youth, and kindling her undazi'd eyes at the full midday beam ; purging and unscaling her long abused fight at the fountain it self of heav'nly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amaz’d at what the means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticat a year of sects and schisms.'

What should ye doe then? should ye suppresse all this flowry crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this City ? should ye set an Oligarchy of twenty engroffers over it, to bring a famin upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measur'd to us by their bushel ?

Beleeve

your

Beleeve it, Lords and Commons, they
who counsell ye to such a suppressing,
doe as good as bid ye suppresse your-
selves; and I will soon shew how. If it
be defir'd to know the immediat cause of
all this free writing and free speaking,
there cannot be assign'd a truer than
own mild, and free, and human govern-
ment; it is the liberty, Lords and Com-
mons, which your own valorous and
happy counsels have purchast us, liberty
which is the nurse of all great wits; this
is that which hath rarify'd and enlight-
ned our fpirits like the influence of
heav'n; this is that which hath enfran-
chis’d, enlarg’d and lifted up our appre-
henfions degrees above themselves. Ye
cannot make us now leffe capable, lefse

knowing, lesse eagerly pursuing of the truth, unleffe

ye first make your selves, that made us fo, lefse the lovers, lefse the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formall, and flavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which

ye: cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and ty-rannous, as they were from whom ye have free'd us. That our hearts are: now more capacious, our thoughts more: erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue: of your owne virtu propagated in us; ye. cannot suppresse that unleffe ye reinforce an abrogated and mercilesse law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick clof..

1

est to ye, and excite others ? not he who takes up armes for cote and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all Jiberties.

What would be best advis'd then, if it be found so hurtfull and so unequall to fuppreffe opinions for the newnes, or the unfutablenes to a customary.acceptance, will not be my task to say.; I only shall -repeat what I have learnt from one of your own honourable. number, a right -noble and pious Lord, who had he not facrific'd his life and fortunes to the

Church

Church and Commonwealth, we had noč now mist and bewayı'd a worthy and undoubted patron of this argument. Ye know him I am sure; yet. I for honours fake, and may it be eternall to him, shall name him, the Lord Brook. He writing of Episcopacy, and by the way treating of fects and schisms, left Ye his vote, or rather now the last words of his dying charge, which I know will ever be of dear and honour'd regard with Ye, so full of meeknes and breathing charity, that next to his last teftament, who bequeath'd love and peace to his Disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard words more mild and peacefull. He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility those, how