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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26854	Richard Baxter his account to his dearly beloved, the inhabitants of Kidderminster, of the causes of his being forbidden by the Bishop of Worcester to preach within his diocess with the Bishop of Worcester's letter in answer thereunto : and some short animadversions upon the said bishops letter.; Account to his dearly beloved, the inhabitants of Kidderminster, of the causes of his being forbidden by the Bishop of Worcester to preach within his diocess	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699. Letter to a friend for vindication of himself from Mr. Baxter's calumny.	1662 (1662)	Wing B1179; ESTC R1412	40,242	54

doe it or command it Yea or not to hinder it in any such case when Qui non vetat peccare cum potest jubet Yea though going to Gods publike worship be of it self so far from being a sin as that it is a duty yet I think it is a sin to command it to all in time of a raging pestilence or when they should be defending the City against the assault of an enemy It may rather be then a duty to prohibite it I think Paul spake not any thing inconsistent with the Government of God or Man when he bid both the Rulers and people of the Church not to destroy him with their meat for whom Christ dyed and when he saith that he hath not his Power to destruction but to Edification Yea there are Evil Accidents of a thing not evil of it self that are caused by the Commander and it is my opinion that they may prove his command unlawful But what need I use any other Instances then that which was the matter of our dispute Suppose it never so lawful of it self to kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament if it be imposed by a penalty that is incomparably beyond the proportion of the offence that penalty is an Accident of the command and maketh it by accident sinful in the Commander If a Prince should have Subjects so weak as that all of them thought it a sin against the example of Christ and the Canons of the general Councils and many hundred years practice of the Church to kneel in the act of Receiving on the Lords day if he should make a Law that all should be put to death that would not kneel when he foreknew that their consciences would command them all or most of them to die rather than obey would any man deny this command to be unlawful by this accident Whether the penalty of ejecting Ministers that dare not put away all that kneel and of casting out all the people that scruple it from the Church be too great for such a circumstance and so in the rest and whether this with the lamentable state of many Congregations and the divisions that will follow being all foreseen do prove the Impositions unlawful which were then in question is a case that I had then a clearer call to speak to then I have now Only I may say that the ejection of the servants of Christ from the Communion of the Church and of his faithful Ministers from their sacred work when too many Congregations have none but insufficient or scandalous teachers or no preaching Ministers at all will appear a matter of very great moment in the day of our Accounts and such as should not be done upon any but a Necessary cause where the benefit is greater then this hurt and all the rest amounts to Having given you to whom I owe it this account of the cause for which I am forbidden the exercise of my Ministry in that Countrey I now direct these Sermons to your hands that seeing I cannot teach you as I would I may teach you as I can And if I much longer enjoy such liberty as this it will be much above my expectation My dearly beloved stand fast in the Lord And fear ye not the reproach of men neither be afraid of their revilings For the moth shall eat them up like a garment and the worm shall eat them like wooll but the righteousnesse of the Lord shall be for ever and his salvation from generation to generation Isa. 51. 7 8. If I have taught you my doctrine of error or impiety of disobedience to your Governours in lawful things of schism or uncharit blenesse unlearn them all and renounce them with penitent detestation But if otherwise I beseech you mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them For they are such as serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Rom. 16. 17. If any shall speak against Truth or Godlinesse remember what you have received and how little any adversary could say that ever made such assaults upon you and that it is easie for any man to talk confidently when no man must contradict him I denyed no man liberty upon equal terms to have said his worst against any doctrine that ever I taught you And how they succeeded I need not tell you your own stability tells the world As you have maintained true Catholicism and never followed any sect so I beseech you still maintain the ancient faith the Love of every member of Christ and common charity to all your Loyalty to your King your peace with all men And let none draw you from Catholick Unity to faction though the declaiming against Faction and Schism should be the device by which they would accomplish it And as the world is nothing and God is all to all that are sincere believers so let no worldly interest seem regardable to you when it stands in any opposition to Christ but account all loss and dung for him Phil. 3. 8. And if you shall hear that I yet suffer more then I have done let it not be your discouragement or grief For I doubt not but it will be my crown and joy I have found no small consolation that I have not suffered for sinfull or for small and indifferent things And if my pleading against the ejection of the Ministers of Christ and the excommunicating of his member for a ceremony and the divisions of his Church the destruction of Charity shall be the cause of my suffering be it never so great it shall as much rejoyce me to be a suffering witnesse for CHARITY and UNITY as if I were a Martyr for the Faith I participate with Paul in an expectation and hope that Christ shall be magnified in my body whether by life or death and as to live will be Christ so to die will be gain Only let your conversation be as it becometh the Gospel of Christ that whether I ever see you more or be absent till the joyfull day I may hear of your affairs that ye stand fast in one spirit with one mind striving together for the faith of the Gospel and in nothing terrified by your adversaries which is to them an evident token of perdition but to you of salvation and that of God if to you it shall be given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on him but also to suffer for his sake Phil. 1. 10 21 27 28 29. But let no injury from inferiors provoke you to dishonour the Governors that God himself hath set over you Be meek and patient the Lord is at hand Honour all men Love the Brotherhood Fear God Honour the King For so is the will of God that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men 1 Pet. 2. 15 17. It is soon enough for you and me to

