LEIGHTON. 471 which they inflicted upon them. And, if oppression make a wise man mild, it can be no great wonder if the intolerable oppressions of the bishops hurried some of the puritans, especially those of warm spirits, to use methods of indis- cretion. But the assertions of our authors, that he excited the parliament and people to take away the lives of the bishops, is without foundation. The truth is, says Mr. Peirce, after enumerating a great many grievances and miseries, occasioned by the episcopal establishment, he excited the parliament utterly to root out the hierarchy, that the nation might be delivered from any further danger : but that he ever urged them to put the bishops to death, whether they were guilty or not guilty of any crime, is what I cannot find in the book. Nay, I meet with that which is directly the contrary. Towards the close of the book, he observes as follows : " To make an end of our present subject, we wish your honours might prevail with the prelates, by fair means, to cast off their overcharging calling. If they will not be thus persuaded, we fear they are like pleuritic patients, who cannot spit, and whom nothing but incision will cure: we meanof their callings, not of their persons ; with whomwe have no quarrel, but wish &tin better than they wish either us or themselves. One of their desperate mountebanks out of the pulpit could find no cure for us, their supposed enemies, but pricking in the bladder : but we"have not so learned Christ.". Besides, there was no such thing among the charges brought against Min in the star-chamber, which most certainly would not have been omitted, if any such expression had been found in the book.+ What degree of credit is, there- fore, due to men who represent the sense ofauthors directly contrary to their own express words ! What they design by such misrepresentation, is left with the candid reader to judge. With respect to Dr. Leighton's calling the queen the daughter of Heth, a Canaanite, and an idolatress, though they are indecent and unbecoming epithets, when applied to the queen ; yet he obviously meant by these expressions, that she was an avowed papist, and she was, in fact, a most notorious.and bitter papist. Archbishop Tillotson after- wards used certain expressions concerning the marriage of foreign popish princes with our own, not much better than those of Dr. Leighton, without giving any umbrage what- . Peirce's Vindication, part i. p. 177, 178. Rushworth's Collec. vol. ii. p. 56, 57. IIIIMPI40*---ilwink4 fir
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