REVERENCE. It is sometimes unreasonable to look after respect and reverence, either from a man's own servant, or other inferiors. A great lord and a gentleman talking together, there came a boy by, leading a calf with both his hands; says the lord to the gentleman, You shall see me make the boy let go his calf. With that he came towards him, thinking the boy would have put off his hat, but the boy took no notice of him. The lord seeing that, Sirrah, says he, do you not know me, that you use no reverence?--Yes, says the boy, if your lordship will hold my calf, I will put off my hat. NON-RESIDENCY. 1. THE people thought they had a great victory over the clergy, when in Henry the Eighth's time they got their bill passed, "That a clergyman should have but two livings;" before a man might have twenty or thirty. It was but getting a dispensation from the pope's limiter, or gatherer of the Peterpence, which was as easily got, as now you may have a licence to eat flesh. 2. As soon as a minister is made, he hath power to preach all over the world, but the civil power restrains him; he cannot preach in this parish, or in that; there is one already appointed. Now if the state allows him two livings, then he hath two places where he may exercise his function, and so has the more power to do his office; which he might do every-where if he were not restrained. RELIGION. 1. KING James said to the fly, Have I three kingdoms, and thou must needs fly into my eye? Is there not enough to meddle with upon the stage, or in love, or at the table, but religion? 2. Religion amongst men appears to me like the learning they got at school. Some men forget all they learned, others spend upon the stock, and some improve it. So some men forget all the religion that was taught them when they were young, others spend upon that stock, and some improve it. 3. Religion is like the fashion; one man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has a doublet: so every man has his religion. We differ about trimming. 4. Men say they are of the same religion for quietness sake; but if the matter were well examined, you would scarce find three any where of the same religion in all points. 5. Every religion is a getting religion; for though I myself get nothing, I am subordinate to those that do. So you may find a lawyer in the Temple that gets little for the present, but he is fitting himself to be in time one of those great ones that do get. 6. Alteration of religion is dangerous, because we know not where it will stay; it is like a millstone that lies upon the top of a pair of stairs; it is hard to remove it, but if once it be thrust off the first stair, it never stays till it comes to the bottom. 7. Question. Whether is the church or the Scripture judge of religion? Answ. In truth neither, but the state. I am troubled with a bile; I call a company of chirurgeons about me; one prescribes one thing, another another; I single out something I like, and ask you that stand by, and are no chirurgeon, what you think of it? You like it too; you and I are judges of the plaster, and we bid them prepare it, and there is an end. Thus it is in religion; the Protestants say they will be judged by the Scripture; the Papists say so too; but that cannot speak. A judge is no judge, except he can both speak and command execution; but the truth is, they never intend to agree. No doubt the pope where he is supreme, is to be judge; if he say we in England ought to be subject to him, then he must draw his sword and make it good. 8. By the law was the manual received into the church before the Reformation, not by the civil law, that had nothing to do in it; nor by the canon law, for that manual that was here, was not in France, nor in Spain; but by custom, which is the common law of England; and custom is but the elder brother to a parliament; and so it will fall out to be nothing that the Papists say, ours is a parliamentary religion, by reason the service-book was established by act of parliament, and never any service-book was so before. That will be nothing that the pope sent the manual: it was ours, because the state received it. The state still makes the religion, and receives into it what will best agree with it. Why are the Venetians Roman Catholics? Because the state likes the religion. All the world knows they care not threepence for the pope. The council of Trent is not at this day admitted in France. 9. Papist. Where was your religion before Luther, an hundred years ago? Protestant. Where was America an hundred or sixscore years ago? Our religion was where the rest of the Christian church was. Papist. Our religion continued ever since the apostles, and therefore it is better. Protestant. So did ours. That there was an interruption of it, will fall out to be nothing, no more than if another earl should tell me of the earl of Kent, saying, He is a better earl than he, because there was one or two of the family of Kent did not take the title upon them; yet all that while they were really earls; and afterwards a great prince declared them to be earls of Kent, as he that made the other family an earl. 10. Disputes in religion will never be ended, because there wants a measure by which the business would be decided. The Puritan would be judged by the word of God: if he would speak clearly, he means himself, but he is ashamed to say so; and he would have me believe him before a whole church, that has read the word of God as well as he. One says one thing, and another another; and there is, I say, no measure to end the controversy. It is just as if two men were at |