XIV. The _Quakers_ are certainly the most _serious_ and solemn People among us in Matters of Religion, and out-go the Dissenters of all other Kinds therein: But yet the Church has no regard to them on that Account, but takes Advantage from thence to _ridicule_ them the more, and to call their Sincerity more in question. And I much doubt whether there was ever a Book written against them by the Divines of any Sect with perfect Decency, and that had not its extravagant Flouts, Scorn, Banter, and Irony, and that not only of the _laughing_, but of the _cruel_ kind: Wherein they copy'd after the _Jews_ of old, who while they prosecuted _Christ_ to Death, and carried on their High-Church Tragedy against him, acted against him the _comick Scenes_ [110] "of spitting in his Face, and buffeting him with the Palms of their Hands, saying, _Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee_;" and who, when they had nail'd him to the Cross, _revil'd_ him with divers _Taunts_, in which the _Chief Priests_, _Scribes_, _Elders_, and even the _Thieves, which were crucified with him_, concurr'd. But yet for all this, these solemn Quakers themselves are not altogether averse to _Irony_ and _Ridicule_, and use it when they can. Their Books abound in Stories to ridicule in their Turn the Priests, their great and bitter Adversaries: And they please themselves with throwing at the Priests the _Centuries of Scandalous Ministers_, and the Books of the _Cobler of_ Glocester. They have also their Satirist and Banterer, _Samuel Fisher_; whose Works, tho all wrote in the _drolling_ Style and Manner, they pride themselves in, and have collected into one great Volume in _Folio_; in which Quaker-Wit and Irony are set up against Church, Presbyterian, and Independent Wit and Irony, without the least Scruple of the lawfulness of such Arms. In a word, their Author acts the Part of a _Jack-Pudding_, _Merry Andrew_, or _Buffoon_, with all the seeming Right, Authority, and Privilege, of the Member of some Establish'd Church of abusing all the World but themselves. The _Quakers_ have also encourag'd and publish'd a most arch Book of the famous _Henry Stubbe_, intitled, _A Light shining out of Darkness_, &c. Wherein all the other religious Parties among us are as handsomly and learnedly banter'd and ridicul'd, as the _Quakers_ have been in any Book against them. And when they were attack'd by one _Samuel Young_, a whimsical Presbyterian-Buffoon-Divine, who call'd himself _Trepidantium Malleus_, and set up for an Imitator of Mr. _Alsop_, in several Pamphlets full of Stories, Repartees, and Ironies; in which _Young_, perhaps, thought himself as secure from a Return of the like kind, as a Ruffian or Thief may when he assaults Men: His Attacks were repell'd in a Book intitled "_Trepidantium Malleus intrepidanter malleatus_; or the West Country Wiseaker's crack-brain'd _Reprimand_ hammer'd about his own Numbscul. Being a _Joco-satirical_ Return to a late Tale of a Tub, emitted by a