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
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
tell you of Abbot and Laud c. and when yet the Conformists preach against one another about it yet did we never speak a word to the King or them of any such matter Because if all men will subscribe the same wholsome Doctrine of the Articles we cannot hinder any from dissembling and destroying what they do subscribe Obj. 24. Agreement with the Church of Rome is more desirable on the terms described by Dr. Heylin in A. B. Lauds life and you would make it impossible Ans. We are for a just concord with all Christians but true Popery we cannot agree with and as to Papists they are but a part a third or fourth part saith your Primate Bishop Bramhall of the Catholick Church We must unite with the whole Church or else we are Schismaticks To embody in the faction of the Papists is as Schismatical as to do it with a smaller faction And if you will unite with all Christians I still say you must unite on Vinc. Lirinensis terms on that which all Christians are agreed in that indeed deserve the name of Christians Now if you establish your concord on the Scripture and on universal terms all Christians in the world will confess that your Religion yea all your Religion is certain truth and that it hath also all things universally necessary to Salvation and this is a fair degree of unity though they say that yet you want their Traditions And then you can tell a Papist quickly where your Religion was before Luther Even where ever the Scripture was received And you do not wilfully and resolvedly cut off your selves from Communion with all the Protestant Churches who do not hold the Traditions and Decrees of Rome But you are united with all the Christians in the world in Christianity and so far as they have any union among themselves And then all those that will needs go further do run the hazard of their own additions We will live in peace with them if they will live in peace with us But if the Papists be such men that they will hold no communion with any that hold not all their Religion that is all the Decrees of their Councils than neither Abassines Armenians Greeks nor Protestants can be received into their Communion And do you think it desirable to comply and embody with them in such a schism and factious combination against all the rest of the Churches of God If you will deal like Christians Catholicks and wise men let us first be as moderate as may be in our Doctrinals and not pretend that we are further disagreed with Papists or any other Christians than indeed we are I am one of those who believe that in many Doctrines quarrelsome ignorant men have made differences where there are none and have made those that be seem wider than they are cut off these superfluities and spare not and then reduce your terms of Union and Communion to the Primitive simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Discipline and if any will have more let it be a matter of liberty and not of necessity or if they will not be limited as we are let them take their scope Or if you your selves will needs have more yet hold it with liberty as matter of conveniency and not of necessity to the union or communion of the Church If you will take this course we shall deny Papists no love no peace no communion with us on our terms which they justifie for the truth of them in our Churches And if they will fly from us and refuse our Communion or will put unlawful terms on us and drive us from them we shall have no accusation for this by our consciences or any wise man He is the Schismatick that maketh communion impossible by his Additions or Impositions or runs away from those that will not receive all his Supernumeraries Usurpation is the peace breaker in the Church of God Christs sheep know his voice and follow him but they will not be so obedient to an unknown voice Why cannot a man be content to be a Lord Bishop and to have many hundred or thousand pound a year for promoting the preaching and practice of Christianity and for punishing Hereticks rebels drunkards sensualists c. and serve God himself with what garb or forms or ceremonies he please as well as to have the same wealth and honour to prosecute much wiser and better men than himself with a burning zeal for not swearing obedience to him or for not subscribing that his Books are faultless or for not wearing a Surplice or signing Children with the transient Image of the Cross. But we must suppose that we cannot make Papists to be Protestants If they will not turn Protestants and we will not turn Papists the contrivance or supposition of a turn or half-turn is but a vain imagination not the way to unity and peace We must take them as they are and they must take us as we are and we must take all the Christian Churches as they are in our design for concord if we will do any good in it The question is not how or how far we shall change one anothers minds or be changed but how we shall maintain so much love and peace as is due to one another in the capacity that we are in and how far we shall endure the different opinions and practices of another to such an end And such a Conciliator with Rome I would be my self and magnifie the design as much as Heylin doth and be as zealous in it as Grotius Laud or Forbes were in theirs For it is but the service of Love and Peace and that is certainly the service of God I would treat with any Papists on such a design If