1 Cor. 15.24 speaketh of the second kinde of Kingdome which shall at the end of the world cease when the Churches warfare shall have an end and her immediate communion with God shall begin when the blessed and glorious Trinitie shall be all things in all men shall supply the want or absence of all things there shall not be because there shall be no need of them Magistrate Minister Word Sacrament Temple Sun or Moon Then cometh the end you tell us that then or deinceps should be afterwards but others think it were better rendred mox statim that is by and by or presently after Strange that the Apostle should say Every one in his own order and yet finde no order or time for the resurrection of the unjust if there be it is not mentioned with the just Answer Under this Unusquisque no other are comprehended but Christ they that are Christs the term here reacheth no further you may finde just and unjust mentioned elswhere Acts 24.15 I have hope towards God that there shall be a resurrection of the dead both of the just and the unjust The twentieth chapter of the Revelation the fourth and sixth verses do imply two Resurrections the first and the last yet not both of the bodie but one of the soul from the death of sin and errour during this world The other of the bodie out of the dust of the earth at the end of this world These two resurrections are plainly and distinctly laid down by our Saviour in the fifth chapter of S. Johns Gospel the first in the 25 verse The hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live The second in the 28 and 29 verses The hour is coming when all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth It 's a Resurrection after they had been beheaded and therefore not in this life time now if that be not the last Resurrection then there is a Resurrection follows in which the rest shall rise ver 5.12 I answer but I neither rehearse nor retort your insulting words The fourth verse speaketh neither of bodies nor of resurrection but of souls onely and expresly I saw the souls of them that were beheaded and they lived and reigned to wit in heavenly glorie it is not said they rose again or lived again But the rest of the dead lived not again That is Satan detained many still in Paganism and Antichristianism who would not rise out of sin and errour Until the thousand years were finished That is Not all that time of Satans binding not that they rose afterward but they rose not at all it is not a limitation of the time but an absolute denial This is the first Resurrection Which is as if he had said thus This living again that I speak of is to be understood of the first Resurrection which is from the death in sin and I pray mark it well It is not the same life or kinde of living that is affirmed of those in the fourth verse and denied of those in the fifth it is said of those quod vixerint that they lived of these quod revixerint that they lived again And betwixt these two there is not to be conceived any Synonymus contradiction but a diversitie Metaphorical Those in the fourth verse lived the life of glorie those of the fifth verse did not arise or live again to the life of grace And you unskilfully put together the fifth verse with the twelfth whereas the fifth speaketh of the first Resurrection the twelfth of the second or last which is of the bodie at the day of Judgement Because you say that though you speak besides the ordinary rode yet you speak not besides the Scriptures I would desire your scholars whom you instructed in the Doctrine of the Millenarians though very obscurely in your Catechisme and have added now an explication or vindication of it That they would read over that chapter which you refer them to and which hath from the beginning of this errour been accounted the principal place of Scripture giving countenance to such belief that is the twentieth chapter of the Revelaion you say the dead in Christ shall rise first and reign with him a thousand years and then the rest shall rise to judgement of condemnaion by themselves apart Now in reading this chapter they shall finde that after the thousand years are expired there followeth what The Resurrection of the ungodly no. But Satan loosed Cog and Magog going forth to battel with armies of innumerable souldiers making war against the Saints and which are to be devoured with fire from heaven And whence should these wicked ones be there were none but the just living upon the earth for the rest of the dead lived not again for all that time If they read on to the 12 verse there Saint John seeth the general judgement at the last when both sea and land give up their dead they were judged every man according to their works good as well as bad and they were condemned who were not written in the book of life not those who were not raised at the first Resurrection And if the chief authority of Scripture for your opinion be so palpably impertinent and the proof taken thence so weak how weak is your opinion So much for the Scriptures which you bring Now we are to consider the judgement of the ancient orthodox To say nothing that Justin Martyr one of the ancientest of the primitive writers tells us that in his times all that were in all things orthodox Christians so beleeved Dial. with Tryph. So also Tertull lib. 3. contra Marc. and Lactant. lib. 7. the Reader that hath the books may if he please consult them I study brevitie You would not name Cerinthus who was somewhat more ancient though much more heterodox yet he it was who broached