best appearing Grounds of Dissent and Separation and that I might so do I thought it best first to set aside those persons that have none 5. Obedience hath done you no hurt in your Plot of Separation though a little more Obedience in you or them that have on this score separated would have done the Church of England much good They that are drawn and held to you by this Argument are Children and Servants who certainly are the most defensible of all the Families that belong to these Tribes considering they do in some sense assert hereby what their Parents and Masters do deny to the King and the Church viz. Obedience There are many considerations of great efficacie to binde these persons to the very Sentiments as well as Commandments of their domestic Superiours 'T is sufficient if there were only in the case a quiet life Trade and Portion to be forfeited by their reluctancie and this there is too often to say nothing of those fearful curses some are afraid to incur being pronounced on them by their dying friends on condition of returning to the obedience to the English Antichristian and Idolatrous Church I think the Servants are under the hardest terms who for the most part have had other kind of Education and come to their Masters with Catechisms Principles and Practises according to the Church of England and therefore must unlearn somethings and disuse more in the practice of their Religion before they can comply with yours You know a little skill in Case-Divinity will help these young people to some ease and the very Doctrine you often needlesly press of an indispensable and prime subjection to God will do them real good and you know the subjection we owe to the Church and the King for Gods-sake supercedes the obedience we owe to Parents and Masters if they once draw up to a competition And ' truly 't is pity but these should be relieved not only in respect of the Church and the good of their Souls but also of their bodies especially when they are galli'd often a whole day to hunger to strange Prayers and strange Propositions whereof many of your underling Conventicles are very full and is not unknown to your Chief Rabbies and Masters Let me then dismiss these as not bringing much credit to any Society and least of all to yours whose pretended formality and essence is to outgo others in purity of heart and life The ground of your Dissent is next to be lookt into which after the most diligent search that I could make seems finally resolved into this Principle viz. That nothing may be lawfully done or used in the Church of Christ without Command or Example for it in Scripture For I suppose your chief dislike of our Church is because in its usages there are somethings inscriptural and so I may boldly say will be while the world stands But this is such a Principle that if you resolve to stand by it and are content to abide by the just Consequences of the same it will as well serve you against any Church as ours not only that of Rome but Geneva not only against the late magnified Platform of Scotland but New England also But to be short either you approve of this Principle or you do not if you do why do you not observe it and govern your selves within your selves by it If you do not why would you obtrude it on the Church of England and desert her too for want of an impossible Conformity to it For examine the next most Evangelical Assembling and tell me whether there be not some Circumstances in the time place gesture manner of Preaching and Praying for which the best Textuary of you all can bring forth no plain positive and particular Commands and Examples from the Holy Scripture And these Circumstances of yours ye are over-rul'd in and suffer your selves to be obedient to on a Vassalage to some private man and it may be he no great Apostle yet continuing to blame those that in as innocent and much more decent Ceremonies and Circumstances are observant of Authority and were derived from those men that were not ashamed to live nor afraid to die for the Gospel Moreover this being the great Postulatum of the Science of Non-conformity and Novel Puritanism may I be so bold as to ask you whence you had it Not from the Scriptures I am sure neither in word nor sense not from Examples of Jewish or Christian Church in the Scripture registred for they both used Ceremonies and Circumstances in Worship again took them up and laid them down without the interposition of a particular Divine Command and yet are guiltless All that I can find of Scriptures that you are wont to alledge for this Opinion are some conceptions of your own on those Texts that mention God's Holiness and Jealousie That thou shalt not add nor diminish c. which have been an hundred times answered to you and had you been ingenuous the Answers had long before removed the dotage You will not say sure that this is a Principle enforced on you by Spiritual Wisdom and prudential debates in the understanding of every man that is possessed with a due fear of God for this were to make your selves the only true Christians or to be found if you venture to talk of prudence in the same Oven wherein you seek to finde or to put your Adversaries But the Church of England must be cautious in contending against this Principle for scarce any of her Members do but they are readily accused for disparaging the fulness of Scripture for speaking un-Protestantlike of the perfection of that Sacred Volume and lastly that Christ as Moses was not faithful in his house Which Accusations were they true would signifie but they are not true inasmuch as the Members of the Church of England have always willingly asserted and learnedly