silencing to lose our friends to gratifie them that thus abuse us and to take pains to exchange kindness for cruelty and to strive hard to leap out of the ashes into the fire But I will tell the truth to the world and you we do what you desire of us or reasonably can desire I constantly Preached till the Goal restrained me against Separation and much more against sedition and rebellion We do it openly and plainly I am the man that am reproached in Print for want of this And the same hand so far justified me as before the Kings Majesty and Lords and before the Right Reverend Bishops to say of me and my Disputes of Church-Government about the Ceremonies c. No man hath written better of these things And can we speak louder than by the Press Or can they prove that we preach not as we write O wonderful that ever the world can degenerate to so much unrighteousness as to condemn men upon such defamations as these Besides that Book many a year before and since I have still written to the same purpose I have Preached to the same purpose But thinking it more seasonable in private Conference I have an hundred and an hundred times more pleaded for the like in private And my Disputes before mentioned are accused by many offended persons as having made a hundred Ministers at least conformable And had they not been written in the very height of Usurpation before the Kings return I should have been taken for the vilest temporizer This is our course and yet if wrath and partiality and ill will do but dream that we do infect the people and cherish them in Separation and do not contradict but flatter them in their extreams against our own judgments the world must ring of all these dreams and they think it fit that we be used as if all were certain truth We have need to bless our selves against dreaming neighbours if we must be estimated and used and described to the world according to their dreams Nay I will tell the world here the certain truth of our success and usage I preach I write and I frequently and openly talk against Separation and for the lawfulness of joining with the Church in the use of the Liturgy and to rebuke mens extreams and censures of the Episcopal Clergy and for an impartial love of all true Christians I sharply reprove the weak reasonings of those that are otherwise minded and by this I occasion the true Sectarians every where to speak against me and yet even these Sectaries wish me well and would do me no harm and the generality of my hearers bear all this well and seem to be of the same mind And yet when I am loved by those that I plead against I am reviled and abused by those that I plead for Yea more I must profess it before the world that I plead your cause as far as conscionably I can and its you that hinder me and none like you You would have us do your work with the people and you would not let us do it You use us as I saw a man lately do by a Colt who tyed him fast to a great tree and lashed him most cruelly to make him draw You make our work difficult if not impossible and then think us worthy of your smarting wrath for not performing it Were it not for two things we could do much to reconcile the people to you 1. If you would not impose those Oaths Subscriptions and such like burdens which we are our selves unable without fraud and falshood to defend 2. If you would not silence their faithful Teachers but would encourage Godliness and good men impartially and would exercise LOVE as openly and largely as you exercise WRATH But we must tell the world and you that we are unable utterly unable to justifie the Corporation-Oath and Declaration and to bring the people to like those Bishops whom they think are the chief cause of depriving of them of their long tried painful faithful Pastors and setting over them such as in too many places are set When our people are in Goals for meeting as they have done these twenty yea thirty or forty years only to repeat their Teachers Sermon and pray and sing a Psalm together between the publick Exercises on the Lords-day where they have reverently attended It is a hard task that you put on them to like you but a harder that you put on us that we must Preach them to it even when we must not Preach at all That we must go to the Gaols to them or after they come out to their houses to teach them to like the Bishops and their Impositions They will tell us VVe love them with a love of Benevolence as we must our enemies we wish them no harm but the greatest good but we cannot love them as such complacentially nor think approvingly of their ways Whether you do well or ill in promoting their sufferings I am not now judging I only tell you that it is the greatest hinderance to our reconciling them to you and your ways that you could easily have devised I never saw that wooing speed well that said Love me or I will send thee to Gaol When I was a child I never thought any correction more unreasonable than whipping children to make them give over crying when whipping was an unresistible means to make them cry if they had not cried before While I am Voluminously reproached for not reproving the spirit of Separation or Nonconformty as afore limited when I did it last I was sent to Prison and when I would do it by Preaching I have not leave And if your meaning be Speak when we have shut thy mouth and teach men to like us when they suffer our wrath you increase our task when you have taken away our straw I conclude therefore with repeating it you will not suffer us to serve you as we can but are our greatest hinderers while you blame us And lastly as to their scrupling the Corporation Declaration and Oath I can speak best for my self The Bayliff Justice and all the twelve Capital Burgesses besides inferior Burgesses did refuse it and were every one displaced save one now dead that had been a Soldier in the Kings Army what men were put in their stead I am not now to tell you And they were so far from being perswaded to this by me at almost an hundred miles distance that I never once spake to them nor wrote to them one Letter or word about it And it being no part of the old Conformity how could this be put into their heads by me especially when they know that I had kept the Covenant from ever being put upon that Town and Country 4 Obj But the issue sheweth how little good your Teaching doth where are any more against Bishops and Conformity than your hearers You make men hypocrites and teach them to prate phrases and cut faces and rail at carnal
artibus inquit bonestis Nullus in urbe locus nulla emolumenta laborum Res hodie minor est quam fuit atque eadem cras Deteret exiguis aliquid proponimus illuc Ire satigatus ubi Daedalus exuit alas Dum nova Canities dum prima recta senectus Dum superest Lachesi quod torqueat pedibus me Porto meis nullo dextram subeunte bacillo Cedamus patriâ Vivant Arturius istic Et Catulus maneant qui nigrum in Candida vertunt I think this much with what is said in the Propositions may satisfie men that are willing to understand that your way will never attain the peace and concord of the Churches nor in likelihood your own ends 1. Either by changing mens judgments 2. Or bringing them to conformity against their judgments 3. Or by destroying them Nay that it is the most destructive course to all good ends that you can take And I may add that if you should banish them the worth which they carry with them as in Amesius his instance will shine where they come and their honour will be your shame for men are naturally and not without cause inclined to think them to be extreme bad men by whom men so good and learned and unblamable do so much suffer And methinks you of all men should not be guilty of so much self-denial as to contemn your Reputation in all other Countreys and not to care how odious your Names are to others and to posterity so be it you hear not their words your selves of which more anon But here I would insert an humble request to my silenced brethren that they will study and pray and labour so diligently and live so holily and innocently that whithersoever they be driven their light may shine to the glory of their Lord and the service of his Church and that they would not disgrace their silencers and afflicters by hard words but by eminent knowledg and holiness and they shall find that this splendor of their worth will speak more for them and against those that hate them than all our apologies will do I will here to this purpose cast in a brief History both for your afflicters sake and yours It is the occasion of the translation of Philosophy from Greece unto the Saracene Arabians as it is recorded by Caelius August Curio Histor. Saracen l. 2. and out of him by Hornius Hist. Philos. l. 4. p. 287 288. Mamunus their Califf or King was a great lover of learning in whose time there was among the Greek Christians one Leo a Bishop of Thessalonica who for differing from those in power in the controversie about Images which then troubled the Churches was driven from his flock and coming to Constantinople he lived in a poor cottage privately but being a most excellent