doubt that neither the Episcopal Presbyterian nor Independant way alone will well settle the Church But that each of the three Parties and those called Erastians have somewhat of the Truth in peculiar and somewhat of Faultiness and if ever the Church be well setled it must be by taking the best and leaving out the worst of every party and till that can be done we must bear with what we cannot amend Octobo 9. 1688. Mr. J BEcause your Friend refuseth Conference though I promised secrefie and a loving Debate I will for your sake answer your Questions my self which I take to be these Two I Whether you ought not presently to fix your self in a particular Church and not continue any longer occasional Communion with many II. What Church you should be a fixed Communicant in I. As to the First I know not well what is meant by fixed Membership by the Author of the Writing which you shewed me you must be a fixed Member of Christ and the Church Universal or else you are no fixed Christian But as to particular Pastors and Congregations Order and Concord and Edification are the general Rules which tell you where to fix and how far 1. You ought not to commit any real Sin for Communion with any Church 2. Though you may and must join with faulty Assemblies and Worship yet you must not justifie their Faults nor profess your Consent to them nor promise that you will never endeavour any Amendment of them 3. There must be no Self-obliging unnecessarily Liberty is not so contemptible a thing that we should cast it away for nought much less must you bind your self contrary to God's Providence or without excepting Alterations by it 4. Your Church-Membership as to particular Congregations must have no greater fixedness than your Habitation and other Obligations You may remove your Congregational Relation when you remove your Dwelling and none can hinder you from removing both when your Interest requireth it Suspect them that would make you their Propriety II. As to the Second where you should fix 1. You are in your Father's House under his Government and must obey him in all lawful things and must not go against his Consent 2. You are a Member of a Christian Family and no Scripture tells us of the Members of one Christian Family being of divers Churches nor alloweth it 3. Scripture knoweth no particular Churches but what were bounded by Neighbourhood and Cohabitation except Hereticks There were never Churches gathered out of Churches then nor two approved Churches of the same Language in the same Bounds 1. I do hereby undertake to prove against any Disputer that there is no Form so agreeable to God's Word as this following 1. A Christian Kingdom consisting of a Christian King or supreme Power and particular confederate Churches being the Burgesses and peaceable Unbelievers that tolerated Aliens or Catechumens 2. A reformed Episcopacy Successors to the Evangelists that without the Sword or Force had the Care of many Churches 3. Reformed Parish-Churches consisting of Godly Pastors and professed Christian Cohabitants the incapable being Catechumens which made the old Nonconformists declare that they were so far from being against Parish-Churches that their Lives would be a burden to them if they were not restored to them The first Church State that Christ himself made was the Platform of a Christian Kingdom Church offering to make Iudaea such setting Twelve Apostles over the Twelve Tribes and Seventy two Disciples the Number of their great Council and so would have gathered all Ierusalem's Children to himself as a Hen gathereth her Chickens Mat. 23. which they refusing he declared that the Kingdom of God should be taken from them and given to a Nation that would bring forth the fruit thereof and so they were cut off for their Unbelief and we graffed in to the same Olive or political State the Mosaical Law only changed for Christ's Law And as all the Prophets foretold this that Christ's Church should be a Davidical Kingdom so after Two Hundred Ninety Four Years Tryal it was set up and the Pagan Empire Babylon did fall and Christ reigned by Christian Emperors and his enemies were made his Footstool and the Kingdoms of the World became the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ consisting of Churches confederate for Unity and the Nations brought in their Glory to it and the Fulness of the Gentiles came in and all the Israel of God were saved Iudaea becoming the most Christian Nation in the World And Heaven and Earth rejoiced at the Fall of Babylon and this new Ierusalem's iniâ—ial Sâ—aâ—e And sure it is such a Kingdom-Church which those expect that talk of the future Thousand Years Reign of Christ. As Teachers are under him as Prophet and Priests as he is Priest so are Christian Kings as he is King and bad Kings are no more Reason against his Institution than bad Teachers and Priests 2. There are Three Sorts of Pastors or Bishops in Christ's Church I. Such as were to gather many Churches out of Infideâ—s and to set Elders or fixed Bishops over them and then oversee both the Elders and People Such Christ made the Apostles whose Office was partly extraordinary and temporary and is so far only ceased and partly ordinary and continued and so Christ promised to be with them to the end of the World And such were Evangelists sent forth with and by the Apostles to gather and oversee many Churches and Pastors Such were Titus Timothy Luke Mark Barnabas Silas and many more God never recalled this Order of Ministers if any say he did it lyeth in them to prove it This was the first sort of Pastors II. The Second Sort were the fixed Elders which these ordained in every Church who were all Bishops over the Flocks and so called but under the general Ministers who yet had none of them any forcing Power by the Sword these two God instituted III. The Third Sort between these Two was a President Pastor in every particular Church like the President of a Colledge who had some moderating guiding Power among the rest of the Elders This was set up to avoid Division among the Elders every Church having usually many and received even in some of the Apostles Days and never rejected for a Thousand Years 3. Particular Churches in Scripture Times were distinguished by the places of their Neighbourhood as I said before and there were never two Churches in the same Bounds except Hereticks and Men of divers Languages From this it is plain that the most Divine From of Government is 1. A Christian Kingdom 2. With Reformed General Ministers 3. And Reformed Parish-Churches having fixed Pastors and where it may be our Chief c. Moreover as to your fixing the Churches in Question with you I suppose are not the Papists the Quakers the Familists c. But the Episcopal the Presbyterian the Independent and the Separatist if not the Anabaptists also I. The Episcopal are of Two Sorts
or to turn to something else which though there be some reason for it I feel cometh from a want of Zeal for the Truth and from an impatient Temper of Mind I am ready to think that People should quickly understand all in a few words and if they cannot lazily to despair of them and leave them to themselves And I the more know that it is sinful in me because it is partly so in other things even about the Faults of my Servants or other Inferiours if three or four times warning do no good on them I am much tempted to despair of them and turn them away and leave them to themselves I mention all these Distempers that my Faults may be a warning to others to take heed as they call on my self for Repentance and Watchfulness O Lord for the Merits and Sacrifice and Intercession of Christ be merciful to me a Sinner and forgive my known and unknown Sins THE LIFE OF THE REVEREND Mr. Richard Baxter LIB I. PART II. § 1. IN the Time of the late unhappy Wars in these Kingdoms the Controversies about Church Government were in most Mens mouths and made the greatest Noise being hotly agitated by States-men and Divines by Words and Writings which made it necessary to me to set my self to the most serious study of those Points The result of which was this confident and setled Judgment that of the four contending Parties the Erastian Episcopal Presbyterian and Independant each one had some Truths in peculiar which the other overlookt or took little notice of and each one had their proper Mistakes which gave advantage to their Adversaries though all of them had so much truth in common among them as would have made these Kingdoms happy if it had been unanimously and soberly reduced to practice by prudent and charitable Men. § 2. 1. The Erastians I thought were thus far in the right in asserting more fully than others the Magistrates Power in Matters of Religion that all Coercive Power by Mulcts or Force is only in their hands which is the full sence of our Oath of Supremacy and that no such Power belongeth to the Pastors or People of the Church and that thus as Dr. Ludov. Molinaeâ—â— pleadeth there should not be any Imperium in Imperio or any Coercive Power challenged by Pope Prelate Presbytery or any but by the Magistrate alone that the Pastoral Power is only Perswasive or exercised on Volunteers yet not private such as belongeth to every Man to perswade that hath a perswading Facultyâ— but Publick and Authoritative by Divine appointment And not only to perswade by Sermons or general Speeches but by particular oversight of their particular Flocks much like the Authority of Plato or Zenâ— in his School or a Master in any Academy of Volunteers or of a Physician in his Hospital supposing these were Officers of God's Institution who could as the ground of their perswasitantâ— produce his Commission or Command for what they said and did But though the Diocesans and the Presbyterians of Scotland who had Laws to enable them opposed this Doctrine or the Party at least yet I perceived that indeed it was but on the ground of their Civil Advantages as the Magistrate had impowered by them by his Laws which the Erastians did not contradict except some few of the higher 〈◊〉 sort who pleaded as the Papists for somewhat more which yet they could not themselves tell what to make of But the generality of each Party indeed owned this Doctrine and I could speak with no sober Judicious Prelatist Presbyterian or Independant but confessed that no Secular or Forcing Power belonged to any Pastors of the Church as such and unless the Magistrates authorized them as his Officers they could not touch mens Bodies or Estates but the Conscience alone which can be of none but of Assenters § 3. 2. The Episcopal Party seemed to have reason on their side in 〈◊〉 that in the Primitive Church there were some Apostles Evangelists and others who were general unfixed Officers of the Church not tyed to any particular Chaâ—ge and had some Superiority some of them â—â—over-fixed Bishops or Pastors And though the extraordinary Parts of the Apostles Office ceased with them I saw no proof of the Cessation of any ordinary part of their Office such as Church Government is confessed to be All the doubt that I saw in this was Whether the Apostles themselves were constituted Governours of other Pastors or only over-ruled them by the Eminency of their Gifts and Priviledge of Infallibility For it seemed to me unmeet to affirm without proof that Christ setled a Form of Government in his Church to endure only for one Age and changed it for a New one when that Age was ended And as to fixed Bishops of particular Churches that were Superiours in degree to Presbyters though I saw nothing at all in Scripture for them which was any whit cogent yet I saw that the Reception of them in all the Churches was so timely even in the days of one of the Apostles in some Churches and so general that I thought it a most improbable thing that if it had been contrary to the Apostles mind we should never read that they themselves or any one of their Disciples that conversed with them no nor any Christian or Heretick in the World should once speak or write a word against it till long after it was generally setled in the Curches This therefore I resolved never to oppose § 4. 3. And as for the Presbyterians I found that the Office of Preaching Presbyters was allowed by all that deserve the Name of Christians and that this Office did participate subserviently to Christ of the Prophetical or Teaching the Priestly or worshipping and the Governing Power and that both Scripture Antiquity and the perswasive Nature of Church Government clearly shew that all Presbyters were Church Governours as well as Church Teachers and that to deny this was to destroy the Office and to endeavour to destroy the Churches And I saw in Scripture Antiquity and Reason that the Association of Pastors and Churches for Agreement and their Synods in Cases of Necessity are a plain duty and that their ordinary stated Synods are usually very convenient And I saw that in England the Persons which were called Presbyterians were emiment for Learning Sobriety and Piety and the Pastors so called were they that went through the Work of the Ministry in diligent serious preaching to the People and edifying Mens Souls and keeping up Religion in the Land § 5. 4. And for the Independants I saw that most of them were Zealous and very many Learned discreet and godly Men and fit to be very serviceable in the Church And I found in the search of Scripture and Antiquity that in the beginning a Governed Church and a stated worshipping Church were all one and not two several things And that though there might be other byâ—Meetings in places like our Chappels or private Houses
me for which I thank you and rest Yours in the best Bonds R. Vines § 27. Something also I wrote to Reverend and Learned Mr. Th. Gataker whose Judgment I had seen before in his own Writings And having the encouragement of such Consent I motioned the Business to some London Ministers to have it set on foot among themselves because if it came from them it would be much more taking than from us But they thought it unfit to be managed there for several Reasons and so we must try it or only sit still and wish well as we had done § 28. Next this the state of my own Congregation and the necessity of my Duty constrained me to make some Attempt For I must administer the Sacraments to the Church and the ordinary way of Examining every Man before they come I was not able to prove necessary and the People were averse to it So that I was forced to think of the matter more seriously and having determined of that way which was I thought most agreeable to the Word of God I thought if all the Ministers did accord together in one way the People would much more easily submit than to the way of any Minister that was singular To attempt their Consent I had two very great Encouragements The one was an honest humble tractable People at home engaged in no Party Prelatical Presbyterian or Independant but loving Godliness and Peace and hating Schism as that which they perceived to tend to the ruine of Religion The other was a Company of honest godly serious humble Ministers in the Country where I lived who were not one of them that Associated Presbyterian or Independant and not past four or five of them Episcopal but dis-engaged faithful Men. At a Lecture at Worcester I first procured a Meeting and told them of the Design which they all approved They imposed it upon me to draw up a Form of Agreement The Matter of it was to consist So much of the Church Order and Discipline as the Episcopal Presbyterian and Independant are agreed in as belonging to the Pastors of each particular Church The Reasons of this were 1. Because we all believed that the practice of so much as all are agreed in would do very much to the Order and Reformation of the Churches and that the controverted Parts are those of least necessity or weight 2. Because we would not necessitate any Party to refuse our Association by putting in a word which he disowneth for we intended not to dispute one another into nearer Agreement in Opinions but first to agree in the practice of all that which was owned by us all According to their desire I drew up some Articles for our Consent which might engage us to the most effectual practice of so much Discipline as might reduce the Churches to order and satisfie Ministers in administring the Sacraments and stop the more religious People from Separation to which the unreâ—ormedness of the Churches through want of Discipline inclined them and yet might not at all contradict the Judgments of any of the three Parties And I brought in the Reasons of the several Points which after sufficient Deliberation and Examination with the alteration of some few words were consented to by all the Ministers that were present and after several Meetings we subscribed them and so associated for our mutual help and concord in our Work The Ministers that thus associated were for Number Parts and Piety the most considerable part of all that County and some out of some neighbouring Counties that were near us There was not that I know of one through Presbyterian among them because there was but one such that I knew of in all the County and he lived somewhat remote Nor did any Independant subscribe save one for there were that I knew of but five or six in the County and two of the weightiest of them approved it in words and the rest withdrew from our Debates and gave us no reason against any thing proposed Those that did not come near us nor concur with us were all the weaker sort of Ministers whose Sufficiency or Conversation was questioned by others and knew they were of little esteem among them and were neither able or willing to exercise any Discipline on their Flocks As also some few of better parts of the Episcopal way who never came near us and knew not of our Proposals or resolved to do nothing till they had Episcopacy restored or such whose Judgments esteemed such Discipline of no great necessity And one or two very worthy Ministers who approved of our Agreement subscribed it not because they had a People so very Refractory that they knew they were not able to bring them to submit to it Having all agreed in this Association we proposed publickly to our People so much as required their Consent and Practice and gave every Family a Copy in Print and a sufficient time to consider and understand it and then put it in Execution and I published it with the Reasons of it and an Explication of what seemed doubtful in it in a Book which I called Christian Concord which pleased me and displeased others § 29. There were at that time two sorts of Episcopal Men who differed from each other more than the more moderate sort differed from the Presbyterians The one was the old common moderate sort who were commonly in Doctrine Calvinists and took Episcopacy to be necessary ad bene esse Ministerii Ecclesiae but not ad esse and took all those of the Reformed that had not Bishops for true Churches and Ministers wanting only that which they thought would make them more compleat The other sort followed Dr. H. Hammond and for ought we knew were very new and very few Their Judgment was as he afferteth in Annot. in Act. 11. in Desertat that all the Texts of Scripture which speak of Presbyters do mean Bishops and that the Office of Subject-Presbyters was not in the Church in Scripture Times but before Ignatius wrote it was but that the Apostles planted in every Church only a Bishop with Deacons but with this intent asserted but never proved that in time when the Christians multiplied these Bishops that had then but one Church a piece should ordain Subject-Presbyters under them and be the Pastors of many Churches And they held that Ordination without Bishops was invalid and a Ministry so ordained was null and the Reformed Churches that had no Bishops nor Presbyters ordained by Bishops were no true Churches though the Church of Rome be a true Church as having Bishops These Men in Doctrine were such as are called Arminians And though the other sort were more numerous and elder and some of them said that Dr. H. Hammond had given away their Cause because hereby he confesseth that de facto the Churches were but Congregational or Parochial and that Every Church had a Bishop and no Subject Presbyters were ordained by the Apostles or in Scripture
may read them After this I received from Sir Ralph Clare these ensuing Papers as from some Courtiers which are of the same Strain with Dr. Gunning's which with my brief Answer I adjoin SIR THE Influence and Power you have in the present Pastor of your Church who is much famed abroad and had in a reverend Esteem as well for Piety of Life as for his Learning Moderation and desiring the Peace of the Church gives Encouragement to your old Acquaintance and Associate in that One-glorious Court of England to desire the Favour that this inclosed Paper may be presented to his Christian View and Consideration presuming so great is his Charity that he will not leave any wounded Soul unhealed wherein he is able to bestow his Balm In this he extends not his Charity alone as to a single Person but in me there are many more of your Friends included who would have appeared in Person or met in Conference were is not our Mansions are at too great a distance and the Malignity and Iealousy of Times challenges Retirements rather than Assemblies It is not civil in us to chalk the Method of Answering the Queries yet for Easement Sake and Brevity it will be satisfactory his free Concession of any Proposals in the Affirmative to be true without any Enlargement of Reasons and for those Queries which may and must admit Divisions Distinctions and Discourse on the Case let the reverend Gentleman use his own Form Iudgment and Discretion as believing he will proceed with such Candor and Impartiality as becometh a Man of his Calling and Eminency waving all By-Interests and Relations to any Party or Faction either regnant or eclipst which Act will deservedly heighten the high Esteem he is valued at and your self by this Honour done engage me and many more of your old Friends in me to subscribe our selves Your Servants Theophilus Church A feigned Name April 20. 1655. Certain Queries and Scruples of Conscience offered to some Learned Divines for Resolution and Satisfaction 1. WHETHER may a Christian Magistrate tolerate Liberty of Conscience in Religion and Church Discipline without Scandal 2. Whether may and ought a tender Conscience exercise and use his Liberty and Freedom without Violence inforced by Superiors 3. Whether in Matters of Government Ecclesiastical depending only of Fact the general and perpetual Practice of the Church from Age to Age be not a sufficient Evidence and Warrant of the Right Truth and certainty of the thing 4. Whether the Vocation of Bishops be an Order Lawful in it self 5. Whether the Regiment Ecclesiastical by Bishops hath not continued throughout the Christian Church ever since the Apostles untill Calvin's days No Church Orthodox dissenting 6. Whether was there ever since the Apostle's days so much as one national Church governed by a Presbytery without a Bishop untill Calvin's Days If so where was the Original in what Place by what Persons of what continuance and how was it lost or changed into Episcopacy and upon what Grounds or Motives 7. Whether the present Ministry in the Church of England as it now separated from their lawful Superiors or Bishops be not Schismatical 8. Whether all these Ministers that have taken the Oath of Canonical Obedience to their Bishops and have backsliden and submitted to those Powers that violently deprived the said Bishops of their legal Powers and Iurisdictions by yielding a voluntary Obedience to their Ordinances are not under a high Censure of Perjury and Schism 9. Whether those Ministers now pretended to be made and ordained in the Church of England only by their Fellow Ministers without a Bishop be true Ministers or no or else meer Lay Persons and bold Usurpers of the Sacred Function and Order like Corah and his Complices 10. Whether all those Ministers which are now in actual possession of the late Incumbents Parsonages and Cures of Souls and deprived for their only adhering and assisting their late lawful Prince and their Governour and also their Bishops to whom they owed all Canonical Obedience without and beside any Legal Induction or Admission may not be reputed as Intruders and false Shepherds 11. Whether it had not been an excellent part of Christian Perfection rather to endure passively lost of Liberty Estate and even of Life it self for the maintenance and defence of the Iust and Legal Rights invested in the Church and the Bishops it 's Superintendent Pastors and the Liturgy and Service of the Church than carnally for Self-interest and Ends to comply and submit even against their knowing Consciences to a violent and meer prevailing power and force in the abolishing of Episcopal Power and the daily Prayers and Service used in the Church 12. Whether all such Persons be not guilty of Schism and of Scandal given which Communicate and be present in such Ministers Congregations and Assemblies whether in Church or in private Meetings to hear their Prayers or Sermons or receive their Sacraments according to the now present mode and form more especially in the participation with them in the Sacrament of the Eucharist Or how far may a good Christian Communicate with such without just Scandal given or taken 13. Whether it be lawful and just for any Orthodox Minister or Episcoparian to accept of any Benefice with Cure of Souls as the state of the English Church now standeth visible and ruling without guilt of Schism by compliance to their Form 14. Whether as the Condition of the present Church of England is The Ministers thereof may not legally and so justifiably exercise and use against the late Liturgy of the Church there being no Statute Law prohibiting the same And whether those that continue the Observation of the late Directory be not perturbers of the Peace of the Church especially since the limitation of trial by a pretended Legality and Command for its observance is expired and not reconfirmed 15. Whether the old Iewish Church had not set Forms of Prayer whether St. John the Raptist our Saviour's Praecursor and our blessed Saviour himself taught not their Disciples set Forms of Prayers and whether the Christian Church especially since the time of Peace from the violence of Heathenish Persecution had not nor generally used set Forms of Prayer And whether the Ministers now ex tempore Prayers in the Church be not as well a set Form of Prayers to the Auditors whose Spirits are therein bounded as any set Form of Prayer used in the Church 16. Whether may a Christian without Scandal given appear to be a Godfather or Godmother to a Child in these New Assemblies where the Minister useth his own Dictates and Prayers and not of the ancient Liturgy except the Words of Baptism I Baptize thee A. B. in the Name of the Father c. 17. Whether any Supream Earthly Power or Powers Spiritual or Temporal joint or separate can alienate and convert to secular uses or imployments any Houses Lands Goods or Things once devoted offered and dedicated to God and his Church
without grand Sacriledge and Prophaneness although by Corruption of Persons and Times they have been either superstitiously abused or too prophanely employed but rather to reduce them to their primitive Use and Donation 18. Whether the ancient Fasting Days of the Week and Festivals of the Church setled both by Provincial Synods in the Year 1562. and 1640. and confirmed by the then Regal Power and also by several Statutes and Laws ought not by all persons in Conscience to be still observed until they be abrogated by the like Powers again or how far the Liberty of Conscience therein may be used in observing or not observing them the like for the usage of the Cross in Baptism and the humble posture of Kneeling at the receiving of the blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper 19. Which way of security and peace of Conscience may a quiet Christian order and dispose himself his Wife Children and Family in his Duty and Service towards God and enjoy the right use and benefit of the Sacraments and other holy Duties as long as that part of the Catholick Church wherein he lives is under persecution and the visible Ruling Church therein is faln Schismatical if not in many particulare Heretical April 20th 1655. May 14th 1655. An Answer to the foregoing Questions sent to Sir R. Clare Ad Quest. 1m. EIther that Conscience owneth the right Religion and Discipline only or the right with some tolerable accidental Errours or a wrong Religion and Discipline in the Substance The first the Magistrate must not only tolerate but promote The second he must tolerate rather than do worse by suppressing it The third he must suppress by all lawful means and tolerate when he cannot help it without a greater Evil. I suppose no Judicious Man will expect an exact Solution of so Comprehensive a Question in few words And I find not that a large Discussion is now expected from me There are four or five Sheets of my Manuscripts in some hands abroad on this Point which may do more towards a satisfactory Solution than these few words Ad 2m. Either the tender Conscience is in the right or in the wrong If in the wrong the Magistrates Liberty will not make a Sin to be no Sin but the Party is bound by God to rectifie his Judgment and thereby his Practice If in the right it is a strange Question Whether a Man may obey God that hath the Magistrates leave till he be enforced by Mens violence Doth any doubt of it Ad 3m. Matter of Government depending only on Fact is a Contradiction Seeing Government consisteth in a Right and the Exercise of it I am not able therefore to understand this Question Yet if this may afford any help toward the Solution I affirm That the general and perpetual practice of the Church from Age to Age of a thing not forbidden by the Word of God will warrant our imitation I say of a thing not forbidden because it hath been the general and perpetual practice of the Church to Sin by vain Thoughts Words imperfect Duties c. wherein our imitation is not warrantable The general and perpetual practice includeth the Apostles and that Age. But what is meant by Evidencing the Right of a thing that dependeth only of Fact or by Evidencing the Truth and Certainty of a Fact by general and perpetual practice which is to prove idem per idem I will not presume that I understand Ad 4m. I know not what Bishops you mean A Congregational Bishop overseeing the People is undoubtedly lawful so is a Congregational Bishop being President of a Presbytery which is over that Congregation Where many Congregational Officers are associated I do not think that a President for a time or during his fitness standing and fixed is unlawful The like I may say of a President of many of those Associations again associated as in a Province or Diocess And I believe it were a very easie work for wise godly moderate men to agree about his Power And I would not seem so censorious as to proclaim that England wanteth such further than the actual want of such Agreement or just endeavours thereto doth proclaim it I am satisfied also that the Apostles themselves have de jure Successors in all that part of their work which is to be perpetuated or continued till now though not in their extraordinary Endowments and Priviledges But if the sence of your Question be Whether one Man may be the standing chief Governour of many particular Churches with their Officers having either sole power of Ordination and Jurisdiction as some would have or a Negative Voice in both as others it would seem great arrogancy in me to be the confident Determiner of such a Question which so wise learned godly sober Men have said so much of on both sides already Ad 5m. 1. He that knows how short Church History is in these Matters for the first Age after the Apostles at least and hath read impartially what Gersom Bucerus Parker Blondellus Salmasius Altare Damascen have said on one side and Saravia Downham Dr. Hammond c. on the other would sure never expect that I should presume to pass any confident Sentence in the Point And it 's like he would be somewhat moderate himself 2. I say as before I know not what you mean by Bishops I am confident that the Church was not of many Hundred years after Christ governed as ours was lately in England by a Diocesan Bishop and a Chancellor excluding almost all the Presbyters 3. Why do you say Since the Apostles days when you before spoke of the General and perpetual practice of the Church Ad 6m. The word National Church admits of divers sences As it was usually understood in England I think there was none for divers hundred years after Christ either governed by Bishops or without them They that will look after the most encouraging Presidents must look higher than National Churches Ad 7m. The Question seems not to mean any particular truly-schismatical Party of Ministers but the generality that live not under the Bishops and so I answer negatively waiting for the Accusers proof Ad 8m. 1. I know not what the Oath of Canonical Obedience is therefore cannot give a full Answer I know multitudes of Ministers ordained by Bishops that never took any such Oath 2. The Powers that violently took down the Bishops were the Secular Powers None else could use violence And it were a strange Oath for a Man to swear that he would never obey the Secular Powers if they took down the Bishops when the Holy Ghost would have us obey Heathen Persecutors 3. If it were so great a Sin to obey those Powers I conceive it must be so to the Laity as well as the Ministry And I knew but few of the Episcopal Gentry or others called to it that did refuse to take the Engagement to be true and faithful to that Power when the Presbyters here accused durst not take it
Removal 3. Let divers of these Classes meet once or twice a year in a Provincial Assembly and let the fittest Man in the Province be their standing President Hitherto there is no Concession on the Presbyterian side but that the President pro tempore be turned to a standing President nor any on the Episcopal side but that most necessary one that every Presbyter be acknowledged a Church Guide and not a meer Preacher 4. Let it be left to each Man's Conscience whether the President be called by the Name of Bishop President Superintendent Moderator c. seeing a Name is no meet Reason of a Breach 5. Let no Man be forced to express his Judgment de Iure whether the President have a Negative Voice in Ordination or Excommunication nor whether he be distinct in order or only in degree seeing it is not the unonimous and right belief concerning these things that is of Necessity for then they must have been in our Creed but the unanimous and right practice But let all agree that they will joyn in these Classical and Provincial Assemblies and then only Ordain and that they will not Ordain but when the President is one unless in case of flat necessity which is never like to befal us if this way be taken My Question now is Whether the godly moderate Episcopal and Presbyterian Divines on supposition that they can at present come no nearer to each other may not and ought not thus far to close and thus live in Christian Love and Unity seeing that we are bound to Concord in Practice so far as we agree in Judgment and seeing that if any nearer Closure be yet necessary in such United Bodies and Amicable Associations Assemblies and Correspondencies its most likely to be attained this way and indeed no other that I can as yet discern These Terms I once propounded to one most Reverend Prelate now near you who told me That with moderate Men they might suffice for an Union If you are of the same Judgment I should have the stronger hopes and if you are not I shall the sooner let them fall Were your leisure such as to admit of further trouble I would crave a word for the Resolution of my own Judgment in these Points 1. I am satisfied that the Apostles have Successors in all those Works that are of standing Necessity and that Church-Government is one of those Works and that its improbable that Christ should settle one Species of Church-Government in the Apostles Hands for an Age and then change it for ever after and that they that affirm such a Change must prove it and this Argument sticks close But then I would crave one of your strongest Arguments to prove though I know that the Presbyterians grant it that indeed the Apostles had a power by Office to Govern the Seventy or the Presbyters as inferiour Officers besides the power that they had by the meer interest of their Gifts and priviledge of being Eye-witnesses of the Works of Christ and Ear-witnesses of his Word 2. If the Apostles Examples will prove the Right of an unfixed Ambulatory Episcopacy yet I would see how it appears that ever they were fixed to particular Churches or ever any of them had a distinct and limited Diocess where the rest had not Charge as well as they 3. I am satisfied that very early after the Apostles the common Government of each Church was by a Bishop and Presbytery but I can yet see no Evidence that this Church for 150 or 200 Years was any more than one Congregation like one of our Parishes for number of People which was Congregate in a City and from the Circumjacent Villages as our Independant or Anabaptist Churches now are while the Multitude were Infidels I would therefore crave one clear Proof that the first fixed Bishops ruled any more standing Congregations having ordinary Assemblies and Communion in the Lord's Supper than one only And whether the multiplying of Believers did not make a real Change of the former Species of Government while the Bishop of the City took on him the Government of many Particular Churches who had but one before and when Bishops should have been multiplied as fast as Churches were and as Presbyters were Some Passages in the eldest Writers incline me to these Thoughts of which if they be wrong your Correction will be most acceptable May I crave if not your Solution of all these Doubts yet at least your Advice in the first Case of Practice and your Pardon of my Boldness I shall under great Obligations remain A humble Reverencer of your great Abilities and Dignity Rich. Baxter Kiderminster in Worcestershire June 8. 1655. If you return any thing Mr. Underhill at the Anchor and Bible in Paul's Church-yard will convey it me To the very Reverend and much Honoured Dr. Brownrigg Bishop of Exeter These Whereto the Bishop made this short Reply Worthy Sir I Have received your kind and â—â—â—â—teous Letter the Evidence of your very pioâ—â— and peaceable Spirit which I heartily desire may be a Provocation to others to lead them into the ways of Peace Sir Your Esteem of me and of my Abilities is the Errour of your Love and of those that have represented me to you in too great a Character quod non humiliter tantùm sed veraciter dico only I shall desire to be serviceable to God and his Church in what I am able Your Letter came to my hands at the time of my removal from Highgate into the Country here I have continued many Months suffering the trouble and pain of the Stone which which hath put me into a long and tedious Course of Physick Now I am upon my Iourney homewards from whence God willing I will write to you being truly sensible of your Religious Endeavours for so good a Work as the Composing of those woful Rents made in this Church The God of Truth and Peace guide us into the Ways of Truth and Peace to whose Grace and Blessing I do heartily recommend you resting SIR Your very respectful Friend who embraceth your Love and returns his to you very heartily Ra. Exon. Highgate July 3. 1655. And not long after I received this Answer Worthy Sir I Am indebted to you for an Answer to your Inquiries which I received from you It should have been more speedy but in truth I brought from London my crasie and ill-affected Body which since my coming home hath bred me much pain of the Stone and taken up my time in suffering those Distempers and using the Remedies prescribed to me I have now sent you my Thoughts which I doubt not but you will receive as candidly as I impart them to you The Age is quarrelsome but I apprehend you as one of a peaceable Spirit aiming only at the Settlement of our unhappy Distractions The God of Peace compose all our hearts to Peace and make the Rents of our Church to be the Matter of our chief Compassion Charitas Ecclesiae
Power that they had by the meer Interest of their Gifts and Priviledge of being Eye Witnesses of the Works of Christ and Ear Witnesses of his Words Answ. 7. The extraordinary Gifts of the Apostles and the Priviledge of being Eye and Ear Witnesses to Christ were Abilities which they had for the infallible Discharge of their Function but they were not the Ground of their Power and Authority to govern the Church That the Seventy and so other Presbyters were inferior to the Apostles and under their Government doth appear to me though at their first sending by Christ they were immediately subject to Christ the Apostles not being then established in the Government of the Church but when Christ authorised his Apostles with the Power of Government Potestas Clavium was committed to them only not to the Seventy and so we must conceive that the Colledge of Apostles were invested with the Government of the Church and the Seventy not having the Keys committed to them were under the Authority of the Apostles and so were Presbyters to the Apostles Successors Prop. 3. If the Apostles Example will prove the right of an unfixed ambulatory Episcopacy yet I would see how it appears that ever they were fixed to particular Charges or ever any of them had a distinct and limited Diocess where the rest had not Charge as well as they Answ. 8. I conceive the Apostles as Apostles had an unlimited and as you call it an unfixed ambulatory Episcopacy being sent into the whole World and not by Christ's Institution confined to any one fixed Seat but yet that hinders not but that by Consent and Agreement among themselves they might have a Distribution of their several Circuits as it is seen in the Agreement between St. Peter and St. Paul which as it did not exclude their original Power over all Churches so it did accommodate them to a more opportune Discharge of their Function and accordingly they setled their Successors in those Places not committing to them an universal Jurisdiction which was a Personal Priviledge of their Apostleship Prop. 4. I am satisfied that very early after the Apostles the common Government of each Church was by a Bishop and Presbytery but yet I can see no Evidence that this Church for 150 or 200 Years was any more than one Congregation like one of our Parishes for Number of People which was congregated in a City and from the circumjacent Villages as our Independant or Anabaptist Churches now are while the Multitude were Infidels I would therefore crave any clear Proof that the first fixed Bishops ruled any more standing Congregations having ordinarily Assemblies and Communion in the Lord's Supper than one only and whether the multiplying of Believers did not make a real Change of the former Species of Government while the Bishop of the City took on him the Government of many particular Churches who had but one before and whether Bishops should not have been multiplied as fast as Churches were and Presbyters were Answ. 9. That the Government of the Churches was not only Vicatim but Regionatim appears by those Deputies and Successors which the Apostles constituted in particular Titus is authorised to ordain and govern not one Parish but the many Churches in Crete That those primitive Bishops did employ their ordinary Function of Preaching and adminstring the Sacrament in their City of Residence may well be granted which hinders not but that they might have Inspection into the circumjacent Villages for ordaining of Presbyters and other Administrations of Government and what needed a Colledge of Presbyters residing in the City with the Bishop if they were not sent out by him to officiate in those Villages adjacent as the Number of Believers required not did the multiplying of Believers in the adjacent places require several Bishops in several Congregations independent on the City Bishop but the ordinary Discharge of those Places was committed to them in Subordination to the City-Bishop and Presbyters there assembled as occasion required In this Case it fared with the Church as in Philosophy they say it is in the matter of Nutrition and Augmentation where the form is not multiplied but only extended ad novam materiam These Answers not changing my Judgment I made the following Notes upon them Ad 1. Every Church Primae magnitudinis speciei should be as great and no greater than is capable of PERSONAL Communion as our greater Parishes and every such Church had of old a Bishop One Altar and one Bishop was Ignatius's Note of one Church and such a one may maintain divers Ministers and the Rich should not burden the Church for maintenance but help freely Ad 2. This is a President of a Synod of Bishops Ad 3. I thank you for granting Presbyters to be Church-Rectors Ad 4. If he be but a President he is but a Bishop Primi Ordinis of one Church as the rest But if he be the stated Rector of many Churches he is really an Archbishop Ad 5. This was written when our Diocesane Frame was taken down to reconcile them that were for and them that were against such Bishops pro tempore If you take liberty to cast off the Example of Cyprian's times on pretence that the Case is altered by the Kings Laws then you will never know where to rest while Laws are alterable Qu. Whether the Practice of the Church till Cyprian's time be not a probable Notice to us what was the Apostolical instituted Government If not why use you the Argument of Antiquity for Episcopacy If yea Qu. Whether Rulers may alter the Apostolick Institution and the Office and work of Presbyters may be changed on pretence that now Bishops can do it without them He that ever tryed true Discipline will find one Parish big enough for one Man's or divers Mens right Performance of it and Six hundred or a Thousand Parishes too many Alas do you think it Lawful to ordain insufficient unmeet Men if the Law of the Land so command you what then are Christ's Laws for Ad. 6. Here I granted you the major of your grand Argument for Episcopacy Ad 7. The Apostles Superiority of Power I deny not but that the Power of the Keys was given to the Apostles only I deny If Christ immediately gave it to no other yet by his Spirit he did and by the Church-Law which he left to be the Instrument of continued conveyance and Title by which the Apostles were to invest others with that Power which the Schoolmen ordinarily acknowledge to belong to Presbyters as such who may use them to the People Ad 8. 1. De facto it is no where proved truly that the Twelve or Thirteen Apostles did by consent limit their Provinces But contrarily that they Officiated together at Ierusalem and Peter if at Rome as some think he was and Paul in the same Diocess at Rome c. and Paul and Iohn at Ephesus and Timothy also as is said 2. If they had this had been
