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or wilfulness hath fathered upon every of the Fathers, not without shameless importunity and gross impossibilities: all which, as she said of Peter, their speech bewrayeth; or, as Austin said of Cyprian's style, their face. This fraud is more easily avoided for, as in notorious burglaries, ofttimes there is either a hat, or a glove, or a weapon left behind, which descrieth the authors; so the God of Truth hath besotted these impostors, to let fall some palpable error, though but of false calculation, whereby, if not their names, yet their ages might appear, to their conviction.

Most danger is in the secret corruption of the true and acknowledged issue of those gracious parents: whom, through close and crafty handling, they have induced to belie those that begot them; and to betray their fathers, either with silence, or false evidence. Plainly, how are the honoured volumes of faithful Antiquity, blurred, interlined, altered, depraved by subtle treachery; and made to speak, what they meant not! Fie on this, not so much injustice as impiety, to raze the awful monuments of the dead; to blot and change the original will of the deceased, and partially to insert our own legacies. This is done by our guilty adversaries, to the injury, not more of these authors, than of the present and succeeding times.

Hence, those Fathers are some-where not ours; what wonder? while they are not themselves. Your industry hath offered, and that motion is lively and heroical, to challenge all their learned and elegant pages, from injury of corruption; to restore them to themselves, and to us. That, which all the learned of our times have but desired to see done, you proffer to effect. Your essay in Cyprian and Austin is happy, and justly applauded. All our libraries, whom your diligent hand hath ransacked, offer their aid; in such abundance of manuscripts, as all Europe would envy to sce met in one island.

After all this, for that the most spiteful imputation to our truth is novelty, you offer to deduce her pedigree from those primitive times, through the successions of all ages; and, to bring into the light of the world many, as yet obscure, but no less certain and authentical patrons, in a continued line of defence.

You have given proof enough, that these are no glorious vaunts, but the zealous challenges of an able champion.

What wanteth then? Let me say for you: not a heart, not a head, not a hand; but, which I almost scorn to name in such a cause, a purse. If this continue your hinderance, it will not be more our loss than shame.

Hear me a little, ye Great and Wealthy. Hath God loaded you with so much substance; and will you not lend him a little of his own? Shall your riot be fed with excess; while God's cause shall starve for want? Shall our adversaries so insultingly outbid us; and, in the zeal of their profusion, laugh, at our heartless and cold niggardliness? Shall heavenly truth lie in the dust, for want of a little stamped earth to raise her? How can you so much any way honour God, yea yourselves; deserve of posterity; pleasure the

Church; and make you so good friends of your Mammon? Let not the next age say, that she had so unkind predecessors. Fetch forth of your superfluous store; and cast in your rich gifts, into this Treasury of the Temple. The Lord and his Church have need.

For you, it angers me to see how that flattering Possevinus smoothly entices you from us, with golden offers, upon the advantage of our neglect; as if he, measuring your mind by his own, thought that an omnia dabo would bring you with himself on your knees to worship the devil, the beast, the image of both as if we were not as able to encourage, to reward desert. Hath virtue no patrons, on this side the Alps? Are those hills only, the thresholds of honour? I plead not, because I cannot fear you: but who sees not, how munificently our Church scattereth her bountiful favours upon less merit. If your day be not yet come, expect it: God and the Church owe you a benefit: if their payment be long, it is sure. Only go you on with courage, in those your high endeavours; and, in the mean time, think it great recompence to have deserved.

EPISTLE IX.

TO MR. E. A.

A Discourse of Fleeing or Stay in the time of Pestilence; whether lawful for Minister or People.

How many hath a seduced conscience led untimely to the grave! I speak of this sad occasion of pestilence. The angel of God follows you; and you doubt whether you should flee. If a lion out of the forest should pursue you, you would make no question; yet could not he do it, unsent. What is the difference? both instruments of divine revenge; both threaten death; one, by spilling the blood; the other, by infecting it.

Who knows, whether he hath not appointed your Zoar, out of the lists of this destruction?

You say, it is God's visitation. What evil is not? If war have wasted the confines of your country, you save your throats by flight: why are you more favourable to God's immediate sword of pestilence? very leprosy, by God's Law, requires a separation; yet no mortal sickness. When you see a noted leper proclaim his uncleanness in the street, will you embrace him, for his sake that hath stricken him; or avoid him, for his sake that hath forbidden you? If you honour his rod, much more will you regard his precept. If If you mislike not the affliction, because he sends it; then love the life, which you have of his sending: fear

the judgment which he will send, if you love it not. He, that bids us flee when we are persecuted, hath neither excepted angel nor man: whether soever, I fear our guiltiness, if wilfully we flee not.

"But, whither shall we flee from God?" say you : "where shall he not, both find and lead us? whither shall not our destiny follow us? Vain men! we may run from our home, not from our grave. Death is subtle: our time is set: we can not, God will not, alter it."

Alas, how wise we are to wrong ourselves! Because death will overtake us, shall we run and meet him? Because God's decree is sure, shall we be desperate? Shall we presume, because God changeth not? Why do we not try every knife and cord, since our time is neither capable of prevention nor delay? Our end is set, not without our means. In matter of danger, where the end is not known, the means must be suspected; in matter of hope, where the end is not known, means must be used. Use, then, freely the means of your flight: suspect the danger of your stay: and, since there is no particular necessity of your presence, know that God bids you depart and live.

