used which are most accommodated to the capacity of the people Herein I known you will agree with me I go on But a set form is most accommodate Ergo This proposition is easily proved I make it good thus 1. The understanding is prae-acquainted with and the subject otherwise difficult is thus made obvious and easie 2. The matter is the same not at the will or passion or ignorance or negligence of him that prayeth to be varied by reason of which sometime the people cannot sometime dare not go along with their Minister 3. Though the language be not in it self unknown yet the harshnesse of it in some the length and tediousnesse of stile in others the affected heighth of forced Allegories and Tropes not to say the nonsense and ridiculously absurd variations of many pretenders to the faculty renderâ— it altogether as unintelligible as it were Latine or Greek If were to make good this assertion by a particular in â—ance I would go no farther than your prayer you have given us pag 6 37 38. which infinite of honest and simple Christians would no more know how to understand than they would doe a Scene out of Iohnsons Cataline But what command in Scripture is there for it Where is conceived prayer mentioned what such virtue is there in the extemporall wording of a Prayer that for the giving it such undoubted liberty we must run all these hazzards The soul may be as much inflamed that prayes in a set form as that which doth not and that may be as cold that prayes extempore Will you say that every one that hath the gift hath also affections answerable you dare not That then may be belyed and we shall admire the spirit where it is not what is this but to warm our selves at a painted fire For indeed it is not the volubility or roundnesse of tongue that is the work of Gods Spirit primarily in him that hath this gift of Prayer but the enkindling of the affections I say primarily for where the Spirit of Grace which is as fire in the heart findes such abilities such naturall abilities either actuall or potentiall it doth catch hold of them and make fuell as it were of them whereby the soul burns the more ardently But where it finds them not God never infuseth them this is meer Anabaptisme otherwise no such abilities no grace no extemporall expressions no Prayer And this being thus doth it make a Prayer ever the more acceptable to God that it is extemporall Doth it make a Prayer unacceptable that it is not so In truth no But this is it there is more of the man in the extemporall Prayer and that makes us doat so much upon it as the fond mother commonly loves that child best whose face is most like her though perhaps of worst conditions You cannot but know that there are of the holiest men and most able Ministers about London and elsewhere that both use our Liturgy and accustome themselves to a set form of their own wisely considering as I said before that they are publike men and are bound to do not what they could more to their own benefit but what they must to the peoples Yea those that do use extemporall expressions I would ask them how far they are from a set form Is not yesterdayes to dayes to morrows and every dayes Prayer alike in the frame oeconomy or disposition of the matter Is not the matter the same do they not preface petition conclude always alike Not in the same words you will say Well but S. Paul did so in all his Epistles in the very same words and it is more than probable did so in all his Prayers If there be new emergent occasions do not those men insert into their own doth not the Church insert into the Common-prayer book such petitions as are needfull for those occasions Consider then in what things their Prayers come near yours and yours come near theirs and where 's the difference why is the world distracted about nothing either you are exorbitant or both may agree 3. Most expedient to attain the end such worship drives at Order Unity Piety and the best advancement of Gods glory Whereas an unbounded liberty in extemporall and fanaticall Prayers brings forth the quite contrary disorder dis-union of affections between man and man impiety atheism and anarchy Ex ungue leonem What leud demeanours what insolent and irreligious behaviours both towards the Book of Common-prayers and the men that use them hath this lawless time shewn now while the laws are still in force that authorize them The King and Parliament devoutly use them religious people morning and evening frequent them now some to spurn and tear them others spit at them you to call them superstitious evill a Crambe a Kickshoe an Hotch-potch a Drench c. If this be not the highest degree of profanation nothing is Surely if we do not repent for this our posterity will and besides that blush when ever they shall be upbraided by such prodigiously Atheisticall Ancestors But to proceed What order can ever be expected what uniformity looked for what consent and harmony betwixt Church and Church when every one shall differ in that which should make them truly one a Communion of Saints even their community of Prayers How while some are starved shall others be pampered and then what likenesse Tell me not that they that will shall use the Churches set forms for either they will be wholly neglected where others cannot be had being so discountenanced