silencing to lose our friends to gratifie them that thus abuse us and to take pains to exchange kindness for cruelty and to strive hard to leap out of the ashes into the fire But I will tell the truth to the world and you we do what you desire of us or reasonably can desire I constantly Preached till the Goal restrained me against Separation and much more against sedition and rebellion We do it openly and plainly I am the man that am reproached in Print for want of this And the same hand so far justified me as before the Kings Majesty and Lords and before the Right Reverend Bishops to say of me and my Disputes of Church-Government about the Ceremonies c. No man hath written better of these things And can we speak louder than by the Press Or can they prove that we preach not as we write O wonderful that ever the world can degenerate to so much unrighteousness as to condemn men upon such defamations as these Besides that Book many a year before and since I have still written to the same purpose I have Preached to the same purpose But thinking it more seasonable in private Conference I have an hundred and an hundred times more pleaded for the like in private And my Disputes before mentioned are accused by many offended persons as having made a hundred Ministers at least conformable And had they not been written in the very height of Usurpation before the Kings return I should have been taken for the vilest temporizer This is our course and yet if wrath and partiality and ill will do but dream that we do infect the people and cherish them in Separation and do not contradict but flatter them in their extreams against our own judgments the world must ring of all these dreams and they think it fit that we be used as if all were certain truth We have need to bless our selves against dreaming neighbours if we must be estimated and used and described to the world according to their dreams Nay I will tell the world here the certain truth of our success and usage I preach I write and I frequently and openly talk against Separation and for the lawfulness of joining with the Church in the use of the Liturgy and to rebuke mens extreams and censures of the Episcopal Clergy and for an impartial love of all true Christians I sharply reprove the weak reasonings of those that are otherwise minded and by this I occasion the true Sectarians every where to speak against me and yet even these Sectaries wish me well and would do me no harm and the generality of my hearers bear all this well and seem to be of the same mind And yet when I am loved by those that I plead against I am reviled and abused by those that I plead for Yea more I must profess it before the world that I plead your cause as far as conscionably I can and its you that hinder me and none like you You would have us do your work with the people and you would not let us do it You use us as I saw a man lately do by a Colt who tyed him fast to a great tree and lashed him most cruelly to make him draw You make our work difficult if not impossible and then think us worthy of your smarting wrath for not performing it Were it not for two things we could do much to reconcile the people to you 1. If you would not impose those Oaths Subscriptions and such like burdens which we are our selves unable without fraud and falshood to defend 2. If you would not silence their faithful Teachers but would encourage Godliness and good men impartially and would exercise LOVE as openly and largely as you exercise WRATH But we must tell the world and you that we are unable utterly unable to justifie the Corporation-Oath and Declaration and to bring the people to like those Bishops whom they think are the chief cause of depriving of them of their long tried painful faithful Pastors and setting over them such as in too many places are set When our people are in Goals for meeting as they have done these twenty yea thirty or forty years only to repeat their Teachers Sermon and pray and sing a Psalm together between the publick Exercises on the Lords-day where they have reverently attended It is a hard task that you put on them to like you but a harder that you put on us that we must Preach them to it even when we must not Preach at all That we must go to the Gaols to them or after they come out to their houses to teach them to like the Bishops and their Impositions They will tell us VVe love them with a love of Benevolence as we must our enemies we wish them no harm but the greatest good but we cannot love them as such complacentially nor think approvingly of their ways Whether you do well or ill in promoting their sufferings I am not now judging I only tell you that it is the greatest hinderance to our reconciling them to you and your ways that you could easily have devised I never saw that wooing speed well that said Love me or I will send thee to Gaol When I was a child I never thought any correction more unreasonable than whipping children to make them give over crying when whipping was an unresistible means to make them cry if they had not cried before While I am Voluminously reproached for not reproving the spirit of Separation or Nonconformty as afore limited when I did it last I was sent to Prison and when I would do it by Preaching I have not leave And if your meaning be Speak when we have shut thy mouth and teach men to like us when they suffer our wrath you increase our task when you have taken away our straw I conclude therefore with repeating it you will not suffer us to serve you as we can but are our greatest hinderers while you blame us And lastly as to their scrupling the Corporation Declaration and Oath I can speak best for my self The Bayliff Justice and all the twelve Capital Burgesses besides inferior Burgesses did refuse it and were every one displaced save one now dead that had been a Soldier in the Kings Army what men were put in their stead I am not now to tell you And they were so far from being perswaded to this by me at almost an hundred miles distance that I never once spake to them nor wrote to them one Letter or word about it And it being no part of the old Conformity how could this be put into their heads by me especially when they know that I had kept the Covenant from ever being put upon that Town and Country 4 Obj But the issue sheweth how little good your Teaching doth where are any more against Bishops and Conformity than your hearers You make men hypocrites and teach them to prate phrases and cut faces and rail at carnal
any thing more injurious to the souls of men or the ends of your office in all your Preaching praying and ministration than the not using of a Cross or Surplice Forgive me if I ask you whether you dare appear before God with no better a Repentance and what a Pharisee could say more than I thank thee God that I am not so bad as this Puritan that will not subscribe or use the Cross or Surplice But I suppose you will confess that you have much worse Ministerial failings and if so should you not be impartial and say Veniam petimusque damusque vicissim I verily thought when I entered into the Ministry that not one of all my School masters the tipling Readers before-mentioned were more useful to the Church than an Amesius a Hildersham c. 3. But I beseech you let not conceit affright you or at least let not so many pay so dear for your causeless fears It is in your power more than in ours to prevent all the feared inconveniences of our Preaching It is most certain that needless Impositions are the great cause of factions and divisions in the Church We heretofore instanced to you 1. There is no Imposition what gesture to sing a Psalm in or to hear Gods Word and about these I never heard of a contention But about the Sacrament-gesture and bowing rather at the Name of JESUS than of Christ or God there is Imposition and there 's Contention 2. There is far more difference between your Cathedral Worship and your common Parish-Worship than between the users and not users of a Cross and Surplice And yet it causeth no such Factions 1. If you say that it is because they differ not in Judgment but in Practice I answer 1. That 's more than you know I believe you would have some more Nonconformists if you everywhere imposed the Cathedral-Worship And 2. we shall be known to differ in Judgment whether we preach or worship with you or not 3. And some of you as Dr. Heylin and the Answerer of a parcel of our Reply to you are against the use of any prayers in the Pulpit but the Liturgy and some against praying there before Sermon but only for bidding prayer as they call it And most of you practice otherwise and yet it maketh no division 4. Nay when bowing towards the Altar was recommended in the Canon of 1640 it was not Imposed but men desired not to judg one another about it And why might not Crossing be under the like liberty 5. And even in Doctrinals which are more than Ceremonies you know what a notorious difference there is among your selves Some called Arminians and preaching for it some that think and preach against it some preach for Original sin and Bishop Taylor writeth against it and yet you can bear with one another Yea how many new Doctrines hath Mr. Thorndike published and yet his Ministry is tollerable 6. Yea even about the matters of State you know what Mr. Thorndike hath said against the Oath of Supremacy as necessary to be altered for the Papists sake And yet what Faction hath this caused 7. Yea you should consider that it is one of the greatest policies of Rome for the preservation of their Peace and Unity and the power of their Hierarchy that the Pope alloweth such diversities of Religious Houses Orders Rules and Ceremonies that all humors are thereby fitted and every man that hath a mind of an odd and stricter way may find a time or society for his turn And will not the long experience of so great a Church do something to convince you of your mistake 4. But what confusion will it be for a man to forbear a Surplice every day when many of your own forbear it most days and wear it but seldom and this without confusion And what if a child be uncrossed when the Parents so desire it or done by another when they desire it What confusion is this Why may not a little measure of brotherly love serve to procure mutual patience in that which is no injury to any as well as in the bowing towards the Altar where you think it may serve turn without uniformity 5. But that which I would chiefly have you mind is that your own way will cross your ends and interest much more than this which we propose to you It is long since you told me your thoughts some of you that if the Ministers were taken from them the people would conform and be reduced And since I told you I was assured you were mistaken and that the casting out of the Ministers would be a very great increase of the peoples disaffection to you and consequently of divisions You have since had seventeen years tryal whether this be true or not Alas that England must suffer so much while the Bishops are learning how to rule and do their office yea learning that which weaker persons easily perceive Alas that so many thousand Souls must pay so dear for a few mens experience I know you say that it is because the Laws are not strictly executed But I suppose you know how many Ministers such as the world is not worthy of have layen long in the Jayls in Devonshire in Somersetshire in Dorsetshire in Worcestershire and in many other Counties and also how many of the Laity have suffered their three months Imprisonment and some much more and how little all this hath served your turn and how much further you would carry on your severity I know not But I know you are not like to cause either Love or Unanimity by this way Will no experience teach you such easie and obvious things Do you not see that there are many more of the common people disaffected to your Ministry and way than were when the Ministers were first silenced and cast out Yea they that lost no Ministers of their own are yet changed by the common experience of the Land You will not endure us to tell you truly what a Ministry you have cast out and what a Ministry in too many places are in their stead But the people will know it whether you will or not To tell men beyond Sea in Latin as Mr. Durel doth of our badness and of the excellency of your present Ministry will not perswade the people of England not to believe their ears and eyes I love to instance where I dwell and see because of certainty This Market-Town of Barnet ten miles from London was so extremely addicted to your way and so impatient of the Directory and the Ministry now cast out that one who was their Minister in the times of Usurpation told me he was fain to leave them and prosessed to me that he was really afraid lest they would have put him into the Grave and buried him alive for burying a Corps without the Common-prayer according to the Directory And now the case is so much altered that though the Town consist so much of Inns and Ale-houses which are very
