72. When the people, that most esteem their faithful Ministers, are deprived of their labours, by the prohibitions, of the rest, and themselves also afflicted with them; it will stir up in them an inordinate, unwarrantable, passionate zeal; which will corrupt their very prayers, and make them speak unseemly things, and pray for the downfal of that Clergy, which they take to be the enemies of God, and godliness. And they will think that to speak easily or charitably of such men, as dare forbid Christ's Ministers to preach his Gospel, and by notorious sacrilege, alienate the persons, and gifts that were consecrated solemnly to God; is but to be lukewarm, and indifferent between God and the devil.

73. And when they take them as enemies to religion, and to themselves, the younger and rasher sort of Ministers; but much more the people, will grow into a suspicion of all that they see their afflicters stand for: they will dislike not only their faults; but many harmless things, yea many laudable customs which they use; and will grow into some superstition in opposition to them, making new sins in the manner of worship, which God never forbad or made to be sins; and taking up new duties, which God never made duties; yea ready to forsake some old and wholesome doctrines, because their afflicters own them; and to take up some new, unsound doctrines, and expositions of God's word, because they are inclined by opinion, and passion conjoined, to go as far as may be from such men, whom they think so bad of.

74. And the vulgar people that have but little sense of religion (that are not by the aforesaid interest, united to the afflicting Clergy), having a reverence to the worth of those that are afflicted, and an experience of the rawness, and differing lives of many that possess their rooms, will grow to compassionate the afflicted, and to think that they are injured themselves, and so to think hardly of the causers of all this.

75. Hereupon the powerful Clergy, will increase their accusations against the party that is against them, and declare to the world in print and from the pulpits, their ignorance, unpeaceableness, unruliness, giddiness, false opinions and conceits about the manner of worship, and how unsufferable a sort of men they are.

76. By this time the devil will have done the radical part of his work; which is to destroy much of Christian love to

one another, and make them take each other for unlovely, odious persons: the one part, for persecuting enemies of godliness, and hypocrites, and Pharisees: the other for pevish, seditious, turbulent, unruly sectaries. And on these suppositions, all their after characters, affections and practices towards each other will proceed.

77. By this enmity and opposition against each other, both parties will increase in wrath, and somewhat in numbers. The worldly afflicting Clergy will multiply not only such as are disaffected to them, but downright fanatics, and sectaries that will run as far from them as they can, into contrary extremes. For when they are once brought into a distaste of the old hive, the bees will hardly gather into one new one; but will divide into several swarms and hives. As every man's zeal is more against the afflicting party; so he will go further from them: some to be Separatists, some Anabaptists, some Antinomians, some Seekers, some Quakers, and some to they know not what themselves.

78. For the women, and apprentices, and novices in Christianity, that have more passion than judgment, will abundance of them quite overrun, even their own afflicted Teachers, and will forsake them, if they will not overrun their own judgments, in forsaking those that do afflict them.

79. And many hypocrites that have no sound religion; but ignorance, pride, and uncharitableness, will thrust in among them, in these discontents; or spring up in the nurseries of these briars of passion, and will bring in new doctrines, and new ways of worship, and make themselves preachers, and the heads of sects: by reason of whom, the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.

80. And many unstable persons seeing this, will dread and loathe so giddy a sort of men, and will turn Papists, upon the persuasions of them that tell them, that there is no true unity nor consistency, but at Rome; and that all must thus turn giddy at last, that are not fixed in the papal head. And thus they that fly too far from the Common-PrayerBook, will drive men to the mass, and the afflicters will make sectaries and the sectaries will make Papists.

81. When the violent Clergy, instead of a fatherly government of the flocks, have driven the people into passions, distempers, and uncharitable disaffections to themselves, and have also been the great cause of multiplied heresies, and

sects by the same means, instead of being humbled and penitent for their sin, they will be hardened, and justify all their violences, by the giddiness and miscarriages of those sectaries, which they themselves have made.

82. And when they publish the faults of such, for the justification of their own violence, they will draw thousands · into an approbation of their courses, (to think that such a turbulent people can never be too hardly called or used) and consequently into a participation of their guilt.

83. By all this, the Dissenters will be still more alienated from them; and many will aggravate the crime of the Ministers that conform to their impositions, and obey them; and for the sake of a few that afflict them, they will condemn many laudable conforming Ministers, that never consented to it; but could heartily wish, that it were otherwise.

84. And the younger, and more indiscreet, passionate sort, will frequently reproach such, as unconscionable temporizers, that will do any thing for worldly ends, and that as hypocrites for a fleshly interest, concur with the corrupters, and afflicters of the godly.