the opinion you speak of so witnesseth Saint Augustine in his eight book of heresies He held it indeed in a more gross manner some of the fathers following refined it from the more feculent parts Justin Martyr had it from the Jews with whom he conversed and his opinion is meerly Judaical that Jerusalem shall be built again enlarged and beautified and that the Prophets and the Patriarchs the Jews and the Proselytes who were before Christs coming shall meet there in a joyfull manner but not that all they who belong to Christ shall be raised with them as you teach And secondly you would not let us know because you studied brevitie what authorities your authours had for that their belief though fairly you give us leave to consult them Now I finde that the first place brought by the first of your three is out of Isa 65.22 As the days of a tree are the days of my people the meaning whereof is to be gathered from the words next before the similitude is taken from the matter there spoken
go thorow with so tedious an employment And yet when I pass by his objections and exceptions such as they are taking no notice of them I am afraid those Lay-men that he speaketh of pag. 102. that cannot read Latine and yet could see the faults of my arguings when they shall come and here espie moreover the want of my answerings will verily beleeve that I am quite put to silence in the respective particulars and can finde cut nothing to say in behalf of my self but am at Dulcarnon right at my wits end I must therefore desire you to remember that if I have omitted any thing it is not because I thought it could not answered but because I thought it needed no answer or else deserved none trusting that you my Reader will compare what is said on each side and satisfie your self So will I here take my leave of you rather than I will seem either to misdoubt or any further to prevent your observation CHAP. I. Touching the Epistle IF beginnings be ominous as they are held to be then may I presage at the very first what I shall finde in that which followeth for with these words you break into your discourse M r. H. observes a wrong method he condemns me as an Interpolator veritatis Title-page a Huckster of the truth before he brings in any proof or evidence Sentences prefixt in title-pages are not to be taken with any strict or rigorous application your self Sir have now set down five severall ones there wâ—h do intimate much worse against me before you did prove they were applicable to me and your very Title proclaims my Notes to be Mistakes before you give in any evidence that they were such at least in the Readers order and the progression that he must make This is just as if you should blame the Vintner for hanging forth his ivie when as yet you have not tasted his wine or before you know whether it comes not so near to vinegar that after the old quip of Palladas a bunch of Lettice or other Sallet-herbs may not better become the sign-post According to your new method which your self follow not he that writes a book must place the Title of it there where FINIS is wont to stand for when he hath concluded we will suppose that he hath made his Title and his promise good But Titles as I take it are usually impressed last As also Prefaces and Epistles though they be placed first are yet taken to be composed then when the work is done Pag. 1. Articles of Religion must not be injurious to the Churches growth or her members by tying them to the measure already obtained By the growth and measure you speak of you do not mean more clear illumination in respect of the minde or evident belief which is called Gradual Revelation for that is no way hindred by tying Christian people to Articles and forms of Confession But I finde where your trouble lyeth you are for Doctrinal Revelations which are in regard of the object or things revealed as if there were some points of our Confession that had no certainty and some others that being not commonly known are not yet received into it which may hereafter be found needfull to be beleeved as Chiliasme or Christs temporall kingdome and many other old lights that might again be set up new if once the people could be brought to forget those terms of prejudice Donatist Anabaptist Pelagian We had not as yet had our Articles and Catechismes if Popish Articles had not been broke through or gone beyond Because Articles and Confessions were once abused must they not now be made use of Simile est mater erroris The Anabaptists thought they must needs oppose Luther as much as Luther opposed the Pope How shall the people ever come to be grounded and rooted in the Faith if they be taught to think that they are still upon uncertainties no otherwise than they were before the Reformation I fear the late Synod went more from the English Catechisme than mine hath done by far especially in the points the Reviewer sticks at Here you make divers Parallels namely betwixt the Church-Catechisme that of the Synod and your own But I have not yet made any collation or comparison betwixt the Assemblies Catechisme and any other And I think there is no comparison to be made betwixt so great a number of men so well qualifyed whatsoever their Authority was pretending to walk in the beaten path of the reformed Churches And your self being but one singular person without any colour of Authoritie professing to forsake the common road And he that readeth the Title-page of your Catechisme and observeth what points you there promise to lay