CHAP. IV.
WHo doubts, but if the plebs or populacy, in any Na∣tion or Church, be left to themselves, to cut out Religion & Liberty into what thongs they list, they will soon be not only unshod, ungirt & unblest, but so quite naked and unclothed, as to any Christian grace or vertue, gravity or decency, truth or san∣ctity, that their shame and nakedness will soon ap∣pear in all manner of fedity, deformity, errour and ignorance, inso∣lence and confusion? They have little studied the vulgar genius, who do not find by all reading and experience, that the common temper of people is rude and perverse, light and licentious, petulant and inso∣lent, as S. Bernard well expresseth it.
They are not convincible with reason, because incapable; they despise good examples, be∣cause they love not to imitate them; they are too proud and pee∣vish to be sweetly won and perswaded to goodness; they are mad and impatient to be curbed.Yea, they are undone, and perish eter∣nally, if they be betrayed to themselves; if God and good men be not better to them than they deserve, desire, or design for them∣selves, either in things civil or sacred; if there be not, by just and honest policies, such holy restraints and wholsome severities put upon them, as are not their chains, but their girdles; not their bannacles, but their bridles. Alas, what wise Magistrate or Minister is there, who doth not find by daily experience, that if you will but save peo∣ples purses, they are not very solicitous how to save their souls? most of them think Taxes and Tithes farre greater burthens, than all their sins and trespasses; not much valuing their sanctification or salva∣tion, so as they enjoy that rustick, thrifty and unmannerly liberty, which they naturally affect, against their teachers and betters. What immense summes of money have of late years been spent upon mili∣tary and secular accounts? If the hundredth part had been desired of them, in order to have procured a competent maintenance for an able Preacher in every parish (without which there is little hope ever to enjoy competent Ministers) O what an out-cry would have been made? what an oppression would it have seemed to the common people, beyond ship-money, yea, beyond the bricks and bondage of Egypt, as if their very life-blood and the marrow of their bones had been taken from them? so much doth the beast and naturall man over-weigh the Christian, in the most of men and women.