his divided People to be one among themselves and to keep them all in dependance upon Himself as the Procurer of their common safety The Prejudices that have been conceived and the Calumnies that have been raised against the Nonconformists gave occasion of resolving this Question Whether they be of a judgment and temper that makes them capable of being brought under the Magistrates Paternal Care and Conduct to such a stated Order as will comport with this Church and Kingdom This by the Answerer is termed a Dialect of Canting and is wilfully wrested into a Question of another nature Whether he had occasion given him to speak so scornfully let any judg that understand sober language But that they might appear uncapable of a Comprehension he sticks not to affirm That the Principles of Presbyterian Perswasion do not admit of any stability but may be drawn out to patronize the wildest Sects that are or have been And his main proof is taken from the bare word of Two of their Eminent Adversaries He might have remembred That the same Reproach is cast upon the Principles of Protestantism by Romish Writers One may well ask Where is the Truth and Candor of those men that write after this manner Consider the French Dutch Helvetian Churches how intire they keep themselves in Orthodox Unity from the Gangrene of Sects and Schisms The Church of Scotland whilst it was Presbyterian was inferior to none in the Unity of Doctrine and Church-Communion Did Prelacy ever effect the like Unity in the Church of England And shall the Sects that now are or lately were in this Nation be charged upon Presbytery that was never setled among us and against which the Sectaries had the greatest indignation Though that Way never obtained in England nor was favoured with the Magistrates vigorous aid yet it is very untrue that the first admirers and friends thereof grew sick of it and hissed for the other Sects to affront reproach and baffle it It is well known that it received those disgraces from another sort of men The asserting of this Government is far from the design of this or the former Treatise yet it may be lawful to vindicate it from unjust aspersions The Answerer is pleased to stile it No other but a Sect. I hope he doth not intend to make the Foreign Reformed Churches but so many Combinations of Sectaries If his meaning be that is no better than a Sect in England because another Government is established by Law let him tell us Whether Episcopacy would be a Sect if it should appear in those Countries where Presbytery is the Legal Government No less will follow if the Notion of Sect be extended so far as to fetch in whatsoever dissents from the Order by Law established SECT VII Of their Principles touching OBEDIENCE and GOVERNMENT ANother great Prejudice taken up against the Nonconformists is That they are inconsistent with any Regular Government And this Author reports that it is a common Maxime among the Dissenters That an Indifferent Thing becomes Vnlawful by being Commanded But let the World hear them speak for themselves out of their Account to His Majesty concerning the Review and Alteration of the Liturgy We humbly beseech Your Majesty to believe That we own no Principles of Faction or Disobedience nor patronize the Errors or Obstinacy of any It is granted us by all That nothing should be commanded us by man which is contrary to the Word of God That if it be and we know it we are bound not to perform it God being the Absolute Universal Sovereign That we must use all just means to discern the Will of God and whether the Commands of Men be contrary to it That if the Command be sinful and any through neglect of sufficient search should judg it Lawful his culpable Error excuseth not his doing it from being sin And therefore as a reasonable creature must needs have a judgment of discerning that he may rationally obey it so is he with the greatest care and diligence to exercise it in the greatest things even the obeying of God and the saving of his Soul And that where a strong probability of a great Sin and Danger lieth before us we must not rashly run on without search And that to go on against Conscience where it is mistaken is sin and danger to him that erreth And on the other side we are remembred that in things no way against the Law of God the Commands of our Governors must be obeyed but if they command what God forbids we must patiently submit to suffering and every soul must be subject to the Higher Powers for Conscience sake and not resist The Publike Judgment Civil or Ecclesiastical belongeth only to publike persons and not to any private man That no man must be be causlesly or pragmatically inquisitive into the reasons of his Superiors Commands nor by Pride and Self-conceitedness exalt his own understanding above its Worth and Office but all to be modestly and humbly self-suspicious That none must erroneously pretend to God's Law against the just Command of his Superiors nor pretend the doing of his duty to be a sin That he who suspecteth his Superiors Commands to be against Gods Laws must use all means for full information before he settle in a course of disobeying them