times cast a figure, he at last satisfyed himself that
the Episcopal Government would endure as long as
this King lived; and from thence forward cast about
how to be admitted into the Church of England,
and find the highway to her preferments. In order
to this he daily enlarged, not only his conversation,
but his conscience, and was made free of some of
the town-vices; imagining, like Muleasses King
of Tunis (for I take witness that on all occasions
I treat him rather above his quality than otherwise),
that by hiding himself among the onions, he should
escape being traced by his perfumes. Ignorant
and mistaken man, that thought it necessary to part
with any virtue to get a living; or that the Church
of England did not require and incourage more sobriety
than he could ever be guilty of; whereas it hath
alwayes been fruitful of men who, together with obedience
to that discipline, have lived to the envy of the
Nonconformists in their conversation, and without
such could never either have been preserved so
long, or after so long a dissipation have ever recover’d.
But neither was this yet, in his opinion, sufficient;
and therefore he resolv’d to try a shorter
path, which some few men had trod not unsuccessfully;
that is, to print a Book; if that would not do,
a second; if not that, a third of an higher extraction,
and so forward, to give experiment against their
former party of a keen stile and a ductile judgment.
His first proof-piece was in the year 1665, the
Tentamina Physico-Theologica; a tedious transcript
of his common-place book, wherein there is very
little of his own, but the arrogance and the unparalleled
censoriousness that he exercises over all other
Writers. When he had cook’d up these musty
collections, he makes his first invitation to his
‘old acquaintance’ my lord Archbishop
of Canterbury, who had never seen before nor heard
of him. But I must confess he furbishes-up
his Grace in so glorious an Epistle, that had not
my Lord been long since proof against the most spiritual
flattery, the Dedication only, without ever reading
the Book, might have serv’d to have fix’d
him from that instant as his favourite. Yet
all this I perceive did not his work, but his Grace
was so unmindful, or rather so prudent, that the
gentleman thought it necessary to spur-up again
the next year with another new Book, to show more
plainly what he would be at. This he dedicates
to Doctor Bathurst; and to evidence from the very
Epistle that he was ready to renounce that very
education, the civility of which he is so tender of
as to blame me for disordering it, he picks occasion
to tell him: ’to your prevailing advice,
Sir, do I owe my first rescue from the chains and
fetters of an unhappy education.’ But in
the Book, which he calls ‘A free and impartial
Censure of the Platonick Philosophy’ (censure
’tis sure to be, whatsoever he writes), he speaks
out, and demonstrates himself ready and equipp’d
to surrender not only the Cause, but betray his
Party without making any conditions for them, and


