main: Other Propositions are (for the most part) but
as waste paper in which those are wrapped up, to present them somewhat
more handsomly.

Nor do I so much wonder at the variety, and horrible noveltie of some
Propositions, (there being nothing so monstrous, which some fancies
are not prone to long for).

This casts me into, not an admiration, but an extasie, how such things
should have the fortune to be propounded in the name of the two Houses
of the Parliament of England, among whom, I am very confident, there
was not a fourth part of the Members of either House, whose Judgements
free, single and apart did approve or desire such destructive changes
in the Government of the Church.

I am perswaded there remains in far the Major part of both Houses
(if free and full) so much Learning, Reason, Religion, and just
Moderation, as to know how to sever between the use and the abuse of
things, the institution and the corruption, the Government and
the mis-government, the Primitive Patterns and the aberrations or
blottings of after-Copies.

Sure they could not at all, upon so little, or no Reason (as yet
produced to the contrary) so soon renounce all regard to the Laws in
force, to antiquity, to the piety of their Reforming progenitors, to
the prosperity of former times in this Church and State, under the
present Government of the Church.

Yet, by a strange fatality, these men suffer, either by their absence,
or silence, or negligence, or supine credulity (beleeving that all
is good, which is guilded with shewes of Zeal and Reformation) their
private dissenting in Judgement to be drawn into the common sewer or
streame of the present vogue and humour; which hath its chief rise and
abetment from those popular clamors and tumults: which served to give
life and strength to the infinite activity of those men, who studied
with all diligence, and policy, to improve to their innovating
designes, the present distractions.

Such Armies of Propositions having so little, in my judgment, of
Reason, Justice, and Religion on their side, as they had Tumult and
Faction for their rise, must not go alone, but ever be backt and
seconded, with Armies of Souldiers; Though the second should prevaile
against my Person, yet that first shall never overcome me further then
I see cause; for, I look not at their number and power, so much as I
weigh their Reason and Justice.

Had the two Houses first sued out their Livery, and once effectually
re