Philosopher taught many in his private School so that many excellent Philosophers went out of it in a little time Among whom one young man was taken prisoner by the Saracens in the Wars who being excellent in Geometry fell into the hands of a great man by whom his fame was brought to the King who trying him and finding him to excel all his Philosophers must know who was his Master He told him one Leo a man that was frowned into obscurity and poverty but a most excellent Philosopher The King Mamumus was so inflamed with a desire of Leo that he presently wrote to him and offered him all the Honour and Riches that he could desire so he would but come to him Leo shewed the Letters to the Emperor at Constantinople whereupon the Emperor not willing that such an honour should pass to his Enemy gave him License to teach in publick King Mamumus despairing of Leo sendeth important Letters to the Emperor to beg Leo's presence but a little while professing that he would have come with the request himself but that the Government of a fierce sort of people detained him Hereupon the Emperor coming to know his worth and how his own Honour was interessed in the business restored Leo to his Bishoprick and had him in great honour and gave him great Riches And Mamumus not obtaining his desires wrote many of his difficulties as Questions to Leo and so procured some of his instructions in Writing by way of answer to his great satisfaction And this is noted as the introduction of Learning into that Countrey which since Mahometanism hath famished O that we were all such that our worth might be our apology and O that those who think it their interest to afflict such and suppress them and render them odious to the world did better understand their own interest and know on whom the dishonour will redound at last which I wish not to befall them but wish them to prevent 7. If you could procure Uniformity by the means of violence it must be both got and kept up at dearer rates than the thing is worth 1. Uniformity must be purchased at the loss of Unity If Violence drive mens bodies nearer together it will make the heart-separation much wider Christ hath said that by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye love one another but not By this if ye all swear obedience to the Bishops or subscribe that their Writings are infallible or if ye use the same Liturgy Cross or Ceremonies Our salvation lyeth more on our unity in Faith and Love than in our uniformity in things unnecessary And that is the most prosperous state of the Church in which mens salvation is most promoted He that loveth not his brother whom he seeth daily loveth not God whom he never saw And he that hateth his brother is a manslayer and no manslayer hath eternal life abiding in him and violence and cruelty are the great and known destroyers of Love He that saith as some Let them hate so they fear doth shew that he hateth God and man and will prove the greatest hater of himself at last 2. You will wrong the King and Kingdom by depopulation and weaken it so that it may become not only the scorn of our common enemies but their prey For ought I can discern you that have despised my predictions of that kind have encreased the number already manifold of those that dislike you and your way And if your self-conceitedness and unskilfulness shall first make most of the Kings subjects distast you and then your cruelty shall suggest that they must be punished till they love you or be destroyed for disliking you this will be but like the work of unhappy Surgeons that must cut off the limb because they have themselves made the wound uncurable Believe it the hanging or banishing of a few hundreds or thousands will not do your business but make it worse I told you so long ago as to silencing and you would not believe it nay it will make it incomparably worse And if you banish or kill all that are against you Land will be very cheap and Houses cheaper and
and if most of the Parishes in and near London have men so tolerable that we much rejoice in it doth it follow that it is an error or schism to be acquainted with the rest of the Kingdoms or to believe our ears and the sad experience of too great a number in the land It is a fine world when it is become a controversie Whether that which so many thousands in three Kingdoms hear and see be true We write none of this to reproach the Ministry we would hide their nakedness if we could We like not the Glocester-Coblers writings nor the Centuries We only shew you that the reasons are invalid which are fetcht from the sufficiency of the present Ministry to prove it our duty not to preach 5. And if it were but the peoples prejudice against them it proveth their necessity I will purposely say nothing whether the common charge of scandal be true or false because I will not meddle with that cause But be it as it will if the people once think hardly of them or of their Preaching it is not like to do them much good I know the common answer is Who is that long of but of themselves and you To which I say 1. Suppose it be long of themselves must their souls be therefore cruelly forsaken I have wondered to hear and read such reasoning so often from some Pastors of the Church that should be the Fathers of the flock It is long of themselves say they And what then It is long of our selves that we are all sinners and must we therefore have no Saviour no Sanctifier no Ministry no remedy All the sins that you Preach against are long of the sinners themselves Will you therefore think you are discharged from Preaching But you 'l say That it is their wilfulness Ans. If there were no will there were no sin There is too much wilfulness in all the sin that you commit your selves must you therefore be forsaken But O how much better would it beseem an humble tender conscienced Ministry to suspect themselves and say Is there no cause of this distaste in us If it were partial hereticks only that disliked us for opinion sake it were no wonder but when the common people of our Parishes think our Preaching cold and dry and our Sermons like a boys Oration and our lives too little heavenly and holy what cause have we to fear lest it be too true or so much at least as will make us guilty of their distaste Surely it more nearly concerneth you all to see that you be clear your selves and to judg your selves before God judg you than to fall so heavily on the people When you have been as angry as you will men will be men and ears will be ears and as words will not satisfie a hungry stomack so chiding the poor people and telling them that the fault is theirs will not illuminate quicken humble and comfort them nor either do that for them which they want or make them that are indeed alive to believe that it is done when it is not Suppose your own children surfeit by their own fault and lose their appetite will you deny them one sort of food which they can eat because it is long of themselves that they have lost their appetite to another Will you say Eat this or famish it is long of your selves Shall the Physician deny his Patient that Physick which his stomack can take because it was long of himself that he can take no other Is this a method fit for Parents Nurses or Physicians to think that it is not their duty to help those that are made diseased or necessitous by themselves I beseech you think what else your Ministry is for and why have you your honour and your maintenance but to serve under Christ for the saving of those that would destroy themselves What enemy have you so much need your selves to resist and to be saved from as from your selves Oh that you better knew it And from whom else would you save the people Men and Devils cannot hurt them if they be but saved from themselves When I hear a cold and sleepy Preacher or hear Gods work done so ignorantly and slovenly as I would not have my boy to say his lesson I yet confess It is long of my self if this Sermon raise not my heart to Heaven For his very Text or one of the Scripture-sentences which he cited should have been enough to do it because it mentioneth God and Eternity the least thought of which should raise my soul. But alas my heart is cold and dull and drowsie This is my disease or else what need I come to Church for cure I knew I was faulty but I hear you in hope that my faults should be cured And if you do that which is unsuitable to your hearers faults and maladies you are faulty Physicians for no better curing faulty Patients To tell a man in a fever or a dropsie if bread and drink will not cure you it is long of your own disease is the answer of such Physicians as are like them in whose hands many thousand souls in the world lye gasping at this day If you shall say That God doth not tye his grace to the ability of the Pastor I answer such words are fitter to make ones head and heart to ake than to put the answerer to any difficulty Use such arguments about plowing and sowing about eating and drinking and when you are to chuse a Tutor or Schoolmaster for your Children or when you are sick and seek to a Physician say God doth not tye his help and blessing to a wise Tutor any more than to an ignorant one nor to an able Physician any more than to a foolish Emperick Or if you will fly to the distinction of spiritual gifts and common remember that God is no more tyed to means for the one than for the other and quoad media habitus infusi se habent ad modum acquisitorum At least set not your greatest Scholars nor sharpest wits to convince a Sectary or a Papist for Illumination is a spiritual Grace and God can work on a Papist or Schismatick as well by an ignorant Reader But sure the opinions of these times are not so much for miraculous operations of Omnipotency nor so much for the vanity of moral suasion and instruction that we should need to say much in this case if you could but turn it to a Doctrinal-controversie where their Interest is not against it God can work convictions and conversion by the unlikeliest means But he usually worketh according to the aptitude of the means he useth And sure I am that it is our duty both teachers and hearers to chuse the best and to study and preach even as we would do if all lay on our skill and diligence but to know that when Paul hath planted and Apollo watered it is God still that must give the increase But he will not give so
