SS LIVES OF THE PURITANS. In the year 1646, Mr. Price published several pamphlets on the controversies of the day. Onewas written in defence of independency ; two others were replies, one to the City Remonstrance, the Other to a Vindication of the Remon- strance. In politics he seems to .have been of republican principles, ascribing the supreme power of the kingdom to the house of commons ; and this is all that we know of him.* Mr. SYMONDS was beneficed at Sandwich in Kent, during the civil wars ; styled by Edwards, "a great independent, and a great sectary." If we are to give credit to this writer, he was of a high and imperious spirit, and, in his views of church discipline, remarkably rigid and severe.i. He relates of him what he calls " a merry story," which is as follows : While he was at Sandwich, a person came to him to be catechized; but, instead of performing the duty of his office, he sent him to a mechanic of the town to do it for him ; and when he was expostulated with, and asked why he had done so, he replied, " that one goose might best teach another to eat." The author applies and improves this "story by adding,' " so merry are our most demure inde- pendents."# The following account of Mr. Symonds we give in the wads of this writer. " There is one Mr. Symonds, a great sectary," says he, " who came to London since the wars, and preached at little Alhallows, Thames-street; and at the Tower, where I have been informed, that he hath preached several strange things : as, for toleration, and liberty for all men to worship God according to their consciences, and in favour of antipcedobaptism. Also preaching once at Andrew's, 1,Indershaft, for Mr. Goodwin, he preached high strains of .antinomianism : as, that Christ was a legal preacher, and lived in a dark time, and so preached the law, but afterwards the gospel came to be preached. Afterwards, preaching at Lawrence Poultney, on the day of thanksgiving for taking Sherborn castle, he spake of the great victories the saints, meaning the independents, had obtained; and yet the parlia- ment was now making laws against these saints. As at London he hath preached thus; so since he left London, this last summer, he preached at Bath before the General strange stuff, viz. against presbytery, saying it was a limb of anti- christ, pleading for liberty of conscience, and for those who Edwards's Gangrana, part iii, p. 160, 16i. + Ibid. p. 108, 109. t Ibid. p. 76.
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