other saith That the old did onely shadow Grace which was afterward to be given through the passion of Iesus Christ. But the after-wit of latter daies hath found out another more exquisite distinction That Evangelical Sacraments are causes to effect Grace through motions of signes legal according to the same signification and sense wherein Evangelical Sacraments are held by us to be God's Instruments for that purpose For howsoever Bellarmine hath shrunk up the Lutherans sinews and cut off our Doctrine by the skirts Allen although he terms us Hereticks according to the usual bitter venom of his first style doth yet ingenuously confess That the old School-mens Doctrine and ours is one concerning Sacramental efficacy derived from God himself assisting by promise those outward signes of Elements and Words out of which their School-men of the newer mint are so desirous to hatch Grace Where God doth work and use these outward means wherein he neither findeth nor planteth force and aptnesse towards his intended purpose such means are but signes to bring men to the consideration of his Omnipotent Power which without the use of things sensible would not be marked At the time therefore when he giveth his Heavenly Grace he applyeth by the hands of his Ministers that which betokeneth the same nor only betokeneth but being also accompanied for ever with such Power as doth truly work is in that respect termed God's Instrument a true efficient cause of Grace a cause not in it self but onely by connexion of that which is in it self a cause namely God's own Strength and Power Sacraments that is to say the outward signes in Sacraments work nothing till they be blessed and sanctified by God But what is God's Heavenly Benediction and Sanctification saving onely the association of his Spirit Shall we say that Sacraments are like Magical signes if thus they have their effect Is it Magick for God to manifest by things sensible what he doth and to do by his most glorious Spirit really what he manifesteth in his Sacraments The delivery and administration whereof remaineth in the hands of mortal men by whom as by personal Instruments God doth apply signes and with signes inseparably joyn his Spirit and through the power of his Spirit work Grace The first is by way of concomitance and consequence to deliver the rest also that either accompany or ensue It is not here as in Cases of mutual Commerce where divers Persons have divers acts to be performed in their own behalf a Creditor to shew his Bill and a Debtor to pay his Money But God and Man doe here meet in one Action upon a Third in whom as it is the work of God to create Grace so it is his work by the hand of the Ministry to apply a sign which should betoken and his work to annex that Spirit which shall effect it The Action therefore is but one God the Author thereof and Man a Co-partner by him assigned to work for with and under him God the Giver of Grace by the outward Ministery of man so farr forth as he authorizeth man to apply the Sacraments of Grace in the Soul which he alone worketh without either Instrument or Co-agent Whereas therefore with us the remission of Sinne is ascribed unto God as a thing which proceedeth from him only and presently followeth upon the vertue of true Repentance appearing in man that which we attribute to the vertue they do not only impute to the Sacrament of Repentance but having made Repentance a Sacrament and thinking of Sacraments as they do they are enforced to make the Ministry of the Priests and their Absolution a cause of that which the sole Omnipotency of God worketh And yet for my own part I am not able well to conceive how their Doctrine That human Absolution is really a cause out of which our Deliverance from Sinne doth ensue can cleave with the Council of Trent defining That Contrition perfected with Charity doth at all times it self reconcile offenders to God before they come to receive actually the Sacrament of Penance How it can stand with those Discourses of the learned Rabbies which grant That whosoever turneth unto God with his whole heart hath immediately his Sinnes taken away That if a man he truly converted his Pardon can neither be denyed nor delayed It doth not stay for the Priest's Absolution but presently followeth Surely if every contrite Sinner in whom there is Charity and a sincere conversion of Heart have Remission of Sinnes given him before he seek it at the Priest's hands if reconciliation to God be a present and immediate sequel upon every such Conversion or Change It must of necessity follow seeing no man can be a true Penitent or Contrite which doth not both love God and sincerely abhor Sinne that therefore they all before Absolution attain Forgivenesse whereunto notwithstanding Absolution is pretended a Cause so necessary that Sinne without it except in some rare extraordinary Case cannot possibly be remitted Shall Absolution be a Cause producing and working that Effect which is alwayes brought forth without it and had before Absolution be thought of But when they which are thus before-hand pardoned of God shall come to be also assoiled by the Priest I would know what force his Absolution hath in this case Are they able to say here that the Priest doth remit any thing Yet when any of ours ascribeth the Work of Remission to God and interpreteth the Priests Sentence to be but a solemn Declaration of that which God himself hath already performed they scorn at it they urge against it that if this were true our Saviour Christ should rather have said What is loosed in Heaven ye shall loose on Earth then as he doth Whatsoever ye loose on Earth shall in Heaven be loosed As if he were to learn of us how to place his words and not we to crave rather of him a sound and right understanding lest to his dishonour and our own hurt we mis-expound them It sufficeth I think both against their constructions to have proved that they ground an untruth on his speech and in behalf of our own that his words without any such transposition do very well admit the sense we give them which is that he taketh to himself the lawfull proceedings of Authority in his Name and that the Act of Spiritual Authority in this case is by Sentence to acquit or pronounce them free from sinne whom they judge to be sincerely and truly penitent which Interpretation they themselves do acknowledge though not sufficient yet very true Absolution they say declareth indeed but this is not all for it likewise maketh innocent which addition being an untruth proved our truth granted hath I hope sufficiency without it and consequently our opinion therein neither to be challenged as untrue nor as unsufficient To rid themselves out of these Bryars and to make Remission of Sinnes an effect of Absolution notwithstanding that which hitherto hath been said
of uncleanness they nourish the root out of which they grow they breed that iniquity which bred them The blot therefore of Sin abideth though the act be transitory And out of both ariseth a present debt to endure what punishment soever the evil which we have done deserveth an Obligation in the Chains whereof Sinners by the Justice of Almighty God continue bound till Repentance loose them Repent this thy Wickedness saith Peter unto Simon Magus beseech God that if it be possible the thought of thine heart may be pardoned for I see thou art in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of Iniquity In like manner Solomon The Wicked shall be held fast in the cords of his own sin Nor doth God only binde Sinners hand and foot by the dreadful determination of his own unsearchable Judgment against them but sometime also the Church bindeth by the Censures of her Discipline So that when Offenders upon their Repentance are by the same Discipline absolved the Church looseth but her own Bonds the Chains wherein she had tyed them before The act of Sin God alone remitteth in that his purpose is never to call it to account or to lay it unto mens charge The stain he washeth out by the sanctifying Grace of his Spirit And concerning the punishment of Sinne as none else hath power to cast Body and Soul into Hell fire so none power to deliver either besides him As for the Ministerial Sentence of private Absolution it can be no more than a Declaration what God hath done It hath but the force of the Prophet Nathan's Absolution God hath taken away thy Sin Than which construction especially of words judicial there is not any thing more vulgar For example the Publicans are said in the Gospel to have justified God The Jews in Malachi to have blessed Proud men which sinne and prosper not that the one did make God righteous or the other the wicked happy But to bless to Justifie and to Absolve are as commonly used for words of Judgement or Declaration as of true and real efficacy Yea even by the opinion of the Master of Sentences It may be soundly affirmed and thought that God alone doth remit and retain Sinnes although he have given Power to the Church to do both But he one way and the Church another He only by himself forgiveth Sinne who cleanseth the Soul from inward blemish and looseth the Debt of Eternal death So great a Priviledge he hath not given unto his Priests who notwithstanding are authorized to loose and binde that is to say declare who are bound and who are loosed For albeit a man be already cleared before God yet he is not in the Church of God so taken but by the vertue of the Priests Sentence who likewise may be said to binde by imposing Satisfaction and to loose by admitting to the Holy Communion Saint Hierom also whom the Master of the Sentences alledgeth for more countenance of his own opinion doth no less plainly and directly affirm That as the Priests of the Law could only discern and neither cause nor remove Leprosies So the Ministers of the Gospel when they retain or remit Sin do but in the one judge how long we continue guilty and in the other declare when we are clear or free For there is nothing more apparent than that the Discipline of Repentance both Publick and Private was ordained as an outward mean to bring men to the vertue of inward Conversion So that when this by manifest tokens did seem effected Absolution ensuing which could not make served only to declare men innocent But the cause wherefore they are so stiff and have forsaken their own Master in this point is for that they hold the private Discipline of Penitency to be a Sacrament Absolution an external sign in this Sacrament the signs external of all Sacraments in the New Testament to be both causes of that which they signifie and signs of that which they truly cause To this opinion concerning Sacraments they are now tyed by expounding a Canon in the Florentine Council according to the former Ecclesiastical invention received from Thomas For his device it was that the mercy of God which useth Sacraments as Instruments whereby to work indueth them at the time of their Administration with supernatural force and ability to induce Grace into the Souls of men Even as the Axe and Saw doth seem to bring Timber into that fashion which the minde of the Artificer intendeth His Conceipt Scotus Occam Petrus Alliacensis with sundry others do most earnestly and strongly impugn shewing very good reason wherefore no Sacrament of the new Law can either by vertue which it self hath or by force supernatural given it be properly a cause to work Grace but Sacraments are therefore said to work or conferr Grace because the will of Almighty God is although not to give them such efficacy yet himself to be present in the Ministry of the working that effect which proceedeth wholly from him without any real operation of theirs such as can enter into men's Souls In which construction seeing that our Books and Writings have made it known to the World how we joyn with them it seemeth very hard and injurious Dealing that Bellarmine throughout the whole course of his second Book De Sacramentis in genere should so boldly face down his Adversaries as if their opinion were that Sacraments are naked empty and ineffectual signes whererein there is no other force than only such as in Pictures to stir up the minde that so by theory and speculation of things represented Faith may grow Finally That all the operations which Sacraments have is a sensible and divine Instruction But had it pleased him not to hud-wink his own knowledge I nothing doubt but he fully saw how to answer himself it being a matter very strange and incredible that one which with so great diligence hath winowed his Adversarys Writings should be ignorant of their minds For even as in the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ both God and Man when his human nature is by it self considered we may not attribute that unto him which we do and must ascribe as oft as respect is had unto both natures combined so because in Sacraments there are two things distinctly to be considered the outward sign and the secret concurrence of Gods most blessed Spirit in which respect our Saviour hath taught that Water and the Holy Ghost are combined to work the mysterie of new birth Sacraments therefore as signs have only those effects before mentioned but of Sacraments in that by God's own Will and Ordinance they are signs assisted alwayes with the power of the Holy Ghost we acknowledge whatsoever either the places of the Scripture or the Authority of Councels and Fathers or the proofs and arguments of reason which he alledgeth can shew to be wrought by them The Elements and words have power of infallible signification for
move as frighted men out of their places what Cave shall receive them What Mountain or Rock shall they get by intreaty to fall upon them What covert to hide them from that wrath which they shall neither be able to abide or avoid No man's misery therefore being greater than theirs whose impiety is most fortunate much more cause there is for them to bewail their own infelicity than for others to be troubled with their prosperous and happy estate as if the hand of the Almighty did not or would not touch them For these causes and the like unto these therefore Be not troubled Now though the cause of our heaviness be just yet may not our affections herein be yielded unto with too much indulgency and favour The grief of Compassion whereby we are touched with the feeling of other mens woes is of all other least dangerous Yet this is a leââ unto sundry duties by this we are apt to spare sometimes where we ought to strike The grief which our own sufferings do bring what temptations have not risen from it What great advantage Satan hath taken even by the godly grief of hearty contrition for sins committed against God the near approaching of so many afflicted Souls whom the conscience of sinne hath brought unto the very brink of extreme despair doth but too abundantly shew These things wheresoever they fall cannot but trouble and molest the minde Whether we be therefore moved vainly with that which seemeth hurtful and is not or have just cause of grief being pressed indeed with those things which are grievous our Saviour's Lesson is touching the one Be not troubled not over-troubled for the other For though to have no âeeling of that which meerly concerneth us were stupidity nevertheless seeing that as the Authour of our Salvation was himself Consecrated by affliction so the way which we are to follow him by is not strewed with rushes but set with thorns be it never so hard to learn we must learn to suffer with patience even that which seemeth almost impossible to be suffered that in the hour when God shall call us unto our trial and turn this honey of peace and pleasure wherewith we swell into that gall and bitterness which Flesh doth shrink to taste of nothing may cause us in the troubles of our Souls to storm and grudge and repine at God but every Heart be enabled with divinely-inspired courage to inculcate unto it self Be not troubled and in those last and greatest Conflicts to remember that nothing may be so sharp and bitter to be suffered but that still we our selves may give our selves this encouragement Even learn also patience O my Soul Naming Patience I name that vertue which onely hath power to stay our Souls from being over-excessively troubled A vertue wherein if ever any surely that Soul had good experience which extremity of pains having chased out of the Tabernacle of this Flesh Angels I nothing doubt have carried into the bosom of her Father Abraham The death of the Saints of God is precious in his sight And shall it seem unto us superfluous at such times as these are to hear in what manner they have ended their lives The Lord himself hath not disdained so exactly to register in the Book of Life after what sort his Servants have closed up their dayes on Earth that he descendeth even to their very meanest actions what meat they have longed for in their Sicknesse what they have spoken unto their Children Kinsfolks and Friends where they have willed their dead Carkasses to be laid how they have framed their Wills and Testaments yea the very turning of their Faces to this side or that the setting of their Eyes the degrees whereby their natural Heat hath departed from them their Cryes their Groans their Pantings Breathings and Last-gaspings he hath most solemnly commended unto the memory of all Generations The care of the living both to live and dye well must needs be somewhat encreased when they know that their departure shall not be foulded up in silence but the ears of many be made acquainted with it Again when they hear how mercifully God hath dealt with others in the hour of their last need besides the praise which they give to God and the joy which they have or should have by reason of their Fellowship and Communion of Saints is not their hope also much confirmed against the day of their own dissolution Finally the sound of these things doth not so passe the ears of them that are most loose and dissolute of life but it causeth them sometime or other to wish in their hearts Oh that we might dye the death of the Righteous and that our end might be like his Howbeit because to spend herein many words would be to strike even as many wounds into their mindes whom I rather wish to comfort Therefore concerning this vertuous Gentlewoman onely this little I speak and that of knowledge She lived a Dove and dyed a Lambe And if amongst so many Vertues hearty Devotion towards God towards Poverty tender Compassion Motherly Affection toward Servants towards Friends even serviceable kindness milde behaviour and harmless meaning towards all if where so many Vertues were eminent any be worthy of special mention I wish her dearest Friends of that sex to be her nearest Followers in two things Silence saving only where duty did exact speech and Patience even then when extremity of pains did enforce grief Blessed are they that dye in the Lord. And concerning the dead which are blessed let not the hearts of any living be over-charged with grief over-troubled Touching the latter affection of Fear which respecteth evil to come as the other which we have spoken of doth present evils first in the nature thereof it is plain that we are not of every future evil afraid Perceive we not how they whose tendernesse shrinketh at the least rase of a Needle 's Point do kisse the Sword that peirceth their Souls quite thorow If every Evil did cause Fear Sinne because it is Sinne would be feared whereas properly Sinne is not feared as Sinne but onely as having some kinde of harm annexed To teach men to avoid sinne it had been sufficient for the Apostle to say Flye it But to make them afraid of committing sinne because the naming of Sin sufficed not therefore he addeth further That it is as a Serpent which stingeth the Soul Again be it that some nocive or hurtful thing be towards us must fear of necessity follow hereupon Not except that hurtful thing doe threaten us either with destruction or vexation and that such as we have neither a conceit of ability to resist nor of utter impossibility to avoid That which we know our selves able to withstand we fear not and that which we know are unable to deferr or diminish or any way avoid we cease to fear we give our selves over to bear and sustain it The evil therefore which is feared must be in our perswasion
much as the Hem of Christs Garment If they do wherefore should I doubt but that Vertue may proceed from Christ to save them No I will not be afraid to say to such a one You erre in your opinion but be of good comfort you have to do with a Merciful God who will make the best of that little which you hold well and not with a captions Sophister who gathereth the worst out of every thing in which you are mistaken But it will be said The admittance of Merit in any degree overthroweth the Foundation excladeth from the hope of Mercy from all possibility of Salvation And now Mr. Hookers own words follow What though they hold the truth sincerely in all other parts of Christian Faith Although they have in some measure all the Vertues and Graces of the Spirit Although they have all other Tokens of Gods Children in them Although they be far from having any proud opinion that they shall be saved by the worthiness of their Deeds Although the onely thing that troubleth and molesteth them be a little too much dejection somewhat too great a fire arising from an erronious conceit That God will require a worthiness in them which they are grieved to finde wanting in themselves Although they be not obstinate in this Opinion Although they be willing and would be glad to forsake it if any one Reason were brought sufficient to disprove it Although the onely cause why they do not forsake it ere they die be their ignorance of that means by which it might be disproved Although the cause why the ignorance in this point is not removed be the want of knowledge in such as should be able and are not to remove it Let me die says Mr. Hooker if it be ever proved That simply an Error doth exclude a Pope or Cardinal in such a case utterly from hope of life Surely I must confess That if it be an Error to think that God may be merciful to save men even when they err my greatest comfort is my error Were it not for the love I bear to this Error I would never wish to speak or to live I was willing to take notice of these two points as supposing them to be very material and that as they are thus contracted they may prove useful to my Reader as also for that the Answers be Arguments of Mr. Hookers great and clear Reason and equal Charity Other Exceptions were also made against him as That he prayed before and not after his Sermons that in his Prayers be named Bishops that be kneeled both when he prayed and he when he received the Sacrament and says Mr. Hooker in his Defence other Exceptions so like these as but to name I should have thought a greater fault then to commit them And 't is not unworthy the noting that in the menage of so great a Controversie a sharper reproof then this and one like it did never fall from the happy Pen of this humble Man That like it was upon a like occasion of Exceptious to which his Answer was Your next Argument consists of Railing and of Reasons to your Railing I say nothing to your Reasons I say what follows And I am glad of this fair occasion to testifie the Dove-like temper of this meek this matchless Man and doubtless it Almighty God had blest the Dissenters from the Ceremonies and Discipline of this Church with a like measure of Wisdom and Humility instead of their pertinacious Zeal then Obedience and Truth had kissed each other then Peace and Piety had flourished in our Nation and this Church and State had been blest like Ierusalem that is at unity with it self but that can never be expected till God shall bless the common people with a belief That Schism is a sin and that there may be offences taken which are not given and that Laws are not made for private men to dispute but to obey And this also maybe worthy of noting That these Exceptions of Mr. Travers against Mr. Hooker were the cause of his transcribing several of his Sermons which we now see Printed with his Books of his Answer to Mr. Travers his Supplication and of his most learned and useful Discourse of Iustification of Faith and Works and by their Transcription they fell into the hands of others that have preserved them from being lost as too many of his other matchless Writings have been and from these I have gathered many observations in this Discourse of his Life After the publication of his Answer to the Petition of Mr. Travers Mr. Hooker grew daily into greater repute with the most Learned and Wise of the Nation but it had a contrary effect in very many of the Temple that were zealous for Mr. Travers and for his Church Discipline insomuch that though Mr. Travers left the place yet the Seeds of Discontent could not be rooted out of that Society by the great Reason and as great Meekness of this humble Man For though the Cheif Benchers gave him much Reverence and Incouragement yet he there met with many neglects and oppositions-by-those of Mr. Travers judgment insomuch that it turned to his extream grief And that he might unbeguile and win them he designed to write a deliberate sober Treatise of the Churches power to make Cannons for the use of Ceremonies and by Law to impose an obedience to them as upon Her Children and this he proposed to do in Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity intending therein to shew such Arguments as should force an assent from all Men if Reason delivered in sweet Language and void of any provocation were able to do it And that he might prevent all prejudice he wrote before it a large Preface or Epistle to the Dissenting Brethren wherein there were such Bowels of Love and such a Commixture of that Love with Reason as was never exceeded but in Holy Writ and particularly by that of St. Paul to his dear Brother and Fellow-Laborer Philemon Then which none ever was more like this Epistle of Mr. Hookers So that his dear Friend and Companion in his Studies Doctor Spencer might after his Death justly say What admirable height of Learning and depth of Iudgment dwelt in the lowly minde of this truly humble Man great in all wise mens eyes except his own With what gravity and majesty of Speech his Tongue and Pen uttered Heavenly Mysteries whose eyes in the Humility of his Heart were always cast down to the ground How all things that proceeded from him were breathed as from the Spirit of Love as if he like the Bird of the Holy Ghost the Dove had wanted Gall Let those that knew him not in his Person judge by these living Images of his Soul his Writings The Foundation of these Books was laid in the Temple but he found it no fit place to finish what he had there designed and therefore solicited the Archbishop for a remove to whom he spake to this purpose My Lord
a Minister to Preach Christ crucified In regard whereof not onely worldly things but things otherwise precious even the Discipline it self is vile and base Whereas now by the heat of Contention and violence of Affection the Zeal of Men towards the one hath greatly decayed their love to the other Hereunto therefore they are to be exhorted to Preach Christ crucified the Mortification of the Flesh the Renewing of the Spirit not those things which in time of Strife seem precious but Passions being allayed are vain and childish GEO. CRANMER This Epitaph was long since presented to the World in Memory of Mr. Hooker by Sir William Cooper who also built him a fair Monument in Borne-Church and acknowledges him to have been his Spiritual Father THough nothing can be spoke worthy his Fame Or the Remembrance of that precious Name Iudicious Hooker though this cost be spent On him that hath a Lasting Monument In his own Books yet ought we to express If not his Worth yet oue Respectfulness Church Ceremonies he maintaiu'd Then Why Without all Ceremony should he die Was it because his Life and Death should be Both equal Patterns of Humility Or that perhaps this onely glorious one Was above all to ask Why had he none Yet he that lay so long obscurely low Doth now preferr'd to greater Honors go Ambitious men Learn hence to be more wise Humility is the true way to rise And God in me this Lesson did Inspire To bid this humble Man Friend sit up higher TO THE Most Reverend Father in GOD my very good Lord the Lord Archbishop of CANTERBURY his Grace Primate and Metropolitan of all ENGLAND MOst Reverend in Christ the long continued and more then ordinary favor which hither to your Grace hath been pleased to shew towards me may justly claim at my hands some thankful acknowledgment thereof In which consideration as also for that I embrace willingly the ancient received course and conveniency of that Discipline which teacheth inferior Degrees and Orders in the Church of God to submit their Writings to the same Authority from which their allowable dealings whatsoever in such affairs must receive approbation I nothing fear but that your accustomed clemency will take in good worth the offer of these my simple and mean Labors bestowed for the necessary justification of Laws heretofore made questionable because as I take it they were not perfectly understood For surely I cannot finde any great cause of just complaint that good Laws have so much been wanting unto us as we to them To seek Reformation of evil Laws is a commendable endeavor but for us the more necessary is a speedy redress of our selves We have on all sides lost much of our first fervency towards God and therefore concerning our own degenerated ways we have reason to exhort with St. Gregory ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Let us return again unto that which we sometime were but touching the exchange of Laws in Practice with Laws in Device which they say are better for the State of the Church if they might take place the farther we examine them the greater cause we finde to conclude ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã although we continue the same we are the harm is not great These fervent Reprehenders of things established by Publick Authority are always confident and bold spirited men But their confidence for the most part riseth from too much credit given to their own wits for which cause they are seldom free from Error The Errors which we seek to reform in this kinde of men are such as both received at your own hands their first wound and from that time to this present have been proceeded in with that Moderation which useth by Patience to suppress boldness and to make them conquer that suffer Wherein considering the nature and kinde of these Controversies the dangerous sequels whereunto they were likely to grow and how many ways we have been thereby taught Wisdom I may boldly aver concerning the first that as the weightiest conflicts the Church hath had were those which touched the Head the Person of our Savior Christ and the next of importance those questions which are at this day between us and the Church of Rome about the Actions of the Body of the Church of God so these which have lastly sprung up from Complements Rites and Ceremonies of Church Actions are in truth for the greatest part such silly things that very easiness doth make them hard to be disputed of in serious manner Which also may seem to be the cause why divers of the Reverend Prelacy and other most judicious men have especially bestowed their pains about the Matter of Jurisdiction Notwithstanding led by your Graces example my self have thought it convenient to wade through the whole Cause following that method which searcheth the Truth by the causes of Truth Now if any marvel how a thing in it self so weak could import any great danger they must consider not so much how small the spark is that flieth up as how apt things about it are to take fire Bodies Politick being subject as much as Natural to dissolution by divers means there are undoubtedly more estates overthrown through diseases bred within themselves then through violence from abroad because our manner is always to cast a doubtful and a more suspicious eye towards that over which we know we have least power And therefore the fear of External dangers causeth forces at home to be the more united It is to all sorts a kinde of Bridle it maketh vertuous Mindes watchful it holdeth contrary Dispositions in suspense and it setteth those Wits on work in better things which could be else imployed in worse whereas on the other side domestical Evils for that we think we can master them at all times are often permitted to run on forward till it be too late to recal them In the mean while the Commonwealth is not onely through unsoundness so far impaired as those evils chance to prevail but farther also through opposition arising between the unsound parts and the sound where each endeavoreth to draw evermore contrary ways till destruction in the end bring the whole to ruine To reckon up how many Causes there are by force whereof Divisions may grow in a Commonwealth is not here necessary Such as rise from variety in Matter of Religion are not onely the farthest spred because in Religion all men presume themselves interessed alike but they are also for the most part hotlier prosecuted and pursued then other strifes for as much as coldness which in other Contentions may be thought to proceed from Moderation is not in these so favorably construed The part which in this present quarrel striveth against the Current and Stream of Laws was a long while nothing feared the wisest contented not to call to minde how Errors have their effect many times not proportioned to that little appearance of Reason whereupon they would seem built but rather to the vehement affection or
Iudges in that Court to be their Ministers others of the people annually chosen twice so many in number as they to be Iudges together with them in the same Court These two sorts to have the care of all Mens manners power of determining of all kinde of Ecclesiastical Causes and authority to Convent to Controll to Punish as far as with Excommunication whom soever they should think worthy none either small or great excepted This device I see not how the wisest at that time living could have bettered if we duly consider what the present State of Geneva did then require For their Bishop and his Clergy being as it is said departed from them by Moon-light or howsoever being departed to chuse in his room any other Bishop had been a thing altogether impossible And for their Ministers to seek that themselves alone might have coercive power over the whole Church would perhaps have been hardly construed at that time But when so frank an offer was made that for every one Minister there should be two of the people to sit and give voice in the Ecclesiastical Consistory what inconvenience could they easily finde which themselves might not be able always to remedy Howbeit as ever more the simpler sort are even when they see no apparent cause jealous notwithstanding over the secret intents and purposes of wiser men this Proposition of his did somewhat trouble them Of the Ministers themselves which had staid behinde in the City when Calvin was gone some upon knowledge of the peoples earnest intent to recal him to his place again had beforehand written their Letters of Submission and assured him of their alleâgiance for ever after if it should like him to hearken unto that Publick Suit But yet misdoubting what might happen if this Discipline did go forward they objected against it the example of other Reformed Churches living quietly and orderly without it Some of the chiefest place and countenance amongst the Laity professed with greater stomach their judgments that such a Discipline was little better then Popish Tyranny disguised and tendered unto them under a new Form This sort it may be had some fear that the filling up of the Seats in the Consistory with so great a member of Laymen was but to please the mindes of the people to the end they might think their own sway somewhat but when things came to tryal of practice their Pastors learning would be at all times of force to over-perswade simple men who knowing the time of their own Presidentship to be but short would always stand in fear of their Ministers perpetual authority And among the Ministers themselves one being so far in estimation above the rest the voices of the rest were likely to be given for the most part respectively with a kinde of secret dependency and aw So that in shew a marvellous indifferently composed Senate Ecclesiastical was to govern but in effect one onely man should as the Spirit and Soul of the residue do all in all But what did these vain surmises boot Brought they were now to so strait an issue that of two things they must chuse one Namely Whether they would to their endless disgrace with ridiculous lightness dismiss him whose restitution they had in so impotent manner desired or else condescend unto that demand wherein he was resolute either to have it or to leave them They thought it better to be somewhat hardly yoked at home then for ever abroad discredited Wherefore in the end those Orders were on all sides assented unto with no less alacrity of minde then Cities unable to hold out longer are wont to shew when they take conditions such as liketh him to offer them which hath them in the narrow streights of advantage Not many years were over passed before these twice-sworn men adventured to give their last and hottest assault to the Fortress of the same Discipline childishly granting by common consent of their whole Senate and that under their Town-Seal a Relaxation to one Bertelier whom the Eldership had Excommunicated Further also decreeing with strange absurdity that to the same Senate it should belong to give final judgment in Matter of Excommunication and to absolve whom it pleased them clean contrary to their own former Deeds and Oaths The report of which Decree being fortwith brought unto Calvin Before saith he this Decree take place either my Blood or Banishment shall sign it Again two days before the Communion should be celebrated this speech was publickly to like effect Kill me if ever this hand do teach forth the things that are holy to them whom the Church hath judged despisers Whereupon for fear of tumult the forenamed Bertelier was by his friends advised for that time not to use the liberty granted him by the Senate nor to present himself in the Church till they saw somewhat further what would ensue After the Communion quietly ministred and some likelihood of peaceable ending of these troubles without any more aââ that very day in the afternoon besides all mens expectation concluding his ordinary Sermon he telleth them That because he neither had learned nor taught to strive with such as are in Authority therefore saith he the case so standing as now it doth let me use these words of the Apostle unto you I commend you unto God and the Word of his Grace and so bad them heartily Adieu It sometimes cometh to pass that the readiest way which a wise man hath to conquer is to flie This voluntary and unexpected mention of sudden departure caused presently the Senate for according to their wonted manner they still continued onely constant in unconstancy to gather themselves together and for a time to suspend their own Decree leaving things to proceed as before till they had heard the judgment of Four Helvetian Cities concerning the matter which was in strife This to have done at the first before they gave assent unto any order had shewed some wit and discretion in them but now to do it was as much as to say in effect That they would play their parts on a stage Calvin therefore dispatcheth with all expedition his Letters unto some Principal Pastor in every of those Cities craving earnestly at their hands to respect this Cause as a thing whereupon the whole State of Religion and Piety in that Church did so much depend That God and all good men were now inevitably certain to be trampled under foot unless those Four Cities by their good means might be brought to give sentence with the Ministers of Geneva when the Cause should be brought before them yea so to give it that two things it might effectually contain The one an Absolute Approbation of the Discipline of Geneva as consonant unto the Word of God without any cautions qualifications ifs or ands the other an earnest Admonition not to innovate or charge the same His vehement request herein as touching both points was satisfied For albeit the said Helvetian Churches did never as yet
World whereby the one sort are named The Brethren the Godly and so forth the other Worldlings Time-servers Pleasers of Men not of God with such like From hence they are easily drawn on to think it exceeding necessary for fear of quenching that good Spirit to use all means whereby the same may be both strengthned in themselves and made manifest unto others This maketh them diligent bearers of such as are known that way to incline this maketh them eager to take and seek all occasions of secret Conference with such this maketh them glad to use such as Counsellors and Directors in all their dealings which are of weight as Contracts Testaments and the like this maketh them through an unweariable desire of receiving instruction from the Masters of that Company to cast off the care of those very affairs which do most concern their estate and to think that then they are like unto Mary commendable for making choice of the better part Finally This is it which maketh them willing to charge yea oftentimes even to over-charge themselves for such Mens sustenance and relief least their zeal to the Cause should any way be unwitnessed For what is it which poor beguiled souls will not do through so powerful incitements In which respect it is also noted that most labor hath been bestowed to win and retain towards this Cause them whose judgments are commonly weakest by reason of their sex And although not Women loaden with sins as the Apostle St. Paul speaketh but as we verily esteem of them for the most part Women propense and inclinable to holiness be otherwise edified in good things rather then carried away as captives into any kinde of sin and evil by such as enter into their houses with purpose to plant there a zeal and a love towards this kinde of Discipline yet some occasion is hereby ministred for Men to think that if the Cause which is thus furthered did gain by the soundness of proof whereupon it doth build it self it would not most busily endeavor to prevail where least ability of judgment is And therefore that this so eminent industry in making Proselytes more of that sex then of the other groweth for that they are deemed apter to serve as instruments and helps in the Cause Apter they are through the eagerness of their affection that maketh them which way soever they take diligent in drawing their Husbands Children Servants Friends and Allies the same way Apter through that natural inclination unto pity which breedeth in them a greater readiness then in men to be bountiful towards their Preachers who suffer want Apter through sundry opportunities which they especially have to procure encouragements for their Brethren Finally Apter through a singular delight which they take in giving very large and particular intelligence how all near about them stand affected as concerning the same Cause But be they Women or be they Men if once they have tasted of that Cup let any man of contrary opinion open his mouth to perswade them they close up their ears his Reasons they weigh not all is answered with rehearsal of the words of John We are of God he that knoweth God heareth us As for the rest Ye are of the World for this Worlds pomp and vanity it is that ye speak and the World whose ye are heareth you Which cloke sitteth no less fit oâ the lack of their Cause then of the Anabaptists when the Dignity Authority and Honor of Gods Magistrates is upheld against them Shew these eagerly-affected men their inability to judge of such matters their answer is God hath chosen the simple Convince them of Folly and that so plainly that very children upbraid them with it they have their bucklers of like defence Christs own Apostle was accounted mad The best men evermore by the sentence of the World have been judged to be out of their right mindes When instruction doth them no good let them feel but the least degree of most mercifully tempered Severity they fasten on the head of the Lords Vicegerents here on Earth whatsoever they any where finde uttered against the cruelty of Blood-thirsty men and to themselves they draw all the Sentences which Scripture hath in the favor of Innocency persecuted for the Truth yea they are of their due and deserved sufferings no less proud then those ancient disturbers to whom St. Augustine writeth saying Martyrs rightly so named are they not which suffer for their disorder and for the ungodly breach they have made of Christian Unity but which for Righteousness sake are persecuted For Agar also suffered persecution at the hands of Sara wherein she which did impose was holy and she unrighteous which did bear the burthen In like sort with the Theeves was the Lord himself crucified but they who were matcht in the pain which they suffered were in the cause of their sufferings dis-joyned If that must needs be the true Church which doth endure persecution and not that which persecuteth let them ask of the Apostle what Church Sara did represent when she held her Maid in affliction For even our Mother which is free the Heavenly Ierusalem that is to say The true Church of God was as he doth affirm prefigured in that very Woman by whom the Bond-maid was so sharply handled Although if all things be throughly skanned she did in truth more persecute Sara by proud resistance then Sara her by severity of punishment These are the paths wherein ye have walked that are of the ordinary sort of men these are the very steps ye have trodden and the manifest degrees whereby ye are of your Guides and Directors trained up in that School A custom of inuring your ears with reproof of faults especially in your Governors and use to attribute those faults to the kinde of Spiritual Regiment under which ye live boldness in warranting the force of their Discipline for the cure of all such evils a slight of framing your conceits to imagine that Scripture every where favoreth that Discipline perswasion that the cause why ye finde it in Scripture is the illumination of the Spirit that the same Spirit is a Seal unto you of your nearness unto God that ye are by all means to nourish and witness it in your selves and to strengthen on every side your mindes against whatsoever might be of force to withdraw you from it 4. Wherefore to come unto you whose judgment is a Lanthorn of Direction for all the rest you that frame thus the peoples hearts not altogether as I willingly perswade my self of a politick intent or purpose but your selves being first over-borne with the weight of greater mens judgments on your shoulders is laid the burthen of upholding the cause by Argument For which purpose Sentences out of the Word of God ye alledge divers but so that when the same are aiscust thus it always in a manner falleth out That what things by vertue thereof ye urge upon us as altogether
universally either sufficient or necessary If they be nevertheless on your part it still remaineth to be better proved That the Form of Discipline which ye intitle Apostolical was in the Apostles time exercised For of this very thing ye fail even touching that which ye make most account of as being Matter of Substance in Discipline I mean the Power of your Lay-Elders and the difference of your Doctors from the Pastors in all Churches So that in faith we may be bold to conclude That besides these last times which for insolency pride and egregious contempt of all good order are the worst there are none wherein ye can truly affirm that the compleat Form of your Discipline or the Substance thereof was practised The evidence therefore of Antiquity failing you ye flie to the judgments of such Learned men as seem by their Writings to be of opinion that all Christian Churches should receive your Discipline and abandon ours Wherein as ye heap up the names of a number of men not unworthy to be had in honor so there are a number whom when ye mention although it serve ye to purpose with the ignorant and vulgar sort who measure by tale and not by weight yet surely they who know what quality and value the men are of will think ye draw very near the dregs But were they all of as great account as the best and chiefest amongst them with us notwithstanding neither are they neither ought they to be of such reckoning that their opinion or conjecture should cause the Laws of the Church of England to give place much less when they neither do all agree in that opinion and of them which are at agreement the most part through a courteous enducement have followed one man as their Guide finally that one therein not unlikely to have swerved If any chance to say it is probable that in the Apostles times there were Lay-Elders or not to mislike the continuance of them in the Church or to affirm that Bishops at the first were a name but not a power distinct from Presbyters or to speak any thing in praise of those Churches which are without Episcopal Regiment or to reprove the fault of such as abuse that Calling All these ye Register for Men perswaded as you are that every Christian Church standeth bound by the Law of God to put down Bishops and in their rooms to erect an Eldership so authorized as you would have it for the Government of each Parish Deceived greatly they are therefore who think that all they whose names are cited amongst the Favorers of this Cause are on any such verdict agreed Yet touching some material points of your Discipline a kinde of agreement we grant there is amongst many Divines of Reformed Churches abroad For first To do as the Church of Geneva did the Learned in some other Churches must needs be the more willing who having used in like manner not the slow and tedious help of proceeding by publick Authority but the peoples more quick endeavor for alteration in such an exigent I see not well how they could have staid to deliberate about any other Regiment then that which already was devised to their hands that which in like case had been taken that which was easiest to be established without delay that which was likeliest to content the people by reason of some kinde of sway which it giveth them When therefore the example of one Church was thus at the first almost through a kinde of constraint or necessity followed by many their concurrence in perswasion about some material points belonging to the same polity is not strange For we are not to marvel greatly if they which have all done the same thing do easily embrace the same opinion as concerning their own doings Besides mark I beseech you that which Galen in matter of Philosophy noteth for the like falleth out even in Questions of higher knowledge It fareth many times with mens opinions as with rumors and reports That which a credible person telleth is easily thought probable by such as are well perswaded of him But if two or three or four agree all in the same tale they judge it then to be out of Controversie and so are many times overtaken for want of due consideration either some common cause leading them all into error or one mans oversight deceiving many through their too much credulity and easiness of belief Though ten persons be brought to give testimony in any cause yet if the knowledge they have of the thing whereunto they come as witnesses appear to have grown from some one amongst them and to have spred it self from hand to hand they all are in force but as one testimony nor is it otherwise here where the Daughter Churches do speak their Mothers Dialect here where so many sing one Song by reason that he is the Guide of the Quire concerning whose deserved authority amongst even the gravest Divines we have already spoken at large Will ye ask what should move those many Learned to be followers of one Mans judgment no necessity of Argument forcing them thereunto Your demand is answered by your selves Loth ye are to think that they whom ye judge to have attained as sound knowledge in all points of Doctrine as any since the Apostles time should mistake in Discipline Such is naturally our affection that whom in great things we mightily admire in them we are not perswaded willingly that any thing should be amiss The reason whereof is for that as dead Flies putrifie the ointment of the Apothecary so a little Folly him that is in estimation for wisdom This in every profession hath too much authorized the judgment of a few This with Germans hath caused Luther and with many other Churches Calvin to prevail in all things Yet are we not able to define whether the Wisdom of that God who setteth before us in holy Scripture so many admirable patterns of Vertue and no one of them without somewhat noted wherein they were culpable to the end that to him alone it might always be acknowledged Thou onely art holy thou onely art just might not permit those worthy Vessels of his Glory to be in some things blemished with the stain of humane frailty even for this cause lest we should esteem of any man above that which behoveth 5. Notwithstanding as though ye were able to say a great deal more then hitherto your Books have revealed to the World earnest Challengers ye are of tryal by some publick Disputation wherein if the thing ye crave be no more then onely leave to dispute openly about those Matters that are inquestion the Schools in Universities for any thing I know are open unto you They have their yearly Acts and Commencements besides other Disputations both ordinary and upon occasion wherein the several parts of our own Ecclesiastical Discipline are oftentimes offered unto that kinde of Examination the learnedst of you have been of late years
