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

Ans. 1. This man yet confuteth the former that maketh us gainers. 2. But what escape is possible from such Accusers? Did we make those Laws against our selves? Do we persecute our selves? Shall Clergy-men provoke Magistrates to make such Laws as he calleth smart, and then make our sufferings to be one of our methods? If this be the method to obtain Veneration, I doubt such as the Accusers will hardly learn it. 3. But in our experience the vulgar usually most honour the prospering and upper side, and set light by sufferers, as if their very usage proved their desert. It is like to be the better sort that are so compassionate, and so much value men that for conscience are vilified by others.

But p. 132. he hath found out covetousness in our sufferings, which others lay upon us; and saith, that Calamy found three days in Newgate more gainful than half a years preaching at Aldermanbury: so that now we have found out another Vice that ⟨p. 171⟩may possibly be in this matter, Pride and Covetousness too, &c.

Ans. Is this the Justice of Sacred Clergy-men? 1. Do they lay us with Rogues in the common Gaols for preaching the Gospel when they forbid us, and then envy us that charity there relieveth us, and that any are more merciful than themselves? Do these men believingly preach Matth. 25. I was hungry, and ye fed me—I was in prison, and ye visited me? &c. 2. How knoweth this man what Mr. Calamy received? Is it likely that he knoweth what he saith to be true? which none of us know, that better knew Mr. Calamy than he. 3. If our friends are so liberal, sure they are a better sort of people than the Conformists, if those Preachers say true who tell the world what a wretched case their Clergy would be in, if their maintenance depended on the will and charity of the people. But to make them no better than they are, one of us that writeth this, can say by experience how like this report is to be false: for when he lay (for the ordinary cause) many times three days in the Common Gaol, he was never offered a groat by any, but one Country Knight, one Lady, and one Citizen (and a by offer from one that he had reason to refuse) nor received a farthing from any but these three, which did but defray his Prison and Law charges, but not by many pounds his Losses by that prosecution.