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doctrine_n	church_n	england_n	reformation_n	4,105	5	9.0185	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44308	The non-conformists champion, his challenge accepted, or, An answer to Mr. Baxter's Petition for peace written long since, but now first published upon his repeated provocations and importune clamors, that it was never answered : whereunto is prefixed an epistle to Mr. Baxter with some remarks upon his Holy Common-wealth, upon his Sermon to the House of Commons, upon his Non-conformists plea for peace and upon his Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet. / by Ri. Hooke.	R. H. (Richard Hooke); Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Petition for peace.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Holy commonwealth.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Sermon of repentance.	1682 (1682)	Wing H2608; ESTC R28683	62,409	170

formerly I am to learn they know his late Majesty made to them moderate Proposals but was refused and they confess the Lord Primate of Ireland made moderate Proposals but by them never accepted As to their bold Appeal to all Protestant Churches presuming they will give their Judgments for them and against the Church of England's established Constitutions which they have the huge Confidence to prophesie even of the Judgment of all succeeding ages They might without a Revelation by their Jugdment past and present have foreseen their Judgment for the future The past age hath cryed Grace Grace to our happy orderly and moderate Reformation in Doctrine Government and Worship the Protestant Churches have given us the Right-hand of Fellowship have maintained sweet Communion with us have in Marian Persecution received our Exiles their most eminent Lights have sent us high Congratulations their ablest Ministers have divers of them come over and with Joy beheld our Order and some have lived and died amongst us What Judgment did Mr. Beza give Let himself speak Quod si nunc If now the Reformed Churches of England being underprop'd with the Authority of Bishops and Archbishops do continue as this hath hapened to that Church in our memory That she hath had Men of that Calling not onely most notable Martyrs but also excellent Pastors and Doctors let them truly enjoy that singular Blessing of God which I wish may be perpetual unto her What Judgment did Peter Martyr pass in the Case of Bishop Hooper about the Ceremonies Did he not answer his Arguments vindicate the lawfulness of them exhort him to submit unto them The Judgment of Doctor Moulin you have heard and much more might be told you of the high Honour he had for the Church of England And to come nearer what Judgment the Protestant Churches passed upon your Covenant your Reforming the Church by the Sword and in the Bloud of the Nursing Father and the Prime Pastour of it with many Thousands more you have surely heard Were they not ashamed confounded and astonished at our Schisms and Seditions and Violations of all Authority Sacred and Civil And Have not your Actions in the late lamentable times cast a Blemish upon the Honour of our Nation never to be washed off An English-man daring scarce to look another man in the face in a foreign Countrey being under the Objection and Reproach of Rebellion Murthering their King Changing the best tempered Monarchy in the World into a puny Common-wealth and that swallowed up soon into a Barbarous Protectourship and Abasing the most primitive and venerable Episcopacy into a novel and contemptible Parity and Linsy-woolsey Presbytery made up of Preachers and Lay-elders and that too straight undermined and baffled by a Mushrome Independency Pudet haec Opprobria vobis dici potuisse non potuisse refelli This is the past Judgment of the Protestant Churches abroad concerning our Church established and you who ruined it till God in mercy restored it For the Churches of succeeding ages I think they will hardly believe the History of ours That such men as you professing highest Godliness should in a pretended zeal for it preach up Sedition and Schism and embroil the Church and Nation wherein you were born and baptized in Bloud and Confusion and which seems more incredible Appeal to all Protestant Churches in your own Justification nay Supplicate the King whose Royal Father was martyred and himself long banished for standing up in defence of the Church which you opposed and by Force destroyed to screen you from the Churche's Power to grant you the chief Benefices in the Church and give you Liberty to be of another Church to enjoy a Worship and Government of your own Mode and Model But my Brethren how come you to make this lowd Challenge Why enquire you or rather Why presume you what Judgment the Protestant Churches will make of our Churches proceedings Sure your mighty Zeal and ardent Affection to your Cause hath clouded your own Judgment and quite bereaved you of your Memory You mention often and with seeming regard his Majestie 's gracious Declaration touching Ecclesiastical Affairs he therein tells you the present Judgment of the Reformed Churches abroad and had you Faith to believe his Royal word you might have spared this Argument and Out-cry which you may blush for and wish you had suppressed Hear his Majesty speaking their Judgment We do think Our self the more competent to propose and with God's Assistence to determine many things now in Difference from the time We have spent and the experience We have had in most of the Reformed Churches