downe steepe hills that is to your owne swinge But you could soon reply to me that not to abstaine for every offence though in a case commanded by lawfull authoritie were soul-murder and against the sixth Commandement and that the authority so commanding were Antichristian which how it may agree with a Legislative power in King or in Parliament and how comply with the Presbyteriall or Parochiall government more then with that of Bishops I professe I do not understand all superioritie all imposition all publique order and common decency is a popish and antichristian usurpation of Christs scepter Your third endeavour is against the discipline of the Church in exercising the power of Excommunication this you prove to be another branch of Popery because it is from the Church of Rome you may with the same pains argue Christ and his Apostles to have been popish who are the undoubted authors of that power but you doe well to deny all censures having already denyed all Lawes Superiors and Judges least you might happen be punished for this contumacie You tell us of the Homilies and what doe you think are meant by the third mark the true discipline there it must be either this of ours or that of yours yours are not at all that we have heard of nor needs there discipline where there is neither Law nor injunction if this of ours the homilies stand up and witnesse against you but your aime is to prove the Church of England by the book of Homilies to be no Church at all I pray you how were they Homilies but by the Church this is to prove by a Church that we have no Church at all a Logick indeed that beseems your conventicles where repugnantia in adiecto is attended by willfull malice and grosse ignorance Now this cleer deniall of a Church how agreeth it with your advise of reformation motus supponit non facit subiectum nor can we reforme that Church which as yet is not gathered together I know by your breath you are an actuall Separatist who have some years agoe condemned the whole body of this Church to hell and perdition though now to insinuate your self the better you appear as your master before you sometime as an Angel of light You adde the not due Administration of the Sacraments Did you never think that rightly done till in Germany the holy Supper with all reverence to that sacred mystery be it spoken was given by one of your number after some long winded orations from the back of an oyster board to his fellow sitting Communicanter in brown bread and small beare It was say you the pride and delicacie of the Antichrist that first used a wheat loaf and wine nor will you have us in this though in other things to the very communicating in an upper room as you doe and after supper follow the example of Christ he you tell us horrâ—sco referâ—us was content with the ordinary and native elements of the Countrey and so must we be too But the Church of England doth no lesse hate the absurd Popish Transubstantiation then your foolish sacramentary bare representing signes both sacrificall and Sacramentary let them goe packing for her and so that other Sacrament of Baptisme though you have vainly nibbled about the signe of the crosse no lesse hatefull and Idolatmus to you then ridiculous and shamefull to the Pagans of old yet when it comes to the push of an argument you deserve nothing but Virgils description of his evanishing apparitions Ingenti trepidare metu parstollere vocem Exiguam incoeptus clamor frustratur hiantes In spight of you and all wrangling opposites the Church of England as the purity so shall ever retein her decency as beseemeth so high actions in dispensing these sacred mysteries The restraint and edicts you complain of were much indeed against your Catholike gift of preaching but now I hope you have repayed that losse when not a Sow-gelder among you who makes not hold with a tub for his pulpit Dii fi qua est Coelo pietas quae talia curet persolvant grates dignas The fourth plea is against the root of all bitternesse the very heart and lungs of the Antichrist the government of Bishops each casuall mishap in them must be an errour so will your Rabbies have to be who deeming themselves lesse in imployment then in merit doe heartily raile against that which they heartily desire the Rochet This you say is not of divine therefore it must be of diabolicall institution can you giue a reason of this consequence yes I will helpe your to it and from your owne grounds all Lawes impositions superiorities ordinancâ—s from men are in your opinion and this is no weak one usurped tyrannicall â—ntichristianty and against the prerogative of Christ who is the sole 〈◊〉 to the commonwealth of Israel in his spirituall Kingdome these are your wise religious thoughts but what say you to your parishes these were not instituted by Christ here perhaps you will slip me and adhere to family yea personall discipline and withall bring your warrant for it that Paul did send greeting to the Church at the house of Priscilla and Aquila neither can I reach you here I know not what customes you use in your rebaptization what say you of meeting together in private houses and expounding a peece of Scripture for this you will alledge Apostolicall practice and the same necessity because of the persecution and the same otherwise the Argument were nought infallibly too what say you of the giving of the holy Supper to women this sure you