the title of "The region of divines." For me, I can be content to be base enough in mine own eyes: but, if my disparagement shall redound to my betters, I dare tell him it is my comfort, that I was sent thither by a judgment no less infallible, than of Paul the Fifth. Let himself or any of his eavesdropping companions (to whom that place stood open) say wherein I shamed those, that sent me. It was my just grief, that the necessity of my health, yea of my life, called me off immaturely but, since either death or departure must be yielded to, others shall judge whether I went away more laden with infirmity, than, however unworthy, with approbation".

But that second lie of mine is so loud, that all my brethren of Dort must hear it; and they, which were lately the witnesses of my sincerity, gracing me with the dear testimony of their approof, are now made the judges of my impudency. What monster of falsehood will come forth!

In my "Censure of Travel," glancing at the Jesuitical brag of their Indian Miracles (whereat their very friends make sport) I charge Cardinal Bellarmin for an avoucher of these cozenages; who dares aver, that his fellow Xavier not only healed the deaf, dumb, and blind, but raised the dead: to which I add, while his brother Acosta, after many years spent in those parts, can pull him by the sleeve, and tell him in his ear, so loud that all the world may hear, Prodigia nulla producimus.

This is my indictment. Let me come to my trial. if ye can, ye reverend heads: I crave no favour.

Cast me,

Where lies this so lewd lie, and malicious abuse? That Bellarmin says thus of the Jesuit Xavier, is not denied. That Acosta says thus of himself and his fellow Jesuits, is granted.

The first lie yet is, Acosta was never in the East Indies at all, nor Xavier in the West: and how then could Acosta spend many years in those parts?

A perilous plea! Whoever, I beseech you, mentioned either East or West? I spake of the Indies, in common: so did his Bellarmin, from whom I cited this, Claruit etiam in Indiis omni genere miraculorum, &c. Here is not one of the Indies mentioned; but both, or either. If both lived in the Indies, though not in one town, in one country, in one India; wherein have I offended, while, speaking of the Indies in general, I said that Xavier and Acosta lived there? Yet this is one lie, he saith, and that so long a one, as that it reacheth as far as it is from the East to the West, from the Arctic to the Antarctic Pole: wherein I doubt not but your reverences will easily mark the skill of this learned cosmographer. Some parts of

Necessitate propellente, proditio est ea tacere quæ quis studiosè perfecerit. Chrysost. in illa: Utinam tolerassetis, &c.

e Bell. de Notis Eccles. I. iv. c. 14.

VOL. IX.

M

those instanced Indies differ not so far: not to speak of the small strait of Anian, the mentioned region of Mexico is not above fourscore degrees from Japan. Either your construction must favour him, or else this must go into the book of oversights.

The second lie is, that Acosta pulled Bellarmin by the sleeve in this assertion, as if he denied those Eastern miracles, which he elsewhere confesseth.

Indeed, this sauciness were dangerous. The Red Hat, you say, is fellow to a crown. But shall I confess where I erred? My dull head could not conceive that God should be the God of the Mountains, and not of the Valleys; of the East Indies, not of the West; and yet be the Jesuits' God in both: especially, since the reason that Joseph Acosta fetches from the persons, which should be the subject of those wonders, holds as equally for both Indies, as an almanack, made for the meridian of one city, serveth the neighbours.

Hitherto then the prologue of my infamous falsehoods, such, as if all my writings could have afforded any equally heinous, these had never been chosen out to grace the front of his Detection. There must needs be much terror in the sequel.

The rest of this storm falls upon our learned Professor, Doctor Collins; one of the prime ornaments of our Cambridge; the partnership of whose unjust disgraces doth not a little hearten my unworthiness. The world knows the eminency of that man's learning, wit, judgment, eloquence. His works praise him enough in the gate. Yet this malapert cornercreeper doth so basely vilify him, for ignorance, silliness, prattling, rusticity, lying; as if in these only he were matchless. Indeed, whom doth the aspersion of that foul hand forbear? Vilium est hominum alios viles facere! I appeal to all the tribunals of learning through the world, whether all Doway have yielded ought comparable to that man's pen: whether he have not so conjured down his Caco-Dæmon Joannes, that he never dares to look back into the light again: whether his Ephatha be not so powerful, that, if his adversary were any otherwise deaf than the block which he worships, it might open his ear to the truth. It angers C. E. to hear that kings should not die; or, perhaps, that they, whose heads are anointed, should die by any other than anointed fingers. The sentence of his Cardinal and Jesuits, both de facto and de jure, of deposing and murdering kings, is now beside our way. Only we may read afar off, in capital letters, Arise, Peter, kill and eat.

f Jos. Acosta, 1. ii. de Sal. Ind. c. 9.

