nothing backwarder in beholding and edifying by them; whereof those
who had already used the means looked about them with great concern,
in hopes of conceiving a suitable offspring by such a prospect;
others, who stood candidates for benevolence, found there a
plentiful choice, and were sure to fix upon such as discovered the
largest ears, that the breed might not dwindle between them.
Lastly, the devouter sisters, who looked upon all extraordinary
dilatations of that member as protrusions of zeal, or spiritual
excrescences, were sure to honour every head they sat upon as if
they had been cloven tongues, but especially that of the preacher,
whose ears were usually of the prime magnitude, which upon that
account he was very frequent and exact in exposing with all
advantages to the people in his rhetorical paroxysms, turning
sometimes to hold forth the one, and sometimes to hold forth the
other; from which custom the whole operation of preaching is to this
very day among their professors styled by the phrase of holding
forth.

Such was the progress of the saints for advancing the size of that
member, and it is thought the success would have been every way
answerable, if in process of time a cruel king had not arose, who
raised a bloody persecution against all ears above a certain
standard {152a}; upon which some were glad to hide their flourishing
sprouts in a black border, others crept wholly under a periwig; some
were slit, others cropped, and a great number sliced off to the
stumps. But of this more hereafter in my general "History of Ears,"
which I design very speedily to bestow upon the public.

From this brief survey of the falling state of ears in the last age,
and the small care had to advance their ancient growth in the