youth, and kindling her undazl'd eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it felf 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 fects and fchifms.' What should ye doe then? should ye fuppreffe all this flowry crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this City? should ye fet an Oligarchy of twenty engrossers 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 I Beleeve : Beleeve it, Lords and Commons, they who counsell ye to fuch a fuppreffing, doe as good as bid ye fuppreffe yourselves; and I will foon 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 your own mild, and free, and human government; it is the liberty, Lords and Commons, 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 enlightned our fpirits like the influence of heav'n; this is that which hath enfranchis'd, enlarg'd and lifted up our apprehenfions degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make us now lesse capable, leffe know knowing, leffe eagerly pursuing of the truth, unlesse ye first make your selves,. that made us fo, leffe the lovers, leffe 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, oppreffive, 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 fuppreffe that unlesse ye reinforce an abrogated and mercilesse law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick clof eft : eft 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 confcience, above all liberties. What would be best advis'd then, if it be found fo 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 not now mist and bewayl'd a worthy and undoubted patron of this argument. Ye know him I am fure; yet I for honours fake, and may it be eternall to him, Thall 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, fo full of meeknes and breathing charity, that next to his last teftament, who bequeath'd love and peace to his Difciples, 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 |