they give all for gone save only a little hold and hope they have in their prayers and in the precious promises of God to whom nothing is impossible or hard that is worthy of him and who is a present help both inward and outward in time of trouble when his time of help is come The Reasons of Gods permitting his Cause thus to lapse for a time as silent and unconcerned or as not seeing nor regarding the low estate of his Church may in brief be these 1. To let wicked men see what is in fundo cordium in the bottom and lees of their hearts if they be let alone unpunished and unrestrained to the very dregs of their malice what a perfect enmity and hatred they have to God and his Cause which is his Truth Word and VVorship yea every grace and vertue or good work yea all rules of justice good laws and decent order in Church and State that as the thoughts of their hearts are onely evil and that continually so will the actings of their lives if left to themselves 2. For the trial of his grace in those that are upright in heart and on Gods side that their prayers faith zeal patience perseverance and Christian courage together with their love to God and charity even to enemies with their compassion for the Church may be manifested Hence as St. Paul tells us 1 Cor. 11. God permits Heresies and Apostasies and Schisms to rise and prevail in the Church yea and many sinful at least superstitious corruptions in doctrine and manners that by such trials the sounder sort may be approved who in the hour of temptation persevere without shipwrack of faith or good conscience either in their judgement or conversation which is still such as becomes the Gospel of Christ 3. God permits these lapses and oppressions of Religion to punish by penal induration and blindness the obstinate and presumptuous sinners who gratifie their immoralities and lusts by their errors and Apostacies letting them alone to add sin to sin and to fill up the measure of their iniquity Hence they are given up to strong delusions to believe fables and speak lyes in hypocrisie because they with-held the truth in unrighteousness and loved the darkness of sottish superstition and confusion more then the truth and power purity and order of Religion 4. The Cause of God is many times under great depressions that by such fiery trials God may purge away the dross of such as are for the main sincerely good but yet gradually lukewarm too secure too sensual too carnal and worldly too self-conceited and self-seeking they are cast into the furnace of affliction to wean their affections from the fleshly and sensual world to prepare them for death and a better life by a nearer conformity to Christ in his cross that they may not think the greatest reward of Christian piety to be had in this world that they may embrace nudum Christum crucifixum Christ with the cross as well as with the crown 5. Lastly It is magnum praejudicium futuri judicii an evident token of after judgement and future recompences which shall reward the patience and perseverance of the godly with a crown of glory and the wicked after all their prosperous oppressions with the fruit of their own ways by the impressions of divine Justice in the ballancing of eternity 3. The third General Head is How God pleads his own Cause 1. Immediately by his own special appearing for it against his and his Churches enemies 2. Mediately by such instruments as he stirs up to be on his side 1. God hath his pleadings in several Courts 1. In foro conscienciae in that Court of conscience which is within men sometimes God pleads against them there filling them with terrors and stupors with horror and inquietude as in Cain those surda fulmina secreta fulgura those silent thunders and unseen lightnings which make them self-arraigned accused convinced judged and condemned in interiori tribunali at the bar or tribunal of their own brests as were Josephs brethren when they came into trouble and were more afraid then hurt yet guilty consciences are afraid of a leafs shaking and their own shadow There is no peace saith my God that is no true well-grounded and constant to the wicked as such they are as a restless sea not only foaming out their rage and fury against God but filling and fowling themselves with mire and dirt Prima est haec ultio quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur thus the heathens found and owned that the accuser witness judge condemner and tormentor which every wicked man had in his own soul was of all most inexorable and intolerable Poena autem vehemens c. Nocte dieque a suum gestere in pectore testem yea pestem that they seem sometime quiet jolly merry and secure it is but as a puddle of fowl water which stinks the more it stands still or as a warm gleam before a smart showre these are the sharp Indictments in mens own souls not verbal pleas onely but forked arrows and poysoned darts which drink up their very spirits as so many furies or animarum hirudines leeches of their souls 2. Other times God pleads his own Cause in the Court of conscience for us and in our behalf in troubles doubts darkness and desertions when by the evil of times as Eliah Jeremiah Baruch we are dejected or by the evil of temptations buffetted and tossed as St. Paul in a long and dismal storm that we see no light there the promises and Spirit of God pleads for us crying and making intercession with us commanding us to lay hold on his strength God furnisheth