in a way that should make their hearts to ake I think saith Mr. Baxter their hearts have aked by this time and as they judged him to the Gallows for his Prediction so hath Christ executed them by Thousands for their Rebellion against him Now it is evident what Discipline Vdal meant by his Confederacy with Coppinger Penry c. of which Cambden p. 420. of his Eliz. Angl. says Some of those Men who were great Admirers of the Geneva Discipline thought there was no better way for establishing it in England than by railing against the English Hierarchy and stirring up the People to a dislike of Bishops They therefore set forth scandalous Books against the Government of the Church and Prelates as Martin Mar-Prelate Minerals Diotrephes A Demonstration of Discipline c. In which Libels they set forth virulent Calumnies and opprobrious Taunts and Reproaches in such manner as the Authours seemed rather Scullions out of the Kitchin than pious and godly Men yet the Authours were Penry and Vdal Ministers of the Word Bishop Bancroft quoteth a Pamphlet of Mr. Vdal's called A Dialogue where he says That the Bishops Callings are meer Antichristian p. 59. of Dangerous Positions and p. 45. he says They were very devilish and infamous Dialogues and that there was a Conspiracy between Coppinger Wigginton c. by some extraordinary means such as Vdal had prophesied should make their hearts to ake for releasing of some that stood in danger of their lives meaning as I suppose says the Bishop Vdal Newman c. The dangers threatned by such extraordinary means to disturb the Goverment hastned the Trial of Vdal who with three others took occasion from the intended Invasion in 88 to alarm the Nation at home as also they did on the Powder Plot and to this day do by scattering seditious Pamphlets Vdal was charged with a Book called A Demonstration of Discipline which Christ hath prescribed in his Word for the government of his Church in all times and places to the Worlds end The Preface was directed To the supposed Governours of the Church of England to whom he says Who can deny you without blushing to be the cause of all ungodliness seeing your Government is that which giveth leave to a Man to be any thing save a sound Christian for certainly it's more free in these days to be a Papist Anabaptist of the Family of Love yea as any most wicked rather than what we should be And I could live these Twenty years as well as any such in England yea in a Bishop's House it may be and never be molested for it So true is that you are charged with in a Dialogue lately come forth and by you burnt that you care for nothing but the Maintenance of your Dignities be it to the damnation of your own Souls and infinite millions more The whole Book being like this Preface he was indicted at the Assizes held at Croyden and found guilty He pleaded That he was indicted on the Statute of 23 of Eliz. c. 2. for publishing seditious words against the Queen but that the Book charged on him contained no seditious words against the Queen but the Bishops only But it was answered by the Judges N.B. That they who spake against her Majesty's Government in Cases Ecclesiastical her Laws Proceedings or Ecclesiastical Officers which ruled under her did defame the Queen And on clear proof that he was the Authour of that Libel he was found guilty and received Sentence of Death but by intercession of Archbishop Whitgift was Reprieved Mr. Baxter's actings have been so like Mr. Vdal's that it is no wonder to find him labouring to justifie him in a Cause wherein himself is so nearly concerned In 1659. came forth Mr. Baxter's Key for Catholicks dedicated To his Highness Richard Lord Protector p. 323. where he asserts That if the Body of a Commonwealth or those that have part in the Legislative Power and so in the Supremacy should be unwillingly engaged in a War with the Prince suppose the Long Parliament or the Commonwealth under Oliver against King Charles the First and after many years Blood and Desolations judiciously take away his Life as guilty of all this Blood and not to be trusted any more with Government as the Parliaments Vote for Non-address to the King And all this they do not as Private Men but as the remaining Soveraign Power and say they do it according to Law undoubtedly this case doth very much differ from the Powder Plot or Papists murdering of Kings With much more to the same evil purpose And doubtless the difference is great it is more horrid for Subjects to pretend Justice than for the Pope to attempt by secret Plots to destroy a Protestant Prince In the year 58. he prints his Five Disputations of Church Government which were designed against restoring the extruded Episcopacy and Liturgy and to justifie the Presbyterian Ordination where as also in his Method for Peace p. 389. he saith We have taken down the superfluous honour of Bishops viz. their power over Presbyters as Antichristian This disputatious Book he says was written against Dr. Hammond who was then his Neighbour and he dealt very friendly with him for he scarce touched one of his Arguments but the design of the Book was to destroy the whole Order as Optatus said of a Donatist Dei Episcopos linguae gladio jugulasti fundens sanguinem non corporis sed honoris Opt. Milevit l. 2. And because after No Bishop follows No King in 1659. he sets forth his Holy Common-wealth which was no other than a Plot to keep out the King as the other was to keep out the Bishops for there being great hopes that upon so many Revolutions of Government we should settle again on our ancient Foundations he says He suited that Book to the demands and doubts of those times And his endeavour is to prove That the King being secluded and his Subjects discharged of their Obedience ought not to be readmitted Thus in the Preface That a Succession of wise and godly Men may be secured to the Nation in the highest Power is that I have directed you the way to in this Book And thus he explains himself First as to the higher Powers Prove saith he that the King was the highest Power in the times of Division and that he had power to make that War that he made and I will offer my Head to Justice as a Rebel These confident Assertions of his were such as brought a far better Head to the Block But what would Mr. Baxter have My wish is saith he that our Parliaments may be holy and this ascertained from Generation to Generation by such a necessary Regulation of Elections that all those who by wickedness have forfeited their Liberties i.e. the King and Loyal Party may neither choose nor be chosen And the reducing Elections to faithful honest upright men such as he says were then in Richard Cromwel 's Parliament is the only
Laws â—…ainst Dissenters which yet says he all did not Yet Mr. Baxter spares none nor doth Dr. Maurice in his Vindication of the Primitive Church and Diocesan Episcopacy in answer to Mr. Baxter's Church History of Bishops c. spare him for whoever reads the Preface to that Answer and Chap. 8. p. 276. where he abundantly proves Mr. Baxter's ignorance and scandalous imputation of the Heresies Schisms and Troubles which were raised by several Presbyters against their Orthodox Bishops to those Primitive Fathers he will be of the same mind that I am That there never was any School-boy more justly though severely chastised for any Fault than Mr. Baxter is for that Treatise which he says is very elaborate and unconfuted Mr. Baxter in a Preface to his Penitent Confession Sect. 9. hath this Question and Answer Quest How should one have the better of any Adversary that blamed him Answ Speak and do things that are most odious as Perjury Lying Persecution c. and cover them with Sacred Pretences and then all that accuse thee will be taken for uncharitable Railers This method Mr. Baxter useth for Confutation of his Adversaries Thus he answered the Bishop of Worcester's Sermon against Separation calling it A Schismatical Sermon in his Preface to his second Defence p. 12 and says That the Bishop's Book is made up 1. Of untrue Accusations 2. Vntrue Historical Relations 3. Fallacious Reasonings And that in writing that Book against the Bishop he felt so little Passion that he thought verily that he sinned all the while for want of a livelier sence of the sin and hurt which he was detecting by his Confutation And which is to be noted in an Epistle Dedicatory to the Bishop he confesseth That he answered him in a manner that required his Patience and if it was too provoking he beggs his pardon But afterwards adds I doubt that I took advantage of his temerity and confuted him in too provoking terms and that some meer impertinent noise was made to his Answer by some one that is confuted But the Bishop sheweth what kind of Confutation it was p. 59. of the History of Separation Mr. Baxter discovered so much anger and unbecoming Passion that I truly pitied him and was so far from being transported by it that it was enough to cure an indecent Passion to see how ill it became a Man of his Age Profession and Reputation for he seems to have written the whole Book in one continued fit of anger For which and the scurrility of his Preface wherein having in twenty particulars described the most unskilful proud partial obstinate cruel and impertinent Adversaries he could think of places of Scripture or Similitudes for he thus concludes Though all this be not the Case of the Reverend Bishop c. which the Bishop notes to be a malicious way of Reproaching to name so many very ill things and leave the Reader to apply as much as he pleaseth And in p. 63. the Bishop complains that Mr. Baxter says That his Principles overthrow all Religion and that he was a secret Vnderminer of the Proofs of a Deity p. 63. of the Bishop's Preface After the same manner he confutes Bishop Morley's Letter concerning him saying It is most shameless for untruths in publick matters of fact and adds Ironically the Accuser is a Member of the best Church in the World but is this bundle of his gross untruths a proof that he is one of the best men in the World In the like manner he reflects on Bishop Patrick's Friendly Debate That his Book was so disingenious and virulent as caused most religious People to abhor it for the strain and tendency and probable effects Baxter's Life part 2. p. 39. As for Dr. Sherlock he thinks it Confutation enough of his former and latter Writings that they were virulent and ignorant p. 198. of his Life part 3. But Dr. Sherlock's Practical Treatises whereof we have many are as sound pious and useful I need not say as any of Mr. Baxter's but as any other on such Subjects as he hath written on as of Death and Judgment of Providence c. Dr. Fulwood though Mr. Baxter had formerly commended him for a Learned Man yet for some Reflections on his Book called Sacrilegious Desertion he calls him railing Russian p. 6. and his Reflections are a few confident silly Reasonings And p. 60. tells him of his want of common sence and modesty P. 113. part 1. of his Life he says That Dr. Pierce wrote a bitter Book against him full of malignant bitterness against godly men and breathing out blood-thirsty malice in a fluent stile abundance of lies are also in it against the old Puritans and me And that he wrote a much more railing malicious Volume than the former the liveliest express of Satan's image malignity bloody malice and falshood cover'd in handsom railing Rhetorick I have not heard saith he of three such railing men in England as Tylenus junior Pierce and Gunning of the Jesuits Opinion in Doctrinals and of the old Dominical complexion the ablest men that their Party hath in all the Land of great diligence in study and reading of excellent oratory and temperate lives but all their parts so sharpned with a furious persecuting Zeal against those that dislike Arminianism high Prelacy or full Conformity that they are like Bryars and Thorns not to be handled but by a fenced hand breathing out threatnings against God's Servants better than themselves and seem unsatisfied with blood and ruins and still cry Give Give bidding as loud Defiance to Christian Charity as every Arius or any Heretick did to Faith I fear I have offended my Reader by spreading before him such heaps of putrid and noisome Garbage But Mr. Baxter offering no matter of Argument for how could he against his own Relations and undeniable Matters of Fact except he had given himself the lye I thought nothing else needful but to shew the temper of the Man and the usual manner of his Communication to convince the Reader that he too often calls evil good and good evil and supplies the want of Argument and Reason with Invectives and Railing As to his Charge that my Book was full of Falshood half Sentences none was more concerned or better able to have shewn a few instances if the Book had been so full And for quoting any retracted Lines I never heard much of Mr. Baxter's Retractations though he had reason enough to have written as largely upon that Subject as St. Augustine did I do not think that his expunging out of his Kalender of Saints the names of Brook Pym White c. amounted to a Retractation because he told us that he did it not as altering his judgment of them but because it gave offence Yet Mr. Baxter shews reason enough to have expunged the Lord Brook for p. 63. of Mr. Baxter's Life part 1. he says That the Lord Brook was known and noted as a gross Sectary in the House of Peers
the strength of the Empire hath taken away all the seeds of Impiety Edictum Theodosii in fine Concilii I see no reason why Mr. Baxter should speak so favourably of Nestorius though I have considered all that he writes but that he might make his Readers think more contemptible of Cyril who was so great learned and good a Bishop Vincentius Lyrinensis an approved Author who lived near that time writes thus Infelix ille Nestorius subito ex Ove conversus in Lupum gregem Christi lacerare cepit Cum enim hi ipsi qui rodebantur ex magna adhuc parte Ovem crederent morsibus ejus magis patebant Nam quis eum facile errare arbitraretur quem tanto Imperii Judicio electum tanto Sacerdotum studio prosecutum videret Qui cum magno Sanctorum amore Summo populi favore celebraretur quotidie palam divina tractabat eloquia noxios quoque Judaeorum Gentilem confutabat errores This is as much as Mr. Baxter could say for him But what follows Qui ut uni haeresi suae aditum patefaceret cunctarum Haeresewn blasphemias insectabatur cap. 16. and cap. 17. In audito scelere duos vult esse filios Dei unum Deum alterum hominem unum qui ex patre alterum qui sit generatus ex matre atque ideo asserit Sanctam Mariam non 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. sed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. dicendam quia scilicet ex eâ non ille Christus qui Deus sed qui homo erat natus Quod si quis eum putat in literis unum Christum dicere unam Christi personam non temere credat hoc enim fraudulentiae causâ conceptus sen partus virginei tempore duos Christos fuisse contendit Who will not believe this Father that lived in those days a Man of great Learning and Integrity before a late prejudiced Person that serves a Party Another instance of Mr. Baxter's racking Ecclesiastical History to make it speak his sence against Bishops is his account of Novatus and Novatian one of which he calls an ill chosen Bishop of Rome i.e. Novatian though indeed they were both ambitious Presbyters and Novatus and African Priest saith Mr. Baxter went to Rome to make Novatian a Bishop p. 36. when Cornelius was duly elected before Of which St. Cyprian saith Agnoscant atque intelligant Episcopo semel facto collegarum ac plebis testimonio judicio comprobato alium constitui nullo modo posse Epist 4. ad Cornel. For indeed Novation was an ambitious Presbyter that contended against Cornelius to thrust him out of his Chair for admitting those to his Communion who in the time of Persecution under Decius had denied the Faith supposing that they could not repent after such a fall In opposition to such he calls his Faction the Cathari which Mr. Baxter knows how to English This pure Presbyter sent for three Rustick Bishops as my Author calls them from Italy to come to him at Rome under pretence of mediating for him with Cornelius and the other Bishops Being come he entertains them with plenty of good Chear and Wine which is still in fashion with that sort of People and when they had well drank some of his Party force the Bishops to lay their hands on Novatian and make him an Vtopian Bishop for it will puzzle Mr. Baxter to name his Title though he call him an ill chosen Bishop of Rome which Title he gives him only to draw an Odium on the Bishops though the great troubles brought upon the Church by their Errours and Schisms were wholly the fruit of their Envy against Cornelius the lawful Bishop of Rome Of which St. Cyprian also gives a full account who caused the meeting of some Councils to suppress them Yet Mr. Baxter such is his Zeal for Anti-Prelatical Men thus excuseth the matter It was Zeal against Errour which made both the Novatians and the Donatists run into Errour p. 32. And though that long and sad Schisms did ensue yet he thus excuseth it The Rigour of the Novatians was increased by their offence at other mens sinful latitude and tepidity p. 35. Chap. 3. Mr. Baxter treats of the Council of Nice and the Heresie of Arius P. 45. Mr. Baxter says That Athanasius refusing to admit Arius to his Communion caused much Calamities And p. 46. They that had gathered Separate Churches did communicate with Arius that they might be delivered from the Persecution of a godly Bishop i.e. from Athanasius whom Mr. Baxter confesseth to be a godly Bishop but being Bishop and opposing the Arian Conventicles he is a Persecutor That you may see the Partiality of this Historian I shall give you a brief History of the growth of Arianism Arius a Presbyter was condemned in the first General Council at Nice for denying the Deity of Christ making him a Creature for which he was banished by Constantine as the cause of great Division and Corruption in the Church But there was a certain Presbyter who grew into so great familiarity with Constantia the Emperours Sister as to perswade her that Arius had been abused by the Council and did not hold the Opinions for which he was condemned Whereupon Constantine recals Arius and enquires into the truth of that report and Constantia dying recommends this Presbyter to the Emperour her Brother as worthy of his favour and when Constantine died this Presbyter carrieth the News to Constantius that his Father had bequeathed the Eastern Empire to him Which being what he hoped for he received the Presbyter into his Favour and kept him in his Court where first he infected some of the Eunuchs with that Errour and by their means the Empress also and so the Emperour himself Socrates l. 1.19 and l. 2.2 This revived the Arian Faction Arius is restored to Alexandria from whence the multitude of his Followers having conspired the death of Athanasius Constantine had removed Athanasius into Gallia where Constans his Son then lived who entertained him with some respect and writes to his Brother Constantius to admit him again to Alexandria or threatneth him with War lib. 2. cap. 18. Whereupon Athanasius is restored but his life is in perpetual danger the Arians being more in number than the Orthodox Hosius Bishop of Corduba a Man of great Age and Learning and a constant Assertor of the Truth was shamefully whipped and tortured by them lib. 2. cap. 26. And though they were condemned by the Councils of Milain and Ariminum Constantius favours them and threatneth the Councils To him succeeded Julian the Apostate then Jovianus who reigned but Seven Months then Valentian who admitted Valens and Arian to partake of the Empire All which time the Arians exercised great cruelty not only on the Orthodox Bishops but against each other for under them sprang up the Novatians and Eunomians lib. 4. cap. 23. and lib. 5. cap. 20. who all agreed in the Arian Heresie but persecuted one another So did the
Macedonians lib. 2. cap. 13. and 35. and the Nestorians who burnt the Arian Church at Constantinople lib. 7. cap. 20. vexed the Novatians and Macedonians lib. 7. cap. 31. And all this by the instigation of Anastatius a Presbyter lib. 7. cap. 32. Yet all these Tâ—mults are imputed to the Bishops who all the while suffered from the heretical Presbyâ—… the true Ancestors of Mr. Baxter Majorum quisquis fuit ille tuorum Aut Pastor fuit aut illud quod dicere nolo Chap. 7. Mr. Baxter treats of the Tria Capitula The Tria Capitula were three Chapters mentioned in the Council of Chalcedon in which the Nestorians who could not longer defend their Heresie under the Name of its Author sought to cloke it under the Name and Writings of Theodorus Bishop of Mopsuestia of Theodoret's Writings against St. Cyril and an Epistle of Ibas unto Maris These made the Tria Capitula for which Pope Vigilius and some of his Party appeared But the Emperour Justinian and the Catholick Bishops appeared against them Many Sectaries who were condemned under the name of the Acephali disclaimed this Council others pretended it had approved of the Tria Capitula Great Divisions ensued hereupon Justinian knowing that the Council of Chalcedon had exploded that Heresie sends forth his Imperial Edict wherein accursing the Authors and Abettors of those Tria Capitula he summons the Fifth General Council of Constantinople at which the Pope refused to be present noluit interesse saith Bellarmine and the true reason was because he favoured that Heresie and approved not of the Council of Chalcedon which was held without him and did determine for the Prerogative of Constantinople against him Vigilius though he came not himself sent his Decree which maintained that Heresie and was confuted in the Sixth Collation of the Council of Constans And they set forth a most holy Confession of their Faith consonant in all points to that which the Holy Apostles preached which the four former Councils explained and the holy Fathers with uniform consent maintained Now I would desire Mr. Baxter to resolve me whether the blame of those Commotions which followed on this Dissention is to be laid on the Emperour and the Catholick Bishops who sided with him in defence of the true Faith against Nestorianism as Binius and Baronius would have it or on the Pope and his Italians who pleaded for that Heresie and together with the Agnoites Gainaites Theodosians Themistians and the rest of the Acephali promoted and continued those Broils Chap. 9. Consisting of about Sixty Pages is spent about the Worshipping of Images whereof he makes the Bishops Patrons Whereas many both Emperours and Bishops suffered very much as Iconoclastes i.e. the destroyers of Images Bishop Jewel challengeth the Church of Rome to shew but one Authority during Six hundred Years of the Church for worshipping Images and is not yet answered The rise of which in brief was this The Arcans and Donatists having wasted the Church made way for vast numbers of Infidels to enter in who brought with them and superstitiously honoured the Images of their Benefactors and many ignorant Christians learned their customs The Pictures of St. Peter and St. Paul we read of in Ancient History but withal we read they were not permitted to be brought into the Churches The opposition made against them may be seen in the Magdeburg In the year 754 the Bishops disputed against them and in a Council at Constantinople consisting of 338 Bishops How Leo Isauricus and Gregory Bishop of Neocaesaria opposed them is too large to repeat It was about the year 787 that Irene who was Daughter to a Pagan King of Tartaria gave publick countenance to Image-worship She ruling as Empress in the minority of Constantine her Son promoted this Pagan custom for as Mr. Hales observes Dux femina facti she was a Woman of so Tyrannous a Spirit that she caused the eyes of her Son Constantine to be put out which struck a great awe into the Christians under her One cause of her Cruelty to her Son being his opposing this Image-worship But finding one Tarasius to be of her mind she makes him Patriarch of Constantinople and calls a Council at Nice consisting of 350 Bishops most of them Arians and so about the year 787 they Decreed for Image-worship But in the year 792 all was reversed by Charles the Great in a Council at Frankfort One Decree mentioned by Mr. Baxter I shall remind him of it is p. 213. A man that had his hands in blood must not be a Bishop Another Heresie which makes the Church History to swell is that of the Monothelites of which Mr. Baxter speaks ch 8. And because he saith nothing of the rise of it I shall It was occasioned by one John Philoponus a Presbyter who wrote subtilly concerning it and drew many to his Opinion Anno 517. but all the time that Justinian was Emperour they hid themselves and propagated their Heresie in Conventicles for it was condemned by 175 Bishops in the fifth Synod of Constantinople and confuted by the Learned Bishop Gregory Nazianzene and by 603 Bishops in the fourth General Council at Chalcedon and in the sixth Synod of Constantinople by 170 Bishops But after the death of Theodosius Philippicus succeeded of whose Succession a Monotholite Monk had foretold him and that if he would rescind the Decrees of the sixth Synod and favour the Monothelites he should raign long and happily This made Philippicus to espouse that Cause and presently he banisheth Cyrus Patriarch of Constantinople and many Orthodox Bishops He maketh one John a Presbyter Patriarch and filleth up the vacant Bishopricks with Presbyters of that Faction and then assembles them and confirms that Heresie But the Bishops of the Western Churches resisted it and sent thundering Letters against it And it is no wonder that the Orthodox Bishops did hide themselves under this Tyranny or that Philippicus found Presbyters to make Bishops in their room who defended him and the Faction For it is well known how many such in our Age adhered to usurping Powers and defended as great both State and Ecclesiastical Heresies as this of the Monothelites and would not permit the Bishops to appear But if these Presbyters had taken the name of Bishops under Cromwel as the Monothelites did under Philippicus you might with as much truth have affirmed that innumerable Bishops did in the times of our Confusions defend Rebellion and Heresie as that the Bishops who suffered all manner of indignities from the Monothelites did defend that Errour or raise those Tumults This Philippicus within a year and half was deprived of the Empire by the same Souldiers that set him up who put out his Eyes and left him to die in Prison as a Tyrant These instances for I remember that I am writing a Character of Mr. Baxter and not of the ancient Hereticks may suffice to acquaint the Reader of the ingenuity of this Man who rails intolerably against
