Chancellors are the Kings Officers to Govern the Church circa sacra by the Sword we will swear and perform Obedience to them under the King in licitis honestis But I told you they that take them for the Usurpers of Spiritual power will easily prove it to be lawful to swear Obedience to Usurpers in licitis honestis will you deny that 3. And I told you that it is another Oath that is imposed on us to take But did you well to say You produced the words of Ignatius to prove the antiquity of swearing to Bishops who saith not a syllable of any such thing And untruly say I took no notice of it when I told you that Ignatius mentioned not Oaths but only actual Obedience This is no notice with you But do you not know how late it was before swearing Obedience to Bishops came into the Church and by what sort of men and to what end and effect § 52. Your talk of Cartwright confirmeth me of the vanity of the Hypocrites reward the praise of men there being nothing so false which may not by some men be said of them with boldest confidence If Cochleus or his like do but say That Luther learned of the Devil that Calvin was a stigmatized Sodomite c. all their Followers can ever after say It is in Print So Mr. S. P. some body Printed this you say And Heylin saith He promised What just the same or to the same sense as I told you I voluntarily subscribed when I might by the Kings Declaration have chosen meerly because I would have them know our minds and peaceable resolutions I told you why he that can promise to live peaceably c. cannot subscribe and swear the Approbation of all in that Liturgy Government c. which he liveth peaceably under But this is nothing to you if Cartwright Conformed first Prove it by credible History 2. Why then could the great Earl of Leicester procure no more liberty for him than an Hospital in Warwick and no Church 3. I have lived in Coventry and been oft in Warwick and know by all credible testimony of Neighbours that it 's false and no such thing as his Conformity was there dream'd of any further than I Conform 4. Why did he never declare it to the World nor retract his Writings 5. Your Heylin's own words intimate the contrary though I must tell you I owe as little belief to that Book of his as most Histories written by sober Protestants But you say much more Dr. Burges p. 377. observed That Cartwright opposed the Ceremonies as Inconveniences but not as unlawful and therefore perswaded men to Conform rather than leave their Flocks Answ 1. But the Ceremonies are but part and the lesser part of Conformity 2. Else had all Conformity been here included he was still a Conformist And how could you then say That at last he wrangled himself into Conformity if he was such at first 3. But if you cite him truly be judge your self whether Hoylin said true and what will be your case if you will report all that you find such men report 1. Dr. Burges's own words are but these pag. 423. The consideration of this necessity moved Mr. Cartwright to advise the wearing of the Surplice and Mr. Beza to resolve for the use of these Ceremonies rather than the Flocks of Christ should be forsaken for these And he citeth Cart. Repl. 2. So that here is not a word of Cartwright's Concession in any thing but the Surplice kneeling he was for The Answer of Amesius to his Father-in-law Burges is in these words Fresh suit p. 21 22. Whereas he addeth that Beza and Mr. Cartwright determined with them in case of the Surplice I answer 1. They did not so for the Cross 2. They did not so for subscription to either 3. They did not so but by way of toleration requiring also that men speak against the imposing of the Surplice 4. Beza was not throughly acquainted with the state of our Church Mr. Cartwright as I have been certainly informed by his own Son recalled that Passage of his Book and desired that his revoking of it might be made known Then followeth the Attestation of another to that report Do you see now how credibly S. P. Heylin and you report Cartwright to have wrangled himself at last into Conformity Be warned and take up false reports no more § 53. I thank you for shortning my trouble § 54. Waspish and faltering and raging after a tedious journey Are your Logicks above my skill to answer But adrem 1. It is a wonder to me that an Englishman should be in doubt who they be that drive men from the Parish Churches Enquire who drave away the People of Kederminster Did I I Preach'd I Printed long before That should the Liturgy be restored it were no sufficient cause c When I was silenced and might not Preach in publick the last Sermon that ever I preached to some at my Farwel in a private House was in conclusion to perswade all to keep to the publick Churches where the Ministers are not notoriously Insufficient as to the very Essentials or notorious Hercticks or Malignant Opposers not of differing Parties but of the certain Practice of Godliness it self But when I had done my best then and since by other means the Reading Vicar and one Sermon of the Bishops and one of the Deans and many of a Lecturers after and they saw so many hundred Ministers silenced it possessed them with so great a prejudice that till a good Minister came among them it was past my power to reconcile them to the Church nor is it done so fully as before I could easily have done 2. As to your second Questien When I told you how hardly the People would be driven tâ— Communion in your way You answered Haâ— they not been distracted distorted poysoned by other Tutors But since they have been taught like Wolves not to value the Scepter like Mastiff-dogs they will worry me to pieces Those that are lately perverted any way are most heady and â—ierce The Revolters are profound to make slaughter And after the Scribes and Pharisees compassed Sea and Land to make a Proselyte when he was made he was twofold more the Child of Hell than themselves These are your words And I thought I had used them very gently when I only say Whether all such Dissenters are such Children of Hell as you describe I might have added such Wolves Dogs c. I shall leave to a more wise and righteous Judge what is in these words Be impartial one hour before you die and compare them with your own and think how he that will say at last Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these my Brethren c. will take all these Revilings of faithful Souls But how heedlesly do you read I said All such Dissenters as you described and were talkt of And you say all Dissenters There is no
humane policie that he denied and that they differed but about words Did ever Christian before you deny particular Churches to be distinct policies and parts of the Universal Have we so many Books written of Ecclesiastical Policie and is there no such thing or no Churches that are Politick Societies § XXXVII He adds According to your assertion all the world must be Atheists of no Religion at all Answ Then all the world of Christians are so for as far as writings notifie they are generally of this mind Alas Brother did you shew this to any man before you Printed it for their honour I must think you did not and for your sake I wish you had § XXXVIII He adds Your division of the Church into Universal and particular is plainly against that Rule in Logick Membra omnis bonae divisionis debent esse inter se opposita but you oppose the same thing against it self Answ Thus do men humble themselves by forsaking humility Had it not been better for your to have let your Logick alone than to bewray that which you might have concealed Are not diversa distinguishable as well as opposita And is there no diversity in parte essentiae as in subalternis where there is not a diversity in totâ essentia as there is in summis generibus is there not both diversity and opposition inter totum partem and between the species of an universal and particular Society Are they not Relative opposita May you not distinguish Army and Regiment and Troop Kingdom and City Christ and a Bishop c. § XXXIX He adds You make the Church at Corinth a particular Church Answ And do not all Christians Is it all the Christian world § XL. You plainly saith he leave out of your description the differing form or token of that which you call a particular Church and that is Neighbourhood c. Answ Anne putares 1. Have I so oft exprest it and yet will you say so 2. But it was in descriptions indeed and I was far from your Logical belief that Neighbourhood is the differencing form And I hope no one else is of your mind 1. If Neighbourhood be the differencing form then all Christian Neighbours are particular Churches But that is false Ergo. 1. Those that dwell together only for Trade are not therefore Churches 2. Those that hold that there are no particular Churches or Pastors but that all Christians are as Priests 3. Those that hold that the Minister of the Parish where they live is no true Minister nor the Parish a true Church 4. Those that profess themselves Members of no particular Church 5. Those that profess to be no Members of that Church but of another 6. Papists and Sectaries that stand in opposition to that Church 7. Those that dwell near another Parish-Church and many miles from their own are not Members by proximity 8. Those that are Excommunicated which is de facto all professed Non-Conformists 9. In places where the Magistrate tyeth not Churches to Parish-bounds persons of the same street and house may be of several Churches 10. No man that consenteth not is a Church-Member 11. And who knoweth not that proximity is but dispositio materiae and not the differencing form All these singular novelties should have had better proof than these dry assertions contrary to all Christian sense § XLI This startles me I strive to be silent and cannot saith he and the more I strive the more I am overcome Answ If you are so far gone I shall hereafter I think without any striving with my self let that which is within you talk on and not resist you For who can hold that which will away But I wish you the benefit of some stiptick remedy and a sober mind § XLII I prove to you saith he when there is nothing like one proving word c. you make the Lord Jesus the authour and founder of subverting principles Answ Read the Ninth Commandment I conclude with these requests to him as my true friend viz. to consider Qu. 1. Whether a man so far from persecution and yet condemning us of Atheism blaspheming and destroying all Religion c. be not much more uncharitable than they that charge no such thing upon us but trouble us for refusing Forms are Ceremonies or is it not the same spirit Qu. 2. Whether he justifie not the silencing and ruining of all whom he so accuseth should not such impious Atheists be silenced Qu. 3. If he knew that the generality of the Christian world in all ages hold what he thus censureth what will he call it to charge all Christians so far with Atheism and casting out all Religion and making God and Christ a deceiver If he knew it not what will he call it to venture thus to publish such an accusation before he knew that which an ordinary Inhabitant of the world might so easily have known As if he had published All that say a City is specified by its subordinate Form of Government and is a part of the Kingdom specified by the Monarch are Traytors and depose the King or make him a deceiver and no King and deny all obedience What will you call this dealing Qu. 4. Was it well done to write such a Book while he understood so very little of the very plainest passages which he wrote against Qu. 5. Was it excusable to confess some errour of the last and to add far worse and after warning a second time so to speak evil of what he understood not Qu. 6. Was it humility to make ostentation of the Logick he understood not Qu. 7. Doth not the extreme bold confidence of the falsest of his own conceptions shew a very unhumbled overvaluing of his own understanding To be ignorant is common to Mankind yea and to be much ignorant of our ignorance and to think that we know more than we do But to have so little sense of this calamity and so little suspicion of ones own understanding as to be confident to such a height of accusation of the grossest falshoods where a lad of fourteen years old that had read any thing of Logick and Politicks might have better taught him that I say not the reason and use of Mankind this seemeth somewhat beyond the common measure of self-conceitedness Qu. 8. Whether the great number of asserted untruths here shew not some want of necessary tenderness or care of writing CHAP. IV. Mr. Chenies Accusations of me about Church-Covenants and rigid Independencie and the odiousness hereof considered § 1. WHen he had said that it leads to two contrary Gods which is to make no true God p. 69. He proceedeth Mr. B. hath devised and framed two Covenants the one to make a man a Member of the Church Universal the other of the particular p. 97. I will shew 1. That this is the same with the upstart way of the Independents 2. The unsoundness of it p. 101. Mr. B. and the Independents now are contrary to
