restrained the people from meeting to repeat or pray did thereby occasion them to go further in their undertakings than they ought I still found that to let them do what belonged to them as private men was the means to keep them from that which belonged only to the Ministers and needful meetings in their houses in due subordination to the Pastors and Church-assemblies was the best way to keep them from schismatical meetings which were in opposition to the Pastors and Church-assemblies Yea that to drive them hard on to their proper duty in their families and for their ignorant neighbours was the best way to convince them that they had neither ability nor leisure for more which belonged not to them In a word it was a principal cause that we had no sects nor divisions among us And now if any man come with his exceptions against such meetings as dangerous to the Church or State I only answer him 1. Try it as much as we have done before you condemn you know not what 2. Will you do nothing to help the people to Heaven but that which is lyable to no abuse or inconvenience Then Christ and the Gospel and Scripture and much more Reason it self must be renounced which are all more abused than such private meetings 3. See that you be not more afraid of sects than of mens apparent ungodliness and damnation 4. And see that it be not your own want of skill and diligence that makes you oppose that means which you cannot guide and manage Obj. But this was not the common case of the Nonconformists what do you tell us a long story of your doings when it was otherwise throughout the land Ans. 1. You know that there were then many Sectaries in the land and you may as well impute to us your own misdoings as theirs We justifie not the Sectaries in their principles or practises 2. What was the Doctrine and practise of Presbyterian and Independents the writings which they all agreed to will partly tell you In the Confession of Faith you see what Doctrine they agreed to Preach In the Catechisms they shew you that the Creed Lords-Prayer and Decalogue were not only to be learned by the people but the sense and use also of them all And is this casting them out of the Church And in the Directory they advise to the use of the very words of the Lords prayer in the Churches 3. That I was not singular in this course you may soon learn if you will but enquire what was done at Bewdeley Stourbridg and other places round about me Nay when our two Agreements one for Catechising and personal Conference from house to house and the other for common concord in Discipline were subscribed by so many of all that County and some adjoining whose names are visible there in print you may imagine they endeavoured to do what they subscribed to do 4. Nor was it that County only you may see in their Printed Agreements that the Ministers of Westmorland and other Counties agreed much on the same courses And Essex Wiltshire Dorsetshire and many others had begun the same work from which the return of Diocesans hath released them And remember that the charge of casting out all Discipline and of Presbyterian examinations and severities are hardly reconcileable nor yet the not administring the Sacrament and the examining of the people before the Sacrament But for our Countrys we used not such examinations because our foresaid ordinary Catechising and conference and also our requiring a publick profession of the Christian faith and life at the transition of the youth out of their state of Infant-membership into that of the adult described by me in my Treatise of Confirmation did better answer their necessities 6 Obj. But all this while you lived in Sequestrations upon other mens estates and eat other mens bread of which you never made restitution and how then can you think your merits are such as may plead for your readmission and in particular Mr. Durel and many others have told the world and your self that as a reward for your military service you had a good Benefice out of which another only for his fidelity was cast out with what conscience this was done see you to it Ans. Reader seeing it 's the pleasure of Mr. Durel and so many more to call out the man and cull out the matter with which the world must be thus troubled I intreat thee to pardon my personal narratives for which were it not that they lay the interest of so many of my Brethren of my writings and office upon it I could not pardon my self 1. Let the world then know that these Ministers whom we succeeded were cast out by the Secular power that bore sway and not by those that succeeded them If you know of one Minister of a hundred that was the agent in that work let that one and not the innocent hear of it 2. That the people of each Parish or some of them were the accusers witnesses and sollicitors of the cause who beg'd for deliverance and a better Ministry as if it concerned the benefit of their souls 3. That it was somewhat an excusable error in the Ministers that succeeded them to think that if the Parliament or any Usurpers did turn out the former Ministers of any place the people should not therefore be left as Heathens and all Gods Worship be forsaken and the doors shut up as in the Venetian and other Interdicts by the Pope and this for ten or twelve years together yea almost twenty and that if the Parliament had cast out the overseers of the poor or the nurses of your children it 's hard that all they that after relieved them and saved their lives must be accused as so greatly injurious and that it 's hard that when the love of souls doth make them unweariedly spend themselves for the peoples good that this should be one of their unpardonable crimes How different are mens judgments of vice and virtue and they did think also that really before God and man the Salary was for the work And if they had a lawful calling to the work of the place they thought they had so to the Salary They thought that if a Pilot of a Ship were on pretence of insufficiency and utter ignorance cast out by usurpers of the power that all Shipping must not therefore stand still nor all men be proclaimed sinners that take the place and maintenance I justifie not their reasons but I may tell you my opinion that being young men mostly in the Universities that had little or nothing of their own they could not well otherwise have got bread and clothing much less Books Fire House-room c. nor long have Preached without bread and clothing And I knew few of them that when they were cast out were able to refund or restore that which bought them bread and fire and clothing unless you would sell them as slaves to work
