her In order to which I will therefore briefly and plainly describe the true notion of Schism In hopes that when men shall understand wherein the guilt of it lyes they will avoid the evil as well as abominate the consequence Schism is a voluntary departure or separation of ones self without just cause given from that Christian Church whereof he was once a member or Schism is a breach of that Communion wherein a man might have continued without sin First I call it a Departure or Separation from the Society of the Church to distinguish it from other sins which though they are breaches of the Laws of our Religion and consequently of the Church yet are not a renunciation of the Society For as there may be a sickly infirm nay an ulcerous member and yet a member of the body So there may be such a person who for his wickedness deserves well to be cast out of the Church as being a scandal and dishonour to it yet neither separating himself nor being cast out of the Society remains still a member of it Now what it is that imports a mans separation of himself or departure from the Church we shall easily understand for it is no more but this When a man shall either expresly declare that he doth renounce such a Society or shall refuse to joyn in the acts and exercises of Religion used by such a Society and to submit to its Authority So he separates that refuses Baptism the Lord Supper or to submit unto the Censures of a Church and sufficiently declares that he owns himself no longer of it Secondly I call it a Voluntary Separation to distinguish sin from punishment or Schism from Excommunication For though the last makes a man no member of a Church yet it is supposed involuntary and he doth not make himself so Thirdly I call it a departure from a particular Church of Christ or from a part of the visible Church to distinguish it from Apostasie which is a casting off of the whole Religion the name and profession of Christianity and not only the particular Society but the Schismatick is he that retaining the Religion in general or at least a pretence of it changes his Society associates himself with or makes up some other body in opposition to that whereof he formerly was Fourthly I add those words whereof he was a member because Schism imports division and making two of that which was but one before And so Turks Pagans Jews cannot be called Schismaticks having never been of the Church These things I suppose are all generally agreed of The only difficulty is in that which I subjoyn in these words an unnecessary separation or without just cause or to separate from that Society wherein I may continue without sin And here we meet with opposition on both sides some defining too strictly and others extending too far the causes of Separation Of the first sort are the Zealots of the Church of Rome who scarcely allow any thing as a sufficient cause of Separation for being conscious of so many and great Corruptions in their Church they know they can scarce allow any thing as a just cause of Separation that will not be in danger to be used against themselves and justifie the recession of all Protestants from them But on the other side some Protestants make the causes of Separation as many and as light as the Jews did of Divorce almost for any matter whatsoever Josephus put away his Wife as himself tells us because she was not mannerly enough another his because he saw a handsomer than she a third his because she drest not his dinner well As these Jews did by their Wives so do many Christians by the Church One likes not her dress another thinks her too costly in her ornaments a third phansies some German beauty or other that he hath seen in his travails and all to make way for new Amours upon very slender pretences repudiate their former choice But as our Saviour when the Case was put found out a middle way betwixt allowing Divorce for no cause at all and for every cause so ought it to be done in this business of Schism To hit this mark therefore I say that then and then only is there just cause of Separation when Perseverance in the Communion of such a Church cannot be without sin that is when she shall impose such Laws and terms of Society as cannot be submitted to without apparent breach of the Divine Law And upon this foundation I doubt not but we shall quit our selves well on both sides that is both justifie our Recession from the Church of Rome and demonstrate the unwarrantableness of this Separation of the Protestants of this Kingdom from the Communion of the Church of England For it 's plain on the one hand that it cannot be sin to separate when it is sin to communicate since no Laws of men can abrogate or dissolve the obligation of the express Laws of God And on the other it is as plain that Schism being so great a sin and of so extream bad consequence that which must acquit me of the guilt of it in my separation can be nothing less than equal danger on the other hand and that when I may persevere without sin it must of necessity be a sin to separate upon inferiour dislikes This methinks is so plain that I wonder any doubt should be admitted of in the case Notwithstanding because I observe some men think to wash their hands of the imputation of Schism upon other terms as namely Although a Church shall not require or impose such conditions of Communion as are expresly sinful yet if she shall require indifferent unnecessary or at most suspected things that in this case there is enough to excuse the person that shall separate from a participation of this sin And also because this opinion bears it self up by the great name of Mr. Hales as his declared judgement in a little Tract of Schism now very much in the hands of men I will therefore for the clearing of this matter say these three things 1. I willingly acknowledge that such a Church as shall studiously or carelesly clog her Communion with unnecessary burdensome and suspected conditions is very highly to blame yet is it neither burdensomness nor every light suspicion of sin but a plain necessity or certainty of sin in complyance that can justifie my Separation forasmuch as I cannot be discharged from a plain duty but by an equal plainness of the sin And for this phrase suspected it is so loose and uncertain that there is no hold of it men will easily suspect what they have no mind to and Suspicion having this priviledge we shall quickly evacute every uneasie duty and instead of guiding our selves by Gods Word and sound reasoning we shall give our selves up to the conduct of Passion Melancholy and Secular Interest 2. If the non-necessity of some of the terms of Communion be a warrant of
An Enquiry into y e Causes of the present Separation from the Church of England Hic verus est cultus in quo mens colentis seipsam Deo immaculatam victimam sistit Lact. A Serious and Compassionate INQUIRY Into the Causes of the present Neglect and Contempt of the Protestant Religion AND CHURCH OF ENGLAND WITH Several seasonable Considerations offer'd to all English Protestants tending to perswade them to a Complyance with and Conformity to the Religion and Government of this Church as it is established by the Laws of the KINGDOM Tertual Scorpiac adv Gnostic Non in occasione frustrandi Martyrii jubet te Apostolus scil subjici Magistratibus sed in provocatione bene vivendi Sine ira studio quorum causas procul habeo Tacit. Ann. 1. London Printed by Robert White for Richard Royston Bookseller to His most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner MDCLXXIV INstead of an Epistle to the Reader as the manner is I humbly submit the ensuing Discourse to the Censure of my Superiours in the Church of England and to the consideration of all the Non-conformists of whatsoever Sect or Denomination hoping the former will pardon the defects of it and that the latter may by Gods blessing reap some benefit by it THE CONTENTS THE INTRODUCTION Wherein the Antient Estate of Christianity in general is compared with the present and the Condition of the Reformed Religion in this Kingdom in the first times of it is compared with that of the present Age And the Change lamented PART I. An Enquiry into the Causes and Origin of the Separation from and Contempt of the English Reformed Church CHAP. I. Wherein are represented several things that are pretended but are not the true Causes of our distractions and dissatisfactions viz. 1. Corruption in Doctrine 2. The too near approach of this Church to the Roman 3. The Scandalousness of the Clergy All which are disproved pag. 1. CHAP. II. Of the more remote and less observed Causes of the infelicity of this Church such as 1. The Reign of Queen Mary and return of Popery under her in the Infancy of the Reformation 2. The bad provision for Ministers in Corporations c. 3. Frequent Wars 4. The liberty in Religion that Trade seems to require 5. The secret designs of Atheists and Papists p. 30. CHAP. III. Of the more immediate Causes of the Distractions of the Church of England such as 1. Rashness of popular Judgement 2. Judaism 3. Prejudice 4. Want of true Christian Zeal in the generality of its Members p. 56. PART II. Wherein several serious Considerations are propounded tending to perswade all English Protestants to comply with and conform to the Religion and Government of this Church as it is established by Law CHAP. I. A Reflection upon divers wayes or Methods for the Prevention and Cure of Church-Divisions p. 85. CHAP. II. Of the true notion of Schism the sin and mischievous consequents of it p. 105. CHAP. III. Of the nature and importance of those things that are scrupled or objected against in this Church and that they are such as may without sin be sacrificed to Peace and therefore cannot excuse us from sin in separating from the Church upon their account p. 121. CHAP. IV. The those that find fault with the Constitution of this Church will never be able to find out or agree upon a better p. 140. CHAP. V. That God layes very little stress upon Circumstantials in Religion p. 151. CHAP. VI. That the Magistrate hath Authority to determine such Externals of Religion as are the matters of our disputes and what deportment is due from Christians towards him p. 159. CHAP. VII Wherein Christian Liberty consists and that it doth not discharge us from Obedience to Laws p. 175. CHAP. VIII Of a Tender Conscience what it is and its Priviledges p. 190. CHAP. IX The great dishonour that disobedience to Laws and Magistrates and the distractions of Government do to any Profession of Religion whatsoever p. 212. CHAP. X. The danger by our Distractions and Divisions p. 223. The Conclusion p. 240. THE INTRODUCTION WHEREIN The Antient estate of Christianity in general is compared with the present and the Condition of the Reformed Religion in this Kingdom in the first times of it is compared with that of the present Age And the Change lamented WHosoever seriously considers the Certainty and Excellency of the Christian Religion in its own nature and withal observes with how just Veneration it was received with what Ardour imbraced with what Courage and Constancy maintained and practised then when all the Powers on Earth sought to suppress it when the Wit and Malice of the World was combined against it and when to be a Christian was the plain way to ruine and the loss of whatsoever uses to be dear to men in this world And shall compare herewith the present State of Christendome now since the offence of the Cross is ceased and the Faith of Christ as is become the Profession of Kings and Princes and besides all other either arguments of its truth or inducements to embrace it is confirmed by the successive Suffrages of so many Ages and the concurrent Votes of so great a part of Mankind He I say that shall take the little pains to make this Comparison cannot choose but be astonished at the contrary face of things and be ready to say with Linacer Aut hoc non est Evangelium aut nos non sumus Evangelici Either Christian Religion is not what it was or men are not what they were wont to be For besides the palpable Contradiction of the Lives of the generality of Christians now to the Rules of their Religion laid down in the Writings of the New Testament which is such as would make an indifferent man suspect that they believed those Books to contain absolute impossibilities or at least not the things that are necessary to salvation since so few take the Rule of their Lives or the Measures of their Actions thence Besides this I say he that shall observe how the Primitive Christians for several Ages after our Saviour are reported to have lived and how far short the latter Ages fall of those Examples will be tempted either to pronounce the Histories of those Times meer Romances or the Men of these Times to be any thing rather than what they call themselves Such a general Declension there hath been that the complaint of Tully concerning the Philosophers of his time may justly be applyed to the Christians of ours That they made disciplinam suam ostentationem scientiae non legem vitae non obtemperant sibi ipsis sed in eo peccant cujus profitentur scientiam That whereas Christian Religion was calculated for no other Meridian designed to no other purpose than the bettering and improving the Tempers and Lives of Men it is perverted rather to an Apology for our Loosness than applyed to the Cure of our Disorders I cannot please my self with so odious a
