contribute towards making him acquainted with the whole Body of the Scriptures 2. But then Secondly I charge you with casting out the reading of the Word of God from most of your Publick Assemblies Insomuch that in many of your Meetings setting aside a Verse or two for a Text or Quotation at the discretion of the Teacher the Voice of God is never Publickly heard amongst you This Mr. Boyse censures p. 92. as a bare-fac'd Untruth but your selves shall be Judges First then I have proved that Reading the Scriptures for the Instruction of the People is a Publick Ordinance of God Chap. 3. Sect. 1. and tho' it is not determined how much we ought to read at a time yet it ought to be so Ordered that the diligent Hearers may in a competent time be acquainted with the whole Body of the Scripture and in this I have the Concurrence of your Directory Now if you can Name but one Meeting in the North of Ireland where this has been Observed Mr. Boyse may have some Ground to contradict me but the Case is far otherwise you have thrown this Orderly Reading of the Holy Scriptures not only out of most or many of your Meetings but out of all of them 2. But further I appeal to your selves whether any of your Ministers ever read one Portion of Scripture but what was either designed for a Text to a Lecture or Sermon or a Quotation If any one pretend the contrary I must desire him to name the Time and Place that I may reprove those Informers that Mr. Boyse affirms p. 92. have so greatly imposed on me But till the Time and Place be named my assertion is literally true and in a larger sense then I expressed it I heartily wish you who are Teachers would amend this fault and I shall then acknowledge that this part of my Book is Effectually Answered and of no further force against you And let me tell you that your complyance in this would beget an honour and esteem in the People for Reading the Scriptures Publickly which is an Institution of God and satisfie the World that you have a greater value for the Word of God then for your own Expositions which no Impartial Considerer will ever believe whilst you allow it no place in your Meetings but when you can have leisure to bring in your own Expositions And sure it seems strange that you can allow at least an hour for a Sermon of your own Composing and cannot allow 10 minutes for the Word of God which is the Truth of the Case however Mr. Boyse endeavours to palliate it A third Mater of Fact denied by Mr. Boyse is That a Man may frequent your Meetings all his Life and yet have no security or hardly possibility of Learning from your Publick Teaching all the great Mysteries of his Religion This he censures p. 83. as a gross and shameless Accusation and advances it as a known Truth that the great Mysteries and Principles of the Christian Religion are not seldomer taught in your Pulpits than in ours Now to discover whether I deserve the hard words which Mr. Boyse gives me on this account I desire you to consider 1. That the great Mysteries of our Religion are the Conception Birth Passion Resurrection Ascension and final coming of our Saviour to judge the quick and the dead together with the Doctrine of the Trinity in whose Name we are Baptised and the descent of the Holy Ghost 2. That we in our Church have a certain time appointed us every Year for the Teaching each of these and our Ministers do professedly handle each of them in their discourses on these times So that every one who desireth to be informed concerning them is sure at a certain time of the Year to have a full discourse in every Parish on each of them in Order to the Explaining and Inculcating them with the uses and effects 3. As to your Ministers there lies no Obligation on them to go thro' these Mysteries in any such time nor indeed in their whole Lives And whereas Mr. Boyse alledges p. 83. that The Directory requires that Ordinarily the subject of the Ministers Sermon shall be some Text of Scripture holding forth some principal or head of Religion This Obligation is taken off by the following Words which are these or sutable to some special occasion emergent or he may go on in some Chapter Psalm or Book of the Scripture as he shall think fit From whence it is plain that the Directory lays no Obligation on your Ministers to handle professedly any of these Mysteries and that you have no Security other then the pleasure of your Ministers that you shall ever learn from their Publick Teaching all the Mysteries of your Religion But Fourthly I have examined and put it to many of your Persuasion whether they ever heard any Minister of Yours that professedly made a whole discourse on the Trinity Conception Nativity Resurrection or Ascension of our Saviour or on his sending down the Holy Ghost and I do profess that I never yet amongst many met one Man that could satisfie me in this point or assure me that his Minister had done it Which shews how dangerous a matter it is to leave these things to Men's choice I heartily desire you that Read this to recollect your Memories and examine your own Consciences and say whether your Ministers do once every Year handle professedly each of these Mysteries as ours do and if they do not judge whether it be true that Mr. Boyse asserts p. 