they of infinity of temporal promotions? By the great philosopher (Pol. lib. ii. cap. 9), it is forbidden as a thing most dangerous to commonwealths, that by the same man many great offices should be exercised. When they deride our ceremonies as vain and frivolous, were it hard to apply their exceptions, even to those civil ceremonies, which at the coronation, in parliament, and all courts of justice, are used? Were it hard to argue even against circumcision, the ordinance of God, as being a cruel ceremony; against the passover, as being ridiculous, shod, begirt, a staff in their hand, to eat a lamb ?

To conclude: you may exhort the clergy, (or, what if you di rect your conclusion not to the clergy in general, but only to the learned in or of both universities?) you may exhort them to a due consideration of all things, and to a right esteem and valuing of each thing in that degree wherein it ought to stand. For it oftentimes falleth out, that what men have either devised themselves, or greatly delighted in, the price and the excellency thereof they do admire above desert. The chiefest labour of a Christian should be to know, of a minister, to preach Christ crucified; in regard whereof, not only worldly things, but things otherwise precious, even the discipline itself, is vile and base. Whereas now, by the heat of contention and violence of affection, the zeal of men towards the one, hath greatly decayed their love to the other. Hereunto therefore they are to be exhorted, to preach Christ crucified, the mortification of the flesh, the renewing of the Spirit; not those things which in time of strife seem precious, but (passions being allayed) are vain and childish. GEORGE CRANMER.

This epitaph was long since presented to the world in memory of Mr. Hooker, by Sir William Cooper; who also built him a fair monument in Borne-church, and acknowledges him to have been his spiritual father.

Though nothing can be spoke worthy his fame,
Or the remembrance of that precious name,
Judicious Hooker; though this cost be spent
On him that hath a lasting monument

In his own books; yet, ought we to express,
If not his worth, yet our respectfulness.
Church-ceremonies he maintained: then why
Without all ceremony should he die?

Was it because his life and death should be
Both equal patterns of humility?
Or, that perhaps this only glorious one
Was above all, to ask, why had he none?

Yet he that lay so long obscurely low,

Doth now preferred to greater honours go.
Ambitious men, learn hence to be more wise;
Humility is the true way to rise:
And God in me this lesson did inspire,

To bid this humble man, Friend, sit up higher.

W.C.

TO THE

MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD,

MY VERY GOOD LORD,

THE

LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY

HIS GRACE, PRIMATE AND METROPOLITAN OF ALL ENGLAND.

MOST REVEREND IN CHRIST,

of writing this general discourse.

THE long continued and more than ordinary favour which hi- The cause therto your Grace hath been pleased to shew towards me, may justly claim at my hands some thankful acknowledgment thereof. In which consideration, as also for that I embrace willingly the ancient received course, and conveniency of that discipline, which teacheth inferior degrees and orders in the church of God, to submit their writings to the same authority, from which their allowable dealings whatsoever, in such affairs, must receive approbation, I nothing fear but that your accustomed clemency will take in good worth, the offer of these my simple and mean labours, bestowed for the necessary justification of laws heretofore made questionable, because, as I take it, they were not perfectly understood: for surely, I cannot find any great cause of just complaint, that good laws have so much been wanting unto us, as we to them. To seek reformation of evil laws, is a commendable endeavour; but for us the more necessary, is a speedy redress of ourselves. We have on all sides lost much of our first fervency towards God; and therefore concerning our own degenerated ways, we have reason to exhort with St. Gregory, Oreр μev yevúμeda, Let us return again unto that which we sometimes were.-But touching the exchange of laws in practice with laws in device, which they say are better for the state of the church if they might take place, the farther we examine them, the greater cause we find to conclude μévoμev ötep έoμèv, although we continue the same we are, the harm is not great.— The fervent reprehenders of things established by public authority are always confident and bold-spirited men. But their confidence for the most part riseth from too much credit given to their own wits, for which cause they are seldom free from error. The errors a Greg. Naz.

which we seek to reform in this kind of men, are such as both received at your own hands their first wound, and from that time to this present have been proceeded in with that moderation, which useth by patience to suppress boldness, and to make them conquer that suffer. Wherein considering the nature and kind of these controversies, the dangerous sequels whereunto they were likely to grow, and how many ways we have been thereby taught wisdom, I may boldly aver concerning the first, that as the weightiest conflicts the church hath had, were those which touched the bead, the person of our Saviour Christ; and the next of importance, those questions that are at this day between us and the church of Rome, about the actions of the body of the church of God; so these which have lastly sprung up from complements, rites, and ceremonies of churchactions, are in truth, for the greatest part, such silly things, that very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of in serious manner. Which also may seem to be the cause, why divers of the reverend prelacy, and other most judicious men, have especially bestowed their pains about the matter of jurisdiction. Notwithstanding, led by your Grace's example, myself have thought it convenient to wade through the whole cause, following that method which searcheth the truth by the causes of truth. Now, if any marvel, how a thing in itself so weak could import any great danger, they must consider not so much how small the spark is that flieth up, as how apt things about it are to take fire. Bodies politic being subject as much as natural to dissolution, by divers means; there are undoubtedly more estates overthrown through diseases bred within themselves, than through violence from abroad; because our manner is always to cast a more doubtful and a more suspicious eye towards that, over which we know we have least power; and therefore, the fear of external dangers causeth forces at home to be the more united. It is to all sorts a kind of bridle, it maketh virtuous minds watchful, it holdeth contrary dispositions in suspense, and it setteth those wits on work in better things, which could else be employed in worse; whereas on the other side, domestical evils, for that we think we can master them at all times, are often permitted to run on forward, till it be too late to recall them. In the mean while the commonwealth is not only through unsoundness so far impaired, as those evils chance to prevail; but farther also, through opposition arising between the unsound parts and the sound, where each endeavoureth to draw evermore contrary ways, till destruction in the end bring the whole to ruin.

