shall spend the day as the Lords-day or have any publick communion with the Church And they are apter to be sensible of this calamity themselves than the Objectors are 6. And I must add also that as London is the most populous place so it hath the greatest number of true Separatists and Sectaries and the sounder part are not responsible for their actions 12 Obj. But with what conscience do you come into Cities Corporations or within five miles of them or of your former Preachingplaces Doth God bid you preach just here And how do your scruples engage you thus to break the Laws Ans. Even with such a Conscience as we Preach in England when the Scripture nameth not England to us Did not the ancient Christians also disobey a lawful power when they setled their Churches in Cities even when they were forbidden both City and Country and if Christ say VVhen they persecute you in one city fly to another and you bid us fly from all and fly to none Hath not a Nonconformists Conscience something of the command of Christ to countenance his practice But our true Reasons are the same as are forementioned for our Preaching If necessity be upon us to Preach because of the peoples necessity to hear then where their necessity is greatest there our obligation is greatest But in populous Cities and Towns when the ablest conformable Minister is insufficient for a quarter of the Parish the peoples necessities are greatest Ergo If it be lawful for us to desert and betray to Satan the souls of all the Cities and Corporations in England and within five miles of them and of all the places where we have Preached why will it not be lawful to do so by the rest VVhere the carcass is the eagles will be gathered together and where the work and Vineyard is the labourer must be And all good men love the publick good and therefore will chuse those places for their labour caeteris paribus which the publick good doth most depend on Especially if the people of their ancient charge live there and they think that their relation to them is not dissolved And I must profess that few of the passages of this generation do more astonish me with dread and wonder than to think that City-Pastors who have so vast a charge and so much more need of help than the Country yea men of reputed learning sobriety and piety should ever be desirous to take this burden wholly on themselves and should be the forwardest to drive away assistants yea and make it a sin to preach to those souls that they know they cannot preach to themselves Yea that the same men that one year have much ado to satisfie their own consciences to conform and think they speed well if with Conformity they can but keep up some reputation of honesty yet the next year make so great a progress as to question his honesty that will not sacrilegiously renounce his Ministry and are the forwardest to put down all Preaching save their own Do the Pastors themselves no better know the Parish bounds and the peoples wants or the worth of souls What then can we expect from others Obj. But it is not your help but your hindering us that we are against Do you help us by drawing the people from us to your selves Ans. I cannot tell whether we help you or not till I know what is your help If your work be not to get followers and applause but to bring men to Christian knowledg faith love obedience and patience then all the Ministers that I plead for are you helpers those that are not silence them and spare not But if your work be to preach up your selves and your successes be reckoned by your applause I cannot tell whether we help you or not For though we seek to increase your reputation with the people yet it is not as you are self-seekers but as in charity we hope you preach more for Christ and mens Salvation than for your selves 13 Obj. But what you before denied of the Magistrate you cannot deny of the Church The Church calleth you and giveth you your power Therefore it may take it from you And so Mr. Rathband confesseth and the old Nonconformists practised Ans. 1. The Church is an ambiguous word If you mean the Bishops all those whom you call to be re-ordained deny that ever the Bishops gave them their power 2. And it was One Bishop who ordained each of the rest or two at most who are both dead and cannot take away what they gave 3. I have answered this before and more largely in my Dispute of Ordination Men give us not our Power at all as from themselves but as Servants of Christ invest them solemnly to whom he giveth it And a servant cannot dispossess him whom by his Masters Orders he hath invested 4. You give us our Baptism and Matrimony as truly as our Ministry And yet you cannot take them from us 5. But indeed if the Church that is the People refuse us we cannot teach and edifie them against their wills 6. And if one Bishop silence us he doth it but as exercising Government in his Diocess and it followeth not that we are silenced in all others 7. And they that dissent from our Diocesan frame of Prelacy do not much reverence their Governing Spiritual Power And if the Kings prohibition bind them not against their Conscience of Gods obligations to be silent much less will yours 8. No Bishops have silenced us by Spiritual Government that we know of but only as Barons by the Secular Laws to which they gave their Votes which yet all did not How then are we obliged by their Power of the Keys to be silent For my part I have one or two of their Licenses never re-called or nulled 9. If a Bishop should silence him under pretence of Government and Order whom God obligeth to preach as much as I have before proved that we are obliged it were ipso facto null as to our Consciences as being against the Laws of God 10. He that is silenced in every Bishops Diocess is not yet thereby degraded but is still a Minister to the world at least for their conversion For those without the Infidels and Heathens are of no Bishops Diocess And it 's a question whether those among us that openly renounce the Prelacy and declare themselves to be none of their Church are yet indeed members of their Church whether they will or not We believe not that a Law of the Land doth make any man a Church-member without his own consent If you think otherwise why distinguish you the Sons of the Church from others If all the people of London be not the Sons or members of your Church the rest are not under your Pastoral Spiritual Government And as for your Secular Power enough is said of that before And I think no man will say that the extent of your Diocess to many hundred Parishes is a
the service which he hath qualified us for and all our former time hath been spent in preparing for and so it is as a casting away our time and life 10. It will be a wilful compliance with Phariseism after the warning of their ill examples who preferred their orders traditions sabbaths and their own authority before the good of the peoples souls and bodies 11. It will be an encouraging compliance with Church-tyranny in exercitio if we will give over Preaching as oft as Bishops forbid us because we will not take their Oaths and be stigmatized with their PER I say supposing this had been the case 12. We think it will be a compliance with Church-tyranny quo ad titulum being ready to prove not only that the present Diocesans have no true power over us but what is given them by the King as Magistrates but also that their frame of Government is destructive of the Churches Ministry both Episcopacy and Presbytery and Discipline of Christs appointment 13. We are afraid of being guilty as things now go of mens Usurpation and injury against the King while we have the Kings License to preach and they tell us not only that the King hath not so much authority to License us as they but also that he hath less authority to silence us than they and that it is lawful to preach when Kings unjustly forbid us as the ancient Pastors did but not when these Bishops forbid us 14. In short When we think what a work it is to damn souls by starving them or to hinder their salvation our hearts dread to participate in such guilt considering 1. It is contrary to the very nature of God who is Love it self And we find that the silencers are ready to trust in Gods Love to themselves in the hour of their extremity And shall we think that he so little loveth the souls of men as to desire that they should be damned rather than saved against the will of a Diocesan 2. It is contrary to the very office and design of Christ who laid down his life a ransome for many and came to seek and to save that which was lost and would not cease when the Rulers forbad him to teach the people and demanded an account of his authority but would break even the rest of the Sabbath to save mens health telling them that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and if Prelacy be of God it is for the peoples salvation and not their salvation to be sacrificed to a Prelates will 3. It is contrary to the sanctifying-work of the Holy Ghost who by the Gospel converteth man to God 4. It is contrary to Christs institution of the Ministerial office which was for mens salvation 5. It is contrary to our duty to the Catholick Church whose increase we must endeavour 6. It is contrary to our daily prayers To pray God to have mercy upon all men and to deny them his mercy and starve their souls is gross hypocrisie 7. It is contrary to our Baptismal-vow in which we engaged our selves to fight under Christs banner in the place where he should set us against the world the flesh and the devil 8. It is contrary to our due Love to our native Countrey for whose temporal welfare even a Heathen would have dyed 9. It is contrary to that peace of the Church which is pretended for it For it destroyeth the necessary foundations and ends of peace 10. And it is contrary to the very honour of the Prelates themselves which is set in competition with things of inestimable worth For it will make the people that believe the Gospel to take such men as prosessing themselves the Fathers of the Church do silence the faithful Preachers of it to be grand enemies of Christ and Souls and the Captains in the Army of the devil 11. All good men long for the propagating of the Gospel to the Heathen and Infidel World And shall we then be guilty of suppressing it at home 12. The Papists and all such will condemn us who will not give over Preaching even when King and Law and Bishops forbid them And shall we incur all this guilt by ceasing for nothing yea even now while we are licensed by the King We had rather be taken in the company of thieves in a pursuit than to be found among PER's and soul murderers at judgment Sion is the City of Salvation but in Babylon is found the blood of souls of whom for carnal ends they made merchandize The foregoing Reasons of our Accusation are sufficiently answered already I. Where it is said that our Calling is dependent on the Bishops I answer It is yet lis sub judice whether such a Prelacy be of God we mean the English Species that is for one man to destroy a thousand or many hundred Churches and make them but Parts of one Diocesan Church and without any Bishop under him to Rule and exercise the Power of the Keys over that one Church by a Lay-Chancellor in a secular manner and deny the Power of the Church-Keys to all the demi-Presbyters If these Diocesans were of God so is not every one that by worldly power gets possession of the place being neither chosen by the Clergy or the people any more than one that forcibly usurpeth the name and dignity What maketh that man a Bishop over me any more than another man Had they said the King I should have reverenced the answer at least Though the Arrians had the same in Constantius and Valens's days But when they trust not to this but to their divine right what is it that is their title They say Consecration I answer 1. Consecration is but a Ministerial investiture like Marriage of one that before had right by election This they deny and lay all on Consecration and not Election 2. But if so then if the unjustest claimer be Consecrated he is our Bishop And then the Consecrators have more power to determine who shall be Bishops than Kings and People 3. But who be these Consecrators Are they any Bishops whatever or some in special above the rest If any then any wicked Bishops may make more and undo the Church And then what if three Bishops Consecrate one and three another and three another over one Diocess Are they all the Bishops of that Diocess or which 4. But the Objectors confess that Consecration doth but make one a Bishop without a determinate Church but to make him the Bishop of this or that Church humane application is necessary But 1. Where find they in Scripture a Bishop made that was not made the Bishop of a particular Church I believe that a Minister of Christ in general and an Evangelist in specie may be made before he is fixed to any particular Church But not a Bishop if Scripture must be the rule 2. But if he be Consecrated a Bishop and not my Bishop or any other mans this layeth on me no
obligation to obey him 3. But they are forced at last to resolve all their power and our duty into Humane will or institution It is Man that must make him my Bishop And this they call the application of the power But by what Act is this application Is it by Election or by another Consecration or how sure they will say by Election And doubtless some one must first Elect him to be a Bishop indeterminately It 's strange that men must be Consecrated that no men chuse Then they chuse themselves And then the Consecrators must Consecrate any one that will chuse himself to be a Bishop But if not so they make the Consecrators chusers and therefore should not say that Election doth nothing to make him a Bishop But who are the second determing Electors They know not who to lay it on nor who it is that maketh a man Bishop of these persons and this place One will say the Consecrators and then they know not who these must be and we may possibly have ten Bishops at once another will say the Clergy which really here chuse not another will say the King and they must all come to that or nothing though they are very loth for none of them will say The People 2. But what is the dependance of our calling on the Bishops supposing them of Gods appointment Is it a dependance 1. Of Essence 2. For Operation 3. Or for the Order and Circumstances of operation And do they mean that we depend 1. On the Bishops first Ordination 2. Or on his continued Will 1. If our Calling as to Authority and Obligation did depend in esse on the will of the ordainer as such that is that we receive it from him of which more elsewhere yet doth it not follow that the continuance of it dependeth on his Will and that he may undo what he hath done For he engageth men to God durante vita in a perpetual office which maketh the Papist call it an indelible Character In Ordination a Contract is made between Christ and the Minister and till they null it that contracted it he cannot do it that did but Ministerially contract them A Priest may Marry man and wise but cannot unmarry them A Bishop may Crown and Anoint the King but cannot depose him 2. And if the Bishop cannot null the esse of our Calling than the operation is not at his Will For 1. the Esse is nothing but the Potestas operandi cum obligatione 2. Else it were left to the Will of Bishops whether Christ should have any Ministers and Worship and whether the Gospel should be preached or Souls be saved 3. But if it be only the Time place and order of our Ministration that is left to Bishops they have no power to forbid the necessary preaching of the Gospel on pretence of ordering it To order operation is not to prohibit it He doth not order my studies writing travel building who biddeth me study write travel build no more 4. As the Bishops of Spain at Trent defended the Divine right of their office against the Pope so must we ours against the Prelates Christ hath instituted the office of Presbyters himself which is more generally agreed on among Christians than that he hath instituted our Prelacy But if Dr. Hammond's opinion hold true that there were no subject Presbyters in Scripture-times we shall think it hard to prove that there ought to be any now And then all Ministers must be of one order 5. Suppose Scotland possessed of the Christian Religion under such Presbyters as Coleman Aidan Finan c. and after a Courtier perswadeth the King to call one man their Bishop and make him be Consecrated Are all those Churches and holy Pastors on a sudden by that act become such dependants on that Bishop as that they must give over preaching when he bids them 6. By your Rules men may enlarge Diocesses at their pleasure and if the King will make all England one Diocess he may put down all the Bishopricks save one and give one man power to chuse whether Christ shall have any Gospel or souls in England and so Christ must shortly be no Christ or Saviour without the Bishops leave II. To the second Reason I deny that by preaching we use any Prelatical power the pretended Office of a Prelate is not to be the sole Preacher but the Governour of Preachers If we made our selves Governours of Preachers we should assume their power But to preach is our own work Obj. You call and govern assemblies Ans. We govern not Diocesses nor other Presbyters and to guide particular Assemblies in worship was ever acknowledged the Presbyters work Obj. Yes under the Bishops government but not without him Ans. To do the work of his own office without him that should govern him could be but a disobedience against that Governour but not a deposing him and usurpation of his Government If a Physician Taylor or Shoomaker exercise his Calling when the King forbiddeth him yea or a Schoolmaster or Minister who governs others this is not to depose the King and take his power but only to disobey his power Can you perswade all Popish Priests in England that they depose the King III. The third Reason is as gross a fallacy supposing that our silence is but passive obedience but passive obedience as it is commonly called is but patient suffering without resistance If the Bishops excommunicate us or imprison us or deprive us of all Ministerial maintenance or take all our Estates we never resist them but endure all But when the first part of Religion is positive and the second negative will any say that it is but passive obedience to omit all our duty if a Bishop forbid it us Then it were but passive obedience to give over loving God and man and maintaining our Families or praying to God or doing any good if the Bishop forbid it us 2. And for keeping peace which you demand how it should be done I answer you 1. Satan keepeth possession of his Kingdom in some peace Peaceable unholiness is the surest way to hell 2. We are commanded but if it be possible and as much as in us lieth to live peaceably with all men But peace is first in the power of Rulers and if they will have no peace it is not in our power to procure it against their wills but only to do our part towards it If a Bishop should forbid all men to feed their children and servants with any wholsome food and then say What peace or order can you have without such obedience This is but to put a scorn on the Churches when they have persecuted them and to take away their peace and then ask them why they will not have it IV. To the fourth Reason That the Bishop is judg who shall preach I answer 1. Were the Bishops Calling justified yet he hath not power to judg in partem utram libet whether there shall be preaching or
