that whereof before hee was so scrupulous And yet at the same time Naevius and Plautus the first Latine comedians had fill'd the City with all the borrow'd Scenes of Menander and Philemon Then began to be consider'd there also what was to be don to libellous books and Authors for Naevius was quickly cast into prison for his unbridl'd pen and releas'd by the Tribunes upon his recantation We read also that lipels were burnt and the makers punisht by Augustus The like severity no doubt was us'd if ought were impiously writt'n against their esteemed gods Except in these two points how the world went in Books the Magistrat kept no reckning And therefore Lucretius without impeachment versifies his Epicurism to Memmius and had the honour to be set forth the second time by Cicero so great a father of the Common-wealth although himselfe disputes against that opinion in his own writings Nor was the Satyricall sharpnesse or naked plainnes of Lucilius or Catullus or Flaccus by any order prohibited And for matters of State the story of Titus Livius though it extoll'd that part which Pompey held was not therefore supprest by Octavius Caesar of the other Faction But that Neso was by him banisht in his old age for the wanton Poems of his youth was but a meer covert of State over some secret cause and besides the Books were neither banisht nor call'd in From hence we shall meet with little else but tyranny in the Roman Empire that we may not marvell if not so often bad as good Books were silenc't I shall therefore deem to have bin large anough in producing what among the ancients was punishable to write save only which all other arguments were free to treat on By this time the Emperors were become Christians whose discipline in this point I doe not finde to have bin more severe then what was formerly in practice The Books of those whom they took to be grand Hereticks were examin'd refuted and condemn'd in the generall Councels and not till then were prohibited or burnt by autority of the Emperor As for the writings of Heathen authors unlesse they were plaine invectives against Christianity as those of Porphyrius and Proclus they met with no interdict that can be cited till about the year 400. in a Carthaginian Councel wherein Bishops themselves were forbid to read the Books of Gentiles but Heresies they might read while others long before them on the contrary scrupl'd more the Books of Hereticks then of Gentiles And that the primitive Councels and Bishops were wont only to declare what Books were not commendable passing no furder but leaving it to each ones conscience to read or to lay by till after the yeare 800. is observ'd already by Padre Paolo the great unmasker of the Trentine Councel After which time the Popes of Rome engrossing what they pleas'd of Politicall rule into their owne hands extended their dominion over mens eyes as they had before over their judgements burning and prohibiting to be read what they fansied not yet sparing in their censures and the Books not many which they so dealt with till Martin the 5. by his Bull not only prohibited but was the first that excommunicated the reading of hereticall Books for about that time Wicklef and Husse growing terrible were they who first drove the Papall Court to a stricter policy of prohibiting Which cours Leo the 10 and his successors follow'd untill the Councell of Trent and the Spanish Inquisition engendring together brought forth or perfeted those Catalogues and expurging Indexes that rake through the entralls of many an old good Author with a violation wors then any could be offer'd to his tomb Nor did they stay in matters Hereticall but any subject that was not to their palat they either condemn'd in a prohibition or had it strait into the new Purgatory of an Index To fill up the measure of encroachment their last invention was to ordain that no Book pamphlet or paper should be Printed as if S. Peter had bequeath'd them the keys of the Presse also out of Paradise unlesse it were approv'd and licenc't under the hands of 2 or 3 glutton Friers For example Let the Chancellor Cini be pleas'd to see if in this present work be contain'd ought that may withstand the Printing Vincent Rabatta Vicar of Florence I have seen this present work and finde nothing athwart the Catholick faith and good manners In witnesse whereof I have given c. Nicolò Cini Chancellor of Florence Attending the precedent relation it is allow'd that this present work of Davanzati may be Printed Vincent Rabatta c. It may be Printed July 15. Friar Simon Mompei d' Amelia Chancellor of the holy office in Florence Sure they have a conceit if he of the bottomlesse pit had not long since broke prison that this quadruple exorcism would barre him down I feare their next designe will be to get into their custody the licencing of that which they say * Claudius intended but went not through with Voutsafe to see another of their forms the Roman stamp Imprimatur If it seem good to the reverend Master of the holy Palace Belcastro Vicegerent Imprimatur Friar Nicolò Rodolphi Master of the holy Palace Sometimes 5 Imprimaturs are seen together dialogue-wise in the Piatza of one Title page complementing and ducking each to other with their shav'n reverences whether the Author who stands by in perplexity at the foot of his Epistle shall to the Presse or to the spunge These are the prety responsories these are the deare Antiphonies that so bewitcht of late our Prelats