abroad in France the Low-countries and Germany where We have had frequent Conference with the most Learned men who have unanimously lamented the great Reproach the Protestant Religion undergoes from the Distempers and too notorious Schisms in Matters of Religion in England And as the most Learned among them have alwaies with great Submission and Reverence acknowledged and magnified the established Government of the Church of England and the great Countenance and Shelter the Protestant Religion received from it before these unhappy times So many of the have with great Ingenuity and Sorrow confessed that they were too easily mis-led by mis-information and prejudice into some disesteem of it as if it had too much complyed with the Church of Rome whereas they now acknowledg it to be the best Fence God hath yet raised against Popery in the World and We are persuaded they do with great Zeal wish it restored to its old Dignity and Veneration You see what Judgment the Protestant Churches have passed upon the Church of England and her former Proceedings and thereby may take an Estimate what Judgment they will pass on her present Proceedings and how the Churche's Cause and yours will be represented to them They will acknowledg and magnifie with great Submission and Reverence the established Government of the Church of England if you dare believe his Majesty and consequently will censure you as Schismatical and Disobedient to refuse to submit unto it But I must not misrepresent you your Submission you profess If after our Submission to his Majesty's Declaration and after our own Proposals of the primitive Episcopacy and of such a Liturgy as we here tender we may not be permitted to exercise our Ministry the Pens of those moderate Bishops will bear witness against you that were once employed as the Chief Defenders of that Cause we mean such as Reverend Bishop Hall and Usher who have published to the World that much less than this might have served to our fraternal Vnity and Peace Ans You before appealed to the Protestant Churches abroad now unto two Bishops of our own and with like Success 1. You say you have submitted to his Majestie 's Declaration you should have instanced wherein His Majesty there declares That having seen all the Liturgies that are extant and used in this part of the World he esteems that of

that you will quarrel at it you are known to be of a polemical humour and temper of a hot Brain and hasty Pen the Hector of the Old Cause the Non-conformists Pope I wrong you not in the Appellation You have more than proved it in Acting the Pope Yours are the two Swords and you have with mighty valour drawn them both The temporal Sword you have drawn against the King in the late Rebellion and you glory that you drew in with you many thousands And in cold bloud near twenty years after you tell the World you cannot see you were mistaken nor dare you repent of it nor forbear the same if it were to doe again in the same state of things And Sir may I be so bold as to ask you Are you not this day of the same mind and wish the state of things were now the same that you might be Doing again Blessed be God who hath by Miracle taken from you the temporal Sword and restored it to the King whose it is But the spiritual Sword cannot be wrested from you and this you are so daring as to draw still against the Church upon which you are ever and anon making new Assaults and here too you muster your holy Army Two thousand Ministers and by the number of those Centurions we may guess how many are your Legions Shall demonstrate to you further how you take upon you the Pope in both his claims of highest Power One over Kings in your Holy Common-wealth bounding them all by your Laws for Government or rather binding them in your long and heavy Chain of 380 Links The other claim of highest Power over the whole Church you do in effect make of being its universal infallible Head and Guide where you say you have written a Treatise of The onely true terms of Concord of all Christian Churches and of the false Terms which they will never unite in but are the causes of Schism Here speaks an Oracle The onely terms of true and false Concord and Schism are in your Breast and given out from your infallible Chair a rare and happy Catholicon O that it may work the Cure Sorry I am it comes forth a little too late had you published it in the vacancy of the See of Canterbury you had infallibly been made Papa alterius orbis When you penned the Petition for Peace you proclaim to the World you onely had the Spirit of fortitude telling us how stoutly you stood up against the Bishops for the Old Cause when deserted by all your brethren in the Conflict But I hope you had not then attained the Spirit of infallibility if so I am upon a vain attempt and your Petition as you suggest is unanswerable and I have some ground to hope it since the pious old Gentleman who wrote Doctour Sanderson's Life assures us that the present Bishop of Chester told him very lately that one of the Dissenters whom he forbears to name but you intimately know him appeared to Dr. Sanderson to be so bold so troublesome and so illogical in the Dispute at the Savoy as forced the patient Bishop then Moderatour to say with an unusual earnestness that he never met with a man of more pertinacious Confidence and less Abilities in all his conversation Sir you talk much of Peace and Love Concord and Vnion and the Cure of Divisions and they are the Title of divers of your Books yet abundance of judicious and peaceable