volve and reflect upon things which he had heretofore more perfunctorily considered, and to enquire and examine many other particulars which he had never known and thought of before; and that upon the whole matter, since the church in which he had been educated now ceased to be, he was resolved to live in a Christian communion, and therefore it was probable that he might enter into that of the Roman. I told him, he must have a worse opinion of his own church, before he could be received into the other; for he must publicly and literally renounce all its doctrine as heretical, and put off and disclaim the orders he had received in it, before he could be acknowledged and received in that church. He replied with more warmth, that he was resolved to do neither, and was well assured that neither would be required from him; that they with whom he conversed, had a great value for the church of England, because it retained so much of order and antiquity; and that there would be no need to quit his orders, which he was resolved never to do. And they told him very true, for if he had no mind to be in orders, nobody would press him to it; but that would not do his business, nor could he enjoy those benefits and advantages which he was to enjoy from his conversion, without being in orders; and then he was compelled to do both, which he was so

positively resolved never to consent to: so far he was from discerning the depth of the water he was to wade through. They who have read Mr Cressey's first edition of his Exomologesis, in which he published the motives that prevailed with him to leave the church, find some modest expressions of the church of England, and esteem of the doctors and scholars of it, amongst whom he had indeed many friends; he inserts a subscription and declaration, which, he said, all Roman catholic subjects would make of their indispensable fidelity to the king; he said, many things were published by particular men as catholic doctrines, which the church did not enjoin; as in the point of purgatory, he did believe, nor did the church oblige him to believe more, that it is a place of acquiescence, where the soul rests without pain. I do verily think that he believed all this at that time, and the book was licenced to be printed by two or three doctors of the Sorbonne, whereof Dr Holding was one; but this temper was so little liked, besides his oversight in the point of purgatory, for want of being well read in the council of Trent, that there was a second edition presently set out, wherein both the recognition for the catholics, and that of purgatory, and many other particulars, are quite left out; and all the contemptuous expressions of the church of England are inserted, and more bitter and virulent

invectives against the clergy of it, than the ancient jesuits did heretofore make use of. Of which I took notice to Mr Cressey afterwards at Paris; and for which, out of countenance, he made me no other answer, than that many exceptions had been taken to his first edition; and that by his superiors' command he had put it in the hands of such a person, whom he named, to be again set out; and that such things were left out and others put in as they thought fit, and of which he had no notice till the second edition was published. To such scandalous reproaches arethese proselytes exposed, by those who first corrupt and seduce them, without letting them know the utmost that will be expected from them, until they are gone too far to retire ; and then, warmed and chafed between anger and shame, they first contract an impudence, and then an animosity against those whom they have injured and provoked, and think it the best manifestation of their zeal to their new religion, to prosecute their old with all the scandals and calumnies their new adoption can suggest to them; and which graver and more confirmed catholics, who have always adhered to their religion, decline and detest. In a word, they who think themselves not safe in a church, in which there are no errors or corruptions admitted and practised, must make all the haste they can to the church triumphant; for in

the militant they will find little time to rest, but may wander through all Christian kingdoms without satisfaction, and probably may at last be compelled to sit still in as insecure a station, as that from whence they begun their journey. Prudent and pious men know, that they may live very conscientiously, and serve God very acceptably, in a church where some errors are believed, and it may be taught, and in which some incongruities and indecencies are practised, and it may be countenanced, and continue themselves neither corrupted in the one or in the other; and that a man may with a better conscience remain in that communion, than go about to reform it by ways which he is not qualified to put in practice; but he can very hardly, with the same testimony of conscience, or the same tranquillity of mind, depart from that church, because of the errors and corruptions which he thinks to be in it, and chuse another church which he is not sure is free from all; less, if he himself cannot but discern as gross corruptions, and in the consequence more pernicious and scandalous, in that to which he is going, as in the other from which he is departing; and least of all, if he must be obliged to commit indecencies, to subscribe or acknowledge untruths, and profess malice and animosity against the one, to make his way into the other: all which they must be guilty of, who de

part from the church of England to enter into the Roman. Nor let them please themselves with that state distinction, between that church and that court, of which all the catholic princes and states in Christendom have so long and so ineffectually complained; if the church and the state be like Hippocrates's twins, that they always laugh and cry together, and cannot be divided from each other, it will be necessary for those who receive damage and mischief from their so inseparable union, and are qualified with authority and power to make a reformation, that they pull them asunder, though with the expiration of both.

To conclude: I must end as I begun, and desire those of our own church not to make a plaister too wide and too broad for the sore it is to cover, in the particular contest with our own countrymen, upon what hath relation to conscience and religion, and in which the honour of the king, and the peace and security of the kingdom, are only concerned. Let us not enlarge the controversy then, by taking more into the argument than is absolutely necessary to the end of it; and by which, though we do not make our cause the worse, we make the number of the enemies the greater to oppose it. But since it is a singular case, and concerns only individual persons, let us so proceed with them, that as they are a sect by themselves, so all catholic