what we thought sinful 2. That we in dispute maintained it 3. That to that very question we after gave in a paper of eight particulars in the Liturgy which we undertook to prove flat sin 4. That we published that profession in our Petition for Peace 5. That this was before the worse new Conformity 6. And had it been otherwise what were our thoughts to 2000 men that were absent I must profess I that was still with them cannot imagine whence this inhumane fiction could arise unless it were from these words of my own which others seconded When we spake for common Concord we told them that the question now was not what would satisfie us few men but what was necessary to the common union And I added That I never scrupled E. g. kneeling at the receiving of the Lords Supper but better men than I did scruple it and I undertook to prove it a great sin to cast them out of Christian Sacramental Communion for that cause I verily believe that the horrid forgery had no better colour of proof than these words Accus 30. Of mens injurious imputing to us the errors and faults of all the Sectaries The course that some Writers that should have modesty and justice take to defame us is to jumble all sects besides their own together under the name of Nonconformists and then to rake up the unwarrantable expressions of men of several parties as the Nonconformists Doctrine and so whatever they find written by an Antinomian a Separatist an Anabaptist and why not a Papist or a Quaker too they lay at the Nonconformists doors When 1. all men of reason know that though affirmative titles use to signifie some union so do not negatives To call a man a Papist or a Protestant signifieth somewhat in which he agreeth with others But to be no Papists or no Protestants agreeth to all other parties in the world 2. And if before Conformity was required and so there were no Conformists the several Sects were aliens to each others surely they are so after or else you may know who is the cause 3. And why do the Papists and such Arminians as Episcopius who are Nonconformists claim kindred and kindness to and from the Conformists rather than the Nonconformists if they know not to whom they are best affected 4. Did not the Heathens do thus also by the ancient Christians when Sects swarmed among them and deride and accuse them for their divisions And did not the Papists so by the Reformers yea and do to this day What more common with them than to say All these Sects swarm out from you And so did the persecutors of the old Waldenses when the Manichees were among them 5. If Nonconformity cause all these Sects then they are the causes of them that cause Nonconformity And if you will call in your Impositions there will be no Nonconformists Let impartial sober reason judg who it is that causeth all these Sects If all the Decrees of General Councils were imposed on all men to be subscribed would not thousands be Nonconformists that are now conformable Who cry out against Sects so much as the Papists and yet who in all the world more cause them even by the manifold Laws by which they pretend to cure them If only a peaceable communion with the Church had been required instead of all the Covenants Oaths Declarations and Subscriptions how many thousand fewer Nonconformists had there been If any should impose Oaths Covenants or Subscriptions against Episcopacy and for lay-Elders would it not make most of the Conformists Nonconformable And what is it that those do who subscribe the same doctrine with you to make other men heterodox 6. Thus were the old Nonconformists accused when they wrote more against Sects and Separation than all the high Conformists did And we must say That if Separatists Anabaptists Antinomians and such like had not been more effectually confuted and kept under by the Nonconformists than they have been by the persecutors or sharp opposers of Nonconformists they had been like to have so abounded as to have carried down most of the zealously religious sort in the stream Let posterity judg by the Writings of Hildersham Paget Gifford Bradshaw Ball Rathband and many more such against Separation and by many of the present Nonconformists against Antinomianism Anabaptistry Popery c. who have done most against these Sects If men that would draw birds to their nets by throwing stones or hooting at them or that would beat the water to make the fish bite at their hooks or that will still spur-gall their horses to keep them quiet will revile those that have more skill as the causes of their unsuccesfulness because they do not as they do such men must at last be taught by experience if ever they will learn For our parts we cannot be of their minds Accus 31. Of some printed Accusations of us as Covetous and other such like But it hath pleased some late Writers of great account with some to lay such matters to our charge as the cause of our nonconformity as one would have thought should never have entred into the thoughts of a sober man that ever saw or heard of the English affairs and present state 1. The year 1674. was published a Book under the name of Dr. Asheton Chaplain to the Duke of Ormond who in his introduction supposeth the Nonconforming people to be such as meerly believing the Ministers and the Ministers to be such lest they scandalize the people that think the things unlawful And so he applieth himself to confute them on that supposition a thing easily done if this were all And he citeth the words of one of us about scandal against our selves To which we say 1. Seeing even Pagans Papists Socinians and Quakers Anabaptists and Separatists and some Arminians and Prelatists too are Nonconformists in the largest sense as refusing Conformity and seeing it is not imaginable that all the persons of any one profession should be just of the same degree of understanding and in every thing of the same opinion it is not impossible but that some one called a Nonconformist may be as brainless and dishonest as he describeth them But we must say that we remember not that ever we met with one of them that was such and that had no stronger reasons against Conformity or that took the things avoided to be indifferent 2. And whether we our selves are such let our Writings and Reasons therein given against Conformity be the evidence Could he hope to make the world believe that men not mad with factious humour would live as we live and suffer what we have suffered and durst forbear much of the work to which we are devoted and all to avoid that which we account indifferent and no sin And hear then how he doth more than justifie us himself pag. 30. If Conformity be unlawful if having beg'd Direction from the father of lights in hearty prayer and having used all
of greater use to the Church than Preaching to any there would be and therefore would do nothing which might hinder or interrupt them But when first the lamentable Plague had awakened those that were left alive to look more seriously towards Eternity and then the lamentable Fire had consumed so much of the Wealth and Glory of the Land of which we were the sad spectators and when these awakenings and the consequent necessities of the City had caused many Ministers to resolve to preach the Gospel to the survivers what ever they underwent the poor people of the Parish of Acton where I lived came crowding into my House while I taught my Family and since once they began they would not cease And verily I had neither a heart to shut the doors against them nor wit enough to justifie it if I had done it I never invited one and when they came I knew no reason to forbid them They were not Sectaries nor Seditious but poor people that needed to be taught the Principles of Religion There was not two or three in all the Parish that I knew of that did separate from the publick Assembly yea or the Liturgy They went with me into the Church which was before my door I Preached not at the time of publick Exercise I thought this course did tend to union and not to division I freely taught them the evil of Separation and Sedition And whereas the multitude of hearers was an offence I was glad that such a multitude did relish or could bear such Doctrine The last Sermon I preached to them was on Mat. 5. Blessed are the meek c. whence after Dr. Hammond I shewed them how much meekness and patience conduceth even to peace on earth and what sedition rebellion passion and intemperance doth against it They say there were some witnesses present that after did accuse me that I know not but that week by a Warrant I was brought before two of his Majesties Justices of the Peace and offered the Oxford Oath and sent to the Goal as by the Mittimus was expressed for Preaching in my House which they called a Conventicle and for not taking the Oath The persons manner circumstances nor my deliverance by the Honourable and Righteous Judges the Glory of his Majesties Government subordinate to himself I have no mind nor cause now to meddle with having said as much as is needful to open the true nature of our supposed crimes And now you see that it is Preaching that is so much of our offence and coming within five miles of a Corporation c. I shall here fix and tell you 1. What is really our judgment in the case whether such prohibited Ministers may preach 2. What are our Reasons 3. What Reasons you have to be for our Preaching rather than against it 4. How vain the common arguments against it are And 5. I shall venture to shut up the Premises with an humble Petition to you once more for the Church and the souls of men and for the interest of unity love and peace 1. WE do hold that the Sacred Office of the Ministry consisteth in an obligation to do the work and authority to warrant us therein And that both these are essential to the office 2. That God doth not call men now immediately as the Prophets and Apostles were but giving them necessary qualifications doth commit it to the Ministry of men first to discern and judg of those qualifications and then by a solemn Investiture to put them in possession of the office which is called Ordination and is ordinarily necessary for order sake 3. That yet the office it self is of Gods