Wadsworth Dr. Annesly and abundance more about the City or on the generality of the silenced Ministers in all the Counties of the Land 9. But do you consider how heinously you dishonour the Conformists by the disparity of the charge which you lay on the Nonconformists and which they have laid on you I am not justifying either of your accusations But if I were a stranger in England and had seen the Chair-man of the Committee of Parliament publish his Century of Conformists accused on witness of so many Crimes especially drunkenness and negligence and insufficiency in so many and had seen the like charges before the Committees of the several Counties attested on Oath and had heard both your Icabods Groans and the Gloucester Coblers History of the present Ministry And then had read the most learned and sharp of the Nonconformists adversaries charging them with heart-hypocrisie with disobedience to those Laws for Oaths and Ceremonies which they think are contrary to the Laws of God and with cutting faces and prating phrases and incongruous expressions in praying and preaching to the vulgar c. I should suspect that their cases were not alike 10. Is it a thing possible that a Divine in England should not know that there are in all Countries such Readers and young raw ignorant Conformable Preachers O that they were but here and there one that in understanding in method in phrase and all Ministerial abilities may learn seven years and seven before they are like to reach the measure of W. B. and T. W. whom he reproveth And could he forget that it is as just and solid reasoning to say This multitude of Conformists frequently speak non-sense confusedly c. Ergo the Conformists have such a Religion as to say W. B. and T W. did not express this or that congruously Ergo the Nonconformists Religion is such 22 Obj. You overthrow all principles of Government while you say that the Magistrate may not command things evil by accident And while you allow doubting or scrupling persons to disobey authority as oft as they are but pleased to question their Commands whereas if you are uncertain whether the matter be lawful you are bound to obey because you are certain that Governours must be obeyed and being uncertain that the thing is evil the certain part must prevail against the uncertain Ans. We have long been silent at such accusations supposing by this time they would have been ashamed of themselves Had we read such Moral Divinity as some would teach us in Father Banny Escobar or other such Jesuits we had been like to have found it in the Collection of their Morals which the Jansenists published 1. I never read or heard man yet say that the Magistrate may not command any thing evil by accident But I have said my self that His Commands of things evil by accident may be sinful that is that it is not all things that are evil by accident that he may command But because some men will not understand till they are constrained against their wills I shall elsewhere open the truth about this so plainly as that they shall hardly avoid the understanding of it but by refusing to read it And I will shew them what it is to maintain that men may command any thing that is evil by accident only 2. And the other accusation is the forgery of passionate enmity also we believe that a man is not to obey authority at all times whenever he doubteth of the matter commanded or in every case of doubting But we never thought that all doubtings will excuse his obedience We use to speak more distinctly and leave them to confusion that either cannot distinguish or must have troubled waters to fish in for matter of calumniation Of this also I shall elsewhere give you a satisfactory account of our judgment Done since in my 2d Plea for Peace 23 Obj. But the grand accusation against us by Dr. Heylin in his life of A. B. Laud and elsewhere is for Calvinism or Puritanism in Doctrine against that which is commonly called Arminianism which he maketh the matter of our great contentions and calamities And many other say as he And Mr. Thorndike carrieth it yet much higher accusing us not only of the Doctrine of imputed Righteousness but others in which we have departed from the Church of Rome See his Just Weights and Measures and his Greater Volume Ans. 1. By this it further appeareth how unjustly and partially we are used and how unnecessary they themselves hold Unity in Doctine it self to be in matters which some account so great to the liberty of Preaching the Gospel For in all the Arminian Controversies the Conformists differ among themselves as much as we do from any of them if not more Nothing more common now in our Pulpits than for one man to preach up Free-will and another to preach it down and neither of them know what Free will is and for one to preach for absolute Election perseverance of all Saints c. and another to preach the contrary and shew the tendency of these opinions to all wickedness And yet all these men are suffered to preach because they