scarce find three anywhere of the same religion in all points.

5. Every religion is a getting religion; for though I myself get nothing, I am subordinate to them 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 10 the top of a pair of stairs; 'tis hard to remove it, but if it once 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?

Answer. In truth neither, but the state. I am troubled with a boil; I call a company of surgeons about me; one prescribes one thing, another another; I single out something I like, and ask you that stand by, and are no surgeon, what you think of it: you like it too; you and I are the 20judges of the plaister, and we bid them prepare it, and

there's an end. Thus 'tis in religion; the protestants say they will be judged by the scripture; the papists they 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 says 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 in the church

1. 29. the Manual] was one of the many service-books in use before the Reformation. See e. g. a decree of a synod at Exeter (1287), giving a list of books with which every church was to be furnished, viz. missale bonum, gradale, troparium, manuale bonum, legenda, antiphonale, psalteria, ordinale, venitare ympnare, collectare. Wilkins, Concilia, ii. 139.

The manual contained the offices and rites and ceremonies which

before the Reformation. Not by the civil law, that had nothing to do with 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; that ours is a parliamentary religion, by reason the service-book was established by act of parliament, and never any servicebook was so before. That will be nothing that the pope sent the Manual. 'Twas ours, because the state received 10 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 three-pence for the pope. The Council of Trent is not admitted at this day in France. 9. Papist. Where was your religion before Luther, an hundred years ago?

Protestant. Where was America an hundred or six-score years ago? Our religion was where the rest of the Christian Church was.

Papist. Our religion continued ever since the Apostles, and therefore 'tis the better.

Protestant. So did ours. That there was an interruption in it, will fall out to be nothing; no more than if another earl should tell one of the earls of Kent; He is a better earl than he, because there was one or two of the family of a parish priest in the discharge of his ordinary duties would be called upon to perform, and a variety of other offices less frequently needed. Maskell, in the preface to his Monumenta Ritualia, ch. v, gives a copy of the table of contents of the manual according to the Salisbury use. They were not quite the same as those in use elsewhere, but the claim and belief of Roman Catholic writers is that together with the other devotional books in public use, they represent, substantially and very closely, the forms which Augustine received from Pope Gregory, when he set out on his English mission.

Selden appears to use the word 'manual' here as equivalent to service-book of every kind.

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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 should be decided. The Puritan would be judged by the word of God: if he would speak clearly, he means himself, but that he is ashamed to say so; and he would have me believe 10 him before a whole church, that have 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. 'Tis just as if two men were at bowls, and both judged by the eye: one says 'tis his cast, the other says 'tis my cast; and having no measure, the difference is eternal. Ben Jonson satirically expressed the vain disputes of divines by Rabbi Busy disputing with a puppet in his Bartholomew 1. 2. a great prince] so in MSS. and early editions. Some later editions read 'as great a prince.'

1. 17. Rabbi Busy disputing &c.] The dispute referred to is between Rabbi Busy and a puppet belonging to Lanthorn Leatherhead, see Barthol. Fair, Act v. sc. 3. There are various readings of the text of the Table Talk. The Harleian MS. 690, gives-'Inigo Lanthorne disputing with a puppet in Bartholomew Fair.' The Sloane MS. 2513 reads, 'in his Bartholomew Fair,' but otherwise agrees with Harleian 690. The early printed editions read-'Inigo Lanthorne disputing with his puppet in a Bartholomew Fair.' The reading which I have followed-that of Harleian MS. 1315-is the only one which is not obviously incorrect. I am inclined to think that the original reading may have been 'Rabbi Busy disputing with Inigo Lanthorne his puppet, in his (sc. Ben Jonson's) Bartholomew Fair,' and that this has been cut down and changed into the various forms given above. Inigo Lanthorne is of course a half-way name between Lanthorne Leatherhead and Inigo Jones, who is assumed to have been satirized by Jonson under the name of Lanthorne Leatherhead. Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones were for many years fellow-workers for the stage, Jonson contributing the words of the masque or play, and Jones undertaking the scenery and stage-properties. This unequal partnership lasted for more than ten years after Bartholomew Fair was brought out (1614). How sharply they quarrelled afterwards,

fair. It is so it is not so: it is so: it is not so; crying thus one to another a quarter of an hour together.

