All this bred him more and more envy; but if it had pleas’d God to have given him an uninterrupted course, and if few of his Successors had walked in his stepps, wee might, without any tendency to Popery, or danger of superstition, have serv’d God reverently and uniformely, and according unto Primitive practice and purity, and not have bin, as we are now, like a shivered glass, scarse ever to be made whole again.  Thus finding Providence had led him into authority, he very really and strongly opposed both Popery and Presbytery.  He was sensible, how the first by additions had perverted the purity of Religion, and turned it into a policy; but resolving not to contest Rome’s truths, tho’ he spared not her errors, both Papist and Presbyter, with all their Lay-Party, were well contented, that it might be believed, he was Popishly affected.  And being conscious likewise, how Presbytery or the Calvinisticall Reformation, which many here, and more in Scotland, affected, by substraction and novel interpretation, had forsaken the good old ways of the primitive Church, and was become dangerous to Monarchy, he sett himself against this, as well as that:  but both their weights crusht him....

As this good Arch-Bishop I write of, had these great eminences, so he may be acknowledged to have failed in those prudences, which belong unto a great Minister of State, who like a wise Physician is to consider times and seasons, as well as persons and diseases, and to regard those complications, which usually are mixed in ill habits of body, and to use more alterative than purgative Physick.  For popular bents and inclinations are cured more by a steddy than precipitate hand or counsel; multitudes being to be drawn over from their errors, rather by wayes they discerne not, than by those, which they are likely to contest; whilst upon single persons and great men courses of violence and authority may be exercised.  But Ministers of State unwillingly run this course, because they would have the honour of perfecting the work they affect in their own time; and the multitude of this good man’s busines, and the promptnes of his nature, made those ceremonies, which are necessary by great Persons to be paid unto men in his station, to be unwelcome unto him, and so he discharged himselfe of them, and thereby disobliged those persons, who thought their quality, tho’ not their busines, required a patient and respectfull entertainment.  This I reflect upon, because I heard from a good hand, that the Marquiss of Argile making him an insidious visit, and he, knowing he neither loved him nor the Church, entertaining him not with that franknes he should have done, but plainly telling him, he was at that time a little busy about the King’s affairs, this great Lord took it so much in indignation, and esteem’d it such a Lordly Prelacy, that he declaimed against it, and became (if possible) more enemy both to him and the Church, than he was before.  The rectitude of his nature therefore made him not a fitt instrument to struggle with the obliquity of those times; and he had this infirmity likewise, that he beleived those forward instruments, which he employed, followed the zeal of their own natures, when they did but observe that of his:  for as soon as difficulty or danger appeared, his petty instruments shrunk to nothing, and shewed, from whom they borrowed their heat.