open would think that you ought in fair dealing to have made the nine and thirty Articles your Standard and rule of comparison for They contain the established Doctrine of the Church of England touching those controverted points but in the childrens Catechisme nothing is laid down purposely concerning them because it was not thought although you think so that they did sute the capacitie of children Yet because you seem to appeal to the English Catechisme as making much for you I am willing to deal with you there and thither we will go Although I expect you should evade and shift off all that can be brought against you out of it or else flie off from it as not obliging you in all things but onely in some things that you approve And these two I reckon to be much alike I know little difference in this matter betwixt you who think that Confessions which are to be subscribed unto be prejudicial to Christian growth and libertie and others whosoever they be who make confessions and articles useless by opposing and eluding their manifest meaning Out of the Church-Catechisme I propound to you two arguments in brief against your common Doctrine The first out of these words The holy Ghost sanctifyeth all the elect people of God Where is taught that Gods Spirit sanctifyeth those that be elected elected first and then sanctifyed You teach quite otherwise that God electeth those that are sanctifyed chooseth the godly man as you wrest the Psalm and those that beleeve and that are called that is engrafted into Christs mystical Bodie and you cannot finde where the Uncalled are said to be elected Secondly the English Catechisme teacheth the scholar thus That he is not able to serve God without his special Grace and he that hath learned this lesson well will never be brought to answer to the name Universalist or beleeve he can do it by Universal Grace So here is no accord in the points we stick at Sect. 3. His third page utters this uncharitable slander of me that I dread and deprecate all national establishment of Religion as sanguinary persecution Reply 'T is false That God establish his true Religion in this Nation I pray for and neither dread nor deprecate Is there no way to build
to obtain life eternal by Jesus Christ our Redeemer In the fourth Section he that is loth to read over all your book may finde enough for a taste how to judge of your dealing I did say that the meaning of those words Ephes 1. He chose us in him was not that God chose Christ first and in choosing him chose us I proved it out of the words in the seventh verse and the like manner of speech there in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sins I asked had Christ forgiveness first and we in him No. Now to have forgiveness is to be forgiven Mark 3.29 He that shall blaspheme against the holy Ghost hath never forgiveness Acts 10.43 Whosoever beleeveth in him shall receive remission of sins Redemption and forgiveness are here taken passively as they are taken actively so they may be said to be in Christ I might have said thus for so I meant Was Christ forgiven first and then we in him Was Christ redeemed first and we in him and then I had prevented that most absurd and impertinent vagarie of yours of partaking of a feast by coming into the house where it is with a great deal the like which when you wrote I wonder where your senses were wandring I call you back therefore if I may and I tell you We were forgiven and redeemed in Christ yet Christ was not forgiven and redeemed first So were we chosen in Christ and yet Christ was not chosen as we were chosen For the clearer understanding of this matter and of those words We were chosen in Christ it is needfull to distinguish The word Christ may be taken two ways First personally for the Son of God made man and suffering for us Secondly collectively as it signifies a mystical bodie whereof Christ is the Head a body congregated of Christ and all beleevers incorporate with him You take it in this latter sense as if we were chosen because we were united to him or after we were made one with him But I have shewed that it is to be taken in the former sense for the person of the Mediatour in whom that is by whom by whose bloud V. 7. we were ehosen to salvation or to be brought to life as he is taken not for a person but for a collective bodie so indeed not otherwise we may be said to be chosen into him but no way in him as you meâ—n You think If election of the Church do in nature or reason precede the choice of a Mediatour then we cannot be chosen in Christ because we are chosen before the confideration of him It is more irksome to speak to him that will not understand than to him that cannot Let me use a few words to your layman whosoever he was that had the good hap to espie this contradiction for this is likely to be that which you speak of in the twentieth chapter My friend you intend to build an house this is your end and purpose this you think of first next you think of hiring workmen and providing materials as means towards building the house and yet you cannot for the least moment of time think to build an house not having wherewithall without workmen and materials You intend to cross the haven this is your first purpose next you think of taking boat you think of one before the other and yet you think of them both together Likewise it is but one purpose desire or resolution of yours to make a voyage into France and to go a ship-board you intend these two both together yet in reason the first