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A30727
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Christian liberty asserted in oposition to the Roman yoke delivered in a sermon preached in His Majesties royal chappel of Windsor, the 8th of Decemb. 1678 / by John Butler.
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Butler, John, D.D.
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1678
(1678)
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Wing B6277; ESTC R7538
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15,021
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44
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Jews had said to terrifie the Galatians the Apostle asks them this question this only Gal. iii. 2. would I learn of you received you the spirit by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith q. d. did I who am a Jew when I preached to you the Gospel of Christ upon which the Lord working with me you received the Holy Ghost and saw that Doctrine confirmed by miracles did I oblige you to any such custom AND This only would I learn of the Papists did we first receive the Gospel from them I know very well that some of them want not confidence to affirm any thing but we are better assured that Christianity was planted in this Island long before any of the Popes agents set their feet here And when they did come what did they do for us but corrupt our Religion by degrees and draw us into their yoke by making us believe that if we did not keep close communion with and observe them in all things we should certainly be damned BUT the Galatians were weary of their past and afraid of their future persecutions if they did not comply with the Jews THE more Fools they ARE ye so foolish says our Apostle have Ch. iii. 3 4. ye suffered so many things in vain if it be yet in vain q. d. Have ye embraced the Gospel with resolutions to suffer in the profession of it have ye done it hitherto and will ye now by foolishly thinking to avoid persecutions lose the Crown laid up in store for you on that account THE more fools they and the more cowards we WE have suffered in the defence of our Religion of the cause of God and his Vicegerents against a schismatical and rebellious generation of men but yet such as were set on and managed undoubtedly by our old implacable adversaries of Rome How many men of all ranks and degrees with an invincible courage lost their Estates their Liberties their Lives in the quarrel and are we faint-hearted now Have a care He that seeks thus to save his life is in a fair way to lose it BUT stay is the Liberty wherewith we are made free worth the contending for i. e. so as to oblige us to die if called to it rather than yield to the Roman Yoke IS it I do not in the least doubt it I am sure the first blessed instruments of our happy Reformation and their followers thought so else they would never have lost their Lives in the cause BUT Good God! in what an age do we live when a sort of men among our selves of loose and corrupt principles have not stuck to affront the memory of those blessed men and women with the name of Foxian Martyrs Such fellows will look to themselves I 'll warrant them NOW to satisfie you in the point I will in as few words as I can give you an account of this liberty wherewith we are made free and then tell me what you think on 't WE have the Oracles of God those Fountains of living water which contain all things necessary for our Salvation put into our hands 2 Tim. 3. 17. and read to us according to the Apostles times in a known tongue We have the Word of God purely dispensed by Workmen that need not be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth We have the Sacraments rightly and duely administred according to our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ his own holy Institution And all this which characterizeth a true Church in order to our future happiness Then which both tends to that and also to our present well-being we are taught to obey our King and all that are put in authority under him without resisting to suffer death rather than lift up a finger against him never to expect to see the face of God with comfort unless we be of a peaceable disposition and live an holy life so taking the holy Jesus for our pattern as yet despairing most justly of all benefit from our own or others pretended righteousness to rely upon his most meritorious Death and Passion for our Salvation In a word to honour all men to love the Brother-hood nay our very enemies to fear God and honour the King These for brevity's sake I offer only as a specimen of that great and glorious liberty wherewith we are made free And what think ye now is not this liberty worth the contending for worth every mans contending for I will not so much as suspect that any person here thinks otherwise But if any such there be I shall only desire your patience a little while till I come to paint out to them the yoke of bondage which is to be given us in exchange for this liberty and then I hope they will be satisfied In the mean time let us stand fast in the liberty wherewith we are made free Stand fast therefore For Christ his sake stand fast Which is the Apostles second argument to enforce his exhortation Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free CHRIST made the Galatians us and the whole world free by his meritorious Death and Passion on his part and by faith and repentance on ours Christ made us free by enjoining us no more than his own perfect law of liberty leaving power indeed to the Guides of the Church to take care that all things should be done with decency and order but not to alter or diminish no nor to add a tittle that was not built upon that foundation And all the Epistles of the holy Apostles are but so many Comments upon that Law As for the straw therefore and stubble which our adversaries of Rome have built upon this foundation in order to our making brick for the repair of their tottering Tower away with it LET us follow Christ the author and finisher of our faith and not the corrupter of it Christ the Captain of our Salvation the Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls and not his pretended Lieutenant and Vicar who acts both beyond and contrary to his Commission Remember I beseech you your first Vow when you were baptized into Christ who purchased your liberty by shedding his own most precious Blood for you and not into that man or Church who are most notoriously known ready to take it from you at the expence of your bloud if they cannot compass it by other means Remember that at that time you promised faithfully to be the Souldiers of Christ and to fight manfully under his Banner and do not run from your Colours by ungratefully and cowardly quitting your Post STAND fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free AND now one would think the Apostle had said enough to make his Galatians stand fast by urging to them their liberty and the author of it that there needed no more to be said in the case and that therefore if those would not prevail upon them all other arguments would prove insignificant and useless NO such matter He