and their Chaplaines with the goodly Eccho they made and besotted us to the gay imitation of a lordly Imprimatur one from Lambeth house another from the West end of Pauls so apishly Romanizing that the word of command still was set downe in Latine as if the learned Grammaticall pen that wrote it would cast no ink without Latine or perhaps as they thought because no vulgar tongue was worthy to expresse the pure conceit of an Imprimatur but rather as I hope for that our English the language of men ever famous and formost in the atchievements of liberty will not easily finde servile letters anow to spell such a dictatorie presumption English And thus ye have the Inventors and the originall of Book-licencing ript up and drawn as lineally as any pedigree We have it not that can be heard of from any ancient State or politie or Church nor by any Statute left us by our Ancestors elder or later nor from the moderne custom of any reformed Citty or Church abroad but from the most Antichristian Councel and the most tyrannous Inquisition that ever inquir'd Till then Books were ever as freely admitted into the World as any other birth the issue of the brain was no more stifl'd then the issue of the womb no envious Juno sate cros-leg'd over the nativity of any mans intellectuall off spring but if it prov'd a Monster who denies
instance wherein to shew both that love of truth which ye eminently professe and that uprightnesse of your judgement which is not wont to be partiall to your selves by judging over again that Order which ye have ordain'd to regulate Printing That no Book pamphlet or paper shall be henceforth Printed unlesse the same be first approv'd and licenc't by such or at least one of such as shall be thereto appointed For that part which preserves justly every mans Copy to himselfe or provides for the poor I touch not only wish they be not made pretenses to abuse and persecute honest and painfull Men who offend not in either of these particulars But that other clause of Licencing Books which we thought had dy'd with his brother quadragesunal and matrimonial when the Prelats expir'd I shall now attend with such a Homily as shall lay before ye first the inventors of it to bee those whom ye will be loath to own next what is to be thought in generall of reading what ever sort the Books be and that this Order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous seditious and libellous Books which were mainly intended to be supprest Last that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning and the stop of Truth not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already but by hindring and cropping the discovery that might bee yet further made both in religious and civill Wisdome I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves as well as men and thereafter to confine imprison and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors For Books are not absolutely dead things but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous Dragons teeth and being sown up and down may chance to spring up armed men And yet on the other hand unlesse warinesse be us'd as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature Gods Image but hee who destroyes a good Booke kills reason it selfe kills the Image of God as it were in the eye Many a man lives a burden to the Earth but a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life 'T is true no age can restore a life whereof perhaps there is no great losse and revolutions of ages doe not oft recover the losse of a rejected truth for the want of which whole Nations fare the worse We should be wary therefore what persecution we raise against the living labours of publick men how we spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and stor'd up in Books since we see a kinde of homicide may be thus committed sometimes a martyrdome and if it extend to the whole impression a kinde of massacre whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elementall life but strikes at that ethereall and and fist essence the breath of reason it selfe slaics an immortality rather then a life But lest I should be condemn'd of introducing licence while I oppose Licencing I refuse not the paines to be so much Historicall as will serve to shew what hath been done by ancient and famous Commonwealths against this disorder till the very time that this project of licencing crept out of the Inquisition was catcht up by our Prelates and hath caught some of our Presbyters In Athens where Books and Wits were ever busier then in any other part of Greece I finde but only two sorts of writings which the Magistrate car'd to take notice of those either blasphemous and Atheisticall or Libellous Thus the Books of Protagoras were by the Iudges of Areopagus commanded to be burnt and himselfe banisht the territory for a discourse begun with his confessing not to know whether there were gods or whether not And against defaming it was decreed that none should be traduc'd by name as was the manner of Vetus Comoedia whereby we may guesse how they censur'd libelling And this course was quick enough as Cicero writes to quell both the desperate wits of other Atheists and the open way of defaming as the event shew'd Of other sects and opinions though tending to voluptuousnesse and the denying of divine providence they tooke no heed Therefore we do not read that either Epicurus or that libertine school of Cyrene or what the Cynick