and the coherance it hath with those things either on which it dependeth or which depend on it 8. The case so standing therefore my Brethren as it doth the wisdom of Governors ye must not blame in that they further also forecasting the manifold strange and dangerous innovations which are more then likely to follow if your Discipline should take place have for that cause thought it hitherto a part of their duty to withstand your endeavors that way The rather for that they have seen already some small beginnings of the fruits thereof in them who concurring with you in judgment about the necessity of that Discipline have adventured without more ado to separate themselves from the rest of the Church and to put your speculations in execution These mens hastiness the warier sort of you doth not commend ye wish they had held themselves longer in and not so dangerously flown abroad before the feathers of the Cause had been grown their Error with merciful terms ye reprove naming them in great commiseration of minds your poor Brethren They on the contrary side more bitterly accuse you as their false Brethren and against you they plead saying From your Brests it is that we have sucked those things which when ye delivered unto us ye termed that heavenly sincere and wholesom Milk of Gods Word howsoever ye now abhor as poyson that which the vertue thereof hath wrought and brought forth in us Ye sometime our Companions Guides and Familiars with whom we have had most sweet Consultations are now become our professed Adversaries because we think the Statute-Congregation in England to be no true Christian Churches because we have severed our selves from them and because without their leave or licence that are in Civil Authority we have secretly framed our own Churches according to the Platform of the Word of God For of that point between you and us there is no Controversie Also what would ye have us to do At such time as ye were content to accept us in the number of your own your Teaching we heard weread your Writings And though we would yet able we are not to forget with what zeal ye have ever profest That in the English Congregations for so many of them as be ordered according unto their own Laws the very Publick Service of God is fraught as touching Matter with heaps of intolerable Pollutions and as concerning Form borrowed from the Shop of Antichrist hateful both ways in the eyes of the most Holy the kinde of their Government by Bishops and Archbishops Antichristian that Discipline which Christ hath essentially tied that is to say so united unto his Church that we cannot account it really to be his Church which hath not in it the same Discipline that very Discipline no less there despised then in the highest Throne of Antichrist All such parts of the Word of God as do any way concern that Discipline no less unsoundly taught and interpreted by all authorized English Pastors then by Antichrists Factors themselves At Baptism Crossing at the Supper of the Lord. Kneeling at both a number of other the most notorious Badges of Antichristian Recognisance usual Being moved with these and the like your effectual discourses whereunto we gave most attentive ear till they entred even into our souls and were as fire within our bosoms We thought we might hereof be bold to conclude That sith no such Antichristian Synagogue may be accounted a true Church of Christ ye by accusing all Congregations ordered according to the Laws of England as Antichristian did mean to condemn those Congregations as not being any of them worthy the name of a true Christian Church Ye tell us now it is not your meaning But what meant your often threatnings of them who professing themselves the inhabitants of Mount Sion were too loth to depart wholly as they should out of Babylon Whereat our hearts being fearfully troubled we durst not we durst not continue longer so near her confines lest her plagues might suddenly overtake us before we did cease to be partakers with her sins for so we could not chuse but acknowledge with grief that we were when they doing evil we by our presence in their Assemblies seemed to like thereof or at leastwise not so earnestly to dislike as became men heartily zealous of Gods glory For adventuring to erect the Discipline of Christ without the leave of the Christian Magistrate haply ye may condemn us as fools in that we hazard thereby our estates and persons further then you which are that way more wise think necessary But of any offence or sin therein committed against God with what conscience can you accuse us when your own positions are That the things we observe should every of them be dearer unto us then ten thousand lives that they are the peremptory Commandments of God that no mortal man can dispense with them and that the Magistrate grievously sinneth in not constraining thereunto Will ye blame any man for doing that of his own accord which all men should be compelled to do that are not willing of themselves When God commandeth shall we answer that we will obey if so be Cesar will grant us leave Is Discipline an Ecclesiastical Matter or a Civil If an Ecclesiastical is must of necessity belong to the duty of the Minister and the Minister ye say holdeth all his Authority of doing whatsoever belongeth unto the Spiritual Charge of the House of God even immediately from God himself without dependency upon any Magistrate Whereupon it followeth as we suppose that the hearts of the people being willing to be under the Scepter of Christ the Minister of God into whose hands the Lord himself hath put that Scepter is without all excuse if thereby he guide them not Nor do we finde that hitherto greatly ye have disliked those Churches abroad where the people with direction of their godly Ministers have even against the will of the Magistrate brought in either the Doctrine or Discipline of Iesus Christ For which cause we must now think the very same thing of you which our Saviour did sometime utter concerning false-hearted Scribes and Pharisees They say and do not Thus the foolish Barrowist deriveth his Schism by way of Conclusion as to him it seemeth directly and plainly out of your principles Him therefore we leave to be satisfied by you from whom he hath sprung And if such by your own acknowledgment be persons dangerous although as yet the alterations which they have made are of small and tender growth the changes likely to ensue throughout all States and Vocations within this Land in case your desire should take place must be thought upon First Concerning the Supream Power of the Highest they are no small Prerogatives which now thereunto belonging the Form of your Discipline will constrain it to resign as in the last Book of this Treatise we have shewed at large Again it may justly be feared whether our English
Here they drew in a Sea of Matter by amplifying all things unto their own Company which are any where spoken concerning Divine Favors and Benefits bestowed upon the Old Commonwealth of Israel concluding that as Israel was delivered out of Egypt so they spiritually out of the Egypt of this Worlds servile thraldom unto Sin and Superstition As Israel was to root out the Idolatrous Nations and to plant instead of them a people which feared God so the same Lords good will and pleasure was now that these new Israelites should under the conduct of other Joshua's Sampsons and Gideons perform a work no less miraculous in casting out violently the wicked from the Earth and establishing the Kingdom of Christ with perfect liberty And therefore as the cause why the Children of Israel took unto one Man many Wives might be lest the casualties of War should any way hinder the promise of God concerning their multitude from taking effect in them so it was not unlike that for the necessary propagation of Christs Kingdom under the Gospel the Lord was content to allow as much Now whatsoever they did in such sort collect out of Scripture when they came to justifie or perswade it unto others all was the Heavenly Fathers appointment his commandment his will and charge Which thing is the very point in regard whereof I have gathered his Declaration For my purpose herein is to shew that when the mindes of men are once erroneously perswaded that it is the Will of God to have those things done which they fancy then Opinions are as Thorns in their sides never suffering them to take rest till they have brought their speculations into practise The lets and impediments of which practice their restless desire and study to remove leadeth them every day forth by the hand into other more dangerous opinions sometimes quite and clean contrary to their first pretended meanings So as what will grow out of such Errors as go masked under the clâak of Divine Authority impossible it is that ever the wit of man should imagine till time have brought forth the fruits of them For which cause it behoveth Wisdom to fear the sequels thereof even beyond all apparent cause of fear These men in whose mouths at the first sounded nothing but onely Mortification of the Flesh were come at the lenght to think they might lawfully have their six or seven Wives apiece They which at the first thought Iudgment and Iustice it self to be merciless cruelty accounted at the length their own hands sanctified with being imbrued in Christian blood They who at the first were wont to beat down all Dominion and to urge against poor Constables Kings of Nations had at the length both Consuls and Kings of their own erection amongst themselves Finally they which could not brook at the first that any man should seek no not by Law the recovery of Goods injuriously taken or withheld from him were grown at the last to think they could not offer unto God more acceptable Sacrifice then by turning their Adversaries clean out of house and home and by enriching themselves with all kinde of spoil and pillage Which thing being laid to their charge they had in a readiness their answer That now the time was come when according to our Saviours promise The meek ones must inherit the Earth and that their title hereunto was the same which the righteous Israelites had unto the goods of the wicked Egyptians Wherefore sith the World hath had in these men so fresh experience how dangerous such active Errors are it must not offend you though touching the sequel of your present misperswasions much more be doubted then your own intents and purposes do haply aim at And yet your words already are somewhat when ye affirm that your Pastors Doctors Elders and Deacons ought to be in this Church of England Whether Her Majesty and our State will or no When for the animating of your Confederates ye publish the Musters which ye have made of your own Bands and proclaim them to amount to I know not how many thousands when ye threaten that sith neither your Suits to the Parliament nor Supplications to our Convocation-House neither your Defences by Writing nor Challenges of Disputation in behalf of that Cause are able to prevail we must blame our selves if to bring in Discipline some such means hereafter be used as shall cause all our hearts to ake That things doubtful are to be construed in the better part is a Principle not safe to be followed in Matters concerning the Publick State of a Commonweal But howsoever these and the like Speeches be accounted as Arrows idlely shot at random without either eye had to any Mark or regard to their lighting place hath not your longing desire for the practice of your Discipline brought the Matter already unto this demurrer amongst you whether the people and their Godly Pastors that way affected ought not to make Separation from the rest and to begin the Exercise of Discipline without the License of Civil Powers which License they have sought for and are not heard Upon which question as ye have now divided your selves the warier sort of you taking the one part and the forwarder in zeal the other so in case these earnest Ones should prevail what other sequel can any wise man imagine but this that having first resolved that Attempts for Discipline without Superiors are lawful it will follow in the next place to be disputed What may be attempted against Superiors which will not have the Scepter of that Discipline to rule over them Yea even by you which have staid your selves from running head-long with the other sort somewhat notwithstanding there hath been done without the leave or liking of your lawful Superiors for the exercise of a part of your Discipline amongst the Clergy thereunto addicted And lest Examination of Principal Parties therein should bring those things to light which might hinder and let your proceedings behold for a Bar against that impediment one Opinion ye have newly added unto the rest even upon this occasion an Opinion to exempt you from taking Oaths which may turn to the molestation of your Brethren in that cause The next Neighbor Opinions whereunto when occasion requireth may follow for Dispensation with Oaths already taken if they afterwards be found to import a necessity of detecting ought which may bring such good men into trouble or damage whatsoever the cause be O merciful God what mans wit is there able to sound the depth of those dangerous and fearful evils whereinto our weak and impotent nature is inclineable to sink it self rather theâ to shew an acknowledgment of Error in that which once we have unadvisedly taken upon us to defend against the stream as it were of a contrary publick resolution Wherefore if we any thing respect their Error who being perswaded even as ye are have gone further upon that perswasion then ye allow if we
Earth pine away as Children at the withered Brests of their Mother no longerable to yield them relief What would become of Man himself whom these things now do all serve See we not plainly that obedience of Creatures unto the Law of Nature is the stay of the whole World Notwithstanding with Nature it cometh sometimes to pass as with art Let Phidias have rude and obstinate stuff to carve though his art do that it should his work will lack that beauty which otherwise in fitter matter it might have had He that striketh an Instrument with skill may cause notwithstanding a very unpleasant sound if the string whereon he striketh chance to be uncapable of harmony In the matter whereof things natural consist that of Theophrastus takes place ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Much of it is oftentimes such as will by no means yield to receive that impression which were best and most perfect Which defect in the matter of things natural they who gave themselves unto the contemplation of nature amongst the Heathen observed often But the true original cause thereof Divine Malediction laid for the sin of Man upon these Creatures which God had made for the use of Man this being an Article of that saving truth which God hath revealed unto his Church was above thereach of their meerly natural capacity and understanding But howsoever these swervings are now and then incident into the course of Nature nevertheless so constantly the Laws of Nature are by Natural Agents observed that no man denieth but those things which Nature worketh are wrought either always or for the most part after one and the same manner If here it be demanded What that is which keepeth Nature in obedience to her own Law we must have recourse to that higher Law whereof we have already spoken and because all other Laws do thereon depend from thence we must borrow so much as shall need for brief resolution in this point Although we are not of opinion therefore as some are that Nature in working hath before her certain exemplary draughts or patterns which subsisting in the bosom of the Highest and being thence discovered she fixeth her eye upon them as Travellers by Sea upon the Pole-star of the World and that according thereunto she guideth her hand to work by imitation Although we rather embrace the Oracle of Hippocrates That each thing both in small and in great fulfilleth the task which destiny hath set down And concerning the manner of excecuting and fulfilling the same What they do they know not yet is it in shew and appearance as though they did know what they do and the truth is they do not discern the things which they look on Nevertheless for as much as the works of Nature are no less exact then if she did both behold and study how to express some absolute shape or mirror always present before her yea such her dexterity and skill appeareth that no intellectual Creature in the World were able by capacity to do that which Nature doth without capacity and knowledge it cannot be but Nature hath some Directer of infinite knowledge to guide her in all her ways Who the guide of Nature but onely the God of Nature In him we live move and are Those things which Nature is said to do are by Divine Art performed using Nature as an Instrument nor is there any such Art or Knowledge Divine in Nature her self working but in the guide of Natures work Whereas therefore things natural which are not in the number of Voluntary Agents for of such onely we now speak and of no other do so necessarily observe their certain Laws that as long as they keep those Forms which give them their Being they cannot possibly be apt or inclinable to do otherwise then they do seeing the kindes of their operations are both constantly and exactly framed according to the several ends for which they serve they themselves in the mean while though doing that which is fit yet knowing neither what they do nor why It followeth that all which they do in this sort proceedeth originally from some such Agent as knoweth appointeth holdeth up and even actually frameth the same The manner of this Divine Efficiency being far above us we are no more able to conceive by our Reason then Creatures unreasonable by their Sense are able to apprehend after what manner we dispose and order the course of our affairs Onely thus much is discerned that the Natural Generation and Process of all things receiveth order of proceeding from the setled stability of Divine Understanding This appointeth unto them their kindes of working the disposition whereof in the Purity of Gods own Knowledge and Will is rightly termed by the name of Providence The same being referred unto the things themselves here disposed by it was wont by the Ancient to be called Natural Destiny That Law the performance whereof we behold in things natural is as it were an authentical or an original Draught written in the bosom of God himself whose Spirit being to execute the same useth every particular nature every meer natural agent onely as an Instrument created at the beginning and ever since the beginning used to work his own will and pleasure withal Nature therefore is nothing else but Gods Instrument In the course whereof Dionysius perceiving some sudden disturbance is said to have cryed out Aut Dens natura patitur aut mundi machina dissolvitur Either God doth suffer impediment and is by a greater then himself hindred or if that be impossible then hath he determined to make a present dissolution of the World the execution of that Law beginning now to stand still without which the World cannot stand This Workman whose servitor Nature is being in truth but onely One the Heathens imagining to be moe gave him in the Skie the name of Iupiter in the Air the name of Iune in the Water the name of Neptune in the Earth the name of Vesla and sometimes of Ceres the name of Apollo in the Sun in the Moon the name of Diana the name of AEolus and divers other in the Winds and to conclude even so many Guides of Nature they dreamed of as they saw there were kindes of things natural in the World These they honored as having power to work or cease accordingly as men deseived of them But unto us there is one onely Guide of all Agents Natural and he both the Creator and the Worker of all in all alone to be blessed adored and honored by all forever That which hitherto hath been spoken concerneth Natural Agents considered in themselves But we must further remember also which thing to touch in a word shall suffice That as in this respect they have their Law which Law directeth them in the means whereby they tend to their own perfection so likewise another Law there is which toucheth them as they are sociable parts united into one Body A Law which bindeth them each to
that in truth they never meant any otherwise to tie the one then the other unto Scripture both being thereunto equally tied as far as each is required in the same kinde of necessity unto Salvation If therefore it be not unlawful to know and with full perswasion to believe much more then Scripture alone doth teach if it be against all Sense and Reason to condemn the knowledge of so many Arts and Sciences as are otherwise learned then in Holy Scripture notwithstanding the manifest Speeches of ancient Catholick Fathers which seem to close up within the bosom thereof all manner good and lawful knowledge wheresore should their words be thought more effectual to shew that we may not in deeds and practice then they are to prove that in speculation and knowledge we ought not to go any further then the Scripture Which Scripture being given to teach matters of belief no less then of action the Fathers must needs be and are even as plain against credit besides the relation as against practice without the injunction of the Scripture S. Augustine hath said Whether it be question of Christ or whether it be question of his Church or of what thing soever the question be I say not if we but if an Angel from Heaven shall tell us any thing beside that you have received in the Scripture under the Law and the Gospel let him be accursed In like sort Tertallian We may not give our selves this liberty to bring in any thing of our will nor chuse any thing that other men bring in of their will we have the Apostles themselves for Authors which themselves brought nothing of their own will but the Discipline which they received of Christ they delivered faithfully unto the people in which place the name of Discipline importeth not as they who alledge it would fain have it construed but as any man who noteth the circumstance of the place and the occasion of uttering the words will easily acknowledge even the self-same thing it signifieth which the name of Doctrine doth and as well might the one as the other there have been used To help them farther doth not S. Ierome after the self-same manner dispute We believe it not because we read it not yea We ought not so much as to know the things which the Book of the Law containeth not saith S. Hilary Shall we hereupon then conclude that we may not take knowledge of or give credit unto any thing which sense or experience or report or art doth propose unless we finde the same in Scripture No it is too plain that so far to extend their Speeches is to wrest them against their true intent and meaning To urge any thing upon the Church requiring thereunto that Religious Assent of Christian Belief wherewith the words of the Holy Prophets are received to urge any thing as part of that supernatural and celestially revealed Truth which God hath taught and not to shew it in Scripture this did the ancient Fathers evermore think unlawful impious execrable And thus as their Speeches were meant so by us they must be restrained As for those alledged words of Cyprian The Christian Religion shall finde that out of this Scripture Rules of all Doctrines have sprung and that from hence doth spring and hither doth return whatsoever the Ecclesiastical Discipline doth contain Surely this place would never have been brought forth in this cause if it had been but once read over in the Author himself out of whom it is cited For the words are uttered concerning that one principal Commandment of Love in the honour whereof hespeaketh after this sort Surely this Commandment containeth the Law and the Prophets and in this one Word is the Abridgement of all the Volumes of Scripture This Nature and Reason and the authority of thy Word O Lord doth proclaim this we have heard out of thy month herein the perfection of all Religion doth consist This is the first Commandment and the last This being written in the Book of Life is as it were an everlasting lesson both to Men and Angels Let Christian Religion read this one Word and meditate upon this Commandment and out of this Scriptrue it shall finde the Rules of all Learning to have spring and from hence to have risen and hither to return whatsoever the Ecclesiastical Discipline containeth and that in all things it is vain and bootless which Charity confirmeth not Was this a sentence trow you of so great force to prove that Scripture is the onely Rule of all the actions of men Might they not hereby even as well prove that one Commandment of Scripture is the onely rule of all things and so exclude the rest of the Scripture as now they do all means besides Scripture But thus it fareth when too much desire of contradiction causeth our speech rather to pass by number then to stay for weight Well but Tertullian doth in this case speak yet more plainly The Scripture saith he denieth what it noteth not which are indeed the words of Tertullian But what the Scripture reckoneth up the Kings of Israel and amongst those Kings David the Scripture reckoneth up the sons of David and amongst those sons Solomon To prove that amongst the Kings of Israel there was no David but only one no Solomon but one in the sons of David Tertullians Argument will fitly prove For inasmuch as the Scripture did propose to reckon up all if there were moe it would haue named them In this case the Scripture doth deny the thing it noteth not Howbeit I could not but think that man to do me some piece of manifest injury which would hereby fasten upon me a general Opinion as if I did think the Scripture to deny the very Reign of King Henry the Eighth because it no where noteth that any such King did reign Tertullians speech is probable concerning such matter as he there speaketh of There was saith Tertullian no second Lamech like to him that had two wives the Scripture denieth what it noteth not As therefore it noteth one such to have been in that Age of the World so had there been moe it would by likelihood as well have noted many as one What infer we now hereupon There was no second Lamech the Scripture denieth what it noteth not Were it consonant unto reason to divorce these two Sentences the former of which doth shew how the latter is retrained and not marking the former to conclude by the latter of them that simply whatsoever any man at this day doth think true is by the Scripture denied unless it be there affirmed to be true I wonder that a case so weak and feeble hath been so much persisted in But to come unto those their Sentences wherein matters of action are more apparently touched the Name of Tertullian is as before so here again pretended who writing unto his Wife two Books and exhorting her in the one to live a Widow
it self could not reach unto Yet those things also we believe knowing by Reason that the Scripture is the Word of God In the presence of Festus a Roman and of King Agrippa a Jew St. Paul omitting the one who neither knew the Jews Religion not the Books whereby they were taught it speaks unto the other of things foreshewed by Moses and the Prophets and performed in Jesus Christ intending thereby to prove himself so unjustly accused that unless his Judges did condemn both Moses and the Prophets him they could not chuse but acquit who taught onely that fulfilled which they so long since had foretold His cause was easie to be discerned what was done their eyes were witnesses what Moses and the Prophets did speak their Books could quickly shew It was no hard thing for him to compare them which knew the one and believed the other King Agrippa believest thou the Prophets I know thou dost The question is how the Books of the Prophets came to be credited of King Agrippa For what with him did authorise the Prophets the like with us doth cause the rest of the Scripture of God to be of credit Because we maintain That in Scripture we are taught all things necessary unto Salvation hereupon very childishly it is by some demanded What Scripture can teach us the Sacred Authority of the Scripture upon the knowledge whereof our whole Faith and Salvation dependeth As though there were any kinde of Science in the World which leadeth men unto knowledge without presupposing a number of things already known No Science doth make known the first Principles whereon it buildeth but they are always either taken as plain and manifest in themselves or as proved and granted already some former knowledge having made them evident Scripture teacheth all supernaturally revealed Truth without the knowledge whereof Salvation cannot be attained The main principal whereupon our belief of all things therein contained dependeth is That the Scriptures are the Oracles of God himself This in it self we cannot say is evident For then all men that hear it would acknowledge it in heart as they do when they hear that every whole is more then any part of that whole because this in it self is evident The other we know that all do not acknowledge when they hear it There must be therefore some former knowledge presupposed which doth herein assure the hearts of all Believers Scripture teacheth us that saving Truth which God hath discovered unto the World by Revelation and it presumeth us taught otherwise that it self is Divine and Sacred The question then being By what means we are taught this some answer That to learn it we have no other way then onely Tradition as namely that so we believe because both we from our Predecessors and they from theirs have so received But is this enough That which all mens experience teacheth them may not in any wise be denied And by experience we all know that the first outward Motive leading men so to esteem of the Scripture is the authority of Gods Church For when we know the whole Church of God hath that opinion of the Scripture we judge it even at the first an impudent thing for any man bred and brought up in the Church to be of a contrary minde without cause Afterwards the more we bestow our labor in reading or hearing the Mysteries thereof the more we finde that the thing it self doth answer our received opinion concerning it So that the former enducement prevailing somewhat with us before doth now much more prevail when the very thing hath Ministred further Reason If Infidels or Atheists chance at any time to call it in question this giveth us occasion to sift what reason there is whereby the testimony of the Church concerning Scripture and our own perswasion which Scripture it self hath confirmed may be proved a truth infallible In which case the ancient Fathers being often constrained to shew what warrant they had so much to relie upon the Scriptures endeavored still to maintain the authority of the Books of God by Arguments such as unbelievers themselves must needs think reasonable if they judged thereof as they should Neither is it a thing impossible or greatly heard even by such kinde of proofs so to manifest and clear that point that no man living shall be able to deny it without denying some apparent Principle such as all men acknowledge to be true Wherefore if I believe the Gospel yet is reason of singular use for that it confirmeth me in this my belief the more If I do not as yet believe nevertheless to bring me into the number of Believers except Reason did somewhat help and were an Instrument which God doth use unto such purposes what should it boot to dispute with Infidels or godless persons for their conversion and perswasion in that point Neither can I think that when grave and learned men do sometime hold that of this Principle there is no proof but by the testimony of the Spirit which assureth our hearts therein it is their meaning to exclude utterly all force which any kinde of Reason may have in that behalf but I rather incline to interpret such their speeches as if they had more expresly set down that other motives and enducements be they never so strong and consonant unto Reason are notwithstanding ineffectual of themselves to work Faith concerning this Principle if the special Grace of the Holy Ghost concur not to the enlightning of our mindes For otherwise I doubt not but men of wisdom and judgment will grant That the Church in this point especially is furnished with Reason to stop the mouths of her impious Adversaries and that as it were altogether bootless to alledge against them what the Spirit hath taught us so likewise that even to our own selves it needeth Caution and Explication how the testimony of the Spirit may be discerned by what means it may be known lest men think that the Spirit of God doth testifie those things which the spirit of error suggesteth The operations of the Spirit especially these ordinary which be common unto all true Christian men are as we know things secret and undiscernable even to the very soul where they are because their nature is of another and an higher kinde then that they can be by us perceived in this life Wherefore albeit the Spirit lead us into all truth and direct us in all goodness yet because these workings of the Spirit in us are so privy and secret we theresore stand on a plainer ground when we gather by Reason from the quality of things believed or done that the Spirit of God hath directed us in both then if we settle our selves to believe or to do any certain particular thing as being moved thereto by the Spirit But of this enough To go from the Books of Scripture to the sense and meaning thereof because the Sentences which are by the Apostles recited out of the Psalms to prove
this point Satan took advantage urging the more securely a false cause because the true was unto Adam unknown Why the Jews were forbidden to Plough their Ground with an Ox and an Ass why to cloath themselves with mingled attire of Wooll and Linnen it was both unto them and to us it remaineth obscure Such Laws perhaps cannot be abrogated saving onely by whom they were made because the intent of them being known unto none but the Author he alone can judge how long it is requisite they should endure But if the reason why things were instituted may be known and being known do appear manifestly to be of perpetual necessity then are those things also perpetual unless they cease to be effectual unto that purpose for which they were at the first instituted Because when a thing doth cease to be available unto the end which gave it being the continuance of it must then of necessity appear superfluous And of this we cannot be ignorant how sometimes that hath done great good which afterwards when time hath changed the ancient course of things doth grow to be either very hurtful or not so greatly profitable and necessary If therefore the end for which a Law provideth be perpetually necessary and the way whereby it provideth perpetually also most apt no doubt but that every such Law ought for ever to remain unchangeable Whether God be the Author of Laws by authorising that power of men whereby they are made or by delivering them made immediately from himself by word onely or in writing also or howsoever notwithstanding the Authority of their Maker the mutability of that end for which they are made maketh them also changeable The Law of Ceremonies came from God Moses had commandment to commit it unto the Sacred Records of Scripture where it continueth even unto this very day and hour in force still as the Jew surmiseth because God himself was Author of it and for us to abolish what he hath established were presumption most intolerable But that which they in the blindness of their obdurate hearts are not able to discern sith the end for which that Law was ordained is now fulfilled past and gone how should it but cease any longer to be which hath no longer any cause of being in force as before That which necessity of some special time doth cause to be enjoyned bindeth no longer then during that time but doth afterward become free Which thing is also plain even by that Law which the Apostles assembled at the Council of Ierusalem did from thence deliver unto the Church of Christ the Preface whereof to authorise it was To the Holy Ghost and to us it hath seemed good Which style they did not use as matching themselves in Power with the Holy Ghost but as testifying the Holy Ghost to be the Author and themselves but onely Utterers of that Decree This Law therefore to haue proceeded from God as the Author thereof no faithful man will deny It was of God not onely because God gave them the power whereby they might make Laws but for that it proceeded even from the holy Motion and Suggestion of that secret Divine Spirit whose sentence they did but onely pronounce Notwithstanding as the Law of Ceremonies delivered unto the Jews so this very Law which the Gentiles received from the Mouth of the Holy Ghost is in like respect abrogated by decease of the end for which it was given But such as do not stick at this point such as grant that what hath been instituted upon any special cause needeth not to be observed that cause ceasing do notwithstanding herein fail they judge the Laws of God onely by the Author and main end for which they were made so that for us to change that which he hath established they hold it execrable pride and presumption if so be the end and purpose for which God by that mean provideth be permanent And upon this they ground those ample Disputes concerning Orders and Offices which being by him appointed for the Government of his Church if it be necessary always that the Church of Christ be governed then doth the end for which God provided remain still and therefore in those means which he by Law did establish as being fittest unto that end for us to alter any thing is to lift up our selves against God and as it were to countermand him Wherein they mark not that Laws are Instruments to rule by and that Instruments are not onely to be framed according unto the general end for which they are provided but even according unto that very particular which riseth out of the matter whereon they have to work The end wherefore Laws were made may be permanent and those Laws nevertheless require some alteration if there be any unfitness in the means which they prescribe as tending unto that end and purpose As for example a Law that to bridle theft doth punish Theeves with a quadruple restitution hath an end which will continue as long as the World it self continueth Theft will be always and will always need to be bridled But that the mean which this Law provideth for that end namely the punishment of quadruple restitution that this will be always sufficient to bridle and restrain that kinde of enormity no man can warrant Insufficiency of Laws doth sometimes come by want of judgment in the Makers Which cause cannot fall into any Law termed properly and immediately Divine as it may and doth into Humane Laws often But that which hath been once most sufficient may wax otherwise by alteration of time and place that punishment which hath been sometimes forcible to bridle sin may grow afterwards too week and feeble In a word we plainly perceive by the difference of those three Laws which the Jews received at the hands of God the Moral Ceremonial and Judicial that if the end for which and the matter according whereunto God maketh his Laws continue always one and the same his Laws also do the like for which cause the Moral Law cannot be altered Secondly That whether the Matter whereon Laws are made continue or continue not if their end have once ceased they cease also to be of force as in the Law Ceremonial it fareth Finally That albeit the end continue as in that Law of Theft specified and in a great part of those ancient Judicials it doth yet for as much as there is not in all respects the same subject or matter remaining for which they were first instituted even this is sufficient cause of change And therefore Laws though both ordained of God himself and the end for which they were ordained continuing may notwithstanding cease it by alteration of persons or times they be found unsufficient to attain unto that end In which respect why may we not presume that God doth even call for such change or alteration as the very condition of things themselves doth make necessary They which do therefore plead the Authority of
therein we ought to have followed The Matter contained in this Fourth Book 1. HOw great use Ceremonies have in the Church 2. The First thing they blame in the kinde of our Ceremonies is that we have not in them ancient Apostolical simplicity but a greater pomp and stateliness 3. The second that so many of them are the same which the Church of Rome useth and the Reasons which they bring to prove them for that cause blame-worthy 4. How when they go about to expound what Popish Ceremonies they mean they contradict their own Argument against Popish Ceremonies 5. An Answer to the Argument whereby they would prove that sith we allow the customs of our Fathers to be followed we therefore may not allow such customs as the Church of Rome hath because we cannot account of them which are in that Church as of our Fathers 6. To their Allegation that the course of Gods own wisdom doth make against our conformity with the Church of Rome in such things 7. To the example of the eldest Church which they bring for the same purpose 8. That it is not our best Politie as they pretend it is for establishment of sound Religion to hâve in these things no agreement with the Church of Rome being unsound 9. That neither the Papists upbraiding us as furnished out of their store nor any hope which in that respect they are said to conceive doth make any more against our Ceremonies then the former Allegations have done 10. The grief which they say godly Brethren conceive at such Ceremonies as we have câââmen with the Church of Rome 11. The third thing for which they reprove a great part of our Ceremonies is for that as we have them from the Church of Rome so that Church had them from the Jews 12. The fourth for that sundry of them have been they say abused unto Iââaery and arâ by that mean become scandalous 13. The fifth for that we retain them still notwithstanding the example of certain Churches reformed before us which have cast them out 14. A Declaration of the proceedings of the Church of England âor the establisement of things as they are SUch was the ancient simplicity and softness of spirit which sometimes prevailed in the World that they whose words were even as Oracles amongst men seemed evermore loth to give sentence against any thing publiquely received in the Church of God except it were wonderful apparently evil for that they did not so much encline to that seventy which delighteth to reprove the least things in seeth amiss as to that Charity which is unwilling to behold any thing that duty bindeth it to reprove The state of this present Age wherein Zeal hath drowned Charity and Skill Meekness will not now suffer any man to marvel whatsoever he shall hear reproved by whomsoever Those Rites and Ceremonies of the Church therefore which are the self-same now that they were when Holy and Vertuous men maintained them against profane and deriding Adversaries her own children have at this day in deâision Whether justly or no it shall then appear when all things are heard which they have to alledge against the outward received Orders of this Church Which inasmuch as themselves do compare unto Mint and Cummin granting them to be no part of those things which in the matter of Polity are weightier we hope that for small things their strife will neither be earnest noâ long The fifting of that which is objected against the Orders of the Church in particular doth not belong unto this place Here we are to discuss onely those general exceptions which have been taken at any time against them First therefore to the end that their nature and use whereunto they serve may plainly appear and so afterwards their quality the better be discerned we are to note that in every grand or main publique duty which God requireth at the hands of his Church there is besides that matter and form wherein the essence thereof consisteth a certain outward fashion whereby the same is in decent sort administred The substance of all religious actions is delivered from God himself in few words For example sake in the Sacraments Unto the Element let the Word be added and they both do make a Sacrament saith S. Augustine Baptism is given by the Element of Water and that prescript form of words which the Church of Christ doth use the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ is administred in the Elements of Bread and Wine if those mystical words be added thereunto But the due and decent form of administring those holy Sacraments doth require a great deal more The end which is aimed at in setting down the outward form of all religious actions is the edification of the Church Now men are edified when either their understanding is taught somewhat whereof in such actions it behoveth all men to consider or when their hearts are moved with any affection suitable thereunto when their mindes are in any sort stirred up unto that reverence devotion attention and due regard which in those cases seemeth requisite Because therefore unto this purpose not onely speech but sundry sensible means besides have always been thought necessary and especially those means which being object to the eye the liveliest and the most apprehensive sense of all other have in that respect seemed the sittest to make a deep and strong impression from hence have risen not only a number of Prayers Readings Questionings Exhortings but even of visible signs also which being used in perfomance of holy actions are undoubtedly most effectual to open such matter as men when they know and remember carefully must needs be a great deal the better informed to what effect such duties serve We must not think but that there is some ground of Reason even in Nature whereby it cometh to pass that no Nation under Heaven either doth or ever did suffer publike actions which are of weight whether they be Civil and Temporal or else Spiritual and Sacred to pass without some visible solemnity The very strangeness whereof and difference from that which is common doth cause Popular eyes to observe and to mark the same Words both because they are common and do not so strongly move the phansie of man are for the most part but slightly heard and therefore with singular wisdom it hath been provided that the deeds of men which are made in the presence of Witnesses should pass not only with words but also with certain sensible actions the memory whereof is far more easie and durable then the memory of speech can be The things which so long experience of all Ages hath confirmed and made profitable let not us presume to condemn as follies and toys because we sometimes know not the cause and reason of them A wit disposed to scorn whatsoever it doth not conceive might ask wherefore Abraham should say to his servant Put thy hand under my thigh and swear was it not sufficient
way to keep his People from infection oâ Idolaty and Superstition by severing them from Idolaters in outward Ceremonies and therefore hath forbidden them to do things which are in themselves very lawful to be done And âurther where as the Lord was careful to sever them by Ceremonies from other Nations yet was he not so careful to sever them from any as from the Egyptians amongst whom they lived and from those Nations which were next Neighbours to them because from them was the greatest fear of infection So that following the course which the wisdom of God doth teach it were more safe for us to conform our indifferent Ceremonies to the Turks which are far off then to the Papists which are so near Touching the example of the eldest Churches of God in one Councel it was decreed that Christians should not deck their houses with Bay-leaves and green boughs because the Pagans did use so to do and that they should not rest from their labours those days that the Pagans did that they should not keep the first day of every month as they did Another Council decreed that Christians should not celebrate Feasts on the Birth-dayes of the Martyrs because it was the manner of the Heathen O saith Tertullian better is the Religion of the Heathen for they use no solemnity of the Christians neither the Lords day neither the Pentecost and if they knew them they would have nothing to do with them for they would be afraid lest they should seem Christians but we are not afraid to be called Heathens The same Tertullian would not have Christians to sit after they had payed because the Idolaters did so Whereby it appeareth that both of Particular men and of Counsels in making or abolishing of Ceremonies heed had been taken that the Christians should not be like the Idolaters no not in those things which of themselves are most indifferent to be used or not used The same conformity is not lesse opposite unto reason first inasmuch as contraries must be cured by their contraries and therefore Popery being Antichristianity is not healed but by establishment of Orders thereunto opposite The way to bring a drunken man to sobriety it to carry him as far from excess of drink as may be To rectifie a crooked stick we bend it on the contrary side as far as it was at the first on that side from whence we draw it and so it cometh in the end to a middle between both which is perfect straightness Utter inconformity therefore with the Church of Rome in these things is the best and surest Policy which the Church can use While we use their Ceremonies they take occasion to blaspheme saying that our Religion cannot stand by it self unless it lean upon the staff of their Ceremonies They hereby conceive great hope of having the rest of their Popery in the end which hope causeth them to be more frozen in their wickedness Neither is it without cause that they have this hope considering that which M. Bucer noteth upon the eighteenth of S. Matthew that where these things have been left Popery hath returned but on the other part in places which have been cleansed of these things it hath not yet been seen that it hath had any entrance None make such clamours for these Ceremonies as the Papists and those whom they suborn a manifest token how much they triumph and joy in these things They breed grief of minde in a number that are godly minded and have Antichristianity in such detestation that their minds are Martyred with the very sight of them in the Church Such godly Brethren we ought not thus to grieve with unprofitable Ceremonies yea Ceremonies wherein there is not only no profit but also danger of great hurt that may grow to the Church by infection which Popish Ceremonies are means to breed This in effect is the sum and substance of that which they bring by way of opposition against those Orders which we have common with the Church of Rome these are the reasons wherewith they would prove our Ceremonies in that respect worthy of blame 4. Before we answer unto these things we are to cut off that whereunto they from whom these Objections proceed do oftentimes fly for defence and succour when the force and strength of their Argument is elided For the Ceremonies in use amongst us being in no other respect retained saving onely for that to retain them is to our seeming good and profitable yea so profitable and so good that if we had either simply taken them clean away or else removed them so as to place in their stead others we had done worse the plain and direct way against us herein had been onely to prove that all such Ceremonies as they require to be abolished are retained by us to the hurt of the Church or with lesse benefit then the abolishment of them would bring But forasmuch as they saw how hardly they should be able to perform this they took a more compendious way traducing the Ceremonies of our Church under the name of being Popish The cause why this way seemed better unto them was for that the name of Popery is more odious then very Paganism amongst divers of the more simple sort so whatsoever they hear named Popish they presently conceive deep hatred against it imagining there can be nothing contained in that name but needs it must be exceeding detestable The ears of the People they have therefore filled with strong clamours The Church of England is fraught with Popish Ceremonies they that favour the cause of Reformation maintain nothing but the sincerity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ All such as withstand them fight for the Laws of his sworn enemy uphold the filthy reliques of Antichrist and are defenders of that which is Popish These are the notes wherewith are drawn from the hearts of the multitude so many sighs with these tunes their minds are exasperated against the lawful Guides and Governours of their souls these are the voices that fill them with general discontentment as though the bosom of that famous Church wherein they live were more noysom then any dungeon But when the Authors of so scandalous incantations are examined and called to account how can they justifie such their dealings when they are urged directly to answer whether it be lawful for us to use any such Ceremonies as the Church of Rome useth although the same be not commanded in the Word of God being driven to see that the use of some such Ceremonies must of necessity be granted lawful they go about to make us believe that they are just of the same Opinion and that they only think such Ceremonies are not to be used when they are unprofitable or when as good or better may be established Which Answer is both idle in regard of us and also repugnant to themselves It is in regard of us very vain to make this answer because they
