The white devilThe white deuil

Go now, and applaud your selves, ye sons of fraud, that eagle-eyed scrupulosity cannot find you faulty, nor the Lyon-handed law touch you, please your selves in your security. You practise belike, behind the hangings, and come not on the public stage of Injury: yet you are not free from spectators: testante Numine, homine, Daemon: God, man, Angels, Devils shall witness against you: ⟨p. 44⟩ex cordibus, ex codicibus: by your hearts, by your books, God shall judge you. Injury is often in the one, perjury in the other: the great Justice will not put it up: they shall be convicted thieves.

Goe now, and applaud your selues, yee sons of fraud, that eagle-eyed scrupulositie cannot find you faultie, nor the Lyon-handed law touch you, please your selues in your securitie. You practise belike, behind the hangings, and come not on the publike stage of Iniurie: yet you are not free from spectators: testante Numine, homine, Daemone: God, man, Angels, Deuils shall witnesse against you: ⟨p. 44⟩ex cordibus, ex codicibus: by your hearts, by your bookes, God shall iudge you. Iniurie is often in the one, periurie in the other: the great Iustice wil not put it vp: they shal be convicted theeues.

5. There are thieves crop into the Church too; or rather they encroach on the Church; for Ministers cannot now play the thieves with their livings, they have nothing left to steal: but there are secret Judases, can make shift to do it. Difficilis magni custodia census. The Eagles flock to a carcass, and thieves hanker about rich doors: at the dispersion of church-livings, they cried as the Babylonians, to the spoil, to the spoil. The Church was once rich, but it was (diebus illis) in the golden time: when honesty went in good clothes; and ostentation durst not give religion the check-mate, now they plead prescription, and prove them their own by long possession. I do not tax all those for private thieves, that hold in their hands, lands and possessions, that were once the Churches; but those that withhold such as are due to Church-men. Their estates were once taken away by (more than) Gods (mere) sufferance, for a just punishment of their idleness, Idolatry, lusts: sure there is some Achanisme in the camp of the Levites, that makes this plague-sore to run still: there is some disobedient and fugitive Jonasses that thus totter our ship. I complain not, that claustra are turned into castra; Abbeys into Gentlemen's houses; places of monition, to places of munition: but that men rob (aram dominicam) Gods house, to furnish (haram domesticam) their own house, this is theft, and sacrilegious theft: a succession of theft; for the fingers of the sons are now heavier than the loins of their fathers: those were (improbi Papistae) wicked Papists, and these are (improbirapistae) ungodly robbers.