us with strong reason bidding us plead with him and urge his own name and glory and goodness as Moses did to disarm an angry God He then puts us in mind of Christs merits who is our righteousness of Gods free gift of pardoning sin for his own sake of the Law fulfilled of the no condemnation to them that are in Christ of his not quenching the smoaking flax or breaking the bruised reed These and the like are Gods gracious pleadings in us and for us when we can say nothing for our selves as a Judge that turns Advocate for a modest and penitent prisoner God stops the mouth of the great accuser the Devil Christ answers for us all doubts and objections all debts and indictments they are paid and cancelled by his rich and gratuitous grace 3. God pleads his Cause many times in foro seculi by the visible instances of his special power and providence which makes all men to see there is a God that judgeth the world who is neither deaf nor dumb neither negligent nor impotent only patient and long-suffering toward his adversaries that they might see they had space of repentance Here the pleadings of God when he
my confidence of inviting you again to review the Cause of God which hath been now mightily pleaded beyond what we could ask or think God himself conquering the monsters of our sins and miseries by the miracles of his mercies My aim is to retain and engage as Counsellors Advocates and Servients to this righteous cause yet without any other Fee then that of a good conscience in this world not only men of my own profession as Divines and Ministers but you â—s o that are either the Sages and Iudges or the Students and Practisers in the Laws because I look upon you as Masters of great Reason and no less careful I hope of true Religion best acquainted with the constitutions of this Church and Kingdom persons generally adorned with ingenuous education and good literature yea and which is more in vulgar eies and esteem with good estates Gentlemen related by birth or alliance or clients or acquaintance to the best Families and greatest affairs of the Nation you either fill the one or attend the other house of Parliament while no Bishop or other Clergie-man never so worthy is admitted to come there unless as a Supplicant or Delinquent your counsels and examples are not onely influentiall in your country retirements but also efficacious in all the Cities and Courts of England It is your custom and no less your wisdom and honor to keep to and plead for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Magna Charta fundamental Laws and ancient and excellent constitutions of this Church and Kingdom not therefore good because ancient but therefore ancient because they were judged and experimentally found by our wise and pious Progenitors to be very good yea best for this Church and State It becomes the freedom of your spirits and estates as Lawyers and Gentlemen however the poor Clergie are oft compelled to popular dependancie yea and some of them like leeches thrive best when they hang most upon the skins of people I say it becomes you to be the furthest of any men living from flattering or abetting any factius novelties or Fanatick Novellers in Church or State which you cannot do without greater sin and shame then other men because you have more knowledge of good and evil of Law and Iustice of Reason and Religion the guilt and burthen of other mens sins which are lead and deluded by your counsel or example must needs lie heavie upon your souls as well as ours of the Clergie when being their guides lights and oracles you or we prove their deceivers and seaucers Certainly if the poyson of some Lawyers teeth had not venomed the wounds which some Preachers tongues first gave to the life and welfare of this Church and Kingdom we had not run to such horrid ulcers such in veterate and incurable gangreens of disloyalty and irreligion of faction and confusion nor endured so various ridiculous and superfluous Tragedies which then began when Pulpits rang Aarons bels backward as to the Cause of God and Courts of judicature meanly conformed to the vilest lusts of men such as have given horror and astonishment to the modest part of mankind and which threatned except the Lord had been merciful to us to have tormented Kings and Parliaments and people of all degrees in the hell fire or Tophet of everlasting fewds factions and confusions under the specious name but most putid fallacy of Gods Cause the good cause and at last the good old cause though nothing was more vile and novel less ancient or more arrantly wicked for perjury perfidy Sacriledge and Regicide void of all fear of God or reverence of man contrary to the Word of God and Laws of that Nation A Cause the zealous Martyrs for which are only fit to be put in the Devilâ— Diptych or Calendar or in God Black book not in the Book of lifâ— Against all which presumptuo 〈…〉 imposures in Church and State You O worthy professors of the La 〈…〉 and of our reformed Religion aâ— well as we Preachers of the Gospelâ— have now all honorable and safâ— encouragement to oppose ouâ— selves under the protection of God and the King that both you a 〈…〉 Iudges and Iustices by the civil sword and we as Bishops and Presbyters by the spiritual sword may be as valiant for the honour and order of the established Religion and Laws of England for the ancient and excellent Government Regal and Episcopall of this Church and Kingdom as