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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A48098	A letter from the protesters with an answer thereunto, from an asserter of the authority of the two late general assemblies, at Dundee and Edinburgh.	Asserter of the authority of the late general assemblies of Dundee and Edinburgh.	1653 (1653)	Wing L1538; ESTC R9563	23,439	32

the Malignant Party to exercise their power against you but also for making your own people abhorre you and truly though we were aiming at your shame and disgrace we could hardly imagine a more compendious way for bringing of it about but the uprightnesse of the upright will preserve him Lastly ye professe your dissatisfaction with the present Commission and that for severall things 1. For their slighting and misconstruing all your endeavours for Peace 2. For misrepresenting your proceedings to Presbyteries particularly in their Letter of the Date Febr. 25. To which we Answer 1. The Commission did appoint a Conference at St. Andrews in order to Union and Peace which was the grant of your desire for the maine and if some words expressing their appointment did make you slight the offer it would appear ye have not had mind to the thing it self 2. That the Commission did misrepresent your proceedings is more then can be proved as to the passage of their Letter pitched upon we answer 1. If the Conference appointed by the Commission was not slighted by you then whose default was it that it was not keeped 2. That those of your number was not advised with in drawing up of the Commissions Answer will not be thought strange unto those who know ye advised with none of our Judgement when ye did draw up your demand though there was severalls present mediating with you for Peace 3. That some at least of your previous desires were refused by the Commission will be thought as little strange unto those who knew what ye did desire viz. that the Commission should uncommissionat themselves by a Publick Declaration that they should Act nothing as a Commission during the Conference though the necessity of the Church should never so much require it And how could we as ye alledge imagine that the refusing of this desire would marre the good of the Conference except we had first imagined that your proponing of such a previous desire did argue that ye intended no good at all in order to the Churches Peace should be reaped by the Conference Lastly ye professe your selves greatly stumbled at the Fasts and Humiliations appointed by the Commission from time to time and that because the Causes thereof are General and ambiguous For Answer 1. If we were to shew unto you all wherewith we are dissatisfied in your way we conceive we have greater reason to be dissatisfied with your selves but our intent being mainly herein to clear our selves we shal only Propone this Question If ever ye read in any Church Story in any age of the Church that when difference of Judgement did fall out among Prime and Eminent Church-members that ever the one Party being the fewer and no Church Judicatorie did take upon them to turn over the one side of the Controversie into Causes of Gods Wrath upon the Church and by the Sole Authority of Church Sessions hold them forth to Congregations to be mourned for at Solemn Fasts and this all before the Rent did turn remedilesse yea and while the same Party is pretending unto Peace and charging the other with slighting all Overtures for Union and healing so often Propounded and so much pursued by themselves 2. If ye had instanced any of these Causes of our late Fasts which are either ambiguous or generall we should have answered But sure we are it is an unjust charge no Causes can be more clear nor needeth to be more particular nor the Causes of the very last Fast are as is obvious unto any who without prejudice will peruse them But we gather from that which followeth in yours what it is ye misse most in these Causes viz. That we do not acknowledge a Land-destroying guiltinesse in the Publike Resolutions It seemeth unto us ye hint at this while ye say ye do finde in Gods ordinary way of dealing with his People that there hath usually been some publick sins and breaches of Covenant preceeding such sad judgements For Answer 1. We are deceived if we have not found the contrary Psal 44. The People of God are put unto shame given as sheep appointed for meat scattered among the heathen they were broken in the places of Dragons their bellies made to cleave unto the dust and yet vers 17. for all this they had not forgotten God nor yet dealt falsely in his Covenant Ye know also what sad judgements were brought upon the whole Catholick Church visible in the time of the first Persecutions by the heathen Emperors and afterwards by the Arrians and yet there is nothing extant of any publicke break of Covenant going before those terrible stroaks and sad sufferings But 2. Granting that some breaches of Covenant had gone before our sad stroake must it therefore follow that those were the Publick Resolutions May there not be found other breaches in relation to those who are our Rod or some other things But 3. Though ye were perswaded that the breach is in these yet do ye think it indeed a sin before the Lord for us who are not so perswaded to mourn for other Land-destroying sins which are upon all hands uncontroverted May not Joshua and the Elders mourn for their stroak and their known sinnes procuring it though yet they knew nothing of Achan who had procured Gods Wrath against them most Or did Job sin while he acknowledged his known iniquity Job 7. 21. Although he himself apprehended there was some further prime cause of this stroak nor any thing he had yet seen as appears from Job 10. 2. Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me But lastly as to this purpose ye adde that we would not look upon it with a light eye that so many Godly in the Land cannot join in our fasts and that all the wicked and prophane in the Land do carefully attend such dyets For Answer 1. We know there are both Godly and prophane within the Church but for our selves we never liked the making use of that distinction for strengthning of interest and faction by ranking all the prophane and wicked upon the one side and so none but the Godly yea and the generality of the Godly upon the other We know such a method hath been followed by some but the vanity of it hath still at last been discovered how long it will hold up with you we do not know 2. Though we are not able from our own exact knowledge to order Professors through the whole Land in their severall ranks yet our information faileth us if the generality of noted professors of any old standing do not join with us in our Fasts and Humiliations 3. That any doth not joyn with us is not looked on with a light eye by us we professe we look sadly upon it as a piece of that spirit stirring in the times The intent whereof is to make professors first lightly to scruple and then to separate without any reason upon meer gainstanding of minde first from some Ordinances in the hands only of some and