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 Mend. Mag. For though he had indeed done it sufficiently in other yet this Book was penned on purpose to justifie the preaching of Nonconformists though forbidden by Law P. 102. He raiseth the Objection of preaching in Cities c. against Laws And Answ Did not the ancient Christians also disobey a lawful â—…er when forbidden c. As if Christian Magistrates were to be reputed as the Heathen Persecutors But to omit this p. 104. he says N.B. 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 and he acknowledgeth all did not And if any shall read the Preambles to those Acts he may plainly see the cause of making them was not only the late dreadful Experience which the Nation had of the Confusions caused by the preaching of such Men but their present endeavours to reduce us to the like again which all those Acts notwithstanding they are still labouring for This is evident that Mr. Baxter though he were Ordained by a Bishop and subscribed though as he confesseth he had not read the Book of Ordination nor exactly weighed what he subscribed to p. 59. for it seems he was a passive Conformist and one that came into the Church to find a better opportunity to pull it down he did partake with Mr. Pryn in an Antipathy against Lordly Prelacy and glorieth in being stiled the Antisignanus Presbyterorum p. 11. And p. 6. he tells us of one Fenne a famous Country Non-conformist who with a loud voice would say Amen to all the Prayers in the Liturgy except that for Bishops to which his silence was accounted a dissent Doubtless Mr. Baxter is of the same mind he cannot pray for them lest it should seem a compliance with Church Tyranny and a frame of Government destructive of the Churches Ministry p. 241. and with such Persons as professing themselves Fathers of the Church are grand Enemies of Christ and Souls and the Captains in the Army of the Devil p. 243. I have heard a late Report of a Rebel in Scotland who being under Condemnation was put in mind of begging Pardon and to say God bless the King but his Answer was He would not purchase his life at so dear a rate Let the Reader judge how near Mr. Baxter approacheth that temper who will not and cannot indeed pray for the Bishops as such but rather suffer many deaths than be in their case c. How amazing a passage is that p. 135. When you are in the dust the world will not be afraid of you but freely tread upon you Hic Jacet Mr. Love did as bad by Archbishop Land while he was alive and cast up your bones to make room for others and talk of you and your acts as freely as of King Henry the Eighth Queen Mary Bishop Bonner and Gardner are now talked of As if our Bishops were the Successours of those and not of Cranmer Latimer Ridly Hooper and other Martyrs of that Age who died for the Defence of that Reformation which our Bishops still defend against both Papists and Fanaticks But Etiam post mortem invidia How sollicitous is dying Mr. Baxter to bequeath a double portion of his Anti-Prelatical Spirit to the People who by prophesying what they will be tells them what he would have them to be i.e. Perpetual and implacable Enemies to the Bishops p. 187. And in his Prognostick to which he refers how often doth he croak over his Cant of Perjury a sin meet for none but utterly debauched Consciences and such as threatneth dreadful ruine Such principles and practices would make us guilty of the perjury and impenitence of many hundred thousand persons p. 154. And p. 219. Aggravated perjury deliberate lying rebellious profession of disobedience to God owning great and publick sins corrupting holy Worship c. P. 221. The sins which we fear viz. in Conformity be of the greatest sort that Hell suggesteth perjury and owning the perjury of thousands and doing that which is equivalent to the preaching of impenitency and saying Repent not for I declare it is no sin and lying deliberately and making a publick Ministerial profession of Vsurpation and Church Corruptions and of our resolution never to obey God in doing any duty of ours in order to a Reformation c. Will any Man believe that Mr. Baxter is so grievously persecuted who hears him thus affronting the Laws and reviling and provoking Authority P. 200. It may be your great Patrons may die or fall or forsake you and then your hearts are broken It may be death he seemeth to speak of a violent death as p. 204. One Felton may end the great Duke of Buckingham p. 205. Or they may meet with such Executioners as Cardinal Beton may enter into your Families and make you think what blood-thirstiness doth tend to And you must consider also that if blood or destruction be the means you trust to you must set up a Shambles or Trade of Butchery and make it the profession of all your lives c. which I abhor to relate what he there talks at large And p. 226 227. The world already thinks that the Clergy are so covetous proud and envious that like the great Dog that hath got the Carrion snarls at every little Dog that looketh at them suspecting they come to take some from him it is the common opinion that the Clergy are the Incendiaries 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 if they persecuted it eo nomine as the proud and covetous Clergy are Now that it hath been Mr. Baxter's work to effect this temper in the People he gives us this instance besides what I might mention in London and Kedderminster p. 90. I love to instance where I dwell and see because of certainty This Market Town of Barnet ten miles from London was so extreamly addicted to your way so impatient of the Directory and Ministry now cast out that one who was their Minister in times of Vsurpation told me he was fain to leave them and professed he was really afraid lest they would have put him into the Grave and buried him alive for burying a Corps without Common Prayer according to the Directory And now the Case is so much altered that though the Town consists so much of Inns and Ale-houses a private meeting near the Church is so much crowded as the Churches were and the Church is almost empty Egregias vero laudes spolia ampla the Inns and Ale-houses are become Conventicles by Mr. Baxter's Reformation and the Church forsaken From p. 197 to 210. you have a continued cry of the bloodiness of Bishops comparing them to Foxes Wolves
it And Consect 4. All carnal Interest and all carnal Reason is on the Diocesans side and all the lusts of the heart of Man and consequently all that the Devil can do and therefore while carnal Christians make a Religion of their Lusts and Interests and Pride and Covetousness and Idleness are more predominant than the fear of God and the love of Souls no wonder if the Diocesans Cause prevail with such Consect 7. Take but from such Prelates the Plumes it hath stollen from Magistrates and Presbyters and it will be a naked thing and simple name He says in the Preface The Sufferers will call the Prelates Persecutors Wolves in Sheeps clothing who are known by their fruits their teeth and claws P. 163. part 1. It is the Prelacy that maketh almost all the Sects that be in England this day whereas those little Foxes were not heard of until the Wild-boars had broken down the Fences of Episcopacy and when they see what Ministers and how many hundred of them are silenced and what Fellows are set up in their stead they think they can never â—…y far enough from such Prelates and we that dwell among them do take them that dislike their course and ways to be generally the most religious and sober People in the Land but I think Mr. Baxter spake in jest when he adds excepting always the King and Parliament And p. 167 168. That before the Prelates had again ruled seven years there were seven and seven against them for one that was so before Which is a notorious falshood there being a general Conformity until a Toleration was granted And p. 161. he proclaims thus I am one of the eighteen hundred that have been silenced by better Authority than the Prelates alone yet I think I am bound in Conscience to exercise the Ministry which I received whatever I suffer and if the Sword straitned me no more than my Conscience of the Bishops prohibition I should be very little hindred for that saith he is vanished into Air p. 163. And so it seems is the power of the Sword too with him for that he means by better Authority the Laws established by King and Parliament And yet this Man had taught other Doctrine for p. 30. of his first Plea Princes and Rulers may forbid all that preach Rebellion and Sedition and punish them if they do it and may hinder the incorrigible whose preaching will do more hurt than good from exercising the Ministry in their Dominions P. 32. They should see that their Kingdoms be well provided of publick Preachers and Catechists and may be due means compel the ignorant to hear and learn what Christianity is Sect. 36. They may when a Peoples ignorance faction or wilfulness make them refuse all that are truly fit for them urge them to accept the best and may possess such of the publick Temples and Maintenance and make it the Peoples duty to consent as is aforesaid No great need then of the Peoples consent which Mr. Baxter so much contends for Sect. 37. They ought to hinder Preachers from uncharitable and unrighteous railing at each other and unpeaceable controversies and contentions And p. 35. sect 40. They may make their own Officers circa Sacra to execute their Magistratical Power and if they authorize any particular Bishops or Pastors to exercise any such power as belongs to the Prince to give not contrary to Christ's Laws c. we judge that the Subjects should obey all such even for Conscience sake P. 117. We deny not saith he but if the generality of the Ministry obtain their liberty by some small tolerable sin or errour and the sounder part be few and unnecessary in that Country prudence obligeth them to go to some other place that needeth them and never to exercise their Ministry where in true Reason it is like to do more hurt than good And of this he maketh the Magistrate Judge p. 265. of his Way of Concord Yet p. 244. of his Plea he says That though the execution of the Laws have cost some excellent Men their lives already we may know that no execution short of death or utter disablement will make the most conscionable forsake their duty And p. 249. Why we should not speak openly rather than in secret and what but a Spirit of Envy or Carnal Interest cross to the interest of Christ should grudge at such preaching we cannot tell Nor can any one reconcile these Contradictions One thing I shall observe from his Church-Historian mentioned in the Preface That when Philip Nerius set up his Oratorian Exercises at Rome it was found necessary to win the people to use large affectionate extemporate Prayers Expositions and Sermons Yet when the Bishop of Worcester says This practice was brought into England by the Jesuits to bring the Liturgy into Contempt in the Preface to his History of Separation Mr. Baxter replies p. 12. That this is a sad saying and that there is no probability that the Jesuits should be the first setters up of this way in England though the Bishop gave two instances of it in Matter of Fact And says in the Preface to his second Defence That the Bishops's Book is made up of three parts 1. Of untrue Accusations 2. Vntrue historical Citations abundance 3. Fallacious Reasonings As if there were not one true word in the whole Book though even this imitating of Philip Nerius in extemporary Exercises and separate Meetings is by Mr. Baxter himself parallel'd with ours as the Original and Copy p. 22. of Preface to Mr. Baxter's Now or Never The Meetings of the Oratorians and their Exercises are so like those now abhorred by many c. Then comes forth his first and second Plea for Peace Of the first the Bishop of Worcester says It seems to be designed on purpose to represent the Clergy of our Church as a company of notorious lying perjured Villains for conforming to the Laws of the Land and Orders established with no less than thirty Aggravations of the Sin of Conformity And Mr. Baxter in his Answer seems to justifie it And with a great deal of vain-glory in the latter end of that Book printeth a complemental Letter sent him from Mr. Glanvil in 1661. to shew how he loves the Applause of Men of which he says he had been surfeited with Humane Applause p. 133. which rather than he would want he blows a Trumpet himself in another Book called the Only way to Concord saying in the Preface to Bishop Morley and Bishop Gunning I am fully perswaded that in this Book I have told you a righter way of Christian Concord more divine sure harmless and comprehensive fitted by Christ himself to the interest of all good Men yea of the Church and all the World He speaks as if he had gotten an infallible Spirit and had not only the Presbyter but the Pope in his belly Whereas that way of Concord will rather prove a means of perpetuating Discord and Divisions in the
Wales for by Burlace's Relation p. 199. the Confederate Catholicks being distressed by their Enemies they sent Antrim and Muskerry to the Queen and the Prince in France to take Compassion of their miserable Condition and both the Queen and Prince told them That they would shortly send a Person qualified to treat with them who should have power to give them whatever was requisite to their Security and Happiness And they returned to Ireland well satisfied with what was then granted them which probably was very large the Prince being then wholly at his Mothers dispose and how far the King might remember what Orders and Concessions he had made them at that time or some time afterwards this was that which prevailed for the restoring of Antrim to his Estate and not any Order from K. Charles the First But here it is to be noted that these things were transacted in the Year 1648. when the King was a close Prisoner and therefore no Commission could be had from him much less is it like that he had given Antrim a Commission in the beginning of that War which was in 41 which was denied by Sir Phelim O Neale and the Lords Mackguire and Muskerry at their several Executions and was never pretended by any of the leading Papists in their Declarations or Confessions Or if they had pretended any such Order or Commission who could believe any reality or truth in it when it is most certain that the King did commission the Noble Ormond as his Lord Deputy to manage that War for his Protestant Subjects against those bloody Rebels which continued for several years which as the good King complains in that Twelfth Chapter of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were to represent him to the World as a Cyclopick Monster whom nothing would serve to eat and drink but the Flesh and Blood of his own Subjects Mr. Baxter adds That Antrim was forced to produce in Parliament a Letter of King Charles the First by which he gave him order to take up Arms. Mr. Baxter is the first that I have heard or read to mention this particular and by the event it appears that either there was never such a Letter produced or what he pretended to be the King's Order and Instructions was not for raising the first War for then doubtless some of that Parliament who had ingaged against the King in the late War would have been loud and clamorous enough but they were all silent and went not a step out of their way but a Cessation being agreed on some of the Popish Party being beaten and in fear of utter ruine thought it more eligible to joyn themselves with my Lord Ormond than become a Prey to the Parliaments Army who were resolved on their utter Extirpation This was in the Year 1648. and then for ought I know he might have something to plead for himself with Charles the Second I remember that there was a Case brought into the House of Peers between the Lord of Ormond and the Lord of Anglesey wherein the former was Accused by the latter for the Cessation of Arms made by him and his joyning with some of the Papists wherein the Lord of Ormond was acquitted by his Peers I have not the Case by me but it will give much light to this Affair All the talk without doors which Mr. Baxter says was murmured by the People was probably the scandalous Suggestion of his inveterate Malice to that good King against whom he had been an active Enemy during that War and would now justifie himself and others upon this late and false pretence That the King gave his Commission to Antrim for that Insurrection wherein Two hundred thousand were slain But that the Veracity of Mr. Baxter in relating of History may appear I will set before the Reader one notorious Instance which he produceth p. 199. of the third part of his Life in these words Many French Ministers sentenced to death and banishment came hither for refuge and the Church-men relieve them not because they are not for English Diocesans and Conformity Where I shall take notice of the gross falshood of first the Matter of Fact and secondly of the Reason and Occasion of it First As to Matter of Fact viz. That the Church-men did not relieve those French Ministers who being Sentenced to Death and Banishment fled hither for refuge this is so loud a Lie as needs no Bell to proclaim it The Matter of Fact is so notoriously evident to the contrary of what Mr. Baxter reports that almost every Church-man in England can disprove it The Reverend Bishop of London did most affectionately compassionate their Case and made competent provision for a great number of them as tenderly as a Father could do for his Children He sent down some into every Diocess of the Province of Canterbury with earnest desire to the several Bishops to provide for them in order whereto several of those distressed Ministers were fixed in beneficial Curacies The Register for the Bishop of Exon hath Recorded the several Names of such French Ministers as were Ordained by him to Exercise their Ministry in the places hereafter mentioned Mr. Johannis Jacobus Mauzino was Ordained Presbyter to Officiate at Barnstable March 22. 1685. Mr. Jacobus Sanxay Ordained Presbyter and setled in the parish-Parish-Church of St. Olaves Exon. Mr. Johannis Calvetus and Mr. Johannis Gardian Giury were both Ordained Presbyters Mr. Daniel Cauniers was Ordained Presbyter and Inducted to a competent Benefice called East-Budly in Devon May 25. 1686. Mr. Peter Pabouleus was Ordained and Setled at Falmouth Mr. Andrew Coyaldus de Sante Ordained and Setled at Darmouth Mr. Lodovicus Beenaudea◠Ordained and Setled at Biddiford Divers others who had been Ordained at London were sent hither and provided for But how great the number was which were Setled in and about London and other Diocesses is too large to be inserted here Therefore Mr. Baxter's Affirmation That the Church men relieved them not is notoriously false and a Scandalum Magnatum Secondly Nor is the Reason which he gives for their not relieving them less scandalous for it was saith Mr. Baxter because they were not for English Diocesans nor Conformity whereas all the Persons above-named did submit to Episcopal Ordination and declared their Conformity which accordingly they did practise in their several Congregations having the English Liturgy translated into French for that purpose Could Mr. Baxter have discovered so gross a falshood in any Writing of a Conformist he would have branded it with all the Notes of Infamy that his snarling Rhetorick and Malice could have invented But I shall make only this Reflection upon it viz. That this Calumny is one of the last Periods in the close of his written Life which once more called to my remembrance what the Bishop of Worcester said of Mr. Baxter That he would die leaving his sting in the wounds of the Church But where went the Charity of Mr. Baxter and those liberal Friends who made
were those Two thousand In your Letter to Mr. Bagshaw you speak but of about Eighteen hundred and you are not wont to mince the matter A great number of them had possessed themselves of other Mens Rights and it was an Act of Justice to restore the Owners to their Rights Mr. Baxter I hear was he that invaded Kidderminster the Property of one Mr. Dance whom he confest to be a Man of an unblameable Life but not thought fit for so great a Congregation much more to have any Restitution made for all that was taken from him As for those that had lawful Titles some of them were altogether unqualified as to Learning or good Lives the rest ejected themselves for not obeying the Laws There were no tearing Engines made use of The lawless Practises of the Presbyterians under the Long Parliament deserved that name whenas Mr. White their Centurist writes There were about Eighteen thousand Ministers all lawful Ministers illegally ejected both Vniversities deprived of their Scholars who were driven to great Necessities not suffered to teach Schools no not in a Gentleman's House for the Education of their Children twelve Bishops clapt into the Tower at once the rest Sequestred without any Provision or Respect to their Age Learning or Piety And I need not prove it to Mr. Baxter who knows the truth of what I say That that one Engine of the Scottish Covenant destroyed more in one year both Laity and Clergy than all the tearing Engines did ever since they were formed into Laws Mr. Baxter The third passage is p. 69 70. which though Mr. Baxter hath not I shall here transcribe and it may serve to Answer Mr. Baxter's Question Can you name says he one Presbyter for very many Bishops that have been the Heads or Fomenters of Heresie Schism or Rebellion and that for his part he knows nothing comparable in shame and mischievous effects to the horrid Persidiousness Contention Schism and Pride of Bishops In opposition to this I said in the place quoted That Novatus and Novatian Aerius and Arius Donatus and his Fellow Presbyters who assumed the Episcopal Power to themselves had shed more Blood and committed more Outrages than were done under any instance of Episcopal Ambition and that our late Schism at home and the Wounds made by it are yet so open that there needs no Rhetorick but our own Experience to teach us that the little Finger of the Presbyterians is heavier than the Episcopal Loyns Let any Man sum up together the Mischiefs occasioned by the Avarice and Ambition of Bishops for One hundred Years together in this our Nation and I dare ingage to demonstrate that for Wickedness in contriving for Malice and Cruelty in Executing for Pride and Arrogance in Usurping in Obstinacy and Implacableness in endeavouring to perpetuate unparallel'd Confusions Though some Bishops had done amiss yet our Presbyterians have exceeded them all For let me be informed Whether for a Juncto of Presbyters who had often sworn Fidelity to their Prince and Obedience to their lawful Ordinaries to abrogate these Sacred Obligations and by dethroning one incomparable Prince to set up many Tyrants and by covenanting against one Bishop in a Diocess to erect Two or Three hundred and expose all the Clergy that would not partake with them in their sins to contempt and misery be not an unparallel Mischief Mr. Hales himself whom Mr. Baxter so magnifies for his Book of Schism found their tender Mercies to be cruel whom they deprived of that plentiful Estate which he enjoyed under the Episcopal Government being reduced to that Extremity that he was forced to sell his Books to supply his Necessities Let me be informed I pray you whether this be not more than any Bishop did or could be guilty of Such Indignities Perjuries Usurpations and Cruelties as these Men have acted against their just lawful and excellent Governours in Church and State I believe have not been acted since Judas betrayed his Master Mr. Baxter These are great things to be spoken so boldly saith Mr. Baxter Answ And they were bolder Men that acted them say I. But I am at a loss what to say of them who were the first Incendiaries the Boutefews that blew up the Coals and scattered such Wild-fire through the Nation as ran through every City Town and Village in the Nation let Mr. Baxter speak his own thoughts of such They may justly fear of being Firebrands in Hell for their being Fire-brands on Earth The passage which Mr. Baxter thought not fit to recite led me to consider what Mischief had been occasioned by the Ambition of Factious Presbyters such as Novatus and Novatian Aerius and Arius Donatus and his Followers of old and by a Juncto of Presbyterians in our own days and he confesseth that Arius and Aerius were not Bishops and he might have said it of Novatus and Novatian Donatus and his Fellows that they were not Bishops but seekers of Bishopricks and divided because they could not obtain them Surely says Mr. Baxter they were Prelatical Presbyters And concludes thus I will never while I breathe trust a Presbyter that sets himself to get Preferment no more than I will trust a he might have said as King James did a Highland or Border Robber I doubt not but the Reader will observe with me what a pitiful shift Mr. Baxter was put to when he says That if Arius or Novatus Aerius and Donatus which he says are all the Presbyters that I name though I had named Novatus and Novatian and could have mentioned many more if an Answer to a Letter would have permitted it were the beginners of any Schism many hundred Bishops were the promoters of them all which is as much as if he had said That when these Presbyters had supplanted their Bishops and assumed both the Name and Authority of Bishops to themselves then those Bishops and their Successors promoted and formented the Schisms and Heresies which the first Inventers had broached against those Orthodox and Legal Bishops with all manner of violence and cruelty And this is that fallacy that runs through Mr. Baxter's whole History of Episcopacy wherein all the Tumults and Confusions which the Off-spring of those ambitious Presbyters had acted is by him imputed to Bishops Whereas in truth they were not otherwise Bishops than of their own making and having usurped that title did with force and bloodshed defend their several Schisms and Heresies to the great molestation and disturbance of the true Bishops I shall make this appear in what was transacted here at home Thus we had an order of Orthodox and Learned Bishops as ever was in the Church from the Reformation but were always maligned by the Presbyters In the Year 1640. this malignity vented it self Concerning other Particulars as that of the Tria Capitula and Philippicus mentioned by Mr. Baxter under this Head I refer the Reader to the former Treatise for an answer The Smectymnians write scurrilous Pamphlets against them the London