AN APOLOGY FOR THE Nonconformists Ministry CONTAINING I. The REASONS of their PREACHING II. An Answer to the Accusations urged as Reasons for the Silencing of about 2000 by Bishop Morley Bishop Gunings Chaplain Dr. Saywell Mr. Durel the nameless Ecclesiastical Politician and Debate-maker the Counterminer H. Fowlis Dr. Good and many others III. Reasons proving it the duty and interest of the Bishops and Conformists to endeavour earnestly their Restoration With a POSTSCRIPT upon Oral Debates with Mr. H. Dodwell against his Reasons for their Silence And a Scheme of INTERESTS Written in 1668 and 1669 for the most of it and now Published as an Addition to the Defence against Dr. Stillingfleet and as an Account to the Silencers of the Reasons of our Practice By RICHARD BAXTER 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom Preach the Word Be instant in season out of season reprove rebuke exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine London Printed for T. Parkhurst and D. Newman at the Bible and three Crowns in Cheapside and at the Kings Arms in the Poultry 1681. To the Right Reverend Dr. Compton Lord Bishop of London Dr. Barlow Lord Bishop of Lincoln Dr. Crofts Lord Bishop of Hereford Dr. Rainbow Lord Bishop of Carlisle Dr. Thomas Lord Bishop of St. Davids Dr. Lloyd Lord Bishop of Peterborough and as many more as are of their Moderation and love of our Common Peace and Concord Right Reverend Fathers and Honourable Lords YOU are not the men that resisted and frustrated our earnest endeavours and hopes of Concord at his Majesties return 1660 and 1661 nor made the Act of Uniformity or the rest by which we suffer nor have you been the makers of any Engines to wrack and tear in pieces the Church and Kingdom at such a time when they groan'd and beg'd and hoped for healing I therefore direct this Apology to you and all others of your moderation in some hope though evil men and deceivers grow worse and worse You are reputed among us Nonconformists not only true to the Protestant Cause but lovers of good men and no lovers of cruel silencings violence or blood Though I know but few of you I have reason to believe this fame and some of you have publickly declared your moderation to the world If then the ancient Christians might present their Apologies in hope to Heathen Emperors may I not do so much more to Christian Bishops to moderate Bishops and lovers of peace If yow are wiser and better than we you are as much more merciful and peaceable than we and as much more against all hindering the Gospel and weakening or dividing the Churches of Christ by unjust silencing restraining or persecuting any faithful Ministers or Christians and you are more sensible than we with what deep sense men will shortly hear In as much as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me You have then more of the wisdom from above which is first pure then peaceable gentle c. Jam. 3. 17. and you have a deeper Impress of that holy LOVE by which all Christs disciples must be known Interest is supposed to Rule the World And the grand design of Satan is to set up some fleshly sinful interest in Rulers and Teachers and People which is contrary to the Laws and interest of Christ and then he hath made a Virtual War Carnal Interest will not yield and Christ will not yield nor change his Laws Carnal interest will expound them for it self and so secretly and powerfully byas the judgment that even Learned men when they warp and err shall not perceive it but verily think that it 's all for God We are commonly supposed to be against your interest and that this will make us continue unreconciled to the gratifying of them that have no low game to play by the contrived means of our divisions If your chosen Interest be the furthering of holiness and everlasting happiness by sound and serious preaching of Christs Gospel worshipping God that is a Spirit in spirit and truth and yet with all reverent decency and order and living according to the Laws of our Universal Head in soberness righteousness godliness and in love and peace with one another God forbid that we should be against your interest And this is your interest indeed He that is most for it we account the best and wisest man And if your Dignity Wealth and Honour be your Interest subordinate to the greater as it is highest in the ungodly I beseech you think not we are more even against that than we are indeed I had rather be ruled than rule but God must be first obeyed God knows I envy not your dignity or wealth I have proved in the end of this book that our Restoration is greatly for your interest and that none have done more against you than those of your own tribe that have had the greatest hand in our silencing and suffering Give me but a sober understanding man to deal with and I undertake to shew him that by a meer Reforming of the Parish-Churches so far as your selves confess to be desirable and just with such a limited Toleration of peaceable sound Christians as Christian Reason must acknowledge necessary We may be brought yet to an happy Concord and a better Reformation than England yet ever saw without doing the least wrong or hurt to the Diocesans It is usually said that England had more respect to the principles of Augustine in Doctrine and of Melancthon and Bucer in the points of Reformation than of Calvin Luther or any other And as to Cranmer Ridley Cox and the other Reforming Bishops I verily believe it I know no Divines whose judgment I more consent to than Bucers and Melancthons O that all our Clergy would read and weigh what Bucer saith copiously and vehemently for Parish-Discipline and pure Communion de Regno Dei de Animarum Cura in censura Liturg. specially de Confirmatione and what he saith of Pastoral Government Ordination and Order and of imposing such Ceremonies as ours It was written in England and for England And that they would read what Melancthon saith in his Epistles of the Pestilent design of the Papists that would lay the validity of our Ministry and Sacraments on an uninterrupted succession of Canonical Episcopal Ordination that they may make the judgment of their Councils more effectual than of Christ and his Spirit in the Scriptures and what he saith against these cheats And verily we have little worldly interest to draw us to be enemies to yours And I still profess that in all my experience those called Nonconformists did heartily love honour praise and hear a Bishop or Conformist that preached and lived seriously spiritually and in Christian Love such as through Gods mercy we have had many yea if he preached and lived better than Nonconformists they
loved and honoured him more though with some weak partial persons it was otherwise If then we have any Interest opposite to yours it is not Riches it is not Power we wisht no more than to be Pastors to the Volunteers of a Parish-Church And what more do the Independents wish than that persons have the same liberty to chuse to whom the Pastoral care of their Souls shall be entrusted as they have to chuse Physicians or Schoolmasters and Tutors for their Children and Wives or Servants Husbands or Masters in the family living under Laws of sobriety and peace And if you think that our cross interest is the praise of a few that follow us in a reproached suffering state you think we have a very low mind and game Why then do we so much desire to be out of this state and to take up with reformed Parish-interest And why doth not a far stronger worldly interest more prevail with us But such accusations are answered in this book As for that party of men among us Archbishops Bishops and Doctors that have made it their office and interest to set up as for Christ 1. A Catholick Church formed by a vicarious Universal Government viz. A General Council or a feigned Universal Colledge of Bishops 2. And the Patriarchal power which was in the Roman Empire 3. And the Pope as the President or Principium unitatis Catholicae 4. And the same Pope as our Western-Patriarch and the six or eight first General Councels as the Laws or Rule of Government and so would bring us under a foreign Jurisdiction and turn the orders of a Catholiok Empire into those of the Catholick Church through the World 6. And that pretend that the Papists Churches have an uninterrupted valid succession and therefore are true Churches and that the Protestant Churches that have no uninterrupted Canonical Episcopal succession are no true Churches nor have valid Sacraments or any ordinary title to salvation I say as for this party of men whose Writings and Names I need not tell you of we profess that we have no hope that ever they will be reconciled to us because it will not stand with their desired reconciliation described by themselves with a more powerful and numerous party which they prefer before us And though as much as in us lyeth we must live peaceably with all men we can never receive their unpeaceable principles and terms And it much more alienateth us against the Church of Rome to find that the nearer any are to them the more they are for uncharitableness and cruelty and trust not to the Church-Keys but to the Sword as if blood banishment or destroying conscionable Christians that are not of their minds were the strength of their Religion and Church and still cry Strike home and execute the Laws Abate nothing Tolerate none of them Let them make their task and have no straw Away with them as pestilent fellows and movers of seditions just contrary to the Christian Nature and Interest and Law And if he that dwells in Love dwells in God and God in him who dwells in them that dwell in wrath and imitate Cain and bear thorns and thistles and devour the flocks which they should gather and feed and shew that they love their brethren by destroying them Right Reverend Fathers and Lords we have far better thoughts and hopes of you and though I have beg'd in vain these Twenty years for Peace and Concord of others of your Order I address my self to you beseeching you patiently to read this Apology and pardon the earnestness of it for it is for a weighty cause It was most written 1668 or 1669 before most of you were Bishops Dr. Stillingfleet hath newly told us that If we will but allow that by virtue of the Rule Phil. 3. Men are bound to do all things lawful for preserving the peace of the Church we have no further difference about this matter pag. 176. We have still allowed it we have solemnly protested it Were it lawful to us to conform and cease our Ministry which we were vowed to we would do it I beg of you as on my knees for your own sakes for Englands for the Churches for Christs that you will agree with us on these terms I ask nothing of you for my self I need nothing that you can give me My time of service is near an end But England will be England and Souls and the Churches peace will be precious and the Cause will be the same when all the present Nonconformists are dead And Bishops must dye as well as we Our Lord delayeth not his coming to encourage any to smite their fellow-servants If it be not a Lawful thing for the peace of the Church to forbear the dividing Impositions and Prosecutions I need not name them then let us all suffer still But if it be do not only privately wish but zealously as Lovers of the Church endeavour and that with speed and all your might for Peace to abate what may lawfully be abated It is not in our power to procure Union For sin and self-condemning will not do it How much is in yours the Lord cause you to know and practice I rest Your Servant R. B. AN APOLOGY FOR THE SILENCED MINISTERS Especially for their not ceasing to Preach Christs Gospel Being the Third Part of their Plea for Peace Humbly directed to those of the Lord Bishops and to the rest of the Conformable Clergy of their mind who have procured our Silence and Sufferings or the continuance thereof Most Reverend and Right Reverend Lords and Fathers and Reverend Brethren HAVING once tryed in vain though by the favour of His Majesties Gracious Encouragement and Commission what speaking might do and since that tryed as much in vain what silence in this kind will do I have resolved once more before the expiring of my gasping hopes to resist despair and to try whether so many years experience hath opened your ears and hearts to the Reasons and humble Requests of those who not so much for their Sufferings as for the Souls of men do daily eat the bread of sorrow At least before I resign this Skeleton to the dust to leave one more testimony of my zeal for Unity and Peace and make one more attempt for the Gospel and the Church of Christ that I may not appear before my Judg in the guilt of negligence cowardize or unprofitableness Not to be your Accuser nor a Justifier of any of the weaknesses or miscarriages of the present Nonconformists nor yet of those of former times but humbly to re-mind you of the things that concern the interest of Christ the people and your selves When it pleased the most Gracious Soveraign of the World to restore his Majesty by the concurrence of the desires of his Subjects and the wonderful dissolution of that Army and Government which resisted his returns as we knew that our divisions had been our sin and ruine and our enemies strength and that
our Concord now would be our duty and our hope and our enemies terrour so we thought that the season had happily favoured our just desires We had all one undoubted Soveraign to unite in We had all seen and felt the folly and calamity of Dissentions We had found that principles and practises of jealousie violence and division had let out our blood and made havock of our wealth and separated us from our King and one another and brought us all into confusions We had newly found that our sudden unanimity and concord had restored the King and those that suffered for and with him We knew that almost all the people of the Land were so weary of contention and its effects that they were melted into an aptness for the mould of unity and never were more inclined to Concord even upon any tolerable terms We knew also that we had a King who was newly restored by the very first recovery of his peoples unity and who was even then famous for a loving and a gracious nature enclined to moderation quietness and peace And we had newly seen the many published Declarations of the Nobility and Gentry of the Land who had suffered most in His Majesties cause protesting against all future animosities and revenge The attempts which we made for the Churches healing upon these encouragements did quickly meet with gracious acceptance and yet greater encouragement from the King And we had no reason to think that among all the rest the Clergy should be averse to such a work or yet should spoil it at such a season for want of skill because we had on both sides been deep in those experiences that should instruct us and many not the least and last either in the former sin or present interest and our calling and understanding in such things were supposed such as should make us Leaders to all the people in any just attempts for Concord When we had humbly craved of his Majesty that such persons of both sides as he should appoint might bring in Proposals containing such Approaches and Abatements and Accommodations as each part could yield unto without sin against God and against their consciences and his Majesty had more than granted our requests even expressing his Gracious resolution to draw you on to such Concessions we did accordingly give notice to the London-Ministers that our Concord might be the more extensive to meet at Sion-Colledge and give in their sense of the necessary means to so good an end Bishop Reynolds and Bishop Worth and some others that Conform concurred with us in our Proposals We never spake a word against a Liturgy nor set-forms of Prayer nor against the festival Commemorations of the Saints nor many other things which many had formerly excepted against but only desired some emendations of the Liturgy and that some other forms of Prayer might be added to the several offices with a Liberty of using this or that And for the Government of the Church which was accounted the matter of greatest difference we never made one offer for Presbytery That is the Government of the Church by Classes and Presbyteries constituted of Lay and Clergy-Elders nor did we ever speak a word for Lay-Elders Not that we presumed to Censure those Churches that used them but as many or most of our selves were never for them so we knew that no forms in which the Churches were known so much to differ could be the proper terms of Concord We never made any Proposals against Episcopacy no not against the Lordships of the Bishops nor against the greatness of their Revenues nor their places in Parliament nor made we any offer of any other way of Discipline but the frame which by Archbishop Usher had been presented to the late King called The Reduction of Episcopacy c. In which he thought that he had hit upon the ancient Primitive Government by Bishops with their Clergy-Presbyters as their Colledge Not that we approved all the forementioned things which we passed by but that we knew we must yield for the Churches peace as far as we could do without committing sin our selves When we presented to His Majesty these our Proposals and Requests and expected to meet with the like Concessions and Approaches of our Brethren not yet made Bishops we met with his Majesties Gracious acceptance but our expectations failed of all the rest having never received any such thing from that day unto this But we shortly after received a sharp Answer to our Proposals to which when a Reply was drawn up we purposely cast it by lest turning the work of Pacification into a dispute should frustrate it by exasperating altercations But when we that should have been the forwardest to Peace could do no more to an Agreement among our selves his Majesty was pleased to do more and published his Gracious Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs In which though he granted us not Archbishop Ushers Model of Episcopacy nor all that we desired yet granted he so much as made us thankfully rejoyce in hope to have seen the Churches unity and peace Because we thought the terms were such as to which we could without any guilt of sin or check of conscience have laid out our selves in perswading all our Brethren to conform And accordingly the London-Ministers did presently draw a Thanksgiving to his Majesty yea the Commons House of Parliament themselves did thank him There was nothing now remaining for the confirmation of our hopes but the intended Alterations of the Liturgy and the Confirmation of his Majesties Gracious Concessions When we had a Commission from his Majesty to attempt the first we hoped to do it by mutual compliances in gentle and amicable Conference But it was resolved to us that we being the Plaintiffs must bring in a draught of all the Alterations of the Liturgy which we desired and also of those Additional forms which we had proposed as an expedient for Concord Upon this some of our Brethren would have insisted on a refusal believing that it would but spin out time and end in nothing which would attain that Concord which was our end But others perswading them rather to do as was imposed on us than to go no further because at the worst our case would in writing be less lyable to mis-reports than if we had only spoken for our selves perhaps under checks in temptations and restraints For we had heard many wish that the Conference at Hampton-Court in King James his time had been by writing Hereupon we ventured on the imposed task We brought in writing some exceptions against some passages in the Liturgy To this we afterward received an Answer To which we offered to you a Reply and with it the Additions to the Liturgy which we desired And foreseeing the danger of the confusions and sins which since have followed our Divisions we did so far supererogate as to present to you a long and earnest Petition for Unity and Peace And we agreed with you as
