the active Romanists, the restless Nonconformists, (of which there were many sorts), and the passive, peaceable Protestant. The coun

sels of the first considered and resolved on in Rome; the second in Scotland, in Geneva, and in divers selected, secret, dangerous conventicles both there and within the bosom of our own nation; the third pleaded and defended their cause by established laws, both ecclesiastical and civil; and if they were active, it was to prevent the other two from destroying what was by those known laws happily established to them and their posterity.

I shall forbear to mention the very many and dangerous plots of the Romanists against the church and state; because what is principally intended in this digression is an account of the opinions and activity of the Nonconformists; against whose judgment and practice Mr. Hooker became at last, but most unwillingly, to be engag ed in a book-war; a war which he maintained, not as against an enemy, but with the spirit of meekness and reason.

In which number of Nonconformists, though some might be sincere and well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, as thereby to cover a multitude of errors, yet of this party there were many that were possessed of a high degree of spiritual wickedness; I mean with

an innate, restless, radical pride and malice; I mean not those lesser sins which are more visible and more properly carnal, and sins against a man's self, as gluttony, and drunkenness, and the like (from which, good Lord, deliver us); but sins of a higher nature, because more unlike to the nature of God, which is love, and mercy, and peace; and more like the devil (who is no glutton, nor can be drunk, and yet is a devil); those wickednesses of malice and revenge, and opposition, and a complacence in working and beholding confusion (which are more properly his work, who is the enemy and disturber of mankind; and greater sins, though many will not believe it); men whom a furious zeal and prejudice had blinded, and made incapable of hearing reason, or adhering to the ways of peace; men whom pride and self-conceit had made to over-value their own wisdom, and become pertinacious, and to hold foolish and unmannerly disputes against those men which they ought to reverence, and those laws which they ought to obey; men that labored and joyed to speak evil of government, and then to be the authors of confusion (of confusion as it is confusion); whom company, and conversation, and custom had blinded, and made insensible that these were errors; and at last became so restless and so hardened in their opinions, that like those who perished in the gainsaying of Korah, so these

died without repenting these spiritual wickednesses; of which Coppinger and Hacket, and their adherents, are too sad testimonies.

And in these times, which tended thus to confusion, there were also many others that pretended to tenderness of conscience, refusing to submit to ceremonies, or to take an oath before a lawful magistrate and yet these very men did in their secret conventicles covenant and swear to each other, to be assiduous and faithful in using their best endeavours to set up a church government that they had not agreed on. To which end there were many select parties that wandered up and down, and were active in sowing discontents and sedition, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the church and state; but especially against the bishops: by which means, together with very bold, and as indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as St. Peter observes there were in his time, "some that wrested the Scripture to their own destruction: So by these men, and this means, many came to believe the bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructors of God's discipline; and many of them were at last given over to such desperate delusions, as to find out a text in the "Revelation of St, John,” that "Antichrist was to be overcome by the sword," which they were very ready to take into

their hands. So that those very men that began with tender, meek petitions proceeded to print public admonitions; and then to satirical remon❤ strances; and at last (having like David numbered who was not, and who was, for their cause) they got a supposed certainty of so great a party, that they durst threaten first the bishops, and not long after both the Queen and Parliament; to all which they were secretly encouraged by the Earl of Leicester, then in great favor with her Majesty, and the reputed cherisher and patron-general of these pretenders to tenderness of conscience, whom he used as a sacrilegious snare to further his design; which was by their means to bring such an odium upon the bishops, as to procure an alienation of their lands, and a large proportion of them for himself; which avaricious desire had so blinded his reason, that his ambitious and greedy hopes had almost flattered him into present possion of Lambeth House.

And to these strange and dangerous undertakings the Nonconformists of this nation were much encouraged and heightened by a correspondence and confederacy with that brotherhood in Scotland; so that here they became so bold, that one told the Queen openly in a sermon, "She was like an untamed heifer, that would not be ruled by God's people, but obstructed his discipline.” And in Scotland they were more confident; for

there they declared her an Atheist, and grew to such a height as not to be accountable for any thing spoken against her; no, nor for treason against their own king, if spoken in the pulpit; showing at last such a disobedience even to him, that his mother being in England, and then in distress and in prison, and in danger of death, the church denied the king their prayers for her; and at another time, when he had appointed a day of feasting, their church declared for a general fast, in opposition to his authority.

To this height they were grown in both nations, and by these means there was distilled into the minds of the common people such other venomous and turbulent principles, as were inconsistent with the safety of the church and state; and these vented so daringly, that, beside the loss of life and limbs, the church and state were both forced to use such other severities as will not admit of an excuse, if it had not been to prevent confusion and the perilous consequences of it; which, without such prevention, would in a short time have brought unavoidable ruin and misery to this numerous nation.

These errors and animosities were so remarka ble, that they begot wonder in an ingenious Italian, who being about this time come newly into this nation, writ scoffingly to a friend in his own country, "That the common people of England were