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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44196	The judgment of the late Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale, of the nature of true religion, the causes of its corruption, and the churches calamity by mens additions and violences with the desired cure : in three discourses / written by himself at several times ... ; humbly dedicated to the honourable judges and learned lawyers ... by the faithful publisher, Richard Baxter ; to which is annexed the judgment of Sir Francis Bacon ... and somewhat of Dr. Isaack Barrows on the same subject.	Hale, Matthew, Sir, 1609-1676.; Bacon, Francis, 1561-1626.; Barrow, Isaac, 1630-1677.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1684 (1684)	Wing H247; ESTC R11139	41,043	77

ill Effects 1. It maketh differences unreconcileable 2. It disadventages their Cause and Persons that use them with sober men 3. It exposeth Religion it self to the derisiof Atheists and increaseth such More of this evil with a Concluding Counsel to use more Temperance Prudence and Moderation in Contests about the Circumstantials of Religion p 20. 21. The Contents of the Additional Testimonies 1 THe Lord Bacons words in his Advertisement of the Controversies of the Church of England 2. His words in his Considerations for better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England Lest the Reader accuse me of omitting any part I had rather he would read all those two Treatises himself than those Scraps 3 Animadversions of the Transcriber 4. Some passages of Doctor Isaack Barrow PART I. OF RELIGION The Ends and Uses of it and the Errors of Men touching it TRUE Religion is the greatest Improvement Advantage and Priviledge of Humane Nature and that which gives it the noblest and highest Pre-eminence above other visible Creatures We may observe in many Bruit Beasts and Birds admirable Instincts Dexterities and Sagacities and in some of them some dark resemblances of Reason or Ratiocination But Religion is so appropriate to the Humane Nature that there are scarce any sort of Men but have some Religion Nor do the most subtle or sagacious Bruits afford any signs thereof as communicated to their Natures It is one of the chiefest Mercies and Blessings that Almighty God hath afforded to the Children of Men and that which signally manifests his Providential Care towards and over them that in all Ages and among all Nations he hath given to them some Means and Helps to discover unto them though in different Degrees some principal Sentiments of true Religion 1. By the secret Characters and Impressions and Structures thereof in their Minds and Consciences 2. By his Glorious and admirable Works commonly called the Works of Nature 3. By signal Providences and Providential Regiment of the World 4. By raising up Men in all Ages of great Wisdom Observation and Learning which did instruct the more ignorant in this great Concernment the Rudiments of Natural Religion 5. By Traditionary Transmission of many important Truths and Directions of Life from Ancestors to their Posterity and others Though in process of time evil Customs and evil Men did in a great measure impair and corrupt the Sentiments and Practices of Men notwithstanding these helps Therefore the same Mercy and Goodness of God for the preservation and propagation of the true Religion was pleased to substitute a more fixed and permanent means namely the Holy Scriptures or Divine Revelations committed to Writing in the Books of the Old and New Testament Though the Religion delivered in both Testaments be in substance the same yet the true Religion was more fully and plainly and distinctly delivered by Christ and his Apostles in the New Testament together also with some additional Instructions for the better preservation and propagation thereof to Mankind and divers additional Evidences to prove and manifest the truth of this Religion to procure its belief and acceptation As the Birth Miracles Death Resurrection and Ascension of Christ Jesus the great Reformer of the Jewish and great Institutor of the Christian Religion so called from Christ that taught and asserted it The Christian Religion is the most perfect Rule of our Duty to God our selves and others and was designed principally for these Great Ends. 1. To restore to the Glorious God the Honour Duty and Obedience of his Creature Man teaching him to Know to Glorifie and Serve his Creator to be Thankful to him to submit to his Will to obey his Law and Command to be thankful for his Mercies to acknowledge him in all his ways to call upon him to Worship him to depend upon him to walk sincerely in his sight to admire and adore his Greatness and Goodness in all his works especially in the great work of the Redemption of Mankind by his Son Christ Jesus 2. To inable Man to attain everlasting Happiness the perpetual Vision of the Glorious God and to fit and prepare him to be a partaker of the Inheritance of the Saints in Light and Glory 3. To compose and settle Mankind in such a decent and becomingrectitude order and deportment in this World as may be suitable to the Existence of a Reasonable Nature and the Good of Mankind Which consistsprincipally in a double relation 1. To a Mans self Sobriety 2. To others which consists in those two great Habits or Disposition beneficent to Mankind viz. Righteousness or Justice and Charity or Love and Beneficence These three Great Ends are succinctly delivered Tit. 2. 