ts, feasts him, lodges him; his religion comes home at
night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep; rises,
is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced brewage, and
better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed
on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad
at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day
without his religion.

Another sort there be who, when they hear that all things shall be
ordered, all things regulated and settled, nothing written but what
passes through the custom-house of certain publicans that have the
tonnaging and poundaging of all free-spoken truth, will straight give
themselves up into your hands, make 'em and cut 'em out what religion ye
please: there be delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes that
will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year
as in a delightful dream. What need they torture their heads with that
which others have taken so strictly and so unalterably into their own
purveying? These are the fruits which a dull ease and cessation of our
knowledge will bring forth among the people. How goodly and how to be
wished were such an obedient unanimity as this, what a fine conformity
would it starch us all into! Doubtless a staunch and solid piece of
framework, as any January could freeze together.

Nor much better will be the consequence even among the clergy
themselves. It is no new thing never heard of before, for a parochial
minister, who has his reward and is at his Hercules' pillars in a warm
benefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may
rouse up his studies, to finish his circuit in an English Concordance
and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a sober graduateship,
a Harmony and a Catena; treading the constant round of certain common
doctrinal heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks, and
means, out of which, as out of an alphabet, or sol-fa, by forming and
transforming, joining and disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and
two hours' meditation, might furnish him unspeakably to the performance
of more than a weekly charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the infinite
helps of interlinearies, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear.
But as for the multitude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on every
text that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry,
and add to boot St. Mar