no fixing any more Diocesses in the World than Twelve or Thirteen and whoever since pretended to succeed them in those Twelve or Thirteen Diocesses 3. And if following Bishops or Princes fixt Diocesses that is no divine nor unalterable Law 4. We never read that an Apostle claimed any Diocess as proper to him or forbad any other to officiate in it or blamed them for so doing 5. It is certain that while they went themselves from Country to Country they fixed Bishops to every Church or City Act. 14. 23. Yit 1. 5 6. Ad 9. 1. The Apostles fixed not Bishops of the lowest Rank Vicatim nor Rigionatim but in every Church which was then in every City where were Christians even the same Church that had Deacons and Presbyters fixed 2. Bishops preached to Infidels to whom they were not Bishops but Preachers 3. The Christians of neighbour Villages came to the City-Church and when they had Oratories or Chappels there it made them not another Parish and excluded not such from personal Communion with the Bishops Church nor extended to such as by Distance or Numbers were uncapable of such personal Communion 4. Titus was either an ambulatory Evangelist to go about as the Apostles gathering and Setling Churches as I think or if fixed he was an Archbishop who was to settle Bishops under him in every City as Dr. Hammond judged It followeth not that a meer Bishop may have a Multitude of Churches because an Archbishop may who hath many Bishops under him 5. As the Magnitude of human Body so also of a particular Church hath its Limitation suited to its Ends Communion by Delegates or Officers only is the Case of many Churches associated But Personal Communion in Doctrine Worship Conversation and Discipline is the End of each particular Church and if you extend the Form to more than are capable of that End even to many such Societies by so doing the Species is changed § 38. About this time a reverend learned Brother Mr. Martin Iohnson being of the Judgment of Dr. Hammond and Dr. Gunning and yet a Lover of all honest peaceable Men and constant at our Meetings Lectures and Disputations was pleased to write to me about the Necessity of Episcopal Ordination I maintained that it was not necessary ad esse Ecclesiae and that he might be a true Minister who was ordained by Presbyters and that in Cases of Necessity it was a Duty to take Ordination from them He opposed this with Modesty and Judgment being a very good Logician till at last he yielded to the Truth These Letters with their Answers are added in the Appendix § 39. A little after this an Accident fell out that hindered our Concord with the Episcopal Party and is pretended at this Day by many to justifie the Silencing of all the Ministers that were afterward put out Oliver Cromwell who then usurped the Government being desired by some to forbid all Ministers of all Parties whatsoever to officiate who were notoriously insufficient or scandalous taketh hence Occasion to put in with the rest all those that took part with the King against the Parliament and so by offending them hindred our Agreement with them which provoked me then to protest against it and publish my Judgment against the hindering of any Man to preach the Gospel upon the Ground of such Civil Controversies as those § 40. And about the same time Experience in my Pastoral Charge convinced me that publick Preaching is not all the ordinary Work of a faithful Minister and that personal Conference with every one about the State of their own Souls together with Catechising is a Work of very great Necessity For the Custom in England is only to catechise the younger sort and that but by teaching them the Words of the Catechism in the Liturgy which we thought besides the Doctrine of the Sacrament had little more explicatory than the Words themselves of the Creed Lord's Prayer and Decalogue Therefore I propounded the Business to the Ministers and they all upon Debate consented that I should â—â—rn our brief Confession into a Catechism and draw up a Form of Agreement for the Practising of that Duty I drew up the Catechism in Two leaves in 8 vâ— comprehending 〈◊〉 is necessary to be believed consented to and practised in as narrow â— room and just a Method as I thought agreeable to the Peoples Understandings And I proposed a Form of Agreement for the Practice which might engage the 〈…〉 to go through with the Work And when I brought it in it was conseâ—â—ed to and subscribed and many neighbouring Ministers of other Countries desired to join with us and we printed the Catechism and Agreement together § 41. Of all the Works that ever I 〈◊〉 this yielded me most Comfort in the practice of it All Men thought that the People especially the ancienter sort would never have submitted to this Course and so that it would have come to nothing But God gave me a 〈◊〉 willing People and gave me also interest in them and when I had 〈◊〉 and my People had given a good Example to other Parishes and especially the Ministers so 〈◊〉 concurring that none gainsayed us it prevailed much with the Parishes 〈◊〉 I set two Days Week apart for this Employment 〈◊〉 faithful unwearied Assistant and my self took fourteen Families every Week those in the Town came to us to our Houses those in the Parish my Assistant 〈…〉 to 〈◊〉 Houses besides what a Curate did at a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 to us a Family only being present as a 〈◊〉 and no Stranger admitted after that I first helpâ— them to understand it and next enquired modestly into the State of their Souls and lastly endeavoured to set all home to the convincing awakening and resolving of their Hearts according to their several Conditions bestowing about an Hour and the Labour of a Sermon with every Family and I found it so effectual through the Blessing of God that few went away without some seeming Humiliation Conviction and Purpose and Promise for a holy Life and except half a dozen or thereabouts of the most ignorant and senseless all the Families in the Town came to me and though the first time they came with Fear and Backwardness after that they longed for their turn to come again So that I hope God did good to many by it And yet this was not all the Comfort I had in it § 42. For my Brethren appointing me to preach to them about it on a Day of Humiliation at Worcester when we set upon it I printed the Sermon prepared for that use with necessary Additions containing Reasons and Directions for this Work in a Book called The Reformed Pastor which excited so many others to take the Course that we had taken that it was a far greater Addition to my Comfort than the profiting of the Parish or County where we lived Yea a Reverend Pastor from Switzerland wrote me word that it excited
Coactive Power but where it must be used that it be by Magistrates And that your Execution be not annexed to their Iudgments nor any Man punished by you meerly because he is Excommunicate that is sorely punished by them 3. Every stated full Congregation that had unum Altare was by Divine Institution to have a Bishop of their own or many if they could be had which Bishops were called Elders also in the Scripture And for Order sake where there were many of these the Churches soon placed the Precedency and Moderatorship in one whom they called by Eminency the Bishop 4. Because in the beginning there were no stated Churches or Altars ordinarily but in Towns and Cities therefore the same Apostles that ordained Elders in every Church are said also to appoint that they be Ordained 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oppidatim in every Town or City And it being long before the Villages had Churches they were the Parish or Diocess of the Bishops of the Town And when Rural Bishops were placed in those Churches they were subjected to the City Bishops when every Church as in the beginning should have had a Bishop of their own 5. If you will return to the Scripture Pattern every stated Congregation that hath one Altar must have Pastors that have the Government of the People and if you will return to the primitive Episcopacy eminently so called every one of these Churches should have a Bishop with Fellow Presbyters as his Collegues or Deacons at least in smaller Churches 6. If you will return to the first and lowest degree of Corruption of Church-Order you must have a Bishop and Presbytery in every City and Town only such as our Corporations and Boroughs are who must take care also of the adjacent Villages 7. For the maintaining of Unity and Concord and Edifying each other by Communion these Bishops held ordinary Synods or Meetings in which by Agreements called Canons no proper Laws they bound up themselves in things of mutable Determination and also tied themselves to their Duties 8. Besides these particular Bishops there were General Overseers of the Church such as the Apostles Evangelists and others that fixed not themselves in relation to any one particular Church but the Care of many And that these have Successors in this ordinary part of their Work we do not gainsay But we humbly crave that if our Diocesans will be such they be taken for Archbishops or General Pastors and that they take only a General Charge of the Flock overseeing the particular Pastors or Bishops and receiving Appeals in some Special Cases and not a particular Charge of each Soul as the particular Bishops have And therefore that they be not charged with ordinary Confirming or admitting into the state of Adult Members all the People which will bind them in Conscience to know and try them all or most Nor yet to receive Presentments of all Scandals nor to Excommunicate and absolve or impose Publick Penitence on all that these belong to 9. If these things may not be granted we must be bold to leave our Testimony that Diocesans assuming the particular Government of all the People in so many Churches as they have in England are destructive 1. To the very being of all the particular Churches save the Cathedral or City where they are It being that old Maxim Ubi non est Episcopus non est Ecclesia viz. in sensu politica 2. And to the Pastoral Office of Christ's Institution 3. And to the most ancient Episcopacy Whenas by the establishing of these Parochial Bishops at least Oppidatim the Diocesans may become of great use for the Work of General Oversight We refuse not General Officers so they overthrow not the particular Officers and Churches As if General Officers in an Army or Navy would be the sole Commanders and depose all the Captains and consequently make the Discipline impossible 10. We most earnestly beseech your Majesty that in Matters of Doctrine Discipline and Worship the Modes and Circumstances and Ceremonies may not be made more necessary to our Ordination Institution Ministration or Communion than God hath made them either in Scripture or in the Nature of the thing lest they be still the Engines of our Divisions and Calamity but that we may hold our Concord and Communion in Necessary things according to the Primitive Simplicity and may have Liberty in things Unnecessary as to Subscriptions Promises and Practice that so the Churches may have Peace and Charity in both And that our Discipline which operateth on the Will may not be corrupted by unnecessary and unseasonable violence nor any permitted much less constrained to be Members of our Churches and Communion that vilifie such Priviledges and cannot be moved by our Exhortations nor feel the weight of a meer Excommunication Though a gentle Force is necessary to compel the Learners or Catechumens to submit to the necessary means of their Instruction and to restrain the petulant from abusing the Worship and Worshippers of the Lord. He that will rather be cast out of the Church by Excommunication than repent and amend his wicked Life is so unfit to be a Member of the Church that it is most unfit to drive him into it by Imprisonment Mulcts or Secular Force And this is that which doth corrupt and undo the Church I shall here Annex Archbishop Usher's Model of Government which we now also presented The Reduction of Episcopacy unto the Form of Synodical Government received in the Ancient Church proposed in the Year 1641. as an Expedient for the prevention of those Troubles which afterwards did arise about the Matter of Church-Government Episcopal and Presbyterial Government conjoyned BY the Order of the Church of England all Presbyters are charged to minister the Doctrine and Sacraments and the Discipline of Christ as the Lord hath commanded and as this Realm hath received the same And that we might the better understand what the Lord had commanded therein the Exhortation of St. Paul to the Elders of the Church of Ephesus is appointed to be read unto them at the time of their Ordination Take heed unto your selves and to all the Flock among whom the Holy Ghost hath made you Overseers to rule the Congregation of God which he hath purchased with his Blood Of the many Elders who in common thus ruled the Church of Ephesus there was one President whom our Saviour in his Epistle to the Church in a peculiar manner stileth the Angel of the Church of Ephesus And Ignatius in another Epistle written about twelve Years after to the same Church calleth the Bishop thereof Betwixt which Bishop and the Presbytery of that Church what an harmonious Consent there was in the ordering the Church-Government the same Ignatius doth fully there declare by the Presbytery with d St. Paul understanding the Company of the rest of the Presbytery or Elders who then had a Hand not only in the delivery of the Doctrine and Sacraments but also
Consecrated Bread and Wine which is here omitted The Minister is causelesly tied to meet the Corps just at the Church Style and to use the oft-repeated Lord have Mercy upon us Christ have Mercy upon us Lord have Mercy upon us And it is a Confusion perilous to the living that we are to presume that all we bury be of one sort viz. Elect and Saved when contrarily we see multitudes die without any such Signs of Repentance as rational Charity can judge sincere It is disorder that Women be not at all required beforehand to desire any publick Prayers for their safe Deliverance and yet when they are delivered that a Thanksgiving on the Lord's Days such as is for other great Deliverances will not serve the turn without a special Office which if performed on the Lord's Day will be an Impediment or Disturbance to the publick Worship And while an inconvenient Psalms and Repetitions and Responds be used the Prayer is defective as will appear by comparing it with what we offer It is a perilous Disorder that Penance as it is called be used by notorious Sinners at a stated time the beginning of Lent which should be used rightly to restore the Person whenever he is fallen And this is not to be wished in this Disorder to be restored again no more than that Physick be given only at Lent in acute Diseases which must be medicated out of Hand In the repeating of the Curses the People should be better taught to know the difference of the Law and Gospel and then that excellent dehortation may be well used But this pertaineth to the ordinary preaching of the Word Of the Responds and the doubtful Phrase thou hatest nothing tâ—at thou hast made we have spoke before Other Omissions and Disorders appear by comparing it with what we offer We only add upon the whole these further general Remarks 1. It is a great Disorder that we have so many Prayers instead of many Petitions in one Prayer The Gravity and Seriousness requisite in our Prayers to God and the Examples left on Record in Scripture do persuade us when we have many Petitions at once to put up to God which all have a Connexion in Nature and Necessity that there should be such a Connexion of our Desires and Requests and many of them should constitute one Prayer whereas the Common-Prayer-Book in its numerous Collects doth make oft times as many Prayers as Petitions and we undecently begin with a solemn Preface and as Solemnly conclude and then begin again as if before every Petition of the Lord's Prayer we should repeat Our Father which art in Heaven and after every Petition For thine is the Kingdom the Power and the Glory Yet we deny not that when we have but some one Particular Request to put up without Connexion with others we may then make a Prayer of that alone 2. Hence it comes to pass that the holy and reverend Name of God is made the matter of unnecessary Tautologies while half the Prayer is made up of his Attributes and Addresses to him and with Conclusions containing the Mention of his Name and Kingdom and the Merits of his Son even in holy Worship we should fear using God's Name unreverently and in vain 3. And it is a great Disorder that so much of the publick Prayers should be uttered by the People as in the Responds and that they only should put up the petitioning part while the Minister doth but suggest to them or recite the Matter of the Petitions as in the Litany seeing the Minister is by Office to be the Mouth of the People and God and Scripture intimateth that ordinarily their Part was but to say Amen and it seemeth to many sober People who are much offended at it to be a very confused and unseeâ—â— Murmur that is caused in most Congregations by the Peoples speaking Especially when in reading the Psalms the People say every second Verse which cannot be heard and understood by such as cannot read or have no Books and then the other Verse which the Minister saith is not understood because we hear not the annexed Verse which containeth part of the Sense And so the whole reading Psalms are almost as in Latin to them that cannot read themselves And that all this is really Disorder and contrary to Edification appeareth both in the Reason of the thing and in that the Prayers mentioned in Scripture are of another Order and in that they are not according to the Method of the Lord's Prayer which is the perfect Rule of Prayer in all universal Prayers which consists not of occasional Particulars and in that the most sensible experienced praying Christians find it by Experience to hinder their Edification and their Testimony should be preferred before that of ignorant unexperienced partial or ungodly Men or at least a Course taken which is agreeable to both sorts and hindereth the Edification of neither And lastly those very Men that will not reform any of this Disorder in the Liturgy do nauseate and condemn the Prayers of a weak Minister or private Christian if they have but the fourth part of the very like Disorders Repetitions Tautologies or Defects as the Liturgy hath For these Reasons a proportionable Reformation is desired Besides all forementioned there is in two months space no less than one hundred and nine Chapters of the Apocrypha appointed to be read as Lessons just in the time manner and Title as the Chapter of the holy Scriptures be even the Stories of Tobit and Iudith being part and also of Bel and the Dragon and Susanna which Protestants hold to be but Fables But those Exceptions which we actually offered to the Bishops were as follows The Exceptions against the Book of Common-Prayer ACknowledging with all humility and thankfulness his Majesty's most Princely Condescention and Indulgence to very many of his Loyal Subjects as well in his Majesty's most gracious Declaration as particularly in this present Commission issued forth in pursuance thereof we doubt not but the right Reverend Bishops and all the rest of his Majesty's Commissioners intrusted in this Work will in imitation of his Majesty's most prudent and Christian Moderation and Clemency judge it their Duty what we find to be the Apostles own Practice in a special manner to be tender of the Churches Peace to bear with the Infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves nor to measure the Consciences of other Men by the Light and Latitude of their own but seriously and readily to consider and advise of such Expedients as may most conduce to the healing of our Breaches and uniting those that differ And albeit we have an high and honourable esteem of those godly and learned Bishops and others who were the first Compilers of the publick Liturgy and do look upon it as an excellent and worthy Work for that time when the Church of England made her first step out of such a Mist of Popish Ignorance and Superstition wherein
his Congregation a Church worshipped many years without singing Psalms and Sacraments forsooth because he took them not then for a Church I must suspend my Answer to them and all such tho' I know the Papists will take it for a Confutation of all my writings against them to say his own brethren Prosestants and Dissenters have proved him a Lyer This I must bear from Separating Non-conformists while the Justices that bind and trouble me openly declare me innocent And I am told that the Papists will not endure me to write against the Separatists no more than against themselves because they need their help to pull down the Godly Parish Ministers § 87. Many French Ministers sentenced to Death and Banishment fly hither for refuge And the Church men relieve them not because they are not for English Diocesans and Conformity And others have many of their own distressed Ministers and acquaintance to relieve that few are able But the Chief that now I can do is to help such and the Silences Ministers here and the poor as the Almoner of a few Liberal friends who trust me with their Charity § 88. As to the present State of England the Plots the Execution of Men High and Low the Publick Counsels and Designs the Quality and Practice of Judges and Bishops the Sessions and Justices the quality of the Clergy and the Universities and Patrons the Church-Government by the Keys by Lay-Civilians the usage of Ministers and private Meetings for Preaching or Prayer the Expectations of what is next to be done c. The Reader must expect none of this sort of History from me No doubt but there will be many Volumes of it by others transmitted to posterity who may do it more fully than I can now do § 89. Ianuary Seventeenth I was forced again to be carried to the Sessions and after divers daies good words which put me in expectation of freedom when I was gone one Justice Sir Decerham said that it 's like that these persons solicited so for my liberty that they might come to hear me in Conventicles and on that they bound me again in Four hundred pound bond for above a Quarter of a year and so it 's like it will be till I die or worse Tho' no one ever accused me for any Conventicle or Preaching since they took all my Books and Goods above two years ago and I for the most part keep my bed § 90. Mr. Ienkins dyed in Newgate this week Ianuary Nineteenth 1684 5. as Mr. Bampfield Mr. Raphson and others died lately before him The Prison where are so many suffocateth the Spirits of aged Ministers But blessed be God that gave them so long time to Preach before at cheaper rates § 61. One Richard Baxter a Sabbatarian Anabaptist was sent to Gaol for refusing the Oath of Allegiance and it went for currant that it was I. § 92. Mr. Rosewell did so fully plead his own Case and prove his innocency and prove the Confederacy incompetency and falshood of the Witnesses that tho' alas the Jury found him guilty of Treason even the Chief Justice and Judges were convinced of his innocency and at last procured his Pardon and deliverance Innocency with humility and great ability were his advantages improved and withall that he had few Enemies APPENDIX A Reply to some Exceptions against our Worcestershire Agreement and my Christian Concord Written by a nameless Author and sent by Dr. Warmstrye Honoured and Worthy Sir Salutem Officia in Christo Iesu Autore Salutis Except Sect. 1. FOR Christian Concord Mr. Baxter cannot write more willingly nor you be more strongly inclined to meet any such motion then you well know the Hearts of very many of your Brethren to be already agreed in that And I believe I have given you evidence in all my former Discourses with you uncontradicted by any action of mine that I the meanest of the servants of your Order do make it the butt and aime of all my weak Studies and Labours in order to the glory and service of God and Christ our Lord who hath so hightly injoyned it 2. But this bars us not but obliges us well to consider whether this Worcester Agreement be a true Union in Ecclesiastical Peace or the carrying on a Schismatical Combination reaching to enclose in the Episcopal Divines also â—3 That they may now at length by this approve of the Presbyters Declaration to the World of the no necessity of continuing their Canonical Obedience to their Bishops in Christ which was the first wheel that set a work this sad Revolution the ejecting out of the Church I mean out of their principal proper place in the Church the Bishops and Pastors the Successors of the Apostles in the Church whether this be so or no I say I must request you to judge by considering Reply to Sect 1. I shall not unwillingly believe and acknowledge that your love to Concord is greater than mine when I see you more zealously seeking it and hear of your Motions and moderate Rational Attempts to that end And I shall begin to hope well of you when you are but willing to accept such motions from any others or at least not to hinder the Concord of your Brethren 2. Schismarical Combinations are against the United Churches or the United Members of one particular Church We unite or combine against no such-Churches or Members nor against any thing but prophaneness and wickedness and against the disunion discord and alienation of Brethren and the utter neglect of the Ordinances of Christ. Our utmost care and endeavour is to heal a Schism and if they that do their best to heal it lamenting it daily as the great sin and calamity of the Churches and making it the chiefest part of their Studies with unsatiable longings to see it accomplished looking for no wordly advantage by the work having no Lordly Honours nor Dignities of their own to engage for which might byass them nay most prodigally casting away their Reputation with all the contenders of every Party accounting nothing in this world dear to them for the healing of our Divisions and waiting on God in earnest Prayer daily for success concerning all which the Righteous God is better acquainted with my heart and ways than this Contender I say if yet we are not only Schismaticks but Schismatical in these very attempts I know not yet how we shall escape that sin I hope God will not impute that to me which this Writer doth and that as he will not impute my Prayers and Endeavours against Drunkenness Covetousness and Contentions of Neighbours to be indeed Drunkenness Covetousness or Contention so neither will be impute my earnest Prayers and endeavours against Schism and Discord to be Schismatical But Schism is not the same thing in one Mans mouth as in anothers It is the unhappiness of each Party or Schismatical Faction to make to themselves a new Center of union which God never made and then all must
the same all are not of the Church that are in the Parish there are three sorts of the Parish 1. Communicants and those are the Church 2. Meer Hearers and Catechical Persons and these are Candidates 3. Aliens Atheists Infidels and Papists Hereticks Men of no Church or other Churches Parish-Churches as combined parts of a Christian Kingdom or National Church thus distinguished from Aliens Auditors and not only tolerated but orderly combined maintained encouraged are the most regular Churches agreeable to Scripture Reason and Antiquity Quest. 3. Suppose the Parish-Churches should be no true Churches is it destructive to particular Churches to join with the Parish-Assemblies Answ. No who can dream that Families and Neighbours and occasional Meetings may not Worship God or that such Worship destroys Churches Did Corâ—lius's Meeting Acts 18. or those Acts 12. 12. or these that Acts 20. prayed at an Oratory nor the Water destroy the Church 2. Occasion Communicants are not bound to try the Call of the Ministers where they come and have no Vote but to take them according to visible Profession and Possession and if the Ministers should prove uncalled the Loss would be to themselves and not to the Faithful that are blameless and have right to the Childrens Bread though a Iudas or a Pharisee distribute it But the Separatists Object that pretended Churches which are not true are worse than occasional Assemblies that pretend it not Answ. 1. whether they are worse or better is nothing to this Question of destroying Churches 2. The liker they are to true Churches the liker they are to be better than those that are unlike them 3. The Officiating of a true Minister may make that a true temporary Church which is not a constant setled Church 4. It is far liker that many separating Congregations will prove no true lawful Churches for want of true Ministers and other Causes and yet it will not follow that all that join with them destroy true Churches for some under Government may do it blamelesly and they that do it sinfully may yet own true Churches every Sin destroys not other Churches 5. It is a Duty for Members of a Church to get what good they can by all Christians whether they be regular Churches or not Quest. 4. Suppose the Parish-Assemblies to be particular Churches are the Corruptions in them so great as that we must separate from them or would it not be Schism so to do Answ. There are many sorts of Separation It is Schism to call them no true Churches of Christ or such as it is not lawful to hold Communion with and to separate on that account and this I have oft proved in Print so fully that I must not now repeat it But there are many Occasions which may warrant and necessitate a meer local Separation as I have fully proved in many Treatises as if any Sin be imposed and Communion denied to those that will not Sin those Men do not separate but are driven out by Separatists or Tyrants and must not give over all Church Worship of God because Tyrants forbid it them Many other Instances of lawful local Separation I have published which I cannot find any have confuted no nor denyed Quest. 5. Whether there are not in congregational Churches such things which are not plainly instituted in Scripture Answ. Congregational is a sorry Word as here used in distinction from Parish-Churches Parish-Churches are Congregational they consist of Pastors and Christian Communicants joined for Personal Communion and Independents and Separatists much differ many Independants are against Separation the old Nonconformists both Presbyterians and Independants were judged the Parish-Churches that had tolerable Ministers to be true Churches and Independents greatly differ among themselves some are sound in the Faith and some are unfound some are for Infant Church-Membership and Covenant Grace and some against it some are for self-made Covenants and Terms of Church-entrance and Communion and for the Peoples Power of the Keys and against Ordination and many other Errors which others do renounce And remember it is one thing to be Independants by Agreement as Neighbour Churches and another thing to be dependant as Subjects on governing Churches And it is one thing to be Independant on equal Neighbour Churches and another thing to be independant on a superior Ministry The Churches of Rome Corinth Galatia Ephesus and the rest were independant on each other as to Government but they were dependant on the Apostles and Evangelists Paul Barnabas Luke Mark Silas Timothy Titus and Apollos c. as to Oversight and dependant on other Churches as Fellow-members of the same Universal Body as the Members of our Bodies are 3. I know no Churches to happy as to have nothing that is not particularly yea or generally instituted in Scripture yea and that obtruded on the People O! when will God make them wiser some Independant Ministers and Churches have Catholick Charitable Uniting Principles But the separating part who are they that have so many and great Defects and Faults as I have in my former Writing enumerated and need not here again recite but advise you impartially to review them Quest. 6. Whether every Person who doth join with such a Church doth not become as guilty of the Sin of such a Church as those do that join with the Church of England Answ. This Question intimateth that you know not what the Church of England is It is nothing but a Christian Kingdom consisting of a Christian supreme Power and combined Christians and Churches governed by that Power it is not Liturgies nor Ceremonies that essentiate the Church of England Orthodox Godly Presbyterians and Independants who deny not a Christian Kingdom of Christian Churches though differing in many thing are all parts of the true Church of England But I suppose you mean the Conformists which are but a part 2. One is guilty of the Faults of the Conformists by their bare Presence and Communion who do not consent to those Faults and if bare Presence signified Consent we must avoid Communion with all Churches on Earth for who are Sinless And all must avoid us and how shall we avoid our selves who sin in all we do 3. But when People causelesly separate and unchurch other Churches far â—ounder than their own and falsely accuse them yea and almost all Christ's Churches these Fifteen Hsndred Years as those now called Separatists usually do I think your ordinary joining with such when you may have sounder Communion is a sinful Encouragement of them in their Schism justly leaveth you under the Imputation of Schism and requireth great Humiliation and Reformation being greater than some great private Sins as publick Cases are more important than private but I am loath to say all that I judge true against the present separating Way lest I be mistaken as if I would render them odious or be against the necessary Toleration of the Week I have truly told the World near Forty Years ago that I am past
in Scripture than that Baptism was appointed for our Entrance upon our State of Disciples in general And Ergo if a Man may be a visible Disciple without it where it seemeth most necessary then much more may he be admitted into a particular Church afterward without it when at least it is no more necessary and indeed much less and not at all save only as universal Church-Member this is pre-requisite to particular The Ministers of Christ Baptized 2000 without asking the Consent of any particular Church 2. They that are under both a Precept making the use of instituted Ordinances their Duty and a Promise of Acceptance in the Performance must perform these Duties with belief of their Acceptance But such are these that you account unbaptized Ergo That they are under a Command is plain All the Precepts for Christian Communion and not forsaking the assembling of our selves and obeying those that rule over us c. are made to the whole visible Church that hath Opportunity for such Communion you will not think that our Sin as you take it can except us from an Obligation to Duty But all the Question is whether such Duty will be accepted if performed by the unbaptized as you now suppose them and this you grant professing your self that you are out of doubt that we are very well accepted of God and you think that it is accounted for Baptism to us And if you yield both that we are bound to the Duty and shall have Acceptance in particular Church Communion what is it then besides the regularity that you deny Do you not grant the Cause in Hand And we have many Promises of Acceptance of Believers in their sincere Endeavours and all things are pure to the Pure And if involuntary unavoidable Mistakes shall hinder our Acceptance when we are sincere then we can never be sure that we are accepted 3. It is but visibility that is requisite in a Church or Member to make them capable of our Communion If it be a Communion of Christians as Christians or Saints as Saints that particular Churches are to hold withal that consent and are Members of their Churches then Christianity or visible Sanctity in such Consenters is all that is of Necessity to such Communion But the Antecedent is plain As it is as Christians that we must inwardly love one another so it is as Christians that we must manifest that Love in holy Communion Communion is the Demonstration of Love and all Men must know us to be Christ's Disciples by our loving one another and therefore if any Man be but a visible Christian it 's plain that he 's capable of your Communion if he cohabits and consent else it were not formalitur a Communion of Saints or Christians but of something else Now you confess that Men are visible Christians that are to you unbaptized 4. There is no such thing as a universal visible Church that is not to use Eucharistical Communion nor any parts of it that have opportunity Your similitude of Corporations in a Republick holds in some things but hath this dissimilitude that all Christ's Republick should consist of such Corporations except a Person that is a Merchant Traveller Embassador or by some extraordinary Necessity is denied Opportunity which Rarities are not here of Consideration And whereas in Republicks it may be as commodious for rural Villages to be not incorporate as for Cities to be incorporate and their Priviledges in their Nation may be as great and they are not obliged to incorporate none of this is so in our Case But every visible Christian not hindered by Necessity is bound to incorporate and charged not to forsake the Assemblies but all to join and speak the same things and Glorify God with one Mouth c. And he that is not a visible Christian hath no visible Right to our Christian Communion And he that is a visible Christian and depriveth himself of this Communion sinneth and wrongeth his own Soul and as it were out-laws himself and is not as you suppose in your Comparison of the not-incorporate But though in some Cases such may be saved as deny instituted Communion and Worship or neglect it yet they do so far put themselves into the State of those without 5. Your Opinion sets up a new kind of Church or Christian Assemblies and Communion of such as may only hear and Pray and not have Eucharistical Communion and be under Church-Guidance Shew us any such in Scripture if you can 6. Heathens or Infidels are called to a natural Worship of God Ergo visible Christians are called to more 7. Faith it self hath its Office formally by Institution though its aptitude thereto be in the Nature of the thing And if the Gospel it self be supernatural and our Christianity and Faith an instituted thing as well as Sacrament and Governors and so the universal visible Church an Institution as well as a particular then certainly want of Baptism will no more keep a visible Christian out of the particular instituted Church than out of the universal because as to the Point of Institution there is no such Reason as can make a Difference 8. The great and excellent part of Church Communion is that which you call natural Worship as performed by Believers in the loving God in Christ and admiring and magnifying his Love in the Riches of the Grace of Redemption and seeking with all Saints to comprehend it hearing his Counsels and Commands praying for his Grace and Glory and praising and magnifying him in Faith and Hope and Love with our Eye upon the second Coming of our Lord. And that which you call Instituted Order and Worship is but the means to this and without this but a Shell It is subservient to it And therefore 1. They that are capable of the greater are capable of the less Heathens are bound to meer natural Worship and their Hearing and Praying is another thing and Obligation and Capacity differ 2. They that must do the work must do it in God's way and by his means The great internal Worship is as the Soul and the external as the Body which are to be distinguished but not separated Must one sort of Christians have the Soul of holy Communion without the Body and carry the Knife naked while you deny them the Sheath 9. If a Member of the Universal visible Church as such is pro tempore to be admitted to Communion in all Ordinances with any particular Church where they come then these that you acknowledge such visible Members must by you be so admitted and so are capable of Communion in instituted Ordinances but the Antecedent is true beyond Dispute None of the Apostles were Members of particular Churches but were as Itinerants to do their work in many Countries so was it with abundance of Itinerant Preachers of those times called their Companions and Fellow Labourers and Helpers as Barnabas Luke Mark Silus Timothy Titus Epaphroditus Apollos c. When Paul came
Lives in the attempt The three Commanders for the Parliament in Pembrookshire raised an Army against them viz. Major General Langhorn Collonel Powel and Collonel Poyer The Scots raised a great Army under the Command of the Duke of Hamilton The Kentish Men rose under the Command of the Lord Goring and others and the Essex Men under Sir Charles Lucas But God's time was not come and the Spirit of Pride and Schism must be known to the World by its Effects Duke Hamilton's Army was easily routed in Lancashire and he taken and the scattered Parts pursued till they came to nothing Langhorn with the Pembrookshire Men was totally routed by Collonel Horton and all the chief Commanders being taken Prisoners it fell to Collonel Poyer's Lot to be shot to Death The Kentish Men were driven out of Kent into Essex being foiled at Maidstone And in Colchester they endured a long and grievous Siege and yielding at last Sir Charles Lucas and another or two were shot to Death and thus all the Succors of the King were defeated § 91. Never to this time when Cromwell had taught his Agitators to govern and could not easily unteach it them again there arose a Party who adhered to the Principles of their agreement of the People which suited not with his Designs And to make them odious he denominated them Levellers as if they intended to level Men of all Qualities and Estates while he discountenanced them he discontented them and being discontented they endeavoured to discontent the Army and at last appointed a Randezvouz at Burford to make Head against him But Cromwell whose Diligence and Dispatch was a great Cause of his Successes had presently his Brother Desborough and some other Regiments ready to surprise them there in their Quarters before they could get their Numbers together So that about 1500 being scattered and taken and some slain the Levellers War was crusht in the Egg and Thompson one of Captain Pitchford's Corporals aforementioned who became their chief Leader was pursued near Wielingborough in Northamptonshire and there slain while he defended himself § 92. As I have past over many Battles Sieges and great Actions of the Wars as not belonging to my purpose so I have passed over Cromwell's March into Scotland to help the Covenanters when Montross was too strong for them and I shall pass over his Transportation into Ireland and his speedy Conquest of the remaining Forces and Fortresses of that Kingdom his taking the Isles of Man of Iersey Garnsey and Scilly and such other of his Successes and speak only in brief of what he did to the change of the Government and to the exalting of himself and of his Confidents And I will pass over the Londoners Petitions for the King and their Carriage towards the House which looked like a force and exasperated them so that the Speakers of both Houses the Earl of Manchester and Mr. Lenthall did with the greater part of the present Members go forth to Cromwell and make some kind of Confederacy with the Army and took them for their Protectors against the Citizens Also their votings and unvoting in these Cases c. § 93. The King being at the Isle of Wight the Parliament sent him some Propositions to be consented to in order to his Restoration The King granted many of them and some he granted not The Scottish Commissioners thought the Conditions more dishonourable to the King than was consistant with their Covenant and Duty and protested against them for which the Parliament blamed them as hinderers of the desired Peace The chiefest thing which the King stuck at was the utter abolishing of Episcopacy and alienating theirs and the Dean and Chapters Lands Hereupon with the Commissioners certain Divines were sent down to satisfie the King viz. Mr. Steph. Marshall Mr. Rich. Vines Dr. Lazarus Seaman c. who were met by many of the King 's Divines Archbishop Usher Dr. Hammond Dr. Sheldon c. The Debates here being in Writing were published and each Party thought they had the better and the Parliaments Divines came off with great Honour But for my part I confess these two things against them though Persons whom I highly honoured 1. That they seem not to me to have answered satisfactorily to the main Argument fetcht from the Apostles own Government with which Saravia had inclined me to some Episcopacy before though Miracles and Infallibility were Apostolical temporary Priviledges yet Church Government is an ordinary thing to be continued And therefore as the Apostles had Successors as they were Preachers I see not but that they must have Successors as Church Governors And it seemeth unlikely to me that Christ should settle a Form of Government in his Church which was to continue but for one Age and then to be transformed into another Species Could I be sure what was the Government in the Days of the Apostles themselves I should be satisfied what should be the Government now 2. They seem not to me to have taken the Course which should have setled these distracted Churches Instead of disputing against all Episcopacy they should have changed Diocesan Prelacy into such an Episcopacy as the Conscience of the King might have admitted and as was agreeable to that which the Church had in the two or three first Ages I confess Mr. Vines wrote to me as their excuse in this and other Matters of the Assembly that the Parliament tied them up from treating or disputing of any thing at all but what they appointed or proposed to them But I think plain dealing with such Leaders had been best and to have told them this is our Iudgment and in the matters of God and his Church we will serve you according to our Judgment or not at all But indeed if they were not of one Mind among themselves this could not be expected Archbishop Usher there took the rightest course who offered the King his Reduction of Episcopacy to the form of Presbytery And he told me himself that before the King had refused it but at the Isle of Wight he accepted it and as he would not when others would so others would not when he would And when our present King Charles II. came in we tendered it for Union to him and then he would not And thus the true moderate healing terms are always rejected by them that stand on the higher Ground though accepted by them that are lower and cannot have what they will From whence it is easy to perceive whether Prosperity or Adversity the Highest or the Lowest be ordinarily the greater Hinderer of the Churches Unity and Peace I know that if the Divines and Parliament had agreed for a moderate Episcopacy with the King some Presbyterians of Scotland would have been against it and many Independants of England and the Army would have made i◠the matter of odious Accusations and Clamours But all this had been of no great regard to remove foreseeing judicious Men from those healing Counsels which must
But this increase of Godliness was not in all places alike For in some places where the Ministers were formal or ignorant or weak and imprudent contentious or negligent the Parishes were as bad as heretofore And in some places where the Ministers had excellent parts and holy lives and thirsted after the good of Souls and wholly devoted themselves their time and strength and estates thereunto and thought no pains or cost too much there abundance were converted to serious Godliness And with those of a middle state usually they had a middle measure of Success And I must add this to the true Information of Posterity That God did so wonderfully bless the Labours of his unanimous faithful Ministers that had it not been for the Faction of the Prelatists on one side that drew men off and the Factions of the giddy and turbulent Sectaries on the other side who pull'd down all Government cried down the Ministers and broke all into Confusion and made the People at their wits end not knowing what Religion to be of together with some laziness and selfishness in many of the Ministry I say had it not been for these Impediments England had been like in a quarter of an Age to have become a Land of Saints and a Pattern of Holiness to all the World and the unmatchable Paradise of the Earth Never were such fair opportunities to sanctifie a Nation lost and trodden under foot as have been in this Land of late Woe be to them that were the Causes of it § 140. In our Association in this County though we made our Terms large enough for all Episcopal Presbyterians and Independants there was not one Presbyterian joyned with us that I know of for I knew but of one in all the County Mr. Tho. Hall nor one Independant though two or three honest ones said nothing against us nor one of the New Prelatical way Dr. Hammond's but three or four moderate Conformists that were for the old Episcopacy and all the rest were meer Catholicks Men of no Faction nor siding with any Party but owning that which was good in all as far as they could discern it and upon a Concord in so much laying out themselves for the great Ends of their Ministry the Peoples Edification § 141. And the increase of Sectaries among us was much through the weakness or the faultiness of Ministers And it made me remember that Sects have most abounded when the Gospel hath most prospered and God hath been doing the greatest works in the World As first in the Apostles and the Primitive Times and then when Christian Emperours were assisting the Church and then when Reformation prospered in Germany and lately in New-England where Godliness most flourished and last of all here when so pleasant a Spring had raised all our hopes And our Impatience of weak Peoples Errours and Dissent did make the Business worse whilst every weak Minister that could not or would not do that for his People which belonged to his place was presently crying out against the Magistrates for suffering these Errours and thinking the Sword must do that which the Word should do And it is a wicked thing in Men to desire with the Papists that the People were rather blind than purblind and that they might rather know nothing than mistake in some few Points and to be more troubled that a man contradicteth us in the Point of Infant Baptism or Church Government than that many of the People are sottishly careless of their own Salvation He that never regardeth the Word of God is not like to Err much about it Men will sooner fall out about Gold or Pearls than Swine or Asses will § 142. All this while that I abode at Kidderminster though the Rulers that then were made an Order that no Sequestred Minister should have his fifth part unless he removed out of the Parish where he had been Minister yet did I never remove the old Sequestred Vicar so much as out of his Vicaridge House no nor once came within the Doors of it so far was I from Seizing on it as my own or removing him out of the Town But he lived in peace and quietness with us and reformed his Life and lived without any Scandal or Offensiveness and I never heard that he spake an ill word of me And yet as soon as the times were changed the instigation of others made him as malapart again as if he had been awakened out of a sleepy Innocence § 143. About this time Cromwell set up his Major Generals and the Decimation of the Estates of the Royalists called Delinquents to maintain them And Iames Berry was made Major General of Worcestershire Shropshire Herefordshire and North-Wales the Countreys in which he had formerly lived as a Servant a Clark of Iron-works His reign was modest and short but hated and scorned by the Gentry that had known his Inferiority so that it had been better for him to have chosen a stranger place And yet many of them attended him as submissively as if they had honoured him so significant a thing is power and prosperity with worldly minds § 144. I come now to the End of Cromwell's Reign who died of a Fever before he was aware He escaped the Attempts of many that sought to have dispatched him sooner but could not escape the stroke of God when his appointed Time was come Though an Independant praying for him said Lord we ask not for his Life for that we are sure of but that he may serve thee better than ever he had done to the dishonour of that Presumption which some men call a particular Faith that is A believing that they shall receive whatever they ask if they can but stedfastly believe that they shall receive it though it be such as they have no other promise for but that of Hearing believing Prayers which they misunderstand Never man was highlier extolled and never man was baselier reported of and vilified than this man No meer man was better and worse spoken of than he according as mens Interests led their Judgments The Soldiers and Sectaries most highly magnified him till he began to seek the Crown and the Establishment of his Family And then there were so many that would be Half-Kings themselves that a King did seem intollerable to them The Royalists abhorred him as a most perfidious Hypocriâ—e and the Presbyterians thought him little better in his management of publick matters It after so many others I may speak my Opinion of him I think that having been a Prodigal in his Youth and afterward changed to a zealous Religiousness he meant honestly in the main and was pious and conscionable in the main course of his Life till Prosperity and Success corrupted him that at his first entrance into the Wars being but a Captain of Horse he had a special care to get religious men into his Troop These men were of greater understanding than common Soldiers and therefore were more apprehensive of