it was my judgment that it was not my duty without a special call to perswade any man to Nonconformity when it was but in the issue to perswade him to be silenced and to deprive the Church of his publick labours Therefore did I never to my remembrance endeavour to make any one man a Nonconformist that did not come or send to me for resolution in the case And some such also I put off as far as conscionably I could Though I may never perswade a man to that which I judg to be sin yet I am not always bound to disswade him from it If I saw a man about to tell a lye or take a false oath to save the life of the King from an enemy or traytor I do not think that it is my duty to hinder him Affirmatives bind not ad semper I thank God not that so many laudable Ministers conform but that they preach the Gospel and keep up so much of the interest of the Church and Religion in the Land I have met with some women and hot-brain'd lads of another mind that said Let them put upon us the veriest ignorant sots and drunkards we shall be the more easily justified for not going to their Churches But I ever reproved this as the language of the Serpent who insinuating into the injudicious would increase the sin and misery of the world For my own part I heard all Ministers where I lived who were but tollerable in the Sacred Office I came to the beginning of the Churches Prayers when I could and staid to the end I took not my self for a constrained unwilling hearer of them but the more any external imperfection made my devotion difficult the more I thought it my duty to labour to stir up my affections lest I should as the hypocrite draw near to God with my lips without my heart I remember what was said of Old Mr. Fenne the famous Coventry Nonconformist that he would say Amen loudly to every one of the Common-Prayers except that for the Bishops by which he thought he sufficiently expressed his dissent I know how unable the old Separatists were to answer the many Arguments of the famous Arthur Hildersham John Paget William Bradshaw Brightman John Ball and other old Nonconformists for the lawfulness of Communicating with our parish-Parish-Churches in the Sacraments and the Liturgy I was exceedingly moved against Separation truly so called by considering 1. How contrary it is to the principle of Christian love 2. And how directly and certainly pernicious to the interest and cause of Christ and of his Church and of the souls of men and how powerful a means it is to kill that little love that is left in the world 3. And how plainly it proceedeth from the same spirit that persecution doth For though their expressions be various their minds and principles are much the same which is to vilifie our Brethren and represent them as odious and intollerable and overlook that of Christ which is amiable in them In which when they have agreed as Children of the same Father they differ in their way of serving him One saith He is such and such therefore away with him silence him imprison him banish him The other saith He is such and such a one therefore away with him have no communion with him He that eateth not Rom. 14. will say Away with him because he eateth And he that eateth will say Away with him because he eateth not Both agree in murdering love and accounting their brother unlovely and intollerable 4. And I was greatly moved in thinking of the state of most of the Churches in the world if I travelled in Abassia Armenia Russia or among the Greek Churches I durst not deny to hold communion with them When I go to God in prayer I dare not go in a separate capacity but as a member of the Universal Church nor would I part with my share in the Common-prayers of all the Churches for all the world but am joined with them in spirit while I am corporally absent owning all their holy prayers though none of their faults or failings in them having many in all my own prayers to God which I must be further from justifying than other mens And having perused all the foreign and ancient Liturgies extant in the Bibliotheva Patrum I doubt not but our own is incomparably better than any that is there But I will not conceal it from you that I am not such a Separatist neither as to communicate with Parish-Churches only If only the Law have turned any Pastors out of the Parishes and the people and they still hold their relation and communion not to say now whether they do well or ill I will no more separate from them than from you I communicate with you in Liturgy and Sacrament but neither as with a Sect or Faction nor as the whole Church but only as a part of the Church Universal and so are they I will hear you and I will hear them when I have a just occasion I will communicate with you and I will communicate with them as I perceive a call If each side run away from the other I will run from neither though I will sin with neither and must go from them that drive me away But I tell all that ask my mind that I am not so indifferent as to the Ministers whom I must join with as I am to the forms and modes of Worship Not that I call their actions Nullities or say that the Sacraments are invalid which they administer For their usurpation cannot rob the innocent of their right But yet I will not be guilty of countenancing and encouraging any soul-murderer in so great a sin Three sorts of Teachers I renounce Communion with as Ministers 1. Those that through intollerable ignorance and insufficiency do want those abilities which are necessary to the essence of the Ministry 2. Those Hereticks who preach against any essential article of Religion 3. Those wicked ones who openly bend their application not against different Sects and adversaries for that is common to all the factious and peevish but against the serious practise of Godliness Temperance Love or Justice and that labour to make these odious to their hearers though their Doctrine be sound from which they raise these malignant applications These are the men that I will not communicate with I confess when I read in Sulpitius Severus the History of St. Martins resolved Separation from Ithacius Idacius and the Synods of Bishops of those times and the confirmation of him by Visions and the antiquity and credibility of that History if of almost any ancient Church History in the main and the stupendious miracles which he is said to work it a little stagger'd me till I considered 1. That Scripture only is our rule And 2. That it was not from the Episcopal Order that he separated for he was one himself nor from any particular Bishops that were innocent nor yet from the
Churches of the people in their Communion and Worship but only from a prevailing company and Synod of the Bishops that were guilty of cruelty and of bringing reproach upon the serious practisers of Godliness in those times And as for the many Volumes which have been written against my self I thought it not necessary to confute them nor seasonable to stand upon a Personal Vindication when I knew it would exasperate the accusers to be accounted injurious and false and would increase the breach Yea when it was judged against me that my presence would be injurious to the people that I had long preached to and that my absence would more conduce to their Conformity and that they were none of my Charge I so far denied my self and them as that I never since came near them nor unless very rarely sent them one line Though I thought if I had been allowed so much it might have better answered the ends of those that were most for my removal Yet did I not take this for any perfidious forsaking them when upon many accounts I believed it to be for their good and I sent them all the Books which I wrote If any think that I should not say so much of my self in an Apology for others I answer 1. It is because that men will needs have it so whether I will or not I say not a word to them and yet what a multitude of Volumes have these seven years and more been tossing my Name as a football of reproach about the land And when the cause is pleaded they presently let fly at the persons and say what you can it 's there that they will stick and till they are answered there they think they are unanswered 2. And because I am best acquainted with my self and can speak with more certainty of my own case and reasons than of any others 3 But chiefly because as our late Tilenus hath stiled me Purus putus Puritanus so the late Episcopal Indignation published me the Antesignanus of the Presbyterians I deserve not so much honour But hence the world and posterity may know that whereas but a few years ago a Puritan was one that was against Bishops and Ceremonies and Liturgy and a Presbyterian was one that was for Lay-Elders and the power of Classes composed partly of such not only for concord but as Governours of all the particular Churches now in England a Puritan is one that is no more against and as much for Archbishops Bishops Liturgy and Ceremonies as in my Books I have long published my self to be And a Puritan as a Puritan is no worse a person than I am whose life and writings have had the happiness to have some share in their commendations And a Presbyterian now is one that is against Lay-Elders and in his judgment against the Regimental power of Classes and Synods as over the Pastors of the particular Churches and only for their consultation and their use to concord and one that is as aforesaid for Archbishops Bishops c. as far as in my dispute for Church-Government I have declared my self to be It is of some use to know the mutability of the world and what a purus putus Puritanus and a Presbyterian now is But having thus far related the History of our true endeavours for peace it must be my next task to Apologize for our supposed unpeaceableness And I cannot better know what is the matter of offence than by knowing what is charged on my self He that was one of the first restrained from Preaching and hath been laid in the Goal as I have been will be supposed to be one of the most guilty And therefore I may hope that they that have escaped better have deserved less and that my own defence will be also theirs And I owe the offended an account of the practise by which I have so much offended them When the Act of Uniformity was not yet made or talkt of I went to the now Archbishop of Canterbury then Bishop of London even whilest the Kings Declaration gave us liberty and I desired his License to preach in his Diocess which he was pleased to grant me upon my Voluntary subscription to the Doctrine of the Church and those terms of peaceableness which he accepted When the said Act of Uniformity was in fieri I ceased that seeming Lecture which I had before 1st of May 1662. When that Act came out it forbad all to hold any Benefice Cure Lecture c. who had possession of any Ecclesiastical Promotion the 1st of May 1662 and did not subscribe and declare as required of them in that Act and also forbad the reception of any into such Promotion or Cure for the future that should not so subscribe and declare Neither of these being my case for I was out of all before May 1st 1662 and I sought no new Cure or Benefice the Law did no more require me to subscribe and declare than it did the Bishops or any conformable man that for so long had Cure Promotion or stated employment So that I was no Nonconformist in the sense of the Law because I conformed as far as the Act required me to conform And that Act not forbidding occasional Sermons to any but those that were not Licensed my License enabled me to Preach occasionally as many that had no places did yet because I knew that the Bishop might revoke my License at his pleasure and that if I so far used it being reputed a Nonconformist it would give offence to my superiors I never since made use of it to this day nor ever Preached a publick Sermon And though the Act forbad me not publick Catechising or the Administration of the Sacraments I never did either to avoid offence And when about three years after the Oxford Act came forth for the restraining Nonconformists from coming within five miles of a Corporation or of any place where they had been Teachers or kept a Conventicle I found that I was not concerned in that Act because by Law I was no Nonconformist to whom the Act by the very title and matter was limited So that being neither a Nonconformist by Law nor my License to preach occasionally ever nulled nor yet concerned in this Oxford Act which imposeth the new Oath I supposed my peace not endangered by the Law which the Lawyers whom I consulted also did conclude Yet did I forbear to come within five miles of a Corporation except on the rode to avoid offence All this while I lived in a place where sew desired me to preach they being poor and worldly people that minded most their labours and necessities So that I contented my self to instruct my family with three or four more that sometimes desired to be present But the chief reason why I did no more was because as none called me to it so I was engaged in certain writings A Body of Practical Divinity the Reasons of the Christian Religion and others which I thought
world to charge the soundest Christians with Hypocrisie because then they talk of the secrets of the heart which we cannot open for our own vindication 2. As for self estimation our judgment is that Pride is one of the worst of sins and Pride of Wisdom and Godliness is one of the worst sorts of Pride and there are too many guilty of it in the world and we would fain have leave to Preach against it In the mean time we spare not by Writing and Conference and such Preaching as we use to do against it what we can And we shall heartily thank you for any true help to detect and mortifie it more in our selves But remembring from my childhood that the sots and drunkards of the Town and Countrey where I lived were used to speak the very same words with this Objection against all serious godly Christians how conformable soever I presume to ask you these few Questions Q. 1. Are the Conformists more Godly or Holy than all the ignorant drunken unchast voluptuous carnal rabble or are they not Q. 2. If not why do they take it for a wrong to hear of much less If they are as I doubt not but very many are do they so esteem themselves or not If not why should they be angry with others for thinking of them as they think of themselves If yea Q. 3. May they not take it for a greater mercy than all the riches of the World If all are none of Christs that have not his spirit may not they give God thanks for it that have received it Rom. 8. 9. Q. 4. And do you never give God thanks for his grace of Sanctification your selves Q. 5. If you do how shall a man know that you are not as very Hypocrites in so doing as the Nonconformists When they and you thank God for the same mercy how shall we know but by the fruits which of you is sincere Q. 6. Do you know that there are any or many among us that live after the flesh an ungodly sensual worldly life If not you are strangers to the Land which you inhabit If yea Q 7. Do you think all these are in a good and safe condition If yea give over Preaching against them If not do not better men differ from them Q. 8. And must not our light so shine before men though not for their applause that they may see our good works and glorifie God Matth. 5. 16. 4. And seeing we are accounted the Pharisees Come on and let us recite the Pharisees Character and see who is likest him 1. The Pharisees were the chiefest members of the Sanhedrim and Rulers of the Church and so are not we Act. 5. 34. Mat. 12. 14. 23. 2. 27. 62. John 7. 32 48. 2. The Pharisees were against the Scripture-sufficiency for the customs and traditions of their ancestors Mat. 15. 2. 3. They imposed these Traditions as Laws on others and accused the Christians for not observing them Mat. 15. 2. 4. They preferred these Tradition before the practice of some Moral duties Mat. 15. 9. 5. 6. 5. They were so much for Ceremony that they were precise and strict in the observance of their Ceremonies Mat. 23. 5. 23. 25 c. and for them neglected mercy and saith Mat. 23. 23. 6. They were covetous and sought after Riches even by oppression Mat. 23. 14. 7. They were proud and Lordly and strove for preferment the highest places and the highest titles Mat. 23. 6 7 c. 8. They wore a different sort of garments which was openly to signifie their special holiness Mat. 23. 5. 9. They were very zealous to make men Proselytes and conformable to all their Ceremonies Mat. 23. 15. 10. They foolishly and preposterously preferred small matters before great v. 16 17 c. 11. They laboured to silence Christ and the Preachers of his Gospel and forbad them with threatnings to Preach any more Mat. 23. 13. Act. 4. 18 c. 12. They persecuted Christ and his Apostles and sought first to intrap them in their speech and then to bring them into sufferings Luke 6. 7 c. If you know any that ever silenced or persecuted any faithful Minister he is none of the men that I am speaking for 13. They pretended Law for all their cruelties John 15. 7. and accused them as breakers of the Law Luke 6. 2. 4. 3. 14. They urged Christ to decide State-Controversies about Caesars right which he warily avoided knowing they did but seek matter of accusation Mat. 22. 17. Mark 12. 14. 15. Yet did they accuse him as an enemy to Caesar and as guilty of disloyalty even to his crucifixion Luke 23. 2. John 19. 12. And were not contented to take away his life unless they put on him the infamy of Treason 16. They would not understand the meaning of the Law of Love or I will have mercy and not sacrifice Mat. 9. 13. 17. They were stricter for Tything and such Levitical Rights than for the spiritual worshipping of God Mat. 23. 23. 18. Their Righteousness was more in outside Religious pomp and bodily exercise than in the inward part and moral practise Mat. 23 24 c. 19. They pretended great veneration for the dead Saints and built them Monuments for an honourable memorial while they imitated those that murdered them and persecuted the living Saints that imitated them Mat. 23. 26 27 c. 20. They had their set-days of formal fasting twice a week turning even extraordinary duties and all into form and ceremony Luke 18. 2. And were inquisitive after them that conformed not herein Mat. 9. 14. Mark 2. 18. 21. They counted it the folly and ignorance of the Law in the common people whom they took for cursed to be such admirers of the preaching of Christ John 7. 49. 22. They used long prayers as a cloak for their oppression Query Whether they were a Liturgy or not If yea so let it pass in their Character If not then it is scarce like that there was any other Liturgy than the Scriptures in those times else it is most like that the Pharisees would have used it For 23. they went up into the Temple to pray and sometime in other publick places as Bishop Hall notably describeth the Hypocrite in his Characters that he kneeling down behind a Pillar in the great Church muttereth over certain words praying to that God whom he all the week at home forgetteth and disobeyeth and rising up commendeth the devotion of our ancestors He boweth at the name of Jesus and sweareth by the name of God c. This is the sense for being separated from books I pretend not to recite verbatim So did these Pharisees make ostentation of their prayers in the Temple but we read not of their family or secret prayers which Christ enjoineth to his Disciples that they may differ from the Pharisees Mat. 6. 24 They insulted over the followers of Christ as an accursed ignorant vulgar sort when they were