And that he who indeed discovereth any thing commanded to be a sin though he must not do it must manage his Opinion with very great care and tenderness of the Publike Peace and the honour of his Governors These are our Principles If we are otherwise represented to Your Majesty we are mis-represented If we are accused of contradicting them we humbly crave that we may not be condemned before we be heard This is sound speech that cannot be reproved Wherefore if the Clemency of their Superiors shall remit those Injunctions that may wellbe dispensed with and unto which they cannot yeeld conformity for fear lest they sin against God their Principles will dispose them with an humble and thankful acquiescence to receive so great a Benefit SECT VIII Of placing them in the same rank for Crime and Guilt with the PAPISTS THE Answerer hath not feared to set the Papists and the Protestant Dissenters upon the same level in the guilt of Rebellion Cruelty and Turbulency For a high Charge having been made good against Popery That it disposeth Subjects to Rebellion That it persecutes all other Religions within its reach That wheresoever it finds encouragement it is restless till it bear down all or hath put all in disorder He comes and tells the World That the Nonconformists are no more innocent of the same Crimes Can men of sound minds and temperate spirits believe this And what greater advantage can be given the Popish Party then that a Protestant Writer should declare and publish that so great a part of Protestants are equally involved with them in those heinous Crimes with which the Protestants have always charged them And that such
acquiescence in the Commands of Superiors and the proper matter of their Injunctions IN the former Treatise this Argument was used The Church doth not claim an Infallibility therefore the cannot settle the Conscience by her sole Warrant but still leaves room for doubting The Answerer makes this to be either a piece of ignorance or of portentous malice and an Assertion that would disturb all Government both in Families and in the State that would confound all Society and extirpate Faith and Justice from among the sons of men But this his strange Inference rather is portentous That the Church cannot settle the Conscience by her sole Warrant is it not a Principle maintained by all Protestants in opposition to the Popish implicit Faith and blind Obedience But is this person consistent with himself For after he hath a while expatiated in his imaginary hideous Consequences he comes himself to deny that the Church bindeth the Conscience by her own Authority And yet it is a lesser thing to bind the Conscience than to settle it and leave no room for doubting For Conscience may be obliged when it is not setled And if the Church cannot oblige doubtless she cannot settle the Conscience by her sole Authority How then could a man of reason draw such hideous Inferences from that Position If I may give way to conjectures I suspect that he might take check at the word Infallibility by which I intend no more then Infallible Direction and I fear not to own this Assertion That whosoever have not Infallible Direction or the certain assistance of an Infallible Guide so as to be exempted from all error in what they propound for Belief or Practice cannot settle the Conscience by their sole warrant I still aver That in prescribed Forms and Rites of Religion the Conscience that doth its office will interpose and concern it self And it is matter of astonishment that a Learned Protestant should say this Position must needs be false For Conscience guided by the fear of God will use all just means to discern his Will and cannot resign it self to the dictates of men in the points of Divine Worship If the Judgment of Discerning which makes men differ from Brutes be to be exercised in any case it is chiefly requisite in these matters wherein the Glory of God and the Saving of the Soul is so much concerned It is granted That to maintain Peace and Unity in the Church and to be obedient to the Higher Powers in those things which are proper matter for their Commands are most strictly injoined Duties But the Injunctions here considered though to the Imposers they are but things Indifferent that is neither Commanded nor Forbidden of God in the Consciences of Dissenters are Unlawful To instance in some controverted Ceremonies They think that God hath determined against them though not in particular yet in the general Prohibition of all uncommanded Worship And they reply Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto men more then unto God judg ye To restrain that of the Apostle He that doubts is damned if he eat only to things wherein the Church hath not interposed her Authority is a false gloss and a begging of the Question What human Authority can warrant any one to put in practice an unlawful or suspected Action or to make profession of a known or suspected Falshood As concerning the Rights of Superiors it is the Church's Duty and Honour to teach and command her Children to do whatsoever Christ hath commanded And it is the chiefest Glory and most proper Work of the