Schism and Herefie come to be opened it will not be found to lye where you imagin nor so easily proved as rashly affirmed or intimated 2. Do not be too sensible of Persecution when Liberty of Conscience is so proclaimed though the Restriction be somewhat on your side O the difference of your Persecution and theirs that suffered by you 3. The only conscionable and safe way for the Church and your own Souls is to love long for pray and consult for Peace Close in the unanimous practice of so much as all are agreed in In amicable Meetings endeavour the healing of all breaches Disown the ungodly of all Parties Lay by the new violent Opinions inconsistant with Unity I expect not that this advice should please the prejudiced But that it 's the only safe and comfortable way is the Confident Opinion of Your Brother Richard Baxter All the Disturbance I had in my own Parish was by Sir Ralph Clare's refusing to Communicate with us unless I would give it him kneeling on a distinct Day and not with those that received it fitting To which Demand I gave him this following Answer SIR UPon Consultation with others and my own Conscience I return this Answer to your last motion beseeching you to believe that it had been more pleasing if it would have stood with the pleasing of God and any own Conscience 1. In general it is my resolution to be so far from being the Author of any Divisions in any part of the Church of Christ as that I shall do all that lawfully I can to avoid them 2. I am so far from the Judgment and Practices of the late Prelates of England in point of compelling all to obey or imitate them in gestures and other indifferent things on pain of being deprived of God's greatest Ordinances which are not indifferents beside the ruine of their Estates c. that I would become all things lawful to all Men for their good and as I know that the Kingdom of God standeth not in such things so neither would I shut any out of his visible Kingdom for such things as judging that our Office is to see God's Law obeyed as far as we can procure it and not to be Law-gives to the Church our selves and in Circumstantials to make no more Determinations than are necessary left they prove but Engines to ensnare Mens Consciences and to divide the Church And as I would impose no such things on other Churches if I had power so neither will I do it on this Church of which I have some oversight 3. More particularly I am certain that sitting in the receiving of the Lord's Supper is lawful or else Christ and his Apostles and all his Churches for many hundred years after him did sin which cannot be And I take it to be intolerable arrogancy and unmannerliness to speak easily to call that unreverence and sawciness as many do which Christ and the Apostles and all the Church so long used with one consent He better knew what pleaseth himself than we do The vain pretended difference between the Apostles Gesture and ours is nothing to the matter He that sitteth on the Ground sitteth as well as he that sitteth on a Stool And if any difference were it was their Gesture that seems the more homely and no such difference can be pretended in the Christian Churches many hundred years after And I think it is a naked pretence having no shew of reason to cover it of them that against all this will plead a necessity of kneeling because of our unworthiness For 1. The Churches of so long time were unworthy as well as we 2. We may kneel as low as the Dust and on our bare knees if we please immediately before in praying for a blessing and for the pardon of our sins and as soon as we have done 3. Man must not by his own Conceits make those things necessary to the Church which Christ and his Church for so long thought unnecessary 4. On this pretence we might refuse the Sacrament it self for they are more unworthy to eat the Flesh of Christ and to drink his blood than to sit at his Table 5. The Gospel is Glad Tidings the Effects of it are Faith and Peace and Joy the Benefits are to make us one with Christ and to be his Spouse and Members the work of it is the joyful Commemoration of these Benefits and living in Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost And the Sacramental Signs are such as suit the Benefits and Duties If therefore Christ have called us by his Example and the Example of all his Church to sit with him at his Table to represent Our Union Communion and joyful redeemed State and our everlasting sitting with him at his Table in his Kingdom it as little beseems us to reject this Mercy and Duty because of our Unworthiness as to be our own Lawgivers And on the like Reasons men might say I will not be united to thee nor be a Member of thy Body or married to thee nor sit with thee on thy Throne Rev. 3. 21. according to thy Promise because it would be too great sawciness in me Gospel Mercies and Gospel Duties and Signs must be all suited and so Christ hath done them and we may not undo them 4. I must profess that upon such Considerations I am not certain that sitting is not of commanded Necessity as I am sure it is lawful nor am I certain that kneeling in the Act of Receiving when done of choice is not a flat sin For I know it is not only against Scripture Example where though Circumstances apparently occasional bind not as an upper Room c. yet that 's nothing to others but also it is against the Canons of Councils yea a General Council at Trull in Constantinople and against so concurrent a Judgment and Practice of the Church for many hundred years that it seems to fight with Vincentius Lerinens Catholick Rule quod semper ubique ab omnibus receptum c. Let them therefore justifie kneeling as lawful that can for I cannot and therefore dare not do that which shall be an owning of it when we may freely do otherwise 5. Yet for all this I so much incline to Thoughts of Peace and Closure with others that I will not say that sitting is of necessity nor that kneeling is unlawful unless where other Circumstances make it so nor condemn any that differ from me herein Yea if I could not otherwise Communicate with the Church in the Sacrament I would take it kneeling myself as being certain that the Sacrament is a Duty and not certain that kneeling is a sin and in that Case I believe it is not 6. As for them that think kneeling a Duty because of the Canons of the late Bishops enjoyning it I have more to say against their Judgment than this Paper will contain Only in a word 1. If it be the Secular Powers establishing those Canons that binds
their Consciences Why do they not obey the present Secular Powers in all other things It is known the King consented to relax this And however this is little to them that go on the Ground of Divine or Ecclesiastical Right And if we must so plunge our selves into Enquiries after the Rights of Secular Governours before we can know whether to stand or set at the Sacrament we are all uncertain what to do in greater Matters for there are as apparent grounds for our uncertainty of five hundred years old and more which this is no place to dive into And it would be as unlawful on this ground to read any other Psalm or Chapter but what was of old appointed for the Day as to forbear kneeling at the Sacrament And perhaps on the Opponents grounds it would be still as sinful to restrain a Child or Servant from Dancing on the Lord's Day And if it be Ecclesiastical Authority that they stick at that must be derived from Christ and so Originally Divine or it is none And then not to wade so unseasonably into the main Controversie 1. Before they have proved their Legislative Authority 2. And that this Congregation is Iure Divino part of their Charge and under their Jurisdiction 3. And that they had power to contradict the Examples of Christ and his Apostles herein and the constant practice of the Primitive Church and the Canons of Councils even General Councils 4. And that their Canons are yet in force against all these I say before all this be well done we shall find that there must go more than a slight Supposition to the making good of their Cause According to their own Principles a lower Power cannot reverse the Acts of a higher But the General Councils Nice and Constantinople that forbad Kneeling on any Lord's Day was a higher Power than the English Convocation Ergo The English Convocation cannot Repeal its Acts. Though for my own part I think that neither of their Acts do need any Repeal to Null them to us in such Cases 5. Besides this if these Canons bind Conscience yet it is either by the Authority that Enacted them or by the Authority of the present Church-Governours that impose them If old Canons bind without or against the present Power then the same Canon that forbiddeth Kneeling bindeth and many an hundred more a great part of which are now made no Conscience of If it be the present Authority that is above the Ancient then 1. They that pretend to such Authority over this Congregation should produce and exercise it For if we know them not not receive any Commands from them we are capable of no Disobedience to them 2. And in the mean time We that are in the place must take it as our Charge or do the Work or for ought I know it will in most Places be undone For the Authority is for the Work 3. We use to take it for the great partiality at least of the Church of Rome that will be judged by none but the present Church that is themselves when we would be tried by the Scripture or the Ancient Church In a word I do not think that when Circumstances tending to Order and Decency are so mutable that God ever gave power to any Bishops to tie all Congregations and Ages to this or that Sacrament Gesture nor at all to make them so necessary as that Bodily Punishment or Excommunications should be inflicted on the Neglecters of them And I think that Calling which hath no better Work than this to do is not worth the regarding And here I should propound to the contrary-minded one Question Whether if a Bishop should command them to stand or sit they would do it Yea or if a Convocation commanded it If they say Yea then must they lay by all their Arguments from pretended irreverence to prove Sitting evil for I hope they would not be irreverent nor do evil at the command of a Bishop or Convocation And then let our Authority from Scripture Example and the Universal Church and a General Council and the present Secular Power and the late Assembly and Parliaments and the present Pastors or Presbyters of the Congregations I say let all this be set against the present Countermand of I know not who nor for what Reason as being not visible But if they say They would not obey the Bishops if they forbad them Kneeling then let them justifie us that obey them not when they command us to Kneel having so much as is expressed to the contrary Thus Sir I have first given you my Reasons about the Gesture it self And of putting it into each Persons hands I have thus much more to say 1. I know nothing to oblige me to it 2. Christ himself did otherwise as appeareth in Matth. 26. 26 27. For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 take ye eat ye drink ye all of it doth shew that it was given to them all in general and not to each man singly 3. And in this also Antiquity is on my side the contrary being much later More Reasons I have that I shall not now trouble you with To this I may well add That no Man can have any Rational pretence that I know of against the Receiving of the Sacrament upon such a General Delivery 1. Because the contrary was never yet pleaded necessary Iure Divino that I know of 2. And if it were a Sin it would be the Ministers Sin so to deliver it and not theirs who as they have not the Rule of his Actions so they shall not Answer for them Having thus told you my thoughts of the Matters in doubt I shall next tell you my purpose as to your Motion 1. I did never hitherto to my remembrance refuse to give the Sacrament to any one meerly because they would not take it Sitting or Standing nor did ever forbid or repel any on that account nor ever mean to do If any of my Charge shall take it Standing or Kneeling I shall not forbid them on any such account 2. If they further expect that I should put it into each Man's hands individually I may well expect the liberty of guiding my own Actions according to my own Conscience if I may not guide theirs It is enough that in such Cases they will refuse to be Ruled by me they should not also usurp the ruling of me but let us be equal and let me have my liberty as I am willing to let them have theirs and if I sin they are not guilty of it Nor have they any ground to refuse the Sacrament rather than so take it 3. Yet if any of my Pastoral Charge shall be unsatisfied if they will but hear my Reasons first and if those Reasons convince them not if they will profess that they think it a Sin against God for them to Receive the Sacrament unless it be put into their hands Kneeling and Ergo that they dare not in Conscience take it otherwise I do purpose to
omnes omnium Charitates inse complectitur Sir I have sent you my Answer written with a more legible hand and with some regard of ease to my self in transcribing with my very hearty love recommended and assured to you I commend you to the Grace and Blessing of Almighty God resting Your very respectful Friend Ra. Exon. Austie in Hartfordshire Iuly 21. 1655. Bishop Brownrigg ' s Answer about Government Prop. 1. YOur first Proposal is In every Parish where there are more Presbyters than one let one be the Chief and his Consent chiefly taken in the guidance of the Church Answ. 1. This Case is rarely to be found in the Parishes of England nor can there be a sufficient Maintenance for a Plurality of Presbyters in our Parochial Congregations yet if such be found it may be a good means to preserve Order and Peace that the ordering of Affairs which shall be referred to them be managed by him that hath the Praesecture of that Parish I wish that in those Churches which beside the Incumbent have had Lecturers this Rule had been observed Prop. 2. Let many such Churches be associated call it a Classis or what you will and let the fittest Man be their President as long as he is fit that is during life unless he deserve a removal Answ. 2. This Proposal looks like our Rural Deaneries or Choriepiscopal Order which hath been laid much aside but for the reducing of it and to make it profitable I wish that it may be bounded with fit Canons prescribing what they may do and with intimation from the Bishop and his Inspection and that such a Dean or President may be continued for Life that being a means to breed Experience if he do not deserve a removal Prop. 3. Let divers of these Classes meet once or twice a Year in a Provincial Assembly and let the fitâ—est Man in the Province be their standing President Answ. 3. This Course hath been by Law and Practice already used in our Church in the Archidiaconal Visitations and Synods which may be more quickened and actuated by sit Canons for their Direction what and who the President must be may be provided for by Canons and his Station continued and that Presbyters having Cure of Souls should not be accounted meer Preachers but Church-Guides and as they are already acknowledged Rectors of Churches Prop. 4. Let it be left to every Man's Conscience Whether the President be called by the Name of Bishop President Superintendent Moderator c. seeing that a Name is no meet Reason of a Breach c. Answ. 4. If by President you understand him that must moderate the Half-year or yearly Synods under the Inspection of the Diocesan as his Order may be newly framed so his Name may be newly imposed but that the Primitive Name of Bishop should be turned into a new Name is as you say no meet Reason for a Breach and we see Presbyters assume that Name to themselves and to put a new Name upon an old Institution is as Augustine speaks in the like Case Indoctis struere fallaciam doctis facere injuriam Prop. 5. Let no Man be forced to Express his Iudgment de Jure Whether the President have a Negative Voice in Ordination or Excommunication or whether he be distinct in Order or Degree seeing it is not the unanimous and right Belief of these things that is of Necessity for then they must have been in our Creed but the unanimous and right Practice but let them all agree that they will constantly joyn in these Classical and Provincial Assemblies and then only Ordain and that they will not Ordain but when the President is one unless in Case of flat Necessity which is never like to befall us if this may be takenâ— Answ. 5. If by President you understand the Diocesan then that the Bishop should be deprived of his Negative Voice in Ordination or Excommunication and so I conceive in other Censures and Acts of Government is to make him a meer Shadow without any Authority like our Scrutators in our University to propound Graces and collect Suffrages and pronounce Sentence Surely St. Paul invested Timothy and Titus with more Power and Authority both for Ordination and Censures but then to remedy the Inconveniencies of a wilful Negative it 's fit that an Appeal may be made to a Provincial Synod that may examine and if need be rectifie what was amiss in the Negative That Church Businesses were Ordered by the Concurrence of more Presbyters besides the Bishop in Cyprian's time was fit at that time when the Government of Church Affairs was Arbitrary and not Regulated by Law in which Case it was safest for the Bishop to have the Consent of others with him This is not our Case we have express Canons and Laws laid upon Bishops beyond which they cannot go and so may well be intrusted with the Execution of the Sentence of the Law the Sentence of the Judge being only Declarativa Executiva and if he transgress those Rules prefixed he is liable to Censure In our Church plurimum legi minimum Episcopo relinquitur as we see in Civil Matters one Justice of Peace hath the Power of Executing the Sentence of a Law or Statute but no Arbitrary Power granted to him That the Bishop be distinct from the Presbyter whether ordine or gradu is the Schoolmens Debate and I conceive may have such accord as may not ingender strife That Ordination be by the Assistance of Presbyters is already required in our Form of Ordination and if it be fixed to the Times of Synods it may be easily granted and sure that Blame that hath been laid upon our Bishops for Ordaining of insufficient Men is most what an undue Charge the Law of the Land hath set that lowness of sufficiency in Men to be ordained and instituted that if a Bishop refuseth to give Orders or Institution to a Man presented by the Patron he is punishable by the Judges As I have heard Archbishop Abbot was fined an Hundred pounds in case he did not admit a Clark so meanly qualified as the Law requires Some other Proposals are added in the End of your Letter Prop. 1. I Am satisfied that the Apostles have Successors in all those Works that are of standing Necessity and that Church Government is one of those Works and that it is improbable that Christ should settle one Species of Church Government in the Apostles Hands for an Age and then Change it for ever after and they that affirm such a change must prove it Answ. 6. Supposing what the Apostles did in ordering of Church Government to be in the Name and by the Authority of Christ this Assertion I conceive to be very true and it doth infer a Subordination of all Officers and Members of the Church to the Apostles and those that were their Successors Prop. 2. Whether the Apostles had a Power by Office to govern the LXX and the Presbyters as inferior Officers besides the
from their Churches Answ. No but consent to improve the common Truths and perform our Duties even to such as differ from us in this Object 3. There is not one of an hundred of them that will consent to these Terms Answ. If they will not who can help it when we have tried them we have done our Duty and left them without Excuse Object 4. Shall we confess a Schismatical Church for a true Church Answ. Every Schism nulleth not the Church or Ministry that is guilty of it else most of the Churches in the World were nulled If they reject the Essentials of a Church they are none Object 5. Baptism is Essential to a Church The Apostle Heb. 6. 1. putteth it among the Principles Answ. 1. It is only the thing signified by Baptism that is Essential 2. The Apostle calls it a Principle because it is one of the first things taught but not because it is Essential to a Church 3. The Anabaptists have Baptism in their Churches though not of Infants Object 6. To make a League with Schsmaticks is to be guilty of their Schism Answ. True If by that League you own approve or consent to their Schism But not by agreeing with them to perform Common Duties Object 7. They are undermining the Church and Ministry and shall we seek peace with such Answ. 1. Those that we speak of are not such 2. If they were yet it is our Duty to hinder them by agreeing to moderate Ways and Common Duties Object 8. They are guilty of their Infants Damnation as much as in them lyeth by not believing their part in the Covenant nor dedicating them to God Answ. They virtually consent for their Infants in that they would actually do it if they knew the Promise Object 9. They are under God's visible Displeasure Ergo c. Answ. So far as God disowneth them we must do so but no further Object 10. We shall be reproached as complying with them Answ. Slanderous Tongues cannot excuse us from plain Duties Object 11. Those whom we should Excommunicate we may not have Communion with But the Anabaptists should be Excommunicated Ergo c. Answ. I deny the Minor taken of such Anabaptists as we have now in question Object 12. It is a scandalous Sin unrepented of Answ. 1. So is many a greater Errour which Men must not be Excommunicated for 2. It is virtually repented of seeing if they knew the Evil of it they would repent Object 13. You would have a looser Discipline than the Prelates or Papists for they would not Communicate with Anabaptists Answ. 1. I only avoid dividing rigour and cruelty 2. They have Multitudes in their Communion that know not what Baptism is nor to what use nor who Christ is whether God or Man nor many other Fundamentals Ergo Their Discipline is far looser than I desire but too partial also The Anabaptists object We are bound to propagate the Truth and if you will have Communion with us you must be baptized Answ. 1. You are bound to propagate first the greatest Truths that Salvation lyeth on and to do nothing that may hinder this by promoting your own Opinions 2. If you reject Communion with all but Anabaptists you reject all the Church through most Ages of the World And no Church no Christ and no Christ no Christians nor any Salvation 3. Blame us not if we be not easily brought to your Opinion if we had but these Reasons 1. You confess no thanks to you that Infants were once Church-Members by God's appointment and have never yet proved that he cast them out again And we must have good proof of that before we can be satisfied with your way 2. We cannot be hasty to believe an Evil and we know that it is a sad Penal Evil for Infants to be put out of the Church And Ergo we will have proof of it before we believe it 3. It must be no easie matter with us to believe that the Head and Shepherd of the Church hath de facto had a Church of a false Constitution as to the very Materials and Enterance from the beginning to this day except a few within this twenty years that troubled it in a Corner of the World and that now in the end of the World we must expect a right Constitution as if Christ had slept or regarded not his Church or been the Head of a Body which he disowned We cannot hastily believe such things I say again No Church no Christ for No Body no Head And if no Christ then there is no Christ now Take heed therefore how you unâ—Church or difown the whole Church of Christ in the very frame for so many Ages An Offer of Christian fraternal Communion to the Brethren that are against or doubtful about Baptizing Infants of Believers IT is our exceeding Joy that we have all one God one Saviour one Spirit one Faith and one Baptismal Covenant one Rule of Faith and Life one End and Hope and are Members of one Catholick Church and agree about God's Worship in the most and greatest parts And it is our Grief and the Matter of our great Humiliation that we can come no nearer and that by the Remnants of our Differences the Wicked are so hardened the Weak offended our Charity hindered our holy Communion and mutual Edification disturbed our Minds discomposed and the Gospel the Catholick Church and our Saviour dishonoured Lamenting this with the rest of our Unhappiness while we are in the Flesh and absent from the Lord the Centre of Perfect Unity and Concord and knowing it to be our Duty to walk by the same Rule and mind the same things so far as we have attained and being taught of God to love one another and observing how frequently and urgently Brotherly Love and Forbearance and the Unity and Concord of Christians is prest in the holy Scriptures and Uncharitableness and Divisions condemned that as far as may be we may promote our Common Ends of Christianity and with one Mind and Mouth may glorifie God We whose Names are under-written do make this following Offer of Communion 1. To all those that joyn with us in the foregoing Profession of the Christian Faith and have been Baptized since their Infant-Baptism as thinking it unlawful or insufficient we offer free Communion in our particular Churches with leave to Enter your dissent from our Infant-Baptism into the Church-Register or Records so be it you will thence-forth walk in that Love and Holiness and that Obedience to the faithful Overseers of the Flock and that Concord and Brotherly Communion with the Church as is required in the holy Scriptures according to your power and will resist Uncharitableness Discord and Divisions and joyn with us in our Common Work for the Common Ends. 2. To all those that joyn with us in the foregoing Profession of Faith though they have been baptized since their Infant-Baptism or think that Baptism unlawful and dare not hold Local Communion with us in
Errours have divided and distracted the Christian Churches and one would think Experience should save us from them § 53. But the Brethren resolved that they would hold on the way which they had begun And though they were honest and competently judicious Men yet those that managed the Business did want the Judgment and Accurateness which such a Work required though they would think any Man supercilious that should tell them so And the tincture of Faction stuck so upon their Minds that it hindered their Judgment The great doer of all that worded the Articles was Dr. Owen Mr. Nye and Dr. Goodwin and Mr. Syd Sympson were his Assistants and Dr. Cheynell his Scribe Mr. Marshall a sober worthy Man did something the rest sober Orthodox Men said little but suffered the Heat of the rest to carry all § 54. When I saw they would not change their Method I saw also that there was nothing for me and others of my Mind to do but only to hinder them from doing harm and trusting in their own Opinions or crude Conceirs among our Fundamentals And presently Dr. Owen in extolling the Holy Scriptures put in that That no Man could know God to Salvation by any other means I told him that this was neither a Fundamental nor a Truth and that if among the Papists or any others a poor Christian should believe by the teaching of another without ever knowing that there is a Scripture he should be saved because it is promised that whoever believed should be saved He said awhile That there could be no other way of Saving Revelation of Jesus Christ I told him that he was savingly revealed by Preaching many years before the New Testament was written He told us that the Primitive Church was bound to believe no more from the Apostles but what was written before in the Old Testament and proved thence I told him that by that Assertion he subverted the Christian Church and Faith 1. By overthrowing the Material 2. and the Formal Object of our Faith or the medium necessary thereto 1. For the Matter it is not in the Old Testament That this Iesus is the Christ that he is already incarnate conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary fulfilled the Law suffered was crucified buried and rose again ascended into Heaven and is there at the right hand of God in our Nature and therein intercedeth for the Church that he hath instituted the Sacraments sent his Apostles given the Holy Ghost to them to direct them into all Truth c. with more of the like 2. That if Christ and his Apostles were not to be believed for the Image of God appearing on their Doctrine and the Divine Attestation of Miracles confirming it then Moses and the Prophets were not for those Reasons to be believed And consequently not to be believed at all for there was no reason to believe them which Christ also gave us not for the belief of him and his Apostles After a deal of wrangling about these Things because the Doctor was the hotter and better befriended in that Assembly and I was then under great Weakness and Soporous or Scotomatical Ilness of my Head I asked their leave to give them the Reasons of my Opinion in Writing which I brought in and never received any Answer to it And yet if Mr. Vines who came but seldom had not stuck to me when he was there they would have made the World believe as some of them endeavoured that I was Popish and pleaded for the Sufficiency of Tradition to Salvation without the Scripture But Bishop Usher was of the same mind with me and told me that he had said the same to the Iesuits Challenge Cap. de Tradit § 55. Many other such crude and unsound Passages like the Savoy Articles of Justification after put into the Independant Agreement had come into our New Fundamentals And all because the over-Orthodox Doctors Owen and Cheynell took it to be their Duty in all their Fundamentals to put in those words which as they said did obviate the Heresies and Errours of the Divines Whenas I told them they should make the Rule to look no way but strait forward and put in their Rejections after as the Synod of Dort doth as being the Contradictions of the Rule One merry passage I remember occasioned laughter Mr. Sympson caused them to make this a Fundamental That He that alloweth himself or others in any known sin cannot be saved I pleaded against the word allowed and told them that many a Thousand lived in wilful sin which they could not be said to allow themselves in but confessed it to be sin and went on against Conscience and yet were impenitent and in a state of Death And that there seemed a little contradiction between known sin and allowed so far as a Man knoweth that he sinneth he doth not allow that is approve it Other Exceptions there were but they would have their way and my opposition to any thing did but heighten their Resolution At last I told them As stiff as they were in their opinion and way I would force them with one word to change or blot out all that Fundamental I urged them to take my wager and they would not believe me but marvelled what I meant I told them that the Parliament took the Independant way of Separation to be a sin and when this Article came before them they would say By our Brethrens own Judgment we are all damned Men if we allow the Independants or 〈◊〉 other Sectaries in their sin They gave me no Answer but they left out all that Fundamental The Papers which I gave them in were these Without the Knowledge of whom by the Revelation of Scripture there is no Salvation The Words by the Revelation of the Scripture I desired might be either here left out or changed into the Revelation of the Gospel or the Word of God To this you will not consent because it would intimate that there may be another co-ordinate way of Revealing Christ besides the written Word by which there may be Salvation I cannot subscribe to the Article as it stands of which when I have shewed the point of our Difference I shall give you my Reasons 1. Our Difference is not de doctrina tradita but de modo tradendi For I have fully acknowledged that there is no Salvation without the Knowledge of the Essentials of the Christian Faith 2. And that the Light of Nature and Book of the Creatures is insufficient hereunto So far we are agreed as to the way of the Revelation 3. Nor do I doubt of the full Perfection of the Scripture but detest the Popish Doctrines of Traditions or unwritten Verities to supply what is supposed to be wanting in the Scripture as if it were but a part of God's Word for the revealing of these supernatural things I desired rather that you would more fully express the Scriptures Perfection and Infallability 4. Nor is it any doubt
manifested that the Western Creed now called the Apostles wanting two or three Clauses that now are in it was not only before the Nicene Creed but of such farther Antiquity that no beginning of it below the Apostles Days can be found So it is past doubt that in other Words the Churches had still a Symbol or Sum of their Belief which was the Test of the Orthodox and that which the Catechumeni were to be instructed in Origen Tertullian Irenaeus to speak of none of these below them do mention and recite them The Doctrine of this Creed they affirm themselves to have received from the Apostles by verbal Tradition as well as by Writing This then hath been a collateral way of delivering down the saving Truths of the Gospel though a far more imperfect way than by the Scriptures 4. Another means hath been by Parents teaching these Principles to their Children which as they were commanded to do and did before the writing of the Gospel so did they successively continue it as a collateral way 5. Another collateral means was in the constant use of the Lord's Supper in Commemoration of Christ's Death till he come to receive us to Glory where the very Sum and all the Fundamentals of our Religion are contained which hath been continued by uninterrupted Succession even from the time that preceded the writing of the Scriptures it is therefore conceived possible for some Souls to be converted in darker parts of the World by these or some of these means without the written Word 3. The ancient Doctors of the Church affirmed that they had their Doctrine from the Apostles by verbal as well as by written Tradition Yea and that if there were no Scripture yet Tradition might resolve the Doubts against the Hereticks and that in those Days which were nearer the Spring-Head Tradition was a better way than Scripture to confute Hereticks as Tertullian de Praescript at large and Irenaeus's Words are well known Whether in this they mistake or not I don't determine yet certainly this may tell us that we cannot conclude that there was then no co-ordinate way of delivering down the Sum of Christian Verity 4. He that will prove your negative Assertion must either know all the World and that de facto there is among them no such Tradition or else must have some Revelation from God that there is not any such nor shall be But we have neither of these Ergo we cannot certainly conclude it 5. We see by Experience that more in substance of other common Precepts and History can be delivered down to Posterity by other means without formal Records Ergo so may these For though they cannot have the golden Cabinet of Scripture but from the Spirit nor without the Spirit can Men believe Yet the Truths may be remembred and delivered as aforesaid 6. God can deliver the Marrow of the Gospel by other means than the Writing and he hath not told us that he will not Ergo for ought we know he doth 7. We ought not absolutely to exclude extraordinary means when God hath not tyed himself from them It is a dangerous Sin of them that leave the ordinary means and look out for extraordinary as Spirit of Prophesy Angels c. But to conclude that God will never reveal Christ by an Angel to one that hath not the Scripture is more than we may do I know not therefore why it is that you would not be prevailed with so much as to add the Word ordinarily when yet it 's by some affirmed to be your Sense and by all that it is your Duty to deliver your Sense as plain as you may So much of my Reasons against the certainty of the Truth of your Assertion 3. I next add that it seems not a Point so weighty as to cast out all that are different from us in this Opinion My Reasons are 1. From the Nature of the Thing 1. It hath so much to be said against the very Truth of it and so is doubtful 2. There can no ill Consequences be manifested to rise from the contrary Opinion Much less so ill as to deserve such a Censure It is no wrong to Scripture that there is a more imperfect collateral way of delivering some part of the same Truths no more than it is a wrong to Scripture that the Law of Nature delivers some other Part of them 2. From the Persons that were of the Opinion contrary to your Assertion who were the ancient Doctors of the Churches and many of the most learned judicious and godly of the Reformed Divines as I undertake to manifest when I have Opportunity and it is necessary For my own part if it were only my self that should be cast out by this Engine I should say the less but as I know not how many Hundred may be of the same Mind and as I think it to be the most common Judgment of Divines so I know such here among us of that Mind with whom I am not worthy to be named who would not subscribe to this your Assertion whereby it seems to me to be more tollerable to diffent from you 4. Seeing you have voted to lay down only Fundamentals to Salvation first and upon that Vote have put this as one you do not only damn all that believe any other way than by the written Word but you damn all those that will not damn them by owning this condemning Article Now that it is not Fundamental appears 1. In that the Fathers and choicest reformed Divines were else no Christians 2. No Creed of the ancient Churches did contain it 3. It is not of necessity to our believing on Christ the Foundation A Man may be brought himself by the Scripture to believe that yet thinks another may believe by verbal Tradition 4. No Scripture doth expresly no not implicitly deliver it much less as a Fundamental 5. My next Reason was that your Assertion and Reason are injurious to the Christian Cause For 1. When Gospel Truth is delivered down by two Hands you wrong it when you cut off one when neither is needless 2. We are able by other ways of Proof to confute those Infidels that deny the Authority of Scripture especially when they tell us that we cannot prove that our Doctrine was delivered from Christ and his Apostles and not since devised or corrupted by later Hands Now you would force our Arguments out of our Hands to the Advantage of the Enemy Upon the Experience of some late Debates with subtil Apostates now Infidels I am bold with Submission to say that I would not for all the World so wound the Christian Cause as it is wounded by those who bereave the Scripture of the Advantage of other Tradition And think that a Bible found by the way by one that never heard of it hath the same Advantages to procure Belief as Scripture and Scripture-Doctrine and matters of Fact delivered to us by the Hand of certain Tradition And 3. By the
of the nearer Ends The Holy Ghost as Illuminating and so Revealing by the Instrumentality of the Word is in Efficiency and Dignity above the Word 3. The Apostles themselves were in order of Efficiency above the Writing or Letter of the Word though in order of Dignity the Scripture is above them 4. The Ministry and Teaching of Parents is as to the Original both subordinate to Scripture as commanded by it and co-ordiante as instituted and enjoyned before it by verbal Precept and doth still acknowledge this double obligation But it is subordinate to Scripture in Dignity and as to the nearer End 5. The same is true of Baptism and other Ordinances mentioned already 6. The delivery of the Scriptures down to our hands 1. As to acquaint us with the Canonical Books 2. And that these are all 3. And that they are uncorrupted in Matters of moment is in efficiency a co-ordinate Means of Revelation for it is not out of Scripture only that it receiveth its force but as to the End and the Dignity it is subordinate to the Scripture These things seeming thus to my apprehension I cannot yet acknowledge it a Truth that no Means of Revealing Christ is co-ordinate with the Scriptures I need to say no more to the Necessity and Fundamentality than I said in my last Paper I earnestly crave that the offering of these Reasons as my Diffent may not be offensive to you seeing I apprehend the Case to impose on me a Necessity there being no Means in the World that I remember more like to be an Engine to tear in pieces the Church than an unfound composure of Fundamentals I mean an Imposing of those Things as Fundamental which are not found whereby the most deserving may be ejected from the Ministry and censured to Damnation We are framing a Means of Union and not of Division And though it grieves me to be offensive to my Brethren yet had I rather suffer any thing in the World than be guilty of putting among our Fundamentals one word that is not true The Christian Faith hath been ever the same since the Apostles days and I find not that ever the Churches Fundamentals contained such an Article as this The Scripture nor the Assembly's Confession have none such that I know of The word Co-ordinate is so ambiguous that it is unfit to lay so great a stress upon it and the use of it here yet more perswades me that it had been better for us to adhere to Scripture Terms R. B. § 56. At last Twenty of their Propositions were printed for the Parliament But the Parliament was dissolved and all came to nothing and that Labour was lost § 57. At this time the Lord Broghill and the Earl of Warwick brought me to Preach before Cromwell the Protector which was the only time that ever I preached to him save once long before when he was an inferiour Man among other Auditors I knew not which way to provoke him better to his Duty than by Preaching on 1 Cor. 1. 10. against the Divisions and Distractions of the Church and shewing how mischievous a thing it was for Politicians to maintain such Divisions for their own Ends that they might fish in troubled waters and keep the Church by its Divisions in a state of Weakness lest it should be able to offend them and to shew the Necessity and Means of Union But the plainness and nearness I heard was displeasing to him and his Courtiers but they put it up § 58. A while after Cromwell sent to speak with me and when I came in the presence only of three of his chief Men he began a long and tedious Speech to me of God's Providence in the Change of the Government and how God had owned it and what great things had been done at home and abroad in the Peace with Spain and Holland c. When he had wearied us all with speaking thus slowly about an hour I told him It was too great Condescension to acquaint me so fully with all these Matters which were above me but I told him that we took our Ancient Monarchy to be a Blessing and not an Evil to the Land and humbly craved his Patience that I might ask him How England had ever forfeited that Blessing and unto whom the Forfeiture was made I was fain to speak of the Species of Government only for they had lately made it Treason by a Law to speak for the Person of the King Upon that Question he was awakened into some Passion and told me it was no Forfeiture but God had Changed it as pleased him and then he let fly at the Parliament which thwarted him and especially by name at four or five of those Members which were my chief Acquaintance and I presumed to defend them against his Passion and thus four or five hours were spent § 59. A few days after he sent for me again to hear my Judgment about Liberberty of Conscience which he pretended to be most zealous for before almost all his Privy Council where after another slow tedious Speech of his I told him a little of my Judgment And when two of his Company had spun out a great deal more of the time in such like tedious but meer ignorant Speeches some four or five hours being spent I told him that if he would be at the labour to read it I could tell him more of my mind in Writing in two Sheets than in that way of Speaking in many days and that I had a Paper on that Subject by me written for a Friend which if he would peruse and allow for the change of the Person he would know my Sense He received the Paper after but I scarce believe that he ever read it for I saw that what he learned must be from himself being more disposed to speak many hours than to hear one and little heeding what another said when he had spoken himself § 60. While I lodged at the Lord Broghill's a certain Person was importunate to speak with me Dr. Niâ—â— Gibbon who shutting the Doors on us that there might be no Witnesses drew forth a Scheme of Theology and told me how long a Journey he had once taken towards me and engaged me patiently to hear him open to me his Scheme which he said was the very thing that I had been long groping after and contained the only Terms and Method to resolve all Doubts whatever in Divinity and unite all Christians through the World And there was none of them printed but what he kept himself and he communicated them only to such as were prepared which he thought I was because I was 1. Searching 2. Impartial and 3. A Lover of Method I thank him and heard him above an hour in silence and after two or three days talk with him I found all his Frame the Contrivance of a very strong Head-piece was secretly and cunningly fitted to usher in a Socinian Popery or a mixture of Popery and half Socinianism