if left arbitrary discountenanced I say by publike authority depraved condemned damned by private persons or else whiles both are in use it will nourish a continuall enmity betwixt the users of each It is a requisite in the Church of Christ that the particular Congregations which are the members of that mysticall body be of one heart and one minde especially in their Prayers to and Praises of God more especially in publike meetings at publike deliverances in publike dangers how shall we be so when we shall not know what one anothers hearts and mindes are No but the designe of your dear friend the Authour of The Protestation protested and some since him is to have the Church at length sifted and winnowed and the grain laid apart by it self that is your faction and for the chaffe all else let them do or be what they will it matters not If the Kings State will maintain the faith of Christ well and good they shall have your fair leave if not they shall have your leave too so you may enjoy your consciences you are indifferent This is the Common good that is cryed up though indeed the Publike wo and thus you tread a fair way to it you shall have the hold of the hearts of the people the surest hold that may be of their consciences of all their religiousest actions their Prayers Supplications c. and the State shall have none of you not command you to pray
A MODEST CONFUTATION OF A Slanderous and Scurrilous LIBELL ENTITVLED ANIMADVERSIONS VPON THE REMONSTRANTS DEFENSE AGAINST SMECTYMNUUS {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Diog. apud Lucian de Hist. conser. Printed in the yeer M.DC.XLII TO THE READER READER IF thou hast any generall or particular concernment in the affairs of these times or but naturall curiosity thou art acquainted with the late and hot bickerings between the Prelates and Smectvmnuans To make up the breaches of whose solemn Scenes it were too ominous to say Tragicall there is thrust forth upon the Stage as also to take the eare of the lesse intelligent a scurrilous Mime a personated and as himself thinks a grim lowring bitter fool I have no further notice of him than he hath been pleased in his immodest and injurious Libell to give of himself and therefore as our industrious Criticks for want of clearer evidence concerning the life and manners of some revived Authours must fetch his character from some scattered passages in his own writings It seems he hath been initiated in the Arts by Jacke Seaton and by Bishop Downam confirmed a Logician and as he sayes his companions did it is like hee spent his youth in loytering bezelling and harlotting Thus being grown to an Impostume in the brest of the Vniversity he was at length vomited out thence into a Suburbe sinke about London which since his comming up hath groaned under two ills Him and the Plague Where his morning haunts are I wist not but he that would finde him after dinner must search the Play-Houses or the Bordelli for there I have traced him among old Cloaks false Beards Tyres Cases Periwigs Modona Vizzards nightwalking-Cudgellers and Salt Lotion Many of late since he was out of Wit and Cloaths as Stilpo merrily jeered the poore Starveling Crates he is new cloathed in Serge and confined to a Parlour where he blasphemes God and the King as ordinarily as erewhile he drank Sack or swore Hear him speak Our Liturgie runnes up and down like an English gallopping Nun Pag. 16. While shee prankes her selfe in the weeds of Popish Masse she provokes the jelousie of God no otherwise than a Wife affecting Whorish attire Pag. 22. Liturgie a bait for them Papists to bite at Pag. 23. A Pharisaicall and vain-glorious project Ibid. God hath taught them the People to detest your Liturgie and Prelacy Pag. 24. Is Liturgie good or evill Evill Pag. 26. A Meditation of yours observed at Lambeth from the Archiepiscopall Kittens Pag. 29. The Prelates would have Saint Pauls words * ramp one over another Pag. 40. â—et not those wretched Fathers think they shall impoverish the Church of willing and able supply though they keep back their sordid sperm begotten in the lustinesse of their avarice Pag. 57. Lest thinking to offer them as a Present to God they dish them out for the Divell Pag. 58. Your Confutation hath atchieved nothing against it The Reply by SMECTYMNUUS left nothing upon it but a soule taste of your Skillet foot and a more perfect and distinguishable odour of your Socks than of your Night-cap Pag. 67. Christian doest thou like these passages or doth thy heart rise against such unseemly beastlinesse Nay but take heed This is nothing disagreeing from Christian meeknesse Pag. 2. Not unauthorised from the Morall precept of Solomon Nor from the example of Christ and all his Followers in all ages Ibid. Horrid blasphemy You that love Christ and know this miscreant wretch stone him to death lest your selves smart for his impunity This is my adversary to encounter whom at his own weapons which he voluntarily chose pag. 4. as Goliah his Sword and Spear to defie the God and the Host of Israel I am much too weak and must despaire of victory unlesse it may be gotten by the strength of a good cause and a modest defense of it I dare not say but there may be hid in my nature as much venemous Atheisme and profanation as hath broken