I shall forbear to mention the very many and dangerous plots of the Romanists against the Church and State; because what is principally intended in this digression, is an account of the opinions and activity of the Non-conformists:  against whose judgment and practice Mr. Hooker became at last, but most unwillingly, to be engaged in a book-war; a war which he maintained not as against an enemy, but with the spirit of meekness and reason.

[Sidenote:  The Non-conformists]

In which number of Non-conformists, though some might be sincere, well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, as thereby to cover a multitude of their errors; yet of this party there were many that were possessed with a high degree of spiritual wickedness; I mean with an innate restless pride and malice; I do not mean the visible carnal sins of gluttony and drunkenness, and the like,—­from which, good Lord, deliver us!—­but sins of a higher nature, because they are more unlike God, who is the God of love, and mercy, and order, and peace:  and more like the Devil, who is not a glutton, nor can be drunk, and yet is a Devil:  but I mean those spiritual wickednesses of malice and revenge, and an opposition to government:  men that joyed to be the authors of misery, which is properly his work that is the enemy and disturber of mankind; and thereby greater sinners than the glutton or drunkard, though some will not believe it.  And of this party there were also many, whom prejudice and a furious zeal had so blinded, as to make them neither to hear reason, nor adhere to the ways of peace:  men that were the very dregs and pest of mankind; men whom pride and self-conceit had made to over-value their own pitiful crooked wisdom so much as not to be ashamed to hold foolish and unmannerly disputes against those men whom they ought to reverence, and those laws which they ought to obey; men that laboured and joyed first to find out the faults, and then speak evil of Government, and to be the authors of confusion; men whom company, and conversation, and custom had at last so blinded, and made so insensible that these were sins, that like those that perished in the gainsaying of Korah, so these died without repenting of these spiritual wickednesses; of which the practices of Coppinger and Hacket[15] in their lives, and the death of them and their adherents, are, God knows, too sad examples, and ought to be cautions to those men that are inclined to the like spiritual wickednesses.

[Sidenote:  Growth of sedition]

And in these times, which tended thus to confusion, there were also many of these scruple-mongers, that pretended a tenderness of conscience, refusing to take an oath before a lawful Magistrate:  and yet these very men in their secret Conventicles did covenant and swear to each other, to be assiduous and faithful in using their best endeavours to set up the Presbyterian doctrine and discipline; and both in such a manner as they themselves had not yet agreed