TO THE SAME MOST GRACIOUS PATRONAGE OF THE

HIGH AND MIGHTY PRINCE, HENRY,

PRINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN,

HIS HIGHNESS'S UNWORTHY SERVANT,

HUMBLY PROSTRATES HIMSELF, AND HIS SECOND LABOUR,

WITH

CONTINUAL APPRECATIONS OF ALL HAPPINESS.

THE THIRD DECADE.

EPISTLE I.

TO MR. SMITH, AND MR. ROB.

RING LEADERS OF THE LATE SEPARATION; AT AMSTERDAM.

Setting forth their Injury done to the Church, the Injustice of their Cause, and Fearfulness of their Offence.

Censuring and advising them.

WE hear of your separation, and mourn; yet not so much for you, as for your wrong.

You could not do a greater injury to your mother, than to flee from her. Say, she were poor, ragged, weak; say, she were deformed; yet she is not infectious: or, if she were, yet she is yours. This were cause enough for you, to lament her, to pray for her, to labour for her redress; not to avoid her. This unnaturalness is shameful; and more heinous in you, who are reported not parties in this evil, but authors. Your flight is not so much, as your misguidance.

Plead not: this fault is past excuse: if we all should follow you, this were the way of a Church, as you plead, imperfect, to make no Church; and of a remedy, to make a disease. Still the fruit of our charity to you, is, besides our grief, pity. Your zeal of truth hath mis-led you, and you others: a zeal, if honest, yet blindfolded, and led by self-will. Oh, that you loved peace, but half so well as truth: then, this breach had never been; and you, that are yet brethren, had been still companions.

"Go out of Babylon," you say: "the voice, not of schism, but of holiness." Know you where you are? Look about you, I beseech you look behind you; and see if we have not left it upon our backs. She herself feels, and sees, that she is abandoned; and complains to all the world, that we have not only forsaken, but spoiled her; and yet you say "Come out of Babylon." And, except you will be willingly blind; you may see the heaps of her altars, the ashes of her idols, the ruins of her monuments, the condemnation of her errors, the revenge of her abominations.

And are we yet in Babylon? Is Babylon yet amongst us? Where are the main buildings of that accursed city: those

high and proud towers, of their universal hierarchy; infallible judgment; dispensation with laws of God, and sins of men ; disposition of kingdoms; deposition of princes; parting stakes with God in our conversion, through freedom of will; in our salvation, through the merit of our works? Where are those rotten heaps (rotten, not through age, but corruption) of transubstantiating of bread, adoring of images, multitude of sacraments, power of indulgences, necessity of confessions, profit of pilgrimages, constrained and approved ignorance, unknown devotions? Where are those deep vaults if not mines, of penances and purgatories, and whatsoever hath been devised by those popelings, whether profitable or glorious, against the Lord and his Christ? Are they not all razed, and buried in the dust? Hath not the majesty of her gods, like as was done to Mythra and Seraphis, been long ago offered to the public laughter of the vulgar; What is this, but to go, yea to run, if not to fly, out of Babylon? But, as every man is a hearty patron of his own actions, and it is a desperate cause that hath no plea, you allege our consorting in Ceremonies; and say, still we tarry in the suburbs. Grant that these were as ill, as an enemy can make them, or can pretend them: you are deceived, if you think the walls of Babylon stand upon Ceremonies. Substantial errors are both her foundation and frame. These ritual observations are not so much as tile and reed: rather like to some fane upon the roof; for ornament, more than use: not parts of the building; but not-necessary appendances. If you take them otherwise, you wrong the Church: if thus, and yet depart, you wrong it and yourself: as if you would have persuaded righteous Lot, not to stay in Zoar, because it was so near Sodom. I fear, if you had seen the money-changers in the Temple, how ever you would have prayed, or taught there: Christ did it; not forsaking the place, but scourging the offenders. And this is the valour of Christian Teachers, to oppose abuses, not to run away from them. Where shall you not thus find Babylon? Would you have run from Geneva, because of her wafers? or, from Corinth, for her disordered love-feasts?