own institution and from that Institution the Authority and Obligation resulteth directly to the persons lawfully ordained So that God only giveth the office or power though not without the act of man to fit the person to receive it and then Ministerially by Investiture to deliver possession It is not without man but it is not of or from man as the possessor of the power given but only as a servant to give possession in the name of Christ. Even as men first chose by the preparation and direction of Gods Providence the line or family that should reign But God only giveth the King his power Or as the members of a Corporation may chuse their Mayor and the Steward or Recorder may solemnly give him possession but his power it self is immediately from the Charter of the King 4. That though we be not called as the Apostles yet when we are called we are bound to fidelity as well as they were 5. That it is not an office to be taken up on trial and for a limited time as servants are bound to their masters by the year but as Marriage it is for life unless God shall disable us and as we say for better and for worse and not to be laid by at pleasure And therefore those Schoolmen that interpret the Indelible character of the Relation seem not to differ from us at all 6. That though Ordination be not as the two Sacraments of the Covenant of Grace and necessary to Salvation nor generally to all the people yet may it not unfitly be called the Sacrament of Orders or of our Ministerial Covenant with Christ as a Soldiers Oath and Engagement was Sacramentum Militare 7. That Kings and other Magistrates are not by Ordination to give this office nor by Degradation to take it away 8. But that Ministers are under the Government of the King as well as Physicians or any other subjects And that he may use the sword to force them to the due performance of their office and to hinder them from abusing it to the mischief of the Church 9. That this power is for the ends of the Ministry which is for edification and the publick good And therefore that the end it self is not put into the power of man whether the Church shall be edified and happy or not nor yet the office of the Ministry it self whether there shall be a Ministry or not Nor the necessary work of that office whether the Ministry when necessary shall be exercised or not 10. We believe that those that ordain a Minister cannot degrade him at their pleasure As he that may baptize a child cannot unbaptize him again at pleasure nor he that marrieth persons unmarry them 11. Much less can every Bishop degrade at pleasure those whom other men ordained Else every Minister might be degraded while there are so many disagreeing and angry Bishops in the world 12. If the Magistrate forbid us to preach the Gospel either our Preaching is necessary or unnecessary and this is either notorious or doubtful If our Preaching be notoriously unnecessary we will obey him and forbear If it be a doubtful case to us we will use all the means which God hath appointed us to know the certain truth And if yet it be doubtful and our minds in suspence we will stand to
and if most of the Parishes in and near London have men so tolerable that we much rejoice in it doth it follow that it is an error or schism to be acquainted with the rest of the Kingdoms or to believe our ears and the sad experience of too great a number in the land It is a fine world when it is become a controversie Whether that which so many thousands in three Kingdoms hear and see be true We write none of this to reproach the Ministry we would hide their nakedness if we could We like not the Glocester-Coblers writings nor the Centuries We only shew you that the reasons are invalid which are fetcht from the sufficiency of the present Ministry to prove it our duty not to preach 5. And if it were but the peoples prejudice against them it proveth their necessity I will purposely say nothing whether the common charge of scandal be true or false because I will not meddle with that cause But be it as it will if the people once think hardly of them or of their Preaching it is not like to do them much good I know the common answer is Who is that long of but of themselves and you To which I say 1. Suppose it be long of themselves must their souls be therefore cruelly forsaken I have wondered to hear and read such reasoning so often from some Pastors of the Church that should be the Fathers of the flock It is long of themselves say they And what then It is long of our selves that we are all sinners and must we therefore have no Saviour no Sanctifier no Ministry no remedy All the sins that you Preach against are long of the sinners themselves Will you therefore think you are discharged from Preaching But you 'l say That it is their wilfulness Ans. If there were no will there were no sin There is too much wilfulness in all the sin that you commit your selves must you therefore be forsaken But O how much better would it beseem an humble tender conscienced Ministry to suspect themselves and say Is there no cause of this distaste in us If it were partial hereticks only that disliked us for opinion sake it were no wonder but when the common people of our Parishes think our Preaching cold and dry and our Sermons like a boys Oration and our lives too little heavenly and holy what cause have we to fear lest it be too true or so much at least as will make us guilty of their distaste Surely it more nearly concerneth you all to see that you be clear your selves and to judg your selves before God judg you than to fall so heavily on the people When you have been as angry as you will men will be men and ears will be ears and as words will not satisfie a hungry stomack so chiding the poor people and telling them that the fault is theirs will not illuminate quicken humble and comfort them nor either do that for them which they want or make them that are indeed alive to believe that it is done when it is not Suppose your own children surfeit by their own fault and lose their appetite will you deny them one sort of food which they can eat because it is long of themselves that they have lost their appetite to another Will you say Eat this or famish it is long of your selves Shall the Physician deny his Patient that Physick which his stomack can take because it was long of himself that he can take no other Is this a method fit for Parents Nurses or Physicians to think that it is not their duty to help those that are made diseased or necessitous by themselves I beseech you think what else your Ministry is for and why have you your honour and your maintenance but to serve under Christ for the saving of those that would destroy themselves What enemy have you so much need your selves to resist and to be saved from as from your selves Oh that you better knew it And from whom else would you save the people Men and Devils cannot hurt them if they be but saved from themselves When I hear a cold and sleepy Preacher or hear Gods work done so ignorantly and slovenly as I would not have my boy to say his lesson I yet confess It is long of my self if this Sermon raise not my heart to Heaven For his very Text or one of the Scripture-sentences which he cited should have been enough to do it because it mentioneth God and Eternity the least thought of which should raise my soul. But alas my heart is cold and dull and drowsie This is my disease or else what need I come to Church for cure I knew I was faulty but I hear you in hope that my faults should be cured And if you do that which is unsuitable to your hearers faults and maladies you are faulty Physicians for no better curing faulty Patients To tell a man in a fever or a dropsie if bread and drink will not cure you it is long of your own disease is the answer of such Physicians as are like them in whose hands many thousand souls in the world lye gasping at this day If you shall say That God doth not tye his grace to the ability of the Pastor I answer such words are fitter to make ones head and heart to ake than to put the answerer to any difficulty Use such arguments about plowing and sowing about eating and drinking and when you are to chuse a Tutor or Schoolmaster for your Children or when you are sick and seek to a Physician say God doth not tye his help and blessing to a wise Tutor any more than to an ignorant one nor to an able Physician any more than to a foolish Emperick Or if you will fly to the distinction of spiritual gifts and common remember that God is no more tyed to means for the one than for the other and quoad media habitus infusi se habent ad modum acquisitorum At least set not your greatest Scholars nor sharpest wits to convince a Sectary or a Papist for Illumination is a spiritual Grace and God can work on a Papist or Schismatick as well by an ignorant Reader But sure the opinions of these times are not so much for miraculous operations of Omnipotency nor so much for the vanity of moral suasion and instruction that we should need to say much in this case if you could but turn it to a Doctrinal-controversie where their Interest is not against it God can work convictions and conversion by the unlikeliest means But he usually worketh according to the aptitude of the means he useth And sure I am that it is our duty both teachers and hearers to chuse the best and to study and preach even as we would do if all lay on our skill and diligence but to know that when Paul hath planted and Apollo watered it is God still that must give the increase But he will not give so
s no wonder if one sin be a temptation to another or by actions sinful only in this And that scandal is 1. When the action otherwise lawful is purposely intended as a snare or temptation 2. When it is not so intended but hath a strong natural tendency in it self to tempt and being unnecessary is the effect of great inadvertency carelesness rashness and want of love to others souls But scandal taken and not given that is not culpably given is when it is either from a necessary duty of ours or from a thing so harmless as that there is no probability that it should be a temptation to any but those that go out of their way to seek for matter of temptation to themselves by an extraordinary perverseness We think it no false distinguishing to say that it is one thing to lay a trap or dig a pit purposely for men to fall in and another thing rashly and carelesly to dig a pit and cover it to catch wild beasts in in the common high-way or very near it and another thing to dig a pit quite out of all ordinary passage of men where yet a drunkard or one that will seek a pit to leap into may possibly find it Scandalum datum is that which charity and prudence bind men carefully to prevent and Scandalum acceptum is that which ariseth not from any omission of the duty of him from whom it is taken But more of this anon We have told you our Religion but we are not now disputing against yours If the naming of such opinions be confutation enough the owners have confuted them themselves If it be not let them pass Our work at present is only Apology though we are tainted too with the disputing disease And so much for our Reasons for Preaching Christs Gospel against mens will The sum of all is this It is an indispensible duty lying on us as men and Ministers by the obligation of Gods Law of Charity and as Ministers also by the obligation of our own Vows or self-dedication at our Ordination to do our best in the exercise of all our talents Humane Christian and Ministerial to seek to save the peoples souls and so to preach or teach and exhort them in the