impudence utter'd was ever question'd by the Laws Neither is it recorded that the writings of those old Comedians were supprest though the acting of them were forbid and that Plato commended the reading of Aristophanes the loosest of them all to his royall scholler Dionysius is commonly known and may be excus'd if holy Chrysostome as is reported nightly studied so much the same Author and had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the stile of a rousing Sermon That other leading City of Greece Lacedaemon considering that Lycurgus their Law-giver was so addicted to elegant learning as to have been the first that brought out of Jonia the scatter'd workes of Homer and sent the Poet Thales from Creet to prepare and mollifie the Spartan surlinesse with his smooth songs and odes the better to plant among them law and civility it is to be wonder'd how musclesse and unbookish they were minding nought but the feats of Warre There needed no licencing of Books among them for they dislik'd all but their owne Laconick Apothegms and took a slight occasion to chase Archilochus out of their City perhaps for composing in a higher straine then their owne souldierly ballats and roundels could reach to Or if it were for his broad verses they were not therein so cautious but they were as dissolute in their promiscuous conversing whence Euripides affirmes in Andromache that their women were all unchaste Thus much may give us light after what sort Bookes were prohibited among the Greeks The Romans also for many ages train'd up only to a military roughnes resembling most the Lacedaemonian guise knew of learning little but what their twelve Tables and the Pontifick College with their Augurs and Flamins taught them in Religion and Law so unacquainted with other learning that when Carneades and Critolaus with the Stoick Diogenes comming Embassadors to Rome tooke thereby occasion to give the City a tast of their Philosophy they were suspected for seducers by no lesse a man then Cato the Censor who mov'd it in the Senat to dismisse them speedily and to banish all such Attick bablers out of Italy But Scipio and others of the noblest Senators withstood him and his old Sabin austerity honour'd and admir'd the men and the Censor himself at last in his old age fell to the study of
begun it was as little in my fear that what words of complaint I heard among lerned men of other parts utter'd against the Inquisition the same I shou'd hear by as lerned men at home utterd in time of Parlament against an order of licencing and that so generally that when I had disclos'd my self a companion of their discontent I might say if without envy that he whom an honest questorship had indear'd to the Sicilians was not more by them importun'd against Verres then the favourable opinion which I had among many who honour ye and are known and respected by ye loaded me with entreaties and perswasions that I would not despair to lay together that which just reason should bring into my mind toward the removal of an undeserved thraldom upon lerning That this is not therefore the disburdning of a particular fancie but the common grievance of all those who had prepar'd their minds and studies above the vulgar pitch to advance truth in others and from others to entertain it thus much may satisfie And in their name I shall for neither friend nor foe conceal what the generall murmur is that if it come to inquisitioning again and licencing and that we are so timorous of our selvs and so suspicious of all men as to fear each book and the shaking of every leaf before we know what the contents are if some who but of late were little better then silenc't from preaching shall come now to silence us from reading except what they please it cannot be guest what is intended by som but a second tyranny over learning and will soon put it out of controversie that Bishops and Presbyters are the same to us both name and thing That those evills of Prelaty which before from five or six and twenty Sees were distributivly charg'd upon the whole people will now light wholly upon learning is not obscure to us whenas now the Pastor of a small unlearned Parish on the sudden shall be exalted Archbishop over a large dioces of books and yet not remove but keep his other cure too a mysticall pluralist He who but of late cry'd down the sole ordination of every novice Batchelor of Art and deny'd sole jurisdiction over the simplest Parishioner shall now at home in his privat chair assume both these over worthiest and excellentest books and ablest authors that write them This is not Yee Covnants and Protestations that we have made this is not to put down Prelaty this is but to chop an Episcopacy this is but to translate the Palace Metropolitan from one kind of dominion into another this is but an old canonicall flight of commuting our penance To startle thus betimes at a meer unlicenc't pamphlet will after a while be afraid of every conventicle and a while after will make a conventicle of every Christian meeting But I am certain that a State govern'd by the rules of justice and fortitude or a Church built and founded upon the rock of faith and true knowledge cannot be so pusillanimous While things are yet not constituted in Religion that freedom of writing should be restrain'd by a discipline imitated from the Prelats and learnt by them from the Inquisition to shut us up all again into the brest of a licencer must needs give cause of doubt and