crooked wisdom so much as not to be
ashamed to hold foolish and unmannerly disputes against those men whom
they ought to reverence, and those laws which they ought to obey; men
that laboured and joyed first to find out the faults, and then speak
evil of Government, and to be the authors of confusion; men whom
company, and conversation, and custom had at last so blinded, and made
so insensible that these were sins, that like those that perished
in the gainsaying of Korah, so these died without repenting of these
spiritual wickednesses; of which the practices of Coppinger and
Hacket[15] in their lives, and the death of them and their adherents,
are, God knows, too sad examples, and ought to be cautions to those
men that are inclined to the like spiritual wickednesses.

[Sidenote: Growth of sedition]

And in these times, which tended thus to confusion, there were
also many of these scruple-mongers, that pretended a tenderness of
conscience, refusing to take an oath before a lawful Magistrate: and
yet these very men in their secret Conventicles did covenant and
swear to each other, to be assiduous and faithful in using their best
endeavours to set up the Presbyterian doctrine and discipline; and
both in such a manner as they themselves had not yet agreed on; but
up that government must. To which end there were many that wandered
up and down and were active in sowing discontents and seditions,
by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous
pamphlets and libels against the Church and State; but especially
against the Bishops; by which means, together with venomous and
indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as to believe
the Bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructers of God's
discipline! and at last some of them were given over to so bloody a
zeal, and such other desperate delusions, as to find out a text in
the Revelation of St. John, that Antichrist was to be overcome by
the sword. So that those very men, that began with tender and meek
petitions, proceeded to admonitions: then to satirical remonstrances:
and at last--having, like Absalom, numbered who was not, and who was,
for their cause--they got a supposed certainty of so great a party,
that they durst threaten first the Bishops, and then the Queen and
Parliament, to all which they were secretly encouraged by the Earl
of Leicester, then in great favour with her Majesty, and the reputed
cherisher and patron-general of these