Believe
him as he whistles to his Cambridge team of committee-men, and he doth
wonders. But holy men, like the holy language, must be read backwards.
They rifle colleges to promote learning, and pull down churches for
edification. But sacrilege is entailed upon him. There must be a
Cromwell for cathedrals as well as abbeys; a secure sin, whose offence
carries its pardon in its mouth; for how shall he be hanged for
church-robbery, that gives himself the benefit of the clergy?
But for all Cromwell's nose wears the dominical letter, compared to
Manchester he is but like the vigils to an holy-day. This, this is the
man of God, so sanctified a thunderbolt, that Burroughs (in a
proportionable blasphemy to his Lord of Hosts) would style him the
archangel giving battle to the devil.
Indeed, as the angels each of them makes a several species, so every one
of his soldiers makes a distinct church. Had these beasts been to enter
into the ark it would have puzzled Noah to have sorted them into pairs.
If ever there were a rope of sand it was so many sects twisted into an
association.
They agree in nothing but that they are all Adamites in understanding.
It is a sign of a coward to wink and fight, yet all their valour
proceeds from their ignorance.
But I wonder whence their general's purity proceeds; it is not by
traduction; if he was begotten a saint it was by equivocal generation,
for the devil in the father is turned monk in the son, so his godliness
is of the same parentage with good laws, both extracted out of bad
manners, and would he alter the Scripture as he hath attempted the
creed, he might vary the text and say to corruption, Thou art my Father.
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