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You, that have been

Ever at home, yet have all countries seene;
And like a compasse, keeping one foot still
Upon your center, do your circle fill

Of general knowledge; watch'd men; manners too;
Heard, what past times have said; seene what ours do.

REN JONSON TO SELDEN.

THE

DISCOURSES

OF

JOHN SELDEN, ESQ.

ABBIES, PRIORIES, &c.

1. THE unwillingness of the monks to part with their land, will fall out to be just nothing, because they were yielded up to the king by a supreme hand, viz. a parliament. If a king conquer another country, the people are loath to loose their lands, yet no divine will deny, but the king may give them to whom he please. If a parliament make a law concerning leather, or any other commodity, you and I for example are parliament men, perhaps in respect to our own private interests, we are against it, yet the major part conclude it, we are then involved, and the law is good.

B

2. When the founder of abbies laid a curse

upon those that should take away those lands, I would fain know what power they had to curse me; it is not the curses that come from the poor, or from any body, that hurt me, because they come from them, but because I do something ill against them that deserves God should curse me for it. On the other side it is not a man's blessing me that makes me blessed, he only declares me to be so; and if I do well I shall be blessed, whether any bless me or not.

3. At the time of dissolution, they were tender in taking from the abbots and priors their lands and their houses, till they surrendered them (as most of them did). Indeed the prior of St. John's, Sir Richard Weston, being a stout man, got into France, and stood out a whole year, at last submitted, and the king took in that priory also, to which the Temple belonged, and many other houses in England. They did not then cry, no abbots, no priors, as we do now, no bishops, no bishops.

4. Henry the Fifth put away the friars, aliens, and seized to himself one hundred thousand pounds a year, and therefore they were not the Protestants only that took away church lands,

5. In queen Elizabeth's time, when all the abbies were pulled down, all good works defaced, then the preachers must cry up justification by faith, not by good works.

ARTICLES.

1. THE nine and thirty Articles are much another thing in Latin (in which tongue they were made) than they are translated into English: they were made at three several convocations, and confirmed by act of parliament six or seven times after. There is a secret concerning them: of late ministers have subscribed to all of them, but by act of parliament that confirmed them, they ought only to subscribe to those articles which contain matter of faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments, as appears by the first subscriptions. But bishop Bancroft (in the convocation held in king James's days) he began it; that ministers should subscribe to three things, to the king's supremacy, to the Common Prayer, and to the Thirty-nine Articles; many of them do not contain matter of faith. Is it matter of faith how the church should be governed? whether infants should be baptized? whether we have any property in our goods? &c.

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