II. In matters of religion, to be ruled by one that writes against his adversary, and throws all the dirt he can in his face, is, as if in point of good manners a man should be governed by one whom he sees at cuffs with another, and thereupon thinks himself bound to give the next man he meets a box on the ear.

12. It is to no purpose to labour to reconcile religions, when the interest of princes will not suffer it. 'Tis well if 10 they would be reconciled so far, that they should not cut one another's throats.

13. There is all the reason in the world divines should not be suffered to go a hair's breadth beyond their bounds, for fear of breeding confusion, since there now be so many religions on foot. The matter was not so narrowly to be looked after when there was but one religion in Christendom; the rest would cry him down for an heretic, and there was nobody to side with him.

14. We look after religion, as the butcher did after his 20 knife, when he had it in his mouth.

15. Religion is made a juggler's paper; now 'tis a horse, now 'tis a lanthorn, now 'tis a boat, now 'tis a man. To serve ends, religion is turned into all shapes.

16. Some men's pretending religion, is like the roaring boys' way of challenges: (their reputation is dear, it cannot

and what a mean opinion Ben Jonson had of his old partner, may be seen from inter alia his 'Expostulation with Inigo Jones' and his verses 'To Inigo Marquis-would-be,' in which Inigo Jones is held up to ridicule as a mere stage-property-man and puppet-play presenter and would-be poet, very much as Lanthorn Leatherhead is shown in Bartholomew Fair. The resemblance between the two, as Ben Jonson has drawn them, is certain; their intended identification is almost certain. Selden knew Ben Jonson intimately, and if the words 'Inigo Lanthorne' ever came from Selden's mouth, the proof may be regarded as complete.

1. 25. like the roaring boys &c.] In Overbury's Characters, 'A roaring

stand with the honour of a gentleman :) when, God knows, they have neither reputation nor honour about them.

17. Pretending religion and the law of God, is to set all things loose. When a man has no mind to do something he ought to do by his contract with man, then he gets a text, and interprets it as he pleases, and so thinks to get loose.

18. We talk much of settling religion. Religion is well enough settled already, if we would let it alone. Methinks 10 we might look after, &c.

19. If men should say they took arms for anything

Boy' is represented as a bullying cheating fellow. 'He sends challenges by word of mouth; for he protests (as he is a gentleman and brother of the sword) he can neither read nor write. . . . Soldier he is none, for he cannot distinguish between onion-seed and gunpowder: if he has worn it in his hollow tooth for the tooth-ache, and so come to the knowledge of it, that's all.' Overbury, Miscell. Works, p. 173 (ed. 1756).

In the old play, Amends for Ladies, Act iii. sc. 4, Whorebang, Bots, Tearchaps, and Spillblood appear as 'Roarers,' i. e. as noisy, cowardly bullies. Hazlitt's Old English Plays, vol. xi.

In the Dramatis Personae of Bartholomew Fair, Val. Cutting is described as a Roarer or Bully.

His honour, his reputation, are words frequently in Bobadil's mouth (Every man in his Humour).

1. 11. If men should say &c.] A care for religion was a chief reason alleged in the Declaration of the Kingdom of Scotland to justify their expedition into England in 1643. They said 'It was most necessary that every one, against all doubting, should be persuaded in his mind

of the goodness of the cause maintained by him; which they said was no other than the good of religion in England, and the deliverance of their brethren out of the depths of affliction; the preservation of their own religion, and of themselves from the extremity of misery.' They trusted, therefore, 'that the Lord would save them from the curse of Meroz, who came not to help the Lord against the mighty.' There is much more to the same effect in this Declaration, and in a joint Declaration put out at the same time in the name of both kingdoms, England and Scotland. Their confidence was in God Almighty, the Lord of Hosts . . . It was his own truth and cause which they maintained against the heresy, superstition, and tyranny of Anti-Christ: the glory of his name, the exaltation of the kingdom