and that at Paris and the British Bishops declar'd themselves openly against it And Charles the Great himself wrote against it Whilst this exact Correspondence was among all the Bishops of the Catholique Church and in every Diocese between the Bishop and his Clergy and all his Flock then as one of the Fathers glories If any man askt the way to the Catholique Church no Heretique had the face to shew him the way to his particular Church as if that were the Cotholique And thus although the Body of the Clergy be a thousand times greater as this Author observes then any Council and for this very reason for their unmanageable numbers cannot be convened in one place nor their Suffrages gathered yet 't is observable that the Universality or whole Fraternity of Christians that were in the Apostles Fellowship or Communion had honourable mention made of them and of their concurrence in the Letter of Decision from that first Apostolical Council in the Acts of the Apostles And so the Legates of Princes and several Learned Priests and Deacons have been Assessors to General Councils but no Voters there for that were endless consentiendo subscripsere that is subscribed their assent and consent therefore our Author is not to think it a Monopoly of ours though the word Church be sometimes used and taken for the Clergy only for as I shew'd before there can be no sheep without Shepherds so 't is an equal absurdity to imagine that the Shepherds should be preserved without their sheep But if he will grant any thing at all by way of deference to the Churche's Judgment he must not talk to us of the whole Body nor of his thousands and thousand thousands for fear of falling into the new oral-Tradition way that rare invention of learning what is the Faith by sifting and finding out if we can what was held at all times and in all places by all the Midwives and the Dry-Nurses and the Common People I come now to his last pretence against the Churche's Authority in General Councils The Prejudices they that should sit in Council would bring along with them and then who can doubt but they would avow that in the Council which they all taught in their Churches This again is a piece of my Author 's unthought of Popery for the Papists are not able to endure Councils free and truly General which never fail'd to swinge their Popes and their Popery too that is the Quintescence of it the Popes Supremacy as no doubt they would condemn many other of their Doctrines and Practices but that as there have been no such Councils of later Ages so indeed there was no such Church of Rome in former Ages when there were such Councils and the Council of Trent has made their Church so quite another thing that we may well retort them their own Question Where was your Church before Luther Now ask them for any Decree of a General Council for praying to Saints or worshipping Images or the like if we reject the Council of Trent as we would do the Assembly of Divines at Westminster they reply the visibly major part of the Church both East and West have introduced it and as our Author expresses himself in another Instance They all have taught it in their Churches therefore if they met in Council who can doubt but they would avow it I desire to remind these over-hasty Opiniators of that well known and remarkable story concerning Paphnutius at the Sacred Oecumenical Council of Nice when the Question was debated earnestly there Whether married Priests should be separated from their wives or no and when the Major part of Bishops inclin'd to the wrong side even to forbid them cohabiting any longer the great Paphnutius stood up and set them right proving the ancient Tradition or Custom of the Church to the contrary And with one Speech he turn'd the whole Council for it is one thing to strike at random as commonly Polemical Authors do or to oppose those passages in their Adversaries books which are ready to fall of themselves and to pass by those which urge and press them harder and quite another thing to keep one another to a point till it comes to an issue upon the whole affair But this can hardly be when two Controvertists are as far distant from each other in place as they are in opinion But if sober good and learned men were conven'd and met prepared with study not for a vain wrangle or victory but for a mature deliberation to give such an account of their Belief that all might end in some fixt determination after full conviction If Praesidents and Moderators were design'd with one to do the office of a Prolocutor or Speaker to see that all might be done orderly and proceed in strict and punctual form of Argument a Method which this Author so often declares against that he will not be this Prolocutor If the Ratiocinators on both sides might have daies given them to recal any thing that slipt inconsiderately from them that there might be no lying at the catch as they say If such a Conference as this were protracted from time to time till all were ripen'd for an issue If there were ready at hand all books that would be of use Fathers especially and Former Councils and above all the Holy Bible placed upon its Throne as it was the custom to place it in Ancient Councils If I durst hope to see but such â— Council as this then I would hope to see the Church restor'd to all her Ancient splendor and Serene glory For I will but appeal to this Author if we may compare those great things with our lesser affairs if he has ever done any exercise at Divinity-Disputations in an University what a vast