Section 1

My single remonstrance is encountered with a plural adversary that talks in the style of We, and Us: Their names, persons, qualities, numbers, I care not to know; But, could they say, My name is Legion, for we are many; or were they as many Legions as men, my cause, indeed God's, would bid me to meet them undismayed, and to say with holy David, Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear (Psalm 27:3). The truth of God, which I maintain, shall bear me up against the discouragements of my confessed weakness; In which just confidence I do gladly fly to the Bar of this high and honorable Court, craving no favor but justice.

Besides number, these men think perhaps to carry it by bulk; for those that spare not to condemn the multitude of my few words, lash out into so tedious an answer, that if I should return them a reply in the same proportion, the reader's eye would be tired with the very prospect, and his tongue could not but say, Quis leget haec? But, though they have had so little mercy on him, as to put him to the penance of their lengthy volume, I dare not abuse his leisure in following them in every step of their loose and superfluous discourse; but shall so contract their lavish sheets, as that while I save time, I shall not lose anything of truth.

And first, these brief men complain of the length of my preface; and fetch their grounds afar off, from the admired sons of justice, the Areopagi: The Areopagi? Who were those? Truly my masters, I had thought this had been the name of the place, not of the men. It is an ill sign, they say, to stumble at the threshold. And what say the admired Areopagi, the grave judges of Athens? They condemn prefaces, and passion; neither of which can be justly charged upon the Remonstrance: For the passion, let any reader judge, whether anything can be more calmly, more mildly written; and for the preface, brethren, your censure is palpably mistaken; for that which you miscall the preface, is one of the main pieces of the substance of that intended discourse, which was a too just complaint of the shameful number of libels, lately dropped from our lawless presses; A point no less considerable, nor less essential to that proposed Remonstrance, than those, which your peremptory analysis makes the only subject thereof. I beseech you brethren, spend your logic upon your own works, let mine be such as I contrive them.

Those trifling cavils which you are pleased to make at some phrases of this misnamed preface, are not worth notice; It is not for us to run after the spending of every mouth: Gladly would you excuse that which the world cries shame on, the multitude of the late seditious pamphlets; whereat you might well blush in silence; when an honorable person in open Parliament could reckon up no less than 140, that had passed the press since the beginning of this Session. It angers you, to hear of the honesty of my moderate paper, out of the conscience of your own guiltiness.

Those other verbal exceptions are but light froth, and will sink alone; that scum may be worth taking off, which follows; wherein I shall desire all impartial eyes to judge, whether these men do not endeavor to cast unjust envy upon me, against the clear verdict of any knowing man's conscience: In comparing of governments of churches and states, I had said, that if antiquity may be the rule, the civil polity (as in general notion) has sometimes varied, (as that of the state of Rome had done to seven several forms) the sacred, never; The civil came from arbitrary imposers, the sacred from men inspired: these gracious interpreters would needs draw my words to the present, and particular government of our own monarchy, as if I implied that to be variable and arbitrary; and are not ashamed to mention that deadly name of treason; Whereas no man that is not willfully blind, but sees that I speak of the common forms of government, that are in the several states and dominions in the world; whereof some are ruled by an aristocracy, others by a democracy, others by a monarchy, whether limited, or absolute, others by a mixed form of all these; which were in the first beginnings, in the free determination of their founders; not aiming at the settled government of any one kingdom, much less of our own.

Brethren, while you desire to seem godly, learn to be less malicious. In the meantime, God bless all good men from such charity, and our sacred monarchy from such friends. The form of the Episcopal government of the Church has, contrarily, been ever one and the same, without any considerable variation; and if it has anywhere invaded the civil administration and yoked monarchy, it is the insolence of the persons, not the fault of the calling: And if William Rufus, a prince noted for being grossly irreligious, oppressed by tyrannical Popish prelates, did let fall this choleric word, that he would have the Jews confute them, and that rather than fail, England should turn Jewish, on this condition; Is this an argument for any Christian to use, for the confuting of godly, and loyal Protestant bishops? Which are ready to be censured rather for too great observance of sovereignty? Let any but a Jew judge, whether this be a fit instance for a Christian. Anything serves against Episcopacy; The testimony of a Pope, (whom these men honor highly) Pius 4, is also brought in as irrefragable, against the divine right of bishops. And what says Antichrist? He tells the Spanish Ambassador, that his master, suing for the council's declaration of this truth, knew not what he demanded; for bishops so declared, would be exempted from his regal power, and as independent as the Pope himself. Tell me, brethren, do you like, or believe this assertion, because a Pope said it? Or can you blame him (who would have all Episcopal jurisdiction derived merely from himself) to be unwilling that their right should be yielded to have the same grounds which he pretends for his own? And if there might be this danger in those kingdoms where the clergy challenges an exemption from the power of all secularity; why is this enviously upbraided to those of ours, who do gladly profess, notwithstanding the Apostolic, that is, divine right of their calling, to hold their places and exercise of their jurisdiction wholly from His Majesty?

No less spiteful, nor more true, is your observation of the comparison made between the endeavors of alteration in our neighbor church, by our Episcopal faction, and that which is now justly desired by the humble petitioners to the honorable House. It is a foul slander to charge the name of Episcopacy with a faction, for the fact imputed to some few. Fie brethren, are you Presbyters of the Church of England, and dare challenge Episcopacy of faction? Had you spoken but such a word in the time of holy Cyprian, whom you frequently cite, as a pattern of good discipline, what had become of you? Neither is the wrong less, to make application of that which was most justly charged upon the practices, and combinations of libeling Separatists, to humble and peaceable petitioners; the one railing outright upon an established and holy government, whom I deservedly censured, the other modestly suing for a reformation of the abuses of government: Surely, while the worst are thus patronized by our indulgent answerers, it is a hard question, whether the libelers themselves, or these their overzealous advocates, are more justly to be branded for incendiaries.