84. That the peculiar Mysteries of the Christian Religion are so much more frequently inculcated in your Sermons then ours as has occasioned some of you to reproach us as Preaching little but Morality These I am sure are the greatest Mysteries peculiar to the Christian Religion and they are professedly and indispensably taught in our Church once every Year What ground can there then be to accuse us of teaching little but Morality 5. As to Mr Boyse's excuse for you in this behalf That there is no Scriptural Rule or Example prescribing to Ordinary Teachers the exact Order in which they should explain the Mysteries of Christian Religion to the people I would desire you to observe that the Scripture obliges us to Teach them all these the whole Council of God and the same obliges us to do this and all other Religious performances in Order or according to an Order There ought therefore to be in every Church an Order whereby every Teacher may be obliged to Teach them all in a competent time as it is in our Church and the Directory has manifestly failed in this having made no such Order but left it to the discretion of every Minister whether he will make any of these Mysteries his Subject in his whole Life and some have been so indiscreet as to Preach for half a Year nay a whole Year on the same Subject I have seen many Sermons Printed by your Party and yet
105. He calls Sitting at Prayers a Sloathful Posture p. 3. and says he cannot excuse it from Irreverence and hopes that those who have been guilty of it heretofore will not persist in it without real Necessity I hope therefore that you will take no Offence at our Service or Abstain from it because Bodily Worship is required in it or use any more that indecent Posture of Sitting at Prayers in your Meetings when your own Advocate Condemns it 10. He cannot condemn Kneeling at the Lord's Supper as Unlawful p. 123. and grants that you ought to Stand up at your Thanksgivings and Blessing before Receiving and after and that he will not excuse you if you do otherwise in it p. 112. And therefore as far as you are of his mind in this matter you will have no reason to condemn us for Kneeling as guilty of Idolatry or wonder that we receive the Elements on our Knees since we receive them with Prayer and Thanksgiving and continue whilst we eat and drink in the exercise of them with the most earnest Passion that our Minds are capable of II. He agrees with me as to the Frequency of Celebrating the Lord's-Supper p. 131. And owns it was one Constant part of the Christian Lord's-Days Worship in the Apostles time And that he thinks it past all doubt that this was the Universal practice of the Christian Church for several succeeding Ages And therefore I hope you will endeavour to Restore this Apostolick and Primitive Institution to what it was and consider how Unreconcileable your present Practice of Receiving is to this Institution of Christ and Universal Practice If these things be universally Believed and Received amongst you I can see no reason why you should decline our Churches at least when you cannot go to your own Meetings and hope you will not hereafter go out when our Prayers begin as if you were in danger of being Polluted by them or refuse to conform in the Bodily Expressions of Worship used at them as I have sometimes observed some of you to do who rather chuse to stay then disturb the Congregation by going unseasonably away If I could gain these Points of you I should think my Labours in my Book bestowed to a most Excellent purpose and be content with Joy to endure a Thousand more hard things than Mr. Boyse has been pleased to say of me who appears by his Book to be much a Stranger both to you and me and to have intermeddled with us before he understood either of our Practices or Circumstances and I hope by Gods help it shall not be in his power to make you conceive otherwise of my Sincere Affections and Concern for your Souls than I have profest and shall always desire to Maintain III. I shall now proceed to the third thing I promised in this Admonition and that is to shew you That whereas there are several Matters of Fact which I affirm and Mr. Boyse denies the mistakes lye on his side notwithstanding he imputes them to me with great assurance as Falshoods and asserts that I am hard'ned in them For the Proof of this I need no more than to Appeal to your own Consciences and I must tell you that what I have Wrote was from Sight Experience or certain Information on the place whereas he has his account of things only at second-hand and produces no Vouchers I will instance in some of the principal matters of Fact which he contradicts 1. First then One of the Principal Matters of Fact in dispute is what I assert Chap. 3. Sect. 3. N. 2. That in all the Meetings in the North of Ireland in a whole year perhaps there is not so much Scripture read as in one day in Our Church by the strictest enquiry I could make This he contradicts with great vehemence and asserts p. 93. that there is nothing like Truth in the Assertion with a great many ill words You mâ—y observe that I expressed my self doubtfully in this Case with a perhaps it was so but I assure you that I had no doubt of the Truth of it only I was willing to