And I knew that if I were no Bishop my self I could far more effectually perswade men to Conformity than if I were And this was the reason I gave of my refusal But if the Kings Declaration should not be ratified as I verily did believe it would not I knew if I took a Bishoprick I must quickly leave it And then it was better refuse it at the first And this being our case methinks I might refer the judgment of it even to the Censurer himself whose civility to my self through the rest of his Debate I do acknowledge 15 Obj. If the King must change or relax his Laws as oft as men will be scrupulous or discontented there will be no setledness consistency or order Your tender Consciences are but tender heads And soft-headed people must be Rulers of us all if we must change as oft as their weakness will desire it Ans. You cannot think that when you talk at this rate the readers and hearers can be all so simple as not to understand that your words only signifie that you stand on the higher ground and not that you have the better cause For 1. you were not only importuned before these Laws were made to have done your part for a more universal Concord but you were also Commissioned by the King under his Broad Seal to consult for the making such alterations in the Liturgy as were necessary to satisfie tender Consciences When instead of so doing you have made the burden heavier than before And is this a fit plea for men that before the new Laws and Impositions had so much power and opportunity to have prevented the matter of our grievance and were so long importuned to it in vain to talk afterward of the inconvenience of changing or relaxing Laws 2. Have the Nonconformists so often changed their cause that you should be put to talk of so frequent change of Laws Do you not tell them that their arguments and exceptions are but the same that have been answered to their predecessors long ago If their cause be the same one alteration since the first Imposition of Conformity would have served their turn If after the troubles or differences at Frank ford they had been brought to an agreement by mutual accesses and concessions what need any more as to the Nonconformists to this day 3. Who were the Changers when you put your new clauses into the Liturgy as the doctrine of Baptized Infants salvation without distinguishing of them that were baptized Rightfully or without right c. If all the new Oaths Subscriptions and Declarations be imposed by your advice surely it was you that were in that the Changers Changes then will do well and be laudable when they serve your ends but they are dangerous when they are against your minds What changes doth Thorndike plead for 4. When the New Canons and Oath were made 1640 and when Rails and Altars were set up and bowing towards the Altar recommended there was no danger in these changes But if an Oath or Subscription of seven years age be abated how dangerous would such changes be 5. The Kings Majesty when he published his Declaration about Ecclesiastical affairs did not take those changes there made to be so dangerous Nor did the Commons in Parliament who gave him thanks for that Declaration We may know then by that much whence the noise of danger cometh 6. If a needless Subscription or a Ceremony have burdened so many and considerable Subjects an hundred years and more and if the calamitous attempts of change that have been made unlawfully in the Land have been occasioned by mens differences about those things and if they are still the burden of so many as are now against Conformity Let impartial persons then be judges whether the removing of those troublesome unnecessary burdens were not the likest means imaginable to prevent any more ill attempts of change 7. Is there any thing in the world that you think unlawful No doubt there is Suppose that one thing were by a Law imposed on you would you think that a change of that Law would be a dangerous thing and would you exclaim against it as now you do What if King Charles I. his Concessions in his restraint in the Isle of Wight had past into a Law as they had if the Parliament had not suddenly been broken and that Episcopacy had received as great a change as was then intended in those Concessions Would you have taken the rescinding of all these Laws for a dangerous change 16 Obj. It is obedience that beseemeth tender consciences Disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft And would you have any countenance you in so great a sin If Subjects must have the Laws changed instead of obeying them they will be Rulers and not Subjects Why are you not more tender of offending and disobeying your Governours Ans. 1. Are not you and we agreed that God is the chief Ruler and to be first obeyed and no man against him but only under him In this sure we do not differ To disobey God is as the sin of witchcraft and obedience to him is better than sacrifice And when it is only our obedience to God that maketh us disobey any Governours judge whether we were not more chargeable with disobedience if we obeyed men and disobeyed God We have no reason to cast our selves under all your reproach and so much suffering but only to avoid disobedience to God And when our costliest obedience must go for odious disobedience and if we disobey God to please men it would go for obeeience what remedy but to wait for a more righteous judgment where obedience and disobedience will be better known 2. Again I ask Is there any Oath that you dare not take any thing that you dare not subscribe to and declare any thing that in Gods worship you durst not use Suppose that one thing were imposed on you would you Conform to it or not If you were but put to subscribe all to the truth of Dr. Hammonds opinion that there were no Presbyters but Bishops in the Scripture-times and that no Church then was bigger than one Bishop with his Deacons did efficiate with would not some part of you scruple subscribing to it If any one thing or word which you judge unlawful to be done or subscribed were put on you by a Law would not you then be the Nonconformists And were it not as easie then to declaim against your Disobedience and Nonconformity as it is now for you to do it against ours Might not Volumes as plausibly be written to shew the mischief of Subjects disobedience and quarrelling with the Laws and being judges of what is unlawful And might not you be as largely characterized as a stubborn unquiet people as we are by you now So that all this still doth only tell us that you are got up in the highest seat from whence you have advantage to look down with scorn upon those that are more fearful
tell you of Abbot and Laud c. and when yet the Conformists preach against one another about it yet did we never speak a word to the King or them of any such matter Because if all men will subscribe the same wholsome Doctrine of the Articles we cannot hinder any from dissembling and destroying what they do subscribe Obj. 24. Agreement with the Church of Rome is more desirable on the terms described by Dr. Heylin in A. B. Lauds life and you would make it impossible Ans. We are for a just concord with all Christians but true Popery we cannot agree with and as to Papists they are but a part a third or fourth part saith your Primate Bishop Bramhall of the Catholick Church We must unite with the whole Church or else we are Schismaticks To embody in the faction of the Papists is as Schismatical as to do it with a smaller faction And if you will unite with all Christians I still say you must unite on Vinc. Lirinensis terms on that which all Christians are agreed in that indeed deserve the name of Christians Now if you establish your concord on the Scripture and on universal terms all Christians in the world will confess that your Religion yea all your Religion is certain truth and that it hath also all things universally necessary to Salvation and this is a fair degree of unity though they say that yet you want their Traditions And then you can tell a Papist quickly where your Religion was before Luther Even where ever the Scripture was received And you do not wilfully and resolvedly cut off your selves from Communion with all the Protestant Churches who do not hold the Traditions and Decrees of Rome But you are united with all the Christians in the world in Christianity and so far as they have any union among themselves And then all those that will needs go further do run the hazard of their own additions We will live in peace with them if they will live in peace with us But if the Papists be such men that they will hold no communion with any that hold not all their Religion that is all the Decrees of their Councils than neither Abassines Armenians Greeks nor Protestants can be received into their Communion And do you think it desirable to comply and embody with them in such a schism and factious combination against all the rest of the Churches of God If you will deal like Christians Catholicks and wise men let us first be as moderate as may be in our Doctrinals and not pretend that we are further disagreed with Papists or any other Christians than indeed we are I am one of those who believe that in many Doctrines quarrelsome ignorant men have made differences where there are none and have made those that be seem wider than they are cut off these superfluities and spare not and then reduce your terms of Union and Communion to the Primitive simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Discipline and if any will have more let it be a matter of liberty and not of necessity or if they will not be limited as we are let them take their scope Or if you your selves will needs have more yet hold it with liberty as matter of conveniency and not of necessity to the union or communion of the Church If you will take this course we shall deny Papists no love no peace no communion with us on our terms which they justifie for the truth of them in our Churches And if they will fly from us and refuse our Communion or will put unlawful terms on us and drive us from them we shall have no accusation for this by our consciences or any wise man He is the Schismatick that maketh communion impossible by his Additions or Impositions or runs away from those that will not receive all his Supernumeraries Usurpation is the peace breaker in the Church of God Christs sheep know his voice and follow him but they will not be so obedient to an unknown voice Why cannot a man be content to be a Lord Bishop and to have many hundred or thousand pound a year for promoting the preaching and practice of Christianity and for punishing Hereticks rebels drunkards sensualists c. and serve God himself with what garb or forms or ceremonies he please as well as to have the same wealth and honour to prosecute much wiser and better men than himself with a burning zeal for not swearing obedience to him or for not subscribing that his Books are faultless or for not wearing a Surplice or signing Children with the transient Image of the Cross. But we must suppose that we cannot make Papists to be Protestants If they will not turn Protestants and we will not turn Papists the contrivance or supposition of a turn or half-turn is but a vain imagination not the way to unity and peace We must take them as they are and they must take us as we are and we must take all the Christian Churches as they are in our design for concord if we will do any good in it The question is not how or how far we shall change one anothers minds or be changed but how we shall maintain so much love and peace as is due to one another in the capacity that we are in and how far we shall endure the different opinions and practices of another to such an end And such a Conciliator with Rome I would be my self and magnifie the design as much as Heylin doth and be as zealous in it as Grotius Laud or Forbes were in theirs For it is but the service of Love and Peace and that is certainly the service of God I would treat with any Papists on such a design If peevish or suspious Protestants should try out on me and defame me for such a design as some have done I would no more regard it than the crying of a child If Christian Princes would make such a Treaty their business by their Embassadors that Love and Liberty might be regulated by the just rules of Equality and not be pretended only by a faction for their own ends even by them that will seek Liberty but will not give it I would bless God for such Princes and for so good a work And I would be and am ready to manifest to all wise impartial men whose Religion is Love and not Malice under the name of Zeal that in many Doctrines that we are by some supposed to differ in Fundamentals ignorance hath feigned the difference to be doubly greater than it is And I think many of Forbes and Spalato's Arguments in his very Learned Books de Republ. Eccles. to be worthy the serious study of every Learned man I know Luther took the Doctrine of uncertainty of Salvation alone to be cause enough of our unreconcileableness with Rome and yet I know as well that it is not one godly person of many yea very many of them that are farthest from the Papists who do
Catalogue of Questions for our Disputations at those Meetings and never then talkt to us of what he here writeth in a Book called Dubitantius Firmianus 2. Mr. Thomas Foley a Nonconformist Gentleman eminent for Charity having built near Stourbridge a Hospital and endowed it with about 500 l. per annum being my friend Dr. Good wrote to me to move him to give maintenance for two Scholarships in Baliol-Colledge and I wrote this Letter in answer to that but the sending was delayed till he was dead Accus 29. Another to save the Nation from the labours of a Concordant Ministry and from the blessings of Unity Peace and Innocence hath written a book lately called The Modern Pleas for Comprehension Toleration c. considered who at his enterance saith I would fain have any of our dissenting brethren to answer directly Whether there be any one thing sinful in her Communion the Churches as by Law established or only some things as they conceive inexpedient And p. 11. he saith Suppose that the terms of the Communion of the Church are not only inexpedient but really sinful if so then I shall readily grant that the Church ought not to be communicated with while the terms of her Communion are such But I shall presume to say with some confidence that it is not easie to find a considerable man among them who will not be ashamed to own it publickly or who doth himself really believe it And p. 12. I have been credibly informed not to say that I am able to make it good that Mr. Calamy did before his Majesty and divers Lords of the Council profess that there was not any thing in the constitution of the Church to which he could not conform were it not for the scandalizing of others so that in his esteem the Constitutions of the Church were in themselves innocent and the whole objection against them lay in the mistakes of other men Yet saith he p. 11. That the separation from the Church is so avowed and pressed upon the people as if that it were highly necessary and that communion with the Church was highly criminal at least in the opinion of the teachers Ans. And now Reader what a shake doth this instance give to the credit of History at least such as is written by interessed factious men yea what a reproach to humane nature For what untruth can be imagined so gross and what thing so nakedly evil as may not be expected to be found in Man yea in professed Christians yea in Divines of such a character Either this man and such others believe what they say themselves or not If not what Preachers what Christians what Men are these If they do what matter of fact can ever be so notorious as that we can hope that such men can know it What History of such Writers can deserve any credit What regard can the people be encouraged to give to the Words and Writings of such Doctors that no better know such publick notorious matters of fact and so confidently and boldly deceive the world in cases where so many thousands yea the Churches Peace and Concord is so much concerned Reader judge by these notorious evidences of fact of these mens credibility and usage 1. The judgment of the ancient Nonconformists is declared to the world by abundance of Writings in which they thought that they proved much in the English Constitutions to be sinful and such as men must suffer deprivation and death rather than consent to And are all these Writings no evidence of their judgments nor their sufferings neither 2. Since his Majesties Restoration the present Nonconformists still distinguished 1. Between Diocesan or National Churches and Parish-Churches 2. Between the Communion and Conformity of private men and of Ministers And 3. Between Approbation of the Church-Constitutions Practising all imposed and peaceable behaviour and submission And though some exasperated persons have by the late sufferings of conscionable men been tempted to separate from the Prelates and their party as far as St. Martin did from the Bishops about him and their Synods yet the main body of the Nonconforming Ministers as far as ever we could learn did judge as followeth 1. That those parish-Parish-Churches which had true Ministers not utterly uncapable persons were true Churches of Christ. 