Duties will permit I have done my part in urging you and them with my offer till you call me unto more In the mean time Madam may I intreat you to read impartâ—ally and deliberately 1. My little Book called The Trâ—â— Catholick and Catholick Church c. which I shall send or bring you 2. My Preface before the Disputation with Mr. Iohnson and the Letters in the end and the Second Part and then the first 3. My two first Books against Popery The Safe Religion and The Key For your former reading of them before any doubting had made you observe the stress of Arguments is nothing if you will but now read them again impartially after your contrary Conceptions continue a Papist if you can And truly if you will not do thus much for your own Soul because Men engage you to the contrary that dare not appear to make good their own Cause I must be a Witness against you before the Lord that you wilfully resused Instruction and sold your Soul at too cheap a rate I tried when I was last with you to revive your Reason by proposing to you the Infallibility of the Common Senses of all the World and I could not prevail though you had nothing to answer that was not against Common Sense And it is impossible any thing controverted can be brought nearer you or made plainer than to be brought to your Eyes and Taste and Feeling and not yours only but all Mens else Sense goes before Faith Faith is no Faith but upon Supposition of Sense and Understanding if therefore Common Sense be fallible Faith must needs be so But methinks yet I should have hope of reviving your Charity You cannot be a Papist indeed but you must believe that out of their Church that is out of the Pope's Dominions there is no Salvation and consequently no Justification and Charity or saving Grace And is it possible you can so easily believe your religious Father to be in Hell your prudent pious Mother to be void of the Love of God and in a state of Damnation and not only me that am a Stranger to you but all the Millions of better People in the World to be in the same State of Gracelesness and Damnation and all because we believe not that the Pope is Christ's Vicar General or Deputy on Earth and dare not subject our selves to his usurped Dominions When we are ready to protest before the Lord as we shall answer it at his Bar that we would be his Subjects but for Fear of the high Displeasure of the true Head and King of the Church and for fear of sinning and Damning our own Souls And that we are heartily willing to read and study and pray and hear all that can be said for them and some of us read as much of their Writings as of our own and more and would not stick at Cost or Pains or Loss or Shame were it to travail over Land and Sea to find out that they are in the Right if that would do it and they be so indeed But the more we study the more we pray to God for his Assistance the more diligently we search we are the more resolved and convinced that their way as it differeth from ours is false and that they are the most Superstitious Tyrannical Leprous part of the Catholick Church condemning the main Body because they will not be under their abominable Dominion and will not sin as much as they We hold all that was held necessary by the Apostles and the ancient Church and we dare not make a new Faith to our selves as the Papal Sectaries have done Must we renounce both our Sense and Reason and put out the Eye of Natural Understanding and also renounce the Catholick Church and Christian Charity and step into the Throne and pronounce Damnation not only upon all the Saints of God that we have been acquainted with our selves but also on the Body of Christ which he died for even on the far greatest part of the Universal Church and all this because they will not depart from the Word of God to corrupt his Doctrine Discipline and Worship and herein obey an usurping Vice Christ must we do all this or else be judged to Damnation by the Sectaries of Rome For my part I shall be so far from fearing their Sentance that I appeal to Christ whose Body they condemn and I had rather be tortured in their Inquisition and cut as small as Herbs to the Pot and be accounted the odiousest Wretch on Earth than be guilty of being a Papist at all but especially on such hellish Terms as these If the greater part of the Church must be damned as no part of the Church it will be impossible to prove your Sect or Fragment to be the Church any more than any other Christ is the Saviour of his Body Eph. 5. 23 and to him as to its Head it 's subject ver 24. and this Body is that which is sanctified by him ver 26. And by one Spirit all his Members are baptized into one Body 1 Cor. 12. 12 13. Did you never note where the Unity of the Body is fulliest described that Apostles themselves are made but Members and Christ only the Head 1 Cor. 27 28 29. Eph. 4. 4 5 7 11. There is but one Lord c. but diversity of gifts of whom the Apostles are the chief And when Thousands were added to the Church even such as should be saved Acts 2. 47. what made them Christians but the Baptismal Covenant and what were they Baptized into but into the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Peter or Paul baptized none into their own Names nor dare the Pope himself lest his Innovation be too visible Christ hath said He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved Mark 16. 16. Did they ever then subject any Baptism to the Bishop of Rome Was the Eunuch Acts 8. subjected to the Pope that only saith I believe that Iesus Christ is the Son of God and was Baptized If men could not be saved without believing in the Pope and being subject to the Church of Rome how comes it to pass that none of the Apostles preached this necessary Article of Faith Why did they never say You must believe in or be subject to the Pope of Rome or you cannot be saved Would they be so unfaithful as to hide a necessary Article Why did Peter himself Acts 2. by Baptism take Three thousand into the Church without preaching any of this Doctrine to them The Gospel professeth that he that hath the Son hath Life 1 Joh. 5. 11 12. and whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life Joh. 3. 16. and that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus that walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit And now up steps a Man of Rome and presumeth to Reverse the Gospel and say It 's no such matter for all this they shall not be
saved unless they will be my Subjects If you say that those may be saved that Sin for want of Light I answer 1. On this account your Doctors teach the Salvation of Heathens Are those of your Church and so no otherwise of Christians than of Heathens 2. Either these wanting your Light are in the Church or out If in it then a Man may be of the Church without being a Papist which is against your Faith If out of it then it seems Men out of the Church may be saved and Christ is the Saviour of more than his Body which is against your Faith and ours 3. Who is it that hath sufficient Light if all that have heard or read the frivolous Reasonings of the Papists then your Parents and almost all of us must perish But if it be any other Light which must be had you know not what measure to give us to discern it nor ever will know and so you make your Church invisible while the Members of it cannot be known For none can know of another by your Rule whether his Light be sufficient or not And I pray you are not all the Indians of America that never heard of Christ the Members of your Church for their Light sure is not sufficient to shew them either the Pope or Christ. Hath he the heart of a right Christian that can thus damn two or three parts of all the Christians in the World for not believing in a Wretch at Rome that sometime is an Infidel himself for so was Pope Iohn 23. judged to be by the great General Council at Constance even one that believed no Resurrection which is worse than a Turk or Jew or some Heathens And it 's a wonder to me that if your own Soul hath ever been seriously conversant with God in Holy Worship you can savour and suit with the Cantings and Repetitions and Stage Devotions of the Papists and that a Latin Mass should be believed to be the acceptable way of Worship when the Holy Ghost hath so plainly and copiously disowned that serving of God in an unknown tongue 1 Cor. 14. Pardon me if I intreat you to make a deliberate search into your Heart and former Ways and try whether you conversed with God in the Spirit and were serious in your Faith and Love and Worship If you were not no wonder if an unsound superfical Religion be easily let go and such an unexperienced Heart can suit with a Canting Carnal Iudicrous kind of Devotion or if God so far forsake a Soul that was not sound and serious in the Religion once professed by you But if it was better with you then its strange your Soul can so lose its relish and its stranger that one that was a Member of Christ and in the Church and justified before should turn to a Sect that tells them they were not what they were and must come to them for what they had already And whereas all the pretence you shew me for your Change was the difference that you found amongst us Protestants and our condemning one another do you not know that in Policy greater Differences are tolerated among the Papists under the Names of divers Orders by far than any are between the Presbyterian Independant and Episcopal Protestants And that none but ungodly or uncharitable passionate People with us do deny any of these Parties to be true Members of the Universal Church If you here met with any one that doth condemn the other as no parts of the Church of Christ they spake not according to the Protestant Religion and you can no more charge us with the Railings of every Fellow that is drunk with domineering Pride or Passion than with the words of the next Scold or Quaker or Papist that you shall hear Reviling us I have said more to you than at first I intended I look on you as one about that Age when Conscience useth to receive its first serious deep Impressions and the Papists falling in with you just at that time I doubt before you had heartily received the Life of what before you professed and had time to be rooted and stablished in the Truth the opportunity served them to your Delusion That it may not prove to your everlasting Destruction shall be the Prayers and if you admit them the faithful Endeavours of Your Servant in obedience to Christ though to no Vice-Christ Rich. Baxter Dec. 1. 1660. The Answer to the Lady Anne Lindsey's Letter to her Mother Madam IT pleased the truly honourable Lady your Mother to shew me your Letter directed to her from Calice and to give me leave to send you my Animadversions upon it which I am the willinger to do because I perceive you have there contracted the Reasons most commonly used for the perverting of the Ignorant and which its likely have prevailed most with your self You must give me leave to be free and plain with you in the Matters of God and of Salvation I think it meet to leave the first part of your Letter of the Point of Obedience to your Mother's Animadversions It is the Doctrinal Part that I shall speak to You say that Heresies against Faith expressed by the Name of Sects cut us off from Heaven and that an Aâ—athema is on them that preach any other Doctrine than what was preached by the Apostles How far Heresie cuts off from the Church I have distinctly shewed you in the end of my Book against Mr. Iohnson on that Question but while you expect your Mother should consider of your Reasons you will not your self peruse an Answer to them which before was tendered you whom then can you blame if your Soul be cheated Briefly you err in Confounding Sects and Heresies which are not the same Heresies indeed which are false Doctrines practically inconsistent with the Essentials of Christian Faith do cut Men off from a state of Life or shew them to be Aliens but lesser Errours called Heresies by ignorant or uncharitable Men do un-Church none Herein I plead for you for if they did then wo to the Church of Rome that hath so many Errours And if it be damnable to be a Sect all Papists must be damned they being as certainly a Sect as there is any in the World A corrupt part of the Universal Church condemning the rest and pretending to be it self the whole is a Sect or Party of Schismaticks but such are the Papists Therefore they are a Sect c. But this is not the worst You consequently Anathematize all Papists by your Sentance for Heresies by your own Sentance cut off Men from Heaven But Popery is a bundle of Heresies Therefore it cuts off Men from Heaven The minor I prove according to your Churches Principles that Doctrine is Heresie which is contrary to a point of Faith But many of the Papists Doctrines are contrary to Points of Faith Ergo c. To pass by now all those Points of Popery which are contrary to what the Holy
whole Christian World 5. That the Church is the Pillar and Ground of Truth the Possessors Keepers and Teachers of God's Oracles and that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it is most sure and comfortable Truth But what is this to Rome any more than to Ierusalem or Alexandria The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Body of Christ the Universality of Christians the true Catholick Church But it may prevail against Corinthians Gallateans Romans or any particular part As it prevailed against Pope Iohn XXII alias XXIII to make him deny the Resurrection and against Pope Eugenius to make him a Heretick if General Councils are to be believed 6. As to what you say of Apostles still placed in the Church When any shew us an immediate Mission by their Commission and by Miracles Tongues and a Spirit of Revelation and infallability prove themselves Apostles we shall believe them Till then we remember that Church that was commended for trying them that said they were Apostles and were not and finding them Lyers Rev. 23. Peter and the Twelve Apostles with him we acknowledge and Paul we acknowledge but know none properly called Apostles living now But if it be only the Name and not the Office that you differ about and by Apostles you mean not Men immediately sent by Christ to preach the Gospel with a Spirit of Miracles and Infallability which is our Sense of that Word but some other sort of Men then if they be ordinory Pastors or Bishops it s no matter of Difference if not you must describe them before we can know them They are to blame whoever they be that they call not themselves Apostles and tell us where who and how many they are if they are so indeed 7. They were to be accounted Heathens and Publicans that heard not the Church admonishing them But sure other Pastors besides Apostles must admonish and be heard And other Churches besides the Roman must hold or refuse Communion as is there signified either you will erroneously have that Text understood of the Universal Church or else truly of a Particular Church If the former what 's that to the Roman Church that is but a corrupted Part If the latter it 's no more to the Roman than any other which are particular Churches also surely this is plain Truth if you are willing to see 8. You say The Faith of which Believers were was that of the Romans spread through the World Answ. Yes and it was the Faith of the Ephesians Philippians Colâ—ssians too and all one The Romans had not a Faith of their own specifically different from others Nor did the Holy Ghost by the Apostles ever give one Word of Command to other Churches to conform their Faith to Rome or take that Church for their Mistress or Sovereign These Fancies Pride hath set up against Christ The Faith of Ierusalem was as much known through the World as that of Rome and sure you think not that being known through the World made them the Rule or Rulers of the World 9. Upon Observation you find this Church shining as a Light and set as a City on a Hill And was not Ierusalem Antioch Alexandria Ephesus c. so too Sure they were All faithful Preachers of the Gospel especially the Apostles were observable as such Lights and City to the World that wondred at their Doctrine which is all that Christ there saith and as I said the universal Church is more observable than the Roman Sect And other particular Churches are and were as Light and Conspicuous as it And the most conspicuous Church hath from thence no Pretence to be the rule or Ruler of the rest 10. You say This Church hath been ever triumphant ever Heresies Answ. 1. What! when Honorius was by two or three General Councils condemned for a Heretick Pope Iohn XXII and Eugenius as beforesaid for that and worse with many more 2. Woe to the Churches if others had not conquered Heresy better than the Roman Party hath done 3. And veriâ—y did you think that a particular Church is therefore the Rule or Ruler to the rest because it triumpheth over Heresy 11. You add immoveable in Persecutions Answ. 1. For they have been the great Persecutors as Leeches sucking and swell'd with the Blood of Thousands and Ten Thousands of the Saints and Martyrs of Jesus O the Blood that will be found among them when the righteous Judge of all the World shall make Inquisition for Blood among their Massacrees and Inquisitions 2. Was that Church unmoveable in Persecution when the Head of it Pope Marcellinus offered Incense to Idols And Liberius subscribed to the Arrians and against Athenasius What should I tell you of more who I perceive are made believe the Crow is white 3. Again it is a pitiful Proof of their Rule to prove them immutable in Persecution The Church hath many Heads if every Church or Bishop be its Head that hath stood fast in Persecution 12. You add And always watchful in the Succession of Pastors I give you the same Answers 1. watchful indeed when their own Church Histories tell us of such Multitudes that came in by Symony or Poison or other Murder or Violence that have been Hereticks as aforeshewd or Adulterers Murderers and such impious Wretches as the Cannons depose and when Iohn XII or XIII was deposed by a Councell for ravishing Maids and Wives at his Doors and abundance more such Villanies and Iohn XXII for worse and when Eugenius continued the Succession when a general Council bad judged him a Heretick wicked deposed c. and when they have had such abundance of Schisms having two three or four Popes alive at once and one Schism of Forty Years in which no Man knew or knows to this Day which was the true Pope and when meer Possession is it that must prove their Succession For besides these Incapacities Mr. Iohnson you may see confesseth that no one way of Election by Cardinals People Emperors Bishops Councils c. hath been held or is necessary nor any Consecration necessary at all to the being of the Pope And if a Succession of bare Possession serve how many Churches have the like Yea 2. Constantinople Ethiopia Armenia and many other Churches have had a far more regular Succession than Rome of at least as good 3. And it 's a pitiful Argument that because a Church hath had a Succession of Pastors therefore they are the whole Church and others are no part or therefore they are the 〈◊〉 and Rulers to the rest or therefore we must be of that Particular Church only Surâ— none denies the Succession of Pastors in England as to meer possession of the Place if that will serve the turn 13. To what you say of being 〈◊〉 Holy Catholick and Apostolick and cannot deceive you I answer 1. O dreadful Delusion that a Church headed with horrid Monsters and not Men 〈◊〉 their own Histories describe a multitude of their Popes should
daily expect the Communications of his Grace and Comfort especially seeing that these Ceremonies have been imposed and urged upon such Consideratioms as draw too near to the significancy and moral efficacy of Sacraments themselves That they have together with Popery been rejected by many of the Reformed Churches abroad amongst whom notwithstanding we doubt not but the Lord is worshipped decently orderly and in the beauty of Holiness That ever since the Reformation they have been Matter of Contention and endless Disputes in this Church and have been a Cause of depriving the Church of the Fruit and Benefit which might have been reaped from the Labours of many Learned and Godly Ministers some of whom judging them unlawful others unexpedient were in Conscience unwilling to be brought under the power of them That they have occasioned by the offence taken at them by many of the People heretofore great Separations from our Church and so have rather prejudiced than promoted the Unity thereof and at this time by reason of their long disuse may be more likely than ever heretofore to produce the same Inconveniencies That they are at best but indifferent and in their Nature mutable and that it 's especially in various Exigencies of the Church very needful and expedient that things in themselves mutable be sometimes actually changed lest they should by perpetual permanency and constant use be judged by the People as necessary as the Substancials of Worship themselves And though we do most heartily acknowledge your Majesty to be Custos utriusque Tabulae and to be Supream Governour over all Persons and in all Things and Causes as well Ecclesiastical as Civil in these your Majesty's Dominions yet we humbly crave leave to beseech your Majesty to consider whether as a Christian Magistrate you be not as well obliged by that Doctrine of the Apostle touching Things indifferent not occasioning an offence to weak Brethren as the Apostle himself then one of the highest Officers in the Church of Christ judged himself to be obliged and whether the great Work wherewith the Lord hath intrusted your Majesty be not rather to provide by your Sacred Authority that the things which are necessary by virtue of Divine Command in his Worship should be duly performed then that Things unnecessary should be made by Humane Command necessary and penal And how greatly pleasing it will be to the Lord that your Majesty's heart is so tenderly and religiously Compassionate to such of his poor Servants differing in so small matters as to preserve the Peace of their Consciences in God's Worship above all their Civil Concernments whatsoever May it therefore please your Majesty out of your Princely Care of healing our Breaches graciously to grant That Kneeling at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper and such Holydays as are but of Humane Institution may not be imposed upon such as do conscientiously scruple the Observation of them And that the use of the Surplice and Cross in Baptism and bowing at the Name of Iesus rather than the Name of Christ or Emanuel or other Names whereby that Divine Person or either of the other Divine Persons is nominated may be abolished these things being in the Judgment of the Imposers themselves but indifferent and mutable in the Judgment of others a Rock of Offence and in the Judgment of all not to be valued with the Peace of the Church We likewise humbly represent unto your most Excellent Majesty That divers Ceremonies which we conceive had no Foundation in the Law of the Land as erecting Altars bowing towards them and such like have been not only introduced but in some places imposed whereby an Arbitrary Power was usurped divers Ministers of the Gospel though Conformable to the Established Ceremonies troubled some Reverend and Learned Bishops offended the Protestants grieved and the Papists pleased as hoping that those Innovations might make way for greater Changes May it therefore please your Majesty by such ways as your Royal Wisdom shall judge meet effectually to prevent the imposing and using of such Innovations for the future that so according to the pious intention of your Royal Grandfather King Iames of blessed memory the Publick Worship may be free not only from blame but from suspicion In obedience to your Majesty's Royal Pleasure graciously signified to us we have tendered to your most Excellent Majesty what we humbly conceive may most conduce to the Glory of God to the Peace and Reformation of the Church and to the taking away not only of our Differences but the Roots and Causes of them We humbly beg your Majesty's favourable Acceptance of these our Loyal and Conscientious Endeavours to serve your Majesty and the Church of Christ and your gracious Pardon if in any Thing or Expression we answer not your Majesty's Expectation professing before your Majesty and before the Lord the Searcher of Hearts that we have done nothing out of strife vain Glory or Emulation but have sincerely offered what we apprehend most seasonable and conducing to that happy End of Unity and Peace which your Majesty doth so piously prosecute We humbly lay our selves and these our Addresses at your Majesty's feet professing our unfeigned resolution to live and die your Majesty's faithful loyal and obedient Subjects and humbly implore your Gracious Majesty according unto your Princely Wisdom and Fatherly Compassion so to lay your Hand upon the bleeding Rents and Divisions that are amongst us that there may be an healing of them so shall your Throne be greater than the Throne of your Fathers in your days the Righteous shall flourish Peace shall run down like a River and the Generations to come shall call you blessed This following Paper I drew up at this time and offered to the Brethren to have been presented to the King as the Summary of our Judgment that he might see in a few plain words what it was that we indeed desired But it was not consented to both because that all of us were not agreed among our selves in granting so much of Episcopacy and because we would not hinder our Success by adding any more to Bishop Usher's Model hoping that his Authority might have facilitated the Reception of it to which Reasons I consented The brief Sum of our Iudgment and Desires about Church-Government 1. POwer is 1. Imperial and Coercive by Mulcts and Penalties 2. or Doctoral and Suasory The first belongeth only to the Magistrate The second to the Pastors of the Church 2. Though in Cases of Necessity the same Man may be both a Magistrate and a Pastor yet out of such Case it is unlawful or very unmeet Each Calling will find a Man work enough alone And our work being perswasive is successful but as it procureth Complacency and Consent and therefore we should be put upon no such Actions as will render us more feared and hated than desired to our Flocks We therefore humbly beseech your Majesty to trust no Church-men with the Sword with any degree of Imperial
whereas you tell us that the conforming of Suffraganes to Rural Deaneries and other such are his private Conceptions destitute of any Testimoney of Antiquity We answer No marvel when Rural Deaneries were unknown to true Antiquity And when in the Ancientest Church every Church had its proper Bishop and every Bishop but one Church that had also but one Altar But surely the Corepiscopi were no Strangers to Antiquity as may appear before the Council at Nice in Concil Ancyran Can. 12. and in Concil Antiochin Can. 10. c. It was unknown in the days of Ignatius and Iustin Martyr that a Church should be as large as a Rural Deanry containing a dozen Churches with Altars that had none of them peculiar Bishops But it was not strange then that every Church had a Bishop and if it were Rural a Chorepiscopus As also you may gather even from Clemens Romanus The Quarrel which you pick with the Archbishops Reduction for not Naming the King as if he destroyed his Supremacy is such as a low degree of Charity with a little Understanding might easily have prevented Either you know that it is the Power of the Keys called Spiritual and proper-Ecclesiastical and not the Coercive Power circa Ecclesiastica which the Archbishop speaketh of and all our Controversie is about or you do not know it If you do know it either you think this Power of the Keys is resolved into the King or not If you do think so you differ from the King and from all of your selves that ever we talked with and you contradict all Protestant Princes that have openly disclaimed any such Power and published this to the World to stop the Mouths of Calumniating Papists And we have heard the King and some of you disclaim it And how can you then fitly debate these Controversies that differ from all Protestant Kings and from the Church But if you your selves do not so think had you a Pen that would charge the Archbishop for destroying the King's Supremacy for asserting nothing but what the King and you maintain And if you knew not that this Spiritual Power of the Keys as distinct from Magistratical Coercive Power is the Subject of our Controversie we dispute to good purpose indeed with Men that know not what Subject it is that we are to dispute about so that which way soever it go you see how it is like to fall and how Men that are out of the dust and noise will judge of our Debates And here we leave it to the Notice and Observation of Posterity upon the perusal of all your Exceptions How little the English Bishops had to say against the Form of Primitive Episcopacy contained in Archbishop Usher's Reduction in the day when they rather chose the increase of our Divisions the Silencing of many Hundred faithful Ministers the scattering of the Flocks the afflicting of so many thousand godly Christians than the accepting of this Primitive Episcopacy which was the Expedient which those called Presbyterians offered never once speaking for the Cause of Presbytery And what kind of Peace-makers and Conciliators we met with when both Parties were to meet at one time and place with their several Concessions for Peace and Concord ready drawn up and the Presbyterians in their Concessions laid by all their Cause and proposed an Archbishops frame of Episcopacy and the other side brought not in any of their Concessions at all but only unpeaceably rejected all the Moderation that was desired Lastly They hear desire it may be observed that in this Reduction Archiepiscopacy is acknowledged And we shall also desire that it may be observed that we never put in a word to them against Archbishops Metropolitans or Primates and yet we are very far from attaining any Peace with them And we desire that it may be observed also that understanding with whom we had to do we offered them not that which we approved our selves as the best but that which we would submit to as having some Consistency with the Discipline and Order of the Church which was our End Of the Superadded Particulars § 14. 1. This is scarce Serious The Primate's Suffragans or Chorepiscopi are Rural Deans or as many for number The Suffragans you talk of by Law are other things about Sixteen in all the Land The King's Power is about the Choice of them as Humane Officers but as Pastors of the Church or Bishops the Churches had the Choice for a Thousand years after Christ through most of the Christian World And what if it be in the King's power Is it not the more reasonable that the King be petitioned to in the Business The King doth not choose every Rural Dean himself And is it any more destructive of his Power to do it by the Synods than by the Diocesan This use the Name and Power of Kings is made of by some kind of Men to make a noise against all that cross their Domination but all that is exercised by themselves is no whit derogatory to Royalty And yet how many Men have been Excommunicated for refusing to Answer in the Chancellor's Courts till they profess to sit there by the King's Authority § 15. We much doubt whether you designed to read the Archbishop's Reduction when you answered our Papers If you did not why would you choose to be ignorant of what you answered when so light a Labour might have informed you If you did how could you be ignorant of what we meant by Associations when you saw that such as our Rural Deaneries was the thing spoken of and proposed by the Reduction And 1. Are the Rural Deaneries think you without the King's Authority If not what mean you by such Intimations unless you would make Men believe that we breathe Treason as oft as we breathe as the Soldier charged the Country-man for whistling Treason when he meant to plunder him 2. And what though Associations may not be entered into without the King's Authority Do you mean that therefore we may not thus desire his Authority for them If you do not to what sence or purpose is this Answer Sure we are that for Three hundred years when Magistrates were not Christian there was Preaching Praying and Associating in particular Churches hereunto without the Kings Authority and also Associating in Synods And after that for many a Hundred year the Christian Magistrates confirmed and over-ruled such Associations but never overthrew them or forbad them § 16. But the Apostles of Christ and all his Churches for many hundred years thought all these Subscriptions and Oaths unnecessary and never prescribed nor required either them or any such So unhappy is the present Church in the happy Understandings of these Men of Yesterday that are wiser than Christ his Apostles and Universal Church and have at last found out these necessary Oaths and Subscriptions And you are not quite mistaken Necessary they are to set up those that shall rule by Constraint as Lords over God's Heritage and
effectual with none but wicked Men and Hypocrites who dare Sin against their Consciences for fear of Men And is it worth so much ado to bring the Children of the Devil into your Church The third way of Efficacy is but to kill or banish all the Children of God that are not of your Opinion for it is they that dare not Sin against Conscience whatever they suffer And this is but such an Efficacy as the Spanish Inquisition and Queen Mary's Bonfires had to send those to God whom the World is not worthy of You know every Man that is true to his God and his Conscience will never do that which he taketh to be Sin till his Judgment is changed and therefore with such it can be no lower than Blood or Banishment or Imprisonment at least that is the Efficacy which you desire And if no such rigour be too much its pity the French that murthered 30000 or 40000 at their Bartholoâ—â—ew days or as Dr. Peter Moulin saith 100000 within a few Weeks and the Irish that murthered 200000 had not had a better Cause For they took the most effectual way of rigour But when God maketh Inquisition for the Blood of his Servants he will convince Men that such rigour was too much and that their Wrath did not fulfil his Righteousness You shew your Kindness to Men's praying in the Pulple without your Book Make good what you say that such Praying is of no great Antiquity and we will never contradict you more Or if we prove it not the Ancientest way of Praying in the Christian Church we will give you free leave to hang or banish us for not Subscribing to the Common Prayer Book which the Apostles used and which was imposed on the Church for some hundred years But it seems you think that we are beholden to meer Sufferance without Law or Canon for conceived Prayers How long then it will be suffered we know not if we must live by your Patience § 20. It seemeth that our Converse and yours much differ The most that we know or meet with had rather be without the Liturgy and you say That the People generally are well satisfied with it By this time they are of another Mind If it were so we take it for no great honour to it considering what the greater Number are in most places and of what Lives those Persons are of our Parishes and Acquaintance generally or for the most part who are for it Or what those are that are against it and whom for itsâ— sake you desire your effectual rigour may be exercised against The Lord prepare them to undergo it innocently § 21. Doth there need no more to be said for the Ceremonies How little will satisfie some Men's Consciences Lawful Authority hath in other Countreys cast out the same Bishops and Ceremonies which are here received Doth it follow that they are good in one Country and disorderly and undecent in another Or that our Authority only is infallible in judging of them Is not God's Worship perfect without our Ceremonies in its Integrals as well as its Essentials As for Circumstantials when you saw us allow of them you need not plead for them as against us But the Question is whether our Additions be not more then Circumstances § 22. We suppose that you give all to the Cross in Baptism which is necessary to a Humane Sacrament And this we are ready to try be just Dispute When you say that never was Moral Efficacy ascribed to them you seem to give up all your Cause for by denying this ascribed Efficacy you seem to grant them unlawful if it be so And if it be not so let us bear the blame of wronging them The informing and exciting the dull mind of Man in its duty to God is a Moral Effect from Moral Efficacy But the informing and exciting the dull Mind of Man in its Duty to God is an Effect ascribed to our Ceremonies Ergo a Moral Effect from Moral Efficacy is ascribed to our Ceremonies The major cannot be denied by any Man that knoweth what a Moral Effect and Efficacy is that which worketh not per modum Naturae in genere Causae efficientis naturalis only but per modum objecti vel in genere causae finalis upon the Mind of Man doth work morally but so do our Ceremonies Ergo sure the Arminians that deny all proper Physical Operations of God's Spirit as well as his Word and reduce all to Moral Efficacy will not say that Ceremonies have such a Physical Efficacy more than Moral And if not so the good Effects here mentioned can be from no lower Efficacy than Moral And the minor which must be denied is in the words of the Preface to the Common Prayer Book and therefore undeniable The Word of God it self worketh but moraliter proponendo objectum and so do our Ceremonies § 23. There is a great difference between Sacramental Ceremonies and meer Circumstances which the Reformed Churches keep These we confound not and could have wished you would not Our Cross in Baptism is A dedicating sign saith the Canon or transient Image made in token that this Child shall not be ashamed of Christ crucified but manly fight under his Banner against the Flesh the World and the Devil and continue Christ's faithful Servant and Soldier to his Lives end So that 1. It is a Dedicating Sign performed by the Minister and not by the Person himself as a bare Professing Sign is 2. It engageth the Party in a Relation to Christ as his Soldier and Servant 3. And in the Duties of this Relation against all our Enemies as the Sacramentum Militare doth a Soldier to his General and that in plainer and fuller words than are annexed to Baptism 4. And it is no other than the Covenant of Grace or of Christianity it self which this Sacrament of the Cross doth enter us into as Baptism also doth It is not made a part of Baptism nor called a Sacrament but as far as we can judge made essentially a Humane Sacrament adjoyned to Baptism The Reformed Churches which use the Cross we mean the Lutherans yet use it not in this manner § 24. This is but your unproved Assertion That the Fault was not in the Ceremonies but in the Contenders we are ready to prove the contrary but if it had been true how far are you from Paul's mind expressed Rom. 14. 15. and 1 Cor. 8. You will let your weak Brother perish and spare not so you can but charge the Fault on himself and lay Stumbling-blocks before him and then save him by your effectual rigour by Imprisonment or Punishment § 25. Those seem a few to you that seem many to us Had it been but one hundred such as Cartwright Amesius Bradshaw Parker Hildersham Dod Nicolls Langley Paget Hering Baynes Bates Davenport Hooker Wilson Cotton Norton Shephard Cobbet Word c. they had been enough to have grieved the Souls of many Thousand godly
Christians and enough for any one of the Reformed Churches had they possessed them to have gloried in and many far meaner are yet the glory of the Ancient Churches and called and reverenced as Fathers But we doubt this same Spirit will make you think that many Hundred more are but a few to be Silenced e're long And then your Clemency will comfort the poor People that have ignorant or deboist Readers instead of Ministers for too many such we have known that it was their Pastors faults that obstinately refused to Conform when they had promised it that is that repented of the Sin of their Subscription when they discerned it And had they never been ignorant enough to Subscribe they had never entered And the many hundreds which you thus keep from the Ministry you make nothing of § 26. Whether Diocesanes be a lawful Authority as claiming Spiritual Government and how far Men may own them even in lawful things are Controversies to be elsewhere managed We justify no Man's leaving his Ministry upon the Refusal of any thing but what he judged unlawful yea and what was really so § 27. Whether any Offence were given though not enough to warrant Separation let our Argumentations on both sides declare The said Declaration of the Churches Sense is not the smallest part of the Scandal Calling a humane Sacrament indifferent or no Sacrament proveth it not to be as it is called That the Nonconformists were the Cause of Separation who did most against it is easily said and as easily proved as the Arrians proved that the Orthodox were the cause of the Schism of the Luciferans who separated from the Church for receiving the Arrians too easily to Communion § 28. Church Matters in this much differ from Civil Matters and its one thing to change a Church Custom when it dangerously prevaileth to corrupt Mens Understandings and another thing when there is no such Danger So Hezekiah thought when he destroyed the Brazen Serpent and Paul who before circumcised Timothy when he said If ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing Could Men have foreseen that the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the imperial Churches would have been sublimated to such a challenged Supremacy over all the Christian World we suppose the Ancients would have held it their Duty to have removed the Primacy to some other Seat § 29. According to your Councils will you be judged of God The Not-abating of the Impositions is the casting off of many hundreds of your Brethren out of the Ministry and of many thousand Christians out of your Communion But the abating of the Impositions will so offend you as to silence or excommunicate none of you at all For e. g. we think it a Sin to Subscribe or swear canonical Obedience or use the transient Image of the Cross in Baptism and therefore these must cast us out But you think it no Sin to forbear them if the Magistrate abate them and therefore none of you will be cast out by the Abatement But it seemeth that your Charity judgeth the bare displeasing of your Apetite to the Ceremonies is a greater evil than the silencing and excommunicating all us your poor Brethren though our Imprisoment follow Nay this is not all For your Displeasure will be only that another Man subscribeth not crosseth not c. while you may do it your selves as much as you please Whether the casting out of so many Ministers and Christians for such things do more subserve the main ends of publick Government than the forbearance would do if you know not we leave you to God's Conviction As also whether these things be well imposed and Mens Obedience to Authority and the Peace of the Church and its Uniformity or Unity be well and justly laid upon them Such Concessions indeed might bear you out far Concerning particular Ceremonies § 30. Why then is it not as meet that one Gesture be used by all in singing Psalms or hearing Sermons Why doth the Ministers stand in Prayer even in the Sacrament Prayer while the People kneel We speak against none of your Liberty in using either kneeling or Holy-days and perhaps some of us mean to use both our selves but only beseech you that they may be no more imposed than the ancient Church imposed them and we desire no more and if you reverence Antiquity why will you not imitate it in point of Imposition as well as in the thing it self But yet that Antiquity was against Kneeling on the Lord's Day at the Sacrament and that they had but few of our Holy-days for many hundred Years we suppose you are not ignorant § 31. It 's well you have no more to say against Liberty to forbear the other three Ceremonies the more unexcusablde will you be when you silence and excommunicate those that use them not § 32. And its strange that meaner understandings than yours cannot see why Men should forbear that which is not to be valued with the Churches Peace A Lye or a false Subscription is not to be valued with the Churches Peace And is it therefore a Wonder to you that Men should scruple them It is fitter Matter for the Wonder of good Men that after so long Experience those that will needs be the Lords and Governors in spiritual Matters should so resolvedly lay the Churches Peace upon such things as these where they know beforehand that Men of no Conscience will all be peaceable and thousands of godly People are unsatisfied and that they will needs take all for Disturbers of the Peace who jump not with their Humour in every Ceremony how willing soever to be ruled by the Laws of God § 33. We are glad that you justify not Innovation and Arbitrariness and yet desire not such a Cure as some do by getting Laws which may do their Work § 34. If your want of Charity were not extraordinary it could not work effectually to the afflicting of your Brethren and the Church when we tell you what will end your Differences you know our Minds so much better than our selves that you will not believe us But you will be confident that we will come on with new Demands This is your way of Conciliation when you were to bring in your utmost Concessions in order to our Unity and it was promised by his Majesty that you should meet us half way you bring in nothing and persuade his Majesty also that he should not believe us in what we offer that it would be satisfactory if it were granted You say that it will give Dissatisfaction to the greater Part of his Majesty's Subjects We are more charitable than to believe that a quarter of his Majesty's Subjects are so uncharitable as to be dissatisfied if their Brethren be not silenced and excommunicated for not swearing subscribing or using a Ceremony while they may do it as much as they list themselves And whereas you say that there is no assurance given that it will content all Dissenters
till it be effectually reformed by Divines of both Perswasions equally deputed thereunto And that your Majesty would procure that Moderation in the Imposition hereafter which we before desired 4. Concerning Ceremonies Returning our humble Thanks for your Majesty's gracious Concessions of which we are assured you will never have cause to repent we further crave 1. That your Majesty would leave out those words concerning us That we do not in our Iudgments believe the practice of those particular Ceremonies which we except against to be in it self unlawful for we have not so declared our Judgments Indeed we have said that treating in order to a happy uniting of our Brethren through the Land our Work is not to say what is our own Opinion or what will satisfie us but what will satisfie so many as may procure the said Union And we have said that some think some of them unlawful in themselves and others but inconvenient And while the Imposers think them but indifferent we conceived they might reasonably be entreated to let them go for the saving of their Brethrens Consciences and the Churches Peace We are sure that a Christian's Conscience should be tender of adding to or diminishing from the Matter of God's Worship in the smallest Point the Laws of God being herein the only perfect Rule Deut. 12. 32. And that a Synod infallibly guided by the Holy Ghost would lay upon the Churches no greater burden then necessary things Acts 15. 28. And that for things indifferent Christians should not despise or judge each other Rom. 14. much less by silencing the able and faithful Ministers of the Gospel to punish the Flocks even in their Souls for the tolerable Differences and supposed Mistakes of Ministers We doubt not but Peter and Paul went to Heaven without the Ceremonies in question And seeing your Majesty well expresseth it That the Universal Church cannot introduce one Ceremony in the Worship of God that is contrary to God's Word expressed in the Scriptures and Multitudes of Protestants at home and abroad do think that all Mystical Sacramental Rites of Humane Institution are contrary to the perfection of God's Law and to Deut. 12. 32. c. though the Determination of meer Circumstances necessary in genere be not so and therefore dare not use them for fear of the Displeasure of God the Universal Sovereign it must needs be a great Expression of your Majesty's wisdom and tenderness of God's Honour and the Safety of your Peoples Souls to refuse in things unnecessary to drive Men upon apprehended Sin and upon the Wrath of God and the Terrours of a Condemning Conscience 2. We beseech your Majesty to understand that it is not our meaning by the Word abolishing to crave a Prohibition against your own or other Mens Liberty in the things in question but it is a full Liberty that we desire such as should be in unnecessary things and such as will tend to the Concord of your People viz. That there be no Law or Canon for or against them commanding recommending or prohibiting them As now there is none for any particular Gesture in singing of Psalms where Liberty preserveth an uninterrupted Unity For the Particular Ceremonies 1. We humbly crave as to kneeling in the Act of Receiving that your Majesty will declare our Liberty therein that none should be troubled for receiving it standing or sitting And your Majesty's Expressions upon Reasons best known if not only to themselves command us to render some of our Reasons 1. We are sure that Christ and his Apostles sinned not by not receiving it kneeling and many are not sure that by kneeling they should not sin and therefore for the better Security though not for absolute Necessity we crave leave to take the safer side 2. We are sure that kneeling in any Adoration at all in any Worship on any Lord's Day in the Year or any Week-day between Ester and Pentcost was not only disused but forbidden by General Councils as Concil Nicen. 1 Can. 20. and Concil Trull c. and disclaimed by ancient Writers and this as a general and uncontroled Tradition And therefore that kneeling in the Act of receiving is a Novelty contrary to the Decrees and Practice of the Church for many hundred Years after the Apostles And if we part with the venerable Examples of all Antiquity where it agrees with Scripture and that for nothing we shall depart from the Terms which most Moderators think necessary for the Reconciling of the Churches And Novelty is a Dishonour to any part of Religion And if Antiquity be Honourable the most ancient or nearest the Legislation and Fountain must be most honourable And it is not safe to intimate a Charge of Unreverence upon all the Apostles and primitive Christians and the Universal Church for so many hundred Years together of its purest Time 3. Though our meaning be good it is not good to shew a needless Countenance of the Papists Practice of Adoring the Bread as God when it is used by them round about us Saith Bishop Hall in his Life pag. 20. I had a dangerous Conflict with a Sarbonist who took occasion by our kneeling at the Receipt of the Echarist to persuade all the Company of our Acknowledgment of a Transubstantiation 4. Some of us that could rather kneel than be deprived of Communion should yet suffer much before we durst put all others from the Communion that durst not take it kneeling which therefore we crave we might not be put upon it 2. We humbly crave also that the religious Observation of Holy-days of human Institution may be declared to be left indifferent that none be troubled for not observing them 3. We humbly tender your Majesty our Thanks for your gracious Concession of Liberty as to the Cross and Surplice and bowing at the Name Iesus rather than Christ or God But we farther humbly beseech your Majesty 1. That this Liberty in forbearing the Surpliâ—â— might extend to the Colledges and Cathedrals also that it drive not thence all those that Scruple it and make not those Places receptive only of a Party and that the Youth of the Nation may have just Liberty as well as the Elder If they be engaged in the Universities and their Liberties there cut off in their beginning they cannot afterwards be free many hopeful Persons will be else diverted from the Service of the Church 2. That your Majesty will endeavour the repealing of all Laws and Canons by which these Ceremonies are imposed that they might be left at full Liberty 4. We also humbly tender our Thanks to your Majesty for your gracious Concession of the Forbearance of the Subscription required by that Canon But 1. we humbly acquaint your Majesty that we do not dissent from the Doctrine of the Church of England expressed in the Articles and Homilies But it is the controverted Passages about Government Liturgy and Ceremonies and some Byâ—passages and Phrases in the doctrinal Part which are scrupled by