all subscribe the same doctrine though they neither believe nor preach the same The Articles of the Church of England are subscribed by them all They Assent and Consent to all the Doctrine of the Church And indeed is it because the Articles are not intelligible or have they contrary meanings to fit the use of every subscriber Are they hot to one and cold to another Or rather do many of the Subscribers take heed of Tenderness of Conscience because it is but tenderness of Head and is more sensible of hurt and smart than a feared Conscience is or is a word and thing that is grown into disgrace and scorn in our times For my own part I doubt not but the Compilers of the Articles and Liturgy were in these things of Augustines judgment who was for absolute Election but for no other Reprobation but non-election and the decree of damnation and desertion only upon foresight of sin But as to the differences themselves it would grieve a man of any understanding to read such a History as Dr. Heylins Life of the Archbishop which intimateth to the world that such points as these were the occasion of all the contrivances against each other and of the enmities and calamities which these Kingdoms have undergone When-as the things are such as never bred any such dissention in the first ages of the Church nor would do among us if we had their piety and simplicity I long ago began a Treatise which the agitations of my Troublers have interrupted to reconcile the Arminians and Anti-Arminians in these matters in which I should easily have manifested how unfit such Subjects were to be so fiercely and implacably contended about And because I know not whether ever I shall live to re assume it being toss'd about and having neither
grace And though God give grace without and against desert he never denieth it to any without desert and that more than the desert of Original sin not now interupting our discourse with the Case of Infants 12. That when common Grace hath brought one man much nearer the Kingdom of God than another the same degree of further Divine operation and help which would be uneffectual to make a distant and unprepared man a believer may make him a believer that is nearer and more prepared 13. All effectual grace proceedeth from an effectual will of God to work it 14. The great question therefore Whether none are converted but by special effectual grace or any also by that which in its own nature is meerly sufficient and made effectual by mans will is captious and partly past the reach of man It being certain 1. That Grace is the chief agent in all that believe 2. That the will and mind of man is the immediate actor in believing 3. That whoever believeth hath such grace as cometh from an absolute certain fixed will of God that it shall attain the effect 4. And that in what degrees of influx God worketh on one that is converted more or less than on another is no enquiry for any man that knoweth what he talketh of Nor can we well tell when one mans will deth do its part better than anothers by the same degree of Grace 15. I should shew when Free-will and Necessity are consistent or inconsistent 16. And also how God hath his will as much when man hath greatest freedom as if he had none and that man hath as much freedom under the will and decrees of God as if they were none Nay without them as a cause he could have no freedom 17. I should shew that the Calvinists that run not with some few into extremity do acknowledge as much common Grace to all men as the Arminians do For they confess the universal conditional promise or Covenant and they say that all men that hear the Gospel have pardon and sanctification and salvation brought to their own wills and that if they refuse it not they they shall have it and that they have the posse credere And the difference is that the Arminian thinketh that none ordinarily have any more than this with such perswasions as make it possible antecedently but the Calvinists think the elect have more that is that Grace maketh them actually willing which is certain But how Grace and the will concur is as uncertain as aforesaid 18. All creatures are Passive or Receptive as to Gods efficiency or influx on them And so is mans soul And therefore it is true that it is meerly Passive not only in receiving the first gracious influx of God but in all the influxes which it is under in every action of our lives But it is a truly vital active soul or power which is thus passive first and therefore is ever the next agent in all its Acts of believing c. and never meerly passive for that were a contradiction Nor can it be proved that the soul is meerly recipient or passive as to the true habits of Grace but only as to that Influx which exciteth us to act and by that act done by God and the Soul the habit is produced which yet is called Infused because it is caused by a special Influx what ever more than this is possible no more can be proved de facto 19. Our differences about Universal Redemption and of the Decrees depend on those about Operations and are easily reconciled with them Christ died for all men so far as to procure them all the Grace that he giveth them And he giveth all men the Universal Grace fore described the Conditional pardon c. therefore so far he died for them But of this I have written a peculiar Treatise not yet published 20. The Doctrine of Gods antecedent and consequent will must be better explained as being but his governing will so called from Legislation and Judgment which are the antecedent and consequent parts of Government 21. So must Gods will de naturalibus moralibus and his Legislative antecedent will be well opened and the uselesness and confusion of the distinction of signi bene placiti manifested 22. I would prove that God hath no Decree or will of meer