dare not deny least the Diaconists punish you if I should remember you here of the baptizing of infants the distinction of Apocryphical canonicall Scripture the Apostles creed you would presently stifle me with the noyse of tradition the first and last of those you have taken an order with and for the other you desire no more testimony from or of scripture then your owne that is of your own spirit you are so naked in your outward worship as the wrestlers of old it is impossible to lay hold upon you and so grumbling against all church custome and laws for what is not commanded in scripture is to you contramandat and shall so be to us too if you grant a generall power and rest not only upon particulars that I can finde nothing materiall of publike order and decencie to lay to your charge I must therefore goe about to prove the government of Bishops to be of Divine institution or nothing and here I will take the surest way that is to shew the Divine institution of Episcopacy from Christ himselfe not from the precept and practices of the Apostles else you would sâ—ip out of my fingers and tell me that if not by the blessed Apostles themselves as one of yours said yet in their time this mistery of iniquity of Antichristianisme did begin to worke My assertion is therefore and with better ground then your
honourable House of Commons against whom by this reason you have taken up the bucklers will provide for that fire that gangrene of yours which hath already inflamed the bed-straw and ceased almost upon the very heart of the Kingdome In your sixt answer you ld delt your strokes about you your first blow is at the Liturgy this you observe to bee popish in two respects First in regard of the whole frame and matter of it as being translated out of the Romish Latine Liturgie But is it not the Romish Liturgie translated That is are there any thing in the Masse Booke which is not in the booke of service if your answer be negative I leave you to bee hissed at but if affirmative What advantage have you gotten by this envious calumny Doe you thinke we may not use what is in the Masse booke consonant to Scripture and purest antiquity to say otherwise were to deny the Lords prayer and the Decalogue because they are there Indeed I thinke you intend no lesse then a perfect reformation from Rome that is a flat denyall of all that ever Rome maintained so much doth your new Creed proport God grant you doe not deny Christ to be the Sonne of God because the Devills confessed him to be so Tell mee in good earnest are you so silly as to conceive that there have beene Heretiques before your selves who durst adventure to have nothing common with preceding Christianity And why may there not be some few pearles in that dung-hill the masse-booke If these be culled out and according to Scripture and the best patterne of ancient Liturgies most judiciously framed for the service of our Church what can malice or ignorance say against it no greater errour in you and our other enemies of Rome than not to distinguish betwixt the purging of an old Church and the building of a new they upbraid us because they say it is so you because you thinke it is not so all must be admitted from them errours with truths all rejected by you truthes with errors they destroy the perfection of the Scripture you the being of the Church you no lesse enemies to the authoritie of this then they to the beliefe of that But let both of you roare like the Lyonesse bereaved of her whelps and mixe heaven and earth together by your lowings Naaman shall be the same man to us before and after his washing wee will in despight of papists cleanse the leprosie in spight of you retaine the substance you mention the late parallel in a Mathematicall sense justly so called for as Lines parallel cannot be in one point coincident so neither the Service booke with that of the Masse he is an ungratious sonne of the Church who hath falsly invented these whoredomes and they the unworthy off-spring of such a mother if they rest unrevenged Meane time what a death it is to thinke of the sport and advantage our watchfull enemies will be sure to make of our self-confession that we have the same publike worship which in them we doe condemne as heresie as idolatrie what exporbrations what triumph of theirs will hence ensue How shall we argue against them without bespattering our owne faces in time to come all our helpe is that the Treatise it selfe the parallell is so ridiculous a peece that it will bee thought the dreames of a sleeping person and they say Dormientes non tenentur de jâ—re we are not answerable for the fact You tell us you omit to say what you cannot you dare not say all your frivolous exceptions are so fully answered by the learned Mason judicious Hooker and others that it will be three ages yet ere you attaine to so much judgement as to understand their discourses why doe you gull the world with these bravadoes such generall flashes and when it comes to the close to the dispute frustra comprensa manus affugit imagâ— Par levibus ventis volucrique fimillima somâ—â— No word of you then if we dare call the settled Lawes of Church and State in question we shall by the meanest of five thousand in England stop your blacke and ignorant mouthes and make you confesse there is nothing conteined in that Booke which is not agreeable with Scripture suteable to Antiquitie and allowable