Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A45302
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A modest confutation of a slanderous and scurrilous libell, entitvled, Animadversions vpon the remonstrants defense against Smectymnuus
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Hall, Joseph, 1574-1656.
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1642
(1642)
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Wing H393; ESTC R3701
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34,653
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47
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I hope between a Libell clapt upon Whitehallgates and a Panygirick at Pauls In my opinion those flatterers shall do very ill to be silent till either their Prince be lesse vertuous or you lesse malitious Animad. And as for your young Scholars that petition for Bishopricks and Deanaries to encourage them in their Studies and that many Gentlemen else will not put their sons to learning c. That which they alledge for their encouragement should be cut away forthwith as the very bait of pride and ambition the very garbage that draws together all the fowls of prey c. Confut. It is one of those young Scholars that asks your Eldership whether there were not birds and beasts of prey that did devour the flock before ere the Church were so much beholding to the bounty of Princes and Nobles as now she is Whether the Devill can allure never a Cobler from his awl and last under a fat Prebendary Whether a Widows house be not as tempting as a Bishops Palace or there be not of those degenerate sort of men who will desire the Priesthood for a morsell of bread If so how are we or shall we be then more safe than now Poor soul how envie and anger befools thee Bethink your self better are not Parsonages Vicarages and Lectures prey too and do we not see halt and dumb too often possesse the former and crazed men the latter away with them then by any means No but away with those fowls and beasts rather and then that prey will be meat for honest and able Preachers or I doubt not else but sacriledg Hook and his neighbour Gentlemen will make many a pleasant meal on it But in good earnest Sir for Bishopricks and Denaries they are in too wise a Dispencers hands to be given to Vultures had it been otherwise perhaps yours and your fellows mouths ere this had been stopt Anim The heathen Philosophers thought virtue was for its own sake inestimable and the greatest gain of a Teacher to make a soul virtuous Was morall virtue so lovely or so alluring and heathen men so inamoured of her as to teach and study her with greatest neglect and contempt of worldly profit and advancement and is Christian Piety so homely and unpleasant and Christian men so cloyed with her as that none will study and teach her but for lucre and preferment O stale-grown Piety O Gospel rated as cheap as thy Master c. pag. 54. Confut. Now I see you know somewhat and were I not assured that other passions distracted you I could easily be enclined to think that this volley of expressions proceeded from a love of goodnesse indeed so much the more easily inclined by how much I would fain have it so For were there no guile in them as I do continually nourish such thoughts so would I never desire to have them better cloathed if at any time a floud of eloquence becomes us it is when we expresse such a love or such an indignation But it is one thing that you say and another thing that you prove the means is often times rested and taken up in stead of the end therefore the means is not the means or therfore the means cannot be looked at as the means illogicall and absurd A Philosopher loves virtue and a Christian loves him that is the fountain of that virtue What then The Philosopher you say loved virtue for it self So doth a Christian love God much more But he did it with neglect of others things wealth honours c. He came then so much short of his own Philosophicall perfection They that stood a begging in the streets might if it had pleased them have been as liberall as their best Masters And that Philosopher that flung his gold into the sea might have been perhaps lesse an Infidell if he had provided for himself and his family with it I am sure might have been more magnificent But that offends you that our Church should use the same means to entice men to the pure service of God that were used to tempt our Saviour to the service of the Dâ—vill Those means were neither in themselves nor as enticemenâ—s any way dangerous but so far as they were tendered by him from whom it was a sin to receive them to him who could make no use of them for such an eâ—d as it had been a sin to accept them Oâ—herwise how could God entice the children of Israel with the promise of Canaan or Solomon with riches and honours and all kind of abundance But these desires mixe As subordinate they may The holy Ghost witnesseth of Moseâ— that he had an eye to the reward I ask whether in that Moses sinned yea God himself hearteneth on the Church of Smyâ—na Be thou faithfull unto the death and I will give thee a Crown of life Du Moulin whose Tractates you would seem to be acquainted with in a discourse Of the love of God tells us the most imperfect and incomplete degree of this love is to love God for the good we receive from him Thus children saith he say Grace that they may go to break-fast Indeed a childish love The perfectest is to love him and nothing else a love onely the glorified Saints are capable of betwixt which two he placeth a third a mixed love which is when we love God with other things yet so as that we love those things for Gods sake that is as helps and furtherances of our own piety and his glory Either you wilfully oversee much truth or are very ignorant Animad. A true Pastor of Christs sending hath this especiall marke that for greatest labours and greateâ— merits in the Church he requires either nothing if he could so subsist or a very common and reasonable supply of humane necessaries We cannot do better therefore than to leave this care of ours to God he can easily send Labourers into his harvest He can stir up rich fathers to bestow exquisite education upon their children and so dedicate them to the service of the Gospel he can make the sons of Nobles his Ministers c pag. 56. Animad. No man doubts of what God can do but we may well doubt he will not do what we would have him while we are thus froward and unthankfull while we are under persecution poor wretched and despicable fed but from hand to mouth as we say whiles God leads his Church through a desart or wildernesse If we expect our drink to drop out of a flint or from the shivers of a barren and dry rock if we spread our table to a miracle or every morning and evening look out for a Raven to feed us it becomes our condition and therefore God answers our expectation but if when he hath brought his Church into a land that flows with milk and honey when he hath made Kings our nursing Fathers and Queens our nursing Mothers we will then over-look all that bounty and say God can do thus and thus can
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