manner which most conduceth thereto when and where our teaching is truly and evidently necessary But now in the Kings Dominions our teaching is to these ends truly and evidently necessary therefore it is our duty so to teach III. BEcause many of your contrary Reasonings are already answered before I will here annex the rest that they may not have the disadvantage of too great a distance 1. Obj. Your own preciseness and censoriousness maketh the common people seem mostly ignorant and prophane to you and then you pretend a necessity of your Preaching when you do but feign it by setting your selves more above your neighbours than there is cause Ans. 1. I confess that many of the Separatists are truly guilty of what you here object For when they have Unchurched whole Parishes of men whom they know not nor ever heard speak for themselves we that have come after them have found abundance of the people much better than they imagined But one error or extream will not justifie another Remember that we are not now talking of mens qualifications for visible Communion in the Church but of their necessity of being taught And we censure none beyond such cogent evidence as is not in our power now to be ignorant of I beseech you deal openly with us and answer us these few Questions and all the matter will be ended 1. If men do not know who Christ is or what he came into the world for nor what he hath done for us nor what the Holy Ghost is nor what he is to do for us nor what a Saviour or a Sanctifier is nor what is the plain sense of most Articles of the Creed or Petitions in the Lords-prayer have such men need of Teaching to save their souls or not 2. If men follow the world eagerly all the week and talk of it on the Lords day and love not to hear any talk of another world or how they must be pardoned and saved but swear and curse and rail and many of them are drunkards gluttons or fornicators and if they never teach their children or families or pray with them any more than Infidels and shew no Religion but going to Church or perhaps sometimes say the Lords-prayer and the Creed without understanding and if we advise them to prepare for death and the life to come and tell them the need of a Saviour a Sanctifier and of faith repentance and a holy life they tell us that they will trust God with their souls and not trouble their heads with things so high they shall speed as well as their neighbours Have these mens souls any need of teaching 3. If any of the people so much love their drunkenness and fornication and other gross sins that they hate the Minister that seriously though gently reproveth them and like Cain would see their brothers blood if he offer God a more acceptable sacrifice than themselves or slander and hate the most conformable Minister that is but strict and seriously Religious and is talking against them on all occasins have these mens souls any need of exhortation or not 4. If many of the people be weak in judgment that mean well and have only a glimmering confused knowledge of most of the greatest matters of Religion and though we hope well of their sincerity they have abundance of mistakes and sad miscarriages in their lives and are inclined to most of the real errors which the Debate maker reciteth and in danger of being carried into any opinions which are offered by men who by nearness or plausibility of perswasion come to them with any great advantage yea and are like to be troublers of the Church have these men need to be taught or not Let us but be once agreed that the true belief consent and performance of our Baptismal Covenant is necessary ordinarily to mens salvation and that without faith it is impossible to please God and that except a man be regenerate of the Spirit as well as of water and except he be converted and become as a little child he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and that he that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his and that they that are in the flesh cannot please God because the carnal mind is enmity against him and that without holiness none shall see the Lord and that if the Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost and how can they hear without a Preacher c. Agree but to this or any of this and sure our case is fair for a good issue Mark 16. 16. Heb. 11. 6. Joh. 3. 3 5 6. Mat. 18. 3. Rom. 8. 6 7 8 9 13. Heb. 12. 14. 1 Cor. 4. 3. Rom. 10 c. 5. And for the matter
seldom Nonconformists a private Meeting near the Church is crowded like as the Churches were and the Church is almost empty 6. And I will make bold to tell you that if you should banish or imprison all the Ministers and if you should force the people to forbear to conform to you as forced Conformity against their wills is but hypocrisie and doth but paint your Churches with the Ornament of mens company and profiteth not their Souls so you do thereby but prepare instruments to undermine your selves For forced unwilling Conformists will turn against you as soon as they have opportunity And if you imprison men in your Churches they will be still seeking to get out Were not almost all the Westminster-Assembly Espiscopal conformable men when they came thither And did not almost all the people of the Land Conform before the Wars And yet you know that they did you never the more service nor the less displeasure I must profess it was my unhappiness to have so bad acquaintance that before the unhappy Wars I knew not one Conformable Divine to my best remembrance who was of a Religious blameless life and seemed seriously to believe and seek the life to come and to prefer Heaven before Earth who did not Conform only upon Mr. Sprint's argument of Necessity and had not rather have been excused and would not profess that they had far rather that this Conformity were not imposed and that they did it as Paul submitted to some Jewish Ceremonies meerly that they might not be kept from Preaching And so they held Conformity to be lawful And therefore with the Assembly when they might be free they chose it rather And is this the happiest Unity that you might attain 10 Obj. Your pretended Piety is but Pharisaical hypocrisie you are the successors of the Pharisees whom Christ spoke hardlier of than of Publicans and Harlots And the vicious and debauched are more tolerable than you whose Religious and zealous Villanies are of greater danger to the publick safety and whose Piety is but pride in counting your selves Holier and better than your Neighbours and saying I thank thee God that I am not as other men nor as this Publican Ans. 1. It is a shrewd suspicion that their Cause is not good who are put to uphold it by accusing their adversaries of heart-sins as Hypocrisie is which are quite out of the sight of men Either you mean that it is Hypocrisie latent or Hypocrisie detected by a wicked life If the former I confess you have us at an advantage For as you pretend to be as Gods in knowing the heart so we who confess our selves but men have no way of defence against heart-accusations but denial and calling for your proof And our Denial were not enough if you knew the heart indeed Our judgment is that Hypocrisie is a most hateful sin and as I have declared my opinion at large in a Discourse called The Formal Hypocrite we think that all men except the professed Atheists and Infidels who have multiplied since the Ministers were silenced among us in England are either Saints or Hypocrites For all that profess true Christianity according to their Baptismal-Covenant do profess Sanctity And therefore we suppose that the more any mans life is contrary to his profession the more notorious Hypocrite he is For the difference lyeth not in the Materials of our Profession For we profess nothing as our Religion but Christianity If any go further we renounce their profession And all of you that stand to your Baptism profess Christianity the same Christianity as we The question therefore is Whose lives do most contradict their profession I doubt not but you will confess for you cannot deny it that a proud domineering worldly covetous drunken gluttonous malicious persecuting Christian is an Hypocrite If you prove any among us guilty of these you were best name the men unless you think that Non-conformity to Oaths and Subscriptions make all that are endued with it eat and drink too much As for these other zealous Villanies which you charge upon us they are to be spoken of by themselves We are content that if the Nonconformists lives do contradict their Christian profession more than the Conformists proportionably that you write in Capital Letters the name Hypocrite upon every ones back and breast that the people may know them as they go along the streets and may gratifie the Politician by hating them more for their hypocrisie than they admired them for their pretended Saint ship But if you will hear a person whom you so much dislike I will tell you how this may be best discovered Do not perswade our Rulers any more to make Laws to eject men for not taking those Oaths Subscriptions c. for then men will think whether you will or not that you had no greater fault to prove them Hypocrites by But get them to make a Law that all Rebels Traytors swearers drunkards fornicators gluttons covetous persons pluralists non-residents soul murdering idle Teachers shall be cast out whether they subscribe and declare or not And then those that are flagitious will be the sufferers and if it fall upon the present Nonconformists let them bear it and spare not Again we intreat you to get us such Laws against all Vice except those that are made vices by the wills and interests of differing Factions and execute them as severely as you will And then if we be proved criminal name the Vices which you think proveth men Hypocrites and it will sound better to accuse them of these than of hypocrisie or at least to prove their hypocrisie by those than by presumptions and general unproved accusations Let him have his portion with Hypocrites who by living most contrary to the Christian profession doth most convincingly prove himself an Hypocrite I confess since I have still observed from my youth that the most vicious enemies of godliness have used to call those Hypocrites who do but seem to be no Hypocrites that is to be serious in the Christian profession and seriously to mind and mention and seek the life to come I have been constrained when I heard a man called an Hypocrite and no more especially by a vicious man or an adversary to suspect that there is some more than ordinary excellency in that person For I must suppose it is some great good which he is thought to make a cloak for evil If long praying had not been good it had not been a fit pretence for oppression in the Pharisees If praying and alms-deeds had not been good it would have disgraced the Hypocrites Matth. 6. to have made ostentation of them When you call us Hypocrites and dissembled Saints you tell the world that we have the profession and outward appearance of good And whether we corrupt it by a deceitful heart remaineth to be proved as well as asserted Mr. Robert Bolton was no Nonconformist as to the old Conformity who noteth it to be the use of the