discouragement to all learned and religious men Who cannot but discern the finenes of this politic drift and who are the contrivers that while Bishops were to be baited down then all Presses might be open it was the peoples birthright and priviledge in time of Parlament it was the breaking forth of light But now the Bishops abrogated and voided out of the Church as if our Reformation sought no more but to make room for others into their seats under another name the Episcopall arts begin to bud again the cruse of truth must run no more oyle liberty of Printing must be enthrall'd again under a Prelaticall commission of twenty the privilege of the people nullify'd and which is wors the freedom of learning must groan again and to her old fetters all this the Parlament yet sitting Although their own late arguments and defences against the Prelats might remember them that this obstructing violence meets for the most part with an event utterly opposite to the end which it drives at instead of suppressing sects and schisms it raises them and invests them with a reputation The punishing of wits enhaunces their autority saith the Vicount St. Albans and a forbidd'n writing is thought to be a certain spark of truth that flies up in the faces of them who seeke to tread it out This order therefore may prove a nursing mother to sects but I shall easily shew how it will be a step-dame to Truth and first by disinabling us to the maintenance of what is known already Well knows he who uses to consider that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise as well as our limbs and complexion Truth is compar'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition A man may be a heretick in the truth and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so or the Assembly so determins without knowing other reason though his belief be true yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresie There is not any burden that som would gladlier post off to another then the charge and care of their Religion There be who knows not that there be of Protestants and professors who live and dye in as arrant an implicit faith as any lay Papist of Loretto A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure and to his profits finds Religion to be a traffick so entangl'd and of so many piddling accounts that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock going upon that trade What should he doe fain he would have the name to be religious fain he would bear up with his neighbours in that What does he therefore but resolvs to give over toyling and to find himself out som factor to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs som Divine of note and estimation that must be To him he adheres resigns the whole ware-house of his religion with all the locks and keyes into his custody and indeed makes the very person of that man his religion esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety So that a man may say his religion is now no more within himself but is becom a dividuall movable and goes and comes neer him according as that good man frequents the house He entertains him gives him gifts feasts him lodges him his religion comes home at night praies is liberally supt and sumptuously laid to sleep rises is saluted and after the malmsey or some well spic't bruage and better breakfasted then he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and
it self will tell us more at large being publish to the world and dedicated to the Parlament by him who both for his life and for his death deserve that what advice he left be not laid by without perusall And now the time in speciall is by priviledge to write and speak what may help to the furder discussing of matters in agitation The Temple of Janus with his two controversal faces might now not unsignificantly be set open And though all the windes of doctrin were let loose to play upon the earth so Truth be in the field we do injuriously by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength Let her and Falshood grapple who ever knew Truth put to the wors in a free and open encounter Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva fram'd and fabric't already to our hands Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us there be who envy and oppose if it come not first in at their casements What a collusion is this whenas we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence to seek for wisdom as for hidd'n treasures early and late that another order shall enjoyn us to know nothing but by statute When a man hath bin labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge hath furnisht out his findings in all their equipage drawn forth his reasons as it were a battell raung'd scatter'd and defeated all objections in his way calls out his adversary into the plain offers him the advantage of wind and sun if he please only that he may try the matter by dint of argument for his opponets then to sculk to lay ambushments to keep a narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger should passe though it be valour anough in shouldiership is but weaknes and cowardise in the wars of Truth For who knows not that Truth is strong next to the Almighty she needs no policies nor stratagems nor licencings to make her victorious those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power give her but room do not bind her when she sleeps for then she speaks not true as the old Proteus did