right cause, that we do not give them gentle meetings and gentle
dismissions, that we debate not and examine the matter thoroughly with
liberal and frequent audience; if not for their sakes, yet for our own?
seeing no man who hath tasted learning, but will confess the many ways
of profiting by those who, not contented with stale receipts, are able
to manage and set forth new positions to the world. And were they but as
the dust and cinders of our feet, so long as in that notion they may yet
serve to polish and brighten the armoury of Truth, even for that respect
they were not utterly to be cast away. But if they be of those whom God
hath fitted for the special use of these times with eminent and ample
gifts, and those perhaps neither among the priests nor among the
Pharisees, and we in the haste of a precipitant zeal shall make no
distinction, but resolve to stop their mouths, because we fear they come
with new and dangerous opinions, as we commonly forejudge them ere we
understand them; no less than woe to us, while, thinking thus to defend
the Gospel, we are found the persecutors.

There have been not a few since the beginning of this Parliament, both
of the presbytery and others, who by their unlicensed books, to the
contempt of an Imprimatur, first broke that triple ice clung about our
hearts, and taught the people to see day: I hope that none of those were
the persuaders to renew upon us this bondage which they themselves have
wrought so much good by contemning. But if neither the check that Moses
gave to young Joshua, nor the countermand which our Saviour gave
to young John, who was so ready to prohibit those whom he thought
unlicensed, be not enough to admonish our elders how unacceptable to
God their testy mood of prohibiting is; if neither their own remembrance
what evil hath abounded in the Church by this set of licensing, and what
good they themselves have begun by transgressing it, be not enough,
but that they will persuade and execute the most Dominican part of the