person do think and say that you have more opposed the Peace of the church and State too and contributed to its Divisions than any or all the party of your profession Nay that you are not at peace with your own party and where they express their dissent from you though never so modestly you treat them rudely and insolently as anon I may give you an Instance At present I shall take the liberty to consider and offer you some of my Sentiments upon two of those Discourses I now named your Holy Commonwealth and your Plea for Peace For the first truly I was seised with wonder and grief at the sight of your Commonwealth that seventeen years after our late Troubles began and they yet continuing you having in prospect our lamentable Confusions and leisure to reflect upon the Ruins of the Church and State and seeing the Kingdom overturned by Rebellion Sedition Murther and Plunder the Violation of all the Laws and of all mens Rights and the seising sequestring and selling the Estates of the King the Bishops and the most eminently loyal Subjects and after the horrid Assassination of the King himself turned into several monstrous forms as the several powers and ambitious of several parties prevailed and seeing also the Church rent all into sects and factions its holy Doctrine polluted with monstrous heresies its apostolical Government pluckt up root and branch its most religious Form of publick worship abolished and every gifted Brother left to his private mode you could have so little sense and pitty that I say not piety as not in the least to deplore the Calamities of our Zion that God in the indignation of his anger had despised the King and the Priest cast off his Altar abhorred his Sanctuary his Enemies roaring in the midst of his Congregations and setting up their Banners for tokens That in all your tedious Book you not once lament our Josiah the Lord 's Anointed taken in the snares of wicked men Though in the beginning of it you resent the ill useage of the usurping Protector to whom you give flattering Titles Nay that you could cry up those who had contrived and acted all these Mischiefs and Miseries to be the Godly party and theirs the Good cause and as if there had been never such a thing as a Kingdom in England you should form as Utopian Common-wealth by Centuries of wild and seditious Maxims I may hereafter make some Animadversions upon your Common-wealth I will now onely recall to your second thoughts a few of your Theses which speak it not very holy In your Preface Romans the 13th being objected unto you you avow resistence of the King with an offer of your Head to Justice as a Rebel if any can prove that the King was the Highest Power in the time of Division and had Power to make that War That is If any can prove the King was in Authortiy above those who even when opposing him acknowledged themselves his Subjects and turning Rebels he had Right by War to defend himself and reduce them to obedience Sir you may bless God that the King's Son and Successour was like him a most mercifull Prince else your Offer might by his Justice have been taken All Writers think Saint Paul means by the Higher Powers the Emperour or which is all one the King and name him and your self name him elsewhere If a heathen persecuting Nero must be obeyed and Saint Peter calls the King Supreme and yet you miserably shuffie off both with

accuse our Lord himself is not his Prayer made up of meer Generals Sure so many grave Divines should not make their Objections by Number but by Weight and due and sober Consideration How little they considered this will farther appear in that 3. They confess their Objection to be untrue when they tell us that the Litany is for Grace Peace Rain Fair-weather c. and indeed I may challenge our Brethren to shew any Particulars needfull for the Church to petition at the hands of God in her publick Worship omitted in the Litany 8. They desire That all obsolete words may be altered Ans That may be soon done for few or no obsolete words are in the Liturgy but doth not God do not we understand old and plain words must we coin new ones to please him and our selves must we be rhetorical quaint and curious complement God in our Prayers Let us take unto us those words the Church hath from God's Word put into our mouths and join with them our Hearts and let us not doubt but God will hear us graciously 9. It troubles them That the publick Worship of God may not be administred by any that dares not wear a Surplice Ans Who are those tender ones that dare not What a frightfull Bugg is a Surplice that you dare not wear it in the Administration of the publick Worship Nay you dare refuse to administer in God's publick Worship rather than wear a Surplice Your Master Beza was not so timerous or dainty Mihi videtur Ecclesias minime deserendas propter Pileum aut Vestes aut aliquid aliud hujusmodi vere medium aut indifferens To me it seemeth that we ought not to forsake the Churches for Caps or Vestments or any other such like thing of a nature mixt and indifferent Mr. Moulin was not so tender could as he professed willingly wear a Fool's-coat and Cap so he might freely and publickly administer God's true and holy Worship Are not different and decent Vestures by God himself appointed to his Priests in their publick and holy Ministrations and why may not the Governors of the Church command under the Gospel the like decent and distinct Habits to Ministers which God commanded under the Law so as no Religion or Sanctity be placed in them as we declare there