better attain your just ends than violence can do Obj. 25. But if we should abate you any thing though but a ceremony or a Subscription or Oath or should make any alteration in the Church Government though it were but to take the Church keys from Lay Chancellors or if we should reform Discipline or any thing at your desires you will be taken by the people to be their deliverers and reformers and your cause will be taken to be good when we yield to it in any part and it will be said that you did not dissent from us and make all this ado in vain and we shall be thought to have been in the wrong and all this while opposed Reformation Or as the young Eccl Politician speaketh pag. 258 This would but give the countenance of authority to their scruples and superstitious pretences and leave the Church of England under all those calumnies to posterity with which themselves or their followers labour to charge it and oblige future ages to admire and celebrate these peevish and seditious persons as the founders of a more godly and through Reformation Ans. 1. It is the nature of all sin to blind the mind and engage the affections to it that the more men have of it the less they may either see or hate it And so it is with Faction Schism and selfishness which is the root of all as the case of the Roman Clergy witnesseth And if any besides your selves had reported you to speak such words which are the full significants of these vices selfishness faction and schism I should have judged him uncharitable Alas that ever men that call themselves Ministers of Christ and Pastors of his flocks should and would be thought to be the wisest and worthiest of his Ministers in comparison of whom we are worthy to be silenced banished and ruined should yet dare before God and man to vent and own the language of pride and faction and envy while they cry out against pride and faction and envy But they that think they know something know nothing as they ought to know The Lord teach me to become a fool and escape their wisdom that I may be wise and to know my self better than such men do before I pretend to know the folly and hypocrisie and unworthiness of men that are wiser and more sincere and worthy than my self What little need had you to disgrace your selves by telling the world that you will not amend lest you be thought to have done amiss and lest those that desired it be celebrated as the founders of a godly Reformation Hath not self-seeking and siding done enough against us yet but you must keep up the distinction of Parties and their Merits for your own reputation against them whose desire is to have unity setled upon terms of common agreement that there may be no more names or signs of faction among us Thus is the Church or Kingdom rather of Rome kept from Reformation lest they should part with the honour of their Infallibility and seem to confess that they needed Reformation 2. But it is a gross mistake to think that this course will keep up your honour to posterity or hinder the estimation of them who desire you to amend For when you and we are in the dust the world will not be afraid of you nor silence truth lest they incur the danger of your frowns but will freely tread upon your Hic jacet and cast up your bones to make room for others and talk of you and your acts as freely as King Henry the Eighth Queen Mary Bishop Bonner and Gardiner are now talkt of And there will such men survive us as will take it for a greater fault and shame to have sinned impenitently than to have repented and to have refused amendment when peace and common interest required it and so many arguments were used for it yea and to have so afflicted their brethren that desired and sought it of them than to have been guilty of the mutability and weakness of amending or of being more for love and unity and peace 3. But if that be the matter men of half your pretended wisdom might easily know how to heal the Church and yet to salve your honour too yea and to deny the feared honour of the Dissenters so far as such as you can hinder it And if you will not interpret it as an approving of your act I will tell you how Cannot you abate the Subscriptions Oaths and other such Impositions and tell the world that you do it not as convinced by the Nonconformists arguments nor as supposing that the things have any evil in them but only out of your eminent charity as bearing with the weak and your love of the Churches peace and concord more than the dissenters love them Nay you may rail at the Nonconformists in your very Concessions and call them as bad as you do in your writings so you will but yield to healing terms and do it not as a Reformation but as a peaceable forbearance of these Schismatical peevish disobedient Reformers that they may have no more pretence for Schism 4. Did Peter Heylin or Archbishop Laud and his adherents if Heylin belie him not deal with the Papists on such terms as these Did they say They will justifie their Invasion 88 and their Powder-Plot and all their Treasonable Practises and Bulls and all their false Doctrines for which these were done if we abate them any thing or yield them the least and therefore we will yield them nothing at all Did Grotius did your Bishop Forbes doth your Mr. Herbert Thorndike go upon such terms with them or not Speak out Do you think us or the Papists nearer to you If they are nearer you than we are then you are nearer them than us Even than us who subscribe to all the faith of the Church of England and differ as you say but in indifferent things Than us whose Writings declare our judgments to the world But if you be really nearer to us than to the Papists why may you not yield as far to us for peace and concord as the Episcopal Reconcilers would have done to them Even Dr. R. Cox would have yielded to Church-Images Vid. Epist. ad Cassand 5. Lastly O that you would remember that he that denieth not himself cannot be Christs disciple And that you would never tempt the world to think that we should all have peace if there were none that were cast down because Abel offereth a more accepted sacrifice than their own yea or if there were none that made it the chief point of difference whether we should be seriously or only seemingly Christians and live as men that believe indeed that there is a life to come and that the Scripture is true I hope I may recite Dr. Hammonds Paraphrase on Act. 4 9. 14 18 21. If we this day be examined of an action which is so far from being a crime that it is a special act