difference there is between sitting in ones study and writing such Pamphlets as his and mine and defending in the School a material Question in Theology where one stands a Respondent enclosed within the compass of his Pew as Popilius the Roman Embassador to King Antiochus made a circle with his wand about that Prince and bid him give him a determinate answer before he went out of it Which puts me in mind of a certain Pope's reply and it was a very shrewd one when he was importun'd to call the Council of Trent he put them off a great while with this Answer that he would not fight with a Cat in a Cupbord meaning he was loth to contend with all the Praelacy shut up together for then he knew they would flie in his face and so they did in the faces of his Successors notwithstanding all their Artifices whereas he could deal well enough with them severally and at a distance And it is no wonder at all if the Bishops of the Duffusive Church are fain to suffer and groan under many of the Papal Abuses which they might easily remedy and reform if they were protected as they ought to be by all Christian Kings
to the Church and the State is not that also Turbulent And if they were thus solicitous to preserve and establish as a sacred inviolable thing the Idolatrous worship of their false Gods what care of ours can be great enough to secure the Godly worship of the only True God when it is shaken by such Divisions But to return to St. Austin how did the Civil Magistrate proceed to punish the Donatists for their sedition even by laying his Commands upon them at that good Father's Request That they should come to Church A severe punishment and very likely indeed to be inflicted upon them as Traytors to the Imperial Crown But secondly says he to answer more particularly this story I suppose says he there is no man such a stranger to the world as to be ignorant that there are Hypocrites in it and such for ought we know these seeming converted Donatists might be who for love of this World more than for love of the Truth forsoâ—k their heretical Profession though not their Opinion c. Incomparable for ought he knows they were Hypocrites So for ought we know This Author is all this while a Jesuite and writes this Pamphlet only to embroyl us Protestants But he goes on unless it can be evidenc't that these Donatists hearts were changed as well as their Profession a thing impossible to prove all this proves nothing Very good So unless it can be evidenc't that he writes all this Pamphlet from his Heart which is impossible to be prov'd it all signifies just nothing But thirdly says he put the case their hearts were really chang'd as to matter of belief 't is evident their hearts were very worldly still groveling on the earth not one step nearer Heaven A horrible charitable saying we may forgive him any thing after this as his supposing in this next sentence that the pruning of the Tree by the Magistrate's Sword is doing evil As for his putting the Case Malchus had been converted by St. Peter 's cutting off his ear and saying this would not have excus'd St. Peter 's act which our Saviour so sharply reprov'd and threatned by perishing with the sword In the first place I humbly conceive St. Peter was no Civil Magistrate unless he that will not allow him to draw oâ—e Sword here as a private Person will admit the fine Monkish conceit of Ecce duo Gladii behold here are two Swords the Spiritual and the Temporal for St. Peter and his Successors And secondly for his cutting of Malchus's ear I suppose there is some difference between the Magistrat's giving one an ear to hear with or compelling one to hearken and listen to reason and cutting off ones ear or setting one in the Pillory But all this he says in reference to compelling men to believe or conform still reserving to the Magistrate power according to Scripture to punish evil doers not evil believers not who think but do publish or do practise something to subvert the Fundamentals of Religion or disturb the Peace of the State or injure their Neighbour God the only searcher of hearts reserves to himself the punishment of evil thoughts of evil belief which man can never have a right cognizance of And does he take all this pains only to put a fallacy upon us and only to prove the truth of an old Adage that Thought is free And that no body can be punisht in this world for his Thoughts only or that it is all one for a thing not to be and not to appear to be But for all this evil believers if they profess their evil belief plainly appear evil doers and are to be treated accordingly Though I speak nothing more against them or their greatest Speakers than that they may be brought to our Churches and give us a fair hearing Animadversions upon his Appendix to the former Subject HIS Appendix to the former Subject begins with censuring the modesty of our first Reformers for their deference to the Ancient Fathers and Councils We thank him for this reproach Hereby says he they were reduc't to great straits in their Disputations He shall find himself reduc't into much greater before we have done with him for thus aspersing and deserting both the Ancients and the Modern Fathers as I may style them of this Church and the Reformation His reason for thus rejecting Antiquity is because some Popish Errors were crept very early into the Church The Superstition of the Cross and Chrism were in use in the second Century They were in use but none were then allowed in any superstitious abuse of them As for the Millenary Error and the