The Levites Scourge, Section 13
SECT. XIII. Of ministeriall habits, recreations on the Lords day, and how the Brownists and sectaries prophane the Christian Sabbath.
HAst thou yet any better stuff in thy shop, Britanicus, besides the large mourning weed beg'd artificially at the last funerall of a saint? Yes, a sattin cassock surely, a decent garment for a grave divine, especially on high dayes: what wouldst thou have the reverend clergy to weare? wouldst thou have them go in cuerpo, like your new England and Holland theologues? or in a rocket liued through with plush or taffata, as some of the Assembly men flaunt it? or in a short jacket, much like the riding coat of Davids Embassadors, which was cut off at o… sacrum, the huckle bone? Here Brit. thou playst the base cynick, …alcas fastum Platonis, Plutarch Apopl….thou tramplest upon Plato's pride, but remember what Plato repli'd; calcas fastum, sed alio fastu, thou tramplest upon the pride of some of the clergy in their apparell, but thou dost it in a worse kind of pride.
As for card-playing, I need not gle…k it with thee, for we are at play already; thy earnest is nothing but jests, and those very scurrilous and ridiculous; and therefore either to be scorned or retorted upon thee in sober sadnesse. The Doctor is no player at cards or dice, nor approveth at all any recreations on the Lords day, but such as, like Aarons golden plate in his miter, have holinesse stamped on them: As for those of thy precise sect, they indeed will not for a world play a game at cards or tables on the Lords day, after evening prayer; but they do far worse, they take away morning and evening prayer both, and jear out the sacred liturgy of the church: if thou art come to thy self Brit. and hast thy wits about thee, prethee tell me, is it not better playing a game at tables on the christian sabbath, wherin a wooden man is taken up without any losse or hurt? or at chesse, in which there is an image of men set in battail array, there to cast the bloody die of war on that day, to kill, to pillage, to plunder? of the two I had rather see latrunculos, on that day then latrones, chesse-men then pressed-men: notwithstanding to chuse, you rifle houses, and sequester malignants on that day; your city magistrates and Officers will not suffer a poor waterman to rowe on the Thames yet they permit the souldiers in all the courts of guard, and forts, and ships to drink and swell all the day: a physitian may not passe over the river to save the life of the body, not a divine to save the life of the soul, yet they account it a sanctifying of the sabbath to beat up drums and presse souldiers▪ to kill men on that day: O precise hypocrisie, or rather hypocriticall precisenesse! A devout father sharply reprooving the evill conversation of some christians in his time told them to their faces, gentes agitis sub nomine Christi, you act the parts of Gentiles in the habit of Christians: but I may truly say of you, Iudaeos agitis sub nomine Christi, you act the parts of Iewes in the habit of Christians: Iewes, I say, in the rigid observation of the Sabbath; of Iewes, in venting your spleen and malice against Christ, by excluding his prayer out of your liturgie; by defacing his name Iesus wheresoever you see it written in golden characters, or wrought in cloth of gold or tissue, or stampt in holy vessels, calling it the Iesuits trim or ga…b by inveighing against keeping the feast of the nativity, resurrection and ascension, and terrifying those that in a religious compassion fast & mourn on good friday; your b…ating down with axes and hammers the carved works of the temple, wherin there is any monument of him; and which is far worse, persecuting his meniall servants, the most faithfull and orthodoxall ministers of the gospell unto bonds and death.