our Concord now would be our duty and our hope and our enemies terrour so we thought that the season had happily favoured our just desires We had all one undoubted Soveraign to unite in We had all seen and felt the folly and calamity of Dissentions We had found that principles and practises of jealousie violence and division had let out our blood and made havock of our wealth and separated us from our King and one another and brought us all into confusions We had newly found that our sudden unanimity and concord had restored the King and those that suffered for and with him We knew that almost all the people of the Land were so weary of contention and its effects that they were melted into an aptness for the mould of unity and never were more inclined to Concord even upon any tolerable terms We knew also that we had a King who was newly restored by the very first recovery of his peoples unity and who was even then famous for a loving and a gracious nature enclined to moderation quietness and peace And we had newly seen the many published Declarations of the Nobility and Gentry of the Land who had suffered most in His Majesties cause protesting against all future animosities and revenge The attempts which we made for the Churches healing upon these encouragements did quickly meet with gracious acceptance and yet greater encouragement from the King And we had no reason to think that among all the rest the Clergy should be averse to such a work or yet should spoil it at such a season for want of skill because we had on both sides been deep in those experiences that should instruct us and many not the least and last either in the former sin or present interest and our calling and understanding in such things were supposed such as should make us Leaders to all the people in any just attempts for Concord When we had humbly craved of his Majesty that such persons of both sides as he should appoint might bring in Proposals containing such Approaches and Abatements and Accommodations as each part could yield unto without sin against God and against their consciences and his Majesty had more than granted our requests even expressing his Gracious resolution to draw you on to such Concessions we did accordingly give notice to the London-Ministers that our Concord might be the more extensive to meet at Sion-Colledge and give in their sense of the necessary means to so good an end Bishop Reynolds and Bishop Worth and some others that Conform concurred with us in our Proposals We never spake a word against a Liturgy nor set-forms of Prayer nor against the festival Commemorations of the Saints nor many other things which many had formerly excepted against but only desired some emendations of the Liturgy and that some other forms of Prayer might be added to the several offices with a Liberty of using this or that And for the Government of the Church which was accounted the matter of greatest difference we never made one offer for Presbytery That is the Government of the Church by Classes and Presbyteries constituted of Lay and Clergy-Elders nor did we ever speak a word for Lay-Elders Not that we presumed to Censure those Churches that used them but as many or most of our selves were never for them so we knew that no forms in which the Churches were known so much to differ could be the proper terms of Concord We never made any Proposals against Episcopacy no not against the Lordships of the Bishops nor against the greatness of their Revenues nor their places in Parliament nor made we any offer of any other way of Discipline but the frame which by Archbishop Usher had been presented to the late King called The Reduction of Episcopacy c. In which he thought that he had hit upon the ancient Primitive Government by Bishops with their Clergy-Presbyters as their Colledge Not that we approved all the forementioned things which we passed by but that we knew we must yield for the Churches peace as far as we could do without committing sin our selves When we presented to His Majesty these our Proposals and Requests and expected to meet with the like Concessions and Approaches of our Brethren not yet made Bishops we met with his Majesties Gracious acceptance but our expectations failed of all the rest having never received any such thing from that day unto this But we shortly after received a sharp Answer to our Proposals to which when a Reply was drawn up we purposely cast it by lest turning the work of Pacification into a dispute should frustrate it by exasperating altercations But when we that should have been the forwardest to Peace could do no more to an Agreement among our selves his Majesty was pleased to do more and published his Gracious Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs In which though he granted us not Archbishop Ushers Model of Episcopacy nor all that we desired yet granted he so much as made us thankfully rejoyce in hope to have seen the Churches unity and peace Because we thought the terms were such as to which we could without any guilt of sin or check of conscience have laid out our selves in perswading all our Brethren to conform And accordingly the London-Ministers did presently draw a Thanksgiving to his Majesty yea the Commons House of Parliament themselves did thank him There was nothing now remaining for the confirmation of our hopes but the intended Alterations of the Liturgy and the Confirmation of his Majesties Gracious Concessions When we had a Commission from his Majesty to attempt the first we hoped to do it by mutual compliances in gentle and amicable Conference But it was resolved to us that we being the Plaintiffs must bring in a draught of all the Alterations of the Liturgy which we desired and also of those Additional forms which we had proposed as an expedient for Concord Upon this some of our Brethren would have insisted on a refusal believing that it would but spin out time and end in nothing which would attain that Concord which was our end But others perswading them rather to do as was imposed on us than to go no further because at the worst our case would in writing be less lyable to mis-reports than if we had only spoken for our selves perhaps under checks in temptations and restraints For we had heard many wish that the Conference at Hampton-Court in King James his time had been by writing Hereupon we ventured on the imposed task We brought in writing some exceptions against some passages in the Liturgy To this we afterward received an Answer To which we offered to you a Reply and with it the Additions to the Liturgy which we desired And foreseeing the danger of the confusions and sins which since have followed our Divisions we did so far supererogate as to present to you a long and earnest Petition for Unity and Peace And we agreed with you as
Churches of the people in their Communion and Worship but only from a prevailing company and Synod of the Bishops that were guilty of cruelty and of bringing reproach upon the serious practisers of Godliness in those times And as for the many Volumes which have been written against my self I thought it not necessary to confute them nor seasonable to stand upon a Personal Vindication when I knew it would exasperate the accusers to be accounted injurious and false and would increase the breach Yea when it was judged against me that my presence would be injurious to the people that I had long preached to and that my absence would more conduce to their Conformity and that they were none of my Charge I so far denied my self and them as that I never since came near them nor unless very rarely sent them one line Though I thought if I had been allowed so much it might have better answered the ends of those that were most for my removal Yet did I not take this for any perfidious forsaking them when upon many accounts I believed it to be for their good and I sent them all the Books which I wrote If any think that I should not say so much of my self in an Apology for others I answer 1. It is because that men will needs have it so whether I will or not I say not a word to them and yet what a multitude of Volumes have these seven years and more been tossing my Name as a football of reproach about the land And when the cause is pleaded they presently let fly at the persons and say what you can it 's there that they will stick and till they are answered there they think they are unanswered 2. And because I am best acquainted with my self and can speak with more certainty of my own case and reasons than of any others 3 But chiefly because as our late Tilenus hath stiled me Purus putus Puritanus so the late Episcopal Indignation published me the Antesignanus of the Presbyterians I deserve not so much honour But hence the world and posterity may know that whereas but a few years ago a Puritan was one that was against Bishops and Ceremonies and Liturgy and a Presbyterian was one that was for Lay-Elders and the power of Classes composed partly of such not only for concord but as Governours of all the particular Churches now in England a Puritan is one that is no more against and as much for Archbishops Bishops Liturgy and Ceremonies as in my Books I have long published my self to be And a Puritan as a Puritan is no worse a person than I am whose life and writings have had the happiness to have some share in their commendations And a Presbyterian now is one that is against Lay-Elders and in his judgment against the Regimental power of Classes and Synods as over the Pastors of the particular Churches and only for their consultation and their use to concord and one that is as aforesaid for Archbishops Bishops c. as far as in my dispute for Church-Government I have declared my self to be It is of some use to know the mutability of the world and what a purus putus Puritanus and a Presbyterian now is But having thus far related the History of our true endeavours for peace it must be my next task to Apologize for our supposed unpeaceableness And I cannot better know what is the matter of offence than by knowing what is charged on my self He that was one of the first restrained from Preaching and hath been laid in the Goal as I have been will be supposed to be one of the most guilty And therefore I may hope that they that have escaped better have deserved less and that my own defence will be also theirs And I owe the offended an account of the practise by which I have so