speak for our selves And I would be engaged to leave out all such plain expressions as now offend you But to begin such a Work when I know I cannot Print it or to enter a Dispute with you in this rambling way whose Books and Letters tell me that you will Syllogize in Aristophanes or Lucian's Moods and Figures and whose Logick will take up no greater room among your Oratorical Diversions Evasions Subterfuges and Flosculi than a spoonful of Wine in a Gallon of Water which will leave it Water still I shall not easily be drawn to this having lost so much time upon you already as I have done Therefore you here bring in your Serpents Head and Tail and Fable upon a false Supposition of the Subject of our Debates § 1. Here first you would have your Book go for Innocent no wonder Impenitence is no rarity among those whose office is to Preach Repentance And therefore so many of them go without the Fruits of it Matth. 7. 22 23. And he that can write against Truth can defend it by Untruth 2. You untruly suppose me to undertake the Confutation of your Book But who hath so little to do as to shew particularly of each Page and Line of a Bundle of impotent Oratorian Revilings how little Logick or Truth is in them 3. You untruly suppose me not to have opened the faultiness of any Page of your Book Let the Impartial judge 4. In all you shew the strange unacquaintedness with your Self and your Own which you cannot endure to be told of A Calumniating Volume of yours is Innocent and affordeth no matter for blame or repentance But to be told so is to let fall such Drops on you as make you smart you say as if there had been poyson in them If we that are forbidden to eat a Bit or wear a Rag of the Levites Portion or come within Five Miles of any Corporation or Preach Christ to the most ignorant miserable Souls do but think and say it is hard usage We add to our guilt and deserve yet worse because we do not Toto pectore telum recipere Or as Camero unbutton our Doublets and cry Feri miser But if we tell you of it when you voluminously play with Reproaches upon them that you are utterly unable to prove guilty and confute Oh it maketh you smart like poyson Guilt is always tender but most in the Domineering Tribe They are contemned and scorned if we take not their strokes for stroakings and their calumnies for kindness And to tell them that their slanders are injuries is to call them to veil their Bonnets to us and we are Popular Rabbies for being against the Rabbies if the people that know them and us will not because they cannot believe all the falshoods which such report of us who find no readier and surer steps for their Ascension to their desired Heights § 2. First Here you would be my Tâ—â—â—r in Logick to teach me that the Species is noâ— comprehended in the Genus And that I transgrâ—ss the Laws of Discourse in supposing that what was spoken against the Non-conformists as such was spoken against the Presbyterian Non-conformists This is my inclosing and limiting As if I had offended by saying that you say that against Man which you say against an Animal as such And this Talk needs a Confutation But was not the Discipline calumniated which I noted a sufficient explication of your sense 2. And here you condensate your Untruths As first That there were but few who were not then tantum non Independants which the Age you live in knows to be false 2. That I intimate that they are all of a sudden become Presbyterians Because Presbyterians are a part of them so part and whole are not distinguishable by the Logick of the Gamaliels whose Instruction I mist of When I have oft Published that besides Scotland Lancashire and London I knew no great number of Ministers that received the Presbyterian Model But almost all those in the County where you live Worcestershire Declared that they agreed to joyn in the Practice of so much of Church Discipline as the Episcopal Presbyterians and Independents were all agreed in and on those grounds to unite for the promoting of the Peoples Instruction and Salvation without dividing for the Controverted parts or laying a greater stress on them than there was cause for yet here you have occasion to talk of the transmutation of Elements c. § 3. Here you want Conviction still If so I will not undertake to Convince you of any thing in the World which you are unwilling to know Offer the case to an uninterested Stranger and take his Judgment Tell him this Truth Eighteen hundred Ministers are at once forbidden to Preach Christ according to their Ordination Vow And when upon that Dedication they had alienanated themselves from all other ways of Employment and Livelihood they and their Families are cast upon Alms in a time of extraordinary poverty except some of them that had somewhat of their own None of all these are put out for Ignorance Insufficiency or any Crime or scandal at all But for not subscribing Assent and Consens to all things without exception in Three Books written by men that profess that General Councils are fallible even in matters of Faith And for not declaring that no man that vowed it is obliged to endeavour in his Place and Calling any alteration of the present Church Government which some think the unsworn as much bound to endeavour as to Reform the worst Alehouse or Tavern in the Land Especially whilst Lay-men Govern by the Keys of Excommunication and Absolution And for not swearing and unswearing c. as is known with such like things These Men thus ejected and silenced are forbidden upon severe Penalties Ecclesiastical and Corporal to speak any thing in depravation of the Government of the Church the Liturgy or Ceremonies and under the penalty of total ruine in this World To say that any man is bound by the National Vow to endeavour any alteration as aforesaid A Law forbiddeth Printers to Print any unlicensed Book upon penalty of losing all the Copies Paper and Print besides answering for all therein contained The Company in London is called together and constrained as holding their Charter by Patent to make Laws also among themselves That any man that Printeth an unlicensed Book or Leaf shall lose his Freedom and become uncapable of their Trade and so be utterly undone A Conforming Minister for ends best known to himself Writeth a Book called a Perswasive to Conformity which containeth not the twentieth part of the Argument commonly before used by others Saravia Hammond Downame Bilson Burges Fulwood c. which the Non-conformists are supposed to have studied But florid Oratorical confident Calumnies most of the Book importing an Ignoratio Elenchi And in this Book he vehemently urgeth one man particularly that never saw him nor meddled with him to publish to the World An
end at this rate of calling you again to read what you write against I excuse no mans faults But I will not be one of those Nurses that will cast the Children out of the house when ever they cry or wrangle till I find it pleaseth our Father and till I know where to have better enow in their rooms Nor will I call them Wolves and Dogs that for fear of sinning against God dare not do as I do and too precisely wrangle with me when I urge them to it And if their narrow throats cannot swallow so big Morsels as the Nurse can but will cry and strive when it is cram'd down by force I will not cut their Throats to widen the passage nor stretch Conscience till like a crakt Bladder it will hold nothing Nor with Ithacius get the worst on my side as my Flocke and bring the strictest under suspicion and reproach because they are angry with me And what now your Calumniare fortiter signifieth Review § 55. The matter of this I have answered The Flowers of Flood-gates Torrents Dragons Scum Raca c. I leave unanswered because you would have brevity But if you would have brevity you should not make work for prolixity unless you bespeak me to forbear answering you But I know not how better to spare your trouble and my own than to tell you that I expect or desire no answer from you to all this that I have written And if you do send me one I will not promise you a Reply I like the Work as little as you do And for the matter and manner of my Writings I do as one that daily expecteth and long have done a speedy passage into a more holy wise righteous and peaceable World Protest to you that as I have not been for forty years at least the most negligent Searcher after Truth nor the coldest Desirer of it but have I think Impartially laboured to know it without adhering to any Sect at least these 25 years so I do defend nothing which I am perswaded is the Truth nor oppose any other mens ways but what I think my Fidelity to God his Church and Truth obligeth me to oppose If you be in the right and I in the wrong it is because you have a more blessed understanding and not because I have been less studious or desirous to know the truth than you And I confess my Temper and Style is sharp and Verba rebus aptanda is a Motto that Quoad dispositionem was born with me and maketh me oft forbear that pleasing style which should be fitted to the persons though unsuitable to the thing But I write in hast and suit all my Answers just to the matter before me not considering sufficiently how men can bear it I justifie none of this and I unfeignedly desire you to pardon all Passages which you shall truly find to transgress the Rules of Christian lenity For if I be angry I would not sin but I am not conscious of wrath or disaffection when I speak most eagerly But I must needs tell you that had this writing been for the view of the World I would have forborne most of that freedom which in plainess I have used to you but being only for your self I remembred Lâ—v. 19. 17. which I need not recite being confident that you have much wronged your bretheren by the Book which you have written Which I impute with all the rest of our divisions violences and calamities to waâ—â— of acquaintance and familiarity with each other each party conversing familiarly only with those of their own mind and iudging falsly of their neerest Neighbours as of real strangers by thereports of factious men For I do not remember that I ever yet had reall acquaintance with any man in my Life that I did not live in Love and Peace with But all my reproaches accusations and sufferings have come from men that know me not unless by a few publick interviews And I do faithfully endeavour to defend behind their backs the just Honour and Reputation of the Bishops and Conformists as well as of the Nonconformists being not for factious Calumny against either Nor am so sharp in my censures as your moderate Erasmus was against such Bishops as he then of London that would have persecuted Dr. Colet the Bishop being a learned Scotist who as Mr. Thomas Smith translateth him in the Life of Dr. Colet saith of which sort of men I have known some that I WOULD NOT CALL KNAVES but I never knew one whom I COULD CALL a CHRISTIAN There be some that judge just thus of the not unwilling Conformists but the eager promoters and defenders of it among the Clergy that are not our superiours But so do not I but reprove their censoriousness though I must needs confess while I fear being of a party I fear not being one that differeth from ungodly formal Hypocrites and that I find very great difference in point of serious piety between parties And if in my Youth I did incline more to one party than another it was only on the supposition that they were more spiritual practical and devoted to God on which account I hope I shall still value them though even then Schism was and now much more is a thing which I abhorr but take not those to be the least promoters of it who most accuse their brethren of it being just of Hales's mind in that treat of Schism And for former complyances c. you were acquainted at Coâ—sold Sir Robert Pyes Mr. Twisse's c. consider whether of us it is that needeth no Retractation A word to the wise is enough Having some information of your former life I may very easily say that as great a noise as you now make for Conformity and against the late Usurpers I did much more against them than you did in my Ministry and my danger from them was not a denial of a richer living which I never sought but for open opposing their usurpation engagementdaies of thanksgiving for unjust victories c. I add this but to mind you that some men by reproaching others do doubly reproach themselves and that consciousness of their proper case should make men speak as they would hear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. look diligently into the Scriptures which are the true Oracles of the Holy Ghost learn that in them is contained nothing unjust or fained or counterfeit For you shall not find that the just were rejected by holy men The just suffered persecution but from the ungodly They were cast into prison but by the Profane they were stoned but by the unrighteous and transgressours of the Laws They were extinct but by the wicked and such as were pricked with unjust envy against them Clemens Roman ad Corinth Reader remember that this was written only for Mr. Hinkleys sight if he had so pleased FINIS RICHARD BAXTERS second Account to Mr. John Cheney of his Judgment accused by him of Atheism subverting