by the confessions and writings of the best reformed Churches and Divines in Europe And you Sir who hath made all this dinne how should a man finde your out either to convert you or to be converted by you your name it seemes was affrighted of the title-page but it may be you had none and that this libell hath been penn'd by you in the interiâ—â— betwixt your renunciation of that name you had from the Church of England and your anabaptization You adde there is vitious things animus meminisse horret that runne thorow all the veines of the Service Booke all the letters of the Alphabet cannot furnish censures for this blasphemous Rabshakeh God rebuke thee Satan Sufficiently discovered by whom in whose age Did your Separatists ever produce any thing upon this subject but lazie indigested fables as farre from learning as their authors from sense King Arthurs storie a tale of Robin Hood or the Bookes of Chivalrie were ever thought more profitable non-sense more judicious stuffe Your second generall respect is The imposition of the Liturgie upon all mens consciences let the matter be never so landable yet the manner the imposition is a wile of the Antichrist Here I entreat Geneva to answer you whose Church hath an imposed a set forme of Liturgie and whose worthiest men Calvin and Beza doe stoutly maintaine the Churches power in prescribing Ceremonies and Orders for Unitie and Peace sake It were easie to have loaden the Margine with quotations if I had not abhorred the ostentive foolishnesse of your sect. Who runnes may reade here that in terminis terminantibus you brand all superioritie Ecclesiasticall whether of King Church or Parliament for all these are included in this imposition with the minsing titles of Popery and Antichristianisme if this be the reformation you intend that no law can please you much good may it doe you and those that desire it I am confident the Church and State of England are not so wearie of themselves as to become slaves to your fancie this perhaps may fit America where there is no government at all but how it may subsist with a being of a kingdome here I understand it not Popery you say is Antichristianisme hence every Papist must be the Antichrist nor stay you here but bring the matter home from Italie to England and tell us by a necessarie consequence that not Bishops onely but all Superiours doe oppose and overthrow the Kingly office of Christ which is incommunicable to any creature and power in heaven or earth bona verba quaeso The Scripture you bring 2 Ioh. 22. is as farre from the point as you from truth and judgement Speake out dare you say it in open termes though
Judges or your selves determine the integrity of the Law if they why doe not you attend their determination how is it that the hand must reforme the head the people their Prince and doe you thinke petitions covenants and insurrections the surest gradations to the Kingdome of Heaven But if your selves onely what need have you of Judges Magistracie and Trienniall Parliaments are to you but cyphers and visible nothings your consent is the figure which makes the number for if old Lawes be to be repealed it is sufficient if you say These are against the Word of God no more obedience from you your Sic volo sic jubeo is more than powerfull the wall of each Citie must to the ground at the voyce of your rams-hornes And if new Lawes be to be made it seemes it is you that truch with the Scepter unlesse your wise heads finde them agreeable to the Word of God all is voyde ipso facto What language is this Is it not the Dialâ—ct of rebellion the very {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the Tactus physicus of all disorder mutinie and confusion Now let the world judge betwixt us whether or not this your Doctrine strikes home to the very life of government and destroyes it insensibly as the worme that Gourd of Jonas every man by this ipso facto of yours is left with a supreame power to bee King and Priest to himselfe Your third ground is of the same bullion and carryeth your Image that is of Schisme and Democracie You have vowed against all Popery and finding the particulars mentioned to be so you will have no more communion with them What if you should finde the Decalogue and the Lords Prayer as you have already the Creed to be Popish must not all the Principles of our Religion for your pleasure be drawne within the verge of a thundring abjuration nor is this feare in vaine your precisest Gospellers already deny the Law as only suteable to the Climate of the Jewes and some of your best Rabbies make it a case of conscience not to say the Lords Prayer that Magicum canticum as they tearme it Pontificorum if therefore this wantonnesse of yours bee not restrained I appeale to your selves that is to prejudice and faction it selfe if we shall have more certainty of Religion left us then what may subsist with the ebbing and flowing of your distempered and Moone-changing braines It is your next care to draw the Parliament to your party but there is no communication betwixt light and darkenesse nature hath taught all Entities to intend their owne preservation nor can that Honourable Court forget its beeing and ioyne with you plant you at such a distance whether your antipathy may reach you shall no lesse exhaust the priviledges and authority of that most honourable meeting then the Cabage doth the sap and life and