To reckon up how many causes there are, by force whereof divisions may grow in a commonwealth, is not here necessary. Such as rise from variety in matter of religion, are not only the farthest spread, because in religion all men presume themselves interested

alike, but they are also for the most part hotlier prosecuted and pursued than other strifes; forasmuch as coldness, which in other contentions may be thought to proceed from moderation, is not in these so favourably construed. The part which in this present quarrel striveth against the current and stream of laws, was a long while nothing feared, the wisest contented not to call to mind how errors have their effect, many times not proportioned to that little appearance of reason, whereupon they would seem built, but rather to the vehement affection or fancy which is cast towards them, and proceedeth from other causes. For there are divers motives drawing men to favour mightily those opinions, wherein their persuasions are but weakly settled; and if the passions of the mind be strong, they easily sophisticate the understanding, they make it apt to believe upon very slender warrant, and to imagine infallible truth, where scarce any probable show appeareth.

Thus were those poor seduced creatures, Hacket and his other two adherents, whom I can neither speak or think of, but with much commiseration and pity. Thus were they trained by fair ways first, accounting their own extraordinary love to his discipline, a token of God's more than ordinary love towards them. From hence they grew to a strong conceit, that God, which had moved them to love his discipline, more than the common sort of men did, might have a purpose by their means to bring a wonderful work to pass, beyond all men's expectation, for the advancement of the throne of discipline, by some tragical execution, with the particularities whereof it was not safe for their friends to be made acquainted; of whom they did therefore but covertly demand, what they thought of extraordinary motions of the Spirit in these days, and withal request to be commended unto God by their prayers, whatsoever should be undertaken by men of God, in mere zeal to his glory, and the good of his distressed church. With this unusual and strange course they went on forward, till God, in whose heaviest worldly judgments, I nothing doubt, but that there may lie hidden mercy, gave them over to their own inventions, and left them made in the end an example for headstrong and inconsiderate zeal, no less fearful than Achitophel for proud and irreligious wisdom. If a spark of error have thus prevailed, falling even where the wood was green and farthest off, to all men's thinking, from any inclination unto furious attempts; must not the peril thereof be greater in men whose minds are of themselves as dry fuel, apt beforehand unto tumults, seditions, and broils? But by this we see in a cause of religion, to how desperate adventures men will strain themselves for relief of their own part, having law and authority against them. Furthermore, let not any man think, that in such divisions, either part can free itself from inconveniences, sustained not only through

a kind of truce, which virtue on both sides doth make with vice, during war between truth and error; but also, in that there are hereby so fit occasions ministered for men to purchase to themselves well-willers by the colour under which they oftentimes prosecute quarrels of envy or inveterate malice, and especially because contentions were as yet never able to prevent two evils; the one a mutual exchange of unseemly and unjust disgraces, offered by men whose tongues and passions are out of rule; the other a common hazard of both, to be made a prey by such as study how to work upon all occurrents, with most advantage in private. I deny not therefore, but that our antagonists in these controversies may peradventure have met with some, not unlike to Ithacius," who mightily bending himself by all means against the heresy of Priscillian (the hatred of which one evil was all the virtue he had), became so wise in the end, that every man, careful of virtuous conversation, studious of Scripture, and given unto any abstinence in diet, was set down in his calendar of suspected Priscillianists, for whom it should be expedient to approve their soundness of faith, by a more licentious and loose behaviour. Such proctors and patrons the truth might spare; yet is not their grossness so intollerable, as, on the contrary side, the scurrilous and more than satirical immodesty of Martinism; the first published schedules whereof being brought to the hands of a grave and a very honourable knight, with signification given, that the book would refresh his spirits, he took it, saw what the title was, read over an unsavoury sentence or two, and delivered back the libel with this answer. "I am sorry you are of the mind to be solaced with these sports, and sorrier you have herein thought mine affection to be like your own." But as these sores on all hands lie open, so the deepest wounds of the church of God have been more softly and closely given. It being perceived, that the plot of discipline did not only bend itself to reform ceremonies, but seek farther to erect a popular authority of elders, and to take away episcopal jurisdiction, together with all other ornaments and means, whereby any difference or inequality is upheld in the ecclesiastical order, towards this destructive part, they have found many helping hands, divers although peradventure not willing to be yoked with elderships, yet contented (for what intent God doth know) to uphold opposition against bishops, not without greater hurt to the course of their whole proceedings in the business of God and her Majesty's service, than otherwise much more weighty adversaries had been able by their own power to have brought to pass. Men are naturally better contented to have their commendable actions suppressed, than the contrary much divulged. And because the wits of the multitude are such, that many a Sulp. Sever. Epist. Hist. Eccles.