had put the word Christians instead of the word Nonconformist and said that Christians hold all those sottish and impudent opinions but yet said It is not all Christians had this been justice to Christianity and yet it is true for if Nonconformists be Christians then Christians hold what they hold He that heareth such a word Christians or Protestants or Nonconformists have a foolish Religion doth suppose it to be locutio formalis and that the meaning is As Christians or as Protestants or as Nonconformists their Religion is foolish And for the Author to say when he hath done I meant not All Christians All Protestants All Nonconformists is to say I speak not of them as such What then Why as Antinomians or as ignorant unlearned people But why then did you not charge your fooleries only on Antinomians Sectaries and ignorant people and make them as such only the actors in your scene and not as Christians Protestants c. I know the name Christians is more venerable than Protestant or Nonconformist But the injustice is as palpable in the one as in the other And the cause or the principle is bad that can engage men in such unrighteousness and make them so strange to themselves as not to see it yea to proceed impenitently in it even when Righteousness is one of the things which they write for as neglected by them whom they endeavour to disgrace It is an ill cause that produceth such effects though a quick and hasty wit can write another Volume to defend it till love it self shall sit in judgment and condemn all the issues of uncharitable wrath The cause of Nonconformity as of old and as owned now by us was punctually expressed to you in our many Papers given in when we vainly attempted unity and the new Conformity is known by the Acts which are lately made And what is the matter of the Debaters Dialogues to any of this Doth any Act of Parliament forbid men to say I am well through mercy Or is there any Nonconformity in that speech or any unfitness either And so of abundance of such other passages 6. And is it for the interest of Justice honesty and charity to perswade the world that the Nonconformists Religion is foolish senseless and unpeaceable when they profess to own no Religion at all but naked Christianity Is Christianity so vile a thing And indeed is not your Religion the same with ours I thought we had not been of different Religions but only of different opinions about Discipline and modes of worship in the same Religion But you know your selves better than we do But if really you are of another Religion from us why were there never any attempts to reconcile us in Doctrinals when the work of reconciliation was vainly on foot Why did you never charge us with errors in Doctrine Nay why did Dr. Cornelius Burgess his Reasons for Reformation in Doctrine Discipline c. so much offend as you may see even in the Kings Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs where he takes it ill that some pretend that we differ in Doctrinals But now the Religion of one must be wise and the other foolish The King there declareth our unity in Religion after his trial of both sides And this Author maketh our Religions as different as light and darkness that is as wisdom and folly Our Religion as to its containing Rule is the holy Canonical Scripture Is that foolish and seditious we profess to have no more The Explication of the Nonconformists sense of it you have much in the Assemblies Catechisms and Confession Why wrote you not to prove them to be another Religion Our Books also are abroad Mr. Hildershams Greenhams Hierons Dods Amesius Bains Bradshaws Cartwrights Mr. Gataker Mr. Vines Mr. Anth. Burgess Mr. Shaws Mr. How 's Mr. Allens and an hundred more What false Religion do they contain I have told you my Religion oft enough especially in my Reasons for the Christian Religion and in my Confession And if it be not false and foolish then it is not the Nonconformists as such that is so for a quatenus ad omne you may justly argue Yea the Author is pleased to favour me with some Vindication and to blame others for opposing me and is not that enough to prove that such opinions as he disliketh are no part of Nonconformity as now in Controversie But he will give me occasion to tell him how much I differ from his mind and ways when as there are near thirty or forty Books written against me in whole or in part by men of several Sects and parties and yet I fall out with none of them all nor charge them with such foolish Religions unless they be downright Apostates or Hereticks Nor would I silence any one of them that is a sincere Preacher of the Christian Faith My provocations its like have been more than this Authors ever were But must I forgive enemies and not friends Do we contend for our selves or for Truth and love and unity and peace It is some honour from those adversaries both to me and to my brethren that I am called their Antisignanus who have written such abundance of Books against me For it seems that we forgive and love each other If you say that it is because we now agree in Nonconformity I answer 1. It was so before 2. And you suppose us as little agreed in that and indeed many censure me more for differing from them there than in all the rest 7. And is it not as valid arguing to say Mr. Hildersham Dr. Reignolds Amesius Bradshaw Burgess c. have written soundly and learnedly Ergo the Religion of the Nonconformists is wise and sound as to say Mr. Bridge one of the five Dissenters from the Presbyterians hath some harsh expressions and Mr. T. W. hath some little sententious jingles such as Conformists most abound with Ergo the Nonconformists Religion is foolish 8. But it may be you will say that the Nonconformists must be judged of not by an odd person as your self is but by the major part Ans. 1. It never goeth right among Divines when they judge Causes by persons contrary to signed avowed professions Do they print and publish their professed Religion to the World and will you measure and denominate the Religion of the Nonconformists by two or three mens Writings against which also you have no more to say 2. And why did you not prove that it is the major part or one of an hundred that are guilty of the real weaknesses which you mention for all that you find fault with are not weaknesses Are the two or three that you named the major part of Eighteen hundred What of all this have you to charge on those forenamed or on Mr. John Ball Mr. John Paget Mr. Langley c. or on Dr. Twisse Dr. Arrowsmith and the rest of that Assembly or on Dr. Tuckney Dr. Langley Dr. Staunton Dr. Seaman Dr. Manton Dr. Bates Mr. Bull Mr.
grace And though God give grace without and against desert he never denieth it to any without desert and that more than the desert of Original sin not now interupting our discourse with the Case of Infants 12. That when common Grace hath brought one man much nearer the Kingdom of God than another the same degree of further Divine operation and help which would be uneffectual to make a distant and unprepared man a believer may make him a believer that is nearer and more prepared 13. All effectual grace proceedeth from an effectual will of God to work it 14. The great question therefore Whether none are converted but by special effectual grace or any also by that which in its own nature is meerly sufficient and made effectual by mans will is captious and partly past the reach of man It being certain 1. That Grace is the chief agent in all that believe 2. That the will and mind of man is the immediate actor in believing 3. That whoever believeth hath such grace as cometh from an absolute certain fixed will of God that it shall attain the effect 4. And that in what degrees of influx God worketh on one that is converted more or less than on another is no enquiry for any man that knoweth what he talketh of Nor can we well tell when one mans will deth do its part better than anothers by the same degree of Grace 15. I should shew when Free-will and Necessity are consistent or inconsistent 16. And also how God hath his will as much when man hath greatest freedom as if he had none and that man hath as much freedom under the will and decrees of God as if they were none Nay without them as a cause he could have no freedom 17. I should shew that the Calvinists that run not with some few into extremity do acknowledge as much common Grace to all men as the Arminians do For they confess the universal conditional promise or Covenant and they say that all men that hear the Gospel have pardon and sanctification and salvation brought to their own wills and that if they refuse it not they they shall have it and that they have the posse credere And the difference is that the Arminian thinketh that none ordinarily have any more than this with such perswasions as make it possible antecedently but the Calvinists think the elect have more that is that Grace maketh them actually willing which is certain But how Grace and the will concur is as uncertain as aforesaid 18. All creatures are Passive or Receptive as to Gods efficiency or influx on them And so is mans soul And therefore it is true that it is meerly Passive not only in receiving the first gracious influx of God but in all the influxes which it is under in every action of our lives But it is a truly vital active soul or power which is thus passive first and therefore is ever the next agent in all its Acts of believing c. and never meerly passive for that were a contradiction Nor can it be proved that the soul is meerly recipient or passive as to the true habits of Grace but only as to that Influx which exciteth us to act and by that act done by God and the Soul the habit is produced which yet is called Infused because it is caused by a special Influx what ever more than this is possible no more can be proved de facto 19. Our differences about Universal Redemption and of the Decrees depend on those about Operations and are easily reconciled with them Christ died for all men so far as to procure them all the Grace that he giveth them And he giveth all men the Universal Grace fore described the Conditional pardon c. therefore so far he died for them But of this I have written a peculiar Treatise not yet published 20. The Doctrine of Gods antecedent and consequent will must be better explained as being but his governing will so called from Legislation and Judgment which are the antecedent and consequent parts of Government 21. So must Gods will de naturalibus moralibus and his Legislative antecedent will be well opened and the uselesness and confusion of the distinction of signi bene placiti manifested 22. I would prove that God hath no Decree or will of meer Negatives as not to give grace faith glory not to save c. and therefore hath no Decree to permit because permitting is but not-hindering which is nothing By which one sort of Reprobation as now called will be disproved 23. That Reprobation to positive damnation is only upon foreseen and not decreed impenitency or unbelief 24. That Election and Reprobation therefore go not pari passu but as Austin and Prosper taught the one is a positive absolute Will or Decree of God the other only upon fore-sight 26. Predetermination by Physical premotion to evil materially and as necessary to all actions natural and free is to be left to the Dominicans and not owned by any that know the consequences 27. The numbering and ordering of Decrees secundum ordinem intentionis executionis is to be discussed and the vanity of mens fictions here about made known 28. The nature of futurition and the falshood of founding it necessarily in an eternal cause is to be opened 29. The foolish disputes of the manner of Gods knowing future contingents are by clear reason to be cast out of the Church and Schools 30. In a word a convenient explication will manifest that the difference in all these Controversies really is next to none except in the point of Perseverance and that in that point those that hold with Augustine and Prosper that not all the truly justified and sanctified do persevere but all the Elect and those that hold that all the justified and sanctified are Elect and do persevere have great reason to number this difference among those School-disputes which should break no charity nor communion among Christians But of Perseverance I have long ago published my thoughts in a peculiar Treatise I have said thus much to shew the world not only that we ought not to be silenced or oppressed as an odious sort of people for those Doctrines which some abhor when we subscribe to the same Articles of the Churches Doctrine as they do but also that it is a mixture of that ignorance and pride which is the disease and calamity of Church-men as well as of the world which hath caused most of the heats on both sides and the Cruelties in Holland or in England thence proceeding about these Controversies And that when men have more Understanding or Humility these differences will but little disturb the Church And again I say that those Church snuffers who put out the lights should have remembered our moderation in this point that whereas Parliaments have complained so long and zealously against Arminianism and when Bishops have been so hot about it against each other as Heylin will