justified the perfection of Holy Scriptures as having in them a sufficient and full Revelation of supernatural Truths and the Substantials of God's Worship and the advancing moral and civil Duties to a more sublime and spiritual height by directing them to a more noble end and exacting performance of them in a holy manner Bishop Sanderson Pref. to 20 Serm. But then 't is added by that renowned Bishop that this the Protestants do assert without any purpose thereby to exclude belief of what is otherwise reasonable or the practise of what is prudential Idem ibid But the truth is that Bishop might say what he pleased my meaning is that his Exercitations on the Cause of the Church of England as it stands in Controversie with you are above your refuting Else though Mr. Hookes's be a longsome Book why are not the Right Reverend Sanderson's few Sermons and two Prefaces taken into consideration For doth he not enervate your Principle and establish our Ceremonies with that freeness as if he craved favour from no man's Reason or Learning Therefore let it be thought no
among us which God forbid who may we blame for it but your selves and your Fore-runners who could never endure that body of Canons wherein was one in Title and Doctrine against Socinianism It is the fourth Canon agreed on by the several Synods of London and York 1640. wherein Socinianism is called a damnable and cursed Heresie a complication of many antient Heresies condemn'd by the four first General Councils and lastly contrariant to the Articles of Religion now established in the Church of England I know on what Canon or Canons the burden of your clamour was laid and that the Lawyers helpt you to find out an irregularity in their making though the Composers had the King's Commission to impower them and the Canons the King's Declaration before them yet this Canon underwent the same fate as others though not so audibly complain'd against which I cannot think for all that but was as well as the rest secretly design'd against by the first Authors of our confusions in Religion For soon after the Ministers that exercised before the Lords and Commons at their Monthly Fasts complain'd against infinite Errors and Heresies and this by name of Socinianism and that the persons who were guilty of it were not the adherents to Episcopacie but such as were hearded among the Dissenters and joyn'd for a pretended Reformation The matter therefore well considered though you dislike Socinianism as well you may yet you may see whether directly or by accident I enquire not who unhappily ministred to its growth if not to its first Introduction Concerning the Discipline of the Church of England I have found nothing so boldly talkt against as the particular of Excommunications as if they were irregularly decreed and on light and unmeet occasions But these exceptions are so idle and vain that they argue either ignorance or unrighteousness in those who first made them For had they observ'd how and by whom men are Ecclesiastically censured they would not think the Keys usurp'd by Lay-men 'T is no news to hear Courts and their proceedings first misunderstood and then misrepresented by those who are obnoxious or have an itch to rule and are impatient of Government Now Government it self being sacred and necessary they that quarrel at it must begin with the suspected corruptions of it of which they are neither capable to judge or amend and so proceed to confusion but still keeping up to a noise of corruption till themselves are possess'd of it and then become abominable And as for the causes and occasions of Excommunications that are insisted on by you to be light and trivial it is manifest that those who so accuse are very heedless or very illiterate For let them but read the ordinary form of that Instrument and they will find the cause is renouncing to Government and contempt of the Court that is when men do not acknowledge the Jurisdiction or will not submit and acquiesce in its determinations and censures Having thus mentioned your Principle of Dissent and some Applications that you make thereof for your own pitiful defence against the Church of England let me further add something of the ways and manners you observe or at least are in use among your selves I have sometime considered your Worshipping of God and finde that though you have long handled that Text That God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth to serve you against those you oppose yet there is little assurance that there is more spirit or truth in your worship than in your slighted Neighbour's For if to worship God in spirit be to joyn the Soul with external performances in God's Worship what can you say for your selves more than those from whom you separate who acknowledg the Doctrine and profess the practise of the same beyond your disproof knowing herein they are to be tried by God and not you who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins But yet have not the Sons of the Church of England greater appearances that their Souls are joyn'd to the material parts of Gods worship than you when they readily use such Acts and Indications of reverence as you make Conscience to deny and a piece of Religion to contemn nay sometime become distinctly character'd from us by an obstinate and insolent refusal to use them The Congregations that worship God according to the Canons and Rubricks yf the Church of England do in Prayer and Communions kneel in hearing they are uncovered and in any other constant or contingent Office are decent orderly of which they are so far observant that to prevent any opportunity for confusion it is their