and received into the Church by a Judg that hath Authority thereto Not at all from Artic. XXXIV where it is declared That whosoever through his private Judgment wittingly and purposely doth openly break the Traditions and Ceremonies of the Church which be not repugnant to the Word of God and be ordained and approved by common Authority ought to be rebuked openly that others may fear to do the like as he that offendeth against the common Order of the Church and hurteth the Authority of the Magistrate and woundeth the Consciences of weak Brethren Not at all from Artic. XXXVI where it is declared That the Book of Consecration of Arch-bishops and Bishops and ordaining of Priests and Deacons doth contain all things necessary to such a Consecration and Ordaining neither hath it any thing which is of it self superstitious or ungodly And are not these part of the professed Doctrine of the Church of England But why chatechize I you thus far when you have before profess'd your Ignorance what is meant by the Church of England How then can you tell what the Doctrine of that Church is and whether or no or in what you agree and differ with it Till the new Doctrine about Infants was brought into the new Rubrick If you differ not at all from the old Doctrine of the old Rubrick as you would seem to tell us there needs no question about the new for let us view them well together The Old Rubrick thus That no Man shall think that any Detriment shall come to Children by deferring of their Confirmation he shall know for a Truth that it is certain by God's Word that Children being baptized have all things necessary for their Salvation and be undoubtedly saved The New more shortly thus It is certain by God's Word that Children which are baptized dying before they commit actual Sin are undoubtedly saved Where indeed the Preface of the former is omitted but nothing is taught for a Truth certain by God's Word but what was so acknowledged before For the Omission of that one Clause have all things necessary to their Salvation is sufficiently included in are undoubtedly saved and the inserting that other dying before they commit actual Sin tends rather to restrain than to enlarge the Proposition as the impartial Observer will easily judg And yet forsooth this new Doctrine as he slanders it sticks much with them who avouch themselves not to differ at all from the Doctrine of the Church of England till that new Rubrick which contains it was introduced And here is the Sum of his Doctrinal Corruptions in the Plural Number which we had mention of before And he hath yet another Fling at it before the end I read in the Rubrick of something about Infants certain by the Word of God but I never read in what Chapter or Verse it was Now must he not evidently affirm as much of the Old if he agree unto it as he would be thought to do Is it not there as express He shall know for a Truth that it is certain by the Word of God Is not that Fanatick Exception every whit as pertinent and agreeable there ' But I never heard in what Chapter or Verse it was What need of this I pray to either What Chapter or Verse As if Scripture Sence and Consequences were not as truly the Word of God as Scripture-Words and express Assertions That which is there dianoeticè as well as that which is there axiomaticè as some love to speak Or as if Holy Scripture were not before Chapter and Verse were determined in it But this is the doughty way of arguing which the Presbyterians have furnished the other Sects withal against themselves What Chapter and Verse saith so and so And this great Rebuker of other Sectaries seems mightily taken himself with it What Chapter and Verse saith that only Subscribers Swearers Declarers and Conformers are the Church of Christ and those that fear an Oath and Conformity are none of it This one would think were matter enough for many Verses ' Yet it is not in minutioribus that we differ from the Conformists So it appears God knoweth we think the Matters in difference very far from things indifferent Gather from it what you can We must gather from it then That they are not minute or small Matters upon which you are rejected and that the Church and you are not like to agree until either she renounce her Doctrine or you alter your Judgment about it We can therefore the more easily believe you when you say We have almost twelve years ago cried out even to Vnmannerliness that if possibly we might have been heard to the Reverend Prelates O drive not godly People from your Communion for nothing Vnmannerliness with a Witness But can any thing be of less weight than nothing Elsewhere you have it Do you excommunicate and drive from your several Parishes the Members of Christ for not eating with your Spoon And can there be any thing almost more minute or indifferent than that But elsewhere you are still more irreverent and in your own word unmannerly malè morati Do you silence us and depose us from the Ministry and forbid Baptism and the Lord's Supper to all that have not as wide a Swallow as