An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…

But I cannot speak so certainly of any ones case as my own: I will give you the true Narrative of my Education, and leave it to you to judg, what put the Principles of Nonconformity into my head. I was never bred up under any Nonconformable Minister; ⟨p. 58⟩from the age of six till ten, I had four School-masters, Curates of the place successively, that read Common-prayer; two never Preached, the other two seldom; but the two more learned drank themselves into beggary and left us. I came then to live at the habitation of my ancestors. There I fond one Sir William Rogers about fourscore, Parson of two places twenty miles distant, that never Preached (they told me) in all his life; when his sight failed, he said the Common-prayer by rote; and he that read all the Scriptures was a poor day-labourer of the place; and the next year when he gave over, a Taylor read it. After him a pretended Minister, Grandchild to the Parson, took the whole Cure, but never Preached once. The Son of the old Parson also was there sometimes a Minister, that is a Reader, and a famous debauched Stage player. At this time a Son of the next Neighbour turned Minister, and exceeded them so far that he undertook to Preach, and had a Benefice a great way off, whence after many years scandal he fled upon a discovery that one of the forementioned had forged his Orders. The next Curate (that did all that there was done) and my School-master, was another Neighbours Son, who being set to be a Lawyers Clerk drunk himself into such necessity that he was fain to turn Curate. When ever he came in drunk, we knew it by our smarts, being sure to be whipped. He never Preached in my time there but once, which was the terriblest Sermon that ever I heard, to hear a man drunk in the Pulpit (or else he had not ventured to Preach) to talk a deal of stark nonsense upon so terrible a Text, as Mat. 25. Come ye blessed and go ye cursed. Our next Parson was no Nonconformist neither. And then I was taken into the tuition of a grave and eminent man, of high esteem among great men, who expected verily to have been a Bishop. He loved me well; but so far frustrated my expectation, that in almost two years time he neither read to me, nor instructed me one hour, but discoursed usually of the unlearned factious Puritans.

But I cannot speak so certainly of any ones case as my own: I will give you the true Narrative of my Education, and leave it to you to judg, what put the Principles of Nonconformity into my head. I was never bred up under any Nonconformable Minister;