Many voices spoke at once. Humphreys exclaimed, that he had disobeyed his orders, and was an eye-servant. Davies said, that he had dared to speak slanderously of the holy covenant. Dr. Beaumont declared himself an enemy to slander and disobedience, but in order to afford a pretext for the commitment of Jobson, Humphreys must shew his commands were strictly lawful, and Davies that the covenant was holy.
Both answered at the same time. The powerful lungs of Humphreys enabled him to thunder out, that the time was now past when he cared for the Doctor, that he knew he was as good as he, would do as he liked, and ere long meant to shew him he had the best right to the glebe, where he would no longer moil and toil for a caterpillar, that fattened on his labours. The shrill pipe of Davies issuing from his meagre form in a still higher key, insisted that the covenant was our only defence against malignant men, and evil counsellors, Arminians and Jesuits, and that if this godly bond was trampled on, the nation would be overrun with popery and formality.
When his antagonists, in striving to drown each other's voices, had mutually exhausted their powers of utterance, Dr. Beaumont answered, that since temporal endowment was no essential mark of a true church, but rather an adjunct springing out of a right feeling in the public for their spiritual advisers, the depriving him of his emoluments by the strong arm of power, would not degrade him from the office to which he had been divinely appointed. "It will, therefore," said he, "friend Humphreys, be always my duty to advise and assist you, and if you violently deprive me of what the most ancient of our laws has made mine, the necessity of my interference to convince you of your fault will become more evident. As for the wonderful efficacy which our neighbour Davies attributes to what I consider as a mere party-engagement, I must observe that popery received a blow from the labours of our first reformers, which would ere now have proved mortal, had not the divisions and subdivisions, the schisms and sects, that have originated in the importunate spirit of puritanical objectors, afforded leisure and security for the Hydra to heal her deadly wounds. In the early part of the reign of our late Queen of glorious memory, the Papists generally attended their several parish-churches, listened to our Liturgy and services with devotion, and seemed in a fair way to be won over by the moderation and decency of our worship. But the intemperance of those who, for the merest trifles, quarrelled with the establishment, who rejected even apostolical usages, because they had been practised by the catholics, who, instead of allowing Rome to be a church in error, denied that its followers could be saved, and thus raised the dark cloud of schism against the sun of the reformation; their rashness, uncharitableness, and fastidious scruples, in purifying what they owned to be non-essentials, have, I say, imped the dragon's wings, and placed the scarlet abomination, as ye call it, in a tower of strength, which the artillery of your covenant, lighted as it is by the flame of treason and civil commotion, can never overthrow.--The champions of these sects in the reign of Elizabeth, countenanced by that most flagitious courtier and tyrannical governor, the Earl of Leicester, accused Hooker, the great bulwark of the Protestant cause, of leaning towards popery, because he refused to consign the souls of our ancestors to perdition; and a most uncharitable outcry was raised against a Bishop for the same bias, because he trusted that the grandmother of our good King would experience the mercies of our Saviour, on whose merits, in her last moments, she declared she relied.--Thus did these ill-advised persons, by a breach of that charity and unity, which Scripture every where enjoins, prevent the Protestant church from exhibiting the surest marks of Christian verity. Instead of alluring people to come out of the mystical Babylon, these most lamentable divisions and controversies about trifles have driven thousands into the perilous labyrinths of a persuasion, which admits no difference of opinion, or into the yet more dreary dungeons of Atheism, whose most formidable objection to our faith, is the ill blood which it foments. Never have these enemies to God and man made such progress, as since the time when spiritual pride, turbulence and ambition, united under the name of perfect reformation, to pluck down an edifice constructed in moderation, defended by the doctrines, beautified by the labours, and cemented by the blood of its founders."