who spake oracles only when he was caught bound but then rather she turns herself into all shapes except her own and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time as Micaiah did before Ahab untill she be adjur'd into her own likenes Yet is it not impossible that she may have more shapes then one What else is all that rank of things indifferent wherein Truth may be on this side or on the other without being unlike her self What but a vain shadow else is the abolition of those ordinances that hand writing nayl'd to the crosse what great purchase is this Christian liberty which Paul so often boasts of His doctrine is that he who eats or eats not regards a day or regards it not may doe either to the Lord How many other things might be tolerated in peace and left to conscience had we but charity and were it not the chiefstrong hold of our hypocrisie to be ever judging one another I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us We stumble and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible congregation from another though it be not in fundamentalls and through our forwardnes to suppresse and our backwardnes to recover any enthrall'd peece of truth out of the gripe of custom we care not to keep truth separated from truth which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all We doe not see that while we still affect by all means a rigid externall formality we may as soon fall again into a grosse conforming stupidity a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and stubble forc't and frozen together which is more to the sudden degenerating of a Church then many subdichotomies of petty schisms Not that I can think well of every light separation or that all in a Church is to be expected gold and silver and presious stones it is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares the good fish from the other frie that must be the Angels Ministery at the end of mortall things Yet if all cannot be of one mind as who looks they should be this doubtles is more wholsome more prudent and more Christian that many be tolerated rather then all compell'd I mean not tolerated Popery and open superstition which as it extirpats all religions and civill supremacies so it self should be extirpat provided first that all charitable and compassionat means be us'd to win and regain the weak and the misled that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or maners no law can possibly permit that intends not to unlaw it self but those neighboring differences or rather indifference are what I speak of whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline which though they may be many yet need not interrupt the unity of Spirit if we could but find among us the bond of peace In the mean while if any one would write and bring his helpfull hand to the slow-moving Reformation which we labour under if Truth have spok'n to him before others or but seem'd at least to speak who hath so bejesuited us that we should trouble that man with asking licence to doe so worthy a deed and not consider this that if it come to prohibiting there is not ought more likely to be prohibited then truth it self whose first appearance to our eyes bleat'd and dimm'd with prejudice and custom is more unsightly and unplausible then many errors ev'n as the person is of many a great man slight and contemptible to see to And what doe they tell us vainly of new opinions when this very opinion of theirs that none must be heard but whom they like is the worst and newest opinion of all others and is the chief cause why sects and schisms doe so much abound and true knowledge is kept at distance from us besides yet a greater danger which is in it For when God shakes a Kingdome with strong and healthfull commotions to a generall reforming 't is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing but yet more true it is that God then raises to his own work men of rare abilities and more then common industry not only to look back and revise what hath bin taught heretofore but to gain furder and goe on some new enlightn'd steps in the discovery of truth For such is the order of Gods enlightning his Church to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam so as our earthly eyes may best sustain it Neither is God appointed and confin'd where and out of what place these
considerat builders more wise in spirituall architecture when great reformation is expected For now the time seems come wherein Moses the great Prophet may sit in heav'n rejoycing to see that memorable and glorious wish of his fulfill'd when not only our sev'nty Elders but all the Lords people are become Prophets No marvell then though some men and some good men too perhaps but young in goodnesse as Joshua then was envy them They fret and out of their own weaknes are in agony lest these divisions and subdivisions will undoe us The adversarie again applauds and waits the hour when they have brancht themselves out saith he small anough into parties and partitions then will be our time Fool he sees not the firm root out of which we all grow though into branches nor will beware untill he see our small divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill united and unweildy brigade And that we are to hope better of all those supposed sects and schisms and that we shall not need that solicitude honest perhaps though over timorous of them that vex in this behalf but shall laugh in the end at those