Superstition that riseth voluntarily and by degrees which are hardly discerned mingling it self with the Rites even of very Divine Service done to the onely true God must be considered of as a creeping and incroaching evil an evil the first beginnings whereof are commonly harmless so that it proveth onely then to be an evil when some farther accident doth grow unto it or it self come unto farther growth For in the Church of God sometimes it cometh to pass as in over-battle grounds the Fertile disposition whereof is good yet because it exceedeth due proportion it bringeth forth abundantly through too much rankness things less profitable whereby that which principally it should yield being either prevented in place or defrauded of nourishment faileth This if so large a discourse were necessary might be exemplified even by heaps of Rites and Customs now superstitious in the greatest part of the Christian World which in their first original beginnings when the strength of vertuous devout or charitable affection bloomed them no man could justly have condemned as evil 4. But howsoever Superstition doth grow that wherein unsounder times have done amiss the better ages ensuing must rectifie as they may I now come therefore to those accusations brought against us by Pretenders of Reformation the first in the rank whereof is such That if so be the Church of England did at this day therewith as justly deserve to be touched as they in this cause have imagined it doth rather would I exhort all sorts to seek pardon even with tears at the hands of God then meditate words of defence for our doings to the end that men might think favorably of them For as the case of this World especially now doth stand what other stay or succor have we to lean unto saving the testimony of our Conscience and the comfort we take in this that we serve the living God as near as our Wits can reach unto the knowledge thereof even according to his own will and do therefore trust that his mercy shall be our safeguard against those enraged Powers abroad which principally in that respect are become our Enemies But sith no man can do ill with a good Conscience the consolation which we herein seem to finde is but a meer deceitful pleasing of our selves in errour which at the length must needs turn to our greater grief if that which we do to please God most be for the manifold defects thereof offensive unto him For so it is judged our Prayers our Sacraments our Fasts our Times and Places of Publick meeting together for the worship and service of God our Marriages our Burials our Functions Elections and Ordinations Ecclesiastical almost whatsoever we do in the exercise of our Religion according to Laws for that purpose established all things are some way or other thought faulty all things stained with Superstition Now although it may be the wiser sort of men are not greatly moved hereat considering how subject the very best things have been always unto cavil when Wits possessed either with disdain or dislike thereof have set them up as their mark to shoot at safe notwithstanding it were not therefore to neglect the danger which from hence may grow and that especially in regard of them who desiring to serve God as they ought but being not so skilful as in every point to unwinde themselves where the shares of glosing speech do lye to intangle them are in minde not a little troubled when they hear so bitter invectives against that which this Church hath taught them to reverence as holy to approve as lawful and to observe as behoveful for the exercise of Christian duty It seemeth therefore at least for their sakes very meet that such as blame us in this behalf be directly answered and they which follow us informed plainly in the Reasons of that we do On both sides the end intended between us is to have Laws and Ordinances such as may rightly serve to abolish Superstition and to establish the service of God with all things thereunto appertaining in some perfect form There is an inward reasonable and there is a solemn outward serviceable Worship belonging unto God Of the former kinde are all manner of vertuous Duties that each man in reason and conscience to God-ward oweth Solemn and serviceable Worship we name for Distinction sake whatsoever belongeth to the Church or Publick Society of God by way of External adoration It is the later of these two whereupon our present question groweth Again this later being ordered partly and as touching Principal matters by none but Precepts Divine only partly and as concerning things of Inferiour regard by Ordinances as well Human as Divine about the substance of Religion wherein Gods only Law must be kept there is here no controversie the Crime now intended against us is that our Laws have not ordered those inferiour things as behoveth and that our Customs are either Superstitious or otherwise amiss whether we respect the exercise of Publick duties in Religion or the Functions of Persons authorised thereunto 5. It is with Teachers of Mathematical Sciences usual for us in this present question necessary to lay down first certain reasonable demands which in most Particulars following are to serve as Principles whereby to work and therefore must be before-hand considered The men whom we labour to inform in the truth perceive that so to proceed is requisite For to this end they also propose touching Customs and Rites indifferent their general Axioms some of them subject unto just Exceptions and as we think more meet by them to be farther considered than assented unto by us As that In outward things belonging to the Service of God Reformed Churches ought by all means to shun conformity with the Church of Rome that The first Reformed should be a Pattern whereunto all that come after might to conform themselves that Sound Religion may not use the things which being not commanded of God have been either devised or abused unto Superstition These and the rest of the same consort we have in the Book going before examined Other Canons they alledge and Rules not unworthy of approbation as That in all such things the glory of God and the edification or ghostly good of his People must be sought that nothing should be undecently or murderly done But forasmuch as all the difficulty is in discerning what things do glorifie God and edifie his Church what not when we should think them decent and fit when otherwise because these Rules being too general come not near enough unto the matter which we have in hand and the former Principles being nearer the purpose are too far from Truth we must propose unto all men certain Petitions incident and very material in Causes of this nature such as no man of moderate judgment hath cause to think unjust or unreasonable 6. The first thing therefore which is of force to cause Approbation with good conscience towards such Customs
or Rites as publickly are established is when there ariseth from the due consideration of those Customs and Rites in themselves apparent reason although not alwayes to prove them better than any other that might possibly be devised for who did ever require this in man's Ordinances yet competent to shew their conveniency and fitness in regard of the use for which they should serve Now touching the nature of religious Services and the manner of their due performance thus much generally we know to be most clear that whereas the greatness and dignity of all manner of Actions is measured by the worthiness of the Subject from which they proceed and of the Object whereabout they are conversant we must of necessity in both respects acknowledge that this present World affordeth not any thing comparable unto the publick Duties of Religion For if the best things have the perfectest and best operations it will follow that seeing Man is the worthiest Creature upon earth and every Society of Men more worthy than any Man and of Societies that most excellent which we call the Church there can be in this World no work performed equal to the exercise of true Religion the proper operation of the Church of God Again forasmuch as Religion worketh upon him who in Majesty and Power is infinite as we ought we account not of it unless we esteem it even according to that very height of Excellency which our hearts conceive when Divine sublimity it self is rightly considered In the powers and faculties of our Souls God requireth the uttermost which our unfeigned affection towards him is able to yield So that if we affect him not farr above and before all things our Religion hath not that inward perfection which it should have neither do we indeed worship him as our God That which inwardly each man should be the Church outwardly ought to testifie And therefore the Duties of our Religion which are seen must be such as that affection which is unseen ought to be Signs must resemble the Things they signifie If Religion bear the greatest sway in our Hearts our outward religious Duties must shew it as farr as the Church hath outward Ability Duties of Religion performed by whole Societies of men ought to have in them according to our power a sensible Excellency correspondent to the Majesty of Him whom we worship Yea then are the publick Duties of Religion best ordered when the Militant Church doth resemble by sensible means as it may in such cases that hidden Dignity and Glory wherewith the Church Triumphant in Heaven is beautified Howbeit even as the very heat of the Sun it self which is the life of the whole World was to the people of God in the Desert a grievous annoyance for ease whereof his extraordinary Providence ordained a Cloudy Pillar to over-shadow them So things of general use and benefit for in this world What is so perfect that no Inconvenience doth ever follow itâ may by some accident be incommodious to a few In which case for such private Evils remedies thereare of like condition though publick Ordinances wherein the Common good is respected be not stirred Let our first Demand be therefore That in the External Form of Religion such things as are apparently or can be sufficiently proved effectual and generally fit to setforward Godliness either as betokening the greatness of God or as beseeming the Dignity of Religion or as concurring with Celestial Impressions in the mindes of men may be reverently thought of some few rare casual and tollerable or otherwise curable Inconveniences notwithstanding 7. Neither may we in this Case lightly esteem what hath been allowed as fit in the judgment of Antiquity and by the long continued practise of the whole Church from which unnecessarily to swerve Experience never as yet hath found it safe For Wisdom's sake we reverence them no less that are young or not much less then if they were stricken in years And therefore of such it is rightly said That the ripeness of Understanding is gray Hair and their Vertues old Age. But because Wisdom and Youth are seldom joyned in one and the ordinary course of the World is more according to Iob's Observation who giveth men advice to seek Wisdom amongst the Antient and in the length of Dayes Understanding therefore if the Comparison do stand between Man and Man which shall hearken unto other sith the Aged for the most part are best experienced least subject to rash and unadvised Passions it hath been ever judged reasonable That their Sentence in matter of Counsel should be better trusted and more relyed upon than other mens The goodness of God having furnished men with two chief Instruments both necessary for this life Hands to execute and a Mind to devise great things the one is not profitable longer than the vigour of Youth doth strengthen it nor the other greatly till Age and Experience have brought it to Perfection In whom therefore Time hath not perfected Knowledge such must be contented to follow them in whom it hath For this Cause none is more attentively heard than they whose Speeches are as Davids were I have been Young and now am Old much I have seen and observed in the World Sharp and subtile discourses of Wit procure many times very great applause but being laid in the Ballance with that which the habit of sound Experience plainly delivereth they are over-weighed God may endue Men extraordinarily with Understanding as it pleaseth him But let no Man presuming thereupon neglect the Instructions or despite the Ordinances of his Elders sith he whose gift Wisdom is hath said Ask thy Father and he will shew thee thine Antients and they shall tell thee It is therefore the Voyce both of God and Nature not of Learning only that especially in matters of Action and Policy The sentences and judgements of Men experienced aged and wise yea though they speak without any proof or demonstration are no less to be hearkned unto than as being Demonstrations in themselves because such Mens long Observation is as an Eye wherewith they presently and plainly behold those Principles which sway over all Actions Whereby we are taught both the Cause wherefore Wise-mens Judgments should be credited and the Mean how to use their Judgments to the increase of our own Wisdom That which sheweth them to be Wise is the gathering of Principles out of their own particular Experiments And the framing of our particular Experiments according to the Rule of their Principles shall make us such as they are If therefore even at the first so great account should be made of Wise mens Counsels touching things that are Publickly done as time shall add thereunto continuance and approbation of succeeding Ages their Credit and Authority must needs be greater They which do nothing but that which men of Account did before them are although they do amiss yet the less faulty because they are not the Authors of
Words a manifest shew of jar yet none if we look upon the difference of matter with regard whereunto they might both have spoken even of one Miracle the very same which they spake of divers the one intending thereby to signifie that the greatness of the burden exceeded the natural ability of the instruments which they had to bear it the other that the weakness thereof was supported by a supernatural and miraculous addition of strength The Nets as touching themselves brake but through the power oâ God they held Are not the words of the Prophet Micheas touching Bethleem Thou Bethleem the least and doth not the very Evangelist translate these words Thou Bethleem not the least the one regarding the quantity of the Place the other the dignity Micheas attributeth unto it smallness in respect of circuit Matthew greatness in regard of honor and estimation by being the native soyle of our Lord and Saviour Christ. Sith therefore Speeches which gain-say one another must of necessity be applyed both unto one and the self-same Subject sith they must also the one affirm the other deny the self-same thing what necessity of contradiction can there be between the Letter of the Prophet David and our authorised Translation thereof if he understanding Moses and Aaron do say They were not disobedient we applying our speech to Pharaoh and the AEgyptians do say of them They were not obedient Or which the matter it self will easily enough likewise suffer if the AEgyptians being meant by both it be said that they in regard of their offer to let go the People when they saw the fearful darkness disobeyed not the Word of the Lord and yet that they did not obey his Word in as much as the Sheep and Cattel at the self-same time they with-held Of both Translations the better I willingly acknowledge that which cometh nearer to the very letter of the Original verity yet so that the other may likewise safely enough be read without any perâl at all of gain-saying as much as the least jot or syllable of God's most sacred and precious Truth Which Truth as in this we do not violate so neither is the same gain-sayed or crost no not in those very Preambles placed before certain readings wherein the steps of the Latin Service-Book have been somewhat too nearly followed As when we say Christ spake to his Disciples That which the Gospel declareth he spake unto the Pharises For doth the Gospel affirm he spake to the Pharisees only doth it mean that they and besides them no man else was at that time spoken unto by our Saviour Christ If not then is there in this diversity no contrariety I suppose it somewhat probable that St. Iohn and St. Matthew which have recorded those Sermons heard them and being Hearers did think themselves as wel respected as the Pharisees in that which their Lord and Master taught concerning the Pastoral care he had over his own Flock and his offer of Grace made to the whole World which things are the matter whereof he treateth in those Sermons Wherefore as yet there is nothing found wherein we read for the Word of God that which may be condemned as repugnant unto his Word Furthermore somewhat they are displeased in that we follow not the method of Reading which in their judgement is most commendable the method used in some foreign Churches where Scriptures are read before the time of Divine Service and without either choyce or stint appointed by any determinate Order Nevertheless till such time as they shall vouchsafe us some just and sufficient reason to the contrary we must by their patience if not allowance retain the antient received Custom which we now observe For with us the reading of the Scripture in the Church is a part of our Church-Liturgy a special Portion of the Service which we do to God and not an exercise to spend the time when one doth wait for anothers coming till the assembly of them which shall afterwards worship him be compleâ Wherefore as the form of our Publick Service is not voluntary so neither are the parts thereof left uncertain but they are all set down in such order and with such choyce as hath in the wisdom of the Church seemed best to concur as well with the special occasions as with the general purpose which we have to glorifie God 20. Other Publick readings there are of Books and Writings not Canonical whereby the Church doth also preach or openly make known the Doctrine of vertuous conversation whereupon besides those things in regard whereof we are thought to read the Scriptures of God amiss it is thought amiss that we read in our Churches any thing at all besides the Scriptures To exclude the reading of any such profitable instruction as the Church hath devised for the better understanding of Scripture or for the easier trayning up of the People in holiness and righteousness of life they plead that God in the Law would have nothing brought into the Temple neither Besomes nor Flesh-hooks nor Trumpets but those only which were sanctified that for the expounding of darker places we ought to follow the Jews Polity who under Antiochus where they had not the commodity of Sermons appointed always at their Meetings somewhat out of the Prophets to be read together with the Law and so by the one made the other plainer to be understood That before and after our Saviours comming they neither read Onkelos nor Ionathan's Paraphrase though having both but contented themselves with the reading only of Scriptures that if in the Primitive Church there had been any thing read besides the Monuments of the Prophets and Apostles Iustin Martyr and Origen who mention these would have spoken of the other likewise that the most antient and best Councels forbid any thing to be read in Churches saving Canonical Scripture onely that when other things were afterwards permitted fault was found with it it succeeded but ill the Bible it self was thereby in time quite and clean thrust out Which Arguments if they be only brought in token of the Authors good-will and meaning towards the cause which they would set forward must accordingly be accepted of by them who already are perswaded the same way But if their drift and purpose be to perswade others it would be demanded by what Rule the legal hallowing of Besomes and Flesh-hooks must needs exclude all other readings in the Church save Scripture Things sanctified were thereby in such sort appropriated unto God as that they might never afterwards again be made common For which cause the Lord to sign and mark them as his own appointed oyle of holy oyntment the like whereunto it was not lawful to make for ordinary and daily uses Thus the anoynting of Aaron and his Sons tyed them to the Office of the Priest-hood for ever the anoynting not of those Silver Trumpets which Moses as well
Lessons Human with Sacred at such time as the one both affected the Credit and usurped the Name of the other as by the Canon of a later Council providing remedy for the self-same Evil and yet allowing the old Ecclesiastical Books to be read it doth more plainly and clearly appear neither can be construed nor should be urged utterly to prejudice our use of those old Ecclesiastical Writings much less of Homilies which were a third kinde of Readings usual in former times a most commendable Institution as well then to supply the casual as now the necessary defect of Sermons In the heat of general Persecution whereunto Christian Belief was subject upon the first promulgation thereof throughout the World it much confirmed the courage and constancy of weaker mindes when publick relation was made unto them after what manner God had been glorified through the sufferings of Martyrs famous amongst them for Holiness during life and at the time of their death admirable in all mens eyes through miraculous evidence of Grace divine assisting them from above For which cause the Vertues of some being thought expedient to be annually had in remembrance above the rest this brought in a fouth kinde of Publick Reading whereby the lives of such Saints and Martyrs had at the time of their yearly Memorials solemn recognition in the Church of God The fond imitation of which laudible Custom being in later Ages resumed where there was neither the like cause to do as the Fathers before had done nor any Care Conscience or Wit in such as undertook to perform that Work some brainless men have by great labour and travel brought to pass that the Church is now ashamed of nothing more than of Saints If therefore Pope Gelasim did so long sithence see those defects of Judgment even then for which the reading of the Acts of Martyrs should be and was at that time forborn in the Church of Rome we are not to marvail that afterwards Legends being grown in a manner to be nothing else but heaps of frivolous and scandalous vanities they have been even with disdain thrown out the very Nests which bred them abhorring them We are not therefore to except only Scripture and to make confusedly all the residue of one sute as if they who abolish Legends could not without incongruity retain in the Church either Homilies or those old Ecclesiastical Books Which Books in case my self did think as some others do safer and better to be left publickly unread nevertheless as in other things of like nature even so in this my private Judgement I should be loath to oppose against the force of their Reverend Authority who rather considering the Divine excellency of some things in all and of all things in certain of those Apocrypha which we publickly read have thought-it better to let them stand as a lift or marginal border unto the Old Testament and though with Divine yet as Human compositions to grant at the least unto certain of them publick audience in the House of God For in as much as the due estimation of heavenly Truth dependeth wholly upon the known and approved authority of those famous Oracles of God it greatly behoveth the Church to have always most especial care lest through confused mixture at any time Human usurp the room and Title of Divine Writings Wherefore albeit for the Peoples more plain instruction as the antient use hath been we read in our Churches certain Books besides the Scripture yet as the Scripture we read them not All men know our professed opinion touching the difference whereby we sever them from the Scripture And if any where it be suspected that some one or other will haply mistake a thing so manifest in every man's eye there is no lett but that as often as those Books are read and need so requireth the style of their difference may expresly be mentioned to barr even all possiblity of Error It being then known that we hold not the Apocrypha for sacred as we do the holy Scripture but for human compositions the subject whereof are sundry Divine matters let there be reason shewed why to read any part of them publickly it should be unlawful or hurtful unto the Church of God I hear it said that many things in them are very frivolous and unworthy of publick audience yea many contrary plainly contrary to the holy Scripture Which hitherto is neither sufficiently proved by him who saith it and if the proofs thereof were strong yet the very allegation it self is weak Let us therefore suppose for I will not demand to what purpose it is that against our Custom of reading Books not Canonical they bring exceptions of matter in those Books which we never use to read suppose I say that what faults soever they have observed throughout the passages of all those Books the same in every respect were such as neither could be construed nor ought to be censured otherwise than even as themselves pretend Yet as men through too much haste oftentimes forget the Errand whereabout they should go so here it appeareth that an eager desire to take together whatsoever might prejudice or any way hinder the credit of Apocryphal Books hath caused the Collector's Pen so to run as it were on Wheels that the minde which should guide it had no leisure to think whether that which might haply serve to with-hold from giving them the Authority which belongeth unto Sacred Scripture and to cut them off from the Canon would as effectually serve to shut them altogether out of the Church and to withdraw from granting unto them that publick use wherein they are only held as profitable for instruction Is it not acknowledged that those Books are Holy that they are Ecclesiastical and Sacred that to term them Divine as being for their excellency next unto them which are properly so termed is no way to honour them above desert yea even that the whole Church of Christ as well at the first as sithence hath most worthily approved their fitness for the publick informations of Life and manners Is not thus much I say acknowledged and that by them who notwithstanding receive not the same for any part of Canonical Scripture by them who deny not but that they are Faulty by them who are ready enough to give instances wherein they seem to contain matter scarce agreeable with holy Scripture So little doth such their supposed Faultiness in moderate mens Judgments inforce the removal of them out of the House of God that still they are judged to retain worthily those very Titles of Commendation than which there cannot greater be given to Writings the Authors whereof are Men. As in truth if the Scripture it self ascribing to the Persons of Men Righteousness in regard of their manifold vertues may not rightly be construed as though it did thereby clear them and make them quite free from all faults no reason we should judge
oftentimes in one year run through yet a number of Churches which have no such order of simple Reading cannot be in this point charged with breach of Gods commandement which they might be if simple Reading were necessary A poor a cold and an hungry cavil Shall we therefore to please them change the Word Necessary and say that it hath been a commendable Order a Custom very expedient or an Ordinance most profitable whereby they know right well that we mean exceedingly behoovful to read the Word of God at large in the Church whether it be as our manner is or as theirs is whom they prefer before us It is not this that will content or satisfie their mindes They have against it a marvellous deep and profound Axiome that Two things to one and the same end cannot but very improperly be said most profitable And therefore if Preaching be most profitable to man's Salvation then is not Reading if Reading be then Preaching is not Are they resolved then at the leastwise if Preaching be the only ordinary mean whereby it pleaseth God to save our Souls what kinde of Preaching it is which doth save Understand they how or in what respect there is that force or vertue in Preaching We have reason wherefore to make these Demands for that although their Pens run all upon Preaching and Sermons yet when themselves do practise that whereof they write they change their Dialect and those words they shun as if there were in them some secret sting It is not their phrase to say they Preach or to give to their own instructions and exhortations the name of Sermons the pain they take themselves in this kinde is either opening or Lecturing or Reading or Exercising but in no case Preaching And in this present Question they also warily protest that what they ascribe to the vertue of Preaching they still mean it of good Preaching Now one of them saith that a good Sermon must expound and apply a large portion of the Text of Scripture at one time Another giveth us to understand that sound Preaching is not to do as one did at London who spent most of his time in Invectives against good men and told his Audience how the Magistrate should have an eye to such as troubled the peace of the Church The best of them hold it for no good Preaching when a man endeavoureth to make a glorious shew of Eloquence and Learning rather than to apply himself to the capacity of the simple But let them shape us out a good Preacher by what pattern soever pleaseth them best let them exclude and inclose whom they will with their definitions we are not desirous to enter into any contention with them about this or to abate the conceit they have of their own ways so that when once we are agreed what Sermons shall currently pass for good we may at length understand from them what that is in a good Sermon which doth make it the Word of Life unto such as hear If substance of matter evidence of things strength and validity of arguments and proofs or if any other vertue else which Words and Sentences may contain of all this what is there in the best Sermons being uttered which they lose by being read But they utterly deny that the reading either of Scriptures or Homilies and Sermons can ever by the ordinary grace of God save any Soul So that although we had all the Sermons word for word which Iames Paul Peter and the rest of the Apostles made some one of which Sermons was of power to convert thousands of the Hearers unto Christian Faith yea although we had all the instructions exhortations consolations which came from the gracious lips of our Lord Jesus Christ himself and should read them ten thousand times over to Faith and Salvation no man could hereby hope to attain Whereupon it must of necessity follow that the vigour and vital efficacy of Sermons doth grow from certain accidents which are not in them but in their Maker his vertue his gesture his countenance his zeal the motion of his body and the inflexion of his voice who first uttereth them as his own is that which giveth them the form the nature the very essence of instruments available to Eternal life If they like neither that nor this what remaineth but that their final conclusion be Sermons we know are the only ordinary means to Salvation but why or how we cannot tell Wherefore to end this tedious Controversie wherein the too great importunity of our over-eager Adversaries hath constrained us much longer to dwell than the barrenness of so poor a Cause could have seemed at the first likely either to require or to admit if they which without partialities and passions are accustomed to weigh all things and accordingly to give their sentence shall here sit down to receive our Audit and to cast up the whole reckoning on both sides the sum which Truth amounteth unto will appear to be but this that as Medicines provided of Nature and applyed by Art for the benefit of bodily health take effect sometime under and sometime above the natural proportion of their vertue according as the minde and fancy of the Patient doth more or less concurr with them So whether we barely read unto men the Scriptures of God or by Homilies concerning matter of Belief and Conversation seek to lay before them the duties which they owe unto God and Man whether we deliver them Books to read and consider of in private at their own best leasure or call them to the hearing of Sermons publickly in the House of God albeit every of these and the like unto these means do truly and daily effect that in the hearts of men for which they are each and all meant yet the operation which they have in common being most sensible and most generally noted in one kinde above the rest that one hath in some mens opinions drowned altogether the rest and injuriously brought to pass that they have been thought not less effectual than the other but without the other uneffectual to save souls Whereas the cause why Sermons only are observed to prevail so much while all means else seem to sleep and do nothing is in truth but that singular affection and attention which the people sheweth every where towards the one and their cold disposition to the other the reason hereof being partly the Art which our Adversaries use for the credit of their Sermons to bring men out of conceit with all other Teaching besides partly a custom which men have to let those things carelesly pass by their ears which they have oftentimes heard before or know they may hear again whenever it pleaseth themselves partly the especial advantages which Sermons naturally have to procure attention both in that they come always new and because by the Hearer it is still presumed that if they be let slip for the present what good soever they contain is
lost and that without all hope of recovery This is the true cause of odds between Sermons and other kindes of wholesome Instruction As for the difference which hath been hitherto so much defended on the contrary side making Sermons the only ordinary means unto Faith and eternal Life sith this hath neither evidence of Truth nor proof sufficient to give it warrant a cause of such quality may with fart better grace and conveniency aske that pardon which common humanity doth easily grant than claim in challenging manner that assent which is as unwilling when reason guideth it to be yielded where it is not as with-held where it is apparently due All which notwithstanding as we could greatly wish that the rigour of this their opinion were allayed and mittigated so because we hold it the part of religious ingenuity to honour vertue in whomsoever therefore it is our most hearty desire and shall be always our Prayer unto Almighty God that in the self-same fervent zeal wherewith they seem to effect the good of the Souls of men and to thirst after nothing more than that all men might by all means be directed in the way of life both they and we may constantly persist to the Worlds end For in this we are not their Adversaries though they in the other hitherto have been ours 23. Between the Throne of God in Heaven and his Church upon Earth here militant if it be so that Angels have their continual intercourse where should we finde the same more verified than in those two ghostly Exercises the one Doctrine the other Prayer For what is the Assembling of the Church to learn but the receiving of Angels descended from above What to pray but the sending of Angels upwards His Heavenly Inspirations and our holy Desires are as so many Angels of intercourse and commerce between God and us As Teaching bringeth us to know that God is our supream Truth so Prayer testifieth that we acknowledge him our soveraign Good Besides sith on God as the most High all inferiour Causes in the World are dependant and the higher any Cause is the more it coveteth to impart vertue unto things beneath it how should any kinde of service we do or can do finde greater acceptance than Prayer which sheweth our concurrence with him in desiring that wherewith his very Nature doth most delight Is not the name of Prayer usual to signifie even all the service that ever we do unto God And that for no other cause as I suppose but to shew that there is in Religion no acceptable Duty which devout Invocation of the name of God doth not either presuppose or inferr Prayers are those Calves of Mens lips those most gracious and sweet odours those rich Presents and Gifts which being carried up into Heaven do best restifie our dutiful affection and are for the purchasing of all favour at the hands of God the most undoubted means we can use On others what more easily and yet what more fruitfully bestowed than our Prayers If we give Counsel they are the simpler onely that need it if Almes the poorer only are relieved but by Prayer we do good to all And whereas every other Duty besides is but to shew it self as time and opportunity require for this all times are convenient when we are not able to do any other things for mens behoof when through maliciousness or unkindness they vouchsafe not to accept any other good at our hands Prayer is that which we always have in our power to bestow and they never in theirs to refuse Wherefore God fotbid saith Samuel speaking unto a most unthankful People a People weary of the benefit of his most vertuous Government over them God forbid that I should sin against the Lord and cease to pray for you It is the first thing wherewith a righteous life beginneth and the last wherewith it doth end The knowledge is small which we have on Earth concerning things that are done in Heaven Notwithstanding thus much we know even of Saints in Heaven that they pray And therefore Prayer being a work common to the Church as well Triumphant as Militant a work common unto Men with Angels what should we think but that so much of our Lives is celestial and divine as we spend in the exercise of Prayer For which cause we see that the most comfortable Visitations which God hath sent men from above have taken especially the times of Prayer as their most natural opportunities 24. This holy and religious duty of Service towards God concerneth us one way in that we are men and another way in that we are joined as parts to that visible Mystical Body which is his Church As men we are at our own choice both for time and place and form according to the exigence of our own occasions in private But the service which we do as Members of a Publick Body is publick and for that cause must needs be accompted by so much worthier than the other as a whole society of such condition exceedeth the worth of any one In which consideration unto Christian Assemblies there are most special Promises made St. Paul though likely to prevail with God as much as any one did notwithstanding think it much more both for God's glory and his own good if Prayers might be made and thanks yielded in his behalf by a number of men The Prince and People of Niniveh assembling themselves as a main Army of Supplicants it was not in the power of God to withstand them I speak no otherwise concerning the force of Publick Prayer in the Church of God than before me Tertullian hath done We come by Troops to the Place of Assembly that being banded as it were together we may be Sapplicants enough to besiege God with our Prayers These Forces are unto him acceptable When we publickly make our Prayers it cannot be but that we do it with much more comfort than in private for that the things we aske publickly are approved as needful and good in the Judgement of all we hear them sought for and desired with common consent Again thus much help and furtherance is more yielded in that if so be our zeal and devotion to God-ward be slack the alacrity and fervour of others serveth as a present spurt For even Prayer it self saith Saint Basil when it hath not the consort of many voyces to strengthen it is not it self Finally the good which we do by Publick Prayer is more than in private can be done for that besides the benefit which is here is no less procured to our selves the whole Church is much bettered by our good example and consequently whereas secret neglect of our duty in this kinde is but only our own hurt one man's contempt of the Common Prayer of the Church of God may be and oftentimes is most hurtful unto many In which considerations the Prophet David so often voweth
care for the well bestowing of time account waste As for unpleasantness of sound if it happen the good of Mens souls doth either deceive our ears that we note it not or arm them with patience to endure it We are not so nice as to cast away a sharp Knife because the edge of it may sometimes grate And such subtile opinions as few but Utopians are likely to fall into we in this climate do not greatly fear 37. The complaint which they make about Psalms and Hymns might as well be over-past without any answer as it is without any cause brought forth But our desire is to content them if it may be and to yield them a just reason even of the least things wherein undeservedly they have but as much as dreamed or suspected that we do amiss They seem sometimes so to speak as if greatly offended them that such Hymns and Psalms as are Scripture should in Common Prayer be otherwise used then the rest of the Scripture is wont sometime displeased they are at the artificial Musick which we adde unto Psalms of this kinde or of any other nature else sometime the plainest and the most intelligible rehearsal of them yet they savor not because it is done by Interlocution and with a mutual return of Sentences from side to side They are not ignorant what difference there is between other parts of Scripture and Psalms The choice and flower of all things profitable in other Books the Psalms do both more briefly contain and more movingly also express by reason of that Poetical Form wherewith they are written The Ancients when they speak of the Book of Psalms use to fall into large Discourses shewing how this part above the rest doth of purpose set forth and celebrate all the considerations and operations which belong to God it magnifieth the holy Meditations and Actions of Divine Men it is of things heavenly an Universal Declaration working in them whose hearts God inspireth with the due consideration thereof an habit or disposition of minde whereby they are made fit Vessels both for receipt and for delivery of whatsoever spiritual perfection What is there necessary for man to know which the Psalms are not able to teach They are to beginners an easie and familiar Introduction a mighty Augmentation of all Vertue and Knowledge in such as are entred before a strong confirmation to the most perfect amongst others Heroical Magnanimity exquisite Justice gave Moderation exact Wisdom Repentance unfeigned unwearied Patience the Mysteries of God the Sufferings of Christ the Terrors of Wrath the Comforts of Grace the Works of Providence over this World and the promised Joys of that World which is to come all good necessarily to be either known or done or had this one Celestial Fountain yieldeth Let there be any grief or disease incident nuto the Soul of Man any wound or sickness named for which there is not in this Treasure-house a present comfortable remedy at all times ready to be found Hereof it is that we covet to make the Psalms especially familiar unto all This is the very cause why we iterate the Psalms oftner then any other part of Scripture besides the cause wherefore we inure the people together with their Minister and not the Minister alone to read them as other parts of Scripture he doth 38. Touching Musical Harmony whether by Instrument or by Voice it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition such notwithstanding is the force thereof and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most Divine that some have been thereby induced to think that the Soul it self by Nature is or hath in it Harmony A thing which delighteth all Ages and beseemeth all States a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy as decent being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity as being used when men most sequester themselves from action The reason hereof is an admirable faculty which Musick hath to express and represents to the minde more inwardly then any other sensible mean the very standing rising and falling the very steps and inflections every way the turns and varieties of all Passions whereunto the minde is subject yea so to imitate them that whether it resemble unto us the same state wherein our mindes already are or a clean contrary we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed then changed and led away by the other In Harmony the very Image and Character even of Vertue and Vice is perceived the minde delighted with their Resemblances and brought by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent then some kindes of Harmony then some nothing more strong and potent unto good And that there is such a difference of one kinde from another we need no proof but our own experience in as much as we are at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness of some more mollified and softned in minde one kinde apter to stay and settle us another to move and stir our affections There is that draweth to a marvelous grave and sober mediocrity there is also that carrieth as it were into extasies filling the minde with an heavenly joy and for the time in a manner severing it from the body So that although we lay altogether aside the consideration of Ditty or Matter the very Harmony of sounds being framed in due sort and carried from the Ear to the Spiritual faculties of our Souls is by a Native Puissance and Efficacy greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that which is too eager sovereign against melancholly and despair forcible to draw forth tears of devotion if the minde be such as can yield them able both to move and to moderate all affections The Prophet David having therefore singular knowledge not in Poetry alone but in Musick also judged them both to be things most necessary for the House of God left behinde him to that purpose a number of divinely indited Poems and was farther the Author of adding unto Poetry melody a publick Prayer melody both Vocal and Instrumental for the raising up of Mens hearts and the sweetning of their affections towards God In which consideration the Church of Christ doth likewise at this present day retain it as an ornament to Gods service and an help to our own devotion They which under pretence of the Law Ceremonial abrogated require the abrogation of Instrumental Musick approving nevertheless the use of Vocal melody to remain must shew some reason wherefore the one should be thought a Legal Ceremony and not the other In Church Musick curiosity and oftentation of Art wanton or light or unsuitable harmony such as onely pleaseth the ear and doth not naturally serve to the very kinde and degree of those impressions which the matter