RICHARD BAXTER HIS ACCOUNT To his dearly beloved the Inhabitants OF KIDDER MINSTER Of the causes of his being forbidden by the Bishop of WORCESTER to preach within his Diocess WITH The Bishop of WORCESTER'S Letter in Answer thereunto AND Some short Animadversions upon the said Bishops LETTER LONDON Printed Anno Dom. 1660. To my dearly beloved the Inhabitants of the Burrough and Parish of Kederminster in Worcester-shire AS I never desired any greater preferment in this world than to have continued in the work of my Ministry among you so I once thought my dayes would have been ended in that desired station But we are unmeet to tell God how he shall dispose of us or to foreknow what changes he intends to make Though you are low in the world and have not the Riches which cause mens estimation with the most I see no probability that we should have been separated till death could I but have obtained leave to preach for nothing But being forbidden to preach the Gospel in that Diocesse I must thankfully take the liberty which shall anywhere else be vouchsafed me And while I may enjoy it I take it not for my duty to be over querulour though the wound that is made by my separation from you be very deep And though to strangers it will seem probable that such severity had never been exercised against me but for some heynous crime yet to you that have known me I shall need to say but little in my defence The great crime which is openly charged on me and for which I am thought unworthy to preach the Gospel even where there is no other to preach is a matter that you are unacquainted with and therefore as you have heard me publikely accused of it I am bound to redder you such an account as is necessary to your just information and satisfaction It pleased the Kings Majesty in the prosecution of his most Christian resolution of uniting his differing subjects by the way of mutual approaches and abatements to grant a Commission to twelve Bishops and nine assistances on the one side and to one Bishop and eleven other Divines and nine assistants on the other side to treat about such alterations of the Liturgy as are necessary to the satisfying of tender Consciences and to the restoring of unity and reace My experiences in a former Treaty for Reconciliation in matter of Discipline made me intreat those to whom the nomination on the one side was committed to excuse me from the service which I knew would prove troublesome to my self and ungrateful to others but I could not prevail But the Work it self I very much approved as to be done by fitter and more acceptable persons Being commanded by the Kings Commission I took it to be my duty to be faithful and to plead for such Alterations as I knew were necessary to the assigned ends thinking it to be treachery to his Majesty that entrusted us and to the Church and Cause for which we were entrusted if under pretence of making such Alterations as were necessary to the two forementioned ends I should have silently yield to have \ No Alterations\ or \ next to none \ In the conclusion when the chief work was done by writing a Committee of each part was appointed to manage a Disputation in prefence by writing also Therein those of the other part formed an Argument whose Major proposition was to this sense for I have no copy \ Whatsoever book enjoyneth nothing but what is of it self lawfal and by lawful authority enjoyneth nothing that is sinful \ We denied this proposition and at last gave divers Reasons of our denyal among which one was that \ It may be unlawful by Accident and therefore sinful\ You now know my crime It is my concurring with learned reverend Brethren to give this Reason of our denyal of a proposition Yet they are not forbidden to preach for it and I hope shall not be but only I. You have publikely heard from a mouth that should speak nothing but the words of Charity Truth and Sobernesse especially there that this was \ a desperate shift that men at the last extremity are forced to\ and inferring \ that then neither God nor Man can enjoyn without sin \ In City and Country this soundeth forth to my reproach I should take it for an act of clemency to have been smitten professedly for nothing and that it might not have been thought necessary to afflict me by a defamation that so I might seem justly afflicted by a prohibition to preach the Gospel But indeed is there in these words of ours so great a crime Though we doubted not but they knew that our Assertion made not Every evil accident to be such as made an Imposition unlawful yet we exprest this by word to them at that time for fear of being misreported and I told it to the Right Reverend Bishop when he forbad me to preach and gave this as a reason And I must confesse I am still guilty of so much weaknesse as to be confident that some things not evil of themselves may have Accidents so evil as may make it a sin to him that shall command them Is this opinion inconsistent with all Government Yea I must confesse my self guilty of so much greater weaknesse as that I thought I should never have found a man on earth that had the ordinary reason of a man that had made question of it yea I shall say more then that which hath offended viz. that whenever the commanding or forbidding of a thing indifferent is like to occasion more hurt than good and this may be foreseen the commanding or forbidding it is a sin But yet this is not the Assertion that I am chargeable with but that \ some Accidents there may be that make the Imposition sinful \ If I may ask it without accusing others how would my crime have been denominated if I had said the contrary Should I not have been judged unmeet to live in any Governed society It is not unlawfull of it self to command out a Navy to Sea But if it were foreseen that they would fall into the enemies hands or were like to perish by any accident and the necessity of sending them were small or none it were a sin to send them It is not of it self unlawful to sell poyson or to give a knife to another or to bid another do it but if it were foreseen that they will be used to poyson or kill the buyer it is unlawful and I think the Law would make him believe it that were guilty It is not of it self unlawful to light a Candle or set fire on a straw But if it may be foreknown that by anothers negligence or wilfulnesse it is like to set fire on the City or to give fire on a train and store of Gunpowder that is under the Parliament House when the King and Parliament are there I crave the Bishops pardon for believing that it were sinful to

