[17] The passage occurs in his Sermon before 'Lord Lawarre' on setting out for Virginia (see its title-page _ante_). After disposing of (1) the divels, (2) the Papists, he comes, as follows, to (3) the Plaiers. 'As for the Plaiers: (pardon me, right honourable and beloued, for wronging this place and your patience with so base a subject), they play with Princes and Potentates, Magistrates and Ministers, nay with God and Religion and all holy things: nothing that is good, excellent, or holy can escape them: how then can this action? But this may suffice, that they are Players: they abuse Virginia, but they are Players: they disgrace it; true, but they are but Players, and they haue played with better things, and such as for which, if they speedily repent not, I dare say, vengeance waites for them. But let them play on; they make men laugh on earth, but "Hee that sits in heaven laughes them to scorne;" because like the flie, they so long play with the candle, till first it singe their wings, and at last burnes them altogether. But why are the Players enemies to this Plantation and doe abuse it? I will tell you the causes. First, for that they are so multiplied here, that one cannot liue by another, and they see that wee send of all trades to Virginia, but wee send no Players, which if wee would doe, they that remaine would gaine the more at home. Secondly, as the diuell hates vs because wee purpose not to suffer Heathens, and the Pope because wee have vowed to tolerate no Papists, so doe the Players, because wee resolue to suffer no idle persons in Virginia; which course, if it were taken in England, they know they might turne to new occupations' [sheet H 3, unpaged]. The 'Talk' in Selden's 'Table-Talk' is as follows: 'I never converted but two; the one was Mr. Crashaw, from writing against Plays, by telling him a way how to understand that place [of putting on women's apparel], which has nothing to do in the business [as neither has it]--that the Fathers speak against Plays in their time with reason enough, for they had real idolatries mixed with their Plays, having three altars perpetually upon the stage' ('Poetry,' § 3). In confirmation farther of our correction of a long-continued error, I find the elder Crashaw in another of his sermons touching incidentally on the very point of 'women's apparel,' as follows: 'The ungodly playes and enterludes so rife in this nation: what are they but a bastard of Babylon, a daughter of error and confusion, a hellish device (the divel's own recreation to mock at holy things), by him delivered to the heathen, from them to the Papists, and from them to us?... They know all this, _and that God accounts it abomination for a man to put on woman's apparel_, and that the ancient Fathers expounded that place against them' (Sermon preached at the Crosse, Feb. 14, 1607 ... justified by the Author ... 1609, 4to, p. 169). Probably the preacher intimated his intention to pursue his