486 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 212. 



tents justify the title. Extravagance and the far- 

 fetched were the gauge of wit : Donne, Herbert, 

 and many a man of genius fovindered on this rock, 

 as well as Cowley, who acted up to his own defini- 

 tion : 



" In a true Piece of Wit all things must be, 

 Yet all things there agree ; 

 As ill the Ark, join'd without force or strife, 

 All creatures dwelt — all creatures that had life." 



It is not, however, for the purpose of illus- 

 trating this mania that I am about to dwell on 

 the two similes nvhich form the subject of my 

 present Note : I selected them as favourite party- 

 similes which formed a standing dish for old 

 Anglican writers; and also because they throw 

 light on the history of religious party in England, 

 and thus form a suitable supplement to my article 

 on " High Church and Low Church" (Vol. viii., 

 p. 117.). 



As the object of the Church of England, m 

 separating from Rome, was the refoi'mation, not 

 the destruction of her former faith, by the very 

 act of reformation she found herself opposed to 

 two bodies ; namely, that from whicli she sepa- 

 rated, and the ultra-reformers or Puritans, who 

 clamoured for a radical reformation. 



Taking these as the Scylla and Charybdis — 

 the two extremes to be avoided — the Anglican 

 Church hoped to attain the safe and golden mean 

 by steering between these opposites, and find, in 

 this via media course, the path of truth. 



Accordingly, her divines abound with warnings 

 against the aforesaid Scylla and Charybdis, and 

 with exhortations to cleave to the middle line of 

 safety. Acting on the proverb that extremes meet, 

 they were ever drawing parallels between their 

 two opponents. On the other haml, the Puritans 

 stoutly contended that theij were the true middle- 

 men ; and in their turn traced divers similarities 

 and parallels betwixt " Popery and Prelacy," the 

 " Mass Book and Service Book." * 



* An Analysis of the "divers pamphlets published 

 against the Book of Common Prayer" would make a 

 very curious volume. Take a passage from the Anatomy 

 of the Service Booh, for instance : " The cruellest of the 

 American savages, called the Mohaukes, though they 

 fattened their captive Christians to the slaughter, yet 

 they eat them up at once ; but the Service-book savages 

 eat the servants of God by piece-meal : keeping them 

 alive (if it may be called a life) ut sentiant se mori, that 

 they may be the more sensible of their dying" (p. 56.'). 

 Sir Walter Scott quotes a curious tract in Woodstock, 

 entitled Vindication of the Book of Common Prayer 

 against the Contumelious Slanders of the Fanatic Party 

 terming it " Porridge." The autlior of this singular 

 and rare tract (says Sir W.) indulges in the allegorical 

 style, till he fairly hunts down the allegory. The 

 learned divine chases his metaphor at a very cold scent, 

 through a pamphlet of six mortal quarto pages. — See a 



Without farther preface, I shall give the title of 

 a curious work, which will tell its own story : 



" Foxes and Firebrands ; or A Specimen of the Danger 

 and Harmony of Popery and Separation. Wherein is 

 proved from undeniable Matter of Fact and Reason, 

 that Separation from the Church of England is, in the 

 Judgment of Papists, and by Experience, found the 

 most Compendious way to introduce Popery, and to 

 ruine the Protestant Religion : 



' Tantum Religio potuit suadere Malorum.'' " 



A work under this title was published, if I 

 mistake not, in London in 1678 by Dr. Henry 

 Nalson ; in 1682, Robert "Ware reprinted it with 

 a second part of his own; and in 1689 he added 

 a third and last part in 12mo., uniform with the 

 previous volume.* In the Epist. Ded. to Part II. 

 the writer says of the Church of England : 



" The Papists on th6 one hand, and the Puritans on 

 the other, did endeavour to sully and bespatter the 

 glory of her Reformation : the one taxing it with in- 

 novation, and the other with superstition." 



The Preface to the Third Part declares that 

 the object of the whole work is " to reclaim the 

 most hiiggard Papists" and Puritans. 



Wheatly,in treating of the State Service for the 

 29th of May, remarks : 



" Tlie Papists and Sectaries, like Sampson's Foxes, 

 though they look contrary ways, do yet both join in 

 carrying Fire to destroy us : their End is tiie same, 

 though the method be different." — Rational Illust. of 

 the Book of Common Prayer, 3rd edit., London, 1720, 

 folio. 



The following passage occtirs in A Letter to the 

 Author of the Vindication of the Clergy, by Dr. 

 Eachard, London, 1705 : 



" I have put in hard, I'll assure you, in all com- 

 panies, for two or three more : as for example, The 

 Papist and the Puritan being tyed together like Sampson's 

 Foxes. I liked it well enough, and have beseeched 

 them to let it pass for a phansie ; but I could never 

 get tlie rogues in a good humour to do it : for they say 

 that Sampson's foxes have been so very long and so very 

 often tied together, that it is high time to part them. 

 It may be because something very like it is to be found 

 in a printed sermon, which was preached thirty-eight 

 years ago : it is no flam nor whisker. It is the forty- 

 third page upon the right hand. Yours go thus. viz. 

 Papist and Puritan, like Sampson's Foxes, though looking 

 and running two several ways, yet are ever joyned to- 

 gether in the tail. My author has it thus, viz. The 

 Separatists and the Romanists consequently to their other- 

 wise most distant principles do fully agree, like Sampson's 

 Foxes, tyed together by the tails, to set all on fire, although 

 their faces look quite contrary ways." — P. .S4. 



It would be easy to multiply passages in which 

 this simile occurs ; but what I have given is suffi- 



Parallel of t7te Liturgy with the Mass Book, Breviary, 

 ^-c, hy Robert Baylie, 1661, 4to. 



[* See » N. & Q,.," Vol. viii., p. 172.— Ed.] 



