ever they be miscall'd, that defire to live purely, in fuch a ufe of God's ordinances, as the best guidance of their confcience gives them, and to tolerat them, though in fome difconformity to ourselves. The book it felf will tell us more at large, being publifht to the world, and dedicated to the Parlament by him who both for his life and for his death deferves, that what advice he left be not laid by without perufall.

And now the time in fpeciall is, by priviledge to write and speak what may help to the furder difcuffing of matters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his two controverfal faces might now not unfignificantly be fet open. And though all the windes of doctrin were let loofe"

to

to play upon the earth, fo Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licencing and prohibiting to mifdoubt her ftrength. Let her and Falfhood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the wors, in a free; and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and fureft fuppreffing. He who hears what praying there is for light and clearer knowledge to be fent down among us, would think of other matters to be conflitued beyond the difcipline af Geneva, fram'd and fabric't already to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for fhines in upon us, there be who envy, and oppofe it, if it come not firft in at their cafements. What a collufion is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wife man to ufe dili

gence,

gence, to feek for wisdom as for hidd'n treasures early and late, that another order fhall enjoyn us to know nothing but by ftatute. When a man hath bin labouring the hardeft labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnisht out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reafons as it were a battell raung'd, fcatter'd and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adverfary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and fun, if he please; only that he may try the matter by dint of argument, for his opponents then to fculk, to lay ambufhments, to keep a narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger fhould paffe, though it be valour anough in fouldierfhip, is but

weaknes and cowardife in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth" is ftrong next to the Almighty? The needs no policies, nor ftratagems, nor licencings, to make her victorious, those are the fhifts and defences that error uses against her power: give her but room, & do not bind her when the fleeps, for then the speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who fpake oracles only when he was caught & bound, but then rather the turns herself into all shapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, untill fhe be adjur'd into her own likenes. Yet is it not impoffible that the may have more fhapes than one. What else is all that rank of

things indifferent, wherein Truth may be on this fide, or on the other, without being unlike her felf? What but a vain fhadow elfe is the abolition of thofe ordinances, that hand-writing nayl'd to the croffe? what great purchase is this Chrif tian liberty which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day, or regards it not, may doe either to the LORD. How many other things might be tolerared in peace, and left to confcience,' had we but charity, and were it not the chief ftrong hold of our hypocrifie to be ever judging one another. I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a flavish print upon our necks; the ghoft of a linnen decency yet haunts us. We stumble

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