they say that there are some things that will be closely united by no cement so well as by humane blood Doubtless the Gospel as used in English and Preached by true Protestants such as the Pseudo-Bellamie in Philanax Anglicus hatefully calleth Protestants off Sincerity goeth not with many beyond Sea for the same Gospel which they believe And therefore no wonder if the Preachers of it be unpleasing to them and he that will please them and unite with them must silence or oppose those that they would have to be silenced and disgraced And some think that Union with many Kingdoms of Christians which call themselves the Catholick Church is much to be preferred before the Love and Concord of a hated party in our Island And as Dr. Saywell the Master of a Colledge and Bishop Gunnings Chaplain saith to prove that there is a Universal Legislative and Judicial power in the Clergy over Kingdoms as well Persons If more persons or particular Churches give offence by Heresy Schism c. The CHURCH UNIVERSAL or the rest of the Bishops may reprove them for it and then there is no Reason why one man should be censured and many should go free and consequently our Saviour hath established the Authority of his Church over all Christians as well particular Churches as private men Churches of Kingdoms and Nations have a SOVERAIGNTY over them to which they must yield obedience Isa. 60. 12. The Nation and Kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish yea those Nations shall be utterly wasted pag. 343. Though Kings have no Civil Universal Soveraign over them but Christ yet it seems all the world both Kings and Kingdoms have an Ecclesiastical Soveraignty over them all Communion of equalls and Christian Counsel and Reproof is not enough such as all Neighbour Princes may use towards one another Nor the denial of such Communion to the uncapable But all Kings and Kingdoms must be under one Church Soveraignty which hath a Legislative Judicial power over them all to excommunicate absolve them c. And how much more in ordine ad Spirituaâ—ia the common exposition of Ecclesiastical Power tells you As experience long told many Kingdoms what the Excommunicating of a King and Interdicting a Kingdom the worship of God do signify towards their Dethroning or Invasion And all this must be done not as for the Pope but under the name of a General Council and the poor Pope shall have no power but say some to call that Council and call it General when there is no such thing and preside in it and rule us as chief Patriarch and St. Peters Successor in the Intervals of General Councils that is continually and that not Arbitrarily but by the Laws of the Church or Councils and no mortal man can tell which those Authorized Legislative Councils are among the hundreds of erroneous or contradicting ones So that Popery in England is an abhorred thing for it is nothing with some but the Popes absolute Government of the whole Church as without or above Laws and Ecclesiastick Parliaments And can you reconcile all this to our Oath of Supremacy and the Canons that establish it renouncing all forreign Iurisdiction Yes easily we have been told it meaneth only forreign Civil Iurisdiction which belongs to the King and not forreign Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction which is all that the sober Popes do claim save indirectly in ordine ad Spiritualia To Command a Nation on pain of Excommunication and Damnation according to divers Councils to renounce their Allegiance to their Excommunicate Prince and to depose him and set up another is no act of Civil but of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction which yet hath dethroned Emperours and overthrown Dominions And saith A. Bishop Laud in Dr. Stillingfleet's defence of him p. 540. It doth not follow because the Church may err therefore She may not Govern. For the Church hath not only a PASTORAL Power to Teach and Direct but a PRETORIAN also to controul and censure c. And for external obedience to General Councils when they err Consider whether it be not fit to allow a General council that honour and priviledge which all other Great Courts have Stillingfleet p. 534. So that instead of a Council of equals for concord as Princes use for peace with their neighbours We have an Vniversal Soveraign Court set up with Pretorian Power to make binding Laws and pass Iudgment to all the Christian World and say some They are Schismaticks that obey not these Vniversal Laws and obedience to them and suppressing all forbidden Assemblies for Gods worship is the only way to Christian concord And where this forreign Jurisdiction is made of such absolute necessity that without subjection to it by Kings and Kingdoms there is no concord to be had nor any avoiding of the guilt of Schism what wonder if some can wish that silencings reproaches ruines and confusions may be thought no dear price to obtain an universal union for which Christ and his Law are insufficient They that have read Grotius Cassander Baldwin Hoffmeister Erasmus A. Bishop Laud Dr. Heylin of his Life Bishop Sparrow A. Bishop Bromhal and the Prefacer Bishop Parker Thorndike Bishop Gunning and his Chaplain Dr. Saywell and such others and against them all have read Dr. Isaac Barrow of the Supremacy against Thorndike c. may understand where our difference and danger lyeth § 8. And is Englands self destroying disease uncureable God hath in wonderful mercy given us peace from forreign Enemies And is there no hope of prevailing with English men to live together in peace Must that of Isa. 49. 36. be our case to eat our own Flesh and be drunken with our own Blood as with sweet Wine Alas no counsel no petitions no tears no experience no judgments of God by Plagues and Flames have hitherto one jot prevailed But the Ulcer of mens minds grows more and more putrid and malignant Two ways are by some proposed First that all the Consciencious worshippers of God in the Kingdom should bring their judgments to a full conformity in every particular to their rulers Whenas first they cannot tell us who these must be some say to the King or Law Some say to the Bishops in a National Convocation Others say to the foresaid forreign universal Soveraignty of General Councils with the Patriarchs If the first be the way what Kingdoms must it be in Is it no where but in Britain Or also in France Spain Italy Germany Poland And must there be as many Religions as Kings and Laws will make And how far must this go And where must we stop Must Kings choose us a God Or chuse whether we shall have any God any Christ any Bible any worship of God and so any Heaven If it be the Bishops that must be the common rule of our Religion what Countreys and Ages doth this rule serve for Was it the rule where Princes and Prelates were Arians or Nestorians or Eutychians or Monothelites or Papists Is it
their ancient and accustomed Liberty Regiment Laws they may not well be counted Rebels saith he of Obedience pag. 520. But I hear many now say the contrary and Condemn such Doctrine as disloyal I find some joyn with the Papists in accusing the Reformation as caused by Rebellions in Germany Geneva France Belgium c. And I find Bishop Iewel Bilson and other Bishops defending the French defence and Dr. Peter Moulin of Canterbury in his answer to Philanax Anglicus Contradicting their accusers as false in Point of History Abundance of such Political Controversies are now lately agitated some charging their adversaries with Rebellion and some with Tyranny Some saying they are guilty of Treason against the King and others They are Traitors against the Kingdom And too ordinarily damning one another as if these matters were Articles of our Creed What a dismal difference is there now about those words in the Declaration in the Corporation Act There is no Obligation on me or any other person from the Oath called the solemn League and Covenant Some say there are none but Rebels will refuse it And that if any obligation had been granted to things lawful or necessary some would have extended it to Rebellion or Schism And therefore all Obligation is to be renounced Others say that National perjury is a forerunner of National Calamity or ruine and that where Oaths bind not there can be no Trust and no Trust no Commerce And they think as Dr. Sanderson and Casuists Papists and Protestants do that though an Oath or Vow be unlawfully Imposed and Sinfully taken and part of the matter of it be unlawful and the Imposers and Takers are bound to repent and no one is bound by it to the unlawful part yet the taker is bound to that part of the matter which is lawful or necessary And they take it to be lawful and necessary to Repent of sin to oppose Prophaneness Schisms Heresy and Popery to defend the King and therefore that it obligeth them to these I meddle not with the Roman opinion that it is the Henrician Heresy to say that Kings have a power of investing Bishops and disobeying the Popes Excommunication and of such as Cardinal Perron that dare not question or deny the power of the Pope and Councils to Excommunicate and depose Kings because then they must condemn approved General Councils which are their religion itself and saith he must grant that the Pope is Antichrist and the Church erroneous that hath so long used this I name all these Political Controversies 1. To tell you that it is not factious and passionate enmity to each other on such accounts which I mean by enmity to Religion 2. And to remember men that if in so many and great points of Politicks and Government the Learned and Christian World have so great difference what reason is there that we should Damn or Excommunicate or hate each other about a hard opinion in Religion or a Ceremony 3. And to tell the Popish Church that if it were a good argument that there must be one Pretorian Court or Church to oblige all the World by an universal determination in what sence to expound the Scripture because it