Either run out of the world, or your flight is in vain. If experience of change teach you not, that you shall find your Babylon every where, return not. Compare the place you have left, with that you have chosen: let not fear of seeming to repent over-soon, make you partial. Lo there a common harbour of all opinions, of all heresies; if not a mixture: here, you drew in the free and clear air of the Gospel, without that odious composition of Judaism, Arianism, Anabaptism: there, you live in the stench of these, and more. You are unworthy of pity, if you will approve your misery. Say, if you can, that the Church of England (if she were not yours) is not a

heaven, to Amsterdam. How is it then, that our gnats are harder to swallow, than their camels? and that, while all Christendom magnifies our happiness and applauds it, your handful alone so detests our enormities, that you despise our graces?

See, whether in this, you make not God a loser. The thank of all his favours is lost, because you want more: and, in the mean time, who gains by this sequestration, but Rome and Hell? How do they insult in this advantage, that our Mother's own children condemn her for unclean, that we are daily weakened by our divisions, that the rude multitude hath so palpable a motive to distrust us! Sure, you intended it not: but, if you had been their hired agent, you could not have done our enemies greater service. The God of Heaven open your eyes, that you may see the injustice of that zeal, which hath transported you; and turn your heart to an endeavour of all Christian satisfaction: otherwise, your souls shall find too late, that it had been a thousand times better to swallow a Ceremony, than to rend a Church; yea, that even whoredoms and murders shall abide an easier answer, than sepa

ration.

I have done, if only I have advised you of that fearful threatening of the Wise Man: The eye, that mocketh his father, and despises the government of his mother, the ravens of the river shall pick it out, and the young eagles eat it.

EPISTLE II.

TO SIR ANDREW ASTELEY.

Discourse of our due Preparation for Death, and the
Means to sweeten it to us.

SINCE I saw you, I saw my father die: how boldly and merrily did he pass through the gates of death, as if they had had no terror, but much pleasure! Oh, that I could as easily imitate, as not forget him! We know we must tread the same way: how happy, if with the same mind!

Our life, as it gives way to death, so must make way for it. It will be, though we will not: it will not be happy, without our will, without our preparation.

It is the best and longest lesson, to learn how to die; and of surest use: which alone if we take not out, it were better, not to have lived. O vain studies of men, how to walk through Rome streets all day in the shade; how to square circles; how to salve up the celestial motions; how to correct miswritten copies, to fetch up old words from forgetfulness, and a thou

sand other like points of idle skill: while the main care of life and death is neglected!

There is an art of this, infallible, eternal, both in truth and use: for, though the means be divers, yet the last act is still the same, and the disposition of the soul need not be other. It is all one, whether a fever bring it, or a sword. Wherein yet, after long profession of other sciences, I am still (why should I shame to confess?) a learner; and shall be, I hope, whilst I am yet it shall not repent us, as diligent scholars repeat their parts unto each other to be more perfect; so mutually to recal some of our rules of well dying: the first whereof, is a conscionable life: the next, a right apprehension of life and death. I tread in the beaten path: do you follow

me.

To live holily, is the way to die safely, happily. If death be terrible, yet innocence is bold; and will neither fear itself, nor let us fear: where, contrariwise, wickedness is cowardly; and cannot abide, either any glimpse of light, or shew of danger. Hope doth not more draw our eyes forward, than conscience turns them backward, and forces us to look behind us; affrighting us even with our past evils. Besides the pain of death, every sin is a new fury, to torment the soul, and make it loth to part. How can it choose, when it sees, on the one side, what evil it hath done; on the other, what evil it must suffer? It was a clear heart (what else could do it?) that gave so bold a forehead to that holy Bishop, who durst, on his death bed, profess, "I have so lived, as I neither fear to die, nor shame to live." What care we when we be found, if well doing? what care we how suddenly, when our preparation is perpetual? what care we how violently, when so many inward friends (such are our good actions) give us secret comfort? There is no good steward, but is glad of his audit: his straight accounts desire nothing, more than a discharge: only the doubtful and untrusty fears his reckoning.

We

Neither only doth the want of integrity make us timorous, but of wisdom; in that our ignorance cannot equally value, either the life which we leave, or the death we expect. have long conversed with this life, and yet are unacquainted: how should we then know that death we never saw? or that life, which follows that death? These cottages have been ruinous, and we have not thought of their fall: our way hath been deep, and we have not looked for our rest. Shew me ever any man, that knew what life was, and was loth to leave it: I will show you a psisoner, that would dwell in his gaol; a slave, that likes to be chained to his galley. What is there, here, but darkness of ignorance, discomfort of events, impotency of body, vexation of conscience, distemper of passions, complaint of estate, fears and sense of evil, hopes and doubts