much offended them When the Act of Uniformity was not yet made or talkt of I went to the now Archbishop of Canterbury then Bishop of London even whilest the Kings Declaration gave us liberty and I desired his License to preach in his Diocess which he was pleased to grant me upon my Voluntary subscription to the Doctrine of the Church and those terms of peaceableness which he accepted When the said Act of Uniformity was in fieri I ceased that seeming Lecture which I had before 1st of May 1662. When that Act came out it forbad all to hold any Benefice Cure Lecture c. who had possession of any Ecclesiastical Promotion the 1st of May 1662 and did not subscribe and declare as required of them in that Act and also forbad the reception of any into such Promotion or Cure for the future that should not so subscribe and declare Neither of these being my case for I was out of all before May 1st 1662 and I sought no new Cure or Benefice the Law did no more require me to subscribe and declare than it did the Bishops or any conformable man that for so long had Cure Promotion or stated employment So that I was no Nonconformist in the sense of the Law because I conformed as far as the Act required me to conform And that Act not forbidding occasional Sermons to any but those that were not Licensed my License enabled me to Preach occasionally as many that had no places did yet because I knew that the Bishop might revoke my License at his pleasure and that if I so far used it being reputed a Nonconformist it would give offence to my superiors I never since made use of it to this day nor ever Preached a publick Sermon And though the Act forbad me not publick Catechising or the Administration of the Sacraments I never did either to avoid offence And when about three years after the Oxford Act came forth for the restraining Nonconformists from coming within five miles of a Corporation or of any place where they had been Teachers or kept a Conventicle I found that I was not concerned in that Act because by Law I was no Nonconformist to whom the Act by the very title and matter was limited So that being neither a Nonconformist by Law nor my License to preach occasionally ever nulled nor yet concerned in this Oxford Act which imposeth the new Oath I supposed my peace not endangered by the Law which the Lawyers whom I consulted also did conclude Yet did I forbear to come within five miles of a Corporation except on the rode to avoid offence All this while I lived in a place where sew desired me to preach they being poor and worldly people that minded most their labours and necessities So that I contented my self to instruct my family with three or four more that sometimes desired to be present But the chief reason why I did no more was because as none called me to it so I was engaged in certain writings A Body of Practical Divinity the Reasons of the Christian Religion and others which I thought
themselves to no parties sidings or factions in Religion They that you call Puritans and our followers were neither Episcopal Presbyterians or Independents but for plain Christianity and Godliness as such and for the unity of all sober Christians and to do their own duty in that especially which all these parties did consent in When I was removed from them and they heard a stranger in the Pulpit crying out against them as Presbyterians and a generation of vipers c. I hear they looked somewhat strangely at such strange kind of Preaching what the man meant to pretend to know their judgments better than they knew their own When I never knew two whose judgments were for the Presbyterian Government in all the Town and Parish They were in all this so unanimous and concordant that when division shattered some other Parishes there was not that I heard of one Anabaptist one Quaker nor of any different party at all among them save that two ot three in the War fell off from Christianity and all Religion and became as a pillar of Salt unto all the rest When I called them to my house to be Catechised and instructed there were very few families refused And there were not that I could hear of in the heart of the Town above one or two families in a street side that did not call on God and daily worship him The Lords-day they spent in publick Worship and in repeating for memory what they heard and in Praying and singing Psalms of praise They lived in quietness and had no Law-suits nor known contentions None of them lived in wealth or worldly honours none in idleness few or none in begging but in daily painful labour in their Callings by which they lived from hand to mouth Those few that were common drunkards in the Town three or four that custom had made as beasts were yet convinced that their neighbours were better and happier than they As to their cutting faces I can say nothing to you but that their tone was as decent as most Preachers I now hear and their countenance as sober and well composed But God most regardeth the composure of the heart But all that seemeth serious is to some men matter of scorn and one lately telleth you That if you stop the Nonconformists mouths no wonder if they speak through the nose And men will have more care to wash their faces and compose their countenances in publick than if you drive them into corners And for their prating-phrases they are ambitious but of two excellencies of speech the one is to speak their minds in that matter which may have the fullest signification both of the matter spoken and of the speakers affections about the matter for the use of speech is to express them both the other is for ornament and that is to speak in Scripture-phrase not abused any further than weakness causeth all the weak to do even publick Preachers as well as others but as well understood as they are able And they that scorn at Scripture-phrase should not conform to the Book of Ordination or Articles where the Scripture sufficiency and perfection is confest If the phrase of the Scripture it self is not odious neither is the sober use of it where it is not perverted But to such general charges we can give no answer but nexa caput sequitur name the particular persons and words and prove your accusation and caluminate not the rest against whom no such proof is brought 5 Obj. But what excellent Preaching or Labours have you to boast of more than others that your Preaching must be thought so necessary What did you when you did preach but cast out Catechising the Lords-prayer the Creed and the Communion in the Sacrament out of the Church and bring the people to be almost Heathens and cast out all true Discipline and Government and substituted Presbyterian Examinations before the Sacrament and rigor and tyranny which the people would not endure and is this so necessary a thing Ans. These things indeed we read and hear from you very often but another Judg must pass the final sentence You make us pity the poor world in regard of the uncertainty of History You put us upon the recital of our practice which will sound like the boasting of a fool But if blessed Paul was put upon that which he calleth Speaking like a fool though they were not the words of folly we must not murmur if we have the like inconvenience put upon us 1. If the successes before described be nothing worth in your esteem yet labour must be continued still and we must in meekness instruct those that oppose if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth 2 Tim. 2. 25 26. And I suppose few Parish-Priests of my acquaintance will either judg themselves and their labours useless or give them over if the maintenance fail not of success else how many empty Temples should we have But you shall not so easily tempt us into utter unthankfulness for so great a mercy as our success beyond our expectation was I remember Dr. Ames telleth his Father in Law Dr. Burgess in his Fresh Suit that Bishop Morton himself did silence old Mr. Midsley of Rutsdale in Lancashire after God had blessed his Ministry with the Conversion of many thousand souls and his Son after him he silenced also Whether you will think that this which he calleth conversion being but from Popery ignorance sensuality and prophaneness be to be valued or whether you will deny the publick matter of fact I know not but for my part I was glad to hear that he was not silenced till many thousands had been converted by him And O what abundance of success this way had the Ministry of Mr. Hildersham Mr. Nichols Mr. Dod Mr. Thomas Hooker Mr. John Rogers of Dedham Mr. Herring Mr. Barlow and abundance more of the old Nonconformists And what understanding excellent persons were Dr. Ames Mr. Bradshaw Mr. John Ball Mr. John Paget old John Fox Mr. Paul Bain Mr. Parker c. To say nothing of Mr. Perkins Dr. Humphrey Dr. John Reynolds c. who were more Nonconformists than I and those of my judgment are Doubtless they were as like to know how to Preach without either prating phrases or ignorant unlearned dry unedifying Sermons tending to bring Christianity into contempt as most at least of the Parish-Priests that I use to hear in any place where ever I come 2. And as to our own Preaching I confess we have little cause to boast of it For my own part God knoweth I have seldom come out of the Pulpit without some grief and self-accusation that I should stand there to speak as a Minister of Christ about so great a matter as the everlasting Salvation of the peoples souls and that to men that are almost dying and must shortly be all in an unchangeable state where there is no more time of preparation for their final doom