peevish or suspious Protestants should try out on me and defame me for such a design as some have done I would no more regard it than the crying of a child If Christian Princes would make such a Treaty their business by their Embassadors that Love and Liberty might be regulated by the just rules of Equality and not be pretended only by a faction for their own ends even by them that will seek Liberty but will not give it I would bless God for such Princes and for so good a work And I would be and am ready to manifest to all wise impartial men whose Religion is Love and not Malice under the name of Zeal that in many Doctrines that we are by some supposed to differ in Fundamentals ignorance hath feigned the difference to be doubly greater than it is And I think many of Forbes and Spalato's Arguments in his very Learned Books de Republ. Eccles. to be worthy the serious study of every Learned man I know Luther took the Doctrine of uncertainty of Salvation alone to be cause enough of our unreconcileableness with Rome and yet I know as well that it is not one godly person of many yea very many of them that are farthest from the Papists who do
say that they are certain of their own Salvation I know that many excellent Protestants have made it the sense of that article of the Creed I believe that my own sins are pardoned and say that this Proposition My sins are pardoned is de fide Divina And yet I know that in propriety and strictness of speech which should be used in Controversies it is not true I know that many of the School-mens assertions are commonly rejected as erroneous because they are not commonly understood I know that Luther maketh the Doctrine of Justification to be Articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae and yet I know that Ludovicus le Blank of Sedan in his Theses hath greatly narrowed the difference and understands it much better than Luther seemeth to have done Which I may say also of Bucer Conradus Bergius In Praxi Cathol Ludov. Crocius and many other such Conciliators And that Luther on the Galatians is so acceptable to the Antinomians that I conceive divers passages in it have need of as candid an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Doctrine of Scotus and many Papists on that point I am my self a Christian and that is my Religion and I own the name Protestant for no greater reason than because it is the Protestant Religion to be meer Christians and to protest against the Roman Superadditions and depravations of it And so to be a Protestant and to be a meer Christian adhering to Scripture sufficiency as the test and terms of Union and Communion are all one Yea if any one doubted of the Canonicalness of the Canticles Esther or some one or few Books and acknowledg the main body of the Scriptures and the ancient articles of faith I would not cast such a one from my Communion And these terms or none I have foretold it you oft must heal the Church if ever it be healed And till the Papists will see the equity of these terms it is our great advantage that the certain truth of all our Religion is so fully acknowledged But 2. as long as we let others alone with their additions why may they not live in peace with us and let us alone without them All men are united in the Essentials of Humanity though they are not all of one complection stature or degree of strength And if any be so peevish that he will associate with none that are not of his own complection the separation is the effect of his folly which may possibly be cured and till it be cured both the fault and the suffering is his own If a Law were made that none shall live in the Kings Dominions but men of a Sanguine complection and of a strait and comely person and of such a proportion of tallness and of strength and of flaxen hair this Law would necessitate a separation and diminution of the Kings subjects from generation to generation But if the Law be that all English men that will live after the rules of Reason Honesty and Society shall have the priviledges of subjects if an hundred thousand had got a conceit that they may not lawfully be of the same Kingdom with any but men of their own complection and stature as aforesaid this is a cureable folly and the Law-makers may say we have done our parts for universal society and it is not we that make it impossible or hinder it and men in time may come to reason We refuse not them but they refuse us If you make things necessary and of common agreement to be your terms of Union Greeks Abassines Armenians Romans may take their own way and every one without injury enjoy his own be it wisdom or folly upon these terms But if you unite upon any other terms you make Laws for schism even for the exclusion of all that are not of your mind For Hales his Doctrine is true in the judgment of all men save the guilty that the Imposer of unnecessary doubtful things is the Schismatick or cause of all the schism So that there is no true union to be expected with Rome or any others but on the terms of primitive simplicity or which all true Christians are agreed in And they are no good terms which induce the authors through the force of interest to say that none in the world are good Christians that are not of their cut and strain and wear not their livery and lace not their coats in the Imposers mode 4 And as long as we take nothing from the men of various modes and fashions by unity in the Essentials of Humanity and Christianity to imagine that it is the