2 That the ordinary Liturgy appointed for the publick worship was such as a good Christian may lawfully joyn in not speaking of Baptizings Burials c. in which some things they thought more dubious 3. That though combined Churches whether you call them Diocesan or National are not any otherwise a Divine Institution than as Concord is commanded us in general and may not be set up to the detriment of the particular Churches which are of Divine Institution yet a good Christian may and must live peaceably and submissively where some such combined Churches are guilty of Usurpation and sinful abuse 4. That Conformity to all the Subscriptions Declarations Oaths Covenants and Practices now imposed on Ministers would be to us a very great and heinous sin modesty forbidding us to meddle uncalled with the Consciences of the Conformists 3. Their judgment of the sinfulness of Ministerial Conformity they declared to his Majesty and the Bishops in many Writings when they had encouragement to attempt once the healing of the divisions And when because they agreed to leave out all harsh provoking words in their accusations of the Church-Orders and Ceremonies the Lord Chancellor had put into the first draught of a Declaration That we do not in our judgments believe the practice of those particular Ceremonies which we except against to be in it self unlawful In our next Address we desired that those words might be expunged and so they were Yet this extended not to Subscriptions Oaths c. And afterward many particulars were mentioned which we thought sinful and the supposition vindicated in a Reply to which the Bishops never answered And in a long Petition for Peace p. 6. we make this Protestation following Who can pretend to be better acquainted with their hearts than they are themselves For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him And they are ready to appeal to the dreadful God the searcher of hearts and the hater of hypocrisie that if it were not for fear of sinning against him and wounding their consciences and hazarding and hindering their salvations they would readily obey you in all these things That it is their fear of sin and damnation that is their impediment they are ready to give you all the assurance that man can give by the solemnest professions or by Oath if justly called to it And one would think that a little charity might suffice to enable you to believe them when their non-compliance brings them under suffering and their compliance is the visible way to favour safety and prosperity in the world And if men that thus appeal to God concerning the intention of
testifie some of us that we were from first to last in his company at such meetings where those matters were transfacted and at all the meetings before his Majesty that we heard he was present at and we over and over have heard him profess that he took several things in Conformity to be intollerable sins but never heard a word from him to the contrary And he may be judged of by the Preface to our Reply which he wrote and by his not only refusing a Bishoprick but by his Sufferings and constant profession to his death This Writer to save the Church from Concord by restoring the silenced Ministers feigneth Comprehension to be a late device a thing unknown or that amounts to no more than a pretty artifice of saving the reputation of about a dozen persons who are sick of their separation and stand in need of a plausible pretence under which to return unto it Their credit will not suffer them to renounce their old principles and they are weary of sticking longer to them Now if the pride of these men should be thus far gratified c. Ans. 1. See how boldly this man pretendeth to search the hearts of others 2. How he feigneth that to be New which they so laboured for 1660 and ever since Read but their Petition for Peace and Judg. 3. Doth he not take it to be more for our Reputation to conform and to be dignified and preferred than to live under the scorn and sufferings that we do Do not Bishop Reignolds and many others that conform live in more reputation in the world than we that are thus reviled by so many Doctors of the Church and sometimes lie in the common Jayls and are fain to stoop to be beholden for our bread or necessary maintenance 4. Who are those dozen men and why doth he not name them and prove his charge Are they not men of strange facinating power that could make 1800 such Ministers distant in all Counties to deny Conformity And are they not strange persons that will all over the Land give over preaching or live in poverty and suffering some have dyed through the effects of want and all to gratifie a dozen men no one knoweth who And it 's like some that he meaneth in his dozen have done more to displease many of the rest than others 5. What Nonconformist hath not groaned for our divisions and been indeed aweary of them from the first day and longed for our common Concord but that is not to be weary of their principles O that he would procure us but liberty to preach the Gospel for all the rest that earnestly desire agreement and shut out the dozen that he meaneth whoever they be But pardon me for saying that these men do satisfie us that Sadduces are blind who believe that there is no Devil when so much of him appeareth actively in the World But our difference is not in Government and Ceremony only but in Doctrines of Grand importance in Morality For he saith pag. 66. For unless it the Covenant be lawful in every particular respect no body can be obliged by it O dreadful Doctrine to come from a Doctor of a Christian Church That a Covenant and Vow to God can oblige no body unless it be lawful in every respect If so Protestants that hold that imperfect man hath no sinless work and so no Vow or Covenant is in all respects lawful must hold that they are bound by no vow or covenant If this be so every erroneous man or every knave that hath the ignorance or craft to drop in any one unlawful thing into his Covenants and Vows is obliged by none of them at all How easily then may a Papist or an Atheist shake off all Oaths of Allegiance or Supremacy by adding one unlawful Particle It 's true that if some one clause in a Vow were so essential to all the rest as to be their sense if that were unlawful to be kept all were so And as to the denomination of the frame as consisting of several parts it may be called a bad or unlawful Oath if part were so because bonum est ex causis integris and the sense is but that it is unlawful quoad hoc or secundum quid But as to obligation though the Actus imponentis and the Actus jurantis be unlawful yet if the materia juramenti have ten parts and one only be sin that doth not nullifie the obligation to the rest No nor though nine parts of it were sin their neighbourhood nullifieth not the obligation to the tenth But what wonder if Conformity by Oaths Subscriptions Declarations and Covenants seem lawful to Doctors of such principles as these What if a Popish Prince or People put an unlawful clause into their Covenants Are they therefore wholly disobliged as to each other The same I say of Covenants of Peace between several Princes And of Covenants between husband and wife and so of other Contracts but especially of Vows to God But what if Perjury prove a greater sin than not conforming to it yea a sin meet for none but utterly debauched Consciences and such as threatneth dreadful ruine And what if such principles and practices would make us guilty of the Perjury and impenitence of many hundred thousand persons Should we be drawn into such a guilt by such words as these and that in a time when God by his Judgments is searching after and finding out the Nations sins God forbid Another since called A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transposed p. 457 458. saith Do you at all know what were the abatements they demanded to bring them off with Conscience To let you see your confidence I tell you they demanded none at all but the question being solemnly put to them and that as I am told in his Majesties presence Whether they knew of any thing in the Liturgy with which they could not comply without sin they all declared their own satisfaction but only desired some abatements for the ease of weak brethren or rather as you tell us bluntly to bring themselves off with some little reputation Ans. O patient God! Alas for strangers and the Generations to come that must read such history Alas for the Souls and Churches that have such Guides Alas that he whose Character is to be the old Lyer and Murderer can do so much in the Churches at once to destroy Love and Souls to make odious Gods Ministers and to render it so difficult to believe Church-History If this man had thus published that we were not English men or that we did at that same time the horrid'st Villanies that he could devise what other answer could we make than that which these words must have It is a forgery against such notorious evidence that I will not undertake for the man that dare print this but that he may say any thing that can be devised how false soever I have told you 1. That we gave them in writing an account of
of old will tell posterity whether the Nonconformists preached loose licentious Doctrine 5. But the fullest decision of this case will be from their cause it self The Liturgy and Canon 1. obligeth us to refuse no Child that is offered us in baptism 2. The Rubrick pronounceth the baptized Infants so dying certainly saved not excepting any child of any Infidel or Atheist or open denier of a life to come or derider of Christ and the holy Scripture of which there are now great store 3. When the baptized Children can say the words of the Creed Lords Prayer c. though they know not what they say they are confirmed by the Bishop 4. Being confirmed they are to be admitted to the Lords-Supper though they know not what it meaneth yea they are compelled for fear of Imprisonment and ruine to communicate 5. When they are sick if they will but say they repent and desire it they must be Absolved in absolute terms though they give the Minister no satisfaction that they are truly penitent and have lived till then a most ungodly life and perhaps lie cursing and swearing and railing at a holy life on their sick-bed 6. And being dead we must pronounce our hope of every one in England except unbaptized ones excommunicate and self-murderers that God in mercy hath taken to himself the Soul of this our dear brother out of the miseries of this world Though they were professed Atheists Infidels scorners of Christ notorious adulterers or other criminals and never once so much as said I repent 7. And the Discipline of the Church being managed by one Lay-Chancellor and his Court with some small assistance in a Diocess of many hundred Parishes is utterly uncapable of calling one of an hundred to repentance or keeping clean the Church And these are much of that which the Nonconformists refuse to subscribe their full Assent and Consent to and to Covenant never to endeavour to reform for which they suffer the loss of all And now judge which side hath the looser principles and cause And add their refusal to approve of that which they fear to be in many thousands Perjury and the rest which the Conformists never scruple and try who are the looser and have the greater Latitude of Conscience And never did we yet meet with many that do believe that we live in more fulness and idleness and fleshly liberty than most of the Conformists do which we speak not as accusing any but in our necessary defence But he pretendeth to prove it 1. By our Books 2. By particular doctrines of Election Justification Good-works c. But 1. Doth not the world know that the Nonconformists offer to subscribe the same Doctrine of the Church of England as the Conformists do in the 39. Articles and the Book of Homilies If one then have a wrong faith professed so hath the other And let them that must contradict the Doctrine which they subscribe bear the greatest shame and punishment and spare us not if it be we 2. Why is there no publick accusation against us these years in which by his Majesties License we have preached openly as for any unsoundness of our doctrine 3. Who knoweth not that such accusing inferences are usually brought by all factious quarrel some Divines against their adversaries Whence such Writings as Caivino-Turcesinus c. have sprung up 4. The Reporter here either chargeth on the Nonconformists the Doctrines of the Antinomians which none have more confuted and of a few half Antinomian erroneous men against whom he might have read the Writings of Mr. Burges Mr. VVoodbridg Mr. Gibbons Mr. Warren Mr. Jessope Mr. Gataker and many other Nonconformists or else he falsifieth their doctrine He citeth the Marrow of Modern Divinity written thirty years ago by a Barber tainted with Antinomianism and though he cite the names of five Independents that then approved or commended it too hastily he never tells you how commonly both the Presbyterian and Episcopal Nonconformists and very many Independents reject and condemn it and how many have confuted it more than Conformists ever did And blessed be God that our forecited Books are visible to report our Doctrine to the World 5. But he singleth out one of us from the report of a Conforming Contradictor as making heinous sins such as Peters Lots c. consistent with true Grace Reader this is the true case in which you will still see what justice we have from this kind of men Baxter about near thirty years ago endeavoured with all his power and diligence to reconcile the Episcopals Presbyterians and Independents at least to joyn in the same Communion He found the two latter full of distast against the Prelatical party of Ministers but especially of the common people even his own hearers still saying they are swearers drunkards meer worldly loose ungodly people that have no seriousness in Religion and it is not lawful for us to have communion with such To cure them of this distast he stretcht his charity as far as he thought just to extenuate their faults and told the people That though many of these Prelatists would swear and curse and had divers such faults in the exercise of Church-communion they that were not-Pastors but private men must bear what they could not reform and withall must compassionately consider that many foul faults committed more through passion and custom than love and interest might stand with grace and Pauls counsel Gal. 6. 1 2. was to be well considered This being the scope of his discourse and the end what doth Mr. Tho. Pierce but retort it on him unthankfully to his reproach as holding too loose a doctrine Which this man here also now repeateth But as he told Mr. Pierce that for all this if one were necessary he had rather dye in the case of Noah Lot and Peter in the time of their sin than in the case of Mr. Pierce when he wrote that book being perswaded that they had then more of the love of God and man than he the same also he still professeth to this Enquirer and all of his spirit that so unthankfully requite men for perswading the people to judge as charitably as they could for Concord sake of scandalous Prelatists But if we be odious for pleading for charitable censures to such what are they that live in the sin it self and they that receive them constantly to their Communion And here as a proof he tells us how Dr. Hammond's Catechism and Mr. Fowlers book of Holiness being the design of Christianity have been censured and Mr. Baxter for daring to justifie the argument of that book p. 109. To which we say 1. We highly value Dr. Hammonds Practical Catechism And it 's strange that if one of us have justified the argument of the other that our Doctrine should not rather be gathered from such as he than from we know not whom For we must say that we know of none accounted Orthodox among us who have at all disowned
