vel sensus so it is pardoned and this is indeed the Reatus poenae Not only the Penalty but the Dueness of that Penalty or the Obligation to it is remitted and nullified 2. Therefore if by Reatus Culpae you mean an Obligation to Punishment for that Fault this being indeed the Reatus poenae as is said is done away So that we are I think all agreed de re And de nomine you may say that the Reatus Culpae is done away or remitted or not in several senses In se it is not nullified nor can be But as Dueness of Punishment followeth that is pardoned Object 7. You have said That though we were not personally but seminally in Adam when he sinned yet when we are Persons we are Persons guilty of his actual sin And so we must be Persons that are Partakers of Christ's Actual Righteousness and not only of its Effects as soon as we are Believers For Christ being the Second Adam and publick Person we have our part in his Righteousness as truly and as much as in Adam's sin Answ 1. We must first understand how far Adam's sin is ours And first I have elsewhere proved that our Covenant-Vnion and Interest supposeth our Natural Vnion and Interest and that it is an adding to God's Word and Covenant to say That he covenanted that Adam should personate each one of his Posterity in God's imputation or account any further than they were naturally in him and so that his innocency or sin should be reputed theirs as far as if they had been personally the Subjects and Agents The Person of Peter never was in Reality or God's Reputation the Person of Adam Nor Adam's Person the Person of Peter But Peter being virtually and seminally in Adam when he sinned his Person is derived from Adam's Person And so Peter's Guilt is not numerically the same with Adams but the Accident of another Subject and therefore another Accident derived with the Person from Adam and from nearer Parents The Fundamentum of that Relation of Guilt is the Natural Relation of the Person to Adam and so it is Relatio in Relatione fundata The Fundamentum of that natural Relation is Generation yea a series of Generations from Adam to that Person And Adam's Generation being the Communication of a Guilty Nature with personality to his Sons and Daughters is the fundamentum next following his personal Fault and Guilt charged on him by the Law So that here is a long series of efficient Causes bringing down from Adam's Person and Guilt a distinct numerical Person and Guilt of every one of his later Posterity 2. And it is not the same sort of Guilt or so plenary which is on us for Adam's Act as was on him but a Guilt Analogical or of another sort that is He was guilty of being the wilful sinning Person and so are not we but only of being Persons whose Being is derived by Generation from the wilful sinning Persons besides the guilt of our own inherent pravity That is The Relation is such which our Persons have to Adam ' s Person as make it just with God to desert us and to punish us for that and our pravity together This is our Guilt of Original sin 3. And this Guilt cometh to us by Natural Propagation and resultancy from our very Nature so propagated And now let us consider of our contrary Interest in Christ And 1. Our Persons are not the same as Christ's Person nor Christ's as ours nor ever so judged or accounted of God 2. Our Persons were not naturally seminally and virtually in Christ's Person any further than he is Creator and Cause of all things as they were in Adams 3. Therefore we derive not Righteousness from him by Generation but by his voluntary Donation or Contract 4. As he became not our Natural Parent so our Persons not being in Christ when he obeyed are not reputed to have been in him naturally or to have obeyed in and by him 5. If Christ and we are reputed one Person either he obeyed in our Person or we in his or both If he obeyed as a Reputed Sinner in the Person of each Sinner his Obedience could not be meritorious according to the Law of Innocency which required sinless Perfection And he being supposed to have broken the Law in our Persons could not so be supposed to keept it If we obeyed in his Person we obeyed as Mediators or Christ's of which before 6. But as is oft said Christ our Mediator undertook in a middle Person to reconcile God and Man not by bringing God erroneously to judg that he or we were what we are not or did what we did not but by being doing and suffering for us that in his own Person which should better answer God's Ends and Honour than if we had done and suffered in our Persons that hereby he might merit a free Gift of Pardon and Life with himself to be given by a Law of Grace to believing penitent Accepters And so our Righteousness as is oft opened is a Relation resulting at once from all these Causes as fundamental to it viz. Christ's Meritorious Righteousness his free Gift thereupon and our Relation to him as Covenanters or United Believers And this is agreed on Object 8. As Christ is a Sinner by imputation of our sin so we are Righteous by the imputation of his Righteousness But it is our sin it self that is imputed to Christ Therefore it is his Righteousness it self that is imputed to us Answ 1. Christ's Person was not the Subject of our personal Relative Guilt much less of our Habits or Acts. 2. God did not judg him to have been so 3. Nay Christ had no Guilt of the same kind reckoned to be on him else those unmeet Speeches used rashly