fatter than Presbytery or had a better fleece and therefore was fitter for a sacrifice O no but Presbytery they say is a plant of Jesus Christs which Episcopacy is not and therefore to be weeded out Truly it may as well be said by the partiall Presbyterian that the seventy Disciples were of Jesus Christs appointment but the twelve Apostles were not that God created the lesser Stars and Planets but not the Sun and Moon that God made people but not Princes that he formed the feet and hands but not the eyes and heads of naturall bodies This is the great question which is not to be thus begged or supposed but should have been solidly proved before judgement had been so severely passed against Episcopacy we should have seen the time and place when and where Episcopacy usurped when and where Presbyters ruled in this or any Church by way of parity without any Bishop President or Apostle above them The constant streame of this Jordan which hath flowed from the first springs and fountaines of Christianity ever flowing and over-flowing in the Catholick Church this should have been miraculously divided before that Presbytery should have boasted of its passing over dry-shod and of its drowning all Bishops and all Episcopacy as the Egyptians in a Red Sea between the returnings and closings of the waters of Independency and Presbytery Whenas it is well known even by their own confessions that have any graines of Learning in them that Presbyters were ever as Cyphers in all Churches insignificant as to Church-Government without Bishops being set over them and before them as Capitall Figures Bishops were ever esteemed as the chief Captaines of the Lords host in this Militant State principall Stewards of Christs House-hold head-shepherds of his flock the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 first-ordained and first-ordainers of the Evangelicall Ministry the first consecrators and distributers of all sacred mysteries the prime Conservators and Actors of all Ecclesiasticall Authority These were in all Ages next the Scriptures the Churches chiefest-Oracles and Interpreters these were the grand Divines in all Times and Places not superficially armed with light armour onely for the preaching or Homilisticall flourishes of a Pulpit but with the weighty and complete armour of veterane and valiant souldiers who were to stand in the fore-front of the Lords Battailes to receive the first charge and impressions from the Churches enemies of their force cunning and malice these were the fairest transcripts or Copies of Apostolicall Mission and Evangelicall Commission these were the great Magazins of sound and vast Learning these the Centers Refuges Sanctuaries Succour of both Ministers and people in all Churches these gave as holy Orders to Presbyters and Deacons so decent Ceremonies to all the Church also fatherly Counsels and friendly incouragements to all worthy Ministers when young and novices weak and defective when fearfull and dejected these gave Vigour and Authority to that Discipline which was necessary to punish and repress scandalous livers these these worthy Bishops such as we had good store in England even now at the last cast were the Chariots and horse-men of Israel these alwaies by the help of God recovered the Ark of God after the Philistines had taken it these recollected the flocks of Christ after they had been worried and scattered by grievous wolves and foxes being persons of more publick influence of more eminent example of larger hearts and greater spirits commonly than most or any private Ministers most mens spirits shrinking with the tenuity of their place and condition and enlarging with the ampleness of them God usually giving of that spirit of Government and Authority to those that are placed justly in it as he did to Moses Aaron Joshua Saul David Samuel and others both Princes and Prelates Judges and Magistrates who but equal it may be to inferiour persons in sanctifying Gifts and Graces as the Bishops of England might be to the many godly Presbyters yet in this they exceeded them not because placed above them in worldly Place and secular Honour but because they from the Apostles pattern were particularly appointed and commissioned by the Church of Christ and so fitted to execute those eminent Offices of church-Church-government in Ordination and Jurisdiction beyond what was ever given to any Presbyters without their Bishops Having then such a cloud of Witnesses both at home and abroad of former and latter times by which to justifie the deserved eminency of Episcopacy and to condemn the insolency of Presbytery I cannot forbear with St. Paul to demand in the behalf of our worthy English Bishops who have been so distrusted so discountenanced so dejected so despised so desolated so depressed Wherein did they come short of the very best of those Presbyters who were known sufficiently to my self who hâ—â—e so studiously sought their ruine and so ambitiously usurped against them Were Presbyters good Preachers so were Bishops Were Presbyters able Writers Bishops were more Were Presbyters zealous Opposers of Popery so were Bishops Were Presbyters devout Men so were Bishops Were Presbyters unblameable Livers so were Bishops Were Presbyters Martyrs and Confessors so were Bishops Were Presbyters Instruments for a just and orderly Reformation of Religion Bishops were more Were Presbyters useful to Church and State by word and example in their petty Parishes Bishops were more in their primitive Parishes or larger Dioceses which were long known and of force in the Church of Christ before lesser Parishes were in use or in being Were Presbyters hospitable and charitable without which all Religion Faith and Fervency is nothing Bishops were more equal in their Affections beyond them in their Liberalities as much as their Revenues Are Presbyters that were able faithful humble and orderly gone to Heaven so no doubt through Gods mercy are those holy Bishops who have been cast upon Dunghills as Lazarus and Job by the cacozelotry of some men in our times who have so much houted and outed despised and destroyed them Many Presbyters have done well and learnedly but many Bishops have exceeded them all who were so far from losing or abating the Gifts and Graces they had when but Presbyters that they increased them and improved them when made Bishops above other Presbyters who were then at their best when they most kept within that place and station in which God and the Church and the Laws and their own proportions had set them in an holy and humble a rational and religious a pious and prudent subordination to their respective Bishops as their lawful Superiours and reverend Fathers whose names are and ever will be pretious to all those that understand what belongs to excellent Learning to eminent Vertue to Christian Courage to admirable Patience to what is Primitive Catholick and complete in the Order Honour Polity Government and Happiness of the Church of Christ No Learned or Worthy Writer Forreign or Domestick who can fly above the Parasitisme of popular Pamphlets which will soon be condemned to Chandlers shops to
well as in a triumphant Chariot Ambitious vanities are never seasonable or comely for any humble Christians and least for the Ministers of Christ who ought to be crucified to the world and the world to them Gal. 6.14 especially at my years and in my condition 'T is honour and grandeur enough for Me if I may next the advance of Gods glory promote Your and my Countries common good which I must tell you doth not a little depend upon the good order unity and government the honour peace and safety of the Reformed Religion duly established in this Church and Nation of England Of whose festred scratches and deep wounds since I cannot but have a great sense both of Grief and Shame and toward whose healing since I am indeed very ambitious to drop one drop of soveraigne balsome before I die I have here endeavoured to seek Your face and to recommend Her distress to Your compassions It is for Her sake and for Yours in Her that I again adventure for truly it is an adventure and no small one in this age thus to appeare in publique possibly with more forwardnesse and zeale than prudence and discretion in some mens censure Who it may be have not so much charity or courage in them as to own an afflicted friend an impoverished father or a distressed mother Yet to justifie my discretion this may be said That nothing seems to me in Policy as well as Piety more rationally and religiously necessary than a publique tender regard to the state of the Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation To me Noblemen and Gentlemen Citizens and Yeomen all sorts in their private and publique capacity seem if not to want yet to expect something in this kind from some of us Ministers of the Church of England which might handsomely excite to honest industry those sparks of piety and generosity which heretofore flamed in their Fore-fathers liberall breasts toward this Church of England as Christian and as Reformed Nor are they I presume quite extinct in yours who now succeed them whom I doe not arrogantly instruct as if I thought you ignorant but humbly provoke to doe what you know when opportunity shall answer your abilities and good will Not but that I have also pleasing speculations many times of that silent safetie and secure latencie in which I see others my betters or equals hug themselves I know there are men otherwayes of good worth and parts who dare not speak one good word either of or for the best Bishops the best Presbyters or the best Nationall Church in the world as this of England was These over-bred and too much Gentlemen may consider That a good man may be more wary than wise more fearfull than faithfull more cautious than consciencious The Prophet Jeremie resolved by reason of the danger and ingratitude of the Jewes to speak no more to them in the name of the Lord but the word of God was as fire in his breast he could not hold his peace and keep peace in his soule I could as easily wrap my self up in silence and privacie as some others doe if I did not feare sins of omission as well as commission which was the jealousie a most learned and godly person had of himself lately dying who yet had been an earnest intercessor for the relief of many distressed Ministers in England I would also covet the reputation of a wise man by keeping silence in an evill time if I had not many and great stimulations while my life is declining and my death approching to give what further constant and comely proofs I may to this and after-ages of my zeal for God of my love to my Saviour of my communion with his Catholick Church of my particular respect to this noble part of it The Church of England and in this of my due observance to my Reverend Fathers and beloved brethren the godly Bishops and orderly Presbyters of this Church yea and lastly of my charitable ambition to heap coals of fire not scorching and consuming but melting and refining even upon the heads of those who still professe to be remorslesse enemies to my calling and to the whole Church of England who seem to me as if they sought totally to debase the Clergie of England yea utterly to destroy the ancient Catholique order and government succession and authority of the Evangelicall Ministery in this Reformed Church while they endeavour to remove able ordained and autoritative Teachers into corners and to obtrude I know not what volâ—ntiers new and exotick intruders into that holy function These will certainly in a few years make the Sun goe down upon England at noon-day bringing upon this Nation the shadows of the night Superstition ignorance profanenesse irreligion and confusion leading Posterity to Popery by the way of popularity poverty parity despiciency and Anarchy falling upon the Ministery and the Reformed Religion of this Church In which blacknesse of darknesse debasings and disorders the Seers of this people will in time grow blind the guides unguided the teachers will be untaught the Pastors unbred the flock unfed by a mushrome and novell Ministery multiforme miserable mechanick Grows-up neither duly ordained nor decently maintained nor much deserving either of them being crest-faln in themselves and contemptible to others I cannot be satisfied in Reason or Religion in honour or conscience in policy or piety how it can be happy for You your Posterity and this whole Nation to live after a vagrant loose and indifferent way of Christian administrations and profession according to every mans private fancy choice and humour without any such Nationall setling and combination such publique Ecclesiasticall union as hath in all Ages and Nations best edified and fortified counselled and corrected excited and increased both gifts and graces in a most comely and most Christian order with such harmony unity majesty and authority as best becomes the Disciples and Churches of Christ I confesse I am ashamed to see and heare any Gentlemen of honour or other persons of commendable qualities of good estates of ingenuous parts and breeding poorly and meanly to forsake the waters of Siloah and to follow the brooks of Teman to discountenance at least if not quite discard their learned grave godly and experienced Ministers who are of the true metall and stamp too which a Minister of the Gospel ought to be that is really enabled and duly ordained or authorized to that great work And this most what not out of any serious advice and consciencious choise becoming Christians in so great a concernment but rather out of easinesse levity curiosity popularity or some pittifull complyances with novell upstarts and rude intruders into that Sacred office Among whom if they doe save their purses which is by some deserters of their lawfull Ministers much looked after yet I am afraid they too much venture their souls I am sure they lose much of their credit both in present and after-ages
man in comparison seeketh after her bruise is almost incurable and her wound is very grievous There are few to plead her cause she hath no healing medicines her lovers have forgotten her since God hath wounded her with the wounds of enemies and with the chastisements of cruell ones who in her dust and captivity require of her to sing the songs of Sion commanding her to call her ruines Reformations and to account their persecutions her perfections It is time then for all that have any regard to the Church of England to cry mightily both to God and man to give them no rest till they return to be gracious to this much afflicted impoverished despised divided disordered Church It is high time for all honest English Christians to pitty her ruines to favour her dust to speak comfortably to her to put an end to her warfare to bind up her wounds to make up her breaches to repaire her losses as Jobs friends did his with their kind and munificent compassions that Posterity may not read in the sad ruines divisions and desolations of this famous and reformed Church of England pristine liberality and modern sordidnesse the bounty beauty and order of former times the deformity sacriledge and confusion of these later Who can consider without shame and regret how much more generous and large-hearted even those Ages were which had some rust and dimnesse of superstition growing upon their Religion then these are in which the English world is filled and confounded with the noise and shews of brightnings and reformations in which by new most preposterous methods some of our late unlucky Architects or Antivitruvian Builders have endeavoured with their axes and hammers to break down more good Church-vvork in twice seven years than the best master-builders can hope to repair in seventy seven I doe not mean onely as to the materiall and mechanick fabricks of goodly Churches which in many places lie sordidly wasted shamefully desolated but as to that which was the rationall politicall morall the prudentiall and truly pious structure of this well-reformed Church of England of whose ruines I shall give you afterward a more particular account But it is now time for me in order to work upon your affections to give over such tedious Prefacings and to present You with as true and lively a prospect as I can of Her sad posture There being more pathetick power in your hearing or seeing one of her own sighs and tears O what is there in her wounds than in the greatest seas of any mans oratory to stir up in You those filiall compassions which most become You to so deserving and now so distressed a Mother as is this Church of England The goodly CEDAR of Apostolick Catholick EPISCOPACY coâ—â—… with the moderne Shoots Slips of divided NOVELTIES in the Church ΔΕÎΔΡΟΛΟΓΙΑ The Embleme of the Trees explained In which is briefly set forth the History and Chronology of Episcopacy Presbytery and Independency as pretenders to church-Church-government their first planting growing and spreading in the Christian World THe design of this Figure or Embleme is to instruct Christians of the meanest capacities who have less abilities or leisure to read large Discourses touching the due Order Way and Method of Church-union and Communion which Subject is now multiplyed to so many parties and opinions that ordinary people as in a Wood or Maze and Labyrinth are unable to disentangle themselves of those perplexed contentions and confusions which have of late so miserably divided and almost destroyed the Harmony and Happiness of the Church of England upon the disputes not so much about saving Faith and holy Life as those of a Churches right constitution in its Divine Original Apostolick Derivation Catholick Succession Regular Subordination and Brotherly Communion First most people learned and unlearned were heretofore prepossessed with the Catholick use and approbation of Episcopacy as ubique semper ab omnibus ever and onely used in this and all other Churches from the first planting of Christianity After this many weaker Christians came to be dispossessed of their former perswasions by the violent obtrusions of such a Presbytery as challengeth Church-government not in common with Bishops but wholy without them This forreign plant not taking any deep root in this English soyle was soon starved and much supplanted by the Insinuations of a newer way called Independency At last many heretofore well-meaning Christians finding such great Authorities even from Christ pretended on all sides for these diversities of Bishops Presbyters and People each challenging the right of Church-government Rule and Jurisdiction as principally due to them and from Christ immediately committed to them have by long perplexed and sharp disputes been brought to such doubtings as have betrayed them to strange indifferencies as to all Ecclesiastical Society and Order which is the very band of Christian Religion so far that they care for no Church no Christian Communion no setled Government no sober Religion By this Figure Type or Scheme every one may easily see in one view their rise growth and proportions what in the beginning was what ever since for above 1500. years hath been and what in right reason ought to be the authoritative and constant Order Polity and Government of every particular Church as a part of the universal if we regard either Scripture-direction or Christs institution or Apostolical prescription or universal practise of all Churches in all Ages and places till of later dayes wherein the factious Ambitions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 abortive and divided Novelties have either in too indulgent or in troublesome times strangely warped from or contested against uniform Antiquity either usurping upon or denying those just Interests which ought to be preserved joyntly in every well-ordered Church to Bishops to Presbyters and to faithful people who as Members of one Body and Branches of one Tree or Root ought to be but one in an Ecclesiastical harmony though they have different uses and offices for the common good The Catholick Church of Christ which all true Christians believe to be Sponsa unica dilecta the Spouse and Body of Christ one and intire as united to him the Head of all by one Faith so to one another as Members by one Spirit one Baptism one Bread and one Cup which are visible symbols or signs of that invisible Communion in Truth in Love Charity which every true Christian hath with Jesus Christ and all true Believers in all the world This Catholick one and uniform Ch. is here set forth under the similitude of one fair straight well-grown fruitful flourishing uniform Tree as the Cedar of the Lord full of sap rooted in Christ from whom it derives the spirit life and radical moisture of Grace by such outward means and Ministers as the Lord hath appointed to be workers together with him as some Apostles some Prophets some Evangelists some Pastors and Teachers for planting propagating watering
by learned and godly men Bishops and other Ministers were notably discovered and by some Christian Princes or States happily amended with great order and by due authority as in other places so no where with more Wisdom Justice and Moderation than in England Where as in most of the Churches protesting against the Roman deformities especially those of the Lutheran denomination the ancient Orders and Authority both of Bishops and Presbyters were preserved as is evident in the Augustane confession which finds no fault with but highly approves the Government of the Church by Bishops under Episcopacy provided Bishops would joyn in a just Reformation of those gross abuses which were the Churches intolerable grievances as well as the dishonour of Christian Religion and Christian Bishops whose deserved Honours Estates and Eminencies in Authority they saw no cause to envie grudge or diminish So far were these first Reformers from hewing down Episcopacy as if it cumbred the ground that they onely digged about it and mended it that it might bring forth good fruit as it did in England and elsewhere While the Western Churches Reformation was yet but crude and in motion by Luthers means there arose Mr. John Calvin about the Year 1541. a man of good Learning acute Wit copious Eloquence great Industry quick Passions sharp Pen of reputed Piety and of no less Policy Him the people of Geneva thought the fittest man in the world to settle their distracted Church and State after they had with the wonted arts of tumultuating and discontented people forced Eustace their Bishop and Prince to flye from his Palace and City his Bishoprick and his Seigniorie because he would not presently gratifie them with such a Reformation as they imperiously demanded rather than modestly desired Mr. Calvin as Mr. R. Hooker hath excellently set it forth undertook with much difficulty and after many indignities worthy of popular levity fury and petulancy put upon him to settle their Church-affairs together with the civil State in such order as he thought not most Scriptural primitive and Catholick but most prudential plausible and probable in humane reason and honest policy to take and hold the tumultuating inconstancy of that people so to bring them to something of civil and religious order acting herein not upon any Wiclefian or the after Presbyterian and Antiepiscopal Principles as imagining either Episcopacy to be unlawful or sole Presbytery to be necessary as of Divine Institution neither of which were his judgement as is sufficiently and vehemently declared by his passionate approbation of reformed Bishops and his esteeming so honourably of regular Episcopacy that he passeth all Anathemas or curses on those that are against them so far was Calvin from laying the Axe to the root of this Tree which with Christianity had ever as he confessed born Episcopacy But he rather went upon Erastian principles and politick grounds looking it seems upon the Government of the Church as he did upon the Lords-day which is not elder nor more authentick or Catholick as to the Churches use and observation than Episcopacy to be in their nature mutable as of Ecclesiastick yet Divine prescription according as Times Occasions and Minds of men might fall out He well knew being a learned man and oft confesseth in his Writings the primitive blessing and universal authority of presidential Episcopacy in all Churches yet he neither thought it nor any forme of Government any more than clothes to be essential to the substance and body or any Church or of the Christian Religion but variable to several forms and polities as prudence might invite or necessity require so that he never set up any soveraign and unepiscopal Presbytery as an Idol or Moloch to which not onely the children but the Fathers of the Churches even very godly and reformed Bishops were all sacrificed He thought it did not misbecome his policy and prudence to serve the times and humors of the Citizens so far as to seem to vary the outward mode of their and all other Churches ancient government provided he served the Lord and that people in setling such a government as might preserve the Christian Reformed Religion among them in true Doctrine and good Manners which was the main work which Calvin seemed to mind most To have reconciled the City and their former Bishop was a matter impossible unless he or they had changed their minds in Religion to have perswaded them to elect a new Prince and Bishop of their own profession and opinion had been very imprudent considering either the fair offers they made to himself of being not titularly indeed but virtually and really both the Prince and Prelate or remembring that strong fancy of Liberty which had now so filled and intoxicated all sorts of Citizens In the last place to have set up himself in the pomp and formalities of a Bishop and a Prince had been an act of too much Impudence and Envy for a person of his Ingenuity Policy and Dexterity in publick managements it sufficed his design so far to gratifie both the Populacy with seeming Liberty and the Optimacy with some civil and Magistratick Authority all of them with such reformed purity in Religion as most pleased them and yet to keep up himself and his collegues of the Ministry to such an height of Ecclesiastical Influence and Church-power as made them far from being either slaves to the Vulgar or cyphers to the Government for all cases civil and criminal as well as religious were one way or other reducible and so responsible either by way of comprimising or upon scandal or repentance or satisfaction to the cognizance and consistory of him and his collegues himself being as the Caesar they as his Bibuli In effect his Wisdom Reputation Eloquence and Courage set him up in Geneva and other places to so high an eminency of respect and authority as he equalled yea exceeded most Bishops however his pomp train and pension were but small after the usual bounty expectable from any State or City that list to make their Reformations of Religion compleat by robbing the Church and Clergy of their ancient Lands and Revenues which doubtless in that City had been so great and princely as upon the confiscation of them to their Town-box or Exchequer they might well have allowed Mr. Calvin their great Reformer and chief Pastor and his Associates a Salary much beyond an hundred pounds per ann with a little provision of Corn. But he wisely dissembled this Indignity finding that as Riches Pomp and Luxury had undone former Bishops so a voluntary kind of Poverty and Austerity would now best conciliate to him and his collegues a greater Reverence and Authority nor was it considerable to have a gay or rich scabbard provided they had sharp and well metall'd swords their Ambition was rather to intend Gods work in reforming Religion of its Leprosie with Elisha than in taking mans rewards with Gehazi In this Presbyterian Prelacy or Prelatick Presbytery
honour merited by the Emperours Diocletian Galerius for their extirpating Christian superstition restoring the worship of the Gods No pen saith Eusebius could equall the atrocity of those times against the Church of Christ Yet even then the gracious spirit of sincere Christians as the Ark in the deluge rose highest toward heaven then godly Bishops and Presbyters were as another Historian writes more ambitious of Martyrdome than now Presbyters are of being all made Bishops then were Christians more then conquerours and true Christianity most triumphant when it seemed most depressed despised and almost destroyed as Sulpitius Severus writes of the same times in his short but elegant History Thus Eusebius and others describe that horrid storm and black night which was relieved by the blessed day-star of Constantine the Great appearing In which dismall times learned men do not quarrell at the profession and state of Religion but at the irreligion and scandall of Christians lives the fault and provocation was not from the Faith Doctrine Liturgy Order and Government then established in the Churches of Christ but from the degenerous depraved and ungoverned passions of men as they all blamed these last whenever they appeared so they constantly asserted the other as was evident in the Synod of Antioch in which a little before Diocletians time the heresie of Paulus Samâ—satenus denying the Divinity of Christ was condemned by all being confuted by Malchion a learned man an accurate Disputant The Author or Heresiarch was excommunicated not onely from the Church of Antioch but also from the Catholick Church and separated from all Christian communion throughout the world by a just and unanimous severity Holy men then rightly judged that the meritorious cause of all those sore calamities arose not from the frame of Christian Churches which was holy uniform and Apostolick as yet but from the wantonness and wickedness of Christian professors neglecting so great means of salvation and abusing such Halcyon dayes as had been sometime afforded them Which censure I may without rashnesse or uncharitablenesse pass as to the present distresses incumbent upon the Church of England whose holy wise honourable and happy Reformation must ever be vindicated as much as in me lies against all such gain-sayers as make no scruple to condemne as all the generations of Gods children in former ages so those especially who worthily setled and valiantly maintained the Christian reformed Religion in the Church of England as against all Heathenish and Hereticall profaneness so against the more puissant and superstitious Papists also against the more peevish but then more feeble Schismaticks CHAP. X. IT were as impertinent a work for me in these times to insist upon every particular in the frame of the Church of England or to cry up every small lineament in Her for most rare and incomparable as it is unreasonable and spitefull in those that deny Her to have had any one handsome feature in Her or any thing grave comely Christian-like or Church-like in her main constitution and complexion Mr. Richard Hooker one of the ablest Pens and best Spirits that ever England employed or enjoyed hath besides many other worthy men abundantly examined every feature and dress of the Church of England asserting it by calm clear and unanswerable demonstrations of Reason and Scripture to have been very far from having any thing unchristian or uncomely deformed or intolerable which her then enemies declaimed and now have proclaimed whose wrathfull menaces the meekness and wisdome of that good man foresaw and in his Epistle foretold would be very fierce and cruell if once they got power answerable to their prejudices superstitions and passions against the Church of England which he fully proved to differ no more from the Primitive temper and prudence than was either lawfull convenient or necessary in the variation of times and occasions The excellent endeavours of that rarely-learned and godly Divine so full of the spirit and wisdome of Christ one would have thought might have been sufficient for ever to have kept up the peace order and honour of the Church of England also to have silenced the pratings and petulancies of her adversaries But alas few of those plebeian spirits and weaker capacities to whose errour anger and activity the Church of England now chiefly owes her miseries tears and fears were ever able to understand or bear away the weight strength and profoundnesse of that most ample mans reasonings and his eloquent writings Others of them that were more able were so cunning and partiall for the interest of their cause and faction as commonly to decry for obscure or to suspect as dangerous because prejudiciall to their interest or to bury in silence as their enemy that rare piece of Mr. Hookers Ecclesiasticall Polity which many of them had seldome either the courage or the honesty to read none of them the power ever to reply or the hardiness so much as to endeavour a just confutation of his mighty demonstrations Yea I have been credibly informed that some of the then-dissenters from the Church of England had the good or rather evil fortune utterly to suppress those now defective but by him promised and performed books touching the vindication of the Church of England in its Ordination Jurisdiction and Government by the way of Ancient Catholick Primitive and Apostolick Episcopacy Which one word Episcopacy hath of late years cost more blood and treasure in Scotland and England than all the enemies of Bishops and of this Church had in their veins or were worth 20. years ago whose importune clamours of old and endeavours of late to extirpate Primitive Catholick and Apostolicall Episcopacy out of this Church and to introduce by head and shoulders the exotick novelties and vanities of humane invention have brought themselves and this whole Church to so various and divided a posture as makes no setled or uniform Church-government at all by a popular precipitancy ruining an ancient and goodly Fabrick whose temporary decayes or defects might easily and wisely have been amended before they had agreed of a new model or seriously considered either their skill or their authority to erect a new one if they could find out a better which hitherto they have not done nor will they I believe ever be able to do as destitute in this point of any just commission direction power or precedent either from God or man I am sure the Supreme power of regulating all Ecclesiasticall affairs was under God by the laws of England invested in the Chief Magistrate and Governours of this Church without and against whose judgements consents and consciences no innovations were to be carried on nor indeed begun in this Church whose events or successes hitherto have been only worthy of such tumultuary beginnings the effects of them being full of dissolution confusion to all of injurious afflictions to many worthy men besides penall and perpetuall divisions among the Innovators themselves who
varying in this as in other things from the whole ancient Churches constitution no less than from this of England are likely to differ among themselves even till Doomesday unless they return under some new name and disguised notion of moderators and superintendents to what they have rashly deserted the true pattern in the Mount that paternall Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy which was the centre and crown of the Churches unity peace order and honour which imports no more after all this clamour and terrour than one grave and worthy Presbyter duly chosen in the severall Dioceses limits to be the chief Ecclesiastick Overseer and Governour succeeding in the managing of that Ecclesiasticall power and authority which without an Apostolick President or Bishop properly so called Presbyters alone in parity or equality never did enjoy and so never ought to exercise in the Churches of Christ as to ordination and jurisdiction no more than Bishops regularly may without the counsel and assistance of Presbyters Which ancient Order eminent Authority of Primitive Episcopacy if neither right Reason nor the Word of God either in the Old or New Testament did clearly set forth to us as best if neither Apostles at first nor the Primitive Fathers after them if neither Church-history nor Catholick custome nor Primitive Antiquity nor the approbation of the best Reformed Churches and Divines if all these did not commend it as they evidently do to my best understanding yet the late mad and sad extravagancies in Religion do highly recommend it yea the great want of it in England shews the great use necessity and excellency of it especially if advanced to its greatest improvement of counsel order and authority I may adde the votes of all sober and impartiall Christians even now in England who are grown so wise by their woes as generally to wish for such Episcopacy whose restitution would be more welcome to the wiser and better sort of Christians in this nation than ever the removall of it was or the medlies of Presbytery and Independency is like to be Nor do I believe that the restauration of a right Episcopacy would be unacceptable to many of the soberest men even of those two parties if any expedient could be found to salve and redeem the reputations of some lay-leaders and popular Primates of those sides whose credits lie much at pawn with the people upon this very score as having been by them rashly biassed against all Episcopacy the abusing of which Apostolick order on one side and the abolishing of it on the other side were I think two of the greatest Engines the Devil used to batter the Church of Christ withall pride and parity insolency and Anarchy being equally pernicious to Church-polity and Christian piety The overboylings of some mens passions which the Scotch Thistles being set on fire under them chiefly occasioned having now almost quenched themselves by bringing infinite fedities and deformities upon the whole face of the Christian Reformed Religion in this Church as well as otherwhere these sad events may save me the labour of further asserting in this place the use and honour of Catholick Episcopacy in the Churches of Christ which is already done as by my owne so many abler pens as it was also done by Mr. Hooker sufficiently proving that the Church of England deserved not upon the account of its retaining the Catholick and Apostolick order of Episcopacy to have suffered these many calamities which have ensued since the Schismes and Apostasy of many from this Church and from that Primitive Government other than which was not so much as known or thought of in the Catholick Church of Christ for 1500 years nor then when the Church of England began its wise and happy Reformation which did not indeed abolish but reform and continue as became its wisdom that Ancient and Apostolick government of the Church which was primitively planted in these British Churches as in all others throughout the world long before the Bishop of Rome had any influence or authority among them being highly blessed of God and honoured of all good men nor hath yet any cause appeared why it should be blasted or accursed or scared by Smectymnuan terrors CHAP. XI AS for the Doctrinals of Christian Religion this Church of England ever had so high an approbation from the best Reformed Churches and so harmonious a consent with the most Orthodox and Primitive Churches that it must be extreme ignorance or impudence on this part to esteem the present miseries of this Church as merited by Her wherein it was indeed most exact and compleat as wholly consonant to the Word of God so nothing dissonant from the sense and practise of the ancient and purest Churches Yea I find that the bitterest enemies of the Church of England do in This least shew their teeth or clawes except onely in the point of Infant-Baptism not for want of ill will for nothing more pincheth them then the Doctrine of the Church of England which was according to godliness teaching all men that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts they should live righteously soberly and godlily in this present world but for want as of just cause so of skill and abilitie most of them being such as have no great stock of knowledge learning or judgement nor very capable on this side to assault the Church of England whose strength and shield is the invincible Word of God rightly understood Therefore the cunning Adversaries and Vastators of the Church of England drive a lesser trade of small cavellings and bitings rather as the serpent at the heel than head not much engaging themselves in any grand controversies of Divinity which are generally above the reach of their capacities whose feeble assaults the Church of England hath no cause to fear against the Doctrine set forth in Her 39. Articles Her Catechisme Her Liturgy and Her Homilies since She hath so many years mightily maintained this post of her Doctrine against the Learning Power and Policy of the Roman party who are veterane Souldiers and mighty Troopers weightily armed in comparison of whose puissance these light-armed Schismaticks and small Skirmishers are like Pot-guns to Canons or Pigmies to Giants seeking to deface the Pinnacles and Ornamentalls of Religion but not capable to shake the foundations of it as it was happily established and duly professed in the Church of England CHAP. XII NOr have they had either more cause for or better successe in their disputings against the Devotionals of the Church of England in its publick worshipping of God by Confessions Prayers Praises Psalmodies and other holy Oblations of rationall and Evangelicall Services offered up to God by the joynt devotion of this Church the subject and holy matter of which ever was is too hard for their biting therefore most of them contented themselves to bark at the manner of performing them chiefly quarrelling at that prescript form or Liturgie used in this Church under the title
