With what face can they object to the king the bringing in of foreigners, when themselves entertain such an army of Hebrews?  This Cromwell is never so valorous as when he is making speeches for the association, which nevertheless he doth somewhat ominously with his neck awry, holding up his ear as if he expected Mahomet’s pigeon to come and prompt him.  He should be a bird of prey too by his bloody beak; his nose is able to try a young eagle, whether she be lawfully begotten.  But all is not gold that glitters.  What we wonder at in the rest of them is natural to him to kill without bloodshed, for the most of his trophies are in a church window, when a looking-glass would show him more superstition.  He is so perfect a hater of images that he hath defaced God’s in his own countenance.  If he deals with men, ’tis when he takes them napping in an old monument; then down goes dust and ashes, and the stoutest cavalier is no better.  O brave Oliver!  Time’s voider, subsizer to the worms, in whom death, who formerly devoured our ancestors, now chews the cud.  He said grace once as if he would have fallen aboard with the Marquis of Newcastle; nay, and the diurnal gave you his bill of fare; but it proved a running banquet, as appears by the story.  Believe him as he whistles to his Cambridge team of committee-men, and he doth wonders.  But holy men, like the holy language, must be read backwards.  They rifle colleges to promote learning, and pull down churches for edification.  But sacrilege is entailed upon him.  There must be a Cromwell for cathedrals as well as abbeys; a secure sin, whose offence carries its pardon in its mouth; for how shall he be hanged for church-robbery, that gives himself the benefit of the clergy?

But for all Cromwell’s nose wears the dominical letter, compared to Manchester he is but like the vigils to an holy-day.  This, this is the man of God, so sanctified a thunderbolt, that Burroughs (in a proportionable blasphemy to his Lord of Hosts) would style him the archangel giving battle to the devil.

Indeed, as the angels each of them makes a several species, so every one of his soldiers makes a distinct church.  Had these beasts been to enter into the ark it would have puzzled Noah to have sorted them into pairs.  If ever there were a rope of sand it was so many sects twisted into an association.

They agree in nothing but that they are all Adamites in understanding.  It is a sign of a coward to wink and fight, yet all their valour proceeds from their ignorance.

But I wonder whence their general’s purity proceeds; it is not by traduction; if he was begotten a saint it was by equivocal generation, for the devil in the father is turned monk in the son, so his godliness is of the same parentage with good laws, both extracted out of bad manners, and would he alter the Scripture as he hath attempted the creed, he might vary the text and say to corruption, Thou art my Father.

This is he that put out one of the kingdom’s eyes by clouding our mother university; and (if this Scotch mist farther prevail) he will extinguish the other.  He hath the like quarrel to both, because both are strung with the same optic nerve, knowing loyalty.