doctrine of necessity is a blasphemous, desperate, and destructive doctrine. That it were better to be an Atheist, than to hold it; and he that maintaineth it, is fitter to be refuted with rods than with arguments. And now whether this his doctrine or mine be the more intelligible, more rational, or more conformable to God’s word, I leave it to the judgment of the reader. But whatsoever be the truth of the disputed question, the reader may peradventure think I have not used the Bishop with that respect I ought, or without disadvantage of my cause I might have done; for which I am to make a short apology. A little before the last parliament of the late king, when every man spake freely against the then present government, I thought it worth my study to consider the grounds and consequences of such behaviour, and whether it were conformable or contrary to reason and to the Word of God. And after some time I did put in order and publish my thoughts thereof, first in Latin, and then again the same in English; where I endeavoured to prove both by reason and Scripture, that they who have once submitted themselves to any sovereign governor, either by express acknowledgment of his power, or by receiving protection from his laws, are obliged to be true and faithful to him, and to acknowledge no other supreme power but him in any matter or question whatsoever, either civil or ecclesiastical. In which books of mine, I pursued my subject without taking notice of any particular man that held any opinion contrary to that which I then wrote; only in general I maintained that the office of the clergy, in respect of the supreme civil power, was not magisterial, but ministerial; and that their teaching of the people was founded upon no other authority than that of the civil sovereign; and all this without any word tending to the disgrace either of episcopacy or of presbytery. Nevertheless I find since, that divers of them, whereof the Bishop of Derry is one, have taken offence especially at two things; one, that I make the supremacy in matters of religion to reside in the civil sovereign; the other, that being no clergyman, I deliver doctrines, and ground them upon words of the Scripture, which doctrines they, being by profession divines, have never taught. And in this their displeasure, divers of them in their books and sermons, without answering any of my arguments, have not only exclaimed against my doctrine, but reviled me, and endeavoured to make me hateful for those things, for which (if they knew their own and the public good) they ought to have given me thanks. There is also one of them, that taking offence at me for blaming in part the discipline instituted heretofore, and regulated by the authority of the Pope, in the universities, not only ranks me amongst those men that would have the revenue of the universities diminished, and says plainly I have no religion, but also thinks me so simple and ignorant of the world as to