These good and warm men to whose martyrly courage much might be indulged while yet Reformation was an Embryo in the formation and birth were in time much worn out men afterward began more coolely to consider the nature of the things no less than their own fears or other mens prejudices especially after they saw those things three times solemnly determined and setled by the publick wisdome and authority both of this Church and State The few remains of the old stock of pious dissenters which in my time I have known were grown so calm and moderate as to the Ceremonies of the Church of England that I never found they perswaded others against them As for Liturgie and Episcopacy I am sure they justly asserted them as to the main as wishing onely some small sweetning of the first as to a few darker expressions and the softening of the other as to some more equable regulations which were as far from extirpation of either of them as wiping the eyes is from pulling them out and washing the hands from cutting them off Yea I know by long experience that when the graver and more learned sort of Non-conformists perceived how mightily the Reformed Religion grew and prospered in England amidst the Liturgie Bishops and Ceremonies against which some fiercer spirits had so excessively inveighed when they saw what buds and leaves blossoms and ripe fruit Aarons rod brought forth what eminent gifts and graces God was pleased to dispense by Bishops and Presbyters that were piously conformable to the Church of England they wholly laid aside their former heats and youthfull eagernesses which sometimes fed high and were kept warm by the hopes and flatteries of those who expected that party should long agone have prevailed yea many of them now aged both repented of and recanted their more juvenile and indiscreet fervours advising others now beginners to conform to the good orders and to study the peace of the Church of England which they saw so blessed of God as none in the world exceeded Her Nor did I ever hear of any sober Christian or truly godly Minister who being in other things prudent unblameable and sincere did ever suffer any penitentiall strokes or checks of conscience either upon his death-bed or before meerly upon the account of their having been conformable to and keeping communion with the Church of England nor did they ever find or complain of Ceremonies Liturgie or Episcopacy as any damps to their reall graces or to their holy communion with Gods blessed Spirit At last both good Ministers and people generally submitted themselves in all peaceableness for many years to the order and uniformity of the Church of England untill the late Northern Earth-quake scared many by a Panick fear from their former stedfastness in practises and judgements which had been taken up by many Ministers not suddenly and easily but after serious and mature deliberations against which nothing new hath as yet been alledged to alter their minds onely old rusty arguments have been wrapped up in new furbished arms the strongest sword it seems makes the best proofs and impressions on some mens consciences even in matters of Religion Which vertigo excusable giddiness in the vulgar but shamefull inconstancy in some men of parts and learning is no news to wise men since as the most renowned Isaac Casaubon observes the native mutability of mens minds is such That they precipitantly run by sholes and troops upon changes which are for the worst but scarce one man of a thousand is to be won by the sense of his own and other mens miseries or by the most importune and strongest reasons in the world to retract his popular transports or to revert to the better by holy and happy Apostasies Changes to the worse like sicknesses are easie and sudden recoveries to the better like health are slow and difficult Irregular zeal and popular tumults like storms and tempests easily drive men from their anchors into dangerous seas but they seldom bring them back into safe harbors The first is the work of the many but not the wise the second of the wise who are but few and who during the paroxysme or first impression of vulgar violence must a little yield themselves either to be carried away or oppressed by the rage and precipitancy of such mutations which divers sober men no doubt have rather suffered of late years than approved here in England who humbly pray to recover that happy port or station wherein the Reformed Religion was once like a well-built well-ballasted and richly laden ship safely anchored in the Church of England where the ceremonies were but as the wast clothes flags and streamers no part indeed of its precious lading but yet not uncomely ornaments much less such dangerous burthens or blemishes as merited the utter sinking and over-setting of so fair a vessel which seems to have been the delight of some men though I do not think it was or is according to the desire of the most sober modest Non-conformists no more than it was or is agreeable to the mind of the chief Magistrate nor of the best Nobility the wisest Gentry the learnedst Clergie or the better sort of Commons if they were left to their free votes and untumultuated suffrages Certainly all pious and prudent persons who ever owned the Church of England having now more leisure and clearer light to discern things than when the clouds and storms first began cannot but continually deplore their own credulity some mens cruelty and most mens inconstancy in religion which have left this Church in so broken and calamitous a condition while some oppose Her many forsake Her and few assert Her Especially when they finde as they do every where by experience that those eager agitators against the Church of England upon the old account of Ceremonies Liturgie and Episcopacy doe yet as grand Masters and most authentick Dictators take to themselves and their respective parties a most plenipotentiary power to teach ordain rule over-see guide correct and excommunicate such as they can get into their severalls divided or new-erected Churches whose divine authority power and jurisdiction in things Ecclesiastick they cry up for absolute Supreme Divine Thus they make or at least fancy themselves mutually Kings and Priests in the majesty and soveraignty of all Ecclesiastick jurisdiction amidst their small conventicles who wholly deny any such authority to the Grandeur number magnificence of the Church of England that is the joynt consent united influence and combined interest of all good Christians in this Nation who publickly agreed with one mind and in one manner to serve the Lord. Yet in the manner of their Communion ministrations or worship who sees not that every one of these new Masters affects to be author of his own Liturgie perswading people to pray to and praise God to consecrate and celebrate holy mysteries rather after such a form as they shall either suddenly conceive or more soberly provide
these must exercise all Church-power and Divine authority over your consciences whereas for my part I do not think that the best of these new Masters and Ministers can have from their own fancies or peoples forwardness so much authority because they have none either from God or the Church of Christ or the laws of this Land as would make them petty Constables or Bom-baylies a Lay-elder or an Apparitor This I am sure that in the purest and primitive times as Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian S. Cyprian and others assure us the holy mysteries of Christian Religion the power of the Keyes the sacrating of Sacraments the pastorall ruling and preaching as of office duty and necessity to any part of Christs flock was esteemed the peculiar and proper work of Bishops and Presbyters in their order and degree as the true and onely Pastors and Teachers that succeeded the twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples in their ordinary Ministry nor were men branded for other how able soever than insolent and execrable usurpers who did adventure to officiate unordained that is not duly authorised as Ministers Such intruders Tertullian notes both some men and women to have been in his time who were leavened with Schisme and Heresie so Epiphanius and S. Austin tell us of the Quintilliani Pepuziani and Colliridiani who were confounders of the Ministeriall order Sozomen Socrates Nicephorus and other Church-historians sharply censure one Ischyras or Ischyrion who unordained pretended to be a Presbyter and so to officiate calling him a detestable person and worthy of more than one death whom Athanasius finding about to consecrate or rather desecrate the Eucharist he in an holy and heroick zeal as Christ in the Temple brake the Communion Cup overthrew the Table and repressed his insolent impiety counting him as another Judas Iscariot a traitor to Christ and the Church Yet in the place of the Ministers of the Church of England I beseech you how few Athanasiusses how many Ischyrasses may you now see challenging to themselves the care of mens souls as Ministers of Christ undertaking the managerie of mens eternall interests confident to interpret Scriptures to resolve doubts to decide controversies to satisfie mens consciences to keep up the truth power and majesty of Christian Religion by new undue and exotick wayes against the torrent and impetuous force of ignorance Atheism profaneness errour malice and madness of men and Devils For all which grand designs of Gods glory and the Churches good those men are as fit agitators as Phaeton was to drive Phoebus his Chariot and truly with like success they will do it for instead of enlightening the world these Incendiaries will set all on fire as far as they meet with any combustible matter in which sad conflagrations begun and blown up by them in this Church of England some of them are so vain as to glory calling them the spirituall day of judgement an invisible doomesday a coming of Christ in the spirit of burning and refining to purge his Church For this purpose they say the Sun must be turned into darknesse and the Moon into blood government of Church and State must be subverted nor do they according to their severall fancies and interests fail to presage and expect a glorious Resurrection to their parties which they hope shall reign with Christ if not a thousand years yet as long as they can prevail so as to get power and preserve those liberties they have ravished to themselves CHAP. VIII NOr are these novell undertakers ever more ridiculous than when they sow pillowes under their own rustick arms and others elbows excusing yea abetting their illiterate rudeness and idiotick confidence with the primitive plainness and simplicity of the Apostles when Christ first chose them who were Fishermen Tent-makers or the like Which is truly but very impertinently alledged as any parallel case with these impotent and pragmatick intruders unless they could manifest to the world which they never yet did nor ever will such miraculous endowments such power and anointing from above as came upon the Apostles which in one moment was able to furnish them with more sufficiency and authority than all study and industry can ever do any of us which are the now ordinary means appointed and blessed by God succeeding in the place of miraculous gifts where Churches are once fully planted and Christianity setled To all which the constant testimony of an uninterrupted Ministery and holy succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters from the very Apostles as they from Christ is a more pregnant witnesse and conviction than any new miracles could be much more than any such pittifull accounts can be as these wonders of ignorance and arrogancy can give to the world of any extraordinary matters they say or do either as Ministers or Christians The best of some of whose lives would deform I fear the golden legend which seems to be written by a man of a brazen forehead a leaden wit and an iron heart We the despised Clergie of England do profess to use and pray God to bless our long preparative studies meditations writings readings also our immediate care concomitant labours in this kind habitually to fit us for that dreadfull work and for every actuall discharge of it We find these methods practised by the most famous lights of the Church recommended by S. Paul to Timothy though a person in some things extraordinarily gifted that he should attend didiligently to those exercises that his profiting might appear We do not now expect fire from heaven with Elias to come down upon our sacrifices but we are glad to take the ordinary coals of Gods altar which may by his Word and Spirit going along with our pains and prayers both enlighten our minds and kindle our hearts so as to make us burning and shining lights in Gods house which is his Church Truly those proud and poor wretches who know no coals but those of their own chimney-corners may possibly have a few embers on their hearths or in their potsheards they may like dark lanthorns have a bit of a farthing-candle in them that shines with a little dim and dubious light on one side onely as in the smatterings of some plain primer-knowledge which they have gathered either by superficiall reading the Scriptures or by hearing some Sermons heretofore from the able Ministers of England or by gleaning a little out of the plainest of their writings but 't is most apparent that on three sides of them that is for Grammaticall skill historicall knowledge and polemicall learning they are so horridly black and dark that they seem fitter implements to bring in such ignorance irreverence Atheism superstition and confusion as shall quite put out the Christian and Reformed Religion in this nation reducing all to pristine darkness deformity and barbarity than probable ever to be either propagators purgators or preservers of it which had long ago been over-run with the rank weeds of
which I am sure give all the seeing world in this point so clear so perfect so full a light and so uniform a testimony that no learned impartiall and conscientious Christian can desire more nor can they but acquiesce in these unless they dare to doubt and deny the veracity and fidelity of all authors that have given us account of any Ecclesiasticall Catholick affairs and customes since the Apostles times in all which no one point or practise hath less doubt or dispute less variation or diversity than this of Ecclesiasticall order both as to the Ministry and government of the Church What the ignorant vulgar who are the bran and courser sort of people may endlesly fancy and affect or what others of better parts but as base passions may cunningly pretend I know not the better to bring in their new modelings of Ministers and Churches but I am sure it will very ill become you O noble Gentlemen who are the best and finest flower the beauty and honour the strength and stability of this English Nation who are the choice and chiefest sons of the Church of England it ill becomes you to suspect all those burning and shining lights both Bishops and Presbyters Fathers and Historians single and sociall in their Closets and in their Councils even in the first innocent ages when the Church was most pure and persecuted as if they had all been either grosly ignorant of or supinely negligent in following the mind of Christ and methods of the blessed Apostles as to these great affairs of the Church which were openly uniformly universally both preached and practised by the Apostles also delivered to and received by their successors as in other things so most indisputably in this which so much concerned not onely the right ordering and well-being and polity of the estate of the Church militant but it s very being and Essence in Doctrine Ministry Duties Discipline and Government Can it I beseech you without great uncharitableness and pervicacy unworthy of any ingenuous soul be imagined that from the beginning during the life of some Apostles and their scholars the whole Church and the most eminent persons in it Ministers Martyrs and Confessors did all conspire to delude themselves and to deceive all posterity in so clear great and sacred concernments as those of the Churches Ministry and Polity were ever esteemed The incomparable and unanswerable Mr. Rich Hooker who is not to be read without admiration nor named without veneration long ago urged this Absurdity against the then more modest Sticklers for their Disciplinarian Innovations in the Ministry and Polity of the Church of England Sure saith he it were a very strange thing that such a Discipline meaning the Presbyterian as ye speak of should be taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God and no Church hath ever found it out nor received it till this present time or contrariwise that the Government of the Church against which you bend your selves should be observed every where through all generations and ages of the Christian world and no Church ever perceive it to be against the word of God We require you to find out but one Church upon the face of the earth that hath been ordered by your Discipline or that hath not been ordered by ours that is Episcopall government for ordination and jurisdiction since the times that the blessed Apostles were conversant upon earth This unanswered challenge did that excellent person heretofore make in order to prevent if possible these innovations and mischiefs which are now grassant in England to the hazard of quite overthrowing all that ancient Order Ministry succession and Government which had been conserved in this Church conform to all parts of the Catholick Church If your other employments and studies have hindred you from being so well acquainted with the authentick works and authoritative testimonies of the ancientest writers of Church-affairs as those grand Authors deserve and your ingenuity cannot but desire yet far be it from your prudence piety and charity to derogate from the honour and credit of your own Countrey-men who have in the Histories of England both Civil and Ecclesiasticall to which you cannot well be strangers sufficiently shewed from the originall of these British Churches what Ministry and Orders they had If you are yet strangers to those eldest ages times and authors of your own and so cannot maturely ground your judgements upon their testimony yet what think you of the learning piety honesty and courage of those later and reall and renowned Reformers of this Church whether Clergie or Lay-men who lived in your fathers memories whose blood and ashes as Martyrs and Confessors against Papall innovations and corruptions is still warm and precious These did not lay new foundations of a Christian Church a true Religion or an authentick Ministry here in England but they onely repaired the decayes of the old and lightned them of those either erroneous or dangerous superstructures with which long ignorance and superstition had over-laded them and not so much built upon them as almost quite buried them These Heroes these worthy men I say who were worthy of the name of Christians English-men and Reformers did not ever design or go about to broach new fountains nor to cut new channels nor to lay new pipes by which to convey the Ecclesiasticall order and Ministeriall authority here in England but they cleansed the foulness they removed the obstructions they sodered the ruptures of the former Catholick way which was very good as well as very old yet not the antiquity but the veracity and divinity of it attested both by Scriptures and by the Catholick usage of all Churches made those blessed Reformers now an hundred years ago cheerfully subscribe to that polity Ministry and authority Ecclesiasticall which they mended but changed not these they recommended to all estates in this nation by whose Parlamentary votes and sanction they were established as the best means to preserve this Church both Christian and Reformed After these famous Fathers of England's happy Reformation whose judgement is manifest in the point of ministeriall power and holy order to be carried on by Bishops and Presbyters can you suspect that their later successors in office and judgement I mean all those learned grave and godly Ministers of England whom your eyes have seen and your ears have heard heretofore with great respect love and admiration dispensing the word of God and holy mysteries to you who till the divisions and deformities of these last and worst dayes have baptized instructed and guided both you and your hopefull posterity in the way to heaven and happiness in truth and peace in faith and repentance in humility and holiness in all graces vertues and good works powerfully set forth to you by their excellent Sermons and fervent Prayers by the blessed Sacraments and worthy Examples they have communicated to you can you I say suspect that all these together with the
S. Paul tells Philemon as to whatever they can rightly pretend of the true honour priviledge and power of Christiany What is less Saintly than to cry up novell partiall and factious Reformations to magnifie uncouth and exotick wayes of Ministry and Christianity Church-fellowship and Communion while in the mean time they ungratefully despise and cruelly crucifie their proper Mother the Church of England together with those whom they sometime justly esteemed as their Fathers in God and brethren in Christ What is less Saintly than to endeavour to rob God in a land of peace and plenty to expose his servants and service after the order of Christs Evangelicall Priesthood to as great contempts deformities and diminutions in all points both for order and authority learning and maintenance as ever Julian the Apostate did design with great impudence crying down the rare and indeed incomparable Ministers of the Church of England who had been liberally treated and honourably maintained that they may with vulgar easiness and credulity by a penurious covetous and sacrilegious sophistry cry up some cheap new-fashioned Teachers as rare Angels that had no stomachs and would preach gratis who I believe are found in many places as greedy and voracious as Bell and the Dragon in the Apocrypha Nor can I think them other than Apocryphall Preachers so far from Angels of light sent from God to comfort the Reformed Religion in its bloody sweat and agonies that they seem rather as Messengers of Satan sent to buffet this Reformed Church and the renowned Clergie of England whose fame and flourishing whose piety and prosperity whose honour and unity whose Catholick order and authority heretofore was so conspicuous by the rare indulgence of Gods providence by the generous munificence of pious Princes and by the moderation of wise and worthy Parliaments that God it seems saw it in danger as S. Paul to be exalted above measure by reason of those excellent endowments and enjoyments both spirituall and temporall which were bestowed upon it All which are prone to threaten themselves by their excess the usuall temper of humane frailty being such that it is never so fixed sweetened and seasoned by any temporall blessings in the best of men but it is subject to warp to sowre or to putrifie if it stand too long in the warm sun of prosperity However it becomes all holy and humble Ministers to bless God with holy Job though he take what he once gave it is his mercy that he chuseth rather by impoverishing of us to correct us than to leave us wholly to that crookedness and putrefaction which we were ready of our selves in peace and plenty to contract it is better for any Church any Clergie any Christians to be healed by the sharpness of Gods corrosives and vinegar than too much softned by the suppleness of his oyles and lenitives I hope the health and soundness of the Church and Clergie of England are Gods last designs that his blessings to both shall in due time be restored and enjoyed again when being better prepared to use and value them we shall be less subject to abuse and loose them CHAP. XX. MEan time while many grave and excellent Ministers are faine patiently to hang their harps upon the willowes while they and other sober Christians daily weep over the waters of Babylon our sad confusions a generall astonishment hath seised upon all sober and serious wise and worthy men true lovers of this Church and Nation who with sad hearts and moistened eyes do hear and see the more then childish petulancies the rude insolencies the impudent familiarities the irreverent behaviours which in many places the common sort of people are grown to affect and presume to use even in our religious duties and sacred assemblies expressing less outward respect or reverence in the presence of God when his Ministers and his people assemble to worship him than they are wont to use either for fear or civility or shame before the Steward and Jury of a Court Leet or the meanest Justice of Peace and his Clark in the countrey From the rude examples and daring indulgences of some men whose years and education might have taught them better manners there daily growes up a numerous generation a rustick heady and impudent fry of younger people who carry no more regard to any duties of Religion or respect to the Ministers of them than the fourty children did to the Prophet Elisha when they mocked him and were for their ill breeding and irreligious rudeness torn in pieces by the she-Bears to teach both parents and children better manners towards Gods Prophets as was of old observed Yea there are some grown so clownish and Cyclopick Christians that their very Religion consists not a little in their morose undecent uncivil untractable spirits and demeanour if others have their heads reverently uncovered in the presence and service of God these must have their hats on not to relieve the tenderness and infirmity of their heads but to shew the liberty and surliness of their wills and spirits If others testifie their inward veneration of the divine Majesty by their outward comely gestures as either standing or kneeling according to the variety of duties these by all means affect to fit or loll after such a lazy and neglective fashion that easily discovers and openly proclaims neither much fear of God nor reverence of man yea some people are not satisfied thus to express their sullen tempers by their churlish and unconformable gestures as to our religious duties and decencies in case they vouchsafe to be present but they must be railing and reviling prating and opposing cavilling and disputing in publick What eare not wholly uncircumcised can bear the vain bablings the unprofitable unpleasing and profane janglings of such sophisters the unharmonious noise of such Low-bels whose sound is neither with verity certainty harmony nor gravity yet do they every where seek to drown or confound the sacred concent of Aarons bells and that sweet musick which was wont to be in Gods sanctuary in our Churches here in England when good Christians did orderly and reverently meet together with their lawfull Ministers in one place with one accord with one heart one mind one mouth to serve the Lord and to edifie one another in truth and love with all modesty humility decency and solemnity CHAP. XXI WHich comfort honour solemnity and blessing of Religion formerly enjoyed in most Congregations of the Church of England how many of later yeares have dared not more with rudeness than profaneness to exchange for a kind of Sibylline ravings Bacchinal raptures They obtrude upon poor people sudden correptions licentious rantings ridiculous quakings fanatick ravings senselesse vapourings and such like rallieries or gallantries in Religion which seek to turn Christianity to a kind of buffoonery If these corrept corrupt extasies or extravagancies be not permitted to such fanatick triflers troublers of travagancies be not permitted to such
as to question the usual and approved practise of it from all times which S. Austin so vehemently affirmes that in his Epistle to Volusia he sayes The custom of our Mother the Church in baptizing Infants as it is not to be neglected as superfluous so nor would it have been either practised or believed unlesse it had been so delivered by the Apostles as their undoubted sense and practise which Pelagius did not yea could not with any colour deny as S. Austin observes though it had much served his design about original sin if he could in that point have baffled the credit custome and authority of the Catholick Church which S. Cyprian who lived in the second Century so beyond all cavill or scruple so industriously and fully sets down that if there were no other testimonies of the Ancients that alone would satisfie any sober man being written not upon any heat of dispute but calmly and clearly as of a matter ever done and never under dispute in the Church to his dayes But I have in this part done more than I designed in order to advance not strifes and further contention but Christian peace and charity on all sides in this Church and Nation as to those religious differences which are a great occasion of our miseries CHAP. XIV FRom the Deformities Divisions and Degeneration of Religion also the Falsifications Usurpations and Devastations which of later years have been made by the violent sort of Anabaptists and other furious Sectaries against the Unity and Authority the Sanctity and Majesty of the Church of England destroying its Primitive Order and Apostolick Government its Catholick Succession its holy Ordination its happy and most successfull Ministry to the great neglect and contempt of all holy ministrations and duties of Religion I cannot but further intimate to your piety and prudence O my honoured Countrey-men that which is most notorious and no lesse dangerous both in religious and civil respects namely the great Advantages Applauses and Increases which the Roman or Papal party daily gain against the Reformed Religion as it was once wisely honourably and happily established professed and maintained here in England which is now looked upon by the more subtill superstitious and malicious sort of Papists as deformed divided dissolved desolated so conclamate for dead that they fail not with scorn to boast that in England we have now no Church no Pastors no Bishops no Presbyters no true Ministry no holy Ministrations no Order no Unity no Authority no Reverence as to things Divine or Ecclesiastick Insomuch that we must in this sad posture not onely despair of ever getting ground against the Romanists by converting any of them from the errours of their way to the true Reformed Religion but we must daily expect to lose ground to the Popish party and their Proselytes there being no banks or piles now sufficient to keep the Sea of Rome from over-flowing or undermining us in order to advance their restlesse interests which have been and still are mightily promoted not by the reverend Bishops and the other Episcopal Clergie who are men of Learning Piety Prudence and Martyr-like constancy as some men with more Heat than Wit more Spite than Truth have in their mechanick and vulgar Oratory of late miserably and falsely declaimed but by those who have most done the Popes work while they have seemed most furiously to flie in the Popes face as popularly zealous against Popery and yet at the same time by a strange giddinesse headinesse and madnesse they have risen up against that Mother-Church which bare them and those Fathers in it who heretofore mightily defended them and theirs from the talons and gripes of that Roman Eagle and this not with childish scufflings or light skirmishings to which manner of fight the illiterate weaknesse and rudenesse of our new Masters and Champions hath reduced those Controversies but with such a Panoply or compleat Armour of proof such sharp Weapons such ponderous Engines such rare dexterity of well-managed Powers raised from all Learning both Divine and Humane that the high places and defences of Rome were not able to stand before them heretofore when they were battered by our Jewels our Lakes our Davenants our Whites our Halls our Mortons our Andrews and the late invincible Usher who deserved to be Primate not onely of Ireland but of all the Protestant Forces in the world All these were Bishops Worthies of the first three seconded in their ranks by able and orderly Presbyters as Whitakers Perkins Reynolds Whites Crakanthorps Sutliffs and innumerable others while our Regiments were orderly our Marchings comely and our Forces both united and encouraged Whereas now there is no doubt but the mercilesse mowing down and scattering of the Clergie of England like Hay with the withering and decay of Government Regularity and Order in this Church these have infinitely contributed to the Papall harvest and Romish agitations the gleanings of whose Emissaries will soon amount to more than the sheaves of any the most zealous and reformed Ministers in England By the Papall interests and advantages I doe not mean the Roman Clergies preaching or propagating those Truths of Christian Doctrine Duties which for the main they profess in common with us and all Christian Churches if any of them be thus piously industrious I neither quarrell at them nor envy their successes but rather I should rejoyce in them with S. Paul because however Christ crucified is preached by some whom common people will either more reverence or sooner believe than they generally doe the decayed despised divided Ministers of Engl. who seem to have many of them so small abilities and carrying so little shew or pretence of any good authority for their work ministeriall nor can they be potent or esteemed abroad who are so impotent and disesteemed at home But I mean that Papall Monarchy or Ecclesiasticall Tyranny by which the Church or rather the Court of Rome by such sinister Arts and unjust Policies as were shamefully used and discovered in the Tridentine conventicle seeks to usurp and continue an imperiall power over all Churches and Bishops as if there had been but one Apostle or one Apostolick Church planted in the world also to corrupt abuse that ancient Purity Simplicity and Liberty of Religion which was preserved among Primitive Churches and their coordinate Bishops Further without fear of God or reverence of man opposing some Divine Truths and undoubted institutions of Christ also imposing such erroneous Doctrines and superstitious Opinions upon all Christians to be believed and accordingly practised as become not the severity and sanctity of true Religion adding to that holy foundation which was indeed first laid by the great Apostles and continued happily for many hundred years by the successive Bishops of Rome those after superstructures not of ceremonies onely which are tolerable many of them like feathers making but little weight in Religion but of corrupt Doctrines and
rejoyce in that vengeance which they conclude God hath made upon our Schismes Errours Obstinacies and Persecutions against them by our mutuall confusions Hence must daily and necessarily follow secret inclinations and accessions to the Roman party by all those who are not well grounded in the Reformed Religion or not much prejudiced against the Popish Errours or are indifferent for any Religion which is most easie or pleasing These at length will warp to the Roman party as the most specious of any so that unlesse there be a speedy restauration of the honour of the Church of England I see not how it is possible to prevent that fatall relapse either to Romish superstition and slavery or else to a dreadfull persecution which will in time necessarily follow those dissipations and destructions of this Reformed Church its Ministry Government and Religion which some men have already too much still do beyond measure so industriously promote to the excessive joy and gratifying of the Popish party and designes which are not onely invasive upon the honour and freedome of this Nation but highly scandalous to our Reformed Profession and dangerous to our consciences especially as we yet stand convinced of the Errours Superstitions and Sacriledges of the Romish Religion since it lapsed from the Primitive Institutions of Christ the patterns of the Apostles the ancient Communion of Christian Churches and the fraternall Coordination of Bishops who were alwayes united in orderly happy and harmonious Aristocracies rather than subordinate to any one Monarchicall Supremacy as to Ecclesiasticall Power and Jurisdiction however they had such regulation and primacy of order by Patriarchs and Metropolitans among Bishops and the representers of severall Churches as became wise men that were numerous when they met in great Councils or Church-Assemblies CHAP. XV. I Cannot but here recommend it to the most serious consideration of all wise and worthy Christians who make conscience and not policy of Religion as Christian and Reformed That however the soberest sort of Christians in Engl. do in many and possibly in most things necessary to salvation which are not very numerous agree both charitably and cheerfully with those of the Roman Church as to our common Faith in Jesus Christ and hope of Salvation by his merits in the way of an holy life and good works yet as it will never be hoped that the Papists shall return to a communion with us while we are so divided among our selves and daily excommunicating each other from Church and Christ and Heaven so it will be very difficult and dangerous both in point of conscience and prudence of sin and safety for you or your posterity to return to a plenary and visible Communion with the Papal profession or Roman Conventions considering how we now stand convinced in our judgements and so will many of your posterity ever be untill all Books of controversie which no purgatory Index can correct are burnt or buried by which you and they must needs be so well informed as to be justly opposite and uncompliant to those Errours Superstitions and Sacriledges which the Roman party seeks to impose upon all those that will have visible communion with them which no consciencious Christian can swallow down when they appear to him not onely different from but contradictive in plain termes to that Word of God which themselves with us do own to be the rule of faith and manners the measure of all true Religion contrary to which some of their Tenets Injunctions and Practises seem to us either to rob God of his peculiar honour and omniscience which is to search hearts to heare and answer the prayers of our souls as well as our lips or to rob Christ of the glory of his onely Merit Mediation Satisfaction and Intercession for us or lastly to rob the Church of Christ of that pure and plenary perception of Christs holy Institutions and blessed Sacraments to which they adde and detract as they please performing religious offices most-what in such a language as most people cannot understand and so not be edified either in their judgements or affections which ought in all reason by holy duties to be either more enlightened or judiciously warmed and devoutly excited to the knowledge of God to the love of Christ to an holy Life and mutuall Charity To remove all which Deformities Disorders and Indignities put upon religious Mysteries by the Church of Rome the Church of England with great Prudence Piety and Charity did assert and restore to a Scripturall rectitude primitive simplicity and sober decency the state of this Church and Nation by a just necessary and prudent Reformation of those Romish Errours Superfluities and Corruptions which had with great fraud and fallacy prevailed upon this as other parts of Christendome here in the Western world Which great and happy work of due Reformation was begun carried on and compleated not by any forraign or intestine Swords not by popular and tumultuary rudenesse as in many places which are the odious methods of the Devil to blast over-drive and pervert due and true Reformation in Churches or States but in Gods peaceable just and holy way by such publick lawful and complete Authority both Ecclesiasticall and Civil as this Church and Nation had originally in it self without any authoritative or subordinate dependance upon any forraign State or Church Prince or Prelate however it did in Charity so comply for many years and correspond with the pristine renown and eminency of the Roman Church as might most preserve Order and unity in the Christian world till it felt as well as saw the Roman Yoke to be intolerable in honour and conscience Which Independent and absolute state of this Church and Monarchy as to the originall right and power of it in it self hath been unanswerably asserted as by others so of late by those very reverend learned and judicious persons who have made it their businesse in particular Tracts to defend this Church and Christian State from the just charge of any unjust Schisme in respect of the Roman Communion and Jurisdiction or usurpation rather resuming upon good grounds both as to Divine and Humane Lawes that supreme power which is inherent and unalienable in this Nation both in Prince Nobility Prelates and People for the preserving of true Religion and reforming it as need shall require in order to the Honour Peace and Happinesse both of Prince and People Church and State who never did nor indeed ever could alienate or give away from themselves and their posterity those primitive ancient Rights or Immunities of the Nation which if any had in the darkness drowziness of times by great artifices and pretensions encroached upon all Reason and Justice required that when Prince and People awaked out of their dreams and superstitious slumbers they should reassume those honorary powers and hereditary priviledges of Church and State which were cunningly lurched or filched from them while they were dozed or asleep
