e were made the theme, then the doctoral degree of
wit was to be taken at Billingsgate: even the most saint-like of the
party, though they durst not excuse this contempt and vilifying of the
government, yet were pleased, and grinned at it with a pious smile; and
called it a judgment of God against the hierarchy. Thus sectaries, we
may see, were born with teeth, foul-mouthed and scurrilous from their
infancy: and if spiritual pride, venom, violence, contempt of superiors,
and slander, had been the marks of orthodox belief, the presbytery and
the rest of our schismatics, which are their spawn, were always the most
visible church in the Christian world.

It is true, the government was too strong at that time for a rebellion;
but, to show what proficiency they had made in Calvin's school, even
then their mouths watered at it: for two of their gifted brotherhood,
Hacket[86] and Coppinger, as the story tells us, got up into a
pease-cart and harangue the people, to dispose them to an insurrection,
and to establish their discipline by force: so that however it comes
about, that now they celebrate Queen Elizabeth's birth-night as that of
their saint and patroness; yet then they were for doing the work of the
Lord by arms against her; and in all probability they wanted but a
fanatic lord mayor and two sheriffs of their party to have compassed it.

Our venerable Hooker, after many admonitions which he had given them,
towards the end of his preface breaks out into this prophetic speech:--
"There is in every one of these considerations most just cause to fear,
lest our hastiness to embrace a thing of so perilous consequence
(meaning the Presbyterian discipline) should cause posterity to feel
those evils, which as yet are more easy for us to prevent, than they
would be for them to remedy."

How fatally this Cassandra has foretold, we know too well by sad
experience: the seeds were sown in the time of Queen Elizabeth, the
bloody harvest ripened in the reign of King Charles the Martyr; and,
because all the sheaves could not be carried off without shedding some
of the loose grains, another crop is too like to follow; nay, I fear it
is unavoidable, if the conventiclers be permitted still to scatter.

A man may be suffered to quote an adversary to our religion, when he
speaks truth; and it is the observation of Maimbourg, in his "History of
Calvinism," that wherever that discipline was planted and embraced,
rebellion, civil war, and mi