of these is first because you desire the other onely in order to that If neither you nor your friend can understand this you are more fit to meddle in other matters than in finding out contradictions Your Essay that names written in heaven should be the qualities of godly meek mercifull written ever in heaven but put upon men when they beleeve came out of Socinus's shop as I told you some where before though you have hammered it more then any other that I know of The names of beleevers are according to their frames and you quote Solomons Proverbs The wise in heart shall be called prudent I told you that qualities are not names Prudent is a qualitie so is righteous poor in spirit mercifull Here you answer somewhat nicely Prudence is the qualitie Prudent the name You shall not need to tell me of my new Logick I have enough left of my old to tell you that Prudence is a qualitie in the Abstract and Prudent is a qualitie no less in the Concrete so they are both qualities but neither of them any mans name But you as before you confounded qualities with names now confound Grammar with Logick as if those things which differ in the one must differ in the other also I can discern nothing further in this Chapter concerning which there is need of any notice to be taken or to be given I shall onely give you this my reason against this new Essay When we read that there are in heaven names written in a book it is borrowed from mens custome who are wont to set down in writing the names of certain persons in a book scrol or catalogue to the intent that their persons may be for sundry purposes the more certainly remembred in time to come So that though there be no book or writing with God yet is there somewhat like it and the thing it self is found among men But as for your kinde of book or writing a book full not of proper names but Adjectives or Qualities it is no where found that I can tell of neither know I where to look for it Therefore vnless you and yours can invent this you have invented nothing CHAP. XVII Jacob and Esau CHAP. XVIII Pharaoh I Dare trust any Reader with your xvii chapter throughout if his senses be but awake though they be not much exercised Onely I observe what encouragement you give him at the beginning while you explain your meaning of that in your Catechisme The Scripture says not that the Election of Jacob and the rejection of Esau were personal by personal evidently meaning as considered in their own persons without Christ for First you then explained your self in the very next answer thus Not personally but nationally therefore it is too bad tosay that you evidently meant any thing else than Nationally Secondly though something hath been said touching election personal and withall in Christ yet for Esau's rejection how that should be not personal but in Christ or not without him you should have helped your Reader in this who is not always of so quick invention as your self As for your xviii chapter I know nothing in it but may receive satisfaction either from what hath formerly been said or from what hereafter followeth CHAP. XIX Vessels of honour and dishonour Sect. 1. He saith I interpret a vessel of honour upon which any honour is conferred whereas I spake
never have laid any great weight upon that place Gal. 5.4 Ye are fallen from Grace for in the third ch v. 26. he saith ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus Such warnings and exhortations are usefull to all for as the secure are awakened and the unsound may hereby be made better than they are so are true beleevers held in that state which they have attained By fear of falling away they are preserved from falling away Care and watchfulness are spiritual graces of God whereby they continue stedfast When many of Christs disciples being offended left him their departure endangered the rest the twelve therefore he kept by him by asking them thus will ye also go away As for such impossibilitie of falling away as you speak of I know not any That which certainly shall not in the event come to pass may yet be possible in it self to come to pass For the Saints considered in themselves to fall away is a thing possible yea very probable such is their weakness such is their danger But upon supposition of Gods Decree and promise and preservation it is impossible that it should be They are as frail as glasses but they are held by a warie hand God will not suffer them to be tempted above their strength but knoweth how to deliver them out of temptation He will not suffer the rod of the wicked to rest to abide long upon the lot of the righteous lest the righteous put forth their hands to wickedness He shortens the days of trouble that the Elect be not born down nor sink under the burden And sometimes speedily takes them away lest malice should alter their understanding or deceit beguile their soul To prove that there is a difference betwixt true beleevers and Apostates besore their fall I alledged several places to which you have answered severally and largely But you have said nothing that hath made any of those testimonies to that purpose invalid The two first did shew not onely that there is a difference but that the ground of that difference is in Gods secret counsel To those two I shall onely add now some other the like and then conclude this chapter Joh. 17.12 None of them is lost but the son of perdition And what that signifies you cannot better understand than by conferring with a parallel place of the same subject namely Joh. 