Foxes and wild Boars of Romish Power and Policy to enter in and not onely secretly but openly as occasion shall serve to destroy all the remaining stock of the true Protestants and Professors of the Reformed Religion who at first soberly protesting against Popish Errours and Deformities afterwards praying in-vain for a joynt and just Reformation did at last reform themselves after the rule of Gods Word interpreted by the Catholick Practise of purest Antiquity What without a miracle can hinder the Papall prevalency in England when once sound Doctrine is shaken corrupted despised when Scriptures are wrested by every private interpreter when the ancient Creeds and Symbols the Lords Prayer and Ten Commandements all wholsome forms of sound Doctrine and Devotion the Articles and Liturgy of such a Church together with the first famous Councils all are slighted vilified despised and abhorred by such English-men as pretend to be great Reformers when neither pristine Respect nor Support Credit nor Countenance Maintenance nor Reverence shall be left either to the Reformed Religion or the Ministry of it without which they will hardly be carried on beyond the fate of Pharaohs Chariots when their wheeles were taken off which is to be overwhelmed and drowned in the Romish red Sea which will certainly overflow all when once England is become not onely a dunghill and Tophet of Hereticall filth and Schismaticall fire but an Aceldama or field of blood by mutuall Animosities and civil Dissentions arising from the variations and confusions of Religions All which as the Roman Eagle now foresees and so followes the camp of Sectaries as Vultures and Birds of prey are wont to doe Armies so no man not blinded with private passions and present interest is so simple as not to know that it will in time terribly seize upon the blind dying or dead carkase of this Church and Nation whose expiration will be very visible when the Purity Order and Unity of Religion the Respect Support and Authority of the Ministry is vanished and banished out of England by the neglect of some the Malice Madnesse and Ingratitude of others your most unhappy Countrey-men Then shall the Israel of England return to the Egypt of Rome then shall the beauty of our Sion be captive to the bondage of Babylons either Superstition or Persecution from both which I beseech God to deliver us As an Omen of the future fate how many persons of fair Estates others of good parts and hopefull Learning are already shrewdly warped and inclined to the Church of Rome and either actually reconciled or in a great readinesse to embrace that Communion which excommunicates all Greek and Latine Churches Eastern Western and African Christians which will not submit to its Dominion and Superstition chiefly moved hereto because they know not what to make of or expect from the Religion and Reformation of the Church of England which they see so many zealous to reproch and ruine so few concerned to relieve restore or pity As for the return of you my noble Countrey-men and your Posterity to the Roman Subjection and Superstition I doubt not but many of you most of you all of you that are persons of judicious and consciencious Piety doe heartily deprecate it and would seriously avoid it to the best of your skill and power as indeed you have great cause both in Prudence and Conscience in Piety and Policy yet I believe none of you can flatter your selves that the next Century shall defend the Reformed Religion in England from Romish Pretensions Perswasions and Prevalencies as the last hath done while the Dignity Order and Authority of the Ministry the Government of excellent Bishops the Majesty and Unity of this reformed Church and its Religion were all maintained by the unanimous vote consent and power of all Estates Nay the Dilemma and distressed choice of Religion is now reduced to this that many peaceable and well-minded Christians having been so long harrassed bitten and worried with novell Factions and pretended Reformations would rather chuse that their Posterity if they may but have the excuse of ignorance in the main controversies to plead for Gods mercy in their joining to that Communion which hath so strong a relish of Egyptian Leeks and Onions of Idolatry and Superstition besides unchristian Arrogancy and intolerable Ambition that their Posterity I say should return to the Roman party which hath something among them setled orderly and uniform becoming Religion than to have them ever turning and tortured upon Ixions wheel catching in vain at fancifull Reformations as Tantalus at the deceitfull waters rolling with infinite paines and hazard the Reformed Religion like Sisyphus his stone sometime asserting it by Law and Power otherwhile exposing it to popular Liberty and Loosenesse than to have them tossed to and fro with every wind of Doctrine with the Fedities Blasphemies Animosities Anarchies Dangers and Confusions attending fanatick Fancies quotidian Reformations which like botches or boiles from surfeited and unwholsome bodies do daily break out among those Christians who have no rule of Religion but their own humours and no bounds of their Reformations but their own Interests the first makes them ridiculous the second pernicious to all sober Christians Whereas the Roman Church however tainted with rank Errours and dangerous Corruptions in Doctrine and Manners which forbid us under our present convictions to have in those things any visible sacred communion with them though we have a great charity and pity for them Charity in what they still retain good Pity in what they have erred from the Rule and Example of Christ and his Catholick Church yet it cannot be denied without a brutish blindnesse and injurious slander which onely serves to gratifie the grosse Antipathies of the gaping vulgar that the Church of Rome among its Tares and Cockle its Weeds and Thornes hath many wholsome Herbs and holy Plants growing much more of Reason and Religion of good Learning and sober Industry of Order and Polity of Morality and Constancy of Christian Candor and Civility of common Honesty and Humanity becoming grave men and Christians by which to invite after-Ages and your Posterity to adhere to it and them rather then to be everlastingly exposed to the profane bablings endless janglings miserable manglings childing confusions Atheisticall indifferencies and sacrilegious furies of some later spirits which are equally greedy and giddy making both a play and a prey of Religion who have nothing in them comparable to the Papall party to deserve your or your Posterities admiration or imitation but rather their greatest caution and prevention for you will finde what not I onely but sad experience of others may tell you that the sithes and pitch-forks of these petty Sects and plebeian Factions will be as sharp and heavy as the Papists Swords and Faggots heretofore were both to your religious and civil Happinesse CHAP. XXIX FOr however the feeblenesse and paucity of lesser Sects and Factions in Religion in some places their mutuall
much letting of blood as these last Calentures which have infinitely wasted the people and spirits of these three Nations taking their first popular heats or pretending so at least from the zeal each party had for its Religion not as Christian which all professe but as discriminated by particular marks of lesser Opinions and Perswasions which occasion more discords than all their agreement in other main matters can preserve of Love and Concord as men as Countrey-men or Christians How oft since the Reformation in England began and was perfected to so great a beauty for Justice Piety Order Charity Moderation and Honour as became the Glory of God the Majesty of Christian Religion and the Wisdome of this Nation have the struglings of Religion threatned and began civil broyles not onely in eighth's dayes both in the North and West when yet Reformation was much unhewn and unpolished people being unsatisfied because untaught as to the just grounds of necessary Alteration but afterward in succeeding Princes dayes especially in Queen Elizabeth's long and happy reign how infinitely did religious discontents boyle in some mens breasts insomuch that for want of vent in open flames of Hostility which the publick Power Policy and Vigilancy of those times repressed they bred all sorts of foul Impostumations even to the study of Assassinations Empoisonings and Treasons some so black and barbarous as are unparallel'd in former and will be scarce credible in after-Ages Nor did the discontented Papists onely meditate first revenge then Soveraignty by blowing all up at one blow that was sacred or civil in this Nation but even that little cloud which at first seemed but as an hands breadth of difference in some outward Forms Ceremonies and Circumstances of Religion as Christian and Reformed this in time grew so full of sulphurous or hot vapours that it looked very black when it was not yet very big in England either by schismes or separations being much cooled and allayed yea in great part dissipated and vanished through the excellent temper of that Government both in Church and State which that renowned Queen and her wise Councel preserved which suffered neither Conformity to grow wanton and lazy nor Non-conformity to be presumptuous or desperate nor yet too popular by out-vying the other party either in Piety or Industry Episcopacy as the ancient and onely Catholick Government of this and all other Churches for 1500. years was then had in due veneration allowed its double honour both in Church and State in Parlaments and Synods it was treated with great gravity and respect by that incomparable Princesse afterward it was asserted with greater indulgence and passion by King James who began that Proverb which his Son saw verified No Bishop no King yet in the beginning of the late Kings dayes Episcopacy and the state of the Church was even pampered and cosetted by so excessive a favour and propensity as made it seem his chief Favourite not onely for reasons of State but of Conscience The Episcopall throne and dignity seemed as immutable as the Kings Scepter and Majesty so zealously devoted he was to assert it so fearfull by any sacrilegious act to diminish it such a Patron such a Champion for the State Ecclesiastick that upon the matter he was resolved to venture Kingdomes Life and all upon this cause and either to swimme or sink with the Church of England against the Tide of all Faction What could be desired of greater advantage and security than such an immensity of favour from so potent a Monarch for the indemnity and stability of the Episcopall interests and its friends in England which in the Beginning of King Charles his reign had what they could hope or desire his benignity exceeding the very hopes of Church-men his Royall favour confirming all those Immunities Honours Jurisdictions and Revenues as sacred and inviolable which they enjoyed by the Lawes Priviledges and Customes of England to which the Learning Gravity and Merit of many worthy Bishops and other Church-men in England bare so great and good a proportion that few were so impudently envious as not to think that many yea most of them well deserved what they soberly enjoyed The heat of the opposite Factions as Non-conformists or Separatists was so much allayed that it seemed quite extinguished nor possibly could it have revived to so sudden and dreadfull flames if the immoderations of some mens passionate counsels and precipitate activities had not transported them beyond those bounds which politick and it may be pious prudence did require which easily re-inkindled those old differences which had been so much suppressed that they seemed quite buried in England till they took fresh and unexpected fires from the cold climate but hot spirits of Scotland which finding prepared and combustible matter there and here too soon brake out to such flames as were not to be quenched but with the best blood in England and the overthrow of the ancient Government both of Church and State even then when both seemed to be in their greatest height and fixation So dangerous even beyond all imagination and expression are the sparks of religious dissentions if they be either by preposterous Oppositions provoked or by imprudent Negligences permitted to ferment and spread in any Church and State or if they be not by at powerfull way of reall Wisdome and true Piety which is the best and surest policy so quenched and smothered as may take away from all men of any Worth Modesty and Conscience any just cause to endeavour or desire any such Innovations as those did who upon Presbyterian principles first aimed at not a totall change of Doctrine but onely an amendment of Discipline and Government in this Church which as they seemed in a short time to have obtained beyond their first designs so in no long time after they were as much frustrated and soon defeated by other subsequent parties which sprang up upon the like grounds of religious differences After Episcopacy was thrust under hatches what I pray could be more absolute and Magisteriall bigger in words lookes enterprises in terrours of others in boasts and confidences of it self than the Presbyterian party was after once that Leven by a Scotch maceration and infusion had diffused it self and sowred many peoples simplicity here in England against the Episcopall constitution and administration of this Church How did this high-flying Icarus in a short time disdain any rivall puffing at all its Prelatick adversaries setting its feet on all the Bishops and the Episcopall Clergies neck as the Israelites did on the five Kings of the Amorites before they were to be slain which thing was done at Josuahs command who was the supreme Magistrate but these forward Spirits tarried not for any such command or consent to their dominion from the Prince of the people but their new soveraginty fought to spread it self like lightning in a moment to the latitude of these three Kingdomes impregnated and palliated with many popular petitions
plat-forme of so-disciplined Churches but not therefore any way the more or better reformed For these are rather as Cyphers adding some number traine and company to the Ministers than signifying ought of themselves further than prudence policy may make use of them But certainly no Religious necessity commands them as a duty and of divine Institution there being an impossibility to find them in every parochial congregation where there is seldome any one man of the Laity who is meet in any kind to be joyned with the Minister in any such authority which claimes to be Sacred and Divine for which God ever provides fitting instruments where he commands to have any use of them God gave the word and great was the company of Preaching Elders Bishops and Presbyters in all ages but of Lay-Elders and Ruling onely we read so little so no use in any Church or age that we may conclude God gave no such word for them The wise God abhors unequall mixtures such as the plowing with an Ox and an Asse and such seems the joyning of Preachers with these Lay-Elders in the discipline and government of the Church the Asse both disgracing and overtoyling the laborious and more ponderous Ox who hath more hindrance than help from so silly and sluggish an assistant Motly and unsociable conjunctions in sowing mislane or wearing linsy-wolsy garments are also forbidden by the Lord as emblems of his abhoring all things that make any uncomely and unsociable confusion which ought chiefly to be avoided in Church-affaires that order solemnity ability and prudence might keep up the Majesty of Religion the Churches venerable discipline and the Ministeriall divine autority even there where no civill Magistrate would own it Yet if any Presbyter be so wedded to these Lay-Elders that he will never be reconciled to Primitive Episcopacy if he be wholly divorced from his dear Elders for my part he shall have my consent to enjoy them upon a politick and prudent account where he may conveniently have use of them For I do not think the outward Government of the Church to be made of such stuffe or fashion which will not in any case either stretch or shrink as those garments might do on the Jewes bodies when they ware them forty yeares in the wildernesse provided all things be done decently and in order with due regard to the maine end and the best examples But if any contend for these Elders upon a divine and strict account of Religion my answer is with St. Paul we had no such custome in England nor the other Churches of Christ in the world for 1400. yeares who were fed and ruled by Bishops and Presbyters as the onely Elders Pastors and Presidents in Ecclesiasticall Government This is sure Presbytery was at first so confident of its sure standing in England where it never yet had any footing since Christianity was planted that it doubted not to make use of such a wooden leg or crutch as Lay-Elders are to support its new Government and discipline which was hereby rendred very popular and specious to many Ministers and other men of vulgar Spirits who were more ambitious of any small pittance of Church-Government to passe through their fingers than judicious to measure and design the true proportions of it or themselves which certainly ought to be most remote from a Democratick temper Church-Government depending not upon many strong rash and rude hands but upon wise heads and holy hearts of which no great store is ordinarily to be found among common and Country-people upon which crab-stocks neverthelesse this graft of Presbyterian government was to be every where grafted on the one side not without mighty applause and great expectation from the meaner-spirited people of England in every parish some of which were to be found not onely among the very Mechanick and Rustick Plebs onely but among some Citizens Gentlemen and Noblemen too who began to have very warme and devout ambitions to enjoy the title of a ruling Elder as a divine honour added to their other civill honours gently submitting their and their posterities tamer necks to such a yoke as neither they nor their fore-fathers ever knew by which one little Minister with two or three of his Elders might be impowered to excommunicate a King and all his Councell as King James expresseth in his sense of their arrogancy But while the common people of Engl. were every where preparing themselves to admire adore or dread yea to entertain and feed with double honour which was required for its due this new and strange beast of Presbytery which rose out of the sea of Scotish broyles and English troubles being as was thought adorned with seven Heads and ten Horns coming forth conquering and to conquer in the midst of so great glory swelling confidences and superfluity of successes behold a little stone of Independency cut out by no hand of Authority riseth up against the great mountain of Presbytery as its Emulator and Rivall This in a short time hath so cloven it in sunder that it hath quite broken its hoped Monopoly of Church-government and Independency having never had any Patent from any Christian King or people heretofore pleads a Patent as doth Presbytery from Christ Jesus which hath been it seems dormant and unexecuted these 1640 years This some more grosse and credulous spirits do easily believe though they never saw the Commission Only as the more acute and nimble Independents besides the more profound and solid Episcopalians eagerly dispute against the usurped Authority of Presbytery alledging that Classicall Provinciall and Nationall Presbyteries are to them much more Apocryphall than Deanes and Chapters Bishops and Arch-bishops so do both of them no lesse urge a pure Novelty besides the fractions and parcellings of Government against Independency tokens of weaknesse imprudence and inconsistency in Government Yet amidst all this stickling the puny of Independency which enjoyed at first the smiles and cajolings of Presbytery counting it an harmless and innocent Novelty because yet unarmed grew up by strange successes and unexpected favours of power to such a stature procerity and pertness that it not onely now justles with Presbytery but it makes it in many places glad to comply yea to curry favour with and to truckle under Independency which challengeth Seniority before Presbytery with much more probability than Presbytery can alledge any authority for its rejecting Catholick Episcopacy it being more evident that particular Congregations were first governed by one sole Apostle Pastor Teacher Bishop or Presbyter present among them than that many Presbyters ever governed the large and united Combinations of Christian Congregations and Churches without some one Apostle or eminent Bishop as chief President among them to which all Church-history consents without any one exception in all the world Thus hath Independency as a little but tite Pinnace in a short time got the wind of and given a broad-side to Presbytery which soon grew a slug when
peevish and jealous against those that have more if we have much we easily grow proud high-conceited dictatorian Some of us are very rusticall morose and refractory others of us very imperious supercilious and magisteriall few of us of so wise calme and safe tempers as to be left to our selves in things of publick Office and Order lest we grow heady and extravagant Nor are we of so humble and meek Spirits as to be willingly led by others If left free we grow insolent popular and factious if under any Government or restraint we grow touchy refractory and petulant not easily kept within our own or others bounds untill by pregnant reason and prevalent power meeting together in wise and resolute magistrates we are at once convinced and commanded perswaded and over-awed to keep those honest bounds of order and subjection which do not onely best become us but ought to be least arbitrary because most necessary both for our own and the publick good most of us will be good subjects even to Church-Government as well as State when we see we must be so and few of us will be either quiet or content when we find that we may be what we or the vulgar will by loose Tolerations and indiscreet indulgences which betray Ministers no lesse than other men to many dangerous extravagancies To cure therefore the distempers of Religion and to restore some Health Beauty Order and Unity to this sick deformed disordered and divided Church of England the first applications as I humbly conceive must by wisdome and power be made to those that professe to be Ministers of the Gospel who must have as broken or started and dislocated bones whose flesh and muscles are highly swoln and enflamed not onely wholesome diet and Physick given them but such splinters and ligatures as may be at once gentle yet strong not bound so hard as may occasion paine or mortifying nor yet so loose as may suffer any constant dislocation or new flying out To such ruptures and inordinacies the many notions and raptures that Scholars and Preachers get by reading and conversing besides the pregnancy of their wits and ambition of their own Spirits are prone to tempt them no preacher is so meane but he would faine appeare some body if he despaire of his own merits as to publick notice and preferment then he applies to popular arts and lesser engines Discontent and ambition are observed both in old times and of later to have been the great perturbers of the Churches peace which some have written even of Mr. Cartwright himself a man of excellent Learning yet unsatisfied when he had not the good fortune to be so much favoured and preferred by Queen Elizabeth as others were who bare a part with him in publick Acts at Cambridge before that popular yet politick Princesse Who had no greater art in her Government than this to give not onely shrewd guesses at mens tempers and geniusses but exactly to calculate the proportions of their spirits and parts and accordingly either to refuse them or imploy them in Church or State Nor could she easily have kept this Church of England from flying in pieces in her dayes when many notable Ministers wits did work like new beere or bottled Ale to blow up the Government of the Church unlesse she had besides the Canons agreed in Synods and the good Lawes passed in Parliament applyed such wise able and resolute Governours to the Helme of the Church as were Parker Grindall Whitgift Sands Matthewes and others whom the stormes yet safety of the Church in those times shewed to be excellent Pilots and excellent Prelates no lesse than excellent Preachers Whose names and autority had then been made as odious and unpopular as now all Bishops and Episcopall Clergy have been if under God the resolute power and ponderous authority of the Princesse had not preserved them besides the Gravity Piety and prudence of their own carriage which abundantly stopped the mouthes of their clamorous enemies then and further justified them to all posterity to have been as the true Sons of wisdome so deservedly the venerable Bishops and Fathers of this then famous and flourishing Church I well know that Ministers in England above all sorts of men do stand bound in conscience and prudence to use all faire meanes for the speedy setling and happy restitution of the State of Religion in this Church because however many of them professe to be great patrons of piety and sticklers for Reformations either old or new yet most if not all our Church-deformities and miseries have been and still are imputed chiefly to their immoderations passions or indiscretions when too much left to themselves Some driving so furiously to conformity that they went beyond it not onely over-shooting themselves but the good Lawes Canons and Customes of this Church hereby putting the common people into high jealousies of superstition by their too great heats and surfeits of ceremonious innovations and affected formalities Other Ministers were so jealous and impatient of what they fancied rather than felt to be burthens in Religion that they not onely cast off some superfluous loades of new ceremonies but the very comely Garment Girdle and Government of this Church yea some of them at last flung off all their clothes and tare off as Hercules in his fiery shirt much of their own skins by a frantick kind of excesse severely revenging even other mens reall or imputed faults upon themselves and upon the whole Church committing greater injuries than ever they did or indeed could suffer while they possessed their soules in patience and peace whereas now they have left themselves and this whole Church as the Tortoise did that was weary of its shell and put it off almost nothing for safety comelinesse or honour but are nakedly exposed to all those dangers and deformities which attend any Church Religion and Ministry which being once ungirt as to order unity and Government will soon be unblest as to all holy improvements either in Piety Verity or Charity Hence hence it is that such a crowd of importune and insolent mischiefes have as the Sodomites upon the Angels and Lot at his doore not onely rudely pressed but notoriously prevailed too farre upon all Ministers and the State of the Reformed Religion chiefly the jealousies feuds factions animosities immoderations indiscretions divisions and dissociations among Ministers who can never expect to see common people return from their madnesse and giddinesse to sober senses untill they see their Preachers to recover their wits and their pastors to become patternes as of piety and zeal so of humility and order of charity and unity of gravity and constancy of meeknesse and wisdome and not to be like mad dogs so daily snarling and snapping at one another so biting and infecting their own and others flocks with their poysonous foam and teeth that at last they disorder the whole frame of the Church and endanger the civil peace of the Nation whence some
men have been ready to think it were a part of wisdome and State-policy to put in execution the counsel and resolution which once Queen Elizabeth took up in some time of Her Reigne even to forbid all preaching and praying as to ministers own inventions and composures because she found most Ministers passions so inseparable from their pulpits if they were left to themselves The want of Christian harmony and correspondency in publick and lawfull conventions with unanimity and fitting subordination among Ministers in England for these last twenty yeares good God! what havock and confusion what waste and desolation what scorn and contempt hath it brought upon the whole Ministry the Church and the State of Reformed Religion not more in the order and peace than in the power and purity of them while severall Ministers in their partiall conventicles and mutinous meetings go severall waies seek onely to draw Disciples after themselves not to lead them nearer to God and Christ and this Church but to their own private opinions parties and interests according as they can possesse people to comply with their new Ministeriall authority new Church-waies and new spirituall projects which being so horribly divided the good onely way of Christianity is almost destroyed for none that are novell can be so authentick and authoritative but they are by some suspected by others denyed and by most despised Hence mutuall loathings between people and people Pastors and Pastors hence that nauseous abhorrence in many of all Sermons and Religious service hence that Atrophy or indifferency of most people to the blessed Sacraments hence that rudenesse and irreverence shewed by many in all Religious duties hence that looseness in moralities that rottennesse in opinions that coldnesse in devotions that boldnesse in blasphemies that impudence in heresies that fondnesse after novelties that boasting in schismatick rendings hence so many new and strange secular policies are grown up as thistles in the good field of this Church instead of Primitive simplicities hence so many gay and cunning hypocrisies spring up like cockle and poppy among wheat instead of sober honesty and Christian charity which were heretofore so abounding in England A pious and prudent closing a sincere and thorough healing of those wounds which Ministers have given themselves this Church and the Reformed Religion by their easinesse credulity inconstancy popularity and impatience to bear any thing and also by their too much confidence in secular Counsels and armes of flesh while they served diverse lusts and passions of men and times more than the Lord this would advance the reall interest of all parties so farre as they are Christs and bring the whole frame of Religion to such an happy consistency as becomes the honour of such a Nation and such a Reformed Church as England sometime was In which paternal presidency fraternal assistance and filial submission might all meet together to satifie all calme and sober Spirits that are either of Episcopall Presbyterian or Independent perswasions which are I think the most considerable parties yet in England both as to their numbers abilities and worth I know it is very hard for weak and wilfull men to reclaime themselves or others from those transports which they have not chosen but ventured upon it is the work of wise men to recant their own errors and to recall people from those scatterings and extravagancies to which they have been once throughly scared and cunningly driven I have much admired while I have read the prudent Arts and pious guiles which King James a Master of great Learning Wit and Eloquence used whereby to calme the hot Spirits of Ministers in Scotland so as to reduce them to that excellent Church-frame and Government of which many popular factious and covetous Spirits were not more weary than unworthy by the overthrow of which I believe the jealous Presbyters in Scotland that Church and State have got so little that they may well put their gaines in their eyes and yet see both their folly and their misery rather weeping for their destroying than justly triumphing in their extirpation of so excellent a constitution of a Church as indeed they enjoyed with as much happinesse had they known it as they obtained it with much difficulty Great bodies we see cannot move regularly or handsomely unlesse they have such respective heads and presidents as may be principles of order and union of proportionate motions and usefull operations The want of which with the dissolving of all Ecclesiasticall subordinations into popular parities and reducing Nationall Convocations or Synods into partiall Assemblies and Associations all sorts of sober Ministers have found by wofull experience to be so pernicious both to their private and the publick interests of Religion that I believe most of them are now very solicitous how to heale themselves lest they further appeare Physitians of no value to the people who can never think themselves either well taught or governed by such Ministers as know not how to governe themselves and yet are impatient to be governed by any other but themselves who being either meane or weak or wilfull men taken singly will not be much abler or stronger or more valued in any arbitrary precarious or partiall waies of self-combinations or Associatings CHAP. VII I Am neither wholly ignorant of nor averse from those later projects and Essayes of Associations which some Ministers have presented to the world and as I heare practised among themselves in some Countries with what good successe or publick advantage I do not yet understand however this plot of Associating doth proclaime to all the world that the generality of Ministers are very sensible of that shame solitude feeblenesse contempt dissipation and diminution to which their late divisions have exposed them even among those people whom they most gratified with eating that forbidden fruit which by a surfeit of liberty hath brought so great sicknesse and mortality upon the life of Religion as Christian and Reformed also upon the honour of the Clergy and the happinesse of the people of England I see the sense of their own and the peoples nakednesse as to Ecclesiasticall union and Government hath made Ministers seek for some covering for themselves though it be but of fig-leaves in comparison of that goodly Garment which God had formerly clothed them withall after the manner of all ancient Churches who were governed adorned and defended by Episcopall Eminency Presidency and Authority strengthned with Presbyterian Counsells and further helped by the service and care of Deacons or Overseers for the poor to complete the well-Governing of the Church with Charity Wisdome and Orderly Authority So that neither the Wise Strong Great or Rich might be extravagant and unruly nor the Simpler Weaker Lesser and poorer sort of Christians be neglected and contemned A method of Church-Government certainly not more ancient and Catholick than complete in all the requisite proportions of Government which had in it not onely all principles of reason
conferences occasion better understanding between many of them and so by Gods blessing in time produce some such counsels as may be worthy of them and the publick But if their aime be slily to get into some hands such popular advantages by their soft insinuations of seeming equanimity and moderation as shall further displace and disparage the former Catholick Government of this and all ancient Churches they will be but as new patches put to an old garment which will make the rent and deformity the greater Certainly the state of the Reformed Religion in England will never be happy till it is setled nor setled till it be uniform nor uniform till the office and authority of Ministers be valid and venerable nor will this ever be untill the sanctity and samenesse of ordination together with the use of Ecclesiasticall power and holy Ministrations be rendred so August so Sacred and Complete as may be most conforme to Scripture and to pure Antiquity for while Ministers are of diverse makes and moulds they will be of diverse minds nor can they produce other than multiforme Christians of different fashions and deformed factions in Religion which do as necessarily bring forth infinite mischiefs in any Church or Christian State as the itch breeds scratching and scratching fetches blood As the blessed Apostles so their holy successors kept to one way of Religious Order and Power which preserved the unity of faith and love among Christian Bishops Presbyters and people I confess I do sometimes in my sad and retired solitudes hope that our common calamities may by Gods softning and calming grace upon mens spirits make both all Godly Ministers and all good people so wise as humbly sincerely and charitably to search into the cleare steps of Primitive prudence Apostolicall order and Ecclesiacall Authority which had due and tender regard to all sorts of Christians so as to keep up a meet subordination with a Christian communion To which end I was willing to hope this shew of Association might conduce But when I find in some of them nothing that looks civilly upon Episcopacy many things cast reprochfully and scornfully upon the excellent Bishops of England and all the Episcopall Clergy who were not inferiour in any regard to the best Associators when I find that some of them have the confidence to exclude all that have of late yeares been ordained by any Bishop with Presbyters though such an one as the late most venerable Bishop of Norwich Dr. Hall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when I see that some rigid Presbyterians and popular Independents affect with great Magistery to Duopolize all Church-power to grasp into their hands and bosomes as the sides of a drag-net meeting together all Ministeriall Authority not onely not owning the best surviving Bishops with any respect nor yet in any faire way applying to any of them after all their undeserved indignities but spitefully and professedly abdicating all communion with them under the name of Bishops reducing them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the levell and parallel of Presbyters which the 630. Orthodox Fathers in the fourth generall famous Councell of Chalcedon which all Ministers of England approved and I think subscribed to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an absurd and unreasonable practise yea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a great sacriledge and Zonaras upon that Canon makes it a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fighting as Giants against God as a dethroning of Christ the Bishops eminent authority and presidency in the Church being a lively representation of Christs sitting in the midst of the throne who did undoubtedly delegate his visible authority of governing the Church to the chief Apostles above the 70. and all other Teachers after which manner and proportion these chief Apostles who were the first and great Bishops after Christ did both commit and derive their authority to the following Bishops their successors who were a lesser sort or second edition of Apostles when I see what an Idol some Ministers and people make of their Scotch-Covenant by which great Engine or Military Ram they still think themselves bound to batter Episcopacy as if their Covenanting against it as it then stood in England were an obligation to persecute all Episcopacy for ever when in earnest the least variation of its former constitution both satisfies and absolves from that bond which some men still superstitiously venerate as if it were an image faln from heaven a matter of divine precept and institution and not rather of humane machination and politick invention which we are sure it was as if it were the solemn result of the pious or of the peaceable and publick sense of this Nation and not rather the issue of troubled braines and broken times indeed many forget that the Covenant smells more of fire smoke of sulphur and gun-powder than of the Spouses myrrh and perfumes of Christian Love and Charity Again when I consider how passion and pride betrayes many men to rashnesse rashnesse to folly folly to obstinacy obstinacy to presumption presumption to animosities and these to unchristian fewds everlasting despite and bitternesse which must still be vented as cholerick humors once in a month against the most innocent and Primitive Episcopacy yea against the most deserving and yet most suffering Bishops of this Church and of all the world old and new when I see the personall errata's and exorbitances or infirmities of some few Bishops by most uncharitable Synecdoches which put a part for the whole are in a pittifull fallacious way of vulgar oratory urged against all Episcopacy and Bishops in any orderly eminency or presidentiall authority in the Church contrary to the faith and honour of all antiquity and the former happy experiences of this Reformed Church when I find how wary and shy some Ministers are in their zeal and forwardnesse for their petty Associations to seem to own even their own judgements and reall inclinations toward any such condescentions and close with Episcopacy as may reflect upon their former transports how loth they are really and freely to offer such proposals as are equable and ingenuous pure and peaceable to the Episcopall party who aim at no more than such a paternall presidency and order as may best preserve the undoubted power of ordination and Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction as it was Primitively setled in and transmitted by the hands of the first Bishops who immediately succeeded the Apostles When I see as I plainly do this partiality restivenesse and cowardise in some Ministers of good parts then do I almost sink in despaire ever to see or enjoy while I live in England any thing in the Order Government and Discipline of this Church that may look like the Primitive pattern which was indeed a Catholicon approved in all Churches used in all ages and submitted to by all sorts of good Christians the onely proper Antidote I think against the poysons of our times farre beyond any of these kind of new confections which tampering and partiall Empiricks