Magistrate who is Gods Minister and Vicegerent to be custos vindex utriusque Tabulae To incourage and inforce Obedience to the Divine Laws whether written in the Bible or imprinted in our Nature and in subserviency thereunto to have power to determine such things as are requisite in the general but in the particulars are left undetermined of God and are to be ordered by Human Prudence according to the Light of Nature and the general Rules of Gods Word But things indifferent in their nature and either offensive in their use or needless and superfluous are not worthy to be made the proper matter of his Commands It is a grave and weighty saying of a Learned man of whatsoever Perswasion he were If the special Guides and Pastors of the Church would be a little sparing of incumbring Churches with superfluities or not over-rigid either in reviving obsolete Customs or imposing new there would be far less cause of Schism and Superstition and all the inconvenience that were likely to ensue would be but this That in so doing they should yeeld a little to the imbecillity of their Inferiors a thing which St. Paul would never have refused to do SECT XIII Of the alledged Reasons of the Ecclesiastical Injunctions in the beginning of the Reformation THE Answerer relates at large the proceeding of this Church in the beginning of the Reformation The sum of the Relation is That there being Two sorts of men one that thought it a great matter of Conscience to depart from the least Ceremony they were so addicted to their old Customs the other so new-fangled that they would innovate all things and nothing would satisfie them but that which was new It was necessary for the Church to interpose for Peace sake and casting off neither Party to please each to their edification and also to injoyn some things to the common observance of all and therefore she took away the excessive multitude of Ceremonies as those that were dark and abused to Superstition and Covetousness but retained those few that were for Decency Discipline and apt to stir up the dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty to God We have good warrant to call in question the truth of his Narration in things of the greatest weight First It is not true that the Party that were for Ceremonies comprehended all those who staid at home and did not flye in the time of Queen Mary's Persecution For such as dissented from the Ceremonies in the time of that Persecution had their Assemblies for the Worship of God in this Land and indured among others in the Fiery Trial. And we can find but little zeal in the Martyrs of those days for this kind of Conformity Likewise it is not true that the Party that were against Ceremonies were but small as being but some few of those that fled beyond Sea There is clear evidence to the contrary An Historian zealous for Conformity even unto bitterness reports in his Ecclesia Restaurata That in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign many that were disaffected to Episcopacy and Ceremonies were raised to great Preferments Besides those that were in Ecclesiastical Dignities he observes That the Queens Professor at Oxford and the Margaret Professor in Cambridg were among the Nonconformists For the multitude of Dissenters in those dayes there is a notable testimony of a Friend of Prelacy in his Letter
look upon them as theirs when they hold their Publike Stations Unto all this may be added That the Ancient Nonconformists earnestly opposed the Separation of the Brownists and held communion with the Church of England in its Publike Worship And doubtless it is the Ministers Interest not to have their Subsistence by the Arbitrary Benevolence of the people and so to live in continual dependance upon their mutable dispositions for a Maintenance that is poor and low in comparison of the Publike Encouragements Hereby one may partly judg whether Learned and Prudent men be Nonconformists by the pleasure of their own will or the constraining-force of Conscience Now their Consciences may be relieved if they be not made personally to profess or practice any thing against the dictates thereof And retaining their own private judgments they may well hold to this Catholick Principle That in a Church acknowledged to be sound in Doctrine and in the Substance or main Parts of Divine Worship and not defective in any vital part of Christian Religion they are bound to bear with much which they take to be amiss in others Practice in which they do not personally bear a part themselves As concerning a Form of Church-Government and Rule of Discipline Men that understand their own Interest cannot for self-ends as they have been upbraided couet the Power of such a Discipline as inevitably procures envy and ill-will without any temporal profit or dignity And if the Higher Powers will not admit such a Form I deliver my own private judgment without prejudice to other mens this may tend to satisfie the Subjects Conscience That Ecclesiastical Government is necessarily more directed and ordered in the exercise thereof by the Determinations of the Civil Magistrate in places where the true Religion is maintained