13.18 I speak not of you all I know whom I have chosen in each of these texts Judas is he that is excepted and in the one he is called the son of perdition in the other he is said not to be chosen and thence it was he fell away and was lost And that Election to life is spoken of there and not to Office is certain and evident for Judas was chosen to be an Apostle When the Jews in so great a part fell off from the true Church it was a very great offence How doth the Apostle remove it Rom. 11.7 Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for but the Election hath obtained it When some turned the Grace of God into wantonness S. Jude to prevent the scandal saith that such false teachers and their followers were not good at first and at best but such as crept in unawares and were before of old ordained to this condemnation And when the generalitie of the inhabitants of the earth did wonder after the Beast and worship him there is in serted a clause of difference betwixt them and others and that difference derived from the very fountain or foundation of God the Elect are excepted Revel 13.8 All whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world CHAP. XXIX The will of God IF it please the Reader to peruse first mine and then yours and but compare them together I suppose he will not think it needfull that any thing more be written now about the title or subject of this chapter When we are speaking of the will of God you betake jrour self to the Free will of man bringing forth such fragments as have often been served up I shall onely take notice of some other things which you have fallen upon no way belonging hither For you are like a valiant Gamester and will have at all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Joannes ad oppositum as you can hold up any thing that you have said you can oppose whatsoever another saith yea sometimes although it be your own opinion Sect. 2. But he says God is to be worshipped in spirit and truth now and not as before Christs coining in outward rites shadows and ceremonies which then bare a great part of Gods service I am glad M. H. is for such spiritual worship if it be in realitie for he may have it is likely a secret intention contrary to his revealed sayings as he signifies of God Soon after this about the beginning of your next Section you call it a Threed-bare distinction of A Revealed will and secret and like better of Conditional and Absolute I told you then you had often heard it and I like it the better for being common and ordinary You say little to it there and here you make a Jest upon it and a jest if it be a threed-bare one as this is is stark naught but if withall it be prophane and Lucianical it is the more abominable To understand and to make out the two-fold will of God manifestly delivered in holy Scripture it concerneth you as well as others and I think you cannot do it better than others have done For example Exod. 7.3 4. God commanded Pharaoh to let the people go at the very same time he hardened Pharaoh's heart that he might not let them go Yours of Conditionall and Absolute will not help the matter here unless you can tell what should be the condition in this case You that hold God willeth all men to be saved in your sense without any difference till they themselves make it not conferring one place of Scripture with another one principle of Faith with the rest must make two contrary wills or else deny whether directly or by consequence Gods omnipotence It being a most certain truth in Reason and in Religion gion that God doth whatsoever he will both in Heaven and in Earth But others say consonantly to other parts of Christian Divinity that Gods revealed will is not always properly a will but onely figuratively interpretatively or by way of likeness He is said to will because he seemeth to will in declaring what he willeth should be mans duty and what he will accept and approve of if performed Now because this is declared by the Law or Commandment therefore it is called his revealed will This is no way contrary to his will whereby he peremptorily determines what he himself will do and what shall inevitably come to pass which because he hath not discovered to us except matter of prophecy or promise is therefore called his secret will Or
abuses of Popery were to be reformed not onely the wel-minded laid to their hands but persons also worldly godless and enemies to Religion joyned with the rest in the destructive part but intended to promote Atheisme when they set themselves against Superstition Hereticks also whose opinions lay on that side were zealous in their manner but their zeal was more like Wild-fire which they threw in to have marred all if it might have been For after that Antiquity came to be a badge ot Popery then 1 whatsoever was found to have been practised by the Papists in Church-orders was for that reason rejected Not a stone must be taken from Babylon for a foundation or a corner If the least matter of all were yielded it was as a pepper-corn in acknowledgement of the Antichristian Government And 2 even the most sacred Articles of our Christian Faith have been denyed as having come from Rome and thither were to be returned So the name of Antichrist the Beast and the Dragon served the turne for many heresies for all profaneness A Discourse came forth entituled The storming of Antichrist a right proper and well chosen word of which they know the meaning who had experience of the Wars and laying siege to Towns and