25th (Lady-day). Up and by water to White Hall, and there to chappell;
where it was most infinite full to hear Dr. Critton. Being not knowne,
some great persons in the pew I pretended to, and went in, did question my
coming in. I told them my pretence; so they turned to the orders of the
chappell, which hung behind upon the wall, and read it; and were
satisfied; but they did not demand whether I was in waiting or no; and so
I was in some fear lest he that was in waiting might come and betray me.
The Doctor preached upon the thirty-first of Jeremy, and the twenty-first
and twenty-second verses, about a woman compassing a man; meaning the
Virgin conceiving and bearing our Saviour. It was the worst sermon I ever
heard him make, I must confess; and yet it was good, and in two places
very bitter, advising the King to do as the Emperor Severus did, to hang
up a Presbyter John (a short coat and a long gowne interchangeably) in all
the Courts of England. But the story of Severus was pretty, that he
hanged up forty senators before the Senate house, and then made a speech
presently to the Senate in praise of his owne lenity; and then decreed
that never any senator after that time should suffer in the same manner
without consent of the Senate: which he compared to the proceeding of the
Long Parliament against my Lord Strafford. He said the greatest part of
the lay magistrates in England were Puritans, and would not do justice;
and the Bishopps, their powers were so taken away and lessened, that they
could not exercise the power they ought. He told the King and the ladies
plainly, speaking of death and of the skulls and bones of dead men and
women,

[The preacher appears to have had the grave scene in "Hamlet" in
his mind, as he gives the same illustration of Alexander as Hamlet
does.]

how there is no difference; that nobody could tell that of the great