Mankind by making the sinister intentions of men co-operate towards them He made use of the unnatural cruelty of Joseph's brethren towards him to the preservation of the whole family of Jacob sending Joseph into Aegypt as an Harbinger and Nurse to provide for them in a famine And in respect hereof Joseph tells them it was not they but God sent him thither The Cruelty of Pharaoh who sought by severities to break and wear out the Israelites harden'd them and prepared them for all the difficulties they were afterwards to encounter The obstinacy and incredulity of the Jews proved to be the riches of the Gentiles The persecution of the Apostles at Jerusalem made way for the spreading of the Gospel into all other Countreys Instances of this kind are innumerable or if they were not yet were it very unsafe for those of the Church of Rome to make this objection lest they provoke us to say what cannot be either denyed or justified That the barbarous Tyrant and Usurper Phocas brought in the Universal Pastorship of the Bishop of Rome and that the most bloody and rapacious Princes have ordinarily been the great Patrons and Indowers of their Church thinking it seems to hallow their own Villanies and legitimate their unjust acquisitions by dividing the spoil with the Bishop and Church of Rome 3. The English Reformation was the most compleat and perfect in its kind as retaining the most antient Doctrine and soundest Confession of Faith founded upon the holy Scriptures and agreeable to the first General Councils the most Primitive Church-Government and a Liturgy the best accommodate to reconcile and unite mens Devotions Such a Liturgy as Mr. Fox the Author of the Martyrologie is not afraid to say was indited by the Holy Ghost but certainly had a great testimony in the unspeakable joy and contentment holy men took in it in King Edward the Sixths dayes their zeal for the maintenance of it longing for the restitution of it and sealing it with their blood in Queen Maries dayes and the universal triumphs and acclamations at the restoring of it in Queen Elizabeths Reign And admirable it is to consider how happy this Church and Nation then was in what Glory and Majesty the Prince reigned in what Peace and Concord the Subjects lived but especially it is remarkable how devout and pious an Age that was as is scarce perhaps to be parallel'd since the time that Christianity flourisht under Constantine the Great what reverence was then yielded to the Ministers of Religion What devotion to the publick worship How general an acquiescence of hearts and minds in it Which the greater it was the more just is our wonder and the more reasonable our inquiry what should be the Cause that in the same Church and amongst devout and honest-minded Englishmen such a zeal should terminate in so cold an indifferency as may now be observed or rather that such a blessed harmony should degenerate into so much discord as is now too discernable amongst us We read Ezra 3. that when the second Temple at Jerusalem was building the young men rejoyced at the reviving glory of their Nation and Religion but the old men that had beheld the far greater splendour and more stately Majesty of the former Temple built by Salomon they wept as contemplating how far this came short of that so that it was hard to say whether the shouts of the young men or the lamentations of the elder were the more loud And truly when we consider in how low a condition the Church of England was some few years since till it had a happy Resurrection with the return of our Gracious Soveraign will see cause to rejoyce and thank God that we are in no worse condition than we are But he that understands and considers what was the felicity of the first Age of our Reformation and compares it with the present condition of our affairs will have just cause to lament the difference For in those dayes so venerable was the Society of the Church that to be cast out of it by Excommunication was as dreadful as to be thunder-smitten that Sentence was like Proscription amongst the Romans which they counted a Civil death and dreaded as much as a Natural But now it is become a matter of Ambition with some and a piece of Glory And to be cast out of the Church is as good as Letters testimonial or recommendatory to other Assemblies There were few or none then that did not constantly frequent the Church now the Church is become the Conventicle in many places and the Conventicle the Church in respect of the fulness and frequency of the one and the unfrequentedness and destitution of the other Aristonicus came to a certain City in Greece where he observed many Temples but few Men that would hear him He therefore instead of the usual phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cryes out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hear O ye Stone-walls less hard than the hearts of men The Application is too easie in our case In that time we speak of the Liturgy and publick Prayers were counted a principal part of Gods worship now they are not only nothing without a Sermon but in danger to desecrate the Sermon too by their conjunction The Bible is scarce Canonical if it have the Prayers bound up in the same Cover and so extreamly offensive are they grown to some that they will rather totally neglect the publick Worship of God and never receive the Communion whilest they live than have to do with the Common Prayers Heretofore there were but few things scrupled in the establisht Religion and those were very few that made use of any such pretence or scruple but now it is become the great point of Sanctity to scruple every thing There was one indeed and he a great man that said there were tolerabiles ineptiae in our Liturgy and the most favourable return he met with was that he had his tolerabiles morositates Now the title of ineptiae is counted too mild an expression whatever suits not the present humour is either Jewish Popish or Superstitious This Change is sadly lamentable that good Laws should be thus trampled upon the best Church in the world thus despised and the best minded People thus abused Now my business is therefore in the first place to enquire from what Causes this hath come to pass PART I. An Enquiry into the Causes and Origin of the Separation from and Contempt of the English Reformed Church CHAP. I. Wherein are represented several things that are pretended but are not the true Causes of our distractions and dissatisfactions viz. 1. Corruption in Doctrine 2. The too near approach of this Church to the Roman 3. The Scandalousness of the Clergy All which are disproved WE have a Proverbial saying amongst us that Every one that is forty years old is either a Fool or a Physician But without a Proverb to justifie the undertaking there are but few that at
when the Dort Opinions were very predominant amongst many Divines of this Church they used it may be a little more scholastick subtilty to reconcile their own Opinions with these Articles but never condemned the latter for the sake of the former And at this day divers good men are in the service of this Church that are in their private Judgements of the Dort perswasion and yet never thought their subscription to these Articles did any violence to their Consciences or Judgements therefore this can be no cause of our Troubles nor ground of Separation from the Church A second pretence against this Church is that it is not sufficiently purged from the dross of Popish Superstitions that it comes too near the Church of Rome and so the Communion of it is dangerous Popery is an odious Name in this Nation and God be thanked that it is so for it deserves no less But as Constantine when he condemned the Arrians and decreed their Books should be burnt appointed that they should be called Porphyrians a Name sufficiently detested by the generality of Christians So those men that have a mind to reproach the Church know no more effectual way of affixing an Ignominy upon it than by laying the imputation of Popery to it And indeed if the Charge were as true as it is false or if it were as probable as it is malicious it would not only serve to exasperate the Vulgar against the Church but to justifie their Secession from it But it is hard to say whether the unreasonableness or the uncharitableness be greater in this suggestion For 1. It is certain there hath been little or no alteration made in either the Doctrine Discipline or Liturgy since the first Reformation and therefore if either of them incline too much that way they did so from the beginning Now that which I inquire into is what should be the causes of the late revolt and separation from this Church or what should make that discernable change in mens affections towards it from what was in the former Age And he that tells me it was Popishly constituted at first gives indeed a reason if it was true why this Reformation should not have been entertained at first but doth not assign a cause why those should depart from it now that had imbraced it with so much zeal formerly He therefore that would speak home to this case must shew that this Church hath lost its first love and hath warped towards the old corruptions from which it was once purged But this is so far from being possible to be shewn that it is certain on the contrary that all the change that hath been made of late years hath been meerly in complyance with and condescension to those that object this against it and a man would reasonably expect they would easily pardon such Innovations But in truth the main quarrel is that we are not alwayes reforming but keep to the old Matron-like Dress the Queen Elizabeth fashion If the Governours of the Church would comply with the curiosity of this wanton Age our Religion would quickly have the fortune of Apelles's picture according to the known story He to deride the conceited folly of the Age exposes to publick view a Master-piece of his work And as it usually happens that every body pretends to skill in reforming by the incouragement of the Proverb that saith facile est inventu addere scarcely any person that past by but spent their verdict upon the picture All commend it in the general yet to give some special instance of their skill every one finds some fault or other One would have had more Shadow another less one commends the Eye but blames a Lip c. The subtil Artist observes all and still as any passenger had shot his bolt alters the picture accordingly The result was that at last by so many Reformations it became so deformed and monstrous a piece that not only wiser men but these vulgar Reformers themselves wondered at it and could now discern nothing worthy so famed an Artist He on the other hand to right himself produces another Piece of the same Beauty and Art which he had hitherto kept up by him and had escaped their censure and upbraids them thus Hanc ego feci istam populus This latter is my work the other is a monster of your own making This is our case Christian Religion was by holy and wise men our Reformers devested of those gaudy and meretricious accoutrements the Romanists had drest her up in and habited according to primitive simplicity but this would not please every body every Sect and Party would have something or other added or altered according to their several phancies and Hypotheses which if it should be allowed the opinions of men are so contrary one to another as well as to truth the true lineaments of Christianity would quite be lost Upon this consideration hath not this Church been very fond of alterations But to all this it is likely it will be replyed That now we have more light and discover blemishes and deformities which though they were before yet we could not discern when our selves came out of the dark Den of Popery At first like the man under cure of his blindness Mark 8. 