tell you of Abbot and Laud c. and when yet the Conformists preach against one another about it yet did we never speak a word to the King or them of any such matter Because if all men will subscribe the same wholsome Doctrine of the Articles we cannot hinder any from dissembling and destroying what they do subscribe Obj. 24. Agreement with the Church of Rome is more desirable on the terms described by Dr. Heylin in A. B. Lauds life and you would make it impossible Ans. We are for a just concord with all Christians but true Popery we cannot agree with and as to Papists they are but a part a third or fourth part saith your Primate Bishop Bramhall of the Catholick Church We must unite with the whole Church or else we are Schismaticks To embody in the faction of the Papists is as Schismatical as to do it with a smaller faction And if you will unite with all Christians I still say you must unite on Vinc. Lirinensis terms on that which all Christians are agreed in that indeed deserve the name of Christians Now if you establish your concord on the Scripture and on universal terms all Christians in the world will confess that your Religion yea all your Religion is certain truth and that it hath also all things universally necessary to Salvation and this is a fair degree of unity though they say that yet you want their Traditions And then you can tell a Papist quickly where your Religion was before Luther Even where ever the Scripture was received And you do not wilfully and resolvedly cut off your selves from Communion with all the Protestant Churches who do not hold the Traditions and Decrees of Rome But you are united with all the Christians in the world in Christianity and so far as they have any union among themselves And then all those that will needs go further do run the hazard of their own additions We will live in peace with them if they will live in peace with us But if the Papists be such men that they will hold no communion with any that hold not all their Religion that is all the Decrees of their Councils than neither Abassines Armenians Greeks nor Protestants can be received into their Communion And do you think it desirable to comply and embody with them in such a schism and factious combination against all the rest of the Churches of God If you will deal like Christians Catholicks and wise men let us first be as moderate as may be in our Doctrinals and not pretend that we are further disagreed with Papists or any other Christians than indeed we are I am one of those who believe that in many Doctrines quarrelsome ignorant men have made differences where there are none and have made those that be seem wider than they are cut off these superfluities and spare not and then reduce your terms of Union and Communion to the Primitive simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Discipline and if any will have more let it be a matter of liberty and not of necessity or if they will not be limited as we are let them take their scope Or if you your selves will needs have more yet hold it with liberty as matter of conveniency and not of necessity to the union or communion of the Church If you will take this course we shall deny Papists no love no peace no communion with us on our terms which they justifie for the truth of them in our Churches And if they will fly from us and refuse our Communion or will put unlawful terms on us and drive us from them we shall have no accusation for this by our consciences or any wise man He is the Schismatick that maketh communion impossible by his Additions or Impositions or runs away from those that will not receive all his Supernumeraries Usurpation is the peace breaker in the Church of God Christs sheep know his voice and follow him but they will not be so obedient to an unknown voice Why cannot a man be content to be a Lord Bishop and to have many hundred or thousand pound a year for promoting the preaching and practice of Christianity and for punishing Hereticks rebels drunkards sensualists c. and serve God himself with what garb or forms or ceremonies he please as well as to have the same wealth and honour to prosecute much wiser and better men than himself with a burning zeal for not swearing obedience to him or for not subscribing that his Books are faultless or for not wearing a Surplice or signing Children with the transient Image of the Cross. But we must suppose that we cannot make Papists to be Protestants If they will not turn Protestants and we will not turn Papists the contrivance or supposition of a turn or half-turn is but a vain imagination not the way to unity and peace We must take them as they are and they must take us as we are and we must take all the Christian Churches as they are in our design for concord if we will do any good in it The question is not how or how far we shall change one anothers minds or be changed but how we shall maintain so much love and peace as is due to one another in the capacity that we are in and how far we shall endure the different opinions and practices of another to such an end And such a Conciliator with Rome I would be my self and magnifie the design as much as Heylin doth and be as zealous in it as Grotius Laud or Forbes were in theirs For it is but the service of Love and Peace and that is certainly the service of God I would treat with any Papists on such a design If peevish or suspious Protestants should try out on me and defame me for such a design as some have done I would no more regard it than the crying of a child If Christian Princes would make such a Treaty their business by their Embassadors that Love and Liberty might be regulated by the just rules of Equality and not be pretended only by a faction for their own ends even by them that will seek Liberty but will not give it I would bless God for such Princes and for so good a work And I would be and am ready to manifest to all wise impartial men whose Religion is Love and not Malice under the name of Zeal that in many Doctrines that we are by some supposed to differ in Fundamentals ignorance hath feigned the difference to be doubly greater than it is And I think many of Forbes and Spalato's Arguments in his very Learned Books de Republ. Eccles. to be worthy the serious study of every Learned man I know Luther took the Doctrine of uncertainty of Salvation alone to be cause enough of our unreconcileableness with Rome and yet I know as well that it is not one godly person of many yea very many of them that are farthest from the Papists who do
necessity by assuring their Proselytes that they were resolved to stick to them and as they had defended the Cause with their Tongues and Pens they were now ready if Providence call them to it to seal it with their blood And is it a sign of covetousness to dye for what they hold But by this he tells us that the people were melted into such kindness as that the Preachers are no losers by their silence Here 's the wonder Hear the proof 1. Many of them gain more at present from their party than they could from the Church if they conformed Ans. 1. O that he would name those many and let us try the case and see also whether they are a considerable number The Independents are commonly thought to be best provided for in London But how small is their maintenance to what they had or might have had heretofore And why might they not now have more if they could conform We were just now accused by him and another about our deliberate refusing of Church Dignities And doth he think that we get more now than a Bishoprick or Deanery would have amounted to And as for what he talks of our being in other mens preferments we took our Labours indeed for preferment but not our maintenance and those that are now Conformists as well as the Nonconformists were formerly in sequestrations and some were out and others where the old sequestred Incumbents were dead were setled by Law long before the time of silencing And would not covetousness rather have perswaded them all to conform and take new Livings than to leave all Is it possible for an English man to think that we live more plenteously upon our Neighbours charity than the Conformists do upon their Dignities Tythes and Charity together even such as live in the houses and favour of the Nobles and great men of the Land Doth he not here much commend the charity of those that are for the Nonconformists before he is aware in comparison of others But the Reader shall know the truth of this anon But suppose some did gain so much by their Nonconformity would that cause many hundred to continue Nonconformists who live in want and have no such hopes His second proof runs thus They retain a power and interest in their party to prefer their conforming sons And this is such a piece of impiety as were there not too much ground for the suspition I should not think any Christian could be guilty of Ans. And this is such a kind of charge and proof as we think a just and sober Heathen or Mahometan would abhor and would be as a wonder to us if the sight and hearing of the like from such men did not tell us what Monstrous pravity hath corrupted the nature of man And we are sorry that posterity must know by such passages that the Church of England hath such Doctors to succeed the silenced Nonconformists and the houses of the Nobility such Chaplains whose most deliberate Writings when they appeal to the day of Judgment are such as may make human nature blush 1. Of 1800 or 2000 silenced Ministers we know not of twenty that have sons that are Conforming Ministers suppose there should be 40 or 50 such in England would 1750 others be purposely Nonconformists that those 40 or 50 sons of other men might get Livings What are they to them or what get they by it 2. Would it not be a greater prey for covetousness for both Father and Son by conforming to have Livings than for the Son alone Yea for 1800 Ministers to have Livings than 40 or 50 of their sons alone 3. And who knoweth not as they boast themselves that Nobility and Gentry who have presentations to Church Livings are so many of them conformable and distast the Nonconformists as shameth this accusation Do not the Parliament and Laws tell us how they are affected And doth not the prosecution of the Nonconformists tell it us Will they that make Laws to eject silence confine