Worship And further considering the great Age of some Ministers and Infirmities of others and the variety of several Services oft-times concurring upon the same day whereby it may be inexpedient to require every Minister at all times to read the whole It may be left to the discretion of the Minister to omit part of it as occasion shall require which liberty we find to be allowed even in the first Common Prayer Book of Edward 6. 8. That in regard of the many Defects which have been observed in that Version of the Scriptures which is used throughout the Liturgy manifold Instances whereof may be produced as in the Epistle for the first Sunday after Epiphany taken out of Romans 12. 1. Be ye changed in your shape And the Epistle for the Sunday next before Easter taken out of Philippians 2. 5. Found in his apparel as a man as also the Epistle for the fourth Sunday in Lent taken out of the fourth of the Galatians Mount Sinai is Agar in Arabia and bordereth upon the City which is now called Ierusalem The Epistle for St. Matthew's Day taken out of the second Epistle of Corinth and the 4th We go not out of Kind The Gospel for the second Sunday after Epiphany taken out of the second of Iohn When Men be drunk The Gospel for the third Sunday in Lent taken out of the 11th of Luke One House doth fall upon another The Gospel for the Annunciation taken out of the first of Luke This is the sixth Month which was called barren and many other places we therefore desire instead thereof the New Translation allowed by Authority may alone be used 9. That inasmuch as the holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto Salvation to furnish us throughly unto all good Works and contain in them all things necessary either in Doctrine to be believed or in Duty to be practised whereas divers Chapters of the Apocryphal Books appointed to be read are Charged to be in both respects of dubious and uncertain credit It is therefore desired that nothing be read in the Church for Lessons but the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament 10. That the Minister be not required to rehearse any part of the Liturgy at the Communion-Table save only those parts which properly belong to the Lord's Supper and that at such times only when the said holy Supper is administred 11. That as the Word Minister and not Priest or Curate is used in the Absolution and in divers other places it may throughout the whole Book be so used instead of those two Words and that instead of the Word Sunday the Word Lord's-day may be every where used 12. Because singing of Psalms is a considerable part of publick Worship we desire that the Version set forth and allowed to be sung in Churches may be amended or that we may have leave to make use of a purer Version 13. That all obsolete Words in the Common-Prayer and such whose use is changed from their first significancy as Aread used in the Gospel for the Monday and Wednesday before Easter Then opened he their Wits used in the Gospel for Easter Tuesday c. may be altered unto other Words generally received and better understood 14. That no Portions of the Old Testament or of the Acts of the Apostles be called Epistles and read as such 15. That whereas throughout the several Offices the Phrase is such as presumes all Persons within the Communion of the Church to be regenerated converted and in an actual state of Grace which had Ecclesiastical Discipline been truly and vigorously executed in the Exclusion of Scandalous and obstinate Sinners might be better supposed But there having been and still being a confessed want of that as in the Liturgy is acknowledged it cannot be rationally admitted in the utmost Latitude of Charity We desire that this may be reformed 16. That whereas orderly Connection of Prayers and of particular Petitions and Expressions together with a competent length of the Forms used are tending much to Edification and to gain the reverence of People to them There appears to us too great a neglect of both of this Order and of other just Laws of Method Particularly 1. The Collects are generally short many of them consisting but of one or at most two Sentences of Petition and these generally ushered in with a repeated mention of the Name and Attributes of God and presently concluding with the Name and Merits of Christ whence are caused many unnecessary Intercisions and Abruptions which when many Petitions are to be offered at the same time are neither agreeable to Scriptural Examples nor suited to the Gravity and Seriousness of that Holy Duty 2. The Prefaces of many Collects have not any clear and special Respect to the following Petitions and particular Petitions are put together which have not any due Order nor evident Connection one with another nor suitableness with the Occasions upon which they are used but seem to have fallen in rather casually than from an orderly Contrivance It is desired that instead of those various Collects there may be one methodical and intire form of Prayer composed out of many of them 17. That whereas the publick Liturgy of a Church should in reason comprehend the Summ of all such Sins as are ordinarily to be confessed in Prayer by the Church and of such Petitions and Thanksgivings as are ordinarily by the Church to be put up to God and the publick Catechisms or Systems of Doctrine should summarily comprehend all such Doctrines as are necessary to be believed and these explicitly set down The present Liturgy as to all these seems very defective Particularly 1. There is no preparatory Prayer in our Address to God for Assistance or Acceptance yet many Collects in the midst of the Worship have little or nothing else 2. The Confession is very defective not clearly expressing original Sin nor sufficiently enumerating actual Sins with their Aggravations but consisting only of Generals Whereas confession being the Exercise of Repentance ought to be more particular 3. There is also a great Defect as to such Forms of publick Praise and Thanksgiving as are suitable to Gospel-worship 4. The whole Body of the Common-Prayer also consisteth very much of meer Generals as To have our Prayers heard to be kept from all Evil and from all Enemies and all Adversity that we might do God's Will without any mention of the Particulars in which these Generals exist 5. The Catechism is defective as to many necessary Doctrines of our Religion some even of the Essentials of Christianity not mentioned except in the Creed and there not so explicite as ought to be in a Catechism 18. Because this Liturgy containeth the Imposition of divers Ceremonies which from the first Reformation have by sundry learned and pious Men been judged unwarrantable as 1. That Publick Worship may not be celebrated by any Minister that dare not wear a Surpless 2. That none may baptise nor be
baptised without the transient Image of the Cross which hath at least the Semblance of a Sacrament of human Institution being used as an ingaging Sign in our first and solemn Covenanting with Christ and the Duties whereunto we are really obliged by Baptism being more expresly fixed to that airy Sign than to this holy Sacrament 3. That none may receive the Lord's Supper that dare not kneel in the act of receiving but the Minister must exclude all such from the Communion although such kneeling not only differs from the practice of Christ and of his Apostles but at least on the Lord's Day is contrary to the practice of the Catholick Church for many hundred Years after and forbidden by the most venerable Councils that ever were in the Christian World All which Impositions are made yet more grievous by that Subscription to their Lawfulness which the Canon exacts and by the heavy Punishment upon the Non-observance of them which the Act of Uniformity inflicts And it being doubtful whether God hath given power unto Men to institute in his Worship such Mystical Teaching Signs which not being necessary in genere fall not under the Rule of doing all things decently orderly and to edification and which once granted will upon the same reason open a door to the Arbitrary Imposition of numerous Ceremonies of which St. Augustine complained in his days and the things in Controversie being in the Judgment of the Imposers confessedly indifferent who do not so much as pretend any real Goodness in them of themselves otherwise than what is derived from their being imposed and consequently the Imposition ceasing that will cease also and the Worship of God not become indecent without them Whereas in the other hand on the Judgment of the Opposers they are by some held sinful and unlawful in themselves by others very inconvenient and unsuitable to the Simplicity of Gospel Worship and by all of them very grievous and burthensome and therefore not at all fit to be put in ballance with the Peace of the Church which is more likely to be promoted by their removal than continuance Considering also how tender our Lord and Saviour himself is of weak Brethren declaring it much better for a Man to have Milstone hang'd about his neck and be cast into the depth of the Sea than to offend one of his little Ones And how the Apostle Paul who had as great a Legislative Power in the Church as any under Christ held himself obliged by that Common Rule of Charity not to lay a stumbling block or an occasion of offence before a weak Brother chusing rather not to eat flesh whiles the world stands though in it self a thing lawful than offend his Brother for whom Christ died We cannot but desire that these Ceremonies may not be imposed on them who judge such Impositions a Violation of the Royalty of Christ and an Impeachment of his Laws as insufficient and are under the holy awe of that which is written Deut. 12. 32. what thing soever I command you observe to do it Thou shalt not add thereto nor diminish from it but that there may be either a total Abolition of them or at least such a liberty that those who are unsatisfied concerning their lawfulness or expediency may not be compelled to the Practice of them or Subscription to them But may be permitted to enjoy their Ministerial Function and Communion with the Church without them The rather because these Ceremonies have for above an hundred years been the Fountain of manifold Evils in this Church and Nation occasioning sad Divisions between Ministers and Ministers as also between Ministers and People exposing many Orthodox Pious and Peaceable Ministers to the displeasure of their Rulers casting them on the edge of the Penal Statutes to the loss not only of their Livings and Liberties but also of their Opportunities for the Service of Christ and his Church and forcing People either to Worship God in such a manner as their own Consciences condemn or doubt of or else to forsake our Assemblies as thousands haâ—e done And no better Fruits than these can be looked for from the retaining and imposing of these Ceremonies unless we could presume that all his Majesty's Subjects should have the same Subtilty of Judgment to discern even to a Ceremony how far the Power of Man extends in the Things of God which is not to be expected or should yield Obedience to all the Impositions of Men concerning them without inquiring into the Will of God which is not to be desired We do therefore most earnestlyâ— entreat the Right Reverend Fathers and Brethren to whom these Papers are delivered as they tender the Glory of God the Honour of Religion the Peace of the Church the Service of his Majesty in the Accomplishment of that happy Union which his Majesty hath so abundantly 〈◊〉 his Desires of to joyn with us in importuning his most Excellent Majesty that his most gracious Indulgence as to these Ceremonies granted in his Royal Declaration may be confirmed and continued to us and our Posterities and extended to such as do not yet enjoy the Benefit thereof 19. As to that Passage in his Majesty's Commission where we are authorized and required to compare the present Liturgy with the most ancient Liturgies which have been used in the Church in the most purest and primitiveâ— Timesâ— We have in Obedience to his Majesty's Commission made Enquiry but cannot find any Records of known Credit concerning any entire Forms of Liturgy within the first Three hundred years which are confessed to be as the most primitive so the purest Ages of the Church Nor any Impositions of Liturgies upon any National Church for some hundreds of years after We find indeed some Liturgical Forms fathered upon St. Basil St. Chrysostome and St. Ambrose but we have not seen any Copies of them but such as give us sufficient Evidence to conclude them either wholly spurious or so interpolated that we cannot make a judgment which in them hath any primitive Authority Having thus in general expressed our Desires we come now to particulars which we find numerous and of a various nature some we grant are of inferiour Consideration verbal rather than material which were they not in the Publick Liturgy of so famous a Church we should not have mentioned others dubious and disputable as not having a clear Foundation in Scripture for their warrant but some there be that seem to be corrupt and to carry in them a repugnancy to the Rule of the Gospel and therefore have administred just Matter of Exception and Offence to many truly religious and peaceable not of a private station only but learned and judicious Divines as well of other Reformed Churches as of the Church of England ever since the Reformation We know much hath been spoken and written by way of Apology in Answer to many things that have been objected but yet the Doubts and Scruples of Tender Consciences still continue or rather
former naughty lives as is partly expressed in the Rubrick and more fully in the Canons Rubrick Exception Then shall the Priest rehearse distinctly all the ten Commandments and the People kneeling shall after every Commandment ask God's mercy for transgressing the same We desire 1. That the Preface prefixed by God himself to the ten Commandments may be restored 2. That the fourth Commandment may be read as in Exod. 20. Deut. 5. He blessed the Sabbath day 3. That neither Minister nor People may be enjoyned to kneel more at the reading of this than of other parts of Scriptures the rather because many ignorant Persons are thereby induced to use the Ten Commandments as a Prayer 4. That instead of those short Prayers of the People intermixed with the several Commandments the Minister after the reading of all may conclude with a suitable Prayer Rubrick Exception After the Creed if there be no Sermon shall follow one of the Homâ—â—â—es already set forth or hereafter to be set forth by common Authority We desire that the Preaching of the Word may be strictly enjoined and not left so indifferent at the Administration of the Sacraments as also that Ministers may not be bound to those things which are are as yet but future and not in being After such Sermon Homily or Exhortation the Curate shall declare c. and earnestly exhort them to remember the Poor saying one or more of these sentences following Two of the Sentences here cited are Apocryphal and four of them more proper to draw out the Peoples Bounty to their Ministers than their Charity to the Poor Then shall the Church-wardens or some other by them appointed gather the Devotion of the People Collection for the Poor may be better made at or a little before the departing of the Communicants Exhortation  We be come together at this time to feed at the Lords Supper unto the which in Gods behalf I bid you all that be here present and beseech you for the Lord Iesus Christ sake that ye will not refuse to come c. If it be intended that these Exhortations should be read at the Communion they seem to us to be unseasonable The way and means thereto is first to examine your Lives and Conversations and if ye shall perceive your offences to be such as be not only against God but also against your Neighbours then ye shall reconcile your seâ—ves unto them and be ready to make Restitution and Satisfaction And because it is requisite that no man should come to the holy Communion but with a full trust in Gods mercy and with a quiet Conscience We fear this may discourage many from coming to the Sacrament who lye under a doubting and troubled Conscience Before the Confession  Then shall this general Confession be made in the name of all those that are minded to receive the holy Communion either by one of them or else by one of the Ministers or by the Priest himself We desire it may be made by the Minister only Before the Confession Exception Then shall the Priest or the Bishop being present stand up and turning himself to the people say thus The Minister turning himself to the People is most convenient throughout the whole Ministration Before the Preface on Christmas day and 7 days after  Because thou didst give Iesus Christ thine only Son to be born as this Day for us c. First We cannot peremptorily fix the Nativity of our Saviour to this or that day particularly Secondly it seems incongruous to affirm the Birth of Christ Upon Whitsunday and six days after and the descending of the Holy Ghost to be on this day for seven or eight days together According to whose most true promise the Holy Ghost came down this day from Heaven  Prayer before that which is at the Consecration  Grant us that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body and our Souls washed through his most precious blood We desire that whereas these Words seem to give a greater efficacy to the Blood than to the Body of Christ they may be altered thus That our sinful souls and bodies may be cleansed through his precious Body and Blood Prayer at the Consecration We conceive that the manner of the consecrating of the Elements is not here explicite and distinct enough and the Ministers breaking of the Bread is not so much as mentioned Hear us O merciful Father c. who in the same night that he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he brake it and gave to his Disciples saying Take eat c.  Rubrick  Then shall the Minister first receive the Communion in both kinds c. and after deliver it to the people in their hands kneeling and when he delivereth the bread he shall say The Body of our Lord Iesus Christ which was given for thee preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting Life and take and eat this in Remembrance c. We desire that at the Distribution of the Bread and Wine to the Communicants we may use the Words of our Saviour as near as may be and that the Minister be not required to deliver the Bread and Wine into every particular Communicants hand and to repeat the words to each one in the singular number but that it may suffice to speak them to divers jointly according to our Saviours Example  We also desire that the Kneeling at the Sacrament it being not that Gesture which the Apostles used though Christ was personally present amongst them nor that which was used in the purest and primitive times of the Church may be left free as it was 1. and 2. EDW. As touching Kneeling c. they may be used or left as every Mans Devotion serveth without blame Rubrick Exception And note that every Parishioner shall Communicate at the least three times in the year of which Easter to be one and shall also receive the Sacraments and other Rites according to the Orders in this Book appointed Forasmuch as every Parishioner is not duly qualified for the Lord's Supper and those habitually prepared are not at all times actually disposed but many may be hindered by the Providence of God and some by the Distemper of their own Spirits we desire this Rubrick may be either wholly omitted or thus altered  Every Minister shall be bound to administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper at least thrice a Year provided there be a due number of Communicants manifesting their Desires to receive And we desire that the following Rubrick in the Common-Prayer-Book in 5 and 8 Edw. established by Law as much as any other part of the Common-Prayer-Book may be restored for the vindicating of our Church in the matter of Kneeling at the Sacrament although the Gesture be left indifferent Although no order can be so perfectly devised but it may be of some either for their Ignorance and Infirmity or else of Malice and Obstinacy misconstrued depraved and
Believers that the Covenant of God is made and not that we can find to all that that have such believing Sureties who are neither Parents nor Prâ—parents of the Child Ans. Repentance whereby they forsake sin and Faith whereby they stedfastly believe the Promises of God c.  20 Quest. Why then are Infants baptized when by reason of ther tender Age they cannot perform them  Ans. Yes they do perform by their Sureties who promise and vow them both in their Names  In the general we observe That the Doctrine of the Sacraments which was added upon the Conference at Hampton-Court is much more fully and particularly delivered than the other parts of the Catechism in short Answers fitted to the memories of Children and thereupon we offer it to be considered First Whether there should not be a more distinct and full Explication of the Creed the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer Secondly Whether it were no convenient to add what seems to be wanting somewhat particularly concerning the Nature of Faith of Repentance the two Covenants of Justification Sanctification Adoption and Regeneration Of Confirmation The last Rubrick before the Catechism  ANd that no Man shall think that any detriment shall come to Children by deferring of their Confirmation he shall know for truth that it is certain by God's Word that Children being baptized have all things necessary for their Salvation and be undoubtedly saved ALthough we charitably suppose the meaning of these words was only to exclude the necessity of any other Sacraments to baptized Infants yet these words are dangerous as to the misleading of the Vulgar and therefore we desire they may be expunged Rubrick after the Catechism  So soon as the Children can say in their Mother-tongue the Articles of the Faith the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments and can answer such other Questions of this short Catechism c. then shall they be brought to the Bishop c. and the Bishop shall Confirm them We conceive that it is not a sufficient qualification for Confirmation that Children be able memoriter to the repeat the Articles of the Faith commonly called the Apostles Creed the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments and to answer to some Questions of this short Catechism for it is often found that Children are able to do all this at four or five years old 2dly It crosses what is said in the third Reason of the first Rubrick before Confirmation concerning the usage of the Church in times past ordaining that Confirmation should be ministred unto them that were of perfect Age that they being instructed in the Christian Religion should openly profess their own Faith and promise to be obedient to the Will of God And therefore 3dly we desire that none may be Confirmed but according to his Majesty's Declaration viz. That Confirmation be rightly and solemnly performed by the Information and with the Consent of the Minister of the place Rubrick after the Catechirm  Then shall they be brought to the Bishop by one that shall be his Godfather or Godmother This seems to bring in another sort of Godfathers and Godmothers besides those made use of in Baptism and we see no need either of the one or the other The Prayer before the Imposition of Hands  Who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy Servants by Water and the Holy Ghost and hast given unto them the forgiveness of all their sins This supposeth that all the Children who are brought to be confirmed have the Spirit of Christ and the forgiveness of all their sins Whereas a great number of Children at that Age having committed many sins since their Baptism do shew no Evidence of serious Repentance or of any special Saving Grace And therefore this Confirmation if administred to such would be a perillous and gross Abuse Rubrick before the Imposition of Hands  Then the Bishop shall lay his hand on every Child severally This seems to put a higher value upon Confirmation then upon Baptism or the Lord's Supper for according to the Rubrick and Order in the Common-Prayer-Book every Deacon may Baptize and every Minister may consecrate and administer the Lord's Supper but the Bishop only may Confirm The Prayer after Imposition of Hands  We make our humble Supplications unto thee for these Children upon whom after the Example of thy Holy Apostles we have laid our Hands to certifie them by this Sign of thy Favour and gracious Goodness towards them We desire that the Practice of the Apostles may not be alledged as a ground of this Imposition of Hands for the Confirmation of Children both because the Apostles did never use it in that Case as also because the Articles of the Church of England declare it to be a corrupt imitation of the Apostles practice Acts 25. We desire that Imposition of Hands may not be made as here it is a Sign to certifie Children of God's Grace and Favour towards them because this seems to speak it a Sacrament and is contrary to that fore-mentioned 25th Article which saith That Confirmation hath no visible Sign appointed by God The last Rubrick after Confirmation We desire that Confirmation may not be made so necessary to the Holy Communion as that none should be admitted to it unless they be confirmed None shall be admitted to the holy Communion until such time as he can say the Catechism and be confirmed  Of the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony THe Man shall give the Woman a Ring c. shall surely perform and keep the Uow and Covenant betwixt them made whereof this Ring given and received is a Token and Pledge c. SEeing this Ceremony of the Ring in Marriage is made necessary to it and a significant Sign of the Vow and Covenant betwixt the Parties and Romish Ritualists give such Reasons for the Use and Institution of the Ring as are either frivolous or superstitious It is desired that this Ceremony of the Ring in Marriage may be left indifferent to be used or forborn The Man shall say With my Body I thee worship This word worship being much altered in the Use of it since this Form was first drawn up We desire some other word may be used instead of it In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost These words being only used in Baptism and herein the Solemnization of Matrimony and in the Absolution of the Sick We desire it may be considered whether they should not be here omitted least they should seem to favour those who count Matrimony a Sacraâ—â—â— Till Death us depart This word depart is here improperly used Rubrick Exception Then the Minister or Clerk going to the Lords Table shall say or sing this Psalm We conceive this Change of Place and Posture mentioned in these two Rubricks is needless and therefore desire it may be omitted Next Rubrick  The Psalm ended and the Man and the Woman kneeling before the Lord's Table the Priest
Men are about to do § 213. You have had the Substance of our wandering Discourses you are next to have our as unprofitable Disputes In which all was to be managed in Writing ex tempore by Dr. Pierson Dr. Gunning and Dr. Sparrow with Dr. Pierce on one side and Dr. Bates Dr. Iacomb and my self on the other side we withdrawing into the next Room and leaving the Bishops and them together while we wrote our part And we began with the Imposition of Kneeling upon two Accounts though I took the Gesture it self as lawful 1. Because I knew I had the fullest Evidence and the greatest Authority of Antiquity or Church-Law and Custom against them 2. Because the Penalty is so immediate and great to put all that kneel not from the Communion And it was only the Penalty and to the Imposition on that Penalty which we disputed against § 214. Oppon Arg. 1. To enjoin all Ministers to deny the Communion to all that dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament on the Lord's days is sinful But the Common-Prayer-Book and Canons enjoin all Ministers to deny the Communion to all that dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament on the Lord's Days Ergo the Common-Prayer-Book and Canons do or contain that which is sinful Resp. Not granting nor denying the Major in the first place prove the Minor Oppon We prove both 1. Prob. Major To enjoin Ministers to deny the Communion to Men because they dare not go against the Practice of the Apostles and the universal Church for many hundred Years after them and the Canons of the most venerable Councils is sinful But to enjoin Ministers to deny Communion to all that dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament on the Lord's Days is to enjoin them to deny Communion to them because they dare not go against the Practice of the Apostles and the universal Church for many hundred Years after them and the Canons of the most venerable Councils Ergo. To enjoin all Ministers to deny Communion to all that dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament on the Lord's Day is sinful Prob. Minor The Words of the Common-Prayer-Book and Canons prove it Resp. The Minor viz. as to the Common-Prayer-Book of which the Proof must proceed is not yet proved But the Major which we had not then spoke to but now do clearly denying that Major also of the first Syllogisin you prove by the Syllogism brought in which we deny the Minor § 215. Here we told them That for the Proof of both Propositions denyed the Presence of the Book is necessary which we desired them to procure us but they were not fatcht And first we had a large Debate about the Words of the Common-Prayer He shall deliver it them kneeling on their knees Dr. Pierson confessed that the Canons did reject them that kneel not from the Communion but these Words of the Common-Prayer-Book do not But they only include Kneelers but exclude not others We answered them that either the Common-Prayer-Book doth exclude them that kneel not or it doth not If it doth the Proposition is true If it do not then we shall willingly let fall this Argument against it and proceed to another Therefore I desired them but to tell us openly their own judgment of the Sense of the Book for we professed to argue against it only on Supposition of the exclusive Sense § 216. Hereupon unavoidably they fell into Discord among themselves Dr. Pierson who was to defend the Book told us his judgment was that the Sense was not exclusive Bishop Morley who was to offend the Nonconformists gave his judgment for the exclusive Sense viz. That the Minister is to give it to Kneelers and no others So that we professed to them That we could not go any further till they agreed among themselves of their Sense § 217. And for the other Minor denied though the Books were not present I alledged the 20th Canon Concil Nicaen Concil Trull and Tertullian oft and Epiphanius with the common Consent of ancient Writers who tell us it was the Tradition and Custom of the universal Church not to adore by Genuflexion on any Lord's Day or on any Day between Easter and Whitsuntide Ergo not so to adore in taking the Sacrament § 218. Bishop Morley answered That this was the Custom but only between Easter and Whitsuntide and therefore it being otherwise the rest of the Year was more against us I answered him that he mistook where a multitude of Evidences might rectifie him it was on every Lord's Day through the Year that this Adoration by Genuflexion was forbidden though on other Week-days it was only between Easter and Whitsuntide § 219. Next he and the rest insisted on it that these Canons and Customs extended only to Prayer To which I answered That 1. The plain words are against them where some speak of all Adoration and others more largely of the publick Worship and offered to bring them full Proof from the Books as soon as they would give me time 2. And if it were only in Prayer it is all one to our Case For the Liturgy giveth the Sacrament with Words of Prayer and it is the common Argument brought for kneeling that it 's suitable to the conjunct Prayer And I told them over and over that Antiquity was so clear in the point that I desired all might be laid on that and I might have time to bring them in my Testimonies But thus that Argument was turned off and the Evening broke off that part of the Dispute The next Days Argument § 220. Oppon To enjoin Ministers to deny the Communion to such as the Holy Ghost hath required us to receive to the Communion is sinful But to enjoin Ministers to deny the Communion to all that dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament is to enjoin them to deny the Communion to such as the holy Ghost hath required us to receive to the Communion Ergo. to enjoin Ministers to deny the Communion to all that dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament is a Sin Resp. We deny the Minor Oppon The Holy Ghost hath required us to receive to the Communion even all the weak in the Faith who are charged with no greater Fault than erroneously refusing things lawful as unlawful But many of those who dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament are at the worst but weak in the Faith and charged with no greater Fault than erroneously refusing things lawful as unlawful Ergo To enjoin Ministers to deny the Communion to all who dare not kneel in the Reception of the Sacrament is to enjoin them to deny the Communion to such as the Holy Ghost hath required us to receive to the Communion Resp. We say This is no true but a fallacious Syllogism of no due Form For this Reason That whereas both Subject and Predicate of the Conclusion ought to be somewhere
Guilt of the Division caused by it But when they are Imposed we may do that which in it self is lawful without any consent to the Imposition at all Yea and that which as imposed tendeth to Division may upon supposition that it will be and is imposed be practised sometimes as the way to Unity and to avoid Division § 310. 7. Lastly it is said That the Necessity which is pretended for this Conformity is none at all For 1. As to a Necessity of Communion with the Church Catholick it requireth not Personal Local Communion with each particular Congregation but that at a distance we own them so far as they are to be owned 2. And for the Escaping of Punishment from Men there is no necessity of it nor yet of our Personal Liberty to preach the Gospel when we cannot do it upon lawful Terms But to this the moderate Nonconformists say That 1. our Catholick Communion requireth that we in Judgment or Practice separate from no Church of Christ which forceth us not to sin but hold Communion with them as we have a Call and Opportunity And that we must not separate from one upon a Cause that is common to almost all 2. That though there be no Necessity of our escaping Persecution nor any absolute Necessity of our Personal Preaching yet there is of this last an ordinate Hypothetical Necessity laid upon us by God himself and wo to us if we preach not when we may So that you see that these general Reasons which some Nonconformists extend to all the moderate allow only as Seconds against those things which first are proved unlawful § 311. I. For the particular Controversie about Diocesans 1. Some of the Nonconformists are against all Bishops as distinct from Presbyters by any other than a Temporary Presidency or Moderatorship But the most of them of my Acquaintance are for the lawfulness of some stated Episcopacy that is that there be fixed Presidents or Bishops in every particular Church they take to be lawful as of Humane Constitution and Ecclesiastical Custom contrary to no Law of God 2. That there be more general Overseers of many of these Bishops and Churches as the Apostles were though without their extraordinary Call and Priviledges they think also lawful if not in some fort of Divine Institution 1. Because Church-Government being an ordinary standing work in that the Apostles were to have Successors 2. Because they think it incredible if the Apostles had been against particular Primitive Episcopacy that no Church or Person would have been found on Record to have born witness against it till it had been so universally received by all the Churches But they are all agreed that the English Diocesan Frame of Government and so the Popish Prelacy is unlawful and of dangerous tendency in the Churches And that this Controversie may be understood the English Frame must here be opened § 312. There are in England two Archbishops and under one of them four Bishops and under the other One and twenty Bishops In all Five and twenty Bishops with Two Archbishops Every Bishop hath a Cathedral Church which is no Parish Church nor hath any People appropriated to it as Parishioners But a Dean with a Chapter of Prebends or Canons are the Preachers to it and Governours of I know not whom In some Bishopricks are Three hundred some Four hundred some Five hundred some One thousand some Twelve hundred Parishes and some more In the greatest Parishes of London are about Threescore thousand Souls as Martyns Stepney Giles Cripplegate in others about Thirty thousand as Giles's in the Fields Sepulchres in others about Twenty thousand and in the lesser Parishes fewer Usually the greater Country Parishes in Market Towns have about Four thousand or Three thousand or Two thousand Souls and the ordinary Rural Parishes about One thousand in the bigger sort and Two hundred or Three hundred in the lesser some more and some less In these Parishes the Ministers who have watched over them and of late times instructed and catechised every Family and Person young and old apart in many places do find that the number of those that are ignorant of the Person and Office of Christ and the Essentials of Christianity and of all Religion and of those that are ordinary Drunkards Whoremongers Prophane Swearers Cursers Railers or otherwise notoriously Scandalous or Ungodly is not small For the Government of these besides preaching to them and exhorting them and giving them the Sacraments the Parish Minister hath no power He hath no power of judging whole Children he shall baptize but must refuse none though the Parents be professed Heathens or Infidels if Godfathers and Godmothers bring them to be baptized who yet never adopt them nor meddle more as Owners of them with their Education and perhaps know not what Baptism or Christianity is themselves They have no power to judge what Persons of their Parish shall be confirmed or admitted into the number of Adult Communicants so that all their Flocks are imposed on them They have no more power than any private Man to admonish the Scandalous before Witness or to admonish them before the Church or pray for their Repentance by Name or to judge who is to be cast out of the Communion of the Church or to be Absolved nor to deny the Sacrament to any unless for a particular time when he is just going to Administer it he see any there that are notoriously guilty and he take them then aside and they will not so much as say We will do better And it is uncertain whether he may Suspend any of these but the Malicious that will not be reconciled So that the Ministers may read Prayers and Preach and may read an Excommunication or Absolution when it is sent them and may if they please joyn with the Churchwarden as Informers to present some Men to the Bishops Court but Church-Government is denied them The Government then of all these Churches and Exercise of Holy Discipline belongeth to the Bishops in Title but the Bishops do and must Exercise it in their Courts or Consistories In every Diocess there is one of these Courts where the Ordinary Judge is the Bishop's Chancellour a Lay-man and a Civil Lawyer though in many Cases the Bishop may fit himself if he please The Court hath also a Register and Proctors to plead Mens Causes as Counsellers in Civil Courts And they have some Fellows called Apparators who are their Messengers for Citation besides the Churchwardens Presentments who bring them in Custom This Court is to hear all considerable Causes and determine them by Excommunications or Absolutions and to send their Excommunications or Absolutions written to the Parish Priest who is to read them But pro forma when the Lay-Chancellour hath resolved who shall be Excommunicated they have a Clergy-Presbyter present to speak the Sentence in the Court who yet hath no power but of meer Pronunciation but is a Ceremony to put off the Odium from
such things If it be said that the Magistrate may set up Civil Courts who may judge Circa Sacra I answer but 1. These judge de Sacris and Excommunicate and Absolve 2. They do it under the Name of Church-Discipline and the Power of the Keys 3. And instead of Christ's deposed Discipline § 339. 9. The ninth Charge against our Prelacy is consequential That it bringeth on us a multitude of grievous Calamities and ill Consequences by this abolition of true Discipline and the aforesaid Corruptions As for instance 1. That it giveth up our Cause to the Brownists quantum in se who say that our Churches are no true Churches and our Ministry is no true Ministry For if we have true Churches and Ministers it is either the Parochial the Diocesan or the National But 1. for the Parochial they say that they are no true Churches or Ministers for a true Church in sensu politico is constituted of the Governing part and the Governed part But a Parish Church hath no Governing part as such For the Diocesan is not the Head of it as a Parish Church but as a part of his Diocesan Church Otherwise one Man should be a Thousand Heads and Political persons And the Parson or Vicar though perhaps called Rector is only the Teacher and Priest and denied all Government Egro he is no Pastor as wanting an essential part of that Office nor the Church a true Church And for my part I know not how to confute these Men but by telling them that the Pastor of that Parish-Church must be judged of by God's description and not by the Bishop's which I doubt not is a true and satisfactory Answer And for a Diocesan Church the Brownists say that it is not only no Church of Christ's institution but contrary to it and therefore not to be acknowledged And for the National Church unless you speak equivocally they know no such thing for what is it that is the Constitutive Head of it The King is the Civil Head But the Constitutive Head of a Church must be an Ecclesiastical Head or a Clergy-man or Society of Men It cannot be an Archbishop for neither of the Archbishops pretendeth to it having but a priority of place and not any Government over one another Canterbury over York or in each others Provinces And the Convocation it cannot be because the Canon Anathematizeth them that take it not for the Representative Church of England And if it be but the Representative it cannot be the Constitutive Head For either it representeth the Governing part of the Church which is indeed the Head or the Governed part which is the Body If it represent the latter only then as such it can have no Governing power at all For as Representative it can have no more power than those that are represented But the Governed party as such have no Governing power Ergo neither have their Representers as such If they represent any higher power What is it It must be either in a single Person or a Collective Body which is one Political Person But the former is not at all pretended nor can be If it be said that they represent all the Pastors of England I answer no doubt that is the meaning of the Canon and yet no Man affirmeth that the real Body of all those Pastors in conjunction is one Collective Political Head of this Church For Parish-Ministers are only Heads of their several Parishes if so much but not of all the rest of the Parishes in the Nation any otherwise than of those in other Land 's Wherefore it is most evident that there is no such thing as a Church of England in a Political Formal sence as it hath one Constitutive and Ecclesiastical Head but only in an improper larger sence either as the Pastors of many Churches met in a Synod do make binding Agreements by way of voluntary Concord and Consent as many Kings may do in a voluntary Meeting which doth not constitute a Political Society Or else as they have one accidental Civil Head the King who is Head of all Religious Societies in his Dominions Papists Anabaptists c. But these are none of them Denominations à formâ But hence it may be noted 1. That as Bishop Usher said Synods are not properly a Superiour Governing power over the particular Bishops but only for voluntary Concord 2. That the Bishops must against their wills grant that all Parish-Ministers are de jure Church Governours or else how come their Representatives to be part of the Governing-Church even in Canon-making for common Government as they judge As for the Democratical conceit of them that say that the Parliament hath their Governing power as they are the Peoples Representatives and so have the Members of the Convocation though those represented have no Governing power themselves it is so palpably Self-contradicting that I need not confute it § 340. 2. A second evil Consequence is that by neglect of Discipline or excluding it the Vicious want that remedy which God hath provided to bring them to Repentance and Salvation That God hath appointed Discipline is proved from Lev. 19. 17. Matth. 18. 15 16 17 18. 1. Cor. 5. Tit. 1. 13 2. 15. 3. 10. 1 Tim. 3. 5 15. 5. 19 20 21 22 24. 2 Tim. 3. 5. 4. 2. 2. Thess. 3. 6 14. And as neglect of Preaching so neglect of Discipline tendeth to the hardening of Sinners in their sins And when in the Application of Baptism Confirmation the Lord's Supper Absolution and all Church Consolations to them they are all used by the Church as pardoned Sinners and judged to be such how vicious soever they will the easilier believe they are such indeed and reject all passages in Sermons that would convince them and all that would perswade them of the Necessity of a Change So that no doubt but many Thousands are hindered from Conversion and Salvation for want of Discipline § 341. 3. And it tendeth to propagate the Sin as Impunity from Magistrates or Parents would do which made the Apostle say 1. Cor. 5. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump many will be encouraged to do that which undergoeth no more censure § 342. 4. It keepeth up the Credit of Sin it self and gratifieth Satan while the Church is deprived of the Publick Means appointed by God for putting Sin to open shame and bruising the Serpent's Head by a solemn Condemnation of his Works of Darkness § 343. 5. It depriveth Holiness and Obedience of the honour which God hath appointed for it by this publick differencing Judgment of the Church which being as Tertullian calleth it praejudicium futuri judicij doth represent the Justification and Condemnation of that Day and wonderfully tend to the publick honour of Godliness and Honesty and consequently to the Conversion and Establishment of Mens Souls § 344. 6. It greatly tendeth to the dishonour of the Church by its pollution whenas Christian Societies shall be conspurcated with
