I have now delivered the grounds, whereupon I refused to authorise this book: being sorry at my heart, that the King, my gracious Master, should rest so great a building upon so weak a foundation; the Treatise being so slender, and without substance, but that it proceeded from a hungry man.
If I had been in Council, when the Project for this Loan was first handled, I would have used my best reasons to have had it well grounded; but I was absent, and knew not whereupon they proceeded: only I saw, it was followed with much vehemency. And since it was put in execution, I did not interpose myself to know the grounds of one, nor of the other.
It seemed therefore strange unto me, that, in the upshot of the business, I was called in, to make that good by Divinity, which others had done; and must have no other inducement to it, but Doctor Sibthorp's contemptible treatise!
I imagined this, for the manner of the carriage of it, to be somewhat like unto the Earl of Somerset's case; who having abused the wife of the Earl of Essex, must have her divorced from her husband, and must himself marry her. And this must not be done; but that the Archbishop of Canterbury must ratify all, judicially!
I know the cases are different; but I only compare the manner of the carriage.
When the approbation of the Sermon was by me refused, it was carried to the Bishop of London, who gave a great and stately allowance of it [It was entered at Stationers' Hall, under his authority, on the 3rd May, 1627]: the good man being not willing that anything should stick which was sent unto him from the Court; as appeareth by the book which is commonly called The Seven Sacraments, which was allowed by his Lordship, with all the errors! which since that time have been expunged and taken out of it.
But before this passed the Bishop's file, there is one accident which fitly cometh in to be recounted in this place.