The defence of the nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of the matter…

V. I that greatly fear lest God's late dreadful Corporation Judgments, Plague, Flames, Poverty, and Divisions, are inflicted for Corporation Sins, and among those Sins, eminently for Perjury, am more inclined to call them in Bradford's words at the Stake, Repent, O England, than to encourage them in such Sin, and by Printing, to persuade them not to repent.

V. I that greatly fear lest God's late dreadful Corporation Iudgments, Plague, Flames, Poverty, and Divisions, are inflicted for Corporation Sins, and among those Sins, eminently for Perjury, am more inclined to call them in Bradford's words at the Stake, Repent, O England, than to encourage them in such Sin, and by Printing, to persuade them not to repent.

VI. When we cry out of the Jesuits for stretching Oaths and Testimonies, and all words by Equivocations, and Mental Reservations, to the endangering of Kings and Kingdoms, and Mens Lives and Souls, it ill beseemeth us to imitate or encourage them, or to enable them to say, that they stretch words no more than we.

VII. It would be an unexcusable Sin in such a one as I, who live not in another Age, Land, or Place, where the Imposers sense could not be known, but in the same Age, and Place, and have had so many Personal Treaties with the Bishops and the Lord Chancellor Hide, who were the chief promoters of the Impositions, and who know so many of the Parliament and Convocation that made these Forms, and have had so great and satisfactory testimony of their Minds and ⟨p. 133⟩Meanings, and their Speeches and Reasons in Parliament upon these subjects; and am fully satisfied in my Conscience, that you satisfy their meaning. It is not the sense of any Bishops that came in since that Act was made, nor of any odd Person that is to pass for the Law-makers sense.