Necessity of Infants receiving the Blessed Sacrament Errors indeed but no Heresies and common Errors but by no means to be charged on the Church Universal of those Ages which is but a Vulgar Error since the Papists he confesses reject them both I hope these do not prove the Fathers Papists nor yet Heretiques that the Reformers should balk them on these Surmises However this Reformer urges them where he thinks they serve his turn St. Cyprian tells us that every Praepositus which we call Bishop is to be guided by his own Reason and Conscience and is responsible to God only for his Doctrine St. Cyprian only says in the place which he means though he is not pleas'd to quote it that a Bishop was Praepositus and responsible to no other that is to no other Bishop and particularly not responsible to the Bishop of Rome But St. Cyprian never says that a Bishop is not responsible to the Church or a Council of Bishops which without any usurpation have always taken to themselves the authority of calling even Patriarchs to an account for their Doctrine as that General Council held at Constantinople by the Emperour Constantinus Pogonatus judg'd and condemn'd five Patriarchs at once and Honorius the Pope of Rome for one of them But St. Augustine believed it a direct Heresie to hold there were any Antipodes 'T is true he held there were none and rally'd those that held there was any such thing This was for want of understanding the System of the World which in those Ages few understood before the late Discoveries But St. Augustine is so little guilty of believing it either a Direct or an Indirect Heresie that he scarce makes Religion at all concern'd in it And if he touch it only as a point of Philosophy then his Reputation of Wit is as safe as that of Herodotus and Lucretius and many of the greatest Wits that made as fine Burlesques as he upon this opinion of Antipodes But if so great a Divine as St. Augustine and so great a Scholar as Lactantius were liable to such mistakes for want of skill in the Mathematiques Then why does this Author inveigh against that part of Learning for a Divine in his preaching Chapter p. 27. 28 He can't but wonder that men of any brains or modesty should so grosly abuse this saying of our Saviour He
not at all if he did not apprehend it aright and as it was presently to be celebrated in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost Why this very short Baptismal form is a perfect Creed by itself if it be throughly penetrated and explained in its full latitude for it seems the Name of the Son was by a divine Criticism chosen and interpos'd between the other two Persons whose God-head was confest and acknowledg'd by the Jewish Church rather than that of the Word to denote the Second of the 3 Persons of the most equal and inseparable Trinity as God of God from the Eternal Father and also to connote the Co-eternal Son made man in the fulness of time and therefore born of a Woman the Virgin Mary Why here 's a great part of the faith already And then the Baptismal action it self the Immersion and Emersion out of the Water did in its full and plain importance as no doubt the Eunuch was made to understand it before he was brought to it acquaint him and instruct him abundantly in those other great points of Faith the Dying Burying and Rising again of Christ for our Justification from our sins as also with the whole Practical duty of a Christian man that being the Inward part or Thing signified in the Sacrament of Baptism viz. a Death unto Sin the great comprehensive duty of Mortification and a New birth unto Righteousness where he must needs be told the mystery of the First and Second Covenant that being by nature born in sin Original sin and a Son of wrath he had hereby Forgiveness of sins was adopted and made a Child of Grace and Heir and Co-heir with Christ in the Communion of Saints to live with him after the Resurrection in life everlasting Now this Author may see what use and need there was of the Constantinopolitan Creed that put in One baptism for the Remission of sins Since the true understanding of that Sacrament is so instructive of all other Fundamentals For all this our Apostle St. Paul supposed as the common Notions all Christians should have of their Baptism Know ye not that as many of us as were baptiz'd unto Jesus Christ were baptiz'd into his death Therefore we are buried with him by Baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we should walk in newness of life For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his Death we shall be also in the likeness of his Resurrection Ro. 6. 3 4 5 c To as liâ—tle purpose then is his next Application of that passage in St. John Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God 1 Joh. 4. 2. Why the Mahumetans confess in some sense that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh as a great Prophet sent from God Will a Mahumetan or a Socinian confession of this suffice For the Socinians will admit the Apostles Creed as the sum of Faith the words I mean but not the Catholick sense of it And they will say through Jesus Christ our Lord at the end of their own Prayers in their own distorted sense of it But if confessing Jesus Christ be as St. John means it confessing the God and the Man otherwise it is not indeed confessing the same Jesus Christ whom Christians ought to confess this takes in whole Christianity that is all its few primary Fundamentals are coucht in this All these no question were virtually contain'd in St. Peter's short confession of faith Thou art Christ the Son of the living God for which confession he was blest and upon which faith Christ declared he would build his Church as upon a Rock And all these no doubt St. Paul preach to the Corinthians when yet he determin'd to know nothing amongst them but Jesus Christ and him crucified 1 Cor 2. 