85. These censures and reproaches will provoke those conforming Ministers, who are not masters of their passions, nor conquerors of their pride, to think as badly of the censurers, as their afflicters do, and to join with them in the displaying of all enormities, and promoting their further sufferings, and publishing the folly and turbulency of their spirits, with spleen and partiality.

86. By these kind of speeches, preachings, and writings, multitudes of the debauched will be hardened in their sin against all religion: for when they observe that it is the same party of men, who are thus reproached, that are the strictest reprovers of their lewdness, their fornications, tippling, gaming, luxuries, and ungodliness; they will think it is no great matter, what such a defamed, giddy sort of people say, and that really they are worse themselves.

87. Each party of these adversaries, will characterize the adverse party as hypocrites: the passionate sufferers, will call the afflicters, Hypocrites, and Pharisees, that have no religion, but a formal show of outside ceremonies and words, and that tithe mint, and cummin, and wash the outside, while within they are full of persecuting cruelty, and are wolves in sheep's clothing, loving the uppermost seats, and

great titles, and ceremonious phylacteries, whilst they are enemies to the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, and get revenues to themselves, and devour not only the houses, but the peace and lives of others, under pretence of long liturgies; and that devour the living saints, while they keep holy days, and build monuments for the dead ones, whom their fathers murdered, &c. And the powerful Clergy, will call the others Hypocrites, and labour to show that the Pharisees' character belongeth to them, and that their pretences of strictness in religion, and their long praying and preaching, is but a cloak to cover their disobedience, and covetousness, and secret sins; and that their hearts, and inside, is as bad as others, and that their fervency in devotion, is but an hypocritical, affected, whining, and canting; and that they are worse, than the lesser religious sort of people; because they are more unpeaceable, and disobedient, and add hypocrisy to their sin.

88. The ignorant, worldlings, drunkards, and ungodly despisers of holiness and heaven, being in all countries most contradicted in their way, by this stricter sort of men, and hearing them in pulpit, and press so branded for hypocrites, will joyfully unite themselves with the censurers; and so they will make up as one party, in crying down the precise hypocrites; and usually make some name to call them by, as their brand of common ignominy: and they will live the more quietly in all their sins, and think they shall be saved, as soon as the precisest, that make more show, but have no more sincerity, but more hypocrisy than themselves.

89. The suffering party, seeing the ungodly, and the conforming afflicters of them thus united, and made one party in opposition to them, will increase their hard thoughts of the adverse Clergy, and take them for downright profane, and the leading enemies of godliness in the world, that will be captains in the devil's army, and lead on all the most un-godly against serious godliness, for their worldly ends.

of.

90. And the young and indifferent sort of people, in all countries, that were engaged in neither part, being but strangers to religion, and to the differences, will be ready to judge of the cause by the persons: and seeing so many the dignified advanced Clergy, and the more sensual sort of the people on one side, and so many men of strict lives on the other, that suffer also for their religion, and hearing too that

it is some name of preciseness, that they are reproached by, will think them to be the better side; and so the title of the godly will grow by degrees, to be almost appropriated to their party, and the title of profane and persecutors to the

other.

91. All this while the nonconforming Ministers, will be somewhat differently affected, according to the different degrees of their judiciousness, experience, and self-denial.

Some of them will think these passions of the people needful, to check the fierceness of the afflicters (which doth but exasperate it); and therefore, will let them alone, though they will not encourage them.

Some of the younger or more injudicious hot-brained sort will put them on, and make them believe, that all communion with any conforming Ministers or their Parish Churches is unlawful, and their forms of worship, are sinful and antichristian; and that they are all temporizers, and betrayers of truth and purity, that communicate or assemble with them.

The judicious, and experienced, and most patient, and self-denying sort, will themselves abstain from all that is sin; and as far as it is in their choice and power, will join with the churches that worship God most agreeably to his word and will; but so, as that they will not be loud in their complaints, nor busy to draw men to their opinions in controvertible points, nor will unchurch and condemn all the Churches that have something which they dislike as sinful; nor will renounce the communion of all faulty Churches, lest they renounce the communion of all in the world, and teach all others to renounce theirs: but they will sometimes communicate with the more faulty Churches, to shew that they unchurch them not (so they be not forced in it to any sin); though usually they will prefer the purest: yea, ordinarily they will join with the more faulty, when they can have no better, or when the public good requireth it. They will never prefer the interest of their nonconforming party, before the interest of Christianity, or the public good: They will so defend lesser truths, as not to neglect or disadvantage the greater, which all are agreed in; they will so preserve their own innocency, as not to stir up other men's passions, nor to make factions or divisions by their difference. They