your selves And yet all this while you meddle not with our Consciences It were obvious to retort that their Swallow was wide enough who could let down the Covenant Bishops and their Lands together and may claim Kindred with those on Record for straining at Gnats and swallowing Camels Why may not we in the allowed Places exercise our Ministry in baptizing the Children of any of your Flocks that shall desire it or giving them the Sacrament I yet understand not unless for avoiding your Envy and Displeasure Again What harm will it do you if a N. C. preach by you if many follow him if some prefer him before you Yea further Brethren what if the Nonconformable Ministers do give the Sacrament to some as you do to others What if they call themselves a Church or exercise Discipline which without need I would not have them do what harm will this be to you or others Were they once permitted we may perceive how they would be still hitching forward and encroaching step by step For I note these Passages only as a Specimen of those Liberties which they design to take from their Toleration And yet we must believe him We never desired to play the Bishops in other Mens Diocesses What! not in the Bishop of Worcester's not in the Bishop of London's c But to the Questions briefly Why may we not do so and so Or What harm will it do to you or others We may answer as the Presbyterians themselves sometimes did their Independent Brethren The whole Church of England in short time will be swallowed up with Distraction and Confusion And the Mischiefs in the Church will have
in disdainful Pride and Surliness and into the way of Seekers that were to seek for a Ministry for a Church a Scripture and consequently a Christ I have many times heard it break out into more horrid Reviling of the best Ministry and godliest People than ever I heard from the most malignant Drunkard I have lived to see it put to the Question in that which they call'd the Little Parliament Whether all the Ministers of the Parishes of England should be put down at once When Love was once killed in their own Breasts by those same Principles which I here detect I have seen how confidently the Killing of the King the Rebellious Demolishing of the Government of the Land the Killing of many Thousands of their Brethren the Turnings and Overturnings of all kind of Rule even that which they themselves set up have been committed and justified and prophanely fathered upon God These with more such Fruits of Love-killing King-killing Principles and Divisions I have seen And if after so long so sad so notorious Experience you would have me still to be tender of the Brood of Hell I mean these Love-destroying Ways and to shew any countenance to that which really hath done all this you would have me as blind as the Sodomites and as obdurate as Pharaoh and his Egyptians and utterly resolved never to learn the Will of God or to regard either Good or Evil in the World The same Sins are continued in without Repentance And how guilty are those Ministers of the Blood of Souls that will not tell Men of their Sin and Danger He that after the Experiences of this Age will think it fit to follow the Conduct of Injudicious Zealots is left as inexcusable as almost any Man that never had a Sight of Hell Preach Faith and Repentance the common Catechism-Principles which are of greatest need and use and require the greatest Skill in Preachers the Baptismal Covenant the Creed the Lord's Prayer the Decalogue and do not on pretence of going higher trouble the Peoples Heads with unnecessary things nor turn them after vain Janglings much less against Conformity or any thing that reflecteth upon the Parish-Ministers You may quickly kindle in your Religious Hearers a factious opinionative kind of Zeal that shall make them Firebrands in the Church and no whit tend to save their Souls and you may deceive your selves by exercising an opinionative Zeal whilst you think you are doing the Work of Christ If there be any among you that by such a sinful unpeaceable Zeal will be censuring and deriding Conformists and making them odious to the Hearers rebuke them sharply and cherish not their Sin And if they hear not rebuke them before all and if they amend not cast them out of your Communion And as you love your selves the Church and others let not the proudest censorious People be your Masters Take heed of that base complying Humour that maketh some they dare not displease them lest they should call them as bad as they do the Conformists But if you come to this it is the Women and Boys that have least Knowledg and most proud censorious Passions that will be the Church-Governours Keep your Authority let them take it how they will and be not servile Followers of the Peoples Errors and Irregular Ways If you set your selves in a dividing Way secretly to rejoice at the Conformable Minister's disparagement and to draw as many from him as you can you are but Destroyers of the Church of God Call your selves what you will I call you Destroyers if you are