restrained the people from meeting to repeat or pray did thereby occasion them to go further in their undertakings than they ought I still found that to let them do what belonged to them as private men was the means to keep them from that which belonged only to the Ministers and needful meetings in their houses in due subordination to the Pastors and Church-assemblies was the best way to keep them from schismatical meetings which were in opposition to the Pastors and Church-assemblies Yea that to drive them hard on to their proper duty in their families and for their ignorant neighbours was the best way to convince them that they had neither ability nor leisure for more which belonged not to them In a word it was a principal cause that we had no sects nor divisions among us And now if any man come with his exceptions against such meetings as dangerous to the Church or State I only answer him 1. Try it as much as we have done before you condemn you know not what 2. Will you do nothing to help the people to Heaven but that which is lyable to no abuse or inconvenience Then Christ and the Gospel and Scripture and much more Reason it self must be renounced which are all more abused than such private meetings 3. See that you be not more afraid of sects than of mens apparent ungodliness and damnation 4. And see that it be not your own want of skill and diligence that makes you oppose that means which you cannot guide and manage Obj. But this was not the common case of the Nonconformists what do you tell us a long story of your doings when it was otherwise throughout the land Ans. 1. You know that there were then many Sectaries in the land and you may as well impute to us your own misdoings as theirs We justifie not the Sectaries in their principles or practises 2. What was the Doctrine and practise of Presbyterian and Independents the writings which they all agreed to will partly tell you In the Confession of Faith you see what Doctrine they agreed to Preach In the Catechisms they shew you that the Creed Lords-Prayer and Decalogue were not only to be learned by the people but the sense and use also of them all And is this casting them out of the Church And in the Directory they advise to the use of the very words of the Lords prayer in the Churches 3. That I was not singular in this course you may soon learn if you will but enquire what was done at Bewdeley Stourbridg and other places round about me Nay when our two Agreements one for Catechising and personal Conference from house to house and the other for common concord in Discipline were subscribed by so many of all that County and some adjoining whose names are visible there in print you may imagine they endeavoured to do what they subscribed to do 4. Nor was it that County only you may see in their Printed Agreements that the Ministers of Westmorland and other Counties agreed much on the same courses And Essex Wiltshire Dorsetshire and many others had begun the same work from which the return of Diocesans hath released them And remember that the charge of casting out all Discipline and of Presbyterian examinations and severities are hardly reconcileable nor yet the not administring the Sacrament and the examining of the people before the Sacrament But for our Countrys we used not such examinations because our foresaid ordinary Catechising and conference and also our requiring a publick profession of the Christian faith and life at the transition of the youth out of their state of Infant-membership into that of the adult described by me in my Treatise of Confirmation did better answer their necessities 6 Obj. But all this while you lived in Sequestrations upon other mens estates and eat other mens bread of which you never made restitution and how then can you think your merits are such as may plead for your readmission and in particular Mr. Durel and many others have told the world and your self that as a reward for your military service you had a good Benefice out of which another only for his fidelity was cast out with what conscience this was done see you to it Ans. Reader seeing it 's the pleasure of Mr. Durel and so many more to call out the man and cull out the matter with which the world must be thus troubled I intreat thee to pardon my personal narratives for which were it not that they lay the interest of so many of my Brethren of my writings and office upon it I could not pardon my self 1. Let the world then know that these Ministers whom we succeeded were cast out by the Secular power that bore sway and not by those that succeeded them If you know of one Minister of a hundred that was the agent in that work let that one and not the innocent hear of it 2. That the people of each Parish or some of them were the accusers witnesses and sollicitors of the cause who beg'd for deliverance and a better Ministry as if it concerned the benefit of their souls 3. That it was somewhat an excusable error in the Ministers that succeeded them to think that if the Parliament or any Usurpers did turn out the former Ministers of any place the people should not therefore be left as Heathens and all Gods Worship be forsaken and the doors shut up as in the Venetian and other Interdicts by the Pope and this for ten or twelve years together yea almost twenty and that if the Parliament had cast out the overseers of the poor or the nurses of your children it 's hard that all they that after relieved them and saved their lives must be accused as so greatly injurious and that it 's hard that when the love of souls doth make them unweariedly spend themselves for the peoples good that this should be one of their unpardonable crimes How different are mens judgments of vice and virtue and they did think also that really before God and man the Salary was for the work And if they had a lawful calling to the work of the place they thought they had so to the Salary They thought that if a Pilot of a Ship were on pretence of insufficiency and utter ignorance cast out by usurpers of the power that all Shipping must not therefore stand still nor all men be proclaimed sinners that take the place and maintenance I justifie not their reasons but I may tell you my opinion that being young men mostly in the Universities that had little or nothing of their own they could not well otherwise have got bread and clothing much less Books Fire House-room c. nor long have Preached without bread and clothing And I knew few of them that when they were cast out were able to refund or restore that which bought them bread and fire and clothing unless you would sell them as slaves to work
what we thought sinful 2. That we in dispute maintained it 3. That to that very question we after gave in a paper of eight particulars in the Liturgy which we undertook to prove flat sin 4. That we published that profession in our Petition for Peace 5. That this was before the worse new Conformity 6. And had it been otherwise what were our thoughts to 2000 men that were absent I must profess I that was still with them cannot imagine whence this inhumane fiction could arise unless it were from these words of my own which others seconded When we spake for common Concord we told them that the question now was not what would satisfie us few men but what was necessary to the common union And I added That I never scrupled E. g. kneeling at the receiving of the Lords Supper but better men than I did scruple it and I undertook to prove it a great sin to cast them out of Christian Sacramental Communion for that cause I verily believe that the horrid forgery had no better colour of proof than these words Accus 30. Of mens injurious imputing to us the errors and faults of all the Sectaries The course that some Writers that should have modesty and justice take to defame us is to jumble all sects besides their own together under the name of Nonconformists and then to rake up the unwarrantable expressions of men of several parties as the Nonconformists Doctrine and so whatever they find written by an Antinomian a Separatist an Anabaptist and why not a Papist or a Quaker too they lay at the Nonconformists doors When 1. all men of reason know that though affirmative titles use to signifie some union so do not negatives To call a man a Papist or a Protestant signifieth somewhat in which he agreeth with others But to be no Papists or no Protestants agreeth to all other parties in the world 2. And if before Conformity was required and so there were no Conformists the several Sects were aliens to each others surely they are so after or else you may know who is the cause 3. And why do the Papists and