See “The Rehearsal Transprosed, the second part,” p. 76.
One of the canting terms used by the saints of those days, and not obsolete in the dialect of those who still give themselves out to be saints in the present.
Marvell admirably describes Parker’s journey to London at the Restoration, where “he spent a considerable time in creeping into all corners and companies, horoscoping up and down concerning the duration of the government.” This term, so expressive of his political doubts, is from “Judicial Astrology,” then a prevalent study. “Not considering anything as best, but as most lasting and most profitable; and after having many times cast a figure, he at last satisfied himself that the episcopal government would endure as long as this king lived, and from thenceforwards cast about to find the highway to preferment. To do 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.” The narrative proceeds with a curious detail of all his sycophantic attempts at seducing useful patrons, among whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury. Then began “those pernicious books,” says Marvell, “in which he first makes all that he will to be law, and then whatsoever is law, to be divinity.” Parker, in his “Ecclesiastical Polity,” came at length to promulgate such violent principles as these, “He openly declares his submission to the government of a Nero and a Caligula, rather than suffer a dissolution of it.” He says, “it is absolutely necessary to set up a more severe government over men’s consciences and religious persuasions than over their vices and immoralities;” and that “men’s vices and debaucheries may lie more safely indulged than their consciences.” Is it not difficult to imagine that this man had once been an Independent, the advocate for every congregation being independent of a bishop or a synod?
Parker’s father was a lawyer, and one of Oliver’s most submissive sub-committee men, who so long pillaged the nation and spilled its blood, “not in the hot and military way (which diminishes always the offence), but in the cooler blood and sedentary execution of an high court of justice.” He wrote a very remarkable book (after he had been petitioned against for a misdemeanour) in defence of that usurped irregular state called “The Government of the People of England.” It had “a most hieroglyphical title” of several emblems: two hands joined, and beneath a sheaf of arrows, stuffed about with half-a-dozen mottoes, “enough,” says Marvell, “to have supplied the mantlings and achievement of this (godly) family.” An anecdote in this secret history of Parker is probably true. “He shortly afterwards did inveigh against his father’s memory, and in his mother’s presence, before witnesses, for a couple of whining fanatics.”—Rehearsal Transprosed, second part, p. 75.
This preface was prefixed to Bishop Bramball’s “Vindication of the Bishops from the Presbyterian Charge of Popery.”