e, yet he
persisted as far as in him was--that is, by praying, caballing, and
discoursing--to obstruct the restoring of the episcopal government,
revenues, and authority. Insomuch that, finding himself
discountenanced on those accounts by the then Warden of Wadham, he
shifted colledges to Trinity, and, when there, went away without his
degree, scrupling, forsooth, the Subscription then required. From
thence he came to London, where he spent a considerable time in
creeping into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down
concerning the duration of the Government; not considering anything
as best, but as most lasting and most profitable. And after having
many times cast a figure, he at last satisfyed himself that the
Episcopal Government would endure as long as this King lived; and
from thence forward cast about how to be admitted into the Church of
England, and find the highway to her preferments. In order to this he
daily enlarged, not only his conversation, but his conscience, and
was made free of some of the town-vices; imagining, like Muleasses
King of Tunis (for I take witness that on all occasions I treat him
rather above his quality than otherwise), that by hiding himself
among the onions, he should escape being traced by his perfumes.
Ignorant and mistaken man, that thought it necessary to part with any
virtue to get a living; or that the Church of England did not require
and incourage more sobriety than he could ever be guilty of; whereas
it hath alwayes been fruitful of men who, together with obedience to
that discipline, have lived to the envy of the Nonconformists in
their conversation, and without such could never either have been
preserved so long, or after so long a dissipation have ever
recover'd. But neither was this yet, in his opinion, sufficient; and
therefore he resolv'd to try a shorter path, which some few men had
trod not unsuccessfully; that is, to print a Book; if that would not
do, a second; if not that, a third of an higher extraction, and so
forward, to give experiment against their former party of a keen
stile and a ductile judgment. His first proof-piece was in the year
1665, the _Tentamina Physico-Theologica_; a tedious transcript of his
common-place book, wherein there is very little of his own, but the
arrogance and the unparalleled censoriousness that he exercises over
all o