and reverence Calamity and Devotion SECT. X. The Doctors pretended moderation and modesty concerning the Service-book and his seeking to defraud me of the peoples favour Confuted THese I might say would then have been my Considerations but I do not say they are now my Objections yet haply they may be so to your self in private hereafter if you will faithfully promise me first your privacy then your satisfaction Your choice of Considerations before Objections is prudent and methodicall I would it had been your manner to keep your self in that good order I should not then have had so much to object against your inconsiderateness both of speech and writing as now I have nor should you have need to capitulate with me for a promise of privacy your own discretion would have been your protection if I had either not promised as I never did though in your * Letters you impose a promise upon me or had not kept your counsell which upon a lawfull promise no provocation should have made me violate but you were commonly so confident in your high conceipt of the Service-book * that notwithstanding all that was said or done by the superiour powers against it you were willing to have appeared a publique Champion for it in the Pulpit so far were you from any need of my secrecy for your security in that matter unless you counterfeited a courage then as it may be you do a fear now Howsoever to require me to give you satisfaction in what you shall object is as unreasonable as if I should condition with you to rest satisfied with whatsoever answer I should make to what you objected I shall desire to have no gall in my ink and I hope to finde none in yours yet must crave leave to say that your making me a candidate of the peoples applause by endeavours to expose you and your performance to their dislike savours of too much bitterness if you do not believe it and of too much credulity if you do In this passage you deliver your own desire for your self and your hope of me with a Dilemma against me your desire you say is to have no gall in your ink and you hope to finde none in mine that is a figure for I know you would not be understood according to the letter Your minde is that our writings might not be imbittered with uncharitable expressions if you had stopped there I might have thought that you had a better conceipt of me than of your self because of your self you say but that it is your desire and we may desire the Reformation of the lewdest of whom there is least hope but of me you say you hope and hope is not without some appearance or ground of good yet sure your desire of such a Christian temper is very faint or comes upon you very seldom since a very small occasion easily puts you into a passion and your passion usually vents it self with much virulence whether you write or speak and your hope of me seems very light since your Dilemma in the next words tends to convince me of too much bitterness if I believe not that you desire the applause of the people to the prejudice of mine acceptation of too much credulity if I do To the first part of it I answer 1. That if I should say you desired to be the peoples Canditate c. and not believe it this were hypocrisie rather than bitterness for if I were disposed to speak bitterly against you I would not deal so mildly with you as to lay so small a matter to your charge as that you desire to be gracious in the peoples eyes whose Pastor you were and that therein I may not be your Jacob to supplant you which if you confess more will be ready to excuse you than to condemn you for it To the other part that it is too much credulity if I do believe it I say it were gross stupidity in me if I did not believe it having had abundant evidence of it of severall sorts ever since I first saw you SECT. XI The Doctor desires no entercourse by Letter with me untill he be removed out of the County upon pretences false and frivolous FOr which cause I shall not desire any such entercourse of Letters whiles you are among those who have sworn themselves into an Antipathy against me or I among them who seem to have a Sympathy with my Religion Of this passage I have observed somewhat but that was only as a supersedeas to our enterchange of Letters for a time and that time must be say you 1. While I am among those who have sworn themselves into an Antipathy against you c. Have you so soon forgotten your caution of bitterness as to write thus bitterly of them who upon their Oaths did but discharge their consciences in matters criminall against you and how can you say they swore themselves into an Antipathy against you Was not their Antipathy as you tearm it of an Ante-date of three or four years time before their swearing Truly Sir for those whom you chiefly mean in this hainous charge so far as I can judge of them and I have had opportunity to know them better then you they are so farre from being too forward to swear falsly that in a cause of mine they were very loth to take a true Oath if otherwise they might be freed from it 2. While you are among them who seem to have a Sympathy with your Religion Your Religion Sir I had thought you and your friends and I and my friends had been all of us of one Religion but if we be not we differ sure chiefly in this that we hold the Bible the best furniture of our houses and closets and you the service-Service-book If so Sir we would not change our spirituall Birthright or double Legacy in our Lords Will and Testament Old and New for your Mess of red Pottage your Rubrick and service-Service-book if we might have a world to boot For the first may increase more jealousie in you the latter may raise more imputations on me However your Dichotomy of reason for our not writing to each other be made I am sure it is misapplied for imputations are the effects of the former viz. swearing Antipathy which you apply to the latter and jealousie proceeds from the latter viz. the Sympathy of your friends which you apply to the former And so you place them as improperly and impertinently as if you should put a glove on the face and a mask on the hand SECT. XII The Doctors contradicting of himself calling me an Oracle to whom he will have free approach not when we are nearest together but when we are farther asunder How preposterously he preferres temporall interests before spirituall and mistakes velitations as less then differences His Epiphonema flat and feeble like the premises BVt after my removall out of the County which at this instant