2. But whereas in the next place he charges some with introducing new and many Articles of Faith I hope he does not mean all our 39 Articles most of which as a late Right Reverend and learned Praelate Bishop Lany Lord Bishop of Ely styles them in one of his 5 Sermon p 48. are Articles of Peace and consent in certain Controversies not Articles of Faith or Communion Not as if the Subscribers to these Articles engaged themselves to no more than not to contradict them or never to preach against them No the Church is so just to her self as to exact for the security of her own Peace that all whom she trusts with teaching others or whom she recommends to the world with University Degrees shall subscribe to these Articles as their own Opinions and what they believe as convinc'd in their own Judgments that they are true Yet this I take to be one of her greatest Ecclesiastical Policies that she admits the many thousands and hundred thousands without any Subscription to these Articles ad Communionem Laicam that is not to Half-Communion as some would ignorantly construe it because they have Sacrilegiously taken away the Cup from the Laity but to that which the Primitive Church called the Communion of Laicks that is such a Communion as was given without such Conditions as were anciently requir'd of Ecclesiasticks But my best excuse for him is that though he be scuffling in the dark yet he strikes at the Papists especially and would narrow their Faith rather than ours 'T is true they have introduc'd many a new Article of Faith which is bad enough and which is worse many a one that has not a syllable of truth in it He puts the Papists Lutherans and Calvinists all together One cries this is a Demonstration Another saies he cries no such matter c. He may make as bold with any of these as he pleases for we are none of these and I am not bound to make war in their vindication In the 4th page concerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost he does implicitly condemn the Catholick Church both in the East and West for being so presumptuous in her Definitions 'T is modestly done of him But he means we have no comprehensive knowledg of the matter declared His meaning is good and true But his Inference is stark naught if he means therefore we understand not at all that this or that is declared And I am sure I do him no wrong in fixing this meaning upon his words for these are his very words If then our Reason understands not what is declared how can we by Reason make any deduction by way of Argument from that which we understand not Is it even so Then let us put the case with reverence That Almighty God who assuming I suppose the shape of an Angel treated with Abraham face to face as a man does with his friend should for once have spoken in the same manner to Arrius or Socinus and made this one declaration to either of them that the Catholick Church's doctrine of the
Trinity was true and his false Then I demand would not this have been demonstration enough of the Faith which we call Catholick either to Socinus or Arrius And yet all those contradictory Arguments which either of them had once fanci'd Insoluble supposing them not answered in particular would remain against it and stand as they did before any such declaration and yet all this without giving him any comprehensive knowledg But as to the ground upon which he raises all this dust in p. 4. about the Procession of the Holy Ghost I can easily answer for the Church of England let the Church of Rome answer for her self if she can for her trampling upon the poor Greek Church as she lies in the dust and branding her with Haeresie for her doctrine of the Procession as cruelly as her Turkish Masters burn their Half-moons on the bodies of those whom they enslave But our Church is not so uncharitable as to define it a Haeresie for any to maintain that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father by the Son though we maintain also with good reason as a great truth that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son But this makes no breach of Communion between us and the Greeks the difference arising only from the Inadaequation of Languages which notwithstanding we agree in the main of this Article So that I may answer all this needless discourse as Demosthenes once answered the Oratour Aeschines who kept much ado about a word which the other had not used so properly But the Fortunes of Greece said he do not depend upon it But if in Divine matters we once give way to human deductions a cunning Sophister may soon lead a weak disputant into many Errors So I doubt some such one has misled this Author who whatever he be I dare say is not condemned by St. Paul for one of the disputers of this World but rather is one of those whom the same Apostle forbids us to admit to any doubtful disputations But is this Author serious against human deductions from Scripture as he calls them especially since he confesses p. 7 that Haeresies never appear at first in their own natural shape but disguised with specious pretences drawn from some obscure places of Scripture capable of various interpretations And thus having gotten footing by degrees they lay aside their