such Arminians as Episcopius who are Nonconformists claim kindred and kindness to and from the Conformists rather than the Nonconformists if they know not to whom they are best affected 4. Did not the Heathens do thus also by the ancient Christians when Sects swarmed among them and deride and accuse them for their divisions And did not the Papists so by the Reformers yea and do to this day What more common with them than to say All these Sects swarm out from you And so did the persecutors of the old Waldenses when the Manichees were among them 5. If Nonconformity cause all these Sects then they are the causes of them that cause Nonconformity And if you will call in your Impositions there will be no Nonconformists Let impartial sober reason judg who it is that causeth all these Sects If all the Decrees of General Councils were imposed on all men to be subscribed would not thousands be Nonconformists that are now conformable Who cry out against Sects so much as the Papists and yet who in all the world more cause them even by the manifold Laws by which they pretend to cure them If only a peaceable communion with the Church had been required instead of all the Covenants Oaths Declarations and Subscriptions how many thousand fewer Nonconformists had there been If any should impose Oaths Covenants or Subscriptions against Episcopacy and for lay-Elders would it not make most of the Conformists Nonconformable And what is it that those do who subscribe the same doctrine with you to make other men heterodox 6. Thus were the old Nonconformists accused when they wrote more against Sects and Separation than all the high Conformists did And we must say That if Separatists Anabaptists Antinomians and such like had not been more effectually confuted and kept under by the Nonconformists than they have been by the persecutors or sharp opposers of Nonconformists they had been like to have so abounded as to have carried down most of the zealously religious sort in the stream Let posterity judg by the Writings of Hildersham Paget Gifford Bradshaw Ball Rathband and many more such against Separation and by many of the present Nonconformists against Antinomianism Anabaptistry Popery c. who have done most against these Sects If men that would draw birds to their nets by throwing stones or hooting at them or that would beat the water to make the fish bite at their hooks or that will still spur-gall their horses to keep them quiet will revile those that have more skill as the causes of their unsuccesfulness because they do not as they do such men must at last be taught by experience if ever they will learn For our parts we cannot be of their minds Accus 31. Of some printed Accusations of us as Covetous and other such like But it hath pleased some late Writers of great account with some to lay such matters to our charge as the cause of our nonconformity as one would have thought should never have entred into the thoughts of a sober man that ever saw or heard of the English affairs and present state 1. The year 1674. was published a Book under the name of Dr. Asheton Chaplain to the Duke of Ormond who in his introduction supposeth the Nonconforming people to be such as meerly believing the Ministers and the Ministers to be such lest they scandalize the people that think the things unlawful And so he applieth himself to confute them on that supposition a thing easily done if this were all And he citeth the words of one of us about scandal against our selves To which we say 1. Seeing even Pagans Papists Socinians and Quakers Anabaptists and Separatists and some Arminians and Prelatists too are Nonconformists in the largest sense as refusing Conformity and seeing it is not imaginable that all the persons of any one profession should be just of the same degree of understanding and in every thing of the same opinion it is not impossible but that some one called a Nonconformist may be as brainless and dishonest as he describeth them But we must say that we remember not that ever we met with one of them that was such and that had no stronger reasons against Conformity or that took the things avoided to be indifferent 2. And whether we our selves are such let our Writings and Reasons therein given against Conformity be the evidence Could he hope to make the world believe that men not mad with factious humour would live as we live and suffer what we have suffered and durst forbear much of the work to which we are devoted and all to avoid that which we account indifferent and no sin And hear then how he doth more than justifie us himself pag. 30. If Conformity be unlawful if having beg'd Direction from the father of lights in hearty prayer and having used all
more openly and resolutely in their work But in the mean time the Countrey Gaols were possessed by many faithful Ministers where some have dyed and some excellent men contracted those diseases of which they dyed shortly after and some have dyed by the effects of poverty by cold and ill food for want of necessaries And the complaints of Wives and hungry Children and the burden of debts for meat drink clothes fire and houses hath been a sharper trial to very many of them than their revilers seem to be acquainted with And had they felt it but one year themselves it 's like they would not have thought this a way to gratifie either covetousness or pride It 's true that we should rejoyce in all our tribulations and in every condition be content but humane frailty must be confessed that some by such distress have been cast into sad melancholies which yet seemed more tolerable too than gripes of conscience for wilful sin And indeed the minds of few ingenuous persons will account it an ease to live on alms and to be beholden to mens charity for their daily bread especially when it 's too well known how much most men do love their money and how tenacious they are of it and if they give once how hardly they are brought to it again Who that is able would not rather with Paul get their bread by some labour than fordidly live on a barren and backward sort of charity And the truth is it is the poverty of the friends of the Nonconformists that hath been the cause of these defects It 's well known that it is but few comparatively of the Gentry that have owned them but the Countrey Farmers of their several Parishes whose payments and charges were so great that they had little to spare from the maintenance of their own Families And the lamentable fire so greatly impoverished the Londoners and all the Countrey Tradesmen that depended on them together with the decay of Trade that the Streams were dryed up that should have supplied the Nonconformists wants so that if some very charitable Citizens and others had not done extraordinarily for them beyond all others they might have perished by Famine And after all the number in the City and other parts who by the peoples liberality have a tolerable maintenance which ignorance and envy call a Plenty is very small in comparison of all those through the rest of the Land who have greater wants and lesser helps And it hath not been the least of the said Ministers sufferings that the continual uncertainty of their condition hath disabled them from any commodious fixing of their habitations and put them to the trouble and charge of frequent removals one while severities drive them to retirement and afterward his Majesties gracious Licenses draw them out to more populous places and encouraged them to take houses accordingly and put off the old And shortly after the revocation of the Licenses and the sharpness of prosecution puts them on the necessity of another change which indeed to single men is less but to the far greatest part who have families to remove and care for they that have tryed it and have no money to defray the charges of such removals know what it is to be thus unsetled But all these are light afflictions compared with the delights of pleasing God and saving Souls and with the pleasures of our daily work while we are employed in studying proclaiming and trusting the certain promises of eternal life and waiting for the promised reward in glory And far be it from us to mention them as murmuring at the Providence of God but only in confutation of the hard-faced Calumnies of some men and to acquaint posterity historically with the truth God is just in all the corrections which he layeth on us we have deserved silencing mulcts and imprisonments from him yea he is exceeding merciful to us both in our sufferings for truth and conscience-sake and in our preservations and deliverances and we are far from repenting of our Masters work But whether we deserve from men the accusations and usage which these 17 years we have undergone we refer to his judgment who will shortly by his just and final sentence decide this Controversie and justifie the just 33. Mr. Hollingworth in an Assize-Sermon printed tells a story to prove his Schismaticks as cruel as the execution of the Laws against us would be that some one leading Sectary said He would have all banished that would not subscribe the