For other wretches I know how their penurious covetous and sacrilegious pulse doth beat they are in nothing more envious and jealous t is equally harsh and odious to them to heare of any thing to be given or restored to the Church being much more sensible of any damage and injury done to their private purses and Estates than of such publick detriments and depressions as cloud the glory of their God and Saviour eclipse the honor of this Church and State vilifie and upon the point nullifie the dignity of the Ministry and prostitute the soules of poor people for which Christ hath died to ignorance and Atheisme to licenciousnesse and hypocrisie it being more with many men to save a penny than to save a soul more willing to spare a sound tooth out of their heads than one pound or shilling to advance Religion they are for a cheap heaven or none so willing they are to perish with their money rather than live by lightning the ship a little CHAP. XVIII AFter the foundations of a true Christian Ministry are thus laid both for its Being which consists in reall abilities discovered and in valid Authority conferred after the most venerable Catholick and authentick custome of the Church which being conforme to the word of God ought in such cases to be as a Law sacred and inviolable after I have further set forth the wel-being of the Clergy and in that of the whole Church by sustaining able Ministers in their severall degrees and stations with such ingenuous maintenance as may become not onely the honor of the work and workmen but the Glory of the Christians God the love and value of their Saviour and the beauty or majesty of the Church in which they are employed in so sacred solemn publick and constant services which ought in all reason and Religion to be kept up by all good Christians to some outward conspicuity and decency as far as Gods indulgence affords men peace and plenty The next thing I humbly commend to the Noblenesse Wisdome and Piety of my Country for the further strengthning and preservation of the being and wel-being of this Church and its Christian Reformed Religion both in Ministers and people able Preachers and honest Professors is so to combine cement and unite all worthy Ministers and other Christians in an uniforme and holy harmony of due subordination holy discipline and decent Government as may best keep them by Gods blessing from such fractures and factions such schismes and swellings such dashings and dividings against and from each other as have of latter years not onely battered themselves and each other to great diminutions weaknings and deformities but they have crushed this whole Church and crumbled its former intirenesse and amplenesse to so many broken bits and pieces through the impotent ambition of those Ministers or people who being least apt or able are most greedy to govern of themselves and loth to be governed by others which refractoâ—inesse hath not onely defaced the beauty and broken the unity of this Church but further threatens to shake the civill peace stability and consistence of this Nation whose honor and happinesse is not onely now at the stake but much abated and in hazard to be quite lost if that publick wisdome and courage be not applied which is necessary to recover the blessing of the Reformed Religion and the unity of this Church to such a posture of setledness order and unity as shall not need to feare either fanatick Confusion or Romish usurpations which are the great plots and designes laid against this Church and Nation of England I easily foresee that nothing will be a more hard knotty and flinty work than the recomposing of this Church to any Ecclesiasticall Uniformity Charitable Harmony and Orderly Government if either the late sharp passions private interests or mutuall prejudices of any one of the parties so divided from each other in England be made the partiall and scanty measures of Church-Order and Polity For the animosities and Antipathies among them are such that they will on all sides disdaine to be forcibly cast into any one of the pretended models which are on foot The onely probable and feisable way to reduce all sober Ministers and honest people to a consciencious and charitable Communion is for the wisdome and piety of this Nation to do as Constantine the Great did when he burnt all the querulous demands and uncharitable petitions of the Ecclesiasticks against one another so reconciling them all while he utterly silenced all their quarrels and buried their complaints In like manner the best and speediest method of our union will be to lay aside all the earnest pleas and violent pretentions of all sides either Episcopal Presbyterian or Independent which have occasioned or increased our late differences and onely to examine calmely seriously and impartially what was the Idea of Church-Order and Government for the first three or four hundred yeares that is twelve hundred yeares at least before these late contests and debates were raised or indeed thought on in this or any Church Certainly the Primitive Catholick and Apostolick posture of the Churches Polity Order and Government must needs be the true pattern in the Mount as Mr. Calvin confesseth in which times there was lesse leisure for ambitious or factious variations the Church being either persecuted most-what for 300. yeares or miraculously refreshed at its freedome in the fourth Century through Gods indulgence and the munificence of Constantine the Great and other Christian Emperours who as Princely nursing Fathers studied the Peace Unity and prosperity of the Church as much as that of the Empire In both which conditions both calme and storme it is most remarkable that as no one Author Father Historian Synod or Councill did any way doubt dispute or divide about Church-Government before the Great Council of Nice so when that great and Oecumenick Councill did come together to take a survey as of the Churches unity in sound Doctrine and Manners so of its Discipline and Government that it might gather together and recompose what ever the tempestuous times of persecution had shaken or shattered yet this grand most venerable and holy Assembly did neither begin any new Hierarchy or Government of the Church nor did they in the least sort tax former times of any Innovation Alteration or desertion from the Primitive Apostolick and Universall pattern which was still fresh in mens memories but they began their Session and Sanctions with that solemn approbation confirmation of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 former ancient Customes or Orders of the Church-Catholick as holy and Authentick which all men knew had prevailed from the beginning Nor was there then any doubt or debate in the generall as to the point of Episcopall presidency or jurisdiction however as to their respective Dioceses and particular distributions some disputes had risen But as to the succession of chief Bishops from the very Apostles daies and
degenerous persons as deserved not to bear the name or knew not how to use the Office of a Bishop Doubtless their Enemies being Judges no place no Age no one Nation or Church in the world since the Apostles ever exceeded the Bishops of England for piety and learning for useful and exemplary vertues of which I shall afterward give more exact account no Church ever more happy flourishing or prosperous then the reformed Church of England was under such worthy Bishops as some men so despitefully used Could Bishops in this and all Churches be so blessed of God and yet Episcopacy deserve to be so abhorred of men Were the Evangelical labours of godly Bishops so plentifully watered with the Dew of Heaven and yet doth their function deserve to be rooted out of the Earth If Episcopacy in its secular riches and honours must needs be destroyed in order to confiscate the Churches Lands yet at least primitive though poor Episcopacy might have been preserved whose ancient eminency would have been both authoritative and conspicuous among good Christians through the Clouds of such undeserved poverty Though some men might presume to deprive Bishops of their deserved and lawful Estates yet sure they were too bold to rob the Church of all excellent and deserving Bishops such as England ever afforded both before and since the Reformation which the Romish and Jesuitick policies never hoped more effectually to deforme and destroy than by helping to carry on the routing of Episcopacy Certainly the excellent Bishops of England were the greatest Eye-sore of the Pope and his Conclave nor did they care to fight by their secret and open Engines against small or great Presbyters so much as against these Prelates who had so long stood in their way They knew when these chief Shepherds were smitten the Sheep would soon be scattered nor were Papists ever more gratified than when Episcopacy was extirpated out of England What if the God the Lord of his Church the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath laid the Government of it on the Shoulders of Christ Jesus and he derived the external administration or dispensation of it to the Apostles and they to succeeding Bishops as spiritual Pastors and venerable Fathers of his Church what if he should thus plead the cause of Episcopacy in the eminency of its Apostolical order and primitive authority against all those that have spoken acted and written so many peevish spiteful popular partial and perverse things against it What if he should lay to their Consciences what is visible to their and all mens eyes the sad divisions miserable confusions and horrid vastations of this Church and the Reformed Religion which have followed the destroying of harmlesse honourable ancient venerable useful and necessary Episcopacy Would they not be infinitely ashamed and mightily confounded for the new Modes which they have taken up for the Oakes which they have chosen to over-shadow themselves yea for the Briars and Brambles which they fancy as fittest to rule themselves and the Church of Christ in this Land either by way of parity or popularity which are not fit methods to rule their own families withall Will a few arbitrary precarious Presbyters and unautoritative Preachers or their new Associations serve their turn Or will a few petty Congregations or Schismatizing Conventicles here and there scattered and scrambled together in Cities and Countries be able to countervail the damage or to recompence the unspeakable defects and detriments which this Church and Nation which all estates and degrees of Christian people have sustained by the totall loss and overthrow of primitive Episcopacy which was as it were smothered to death in a crowd and huddle never legally examined or fairly condemned by the free and full suffrages of all estates so as its Antiquity worth and honour did deserve What learned prudent and conscientious Ministers or other Christians can be fully satisfied with those new-fashioned ordinations and ministrations of holy things which neither they nor their Fore-fathers nor any ancient Churches ever knew and wherein that Divine Authority which they challenge is so justly doubted or disputed as by no Catholick hand or regular course committed to them If that Ministeriall power which is challenged and exercised upon such new accounts of humane policies and later inventions if it should really be none at all or as weak and defective as it is dubious for Ordination as it is for Jurisdiction which is very much feared and suspected by very wise and good men especially where not want and necessity deny but wantonnesse and wilfulnesse seek to deprive Christians of their true Bishop O how vain how invalid how arrogant how insignificant must those Ministers and all their holy Ministrations appear to many Christians who have of later years set themselves up by a Presbyterian Commission or Popular Election not onely without but against their lawful Superiours who were every way so able so worthy and so lawfully authorized for that office and eminency not onely as they were ordained Presbyters but as they were further consecrated Bishops that is placed by Christ and appointed by the Church in an higher degree capacity use and exercise of Ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction then ever was in any Presbyters Of which eminency Episcopal as that famous Council of Nice took such care to have it continued after the cient mode and patern of publick Election and solemn Consecration or the Churches Benediction so all this formality must have been very superstitious and ridiculous if it added nothing of authority and power peculiar to them as Bishops but onely what they formerly had received in common as Presbyters Doubtless reordination as rebaptization to the same office and degree in the Church was ever condemned in the Church of Christ as impious because superfluous a meer mockery of Religion a taking the name of God in vaine forbidden by the African Canons and many Councils never practised by any but such as St. Basil the Great reports one Eustathius of Sebastia to have been whom he calls an infamous Heretick a notorious deserter of the Churches Catholick Communion If St. Chrysostome in the fourth Century had judged it enough to complete him in his Episcopall power and Authority to have been once ordained a Presbyter as he was in Antioch where he so lived twelve yeares sure he would not have troubled himself to have been after ordained or consecrated a Bishop by Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria and others of that order when he was chosen to be Bishop of Constantinople Nor would St. Austin a person no lesse pious and learned who had been ordained Presbyter by Valerius Bishop of Hippo been ordained anew by Megalius Patriarch of Numidia when he was chosen to be Bishop of Hippo. In like sort was one Alexander a Presbyter ordained by St. Chrysostome to be Bishop of Bassinopolis according to the uniforme method of Antiquity which judged that the Presbyters chusing the peoples approving and the
Custom and Canons of this as of all Churches also by the ancient Lawes of this Nation thus splitting even their dear Presbytery in pieces which was best embarqued with Episcopacy while they ran this on ground upon the Rocks Quick-sands the oppositions of power and the despiciencies of people between which all Church-government and publick respect is now removed from both Bishops and Presbyters Alas how pitiful a part of any Government have any of these Ministers now to act and please themselves with who affected to play a new game at Chesse in this Church onely with pawns and rooks without Kings or Bishops whose unseparable fate at least as to the Genius of England King James very wisely foresaw would stand and fall together if he had as wisely prevented the danger and damage of both it being very hard for any Soveraign Prince to govern such an head-strong people unless he have power over their minds as well as their bodies This a Prince cannot have but by Preachers who as the weekly Musterers Orators and Commanders of the populacy do exercise by the Scepter of their tongues a secret and swasive yet potent Empire over most peoples soules These preachers he knew were not easily kept either in good order or in just honor being men of quick fancies of daring and active confidences great valuers of themselves and ambitious to be many Masters yea popular and petty Monarchs in the Thrones of their Pulpits and Territories of their Parishes unlesse there were some men over them who are fittest to be above them as being too hard for them in their own sphere and mystery best able to judge of Ministers Learning Opinions Preaching Praying and Living men for yeares of Gravity and Prudence rewarded with Estates and Honors And such were Bishops without whom Christian Monarchs are like those Kings who had their thumbs and great toes cut off it being not possible for a Prince immediately to correspond with every petty Presbyter nor is it comely to contest with them nor can he be quiet from their pragmatick janglings unlesse they be curbed by some such Learned Authoritative and Venerable Superiours as are properest for them who were the fittest mediums between the King and his other Clergy both to perswade Princes to favour the Church and to perswade Church-men to preach and practise loyalty toward their Princes which tends to the honor of both Magistracy and Ministry So that it was no other then an obvious conjecture to foretel No Bishop no King since the same Scriptures and Principles of both reason and religion piety and policy lead men to obey both as rulers over them in the Lord or to reject both by affecting popular parities and communities as in Church so in State Which abatement of Kingly or Soveraign power in one person as to its civil Magistratick and Monarchical eminency hath by late experience been found so inconsistent with the Genius of this English Nation that the Representatives of the People have not onely importunely petitioned the restitution of Monarchical yea Kingly government but they have actually setled the main authority in one person under an other Name and Title justly fearing lest the dividing and diminishing of Soveraignty Majesty and Authority as to the chief Governour should in time make a dissolution of the civil Government by frequent emulations and ambitions incident to any such Nation as England is which hath so many great and rival Spirits in it prone to contemn or contest with any thing that looks like their Equal Nor do I doubt but Time will further shew us if it hath not done it already sufficiently that no less inconveniences and mischiefs both as to Church and State may follow the debasing and destroying of Ecclesiastical power and authority in England dividing and mincing it so diverting the ample and fair the ancient and potent stream of Episcopacy which flowed from the Throne of Christ and of Christian Kings into the new rivulets small channels and weak currents either of Presbytery or Independency The Scepter of Government in Church or State like the staff or rod of Moses when it is cast out of his hand on the Earth or populacy turns to a serpent Democracy being a very terrible Daemogorgon untill it be resumed into Moses his hand as King in Iesurun it doth not return to its former beauty strength and use which that did after it had justly devoured the rods and serpents of the Magicians as in time Monarchical Government will do all other kinds or essayes in Engl. which are but the effects of popular passions and encroachments carried on more by some Preachers Inchantments then by Lay-mens Ambitions Strabo and others tell us that the people of Cappadocia when the Romanes had conquered their Kings and offered them their Liberty as a Province or free State under them they refused the favour affirming the temper of their Country was such that the people in it could not live if they were not governed by a King So pertinacious were they as indeed most people in the world have been and are at this day to retaine the sacred Tradition of Kingly or Monarchicall Government which being parentall and Patriarchall is most naturall and divine derived to us by nature and confirmed by good experience ever since Noah and Adam who had their just Soveraignty as Fathers and Kings over all mankind derived to them from God the Great Father and Eternall King over all from whom Monarchy and so Episcopacy derive their Majesty and Authority Primogeniture carrying with it as Princely so Priestly power which made the same name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gen. 41.45 Exod. 3.1 to signifie both Prince and Priest The want of either of which and the swerving from either of them commonly occasioneth infinite distractions in any Nation and Church especially if they have been in all times wonted to be governed by them To avoid which miseries among Mankind the Wisdom of God hath guided as most Nations to Monarchy so this and all primitive Churches to the royall Priesthood of Episcopacy from the very cradle or beginning of Christianity At which time S. Jerom to Euagrius confesseth it was toto orbe decretum a Catholick Decree and Order through all the Christian world which could be no other then Apostolical at least And however other Reformed Churches may make a shift to live and some of them thrive without the formal name and title of Bishops though most of them have the efficacy of the power and the reality of the authority in their Superintendents yet I am confident till English Spirits are wholly cow'd and depressed with war and such exhaustings as utterly dis-spirit and embase the Nobility Gentry and Communalty nothing will be more inconsistent with them than what savours of parity and popularity in Church-Government They will rather affect to have every one what they list which in effect will be no Government properly Ecclesiastick further then they may be commanded
be destroyed by vermine as that brave man Simon of Sudbury Archbishop of Canterbury was whom the rabble at seven or eight blowes hacked in pieces A valiant man will not cry out for assistance when he is to encounter with his match but if many beasts of the people unprovoked run upon him he may without cowardise call for succour where he thinks it may be had Such was the case of those Bishops at that time when they not onely fancied but actually found promiscuous and rude heapes of people not onely threatning but offering indignities to their persons as well as to their place and function through whose sides they saw the malice and insolency of such Riotous Reformers sought to strike at the whole frame and constitution of the Church of England which they as all good men had great cause to value more than their lives if they might lay them down in an orderly deliberate way not in a tumultuary and confused fashion Whatever miscarriage those Bishops were guilty of in that particular yet I am sure it was somewhat excusable by the greater Misdemeanor of those who gave them occasion so to complaine Nor doth it any way blemish that excellency which in their more calme and composed actions they did discover worthy of themselves and their Predecessors to whom Erasmus long agoe in Archbishop Warhams daies gave this commendation that England of all Churches had learned Bishops I will not go beyond the Reformation of Religion to find worthy Bishops in England it may suffice here to register some of the well-known names of them which possibly the vulgar never heard of though men of reading and breeding cannot be ignorant of them What was more gentle ingenuous and honest-hearted than Archbishop Cranmer whose native facility made him in rough times lesse fixed till he came to be tyed to the stake of Martyrdome where he took a severe revenge on his inconstancy by burning his right hand first but his sincere though fraile heart was unburned amidst his ashes What was more down-right good than Bishop Latimer who joyed to sacrifice his now decrepit body upon so holy an account as the Truth of Christ What was more holy than Bishop Hooper or more resolute than Bishop Ridley What more severely yea morosely good than Bishop Farrar All of them Martyrs for true Religion by whose fires it was fully refined from the Romane Idolatry drosse and superstition This foundation laid by such gracious and glorious Martyr Bishops in England God was pleased to build a superstructure worthy of it in other most worthy Bishops even to our daies Time would faile me to give every one of them their just Character It may suffice to place an Asterisk of honor to some of their names What man had more Christian gravity than Archbishop Parker who had more humble piety than Archbishop Grindall who more Christian Candor Courage and Charity than Archbishop Whitgift who overcame his enemies by wel-doing and patience deservedly using that triumphant Christian Motto Vincit qui patitur Who had more of pious prudence and commendable policy than Archbishop Bancroft who did many Ministers good that never thanked him for it Who had more of an honorable gravity and all vertues than Archbishop Abbot to whom I may joyne his brother Bishop of Salisbury All these were as chief of the Fathers Metropolitanes of Canterbury Primates of all England as to Ecclesiasticall Order and Jurisdiction according to the ancient pattern of the Church of Christ in all Ages and places Nor were the Archbishops of York inferiour to them such as Sandes Hutton Matthewes and others men of great and good spirits Learned Industrious Hospitable Charitable good Preachers good Livers and good Governours After these came those other Bishops who were equal to them in Gifts Graces and Episcopal Power but so far inferior to them in Precedency and some Jurisdiction as the good Order and Polity of the Church required No Age or History of the Church can shew in any one Century a more goodly company of Bishops than here I could reckon up To omit many that were worthy of honourable remembrance who had been some of them Confessors and Sufferers others constant professors of the true reformed Religion these I may not smother in silence without sacriledge robbing God of his glory this Church of its honour and these Bishops of their deserved praises most of whose works do yet speak for them and loudly upbraid the ingratitude of those that cast dead flies of indignities upon such Bishops whose names are as a pretious Oyntment poured out What was ever more pretious more resplendent in any Church than Bishop Jewel for Learning for Judgement for Modesty for Humility for all Christian Gifts and Graces What one or many Presbyters ever deserved so well of this Church and the Reformed Religion as this one Bishop did whom God used as a chosen arrow against the face of the enemies of this Church and the Reformed Religion What man had more of the Majesty of goodnesse and Beauty of holinesse than Bishop King Who was more venerable than Bishop Cooper though much molested by factious and unquiet spirits Who had more ampleness and compleateness for a good Man a good Christian a good Scholar a good Preacher a good Bishop than Bishop Andrews a man of an astonishing excellency both at home and abroad How shall I sufficiently express the learned and holy Elegancie of Bishop Lake whose Sermons are so many rare Gems or the holy Industry and modest Piety of Bishop Babington Or the Nobleness by Grace by Gifts by Birth and by Life of Bishop Montacute How acutely profound are the Disputes and Decisions of Bishop White How full of equanimity moderation was Bishop Overall How clear compendious and exact was Bishop Davenant How fragrant and florid are the Writings as â—â—s the Life of Bishop Field whose Labours God did bless with the Dew of Heaven he long agoe asserting the honour of this Church by an unanswerable Vindication What can be more beautiful for Learning Judgement and Integrity than Bishop Bilson whose excellent works if some in England had more studied they had not so easily opposed the perpetual Government of the Church which he proves to be Episcopacy Was there any man more Saintly than Bishop Felton who had been a good Patron to some Ministers that since have helped to destroy his Order What could be more devout and thankful to God than Bishop Carleton who hath erected a fair pillar of Gratitude for the remembrance of Gods mercies to this Church and State How commendable for ever will the learned Industry of Bishop Godwin appear to impartial Posterity who hath with equal fidelity diligence and eloquence preserved the History of our English Bishops for above a thousand yeares from oblivion Nothing was beyond the couragious and consciencious freedom of Bishop Sinhouse whose eloquent tongue and honest heart were capable to over-awe a Court and to make Courtiers modest
possibly as Valiant Pious and Morall yet Wisdome being the highest humane endowment and politick or gubernative prudence being the noblest exercise of wisdome in this world for the publick and common good of mankind few of whom are fit to governe themselves or others it is but fit that greater publick incouragements and preferments of Honor and Estate should be given to these than onely to strength which alone is but brutall the endowment of a body which men have common with beasts but the other is proper to our reasonable soules by which we are not far from Angels and neer of kin to God In which excellencies since some Ministers may and do exceed others which makes these want Governours and the others fit to govern what is there of Humane or Divine Law that can be against so prudent so necessary an Order and Polity in the Church as Bishops are and ever have been Whose so envied Estates and Dignities were still no more than that double honour which the Apostle challengeth from all Christians as due to those that rule well and labour in the Word and Doctrine not onely by teaching and writing themselves but by taking care that others do so too within the limits of sober Life and sound Doctrine which works many yea most I hope of our Bishops did and all might yea should have done since the Reformation with as much paines and to as much publick good as this or any other Antiprelatist can pretend to So far was the case of Bishops and Deanes and Prebends different from that of Monks and Abbots which this great D. seeks to parallel as equally needlesse idle odious and pittiless when he cannot be ignorant that Bishops being immediate Successors to the Apostles with whom were anciently resident in Cities the Venerable Colledges of Presbyters which were Deanes and Prebends as their ordinary Counsel these must needs be much elder than any Monastick Orders unlesse he think Jo. Baptist began those Bishops were as placed by the Apostles ever owned in all Ages and Places and reverenced by all orderly Presbyters and Christian people yea and by all Christian Princes by whose pious munificence they were endowed with Revenues and Honors long before ever Presbyters had their Glebes apart and Tithes appropriate to them yet were these Bishops and the Colledges of Presbyters more severely used than the Monks and Abbots who had pensions for life allowed them if they staied in England I appeale to all that are not Levellers in Church or State Is not Government good order and comely subordination as necessary in the Church among all men both of the Laity and Clergy as the family of Christ the Household of faith and an holy Polity City or Common-wealth as it is in all civil Fraternities Companies and Communities or in this paintiffs family Where besides food and other necessaries which he provides for himself in common with his Servants and Children yet doubtless he still reserves for himself a Benjamins portion as to the eminency of his Estate and Authority above them as a Father and Governour Were it robbery and violence to take away any thing unjustly from his children and not so to take all from him as a Father Let this great advocate who pleads I suppose without his see uncalled and unhired against the poor Bishops let him freely declare next bout to all the world whether if he had been a Bishop which honor few men are of the Heresie to think he would have refused being a double-Beneficed and very Conformable man he would have been content that measure should have been offered to him which he thus justifies and triumphs in as offered to his Fathers the Bishops men much his betters every way some of whose shooe-latchets he was not worthy to unloose unlesse he have more worth in him than ever yet he discovered to the world whose agitations have yet been as various as many and as importune to and fro as any Presbyters in England Besides that he endeavours for ever to obstruct any generous return of this Nation to put the Church and Clergy into any Estate of Order Honor and Estate worthy of such Learned and Worthy men as might be bred up if such publick incouragements were not wanting I do in no sort doubt of his Tenderness Touchiness and Impatience if the case had been his own I find how he is netled for a little portion of Bishops Lands to which he pretends a right of purchase I have ever heard this character of this plaintiff that he was ad rem satis intentus nor was he among Pharaohs lean Kine that needed to have fed upon the fatter Quo teneam modo How partial are the principles of some Protestant Preachers of some Quodlibetick Presbyters They may well be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who are so far 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 self-tormenting who are self-condemned who seek to ingratiate and corroborate with men of power by an absolute commending of that for lawful just and good without any peradventure which hath alwaies been a case scarce disputable among Learned and Godly men in all Ages so much did they ever not onely incline but generally resolve the case quite contrary to this great Casuist However it is the safer side no doubt not to alienate any Church-lands and in dubious cases a Divine yea a Doctor and a great one that undertakes to be Confessor and Absolver to Parl. and people he should rather advise in tutiorem partem to the safer side than adventure upon or incourage to that which hath any thing dubious or dangerous in it as to sin yea and a sin of an high nature as Sacriledg is esteemed by all Nations by all Christians that have not buried Christianity and Christ in the Mount Calvary of covetous hearts the Golgotha's or places of skulls where no Helena will ever look for the Crosse of Christ in hope to find it They are far enough from being true Christians who dare Crucifie the Pastors Preachers and Ministers of this Crucified Savour O how glorious and gracious an example to all sorts of men in the present and after-Ages hath this Rabbi this great Master now in our Israel given Prima est haec ultio quod se judice c. May not all men hereafter venture in any case never so doubted to follow this one Doctors opinion if any way plausible or probable against the generall streame and current of all Learned men A latitude which of late I find some Jesuits have allowed in cases of conscience Truly it might seem veniall for secular and military men in cases of civil urgencies and as they imagined necessities of self preservation to seize upon the shew bread the Priests portion and Goliahs sword too as David and his men did by the good leave of the Priests but it had become a Clergy-man and an eminent one who still ownes I think his Academick degrees as deserved and his Ecclesiastick Orders which sure were from
the Bishops hands and Authority as holy and valid else the Tithes and Glebes and Spirituall Livings cannot be so sacred and inviolable in his use and possession as he affirmes them to be I say it had become such an one at least to have been silent who is too rich and knowing to be a Liveller or an Anabaptist or a Quaker or a disowner of all Order and Office Ministeriall He should not have cast oyle by his eminent example and eloquent plea on that fire which he sees is ready to consume even all Presbyters as well as Bishops setled maintenance However if he could not avoid this rock of purchasing Bishops Lands his modesty had been some expiation and his silence a great abatement of the scandall he might have swallowed those holy but now desecrated morsells in secret and not have proclaimed on the house-top to all the world the rost-meat he hath gotten the Venison or part at least which he hath taken together with his great appetite and good digestion The world is not much concerned to know all these things nor much pleased at his swallowing down without chewing any bit of Bishops Lands or Deanes Houses or a whole Colledg or a Cathedrall Church if he can compasse them by his purse or policy for where a crum of this kind goes easily down in time a loaden cart with six horses may follow Were there not others States-men Lay-men and Military-men enough to have bought those Bishops and Church-lands if they must needs have been sold They might possibly have some Reasons of State and solutions of deeply Learned Lawyers which such an one as I and other simple Divines know not of and therefore may not censure But as to the principles of Schollars and the conscience of all Church-men generally we resolve that if it be but a disputable case where sin lies at the door if there be but any notable appearance of evil we are above all men to abstaine from it If it may be veniall in others pleading their ignorance or urgent occasions yet it must needs seem a most uncircumcized act for a grave Minister and of the Church of England a great Doctor and a Reverend Divine Church-men ought in any things of pregnant scandall to be most circumspect and cautious because their example is most contagious allowing as it were of course many graines of further liberty to Lay-men who never think that their girdles ought to be so strait as Ministers if ours be loose theirs will be unbuckled and at last quite thrown off Hence many of our Domestick and new started Presbyterians whom I well knew Mr. C. Mr. W. Mr. S. and others with all the Smectymnuan Legion who were earnest enough at first for the pruning of the over-grown or seare or too much over dropping boughs of Episcopacy and afterward they so far served the times and their Lords as to conspire to the felling down of those ancient and stately Standards in the Church yet I well know they never intended that Lay-men should have gone away with the Bark Tops Timber Bodies Chips and all no they good men intended very honestly and zealously that these superfluities of Bishops and Deanes Estates c. should have been applyed to buy in all Impropriations to augment poor Livings to put Presbyters generally into so good a plight and habit for back and belly that they might be fit to rule in common and have some Majesty as Aldermen of Cities and Burgesses of Townes usually have in their Cheeks and on their Backs for starveling and thred bare Governours like Consumptionary Physitians discredit their profession and deprecate their dignity We other poor Ministers who follow the sense of all the ancient Fathers and Councills of the Canon and Civil Lawes of School-men and Casuists of Reformed and not Reformed Churches both Greek and Latine we wonder what Angel from Heaven hath whispered to this purchaser and pleader to tell him of Gods non acceptance of Bishops lands Persons or Profession of which he was pleased to make so much and so good use to his glory and his Churches good both in England and all the Christian world for a thousand yeares yet now he is content it seemes they should all be Alienated Extirpated Destroyed Possessions Persons and Function of Bishops as unnecessary yea pernicious to the Church and Ministry in Honour Order Government Charity and Hospitality all which are better Reformed to Parity Popularity and Poverty This he reports as from the Cabinet-Counsell or Committee of Heaven where it seemes he hath been since he purchased Bishops lands Truly if an Angel from Heaven had told some Divines and other Gentlemen thus much they would not have believed him because they are perswaded so much of the Evangelicall Order the Apostolick Authority and the Catholick Succession the prudent necessity the honorable decency of Bishops in the Church of Christ upon which presumptions if not sure perswasions they conceive it had been a modesty in all Learned and weighty Ministers who had received their Ordination from Godly Orthodox and Reformed Bishops such as Calvin and Beza and Vedelius would have honored and submitted unto without any envy or diminishing of their Estates and Honors not to have touched so much as a shooe-latchet of what by Right Law and Merit had been theirs that it might at least have been upon Record to after-Ages for the Honour of the English Reformed Clergy in their lowest ebb and depression Ecclesiae Episcoporum bona inter Presbyteros Ecclesiasticos non invenerunt emptorem There is no doubt there would have been buyers enough beside men of larger Estates yet not of stricter consciences even this great and glorious purchaser who though he hath paid his mony yet hath not so put off his Armour hitherto as to have any great cause to boast seemed not at first so satisfied as to be forward not coming at the beginning of the Faire when sure the best peny-worths for example sake would have been sold to so eminent a D. the better to decoy on other purchasers but alas he seems obtorto collo renitente Minerva against his genius to be drawn in driven and necessitated at the fag end of the Market to take such eggs for his money as had been sate upon by a Bishop so many hundred of yeares and may as it seems be either addle or eggs of contention to this purchaser now so resolved and triumphing in his conscientious freedom to buy and sell in the Temple when other poor Scholars are still wind bound and narrow-soled as imagining that Christ long agoe drove all such kind of Merchandize out of the Church as ill becoming Christians as it did the Jewes yea and St. Paul teacheth Believers equally to abhorre Sacriledg as Idols To conclude this long digression whose scandalous occasion lay so high in my way that I could not avoid it this one great instance telling to all the world what this purchaser hath swallowed and how
Irreconcilable differences between Reformed Truths and Romish Errors which are manifest and obstinate p. 308 CHAP. XVII Necessary separation and distance from Rome without uncharitableness p. 313 XVIII Two grand Obstructions of all Christian accommodation in these Western Churches p. 317 XIX The equity and charity of severe and sacrilegious Reformings p. 322 XX. The excuses and pleas for sacrilegious excesses answered p. 325 XXI Sacrilege a great pest to Religion and stop to Reformation p. 327 XXII The insatiableness of sacrilegious spirits unrepressed p. 335 XXIII Pleas for sacrilege answered p. 338 XXIV The Romanists discouragements as to the Reformed Religion by Sacrilege p. 343 XXV A plea for Paul's and other Churches in England p. 348 XXVI Of pious munificence becoming Christians p. 353 XXVII The main hinderances and unlikelihood of a conjunction between Protestants and Romanists p. 355 XXVIII Roman interests advanced by the petty factions of super-Reformers of Religion p. 362 XXIX The danger of divided parties in Religion as to the civil interests of England p. 370 BOOK IV. Setting forth the Sighs Prayers of the Church of England in order to its Healing and Recovery CHAP. I. THE design method of this fourth Book p. 389 II. The difficultie of repairing a decayed Church p. 393 III. Grand motives to a publick restitution and fixation of the Reformed Religion p. 400 IV. Sense of true Honour calls for the establishment of Religion p. 411 V. The hopeful possibility of restoring true Religion to unity and setledness in England p. 422 VI. Of means to recompose the differences of Religion in England p. 427 VII Of the late Associations projected by some Ministers p. 436 VIII Of civil Assistance from Lay-men to restore this Church Religion p. 442 IX A scrutiny of what is good or bad in all parties p. 447 X. The reconciling of the real interests of Episcopacy Presbytery and Independency p. 452 XI True Episcopacy stated and represented to its Antagonists p. 458 CHAP. XII Objections against Episcopacy discussed p. 468 XIII Earnestly exhorting Ministers of all sides to an happy composure and union p. 479. XIV Humbly exhorting Magistrates to assist in so good a work p. 485 XV. Councils or Synods the proper means to restore lapsed Religion p. 492 XVI The method of restoring a setled Church and united Ministry p. 502 XVII Of the well-being of the Clergy or Ministry 1. In point of maintenance and support p. 518 XVIII Of meet order Government and subordination among the Clergy p. 527 XIX Several Pleas in behalf of Episcopacy p. 539 A first Plea from the Catholick Antiquity of Episcopacy p. 540 XX. A second Plea for Episcopacy from its Evangelical temper as to civil subjection p. 556 CHAP. XXI A third Episcopacy most suitable to the genius temper of the English p. 581 XXII A fourth plea for Episcopacy from their true piety and orderly policy p. 600 XXIII A Review of our late English Bishops p. 616 XXIV Bishop Usher Primate of Armagh an unanswerable vindication of Prelacy not Popish but pious p. 639 XXV Commending this Church of England with the Reformed Religion to the piety and wisdome of all persons of honour and honesty p. 651 XXVI A further Caution against Sacrilege upon the occasion of D. B his case lately published about purchasing of Bishops lands p. 665 XXVII Further commending the unity honor and support of the Religion and Ministry of this Church p. 685 The Catalogue of the Bishops in England and Wales 693 The Embleme of the Trees explained in which is briefly set forth the History and Chronology of Episcopacy Presbytery and Independency as pretenders to church-Church-government their first planting growing and spreading in the Christian world p. 22. Revel 3.2 Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain which are ready to die Lam. 1.22 My sighs are many and my heart is faint Synes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ferreus est non fidelis non Christianus sed crudelis quem MATRIS Lacrymae non molliunt Suspiria non movent Planctus non mordent Preces non vincunt Vulnera non cruciant J. G. Ecclesiae Anglicanae Suspiria THE SIGHS OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND Humbly presented to my Honoured and Beloved Countrymen Persons of true Honour Piety and Prudence Who have a just Gratitude Love and Pity for HER. I Am not so ignorant of YOU Honoured and worthy Gentlemen or of my Selfe as to think That you need be put in mind by Me or any private Monitor of that Justice Moderation and Prudence which you owe to your Countrey in reference to those Civill Interests of Peace Plenty Safety Honour Liberty Settlement and the like Which I know doe usually fall under the first cares and counsels of men Momentary concernments giving us poore Mortals quicker summons and resentments than those that are eternall These being the objects of our Faith afar off Those of our senses neerer hand For the just establishing and prudent managing of which if Gods Providence either hath or ever shall give YOU any opportunity worthy of YOUR abilities and integrity I have no more to doe or say as to any of these secular accounts save onely to crave in all humility of the Supreme Wisdome and Mighty Counsellour That he would make you Repairers of those Breaches relievers of those burdens and dispellers of those feares which we owe not so much to the impotence or violence of other mens passions as each of us to our own sins and personall impieties Those importune soliciters of Gods Judgments which by a strange vicissitude and unexpected retaliation of vengeance doe testifie to our faces against the crying iniquities of all estates in these British Nations Which have provoked the just Judge of Heaven and Earth to punish some of us by sore adversities others by severe impunities justly letting us alone and smiting us no more Our Sins then becoming Gods greatest grievances when they are lesse ours as to Contrition Confession and Reformation than they should be And possibly would be if we felt their burdens in our afflictions Hence they also grow at last our greatest penalties and infelicities even then when Prosperity betrayes us most to Impenitency setting us farthest from Amendment and Remorse our earthy hearts usually most hardning when we enjoy the warmest beams of that Sun which Providence makes to shine upon good and bad the just and unjust As for those pecuniary and politick pressures which most men fancy to be their greatest grievances having a quicker sense of what pincheth their purses than what wounds or pierceth their consciences I have learned aâ—ter twice seven yeares experience to be a Christian Stoick Not utterly stupid and improvident but yet not so impertinent as to complain of any common charge or burthen which seems necessary to the present Polity under which I may have leave to live a godly and peaceable life much lesse so discontent as not to be thankfull to God and man for any moderate
