The nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of their judgment in certain things…

XXX. These Ministers in these places have been prosecuted more severely than the rest, by imprisonments, fines and guards against their meetings; which induced others to Preach in the City where there seemed less need, because they found quietness no where else, and because some out of the remoter needy Parishes might come thither to them.

XXXI. Though they have lost all Ministerial maintenance, and are liable to pay 20 l. the first Sermon, and 40 l. the rest, and 20 l. for the ground ⟨p. 244⟩for all that they Preach, besides six months imprisonment in the common goals, and poverty disableth City and Country to maintain them; and some with Wives and Children have long lived on little besides brown Rye Bread and Water; and others, that can live of their own, expend all in the charges of the places and adjuncts where they Preach for nothing; and some never took any pay, from the first these 17 years, but patiently serve God and wast their strength under mens obloquy and reproach; yet are there not wanting persons of the Clergy, who represent their greatest and dearest services as their greatest sins, and accuse them as enemies of the Churches peace, and the leaders of Schism, and in pulpit and print provoke authority to execute the Laws more severely on them; Though the execution hath cost some excellent men their lives already, and they may know that no execution short of death or utter disablement will make the most conscionable forsake their duty, and sacrilegiously desert the Office to which they were dedicated and ordained: (As the late case of the Hungarian Ministers declareth:) And such courses never ended in the honour of those of the Clergy that procured them: Yea some as going to the bar of God, have undertaken to prove, that it is through pride and covetousness that we conform not. And because some Churches called Independent withdraw not their maintenance from their Pastors, and some few others have maintenance of their own, or friends that will not see them want, they would make strangers believe that the common sort of Nonconformists, whose families live in sufferings ⟨p. 245⟩