Doctrine of the Church in the 36 Articles I wrote to him to know whom he meant and he would not tell me but in a very respectful Letter said It was not nor Dr. Manton c. I since understood that this is said of Dr. Owen But 1. he professeth it is false 2. He is known to be for much liberty 3. If he did say it it was but to avert the odium of an overlarge toleration from the Independents 4. And what is this to the case of the many hundred Nonconformable Ministers in England But they be rendred odious for this word of his I will end with the Charge of Henry Fowlis passing over his abusive Volumes of Collections lest I be over-tedious in his History of Popish Treasons this is his accusation he saith of those whom he calleth Puritans I think the Puritans to be the worst people of all mankind A Sect that will agree with you in the fundamentals of Religion but will take Miff and destroy all for a trifle and rather than submit to an innocent Ceremony though imposed by lawful authority will ruine Kingdoms Murder Bishops A Sect that would hate Christ but that he said he came not to bring Peace but War As for the Roman Catholick I must needs have a greater kindness for him than the former fire-brands as being an adversary more learned and so to be expected more Civil and Gentile and wherein they differ from us they look upon as fundamental and so have a greater reason for their dissent than our Phanatical Presbyterians a people not capable of a Commendation nor to be obliged by any favours their very Constitution being ingratitude At this rate the Ecclesiastical Politician and others inform the world of Puritans and Presbyterians in the Gross Those that knew this mans Morals laugh at his Railery but posterity will not know what he was I shall only desire the Reader to note 1. That Puritans and Presbyterians now do signifie what the speakers please Mr. Robert Bolton a Learned Conformist thinketh that the name Puritan as commonly used in England in the mouths of common drunkards and the prophane and impious sort is turned against true Godliness with the greatest spleen that ever word was in the world 2. Mark that we are called The worst people of all mankind even Heathens Jews Turks Cannibals not excepted and yet we agree with the Accusers in all fundamentals This is the Charity which we meet with from these men
people to their cruelties Of all beasts they love not sheep that have bloody teeth and fangs nor of all birds a Dove that liveth like the Hawks on flesh And when the Clergy are once made hateful to them I have told you that the scandal tendeth to make them think hardly of their doctrine and at least to run into some contrary extream if not to dislike Religion it self I have seldom observed any extream in Hereticks or Schismaticks which was not notably caused by the Clergies contrary extream Antinomianism rose among us from our obscure Preaching of Evangelical Grace and insisting too much on tears and terrors Arminianism rose from mens prophane abuse of the Doctrine of Election saying If I am elected I shall be saved whatever I do and when God will give me grace I shall have it and till then it is not in him that willeth or runneth The Quakers arose from the pride and vanity of Religious people from which they fled into the fordid extream And Separatists have almost always risen from the ignorance ungodliness the shameful disabilities idle negligence pride covetousness or cruelty of the Clergy This is true as the experience of all ages telleth us The insufficient and naughty Clergy make Separatists At this day the superstitious think they can scarce go too far from men that they account so ungodly malignant and cruel And the ungodly and infidel and cruel sort of men do think they can scarce go too far from the superstitious If you would read and learn of such reprovers as Gildas and Salvian and Nazianzen and Hilary and Alvarus Pelagius Planct Eccles. and Acontius and such like you need not have so many thousands flying from your Churches as from an house on fire or infected with the Plague nor reporting your Crimes as the Parliament-Centuries or the Gloucester-Cobler or your groaning Icabod have done 16. You should rather help to cure the prejudice that the world hath against the Clergy as envious selfish and cruel than encrease it The World already thinketh that the Clergy are so covetous proud and envious that they can endure no man that standeth in their light but like the great dog that hath got the carrion snarl at every little dog that looketh at them suspecting they come to take some from him It is their common opinion that the Clergy are the incendiaries and troublers of the world And that the worst Princes left to themselves are not half so cruel against the faithful Preachers and Practisers of Christianity as the proud and covetous Clergy are It is therefore your duty not to confirm the world in this opinion by seeming as envious and cruel as others have been but to cure it by love and tenderness and self-denial 17. Have you ever considered and regarded whether the Apostles ever took your course You say your selves that they had power to give men over to the Devil for Corporal punishment And yet when did they ever do so by any but desperate Infidels as Elymas or desperate Hereticks that denied fundamentals as Alexander Hymenaeus and Philetus Or whom did they so much as threaten Church-sharpness to else unless it were such a proud domineering Bishop as Diotrephes who would neither receive some brethren nor permit others to do it but cast them out of the Church prating with malicious words against the Apostle Paul blamed Mark but did not silence him He fell out with Barnabas to a parting but did not hinder him from preaching the Gospel He blameth Demas for forsaking him and loving the world and many more for forsaking him when he appeared before Nero and elsewhere They all mind their own things and not the things that are Jesus Christs And yet he silenced none of them that preached the same Gospel which he did He met with some Preachers so bad that they Preached Christ of envy and strife of contention not sincerely supposing to add affliction to his bonds What then Notwithstanding every way whether in contention or in truth Christ was preached and he therein rejoyced and resolved to rejoyce and not to silence them Phil. 1. 15 16 17 18. Some indeed that preached the Law and as it were another Gospel he saith must have their mouths stopped but none that preached the same Gospel nor they by the Sword but by the convincing Word He that wrote as he did Rom. 14. 15. was far from silencing Preachers for not using Ceremonies or things called indifferent or for not taking an Oath of obedience to himself And will you prove wiser and better than the Apostles at the last 18. Methinks as I said before even selfishness should make you have some regard to your surviving names Think not that your party shall be the Masters of fame Think but on all history whether those that suffered in their times as the Martyrs and such Bishops as Athanasius Nazianzen Chrysostom c. have not left a sweeter name to the Church than those by whom they suffered Whether the name of the Nonconformists John Rogers and his followers and Bradford Sanders Glover Hooper Latimer Ridley Cranmer c. be not sweeter now than Gardiners and Bonners And think on the nature of your cause and ours When you have done your worst against Christs faithful Ministers and sought to justifie it by calling them Schismaticks posterity will enquire into the Merits of the Cause and the Evidence of their words and yours and their Writings at least will some of them survive when you have done your worst And do you think that they who read such Works as Amesius Hildershams Hierons Baynes Balls c. of old and as Gatakers Vines Anthony Burgesses Allens c. of late will believe that they were Schismaticks or unworthy to preach repentance and faith in Christ I have written so much against Schism my self as that I defie malignity it self to make posterity believe me a Schismatick When they peruse the Declarations Subscriptions Oaths and actions which we refuse and weigh our reasons they will judge otherwise than interest and partiality and malice will do at the present The next Sulpitius will describe us liker Martin than you and the Fanaticks like the Priscillianists and too many of your selves like Ithacius and Idacius and their Synods of Bishops which you may easily foresee when your Hooker himself in his Preface doth it by some Conformists already 19. You take so notorious a way to tempt the people to their present suspicions of your over-much kindness to Popery as that charity to them obligeth you to help to cure them of that uncharitable suspicion of you And I confess if I would have liberty for any one sect my self I would counsel and perswade men to take away the liberty of Religion from as great and worthy and considerable a part of the Ministers and People as I could that the cry for changes and liberty might be so great that others may be let in with them as if it were to gratifie them But