disguises and march barefac'd Now after this observation would one think it possible for one that is but master of coherent thoughts for three minutes within the compass of three pages to tell us gravely Wherefore we have no other safe way to speak of divine matters but in Scripture language ipsissimus verbis with the very same words Admirable What way then is there to oppose those new arising Haeresies that draw their specious pretences from those obscure Scriptures and do not in express words contradict any plain Texts if there be no safe way to speak against them or to speak at all in Divine matters but in express words of Scripture Nay our Author as it happens is aware of this horrid consequence and admits it blaming for his imprudence that most prudent and most pious Constantine as he calls him the first and best of Christian Emperours that he did not pursue his own Intentions to suppress all Disputes and all new Questions of God the Son both Homoousian and and Homoiousian and command all to acquiesce in the very Scripture expressions without any addition and then he is confident the Arrian Haeresie had soon expir'd Why this was the very design of those Arrians themselves that which they drove at in the Court that which they urg'd in all their little Councils and Cabals that silence might be injoyn'd both Parties and the Nicene profession of Faith not impos'd upon them as if it had not been ground enough for the Church safely to declare and define one divine Essence in the Trinity when St. John had set it down There be three that bear witness in heaven the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost and these three are One 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What signifies â—â—â— but Unum that is Una Res or Una Essentia One Essence and what is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 more than this Only the Church had a necessity of using that word directly to meet and encounter the opposite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Hereticks took up to speak their new Faith in a new Term and beside and against the Scripture But this Principle will mislead him farther yet for upon his measures and rules of Faith what will become of our Prime and most necessary Principles of Faith as he very truly calls them p. 4. the Trinity three Persons and one God Why do we find this Author p. 29. solemnly affirming this in the presence of God that he has known some pass for very good Preachers that could not give a good account of the Athanasian Creed I suppose this Author passes for a very good Preacher himself and firmly believes this Creed and professes his Faith by it openly in the Church yet what good account can he give of this Creed if we have no other safe way to speak of divine matters but in Scripture language and may not safely use deductions or inferences from Scripture How many Terms are there in the Athanasian which to seek for in the Apostles Creed or in the whole Bible were to as much purpose as it was for the old affected Ciceronian in Erasmus to labor and toil his brains to turn that Creed into Ciceronian Latin Yet these are the Terms in which the Catholick Church has thought she spoke safely in these Divine matters But it seems she has spoken al this while at the peril of her understanding In the mean while the old dormant Heresies may safely revive again as the Monothelites that affirmed that there was but one Will in Christ and the Nestorians that asserted there were two Persons in Christ c. Now their Ghosts may rise and walk and invade the Church again under this Authors shadow for though by immediate consequences they destroy the Faith and rob us of our Saviour yet these consequences are only Rational Deductions an human or Heathen way of Argumenting as he words it But there 's no safe way to speak of these Divine matters but in Scripture language Ipsissimis verbis with the very same words Then these and twenty other sorts of Heretiks are safe enough unless they lay aside their Disguises and turn such errant Mooncalves as to state their Heretical conclusions point blank contradictory to some expres propositions in the Bible But any thing to avoid the plague of School Divinity as he very feelingly calls it though I dare say he was never infected with it But alas poor St. Augustine had a touch of it and so had Athanasius before him And if we believe this Author Many of the primitive Doctors and Fathers being converted from heathenism and having by long and great
And again in the same page Can you drive Faith like a Nail into his head or heart with a hammer Nay 't is not in a mans own power to make himself Believe any thing farther than his Reason shews him much less Divine things Put this together and there 's a great deal more of it and see whether it does not lead us into the very dregs of Mr. Hobbs's Divinity i. e. Fatality For if it be not in any man's power to discern Fundamental truths of which we are treating in this Chapter when they are laid before his eyes Then I am sure it is none of his fault of which the result is this that whereas our Saviour has pronounc'd that He that believes shall be saved and he that believes not that is he that disbelieves after a sufficient proposal shall be damned This Author will have it that He who does not believe even after such Evidence cannot believe and therefore cannot be saved and so cannot avoid being damned Only this Author is better natur'd indeed than Mr. Hobbs who allows the Civil Magistrate to correct and even