good Ofyris,) took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever fince, the fad friends of Truth, fuch as durft appear, imitating the careful fearch that Ifis made for the mangled body of Ofiris, went up and down gathering-up limb by limb, ftill as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever fhall do, till her Mafter's fecond coming; He fhal! bring-together every joint and member, and fhall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not thefe Licenfing prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue feeking, that continue to do our obfequies to the torn body of our martyred faint. We boaft our light; but if we look not wifely on the fun itfelf, it fmites us into darkness. Who can difcern thofe planets that are oft combuft, and thofe ftars of brighteft magnitude that rife and fet with the fun, until the oppofite motion of their orbs bring them to fuch a place in the firmament, where they may be feen evening or morning? The light which we have gained, was given us, not to be ever staring-on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmitring of a bishop, and the removing him from off the presbyterian shoulders, that will make us a happy nation; no, if other things as great in the church, and in the rule of life, both economical and political, be not looked-into and reformed, we have looked fo long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin have beaconed-up to us, that we are ftark-blind. There be who perpetually complain of Schifms and Sects, and make it fuch a calamity, that any man diffents from their maxims. It is their own

The Eng

pride and ignorance which caufes the disturbing; who neither will hear with meekness, nor can convince; yet all must be fuppreffed which is not found in their Syntagma. They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those diffevered pieces, which are yet wanting to the body of truth. To be ftill fearching what we know not, by what we know, ftill clofing-up truth to truth as we find it, (for all her body is homogeneal, and proportional) this is the golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes-up the beft harmony in a a church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly-divided, minds.

Lords and Commons of England! confider what Na❤ lish nation tion it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the go

was always

for their

love of

and their

diligence pursuit of

in the

truth.

remarkable vernors: a nation not flow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing fpirit; acute to invent, fubtile knowledge and finewy to difcourfe; not beneath the reach of any point, the highest that human capacity can foar-to. Therefore the ftudies of Learning in her deepest Sciences. have been fo ancient, and fo eminent, among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been perfuaded, that even the fchool of Pythagoras, and the Perfian wisdom, took beginning from the old Philofophy of this ifland. And that wife and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Cæfar, preferred the natural wits of Britain, before the laboured ftudies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Tranfilvanian fends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of Ruffia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their ftaid men, to learn our language, and our Theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this, the fayour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument

to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why elfe was this nation chofer before any other, that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and founded-forth the firft tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obftinate perverfenefs of our Prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to fupprefs him as a Schifmatic and Innovator, perhaps, neither the Bohemian Huffe and Jerom, no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known: the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate Clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the lateft and the backwardest scholars [of thofe] of whom God offered to have made us the teachers. Now once again, by all concurrence of figns, and by the general instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and folemnly exprefs their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin fome new and great period in his church, even to the reforming of Reformation itself;" what does he then but reveal himfelf to his fervants, and, as his manner is, firft, to his Englishmen? I fay. as his manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of his counfels, and are unworthy. Behold A descripnow this vaft city; a city of refuge, the manfion- zcal and houfe of liberty, encompaffed and furrounded with his with which protection. The fhop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion-out the plates and people then in London inftruments of armed Juftice in defence of beleaguer'd were studyTruth, than there be pens and heads there, fitting by amining the their ftudious lamps, mufing, fearching, revolving religion. new notions and ideas, wherewith to prefent, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation: others as faft, reading, trying all things, affent

ing

tion of the

eagerness

the vast number of

⚫ing and ex

.doctrines of

will arise

ought not

to be es

exil.

ing to the force of reafon and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation fo pliant and fo prone to feek after knowledge? What wants there to fuch a towardly and pregnant foil, but wife and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of fages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harveft; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift-up, the fields Diversity of are white already. Where there is much defire to opinions learn, there of neceffity will be much arguing, much hence, but writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under thefe fantastic teemed an terrours of Sect and Schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding, which God hath stirred-up in this city. What fome lament of, we rather should rejoice at, fhould rather praise this pious forwardness among men, to reaffume the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little for bearance of one another, and fome grain of Charity, might win all these diligencies to join and unite into one general and brotherly search after truth; could we but forego this Prelatical tradition of crowding free confciences and Chriftian liberties into Canons and precepts of men. I doubt not, if some great and worthy ftranger should come among us, wife to difcern the mould and temper of a people, and how to govern it, obferving the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and reafonings in the purfuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry-out, as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage; "if fuch were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest defign that could be attempted to make a church, or kingdom, happy." Yet thefe are the men cried

out

out against for Schifmatics and Sectaries, as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, fome cutting," fome fquaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there fhould be a fort of irrational men, who could not confider there must be inany fchifms and many diffections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the house of God can be built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous, in this world: neither can every piece of the building be of one form; nay, rather the perfection confifts in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly diffimilitudes, (that are not vaftly disproportional,) arifes the goodly and the graceful fymmetry that commends the whole pile and ftructure.

Let us therefore be more confiderate builders, more wife in spiritual architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time feems come wherein Mofes, the great prophet, may fit in Heaven rejoicing to fee that memorable and glorious with of his fulfilled, when not only our feventy elders, but all the Lord's people are become prophets. No marvel then, though fome men, and fome good men too, perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret and, out of their own weaknefs, are in agony, left thefe divifions and fubdivifions will undo us. The adversary again applauds, and waits the hour; "when they have branched themselves out, faith he, fmall enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time." Fool! he fees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches; nor will beware until he fee our fmall divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldly brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these fuppofed Sects and Schifms, and that we fhall not need that folli

citude,