contrary Army? What greater Service could all the World do for the Devil then to cast out the Ministers of Christ? And what more would the Devil himself desire, to set up his Kingdom and suppress the Church? Wretches! you shall shortly see your master, and he shall pay you your wages contrary to your expectation. Read Gods Word to a Malignant, Acts xiii. 10.1

10. These enemies do reproach as faithful a Ministry as the world enjoyeth, and their malice hath so little footing, as that the result must be their own shame. Among the Papists indeed there are Mass-priests that can but read a Mass, whose office is to turn a piece of bread into a God; And yet these the Malignants either let alone, or liken us to them. The Greeks, and Ethiopians, and most of the Christian world, would have a Ministry that seldom or never preach to them, but read Common-prayer and Homilies. The most of Protestant Churches have a learned Ministry that is so taken up with Controversies; that they are much less in the powerful preaching and practice of godliness: Above all Nations under heaven, the English are set upon Practical

1 St Paul's words to Elymas the Sorcerer,- -"O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, &c."

Divinity and Holiness; and yet even they are by Malignity chosen out for reproach. Alas, scandals in the Ministry, (as drunkenness, swearing, &c.) among other Nations are but too common but in England Magistrates and Ministers combine against them. Ministers are still spurring on the Magistrates to cast out the insufficient, negligent and scandalous; and desire and use more severity with men of their own profession, then with Magistrates or any others in the Land. In nothing are they more zealous then to sweep out all the remnant of the scandalous. And for themselves, they are devoted to the work of the Lord, and think nothing too much that they are able to perform, but preach in season and out of season, with all long-suffering and doctrine; and yet Malignants make them their reproach.

11. It is abundance of Pride and Impudency, that these Malignant enemies are guilty of. They are most of them persons of lamentable ignorance; and yet they dare revile at the Teachers, and think themselves wise enough to rebuke and teach them: Many of them are men of wicked lives; and yet they can tell the world how bad the ministers are. A Railer, a Drunkard, a Covetous Worlding, an Ignorant Sott, is the likest person to fall upon the

Minister; and the Owl will call the Lark a night-bird. Alas, when we come to try them, what dark wretches do we find them! and should be glad if they were but teachable. And yet they have learnt the Devils first lesson, to despise their Teachers.

12. And O what barbarous ingratitude are these Malignant enemies of the Ministry guilty of! For whom do we watch, but for them and others? Can they be so blind as to think a painful Minister doth make it his design to seek himself, or to look after great matters in the world? Would not the time, and labour, and cost that they are at in the Schools and Universities have fitted them for a more gainful trade? Do not Lawyers, Physicians, &c., live a far easier, and in the world a more honourable plentiful life? Have not the Ministers themselves been the principal Instruments of taking down Bishops, Deans and Chapters, Arch-deacons, Prebends, and all means of preferment? And what have they got by it? or ever endeavoured? Speak malice, and spare not. Is it any thing but what they had before? even the maintenance due to their particular charge. Unthankful wretches! It is for your sakes and souls that they study, and pray, and watch, and fast, and exhort, and

labour, to the consuming of their strength; and when they have done, are made the Drunkards song, and the scorn of all the wicked of the Countrey; and when they spend and are spent, the more they love, the less they are beloved. In the times of this greatest prosperity of the Church, they live under constant hatred and scorn, from those that they would save, and will not let alone in sin. And what do they endure all this for but Gods honour and your salvation? Would we be Ministers for any lower ends? Let shame from God and man be on the face of such a Minister! I profess, were it not for the belief of the greatness and necessity, and excellency of the truths that I am to preach, and for the will of God and the good of souls, I would be a Plow-man, or the meanest Trade, if not a Sweep-Chimney, rather then a Minister. Must we break our health, and lay by all our worldly interest, for you, even for you, and think not our lives and labours too good or too dear to further your salvation, and must we by you, even by you, be reproached after all? God will be judge between you and us, whether this be not inhumane ingratitude, and whether we deserve it at your hands.

XI

GEORGE FOX

[The founder of the Society of Friends was born 1624. He felt a special call in 1643, and shortly afterwards began to form his Society, whose members were first called Quakers in 1650. He spent his life in itinerant preaching; after visiting nearly every corner of England, as well as Holland and America, and suffering imprisonment eight times, he died in 1691. He soon saw the importance of pamphlet writing, and wrote many himself, his followers being the most prolific and earnest, not to say violent, of pamphleteers. It is hardly necessary to point out the great significance of the Quaker protest against the formalism and bibliolatry of the seventeenth Century. The tract here given is chosen for its insistance on the central Quaker doctrine of the sufficiency of the light withina kind of sublime anarchism, which led by reaction into the depreciation of "enthusiasm" in the next century (pp. 273, 292). We find Law lamenting at the beginning of that utilitarian age that "even the most worthy and pious among the clergy of the Established Church are afraid to assert the sufficiency of the Divine Light, because the Quakers, who have broken off from the Church have made this doctrine their corner-stone." If Fox had been able to reform the Church from within, the history of the Hanoverian age might