Negatives as not to give grace faith glory not to save c. and therefore hath no Decree to permit because permitting is but not-hindering which is nothing By which one sort of Reprobation as now called will be disproved 23. That Reprobation to positive damnation is only upon foreseen and not decreed impenitency or unbelief 24. That Election and Reprobation therefore go not pari passu but as Austin and Prosper taught the one is a positive absolute Will or Decree of God the other only upon fore-sight 26. Predetermination by Physical premotion to evil materially and as necessary to all actions natural and free is to be left to the Dominicans and not owned by any that know the consequences 27. The numbering and ordering of Decrees secundum ordinem intentionis executionis is to be discussed and the vanity of mens fictions here about made known 28. The nature of futurition and the falshood of founding it necessarily in an eternal cause is to be opened 29. The foolish disputes of the manner of Gods knowing future contingents are by clear reason to be cast out of the Church and Schools 30. In a word a convenient explication will manifest that the difference in all these Controversies really is next to none except in the point of Perseverance and that in that point those that hold with Augustine and Prosper that not all the truly justified and sanctified do persevere but all the Elect and those that hold that all the justified and sanctified are Elect and do persevere have great reason to number this difference among those School-disputes which should break no charity nor communion among Christians But of Perseverance I have long ago published my thoughts in a peculiar Treatise I have said thus much to shew the world not only that we ought not to be silenced or oppressed as an odious sort of people for those Doctrines which some abhor when we subscribe to the same Articles of the Churches Doctrine as they do but also that it is a mixture of that ignorance and pride which is the disease and calamity of Church-men as well as of the world which hath caused most of the heats on both sides and the Cruelties in Holland or in England thence proceeding about these Controversies And that when men have more Understanding or Humility these differences will but little disturb the Church And again I say that those Church snuffers who put out the lights should have remembered our moderation in this point that whereas Parliaments have complained so long and zealously against Arminianism and when Bishops have been so hot about it against each other as Heylin will
of old will tell posterity whether the Nonconformists preached loose licentious Doctrine 5. But the fullest decision of this case will be from their cause it self The Liturgy and Canon 1. obligeth us to refuse no Child that is offered us in baptism 2. The Rubrick pronounceth the baptized Infants so dying certainly saved not excepting any child of any Infidel or Atheist or open denier of a life to come or derider of Christ and the holy Scripture of which there are now great store 3. When the baptized Children can say the words of the Creed Lords Prayer c. though they know not what they say they are confirmed by the Bishop 4. Being confirmed they are to be admitted to the Lords-Supper though they know not what it meaneth yea they are compelled for fear of Imprisonment and ruine to communicate 5. When they are sick if they will but say they repent and desire it they must be Absolved in absolute terms though they give the Minister no satisfaction that they are truly penitent and have lived till then a most ungodly life and perhaps lie cursing and swearing and railing at a holy life on their sick-bed 6. And being dead we must pronounce our hope of every one in England except unbaptized ones excommunicate and self-murderers that God in mercy hath taken to himself the Soul of this our dear brother out of the miseries of this world Though they were professed Atheists Infidels scorners of Christ notorious adulterers or other criminals and never once so much as said I repent 7. And the Discipline of the Church being managed by one Lay-Chancellor and his Court with some small assistance in a Diocess of many hundred Parishes is utterly uncapable of calling one of an hundred to repentance or keeping clean the Church And these are much of that which the Nonconformists refuse to subscribe their full Assent and Consent to and to Covenant never to endeavour to reform for which they suffer the loss of all And now judge which side hath the looser principles and cause And add their refusal to approve of that which they fear to be in many thousands Perjury and the rest which the Conformists never scruple and try who are the looser and have the greater Latitude of Conscience And never did we yet meet with many that do believe that we live in more fulness and idleness and fleshly liberty than most of the Conformists do which we speak not as accusing any but in our necessary defence But he pretendeth to prove it 1. By our Books 2. By particular doctrines of Election Justification Good-works c. But 1. Doth not the world know that the Nonconformists offer to subscribe the same Doctrine of the Church of England as the Conformists do in the 39. Articles and the Book of Homilies If one then have a wrong faith professed so hath the other And let them that must contradict the Doctrine which they subscribe bear the greatest shame and punishment and spare us not if it be we 2. Why is there no publick accusation against us these years in which by his Majesties License we have preached openly as for any unsoundness of our doctrine 3. Who knoweth not that such accusing inferences are usually brought by all factious quarrel some Divines against their adversaries Whence such Writings as Caivino-Turcesinus