all Religion Christianity the Gospel the Church all Government Introducing Popery c. Especially for asserting 1. That Christ hath Instituted one Universal Church of which he onely is the Head and particular Churches as parts of it of which the Pastors are Subordinate Heads or Governours and so formally differenced 2. That neither of them is Constituted without some signification of consent which he never before heard one Christian deny CHAP. I. PREFATORY § 1. COntending though Defensive and made necessary by Accusers is an unpleasant work As I would choose a Prison before a Defensive War were it for no greater interest than my own so I would choose to be in Print proclaimed an Heretick Schismatick Atheist or any thing rather than be at the unpleasing labour of a Confutation of all Accusers were it not for a higher interest than mine For though we must contend for the Faith yet the servant of the Lord must not needlesly strive 2 Tim. 2. 24 25. And experience tells us the good seldome answereth the bad effects § 2. And there are few that call me to a publick Account that I answer less willingly than Mr. Cheney because his Accusations are such gross Mistakes that I cannot Answer them in the gentlest manner according to truth without opening that which will bring him lower in the Readers esteem than I desire and I much fear will be to himself a temptation which he will hardly overcome as I see by this his 2d Book Had he that was my familiar Neighbour thought meet to have spoken with me before his Publications I am past doubt that I could have convinced him of multitudes of Untruths and Errours so as to have prevented such a publication of them for in private he would easilier have born the detection of them than in the hearing of the World which he has chosen But whereas some cast away his Book as a fardel of Dotage and shameless Lyes I must remember such that I am confident he wrote no falshoods with a purpose knowingly to deceive and therefore they are not strictly Lyes but as rash untruths are such in a larger sense which ignorant men assert for want of due tryal It is a great errour to over-value such poor frail ignorant men as we all are Mr. Ch. and I have both over-valued one another and this errour now we have both escaped but not laid by our Christian love And as God will not take Mens Diseases for their Sins his bodily temper is to me a great excuse of his strong confident mistakes § 3. The very Introductory Preface of his Books disowning Cruelty and uncharitable dividing Impositions enableth me to forgive him the multitude of rash untruths and slanders and instead of a Mentiris I shall put but a Putares or Non-putares I have just such a task in dealing with Mr. Ch. as with one that is hard of hearing when I speak to such a one that heareth but one half and mis-heareth the rest he answereth me as he heard and when I tell him his mistake his last reply is I thought you had said thus and thus but if I should dispute a whole day with such a man I should be sharply censured if I printed the Dispute and told the World how many hundred times the man mis-heard and so mistook me And I fear neither he himself nor the Reader that valueth his time would thank me for such exercise of my Arithmetick with Mr. Cheney § 4. For his Preface I thank him It tells me that all our Accusers do it not in meer Malignity and that he hath a few steps further to tumble before he come to the bottom of the hill His Book consisteth partly of a handsome considerable discourse for Prelacie and other Church-Offices of Humane Invention and partly of a new singular Doctrine about Church-Forms partly in a critical discharge of his fancy and unpacking his preparations against the Independant Covenant and Church-Form and partly in detecting my many Atheistical Infidel Impious Errours by which he supposeth I am deceiving the world and partly n a multitude of falshoods of me and others in matter of fact and partly I hope an ignorant plea for the Pope To open all these fully would tire the Reader and me CHAP. II. What the Doctrine is which he accuseth of Atheism Impiety c. § 1. THE Reader that hath well perused my Writings knoweth it but I cannot expect that all should do so that read his Book The abstract is this I. That Jesus Christ is Head over all things to the Church Eph. 1. 22 23. II. That the Mosaical Law as such never bound other Kingdoms and is ceased with their Commonwealth and is abrogated by Christ and that he as King of the Church hath established a sufficient Law for all that is universally necessary for Doctrine Worship and Church-order or Government and was faithful in all his house as Moses and Commissioned his Apostles to Disciple Nations Baptizing them and teaching them what Christ himself had commanded them Matth. 28. 19. III. That he setled the Ministry and Church-Form before he made any Magistrate Christian and that no Magistrate hath power to change them IV. That what his Apostles did by his Commission and Spirit he did by them V. That Church-Forms being so Instituted and Constituted he hath not left them so much to the will of Man as he hath done the Forms of Civil Government VI. That Christ hath One Universal Church of which he is the onely Head and Law-giver and no Vicar personal or collective as one Political person or power of which professed believers and consenters in Baptism are the visible Members and sincere Believers and Consenters the Spiritual saved Members VII That the World and Church are not all one nor Heathens and Infidels the same with Christians nor any parts of the Church properly called VIII That Christs Ministers first work to which they were Commissioned was not on the Church or any Member of it but the Infidel world to gather them into a Church and the first Baptized person was not Baptized into a pre-existent Church but the Church existing Baptism entereth men into it IX That the first Baptizer was no Pastor of such an existent Church but an Organical Minister to gather a Christian Church X. That though at Baptism one may enter into the Universal and a particular Church yet Baptisme qua talis entereth us onely into the Universal being our Christening or Covenant-uniting to the body of Christ XI That a Pastor in the Scripture and usual sense is a Relate to Oves the Sheep or Flock and not to Infidels And a Ministry to Infidels and an Episcopacy or Pastorship of the flock are different notions but if any will use the terms otherwise we contend not de nomine though you call him a Pastor of Infidels or what else you can devise XII To explain my self when I mention a Bishop or Pastor I mean the Bishop or Pastor of
his talk my ignorance of the Law shall suspend my Subscription 1. King John gave up his Kingdom to the Pope I cannot say it had been unlawful for the Kingdom to resist such as he should have Commissioned to execute it 2. Nor such as should be Commissioned to dispossess the right Heir and settle it on a Stranger or an Enemy 3. Nor such as should be Commissioned to seize on all the Subjects Estates or Lives yea or lay Taxes contrary to Law in cases where the Law enableth the Sheriff by the Posse Comitatus to resist 4. Nor if any get the Broad-Seal to Commissions to seize on the King's Garrisons Forts Navies Treasures Guards whereby a traiterous Lord-Keeper might at any time Depose the King I have told you that old Parliaments Popish and Protestant and Archbishop Abbot and Bishop Bilson c. were as much Nonconformists in this as I am And so much to the Impleaders Accusations of the Nonconformists and his Reasons for the justifying of their Silencing and ruine and the Lawfulness of some of the things which they judge to them unlawful Let the impartial Reader try and judge The rest of my Book which is the far greater part he answereth by contempt and silence CHAP. IV. Of his dealing with the Second Plea for Peace WHile we hear men that should be our Brethren go on to call to Magistrates for Execution of the Laws which they have got against us and for want of matter of Accusation against those that they prosecute raking up odious Criminations from the late Wars which few of the now Silenced Ministers had any hand in and never ceasing to tell men that the Beginners of that War were guilty of the King's Death After 17 or 18 years Silence 1. I told them That two parties of the Episcopal Conformists being the beginners in England it 's wonder'd that they see not how they accuse themselves And why do they not profess Repentance first 2. I fully told them what are our Principles of Government and Obedience and intreated them to shew me wherein they are disloyal or culpable And this man is the first that I finde pretending to assault it and shame lessly passeth over the Book itself and by his silence seemeth to justifie our Doctrine And yet to shew his Will he taketh occasion again to take up the foresaid actions of the evil Civil War as if that were any thing to the present Cause or as if he were calling the dead to Judgment For we have oft offered them thanks if they will Silence only those that had a hand in those Wars 2. He taketh on him to answer my Historical Preface and therein heapeth abundance of untruths part of which I mentioned in the second Chapter and the rest I have so fully confuted in my Answer to Mr. Hinkley and in an Historical Index of those affairs that I will not waste my own and the Readers time by saying the same things here again And his Accusations of my Concord and Moral Prognostication I have answered before It is the manner of the man to name Books and take occasion from somewhat in them to pour out that which he most abounds with and to try whether men will take this for a Confutation O miserable world Where the very Preachers of Holiness Love and Peace go on to the Grave and Judgment and Eternity fighting against Holiness Love and Peace forbidding others to worship God that cannot swallow all their Inventions and not enduring their Brethren to live in Peace among them But 't is Letter in the World of Holy Love and Peace A REFLECTION on the REFLECTER on a Book against Sacrilegious Desertion of the Sacred Ministry § 1. WHen the King being more merciful than the Canoneer Clergy had granted Licenses to the Nonconformists for the publick worshipping of God in peaceable Assemblies many of the Clergy still cryed down such Assemblies as Schismatical when before they seemed to lay the charge of Schism on them for their want of Authority And these are the men that when it is for their Interest are zealous defenders of the Royal Power against some Parliaments Limitations but their Interest can extol or at least absolve Mr. Hooker himself Some of them would have perswaded us to forbear the Liberty which the King had granted us and so to be the Silencers of our selves and to forbear Gods publick Worship till we dare Conform And no wonder when they apprehended such dismal Consequents to their Church from our Preaching as Mr. Hinkley in his letter-Letter-book hath told you Among others Dr. Fulwood would have drawn us into half this guilt on pretence of perswading us to the moderate use of our Licenses On which occasion I wrote a small Book to prove that wilful deserting of our Ministry even when it is forbidden unjustly and yet remaineth notoriously necessary to the ends of the Institution is downright Sacriledge and worse than alienating Church-Goods or Lands But I took occasion in it to deal as plainly with those Non-Conformists who are inclined to unwarrantable Separations as with our Accusers Dr. Fullwood wrote an Answer to this Book I never replyed partly that they may see that I can give such men the honour of having the last word and partly to save mine own and the Readers time But now either he or some other unnamed Author that is marked M. A. hath published more Useful Reflections on that Book He knoweth to what use and let him use them accordingly § 2. I. Part of his Reflections are Citations out of that and other of my Books of such words as seem to be for them and against the Non-Conformists and my self II. The other part is his descant on the words which he disliketh and setteth them to the Tune which suits his Inclination and may serve his turn Should I Print an Answer to such stuff as this and in many Sheets tell men where and how such men speak amiss the Reader might think that Satan hath such power on me as by any of his Instruments at his pleasure to draw me to cast away my own and other mens precious time § 3. All therefore that I shall say to him shall be this I. As to the first that 1. I can reconcile my own words though he cannot And as he never desired me to teach him to do it I am not at leisure to offer him my Service All is not contradiction which men that understand not words do think so 2. Readers You see here when they call for Moderation and would have us come as near them as we can they do but turn it to reproach And one that granteth them all that they cite out of my Books and comes as near them as I do is nevertheless thought unsufferable by them in the exercise of the Ministry and out of Jayl This is the spirit of the men § 4. II. To the other part I only say The man mistakes all the question which is not
