A She Precise Hypocrite

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Title:     A She Precise Hypocrite
Author: John Earle [More Titles by Earle]

Is one in whom good women suffer, and have their truth misinterpreted by her folly. She is one, she knows not what her self if you ask her, but she is indeed one that has taken a toy at the fashion of religion, and is enamoured of the new fangle. She is a nonconformist in a close stomacher and ruff of Geneva print,[1] and her purity consists much in her linnen. She has heard of the rag of Rome, and thinks it a very sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of Babylon for a very naughty woman. She has left her virginity as a relick of popery, and marries in her tribe without a ring. Her devotion at the church is much in the turning up of her eye; and turning down the leaf in her book, when she hears named chapter and verse. When she comes home, she commends the sermon for the scripture, and two hours. She loves preaching better then praying, and of preachers, lecturers; and thinks the week day's exercise far more edifying than the Sunday's. Her oftest gossipings are sabbath-day's journeys, where, (though an enemy to superstition,) she will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a better sermon in her own parish. She doubts of the virgin Mary's salvation, and dares not saint her, but knows her own place in heaven as perfectly as the pew she has a key to. She is so taken up with faith she has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear by my truly. She rails at other women by the names of Jezebel and Dalilah; and calls her own daughters Rebecca and Abigail, and not Ann but Hannah. She suffers them not to learn on the virginals,[2] because of their affinity with organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes sake, since they were reformed to the tune of a psalm. She overflows so with the bible, that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids without scripture. It is a question whether she is more troubled with the Devil, or the Devil with her: She is always challenging and daring him, and her weapon [[3]is the Practice of Piety.] Nothing angers her so much as that women cannot preach, and in this point only thinks the Brownist erroneous; but what she cannot at the church she does at the table, where she prattles more than any against sense and Antichrist, 'till a capon's wing silence her. She expounds the priests of Baal, reading ministers, and thinks the salvation of that parish as desperate as the Turks. She is a main derider to her capacity of those that are not her preachers, and censures all sermons but bad ones. If her husband be a tradesman, she helps him to customers, howsoever to good cheer, and they are a most faithful couple at these meetings, for they never fail. Her conscience is like others lust, never satisfied, and you might better answer Scotus than her scruples. She is one that thinks she performs all her duties to God in hearing, and shews the fruits of it in talking. She is more fiery against the may-pole than her husband, and thinks she might do a Phineas' act to break the pate of the fidler. She is an everlasting argument, but I am weary of her.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Strict devotees were, I believe, noted for the smallness and precision of their ruffs, which were termed in print from the exactness of the folds. So in Mynshul's Essays, 4to. 1618. "I vndertooke a warre when I adventured to speake in print, (not in print as Puritan's ruffes are set.)" The term of Geneva print probably arose from the minuteness of the type used at Geneva. In the Merry Devil of Edmonton, a comedy, 4to. 1608, is an expression which goes some way to prove the correctness of this supposition:--"I see by thy eyes thou hast bin reading little Geneua print;"--and, that small ruffs were worn by the puritanical set, an instance appears in Mayne's City Match, a comedy, 4to. 1658.

----"O miracle!
Out of your little ruffe, Dorcas, and in the fashion!
Dost thou hope to be saved?"

From these three extracts it is, I think, clear that a ruff of Geneva print meant a small, closely-folded ruff, which was the distinction of a non-conformist.

[2] A virginal, says Mr. Malone, was strung like a spinnet, and shaped like a piano-forte: the mode of playing on this instrument was therefore similar to that of the organ.

[3] Weapons are spells no less potent than different, as being the sage sentences of some of her own sectaries. First edit.

[The end]
John Earle's essay: She Precise Hypocrite

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