as that was may not be taken away without Sacriledge it is your errour for Christ hath prescribed no particular form of worship for his Church in the new Testament as he did in the Old if he had all Christian Churches should have been bound to that but since he hath therein left them free except for the generall rule of decency and order 1 Cor. 14. 40. and the short form of Prayer commonly called the Lords Prayer but is not a prayer say some but only a pattern of prayer but the Directory of the Assembly saith it is both they are at liberty to frame diversity of forms so they be consonant to the sound doctrine of the Scripture and what they frame themselves they may correct or change take away the old and substitute a new Form as they conceive may be most convenient for the honour of God and the furtherance of godliness Secondly To call the taking away of an humane form of Divine worship Sacriledge is â—o reproach not only the present Reformation but the precedent in the daies of King Edward for then there was one form of Service at Salisbury another at Hereford another at Bangor another at York another at Lincoln but x King Edward abolisht them all and established another form which was to be the form of worship to the whole Realm Thirdly The Translations of the Bible and singing Psalms turned into Meeter were with the Service-book devoted to the Service of God in his Sanctuary so were the Books of Homilies Was it sacriledge in y King James to take away all precedent Translations the Geneva especially which was most in use before since his coming to the Crown of England and had been Printed above 30 times by Queen Elizab. and his priviledged Printers Christopher and Robert Barker and making a new one to put the old out of use and office or was it Sacriledge in King Charles to cashire the old psalm-Psalm-book made partly by z Thomas Sternhold Groom of King Edw. the 6th his Bed-chamber and the rest by men of the same relation and Religion by authorizing his Fathers Edition of the singing Psalmes to be published in the Churches of his Dominion Or were you guilty of Sacriledge when you left off the Homilies a which King James would have allowed not only as Sermons deputies but as their fellows in joynt Commission with them Obj. But you will say Change is no robbery to take away a silver Chalice from the Communion Table and to put a golden one in its place or to bring a more perfect Translation of the Bible for one less perfect a more exact Psalm book then that which hath been formed in ruder times and to preach a Sermon in stead of reading an Homilie is no Sacriledge but Religious Beneficence but the new Reformation hath taken away the old Service and hath not set up a new one nor any other in the room thereof Sol. There hath been done so much in effect in the Directory that there will be no defect in the publique worship if the Minister be but competently qualified both for praying and preaching as he should be for by following the direction there given he may as well make his own Prayer as his own Sermon especially if he give himself to both as the Apostles did Act. 6. 4. and make use of such b helps as God hath been pleased to furnish this age withall above many of the former and I doubt not but as at the first setting up of the English Liturgy there was necessity to make use of many illiterate yet well meaning upright-hearted Protestants to take the cure of many Parish Churches for want of a competent supply of Learned-men as c Cambden observeth in his Hist. of Qu. Eliz. and in the Preface of the Homilies of the first Edition to my best remembrance for I have not the Book by me it is said There was scarce to be found for every County a well qualified Preacher who without a Praier book and an Homilâ—e could not pray to God for nor Preach from God to the people But now there will be by Gods blessing on means and helps more then heretofore a sociableness of proficiency both for Praying and Preaching so that Ministers shall have no more need to have their Praiers made for them than their Sermons and why should they not be able to make their own words in the reading Pew as well as in the Pulpit or why as the manner of some is may not all be done in one place For your second exception of Scandall you know the usuall distinction of Scandalum datum acceptum he that gives the Scandall is the offender that is he that doth any thing he shuld not do whereby another may justly be offended but he that takes offence at a warrantable act not he that acteth warrantably is the offender No doubt when Hezekiah brake the brazen Serpent those who did so Idolize iâ— as to burn Incense to it were offended with his severity in breaking it but that was their fault not his whose purpose was by that Reformation to remove a great occasion of Scandall from the eyes of the people and that was their meaning who laid aside the Service-book at which many godly persons took offence because it was 1. So conformable to the Popish Mass-book as * before hath been observed whereof I can make more particular proof and haply shall do in time convenient 2. Because the Scriptures brought into it were taken out of corrupt Translations even since there was a better set forth by King James his procurement 3. Because Apocryphall writings were prescribed to be read and much of the Canonicall Scripture left out 4. Because there were many particulars in it very liable to suspicion of an erroneous sense 5. Because by it many of the best Christians who durst not use the gesture of kneeling at the Sacrament were excluded from the Sacrament all which gave great occasion to the schism of the Brownists 6. Because it was so strictly urged 1. That by the 14 Canon it might not be lawfull for a Minister to omit any part of it though besides his Preaching he had both Sacraments to be administred and Catechism to be performed 2. Ministers were enjoyned to make it their Diurnall of Devotion when Dr Easdall Chancellour of York Dr Cousens and Dr Wickam were Visitors at Chest for Archbishop Neale they required the reading of the Service book every day and when it was objected the people would not come to partake with the Ministers What of that said Dr Cousens to him that made the objection do you come and do your duty There be rivers in the wilderness where no man dwels alledging Psalm 104. 10. but he forgat the following verse They give drink to the beast of the field the wilde Asses quench their thirst 7. Because divers godly and learned Ministers who scrupled subscription and conformity to the Service-book not