man of Mr. Baxters principles and temper was like enough to make of what should pass betwixt us And it was very well I did so for I find that the Presbyter as well as the Papist will serve themselves as often as they are put to it of their piae fraudet or holy artifices of speaking more or lesse then the truth as it makes more or less for their purpose or advantage as likewise of putting non causam pro causa or a part and a less principal part of the cause for the whole cause For who would not think that knows not Mr. Baxter that when he tells his Disciples of Kidderminster You now know my Crime with reference to the aforesaid assertion and to that only who would not think I say that either there was nothing else objected against him or at least nothing of moment or that could be any just and reasonable cause of my forbidding him to Preach in my Diocess especially when he adds that the Right Reverend Bishop gave him this as a reason for his forbidding him to Preach where if he means that the Bishop gave him this as the only or the principal reason he speaks without truth and against his Conscience for the first and principal reason the Bishop gave him for his forbidding him to preach was as he well knows and as the Dean of Worcester will witness against him His preaching before without License having no Cure of his own to preach to whereunto when he replyed I had promised to give him such a License as the Bishop of London had given him viz. Quàm diu se bene gereret durante beneplacito I rejoyn'd that it was true indeed I had once promised to give him such a License but withal that it was as true that first I had never promised to give him a License if he took it before I gave it him and that for this presumption of his I had now forbidden him to preach any more Secondly That I knew more of him since then I did at that time for first I had been credibly informed that he had abused the Bishop of London's favour in preaching factiously though not in the City yet in the Diocess of London and I named the place to him Secondly that since that promise of mine which cannot be supposed no other then conditional I myself had heard him in a Conference in the Savoy maintaining such a position as was destructive to Legislative power both in God and Man meaning the Assertion before spoken of viz. That the enjoining of things lawfull by lawfull Authority if they might by accident be the cause of sin was sinful which Assertion of his with the horrible consequences of it I told him then at Worcester I had formerly told him of at the Savoy openly and before all the company that was at the Conference whereunto all that he replyed at my second telling him at Worcester was that he had used some distinctions to salve that Assertion from those consequences but what those distinctions were he did not then mention as Dr. Warmstry can witness though in this printed address of his to his friends of Kidderminster he saith he did tell the Bishop in what a limited and restrained sense he and his brethren understood that Assertion which whether they did or no will appear by and by when we shall more nearly examine his printed Narrative as to that particular In the mean time though I said indeed that one that held and was likely to teach such Doctrines was not to be suffered to Preach unto the people yet this was not then alledged by me as the cause or crime for which I had forbidden him to Preach for that as I said before was His presuming to preach without License but only as a reason why I should have thought myself not obliged by the promise I had formerly made him to give him License though he had not otherwise forfeited his claim to that promise by Preaching without or before he had it Lastly He might have remembred another reason I gave him why I could not have made good that promise namely those principles of Treason and Rebellion publickly extant in his books which I had not taken notice of till after the making of that promise and which till he should recant in as publick a manner I thought myself obliged in Conscience not to suffer him to preach in my Diocesse whereunto his Answer was That whatsoever he had said or done in that kind was pardoned by the Act of Indempnity True said I so far as the King can pardon it that is in regard of its corporal punishment here in this world but it is God that must pardon the guilt or obligation to punishment in the world to come which he will not without Repentance and it is the Church that must pardon the scandal which she cannot do neither without an honourable amends made her by publick Confession and Recantation I could tell Mr. Baxter in his ear likewise that in excuse of his Rebellious principles formerly published he said That now the Parliament had declared where the Soveraign power was he should acknowledge it and submit to it as if the King owed his Soveraignty to the declaration of a Parliament which is as false as Rebellious and as dangerous a principle as any of his former however by what hath been said it appears that Mr. Baxter meant to impose upon his credulous friends at Kidderminster upon his unwary Readers by making them believe that was the only cause for which the Bishop forbad him to Preach which was neither the only nor the principal cause why the Bishop did so nor indeed to speak properly any cause of it at all for the only proper cause for which the Bishop forbad him to Preach was His preaching before without the Bishops License the other which he pretends together with the third which he conceals where properly and professedly the Causes why the Bishop would not take off that prohibition or why he would not give him a License to Preach for the future either at Kidderminster or in any other place of his Diocess until he should publickly retract that Position which he had openly asserted at the Conference and should publickly renounce likewise those seditious and rebellious principles which are published in his Books And this is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth of what passed betwixt me and Mr. Baxter at Worcester before I preached at Kidderminster where whether I defamed him or he by saying so hath not grosly defamed me will appear by that which follows wherein that I might neither be deceived myself nor deceive others I have not trusted to my own memory only as Mr. Baxter saith he doth to his but I have consulted with Dr. Gunning and Dr. Pearson two of the three that managed that Conference with Mr. Baxter and his Assistants and have seen that Assertion in the same sense that I object it