of Diocesan Prelacy Therefore to save us any more trouble we will refer all that Controversie to your own Ignatius alone who determineth That in every Church there is one Altar and one Bishop with his Presbyters and Deacons and with that we are content In your Page 6 to keep your wont 1. You feign me to say that which I tell you is objected to me by others 2. You falsly feign me to allow the Conformists to have some Hebrew Chaldee Syriac and Arabic my very mention of which words you out lay hold on as an Honour granted to your â—â—â—â— But it is all a false supposition I never apâ—roved hofe words to the Conformists I only told you that valuing Matter before Words I 〈…〉 the Church had men that speak sound Doctrine in an apt and serious manner for bringing Sinners to repentance in English than such as can lace an insipid empty senceless Discourse with some shreds of Chaldee Syriac or Arabic and though I could wish that all the Ministers of Christ had all Accomplishments fit even for the adorning of their â—acred Work yet I had rather hear a meer English Divine than an Hebrew or a Syriac Sot You put me to the troublesom repeating of my words by your falsification I did not mention Conformists at all nor had any thought of appropriating these Passages to them any more than others But only to tell you that be he Conformist on Non-conformist if like Augustine Ambrose c. he had sound Divinity without the Languages now mentioned I could better bear with him than with one whoever that had Words for Ostentation without Sense and to free you from all suspicion of Injury I never heard one of the young Conformists which I mention make any ostentation or credible signification of his skill in any one of those Tongues Nor do I remember but exceeding few Conformists in England of my acquaintance that I will accuse or suspect of any such skill But having a Lad in my house not long ago come from School who hath some acquaintance in all these Languages and as many more who I assure you is too young to be a Conformable Preacher or Divine he being next me suggested the Matter of my Comparison when you vilified I know not whom some unnamed Non-conformists for knowing little more than English Books can teach them One Pressick a Sadler in Leverpool hath written That against some of your Sect in English which all their Languages will hardly enable them to Confute And I hear but few of you that in real knowledge are much more Angelical than Aquinas subtle than Scotus profound than Bradwardine c. when yet they and their Scholastick Tribe were commonly very sorry Linguists But it s needful that I intreat you that you affirm me not to have called them all Non-conformistâ— because I name them in this Comparison As for the loads of Dirt that you say I cast and your saying that you see you should have said feel that its difficult to forbear reproach towards them from whom we differ I answer 1. And I see that it s no wonder if that Tribe who think themselves persecuted when they may not persecute and silence others do also think themselves reproached when others are justly vindicated from their reproach 2. But it s hard that as Transubstantiation must be an Article of some mens Faith so we also must be obliged to believe that all our Senses and Experience are deceived And that he that walketh in the Frost is a reproach for saying it is cold because another affirmeth that the Summer is colder because of now and then a rainy day Alas are so many great Chappelries and many Parish Churches in several parts of the Land utterly without any Minister at all Are so many others so supplied yea so many hundreds as the Lovers of Souls do groan and weep for and must we neither see nor feel it But Sir if we must not feel it to you let us feel it to God that we may feelingly and not formally pray him to send forth more and better Labourers into his Harvest For my part I seriously profess that if the Gospel be but better Preached and the Souls of all the Parishes in the Three Kingdoms better instructed for their Salvation without us than with us I will never more speak for a Liberty to Preach much less desire a Farthing of the Maintenance But Sir if you talk in Print as you do to me in private Letters you might make strangers of your Mind But to the People of the present Age that see that hear that know the Persons your words will be all vain You may call them the Children of Hell for not believing you but men are so naturally sensible that your Anger will not change them neer London and in it I think are the worthiest Conformists in the Land proportionably And yet how many places not far off it feel what I say A worthy Learned judicious peaceable Divine bred up in one of the next Parishes to you awhile Mr. John Warren is silenced at a great Town Hatfield Broadoak in the Bishop of London's Presentation Thus he hath long lived and done much good yet since 1662 that he was silenced the Place hath been void many years because the Maintenance is small and there must be none at all rather than such a one as He. But you call this casting Dirt too The starved Souls must not take on them to feel their Case And to be past feeling in such cases is a state that men are prone to of themselves and need no Preachers to help them to be indifferent in Well! Souls must be starved or not be humble How can we prefer others before our selves unless we will be content that those for whom Christ died be neglected and Ignorance set up to teach men knowledge and the Ungodly to teach them Godliness But as in Natune so in Grace there is a Principle that will not suffer men by Words to be brought to take Famine for Food nor saying a dry Lesson for teaching men the Way to Heaven Blessed be God that hath possessed all renewed Christians with a new Nature which differenceth the Chaff from the Wheat and words from real worth and substance But you heard a Preacher say That he thanked God he never heard a Preacher but he could get something by him Answer And I also am of Mr. Herbert's mind Church-porch p. 15. If all want sense God takes a Text and preacheth Patience But for all that I will not by my Approbation contract the Guilt of such Preachers nor of those that set them up and would have others silenced and calumniated and then plead Humility for the valuing of these Every Text that is preached on is eaifying and I hope by bare reading it we may be edified And in Muscovy where all Preaching is put down for fear of Treason 1671. and yet now by Treason they are just between Life and Death
a Liberty to Preach Christ to ignorant Souls must Protestants Greeks and Papists be all silenced for want of Loyalty I will subscribe to the utmost that which any of their Confessions give to Kings 4. The Non-conformists as far as I am acquainted with them have still been ready in express terms to promise never to meddle in any War against the King Nay to promise to employ their interest and labour to prvent it I◠this would serve they should not be silenced Are such as Hooker and Bilson thought worthy of Honour and are these Principles of ours so much less security against War as to leave us on that account uncapable to Preach Let but reason and humility be judge of your Accusation and Cause And here to shame your self yet more Marchiaement Need-hams Book is instanced in A Man that is no Minister but a Physician who in those daies Wrote against us Non-conformists and against my self by Name when the generality of the now silenced Non-conformists and excluding the Sectaries stood out refusing for the most part the engagement whom the Royalists of my vicinity took it This Man that Wrote against me and since the Kings return hath welcomed him in florid Poems is instanced in to tell Men what the Nonconformists are and why they are silenced Truly Sir I conjecture you are a Stranger to them as abundance of the Prelatists are though you lived in England and have dwelt somewhere where you knew but some Giddy Sectaries and judge by them of those you knew not And here Page 8. I am glad that you deny not that the worst among us are received if they do but conforme which sheweth for what crime we are kept out And for your exclamation against us that come not in you would be impatient if I should but describe your dealing What if you lived under in such a power of Usurpers as would say if all the Ministers in Germany Holland c. will under their hands or delibrately profess that no one in the Kingdom is bound by the Oath of Supremacy or Allegiance and promise that he will never endeavour the reformation of any Corruption in Religion but will Assent and Consent to every Word in the Interim and will use Exorcism c. they shall have leave to Preach else they shall all be silenced and deprived of all Ministerial Liberty and maintenance And the◠Cassander should have told them that they shu◠out themselves if they come not in I say not that our Case is the same with this I know it is not But Cassander dealt more Candidly than you do Is there any thing that could be imposed that would make you a Non-conformist If there be might non any Man talk to you at such rates even tye your Legs and intreat you to go or blindfold you and say read who struck you § 6. What need you more to the present Case when you say that there is never a Cherubim to hinder them than this that though it be no sin in your Opinion it is a hainous sin in theirs And will your Opinion prove it where we search as diligently as you do to know the truth If we be not as good as you you may allow us to love our selves as well Tell me what time of any Usurpation had such impositions which the main Body of the present Conformists then in being did not conform or submit to or which they refused to the Cost of all their Church maintenance for the liberty of Preaching too many of them could easily forego it I know that many were turned out by others that would gladly have conformed if that would but have been accepted I knew not three Men in the three Counties about me that would not then have conformed if that would have kept them in their livings If there were more unknown to me there or elsewhere I would but have asked those men whether it was a sin that was imposed on them And if so whether it would have prevailed with them if one had done as you and told them that they kept out themselves and that no Cherubin stood in the way and how hainously they sinned in forsaking their Calling It seems by your Complaint of the Tryers men that I had nothing to do with that either you did Conform then or would have done if they had not refused you They say you did Conform I am sure that most of my Acquaintance that were sequestred would have Conformed to have kept their Livings But if we be of another mind now when Declarations Subscriptions Oaths and Practices are imposed on us which what would you have us to do Our manifold Interests obligeth us to judge them lawful if we could We lose as much by not Conforming as most of you get by Conforming Must we judge all lawful because our Guides do so How far will that hold Will it hold in Italy or in France or in Denmark or formerly in Scotland if you had lived there He that must take all for good which another calleth so must know who it is that is so far to be trusted on especially of those that renounce Infallibility 2. The Irony was palpable enough to have prevented your Fancy that I give up the Cause scil by confessing the Crime that we sought to save Souls and that we did eat bread A little will encourage you sometimes to great Conclusions § 7. P. 9. Here you have many things to say to prove that men that came into Sequestrations either sought not or procured the good of Souls But O! first remember that if that were true yet all those or neer all were turned out of their Sequestrations before the silencing Bartholomew Day 1662. 2. Do you think that it had been as consistent with the good of Souls that they had for sixteen years been all untaught and left without any Ministers or Publick Worship rather than any should have succeeded the ejected 3. If our Preaching did no good to Souls why should you think that yours does any If you preach the same Gospel why should you think so well of your own works above other mens And if yours also do no good why do men pay their Tythes and trouble themselves to hear such as do but trouble the World 4. Do you not Conspire with the Quakers that falsly cried out that our Ministry did not profit men and with the Levellers that would have taken down the Ministry as unprofitable 5. But O! what an attempt you make to prove how little History is credible to teach men to say How know we that Hegisyppus that Eusebius that Socrates that Epiphanius say true when such men as should be the Preachers of Truth can say what they do of common or notorious matters of Fact yea and confidently stand to it to the face of that Age which knoweth that they speak falsly 1. Who are more competent Judges whether men received any good by Christs Gospel which we preached you or they Do