Rabble are stirred up to Petition against them Mr. Baxter himself having in Anno 1640. conceived a dislike of them began to write his History of Bishops to represent them as the Lords of Misrule twelve Bishops are sent to the Tower the Archbishop beheaded the rest-sequestred the Nation drawn into a Covenant against them their Revenues imployed to maintain a War against the King and to gratifie such Presbyters as had defamed and opposed them Under those grew up the several Factions of Independents Anabaptists Quakers and a Fanatical Army that set the whole Nation into a Flame that continued to devour for 20 years together Now suppose the Supream Power i.e. the Parliament as Mr. Baxter says had advanced some of the most active Presbyters as Superintendents or Bishops and Archbishops for Mr. Baxter approves of this last Order as Overseers of Bishops would it become a true Historian to impute all the Disorders and Confusions that were acted by and under the several Factions and thus made Bishops to that Order which were deposed prescribed and driven into Corners or exposed to innumerable Affronts and Sufferings during all that time and yet this is the manner of Mr. Baxter's dealing with those more ancient Bishops which he mentioneth as a true Historian throughout his History of Bishops Mr. Baxter Did you know or not that Novatus was an ill chosen Bishop of Rome and Novatian a promoter of his Prelacy Answ I doubt not but Mr. Baxter knew that Novatus was meerly a Presbyter and that in his time Cornelius was Bishop of Rome with whom Novatus had a quarrel for admitting such to his Communion as in the days of Persecution under Decius had denied the Faith Novatus affirming That they could not repent after their Fall and hereupon he calls his Faction the Cathari This pure Presbyter being at Rome se sends for three Rustick Bishops as my Author calls them to come to him from Italy to Rome where he caresseth them with plenty of good Victuals and Wine and when they had well drank some of Novatus his Party prevail with those Bishops to lay their hands on Novatus and make him a Bishop but whether a Bishop of Rome as Mr. Baxter says I have not read but that Novatus and Novatian who espoused his Opinion and promoted his Faction to the great disturbance of Cornelius the lawful Bishop is notorious in Ecclesiastical History Mr. Baxter As for Donatus there were two of them one of them a Bishop and the Donatist Schism was meerly and basely Prelatical Answ Here I question your Fidelity and have proved at large in my History of the Donatists that the Schism was wholly Presbyterial for the Bishoprick of Carthage being void Botrus and Celesius two Presbyters sought to supplant Cecilian a Person of known Integrity who was chosen Bishop of that Church But Lucilla a Woman descended from a Noble Family of Spain abets their quarrel and by great Gifts prevail with Botrus and Celesius who had been defeated to appear for Majorinus who was Domestick Chaplain to Lucilla and had been Deacon to Cecilian these gather a great number of persons whom they had drawn from the Communion of Cecilian to meet at Cirta where they pronounce Cecilian deposed as a Traditor and set up Majorinus to be Bp. of Carthage who dying shortly after Donatus is by his Party chosen to succeed him whom Cecilian accused for re-baptizing those that came to his Party from the Catholick Church and for degrading Bishops and Priests And this was the rise of the Sect of the Donatists under whom the Arian Heresie spread it self and the Crew of Circumcellians arose as may be seen at large in the History of the Donatists This is a second Instance of the Schism begun by Presbyters and of Mr. Baxter's fidelity in relating Church History and imputing the Troubles caused and continued by Presbyters to the Bishops The third instance is Arius a Presbyter of Alexandria in Egypt who was bred up under Melitus another Presbyter from whom Arius was taught That Christ was not the Eternal Son of God but meer Man from both his Parents This Meletius held it lawful in times of Persecution to deny Christ as he had done and pleaded That he had not denied God but Man For these Tenets Peter Bp. of Alexandria Excommunicated them both but Peter dying Achillus succeeded him under whom Arius reading Lectures in Alexandria began to publish his Heresie and infected great numbers insomuch that Achillus dying he became Competitor for that Bishoprick with Alexander who being a Person of known Abilities and Integrity was chosen by a general Suffrage of that Church by this good Bishop Arius was Excommunicated for opposing the Divinity of Christ and teaching that he was not from Eternity nor did partake of the Substance of the Father being created in time and was indeed more excellent than other Creatures but not equal with the Father He challenged to dispute these his heretical Opinions with Alexander and a time and place was appointed but as Arius was come to the place an extream pain in his Bowels seiz'd on him and going aside to ease himself his very Bowels fell from him But his Name and Heresie survived in another Arius or as History stiles him Arianus homo potius quam Arius who opposed Athanasius in the Council of Nice but upon a full discussion of the Arian Doctrines by that Council his Heresie was condemned the Books written for it were burnt and an Edict set forth by Constantine threatning Death to such as should conceal any of their Books Now how long this Heresie prevailed how many Catholick Bishops were banisht and murthered for opposing it how it spread like a Gangreen through all the Members of the Church as you have set forth in your History of Bishops is mostly true but your imputing those Confusions to the Catholick Bishops who were the Sufferers in all that time being the defensive Party I am bold to say is false for under the Arian Schism and by such as took part with them as the Donatists Nestorians Eutychians Macedonians Acephalites Monothelites who often made havock of one another and all united to distress the true Bishops all those Mischiefs which you mention in this Letter and more largely in your Hist of Bishops were put in Execution for 140 years together i.e. from the days of Constantine to the days of Constantius nec dum finitus Orestes Mr. Baxter Were it not for entering on an unpleasing and unprofitable task I would ask you Who that Juncto of Presbyters was that dethroned the King Answ They were such as the Westminster Assembly that dispersed their Members into the Country to animate the People to ingage in the War against the King and with Mr. Baxter assisted in carrying on the War from the beginning to the end and drew many thousands to ingage in that War Those that incouraged the Rabble of London to go to Westminster and demand Justice of him in such
A REVIEW OF Mr. Richard Baxter's LIFE WHEREIN Many Mistakes are Rectified some False Relations Detected some Omissions supplyed out of his other BOOKS WITH REMARKS on several Material Passages By THOMAS LONG B.D. One of the Prebendaries of St. Peter's Exon. I have been in the heat of my Zeal so forward to Changes and Ways of Blood that I fear God will not let me have a hand in the peaceable building of his Church Mr. Baxter's Letter to Dr. Hill LONDON Printed by F.C. and are to be sold by E. Whitlock near Stationers-Hall 1697. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND Father in GOD JONATHAN Lord Bishop of Exeter May it please your Lordship I Am very sensible how Criminal it is for any Christian to do what the very Heathen have forbid to speak any thing of the Dead but what is well and yet there are so many ill things recorded of Mr. Baxter in the following Treatise that I might justly incur your Lordships displeasure if I could not plead very necessary and satisfactory Reasons for this Undertaking First therefore I plead that I have said little or nothing in what is now published but what Mr. Baxter reported of himself as Matters of Fact in the History of his Life and other Books printed in his Life time or what is fairly inferred from the same 2. That the Substance of what is now published was printed about nine years before his Death which it is evident he had perused and acknowledgeth he had given no Answer to it except a Mentiris which was his usual Reply to other Adversaries for want of Reason and Argument 3. I say that though dead he hath first provoked me for in p. 188. part 3. of his Life he saith Long of Exeter wrote so fierce a Book to prove me out of my own Writings to be one of the worst Men living on Earth full of Falshoods and old retracted Lines and half Sentences that I never saw any like it and yet though so much concerned and surviving about Nine years he hath not discovered that fulness of Falshoods c. which he suggested but tells his Readers that it is none of the Matter in Controversie whether he be good or bad whereas it is certain that a good Man would never ingage in so bad a Cause as he hath defended by his Personal Actions as well as in many Writings and he himself tells us That a true Description of Persons is much of the Life of History p. 136. of his Life And an evil Tree cannot bring forth good Fruit. 4. I plead not my own Cause but the Cause of the Church and National Constitutions and in truth of all Degrees of Persons in the Nation for this Historical Relation of his own Life contains a virulent invective and grinning Satyr against all that live in conformity to the Ecclesiastical or Civil Laws the King is represented as a Papist and Authorizer of the Irish Insurrection the Parliament is Tyrannical making such Laws as proved Taring Engines and such as no Man fearing God could submit to the established Order of Episcopacy as Antichristian the Clergy as perjured and persecuting Persons the Nobility and Gentry as strengthners of Iniquity in the Land And do not such Scandals demand a Reply 5. It is necessary to disperse those Clouds and Umbrages with which he would cover his mischievous Designs his Pleas for Peace first second and third and his Only way of Concord being nothing else but Seeds of Discord and Confusion and necessary it was that such ill things should have good Names given them those that would propagate Schisms and Heresies need a Form of Godliness to set them off Arius Aerius and Donatus were Men of good Learning and as to appearance of good Lives also yet the one most strangely propagated that damnable Error of denying the Lord that bought him and the other those Schisms which have divided the Body of Christ his Church to this present Age 'T is but an Artifice therefore of all Seducers of which the Apostle forewarns us 2 Tim. 3.2,3 That in the last days men should be lovers of themselves covetous boasters proud blasphemers disobedient to parents unthankful unholy without natural affection truce-breakers false accusers incontinent fierce despisers of those that are good traitors heady high-minded lovers of pleasures more than of God and all this under a Form of Godliness and when even Satan can transform himself into an Angel of Light it is no marvel if his Ministers be transformed as the Ministers of Righteousness 6. I remember that our Excellent Bishop of Worcester prudently foretold of Mr. Baxter That he would dye leaving his sting in the wounds of the Church which Mr. Baxter hath abundantly fulfilled in this and many other of his Writings which Stings must be pluckt out or the Wounds which they have made will be still kept open and bleeding for though Mr. Baxter be dead he hath done what he could to raise up and arm a Succession of such a Generation of Dissenters as shall still eat into the Bowels of the Church and he hath provided a Magazine of Ammunition for them Mr. Sylvester tells us How much he was delighted in a hopeful Race of young Ministers and Christians how much he valued young Divines and hopeful Candidates for the Ministry how liberal he was of Counsel and Encouragement to them and inquisitive after and pleased with their growthful Numbers and Improvement And he told me that he had the greatest hopes and expectations from the succeeding Generation of them that they would do God's Work much better than we had done before them To which end he acquaints us in the beginning of his Preface That Mr. Baxter left the orderly disposal of his bequeathed Library to young poor Students So that here is a Fund provided for a perpetual Schism And Mr. Sylvester hath discovered a hidden Treasure of Mr. Baxter's which he is improving as a Supply of Deficiencies in another Volume Having shewn your Lordship the Reasons of my Undertaking I shall briefly give you an Account of what I have performed to frustrate these pernicious Attempts Your Lordship knows I have served as a Veterane Souldier in these Parts of the Church Militant about Fifty years and might now sue for a Dismission being somewhat elder than Mr. Baxter was when he left writing which was as Mr. Sylvester says Seven years before his death when he was as I compute it Sixty nine years old and I am now entred into the Seventy sixth year yet to excite and encourage men of greater Abilities I have as I were able performed these two things First Whereas a great part of this and other Writings of Mr. Baxter as also of his whole Life hath been spent in framing Objections against and Defamations of our well-establish'd Discipline and Liturgy which he blameth as too confused for want of Method and for its Matter abstracted from the Penal Laws as abounding with Thirty or Forty such tremendous things as a man
fearing God could not comply with though many men such as Dr. Beveredge Comber Falkner and the Authors of the London Cases have convincingly Answered and Vindicated them yet conceiving that none could so effectually confute them ad homines at least as Mr. Baxter himself hath done I recommended them that are unsatisfied to the serious use of Mr. Baxter's Last Legacy and Admonitions to Dissenters lately printed which if they would read without prejudice and malice well weigh the force of his Arguments they would do much right to Mr. Baxter and themselves For whoever shall think of opposing what Mr. Baxter hath said in Passion or heat of Disputation against what is proposed in those Admonitions will but shew how often Mr. Baxter hath contradicted himself nor will any sober Person that hath sound and wholsome Reasons offered by Mr. Baxter for the informing of his Judgment and Conscience pass by those and fasten on such putrified Soars and Ulcers and like the Horse-leach continue sucking in Corruption till he bursts and dyes when Salutary Food is provided Secondly Whereas Mr. Baxter and his Admirers value him for his great Zeal and constant Endeavours for Catholick Charity and particularly for Unity Love and Concord between all Parties in this Nation I have shewn in this Abridgment of his Life and mostly ex Ore suo from his own Relations that as much as in him lay he hath made the Terms of Love and Union impossible and that as he was a great Incendiary of our Unnatural Wars from the beginning to the end having engaged some Thousands in the Rebellion and served as a Chaplain to the Garrison at Coventry in 1642. so he was a Chaplain to Whaley the King's Jaylor in 1647. so in our unchristian Divisions he hath been the most forward Agent and Disputant Quorum pars magna fuit as testifieth Mr. Sylvester and that elaborate History of Bishops and Councils which he began to meditate in the Year 1640. and after many years was printed to shew as the Learned Dr. Maurice hath proved how much he wanted of being a Scholar or a Christian For Mr. Baxter himself was afraid lest that History as opened by him should prove a Temptation to some to contemn Christianity it self for the sake and crimes of such a Clergy p. 181. part 3. And indeed they had been intolerable in any Nation if they had been such as Mr. Baxter represents them But whoever shall consult the Catalogues of Ancient Heresies or the Histories of Schisms and Ecclesiastical Feuds and Tumults whether those Sixty Heresies reckoned by Epiphanius or those Eighty eight by St. Augustine or those greater Numbers by Philastrius and Theodoret or those Schisms occasioned by Novatus and the Donatists will have a hard Task to prove any lawful Bishop to be the Founder of any of those Heresies or Schisms It is evident therefore that he hath endeavoured to ruine the Primitive Government of the Church to raise a new Model of his own disturbed Imagination So that if there be any such Sins as Schism and Rebellion and such as Endeavour to defend and perpetuate them are guilty this Dux gregis may bear the Bell. Yet lest it should be thought that I have disquieted my self and others in vain and being an old Man have dreamt a Dream and Combat with Fears and Jealousies of my own Imagination let it be considered That as of old a Man of Gath came forth defying the Armies of Israel saying Give me a man that we may fight together and if he kill me we will be your Servants but if I prevail against him you shall be our Servants at whose words all Israel was dismayed and greatly afraid and the Philistines shouted and cried Victoria So there hath been a Defiance published in the Life of Mr. Baxter to the whole Host of Israel whereat great Insultation and Triumph among the Non-Conformists is heard in our Streets and is there not a Cause why an obscure Shepherd how meanly soever he be otherwise armed having got Goliah's own Sword wherewith to fight him should enter the Lists against him My Lord There is another such Disease as the Pice that hath infected both Sexes among us and is become Epidemical Mankind still longs for forbidden Fruit they loath Manna and require Meat for their Lusts How hath that damnable Heresie of the Socinians spread it self of late and corrupted the Faith of many though the Authors are either unknown or Persons of a very ill Character who under the Name of Deists and Vnitarians design the Contempt of all Revealed Religion and to unite us all in Atheism But as Mr. Baxter's Person was had in admiration among many Thousands of his Proselytes so his Remains are esteemed by them as precious and venerable as any Relicks of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the Superstitious Papists Whatever raw and undigested Notions uncharitable Censures malicious Scandals and false Histories he hath uttered are lickt up and swallowed by a giddy Multitude as Rarities and luscious Dainties and the Dictates of an Infallible Teacher I shall trouble your Lordship but with one Instance Mr. Baxter hath asserted as past doubt That the Marquess Antrim had a Commission from King Charles the First for Raising that Irish Rebellion wherein Two hundred thousand Protestants were Massacred this is published again from Mr. Baxter by Dr. O. in the later end of his second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And though the ground of this Report hath no other Foundation but a Libel published by some Regicides yet the confirming it by two such Evidences as Mr. Baxter and the Doctor hath authorized it to pass as Common Discourse in Cabals and Coffee-Houses I cannot but wonder that the Doctor should so little consult for his own Credit for who will regard his Testimony against other Persons who hath so confidently asserted such a Blasphemy against the Lord 's Anointed whatever he hath deserved of the Nation by his former Evidences he deserves another sort of Pension for this Scandalous Imputation for we must blot out of our Calendar the Celebrated Memory of the Royal Martyr or shew a Mark of our just Indignation against such a One as hath so publickly affronted the Authority and Wisdom of the whole Nation Pudet haec opprobria This may be worthy of the Cognizance of the Parliament My Lord I am conscious that I have moved a Nest of Wasps and Hornets that will be buzzing about my Ears but I am an old Man and hard of Hearing so that I shall not be troubled with their Noise and as for their impotent Stings they have been so vainly spent on the Church of England that they are become very Drones And I well remember that when the present Bishop of Worcester had provoked them by his incomparable Sermon against Separation almost as soon as it was published a Forlorn Party of Reformado's appeared publickly against it such as Humphries Alsop Lob a Country and City Non-Conformist with Dr. Owen and Mr. Baxter
as their Leaders with their united Force beset him and railed lowdly against him yet durst not Attack him but evaded his weighty Arguments And Mr. Sylvester in his Preface tells us That the present Archbishop the Bishops of Worcester and Ely their greatest Antagonists were expresly mentioned by Mr. Baxter as Persons greatly admired and highly valued by him and of their readiness to serve the Publick Interest both Civil and Religious he doubted not Yet such is the Hypocrisie of these Men that they will openly Scandalize and Defame such Persons for the Edification of their Party whom they inwardly approve of and admire for their Personal Vertues and constant Endeavours to serve the Publick Interest of Church and State And though I despair of meriting their good Opinion by what I have done yet I have learnt to care less for their Calumnies and Reproaches which though plentifully and with great vehemence thrown out will not stick And now my Lord begging your pardon for this tedious Address and too confident Interruption of your more important Affairs I bless the good Providence of Almighty God who under Christ the Great Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls hath placed me under the Tuition and Patronage of a Person of such Primitive Courage and undaunted Resolution as hath constantly and successfully stem'd that Spring-Tide of Popery and Socianism which was violently overflowing of us and I trust will as effectually withstand those raging Waves of Fanaticism which so impetuously assault the Ark of God on every side that we being delivered from the Hand of all our Enemies may serve God with one Consent in Righteousness and Holiness all the Days of our Life is the earnest Prayer of Your Lordships Dutiful and Devoted Servant Tho. Long. Exon Jan. 1. 1696. THE Introduction I Think it reasonable to give the Reader an Account how I became obliged to ingage in this troublesome Adventure and for his Satisfaction and my own Justification I shall declare the first occasion of my Contest with Mr. Baxter It is generally known how many Books Mr. Baxter hath written to justifie that Separation which he and others of his Perswasion had printed some of which he called elaborate and unconfutable and as another Goliah despised all the Hosts of Israel whoever appeared against him was presently born down with such a Flood of Gaul and bitter Language whereof he had an inexhaustible store that it was enough to affright any considerate Man from approaching near him he was resolved to have the last word to every Opposer and his word was as Law and Gospel to all his Party These Considerations occasioned me to think of dealing with Mr. Baxter in some other Method and having read something and heard more of his ingaging in our late War in which he continued well-nigh from the beginning to the end about 71 years and had been present at most of the great Fights and Sieges in that war as you will find hereafter from his own relation I resolved to be at some pains to trace his progress throughout the War and because I wanted opportunity to enquire it from others and partly because I might neither be truly or fully informed either from some of the Party with whom he was or the Party against whom he was ingaged I thought it much more safe and unquestionable to relate such of his Actions and his Principles and Reasons on which he acted as I could glean up from his own undoubted Writings which being done though I now perceive I were in the dark as to many other considerable Passages recorded by himself in his Life at large I caused my Collections to be printed in the Year 1682. while Mr. Baxter was living upon which he Reflects as followeth Mr. Long of Exeter if Fame misreport not the anonimous Author wrote so fierce a Book to prove me out of my own Writings to be one of the worst Men living on Earth full of Falshoods and râ—…fred Lines and half Sentences that I never saw the like of it and being overwhelmed with work and weakness and pains and having least zeal to defend a Person so bad as I know my self to be I yet never answered him it being none of the matter in Controversie whether I be good or bad God be merciful to me a sinner P. 188. of his Life Answ I will not gainsay his Conjecture of the Author of the Book in question which was intituled The second Part of the unreasonableness of Separation which was printed 1682. The Book could not seem to be so fierce being an account of his own Relations concerning his Actions and Writings which if they represent him to be one of the worst Men living upon Earth I could not help that Mr. Baxter himself in his History of Bishops pleads for his justification That he made use of their own words In the Preface to that Book he says in a Parenthesis That the Book was full of Falshoods retracted Lines and half Sentences but that he never answer'd it which is very strange seeing he lived above 9 years after he had perused the Book in which interval he wrote several large Treatises which less concerned him than that wherein he says he was so much mis-represented And in all probability if the Book which he reflects on had been so full of Falshoods retracted Lines and half Sentences he might during that interval have found leisure enough to have given some Instances of what he pretended against with his Plea of being overwhelmed with work weakness and pains appears to be but a vain Excuse for he had zeal enough to defend himself against several others that charged him with much lesser Miscarriages And it was very considerable to the Matter in Controversie whether the Person so fiercely accused were good or bad whether he were an honest and peaceable Man one wholly devoted to serve a private interest against the publick welfare Mr. Baxter thought this a Reason why so many adhered to the Parliament That though the King had the Cause the Parliament had the better Men Mr. Baxter's Life p. 37. For my part I should have been extreamly confounded if either Mr. Baxter whilst he was living or any one since his death could have discovered an hundredth part of that Fierceness Falshood or imperfect Sentences in my Book which Dr. Maurice hath observed in Mr. Baxter's Church History of Bishops wherein he strikes at Christianity it self by the Reproaches which he casts on the Primitive Bishops calling them A few turbulent Spirits p. 46. silencing and destroying Prelates p. 73. proud contentious ambitious and hereticating Bishops p. 77. firebrands of the world p. 98. merciless furious and confounders of Churches p. 183. Nor doth he deal more mercifully with our Diocesan Bishops whom he calls Silencing damning Prelates Bryars and Thorns and Military Instruments of the Devil Though in a good mood he saith That none of the Bishops had silenced them unless by voting as Peers in the House of Lords for the