24. we saw men as trees walking we discovered only some more palpable errors but now we discern though lesser yet not tolerable deformities 2. To this therefore I answer in the second place That it is certain all is not to be esteemed Popery that is held or practised by the Church of Rome and it cannot be our duty as I have said before to depart further from her than she hath departed from the truth for then it would be our duty to forsake Christianity it self in detestation of Popery To reform is not surely to cast away every thing that was in use before unless Barbarism be the only through Reformation The Historian observes of those that spoil Provinces and ransack Kingdoms ubi solitudinem fecere pacem appellant when they had converted a flourishing Countrey into a desolate wilderness they called this a profound peace But sure to reform is not to destroy and lay waste but to amend Unless therefore it can be proved against the Church of England that she holds or practises any thing false or sinful it will little avail them that object against her and as little be any blemish to her constitution that in some things she concurs with the Roman Nor is it reasonable to say such a thing is received from the Church of Rome meerly because there it is to be found unless it be to be found no where else for though it be true that many things are the same in both Churches in as much as it is impossible they should be Churches of Christ at all else yet it is as true that those things wherein they agree are such and no other as were received generally by all Christian Churches and by the Roman
what age soever do not think themselves at years of discretion enough to pass a judgement upon and prescribe to the Body Politick whether Church or State Though it usually happens that such Empiricks either to shew their wit suspecting distempers where there are none make them or whilest they rashly adventure quiet a movere and like Englishmen will be alwayes mending they make work for better skill than their own or lastly if they discover some small matter amiss mistaking the cause of it not only lose their time and labour which would be easily pardonable but exhaust the spirits of the Patient with improper medicines and purge out the good and useful juices as noxious humours and so the Physician becomes far the greater disease of the two That our Church is of a sound and healthful constitution and might have continued so had it not met with this fortune I think I have sufficiently though briefly manifested in the foregoing Introduction But some men either loving to be alwayes reforming or having first separated from it that they may either commend their own skill or justifie their own fact must accuse the Church We read of Brutus that having killed Caesar he was alwayes after inveighing against him as a Tyrant Ità enim facto ejus expediebat saith the Historian It was expedient he should call Caesar Tyrant for otherwise himself must be a notorious Traytor So these men though the greatest disorders of the Church be but what themselves have made must find faults that they may not seem to have raised all the dust and withdrawn themselves and others from it without cause 1. And in the first place the Doctrine of this Church is blamed though thanks be to God there are but few that are of so little discretion as to bring in this charge and those that are will never be able to prove it The main if not the only thing excepted against in this kind is that the thirty nine Articles are not so punctual in defining the five points debated at the Synod of Dort as they could wish But this though it neither needs nor deserves an answer yet I shall reply these two things to it First That it is not so with the Doctrine of Christianity as with common Arts and Sciences which depend upon humane wit and invention and consequently are capable of daily improvements For the mind of man having not an intuitive knowledge but proceeding by way of discourse discovers one thing by another and infers things from one another so that there is not a Nè plus ultrà in those things but daily new discoveries dies diem docet Whereto accords the saying of wise men Antiquitas saeculi est juventus mundi That which we call the old World is but indeed the infancy of knowledge and the latter Times must needs have as much the advantage of truth as they have of deliberation and experiment But it is quite otherwise with Christianity for that depending solely upon Divine Revelation can admit of no new discoveries time may obscure it and the busie wit of man may perplex and confound it with its inventions but can never discover any thing new or bring to light any truth that was not so from the beginning For if we admit of new Revelations we lose the old and our Religion together we accuse our Saviour and his Apostles as if they had not sufficiently revealed Gods mind to the world and we incurr St. Paul's Anathema which he denounces against him whosoever it shall be nay if an Anger from Heaven that shall preach any other doctrine than what had been received And St. Jude hath told us the Faith was once that is either at once or once for all delivered to or by the Saints But if we shall pretend a private Spirit or Revelation to discover and interpret what was before delivered we do as bad we suppose Christ and his Apostles not to be able to deliver the mind of God and we open a Gap for all Impostures and delusions perpetually to infest and corrupt Christian Doctrine The consequence of these premises is that contrary to what I affirmed before of other Sciences the elder any Doctrine of Christianity can be proved to be it must needs be the truer and accordingly deserve the greater veneration from us as coming nearer the fountain of Evangelical Truth Divine Revelation and that he that talks of more clear Light of the latter times and clearer discoveries in Religion talks as foolishly as he that should affirm he could discern things better at a miles distance than the man that hath as good eyes as himself and yet stood close by the object This being so it must needs be the excellency and great commendation of this Church that her Articles of Doctrine agree better with the first Times of Christianity than the last Age and is an irrefragable Argument that she derived it not from any Lake or lower streams troubled and mudded with mens passions and disputes but from the Fountain of the holy Scripture and from those who certainly had best advantage of understanding it in its own simplicity the Primitive Church That no one Father or Writer of the Church whether Greek or Latin before St. Austin's time agreed in Doctrine with the determination of the Synod of Dort is so notoriously plain that it needs no proof nor can be denyed And if he I mean St. Austin agrees therewith yet it is certain that in so doing he disagrees as much with himself as he doth with us of the Church of England And what if St. Austin a devout good man but whose Piety was far more commendable than his Reason being hard put to it by the Manichees on one hand and the Pelagians on the other was not able to extricate himself who can help it Shall his Opinion and that which he was rather forced into by disputation than made choice of but especially shall the Determination of a few Divines at Dort vye with the constant Doctrine of the Primitive Church or make that an imputation upon our Church which is really amongst its Glories Must a novel Dutch Synod prescribe Doctrine to the Church of England and outweigh all Antiquity Shall those that knew not how God could be just unless he was cruel nor great unless he decreed to damn the greatest part of Mankind that could not tell how man should be kept humble unless they made him not a man but a stock or stone Shall I say such Men and such Opinions confront the Antient Catholick Apostolick Faith held forth in the Church of England Secondly The Articles of the Doctrine of this Church do with such admirable prudence and wariness handle these points we are now speaking of as if particular respect was had to these men and care taken that they might abundare suo sensu enjoy their own Judgements and yet without check subscribe to these Articles And accordingly it is well known that not many years since
the Church by ripping up the miscarriages of the other perswasions For besides that I have not so leaned Christ I have observed so much of the world that such uncharitable recriminations have not only made an Apology for the Atheism and Profaneness of the Age but afford a pleasant spectacle to all evil men to behold Divines coming upon the Stage like Gladiators and wounding and murdering one anothers reputation To which add that I verily hope the Lives of the generality at least of the Clergy of England are so unblameable and commendable in themselves that they need not the soil of other mens deformities to set them off or recommend them Yet I will say these two two things further in the case 1. If a man be a male-content with the Government and forsaking the Church resort to private Assemblies or if being a Clergy-man and continuing in the Church he shall debauch his Office and undermine the Church which he should uphold such a man may then debauch his Life too and yet have a very charitable construction amongst the generality of dissenters And on the other side if a man be of singular sanctity and the most holy conversation but withal zealous of the interest of the Church and his own duty in it this man shall have worse quarter and be more maligned by the fiery Zealots of other parties than one that is both of a more loose life and meaner abilities Whence it plainly appears that the bad lives of Clergy-men if it were true is but a pretext not the true cause of quarrel with the Church 2. If impertinent and phantastical talking of Religion be Religion if endless scrupulosity and straining at Gnats if censoriousness and rash judging our Betters and Superiours if melancholy sighing and complaining be true Christianity if going from Sermon to Sermon without allowing our selves time to mediate on what we hear or leisure to instruct our Families if these and such as these are the main points