those Vices which are the shame of Infidels and Heathens and those of our Communion are in their Lives no better than the Unbelieving World All Men will think that that is the best Society which hath the best People and will judge rather by Mens Lives than their Opinions § 345. 7. And hereby it greatly dishonoureth Christianity it self and when the Church is as full of Vices as the Mahomiran Societies are or the Heathen it is a publick perswading the World that our Religion is as false or bad as theirs § 346. 8. And hereby God himself and our blessed Redeemer are greatly dishonoured in the World As his Saints are his honour so when the Communion of Atheists and Prophane Persons and Oppressors and Deceivers and Fornicators and Drunkards is called by us The Communion of Saints it tendeth to make the Church a Scorn and to the great dishonour of the Head of such a Body and the Author of the Christian Faith § 347. 9. And it lamentably conduceth to the hardening of the Heathens and Infidels of the World and hindering their Conversion to the Christian Faith It would make a Believer's heart to bleed if any thing in all the World will do it to think that five parts in six of the World are still Heathens Mahometans and Infidels and that the wicked Lives of Christians with Popperies Ignorance and Divisions is the great Impediment to their Conversion To read and hear Travellers and Merchants tell that the Banians and other Heathens in Indostan Cambaia and many other Lands and the Mahometans adjoyning to the Greeks and the Abassines c. do commonly fly from Christianity as the Separatists among us do from Prelacy and say God will not save us if we be Christians for Christians are Drunkards and proud and Deceivers c. And that the Mahometans and many Heathens have more both of Devotion and Honesty than the common fort of Christians have that live among them O wretched Christians that are not content to damn themselves but thus lay stumbling blocks before the World It were better for these men that they had never been born But if all these notorious ones were disowned by the Churches it would quit our Profession much from the dishonour and shew poor Infidels that our Religion is good though their Lives be bad § 348. 10. Lastly it galleth the Consciences of the Ministers in their administrations of the Sacraments to the openly ungodly and grosly ignorant It hindereth the Comfort of the Church in its Communion It filleth the Heads of poor Christians with Scruples and their Hearts with Fears and is the great cause of unavoidable Separations among us and consequently of all the Censures on one side and wrathful Penalties on the other and uncharitableness on both sides which follow thereupon If the Pastors will not differ between the precious and the vile by necessary regular Discipline tender Christians will be tempted to difference by irregular Separations and to think as Cyprian saith That it belongeth to the People to forsake a sinful Pastor They will separate further than they ought and will take our Churches as Sinks of Pollution and fly from the noisomness of them and come out from among us for fear of partaking in our Plagues as men run out of a ruinous House lest it fall upon their Heads And then they will fall into Sects among themselves and fall under the hot displeasure of the Bishops and then they will be reproached and vexed as Schismaticks while they reproach our Churches as Hypocritical and Prophane that call such Societies the Communion of Saints This hath been and this is and this will be the Cause of Separations Sects Persecutions Malice and Ruins in the Christian World And it will never be cured till some tolerable Discipline cure the Churches § 349. 10. The tenth and last Charge against our Frame of Prelacy is That by is use of Civil or Coercive Power it at once breaketh the Command of Christ and greatly injureth the Civil Government Both which are thus proved by the Nonconformists § 350. 1. It violateth all these Laws of Christ Luke 22. 24 25. And there was a strife among them which of them should be accounted the greatest And he said unto them the Kings of the Gentles exercise Lordship over them and they that exercise Authority upon them are called Benefactors but ye shall not be so but he that is greatest among you let him be as the younger and he that is chief as he that doth serve That is it is a Ministerial Dignity and not a Magistratical which you are called to that which is allowed to Kings here is denied to Ministers even Apostles But it is not Tyranny or Abuse of Power but Secular Magistratical Power it self which is all owed to Kings Ergo it is this which is forbidden Ministers This is the very sence of the Text which is given by Protestant Episcopal Divines themselves when they reject the Presbyterians sence who say that it forbiddeth Ecclesiastical Superiority and Power of one Minister over another as well as Coercive Therefore the old Rhymer said against the Prelates Christus dixit quodam loco Vos non sic nec dixit joco Dixit suis Ergo isti Cujus sunt non certo Christi So 1. Pet. 5. 1 2 3. Feed the Flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly Not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind Neither as being Lords over God's heritage but being ensamples to the Flock But our Bishops take the oversight of those that are not among them and whom they feed not and they rule them by constraint and not as voluntary Subjects not by Ensample for one of an hundred never seeth or knoweth them but as Lords by Secular Force Dr. Hammond taketh the word Constraint here Actively not Passively not as forbidding them to Bishops against their own Wills but to Rule the People by constraint against the Peoples wills It would be tedious to recite all those Texts which command the People to imitate the Apostles as they imitated Christ who never used Magistratical force nor did any of his Apostles and say that the Weapons of our warfare are not carnals and that he that warreth entangleth not himself with the Affairs of this Life and that the Servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle c. § 351. 2. And that this Coercive Church Government is an heinous Injury to Christian Magistrates even where it seemeth to be subordinate to them appeareth thus 1. Though they do mostly confess that they can exercise no Power of Coercion of themselves but by the Magistrates consent yet do they take it to be the Magistrates duty to consent to it as if he were not else a tender Nursing Father to the Church and so they lay his Conscience in Prison till he trust them with his Sword or serve them by it 2. They call their Magistratical Government by the
Name of Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Government And so by the Name they seduce Mens minds to think that this is indeed the use of the Keys which God hath put into the Churches Hands 3. Hereby they greatly encourage the Usurpation of the Pope and his Clergy who set up such Courts for probate of Wills and Causes of Matrimony and rule the Church in a Secular manner though many of them confess that directly the Church hath no forcing Power And this they call the Churches Power and Spiritual Government and Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction and say that it belongeth not to Kings and that no King can in Conscience restrain them of it but must protect them in it And so they set up Imperium in Imperio and as Bishop Bedle said of Ireland The Pope hath a Kingdom there in the Kingdom greater than the Kings Against which Ludov. Molinaeus hath written at large in two or three Treatises So that when the Papal Power in England was cast down and their Courts subjected to the King and the Oath of Supremacy formed it was under the Name of Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Power that it was acknowledged to be in the King who yet claimeth no proper Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Power so greatly were these Terms abused and so are they still as applied to our Bishops Courts so that the King is said by us to be Chief Governour in all Causes Ecclesiastical because Coercive Power in Church Matters which is proper to the Magistrate was possessed and claimed by the Clergy And in all Popish Kingdoms the Kings are but half Kings through these Usurpations of the Clergy And for us to Exercise the same kind of Power mixt with the Exercise of the Keys and that by the same Name is greatly to countenance the Usurpers § 352. If it be said That the Church claimeth no Coercive Power but as granted them by the King or that it is the Magistrate that annexeth Mulcts and Penalties and not the Church I answer 1. They perswade the Magistrate that he ought to do so 2. Force is not a meer Accident but confessed by them to be the very Life of their Government It is that which bringeth People to their Courts and enforceth all their Precepts and causeth Obedience to them so that it is part of the very Constitution of their Government And as to Fees and Commutation of Penance Pecuniary Mulcts are thus imposed by themselves 3. Their very Courts and Officers are of a Secular Form 4. The Magistrate is but the Executioner of their Sentence He must grant out a Writ and imprison a Man quatenus excommunicate without sitting in Judgment upon the Cause himself and trying the Person according to his Accusation And what a dishonour do these Men put on Magistrates that make them their Executioners to imprison those whom they condemn inuudita causa at a venture be it right or wrong So much of the Nonconformists Charges against the English Prelacy § 353. By this you may see what they Answer to the Reasons of the Conformists As 1. To the willing Conformists who plead a Iur Divinum they say That if all that Gersom Bucer Didoclavius Blondell Salmasius Parker Baines c. have said against Episcopacy it self were certainly confuted yet it is quite another thing that is called Episcopacy by them that plead it Iure Divino If 1. Bishops of single Churches with a Presbytery under them 2. and General Bishops over these Bishops were both proved Iure Divine yet our Diocesans are proved to be contra jus Divinum 2. To the Latitudinarians and involuntary Conformists who plead that no Church-Government as to the form is of Divine Institution they answer 1. This is to condemn themselves and say Because no Form is of God's Institution therefore I will declare that the Episcopal Form is of Divine Institution for this is part of their Subscription or Declaration when they Profess Assent and Confent to all things in the Book of Common Prayer and Ordination And one thing in it is in these words with which the Book beginneth It is evident to all Men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors that from the Apostles time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church Bishops Priests and Deacons which Offices were evermore had in such reverend estimation c. So that here they declare that Bishops and Priests are not only distinct Degrees but distinct Orders and Offices and that since the Apostles time as evident by Scripture c. when yet many of the very Papists Schoolmen do deny it And the Collect in the Ordering of Priests runs thus Almighty God giver of all good things who by the holy Spirit hath appointed divers Orders of Ministers in the Church So that in plain English they declare That Episcopacy even as a distinct Order Office and Function for all these words are there is appointed by the Spirit of God because they believe that no Form is so appointed 2. That which Mr. Stillingfleet calleth A Form is none of the Substance of the Government it self nor the Offices in the Church He granteth that 1. Worshipping Assemblies are of Divine appointment 2. That every one of these must have one or more Pastors who have power in their Order to teach them and go before them in Worship and spiritually guide or govern them But 1. Whether a Church shall have one Pastor or more 2. Whether one of them shall be in some things subject to another 3. Whether constant Synods shall be held for concord of Associated Churches 4. Whether in these Synods one shall be Moderator and how long and with what Authority not unreasonable these he thinks are left undetermined And I am of his mind supposing General Rules to guide them by as he doth But the Matter and Manner of Church-Discipline being of God's appointment and the Nature and Ends of a particular Church and the Office of Pastors as well as the Form of the Church Universal it is past doubt that nothing which subverteth any of these is lawful And indeed if properly no Form of Government be instituted by God then no Form of a Church neither for the Form of Government is the Form of a Church considered in sensu politico and not as a meer Community And then the Church of England is not of God's making Quest. Who then made it Either another Church made this Church and then what was that Church and who made its Form and so ad Originem or no Church made it If no Church made the Church of England quo jure or what is its Authority and Honour If the King made it was he a Member of a Church or not If yea 1. There was then a Church-Form before the Church of England And who made that Church usque ad Originem If the King that made it was no Member of a Church then he that is no Member of a Church may institute a Church Form but quo jure and with what
against him 3. Lest they encourage Usurpers in these insolent Novelties and Corruptions which the ancient Churches never knew and came not into the Church till the Roman Papacy grew to some degree of Impudency in their Usurpations § 398. Yet these two things the Non-conformists are contented readily to do 1. To obey the Bishops Chancellors c. by meer Submission without an Oath in all things lawful To appear at their Courts and answer them with due reverence For they think that Subjection and Submission towards Usurpers greatly differ and that as in the late Cromwellian Usurpation in England many submitted as they would have done to a Robber whom they could not resist who yet would not swear Subjection nor do any thing which seemed to justifie his Usurpation or Title So here though they dare not state themselves by an Oath in the relation of Subjects to the Prelates yet they can obey them materially in lawful things 2. And they are willing to swear Obedience to them as they are the King's Officers commissioned by him to exercise such Coercive Power as belongeth to the Magistrate about Church Matters But not as they exercise the Power of the Keys in Absolving Excommunicating c. § 399. Object 1. It is but in licitis honestis that you swear to obey them And who will refuse things lawful and honest Answ. 1. But it is in the relation of our lawful Ordinaries that we are required to swear this Obedience to them It may be lawful and honest to do the things commanded when it is neither lawful nor honest to subject my self to the Commander as his Subject The most just Authority that is can command us nothing but licita honesta And if Cromwell or the Engaging piece of the Parliament had required me to swear Obedience to them in licitis honestis I think to have done it had been a subjecting my self to them as my Governours which had neither been licitum nor honestum If a Rebel now should usurp Authority against the King's will for the Government of Ireland or Scotland he that would go swear Obedience to him in licitis honestis I think would be disloyal 2. And it is Obedience according to the Canon which is their in licitis honestis And this is to Lay-Chancellors Exercise of the Keys and many other things which are supposed licita honesta but not yet proved to be so § 400. Object 2. What a Man may do he may swear to do But licita honesta a Man may do Ergo Answ. 1. I deny the Major as universally taken There is many a thing that may be done which may not be sworn Else you might swear to speak every word before you speak it and to do every trivial Action that you do 2. Some time the Oath reacheth further than the Act to be done even to the Relation in which it is done and the reason for which and this is the Case here So that here is a feigning of a false state of the Question which is not Whether we may swear to do licita honesta but whether we may swear to obey them as our lawful Ordinaries in licitis honestis 3. The Conclusion therefore might be granted without any Decision of the Controversie For the Question is not Whether we may swear to do such things but whether we may swear to obey those Men in that relation and to do those things sub formali ratione obedientiae Which their Loyalty to Christ their King they think prohibiteth What if you lived in a Popish Country would you swear to obey the Pope in licitis honestis If not you may see our Reasons while you give your own § 401. Object 3. The Scripture commandeth all Men to subject themselves one to another Answ. There is an Equivocation in the word subject The Text speaketh only of private submission and yielding to others voluntarily carrying our selves with that lowliness as Subjects do to their Rulers But this is nothing to publick relative stated subjection of which the Controversie is He would be but an ill Subject to the King or an ill Member of the Church who would make every man his King or his Pastor on this pretence that we must all subject our selves to each other § 402. Object 4. You are to swear Obedience to them only as Church-Magistrates appointed by the King Answ. That cannot be true because it is as our Ordinaries who have the power of Ordination Excommunication and Absolution and in the exercise of this power But the power of the Keys is not Magistratical § 403. V. The fifth Controversie is about Re-ordination Now in this the Nonconformists are the more shie 1. Because in our most Publick Meetings before the King and the Lords and the Bishops some of them as Dr. Gunning oft have openly declared that the Ordination which hath been in England without Bishops is null and those that were so Ordained without them are no Ministers but Lay-men And his Majesty himself hath signified openly his own Judgment accordingly that he would no more take the Sacrament from such then from Lay-men So that it being thus openly declared to be their sence and no one of their Bishops or Doctors contradicting it we have reason to think that by submitting to be Re-ordained Men do interpretatively confess the nullity of their former Ordination 2. And it is a new thing contrary to the Judgment and Practice of all the Reformed Churches 3. And there is a Canon among those called the Apostles which is express against it commanding the Deposition of the Ordainers and Ordained 4. I have fully proved in my Disputation of Church Government That the said Ordination without Diocesans is valid and better than the Prelates and was performed by such Bishops as were in Ignatius's days viz. City-Pastors who had Presbyters under them And no Man hath attempted to answer what I have there said 5. And at best to be Re-ordained seemeth but a taking of God's Name in vain and a solemn praying to God for that which they have already and a pretending de novo to receive that Authority which they had before And to come as upon a Stage thus ludicrously to play with holy Things to fulfil the Humours and confirm the claim of Usurpers is somewhat hard § 404. VI. The sixth Controversie is about the first Declaration I do here declare my unfeigned Assent and Consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by the Book entituled c. Here the Non-conformists have to do with two sorts the willing and the unwilling Conformists The first say that this Declaration may be lawfully made in its proper sence The Non-conformists refer you for the Answer of this to all their foregoing Exceptions against the Book besides what they have said against our Order of Diocesans and so against the Book of Ordination which asserteth three Orders as of Divine Institution And besides
Ministers can perform and it is a work that I never yet knew one Prelatist well perform to my remembrance and few of them meddle with it at all any farther than to read Common Prayer some time to a dying Man if any one of a Multitude desire it 2. Many of them had Pastoral Charges in Cities and Corporations from the obligation of which they take not themselves to be well released by the bare prohibition of Man while then Peoples needs and desires continue and where their places are supplyed with Men so ignorant and vicious as to be un-meet for such a charge of Souls And it must be more than the Will of Man that must warrant them to fly and forsake their Flocks to which they had a lawful Call and to leave their Souls to those notorious Perils as in very many places they must do 3. And in the rest of the Land where can a Minister labour with advantage but with those that know him and are known of him and have formerly profited by him and will afford him Entertainment 4. If it be lawful to desert the Souls of all Cities and Corporations and all other Parishes where-ever we preach'd it will follow that it is lawful to desert all the rest and so sacrilegiously to desert our office 5. Christ saith When they persecute you in one City fly to another Therefore we are not obliged to desert them all as soon as we are commanded 6. The Preaching of Christ's Apostles and of all his Ministers for 300 Years was against the will of the Princes and Rulers of the Countries where they preached And yet they planted Churches and ordained Elders principally in all the Cities where they came and would rather suffer Imprisonment and Death than to desert them any further than by flying from one to another § 9. 2. But natural necessity also constrained many For many had Wives and many Children to maintain and had not one Penny of yearly Revenue nor any thing but the Gifts of charitable People to maintain them And if they had a poor Cottage to live in and no Money to pay their Rent nor to buy Fire Food or Cloathing they had much less enough to take another House and pay for the removal of their Goods far off and the Charges of a new Settlement and there to dwell among Strangers far from those whose Charity relieved them was but to turn their Families to famish which is more inhumane than to see a Brother have need and to shut up the Bowels of our compassion from him which yet is contrary to the Love of God § 10. And indeed in many Countries it was hard to find many places which were not within five Miles of some Corporation or of some place where we had Preached before for some Ministers preached in a great number of Parishes at several times And if such a place were found was it like that there would be Houses enough found untenanted to receive so many Ministers Or if there were perhaps the Landlords would be so much for Prelacy as to refuse such Tenants or so timorous as to be afraid lest by receiving such they should bring themselves under Suspicion of favouring Non-conformists and so be ruined or so covetous as knowing their advantage to ask more for their Houses than poor Ministers that had hardly any thing left to subsist on could be able to give Besides that almost all Country Houses are annexed to the Farms or Land belonging to them And Ministers are ill Farmers especially when they have no Money to Stock their Land § 11. Yea they allowed them not to be kept as common Beggars on the Alms of the Parish but when by the Law every Beggar is to be brought to the place of his Birth or last abode and there to be kept on Alms No Minister must come within five Miles of the Parish where he ever exercised his Ministry nor any that were born in Cities and Corporations must come within five Miles of them for relief § 12. In this strait those Ministers that had any Maintenance of their own did find out some Dwellings in obscure Villages or in some few Market-Towns which were no Corporations And those that had nothing did leave their Wives and Children and hid themselves abroad and sometimes came secretly to them by night But God bringing Good out of Men's Evil many resolved to preach the more freely in Cities and Corporations till they went to Prison Partly because they were then in the way of their Calling in which they could suffer with the greater peace and partly because they might so do some good before they suffered and partly because the People much desired it and also were readier to relieve one that laboured for them than one that did nothing but hide himself and partly because when they lay in Prison for preaching the Gospel both they and their Wives and Children were like to find more pity and relief than if they should forsake their People and their Work Seeing therefore the Question came to this Whether Beggary and Famine to themselves and Families with the deserting of their Callings and the People's Souls was to be chosen or the faithful performance of their Work with a Prison after and the People's Compassion They thought the latter the more eligible § 13. And yet when they had so chosen their Straits were great for the Country was so impoverished that those of the People who were willing to relieve the Ministers were not able And most that were able were partly their Adversaries and partly worldly-minded and strait-handed and unwilling And alas it is not now and then a Shilling or a Crown given very rarely which will pay House-Rent and maintain a Family Those Ministers that were unmarryed did easilier bear their Poverty but it pierceth a Man's Heart to have Children crying and Sickness come upon them for want of wholsom Food or by drinking Water and to have nothing to relieve them And Women are usually less patient of Suffering than Men and their Impatience would be more to a Husband than his own wants I heard but lately of a good Man that was fain to Spin as Women do to get something towards his Family's relief which could be but little and being Melancholy and Diseased it was but part of the Day that he was able to do that Another Mr. Chadwick in Somerset for a long time had little but brown Rye Bread and Water for himself his Wife and many Children and when his Wife was ready to lye in was to be turned out of Door for not paying his House-Rent But yet God did mercifully provide some Supplies that few of them either perished or were exposed to sordid unseemly Beggary But some few were tempted against their former Judgments to Conform § 14. The Oath imposed on them was this I A B De Swear That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King And that I do abhor
obliged to pay all publick Duties to the Parish where they inhabit under penalty 7. This Indulgence to Continue for three years That the Liturgy may be altered by omitting c. BY using the reading Psalms in the New Translation By appointing some other Lessons out of the Canonical Scripture instead of those taken out of the Apocrypha By not 〈◊〉 God-fathers and God-mothers when either of the parents are ready to answer for the Châ—ld By omitting that clause in the Prayer at Baptism By spiritual Regeneration By changing that Question wilt thou be baptised into Wilt thou haue this Child baptised By omitting those words in the Thanksgiving after publick and private baptism To regenerate this Infant by thy holy Spirit and to receive him for thy Child by adoption And the first Rubrick after baptism It is certain by God's word c. By changing those words in the Exhortation after baptism Regenerate and Graffed into the body into Received into the Church of Christ. By not requiring reiteration of any part of the service about baptism in publick when it is evident that the Child hath been lawfully baptized in private By omitting that Clause in the Collect after Imposition of hands in confirmation After the Example of thy holy Apostles and to certify them by this sign of thy favour and gracious goodness towards them And by changing that other passage in the prayer before Confirmation who hast vouchsafed to regenerate c. into who hast vouchsafed to receive these thy servants into thy Church by baptism By omitting that clause in the Office of Matrimony with my body I thee worship And that in the Collect who hast conseâ—rated c. By allowing Ministers some liberty in the visitation of the â—ick to use such other prayers as they shall judge expedient By changing that clause in the prayer at burial For asmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take to himself c. into For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of this World the Soul c. And that clause In a sure and certain hope c. into in a full assurance of the resurrection by our Lord Iesus Christ who is able to change our vile c. By omitting that Clause We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful World And that other As our hopes is that our brother doth By changing that Clause in the Common service our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body c. into our sinful Souls and Bodies may be cleansed by his precious body and blood By not enjoyning the reading of the Commination That the Liturgy may be abbreviated as to the length of it Especially as to morning-service By omitting all the Responsal prayers from O Lord open thou our c. to the Litany and the Litany and all the prayers from Son of God we beseech thee c. to we humbly beseech thee O Father c. By not enjoyning the use of the Lords Prayer above once viz. Immediately after the absolution except after the Minister's Prayer before Sermon By using the Gloria Patri only once viz. after the Reading Psalms By omitting the venite exultemus unless it be thought fit to put any or all of the first seven among the sentences at the beginning By omitting the Communion service such times as are not Communion Days excepting the 10 Commandments which may be read after the Creed And injoyning the prayer Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep these Laws only once at the End By omitting the Collects Epistles and Gospels except only on particular holidays By inserting the prayers for the Parliament into the Litany immediately after the prayer for the Royal Family in this or the like form That it may please thèe to direct and prosper all the Consultations of the High Court of Parliament to the Advantage of thy Glory the good of the Church the safety honour and welfare of our Sovereign and his Kingdoms By omitting the two hymns in the Consecration of Bishops and the Ordinatiâ—n of Priests That after the first Question in the Catechism What is your Name This may follow When was this Name given you And after that What was promised for you in Baptism Answer Three things were promised for me c. In the Question before the Commandments it may be altered You said it was promised for you c. To the 14 Qu. How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained The Answer may be Two only Baptism and the Lord's Supper § 67. Upon Consultation we altered their paper in some things and added some more for we were held to those proposals only leaving the point for Toleration to be debated with our Brethren of the Congregational way And I privately acquainted Dr. Owen with the substance of the business and consulted him that they might not say we neglected them And we offered them the following form which was not what we desired but more than Dr. Wilkins after Bp. of Chester would grant us still professing himself willing of more but that more would not pass with the Parliament and so would frustrate all our Attempts § 68. The paper offered by us 1. Those who have been ordained only by meer Presbyters or the Presidents of their Synods shall be instituted and authorized to exercise their Ministry and admitted to Bènefices therein in such manner and by such persons as by his Majesty shall be thereto appointed by this form and words alone Take c. Provided that those who desire it have leave to give in their professions that they renounce not their Ordination nor take it for a nuâ—â—â—ty and that they take this as the Magistrates License and Confirmation and that they be not constrained to use any words themselves which are not consistent with this profession 2. All persons to be admitted by Ordination Institution License or otherwise into any Ecclesiastical function and dignity or to any preferment in either Vnivesity or to the Employment of a Schoolmaster shall first take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and instead of all other Oaths Subscriptions and Declarations except the Ancient Vniversity Oath shall be required only to subscribe to this form of Words J. A. B. Do hereby profess and Declare my unfeigned assent to the truth of all the holy Canonical â—criptures and to the Articles of the Creed and to the Doctrine of the Church of England contained in the 36 Articles or to the Doctrinal part of the 39 Articles of the Church of England or excepting only the 3 Articles of Ceremonies and Prelacy And I do hold that the Doctrine Worship and Government there established doth contain all things absolutely necessary to salvation And I will not knowingly by my self or any other endeavour to bring in any Doctrine contrary to this aforesaid so established And it is my true Resolution to hold Communion with
the Ministry in general but a designation to a particular Charge and a legal License c. 4. By such as by his Majesty c. because it is not for us to offer our selves to a Diocesans Imposition of Hands in that manner but if you put it in other Words we cannot help it 5. There are three things which the Nonconformists here scruple 1. Renouncing their Ordination 2. Reordination which is like Rebaptization 3. Owning the Diocesan Species of Prelacy for the Presbyterians are against all Prelacy and the Episcopal Nonconformists are against the English Frame as contrary to that in the time of Cyprian c. Therefore because these Words so much seem to express a Re-ordination by Diocesans 1. by the sign of Imposition of Hands 2. By the Authorising Words 3. and put in of purpose to satisfie them that think the Presbyterians no Ministers 4. In a time when this hath been so publickly declared they cannot submit to all this without either a Declaration to the contrary in the Law or a Liberty by the Law given them to profess their own Sense in the three particulars questioned that they renounce not their Ordination nor take this as Re-ordination nor own the Diocesan Prelary as distinct from the old Episcopacy though they will submit to it 6. As by Instituted we intend admittance to a Pastoral Charge or Authority to administer Sacraments we desire that may he plainly inserted seeing he that only preacheth as Probationers may do hath no need of this nor do any scruple to hear him Or if they do while he hath no charge they may turn their back on him while a Man is a Lecturer only to meer Volunteers there is no use for this II. 1. We mention the Vniversity because many were turned out of their Fellowships there for non-subscribing c. 2. We would have the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy made necessary 3. The professed belief of the Scriptures and Creed we take to be needful to Admittance That which was the only ancient Catholick Profession should not be left out of ours 4. The professed Assent to the Doctrine of the Church of England and not only to approve it in tantum seâ—meth needful to satisfie the Suspicious and to shut out Papists and Hereticks from the comprehension 5. Yet the word approve as related to the Worship and Government though restrictively will on many Accounts be scrupled and that is needless 6. So absolutely as joyned to necessary is needful to avoid Ambiguity and just Scruple 7. The word promise requireth fuller certainty than resolve doth and it bindeth us not to alter our Iudgments which is not in our power in such a case 8. The Word continue is a needless and entangling Word and will deprive us of the use of the Indulgence if we should ever change our minds But if as some say it be only the Communion of Faith and Love such as we owe to Neighbour-Churches and not Subjection nor local presence in Worship let that be but expressed and every sober Person will promise it 9. To promise to preserve the Peace and Happiness of the Church is a fuller Word then to do nothing to disturb the peace and yet more clear and plainly relateth to the whole Church III. We put bowing at the Name of Iesus rather than c. to avoid the imputation of Impiety lest we be thought to be against bowing at that Name simply when it is but as comparatively and exclusively to others IV. 1. In case if it be thought fit c. We must suppose it thought fit 2. This whole Vndertaking is proper only to them that take a Cure and not for an occasional or set Lecturer 3. It will answer our Sense if you put it thus Shall read the Liturgy when satisfactorily altered and some considerable part 'till then if it be delayed 4. The profession of the Lawfulness is but a needless temptation as to him that is bound actually to use it 5. And the promise that it shall be constantly used may be hindered by sickness or so many Casualties that its much safer to bind them only by a Law 6. And then the Event only must be expressed that it be used by whose procurement soever so it be done I may think it unlawful to procure another to do that which I cannot do my self and yet some other may procure it In the Second Article I forgot to tell you That we annex the grant of the desired liberty after the Subscription lest else our hopes be frustrate when we have done all The Reasons of the added Articles are apparent in themselves The Sum of all our Reasons is It is confessed that our Phrase will serve the Ends of our Superiours and we are certain that they will satisfie a far greater number than the other will do and to their greater ease and quiet of Conscience that they may not feel themselves still pinched and uneasie and kept under desires of further changes And we are sure that we are much better able our selves to plead down Men's Objections if it be thus worded than as the other way And we would fain have this no patch or palliate Cure but such as may cause the now drooping Dissenters to rejoyce under the Government and to perceive it to be their Interest to defend it against all Attempters of a Change § 71. But because the grand stop in our Treaty was about Re-ordination and Dr. Wilkins still insisted on this That those Consciences must be accommodated who took them for no Ministers who were ordained without Bishops and some Words were 〈◊〉 into their Proposals which seemed to signifie a Reordination though he denied such a signification we were put to give in this following Paper The Reasons why we cannot consent to Reordination I. WE dare not causelesly consent to the use of such Words as imply an untruth viz. That such as were Ordained by Lawful Pastors and the Presidents of their Synods are not lawful Ministers of Christ in an Ecclesiastical Sense II. We dare not consent to the taking of God's Name in vain by using holy Expressions and a Divine Ordinance either as a Scenical Form or to confirm an Error III. We dare not causelesly go against the Iudgment of the Vniversal Church of all Ages who have condemned Reordination as they did Rebaptization The Canons called the Apostles deposing both the Ordainers and the Ordained IV. We dare not so far wrong the Protestant-Churches as to do that which importeth That their Ministry is null and consequently all their Churches null politically taken V. We dare not so far wrong all the People of England and all other Protestant-Churches who have lived under the Ministry of meer Presbyters or such Bishops as were Ordained only by Presbyters as to tempt them to think that all the Sacraments were nullities which they received and so that they are all unchristened or unbaptized even Denmark and those parts of Germany which have some kind of
adhere to The same Sence is exprest also in Can. 10. which describeth Schismaticks Whosoever shall affirm that such Ministers as refuse to subscribe to the Form and manner of God's Worship in the Church of England prescribed in the Communion-Book and their Adherents may truly take unto them the Name of another Church not established by Law and dare presume to publish that this pretended Church hath long groaned under c. And in the 9th Canon where the Authors of Schism are thus described Whosoever shall separate themselves from the Communion of Saints as it is approved by the Apostle's Rules in the Church of England and combine themselves together in a new Brotherhood accounting the Christians who are conformable to the Doctrine Government Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England to be prophane and unmeet for them to join with in Christian Profession Pro. 3. If our manner of Religious Exercises did differ in some meer degrees or Circumstances from that which is allowed by the Liturgy and Practice of the Church it ought not no be taken to be the thing condemned in this Act. Arg. 1. Otherwise the Justices themselves and almost all his Majesty's Subjects either are already obnoxious to the Mulcts Imprisonments and Banishments or may be they know not how soon Arg. 2. And otherwise no Subject must dare to go to Church for fear of incurring Imprisonment or Banishment The reason of both is visible 1. Almost all conformable Ministers do either by some omissions of Prayers or other parts of the Liturgy or by some alterations many times do that which is dissonant from the Liturgy and practise or Canons of the Church I have seldom been present where somewhat was not contrary to them 2 Because most conformable Ministers do now Preach without Licenses which is contrary to the express Canons of the Church 3. Because few of the King's Subjects or none can tell when they go to Church but they may hear one that hath no License or that will do somewhat dissonant from the manner of the Church Pro. 4. Preaching without License bringeth me not within the Penalty of the Act. Arg. 1. Because I have the Archbishop's License Arg. 2. Because a License is not necessary for Family Instruction Arg. 3. Because else most of the Conformists would be as much obnoxious which is not so judged by the Bishops themselves § 124. 3. The Errors of the Mittimus with the explication of the Oxford Act. THis Act containeth 1. The end and Occasion that is the preserving of Church and Kingdom from the Danger of poisonous Principles II. The Description of the dangerous Persons 1. in the Preamble Where they are 1. Nonconformists or such as have not subscribed and declared according to the Act of Uniformity and other subsequent Acts. 2. They or some of them and other Persons not ordained according to the Form of the Church of England who have since the Act of Oblivion preached in Unlawful Assemblies and have settled themselves in Corporations 2. In the Body of the Act where are two parts answering the two aforesaid in the Preamble 1. The first Subject described is Non-subscribers and Non-declarers according to the Act of Uniformity c. That is Non-conformists who also have not taken the Oath which is here prescribed as a preventing Remedy 2. The second Subject is All such Persons as shall Preach in unlawful Meetings contrary to Laws which must needs refer to the second branch of the Preamble and mean only such Nonconformists and unordained Persons as shall so Preach the Word shall signifying that it must be after the passing of this Act. III. The Offence prohibited is being or coming after March 24. 1665. within five Miles of any Corporation or of any place where since the Act of Oblivion they have been Parsons Vicars Lecturers c. Or have preached in an unlawful Assembly contrary to the Laws before they have in open Sessions taken the Oath That is who have done this since the Act of Oblivion before this Act it being the purpose of this Act to put all those who shall again after this Act preach in Conventicles in the same Case with them who since the Act of Oblivion were Parsons Vicars c. That is that none of them shall come within five miles of any place where they were either Incumbents or Conventiclers before this Act since the act of Oblivion IV. The Penalty is 1. 40 l. for what is past which the after taking of the Oath will not save them from 2. And six months Imprisonment also for such of them as shall not Swear and subscribe the Oath and Declaration offered them So that in this Act the Offence it self prohibited is Coming within five miles c. But the qualification of the subject offending is absolutely necessary to it So that the Mittimus for an offence against this Act must signifie That N. N. having not subscribed and declared according to the Acts of Uniformity and other subsequent Acts or being not ordained according to the Form of the Church of England having since the Act of Oblivion preached in an unlawful Assembly and also hath so preached since this Act and hath not taken the Oath here required is proved by Oath to us to have been or come since Mar. 24. 1665. Within five Miles of a Corporation or a place where he was an incumbent or preached in a Conventicle before this Act since the Act of Oblivion and also hath refused before us to swear and subscribe the said Oath c. Now in this Mittimus 1. Here is no mention that R. B. hath not subscribed and declared already according to the Act of Uniformity or is a Non-conformist nor yet that he is not ordained according to the Form of the Church of England 2. Nor is there any mention that he hath preached in an unlawful Assembly since the Act of Oblivion much less since this Act which must be said 3. Nor that ever they had proof of his not taking the Oath before or that ever he was Convict of Preaching before he took it 4. The Offence it self is not here said to be proved by Oath at all viz. Coming or being within five Miles c. But another thing viz. his Preaching in an unlawful Meeting is said to be proved by Oath which this Act doth not enable them to take such proof of As for the Word in the Mittimus where he now dwelleth it cannot be understood as a part of Deposition 1. Because it is expressed but as the Justice's Assertion and not so much as an and or Conjunction put before it to shew that they had Oath made of it as well as of Preaching 2. Because the Word now dwelleth must be taken strictly or laxly if strictly it referreth but to the time of the Writing of the Mittimus which was two days after the Constable's Warrant and no Accuser Witness or other Person was suffered to be present and therefore it must needs