way to union to force all Dissenters to their modes is but to renounce union and to gratifie a distant party so far as to make them laugh at us as fools and hope ere long to get us at their mercy and thereby to lose disoblige and destroy those that are nearer to us and would indeed be our friends and strength and to become enemies to our own families rather than to displease the people of France by not wearing their fashions 5. And if you had attained a seeming union with the Papists you are not sure it will hold seven year For their Religion still thriveth and thereby changeth and is yet far short of its maturity in all likelihood For General Councils make their Religion and who knoweth how many General Councils of forty Bishops perhaps like that at Trent for a great part of the time there may yet be and what alterations of Religion they may make And are you sure you can go along with them in all as far as they will go If you must break at last unite not on such mutable terms at first But there 's no talking to men whose interest and passion and partiality is the maker of their Religion It is not my purpose to speak any of this either to one of Grotius's mind if Saraviad and the Book called Grotius Papirans be credible or if he be that man that wrote the Discussio Apolog. Rivet who would have us unite upon the acceptance of all the Councils even that of Trent nor to such as come as near them as Mr. Thorndike nor any of that degree of affinity For I suppose they are already gone out of the hearing of such a voice as mine Yet still remember that I am not setting a Law no not Christs Law to your selves for the rule of your own opinions or practices If you will please the Papists by coming yet nearer them even nearer than the learned Forbes Bishop of Edenburgh did if you will have more of their Doctrine Discipline and Worship take it if it will do you any good But why must all others needs be of your judgment or those be of your way that are not of your judgment And why cannot you unite with the Papists if you will without destroying the Protestants or renouncing them Unite in things necessary and hold and use the rest as matters of liberty and it will
testifie some of us that we were from first to last in his company at such meetings where those matters were transfacted and at all the meetings before his Majesty that we heard he was present at and we over and over have heard him profess that he took several things in Conformity to be intollerable sins but never heard a word from him to the contrary And he may be judged of by the Preface to our Reply which he wrote and by his not only refusing a Bishoprick but by his Sufferings and constant profession to his death This Writer to save the Church from Concord by restoring the silenced Ministers feigneth Comprehension to be a late device a thing unknown or that amounts to no more than a pretty artifice of saving the reputation of about a dozen persons who are sick of their separation and stand in need of a plausible pretence under which to return unto it Their credit will not suffer them to renounce their old principles and they are weary of sticking longer to them Now if the pride of these men should be thus far gratified c. Ans. 1. See how boldly this man pretendeth to search the hearts of others 2. How he feigneth that to be New which they so laboured for 1660 and ever since Read but their Petition for Peace and Judg. 3. Doth he not take it to be more for our Reputation to conform and to be dignified and preferred than to live under the scorn and sufferings that we do Do not Bishop Reignolds and many others that conform live in more reputation in the world than we that are thus reviled by so many Doctors of the Church and sometimes lie in the common Jayls and are fain to stoop to be beholden for our bread or necessary maintenance 4. Who are those dozen men and why doth he not name them and prove his charge Are they not men of strange facinating power that could make 1800 such Ministers distant in all Counties to deny Conformity And are they not strange persons that will all over the Land give over preaching or live in poverty and suffering some have dyed through the effects of want and all to gratifie a dozen men no one knoweth who And it 's like some that he meaneth in his dozen have done more to displease many of the rest than others 5. What Nonconformist hath not groaned for our divisions and been indeed aweary of them from the first day and longed for our common Concord but that is not to be weary of their principles O that he would procure us but liberty to preach the Gospel for all the rest that earnestly desire agreement and shut out the dozen that he meaneth whoever they be But pardon me for saying that these men do satisfie us that Sadduces are blind who believe that there is no Devil when so much of him appeareth actively in the World But our difference is not in Government and Ceremony only but in Doctrines of Grand importance in Morality For he saith pag. 66. For unless it the Covenant be lawful in every particular respect no body can be obliged by it O dreadful Doctrine to come from a Doctor of a Christian Church That a Covenant and Vow to God can oblige no body unless it be lawful in every respect If so Protestants that hold that imperfect man hath no sinless work and so no Vow or Covenant is in all respects lawful must hold that they are bound by no vow or covenant If this be so every erroneous man or every knave that