true ministeriall authority precious liberties what sober men count defections from the ancient Catholick Apostolick pattern they boast of as perfections what plain-hearted Christians esteem as decayings of the Reformed Religion and ill omens and presages of its ruine these Seraphicks affirm to be edifyings and repairings of that structure which since the Apostles times they pretend was alwayes decaying and dropping down to Apostasy being overladen with the fair roof or covering of Episcopacy of which burthen some blessed Reformers seek totally to have lightened this Church as they have done some Cathedrals of their Leads that they may leave this Church and the Reformed Religion as without any roof and defence against the injuries of foul weather so without any band or coping to keep the walls and sides together What others call Extirpations these magnifie as rare Plantations in which they fell down Cedars and set up Shrubs they root up Vines and plant Brambles rejecting venerable Bishops and orderly Presbyters who are of the Primitive Stock and Apostolick descent that they may bring in a novel brood of Heteroclite Teachers equivocall Pastors and new-moulded Ministers whose late Origine without all doubt ariseth no higher at best than Geneva or Frankfort or Amsteldam or Arneheim or New England some are such popular pieces so much terrae filii of obscure rise of base and mean extraction that they have no name of men or place to render them remarkable being like Mushromes perking up in every molehill and in a moment making themselves the Ministers of Jesus Christ To whose strange and novell productions in Old England the late civill distractions finding it seemes much prepared matter gave not onely life and activity but so great petulancy and insolency that many do not onely change their former profession and utterly abdicate their Church-standing and communion in England but as meer changelings they prefer the saddest Succubaes and Empusa's the most fanatick apparitions of modern fancies in their poor and pitifull Conventicles before the Church of England as some children do the Queen of Fairies before their genuine Mothers instead of whose sound Doctrine sacred Order and Catholick Councils they betake themselves each to their private dotages and ravings to meer nonsense and blasphemies which some cry up as strong reasonings high raptures extatick illuminations to which all men must subscribe though no wise man know what they mean Such confidence some men have that Christians in England have lost not onely their Religion but their Reason upon whom they hope so rudely and grosly to impose their most childish novelties and frivolous follies that as Erasmus speaks of some monkish corrupters or interpolators of S. Jeroms works who had made it harder for him to find out what that acute and learned Father wrote than ever it was for him to write his excellent works so in England what was formerly plain and easie sound and wholsome orderly and Catholick as to true Religion both in Faith Manners Ministry and Government the modern Novelties Whimseys Factions Intricacies and Extravagancies of some men have made not onely perplexed confused but contemptible and ridiculous Yet these are the trash and husks which some mens nauseo us wanton palates in this age do prefer and chuse rather than that wholsome food and sincere milk of Gods word with which the Reformed Church of England alwayes entertained her children untill an high-minded and stiff-necked generation of rank appetites like Jewes growing sick of quailes and surfeited of manna longed for the garlick and onions of Egypt legendary visions fabulous revelations and fanatick inspirations Which Egyptian diet hath of late by a just anger of Heaven upon mens ingratefull murmurings and wanton longings brought many in England to those high calentures and distempers in Religion that like frantick people they flye in the faces of their Fathers and tear the very flesh of their Mother Though civil troubles and State-furies seem much allayed yet these Clero-masticks and Church-destroyers still maintain a most implacable war against the Church of England thinking yea professing some of them that they shall do God good service utterly to destroy it with all its assistants and adherents In order to which design they have sought every where to vilifie and set at nought to crown with thorns and crucifie or at best to counterfeit and disguise the merit worth and majesty of all the sacred Solemnities and Rites the Peace and Polity the Ministry and Ministrations of the Church of England yea and fancying they have a liberty to mock them first and after to naile them to the Cross Good God! how have they buffeted them how importunely do they obtrude upon them amidst their many Agonies gall and vinegar to drink what cruell contempts what virulent pamphlets what scandalous and scurrilous petitions do they frequently vent against all Churches and Church-men relating to or depending upon the Church of England some of them ripping up by a Neronean cruelty the womb that bare them others cutting off by a more than Amazonian barbarity the breasts that gave them suck Nor do they despair to pierce at last this bleeding Church to the very heart if ever the power of the sword come into such hands as are professed enemies to all other Reformed Churches as well as this of England whose languishing but living fate they now behold as with great pleasure so with no small impatience while they see that notwithstanding all their sedulous and industrious machinations against learning and Religion against the Church and Universities of England against Ministers and their maintenance yet there is still some life and spirit some liberty and hope left through the mercy of God and the moderation of some men in power for those Christians that have the courage and conscience to own the Reformed Church of England as their Mother and the Reformed Clergy as their spirituall Fathers Whose just Honour and Interests as I must never desert while I live because I think them linked with those of Gods Glory my Redeemers Honour the Catholick Churches veracity the peace of my conscience and my countrey's happinesse both as to the present age and to posterity so I have thought it my duty in her deplorable condition and in the despondency of many mens spirits to apply the cordiall of this confection mingled with her teares and with her sighs presented to you my most honoured Countrey-men by the help of which you may both fortify your own honest minds and oppose that diffusive venome which you cannot but daily meet in some mens restlesse malice who neither know how to speak well of the Church of England nor how to hold their peace By the example of your judicious favour and generous compassion I doubt not to excite like affections of courage and constancy in all worthy Protestants honest-hearted English whose duty it is amidst the pertinacy of all other parties and factions who like Burres hang together to hold fast that holy and
of England O venerable censors O severe Aristarchusses of a more than Catonian gravity to whose ploughs and looms and distaffs and clubs and hammers 't is meet as to so many sacred scepters this later English and Christian world should no lesse submit their souls than the Jews and Gentiles Greeks and Barbarians Romans and Scythians did to the nets and fish-hooks of the Apostles who were authorized with miraculous gifts and assisted by the speciall power of the holy Spirit of Christ to plant settle and reform and purge Christian Churches To whose holy Doctrine and Divine Institutions delivered in the Old and New Testament and followed by all the Primitive Catholick Churches notwithstanding that the Church of England did in its first Reformation diligently and exactly conform it self if we may believe the integrity of those Reformers who had the courage and constancy to be Martyrs whose learning worth piety hath been confirm'd by the testimony of so many wise religious Princes by the approbation sanction of so many honourable and unanimous Houses of Parliament by the suffrages of so many learned and reverend Convocations by the applauses of so many Sister-reformed Churches if we may believe the preaching living and dying of so many hundred excellent Bishops and Presbyters or the prayers praises and proficiencies of so many thousands of other good Christians or lastly if we may believe the wonderful blessings and speciall graces of a merciful God attesting to the verity sanctity and integrity of this Church-Reformation and Christian Constitution for many happy years Yet against all these some peevish Momusses some spitefull Caco-zelots some evil-ey'd Zoilusses some insolent and causelesse Enemies of the Church of England have not so much modesty as to conceale their malice or to smother their insolent folly and intolerable arrogancy which dares to put the ignorance giddinesse emptinesse vulgarity rashnesse precipitancy and sinisternesse of their silly censures into the balance of Religion contrary to the renowned learning piety gravity grace and majesty of all those who have had so great favour love respect and honour for the Church of England Whom her spitefull and envious adversaries now presume to follow with nothing but Contumelies and Anathema's with pillagings and spoylings with railings and revilings with waste and ruine to the excessive joy of Her Papall enemies whose deeply-designed policies have a long time desired and hoped to see that wofull day befall the Church of England in which her Bishops might beg her Presbyters be starved her Ministry contemned her Liturgie ejected her Unity dissolved and broken her Ancient and Primitive Government abolished her undoubted ordination and succession of Ministers interrupted her whole Christian Frame and Nationall Constitution which was for the main truly Catholick Primitive and Apostolick destroyed dissipated desolated What invincible Armadoes could not atchieve what monstrous Powder-plots could not accomplish what wily Jesuits and other subtile Sophisters despaired to attain having been oft defeated and repelled by the learned care and vigilant puissance of wise Princes sober Parlaments reverend Bishops and other able Ministers of the Church of England that the weaknesse wantonnesse and wickednesse of some of our own petty Sectaries Schismatick Agitators superâ—reforming Reformers is likely to bring to passe whom the most admired and devout Lord Primate of Armagh a great Prophet of God and Pillar of the Reformed Religion sometime told me he esteemed no other than Factors for Popery and Engines for Roman designs by divisions and domestick confusions of Religion to bring in Popish Superstition and Tyranny Indeed a prudent Conjecturer may in this case easily make a true Prophet For the Roman Eagle a watchfull powerfull and voracious bird can never fail at last to seise on these parts of Christendome for her prey where she shall see Ignorance prevail against Knowledge Barbarity against Learning Division against Unity Confusion against Order People against their Priests Novelty against Antiquity Anarchy against Catholick Authority and infinite deformities ushered in under the title of speciall Reformations That cunning Conclave which overlooks the Christian world as the greatest constellation of policy in the West knows full well that such feaverish distempers in any Church or Christian State as now afflict the Church of England will not faile if they long continue to bring it to such an hectick consumption as will quite destroy its former healthfull constitution and prepare it for those Italian Empiricks who will come then to be in request with common people when they find no good to be got by the best-reputed Physicians the most specious Reformers when these are at their wits ends so differing in their judgements and practise that they know not what to do by reason of the madnesse impatiency and petulancy of people those foraign Mountebanks will alwayes promise men help and cure at an easie rate for they require no more of the most desperate patients than to credit their receipts to be confident of and reconciled to the skill and artifice of the Church of Rome their Mother and the Pope their Father CHAP. VI. I Cannot believe that any of you who are persons of Learning Honour and Integrity lovers of your Countrey and the Reformed Religion can be wholly strangers to the sad and dangerous condition of the Church of England Nor can you if rightly set forth to you be unaffected with it unlesse your designs and fortunes are to be advanced by the rents and ruines of this Church of England In which as the Lord liveth before whom we all stand distempers are risen not onely to Divisions but Distractions not onely to Injuries but Insolencies not only to Obloquies but Oppressions not onely to Schismes but Abscissions not onely to Factions but Confusions not onely to Lapses but Apostacies not onely to rude Deformities but they tend to absolute Nullities as to any Christian Harmony Fraternity Order Beauty Unity Strength Safety and publick setling of that Reformed Religion which was once professed in the Church of England And this by reason of the Envies Despites Rudenesses Animosities Seditions Strifes Separations Raylings Reproches Contumelies Blasphemies and prophane Novelties every where pregnant and predominant among vulgar spirits and odiously cast upon all things that you and your forefathers esteemed as religious and sacred in this Church of England The torrent of rebukes and troubles like Ezekiels waters is now risen not onely to the ankles and knees but to the loyns and neck growing too rapid and deep for the common people to wade over or venture into nor are they safe for any to engage upon but those who as S. Christopher is represented in the Legendary Emblem are heightned by their own integrity and supported by Gods heroick Spirit for it is a black and dangerous a red and dead Sea upon which he adventures who will now seriously assert the Church of England whose troubled state is more stormy than those waters were on which S. Peter ventured to walk or
wife mans censure yet even for these chiefly it is that some subtil and silly people do most bitterly inveigh against them and in them against this whole Church and Nation which must either be guilty with the Clergie or the Clergie must be free and unblameable with the Parlaments and whole people of the land who chose and by law imposed such orders upon themselves and their Ministers Secondly for the Clergies private failings and personal infirmities either immorall or indiscreet to which as frail men they may be subject in these they desire to be the first accusers and severest censurers of themselves which ingenuity is sufficient to silence the malice of the worst to satisfie the justice of the best and to merit the pity as well as pardon of all charitable Christians who are not strangers to their own excess or defects Thirdly Beyond these which are but personal and occasional so venial failings the Clergie of England do defie and challenge their severest adversaries to charge and convince any considerable number of them either in private parties and conventions or in more publick Synods and Convocations of having at any time conspired to broach or abet any Heresy or false Doctrine any gross Errour Schisme or Apostasy any Immorality or Exorbitancy contrary to Truth Faith and good manners That liberty which some of the Clergie conceived might honestly be indulged to such people as were tired and exhausted with hard labour in the six dayes for their civil and sober recreation on the Lords day or Christian Sabbath thereby to counterpoise those Jewish severities which they saw some men began to urge and obtrude upon Christians both as to the change and rest of that day which quarrell is not yet dead in England this I am prone in charity to believe neither arose from any root of immorality in the advisers nor intended any fruits of impiety in the publishers who were not ignorant how far in such a Toleration they did conform to the judgement and practise too of some forreign reformed Churches and to the chief instruments of their Reformation who neither did nor do even in Geneva abhor avoid or forbid modest honest and seasonable recreations to servants and labouring people on the Lords day Although for my part I confess I approve rather according to the Doctrine of the Church of England in the Homily of the time and place of prayer that holy strict observance generally used by the most cautious Christians in England which yet doth allow such ingenuous relaxations of mind and motions on that day as are neither impious nor scanlous being at once far removed from Judaick rigours and from Heathenish riots which medium was the sense and practise too of the best and most of the Clergie in England as to that one point of the Christian Sabbath or Lords day which Justin Martyr calls Sunday 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so sharply objected against some of them So then as to any reall enormities of opinions or scandalous practises in Religion the Clergie of England taken in their polity and integrality neither are nor ever were guilty since the Reformation either in Doctrine Worship Discipline or Manners which justification is as clear as the noon-day's light if not our selves nor our home-bred enemies but the Reformed Churches abroad or the ancient and Primitive Churches might be our Judges None but Papists and Separatists or Anabaptists and Schismaticks have ever condemned or suspected the Church or Clergie of England of any corruption in Doctrine of any flaw in the Foundation of any fraud in holy Institutions of any allowed licentiousnesse in our Conversations of any undecency in our Devotions of any superstition in our religious Administrations in all which according to the directions of Gods Word by the assistance of Gods holy Spirit through faith in the merits and mediation of the Son of God our onely Saviour Jesus Christ we worshipped the onely true God who is blessed for ever As to the point of Church-Discipline wherein some men were so clamorous and importune as if there had been no health in this Church because it did not take their physick which it needed not as the laws had not enjoyned all those ancient severities and strictnesses of penances because neither the temper of the times nor mens spirits would bear them so the wise Bishops and discreet Ministers under them did so manage this point of Church-discipline for many years by their care and vigilancy their good doctrine and exemplary lives their fatherly monitions and charitable corrections as far as the laws gave them leave that they happily attained to the reall use and best end of all Church-discipline which is the Churches peace and preservation in purity and honour in sincerity and conspicuity of true Religion whose interests might possibly have been carried higher as to the point of Discipline if the Clergie of England had been furnished with such a latitude of power as Primitive Bishops and Presbyters both enjoyed and exercised which the softness and delicacy of this Age would hardly endure especially when once the passions novelties ambitions of men were carried on under the pretexts of Reformation and new Discipline in which some men resolved never to be satisfied till all things fell under the tuition and gubernation of their own factions unless all Church-power be in some mens hands no Church-government is worth a button Not but that the remissness of some Church-governours and the rigours of others according to their private tempers judgements and passions might sometime by their excesses or defects possibly displease more calm and moderate men as warping too much on either hand from that medium and rectitude of charity discretion legality and constancy which the Canons of the Church intended Its constitution health and peace required especially in the peevishness and touchiness of those times when many Philistins and Dalilahs lay in wait to betray and destroy the Church of England Yet amidst these seeming exorbitances of some Church-men it may with truth be affirmed and is by all experience confirmed that the state of Christian and Reformed Religion for doctrine manners and government for piety charity and proficiency was far better both in England and in Wales than it now is or is ever like to be under those sad effects to which some mens fury faction and confusion seek to reduce this Church So then the male-administrations truly charged upon some Church-governours heretofore had not so bad an influence upon this Church and the Reformed Religion as the later want of able and fit Governours after the ancient way of Church-government hath now produced every where For the defects and inordinacies of some private Ministers which can be no wonder where there were above ten thousand of them I neither approve nor patronize them in the least kind onely I plead in behalf of the whole order and function as it stood in this Churches constitution that a few Ministers faults ought not in
the firm ground less indeed to vulgar admiration but more to their own safety and others benefit S. Paul seriously represseth the vanity of knowledge falsly so called when men intrude themselves into things they understand not being puffed up as those primitive Gnosticks in their fleshly minds not holding the Truths as they are in Jesus nor content with the simplicity of the Gospel as it hath been delivered received understood believed and practised by the Catholick Church of Christ this check the Apostle gave to humane curiosities and Satanick subtilties even then when speciall gifts and revelations were at the highest tide CHAP. XVII THe better learned and more humble Ministers of the Church of England both Bishops and Presbyters ever professed with S. Austin and the renowned Ancients an holy nescience or modest ignorance in many things no less becoming the best Christians the acutest Scholars and profoundest Divines than their otherwayes vast knowledge and accurate diligence to search the Scriptures and find out things revealed by God which belong to the Church The modesty and gravity of their learning commends the vastness and variety of it as dark shadowes and deep grounds set off the lustre of fair pictures to the greater height They were not ashamed to subscribe to Saint Paul's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unfathomable depth the divine Abyss of unsearchable wisdome and knowledge they were not curious to pry into things above them or to stretch their wits and fancies beyond that line and measure of truth which God had set forth to his Church in his written Word and in those Catholick summaries thence extracted as the rule of Christian Faith Manners and Devotion whereto the spirits of all good Christians great and small learned and idiots were willingly confined of old as Irenaeus tells us they never boasted of raptures revelations new lights visions inspirations special missions and secret impulses from Gods Spirit beyond or contrary to Gods Word and the good order of his Church thereby to exercise their supposed liberties and presumptuous abilities that is indeed to satisfie their lusts disorders and extravagances in things civil and sacred to discover their immodesties and impudicities like the Cainites Ophites Judaites and Adamites to gratifie their luxuries and injuries their sacriledges and oppressions their cruelties against man and blasphemies against God their separations divisions and desolations intended against this Church The godly Pastors and people of Christs flock never professed any such impudent piety or pious impudence because they were evidently contrary to sound Doctrine and holy Discipline beyond and against the sacred precepts and excellent patterns of true Ministers sincere Saints and upright Christians whose everlasting limits are the holy Scriptures sufficient to make the man of God and Minister of Christ perfect to salvation They were not like children taken with any of these odde maskings and mummeries of the Devil who is an old master of these arts in false Prophets and false Apostles with their followers whose craft ever sought to advance their credits against the Orthodox Bishops Presbyters and professors of true Religion by such ostentations of novelties and unheard of curiosities in Religion which never of old or late made any man more honest holy humble or heavenly they never advanced Christians comforts solitary or sociall living or dying but kept both their Masters and Disciples in perpetual inquietudes perplexities and presumptions which usually ended in villanies outrages and despairs Nor will these new Masters late discoveries prove much better whereof they boast with so insolent and loud an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for all their rarities are but dead carkases which are become mummy by being long dried in the sands or wrapped up in searcloths they are not less dead though they seem less putrified to those whose simplicity or curiosity tempts them thus to rake into the skulls and sepulchres of old Hereticks idle Ecstaticks such as the very primitive times were infinitely pestred withal but blessed be God they were all long ago either extinct of themselves and gone down to the pit or crucified dead buried and descended into hell by the just censures Anathemaes and condemnations passed against them by the godly Bishops and Ministers of the Church in those ages Nor have these Spectres ever much appeared in this Church of England till these later years in which by the ruines and rendings of this Church they have gained a rotten kind of resurrection not to their glory but to their renewed shame and eternall infamy I trust in Gods due time when once the honour of the true Christian and Reformed Religion once happily setled and professed in the Church of England shall be again worthily asserted and re-established by your piety and prudence my noble and religious Countrey-men who have been and I hope ever will be the chief professors and constant Patrons of it under your God and your pious Governours Your prudence and piety your justice and generosity is best able to see through all those transports which are so transparent those specious pretences those artificiall mists and vapours which are used by some novel Teachers to abuse the common people that engaging them into eternall parties animosities and factions they may more easily by many mouths and hands not onely cry but utterly pull down this Reformed Church of England in its sound Doctrine wholsome Discipline Catholick Ministry sacred Order solemn Worship and Apostolick Government All which must now be represented to the world by these new Remonstrants as poor and pittifull carnall and common meer empty forms and beggarly elements fit to be cast out with scorn as reaching no further than Christ in the letter Jesus in the flesh Truth in the outward court Religion in the story or legend but they say the Ministers and other Christians of Old England are not come within the vaile to the Spirit and Mystery they have not that light within which far out-shines the paper-lanthern of Gods word without them CHAP. XVIII THese and such like are the uncouth expressions used to usher in under the names of liberty curiosity sublimity nothing but ignorance idlenesse Atheisme barbarity irreligion and utter confusion in this Church or at best as I shall afterward more fully demonstrate they are but van-courriers or agitators for Romish superstitions and Papall usurpations the end of all this gibberish is Venient Romani Put all these fine fancies and affected phrases together with all those strange phantasms in Religion which of late have haunted this Church like so many unquiet vermin or unclean spirits truly they spell nothing but first popular extravagances which are the embasings and embroylings of all true and Reformed Religion next they portend Popish interests and policies prevailing against this Church and State whose future advantages are cunningly but notably wrapt up in these plebeian furies and fondnesses as grocery wares are in brown paper Be confident the spirit of Rome which is
who commonly were most imperious when the Church had most peace and civil prosperity but the Presbyterian thunder and Independent lightning urged most upon all Bishops and all Episcopall Ministers then when they were most scared pillaged and harrased by a civil war when most tossed by those sad storms and almost overwhelmed by the impressions of those sad dissentions Then then was it that Bishops and other Episcopall Ministers whose consciences were guided in their judgements by the wisdome of this Church and Nation together with all other Christian Churches in all ages having lost their clokes in the wars must be deprived of their coats also chiefly for their innocent opinion and honest adherency to Catholick Episcopacy then was it that where Episcopacy had at any time and that by special command from their Governours silenced or sequestred refractory or turbulent Ministers by tens or hundreds possibly Presbytery and Independency inflicted either those mulcts or terrours at least upon thousands of Ministers dissenting from them not as to the Religion established or Laws in force in England but meerly as to their private opinions and principles about church-Church-government Hence so many learned pious and painful Preachers since the civil digladiations ceased had been condemned to chains of everlasting darkness to remediless distresses both they and their families if there had not been some more generous mercy and connivence shewed than those mens spirits intended or can well bear Through which miseries and terrours many Ministers gray hairs have been brought down with sorrow to their graves After all which dreadful severities either intended or executed against the Episcopall Clergie yet as far as I can see the condition of any sort of Ministers now in England is not any whit better as to the generality nor comparable to what the Clergie enjoyed in former times who in my judgement might well have born the yoke of Episcopacy with as little disparagement and with as much ease and honour every way as they have for some years done the examination and inspection the rebukes and frowns the terrours and jurisdictions of Major Generals or Countrey Committees not onely in secular and military but even in religious respects among which few I believe were to be found equal or exceeding such Bishops and other grave Divines as England afforded both able Preachers and excellent Governours much more fitted in all respects except their swords to be the superintendents of Ministers being of the same education office and calling than most of those men can be who are generally so much Heteroclites different from learned men both in their breeding learning studies and course of living that even from hence they have sometimes secret Antipathies even against all Ministers or Clergy-men as persons of another genius of more refined minds and if men were impartially weighed of greater worth and merits As then I cannot find that Ministers of any new name form title and extractions whatsoever have much mended their condition by that great alteration they have made or sought in this Church and State so I am sure their mutual enmities and divisions do very much heighten their common afflictions and add exceedingly to that general darkness and diminution in all respects civil and sacred which is come or coming upon them as upon wicked men in the strict account of Gods justice or as weak men in the vulgar process of mans severity Indeed the worst of Ministers miseries they generally owe to themselves who in piety and prudence above all men should by united counsels and cares avoid them because it is sport to the most and worst of men to see those men together by the ears hating despising biting and devouring one another who are esteemed the severe censurers of other mens sins and follies sharp curbs to the childish petulant and licentious humours of people Ministers scufflings and contests with one another is beyond any Cock-fighting or Bear-baiting to the vulgar envy malice profanenesse and petulancy In the midst of all which sufferings first from Divine Justice which calls upon every one to examine the plague of his own heart next from humane ingratitude and insolency though every sober and prudent Minister cannot but see that precipice and gulph of irreligion irreverence and contempt to which the Reformed Religion and the whole office of the Ministry is now falling in England through the endless capricios and extravagances chiefly of some Ministers though most Ministers on all sides that have any learning worth or abilities for that office do generally agree in the same Scriptures and Sacraments in the same Faith and Salvation in the same God and Saviour in the same Graces and Vertues in the same Doctrine for morals and Mysteries in the same Precepts and Promises in the same holy duties and blessed hopes yet even these Ministers which is a thousand pities are sharply and for ought I can see unless God work miracles upon some of their spirits and tempers resolutely and eternally divided by those wedges of differences touching external Church-order and Discipline the manner of worship and power of managing of Church-government so that the way of peace few have known nor are they patient to learn contrary to their presumptions To recant their errours they are ashamed remit their rigour they must not lest they abate their parties and followers exchange their animosities as men for moderations becoming brethren and Christians they will not lest their credit decay and their factions abate lest those shews and shadows of popular empire vanish which they have seemed or fancied themselves to enjoy upon these accounts of rare inventions and new models of Reformation Ministry c. All which must by some men be kept up though all things else do fall to the ground though the Church of England lies languishing and sighing weeping and bleeding though the Reformed Religion is deformed decaying dying though both piety and sincerity be much dispirited though they cannot but see Ichabod wrote upon all their foreheads though all Ministerial order office employment and authority as to mens inward respect and consciences no less than in their outward reverence and obedience is infinitely slackned and in many places as well as in many hearts quite dissolved though the Catholick Character or Christs cognizance of Christians which is sincere charity be much defaced the Devils badges of factious confederacies be much worn though the purity and simplicity the warmth and worth the words and works of true Religion be much out of fashion giving way to fanatick follies and impudent vanities daily vented in every place though the beauty serenity of the true Christian Religion as of old and of the well-reformed Religion as it was of later years well established in Engl. be much hidden defaced disguised by many hypocritical masks new dresses though the palpable cunning of some men hath taught them to abuse this credulous age by shaving off the hair primitive ornament of this Church which was
no shadow or paternall shelter of protection among themselves to defend them from vulgar heats and plebeian storms nothing of filiall subordination or fraternal conjuntion to keep them in any comely posture and regular motion Look beyond the seas and they see all orders cast into a strength stability and honour by their subordination to their Bishops and Superiours after the ancient and venerable pattern of all Churches look homeward and they find all mysteries of civil trades and merchandise kept up by mutuall correspondencies and corporations for order counsel and government onely the Ministeriall Tribe is become a disorderly order of men like Simeon and Levi they must be divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel which was the left-handed blessing of that holy Patriarch to those fierce and furious brethren c. Yea the Clergie or Ministry if you will for some like that new title best since their condition is much worsted are become in England like the Jews in all lands who are dispersed in many countries but have no where any polity community authority or government Adde to this dissipated and distracted state of Ministers their private distresses and poverties together with the publick neglect and indifferency of people toward them who can wonder if they look pitifully one on another which no jocose or juvenile drolings can relieve how forced are their mutuall salutations since they affect to call one another brethren and yet have cast off their Fathers how feigned are their smiles and embraces when they see how hard an after-game they have to play for their subsistence reputation civill respect and Ecclesiastick union For splendid estates or any beam of publick honour and reall authority further than the Territories of their desk and pulpits reach they may sadly and justly many of them despair of them though I am of opinion no men can better deserve them than some Clergy-men did heretofore and still do but not those who by a spiteful and rash prodigality have set their own as wel as other mens corn-fields on fire by helping to tie foxes tailes with fire-brands These may be glad if they can preserve the petty Provinces of their Parochial and Independent Episcopacies which they so infinitely ambitionated that they indiscreetly ventured to consume the larger harvest of this Church which was annexed to the honour of Ancient and Catholick Episcopacy by which means not onely many Ministers of the Episcopall Ordination and judgement have been shrewdly distressed but even Presbyterian and Independent Preachers who flatter themselves as if they were the speciall favorites of the people even these are fain in many places with much ado to fall to their gleanings to pick up what small compositions remnants and scatterings of support and respect they can here and there get or find as new and speciall undertakers to preach the Gospel and give some credit to the lapsed and distressed Ministry of England This this is generally the fate of Ministers deservedly indeed of some but most unworthy of many of them who not without a patient horrour behold this prospect of calamities befaln them in their decline age and all this after great pains in their studies from their youth upward after infinite prayers and tears for their own and others souls improvement after unwearied diligence in their calling after invincible patience under common peoples incapacities stupidities ingratitudes indignities after many rigours and severities of life voluntarily besides necessarily sustained after a kind of civil martyrdome endured like that of Simon Stilites who loaden with irons confined himself into a narrow pillar of stone while most Ministers are all their life-time condemned to the rusticity barbarity moroseness and brutishness of the flinty vulgar being like Orient Jewels set in sockets of copper or brass or lead or iron or clay What Minister but finds in these licentious times the deportment of many common people as in the city proud and supercilious so in the countrey harsh as hedge-hogs and hard as rocks for so their society oft seems to those men that have once tasted of ingenuous breeding of softer and civiler conversation from which to be wholly removed and all ones life confined to hob-nails and high shoes to loâ—es and lasts to tempers utterly clownish or meerly mechanick yet ponderous or petulant enough as now they dare appear is as if a man should fall from a down bed into a plot of briars and thorns Tell me I beseech you O my brethren and fellow-labourers in the Ministry who have many years contended with the clod and toiled in the brick clamp of a countrey living being as Ministers now even faln under plough-shares and sawes and harrowes as David once treated the children of Ammon tell me O you my companions in this tribulation who have any thing in your temper constitution or education that is courteous and civil polished and generous learned and ingenuous yea tell me O ye Noblemen and Gentlemen of England who are the chief pillars of cloud and fire of light and favour of capacity and affection under God to the now depressed Ministers either in their severall solitudes or amidst those rural societies which are many times more sad than utter solitudes tell me I beseech you all who are my betters or brethren are not those excellent associates rare refreshments precious rewards noble encouragements which Ministers of worth and parts in most places of England for in Wales they say few are resident or incumbent do now enjoy for which they must spend their spirits wast their lungs decay their health exhaust their lives neglect all other wayes of livelihood both for themselves and their families After all which little shall be left them if some men may have their wills but contempt cast upon their persons calling together with the legacies of extreme poverty which after a lingring death they must leave to their desolate wives and fatherlesse children Good God! what arts did Church-men in former times use when they did so much out-wit and out-wealth us when having less charge less learning and less work they had more order and unity more honour and revenues even heaped up pressed down and running over whereas now the tale of brick is much more and the supply of straw far less Livings heretofore worth an 100 l. per annum are now ebbed and hardly squeezed to 50. or 60. pounds and this with much whining and grudging with many evil eyes and evil words on all sides Nor are these yet the dregs of that bitter cup which Ministers above all men are to drink for after all their former pains faithfully bestowed after they have been miserably tossed and weather-beaten by the storms of a long and dubious civil war in the bowels of the Church as well as the State after they have made shipwreck of almost all but a good conscience few of them being ever admitted to any composition or resumption as to their livings yea many of them denied to make
