"Though I believe you have received two or three letters from me since you writ any, yet since your's of your new year's eve came to my hands since I writ last, I reckon it my turn to write againe; and shall either convert you to a more sedulous correspondence, or make you so much ashamed (which is a modesty lazy men are very inclinable to), that you shall give over writing at all. I always send you word of the date of those which I receive from you, so that you can only tell whether I have had that which you say was pretty long and troublesome; for I have not thought any one half long enough, nor troublesome; otherwise than (which on my conscience was not your sense) under the notion of the vile caracters, which is almost cipher without a key: besides that commonly the ink and paper do so throughly incorporate, that the letters are hardly discernable. It is possible the Scots may take their money, if the other will pay it; but if upon that consideration they leave the Kingdom, or suffer the King to leave them, I will no more pretend to divination. Let not those apprehensions startle you nor be troubled that they seem sometimes to make Propositions which you do not like; it being safe and profitable to them to offer anything which they foresee must be denied by their jealous brethren. Look upon their Covenant, their avowed gloss upon that Covenant published to the world, and tell me if any contradications in Philosophy be more diametrically opposite and impossible to be reconciled to the ends of the Independents than those extremes. I wish I were as sure that the King would not desert himself and his pious and honourable principles (of which, truly I have a great confidence) as that the Scots will stick to him, when they are fully convinced that he is not to be removed. "Must I believe _H. Cressy's_[EN] resolution to be peremptory whilst he remains in such company? Truly I am exceedingly troubled for it. "What scruples or scandals could work this odious alteration (for methinks, apostacy is too cholerick a word towards a friend) which you could not remove? It is a great loss to the Church, but a greater to his friends, dead and alive; for the dead suffer where their memory and reputation is objected to question and reproach. "Is it a necessary consequence to the conscience, that if a man turn to that Church, he must take orders in it? Methinks there is a duty incumbent to the function, that might well terrify a man that feels not a very strong impulsion, though he were never so well satisfied in the religion itself. "If we can not keep him a Minister of our Church, I wish he would continue a layman in their's, which would somewhat lessen the defection, and it may be, preserve a _greater proportion of his innocence_.