hath the ignorance or craft to drop in any one unlawful thing into his Covenants and Vows is obliged by none of them at all How easily then may a Papist or an Atheist shake off all Oaths of Allegiance or Supremacy by adding one unlawful Particle It 's true that if some one clause in a Vow were so essential to all the rest as to be their sense if that were unlawful to be kept all were so And as to the denomination of the frame as consisting of several parts it may be called a bad or unlawful Oath if part were so because bonum est ex causis integris and the sense is but that it is unlawful quoad hoc or secundum quid But as to obligation though the Actus imponentis and the Actus jurantis be unlawful yet if the materia juramenti have ten parts and one only be sin that doth not nullifie the obligation to the rest No nor though nine parts of it were sin their neighbourhood nullifieth not the obligation to the tenth But what wonder if Conformity by Oaths Subscriptions Declarations and Covenants seem lawful to Doctors of such principles as these What if a Popish Prince or People put an unlawful clause into their Covenants Are they therefore wholly disobliged as to each other The same I say of Covenants of Peace between several Princes And of Covenants between husband and wife and so of other Contracts but especially of Vows to God But what if Perjury prove a greater sin than not conforming to it yea a sin meet for none but utterly debauched Consciences and such as threatneth dreadful ruine And what if such principles and practices would make us guilty of the Perjury and impenitence of many hundred thousand persons Should we be drawn into such a guilt by such words as these and that in a time when God by his Judgments is searching after and finding out the Nations sins God forbid Another since called A Reproof to the Rehearsal Transposed p. 457 458. saith Do you at all know what were the abatements they demanded to bring them off with Conscience To let you see your confidence I tell you they demanded none at all but the question being solemnly put to them and that as I am told in his Majesties presence Whether they knew of any thing in the Liturgy with which they could not comply without sin they all declared their own satisfaction but only desired some abatements for the ease of weak brethren or rather as you tell us bluntly to bring themselves off with some little reputation Ans. O patient God! Alas for strangers and the Generations to come that must read such history Alas for the Souls and Churches that have such Guides Alas that he whose Character is to be the old Lyer and Murderer can do so much in the Churches at once to destroy Love and Souls to make odious Gods Ministers and to render it so difficult to believe Church-History If this man had thus published that we were not English men or that we did at that same time the horrid'st Villanies that he could devise what other answer could we make than that which these words must have It is a forgery against such notorious evidence that I will not undertake for the man that dare print this but that he may say any thing that can be devised how false soever I have told you 1. That we gave them in writing an account of
of mercy as Preaching the Gospel is Though they were as maliciously and petulantly affected toward them v. 16. as was possible yet had they nothing to object or except against the whole action But Peter and John made light of their interdict or terrours and told them plainly that they were commanded by God to preach and that in all reason God must be obeyed before them or the greatest Magistrate on earth and that they themselves could not but confess so much And so not knowing what else to say to them being not able to deny the force of their argument they wanted our new wits they added more threatnings if possibly they might terrifie them and so dismiss'd them having nothing to lay to their charge And if Mr. Middlesly in Lancashire had brought out the many thousand people converted by him which Dr. Ames mentioneth had it not been a silencing argument against his silencer as well as the Cure of a lame man here was And on 1 Thess. 2. 15 16. It being unreasonable that they which have cast off obedience to God should persecute all men that come to tell them of their duty And this generally is the ground of their quarrel to us that in spight of their prohibition we preach to the Gentiles use means that they might repent of their Idolatries c. By which and the former things the Jews do so fill up the measure of their sins that the wrath of God to the utter destruction of them is now come out upon them already denounced and within a very little while most certain to overtake them I apply it no further than to tell you that if you will still chuse our Suffering as more desirable than our Preaching the Gospel of Christ your arms will sooner be tired with striking than faithful Ministers will be tired with Sufferings and you will be sooner a weary of smiting with the Sword than they will be with preaching the Word under all your pressures And when your nets have taken only the Greater fishes the lesser fry will all get through and become more numerous and in time as Great as those you took and will make the vanity of your trade apparent and make you one day wish that you had left such nets and with Peter and them have been fishers of men to win them rather than to destroy them 26. Obj. But Castellanus his objection against Bicot