Dividers Preach zealously for Love against Love-killing envious Zeal Teach them to know that all Men are imperfect and faulty and so is all Mens Worship of God and that he that will not communicate with faulty Worship must renounce Communion with all the World and all with him Unteach them that false Conceit that all Book-Prayers are unlawful yea or all that is imposed Read over to them those Psalms which have frequent Repetitions and Responses that they may know that such are not unlawful If it be lawful for the People to sing God's Praise it is not unlawful to say it Do you doubt of the Consequence Prove to us what difference there was between the Ancient Singing and our Laudatory Saying and you will find your Task too hard Unteach them that paultry Principle of placing Religion in being cross to the rest of the Congregation as when they will not stand up at the Creed or at the Hymns of Praise when Reason and Vse tell us that standing up is a convenient praising Gesture and when the Primitive Churches from an unknown Original calling it an Apostolical Tradition unanimously commanded Standing only in all the Lord's Days Adorations which because we cannot now well observe it is decently confined to Praises only And in this the Conformists do better and more decently than you And it is sorry Perverseness to fly from a better Way because others use it Unteach them their unwarrantable Self-made Tests of Church-Communion as if there must be any other Proof of Holiness needs given besides a sober Profession of Christianity that is of the Baptismal Covenant not provedly contradicted by Heresy or a wicked Life If we are Nonconformists because we cannot comply with all invented uncapable Terms of Communion from others why shall we make such Engines to divide the Church our selves and do the very things which we condemn in others Unteach them their expectations that all the Church must be satisfied of the Sincerity of each Communicant or that the Presence of the Vnworthy who are admitted by their own false Profession or by the Ministers Fault doth make it unlawful to others there to communicate The Book called the Cure of Church-Divisions will tell you more such dividing Principles which you must unteach them The Ministers that have bred and cherished these have been our Subverters and are our Shame and such Principles are the Shame of too many well-meaning honest People Wo to the selfish Teachers that for their Personal Interest dare not contradict them but cherish them into their dividing Errors In a word Help to save Religious People from being superstitious while they cry out against Superstition And make them know that a Religion which consisteth in our own Modes and Ways of Worship and in decrying other Mens may stand with all unmortified Sin and that the Flesh is no more denied by sitting than by kneeling Brethren suffer me to tell you that pleasing the ignorant Professors Humours is a Sin that sheweth us too humane and carnal and hath always sad Effects at last If any say We shall thus lose our People and the Separatists who will cherish all such Humours will have them all I answer We have too long tried the pleasing Way already and see that we cure not but cherish their
them from all unpeaceable Opposition to what they dare not use or to the Government of the Church Mark it These should have been the Heads of your Petition for us Well but is this all No you should have remembred the good People somewhat too Only let not the People who scruple Conformity be therefore denied Church-Communion and Sacraments Let us now a little view the Particulars And first for the Ministers That the Door of Entrance be not barr'd by any other Subscriptions Professions or Oaths than what were used in the Churches of Christ for 600 Years or till the Exaltation of the Papacy We will not now dispute about that Calculation But this taken by it self might possibly exclude the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and Subscribing the Doctrine of the XXXIX Articles too for before the Exaltation of the Papacy there was no occasion of disclaiming it or declaring against it as there we do in sundry of those Articles Here therefore comes in the Exceptions ' Besides the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Understand it So far as they can stretch themselves to take them in their own Sence And the Subscribing of the Doctrine of the Church of England in the XXXIX Articles according to the Thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth The former gives the colour of Good Subjects this latter of good Church of England Men. But observe it carefully 'T is not all the 39 Articles which yet are the Doctrine of the Church of England they are but for some of them only called by them the Doctrine of the Church of England as distinguished wholly from all Matters of Discipline or Government as they sometimes explain themselves And therefore they add that other Phrase ' According to the Thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth to unriddle their meaning to some and at the same time conceal it from the Vulgar Let as consider briefly the Words of that Statute Declare his Assent and subscribe to all the Articles of Religion which only concern the Confession of the true Christian Faith and the Doctrine of the Sacraments comprized in a Book imprinted entituled Articles Whereupon it was agreed by the Arch-Bishops and Bishops of both Provinces c. Now this it seems they construe thus or to this effect Only to those of all the Articles which concern the Confession of the true Christian Faith and the Doctrine of the Sacraments But the Words of the Statute run gramatically thus To all the Articles of Religion which only concern viz. all which Articles of Religion only concern the Confession of the true Christian Faith and the Doctrine of the Sacraments And that this was the Intendment of the Law appears from what follows there That the Person thus assenting and subscribing shall bring from the Bishop or Guardian of Spiritualties in Writing under his Seal Authentic a Testimonial of such Assent and Subscription and openly on some Sunday read both the said Testimonial and the said Articles That is certainly all the 39 Articles the Book of Articles and what he is to read openly he is supposed to have first assented and subscribed to And again in the same Statute there follows a Penalty for maintaining or affirming any Doctrine directly contrary or repugnant to any of the said Articles But if we explain it by currant Practice there can be no manner of doubt left about it We have seen briefly what they could swear and subscribe to let us mind next what they most stick at And one would guess by those words till the Exultation of the Papacy they should stick at nothing but what had some known tendency thereunto But the matter is otherwise the Door of Entrance is not to be barr'd by any other Subscriptions Professions or Oaths besides these by Name here excepted By a Review then of what else is enjoined by Law we must conclude what they cannot yeild unto First then They cannot declare their unfeigned Assent and Consent to the Liturgy and Ceremonies with the Form or Manner of making ordaining and consecrating of Bishops Priests and Deacons 2 dly They cannot declare that it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take up Arms against the King and that they do abhor that traiterous Position of taking Arms by his Authority against his Person or against those that are commissionated by him 3 dly They cannot declare that they do hold there lies no Obligation upon them nor any other Person from the Oath commonly called the Solemn League and Covenant to endeavour any Change or Alteration of Government either in Church or State and that the same was in it self an unlawful Oath and imposed upon the Subjects of this Realm against the known Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom 4 thly They cannot take the Oath of true and Canonical Obedience to the Bishop in all things lawful and honest and so in like manner that against Simony and that for Residence on Vicarages without a Dispensation For neither of these are in their Exception All these Bars therefore to the Door of their Entrance must be removed And it concerns Authority to consider well what Judgment they proclaim themselves of both as to Church and State and what Propositions they yet maintain who profess they cannot do these things and what their Practice upon them in time is like to be that is ubi adsunt vires when ever they are able Which is more certainly to be gathered from the Observation of what it hath been in Times already past than such bare Words as are given for the present To whom therefore that of Salvian is but too applicable Parum est quod nudis assertionibus dicitis ipsi actibus vestris contra vos testes estis But then an Admission upon this their own limited Subscription will not serve unless those who dare not use the Liturgy and Ceremonies may have leave to preach in the Churches which use them A proper Expedient by degrees to worm out the Use of both Nor is the Salvo added Under Laws which shall restrain them from all unpeaceable Opposition to what they dare not use or to the Government of the Church extensive enough to prevent the Mischief For we must needs conclude that those who dare not use the Liturgy and Ceremonies dislike the Government and believe these things highly sinful For so we are told It is Sin and no small or tolerable Sin which their Consciences fear And what they so believe they will certainly upon all opportunities directly or indirectly bear witness and caution against and labour to withdraw others from How indeed shall they be faithful in their Office upon their own Principles if they should do otherwise To ' be silent and comply is to be cruel to the Sinner and hâ—mself And who can do it that believeth Death and Judgment So we had it even now How guilty are those Ministers of the Blood of â—ouls that will not tell Men of their Sin and Danger So elsewhere Next for the people