time prove extreamly pernicious to the peace piety honour and welfare of this Nation not onely in respect of the Reformed Religion whose authoritative Ministry and maintenance they will ever seek to devour and utterly destroy but even in respect of secular interests and civill peace For the first The integrity and true interests of the Reformed Religion who that hath read what I have already not more passionately then impartially written can be so blind as not to see That the pride petulancy and despite the ignorance licentiousnesse and covetousness of some of these men hath been and still is such that they have not onely sought to wast and deforme to reproach and defame all that outward order visible beauty polity support and unity which became so famous a Church and Nation but they have further studied to weaken and destroy the most solid and essentiall parts of Religion by many grosse errours damnable Doctrines bold blasphemies high Atheismes and rude immoralities all which do naturally boile up in the corrupt hearts and violent lusts of mankinde when they have any fire of temptation or encouragement What is then so immodest so impudent against the glory of God against the honour of our Lord Jesus Christ against the written word of God against the reputation of the Catholick or any well-reformed Church against the Lawes of nature civill societies and common justice against the good of men and Christians their temporall and eternall welfare which some of these Abaddons these Apollyons will not adventure to broach and abet to act own and applaud when they see their raveries are apt not onely to amuse the vulgar people but to mend their own fortunes which are the first and neerest designes they aime at as the chief ends of the agents But the end or effect following their actions though possibly not some of their intentions will be this to prepare by these various windings confused circulations and distorted wrestings of the Reformed Religion the way for Roman factors Papall interests and Jesuitick designes whose learned abilities orderly industry and indefatigable activity is such that by that time the old stock of Reverend orderly and authoritative Bishops and Presbyters the truest and most unquestionable Ministers of the Church of Christ are worn out in England and the reformed Religion is reduced with its titular and extenuated Ministers to a meer medly or popular Chaos of confusions the most of sober people being either sick or ashamed or weary of their home-bred disorders and unremedied diseases in Religion by this time I say the Romish agitators will not onely devoure all these petty parties and feeble factions of Reformers with as much ease as the Stork did the Froggs but they will in time utterly destroy the remaines of the defamed Doctrine and deformed Religion which your fore-fathers owned and to the death professed as most true and well reformed with great Honour Holinesse and Happiness which yet the ignorance and insolence the Illiterateness and Rusticity the Barrennesse and Barbarity of novel Sects have already rendred poor and despicable much to be pitied and deplored both at home and abroad I must ever so far own my reason as to professe that I look upon the Defamers Dividers and Destroyers of the Church of England whatever they are or seem to be no other than the perdues or forelorn hope of Popery which by lighter skirmishes open advantages to the Popes maine Battaglio the Vancourriers or Harbingers sent and excited in great part from the Pragmatick Policies of Rome whose grand interest since the Reformation hath been not more to advance the House of Austria and preserve the Papacy than to regain the Church of England to the Romish slavery In whose present calamities may easily be discerned a far greater reach and deeper Spirit than is usuall to be found in ordinary Sectaries and Schismaticks who are commonly of low and mean parts short-sighted and short-spirited of very shallow wits and extemporary designes rarely aiming at any thing that is of a publick concern of a grand notable and durable proportion but rather gratifying their sudden passions and occasionall fancies or correptions which are pitifully poor and plebeian seldome reaching higher than the pleasure of scratching their own or other mens itching ears with some novel fancies and opinions or setting up themselves by a sorry ambition to be Heads and Leaders the Pastors and Teachers of some credulous company which makes it self into some new mode and very superciliously calls it self The Church not in charity and communion with but in contempt and defiance of all other Churches Parochiall Provinciall Nationall or Catholick owning none of the Primitive Grand and Apostolicall Combinations or their Successions to be truly constituted Churches By such little arts some of them feed their bellies and cloth their backs better than heretofore when they made no such cakes for their Queens of Heaven nor Shrines for their severall Diana's but were confined to their lesse gainfull trades some of them feed meerly upon popular breath which as the wind will never last long in one point or corner lastly some of them keep up their vulgar Pride and sad Ambitions by nothing else but by the fame of their Antagonists the glory they have to contest with the Church of England and her ablest Ministers who are in earnest so much superiour to these sorry Rivals and Ruiners of them in all Learning Religion Vertue Wisdome Honesty and Modesty as the Stars in the firmament are beyond the glittering of rotten chips in the dark or the shining of Glow-wormes in a ditch Certainly these petty parties who scarce know what they drive at and are full of varieties in their Fancies Forms and Factions these cannot produce so constant a current and so strong a tide as is alwaies urging against the Church of Engl. and the honour of the Reformed Religion but they are driven on by a subtill and secret yet potent impulse as waves of the sea not onely dashing and breaking upon each other but all of them battering the Honour and Stability of the Church of England as the great rampart or bank which stands in the way of the Sea of Rome mightily opposing and hindering heretofore both fanatick Confusions Papal Usurpations and Romish Superstitions whose advantages now are evidently prepared and carried on by those that under the name of Reformation will most effectually at last overthrow it For after these petty spirits who have been and are the great Dividers Despisers and Destroyers of the reformed Church of England have a few years longer played their mad pranks in this sometime so flourishing and fruitfull vineyard of the Lord pulling up the hedge of Ecclesiasticall Canons and Civil Sanctions throwing down the wall of Ancient Discipline and Catholick Government breaking in pieces the wine-press of holy Ordination and Ministeriall Authority and Succession pulling up both root and branch of holy Plants and regular Planters what I beseech you can hinder these subtill
are safest healed by lenitive purgations rather than cold applications outwardly Factions in Religion like Fistula's or running sores in foule bodies are in least pain and danger when they have some vent allowed them by which the venemous humours may leisurely spend themselves and those pestilent opinions which carry with them pernicious practices so drain away as most keeps them from recoyling upon the head heart or other noble parts All sudden skinning over or closing of the orifices by which those sharp humours are obstructed but not purged is very dangerous and diffusive of the mischief making the source of the malignity to flow higher if it be not drawn away by such gentle dieticks or healing applications as strengthning the sound parts assisting the weak and purging the disaffected enables them by little and little to cast out what ever was unsound in them and noxious to them Nothing makes the nestitutions of true but decayed and divided Religion more difficult in any Nation than those mutuall corruptions and passions those animosities and transports which disaffect both the People as Patients and many times the Magistrates and Ministers as Physitians And nothing renders that work more facile and feisable than that calmnesse moderation and temper which ought alwayes to be in Physitians whatever violent fits and distempers appear in the Patients Governours in Church and State must ever expect such distempers in peoples minds especially when they are touched upon the tender place of their Religion with which mens consciences seem so vehemently to sympathize that Reformers had need carefully to furnish themselves with such meeknesse of wisdome as is the best antidote for their own security and against the others malady Then there will be hopes of healing in Religion not when Toleration or indulgence is granted to all opinions and professions which list to christen themselves but when such a publick way of solid and sincere Religion both as to doctrine and practice is seriously debated duly prepared publiquely agreed upon and solemnly established as carryes with it most of cleare Scripture-precept and Saintly pattern in faith and manners in vertues and graces in duties and devotions in order and authority in honesty and charity with the greatest uprightnesse and impartiality towards God and man However Epidemick contagions may for a time be permitted something of necessary connivence that they may more freely breathe out themselves yet this great remedy and soveraign medicine in due time ought to be applyed which consists in the owning and establishing of such a Religion as hath in it whatever is holy necessary usefull comely and commendable in any of the pretending parties This once approved and fixed by grave counsell and publique advice of all Estates as the Standard of the publique profession and practice of Religion being also asserted and propagated by Preachers of most indisputable authority of pregnantest abilities and of most exemplary lives orderly and unanimously agreeing among themselves hereby meriting and enjoying the double honour of publique respect and maintenance these gentle rationall and wholsome methods of Religion will certainly in a few years by Gods blessing either drein or drive out by secret and gentle workings all those pestilent distempers in Religion which vulgar minds by a corrupted Liberty as by a licentious and foule diet have contracted to the great disorder and deformity of any Church or Nation professing Christianity For in a short time such as are truly consciencious by the fear of God and love of true Religion will cease to be either pertinacious or contentious or factious or inconstant when they are convinced of so excellent a way as they cannot but conclude to be safe since it is holy and true sober and setled comely and charitable Others that are meer Politicians in Religion either formall Pharisees or false hypocrites or fawning Parasites ready to change and comply with any party and perswasion in order to secular advantages even these will soon give over their factious agitations their pragmatick sticklings and popular sidings and shiftings in Religion when once they find which way the wind or stream of publique favour and civill interest doe drive The Mils of Factions in Religion will soon give over their motions when once they perceive no grist of Profit or stream of Preferment or breath of vulgar Applause is brought in to them There is no wonder to be made at those late sad and mad extravagancies which of later yeares have prevailed against the reformed Religion once setled in England while the Majesty and Honour of this Church and State the sanctity of our Lawes Civil and Ecclesiastick the solemnity of Gods publick worship and service the authority and maintenance of his Ministers have all been through our civil broyles and tumults unhappily exposed to infinite arrogancies spoiles contempts and insolencies even of common people while they saw so many prisons and bonds so many sequestrations and silencings so many deaths and dangers attend not onely the Bishops but the Presbyters the chief Preachers and prime Professors on all sides of that reformed Religion which was established in England No wonder if while the populacy see great Preachers and Professors cast so much dirt and spit in each others faces while they suspect that all piety honesty and Christian charity are made to truckle under State Policies and bend to worldly interests no wonder if the vulgar desperately leap into the Sea of confusion and faction out of that ship which they saw not onely so leaky and crazy that it was almost sunk but so set on fire that they despaired to quench it No wonder if they venture upon either inventing what new wayes of Religion they list to fancy or despising all wonted publick formes and professions since they think themselves not onely incouraged but in a sort exemplarily commanded and almost compelled to cast off with scorn that Reformed Profession of Christian Religion which had so great a Name of Wisdome Law Honour and Holinesse Glory and Happinesse as that had which was established in the Church of England never to be mended as to the main and substantials of Religion in Doctrine Worship Discipline Devotion and Government however in some circumstantials something might possibly be altered or added by the sober counsels of wife and peaceable men who had both ability and autority for such a work Whose great difficulty now is chiefly heightned by that popular froth and vanity those animosities and arrogancies those infinite variations and confusions with which vulgar fury and passions have deformed the face divided the body yea almost devoured every joynt and limb of Chiristan and reformed Religion in England 'T is true these will in time very much waste sink and vanish of themselves while one Faction justles crowds and confounds another the new ones as the night-mares insulting and overlaying the Elder But this is onely as the changing of a Captives Chaines this will but bring in religious rabbles or successions of confusions but no
who have brought forth as good Scribes instructed for the Kingdom of Heaven out of the good treasuries of their hearts things both new old the Learning of the ancient Fathers Councills and Historians set off with later Experiments and Improvements of all spirituall operations and gracious comforts the forgetting I say of these Ministers cannot be worthy of that pious gratitude which becomes noble-minded Christian How meane uncomely and much below you must it needs appeare to all wise and sober Christians in the present age and all posterity if you suffer their holy orders to be despised their spirituall offices to be neglected their divine authority to be usurped their primitive orders and constant succession to be interrupted their persons to be abused and shamefully treated their support as to double honour to be so abuted that their maintetenance shall be very small sharking and uncertaine also their respect and esteem none at all especially among the common people whose civil and religious regards are much measured either by the bag and bushell or by the examples of their betters their Landlords and Governours The wilfull dividing debasing discrediting disordering and discarding of the ancient Clergy as to their Ordination Government Ministry Authority and succession in England which was most Christian Catholick and reformed must needs be as the sin and shame so the great injury and misery of you and your posterity being the ready way to bring in First a scrupulous unsatisfiednesse and unsetlednesse as to our former Religion as if either not true or not reformed Secondly next it raiseth a jealousie and suspicion of any Religion under the name of Reformation as if it would not long hold and had no bottom or bounds Thirdly after this followes a lukewarmenesse coldnesse and indifferency as to all Religion whatsoever as Reformed and as Christian Fourthly then will there creep in by secret steps a generall Apostasie at least from our pristine wise Reformation and happy constitution of Religion to the Roman errors superstitions and usurpations which wait for such a time and temper in England whereby to make their advance upon peoples mindes wildred and confounded when they shall see the shamefull retreates recoilings and variations made in England by the Reformed Religion upon it self whose disorders disgraces and deformities necessarily following the contempt of their Ministers or the change and rupture of their Ministeriall descent and succession will make most if not all men in time to recede from it and rather adhere to its grand Roman rival its implacable enemie Popery whose policies will bring you and your posterity by the contempt and want of true Bishops to have no Pastors or Ministers of any uniforme validity of Catholick complete and most undoubted authority If any man may be a preacher that listeth to pirk up into a Pulpit certainly in a few yeares you shall have no Preachers worth your hearing no Ministers of any reputation and authority either among the Idiots and vulgar or among the more ingenious and wiser sort of people who are not naturally either very solicitous or industrious in the concernments of Religion or the choise of their Ministers If neither God nor good men have any further pleasure in their servants the ancient Clergy of England if they really are as uselesse and worthlesse as they have been made vile and reproched by some mens tongues and pens if they have deserved to be thus tossed in an eternall tempest of factious divisions vulgar depressions and endlesse confusions beyond any other order or rank of men if this be their evill fate and merit after all their studies and paines after all their Praying Preaching Writing and Living to the honor of this Nation and the great advantages of the Reformed Religion if to have equalled at least if not exceeded the Clergy of any Church in any age since the Apostles departure be the unpardonable fault of the Reformed Bishops and their Clergy in England if their very sufferings as the vipers seizing on St. Pauls hand make them appear to barbarous and vulgar minds as sinners therefore despicable because they are so much despised and so thought fit to be destroyed if this lingring and shamefull death of being thus Crucified is that by which the Clergy of England must glorifie God if this bitter cup must not passe from them truly it will be a mercifull severity to hold them no longer in ambiguous calamities but rather wholly to expose them to the last outrages of Fanatick Popular and Schismatick fury the Lions that hunger and roare to have these Daniels wholly cast into their dens and jawes that so your eyes may no longer see your poor despised distressed and miserable Clergy many of whom both Bishops and Presbyters are forced as you know to embrace the dunghil being destitute of order honour and estate some of them having neither food convenient nor any abiding place nor any fitting employment that so that Episcopall Clergy now rendred so odious who under God formerly redeemed you and your fore-fathers out of the bondage and darknesse of Egyptian superstition may by an Egyptian Magick and fate be drowned in the Red-Sea of vulgar contempt popular confusion and inordinate oppressions that thus the new Jannes and Jambres may not onely resist but wholly prevaile by their inchantments against your Moses and Aarons But if your Consciences O worthy Gentlemen who are the Beauty Strength and Honour of this Nation do on the other side tell you not with faint and dubious whispers but by loud and manifest experiences proclaiming to all the world that the ancient Clergy of England have generally deserved better of you by their Learning Preaching Praying Writing and Living what I beseech you can be more worthy of the Wisdome Justice Piety Honour and Gratitude of this Nation than to assert with their publick love and favour the dignity of their worthy Divines the honour of their Clergy the Sanctity of their Religion and Reformation against that plebeian petulancy and insolency which hath so pressed upon them and daily depresseth all their Authority not onely by reason of some Lay-mens folly and insolency but even by their variations and inconstancy who presumed to be Preachers and challenge upon what score they please a share or lot in the Evangelicall Ministry Truly it is high time to redeeme the Sacred Orders the Divine Authority the Catholick succession the ancient and authentick dignity of the Evangelicall Ministry in the Church of England from the obloquies contempts and oppressions of ignorant and unreasonable men who are great enemies to the piety and prosperity of this Nation and but back friends to the Reformed Religion being at so deadly a fewd against the ancient Clergy and Catholick Ministry of this Church whose totall extirpation both root and branch Bishops and Presbyters they have so resolutely designed and restlessely endeavoured that they long for nothing more than the natural death of all the reverend Bishops and all Episcopall
have hitherto so little justified their inventions or discretions that their mutuall divisions and severall diminutions besides the generall abatement and abasement both of Religion Reformation and Ministry do make the whole face of this Church appeare rather like Babel than Jerusalem which was a City at unity in it self not made up with patches and botches by fits and jobs with deformed angles crooked walls and swelling windowes like some narrow lanes in London whose sides seem built in spite to defie and darken one another but designed and wrought by such a juncture of wise Counsell from grand Architects as had well fore-cast and fore seen their work as those did by divine revelation who were to build the Ark Tabernacle and Temple for God as Moses David Salomon Zerubbabel and Ezekiel who had leisurely and exact visions sober and orderly revelations after due and Mathematicall proportions or plat-formes given them and were not hurried on by sudden raptures extemporary snatches and passionate surprises which are the Convulsions of Religion no fit tempers or motions to build or repaire the Church of Christ which even in Primitive defections as we read in the Epistles Correptory or Consolatory to the seven Asian Churches or others were taught by the Spirit of Christ and the Apostles not to seek out new Formes Fashions and Inventions to make Divisions Schismes and Separations either in or from the Respective Churches or from their Angels or Bishops the Presidents or Presbyters But in their Reformations they were to keep their former Church-communion in the grand and Apostolick Combinations which were constituted and proportioned by the guidance and wisdome of Christs Spirit both Pastors and people were to remember from whence they were faln to have due regard to their severall Rulers and Overseers in the Lord to returne to their first love of truth and peace to restore what was decayed to preserve what remained and was ready to dye to hold fast what was wholesome sound and good while they tryed and pared off what was evill and superfluous to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to them to keep to that forme of Doctrine with those Catholick Traditions and Customes which they had received They were not to invent new waies of Churches or Pastors any more than new Doctrines or new Gospels I am for Primitive Sanctities and Severities in all sorts or degrees of Ministers no lesse than for Primitive subordination and communion Ambitious I am for restoring the Piety and Purity as well as the Polity and Unity of Pristine times And although I find many Ministers so ill natured so peevish and crosse-grained that they can sooner vomit up the meate they have digested than recall or recant any error or extravagancy they have adopted and fomented yet I hope better things of the major part of my Fathers and brethren who are men of more calme and ingenuous tempers furthest from juvenile fervors from private designes and popular dependences Nor do I doubt but all Ministers that are worthy men will easily recede not from their Religion and Consciences but from their various superstitions and presumptions from their immoderate values and Idolatrous adorations of some petite opinions and novel imaginations which they have of late years taken up if once they could happily meet and parley together not in arbitrary Junctos and Associations but being thereto called and incouraged by the command and Counsel the Gravity and Authority of those their Superiours who are most able to advance the good of this Church and the restitution of the Reformed Religion If you O worthy Gentlemen should find us Ecclesiasticks more restive pertinacious or obstinate than becomes us either to retain our needlesse indulgences or superfluous severities and rigors of opinions and practises it will be your honor and candor to supple us and by your exemplary perswasions gently to compell us to be such as best becomes us and your selves You cannot give us the Ministers of England a more signall and ample testimony of your love and regard to us than by your exacting from us in our severall places not onely all morall severities and sanctities of life which are indispensible to our calling and duty but all those reall Ministerial strictnesses in all points of holy Ministrations to which our greatest enemies do so much pretend themselves and complaine of us as most defective in them either as to care or diligence or love towards our people But I beseech you let these sacred exactions as to our lives and Doctrines as to our ordination and Ministration be first Scripturall as to the maine ground rule and end of them next Rationall as to Order Decency and Gravity of them lastly let them be Primitive and Catholick not Novel and Fanatick but as much as may be conforme to the patterne of all ancient Churches who had their formations and fixations from the Apostles long before any of these moderne disputes and factions arose or passion had seized any Ministers judgements as to their particular sides and interests But let us not for Gods sake be urged as some designe utterly to forsake the Church of England to renounce our own former both practises and perswasions our standings and understandings too as Ministers which were so much grounded upon Scripturall directions Apostolick exemplifications Catholick imitations and nationall constitutions onely to conforme to some private mens modern fancies or to preferre as to Church-ordination Ministration and Government the novelties of Amsterdam or Geneva before the antiquities of Antioch and Jerusalem Nor yet may you leave us so far to our selves as to suffer every one of us to invent and do whatever seems good in his own eyes Alas many of us are weak in our Learning Religion and Reason strong onely in our Passions Prejudices and Presumptions easie and soft in our Judgements heady and obstinate in our opinions prone to be biased with private interests and abused with popular pretentions While we meane well yet we are ready to do very ill having much in us either cold and doting or young and raw or over-hot and uncomposed never worse governed than when we are left every man to governe our selves or our private flocks after our own various fancies and affectations which are most-what very partiall plebeian imprudent impolitick not many of us understanding the proportions of true Church-Government any more than we do the designes and dimensions of the most noble and magnificent buildings which were never erected and perfected by the occasionall concurrence of every spontaneous workman that listed to joyne his head and hand to carry on what figure and form he thought best but they are the effects of mature Counsell and grand advise from wise Master-builders who first agree in the whole model or Idea before they put the parts in execution The truth is no sorts of men are lesse tractable generally than we that professe to be Ministers If we have little Learning we are envious
polity and prudence but was further commended and confirmed by the ancient patternes of Gods own appointment among the Jewes by Christs Doctrine and example together with his Apostles practise and appointment evident in their writings and in the imitation of all Churches from the beginning The want and waste of which Primitive and Catholick Government as I do unfeignedly deplore in the Church of Engl. so I am glad to see any of my brethren so sensible of it as to make what handsome shift they can for a while to unite and defend themselves til the mercy of God and the wisdome of Governours shall restore such ancient order unity and authority to us as may be most happy for us on all hands And although I think these Associatings to be as incomplete as they seem partiall yet they are so far considerable and commendable as they seem to invite and draw Ministers to some Ecclesiastick union and fraternall society which may be in time much for their own Honour Safety and Happiness as well as the peoples peace especially if such closures arise not from a continued confederacy of factious Spirits against true Episcopacy but rather as preparations for it so farre as times may bear or bring on the due restitution of it not to its pristine pomp and splendor which is not expectable but to its Primitive Order Power and Spirituall Authority in the Church which without doubt is the Conservative the Crown the Consummation the Centre of all Churches Government Short of which what ever popular and plausible prefacings these projects of Associating may make to endeare some Ministers by the parity of their Oligarchies in Presbytery or to draw in common people by their specious Democracies in Independency yet I confesse I expect no great or durable good from either of their partialities First because they are but private mens projects not the results of the publick counsell and united wisdome of this Church and Nation Secondly they are in their constitution defective as to the true proportions of good Government and Polity which must have ability order intirenesse and authority which are not to be found in the parity or plebs either of Ministers or people Thirdly they are as new so precarious and arbitrary therefore unauthoritative and unauthentick easily baffled and despised by any that list to be recusant and refractory Fourthly as they are divided no lesse than Oligarchie and Democracy so they may be dangerous to the Authors abetters and executors of them when ever those that aâ—e or shall be in civill power list to bring them to the triall of a Prâ—munire which statute binds up the hands of all Pragmatick Presbyters and people from acting of their own heads in Church-affaires without Law This I am sure the policies of States-men are easily jealous of Church-men nor can the Clergy discreetly act any thing by way of publick influence in things Ecclesiasticall for which they have not the publick Counsel and consent Possibly these Associations if friendly and ingenuous may be some seeming shelter to some poor Ministers from the urgent stormes of popular contempt and insolency like the undergirding of that crazy and weather-beaten ship in which St. Paul was imbarqued and ready to perish untill the tossed vessell of this Church may be brought into a more commodious haven and fully repaired But if the aime of Associatings be no more than a cunning complicating of Presbyterian and Independent principles and interests together that they may rule in their Duumviracy exclusive of all primitive Presidency and slighting all pleas for Episcopacy which hath the onely Catholick and Classicall precedents for authentick ordination and full authority in the Church all will be no more than daubing with untempered morter by which they may foule their own fingers and other mens faces but they will never erect any stately and durable structure capable to supply the roome of that Primitive Apostolick and Catholick Government in comparison of which these precarious and poor Associatings of Ministers are but a setting up a stanty hedge instead of a good quick-set or a brick-wall for the sense of Christs vineyard Presbytery hath been already so baffled in England and Indepency hath so little place or credit both are such exotick novelties and so incompetent for church-Church-Government that neither single nor sociall ravelled nor twisted they will ever have any considerable power nor be able to give any protection to either Ministers or people much lesse will they promote the Reformed state of Religion or the peace of the Nation The community of Ministers and people though never so much Associated in such levelling factions will still appeare both to their enemies and friends but as so many silly sheep who fearing to be further worried by wolves and dogs do flock together indeed with great eagernesse and crowding but they are not thereby much the safer if they have neither fixed folds nor able valiant and watchfull shepheards to oversee and defend them with such eminent power and lawfull Authority as becomes the masters of such Assemblies and the chief Fathers of those Families which make up the most complete Churches of Christ As it is hard to draw a true circle unlesse the centre be fixed or to build a firm arch without the binding and centre-stone be added to the rest so I firmely believe that neither the interests of people by Independency nor of Presbyters by Presbytery will ever be advantaged to any honourable happy or durable condition by these Associations if they arrogantly and factiously usurp the rights and power of Primitive Episcopacy which hath been alwaies as usefull as venerable in the Church of Christ either used or approved or desired by all learned and sober men and asserted by infinite pregnant and unanswerable testimonies both ancient and late Nor will I hope the Antiquity Sanctity and Majesty of Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy ever want such Princes Peers such Presbyters and people as both in true polity and in good conscience will so approve it as to preferre it no lesse before all modern models than the first temple was preferrable before the second or either of them before the Tabernacle If these Associations do onely intend as some of them pretend to take in all interests with reservation of latitudes and freedomes both of different principles and practises to all sorts of Ministers will they not prove at last Dissociatings and amount to no higher edifying of this Church than the laying of brick and sand without lime which will never make a durable and strong building For they will soon divide and dissolve who are held together by no other bond than their own will and pleasure Possibly thus farre they may be of use as means somewhat to discover more the rubbish and ruines of our late distractions which have made Ministers so much strangers that they are enemies to each other yea possibly they may by drawing them to some amicable conventions and Christian
equality are emulation faction division among Ministers the younger sort naturally mutinying against the elder and the graver sort thinking themselves more wise worthy than the younger Hence grudgs and coldnesses cavils and contradictions sidings and divisions Hence adherings to severall heads and patrons of factions in different opinions or practises Then follow popular adherencies and such declamatory endeavours as may most draw people to severall Masters all which are sufficiently evidently the experiences of Franckfort of old of Roterdam in later years also of new and old England besides the intolerable petulancies and troubles by Masterly Presbyters in Scotland for many yeares in King James his minority and King Charles his too All these have loudly proclaimed that malapertnesse rudenesse insolency effrontery factions confusions are the genuine fruites of an un-sub Presbytery as indeed of all Government which is made up with parity or equality which is rather a lump or masse of flesh like monstrous and abortive births than any comely polity or symmetry befitting an organized body which must have some prime part for the honor order and regulation of the whole which must needs be loose diffused and confused if it be not cemented centred and fixed yea ruled and awed with some eminent part and principall power which having virtue from the whole gives also life vigor firmation and Majesty as to the whole body so to the Government and polity what ever it be civill or Ecclesiastick being as the Hoopes or Curbes of vessels which keep all the pipe-staves together The want of which authoritative order decorum and majesty in Government is prone to give such temptations to young and hot-headed Ministers besides giddy and surly people moving them to ambitious novelties to popular and preposterous practises that men of parts cannot easily resist them Besides the generality of people either of meaner or better quality especially in England will never have such reverence to petty Presbyters in a levelled parity as they will have when they see Ministers united guided honored and animated by a person of that Gravity Age Worth and Eminency that not onely the best Ministers own him as a Father but the best Gentlemen yea Noblemen will reverence him as a man of excellent Learning Piety and Wisdome whose censure or sentence no man of modesty or conscience can despise when they are managed with so much reason and Religion with such order and honor with such gravity and integrity as become such Bishops and such Presbyters happily united in a comely subordination The good that Independency pretends to hold forth to the people of God or Christs little flock in its severall parts and lesser parcels is a more neer union and endeared love of each other a closer care and watching over each others souls more frequent and familiar intercourses between Pastor and people exercising of their own exciting and discovering of their brethrens gifts and sisters graces neerer Communion with each other after the fashion of bodies though small yet so complete and confined to themselves that they are neither subject nor responsible to any but their own chosen members officers and pastor whose Tribunitian not imperatorian power is immediately founded as they say in the very plebs or herd of people as derived immediately from Christ and so completely endued with all Church-Power or spirituall authority that they are to Try Elect Ordain Censure Rebuke Depose Excommunicate and give over to Satan any part of their body They further professe an Art or Receipt they have above all others to keep all ordinances of Christ most entire and pure from all humane mixtures and inventions most set off and adorned with that Simplicity Sincerity Fervency Charity and Sanctity which becomes the Gospel all which are most eminently manifested in the precincts of their little bodies their Independent or Congregationall Churches farre beyond what ever either Episcopacy or Presbytery severally or socially could attain unto These are the gloryings of Independency The evils laid to the charge of Independency are first novelty and inconformity to all pious antiquity A way untaught untryed unthought of by any Christians that owned themselves as parts of the Church Catholick and related to its grand community or sacred society It meanly and miserably confines the Majesty of Ecclesiasticall power and shrinks its authority it drawes the Churches polity and communion to so very narrow and small a compasse that Independency seemes to act rather by distorted and convulsive motions than by that equable harmony of parts which attends all orderly bodies in their concurrent motions Farther it exposeth particular Churches or congregations together with the honor and safety of Religion and all Christian States to petty parties and fractions to popular nay plebeian humors It abaseth the honor of the Evangelicall Ministry weakning the power and diminishing the dignity of all Christian societies mincing and destroying those ancient Grand and Goodly combinations which were Apostolicall and Primitive in the respective Churches of Jerusalem Antioch the 7. Churches of Asia and many others cutting them into small chips and shreds It placeth the sole and absolute power of the keyes for Doctrine and Discipline there where no wise man much lesse the wise Redeemer of his Church would place them even among the vulgar where are seldome found any fit subjects capable to understand much lesse to manage and use them That such are the common sort and major part of all people no wise man is ignorant though they may be plainly and simply good yet seldome are they so prudent so knowing so composed or of such credit and reputation as is fit for any Government either in Church or State to be committed to them as the grand Masters and absolute Dictators which they seem to be in the Independent modell which either hath so many heads that it hath no feet or so many feet that it hath no head Furthermore Independency seems like the flats and shallowes of ponds and rivers the proper beds for all Faction and Schisme to spawne upon the seminary that breeds and noursery that feeds all the vermine of Religion while every silly soul that can but get two or three to conspire with his folly and flatter his new fancy may without feare or wit make a Minister begin a party and beget a Church built and distinguished by some new character of opinion or practise as its badg or sign-post Besides this Independency is indicted by many sober men as a felon or plagiary a sacrilegious robber of other Churches one that steales away Children from their Spirituall fathers sheep from their flocks and shepherds seducing servants from their Masters and children from their parents true Religion worship and devotion yea from all Christian Communion with them entising them first to straggle then to separate then to starve rather than returne to the good pasture and fold whence they have once wandered Lastly as it affects an equall and yet enormous power in every