is abused to errour by mens mistake and there must be an end of Controversies by the same reason there must be an universal Pretorian Court to expound all human Laws and end the controversies of Lawyers Yea and to master all mens Reason for Scripture is no more commonly controverted and abused than Law is And not half so much as Reason is which is pleaded for almost all the falshood and wickedness in the World. § 10. Moreover it is not personal feuds between Man and Man that I mean by Enmity to Godliness No though any such be against an Innocent and Godly Man where it is not for his Godliness but some other difference § 11. I will say more though some dislike it it is not a Papist as such that I mean by a Malignant Enemy of Godliness I know that Education and Temptation and want of hearing the confutation of their errours judiciously made may cause Godly persons to think that the universal Church must be united in some humane Head or Soveraign power and that there is no other way to end controversies and schisms and that as Dr. Saywell saith there must be some over Kingdoms or National Churches as well as over particular persons that many may not escape while a few are punished It is easy to be deceived by the pretences of Unity and Concord while men see the divisions and discords of others And the false pretences of Antiquity are so confidently uttered by their Clergy that men unacquainted with the history may verily believe them And the plea for an uninterrupted succession of Ministerial ordination and that a Superior must give power to the Inferiors deceiveth many If there must be a Diocesane to ordain and rule all Presbyters and a Metropolitan to ordain or rule the Diocesanes and a Patriarch to rule them from whom shall the Patriarchs receive their power or commands but from a Pope The poor reasoning which the French now use with the Protestants puzleth unskilful persons viz. Was there any Church before your reformation If yea where was it And had not you your Ministerial power from it It was Rome or none And if it was the true Church then it is so now We answer them there was and is one only Catholick Church Of this Christ only is the Head or Universal governour and no man or men Of this all Lawful Pastors are his official guides in their several Provinces as many Justices and Mayors of Corporations under one King That all these having one King Jesus and one Law of Christ and one Spirit and one Faith and Hope are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to use Synods when needful to that end but not as a Pretorian or Regent Aristocracy or Court. That the Church before Luther was all over the World where ever there were Christians in Ethiopia Egypt Syria Armenia Georgia Circassia Asia and where ever the Greek Christianity is in Moscovy and in all Europe where there were true Christians That the envious man having sowed Tares this Church is unhappily fallen into many corruptions diseases and factious sects almost all censuring one another no part of it is perfect That the Papal part is in Doctrine Worship and Government one of the most corrupted parts Yet so far as their diseases or errours nullify not their profession of Christianity they are parts though leprous And therefore though they are the most uncharitable and schismatical part as they cut off or unchurch all the Christian World save themselves yet being as Christians united to the rest in the common faith their Baptism Ordinations are not nullities as they invest men in the Christian Society and Christian Ministry though that part of them is a nullity which engageth men
be a wicked errour meerly because the Canon saith so He that can believe what his list believeth nothing truly If this Belief be necessary to Church Communion and to escape damning Schism it is necessary to Salvation Why then is it not in the Creed Ten Commandments or Bible Do you call them the things Indifferent and then call it a wicked errour to hold them sinful Is not this to make it necessary to Salvation or Communion to have so much Learning or Knowledge as to know all Indifferent words and things in the world to be indifferent which men will impose I would all Church-Members with your and others knew all necessary things Do you believe in your heart that all or half the Parishioners do know these things to be lawful or understand any more of them than those that think otherwise when thousands cannot answer a necessary question of the Creed or Catechism nor know who Christ is and how he saveth us Why is there not a Catechism made containing the sound proof that Lay-Chancellors power of the Keys and Diocesan Bishops that have no Bishops under them and our present court-Court-Church discipline and all the Rubrick Ceremonies and Forms are lawful if all must be excommunicate that think and say otherwise Obj. If they are so ignorant that they cannot know Church Orders to be lawful they are not fit to communicate with the Church Ans. Make no Church Orders necessary to Communion but what Christ and his Apostles have made necessary to it and then cast out and spare not all as ignorant that refuse them 2. But again do you believe that most or all that you keep in are wiser and more knowing than those that you cast out How shall such as I believe you who know that in all the Parishes which my cohabitation allowed me to know it is the most knowing and religious part that most dissent and the generality of the grosly ignorant that understand few Articles of the Creed do conform As ignorant as I am and hundreds of my calling and mind I would I were not only silenced and imprisoned but put to death on condition that all that you now receive as Members of the Church had no more ignorance than we have But it 's our lot to tire our selves with teaching poor people to understand their Baptism Christianity Creed Lords Prayer and Ten Commandments and leave most ignorant when all 's done and yet our selves after our hardest and longest study to be judged so ignorant about some Indifferent things as to be unfit for Ministry or Communion Accus If men will not obey Church Governours and Laws they are Rebels and unfit for Christian Society If every man shall follow his own fancy what Order will there be Do not all Churches require obedience to their Orders Ans. 1. The Church hath One Universal King who hath made Universal Laws for all which must be first obeyed and against which no man hath power And yet his own Laws have things necessary to all in which they must unite and Integrals and Accidents which all know not in which they must bear with one another No man understandeth all the Bible And are many Laws and Books more necessary than Gods 2. Whoever depraveth the necessary points of Religion by his own fancies should be rejected But all men living err in many lesser things 3. In what Countreys is it that your Rule holds that Rulers must be thus far obeyed in Religion Is it in China or Pegu or Indostan or Turky Or is it in Italy Spain Poland Silesia Bavaria or France Or is it at Geneva Holland or the Presbyterian Countreys Or is it only in England Scotland and Ireland And was it so here before Henry the 8th or only since And how shall any know where it is unless he try and judge his Rulers Commands by the Laws of God Will you follow this Rule in France or Spain Or shall all Subjects judge of Kings capacities Accus But they hold unlawful Assemblies of their own and worship God contrary to Law and yield not so much as Passive Obedience Ans. 1. You know the Ministers are forbidden their Office unless they will take those Oaths Subscriptions Professions and Practices which they dare not take for fear of sin and damnation And they would be thankful if their reasons may be heard and if any will instruct them better And they are confirmed in their Opinion by the answers or no answers rather made to the reasons already given in And they are devoted or vowed to the sacred Ministry in their Ordination And if there be such a sin as Sacriledge in the world they are confident it were Sacriledge in them to alienate themselves from the Office which they have undertaken As it is Apostacy from Christianity to violate our Baptismal Vow though men should command it they doubt not but it is perfidious Apostacy from the sacred Ministry to violate the Ordination Vow though Bishops silence them As it is Adultery to violate the Conjugal Contract though a Bishop should require it seeing he that married them hath no power to unmarry them unless they do it first themselves and prove Desertors or Adulterers 2. And the people that are excommunicate or forbidden to worship God publickly unless they will do that which they think is sin are still under Gods command to worship him and not to forsake Church-assembling for his worship What would you have these Ministers and People do They study and pray to God to convince them if they take these Oaths Subscriptions Professions and Practices to be sin and they be no sin They resolve to be ruled by Gods Word They are willing to hear any thing that may better inform them They wonder that men accuse them that have no more to say to change them If they desert the Ministry they fear Gods vengeance If these poor people give over all Gods Publick Worship and live like Atheists Conscience living or dying will torment them If they do that which they are perswaded is sin when the Imposers call it but Indifferent Paul hath antidated their Sentence He that doubteth is damned if he eat because he eateth not of faith for whatsoever is not of faith is sin Rom. 14. Change their Judgment they cannot sin they dare not To give over worshiping God is to renounce Salvation Change the Law or Canon men will not It seems to me a strange penalty to forbid men to worship God at all because they think some Subscriptions or Forms to be sin More strange than to say All that will not wear Crape shall go naked Or all that will not eat Anchovies shall eat nothing If a man think the use of a Crucifix in Worship sinful sure to give over all Worship is more sinful But men have their ways 3. What Worship is it that they offer God contrary to Law They are willing to do all required in Scripture by Christ and his Apostles And were they Rebels and