finde by daily experience that those calamities may be nearest at hand readiest to break in suddenly upon us which we in regard of times or circumstances may imagine to be farthest off Or if they do not indeed approach yet such miseries as being present all men are apt to bewail with tears the wise by their Prayers should rather prevent Finally if we for our selves had a priviledge of immunity doth not true Christian Charity require that whatsoever any part of the World yea any one of all our Brethren elswhere doth either suffer or fear the same we account as our own burthen What one Petition is there found in the whole Litany whereof we shall ever be able at any time to say That no man living needeth the grace or benefit therein craved at Gods hands I am not able to express how much it doth grieve me that things of Principal Excellency should be thus bitten at by men whom God hath endued with graces both of Wit and Learning for better purposes We have from the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ received that brief Confession of Faith which hath been always a badge of the Church a mark whereby to discern Christian men from Infidels and Jews This Faith received from the Apostles and their Disciples saith Ireneus the Church though dispersed throughout the World doth notwithstanding keep as safe as if it dwels within the Walls of some one house and as uniformly hold as if it had but one onely heart and soul this as consonantly it Preacheth teacheth and delivereth as if but one tongue did speak for all At one Sun shineth to the whole World so there is no Faith but this one published the brightness whereof must enlighten all that come to the knowledge of the Truth This rule saith Tertullian Christ did institute the stream and current of this rule hath gone as far it hath continued as long as the very promulgation of the Gospel Under Constantine the Emperor about Three hundred years and upward after Christ Arius a Priest in the Church of Alexandria a suttle-witted and a marvellous fair-spoken man but discontented that one should be placed before him in honor whose superior he thought himself in desert became through envy and stomack prone unto contradiction and hold to broach at the length that Heresie wherein the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ contained but not opened in the former Creed the coequality and coeternity of the Son with the Father was denied Being for this impiety deprived of his place by the Bishop of the same Church the punishment which should have reformed him did but increase his obstinacy and give him occasion of laboring with greater earnestness elswhere to intangle unwary mindes with the snares of his damnable opinion Arius in short time had won to himself a number both of Followers and of great Defenders whereupon much disquietness on all sides ensued The Emperor to reduce the Church of Christ unto the Unity of sound Belief when other means whereof tryal was first made took no effect gathered that famous Assembly of Three hundred and eighteen Bishops in the Council of Nice where besides order taken for many things which seemed to need redress there was with common consent for the setling of all mens mindes that other Confession of Faith set down which we call the Nicene Creed whereunto the Arians themselves which were present subscribed also not that they meant sincerely and indeed to forsake their error but onely to escape deprivation and exile which they saw they could not avoid openly persisting in their former opinions when the greater part had concluded against them and that with the Emperors Royal Assent Reserving therefore themselves unto future opportunities and knowing that it would not boot them to stir again in a matter so composed unless they could draw the Emperor first and by his means the chiefest Bishops unto their part till Constantines death and somewhat after they always professed love and zeal to the Nicene Faith yet ceased not in the mean while to strengthen that part which in heart they favored and to infest by all means under colour of other quarrels their greatest Adversaries in this cause Amongst them Athanasius especially whom by the space of Forty six years from the time of his Consecration to succeed Alexander Archbishop in the Church of Alexandria till the last hour of his life in this World they never suffered to enjoy the comfort of a peaceable day The heart of Constantine stoln from him Constantius Constantines Successor his scourge and torment by all the ways that malice armed with Soveraign Authority could devise and use Under Iulian no rest given him and in the days of Valentinian as little Crimes there were laid to his charge many the least whereof being just had bereaved him of estimation and credit with men while the World standeth His Judges evermore the self-same men by whom his accusers were suborned Yet the issue always on their part shame on his triumph Those Bishops and Prelates who should have accounted his cause theirs and could not many of them but with bleeding hearts and with watred checks behold a person of so great place and worth constrained to endure so soul indignities were sure by bewraying their affection towards him to bring upon themselves those molestations whereby if they would not be drawn to seem his Adversaries yet others should be taught how unsafe it was to continue his friends Whereupon it came to pass in the end that very few excepted all became subject to the sway of time other odds there was none amongst them saving onely that some fell sooner away some latter from the soundness of Belief some were Leaders in the Host of Impiety and the rest as common Soldiers either yielding through fear or brought under with penury or by flattery ensnared or else beguiled through simplicity which is the fairest excuse that well may be made for them Yes that which all men did wonder at Osius the ancientest Bishop that Christendom then had the most forward in defence of the Catholick cause and of the contrary part most feared that very Osius with whose hand the Nicene Creed it self was set down and framed for the whole Christian World to subscribe unto so far yielded in the end as even with the same hand to ratifie the Arians Confession a thing which they neither hoped to see nor the other part ever feared till with amazement they saw it done Both were perswaded that although there had been for Osius no way but either presently subscribe or die his answer and choice would have been the same that Eleazars was It doth not become our age to dissemble whereby many young persons might think that Osius in hundred years old and upward were now gone to another Religion and so through mine hypocrisie for a little time of transitory life they might be deceived by me and I procure malediction and reproach to my old
at all times edefie and instruct the attentive hearer Or is our Faith in the Blessed Trinity a matter needless to be so oftentimes mentioned and opened in the principal part of that duty which we ow to God our Publick Prayer Hath the Church of Christ from the first beginning by a secret Universal Instinct of Gods good Spirit always tied it self to end neither Sermon nor almost any speech of moment which hath concerned Matters of God without some special words of honor and glory to that Trinity which we all adore and is the like conclusion of Psalms become now at length an eye-sore or a galling to their ears that hear it Those flames of Arianism they say are quenched which were the cause why the Church devised in such sort to confess and praise the glorious Deity of the Son of God Seeing therefore the sore is whole why retain we as yet the Plaâster When the cause why any thing was ordained doth once cease the thing it self should cease with it that the Church being eased of unprofitable labors needful offices may the better be attended For the doing of things unnecessary is many times the cause why the most necessary are not done But in this case so to reason will not serve their turns For first the ground whereupon they build is not certainly their own but with special limitations Few things are so restrained to any one end or purpose that the same being extinct they should forthwith utterly become frustrate Wisdom may have framed one and the same thing to serve commodiously for divers ends and of those ends any one be sufficient cause for continuance though the rest have ceased even as the Tongue which Nature hath given us for an Instrument of speech is not idle in dumb persons because it also serveth for taste Again if time have worn out or any other mean altogether taken away what was first intended uses not thought upon before may afterwards spring up and be reasonable causes of retaining that which other considerations did formerly procure to be instituted And it cometh sometime to pass that a thing unnecessary in it self as touching the whole direct purpose whereto it was meant or can be applied doth notwithstanding appear convenient to be still held even without use lest by reason of that coherence which it hath with somewhat most necessary the removal of the one should indamage the other And therefore men which have clean lost the possibility of sight keep still their eyes nevertheless in the place where Nature set them As for these two Branches whereof our Question groweth Arianism was indeed some occasion of the one but a cause of neither much less the onely intire cause of both For albeit conflict with Arians brought forth the occasion of writing that Creed which long after was made a part of the Church Liturgy as Hymns and Sentences of Glory were a part thereof before yet cause sufficient there is why both should remain in use the one as a most Divine Explication of the chiefest Articles of our Christian Belief the other as an Heavenly acclamation of joyful applause to his praises in whom we believe neither the one nor the other unworthy to he heard souncing as they are in the Church of Christ whether Arianism live or die Against which poyson likewise if we think that the Church at this day needeth not those ancient preservatives which ages before us were so glad to use we deceive our selves greatly The Weeds of Heresie being grown unto such ripeness as that was do even in the very cutting down scatter oftentimes those seeds which for a while lie unseen and buried in the Earth but afterward freshly spring up again no less pernicious them at the first Which thing they very well know and I doubt not will easily confess who live to their great both toil and grief where the blasphemies of Arians Samosatenians Tritheits Eutychians and Maccdonians are renewed by them who to hatch their Heresie have chosen those Churches as fittest Nests where Athanasius Creed is not heard by them I say renewed who following the course of extream Reformation were wont in the pride of their own proceedings to glory that whereas Luther did but blow away the Roof and Zwinglius batter but the Walls of Popish Superstition the last and hardest work of all remained which was to raze up the very ground and foundation of Popery that doctrine concerning the Deity of Christ which Satanasius for so it pleased those impious forsaken Miscreants to speak hath in this memorable Creed explained So manifestly true is that which one of the Ancients hath concerning Arianism Mortuis authoribus hujus veneni scelerata tamen eorum doctrina non moritur The Authors of this venom being dead and gone their wicked doctrine notwithstanding continueth 43. Amongst the heaps of these Excesses and Superfluities there is espied the want of a principal part of duty There are no thanksgivings for the benefits for which there are Petitions in our Book of Prayer This they have thought a point material to be objected Neither may we take it in evil part to be admonished what special duties of thankfulness we ow to that merciful God for whose unspeakable Graces the onely requital which we are able to make is a true hearty and sincere acknowledgement how precious we esteem such benefits received and how infinite in goodness the Author from whom they come But that to every Petition we make for things needful there should be some answerable sentence of thanks provided particularly to follow such requests obtained either it is not a matter so requisite as they pretend or if it be wherefore have they not then in such order framed their own Book of Common Prayer Why hath our Lord and Saviour taught us a form of Prayer containing so many Petitions of those things which we want and not delivered in like sort as many several forms of Thanksgiving to serve when any thing we pray for is granted What answer soever they can reasonably make unto these demands the same shall discover unto them how causeless a censure it is that there are not in our Book Thanksgivings for all the benefits forwhiââ there are Petitions For concerning the Blessings of God whether they tend unto this life or the life to come there is great cause why we should delight more if giving thanks then in making requests for them in as much as the one hath penââveness and fear the other always joy annexed the one belongeth unto them that seek the other unto them that have found happiness they that pray do but yet sow they that give thanks declare they have reaped Howbeit because there are so many Graces whereof we stand in continual need Graces for which we may not cease daily and hourly to sue Graces which are in bestowing always but never come to be sully had in this present life and therefore when all things here have an end
that which ordereth his Work is Wisdom and that which perfecteth his Work is Power All things which God in their times and seasons hath brought forth were eternally and before all times in God as a work unbegun is in the Artificer which afterward bringeth it unto effect Therefore whatsoever we do behold now in this present World it was inwrapped within the Bowels of Divine Mercy written in the Book of Eternal Wisdom and held in the hands of Omnipotent Power the first Foundations of the World being as yet unlaid So that all things which God hath made are in that respect the Off-spring of God they are in him as effects in their highest cause he likewise actually is in them the assistance and influence of his Deity is their life Let hereunto saving efficacy be added and it bringeth forth a special Off-spring amongst men containing them to whom God hath himself given the gracious and amiable name of Sons We are by Nature the Sons of Adam When God created Adam he created us and as many as are descended from Adam have in themselves the Root out of which they spring The Sons of God we neither are all nor any one of us otherwise then onely by grace and favor The Sons of God have Gods own Natural Son as a second Adam from Heaven whose Race and Progeny they are by Spiritual and Heavenly Birth God therefore loving eternally his Son he must needs eternally in him have loved and preferred before all others them which are spiritually sithence descended and sprung out of him These were in God as in their Saviour and not as in their Creator onely It was the purpose of his saving Goodness his saving Wisdom and his saving Power which inclined it self towards them They which thus were in God eternally by their intended admission to life have by vocation or adoption God actually now in them as the Artificer is in the Work which his hand doth presently frame Life as all other gifts and benefits groweth originally from the Father and cometh not to us but by the Son nor by the Son to any of us in particular but through the Spirit For this cause the Apostle wisheth to the Church of Corinth The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost Which three St. Peter comprehendeth in one The participation of Divine Nature We are therefore in God through Christ eternally according to that intent and purpose whereby we are chosen to be made his in this present World before the World it self was made We are in God through the knowledge which is had of us and the love which is born towards us from everlasting But in God we actually are no longer then onely from the time of our actual Adoption into the Body of his true Church into the Fellowship of his Children For his Church he knoweth and loveth so that they which are in the Church are thereby known to be in him Our being in Christ by Eternal fore-knowledge saveth us not without our Actual and Real Adoption into the Fellowship of his Saints in this present World For in him we actually are by our actual incorporation into that Society which hath him for their Head and doth make together with him one Body he and they in that respect having one name for which cause by vertue of this Mystical Conjunction we are of him and in him even as though our very flesh and bones should be made continuate with his We are in Christ because he knoweth and loveth us even as parts of himself No man actually is in him but they in whom he actually is For he which hath not the Son of God hath not Life I am the Vine and ye are the Branches He which abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much Fruit but the Branch severed from the Vine withereth We are therefore adopted Sons of God to Eternal Life by Participation of the onely begotten Son of God whose Life is the Well-spring and cause of ours It is too cold an interpretation whereby some men expound our Being in Christ to import nothing else but onely That the self-same Nature which maketh us to be Men is in him and maketh him Man as we are For what man in the World is there which hath not so far forth communion with Jesus Christ It is not this that can sustain the weight of such sentences as speak of the Mystery of our Coherence with Jesus Christ. The Church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam Yea by Grace we are every of us in Christ and in his Church and in his Church as by Nature we were in those our first Parents God made Eve of the Rib of Adam And his Church he frameth out of the very Flesh the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of Man His Body crucified and his Blood shed for the Life of the World are the true Elements of that Heavenly Being which maketh us such as himself is of whom we come For which cause the words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning his Church Flesh of my Flesh and Bone of my Bones a true Nature extract out of my own Body So that in him even according to his Manhood we according to our Heavenly Being are as Branches in that Root out of which they grow To all things he is Life and to men Light as the Son of God to the Church both Life and Light Eternal by being made the Son of Man for us and by being in us a Saviour whether we respect him as God or as Man Adam is in us as an original cause of our Nature and of that corruption of Nature which causeth death Christ as the cause original of Restauration to Life The person of Adam is not in us but his nature and the corruption of his nature derived into all men by Propagation Christ having Adams nature as we have but incorrupt deriveth not nature but incorruption and that immediately from his own Person into all that belong unto him As therefore we are really partakers of the body of Sin and Death received from Adam so except we be truly partakers of Christ and as really possessed of his Spirit all we speak of Eternal Life is but a dream That which quickneth us is the Spirit of the Second Adam and his Flesh that wherewith he quickneth That which in him made our Nature uncorrupt was the Union of his Deity with our Nature And in that respect the sentence of Death and Condemnation which onely taketh hold upon sinful flesh could no way possibly extend unto him This caused his voluntary death for others to prevail with God and to have the force of an Expiatory Sacrifice The Blood of Christ as the Apostle witnesseth doth therefore take away sin because through the Eternal Spirit he offered himself unto God without spot That
made us subject to all misery so the full Redemption of the Inward Man and the Work of our Restauration must needs belong unto Knowledge onely They draw very near unto this Error who fixing wholly their mindes on the known necessity of Faith imagine that nothing but Faith is necessary for the attainment of all Grace Yet is it a Branch of Belief that Sacraments are in their place no less required then Belief it self For when our Lord and Saviour promiseth Eternal Life is it any otherwise then as he promised Restitution of health unto Naaman the Syrian namely with this condition Wash and be clean or as to them which were stung of Serpents health by beholding the Brazen Serpent If Christ himself which giveth Salvation do require Baptism it is not for us that look for Salvation to sound and examine him whether unbaptized men may be saved but seriously to do that which is required and religiously to fear the danger which may grow by the want thereof Had Christ onely declared his Will to have all men Baptized and not acquainted us with any cause why Baptism is necessary our ignorance in the reason of that he enjoyneth might perhaps have hindered somewhat the forwardness of our obedience thereunto Whereas now being taught that Baptism is necessary to take away sin how have we the fear of God in our hearts if care of delivering Mens Souls from sin do not move us to use all means for their Baptism Pelagius which denied utterly the guilt of Original sin and in that respect the necessity of Baptism did notwithstanding both Baptize Infants and acknowledge their Baptism necessary for entrance into the Kingdom of God Now the Law of Christ which in these considerations maketh Baptism necessary must be construed and understood according to Rules of Natural Equity Which Rules if they themselves did not follow in expounding the Law of God would they ever be able to prove that the Scripture in saying Whoso believeth not the Gospel of Christ is condemned already meaneth this sentence of those which can hear the Gospel and have discretion when they hear to understand it neither ought it to be applied unto Infants Deaf-men and Fools That which teacheth them thus to interpret the Law of Christ is Natural Equity And because Equity so teacheth it is on all parts gladly confest That there may be in divers cases Life by vertue of inward Baptism even where outward is not found So that if any question be made it is but about the bounds and limits of this possibility For example to think that a man whose Baptism the Crown of Martyrdom preventeth doth lose in that case the happiness which so many thousands enjoy that onely have had the Grace to Believe and not the Honor to seal the testimony thereof with Death were almost barbarous Again When some certain opinative men in St. Bernards time began privately to hold that because our Lord hath said Unless a Man be born again of Water therefore life without either Actual Baptism or Martyrdom in stead of Baptism cannot possibly be obtained at the hands of God Bernard considering that the same equity which had moved them to think the necessity of Baptism no Bar against the happy estate of Unbaptized Martyrs is as forcible for the warrant of their Salvation in whom although there be not the Sufferings of holy Martyrs there are the Vertues which sanctified those Sufferings and made them precious in Gods sight professed himself an enemy to that severity and strictness which admitteth no exception but of Martyrs onely For saith he if a Man desirous of Baptism be suddenly cut off by Death in whom there wanted neither sound Faith devout Hope not sincere Charity God be merciful unto me and pardon me if I err but verily of such a ones Salvation in whom there is no other defect besides his faultless lack of Baptism despair I cannot nor induce my minde to think his Faith void his Hope confounded and his Charity faln to nothing onely because he hath not that which not contempt but impossibility with-holdeth Tell me I beseech you saith Ambrose what there is in any of us more then to will and to seek for our own good They Servant Valentinian O Lord did both For Valentinian the Emperor died before his purpose to receive Baptism could take effect And is it possible that he which had purposely thy Spirit given him to desire Grace should not receive thy Grace which that Spirit did desire Doth it move you that the outward accustomed Solemnities were not done At though Converts that suffer Martyrdom before Baptism did thereby forfeit their right to the Crown of Eternal Glory in the Kingdom of Heaven If the Blood of Martyrs in that case be their Baptism surely his religious desire of Baptism standeth him in the same stead It hath been therefore constantly held as well touching other Believers as Martyrs That Baptism taken away by necessity is supplied by desire of Baptism because with Equity this opinion doth best stand Touching Infants which die unbaptized sith they neither have the Sacrament it self nor any sense or conceit thereof the judgment of many hath gone hard against them But yet seeing Grace is not absolutely tied unto Sacraments and besides such is the lenity of God that unto things altogether impossible he bindeth no man but where we cannot do what is enjoyned us accepteth our will to do in stead of the deed it self Again For as much as there is in their Christian Parents and in the Church of God a presumed desire That the Sacrament of Baptism might be given them yea a purpose also that it shall be given remorse of Equity hath moved divers of the School-Divines in these considerations ingeuously to grant That God all-merciful to such as are not in themselves able to desire Baptism imputeth the secret desire that others have in their behalf and accepteth the same as theirs rather then casteth away their Souls for that which no man is able to help And of the Will of God to impart his Grace unto Infants without Baptism in that case the very circumstance of their Natural Birth may serve as a just Argument whereupon it is not to be misliked that men in charitable presumption do gather a great likelihood of their Salvation to whom the benefit of Christian Parentage being given the rest that should follow is prevented by some such casualty as man hath himself no power to avoid For we are plainly taught of God That the Seed of Faithful Parentage is holy from the very Birth Which albeit we may not so understand as if the Children of Believing Parents were without Sin or Grace from Baptized Parents derived by Propagation or God by Covenant and Promise tied to save any in meer regard of their Parents Belief Yet seeing that to all Professors of the Name of Christ this pre-eminence above Infidels
contrary Internal Powers Which whosoever doth think impossible is undoubtedly farther off from Christian Belief though he be Baptized then are these Innocents which at their Baptism albeit they have no conceit cogitation of Faith are notwithstanding pure and free from all opposite cogitations whereas the other is not free If therefore without any fear or scruple we may account them and term them Believers onely for their outward professions sake which inwardly are farther from Faith then Infants Why not Infants much more at the time of their solemn Initiation by Baptism the Sacrament of Faith whereunto they not onely conceive nothing opposite but have also that Grace given them which is the first and most effectual cause out of which our belief groweth In sum the whole Church is a multitude of Believers all honored with that title even Hypocrites for their Professions sake as well as Saints because of their inward sincere perswasion and Infants as being in the first degree of their ghostly motions towards the actual habit of Faith the first sort are faithful in the eye of the World the second faithful in the sight of God the last in the ready direct way to become both if all things after be suitable to these their present beginnings This saith St. Augustine would not happily content such persons as are uncapable or unquiet but to them which having knowledge are not troublesome it may suffice Wherein I have not for case of my self objected against you that custom onely then which nothing is more from but of a custom most profitable I have done that little which I could ââ yield you a reasonable cause Were St. Augustine now living there are which would tell him for his better instruction that to say of a childe It is elect and to say it doth believe are all one for which cause sith no man is able precisely to affirm the one of any Infant in particular it followeth that precisely and absolutely we ought not to say the other Which precise and absolute terms are needless in this case We speak of Infants as the rule of piety alloweth both to speak and think They that can take to themselves in ordinary talk a charitable kinde of liberty to name men of their own sort Gods dear children notwithstanding the large reign of of Hyprocrisie should not methinks be so strict and rigorous against the Church for presuming as it doth of a Christian Innocent For when we know how Christ is general hath said That of such is the Kingdom of Heaven which Kingdom is the Inheritance of Gods Elect and do withal behold how his providence hath called them unto the first beginnings of Eternal Life and presented them at the Well-spring of New-birth wherein original sin is purged besides which sin there is no Hinderance of their Salvation known to us as themselves will grant hard it were that loving so many fair inducements whereupon to ground we should not be thought to utter at the least a truth as probable and allowable in terming any such particular Infant an elect Babe as in presuming the like of others whose safety nevertheless we are not absolutely able to warrant If any troubled with these seruples be onely for Instructions sake desirous to know yet some farther reason why Interrogatories should be ministred to Infants in Baptism and be answered unto by others as in their names they may consider that Baptism implieth a Covenant or League between God and Man wherein as God doth bestow presently remission of sins and the Holy Ghost hinding also himself to add in process of time what Grace soever shall be farther necessary for the attainment of Everlasting Life so every Baptized Soul receiving the same Grace at the hands of God tieth likewise it self for ever to the observation of his Law no less then the Jews by Circumcision bound themselves to the Law of Moses The Law of Christ requiring therefore Faith and newness of life in all men by vertue of the Covenant which they make in Baptism Is it toyish that the Church in Baptism exacteth at every mans hands an express Profession of Faith and an inevocable promise of obedience by way of solemn stipulation That Infants may contract and covenant with God the Law is plain Neither is the reason of the Law obscure For sith it rendeth we cannot sufficiently express how much to their own good and doth no way hurt or endanger them to begin the race of their lives herewith they are as equity requireth admitted hereunto and in favor of their tender years such formal complements of stipulation as being requisite are impossible by themselves in their own persons to be performed leave is given that they may sufficiently discharge by others Albeit therefore neither deaf nor dumb men neither surious persons nor children can receive any civil stipulation yet this kinde of ghostly stipulation they may through his indulgence who respecting the singular benefit thereof accepteth Children brought unto him for that end entrech into Articles of Covenant with them and in tender commiseration granteth that other Mens Professions and Promises in Baptism made for them shall avail no less then if they had been themselves able to have made their own None more fit to undertake this office in their behalf then such as present them unto Baptism A wrong conceit that none may receive the Sacrament of Baptism but they whose Parents at the least the one of them are by the soundness of their Religion and by their vertuous demeanor known to be Men of God hath caused some to repel Children whosoever bring them if their Parents be mis-perswaded in Religion or sot other mis-deserts ex-communicated some likewise for that cause to withhold Baptism unless the Father albeit no such exception can justly be taken against him do notwithstanding make Profession of his Faith and avouch the childe to be his own Thus whereas God hath appointed them Ministers of holy things they make themselves Inquisitors of mens persons a great deal farther then need is They should consider that God hath ordained Baptism in favor of mankinde To restrain favors is an odious thing to enlarge them acceptable both to God and Man Whereas therefore the Civil Law gave divers Immunities to them which were Fathers of three children and had them living those Immunities they held although their children were all dead if war had consumed them because it seemed in that case not against reason to repute them by a courteous construction of Law as live men in that the honor of their Service done to the Commonwealth would remain always Can it hurt us in exhibiting the Graces which God doth bestow on men or can it prejudice his glory if the self-same equity guide and direct our hands When God made his Covenant with such as had Abraham to their Father was onely Abrahams immediate issue or onely his lineal posterity according to the flesh included in that
For as long as any thing which we desire is unattained we rest not Let us not here take Rest for Idleness They are Idle whom the painfulness of action causeth to avoid those Labors whereunto both God and Nature bindeth them they Rest which either cease from their work when they have brought it unto perfection of else give over a meaner labor because a worthier and better is to be undertaken God hath created nothing to be idle or ill employed As therefore Man doth consist of different and distinct parts every part endued with manifold abilities which all have their several ends and actions thereunto referred so there is in this great variety of duties which belong to men that dependency and other by means whereof the lower sustaining always the more excellent and the higher perfecting the more base they are in their times and seasons continued with most exquisite correspondence Labors of bodily and daily toyl purchase freedom for actions of Religious Joy which benefit these actions requite with the gift of desired Rest A thing most natural and fit to accompany the solemn Festival duties of honor which are done to God For if those principal works of God the memory whereof we use to celebrate at such times be but certain tastes and ââsays as it were of that final benefit wherein our perfect felicity and bliss lieth folded up seeing that the presence of the one doth direct our cogitations thoughts and desires towards the other it giveth surely a kinde of life and addeth inwardly no small delight to those so comfortable expectations when the very outward countenance of that we presently do representeth after a sort that also whereunto we tend as Festival Rest doth that Celestial estate whereof the very Heathens themselves which had not the means whereby to apprehend much did notwithstanding imagine that it needs must consist in Rest and have therefore taught that above the highest moveable sphere there is nothing which feeleth alteration motion or change but all things immutable unsubject to passion blest with eternal continuance in a life of the highest perfection and of that compleat abundant sufficiency within it self which no possibility of want maim or defect can touch Besides whereas ordinary labors are both in themselves painful and base in comparison of Festival Services done to God doth not the natural difference between them shew that the one as it were by way of submission and homage should surrender themselves to the other wherewith they can neither easily concur because painfulness and joy are opposite nor decently because while the minde hath just occasion to make her abode in the House of Gladness the Weed of ordinary toyl and travel becometh her not Wherefore even Nature hath taught the Heathens and God the Jews and Christ us first that Festival Solemnities are a part of the publick exercise of Religion secondly that Praise Liberality and Rest are as Natural Elements whereof Solemnities consist But these things the Heathens converted to the honor of their false gods And as they failed in the end it self so neither could they discern rightly what form and measure Religion therein should observe Whereupon when the Israelites impiously followed so corrupt example they are in every degree noted to have done amiss their Hymns of Songs of Praise were Idolatry their Bounty Excess and their Rest wantonness Therefore the Law of God which appointed them days of Solemnity taught them likewise in what manner the same should be celebrated According to the pattern of which Institution David establishing the state of Religion ordained Praise to be given unto God in the Sabbaths Moneths and appointed Times as their custom had been always before the Lord. Now besides the times which God himself in the Law of Moses particularly specified there were through the Wisdom of the Church certain other devised by occasion of like occurents to those whereupon the former had risen as namely that which Mordecai and Esther did first celebrate in memory of the Lords most wonderful protection when Haman had laid his inevitable Plot to mans thinking for the utter extirpation of the Jews even in one day This they call the Feast of Lots because Haman had cast their life and their death as it were upon the hazard of a Lot To this may be added that other also of Dedication mentioned in the Tenth of St. Iohns Gospel the institution whereof is declared in the History of the Maccabees But for as much as their Law by the coming of Christ is changed and we thereunto no way bound St. Paul although it were not his purpose to favor invectives against the special Sanctification of days and times to the Service of God and to the honor of Jesus Christ doth notwithstanding bend his forces against that opinion which imposed on the Gentiles the Yoke of Jewish Legal observations as if the whole World ought for ever and that upon pain of condemnation to keep and observe the same Such as in this perswasion hallowed those Jewish Sabbaths the Apostle sharply reproveth saying Ye observe days and moneths and times and years I am in fear of you lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain Howbeit so far off was Tertullian from imagining how any man could possibly hereupon call in question such days as the Church of Christ doth observe that the observation of these days he useth for an Argument whereby to prove it could not be the Apostles intent and meaning to condemn simply all observing of such times Generally therefore touching Feasts in the Church of Christ they have that profitable use whereof Saint Augustine speaketh By Festival Solemnities and Set-days we dedicate and sanctifie to God the memory of his benefits lest unthankful forgetfulness thereof should creep upon us in course of time And concerning particulars their Sabbath the Church hath changed into our Lords day that is as the one did continually bring to minde the former World finished by Creation so the other might keep us in perpetual remembrance of a far better World begun by him which came to restore all things to make both Heaven and Earth new For which cause they honored the last day we the first in every seven throughout the year The rest of the days and times which we celebrate have relation all unto one head We begin therefore our Ecclesiastical year with the glorious Annuntiation of his Birth by Angelical Embassage There being hereunto added his Blessed Nativity it self the Mystery of his Legal Circumcision the Testification of his true Incarnation by the Purification of her which brought him in the World his Resurrection his Ascension into Heaven the admirable sending down of his Spirit upon his chosen and which consequently ensued the notice of that incomprehensible Trinity thereby given to the Church of God Again for as much as we know that Christ hath not onely been manifested great in himself but great in other his Saints also
the manifold works of Vertue often practised Before the powers of our mindes be brought unto some perfection our first assays and offers towards Vertue must needs be raw yet commendable because they tend unto ripeness For which cause and Wisdom of God hath commanded especially this circumstance amongst others in solemn Feasts That to Children and Novices in Religion they minister the first occasion to ask and enquire of God Whereupon if there follow but so much Piety as hath been mentioned let the Church learn to further imbecillity with Prayer Preserve Lord these good and gracious beginnings that they suddenly dry not up like the morning dew but may prosper and grow as the Trees which Rivers of Waters keep always flourishing Let all mens acclamations be Grace Grace unto it as to that first laid Corner Stone in Zerubbabels Buildings For who hath despised the day of those things which are small Or how dare we take upon us to condemn that very thing which voluntarily we grant maketh as of nothing somewhat seeing all we pretend against it is onely that as yet this somewhat is not much The days of solemnity which are but few cannot chuse but soon finish that outward exercise of Godliness which properly appertaineth to such times howbeit mens inward disposition to Vertue they both augment for the present and by their often returns bring also the same at the length unto that perfection which we most desire So that although by their necessary short continuance they abridge the present exercise of Piety in some kinde yet because by repetition they enlarge strengthen and confirm the habits of all Vertue it remaineth that we honor observe and keep them as Ordinances many ways singularly profitable in Gods Church This Exception being taken against Holidays for that they restrain the Praises of God unto certain times another followeth condemning restraint of men from their ordinary Trades and Labors at those times It is not they say in the Power of the Church to command Rest because God hath left it to all men at liberty that if they think good to bestow Six whole days in labor they may neither is it more lawful for the Church to abridge any man of that liberty which God hath granted then to take away the yoke which God hath laid upon them and to countermand what he doth expresly enjoyn They deny not but in times of publick calamity that men may the better assemble themselves to fast and pray the Church because it hath received Commandment from God to proclaim a Prohibition from ordinary works standeth bound to do it as the Jews afflicted did in Babylon But without some express Commandment from God there is no power they say under Heaven which may presume by any Decree to restrain the liberty that God hath given Which opinion albeit applied here no farther then to this present cause shaketh universally the Fabrick of Government tendeth to Anarchy and meer confusion dissolveth Families dissipateth Colledges Corporations Armies overthroweth Kingdoms Churches and whatsoever is now through the providence of God by Authority and Power upheld For whereas God hath foreptized things of the greatest weight and hath therein precisely defined as well that which every man must perform as that which no man may attempt leaving all sorts of men in the Rest either to be guided by their own good discretion if they be free from subjection to others or else to be ordered by such Commandments and Laws as proceed from those Superiors under whom they live the Patrons of Liberty have here made Solemn Proclamation that all such Laws and Commandments are void in as much as every man is left to the freedom of his own minde in such things as are not either exacted or prohibited by the Law of God And because onely in these things the Positive Precepts of men have place which Precepts cannot possibly be given without some Abridgment of their Liberty to whom they are given Therefore if the Father command the Son or the Husband the Wife or the Lord the Servant or the Leader the Soldier or the Prince the Subject to go or stand sleep or wake at such times as God himself in particular commandeth neither they are to stand in defence of the Freedom which God hath granted and to do as themselves list knowing that men may as lawfully command them things utterly forbidden by the Law of God as tye them to any thing which the Law of God leaveth free The plain contradictory whereunto is unfallibly certain Those things which the Law of God leaveth Arbitrary and at Liberty are all subject to the Positive Laws of Men which Laws for the common benefit abridge particular Mens Liberty in such things as far as the Rules of Equity will suffer This we must either maintain or else over-turn the World and make every man his own Commander Seeing then that Labor and Rest upon any one day of the Six throughout the year are granted free by the Law of God how exempt we them from the force and power of Ecclesiastical Law except we deprive the World of Power to make any Ordinance or Law at all Besides Is it probable that God should not onely allow but command concurrency of Rest with extraordinary occasions of doleful events befalling peradventure some one certain Church or not extending unto many and not as much as permit or licence the like when Piety triumphant with Joy and Gladness maketh solemn commemoration of Gods most rare and unwonted Mercies such especially as the whole race of mankinde doth or might participate Of vacation from labor in times of sorrow the onely cause is for that the general publick Prayers of the whole Church and our own private business cannot both he followed at once whereas of Rest in the famous solemnities of publick Joy there is both this consideration the same and also farther a kinde of natural repugnancy which maketh labors as hath been proved much more unfit to accompany Festival Praises of God then Offices of Humiliation and Grief Again If we sift what they bring for proof and approbation of Rest with Fasting doth it not in all respects as fully warrant and as strictly command Rest whensoever the Church hath equal reason by Feasts and gladsome solemnities to testifie publick thankfulness towards God I would know some cause why those words of the Prophet Ioel Sanctifie a Fast call a solemn Assembly which words were uttered to the Jews in misery and great distress should more binde the Church to do at all times after the like in their like perplexities then the words of Moses to the same people in a time of joyful deliverance from misery Remember this day may warrant any annual celebration of benefits no less importing the good of men and also justifie as touching the manner and form thereof what circumstance soever we imitate onely in respect of natural fitness or decency without any Jewish regard to Ceremonies such as
whether wilfully to break and despise the wholesome laws of the Church herein be a thing which offendeth God whether truly it may not be said that penitent both weaping and fasting are means to blot out sin means whereby through Gods unspeakable and undeserved mercy we obtain or procure to our selves pardon which attainment unto any gracious benefit by him bestowed the phrase of Antiquity useth to express by the name of Merit but if either Saint Augustine or Saint Ambrose have taught any wrong opinion seeing they which reprove them are not altogether free from Error I hope they will think it no error in us so to censure mens smaller faults that their vertues be not thereby generally prejudiced And if in Churches abroad where we are not subject to Power or Jurisdiction discretion should teach us for Peace and Quietness sake to frame our selves to other mens example Is it meet that at home where our freedom is less our boldness should be more Is it our duty to oppugn in the Churches whereof we are Ministers the Rites and Customs which in Foreign Churches Piety and Modesty did teach us as strangers not to oppugn but to keep without shew of contradiction or dislike Why oppose they the name of a Minister in this case unto the state of a private man Doth their order exempt them from obedience to Laws That which their Office and place requireth is to shew themselves patterns of reverend subjection not Authors and Masters of contempt towards Ordinances the strength whereof when they seek to weaken they do but in truth discover to the World their own imbecillities which a great deal wiselier they might conceal But the practice of the Church of Christ we shall by so much the better both understand and love if to that which hitherto hath been spoken there be somewhat added for more particular declaration how Hereticks have partly abused Fasts and partly bent themselves against the lawful use thereof in the Church of God Whereas therefore Ignatius hath said If any keep Sundays or Saturdays Fasts one onely Saturday in the year excepted that man is no better then a murtherer of Christ the cause of such his earnestness at that time was the impiety of certain Hereticks which thought that this World being corruptible could not be made but a very evil Author And therefore as the Jews did by the Festival Solemnity of their Sabbath rejoyce in the God that created the World as in the Author of all Goodness so those Hereticks in hatred of the Maker of the World sorrowed wept and fasted on that day as being the birth-day of all evil And as Christian men of sound belief did solemnize the Sunday in joyful memory of Christs Resurrection so likewise at the self-same time such Hereticks as denied his Resurrection did the contrary to them which held it When the one sort rejoyced the other fasted Against those Hereticks which have urged perpetual abstinence from certain Meats as being in their very nature unclean the Church hath still bent herself as an enemy Saint Paul giving charge to take heed of them which under any such opinion should utterly forbid the use of Meats or Drinks The Apostles themselves forbad some as the order taken at Ierusalem declareth But the cause of their so doing we all know Again when Tertullian together with such as were his followers began to Montanize and pretending to perfect the severity of Christian Discipline brought in sundry unaccustomed days of Fasting continued their Fasts a great deal longer and made them more rigorous then the use of the Church had been the mindes of men being somewhat moved at so great and so sudden novelty the cause was presently inquired into After notice taken how the Montanists held these Additions to be Supplements of the Gospel whereunto the Spirit of Prophesie did now mean to put as it were the last hand and was therefore newly descended upon Montanus whose orders all Christian men were no less to obey then the Laws of the Apostles themselves this Abstinence the Church abhorred likewise and that justly Whereupon Tertullian proclaiming even open War of the Church maintained Montanism wrote a Book in defence of the new Fast and intituled the same A Treatise of Fasting against the opinion of the Carnal sort In which Treatise nevertheless because so much is sound and good as doth either generally concern the use or in particular declare the Custom of the Churches Fasting in those times men are not to reject whatsoever is alledged out of that Book for confirmation of the Truth His error discloseth it self in those places where he defendeth Fasts to be duties necessary for the whole Church of Christ to observe as commanded by the Holy Ghost and that with the same authority from whence all other Apostolical Ordinances came both being the Laws of God himself without any other distinction or difference saving onely that he which before had declared his will by Paul and Peter did now farther reveal the same by Montanus also Against us ye pretend saith Tertullian that the Publick Orders which Christianity is bound to keep were delivered at the first and that no new thing is to be added thereunto Stand if you can upon this point for behold I challenge you for Fasting more then at Easter your selves But in fine ye answer That these things are to be done as established by the voluntary appointment of men and not by vertue or force of any Divine Commandment Well then he addeth Ye have removed your first footing and gone beyond that which was delivered by doing more then was at the first imposed upon you You say you must do that which your own judgments have allowed We require your obedience to that which God himself doth institute Is it not strange that men to their own will should yield that which to Gods Commandment they will not grant Shall the pleasure of men prevail more with you then the power of God himself These places of Tertullian for Fasting have worthily been put to silence And as worthily Aerius condemned for opposition against Fasting The one endeavored to bring in such Fasts as the Church ought not to receive the other to overthrow such as already it had received and did observe The one was plausible unto many by seeming to hate carnal loosness and riotous excess much more then the rest of the World did the other drew hearers by pretending the maintenance of Christian Liberty The one thought his cause very strongly upheld by making invective declamations with a pale and a withered countenance against the Church by filling the ears of his starved hearers with speech suitable to such mens humors and by telling them no doubt to their marvellous contentment and liking Our new Prophesies are refused they are despised It is because Montanus doth Preach some other God or dissolve the Gospel of Iesus Christ or overthrow any Canon of Faith and Hope No our crime is We teach