Bishop in that Precinct or Oeconomy which either the Apostles had constituted or the Church had digested it self into as it increased Contrary to which meridian patterne and most manifest exemplar of Church-Government if as learned Zanchy acknowledgeth any one instance in any age or place of any Father Councill or Historian could be found of any one Church in its grand Polity or larger Communion I confesse I should then make some scruple whether Episcopall Government however it might seem the best were the onely one to be used in all times and places whether Church-Government were not a matter of Ecclesiastick prudence rather than of Apostolick prescription or Divine appointment To which opinion St Jerom that he might qualifie and moderate the incrochings of some Bishops upon Presbyters or gratifie perhaps his own passion and discontent sometimes seems to have inclined contrary to his cooler and more constant judgement set forth at other times in many passages of his potent and vehement writings as well as in his practise Which allay as to the Divine institution and absolute necessity of Episcopall Government as established by the Apostles seemes also to have swayed with Mr. Calvin and his followers when they found themselves put upon such a necessity as they thought might justifie their altering of it for a time though not their rejecting or reprobating of it for ever which he never did however his reputation interest and engagement carried him off from the more pompous and usuall way of Episcopacy as it was abused in the Church of Rome but he well knew ever judged and confessed that Primitive Episcopacy which consists in a presidentiall eminency of power and jurisdiction in one Minister over many appears to have been laid out by the wisdome and Spirit of Christ in the Apostolicall patterne and prescription as is evident in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus not as a matter of arbitrary freedome which might be lightly changed as people or Ministers or Magistrates listed for their conveniences but as an holy method and wise proportion of Government best in it self fittest for the Churches Order Peace and Communion sacred by the Characters of Gods direction Christs designation constitution of his Church in the Apostles execution and derivation of it also in the Churches Catholick imitation upon all which grounds it hath ever been esteemed by all godly and learned Christians not onely venerable but as to the main modell and fabrick of it inviolable so that they who first factiously presumptuously and rashly change it must needs highly sin against God his Church and their own soules however others that are forced to follow such changes may be excusable The superstructures of Episcopacy as to civill Honor and Estate may indeed be variable by publick consent with times and manners of men but the foundations I believe are not to be removed which are laid upon the naturall civill and religious grounds of diversity disparity and excellency of one man above many proportionable to which Polity Order and Authority are best setled and managed and not upon the loose or slippery bottomes of parity or popularity neither of which have either those principles proportions or perfections of Government which the Spirit and wisdome of God hath laid out by the Apostles practise in Primitive Episcopacy and transmitted by a constant succession for the Churches good which cannot be preserved or advanced where there wants comely gravity due authority and a diviner beame of Majesty in Government and Governors than can be found in any way of levelling and abasing them which are the high-waies as all wise men ever observed to all faction sedition and confusion both in Churches and States of which truth no Age hath seen and suffered greater or sadder experiments than ours since some pragmatick or ambitious Spirits have made miserable essayes to alter and abolish the ancient authority and order of Episcopacy onely to bring in their various novelties which are so far from the true Grandeur and solid Majesty of Government that they are already found to be pittifull and petty projects rather than pious or profound inventions confuting themselves as much as confounding others Could we then on all sides in England be so ingenuous and candid as to lay aside all moderne designes disputes and differences which have made mens eyes so squinted bleared or blood-shotten in the point of church-Church-Government could we remove the fancy of secular pride pomp and ambition in one sort of Ministers the vulgar passions prejudices and envies of a second sort also the pragmatick and plebeian humors of a third sort with the private designes and worldly interests of all cleare all our hearts of these prepossessions and distempers no doubt the face of holy order and wise Government in the Church will easily appeare to the satisfaction of all wise and good men who are either worthy to govern or willing to be governed in a true Christian and charitable way For certainly Church-Government or Ecclesiasticall Polity about which we have had of late in England so great contests even to much bitternesse and blood is no Scholasticall subtilty no intricate nicety no speculative sublimity no metaphysicall profundity which require either accurate Criticks or long-winded Divers or Logicall Disputers or Scepticall Sophisters to find out the Primitive form the true proportions or ancient patterne of it It is plaine as Beza and Bucer observe in right Reason pregnant in the proportions of all order naturall civill military religious It is palpable in Scripture-patternes as Mr. Calvin confesseth it is most apparent in the practise of all Churches It must be weaknesse or wilfullnesse passion or peevishnesse that hinders any man from seeing the true Idea of it It is made up of wisdome and power not onely humane but divine of due authority cemented with true charity a modest and moderate superiority with meek subordination faithfull counsell with equanimous commands meeting together these make up the holy Oeconomy or Polity of Church-Government In which first many humble Christians of one congregation do submit to one duly ordained Minister as set over them in the Lord so far as concernes their private duties and relations secondly many grave and discreet Presbyters with their people submit to one venerable Bishop as a Father or chief Pastor chosen to be over them in things that concerne more publick relations and common duties in which their joynt counsell assistance or obedience is required The Bishops office and work is not only Ministeriall in common with their brethren the other Ministers but Juridicall or Judiciall declaring and exercising the necessary power and eminent acts of Ecclestasticall Discipline and authority with them among them and over them not in the way of secular dominion gotten and kept by civill force or factious ambition which our blessed Lord forbids to those that are chiefest or greatest of his Disciples and flock but in a way of paternall authority which chides with love chastens with
pitty being tenderly severe and most compassionately cruell when it is compelled to exert the sharpest authority doing all things according to the word example and Spirit of Christ Jesus in Meeknesse of Wisdome not to the destruction but edification of the Church in truth and faith in charity and unity To these Presbyters Bishops and Christian people are Deacons subordinate and servient in all things necessary for decency conveniency charity and carrying on of the Churches Autority both in private congregations and more ample conventions part of whole office we see time and custome had devolved upon our Church-Wardens and Overseers for the poor These ends and meanes this order and proportion this constitution and execution of Churchâ—Government by Episcopacy as far as it is conform to Catholick Antiquity and setled by the consent of any Christian Church and Nation by its Synods and Parlaments I do in no sort conceive to be arbitrary precarious or mutable as to the maine however it may be reduced and reformed in its deviations except in cases of invincible necessity which may dispense with Sabbaths Sacraments and all publick externall duties of Polity yea of Piety so far am I from judging it any part of prudent Piety or true Reformation for men rudely to baffle and despise wholly to abrogate and extirpate it because I cannot but look upon it as Scriptuall and Apostolick sacred and binding Christians consciences to due approbation obedience and subjection to it for the Lords sake who undoubtedly intended the right constitution and constant regulation of his Church with Order and Honor no lesse than that of States and Common-weales for whose peaceable Polity the Gospel hath set so many bounds and bonds of subjection Sure neither Church nor State can be honestly or handsomely governed in any way of parity or popularity where every one thinks himself fit to command and so disdains to obey according to those innate passions which are in all men and oft in good men and in good Ministers too who being many are as prone to run into many distempers and dangerous exorbitances if they be left to themselves As Mariners are without a Pilot or sheep without a shepherd or souldiers without a Commander or people without a Prince even so are Christians without ordained Ministers and Ministers without Authoritative Bishops exposed to all manner of Schisms Disorders Factions and Insolencies Which must necessarily follow where the Clergy is either not at all governed by any Grave and Worthy Ecclesiasticall persons or by such Ministers as have none but a popular and precarious Authority or where Ministers are onely curbed and crushed by the imperiousnesse and impertinency of meer Lay-men yea and of such as are not fit to be Judges or Rulers in the least civill affaires much lesse over Learned men whose Place Office and Concerns are properly religious as they stand related to God and his Church Nor can the Clergy be in much better case when they are by a Democratick or Levelling spirit cast into such spontaneous Associations and Confederacies as give to no Minister that orderly and eminent power respect and due authority which is fitting for the Government of the Churches nor yet teach common people that modesty and submission which are necessary for such as desire to be well and worthily governed When all is said and tried that can be in point of Church-Government I doubt not but it will be found true as Beza expresseth it in the happy State of England that Episcopacy is singularis Dei beneficientia Gods singular bounty and blessing to this and any Church which he prayes it might alwaies enjoy where it may be rightly enjoyed and religiously used which the Augustane Confession and all Reformed Churches with their most eminent Professors did desire to submit unto as a most speciall meanes to preserve the Honor Unity and Authority of the Church and its Discipline which as a great River growes weak and shallow when it is drawn into many small channels and rivulets How suitable and almost necessary a right and Primitive Episcopacy is for the temper of England I shall afterward more fully expresse at present it may suffice to shew how easie the restauration of it would be if all sides would sincerely look to the Primitive pattern of church-Church-Government First if the Diocese committed to the presidential inspection of one worthy Bishop were of so moderate an extent as might fall under one mans care and visitation and be most convenient both for the private addresses and dispatches also for the generall meetings of the Clergy in some principall place of it it would much remedy the great grievance of long journies tedious expectation and many tims frustraneous attendance at Westminister to which all Ministers are now compelled to their great charge and trouble many times for a small Living and sometime for a meer repulse Such Counties as Norfolk Suffolk Essex Kent Middlesex with London may seem proportionable to make each of them one Episcopal distribution greater Counties may be divided and lesser united Secondly if the generality of the Clergy or the whole Ministry of each Diocese might choose some few prime men of their Company to be the constant Electors chief Counsellors Correspondents and Assistants with the Bishop to avoid multitudinous tedious and confused managings of elections Ordinations and other publick affaires Thirdly if in case of Episcopall vacancy the generality of the Clergy meeting together might present the names of three or four or more prime men out of which number the Electors should choose one whose election should stand if approved by the Prince or chief Magistrate if not they should choose some other of the nominated Fourthly the person thus chosen and approved on all sides should be solemnly and publickly consecrated by other Bishops in the presence of the Ministers and people of the Diocese By these meanes as there will be no crowd or enterfering among the Clergy so there will be great satisfaction to Prince and people without any clashing between the Civill and Spirituall power which must be avoided considering that not onely the exercise of all Church-power must depend on the leave of the Prince in his dominions but also the honorary setled maintenance of the Bishops as of all the Clergy is but Eleemosynary in the originall from the pious concession and munificence of the Prince or State who as they will not in conscience or honor deny competent allowances to all worthy Ministers of the Gospel so no doubt they will not grudge to adde such Honorary supports to every Bishop or President as may decently maintaine that Authority Charity and Hospitality which becomes his Place Worth and Merit for certainly no men can do more good or deserve better of their Nation and Country than excellent Bishops may do as by their Doctrine and example so by their wise and holy way of governing the Church with such Honor and Authority as became them which could
not but be an excellent meanes to advance the Majesty Purity Power and Profession of Christian and Reformed Religion as otherwhere so chiefly in England whose happinesse and honor in this point might as I humbly conceive be easily recovered by some such expediency in church-Church-Government whose excellent temper should answer all the honest desires and reall interests of all Godly people of modest Presbyters of wise Bishops and of just Princes whose wisdom and authority might easily by the advise of all Estates both Civill and Ecclesiastick so restore Unity Tranquillity and Authority to the Church of England that no worthy Christians of any perswasion Episcopall Presbyterian or Independent should have any cause to complain of either neglect or oppression which cannot befall any party in respect of their just pretensions and equable desires if regard be had to the Primitive pattern of Episcopacy which included the priviledges and satisfactions of all degrees both of Ministers and people The complaints of oppression arise from the later innovations or invasions made by one party against the reall or pretended rights and immunities of the other which my designe is on all hands to unite and mutually preserve by a regular prudent complete moderate and yet authoritative way of Church-Government which is no where to be found but in a well-constituted Episcopacy In a designe wholly for reconciliation and atonement between moderate and pious men of all sides I know the way is not partially to over-value or passionately to undervalue any thing that is alledged by sober men on any side conducing to the common good Therefore I do not I cannot in prudence or conscience so prefer the eminency of Episcopacy as to neglect or oppresse the just rights of worthy Presbyters or the ingenuous satisfactions of Christian people neither of which are to be despised or rejected but cherished and preserved no lesse than the Authority of Bishops which at the highest must be as of one that serveth the Lord Christ and the Church not insulteth against either the Grave and Elder sort of Ministers ought to be treated by the Bishop as brethren the younger sort as Sons The reall interests of all are in my judgement best preserved when they are least scattered or divided but bound up in the same peaceable Polity or holy Harmony which I call the Primitive and complete Episcopacy ever esteemed by the Catholick Church for its excellent wisdom order and usefulness to have been at least of Apostolicall Edition both preceptive and exemplary in its Primitive impression the errata's which by long decurrence of time through many mens hands have befaln it are easily corrected and amended by men of Apostolick Spirits and Primitive tempers For my part I heartily desire humby endeavour and unfeinedly advise for such a blessed accommodation as may satisfie the just designes and honest interests of all good men I am infinitely grieved to see them threaten one another with eternall distances and this Church with everlasting differences and distractions of which I am the more jealous and sensible by what I observe either of rigor or reservednesse in some men of Episcopall Presbyterian and Independent principles who had rather lose the whole game of the Reformed Religion and this Churches Recovery than abate one ace of their high fancies and demands Where Episcopall Divines do remit much of modern advantages and condescend to the most innocent models of Primitive Episcopacy yet still they find many Presbyterians and Independents so died in graine as to their particular parties principles and adherencies that they will not yet endure any thing that hath the least colour or tincture name or title of Episcopacy Some viler sort of men study nothing more than to render the venerable Names of Bishops and Episcopacy odious and the more there is pleaded for their innocency or excellency as Pilate did for Jesus when he found no fault in him the more they clamor with the Jewes Crucifie crucifie And all this lest forsooth some Godly Ministers of the new stamps and models should lose any thing of that popular glosse and lustre whereby they fancy themselves to shine and glister like money new-minted among some people in their private spheares hence some of them grow so cruelly cunning that neither in Charity nor Policy they will endure any closure or treaty with Episcopacy under any notion notwithstanding that they pretend to twist their Associations with the three-fold cords of all moderate men differing still in some principles yet concurring in one grand end for the publick peace as they tell us when yet nothing can intreate them to wish to speak or think well of Episcopacy in any state or constitution Some fervent or fierce men profess such a jealousy of Antichrist in Episcopasy that they cast away all that is of Christ in it They fear an Apostacy if they should returne to the Apostolick Polity which is Episcopacy There are that urge it best for the Piety Peace and Honor of this Nation to have no united Church no Ecclesiasticall Unity which should be Nationall no uniforme or setled Religion but to let every one invent adhere to and advance that party and opinion which they like best so immoveable are they by any experiences of our mischiefes or any remonstrances of Piety Prudence and Charity for a publick composure in Religion From the restive temper of these men I can expect nothing more than that equanimity which will bear at least with Episcopacy in such as can bear with Presbytery or Independency in them If they find it so blessed a Liberty to serve the Lord as they list in those new Church-waies whereof they so much boast and glory why should they envy or how can they in conscience grudge to allow the Godly and honest Episcopall Clergy and other Christians who are in no virtue grace or gift inferior to them to partake of and use the like freedom as is either granted to or used and presumed by Presbytery and Independency Why should they so spitefully obstruct and hinder that concession to Episcopacy which is indulged or challenged to all sorts of novelties and varieties Possibly God in time would decide which is the best way if Episcopacy as Eliah might bring its offering to the Altar as well as others do It may be in a few yeares Providence would shew which way pleaseth him most by his enclining the hearts of good Christians to embrace and follow what hath most of Gods Order and Wisdome of Christs Institution of Apostolick imitation of Catholick Tradition or Custome and of the Churches union all which meet onely in Primitive Episcopacy But this way as it may be dilatory and tedious so it may be dangerous and pernicious as to the welfare of both Church and State for there can be no division in Religion without emulation no emulation without opposition no opposition without ambition no ambition without animosity no animosity without offence no offence without anger and studies
ownes as the badg or bond of his admission into Communion with Christ and his Church both Catholick and congregationall generall and particular This it seemes must now not at all be owned or slighted nulled and forgotten by the superfetation of a new form of Christian confederation more solemn sacred and obliging as they fancy to Christian duties than that was which was solemnly made in the presence of the congregation ratified in the blood of Jesus Christ and testified in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost yea and after this the poor Episcopall Divines if they will gently comply and for feare Associate must quietly permit either the community of the people or the parity of the Presbyters in their severall lesser bodies and congregations or in their greater classes and conventions to challenge to themselves the plenary sole absolute perfect and unappealable power of not onely ordination which of old they never had as St. Jerom confesseth but of all Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction and Discipline and this under the conduct and auspicious management of onely some Diurnall Dictator some temporary prolocutor or extemporary moderator who is forsooth to have the Image of a superficiall Bishop and the shadow of a short-liv'd superintendent a thing meerly occasional and unauthoritative as to any office or power inherent in him or of right to be challenged or exercised by him enjoying onely an horary arbitrary and humane presidency for fashion and civility sake without any Ecclesiasticall eminent or constant Authority residing in him as derived from Christ the Apostles or their successors or any Churches custome designation and consent in former times Such as was ever committed to owned in and used by the Bishops of the Church as regularly succeeding to the Apostles in that ordinary eminency of power which was necessary to keep both Presbyters and all Christian people and Churches good Order Peace and Unity which blessings they never more enjoyed or more happily than under a right Episcopacy Whose cause however of later yeares it hath been run down and trampled in a hurry under foot by some men in England Scotland and Ireland yet hath it suffered no reall diminution as to the true Honor of its Apostolick Authority its Primitive Antiquity its Catholick succession its high descent and its holy Originall which was never denyed or much disputed by any men of any considerable Learning and Piety till these later Dog-dayes in which not onely some single Stars of nebulous and dubious light but whole Constellations of them like Sirius or the Canicular Juncto erected under the new name and figuration of Smectymnuus to calculate the Nativity of a new Reformation became Lords of the Ascendent being filled contrary to their former Conformity and declared submission with a very unbenigne that I say not malignant influence not only against Episcopacy but in effect against the whole visible Constitution of this Church in which as Goods in a sunk ship all things are much wasted and abased by the ruine of Episcopacy Their destructive fires kindled from the colder parts of this Island first flamed into strange Logomachies thredbare cavillings and triviall strifes about Words and Names as if after sixteen hundred years all the Christians and Ministers of England its Princes and Parliaments its Synods and Councels yea all the Christian world elsewhere were to be Catechized by a few petty Presbyters in comparison and their Scot-English Assembly what the names of Bishop and Presbyter of Pastor and Teacher of Elder and Ruler of Helps and Governments of Apostle and Evangelist of Ecclesiastical Stars and Angels did mean which not onely all Writers but all times and practises of all Churches had sufficiently interpreted and cleared from the first promiscuous use of some general names which called the chief Apostles Prophets Evangelists Bishops Presbyters Elders Ministers and Deacons too in whose offices authorities and duties there were real and great differences to more proper and peculiar distinctions according to the several ranks degrees orders offices and powers then established in the Church After the Squibbs and Crackers of paper had been lighted and cast in the face of venerable Episcopacy at last as the manner is things came to dreadful Chiromachies such scufflings and fightings with hands and arms of flesh against that Government which is as the Ancient of dayes that they looked more like that Gigantomachy the Giants assaulting Heaven and the Gods than that Good fight of faith which ought to contend earnestly onely for that which was once uniformly delivered to all true Saints and received by all true Churches of Christ in doctrine order and government among whom all lesser disputations and differences circumstantial rising among good Christians were wont to be fairly debated and determined in lawful Assemblies in Ecclesiastical Synods and National or general Councils from which Christian and Orthodox Bishops were never either terrified or excluded but principally called and admitted as the chief Fathers of those holy Oeconomies or Christian Polities Nor was Episcopacy ever condemned by any of those Councils Synods or Assemblies in any Age of the Church much less was it ejected and extirpated as uselesse unlawful and abominable no not by any Synods and confessions of any Protestant and reformed Churches of note notwithstanding they could not conveniently enioy the blessing of it for so they accounted it either by reason of the petulancy of people or the impatience of civil Magistrates or the Sacrilegious humours and designes of all against the Clergy After all these prepossessions and just presumptions thus challenged to the cause and state of Episcopacy in point of its venerable and undeniable Antiquity I cannot but offer to its still scrupulous or implacable Adversaries these following Quaeres 1. How sad I beseech you and wretched how confounded and astonished must the awakened Consciences of those men be who have been the chief Authors and Fautors of our late troubles variations and miseries chiefly upon the account of their Antiepiscopal Antipathies if after all these combustions perturbations and plunderings of Religion which have rather pleased mens private passions and opinions than any way profited the publick welfare of this Church or State if I say these great sticklers against Episcopacy should be either grosly mistaken or malitiously perverted from the right path that good old way of which former Ages can better inform us then those that are but of yesterday and can know nothing but by their light 2. What if it should be as true as it is most probable because generally so believed in all Ages parts and places of the Church that the cause of Primitive Episcopacy is indeed the cause of God of Christ and of the whole Church the cause of all the Apostles of all Primitive Bishops their immediate successors yea the cause of all true Presbyters and all true Christians a cause in which the glory of God the wisdome of Christ the honor of the Apostles the fidelity of their successors the
and concluding a match with our King Henry the Sevenths daughter and James the Fourth King of Scotland a foundation certainly of very great honour and happiness to both Nations if wise and religious superstructures had been built upon it Now by a strange revolution of Divine Justice that holy Thistle which lately vied for an Equality with if not a Superiority above the Roses is become not so much united in a Parity as subdued to an Inferiority Nor were the English Bishops less loyal to true Religion as Christian yea and to the true Reformation of it then to their King and Country How notably did that renowned Lincolniensis Grostest Bishop of Lincoln assert the freedom of his Conscience against the Popes unworthy commands How many other Bishops in the contests between the Popes and our Princes about Investitures asserted the rights of their Soveraigns After the Roman darkness and Tyranny vanished and the light of an orderly and loyal Reformation appeared how many godly Bishops then did abide the fiery Tryal of Martyrdom How many of them and their Clergy were banished and imprisoned as Confessors How many of them as Jewel Abbot Andrews Davenant White Morton and others have wrote with incomparable study and unanswerable strength against the Papal Usurpations Errors and Superstitions and none beyond the last Archbishop of Canterbury for clearness and exactness of the Controversies stated With how great a resolution and loyal freedom did George Abbot his immediate Predecessor write a notable letter to King James against all toleration of Popery when the Spanish match was hot in treaty At which time with what thunder and lightning did Dr. Senhowes afterward B. of Carlile preach the two famous Sermons against the great Diana of Rome as well as of Ephesus to such a degree of eloquent zeal and becoming courage that he pleased even those whom he offended In the very last Convocation in England anno 1640. which gave occasion to so great flames in this Church meeting with times and minds which had both wood and fire ready and onely wanted a Sacrifice even this so decryed Synod which had in it as learned honest and venerable Church-men Bishops and others as ever were in England had among other things concluded a full and firme defiance against Popery for ever as well as an establishment for Episcopacy which they then found tottering and shaken but had not the happiness to use the right means of establishing it which was not by building it a story higher but by taking it rather a story lower at least abating its Pinnacles Turrets and Battlements what it wanted in ornament and height it might have enjoyed in strength and setledness Yet their design and endeavour was very prudent foreseeing as was easie that the overthrow of Episcopacy in the Reformed Church of England would be the greatest gratification to Rome that could be at present expected by the Papists And certainly the Romish party were never more pleased then with those Convulsion-fits which so tortured first and afterward destroyed not onely that Convocation but all the former Stability Honour Peace Plenty Order and Government of this Church and its Clergy which alwayes feared and foretold no less danger from Scylla then Charybdis I might adde further the humble yet resolute Remonstrance made by the Bishops of Ireland to the Governours and Councel of that Kingdom in the Lord of Straffords time fully and freely declaring the inconsistency of any open and avowed toleration of Popery with the honour of God with the power and purity of the Reformed Religion and with the peace of the Kingdoms Thus when the Bishops of England were Capital or Dominical letters both in the Church and State their Piety Loyalty Courage Zeal and Constancy made I think as fair and as goodly ashew as any of their enemies have done they were legible afar off at home and abroad and will be so to present and after-Ages many an one of them signified more as to exemplary Piety and useful Vertues then one hundred of petty Presbyters or puny Preachers either then did or now do or ever will be able to do who were indeed never so considerable or commendable so useful to the Church or serviceable to the State as when they kept to an humble subordination and wise communion with their Bishops whose honour and peace was the Presbyters honour as the honour of the head is the honour of every member of that Body Doubtless their temporal happiness was bound up together neither could Bishops be happy without the assistance of venerable Presbyters nor Presbyters without the governance of reverend Bishops neither should be without other in the Lords Church I might here further adde to the consideration of the obedientiall and peaceable principles and practises of true Episcopacy its Charitable Hospitable and Generous disposition which are best expressed in times of peace and a state of plenty As Bishops had a firm loyalty to their Princes and obedience for conscience sake to their superiours not examining their morall vertues but their civil Rights which are the onely measures of duty in like manner Bishops had generally great charity to their equals and benignity to ther inferiours which is a great fruit of a subjects loyalty to his Prince and love to his Country relieving many poor people in their pressures and thereby keeping them from those discontents which usually attend the distresses of mens conditions the afflictions of Princes oft rising from the dust the meaner sort of people when necessities animate them to animosities and such insolencies as turne dust into lice as Moses did to the plaguing of Pharaoh and all Egypt None but evil eyes and worse hearts could with unthankfullnesse and uncharitablenesse grudge the excellent Bishops of England those Honors and Revenues which they highly deserved while they worthily employed them rather for others good than their own private enjoyments in any way of luxury or gallantry or debauchery the frequent gulfs of many other mens great Estates and Honors when they are enjoyed and abused by very small and sensuall minds Generally Bishops neglected their own private interests and gaine to advance the publick How few of them in many yeares of peace and plenty raised any considerable fortunes to their particular families or posterities I am sure not comparable to what Judges and Lawyers in all Ages yea and Military men have done in a few yeares whose thrifty swords have gathered better Estates in one seven yeare than any Bishops or other Church-mens liberall words and works ever did or aimed at in twenty yeares though their yearly Revenues were as good or better I think than most Commanders pay and I conceive as much deserved by them in order to the publick good and service which they might do and really did in all Ages both as to Church and State to Superiours Equals and Inferiours For Bishops beyond all men in their times were guilty of building repairing and endowing many Churches which other men
pull down and rob buy and sell squander and embezell Bishops besides their temporary daily and occasionall bounty founded and erected many costly works of durable and Monumentall Charity in Colledges Libraries Free-Schooles Hospitals Almes-Houses and the like many noble endowments they began many they encreased many they perfected to Gods glory the Nations Honor the incouragement of Learning and Religion as well as the relief of many poor people They took as much pleasure in their works of Charity as others can do in their sacriledge or robbery taking away those things from the Church and all religious uses to which neither they nor any of their progenitors ever gave one farthing for they are commonly persons of the meanest blood and ignoblest descents as well as minds and manners who are most repiners at the Churches patrimony which all persons of generous piety both feare and abhor to do knowing that those penurious practises and sacrilegious principles which some men follow are as much Antievangelicall as they are Antiepiscopall against Christ and his Gospel as much as against the Clergy and true Christian Charity It being impossible than Christian or Reformed Religion should ever flourish except by miracle as Aarons dry Rod did when it was nourished by no earth or dew when the Ministers of it are such diminutives kept alwaies in a mendicant Minority and in a plebeian parity as well as poverty when Pastors of the Church are so pittifully penurious and inconspicuous that they are alwaies driven like vermine to be creeping and biting crying and whining craving and coveting crouching and complaining rather than giving or distributing any thing with charity and cheerfulnesse to men or consecrating any free-will offering to God the Church and their Country O how perfect a Blessing how complete a Reformation how Triumphant a Church how glorious a Ministry how pretious Predicants must there needs be then in England when the visible order sociall beauty politick harmony and ancient Government of Religion being first deprived of all honors and amplenesses Ministers are reduced to meannesse and tenuity either wholly scattered into fragments of Independency or molded up in the Masse and Chaos of Presbytery where every Ministers principle and practise must necessarily tend either to rule in Common or else to rend from the Community where there shall be no further motive to any Loyalty Subjection and Peaceablenesse than what either the terror and necessity of others power or the tenuity and paucity of their own party and sides imposeth upon such Ministers and their various Sectators who thus levelled or ravelled or hudled up without any due Subordination to Ecclesiasticall Governours of any Eminency or Authority must needs sow all seeds of Faction Sedition civil Troubles and Disloyalty toward civil Magistrates whatever Title or Majesty they affect to be clothed withall They cannot avoid to be alwaies exposed to and exercised with their peoples mutuall emulations contrarieties contradictions and contempts which are raised and exercised upon the score of different Teachers and Religious disputes for the determining of which there are no men of venerable worth and conspicuity appointed such as Bishops and Synods of old were in all Ages Men cannot long have a consciencious regard to Civil Governours when either they have not or they will not endure any Ecclesiasticall They that see nothing deserving honor love and submission to a Worthy Learned Grave and Godly Bishop will hardly see much in any Justice Judge or Prince especially when Duty Obedience and Fidelity shall be measured by mens parties and opinions in Religion by their civil and secular interests which is alwaies expectable from any people that affect irregular liberties and formidable freedomes in any Church or State As Princes that ever have been Episcopal do hardly suite with the novelties and intrusions of either Presbytery or Independency so t is certain Presbyterian Preachers will as hardly comply with an Episcopall or an Independent Prince as with a Bishop and the like may be imagined of Independents when neither of them enduring any order or subjection as to Religious polity beyond their own fancy must needs be lesse pliable to that obedience which is legal and civil especially when it is exacted by those Princes that are not of their perswasion and way Nor can there be indeed any aptitude in such mens spirits or tempers to any stability of loyalty when their very conjunctions are like the first confused concretion of all things rather an heap of contraries or novelties daily emerging than a composure of any noble orderly and constant harmony in Religion which is never to be expected where there must ever be either a combination of folly and faction of juvenility and simplicity onely none being admitted to some confederacies that do not first renounce much of their Learning and Reading if they have any or of their credit and esteem as to all Ancient Churches or else like lumps of yce they must be compacted and governed as it hits by Gravity and Levity by Age and Youth by Weaknesse and Ability by Steadiness and Giddiness by Rashnesse and Wariness by Passion and Judgement by Prudence and Confidence by Modesty and Impudence Hemp and Silk Course and Fine Linnen and Woollen being twisted and jumbled together these at the best must make up the associating and fluctuating methods of any levelled Ministry or else they must be like sand and stones without lime rather cast into severall little heaps than built up in a joynt and grand fabrick by just Rules Orders and proportions truly edifying when there shall be nothing of Authority among Ministers proportionate to the different Ages Capacities Gifts or Offices and Merits of any of them which make up the true harmony of Government and internall Majesty of all Authority but all things of Religious and Church-order must be left in such a popular and plebeian posture as shall most incourage whatever is most Turbulent Factious Seditious and Rebellious in any mens spirits who will be prone either to affect more Rule than is their due or else be impatient that any should govern them in Church or State further than they list or think is agreeable to those principles and perswasions of Religion or Reformation which they strongly fancy to themselves and aime as strongly to set up and impose on others when they shall be able not by the approbation and permission of the chief Magistrate onely where it may be fairly had but in case he be so blind wilfull obstinate and unconvertible as some have been for Episcopacy against Presbytery they will find a call from God and some speciall impulsives to obtrude their opinions and designes without yea against the expresse will of the Soveraigne Governour whose obstinacy against any such supposed waies of God and pretended Discipline of Jesus Christ is thought by many a sufficient Absolution and Dispensation from their civil Loyalty Oathes and Subjection Thus looking for God in fires and Earth-quakes of civil combustions