the rule now in France Spain Italy c. Or was it so in the Popes Catholick Church from An. 700 till the Reformation If it be General Councils I am weary of repeating the Proofs that there never was one nor ever is like to be one or ought to be If it be an European Council who shall call them and who shall judge whether it be equal and so far General And are not the greater number of European Bishops known Papists And will they not then be the Major Vote And so we must be as bad as they And if the rest of the Christian world be not bound by them in Greece Ethiopia Armenia Syria c. Why are we Is it the Council of Ariminum Sirmium Milane c. or of Ephesus 2 Nice 2d many at Constantinople at the Laterane at Lyons at Florence at Constance at Basil at Trent that are our Rule Must all that will be Catholicks and saved hold all the Heresies Contradictions and Corruptions that Councils have held and obey all their load of Canons If the Italians French English c. are all disagreed how many and which Councils we must obey can all poor people know which is in the right And hath Christ left Religion so uncertain a thing Or so mutable that General Councils of Prelates may be still increasing it If he was the the maker of it by himself and his Apostles we may know more certainly where to find it Most Christians may say Christ we know and Peter and Paul c. we know But your Councils are too many too voluminous too uncertain for us to know But if they are such an absolutely necessary rule as you pretend why do not teachers preach them to us daily as they do the Sacred Scriptures If any would come down to confine these universal Laws only to Things Indifferent alas must the world be confounded and divided about things indifferent Are not things indifferent variable as Countreys and Ages are And must the world have one Soveraignty to make Laws for them Cannot we have Life Liberty Peace and Love without things indifferent Or without agreeing in them Are there any two in the whole world that are not ignorant and that differ not about many greater matters than things indifferent Doth he know himself or know what a man is that thinks all tolerated Christians must be so Skill'd in all things indifferent which men may impose as to know them to be such When it is so hard to teach the people things necessary few and plain Alas Lord why must the Churches be left in such hands § 9. But some have found out another remedy for our divisions and that is That only the Bishops shall be engaged to a Forreign Jurisdiction or profess the necessity of obeying them under the name of a General Council and in the intervals of a Colledge of the Bishops of the whole world as one Aristocracy And that this shall not be imposed on any Lay-Communicants but their Consciences shall be left at liberty Nor at the first on the inferior Clergy till they are prepared to receive it But only that the People obey the Priests and Prelates and the Priests obey the Prelates and all their Governing Officers and the Prelates only profess obedience to the Pretorian Court called The Catholick Church Bishop Gunnings Chaplain tells us that the Laity are not required in order to Communion to declare for General Councils Whether they use the like Moderation in France Spain Germany I know not viz. For the Bishops only to Profess obedience to the Pope and the Priests to the Bishops and the people to the Priests and Bishops I hear they go further And if Conventicles as they will call them are also suppressed we need not fear Religious Violence Murder and Ruine upon a feared Roman Successour For saith the same Bishops Chaplain pag 283. For matters may be so ordered that all Officers Ecclesiastical Civil and Military and all that are employed in Power or Authority of any kind be persons both of known Loyalty to the Crown and yet faithful Sons of the Church and firm to the established Religion and the Laws that they act by may be so explained in the favour of those that conform to the publick Worship and the discouragement of all Dissenters that we must reasonably be secure from all violence that the Papists can offer to force our submission For when all our Bishops and Clergy are under strict obligations and Oaths and the people are guided by them and all Officers Civil and Military are firm to the same interest and under severe penalties if they act any thing to the contrary Then what probable danger can there be of any violence or disturbance to force us out of our Religion when all things are thus secured and the power of External Execution is generally in the hands of men of our own perswasion Ans. The Dr. says well I am of his mind in this When they have subdued and cast out all Dissenters as they do in France and the Bishops and Clergy are setled under a Forreign Church-Jurisdiction and the People setled in Obedience to them and all Offices Civil Military and Ecclesiastick in their hands I do not think they need to fear that the Papists will use violence to change their Religion whoever reigneth But the Question is whether this suppose an Vnion with all in England that are now against a Forreign Jurisdiction or only the destruction of them or else the forcing them to these terms As to a destruction of them or forcing them to such terms surely Violence must do this And what though the Subjects of Forreign Power fear no Violence are all the rest that is the Protestants of the Kingdom inconsiderable We suppose the old Church of England and all our Parliaments since the Reformation were against a Forreign Jurisdiction And will it be no loss to England to destroy so many that is the Body of the Land But the Question is Whether they may not be thus brought to concord by consent I answer no unless you suppose them to be men that indeed have no Religion and therefore can easily part with the bare name For they are sworn by the Oath of Supremacy against all forreign Iurisdiction And put the case that the Pope and a Council or the King of France would bring the Emperours or the Kings Army to serve him and be at his Command and he would only desire that the General Officers and Colonels may be engaged to obey him and the Captains and lower Officers to obey them and the Souldiers to obey the Officers but the common Souldiers shall be bound to no more than this obedience to their Officers Query Whether all these Souldiers be not Traitors to the King or Emperour Cromwells common Souldiers took no Commissions against King or Parliament they did but obey their Officers that pulled down both And were they therefore guiltless Protestants will not thus follow such
Prelates against their Oaths and against the known truth and against their duty to God and the King. § 10. But though it be notorious that Domination and Jurisdiction be the things which cause the Papal Clergy to trouble and tear the Christian world what is it that makes the Laity so mad getteth this Clergy such a militant crowd against their own Tranquillity and Salvation It 's as visible as any moral thing that the Churches Divisions and Wars and Miseries have about a thousand years risen from Satans thrusting such worldly fleshly unholy men into holy Offices who seek them but to serve their Pride and Covetousness and Fleshly Appetites and Ease and who are Enemies at the heart to the serious obedience to Christ which formally they preach Christs own Apostles in their time of ignorance began to strive which of them should be greatest of which we have recorded his sharp rebuke which St. Peter himself did after second in 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3. in words so plain that if his pretended Successours had not first claimed a power as the Church to be the determining expounders of all the Bible they had lain under the Condemnation of Christ and Peter Naked without a Defence or Cloak But this Church-expounding authority sets them above all the Word of God which is now but what they please to make it and an instrument to execute their wills And indeed it is now rather the Pope and his Prelates and Councils than Christ that are the Law-makers to the Church For it is not he that maketh the words only that makes the Law but he that giveth them their sense The words are but as the body and the sense is the Soul of the Law. The Ministerial Church now scorn the name of Ministers and being become Pretorian and Magisterial they give Christ and his Spirit in the Apostles leave to make the words and body of the Scripture or Divine Law as God formed Adams body of the dust so that they may give it the breath of Life and also may make far more Voluminous Laws of their own and cut off and condemn all the Children of God that cannot believe that it 's lawful to obey them And though the Ignorant think that the claim of universal Legislation and Judgment in the universal Church and General Councils be no Service to the Domination of particular Clergy men no nor to any seeing there will never be a General Council They understand not the mystery of iniquity and mistake We have English Writers that have told them 1. That indeed Power is first given to the body fine doctrine for Royalists but by the Body it is given to the Prelates to use for them 2. That as a General Council hath the Supream power so the Prelates under them have the Inferior Ruling power and the executive in the intervals of Councils 3. That as Councils represent the Church in Soveraignty so every Bishop is by his office the true Representative of the Clergy of his Diocess and every Metropolitan the Representative of his Province and every Patriarch of his Patriarchate And then are not the Patriarchs at least with the