Excommunicating Kings offered us as a Test or why was there never any such difference between us and the Prelatists pretended Try us whether we will not subscribe in this to as much as the Prelatists ever did agree on or ordinarily hold and lay our Liberty upon it and spare not But I remember you nibled before at my words in Differ of Magist and Pastors power Thes 60. p. 38. as if I had said That unless perhaps in some rare Case Kings may not be Excommunicated A Calumny when I annexed those words of exception only to the Excommunicating of Parents But your ways are still equal And I gave even Moral Reasons against Excommunicating Kings and Parents But when you in swearing will put who knows how many Exceptions to express Universals must I after all this be at your mercy unless I will say that In no rare case a Pastor may Excommunicate his own Parents What if the rare Case were 1. That he were but one in a Presbytery subject to a Bishop and his Parents were as open Apostates as Julian and the Bishop and the rest of the Presbytery required him to concur in their Excommunication 2. What if the King command a Bishop to Excommunicate a Magistrate or Parent for Treason Must he needs be disobeyed 3. What if God should send an Angel or Prophet with a particular Message so to do I am sure that Case is rare enough and I durst not disobey But it s hard pleasing some men § 45. Semper idem 1. But will you give it under your hand as a Lesson to your Flock That a Minister may not gainsay another for slandering Christians who in any thing differ from him that doth gainsay him nor may defend the Innocency of a Presbyterian unless he be one himself And that all men are bound to stand to the Opinions of all Christians in all other points whom they seek to vindicate against publick slanders What a pack of Doctrines do the Reasonings of these your Writings imply if they were but set together If I write almost twenty years ago and still against Lay Elders a Conformist may equally charge that upon me which I write against if I do but plead against slandering those that hold what I dissent from Yea he knoweth not where to have us so little do our Writings signifie our minds in these mens account The first Epist to Kederm in the first Book that ever I wrote disclaims them But that 's nothing to you And I must be taken for the Achilles of the Party and accountable for their Opinions if I do but say to a Printing Conformist Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy Neighbour May I not say so to you for a Heathen or a Papist Dr. Heylin tells us in the Life of Archbishop Laud That the Kings Printers were censured sorely for Printing the Seventh Commandment Thou shalt commit Adultery But I never yet met with the Ninth Commandment so transmuted to give you any excuse If you think it lawful to say any thing how unjust soever against a man that is not for your Discipline which you as much wish amended your self I am of another mind When Lamprid tells us that Alex Severus borrowed his Motto of the Christians Quod tibi fieri non vis c. He never said that therefore he was a Christian I had got no Lawyer to plead for me at the Bar if they had known that they were accountable for all my Opinions I am sure the Lord Chief Justice when he acquit me thought fit to declare his different judgment from mine in point of Preaching privately Yet here your terms of Logick are Into how many shapes and Hecatetriformis Fish flesh Mermaid Episcopal Presbyterian Independent yet none of these when you please an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sometimes in the water sometimes out I wish you were hot or cold All this set together would make a Syllogism of a new Mood and Figure But 1. For ought I know most of the Nonconformists are such are your bungling description intimateth And whatever men hold take it as it is and feign them not to hold what they do not Do not you in Print proclaim men to be flesh or fish hot or cold that are not so But lay our Error where it lieth even as I must not take your Chancellors for Clergy-men or Lay-men 2. And did not all my tedious writings convince you before now that I therefore take that for an honour which you take for my disgrace because I take that for plain and certain truth which you reproach You could not except a Catholick Christian have trulier called me than an Episcopal Presbyterian-Independent I have oft enough told the World that I am very confident that each of the three Parties have some Truths and some Errors appropriate to themselves or which the rest have not I never found in Scripture any Obligation that I must needs be of a Faction in a time when Faction hath bred Wars troubled Kingdoms silenced Preachers by the hundreds c. and when I have seen and felt the Effects and not been always innocent of the Cause Nor yet that I must either refuse all the good or receive all the bad and feed on the excrements of any Faction whatsoever I am for no such heats or cold I am no such fish or flesh I will neither persecute as Paul did nor separate as Peter did Gal. 2. nor comply as Barnabas did nor reject the Brethren as Diotrephes did nor condemn others as the Weak did nor despise them as the strong did Rom. 14. 1 2 c. But be such an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he that became a Jew a Greek all things to all men that he might win some When I offended the Bishops in Conference I openly told them I had ever taken kneeling at the Sacrament to be lawful but I never took it to be lawful to cast honest Christians out of the Communion of the Church of Christ that dare not do it Did this prove me to be neither fish nor flesh Is no man of your Religion that is not for Excommunication or Prisons Swords or Flames for every Child of God that cryeth or wrangleth with the Breast Again I will say were they Priscillianists I am more for Martin's Spirit than the Ithacian Bishops And Sir that factious fury and uncharitableness keepeth up but a present violent kind of honour the Instance now once again named may tell you that when all the Bishops thereabouts in their Synods did but seek to the Magistrate to use the Sword against such gross Hereticks as the Priscillianists who as Severus saith that knew them were Gnosticks and but one poor ragged unlearned godly Bishop Martin with one other only in all France did dissent from them reprove them and separate for it from their Synods and Communion Godly people accidentally falling under the Vulgars reproach for the Hereticks sake as lately by the word Puritans here yet this one
Enclosure and the Communion of your Conformists I have some business on your side the Hedge the Law and your own expectation will tell you part of it I see some of my Fathers Family with you I have busines on the other side the Hedge There are as good as you and such as I am neerly related to and commanded to love as my self and to receive as Christ received us and not to doubtful disputations to prove or approve all your Jurisdictions Assumptions Oaths Covenants Subscriptions Reordinations Formalities and Ceremonies Your thorn-hedge hath enclosed but one corner of Christs Vineyard and I have business in the rest It hath separated Parents from Children Husbands from Wives as to Church-communion Masters and Servants Brethren from Brethren Neighbours from Neighbours If they that made the hedge can justifie it let them do it it will be tryed before a jealous God ere long if those of you that in learned Books and Sermons exhort us with somewhat hissing Rhetorick to separate from those on the other side the hedge can prove that themselves are all Christs Church and that God would have us separate from all save them and give over Preaching and all publick Worship of God till we can conscionably conform to all their Impositions I say if all these silencing Preachers can make good their accusation of the Brethren and their conclusions let them that undertake it speed as they perform it but for my part I will not separate from Father Mother Brother Friend and all good Christians save a domineering Sect because that Sect will else call me Separatist I was wont to draw the Map of the Church Universal as one Body or Field or Vineyard of Christ hedged in indeed round about from Infidels and distributed into thousands of particular Churches as Streets and Families in one City But if any will say Hold Communion with one Street or Family and separate from the rest and then say that you are a Schismatick for not being for that odious Schism I will hear such as I do the people that talk through the windows on the west side of Moor-fields when they say that all are mad or Schismatical that are not in their Cubs and Chains Mr. Cheney was never there I think and yet it was per album an atrum nescio revealed to him that I am downright for an Independant Covenant which hath twenty Arguments extant to batter it and prove it guilty of irreligiousness or somewhat worse And they say for I am not acquainted much with their practice that the Independent bind their flock to hold Communion with none but their own Sect nor to depart without leave from their particular Churches I am apt to believe that they are slandered for whoever falls sick I will first fear the most epidemical or common disease but if it be no slander I profess that I will never be of a particular Church which claims to be the universal and will forbid me Communion with all save them And if in this the Prelatists agree with the Independents I am against the separating Sectarian Schismatical presumption of them both I take the Kitching and Cole-house to be parts of the house and I have sometimes business in them both But I am most in my Study and Chamber and I will take both Chamber and Colehouse for Schismticks if ever I hear either of them say I am all the house or it is lawful to be in no other room Lord pull up the separating Schismatical Thorn-hedge which hath cursedly divided thy family and flock CHAP. II. The Impleaders Truth examined § 1. CHrist saith that the Devil is the Father of Lies and doubtless he hath subtilty to excuse them and improve them and it is a great advantage to them that they are so disowned by humane nature that it is taken for an injury to humanity to charge any man to be a Lyar and a Ruffian will say it deserveth a challenge or a stab You will think it a paradox that natural dislike should be turned to the advantage of a sin But it is but natural light convincing the understanding not changing or fortifying the will against it And therefore it is but pride of reputation and impenitency that is indeed the fortress of the sin § 2. Accordingly it hath many times been my hard hap to have such Books written against me and that by men whose Reputation is not undervalued by themselves or their followers as were to be answered chiefly by a Mentiris from end to end if it would not seem by custom to be uncivil And to tire the Reader by turning a Mintiris into a civil long Parenthesis and this as frequently as gross falshoods are openly said or intimated is tedious even when necessary With one I was put to