others have been impudently pragmatick to broach those novel errors most illegal injuries and high indignities which they brought upon us more by our own cowardize perhaps then their courage Let us dare as much to be Loyal and religious honest and orderly as others have dared to be false and base insolent and irregular injurious and sacrilegious They wanted not many black mouths vile tongues and libellous pens to plead for the Baalims which they set up meer Idols and Teraphims in Church and State which are now blessed be God cast out to the moles and bats O let not us for I would have no difference between your learned Tribe and ours let none of us who are most versed in God or mans Laws be wanting to the true Cause of our God and Saviour of our rightful King of our reformed Religion and of our famous Church in its Doctrine devotion discipline and Government In the cause of which all your and your posterities happiness are included Since then by the goodness of God the monstrous and many-shapen Dagons of our late Philistins and oppressors are now faln to the ground and broken off head hands and feet a meer fanatick stump let us turn Israelites unanimously set our selves as we have done to the welcome reception of his Majesty so to bring home with truth and peace honor and order joy and jubilation the Ark of God the Church of England restoring it to its place and adorning it with all the beauties of holiness worthy of the wisdom and piety munificence courage and honor of our Ancestors who were famous both for their loyaltie and Religion the fruits of whose care and constancie we enjoyed heretofore as men and Christians in a wel-reformed united and setled National Church till some men lost their wits and hearts their credits and consciences their sense of duty to their God and their King yea and their first love of our reformed Church and Religion for which our famous Forefathers had so notably pleaded not only in the Pulpits at the Bars but in prison also and at stakes when they were able to say with truth and comfort as the royall Martyr of admired memory did now dying That they thanked God they had a good Cause and a gracious God Certainly t is better thus to suffer for God cause inpietie justice patience and charitie then to prosper in the Devils with sacrilegious usurpation and injury this as a fire of thorns may blaze for a time but it will soon be extinguished the other carries the lawrells and
an high hand and out-stretched arm confuting Pharaohs Pride and obstinacy with the Egyptian Gods in the red Sea when no other miracles in lesser drops would soften their hard hearts he soaked them in such great waters as quite drowned them After this how oft was the little flock of Gods Church as a speckled Bird in the Wilderness surrounded with Enemies as a Lilly among Thorns there was Gebal and Ammon and Ameleck the Philistines and they of Tyre the Assyrian Arabian Egyptian all were against them from not onely reason of State but of Religion where different principles make the most deadly antipathies and desperate fâ—wds Thus the wild Bore sometimes with power other while the subtil Foxes of Mungril Jews and half Idolaters with fly insinuations sought to pull down and waste the peace honour plenty safety and Religion of the Jews Thus the Heathens raged and their Princes set themselves against the Lord and his cause fulfilled that first prophecy of an irreconcileable enmity between the Serpent and the seed of the Woman All the gods and Demons all the Oracles and Priests all the Poets and Prophets all the Orators Historians all the great Princes and valiant Soldiers and subtil Polititians all the Wise men and Philosophers set themselves to despise to reproach to oppress and extirpate the name and Nation and Religion of the Jews which was that of the true God from under Heaven as a most pestilent people and of a most detestable superstition Afterwards when the blossoms of Judaick ceremonies fell off and in the fulness of time the ripe fruit of Messias came into the world in spirit and in truth that all Nations might worship the true God aright in every place without confinement I need not tell you who are not ignorant of Scriptural and Ecclesiastical Histories how from Herods malice and subtilty seeking to destroy Christ in his cradle and satiating his defeated malice like a worrying Wolf or raging Bear with the massacring of so many innocent children who were ever esteemed by the antient Church as Infant-Martyrs suffering in Christs stead and upon the first occasion of his cause pleaded in the world by the baptism of their own blood until Constantine the Great 's days of refreshing and rest for a season the true Church and cause of God was never out of the furnace of tribulation martyrdoms fears afflictions and dayly deaths true the bellows did not always blow up the fire and fury of men to the same flames but there wanted not those as Decius and others who envied Christians their numerous cheerful and speedy Martyrdoms of which they were so ambitious § Nothing was more wonted in the mouths of the people than what they clamored against Polycarp a primitive Bishop of Smyrna in S. Johns days Tolle Atheos away with these Atheists and Christiani ad Leones Christians were thought such beasts that they were onely fit to fight with and to feed Beast or to be baited in Beasts skins Yea nomen crimen as Tertullian observes men were so mad against