I never spake for liberty herein for Episcopal Independents yea and Anabaptists that only deny Infant Baptism I wrote that hindering men's Ministry for their being against the Parliament And I think I kept many and many thousands from taking the Covenant 7. At least do you deny Liberty to none but those that denyed it to others and we shall thankfully acquiesce Strict I cannot think the maker of these Proposals could imagin that any much less all of them would or could be agreed to Answ. 1. You speak truly if you mean by those men of whom upon former tryal he had so great Experience It were great weakness in him to have expected it But yet he is so charitable as to be confident though not certain that if these Proposals were made to the Conformable London Ministers such as Dr. Whitchcot Dr. Stillingfleet Mr. Gifford Dr. Tillotson Dr. Cradock Dr. Outram Dr. Ford and many more such Learned worthy peaceable men in this City they would either grant all that is here desired or abate so little as should be no hinderance to our present Concord And though I have no great acquaintance with any of them yet my knowledge of them by fame and hearing them preach doth render me so fully persuaded that if we could get the Case but referred to their Judgment and Counsel instead of the Interessed Bishops who brought us to the state that we are in I make no doubt but we should be all healed in a few weeks time And that you may not think my confidence vain take this proof Bishop Wilkins was no fool nor fanatick These men are much of his spirit and judgment who was a Lover of Mankind and of honesty peace and Impartiality and Justice And we agreed with him upon Terms like these upon the Lord Keeper Bridgman's Invitation so far that by mutual Consent the Agreement was drawn up into the form of an Act to have been offered to the house so that as much as lay in him and us we were all agreed and healed And why should I suspect that any of these worthy persons are less peaceable 2. But by this Conclusion those many persons who have talk't so loud how ready some great Clergy-men are to Condescend agree and abate all Unnecessary things to Unite us and prevent Popery may now see past all doubt the very truth of the Case This Animadverter you see would not grant any one of all these Proposals no not our forbearance of an Oath or Subscription to Ceremony or any piece of their imposed formalities not the leaving out of a word of the Liturâ—ie c. What is it then that they would abate such Dealing will make men see at last Strict Or that if the Non-conformists were upon such Terms as these permitted to exercise their Ministry and made capable of Pastoral charges and other Preferments in our Church this would be a means to heal our lamentable Divisions that are now among us unless he will say that the best expedient to suppress Schism is to embrace and cherish and to reward Schismaticks still professing and resolving to be so Or that it is better and safer for the Church to have a fire within her bowels than without her doors or contraries by being mingled together would thereby become less contrary or destructive to one another No certainly And therefore if they will still continue Non-conformists it is better and safer for the Church they should be still kept out than taken into it Answ. 1. But 't is our Opinion pardon our folly that if the Law had not been made which forbad Daniel to pray to God or commanded the worshiping of the Golden Image they had been no Inconformists that kept not such a Law And that if the Law were repeated which requireth Corporations to declare that no man is bound by the solemn vow no not to repent nor against Popery Schism or Prophaness they would be no Inconformists that did not so declare And that if the Laws commanded us not to swear subscribe declare Cross c. We were no Inconformists or Schismaticks if we did them not But the name of Schismaticks is by such Godfathers as Ithacius Idacius and the rest of the Council of Bishops from whom Ambrose dissended put upon such as St. Martin who separated from them to the death for their Church-Tyranny and wicked Lives and bringing Godly people into the suspicion and reproach of Priscillianism if they did but meet for mutual edification and live Religiously As Grotius saith that by a Papist he meaneth one that approveth of all that any Pope shall say or do and I hope there are few such so with some men a Schismatick is one that approveth not of all that a Pope or Prelate will prescribe And if all the present Non-conformists were commanded to Preach with horns on their heads to signifie the conquering power of the Church or Word they were Schismaticks by such men's nomination if they disobeyed But I will now only ask 1. Q. Were all the Apostles and the Churches in their time and long after Schismaticks who knew not our Oaths Declarations Subscriptions Liturgie Ceremonies c. Q. 2. Did they not take as wise a course for the Churche's concord and the avoiding of Schism as either the English or Roman Bishops take Q. 3 Had not the Omission or the Romish Canons about Transubstantiation Tradition and such like been a better way to prevent heresie than the obeying them And may it not be so in our case Would any be Schismaticks for dissenting from Lay men's power of the Keys from Crossing c. if there were no such Laws And did not Peter and Paul please God as well without them as you do with them And did not Peter and Paul go as safe a way to Heaven as you And is he that consenteth to go the same way to heaven as they did and to do all that the Universal Church imposed for an hundred two hundred years after them at least yet worthier of the Name of a Schismatick than the New Lords that by new Laws do make and call all Schismaticks that live as the Apostles did or did command them and no more 2. You have tryed your Better and safer way by silencing 1800 Ministers of Christ by which the Flocks are scattered and divided and we are as Guelphes and Gibelines in Contention And if yet it seem best to you a few years by Death's interposition will help you to be of another mind But alas must the souls of Millions and the Nation pay so dear for your mistake while you are preparing for the too late Convictions of sad Experience Strict The only certain and safe way of healing these Divisions as I conceive is for all that are taken into the Church to submit to one and the same Rule as well in Agendis as Credendis as well in circumstantials and ceremonials as in Substantials and Essentials as well in the manner as the matter of Religious
think it a heinous sin to conform yet do it or Suffer for your Dissent Q. 6. Was it not an Act of Christ's Wisdom Mercy and Soveraignty to make the Baptismal Covenant which the Church explained by the Creed to be the Stablished Universal Test and Badge of his Disciples and Church-Members And did it not seem good to the Holy Ghost and the Apostles Acts 15. to Impose only necessary things And is it not a Condemning or Contradicting God needlesly to take a Contrary Course Q. 7. Is not Christ's way and the first Churches most likely to save the People's Souls and yours to damn them For you will confess that Christ's few evident necessary Conditions of Christianity would save Men if Bishops and Rulers added no more But if a multitude more which you count Lawful are added then the Nonconformists to them are in danger of Damnation for the Crime of Contempt of your Authority So that consequently you make all your Impositions needful to Salvation and so make it far harder to be saved than otherwise it would have been Q. 8. What hindereth any debauched Conscience from entering into your Ministry who dare Say or Swear any thing while he that feareth an Oath or a Lie may be kept out And against which of these should you more carefully shut the Door Q. 9. If Agreement be desirable Which side may more easily and at a cheaper rate yield and alter you or we If you forbear Imposing an Oath Subscription Declaration or Ceremony it would not do you a Farthing's-worth of hurt If we Swear Subscribe Declare Conform we take our selves to be heinous and wilful sinners against God You call that Indifferent which we believe is Sin Q. 10. Do you not confess that you are not Infallible yea and subscribe that General-councils are not even in matters of Faith And yet must we subscribe our Assent to every word in these Books or else be Silenced or Suffer Do these well consist Q. 11. Dare you deny that many of your Silenced Brethren Study as hard as you to know the Truth and have as good Capacity And are they not as like to be Impartial who suffer as much by their Judgment as you gain by yours Judge but by your selves Doth their kind of Interest tempt you more than â—our own to partiality Q. 12. Is it not gross Uncharitableness and Usurpation of God's Prerogative to say That they do it not out of Conscience when you have no more from the nature of their Cause Motives or Conversation to warrant such a Censure And they are ready to take their Oaths as before God that were it not for fear of sinning they would Conform Q. 13. Do your Consciences never startle when you think of Silencing 1800 such Ministers and depriving so many Thousand Souls of their Ministry 1 Thess. 2. 15 16. Q. 14. Can you hope to make us believe while we dwell in England that the People's Ignorance and Vice is so far Cured or the Conformists for Number and Quality are so sufficient without the Nonconformists that they should rest Silent on supposition their Labours are unnecessary Q. 15. Is not the loss of a Faithful Teacher where through Paucity or Unqualifyedness of the Conformable he is necessary a very great Affliction to the People And Do the Innocent Flocks deserve to suffer in their Souls for our Nonconformity Q. 16. Could not Men of your great Knowledge find out some other Punishment for us such as Drunkards Swearers Fornicators have which may not hurt the People's Souls nor hinder the Preaching of Christ's Gospel Q. 17. Seeing at Ordination we profess that all things necessary to Salvation are in or provable by the Scripture Do you not confess that your â—nventiunculae are not necessary to Salvation And is the Nonconformist's Ministry no more necessay Q. 18. How say you That only Christianity is necessary to a Member of the Universal Church and so much more be necessary to the Members of particular Churches and the Universal consist of them Q. 19. Did any National Church Impose any one Liturgy or Subscription besides the Creed or any Oath of Obedience to the Bishops for 300 400 500 years after Christ's Nativity Q. 20. Can you Read Rom. 14. and 15 and not believe that it bindeth the Church-Rulers as well as the People Q. 21. Did the Ancient Discipline not enforced by the Sword for 300 years do less good than yours Or was any Man Imprison'd or Punish'd by the Sword eo nomine because Excommunicate as a Contemner of Church-power in not repenting for many Hundred years after there were Christian Magistrates Q. 22. Hath not the making false Conditions of Communion and making Unnecessary things necessary thereto been the way by which the Papists have Schismatically divided Christians Q. 23. Should not Bishops be the most skilful and forward to heal and the most backward to divide or persecute Q. 24. Could you do more to extirpate Episcopacy than to make it hateful to the People by making it hurtful 25. Would you do as you do if you loved your Neighbour as your selves and loved not Superiority Q. 26. Were not those that Gildas called no Ministers such as too many now obtruded on the People And was not the Case of the Bishops that St. Martin separated from to the Death like yours or much fairer § 257. A little after some Great Men of the House of Commons drew up a Bill as tending to our Healing to take off our Oaths Subscriptions and Declarations except the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance and Subscriptions to the Doctrine of the Church of England according to the 13th of Eliz. But shewing it to the said Bshop of Winchester he caused them to forbear and broke it And instead of it he furthered an Act only to take of Assent and Consent and the Renunciation of the Government which would have been but a Cunning Snare to make us more remediless and do no good seeing that the same things with the repeated Clauses would be still by other continued Obligations required as may be seen in the Canon for Subscription Act 2. and in the Oxford-Act for the Oath and confining Refusers And it 's credibly averred that when most of the other Bishops were against even this ensnaring shew of abatement he told them in the House that had it been but to abate us a Ceremony he would not have spoken in it But he knew that we were bound to the same things still by other Clauses or Obligations if these were Repealed § 258. But on Feb. 24. all these things were Suddenly ended the King early suddenly and unexpectedly Proroguing the Parliament till November Whereby the Minds of both Houses were much troubled and Multitudes greatly exasperated and alienated from the Court Of whom many now saw that the Leading Bishops had been the great Causes of our Distractions but others hating the Nonconformists more were still as hot for Prelacy and their Violence as ever § 259. All this
long if there be cause § 315. Whilst this was my Employment in the Countrey my Friends at home had got one Mr. Seddon a Nonconformist of Derbyshire lately come to the Gity as a Traveller to Preach the Second Sermon in my New Built Chappel He was told and over-told all the Danger and desired not to come if he feared it I had left word That if he would but step into my House through a Door he was in no danger they having not Power to break open any but the Meeting-house While he was Preaching Three Justices with Soldiers supposed by Secretary Coventry's sending came to the Door to seize the Preacher They thought it had been I and had prepared a Warrant upon the Oxford Act to send me for Six Months to the Common Goal The good man and Two Weak Honest Persons intrusted to have directed him left the House where he was safe and thinking to pass away came to the Justices and Soldiers at the Door and there stood by them till some one said This is the Preacher And so they took him and blotted my Name out of the Warrant and put in his Though almost every Word fitted to my Case was false of him To the Gatehouse he was carried where he continued almost Three Months of the Six and being earnestly desirous of Deliverance I was put to Charges to accomplish it and at last having Righteous Judges and the Warrant being found faulty he had an Habeas Corpus and was freed upon Bonds to appear again the next Term. § 316. By this means my Case was made much worse For 1. The Justices and other Prosecutors were the more exasperated against me 2. And they were now taught to stop every Hole in the next Warrant to which I was still as liable as ever So that I had now no Prospect that way of Escape And yet though my Charge Care and Trouble had been great for his Deliverance and Good People had dealt very kindly with him my usual Back-biters the Prelatists and Separatists talk commonly of me as one that had unworthily saved my self from Danger and drawn a Stranger into the Snare and therefore deserved to bear all the Charges Though as is said 1. I was Twenty Miles off Preaching publickly 2. They that askt him to Preach told him the Worst 3. He went into Danger from Safety by the Conduct of some Persons of that censorious humour 4. My Danger was Increased by it as well as my Charges But Man's Approbation is a Poor Reward § 317. Just when I came home and was beginning to seek Mr. Seddon's Deliverance Mr. Rosse Died the Fiercest of the Justices who had sent me to Goal before The other Two are one Mr. Grey and Sir Philip Matthews § 318. The Parliament being sate again a Letter was secretly printed containing the History of the Debate in the Lord's House the former Sessions about the Test and it was Voted to be burnt by the Hangman but the more desired and read it In which it appeareth That when it came to be their own case more was said by the Lords for the Cause of the Nonconformists than ever they were permitted to say for themselves § 319. A most Excellent Book was written for the Nonconformists for Abatements and Forbearance and Concord by Dr. Herbert Crofts Bp. of Hereford without his Name of which more afterward § 320. The Lords and Commons Revived their Contests about their Powers and Priviledges and the Lords appointed Four Lawyers to plead their Cause and the Commons set up Orders or Votes to forbid them And the Duke of Buckingham made a Notable Speech against Persecution and desired the Consent of the Lords that he might bring in a Bill for the Ease of His Majesty's Protestant Subjects in matters of Religion but while it was preparing the King on Monday November 21st Prorogued the Parliament till February come Twelve-month § 321. The Speeches of the Earl of Shaftsbury and others about the Test were secretly Printed and a Paper of Reasons for Dissolving this Parliament and Calling a New One which were given in the House of Lords And the Debates of this Test opening a little of the Noncouformists Cause as to the Oxford Oath together with what the Earl of Shaftsbury hath done with Wit and Resolution hath alienated many even of the Conformists from the present prevailing Bishops § 322. The other of the fierce Justices that Subscribed a Warrant for my imprisonment died shortly after viz. Colonel Grey The Death of Mr. Barwell Sir Iohn Medlicot Mr. Ross and Mr. Grey besides the Death of some Informers and the Repentance of others and the Death of some late Opposers of the Clergy made me and some others the more to compassionate Persecutors and dread God's Judgments § 323. The Town of Northampton lamentably burnt § 324. An Earthquake in divers Counties § 325. My Dear Friend Sir Matthew Hale Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench falling into a Languishing Disease from which he is not like to Recover resolvedly petitioned for a Dismission and gave up his Place having gone through his Employments and gone off the Stage with more universal love and honour for his Skill Wisdom Piety and resolved Justice than ever I heard or read that any English Man ever did before him or any Magistrate in the World of his rank since the days of the Kings of Israel He resolved in his weakness that the place should not be a burden to him nor he to it And after all his great practice and places he tells me That with his own Inheritance and all he is not now worth above Five hundred Pounds per Annum so little sought he after gain He may most truly be called The Pillar and Basis or Ground of Iustice as Paul called not the Church but Timothy in the Church the Pillar and Basis of Truth His digested knowledge in Law above all Men and next in Philosophy and much in Theology was very great His sincere honesty and humility admirable His Garb and House and Attendance so very mean and low and he so resolutely avoided all the Diversions and Vanities of the World that he was herein the Marvel of his Age. Some made it a Scandal but his Wisdom chose it for his Convenience that in his Age he Marryed a Woman of no Estate suitable to his Disposition to be to him as a Nurse He succeeded me in one of the meanest Houses that ever I had lived in and there hath ever since continued with full content till now that he is going to his Native Countrey in likely-hood to die there It is not the least of my pleasure that I have lived some years in his more than ordinary Love and Friendship and that we are now waiting which shall be first in Heaven Whither he saith he is going with full content and acquiescence in the Will of a gracious God and doubts not but we shall shortly live together O what a blessed World were this were the
Protestant Divines of England are branded as Popish that since the Reformation have defended against the Pope that Bishops are jure Divino for so I say it was direct Popery that first denied Bishops to be jure Divino witness the Pope's and Papelins canvassing in the Council of Trent to oppress by Force and Tyranny the far major and more learned part of the Council that contended for so many Months with Suffrages Arguments and Protestations Protestant like to have it defined that Bishops were jure Divino and only the Pope and his Titulars and Courtiers suffered it not to be propounded least it should be as certainly it would have been defined for then Popes and Presbyterians could not have lorded it so Thus the chiefest and most pious and learned Bishops of our English Church must be branded for Popish Bishop Andrews Mountague White c. Reply to Sect. 15. 1. If you deny the Authors cited by me to be authentick pretend not to adhere to the Episcopal Protestants for sure these are such 2. You do not well to say that all the Protestant Bishops are branded as Popish that since the Reformation have defended against the Pope that Bishops are jure Divino either shew the Words where I so brand them or else do not tell us that your Words are true though in a matter of Fact before your Eyes we may well question your Argument when we find you so untrue in reporting a plain Writing Indeed our late Bishops and those most that were most suspected to be Popish did stand most upon the jus Divinum which many of the first did either disclaim or not maintain But it never came into my Thoughts to brand all for Papists that did own it Do I not cite Downame and others as Protestant Bishops who yet maintain it yea Bishop Andrews whom you name this is not fair 3. As for the Trent Quarrel about Bishops I say but this if the Spanish Bishops and the rest that stood for the jus Divinum of Episcopacy there were no Papists then those that I spoke of in England were none much less And I must cry you mercy for so esteeming them Except to Sect. 16. The 3d Argument is from the uncertainty of Succession which might have done the Hereticks good Service in the old times when St. Irenaeus and Tertullian muster up against them Successions of Catholick Bishops that ever taught as the Church then taught against the Hereticks Reply to Sect. 16. 1. It seems you are confident of an uninterrupted Succession of authoritative Ordination though you seem to think none authoritative but Episcopal But so were not the Protestant Bishops who took the Reformed Churches to have true Ministers and to be true Churches when yet Episcopal Ordination is interrupted with them Such are all those with whose Words you say I fill my Book to whom I may add Men which is strange that were thought nearer your own way As Bishop Bromhall in his late Answer to Militerius who yet would have the Pope to be the Principium Unitatis to the Church and the Answer to Fontanus's Letter said to be Dr. Stewards besides Dr. Fern yea if you were one of those that would yield that Presbyters may ordain yet I am still unpersuaded that you are able to prove an uninterrupted Succession of Authoritative Ordination and if you are able I should heartily thank you if you would perform it and seeing it is so Necessary it is not well that no Episcopal Divine will perform it If you are not able methinks you should not judge it so necessary at least except you know them that are able If you cast it on us to disprove that Succession I refer you to our Answer to Bellarmine and others in those Papers as to that point 2. As for Tertullian and Irenaeus and others of the primitive Ages pleading such Succession I answer 1. It is one thing to maintain an uninterrupted Succession then when and where it was certain and another to maintain it now when it is not 2. It is one thing then to maintain that such a Succession was de facto and another to affirm that it must be or would be to the end of the World which those Fathers did not It was the Scope of Irenaeus and Tertullian not to make an uninterrupted Succession of standing absolute necessity ad esse Officii nor to prophecy that so it should still be and the Church should never want it but from the present certainty of such a Succession de facto to prove that the Orthodox Churches had better Evidence of the Soundness of their Faith than the Hereticks had If this be not their meaning I cannot understand them it was easy then to prove the Succession and therefore it might be made a Medium against Hereticks to prove that the Churches had better Evidence than they But now the Case is altered both through time and Sin It might have been proved by Tradition without Scripture what was sound Doctrine and what not before the Scripture was written An Heretick might have been confuted in the Days of the Apostles without their Writings and perhaps in a great measure some time after but it follows not that they may be so to the End of the World Those that heard it from the Mouth of the Apostles could tell the Church what Doctrine they taught but how uncertain a way Tradition would have been to acquaint the World with God's Mind by that time it had passed through the puddle of depraved Ages even to 1653. God well knew and therefore provided us a more certain way So is it also in this Case of Succession as the Fathers pleaded it against the Hereticks to prove the Soundness of the Tradition of those Churches Except to Sect. 17. Against all which a Quirk it seems lay that if secretly any of them had had but a secret Canonical Irregularity all the following Successions were null But the evident Truth is much otherwise that the Church never anulled the Acts or Ordinations made by Bishops which the Catholick Church then had accepted and reputed Catholick Bishops though afterwards they came to know of any Secret Irregularities or canonical Disablings had they then been urged or prosecuted by any against those Bishops and then they should have been accepted for Bishops by the Church no longer Reply to Sect. 17. 1. I have proved and more can do open and not only secret Irregularities in the Church of Rome's Ordinations known a Priâ—re and not only after the Ordinations The Multitude of Protestant Writers even English Bishops have made that evident enough against the Pope which you call a Querk general Councils have condemned Popes as Hereticks and Infidels and yet they have ordained more 2. If it were otherwise yet all your Answer would only prove that we must sometimes take them for Bishops who were none when the Nullity is secret but not that they are Bishops indeed or have Authority It is one thing to
Nomination of the Person is by the meer Election of Inferiors as the Apostles did bid the Church of Hierusalem choose out seven Men whom they might constitute Deacons I have been tedious perhaps without need on this but the Summ is this that a subordinate efficient Cause is no necessary Medium for the conveyance of Power if at all yet not always I mean a Person but the Mediatio Signi Voluntatis Divinae may oft serve without any more or plainly in serveral Cases mediatio legis cum personae qualificatione may suffice sine mediatione judicis But to come closer where you say the written Word is no fit Medium I answer 1. The written Word in case of a failing of Ordainers is a sufficient mediate Instrument but though in suo genere it be sufficient yet other things must concur in their kind also viz. For the Qualification of the Subject whereof one is the effect of Nature Art and Grace that is Abilities another of the Spirit that is Willingness which may also be moved by other Causes and the third of Providence viz. Opportunity 2. Magistrates Constitution in the said Case of Ministerial failing is a further Medium distinct from Scripture So that if Ministers fail Magistrates are the Judges if both fail the People have sine regemine judicium discretionis Their Judgment of Discretion hath a sufficient Object and Discovery of Godâ—s efficient Constitution 1. In the Law which is then the instrumental Efficient 2. In the Persons Abilities 3. His Willingness 4. The Peoples own Willingness 5. Opportunity You add the giving of Authority which we talk of is an Action terminated upon an Individuum in this Age But the Scripture meddles not with any of the Individuums of these Times Ergo I suppose by meddles not with you mean terminateth it not on The Minor which you knew I would deny you prove thus if it do either quoad nomen or quoad adjunctum aliud incommunicabile or per descriptionem I answer per descriptionem ab adjunctis but it is not always necessary that that they be incommunicable at least most of them for God may possibly propound to the People more than one or two that may seem fit and leave them to choose and so their Choice shall be the thing that makes the difference and God thereupon convey the Power You add if the Word do it by description it must be by some such Form of Words They that are thus and thus qualified may be Ministers of the Word But there is no such Form Ergo I answer I suppose that by Form you mean quoad sensum and not quoad verba And then I say there is such a Sentence in the Law as this If by thus and thus Qualified you include all the Signs that were before expressed And because we are now at the Quick I will not put you off with the bare part of a Respondent but give you the Reasons of my denying your Minor I first suppose it granted that God hath in his Law determined 1. De genere that there shall be Ministers 2. De specie that there shall be such sorts of Ministers in his Church and that not only quoad nomen but quoad defiuitionem differentiam constitutivam that is the Nature of their Work and Power the Object about which and the end to which it is to be employed 3. That the Persons are described from their necessary Qualifications who shall be Subjects of this Form 1 Tim. 3. Tit. 1. and in other Places 4. That all that is now left to be done is but to judge and determine of the particular Person who is most capable of this Form and so far to be the Medium of his receiving the Power 5. That this Judging and Determination must be per signa from the Persons Qualifications agreeing to the Rule 6. That God hath made Ecelesiastical Officers the ordinary authoritative Judges of this Question Who is the qualified Person Thus much I conjecture that we are agreed in so that the Form in the Law is not only They that Preach the Word shall be thus and thus qualified but Men thus and thus qualified shall be appointed to Preach the Word Now that which I am to prove is that the first part of the Constitution remains in force that there shall be Ministers thus qualified though the other Part concerning the way of their Ordination may cease and that Magistrates Designation or Peoples Election upon the discerning of the Qualifications is a sufficient Nomination of the Person and so God doth by his Law convey the Power as truly to the Person thus Nominated as he doth to the Person Nominated by a Bishop ordinarily The same Law being God's only Instrument of this Conveyance whoever nominates To this end I shall lay down divers Arguments and though I conclude not still the same thing you shall see that all doth ad eundem scopum collimare and that either the Obligation to regular ministerial Ordination may cease or that all ways cease not when that ceaseth or that the other ways are sufficient for Nomination of the individual Person and so of preserving the Existence of the Species for these three are the things to be proved 1. Cessante materia cessat obligatio sed hic vel cessat vel cessare potest materia Ergo The Major is past question The Minor is proved 1. From the Silence of Scripture God hath no where obliged himself to give all Churches the Opportunity of regular Ministerial Ordination 2. From undeniable Experience of many Places that could not have Regular Ordination not only through the Imperfection of their own Understandings not able after utmost Industry to know which was the regular Way for that I stick not on but also the moral or natural Impossibility of the thing some living where they could have no Ordination but upon sinful Terms as by wicked Oaths or Professions as it is throughout the Romish Church and Ergo There is a moral Impossibility for trupe inhonestum est impossibile saith the Law Some being cast in most remote parts of the World where no Ministers are and many where no Bishops are nor can be had in any competent time and uncertain whether at all And the Possibility of such a thing is evident in Nature though it never had been till this Day 2. Cessante fine cessat Obligatio sed hic cessat vel cessare potest finis Ergo The Minor only is to be proved The End why I am obliged to seek Ordination rather from an Ecclesiastical Officer than from a Magistrate or to take the other forementioned Courses it is because God hath appointed him Ordinis gratiâ as one that ought to be the fittest to do it least by Mens voluntary Intrusion or the Constitution of others less able to judge the Church should be wronged Now in case the regular Ordainers do prove unsufficient or wicked these Ends fail as in the Church of
separated to God's Service those of the Sons of Asaph and of Heman and of Ieduthun who should prophesie with Harps c. 1 Chron. 25. 1 6. They were for the Service of the House of God according to the King's Order so 1 Chron. 16. 4. so did Solomon 2 Chron. 8. 14 15. The Magistrates Power in Church Matters was no Ceremony or Temporary Thing 13. When any Officers of the Temple were discovered to have no just Title and thereupon were put out yet none of their Actions while they were in Place were censured null Ergo if now any be discovered to have no just Title his former Actions are not to be judged null The Reason of the Consequence lyeth in the Equality of the Case The Antecedent is proved from Ezra 2. 62. Neb. 7. 64 65. They sought their Register among those that were reckoned by Genealogy but they were not found therefore were they as polluted put from the Priest hood So Neh. 13. 29 30. And therefore the Ordination done before such Ejection is not null And that the individual Person to receive this Power may be determined of in case of necessity without an Ecclesiastical Authoritative Determination may further appear thus 1. If the individual Person may be determined of ordinarily or sometimes by the Peoples Election to be presented to the Ministers for their Ordination or Confirmation then may the individual Person be determined of by the People to be presented to God immediately for his Ordination in case there be no Ordainers to be had But the Antecedent is true Ergo the Antecedent is proved 1. From the Apostles Instruction to the Church of Ierusalem Act. 6. 3. Choose you or look you out seven Men of honest Report full of the Holy Ghost and Wisdom whom we may appoint over this Business They describe the Men and leave them to nominate them that were such And if the Church can do this to present to the Apostles then it seems they are competent Discerners of Such If the Apostles had said We do appoint and authorize the seven Men whom you shall choose so that they be such and such Men the Ordination had been as valid on Supposition of such an Election as it was when it followed the Election And if the Apostles might have so done no doubt God may so do by his Law For he doth the same viz. describe the Persons and confer the Power particularly and on an Individuum vagum and sometimes quasi signatum and if popular Election can make it an Individuum determinatum then all is done 2. And the Church hath continued this Custom so far that Councils decreed Ordinations invalid without Elections of the People yea if they were but afrighted and over-awed and did it not freely Insomuch that Cyprian faith Plebs maximam habet potestatem vel dignos Sacerdotas elegendi vel indig nos recusandi Till the bloody bout in the choice of Damasus it is known that the Peoples Election was the principle Determiner of the individual Person or at least did much in it For the Consequence the Reason of it lyes here in that Scripture may apparently suffice for all except the Nomination of the Individual as you seem to intimate in laying the stress of all your Argument upon this that it meddles with no Individuum of these times The Law gives Authority to that individual Person that is justly nominated or determined of But a right qualified Man chosen only by the People in case there be no Ordainer is justly determinated of or nominated Ergo The Law gives Authority to such Where note that the Law needs no other Condition to the actuating of its Conveyance but only the Determination of the recipient Person Then note that regularly Officers and People are to join in this Determination of the Person The People sometime being in electing and the Officers conclusively determine and sometimes the Officers begin and the People after consent but both must concur and all that both can do is to determine of the Man whom God by his Law shall authorize though the very determination it self as by the Officers is an Act of Authority Now whenever two Parties are made Con-causes or are to concur in such Determinations when one Party faileth the Power and Duty is solely in the other At least it is hence apparent that there is a possible way left for the determining of Individuums in this Age. 2. If the Law do so far describe the Persons to receive Power as that a Bishop can nominate the Persons by the Light of that Description then it doth so far describe the Persons as that others may nominate them by the Light of that Description But the Antecedent is true Ergo The Antecedent you will own or else farewell all Episcopal Ordination The Consequence is plain in that others may be able to see that which a Bishop can see and in necessity at least may do it This therefore wholly answers your Argument against the Law being a sufficient Medium eo nomine because it meddles not with Individuums for it meddles with none of the Individuals which Bishops determine of and yet it is the Law that conveys the Power when the Bishop hath determined of the Person to receive it as Spalatensis hath largely proved of Kings Law is God's Instrument of conveying Right and imposing Duty though Men may be the Media Applicationis The Law is to be conceived as in this Form I do authorize the Persons that shall be justly determined of according to this Description And because Ministerial Determinations are the ordinary regular way with the Peoples Consent it is q. d. Ordinarily I do authorize the Persons whom Ecclesiastical Power shall determine of according to this Description So that it is God by his Law that gives the Power As when a Corporation is to choose their Bailiff or Major it is the Law or Charter that is the immediate Instrument of effective Conveyance of the Power though the Choosers are the Media Applicationis and perhaps some capital Burgesses may have the chief Power in choosing him ordinarily 3. If the People may per Iudicium Discretionis discern whether a Bishop have ordained them one agreeable to the Scripture Description then may they also discern whether a Man be agreeable to it though unordained But the antecedent is true Ergo Were not the People to judge of this then they must receive any Heretick or Infidel without Tryal if ordained their Bishop But that is not true Though the Officers contradict it yet the People of themselves are bound to reject a Heretick Bishop 1. It is a general Precept A Man that is a Heretick avoid and with such no not to eat If a Bishop ordain over this Church a common unreformed Drunkard Rayler c. The Holy Ghost bids us not to eat i. e. have Communion with him 2. Cyprian determines it that Plebâ— obsequens praeceptis Dominicis Deum metuens a Peccatore praeposito
may say as much for the proving of the Universal Churches Practice in this Point as in most it being of constant and solemn use and none that I know of that ever opposed it But if you hold this universal Practice to be the other part of God's Law and do lay any thing much on it in other Points especially in Doctrinals I would advise you to get better Proof of the Universality than others use to bring who go that way As the Romish Church is not the the Universal nor the Romish and Greek together so the Opinion of four or five or more Fathers is no Evidence of the Judgment of the universal Church Till they are better agreed with themselves and one another it is hard taking a view of the Judgment of the Church universal in them in controverted Points Till Origen Tertullian c. cease to be accounted Hereticks till Firmilianus Cyprian and the Council of Carthage be better agreed with Stephen Bishop of Rome till Ruffinus cease to be a Heretick to Hierom and many the like Discords it 's hard seeing the Face of the Church universal in this Glass I was but even now reading in Hierom where he tells Austin that there were quaedam Haeretica in his Writings against him when yet to the impartial Reader the angry Man that morosus Senex had the unsounder Cause As long as the Writings of Clem. Alexandr Origen â—atianus pretended Dyonisius Lactantius with so many more do tot erroribus scatere as long as many Councils have so erred and Council is a great Council and someâ—things are imposed by them under the terrible Pennalty of Anathematizing which Rome it self doth take unlawful to be observed these are not perfect Indices of the Mind of Christ or the universal Church Read Baronius himself Tom. 3. what abundance of Errors in History he chargeth upon Epiphanius and others I suppose you to have read Daille and the Lord Digby on this yet think not that I would detract from the due Estimation of the Fathers or Councils or from the necessity of Tradition to the use which I have expressed in the Preface to the Second part of my Book of Rest. But I know not well in the matter of Not-kneeling and Not-fasting on the Lord's Day Not-reading the Books of Heathens c. how a Man should obey both the former Councils and the present Church of Rome it self yea or how in matter of giving the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to Insants and other things the present Church and the former do agree And I would know whether it was not the Practice of that which you call the universal Church then which the following Ages did alter and contradict But all this part of the Answer is but occasional as to your Amplifications and not to the matter under debate I further answer you therefore that the universal Practice of the Church doth prove no more but that it was done and therefore by them judged a Duty to be done and so not to be omitted while they could use it all which I grant you I am not one that would have Ordination used without Imposition but in case of necessity But it follows not from all this that it is essential to Ordination suppose a Church institute a new Ceremony that every Bishop ordained shall have a Helmet on to signify that he must fight valiantly as a Captain under Christ and the Ordainer must lay his Hands on this If I can prove that it hath been the universal Practice of the Church in nudum apertum caput manus imponere doth it follow that this is essential and the contrary null If you ask what necessity there can be of Ordination sine manum Impositione I answer very great and ordinary viz. ut absentes ordinentur for want of which the Church hath suffered and may suffer very much When a Man is in remote Parts of the World and perhaps too scrupelous of playing the Bishop without Ordination if he must travel over Land and Sea for Ordination his Life may be gone or most of it spent while he is seeking Authority to use it for his Master If a few only of the Ordainers were left in a Country or in many Nations and those imprisoned or forced to hide themselves they might by an Instrument under their Hands Ordain when they could not at all or to one of a hundred by Imposition of Hands But yet all this is but the least necessary part of my Answer to your Argument To your Consequence therefore I answer by denying it If the Succession be interrupted what necessity is there that the next must come in without Imposition of Hands what shew of such a Consequence May not the illegitimate Ordainer imponere manus Or may he not himself enter by Imposition of Hands and yet be illegitimate and his Calling null If you think not only Imposition to be essential but also that nothing else is essential or that all are true Ministers that are ordained by a lawful Bishop per manum impositionem then do you egriously tibi ipsi imponere Suppose a lawful Bishop should ordain a Man into an unlawful Office as to be the universal Bishop or should ordain a known Heathen to be a Bishop by Imposition of Hands were not this null Yea and many a lower case as in case of Symony c. if Councils be of any Authority Here then the Succession is interrupted and yet this Man may Ordain others by Imposition of Hands Suppose in the case of Pope Ione the Succession interrupted for want of a capable Sex and yet she might Ordain by Imposition of Hands Lastly I answer This Argument can pretend to prove no more than the former That Ordination is essential to the Call of the Ministry Ergo So far as that is disproved so far is this And indeed it had been stronger arguing a Necessitate Ordinationis ad necessitatem impositionis manuum than e contra because all Arguing should be a Notiore But sure the Necessity of Imposition of Hands is minus notum then the necessity of Ordination Many a Thousand will yield that Ordination is essential I believe that will not yield it of that Imposition Having done with all that I find in this Paper I add this cross Argument for the enervating of all or if you will of your Second which is all If your Arguments do tend as well to prove the absolute Necessity of an uninterrupted Succession quoad modum as to every Mode and Circumstance in Ordination which the Apostles have required as due without express Dispensation for Omission as of legitimate Ecclesiastical Ordination it self then they are unsound At verum prius Ergo The Antecedent is proved thus The full Strength of all your Arguments is here Christ or his Apostles or the Church since have mentioned no other way of Conveying Ministerial Power but by Ordination and Imposition of Hands Ergo There is no other way and this is necessary
Conformists and Nonconformists The Episcopal Conformists are of Two Sorts some lately sprung up that follow Archbishop Laud and Dr. Hammond hold that there are no Political Churches lower than Diocesan because there are no Bishops under them and so that the Parish-Churches are no Churches properly but part of Churches nor the Incumbants true Bishops but Curates under Bishops nor the Foreigners true Ministers or Churches that have no Diocesan Bishops This Party called themselves the Church of England 1658 1659. When we knew but of Four or Five Bishops left alive who Dr. Hammond said with that Party of the Clergy were of his Mind And these seemed uppermost in 1660 and 1661. and were the men whom I disputed with in my Treatise of Episcopacy The other Episcopal Conformists are they that follow the Reformers and hold the Doctrine of the Scripture as only sufficient to Salvation and as explicatory of it the Thirty Nine Articles the Homilies Liturgy Book of Ordination Apology c. These take the Parish-Pastors for true Rectors and the Parish-Churches for true Churches but subordinate to the Diocesans and to be ruled by them But the Laws have imposed on them some Declarations and Subscriptions which they think they may put a good Sense on though by stretching the Words from their usual Signification The Bishops and Deans are chosen by the King indeed and by the Prebends in shew The Incumbant are chosen by Patrons ordained by Diocesans with Presbyters and accepted by Consent of the Communicants of the Parish The Episcopal Government is managed partly by the Bishops and partly by Lay-Civilians and Surrogates The Episcopal Nonconformists are for true Parish-Churches and Ministers reformed without swearing promising declaring or subscribing to any but sure clear necessary things desiring that the Scripture may be their Canons disowning all persecuting Canons taking the capable in each Parish for the Communicant and Church and the rest for Hearers and Catechized Persons desiring that the Magistrate be Judge whom he will maintain approve and tolerate and the Ordainers Judges whom they will ordain and the People be free Consenters to whose Pastoral Care they will trust their Souls desiring that every Presbyter be an Overseer of the Flock and every Church that hath many Elders have one Incumbent President for Unity and Order and that Godly Diocesans may without the Sword or Force have the Oversight of many Ministers and Churches and all these be confederate and under the Government of a Christian King but under no Foreign Jurisdiction though in as much Concord as is possible with all the Christian World And they would have the Keys of Excommunication and Absolution taken out of the Hands of Lay-Men Chancellors or Lay Brethren and the Diocesans to judge in the Synods of the Presbyters in Cases above Parochial Power That this was the Judgment of the Nonconformists that treated for Peace in 1660. and 1661. is to be seen in their printed Proposals in which they desired Archbishop Usher's Model of the Primitive Episcopacy joined with the Synods of Presbyters II. The Presbyterians are for Parish-Churches as aforesaid guided by Elders some teaching and some only ruling and these under Synods of the like Class without Diocesan or Parochial Superiors and all under a National Assembly of the same as the Supreme Church Power III. The Independants are for every Congregation to have all Church Power in it self without any superior Church-Government over them whether Bishops or Synods yet owning Synods for voluntary Concord Of these some are against local Communion with the aforesaid Churches and for avoiding them by Separation some as if they were no Churches and had no true Ministers some for Forms of Prayer some for faulty Communicants some for Episcopal Ordination and some for subscibing and some for all these and many other pretended Reasons But some Independants are for occasional Communion with the other Churches and some also for stated Communion in the Parish-Churches for which you may read Mr. Tomes's the chief of the Anabaptists in a full Treatise and Dr. Thomas Goodwin on the first of the Ephesians earnest against Separation as the old Nonconformists were Now which of all these should you join with I affirm that all these except the Separatists are parts of the Church of England as it is truly essentiated by a Christian Magistracy and confederate Christian particular Churches All are not equally sound and pure but all are parts of the Church of England Liturgies and Ceremonies and Canons and Chancellors are not essential to it as a Church or Christian Kingdom But it is now a Medly less concordant than is desirable but you are not put upon any such Disputes whether you will call the present Church of England Roman as denominated from the King that is the Head or whether you will say that King and Parliament conjunct are that Head and so it is yet Protestant because the Laws are so or whether you will denominate it materially Protestant because the Clergy and Flocks are so your Doubt is only what Congregation to join with I answer That which all your Circumstances set together make it most convenient to the publick good and your own Though I hold not Ministerial Conformity lawful I take Lay-Communion in any of these except the Separatists to be lawful to some Persons whose case maketh it fittest But I judge it unlawful for you to confine your Communion to any one of them so as to refuse occasional Communion with all save them 1. The Parish-Churches have the Advantage of Authority Order and Confederacy and the Protestant Interest is chiefly cast upon them therefore I will not separate from Lay-Communion with them though they need much Reformation 2. You must not go against your Father's Will no nor divide the Family without necessity The same I say of your Husband when you are married 3. The Nonconforming Episcopal and Presbyterians have not such Churches as they desire but only temporarily keep Meetings like to Chappels as Assistants to others till Parishes are reformed 4. I think it a stated sinful Schism to fix as a Member of such a Church and Pastor as is of the Principles of the Writing which you shewed me I. Because they grievously slander the Parish-Churches and Ministers as none and their Worship and Government as far worse than it is II. Because they Renounce local Communion with almost all the Body or Church of Christ on Earth by renouncing it on a Reason common to almost all III. Because they separate from such Churches as Christ and his Apostles joined with and so seem to condemn Christ and his Apostles as Sinners Christ ordinarily joined with the Iews Church in Synagogues and Temple-Offices when the High-Priest bought the Place of Heathens and the Priests Pharisees and Rulers were wicked Persecutors and the Sadduces Hereticks or worse he sent Iudas as an Apostle when he knew him to be a Theif or a Devil The Apostles neither separated nor allowed Separation from