by some would be true viz. That Christ was the greatest Murderer Adulterer Idolater Blasphemer Thief c. in all the World and consequently more hated of God for God must needs hate a sinner as such To be guilty of sin as we are is to be reputed truly to be the Person that committed it But so was not Christ and therefore not so to be reputed Christ was but the Mediator that undertook to suffer for our sins that we might be forgiven and not for his own sin real or justly reputed Expositors commonly say that to be made sin for us is but to be made a Sacrifice for sin So that Christ took upon him neither our numerical guilt of sin it self nor any of the same species but only our Reatum Poenae or Debt of Punishment or lest the Wrangler make a verbal quarrel of it our Reatum Culpae non qua talem in se sed quatenus est fundamentum Reatus poenae And so his Righteousness is ours not numerically the same Relation that he was the Subject of made that Relation to us nor yet a Righteousness of the same Species as Christ's is given us at all for his was a Mediators
out all sin that he might confirm what he said both from the Faith of Abraham by which he was justified and from our Saviours Death by which we are delivered from sin But this is on the by 2. But saith Dr. T. The Orthodox abhor the contrary in sensu forensi Answ How easie is it to challenge the Titles of Orthodox Wise or good Men to ones self And who is not Orthodox himself being Judg But it seems with him no Man must pass for Orthodox that is not in so gross an error of his Mind if these words and not many better that are contrary must be the discovery of it viz. That will not say that in sensu forensi God esteemeth Men to have done that which they never did The best you can make of this is that you cover the same sense which I plainlier express with this illfavoured Phrase of Man's inventing But if indeed you mean any more than I by your sensus forensis viz. that such a suffering and meriting for us may in the lax improper way of some Lawyers speaking be called Our own Doing Meriting Suffering c. I have proved that the Doctrine denied by me subverteth the Gospel of Christ Reader I remember what Grotius then Orthodox thirty years before his Death in that excellent Letter of Church-Orders Predestination Perseverance and Magistrates animadverting on Molinaeus saith How great an injury those Divines who turn the Christian Doctrine into unintelligible Notions and Controversies do to Christian Magistrates because it is the duty of Magistrates to discern and preserve necessary sound Doctrine which these Men would make them unable to discern The same I must say of their injury to all Christians because all should hold fast that which is proved True and Good which this sort of Men would disable them to discern We justly blame the Papists for locking up the Scripture and performing their Worship in an unknown Tongue And alas what abundance of well-meaning Divines do the same thing by undigested Terms and Notions and unintelligible Distinctions not adapted to the Matter but customarily used from some Persons reverenced by them that led the way It is so in their Tractates both of Theology and other Sciences and the great and useful Rule Verba Rebus aptanda sunt is laid aside or rather Men that understand not Matter are like enough to be little skilful in the expressing of it And as Mr. Pemble saith A cloudy unintelligible stile usually signifieth a cloudy unintelligent Head to that sense And as Mr. J. Humfrey tells Dr. Fullwood in his unanswerable late Plea for the Conformists against the charge of Schism pag. 29. So overly are men ordinarily wont to speak at the first sight against that which others have long thought upon that some Men think that the very jingle of a distinction not understood is warrant enough for their reproaching that Doctrine as dangerous and unsound which hath cost another perhaps twenty times as many hard studies as the Reproachers ever bestowed on that Subject To deliver thee from those Learned Obscurities read but the Scripture impartially without their Spectacles and ill-devised Notions and all the Doctrine of Justification that is necessary will be plain to thee And I will venture again to fly so far from flattering those called Learned Men who expect it as to profess that I am perswaded the common sort of honest unlearned Christians even Plowmen and Women do better understand the Doctrine of Justification than many great Disputers will suffer themselves or others to understand it by reason of their forestalling ill-made Notions these unlearned Persons commonly conceive 1. That Christ in his own Person as a Mediator did by his perfect Righteousness and Sufferings merit for us the free pardon of all our sins and the Gift of his Spirit and Life Eternal and hath promised Pardon to all that are Penitent Believers and Heaven to all that so continue and sincerely obey him to the end and that all our after-failings as well as our former sins are freely pardoned by the Sacrifice Merits and Intercession of Christ who also giveth us his Grace for the performance of his imposed Conditions and will judg us as we have or have not performed them Believe but this plain Doctrine and you have a righter understanding of Justification than many would let you quietly enjoy who tell you That Faith is not imputed for Righteousness that it justifieth you