ject of the debate, by being stuffed with light and affected jests, and reproachful personal reflections, should be looked upon, even by men of parts and well able to distinguish and judge of want of logic and impertinent digressions in other subjects, as full answers to the other book, can proceed from nothing but a peevish and froward resolution to be firm and fixed in the opinion we have once entertained; as if any change, or receding from any thing we have once maintained, were beneath the temper of a generous spirit. And when our reason will not supply us, we fly to our passion and our choler; and if we can wound, how lightly and corruptly soever, the person of our adversary, we believe we have done our cause more right than if we had answered his most weighty reasons; whereas in truth a scurrilous or ungrave handling a serious controversy in religion, is almost as great a scandal to Christianity, as the debating light, frivolous, and comical arguments with texts of scripture; and whilst the truth seems to be contended for, the fashion and indecency of it exposes the dignity of the subject to contempt and derision.

I shall restrain and confine this disquisition within the limits of the true and natural differences be tween the church of England, and those enemies thereof, who are the king's own subjects, of the Romish profession, within his own dominions; and

would examine whether the case be so rightly and substantially stated between us, in the many very learned discourses which have been publicly communicated to the view of the world; and whether we have not given them more advantage than we need to do, by making the field larger, and comprehending more particulars as the subject of our disputes and controversies, than are necessary; and do not decline using those weapons ourselves, which are most proper and secure for our defence, and the most natural and vigorous to subdue or reduce them; and whether the same method and temper be the most convenient, and like to be most successful to be still prosecuted by us, which was practised by the gravest and most learned men in the beginning of the Reformation. It is not the purpose, by confining our discourse within these bounds, to lay any imputation or reproach upon any other reformed churches, which have removed themselves from the other's communion. I do not pretend to know their motives, nor to be enough instructed in the circumstances of their separation, much less to censure either; and it may be very lawful and necessary, obstinately to maintain and defend that truth which men have fully discovered and are possessed of, though it may be the means which were used towards the discovery, and the ways by which they came to be possessed of it, were

not so justifiable, and that they paid more for the purchase of it than in truth it was worth; for there are very few errors or corruptions in Christian religion, that are not in themselves more innocent, or less mischievous, than the course that is often taken for the removal and extirpation of them; but with those I meddle not. It is the glory of the church of England, that if ever alteration, and reformation in religion or state, was, or ever can be lawful; if apparent and gross errors are not necessary to be always retained, becasue they have been once received or admitted; it was warrantably done there: whatever change hath been made in that church, was done with all the deliberation, all the circumstances of order, peace, and authori ty, that ever hath been held necessary, and lawful, and justifiable, by the laws of God and man; upon the experience the nation had long had of the mischief of retaining those burdens and corruptions which they desired to be freed from; upon consultation with, and approbation of the bishops and clergy of the land; upon the advice and counsel of the nobility of the kingdom, with the consent and ratification of the crown; and in and with this reformation, whatsoever is of the essence of Christian religion, to be believed, of the duties of Christian religion prescribed, of the purity, order, and decency instituted or practised by the rules of the

apostles, and purest and unquestioned antiquity, is retained and observed with devout veneration. That a church thus reformed, and that with such pious wariness in the observation, and after a long expectation of the just season of its reformation, and all the religious circumstances requisite thereunto; a church, that chose rather for a long time to endure many errors and corruptions in the exercise and worship of the religion that had been established, and which were for many ages discovered to be so by many learned men of that and other nations, than precipitately to enter upon any alteration, which might have been attended with such a concussion in the state, as might have destroyed the peace and security thereof; and by a Christian patience waited God's own leisure and direction; and was then so blessed as to abolish nothing that was necessary or fit to be retained, and retained nothing but what was held decent by the most venerable antiquity: that such a church should find opposition, contradiction, and disobedience from her own children, or those who should be her children; that private and particular persons, who pretend to be subject to the same king, and do enjoy the benefit and protection of the same laws, should presume to revile that church, and take upon them to declare, that salvation cannot be had in the communion thereof; that they should

contemn the laws of their own country, and under which all their fellow-subjects, and by which them. selves enjoy all that they have; that they should introduce an authority and power superior and above what they acknowledge to be in the king, and which the king cannot controul within his own dominions; and with these opinions destructive to government, and this practice inconsistent with peace, that these men should refuse to give that security by oaths and subscriptions, which all other subjects give who live in the same dominions, and all catholic subjects submit to under Roman catholic kings, if required thereunto; this is our just grievance and complaint. Nor can we think it reasonable or tolerable that this kind of men should thus superciliously disobey and contemn the laws of their own country, upon pretence of religion, that neither doth or can oblige them, and which no other Roman catholic subjects in Christendom do insist upon, as shall be made good hereafter: and, therefore, when they will not pay the same subjection to the government under which they live, which all others do, and by which they would be only obliged that they will not disturb the public peace, it is not to be wondered at, nor complained of, if the state endeavours to provide such laws and constitutions as may keep them from be