his passage in his sermon: "It was
the speech of a man renowned for wisdom in our age, that if he were
_commanded_ to put forth to sea in a ship that had neither mast nor
tackling, he would do it:" and being asked what wisdom that were,
replied, "The wisdom must be in him that hath power to command, not
in him that conscience binds to obey." Sibthorpe, after he published
his sermon, immediately had his house burnt down. Dr. Mainwaring,
says a manuscript letter-writer, "sent the other day to a friend of
mine, to help him to all the ancient precedents he could find, to
strengthen his opinion (for absolute monarchy), who answered him he
could help him in nothing but only to hang him, and that if he lived
till a parliament, or, &c., he should be sure of a halter."
Mainwaring afterwards submitted to parliament; but after the
dissolution got a free pardon. The panic of popery was a great evil.
The divines, under Laud, appeared to approach to Catholicism; but it
was probably only a project of reconciliation between the two
churches, which Elizabeth, James, and Charles equally wished. Mr.
Cosins, a letter-writer, is censured for "superstition" in this
bitter style: "Mr. Cosins has impudently made three editions of his
prayer-book, and one which he gives away in private, different from
the published ones. An audacious fellow, whom my Lord of Durham
greatly admireth. I doubt if he be a sound protestant: he was so
blind at even-song on Candlemas-day, that he could not see to read
prayers in the minster with less than three hundred and forty
candles, whereof sixty he caused to be placed about the high altar;
besides he caused the picture of our Saviour, supported by two
angels, to be set in the choir. The committee is very hot against
him, and no matter if they trounce him." This was Cosins, who
survived the revolution, and returning with Charles the Second, was
raised to the see of Durham: the charitable institutions he has left
are most munificent.

[300] Rushworth's Collections, i. 514.

[301] I deliver this fact as I find it in a private letter; but it
is noticed in the Journals of the House of Commons, 23 Junii, 4to.
Caroli Regis. "Sir Edward Coke reporteth that they find that,
enclosed in the letter, to be unfit for any subject's ear to hear.
Read but one line and a half of it, and could