only as an Instrumental Cause and only as it is the reception of Christ's Righteousness and that no other Act of Faith is justifying and that God esteemeth us to have been perfectly Holy and Righteous and fulfilled all the Law and died for our own sins in or by Christ and that he was politically the very Person of every Believing Sinner with more such like And as to this distinction which this Doctor will make a Test of the Orthodox that is Men of of his Size and Judgment you need but this plain explication of it 1. In Law-sense a Man is truly and fitly said himself to have done that which the Law or his Contract alloweth him to do either by himself or another as to do an Office or pay a Debt by a Substitute or Vicar For so I do it by my Instrument and the Law is fulfilled and not broken by me because I was at liberty which way to do it In this sense I deny that we ever fulfilled all the Law by Christ and that so to hold subverts all Religion as a pernicious Heresie 2. But in a tropical improper sense he may be said to be esteemed of God to have done what Christ did who shall have the benefits of Pardon Grace and Glory thereby merited in the manner and measure given by the free Mediator as certainly as if he had done it himself In this improper sense we agree to the Matter but are sorry that improper words should be used as a snare against sound Doctrine and the Churches Love and Concord And yet must we not be allowed Peace § 4. But my free Speech here maketh me remember how sharply the Doctor expounded and applyed one word in the retracted Aphorisms I said not of the Men but of the wrong Opinion opposed by me It fondly supposeth a Medium betwixt one that is just and one that is no sinner one that hath his sin or guilt taken away and one that hath his unrighteousness taken away It 's true in bruits and insensibles that are not subjects capable of Justice there is c. There is a Negative Injustice which denominateth the Subject non-justum but no◠injustum where Righteousness is not due But when there is the debitum habendi its privative The Doctor learnedly translateth first the word fondly by stolide and next he fondly though not stolidè would perswade the Reader that it is said of the Men though himself translate it Doctrina And next he bloweth his Trumpet to the War with this exclamation Stolide O
Controversie is about a Civil personating 3. That God judgeth not falsly 4. That Christ was not our Delegate and Instrument sent by us to do this in our stead as a man payeth his debt by a Servant whom he sendeth with the money 5. That therefore Christs Righteousness is not Imputed to us as if we had done it by him as our Instrument 6. That all the fruits of Christs Merits and Satisfaction are not ours upon our first believing much less before But we receive them by degrees we have new pardon daily of new sins We bear castigatory punishments even Death and Denials or loss of the greater assistance of the Spirit Our Grace is all imperfect c. 7. That we are under a Law and not left ungoverned and lawless and that Christ is our King and Judge And this Law is the Law or Covenant of Grace containing besides the Precepts of perfect Obedience to the Law natural and superadded a Gift of Christ with Pardon and Life but only on Condition that we thankfully and believingly accept the Gift And threatning non-liberation and a far sorer punishment to all that unbelievingly and unthankfully reject it 8. That therefore this Testament or Covenant-Gift is God's Instrument by which he giveth us our Right to Christ and Pardon and Life And no man hath such Right but by this Testament-Gift 9. That this called a Testament Covenant Promise and Law in several respects doth besides the Conditions of our first Right impose on us Continuance in the Faith with sincere Holiness as the necessary Condition of our continued Justification and our actual Glorification And that Heaven is the Reward of this keeping of the new Covenant as to the order of Gods Collation though as to the value of the Benefit it is a Free Gift purchased merited and given by Christ 10. That we shall all be judged by this Law of Christ 11. That we shall all be judged according to our deeds and those that have done good not according to the Law of Innocency or Works but according to the Law of Grace shall go into everlasting life and those that have done evil not by meer sin as sin against the Law of Innocency but by not keeping the Conditions of the Law of Grace shall go into everlasting punishment The sober reading of these following texts may end all our Controversie with men that dare not grosly make void the Word of God Rev. 20.12 13.22.12 2.23 12. That to be Justified at the day of Judgment is to be adjudged to Life Eternal and not condemned to Hell And therefore to be the cause or condition that we are Judged to Glory and the Cause or Condition that we are Justified then will be all one 13. That to be Judged according to our deeds is to be Justified or Condemned according to them 14. That the great tryal of that day as I have after said will not be whether Christ hath done his part but whether we have part in him and so whether we have believed and performed the Condition of that Covenant which giveth Christ and Life 15. That the whole scope of Christ's Sermons and all the Gospel calleth us from sin on the motive of avoiding Hell after we are reputed Righteous