Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an…

And if they fasted and prayed with a dying or sick friend, without getting a License for it from the Bishop, the Church-warden must enter them into their Inquisition, or be forsworn.

These Puritans having the greatest ⟨image 4⟩averseness to Popery, in some things were too suspicious of all that they thought smelled of it: And when they heard that in Ireland the Papists had most barbarously murdered the Protestants (two hundred thousand) and that they boasted that they rose by the King's Commission, and threatened to invade England, and that the English Papists were against the Parliament; this made them think that the Protestant Religion was not safe, but in the Parliaments part and care: Upon which the next year when our odious Civil War began, many of them went into the Parliaments Armies: But the generality would fain have lived quietly at home, but the debauched rabble and their Patrons would not suffer them: But they turned the name Puritan into [Roundhead] and [Down with the Roundheads,] was the common Cry. I have my self by the Cry been in present danger, in passing through a City where no man knew me, because I wore not long Hair. If their Neighbours did but pray, and sing a Psalm in their houses, the rabble would (like the Sodomites at the door of Lot) set up a Cry against them in the ⟨image 4⟩streets, and say, [Down with the Roundheads] the Rebels, a Gowry, a Conspiracy, &c.] Even where I lived they assembled with weapons, and sought my life, and knocked down (mortally by the issue) even strangers in the streets that meddled not with them, because they were accounted friends to the Puritans. By this means the Parliaments Garrisons and Armies were filled with Religious men, that were forced to fly from their houses by the malignant, ignorant drunkards, to save their lives: And this, even this was the ruin of K. Charles, and his Army, and of the persecuting Bishops and Clergy. Necessity made thousands to be Soldiers that could not live at home: And most were moved by an Argument, that was not cogent, still saying, [We cannot believe that God would suffer the generality of the most Religious to choose the wrong side, and the generality of the Papists and ignorant drunkards and malignants to be in the right.]