great matter Finally Seeing that both are Ordinances were devised for the good of Man and yet not Man created purposely for them as for other Offices of Vertue whereunto Gods immutable Law for ever tieth it is but equity to wish or admonish that where by uniform order they are not as yet received the example of Victors extremity in the one and of Iohns Disciples curiosity in the other be not followed yea where they are appointed by Law that notwithstanding we avoid Judaism and as in Festival days mens necessities for matter of labour so in times of Fasting regard be had to their imbecillities lest they should suffer harm doing good Thus therefore we see how these two Customes are in divers respects equal But of Fasting the use and exercise though less pleasant is by so much more requisite than the other as grief of necessity is a more familiar guest then the contrary passion of mind albeit gladness to all men be naturally more welcome For first We our selves do many âo things amiss than well and the fruit of our own ill doing is remorse because nature is conscious to it self that it should do the contrary Again forasmuch as the world over-aboundeth with malice and few are delighted in doing good unto other men there is no man so seldom crost as pleasured at the hands of others whereupon it cannot be chosen but every mans Woes must double in that respect the number and measure of his delights Besides concerning the very choice which oftentimes we are to make our corrupt inclination well considered there is cause why our Saviour should account them the happiest that do most mourn and why Solomon might judge it better to frequent mourning then Feasting-houses not better simply and in it self for then would Nature that way incline but in regard of us and our common weakness better Iob was not ignorant that his Childrens Banquets though teâdiÌg to amity needed Sacrifice Neither doth any of us all need to be taught that in things which delight we easily swerve from mediocrity and are not easily led by a right direct line On the other side the Sores and Diseases of mind which inordinante pleasure breedeth are by Dolour and Grief cured For which cause as all offences use to seduce by pleasing so all punishments endeavour by vexing to reform transgressions We are of our own accord apt enough to give entertainment to things delectable but patiently to lack what flesh and blood doth desire and by Vertue to forbear what by Nature we covet this no man attaineth unto but with labour and long practice From hence it riseth that in former Ages abstinence and Fasting more then ordinary was always a special branch of their praise in whom it could be observed and known were they such as continually gave themselves to austere life of men that took often occasions in private vertuous respects to lay Solomons counsel aside Eat thy bread with joy and to be followers of Davids Example which saith I humbled my soul with fasting or but they who otherwise worthy of no great commendation have made of hunger some their Gain some their Physick some their Art that by mastering sensual Appetites without constraint they might grow able to endure hardness whensoever need should require For the body accustomed to emptiness pineth not away so soon as having still used to fill it self Many singular Effects there are which should make Fasting even in publick Considerations the rather to be accepted For I presume we are not altogether without experience how great their advantage is in martial Enterprizes that lead Armies of men trained in a School of Abstinence It is therefore noted at this day in some that patience of hunger and thirst hath given them many Victories in others that because if they want there is no man able to rule them not they in plenty to moderate themselves he which can either bring them to hunger or overcharge them is sure to make them their own overthrow What Nation soever doth feel these dangerous inconveniences may know that sloth and fulness in peaceable times at home is the cause thereof and the remedy a strict Observation of that part of Christian Discipline which teacheth men in practice of Ghostly warfare against themselves those things that afterwards may help them justly assaulting or standing in lawful defence of themselves against others The very purpose of the Church of God both in the number and in the order of her Fasts hath been not only to preserve thereby throughout all Ages the remembrance of miseries heretofore sustained and of the causes in our selves out of which they have risen that men considering the one might fear the other the more but farther also to temper the mind lest contrary affections coming in place should make it too profuse and dissolute in which respect it seemeth that Fasts have been set as Ushers of Festival days for prevention of those disorders as much as might be wherein notwithstanding the World always will deserve as it hath done blame because such evils being not possible to be rooted out the most we can do is in keeping them low and which is chiefly the fruit we look for to create in the minds of men a love towards a frugal and severe life to undermine the Palaces of wantonness to plant Parsimony as Nature where Riotousness hath been studied to harden whom pleasure would melt and to help the tumours which always Fulness breedeth that Children as it were in the Wool of their Infancy dyed with hardness may never afterwards change colour that the poor whose perpetual Fasts are of Necessity may with better contentment endure the hunger which Vertue causeth others so often to chuse and by advice of Religion it self so far to esteem above the contrary that they which for the most part do lead sensual and easie lives they which as the Prophet David describeth them are not plagued like other men may by the publick spectacle of all be still put in mind what themselves are Finally that every man may be every mans daily guide and example as well by fasting to declare humility as by praise to express joy in the sight of God although it have herein befallen the Church as sometimes David so that the speech of the one may be truly the voice of the other My soul fasted and even that was also turned to my reproof 73. In this world there can be no Society durable otherwise then only by propagation Albeit therefore single Life be a thing more Angelical and Divine yet sith the replenishing first of Earth with blessed Inhabitants and then of Heaven with Saints everlastingly praising God did depend upon conjunction of Man and Woman he which made all things compleat and perfect saw it could not be good to leave men without any Helper unto the sore-alledged end In things which some farther and doth cause to be desired choice
condition as long as they stedfastly were observed to honour God and their success being faln from him are remonstrances more than sufficient how all our welfare even on earth dependeth wholly upon our Religion Heathens were ignorant of true Religion Yet such as that little was which they knew it much impaired or bettered alwaies their worldy affairs as their love and zeal towards it did wain or grow Of the Jews did not even their most malicious and mortal Adversaries all acknowledge that to strive against them it was in vain as long as their amity with God continued that nothing could weaken them but Apostasie In the whole course of their own proceedings did they ever finde it otherwise but that during their faith and fidelity towards God every man of them was in war as a thousand strong and as much as a grand Senate for counsel in peaceable deliberations contrariwise that if they swarved as they often did their wonted courage and magnanimity forsook them utterly their Soldiers and military men trembled at the sight of the naked sword when they entered into mutual conference and sate in counsel for their own good that which Children might have seen their gravest Senators could not discern their Prophets saw darkness instead of Visions the wise and prudent were as men bewitcht even that which they knew being such as might stand them in stead they had not the grace to utter or if any thing were well proposed it took no place it entered not into the minds of the rest to approve and follow it but as men confounded with strange and unusual amaââments of spirit they attempted tumultuously they saw not what and by the issues of all attempts they found no certain conclusion but this God and Heaven are strong against as in all we do The cause whereof was secret fear which took heart and courage from them and the cause of their fear an inward guiltiness that they all had offered God such apparent wrongs as were not pardonable But it may be the case is now altogether changed and that in Christian Religion there is not the like force towards Temporal felicity Search the ancient Records of time look what hath happened by the space of these sixteen hundred years see if all things to this effect be not Inculent and clear yea all things so manifest that for evidence and proof herein we need not by uncertain dark conjectures surmise any to have been plagued of God for contempt or blest in the course of faithful obedience towards true Religion more than onely them whom we finde in that respect on the one side guilty by their own confessions and happy on the other side by all mens acknowledgement who beholding that prosperous estate of such as are good and vertuous impute boldly the same to God's most especial favour but cannot in like manner pronounce that whom he afflicteth above others with them he hath cause to be more offended For Vertue is always plain to be seen rareness causeth it to be observed and goodness to be honoured with admiration As for iniquity and sin it lyeth many times hid and because we be all offenders it becometh us not to incline towards hard and severe sentences touching others unless their notorious wickedness did sensibly before proclaim that which afterwards came to pass Wherefore the sum of every Christian man's duty is to labour by all means towards that which other men seeing in us may justifie and what we our selves must accuse if we fall into it that by all means we can to avoid considering especially that as hitherto upon the Church there never yet fell tempestuous storm the vapours whereof were not first noted to rise from coldness in affection and from backwardness is duties of service towards God so if that which the tears of antiquity have untered concerning this point should be here set down it were assuredly enough to soften and to mollifie an Heart of steel On the contrary part although we confesse with Saint Augustine most willingly that the chiefest happiness for which we have some Christian Kings in so great admiration above the rest is not because of their long Reign their calm and quiet departure out of this present life the settled establishment of their own flesh and blood succeeding them in Royalty and Power the glorious overthrow of foreign enemies or the wise prevention of inward danger and so secret attempts at home all which solaces and comforts of this our unquiet life it pleaseth God oftentimes to bestow on them which have no society or part in the joys of Heaven giving thereby to understand that these in comparison are toys and trifles farr under the value and price of that which is to be looked for at his hands but in truth the reason wherefore we most extol their felicity is if so be they have virtuously reigned if honour have not filled their hearts with pride if the exercise of their power have been service and attendance upon the Majestie of the Most High if they have feared him as their own inferiours and subjects have feared them if they have loved neither pomp nor pleasure more than Heaven if revenge have slowly proceeded from then and mercy willingly offered it self if so they have tempered rigour with lenity that neither extream severitie might utterly cutt them off in whom there was manifest hope of amendment nor yet the easinesse of pardoning offences imbolden offenders if knowing that whatsoever they do their potency may bear it out they have been so much the more carefull are to do any thing but that which is commendable in the best rather than usual with greatest Personages if the true knowledge of themselves have humbled them in God's sight no lesse than God in the eyes of men hath raised them up I say albeit we reckon such to be the happiest of them that are mightiest in the World and albeit those things alone are happiness nevertheless considering what force there is even in outward blessings to comfort the mindes of the best disposed and to give them the greater joy when Religion and Peace Heavenly and Earthly happiness are wreathed in one Crown as to the worthiest of Christian Princes it hath by the providence of the Almighty hitherto befallen let it not seem unto any man a needlesse and superfluous waste of labour that there hath been thus much spoken to declare how in them especially it hath been so observed and withal universally noted even from the highest to the very meanest how this peculiar benefit this singular grace and preheminence Religion hath that either it guardeth as an heavenly shield from all calamities or else conducteth us safe through them and permitteth them not to be miseâ⦠it either giveth honours promotions and wealth or else more benefit by wanting them than if we had them at will it either filleth our Houses with plenty of all good things or maketh a Sallad of green herbs more sweet than all the
authority those actions that appertain to our Place and Calling can our ears admit such a speech uttered in the reverend performance of that Solemnity or can we at any time renew the memory and enter into serious cogitation thereof but with much admiration and joy Remove what these foolish words do imply and what hath the Ministry of God besides wherein to glory Whereas now forasmuch as the Holy Ghost which our Saviour in his first Ordinations gave doth no lesse concurr with Spiritual vocations throughout all ages than the Spirit which God derived from Moses to them that assisted him in his Government did descend from them to their Successors in like Authority and Place we have for the least and meanest Duties performed by vertue of Ministerial power that to dignifie grace and authorize them which no other Offices on Earth can challenge Whether we Preach Pray Baptize Communicate Condemn give Absolution or whatsoever as Disposers of God's Mysteries ourwords judgemnts acts and deeds are not ours but the Holy Ghost's Enough If unfeigaedly and in heart we did believe it enough to banish whatsoever may justly be thought corrupt either in bestowing or in using or in esteeming the same otherwise than is meet For prophanely to bestow or loosely to use or vilely to esteem of the Holy Ghost we all in shew and profession abhor Now because the Ministerie is an Office of dignitie and honour some are doubtful whether any man may seek for it without offence or to speak more properly doubtful they are not but rather bold to accuse our Discipline in this respect as not only permitting but requiring also ambitious suits or other oblique waies or means whereby to obtain it Against this they plead that our Saviour did stay till his Father sent him and the Apostles till he them that the antient Bishops in the Church of Christ were examples and patterns of the same modesty Whereupon in the end they insert Let see therefore at the length amend that custom of repairing from all parts unto the Bishop at the day of Ordination and of seeking to obtain Orders Let the custom of bringing commendatory Letters be removed let men keep themselves at home expecting there the voyce of God and the authority of such as may call them to undertake charge Thus severely they censure and control ambition if it be ambition which they take upon them to reprehend For of that there is cause to doubt Ambition as we understand it hath been accounted a Vice which seeketh after Honours inordinately Ambitious mindes esteeming it their greatest happiness to be admired reverenced and adored above others use all means lawful and unlawful which may bring them to high rooms But as for the power of Order considered by it self and as in this case it must be considered such reputation it hath in the eye of this present World that they which affect it rather need encouragement to bear contempt than deserve blame as men that carry aspiring mindes The work whereunto this power serveth is commended and the desire thereof allowed by the Apostle for good Nevertheless because the burthen thereof is heavy and the charge great it commeth many times to pass that the mindes even of virtuous men are drawn into clean contrary affections some in humility declining that by reason of hardness which others in regard of goodness onely do with servent alacrity cover So that there is not the least degree in this service but it may be both in reverence shunned and of very devotion longed for If then the desire thereof may be holy religious and good may not the profession of that desire be so likewise We are not to think it so long good as it is dissembled and evil if once we begin to open it And allowing that it may be opened without ambition what offence I beseeth you is there in opening it there where it may be furthered and satisfied in case they to whom it appertaineth think meet In vain are those desires allowed the accomplishment whereof it is not lawful for men to seek Power therefore of Ecclesiastical order may be desired the desire thereof may be professed they which profess themselves that way inclined may endeavour to bring their desires to effect and in all this no necessity of evil Is it the bringing of testimonial Letters wherein so great obliquity consisteth What more simple more plain more harmless more agreeable with the law of common humanity than that men where they are not known use for their easier access the credit of such as can best give testimony of them Letters of any other construction our Church-discipline alloweth not and these to allow is neither to require ambitious saings not to approve any indirect or unlawful act The Prophet Esay receiving his message at the hands of God and his charge by heavenly vision heard the voice of the Lord saying Whom shall I send Who shall go for us Whereunto he recordeth his own answer Then I said Here Lord I am send me Which in effect is the Rule and Canon whereby touching this point the very order of the Church is framed The appointment of times for solemn Ordination is but the publick demand of the Church in the name of the Lord himself Whom shall I send who shall go for us The confluence of men whose inclinations are bent that way is but the answer thereunto whereby the labours of sundry being offered the Church hath freedom to take whom her Agents in such case think meet and requisite As for the example of our Saviour Christ who took not to himself this honour to be made our High Priest but received the same from him which said Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec his waiting and not attempting to execute the Office till God saw convenient time may serve in reproof of usurped honours for as much as we ought not of our own accord to assume dignities whereunto we are not called as Christ was But yet it should be withal considered that a proud usurpation without any orderly calling is one thing and another the bare declaration of willingness to obtain admittance which Willingness of minde I suppose did not want in him whose answer was to the voice of his heavenly calling Behold I am come to do thy will And had it been for him as it is for us expedient to receive his Commission signed with the hands of men to seek it might better have beseemed his humility than it doth our boldness to reprehend them of Pride and Ambition that make no worse kinde of suits than by Letters of information Himself in calling his Apostles prevented all cogitations of theirs that way to the end it might truly be said of them Ye chose not me but I of mine own voluntary motion made choice of you Which kinde of undesired nomination to Ecclesiastical Places hefell divers of the most famous amongst the antient Fathers of the Church
why in all the projects of their Discipline it being manifest that their drift is to wrest the Key of Spiritual Authority out of the hands of former Governours and equally to possess therewith the Pastors of all several Congregations the people first for surer accomplishment and then for better defence thereof are pretended necessary Actors in those things whereunto their ability for the most part is as slender as their title and challenge unjust Notwithstanding whether they saw it necessary for them to perswade the people without whose help they could do nothing or else which I rather think the affection which they bear towards this new Form of Government made them to imagin it Gods own Ordinance Their Doctrine is that by the Law of God there must be for ever in all Congregations certain Lay-Elders Ministers of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in as much as our Lord and Saviour by Testament for so they presume hath left all Ministers or Pastors in the Church Executors equally to the whole power of Spiritual Jurisdiction and with them hath joyned the people as Colleagues By maintenance of which Assertion there is unto that part apparently gained a twofold advantage both because the people in this respect are much more easily drawn to favour it as a matter of their own interest and for that if they chance to be crossed by such as oppose against them the colour of Divine Authority assumed for the Grace and Countenance of that Power in the vulgar sort furnisheth their Leaders with great abundance of matter behoveful of their encouragement to proceed alwaies with hope of fortunate success in the end considering their cause to be as David's was a just defence of power given them from above and consequently their Adversaries quarrel the same with Saul's by whom the Ordinance of God was withstood Now on the contrary side if this their surmise prove false if such as in Justification whereof no evidence sufficient either hath been or can be alledged as I hope it shall clearly appear after due examination and trial let them then consider whether those words of Corah Dathan and Abiram against Moses and against Aaron It is too much that ye take upon you seeing all the Congregation is holy be not the very true Abstract and abridgment of all their published Admonitions Demonstrations Supplications and Treatises whatsoever whereby they have laboured to void the rooms of their Spiritual Superiours before Authorized and to advance the new fancied Scepter of Lay Presbyterial Power The Nature of Spiritual Iurisdiction BUt before there can be any setled Determination whether Truth do rest on their part or on ours touching Lay-Elders we are to prepare the way thereunto by explication of some things requisite and very needful to be considered as first how besides that Spiritual Power which is of Order and was instituted for performance of those duties whereof there hath been Speech already had there is in the Church no less necessary a second kind which we call the Power of Jurisdiction When the Apostle doth speak of ruling the Church of God and of receiving accusations his words have evident reference to the Power of Jurisdiction Our Saviours words to the Power of Order when he giveth his Disciples charge saying Preach Baptize Do this in Remembrance of me ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Epist ad Smyrn A Bishop saith Ignatius doth bear the Image of God and of Christ of God in ruling of Christ in administring holy things By this therefore we see a manifest difference acknowledged between the Power of Ecclesiastical Order and the power of Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical The Spiritual Power of the Church being such as neither can be challenged by right of Nature nor could by humane Authority be instituted because the forces and effects thereof are Supernatural and Divine we are to make no doubt or question but that from him which is the Head it hath descended unto us that are the Body now invested therewith He gave it for the benefit and good of Souls as a mean to keep them in the path which leadeth unto endless felicity a bridle to hold them within their due and convenient bounds and if they do go astray a forcible help to reclaim them Now although there be no kind of Spiritual Power for which our Lord Iesus Christ did not give both commission to exercise and direction how to use the same although his Laws in that behalf recorded by the holy Evangelists be the only ground and foundation whereupon the practice of the Church must sustain it self yet as all multitudes once grown to the form of Societies are even thereby naturally warranted to enforce upon their own subjects particularly those things which publick wisdom shall judge expedient for the common good so it were absurd to imagine the Church it self the most glorious amongst them abridged of this liberty or to think that no Law Constitution or Canon can be further made either for Limitation or Amplification in the practice of our Saviours Ordinances whatsoever occasion be offered through variety of times and things during the state of this inconstant world which bringeth forth daily such new evills as must of necessity by new remedies be redrest did both of old enforce our venerable Predecessor and will alwaies constrain others sometime to make sometime to abrogate sometime to augment and again to abridge sometime in sum often to vary alter and change Customs incident unto the manner of exercising that Power which doth it self continue alwaies one and the same I therefore conclude that Spiritual Authority is a Power which Christ hath given to be used over them which are subject unto it for the eternal good of their Souls according to his own most Sacred Laws and the wholsome positive Constitutions of his Church In Doctrine referred unto Action and Practice as this is which concerns Spiritual Jurisdiction the first sound and perfect understanding is the knowledge of the End because thereby both Use doth frame and Contemplation judge all things Of Penitency the chiefest End propounded by Spiritual Iurisdiction Two kinds of Penitency the one a Private Duty toward God the other a Duty of external Discipline Of the vertue of Repentance from which the former Duty proceedeth and of Contrition the first part of that Duty SEeing that the chiefest cause of Spiritual Jurisdiction is to provide for the health and safety of Mens Souls by bringing them to see and Repent their grievous offences committed against God as also to reform all injuries offered with the breach of Christian Love and Charity toward their brethren in matters of Ecclesiastical Cognizance the use of this Power shall by so much the plainlier appear if first the nature of Repentance it self be known We are by Repentance to appease whom we offend by Sin For which cause whereas all Sin deprives us of the favour of Almighty God our way of Reconciliation with him is the inward secret Repentance of the heart which inward
the Children of disobedience On the other to lovers of righteousness all grace and benediction Yet between these extreams that eternal God from whose unspotted justice and undeserved mercy the lot of each inheritance proceedeth is so inclinable rather to shew compassion then to take revenge that all his speeches in holy Scripture are almost nothing else but entreaties of men to prevent destruction by amendment of their wicked lives All the works of his providence little other then meer allurements of the just to continue stedfast and of the unrighteous to change their course All his dealings and proceedings towards true Converts as have even filled the grave writings of holy men with these and the like most sweet sentences Repentance if I may so speak stoppeth God in his way when being provoked by crimes past he cometh to revenge them with most just punishments Yea it tyeth as it were the hands of the Avenger and doth not suffer him to have his will Again The merciful eye of God towards Men hath no power to withstand Penitency at what time soever it comes in presence And again God doth not take it so in evil part though we wound that which he hath required us to keep whole as that after we have taken hurt there should be in us no desire to receive his help Finally lest I be carried too far in so large a Sea There was never any Man condemned of God but for neglect nor justified except he had care of Repentance From these considerations setting before our eyes our inexcusable both unthankfulness in disobeying so merciful foolishness in provoking so powerful a God there ariseth necessarily a pensive and corrosive desire that we had done otherwise a desire which suffereth us to foreslow no time to feel no quietness within our selves to take neither sleep nor food with contentment never to give over Supplications Confessions and other penitent Duties till the light of Gods reconciled favour shine in our darkned soul. Fulgentius asking the question Why Davids confession should be held for effectual Penitence and not Saul's answereth that the one hated Sin the other feared only punishment in this world Sauls acknowledgement of Sin was Fear David's both fear and also love This was the Fountain of Peters Tears this the Life and Spirit of Davids eloquence in those most admirable Hymns intituled Penitential where the words of sorrow for Sin do melt the very Bowels of God remitting it and the Comforts of Grace in remitting Sin carry him which sorrowed rapt as it were into Heaven with extasies of joy and gladness The first motive of the Ninevites unto Repentance was their belief in a Sermon of Fear but the next and most immediate an Axiom of Love Who can tell whether God will turn away his fierce wrath that we perish notâ No conclusion such as theirs Let every man turn from his evil way but out of premisses such as theirs were Fear and Love Wherefore the Well-spring of Repentance is Faith first breeding Fear and then Love which Love causes hope hope resolution of Attempt I will go to my Father and say I have sinned against Heaven and against thee that is to say I will do what the Duty of a Convert requireth Now in a Penitent's or Convert's duty there are included first the aversion of the will from Sin secondly the submission of our selves to God by supplication and Prayer thirdly the purpose of a new life testified with present works of amendment Which three things do very well seem to be comprised in one definition by them which handle Repentance as a vertue that hateth bewaileth and sheweth a purpose to amend Sin We offend God in thought word and deed To the first of which three they make Contrition to the second Confession and to the last our works of Satisfaction answerable Contrition doth not here import those sudden Pangs and Convulsions of the mind which cause sometimes the most forsaken of God to retract their own doings it is no Natural passion or anguish which riseth in us against our wills but a deliberate aversion of the Will of Man from Sin which being alwaies accompanied with grief and grief oftentimes partly with tears partly with other external signs it hath been thought that in these things Contrition doth chiefly consist whereas the chiefest thing in Contrition is that alteration whereby the Will which was before delighted with Sin doth now abhorr and shun nothing more But forasmuch as we cannot hate Sin in our selves without heaviness and grief that there should be in us a thing of such hatefull quality the Will averted from Sin must needs make the affection suitable yea great reason why it should so do For since the Will by conceiving Sin hath deprived the Soul of Life and of life there is not recovery without Repentance the death of Sin Repentance not able to kill Sin but by withdrawing the Will from it the Will unpossible to be withdrawn unless it concur with a contrary affection to that which accompanied it before in evill Is it not clear that as an inordinate delight did first begin sin so Repentance must begin with a just sorrow a sorrow of heart and such a sorrow as renteth the heart neither a feigned nor sleight sorrow not feigned blest it increase Sin nor sleight lest the pleasures of Sin over-match itâââef Wher ore of Grace the highest cause from which Mans Penitency doth proceed of Faith Fear Love Hope what force and efficiency they have in Repentance of Parts and Duties thereunto belonging comprehended in the Schoolmens definitions finally of the first among those Duties Contrition which disliketh and bewaileth iniquity let this suffice And because God will have Offences by Repentance not only abhorred within our selves but also with humble Supplication displayed before Him and a testimony of amendment to be given even by present works worthy Repentance in that they are contrary to those we renounce and disclaim Although the vertue of Repentance do require that her other two parts Consession and Satisfaction should here follow yet seeing they belong as well to the Discipline as to the vertue of Repentance and only differ for that in the one they are performed to Man in the other to God alone I had rather distinguish them in joynt-handling then handle them apart because in quality and manner of practise they are distinct Of the Discipline of Repentance instituted by Christ practised by the Fathers converted by the School-men into a Sacrament and of Confession that which belongeth to the vertue of Repentance that which was used among the Iews that which the Papacy imagineth a Sacrament and that which Antient Discipline practised 1. OUr Lord and Saviour in the sixteenth of St. Matthews Gospel giveth his Apostles Regiment in General over Gods Church For they that have the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are thereby signified to be Stewards of the House of God under whom they Guide Command Judge and
Correct his Family The Souls of Men are Gods Treasure committed to the Trust and Fidelity of such as must render a strict account for the very least which is under their Custody God hath not invested them with Power to make a Revenue thereof but to use it for the good of them whom Jesus Christ hath most dearly bought And because their Office therein consisteth of sundry functions some belonging to Doctrine some to Discipline all contained in the Name of the Keys they have for matters of Discipline as well Litigious as Criminal their Courts and Consistories erected by the heavenly Authority of his most Sacred Voice who hath said Dic Ecclesia Tell the Church against rebellious and conâumacious Persons which refuse to obey their Sentence armed they are with Power to eject such out of the Church to deprive them of the Honours Rights and Priviledges of Christian Men to make them as Heathens and Publicans with whom society was hateful Furthermore lest their Acts should be slenderly accounted of or had in contempt whether they admit to the Fellowship of Saints or seclude from it whether they bind Offenders or set them again at liberty whether they remit or retain Sins whatsoever is done by way of orderly and lawfull proceeding the Lord himself hath promised to ratifie This is that grand Original Warrant by force whereof the Guides and Prelates in Gods Church first his Apostles and afterwards others following them successively did both use and uphold that Discipline the end whereof is to heal Mens Consciences to cure their Sins to reclaim Offenders from iniquity and to make them by Repentance just Neither hath it of Ancient time for any other respect been accustomed to bind by Ecclesiastical Censures to retain so bound till tokens of manifest Repentance appeared and upon apparent Repentance to Release saving only because this was received as a most expedient method for the cure of sin The course of Discipline in former Ages reformed open Transgressors by putting them into Offices of open Penitence especially Confession whereby they declared their own crimes in the hearing of the whole Church and were not from the time of their first Convention capable of the holy Mysteries of Christ till they had solemnly discharged this duty Offenders in secret knowing themselves altogether as unworthy to be admitted to the Lords Table as the other which were with-held being also perswaded that if the Church did direct them in the Offices of their Penitency and assist them with publique Prayer they should more easily obtain that they sought than by trusting wholly to their own endeavours finally having no impediment to stay them from it but bashfulness which countervailed not the former inducements and besides was greatly cased by the good construction which the charity of those times gave to such actions wherein Mens piety and voluntary care to be reconciled to God did purchase them much more love than their faults the testimonies of common frailty were able to procure disgrace they made it not nice to use some one of the Ministers of God by whom the rest might take notice of their faults prescribe them convenient remedies and in the end after publick Confession all joyn in Prayer unto God for them The first beginner of this Custom had the more followers by means of that special favour which alwaies was with good consideration shewed towards voluntary Penitents above the rest But as Professors of Christian belief grew more in number so they waxed worse when Kings and Princes had submitted their Dominions unto the Scepter of Jesus Christ by means whereof Persecution ceasing the Church immediately became subject to those evills which peace and security bringeth forth there was not now that love which before kept all things in tune but every where Schisms Discords Dissentions amongst Men. Conventicles of Hereticks bent more vehemently against the sounder and better sort than very Infidels and Heathens themselves faults not corrected in Charity but noted with delight and kept for malice to use when the deadliest opportunities should be offered Whereupon forasmuch as publick Confessions became dangerous and prejudicial to the safety of well-minded Men and in divers respects advantagious to the Enemies of Gods Church it seemed first unto some and afterwards generally requisite that voluntary Penitents should surcease from open Confession Instead whereof when once private and secret Confession had taken place with the Latins It continued as a profitable Ordinance till the Lateran Council had Decreed that all Men once in a year at the least should confess themselves to the Priest So that being a thing thus made both general and also necessary the next degree of estimation whereunto it grew was to be honoured and and lifted up to the Nature of a Sacramentâ that as Christ did institute Baptism to give life and the Eucharist to nourish life so Penitence might be thought a Sacrament ordained to recover life and Confession a part of the Sacrament They define therefore their private Penetency to be a Sacrament of remitting sins after Baptism The vertue of Repentance a detestation of wickedness with ful purpose to amend the same and with hope to obtain pardon at Gods hands Wheresoever the Prophets cry Repent and in the Gospel Saint Peter maketh the same Exhortation to the Jews as yet unbaptized they would have the vertue of Repentance only to be understood The Sacrament where he adviseth Simon Magus to repent because the Sin of Simon Magus was after Baptism Now although they have onely external Repentance for a Sacrament internal for a Vertue yet make they Sacramental Repentance nevertheless to be composed of three parts Contrition Confession and Satisfaction which is absurd because Contrition being an inward thing belongeth to the Vertue and not to the Sacrament of Repentance which must consist of external parts if the nature thereof be external Besides which is more absurd they leave out Absolution whereas some of their School Divines handling Penance in the nature of a Sacrament and being not able to espie the least resemblance of a Sacrament save only in Absolution for a Sacrament by their doctrine must both signifie and also confer or bestow some special Divine Grace resolved themselves that the duties of the Penitent could be but meer preparations to the Sacrament and that the Sacrament it self was wholly in Absolution And albeit Thomas with his Followers have thought it safer to maintain as well the services of the Penitent as the words of the Minister necessary unto the essence of their Sacrament the services of the Penitent as a cause material the words of Absolution as a formal for that by them all things else are perfected to the taking away of Sin which opinion now reigneth in all their Schools since the time that the Councel of Trent gave it solemn approbation seeing they all make Absolution if not the whole essence yet the very form whereunto they ascribe chiefly the whole force
of them who in time of persecution had through fear betrayed their faith and notwithstanding thought by shift to avoid in that case the necessary Discipline of the Church wrote for their better instruction the book intituled De lapsis a Treatise concerning such as had openly forsaken their Religion and yet were loth openly to confess their fault in such manner as they should have done In which book he compareth with this sort of men certain others which had but a purpose only to have departed from the Faith and yet could not quiet their minds till this very secret and hidden fault was confest How much both greater in faith saith St. Cyprian and also as touching their fear better are those men who although neither sacrifice nor libel could be objected against them yet because they thought to have done that which they should not even this their intent they dolefully open unto Gods Priests They confess that whereof their conscience accuseth them the burthen that presseth their minds they discover they foreslow not of smaller and slighter evils to seek remedy He saith they declared their fault not to one only man in private but revealed it to Gods Priests they confest it before the whole Consistory of Gods Ministers Salvianus for I willingly embrace their conjecture who ascribe those Homilies to him which have hitherto by common error past under the counterfeit name of Eusebius Emesenus I say Salvianus though coming long after Cyprian in time giveth nevertheless the same evidence for his truth in a case very little different from that before alleadged his words are these Whereas most dearly beloved we see that pennance oftentimes is sought and sued for by holy souls which even from their youth have bequeathed themselves a precious treasure unto God let us know that the inspiration of Gods good Spirit moveth them so to do for the benefit of his Church and let such as are wounded learn to enquire for that remedy whereunto the very soundest do thus offer and obtrude as it were themselves that if the vertuous do bewailâ small offences the others cease not to lament great And surely when a man that hath less need performeth sub oculis Ecclesiae in the view sight and beholding of the whole Church an office worthy of his faith and compunction for Sin the good which others thereby reap is his own harvest the heap of his rewards groweth by that which another gaineth and through a kind of spiritual usury from that amendment of life which others learn by him there returneth lucre into his cossers The same Salvianus in another of his Homilies If faults haply be not great and grievous for example if a man have offended in word or in desire worthy of reproof if in the wantonness of his eye or the vanity of his heart the stains of words and thoughts are by daily prayer to be cleansed and by private compunction to be scoured out But if any man examining inwardly his own Conscience have committed some high and capital offence as if by hearing false witness he have quelled and betrayed his faith and by rashness of perjury have violated the sacred name of Truth if with the mire of lustful uncleanness he have sullied the veil of Baptism and the gorgeous robe of Virginity if by being the cause of any mans death he have been the death of the new man within himself if by conference with Southsayers Wizards and Charmers he hath enthralled himself to Satan These and such like committed crimes cannot throughly be taken away with ordinary moderate and secret satisfaction but greater causes do require greater and sharper remedies they need such remedies as are not only sharp but solemn open and publick Again Let that soul saith he answer me which through pernicious shame fastness it now so abasht to acknowledge his Sin in conspectu fratrum before his brethren as he should have been abasht to commit the same What will be do in the presence of that Divine Tribunal where he is to stand arraigned in the Assembly of a glorious and celestial host I will hereunto adde but St. Ambrose's testimony For the places which I might alledge are more then the cause it self needeth There are many saith he who fearing the judgement that is to come and feeling inward remorse of conscience when they have offered themselves unto penitency and are enjoyned what they shall do give back for the only skar which they think that publick supplication will put them unto He speaketh of them which sought voluntarily to be penanced and yet withdrew themselves from open confession which they that were penitents for publick crimes could not possibly have done and therefore it cannot be said he meaneth any other then secret Sinners in that place Gennadius a Presbyter of Marsiles in his book touching Ecclesiastical assertions maketh but two kinds of confession necessary the one in private to God alone for smaller offences the other open when crimes committed are hainous and great Although saith he a man be bitten with conscience of Sin let his will be from thenceforward to Sin no more let him before he communicate satisfie with tears and prayers and then putting his trust in the mercy of Almighty God whose want is to yield godly confession let him boldly receive the Sacrament But I speak this of such as have not burthened themselves with capital Sins Them I exhort to satisfie first by publick penance that so being reconciled by the sentence of the Priest they may communicate safely with others Thus still we hear of publick confessions although the crimes themselves discovered were not publick we hear that the cause of such confessions was not the openness but the greatness of mens offences finally we hear that the same being now held by the Church of Rome to be Sacramental were the onely penitential Confessions used in the Church for a long time and esteemed as necessary remedies against Sin They which will find Auricular Confessions in St. Cyprian therefore must seek out some other passage then that which Bellarmine alledgeth Whereas in smaller faults which are not committed against the Lord himself there is a competent time assigned unto Penitency and that confession is made after that observation and tryal had been bad of the Penitents behaviour neither may any communicate till the Bishop and Clergy have laid their hands upon him how much more ought all things to be warily and stayedly observed according to the Discipline of the Lord in these most grievous and extream crimes S. Cyprians speech is against rashness in admitting Idolaters to the holy Communion before they had shewed sufficient Repentance considering that other offenders were forced to stay out their time and that they made not their publick confession which was the last act of Penitency till their Life and Conversation had been seen into not with the eye of Auricular Scrutiny but of Pastoral Observation according to that in the
and what himself did wish had been otherwise As for Sozomen his correspondency with Hereticks having shewed to what end the Church did first ordain Penitentiaries he addeth immediately that Novatianists which had no care of Repentance could have no need of this Office Are these the words of a Friend or Enemy Besides in the entrace of that whole Narration Not to sinne saith he at all would require a Nature more divine than ours is But God hath commanded to pardon Sinners yea although they transgresse and offend often Could there be any thing spoken more directly opposite to the Doctrine of Novatian Eudaemon was Presbyter under Nectarius To Novatianists the Emperour gave liberty of using their Religion quietly by themselves under a Bishop of their own even within the City for that they stood with the Church in defence of the Catholick Faith against all other Hereticks besides Had therefore Eudaemon favoured their heresie their Camps were not pitched so farr off but he might at all times have found easie accesse unto them Is there any man that hath lived with him and hath touched him that way if not why suspect we him more than Nectarius Their report touching Grecian Catholick Bishops who gave approbation to that which was done and did also the like themselves in their own Churches we have no reason to discredit without some manifest and clear evidence brought against it For of Catholick Bishops no likelihood but that their greatest respect to Nectarius a man honored in those parts no lesse than the Bishop of Rome himself in the Western Churches brought them both easily and speedily unto conformity with him Arrians Eunomians Apollinarians and the rest that stood divided from the Church held their Penitentiaries as before Novatianists from the beginning had never any because their opinion touching Penitency was against the practice of the Church therein and a cause why they severed themselves from the Church so that the very state of things as they then stood giveth great shew of probability to his speech who hath affirmed That they onely which held the Sonne consubstantial with the Father and Novatianists which joyned with them in the same Opinion had no Penitentiaries in their Churches the rest retained them By this it appeareth therefore how Baronius finding the Relation plain that Nectarius did abolish even those private secret Confessions which the People had been before accustomed to make to him that was Penitentiary laboureth what he may to discredit the Authors of the Report and to leave it imprinted in mens mindes that whereas Nectarius did but abrogate publick Confession Novatianists have maliciously forged the abolition of Private as if the oddes between these two were so great in the ballance of their Judgement which equally hated or contemned both or as if it were not more clear than light that the first alteration which established Penitentiaries took away the burthen of Publick Confession in that kinde of Penitents and therefore the second must either abrogate Private or nothing Cardinal Bellarmine therefore finding that against the Writers of the History it is but in vain to stand upon so doubtful terms and exceptions endeavoureth mightily to prove even by their report no other Confession taken away then Publick which Penitentiaries used in Private to impose upon Publick Offenders For why It is saith he very certain that the Name of Penitents in the Fathers Writings signifieth onely Publick Penitents certain that to hear the Confessions of the rest now more than one could possibly have done certain that Sozomen to shew how the Latine Church retained in his time what the Greek had clean cast off declareth the whole Order of Publick Penitency used in the Church of Rome but of Private he maketh no mention And in these Considerations Bellarmine will have it the meaning both of Socrates and Sozomen that the former Episcopal Constitution which first did erect Penitentiaries could not concern any other Offenders than such as Publickly had sinned after Baptisme That onely they were prohibited to come to the Holy Communion except they did first in secret confesse all their Sinnes to the Penitentiary by his appointment openly acknowledge their open Crimes and doe publick Penance for them That whereas before Novatian's uprising no man was constrainable to confesse publickly any Sinne this Canon enforced Publick Offenders thereunto till such time as Nectarius thought good to extinguish the Practice thereof Let us examine therefore these subtile and fine Conjectures whether they be able to hold the touch It seemeth good saith Socrates to put down the office of these Priests which had charge of Penitency what charge that was the kindes of Penitency then usual must make manifest There is often speech in the Fathers Writings In their Books frequent mention of Penitency exercised within the Chambers of our Heart and seen of God and not communicated to any other the whole charge of which Penitency is imposed of God and doth rest upon the Sinner himself But if Penitents in secret being guilty of Crimes whereby they knew they had made themselves unfit Guests for the Table of our Lord did seek direction for their better performance of that which should set them clear it was in this case the Penitentiaries Office to take their Confessions to advise them the best way he could for their Souls good to admonish them to counsel them but not to lay upon them more than private Penance As for notorious wicked Persons whose Crimes were known to convict judge and punish them was the Office of the Ecclesiastical Consistory Penitentiaries had their Institution to another end But unlesse we imagine that the antient time knew no other Repentance then publick or that they had little occasion to speak of any other Repentance or else that in speaking thereof they used continually some other Name and not the name of Repentance whereby to express private Penitency how standeth it with reason that whensoever they write of Penitents it should be thought they meant only Publick Penitents The truth is they handle all three kindes but private and voluntary Repentance much oftner as being of farr more general use whereas Publick was but incident unto few and not oftner than once incident unto any Howbeit because they do not distinguish one kinde of Penitency from another by difference of Names our safest way for Construction is to follow circumstance of Matter which in this Narration will not yield it self applyable onely unto Publick penance do what they can that would so expound it They boldly and confidently affirm That no man being compellable to confesse publickly any Sinne before Novatius time the end of instituting Penitentiaries afterwards in the Church was that by them men might be constrained unto publick Confession Is there any Record in the World which doth testifie this to be true There is that testifie the plain contrary For Sozomen declaring purposely the cause of their Institution saith That whereas men openly craving Pardon at