and calleth us to Holiness Perseverance and overcoming on the motive of laying up a good Foundation and having a Treasure in Heaven and getting the Crown of Righteousness 16. That the after-sins of men imputed Righteous deserve Hell or at least temporal punishments and abatements of Grace and Glory 17. That after such sins especially hainous we must pray for Pardon and repent that we may be pardoned and not say I fulfilled the Law in Christ as from my birth to my death and therefore have no more need of Pardon 18. That he that saith he hath no sin deceiveth himself and is a lyar 19. That Magistrates must punish sin as God s Officers and Pastors by Censure in Christs name and Parents also in their Children 20. That if Christs Holiness and perfect Obedience and Satisfaction and Merit had bin Ours in Right and Imputation as simply and absolutely and fully as it was his own we could have no Guilt no need of Pardon no suspension or detention of the proper fruits of it no punishment for sin specially not so great as the with-holding of degrees of Grace and Glory And many of the consequents aforesaid could not have followed All this I think we are all agreed on and none of it can with any face be denied by a Christian And if so 1. Then whether Christs perfect Holiness and Obedience and Sufferings Merit and Satisfaction be all given us and imputed unto us at our first believing as Our own in the very thing it self by a full and proper Title to the thing Or only so imputed to us as to be judged a just cause of giving us all the effects in the degrees and time forementioned as God pleaseth let all judge as evidence shall convince them 2. And then whether they do well that thrust their devised sence on the Churches as an Article of Faith let the more impartial judge I conclude with this confession to the Reader that though the matter of these Papers hath been thought on these thirty years yet the Script is hasty and defective in order and fulness I could not have leisure so much as to affix in the margin all the texts which say what I assert And several things especially the state of the Case are oft repeated But that is lest once reading suffice not to make them observed and understood which if many times will do I have my end If any say that I should take time to do things more accurately I tell him that I know my straights of time and quantity of business better than he doth and I will rather be defective in the mode of one work than leave undone the substance of another as great July 20. 1672. Richard Baxter The Contents CHap. 1. The History of the Controversie In the Apostles days In the following Ages Augustine and his followers Opinion The Schoolmen Luther Islebius The Lutherans Andr. Osiander The latter German Divines who were against the Imputation of Christ's Active Righteousness Our English Divines Davenant's sense of Imputation Wotton de Reconcil Bradshaw Gataker Dr. Crisp Jo. Simpson Randal Towne c. And the Army Antinomians checkt by the rising of Arminianism there against it Jo. Goodwin Mr. Walker and Mr. Roborough Mr. Ant. Burges My Own endeavours Mr. Cranden Mr. Eyres c. Mr. Woodbridge Mr. Tho. Warren Mr. Hotchkis Mr. Hopkins Mr. Gibbon Mr. Warton Mr. Grailes Mr. Jessop What I then asserted Corn. a Lapide Vasquez Suarez Grotius de Satisf Of the Savoy Declaration Of the Faith of the Congregational-Divines Their saying that Christs Active and Passive Obedience is imputed for our sole Righteousness confuted by Scripture Gataker Usher and Vines read and approved my Confession of Faith Placeus his Writings and trouble
define them If you have a Bishoprick because you define a Bishoprick or have a Lordship a Kingdom Health c. because you can define them your Axiome hath stood you in good stead The Definition is but Explicatio rei But Rei explicatio non est ipsa res Individuals say most are not Definable But nothing is truly Res but Individuals Vniversals as they are in the Mind are existent Individual Acts Cogitations Nâ—tions As they are out of the Mind they are nothing but Individuorum quid intelligibile The Definition of Learning of a Doctor c. may be got in a day If Learning and Doctorship may be so what useless things are Universities and Books Perswade a hungry Scholar that he hath Meat and Drink or the Ambitious that he hath Preferment or the Covetous or Poor that he hath Money because he hath in his Mind or Mouth the Definition of it and quibble him into satisfaction by telling him that Definitio definitum sunt idem re We know and express things narrowly by Names and largely and distinctly by Definitions The Definition here is Explicatio nominis as Animal rationale of the name Homo and both Name and Definition as they are Verba mentis vel oris or Verborum significatio are surely divers from the things named and defined known and expressed unless by the Thing you mean only the Knowledg or Notion of the Thing Therefore though Cui competit definitio eidem quoque competit definitum contra quod convenit definitioni convenit definito Yet say not that Imputed Righteousness in Re is the same with the Definition as it is the Definers act By this time you have helpt Men to understand by an Instance why St. Paul so much warneth Christians to take heed lest any deceive them by vain Philosophy even by Sophistry and abused arbitrary Notions Remember Sir that our Case is of grand Importance As it is stated