of true Godliness then I must confess the Sons of the Church of England are not generally the most holy men and the Non-conformists are But if a reverent sense of God and Conscience of keeping all his express Laws if Justice Mercy Contentment Humility Patience Peaceableness and Obedience to Governours be the principal ingredients of a good life as doubtless they are if we take our measures either from our Saviour the Apostles or Prophets Then I do not despair but the Church-men may be good Christians and of far more holy lives than their accusers notwithstanding all the contempt cast upon them For upon this Issue I dare challenge Malice it self to be able to fasten any brand of bad life upon the generality or body of the Clergy I know this Age is not without some of the brood of Cham who will take the impudence to uncover their Fathers nakedness and expose those deformities which they ought not only out of charity or reverence but wisdom also to conceal And it is not to be expected that such a body of men made of the same flesh and blood and solicited with the same temptations with other men should be altogether without spot or blemish yet I do really believe those are extream few of that number that justly deserve any scandalous character and also very inconsiderable in respect of the whole And he that shall for the miscarriages of a few reflect dishonour upon the Clergy in general shall do as unrighteously as he that shall take a downright honest man and omitting his many and great vertues and innumerable good actions only rake up and represent in an odious Catalogue all the follies of his youth and errors of his life By the which artifice the best man in the world much more the best Society of men may be rendred odious enough It is well enough known that the healthfullest body is not without some humours which if they were all drawn together into some one part or member would make an ill and dangerous spectacle but whilest they lye dispersed in the whole mass of blood where there is a vast predominancy of the good or else are lockt up in their private cells glandulae or other receptacles till they shall be critically evacuated do in the mean time little or nothing indanger or deform such a body I need not apply this to the case in hand To conclude therefore Were there but either so much Charity and Humanity as ought to be in Men and Christians or so much unprejudicacy as becomes wise and good men used in this matter we should instead of reproaching the failings or miscarriages of a few heartily thank God for that remarkable Holiness Humility and Charity that is yet alive and warm in the breasts of so many of the Divines of this Church in this cold and degenerate Age. And for the rest we should think of that saying of Tacitus Vitia erunt donec homines sed neque haec continua meliorum interventu pensantur CHAP. II. Of the more remote and less observed Causes of the infelicity of this Church such as 1. The Reign of Queen Mary and return of Popery under her in the Infancy of the Reformation 2. The bad provision for Ministers in Corporations c. 3. Frequent Wars 4. The liberty in Religion that Trade seems to require 5. The secret designs of Atheists and Papists HItherto I have only noted and refuted the Scandals and Contumelies cast upon this Church which how groundless and unreasonable soever they are yet do not a little mischief when they are whispered in corners and insinuated in Conventicles I might have reckoned up some more of the same nature and as easily have disproved them but they are either reducible to those we have touched or will fall under consideration in due time I now proceed from those Imaginary to inquire into and consider of the true and real Causes of the present disaffection to the English Reformation and they will be found to be of several kinds but I will not trouble my self curiously to distinguish them into exact Classes contenting my self faithfully to relate them and represent their peculiar malignant influences And in this Chapter I will bring into view these five following 1. It was the misfortune and is the great disadvantage of this Church that it was not well confirmed and swadled in its Infancy It is the observation of wise men that it greatly contributes to the duration and longevity of any Society to have a good time of Peace in its Minority and not to have been put upon difficulties and tryals till its limbs and joints were setled and confirmed that is till the people were competently inured to the Laws and the Constitutions by time digested into Customs and made natural to them The State of Sparta remained intire without any considerable change in its Constitution or Laws the longest of any Society we have read of And Lycurgus the Law-giver and Founder of that Common-wealth is thought to
have taken an effectual course to make it so durable by this stratagem When he had framed the body of their Laws he pretends occasion of Travail to consult the Oracle at Delphos about their affairs but first takes an Oath of all the Lacedemonians to preserve the Laws in being inviolable till his return Which having done he resolvedly never returns to them again By this means whilest the people were by the Religion of their Oath and a long expectation of his delayed return for a long time used to the Constitutions he had established they grew so well practised in them that at last Custom had habituated and even naturalized them to them that they became unchangeable Agreeable hereunto is the observation of our own Lawyers that the Common Law as they call it is never grievous to the people and seldome repealed whatever defects are in it as Statute-Laws frequently are because long Custom and Use hath fitted either that to the men or the men to it that all things run easily and naturally that way It is observed also by Divines That when God Almighty gave a peculiar Body of Laws to the people of Israel he took not only the opportunity of their straits and adversities at their coming out of Aegypt that his Institutions might the more easily be received but also kept them fourty years under the continual education in and exercise of those Laws and that in the Wilderness where they were not likely to take in any other impressions nor have other examples before their eyes to tempt or corrupt them And besides all this in a wonderful providence he so ordered it that all those men that came out of Aegypt except Caleb and Joshua and had observed other Customs and Laws and so might be likely to give beginning to innovation should all dye before they came into the Land of Canaan That by all these means the Laws he gave them might take the deeper root and so remain unalterable to all generations I cannot choose but observe one thing more to this purpose That when our Blessed Saviour had by himself and his Apostles planted his Religion in the World though it was such a Law as sufficiently recommended it self to the minds of men by its own goodness easiness and reasonableness and therefore was likely to be an everlasting Religion or Righteousness as the Prophet Daniel calls it yet for more security it pleased the Divine Providence to restrain the rage of Pagans and Jews for a good while and to give the Christians above sixty years of peace before any considerable persecution broke in upon them that in that warm Sun it might spread its roots and get some considerable strength and footing in the world But it was the will of God that the strength of this new-born Church of England should be early tryed And that it might give proof of its divine extraction it must like Hercules conslict with Serpents in its cradle and undergo a severe persecution the good King Edward the Sixth dying immaturely and Queen Mary succeeding him in the Throne By which means it came to pass that as this Infant-Reformation gave egregious proof of its intrinsick truth and reasonableness many fealing it with their blood so it had this disadvantage that we are all this while representing namely that by reason of this persecution a great number of the Ministers and other members of this Church were driven into other Countreys for refuge and shelter from the storm and there were as it 's easie to imagine tempted with novelty and distracted with variety of Rites and Customs before they were well instructed in the reasons or habituated to the practice of their own And hereupon as it is usually observed of English Travailers brought home with them those foreign fashions the fond singularity of which is still very taking with too many to this day I say thus it came to pass that those that went out from us returned not again to us when they did return in regard that before they were well inured to the English Reformation they became inamoured of the Rites of other Churches not much considering whether they were better so long as they were fresher and newer nor minding that there are oft-times reasons that make one Form necessary to be established in one place or people and not in another when otherwise it is possible they may be both indifferent in themselves but not equally fit to the humour and custome of the people or consonant to the Civil Constitutions nor yet observing that many things were taken up and brought into use in other Churches not upon choice but necessity not because they were absolutely better in themselves but the state of affairs so requiring As for instance where the Reformation had not at first the countenance of the Civil Government there the Reformers were constrained to enter into particular confederations with one another from whence Presbyterian Government seems to have taken its rise I say these Exiled English Protestants not entring into so deep a search into the special causes or occasions of those different Rites and Forms they found in the places whither they fled for succour as to discover whether they were strictly Religious or meerly Political but observing some pretexts of Scripture to be made for them and in process of time during their abode in those parts being used to them and by use confirmed in them they at last when they might with safety return to England again came home laden with these Foreign Commodities and crying them up with a good grace found too many Chapmen for such Novelties Thus as the children of Israel even then when they had Bread from Heaven Angels food longed for the Onions and Garlike of Aegypt remembring how sweet those were to them under their bitter bondage and had upon all occasions and upon every pet or disgust a mind to return thither So these men retained as long as they lived a lingring after those entertainments which they found then very pleasant when other was denyed them and so much the more in that as I said before they received a tincture of these before they had well imbibed or sufficiently understood the reasons of the Church of England And though these men are now dead yet the Childrens Teeth are still set on edge with the sowre Grapes their Fathers have eaten For those persons being considerable for their Zeal against Popery and very much recommended to the esteem of people at their return by the travail and hardship they had underwent for the Protestant profession were easily able with great advantage to communicate their Sentiments and propagate their Prejudices amongst the Members of this Church Here therefore I think we may justly lay the first Scene of the Distractions of this Church A second Cause may be reckoned the bad and incompetent provision for a Learned and Able Ministry in the Corporations and generality of great Parishes in England It is easie to observe that