continued But some charitable persons pitied the needy and kept them from famishing and utter distress And some few Ministers of more than ordinary Parts and Name and Acquaintance were better supplied than the rest But those that were as conscientious but of meaner parts and more obscure and small acquaintance and lived in poor Countreys were in great necessities some have long lived with many Children with almost nothing but brown-bread and water and some have been put to work for their living at very low and fordid employments as Musculus once did with a Weaver and in the Town-ditch some took Farms and for want of stock and skill run into greater poverty and debts some that had studied Physick turned Physicians and so escaped want some left the obscure Villages through meer necessity and betook them to London and other Cities and great Towns where the Numbers and Ability of the inhabitants might afford them some relief And some by this siege did yield up their Consciences and stretched them by forced interpretations of the words of the Declaration and Subscription to Conform and upon the review were cast into miserable distress of soul which was more troublesome than poverty and famine And some that thought it not their duty to be very scrupulous and because they had not taken the Covenant or medled in matters of Civil Contention or War did judge themselves more capable than others of Conforming did after upon review repent and give up the places they had taken and the practice which they had begun But all found that the Number of persons that were both able and willing to relieve so many needy families was small and that most were either unable or tenacious of their money so that the sufferings of many were very great 3. But the service that the silenced Ministers did being now in private an Act was made against Conventicles and such penalties annexed as I need not here recite And when the Act was expired it was again revived with many additions And because that these Ministers lived mostly now on Cities and Corporations or their former flocks that were acquainted with them an Act was made in the heat of all the grievous Plague at Oxford imposing on them an Oath which he that took not having kept any Conventicle and after came within five miles of any City or Corporation or place where he had lately preached was to be sent six Months to the Common Jayl and pay 40 l. This Law was harder to them than the former For 1. many men that had made some shift to settle their habitation in the cheapest or most convenient place they could get were forced to remove yea most of the Nonconformists in England were constrained to change their dwelling 2. Some lived with some friends or relations who would give them house-room or help and they were thus driven away from their friends and relations and such entertainments 3. Abundance of them had their houses for a certain time having Leases of them for years or life And they knew not how to get Tenants to take such houses which were incommodious to Farmers though fit for them And they that before wanted bread and cloathing were put to the streights of paying Rent for houses that must stand empty being driven from them 4. And they were hard put to it to find places in England to fix their dwellings in for Corporations in most Counties are so near that he that withdraweth five miles from one doth come within five miles of another or at least within five miles of some place where they had preached And some laborious men that thirsted after mens salvation had gone about preaching over a great part of the Countrey or the Land and so were almost sentenced to banishment by this Law And when they did find out a place that was five miles distant from all the prohibited places it would be strange if there they should find empty houses when Landlords use not to leave their houses untenanted and unpossessed And if a house were empty that it should be fit for a poor Minister that could not take the ground or farm would be strange And 5. when they found a capable place they had not money to take it Being poor before and poorer by their removal 6. And when they borrowed money to take it they wanted money to pay for the removing of their goods and the furnishing of their new habitations Those that have tryed such changes know how chargeable as well as troublesome they are But the thing that most eased them in all these straights was that Market-Towns were not put into the Act with Corporations and so many Market-Towns being no Corporations and there being houses to be had without farms or ground many Ministers got into those Towns which gave Dr. Fullwood occasion to reproach them as dwelling in populous places which had least need of them of which more anon And some Ministers finding their streights so great as that their imprisonment in the common Jayl was not more to be feared and finding especially that they were no more warranted by God to desert the Souls in all Cities and Corporations and all their ancient flocks and all places where they had preached and five miles round about all these than the rest of the Land yea that populous places had the greatest need and their former Hearers might claim the greatest interest in them and that Christ commanded his Apostles when they were prosecuted in one City to fly to another they resolved to follow their work where they were invited and to commit their liberties and lives to God But Gods dreadful judgments were the great cause of their freedom from these streights The terrible Plague consumed so many thousands a week in London that some Nonconformable Ministers durst not leave them in that distress but stayed and preacht to them and visited them and gathered money abroad for the poor which greatly won the peoples hearts and the face of death so prevailed with multitudes to awaken them from security that the success of the Ministers was very great and so great as fixed their resolution to hold on whatever it cost them Multitudes of young people penitently lamenting their former sins and begging of the Ministers not to forsake them in their distress And so many of the Conformable Ministers fled from the infection that the Bishop thought it best to connive at the preaching of the Nonconformists during that necessity And quickly after the lamentable fire consumed with the Houses Eighty nine Churches which made the necessity of preaching in other places more extensive and notoririous it being unmeet that so famous a Christian City should forsake all publick worshipping of God till the Houses and Churches should be all rebuilt So that by this necessity a greater number of Nonconformists were needed and entertained in London yea many Countrey-Ministers that came thither and by their example the rest throughout England were much encouraged to appear
to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost Acts 4. 2 c. 3. Experience assureth us that from the beginning of the Church to this present day Christ never gave too many able faithful Ministers to his Church Supernumeraries of such were never its disease nor the amputation of them its cure There is still need of the Lords-prayer Thy Kingdom come And Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers c. That man is but a Christian or a Pastor in jest and Image and not in earnest and reality who thinketh that the Pastors now allowed are so sufficient for the great employment of the Ministry that more are but supernumerary and the rest may be spared without any detriment to the souls of men Even in the Apostles age of Miraculous gifts Dr. Hammond thinketh the Pastors were so scarce that every Episcopal Church had no more than one Bishop with some Deacons without ever a Subject-Presbyter And that there was de facto none of the Order of subject-Presbyters in Scripture-times And so think all the Presbyterians too And it is a notorious truth that afterwards the Presbyters were so low in abilities that publick preaching in the Church was mostly used by the Bishops only And many Countries have lost the Gospel for want of Preachers And wherever ignorance and prophaneness have broken in upon the Church as the Greeks Abassines Armenians Moscovites Papists and too many Protestant Churches it hath commonly been by the decay of able godly faithful Pastors And if one City or Parish of ten thousand have had too many their near neighbours have so much wanted them that they could not be esteemed supernumerary And in England there are few Parishes which need not helps even where the ablest men are placed much more where Is it seasonable then or doth it answer the Will or Providence of to call in so many when the Church hath always had too few 4. The punishment which you inflict upon the Ministers doth fall a thousand times more heavily on the souls of the innocent people who without being accused or speaking for themselves in a Legal trial have so great a penalty inflicted on them as none but a believer that judgeth of things in reference to Eternity is able to estimate a right Alas to the Preacher the suffering is small in comparison of the peoples What if they live poorly what if they want house or clothes or bread How small a matter is that in comparison of the want of knowledg and faith of grace and salvation I confess their sufferings will cost them dear that are the true cause when Christ condemns those that do not relieve them But to themselves it is no such dreadful business Nay if they were but discharged in conscience from the Ministerial Office most of them might live in much more peace and plenty in the world There are many other Callings to betake themselves to in which they might live quietly and not be as the Hare before the Hunters pursued from place to place with cryes as if they that will imitate Paul in labours must bear also his reproach as pestilent fellows and movers of sedition among the people that do contrary to the decrees of Cesar and turn the world upside down Yea many are already turned Physicians and they have better words and kinder usage But every man that hath the eyes of a Christian in his head and seeth what the people of England VVales and Ireland are for members and for quality and seeth and heareth also what Ministers for number and quality do instruct them doth know as certainly that many hundred thousand souls do wofully need more Ministerial helps as he knoweth that five hundred Scholars do need more than one School-master or five hundred sick men need more than one Physician But O what a plague is it to the Church and World to have Ministers who when they read of the necessity of knowledg holiness and salvation do neither believe Christ nor themselves Argue not the people into such hard thoughts of you as if this were your case by perswading them that it is no matter whether their souls have any more Ministerial helps than now is given them Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost and that the cure of gross ignorance hard-heartedness unbelief and sensuality are of necessity to salvation or not If not deal openly and silence both your selves and us If yea then either you know how these maladies abound in the people and how much labour the cure doth usually cost or not If not then take not on you to be Pastors or English men or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to But if you do know this then I need to say no more to you but to desire you to fuppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors The worldling drunkard and fornicator is most miserable that would have no reproof or help Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cryes and that you hear them calling to you for help O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance unbelief insensibility worldliness and sensuality that are utter strangers to that life of faith and love and holiness without which none can please or see God and must quickly be converted and made new creatures or they are lost for ever Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints you heard them expostulating with you for their souls O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation Alas our ignorance and deadness and worldly-mindedness and fleshly affections are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used what shall we do then if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed Alas say not that the reading of the Scriptures and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn We confess that it should do so if our disease were so light as to need no more the thing it self is good and every word of God is precious but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep and hardned in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone It is the skilful choice of pertinent Truths convincingly and clearly uttered and closely applied with life and seriousness that our case requireth We confess that if a School-boy or a raw ignorant youth from the University did but read a chapter or say over a less pertinent cento of good words we should be moved
artibus inquit bonestis Nullus in urbe locus nulla emolumenta laborum Res hodie minor est quam fuit atque eadem cras Deteret exiguis aliquid proponimus illuc Ire satigatus ubi Daedalus exuit alas Dum nova Canities dum prima recta senectus Dum superest Lachesi quod torqueat pedibus me Porto meis nullo dextram subeunte bacillo Cedamus patriâ Vivant Arturius istic Et Catulus maneant qui nigrum in Candida vertunt I think this much with what is said in the Propositions may satisfie men that are willing to understand that your way will never attain the peace and concord of the Churches nor in likelihood your own ends 1. Either by changing mens judgments 2. Or bringing them to conformity against their judgments 3. Or by destroying them Nay that it is the most destructive course to all good ends that you can take And I may add that if you should banish them the worth which they carry with them as in Amesius his instance will shine where they come and their honour will be your shame for men are naturally and not without cause inclined to think them to be extreme bad men by whom men so good and learned and unblamable do so much suffer And methinks you of all men should not be guilty of so much self-denial as to contemn your Reputation in all other Countreys and not to care how odious your Names are to others and to posterity so be it you hear not their words your selves of which more anon But here I would insert an humble request to my silenced brethren that they will study and pray and labour so diligently and live so holily and innocently that whithersoever they be driven their light may shine to the glory of their Lord and the service of his Church and that they would not disgrace their silencers and afflicters by hard words but by eminent knowledg and holiness and they shall find that this splendor of their worth will speak more for them and against those that hate them than all our apologies will do I will here to this purpose cast in a brief History both for your afflicters sake and yours It is the occasion of the translation of Philosophy from Greece unto the Saracene Arabians as it is recorded by Caelius August Curio Histor. Saracen l. 2. and out of him by Hornius Hist. Philos. l. 4. p. 287 288. Mamunus their Califf or King was a great lover of learning in whose time there was among the Greek Christians one Leo a Bishop of Thessalonica who for differing from those in power in the controversie about Images which then troubled the Churches was driven from his flock and coming to Constantinople he lived in a poor cottage privately but being a most excellent Philosopher taught many in his private School so that many excellent Philosophers went out of it in a little time Among whom one young man was taken prisoner by the Saracens in the Wars who being excellent in Geometry fell into the hands of a great man by whom his fame was brought to the King who trying him and finding him to excel all his Philosophers must know who was his Master He told him one Leo a man that was frowned into obscurity and poverty but a most excellent Philosopher The King Mamumus was so inflamed with a desire of Leo that he presently wrote to him and offered him all the Honour and Riches that he could desire so he would but come to him Leo shewed the Letters to the Emperor at Constantinople whereupon the Emperor not willing that such an honour should pass to his Enemy gave him License to teach in publick King Mamumus despairing of Leo sendeth important Letters to the Emperor to beg Leo's presence but a little while professing that he would have come with the request himself but that the Government of a fierce sort of people detained him Hereupon the Emperor coming to know his worth and how his own Honour was interessed in the business restored Leo to his Bishoprick and had him in great honour and gave him great Riches And Mamumus not obtaining his desires wrote many of his difficulties as Questions to Leo and so procured some of his instructions in Writing by way of answer to his great satisfaction And this is noted as the introduction of Learning into that Countrey which since Mahometanism hath famished O that we were all such that our worth might be our apology and O that those who think it their interest to afflict such and suppress them and render them odious to the world did better understand their own interest and know on whom the dishonour will redound at last which I wish not to befall them but wish them to prevent 7. If you could procure Uniformity by the means of violence it must be both got and kept up at dearer rates than the thing is worth 1. Uniformity must be purchased at the loss of Unity If Violence drive mens bodies nearer together it will make the heart-separation much wider Christ hath said that by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye love one another but not By this if ye all swear obedience to the Bishops or subscribe that their Writings are infallible or if ye use the same Liturgy Cross or Ceremonies Our salvation lyeth more on our unity in Faith and Love than in our uniformity in things unnecessary And that is the most prosperous state of the Church in which mens salvation is most promoted He that loveth not his brother whom he seeth daily loveth not God whom he never saw And he that hateth his brother is a manslayer and no manslayer hath eternal life abiding in him and violence and cruelty are the great and known destroyers of Love He that saith as some Let them hate so they fear doth shew that he hateth God and man and will prove the greatest hater of himself at last 2. You will wrong the King and Kingdom by depopulation and weaken it so that it may become not only the scorn of our common enemies but their prey For ought I can discern you that have despised my predictions of that kind have encreased the number already manifold of those that dislike you and your way And if your self-conceitedness and unskilfulness shall first make most of the Kings subjects distast you and then your cruelty shall suggest that they must be punished till they love you or be destroyed for disliking you this will be but like the work of unhappy Surgeons that must cut off the limb because they have themselves made the wound uncurable Believe it the hanging or banishing of a few hundreds or thousands will not do your business but make it worse I told you so long ago as to silencing and you would not believe it nay it will make it incomparably worse And if you banish or kill all that are against you Land will be very cheap and Houses cheaper and