in my Direct 42. which you assaulted it is Whether if the Question were of the Object of Predestination of the nature of the Will 's liberty Divine concourse and determining way of Grace of the Definition of Justification Faith c. a few well studied Divines are not here to be preferred before Authority and the major Vote Such are my words I assert 1. That the Defining of Justification Faith c. is a work of Art 2. And I have many and many times told the World which you seem to strike at that Christians do not differ so much in their Real conceptions of the Matter as they do in their Definitions 1. Because Definitions are made up of Ambiguous words whose Explication they are not agreed in and almost all Words are ambiguous till explained and ambiguous Words are not fit to define or be defined till explained And 2. Because both selecting fit terms and explaining them and ordering them are works of Art in which Men are unequal and there is as great variety of Intellectual Conceptions as of Faces 3. And I have often said That a Knowledg intuitive or a Simple apprehension of a thing as Sensate or an Internal experience or Reflect act and a general notion of some things may prove the truth of Grace and save Souls and make us capable of Christian Love and Communion as being true saving Knowledg 4. And consequently I have often said that many a thousand Christians have Faith Hope Desire Love Humility Obedience Justication Adoption Vnion with Christ who can define none of these Unless you will speak equivocally of Definition it self and say as good Melancthon and as Gutherleth and some other Romists that Notitia intuitiva est definitio who yet say but what I am saying when they add Vel saltem instar definitionis If all are without Faith Love Justification Adoption who cannot give a true Definition of them how few will be saved How much more then doth Learning to Mens salvation than Grace And Aristotle then is not so far below Paul or the Spirit of Christ as we justly believe The Case is so weighty and palpable that you have nothing to say but as you did about the Guilt of our nearer Parents sins to yield all the Cause and with a passionate clamour to tell Men that I mistake you or wrest your words of which I shall appeal to every sober Reader that will peruse the words of mine which you assault and yours as they are an Answer to mine In a word you go about by the abuse of a trivial Axiome of Definitions 1. To sentence most Christians to Hell and cast them into Desperation as wanting the Grace which they cannot define 2. And to destroy Christian Love and Concord and tear the Church into as many Shreds as there be diversities of Definitions used by them 3. And you would tempt us to think much hardlier of your self than we must or will do as if your Faith Justification c. were unsound because your Definitions are so I know that Vnius rei una tantum est Definitio speaking 1. Not of the Terms but the Sense 2. And supposing that Definition to be perfectly true that is the truth of Intellection and Expression consisting in their congruity to the Thing while the thing is one and the same the conception and expression which is perfectly true must be so too But 1. Our understandings are all imperfect and we know nothing perfectly but Secundum quaedam and Zanckez saith truly that Nihil scitur if we call that only Knowledg which is perfect And consequently no Mental Definition is perfect 2. And Imperfections have many degrees 3. And our Terms which make up that which you know I called a Definition in my Dir. 42. as it is in words are as aforesaid various mutable and variously understood and used § XV. Pag. 24. Again you are at it Whom do you mean by that one rare Person whose single Judgment is to be preferred in the point of Justification and to whom Answ 1. No one that knoweth not the difference between an Invididuum vagum determinatum 2. No one that is of so hard Metal as in despite of the plainest words to insinuate to the World that these words A few well-studied Judicious Divines do signifie only one and that these words One Man of extraordinary understanding and clearness is to be preferred before the Rulers and major Vote in difficult speculations do signifie one individuum determinatum in the World and that the Speaker is bound to name the Man No one that thinketh that Pemble who in his Vind. Grat. hath almost the very same words said well and that I who repeat them am as criminal as you pretend No one who either knoweth not that almost all the World even Papists agree in this Rule or that thinketh his judgment fit herein to bear them all down No one who when his abuses are brought into the open Sun-shine will rather accuse the Light than repent But pag. 25. After some