c. have sprung up 4. The Reporter here either chargeth on the Nonconformists the Doctrines of the Antinomians which none have more confuted and of a few half Antinomian erroneous men against whom he might have read the Writings of Mr. Burges Mr. VVoodbridg Mr. Gibbons Mr. Warren Mr. Jessope Mr. Gataker and many other Nonconformists or else he falsifieth their doctrine He citeth the Marrow of Modern Divinity written thirty years ago by a Barber tainted with Antinomianism and though he cite the names of five Independents that then approved or commended it too hastily he never tells you how commonly both the Presbyterian and Episcopal Nonconformists and very many Independents reject and condemn it and how many have confuted it more than Conformists ever did And blessed be God that our forecited Books are visible to report our Doctrine to the World 5. But he singleth out one of us from the report of a Conforming Contradictor as making heinous sins such as Peters Lots c. consistent with true Grace Reader this is the true case in which you will still see what justice we have from this kind of men Baxter about near thirty years ago endeavoured with all his power and diligence to reconcile the Episcopals Presbyterians and Independents at least to joyn in the same Communion He found the two latter full of distast against the Prelatical party of Ministers but especially of the common people even his own hearers still saying they are swearers drunkards meer worldly loose ungodly people that have no seriousness in Religion and it is not lawful for us to have communion with such To cure them of this distast he stretcht his charity as far as he thought just to extenuate their faults and told the people That though many of these Prelatists would swear and curse and had divers such faults in the exercise of Church-communion they that were not-Pastors but private men must bear what they could not reform and withall must compassionately consider that many foul faults committed more through passion and custom than love and interest might stand with grace and Pauls counsel Gal. 6. 1 2. was to be well considered This being the scope of his discourse and the end what doth Mr. Tho. Pierce but retort it on him unthankfully to his reproach as holding too loose a doctrine Which this man here also now repeateth But as he told Mr. Pierce that for all this if one were necessary he had rather dye in the case of Noah Lot and Peter in the time of their sin than in the case of Mr. Pierce when he wrote that book being perswaded that they had then more of the love of God and man than he the same also he still professeth to this Enquirer and all of his spirit that so unthankfully requite men for perswading the people to judge as charitably as they could for Concord sake of scandalous Prelatists But if we be odious for pleading for charitable censures to such what are they that live in the sin it self and they that receive them constantly to their Communion And here as a proof he tells us how Dr. Hammond's Catechism and Mr. Fowlers book of Holiness being the design of Christianity have been censured and Mr. Baxter for daring to justifie the argument of that book p. 109. To which we say 1. We highly value Dr. Hammonds Practical Catechism And it 's strange that if one of us have justified the argument of the other that our Doctrine should not rather be gathered from such as he than from we know not whom For we must say that we know of none accounted Orthodox among us who have at all disowned
it was my judgment that it was not my duty without a special call to perswade any man to Nonconformity when it was but in the issue to perswade him to be silenced and to deprive the Church of his publick labours Therefore did I never to my remembrance endeavour to make any one man a Nonconformist that did not come or send to me for resolution in the case And some such also I put off as far as conscionably I could Though I may never perswade a man to that which I judg to be sin yet I am not always bound to disswade him from it If I saw a man about to tell a lye or take a false oath to save the life of the King from an enemy or traytor I do not think that it is my duty to hinder him Affirmatives bind not ad semper I thank God not that so many laudable Ministers conform but that they preach the Gospel and keep up so much of the interest of the Church and Religion in the Land I have met with some women and hot-brain'd lads of another mind that said Let them put upon us the veriest ignorant sots and drunkards we shall be the more easily justified for not going to their Churches But I ever reproved this as the language of the Serpent who insinuating into the injudicious would increase the sin and misery of the world For my own part I heard all Ministers where I lived who were but tollerable in the Sacred Office I came to the beginning of the Churches Prayers when I could and staid to the end I took not my self for a constrained unwilling hearer of them but the more any external imperfection made my devotion difficult the more I thought it my duty to labour to stir up my affections lest I should as the hypocrite draw near to God with my lips without my heart I remember what was said of Old Mr. Fenne the famous Coventry Nonconformist that he would say Amen loudly to every one of the Common-Prayers except that for the Bishops by which he thought he sufficiently expressed his dissent I know how unable the old Separatists were to answer the many Arguments of the famous Arthur Hildersham John Paget William Bradshaw Brightman John Ball and other old Nonconformists for the lawfulness of Communicating with our Parish-Churches in the Sacraments and the Liturgy I was exceedingly moved against Separation truly so called by considering 1. How contrary it is