Real Presence, and the Church Prayer Book. The language of
the _Letany_ is in many passages extremely coarse, and it is only
possible to quote such milder expressions as since the time of
Tyndale had been traditional in the Puritan party. "As many
prelates in England, so many vipers in the bowels of Church and
State." They were "the very polecats, stoats, weasels, and
minivers in the warren of Church and State." They were
"Antichrist's little toes." To judge from these expressions
merely one might be disposed to agree with Heylin, who says of
the _Letany_ that it was "so silly and contemptible that nothing
but the sin and malice which appeared in every line of it could
have possibly preserved it from being ridiculous." But the
_Letany_ is really a most important contribution to the history
of the period. Nothing is more graphic than Bastwick's account of
the almost regal reverence claimed for the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the traffic of the streets interrupted when he issued
from Lambeth, the overturning of the stalls; the author's
description of the excessive power of the bishops, of the
extortions of the ecclesiastical courts, is corroborated by
abundant correlative testimony; and he appeals for the truth of
his charges of immorality against the clergy of that time to the
actual cases that came before the High Commission.

Lord Clarendon speaks of Bastwick as "a half-witted,
crack-brained fellow," unknown to either University or the
College of Physicians; perhaps it was because he was unknown to
either University that he acquired that splendid Latin style to
which even Lord Clarendon does justice. The Latin preface to the
second edition of the _Flagellum_, in which Bastwick returns
thanks to the Long Parliament for his release from prison, is
unsurpassed by the Latin writing of the best English scholars,
and bespeaks anything but a half-witted brain. Cicero himself
could hardly have done it better.

Burton's book, however, was considered worse than Prynne's or
Bastwick's, for Heylin calls it "the great masterpiece of
mischief." It consists of two sermons, republished with an appeal
to the King, under the title of _For God and King_. Like
Bastwick, he writes in the interest of the King against the
encroachments of the bishops; and complains bitterly of the
ecclesiastical innovations then in vogue. His accusation is no
less forcible, though less well known, than Laud's Defence in his
Star Chamber speech; and if he