the King: 3. To suppress all insurrections here: 4. To oppose the Scots: and lastly, to dissolve the present Parliament. Mighty businesses, which he could never promise himself to overcome. Therefore I cannot believe he then thought to be King; but only by well serving the strongest party, which was always his main polity, to proceed as far as that and fortune would carry him.
B. The Parliament were certainly no less foolish than wicked, in deserting thus the King, before they had the army at a better command than they had.
A. In the beginning of 1648 the Parliament gave commission to Philip Earl of Pembroke, then made Chancellor of Oxford, together with some of the doctors there as good divines as he, to purge the University. By virtue whereof they turned out all such as were not of their faction, and all such as had approved the use of the Common-prayer-book; as also divers scandalous ministers and scholars (that is, such as customarily without need took the name of God into their mouths, or used to speak wantonly, or haunt the company of lewd women). And for this last I cannot but commend them.
B. So shall not I; for it is just such another piece of piety, as to turn men out of an hospital because they are lame. Where can a man probably learn godliness, and how to correct his vices, better than in the universities erected for that purpose?
A. It may be, the Parliament thought otherwise. For I have often heard the complaints of parents, that their children were debauched there to drunkenness, wantonness, gaming, and other vices consequent to these. Nor is it a wonder amongst so many youths, if they did corrupt one another in despite of their tutors, who oftentimes were little elder than themselves. And therefore I think the Parliament did not much reverence that institution of universities, as to the bringing up of young men to virtue; though many of them learned there to preach, and became thereby capable of preferment and maintenance; and some others