Metropolitans Universal Rulers in such Intervals 4. And the Pope is the Patriarch of the West and hath a primacy in the Church universal and must be confest to be principium unitatis Catholicae and say some to be the President of Councils 5. To which others add that it belongs only to the president to call Councils and to Iudg which are Lawful without whose call they are so far from binding us that they are themselves but unlawful Routs And what would you have more But what 's all this to the poor Priests What Why 7. The people know not what the volumes of Councils say and it is the Priests or no body that must tell it them both what their exposition of Scripture is and what their own additional Laws are without which they cannot be obeyed so that indeed the peoples Faith is ultimately resolvedly into the authority of the Priest who tells them what the Bishop saith who tells them what the Metropolitan and his Synod saith who tells them what the Patriarch and his Synod saith who tells them what the chief Patriarch and a General Council saith who tell them determinatively what Christ and the Scripture saith and meaneth But what 's this to Councils when there are none Yes 8. Those that are past and gone have left all those binding Laws by which the present Bishops as an Aristocracy must govern all the Christian World. But are not they for Monarchy in the state How come they then to plead for a Soveraign Aristocracy over the Catholick Church and how come even the French Clergy to be for the power of a Church Parliament above the Pope I cannot answer that let the Pope and they debate it But I wonder that A. Bishop Laud should be for the derivation of all power from the Body as Richard Hooker is See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence of him p. 544. 545. c. No Body collective whensoever it assembled it self did ever give more power to the representing body of it than a binding power upon it self and all particulars Nor ever did it give this power otherwise than with this Reservation in nature that it would call again and reform and if need were abrogate any law or ordinances upon just cause made evident that the representing Body had failed in trust or truth And this power no Body collective Ecclesiastical or Civil can put out of it self or give away to a Parliament or Council or call it what you will that represents it The power which a Council hath to order settle and define differences arising concerning faith it hath not by any immediate institution of Christ but it was prudently taken up by the Church from the Apostles example See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence I confess that the generality of Politicians and Lawyers Heathens Papists and Protestants go much this way as to Civil Government and say that the Majestas personalis is in the King or Senate but the Majestas realis in the Body which giveth the Organical power and on just cause may take it away It is no honour to be singular in Politicks and I have said enough of this elsewhere Christ. Direct p. 1. But if it be the Body of the whole Church on Earth that must give Church Officers and Councils their power and recal it when there is cause if ever the whole Christian World meet together to vote it when it cometh to Poling we will give both the Monarchical and the Aristocratical Conciliar Papists three for one to try who hath the power given by the Body But while two or three parts do already disown almost all their Councils the case is decided But if an old Councils Heresies Errours or Tyranny can be invalidated only by a new one that is truly General or a new one as Papal as the last we confess that Trent
I call them not Malignant Enemies I find Bishop Gunnings Chaplain thinks that he doth say well when he saith that Not only Murderers Adulterers Drunkards but such Schismaticks as disturb the peace and weaken the authority of the Churches Discipline their 's are to be excommunicated and reckoned among Heathens and Publicans and Enemies to the Gospel of Christ if they preach it without a Diocesanes license p. 214. And that it is already our case that it 's a very difficult matter to find a Iury and Witnesses especially among the Dissenters upon whose credit we may rely All this signifieth how little blind Faction is to be believed and how far it conquereth even humane modesty and veracity But yet I difference it from the Enmity to Godliness which I speak of And that you may see that he is no Papist though for a Forreign Iurisdiction he tells you of Cromwell that There is too great reason to suspect that he intended to settle Popery in the Nation when matters had been ripe to go through with it I confess this is news to me I have roundly told him to his face of his Disloyalty in deposing our English Monarchy and told the world then of his treacherous Usurpation but it never came into my thoughts that he intended to settle Popery in the Nation But if these words come from Clergy Truth and Modesty they are very considerable I hope the old Royalists will be against Popery the more if Cromwel was for it And the Papists I hope will be no more angry with Dr. Moulin that answereth Philanax Anglicus for making the Kings death to be caused and concluded by the Papists if Cromwel was for them But Faction will face men down that Snow is black So on the other side I hear some that are against Infant Baptism sharply censure all that are not of their mind And some over-sharply censure the Prelatists and Conformists And almost all the Christian world is divided into parties that too little stick at the injurious censuring of others The Papists Greeks Abassines Armenians Nestorians Jacobites c. And among the Papists the Dominicans and Molinists and Jansenians c. And among the Protestants too many This is no small sin but it is not that enmity to Godliness it self which I mean. § 9. 3. And I mean not by malignity mens Differences in Civil and Political Controversies Though I take Popery to be half a Civil Controversy and to be unsufferable by such Princes and People whom they bind themselves to depose and destroy And that to Subject all the Christian world to the Legislative Judicial and Executive Government of one Pope or one Pretorian Court is no better than to proclaim such a Pope or Court to be publick enemies and usurpers to all Christian Princes and States But yet abundance of Political differences may consist with serious Piety My reason is because God hath not made Political Controversies so clear as that all good Christians can resolve them Neither the Light of Nature nor the Bible nor Tradition endeth them Nor hath he put them into our Creed or the ten Commandments nor laid mens Salvation on them as he hath done on the Essentials of Religion Nor commanded all men to be so well Skill'd in Statute Books and Common Law as to be able to know which party is in the right And therefore I joyn not with those Clergy or Lay-Gentlemen who damn all that are not of their mind and side in differences of that nature I often hear some say that Kings and States do all receive their Authority from the Body of the Nation who are the chief seat of it So Hooker so Laud and indeed as aforesaid so Heathen Papist and Protestant Politicks ordinarily hold I call not all these malignants though I am fully satisfied 1. That God is the Instituter of Magistracy in genere 2. And that he hath so far specified it as to determine of its unchangeable Essentials that they shall as his Officers promote obedience to the ten Commandments 3. And that he never gave this governing power to the people 4. But that all that the people do is 1. To specify it as to the number of persons a Monarchy Aristocracy or mixt of these and some Democracy 2. To limit it by determining of the Degrees of power about Property and Liberty and all things which Gods Law hath left undetermined and mutable 3. And to determine of the persons and Families that shall receive the immutable power from God and the mutable from men I often hear some most magnify Democracy and some Aristocracy and some Monarchy and some a mixture and some English Clergy men are for a Civil Monarchy Subject to a Catholick Clergy-Aristocracy I call none Malignants for any such differences I find some Papists and Protestants Politick writers saying that when it proveth hurtful to the Common-wealth the people may retract the power given the Prince and change the Government and Hooker saith No doubt in such a case a Prince will part with it And A. Bishop Laud before cited saith of the like and abrogating Laws This power no Body Collective Ecclesiastical or Civil can put out of it self and give away And I find many that extol Hooker and Laud call this a principle of Rebellion It is neither of them that I call Malignants I find most writers of Politicks agreed that the Law of nature Alloweth and Commandeth Kingdoms and Commonwealths self-defence against any publick Enemies that seek to destroy them And that no man on pretence of Right to a Crown hath any right to destroy the body of the people or the Bonum publicum which is the Essentiating end of Government nor can be simul rex publicus hostis I hear others take this for an unchristian doctrine of Rebellion and say that if a King would destroy all the people of a Kingdom in revenge or in siding with another Kingdom of his own or anothers they ought not to resist him or any that he Commissioneth to do it And that if he should Commission a few men to kill all the Parliament as they sit or to burn the City it is Rebellion to resist by self-defence I hear Lawyers themselves at great difference on such matters some for more power and some for less I find the great Defenders of Monarchy such as Barclay and Grotius de Iure Belli naming many cases in which Kings may be resisted yea and forfeit all And I find others among us of a contrary mind Yea I find the Conformable and Diocesane Pillars quite differ in such cases Bishop Bilson naming many cases in which resistance is no rebellion To Subject his Kingdom to a Forreign Realm or to change the form of the Common-wealth from Impery to Tyranny or neglect the Laws Established by common consent of Prince and People to execute his own pleasure In these and other such cases which might be named if the Nobles and Commons joyn together to defend
