VII.

Book of Faith, MS. part i.

CHAP. spirit should be suffered to escape unpunished. The infallible authority of the Church, and lawfulness of terrifying Dissenters by wholesome severities and pious rigours, were favourite opinions, the opposers of which were not to be suffered to act with impunity. Besides, it was a tacit reproach of the cruel proceedings then used against the poor dissenting Wiclifists, for our Bishop to treat them with so much gentleness and goodness, as patiently to hear their evidences, and listen to their motives without exprobration, or using any insulting or upbraiding language to them. This was such a reproof to the thoughts of those who shewed no bowels of compassion towards Dissenters, but reckoned they did God service by tormenting and killing them, that we need not wonder at their lying in wait for our Bishop, because he was not for their turn, and clean contrary to their doings, Accordingly we see, that so much was our Bishop's enemies set against him, as in opposition to him to espouse the principles of those very people whom they called and treated as heretics. But it was for the everlasting honour of our Bishop, that he preferred the rational way of dealing with Dissenters, or the manifesting the truth to their consciences, before that cruel and inhuman method of making them a gazing-stock by reproaches, spoiling their goods, and tormenting their bodies with fire and faggot. This shewed by how Christian a spirit our Bishop was acted, and that he was not like the men of this world, who hate those that are of God, and persecute such as are born of the Spirit. I shall conclude with the following prayer of the Bishop's own composing in English.

O thou Lord Jesu, God and man, head of thy Christian Church, and teacher of Christian belief, I beseech thy mercy, thy pity, and thy charitie, far be this said peril (of implicit faith) from the Christian Churche, and from each person therin contained, and shield thou, that this venom be never brought into thy Church, and if thou suffre it to be any while brought in, I beseche thee, that it be

VII.

soon again outspit; but suffer thou, ordaine, and do, that CHAP. the law and the faith, which thy Church at any time keepeth, be received and admitted to fall under this examinatioun, whether it be the same verry faith, which thou and thine Apostles taught or no, and whether it hath sufficient evidences for it to be very faith or no.