Satisfaction Penitency thrown out of men's hearts the remembrance of that heaviest and last Judgement clean banish'd the wounds of dying men which should be healed are covered the stroke of death which hath gone as deep as any bowels are to receive it is over-cast with the sleight shew of a cloudy look From the Altar of Satan to the holy Table of the Lord men are not afraid to come even belching in a manner the sacrificed morsels they have eaten yea their jaws yet breathing out the irksome savour of their former contagious wickedness they seize upon the blessed body of our Lord nothing terrified with that dreadful commination which saith Whosoever eateth and drinketh unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of Christ. They vainly think it to be peace which is gotten before they be purged of their faults before their crime be solemnly confest before their Conscience be cleared by the sacrifice and imposition of the Priest's hands and before they have pacified the indignation of God Why term they that a Favour which is an Injury Wherefore cloak they Impiety with the name of charitable Indulgence Such facility giveth not but rather taketh away peace and is it self another fresh Persecution or tryal whereby that fraudulent Enemy maketh a secret havock of such as before he had overthrown and now to the end that he may clean swallow them he casteth Sorrow into a dead sleep putteth Grief to silence wipeth away the memory of Faults newly done smothereth the sighs that should rise from a contrite Spirit dryeth up Eyes which ought to send forth rivers of Tears and permitteth not God to be pacified withfull repentance whom haynous and enormous crimes have displeased By this then we see that in Saint Cyprian's judgement all Absolutions are void frustrate and of no effect without sufficient Repentance first shewed Whereas contrariwise if true and full Satisfaction have gone before the sentence of man here given is ratified of God in Heaven according to our Saviours own sacred Testimony Whose sins ye remit they are remitted By what works in the Vertue and by what in the Discipline of Repentance we are said to satisfie either God or men cannot now be thought obscure As for the Inventors of Sacramental Satisfaction they have both altered the natural order heretofore kept in the Church by bringing in a strange preposterous course to absolve before Satisfaction be made and moreover by this their misordered practise are grown into sundry errours concerning the end whereunto it is referred They imagine beyond all conceit of Antiquity that when God doth remit Sin and the punishment eternal thereunto belonging he reserveth the torments of hell-fire to be nevertheless endured for a time either shorter or longer according to the quality of men's Crimes Yet so that there is between God and man a certain Composition as it were or Contract by vertue whereof works assigned by the Priest to be done after Absolution shall satisfie God as touching the punishment which he otherwise would inflict for sin pardoned and forgiven Now because they cannot assure any man that if he performeth what the Priest appointeth it shall suffice This I say because they cannot do in as much as the Priest hath no power to determine or define of equivalency between Sins and Satisfactions And yet if a Penitent depart this life the debt of Satisfaction being either in whole or in part un-discharged they stedfastly hold that the Soul must remain in unspeakable torment till all be paid Therefore for help and mittigation in this Case they advise men to set certain Copes-mates on work whose Prayers and Sacrifices may satisfie God for such Souls as depart in debt Hence have arisen the infinite Pensions of their Priests the building of so many Altars and Tombs the enriching of so many Churches with so many glorious costly Gifts the bequeathing of Lands and ample Possessions to Religious Companies even with utter forgetfulness of Friends Parents Wife and Children all natural affection giving place unto that desire which men doubtful of their own estate have to deliver their Soals from torment after death Yet behold even this being done how farr forth it shall avail they are not sure And therefore the last upshot unto all their former Inventions is that as every action of Christ did both ment for himself and satisfie partly for the eternal and partly for the temporal punishment due unto men for sin So his Saints have obtained the like priviledge of Grace making every good work they do not only meritorious in their own behalf but satisfactory too for the benefit of others Or if having at any time grievously sinned they do more to satisfie God then he in justice can exact of look for at their hands the surplusage runneth to a common stock out of which treasury containing whatsoever Christ did by way of Satisfaction for temporal punishment together with the satisfactory force which resideth in all the vertuous works of Saints and in their Satisfactions whatsoever doth abound I say From hence they hold God satisfied for such arrerages as men behinde in accompt discharge not by other means and for disposition hereof as it is their Doctrine that Christ remitteth not eternal death without the Priests Absolution so without the grant of the Pope they cannot but teach it a like unpossible that Souls in Hell should receive any temporal release of pain The Sacrament of Pardon from him being to this effect no lesse necessary than the Priests Absolution to the other So that by this Postem-gate commeth in the whole mark of Papal Indulgences a Gain unestimable to him to others a Spoyl a scorn both to God and Man So many works of satisfaction pretended to be done by Christ by Saints and Martyrs so many vertuous acts possessed with satisfactory force and vertue so many supererogations in satisfying beyond the exigence of their own necessity And this that the Pope might make a Monopoly of all turning all to his own gain or at least to the gain of those which are his own Such facilitle they have to convert a pretended Sacrament into a Revenue Of Absolution of Penitents SIn is not helped but by being assecured of Pardon It resteth therefore to be considered what warrant we have concerning Forgivenesse when the Sentence of man absolveth us from Sinne committed against God At the words of our Saviour saying to the sick of the Palsey Son thy Sins are forgiven-thee Exception was taken by the Scribes who secretly reasoned against him Is any able to forgive Sins but only God Whereupon they condemned his speech as blasphemy the rest which believed him to be a Prophet sent from God saw no cause wherefore he might not as lawfully say and as truly to whomsoever amongst them God hath taken away thy Sins as Nathan they all knew had used the very like speech to whom David did not therefore impute blasphemy but imbraced as became him the words of truth
they have two shifts At first that in many Penitents there is but Attrition of heart which Attrition they define to be Grief proceeding from Fear without Love and to these they say Absolution doth give that Contrition whereby men are really purged from Sinne. Secondly that even where Contrition or Inward Repentance doth cleanse without Absolution the reason why it commeth so to passe is Because such Contrites intend and desire Absolution though they have it not Which two things granted The one that Absolution given maketh them contrite that are not the other even in them which are contrite the cause why God remitteth Sinne is the purpose or desire they have to receive Absolution we are not to stand against a sequel so clear and manifest as this that alwayes remission of Sinne proceedeth from Absolution either had or desired But should a reasonable man give credit to their bare Conceit and because their Positions have driven them to imagine Absolving of unsufficiently-disposed Penitents to be a real creating of further vertue in them must all other men think it due Let them cancel hence forward and blot out of all their Books those old Cautions touching Necessity of Wisdome lest Priests should inconsiderately absolve any man in whom there were not apparent tokens of true Repentance which to do was in Saint Cyprians Judgement Pestilent Deceit and Flattery not only not available but hurtful to them that had transgrest a frivolous frustrate and false peace such as caused the unrighteous to trust to a lye and destroyed them unto whom it promised safety What needeth Observation whether Penitents have Worthiness and bring Contrition if the words of Absolution do infuse Contrition Have they born us all this while in hand that Contrition is a part of the matter of their Sacrament a Condition or Preparation of the Minde towards Grace to be received by Absolution in the form of their Sacrament And must we now believe That the Form doth give the Matter That Absolution bestoweth Contrition and that the words do make presently of Saul David of Iudas Peter For what was the Penitency of Saul and Iudas but plain Attrition horrour of Sinne through fear of punishment without any long sense or taste of God's Mercy Their other Fiction imputing remission of Sinne to desire of Absolution from the Priest even in them which are truly contrite is an evasion somewhat more witty but no whit more possible for them to prove Belief of the World and Judgement to come Faith in the Promises and Sufferings of Christ for Mankinde Fear of his Majestie Love of his Mercy Grief for Sin Hope for Pardon Suit for Grace These we know to be the Elements of true Contrition suppose that besides all this God did also command that every Penitent should seek his Absolution at the Priests hands where so many Causes are concurring unto one effect have they any reason to impute the whole effect unto one any reason in the choyse of that one to pass by Faith Fear Love Humility Hope Prayer whatsoever else and to enthronize above them all A desire of Absolution from the Priest as if in the whole work of Man's Repentance God did regard and accept nothing but for and in consideration of this Why do the Tridentine Council impute it to Charity That Contrites are reconciled in Gods sight before they receive the Sacrament of Penance if desired Absolution be the true Cause But let this passe how it will seeing the Question is not What vertue God may accept in penitent Sinners but what Grace Absolution actually given doth really bestow upon them If it were as they would have it That God regarding the Humiliation of a Contrite Spirit because there is joyned therewith a lowly desire of the Sacrament of Priestly Absolution pardoneth immediately and forgiveth all Offences Doth this any thing help to prove that Absolution received afterward from the Priest can more than declare him already pardoned which did desire it To desire Absolution presupposing it commanded is Obedience and Obedience in that Case is a Branch of the vertue of Repentance which Vertue being thereby made effectual to the taking away of Sinnes without the Sacrament of Repentance Is it not an Argument that the Sacrament of Absolution hath here no efficacy but the virtue of Contrition worketh all For how should any Effect ensue from Causes which actually are not The Sacrament must be applyed wheresoever any Grace doth proceed from it So that where it is but desired only whatsoever may follow upon Gods acceptation of this desire the Sacrament afterwards received can be no cause thereof Therefore the further we wade the better we see it still appears That the Priest doth never in Absolution no not so much as by way of Service and Ministry really either forgive them take away the uncleanness or remove the punishment of Sinne but if the Party penitent come contrite he hath by their own grant Absolution before Absolution if not contrite although the Priest should seem a thousand times to Absolve him all were in vain For which cause the Antients and better sort of their School Divines Abulensis Alexander Hales and Bonaventurt ascribe the real abolition of Sinne and eternal punishment to the mere pardon of Almighty God without dependency upon the Priests Absolution as a cause to effect the same His Absolution hath in their Doctrine certain other effects specified but this denyed Wherefore having hitherto spoken of the vertue of Repentance required of the Discipline of Repentance which Christ did establish and of the Sacrament of Repentance invented sithence against the pretended force of Humane Absolution in Sacramental Penitency Let it suffice thus far to have shewed how God alone doth truly give the vertue of Repentance alone procure and private Ministerial Absolution but declare remission of Sinnes Now the last and sometimes hardest to be satisfied by Repentance are our Mindes and our Mindes we have then satisfied when the Conscience is of guilty become clear For as long as we are in our selves privy to our own most hainous Crimes but without sense of God's Mercy and Grace towards us unlesse the Heart be either brutish for want of Knowledge or altogether hardned by wilful Atheisme the remorse of Sinne is in it as the deadly sting of a Serpent Which point since very Infidels and Heathens have observed in the nature of Sinne for the disease they felt though they knew no remedy to help it we are not rashly to despise those Sentences which are the testimonies of their experience touching this point They knew that the eye of a Man 's own Conscience is more to be feared by evil doers than the presence of a thousand Witnesses in as much as the mouths of other Accusers are many wayes stopt the ears of the accused not alwayes subject to glowing with contumely and exprobation whereas a guilty Minde being forced to be still both a Martyr and a
for so many years approved and betake our selves unto a Regiment neither appointed of God himself as they who favour it pretend nor till yesterday ever heard of among men By the Jews Festus was much complained of as being a Governor marvellous corrupt and almost intolerable Such notwithstanding were they who came after him that men which thought the publique condition most afflicted under Festur began to wish they had him again and to esteem him a Ruler commendable Great things are hoped for at the hands of these new Presidents whom Reformation would bring in Notwithstanding the time may come when Bishops whose Regiment doth now seem a yoke so heavy to bear will be longed for again even by them that are the readiest to have it taken from off their necks But in the hands of Divine Providence we leave the ordering of all such events and come now to the Question it self which is raised concerning Bishops For the better understanding whereof we must before hand set down what is meant when in this Question we name a Bishop II. For whatsoever we bring from Antiquity by way of defence in this cause of Bishops it is cast off as impertinent matter all is wiped away with an odd kind of shifting Answer That the Bishops which now are be not like unto them which were We therefore beseech all indifferent Judges to weigh sincerely with themselves how the case doth stand If it should be at this day a controversie whether Kingly Regiment were lawful or no peradventure in defence thereof the long continuance which it hath had sithence the first beginning might be alleadged mention perhaps might be made what Kings there were of old even in Abrahams time what Soveraign Princes both before and after Suppose that herein some man purposely bending his wit against Sovereignty should think to elude all such allegations by making ample discovery through a number of particularities wherein the Kings that are do differ from those that have been and should therefore in the end conclude That such ancient examples are no convenient proofs of that Royalty which is now in use Surely for decision of truth in this case there were no remedy but only to shew the nature of Sovereignty to sever it from accidental properties to make it clear that ancient and present Regality are one and the same in substance how great odds soever otherwise may seem to be between them In like manner whereas a Question of late hath grown whether Ecclesiastical Regiment by Bishops be lawful in the Church of Christ or no In which Question they that hold the Negative being pressed with that generally received order according whereunto the most renowned Lights of the Christian World have governed the same in every age as Bishops seeing their manner is to reply that such Bishops as those ancient were ours are not There is no remedy but to shew that to be a Bishop is now the self same thing which it hath been that one definition agreeth fully and truly as well to those elder as to these latter Bishops Sundry dissimilitudes we grant there are which notwithstanding are not such that they cause any equivocation in the name whereby we should think a Bishop in those times to have had a clean other definition then doth rightly agree unto Bishops as they are now Many things there are in the state of Bishops which the times have changed Many a Parsonage at this day is larger then some ancient Bishopricks were many an antient Bishop poorer then at this day sundry under them in degree The simple hereupon lacking judgement and knowledge to discern between the nature of things which changeth not and these outward variable accidents are made beleeve that a Bishop heretofore and now are things in their very nature so distinct that they cannot be judged the same Yet to men that have any part of skill what more evident and plain in Bishops then that augmentation or diminution in their precincts allowances priviledges and such like do make a difference indeed but no essential difference between one Bishop and another As for those things in regard whereof we use properly to term them Bishops those things whereby they essentially differ from other Pastors those things which the natural definition of a Bishop must contain what one of them is there more or less appliable unto Bishops now than of old The name Bishop hath been borrowed from the Grecians with whom it signifieth One which hath principal charge to guide and Oversee others The same word in Ecclesiastical writings being applied unto Church-governors at the first unto all and not unto the chiefest only grew in short time peculiar and proper to signifie such Episcopal Authority alone as the chiefest Governors exercised over the rest for with all Names this is usual that in as much as they are not given till the things whereunto they are given have bin sometime first observed therefore generally Things are antienter then the Names whereby they are called Again sith the first things that grow into general observation and do thereby give men occasion to find Names for them are those which being in many Subjects are thereby the easier the oftner and the more universally noted it followeth that names imposed to signifie common qualities or operations are ancienter then is the restraint of those names to note an excellency of such qualities or operations in some one or few amongst others For example the name Disciple being invented to signifie generally a learner it cannot choose but in that signification be more ancient then when it signifieth as it were by a kind of appropriation those Learners who being taught of Christ were in that respect termed Disciples by an excellency The like is to be seen in the name Apostle the use whereof to signifie a messenger must needs be more ancient then that use which restraineth it unto Messengers sent concerning Evangelical affairs yea this use more ancient then that whereby the same word is yet restrained farther to signifie only those whom our Saviour himself immediately did send After the same manner the Title or Name of a Bishop having been used of old to signifie both an Ecclesiastical Overseer in general and more particularly also a Principal Ecclesiastical Overseer it followeth that this latter restrained signification is not so ancient as the former being more common Yet because the things themselves are always ancienter then their names therefore that thing which the restrained use of the word doth import is likewise ancienter then the restraint of the word is and consequently that power of chief Ecclesiastical Overseers which the term of a Bishop importeth was before the restrained use of the name which doth import it Wherefore a lame and an impotent kind of reasoning it is when men go about to prove that in the Apostles times there was no such thing as the restrained name of a Bishop doth now signifie because in their writings
ended their days did not yet live himself to see the Presbyters of Alexandria othewise then subject unto a Bishop So that we cannot with any truth so interpret his words as to mean that in the Church of Alexandria there had been Bishops indued with Superiority over Presbyters from St. Marks time only till the time of Heraclas and of Dionysius Wherefore that St. Ierom may receive a more probable interpretation then this We answer that generally oâ Regiment by Bishops and what term of continuance it had in the Church of Alexandria it was no part of his mind to speak but to note one onely circumstance belonging to the manner of their election which circumstance is that in Alexandria they used to chuse their Bishops altogether out of the colledge of their own Presbyters and neither from abroad nor out of any other inferior order of the Clergy whereas oftentimes elsewhere the use was to chuse as well from abroad as at home as well inferior unto Presbyters as Presbyters when they saw occasion This custome saith he the Church of Alexandria did always keep till in Heraclas and Dionysius they began to do otherwise These two were the very first not chose out of their Colledge of Presbyters The drift and purpose of S. Ieroms speech doth plainly show what his meaning was for whereas some did over-extol the Office of the Deacon in the Church of Rome where Deacons being grown great through wealth challenged place above Presbyters S. Ierome to abate this insolency writing to Evagrius diminisheth by all means the Deacons estimation and lifteth up Presbyters as far as possible the truth might bear An attendant saith he upon Tables and Widows proudly to exalt himself above them at whose prayers is made the body and blood of Christ above them between whom and Bishops there was at the first for a time no difference neither in authority nor in title And whereas after schisms and contentions made it necessary that some one should be placed over them by which occasion the title of Bishop became proper unto that one yet was that one chosen out of the Presbyters as being the chiefest the highest the worthiest degree of the Clergie and not out of Deacons in which consideration also it seemeth that in Alexandria even from St. Mark to Heraclas and Dionysius Bishops there the Presbyters evermore have chosen one of themselves and not a Deacon at any time to be their Bishop Nor let any man think that Christ hath one Church in Rome and another in the rest of the world that in Rome he alloweth Deacons to be honoured above Presbyters and otherwhere will have them to be in the next degree to the Bishop If it be deemed that abroad where Bishops are poorer the Presbyters under them may be the next unto them in honour but at Rome where the Bishop hath amplerevenâes the Deacons whose estate is nearest for wealth may be also for estimation the next unto him We must know that a Bishop in the meanest City is no less a Bishop then he who is seated in the greatest the countenance of a rich and the meanness of a poor estate doth make no odds between Bishops and therefore if a Presbyter at Engubium be the next in degree to a Bishop surely even at Rome it ought in reason to be so likewise and not a Deacon for wealths sake only to be above who by order should be and elsewhere is underneath a Presbyter But ye will say that according to the custom of Rome a Deacon presenteth unto the Bishop him which standeth to be ordained Presbyter and upon the Deacons testimony given concerning his fitness he receiveth at the Bishops hands Oraïnation So that in Rome the Deacon having this special preheminence the Presbyter ought there to give place unto him Wherefore is the custom of one City brought against the practice of the whole World The pancity of Deacons in the Church of Rome hath gotten the credit as unto Presbyters their multitude hath been cause of contempt Howbeit even in the Church of Rome Presbyters sit and Deacons stand an Argument as strong against the superiority of Deacons as the fore-alleadged reason doth seem for it Besides whosoever is promoted must needs be raised from a lower degree to an higher wherefore either let him which is Presbyter be made a Deacon that so the Deacon may appear to be the greater or if of Deacons Presbyters be made let them know themselves to be in regard of Deacons though below in gain yet above in Office And to the end we may understand that those Apostolical Orders are taken out of the Old Testament what Aaron and his Sons and the Levites were in the Temple the same in the Church may â Bishops and Presbyters and Deacons challenge unto themselves This is the very drift and substance this the true construction and sense of St. Ieroms whole discourse in that Epistle Which I have therefore endeavoured the more at large to explain because no one thing is less effectual or more usual to be alledged against the antient Authority of Bishops concerning whose Government St. Ieroms own words otherwhere are sufficient to show his opinion that this Order was not only in Alexandria so ancient but even an ancient in other Churches We have before alledged his testimony touching Iames the Bishop of Ierusalem As for Bishops in other Churches on the first of the Epistle to Titus thus he speaketh Till through instinct of the devil there grew in the Church factions and among the people it began to be profest I am of Paul I of Apollos and I of Cephas Churches were governed by the common advice of Presbyters but when every one began to reckon those whom himself had baptized his own and not Christs it was decreed IN THE WHOLE WORLD that one chosen out of the Presbyters should be placed above the rest to whom all care of the Church should belong and so the seeds of schism be removed If it be so that by St. Ieroms own Confession this order was not then begun when people in the Apostles absence began to be divided into factions by their Teachers and to rehearse I am of Paul but that even at the very first appointment thereof was agreed upon and received throughout the world how shall a man be perswaded that the same Ierom thought it so ancient no-where saving in Alexandria one only Church of the whole world A sentence there is indeed of St. Ieroms which bring not throughly considered and weighed may cause his meaning so to be taken as if he judged Episcopal regiment to have been the Churches invention long after and not the Apostles own institution as namely when he admonisheth Bishops in this manner As therefore Presbyters do know that the custom of the Church makes them subject to the Bishop which is set over them so let Bishops know that custom rather then the truth of any Ordinance of the Lord maketh them
much concerning that Local Compass which was antiently set out to Bishops within the bounds and limits whereof we finde that they did accordingly exercise that Episcopal Authority and power which they had over the Church of Christ. IX The first whom we read to have bent themselves against the Superiority of Bishops were Aerius and his Followers Aerius seeking to be made a Bishop could not brook that Eustathius was thereunto preferred before him Whereas therefore he saw himself unable to rise to that greatness which his ambitious pride did affect his way of revenge was to try what Wit being sharpned with envy and malice could do in raising a new seditious opinion that the Superiority which Bishops had was a thing which they should not have that a Bishop might not ordain and that a Bishop ought not any way to be distinguished from a Presbyter For so doth St. Augustin deliver the opinion of Aerius Epiphanius not so plainly nor so directly but after a more Rhetorical sort His Speech was rather furious than convenient for man to use What is saith he a Bishop more than a Presbyter The one doth differ from the other nothing For their Order as one their Honour one one their Dignity A Bishop imposeth his hands so doth a Presbyter A Bishop baptizeth the like doth a Presbyter The Bishop is a Minister of Divine Service a Presbyter is the same The Bishop sitteth as a Iudge in a Throne even the Presbyter fitteth also A Presbyter therefore doing thus far the self-same thing which a Bishop did it was by Aerius inforced that they ought not in any thing to differ Are we to think Aerius had wrong in being judged an Heretick for holding this opinion Surely if Heresie be an error falsely fathered upon Scriptures but indeed repugnant to the truth of the Word of God and by the consent of the universal Church in the Councils or in her contrary uniform practice throughout the whole world declared to be such and the opinion of Aerius in this point be a plain error of that nature there is no remedy but Aerius so schismatically and stifly maintaining it must even stand where Epiphanius and Augustin have placed him An error repugnant unto the truth of the Word of God is held by them whosoever they be that stand in defence of any Conclusion drawn erroneously out of Scripture and untruely thereon fathered The opinion of Aerius therefore being falsely collected out of Scripture must needs be acknowledged an error repugnant unto the truth of the Word of God His opinion was that there ought not to be any difference between a Bishop and a Presbyter His grounds and reasons for this Opinion were Sentences of Scripture Under pretence of which Sentences whereby it seemed that Bishops and Presbyters at the first did not differ it was concluded by Aerius that the Church did ill in permitting any difference to be made The Answer which Epiphanius maketh unto some part of the proofs by Aerius alleged was not greatly studied or labored for through a contempt of so base an error for this himself did perceive and profess yieldeth he thereof expresly this reason Men that have wit do evidently see that all this is meer foolishness But how vain and ridiculous soever his opinion seemed unto wise men with it Aerius deceived many for which cause somewhat was convenient to be said against it And in that very extemporal slightness which Epiphanius there useth albeit the answer made to Aerius be in part but raw yet ought not hereby the Truth to finde any less favour than in other Causes it doth where we do not therefore judge Heresie to have the better because now and then it alledgeth that for it self which Defenders of Truth do not always so fully answer Let it therefore suffice that Aerius did bring nothing unanswerable The weak Solutions which the one doth give are to us no prejudice against the Cause as long as the others oppositions are of no greater strength and validity Did not Aerius trow you deserve to be esteemed as a new Apollos mighty and powerful in the Word which could for maintenance of his Cause bring forth so plain Divine Authorities to prove by the Apostles own Writings that Bishops ought not in any thing to differ from other Presbyters For example where it is said that Presbyters made Timothy Bishop is it not clear that a Bishop should not differ from a Presbyter by having power of Ordination Again if a Bishop might by Order be distinguished from a Presbyter would the Apostle have given as he doth unto Presbyters the Title of Bishops These were the invincible demonstrations wherewith Aerius did so fiercely assault Bishops But the Sentence of Aerius perhaps was only that the difference between a Bishop and a Presbyter hath grown by the order and custom of the Church the Word of God not appointing that any such difference should be Well let Aerius then finde the favour to have his Sentence so construed yet his fault in condemning the order of the Church his not submitting himself unto that Order the Schism which he caused in the Church about it who can excuse No the truth is that these things did even necessarily ensue by force of the very opinion which he and his followers did hold His conclusion was That there ought to be no difference between a Presbyter and a Bishop His proofs those Scripture-sentences which make mention of Bishops and Presbyters without any such distinction or difference So that if between his Conclusion and the Proofs whereby he laboured to strengthen the same there be any shew of coherence at all we must of necessity confess that when Aerius did plead There is by the Word of God no difference between a Presbyter and a Bishop his meaning was not only that the Word of God it self appointeth nor but that it enforceth on us the duty of not appointing nor allowing that any such difference should be made X. And of the self-same minde are the Enemies of Government by Bishops even at this present day They hold as Aerius did that if Christ and his Apostles were obeyed a Bishop should not be permitted to ordain that between a Presbyter and a Bishop the Word of God alloweth not any inequality or difference to be made that their Order their Authority their Power ought to be one that it is but by usurpation and corruption that the one sort are suffered to have rule of the other or to be any way superiour unto them Which opinion having now so many Defenders shall never be able while the World doth stand to finde in some believing Antiquity as much as one which hath given it countenance or born any friendly affection towards it Touching these men therefore whose desire is to have all equal three ways there are whereby they usually oppugn the received Order of the Church of Christ. First by disgracing the inequality of Pastors as a new
Government is confirmed yea strengthened it is and ratified even by the not establishment thereof in all Churches every where at the first 2. When they further dispute That if any such thing were usedful Christ would in Scripture have set down particular Statutes and Laws appointing that Bishops should be made and prescribing in what order even as the Law doth for all kinde of Officers which were needful in the Iewish Regiment might not a man that would bend his wit to maintain the fury of the Petrobrusian Hereticks in pulling down Oratories use the self-same argument with as much countenance of reason If it were needful that we should assemble our selves in Churches would that God which taught the Iews so exactly the frame of their sumptuous Temple leave us no particular instructions in writing no not so much at which way to lay any one stone Surely such kinde of Argumentation doth not so strengthen the sinews of their cause as weaken the credit of their Judgement which are led therewith 3. And whereas Thirdly in disproof of that use which Episcopal Authority hath in Judgement of Spiritual Causes they bring forth the verdict of Cyprian who saith That equity requireth every man's Cause to be heard where the fault he was charged with was committed forasmuch as there they may have both Accusers and Witnesses in the Cause This Argument grounding it self on Principles no lesse true in Civil than in Ecclesiastical Causes unless it be qualified with some exceptions or limitations over-turneth the highest Tribunal Seats both in Church and Common-wealth it taketh utterly away all appeals it secretly condemneth even the blessed Apostle himself as having transgressed the law of Equity by his appeal from the Court of Iudea unto those higher which were in Rome The generality of such kinde of axioms deceiveth unless it be construed with such cautions as the matter whereunto they are applyable doth require An usual and ordinary transportation of causes out of Africa into Italy out of one Kingdom into another as discontented Persons list which was the thing which Cyprian disalloweth may be unequal and unmeet and yet not therefore a thing unnecessary to have the Courts erectted in higher places and judgement committed unto greater Persons to whom the meaner may bring their causes either by way of appeal ot otherwise to be determined according to the order of Justice which hath been always observed every where in Civil States and is no less requisite also for the State of the Church of God The Reasons which teach it to be expedient for the one will shew it to be for the other at leastwise not unnecessary Inequality of Pastors is an Ordinance both Divine and profitable Their exceptions against it in these two respects we have shewed to be altogether causless unreasonable and unjust XIV The next thing which they upbraid us with is the difference between that inequality of Pastors which hath been of old and which now is For at length they grant That the superiority of Bishops and of Arch-bishops is somewhat antient but no such kinde of Superiority as ours have By the Laws of our Discipline a Bishop may ordain without asking the Peoples consent a Bishop may excommunicate and release alone a Bishop may imprison a Bishop may bear Civil Office in the Realm a Bishop may be a Counsellor of State these thing antient Bishops neither did nor might do Be it granted that ordinarily neither in elections nor deprivations neither in excommunicating nor in releasing the excommunicate in none of the weighty affairs of Government Bishops of old were wont to do any thing without consultation with their Clergy and consent of the People under them Be it granted that the same Bishops did neither touch any man with corporal punishment nor meddle with secular affairs and Offices the whole Clergy of God being then tyed by the strict and severe Canons of the Church to use no other than ghostly power to attend no other business than heavenly Tarquinius was in the Roman Common-wealth deservedly hated of whose unorderly proceedings the History speaketh thus Hic Regum primus traditum à Prioribus morem de omnibus Senatum consulendi solvit domesticis Consillis Rempub. administravit bellum pacem foedera societates perse ipsum cum quibus voluit injussu Populi ac Senatus fecit diremitque Against Bishops the like is objected That they are Invaders of other mens right and by intolerable usurpation take upon them to do that alone wherein antient Laws have appointed that others not they onely should bear sway Let the Case of Bishops he put not in such sort as it is but even as their very heavyest Adversaries would devise it Suppose that Bishops at the first had encroached upon the Church that by sleights and cunning practises they had appropriated Ecclesiastical as Augustus did Imperial power that they had taken the advantage of mens inclinable affections which did not suffer them for Revenue-sake to be suspected of Ambition that in the mean while their usurpation had gone forward by certain easie and unsensible degrees that being not discerned in the growth when it was thus farr grown as we now see it hath proceeded the world at length perceiving there was just cause of complaint but no place of remedy left had assented unto it by a general secret agreement to bear it now as an helpless evil all this supposed for certain and true yet surely a thing of this nature as for the Superiour to do that alone unto which of right the consent of some other Inferiours should have been required by them though it had an indirect entrance at the first must needs through continuance of so many ages as this hath stood be made now a thing more natural to the Church than that it should be opprest with the mention of contrary Orders worn so many ages since quite and clean out of ure But with Bishops the case is otherwise For in doing that by themselves which others together with them have been accustomed to do they do not any thing but that whereunto they have been upon just occasion authorized by orderly means All things natural have in them naturally more or less the power of providing for their own safety And as each particular man hath this power so every Politick Society of men must needs have the same that thereby the whole may provide for the good of all parts therein For other benefit we have not any by sorting our selves into Politick Societies saving only that by this mean each part hath that relief which the vertue of the whole is able to yield it The Church therefore being a Politick Society or Body cannot possibly want the power of providing for it self And the chiefest part of that power consisteth in the Authority of making Laws Now forasmuch as Corporations are perpetual the Laws of the antienter Church cannot chuse but binde the latter while they are in force But we
must note withal that because the body of the Church continueth the same it hath the same Authority still and may abrogate old Laws or make new as need shall require Wherefore vainly are the antient Canons and Constitutions objected as Laws when once they are either let secretly to dye by dis-usage or are openly abrogated by contrary Laws The Antient had cause to do no otherwise than they did and yet so strictly they judged not themselves in Conscience bound to observe those Orders but that in sundry cases they easily dispensed therewith which I suppose they would never have done had they esteemed them as things whereunto everlasting immutable and undispensible observation did belong The Bishop usually promoted none which were not first allowed as fit by conference had with the rest of his Clergy and with the People Notwithstanding in the case of Aurelius Saint Cyprian did otherwise In matters of Deliberation and Counsel for disposing of that which belongeth generally to the whole body of the Church or which being more particular is nevertheless of so great consequence that it needeth the force of many Judgements conferred in such things the common saying must necessarily take place An Eye cannot see that which Eyes can As for Clerical Ordinations there are no such reasons alledged against the Order which is but that it may be esteemed as good in every respect as that which hath been and in some considerations better at leastwise which is sufficient to our purpose it may be held in the Church of Christ without transgressing any Law either Antient or Late Divine or Human. which we ought to observe and keep The form of making Ecclesiastical Officers hath sundry parts neither are they all of equal moment When Deacons having not been before in the Church of Christ the Apostles saw it needful to have such ordained They first assemble the multitude and shew them how needful it is that Deacons be made Secondly they name unto them what number they judge convenient what quality the men must be of and to the People they commit the care of finding such out Thirdly the People hereunto assenting make their choyce of Stephen and the rest those chosen men they bring and present before the Apostles Howbeit all this doth not endue them with any Ecclesiastical Power But when so much was done the Apostles finding no cause to take exception did with Prayer and imposition of hands make them Deacons This was it which gave them their very being all other things besides were only preparations unto this Touching the form of making Presbyters although it be not wholly of purpose anywhere set down in the Apostles Writings yet sundry speeches there are which insinuate the chiefest things that belong unto that Action As when Paul and Barnabas are said to have fasted prayed and made Presbyters When Timothy is willed to lay hands suddenly on no man for fear of participating with other mens sins For this cause the Order of the Primitive Church was between Choyce and Ordination to have some space for such Probation and Tryal as the Apostle doth mention in Deacons saying Let them first be proved and then minister if so be they be found blameless Alexander Severus beholding in his time how careful the Church of Christ was especially for this point how after the choyce of their Pastors they used to publish the names of the Parties chosen and not to give them the final act of Approbation till they saw whether any lett or impediment would be alledged he gave Commandment That the like should also be done in his own Imperial Elections adding this as a Reason wherefore he so required namely For that both Christians and Iews being so wary about the Ordination of their Priests it seemed very unequal for him not to be in like sort circumspect to whom he committed the Government of Provinces containing power over mens both Estates and Lives This the Canon Law it self doth provide for requiring before Ordination scrutiny Let them diligently be examined three dayes together before the Sabbath and on the Sabbath let them be presented unto the Bishop And even this in effect also is the very use of the Church of England at all Solemne Ordaining of Ministers and if all Ordaining were Solemne I must confesse it were much the better The pretended disorder of the Church of England is that Bishops Ordain them to whose Election the People give no voyces and so the Bishops make them alone that is to say they give Ordination without Popular Election going before which antient Bishops neither did nor might do Now in very truth if the multitude have hereunto a right which right can never be translated from them for any cause then is there no remedy but we must yield that unto the lawful making of Ministers the voyce of the People is required and that according to the Adverse Parties Assertion such as make Ministers without asking the Peoples consent do but exercise a certain Tyranny At the first Erection of the Common-weals of Rome the People for so it was then fittest determined of all affairs Afterwards this growing troublesome their Senators did that for them which themselves before had done In the end all came to one man's hands and the Emperour alone was instead of many Senators In these things the experience of time may breed both Civil and Ecclesiastical change from that which hath been before received neither do latter things always violently exclude former but the one grawing less convenient then it hath been giveth place to that which is now become more That which was fit for the People themselves to do at the first might afterwards be more convenient for them to do by some other Which other is not thereby proved a Tyrant because he alone doth that which a multitude were wont to do unless by violence he take that Authority upon him against the Order of Law and without any publick appointment as with us if any did it should I suppose not long be safe for him so to do This Answer I hope will seem to be so much the more reasonable in that themselves who stand against us have furnish'd us therewith For whereas against the making of Ministers by Bishops alone their use hath been to object What sway the People did bear when Stephen and rest were ordained Deacons They begin to espy how their own Plat-form swerveth not a little from that example wherewith they controul the practices of others For touching the form of the Peoples concurrence in that Action they observe it not no they plainly profess that they are not in this point bound to be followers of the Apostles The Apostles Ordained whom the People had first chosen They hold that their Ecclesiastical Senate ought both to choose and also to Ordain Do not themselves then take away that which the Apostles gave the People namely the priviledge of chusing Ecclesiastical Officers They do But behold in what sort
