Sixteen New Queries, Title page – Dedication
XVI. NEW QVÆRES Proposed to our Lord PRÆLATES.
Printed in the Yeare M. D. CXXXVII.
To our Holy Ghostly Fathers, the Lord Praeliglates of England M. E. sendeth greeting.
MY Lords temporall farre more then spirituall, I have heard you oft cracke exceedingly, on your owne dung-hills, both of your great learning, and likewise of your arch-love and loyaltie (yet invisible) to his Majestie and his prerogatives Royall, as if hee could not be a King unlesse you were Lord Bishops: I shall therefore not challendge, but beseech your Holynes, to give a reall demonstration to the world, both of your profound learning, and pretended peerlesse zeale and duetifullnes to his Majestie, in publishing a speedy full; and satisfactory answer to these fewe Questions here propounded to you of purpose to resolve them. Your Lordlynesses have had above halfe a yeares time (allmost half as much space as most of you take to penn or conne your annuall or bieniall Sermons, and yet cannot get them perfect into your heads or hearts, into which they seldome sinke, but onelyonly into your Bookes:) and yet have given no resolution to them, as people exspected you should or would have done: which makes many suspect, they have put you to a Non plus; either therefore answer them now, at this second Somony and publication, or els I and thousands more shall proclaime to all the world, you cannot doe it, and so are open enemies to his Majestie, his Imperiall Crowne, Lawes, Subjects, and in severall premunires, for all you beare your heads so high, like petty Kings and Popes: Yea I dare pronounce you perjured to his Majestie in the highest degree, by infringing your oathes of Supremacie, so oft reiterated: And as you are the first men inioyned to take this oath, by the Statute of 1. Eliz. c. 1. because the likelyest of all others to violate it, so you are more guilty of the frequent, open, and professed violation thereof, then all other his Majesties subjects put together, who seldome infringe this oath, but either by your coaction or occasioning of them, by force or flatery to breake it, be sure you now give a fatherly satisfactory compleat answer to them with speed, at your utmost perills, and lay all other worldly imployments and affaires aside (as you have layed preaching by, long agoe) till you have done it, els these. Quaeligres will proove fatall to your Popedomes, Episcopalities, Consistories, Visitations, and elegall Ecclesiasticall Iurisdictions, and proceedings, and so I commit you to your studies for the present, as you (no doubt in imitation of your Saviour Christ and his Apostles, who had not any Pursevaunts, Iaylors, Messengers, and Catch-poales, attending at their heeles upon every occasion, and many Jaoles and Prisons, to commit poore Christians and Ministers too at their pleasure, as your Lordships their Successors now have, though wee read not of them in any Author) commit others to your prisons and dungeons, and would doe me no doubt, if you could catch me napping, as Mose did his Mare, even for presuming to propound these questions to you in the behalf of my Soveraigne and Countrey.
M. E.