the multitudes of Opinions that deform and trouble this Church are generally hatcht and nursed up in the Corporations Market-Towns and other great places whereas the lesser Countrey Villages are for the most part quiet and peaceably comply with Establish't Orders And if I should say that not only the Dissatisfaction with the Rites and Government of the Church but also the Convulsions and Confusions of State took their Origin from the bad humours of those greater Societies or Congregations of people I suppose I should say no more than what the observation of every considerative man will allow and confirm Now he that searching for a reason of this difference shall impute it either to the Ease Fulness and Luxury of the former whereby they have leisure and curiosity to excogitate Novelties and spirit and confidence to maintain and abett them whilest the latter tired with hard labour neither trouble themselves nor others but apply themselves to till the ground and earn their bread with the sweat of their brows or to the multitude and great concourse of people in the former amongst whom Notions are more easily started better protected and parties sooner formed for the defence and dissemination of them He I say that discourses thus gives a true account for so much but searches not far enough to the bottom For had there been an able Learned Orthodox Clergy setled in such places they by their wisdome and vigilance would in a great measure have obvated all beginnings of these disorders partly by principling the minds of men with sound Doctrine partly convincing Gain-sayers and especially rendring the Government of the Church lovely and venerable by their wise deportment In order therefore hereunto there ought to have been the most liberal Maintenance and ingenuous Encouragement setled upon such important places That where the work was greatest and the importance most considerable the motives to undertake it might be so too To the intent that the most able and judicious Clergy-men might have been invited to and setled upon those places that most needed them But contrariwise it is most visible that in those places where most Skill is to be exercised and most Labour to be undertaken there is little Revenue to encourage the Workman In a little obscure Parish or Country Village often-times there is a well endowed Church but in these great ones generally where the Flock is great the Fleece is shorn to the Shepherds hands and so pittiful a pittance left to the Curate or Minister that he can scarce afford himself Books to study nor perhaps Bread to eat without too servile a dependance upon the Benevolence of his richer Neighbours By which means either his Spirit is broken with Adversity or the Dignity of his Office obscured in the meanness of his condition or his Influence and Authority evacuated having neither wherewith to live charitably nor hospitably or all these together nay it is well if to help himself under these Pressures he is not tempted to a sordid Connivance at or Complyance with all those Follies and Irregularities he should correct and remedy And so like Esau sell his Birthright the Dignity of the Priesthood for a mess of Pottage Now how this comes to pass that the greatest Cures have generally the least Maintenance is easily found for it is well enough known that in those Times when the Popes had a Paramount Power in England a great part of the Tythes and Revenues of Churches were by their extravagant Authority ravisht from them and applyed to the Abbies and Monasteries and this like an Ostracisme fell commonly upon the greatest Parishes as having the best Revenues and consequently the more desirable Booty to those hungry Caterpillers and so the Issue was that the richest Churches were made the poorest in many such places little more than the Perquisites and Easter-Offerings being left to those that shall discharge the Cure And then though afterwards these superstitious Societies were dissolved yet the Tythes being not thought fit to be restored to their respective Churches the consequence is that those places which ought for the good both of Church and State to be well provided for are too often supplyed by the most inconsiderable Clergy-men or those men made so by the places they supply My meaning is that by reason of the incompetent Legal Maintenance provided for such Ministers the people have it in their power either to corrupt an easie and necessitous man or to starve out a worthy and inflexible one and so whatever the humour of the place shall be it is uncontroulable and incurable To remedy these inconveniencies it hath of late pleased His Majesty and the Parliament to make some provision so far as concerns the City of London and it is hoped the same wisdom will in time take like care of other great places in the same condition for till some such course be taken it will be in vain to expect that the Church of England or the best Laws of Religion that can be devised should either obtain just Veneration or due Effect 3. I account the late Wars another Cause of the bad estate of the Church and Religion amongst us Which may perhaps seem the more strange since when men put their Lives most in danger one would think they should then take the most care to put their Souls out of danger Besides it hath been the wisdom of most Nations to desire the countenance and incouragement of Religion in all their Martial undertakings The Romans made great scruple of enterprizing any thing of that nature till either their Priests from inspection of the Sacrifice or some other of their Pagan Oracles had given them the signal And the Turkish Mufti or High-Priest must give the Prime Visier his blessing before he enters upon the business Whether it be that men indeed believe God Almighty to be the Lord of Hosts and to give Victory to those that stand best approved with him or whether it be only that they apprehend that the opinion of being under Gods favour gives reputation to their Arms inspires their men with valour and resolution and disheartens their enemies or upon whatsoever consideration it is certain the matter of Fact is true and that Religion is of great efficacy in Warlike exploits It may I say therefore seem the more strange that War should be injurious to that which it seeks to for countenance and encouragement But most strange of all that Enemies abroad should make men quarrel with their Friends at home that Iron and Steel Wounds and Blows should make men tender-conscienced that those who can find in their hearts to shed the blood of Men of Christians and of their Brethren without remorse should be so queasie stomached as to scruple every punctilio and nicety in Ecclesiastick matters And yet he that narrowly considers the rise and progress of our Disorders will find that the distractions of the Church have kept pace with those of the State and as before the War our
those of other Cities But thanks be to God there is no necessity of having recourse to such a violent Remedy the Laws of our Religion do both admit of and direct and govern Commerce and the reasonableness of our Christian Religion in general and of the English Reformation in particular is such as that it may be well hoped they may rather gain than lose Proselytes by being confronted with any other Institutions and allure considerate men to the embracing of them whilest some lighter and incogitant persons may be betrayed by their Curiosity All the Use therefore that I make of this Observation concerning Trade is That since there is some danger to Religion thereby all those that do not make a God of the World and take Gain for Godliness will think these three things following to be reasonable 1. That since it is plain the same Means will not preserve Uniformity in Religion nor conserve the Reverence and Happiness of the Church in a Nation vastly addicted to Foreign Commerce as would do where the more simple way of Agriculture was attended to as it was amongst the Spartans and this Nation formerly that therefore there may be such Laws provided and such care taken as that the one be not discouraged nor the other corrupted 2. That every man will not only take care to inform himself in the grounds of his own Profession of Religion but also have so much Charity towards the Governours of his own Countrey and this Church as to think them both as wise and as honest as in other places that by both these his Reason may be instructed and his Affections somewhat composed against every assault of Novelty from other mens Opinions or Practices 3. That at least we will not think it just to impute all the Distractions of mens Minds and Quarrels against the Church to the badness of its Constitution since this point of Trade hath such influence as we see both in the Nature of the thing and in the visible Effects of it 5. It must not be omitted that both Papist and Atheist though upon several grounds combine their Malice against this Church and use all their several Interests and Endeavours to render it as contemptible as they can For the former Manet altâ mente repôstum Judicium Paridis spretaeque injuria formae We know they remember the slur we gave then in our Reformation they are well aware that the decent Order the Dignity and antient Gravity of this Church reproves and shames the Pageantry of theirs They forget not how often the eminent Abilities of our Church-men have baffled theirs therefore they are to be reckoned upon as immortal Enemies They know nothing stands so much in the way of their Designs as the Church of England This hath the countenance of the Laws the support of Reason the favour of Antiquity the recommendation of Decency They therefore can easily frame themselves to a complaisance towards all other Sects because they despise them but here oderunt dum metuunt their fears and danger by this provoke their endeavours inflame their anger and suffer them not so much as to dissemble their spite against it It is well enough known how under the disguise of Quakers and other names they have undermined its reputation and given it what disturbance they can how by their Insinuations into some loose o◠weaker persons they seek to weaken is powers and draw off her numbers how they have furnished others with Arguments to impugn it and subaided all unquiet spirits against her They that scruple nothing themselves nor will suffer any to scruple any thing in their own Communion can teach people to be very nice and squeamish in the Church of England They that are altogether for a blind Obedience at home preach up tenderness of Conscience abroad and when an Implicite Faith will do well enough in Spain or Italy c. yet in England nothing must content men but Infallible Certainty and that in the most circumstantial and inconsiderable matters Then for the Atheists They conscious of the odiousness of their pretences though of late arrived at greater impudence than formerly think it not safe to laugh at all Religions at once though they equally abhor all Therefore lest they should ingage too many enemies at once they deal by Retail and expose to scorn the several Parties of Christians one after another But to be sure the better any Perswasion is the more industriously they set themselves to depress it as knowing well if they can bring that into Contempt they may be secure of the other which must one time or other fall of themselves by reason of the unsoundness of their Foundations Besides it seems something below them to set their wit against a Fanatick they must have higher game and their Jests go off more piquantly when they gratifie the popular envy by being level'd against that which hath a great stock of Reputation and the countenance of publick Laws These blind Beetles that rose out of filth and excrement and now buz about the world hope not only to cover their shame but to increase their Party daily by the divisions of Christians and therefore labour to inflame the Causes to provoke mens Passions and exasperate their minds one against another They scurilously traduce all that is serious and study Religion only to find out flaws in it And what they cannot do by manly Discourse they endeavour by Buffoonry In short It is their manner to dress the best Religion in the world in a phantastical and ridiculous habit that Boyes may laugh at it and weak people brought out of conceit with it and their Worships made merry with the Comedy Now since the Church of England is beset with all these Enemies and under the aforesaid Disadvantages it is no wonder if the felicity and success of it be not a little disturbed It was noted amongst the Felicities of old Rome as that which gave it the opportunity of growing up to so vast a Greatness That till it had by degrees subdued all its Neighbours and was now match for all the World it had never but one Enemy at once to encounter Whilest this Church in its first times had only those of the Church of Rome to confiict with it easily triumphed over them and maintained its Peace and Dignity at home but that now under the Circumstances I have represented in the five foregoing Particulars it bears up so well as it doth is an illustrions argument of its Strength and Soundness of Constitution and they are very severe and uncharitable persons that reckon its Enemies and Misfortunes in the number of its Vices or Faults CHAP. III. Of the more immediate Causes of the Distractions of the Church of England such as 1. Rashness of popular Judgement 2. Judaism 3. Prejudice 4. Want of true Christian Zeal in the generality of its Members COming now in this Chapter to enquire into the immediate Causes of the Evils we groan under I