that the affairs of Christians should be brought into publick judgement Howbeit not without comfort in our Lord are these travels undertaken by us for the hopes sake of eternal life to the end that with patience we may reap fruit So farr is Saint Augustin from thinking it unlawful for Pastors in such sort to judge Civil Causes that he plainly collecteth out of the Apostles words a necessity to undertake that duty yea himself he comforteth with the hope of a blessed reward in lieu of travel that way sustained Again even where whole Christian Kingdoms are how troublesome were it for Universities and other greater Collegiate Societies erected to serve as Nurseries unto the Church of Christ if every thing which civilly doth concern them were to be carried from their own peculiar Governors because for the most part they are as fittest it is they should be Persons Ecclesiastical Calling It was by the wisdom of our famous Predecessors foreseen how unfit this would be and hereupon provided by grant of special Charters that it might be as now it is in the Universities where their Vice-Chancellors being for the most part Professors of Divinity are nevertheless Civil Judges over them in the most of their ordinary Causes And to go yet some degrees further A thing impossible it is not neither altogether unusual for some who are of royal blood to be consecrated unto the Ministry of Jesus Christ and so to be Nurses of God's Church not only as the Prophet did fore-tell but also as the Apostle Saint Paul was Now in case the Crown should by this mean descend unto such Persons perhaps when they are the very last or perhaps the very best of their Race so that a greater benefit they are not able to bestow upon a Kingdom than by accepting their right therein shall the sanctity of their Order deprive them of that honour whereunto they have right by blood or shall it be a barr to shut out the publick good that may grow by their vertuous Regiment If not then must they cast off the Office which they received by Divine Imposition of hands or if they carry a more religious opinion concerning that heavenly Function it followeth that being invested as well with the one as the other they remain God's lawfully anointed both ways With men of skill and mature judgement there is of this so little doubt that concerning such as at this day are under the Archbishops of Ments Colen and Travers being both Archbishops and Princes of the Empire yea such as live within the Popes own Civil Territories there is no cause why any should deny to yield them civil obedience in any thing which they command not repugnant to Christian Piety yea even that civilly for such as are under them not to obey them were the part of seditious Persons Howbeit for Persons Ecclesiastical thus to exercise Civil Dominion of their own is more than when they onely sustain some Publick Office or deal in some business Civil being thereunto even by Supream Authority required As Nature doth not any thing in vain so neither Grace Wherefore if it please God to bless some Principal Attendants on his own Sanctuary and to endue them with extraordinary parts of excellency some in one kinde some in another surely a great derogation it were to the very honour of him who bestowed so precious Graces except they on whom he hath bestowed them should accordingly be imployed that the fruit of those Heavenly Gifts might extend it self unto the Body of the Common-wealth wherein they live which being of purpose instituted for so all Common-wealths are to the end that all might enjoy whatsoever good it pleaseth the Almighty to endue each one with must needs suffer loss when it hath not the gain which eminent civil hability in Ecclesiastical Persons is now and then found apt to afford Shall we then discommend the People of Milan for using Ambrose their Bishop as an Ambassadour about their Publick and Politick Affairs the Jews for electing their Priests sometimes to be Leaders in Warr David for making the High Priest his Chiefest Counsellour of State Finally all Christian Kings and Princes which have appointed unto like services Bishops or other of the Clergy under them No! they have done in this respect that which most sincere and religious wisdom alloweth Neither is it allowable only when either a kinde of necessity doth cast Civil Offices upon them or when they are thereunto preferred in regard of some extraordinary fitness but further also when there are even of right annexed unto some of their places or of course imposed upon certain of their Persons Functions of Dignity and Account in the Common-wealth albeit no other consideration be had therein save this that their credit and countenance may by such means be augmented A thing if ever to be respected surely most of all now when God himself is for his own sake generally no where honoured Religion almost no where no where religiously adored the Ministry of the Word and Sacraments of Christ a very cause of disgrace in the eyes both of high and low where it hath not somewhat besides it self to be countenanced with For unto this very pass things are come that the glory of God is constrained even to stand upon borrowed credit which yet were somewhat the more tolerable if there were not that disswade to lead iâ him No practise so vile but pretended Holynesse is made sometimes a Cloak to hide it The French King Philip Valois in his time made an Ordinance that all Prelates and Bishops shuââld be clean excluded from Parliaments where the Affairs of the Kingdom were handled pretending that a King with good Conscience cannot draw Pastors having Cure of Souls from so weighty a business to trouble their Heads with Consultations of State But irreligious intents are not able to hide themselves no not when Holiness is made their Cloak This is plain and simple truth That the counsels of wicked men hate always the presence of them whose vertue though it should not be able to prevail against their purposes would notwithstanding be unto their minds a secret corrosive and therefore till either by one shift or another they can bring all things to their own hands alone they are not secure Ordinances holler and better there stand as yet in force by the grace of Almighty God and the works of his Providence amongst us Let not Envy so far prevail as to make us account that a Blemish which if there be in us any spark of sound Judgement or of religious Conscience we must of necessity acknowledge to be one of the chiefest Ornaments unto this Land By the antient Laws whereof the Clergy being held for the chief of those Three Estates which together make up the entire Body of this Common-wealth under one Supreme Head and Governour it hath all this time ever born a sway proportionable in the Weighty Affairs of the Land wise and vertuous Kings condescending
are not fit to be Ministers which also hath been collected and that by sundry of the Antient and that it is requisite the Clergy be utterly forbidden Marriage For as the burthen of Civil Regiment doth make them who bear it the less able to attend their Ecclesiastical Charge even so Saint Paul doth say that the Married are careful for the World the unmarried freer to give themselves wholly to the service of God Howbeit both experience hath found it safer that the Clergy should bear the cares of honest Marriage than be subject to the inconveniencies which single life imposed upon them would draw after it And as many as are of sound judgement know it to be farr better for this present age that the detriment be born which haply may grow through the lessening of some few mens Spiritual labours than that the Clergy and Common-wealth should lack the benefit which both the one and the other may reap through their dealing in Civil Affairs In which consideration that men consecrated unto the Spiritual service of God be licensed so farr forth to meddle with the Secular affairs of the World as doth seem for some special good cause requisite and may be without any grievous prejudice unto the Church surely there is not in the Apostles words being rightly understood any lett That no Apostle did ever bear Office may it not be a wonder considering the great devotion of the age wherein they lived and the zeal of Herod of Nero the great Commander of the known World and of other Kings of the Earth at that time to advance by all means Christian Religion Their deriving unto others that smaller charge of distributing of the Goods which were laid at their feet and of making provision for the poor which charge being in part Civil themselves had before as I suppose lawfully undertaken and their following of that which was weightier may serve as a marvellous good example for the dividing of one man's Office into divers slips and the subordinating of Inferiours to discharge some part of the same when by reason of multitude increasing that labour waxeth great and troublesome which before was easie and light but very small force it hath to inferr a perpetual divorce between Ecclesiastical and Civil power in the same Persons The most that can be said in this Case is That sundry eminent Canons bearing the name of Apostolical and divers Conncils likewise there are which have forbidden the Clergy to bear any Secular Office and have enjoyned them to attend altogether upon Reading Preaching and Prayer Whereupon the most of the antient Fathers have shewed great dislikes that these two Powers should be united in one Person For a full and final Answer whereunto I would first demand Whether commension and separation of these two Powers be a matter of mere positive Law or else a thing simply with or against the Law immutable of God and Nature That which is simply against this latter Law can at no time be allowable in any Person more than Adultery Blasphemy Sacriledge and the like But conjunction of Power Ecclesiastical and Civil what Law is there which hath not at some time or other allowed as a thing convenient and meet In the Law of God we have examples sundry whereby it doth most manifestly appear how of him the same hath oftentime been approved No Kingdom or Nation in the World but hath been thereunto accustomed without inconvenience and hurt In the prime of the World Kings and Civil Rulers were Priests for the most part all The Romans note it as a thing beneficial in their own Common-wealth and even to them apparently forcible for the strengthening of the Jewes Regiment under Moses and Samuel I deny not but sometime there may be and hath been perhaps just cause to ordain otherwise Wherefore we are not to urge those things which heretofore have been either ordered or done as thereby to prejudice those Orders which upon contrary occasion and the exigence of the present time by like authority have been established For what is there which doth let but that from contrary occasions contrary Laws may grow and each he reasoned and disputed for by such as are subiect thereunto during the time they are in force and yet neither so opposite to other but that both may laudably continue as long as the ages which keep them do see no necessary cause which may draw them unto alteration Wherefore in these things Canons Constitutions and Laws which have been at one time meet do not prove that the Church should alwayes be bound to follow them Ecclesiastical Persons were by antient Order forbidden to be Executors of any man's Testament or to undertake the Wardship of Children Bishops by the Imperial Law are forbidden to bequeath by Testament or otherwise to alienate any thing grown unto them after they were made Bishops Is there no remedy but that these or the like Orders must therefore every where still be observed The reason is not always evident why former Orders have been repealed and other established in their room Herein therefore we must remember the axiom used in the Civil Laws That the Prince is alwayes presumed to do that with reason which is not against reason being done although no reason of his deed be exprest Which being in every respect as true of the Church and her Divine Authority in making Laws it should be some bridle unto those malepert and proud spirits whose wits not conceiving the reason of Laws that are established they adore their own private fancy as the supreme Law of all and accordingly take upon them to judge that whereby they should be judged But why labour we thus in vain For even to change that which now is and to establish instead thereof that which themselves would acknowledge the very self-same which hath been to what purpose were it fith they protest That they utterly condemn as well that which hath been as that which is as well the antient as the present Superiority Authority and Power of Ecclesiastical Persons XVI Now where they lastly alledge That the Law of our Lord Iesus Christ and the judgement of the best in all ages condemn all ruling Superiority of Ministers over Ministers they are in this as in the rest more bold to affirm than able to prove the things which they bring for support of their weak and feeble Cause The bearing of Dominion or the exercising of Authority they say is this wherein the Civil Magistrate is severed from the Ecclesiastical officer according to the words of our Lord and Saviour Kings of Nations bear rule over them but it shall not be so with you Therefore bearing of Dominion doth not agree to one Minister over another This place hath been and still is although most falsely yet with farr greater shew and likelyhood of truth brought forth by the Anabaptists to prove that the Church of Christ ought to have no Civil Magistrates but be ordered
otherwise was most requisite Wherefore the necessity of ordaining such is no excuse for the rash and careless ordaining of every one that hath but a friend to bestow some two or three words of ordinary commendation in his behalf By reason whereof the Church groweth burdened with silly creatures more then need whose noted baseness and insufficiency bringeth their very Order it self into contempt It may be that the fear of a Quare impedit doth cause Institutions to pass more easily then otherwise they would And to speak plainly the very truth it may be that Writs of Quare non impedit were for these times most necessary in the others place Yet where Law will not suffer men to follow their own judgment to shew their judgment they are not hindred And I doubt not but that even conscienceless and wicked Patrons of which sort the swarms are too great in the Church of England are the more imboldened to present unto Bishops any reffuse by finding so easie acceptation thereof Somewhat they might redress this sore notwithstanding so strong impediments if it did plainly appear that they took it indeed to heart were not in a manner contented with it Shall we look for care in admitting whom others present if that which some of your selves confer be at any time corruptly bestowed A foul and an ugly kind of deformity it hath if a man do but think what it is for a Bishop to draw commodity and gain from those things whereof he is left a free bestower and that in trust without any other obligation then his sacred Order only and that religious Integrity which hath been presumed on in him Simoniacal corruption I may not for honors sake suspect to be amongst men of so great place So often they do not I trust offend by sale as by unadvised gift of such preferments wherein that ancient Canon should specially be remembred which forbiddeth a Bishop to be led by humane affection in bestowing the things of God A fault no where so hurtful as in bestowing places of jurisdiction and in furnishing Cathedral Churches the Prebendaries and other Dignities whereof are the very true successors of those ancient Presbyters which were at the first as Counsellers unto Bishops A foul abuse it is that any one man should be loaded as some are with Livings in this kind yea some even of them who condemn utterly the granting of any two Benefices unto the same man whereas the other is in truth a matter of far greater sequel as experience would soon shew if Churches Cathedral being furnished with the residence of a competent number of vertuous grave wise and learned Divines the rest of the Prebends of every such Church were given within the Diocess unto men of worthiest desert for their better encouragement unto industry and travel unless it seem also convenient to extend the benefit of them unto the learned in Universities and men of special imployment otherwise in the affairs of the Church of God But howsoever surely with the publick good of the Church it will hardly stand that in any one person such favours be more multiplied then law permitteth in those Livings which are with Cure Touching Bishops Visitations the first institution of them was profitable to the end that the state and condition of Churches being known there might be for evils growing convenient remedies provided in due time The observation of Church Laws the correction of faults in the service of God and manners of men these are things that visitors should seek When these things are inquired of formally and but for custom sake fees and pensions being the only thing which is sought and little else done by Visitations we are not to marvel if the baseness of the end doth make the action it self loathsom The good which Bishops may do not only by these Visitations belonging ordinarily to their Office but also in respect of that power which the Founders of Colledges have given them of special trust charging even fearfully their consciences therewith the good I say which they might do by this their authority both within their own Diocess and in the well-springs themselves the Universities is plainly such as cannot chuse but add weight to their heavy accounts in that dreadful Day if they do it not In their Courts where nothing but singular integrity and Justice should prevail if palpable and gross corruptions be found by reason of Offices so often granted unto men who seek nothing but their own gain and make no account what disgrace doth grow by their unjust dealings unto them under whom they deal the evil hereof shall work more then they which procure it do perhaps imagine At the hands of a Bishop the first thing looked for is a care of the Clergy under him a care that in doing good they may have whatsoever comforts and encouragements his countenance authority and place may yield Otherwise what heard shall they have to proceed in their painful course all sorts of men besides being so ready to malign despise and every way oppress them Let them find nothing but disdain in Bishops in the enemies of present Government if that way lift to betake themselves all kind of favourable and friendly help unto which part think we it likely that men having wit courage and stomack will incline As great a fault is the want of severity when need requireth as of kindness and courtesie in Bishops But touching this what with ill usage of their powe amongst the meaner and what with disuage amongst the higher sort they are in the eyes of both sorts as Bees have lost their sting It is a long time sithence any great one hath felt or almost any one much feared the edge of that Ecclesiastical severity which sometime held Lords and Dukes in a more religious aw then now the meanest are able to be kept A Bishop in whom there did plainly appear the marks and tokens of a fatherly affection towards them are under his charge what good might he do ten thousand ways more then any man knows how to set down But the souls of men are not loved that which Christ shed his blood for is not esteemed precious This is the very root the fountain of all negligence in Church-Government Most wretched are the terms of mens estate when once they are at a point of wrechlesness so extream that thy bend not their wits any further than only to shift out the present time never regarding what shall become of their Successors after them Had our Predecessors so loosely cast off from them all care and respect to posterity a Church Christian there had noâ been about the regiment whereof we should need at this day to strive It was the barbarous affection of Nero that the ruine of his own Imperial Seat he could have been well enough contented to see in case he might also have seen it accompanied with the fall of the whole World An affection not more intolerable then theirs
doubted but many of the Fathers were saved but the means I said was not their ignorance which excuseth no man with God but their knowledge and Faith of the Truth which it appeareth God vouchsafed them by many notable Monuments and Records extant in all Ages Which being the last point in all my Sermon rising so naturally from the Text I then propounded as would have occasioned me to have delivered such matter notwithstanding the former Doctrine had been sound and being dealt in by a general speech without touch of his particular I looked not that a matter of Controversie would have been made of it no more than had been of my like dealing in former time But far otherwise than I looked for Mr. Hooker shewing no grief of Offence taken at my speech all the week long the next Sabbath leaving to proceed upon his ordinarie Text professed to preach again that he had done the day before for some question that his Doctrine was drawn into which he desired might be examined with all severitie So proceeding he bestowed his whole time in that discourse concerning his former Doctrine and answering the places of Scripture which I had alledged to prove that a man dying in the Church of Rome is not to be judged by the Scriptures to be saved In which long speech and utterly impertinent to his Text under colour of answering for himself he impugned directly and openly to all mens understanding the true Doctrine which I had delivered and adding to his former Points some other like as willingly one Error followeth another that is That the Galatians joyning with Faith in Christ Circumcision as necessary to Salvation might not be saved And that they of the Church of Rome may be saved by such a Faith of Christ as they had with a general Repentance of all their Errors notwithstanding their opinion of Iustification in part by their works and merits I was necessarily though not willingly drawn to say something to the Points he objected against sound Doctrine which I did in a short speech in the end of my Sermon with protestation of so doing no of any sinister affection to any man but to bear witness to the Truth according to my Calling and wished if the matter should needs further be dealt in some other more convenient way might be taken for it wherein I hope my dealing was manifest to the Consciences of all indifferent Hearers of me that day to have been according to Peace and without any uncharitableness being duly considered For that I conferred with him the first day I have shewed that the Cause requiring of me the Duty at the least not to be altogether silent in it being a matter of such consequence that the time also being short wherein I was to preach after him the hope of the fruit of our communication being small upon experience of forme Conferences my expectation being that the Church should be no further troubled with it upon the motion I made of taking some other course of dealing I suppose my deferring to speak with him till some fit opportunitie cannot in Charity be judged uncharitable The second day his unlooked for opposition with the former Reasons made it to be a matter that required of necessity some Publick answer which being so temporate as I have shewed if notwithstanding it be sensured as uncharitable and punished so grievously as it is What should have been my punishment if without all such cautions and respects as qualified my speech I had before all and in the understanding of all so reproved him offending openly that others might have feared to doe the like which yet if I had done might have been warranted by the rule and charge of the Apostle Them that offend openly rebuke openly that the rest may also fear and by his example who when Peter in this very Case which is now between us had not in Preaching but in a matter of Conversation not gone with a right foot as was fit for the truth of the Gospel conferred not privately with him but as his own rule required reproved him openly before all that others might hear and fear and not dare to do the like All which reasons together weighed I hope will shew the manner of my dealing to have been charitable and warrantable in every sort The next Sabbath day after this Mr. Hooker kept the way he had entred into before and bestowed his whole hour and more onely upon the Questions he had moved and maintained wherein he so set forth the agreement of the Church of Rome with us and their disagreement from us as if we had consented in the greatest and weightiest Points and differed onely in certain smaller matters Which Agreement noted by him in two chief points is not such as he would have made men believe The one in that he said They acknowledge all men sinners even the blessed Virgin though some of them freed her from sinne for the Council of Trent holdeth that she was free from sinne Another in that he said They teach Christ's Righteousness to be the onely meritorious cause of taking away sinne and differ from us onely in the applying of it For Thomas Aquinas their chief Schoolman and Archbishop Catherinus teach That Christ took away onely Original sinne and that the rest are to be taken away by our selves yea the Council of Trent teacheth That Righteousness whereby we are righteous in God's sight is an inherent Righteousness which must needs be of our own Works and cannot be understood of the Righteousness inherent onely in Christ's Person and accounted unto us Moreover he taught the same time That neither the Galatians nor the Church of Rome did directly overthrow the foundation of Iustification by Christ alone but onely by consequent and therefore might well be saved or else neither the Churches of the Lutherans nor any which bold any manner of Errour could be saved because saith he every Errour by consequent overthroweth the Foundation In which Discourses and such like he bestowed his whole time and more which if he had affected either the truth of God or the peace or the Church he would truly not have done Whose example could not draw me to leave the Scripture I took in hand but standing about an hour to deliver the Doctrine of it in the end upon just occasion of the Text leaving sundry other his unsound speeches and keeping me still to the Principal I confirmed the believing the Doctrine of Justification by Christ onely to be necessary to the Justification of all that should be saved and that the Church of Rome directly denieth that a man is saved by Christ or by Faith alone without the works of the Law Which my Answer as it was most necessary for the service of God and the Church so was it without any immodest or reproachful speech to Mr. Hooker whose unsound and wilful dealings in a Cause of so great importance to the Faith of Christ and salvation of the Church
by his special protection preserved clean from all sinne yet concerning the rest they teach as we do that all have sinned Against my words they might with more pretence take exception Because so many of them think she had sinne which exception notwithstanding the Proposition being indefinite and the matter contingent they cannot take because they grant That many whom they account grave and devout amongst them think that she was clear from all sinne But whether Mr. Travers did note my words himself or take them upon the credit of some other man's noting the Tables were faulty wherein it was noted All men sinners even the Blessed Virgin When my second Speech was rather All men except the Blessed Virgin To leave this another fault he findeth that I said They teach Christs Righteousnesse to be the onely meritorious cause of taking away sinne and differ from us onely in the applying of it I did say and doe They teach as we do that although Christ be the onely meritorious cause of our Iustice yet as a medicine which is made for Health doth not heal by being made but by being applyed So by the merits of Christ there can be no Life nor Iustification without the application of his merits But about the manner of applying Christ about the number and power of means whereby he is applyed we dissent from them This of our dissenting from them is acknowledged 14. Our agreement in the former is denied to be such as I pretend Let their own words therefore and mine concerning them be compared Doth not Andradius plainly confess Our sins do shut and onely the merits of Christ open the entring unto blessedness And So to It is put for a good ground that all since the fall of Adam obtained Salvation onely by the Passion of Christ Howbeit as no cause can be effectual without applying so neither can any man be saved to whom the suffering of Christ is not applied In a word who not When the Council of Trent reckoning up the causes of our first Justification doth name no end but God's Glory and our Felicity no efficient but his Mercy no Instrumental but Baptism no meritorious but Christ whom to have merited the taking away of no sin but Original is not their opinion which himself will finde when he hath well examined his Witnesses Catharinus and Thomas Their Jesuites are marvellous angry with the men out of whose gleanings Mr. Travers seemeth to have taken this they openly disclaim it they say plainly Of all this Catholicks there is no one this did ever so teach they make solemn protestation We believe and profess That Christ upon the Cross hath altogether satisfied for all sins as well Original as Actual Indeed they teach that the merit of Christ doth not take away Actual sinne in such sort as it doth Original wherein if their Doctrine had been understood I for my speech had never been accused As for the Council of Trent concerning inherent Righteousness what doth it here No man doubteth but they make another formal cause of Justification than we do In respect whereof I have shewed you already that we disagree about the very essence of that which cureth our Spiritual disease Most time it is which the grand Philosopher hath Every man judgeth well of that which he knoweth and therefore till we know the things throughly whereof we judge it is a point of judgment to stay our judgment 15. Thus much labour being spent in discovering the unsoundness of my Doctrine some pains he taketh further to open faults in the manner of my teaching as that I bestowed my whole hour and more my time and more than my time in discourses utterly impertinent to my Text. Which if I had done it might have past without complaining of to the Privy Council 16. But I did worse as he saith I left the expounding of the Scriptures and my ordinary Calling and discoursed upon School-points and questions neither of edification nor of truth I read no Lecture in the Law or in Physick And except the bounds of ordinary Calling may be drawn like a Purse how are they so much wider unto him than to me that he which in the limits of his ordinary Calling should reprove that in me which he understood not and I labouring that both he and others might understand could not do this without forsaking my Calling The matter whereof I spake was such as being at the first by me but lightly touched he had in that place openly contradicted and solemnly taken upon him to disprove If therefore it were a School-question and unfit to be discoursed of there that which was in me but a Proposition onely at the first wherefore made he a Probleme of it Why took he first upon him to maintain the negative of that which I had affirmatively spoken onely to shew mine own opinion little thinking that ever it would have been a Question Of what nature soever the Question were I could doe no lesse than there explain my self to them unto whom I was accused of unsound Doctrine wherein if to shew what had been through ambiguity mistaken in my words or misapplied by him in this Cause against me I used the distinctions and helps of Schools I trust that herein I have committed no unlawful thing These School-implements are acknowledged by grave and wise men not unprofitable to have been invented The most approved for Learning and Judgement do use them without blame the use of them hath been well liked in some that have taught even in this very place before me the quality of my Hearers is such that I could not but think them of capacity very sufficient for the most part to conceive harder than I used any the cause I had in hand did in my judgment necessarily require them which were then used when my words spoken generally without distinctions had been perverted what other way was there for me but by distinctions to lay them open in their right meaning that it might appear to all men whether they were consonant to truth or no And although Mr. Travers be so inured with the City that he thinketh it unmeet to use any speech which savoureth of the School yet his opinion is no Canon though unto him his minde being troubled my speech did seem like Fetters and Manacles yet there might be some more calmly affected which thought otherwise his private judgment will hardly warrant his bold words that the things which I spake were neither of edification nor truth They might edifie some other for any thing he knoweth and be true for any thing he proveth to the contrary For it is no proof to cry Absurdities the like whereunto have not been heard in publick places within this Land since Queen Marie's days If this came in earnest from him I am sorry to see him so much offended without cause more sorry that his fitâ should be so extream to make him speak he knoweth not what That I
and quite forgetting of strife together with the Causes that have either bred it or brought it up that things of small moment never disjoyn them whom one God one Lord one Faith one Spirit one Baptism bands of so great force have linked that a respectively eye towards things wherewith we should not be disquieted make us not as through infirmity the very Patriarchs themselves sometimes were full gorged unable to speak peaceably to their own Brother Finally that no strife may ever be heard of again but this Who shall hate strife most who shall pursue peace and unity with swiftest paces To The Christian Reader WHereas many desirous of resolution in some Points handled in this learned Discourse were earnest to have it Copied out to case so many labours it hath been thought most worthy and very necessary to be printed that not onely they might be satisfied but the whole Church also hereby edified The rather because it will free the Author from the suspition of some Errors which he hath been thought to have favoured Who might well have answered with Cremutius in Tacitus Verba mea arguuntur adeò factorum innocens sum Certainly the event of that time wherein he lived shewed that to be true which the same Author spake of a worse Cui deerat inimicus per amicos oppressus and that there is not minus periculum ex magna fama quà m ex mala But he hath so quit himself that all may see how as it was said of Agricola Simul suis virtutibus simul vitiis aliorum in ipsam gloriam praeceps agebatur Touching whom I will say no more but that which my Author said of the same man Integritatem c. in tanto viro referre injuria virtutum fuerit But as of all other his Writings so of this I will adde that which Velleius spake in commendation of Piso Nemo fuit qui megis quae agenda erant curaret sine ulla ostentatione agendi So not doubting good Christian Reader of thy assent herein but wishing thy favourable acceptance of this Work which will be an inducement to set forth others of his Learned labours I take my leave from Corpus Christi Colledge in Oxford the sixth of July 1612. Thine in Christ Jesus HENRY IACKSON A LEARNED DISCOURSE OF Justification Works and how the Foundation of FAITH is overthrown HABAK. 1. 4. The wicked doth compass about the righteous therefore perverse Iudgement doth proceed FOR the better manifestation of the Prophets meaning in this place we are first to consider the wicked of whom he saith that They compass about the righteous Secondly the righteous that are compassed about by them and Thirdly That which is inferred Therefore perverse judgement proceedeth Touching the first There are two kinds of wicked men of whom in the fist of the former to the Corinthians the blessed Apostle speaketh thus Do ye not judge them that are within But God judgeth them that art without There are wicked therefore whom the Church may judge and there are wicked whom God onely judgeth wicked within and wicked without the walls of the Church If within the Church particular persons be apparently such as cannot otherwise be reformed the rule of the Apostolical judgment is this Separate them from among you if whole Assemblies this Separate your selves from among them For what society hath light with darkness But the wicked whom the Prophet meaneth were Babylonians and therefore without For which cause we heard at large heretofore in what sort he urgeth God to judge them 2. Now concerning the righteous their neither it nor ever was any meer natural man absolutely righteous in himself that is to say void of all unrighteousness of all sin We dare not except no not the blessed Virgin her self of whom although we say with St. Augustine for the honour sake which we owe to our Lord and Saviour Christ we are not willing in this cause to move any question of his Mother yet for asmuch as the Schools of Rome have made it a question we may answer with Eusebius Emissenus who speaketh of her and to her in this effect Thou didst by special Prerogative nine months together entertain within the Closet of the Flesh the hope of all the ends of the Earth the honour of the World the common joy of Men. He from whom all things had their beginning had his beginning from thee of the Body he took the blood which was to be shed for the life of the World of thee he took that which even for thee be payed A peccati enim veteris nexu per se non est immunis ipsa genitrix Redemptoris The Mother of the Redeemer himself is not otherwise loosed from the bond of antient sinne than by redemption if Christ have paid a ransom for all even for her it followeth that all without exception were Captives If one have died for all then all were dead in sinne all sinful therefore none absolutely righteous in themselves but we are absolutely righteous in Christ. The World then must shew a righteous man otherwise not able to shew a man that is perfectly righteous Christ is made to us Wisdome Iustice Sanctification and Redemption Wisdom because he hath revealed his Fathers will Iustice because he hath offered up himself a Sacrifice for sin Sanctification because he hath given us his Spirit Redemption because he hath appointed a day to vindicate his Children out of the bonds of Corruption into liberty which is glorious How Christ is made Wisdom and how Redemption it may be declared when occasion serveth But how Christ is made the Righteousness of men we are now to declare 3. There is a glorifying Righteousness of men in the World to come as there is a justifying and sanctifying Righteousness here The Righteousness wherewith we shall be clothed in the World to come is both perfect and inherent That whereby here we are justified is perfect but not inherent That whereby we are sanctified is inherent but not perfect This openeth a way to the understanding of that grand question which hangeth yet in controversie between us and the Church of Rome about the matter of justifying Righteousness 4. First although they imagine that the Mother of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ were for his honour and by his special protection preserved clean from all sinne yet touching the rest they teach as we doe That Infants that never did actually offend have their Natures defiled destitute of Justice averted from God That in making man righteous none do efficiently work with God but God They teach as we do that unto Justice no man ever attained but by the Merits of Jesus Christ. They teach as we do That although Christ as God be the efficient as Man the meritorious cause of our Justice yet in us also there is some thing required God is the cause of our natural life in him we live but he quickneth not
the Body without the Soul in the Body Christ hath merited to make us just but as a medicine which is made for health doth not head by being made but by being applied so by the merits of Christ there can be no Justification without the application of his Merits Thus farr we joyn hands with the Church of Rome 5. Wherein then do we disagree We disagree about the future and offence of the Medicine whereby Christ cureth our Disease about the ãâ¦ã of applying it about the number and the power of means which God requireth in as for the effectual applying thereof to our Souls comfort When they are re ãâ¦ã that the righteousness is whereby a Christian man is justified they answer that it is a Divine Spiritual quality which quality received into the Soul doth first make it to be one of them who are born of God and secondly indue it with power to bring forth such works as they do that are born of him even as the Soul of Man being joyned to his Body doth first make him to be of the number of reasonable Creatures and secondly inable him to perform the natural Functions which are proper to his kinde That it maketh the Soul amiable and gracious in the sight of God in regard whereof it is termed Grace That is purgeth purifieth and washeth out all the stains and pollutions of sins that by it through the merit of Christ we are delivered as from sin so from eternal death and condemnation the reward of sin This Grace they will have to be applied by infusion to the end that as the Body is warm by the heat which is in the Body so the Soul might be righteous by inherent Grace which Grace they make capable of increase as the Body may be more and more warm so the Soul more and more justified according as Grace should be augmented the augmentation whereof is merited by good Works as good Works are made meritorious by it Wherefore the first receit of Grace in their Divinity is the first Justification the increase thereof the second Justification As Grace may be increased by the merit of good Works so it may be diminished by the demerit of sins venial it may be lost by mortal sin In as much therefore as it is needful in the one case to repair in the other to recover the loss which is made the infusion of Grace hath her sundry after-meals for the which cause they make many ways to apply the infusion of Grace It is applyed to Infants through Baptism without either Faith or Works and in them really it taketh away Original sinne and the punishment due unto it It is applied to Infidels and wicked men in the first Justification through Baptism without Works yet not without Faith and it taketh away both Sinnes Actual and Original together with all whatsoever punishment eternal or temporal thereby deserved Unto such as have attained the first Justification that is to say the first receit of Grace it is applied farther by good Works to the increase of former Grace which is the second Justification If they work more and more Grace doth more increase and they are more and more justified To such as diminished it by venial sinnes it is applied by Holy-water Ave Marie's Crossings Papal Salutations and such like which serve for reparations of Grace decayed To such as have lost it through mortal sinne it is applied by the Sacrament as they term it of Penance which Sacrament hath force to conferr Grace anew yet in such sort that being so conferred it hath not altogether so much power as at the first For it onely cleanseth out the stain or guilt of sinne committed and changeth the punishment eternal into a temporal satisfactory punishment here if time doe serve if not hereafter to be endured except it be lightned by Masses Works of Charity Pilgrimages Fasts and such like or else shortned by pardon for term or by plenary pardon quite removed and taken away This is the mystery of the man of sinne This maze the Church of Rome doth cause her Followers to tread when they ask her the way to Justification I cannot stand now to untip this Building and to siâ it piece by piece onely I will passe by it in few words that that may befall Bâ⦠in the presence of that which God hath builded as hapned unto Dagon before the Ark. 6. Doubtless saith the Apostle I have counted all things loss and judge them to be doing that I may win Christ and to be found in him not having my own righteousness but that which is through the Faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God through Faith Whether they speak of the first or second Justification they make it the essence of a Divine quality inherent they make it Righteousnesse which is in us If it be in us then is it ours as our Souls are ours though we have them from God and can hold them no longer than pleaseth him for if he withdraw the breath of our nostrils we fall to dust but the Righteousness wherein we must be found if we will be justified is not our own therefore we cannot be justified by any inherent quality Christ hath merited righteousness for as many as are found in him In him God findeth us if we be faithful for by Faith we are incorporated into Christ. Then although in our selves we be altogether sinful and unrighteous yet even the man which is impious in himself full of iniquity full of sin him being found in Christ through Faith and having his sinne remitted through Repentance him God upholdeth with a gracious eye putteth away his sinne by not imputing it taketh quite away the Punishment due thereunto by pardoning it and accepteth him in Jesus Christ as perfectly righteous as if he had fulfilled all that was commanded him in the Law shall I say more perfectly righteous than if himself had fulfilled the whole Law I must take heed what I say but the Apostle saith God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him Such we are in the sight of God the Father as is the very Son of God himself Let it be counted folly or frensie or fury whatsoever it is our comfort and our wisdom we care for no knowledge in the World but this That man hath sinned and God hath suffered That God hath made himself the Son of Man and that men are made the righteousness of God You see therefore that the Church of Rome in teaching Justification by inherent Grace doth pervert the truth of Christ and that by the hands of the Apostles we have received otherwise than she reacheth Now concerning the righteousness of Sanctification we deny it not to be inherent we grant that unless we work we have it not onely we distinguish it as a thing different in nature from the righteousness of Justification we are righteous the one
towards the Gospel of Christ whose eyes are opened to see the Truth and his mouth to renounce all Heresie and Errour any wise opposite thereunto This one opinion of Merits excepted he thinketh God will require at his hands and because he wanteth therefore trembleth and is discouraged it may be I am forgetful and unskilful not furnished with things new and old as a wise and learned Scribe should be nor able to alledge that whereunto if it were alledged he doth hear a minde most williing to yield and so to be recalled as well from this as from other Errours And shall I think because of this onely Errour that such a man toucheth not so much as the hem of Christ's garment If he do Wherefore should not I have hope that vertue may proceed from Christ to save him Because his Errour doth by consequent overthrow his Faith shall I therefore cast him off as one that hath utterly cast off Christ one that holdeth not so much as by a slender thred No I will not be afraid to say unto a Pope or Cardinal in this plight Be of good comfort we have to do with a merciful God ready to make the best of a little which we hold well and not with a captious Sophister which gathereth the worst out of every thing wherein we erre Is there any Reason that I should be suspected or you offended for this speech Is it a dangerous thing to imagine that such men may finde mercy The hour may come when we shall think it a blessed thing to hear that if our sinnes were the sinnes of the Pope and Cardinals the bowels of the mercy of God are larger I do propose unto you a Pope with the neck of an Emperour under his feet a Cardinal riding his horse to the bridle in the blood of Saints but a Pope or a Cardinal sorrowful penitent dis-robed stript not onely of usurpec ' power but also delivered and recalled from Error and Antichrist converted and lying prostrate at the foot of Christ and shall I think that Christ shall spurn at him and shall I cross and gain-say the merciful promises of God generally made unto penitent sinners by opposing the name of a Pope or Cardinal What difference is there in the world between a Pope and a Cardinal and Iohn a Stile in this Case If we think it impossible for them if they be once come within that rank to be afterwards touched with any such remorse let that he granted The Apostle saith If I or an Angel from heaven preach unto c. Let it be as likely that S. Paul or an Angel from Heaven should preach Heresie as that a Pope or Cardinal should be brought so farr forth to acknowledge the truth yet if a Pope or Cardinal should what finde we in their Persons why they might not be saved It is not the Persons you will say but the Errour wherein I suppose them to dye which excludeth them from the hope of mercy the opinion of merits doth take away all possibility of Salvation from them What if they hold it onely as an Errour Although they hold the truth truly and sincerely in all other parts of Christian Faith Although they have in some measure all the Vertues and Graces of the Spirit all other tokens of God's Elect Children in them Although they be farr from having any proud presumptuous opinion that they shall be saved by the worthiness of their deeds Although the onely thing which troubleth and molested them be but a little too much dejection somewhat too great a fear rising from an erroneous conceit that God would require a worthinesse in them which they are grieved to finde wanting in themselves Although they be not obstinate in this perswasion Although they be willing and would be glad to forsake it if any one reason were brought sufficient to dispove it Although the onely lett why they doe not forsake it ere they dye be the ignorance of the means by which it might be disproved Although the cause why the ignorance in this point is not removed be the want of knowledge in such us should be able and are not to remove it Let me dye if ever it be proved that simply an Errour doth exclude a Pope or a Cardinal in such a case utterly from hope of life Surely I must confesse unto you if it be an Errour that God may be merciful to save men even when they erre my greatest Comfort is my Errour were it not for the love I bear unto this Errour I would never wish to speak nor to live 36. Wherefore to resume that mother-Sentence whereof I little thought that so much trouble would have grown I doubt not but that God was merciful to save thousands of our Fathers living in Papish Superstitions inasmuch as they sinned ignorantly Alas what bloody matter is there contained in this Sentence that it should be an occasion of so many hard Censures Did I say that thousands of our Fathers might be saved I have shewed which way it cannot be denied Did I say I doubt not but they were saved I see no impiety in this Perswasion though I had no reason for it Did I say Their ignorance did make me hope they did finde mercy and so were saved What hindreth Salvation but Sinne Sinnes are not equal and Ignorance though it doth not make Sinne to be no Sinne yet seeing it did make their sinne the less why should it not make our hope concerning their life the greater We pity the most and doubt not but God hath most compassion over them that sinne for want of understanding As much is confessed by sundry others almost in the self-same words which I have used It is but onely my evil hap that the same Sentences which savour Verity in other mens books should seem to bolster Heresie when they are once by me recited If I be deceived in this point not they but the blessed Apostle hath deceived me What I said of others the same he said of himself I obtained mercy for I did it ignorantly Construe his words and you cannot misconstrue mine I spake no otherwise I meant no otherwise than he did 37. Thus have I brought the question concerning our Fathers at length unto an end Of whose estate upon so fit an occasion as was offered me handling the weighty causes of separation between the Church of Rome and us and the weak motives which are commonly brought to retain men in that Society amongst which motives the examples of our Fathers deceased is one although I saw it convenient to utter the Sentence which I did to the end that all men might thereby understand how untruly we are said to condemn as many as have been before us otherwise perswaded than we our selves are yet more than that one Sentence I did not think it expedient to utter judging it a great deal meeter for us to have regard to our own estate than to sift over-curiously what is become of other