use my Arithmetick and to answer him by numbring the untruths asserted But I have forborn it with others far more guilty lest their reverence and power should make truth intolerable whose passion or interest or errour had made gross Lies seem true and necessary § 3. This Impleader hath been taught too much by the same Master and had he not spent part of his Book on Doctrinals where his Errata are but mendae but been all Historical where there are too many Mendacia I might have been put to the way of answering before-mentioned But be they Mendae or Mendacia they need aniendment and the Reader may need an antidote against them § 4. Some beginning we have on the Title-page pretending to shew the Reasons of the sinfulness of Conformity Mend. 1. I pretend in my Plea to shew but the matter of Nonconformity and Historical Narrative of our judgment and matters of fact passing by the Reasons or Arguments that must prove the things unlawful though Reason may be gathered by the Reader from the matter or History itself § 5. The same is repeated p. 1. He pretends to give Reasons for the sinfulness of Conformity M. 2. And he overpasseth the chief part of my Book in which I state the case of Government and Separation on pretence that it is a dark and dirty way in which I have lost my self M. 3. And a little will satisfie him that regards such an easie dark and dirty answer § 6. He guesseth that kneeling at the Sacrament for that was then discourst of was one and the chief of those many heinous sins of Conformity Mend. 4. It seems the man was present Reader look to thy belief when thou art among such men 1. There was not a word spoken then against the lawfulness of Kneeling at the Sacrament 2. I openly declared that I held it lawful and none of my Brethren contradicted 3. The thing which we proved unlawful then was Casting those faithful Christians out of the Church-Communion in that Sacrament who dare not take it kneeling for the reasons which cause them to think it sinful § 7. Impl. He will not urge the case but barely mention matters of fact 〈…〉 much
less do we here give the reasons of our Cause He dare not be so bold yet as to venture to displease us But this Hypocrisie is so thin that the weakest eye may look through it Mend. 5. Answ 1. The Printer put urge instead of argue which he was told in the Errata And he maketh the errour his own by feigning the words to be mine 2. If I have disputed the Case by Reasons Why did he not cite them and tell where 3. He alloweth the Reader to take him for a Calumniator who will judge the heart which he knoweth not and bring no proof of the hypocrisie which he saith the weakest eye may see Indeed the weakest is liker than the strongest to see as he doth 4. I will shew him three Reasons why it is not like to be Hypocrisie 1. Because there are severe Laws against all that shall deprave the Common-Prayer Book or accuse Conformity of being sinful which is Excommunication ipso facto c. And also Printing such a charge might have cost both Printer and Writer dear And the Book was written divers years as many can witness before the Act that restrained the Press expired And is it not credible that every man loveth himself and is unwilling to be ruined I knew how easily you are displeased and I felt a little what you can do when you are displeased and others felt more And is it hypocrisie then to say I feared to displease you And verily I was afraid by it of occasioning your wrath and contentious Writings against many others and making the breach wider which I desired to heal 2. When it 's visible in the Book that I avoid Argumentation doth not that prove that I said true 3. The third Proof if God will is yet to come when you see my Arguments added to the History you will confess that it was not Hypocrisie to tell you that I used them not before § 8. Impl. For whereas the Right Reverend and Learned Bishop of Eli had told Mr. B. as he confesseth That he would petition Authority that they might be compelled to give their Reasons he there saith To answer the earnest demand of our Reasons by you the Lord Bishop of Eli I have published an Historical Narrative of our Case and Judgment Answ Had he not mentioned weak Eyes you might wonder that he saw not how he here confuteth his own falshood when in the words cited I profess to give but the Historical Narrative of our Case and Judgment and not the Arguments or Reasons for it But he thinketh If the History be given in answer to him that demanded the Reasons then the History containeth those Reasons Negatur Sequela The matter of Fact must go first The Bishop demanded of me an account of our Non-conformity This is the beginning of an Answer The Reasons may come next § 9. Impl. And if he may be believed they are not only Mr. Baxter's Reasons m. 6. but of many others m. 7. for p. 3. it is said We that publish this here give an account of our own judgment how far we hold it lawful or unlawful to gather or separate from Churches or to differ from what is established by Authority Answ The man knoweth not the difference between giving an account of our judgment in Thesi and in Hypothesi If I tell you in what cases I hold it lawful or unlawful to separate from Churches or how far humane Power may go as I have done in the second Plea is that to tell what I take for sin in our Conformity and the Reasons of it What if I shew how far Lying is unlawful Doth that say that Conformity is Lying c. § 10. Impl. Where is that allowance from Authority which he pretends to have so long waited for and begg'd on his knees m. 8. And where is that care not to displease or provoke the Conformists by shewing the many heinous sins in their Conformity m. 9. When without leave of God m. 10. or man he not only endeavours to displease m. 11. but to ruine us m. 12. If any thing may be this is worse than his hypocrisie it is mere distraction and rage m. 13. When our common Adversaries the Papists c. Answ 1. It was leave that I desired but I never said I begg'd it on my knees but that I would gladly do it could that prevail 2. I never shewed the heinous sins of the Conformists but over and over professed that I accused not them nor meddled with their case but only said How heinous a sin it would be to us to Conform till we knew more reason for it than we do 3. That it is without leave of God that we give a reason of our not conforming I take for false while our Superiours so long and earnestly commanded it and it is so necessary to abate the dividing odium raised against us Rom. 12. 18. If it be possible as much as in you lyeth live peaceably with all men And if we are taken for intollerable Malefactors is not undeceiving our Accusers and Haters a necessary means of Peace 4. It 's false that an endeavour to undeceive the offended is an endeavour to displease them 5. And it is more palpably false that I endeavour their ruine 6. How false is it then that this is distraction and rage And what more necessary to unite us against the common Adversaries What Physicians hath this poor Nation that know no way to unite us but laying us in Jails with Rogues till we can believe all to be lawful which they impose Reader Pitty the case of this poor Land What hands are we fallen into What false Doctrine is charged on us What is the Crime that we have committed We are forbidden to Preach Christ's Gospel though we were solemnly devoted to it by Ordination under the Penalties of great Mulcts and Imprisonments and ruine till we will do that which after our best enquiry we verily judge would be our heinous sin We forbear many years to tell them so much as what it is which we dare not to do till at last the Bishops themselves tell us They will petition Authority to constrein us to it And Parliament-men long askt us What is that you stick at And when after about seventeen or eighteen years Silence I do but tell them what it is the Clergy-men are so displeased that they tell me that It is distraction and rage and an endeavour to ruine them When I never moved to put one Priest of them out of his Benefice nor Bishop Dean Archdeacon Canon Prebend out of a Farthing of his maintenance nor one Bishop from their Lordships or Parliament-Power much less did I ever motion the silencing of any one of them or making them pay Fourty Pound a Sermon or laying them in â—ayl as we are used and yet they cry out that we endeavour to ruine them The Lord pity his poor Flock What a case are we in when our Pastors seem to think
in possession Not only the Synods in Martius time that owned Maximus but Ambrose and Theopl Alexand to Eugenius and Gregory the first and many Western Bishops and ordinarily far most of the Eastern Bishops presently owned Usurpers that came into the Empire by the Murder or Deposition of their Predecessors And are all these Fathers and Christians damn'd 5. The Liturgie requires that when such are Buried they are openly pronounced saved that is That God of his great Mercy hath taken to himself their Souls out of the miseries of this Life and that we hope to be with them We must be Silenced and Imprisoned if we will not say this and subscribe to it and reproached if we do This is the Conformity which they would have us yield 6. Do you not tremble your self when you question whether they be not gone to a worse place and revile us for the hopes of their Salvation Doth not your Conscience ask If such men be not saved what will become of me that deliberately write such Volumes of Falshoods against God's true Servants and their present serving him as if they must cease Preaching and all Church-worship till they dare Conform to all imposed O why will you condemn your self in others 7. I finde many of your selves honouring Bishop Jewel Bishop Bilson and Mr. Hooker and such others that held the Principles which those men went upon and you never yet that I heard of reviled any man for hoping that they were saved No nor Grotius nor Barclay nor the common sort of Lawyers and Politick-Writers that have said more of the Cases in which Kings may be Resisted and Deposed than they did or than I ever said If such Principles may stand with the Salvation of Grotius Hooker Bilson Althusius Alstedius Willius c. Why not of theirs that I have mentioned 8. You know I suppose that it was mostly Episcopal men that began the War Lords Commons and Souldiers on both sides If you will not know and can be ignorant when you list your Will hath a freedom which mine hath not And are you sure that your Conformists also are damned 9. You hereby teach them that are confident that the Laudian Clergie were the chief Causers of the War to conclude therefore that they are damned And so our Clergy on both sides will be like Gregory the Seventh's and the Emperour 's in Germany first exciting and encouraging the Princes and People of the two sides and then taking Oaths against each other and lastly damning one another till a Reverend Council of Bishops Decreed that all the Bishops on the Emperours side should be Deposed and the Dead digg'd out of their Graves and burnt 10. You will open the eyes of the people to see what manner of Spirit you are of and that it is no wonder if you cannot endure us to Preach and Live by you who take us for Criminal for hoping that men are saved who otherwise were of most exemplary Lives but being in point of Politiques on the Parliaments side and doing accordingly while they professed to arm only against Subjects holding the person of the King to be inviolable I finde not that even in the Barons Wars or the Wars between the Houses of Lancaster and York no nor King Stephens the Censures were so high Anselme Archbishop of Canterbury is Sainted that was against his King § 17. The second Charge is my Vindicating the Parliaments War against the King Answ 1. I believed then that it was not against him when their Commissions were for him 2. I proposed my Reasons upon a Learned Knights demand requesting satisfaction by an Answer And had you or any of you ever since confuted them it had been more charity than only to Recite them and Condemn them But I have over and over publickly declared my revocation of that whole Book though not of all that 's in it and wisht that I had never written it for more Reasons than I will now name to you 3. My Judgment about the King's Power and our Obedience I have fully declared in The Second Plea for Peace § 18. The third Accusation is His pertinacious adhering to the Covenant Answ 1. The man knoweth that I own not the imposing it specially as a Test for the Nations Concord it being an engine of Division so imposed 2. That I own not the taking it so imposed 3. That I deny that it obligeth me to any thing that is evil yea or from any Obedience to the King in things lawful nor