those things now which many did at the rising of the Sect and if I could I would believe they never did them 2. This Book of Mr. Danvers with the rest of the same kind increase my hatred of the Disputing Contentious way of writing and my trouble that the Cause of the Church and Truth hath so oft put on me a necessity to write in a Disputing way against the Writings of so many Assailants 3. It increaseth my Grief for the Case of Mankind yea of well-meaning godly Christians who are unable to judg of many Controversies agitated otherwise than by some Glimpses of poor Probability and the esteem which they have of the Persons which do manage them and indeed take their Opinions upon trust from those whom they most reverence and value and yet can so hardly know whom to follow whilst the grossest Mistakes are set off with as great confidence and holy pretence as the greatest Truths O how much should Christians be pitied that must go through so great Temptations 4. It increaseth my Resolution had I longer to live to converse with Men that I would profit or profit by either as a Learner hearing what they have to say without importunate Contradiction or as a Teacher if they desire to Learn of me A School way may do something to increase Knowledg but drenching Men and striving with them doth but set them on a fiercer striving against the Truth And when they that have need of seven and seven years Schooling more under some clear well studied Teacher are made Teachers themselves and then turned loose into the World as Sampsons Foxes to militate for and with their Ignorance what must the Church suffer by such Contenders 5. It increaseth my dislike of that Sectarian dividing hurtful Zeal which is described James 3. and abateth my wonder at the rage of Persecutors For I see that the same Spirit maketh the same kind of Men even when they most cry out against Persecutors and separate furthest from them 6. It resolveth me more to enquire less after the Answers to Mens Books than I have done And I shall hereafter think never the worse of a Mans writings for hearing that they are answered For I see it is not only easie for a Talking Man to talk on and to say something for or against any thing but it is hard for them to do otherwise even to hold their Tongues or Pens or Peace And when I change this Mind I must give the greatest belief to Women that will talk most or to them that live longest and so are like to have the last word or to them that can train up militant Heirs and Successors to defend them when they are dead and so propagate the Contention If a sober Consideration of the first and second writing yea of positive Principles will not inform me I shall have little hope to be much the wiser for all the rest 7. I am fully satisfied that even good 〈◊〉 are here so far from Perfection that they must bear with odious faults and injuries in one another and be habituated to a ready and easie forbearing and forgiving one another I will not so much as describe or denominate Mr. Danvers Citations of Dr. Pierce to prove my Popery and Crimes nor his passages about the Wars and about my Changes Self-contradictions and Repentances lest I do that which savoureth not of Forgiveness O what need have we all of Divine Forgiveness 8. I shall yet less believe what any Mans Opinion yea or Practice is by his Adversaries Sayings Collections Citations or most vehement Asseverations than ever I have done though the Reporters pretend to never so much Truth and pious Zeal 9. I shall less trust a confounding ignorant Reader or Writer that hath not an accurate defining and distinguishing Understanding and hath not a mature exercised discerning Knowledg than ever I have done and especially if he be engaged in a Sect which alas how few parts of the Christian World escape For I here and in many others see that you have no way to seem Orthodox with such but to run quite into the contrary Extream And if I write against both Extreams I am taken by such Men as this but to be for both and against both and to contradict my self When I write against the Persecutors I am one of the Sectaries and when I write against the Sectaries I am of the Persecutors side If I belie not the Prelatists I am a Conformist If I belie not the Anabaptists Independants c. I am one of them If I belie not the â—â—pists I am a Papist if I belie not the Arminians I am an Arminian if I belie not the Calvinists I am with Pseudo-Tilenus and his Brother purus putus Puritanus and one Qui totum Puritanismum totus spirat which Joseph Allen too kindly interpreteth If I be for lawful Episcopacy and lawful Liturgies and Circumstances of Worship I am a temporizing Conformist If I be for no more I am an intollerable Non-Conformist at this time forced to part with House and Goods and Library and all save my Clothes and to possess nothing and yet my Death by six months Imprisonment in the Common Goal is sought after and continually expected If I be as very a Fool and as little understand my self and as much contradict my self as all these Confounders and Men of Violence would have the World believe it is much to my cost being hated by them all while I seek but for the common peace 10. But I have also further learned hence to take up my content in Gods Approbation and having done my duty and pitying their own and the Peoples snares to make but small account of all the Reproaches of all sorts of Sectaries what they will say against me living or dead I leave to themselves and God and shall not to please a Censorious Sect or any Men whatever be false to my Conscience and the Truth If the Cause I defend be not of God I desire it may fall If it be I leave it to God how far He will prosper it and what Men shall think or say of me And I will pray for Peace to him that will not hate and revile me for so doing Farewell Septemb. 4. 1675. FINIS 1 Not by imputing Faith it self part of Believing or any other Evangelical Obedience to them as their Righteousness 2 For their sole Righteousness Mark Virtually Not absolutely Mark by a Trope Mark how far