Theological Differences but Law Differences Letter to Mr. Hinckley p. 25. The first open beginning was about the Militia says Mr. B. And how then did the Bishops begin it The Commons wrested it from the King and by one Order after another seized his Forts and Magazines the Tower of London and his Navy Had any of the Bishops a hand in this They all did and now do own That the sole command and disposition of it is and by the Laws of England ever was the undoubted Right of his Majesty and that both or either of the Houses of Parliament cannot nor ought to pretend to the same They were such Conformists who begun the War as Mr. B. who taught That the Law that saith the King shall have the Militia supposeth it to be against Enemies and not against the Commonwealth nor them that have a part in the Soveraignty and to resist him here is not to resist Power but Vsurpation and private Will And where the Soveraignty is divided into several hands as into King and Parliament and the King invades the other part they may lawfully defend their own by War and the Subject lawfully assist them yea though the power of the Militia be expresly given to the King unless it be also expressed that it shall not be in the other H.C.W. Thes 363. Another beginning of the War was a Confederacy with the Scots then in the Bowels of the Nation with whom the King was informed that some of the Parliament held Correspondence with The Earls of Essex of Warwick Bedford Clare Bullingbrook Mulgrave Holland the Lords Say and Brook and many more were said to be of this Confederacy p. 17. of B's Life with the five Members and Kimbolton whom the Parliament and City protected from the hands of Justice and procured and countenanced armed Tumults Mr. B. makes an Objection p. 474. of H.C.W. That Tumult at Westminster drove him i.e. the King away Answ Only by displeasing not by endangering or medling with him though the King tells us otherwise in his Chapter of Tumults to which I refer and observe Mr. B's Account p. 19. of his Life That too great numbers of Apprentices and others emboldned by proceedings of Parliament not fore-knowing what fire the sparks of their Temerity would kindle did too triumphingly and disorderly urge the Parliament as they had done the King crying Justice Justice the King called these Tumults the Parliament called them City Petitioners which in the end did more than displease the King So that his Report of an Episcopal War was but a Dream of his own though he affirms he was as sure of it as of any thing that he saw yet elsewhere he says no Man can tell where and when and by whom the War was begun Confessions p. 61. Mr. B. knows another sort of five Members that begun the War who were no Episcopal Men I mean the Smectymnuans who wrote so insolently and pedantickly against that meek pious and learned Bishop Hall And how Isaac Pennington brought a Petition of 15000 Londonners against Archbishops Bishops c. which was seconded by the like from several Counties And on March 10. 1640. a Bill is read in the House against Episcopacy and their Vote in Parliament taken away and many of them sent to the Tower for entring a Protest for their Priviledge Did any of the Bishops call in the Scots or promote the Covenant or sit in the Assembly who were chosen to that very end that they might stir up the People to assist the Parliament against the King Though all these things be left on Record yet Mr. B. thinks by his bare Authority to perswade the present and succeeding Generations that the War was begun by Bishops and carried on by a Parliament an Army and Assembly of Conformists yet to excuse the Presbyterians he says p. 26. that the Separatists and Anabaptists began the War Mr. B. will not say that Bishop Hall whom he so frequently commends had any hand in the beginning of our Wars nor will he ever be able to perswade others that what he hath written and publickly delivered as Matter of Fact in the beginning of our Troubles is false I therefore refer the Reader to that Treatise written with his own hand May 29. 1647. having first given you part of a Speech delivered by this excellent Prelate in the House of Lords p. 425. of his Remains My Lords It is a foul and dangerous Insolence which is now complained of to you in the Petitions against Bishops but it is but one of an hundred of those which have of late been done to the Church and Government The Church of England as your Lordships cannot but know hath been and is miserably infested on both sides with Papists on one side and Schismaticks on the other The Psalmist hath of old distinguished the Enemies of the Church into wild Boars out of the Wood and little Foxes out of Burroughs the one whereof goes about to root up the very Foundation of Religion the other to crop the Branches and Blossoms and Clusters thereof both of them conspire the utter ruine and devastation of it As for the former of them I do perceive a great deal of good zeal for the remedy and suppression of them and I do heartily congratulate it and bless God for it and beseech him to prosper it But for the other give me leave to say I do not find many that are sensible of the danger of it which yet in my apprehension is very great and apparent Alas my Lords I beseech you to consider what it is that there should be in London and the Suburbs and Liberties no fewer than fourscore Congregations of several Sectaries as I have been credibly informed instructed by Guides fit for them Coblers Taylors Felt-makers and such like Trash which all are taught to spit in the face of their Mother the Church of England and defile and revile her Government From hence have issued those dangerous assaults of our Church Governours from hence that inundation of base and scurrilous Libels and Pamphlets wherewith we have been of late over-born in which Papists and Prelates like Oxen in a Yoke are still matched together O my Lords I beseech you to be sensible of this great indignity do but look on these Reverend Persons Do not your Lordships see here sitting on these Benches those that have spent their time their strength their bodies and lives in preaching down and writing down Popery and which would be ready if occasion were offered to sacrifice all their old blood that remains to the maintenance of that Truth of God which they have taught and written And shall we be thus despightfully ranged with them whom we do thus professedly oppose But alas this is but one of those many scandalous Aspersions and intolerable Affronts that are daily cast upon us My Lords if these Men may with freedom and impunity thus beat down Ecclesiastical Authority it is to be feared they will not
rest there but will be ready to affront Civil Power too Your Lordships knows that the Jack Straws and Cades and Wat Tylers of former times did not more cry down Learning than Nobility and those of your Lordships that haâ—… read the History of Munster will need no other Item c. Bishop Hall's hard measure p. 45. Nothing could be more plain than that upon the Call of this Parliament and before there was a general Plot and Resolution of the Faction to alter the Government of the Church especially The Parliament was no sooner sate than many vehement Speeches were made against the established Church Government and enforcement of extirpation Root and Branch It was contrived to draw Petitions accusatory from many parts of the Kingdom against Episcopal Government the Promoters of the Petitions were entertained with great respects The Petitions of the opposite Party subscribed with many thousand hands were slighted and disregarded The Rabble of London were stirred up to come armed by thousands to the Houses offering foul Abuses crying out No Bishops no Bishops and professed they would pull the Bishops in pieces The House of Lords sent Messages to disperse them they hold on The Marquess of Hartford told the Bishops they were in great danger advising them to continue in the House that night Messages were sent to the House of Commons but nothing done for their security At last the Earl of Manchester undertook the protection of the Archbishop of York and his Company and the rest by long stay and secret passages escaped home This Archbishop perswades the Bishops to petition his Majesty that they might be secured in the performance of their Duties and to protest against such Acts as should be made during their forced absence He drew up the Petition and Protestation in our presence avowing it to be legal just and agreeable to former proceedings and got our Subscriptions And whereas this Paper was first to have been delivered to his Majesty's Secretary then to his Majesty and after to the Parliament by the Lord Keeper these professed they never perused it and the Lord Keeper to ingratiate himself with the House of Commons and the Faction reads it in the House of Lords aggravates the matter as highly offensive and of dangerous consequence and so sends it to the House of Commons where Glyn cries it up for High Treason yea preferring it to the Powder Plot. The Bishops are called to the Bar on their knees charged with High Treason and on Jan. 30. at eight a clock in the Night in extremity of Frost voted to the Tower The Citizens entertained the News with Bells and Bonfires While we were under restraint the Faction renew the Bill which had been twice rejected to take away the Bishops Votes in Parliament and prevail Their greatest Lawyers were employed to advance our Impeachment to the highest but found nothing to fasten on us One of their Oracles professed they might as well accuse us of Adultery as Treason The House of Commons who first desired we might be brought to a speedy Trial suffered us to languish at last on our Petition we obtain it Our Impeachments being read we plead Not guilty modo formâ and desired speedy Trial. A day is appointed Wild and Glyn aggravate our pretended Treason which our Counsel being ready to answer we were put off to another day which never came The Circumstances of that days hearing were more grievous than the substance we were all thronged so miserably in that strait Room before the Bar sweating and strugling with a merciless Multitude and when dismissed exposed to a new and greater danger for in the dark we must back to the Tower and shoot the Bridge with no small peril There we lye expecting new Summons but the Parliament wave their Impeachment of Treason and accuse us of High Misdemeanours and in a Bill preferred against us desire our Spiritual Means may be taken away After some Weeks more finding the Tower to be chargeable we petition for Liberty on Bail the Lords grant it and we were freed but the Commons hearing of it expostulate with the Lords for freeing us without their consent so we are remanded to the Tower Having tarried there from New-years-eve till Whitsontide where by turns we preached every Lord's-day to a great Auditory of Citizens upon our Petition and 5000 l. Bonds with a Clause of Revocation at a short warning we were dismissed From this Relation the indifferent Reader may perceive how far the Bishops were from beginning the War who suffered most of these Indignities before the War begun and â—ow causless and shameless the Clamours of Mr. B. and his Party concerning their persecution by Bishops are when they openly affront the known Laws by keeping up publick Conventicles in the chiefest Cities of the Naâ—ion and those Reverend Bishops were so â—arbarously treated by their Predecessors against all Law and Humanity And I desire the Reader to observe whether from the year 1660. to this present time it hath not been his chief work to pour out the like Contempt Malice and Violence as was begun in 1640. and as Quintilian says Maledicus à Malefico non distat nisi occasione From these Injuries to the Bishops they proceeded to abuse and affront the King and force from him his two principal Counsellors whom they by unparallel'd proceedings cut off as their most formidable Enemies And having driven the King away by Tumults they endeavour by Remonstrances Declarations and Propositions to make his Return impossible In June 42. the Faction sends a Petition with Nineteen Propositions to his Majesty to which he made many gracious Concessions as he was ready to do even to the one half of his Prerogative to prevent that Deluge of Blood which he foresaw would follow on the War Out of these Concessions saith Mr. B. and likely he knows by whom there was framed a Catechism that would justifie the Parliament in all their proceedings against the King Yet many of those Propositions were such as his Majesty declared he could neither in Honour nor Conscience consent unto One was saith the Royal Martyr in his Chapter of the Nineteenth Proposition To bind my self to a general and implicite consent to whatever they shall desire or propound which were as if Sampson should have consented not only to bind his own hands and cut off his hair but to put out his own eyes that the Philistins might with the more safety mock and abuse him which they chose rather to do than quite to destroy him when he was become so tame an Object and fit Occasion for their Sport and Scorn This use Mr. B. and the Faction make of all his Majesty's Condescensions P. 37. B's Life The King's Answer to the Nineteen Propositions greatly confirmed many that his declaring that the Legislative Power was in King Lords and Commons and that the Government was mixt and not Arbitrary but as soon as the Parliament assumed it they exercised as
impartially especially Dr. Ames's Fresh Suit whereupon he setled in the Judgment which he never since changed about Liturgy and Ceremonies Though he had conceived a Prejudice against them long before as Persecutors viz. when he was 19 years old But still he was absolutely for Episcopacy as it is with us till 1640. when the new Canons with the c. Oath came out which was the very thing that occasioned such Non-conformity as he is guilty of About this time 1640. Mr. Baxter having no Benefice as he tells us See pag. 73. of the Treatise of Episc and pag. 60. of his Apol. and perhaps for that reason among others being a resolved Non-conformist betakes himself to Bridge-North a Town in Shropshire consisting of six Parishes most of them great ones which were under an Ordinary and Court of their own exempt from the Bishops Jurisdiction so that he never used Cross nor Surplice his Subscription notwithstanding having liberty to forbear them He had no inclination to a Pastoral Charge p. 13. of his Life Subscription almost as soon as he made it he began to judge unlawful p. 14. and while he was at Bridge-North he never administred the Sacrament nor Baptized with the Sign of the Cross nor wore the Surplice ibid. p. 14. This place he chose to make the Stage for that Prologue which ushered in the following Tragedy To ingratiate him with the People there is a Report spread that it rained Manna at his coming thither From the Oath mentioned in the Canon he takes the Plot of his first Scene which was this Though every Minister in the Country saith Mr. Baxter was for Bishops as well as himself yet they were so startled by the Oath or rather by Mr. Baxter who was resolved to oppose it that a Meeting is appointed about it for N.B. the Meeting was to be on his Lecture-day and it was his lot to be the Opponent which was too much for one Man to preach the Lecture and manage the Dispute had not Mr. Baxter been over-zealous Mr. Baxter p. 27. of his Life says overdoing is undoing To magnifie that days exploit he says The Defendant was Mr. Christopher Cartwright a good Man and incomparably beyond him in Learning the Defender of King Charles the First against the Marquess of Worcester and the Author of the Rabinical Commentary on Genesis whose Papers of Justification saith he I since answered All these Titles he gives Mr. Cartwright to enhance his own Victory which he easily obtained for though my Objections saith Mr. Baxter were none of the strongest yet the Ministers thought that he failed in answering them so that they broke up more dubious i.e. more dissatisfied as to Episcopal Government than before And thus the Learning and Reputation of Mr. Cartwright were made Trophies to adorn Mr. Baxter's Victory The Scotch Covenant he says was not the first imposed on us that would have been swallow'd without chewing though imposed without Authority but this though required by lawful Authority he was prepared and resolved to oppose P. 37. of his second Defence against the Bishop of Worcester Mr. Baxter says he was so well acquainted forty years ago with many aged Nonconformist Ministers as his familiar Friends that he knew their minds and probably was confederate with them which was about the beginning of the late War in which he was so active that he encouraged some thousands and by the Loyal Party was lookt on as a dangerous Person for he complains that they often sought his Life by unjust Accusations though God delivered him Postscript to true Cath. p. 312. And now if it appear not by his own Narrative of his Education what put the Principles of Non-conformity into his Head yet that which follows will plainly evince what Prejudices against Conformity had possest him from his youth as well against the Government of the Royal Martyr as against his Ecclesiastical Superiours to both which by many actual Oaths as well as other Legal Oblations he was bound to yield obedience but acted and wrote most violently against them P. 84. He boasteth of his Success in converting Souls Before I entred on the Ministry God blessed my private Conference to the Conversion of some In the beginning of my Ministry I was wont to number them as Jewels but since I could not keep any number of them when saith he the Reverend Instructors of my Youth did labour fifty years together in one place and could scarcely say they had converted one or two of their Parishes This is too uncharitable a Censure of Reverend Mens Labours for fifty years together Let others judge whether he thought not too highly of himself He turned many from the Church to Schism and Faction and incouraged Thousands he says to ingage in the War against the King If his Converts were such he had no reason to glory in the number of them His Treatise of Diocesan Bishops he says was meditated in the year 1640. that is at the same time he entred into a War against the King he broached Faction in the Church His Pen disdained to be less active than his Sword And it is probable his Church History had its Conception at the same time for as they were born near together so no Twins are better like On these his Meditations have been more or less employed ever since In every Treatise almost for he hath written to the number of Eighty we are told of the Pride Oppression and Cruelty of the Bishops and in his five Disputations of Church Government we have a Model of this Babel for the erecting of which he hath assembled all the Arian Heretical Authours that he could hear of such as Philostorgus Sondius c. and out of them he quotes only the worst things omitting what is left on Record concerning the Learning Piety Courage Patience Charity and Condescensions of those Fathers and Martyrs of whom the world was not worthy he notes only the Calumnies of their Adversaries or those Infirmities which their Zeal for Truth against Errour and their Love of Peace against Faction might discover in them And contrariwise speaking of their Adversaries whether Arians Nestorians Donatists Novatians c. he commends them as good and well-meaning Men mistaken only in the manner of expressing themselves applauding them for their holy and strict Lives without any notice of their damnable Errours though they denied the Lord that bought them And thus he hath dealt with the Councils and Ancient Fathers to whose Decrees he imputes all the Troubles which were occasioned in the Church by those Hereticks and Schismaticks that opposed them not taking any notice how great a Fence those learned and godly Men were to the Church of God as well against Heathen as Hereticks whom they resisted even to Blood So that Mr. Baxter hath not reproached them only but Christianity it self and represented the Discipline and Authority of the Church as not to be submitted to or tolerated in the World And this
of his Apology where he tells us what sort of Persons were put into the Cures of the Ejected Clergy In my Opinion says he the Sequestring Ministers being mostly young Men in the Vniversities that had nothing of their own could not else get Bread and Clothing much less Fire and House-room Many of these thought it a good work yea a very good work to cast out those as Insufficient and Scandalous and having a lawful Call to the Work they thought they had so to the Salary And when these Sequestrators were forced by the approach of the King's Army to leave their Cures to their proper Owners Mr. Baxter thinks these the Usurpers before God and that they were bound if possible to make Restitution of the Tithes and Maintenance which they had received as much as if they had broke mens Houses or robbed by the High-way See Dr. Pearce against Baxter § 26. Mr. Baxter affirms That if Bishops who come in by the King's Nomination and not by the Majority of the People shall impose inferiour Pastors on the Parish Churches and command the Peoples Acceptance and Obedience the People are not bound to accept and obey them as such nor is it Schism to Disobey no more than it is Treason to Reject the Usurper of a Kingdom So that Mr. Baxter pronounceth as well the King as the Bishops and all Ministers Presented by them or other Patrons to be meer Usurpers This is as the Bishop of Worcester says an excellent Plea for Peace p. 138 139. of the History of Separation I cannot omit to inform the Reader because I my self and some thousand others yet live to contradict him how falsly as well as maliciously he calumniates the happy and peaceable Reign of the Royal Martyr for so it was until the times of Mr. Baxter's unhappy Reformation We read Ezra 3.12 When the Foundation of the second Temple was laid the People shouted but the Priests and Levites and chief of the Fathers who were ancient Men that had seen the first House wept with a loud voice I cannot without a fit of Grief and Pain look back upon those over-prosperous times wherein Peace and Truth did so flourish that we were the Envy of our Neighbour Nations and until groundless Fears and Jealousies distracted us this Nation was as Jerusalem a City at unity within it self Every one sate under his own Vine and under God's Vine too There was no decay of Trade no leading to Captivity till we began to surfeit of our Plenty and to grow sick of Peace and to loath Manna it self and then God gave us up to the hands of such Physicians as had the skill only to let us Blood but never the Art to staunch it till all our Strength and Beauty all our Liberties Properties and Religion were past recovery by the Wit of Man and God himself did it by a Miracle from Heaven And yet this Man of Peace forsooth to whom and such as he we owe the loss of all our Blessings and all the Damages done to Church and State is at every turn defaming those happy Times complaining of Persecution of Christians and Slavery in Civil Respects See what he says H.C.W. p. § 7. The Peoples Rights were evidently invaded many Thousands have suffered or were forced to remove out of the Land upon the account of illegal Impositions and though he himself observes the contrary p. 88. of his Apol. Ministers were ejected and punished for not bowing towards the Altar for preaching Lectures and twice on the Lord's day whereas the Canon only required that they who used that Ceremony would not despise them that used it not c. obliging no Man and the Afternoon Sermon was only to be exchanged for a Catechize Lecture The Preachers that were silenced were mostly Brownists and Anabaptists or such as were prohibited to preach at Norwich One was a Draper another a Taylor a third a Weaver as appears by the Register there If any Ministers were silenced they were such as contrary to their Subscriptions and Solemn Vows refused Conformity and preacht up Sedition and Schism which no Government could endure Nor were any punished but for preaching or practising Sedition and Faction which was then so strong as to affront the Laws and within a little while to destroy them and the Government both in Church and State To dismiss this Book of the Saints Rest which was his first and his best as he thought himself for if Mr. Cressy saith he had read no better than my Saints Rest the Life of Faith the Divine Life the Christian Directory c. he would never have gone from the Protestants to Popery for want of an affectionate Spiritual Devotion I would willingly prevail with Mr. Baxter that as in a later Edition of his Saints Rest he left out the mention of Brook Pym Hamden c. as Members of a more knowing unerring well-ordered right aiming self-denying unanimous honourable triumphant Senate so if he liv'd to see another he would leave out those unsutable Passages which I have mentioned and change them for such as this in the Epistle I shall leave you my best advice for your immortal Souls as the Legacy of a dying Man receive it as from one that unfeignedly loves you as if I offered it on my bended knees yea as one that hath received Authority from Christ to command you I charge you in his Name as you will answer it when we shall meet at Judgment that you faithfully and constantly practise these Directions whereof this is one Above all see that you be followers of Peace and Vnity both in the Church and among your selves I differ from many in several things of considerable moment yet if I should zealously press my judgment on others so as to disturb the Peace of the Church and separate from my Brethren I should fear lest I should prove a Ferebrand in Hell for being a Firebrand in the Church And for all the interest I have in your Judgments and Affections I here charge you that if God should give me up to any factious Church-rending course that you forsake me and follow me not a step No sooner had the Preebyterians excluded the Bishops and their Directory the Liturgy but the Lord's Prayer is also exploded as a thing of no use either for matter or form for the men of that Age thought it not Spiritual enough for such over-grown Christians as they were being adapted only to the Nonage of the first Disciples Nor was it sufficient to disuse it but they poured out all the Contempt they could upon it both from their Pulpits and the Press Dr. O. was so transported with the In-dwelling of the Spirit that at the same time when he wrote against the Socinians he wrote also against the use of our Lord's Prayer And this Anticristian Practice prevailed so far that the People generally refused to teach it their Children Some gave God thanks they had forgotten it and if any sober Clergy-man
have more sound and loyal Principles of Government and Obedience And yet they have preacht and publisht to the World the same Doctrines which were voted January the 4th 1648. That the Representative of the People in Parliament have the Supream Power of the Nation and whatever is enacted or declared for Law by the Commons in Parliament hath the form of a Law and the People are concluded thereby though the Consent of King and Peers be not had thereunto Which Votes were passed in order to the King 's Trial. Were not they the King 's most Loyal Subjects that carried on a War against him until they made him their Prisoner and then used him as a captiv'd Slave denying him the liberty of a Man the society of Wife Children and any Attendant whom he could trust and of a Christian denying him the assistance of his Chaplains leaving him no Comfort that might make his Life desirable but perpetually baiting him with the Covenant and such unreasonable Propositions as they knew before-hand the King could not in Honour or Conscience comply with Being thus bound and chain'd the Independants take him out of their hands and put an end to his Sufferings Salmasius a great Presbyterian himself truly represents the Case If a Thief says he p. 353. of his Defensio Regia apprehends a Traveller disarms him robs him of his Money and leaves him naked and fast bound to some Tree and some ravenous Beast finding him in that condition kills and devours him to whom ought the cause of his Death to be imputed to the Thief or to the Beast And he concludes Ita justum Regem sanctum extinxere Presbyteriani These disarmed him of his Militia these bought and sold him as a Captive these covenanted to preserve his Life with a Condition of his preserving their Religion which when he should refuse they thought themselves bound by Covenant to desert him The Army in a Remonstrance from St. Albans Novemb. 16. say that Whereas it might be objected that the Covenant obliged them to preserve the King's Person They say It was with this restriction In the preservation of the true Religion Religion and Publick Interest were to be understood the principal and supream Matters engaged for the King's Person and Authority were inferiour and subordinate which being not consistent with the preservation of Religion and Publick Interest they were by the Covenant obliged against it And what was it less that the Commissioners of the General Assembly of the Scots resolved on viz. That if the King were excluded from Government in England for not granting the Propositions concerning Religion and the Covenant it was not lawful for that Kingdom to assist him for the recovery of his Government yet this is that Solemn Covenant for the obligation whereof Mr. Baxter so contumaciously pleads against the Authority of the whole Nation And upon these and such like Proposals from Scotland the Parliament vote That no more Addresses be made from them to the King nor any Letters or Message received from him And That it should be Treason for any person to receive Letters from the King or deliver any to him without leave from both Houses And were not these the King 's most Loyal Subjects Or what Body or Party of Men have in Mr. Baxter's sence more sound or loyal Principles of Government and Obedience How often and how deeply this incomparable King was wounded at the heart by those barbarous Declarations of the Parliament and Presbyterian Incendiaries as if he were a witless worthless faithless Person not to be trusted in his most Solemn Protestations against his Intentions for Tyranny and Popery is beyond any Man's expressions but his own These had often murdered him in his Honour and Reputation before his last Execution Nor could his last Speech silence those malicious Blasphemies he was no sooner dead but he was executed in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as much as lay in the power of his Adversaries rob'd of that immortal Jewel more worth than his Crown though no Man was so qualified for such pious and excellent Meditations as himself Those two Disputes about Episcopacy against Henderson and a Junto of Presbyterians at Newport of which his greatest Enemies could not deny him to be the genuine Author sufficiently shew his great Abilities both for Learning and Acurateness of Stile of which Debates the Bishop of Worcester says that his Majesty understood the Constitution of our Church as well as any Bishop in it and defended it with as clear and strong Reasons whereof that Learned Bishop made great use against Mr. Baxter's opposition of Episcopacy p. 271 280. of his History of Separation Yet from the beginning of the War to the end of the Life of that best of Kings and I may add to the end of Mr. Baxter's Life no one hath endeavoured to defame him more and render him odious to Posterity than Mr. Baxter by charging him with granting Commissions to those Irish Papists that massacred Two hundred thousand Protestants of which more hereafter Though Mr. Baxter was disabled to combate any longer with the Sword yet is he resolved to do it with the Pen which he dips not in Gall and Vinegar but in the very Poyson of Asps to keep open the Wounds of the expiring Church To which end he endeavours to draw his Neighbour-Ministers into an Association and procures the Worcestershire Agreement the design of which you may see in Mr. Baxter's Gildas Salvianus which was intended as a Humiliation Sermon to those that would enter into the Association not that they should humble themselves but the Clergy that yet adhered to the King For one effect of it was the promoting a Petition That notoriously insufficient and scandalous persons and as such Mr. Baxter represented the Loyal Clergy though as himself observes in the same Book the Synod of Dort called them Stupor Mundi the Astonishment of the World by reason of their Eminency should not be permitted to meddle with the Mysteries of Christ especially the Sacraments Upon which Petition as Mr. Baxter hath been told there issued that rigid Proclamation for Silencing all sequestred Ministers and forbidding them not only the Exercise of their Ministry but of keeping any Schools c. A design as witless as it was wicked for Mr. Baxter notes in the Preface to that Book That it had been put to a Vote in Parliament to take away both Ministry and Maintenance which was carried in the Negative by two Voices only yet like another Sampson he is pulling down the Pillars of that House whose Ruines would bury himself and all his Order A little taste of his Malice at that season must needs distaste the impartial Reader One sort that will be offended at me says he are some of the Divines of the Prelatical way as indeed they all justly might for reproaching not as by hear-say but from sight and feeling first the Silencing of most godly able men the Persecution even