to the principle of Christian love 2. And how directly and certainly pernicious to the interest and cause of Christ and of his Church and of the souls of men and how powerful a means it is to kill that little love that is left in the world 3. And how plainly it proceedeth from the same spirit that persecution doth For though their expressions be various their minds and principles are much the same which is to vilifie our Brethren and represent them as odious and intollerable and overlook that of Christ which is amiable in them In which when they have agreed as Children of the same Father they differ in their way of serving him One saith He is such and such therefore away with him silence him imprison him banish him The other saith He is such and such a one therefore away with him have no communion with him He that eateth not Rom. 14. will say Away with him because he eateth And he that eateth will say Away with him because he eateth not Both agree in murdering love and accounting their brother unlovely and intollerable 4. And I was greatly moved in thinking of the state of most of the Churches in the world if I travelled in Abassia Armenia Russia or among the Greek Churches I durst not deny to hold communion with them When I go to God in prayer I dare not go in a separate capacity but as a member of the Universal Church nor would I part with my share in the Common-prayers of all the Churches for all the world but am joined with them in spirit while I am corporally absent owning all their holy prayers though none of their faults or failings in them having many in all my own prayers to God which I must be further from justifying than other mens And having perused all the foreign and ancient Liturgies extant in the Bibliotheva Patrum I doubt not but our own is incomparably better than any that is there But I will not conceal it from you that I am not such a Separatist neither as to communicate with Parish-Churches only If only the Law have turned any Pastors out of the Parishes and the people and they still hold their relation and communion not to say now whether they do well or ill I will no more separate from them than from you I communicate with you in Liturgy and Sacrament but neither as with a Sect or Faction nor as the whole Church but only as a part of the Church Universal and so are they I will hear you and I will hear them when I have a just occasion I will communicate with you and I will communicate with them as I perceive a call If each side run away from the other I will run from neither though I will sin with neither and must go from them that drive me away But I tell all that ask my mind that I am not so indifferent as to the Ministers whom I must join with as I am to the forms and modes of Worship Not that I call their actions Nullities or say that the Sacraments are invalid which they administer For their usurpation cannot rob the innocent of their right But yet I will not be guilty of countenancing and encouraging any soul-murderer in so great a sin Three sorts of Teachers I renounce Communion with as Ministers 1. Those that through intollerable ignorance and insufficiency do want those abilities which are necessary to the essence of the Ministry 2. Those Hereticks who preach against any essential article of Religion 3. Those wicked ones who openly bend their application not against different Sects and adversaries for that is common to all the factious and peevish but against the serious practise of Godliness Temperance Love or Justice and that labour to make these odious to their hearers though their Doctrine be sound from which they raise these malignant applications These are the men that I will not communicate with I confess when I read in Sulpitius Severus the History of St. Martins resolved Separation from Ithacius Idacius and the Synods of Bishops of those times and the confirmation of him by Visions and the antiquity and credibility of that History if of almost any ancient Church History in the main and the stupendious miracles which he is said to work it a little stagger'd me till I considered 1. That Scripture only is our rule And 2. That it was not from the Episcopal Order that he separated for he was one himself nor from any particular Bishops that were innocent nor yet from the
sufferings of particular men 18. And we take it also for our duty to pray for the King and all in Authority not with dishonouring intimations but in such a manner as beseemeth us to speak even to God in the hearing of men of his own Officers and not that their favour may make us rich and great but only that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty 1 Tim. 2. 12. And this not seldom nor formally but daily and earnestly And we take it for our duty to preach against schism sedition and rebellion and all principles which tend to breed or feed them and to use our opportunities and interest in the people to promote their loyalty and the publick peace 19. Also we judg it our duty to preach those plain and necessary things which the salvation of men doth most depend on and the people generally have most need to hear that is the opening to them their Baptismal Covenant and the Articles of the Creed the Lords-Prayer the Decalogue and the Gospel-precepts or more briefly the Doctrine of faith in Christ and repentance towards God and of the love of God and man to live soberly righteously and godly in this world as looking and hoping for a better Tit. 2. 