and confound them those seem mighty-powerful-soul-saving-Preachers Who sees not that this must needs be a mighty disadvantage to the Church of England When Devotions shall be esteemed by their noise and not by their weight and Sermons tryed not by their light but heat But if to all this Truth and Falshood also and that in the most sublime points and which is more Expediency it self must be decided at Vulgar Tribunals so that there shall not be that Doctrine so profound or nice which every man will not take upon him to determine nor that Reason so subtle which the crassest minds shall not pretend to understand nor that Rule or Art of Government which shall not fall under vulgar cognizance if every mans Mind become the Standard and Touchstone of every Truth it is impossible upon the suppositions before laid but there must be dissentions disputes and distractions in such a Church and yet neither the Doctrine Discipline Liturgy nor Ministers thereof be to blame For unless the Reformers of such a Society be no wiser than the Vulgar and the Clergy and Governours and all Learned men have the same sentiments with the people unless I say all could be alike wise or alike weak where all will be alike Judges it is absolutely impossible it should be otherwise Those therefore of the Church of Rome have a cure for this They appropriate all Judgement to the Clergy and deal with the rest of Mankind as Sots and Ideots not permitting them to read the Scriptures in the Vulgar Tongue lest they should grow too wise to be governed nay they will not allow them to be masters of common sense but requre them to believe the most contradictory Propositions and make that an Article of Faith which a man may confute by his Fingers ends This is an admirable way to wean them from their own Understanding to unlearn them Disputes and to exercise them to believe in and obey their Rulers This way makes the people Sheep indeed but silly ones God-wot But the Church of England hath no such Antidote of Disputes and Divisions as this is She makes not her self the Mistris of mens Faith nor imposes upon their Understandings She teacheth that our Saviour hath delivered the Mind of God touching the points of necessary Belief or essential to Salvation fully and plainly to the capacity of every considering man that will use the means and in other lesser matters debatable amongst Christians she allows a judgement of Discretion Only since the Peace of the Church often depends upon such points as Salvation doth not and since in many of those every man is not a competent Judge but must either be in danger of being deceived himself and of troubling others or of necessity must trust some body else wiser than himself She recommends in such a case as the safer way for such private persons to comply with publick Determinations and in so advising she jointly consults the Peace of the Church and the quiet of mens Consciences So all that she challenges is a Reverence not a blind Obedience And if after all this some people will be foolish and proud and contentious she hath no further Remedy than to declare them guilty of Sin and Contumacy and that not sufficing to cast them out of her Communion But when all this is done men may be peevish and wilful and render the State of that Church unhappy whose Constitution is neither guilty of Tyranny nor Remisness Now if it shall be objected to this Discourse That this cause from the consideration of the Folly and Injudiciousness of men is too general and will equally extend to all other Reformed Churches as well as our own and especially that this might have brought forth all the Evil we complain of and impute to it in the former Age as well as now for as much as the generality of people were not much wiser then than now To this I answer in two points 1. If other Reformed Churches have not found the effects of Ignorance and Arrogance joyned together as well as we which doubtless they have done more or less it is not to be ascribed to the happiness of their Constitutions but to the unhappiness of their outward Circumstances Their Poverty Oppression Persecution or being surrounded with common Enemies hath probably prevailed upon them to lay aside or smother their private Opinions and to check their animosities more than our Gratitude to the Almighty for our Ease and Peace and Plenty and Liberty hath done upon us Who knoweth not that the Church of Corinth first needed the severe check of an Apostle for their wantonness and divisions that one was of Paul another of Apollos c. And who can give a more probable account of this their Luxuriancy than from the riches ease plenty and liberty of that City Or who hath not observed that whilest the Primitive Christians were in Adversity surrounded with Enemies and under Pagan persecuting Emperours so long they had one heart and mind they submitted their private phancies and peculiar sentiments to publick safety but the same constituted Churches quickly broke out into Quarrels and Factions as soon as a warm Sun of Prosperity shone upon them We have reason accordingly not to charge our unhappiness upon our Religion nor our troubles upon our Prosperity but to lay them at the right door of our Folly and Weakness 2. That these Evils broke not out in our Church sooner since the Seeds of them were sown long ago is due to the joy and contentment that men generally took at their first emerging out of the darkness and superstitions of the Church of Rome by the Reformation which was proportionable to the deliverance and so great that for a time it suffered them not to be very solicitous about little disputes or scrupulosities Like the people of Greece when the Romans at the Isthmian Games by a publick Herald pronounced them and their Countrey free they forgat the contentions they came together about and used to be infinitely taken with But when the novelty of this great Blessing was over Protestants forgat the great and intolerable burdens they had escaped and then began scrupulously to weigh every petty inconvenience and by the goodness of God not having a publick Enemy to unite them quarrel amongst themselves This therefore may be admitted as one cause of our unhappiness 2. That which I would assign as a second cause I know not well what name to give to it But for want of a better expression I will adventure to say That a great part of this Nation having been leavened with Jewish Superstition or Jewish Traditions hath thereby been indisposed to an uniform reception of and perseverance in the Reformation of Religion held forth by this Church How this sowre leaven should get in amongst us is not very easie to determine Some Stories would incline a man to think that it had been in the veins of this Countrey ever since it first received the
and Christians in the whole world besides It being in no Church or Countrey observed with that punctuality and in that Sabbatical manner as by those persons Whence it 's plain that such observation thereof could neither be derived from Christianity in general nor from Protestantism as such but meerly from a Jewish tincture these persons have received A fifth Instance shall be their Doctrine of Absolute Predestination Which though it be not peculiar to these men yet is so universally and ardently embraced by the men of that way as is scarce to be parallel'd And he that seeks the Source of so odd an Opinion can in my opinion pitch no where more probably than upon the absolute Decree of God to favour the posterity of Abraham for his sake It pleased God to bestow the good Land of Canaan upon the descendents of that good man and he resolved and declared he would do it without respect to their deserts now this is made a sufficient ground to conclude That accordingly as he disposed in this Temporal affair so he will proceed by the same way of Prerogative in determining the Eternal Doom of Men. I will add but one more which is their superstitious observation and interpretation of Prodigies To this a great number of this Party are so addicted that every unusual Accident every new Appearance in the World be it in Heaven above or in the Earth below is presently commented upon and applications made of the errand of it though for the most part with Folly as manifest as is the Uncharitableness yet with Confidence as if it were undoubtedly true that God governed the affairs of the World by as visible a Providence now as he did heretofore in the Land of Judaea and the remembrance of what he did then seems to be the only imaginable account of this conceit of theirs now Many other Instances might be given of this kind but I have made choice of these because they contain the principal Doctrines and most Characteristical Practices of the Non-conformists and these carrying so plainly the marks of Judaism upon them and being no otherwise accountable than upon those Principles I think I said not improperly when I called Judaism the second Cause of our Unhappiness since any man may easily see that such Notions and Principles as these are must needs indispose those that are leavened with them to Conformity to or perseverance in the Church of England 3. But if the weakness of Judgement or bad Instruction only obstructed the prosperity of this Church it were not very difficult to find a Remedy but alas the minds of a great number of men are under such Prejudices as have barricado'd them up and rendred them almost inaccessible and that I reckon as a third Cause of our Distractions Prejudice is so great an evil that it is able to render the best Discourses insignificant the most powerful Arguments and convictive evidence ineffectual this stops mens Ears against the voice of the Charmer charm he never so wisely This alone was able to seal up the Eyes of the Gentile World against the Sun of Righteousness when he shone upon them in his brightest glory and to confirm them in their blind Idolatries when the God that made Heaven and Earth gave the fullest discoveries of himself that it was fit for mankind to expect Upon the account of this the Jews rejected that Messias they had so long expected and gloried in before he came though he exactly answered