It has been observed of the warring Turks, that often they used this notable deceit - to send a lying rumor and a vain tumult of war to one place, but, in the meanwhile, to address their true forces to another place, that so they might surprise those who have been unwarily led by pernicious credulity. So have we manifest (alas! too, too manifest) reasons to make us conceive, that whilst the chief urgers of the course of conformity are skirmishing with us about the trifling ceremonies (as some men count them), they are but laboring to hold our thoughts so bent and intent upon those smaller quarrels, that we may forget to distinguish between evils immanent and evils imminent, and that we be not too much awake to espy their secret slight in compassing further aims.
George Gillespie, A Dispute Against the English Popish Ceremonies Obtruded on the Church of Scotland: Wherein Not Only Our Own Arguments Against the Same Are Strongly Confirmed, But Likewise the Answers and Defences of Our Opposites, Such as Hooker, Morton, Burges, Spri...
contrivance, evil