Page:Cutter of Coleman-street - Cowley (1663).djvu/4

 noise with, was, That it was a piece intended for abuse and Satyre against the Kings party. Good God! Against the Kings party? After having served it twenty years during all the time of their misfortunes and afflictions, I must be a very rash and imprudent person if I chose out that of their Restitution to begin a Quarrel with them. I must be too much a Madman to be trusted with such an Edg'd Tool as Comedy. But first, why should either the whole party (as it was once distinguisht by that name, which I hope is abolisht now by Universal Loyalty) or any man of virtue or honour in it, believe themselves injured or at all concerned, by the representation of the faults and follies of a few who in the General division of the Nation had crowded in among them? In all mixt numbers (which is the case of Parties) nay, in the most entire and continued Bodies there are often some degenerate and corrupted parts, which may be cast away from that, and even cut off from this Unity, without any infection of scandal to the remaining Body. The Church of Rome with all her arrogance, and her wide pretences of certainty in all truths, and exemption from all Errors, does not clap on this enchanted Armour of Infallibility upon all her particular Subjects, nor is offended at the reproof even of her greatest Doctors. We are not, I hope, become such Puritans our selves as to assume the Name of the Congregation of the Spotless. It is hard for any Party to be so Ill as that no Good, Impossible to be so Good as that no Ill should be found among them. And it has been the perpetual privilege of Satyre and Comedy to pluck their vices and follies though not their Persons out of the Sanctuary of any Title. A Cowardly ranting Souldier, an Ignorant Charlatanical Doctor, a foolish Cheating Lawyer, a silly Pedantical Scholar, hav, alwayes been, and still are the Principal Subjects of all Comedye without any scandal given to those Honourable Professions, or ever taken by their severest Professors; And, if any good Physician or Divine should be offended with me here for inveighing against a Quack, or for finding Deacon Soaker too often in the Butteryes, my respect and reverence to their callings would make me troubled at