all the Characters of Time Place Lineage Doctrine and Miracles that their own Writings had described him by Nay 't was Prejudice abused the honest minds of the Disciples themselves so that they could not for a long time believe those things Christ Jesus told them from the Scripture must come to pass only because they were against the grain of their Education and were cross to the perswasions they had received in common with the rest of the Jews No wonder then if the Church of England suffer under Prejudice amongst those that have not only seen it stigmatized with the odious marks of Popery and Superstition and had been drawn into a Solemn League and Covenant against it as if it had been an act of the highest Religion to defie and execrate it and so had both their Credits and their Consciences engaged against it But also had lived to see it proscribed for near twenty years by a prevailing Faction Few have that Generosity and strength of mind to bear up against the torrent of times or Confidence enough to oppose the impetuousness of common vogue and prevailing opinion There are not many have the sagacity to discern the true images of things through those thick mists that cunning Politicians cast about them It is very ordinary to take the condemnation of any Person or Party for a sufficient Proof of the Accusation and to think the Indictment proved if the Sentence be past with common consent It was enough both with the Jews and Gentiles against our Saviour that he was condemned as a Malefactor the Ignominy of his Cross was a greater Argument against him with the generality than the excellency of his Doctrine or Evidence of his Miracles was for him This Church was dealt with like the Great Lord Strafford run down by common Fame opprest by Necessity not by Law or Reason and made a Sacrifice to the inraged Multitude The Arguments against it were not weighed but numbered As that Great Lords Impeachment was of Accumulative Treason so was the Churches of Popery there was more in the Conclusion than could be made out by the Premises and in the summ total than in the particulars of which it consisted for though no one point of Popery or Superstition could be proved against it yet it must be so upon the whole This being agreed the cry then is Crucifige destroy it root and branch And now was the Church seemingly dead and as I said before buried too for near twenty years but when by the wonderful Providence of God it was raised again as it was matter of equal Joy and wonder to all such as were not too far under the power of these Prejudices so it could not be expected otherwise but that weak and timerous persons should run from it as from a Ghost or Spectre To all which add That it was the corrupt Interest of some to deceive others into an ill opinion of it partly as being inraged that by the Churches unexpected Revival they lost its Inheritance which they had divided amongst themselves partly being conscious to themselves that by reason of their no more than vulgar abilities they could be fit to fill no extraordinary place in the Church and yet were not able to content themselves with any ordinary one and therefore chose to set up a Party against it and become Leaders of a Faction since they might not be Governours of a Church And when it is come to that pass that by this craft we get our
Livings like the Silver-smiths at Ephesus no wonder if Apostolical Doctrine and Government be cryed down and the Great Diana be cryed up The summ is this Some men were blindly led by their Education others by their Interest a third sort by their Reputation to make good what they had ingaged themselves and others in and these three things are able to form a great Party against the Church 4. The Fourth and Last Cause and I wish it be not the greatest of the Distractions and ill Estate of this Church is the want of true Christian Zeal and of a deep and serious sense of Piety in defect of which hath succeeded that wantonness curiosity novelty scrupulosity and contention we complain of What was it made the Primitive Church so unanimous that it was not crumbled into Parties nor mouldered away in Divisions nor quarrelled about Opinions nor separated one part from another upon occasion of little scruples How came it to pass as I observed in the Introduction to this Discourse that all good men were of one way and all evil men of another that those that travailed to the same City the heavenly Jerusalem kept the same Rode and parted not company It could not be that they should be without different apprehensions for mens Parts were no more alike nor their Educations more equal in those times than now There were then several Rites and Ceremonies that might have afforded matter of scruple if the Christians had been so disposed as well as now and I think both more in number and as lyable to exception as any thing now in use There was then bowing towards the East observation of Lent and other dayes distinction of Garments and innumerable other Observations in the early dayes of Tertullian and yet neither any Scripture brought to prove them nor any such proof thought necessary and yet they were observed without suspicion on one side or objection on the other Harum aliarum ejusmodi disciplinarum si legem expostules Scripturarum nullam invenies sed traditio praetenditur auctrix consuetudo conservatrix fides observatrix saith he in his Book De Corona militis St. Austin saith in his time the number and burden of Ceremonies was grown as great as under the Law of Moses and therefore wishes for a Reformation thereof in his Epistles to Januarius yet never thought these things a sufficient ground of Separation from the Church There was then some diversity of Expression in which the Governours and Pastors of several Churches delivered themselves yet did they not dispute themselves hereupon into Parties nor accuse one another of false Doctrine or either Side make the division of the Church the Evidence of its Orthodoxy or the Trophy of its Victory The true reason then of the different Event of the same Causes then and now seems to be this That in those dayes men were sincerely good and devout and set their hearts upon the main the huge Consequence and concern of which easily prevailed with those holy men to overlook their private satisfactions They were intent upon that wherein the Power of Godliness consisted and upon which the Salvation of Souls depended and so all that was secure they were not so superstitiously concerned for Rituals nor so unreasonably fond of Opinions as to play away the Peace of the Church and the Honour of Religion against trifles and meer tricks of wit and fancy They considered that they all had one God one Faith one Baptism one Lord Jesus Christ in which they all agreed and these great matters were able to unite them in lesser They Good men found enough to do to mortifie their Passions to their burdens of Affliction and Persecution to withstand the Temptations of the Devil and the contagion of evil Examples from the world and had not leisure for those little Disputes that now imploy the minds of men and vex the Church They spent their Heat and Zeal another way and so their Spirits were not easily inflammable with every petty Controversie But when men grow cold and indifferent about great things then they become servent about the lesser When they give over to mind a holy Life and heavenly Conversation then they grow great Disputers and mightily scrupulous about a Ceremony When they cease to study their own hearts then they become censorious of other men then they have both the leisure and the confidence to raise Sarmises and Jealousies and to find fault with their Superiours In short then and not till then do the little Appendages of Religion grow great and mighty matters in mens esteem when the Essentials the great and weighty matters are become little and inconsiderable And that this is the Case with us in this Nation is too evident to require further proof and too lamentable a subject for any good Christian to take pleasure in dilating upon I conclude therefore in this Point lyes a great part of the Unhappiness of this Church and Kingdom PART II. Wherein several serious Considerations are propounded tending to perswade all English Protestants to comply with and conform to the Religion and Government of this Church as it is established by Law CHAP. 1. A Reflection upon divers Wayes or Methods for the Prevention and Cure of Church-Divisions HAving in the former Part of this Discourse diligently enquired into and faithfully recited the principal Causes of the discontents with and secession from this Church It would now ill beseem Christian Charity to rest here for God knows neither the Evils nor the Causes afford any pleasant speculation It was a bad state of things at Rome which the Historian reports in these words Nec morbos nec remedia pati possumus That they were come to so ill a pass that they could neither indure their Distempers nor admit of the Remedies But I perswade my self though the condition of our affairs be bad enough yet that it is not so deplorable as to discourage all Endeavours of a cure And in this hope I take the courage to propound the following considerations wherein if I be deceived and miss of my aim I shall notwithstanding have that of Quintilian to comfort my self withal Prohabilis est cupiditas honestorum vel tutioris est audaciae tentare ea quibus est paratior venia It hath not been the single Unhappiness of this Church alone to be molested with Disputes loaden with Objections and dishonoured by Separation Nor can it be hoped that where the business is Religion and the concern Eternal Life that men should incuriously swallow every thing without moving any question or stirring any dispute And therefore all Churches must of necessity more or less have conflicted with the same difficulties we complain of And consequently the disease being so common it cannot be but that many and divers Remedies have been tryed and made use of And out of that store we will in this Chapter make election of such as seem best to fit the condition of the Patient and