them and gnashed on them as the Jews against S. Stephen that they would not examine their cause or crime thinking it accusation enough that they owned themselves Christians § Dioclesian makes such havock as Decumanus fluctus after others that he not onely cut up the harvest but raked the gleaning of Christians in all the Roman Empire even so far as here in England where S. Albanus and others were Martyred that he gloried and triumphed and set up Trophies for the extirpation of the Christian superstition At this dead lift was the Church of Christ and cause of God when the Bishops of the Churches were banished or Butchered the Presbyters starved destroyed and scattered The Oratories and Temples or Churches all demolished or put to prophane uses the Christian people condemned to the Mettals Islands Prisons Limekills Racks Gibbets and Fires Thus did the cause of God as to the Christian Church stand or rather fal for the first three hundred years under Heatheninsh Persecutors and the oppositions of Philosophy or science falsely so called which yet afterward came to naught as all power and polity will at last do which set themselves to oppose the cause the truth the Church and servants of the living God Thirdly After the Church had some rest in Constantines time by the suppression of Heathenish fury and Idolatrous folly yet was the cause of God not without its following conflicts by reason of Hypocrites Hereticks Schismaticks false Apostles Hucksters of religion deceitful workers Wolves in sheeps cloathing who delighted to divide and destroy to shake foundations and shipwrack consciences to lead Disciples after them by factions partialities and respect of persons either darkening the verity or dividing the unity or defacing the uniformity or destroying the authority or confounding that order and subordination which Christ and his Apostles left in the Church of Christ men full of lusts and pride daily spawned innovations in the doctrine or in the faith or in the customs and in the forms of Religion § Such were all those pristine Hereticks and Schismaticks whose names and deeds deserve to be buried with their damnable doctrines and uncharitable factions in eternal forgetfulness they are too many and too odious to repeat I would to God they were not digged up out of their graves in our days by some carrionly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who searching the graves and raking the kennels of old errors seek to fill the English world with such odious noysom and unsavory spectacles both of opinions and practices § Who that is learned can be ignorant of the prevalent numbers and powers of the Novatians Arrians and Donatists what petulancy and cruelty they used against the Orthodox Cause challenging the Cause and Church of God wholly and only to themselves what despite they had against St. Cyprian Athanasius St. Cyril St. Hilary St. Augustine Optatus and others that opposed routed and confounded their contumacious impudence Thus was the Cause of Christ one whole age or century like Noahs Ark floating in a deluge of Arrian perfidy and persecution to its own grief and astonishment till God took the matter into his own hand and pleading the Cause of Jesus Christ and his eternal Godhead against both people and Bishops and Emperors that were infected with that pestilence for the inundation of the Goths and Vandals the Huns and Heruls the Gauls and Daci seemed no other but the fountains of the great deep broke up to wash away with humane blood the blasphemies with which the Christian world was then polluted against the glory and honor of the Son and Spirit of the blessed God when times were such that men would not endure sound doctrine but heaped up teachers and clucked together Councils and conventicles according to their own lusts and interests without any regard to the primitive Faith and practice of the Church of Christ
which was so zealously tender for the Cause of Christ that they loved not their lives unto death but rather chose mille mortes a thousand deaths then once to crucifie again or deny the Lord that bought them Fourthly The Cause of God may need his special pleading by reason of the great corruption of manners which like weeds grow in the garden of God or as tares in the field of the Church which was first sown with good seed Thus as Eusebius Salvian Suspitius-Severus and othes observe Christian Religion suffered more by the evil lives of Christians then by the malice of persecutors or Hereticks men that had sound heads as to doctrine and Faith yet had foul hearts their brains good but their breath lungs and liver were naught This contagion sometimes seised Pastors and Flocks by idleness pride luxury vain pomps and superfluous ceremonies by secular policies uncharitable actions and scandalous practices so far as made the Cause of God and the name Christ to be blasphemed and abhorred by many while they could not reconcile the holiness of Christians faith and doctrine with the solecisms of their sordid actions and shameful lives Hence came over the Western Churches that thick Egyptian darkness for many hundred of years in which religion was made up for the most part with Images and Pictures with beads and latin prayers with repeated Pater nosters and Ave Maries which people understood not nor the Priests many times with Purgatory Masses and Indulgencies with infinite superstitious ceremonies and empty formalities besides