much as one Collect but instead thereof they petition for a Reformation both of Doctrine and Discipline and particularly they petition his Majesty that some Learned Godly and Moderate Divines of both Perswasions indifferently chosen may be employed to compile such a new Form as they there described or at least to revise and effectually reform the old c. The King denies the first part of making a New Liturgy and tells them he had in his Declaration of Octob. 25. expressed his esteem of the Liturgy of the Church of England but grants the second and authorizeth certain Persons to advise upon and review the said Book comparing the same with the most ancient Liturgies And if reason be to make such reasonable and necessary alterations corrections and amendments as should be thought needful c. with this special caution Avoiding as much as may be all unnecessary abreviations of the Forms and Liturgy wherewith the People are acquainted And how thankfully was this received Mr. Baxter tells us That he drew up another Liturgy a Petition for Peace and Concord and a Reply to the Answer of the Bishops to their Exceptions This new Liturgy though he confesseth it had many imperfections and needed to be amended being the hasty off-spring of eight days yet he pedantically calls it their more correct Nepenthes and protests before God and Men against the dose of Opium which was by the Bishops prescribed i.e. the Liturgy which the King recommended to them as that which plainly tended to cure their Disease by extinguishing of Life and to unite them in a dead Religion Dr. Reynolds he confesseth blamed them for offering a new Liturgy instead of additional Forms but they would have their New or nothing And tells the Bishops If these be all the abatements and amendments you will admit you sell your innocency and the Churches peace for nothing which is indeed somewhat cheaper than that for which his Brethren sold the King and those other things to boot I have heard it credibly reported by some Reverend persons there present that that Treaty might have had the desired effect of Concord had not Mr. Baxter so obstinately resisted Particularly the Learned Bishop of Chester told Mr. Isaak Walton that Dr. Sanderson said There was a certain person there Mr. Baxter knows whom he meant that appeared to be so bold troublesome and illogical as forced the meek Doctor to say with an unusual earnestness that he never met with a Man of more pertinacious Confidence and less Abilities in all his conversation And the Reverend Bishop of Worcester in his Letter p. 13. affirms That Mr. Baxter's furious eagerness to engage in a Disputation to which his Brethren shewed themselves unwilling did wholly frustrate the way that tended to an amiable and fair compliance His Petition for Peace then was like his Pleas now meer threatning and reviling Take heed says he p. 5. how you drive men by Penalties upon that which they judge doth tend to their Damnation And p. 14. The denial of their desires would renew all our troubles p. 18. they tell the Bishops of unmerciful Impositions Nor did they deal better with the King whom they desired to leave out of his Declaration these words We do not in Our Judgements believe the practice of those particular Ceremonies we except against to be in it self unlawful that is we account them unlawful They tell the Bishops in the close of the Second Paper If they will grant those favours it would revive their Hearts to daily and earnest Prayer for their prosperity But p. 12. Should we lose the opportunity of our desired Reconciliation it astonisheth us to foresee what doleful effects our Divisions would produce which we will not so much as mention in particular lest our words should be misunderstood And p. 117. of their Reply As Basil said to Valens the Emperour that would have him pray for the life of his Son If thou wilt receive the true Faith thy Son shall live which when he refused he said The will of God be done with thy Son So we say too If you will put on Charity and promote the Churches Peace God will honour you but if you will do contrary the will of the Lord be done with your Honours Now what greater insolency could they have used if the King had been as low as his Father and the Bishops as obnoxious as Mr. Baxter and his Brethren And who but Mr. Baxter could have thought by a hasty work of eight days done in opposition to his Majesty's Commission and as he confesseth against the advice of some of his more sober Brethren to justle out the Liturgy composed by many Martyrs and Confessors and approved of by the Reformed Churches ever since the Reformation as his Majesty tells him in that Declaration To which though they now say they would have submitted yet could they not then at his Majesties request read any part of the Liturgy though they confessed they could have used almost the whole But instead thereof his Majesty complains in that Declaration of their restless Spirits who continued their bitterness against the Church and endeavoured to raise Jealousies against his Majesty and unseasonably Printed Published and Dispersed a Declaration to his Majesties reproach Their whole Petition was a Pharisaical Remonstrance of their own Godliness and Abilities and the Profaneness of such as were not of their Perswasion besides their frequent and fearful outcries of Persecution and Sufferings when themselves had been the Persecutors for Twenty Years together and as yet had suffered nothing but from their own guilty Consciences and just fears Well might the Loyal Party have answered those Complaints as once their Independent Brethren did Is there the least shew of Oppression Sorrow or cause of Complaint except it be that you are not suffered to oppress vex and gall your Brethren that joyn not with you Can you feed upon nothing but the Blood of your Brethren that though you are as capable of all Preferments even Bishopricks and Deanaries as any of the Loyal Clergy you complain of Slavery and Oppression because you cannot enslave and lead into Captivity Is this to kill you with the Sword that you cannot again kill your Brethren with the Sword See more to this purpose in the Pulpit-Incendiary printed 1648. p. 45. Your Renowned Protector Oliver speaks home to you at the dissolution of the Parliament 1654 in these words Is it ingenuous to ask Liberty and not to give it What greater Hypocrisie than for those who were oppressed by the Bishops to become the greatest Oppressors themselves so soon as the Yoak was removed And his Majesty in the Chapter concerning the Ordinances against Common-Prayer to this effect I see that those are the most rigorous exactors upon others to conform to their illegal Novelties who were least disposed to the due obedience of lawful Constitutions So that I know not whether they sinned more against their Consciences by violently opposing Our established
he be impartial a lover of peace and not ingaged in a faction a sober calm considerate man not one that is passionately rash that shews a malignant spirit one that extenuates or denies all the good that was in his Adversaries and fastneth on them all the Odium he can without proof one that is not deeply ingaged in a party one that is of manifest honâ—… 〈◊〉 conscience c. For want of which qualifications it is truly observed by Dr. Maurice that as his Church History was designed to disgrace Diocesan Bishops so the Preface looks as if it were intended to disgrace his History Nor must we believe our Senses if we must believe that they were Episcopal men that begun the late War when the contrary appears by many other acknowledged Proofs and continued visible Effects related by Mr. Baxter himself The Parliament having had long and late experience how troublesome and implacable such as Mr. Baxter were proceeded to the establishment of the Church and publick Worship excluding none but such as would exclude themselves And as a signal of his Majesty's impartial favour he offered Bishopricks to three Deanries to two or three more and other Dignities were given to several sober Persons that had been of another Perswasion One Bishoprick was accepted one which I suppose was Mr. Baxter refused it See p. 134. of First Plea His reason I suppose was the same that he gave for not reading Common Prayer p. 105. of Sacr. Desert Should the Ministers that have suffered so long but use any part of the Liturgy and Scripture Forms though without any motive but the pleasing of God and the Churches good it seems these Motives would not prevail for this Reason what muttering and censuring would there be against them This bold Man was afraid of the People And in truth he has made it morally impossible for him to accept a Bishoprick having often declared by word and published it in print That the Office of a Bishop as exercised in the Church of England was Antichristian And saith in his Method for peace of Conscience p. 389. We had taken down the superfluous honour of Bishops as Antichristian upon which N.B. the Devil set them to cry down also as Antichristian Tythes Maintenance Priests and Ministers And moreover that the return of such Men would be a great Plague to the Land in Postser to the True Catholick p. 335. And Mr. Baxter knows there is an ancient Canon That a man that had his hand in blood might not be a Bishop See p. 213. of his History And p. 36. A Government which gratifieth the Devil and wicked Men. And now he begins to defame the Laws as he had formerly done the Liturgy and not having other means he discovers his impotent malice in writing a Prognostication dated when by the King's Commission we in vain treated for Concord 1661. He observed p. 40. That the Sectarian Spirit was like Gunpowder ready to take fire on such injuries And Mr. Baxter with his Prognostication like Guy Faux with his Dark Lanthorn is ready for the Exploit and sorry only that it is not done He intimates the Clergy to be proud worldly covetous domineering malignant lazy the plague of the world troublers of Princes dividers of Churches that will being Hypocrites as to Christianity and Godliness like Judas that loved the Bag better than Christ make themselves a Religion consisting of meer Corps and the dead Image of true Religion See p. 12 13. He cries out of New Impositions Subscriptions and Oaths words and Actions which they believe to be against God's Word Doth not this aim directly at the Laws P. 14. he says Their Sufferings will make many otherwise sober Ministers too impatient and to give their Tongues leave to take down the Honour of the Clergy And this will stir up the People and make them pray for the downfal of the Clergy which they take to be Enemies of God and Godliness and that to speak easily or charitably of such Men is but to be lukewarm and indifferent between GOD AND THE DEVIL p. 20. Some of the Non-conformist Ministers will think these Passions of the People needful to check the sierceness of the Afflictors Some of the more injudicious hot-brain'd sort who are the greatest number will put them on and make them believe that all Communion with any Conforming Ministers or Parish Churches is unlawful and that they are all Temporizers and Betrayers of Truth and Purity that communicate with them and carry about among themselves false Reports and Slanders because they will think that the upholding of their Cause which they think is God's doth need the suppression of these mens Credit and Reputations p. 25 26. The godly and peaceable Conformists will get the love of the sober by their Doctrine and Lives but will be despised by the Sectaries because they conform and will be separated by the proud and persecuting Clergy as leaning to the Dissenters and thereupon will be under continual Jealousies and Rebukes And perhaps new Points of Conformity shall be devised to be imposed on them which it is known their Consciences are against that so they also may be forced to be Non-conformists because secret Enemies are more dangerous than open Foes and so part of them will turn downright Non-conformists and the other part will live in displeasure till they see an opportunity to shew it And these are the likeliest to cross and weaken the worldly persecuting Clergy This is such a Prognostication as that for which Mr. Baxter observes Mr. Vdal was condemned in Queen Elizabeth's Reign in an Assize-Sermon on Psal 2. And it is no otherwise a Prognostication than Astrologers observe of Blazing-stars they do irritate and dispose the Humours and Spirits of Men to disorderly Actions to which the event shews that this Prognostication and Mr. Baxter's influence on the People hath had a malign Aspect not unlike the Prophesie of Nostredamus's Son That a certain great City should be burnt and to fulfil his Prophesie did procure it to be set on fire My next Remark is on Mr. Baxter's behaviour at Kedderminster where the Bishop of Worcester publickly declared That he made the People believe that it was lawful for them to take up Arms against the King and suffered or made them to scruple at those things which were lawful which he himself confesseth to be lawful and that he himself heard him to maintain such a Position as was destructive to the Legislative Power both of both of God and Man viz. That the enjoyning of things lawful by lawful Authority if they might by accident be the cause of sin was sinful This was the chiefest Argument urged against Kneeling c. by Mr. Baxter See the Bishops Letter p. 4. and 6. Now though the known integrity of the Bishop is enough to make all good Men believe this Relation yet the consideration of the Premises puts the truth of it beyond all doubt or exception Was this behaviour
Priests p. 44. He talks of Per and Pers p. 49. but lays his Scene in Vtopia and says I know this is not our case in England but if we must follow you into Utopia Lest the Reader should not understand this he speaks plainer p. 74. I have been long of the opinion which you viz. that are of a contrary opinion will one day pardon that perjury perfidiousness and persecution proud contending who shall be greatest and covenanting never in certain points to obey Christ against the world and the flesh is not the way of God p. 56 57. Such confidence upon such insignificant reasons is a great dishonour to the wit and humility of the Authour p. 59. Our excellent Successours that do nothing but see the Peoples faces in the Church You forbid Baptism and the Lord's Supper to all that have not as large a Swallow as your selves p. 60. His want of common sense and modesty p. 65. O with what face p. 66. He tells us p. 96. of some of the Nonconformists Principles and Purposes They suppose that the Ministry doth not save Men as Wizards think that Charms do heal Men by their presence titles names or habits by standing in the Reading-place or Pulpit or being called the Parson of the Parish or saying his set words over them when dead As if the Conformists did believe all this P. 10. They suppose that a greater number of the conformable Priests than they are willing to mention do preach so ignorantly and dully in the Pulpits and do so little of their private work besides that there is great need of a far greater number of Assistants than all the present Non-conformists be They are not able to confute the People who tell them that their publick Priests are so defective in their necessary qualifications for their Office as that they hold it unlawful to own such for true Ministers and encourage them by their presence or commit the care of their Souls to such P. 11. They think that the ejecting the Non-conformists from the Temples and Tythes did not degrade nor make them no true Pastors to their Flocks and that the Magistrates putting another Parish Minister in possession of the Temple and Tythes did not dissolve the foresaid relation They think that the ejected Minister foro Conscientiae Ecclesiae vere sic dictae retaineth still his ancient relation to his Flock and part of them schismatically separate from him and joyn with another Intruder that never had a lawful Call P. 14. They think that Conformity would be in them such a composition of heinous crimes as they forbear to name for fear of seeming Accusers of others and unpeaceable P. 31. Look up man without blushing alas for these poor People that cannot try Sence from Nonsence P. 61. His next hath no bounds it grieveth me to read it O Posterity how will you know what to believe P. 62. Here is much that would as handsomely serve Celsus Julian Porphyry or Eunapius p. 72. P. 25. I will not offend the Readers ears by giving them the names I think they deserve but wish them to read 1 Thess 2.15 which in words at length he puts in his Title page They both killed the Lord Jesus and their own Prophets and persecuted us And tell them by what Names or Titles soever they be distinguished that I that am a dying man would be loth to stand in their case before God And if we were well agreed that there is indeed a God and a Christ a Heaven and a Hell we should easily be agreed in all the rest i.e. Seeing you are not of Mr. Baxter's mind you are very Atheists and in a state of Damnation P. 132. I must tell you that we cannot but think that you need Repentance great Repentance that your Souls yet if possible may be saved p. 74. for sinning more and that by publick deliberate chosen covenanted ministerial sin protesting against Repentance I conclude this Collection of many such great Calumnies which that little Book doth abound with with his impudent Challenge Come and impartially debate the Case with us who have been the greatest Causes of Protestant Divisions Conformists or Nonconformists These putrid Pestilential Stinks and Corruptions are so unlike the Breathings of a mortified Christian that the like never proceeded from any dying Man except such a one as hath been dying Twenty years together of which this is a shrewd Symptome and another is as bad that as they say of dying Beasts he bites deadly Animamque in vulnere ponit I challenge any Man to shew in so little a Book so great Pride Malice and Obloquy on so slender occasion as the Indulgence prepared by the means and in favour of the Papists as well as the Presbyter Mr. Baxter knew the Person against whom he wrote to be a Person of Great Learning and Moderation as he had acknowledged under his own hand in his Book of Conformation where he often quotes him he calls him The Learned Mr. Fulwood in the Postscript but now he is a meer trifler But there is yet ultimus conatus naturae And his restless Spirit grows more brisk and sparkling as it is pouring forth from the crazy Vessel By the great mercy of God that most execrable Plot of the Papists to Assassinate the King whom God hath hitherto by a series of Miracles preserved and the Church of England against which the Gates of Hell have not and we hope never shall prevail was discovered to the great joy of all true Protestants And now while they are undermining the Foundations Mr. Baxter though a dying Man lifts up himself and gets on the top of the Fabrick to throw it down with all his might This Polity he learnt of his Predecessors who on the intended Invasion 88. and the Gunpowder-Treason when the Papists thought to have swallowed us up quick took their advantage to thrust us into their Jaws or at least to devour us themselves if we should escape our other Adversaries That he might act with less suspition and more success he calls his Engines A Plea for Peace which as Bishop Stillingfleet observes might be better called A Plea for Discord and Division And another called The true and only way of Concord so full fraught with impracticable Notions and dividing Principles as if his whole design had been to prove that there is no true way of Concord among the Churches Bishop Stillingfleet But of this Book hereafter Another Book claims precedency whereof after great labour Mr. Baxter is delivered but it proved a Monster full of Teeth and Claws which he calls Church-History of the Government of Bishops but is indeed though very partial a History of those Confusions which were raised in the Church by such as opposed the Orthodox Bishops That the sight of this Monstrous Birth may not offend let the Reader fortifie his Eye-sight with what Mr. Baxter himself hath prepared For telling us what History is credible p. 2. n. 4. of that
Tract It ought to be saith he of One that is impartial a lover of Peace and not ingaged by Faction or Interest to one side against the other a calm and considerate Man not a passionate hasty Judge a Man of manifest Honesty Conscience and Fear of God not a Worldly Wicked Bloody Vnconscionable Man Now let the Reader consider whether this Character agree with our Author And then let the Reader take that other Antidote in the Preface The Sectaries saith Mr. Baxter who rashly separate from some Churches because of some Forms Opinions or Ceremonies which almost all Christians on Earth have used in the former purer Ages and still use should be more cautelous in examining their grounds and should hardly venture to separate from any Church for that which for the same reason would move them to separate from almost all Christians in the whole World if not unchurch the Church of Christ And let the Reader satisfie himself whether Mr. Baxter's Model be not such a Form And may it not be said of Mr. Baxter as he says of Dr. Heylin He is so palpably partial and of so malicious and bloody a strain representing excellent persons as odious intolerable Rogues that he is not to be believed Judge by this one passage p. 120. If our Neighbours that commonly these Thirty Years last use the word God dam me had put but thee instead of me I should have suspected that the Councils and Bishops had made their Religion To which add p. 464. Have not the Ministers themselves been the principal instruments of taking down the Bishops c And what have they got by it I doubt not but the Reader will find the whole Collection to be a History of the Confusion and Bloodshed occasioned by discontented and ambitious Presbyters and their party against the Orthodox who suffered under Heathen Arian and other heretical Emperours by Popes Hereticks and Schismaticks misapplied all to the Bishops and Councils and often speaks more favourably of Hereticks viz. of Arius the Novatians and Donatists who though they were usurping Presbyters he calls them Bishops and through their sides strikes at the Sacred Office p. 276. of his Plea for Peace It was by Bishops striving who should be Chief that the Donatists set up Whereas the Donatists were discontented Presbyters And in the Schisms of those times the Bishops were almost ever the chief Cause The Almost will not save it from a Lye But evident it is whatever quarrel there was in all Church-History wherein a Bishop was concerned how Innocent how Orthodox soever Mr. Baxter makes him the cause of the Quarrel and is his Adversary Hereof I could give many instances had not Mr. Baxter prevented me having said and done enough to overthrow the credit of his History However I will shew the Reader a Specimen of Mr. Baxter's Candour and Truth in relating Church-History Doth not Mr. Baxter know however he dissembles it that Arius and Aërius Novatus and Novatian Majorinus Chaplain to Lucilla a Noble Woman with Botruus and Silesius who first opposed Cecilian Bishop of Carthage and set up for Bishops by the help of Donatus who succeeded them and gave name to the Schism were all Presbyters Till they dub'd one another Bishops and then with whole Armies opposed their lawful Bishops who with great patience and constancy withstood their malice Read the History of the Donatists lately set forth and see how they used St. Augustin himself Mr. Baxter may as well ascribe all the Rebellion and Outrages all the Blasphemies and Faction that have been made within Forty Years past to the Bishops of this Land whereto it's well known the Presbyterians opened the way and led the dance as to impute what he doth to the ancient Bishops and indeed he is not ashamed to assert both these notorious falshoods Mr. Baxter asks the Question p. 429. of his Cure of Divisions Who brought in the errours of the Arians Eunomians c. And he Answers They were Bishops or Presbyters He would be sure to speak one true word I shall not trouble the Reader with all that Mr. Baxter writes of the Arians Nestorians c. in that voluminous Book but refer him to what he says more briefly in his other late Works for he repeats it in many of them P. 27. of his Plea He would not have the Arian Emperours made worse than they were because they were for Toleration of both Parties nor were the Arians themselves like the Socinians saith he because they acknowledged all save the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. save the Divinity of Christ which was all then in Controversie How dangerously saith he as if he were pleading for the Arians did Justine and most of the Ancient Doctors before the Nicene Council speak hereabout and how certainly Eusebius and other great Bishops were Arians and how the Council at Ariminum laid by the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 endeavouring reconcilation I need not send you to Philostorgus or Sondeus Arian Authors for proof If the Conformist should have said half so much he and the whole Church should have smarted for it In the Dispute between St. Cyril and Nestorius whether the Virgin Mary might be called the Mother of God you may see how partially he describes both the Persons and Opinions p. 271. of his Plea Nestorius saith he was a Man of Study and Retirement a poor garb and a strict life i.e. a Presbyterian abhorring publick Contentions and loving Quietness till he got to be uppermost and then he shewed a peevish Zeal against Dissenters called Hereticks Then for St. Cyril of Alexandria whose Works praise him in all the Churches Mr. Baxter hath scarce a good word for him because he was the first Bishop that used the Sword and persecuted the Dissenters He was a Man saith he of great Parts Spirit and Power but the Head of a Turbulent People As to their Opinions the Errour of the Nestorians lay in his want of skill in speaking saith Mr. Baxter and the Controversie was about words rather than matter Most of the People were for Nestorius and most of the Courtiers and Clergy against him and so was the Emperour who deposed Nestorius and restored Cyril but Nestorius returned to his Monastery and there lived four Years in Peace and great Reputation but afterwards was Banished into Foreign Countries and died I wonder why after Four Years he should be Banished if he had lived peaceably and quietly Did not Mr. Baxter ever read how the Emperour Theodotius confirming the Decrees of the Third General Council at Ephesus commanding That none should dare to keep read or transcribe the wicked Books of the profane and sacrilegious Nestorius but search them out cause them to be burnt publickly and that none permit them to have any House or Field to hold private or publick Assemblies and whoever adhered to Nestorius should suffer the loss of his Goods By which Edict saith the Perfect our pious Emperour knowing the Orthodox Religion to be