others will call that Solitude which you call concord uniformity and peace And our unity will be like theirs in Moldavia and VValachia And who shall compensate the Kings damage 3. And Foreign Churches and posterity will be brought by it to so great a hatred of Prelacy that they will never be reconciled to it more but prefer a poor and humble Ministry And indeed it is already so known by its fruits that I am much in doubt the experience of it will alienate the people from that Primitive lawful Episcopacy which I would have them to desire They say already Give us the old honest humble serious Puritans that lived not upon Gold and Worldly greatness and cherished not mens sins that they might cherish them Fruatur vocibus obscaenis omnique libidinis arte Qui Lacedomonium Pytismate lubricrat orbem Namque ibi fortunae veniam damus alea turpis Turpe adulterium mediocribus haec eadem illi Omnia cum faciant Hilares nitidique vocantur Juv. I suppose you know how much it alienateth men from Popery that their Religion must be fed and live by blood yea by precious blood Some of you have written your wishes that the course had been followed which was begun in the days of Whitgift and Bancroft when divers Nonconformists were hanged And some have written that it was not for Religion but for Treason As for Hacket and Coppinger it 's known they were crackt-brain'd men pretending to be sent to judge the World whom the Nonconformists condemned which Bancroft himself in part confesseth And whereas Dr. Sutliffe conjectured that Cartwright was privy to all Mr. Simeon Ash gave me a Manuscript supposed to be Mr. Cartwrights own writing fully confuting that accusation And as for the rest it 's true that the Bishops then laboured by exposition of a Law to make Treason by consequence of that which was spoken against themselves But it will be long ere the confutation of that is well answered which is written by some one learned in the Law called A Petition to her Majesty c. And what the same Author saith Pag. 25. of that Pious man Mr. Udal will by others and perhaps one day by your consciences be thought on with respect to the 2000 silenced Ministers of late and the many that have dyed in and by imprisonment and much more of so many as if you prosecute what you have begun you must destroy His words are That the Bishops should be so unnatural as to seek the life of a right godly and faithful Preacher of the Gospel I mean Mr. Udal to whom Life was offered if he would take his Oath that he did not make a book whereof he was supposed to be Author A rare example that a man should be known standing at a bar shackled in bolts but quaere quo jure and coupled with a murderer whose conscience was thought so faithful and sound by the Judg himself that he would not swear falsly to gain his life He had not learnt some mens rules for expounding Oaths Nor loved his life so well as some men do a Benefice But were no worse men suffered 8. You may have all that is truly desirable and to be expected in this world as necessary to Unity and Concord to Order and Decency and to your own honour accomplished ten thousand times easilier surer and better by obvious honest lawful means God never putteth men upon such bloody and desperate courses as some advise It is no necessity of Gods making that is pleaded for such means but of their own sinful making or false imagining God never wanteth lyes or cruelty to his service or glory They are usually wicked selfish ends whatever is pretended for which men chuse and use such means Or if the ends were never so good they will not justifie such means nay good ends will condemn them as contrary incongruous and destructive But when there are easie suitable and honest means enow at hand the choice of such as are forementioned beseemeth none but those whose design is to destroy If you say What be those means They are easily told you but your little self-interests will not give you leave to think them tolerable I shall tell you more particularly anon I will now speak but of the generals Quest. 1. What if you would learn of the Holy Ghost to impose no other than Necessary things Act. 15. What if you had the patience to endure the Apostolick Primitive way of Discipline and Worship and suffered men to go to Heaven in the same way as the Apostles and Christians of those times did What if you kept all that Wisdom to your selves in which you excel the Apostles and put no more upon the Churches than they did Would the inconveniences of this weigh down the mischiefs which are now upon the Churches throughout the world by the contrary course Let not your passion make you run away with a conceit of an intollerable conclusion and say I would reduce you to the Primitive poverty or persecution No I talk not of matters extrinsick to Discipline and Worship for faith we will yet suppose we are agreed in I suppose you think not that Poverty or Riches are parts of the instituted worship of God I am as far from expecting that you should consent to be as poor and persecuted as the Apostles as that you should be as good as the Apostles Those that you have to do with believe that the Scripture hath more exactly determined how God will be worshipped than hâ—w much a year shall be the Revenues of a Bishop We meddle not with your Lands or Lordships whatever our own opinion be of such matters Though we are ambitious of your higher and wealthier condition yet we neither envy it nor think it our duty to diminish your wealth But the question is If you let men worship God without any more yokes or burdens than Christ and his Apostles laid upon the Churches what harm would it do Did they then want any needful uniformity Did they not pray decently without a Surplice Did they not baptize decently without the Cross If you say that they had their rites of decency then though not the same that we have now I answer Impose no other than they imposed Leave those free which they left free Though you think your own to be better than theirs so do not all Christians If it be mens infirmity to think that the Scripture-rites are better than yours yet what harm will it do you to bear with that infirmity What if you required no more Oaths of obedience to the Bishops than the Apostles required to themselves or to any Pastors of the Church What if you required no Subscription to any thing as certain truth but only to the infallible Oracles of the Spirit Nay the Apostles required not any to subscribe to all the books of Sacred Scripture but only to receive them in general as the Doctrine of Christ and the Holy Ghost and they
terms of the Churches union and communion and we shall not be unthankful to you if you will make that and only that to be so now I do not say that you should make all that necessary which was then used on terms of liberty and indifferency they had then their necessaries for uâ—ion and their unnecessaries which were used at liberty as every Church saw good Impose no more than they imposed no more of Liturgy no more of Ceremony no more Subscriptions Promises or Oaths and it will heal us all Impose Liturgy no further than they then did which at the most was but every Bishop on a particular Church that was united for personal not representative communion and was no bigger than one of our Parishes for number of souls If these terms will not serve you neither you shall not with us have the reputation of the best friends of Antiquity Unity Love or Peace Q. 3. What harm would it do if the Churches were healed by such means as all the most grave experienced Conciliators have pitched upon as the only way at least in all the Protestant Churches We are contented with Lerinensis terms Quâ—d ab omnibus ubique semper receptunest All the famous reconcilers of the last age and this Acontius Melancthon Pelargus Duraeus Calixtus Lud. Crocius Joh. Bergius Conradus Bergius Junius Paraeus Hottonus Amyâ—aldus Usher Morton Hall Davenant Chillingworth Hales Bucer Burroughs Stillingfleet and every man that ever wrote a rational Irenicon conspire in this one necessary means the forbearing all imposition of doubtful unnecessary things as necessary to actual unity and communion and the centering and cementing all on the terms of the few certain greâ—t and necessary things which we are commonly agreed in or as Rupertus Meldenius his oft-cited words are In necessariis unitas in non-necessariis libertas in utrisque charitas Do you think verily that all these were mistaken and that you are wiser than they who have studied the art of peace as much as you have done the arts of victory and getting down those whom you first make and then call your adversaries I know you will still say These are good terms for our union with neighbour churches but not for our church within it self To which I have answered you already and now add 1. Every company of Christians associated for personal communion in Gods publick Worship as distinct from distant communion in Spirit only and from communion by Delegates or Representatives is a true particular church taking Pastors and people to be the parts thus associated Every such Church had a Bishop in Scripture-times as Dr. Hammond in his Annot. will tell you over and over and in Ignatius his time too For he saith That to every Church there was one Altar and one Bishop with his fellow Presbyters and Deacons And this one Altar which shewed only one place of meeting for ordinary publick Communion and one Bishop were the notes of Unity to every one Church as Mr. Mede also fully openeth it And Dr. Hammond will further bear witness what every Bishop with his Church is in 1 Tim. 3. And such all the particular Churches of the whole world considered together under the Supreme Head Christ Jesus dispensing them all by himself and administring them severally not by one Oeconomus but by the several Bishops as inferior Heads of Unity to the several bodies so constituted by the several Apostles in their plantations each of them having an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a several distinct commission from Christ immediately and subordinate to none but the supreme Donor or Plenipotentiary And before so was every such regular Assembly of Christians under a Bishop an Oeconomus set over by Christ the house of God Mark all this then and let your Impositions be measured by this Rule so that either you will have the many Churches in one Kingdom to be united on terms of Regiment or only on terms of Concord On the terms of the extrinsick accidental Regiment we grant that all the Kings Subjects are united and that he hath power circa sacra But so you might have said of all the Roman Empire And so if the Christian part of the World had all one Monarchy your own Concession must be overthrown that neighbour Churches must unite on necessary terms leaving indifferent ones to liberty or else you will see that the case of the Catholick Church under such an Empire would be the same with a National Church under one King And our Churches are as much to be accounted Neighbour-Churches as those in such an Empire would be But if you speak of one Essential Constitutive Ecclesiastical Head and Governour we know none such any more than one Pope Therefore it must be an Union of Concord by which you call many Churches in a Nation one or an extrinsick accidental Union And consequently it is an improper speech because it is not locutio formalis sed accidentalis for the form denominateth We being therefore One Church but Accidentally by one King and by Concord as several agreeing Churches may be called it followeth that we must hold our Concord accordingly with those at home as well as with those abroad upon terms of equal charity and liberty except what the King will take away For as for Councils even General ones much more Provincial it is not Bishop Ushers opinion only but ordinary with Protestants that they are to the particular Bishops not directly Regimental but means of Agreement Mark your Bishop Bilsons words of Christ. Subject pag. 229. To Councils such as the Church of Christ was wont by her Religious Princes to call we owe communion and brotherly concord so long as they make no breach in faith nor in Christian charity Subjection and servitude we owe them none The blessed Angels profess themselves to be fellow-servants of the Saints on earth Rev. 22. What are you then that with your tribunals and jurisdictions would be Lords and Rulers over Christs inheritance 2. The same Reasons which require you to agree only on necessary terms with foreign Churches will oblige you to the like course at home The judgments of Natives are of the same temper and their differences will be as certain and constant and your charity to them should be no less than to strangers Only this we all confess 1. That all the Churches must agree in their subjection to the same King 2. And every particular Church must agree with their particular Pastors in the exercises of Communion 3. And that Concord in one Translation one Meeter and such like is desirable not so much because we are under one King as because we are neighbours and of one language and would be desirable if we were of several Kingdoms in the same propinquity But it is not to be procured at a price which is above its worth 3. When you profess Concord with the foreign Churches upon Catholick terms and deny the same to the Churches that are under one King you
people to their cruelties Of all beasts they love not sheep that have bloody teeth and fangs nor of all birds a Dove that liveth like the Hawks on flesh And when the Clergy are once made hateful to them I have told you that the scandal tendeth to make them think hardly of their doctrine and at least to run into some contrary extream if not to dislike Religion it self I have seldom observed any extream in Hereticks or Schismaticks which was not notably caused by the Clergies contrary extream Antinomianism rose among us from our obscure Preaching of Evangelical Grace and insisting too much on tears and terrors Arminianism rose from mens prophane abuse of the Doctrine of Election saying If I am elected I shall be saved whatever I do and when God will give me grace I shall have it and till then it is not in him that willeth or runneth The Quakers arose from the pride and vanity of Religious people from which they fled into the fordid extream And Separatists have almost always risen from the ignorance ungodliness the shameful disabilities idle negligence pride covetousness or cruelty of the Clergy This is true as the experience of all ages telleth us The insufficient and naughty Clergy make Separatists At this day the superstitious think they can scarce go too far from men that they account so ungodly malignant and cruel And the ungodly and infidel and cruel sort of men do think they can scarce go too far from the superstitious If you would read and learn of such reprovers as Gildas and Salvian and Nazianzen and Hilary and Alvarus Pelagius Planct Eccles. and Acontius and such like you need not have so many thousands flying from your Churches as from an house on fire or infected with the Plague nor reporting your Crimes as the Parliament-Centuries or the Gloucester-Cobler or your groaning Icabod have done 16. You should rather help to cure the prejudice that the world hath against the Clergy as envious selfish and cruel than encrease it The World already thinketh that the Clergy are so covetous proud and envious that they can endure no man that standeth in their light but like the great dog that hath got the carrion snarl at every little dog that looketh at them suspecting they come to take some from him It is their common opinion that the Clergy are the incendiaries and troublers of the world And that the worst Princes left to themselves are not half so cruel against the faithful Preachers and Practisers of Christianity as the proud and covetous Clergy are It is therefore your duty not to confirm the world in this opinion by seeming as envious and cruel as others have been but to cure it by love and tenderness and self-denial 17. Have you ever considered and regarded whether the Apostles ever took your course You say your selves that they had power to give men over to the Devil for Corporal punishment And yet when did they ever do so by any but desperate Infidels as Elymas or desperate Hereticks that denied fundamentals as Alexander Hymenaeus and Philetus Or whom did they so much as threaten Church-sharpness to else unless it were such a proud domineering Bishop as Diotrephes who would neither receive some brethren nor permit others to do it but cast them out of the Church prating with malicious words against the Apostle Paul blamed Mark but did not silence him He fell out with Barnabas to a parting but did not hinder him from preaching the Gospel He blameth Demas for forsaking him and loving the world and many more for forsaking him when he appeared before Nero and elsewhere They all mind their own things and not the things that are Jesus Christs And yet he silenced none of them that preached the same Gospel which he did He met with some Preachers so bad that they Preached Christ of envy and strife of contention not sincerely supposing to add affliction to his bonds What then Notwithstanding every way whether in contention or in truth Christ was preached and he therein rejoyced and resolved to rejoyce and not to silence them Phil. 1. 15 16 17 18. Some indeed that preached the Law and as it were another Gospel he saith must have their mouths stopped but none that preached the same Gospel nor they by the Sword but by the convincing Word He that wrote as he did Rom. 14. 15. was far from silencing Preachers for not using Ceremonies or things called indifferent or for not taking an Oath of obedience to himself And will you prove wiser and better than the Apostles at the last 18. Methinks as I said before even selfishness should make you have some regard to your surviving names Think not that your party shall be the Masters of fame Think but on all history whether those that suffered in their times as the Martyrs and such Bishops as Athanasius Nazianzen Chrysostom c. have not left a sweeter name to the Church than those by whom they suffered Whether the name of the Nonconformists John Rogers and his followers and Bradford Sanders Glover Hooper Latimer Ridley Cranmer c. be not sweeter now than Gardiners and Bonners And think on the nature of your cause and ours When you have done your worst against Christs faithful Ministers and sought to justifie it by calling them Schismaticks posterity will enquire into the Merits of the Cause and the Evidence of their words and yours and their Writings at least will some of them survive when you have done your worst And do you think that they who read such Works as Amesius Hildershams Hierons Baynes Balls c. of old and as Gatakers Vines Anthony Burgesses Allens c. of late will believe that they were Schismaticks or unworthy to preach repentance and faith in Christ I have written so much against Schism my self as that I defie malignity it self to make posterity believe me a Schismatick When they peruse the Declarations Subscriptions Oaths and actions which we refuse and weigh our reasons they will judge otherwise than interest and partiality and malice will do at the present The next Sulpitius will describe us liker Martin than you and the Fanaticks like the Priscillianists and too many of your selves like Ithacius and Idacius and their Synods of Bishops which you may easily foresee when your Hooker himself in his Preface doth it by some Conformists already 19. You take so notorious a way to tempt the people to their present suspicions of your over-much kindness to Popery as that charity to them obligeth you to help to cure them of that uncharitable suspicion of you And I confess if I would have liberty for any one sect my self I would counsel and perswade men to take away the liberty of Religion from as great and worthy and considerable a part of the Ministers and People as I could that the cry for changes and liberty might be so great that others may be let in with them as if it were to gratifie them But