they lose him who is best to be found in the Evangelicall and still voyce to which the Priests and Prophets of the Jewish also the Apostles with their successors the Godly Bishops of the Christian Churches have alwaies listned and generally obeyed judging nothing more diametrally distant from and opposite to true Religion than Rebellion that is the usurping of that power which is by Right and Law anothers upon any religious pretence whatsoever Certainly the Jewel of Loyalty neither was nor ever will be safer kept than in the Cabinet of Primitive Episcopacy as Aarons Râ—d and the Tables of the Law were best preserved in the Ark of the Testimony and in the most holy place which were laid up with the pot of Manna Emblems most lively setting forth the happy State of any Christian Church and Nation while it maintaines the Lawes of God and man while it subjects all men to the Rod or Scepter of just Government both in Church and State supporting as the Princes so the chief Pastors Bishops and Guides of the Church with an honorable plenty and all other Ministers both in Church and State with competent and ingenuous alimony As Christian Kings and Queenes have ever been according to Gods promise the most indulgent liberall and tender nurses of the Church of Christ in all Countries every where retaining and reverencing Episcopacy as most agreeable with their Soveraignty and Monarchy so have all true Christian Bishops in all Ages and places ever been the most Learned Assertors of and the humble submitters to Soveraigne and Monarchical Authority of Princes and no lesse to that of Aristocracy in Common-weales or Republiques such as Florence was and Venice still is who never yet saw any reason of State to move them to change the ancient and honorable Government of Catholick Episcopacy for any other which hath as more of parity popularity and poverty so lesse of honest policy firm peace and religious loyalty Certainly a Christian Prince or State that designes stability to their power and peace will need these two swords of Soveraignty and Episcopacy to keep himself his people and his Church safe A wise Governour cannot but see and say of Episcopacy compared to all other formes as David said of Goliahs sword there is none like that in respect of its principles operations and influences as to religious loyalty and publick tranquillity The loyalty and civil subjection of all novellers seemes to be with so many salvo's and reserves of godlinesse and grace of Religion Christs Discipline or true Church-waies of Princes not being tyrants or persecutors in their subjects sense that there is little certainty much lubricity and as many dangers as evasions But the Loyalty of Episcopacy is positive and plenary resolute and absolute according to those cleare Evangelical precepts and patternes either to act or suffer with good conscience owning no pensations as from God or Man Pope or Presbyter or People which some Antiepiscopall Preachers and Professors seem to have found out as the Gnosticks of old did being loth to be Carbonated or Crucified Christians if they can help it pleading that Right followes Might especially in Cases and Engagements of Religion excusing the Primitive Martyrs softness and easinesse to suffer as Bellarmine and others do the Popes pristine submission to the Emperours by reason of their Minority being then in their bibs and hanging-sleeves CHAP. XXI MY third Plea to recommend Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy to my wise and honoured Countrymen is taken from the consideration of the Genius or temper of the English Nation in which the Spirits of people are generally so heady and giddy so high and stout that they cannot long bear any way of Government or any Governours which seem levelling popular plebeian and prostrate however they may for a fit of novelty or discontent be pleased with such Pageants yet these are not the Mansion-houses that English people will dwell in They are too stiff-necked and stubborn a people ever to reverence or submit to such Magistrates in State or such Discipliners in Church as are but their Peers and Equals at best and many times their Inferiours as in estate and learning so in all those things Divine Civil and Humane which are proper to conciliate respect and command submission upon the account of some eminency of merit or worth set off with some conspicuity of riches honour or power The late Presbyterian design and defeat in England as to inducing their Checker-work of Lay-elders to be Joynt-rulers and Partners with Preachers in Ecclesiastical autority placing as they must needs even silly Mechanicks in many places in a parallel jurisdiction with the ablest Scholars and Ministers as to church-Church-government and Discipline yea and above them in their numbers and suffrages the speedy baffling I say and discountenancing of this pitiful project with all its long train baggage and ammunition by a general dislike difuse and neglect of it sufficiently shews that either Common people in England have more modesty yet left in them than to think themselves fit judges and rulers in the State or Church with their Magistrates and Ministers or else that they utterly disdain to be Catechized and controlled by such as are their plain country-neighbours and trivial Comrades of the same forme for rusticity and simplicity and many times as much below them in prudence as in estate in civility as in solid piety to which a factious and pragmatick ambition in any man adds very little The speedy confutation of this incongruous polity and stratagem which to please the people sought to besiege my selfe and all Ministers both in City and Country with four or five or more Lay-elders made up of Farmers Shop-keepers Clothiers and Handicrafts-men to be our Assessors and Assistants as Censors and Supervisors of all the Parish and our selves too not only with us but in some things above us Ministers both in number and popular influence this hath really wrought such an abhorrence and disdain in most people of all such Lay-ruling-elders and such a despiciency of all such Disciplining-plots as are neither prudent nor pertinent for the English temper that even those Ministers who were at first most zealous to set up in stead of the fair Temples and Cathedrals those small Synagogues and low Consistories of Lay-partners in Church-government even these Ministers find they have lost much of that pristine respect and influence they had among their own and all other people so that upon the point neither great nor small will now be further than they list governed by such methods of imprudent men who have reproched their own mother-Church diminished themselves and their Order blasted their Ministerial Ordination soiled that fountain whence they sprang disgraced those venerable Bishops who were lawfully and worthily their Fathers and Rulers despised as much as in them lyes the very Catholick and honourable name of Episcopacy abolished its ancient honour and autority which were ever established and preserved till now by the
and possibly over-aw'd by the civil sword to submit to any such Triers Ordainers Committee-men and Censors yea Tithing-men and Constables as it is pleased to impose on them while it exerciseth both a Civil and Ecclesiasticall Episcopacy over Church and State as supposing it self safest when it hath both swords in its hands that by so eminent power it may both preserve Majesty and exercise Authority which are inseparable It is extreme vanity and folly to imagine that even the lesser flies the rabble and vulgarity of the people in England naturally course and now grown both baser and ruder then ever being insolent as to the presumptions of their liberties both religious and civil that these I say should easily be held by those fine new cobwebs of church-Church-Government which some men have lately spun out of their own bowels and braines for they are not of the ancient Web or Loome How much lesse can any wise man expect that the greater sort of people in the Nation such as are either purse-proud yet arrant Churles and Clowns will be either catched or held by those imaginary toyles What then shall we think either Presbytery or Independency will do with the higher-spirited Gentry and heretofore Magnanimous Nobility of England Will not these Lords and Ladies think it ridiculously strange to find themselves cited and summoned tried and examined reproved and censured excommunicated yea and reprobated by a few petty-Presbyters whom they look upon commonly as poor Scholars pragmatick and pedantick enough for the most part if they have any power and be under none as to Church-Discipline Or will these Gentlemen submissly venerate the Authority of Good-men Lay-Elders or a cold Vestry of a few honest Gaffers with their Elect Pastor who is as a poor soul set to informe and move that poor Body of Parochial or congregated Christians who are ready to say with the Pharisee to all that are not of their corporation and opinion Stand by we are holier than thou Good God! what stamps of eminency in Reason or Religion in Piety or Policy in Civility or Charity will any persons of Noble Birth Good Breeding and Pregnant Parts see in these Consistorian or Congregationall Conventions to keep up their own Authority and to keep down other mens spirits from despising them Among whom there neither is nor can be generally any such conspicuity or sufficiency for any parts and abilities of mind and body of estate and quality as may redeem them from the very contempt and laughter even of boyes to which many times their pittifull clothes which give either a great glosse or damp with vulgar eyes as they are either rich or mean on the backs of men in Authority besides their simple carriage their senselesse speeches and very silly lookes are prone to expose them Nor have they many times as to the Lay-part of them any thing without or within them to redeem them from this low and loose esteem in all mens both judgements and consciences who are not very silly superstitious or servile Yet of this course bran and barrel for the most part are those men and Ministers who have been most eager to exclude Venerable Episcopacy and to challenge to themselves either as Ministers or Laicks the whole Height Depth Length and Breadth of Ecclesiasticall Government in England not onely for ordaining Ministers but for censuring silencing deposing excommunicating and wholly Anathematizing or abdicating from Christ and his Church all sorts and sizes of men whatever Majesty Soveraignty and Authority they have upon them For these new Masters professe like God to be no respecters of persons all must fall under their lash and stroke who are either in the Parochiall or Congregationall Communion and Jurisdiction Possibly such small Monitors or Triobolary Discipliners who are justly of least esteem in a Nation and Church might for a time and in a humour suite the spirits of some little Colonies or Conventicles in Arnheim or Amsterdam in new England or in old and cold Scotland where common people have much of the easiness or tamenesse of peasants But certainly they are no way suitable to the Haughtiness and Grandeur of England These manacles are so far from shackling the chief of our Tribes and heads of our Families that they are not capable to hamper the feet so far from making good Pillories that they will not serve for good Stocks and whipping-posts for the due repressing and punishing even of vulgar petulancy and insolency which we see prevailes every where inspite both of Presbytery and Independency for want of an Honorable and Venerable Episcopacy justly constituted and honorably countenanced in the Church The temper of the English Nation is not like that of Scotland which with so brotherly and unwelcome a zeal would needs obtrude upon us Presbytery whether we would or no. There every petty Lairde of a Village in his High house hath either a bit and bridle in the mouths or a Cane over the crags of all the poor Cotagers and of the poor Clerick his Minister too who are in a kind of Villanage as underlings to his Seigniorie servilely depending on him the one for his great Salary of an hundred Scotch punds or marks a yeare where every mark is thirteen pence half-penny and every pund is two shillings English the other for their Cotages Copy-Holds Farmes and Tenures So that the common people there being generally over dropped and under-fed low-pursed and low-spirited might easily be ruled as to any religious Government and Church-Concernments by such a Discipline as their gudd Lairdes and Sr. John pleased to put upon them the ambition of Preacher and people being no higher than to eate and drinke and to beget children in their own likenesse to poverty and servility as the Peasants in France and Boores in Germany do But the ruggednesse and fiercenesse of the people of England even of the very Commons and clowns who are higher fed and bred to less slavery then in other countries is such that like our English horses cocks mastives and bores they are no where to be matched for the curstness and animosity of their spirit and mettle How have we seen even mean men bristle against not onely their grave Ministers but their great Benefactors and Masters Tenants have risen against their Landlords and Peasants against the noblest Peers so Presbyters have contested with their Bishops and subjects with their Soveraignes Such tragical rufflings and disdains of their betters are no news in Engl. And shall we think that trades-men peasants and yeomen not to mention gentlemen and noblemen or such as shall govern as supreme will all or any of them now be so tame as to be curbed checked ruled and managed by those minime Ministers and members of Congregations or those petty Presbyters in their Parishes or Associations whom they have no visible cause or motive in the world to look upon or esteem as their equals or betters no way likely to be their benefactors and so
not worthy to be their Rulers in the least kind This submission cannot be expected unless Englishmen are now to be subdued by fine words and made obedient by the formal and supercilious looks of some men who affect in their Churches and Parishes to govern all and are not fit alone to govern any unless they had been more able and willing to govern themselves and to have kept within that compasse of Ecclesiastical Order and subjection to their Bishops and betters which the example of all Churches and all worthy Presbyters and true Christians in all Ages commended to them besides the particular Laws and constitutions of this Church and State These considerations of the unproportionableness of any other Church-government than a right Episcopacy to the temper of England moved the supercilious yet very learned Salmasius in his advice to the Prince Elector then in England and to some other of the long Parlament and of the Scotized Assembly who desired his judgement upon the then hot and perboyling yea passionate and over-boyling debates touching Episcopacy to tell them That as the Episcopal Government rightly constituted and executed is very agreeable to the Word of God and most conform to all Antiquity so it was of all other most suitable to the English spirit and constitution The want of which he already foresaw was and would ever be the cause of much disorder and distraction of infinite Factions Heresies Schismes and Confusions Thus the great Dictator of Learning as he esteemed himself was pleased in this passage and other-where graciously to express his judgement and pleasure according to the humour he was in or to the Interest which he was pleased to adopt Sometimes he is Walo Messalinus and ashamed to own his Name against Episcopacy he was in that disguise to gratifie the pretentions of Presbytery and the adherence or dependence which he had to the French and Dutch Churches otherwhile he puts off the vizard and with open face owns the eminency authority antiquity and universality of Episcopacy yea the incomparable utility of it when joyned with a grave and orderly Presbytery besides a particular aptitude in it to the English Genius For he well saw that all Government and Church-Government as much as any is a beame of Divine Majesty and requires not onely something of a Diviner sufficiency as to inward abilities and endowments but also of a Diviner conspicuity and lustre for Authority civil eminency and ornament We read that God besides his choice of Aaron and his Sons to be complete persons to make them chief Priests according to his Command and Commission gave also strict order for their garments to have them made with such comelinesse cost and curiosity as should be for glory and beauty even before the eyes of the people over whom they were placed And we further read that God forbad to his people the Jewes all birds that did creep and yet fly they were uncleane and abominable to be eaten An Emblem that nothing is lesse comely in Gods Church than to see those men ambitiously affect to fly high in governing others whose condition is low and creeping on the ground Indeed no Government can be carried on in Church or State especially in Engl. but either by the absolute terror of the sword and secular power commanding or by such legal injunctions and religious perswasions as bind good men in conscience to submit first to God and for his sake to those whom he as Lord of all is pleased to set over us Then is government in Church or State most complete and constant when it hath first that rational Empire and religious prevalency over mens hearts which ariseth from the perswasion that people have of the worth abilities right and authority which Governours have by their laws as from God in the State so from Christ in the Church Which perswasion as it brought all Christian people Presbyters and Bishops to be so wholy subject to their civil Magistrates and Soveraigns so it made all Christian Presbyters and Professors to be filially submiss to their Bishops as to Fathers given them by Christ even then when Bishops were rich in graces and gifts of the Spirit but low as to worldly greatness and under much persecution yet then did the Majesty of Episcopal authority prevail on which the lively Characters and pregnant Memorials of the Apostolical pattern designation and succession were still fresh and most remarkable then did it draw all true Believers and good Christians to venerate their Bishops or chief Pastors for Conscience sake by so much the more by how much Presbyters and People had more of the power of Godlinesse in them whereas now it is made a new mark of Godliness and Saintship with many to cast off to hate abhor despise and destroy all Bishops and all eminent Episcopacy Sure either primitive purity or modern dreggs must be very much out of the right way and which of them erres I leave to all sober men to judge As for other Christians of looser Consciences and Conversation which were prone in all Ages to be as weeds in the garden of the Church especially in times of Peace Plenty and Prosperity the piety and wisdom of Christian Princes and other godly people ever took care to keep them in the more awe and reverence toward their Bishops and Ecclesiastical Governours by investing these in such outward and visible enjoyments for estate and honour which might adde some outward respect and authority to them and that no small one before those that had most need to be so restrained overawed and dazled Hence the piety and policy of Constantine the Great not onely gave liberal supports to the Bishops of the Church but gave them places and honors equal to the Patricii the Senators in order and degree which were the Roman chief Nobility It is not onely an imprudent but an impious presumption and a tempting of God to needless miracles for any people to invest those men in any Government as in State so in Church who are as St. Paul saith little esteemed because deserving little who have neither personal abilities for the Office nor any clear and undoubted commission to authorize them in it from God or Man from Christ and his Church which I conceive can hardly if ever be found in any wayes of Church-government which are suspected for Novelty or tainted with Parity and Popularity contemners of Catholick Custom Primitive Antiquity and Apostolical Succession in an holy Uniformity From all which depravations as venerable Episcopacy is sufficiently known to be farthest removed of any so it cannot but seem to all impartial Christians to be as every way best in it self so fittest for the native temper of England where mens spirits are more accurate and acute more inquisitive and searching into the rights foundations and grounds of all authority over them then in other Countries where meannesse and easinesse servility and credulity of common people makes them venerate
Adde to all these the famous Bishop Hall who had in him all that was desirable in an excellent Bishop for Learning Meekness Patience Peaceableness his eloquence both in speaking and writing was transcendent yet the least of his excellencies Lest any rust or soyl should grow upon so great graces and abilities he was among other Bishops polished by the Grindstones and roughnesse of these times yea there wanted not to his dying day some men who gave him a greater lustre by their insolencies Who had ever more of the Dove and lesse of the Serpent then Bishop Potter a man severely good and conscienciously not factiously scrupulous in some things but not as to Episcopacy What shall I speak of the Meekness and Tender-heartedness of Bishop West field who frequently softned his auditors hearts not onely with his excellent Sermons but his unaffected tears yet was he forc'd among other Bishops to lye down in sorrow though no doubt he now reaps in joy Nothing was more mild modest and humble yet learned eloquent and honest than Bishop Winniffe I conclude this goodly Regiment of Church-colonels of Ecclesiastical Rulers of venerable Bishops with Bishop Prideaux who was a Miscellany or Encyclopaedy of all Learning after he had by many years diligence honoured the Divinity-professors Chair and the University of Oxford together with the Nation by his vast pains and was deservedly made a Bishop though somewhat too late he was at last so squeezed to nothing by the iron hand of our times that he had nothing left to maintain himself and his children but dying bequeathed them Piety and Poverty as their Legacy May we not cry out as he did of old Bone Deus c. Blessed God to what times hast thou reserved us what terrors hast thou shewed us If it be thus done in the fruitful sound and green trees what will be done with those that are hollow barren and rotten dry twice dead and pulled up by the rootes All these Heroes of Learning and Religion these renowned Bishops the honor of Episcopacy the glory of this Church the just boasting of this Nation together with many others have some long since some of late dyed in the Lord and are at rest from the sore Labour and travells they in the evening of their lives met with under the Sun Many of them were exhausted distressed despised destroyed as to all worldly enjoyments yet not miserable not so afflicted as to be forsaken of God or despairing of Gods mercies though they found little from man Nor is the English world heretofore so full so famous so flourishing with rare Bishops as yet so drained but there are some such left as are worthy to bring on the Reare and close up this gallant Troop of gowned Generals and mitred Commanders If I might without offence to the Modesty and Gravity of such Bishops as are yet living and best known to me I would tell the erring and ingratefull Age that as it was said of Gonsalvo whom Guicciardine calls the great Captaine an Age is scarce able to breed or match such a Scholar such a Writer such a Bishop as Bishop Morton is A most illustrious and invaluable Jewell yet shut up now in a little box a great and rich Vessel driven in his old Age to a small harbour where his safety is tenuity and obscurity Nor may I give a lesse tender touch of Dr. Juxon whose modesty fidelity and exactness was such that when he bare the great envy of being at once a Lord Bishop of London and Lord Treasurer of England yet he never had blame for either of them his Government as a Bishop was gentle benigne paternal his managing of the Treasury was such that he served his Prince faithfully satisfied all his friends and silenced all his enemies of which he had enough as a Bishop though as a man he was so meek and inoffensive that I think he could contract no enmities with any Some men wished they might have oftner heard him preach and truly I was one of those not onely because preaching was so much in fashion at London but because that City needed good preaching and was to be much taken by it Nor could any preacher in my judgement exceed the Bishop of London I confesse I never heard any man with more pleasure and profit so much he had of Paul and Apollos of a Learned plainenesse and a usefull elaboratenesse when he preached of Mortification of Repentance and other Christian practicks he did it with such a stroke of unaffected eloquence of potent demonstration and irresistible conviction that few Agrippa's or Festus's or Felixe's that heard but must needs for the time and fit be almost perswaded to be penitent and mortified Christians I will yet be so modestly and honestly impudent as to mention two or three Bishops yet living not because I know them but because they are worthy to be known loved and honored by all good men Such as Dr. Duppa the Bishop of Salisbury a person of singular Prudence and Piety equally Grave and Good Learned and Religious so eminent in many things that he is worthy to be not onely a Tutor to a Prince but a Counsellour to a King and no lesse to be a Bishop in the Church of Christ. Next I crave leave to mention Bishop King of whom I need say no more but that I think him a Son worthy of such a Father I cannot forbeare to conclude all with a mighty man Dr. Brownrig Bishop of Excester whose name and presence was once very Venerable to many Ministers while they were orderly Presbyters now he is a dread and terror to them since they are become Presbyterians or Independents such Grassehoppers they seem in their own eyes in comparison of his puissance who so filled the Doctors Chaire in Cambridge and the Pulpit in place where he lived and had filled his Diocese had he been permitted to do the office of a Bishop that it would have been hard to have routed Episcopacy if he had sooner stood in the gap being justly esteemed among the Giantly or Chiefest Worthies of this Age for a Scholar an Orator a Preacher a Divine and a prudent Governour so much mildnesse there is mixed with Majesty and so much generosity with gentleness But I earnestly beg his Lordships and the others pardon since the iniquity of the times have compelled me thus far to transgresse as to commend such persons yet living who though most commendable yet are in nothing more than this that they are more pleased to deserve than to heare their just commendation the best consciences being alwaies attended with the most tender modest and blushing foreheads But I will trespasse no further CHAP. XXIII BUt thus far I have set forth the worth of some I am sure of our English Bishops even in those dayes which damned them all that the world may see upon what mens heads the total ruine of Episcopacy and all Cathedral Churches have faln how there wanted
Religion For I have found by experience that no men have proved move factious affected and fanatick than those men and women who have been most conscious to their youthful Enormities They presently apply to the gentlest Confessors and easiest Repentance which is rather to quarrel with and forsake the Religion they have most violated than seriously to repent and amend without which severities Papists and Separatists think their Converts sufficient if they do but turn to their side and party The second Novellers will be content with any meer fancies or factions in Religion The third the Jesuited Papists with no pure united and well-reformed Religion among us And the fourth the Devil will be content with any Religion that is called Catholick Reformed and Christian so it be not true or not pure or not well-reformed or not orderly setled and uniform or not charitably united or not authoritatively managed and governed Any of which will in time very much unchristen any Christians and unchurch any Church by deforming and dividing them from the Beauty and Communion of the Church Catholick Take heed of betraying your selves and your posterity to Atheisticall licentious immorall and irreligious courses by your Apostasies from and despiciencies of the Learning and Piety Gifts and Graces Ministry and Ministrations Order and Government which were happily setled in the Church of England Go over all the world search all successions of the Church from the Apostles to our daies you shall not find any thing more worthy your Love and Esteem your Veneration and addiction Have you found any thing comparable to it in all the new vapours and florishes of Reformations in any new Inventions Conventions Associations Separations Distractions Distortions Confusions Which may make you giddy by turning you round but they will never make you any progresse in Wisdome or Piety or Charity The Church of England was a most rare and Paragon Jewel shining with admirable lustre on all sides First in its Doctrine or Articles of Religion which were few cleare and sound Secondly in its Sermons or Homilies which were learnedly plain pious and practicall Thirdly in its Liturgy or Devotions which were easie to be understood very apt pathetick and complete Fourthly in its paucity and decency of ceremonies which adorned not incumbred Religion or over-laid the Modesty and Majesty of a comely Reformation Fifthly in the Sanctity and Solemnity of its publick duties which were neither excessive nor defective Sixthly in its Ministry which had good Abilities due Ordination and divine Authority Seventhly it its good Government and Ecclesiasticall Discipline where good Presbyters and good Bishops had leave and courage to do their duties and discharge their consciences whose Fatherly Inspection Catholick Ordination and Ecclesiastick Jurisdiction being wisely managed by worthy men in their severall stations did justly deserve the name of an Hierarchy an holy Regiment or happy Government when it was exercised with that Authority yet Charity and discretion which were ever intended by the Church for the common good of all those Christians that were within her bosome and kept her Communion If others do forget her through fatuity or faction covetousnesse or ambition pride or petulancy as undutifull and ungratefull children yet you may not you will not you cannot so far neglect your own and your posterities happinesse or forfeit your own honor or violate your consciences as to neglect the relief and recovery of your Spirituall Mother But if you of the better sort of men and Christians from whom all good men expect all good things should slight and neglect Her after the vulgar rate which God forbid yet must I never so far comply with you or all the world as to call her former light darknesse or her present darknesse light Pretious with me must the name of the Church of England ever be whose record is in Heaven and in all gracious hearts who were Born and Baptized Instructed Sanctified and Saved in her To this Church of England as I owe with many thousands so I returne with some few the Charity of a Christian as to all Christian Churches the duty of a Son as to a deserving parent the order of a part or member as united and devoted to the whole the obedience of an Inferiour as to a Superiour the gratitude of acknowledging Her Worth and Merit the love of adhering to her unity the candor of approving and conforming to her decent ceremonies the modesty of preferring her Wisdome before my own or any other mens understanding the Humility of submitting to her Spirituall Authority and Governours the Piety and Prudence of relieving and restoring as much as lies in me Her Catholick Order Polity Peace and Government all which I believe were allowed of God and I am sure have been approved by as Learned Wise and Holy men as the world affords I am deeply sensible of the many and great obligations which I have to this Nationall Church and to its Ministers and Bishops for my Baptisme Instruction Confirmation Communion and Ordination not onely as a Member but as a Minister which I account my greatest Honour notwithstanding the great depression of the times in which I have late ward lived I am ambitious to do not onely what becomes my private station but to preserve and expresse the publick respects which are due to this Church whose Despisers and Destroyers have never appeared to me with any Remarques of Beauty or Honour for Learning or Grace for Modesty or Charity for Prudence or Policy comparable to those that were the first Founders Reformers Defenders and Preservers of this Church I must ever professe that I find nothing like her Adversaries nor any thing exceeding her friends in all that was commendable in Catholick and true Antiquity In behalf of this Church having offered many things to the consideration of all good Christians which are my worthy Countrymen I hope as my infirmities may exercise their Charity so my integrity may expiate my infirmities if I have in any thing expressed my self lesse becoming the honest and holy designe which I undertook and have now by Gods help finished which was to set forth First the Teares and Sighâ— of the Church of England Secondly the originall of her Disorders and Distractions Thirdly the dangers and distresses if not remedied Fourthly the probable waies of cure and recovery by Gods blessing to such Order Honour Unity Purity and Peace as becomes so famous a Church and so renowned a Nation whose greatest Crown was Christianity I know there will be many who cannot well beare that freedom of sobernesse and Truth which either my self or others may use in speaking or writing for the Church of England and its pristine Honour Order and Government although themselves use never so great Liberties Reproches and Injuries in Speaking Writing and Acting against them For my part I appeare in this onely as wrapt my self in my Scholastick and Ecclesiastick Gown I meddle not with any civil affaires or Military transactions properly
such Those are of an other sphere and of other principles which I neither censure nor it may be understand I quarrell with no particular mens persons I encounter onely that colluvies of factions parties and novel principles which like the sewers collected from many sinks and kennells have met together to besmeare or over-beare the Church of England I despise no mans Religion so far as it is Religion deserving that holy name in any Catholick and Christian sense But I abhorre an unreasonable immodest unjust and licentious way in any I esteem and embrace with all Charity whatever of Gods Spirit of Christs Truth of Grace and Vertue of Gifts and Parts of Morall Honesty and Humanity I find in any men of any side But I am too old and serious to be abused with vaporings with affectations with popular pretentions with rude and rash Reformations I am for solid sober orderly humble constitutions or restitutions rather of Order Honor and publick encouragement to Religion the Church and Clergy No man hath justled or offended me in all these turbulent times worth owning nor have I an evil eye or an ill will against any man What I write as to my Ecclesiastick Calling Honor and the Church of Englands common concernments may possibly have something of salt but nothing of gall there may be some corrosive to mortifie and meet with the diseased and proud flesh but no venome to poyson or hurt either the diseased or the whole parts It extremely grieves me to see how far the contagion of Ignorance Impudence Profanenesse Irreligion Faction Division Levity Popularity Disorder and Uncharitablenesse hath spread among some of my brethren of the Ministry and many of my Countrymen without any present advance that I can see or future hopes I say not as to their own Honour or Profit but as to Gods glory or the publick interests of the true Christian and Reformed Religion or the good of mens soules or the improvement of any grace and vertue What any side offers as really good or convenient I allow what they partially cry down and causelesly condemn or change that I defend upon the account of this and all Churches Wisdome Honour and Happinesse If what I have written may do any good to the present or after-Ages I have my designe if not I shall by Gods help hereafter redeem this waste of time and labour by applying to studies more suitable to my Genius Spirit and Age which may more improve those graces which are least in dispute among good Christians yet in this I have not wholly lost my labour because I have hereby further discharged my own soul my conscience and reputation from any approbation of what I judge to be either the sins or imprudencies the wickednesse or weaknesse of this Age in which I do not so much live as dye daily weary that my soul finds so little hope of an happy rest or composure unity or harmony in our Church which I had rather see and enjoy before I dye than to have the greatest preferment in the world I envy no men that have wrapped up their worldly interests in their religious policies and daily gaine by the shrines of godlinesse they have made I do indeed boldly rifle their godly principles and pretentions as to their novelties for I see no reason as yet to yield to any of them no not for an hour though they seem never such pillars while they import as if the Church of England had heretofore consisted of a company of silly people and silly Priests whose either ignorance or superstition or sottishnesse or basenesse had hidden the beauties and blessings of true Religion from all peoples eyes so that neither Bishops nor Presbyters nor Princes nor Parlaments nor Convocations ever till now saw what was fit to know and do in Church-matters which are now to be taught and brought to light by the new methods of Presbytery and Independency or by Anabaptism Quakerism and other rarities of Religion untried and untamed Novelties every way as short of the Piety Prudence Unity and Majesty of the Religion and Church of England heretofore as they are wide of or beyond the true ancient bounds and Catholick grounds of Order Government Unity and due Authority I may adde and of the Blessings or Prosperities internal or external spiritual and temporal which attended Episcopal Order and Paternal Presidency which I profess to value as now it is in its rags and ruines far beyond the others in their silks and sprucenesses Episcopacy is now far from being the object of any sober mens Flattery or Ambition yet I cannot but look upon it with such an eye of pitty and reverence as primitive Christians were wont to do upon their Bishops such as Polycarpus Ignatius Irenaeus Cyprian and other Martyrs when they saw them imprisoned beaten tormented destroyed I know yet I plead for those men and for that cause which was once strong but now is weak was honourable and is now despised was favoured but is now frowned upon by many yea I fear most men of ordinary spirits yet I plead for that reverend Order and those reverend persons who have been made a spectacle to Angels and Men such as to this present hour suffer both hunger and thirst are naked and buffeted having no certain dwelling-place which being reviled do blesse being persecuted have suffered with patience being defamed do intreat and being the Glory of all Churches as to Order Unity and Government in all Ages are now looked upon by many as the filth and off scouring of all things yet am I one of those Angels which attend Lazarus on his Dunghil I have chosen to follow the clear though now more exhausted stream of Antiquity rather than the troubled torrents of any Novelties which may be as short-lived as they have been suddenly started I have looked upon all mens principles and pretensions as to Ecclesiastick affairs with what Candor Equanimity and Sincerity I could If in any thing I was inclinable to be partial it was neither for Presbytery nor Independency I confess which I never was catechized in nor accustomed to nor convinced of as to any such Piety or Policy Wisdom or Worth in them which might make me see cause to desire or esteem them but I was swayed against some things not in the constitution so much as some mens administration of Episcopacy I was originally principled to no small jealousies of Bishops actions when they were in their greatest glory and power nor do I yet think but that some Bishops might have been greater Masters of pious Arts than they have proved yet I find now that in many things people were more afraid than hurt For the main I conclude no Ministers or Governours no Superintendencies or Presbyteries in any Reformed way exceeded the Usefulness Merit and Excellency of our English Bishops and Presbyters nor is any thing as to Church-government comparable to a primitive Episcopacy which includes the just Rights Liberties or