say such ungrateful Truths as softly as I could that I might give the less offence to you To make this appear I will take Mr. Boyse's own Computation and allow that there are read in each of your Meetings every Lord's-day for 3 Quarters of the Year half a Chapter tho' you know the case is not Universally so for in some places in this Diocess there has been no Lecturing in some of your Meetings for two Years together but allowing it to be as he says Then in this Diocess there are Nine Meeting-places and Lectures in each 39 Lord's-days in the Year and half a Chapter read at each Lecture which in all makes 175 ½ Now because the First of April was on a Lords-day this year I will take it and compute how many Chapters and Psalms were read on that day in our Church and you will find it thus On the First of April are read 8 Psalms for the day 3 before and between the Lessons That is the 95 the 100 the 67 besides the Song of the Blessed Virgin So that 11 Psalms were read that Day in every Parish-Church Besides these are read 4 Chapters for Lessons and the Epistle and Gospel make a large Chapter more So then in every Parish-Church there are read Psalms and Chapters tho' there be no Funeral or Churching of Women or other Occasional Office 16. There are then 42 Congregations in this Diocess at present in which the Offices of the Church are constantly performed and if we Multiply 42 by 16 it follows that there are read in this Diocess in one Lord's-Day Chapters and Psalms 672 whereas allowing the utmost of Mr. Boyse's Computation there are read in the Meetings in this Diocess in a Year but 175 and a ½ Let me observe that the Meeting-Houses are more Numerous here then in my Neighbour Diocesses in the North there being that I can learn only 4 in Rapho Diocess in which and in the other Diocesses of the North the Parish-Churches are proportionally as many more then the Meetings as they are in the Diocess of Derry And from thence it follows that there is really 4 times more Scripture Read in Our Church in the North in one day then in all the Meetings in the North in a Year which is a great deal more then what I asserted I had a Computation like this in my mind when I wrote my Book and should not have Published it if these Remarks by imputing Falshoods and Untruths to me had not obliged me to do it in my own Justification to the World for to you who know so well the Truth of it it was needless And we have this advantage by reading the same Chapters and Psalms in every Church that whatever Church a Man go to so he be constant at any he is sure to find the Scriptures read on in Order which must needs
small number of your Meeting-Houses and many of you when I have pressed you to Worship God somewhere have answered me That you could do it at home and indeed I have found some that had not been at any Publick Worship in Seven Years and it is not to be wondered at when some of you are Ten Miles some Twenty from a Meeting-place I cast about in my mind how to remedy this and in Order to it enquired of many of you why you did not frequent the Publick Church since you had none else which you could constantly attend with your Families I perceived that Three Objections especially had stuck with you formerly First That our Ministers were Popishly inclined Secondly That some of them were of ill Lives and Negligent And Thirdly That our Service was only Human Inventions and had no particular Warrant from Scripture The first and second of these I found by God's Blessing in great Measure removed at my coming among you so that I cannot say that any one of you ever objected them to me And as to the third I particularly Examined what things they were in our Ordinary Lord's-Days-Service which you taxed as Human Inventions for I only invited you to that Service and which made you think it more justifiable to stay at home then to come to our Churches and I carefully marked what you objected and put them in the Form that you now find them in this Book In which I designed neither to shew Wit or Learning but to propose it to you of my Diocess and to you only in such a plain Method and Stile as might suite your Capacities for I think you are not concerned in Books which you cannot understand I am sure you cannot understand the Generality of Controversie Books I confin'd my self therefore to what I had seen and known to be your Opinions and Practice and I was resolved that my Book should go no further then to you and therefore I Printed only a few which I distributed amongst you and took care that not one of them should be Sold. I must own that the Book is Reprinted in London but this was altogether without my knowledge and very much to my dissatisfaction But I cannot prevent the ill Arts of Tradesmen for their own gain This was the Motive and Method of my Book And whether they be agreable to the Spirit of a Christian Bishop who is concerned for the Service of God and the good of the Souls under his Charge or deserve the Treatment Mr. Boyse has given me in his Remarks suppose I were mistaken in some things as I do not find I am I must leave you to judge II. I shall now proceed to the Second thing I proposed in this Preface which was to shew that Mr. Boyse has granted the Principal things designed in my Book and I hope that they may have some influence on you to Allow the same the Things are these that follow 1. He owns that Singing Psalms in Prose is Lawful p. 10. which I proved Chap. 1. Sect. 1. N. 3. in my Book 2. That Responses or Answering in the praise of God is Lawful p. 16. 