Authors, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 -- Biography; Marvell, Andrew, 1621-1678
"Here it is that after so great an excess of wit, he thinks fit to
take a julep and re-settle his brain and the government. He grows as
serious as 'tis possible for a madman, and pretends to sum-up the
whole state of the controversy with the Nonconformists. And to be
sure he will make the story as plausible for himself as he may; but
therefore it was that I have before so particularly quoted and bound
him up with his own words as fast as such a Proteus could be
pinion'd. For he is as waxen as the first matter, and no form comes
amiss to him. Every change of posture does either alter his opinion
or vary the expression by which we should judge of it; and sitting he
is of one mind, and standing of another. Therefore I take myself the
less concern'd to fight with a windmill like Quixote; or to whip a
gig as boyes do; or with the lacqueys at Charing-Cross or
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields to play at the Wheel of Fortune; lest I should
fall into the hands of my Lord Chief-Justice, or Sir Edmond Godfrey.
The truth is, in short, and let Bayes make more or less of it if he
can, Bayes had at first built-up such a stupendous magistrate as
never was of God's making. He had put all princes upon the rack to
stretch them to his dimension. And as a straight line continued grows
a circle, he had given them so infinite a power, that it was extended
unto impotency. For though he found it not till it was too late in
the cause, yet he felt it all along (which is the understanding of
brutes) in the effect. For hence it is that he so often complains
that princes know not aright that supremacy over consciences, to
which they were so lately, since their deserting the Church of Rome,
restored; that in most Nations government was not rightly understood,
and many expressions of that nature: whereas indeed the matter is,
that princes have always found that uncontroulable government over
_conscience_ to be both unsafe and impracticable. He had run himself
here to a stand, and perceived that there was a God, there was
Scripture; the magistrate himself had a conscience, and must 'take
care that he did not enjoyn things apparently evil.' But after all,
he finds himself again at the same stand here, and is run up to the
wall by an angel. God, and Scripture, and conscience will not let him
go further; but he owns, that if the magistrate enjoyns things
apparently evil, the subject may have liberty to remonstrate. What
shall he do, then? for it is too glorious an enterprize to be
abandoned at the first rebuffe. Why, he gives us a new translation of
the Bible, and a new commentary! He saith, that tenderness of
conscience might be allowed in a Church to be constituted, not in a
Church constituted already. That tenderness of conscience and scandal
are ignorance, pride, and obstinacy. He saith, the Nonconformists
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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