without apparent reason were in the year 1605 to the d number of 277 called in question about it 260 were under censure some of Admonition some of Suspension some of Deprivation And it was matter of Scandall to the weak and wicked as the brazen Serpent was for as the Jews did by that so do most ignorant and prophane people do by this Idolizing it so much that they preferre a piece of Service-book at the grave before Preaching of a Sermon in the Pulpit I speak what I know by experience of some who were so much offended at my refusall of the one that they would not give me thanks for my pains in the other and some are constant recuâ—ants from their Parish-Church though they dwell very near it because I am not constant to a set form of prayer particularly to that of the Service-book I will conclude mine Answer to this Objection with the conclusion of a debate betwixt Dr Edw. Maynw the last Chancellour of Chester and my self as I have observed in my Latine Answer to your Latine Letter which we had many years before the beginning of the last Parliament which was this I having shewed him what offence was given and taken by urging of the Service-book such as it was and how little appearance of just cause of exception there would be if it were laid aside he confessed at last and said We shall never have peace and true charity in the Church untill it be taken away SECT. IX A set or composed form of Prayer how farre lawfull or needfull Obj. BUt the want of that or of some other new composed form in stead of it causeth much scandall by many mens un-premeditated and extemporary utterance whereby they speak that many times which tends rather to the debasing of that holy Office and to the offence of a prudent and pious hearer then to the honour of God Sol. It may be so yet 1. That must not prejudice the gift of God by the Spirit of grace and of supplication Zech. 12. 10. which divers doubtless have and give evident proof of it by their practice I have heard it and e once before published it in Print which I may here pertinently repeat from a very faithfull f witness that a man of high place in the Church and of eminent parts and proficiency in all kinde of knowledge especially of Divinity acknowledged that he hath heard a lay-man in a leathern jacket pray by heart without art or book and with such an evidence and domonstration of the Spirit as hath made him much ashamed of his own defects and disabilities to perform that duty of devotion in such a manner and measure as he had done 2. For those that have not the gifâ—t they may by premeditation and study compose a set form of prayer for themselves and their people which may prevent the precipitation of any unfit or offensive expression 3. Because most are loth to own their own wants and to seem less able for their calling than other men are who need not tie themselves to any set form of words it might I conceive be expedient as an help to such as are more weak in parts or spirit for some have rather too much bashfulness than too little ability for the service and for a prevention of their errours who are too presumptuous in boasting themselves in a false gift Prov. 25. 14. pretending to have that they have not and so undertaking beyond their power as it is in the note upon the place in the first Volume of the late large Annotations as also to prevent presumption in some and for evidence of consent of Churches in the service of God and lastly for a supply to the defects of the common people who commonly are acquainted with no prayers but those they hear in the Congregation that a set form were composed in stead of the old Service-book but not so imperiously imposed as that was which might be so much better done in the present age by the best gifted in that kinde as when the people are well acquainted with it might give them better content than the Service-book did For as the Translations of the Bible are more perfect now than in King Edwards reign they were and Preaching more solid more methodicall and eloquent than in his daies as will appear by comparing Latimer's Sermons before that King with others before Q. Elizab. the two late Kings the long Parliament which last amount to many Volumes now they are Printed And the singing Psalms are more exactly rendred in Meeter by divers in old England and lately by our Brethren in new England than those Thom. Sternhold Will Hopk and Rob. Wisd. so no doubt if we compare Printed prayer-Prayer-books as old as the first English Liturgie with those which have been set forth in our own time we shall finde as much pre-eminence as difference in the latter above the former and if such a design should be so farre taken to heart as to proceed to effect because most of the Reformed Churches of Christendom have found cause to frame a set form of prayer for themselves yet I should never desire to have it so rigorously urged as g Calvin advised nor so premptorily pressed to practise as some Prelates have done but that it were rather commended to the use of all for the reasons before alleadged than strictly commanded to any for many would act in a way of freedom who would not come under a servile obedience especially for that which is neither expresly prescribed nor prohibited in Scripture By this proposall and plea for a set form of Praier I intend not to take off or cool any mans desires or indeavours to be able to walk without such a crutch But for Preachers especially I would have them give themselves to the doubt duty wherein the Apostles exercised themselves viz. Prayer and the Word of God Act. 6. 4. as well that as this that by Gods blessing they may prove good proficients in them both It was the great errour and the mother in gross ignorance in former times that Ministers pinion'd their devotion to the Service-book when many who were but reading Levites were so word-bound with it that upon any occasion which they met not with in that road they were at a stand and as mute as fishes which cals to my remembrance Sr Thomas Holcrofts Curate at the Vale-royall in Cheshire to whom he went his house was on fire desiring him to pray the Curate betook himself with much hast to his Service-book and finding out the prayer for Rain if time require prayed according to the form thereof That God would send such moderate showers c. Moderate showers Sir Humnet so was the Curate called said the Knight that will do no good it is a great fire a very great fire howsoever he had none other holy water to quench it Thus he exposed two things besides himself to derision which should be entertained with gravity