28. and he allows the Scripture Precedents which I brought to prove them in Chap. 1. Sect. 1. N. 4. I hope therefore that upon Consideration of his Reasons if not of mine you will allow the same that he does and that these things will not give any such Offence to you hereafter as they have done 3. He doth not absolutely condemn all Use of Musical Instruments in the praises of God so they be only for directing the People in the Tune of the Psalm they sing p. 30. I therefore hope that you have so much Respect to Mr. Boyse's Judgment that hereafter the Organs will not offend you so as to drive you from our Service 4. He asserts p. 24. That none of the Nonconformist Writers have condemn'd the Singing of Psalms as used in our Cathedrals by a Quire tho' he supposes it Unscriptural nor the Saying them in Parish-Churches by way of Responses and that only some weak and injudicious People have Alledged such Reasons for deserting the Established Church and that they are not to be reckon'd as Condemned by our Saviour in Mar. 7.7 for Commandments of Men And therefore I hope in Respect to his Judgment you will lay aside all such Reasons for your Non-compliance with the Established Worship and retain no ill Opinion of us that do comply with these things To gain which I shall reckon a great step and worth the writing my Book and shall be heartily glad to find as Mr. Boyse intimates that it was only the weak amongst you that insisted on these things 5. He grants p. 9. That God has no where expresly Determined whether we shall pray with or without a Set Form and that therefore both ways of praying may be Lawful in General tho' particular Circumstances may sometimes render the one or the other more Convenient So that this Matter of praying with or without a Set Form according to him is a Matter of Conveniency only and to be determined by Circumstances And therefore upon Mr. Boyse's Principles since our Forms of Prayer can seem to you at worst to be only Inconvenient surely it is better to dispence with an Inconveniency than to neglect all Publick Prayers 6. He grants p. 31. That in some particular Cases God did Recommend to the Jews a Form of Words in their Addresses to Him and that not only to the People but even to the Priests and therefore Forms of Prayer are Warranted by Scripture and are of Divine Original From hence it follows That God has not only in general Commanded us to pray to Him but in particular Commands both Priests and People to pray to him in Forms tho' He has not forbidden other Addresses on such Occasions as I mentioned Chap. 2. N. 2. Sect. 9. 7. He grants that the People expressed their Joyning in the Publick Prayers in Christian Assemblies by adding their Amen as I have proved Chap. 2. Sect. 1. N. 5. And therefore I hope you will not only Approve of this in us but will likewise Introduce it into your own Meetings I am sure the Book Mr. Boyse Quotes for this purpose Advises you to it 8. He grants that the Holy Scripture may be read without Exposition p 10. 95. and that the omission of reading an entire Portion at once is a Defect and that in the Winter Quarter there is no reading in the North of Ireland p. 92. and owns that I may justly charge you with Falling Short of Reading so much as the Directory recommends and therefore I hope our not Explaining every Chapter when we read it will be no Objection against our Service You may know we are obliged every Lord's-day to Explain and Apply some Portion of Scripture in our Sermons so that Exposition is not banished out of our Church 9. He acknowledges that Bodily Worship is Commanded in Scripture p.
Church should be amiss and it should be beyond your power to help them 5. Lastly I can by no means allow that Mr. Boyse had any reason to make such Demands as these or to expect any answer to them All the Occasion he pretends for them is because I made some requests to your Ministers in the Conclusion of my discourse one of which concerned the Exercise of your Discipline that it might be with less offence to us and advantage to our common Christianity and from thence he concludes that I cannot take it ill if we saith he p. 170. use the like freedom in offering with all Humility the following requests But that the Case is no ways the same nor the requests equal will appear if you consider First The Persons concerned in them Secondly The Things demanded And Thirdly The manner of proposing them 1. As to the Persons concerned I may put you in mind that the Laws of the Kingdom and of the Established Church have Constituted me Bishop of this Diocess And tho' you do not own my Authority as duly received from Christ yet I my self am persuaded it is so and that the duty I lye under from my Consecration Vow obliges me to watch over and to endeavour to instruct and advise you out of the Holy Scriptures But Mr. Boyse has no such relation to those he takes on him to advise He has yet owned no proper Church beyond his single