imprison and banish the Nonconformists if they preach prefer their sons because their fathers are Nonconformists Were not those few sons liker to get Livings if their fathers got favour by conforming and if all the rest conformed too Either he would have men think that the Nobility and Gentry who most like the Nonconformists are many or but few if many there is sure some cause that so many who live with them and know them should like them better than the Conformists they take them not to be such as these Doctors do describe them If but few is not Preferment rather to be got from many than from few Another Book called A free and impartial Enquiry into the causes of that very great esteem and honour that the Nonconforming Preachers are generally in with their followers in a Letter to H. M. Proceeding from the like spirit useth the like but more Accusations His first assigned cause is p. 36. A preaching up of an empty formal notional kind of Religion and causing and encouraging men to build their hopes of heaven upon very easie and pleasing conditions And p. 54. No men have ever given people ground to hope for the salvation of the spirit with less pain trouble to the flesh than these men have done Ans. Wonderful that so many thousands should be so deceived Make their hearers believe this and they will soon forsake them We know no one thing that causeth mens dislike of the Conformists so much as that they take them to be just such as he describeth the Nonconformists to be We cannot express their opinion of too many of them in apter words Nor do we know of any thing in the world that causeth men to like the Nonconformists so much as that they judg them to be just contrary to this mans character And have the people no sense nor acquaintance with the persons This is a charge which we meet with few of our enemies that believe Let these evidences decide the case 1. Which side hath generally the strictest followers Which side are the generality of the Blasphemers Whoremongers Drunkards and Debauched persons on And which side hath the most serious religious sort of persons 2. Why is it that the Nonconformists and their followers are commonly accused for preciseness and overmuch strictness for being hypocrites as counterfeiting more holiness and austerity of life than others 3. How many of the Ministers were ever cast out for drunkenness fornication deceit swearing perjury or any loose living or immorality Not one of the 1800 that ever we heard of but all for Nonconformity alone 4. If you should turn your charge upon the Sectaries who hath written more against the Antinomian loose opinions than the Nonconformists have done The many Volumes of Mr. Anthony Burges the Writings of Mr. Richard Allen Mr. Joseph Allen Mr. John Howe with many more of late and of Mr. Hildersham Mr. Ball Mr. Dod Mr. Greenham Mr. Rogers Mr. Perkins and many more such
continued But some charitable persons pitied the needy and kept them from famishing and utter distress And some few Ministers of more than ordinary Parts and Name and Acquaintance were better supplied than the rest But those that were as conscientious but of meaner parts and more obscure and small acquaintance and lived in poor Countreys were in great necessities some have long lived with many Children with almost nothing but brown-bread and water and some have been put to work for their living at very low and fordid employments as Musculus once did with a Weaver and in the Town-ditch some took Farms and for want of stock and skill run into greater poverty and debts some that had studied Physick turned Physicians and so escaped want some left the obscure Villages through meer necessity and betook them to London and other Cities and great Towns where the Numbers and Ability of the inhabitants might afford them some relief And some by this siege did yield up their Consciences and stretched them by forced interpretations of the words of the Declaration and Subscription to Conform and upon the review were cast into miserable distress of soul which was more troublesome than poverty and famine And some that thought it not their duty to be very scrupulous and because they had not taken the Covenant or medled in matters of Civil Contention or War did judge themselves more capable than others of Conforming did after upon review repent and give up the places they had taken and the practice which they had begun But all found that the Number of persons that were both able and willing to relieve so many needy families was small and that most were either unable or tenacious of their money so that the sufferings of many were very great 3. But the service that the silenced Ministers did being now in private an Act was made against Conventicles and such penalties annexed as I need not here recite And when the Act was expired it was again revived with many additions And because that these Ministers lived mostly now on Cities and Corporations or their former flocks that were acquainted with them an Act was made in the heat of all the grievous Plague at Oxford imposing on them an Oath which he that took not having kept any Conventicle and after came within five miles of any City or Corporation or place where he had lately preached was to be sent six Months to the Common Jayl and pay 40 l. This Law was harder to them than the former For 1. many men that had made some shift to settle their habitation in the cheapest or most convenient place they could get were forced to remove yea most of the Nonconformists in England were constrained to change their dwelling 2. Some lived with some friends or relations who would give them house-room or help and they were thus driven away from their friends and relations and such entertainments 3. Abundance of them had their houses for a certain time having Leases of them for years or life And they knew not how to get Tenants to take such houses which were incommodious to Farmers though fit for them And they that before wanted bread and cloathing were put to the streights of paying Rent for houses that must stand empty being driven from them 4. And they were hard put to it to find places in England to fix their dwellings in for Corporations in most Counties are so near that he that withdraweth five miles from one doth come within five miles of another or at least within five miles of some place where they had preached And some laborious men that thirsted after mens salvation had gone about preaching over a great part of the Countrey or the Land and so were almost sentenced to banishment by this Law And when they did find out a place that was five miles distant from all the prohibited places it would be strange if there they should find empty houses when Landlords use not to leave their houses untenanted and unpossessed And if a house were empty that it should be fit for a poor Minister that could not take the ground or farm would be strange And 5. when they found a capable place they had not money to take it Being poor before and poorer by their removal 6. And when they borrowed money to take it they wanted money to pay for the removing of their goods and the furnishing of their new habitations Those that have tryed such changes know how chargeable as well as troublesome they are But the thing that most eased them in all these straights was that Market-Towns were not put into the Act with Corporations and so many Market-Towns being no Corporations and there being houses to be had without farms or ground many Ministers got into those Towns which gave Dr. Fullwood occasion to reproach them as dwelling in populous places which had least need of them of which more anon And some Ministers finding their streights so great as that their imprisonment in the common Jayl was not more to be feared and finding especially that they were no more warranted by God to desert the Souls in all Cities and Corporations and all their ancient flocks and all places where they had preached and five miles round about all these than the rest of the Land yea that populous places had the greatest need and their former Hearers might claim the greatest interest in them and that Christ commanded his Apostles when they were prosecuted in one City to fly to another they resolved to follow their work where they were invited and to commit their liberties and lives to God But Gods dreadful judgments were the great cause of their freedom from these streights The terrible Plague consumed so many thousands a week in London that some Nonconformable Ministers durst not leave them in that distress but stayed and preacht to them and visited them and gathered money abroad for the poor which greatly won the peoples hearts and the face of death so prevailed with multitudes to awaken them from security that the success of the Ministers was very great and so great as fixed their resolution to hold on whatever it cost them Multitudes of young people penitently lamenting their former sins and begging of the Ministers not to forsake them in their distress And so many of the Conformable Ministers fled from the infection that the Bishop thought it best to connive at the preaching of the Nonconformists during that necessity And quickly after the lamentable fire consumed with the Houses Eighty nine Churches which made the necessity of preaching in other places more extensive and notoririous it being unmeet that so famous a Christian City should forsake all publick worshipping of God till the Houses and Churches should be all rebuilt So that by this necessity a greater number of Nonconformists were needed and entertained in London yea many Countrey-Ministers that came thither and by their example the rest throughout England were much encouraged to appear
Those of their own Religion not charged with one doctrinal difference if they obey not their Wills in every Ceremony are the worst of all mankind Reader is this the Religion taught by St. Paul Rom. 14. 