You urge the instance of your Minister. How unequally! There is not more lawfulness in your flight, than sin in ours. You are your own; we, our people's. You are charged with a body, which you may not willingly lose; not hazard by staying: we, with all their souls, which, to hazard by absence, is to lose our own. We must love our lives; but not when they are rivals with our souls, or with others'. How much better is it to be dead, than negligent, than faithless! If some bodies be contagiously sick, shall all souls be wilfully neglected? There can be no time, wherein good counsel is so seasonable, so needful. Every threatening finds impression, where the mind is prepared by sensible judgments. When will the iron hearts of men bow, if not when they are heated in the flame of God's affliction? Now, then, to run away from a necessary and public good to avoid a doubtful and private evil, is to run into a worse evil than we would avoid. He, that will thus run from Nineveh to Tarshish, shall find a tempest and a whale in his way.

Not that I dare be an author to any, of the private visitation of infected beds: I dare not, without better warrant. Who ever said we were bound to close up the dying eyes of every departing Christian; and, upon whatever conditions, to hear their last groans? If we had a word, I would not debate of the success. Then, that were cowardliness, which now is wisdom. Is it no service, that we publicly teach and exhort? that we privately prepare men for death, and arm them against it? that our comfortable letters and messages stir up their fainting hearts? that our loud voices pierce their ears afar; unless we feel their pulses, and lean upon their pillows, and whisper in their ears? Daniel is in the lions' den is it nothing, that Darius speaks comfort to him through the grate, unless he go in to salute him among those fierce companions? A good

Minister is the common goods: he cannot make his life peculiar to one, without injury to many. In the common cause of the Church, he must be no niggard of his life; in the private cause of a neighbour's bodily sickness, he may soon be prodigal. A good father may not spend his substance on one child, and leave the rest beggars. If any man be resolute in the contrary, I would rather praise his courage, than imitate his practice. I confess, I fear; not so much death, as want of warrant for death.

EPISTLE X.

TO MR. R. B.

A Complaint of the Iniquity of the Times; with a Prescription of the Means to redress it.

WHILE I accused the Times, you undertook their patronage. I commend your charity; not your cause. It is true, there was never any age not complained of; never any, that was not censured, as worst. What is, we see what was, we neither enquire, nor care. That, which is out of sight and use, is soon out of mind; and, ere long, out of memory. Yet the iniquity of others cannot excuse ours. And, if you will be but as just as charitable, you shall confess, that both some times exceed others in evil; and these, all.

This earthly moon, the Church, hath her fulls and wanings; and, sometimes, her eclipses, while the shadow of this sinful mass hides her beauty from the world. So long as she wadeth in this planetary world, it should be vain to expect better: it is enough, when she is fixed above, to be free from all change.

This you yield, but nothing can persuade you, that she is not now in the full of her glory: true; or else she were not subject to this darkening. There was never more light of knowledge; never more darkness of impiety: and there could not be such darkness, if there were not such light. Goodness repulsed, gives height to sin: therefore are we worse than our predecessors, because we might be better: by how much our means are greater, by so much are our defects. Turn over all records; and parallel such helps, such care, such cost, such expectation, with such fruit; I yield.

We see but our own times. There was never but one Noah (whom the heathens celebrated under another name) that, with two faces, saw both before and behind him. But lo, that Ancient of Days, to whom all times are present, hath told us, that these last shall be worst. Our experience justifies him, with all but the wilful.

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This censure, lest you should condemn my rigour as unnaturally partial, is not confined to our seas; but, free and common, hath the same bounds with the earth. I joy not in this large society. Would God we were evil alone. How few are those, whose carriage doth not say, that profession of any conscience is pusillanimity! How few, that care so much, as to shew well! and yet of those few, how many care only to seem! whose words disagree from their actions, and their hearts from their words! Where shall a man mew up himself, that he may not be a witness of what he would not? What can he see or hear, and not be either sad, or guilty? Oaths strive for number with words; scoffs, with oaths vain speeches, with both. They are rare hands, that are free either from aspersions of blood, or spots of filthiness. Let me be at once, as I use, bold and plain: wanton excess, excessive pride, close atheism, impudent profaneness, unmerciful oppression, merciful connivance, greedy covetousness, loose prodigality, simoniacal sacrilege, unbridled luxury, beastly drunkenness, bloody treachery, cunning fraud, slanderous detraction, envious underminings, secret idolatry, hypocritical fashionableness, have spread themselves all over the world. The sun of peace, looking upon

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our unclean heaps, hath bred these monsters; and hath given light to this brood of darkness. Look about you, and see if three great idols, Honour, Pleasure, Gain, have not shared the earth amongst them; and left Him least, whose all is. Your denial drives me to particulars. I urge no further.

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If any adversary insult in my confession, tell him, that I account them the greatest part of this evil; neither could thus complain, if they were not. Who knows not, that, as the earth is the dregs of the world, so Italy is the dregs of the earth; Rome, of Italy? It is no wonder, to find Satan in his hell: but, to find him in paradise, is uncouth and grievous.

Let them alone, that will die, and hate to be cured. For us: oh, that remedies were as easy as complaints! that we could be as soon cleared, as convinced! that the taking of the medicine were but so difficult as the prescription! And yet nothing hinders us from health, but our will: neither Gospel, nor Grace, nor Glory, are shut up only our hearts are not open.

Let me turn my style from you, to the secure, to the perverse: though why do I hope they will hear me, that are deaf to God? they will regard words, that care not for judgments? Let me tell them yet, if in vain, they must break, if they bow not: that if mercy may be refused, yet vengeance cannot be resisted: that God can serve himself of them, perforce; neither to their thank, nor ease that the present plagues do but threaten worse: lastly, that if they relent not, hell was not made for nothing.

What should be done, then? Except we would fain smart, each man amend one; and we all live. How commonly do men complain; and yet add to this heap! Redress stands not in words. Let every man pull but one brand out of this fire, and the flame will go out alone. What is a multitude, but a heap of unities? The

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