lieve that they are maliciously forgotten, if they are not mentioned as a convincing instance and evidence and manifestation of the learning, and wisdom, and rare parts of the speculative and contemplative life; which is the school-men: who, being purely and merely men of contemplation, have illustrated all arts and sciences, and have prescribed a method of examining and judging, that men of the most active parts find great ease and improvement by the observation of it. I am contented that they give each what testimony they please, and that they assume the title of being learned and subtle, and what other title they will, but of being good for any thing. It had been happy for religion and the church of God, if they had been all bred ship-carpenters, or lock-smiths, or gun-smiths, or granado-makers, or any other kind of subtle artificers, so they had never been put to school beyond to read and to write. They are the best laveerers of the world, and would have taught a ship to have catched the wind that it should have gained half in half, though it had been contrary, and would have long since found out the north-west passage, or a shorter. They would have made a key, no bigger than a great pin, which would have driven five-and-thirty bolts, and mortar-pieces, that might have carried granadoes farther than the greatest cannon can shoot a bullet.

They might have enriched the world with many of these inventions both for use and beauty, if they had not been fatally directed to the love and contemplation of learning; of which they never undertook to handle any part that they did not deform and deface, and render unintelligible. They have corrupted and spoiled the noblest and most significant language of the world; a language of the greatest eloquence and greatest clearness, that hath ravished and possessed all ears, that hath captivated the understanding and judgment through that avenue; and have left Latin without a monosyllable, or one soft or grateful word; and instead thereof, have filled the mouth so full of large and unwieldy words, that it can hardly utter in a dialect that is intelligible, and hath made the whole mass of the language fitter to be used in the BearGarden than in places of civil conversation. I wish I knew, or that any body would inform me, (for I have no other displeasure to them than I have to those mineral men who are school-men in metals, who, to extract a crown's worth of silver, would spoil as much lead as would cover a house) what benefit the world hath received from them; what piece of learning they ever took in their hands, which they did not leave worse than they found it; what difficulty they ever undertook to explain and resolve, in which they did not tie more

knots than there were before. They have stripped natural philosophy of all its reason and perspicacity, moral philosophy of all its probity, and divinity of all its religion; by confounding all with canting terms, which are not capable of being translated into any language; with distinctions, which so perplex and alter and cover the subject, that a man knows not where to find what he looks for, nor how to apply what he hath found. There is that fatal distemper in their brain, that when they do make any excursion, or sally out of the wilderness of their affected words into the spacious and pleasant fields of polite learning, as some of them sometimes do; especially St Thomas, with as great flights in devotion as the wit of man can suggest, which from him yield infinite benefit, information, and delight, so that a man may be sorry that he ever kept the other company; yet in the very height of that noble career, if they come near the brink of their school-learning, that precipice casts them over head and ears into the abyss of their profound and insignificant definitions and distinctions, that a man would wonder how they come, in so clear a sun-shine, so suddenly to meet with thick mists and clouds, to cover and conceal them. I am well content that they enjoy the honour and preferment, which in the spacious fields of their unlimited and unrestrained contemplation they

have purchased for themselves; and am glad they have had the modesty never to contend in any field of action, but when they have been laughed off the stage; and it is pity but they who have gotten any considerable profit from them, should make ample acknowledgment to their memory, though they will never be able to make amends for the precious time that hath been cast away upon them.

Since we have not been yet able to discover one instance of a man who hath awaked out of the dream of contemplation, and by the treasure he brought with him from thence, hath quickly appeared a man of so ripe an observation, and so well qualified for the greatest business, that he seemed born to teach and never to learn, we have but one other enquiry to make; which if we should not do, we shall be thought purposely to decline that station, that we might not meet with that crowd of instances as would determine the question; which is the court of Rome: that consisting only of ecclesiastical persons, whereof many have been said even from their infancy to have left the world, and have lived out of it till they have been very old, and have then been called again into it to. the exercise and dispatch of the greatest business of the world, must be thought to have obtained all those great endowments and advantages they have above other men, from the sole light of con

templation; many having been called out of the dark cloysters, in which they have spent their lives, to mount into the highest judicatory of the world, and to take charge both of this world and the world to come. Upon which suggestion I have the less reason to enlarge, having gotten the authority of that court on my side; which, from their sufferings under the government of that tribe of men, have enough provided that it shall never be so governed so again, by excluding all religious men for many years out of the conclave. -And though the same authority that hath of late provided that the popes shall be always chosen out of the cardinals (which hath had frequent interruption) hath likewise provided that there shall be always at least four religious men in the college of the cardinals, it hath never been observed near these last hundred years; for most part of which time there hath not been one, and rarely two, religious men in the whole body. Nor is there any reason to reproach that court with what they do not in any degree affect, with being given to contemplation, when from boys of sixteen they are bred the most to action, and the least to contemplation, of any court in the world; where they least look into books, and most converse with men, and have nothing of ecclesiastical but their habit, and the first tonsure, which makes them capable