hate you as it hated me because you are not of the World but I have chosen you out of the World Marvel not if the World hate you As many as will live godly in Christ Iesus shall suffer Persecution c. Who do you think all this is spoken of It is not of you that are fleshly worldly ungodly men Who Persecuteth you for righteousness sake Who hateth revileth or imprisoneth or fineth you for living godly in Christ Jesus Do you suffer as much for reviling Preachers as we have done for Preaching What suffer you for all the Oaths that be sworn daily in Streets and Taverns and the horrid prophaneness Atheism Sadduceism Infidelity that men are guilty or If you did suffer for Whoredom Drunkenness Blasphemy is that for Christ or righteousness When the Holy Ghost saith As he that was born after the Flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit even so it is now is it such as you that he meaneth When Peter saith They speak evil of you and falsly accuse your good conversation in Christ 1 Pet. 3. 16. whom meaneth he When he saith 1 Pet. 4. They think it strange that you run not with them to all excess of ryot lasciviousness lusts excess of wine revellings banquetings and abominable idolatry who do you think he meaneth And when he saith 1. Pet. 2. 9. Ye are a chosen Generation a royal Priest-hood a holy Nation a peculiar People that ye should shew forth the praises of him that hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light who is it that he meaneth You 'll say It is Christians True But is it Hypocrites Is it those that will say at last Lord we have Prophesied in thy Name and Eat and Drunk in thy presence to whom Christ will say Depart from me ye workers of Iniquity I know you not Sure false Christians are worse than Heathens 39. The way which you take against Religious persons doth shew who it is that sets you on work and what it is that is the root of your enmity As Gods Image is in the understanding will and executive power of man so is Satans and he is accordingly described by Christ to be 1. A Liar and Deceiver 2. A Malignant Hater of Goodness or Holiness and a cause of sin 3. A hurtful murderer or destroyer And these are the three ways by which Godly people are prosecuted in the world 1. Belying them is grown so common with their enemies that there is nothing scarcely so notoriously false which they will not affirm of them and it 's well if some will not preach it print it or swear it And they make one another easily believe it Till experience proved it I did not think that humane nature had been liable to such impudent monstrous lying 2. The daily business of many is by wit and diligence to draw men to hate Religious men on false pretences As plainly as Christ preacheth and urgeth Love as his great Commandment so plainly do these press and urge men to Hatred But of this before 3. And Hatred tends to Hurtfulness What plotting and labouring is there in the world to ruine and destroy each other The malignant spirit is blood-thirsty It 's strange how the unclean Devils thirst to draw or suck some blood from Witches Nothing more alienates me from the Papal Kingdom than that it lives like Leeches upon blood To read over the History of the Inquisition and of their Massacres would make Men take Toads and Adders and mad Dogs and Wolves for harmless things in comparison of some Men. If any would requite them or others with the like I hate it in Protestant or Papist The Turks conquered the Greek Empire partly by the mutinous divisions of the Christians and partly by promising them Liberty of Religion And when the Christians thought they should have that they yielded up the Empire with the less resistance And that which was so advantageous to the Infidels might well used and limited be more advantageous to the Christian Truth and Church But though good things may be used in an ill cause it is a sign of a bad cause which needeth bad means That cause which is carried on by Lying Perjury and Deceit by malignant Love-killing endeavours and by cruelty and hurtfulness and blood is thereby made suspicious to all wise men It is a wonder of impudency in Baronius Binnius and other Papists to justifie Martin a Canonized Saint for renouncing Communion to the death with the Synods and Bishops who perswaded the Emperor to draw the Sword against the Gnostick Priscillianists and themselves to defend a thousand-fold greater cruelties and murders in their own Church on the account of Religion But sin is mad self-contradiction 4. I conclude with this great truth They that hate and oppose Godly mens obedience to God do seek to silence the chief Witness of Christ and to cast out Christianity from the Earth Christianity cannot be proved to be true but by the Spirit which is its Seal and Witness This Witness of the Spirit was not only extraordinary in Languages and numerous Miracles but also ordinary in the work of Sanctification This Seal is set on all that shall be saved in all times and places The Lord knoweth who are his And let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity He redeemed us to purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Iesus Christ Tit. 2. 12 13 14. By this healing work Christ is known to be indeed our Physician the real Saviour that saveth his people from their sins As man generateth man and the Father is known by the similitude of the Child and as he is known to be a good Artist that can make others such This is Christs standing Witness in all times and places And when you would turn this into scorn and cloud it with slanders or the charge of Hypocrisie and would have such judged an odious people and have them driven out of the world what do you in effect but spit in the face of Christ and crown him with Thorns and call him a Deceiver and crucifie him afresh and seek to expel Christianity from the Earth What reasonable man could believe Christ to be Christ the Saviour of the world if he did not sanctifie men and make them much better and fitter for Heaven than other men So that in this you directly militate for the Devil the World and the Flesh against God the Father Son and Holy Ghost against the Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints and the Hope of Resurrection and life everlasting which if you did openly under the name of Infidels or Heathens or rather as the profest Souldiers of the Devil it were less disingenuous and hypocritical than to do it in
Christs Apostles did If this be their horrid wickedness that makes them unworthy to live out of Prison say so and pretend no other But if it be Heresie false Doctrine Perjury Fornication Robbing Treason Sedition or any other crime why are they not accused of these before the Judges And why are those charged with them that never were so accused and proved guilty Will not all wise men take those persons for malicious Liars who by their published accusations thus odiously charge multitudes and never offer to prove it against them at the Judicatures Their accusation shews they want not will therefore their not prosecuting them for any such sort of crimes shews that it is truth that is wanting 13. And if they be such wicked persons whence is it that they are charged meerly with Hypocrisy by such as say that they live soberly and justly and demurely but they are at the heart as bad as others Their accusers commonly confess that they are most free from all immoralities and have an outward shew of righteousness but these heart-searchers see that their hearts are bad And do they not by this confute their own accusations 14. And why is it that they that know them best can see none of the wickedness which you accuse them of beyond those humane infirmities of which they most accuse themselves As I have oft done I again solemnly profess as one that cannot be far from my account before the judge of all the the World that having now lived to the 68th year of my age and been most familiar since the age of sixteen or seventeen with that sort of men whom the Vulgar then called Puritans described by Mr. Bolton and such other Conformists though I have met with many that had their mistakes and frailties and troublesome differences in lesser things and some Hypocrites intruded among them yet I never knew any other sort of men comparable to them in Christian Knowledge Faith Obedience to God Hatred of sin Care of their duty to God and man Sobriety Temperance Chastity Truth Heavenly desires endeavours and hopes And that they so far excelled the rest of my acquaintance as made their grace amiable to me and confirmed my belief of the Sacred Scripture Yea more if I had not had the happiness of knowing such a sort of men that in holiness Justice and Love excelled the rest of my acquaintance or at least credibly heard of such I could not have believed in Christ as a Saviour of men whom he made no better than Turks and Infidels Nor could I have believed a Heaven for men no better prepared for it And that now near my end I see so great a difference in Holiness Justice and Charity between those commonly reviled for worshiping God but as the Apostles did and those that hate and persecute them as greatly helps me in believing that there is a Saviour and Sanctifier and Heaven for the faithful and a Devil that deceives the rest and a hell that will receive them which is even visibly begun on Earth Accus But say they it is not for their Godliness or Sobriety that we accuse them but for their sin and wickedness Ans. Still this is but General and signifieth nothing But 1. What is that odious sin 2. It 's Gods merciful Providence