12. And not to fill the peoples heads with needless controversies or vain jangling or contending about words which edifie not but subvert the hearers much less to perplex them with talking of the unrevealed Counsels of God nor yet to corrupt their minds by talking against our Superiors or against dissenters behind their backs or by aggravating the faults of other mens manner of worshipping God or breeding in them distaste of the publick Worship or talking against Bishops or Ceremonies or Liturgy nor by representing any sort of Christians who differ from us in points not fundamental as odious to the hearers whether Lutherans Caelvinists Arminians Episcopal Presbyterian Independent yea or Anabaptists no nor to injure the Papists themselves by making our differences seem greater than indeed they are Our office is to preach up love and not to preach it down and mortifie it which all those do whatever they pretend that attempt to represent their brethren as odious and to hide or deny or extenuate that in them which is good and amiable 20. Lastly we must profess therefore that though we take not our selves bound to prefer our Preaching before other mens nor to tye our selves just to numbers and circumstances of time and place nor to draw a party from the lawful publick Ministers to our selves nor to preach at all where there is not a real and notorious need yet do we take our selves bound on pain of Gods displeasure and of damnation to exercise our Ministerial office as we are able in a pious peaceable and loyal manner as poor assistants to those faithful Ministers that have publick allowance and encouragement notwithstanding any present prohibitions or unwillingness of those that are against it And if this profession shall teach any to conclude that therefore bonds imprisonment or banishment must restrain us the will of the Lord be done we are ready not only to be bound but to die for preaching the Gospel of him that died for us and seeking to save men from a sorer death And we ought not to account our lives as dear to us so that we may finish our course with joy and the Ministry committed to us by the Lord Act. 20. 24. But we ought to suffer without resisting or reviling which we may the easier do while we suffer not as evil doers but for preaching the Gospel of Salvation and teaching men to seek the happiness to come and to forsake their lusts and to love and obey their God and Saviour As we are the more unwilling that the Church should be burdened with unnecessary Ceremonies because if they be used with understanding the people must be taught their sense and use which we scarce have leisure for or pleasure in while they are ignorant of so many greater things and are so very dull of hearing so it is not a little of our peace that if we suffer we be not found Preaching about Ceremonies or shadows but Preaching that Gospel which at our Ordination we solemnly promised to preach And now having told you truly our Principles I shall next tell you the reasons why we cannot forbear our Ministerial work till bonds or disability constrain us to forbear it II. AND here we shall not form Syllogisms in such an Apology as if we were speaking to captious men but nakedly open our reasons as to those that are as much concern'd in the matter as we and should be as willing to know the truth 1. We take it to be Sacriledg and that of the highest nature except Apostacy it self to alienate our selves from the work to which we are consecrated and devoted By how much the nearer any consecrated person or thing is to God and by how much the more useful to his ends his glory in the good of souls by so much the greater sacriledg it is to alienate that which is so consecrated With you we know that we need not dispute either the name of a Sacrament of Orders for we stick not upon names nor the obligation You know the usual Exposition of the Answer in the Church-Catechism to the Question How many Sacraments c A. Two only as generally necessary to Salvation We differ not from you in our sense of this Your Canons enquire after all such as alienate themselves from the Ministry to which they were ordained and turn to any other calling We dislike not that Canon But we wish our observance of it might be thought but a pardonable fault It hath possessed me oft with admiration to see the blinding power of Partiality in some men that can see the evil of Sacriledg in them that alienate Church lands and Goods and Houses and Utensils and can see no evil in the alienation of consecrated persons What are the Cups and Fonts and Tables for do they praise the glorious mystery of Redemption Are they not his Utensils who is set apart to attend the Altar and to commemorate the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world What are the Houses for but for the convenient habitation of the Pastors What are the Lands and Tythes for but for their maintenance while they do the work of God What are the Temples for but to be the convenient places of their and the peoples worshipping of God Is it a crime to steal the feathers and none to steal the goose Is it a crime to rent your clothes and is it none to rend your flesh Or to steal a tile or pick a lock and not to burn the house Is he saulty that robs your child of his hat or book or victuals and is he innocent that killeth him or that robs you of your child We must be speak all Cainuites here who like