This book of Doctor Collins, C. E. falsely insinuateth to have been suppressed. All stationers' shops can convince him of a lie. Nothing ever fell from that learned hand, without applause.

He knows the word, with shame enough. I will not so much wrong that worthy Provost, as to anticipate his quarrel: rather, I leave the superfluity of this malice to the scourge of that abler hand; from whom I doubt not but C. E. shall smart and bleed so well, that he may spare the labour of making himself his own whipping-stock on Good-Friday.

THE HONOUR OF THE

MARRIED CLERGY MAINTAINED,

&c.

THE FIRST BOOK

SECT. I.

NEITHER my charity, nor my leisure, nor my reader's patience, will allow me to follow my Detector in all his extravagances; nor to change idle words of contumely, with a babbler.

His twelve first pages are but the light froth of an impotent anger; wherein he accuseth my bitterness, and professeth his

own.

For me, I appeal unto all eyes: if my pen have been sometimes zealous, it was never intemperate. Neither can he make me believe, that my passions need to appear to my shame, in calling Rome, Prostitute"; or himself, shameless: or in citing from the Quodlibet of his own Catholic Priests, the art of his Jesuits, in Drurying of young heirs. There is neither slander nor shame in truth.

For himself, he confesseth to have sharpened his pen; and to have dipt it, perhaps too deep, in gall: but where his ink is too thick, he shall give me leave to put a little vinegar to it, that it may flow the better. In the mean time, he shall go away with this glory, That a fouler mouth hath seldom ever wiped itself upon clean paper.

After those waste flourishes, his thirteenth page begins to strike; wherein he chargeth me with odious baseness and insufficiency, in borrowing all my proofs from Bellarmin's ob

a Declamationes ambitiosorum opera, otiosorum cibi sunt. Scal. Exer. 307. b Prostituta illa Civitas.

The particulars of this History, he shall receive in due place. d Refut. p. 13.

jections, dissembling their solutions. The man were hard driven, that would go to borrow of an enemy. If all my proofs be fore-alleged and fore-answered by his Bellarmin, to what purpose hath this trifler blurred so much paper? There, he saith, shall the reader see all my Scriptures answered; the Doctrine of Devils explicated: there, that other, Let him be the husband of one wife, and, Marriage is honourable. Answered, indeed! but, as he said, dóra ávéκdora, answerlessly? Such clear beams of truth shine in the face of these Scriptures, that all the cobweb veils of a Jesuit's subtlety cannot obscure them. Their very citation confutes their answer.

And, where had we this law, That if a Jesuit have once meddled with a Scripture, all pens, all tongues, are barred from ever alleging it? If Satan have mis-cited the Psalm, He shall give his angels charge over thee, for temptation; may not we make use of it, for the comfort of protection? Briefly, let my Caviller know that it is not the frivolous illusion of any shuffling Jesuit, that can drive us from the firm bulwark of the Holy Scriptures. In this, they are clearly ours, after all pretences of solution; as he shall well feel in the sequel: and shall secure us against all human opposition.

Before the disquisition whereof, somewhat must of force be premised, concerning the state of our question.

SECT. II.

WHERE, that all readers may see, how learnedly my wise adversary hath mistaken me and himself; I must tell my Detector, that all his tedious discourse sits beside the cushion. For, thus he writes of my Epistle": "So as his whole scope is, to disprove the single life of Catholic Priests; and, thereby, to impugn our doctrine, in that behalf:" upon which conceit, he runs into a large proof of the strong obligation of vows, the necessity of their observation, the penalty and danger of their violation, the praise of virginity, the possibility of keeping it; and, upon this very ground, builds he the tottering wall of his whole ensuing Confutation: insomuch, as, p. 130, he says, "That marriage, at all times, without contrary injunction, was lawful, is not denied: nor will it be proved in haste, that priests, or such as had vowed the contrary, might use that liberty and we say not, that virginity is violently to be imposed on any, for it cometh by free election; but where the vow is free, the transgression is damnable." Thus he.

:

Now, let all indifferent eyes see, whether the only drift of mine Epistle be not, to justify our marriages, not to disprove

e Refut. p. 12.