then where it is persecuted or disregarded And they that have received the Power must answer to God for it They that are discharged from it shall never account for that whereof they have been bereaved SECT XIX It behoves both the Comprehended and the Tolerated to prefer the common Interest of Religion and the setling of the Nation before their own particular Perswasions AS those Dissenters whose Consciences will permit will best comply with their own good by entring into the Establishment if a door be open for their access So they of Narrower Principles that cannot enter into it will be safest within the Limits of such Indulgence as Authority would vouchsafe to grant them with respect to the Common Good Men of all Perswasions should rather chuse to be limited by Publike Rules with mutual Confidence between their Governors and Themselves then to be left to the liberty of their own Affections upon terms uncertain and unsecure Besides the Concernment of their own Peace there is this great Perswasive That this Advice is a compliance with that state of things which will best satisfie and settle the Nation and maintain Reformed Religion against Popery and Christianity against Atheism and Infidelity True Englishmen and Lovers of their dear Countrey which is impaired and reproached by these breaches should yeeld as much to its Wealth and Honour as their Consciences can allow Loyal Subjects and good Patriots should consider what the Kingdom will bear and prefer such bounded Liberty of Comprehension and Indulgence as tends to Union before a loose though larger Liberty that will keep the Breaches open and the Minds of People unquiet and unsetled And it is not of little moment to mind this That the high Concerns of Conscience cannot be better secured then in the Peace and Safety of the excellent Constitution of this Kingdom For the Amplitude of Reformed Religion all true Protestants should promote an ample Establishmeâ—t thereof both for the incompassing of all that be sound in that Profession as also for the more capacious reception of those that may become Converts thereunto And not onely the encrease and glory thereof but its stability in these Dominions is promoted by such an ample Establishment Witness our great Defence against Popery by the common zeal of all Protestants of the several Perswasions for Protestancy in general By this concurrent Zeal the insolencies of the Papists have been repressed and their Confidences defeated Could the Protestant Conformists or Nonconformists either of them upon their own single account if one should exterminate or utterly disable the other be so well secured against Popery as now they are by their common Interest And to imagine by rigor to compel the depressed Party to incorporate with the Party advanced so that one should acquire the Strength of both would in the issue be found a great Error By such proceeding indeed a Party may be wounded and broken and rendred unserviceable to the common good but shall never be gained as an addition of Strength to those who have so handled them But an Accommodation would make both to be as one And seeing in their present divided state the concurrent Zeal of Both hath been so formidable as to dash the hopes of the Popish Party how much more in a state of Union might their Strength increase against their common Adversaries Wherefore the One should open the Way and the Other should readily come in upon just Terms This should be the rather minded on both sides because the Considerate Nonconformists will never promote their own Liberty by such ways and means as would bring in a Toleration of Popery yea they would rather help to bear up the present Ecclesiastical state then that Popery should break in by Anarchy or the Dissolution of all Church-Government Moreover an ample fixed state Ecclesiastical is necessary to uphold and encrease true Religion as well against Infidelity as against Popery The loose part of the World would turn to a weariness and contempt of Divine Institutions and Christianity it self would be much endangered in a state of Ataxy and unfixedness By what ordinary means hath the Doctrine and Institution of Christ been propagated and perpetuated in large Kingdoms and Nations and in the Universe but by incompassing under its external Rule and Order great Multitudes that may fall short of the Life and Power thereof And it doth not root and spread in any sort considerable in a Region where the external Order is set by the Rigid and Narrow Principles of a small Party and the general Multitude lyes open as wast ground for any to invade or occupy Let considerate men judg how much the ample state of a meer Orthodox Profession is to be preferred before Infidelity or Popery or any other Sect of the Christian Name that is Idolatrous or Heretical There be few Converts to the Power of Godliness from Infidelity or Popery or any Heresie but they are generally made out of the Mass of People of an Orthodox Profession If it be the will of God that one must suffer for the Cause of Religion it is more for the Honour of Christianity to suffer from Infidels then from Papists likewise it is more