such Wars and wasting Plagues yet nothing moveth you to see so great and grievous sins as the silencing so many hundred Ministers and the starving so many hundred thousand souls that never deserved evil at your hands That the instances of the obduration of Pharoah and the Pharisees with the consequents make you not afraid lest the wrath should come upon you to the uttermost while you please not God and are contrary to all men forbidding Christs labourers to gather in his harvest and to preach to the ignorant and impenitent that they might be saved 1 Thess. 2. 15. That you are no more sensible of the foretold tenor of Christs final doom on them that did not feed cloath and visit the least of his servants but think that you please him by reproaching those whom he calleth his Brethren and think still that you do God service when you do so much against his servants and against the peoples souls Wonderful when Christ had so plainly rebuked his Disciples for striuing who should be the greatest and forbidden them to Lord it over his Heritage and told them the necessity that they become as little children and the servants of all that yet the pomp and vanities of this world and an uncharitable mind can make the very name of Obedience to your selves seem a sufficient pretence for the lamentable dissipations and confusions of the Churches of true believers That ever you can preach for Loving your neighbours as your selves and not feel the convictions and sentence of your Consciences for what you have already done For my own part I have little sense of any of your injuries to my self Nor am I unthankful for that respect of my Governours which would have advanced me to your degree of honour But I must profess if it were the last word that I should speak in the world that I had rather be the basest scavinger yea and suffer many deaths than be found at the Judgment-seat of Christ in the place and under the guilt of those of you who have done what is done against the Gospel and Church of Christ among us in this Land I am not so foolish as not to know that all this talk is grievous to you and not the way to my ease or honour with you nor to procure favour in your eyes But if in such a day and in such a case we should all be silent and none so much as call you to repentance nor plead the Cause of an injured Saviour and deserted souls we should partake of the crimes which we are lamenting and not only Gildas and Salvianus and such like but all the Prophets and Apostles would condemn us And if all that is here said have no other effect than to increase your indignation and our sufferings Judg O posterity Judg all disinteressed impartial men between these Reverend Lords and us whether the Petitions here presented to them be selfish or unreasonable or such as should be rejected at so dear a rate as our lamentable divisions and Church-distractions come to yea Christ whose cause and interest we plead will certainly and shortly judge before whom their worldly grandeur and dignities will be insignificant and wrathful reproaches will not prove the innocent criminal nor justifie them that condemn the just or that will not understand the will and interest of their Lord. Even so Come Lord Jesus Come quickly Amen If you ask why I write all this to you and not to His Majesty and the Parliament I answer It is not them nor any of their Laws or Actions which in all this book I intend to speak against The most pious Princes and Rulers have been most addicted to reverence the Counsels of the Bishops in the matters of Religion All men are supposed to know more than other sorts of men in their own professions Uncontrolled Fame imputeth all our sufferings to your designs and wills And I have reason to remember that when his Majesty did graciously authorize you by his Letters Patents to make such Alterations in the Liturgy as were necessary to the satisfaction of tender Consciences you would make none at all but what is now done which maketh our burden much greater than before And more than once his Majesty by his publick Declarations hath warranted us to be confident that his Desires are and have been for the quiet peace and welfare of his Subjects upon moderate terms And I know not any man alive that doubteth but if you would cordially desire it and endeavour it the King and his Parliament would soon be found the healers of our wounds and the restorers of Unity and Concord by casting out that which hath cast out Love and turned the people as into Guelphes and Gibelines and we might soon see the blessed fruits of Concord Amen A Postscript to the Apologie for our Preaching SInce the writing of what goeth before I have heard so much from the most learned Accusers of their accusations of us as enableth me the better to know what objections to answer And the ablest that I have met with argueth at this rate Mr. H. Dodwell 1. He confesseth that we cannot subscribe declare and swear as is required without stretching the words to an improper sense and such as I think will allow by parity of reason almost any lying equivocation or perjury in the world Some others of them say If Rulers will go about by fraudulent impositions to turn us out of our Ministry we will countermine them and take their words in any tolerable sense to which we can subdue them But we cannot practice that art 2. He confesseth that we ought not to perform active obedience herein against our consciences 3. But he saith it is Schism in us to preach as we do because the passive obedience of silence is our duty His reasons are 1. Because a Presbyters calling is dependent on the bishop and not otherwise to be exercised 2. Because by preaching we become Church Rulers and take the Bishops Office on us as if a man should depose the King and take his place because he governeth not aright as he conceiveth 3. Because without such passive obedience no peace can be kept by any Government 4. Because the Bishops and not we are Judges who should preach or not 5. And Presbyterians are for silencing some 6. And the hurt that followeth our silence must be charged on the Bishops and not on us So that the great crime of the Nonconformists is preaching Christs Gospel when the Bishops forbid them Here he granteth all the following matter of fact and right 1. That the Preachers in question e. g. my self c. are consecrated to God in the Sacred Ministerial Office 2. That it is Sacriledg and soul-murder to alienate our selves 3. That in God's ordinary way men cannot be saved without knowledg faith and obedience 4. Nor be brought to these but by Teaching 5. That few of the Churches that were burnt in London are rebuilt 6. That many Parishes
are so large and the Churches so small and the Preachers voice so low that one of ten or twenty of the Parishioners cannot hear if they were never so willing 7. That many Ministers are insufficient and the Parson of the Parish where I live hath been suspended ab officio these two or three years or at least hath not officiated 8. That therefore the silence of all the Nonconformists is like to prove the damnation of many thousand souls 9. That if the King only forbid us preaching and not the Bishop we are not bound to such silence as he requireth 10. That our Bishops are not chosen by the Presbyters of the Diocess or the people but by the King whatever formality seem to contradict this 11. That the extent of their Diocesses is not jure divino 12. That none of them is jure divino the Bishop of me or any other such 13. That National Churches are but of humane institution 14. That what man instituteth man may abrogate or undo 15. That if King or Bishop forbid me to relieve the poor in true necessity or to feed any family or teach them I must not obey 16. That the prime part of Religion is in positives and but the second in negatives and therefore sins of omission are the first sins 17. That no sin must be matter of obedience to Bishops or any man 18. That the Apostles had their power to edification and not to destruction 19. That in case of controversies of Faith the Church may not judg in partem utram libet but only for the truth 20. That all Bishops power is limited and not absolute 21. That when they command without power only passive obedience is due 22. That Bishops are not made Judges whether there shall be preaching and worshipping God or not but only to order it aright and judg by whom it shall be done 23. That Bishops cannot dispense with the Law of God nor humane power prevail against Divine 24. That order is for the end and for the thing ordered and not against it 25. That natural morals are to be preferred caeteris paribus before positives much more before humane orders and God will have mercy and not sacrifice 26. That the silencing of the faithful Preachers of the Gospel greatly pleaseth the Devil and that he is so far of the Silencers mind 27. He accuseth not the silenced Ministers with any false doctrine 28. He chargeth them not with Immoralities or a bad life saving his supposed sin of Schism for preaching Christs Gospel when forbidden 29. He confesseth that Paul must preach though forbidden and that he chargeth Timothy before God and Angels to preach in season and out of season 30. He confesseth that the Pastors for 300. years preached when lawful Magistrates were against it and for bad them 31. I acquaint him that I my self have the Bishops ordination the Bishop of the Diocess License not repealed and the Kings License and yet unless I will say that I trust to the Bishops License as that without which all were Schism it is Schism still so that it seemeth to be made necessary not only to have it but to believe in it or trust it On the other side we grant as followeth 1. That we must not over-value our own grace or gifts nor undervalue other men nor pretend that our labours are more necessary than they are 2. We must not disobey our lawful Rulers by omission or commission in any thing which it belongeth to their office or power to command or forbid us 3. That if they command or forbid without power that which belongeth not to their office as that which belongeth to a mans private Trade or self-government or family-government c. if it be not in it self evil we should materially obey them finis gratia to preserve order and reverence to their office and that we embolden not men to disobey in other things though formally that particular injunction be powerless of itself 4. That if they command us that which God forbiddeth or forbid that which God commandeth we must patiently suffer what unjust punishment they inflict on us for not obeying them and not resist them in their executions by force Though we cannot say that this hath no exceptions as if a Bishop would ravish a woman she may resist him to save her chastity yet at least no resistance is lawful which deposeth the Governour or disableth him to govern 5. We think it not lawful to invade or take the publick Temples or Tythes or other maintenance of the publick Ministers against the Kings will or without authority 6. We believe that lawful Rulers have power to forbid such ministers to preach in this or that place or any where in their dominions whose preaching is such as tendeth to do more harm than good 7. Had we any reasonable conviction that our Ministry is unnecessary we would obey our Rulers though they silenced us causlesly and would seek some other place or way of serving God 8. In those times places and circumstances which perswade us that more hurt than good will come by it if we preach we will then and there forbear it though it be not as an act of formal obedience nor a desertion of our Office or of the exercise of it at other times 9. We judg it our duty to further the good success of the Conformable Ministers to the utmost of our power 10. And we take Schism to be a great sin and that which we are bound to do the best we can not only to avoid our selves but to cure or hinder in others But we cannot in our present case give over the preaching of Christs Gospel for the Reasons before given 1. We judg it a violation of the grand Law of Charity to agree with the Bishops that the people shall be damned by thousands and content our selves that not we but they shall answer for it 2. We judge it perfidiousness to violate our Ministerial Covenant with God in which we gave up our selves to his service 3. We judge it also heinous sacriledge it being a holy work to which we are devoted 4. It is an Idolatrous setting up mans will and power above and against Gods 5. It is a preferring of pretended Order before the thing ordered and that which is less than sacrifice even sin before Mercy yea the greatest mercy 6. It is a pleasing of the Devil who is the great enemy of Preaching the Gospel and of sinners repentance and salvation and whose instruments the hinderers of the Gospel are we leave to consideration 7. It is a contradicting of the prayer taught us by Christ Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers For we are sure he hath not sent forth supernumeraries 8. It is a wilful running on Christs damning sentence after his premonition Matth. 25. by omitting greater matters than feeding cloathing visiting c. 9. It will be a burying our talent with the unprofitable servant and denying God
none The Churches in London are burnt down the Parishes are many so large that one of ten or twenty cannot hear in publick If it be in the Bishops power to judg that nine parts of London shall have no preaching why may he not so judg of the other tenth part And if he may judg that there shall be no preaching then why not that there shall be no praying and worshipping God And if so in London why not in other places and so whether there shall be any Gospel Religion or Salvation In cases of Faith a Council hath power only to judg truly that there is a Christ a Resurrection a life to come and not to judg that there is no Christ no Resurrection c. And holy practice is as necessary to our salvation as right believing And therefore the Bishops may judg that we shall preach and pray and worship God but not that we shall not Obj But they are to judg who shall preach The Gospel is not cast out if two thousand of you be silenced If there were not Preachers there may be Readers and the Liturgy Ans. Let them set up such competent Teachers in a sufficient number of Churches as will tell a sober conscience that all our labours are become unnecessary and then we shall think further of the case But is it so in London now Or can any be ignorant that it is not so And God useth to work according to the aptitude of means and too many Churches in the Countreys have such Teachers as say over a few cold words as boys do their Lessons and when experience telleth us how few are the better for them we are afraid of being so hypocritally modest as to let souls perish for fear of seeming to undervalue your raw Lads or scandalous ignorant Priests and to overvalue our selves 2. Are the bishops absolute Judges or not If absolute we must obey them if they command murder or idolatry If not what are the limits of their power Sure it is Gods universal Law They have no power against his commanding or forbidding word none against him or against the common good and mens salvation If Popish and other Casuists use so to limit Kings as to say that they are Ministers of God for good and that they have no power against the common good and that all Laws against it are null may we not much more say so of all our Diocesans You grant that they cannot command us to sin or forbid us duty But then either we have a judgment of discerning to know what is duty and sin or not If not then still if they forbid us duty and say it is no duty or command sin and say it is no sin we must obey But if yea then if we prove in an error it will be our sin And if the Bishops prove in the error it will be theirs And to obey conscience before a bishop is in our sense nothing but to obey God before a bishop in doing what we judg to be his will V. The next reason is none to us For if Presbyterians or any other silence Christs Ministers causlesly and forbid that preaching of the Gospel which is necessary to mens salvation we abhor it in one as well as in another VI. And as to the last 1. We believe not that if Christ should ask us Why we preach not it would excuse us to say The bishop forbad us no more than if he ask us Why did you not feed clothe visit me in my servants The Reasons forementioned tell you why we think we cannot be excused 2. But if we could Nature and Grace incline us to do all the good we can do in the world And if thousands were like to be drowned if we did not help the Ship-master when he forbids us Nature teacheth us to prefer their lives before his will And when our first question is Whether according to Gods ordinary operation by means so many thousands shall be saved from ignorance sin and hell or be damned For you to determine that they shall be damned if the Bishop will and then come in with a second question Who shall answer for it is so horrid to us as frightneth us from obeying the Silencers as if we saw Satan himself perswading us to obey them Will you give us leave openly to tell the people where our controversie lyeth That it is the Bishops will that they shall rather be all damned in their ignorance and sin than taught converted and saved by Nonconformists But they say that it 's they and not we shall answer for it As if they said Their blood be on us But we are loth to yeild that you must be untaught and damned though we were never so sure to be excused Whose interest or work it is Christs or Satans to forbid faithful Ministers to preach the Gospel and do their office the light of Grace when you have all done will tell the gracious as the light of Nature telleth men whose interest and work it is to deny to as many their necessary food Should you deny the necessity of either word or food still Grace or Nature would from age to age resist you Of the two methinks those that perswade us to stretch to conform against our consciences that we may preach do look more favourably towards the common good than those that perswade us not at all to conform but meerly to give over preaching the Gospel The very motion hath an ugly aspect it affrights us as perceiving the voice of an affrighting Solicitor in it It amazeth us to think that some Scholars of great parts and humility and obliging carriage dare make such a motion to so many vowed and consecrated to the Ministry while in so many Parishes so many thousand souls are wallowing in ignorance impiety and sensuality and have not a Church to hear in nor a Minister to instruct them but must stay at home or worse for want of room were they never so willing Shall the Churchwarden on his oath present twenty or forty or fifty thousand in a Parish for not coming into a Church where two thousand can scarce hear the Preacher Or shall all those thousands be idle play or drink without trouble and a few hundreds of them be hunted and ruined that rather join in Gods Worship with a silenced Minister O how easie would it be to our flesh and how dreadful to our consciences to forbear and leave men to themselves Have men nothing to accuse us of as our intollerable crimes but the greatest and costliest duties that ever we performed in the world The Lord keep us all from seducing Faction and forgive us the sin which we see and which we see not and cause us to pray harder for his glorious appearing and most righteous final Judgment Come Lord Jesus come quickly Amen INTEREST real or mistaken RULETH THE WORLD Gods Interest is the highest with all the sanctified I. GOD's Interest is the pleasing of his will