out at his lips Every one that is infected with the Sicknesse hath not the Sores running upon him Of which should I be as lavish as he hath been it might be said of us that we encountred one the other like a Toad and a Spider and each dyed of the others poyson or whiles we would seem to fall out about some petty matters in Religion we well enough agreed together to be eminently wicked It is my Prayer to God that all those and the like scandals with which Hee hath and I may grieve the Church may be forgiven to him and prevented in me And that in his good time himselfe would undertake the Curing of his Churches wounds which by the ignorance of some and malice of others are like to be but the worse for the Plaster Faerwell THE PREFACE §. I. IS apologeticall and well may it be so Satisfaction to tender Consciences is that which we look for and that which you ought to give as having done violence through all your book to the person of an holy and religious Prelate the eares of all good Christians within our Church the established Laws of the Kingdom the pretious and dear name of our common Master and Saviour Christ Jesus We must suppose you have undertaken a religious cause that is your pretended subject we shall examine the truth of it by and by we must now look to your manner of handling it a suspicious way you think and so do I. Here we agree Your defense is In such a cause it is nothing disagreeing from Christian meeknesse the morall precept of Solomon the example of Christ What to weary God and man with lewd profanations scurrilous jests slanderous and reproachfull calumniâ—s What morall precept in Solomon countenances such language as this * Scum Ladâ—es Kitchen-Physick Brawn Beef Kickeshaw and Crambe-Prayers Motley and patcht incoherences With hey passe repasse and the mysticall men of Sturbridge Your Barber leading in Balaams Asse Christ and his Apostles Capon and white-broath in the same leaf Esaus red pottage and a spur-galled Galloway Bastards and Centaurs of spirituall fornications A Christian Ministers Surplice and an Egyptian Priests frock in the same suds your Primero of piety Cogging of Dice into heaven Gleeking and Bacchanalia and Flanks and Brickets c. Such language you should scarce hear from the mouths of canting beggars at an heathen * altar much lesse was it looked for in a treatise of controversall Theologie as yours might have been thought had you not thus prevented it As for Christs example which you blasphemously urge surely that holy mouth was never so foul but then when it was spit upon Yet neither was that indignity so bad as this Well but what if the benefit of this kind of writing will make amends for the fault of it Shall we do evill that good may come thereof God forbid not if the good which followed were far better than it is like to prove for let
as by likelihood would never be so much offended at that which is evill were they not singularly good themselves And further as you have used the matter imputing personall faults to the government in generall of which I shall say somewhat anon It gets you the opinion of wise men too that can see farther into Ecclesiasticall affairs than either the Founders or Conservers of this established Polity Thus much of libels in generall I come now to yours §. III. NOr would I have done you the injury to have called it so were it not too too manifest For that which even you professedly disavow private and personall spleen p. 3. lin. 18. is the greatest matter in your book the other businesse being handled but by the by or not at all and where it is in such a wretched loathsome manner as once I did almost doubt me whether or no you did not jeer at both sides at Religion and God and all I shall first answer to those personall injuries and then to the cause Only first let me satisfie you concerning my engagements and dependencie which perhaps you may possibly think might have wrought me to this vindication I am free as you or any true subiect may or need be I have a fortune therefore good because I am content with it and therefore content with it because it neither goes before nor comes behind my merit God hath given me a soul eager in the search of truth and affections so equally tempered that they neither too hastily adhere to the truth before it be fully examined nor too lazily afterward Such excesse fills the world with furious hot-braind Hereticks Schismaticks c. the defect with cold speculative Atheists I have alwayes resolved that neither person nor cause shall improper me further than they are good and so far it is my duty to give evidence §. IV. HE that shall weed a field of corn bind the weeds up in sheaves and present them at once to the eye of a stranger that is ignorant how much good wheat the field bears beside those weeds may very well be deceived in censuring that field especially if he which presents them hath put into the heap such weeds as came from elsewhere Thus it fares with men when the evil actions of the best are picked and culled out from their virtues and all presented in grosse together to the eye or ear of him who is otherwise ignorant of the persons whose vices or faults they are what monsters do they seem This and more have you done to our Prelate This in pinning upon his sleeve the faults of others