malicious applauders of our differences I have these reasons to perswade me First when a City shall be as it were besieg'd and blockt about her navigable river infested inrodes and incursions round defiance and battell oft rumor'd to be marching up ev'n to her walls and suburb trenches that then the people or the greater part more then at other times wholly tak'n up with the study of highest and most important matters to be reform'd should be disputing reasoning reading inventing discoursing ev'n to a rarity and admiration things not before discourst or writt'n of argues first a singular good will contentednesse and confidence in your prudent foresight and safe government Lords and Commons and from thence derives it self to a gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of their enemies as if there were no small number of as great spirits among us as his was who when Rome was nigh besieg'd by Hanibal being in the City bought that peece of ground at no cheap rate whereon Hanibal himself encampt his own regiment Next it is a lively and cherfull presage of our happy successe and victory For as in a body when the blood is fresh the spirits pure and vigorous not only to vital but to rationall faculties and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and suttlety it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is so when the cherfulnesse of the people is so sprightly up as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety but to spare and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversie and new invention it betok'ns us not degenerated nor drooping to a fatall decay but casting off the old and wrincl'd skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again entring the glorious waies of Truth and prosperous vertue destin'd to become come great and honourable in these latter ages Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep and shaking her invincible locks Methinks I see her as an Eagle muing her mighty youth and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heav'nly radiance while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds with those also that love the twilight flutter about amaz'd at what she means and in their envious gabble would prognosticat a year of sects and schisms What should ye doe then should ye suppresse all this flowry crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this City should ye set an Oligarchy of twenty ingrossers over it to bring a famin upon our minds again when we shall know nothing but what is measur'd to us by their bushel Beleeve it Lord and Commons they who counsell ye to such a suppressing doe as good as bid ye suppresse your selves and I will soon shew how If it be desir'd to know the immediat cause of all this free writing and free speaking there cannot be assing'd a truer then your own mild and free and human government it is the liberty Lords and Commons which your own valorous and happy counsels have purchast us liberty which is the nurse of all great wits this is that which hath ratify'd and enlightn'd our spirits like the influence of heav'n this is that which hath enfranchis'd enlarg'd and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves Ye cannot make us now lesse capable lesse knowing lesse eagarly pursuing of the truth unlesse ye first make your selves that made us so lesse the lovers lesse the founders of our true liberty We can grow ignorant again brutish formall and slavish as ye found us but you then must first become that which ye cannot be oppressive arbitrary and tyrannous as they were from whom ye have free'd us That our hearts are now more capacious our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things is the issue of your owne vertu propagated in us ye cannot suppresse that unlesse ye reinforce an abrogated and mercilesse law that fathers may dispatch at will their own children And who shall then stick closest to ye and excite others not he who takes up armes for cote and conduct and his four nobles of Danegelt Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities yet love my peace better if that were all Give me the liberty to know to utter and to argue freely according to conscience above all liberties What would be best advis'd then if it be found so hurtfull and so unequall to suppresse opinions for the newness or the unsutablenes to a customary acceptance will not be my task to say I only shall repeat what I have learnt from one of your own honourable number a right noble and pious Lord who had he not sacrific'd his life and fortunes to the Church and Commonwealth we had not now mist and bewayl'd a worthy and undoubted patron of this argument Ye know him I am sure yet I for honours sake and may it be eternall to him shall name him the Lord Brook He writing of Episcopacy and by the way treating of sects and schisms left Ye his vote or rather now the last words of his dying charge which I know will ever be of dear and honour'd regard with Ye so full of meeknes and breathing charity that next to his last testament who bequeath'd love and peace to his Disciples I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard words more mild and peacefull He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility those however they be miscall'd that desire to live purely in such a use of Gods Ordinances as the best guidance of their conscience gives them and to tolerat them though in some disconformity to ourselves The book