Page:Colasterion - Milton (1645).djvu/7

 spell it; which had hee bin, it had bin either writt'n as it ought, or scor'd upon the Printer. If it bee excus'd as the carelesnes of his deputy, bee it known, the lerned Author himself is inventoried, and summ'd up, to the utmost value of his Livery cloak. Who ever hee bee, though this to som may seem a slight contest, I shall yet continue to think that man full of other secret injustice, and deceitfull pride, who shall offer in public to assume the skill, though it bee but of a tongue which hee hath not, and would catch his readers to beleeve of his ability, that which is not in him. The Licencer indeed, as his autority now stands, may licence much; but if these Greek Orthographies were of his licencing; the boyes at School might reck'n with him at his Grammar. Nor did I finde this his want of the pretended Languages alone, but accompanied with such a low and home-spun expression of his Mother English all along, without joynt or frame, as made mee ere I knew furder of him, often stop, and conclude, that this Author could for certain bee no other then som mechanic. Nor was the stile flat and rude, and the matter grave and solid, for then ther had bin pardon, but so shallow and so unwary was that also, as gave sufficiently the character of a gross and sluggish, yet a contentious and overweening pretender. For first, it behooving him to shew, as hee promises, what divorce is, and what the true doctrine and Discipline therof, and this beeing to doe by such principles and prooffs as are receav'd on both sides, hee performes neither of these; but shews it first from the Judaical practice, which hee himself disallows, and next from the practice of Canon Law, which the Book hee would confute, utterly rejects, and all Laws depending theron; which this puny Clark calls The Laws of England, and yet pronounces them by an Ecclesiastical Judge: as if that were to bee accounted the Law of England, which depended on the Popery of England; or if it were, this Parlament hee might know hath now damn'd that judicature. So that whether his meaning were to inform his own party, or to confute his adversary, instead of shewing us the true Doctrin and Discipline of Divorce, hee shews us nothing but his own contemptible ignorance. For what is the Mosaic Law to his opinion, and what is the Canon utterly now antiquated, either to that or to mine? Yee see already what a faithfull definer wee have him. From such a wind egg of definition as this, they who expect any of his other arguments to bee well hatcht, let them enjoy the Rh