elsewhere cited out of Scaliger is their greatest strength who said Aristotle was against Monarchy Here they may borrow that by deceiving which by disputing they could not prove The Counterminor and many others like minded endeavour to make Rulers and people believe that it is Rebellion that is in our hearts and that it is only the renouncing of a Rebellious Covenant that we stick at and the Renouncing of Subjects taking arms against the King and any commissioned by him and therefore the silencing of such as cherish the principles of Rebellion is necessary And they think that this Oven gapeth so wide and is so hot that here they may boldly challenge our answer Ans. If men have any remnants of justice and modesty left they shall be constrained to confess that my Answer to this Objection is satisfactory I. I take that man to be an enemy to God to Kings and to Mankind who will maintain that there is any such thing in the world as a lawful unlimited Monarchy or humane Power and therefore wonder that Bishop Morley did put the denial of this among the accused passages of my Political Aphorisms where I expresly speak of Gods Limitation 1. He is an enemy to God that asserteth this because he thereby denieth God to be the Universal Soveraign who hath made Laws for all Kings who are all his Subjects and as they are finite receive but a finite power from him It is Atheism to deny Gods Soveraignty Hath not God forbidden Kings Idolatry Perjury Blasphemy Murder Tyranny Oppression Adultery c 2. He is an enemy to Kings who will render them odious to mankind by drawing such a picture or description of them as to say A King is one that is absolutely unlimited in his power and therefore may deny or blaspheme God and may destroy City and Kingdom and kill all the innocent people when he please 3. He is an enemy to Mankind that would bring them into such slavery under such a Monster and tell them If your King send but a few Commissioned executioners to command all your Heads and murder Senate City and Countrey Parents and Children and burn up all your dwellings neither the Law of Nature or of the Land will allow you to defend your selves against them Who will defend such a monster in War against his enemies when no enemy can bring them into greater slavery II. Almost all mankind on earth agree that all humane Power is limited and that Propriety is in order of nature antecedent to regiment which is to order the use of propriety Men are born with a propriety in their lives members and health And Nature giveth them a propriety in their Children and Contract in their Wives and natural Industry in the fruit of their labours And what am I that I should deny all this and seem wiser in Atheism and Inhumanity than almost all the world III. It is a known thing that Tyranny is the great hinderer of the Preaching of the Gospel and so of the Conversion and saving of the World Why is not the saving truth of God preached among Heathens and Mahometans who are five sixth parts of mankind and among Papists who are the fourth part of the other sixth but because Tyrants will not suffer it And no friend of God Christ or man then should set up or plead for such an evil IV. To stop the mouth of Malice it self I here truly adjoyn the profession of my judgment about all this Controversie and Accusation I do Assent and Consent to all that is said for the Power of Kings and the obedience and patience of Subjects in all the Word of God in all the Confessions which ever I yet saw of any Christian Church Reformed Greek or Papist except what exalteth the Pope his Councils and Agents or which is the ordinary Consent of Politicians Lawyers or Divines or which is established by the Constitution of this Kingdom I stand to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I hold it unlawful for any of his Subjects to take arms against the King that is against his Person Authority Dignity Rights or Laws or against any of his Courts Officers or Soldiers Lawfully Commissioned by him yea or if they be unlawfully Commissioned except when Gods Law of Nature or the Kings own Law or contrary Commission bind me to it And I will never endeavour to alter the Constituted Monarchical Government of this Kingdom Nor will I endeavour to reform the Church or its Government by Rebellion Sedition or any other unlawful means And I believe that no other Oath League
or Covenant doth disoblige me from any of this aforesaid nor warranteth me to disobey any lawful Command of the King or any of my Governours nor to do any unlawful thing And I renounce all Doctrines and Practices contrary to this profession Especially of those Popes and Councils of Bishops who have decreed the Excommunicating and Deposing of Kings or other Temporal Lords and the Absolving their Subjects from their Oaths and Fidelity and the rest of the Papal Usurpations and Church-Tyranny against the Rights of Princes and Christian people though judged Hereticks by Pope Prelates or Priests If this be not enough see the 2d Plea for Peace and my form of professed Loyalty in my book called The true and only way of the Concord of all Christian Churches V. And because they still cant over the mention of the late miserable Wars as if they hated the Act of Oblivion and Peace I add that malice may have no more to say that hath the shew of reason Silence and cast out all that ever had any hand in those Wars except the Conformists and no more and we will give you a thousand thanks and acquiesce in it