than that of the more rational and sober writers of the Independent
school. Amongst the dregs of fanaticism of which they consist, the
reader will look in vain for any germ or promise of future excellence
or distinction as an author. It would seem that he preached the
sermons contained in "The Judgment Set and Books Opened" at the church
of All-Hallows, Lombard-street, at which he must have been for some
time the officiating minister, and where the amusing incident, in
which Webster was concerned, narrated by Wood, which had many a
parallel in those times, no doubt occurred. "On the 12th of Oct.,
1653," says the author of the _Athenæ._,[25] "he (_i.e._ William
Erbury) with John Webster, sometimes a Cambridge scholar, endeavoured
to knock down learning and the ministry both together, in a
disputation that they then had against two ministers in a church in
Lombard-street, in London. Erbury then declared that the wisest
ministers and purest churches were at that time befool'd, confounded,
and defil'd, by reason of learning. Another while he said, that the
ministry were monsters, beasts, asses, greedy dogs, false prophets;
and that they are the Beast with seven heads and ten horns. The same
person also spoke out and said that Babylon is the Church in her
ministers, and that the Great Whore is the Church in her worship, &c.;
so that with him there was an end of ministers and churches and
ordinations altogether. While these things were babbled to and fro,
the multitude being of various opinions, began to mutter, and many to
cry out, and immediately it came to a meeting or tumult, (call it
which you please,) _wherein the women bore away the Bell, but lost
some of them their kerchiefs_: and the dispute being hot, there was
more danger of pulling down the church than the ministry."[26]

[Footnote 23: "Poems, by the Rev. R. Parkinson, Canon of Manchester,"
1845, 12mo. (Hunter's Song.) A most pleasing volume of a very