was very sick, and she believed he would die, and therefore prayed him that he would go to him and save his soul; the charitable father was willing to perform his office, if she could procure him admittance to her uncle in private; the maid told him, that his wife and all his children, who lived in the same house with him, were all protestants, and did not love the papists, but that she would go with him the next morning, and that he should pretend to be a physician, and by that means he should be alone with him: the maid was as good as her word; and when nobody else was in the room, he saw the old man was very weak, and found he knew little of religion, and thereupon he asked him, whether he did desire to be saved? which he seemed very heartily to wish; and thereupon he informed him shortly of what was fit and necessary, and told him in what manner he must confess and abjure all his former errors and heresies: which the good man did with more pregnancy than he could expect from the weakness he was in and from his former life; all which he imputed to the wonderful grace of God; upon which he absolved him, and reconciled him to the church, whereupon the poor man appeared very joyful; and the maid told him, that he died the next morning very comfortably; and the good father said, he never called this to his remembrance, as he did very often, but it filled his heart with joy and it

is very probable that the greatest part of their proselytes are of this man's talent, and as easily caught as he was.

These are the tragical professions and concessions which are the forerunners and preface to every man's deserting the church of England, before he can be received into that of Rome; every particular whereof contains some heinous sin which he is bound to commit, upon a probable hope of salvation, of which he might have been more assured without the charging his conscience with those sins; and all which must render his condition more hazardous than theirs, who have stupidly rested in the ignorance of their education, and acquiesced in that religion which their friends have chosen for them, and their country enjoins them to profess and practise; and distinguishes those who leave the church of England, from those who have been bred in the other. And together with this they lose that which is the greatest confidence and comfort of religion, the certitude of it, that they know clearly and without dispute what they are to believe, and what they are to do: we all can and do with a good conscience pronounce the creed, which we are enjoined by the church to believe; we do understand those twelve articles, and heartily conform to them; and we do understand what duties God and the church have prescribed

to us, which we are sure, according to the faculties we have, we are able heartily to endeavour to observe and practise: but I much doubt, whether our new convert can believe, or whether he be informed he must believe the article of the council of Trent, and the bull to boot, which he is bound as absolutely to believe as the other twelve, and to do many other things which he was free from before; and in which the English catholic's condi, tion is much harder than other men's; for no other catholics are bound to believe and do more than is contained in those articles which are received and accepted by the state under which they live; but the English catholics, because the crown hath accepted and received no part of them (which is confessed to be the only obligation to submit to any council how general soever) are bound to submit to the whole; which would at least oblige them to read them over, and a little to reflect upon them, before they enter into that engagement. But their case is yet much worse, by the absolute uncertainty and impossibility to understand all that they are to believe, and all that they are to do, without an entire submission and obedience to which their hope of salvation is as desperate as it was before they were reconciled; they must have the same resignation to what the church shall hereafter order and determine, as to what it hath already

done; which makes the price of salvation so much dearer than it was in the time of our forefathers, by how much we are obliged to believe and do more than they were bound to believe and do: and it is a common answer, when we object that many of the fathers were of a contrary opinion, that the church had not then declared and determined the matter; and when we put them in mind that one of their own popes was of this or that opinion, they hold it a very satisfactory answer, that he was then but a cardinal, and that it was before he was pope. So that the absurdity as well as the uncertainty of this obligation is so great, that it is impossible to comply with it, but by getting that unnatural jurisdiction over his will and his conscience, which Bellarmine professes he had attained to, and to which fortress all other men are forced to retire upon the defence of this argument, that if the church declare white to be black, he will readily believe that white is black. And to such a man no more is to be said, than that he hath reason to thank God that it hath not declared him to be a woman; which would have given him some cause of perplexity. However, it were to be wished, that this slippery sort of men, who shift their religion as though it were only an act of curiosity to improve their understanding and mend their breeding, were well informed before-hand of the wildness, and un

limitedness, of the new obligations they are to enter into; which could not but awaken their conscience to make some reflections upon the steadiness of that church which they are tempted to abjure, and the prodigious tottering and instability of that they are to enter into.

But the truth is, the emissaries of the church of Rome, which are commonly employed upon those missions for the perverting of souls, never make the true price known to them who are to pay for the commodity they are to buy; but shew them some specious parts of it, which may most work upon those affections and appetites they discover them to be most governed by, and conceal all that might shock the integrity of their understanding, or some interest they might have a mind to cherish. I met once in Flanders a divine of the church of England, who had conversed much and was well known in the court, though of no eminent observation in the church; I told him it was generally reported, I hoped without cause, that he was inclined to change his religion, and to become of the Roman communion; he answered me with some hesitation, that he had very great esteem and reverence for the church of England, in which he had been bred, and that the barbarous persecution and violence under which it lay oppressed, and upon the matter extinguished, had made him re