to any thing but what I have a former obligation to from God himself 4. But I confess that I dare not say that it obligeth no man to repent of his Sin nor to be against Popery Prophaneness or Schism nor to endeavour any amendment of Church-Government And I will not deny but that I take Perjury to be no indifferent thing which of these is the Crime of Adherence he tells me not 19. The next Accusation is Crying down the Royal Martyr as a Papist Answ I have said Till he tell me where and how he proveth it I must take him for a gross Calumniator and wonder not that he Conformeth In my Key for Catholicks he may see where I prove the contrary that the King was no Papist I will confess that which he knoweth not 1662 and 1663. when the Kings Letter in Spain to the Pope was Printed out of Mr. de Chesne by Prynne I was struck a while with doubt and suspicion But I soon considered 1. That the words promised but Endeavours for Unity 2. And that it was written in the Spaniards power in a streight § 20. The next is Crying up his Murderer Answ A repeated malicious falshood § 21. The next Accusation is His Principles in his Holy Commonwealth Answ 1. I oft told you The Book is revoked long ago 2. The Principles which I own I have published as aforesaid in the Third Plea and he doth not confute them 3. Of the Wars I spake before What other doth he name Bishop Morley recited many of them and the first as I remember was that I say That pretence to unlimited Monarchy is unlawful or Tyranny because God hath Limited all Humane Power If this be Heresie or Disloyalty I hold it still I mistake much if any Kings have Power from God to command all their Subjects to blaspheme or deny God or Christ or to renounce his hope of Heaven or to worship the Devil and sell his Soul to him nor to murder Father Mother Wife or Children I will venture to dispute this with any Conformist But as to the harder question Whether Kings may kill any or all their Senators or innocent Subjects for nothing or burn all their Cities or take all their Wives Children and Estates I will leave it to Statesmen to debate I am sorry that ever I wrote so much about their matters § 22. The next charge is His present practices in defending Schism Answ Prove it or number it with your
Slanders What is the Schism Is it Schism to say That it is unlawful like Atheists to cease all Publick Worship of God till Conscience can finde it lawful to Conform Others think that the contrary is both Schismatical and Atheistical Can you prove that I am for Silencing faithful Ministers and making partition separating hedges in the Vineyard of Christ My Rule is to go no further from any Christian than he goeth from Christ or would force me to sin for his Communion § 23. The next charge is Sedition that is not giving over God's Worship till I can swear say and do all that is imposed Where is the proof of all these Accusations But their method of Justice is first to do execution casting out 2000 and next to justifie it by an Accusation behinde our backs and next to bring their Witnesses when we are dead or forbidden to speak and they are one anothers Witnesses This mans proof is that Bishop Bramhall of Ireland said it The next mans may be that This man said it Dr. Ashetons proof was that the Debate-maker said it and who said it to him I know not And p. 100. This man hath an infallible witness Bishop Morley then of Worcester And what saith he Why first That I did what I could to make the King odious to his people But where 's his proof It 's enough The Bishop said it 2. I sowed the seeds of Sedition at Kederminster The proof is the same the Bishop said it 3. The Bishop taught him to adde I my self have heard him in a Conference in the Savoy maintain such a Position as was destructive to the Legislative Power of God and man But what if the Bishop spake as falsely as if he had said that I pleaded for Mahomet Where is your proof then I after Printed the words with the Dispute of the Dr's to which they were an Answer And I have in my Second Plea in a Disputation of Scandal vindicated them Let any man of brains read both and believe the Bishop and you if he can But Reader if such mens renewed Accusations cause me yet to Print that Answer to the Bishop's Letter which for peace I cast away blame not me but them that force me to it I am for peace but they are for War § 24. But what good will it do the Reader to have this mans Falshoods detected and numbred They are so many and so gross that it is a troublesome work as p. 107. Your Principles which assert that the King may be Deposed Answ Burn any Book of mine with scorn where I ever asserted any such thing But if it be a Forgery believe such men accordingly So p. 112. Refusing the Tests of Obedience which require only the disclaiming of Rebellious Principles and Practices Answ See my Profession and Renunciation second Plea Chap. 3 4 and my Confutation of Hooker Chr. Direct Par. 4. Pag. 112 113. He joyns with those that would bring us into the Plot and fathers his Accusation on the Acts of Parliament against us Pag. 113. He saith I have a better opinion of the Papists than of the Conformists because I say I had rather be saved from the Gallows by a Papist than hang'd by a Conformist So p. 132. To withdraw your avowed Communion Answ A Fiction witness the Parish-Assembly Pag. 133. Your Practice continueth and encourageth Separation from our Communion False Ibid. Cartwright after he had written as much as he could against Conformity repented and Conformed at last Answ A Fiction No more than I Conform Many a time have I been in Warwick where he last lived Master of the Hospital and the antient people there and at Coventry knew the contrary If to joyn in the Liturgy and Sacrament and perhaps rather than be Silenced to wear the Surplice be Conforming you abuse many whom you reproach and silence as Nonconformists Pag. 134. He mentions my Positive opposing and hindering their Communion The Book is much made up of such untruths in matter of Fact § 25. His Postscript is his Ingenuous Conjectures if not Proofs that I am a Liar and an Hypocrite in the dating of my Prognostication and that it was written 1680. Answ Should I abuse the Reader by a particular Answer to them That it was not written 1680 many persons that saw them can witness Will his Reasonings make me ignorant of such a matter of my own fact All that I know of it is this 1. As far as I can remember it was shortly after the Savoy-Conference that the first Copy was written but just the Month I do not remember 2. Finding this Copy among my rude neglected Papers I wrote it fair in 1671. And my Memory is not so strong as to be sure that I altered not a word For I cast away the first rude Copy 3. After that I thought it had been lost not seeing it some years Till Mr. Matthew Silvester told me that I had long ago lent it him to read I did not think it worth the Publishing But one of judgment that he shewed it to thinking otherwise I added a few Lines in the End This is the Truth and if it be the Impleaders interest to believe it to be false let him use his Intellect and Pen accordingly I 'le no more strive against him CHAP. III. His Answer to the first Plea for Peace Examined § 1. BEcause the great Charge against thâ— Non-Conformists is 1. Their Not Conforming 2. And that till they can Conform they cease not Preaching and all publick Worship oâ— God which is to live like Atheists and chusâ— Damnation The first thing that I did in the First Plea was to Declare our Judgment about Churches Ministry Church-Communion and Seperation in what Cases we hold it sinful or lawful To my great wonder almost all this iâ— past over by all my Accusing Answerers that â—â—â—â— have seen as if it had bin little to them And they go on to take it for granted that we are guilty of Schism and sinful Separation or in wondering that we do not grant it 2. And as to the second part of our Charge I have seen none yet but Mr. Cheney and this Impleader that pretend to bring proof of the Lawfulness of theâ—â— Points of Conformity which we avoid And to Mr. Cheney I gave a Reply which I judged satisfactory and this man where they agree repeateth the same things as if I had not Replied and therefore I refer him to that Reply rather than write the same over again But in some things they as much differ from each other as from me § 2. Pag. 4. He premiseth 1. What are the Parts of the Book to which we are to declare our Assent and Consent Answ All things contained and prescribed in and by it Are not these words plain We are not for Equivocation What he saith of this is answered to Mr. Ch. 2. Pag. 9. He saith It is granted by the Non-Conformists that the Common-Prayer Book as it is now
Prayer as qualifies it for the publick worship of God Answ 1. Gratis dictum Who authorized you to say that Assenting and Consenting to all things contained and prescribed meaneth not as it saith but only an useable measure of Truth and Goodness Is this the usual sence of All things c. If not where have the Law givers given us another If you can think so why must all be silenced that think otherwise and dare not be so bold § 7 Impl. The title of the Act is the Key If Uniformity be observed the Act is satisfied Answ 〈…〉 is not de fine only but de medio to secure Uniformity by profest Assent c. All Lawyers know that Laws have usually more in the Body than is in the Title § 8. Impl. They say 1. Assent implies the Truth and Consent the Goodness 2. All things they say meaneth all words and expressions 3. By to the use is meant those things that come not into use 4. When it 's said in sensu composito conteined and prescribed in and by c. they extend it to all things that are conteined as well as prescribed Answ I see that Wit is useful to many ends Here are so many and rare Expository Evasions as Escohar or Bauny could not have excelled in them 1. If Assent signifie not Judging all to be true it hath lately got a new signification Consent indeed signifieth oft an object practicable and existent for some good motive of Consent 2. If the all things in the Books mean not all the words but things distinct from words I would we could know what they are Sure it is not the Paper and Ink that the Parliament mean Prayers and Forms are words Actions or Ceremonies that are not words are but little of the Book or rather none of it being but the matters commanded by it 3. There is no word or part of the Book that was not made for some use If not how shall we know which words are useless 4. I do not think that there was a man in the Parliament when the Act was made that ever thought of this subtle Exposition that any man would take all conteined and prescribed only in sensu composito And so that we profess Assent to nothing contained in the Book but that which is prescribed also If so is not conteined an idle word when all men know that all that is prescribed is conteined And yet by that time prescribed Doctrines Calendars Rules Forms c. are taken in they will prove more than my Assent and Consent will reach to § 9. Whereas the Commons brought the Lords to agree with them for not limiting the sense of the Declaration of Assent and Consent to the Use of all he answereth 1. That the Bishops then were more our friends than the Commons As if the Bishops always went with the major Vote of the Lords 2. He giveth Reasons why it is meet that men Approve as well as Use what they do And what else is it that we say but the Using without Approving satisfieth not the imposition § 10. He citeth my words That we may take an Oath whose words in the plain and proper sense are lawful But the Question is Whether these be such § 11. II. pag. 21. He defends the words Easter-day on which the rest depend is always the first Sunday after the first Full-Moon which happens next after the 21 of March Which being oft false he saith 1. Being a General Rule it may be allowed to have some exception Answ And so they say Always and they mean not always but sometimes 2. He proceedeth The Rubrick doth not say a Rule but Rules in the Plural and where the first Rule fails the defect is supplied in the second Answ What may not such a Wit prove true and lawful if the man be willing 1. The Rules contained in that Section under that Title are only this and one for Advent and other Sundays and none for Easter but this 2. To say This is always so and after to say the contrary is but to say One is true and the other false Always excludeth your acknowledged Falshood sometimes 3. He saith The Defect never cometh into practice Answ It 's an useable Rule and so you covenant to practice it if the Use of all things be intended and so you must keep two Easter-days Object 4. Mr. B. might as well have objected