Ministery and the profitable fruits thereof together with the sad effects hath followed upon the interuption of it by the abounding of scandalous Ministers and Elders which ye lament so much the more as that what hath been already done of this kind is condemned by many In answer to which we wish indeed we may all look back where we were when these differences began Our Generall Assemblies were then terrible as ane Armie with Banners inferiour Judicatories and Persons of all ranks walking in their due subordination unto those whereby the weeds and stones of all sorts were gathered out of the Lords Vineyard which now almost every where abound 2. We grant that the House of God ought to be purged and that not only from men of scandalous lives but also of dangerous and erroneous principles but we are sorry that ye labour so much to fasten upon us the hindering of this so good a Work ye know the weakning of our Authority makes purging Work for the time but very little usefull Men are now taught and ye know by whose example to submit no further to Church Censures nor what seemeth good unto themselves Our purging work must have Union going before it or else it is to little purpose so that these who have begun and continued our wofull Rent most are greatest retarders of this necessary work and so deepest in that guilt which you so much at all occasions do charge upon us 3. We know not who those are who repents of the by past work of purging possibely some conceive an inconvenience and danger to continue it in the same way wherein it was formerly used but for what we know there is none of our judgement against the thing it self It may prove hazardous indeed to give unto a Quorum of some few men most of them being very young inexperienced and unacquainted with our Discipline a constant power renued from time to time to sit down upon whole Synods and Presbyteries and cast out and hold in whom they please especially at this time when through our wofull Rent there is so much mutuall irritation of spirit and as your selves grant so many groundlesse prejudices and needlesse jealousies together with so much alienation of affections We are very confident it shall not be made appear that Ezekiel threatneth the neglecting of purging only by such a meane as this so with all respect to your Wisdome and parts ye might as we conceive have omitted the citation of that place as to this purpose As for your two Papers mentioned in yours as containing the causes of GODS dreadfull wrath and the sins of the Ministry which ye recommend unto us we have not as yet so acurately perused them but from the generall view we have taken we finde what is the great work of these books to wit to convince us of the sinfulnesse of the Treaty publict Resolutions c. And in order to our conviction herein ye recommend to us the perusall of the Covenant Engagement Remonstrances Declarations of this Kirk For Answer We have perused many of them all and most of all the Word of Truth the perusall whereof why it is not recommended by you at least among the rest we wonder much But we cannot finde from all or any of these that sinfulnesse in these things which ye charge them with We finde the Treaty with the King approven by Covenant Remonstrances Declarations so that if ye had cited but one passage of any of these seemingly against it we should have cited ten really for it We finde the publict Resolutions also approven by these to wit The Commissions Answer to the Quaeries proponed to them by the Committee of Estates some of which Answers in these is 1. It is lawfull for a Magistrate to imploy the body of his Subjects for the Lands defence especially providing none of them be put to such Trust as may be prejudiciall to the work of GOD which ye know was expresly provided for in the Commissions Answer 2. That a Parliament may take off civill mulcts alter or shorten dyets for admitting unto or debarring from Trust providing they actually imploy none but these who are of known good affection to the Cause of GOD. These are the publick Resolutions so much cryed out against and these wee darre not condemne except vvee vvould depart from the Word of Truth We finde also what the Commission did in receiving of Malignants to give Ecclesiastick signes of Repentance to be justified by the Acts of preceeding Assemblies especially the Assemblie 1649. where many of your judgement did sit as Members We finde that Assembly did injoin the Commission to processe these who were upon the unlawfull Engagement even to Excommunication if they did not offer signes of Repentance We find the Commission 1650. walking by the same steps in their receiving of them to the Communion of the Church which the same Assembly in the same place doth prescribe and if they failed in one circumstance why do ye not make it known So that while ye say that they were notoriously walking in their accustomed prophanenesse and enimity unto the Work of God even when the Commission did receive them is more then can be made good we mean that they were so walking notoriously unto the Judicatory who received them and ye know Church Judicatories are to judge only according unto what is made notour unto them If ye say their walking so was notour unto others then we ask why did not those others follow Christs rule with them Was there any of the whole bulk whom any of you did admonish and for their pertinacy delated them unto the Church as the Word of God and the Generall Assembly did excite all to do This ye know ought to have been first done before ye had thus charged CHRISTS Court with prostituting the Ordinances of Repentance unto the lusts of corrupt men That severall of these whom the Commission did then receive have since proclaimed their dissimulation reflecteth nothing upon us no more then the carriage of diverse of your Judgment who have tread in the same steps with them of late doth reflect upon you Besides this we may say that the greater part of those at whose receiving ye professed your selves most stumbled have given as great a proof of their sincerity by their after actings and sufferings for the Covenant and Cause as any others have done since that time Ye proceed and wish our selves may search what sinfull courses have been taken to promove these Publike Resolutions but least we should not search or happily after searching not find ye put us in mind of severall particulars to which we give this return 1. If any Censures have been imposed upon Ministers without a preceeding Act and practise of our Kirk in such like cases then let the Imposers bear the blame 2. For any particular Acts made by the Assembly at Dundee against Professors for their opposition to the Acts thereof they not being particularly instanced