not its extravagant Flouts, Scorn, Banter, and
Irony, and that not only of the _laughing_, but of the _cruel_ kind:
Wherein they copy'd after the _Jews_ of old, who while they prosecuted
_Christ_ to Death, and carried on their High-Church Tragedy against him,
acted against him the _comick Scenes_ [110] "of spitting in his Face, and
buffeting him with the Palms of their Hands, saying, _Prophesy unto us,
thou Christ, who is he that smote thee_;" and who, when they had nail'd
him to the Cross, _revil'd_ him with divers _Taunts_, in which the _Chief
Priests_, _Scribes_, _Elders_, and even the _Thieves, which were crucified
with him_, concurr'd. But yet for all this, these solemn Quakers
themselves are not altogether averse to _Irony_ and _Ridicule_, and use it
when they can. Their Books abound in Stories to ridicule in their Turn the
Priests, their great and bitter Adversaries: And they please themselves
with throwing at the Priests the _Centuries of Scandalous Ministers_, and
the Books of the _Cobler of_ Glocester. They have also their Satirist and
Banterer, _Samuel Fisher_; whose Works, tho all wrote in the _drolling_
Style and Manner, they pride themselves in, and have collected into one
great Volume in _Folio_; in which Quaker-Wit and Irony are set up against
Church, Presbyterian, and Independent Wit and Irony, without the least
Scruple of the lawfulness of such Arms. In a word, their Author acts the
Part of a _Jack-Pudding_, _Merry Andrew_, or _Buffoon_, with all the
seeming Right, Authority, and Privilege, of the Member of some Establish'd
Church of abusing all the World but themselves. The _Quakers_ have also
encourag'd and publish'd a most arch Book of the famous _Henry Stubbe_,
intitled, _A Light shining out of Darkness_, &c. Wherein all the other
religious Parties among us are as handsomly and learnedly banter'd and
ridicul'd, as the _Quakers_ have been in any Book against them. And when
they were attack'd by one _Samuel Young_, a whimsical
Presbyterian-Buffoon-Divine, who call'd himself _Trepidantium Malleus_,
and set up for an Imitator of Mr. _Alsop_, in several Pamphlets full of
Stories, Repartees, and Ironies; in which _Young_, perhaps, thought
himself as secure from a Return of the like kind, as a Ruffian or Thief
may when he assaults Men: His Attacks were repell'd in a Book intitled
"_Trepidantium Malleus intrepidanter malleatus_; or the West Country
Wiseaker's crack-brain'd _Reprimand_ hammer'd about his own