against the Almanack which saith February hath 28 days Answ So I should if it had said always and only 28. § 12. III. Impl. p. 22. defendeth these words We are fully perswaded in our judgments and we here profess it to the world that the Book as it stood before established by Law doth not contain any thing contrary to the Word of God And 1. he blameth me for omitting the condition of a just and favourable Construction c. Answ I undertook not to transcribe the whole Book which is in so many hands A just construction is still supposed and as favourable as will stand with Truth I have oft enough told him the Rule by which we Interpret words viz. The ordinary sence in which they are understood by men of the profession which they belong to unless the Speakers otherwise expound them If he thought this Rule to be false he should have disputed that If on pretence of favourable Interpretations you resolve to put a good meaning on any words which your Interest perswadeth you to take nobis non licet we cannot do so else we could take any Oath in the world while all words have divers sences and are arbitrary signs which we can put what sence upon that pleases us § 13. Impl. p. 22 23. He well knows our Assent to the words there mentioned is not required nor could be intended Answ Utterly false I know it not but verily believe the contrary Impl. For it is only a profession of our Superiours that were then in being what their judgment and belief was c. Answ So the Rubrick and the 39 Articless were the judgment of your Superiours But are not they and that Preface parts of the Book If not tell us how we shall know what are parts of it and to what we must consent And must you not Assent and Consent to all things in it I like not those Equivocations which will make Oaths and Promises to be but what the Speaker please § 14. Impl. Mr. B. doth very ill to recount those mistranslations in the old Book which are amended in the new c. which Mr. B. knows to be false viz. that Assent to them is required Answ 1. How did this bold man know my thoughts I know these words to be a deliberate Printed Falshood and this man to have so many such as that to me he is incredible 2. When the New Book justifieth the old as having nothing contrary to the word of God and you must Assent to all things in the new one I think you assent to that justification
Whether I be good or bad learned or unlearned Let this be determined with him as he will I am so ignorant and bad that I will not now trouble him with much contradiction But the question is 1. Whether the two thousand Ministers were justly Silenced 2. And whether if they wilfully though so Silenced desert the Ministry to which they were Devoted and Consecrated they will not be guilty of damnable Sacriledge and Perfidiousness If the man will speak to purpose to this question it is like that some one will confute his Defence of so great a sin when I am past this unpleasant Military Work A Note on Varney's Book against the Dissenters from the Church of England INstead of Confuting it I commend the reading of it to such as would see which side hath Phanaticks It declareth that J. Varney hath by Faith pulled down the Devils Kingdome and that King Charles 2. shall be Emperour of all Nations by whom Christ will govern them greater than Turk Pope or French And the way is The Dissenters from the Government of the Church of England must be made Hewers of wood and Drawers of Water and must pay all Taxes and Payments of the Land to maintain the Forces that shall preserve the Land against them Like Decimation Notes on Mr. Le Strange 's Casuist uncased I Have had some gentle Touches from this Musical band heretofore which I found not my self obliged to answer Nor shall I now say any more than this I. That he that fetcheth his chief Stings and Scorns from a Book and the leaf of another Book about twenty years or longer at least revoked and obliterated sheweth that if with Austin we wrote Retractations such men would turn all to reproach II. That I make not Mr. Le Strange 's judgment the measure of my Repentance or Retractations III. That I have never had the Schooling of him and so never taught him to understand my Writings and therefore undertake not that things congruous shall not seem contradictions to him But I can reconcile more than he can For instance 1. My Disputation of Scandal Plea Second reconcileth what he dreamed was contradiction about imposing things evil by accident 2. I can reconcile the Kings having power about the circumstances yea and substance of Religion and yet that he hath none but what he had from Christ But I have not leasure for such work as this IV. Mr. Le Strange quite mistakes the Non-Conformists Question as the Reflecter doth as if Hissing and Stinging were disputing He seemeth to make the Question to be Whether I be not a giddy mutable self-contradicting Fool and Knave Let him in that believe what pleases himself Our Question is Whether Silencing Fining Imprisoning the Non-Conformists be the way of Peace and of the desired Concord of Protestants Yea Whether Concord be possible on those Terms and they will ever end our sad Divisions Notes on a Dialogue between the Pope and a Phanatick MR. L. Strange's Dialogue minds me of this for it is a Book not to be forgotten The Scope of it is to shew that the Non-Conformists are designing to Destroy the King that their Principles are rebellious that they have so far prevailed already that we must have no King or no Parliament which yet being needful and the genius of the Parliament thus corrupted the King must choose his own Councellors and take the choice from the People to this sense and all the Loyal Subjects must give their hands and list or engage themselves to defend the King against these Conspirators Just the Meal-Tub Plot But my Second Plea was written to answer such as this and I leave the fuller Answer to those that are more concerned in it So much against this Regiment of Accusers Turba gravis Paci placidaeque inimica quiâ—ti FINIS * Alas then there is no remedy
of a Bill for Accommodation Octavo price 2 s. The Narrative of Rob. Bolron of Shippon-hall Gent. concerning the late horrid Polish Plot and Conspiracy for the Destruction of His Majesty and the Protestant Religion Wherein is contained 1. His Informations upon Oath before His Majesty in Council and before several Justices of the Peace of the said Design and the means by which he arrived at the knowledge thereof 2. Some particular Applications made to himself to assist those design'd in the murdering of his Majesty the persons by whom such Applications were made and the Reward promised 3. The project of the Popish party to Erect a Nunnery at Dolebanck near Ripely in Yorkshire together with the Names of some Nuns actually design'd for that Imployment and taking the Profession upon them As also an Account of a certain Estate of 90 l. per annum given by Sir Thomas Gascoigne to the Nunnery for ever With other remarkable Passages relating to the horrid Piot Together with an Account of the Endeavours that were used by the Popish party to stifle his Evidence The Narrative of Lawrence Mowbray of Leeds in the County of York Gent. concerning the bloody Popish Conspiracy against the Life of his Sacred Majesty the Government and the Protestant Religion Wherein is contained 1. His knowledge of the said Design from the very first in the Year 1676 with the Opportunity he had to be acquainted therewith and the Reasons why he concealed it so long with the manner of his discovering the said wicked Project to his Majesty and his most honourable Privy Council 2. How far Sir Thomas Gascoigne Sir Miles Stapleton c. are ingaged in the Design of Killing the King and Fireing the City of London and York for the more speedy setting uppermost the Popish Religion in England 3. An Account of the Assemblings of many Popish Priests and Jesuits at Father Rishton's Chamber at Sir Gascoigue's house at Barmebow with their Consultations and Determinations with other considerable matters relating to the Plot. Together with an account of the Endeavours that were used to stifle his Evidence by making an Attempt upon his Life in Leicester Fields price 6 d. A Memento for the English Protestants c. with an Answer to that part of the Compendium which reflects on the Bishop of Lincoln's late Book Quarto price stitcht 6 d. Naked Truth the first part Being the true state of the Primitive Church By an humble Moderator price stitcht one shilling Causa Dei Or an Apology for God wherein the perpetuity of Insernal Torments is evinced and Divine Goodness and Justice that notwithstanding defended c. By Richard Burthogge M. D. Tulli's elect Orations Gouge's Works Octavo Horrid Popish Plot in a Pack of Cards A second Pack continuing a Representation of their Villainous Design from the publication of the first Pack to the last Sessions of Parliament begun Octob. 21. 1680. AN ANSVVER TO M R. HINCKLEY SIR I Have perused yours I think Impartially and to tell you my Judgment of it I perceive is like to offend you more I find it is natural to men to desire to be thought to be in the right and to have said well and done well be it never so ill It is some Honour to Truth and Goodness that the Names and Reputation of them seem desirable to those that cannot endure the things yea that the Things are never loathed or opposed formally as such but for their opposition to somewhat that is more loved And it is some help to the depression of Falshood and Sin that it is ashamed of its own Name and cannot endure to see its own Face which hath ever inclined it to break the Glass though to its greater shame when every piece will shew that ugliness which was shewed but by the whole before If nothing else had notified it to us one might have strongly suspected that you are of that Tribe who take themselves to be persecuted when they may not domineer and when others may but Preach and live without their Consent by your excessive tenderness and impatience calling it Poyson Hornets and abundance of such smarting angry Names if a man that is cast out of God's Vineyard as well as his Maintenance among many hundreds more do but plainly in a private Letter speak for himself and shew the injustice of your Printed Accusations O! that you were all but the thousandth part as tender I will not say of your Brethrens sufferings but of the danger of many thousand perishing starved Souls I shall only tell you this much in general that I now perceive you are used but for a Temptation to me to lose my time by the neglect of better Work And that you do so notoriously bawk the Truth and hide Untruth in a heap of Confident Rhetorical Flourishes that while you are of this temperament I will not undertake to prove to you that Two and Two are Four 1. My Beginning was taken from your Ending where you wrote You will satisfie your self as little as you will do others And what others Mind know you better than your own And sure that which satisfieth not you doth you no good as to its proper end what ever it may do by accident some other way Yet it seems you forgot that you had written this and that was warrant enough for all your confident Impertinencies on that occasion Sandy foundations light and darkness Hornets Nests rushing into the midst of the Pikes waking Dragons the golden Fleece c. come all in upon this your oversight And you seem to think that you have acquit your self well 2. You tell me of bringing the Controversie to an issue by dint of Scripture whether you sin in Conforming Is this fairly done to pretend that to be the Controversie which I never undertook to meddle with Could you possibly forget 1. That You were the Plaintiff and Accuser in Print not content that your Brethren were forbidden to Preach Christ and that many of them live in great poverty and want You wrote a Book of reproachful Oratory with no strength of Argument worthy an Answer to make them seem the flagitious Causes of their own silence and sufferings Against which they that meddled not with you had nothing to do but to justifie themselves 2. That in this Book you vehemently importune me who never knew you nor meddled with you to give the World the Reasons of my Non-conformity 3. That hereupon the Question that I treated about with you was How I may have leave to do it And whether it be ingenious thus publickly to urge me to that which you know I cannot do This was all the Controversie I had with you I tell you again I would go on my knees to any Bishop in England to procure but License for my self alone much more my Brethren to Write and Print the Reasons of our Non-conformity after Nine years Silence Suffering and Accusation that the World and Posterity may but once hear us