is in their manner of
complaining, not only because it is for the most part in bitter and
reproachful terms, but also it is to the common people, who are judges
incompetent and insufficient, both to determine any thing amiss, and
for want of skill and authority to amend it. Which also discovereth
their intent and purpose to be rather destructive than corrective. 3.
Those very exceptions which they take are frivolous and impertinent.
Some things indeed they accuse as impious; which if they may appear to
be such, God forbid they should be maintained.

[Sidenote: "Doubly Deceived"]

Against the rest it is only alleged, that they are idle ceremonies
without use, and that better and more profitable might be devised.
Wherein they are doubly deceived; for neither is it a sufficient plea
to say, this must give place, because a better may be devised; because
in our judgments of better and worse, we oftentimes conceive amiss,
when we compare those things which are in devise with those which are
in practice: for the imperfections of the one are hid, till by time
and trial they be discovered: the others are already manifest and
open to all. But last of all,--which is a point in my opinion of great
regard, and which I am desirous to have enlarged,--they do not see
that for the most part when they strike at the State Ecclesiastical,
they secretly wound the Civil State, for personal faults; "What can
be said against the Church, which may not also agree to the
Commonwealth?" In both, Statesmen have always been, and will be
always, men; sometimes blinded with error, most commonly perverted
by passions; many unworthy have been and are advanced in both; many
worthy not regarded. And as for abuses, which they pretend to be in
the law themselves; when they inveigh against non-residence, do they
take it a matter lawful or expedient in the Civil State, for a man
to have a great and gainful office in the North, himself continually
remaining in the South? "He that hath an office let him attend his
office." When they condemn plurality of livings spiritual to the pit
of Hell, what think they of the infinity of temporal promotions? By
the great Philosopher, _Pol. lib. ii. cap. 9,_ it is forbidden as a
thing most dangerous to Commonwealths, that by the same man many great
offices should be exercised. When they deride our ceremonies as vain
and frivolous, were it hard to apply their exceptions even to those
civil ceremonies, which at the Coronatio