others as corrupters of History when it appears he had no other design in this Collection but to serve his Hypothesis and implacable malice against the Bishops and inrage the People to set the Nation in a Flame It is but a small matter for Mr. Baxter to support himself in Church History He can bid open defiance to the Laws of the Land which he calls tearing Engines and Enemies to God's publick Worship and ought to be disobeyed because it is written Whether it be better to obey God or Man judge ye He begins with a modest complaint p. 101. of first Plea It is not the sence of the Liturgy in that they seem satisfied but a Statute of Parliament which we doubt of it seems insufficient if not impertinent to tell us what is taken for the sence of the Church for the doubt is what is the sence of the Parliament which we cannot otherwise know but by their plain words till they will otherwise declare their meaning i.e. They must declare a meaning contrary to their plain words But Mr. Baxter speaks plain enough Plea the first That the Laws required of them such Subscriptions Covenants Declarations and Practices as they durst not do because they feared God A strange Parliament to make so many Laws as a Man that feareth God cannot obey If Mr. Baxter had any Fear or Reverence of Men he would not thus Reproach the Governours and Defame their Laws and all the while cry out of Persecution But what are those impious Laws This you find in another Book called A search for the English Schismatick where he states the Case between the Diocesan Canoneers and the present meer Nonconformists and though he determine not as he says which of them is the Schismatick yet he makes the Book to be a pair of Spectacles for the Purblind to discern it p. 43. This is just as he dealt by his first Plea where he tells us he will not urge the Case but mention Matters of Fact only Yet in his Book of Concord he says To answer the earnest demand of our Reasons against Conformity by you the Lord Bishop of Ely I have published an Historical Narration c. How did this answer the Bishop's earnest demand of Reasons if it did not contain them when Mr. Baxter says that was the end of publishing that Book Any one that useth Mr. Baxter's Spectacles may see they were his Reasons though he might well be ashamed to call them so But as for those Spectacles that will so plainly discover the English Schismaticks a very skilful Artist hath turned into a Looking-glass which if Mr. Baxter be not afraid to make use of he may thereby see him whom he pretends to search for it is called A Discourse about Church Vnity in defence of the Bishop of Worcester The Laws opposed are such as were made on mature deliberation to secure our Peace The Act for Uniformity and Renouncing the Covenant The Declaration that it is not lawful on any pretence whatsoever c. The Book last mentioned shews his Malice to the Parliament in making false and odious Representations of them to the People p. 457. It is scarce worth the notice that he says the Parliament was drawn in by the Convocation to make those Acts P. 13. of his Search this is but Scandalum Magnatum He comes near to Blasphemy p. 107. of his third Defence where he pleads for excusing the ignorant People who when Divisions fall out between King and Parliament do doubt which it is that should be obeyed He adds Christ was drawn by Hypocrites to pay Tribute to Caesar rather than offend as if our Saviour did what he never intended or really approved to comply with Hypocrites And who can wonder if he that speaks thus of the Master should not stick to revile his Disciples making the Conformists so many deliberately perjured Persons and which is in his own Language Mendacium magnum That about Six thousand Persons that had gone the other way did declare their assent and consent to a Book which they never saw p. 69. of his second Defence Mr. Baxter complains Preface to Diocesan Bishops That at such time as he was turned out of all he was never in so good a condition as to keep a Man-servant except when he travelled nor a Maid-servant except an old Woman to provide him Necessaries and lived in some upper Rooms of another Man's House and yet he says he built a Tabernacle in St. Martins to preach in himself p. 55. of his second and lost One thousand pounds in the Exchequer He hoped it seems to gain a reputation among the Factious of being their great Centurion who loved their Nation and built them a Synagogue But it is very observable that if at such time as Mr. Baxter was turned out of all he was in so low a Condition that he got well by his Non-conformity being able to part with a considerable Sum to build Tabernacles One Intreague I find darkly delivered p. 250. of his first Plea Even Bishops saith Mr. Baxter need to be remembred that while the Wheel is turning the upper side should not tempt Men to forget what side will be uppermost shortly and for ever The words are ambiguous like the old Oracles and may be interpreted pro captu Lectoris but whether he means the Revolutions of Providence as by the turning of the Wheel seems most proper or the Divine Judgment at last it savours of equal Pride Malice and Uncharitableness In Mr. Corbet's Funeral Sermon p. 33. preacht by Mr. Baxter he speaks more plain It seems saith he there is some great evil to come when God takes away the best yea if it should be a fore-runner of a better state yet all save two of the old stock that dishonoured God perished And it was by bloody Wars that Joshua and the new GENERATION were to possess the Land of Promise But the Oracle is expounded by other Cabalistical Rabbies who tell us boldly the time of the Episcopal Persecution is but short And on that confidence invite those whom Mr. Baxter calls the passive Conformists to come over to them promising them a kinder entertainment than they have had from their Brethren of the Conformity Spes est fore ut Fanatici quos vocant utamur illis aequioribus saith the Celeusma p. 34. There is now good hope that we whom they call Fanaticks may shew them more favour Now whether these Men be not engaged in some Plot for the extirpation of the Ecclesiastical Government by Law established to which end they so importunately plead for the Obligation of the Covenant let the Reader judge Time may discover what an ingenious Man hints in his Defence of the Bishop of Worcester p. 68. I will tell Mr. Baxter a Secret which I have heard but hope he will not put me to prove it That the Parliament made good Laws the Papists out of a pretended reverence to tender Consciences hindred the Execution of
them and some leading Fanaticks had private Encouragement to say no more to set up a mighty cry of Persecution to cast all the odium on a persecuting Church and Diocesan Canoneers Dr. Owen noses this hint Some have reported says he that some of the Non-conformists at least do receive or have received Money from the Papists to act their Affairs and promote their interest which he very angrily calls a putrid Calumny a malicious Falshood a frontless Lye and for himself he avows that never any Person in Authority Dignity or Power in the Nation or any that had any relation to Publick Affairs nor from them Papist or Protestant did once speak one word to him or advise with him about any Indulgence or Toleration to be granted to the Papists He says not that he never received any Money to promote a general Toleration which he thinking himself particularly reflected on might have done in few words And my Author desires Dr. O. to resolve him Why a Fast was appointed by a certain Independent Pastor at that time on the fifth of November which as he notes is no Popish Festival 'T is a miserable shift which the Doctor useth speaking at large of the plain open uncontroulable Evidence which the Non-conformists always gave and continue to give of their faithful cordial adherence to the Protestant Religion and Interest in the Nation whereas ever since Forty one they have notoriously scandalized and as much as in them lay ruined the Protestant Religion and National Interest His dealing with Mr. Cheney is most unchristian for in the Preface of his third Defence he judgeth him a godly serious Man yet saith he his Book is so dismal a piece in its extraordinary privation of common Reason Truth Charity Tenderness and Modesty that I am constrained to think that honest Man is diseasedly Melancholy and reports that his Book is 〈◊〉 away as a fardle of dotage and shameless lyes p. 2. of Second Part. Yet if a sober Reader be admitted to judge this melancholy Man hath so provoked Mr. Baxter's choler that he seems quite to have lost his Reason and betakes himself to Railing One Argument Mr. Cheney may well boast of which Mr. Baxter calls his Catholicon concerning a confident Tenet of Mr. Baxter That the Acts for Vniformity and Prefaces are parts of the Book of Common Prayer to which we are to declare our Assent c. Now it is said in a Preface concerning the Service of the Church That forasmuch as nothing can be so plainly set forth but doubts may arise in the use and practice of the same to appease all such diversity if any arise and for the resolution of all doubts concerning the manner how to understand do and execute the things contained in this Book the parties that so doubt or diversly take any thing as do now the Conformists and Non-conformists for Mr. Baxter says they could do and declare as the Conformists do if they could get the sence of the Acts c. to be expounded so as the Conformists understand them N.B. shall always resort to the Bishop of the Diocess who by his discretion shall take order for the quieting and appeasing of the same so that the same Order be not contrary to any thing contained in this Book And if the Bishop of the Diocess be in doubt then he may send for the Resolution of the Archbishop Mr. Baxter answers That the words make not the Bishops Expositors of the Law or Book as Judge but as a Teacher only Mr. Cheney replies Any intelligent Man may help the ignorant to understand the things in the Book but the Bishops are made decisive Judges to order in what manner to understand do and execute all doubtful things in the Book p. 212. And p. 213. he tells Mr. Baxter The late Covenanters had not such Security for their Consciences in taking that Oath in a sense varying from the precise Letter as the Conformists have for their Subscriptions c. And thus the melancholy Man beat the Conjurer out of his Circle and in his third Defence he takes no notice of it As for Mr. Hooker how contemptibly doth he speak of him p. 74. saying That a long tedious Discourse in him hath as much substance as one might put into a Syllogism of six Lines And in his Preface to the Answer of the Bishop of Worcester I am says Mr. Baxter past doubt that Richard Hooker Bp. Hall Bp. Usher were they now alive would be Non-conformists In the year 1681. comes forth Mr. Baxter's Apology for the Non-conformist Ministers in justification of their preaching against Law This he directs to the Right Reverend Bishops of London Lincoln Hereford Carlisle St. Davids and Peterborough and others of their moderation in some hope though evil Men and Deceivers wax worse and worse What his hope is he tells them If the ancient Christians might present their Apology in hope to Heathen Emperours may I not so much more to Christian Bishops You are more sensible than we with what deep sense Men will shortly hear Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these my Brethren you did it unto me See his Charity to those whom he calls our best Bishops But in p. 233. he thus concludes And now we humbly lay these Petitions at your feet and beseech you for the souls of many hundred thousands that you who call your selves their Pastors and the Fathers of the Church will not deny them the bread of Life We beseech you to come out of your Palaces a while and be familiar with the People and confer with all the Poor of the Parish and dwell in some Country Village as we have done who choose the greatest Cities and Towns that you may not see many hundred thousands damned by your means and you have nothing to say when it is to late but a non putaram That the Instances of the Obduration of Pharaoh and the Pharisees make you not afraid lest wrath come upon you to the utmost while you please not God and are contrary to all Men forbidding Christ's Labourers to preach to the Ignorant and Impenitent that they may be saved 1 Thess 2.15 And O that God would make them sensible how many thousand Persons damnation is like to be charged upon them for what they have already done for seventeen years hindring so many faithful Ministers I must profess if it were the last word that I should speak in the world that I had rather be the basest Scavenger yea and suffer many deaths than be found at the Judgment Seat of Christ in the place and guilt of those of you who have done what is done against the Gospel and Church of Christ in this Land Doth not the Reader blush for Mr. Baxter to read such arrogant Censures from a dying Man concerning his betters and all this too causelesly as I shall prove out of his own words He asks the Question p. 236. Why I write all this to you
and his death and lastly that this is the Genius of the Parliament I hope whatever Mr. Baxter may do no other Mans Conscience doth accuse him of such horrid crimes All this we have in the Title-page of his Second Plea for Peace But as the Learned Doctor observed of the First Plea it looks as if he had designed these Books on purpose to represent the Clergy of our Church as a company of notorious lying and perjured Villains These and divers other Fire-brands he fixeth in the top of the Fabrick as if that could not be purged but with Fire pretending it was guilty of many heinous Sins in the Constitution of it And when that Reverend Doctor endeavored to quench those Juniper-coals which had well-nigh set all in a flame he flies in his face charging him with pleading for Presumption Profanation Vsurpation Vncharitableness and Schism p. 73. of his Answer to the Dr's Sermon Again when the Dr. said that preaching in opposition to the Laws established is contrary to the Doctrine of all the Nonconformists of former times Mr. Baxter replies p. 21. This Assertion is so rash and false in matters of notorious fact that it weakeneth his reverence of the Doctors judgment in matters of Right p. 8. So that the Doctor might well say that he wrote that Book in a continued fit of Anger And how could it be otherwise seeing that as Bishop Burnet relates of the Earl of Rochester when God gave him a sight of his sins that he confessed he had been drunk five years together So Mr. Baxter had been distempered with an habit of wrath and rage against the Government of the Church ever since he was Nineteen years old how could he chuse but write with the spirit of Gall and bitternest against such an Adversary as would dissect him alive and discover all the Distempers of that dying Man And what could Mr. Baxter do less than call the Doctor 's Sermon a Schismatical Sermon that would so divide Mr. Baxter that makes Union impossible in any Church but what he himself shall give being and union to And yet this Man of Wrath is angry with himself that he was not more angry with the Doctor For p. 12. of Second Defence I profess says he I felt so little passion in writing that Book that I think verily I sinned all the while for want of a livelier sense of the sin and hurt which I was detecting by my Confutation And in his Title-page dividing the Doctor 's Book into Accusations Reasonings and History he pronounceth them all untrue i.e. in plain English You lie Sir in all that you have written Perhaps Mr. Baxter may not account this Passion but Zeal And his admirers say he is a Stranger to Spite and Anger but he hath a very quick and earnest temper of mind and his stile is very keen and pungent Yea and they think it lawful for him too to make the Scripture serve his passion and rail in holy Language for doubtless his Disciples think that in the Title-page 1 Tim. 6.5,6 well applied to the Doctor Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth supposing that gain is godliness from such withdraw thy self which in plain English is that the Doctor is one of those Men and you are bound to have no communion with him For Mr. Baxter though under another name represents the Doctor to be a most unskilful proud partial obstinate cruel impertinent Adversary Yet Mr. Silvester in his Preface speaking of the Author i.e. Mr. Baxter says I have heard him great and copious in commendation of several Prelates and Conformists and that he particularly mentioned the Reverend Bishops of Worcester and Eli i.e. Bishop Stillingfleet and Bishop Patrick as Persons greatly admired and highly valued by him and of their readiness to serve the Publick interest both Civil and Religious he doubted not it was therefore his bitter Zeal that transported him to write such scandalous invectives contrary to his Knowledge and Conscience But as Mr. H. says in defence of Mr. Baxter Some Men have humours and ways of their own And this it seems is the proper humour of that Party They think with Jonah they do well to be angry that God hath spared us so long and because he suffered their Gourd to spring up and cover their heads for a time whereof they were exceeding glad now that he hath suffered a Worm to strike it and make it wither and the Wind and the Sun beats on their heads they are desperately angry for their Gourd and justifie their anger even against God they do well to be angry even unto death Jonah 4.9 His Treatise of Episcopacy he says in the Title-page was meditated 1640. when the c. Oath was imposed written 1671. and published 1680. by the call of Mr. H.D. and the importunity of our Superiours who demanded the reason of our Nonconformity The design was the concord of all the Protestants who can never unite in the present impositions and for necessary reformation of Parish-Churches and those abuses which else will keep up in all Ages a succession of Nonconformists and to give an account why we dare not covenant by Oath or Subscription to endeavour the amending alteration of the Church-government c. i.e. in plain English against an Act of Parliament P. 140. of his Second Part we have this pathetical Exclamation Alas Lord How long shall Christs enemies the Bishops be Pastors of his Flocks and the seed of the Serpent be the great Instrument that must break the Serpents head and the lovers of sin be they that must be the suppressers of it and those employed to teach in Knowledge who themselves will not know and to preach up Holiness that will not endure it And p. 124. The truth is that is an excellent person to us who is an odious and contemptible person to the Prelates If he will make the People believe that Presbyterians are Rebels and Disciplinarians are seditious brain-sick fellows living in Hypocrisie And that praying without Book and much preaching is Fanaticism and that none are worthy to Preach the Gospel who will not swear to be true to the Prelatical interest That Drunkenness in a conformable Man is a tolerable infirmity and that their ignorantest Nonsence is fitter to save Souls and edifie the Church than the Labours of the Holy and Learned Non-conformists That Calvin was a Rogue as Salmasius said of the Learned Dr. Hammond That Cartwright and Amesius were discontented factious Schismaticks unworthy to preach or be endured this is a Son of the Church and an excellent Person P. 213. of the second Part Confect 3. He says That to Swear Subscribe c. That though Millions should swear to endeavour a Reformation of Episcopacy in their Places and Callings by lawful means which is his addition there is no obligation lieth on any one of them so to endeavour it the Lord have mercy on that Land City or Soul that is guilty of
Church In that Book he calls the Bishops Thorns and Thistles the Military Instruments of the Devil and accounts them to be mad Dogs applying a Welch Proverb to them Though thy Dog be thy own trust him not when he is mad in the Premonition He rails at the Laws in a Verse of Ovid Id quod natura a remittit Invidiè Jura negant After the Contents The Bishop of Worcester propounded several Concessions to be made for the ease of the Dissenters viz. The use of the Cross the Surplice Kneeling at the Sacrament c. in the close of his Preface which Mr. Baxter rejects saying That the benefit would redound sibi suis i.e. to the Bishop and his Party not reaching our necessities but much better than nothing p. 21. of his second Defence Nothing will satisfie him but the altering the Species of Episcopacy changing the Liturgy for a Directory and repealing such Acts of Parliament as were made to secure the Peace of the Nation against such seditious Persons and Practices as had once destroyed it And p. 84. of his third Defence part 2. Mr. Baxter threatneth another destruction to it for comparing the Constitution of our Church to a separating Wall or dividing thorny Hedge he professeth That he An. 1660. once made it the most earnest action of his life to prevent the building of this Wall or Hedge And adds I will do the best I can while I live to pull it down And I believe him for then he hopes he shall be set up not as a Parochial Bishop but an Archbishop succeeding the Apostles in the ordinary Office of Government or at least as an Officer of the King And I have heard of a Proposal that Dr. Owen and Mr. Baxter may be two of the first Archbishops P. 66. of the last part of that Book he says That which hath been the chief cause and engine of Division will never become the means or terms of concord but such are the multitude of unnecessary uncertain humane Decrees Laws and Canons of Faith and Religion whatever the proud and ignorant say to the contrary Yet Solomon said In the multitude of Counsellors there is safety P. 59. In a word saith he Councils of Bishops have been but Church Armies of which at first the Patriarchs were Generals and afterward Popes and Emperours who fought it out for victory And p. 71 72. he condemns the Lutheran and Calvinist the Erastians and Behemists as well as the Diocesan ways of Concord And adds What the Independants have done towards Division and Separation it is in vain in this Age to recite and many wise Men think that the Presbyterians over-violent rejecting of all Episcopacy setting up unordained Elders and National Churches as headed by National Assemblies are divisive and unwarrantable as their making by the Scotch Covenant the renouncing of the Prelacy to be the Test of National Concord also was What remains then Nothing but Mr. Baxter's Model is the Only Only Only way of Concord More sure divine appointed by Christ himself c. But where any Person should find that Rule of which Mr. Baxter speaks so confusedly himself is the great Question for thus he concludes that Book 1. Approving the best 2. Tolerating the tolerable 3. Sacraments free and not forced 4. The intolerable restrained the Test of Toleration being this 5. Whether such tolerated Worship do more good or hurt 6. Magistrates keeping all in peace would heal us But alas Magistrates Laws and Power are resisted Every Faction count themselves more tolerable than others yea condemn others as intolerable and judge of men and things at best by their agreeing with their own perswasions and so the Only way of Concord will leave us still in Confusion Yet Mr. Baxter fearing the Book would fall into the hands of bad Neighbours he sends it forth with the highest Commendations In the Preface to his second Defence I value it saith he above all the rest being assured that the Churches will never otherwise be healed than by that impartial sure and easie Catholick way which some have reviled but none since that I know of confuted nor need they for it so confutes it self that there needs no other confutation but the reading of it Here it is that he calls the Clergy Tyrants p. 37. Thorns and Thistles grievous Wolves and the Military Instruments of the Devil P. 123. Vnder the name of Bishops they are Troublers Persecutors and Destroyers P. 47. Here he says That to tell them as Mr. Dodwel doth that no unlawful thing is imposed will as much satisfie them as if he had said that lying perjury and deliberately covenanting against God's Precepts and for corrupting his sacred Doctrine Worship and Discipline are lawful things P. 9. of his last part He accounts all Bishops and Pastors that have not the consent of the People to be Vsurpers And infers p. 10. If the Temple or Tythes be given to a Priest of Bishop not lawfully called or consented to by the Flock and another be lawfully called i.e. by the People whom the Magistrate casteth out of the Temple and Tythes it is the Peoples duty to adhere to him that is justly called it is not always a duty to adhere to him whom the Magistrate imposeth the Churches met against the will of the Magistrates above three hundred years As if our Magistrates were Heathen Persecutors for Christian Magistrates he says p. 143. must keep peace among all both approved and tolerated and not suffer any unpeaceable Preaching or Disputes which tend to destroy Love and Quietness nor suffer railing Calumnies against each other to be published or printed Now whether Mr. Baxter's way be the Only way of Concord or needs any other Confutation let the Reader judge And such as the Way of Concord such are the Pleas for Peace i.e. Pleas for Schism and Division and such Trumpets as give no uncertain sound to a War For he proclaims the terms for Vniformity to be to them morally impossible and is grieved that he must set forth an unarmed Defence He tells the People of many heinous sins in their Conformity though he had formerly encouraged it and conformed himself as a Lay-man But now God-fathers and God-mothers the Sign of the Cross and kneeling at Sacrament reading the Apocrypha the Office of Burial all are offered to the People as sinful or they are encouraged to think them so for Mr. Baxter thinks it is a sin in Magistrates to punish them for their Non-conformity But the great quarrel is against the Laws for Subscription and Renounceing the Covenant c. of which he speaks dreadful things calls them the tearing Engines of the Law represents the Magistrates as Persecutors and the Clergy as a company of notorious lying and perjured Villains And tells the Magistrates in the Epistle for they were the Legislators It is now seventeen years since near two thousand Ministers of Christ were by Law forbidden the Exercise of their Office unless they did conform