disobedience of Children stubbornness of Servants untractableness in them who although they otherwise may rule yet should in consideration of the imparity of their sex be also subject whatsoever by strife amongst men combined in the fellowship of greater Societies by tyranny of Potentates ambition of Nobles rebellion of Subjects in Civil States by Heresies Schisms Divisions in the Church naming Pride we name the Mother which brought them forth and the onely Nurse that feedeth them Give me the hearts of all men humbled and what is there that can overthrow or disturb the peace of the World Wherein many things are the cause of much evil but Pride of all To declaim of the swarms of Evils issuing out of Pride is an easie labour I rather wish that I could exactly prescribe and perswade effectually the remedies whereby a sore so grievous might be cured and the means how the pride of swelling mindes might be taken down Whereunto so much we have already gained that the evidence of the Cause which breedeth it pointeth directly unto the likeliest and fittest helps to take it away Diseases that come of fulness emptiness must remove Pride is not cured but by abating the Errour which causeth the Minde to swell Then seeing that they swell by mis-conceit of their own excellency for this cause all which tend to the beating down of their Pride whether it be advertisement from men or from God himself chastisement it then maketh them cease to be proud when in causeth them to see their errour in over-seeing the thing they were proud of At this mark Iob in his Apology unto his eloquent Friends aimeth For perceiving how much they delighted to hear themselves talk as if they had given their poor afflicted familiar a schooling of marvellous deep and rare instruction as if they had taught him more than all the World besides could acquaint him with his Answer was to this effect Ye swell as though ye had conceived some great matter but as for that which ye are delivered of who knoweth it not Is any man ignorant of these things At the same mark the blessed Apostle driveth Ye abound in all things ye are rich ye raign and would to Christ we did raign with you But boast not For what have ye or are ye of your selves To this mark all those humble Confessions are referred which have been always frequent in the mouths of Saints truly wading in the tryal of themselves as that of the Prophet's We are nothing but soreness and festered corruption our very light is darkness and our righteousness is self unrighteousness That of GREGORY Let no man ever put confidence in his own deserts Sordet in conspectu Iudicis quod fulget in conspectu operantis In the sight of the dreadful Judge it is noysom which in the doer's judgment maketh a beautiful shew That of ANSELM I adore thee I bless thee Lord God of Heaven and Redeemer of the World with all the power ability and strength of my heart and soul for thy goodness so unmeasurably extended not in regard of my merits whereunto onely torments were due but of thy mere unprocured benignity If these Fathers should be raised again from the dust and have the Books laid open before them wherein such Sentences are found as this Works no other than the value desert price and worth of the joyes of the kingdom of Heaven Heaven in relation to our works as the very stipend which the hired Labourer covenanteth to have of him whose work he doth as a thing equally and justly answering unto the time and waight of his travels rather than to a voluntary or bountiful gift If I say those reverend fore-rehearsed Fathers whose Books are so full of Sentences witnessing their Christian humility should be raised from the dead and behold with their eyes such things written would they not plainly pronounce of the Authors of such Writs that they were fuller of Lucifer than of Christ that they were proud-hearted men and carried more swelling mindes than sincerely and feelingly known Christianity can tolerate But as unruly Children with whom wholsom admonition prevaileth little are notwithstanding brought to fear that everafter which they have once well smarted for so the Mind which falleth not with Instruction yet under the rod of Divine chastisement ceaseth to swell If therefore the Prophet David instructed by good experience have acknowledged Lord I was even at the point of clean forgetting my self and so straying from my right minde but thy Rod hath been my Reformer it hath been good for me even as much as my Soul is worth that I have been with sorrow troubled If the blessed Apostle did need the corrosive of sharp and bitter strokes left his Heart should swell with too great abundance of heavenly Revelations surely upon us whatsoever God in this World doth or shall inflict it cannot seem more than our Pride doth exact not only by way of revenge but of remedy So hard it is to cure a sore of such quality as Pride is in as much as that which rooteth out other Vices causeth this and which is even above all conceit if we were clean from all spot and blemish both of other faults of Pride the fall of Angels doth make it almost a question whether we might not need a Preservative still left we should haply wax proud that we are not proud What is Vertue but a medicine and Vice but a Wound Yet we have so often deeply wounded our selves with Medicine that God hath been fain to make wounds medicinable to cure by Vice where Vertue hath strucken to suffer the just man to fall that being raised he may be taught what Power it was which upheld him standing I am not afraid to affirm it boldly with St. Augustin That men puffed up through a proud opinion of their own sanctity and holiness receive a benefit at the hands of God and are assisted with his Grace when with his Grace they are not assisted but permitted and that grievously to transgress whereby as they were in over-great liking of themselves supplanted so the dislike of that which did supplant them may establish them afterwards the surer Ask the very Soul of Peter and it shall undoubtedly make you it self this Answer My eager Protestations made in the glory of my ghostly strength I am ashamed ofâ but those Crystal tears wherewith my sin and weakness was bewailed have procured my endless joy my Strength hath been my Ruine and my Fall my Stay A REMEDY AGAINST Sorrow and Fear DELIVERED IN A FUNERAL SERMON JOHN 14. 27. Let not your Hearts be troubled nor Fear THE Holy Apostles having gathered themselves together by the special appointment of Christ and being in expectation to receive from him such Instructions as they had been accustomed with were told that which they least looked for namely That the time of his departure out of the World was now come Whereupon they fell into consideration first of the manifold benefits which
the perfection of any thing whereby he might speak all things that are to be spoken to it neither yet be free from error in those things which he speaketh or giveth out And therefore this argument neither affirmatively nor negatively compelleth the hearer but only induceth him to some liking or disliking of that for which it is brought and is rather for an Orator to perswade the simpler sort then for a Disputer to enforce him that is learned 1 Cor. 1 â1 Ioh â 34 Deut. 19.15 Matth. 18. 16. T. C. la. p. 10. Although this kinde of Argument of Authority of men is good neither in humane nâr divine sciences yet it hath some small force in humane sciences for if such as naturally and in that he is a man he may come to some ripeness of judgement in those sââences which in divine maturi hath no force at all as of him which naturally and as he is a man can no more judge of them then a blinde man of colours yea so far is it from drawing crolit If it be barely spoken wâthout Reason and testimony of Scripture that it eaârieth also a suâpition of untruth whatsoever proceedeth from him which the Apostle did well note when to signifie a thing corruptly spoken and against the truth he saith that it is spoken according to man Rom. 3. He saith not as a wicked and flying man but simply as a man And although this corruption be reformed in many yet for so mâch as in whom the knowledge of the truth is most advanced there remaineth both ignorance and disordered affâctions whereof either of them turneth him from speaking of the truth no mans authority with the Church especially and those that are called and perswaded of the Authority of the Word of God can bring any assurance unto the Conscience T. C. l. 2 p. 21. Of divers sentences of the Fathers themselves whereby some have likened them to brute Beasts without Reason which suffer themselves to be led by the judgement and authority of others some have preferred the judgement of one simple rude man alledging reason unto companies of learned men I will conteâ my self at this time with two or three Sentences Irâneuo saith whatsoever is to be shewed in the Scripture cannot be shewed but out of the âcripture themselves l. 3 cap. 12 Ierome saith No man âs he never so holy or eloquent hath any authority after the Apostles in Psal. 86. Augustinâ saith That he will believe none how godly and learned soever he be unless he confirm his sentence by the Scriptures or by some reason nor contrary to them Ep. 18. And in another place Hear this The Lord saith hear not this Donâius saith ââgatus saith Vincentius saith Hilarius saith Ambrose saith Augustine saith but hearken unto thâ the Lord saith Ep 8. And again having to do with an Arrian he affirmeth that neither he ought to bring forth the Council of Niâe nor the other the Council of Arimiâe thereby to bring prejudice each to other neither outhâ the Arrian to be holden by the authority of the one nor himself by the authority of the other but by the Scriptures which are witnesses proper ââ neither but common to both matter with matter cause with cause reason with reason ought to be debated Cont. Max. Atrian p. 14. cap. And in another ââce against Petil. the Donarist he saith Let not these words he heard between us I say You say let us hear this Thus âaith the Lord. And by and by speaking of the Scriptures he saith There let us seek the Church there let us try the cause De unit Eccles. cap. 3. Hereby it is manifest that the argument of the authority of man affirmatively in nothing worth Matth. 17.10 T. C. lib. 2. 2â It at any time it hapned unto Augustine as it did against the Donatists and others to alledge the authority of the ancient Fathers which had been heiuâe him yet this was not done before he had laid a sure foundation of his cause in the Scriptures and that also being provoked by the adversaries of the truth who hare themselves high of some Council or of some man of name that had âavorcil that part A Declaration what the truth is in this matter Matth. 86. 40. Ephis 5. 29. Matth 5. 46. 1 âian 5. 8. Matth. 1â 42. Acts 4. 31. 1 Thes. 2. 7 9. T. C. lib. p. 6. Where this Doctrine is accused of bringing men to despair it hath wrong For when doubting is the way to despair against which this Doctrine offereth the remedy it must needâ be that it bringeth comfort and joy to the conscience of man Luke 7. â What the Church is and in what respect Laws of Pulky are thereunto necessarily required John 10. 22. and 1.47 and 21. 15. 1 Tim. 1 5. a Ephes. 2. 16. That he might r. o n cise both unto God in one body Ephes. 3. 16. That the Genries should be in their ââ also and of the ââââbâdâ âile T. p. 3. 7. art 3 1 Cor. 12. 13. Ephes. 4. 5. Acts. 2.36 John 13 13. Col. 3. 21. and 2. 1. b 1 Cer. 1. 23. Vide Tanilum lib. An sal 15. Not qussitissturis âââit assââiâ quos per flagiria invites vulgus Christianes appellabat Auâior nominis ejus Christus qui Tiberio ãâ¦ã pâââââârem Pântion Pilatum ãâ¦ã ârat Repressâg in pâesers exitiabilu superstitio rââsâââ erumpehat âââ and per Iudsam originem ejus mali jed per urhem ââiâm quo cuâcta undique atrocia aus pâdenda ââââââ ââl broâââââ John 15. 21. ââd 86. 2. 4. Apec 2. 13. Tâcul de Virgin Veland Iter. Advers Haâes lib. â 1. cap. 2. c. Acts 8. 38. 22. 16. 2. 41. Matth. 13.47 13. 24. Exod. 23. ââ 106.19 20. 2 Kings 18 4. Jere 11.14 2 Kings 23. 17. lâi 17. 3. 1. 4. 60. 15. Jere. 13. 11. 1 Kings 13. 8. Jere. 13. 11. 1 Kings 19. 18. âââuâa In Concil Car. Matth 7. 24. 16. 18. ââ 19. Sâââââium in ââââ Con. il Matth. 12. 30. In Conâiââ ãâ¦ã Vide Hââââ Dial. Atâââ Lucifâââa 2 Chre. 13. Hos. 14. 15 17. Josh. 14. 15. Rom. 11.28 Calvin Epish 1. Epist. 283. Epist. 285. Tertul. Exhort ad Caslie Ubi tres Ecclesia est licet laici Acts. 2. 47. Whether it be necessary that some particular Form of Church-Polity be set down in Scripture sith the things that belong particularly unto any such Form are not of necessary to Salvation Tertul. de hibitu mul. AErouli sine necesse est quae Del non lunt Rom. 2. 15. Lact. lib. 6. c. 8. Ille legis hujus inventor disceptater lator Cic. 3. de Repub * Two things misliked the one that we distinguish matters of Discipline or Church Government from matters of Faith and necessary unto Salvation The other that we are injurious to the Scripture of God in abridging the large and rich Continks thereof Their words are these You which
debere dicimus Quod ad rituales ecclesiasticas attinet ordinis aedificationis Ecclesiarum in his semper habendâ ratio est inutiles autem noxias nempe ineptas supersticiosas Patronis suis relinquamus Goulart Genevens Annot. in Epist. Cypr. 74. d T.C.l. â pa 71. They should nor have been to hold as to have brought it into the holy Sacrament of Baptism and so âingle the Ceremonies and inventions of Menâ with the Sacraments and institutions of God T.C. lib 1. pag. 170. The profitable signification of the Cross maketh the thing a great deal worse and bringeth In a new word âneu the Church whereas there ought to âe no Doctor liâard in the Church but onely our Saviour Christ For al hough tâ be the Word of God that we should ââ be ashamed of the Cross of Christ yet is it not the Word of God that we should be kept in remembrance of that by ââân lines drawn across one over another in the Childes Forehead * Luk. 7. 44 a T. C. lib. â pag. 170. It is known to all that have real the Ecclesiâssical sieries That the Heathen did âââââ in Christians in ââââs all in reproach Thuâ the God which âry believed on was hanged upon a Cross. And they thought goâd to râth that they were not ashamed therefore of the Sun of God by the often using of the Sign of the Crist. Which carefulness and goul minde to keep amongst them an open Proseââân of Christ crucified althrough it be to be commended yet is not this means so And they might otherwise have kept it and with less danger then by this use of crossing And as it was brought in upon no good ground so the Lord left a mark of his curse of it and whereby It might be perceived to câmour of the Forat of Men Brain is that it began forthwith while it was yet in the Swalling Ciours to be superstiâiuosly abused The Christians had such a Superstition in it that they would do nothing without Crossing But if it were gramed that upon this consideration which I have before mentioned the ancient Christians did well yet it followeth not that we should to do For we live not amongst those Nation which do cast us in the ââth or reproach us with die Cross of Christ. Now that we live amongst Papist that do not concern the Cros of Christ but which esteem more of the Word in Cross thru of the tene âas wâââ is his sufferings we ough now to do clean conââriwile to thrill christians and abolish aâl use of that Cross to For contrary theasââ must have contrary remedie If therefore thâo'd t Christians to deliver the Cross of Christ sunt now ãâ¦ã all senue the Cross the Christians now to take away the superstitions estimation of it ought to take away âe use of it b Epheâ 5. 12. Rom. 6. 21 c Sen. Epist. 1â lib. 1. d Tââoin ãâ¦ã e Frons honinies cristitiae Islortatis Clementia severitatis index est Plin. lib. 21. Ez. k9 4. Apoc. 7. 3. â p 4. a ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Arist Eth. 4 c.9 a Caro signatur uâ c anima muniatur Tertul de Resur Car. Cypr. Epist 56. âd Thimâââââ Cypr. de Laps Erant enim supplices corona li. Tetilib de Coreâil In the service of âloâ the Donors of their Temples the Sacrifices the Alâââ the Priests and the Suppliants that wore present were Garlands a ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Arist â her I. 1 cap. 6. b Oziar Rex leprae varielate in fronte macularuâ est co porie corporis norarus est nso Domino ubi sigâââcur qui Dominâ prometentur Cypr. de unit Eccles Cap. 16. c Ginlart Am not in Cypr. lib. ad Demerr cap. 19. Quamvis veteres Christiani externo signo cruds un sumi lil âamen suit sinc superstitione c ductrias de Christi merito ab crââe qui postea lâââepsie pios servant immunes d Idem An. not in Cypr. Epist. 57. 67. Dist. 6.3 cap. Quid. âizon lib 17. cap. 15. The. pag. 3. q. 25. art 3. Resp. ad Tert. a Ioseph Antiq lib. 17. cap. 8. lib. 18. cap. 3. de Bell. lib. 2. cap. 8. b Their Eagles their Ensigns and the Images of their Princes they carried with them in all their Armies and had always a kinde of Chappel wherein they places and adored them is their gods ââ l. 40. Heredian lib. 4. c Matth. 22.20 d 2 Chro. 4. 3. e Exod. â2 â f 2 Chro. 34 7. g Josh. 22. 10. 1 King 11. 1â 2 King 13. 13. 2 King 18 3,6 12. 2. 2 King 23. 7. Of Confirmation after Baptism * Caro manus Impositione adumbeatur ât anima Spiritu illumineâur Tertul de Reser Caâ Gen. 48. 14. 2 King 5. 11. Num. 27. 18. Matth. 9. 18. Mark 5. 23. 8. 12. Matth. 19.13 Mark 10. 14. Luk. 18. 15. Mark 16.17 Aââ 1â â Act 8 17 18. ãâ¦ã August de â er âK ââ cap. 15. Tertul. de Baptis Cypr. Epist. 2. ad Donat. c. â Euseb Emis Ser. de Vents Aug. de Trin. liâ 15 cap. 26. lâââ 6. 3. Acts 8. 12 15. Ier. Advers âucif cap. 4. Cypr. Epist. 73. ad Iubajenum Heb. 6. 3. Psal. 31. 10 11 12. * T C. lib. 1. pag. 1â1 Tell me why there should be any such Confirmation in the Church being brought in by the seigned Decretal Epistles of the Popes this is âeââacted by the same T.C. lib. 3. pag. 232 That it is ancienter then the seigned Decretal Epistles I yield unto and no one tittle thereof being once found in the Scripture and seeing that it hath been so horribly abused and not necessary why ought it âââ to be utterly abolished And thirdly this Confirmation hath many dangerous points in it The first step of Popery in this Confirmation is the Laying on of Hands upon the Head of the Childe whereby the opinion of it that it is a Sacrament is confirmed especially when as the Prayer doth say That it is done according to the example of the Apostles which is a manifest unwâtâ and taken indeed from the Popish Confirmation The second is for that the Bishop as he is called must be the onely minister of it whereby the Popish opinion which esteemeth it above Baptism is confirmed For whilest Baptism may be ministred of the Minister and not Confirmation but onely of the Bishop there is great cause of suspition given to think that Baptism is not so precious a thing as Confirmation seeing this was one of the principal reasons whereby that wicked opinion was established in Popery I do not here speak of the inconvenience that men are constrained with charges to bring their children oftentimes half a score miles for that which if it were needful might be as well done at home in their own Parishes The third is for that the Book saith a cause of using Confirmation is Therby imposition of Hands and Prayer the Children may receive strength and
which Admonitions all that I mean to say is but this There will come a time when three words uttered with Charity and Meekness shall receive a far more blessed Reward then three thousand Volumns written with disdainful sharpness of Wit But the manner of Mens Writings must not alienate our hearts from the Truth if it appear they have the Truth as the Followers of the same Defender do think he hath and in that perswasion they follow him no otherwise then himself doth Calvin Beza and others with the like perswasion that they in this cause had the Truth We being as fully perswaded otherwise it resteth that some kinde of tryal be used to finde out which part is in error 3. The first mean whereby Nature teacheth men to judge good from evil as well in Laws as in other things is the force of their own discretion Hereunto therefore St. Paul referreth oftentimes his own speech to be considered of by them that heard him I speak as to them which have understanding Judge ye what I say Again afterward Judge in your selves is it comly that a woman pray uncovered The exercise of this kinde of judgment our Saviour requireth in the Iews In them of Berea the Scripture commendeth it Finally Whatsoever we do if our own secret judgment consent not unto it as fit and good to be done the doing of it to us is sin although the thing it self be allowable St. Pauls rule therefore generally is Let every man in his own minde be fully perswaded of that thing which he either alloweth or doth Some things are so familiar and plain that Truth from Falshood and Good from Evil is most easily discerned in them even by men of no deep capacity And of that nature for the most part are things absolutely unto all Mens salvation necessary either to he held or denied either to be done or avoided For which cause St. Augustine acknowledgeth that they are not onely set down but also plainly set down in Scripture So that he which heareth or readeth may without any great difficulty understand Other things also there are belonging though in a lower degree of importance unto the offices of Christian men Which because they are more obscure more intricate and hard to be judged of therefore God hath appointed some to spend their whole time principally in the study of things Divine to the end that in these more doubtful cases their understanding might be a light to direct others If the understanding power or faculty of the Soul be saith the Grand Physitian like unto bodily sight not of equal sharpness in all What can be more convenient then that even as the dark-sighted man is directed by the clear about things visible so likewise in matters of deeper discourse the wise in heart do shew the simple where his way lieth In our doubtful Cases of Law what man is there who seeth not how requisite it is that Professors of skill in that Faculty be our Directors so it is in all other kindes of knowledge And even in this kinde likewise the Lord hath himself appointed That the Priests lips should preserve knowledge and that other men should seek the truth at his mouth because he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts Gregory Nazianzen offended at the peoples too great presumption in controlling the judgment of them to whom in such cases they should have rather submitted their own seeketh by earnest entreaty to stay them within their bounds Presume not ye that are Sheep to make your selves Guides of them that should guide you neither seek ye to overslip the fold which they about you have pitched It sufficeth for your part if ye can well frame your selves to be ordered Take not upon you to judge your selves nor to make them subject to your Laws who should be a Law to you for God is not a God of Sedition and Confusion but of Order and of Peace But ye will say that if the Guides of the people be blinde the common sort of men must not close up their own eyes and be led by the conduct of such If the Priest be partial in the Law the flock must not therefore depart from the ways of sincere Truth and in simplicity yield to be followers of him for his place sake and office over them Which thing though in it self most true is in your defence notwithstanding weak because the matter wherein ye think that ye see and imagine that your ways are sincere is of far deeper consideration then any one amongst Five hundred of you conceiveth Let the vulgar sort among you know that there is not the least branch of the Cause wherein they are so resolute but to the tryal of it a great deal more appertaineth then their conceit doth reach unto I write not this in disgrace of the simplest that way given but I would gladly they knew the nature of that cause wherein they think themselves throughly instructed and are not by means whereof they daily run themselves without feeling their own hazzard upon the dint of the Apostles sentence against evil speakers as touching things wherein they are ignorant If it be granted a thing unlawful for private men not called unto Publick Consultation to dispute which is the best State of Civil Policy with a desire of bringing in some other kinde them that under which they already live for of such Disputes I take it his meaning was If it be a thing confest that of such Questions they cannot determine without rashness in as much as a great part of them consisteth in special Circumstances and for one kinde as many Reasons may be brought as for another Is there any reason in the World why they should better judge what kinde of Regiment Ecclesiastical is the fittest For in the Civil State more insight and in those affairs more experience a great deal must needs be granted them then in this they can possibly have When they which write in defence of your Discipline and commend it unto the Highest not in the least cunning manner are forced notwithstanding to acknowledge That with whom the Truth is they know not they are not certain what certainly or knowledge can the multitude have thereof Weigh what doth move the common sort so much to favor this Innovation and it shall soon appear unto you that the force of particular Reasons which for your several Opinions are alleaged is a thing whereof the multitude never did nor could so consider as to be therewith wholly carried but certain general Inducements are used to make saleable your Cause in gross And when once men have cast a fancy towards it any slight Declaration of Specialties will serve to lead forward mens inclineable and prepared mindes The method of winning the peoples affection unto a general liking of the Cause for so ye term it hath been this First in the hearing of the multitude the faults especially of
higher Callings are ripped up with marvellous exceeding severity and sharpness of Reproof which being oftentimes dont begetteth a great good opinion of Integrity zeal and Holiness to such constant reprovers of sin as by likelihood would never be so much offended at that which is evil unless themselves were singularly good The next thing hereunto is to impute all Faults and Corruptions wherewith the World aboundeth unto the kinde of Ecclesiastical Government established Wherein as before by reproving Faults they purchased unto themselves with the multitude a name to be vertuous so by finding out this kinde of Cause they obtain to be judged wise above others whereas in truth unto the Form even of Iewish Government which the Lord himself they all confess did establish with like shew of Reason they might impute those Faults which the Prophets condemn in the Governors of that Commonwealth as to the English kinde of Regiment Ecclesiastical whereof also God himself though in another sort is Author the stains and blemishes found in our State which springing from the Root of Humane Frailty and Corruption not onely are but have been always more or less yea and for any thing we know to the contrary will be till the Worlds end complained of what Form of Government soever take place Having gotten thus much sway in the hearts of men a third step is to propose their own Form of Church Government as the onely soveraign remedy of all Evils and to adorn it with all the glorious Titles that may be And the Nature as of men that have sick bodies so likewise of the people in the crazedness of their Mindes possest with dislike and discontentment at things present is to imagine that any thing the vertue whereof they hear commended would help them but that most which they least have tryed The fourth degree of Inducements is by fashioning the very notions and conceits of mens mindes in such sort that when they read the Scripture they may think that every thing soundeth towards the advancement of that Discipline and to the utter disgrace of the contrary Pythagoras by bringing up his Schollars in speculative knowledge of numbers made their conceipts therein so strong that when they came to the contemplation of things natural they imagined that in every particular thing they even beheld as it were with their eyes how the Elements of Number gave Essence and Being to the Works of Nature A thing in reason impossible which notwithstanding through their misfashioned preconceit appeared unto them no less certain then if Nature had written it in the very Foreheads of all the Creatures of God When they of the Family of Love have it once in their heads that Christ doth not signifie any one Person but a Quality whereof many are partakers that to be raised is nothing else but to be regenerated or endued with the said quality and that when Separation of them which have if from them which have it not is here made this is judgment How plainly do they imagine that the Scripture every where speaketh in the favor of that Sect And assuredly the very cause which maketh the simple and ignorant to think they even see how the Word of God runneth currantly on your side is That their mindes are forestalled and their conceits perverted beforehand by being taught that an Elder doth signifie a Lay-man admitted onely to the Office of Rule or Government in the Church a Doctor one which may onely Teach and neither Preach nor Administer the Sacraments a Deacon one which hath charge of the Alms-box and of nothing else That the Scepter the Rod the Throne and Kingdom of Christ art a Form of Regiment onely by Pastors Elders Doctors and Deacons that by Mystical Resemblance Mount Sion and Jerusalem are the Churches which admit Samaria and Babylon the Churches which oppugne the said Form of Regiment And in like sort they are taught to apply all things spoken of repairing the Walls and decayed parts of the City and Temple of God by Esdras Nehemias and the rest As if purposely the Holy Ghost had therein meant to fore-signifie what the Authors of Admonitions to the Parliament of Supplications to the Council of Petitions to Her Majesty and of such other-like Writs should either do or suffer in behalf of this their Cause From hence they proceed to an higher point which is the perswading of men credulous and over-capable of such pleasing Errors That it is the special illumination of the Holy Ghost whereby they discern those things in the Word which others reading yet discern them not Dearly Beloved saith St. John Give not credit unto every spirit There are but two ways whereby the Spirit leadeth men into all Truth the one extraordinary the other common the one belonging but unto some few the other extending it self unto all that are of God the one that which we call by a special divine excellency Revelation the other Reason If the Spirit by such Revelation have discovered unto them the secrets of that Discipline out of Scripture they must profess themselves to be all even Men Women and Children Prophets Or if Reason be the hand which the Spirit hath led them by for as much as Perswasions grounded upon Reason are either weaker or stronger according to the force of those Reasons whereupon the same are grounded they must every of them from the greatest to the least be able for every several Article to shew some special Reason as strong as their Perswasion therein is earnest Otherwise how can it be but that some other sinews there are from which that everplus of strength in Perswasion doth arise Most sure it is That when Mens Affections do frame their Opinions they are in defence of Error more earnest a great deal then for the most part sound Believers in the maintenance of Truth apprehended according to the nature of that evidence which Scripture yieldeth Which being in some things plain as in the Principles of Christian Doctrine in some things as in these Matters of Discipline more dark and doubtful frameth correspondently that inward assent which Gods most gracious Spirit worketh by it as by his Effectual Instrument It is not therefore the servent earnestness of their perswasion but the soundness of those Reasons whereupon the same is built which must declare their Opinions in these things to have been wrought by the Holy Ghost and not by the Fraud of that evil spirit which is even in his illusions strong After that the fancy of the common sort hath once thorowly apprehended the Spirit to be Author of their Perswasions concerning Discipline then is instilled into their hearts that the same Spirit leading men into this opinion doth thereby seal them to be Gods Children and that as the state of the times now standeth the most special taken to know them that are Gods own from others is an earnest affection that way This hath bred high terms of Separation between such and the rest of the
with joy and reverence Now there is no Controversie but as God in that special Case did authorize Nathan so Christ more generally his Apostles and the Ministers of his Word in his Name to absolve Sinners Their power being equal all the difference between them can be but only in this that whereas the one had prophetical evidence the other have the certainty partly of Faith and partly of Human experience whereupon to ground their Sentence Faith to assure them of God's most graous Pardon in Heaven unto all Penitents and touching the sincerity of each particular Parties repentance as much as outward sensible tokens or signes can warrant It is not to be marvelled that so great a difference appeareth between the Doctrine of Rome and Ours when we teach Repentance They imply in the Name of Repentance much more than we do We stand chiefly upon the due inward Conversion of the Heart They more upon Works of external shew We teach above all things that Repentance which is one and the same from the beginning to the World's end They a Sacramental Penance of their own devising and shaping We labour to instruct men in such sort that every Soul which is wounded with sin may learn the way how to cure it self They clean contrary would make all Soars seem incurable unless the Priests have a hand in them Touching the force of whose Absolution they strangely hold that whatsoever the Penitent doth his Contrition Confession and Satisfaction have no place of right to stand as material parts in this Sacrament nor consequently any such force as to make them available for the taking away of Sin in that they proceed from the Penitent himself without the privity of the Minister but only as they are enjoyned by the Minister's Authority and Power So that no contrition or grief of heart till the Priest exact it no acknowledgement of Sins but that which he doth demand no Praying no Fasting no Alms no Recompence or Restitution for whatsoever we have done can help except by him it be first imposed It is the Chain of their own Doctrine No remedy for mortal sin committed after Baptism but the Sacrament of Penance only No Sacrament of Penance if either matter or form be wanting No wayes to make those Duties a material part of the Sacrament unless we consider them as required and exacted by the Priest Our Lord and Saviour they say hath ordained his Priests Judges in such sort that no man which sinneth after Baptisme can be reconciled unto God but by their Sentence For why If there were any other way of Reconciliation the very promise of Christ should be false in saying Whatsoever ye binde on Earth shall be bound in Heaven and whose sins soever ye retain are retained Except therefore the Priest be willing God hath by promise hampred himself so that it is not now in his own power to pardon any man Let him which is offended crave as the Publican did Lord he thou merciful unto me a sinner Let him as David make a thousand times his supplication Have mercy upon me O God according to thy loving kindness according to the multitude of thy compassions put away mine iniquities All this doth not help till such time as the pleasure of the Priest be known till he have signed us a pardon and given us our quietus est God himself hath no Answer to make but such as that of his Angel unto Lot I can do nothing It is true that our Saviour by these words Whose Sins ye remit they are remitted did ordain Judges over our sinful Souls gave them Authority to absolve from sin and promise to ratifie in Heaven whatsoever they should do on Earth in execution of this their Offices to the end that hereby as well his Ministers might take encouragement to do their Duty with all Faithfulness as also his People admonition gladly with all reverence to be ordered by them both parts knowing that the Functions of the one towards the other have his perpetual assistance and approbation Howbeit all this with two Restraints which every Jurisdiction in the World hath the one that the practice thereof proceed in due order the other that it do not extend it self beyond due bounds which bounds or limits have so confined penitential Jurisdiction that although there be given unto it power of remitting sinne yet not such Soveraignty of Power that no sin should be pardonable in man without it Thus to enforce our Saviour's words is as though we should gather that because Whatsoever Ioseph did command in the Land of Pharaoh's grant is it should be done therefore he granteth that nothing should be done in the Land of Egypt but what Ioseph did command and so consequently by enabling his Servant Ioseph to command under him disableth himself to command any thing without Ioseph But by this we see how the Papacy maketh all Sin unpardonable which hath not the Priests Absolution except peradventure in some extraordinary case where albeit Absolution be not had yet it must be desired What is then the force of Absolution What is it which the act of Absolution worketh in a sinful man doth it by any operation derived from it self alter the state of the Soul Doth it really take away sin or but ascertain us of God's most gracious and merciful pardon The latter of which two is our assertion the former theirs At the words of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ saying unto the sick of the Palsie Son thy sins are forgiven thee the Pharisees which knew him not to be Son of the living God took secret exception and fell to reasoning with themselves against him Is any able to forgive Sin but God only The Sins saith St. Cyprian that are committed against him he alone hath power to forgive which took upon him our sins he which sorrowed and suffered for us he whom the Father delivered unto death for our offences Whereunto may be added that which Clemens Alexandrinus hath Our Lord is profitable every way every way beneficial whether we respect him as Man or as God as God forgiving as Man instructing and learning how to avoid Sin For it is I even I that putteth away thine Iniquities for mine own sake and will not remember thy sins saith the Lord. Now albeit we willingly confess with Saint Cyprian The Sinnes which are committed against him he only hath power to forgive who hath taken upon him our Sinnes he which hath sorrowed and suffered for us he whom God hath given for our Offences Yet neither did Saint Cyprian intend to deny the power of the Minister otherwise then if he presume beyond his Commission to remit Sinne where God's own will is it should be retained For against such Ablutions he speaketh which being granted to whom they ought to have been denyed are of no validity and if rightly it be considered how higher causes in operation use to concur with inferiour means his Grace
with our Ministerie God really performing the same which Man is authorized to act as in his Name there shall need for decision of this point no great labour To Remission of Sins there are two things necessary Grace as the only cause which taketh away Iniquity and Repentance as a Duty or Condition required in us To make Repentance such as it should be what doth God demand but inward sincerity joyned with fit and convenient Offices for that purpose the one referred wholly to our own Consciences the other best discerned by them whom God hath appointed Judges in this Court. So that having first the promises of God for pardon generally unto all Offenders penitent and particularly for our own unfeigned meaning the unfallible testimony of a good Conscience the sentence of God's appointed Officer and Vicegerent to approve with unpartial Judgement the quality of that we have done and as from his Tribunal in that respect to assoil us of any Crime I see no cause but that by the Rules of our Faith and Religion we may rest our selves very well assured touching God's most merciful Pardon and Grace who especially for the strengthening of weak timerous and fearful mindes hath so farr indued his Church with Power to absolve Sinners It pleaseth God that men sometimes should by missing this help perceive how much they stand bound to him for so precious a Benefit enjoyed And surely so long as the World lived in any awe or fear of falling away from God so dear were his Ministers to the People chiefly in this respect that being through tyranny and persecution deprived of Pastors the doleful rehearsal of their lost felicities hath not any one thing more eminent than that Sinners distrest should not now know how or where to unlade their Burthens Strange it were unto me that the Fathers who so much every where extol the Grace of Jesus Christ in leaving unto his Church this Heavenly and Divine power should as men whose simplicity had universally been abused agree all to admire the magnifie and needless Office The Sentence therefore of Ministerial Absolution hath two effects touching sin it only declareth us freed from the guiltiness thereof and restored into God's favour but concerning right in Sacred and Divine Mysteries whereof through Sin we were made unworthy as the power of the Church did before effectually binde and retain us from access unto them so upon our apparent repentance it truly restoreth our Liberty looseth and Chains wherewith we were tyed remitteth all whatsoever is past and accepteth us no less returned than if we never had gone astray For in as much as the Power which our Saviour gave to his Church is of two kindes the one to be exercised over voluntary Penitents only the other over such as are to be brought to Amendment by Ecclesiastical Censures the words wherein he hath given this Authority must be so understood as the Subject or Matter whereupon it worketh will permit It doth not permit that in the former kinde that is to say in the use of Power over voluntarie Converts to binde or loose remit or retain should signifie any other than only to pronounce of Sinners according to that which may be gathered by outward signes because really to effect the removal or continuance of Sinne in the Soul of any Offender is no Priestly act but a Work which farr exceedeth their Ability Contrariwise in the latter kinde of Spiritual Jurisdiction which by Censures constraineth men to amend their Lives It is is true that the Minister of God doth then more declare and signifie what God hath wrought And this Power true it is that the Church hath invested in it Howbeit as other truths so this hath by errour been oppugned and depraved through abuse The first of Name that openly in Writing withstood the Churches Authority and Power to remit Sinne was Tertullian after he had combined himself with Montanists drawn to the liking of their Heresie through the very sowreness of his own nature which neither his incredible skill and knowledge otherwise nor the Doctrine of the Gospel it self could but so much alter as to make him savour any thing which carried with it the taste of lenity A Spunge steeped in Worm-wood and Gall a Man through too much severity merciless and neither able to endure nor to be endured of any His Book entituled concerning Chastity and written professedly against the Discipline of the Church hath many fretful and angry Sentences declaring a minde very much offended with such as would not perswade themselves that of Sins some be pardonable by the Keyes of the Church some uncapable of Forgiveness That middle and moderate Offences having received chastisement may by Spiritual Authority afterwards be remitted but greater Transgressions must as touching Indulgence be left to the only pleasure of Almighty God in the World to come That as Idolatry and Bloodshed so likewise Fornication and sinful Lust are of this nature that they which so farr have fallen from God ought to continue for ever after barred from access unto his Sanctuary condemned to perpetual profusion of Tears deprived of all expectation and hope to receive any thing at the Churches hands but publication of their shame For saith he who will fear to waste out that which he hopeth he may recover Who will be careful for ever to hold that which be knoweth cannot for ever be withheld from him He which slackneth the Bridle to sinne doth thereby give it even the spurr also Take away fear and that which presently succeedeth in stead thereof is Licencious desire Greater Offences therefore are punishable but not pardonable by the Church If any Prophet or Apostle be found to have remitted such Transgressions they did it not by the ordinary course of Discipline but by extraordinary power For they also raised the Dead which none but God is able to do they restored the Impotent and Lame men a work peculiar to Jesus Christ Yea that which Christ would not do because executions of such severity beseemed not him who came to save and redeem the World by his sufferings they by their power strook Elymas and Ananias the one blinde and the other dead Approve first your selves to be as they were Apostles or Prophets and then take upon you to pardon all men But if the Authority you have be only Ministerial and no way Soveraign over-reach not the limits which God hath set you know that to pardon capital Sin is beyond your Commission Howbeit as oftentimes the vices of wicked men do cause other their commendable qualities to be abhorred so the honour of great mens vertues is easily a Cloak of their Errours In which respect Tertullian hath past with much less obloquy and reprehension than Novatian who broaching afterwards the same opinion had not otherwise wherewith to countervail the Offence he gave and to procure it the like toleration Novatian at the first a Stoical Phylosopher which kinde of men hath alwayes accounted
Stupidity the highest top of Wisdom and Commiseration the deadlyest sin became by Institution and Study the very same which the other had been before through a secret natural Distemper upon his Conversion to the Christian Faith and recovery from Sickness which moved him to receive the Sacrament of Baptisme in his Bed The Bishops contrary to the Canons of the Church would needs in special love towards him ordain him Presbyter which favour satisfied not him who thought himself worthy of greater Place and Dignity He closed therefore with a number of well-minded men and not suspicious what his secret purposes were and having made them sure unto him by fraud procureth his own Consecration to be their Bishop His Prelacy now was able as he thought to countenance what he intended to publish and therefore his Letters went presently abroad to sundry Churches advising them never to admit to the Fellowship of Holy Mysteryes such as had after Baptisme offered Sacrifice to Idols There was present at the Council of Nice together with other Bishops one Acesius a Novatianist touching whose diversity in opinion from the Church the Emperour desirous to hear some reason asked of him certain Questions for Answer whereunto Acesius weaveth out a long History of things that hapned in the Persecution under Decius And of men which to savelife forsook Faith But in the end was a certain bitter Canon framed in their own School That men which fall into deadly sin after holy Baptism ought never to be again admitted to the Communion of Divine Mysteries That they are to be exhorted unto Repentance howbeit not to be put in hope that Pardon can be bad at the Priest's hands but with God which hath Soveraign Power and Authority in himself to remit sins it may be in the end they shall finde Mercy These Followers of Novatian which gave themselves the Title of ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Clean pure and unspotted men had one point of Montanism more than their Master did professe for amongst Sinnes unpardonable they reckoned second Marriages of which opinion Tertullian making as his usual manner was a salt Apology Such is saith he our stony hardness that defaming our Comforter with a kinde of enormity in Discipline we dam up the doors of the Church no less against twice-married men then against Adulterers and Fornicators Of this sort therefore it was ordained by the Nycene Synod that if any such did return to the Catholick and Apostolick unity they should in Writing binde themselves to observe the Orders of the Church and Communicate as well with them which had been often married or had fallen in time of Persecution as with other sort of Christian people But further to relate or at all to refel the errour of mis-believing men concerning this point is not now to our present purpose greatly necessary The Church may receive no small detriment by corrupt practice even there where Doctrine concerning the substance of things practised is free from any great or dangerous corruption If therefore that which the Papacy doth in matter of Confessions and Absolution be offensive if it palpably serve in the use of the Keyes howsoever that which it teacheth in general concerning the Churches power to retain and forgive sinnes be admitted true have they not on the one side as much whereat to be abasht as on the other wherein to rejoyce They binde all men upon pain of everlasting condemnation and death to make Confessions to their Ghostly Fathers of every great offence they know and can remember that they have committed against God Hath Christ in his Gospel so delivered the Doctrine of Repentance unto the World Did his Apostles so preach it to Nations Have the Fathers so believed or so taught Surely Novatian was not so merciless in depriving the Church of power to Absolve some certain Offenders as they in imposing upon all a necessity thus to confess Novatian would not deny but God might remit that which the Church could not whereas in the Papacy it is maintained that what we conceal from men God himself shall never pardon By which over-sight as they have here surcharged the World with multitude but much abated the weight of Confessions so the careless manner of their Absolution hath made Discipline for the most part amongst them a bare Formality Yea rather a mean of emboldening unto vicious and wicked life then either any help to prevent future or medicine to remedy present evils in the Soul of man The Fathers were slow and alwayes fearful to absolve any before very manifest tokens given of a true Penitent and Contrite spirit It was not their custom to remit sin first and then to impose works of satisfaction as the fashion of Rome is now in so much that this their preposterous course and mis-ordered practises hath bred also in them an errour concerning the end and purpose of these works For against the guiltiness of sin and the danger of everlasting condemnation thereby incurâed Confession and Absolution succeeding the same are as they take it a remedy sufficient and therefore what their Penitentiaries do think to enjoyn farther whether it be a number of Ave-Maries dayly to be scored up a Journey of Pilgrimage to be undertaken some few Dishes of ordinary Diet to be exchanged Offerings to be made at the shrines of Saints or a little to be scraped off from Mens superfluities for relief of poor People all is in lieu or exchange with God whose Justice notwithstanding our Pardon yet oweth us still some Temporal punishment either in this or in the life to come except we quit it our selves here with works of the former kinde and continued till the ballance of God's most strict severity shall finde the pains we have taken equivalent with the plagues which we should endure or else the mercy of the Pope relieve us And at this Postern-gate cometh in the whole Mart of Papal Indulgences so infinitely strewed that the pardon of Sinne which heretofore was obtained hardly and by much suit is with them become now almost impossible to be escaped To set down then the force of this Sentence in Absolving Penitents There are in Sinne these three things The Act which passeth away and vanisheth The Pollution wherewith it leaveth the Soul defiled And the Punishment whereunto they are made subject that have committed it The act of Sin is every deed word and thought against the Law of God For Sinne is the transgression of the Law and although the deed it self do not continue yet is that bad quality permanent whereby it maketh the Soul unrighteous and deformed in God's sight From the Heart come evil Cogitations Murthers Adulteries Fornications Thefts false Testimonies Slanders These are things which defile a man They do not only as effects of impurity argue the Nest no be unclean out of which they came but as causes they strengthen that disposition unto Wickedness which brought them forth They are both fruits and seeds