More in that those which you pretend faults are indeed virtues What hath the Remonstrant to answer for the scorn that is by some thrown upon our Martyrs while it is known to all that will not be ignorant that he doth both honour their memories and tread in their steps and that he doth not as they did in an holy zeal sacrifice his blood to his God is not that he is backward to it but that it is not yet required at his hands God is my witnesse I do not neither can I flatter him He that so patiently hath offered up his fame his civill life to be torn by the teeth and phangs of calumny how shall I think he will love his blood better than that I know what it is that hath rendred many Martyrs and their stories so suspected as they are to wary and uncredulous men Sometime a wrong cause when Traytours shall engage God in a conspiracy and then being detected and brought to execution dye for it no lesse undauntedly than if it were for the dearest truth unhappily priding themselves in that for which they ought rather to have repented What glory is it if when ye are buffeted for your faults ye take it patiently Sometimes the seeking their own deaths in a good cause out of ambition of obtaining that honour which those first times of the Church had set upon Martyrdome Whence I should think it as discommendable for men to seek thus over-eagerly their own deaths banishments confiscations of goods stigmatizings as the Philosopher did the seeking of preferments Neither shall I ever esteem either their names or memories who shall thus gather sticks for their own severall piles and as if God knew not what honour was sit for them be their own Carvers so may the same thorns which Christ wore as the Crown of Humility be upon their heads the Crown of Pride Otherwhiles the ignorant or malitious unfaithfulnesse of the Martyrologers in transmitting to us those Church-stories big-swoln with untrue Legends as so many invincible arguments of the truth of that cause which those Martyrs sealed with their blood I have seen beyond sea what the Jesuites of our own nation have carped at Master Fox his History which made me think though I durst not say that they injured them no lesse now than formerly and if any one of ours shall do the like I shall think he wisheth no better to the Protestant cause than they do §. V. AFter you have born the people in hand that our Remonstrant hath defamed the old ones it is an easie thing to perswade them that he hath made new So you do haled some into the Gehenna at Lambeth strappado'd others with an oath ex officio If that Court hath been illegall either in the constitution of it or in its proceedings it is more than I know but if so the Remonstrant is as guiltlesse of such illegalities as I am ignorant And a fault committed there can no more prejudice Him than the Divine right of Episcopacy Though your Bow-men here were quick in the delivery of their arrows yet they were wide of the mark §. VI IF you missed before now you will be sure to hit him You love toothlesse Satyrs Let me inform you a toothlesse Satyre is as improper as atoothed sleek-stone and as Bullish I wonder you go no lower perhaps his cradle might have yeelded you some worthy observation It was reckoned amongst Saint Augustines faults faults that in his infancy he did morosiùs flere Such a note had not been amisse here but vixit is enough for that an happy time that you cannot invent a slander to fixe upon You begin therefore with his youth the sport and leisure of his youth even that must be raked up out of the dust and cited to witnesse against him as it were to disparage the holinesse of his Age and Calling When my early sinnes are done away as a morning cloud they shall never obscure or darken my setting Sun God will never impute them to me man may hath been the comfort of many a dying Saint in the day of evill when the iniquity of their heels have encompassed them many whose first years have been as famous for debauchednesse as their latter for devotion whiles this Remonstrant no sooner came to be capable of the more violent impressions of
sin but his nature and it fell foul and because he had overcome vices in himself he took liberty to whip them in others Which timely zeal as it did not mis-become his youth so can it not disparage his * Prelacy no not as Poesic not as Satyr The first you cannot condemn and the latter I will maintain against greater Criticks than you would dare boast to have been conversant with only if I appeal to such my fear is I shall have no adversary To let passe therefore your simile of the sleek-stone which shews that you can be as bold with a Prelate as familiar with your Laundresse why in the name of Philology is a toothlesse Satyr improper why Bullish Euge novam Satyram Satyrum sine cornibus euge Monstra novt monstri haec Satyri Satyrae The Authour himself furnished you with the exception and had you had but so much life or quicknesse in your pallade as to have tasted an Epigram you might have understood he speaks there in the person of such carping Poetasters as you and your now-despised Tribe are They say they are Monsters you that they are Bulls you mean I suppose Chymaera's absurd and ridiculous compositions of words inconsistible with sense Let us therefore if you will take them in