is not but they are onely enjoined for Comeliness and Gravity suitable to such Solemnities Solemn Actions of Royalty and Justice have their suitable ornaments enjoyned and they are unto them a Beauty and beget from the People a Veneration Are they onely a Stain in Religion These general Objections against the Common Prayers in their Grand Debate I thought good to consider together with their Reasons in their Petition of Peace that they may see we do not slight nor fear any of their Forces but dare encounter their whole strength Their particular Objections against the parts of the Liturgy are long since by Mr. Hooker and others so convincingly answered those which are old and the new are so weak and inconsiderable that they deserve not a sober Animadversion and therefore I shall not give the Reader the trouble of a Confutation To expose a few of them is enough and he may judge of the rest by their Assize 1. They desire the word Minister which is used in the Absolution and divers other places may be used throughout and not Priest and Curate 2. The Confession they tell us is very defective not clearly expressing Original Sin nor sufficiently enumerating Actual Sins with their Aggravations but consisting onely of Generals whereas Confession being the Exercise of Repentance ought to be more particular This is already answered 3. The often repeating the Lord's Prayer and the Gloria Patri comes within compass of those vain Repetitions our Saviour condemns a vain Objection and may be as well made against David Psal 136. and against many other his Psalms as also against Moses Solomon and our Saviour himself 4. They would have that Petition in the Litany Good Lord deliver us from sudden Death to be altered thus Good Lord deliver us from dying suddenly and unpreparedly 5. They would have that Prayer That it may please God to preserve all that travel by Land or by Water to be changed and expressed indefinitely all that travel 6. They express their dislike of Kneeling at the Reading of the Commandments did they never break any of them and is there not a Prayer subsequent to each of them Lord have mercy upon us 7. They are offended at that Expression in the first Prayer before Baptism That God by his Son our Saviour's being baptized in the River Jordan hath sanctified that and all other waters to the mystical washing away of Sin To satisfie this nice Scruple 't is changed and the word all left out I shall no further pursue these trifles professing my great grief and astonishment that persons pretending to so great Gravity can possibly be guilty of such Lightnesses 'T was a piece of pride and weakness in Calvin to charge our Liturgy as containing in it Tolerabiles Ineptias These and such like light and trivial exceptions of our Brethren will to any sober Judgment appear Ineptiae Intolerabiles Leaving their Grand Debate which I think in the Prophets and Apostles sense may without uncharitableness be affixed not onely as the Title but is much the Subject and Design too of their Paper I goe on to the Consideration of their Petition for Peace Sweet is the name of Peace and now if ever Sweet is the Peace of the State after so long Civil War and the Peace of the Church after so long Division and Persecution Peace is a Blessing of Blessings not a single but a complicated Blessing 'T is Peace that puts us into and keeps us in Possession of all we enjoy Saint Paul tels us of a Bond of Peace Peace is the Bond of our Liberties Properties Estates and Lives and of that which should be to us dearer than all these our Religion 'T is this Religious Peace for which they petition O that they had hearkned to the Petitions of others before But then they prepared for War and sounded the Trumpet to Battel Then to talk of Peace and Accommodation was the mark of a Malignant Then Curse ye Meroz was the Text And O take heed of Treaties Well 't is happy if at last Thoughts of Peace may be entertained But my Brethren why petition you for Peace is it not Peace if not where is the blame who are those which hinder Peace Then is it Peace in the Church when the Magistrate is at Peace with the Church and a Defender of the Faith when Ministers are at Peace with themselves and join regularly in their holy Ministrations when Ministers and their People are at Peace the one teaching and the other embracing sound Doctrine when Magistrates Ministers and People do publickly openly freely uniformly profess and hold the true Christian Religion do join and unite in the publick Worship

taught you You cast off the Reins of Church Government you set your selves at Liberty Did this Cure your Divisions and create among you Peace and Unity No after you had divided from the Church and cast off its Rule and Orders you subdivided among your selves and broke all into pieces and parties never did any Age see such lamentable Divisions in this Church and Nation But you accuse the Bishops as if they will not give you leave to serve God as his Apostles did God forgive you this as false as foul an Accusation Do not the Bishops maintain and the Church stedfastly continue in the Apostles Doctrine Do they not against the Romanists who would obtrude upon us their Traditions in conjunction with the Scriptures assert the Scripture alone to be a most perfect Rule of Faith and Manners Do they not serve God as the Apostles have taught and so many you in Communion with our Church Truly if your meaning be that they give you not leave to serve God as Apostles and no less or lower will serve you than to be as they to