strong places and assaulting them storms of winde tempests of hail and of Lightning do spare nothing that is in their way having no regard shewing no mercy making no difference for being meer naturall Agents they always act according to their utmost power and might So describes the Poet his hardy Souldiers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not likening them to Wolves and Lions which have been known to relent and their mouths have been as it were stopped but they fought as it were a flame fell on like a tempest noting saith the great Scholiast 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they were irrationally impetuous violent without sense or reason without mean or measure And much like these stormers were some of those that went among our Reformers both first and last You seem to extend Beast-worship very far even to those matters in question betwixt us But you give no instance nor shall I insist upon any I know you can if you will distinguish betwixt Poperie and the Christian Religion and if you do not consider apart what belongs to one and what belongs to the other what to Errour and what to Truth you may soon do that which tendeth to the weakening and undermining of the whole building Divers of the Papists have twitted us with the Jews laying to our charge Judaisme for refusing some Apocryphal books and for condemning Image worship as the Jews do now and for saying that a man cannot forgive sins as they also said and for insisting upon the Law of Moses and the precedents of the old Testament to prove that unto Christian Kings belongeth the supremacy in ordering matters of Religion in a Nation he that argueth thus say they is more like a Jew than a Christian The Anabaptists had learned this Lesson too for when they were bent upon such a confusion as should take away the difference betwixt Clergie and Laitie they were wont upon occasion to revile the Priests and Levites as blinde and ignorant 〈◊〉 demanding of John the Baptist by what authority he did what he did as if observation of order in the Church and pretence of Authoritie in Gods worship and service were points of Judaical blindness and infidelity Against all these and such like let us remember that the Jews were once the onely true Church of God and our Christianity came to us from them and through their hands we are all but proselytes to their Church So that as they had once all the Substantials of the true Religion both for belief and practice we cannot suppose but that they do retain many of them still In like manner the Christian Religion came to us through the Church of Rome not from the Church of Rome and our profession is but to remove the additions and superstructures of the Papists by which the right belief and worship have been corrupted and to throw out the earth with which the Philistims had filled the well and stopped the springs Antichrists are many there is false worship on both hands Anarchie is beastly doing as well as Tyrannie and Confusion as much as Usurpation I cannot but think some prejudice a-against my person I know not wherefore being so meer a stranger to him hath clouded his reason By this Clause he that will may judge of all your book as of the sack by a handfull for it is like the rest full of confidence but void of reason as if your Doctrine were so blameless that nothing could be spoken against it Perhaps against your person some may harbour prejudice but against what you teach and write no man unless his reason be overclouded can justly except You should have been well assured first that there was any such prejudice born against you before you took such thought and put your self to a loss in seeking what might be the cause of it For my part I am as much to seek what should be any the very least ground of such a vain surmise Some little while after the comming forth of this your Piece a friend of mine and of yours too who doth nor much give his mind to read Controversies nor was at that time much inclined out of his good nature to pitie my condition did ask me thus Who bade you begin And because this question is very consonant to your sense I will now give you the Answer to it And first if my charge which is that I began be in reference to those multitudes of right-believing Christians who have a long time been offended at your Doctrine My Defence is this that if any other whosoever had before endeavoured to hinder the spreading of your errours then as I could not have begun so I would not have followed There arose indeed some contest between the Reverend Doctor and your self about Vniversity-learning but for other Heterodoxies of yours no man so far as I know gave notice or publick warning I began therefore because none other would though very many much better might But I suppose the meaning of the question was not why I rather than another but why I would begin with you when as you gave me no provocation But I pray consider well they are the Schismaticks who though they abide give just occasion unto others for to depart He that denies the debt begins the sute and he that invades my right sends for the process Will you not give others leave to defend their own against you and and to continue in the things that they have learned and contend for the Faith once delivered to them which you with your Innovations and inventions have corrupted you began when you taught and promoted so many opinions contrary to what we have received when you wrought upon the people to draw them after you when at