11 12. For the Grace of God that bringeth Salvation hath appeared unto all men teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live Soberly Righteously and Godly in this present World Here we have these three Ends of Christian Religion 1. Godliness or our Duty to God 2. Salvation or our own everlasting Happiness 3. Sobriety Righteousness which also includeth Charity a part of Evangelical Righteousness And because Christian Religion was intended and instituted for the good of Man-kind whether Poor or Rich Learned or Unlearned Simple or Prudent Wise or Weak it was fitted with such plain easie and evident Directions both for things to be known and things to be done in order to the attainment of the End for which it was designed that might be understood by any Capacity that had the ordinary and common use of Reason or Humane Understanding and by the common assistance of the Divine Grace might be practised by them The Credenda or things to be known or believed as simply necessary to those Ends are but few and intelligible briefly delivered in that Summary of Christian Religion usually called the Apostles Creed The Agenda or things to be done or forborn are those few and excellent Precepts delivered by Christ and his Apostles in that little Book of the New Testament and yet even the tenth part of that little Book will contain all the Precepts of Christian Duty and Obedience contained in that Book And in brief the Baptismal Covenant as it is contained in the Liturgy and Explanation thereof in the Church Catechism used among us together with the Precepts of the Decalogue contain in effect a Summary or brief Epitome of our Christian Duty And certainly it was necessary and becoming the Wisdom of the most Wise God that that Religion and Doctrine which equally concerned Men of all Kinds and Capacities should be accordingly accommodated as might be useful for all If the Doctrine or Precepts of Christian Religion should have been delivered in over sublime or seraphical expressions in high Rhetorical Raptures in intricate and subtile Phrases or Stile or if it should have been surcharged with multitude of particulars it would have been like a Sealed Book to the far greatest part of Mankind who yet were equally concerned in the Business and

The Judgment of the late LORD CHIEF JUSTICE Sir Matthew Hale Of the Nature of TRUE RELIGION THE CAUSES of its CORRUPTION And the Churches Calamity by Mens ADDITIONS and VIOLENCES With the desired Cure In three Discourses written by himself at several times Humbly Dedicated to the Honourable Judges and Learned Lawyers who knew and honoured the Author because in their true Sentiments of Religion and its Depravations and the Cure the wellfare of England under his Majesty as well as their own is eminently concerned By the faithful Publisher RICHARD BAXTER To which is annexed the Judgment of Sir Francis Bacon Lord Verulam St. Albans and Chancellour of England And somewhat of Dr. Isaack Barrows on the same subject Mat. 5. 9. Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the Children of God Rom. 14. 17 18. The Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the holy ghost For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men LONDON Printed for B. Simmons at the three Cocks near the West-end of S. Paul's Church 1684. A PREFACE With some Notes on these Discourses by the Publisher THe Publishing of these Discourses sheweth the great mutability of such weak understandings as my own Till very lately no Price could have hired me to Publish them lest it were a Violation of his Testament which saith that he would have no Writings of his Published but what in his Life Time he gave to be Published And he delivered not these in his Life Time to me In my ignorance this satisfied me But lately opening the Case to some Lawyers of known Eminence Honour and Integrity they have convinced me that I cross his Will and the Common good by my Suppressing them The Case is this When he was gone from us in great Weakness to the Place of his Death in my last Letter to him I told him how much good the Lord Bacon's Book