PREDESTINATION.

1. They that talk nothing but predestination, and will not proceed in the way of heaven till they be satisfied in that point, do, as a man that would not come to London, unless at his first step he might set his foot upon the top of St. Paul's.

2. For a young divine to begin in his pulpit with predestination, is, as if a man were coming into London, and at his first step would think to set his foot, &c.

3. Predestination is a point inaccessible, out of our reach; we can make no notion of it, it is so full of intricacy, so full of contradiction; it is in good earnest, as we state it, half-a-dozen bulls one upon another.

4. Doctor Prideaux, in his lectures, several days used arguments to prove predestination: at last tells his auditory they are damned that do not believe it; doing herein just like schoolboys, when one of them has got an apple, or something the rest have a mind to, they use all the arguments they can to get some of it from them: I gave you some the other day; you shall have some with me another time. When they cannot prevail, they tell him he is a jackanapes, a rogue, and a rascal.

PREFERMENT.

1. When you would have a child go to such a place, and you find him unwilling, you tell him he shall ride a cock-horse, and then he will go presently: so do those that govern the state deal by men, to

work them to their ends; they tell them they shall be advanced to such or such a place, and they will do any thing they would have them.

2. A great place strangely qualifies. John Read, groom of the chamber to my lord of Kent, was in the right. Attorney Noy being dead, some were saying, "How will the king do for a fit man?" "Why, any man," says John Read, may execute the place." "I warrant,” says my lord, "thou thinkest thou understandest enough to perform it." "Yes," quoth John, "let the king make me attorney, and I would fain see that man, that durst tell me, there is any thing I understand not."

3. When the pageants are a coming there is a great thrusting, and a riding upon one another's backs, to look out at the window; stay a little and they will come just to you, you may see them quietly. So it is when a new statesman or officer is chosen there is great expectation and listening who it should be; stay awhile, and you may know quietly.

4. Missing preferment makes the presbyters fall foul upon the bishops. Men that are in hopes and in the way of rising, keep in the channel; but they that have none, seek new ways: it is so amongst the lawyers; he that hath the judge's ear, will be very observant of the way of the court; but he that hath no regard, will be flying out.

5. My lord Digby having spoken something in the house of commons, for which they would have questioned him, was presently called to the upper house he did by the parliament, as an ape when he hath done some waggery; his master spies him, and he looks for his whip; but before he can come

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at him, "Whip," says he, "to the top of the house."

6. Some of the parliament were discontented, that they wanted places at court, which others had got; but when they had them once, then they were quiet just as at a christening, some that get no sugar plums, when the rest have, mutter and grumble presently the wench comes again with her basket of sugar-plums, and then they catch and scramble; and when they have got them, you hear no more of them.

PREMUNIRE.

There can be no premunire: a premunire, so called from the word premunire facias, was when a man laid an action in an ecclesiastical court, for which he could have no remedy in any of the king's courts, that is, in the courts of common law; by reason, the ecclesiastical courts, before Henry the Eigthth, were subordinate to the pope; and so it was contra coronam et dignitatem regis; but now the ecclesiastical courts are equally subordinate to the king; therefore, it cannot be contra coronam et dignitatem regis, and so no premunire.

PREROGATIVE.

1. Prerogative is something that can be told what it is not something that has no name: just as you see the archbishop has his prerogative court, but we know what is done in that court: so the king's prerogative is not his will, or what divines make it, a power to do what he lists.

2. The king's prerogative, that is, the king's law. For example, if you ask whether a patron may present to a living after six months by law? I answer, "No." If you ask whether the king may? I answer, "He may, by his prerogative;" that is, by the law that concerns him in that case.

PRESBYTERY.

1. They that would bring in a new government, would very fain persuade us, they meet it in antiquity; thus they interpret presbyters, when they meet the word in the fathers. Other professions likewise pretend to antiquity. The alchymist will find his art in Virgil's aureus ramus; and he that delights in optics will find them in Tacitus. When Cæsar came into England, they would persuade us they had perspective glasses, by which he could discover what they were doing upon the land, because it is said positis speculis: the meaning is—his watch, or his sentinel discovered this, and this unto him.

2. Presbyters have the greatest power of any clergy in the world, and gull the laity most. For example: admit there be twelve laymen to six presbyters, the six shall govern the rest as they please; first, because they are constant, and the others come in like churchwardens, in their turns, which is a huge advantage. Men will give way to them who have been in place before them. Next, the laymen have other professions to follow; the presbyters make it their sole business and besides, too, they learn and study the art of persuading: some of Geneva have confessed as much.

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3. The presbyter, with his elders about him, is like a young tree fenced about with two or three or four stakes; the stakes defend it, and hold it upbut the tree only prospers and flourishes; it may be some willow stake may bear a leaf or two, but it comes to nothing. Lay-elders are stakes, the presbyter the tree that flourishes.

4. When the queries were sent to the assembly, concerning the jus divinum of presbytery, their ask. ing time to answer them, was a satire upon themselves; for if it were to be seen in the text, they might quickly turn to the place, and show us it; their delaying to answer, makes us think there is no such thing there. They do just as you have seen a fellow do at a tavern-reckoning; when he should come to pay his reckoning, he puts his hands into his pockets, and keeps a grabbling and a fumbling, and shaking, at last tells you he has left his money at home, when all the company knew at first he had no money there, for every man can quickly find his own money.

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PRIESTS OF ROME.

1. The reason of the statute against priests, was this in the beginning of queen Elizabeth, there was a statute made, that he that drew men from their civil obedience was a traitor. It happened this was done in privacies and confessions, when there could be no proof: therefore, they made another act, that for a priest to be in England, was treason, because they presumed that was his business to fetch men off from their obedience.