Page:Behemoth 1889.djvu/115

 obeyed the command of the priests by a messenger unarmed, to kill themselves. Our late King, the best King perhaps that ever was, you know, was murdered, having been first persecuted by war, at the incitement of Presbyterian ministers; who are therefore guilty of the death of all that fell in that war; which were, I believe, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, near 100,000 persons. Had it not been much better that those seditious ministers, which were not perhaps 1000, had been all killed before they had preached? It had been (I confess) a great massacre; but the killing of 100,000 is a greater.

B. I am glad the bishops were out at this business. As ambitious as some say they are, it did not appear in that business, for they were enemies to them that were in it. *[Though they pretended a divine right (not depending upon the King’s leave) to the government of the Church, yet being but few in number, and not much in favour with the people, how could they choose but be (on the King’s side?)]*

A. I intend not by these quotations to commend either the divinity or the philosophy of those heathen people; but to show only what the reputation of those sciences can effect among the people. For their divinity was nothing but idolatry; and their philosophy (excepting the knowledge which the Egyptian priests, and from them the Chaldeans, had gotten by long observation and study in astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic), very little; and that in great part abused in astrology and fortune-telling. Whereas the divinity of the clergy in this nation, considered apart from the mixture (that has been introduced by the Church of Rome, and in part retained here) of the babbling philosophy of Aristotle and other Greeks, that has no affinity with religion, and serves only to breed disaffection, dissension, and finally sedition and civil war (as we have lately found by dear experience in the differences between the Presbyterians and Episcopals), is the true religion. But for these differences both parties, as they came into power, not only suppressed the tenets of one another, but also