in all cases If the Pope should so far err as to call vice De Rom. Pont. lib. 4. c. 5. vertue and vertue vice and command them to be accordingly practised and forborn the Church were bound to submit and conform her self unless she would sin against Conscience WELL said Cardinal THE good man had forgot that God himself had accursed those that call evil good and good evil But to let that pass how comes so great a man to suppose what he had taken so great pains to prove impossible i. e. that his Holiness can err and how comes he to pull down what he had before as much as in him lay built up i. e. the Popes infallibility For if we be not assured of the real and unalterable difference betwixt vertue and vice we have no certainty and where there is no certainty it is impossible there can be any infallibility Which doctrine of infallibility for I must hasten is the very beam of the yoke to be laid upon us in lieu of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free WE are by Gods providence yet free from the yoke we celebrate the Supper of the Lord with eating and drinking according to his own most holy Institution Be not therefore intangled with this yoke of bondage TAKE for a second part of their yoke the doctrine of Transubstantiation than which I am sure Jacob Behmen has not any thing in all his enthusiastick writings more monstrously mysterious and unintelligible As if no man could possibly become a good Christian unless he threw away his memory and understanding at the same time TRANSUBSTANTIATION a name and thing so unknown to all antiquity and so utterly impossible in it self that I must shake hands with my nature before I can bring my neck to the yoke INDEED if the Assertors of that doctrine can once mould me into such a temper as that with the Comoedian I could run in their hand and in one and the same breath affirm with them that a Cloud looks like a Camel like a Weazel and like a Whale much may be done Till then they must give me leave and if they will not give it me I shall make bold to take it to belive my senses both inward and outward which I humbly conceive and am verily persuaded God and Nature did not bestow upon me with a design to deceive and cheat me IF they ask as they usually do why do we then believe the doctrine of the Trinity which on this occasion they will have to be as much against human reason I answer by denying what they take for granted i. e. That the doctrine of the Trinity and that of Transubstantiation are alike against reason That I and two more can be one or that any created being can be in more than one place at the same is indeed against reason because we have distinct beings and are distinctly circumscribed by our own proper limits and places but that God who is infinite in power and fills all places with his unbounded presence may be whatever he pleaseth to reveal and declare himself to be as touching his Divine Nature is if above yet not at all against my reason BUT to end this Paragraph to what purpose should I be obliged in this matter to call white black and black white Cui bono Cannot the same God who at the Preaching of the Gospel of his Son by his Apostles conferred the Holy Ghost on those that never heard of him before and cannot that Son of God who Instituted Holy Baptism to the mystical washing away of sin confer Grace and Spiritual nourishment to my soul upon my humble and grateful commemoration of his meritorious Death and Passion in eating and drinking the Consecrated Elements without the Priests turning by I know not how many unconceivable Miracles not only the Bread and Wine but even the Bread alone into his real Body and Blood IT cannot be expected that I should within the time allotted me say all that can be said if I could do it upon these and the following subjects and therefore I refer you for your further satisfaction and confirmation to the labours of those many Pious and Learned men of our Church who have in this and all other points controverted betwixt us so baffled our Adversaries of Rome that though they will have the last word there is no help for that they have nothing left them which with modesty they can say for themselves As for us we are yet by the Grace of God free from this groundless useless and senseless yoke of Transubstantiation Be not therefore intangled with this yoke of bondage WHAT shall I say of the Doctrin of the Popes Supremacy over the whole World his pretended power to confer and take away Crowns and Kingdoms and in the stead of God himself for King David makes it his peculiar Prerogative and so doth his Son too to pull down one and set up another They tell us a great many fine stories of St. Peters Keys and St. Pauls Sword but alass they are but stories ambitious imaginations of their own brains Now before I give mine own opinion in the case so far as we are concerned I crave leave to tell you what one of their late Pamphleteers hath affirmed in it viz. That Oliver Cromwel had as much right to exclude the Royal Family and set up for himself as King Henry the Eighth had to throw off his Obedience to the Pope Spoken like a good Subject and a well read man Is there no difference between an home-born Prince and a forein Usurper And for Gods sake what power or profit had ever the Popes of Rome in this Kingdom but what was either granted them by the indulgence and bounty of devout and unwary Princes or else what they extorted by watching their opportunities and fishing in troubled waters the last of which was no Title at all and the first being abused was justly forfeited THE first considerable footing that his Holiness got here was by Austin the Monk about the year 600. and then the Foundation was laid in blood in the blood of twelve hundred Monks A truer story I am sure than that of their 11000 Virgin-Martyrs And as the Naturalists say ex quibus componimur ex iisdem nutrimur so I may say of them If you prove good children believe as the Church believes and do what she bids you right or wrong pay your first-fruits tenths Peter-pence and other perquisites which the Apostolic Sea claims all which however I think better in the King of England's Exchequer than in the Roman Aerary then his Holiness smiles at your easiness and his word is Si populus vult decipi decipiatur c. but if you do not look to your selves the note is changed into that of Nebuchadnezzar his Predecessor in old Babylon If you worship not you shall be cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace But suppose we should not grant but give them what they