vigour of the noble Vine can this bee more evident than by the case in hand where you take the Supremacie upon you and with intollerable pride and foolishnesse presumes to give us the infallible sense and meaning of the Parliament I know you had no such Commission from their Honours as to bee their trenchman and to print a Declaration for them But let us examine your reasons First They intended the Protestation against all Papery It is granted but are you not like the doore that turneth all day upon the hinges and never changeth its place Have you yet proved these things to be Popish nay though you had which you shall never doe rumpantur utilia codro were the probabilities of your arguments a warrant good enough for your reformation without the approbation of your Superiours you indeed never desire a better whilst you doe what seemes good in your owne eyes acknowledging no King in Israel But who gave you authority to cleanse the Temple unlesse you mantaine that all power is from the people your hands and that you may stop the wel-spring the fountaine when the fit takes you Secondly You remember us that the Honourable House of Commons will not have the Protestation extended to the maintenance of any forme of worship discipline and government nor of any Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England and therefore they condemne them as Popish What a wild consequence is this if that pious Judicatory did not finde it convenient as it is not to assert the grounds of Doctrine and Discipline with the same oath did they therefore condemne all as Antichristianisme that they did not is cleare to any that will not shut his eyes first from the maine distance they put betwixt Popery and Popish Innovations and the forme of Worship Discipline Government and Ceremonies of the Church of England interserted by such a period as your ends shall never be able to draw together Secondly from their laudable and religious practice in being at all occasions present at the service of the Church wherein none but Familists who doe conforme themselves to any publike worship can imagine their integrity and noblenesse for all the world would prevaricate if they had but thought much lesse declared the Liturgie as you would have it to be the mass-masse-booke And for the government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops this is the heell you would most willingly bruise because it bruiseth your head it is no lesse evident that the protestation doth not condemne that First from their actuall sitting in the House should these members integrate that body if they were already adjudged as â—ims of the Antichrist this were a too heterogenious fancie Secondly what needed the late dispute concerning the present Discipline if the sentence had beene already past Thirdly would so considerable men for honesty wisedome and power of that number whose reasons militates for Episcopacie have stood up in defence of a maine branch of Popery and not have beene ashamed if not punished for publike maintaining the Antichrist and contradicting their late vow and order These reasons nill you will you doe convince you that it was not the intention of the Parliament as you to arme them against Ecclesiasticall persons and orders in every corner of the kingdome would beare the people in hand to protest against though it seemed not fitting to protest for the present Discipline Government and Ceremonies of the Church if you had a fore-head you would be ashamed of this boldnesse but your obduration hath no more sense Quam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes These great patrons of Church and State shall no doubt punish this malepert saucinesse of yours for their love to peace and truth cannot permit such a firebrand to belie their intâ—ntion and abuse the credulous simplicity of the multitude I am confident this reply of mine shall first visit you in the Gate-house Did you I beseech you ever thinke it possible that the roarings and out-cries of such braying schismatikes as your selfe could have induced the honourable Court of Parliament to change upon a sudden
indeed you say as much that the King and Parliament because of the Liturgie imposed have denyed Jesus to be Christ Tiburne for you if you doe You indeed seem rather stained with this blasphemie who hath boldly and prophancly averred that bowing at that sacred name is idolatrie and as you jeere with the bad thiefe on the crosse Jesu-worship But let me from your own principles use one argument against you whosoever prescribeth to their people a set forme of prayer doe Lord it over the conscience and are the very Antichrist but your extemporarie prayers in publike are to your people a set forme of prayer you therefore are the Antichrist The major is your owne the subsumption is proved by this inevitable dilemma when you pray before your hearers either it is as their mouth to God or for your selves only if you say the last you contradict the action it selfe your expressions and the cause of your meeting and if the first must not the people joyne with you in word or at least in thought and is not this to bee stinced and tyed to aforme of prayer how raw and senselesse so ever By your sole Law-giver you expresse your thoughts of authoritie you can heare of no generall commission for ordering the House of God as place and time shall require but pardon me to beleeve