idle fables and vain janglings which like heaps of chaff had buried the good wheat of Gods floor and the glory of divine institutions to make way for Monastick superstitions Idolatrous adorations and Papal usurpations which were built on the flatteries of some and the fedities of others who easily dispenced with the honor of marriage when they had so cheap pardons for those extravagancies and impurities in which many lived under the vail of celibacy but far enough from pure unspotted and unviolated virginity § To this Augean stable was the Church of Christ and Cause of God brought by the depravedness of Christian manners by the rust and moss of superstition before the Reformation began to dawn in this western World An hundred grievances were at once complained of many confessed some for very shame reformed by even those of the Roman party who with infinite blood-shed in former ages fought under the Notion of holy Wars not only against Turks Jews and Sarazens but against good at least tolerable Christians who might have their errors and fayling in some things but it is sure they kept nearer to the primitive piety purity and patience both in faith administrations and manners than did their proud and merciless destroyers who eat up those poor Christians as bread and turned their cruel Croisadoes to crucifie their brethren breaking their fast sometimes with 20000. of the poor Albigenses Lugdunenses Waldenses Berengarians VVicklesites Hussites Bohemians and others proportionably were their dinners and suppers when the Popes flatterers and vassals had a mind to fall upon them 5. Yea and at this day even among the reformed Churches the purity simplicity honesty charity modesty and equanimity of Reformers is so abated and wasted by the pride animosity bitterness sacriledge rapines cruelties ambitions and covetousness among Protestants besides their endless factions under pretentions of reformation immoderations novellizings and confusions That thiâ— Cause of God as to the true reforming of religion and just protesting against Romish errors and enormities is brought very low as in other places and Churches so in England which was the greatest beauty honour stability refuge and safety of the reformed Religion and that cause of Christ which hath been so learned and valiantly pleaded by the Clergy and Layty the Princes and Parliaments the Martyrs and professors reverend Bishops and learned Presbyters against the Roman Usurpation Superstition Sacriledg and Idolatry which are without doubt so far Antichristian as they are clearly against the Doctrine example and institution of Christ besides the judgment and practice of his primitive Churches § Even this cause I say is now â—ick and ashamed of it self so decayed disparaged and divided that it is next degree to being destroyed and despised by all unless God arise by some extraordinary way of his providence to plead and assert this his own cause of a just and due reformation against the factious policies and Fanatick fallacies of unreasonable men whose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immoderations and transports have marred all by their King killing rapine and sacriledg unless God arise to judge the earth § Nor is this the first time that God hath helped this Church and the Reformed Religion at a dead lift for so it was in Queen Maries days when the reformed party made conscience not to rebel against their persecuting Soveraigne Princess when her persecution was according to her perswasion and conscience yea they pleaded and asserted her civil rights committing the cause of their Religion and Reformation to God with their loyal souls and consciences in well doing and patience There did God arise in his due time and do his own works in his own way to the great honour of the reformed Religion which had first the crowns of so many Martyrdoms on its head without the least spot of civil Tumults Wars Seditions or Rebellions on the hearts or hands of the reforming Clergy and reformed people § By which preposterous methods of latter years mightily cryed up and carryed on by some men in order to reformation of Religion not onely Religion is become retrograde many degrees if we look to the Dial of Gods word and the primitive Christians practice as it pretends to be reformed but even as it is Christian too that is the Doctrine and imitation of a crucified not a crucifying Saviour The lines which some men have drawn as the measures of their Doctrine and deeds are very excentrick and wide as to the wonted centre of Gods glory the circumference of Scripture truth and that strait rule of charity by which those two were wont to meet in the conscience and conversation of good Christians § Nor will either Christian Religion or just Reformation appear in their true beauty and honor while these are so far at distance and separated from each other that either verity and charity patience and subjection truth and peace are wanting in the ways of Christians In the close of this second general Question it is fit to answer that other branch of it also Why God so wise so potent so good s gracious so compassionate and so vigilant for his own Cause that is his Glory and great Name which is so much bound up in his Churches welfare yet suffers it many times so far to run to lapse seeming ruine and despair in the eyes of the world in the triumphs of his enemies and in the despondencies of his servants that