Are we not beholden to it, every man, either to the body, or the choir: for a walk or a warbling note: for a prayer or a thorough-path? Some way or other, there is a topick may make room for your benevolence. “It hath twice suffered Martyrdom: and both by fire, in the time of Henry the Sixth and the third of Elizabeth. “Saint Paul complained of Stoning twice; his church of firing: stoning she wants, indeed, and a good stoning would repair her. “Saint Faith holds her up, I confess. Oh that works were sainted to keep her upright! The first way of building churches was by ways of benevolence; but then there needed no petition: men came on so fast that they were commanded to be kept back, but repairing now, needs petition. Benevolence was a fire once had need to be quenched: it is a spark, now and needs blowing on it: blow it hard, _and put it out_. Some petitions there are, for pulling down of such an isle, or changing lead for thack: so far from reparation, that our suit is to demolish. If to deny this be persecution, if to repair churches be innovation, I’ll be of that religion too. “I remember a tale in Henry Steevens, in his Apology for Herodotus, or in some of the Colloquies of Erasmus, which would have us believe that times were so depraved in popery, that all œconomical discipline was lost by observing the œcumenical; that if an ingenious person would ask his father’s blessing, he must get a dispensation and have a licence from the bishop. “Believe me when I match this tale with another. Since Christmas I was sued to (and I have it under the hands of the minister and the whole parish) that I would give way to the adorning of the church within and without, to build a stone wall about the church-yard which till now had but a hedge. I took it for a flout at first, but it proved a suit indeed; they durst not mend a fault of forty years, without a licence. Churchwardens, though they say it not, yet I doubt me most of them think it, that foul spirits in the Gospel said, ‘O thou Bishop or Chancellor, what! art thou come to torment us before the time, that all is come down to the ground?’ The truth went out once in this phrase: ‘Zelus domûs tuæ exedit ossa mea,’ but now vice versa, it is, ‘Zelus meus exedit domum tuam.’ I hope I gall none here. “Should Christ say that to us now which he said once to the Jews, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again:’ we would quickly know his meaning not to be the material temple. Three years can scarce promoove three foot.