called Considerations of Matters Ecclesiastical had done with many that too justly suspect Clergy Contenders of Partiality and that the Honour and Just Esteem that God had given him with all sorts of Men he owed to the Service of him that gave it And therefore knowing the doleful Case of this Land as div vided and striving about Religion I intreated him that he would Write his Judgment briefly and freely of the Cause and Cure The rather because his Contemplations were so acceptable to many In his last Letter answering this He professeth that those Contemplations were Printed without his Purpose Knowledge or Consent but thanks God if they did good though beyond his intent But though the rest be full of kindness I will not Publish it lest really it should violate his Will But when he was dead he who Published his Contemplations shewed me a Bag of his Mannuscripts small occasional Tractates and gave me out these three saying that They were directed For Mr. Baxter By which I knew they were by him given me in answer to my foresaid Letter which Craved the Publication of his Judgment of our Divisions But I conjecture they had been long before written by him at several Times and much to the same purpose and so I suppose that he gave them me and left the use of them to my Discretion Now say these Learned Lawyers A man may have several Wills in Writing in reference to several Things not repugnant but consistent and all shall stand and be taken as his last Will and may make several Executors and give them several distinct Powers And clausula generalis non porrigitur ad ea quae Specialiter nominantur And this Direction to you on that Occasion maketh it a Legacy bequeathed to you And the answering your Letter by it sheweth to what use And his after likeing of the publishing his Contemplations sheweth that he was not utterly against appearing in Print By this and much more they Satisfie me that it was my Ignorance that made me resolve to Conceal them I confess the Deliverer thought it best for me to make one Treatise out of them all Because being not intended for Publication at the Writing of them the same thing is repeated especially in two of them And that Repetition and the Brevity made me long undervalue them But I take it as an intollerable piaculum to put any altering hand of mine to the Writings of such a Man which I profess I have not done in adding expunging or changing one Word save some false spelling of the Scribe for only the Latin Verses and an enterlining or two are his own hand which I know by many a Sheet that I have had from him And as long as the Occasion of the Writing them is known I think it no dishonour to them to have these Repetitions At least not so much as my alterations would be Yea it is useful first as sully shewing the Readers that these are no hasty crude conceptions but matters that long and deeply dwelt in his heart 2. And Great matters specially to dull or unwilling or negligent Readers or hearers must be oft repeated for a Transient touch passeth away from such without any Effect O that the matter of these three Papers were Written and spoken an hundred times if it would make Rulers and Teachers and People once truly to consider and receive them as they deserve Yet upon oft perusal I find that the Repetition is joyned with variety of inference and Application And he hath too Queasy a Stomach that will Nauseate them in so short discourses on so great a Subject so necessary to a People dissolving by wilfull Divisions by the delusion of Abaddon that is commonly Painted with a Cloven Foot I shall add the Contents for the Readers help But I shall not presume to animadvert on the matter save in these few Notes 1. Tract 1. pag. 3. I suppose by Common assistances he meaneth not that which All men have But which is not Miraculous and all that rightly seek may hope for P. 7. Some of the Controversies which he Judged undeterminable I have Cause to think he at least came nearer to satisfaction in after the Writing of these Papers as he signified to me on some Discourse specially after the reading my Catholick Theology Ib. Among the Points not distinctly knowable without more Revelation than we yet have of it one is what is the Real Consequence of the Baptism of Infants or its Omission But the Act of Vniformity Ejected all the Ministers of England that would not publickly declare that they Assent and Consent that It is CERTAIN BY THE WORD of God that Infants baptized dying before actual Sin are VNDOVBTEDLY saved none excepted Had the Convocation but cited that Word of God that saith this this Good man might have been kept from taking that as unknowable which every Conforming Minister in the Church is Certain of as an undoubted Article of Faith And it would have been a great kindness to the silenced