be whether it were morally possible for such a Person who so passionately and for many years till his very death almost daily bewailed his constrained and unwilling assent to his death to have a Conscience so seared and void of all sense as in case he had been wilfully and designedly guilty of promoting and maintaining that barbarous War wherein as well the Blood of those that fought under my Lord Ormond by his undoubted Commission as of those that fought against him by a falsly pretended one might justly have been charged on him if that pretence had been true to have lived about Seven years and died without any regret of Conscience for so much Blood-guiltiness Bishop Hacket's Testimony on July 24. 1654. AT Rigate in Surry I had conference about this Defamation with that excellent Primate of Armagh saith he Stop their mouths with this that I shall faithfully tell you Sir Will. Parsons our Chief Justice was much intrusted with the King's Affairs in Ireland he deceasing his Friends sent his Papers to me In his Cabinet I found a Letter written by the King to warn him to look well to the meetings of the Popish Irish for he had received certain Intelligence out of Spain that they were upon some great Design of Blood and Confusion c. I was so scrupulbus saith Bishop Hacket to forget nothing of this Relation that before I stirr'd I wrote down the speaker the words the place the year and day Page 197. part 2. of Archbishop Williams 's Life There needs nothing more to be said of Mr. Baxter's being past doubt that Antrim had the King's Commission for the Irish first Insurrection than what the King replied to that virulent Remonstrance of no farther Addresses p. 289. of the Kings Works printed 1662. That if the Irish Rebellion can be justly charged on the King then I shall not blame any for believing all the rest of the Allegations against him The Regicides in the last Charge against the King did not impute to him any hand in the first Insurrection in Ireland but only his continuing Commissions to the Prince and other Rebels and to the Earl of Ormond and to the Irish Rebels and Revolters associated with him Mr. Baxter it seems could have proved much more that he gave a Commission to Antrim for that War wherein two hundred thousand Protestants were slain I am not so well read in the managing of that War as to find Antrim named either as Commander Counsellor or Confederate until the Cessation was treated of July 19 1643. and the first publick Imployment of Antrim was his being sent with Muskerry into France to the Queen when the Confederate Papists were in a low Condition to desire her and the Prince to compassionate them and restore them to their Protection making many Protestations of their Duty and applying themselves to his Majesty's Service but this was when the King was in Prison and what rhey promised for the King's Service or what they performed we find not See Burlace's Hist p. 119. His Majesty's Answer to the two Papers concerning Ireland delivered by the Parliaments Commissioners at Vxbridge which is to be seen p. 553. in his Works do abundantly justifie the Cessation of Arms made with the Irish by Ormond The Letter of Charles the Second printed in the Pamphlet called Truth brought to Light which I suppose is the same in that other Pamphlet called Murder will out says Our Referrees report that they have seen several Letters of our Royal Fathers hand writing and several Instructions to the said Marquess concerning his treating and joyning with the Irish in order to the King's Service by reducing them to their Obedience and by drawing some Forces to them for the service of Scotland and that besides the Letters under the King's hand they had sufficient Evidence and Testimony of several private Messages and Instructions from our Royal Father and from our Royal Mother N.B. This was probably in 1648. when the King was like to be murdered for then we find Antrim and Muskerry were with the Queen and Prince in France with the privity and direction of the King our Father So that this was done to reduce the Papists to Obedience and to draw some Forces for his Service he being then in Extremity Supposing then that all this were true of which I doubt because Antrim still adhered to the Pope's Nuncio and opposed Ormond who can justly blame the King for imploying and interfering one Rebel against another to save his Life To conclude although the Protestations of Sir Phelim O Neale Muskerry and Mackguire at the time of their deaths denying that they knew of any Commission of the King 's for raising or countenancing that Irish Insurrection when if they had owned it they might have saved their Lives and Estates and the Regicides could not mention it in their Charge at his Trial be a sufficient Evidence of the King's Innocency yet his Majesty's frequent Asseverations solemn Imprecations and dying Protestations make it past doubt that Marquess Antrim had not a Commission from Charles the First for raising or encouraging that bloody War wherein Two hundred thousand Protestants were murdered When I first read this Relation of Mr. Baxter's it called to my mind that which the present Bishop of Worcester said concerning him That he would die leaving his sting in the wounds of the Church which he hath verifed in the History of his Life And I may add That he hath poured forth the very bottom of his Gaul to blacken the Memory of the Royal Martyr I cannot therefore let it pass without some Remarks upon it And first I considered what Authority he had for this Report and I found in the Margine that he quoted only a Pamphlet called Murther will out which was a scurrilous Libel written as is believed by the infamous Ludlow who was one of the King's Judges Now to give some colour to this Pamphlet Mr. Baxter bestows Notes of Admiration as that it is of great remark and put him into Amazement and he seems to wonder how he should forget it in his former Relation of that War The Substance of the Relation is That Antrim's Estate being sequestred when Charles the Second was restored and that having applied himself to Ormond and the Council in Ireland they judged against him as a Rebel so that in all probability he had no Order or Commission from Charles the First to produce but coming into England he pleads to Charles the Second that he had his Father's Consent and Authority For proof whereof the King referred his Cause to some of his Privy Council who on Examination found that he had his Fathers the King's Consent But none besides Mr. Baxter says the Letters were a Commission for the first rising and probably the Plea which Antrim then made was grounded upon some Order which he had received from Charles the First while confined or from King Charles the Second whilst he was yet but Prince of
him their Almoner He tells us That this did begin and end at home to help the silenced Ministers and the Poor Such Poor probably as frequented their Conventicles for these are every where the Objects of the Presbyterian Charity though none boast more that they are Men of Catholick and Universal Charity But it was particularly designed to increase the number of such as followed them for their Loaves Had any Man the opportunity to inspect the Subscriptions of the several Bishops Deans and Chapters and other Dignitaries of the Church as also of both the Universities towards the Relief of the Refugees he may find not only a bountiful Supply for the present but Provision made for their future Subsistance as Brethren and professed Members of the same Church with us who want not the countenance or incouragement of the Conforming Clergy to this day My great Age and Infirmities being now within one year as old as Mr. Baxter was at the time of his death do enforce me to omit many other Remarks of Pride Hypocrisie and Contradictions which he that runs may read in this and other Writings of our Author which I leave to the Observation of such as better knew the Man and his Communication and shall make only this one Reflection more on his partiality in censuring the Conformists and Non-conformists of all sorts and degrees And first the Reader may see his hyperbolical Commendations of his Non-conforming Brethren from p. 90. to p. 99. of his Life where he gives the Character of such of the Eighteen hundred silenced Ministers as were his Neighbours not speaking by hearsay but personal acquaintance which were between Forty and Fifty besides many whom he had forgotten and about Forty London Ministers with Fifteen Independants and others of several parts that were Fellow-sufferers with himself All which if they deserved the Titles which he gives them he might have Canonized them as Saints in Heaven on better grounds than he hath done by Brooks Pym and White in his Saints Everlasting Rest. As to the Lay-Brethren of the Separation he gives the preheminence to those of his own Flock at Kidderminster And p. 85. part 1. he says Some of the poor Men did competently understand the Body of Divinity and were able to judge in difficult Controversies and so able in Prayer that few Ministers did match them in order and fulness in apt Expressions and holy Oratory with fervency And of Six hundred Communicants which Mr. Baxter had there he says there were not above Twelve of whom he had not good hopes of their Sincerity And this he imputes to his own Labours For before I came thither there was about one Family in a Street that worshipped God and called on his Name but before I came away there was not past one Family in the side of a Street that did not so p. 88 89. And he adds this reason of their proficiency That being Weavers they could set a Book before them standing in their Looms and edifie one another by reading or talking Of such Trades-men and Freeholders he says that they are the strength of Religion and Civility in the Land though such made up the Mob which begun and continued our Wars and destroyed our Religion by dividing it into innumerable Sects and Factions So that Mr. Edwards observed in his Gangreena that in the space of four years after that Episcopacy was laid aside there were more Heresies started in this Land than had been known in the Universal Church from the foundation thereof As to his Censures of such as lived in Conformity to the established Religion he is as impartial as Death condemning them all as a prophane and persecuting Generation in a Book called Cain and Abel How he hath branded the best of our Kings and the Clergy hath been already shewn How he Censures the Parliament and their Laws which he calls the tearing Engines that woried Two thousand Ministers casting them out of their Possessions into Poverty and Prisons to starve and pine away and for imposing such Oaths Subscriptions and Declarations as any Man that feared God could not comply with is such a Common Place that I wonder it was no more taken notice of After this Censure of the Parliament Mr. Baxter speaks of the Nobility and Gentry in general p. 134. where he saith I more than ever lament the unhappiness of the Nobility and Gentry and great Ones of the World who live in such temptations to Sensuality Curiosity and Wasting of Time about a multitude of little things whose Lives â—…re too often a Transcript of the Sins of Sodom Pride Fulness of Bread and abundance of Idleness and want of Compassion to the Poor And p. 89. That Gentlemen and Beggars and Servile Tenants are the strength of Iniquity in the Land though it was not very civil to put the Beggar on the Gentleman yet it was much worse to joyn them in the Bonds of Iniquity and make the Comparison between them and the Trades-men so odious that these are reputed the strength of Religion and Civility but the Gentry and their Tenants and Beggars the strength of Iniquity And he instanceth in Sir R. Clare and Sir John Packington who much hindred his Success in gathering Proselytes in Kidderminster He gives this Character of Sir R. Clare p. 94. part 1. That he was an old Man of great Courtship and Civility very temperate as to Diet Apparel and Sports seldom swore any louder than by his troth one that shewed him much personal reverence and respect beyond his deserts and conversed with love and familiarity One that sent his Family to be Catechised and personally Instructed which swayed with the worst among that People to do the like But being ruled by Dr. Hammond he liked not of Mr. Baxter's Preciseness and Extemporary Prayer and abstained from the Sacrament which Mr. Baxter delivered to such as sate or stood at the receiving it which gave offence to Sir R. Clare whereby he says Sir R.C. did more to hinder his Success than a multitude of others could have done And on such an account all the Conforming Gentry are the strength of Iniquity And although the Poverty of Mr. Baxter's People whereof the Master-workmen lived but little beter than their Journey-men from hand to mouth p. 94. was a help to his Success the Poor receiving the glad tidings of the Gospel and being usually rich in faith Yet for those that frequent the Churches and Common Prayer they are coupled with the Gentry as the strengtheners of Iniquity whereas the Laws have provided such a Competency for their Maintenance as may keep them from beggary which the Law alloweth not but in truth the multitude of Beggars in occasioned and increased by those many Families that depend upon the Trade of Weaving who living but from hand to mouth are forced on the decay of Trade for a few Weeks to beg for their Subsistance or to do worse of which such places as abound with Men of that
they made the best King and Emperour Lodovic Pius as a Penance resign his Crown and Scepter on the Altar to a Rebel Son and sent him to Prison He that ever read but Baronius Binius or other Episcopal History will pity you Can you name one Presbyter for very many Bishops that have been the Heads or Fomenters of Heresie Schism or Rebellion And yet Presbyters were more in number than Bishops Innumerable Bishops saith Binius were in the Monothelite Council under Philippicus Of all things that ever befel the Christian Church I scarce know any thing comparable in shame and mischievous effects to the horrid Perfidiousness Contention Schism and Pride of Bishops Cursing one year by hundreds all that were of one Opinion and another year all that were of the contrary as the Times and Interest and Emperours changed And if Arius or Novatus Aerius and Donatus which are all you name were the beginners of any Schism how many hundred Bishops were the promoters of them all save that of Aerius against themselves And is it any honour to Episcopacy that Arius and Aerius an Arian were not Bishops when they are said to be Seekers of Bishopricks and to divide because they could not obtain them Sure they were Prelatical Presbyters What honour were it to Episcopacy that you are no Bishop if all these and such things were vended by you in hope of a Bishoprick or some Preferment I will never whilst I breathe trust a Bresbyter that sets himself to get Preferment no more than I will trust a But did you know or did you not that as for Novatus and Novatian one of them was an ill chosen Bishop of Rome and the other a promoter of his Prelacy And that as for Donatus there were two of them one of them a Bishop and that the Donatists Schism was meerly and basely Prelatical even whether their Bishop or Cecilianus should carry it and that their rebaptizing and re-ordaining and Schism was because they took none to have power that had it not from their Bishop as being the right like our re-ordainers And are these Instances to prove what you assert Were it not for entering upon an unpleasing and unprofitable task I would ask you 1. Who that Juncto of Presbyters was that dethroned the King was it they that petitioned and protested against it 2. Whether it was not an Episcopal Parliament forty to one if not an hundred that began the War against the King 3. Whether the General and Commanders of the Army twenty to one were not Conformists 4. Whether the Major-Generals in the Counties were not almost all Episcopal Conformists The Earl of Stamford was over your Country 5. Whether the Admiral and Sea-Captains were not almost Episcopal Conformists As Heylin distinguisheth them of Archbishop Abbot's mind disliking Arminianism Monopolies c. 6. Whether the Archbishop of York were not the Parliaments Major-General 7. Whether the Episcopal Gentry did not more of them take the Engagement and many Episcopal Ministers than the Presbyterians 8. Whether if this Parliament which made the Acts of Vniformity and Conventicles should quarrel with the King it would prove them to be Presbyterians and Non-conformists 9. Whether the Presbyterian Ministers of London and Lancashire did not write more against the Regicides and Vsurpers and declare against them than all the Conformists or as much And the Long Parliament was forced and most of them cast out before the King could be destroyed And when they were restored it made way for his Restoration And Sir Thomas Allen Lord Mayor and the City of London's inviting General Monk from the Rump into the City and joyning with him was the very day that turned the Scales for the King But all these are Matters fitter for your better Consideration than our Debate Your Servant Ri. Baxter Mr. LONG 's Answer Mr. Baxter SIR I find that in a Book of yours defending Schism against Mr. Hales on pretence of opposing it you were pleased to think many passages in my writings worthy of your recital to your ends Answ Whether my Book which you mention or that of Mr. Hales do most oppose Schism is sub judice Had Mr. Hales opposed it I wonder how you and so many Schismaticks quoted him against Obedience to Authority Episcopacy and Liturgy barely on pretence of things scrupled and seeing I oppose Mr. Hales in most of the Passages that concern Schism by your Arguments it must be you or he that defend it and not I. That I thought some Passages in your Writings worthy of my recital and to my end was first Because I thought your end to be the same with mine i.e. to promote Peace and Unity and to destroy Schism and Division For it was once your Resolution to speak for Peace while you had a Tongue to write for Peace while you had a Hand and to live to the Churches Peace while you had an hour to live and could do any thing that could promote it And I hope you did not verba dare Secondly Because as Mr. Hales was a Man in great esteem with you upon the account of that Tract so are you with some others and therefore I could not think of a better Argument ad homines And I find that you with others did urge fiercely the Authority of Mr. Hales p. 2. of the Exceptions at the Savoy in these words To load our publick Forms with private Fancies on which we differ is the most soveraign way to perpetuate Schism to the Worlds end c. which you resume p. 8. of your Reply Though the Reverend Bishops had answered We heartily desire that according to this Proposal great care may be taken to suppress private Conceptions of Prayer lest private Opinions be made the Matter of Prayer in publick is it hath and will be if private Persons take liberty to make publick Prayers And on second thoughts I find you to agree with them p. 201. of the Cure of Divisions in these words Every Separatist Anabaptist Antinomian doth too willingly put his Errours into his Prayers On which words Mr. Bag shaw in his Antidote p. 7. doth thus Paraphrase By mentioning of Separatists as a distinct Body of Men from the Antinomians Quakers and Anabaptists it is evident he can mean no other but his Presbyterian and Congregational Brethren This I have noted by the way that what I said of his Brethrens dissenting from his Reformed Liturgy as he calls it may not seem strange seeing he so far differs from it himself for there he gives liberty to all Ministers to Pray and Exhort as they think fit and here he declares against the Inconveniencies of it Mr. Baxter I thank you that you chose any words of mine for Peace which some may make a better use of than your self But I think if you had referred Men to my own Books to read what goeth before and after they would have been more easily understood Answ They that read your words which I have for the most
not mentioned any Instance that might colour it But thus you dealt with Dr. Pierce who having truly quoted and applied a Passage of Bishop Bancroft's in his Appendix to you p. 254. you told him That he could not have uttered more falshood if the Devil had dictated to him That my Book is an Invective against silenced Ministers is already answered That I am guilty of depraving Ecclesiastical or Sacred History needs no answer because there is no Charge How notoriously you are guilty of this Crime I shall shew in an instance or two besides that wherein you abuse the Primitive Bishops of which hereafter Shew me saith Mr. Baxter in Scripture or History that either there was ever de facto or ought to be de jure such a thing in the World as the Papists call the Church and I profess I will immediately turn Papist Answ This was some ground for them that then said you were one to think so of you For what is more plain in Church History than that there was de facto such a Church as the Papists call the Church of Rome one thousand years together and which hath been acknowledged by Learned Men of your Perswasion and if we may not believe this how shall we believe there was any Church at all at Rome in St. Paul's days But Mr. Baxter cannot be perswaded that there is any such thing as the Church of England p. 35. of his Sacr. Desertion I would give him all the Money in my Purse to make me understand what the Church of England is and yet our Ecclesiastical Histories will shew that we have had the face and form of a Church among us before the days of the Conquerour The Presbyterians did acknowledge the Church of Rome to be a true Church Divine Right p. 265. Will not you allow so much to the Church of England The old Non-conformists generally granted it And Ruthband says all the Reformed Churches acknowledge the Church of England to be their Sister And you say p. 263 264. That almost all the Christian World is worse than it And if we deny Communion with such a Church there hath been no Church to Communicate with these Thousand years We are more beholding to Mr. John Goodwin who says p. 26. of his Sion Colledge visited That there was more of the Truth and Power of Godliness in the Church of England under the Prelatical Government than in all the Reformed Churches beside And if Mr. Hickman say true you have had Communion with the Church of England in all its Ordinances It is then a Church and a true Church The second Instance is concerning Kneeling for though you cannot be ignorant that our Saviour did kneel at his Prayers and do confess that kneeling at Prayers was in use in the Apostles time p. 110. of Grand Debate and that it hath been practised in the Universal Church ever since that Kings were its Nursing Fathers yet from an occasional and temporary Constitution of the Church restrained to the Lord's days throughout the Year and to Week days only between Easter and Whitsontide and applied only to the duty of Prayer not receiving of the Lord's Supper which you make different Actions and say we are not to be in the Act of Praying when we are in the Act of Receiving from this temporary limited Order which they thought fit to continue only till the People were confirmed in the belief of the Resurrection you tell your Kidderminsters That it is against the Canons of the General Councils and many hundred years Practice of the Church to kneel in the Act of Receiving on the Lord's day Whereas you might with more probability have applied it against kneeling at Prayers if there be now any obligation in that Constitution and it holds much more against sitting which was never practised in the Primitive Church though you plead mostly for it And you add All knew that my judgment ever was for the lawfulness of kneeling at the Sacrament Defence of Brinc p. 34. And so you told the Episcopal Party That you would rather kneel than disturb the Peace of the Church or be deprived of its Communion Whereby as the Bishop of Worcester inferred you confess that kneeling at the Sacrament is not sinful and that not to kneel when required is to disturb the Peace of the Church and that the imposing it upon penalty of being deprived of the Communion is an effectual means to make those that otherwise would not kneel to conform to it and consequently the imposing it is not unlawful But Mr. Baxter says in his Christian Directory Part 2. p. 111. Q. 3. Sect. 40. says For kneeling I never heard any thing yet to prove it unlawful if there be any thing it must be either some word of God or the nature of the Ordinance which is supposed to be contradicted But 1. there is no word of God for any gesture nor against any Christ's Example can never be proved to oblige us more in this than in many other Circumstances that are confest not obligatory as that he delivered but to Ministers and but to a Family to Twelve and after Supper on a Thursday night and in an upper Room c. And his gesture was not such a sitting as ours And 2ly for the nature of the Ordinance it is mixt And if it be lawful to take a Pardon from the King upon our knees I know not what can make it unlawful to take a sealed Pardon from Christ by his Ambassador upon our knees Now if you knew not what might make it unlawful to receive the Sacrament kneeling when you wrote your Christian Directory which was long after your Disputation with the Bishops at the Savoy you did not very advisedly urge with so much heat That the requiring Communicants to receive it kneeling under such Penalties was a sinful imposition What to receive a pardon from Christ upon our knees this could not be sinful in the Receiver nor could it be sinful in the Imposer For there being nothing said by our Saviour concerning the Gesture he hath left that to the determination of the Church And if the Church may determine of the place and time of Publick Worship because they are not determined by Christ why may it not determine of particular Gestures not determined by him And I am glad that on second thoughts you cannot find what may make it unlawful For as you say it would be intolerable in a Child or Servant who when his Parent or Master bids him do a thing lawful or indifferent or else he would beat him should reply Sir I could have done the thing if you had not commanded it but your Command renders it unlawful to me I have said so much of this which you account one of the most tremendous sins in our Conformity as by your singling it out for the Subject of your Dispute which you managed at the Savoy with so much heat and importunity it doth appear This concerning Kneeling c.