the Apostle better then you who hath not in vaine appointed this qualification Omnia fiant decenter ordine if the Kings and States of Europe would bee pleased from this your tenet to learne what a moath a cancer-worme you are to all Superioritie and Iurisdiction you would be sent novos quaeritare orbes And for this cause the Pope say you is proved to be the Antichrist in that hee fitteth in and over the Temple of God that is as you please to Paraphrase it The consciences of men it had beene well you had spoken with application you are the onely men I know who must have all mens consciences squared by the supposition of your owne The will-worship you name is truely that you practise that is an affected contradictorious way in the service of God to Scripture to Antiquitie to the Church you live in to Discretion yea to Christianitie it selfe If by a Liturgie devised by men you understand mans devise it is a grosse calumnie a notorious untruth not a syllable in that Booke which is not either as the greater part the words of Scripture it selfe or cleerely deducible in the very Phrase from thence if your sense be that it is imposed by humane power you are no lesse mistaken there is either a particular warrant from Scripture or at the least a generall Commission granted for the ordering of the House of God which extends to the full latitude of the Booke if you had either impartialitie to conceive aright or conscience to obey but it may be you meane that men have contrived the Booke of Liturgie so they have the Apostles Creed which perhaps you for the same reason have rejected nor was ever the Church of God since the first Congregation of the Jewes in a politicke bodie to your last and worst dayes without a publike forme of service and worship We bid you therefore with Saint Augustins Erigere scalâ—â— and goe up to heaven alone but againe Datâ— veniaâ—â— nos non credimus that all the Churches of the Christian world have beene over-laid with Idolatrie and Antichristianisme till this late one of yours Having choaked as you think the Liturgie with this illpeec't discourse of yours concerning the Antichrist your second onset is upon the Ceremonies of the Church these you say because of mans devising and imposed upon the Conscience are also Popery you give no new reason nor I any new answer onely this there is no greater errour committed by you Sectaries then that because the Church of Rome hath thrust upon us some unnecessary many superfluous Ceremonies you would have the reformation to have none at all not confidering that Ceremonies as the hedge doe fence the substance of Religion from the indignities that prophanenesse and irreligion oftentimes put upon it Ceremonies though in the particular that is This or that be not necessarie in the generall they are how long we are men and do inhabite these our dull bodies we had much need of some visible helps to stiâ—re up our Devotion and to give a being a continuitie to publike decencie and order It is true the inward worship of the heart is the great service of God but the outward worship of God is the great witnesse to this whereby our light shineth to the world that men may glorifie our Father which is in Heaven now no outward worship without Ceremonies they the ancienter superfluity and Superstition laid aside the better so they fit time and place for you your are so spirituall though some think you no lesse carnall then your neighbours I am afraid your Religion may evapour in words turne in the smoak of a thin airy profession and as no substance of good works so leave no visibility of worship behind it though now while the heat of a party keeps in the fire you seem to have some zeal in your breasts if you were settled on your dregs and after this great motion returned to your cold bloud it is very possible you shall have no Religion 〈◊〉 all It were not hard to tell you here what happinesse Christians doe enjoy by the wholsome constitutions of a Church or State what peace what unity what concord what increase of â—â—ll pâ—ety and vertue from thence And unity if it be not nature it selfe it is the first principle riveted by the hand of nature no essence no action without this sicknesse and Rebellion the two great confusions of the naturall and politique body do evidence this truth no subsistence no continuation of other but by a first cause a prime agent even your discipline must have unity and order in it if it have life and motion and this the more generall it is the better It s true the extension of good is not its touchstone yet this doth not hinder it to be communicative and that to the dimension of the body which is to be governed But now the matter imposed is left in its own nature indifferent still though not so in the practice and why this very same restraint enlargeth then Christian liberty for otherwise they would be in conscience obliged to abstain from every thing that the nice and peevish humorist should conceive to be offensive now being tyed by a Law they may use their freedome yea must preferre a necessary duty to an imaginarie scandall But this were to digresse nor are you for such peaceable thoughts for you love that order and not any besids it that may be raked out of the ashes of Monarchy but your late injuries meeting with its discretion will teach a necessity of foresight not to adventure huge bodies as you are quia suâ— feruntur pondere