Congregation He has owned no Ecclesiastical Judicature on Earth to whom he and his Congregation are accountable by the Laws of Christ. He can claim no Authority over any other Congregation then his own or challenge so much as to be a Minister of Christ to any other if they please to question it without a new Ordination as appears from those Heads of Agreement Ch. II. Sect. 6. produced by himself Now if there were no more this makes a very manifest difference in our Cases But if you further consider to whom his demands are made it will appear yet greater I only addressed my self to those of your Ministers that are in this Diocess and designed my Book shou'd go no farther But Mr. Boyse proposes his to the whole conformable Clergy Nay to the King and Parliament and to the whole Laity of England and Ireland and this he doth in the name of your whole Party as if he were your Representative From which you may see what a Figure he takes to himself 2. But Secondly There is as great a difference in the things demanded as in the Persons concerned My requests were only in such things as I supposed inoffensive in which we really agreed and were in your own Power to grant me without altering any thing either in your Constitution or Principles And in these I had reason to hope for your Compliance And do yet more then hope for it But several of the things which Mr. Boyse requests concern Temporal Matters such as were in the Power only of King and Parliament Others are such as we think very unreasonable to be asked And others are founded on most unjust Representations of our Practices and Principles which if truly Represented need no Reformation as may appear from his adding to and taking from our 3 and 4 Canons p. 179. And may further appear in the 2 3 4 6 7 8 11 12 13 Requests From all which it wou'd seem that these Requests were rather made to amuse you then that he cou'd seriously expect we shou'd regard them 3. And indeed as the Persons and Matters are very different so the way of proposing them is no less contrary to that used by me By his own Confession I gave no ill Language I charged you with nothing that was so much as doubtful but if you please to read over his Requests I dare leave it to your own judgment whether he has observed the same temper He is not content to load our Church with many groundless Imputations but he exposes the Kingdom and Protestant Inhabitants of it as again overspread with Swearing Profanation of the Lord's-Day Uncleanness Pride Luxury c. p. 182 an Imputation that I can by no means allow to be general There being I am persuaded by the goodness of God a manifest abatement of these in this Diocess But however the Matter be to make such Demands as these in Print which perhaps one in a thousand of those that are concerned in them shall never see may serve to furnish our common Adversaries with Arguments against You and Us and may exasperate and furnish you with Objections against uniting with us but can never serve to amend what might be really amiss in your practice which I am sure was the design of what I wrote And I hope 't will appear that it was so to every one that will seriously review my Address to your Ministers III. The Third Allegation used by Mr. Boyse to take off the force of my Book is That I have omitted to handle that part of our Worship against which you have greatest Exception Thus p. 163. he taxes me That I have omitted one material part of Divine Worship about the manner of performing which the contest between the Established Church and Dissenters does most directly concern this charge of Human Inventions viz. Baptism This he imputes to want of Candour and Ingenuity And gives me many hard words about it and more particularly insists on the Sign of the Cross which he intimates that I did not mention because I could not defend it This then I suppose is one of the most feeble Places of our Church-Service that I have left unguarded I most heartily wish that all our differences were reduced to this one and that you cou'd as easily clear your selves from introducing the Inventions of Men into the Service of God as we can clear our selves in this particular And to convince you that I am in earnest I will give you a short Account of my thoughts of it by which you may know what credit Mr. Boyse's Conjectures concerning me ought to have with you First therefore I will shew you why I omitted this part of God's Service in my Book Secondly That Mr. Boyse's Arguments against the Cross in Baptism are of no force Thirdly That the use of the Cross in Baptism is Warranted by the Holy Scriptures 1. First then I omitted this part of Worship because it was Occasional not Ordinary In my Introduction N. 5. I engaged only to consider the Ordinary Service of God and the main substantial Parts thereof I was sensible that you were obliged to Worship God Publickly every Lord's-day and are answerable for your neglect if you do not when you may and therefore judged it of great moment to clear from Exceptions those parts of our Worship in which you are obliged to join with us on those Days But you have not that same constant necessity to join in Baptism and your Exceptions against it cou'd be no just Reason to hinder your Attendance in