is the third of those ten Particulars which are mentioned by Mr. Baxter p. 131 132 133. and there he says that in their Exceptions and Reply we have an account of what they take to be unlawful and inconvenient 1. The Sign of the Cross 2. The Surplice 3. Kneeling at the Sacrament 4. Pronouncing that Infants baptized are Regenerate 5. Putting the Sacred Elements into the hands of Communicants 6. The Absolution at the Sacrament 7. Giving thanks for all that are buried 8. Subscription to the Book of Common Prayer 9. Not permitted to use Extemporary Prayers 10. The Oath to the Bishops These he judgeth contrary to the Word of God But until Mr. Baxter or some other Nonformist shall confute the Arguments of the London Divines and others that assert the Lawfulness of these things we have no reason to think of Alterations The Reason of your writing to me you say is to crave Satisfaction about two or three Matters of Fact in my Book One is in these words p. 101. When they had in the grand Debate given in their Objections to the Liturgy some of the Brotherhood had prepared another Form but a great part of their Brethren objected many things against that and never as yet did as I hear of agree upon any other nor I think ever will And as if I had not signified plainly enough that I meant the grand Debate at the Savoy you question whether I meant the Westminster Assembly when you your self say that it was the Directory which they drew up and that none was yet vain enough to pretend that they drew up another Liturgy Answ Mr. Baxter was then very vain to conjecture that I meant what was done by the Westminster Assembly for as he adds it must needs be meant of the later of which this is past denial Mr. Baxter That the King's Commission authorized us to make some Additional Forms And adds what Archbishop Sheldon propounded which concerns not me Answ Instead of conforming to the King's Commission Mr. Baxter says that some of them drew up their Exceptions against the Liturgy and appointed him to draw up Additional Forms But I says he drew up a Liturgy which the Prayer for the King being made shorter by Dr. Wallis was agreed to without one dissenting Vote I am glad to hear that all the Non-conforming Party did agree to a Liturgy having so long acted according to the Directory And if they could agree to such a Liturgy as Mr. Baxter says must be very imperfect being done in necessary haste in eight days I wonder that they could not be reconciled to that Liturgy which was so maturely drawn up by our first Reformers Learned Bishops and Holy Martyrs which had endured many a Trial and obtained the Approbation of the other parts of the Reform'd Churches and had been practised by many of those that then opposed it and for their satisfaction was corrected in many things whereat they took offence Besides the King's Commission authorized them if occasion should be to make such reasonable and necessary Alterations Corrections and Amendments as should be by both Parties agreed to be needful to give Satisfaction to tender Consciences c. But avoiding as much as might be all unnecessary Alterations of Forms and Liturgy wherewith the People are already acquainted and have so long received in the Church of England And when Dr. Reignolds thought they should be blamed for offering a whole Liturgy instead of Additional Forms I thought I might rationally infer that as Dr. Reignolds observed they might justly be blamed for offering another Liturgy so directly opposite to the intention of the King's Commission And I wonder how Mr. Baxter could say this work viz. a new Liturgy was extorted from them when it was forbidden by the King Or how there was such a full Concord as Mr. Baxter speaks of when the Prayer for the King contained some things fit to be omitted and when Dr. Pearson and others wrote that there was no necessity of Reforming the Church either in Doctrine Discipline or Worship and when Mr. Baxter says it must needs be very imperfect I confess that the dissenting Party might agree to your Liturgy so as to think it an imperfect hasty Work free from Heresie Blasphemy or Treason but not under your Notion as fit to rival or thrust out the Publick Liturgy the Commissioners could not agree on those terms seeing as they observed it left Men at liberty to use it as a Directory by saying thus as in the several Collects or to this purpose in a Prayer of their own conception for you tell them it was not your work to impose and what uniformity in Worship could be expected if some should use the Forms in the Liturgy and others be left at liberty to use your Forms or their own Conceptions Mr. Calvin commended a Liturgy and Forms of Prayer to prevent the Inconveniencies which might be occasioned by Extempory Effusions And your Brethren in their Morning Lectures affirm p. 58. That the heart may be easily deceived in Inlargements in Prayer Opinion of the Person Taking Expressions Popular Applause Flourishing Novelties and Notions Satanical Illusions Common and Ordinary Inspirations such as are granted to Reprobates All or any of which may make the heart dance in a duty and yet it 's possible nay probable the heart may dance after the Devil's Pipe In the Preface to your Liturgy p. 23. you would have your own Forms inserted into the several places of the Liturgy to which they do belong and left to the Ministers choice to use the one or other But first this would aggravate that Grievance which you complain of that the Liturgy is already too long But secondly this would be to raise Altar against Altar and maintain two distinct Forms of Worship And you doubted not but your correct Nepenthes as you term your Liturgy would be better relished by young Prelates than a Dose of Opium to which you compare the Liturgy though a sober use of Opium may be more useful to fix the Spirits which so large a draught of your Nepenthes may make volatile and giddy Mr. Baxter I was especially desirous to have heard their Exceptions against our Liturgy and urged some of them i.e. the Bishops to it and could never get a word of Answer or Exception Answ Roger L'Estrange in his Relapse Apostate says in the Introduction That though your Liturgy was addressed to the Bishops yet from them above all the rest it was with more care concealed That it was delivered to the Printer by Mr. Baxter or his order and being wrought off this Nepenthes was barrelled up and dispersed through the Nation without the knowledge of the Bishops But supposing it had been delivered to them it was not their work to view or correct your Liturgy but that which the King in his Commission recommended to them it was their duty to reject yours in gross without Reflections on the Particulars You add Nor had we one
Objection from any other Yet I saw a Treatise by a very learned hand about that time called The grand Debate in case of Prayer resumed proving that those Free Pravers which you so earnestly contended for had no advantage above the prescribed Liturgy and by that Person and many other Writers there was not one Objection made which was not answered and confuted I desire therefore such Readers as do still adhere to Mr. Baxter's Arguments against the Common Prayer to do themselves so much right as to peruse what Dr. Comber hath written concerning the Method observed in the several parts of Devotion throughout the Liturgy against the disorder of it objected by Mr. Baxter and the several Cases of the London Divines against all Mr. Baxter's or any other Objectors concerning the Unlawfulness of any thing therein prescribed And seeing in the Preface of his Majesty's Commission he did express his Esteem of the Liturgy and authorized the Commissioners to make such reasonable and necessary Alterations as by and between them should be agreed upon avoiding as much as might be all unnecessary Abbreviations of Form and Liturgy not only the King had been disobeyed but the most pious Members of the Church might justly be offended if any of the Commissioners should have condescended to such Alterations as were insisted on which would have amounted to a confession that the Liturgy was a heavy burden to tender Consciences a just cause of Schism a Superstitious Usage c. upon which pretences the Alterations were desired But first It is not true that there was a full Concord as to your Liturgy for the Reader may observe that the King's Commission was granted to about forty Persons to review the Liturgy and to make such reasonable and necessary Alterations and Amendments as by and between the said Commissioners should be agreed upon to be needful and expedient avoiding as much as might be all unnecessary Abbreviations of the Form and Liturgy wherewith the People are altogether acquainted and have so long received in the Ch. of England can any Man believe there was a full Concord I will not say of all the Commissioners to Mr. Baxter's new Liturgy but among those of the Dissenters that there should be a new Liturgy presented when the Commission confined them to make only some necessary Alterations and Amendments of the old expresly cautioning them to avoid as much as might be all unnecessary Abbreviations of the Form and Liturgy for the Reasons therein alledged For though Mr. Baxter glorieth in this Exploit of drawing up a new Liturgy in eight days yet he acknowledgeth it was very imperfect and that Dr. Reignolds said they should be blamed for it and the Reason of the thing as well as the Example of Dr. Reignolds was sufficient to convince all such as had any sense of their Duty or hope of an Agreement We find also though Mr. Baxter intimates the contrary that there was a particular Exception against the Prayer which he had made for the King which was to be altered by Dr. Wallis his Rubrick also was disliked by them as he confesseth Besides it is certain that a great part of the dissenting Brethren had sometime before conformed to the old Liturgy not only Dr. Reignolds and Mr. Baxter himself but Dr. Conant Spurstow Wallis Manton and generally all the rest and the Amendments and Alterations which were made being about Six hundred were thought so reasonable and satisfactory that divers who had dissented did conform to it notwithstanding that by reason of some other Subscriptions and Declarations their Conformity was made more difficult as did Dr. Reignolds Dr. Gauden Dr. Conant Dr. Wallis and Dr. Lightfoot c. Where then was this full Concord and no Exceptions when they all agreed to a Liturgy and Mr. Baxter's Model was a draught of Nepenthe compounded of unknown Ingredients as every one should fancy And this I hope may be a competent help to make Mr. Baxter discern that the Report that I made viz. that some of the Brotherhood had prepared another Form but some of them objected many things against that and never as yet that I heard did agree upon any other and I think never will is a true Report and such as becomes a Minister of Truth Mr. Baxter But I well know it is a part of Satan's work to perswade the World that no History hath any certainty of Truth that so Sacred History may be disadvantaged Answ If it be Satan's work falsly to relate Matters of Fact recorded in History and if it tends to so impious a Design as to disadvantage the Credit of Sacred History I doubt not to make it appear in two instances viz. in that Historical Relation which Mr. Baxter hath given concerning Bishops and in that of the beginning of our detestible Civil War of which I shall take occasion to speak on two Assertions of Mr. Baxter in this Letter the one is where he affirms That of all things that ever befel the Christian Church he scarce knew any thing comparable in shame and mischievous effects to the horrid Perfidiousness Contention Schism and Pride of Bishops The second is That it was an Episcopal Parliament forty or an hundred to one that began the War against the King On these two Assertions of Mr. Baxter I say I shall make it evident that none hath done more to disadvantage the credit of Sacred History than Mr. Baxter hath done in the false Relation of other Histories be a ready way to it Mr. Baxter Another passage is p. 293. which being imperfectly related by Mr. Baxter I shall give it the Reader in full viz. Ministerial Conformity being submitted to by many of the Assembly of Divines and no sinful act required to make it unlawful which if there had been they or some others ought to have discovered it and then I doubt not it would by Authority have been taken away but that being not done the Ministers ought to conform by the same Rules as the People ought which is granted by Proposition the fourth and confirmed by Mr. Baxter 's practice in receiving the Sacrament Answ Mr. Baxter repeats only so much as is within the Parenthesis on which he runs out into six grand Divisions and under them into two or three and so under one into five Sub-divisions The whole may be comprehended in these two 1. That the Sinfulness of Conformity hath been already proved And then 2dly That we require impossibilities of them because they have not the liberty of the Press Though the Liberty of the Pulpit be as much denied them yet it is no impossibility to use that But I shall for the Reader 's satisfaction consider the Particulars Mr. Baxter Do you not know what abundance of old have thought they discovered the sinfulness of Conformity Bradshaw Nicols Ames Parker Cartwright c. and some of late against our Conformity Cawdry Hickman and others yet unanswered Answ I know what the most of those you name have
written And I know that what you say they thought to be sins have by Whitgift Bancroft Hooker Moreton Burgess and Sprint been proved to be the Non-conformists duties And as to the new Conformity it hath by these Doctors Faukner Durel Fulwood proved to be lawful and also by the Lay-Conformity of all the old Non-conformists as well as by Mr. Baxter to be lawful Mr. Baxter And is this your dry Denial a rational Confutation Answ A Confutation of what No rational Man would undertake a Confutation of what others only thought and Idem est non esse non apparere had the Long Parliament acted rationally when they armed themselves if they had no other Enemy to fight against but those false Reports of German Troops and Armies under ground and Designs to blow up the Thames which were sometime talked off This were like Don Quixot to fight with Windmils and Fancies of their own inventions bring down your Objections from the Clouds fix them somewhere that we may behold them and try if they be formidable Gorgons as can at sight transform the Conformists into such heinous Sinners a dry Denial is enough to confute the Man in the Moon I will not say as you did concerning the Church of England that I would give all the Money in my Purse to know what it is but as Caesar said of the ancient Britains who dwelt in Woods and Fastnesses That it is less difficult to overcome them than to find them out and when they shall appear I have so much confidence in the good Nature of Mr. Baxter that I may borrow Weapons enough out of his Magazine to turn them all into Dust though he thinks that it is no small number of sins so heinous that are imposed by Conformity that he dares not so much as name them lest he should displease and render the Conformists such heinous sinners And p. 31. of Sacr. Desertion That Conformity is a composition of such heinous Crimes as I forbear to name for fear of seeming to be an Accuser of others and to be unpeaceaable This is as if he had told his Superiours to their Faces That they were a company of ungodly Persons and cruel Persecutors that their Sins were great for number and heinous in their nature But I will not name any particular for fear of Displeasing or being thought your Accuser and Unpeaceable In such a case I think it not unreasonable if the Superiours had told Mr. Baxter that he ought to do it But Mr. Baxter will excuse himself thus Mr. Baxter That Men ought not to be blamed for not doing Impossibilities Answ If the thing were impossible to be done it is very blameable to pretend or attempt the doing of it But wherein lyeth the impossibility 1. You say The Law forbids it 2. You are ipso facto Excommunicate 3. Your Governours are against it 4. It would drive you to Jails and Ruine 5. We have begg'd leave of Parliament Men to publish the Case and Reasons of your dissent But good Sir is not your preaching in Conventicles forbidden by the same Law under the like Penalties and yet those tearing Engines as you call them do not make you forbear printing or preaching nor do you want the liberty of the Press for divulging Seditious Pamphlets and railing against Bishops and Conformity The impossibility therefore doth not lye in these External Circumstances but in the nature of the thing There is no sinfulness in what is required in Conformity and therefore it is impossible for you to shew it You tell us indeed that you have by your writing discovered the sinfulness of the old Conformity and refer us to your publick Reply and Petition against it and that some Pamphlets such as Cawdrys Hickmans c. have crept out but you confess nothing that is full and satisfactory no not in any of Mr. Baxter's Writings though he talks in general That in our Liturgy there are some things that seem to be corrupt and carry a repugnancy to the Rule of the Gospel p. 11. of his Savoy Papers where he spends 148 Pages in Exceptions against the Liturgy which the Bishops answer in these few words p. 45. The Church hath been careful to put nothing into the Liturgy but what is evidently the Word of God or hath been generally received in the Catholick Church and if the contrary can be proved we wish it out of the Liturgy And this may answer that Enquiry of Mr. Baxter Which way got you so strong a faith as to be past doubt that did we discover any sinfulness it would by Authority be taken away Make this true and you shall have the honour of being the greatest healer of our breaches that ever rose in the days of my remembrance But if this be not true Answ The strength of my Faith is built on the ground of my Charity which teacheth me to hope and believe all good things of my Superiours especially until I am assured of the contrary and when they have made such good Laws in Church and State as many thousands of good Christians of tender Consciences do submit to and they themselves devoutly practice I cannot think they would establish any known iniquity by Law after their Profession which you have seen under their own hands that if there were any such thing could be proved as they had reason and judgment to discern it so it was in their power to procure the amendment and they wished it out So that whatever your Faith be to believe there are such heinous sins in Conformity I hope my Charity is agreeable to the Christian Faith that if any such thing had appeared it would have been taken away Mr. Baxter But I shall alledge your Authority when we are blamed for discovering the sinfulness of Conformity Answ You have a greater Authority than mine the Law of God Lev. 19.17 Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy Brother and not suffer sin to be upon him And of St. Paul Eph. 5.11 Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them Therefore I say again you ought to have done it and to be plain I see no reason why you have not done it but because it is impossible to be done you find all the Cavils which you have yet used to be insufficient and would seem to reserve more cogent ones to keep up the Courage of your Party and amuze their Consciences with Noise and Clamour Fears and Jealousies and so perpetuate the Schism I cannot pass by one odious Reflection on our Governours viz. Mr. Baxter That near Two thousand Ministers have been near sixteen Years ejected and silenced and many years imprisoned and killed and the People of the Land divided and distracted by the tearing Engines Answ Such Language ill becomes Mr. Baxter who notwithstanding many Provocations hath tasted so much of the Clemency of our Governours Had you lived in the Marian days under Bonner you durst not have said so much But who
Tumults as forced him to leave his Palace for fear of losing his Life Those that seiz'd his Towns Forts Magazines and Ships to maintain the War against him Those that animated Armies with whom he was often present in Person till they forced him to fly to the Scots Those that sold and bought him as a Prisoner of War and voted no more Addresses to him but left him to such as at last barbarously murdered him Mr. Baxter Was it they that petitioned and protested against it Answ The King was dethron'd long before any Presbyterians petitioned or protested against putting him to death then indeed when it was too late the Ministers of London plead for him in these words That the woful Miscarriages of the King himself which we cannot but acknowledge to be very many and great in his Government have cost the three Kingdoms so dear and cast him down from his Excellency into a horrid pit of Misery beyond Example this is as one Paraphraseth it We affirm and testifie that besides those of his evil Counsellors the King 's Personal Crimes and fundamental Errors in Government too many and great to be mentioned have cost England Scotland and Ireland so dear that all the bloodshed devastations and rapine might be charged on him and for these he is justly cast down from his Throne into so horrid a Pit of Misery as to fall under a Sentence of Condemnation This is such a Petition and Plea for the King as those that are made for Peace which are Arguments for Separation and Discord Mr. Love a great Presbyterian in his Vxbridge Sermon laid a Foundation of this in that Maxim Melius pereat unus quam unitas But Mr. Baxter exceeds all in representing him as the Head of the Grotian Religion which he says were arrant Papists This is such a Slander as his barbarous Judges were ashamed to charge him with Mr. Baxter Was it not an Episcopal Parliament forty or one hundred to one that began the War against the King Answ They were indeed Episcopal Men and Conformists for the most part at their first meeting but there was a Juncto among them that soon prevailed to silence and banish the Loyal Members and then openly declared War against the King and ruin to the Bishops Mr. Baxter was one of those Episcopal conforming Men but what he did hath been related and he well knew of what Perswasion the five Members were and those whom he Canonizeth as Saints in his Everlasting Rest These had sometime been zealous Conformists and the King 's most Loyal Subjects but did they continue such The Bishops that began the Reformation had been Popish but when they renounced the Pope's Supremacy and Romish Doctrines and setled the Church on a new Foundation for Doctrine and Worship no sober Man can say that the Reformation was either begun or carried on by Popish Bishops The Case is the same Those that began our war had been most of them Episcopal Men and Conformists but when they imprison'd and sequestred the Bishops threw off the Liturgy and entred into a Covenant against King and Church they were neither Episcopal Men nor Conformists Of this sort were the Generals Admirals and other Officers by Land and Sea Mr. Baxter Whether the Archbishop of York was not the Parliaments Major-General Answ Not at the beginning of the War certainly nor ever that I heard but from Mr. Baxter that he had such a Commission from them That Archbishop was with K. Charles at Oxford and well receiv'd by him nor did he ever appear in any Hostile Actions till 6 years after the beginning of the War and the reason of that was to vindicate a particular right of his own and not on account of the war against the King as hath been proved in that Bishop's Life Mr. Baxter Whether the Episcopal Gentry and Ministry did not take the Engagement more than the Presbyterians Answ I pray Mr. Baxter remember what you were to prove viz. who began the War and and is this which was done after the King's death if it had been true an Argument to prove that they began the War I have read in several of your Books such a Relation of the beginning of our War which will remain after you are gone That the War was begun by Episcopal Men such as were of Archbishop Whitgift's mind That the great Commanders in War by Sea and Land were Conformists and I suppose I have said enough to disprove it Let me therefore remind you of a foregoing passage in your Letter viz. That it is a part of Satan's work to perswade the World that no History hath any certainty of Truth that so Sacred History may be disadvantaged and now let the impartial Reader judge whether Lucian or Mr. Baxter be the truest Historian I confess you have ingaged me in an unpleasing Work but in may not be unprofitable if what I shall add be duly considered Let the Troubles at Frankfort be read over and the groundless Contests and Animosities of some Presbyterians against such as adhered to the Doctrine and Worship of the Church of England while both Parties were in Exile and what you your self have observed of their behaviour after they returned home especially of Knox Goodman and others how they flew in the face of Authority and incessantly woried Q. Elizabeth during her Reign No sooner were they called home but some of them were so intemperate impatient and unpeaceable that some of them turned to flat Separation and flew in the Faces of the Prelates with reviling c. p. 150. of Gildas Salvianus And if the History of the Factious for Presbytery during the Reign of King James and especially of King Charles I. be impartially read you will find this odious Comparison incomparably out-done This is proper to them to overthrow whatsoever Estate they are admitted to says Bertius in Orbis Breviario And this is the reason why Grotius was so condemned for a Papist because in his Book de Antichristo he wrote so much truth against these Men Circumferamus oculos per omnem historiam quod unquam seculum vidit tot subditorum in Principes bella sub religionis titulo horum concitatores ubique reperiuntur Ministri Evangelici ut quidam se vocant quod genus hominum in quae pericula etiam nunc Optimos Civitatis Amsteladomensis Magistratus conjecerit videat si cui libet de Presbyterorum in reges andacia librum Jacobi Britanniarum Regis cui nomen Donum Regium videbit eum ut erat magni Judicij ea praedixisse quae nunc cum dolore horrore perspicimus King James spake by Experience and first he tells the Reader in his Preface These rash heady Preachers think it their honour to contend with Kings and perturbe whole Kingdoms And in p. 41 42. Take heed my Son to such Puritans very Pests in the Church and Commonweal whom no Deserts can oblige neither Oaths or Promises bind breathing nothing but Sedition and Calumnies aspiring without measure railing without reason and making their own imaginations without any warrant of the Word the square of their Conscience I protest before the great God and since I am here as upon my Testament it is no place for me to lye in that ye shall never find with any Highland or Border Thieves greater ingratitude and more lyes and vile perjuries than with these Phanatick Spirits And suffer not the Principles of them to brook your Land if you like to sit at rest except you would keep them for trying your patience as Socrates did an evil Wife He told his Parliament in his Speech March 19. 1603. The third which I call a Sect rather than Religion is the Puritan and Novelist who do not differ so much from us in points of Religion as in their confused Forms of Polity and Parity being ever discontented with the present Government and impatient to suffer any Superiority which maketh their Sect unable to be suffered in any well-governed Commonwealth And now you may research your voluminous Baronius and Binius and collect the Maxims and Practices of the Jesuits who are not much elder than the Presbyterians and if I do not match them in both from the Authors before-named all which will not make up above one Volume of your twenty and relate only the History of about six or sevenscore years for yours of about sixteen hundred I shall need to add only your own Theses concerning Government and what I said will still appear to be true That such horrid things as have been done by that Generation have not been out-done by any other since Judas betrayed his Master By these Relations Mr. Baxter may be inform'd That something hath befal'n the Church that for shame and mischievous effects hath exceeded the Persidiousness Contention Schism and Pride of Bishops POSTSCRIPT WHereas near half of Mr. Baxter's Life is filled up with repeated Cavils and frivolous objections against our Episcopacy and Conformity to the Liturgy and Discipline of the Church which have been fully answered by many Worthies of our Church to the satisfaction of imprejudiced Readers yet because nothing will satisfie his Admirers but what is Mr. Baxter's own sence I have collected such Answers as Mr. Baxter himself hath given to his own Objections and printed them in a little Treatise called Mr. Baxter's last Legacy to all sober Dissenters which I doubt not may give them satisfaction if they deserve that Title FINIS