pieces and see where the incongruity lyes Satyra signified anciently any kind of miscellaneous writing which we now term Essayes whence Varro entituled many of his books of divers subjects Satyras suas Whence there was also a Law called metaphorically Lex Satyra when by one and the same Vote divers things were enacted Last of all it came to be restrained to such kind of writings as contained the vices of the times whether in verse or prose more commonly now of later times in verse Dens or dentatus you cannot think should come here into composition with a Satyre in the primitive or proper signification of it so as to make Satyra dentata as we say it of a child after its teeth are grown or before that he hath teeth or is toothlesse we must seek then some other sense for it where I finde teeth and horns to signifie strength used to defense or injury Nothing is more familiar in Scripture than horn for strength {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} He hath raised up an horn of salvation a strong salvation So also for injurious strength foenum habet in cornu is a common Proverb The word Matth. 10. 16. which we translate simple or harmlesse is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} ab {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} cornu Thus Martial lib. 13. ep. 91. Dente timentur apri defendunt cornua tauros Imbelles damae nil nisi praeda sumus So vinum edentulum was used by the Ancients for small wines such as we say in plain English will do a man no hurt Vinum edentulum hoc est nullarum virium vel saltem perexiguarum Salmuth ex Gualth Tit. 25. p. 84. In the same sense Horace speaks of the effects of strong wines Tu spem reducis mentibus anxiis Viresque addis cornua pauperi makes a man bold or injurious and in this sense unlesse these Authours are improper it is no Bull to say a toothlesse Satyr i. e. an harmlesse Poem that doth Parcere personis dicere de vitiis spare the person but strike the vice For such should a true Satyrist be asper Incolumi gravitate Horat. de Art Poet Satyrae incolumes are harmlesse more elegantly toothlesse Satyrs in opposition to Satyrae mordaces biting or toothed Satyrs such as for their loose insolencies were by Law forbidden to the Ancients Quid refert dictis ignoscat * Mutius annon To which decorum our Authour professes himself to have had respect Virgidem lib. 3. in Prol. For look how far the Ancients Comedy Past former Satyres in her liberty So far must mine yeeld unto them of old 'T is better to be bad than to be bold And Sir David Lindsey in his Satyr in Prol. Prudent peopill I pray Èow all Take na man grief in speciall For we sall speik in generall For pastime and for play Thairfoir till all our rimis be rung c. Though what was and is denyed the stage is got up into the Pulpit much as the manner was with Chaucers Pardoner Then woll I sting hem with my tonge smert In preaching so that he shall not assert To been diffamed falsely if that he Hath trespassed to my brethren or me For though I tell not his proper name Men shall weil know it is the same By signes or by other circumstances Thus quite I folk that doth us displeasances Thus put I out my venym under hiew Of holinesse to semen holy and true As you have censured the Remonstrants Poesie so in like manner you have justified a slip in the Smectymnuans Philology I mean so weakly not so malitiously they mistook a Bench for a Judge or rather the place for the men Areopagi for Areopagitae and you make it good How If in dealing with an outlandish name they thought it best not to screw the English mouth to an harsh forrain termination they did no more than the elegantest Authours among the Greeks Romans Italians c. Every Countrey I know takes and gives that leave in the use of forraign words to fit them to their own easiest pronunciation and best liking sometimes out of necessity sometimes of choice and pleasure onely The Greeks when they met with words terminated in any of these letters {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} because such terminations were unknown to them usually changed them As Polybius for {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} writes {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} And Suetonius as some will have it tells us how the Romans used the old Germane word a Rutters which they still use to signifie horsemen in war And so perhaps our English word Meat is but Mattya fashioned to our Dialect Dives ex omni posita est extructa macello Coena tibi sed te b Mattya sola juvat Mart. lib. 10. Ep. 59. So the Italian Inciostro from the Latine word c Encaustum as likewise our English word Inke Encaustes d Phaeton tabula tibi pictus in hac est Quid tibi vis dypyron qui Phaetonta facis Mart lib. 4. Epig. 47. Our learned Chaucer did not sticke to doe so True There was a King That hyght Ceys and had a wyfe The beste tha myght beare lyfe And this Queene hyght Alcione Fol. 267. Semiramus Candace and Hercules Byblys Dido Tyshe and Piramuâ— Fol. 275. Ne like the pytte of Pegace Vnder Pernaso where the Poetâ— slept Fol. 301. What is all this to the purpose Chaucer hath mollifyed a termination {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} quod valet {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} he hath not