that keeps sin in general under such shame as that the actors of it speak against it even in their slanders 3. But if this be the true cause why do you cull out those that have least sin to fasten your accusations of sin upon If there be a conformable Minister that is more Holy Charitable and Zealous against sin than the rest he is one of those that is called a Puritan and accused of sin Why do we hear none of your furious charges against the common Drunkards Revellers Gamesters Whoremongers Persecutors Profane Blasphemers Lyars and the Families that call not upon God shew no serious regard of any Religion at all You can live among these and Swear and Drink and Play with them and never cry out against them as bad men Accus But religion being the best thing the Corrupters of that are worse than Drunkards and Swearers and Adulterers Ans. Such corrupters there may be as are worse indeed But what is it that they corrupt Religion in They subscribe to all the Bible and the ancient Creeds And if need be to the English Articles of Religion Is not all that enough Their many large published writings tell the world their Judgment in Religion Such as Mr. Arthur Hildershams Mr. Perkins Mr. Greenhams Dods Anthony Burges Richard Alleins and abundance such What errors are in these 2. Why are they not these twenty years accused of Preaching false Doctrine and proved guilty and punisht for it if they are such 3. If it be not in Doctrine what is it Accus They worship God contrary to the Law in not using the Common-Prayer book Ans. 1. Those that constantly joyn in the Parish Churches in the Common-Prayer are as much hated Reviled and Prosecuted as the rest Therefore this charge is but hypocrisy 2. What do they that for matter or manner is positively contrary to Law in Gods worship They read Scripture Pray Preach Praise God with Psalms Communicate in the Lords Supper Doth the Law forbid any of this 3. Not using the rest of the Liturgy is a Negation and no Act at all and therefore no act of worship and therefore no unlawful act no more than silence is He that is silent and he that omits the rest of the Liturgy worships not God by using it but he doth nothing contrary to it or forbidden by it 4. If Peter and Paul were unknown in England and worshipt God but as they did on Earth would you therefore call them Rogues or Rebels or lay them in the jail Did they worship God in an odious intolerable manner Did the Holy-Ghost by them write an infallible Rule for all things necessary in Religion and yet are they unsufferable rogues that worship God but according to that rule 5. Are they wiser men than they that have made us another rule or worship or have they more of Gods Spirit and more authority in religion 6. Do not the Imposers say that all which they add is no part of Religion but things indifferent And are they odious corrupters of Religion who omit no part of Religion but only humane indifferent things 7. Do you not reverence the Church for some hundred years after Christ which imposed no Liturgies but left every Pastor to use his own Prayers 8. Do you not harden the Papists that call our Religion new and ask where it was two hundred years ago if you make the Liturgy as now formed and imposed our Religion when it is not two hundred years old 9. The Godly Bishops of England have ever owned the other Protestant Churches and their Communion who have none of our Liturgies nor any like it 10. If this be the odious crime why do you
never Revile or Prosecute the Atheists Infidels Sadduces Hobbists and those many thousands that seldom if ever go to any Church or worship God publickly at all Is the worship that Peter and Paul used worse than irreligiousness and infidelity 11. Who can believe that you are sincerely zealous against misworshiping God when you can ordinarily your selves be in a drinking house or playing house at the time of publick worship And when so few of you ever so much as worship God in your Families by Prayer or read the Scripture or Catechise your families 12. Is it not a strange thing to hear men accuse others for not using the Liturgy in Gods worship and at the same time would have them that refuse it to be forbidden all publick worshiping of God at all Doth this signify any dislike of their omitting Gods worship Which is the more ungodly omission to omit all worship of God and live like Atheists or to omit only so much of the Liturgy as the Apostles used not I have known many that could not eat cheese as is said before nor scarce smell it without danger of Death If you would have a Law made that such shall eat no other meat few wisemen will believe that it is their health and life that you desire If a man fail in paying his Landlord some odd act of Service will you make a Law that he shall pay nothing at all If a Subject neglect paying some excise or using Bow and Arrows will you forbid him paying any thing or serving the King at all Sure they that forbid men all publick worship be offended at somewhat else than that men do not rightly worship God unless they think that not to worship him at all is better than doing it without their Book Obj. But he shall be Compelled to better worship Ans. How when he lieth in jail he cannot publickly worship God at all Is that better worship I know it is banishment which some would have executed And will men worship God any better among Heathens or Infidels or others Or why should other Countries endure them if they be not to be endured in their own Are not English-men that worship God only by their own Book as much Nonconformists when they are in other Lands France Spain Italy Germany Holland c. as those are here that do not use it And are they there intolerable and worthy of ruine Did the Apostles or first Churches banish any on such accounts Will Christ banish them from his Kingdom Hath he made any such Laws And is not he the absolute Soveraign Hath he left his Servants to the will of man to use them how they will or cast out of his Church whom they will Are you sure these are none of the number of whom Christ saith I was hungry and ye fed me not c. In as much as ye did it not to one of the least of these my Brethren you did it not to me Mat. 25. Accus But they are Schismaticks and Separate from the Church and is not that a damnable sin Ans. 1. Being speaking only to malignant enemies of serious Godliness I say It is not only Separatists that you hate but Godly Conformists yea perhaps most of all because you are more restrained from hurting them How oft hear we Curses and Revilings against Conforming Puritanes or as some call them Church Whigs If they are not haters of their brethren but Friends to Love and Peace you nickname them Trimmers And cursing those whom Christ blesseth when he saith Blessed be the Peace-makers for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven You say Cursed be the Trimmers and would the Kingdom were rid of them It is any that are for a holy life and obedience to God that you abhor 2. As I said before you spare those that come to the Parish Churches no more than others The old Nonconformists wrote more against Separation than any else in England did And yet were hated as intolerable The reconcilers who are since made Nonconformists did publickly offer to be Subject to arch-Arch-Bishops and Bishops to use the Liturgy themselves if reformed and if it were not yet never pleaded for separation And yet are never the more endured 2. But who is it that they separate from Do they not profess Union and Communion with the whole Catholick Church on Earth What separation do you mean Is it their Local absence And are not you such Separatists from all the world saving the Assembly where you meet One cannot be in two places at once Or is it that they dislike somewhat in your Forms of Worship so they may in others Forms with whom yet they profess Communion And in what is it that they shew dislike or separation They hold Communion with you as Christians and as reformed from Popery They separate not from Papists as Christians And from you it is only for that which you say is no part of your Worship or Religion but things indifferent which they think to be sin And are those Separatists from your Church who only separate from that which is no part of your Church or Worship 3. Are the French and Dutch Churches in London Schismaticks or Separatists who profess Communion with our Churches though they use not our Oaths Subscriptions or Liturgy Liking their own mode better and preferring it is no Separation If I like your Liturgy better than any in the Bibliotheca Patrum is that separating from all Churches that use the rest 4. Who are the Schismaticks in France Italy Poland c. Those that are called so and persecuted as such or those that impose on them the things which they judge sinful What if you were in a Presbyterian Land where the Liturgy and Prelacy are forbidden and another Form set up by Law and you should contrary to that Law use the Liturgy and Ceremonies or at least refuse subscribing against Prelacy and for Lay Elders If they excommunicated or ruined you for this who do you think were guilty of the Schism 5. Do they forsake the Assemblies before they are excommunicated Or is it not an odd thing for to excommunicate men first and then accuse them for not coming to Church I have known Ministers stop in the midst of Publick Worship and refuse to go on till an excommunicate person went out The whole representative Church of England do in their 5 6 7 and 8 Canons ipso facto without tryal or sentence excommunicate all in England who affirm any thing to be sinful or repugnant to Gods Word in the Church Governing Offices whatsoever in the Liturgy Ceremonies or Articles And shall they after this be called Separatists for not coming in Doth not the Canon shew that the Church would not have them come in when they cast them out Obj. But the Church and Canon bid them repent of that their wicked errour and publickly confess it and so come in Ans. 1. Is a mans Judgment absolutely in his power Can a man believe a thing to
