Aphorisms of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…Aphorismes of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…

I Never well understood their meaning, who crave Patronage to their Writings from the mere great ones of the times. If they need or desire a borrowed honour, methinks they quite mistake their way, and go for water to the top of Teneriffe, which they should seek in the valleys or still-flowing Springs. To give them our Writings to instruct them, is agreeable to our Office and duty: but to submit them to their censures, or crave the protection of their Greatnesses, and prefix their names as the Signatures of Worth, as if Truth did ever the more dwell within, where this gilded sign is hanged without: this seemeth to me, to be as needless, as absurd. The self-idolizing sin of Pride is so natural to all men, especially when furthered by dignities and worldly pomp, that they are apt enough without a tempter, to take themselves for the summum genus in every ⟨image 3⟩Predicament as well as their own. A little help will mount them above their Teachers, and a little more above Ordinances; but the top of the ambition is to be above God; that on them as the Alpha all may depend, and to them as the Omega all may ascribe. I think it a more needful work (not for our honour, but their own safety) to make them understand, that Princes and Parliaments are Scholars in that School where Christ is the Master, and we his Ushers: and that (at least) in respect of our Nuncupative, Declarative power, we are their Rulers in spirituals, whom they are bound to obey, Heb. 13. 7. 17. and that all Ministers are Bishops or Overseers in the language of the holy Ghost, Act. 20. 28. Phil. 1. 1. &c. and not the servants or pleasers of men, Gal. 11. 10.

I Never well understood their meaning, who crave Patronage to their Writings from the meere great ones of the times. If they need or desire a borrowed honour, methinks they quite mistake their way, and go for water to the top of Teneriffe, which they should seek in the valleys or stillflowing Springs. To give them our Writings to instruct them, is agreeable to our Office and duty: but to submit them to their censures, or crave the protection of their Greatnesses, and prefix their names as the Signatures of Worth, as if Truth did ever the more dwell within, where this gilded sign is hang'd without: this seemeth to me, to be as needlesse, as absur'd. The self-idolizing sin of Pride is so naturall to all men, especially when furthered by dignities and wordly pomp, that they are apt enough without a tempter, to take themselves for the summum genus in every