Brooks - BX9338 .B7 1813 v3

T. COLEMAN. 61 bothmodestly and learnedly in the assembly.". Fuller, styles him " a modest and learned divine, equally averse to presby- tery and prelacy."t From the eminent talents, learning, and moderation of this excellent divine, we might suppose that even bigotry itself would lie dormant ; but this unhappy temper, ever influenced by party principles, and to promote a party interest, will break through all difficulties, to blacken the memory of real worth. Mr. Coleman, in common with many of his brethren, is the subject of public calumny. The zealous historian, speak- ing of those divines who preached before the parliament, says, " Another of these brawlers, who seldom thought of a bishop, or the king's party, but with indignation, was Mr. Thomas Coleman. In one of his sermons, he thus rants against the church of England, and violently persuades the parliamentto execute severejusticeupon her children. Our cathedrals in a great part are of late become the nests of idle drones, and the roosting places of superstitious formalists. Our formalists and government, in the whole hierarchy, are become a fretting gangrene, a spreading leprosy, an insup- portable tyranny. Up with it, up with it to the bottom, root and branch, hip and thigh : destroy these Amalekites, and let their place be no more found. Throw away the rubs ; out with the Lord's enemies, and the land's. Vex the Midianites ; abolish the Amalekites, or else they will vex you with their wiles,, as they have done heretofore. Let popery find no favour, because it is treasonable ; prelacy as little, because it is tyrannical. " This," ourauthor adds, " was rare stuff for the blades at Westminster, and pleased them admirably well. Therefore they straitly order Sir Edward Aiscough and Sir John Wray, to give the zealot hearty thanks for his good directions, and to desire him by all means to print it; which accordingly he did, and,in requital of thanks, dedicates his fury to their worships where he falls to his old trade again, very prettily by his art of rhetorick, calling the king's army partakers with atheists, infidels, and papists ; saying, ' it bath popish masses, super- stitious worships, cold forms in the service of God : it is stored with popish priests : it persecutes God's ministers, painful, preachers : it doth harbour all drunken, debauched clergy, or idle, non-preaching, dumb ministry, our ambitious tyrannical prelacy, and the sink and dregs of the times; the receptacle of the filth of the present and former ages, our Athena; Oxon. vol. ii. p. t Fuller's Church Hist. b, xi. p. 218.

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