15. and Phil. 3. where mutual forbearances and Receiving dissenters is commanded against both Censurers and Despisers Will ever Church on Earth have Concord on these terms Are such mouths fit to call others Fire-brands Is not this a disgrace to the Christian Protestant Religion that all its fundamentals will not keep a man that differeth but in a Ceremony from being the worst of mankind 3. Look back but on the Instances of our Nonconformity before laid down and then tell thy self what to judge of such men and such pens as proclaim to the world that it is but an innocent Ceremony that we submit not to See the Nonconformists Plea for Peace 4. Bethink you what our Nonsubmission or Nonconformity doth to ruine Kingdoms in comparison of the course of such accusers If poor men desire to serve Christ though in poverty with diligence and peace and Lordbishops shall say Either subscribe say and swear all this or be silenced and cast out of all your Ministry and Maintenance Doth he now that patiently beareth all their penalties loseth all and goeth quietly to the Common Jayl among Rogues for Preaching Christs Gospel to more than four without Swearing and Conforming become hereby a Ruiner of Kingdoms while they are innocent that do all this against them Do they not toto nudato pectore taelum recipire tantum non with great Cameron unbutton them and cry Feri miser Is there any one word of Rebellious Doctrine proved by this man when he hath done his worst out of any one Church-Confession of those whom he revileth And if he can find any thing which is not found in the books of any particular men in the late Wars is that their fault that never owned it and were then scarce born Doth he or any of all the malicious tribe charge those whom they reproach with drunkenness gluttony luxury fornication ambition fraud lying or any such immorality 5. Are those that suffer and do so much for that which they think to be the truth of Christ well charged with hating Christ and is not the exception a prophane scorn of Christ but that he said he came not to bring peace It is easie to say with Tertullus of Paul that he is a Ring-leader of a Sect and a pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among the people but where 's the proof 6. And mark why he professeth himself kinder to the Papists 1. Because they are more Learned Civil and Gentile 2. Because they differ in supposed fundamentals But 1. did he not know our advantage in Learning then was a great cause of the success of the Reformation in Luthers days And who that knoweth the pitiful Priests in France Spain and Italy and what a generation Erasmus Stephanus Vives Hutten and others describe and what men the Reformation found in the Priesthood in England and all other Countries will believe this man that the Papists are more learned And though we truly honour the later Leared men that have been bred among them their Suarez their Petavius and many more yet he might know that our John Reignolds our Chamier Sadcel Bochart Capellus Rivet with multitudes of their like were learned men as well as they and so were Rob. Parker Amesius Bradshaw Paget and many other Nonconformists here and Twisse Gataker and many more of the Westminster-Assembly And all the Learning of the Papists in the world is not enough to make them know Bread and Wine when they see and touch and taste it which without Learning may be easily known 2. But that differing in supposed fundamentals should prove the Papists so much better than us doth tell us with what sort of men we have to do By that rule the Mahometans are much better than the Papists and the Heathens yet better than the Mahometans for they differ from us and them in greater things I perceive why the Jews were crueller than the Heathens and the Papal than the Pagan Rome against the Ministers of Christ because they differed not from them in so many and weighty points Note Reader that this mans book of 20s Price is written to prove that Treason Rebellion and King-killing is the very Religion and the ancient and later practice of the Papists Their Councils are cited for it and their chiefest and most learned Writers cited as maintaining the excommunicating and deposing Kings to be in the power of the Pope and that in so great a number in their own words the very Pages accurately and fully cited that after a multitude that have written on that subject he hath quite over-done them all and brought whole loads of Testimonies to prove it to be the common doctrine of the Roman Church so that no man that ever wrote hath in this done so much to render them unreconcilably odious to all Kings and Magistrates as this man hath done and he hath given them the deepest wound in point of Policy and History that was ever given them with as bitter and odious terms of aggravation And yet we that agree with him in all fundamentals and refuse as he dreameth but a Ceremony are worse far worse than they Had he only done by us as he did by them recited the words of our Synoâ—s and Professors we would contentedly have left all to judge of our Confessions and of each particular Author as they deserve and those that are proved culpable to bear the blame But his sentence and inferences only tell us how desirable the coming of Christ is to his Servants and how earnestly we should pray to the Judg of the World to come and to come quickly Reasons why the Conformable Clergy should be desirous of their Brethrens Ministerial liberty that cannot Conform as is now required 1. YOU ought to be better acquainted with the Common state of peoples Souls and the great necessity of Teaching in the Land than Parliaments or Magistrates can be expected to be who converse not with the people about their everlasting hopes as your calling bndeth you to do And you are obliged also to a double zeal for the Kingdom of Christ and mens Salvation As you still profess a zeal for the Church when Revenues Power or Ceremonies are the things in question And men that have acquaintance with the Common state of Souls cannot chuse but know how insufficient they are of themselves without help for so great a work among such multitudes and what need most Parishes have of more than one much more of one If the Shepherds themselves should either be so ignorant as to think that their ignorant Parishes need no more help than one man is able to afford to many thousands or hundreds of Souls and that the labours of others may be spared because that which they do themselves is enough or
it is our comfort that we have a King and Parliament whose aversness to Popery and their Law against all such surmises doth put them out of the peoples suspicions And I think you should do no less but more than any others to avert all unjust suspicions from your selves 20. Is it possible that any partiality interest or passion can make you think either that the people of England need not as much Teaching and Exhortation and Ministerial help to bring them to Repentance and Salvation as all the qualified Ministers in the Land together are able to afford them or that God may not bless the labours of such men as Burges Allen Norman and hundreds more that now are silenced to the conversion of many hundred or thousand sinners unto Repentance and a holy life And if you cannot or dare not deny this have you considered whether your reasons for silencing them be so weighty as will countervail the salvation of so many Souls and will comfort and excuse you at the bar of God And whether then you can justifie your selves by saying Lord though so many Souls persisted in sin and are damned that might have been saved by the Ministry of these learned grave and godly Preachers yet the good which we obtained by their silencing and all their other sufferings was greater than so many mens salvation would have amounted to And if deliberately you will venture on such a cause your selves what would you wish the silenced Ministers to do You say it is our duty to forbear preaching when we are forbidden But what if it prove otherwise and that we must be judged as sacrilegious for alienating consecrated persons from Gods work and as guilty of the blood of all those souls that have perished by our silence and neglect What say you Will you undertake to justifie us and answer for us and bear all the divine displeasure your selves which shall fall upon us for our obeying your silencing commands Are you willing to run all that danger for us But why do I ask you such a question when your undertaking would but shew your greater obdurateness and neither save us nor your selves If you say that the crime is ours for not conforming that is to be examined by it self If ever Episcopacy had two learned and judicious defenders it was Bishop Bilson and Bishop Andrews let not interest now make you differ from your chiefest champions I will add the words of one of them at large Bilson of Subjection p. 399. saith The election of bishops in these days belonged to the people and not to the Prince and though Valens by plain force placed Lucius there yet might the people lawfully reject him as no bishop and cleave to Peter the right Pastor And indeed the people so rejected Lucius that the boys in the street would not touch the ball any more which Lucius's horse feet had trod upon and to the last suffered all the Magistrates displeasure in refusing the Pastor imposed on them who yet perswaded them that he was Orthodox And the error of a Magistrate taketh not away his power as I before said but only his aptitude to use it aright And the Nonconformable people think that they lawfully adhere to their old known faithful Pastors and reject unknown obtruded persons Pag. 236 he saith Princes have no right to call or confirm Preachers but to receive such as be sent of God and give them liberty for their preaching and security for their persons And if Princes refuse so to do Gods labourers must go on forward with that which is commanded them from heaven not by disturbing Princes from their thrones nor invading their Realms as your holy father doth and defendeth he may do but by mildly submitting themselves to the powers on earth and meekly suffering for the defence of the truth what they shall inflict How you gather out of this or any words of ours that Christ and his Apostles might not preach the Gospel without Cesar's delegations and license from others the Kings of the Countreys whither they went I see not except you take the word Supreme for superior to Christ all which standeth neither with our assertion nor intention but is a very pestilent and impudent sophistication of yours Marg. Bishops may preach without Cesars leave if they submit themselves to Cesar's sword as the Apostles did To this I pray add his two pages p. 233 234. to prove that Patriarchs were not erected by Christ but by the consent of Bishops and that Archiepiscopal and Metropolitan Dignities were the gifts of Princes and then consider how far that Office of Presbyters which is of Christs own instituting is to be forsaken in obedience to the command of a Metropolitan or any power of mans ordaining Pag. 226. The charge which the Patriarchs and Bishops of England have over their flocks proceedeth neither from Prince nor Pope nor dependeth on the will or word of any earthly creature therefore you do us the more wrong to say what you list of us By supreme Governours we do not mean Moderators Prescribers Directors Inventors or Authors of these things as you misconster us but Rulers and Magistrates bearing the sword to permit and defend that which Christ himself first appointed and ordained and with lawful force to disturb the despisers of his will and testament Now what inconvenience is this if we say that Princes as publick Magistrates may give freedom protection and assistance to the preaching of the Word Ministring of the Sacraments and right using of the Keys Doth that prove that all Ecclesiastical power and cure of Souls do proceed and depend of the Princes right See also Page 362. And p. 259. As Bishops ought to discern what is truth before they teach so must the people discern who teacheth right before they believe Pag. 261 262. Princes as well as others must yield obedience to Bishops speaking the word of God But if they pass their Commission and speak besides the word of God what they list both Prince and people may despise them See him further proving that all have a judicium discretionis Pag. 259 260 261 262. Bishop Andrews his determination against giving unfit Kings the Sacrament and in what sense the Pastors rule their Princes and consequently may not obey them in the neglect of their own office I have shewed in the decision of the Erastian Controversie and need not repeat it yea he alloweth the very Deacon to deny an unworthy King admittance to the Sacrament And Chrysostome would lose his life rather than give it to the greatest that is unworthy How far then Christs Ministers must give over Preaching Sacraments and all if men command them so to do you may hence gather by these mens judgments And in the conclusion let me again remember you that the trick of twisting your interest pretendedly with Princes and making them believe that those that you would have to be afflicted or expelled are more against Monarchy and Loyalty than