knows not that some things are lawful to avoid suffering which else would not be lawful It is lawful to cast your goods into the Sea to save the Ship and mens lives Which else were a sin It 's lawful to give a Thief your purse to save your life which else were unlawful It 's lawful to blow up neighbours houses to stop a fire Christ proved it lawful to break the Sabbath in cases of necessity he withdrew into the Wilderness and far from Ierusalem to avoid the pharisees persecution And Paul was let down by the Wall in a basket Which without danger of suffering had not been lawful Though no sin must be done to avoid suffering yet that may and must be done which self-preservation makes no sin but a duty To kill a man that assaults you in your own defence is not the same crime as unnecessarily to kill him But as to the other case of taking the Corporation Oath and Declaration if you know the case as you should do before you accuse men you know that it is the true sence of them that is all the controversy No body scruples swearing Loyalty and renouncing Rebellion and Sedition and all unlawful means of reformation That which makes it difficult is that on one side the proper universal sence of the words seems to them unlawful and Oaths must be taken in the usual sence unless our Rulers give another yet on the other side learned sober Conformists profess that they take such words in the limited sence or else they would not take them And they argue subtilly to prove that to be the true sence And our Law-makers to whom it belongs will not end the controversy by an exposition And can you wonder here if men fluctuate in uncertainty And a late writer having given subtiler arguments for the limited sence than were published before did perswade many And in that limited sence twenty Nonconformist Ministers took the oath long ago in London at one time But I justify none that mistake in so great a matter And doubtless if they sinned God will not bless it to their good It will prove their snare And I am glad that we are agreed that Perjury is a heinous sin I beseech you then to consider 1. Whether those men are fit to accuse them who drive them to it and say to Ministers Swear or lye in Iail 2. Or those who are of the mind of Grotius Bishop Taylor and such others that Lying is Lawful when it saves our selves and wrongs no other And of those Divines that say It 's as lawful to defend my self from pernicious Imposers with my tongue as with my hands 3. Let us all with fear who believe there is a God avoid the dreadful crime of perjuring the whole land This whole Kingdom is sworn against all Forreign Iurisdiction in the Oath of Supremacy and against all endeavours to alter the Government of Church or State by 1. the Corporation Act 2. The Vestry Act 3. The Militia Act 4. The Oxford of Confinement 5. And obliged by the Act of Uniformity Is it not perjury than to endeavour any alteration of it 1. What shall we then think of them that would bring in Popery would they not perjure the Kingdom 2. What shall we say of them that write for a Forreign Church Jurisdiction under the name of General Councils or a Colledge of Bishops or of Forreign Patriarchs of whom the Pope is chief and the Principium unitatis to the universal Church Is it no change of our Church Government to bring us under a forreign Jurisdiction Is it no change of State Government to make the King and Kingdom Subject to that forreign Jurisdiction who may excommunicate him and so bring on him all the evil which Excommunication inferreth And what man in his wits knoweth not that Prelates and Priests are much at the will and power of the Princes under whom they live Doth not our King expect that his Bishops obey him And those that must have this Universal Jurisdiction over our King and us are the Subjects of other Princes of which the far greatest part are Papists Mahometans Infidels Heathens or such as are called Hereticks And if our King and we be made Subject to the Subjects of the Turk the Pope the Kings of Spain France Poland the Emperor the Moscovite the Dukes of Bavaria Tuscany and such like is he not made a Subject to their Lords and Masters and much worse Will not this project perjure England 3. Whether it be any alteration of Government by them that would change the Power and use of Parliaments I leave to Lawyers 4. But I would fain be satisfied of another case These Kingdoms of England and Scotland took a Covenant and Vow some Voluntarily some at their Compositions who had been sequestred for the King This Vow contained divers matters of which some are notorious duties as to repent of their sins to oppose Popery Schism and Prophaneness to defend the King c. It 's not denied by most that I meet with that this Oath or Vow was unlawfully imposed and unlawfully taken and many think some of the matter was unlawful viz. to oppose Prelacy c. But seeing Casuists are agreed that an Oath unlawfully both imposed and taken bindeth to that part of the matter which is lawful and necessary notwithstanding the Conjunction of the rest And the Corporations of England are all formed by a Declaration taken by all in power and trust that There is no Obligation without the least exception on me or any other person from the Oath called the Solemn League and Covenant The doubt is whether every man may declare that of all the thousands of three Kingdoms whom he never knew no one is bound by that Oath or Vow to repent of his sins or in his place and calling to oppose Schism Popery or Prophaneness or to defend the King and whether all may declare that the Londoners and Ministers and the restored old Parliament and General Monks Army who restored the King as supposing they were bound to it by that Oath were all deceived and were under no such obligation thence And whether I am not bound in charity to think that the sequestred Royalists put a good sence on it when they took it And so whether all the Corporations of England are free from And for what it is that God hath singled them out for Judgment If you be agreed with us and with manking against so great a sin as Perjury especially national let us help one another with Love and Patience to resolve such doubts Accus But they have been guilty of Rebellion in a Civil War and therefore are justly suspected to Preach or hold Rebellious Doctrine Ans. 1 Are those men lovers of Love and Concord who purposely make use of pardoned acts to keep the Kingdoms wounds still open Did not the King tell you in his Declarations and Act of Oblivion that the putting up of all save to the excepted
persons and closing for the future in mutual love was the only way to the Nations peace You would tempt men to think that you desire to see such days again by trying whether destroying men will tempt nature to a self-defence 2. But you have oft had it proved by Henry Fowlis Bishop Barlow and abundance more that no Protestants come near the Principles and Practices of the Papists as to King-killing and Rebellion And if yet you know not that the War began between two parties of Episcopal conformists here among the English you are unfit to judge of that which you know not And by reading Rushworth Whitlock or any true Histories of such times and matters you may be better informed As you may of their different principles if you read Iewel Bishop Bilson and Richard Hooker on one side and Mainwarning and Sibthorp on the other 3. But how few men are alive that had any hand in those miserable Wars You have oft been offered a thousand thanks if you will silence and hunt no other that are as innocent as you and more than many of of their accusers And shall thousands suffer for other mens deeds 3. What will wise men think of such a sort of men as charge multitudes in general with Rebellious and Seditious Doctrine and have accused so few of any such these twenty years that I know not of one publickly Accused Tryed and Proved guilty of all called Presbyterians in all this Land If they are guilty prove it and let the guilty suffer and not the innocent Only had I my wish I would Bar Perjury and Condemning men unheard Accus They are an unpeaceable sort of people Ans. That 's soon said Who hath these 22 two years manifested most desires of Peace They that have beg'd for it again and again Pleaded and written for it Offered their Oaths that they would obey any lawful Commands for it and do any thing which they did not believe that God forbids Or those Bishops that would not have one Form or Ceremony or needless Subscription forborn to save thousands of Ministers from being silenced and laid in Common jails nor to save many thousand of the people from suffering and to heal the divisions of the Church One would think this should be as easie a Controversy as when Soldiers are plundering the Country and the people on their knees intreating for their goods and lives to determine which of them is most against War. Accus But what need they make such a stir with their Religion What need they any more than go to Church and live obediently and be quiet Why will they be righteous over much will not less ado bring men to Heaven Why do they differ from their Neighbours and judge all carnal that be not as Scrupulous as they God is merciful and will he save none but Puritans or precise zealots Ans. Now you come to the real matter of your distast I did not meddle with the case of Nonconformity as it is a Controversy between Godly men but only as you make a pretence of it to exercise your enmity against serious Godliness and a handle to lay hold on many whom Christ will justify and save To all before said I add 1. If you think they do too much search the Scriptures and see whether it be not less than God commandeth And if so is it not God whom you accuse and reproach 2. If they do too much in obeying God why do Canon-makers impose such abundance