give Laws to all the Churches and to be under the Laws of none you must prove your selves to be such before you crave that leave But though you are not Apostles yet you are Prophets you foresee and foretell the Sufferings of your Innocent Party Strange What a Noise they make in almost every Paragraph lamenting and repeating their Sufferings We are against our wills enforced as often to let them know and I wish they would rightly resent and lay it to heart that the Bishops and Conformable Clergy have been really Sufferers for many years and in the Loss of all they had and they the Causes of their Sufferings and for all those years enjoyed all Ease and Plenty and at this time of their present loud Complaint they have yet suffered nothing and are certain they shall not doe if they will return to their Duty all their former Miscarriages being by his Majestie 's Mercy buried in oblivion and if they will doe so they may be received into Favour and are as capable of all Preferments as any the truest Sons of the Church I am unwilling to remark the other part of their Prophecie ripping up our Divisions by their Party raised and continued ever since the Reformation they in effect threaten they will be their Sons and Heirs and that we must not expect Peace but look for Misery and Division unless they may have their Demands to be as free and high as the Apostles and here as their manner is they heap up a multitude of Scriptures you may judge how pertinently by the first they alledge 1 Philippians 14. There St. Paul saith Many of the Brethren in the Lord waxing confident by his bonds were much more bold to speak the Word without fear This Text they cite to prove that the Bonds and Burthens and Displeasure which is upon them from their Superiours hinders them from serving the Lord without fear Saint Paul's bonds made these Brethren confident and set them above fear But our Brethren upon their meer fancy of Bonds and Burthens are faint-hearted and with fear even distracted The other Scriptures make as little for them or against the Bishops and so I shall pass them over The 18 th and 19 th Reasons are of the same Bran yet again and again they cry up their Abilities and their Godliness and cry out of their Sufferings and Persecutions and the Ungodliness of all who are not of their way I cannot conceive the Reason why this one Topick of their Sufferings makes up more than Ten of their Twenty Reasons and they bring it in over and over so very often but that they think no body knows or will believe they have suffered any thing and therefore they say it so often or else by the loud and repeated Cry of their own they would drown the loud Cry of the Bishops Sufferings by them and their Party which yet the Bishops themselves pass by in Silence but the World cannot but take notice of with much concernment Let us yet hear them again In the 18 th they call themselves the Holy Seed and so many able Ministers laid aside and that many of them suffer and that the Ungodly add Affliction to their Affliction And in the 19 th So many truly fearing God being cast or trodden down are tempted to think ill of that which themselves and the Church thus suffer by and when so many of the worst befriend this way because it gratifieth them it tendeth to make your Cause judged of according to the qualities of its friends or adversaries Of their Sufferings enough and too much of their Godliness and the Ungodliness of all who are not of their Party We have heard often too 't is their strain and way with the Pharisee to stand on their Tiptoes and say God I thank thee I am not thus and thus I am not such as this Publican The worst they say befriend that way 1. That 's no proof of the evil of that way rather of the goodness which shines forth so apparently that it convinces and even enforces the worst of men to approve it Video meliora probóque 2. Who are those worst The King the Parliament and all the obedient Sons of the Church of all Estates and Qualities This is usually their great proof that themselves truly fear God their dislike of established Order this their evidence that others have not the fear of God their Obedience to those whom God hath set over them in Church and State By the one they commend themselves by the other they condemn all but themselves and that this is no untrue Accusation they have made appear in that they made no difference between the best and the worst but cast out all of the Episcopal way Nay as one of them pleading before them the Sobriety and Unblameableness of his Life and Conversation they told him to his effect He should fare the worse for that they liked not so well a sober as a scandalous Malignant who gave their Proceedings against him some colour of Justice 2. They tell us they are tempted to think ill of that they suffer by Ans 'T is easie to guess whence that Temptation is a Criminal is tempted to think ill of the Law because he suffers by it Ungodly men are tempted to think ill of God and murmur at him because they suffer by his just Judgments for their Wickedness You are taught otherwise Matt. 5.44 20. We repeat what formerly we have said That the Holy Ghost hath already so plainly decided the point in controversie in the Instance of Meats and Days Rom. 14.15 that it seemeth strange to us that yet it should remain a Controversie A weak Brother that maketh an unnecessary difference of Meats and Days is not to be cast out but so to be received and not to be troubled with such doubtfull Disputations despising and judging the Servants of the Lord