to cut off those that are thus necessitated to do evil as men kill Vermin or noxious Creatures Whereas this Author as much in the other extreme dares go no farther than that a Christian Magistrate should punish or banish those that trouble the Church of Christ with Doctrines apparently contrary to the clear Text and such as are destructive to Christianity But who will judge what is clear or what is thus destructive the Party accused or the Civil Magistrate For as for the Ecclesiastick he makes the Church all along in this discourse a party and we shall see anon that he will not allow her even in a General Council for a competent Judg to be rely'd upon by both Parties no not in points of Faith But if he dares go no farther than this I dare not go so far I am very far from thinking as he does that it was any part of S. Pauls meaning in this place I wish they were even cut off that trouble you to wish there were a fitting Power that is a Christian Magistrate to punish or banish them and his Reason is nothing why St. Paul should not mean here a cutting off from the Church by way of Excommunication for that saies he was in his power to do Why then should he wish it It might be in his Power i. e. he wanted not authority but yet he might justly apprehend it a perillous thing formally to cut off and excommunicate so numerous and powerful a Faction for fear of some great apostasie from Christianity from which these men by his favour had not cut off themselves though they ran into Schisms or Haeresies Therefore he might well consider it as a thing rather to be wisht than executed and if this were no wish of St. Paul's making that the Troublers of the Church might be punisht or banisht then I cannot find in my heart to go along with this Author in making it my wish that they should either be banisht or more severely punisht for the present than by forcing them into our Churches whence they have indeed banisht themselves that they may hear our defences of an honest Cause And if it wring their Consciences to come thither to Prayers I cannot chuse but make another wish that they might first be satisfied either in our publick or private Conferences with their Leaders The notable effect of such Conferences he that does not believe let him but read what my Lord Bishop of Winchester then of Worcester printed of what pass't in that short one at Worcester-house or the Savoy where as soon as ever it came to writing in Syllogism which this Author so despises here and every where the adverse Party was driven immediately to that wild Assertion that whatsoever may be the occasion of sin to any must be taken away But this Author without making any such provision for their Souls as has any thing in it of constraint is for leaving them to their fate As for those saies he who keep their erroneous opinions to themselves who neither publish nor practice any thing to the disturbance of the Church or State as if to set up Altar against Altar were no disturbance but only refuse to conform to the Churches establisht Doctrine or Discipline pardon me if I say I cannot find any warrant or so much as hint from the Gospel to excuse any force to compel them No! let all such live like Pagans and go to no Churches at all if they have a mind to it But he knows full well there is a common Objection about the Magistrates using any compulsion taken from S. Augustine Some Hereticks Donatists came to him in his later daies and gave thanks that the Civil Power was made use of to restrain them Confessing that was the means which brought them to consider more calmly their own former extravagant Opinions and so brought them home to the true Church To this he answers First the Donatists are well known to have been a Sect not only erroneous in judgment but very turbulent in behaviour always in seditious practices in that case he tells us he shew'd before how the Civil Magistrate may proceed to Punishment But he says our case is not in repressing seditious practices but enforcing a confession of Faith quite of another nature Though I could easily and justly retort him a sharper answer I say only this the very Act against them calls them Seditious Conventicles and openly to break so many known Laws of the land after so many reinforcements is not this to be turbulent And was it not ever understood so in all Religions even in heathen Rome The most learned P. Aerodius tells us when a sort of Innovators kept their Conventicles in opposition to the way receiv'd among them of worshipping their Gods the Senate made an Act there should be no such Meetings as tending to the disturbance of the State and the publique Peace Et si quis tale Sacrum solemne necessarium duceret and if any one judged such a Sacrifice to be necessary and a Solemnity not to be omitted without a Crime he was to repair to the Praetor and the Praetor was to consult the Senate when there were at least a hundred Senators present so that the Rump of Parliament would not do neither And if the Senate gave him leave it must be with this condition That when he performed his offices of Religion his own way ita id sacrum faceret dum ne plures quam quinque sacrificio interessent there should not be above five persons allow'd to be present at the Meeting The self same number besides the Dissenter's own Family is so far forth endur'd by an Act of this present Parliament that there must be more then five to make it a Conventicle But what are 5 to 500 as commonly they meet And are not such Meetings formidable and whatever is formidable