Principle to submit and conform to a stated rule given them by their Superiours which is the only guard against indecencie and distraction But your Assemblies those of our County are otherwise managed Many profess to come with no other designe than to hear only and think themselves discharg'd to God and their own wish if they come time enough to hear a mystical Text pronounc'd as the warning to a Sermon This they believe to be the worship of God or else have knowledge of none And when they come there is no difference between them in the Market and in the Meeting-house and to say truth there needs none that their carriage may bear proportion to the nature of such unlawful Assemblies They have been taught that Preaching and Hearing are the principal Duties of Minister and People and for the one to preach plain Doctrine and the other to be uncovered are both superstitious and moreover that Superstition is so dangerous that rudeness is much safer with such-like whimsies that whenever they are reproved for it in our Assemblies especially in this point of the Hat they think they are abridged of their Christian Priviledges Neither is your Worship better for truth than spirit if to worship God in truth be to worship him after the manner that Christ hath revealed him who is the true God For concerning God nothing is more Emphatical in the Revelation of him by Christ than then that he spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all Rom. 8. 32. which Doctrine that it might be preserved fresh in the memories of Christians then was an holy Rite instituted by our Saviour that carried with it the most easie and familiar signification of the same viz. the Sacrament of the Lords-Supper which is to be celebrated with such words that do import the very Doctrine whereby is shewn not only our Saviour's care and faithfulness to continue an assertion of the Point but over and above that this is the most properly differing Character of the Christian Society But alas Of what little use is this among you your former setting up spiritual Rails by strange and unchristian Niceties hath made a desolation of this Table not yet to be repaired by the soundest Doctrines and vehementest exhortations to those that otherwise are governable people And as for your
own Societies I speak of Kent there is a very little obedience to it or such obedience as little comports with the merit of the Doctrine it relates to or the solemnity wherewith it was instituted And to my experience there are some who frequent your Assemblies with good affection having yet a veneration of that Sacrament do constantly communicate with us not our of compulsion or more than ordinary perswasion but because not in practice in such Meetings of yours to which they usually betake themselves I pray then consider how intire integral your Worship is especialiy where there is nothing but an extemporary prayer and attempts on a Theological Discourse If in any place the Holy Scriptures are read I do not hear of any great care or order had for reading the same in the most material parts thereof but in many places there is no more use of them than in such Quotatations that are brought in to attend the Sermon and in the rest the Method or Confusion of reading is left to the discretion of the gifted Brother Pastor or Minister be he young or old Stranger or home-born And therefore it is that the skill your Auditors have in the Scriptures is very narrow referring only to those Texts which are most in fashion for your Sermons They observe little connexion or discrimination between Old and N. Testament nor particularly understand those Scriptures that essentially concern Christianity but are under Rote and Government of such glosses as you have fixt on those places that appear fairest at least in sound for dissent and difference from the Church of England This consideration makes me reflect on your way of instruction supposing instruction of men not worship of God to be the chief end of your assembling For if it were not you could not reasonably lay such stress on Sermons as you do and you cannot deny but God may be publikely worshipped without them and that acceptably too especially in those places where the Gospel hath been long received and in such a Church where there are ways of another name constantly used to instruct the Members thereof But if you should assemble without Sermons for worship what will become of you For you have so long preach'd a woe upon the neglect and very omission of Preaching that the people you know will curse you if you should but attempt to call them together in any publike Meeting without it But yet to let this pass when you are conven'd your way of instructing one would think might be better advised I meddle not now with the unaptness of your Subjects to beget Principles of Christianity in your Hearers and if they were Principles which you teach how unduly they are proportion'd to their capacities being inveloped with such Phrases that it were hard for the very Apostles to know their own Doctrines again or the Primitive Christians to resume their faith and practice of them if they were to judge and live by your Discourses But say your way of Preaching is mended for indeed the Writings of Dissenters in other Cities and Countries are being more congruous to sense and beginning to be more Orthodox as to Doctrine what reasons can there be in order to better edification as you pretend to neglect the use of the Ten Commandments publike Catechisms the Antient Creeds and the Lords Prayer which deliver the Elements of Religion in such plain words and tractable Periods as the meanest judgment and memory