Have ye any thing contrary to God's book? Yea, have ye not all things agreeable to God's word? Butthe new [religion] is different from the old; and therefore ye will have the old. If ye measure the

old by truth, ye have the oldest. If ye measure the old by fancy, then it is hard, because men's fancies change, to give that is old. Ye will have the oldstile. Will ye have any older than that as Christ left, and his apostles taught, and the first church did use? Ye will have that the canons do establish. Why that is a great deal younger than that ye have of later time, and newlier invented; yet that is it that ye desire. And do ye prefer the bishops of Rome afore Christ? Men's inventions afore God's law? The newer sort of worship before the older? Ye seek no religion; ye be deceived; ye seek traditions. They that teach you blind you,' that' so instruct you, deceive you. If ye seek what the old doctors say, yet look what Christ, the oldest of all, saith. For he saith, "before Abraham was made I am." If ye see the truest way, he is the very truth. If ye seek the readiest way, he is the very way. If ye seek everlasting life, he is the very life. What religion would ye have other how than his religion? You would have the bibles in again. It is no mervail; your blind guides should lead you blind still.

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But why should ye not like that [religion] which

God's word establisheth, the primitive church hath authorized, the greatest learned men of this realm have drawn the whole consent of, the parliament hath confirmed, the king's majesty hath set forth? Is it not truly set out? Can ye devise any truer than Christ's apostles used? Ye think it is not learnedly done. Dare ye, commons, take upon you more learning than the chosen bishops and clerks of this. realm have?

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Learn, learn to know this one point of religion, that God will be worshipped as he hath prescribed, and not as we have devised. And that his will is wholly in the scriptures, which be full of God's spirit, and profitable to teach the truth, &c.

The political seditionists, he addresses. thus:

Ye pretend to a commonwealth. How amend ye it by killing of gentlemen, by spoiling of gentlemen, by imprisoning of gentlemen? A marvellous tanned1 commonwealth. Why should ye hate them for their riches, or for their rule? Rule, they never took so much in hand as ye do now. They never resisted the king, never withstood his council, be faithful at this day, when ye be faithless, not only to the king,

1 Ket, their ringleader, was a tanner.

whose subjects ye be, but also to your lords, whose tenants ye be. Is this your true duty-in some of homage, in most of fealty, in all of allegiance-to leave your duties, go back from your promises, fall from your faith, and contrary to law and truth, to make unlawful assemblies, ungodly companies, wicked and detestable camps, to disobey your betters, and to obey your tanners, to change your obedience from a king to a Ket, to submit yourselves to traitors, and break your faith to your true king and. lords?

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If riches offend you, because ye would have the like, then think that to be no commonwealth, but envy to the commonwealth. Envy it is to appair 1 another man's estate, without the amendment of your own; and to have no gentlemen, because ye be none yourselves, is to bring down an estate, and to mend none. Would ye have all alike rich? That is the overthrow of all labour, and utter decay of work in this realm. For, who will labour more, if, when he hath gotten more, the idle shall by lust, without right, take what him list from him, under pretence of equality with him? This is the bringing in of idleness, which destroyeth the commonwealth, and not the amendment of labour, which maintaineth the commonwealth. If there should be such equali

1 impair.

ty, then ye take all hope away from yours, to come to any better estate than you now leave them. And as many mean men's children come honestly up, and are great succour to all their stock, so should none be hereafter holpen by you. But because you seek equality, whereby all cannot be rich, ye would that belike, whereby every man should be poor. And think beside, that riches and inheritance be God's providence, and given to whom of his wisdom he thinketh good.

This book was printed and dispersed among the rebels.

Sir John Cheke was the first scholar of his age, and contributed perhaps more than any other individual to the diffusion of classical literature. As a proof of his industry, as well as of his learning, it deserves to be mentioned, that he translated from the Greck into the Latin, 1. Five books of Josephus's Antiquities. 2. The Ascetic of Maximus the Monk. 3. Plutarck of Superstition. 4. Three of the Philippics of Demosthenes. 5. His three Olinthiacs. 6. His Oration against Leptines. 7. The Orations of Demosthenes and Eschines on the two opposite sides. 8. Aristotle de Ani

mâ. 9. He translated Sophocles and Euripedes literally. 10. And made corrections on Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, and other authors.

There is a saying of his, relative to Demosthenes, so just, that it ought not to be omitted. "None (says he) ever was more fit to make an Englishman tell his tale praiseworthily in an open hearing, either in parliament or pulpit, or otherwise, than this only orato was."

Sir John wrote, moreover, "A Treatise of Superstition," which was translated by Mr. William Elstob, and is annexed to Strype's Life of him. The Latin title is De Superstitione ad Regem Henricum.

The presence of Cheke appears to have been necessary at Cambridge, in order to keep the attention of the members of that university fixed on polite letters: for he was no sooner called away to court, than they relapsed into idle disputations on the doctrines of predestination, original sin, &c. &c. As a further proof of his influence upon the literary progression of his age, we may cite the cotemporary testimony of Roger Ascham; who, in his schoolmaster, speaks in the following com