nor so feeble and impotent as this here described much less do we number it with things indifferent or that are left to our liberty or with those that some call either works of Supererogation or of Evangelical perfection as answering to counsels and not to commands We are not ashamed of our judgment in this point whoever shall account it heresie or error we hold that it is our duty to love our neighbours as our selves and that this is not an act of extraordinary charity unless as the malice of uncharitable men doth eventually make and denominate it extraordinary But that it is essential to all true saving love and common to every true member of Christ that shall be saved We believe that this love must be extended to the proud and peevish and unto our very enemies and therefore we pray more conformably to the Liturgy than such Conformists that God will forgive our enemies persecutors and slanderers and turn their hearts Accordingly it is part of our Religion that we are obliged to do good to the proud and peevish as well as others yea unto all men to the utmost of our power except those who by Law are taken out of our care by being destined to death for their crimes whose bodies we may not endeavour to save but their souls are as much under our necessary duty as others we hold that even a Traytor Murderer or Felon going to the Gallows must be so far loved pitied and helped that we must do much more than forbear a thing indifferent to save their souls For we long ago received Pauls opinion that we should rather chuse never to eat flesh while we lived than to hinder their Salvation for whom Christ died We believe very confidently that if a proud or peevish man were cutting his own throat or hanging or drowning himself that by an ordinary obligation common to men we are bound in charity to do our best to save his life to cut the rope to pull him out of the water though we lost for it the liberty of a lawful game or feast or rest yea though it must cost us dear And we believe that if we do not this we do not only fail of an extraordinary height of charity but that we are murderers and that we do not only cross the tenderness of good nature but common humanity we cannot deny but we take him for a beast and worse than an Infidel that will not only famish his family but stand by and let them cut their own throats if he can but say they are stubborn proud and peevish or drunk or that will see his neighbours drown or hang themselves if they do it in pride or peevishness or stubbornness rather than he will forsake his liberty in a thing indifferent And therefore it is contrary to our Religion to sell a soul much more many thousands for a Ceremony We take the sixth Commandment to mean Thou shalt not murder the good or the bad the patient or the peevish by commission or by omission And as much as Souls are more worth than Bodies and everlasting life than temporal so much the greater sin do we take it for to be the murderers of Souls by omission than of Bodies And that it will be an insufficient excuse for omissive soul-murdering to say He was peevish and I should have parted with my freedom Could we once think that doing no harm is all our necessary Religion and that doing good is only the work of an extraordinary height of charity then we could be in this of another mind and could think a stone or tree more Religious than a mortal Saint But we have not so learnt to be Religious 2. And indeed we think that this opinion would almost excuse the whole world from works of charity to any at least except Ideots and Infants For to confess all our cross opinions freely we deny not but that we hold the Doctrine of Original sin as inherent in all the seed of Adam and we must have pardon in our Nonconformity for Conformity so far to the Scriptures and the Articles and Doctrine of the Church of England and of the Universal Church And therefore we hold that the whole nature of man is corrupted from the womb with some vicious Principle yea more than so with the particular Principles of pride humour and stubbornness and peevishness And therefore that according to this rule which we dissent from all the world should be suffered to be hanged and damned for ever rather than a Conformist should lose a game at Chess or a cup of Sack or abate a Ceremony Because if it proceed from humour pride or peevishness or any other vicious principle no man is bound to part with his own freedom because his neighbour is froward and humourous And we hold that there are few men or none that have lived so innocently but that if Original sin were denied they have by practice contracted some vicious principles even of pride and humour and frowardness And we hold that it was to cure such viciated souls and such principles that Christ came into the world and that he made the Gospel and instituted the Ministry and that we are workers under Christ in this work and that this seeking and saving of that which is lost even of the proud and froward and humour some and peevish is the very employment of our office And that none of these are that blasphemy of the Holy Ghost that maketh sin unpardonable and uncurable And that though dogged hearing us and swinish contempt of the Gospel it self may excuse us from further importunity with some and allow us to shake off the dust off our feet against them yet so will not every vicious principle nor the frowardness and humour here described Nor yet will a particular humour or peevishness allow us to neglect the souls of them that in the main have received the Gospel of Salvation I confess we are of the number of them that mourn for the reproach of those pitified Churches where the Pastors are of these opinions and think that if all the Children of Christs family be but peevish and froward the Nurses may let them all sin and be damned and not part with any of their freedoms to cure them or to save them Were I also of this opinion I should not stick to make merchandize of souls and to sell an hundred for a Benefice and twenty thousand for a Bishoprick nor to give over Preaching to prevent my suffering were fouls so contemptible and of so little value And consequently we think that the School-distinction of Scandal given and taken is not so false and impertinent as is here said The sense of the distinction is that the fault is sometimes in the giver and sometimes only in the taker Scandal being a snare a trap a stumbling-block or a temptation to sin we think there are several sorts of scandal First Scandal given is by actions otherwise sinful for it