as unexpected justice And is not all this yet enough VI. As to the particular reasons that we have against Subscribing Universally and unlimitedly without any exposition given by the Law-makers that it is unlawful to take arms against any Commissioned by the King and as referring to on any pretence whatsoever it belongeth to another discourse to render them which giveth the reasons of our Nonconformity It would be here unseasonable and they are many and great 27 Obj. But good words must not satisfie while the remembrance of your Rebellious practises yet remaineth Ans. 1. I have elsewhere told the strangers and young men that know it not that it was between two Parties of Episcopal Conformists that the War began 2. Is it not Words that you require as satisfactions in your Subscriptions and Oaths What more than Words is it that you would have 3. Are not the Laws in Power and Judges to execute them against any that shall speak or do disloyally What would you have more than Words and that mens Estates and Lives be answerable for their offences Obj. But why will you not then subscribe and swear in the words of the Law but in your own Ans. To give here the reasons of that is the unseasonable digression before disclaimed You may as well here call us to dispute over all our differences Obj. But here I am charged as an impudent falsifier of History for saying that the War began between two Parties of Episcopal Conformity which maketh me pity the World in point of History when the publick affairs of a Kingdom so openly managed shall be in such a manner controverted in the very age when they were done Divers Lords are yet living who were interessed in these matters and it is unpleasing to give men the Catalogue of great mens Names in a matter which His Majesty hath committed to oblivion But a breviate of all the necessary proof I shall draw up in a History by it self The Accusation 28 being made publickly by my old friend Dr. Thomas Good in his book called Dubitantius Firmianus I will annex a Letter which I wrote in answer to it ACCUS 28. To my Reverend and Worthy Friend Dr. Thomas Good Master of Baliol-Colledge in Oxford Reverend and Worthy Sir IT is now about a Month since I received a Letter from you for the furthering of a good work which I sent to Mr. Foley by his Son Mr. Paul Foley not having opportunity my self to see him I have stayed so long for an answer not hearing yet from him that I think it not meet any longer to forbear to acquaint you with the reasons of the delay He liveth quite at the other end of London from me and my weakness and business keep me much within doors and it 's hard to find him within except at those hours when I am constrained to be in bed But I have reason to conjecture that his answer will be 1. That the rich men whose judgments are for Conformity are far more numerous than those who are of another mind and therefore fitter to promote that work And there are so very few that do any thing for the ejected Ministers that some of them live on brown bread and water c. which hindereth those Gentlemen from other kind of charitable work 2. And I must crave your patience being confident by your ancient kindness of your friendly interpretation which I tell you that this day I heard one say We can expect that Dr. Good do make his Scholars no better than himself And what reason have we to maintain and breed up men to use us as he hath done in his late Treatise I got the Book and was glad to find much good and several moderate passages in it and I knew you so well as that I could not but expect moderation but when I perused the passages referred to I could say no more for them but that I would write to you to hear your answer about them For I confess they surprized me though at the same time I received many new Books of a sanguine complection from other hands without any admiration I. The first passage referred to was pag. 104. Which are confessedly things indifferent This is spoken indefinitely of the Presbyterians Where have I lived I know not one Presbyterian living that divideth from you for any thing which he confesseth indifferent I crave your answer containg the proof of this at least to name some one of them that we may reprove him We take Conformity to be so far from indifferent that we forbear to tell the world the greatness of the sin which we think to be in it lest men cannot bear it and lest it should disaffect the people to the Ministry of the Conformists II. Your p. 156. I pass by The main matter is p. 160 161. that though All the Nonconformists were not in actual arms against the King nor did they all as natural agents cut off his Head but morally that is very sinfully and wickedly they had their hands stained with that royal blood for whosoever did abet these sons of Belial in their rebellions treasons murders of their King and fellow subjects either by consenting to their villanies praying for their prosperity praising God for their successes c. The Charge is high If it be not true 1. They are almost as deeply wrong'd as you can wrong them 2. Our Rulers are wronged by being so provoked to abhor them silence and destroy them 3. Posterity is wronged by a misinforming History I. You are too old to be ignorant that it was an Episcopal and Erastian Parliament of Conformists that first took up these arms in England against the King The Members yet living profess that at that time they knew but one Presbyterian in the House of Commons Interest forced or