on them as if God had not imposed enough 3. Why do you never find fault with men for being too strong too healthful too rich too great but only for being too obedient to God When Christ saith If we did all that God commandeth we must say we are unprofitable Servants we have done no more than was our duty and the best on Earth come short of duty But this which is the Core I answered before And conclude that all that be in their right wits can easilier bear all your accusations and persecutions of us as if we did too much in obedience to God than the accusation of Conscience and the displeasure of God for doing too little Which alas when we have done our best would sink us into despair had we not the merits of Christs suffering and perfect righteousness to trust to Chap. V. An humble Expostulation with the English Papists who by Information and Prosecution seek our ruine THough it be not Popery as such that I am here reasoning against the course that many Papists take in seeking our destruction giveth me cause of this humble expostulation And I speak now of no other but of them I mean 1. Those that write so hotly and ragingly to provoke Superiors to ruine us 2. Those that make a trade of being delators against us for worshiping God as we do 3. Those of them that break in upon us with greatest haughtiness and fury to take away all our goods and seek our imprisonment 4. Those that seek to ruine us by those Laws which were made against themselves 5. Those that would make Superiors believe that our Doctrine is more rebellious than theirs To these I offer a few modest questions Qu. 1. There are some among you that profess great Spirituality and strictness in Religion Serenus Cressy wrote to me commending Baker's book which he published that he forsook the Church of England because he found no Spiritual contemplation and devotion among us Such as Nerius Sales Kempis Gerson Borromaeus Renti c. are really the chief honour of your Church Much of that for which I am hated by the Enemies of serious godliness I acknowledge to Gods praise I was first chiefly awakened to by a book written by one whom Watson and others of your party grievously accuse I mean Parsons Book of Resolution corrected by Bunny True Christianity and Godliness is the same thing in all that have it Your Priest Mr. Hutchinson alias Berry writeth that the most of serious Godliness among Protestants is found among those called Puritans So that I was fain to defend the Conformists against his charge All this being so is it the Spirit of God that engageth and enrageth you with the most destructive bitterness against those men whom you confess to be the most Religious meerly because they are stiffest against your Church Government and way of worship And do you not know that it tendeth more sensibly than disputes to perswade the people whom you thus hate and prosecute that your Religion is malignant and enmity to real Godliness Qu. 2. Do you think it is prudent for you as soon as ever you get up and before you dare openly own your name and cause to begin with Malice Rage and Cruelty and that against the most religious as you say Will not this perswade the people that all is true that is said of your intended cruelty and make them fear you as so many Leopards or Wolves Will they not say if the young Serpents
can so easily sting what will the old ones do And if your infancy here begin with such destructive zeal what will you do when you are at full growth Qu. 3. You cannot be ignorant what cause to accuse your Church with Cruelty and Blood hath been given the world by your Church Laws and Practices By the Council at the Laterane under Innocent 3d the Council for damning Henrician Hereticks even Kings that claim Investiture of Bishops and those that decree the burning of all that you call Hereticks By the murder of so many thousand Albigenses Waldenses Bohemians c. By the Inquisitions more inhumane cruelties in Belgium and Spain c. By the Massacres in France and the murder of Henry III. and IV. By Queen Maries flames By the two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland And there be many among you who disown all this and say it is not from the principles of your Religion when yet General Councils approved are your Religion it self This being copiously opened as I said before by Henry Fowlis Bishop Barlow c. had it not been more prudent for you to have begun with Lenity and Love to have drawn men to think that you are better minded than to perswade them that you are of your rulers and forefathers mind and mean to imitate them Qu. 4. Have you not observed that all parties have faln by forcing multitudes to be their enemies by seeking to destroy or hurt them Most men love quietness and will live in peace if others will give them leave But when they see that they must offend others or not defend themselves it sets all their wit and power on work against their intolerable enemies There are few creatures in the world that have not some power and inclination to hurt others for their own defence The Bee hath a Sting to defend her Hive and Honey And do you not remember that your sufferings in England came most by Queen Maries flames and the Spanish Invasion and the many Treasons against Queen Elizabeth and by the Powder Plot And how the French Massacre and Murders of Kings and the horrid Inquisition set all our Parliaments against you And how the Murder of 200000 in Ireland drove many thousands into the Parliaments Army that else would not have gone And will you yet stir up all the Land to fear and hate you Qu. 5. Is it not both imprudent and unrighteous for you of all men to turn those Laws against us which were made against you and have so much slept and little troubled you You will by this call people to take notice of them that did not before For my own part as I never hurt any of you so I know not that any of the Ministers did whose ruine you endeavour We hear of none of your sufferings by any such Indeed these late years many have died as for the Plot so much talkt of But by whom did they die Was it not by the accusation and witness of Papists Were not Oats Bedlow Dugdale Turbervile Prance Dangerfield Ienison Smith alias Barry the York-shire Witnesses and the rest besides the Irish all men of your selves that came out of your own Bosoms whether the men died justly or unjustly I leave to God But sure it was men of your own selves that did it And will you be revenged for this on such Protestants that medled not in it And you should remember that you and we have a Protestant King who hath sworn all his Kingdom against all forreign jurisdiction and all endeavour of any alteration of Government in Church or state and so much abhors Popery that he hath made a law severely to punish all that shall but raise any suspicion that he is a Papist And you must in reason take heed of dishonouring and defaming him by defaming Protestants in general And sure since Queen Elizabeths days we have had no Kings whom you can justly accuse of cruelty towards you No not King Iames when the Powder Plot had provoked him if half be true that the Bishop of Ambrun saith of his conference with him or that Rushworth and others say of the Oath of the King Prince and Council for Toleration you are disingenuous if you accuse them of cruelty or rigorous severity In you Philanax Anglicus as formerly in the Image of both Churches you make all called Protestants of sincerity to be of Rebellious principles and their Religion introduced by it and yet profess that you honour the King as if you would have men doubt whether he be a Protestant of sincerity or else were as bad as you describe Had the severe Laws been executed against you especially for meer Religion no one could wonder if you desired relief But while you live quietly and Words and Paper hurt you not that I hear of to begin with so much hurtfulness to them that medled not with you will disserve your cause Qu. 6. And is it consistent with reasonable modesty to go about to make the World believe that the Protestant Doctrine is less loyal than yours Do you think your Books are invisible all your practices forgotten It is none of the business of this writing to accuse you herein of any thing but falsly accusing others and seeking to destroy us on such accusation Though you may thus deceive the ignorant that know no more of you than what you tell them that will but turn to your dishonour at last Are not your foresaid Council Canons which are your Religion visible Have not the forecited writers truly cited them and multitudes of your Doctors which may better inform men Are all the Wars of Italy Germany c. against Princes and Emperors for the Pope forgotten Was it not a Council of your Bishops that decreed that all the carcasses of those Bishops that were for the Henrician Heresy that is for the Emperors power of investing Bishops and his exemption from being excommunicated and deposed by the Pope should be digged out of their Graves and Burnt Was it not a council that deposed Ludovicus Pius How many more such acts have they done And are not your most learned Doctors allowed to publish the justification of the Popes power to excommunicate depose Kings if they deserve it in his judgment Do not your politick Writers Casuists and Divines ordinarily hold that the people give Kings their power and may take it away when they forfeit it and that tyranny is such a forfeiture And that the people should not suffer a Heretick to reign And that subjects may be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance according to the foresaid Laterane and Greg. 7. Roman Councils But too much is said of this by many and the case is past a modest denial Even those Protestants that were in Arms for the Parliament and restored the King were so far from thinking that their Oaths of Allegiance may be dispensed with that if I knew any thing of those men and times it was principally the Conscience of two