such Churches as Corinth Gallatia Ephesus Smyrna Sardis Laodicea c. defiled with odious Crimes and Errors though God command them to reform IV. Because hereby they tempt Men to infidelity when they hear that Christ hath no greater a Body and Church than they with which Men may lawfully communicate and rob him of almost his Kingdom V. By false accusing the Prayers of almost all Christ's Church and renouncing Communion with them they forfeit their Interest in the Benefit of their Prayers and of the Communion of Saints VI. Who but Satan would have all the People of England and all Nations to live without any publick Church-worship till they can have better than such as is in our Parish-Churches as if none were better VII With whom would these Men have held Communion if they had lived in any Age till two hundred Years ago when as far as ever I could find there was not one Congregation of Christians or Hereticks in all the World that was against Forms of Worship or Bishops or all Ceremonies let them name one if they can what then will they say to the Question Where was your new Church before the two last Ages Had Christ no Church for One Thousand Two Hundred Years in all the World that a Christian ought to join with in local Communion Did Christ disown them all and yet was he their Head and they his Body Or are these Men as much stricter than Christ as the Pharisees were about his Converse and the Sabbath VIII They condemn themselves by their own Practice while some of them cry down Communion with imposed Forms of Liturgy they sing Psalms imposed by the Pastor or Clerk which are the chief part of imposed Liturgies They sing them in new Versions Metre and Tunes different from the Apostles Churches and yet better for us They use imposed Translations of the Scripture The Pastor imposeth his Words of Prayer as a Forme which the People â—â—st all join with This is but a different Mode of Liturgies IX Charity or Christian Love and Unity are the great vital Graces of the Christian Church And oh how wofully do these Men violate and destroy it when as is said they renounce Communion for a Thousand or Twelve Hundred Years at least with all known Churches on Earth as unlawful in point of local Presence 2. They bind all Christians that will hear them to do the like to this Day to almost all the Churches on Earth 3. Their Principles and Reasons make it sinful to have Communicated with the Reformers the Waldenses Wickliffe Luther Melancthon Zwinglius Calvin Bucer and the rest 4. And they condemn Communion with the Martyrs both under Heathens and of later Times who made or valued and used Liturgies 5. They condemn local Communion with all the late and former holy excellent Bishops and Conformists such as Archbishops Parker Grindall Abbot Usher c. Bishops Hall Morton Pilkinton Downame Davenant and many such All that glorious Tribe of Conformists Preston Sibbs Bolton Whately Crook Io. Downame Stoughton c. Oh how great a Number and how excellent almost matchless Men Almost all the late Westminster Assembly 6. And all the excellent old Nonconformists that were against Separation Dearing Greenham Perkins Bayn Reignolds Dod Hieldersham Bradshaw Ball and Multitudes of such of greatest Piety and Parts 7. All or near all the Reformed Churches 8. All the meer Independants that were against their Separation such as Dr. Tho. Goodwin aforesaid and many of his Mind 9. Yea they condemn the Old Brownists who Printed their Profession of Communion with many Parish-Churches and with Liturgies 10. And they utterly condemn all local Communion with the meer Nonconformists of this Age who offered Terms of Concord in Liturgy and Episcopacy 1661. None of all these are good enough for these Men especially their Women and Lads to have any present Communion with Do they know how little radical Difference there is between saying as Persecutors All these are Hereticks and as Separatists All these are unworthy of Christian Communion Yea the Pope rejecteth Communion but with two or three parts of the Christian World and these Men renounce local Communion with almost all Is this the way of Love and Unity in the Body of Christ X. Is Provoking Excommunicating them the way to reconcile the Publick Ministers and Churches Or is this a time to join with the Enemies of the Protestant Religion to draw all the People to forsake them That so the Reformation here may have only private Toleration as we have till some Disorder is said to forfeit it the King promiseth to defend them and shall separating Protestants pull them down XI The Weakness of these Mens Judgments and Dealings bring all the Nonconformists into Contempt and Scorn with Multitudes of undistinguishing Men as if we were all of the same Temper and hardeneth Thousands in hatred to them all and maketh them long to be persecuting us again and keepeth them from repenting of the Evil they have done Offence must come but woe to them by whom it cometh XII God hath most expresly decided this Controversy in Scripture and these Men seeming Adherents to Scripture cannot see it Rom. 14. and 15. and 16. 17. Ioh. 17. 22 24. Phil. 2. Eph. 4. In a Word in all those Texts that plead for Church Unity and Love and all those that speak of the sinfulness of Schism and that a kingdom divided cannot stand and all those that condemn Dividers and all that command mutual forbearance c. Do you think that receive one another as Christ received us even them that are weak in Faith it self doth mean no more than do not silence them or imprison or murder them No doubt but it meaneth receive them to Church-Communion XIII What a great Sin is unjust silencing worthy Preachers And do not these Men endeavour to silence more thousands than the Act of Uniformity or Bishops did when they tell all that it 's a Sin to hear them XIV If it be unlawful to join with others that are no worse than they it must be unlawful to join with them If I be guily of all that is said or done amiss in the Parish-Churches I shall be more guilty if I join with the Separatists I am not desirous to accuse any but to cover their Faults as far as I can But I cannot resolve your Question without telling you that I take their Church-State to be so far different from the Rule and in many Respects worse than the Parish-Churches as that to join with them as fixed covenanted Members will be a state of Sin 1. Scripture-fixed Ministers or Elders were all ordained by superior general Pastors either alone or with Presbyteries So are not theirs if by any at all 2. Scripture-flocks were ruled by their Pastors Heb. 13. 7 17 24. 1 Thes. 5. 13 14. 1 Pet. 5. 1 Tim. 3 c. But many of their Flocks are the Rulers of themselves and Pastors 3. Scripture particular Churches
and perswading all the Families House by House they saw the Body of Town and Parish in love with serious Religion they told me they had been undone if I had followed their Counsel William Allen who with Mr. Lamb were Pastors of an Anabaptist Arminian Church first separated from the Parish-Churches and next from the Independents was turned from Independency much by seeing being our Kidderminster Factor that Parish-Churches may be made as holy as separated ones and the People not left by lazy Separatists to the Devil So that this Experience made him and his Companion more against Independency than I am 11. They abuse the People in indulging them in works that they were never called to nor are capable of nor can give any comfortable account of to God that is To be the Judges of Persons admitted to Communion and of Mens Repentance and Fitness for the Sacrament c. whenas God hath put this Power called The Church Keys into the Pastors and Rulers hands the not over-forced Men but Voluntiers Baptism is the true Churches Entrance and the Baptizer is the Judge of the Capacity of the Baptized no more but Consent to particular Church Relation and Duty is necessary to Membership of Neighbour Christians in particular Churches And nothing but proved nullifying the Baptismal Covenant by Heresie or Sin impenitently maintained or contained in doth forfeit their visible right to Communion And if the People must judge of all these they must have their Callings to examine every Person and they must grow wiser and abler then many of their Leaders are 12. Their Churches have among them no probable way of Concord but they are as a heap of Sand that upon every Commotion fall in pieces The Experience of it in Holland broke them to nothing And it so affected the Sober in New-England that in 1660. or 1661. Mr. Ash and I were fain to disswade Mr. Norton and Mr. Broadstreet whom they sent hither as Commissioners from inclining to our English Episcopacy foretelling them what was doing and we have seen so deeply were they afraid of being received by that Peoples uncurable Separation from their ablest Pastors whenever any earnest erroneous Teachers would seduce them Their Building wanteth Cement 13. God hath so wonderfully by his Providences disowned the way of Schism and Separation on how good pretences soever that I should be too like Pharaoh in hardness if I should despise his warnings For Instance 1. In the Apostles days all are condemned that separated from the setled Churches even when those Churches had many heinous Scandals and St. Paul saith That all they in Asia were turned from him The Authority and Miracles of the Apostles did not serve to keep Men from Separation and raising Schisms 2. Even when the Church lay under Heathen Persecutors for 294 years yet Swarms of Condemned Sects arose to so great a number as that the naming and confuting them filleth great Volumes to the great Reproach of the Christian Churches and Scandal of the Heathens 3. As soon as Constantine delivered the Churches from the Flames of cruel Persecution and set up Christians in Power and Wealth separating Sects grew greater than before each Party crying up their several Bishops and Teachers and grew worse by Divisions till thereby they tempted the Papal Clergy to unite Men carnally by force 4. At Luther's Reformation Swarms of Separatists arose in Germany Holland Poland c. to the great dishonour of the Protestant Cause 5. Here in England it hath been ill in Queen Elizabeth's time by the Familists and Separatists and far worse since It was such as Quarterman and Lilburn and other Separatists that drew Tumults and Crowds down to Westminster to draw the Parliament to go beyond their own Judgment and thereby divided the Parliament-men and drove away the King which was the beginning of our odious War It was the Separating Party that all over the Land set up Anti-Churches in the Towns that had able godly Ministers when they had nothing imposed on them to excuse it neither Bishops Liturgies nor Ceremonies So that Churches became like Cockpits or Fencing-Schools to draw asunder the Body of Christ. It was the Separating Party that got under Cromwell into the Army and became the common Scorners of a godly able Ministry by the Names of the Priest-byters the Driviners the Westminster-sinners the Dissembly-men as Malignant Drunkards did and worse It was these that thought Success had made them Rulers of the Land that caused the disbanding of all the Soldiers that disliked their Spirit and Way and then pull'd down first eleven and then the major part of the Parliament imprisoning and turning out Men of eminent Piety and Worth and making a Parliament of the minor part and their killing the King and afterward with scorn turning out that minor part that had done their work and to whom they had oft profest themselves Servants It was these Men that set up a Usurper that made a thing called a Parliament all of his and his Armies nomination If this should ever be imitated whom may we thank It was these Men that set up the Military Government of Major-Generals It was they that set up and pull'd down so many feigned Supream Powers in a few years as made themselves the Scorn of the World and by a dreadful warning of Divine Justice all their victorious Army and Power dropt in pieces like Sand as they would have used the Church and was dissolved without one Battle or drop of Blood save the after-Blood of their Leaders that were hang'd drawn and quarter'd by Parliament Sentence It is these Men and these doings that have hardened thousands against Reformation and turned all that was done for it O what did it cost and what raised hopes had many of the Success into Reproach quieted the Consciences of those that have thought they served God by silencing hating and persecuting those that they thought had been of this guilty Sect. In a word the spirit and way of causeless Separation whether by violent Prelatists Pursuits and Excommunications or by self-conceited Sectaries was never owned or blest by God If any say truly or falsly You have had a hand in some such thing your self I answer If I had I will hate it and write against it so much the more To thrust ones self into a way so disowned by God by such a course of fearful warnings is to run with Pharaoh into the Red-Sea especially when Impenitence so fixeth the guilt on them that cannot endure to hear of it as may make us fear that the worst 〈◊〉 behind and Sin and Judgments yet continue The Sum of what is said to you on the other side is that the Church of England and the Parish Churches have no true Ministry and therefore are no true Churches That they confess there is no Church without a Bishop and no Bishop below the Diocesan and so no Church below the Diocesan Church That those are no Scripture Bishops and Churches
and Men cannot be Pastors against their wills and the will of their Diocesans That I contradict my Treatise of Episcopacy in denying this With more like this To which I say I. If the Parish Congregation were but part of a Church you might joyn with it as a part as well as with part of an Independent Church And they that can hear a Lay-man with the Separatists might hear the Ministers thereâ— II. Whether I contradict my self or not is nothing to your Cause and Conscience I undertook not when I wrote that none should wilfully or ignorantly misunderstand me The formal Notion of a National Church is nothing but a Christian Kingdom The Matter is Christian Rulers and Subjects and as ordered Confederate particular Churches England hath been such for many Ages Here from the Reformation they owned the Sovereign Power as the Head of the Political National Church as Christ is of the Universal under him They owned Parish-Churches under Diocesans and true Ministers therein Their Books shew their Judgment their Articles Apology Homelies Liturgy Ordination Canons c. These Books are still owned by the Church But at last a new sort of Bishops rose up that would have made the Parish Churches to be no proper Churches but like Chappels under the Diocesan These called themselves the Church of England when there were but about four or five Bishops left alive who Dr. Hammond said were of his mind Some such domineered afterward and would have set up that way but never prevailed either to retract the Churches Books and Laws nor to get the major part of the Clergy to own them Now all the vain question here is Which of these two Parties shall be called The Church of England Neither of them alone They are two disagreeing parts of it I argued against the last professing not to do it against the first which your Counseller would take no notice of And what 's all this to you If you will not be of the National or Diocesan Church you may be of a Parish Church III. I proved that if all the Bishops and Parliament had said The Parish Ministers are no true Pastors this would not have made them none though they might be guilty of deposing them as far as they could no more than it would make the Nonconforming Ministers and Churches to be none Because we all take the Office as instituted by Christ and Men to be but investing Servants to him having no power to alter it And as in the Marriage the Husband shall have power over the Wife though he that marry them say Nay so shall an ordained Elder be a true Pastor though the Ordainer say Nay IV. I proved that the old Church Books and Doctrine are in force still by Law and the Kingdom and Church are sworn or bound not to endeavour any alteration in the Government of the Church Therefore not to put down the Parish Ministry and Churches Therefore this is the Sence of the Church of England though not of the new Faction that usurped that Name V. Though a Man cannot be a Pastor against his will yet he may be one without his knowledge if by Errour he think he is none For he may consent to all the Office while he thinks it is not all and denieth the Name If a Man think that a Deacon may do all essential to a Pastor and so that he is but a Deacon he is nevertheless a Pastor if he consented to the Work Many thousands are Christians that think they are not and do truly consent to Christianity while they think they do not And why may it not be so also to the Ministry VI. But our Case needeth none of these Reasons For where there is all that is essential to true Pastors and Churches there are true Pastors and Churches But by God's great mercy in many thousand Parishes in England there is all that is essential to true Pastors and Churches Therefore they are such When you will call me to dispute it with any Denier I will fully prove to you That there is great need of Reformation 1. That the Church of England as it is a Christian Kingdom containing Confederate Churches under a Christian King and Laws is that very Form that Christ offered to settle in Iudea and did settle by Constantine 2. That if the Diocesans be good Men and lawfully chosen as they are meer Successours of Timothy and Titus and others that had the oversight of many Churches and Pastors by the Word they are righter than the Opposers 3. That the Incumbents of the Parish-Churches have a valid Ordination by such Bishops and Presbyters righter than the Dividers 4. That many thousands of such Pastors are Men of competent Abilities and many of greater Ministerial Abilities than most of us Nonconformists yea that no known Nation under Heaven hath in so small a compass so many able Ministers as England And that to deny it and separate is great ingratitude towards God 5. That Parish Bounds are a laudable Distribution of Churches the capable Members being Communicants and the rest Catechumens 6. That the ordinary Communicants in multitudes of Parishes are Membrs that have all that is essential to Church-Membership 7. That the Pastors have power from God for all their Work and Mens denial even the Ordainers nullifieth not that Power when they are in general ordained Presbyters 8. That by the Law of the Land they have all Power essential to Pastors They may keep from Communion all that are not Confirmed and there have owned their Baptismal Covenant or are ready and desirous so to do and therefore may try their readiness This is required by the Liturgy And they may deny the Sacrament to all that live in scandalous Sin And they must prosecute such to the Bishops Courts The Law calleth them Rectors Rulers and they own themselves for such And even the Canons that are their worst restraints do own the same and so do the rest of the Church-Books and Laws that they all subscribe to and promise not to alter Ask them whether they take not themselves for true Pastors if you would know whether they consent to be such 9. Though some late Innovators that called themselves The Church of England would as far as they could have nullified in some part the Parish Ministry and Churches and the Canons themselves do sinfully limit the Exercise of their Power the Cause of our Calamities yet this nullifieth not the Office and Churches the Essential Power being setled both by God's Laws and the Churches and the restraint of Exercise nulleth not the Power 10. That to Exclude any from Communion that are Baptized and at Age have owned their Christianity and are not proved by sufficient witnesses to have nullified that Profession by Apostasie Heresie or a wicked or scandalous Life is Church Tyranny and Injustice of which all are guilty that do it or desire it 11. That if this Discipline be neglected by the Ministers sinful Sloth or by the
sinful Omission of the People that will not first privately and then before witness and then to the Church or Pastor admonish the Offenders this is the Sin of Pastors and People but nullifieth not the Church or Office 12. Through God's great Mercy the Doctrine professed by the Church of England and usually preached in many thousand Parish Churches is sound and as well preached as in any other known Kingdom on Earth though Ministers have had their Sins which we still smart for and by 13. There is nothing in the Liturgy-worship which the Laity in the Congregation are ordinarily to perform or joyn in which they may not lawfully do or joyn in or be present at most that needeth Reformation being in Rubricks and By-Offices Baptizing Confirmation Excommunications Absolutions Burials and in the Ministers part 14. The Ministers have all the three parts that can be accounted by any party necessary to an outward Call 1. They have the Magistrates Consent by his Law who is Judge whom he will maintain and tolerate 2. They have the Ordainers Consent and Mission Bishops and Presbyters who are Judges whom to Ordain 3. They have the Communicants Consent expressed in their constant Attendance and Communicating who are the discerning Judges to whom to commit the Pastoral Care and Conduct of their own Souls And though more be desirable no more is of necessity 15. The Confederate Parish-Churches of England that have able godly Pastors want nothing which CHRIST or his APOSTLES or the UNIVERSAL CHURCH of Christ for Six hundred years yea or to this day did ever make or judge necessary to the being of Ministers or Church Nor have the said Churches any Errour or Sin in Doctrine Worship or Government which either Christ or his Apostles or the Universal Church for Six hundred years after Christ did judge inconsistent with the being of a valid Minister and true visible Churches The large proof of these Fifteen Propositions I offer though too long now to perform which though they will not justifie such Ministerial Conformity as I have been urged to yet you may easily see by them 1. What Church-Frame is most agreeable to Scripture 2. And what to judge of the false Accusers of the Church 3. How far Separation is sinful Division and contrary to Christian Love and Union I know the Dividers say 1. That I am turned Conformist 2. And why do I not Conform if I think so well of the Parish Churches and Liturgy And 3. Why have I lost above Twenty thousand pounds in Five and twenty years by refusing a Bishoprick and other Preferments To whom I answer If our printed Proposals Disputes and Petitions for Peace in 1661. and my first second and third Plea for Peace and many more such Writings and my Cure of Church Divisions and my Book for the true and only way of Church Concord and my Confutation of many that made me a Separatist while I Communicated in my Parish Church and never gathered a Church meerly because I forsook not my Ministry but gratis preached a Lecture and my Book against Sacrilegious Desertion of the Ministry I say if all these Books will not silence these ignorant Objectors nor restrain them from speaking evil of that which they understand not I owe them no more nor can hope to cure their quarrelsome Ignorance should I say or write never so much more They have contemned so many excellent Rulers and Pastors single and Assemblies far wiser than I and so censoriously condemn almost all the Body or Church of Christ on Earth that I am not so vain as to expect to escape their Censure Even in New-England not only Mr. Wilson Mr. Norton and such other single Independent Ministers lived and died in lamented Separation and warning the Land against it as their danger but their Synods have been at much trouble thereby and left their Healing Determinations and Testimony against that Dividing Spirit and Way They that would see more may read a small Book of Mr. Philip Nye for Hearing the Parish Preachers and a bigger Book of Mr. Iohn Tombes the greatest and most learned Writer against Infant-Baptism vindicating the Lawfulness and Duty of joyning in ordinary Communion in Word Prayer and Sacrament with the Parish-Churches Dr. Thomas Goodwin on Ephes. 1. Serm. 36. pag. 488. explaining some Words in the foregoing Sermon IT was understood as if I said That all Parish Churches and Ministers generally were Churches and Ministers of Christ such as with whom Communion might be held I said not so I was wary in my Expressions I will only say this to you about it There is no Man that desireth Reformation in this Kingdom as the generality of all godly People do but will acknowledge and say That multitudes of Parishes where Ignorance and Prophaneness overwhelmeth the Generality Scandalousness and Simony the Ministers themselves that these are not Churches and Ministers fit to be held Communion with Only this The Ordinances that have been administred by them so far we must acknowledge them that they are not to be recalled or repeated again But here lyeth the Question my Brethren and my meaning Whereas now in some Parishes in this Kingdom there are many godly Men that do constantly give themselves up to the Worship of God in publick and meet together in one place to that end in a constant way under a godly Minister whom they themselves have chosen to cleave to though they did not choose him at first These notwithstanding their mixture and want of Discipline I never thought for my part but that they were true Churches of Christ and Sister-Churches and so ought to be acknowledged And the contrary was the Errour that I spake against Secondly For holding Communion with them I say as Sister-Churches occasionally as Strangers Men might hold Communion with them And it is acknowledged by all Divines that there is not that Obligation lying upon a Stranger that is not a Member of a Sister-Church to find fault in that Church or in a Member of it as doth on the Church it self to which one belongeth I will give you my Reasons that moved me to speak so much It was not simply to vent my own Judgment or simply to clear my self from that Errour but the Reasons or rather the Motives and Considerations that stirred me in it were these First If we should not acknowledge these Churches thus stated to be true Churches of Christ and their Ministers true Ministers and their Order such and hold Communion with them too in the Sence spoken of we must acknowledge No Church in all the Reformed Churches None of all the Churches in Scotland nor in Holland nor in Germany for they are All as full of mixture as ours And to deny that to our own Churches which we do not to the Churches abroad nothing can be more absurd And it will be very hard to think that there hath been no Church since the Reformation Secondly I know nothing tendeth more to the
Spirit among others is a great rejoicing to me And I hope I may tell you that it is in vain as I am sure I may tell you it is no small Sin any more to resist and strive against him If the Hand of our dear and tender Lord be setting you in joint again shrink not on account of present pain much less should you fear the Reproach of being in Communion with the Body but impartially hearken unto him and yield but lay by all Tumults of Spirits and Passions and get out of the Noise of vulgar Clamours for the Voice of Peace is a still Voice and in Calmness must be attended unto And when you are restored if you find not the Sweetness and Advantages of Peace if you are indeed restored in Mind as well as Practice the Lord hath not spoken in this by me I can hardly think that he that hath raised these Thoughts within you and begun these Convictions will let them die In order to the Ends desired and hoped for I shall offer you so much of my present Thoughts as your described Case requires And 1. though I desire not to dispute the Case of Infant Baptism with you now yet I may say we believe you live in a constant Sin against the Lord in neglecting denying and opposing it and that if you will by one erroneous Supposition draw on a Chain of hurtful Consequences you are the Cause of your own Disorders At a fitter Season I should desire you but to answer me this one Argument All that should be sacramentally or solemnly inticed into the Holy Covenant with God as his People should be Baptized or at least be taken as true Members of the Church and their Entrance just but the Infants of believing Parents should be sacramentally and solemnly entred into Covenant with God or his People Ergo c. The Minor we give you the abundant Proof of Law and Promise for before Christ. It was Abraham's Duty and Priviledge according to the Tenour of the Promise which was made with him before the Law to enter his Children sacramentally and solemnly into the holy Covenant It was all the Churches Duty after both Jews and Proselytes both the uncircumcised Females and the circumcised Males and all the uncircumcised Church in the Wilderness Deut. 29 c. Tell me now how I should answer it before the Lord if I tell Parents that they are absolved from this Duty of solemn entring their Children into the Covenant and are divested of the blessed Priviledge especially when you here tell me well that you know of none but his Body that Christ is the Saviour of and that the Church is this Body Ergo you know of no Salvation for Infants if they be not of the Church Ergo Exclussion would be a heavy Case shall I say that Christ hath recalled this Law and Grant but how should I prove it I shew you the Law and Grant do you shew me the Repeal and we have done Christ never speaks a word to repeal it nor any of his Apostles Entring our Children into the holy Covenant is not a Ceremony If God say to a Father why didst thou not dedicate this Child to me and solemnly enter him into Covenant with me what can he say The Precept Promise and long Practice were plain was the Repeal also plain Yes if it be a Repeal for Christ to take such Children into his Arms and bless them and tell us of such is his Kingdom and to be offended with those that would have kept them from him and to command that all Disciples be Baptized He knew well enough when he instituted Baptism and exercised it first upon the adult that the Iews did so too with their Proselites And Ergo when he did in that no more than they did that yet admitted the Infants of Church-Members his baptizing the Adult could no more signify his Denial of Infants to be baptized than the Iews baptizing the Adult could signify it who at that time baptized Infants also nor could the Disciples interpret Christ's Doctrine and Will to be contrary to the Iews when his Practice was no more than theirs And when he never uttered a Syllable to intimate a Repeal of that great Mercy and Duty of entring Infants solemnly into the Covenant which by God's Appointment had continued so long And the Covenant was I will be thy God and thou shalt be my People But all this falls in besides my first intent and therefore I rather expect your Pardon than your regard of it at the present though time may shew you Light in that which now seems Darkness 2. But if our Infant Baptism were irregular how will you prove it a Nullity never by any sound Argument every Irregularity is not a Nullity Whether you take the Word as signifying Faedus Sacramentale a Sacramental Covenant as Scripture commonly doth more notably intending the Covenant than the outward Act or Sacramentum Faederale a Federal Sacrament or Action most notably signifying the Sign or Act it 's all one to our purpose for Infants are capable of both the Covenant and the outward Sign and of all that is essential to Baptism That they are capable of being entred into Covenant 1. Nature tells us we commonly enter them under Princes as their Subjects and into private Contracts with Landlords for Possessions 2. The ancient Law Promise and Practice of the Church before Christ tells us for then it was actually done by God's Command And that they are capable of the outward Sign is undeniable Prove it a Nullity if you can though it were a Sin 3. But if both were granted the Sin and Nullity I come now to give you my Reasons why it warrants you not to deny Communion with the Churches that were thus Baptized in Infancy And 1. I beseech you note that Baptism is as necessary if not much more to the Admission of Men into the universal visible Church as such or into a particular Church Ergo If Men may be admitted into the universal visible Church without adult Baptism then he may be admitted into a particular Church without it But yet here grant that he may be a Member of the universal Church without it Ergo Baptism is indeed appointed to be our regular entrance by way of Sacramental Covenant and Investiture into the Church Universal and not into a particular Church necessarily though it may be into both yet it is but indirectly into the particular Church The Eunuch and all that were baptized first in any place by the Apostles were baptized only into the Church universal and afterward setled in Order under Pastors in particular Churches Baptism as such as it was called our Christening doth only list Men under Christ as Christians and if it do any more as to the thing in Question it is accidentally and not always nor necessarily We are not directly sure baptized to our Pastors and so not to that Particular Church nothing then is more plain
shall we find them and make them in our Brethren Christ gathereth and will you scatter he reconcileth and uniteth and will you divide he justifieth and will you be he that shall condemn Even them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit and all for want of delaying Baptism till your time when in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth nothing nor uncircumcision but the New Creature and Faith that worketh by Love Have you mark'd how Unity and Love is inculcated in the New Testament and that as Omnipotency is most eminently engraven upon the Creation and Wisdom on the Laws of God so Goodness is most eminently engraven on the Redeemer and that in this Glass the Father in his Love and Goodness must be known and hereby the Impress and Image of Love must be made upon our Souls They that are least for Love and holy Unity are least like God and least for him and most like his Enemy and ours 18. Christ is both King Prophet and Priest and no one is sincerely related unto him in any of these respects but is related to him in all And Ergo all Christians are to be under his Church-Government and Protection in his Family as well as under his Teaching If they are by your own confession Fellow Citizens of the Saints and of the houshold of God do not disfranchise them nor deny them their Priviledges 19. Will not your Principles lead to narrowness of holy Charity in Communication of worldly Goods and destroy Christian Communion in this Those that were in the Apostles Doctrine and Fellowship in breaking of Bread and Prayer not through levelling but charitable Community had all things as common sure you will refuse this when you refuse Communion in Sacrament you will on the same ground think that those few only of your Opinion are to partake of this Special Communication For the Reason is the same 20. Contrary to the Spirit and Scope of the Gospel you lay greater stress upon the very timing of a holy Ceremony than under the Law was laid upon the being of the Ceremony it self Women had Communion without Circumcision The Males in the Wilderness did hold all holy Communion even in the Passover without Circumcision To all this let me add these few Questions to you 1. Do you think in the most humble frame of your Soul that you have no failing as great as you suppose the mis-timing of our Baptism to be and would you be rejected for it 2. Is this norrowness of special loving Communion answerable to the Principles of Universal Redemption and Grace wherein I suspect you go beyond me 3. Have you well considered that God's Unity is the first of his Attributes next his Being The Lord our God is one God And so the Unity of the Church is next the very Essence of it so to be regarded and maintained The Unity cannot be destroyed without destroying the Essence and therefore many Truths and Duties must be put behind the Churches Unity when accidentally the use of them is made inconsistent with it 4. It hath been the common frame of the Church since the Apostles days till of late to consist of a mixture one half baptized at Age being converted at Age from Infidelity and their Baptism before neglected and the other half that were born of Christian Parents baptized in Infancy And both sorts lived in Peace and Love and no Church History that ever I read doth give us any the least intimation that ever these two Sorts disagreed hereupon or accused one anothers way or made it any occasion of a Division And will you advance Knowledge and Holiness in the end of the World by advancing Uncharitableness and Division 5. Bethink you with sobriety as before the Lord if you had lived in the Church in the second third fourth fifth sixth seventh eighth ninth and tenth Century or lower in all which though many were baptized at Age being not Christians by any Infant Covenant yet no Writer that ever I saw doth tell us of one Church or one Pastor no nor of one Man that was a Catholick Christian no nor of one Heretick that I remember that was against the lawfulness of Infant Baptism I say if you had then lived would you have separated from all the Churches on Earth What! from the Universal Church in your Communion or would you have had all these Ages have laid by all instituted Church Order and Worship The consequences of this would rise so high that I will not name them to you Only I would further ask you 6. If you think their Baptism a Nullity and consequently the instituted Churches Ministry Order Sacraments Nullities that were used in all those Ages the seventh eighth ninth tenth c. when almost none but such as were baptized in Infancy were Church Members how far then do you differ from the Seekers that tell us All these were lost in the Apostacy 2. And how easily will a Papist trample you in the dirt and laugh you to scorn when he puts you to prove Successive Church and Ordinances and Ministry 3. And what advantage give you the Infidels and our own Remnants of Infidelity to deny the Head by so far denying the Body 7. Would you have a Unity and do you ever expect such a thing or not If not If you do on what terms do you expect it You can never with the least Encouragement of Reason expect that all should deny Infant Baptism and come to you These late years have given you as much advantage as you can well expect and yet you see the most of the Godly dare not come to you If therefore you will neither come to them in Judgment nor yet close in Communion with Christians of different Judgment what do you but give up Unity as desperate and fix in your divided State 8. And will you give the Papist Disputants so much Encouragement as to confess to them that among us there is not any hopes of Unity or loving Christian Church Communion I have been longer than I intended upon these Reasonings but it is because I would not neglect you but some one of them at least may stick upon you of which success your lives declaring you so honestly impartially and happily disposed to Love and Peace I make no doubt And now to your Objections which should have been my whole Task but that I would make sure the Issue And 1. to your first Argument I answer 1. It is against you and overthrows your Cause for as ordinarily Women were admitted to the Passover without Circumcision but not without the Covenant and as in extraordinary Cases offered as of all Israel 40 years in the Wilderness the Males also were admitted uncircumcised so much more may it be now in case of Baptism 2. Either the Ordinances and Examples of the Jews about Circumcision afford us Arguments for regulating our Baptism and Communion or not If not then you urge them in
Rector of his Parish Church shall as such have power to Preach to them without any further License and to judge according to God's Word to whom and how to perform the proper Work of his Office on what Text and Subject to Preach in what Words and Order to Teach and Pray But if Canons also be made a Rule they shall not oblige him against the Word of God And if for Uniformity or some Mens disability he be tyed to use the Words of prescribed Forms called a Liturgy he shall not be so servilely tyed to them as to be punishable for every Omission of any Collect Sentence or Word while at least the greatest part of the Service appointed for the Day is there read and the Substance and Necessary Part of the Offices be there performed no though he omit the Cross in Baptism and the Surplice and deny not Communion to those that dare not receive it kneeling And if any worthy Minister scruple to use the Liturgy but will be present and not Preach against it he shall be capable notwithstanding of preaching as a Lecturer or Assistant if the Incumbent Pastor do Consent VII No Oath Subscription Covenant Profession or Promise shall be made Necessary to Ministers or Candidates for the Ministry besides the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy and Subscribing to the Sacred Canonical Scriptures and to the ancient Creeds or at the most to the Articles of the Church excepting to them that scruple the Twentieth Thirty fourth and Thirty sixth as they speak only of Ceremonies Traditions and Bishops and the necessary Renunciation of Heresie Popery Rebellion and Usurpation and the Promise of Ministerial Fidelity according to the Word of God Or at least none but what the Reformed Churches are commonly agreed in And let none be capable of Benefices and Church-Dignities or Government in the Universities or Free-Schools who hath not taken the said Oaths Subscriptions and Renunciations VIII Let none have any Benefice with Cure of Souls who is not Ordained to the Sacred Ministry by such Bishops or Pastors as the Law shall thereto appoint for the time to come But those that already are otherwise Ordained by other Pastors shall not be disabled or required to be Ordained again And let no Pastor by Patrons or others be imposed on any Parish Church without the consent of the greater number of the stated Communicants And at his Entrance let some Neighbour Ministers in that Congregation declare him their Pastor as so Consented to and Ordained and preach to them the Duty of the Pastor and Flock and pray for his Success IX If any Pastor be accused of Tyranny Injury or Mal-administration he shall be responsible to the next Synod of Neighbour Pastors or to the Diocesan and his Synod or to the Magistrate or whomsoever the Law shall appoint and if guilty and unreformed after a first and second Admonition shall be punished as his Offence deserveth but only in a Course of Justice according to the Laws and not Arbitrarily Nor so as to be forbidden his Ministerial Labours till he be proved to do more hurt than good And if the supposed Injury to any who is denied Communion be doubtful or but to one or few let not for their sake the Church be deprived of their Pastor but let the Person if proved injured have power to forbear all his Payments and Tythes to the Pastor and to Communicate elsewhere X. Because Patrons who choose Pastors for all the Churches are of so different Minds and Dispositions that there is no certainty that none shall be by them Presented and by Bishops Instituted and Inducted to whom godly Persons may justly scruple to commit the Pastoral Conduct of their Souls whose Safety is more to them then all the World And because there may be some things left in the Liliurgy Church Government and Orders which after their best search may be judged sinful by such godly and peaceable Christians as yet consent to the Word of God and all that the Apostles and their Churches practised And Humanity and Christianity abhor Persecution and Human Darkness and great Difference of Apprehensions is such as leaveth us in Despair of Variety and Concord in doubtful and unnecessary Things Let such Persons be allowed to assemble for Communion and the Worship of God under such Pastors and in such Order as they judge best Provided 1. That their Pastors and Teachers do take all the foresaid Oaths Professions and Subscriptions before some Court of Judicature or Justices at Sessions or the Diocesan as shall be by Law appointed who thereupon shall give them a Testimonial thereof or a written License of Toleration 2. That they be responsible for their Doctrine and Ministration and punishable according to the Laws if they preach or practice any thing inconsistent with their foresaid Profession of Faith and Obedience or of Christian Love and Peace 3. That their Communicants pay all Dues to the Parish Ministers and Churches where they live And if such People as live where the Incumbent is judged by them unfit for the Trust and Conduct of their Souls shall hold Communion with a Neighbour Parish Church they shall not be punishable for it They paying their Parish Dues at home Nor shall private Persons be forbidden peaceably to pray or edifie each other in their Houses XI Christian Priviledges and Church Communion being unvaluable Benefits and just Excommunication a dreadful Punishment no unwilling Person hath right to the said Benefits Therefore none shall be driven by Penalties to say that he is a Christian or to be Baptized or to have Communion in the Lord's Supper Nor shall any be Fined Imprisoned or Corporally and Positively punished by the Sword meerly as a Non-Communicant or Excommunicate and Reconciled but as the Magistrate shall judge the Crimes of themselves deserve But if Non-Communicants be denied all Publick Trust in Churches Universities or Civil Government it is more properly the Securing of he Kingdom Church and Souls then a punishing of them But all Parishioners at Age shall be obliged to forbear reproaching Religion and profaning the Lord's Day and shall hear publick Preaching in some allowed or tolerated Church and shall not refuse to be Catechized or to confer for their Instruction with the Parish Minister and shall pay him all his Tythes and Church Dues XII The Church Power above Parish Churches Diocefan Synodical Chancellors Officials Commissaries c. we presume not to meddle with But were it reduced to the Primitive State or to Archbishop Usher's Model of the Primitive Government yea or but to the King's Description in his Declaration 1660. about Ecclesiastical Affairs and if also the Bishops were chosen as of old for Six hundred years and more it would be a Reformation of great Benefit to the Kingdom and the Churches of Christ therein But if we have but Parish Reformation Religion will be preserved without any wrong or hurt to either the Diocesans or the Tolerated And if Diocesans be good Men