may receive and manage them And if the memory only be first obliged in those wise and blessed accomodations of Divine Truths they are the nearer to the understanding and may at last rule in the affections and conversation Yet with these you instruct not but make them all subside to your own private senses and illustrations of Scripture If this be told abroad to those who are of the Reformed Churches it will become to their Judgment equally wicked and incredible That men should pretend to instruction and the best way too without a Catechism or the use of it without the Decalogue Creeds or Lords Prayer For to say you touch on all these in your Pulpit-declamations is but to tell us of a Wild-goose-chase wherein the Learner though he may come to hear some good shall never have a form of sound words This is the stranger for that these things are omitted not only on choice but in opposition to Laws that enjoyn them but what speak I of Laws when as there is no Church or Kingdom on the face of the whole earth that hath better and more wholesome Laws than ours and yet none so slighted and baffled not by the Banditi or men that live without any conduct of Law and Conscience but by those that pretend to have the greatest apprehension of Religion and liveliest sense of the fear of God For what Authority hath consulted with greater wisdom and compassion towards those it governs hath waited with more patience and desire of Conformity and Obedience or inflicted more gently and tenderly on transgressours than ours yet what Government hath been more complain'd and libell'd against That stand reproach'd and foil'd in its wisest Decrees and most Christian Sanctions to the wonder and astonishment as well as to the evil Example of all the Nations round about us Should other men take your licence to except against Laws that they do not like and abate openly in their Obedience to them as you do no Law would be regarded but the constitution of the Kingdom must dissolve Yet for this you have taught them Principles and given them Patterns which they may know how to use in matters of body and estate as you in your pretended concerns of Soul and Religion For if you may deny Conformity to Law on the account of Conscience towards God in a matter that is not intrinsecally evil or by any word of God absolutely sinful as you cannot prove any thing in our usages is then may others also be set onto violate other Laws which they judge inexpedient or otherwise for I know not what reason do not please them I believe many of you intend no such evil to your Nation and Country but then why will you hold and love that Principle that may be so naturally improv'd to infinite mischiefs The time past surely may suffice you to have wrought your own will the Consequences whereof cannot without horrour be contemplated by any that have affection to the Church or Commonwealth Remember I pray your endeavours and oppositions were and are against such a Church that you cannot accuse of any defect in necessaries to Salvation or hath any thing in use or injunction that may otherwise hazard any mans happiness but set it forforward that shall unite unto it And yet your opposition to it visibly contradicts such a Doctrine for ought yet hath been proved whose infringement brings damnation viz. obedience to Authority Nor are your followers any way better prepared to discharge themselves of being involved in this guilt but by the precarious Argument of an implicite Belief that your Leaders are good men and will not go against the Scriptures which Scriptures if you would be intreated to look into without Party or Passion and so far yield to as you are convinc'd you would quickly both Leader and Follower leave your Tents and Camps and find more comfort though perhaps not success in obedience than obstinacie Here is nothing I believe in this Paper but some of you may have heard but I doubt few of you consider'd and therefore my design hereby is only to give in familiarly another Memorial and to renew the instance for peace and conformity which I do offer to you from the bottom of my heart without sense of any particular wrong or provocation from you save what is to every Member of the Church of England by your recessions from it or batteries against it I need not tell you that you with us are of one common Nature and Country but Religion too for you are wont to defend your selves in all aggresses upon you by the name and pretence to the cause of English Protestants but sure you were never acknowledged abroad as you stand in your disagreements from the Church of England to be in respect of Forein Churches either Mother Sister or Daughter yet will you not cease to multiply distinctions from us and enmities against us Consider how much the right spirit of Christianity is seen in meekness and peaceableness which if they are to be exercised towards all then doubtless not to be denied to a righteous and innocent Authority We ask you not to part with any Christian Vertue or Doctrine as necessary to a compliance with us but rather to become more practical in the most eminent points thereof and that you would leave off to mingle and prefer your own things before the things of Jesus Christ his Gospel and his Church There was a time when the Ordinances of a small piece of a Parliament were cried up for Laws by you and not only Obedience press'd to them on pain of Delinquencie and Damnation but Neutrality cursed though the very matter of those Laws was either to begin or justifie Rebellion or Schisme And shall an integral and full Authority betrampled under your feet in Laws that are for right Religion peace and Unity FINIS