separation then there can be no such sin as Schism at all forasmuch as there never was nor probably ever will be such a Church as required nothing of those in her Communion but things strictly and absolutely necessary as I have shewed partly in the Introduction and could easily make appear at large through all Ages And then may the Author of the Tract about Schism securely as he doth somewhat too lightly call it only a Theological Scarcrow 3. It will be manifest to any considering person that some things are necessary to the Constitution and Administration of a particular Church that are not in themselves necessary absolutely considered And of this I will give two instances The first in the Apostles times The abstaining from things strangled and blood was by the Council at Jerusalem adjudged and declared necessary to be observed by the Gentiles in order to an accomodation betwixt them and the Jews of which I shall say more hereafter and yet I suppose scarce any body thinks the observation of that abstinence so enjoyned necessary in it self The second instance shall be Church-Government Whatever disputes there are about the several Forms of it as whether it ought to be Monarchical or Aristocratical Episcopal or Consistorial and whatever zeal for opinion may transport men to say in favour of either of them yet I suppose few or none will affirm that either of these Forms is absolutely necessary for if one be of absolute necessity the other must be absolutely unlawful and not only so but then also those that do not receive that absolutely necessary Form can be no Churches for that Society which is defective in absolutely necessaries can be no Christian Church Notwithstanding it is not only lawful to determine and define this unnecessary point but it is necessary to the constitution of every particular Church that it be defined one way or other I mean so far as concerns that Church for if this be left indifferent in this particular Church as perhaps it is in it self in the general it is manifest there can be no Superiour nor Inferiour no Governour nor governed no Order and consequently a meer Rout and no Church Therefore some things not necessary in themselves not only may but must be defined in a particular Church and consequently it will be no just exception against a Church nor excuse from Schism if we separate from that Communion because such definitions are made in it CHAP. III. Of the nature and importance of those things that are scrupled or objected against in this Church and that they are such as may without sin be sacrificed to Peace and therefore cannot excuse us from sin in separating from the Church upon their account IT is the custome of those that have a mind to quarrel to aggravate and heighten the causes of discontent to the end that the ensuing mischief may not be imputed to the frowardness of their temper but to the greatness of the provocation And passion is such a Magnifying-glass as is able to extend a Mole-hill to a Mountain The way of Peace therefore is to take just measures of things and as upon the account of Truth we must not make the matters of our dispute less than they are so for the sake of both Truth and Peace we ought not to make them greater Wherefore if men would be perswaded to set aside passion and calmly consider the nature and just value of those things that we in this Church are divided upon we should then be so far from seeing reason to perpetuate our distance and animosities that we should on the contrary be seized with wonder and indignation that we have hitherto been imposed upon so far as to take those things for great deformities which upon mature consideration are really nothing worse than Moles which may be upon the most beautiful face To this purpose therefore having in the former Chapter represented the nature of Schism and the guilt and mischiefs attending it I proceed now to shew the unreasonableness of the temptations to it I mean the littleness and small importance of the Objections against this Church and that neither any of them single nor all of them together can countervail the blessing of Peace or the evil of Division In order hereto I will first shew that the causes of Dissensions amongst us are not like those upon which we separated from the Roman Communion 2. That something must be given for Peace by them that will have it 3. That all the scruples and objections against this Church are not too great a price to pay for it 1. Touching the first it is said by some in heat and passion That there is as much cause for secession from this Church now as there was from the Roman in the time of our Ancestors but with no more reason than if the arguments and discourses written against a notorious Tyrant and Usurper should be turned against a good and lawful Prince As will easily be manifest if we consider the just state of the case on either hand We could not continue in the Roman Church upon any better conditions than Nahash propounded to the men of Jabesh Gilead 1 Sam. 11. to put out our right Eyes that we might be fit for her blind devotion We must for the sake of Peace have denyed the Faith renounced our Reason and contradicted our very Senses That Church instead of instructing men in knowledge professes to nurse them up in ignorance in lieu of the Scriptures it gives them Traditions and instead of such things as were from the beginning and the faith once delivered to the Saints it prescribes those things that had their beginning from private interests and secular advantages They make seven Secraments five more than Christ ever intended for such and take away from the people the half of one of those he expresly instituted and enjoyned They teach men to pray to Saints instead of God and to use a Language in their Devotions which he that pronounces understands no more than the Saint he prayes to doth his Needs and Requests Nay they give divine honour to a piece of Bread and must swallow Idolatry in spite of their teeth herein little better than the Aegyptians who worshipt that for a God which they put into their Bellies They have taken away one of the Ten Commandments and have arts of evacuating allthe rest for they elude the necessity of a true and serious Repentance and subvert the principles of holy Life In short they have brought in Pageantry instead of Piety and Devotion effaced the true lineaments of Christianity and instead thereof recommended and obtruded upon the world the dictates of Ambition the artifices of Gain and a colluvies of almost all the Superstitions Errors and Corruptions of former Ages and this must be received and swallowed by all those that will continue in that Communion These things could not be submitted to without grievous Sin and manifest danger of Damnation therefore
very readily hearkened to But as they past a Doom upon any one he approves the Sentence but before the execution perswades them to bethink themselves of another and better man to be in his Room since a Senate they could not be without But here the business stuck as he had foreseen it would the people who agreed unanimously against the old Senator could by no means accord who should succeed one named this person and another that but whosoever was named by one party was rejected by another that in conclusion as great a pique as they had conceived against the old Senate for want of agreement in better men to fill their places they were constrained to continue them in I only make this application of the Story That it is easie and obvious to find fault with things present but not so to find better for the future And till that can be done 't is neither just to call any thing evil that is the best of its kind nor done like wise men to quarrel with a Church for some infirmities which we know the worst of by long experience lest thereby we come to have either none at all or such an one as may give us cause sadly to repent our choice CHAP. V. That God layes very little stress upon Circumstantials in Religion TO make that which we have hitherto discoursed the more clear and convictive and to ease the minds of men of their scrupulosities and superstitious fears let it be considered in the next place That even then when God Almighty did with the most punctuality prescribe the Ceremonies and Circumstantials of Religion he never laid such stress upon them but that so long as the main of Religion was provided for and the substance of his Institutions observed Alterations might be and were made in those lesser matters without his offence And if this be made appear it will tend to beget in men better notions of God and better measures of Religion as well as dispose them to Conformity to the Church of England For they will have no reason to think of God as a captious Deity that watches advantages against his Creatures nor make Religion a piece of nice scrupulosity and consequently will neither swallow Camels nor strain at Gnats but serve God with the generosity of a free and a comfortable mind Now to this purpose it will not be unuseful to take notice of a distinction mentioned by Maimonides That the Jews acknowledge some things in their Law to be primae intentionis and some things secundae That there were some things God required for themselves as being intrinsecally good and that other things were only required for the sake of and in order to the former The first kind that were essentially good were also absolutely necessary and never could be otherwise such as we call moral Duties The latter kind were of so indifferent a nature as that not only they might not have been commanded but also having been commanded they may in some cases not be a Duty An instance whereof though the Jews were a great while before they understood it and soundly smarted for their Ignorance is that Maxim they have now generally received Periculum vitae dissolvit Sabbatum But the fullest instance of the kind is that which is remembred by Mr. Selden in his Book de jure Naturali Gentium lib. 2. cap. 10. That in case of sickness a Jew might not only eat such meats as were otherwise forbidden but say they for the recovery of his health or avoidance of any great danger he might break any Precept save only those Three great ones against Idolatry Murder and Incest But these things come not home to my purpose only I note them to shew that that superstitious people had some general notice that God did not so precisely animadvert in little matters so the great were minded That which I choose to insist upon for the evidencing of this Observation is the Passeover which was a great Sacrament instituted by God himself upon weighty reasons made a Statute for ever throughout their generations and the soul that observed it not was to be cut off from among his people Exod. 12. And in the eleventh verse of that Chapter the most minute circumstances are defined amongst other that they should eat the Passeover with staves in their hands shoos on their feet and their loins girt by which expressions is plainly intimated and accordingly they understood and practised that they should eat it in the posture of standing Nevertheless it is well known that when they were come into the Land of Canaan to setled habitations they eat it sitting or lying according to the usual custome of feasting in those Countreys And this change continued all along till the times of our Saviour without any reproof from God and our Saviour himself conforms to them herein and in the same posture eats the Passeover with his Disciples Now this is the rather observable because whenas the posture enjoyned by God was symbolical of the haste in which they went out of Aegypt They in the change aforesaid instituted a Ceremony which was symbolical too but quite of another matter namely of the rest and peace God had now given them in the good Land of Canaan And all this alteration made upon prudential considerations and the reason of the thing without any warrant from God for their direction or check for the change Let us take another Instance Though God had so carefully described the Circumstances of the Temple-worship as I have shewed before and the especial reasons of so doing yet we find David distributing the Priests into Orders for the conveniency of their Ministration which might have been called an Innovation in Religion but besides that he institutes instrumental Musick to be used in the Worship of God without any Commission from God that appears And yet this novelty also was so far from incurring any reprehension that it was thenceforward constantly retained and made use of I might for the fuller Evidence of this notion observe That though God had with great solemnity instituted Sacrifices as the means of propitiating his Divine Majesty towards sinful men and had with great accuracy prescribed the Laws thereof yet he puts a great slight upon all of that nature as a thing he regarded not in comparison with the substantial points of Virtue and Obedience Particularly Psal 50. v. 8. I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices c. v. 14. Offer to God the sacrifices of righteousness As if he had said Let me have these latter and I shall not much complain for defect of the former But especially Micah 6. 7. Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of Rams or ten thousands of rivers of Oyl c. but he hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to do justly to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God For a full explication of all which and