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
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
any Church-men in England had by their misdemeanour legally forfeited their use and enjoyments of such holy things as they had in Gods name and as the Churches servants yet certainly the whole Church and Nation had not lost their right in them Posterity could not consent to be deprived of those advantages of Learning and Religion and I am sure Gods title to them can never fall under any forfeiture or escheat whose speciall patrociny those Demesnes were In the Goods and Lands belonging to the Ministry and Church of Christ for the Service of God for the Education and Maintenance of his Ministers for the well-ordering and Government of the Church and Relief of the Poor who ever presumes to impropriate them by meer Power or purchase them to his private Estate had need have either a very good penniworth of them for they will destroy more than they bring or a better title than Ananias had to what was once his own or than God himself hath to them when once devoted and given to him yea they need more power to preserve such Estates to their use and their Posterities than God hath to blesse or curse both them and theirs I have read it as an observation made out of many Authors that the holy vessels of the Temple which were taken from Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian and tossed up and down to many Countreys and Cities in Europe Asia and Africa did as the Ark among the Philistins carry alwayes a storm and calamity with them with such a sacred horrour that no man durst melt them or divert them to secular uses or private benefit untill they were at last brought out of Africa from Carthage as I remember to Constantinople and there dedicated by a Christian Emperour to the service and honour of Christ in the goodly Church of Sancta Sophia which Constantine the Great built and endowed with many goodly both Vessels and Revenues as Eusebius tells us yea and commanded all goods taken from Christian Churches in former times to be restored Sacriledge what fair face soever it carries hath the taile and sting of a Serpent nor can any man die with peace or hope for the prosperity of his Family after him who knowingly is guilty of that Sin Modest and Honest Christians will not no not in their extremities take from God and his Church so much as a shooe-latchet to make them rich David would have been famished I believe rather than by force have taken the Shew-bread or Priests portion from them which was a work onely fit for Doeg who durst take away their lives CHAP. XXIII I Know it will be pleaded by some that are more politick than pious Religionis trapezitae 1. That civil Polities have the absolute supreme power over all things of civil Rights and secular Enjoyments to dispose of them as seems most for the publick Safety Profit and Honour 2. That whatever is acted passed and possessed by such Authority seems valid and unquestionable 3. that those Lands and Revenues which nourished Bishops Deans and Prebends were superfluous if not superstitious as to the point of Christian and Reformed Religion 4. That if there be any fault in any mens first invading and alienating things sacred yet private possessors either by gift or purchase of them are afterward in no fault as having the highest civil Right to what they so enjoy 5. Besides divers Princes and States have disposed as they pleased of Church-Revenues To all these pretensions every mans own reason and conscience will first and best give answer if it be not partiall and bribed by its own private gain but to open the eyes of such as are willingly blind I must tell them in words of sobernesse and truth with all due respect to whatever powers are ordained of God as supreme among men 1. No man as to his own private civil Estate to which he hath a good right in Law would think it just without any fault done by him or proved against him to be deprived of it and turned out of all by any reason of State How then can he think it just as to any Church-mens Ecclesiastick Estates that they should be outed of their Estates to which they have both a civil and religious Title both Gods Right and Mans Donation No Christians should offer that measure to Christ and his Ministers which they would not have offered unto themselves 2. Though civil polities mâ—y have the supreme power over particular mens Estates among men yet 't is a power sub graviore regno subordinate to Gods Soveraignty and ought to be subject to those rules of Reason Justice and Religion which he hath given mankind and especially Christians the greater any mens Power is the more strict the Piety and Equity of it should be for they are subject to erre and to sin no lesse than private men and are no lesse punishable by Divine Vengeance both singly and socially whole Nations may rob God and be accursed of him 3. Civil polities in their due conjunctures are indeed justly counted supreme upon earth being as they ought to be free and full when all Estates called convened and concerned in publick Counsels and Transactions have liberty to plead and vote deny and grant to hear and argue to judge and determine according to the conscience of all and not according to the prevalency and bias of any one party nor exclusive of any mens consent which ought to be had in such cases either as to the right of Enjoyment or as to the joynt legislative and supreme power which onely can make a legall alienation of any civil rights 'T is evident that the most united and excellent Parlaments in England for Piety and Peace did abhor and avoid Sacriledge as a sin against God his Church and all good men The Kings of England were bound by Oath to preserve the State and Rights of the Church nor were Peers and People lesse bound in duty and gratitude to God and man than if they had been sworn 4. It doth not appear by any Law of God or Man in Reason or Religion that any humane or civil power hath any authority or jurisdiction to the prejudice of Gods Rights and Interest whose the Estate and Revenues of the Church are in Fee as chief Lord being dedicated to his Service Worship and Glory and are indeed in no mans property however in Church-mens use as Gods Tenants The acts of power and will may prevaile among men and hold good in Westminster-Hall in foro soli humano but they cannot give a right in foro coeli conscientiae before Gods Tribunall or in a mans own Conscience which regard not actuall and arbitrary Power but internall Right and Equity which forbids any injury to be done to any man and specially to those that are the Ministers or Servants of Christ and his Church whose injuries redound to God himself Good Christians must consider not quid factum valet among
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
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
and defiance of all that went before who I beseech you of most ordinary Christians who are yet agitated by their youthfull lusts and unbridled passions will be so constant as to hold fast that profession which formerly they had taken up Who will continue to venerate that Church and Clergy whose heads they see crowned with thornes and their faces besmeared with blood and dirt whose comelinesse is deformed with the spittings buffetings and scornes of those that seek to expose them to open shame and to fasten them to the Crosse of death and infamy Alas they will not at all regard in a short time any orders of the Church or any ordination of Ministers or any sacred ordinances and mysteries dispensed by them since no pleas never so pregnant and unanswerable for the Antiquity Uniformity and Constancy of that way and method which was used in all ages and places of the Church of Christ since no gracious and glorious successes attending such ordaining Bishops and such ordained Presbyters since nothing prevailes against vulgar prejudices and extravagancies provoked by that impatient itch they alwaies have after novelties Many we see will have no Ordination no Ministers no Sacraments rather than Bishops should have any hand in ordaining The honor of that Ordination which was in all ancient Churches must be cruelly sacrificed with all ancient and Catholick Episcopacy rather then some mens passions for a parity or popularity or an Anarchy in the Church be not gratified All Bishops as such and all Presbyters and all Christians and all Churches and all holy duties performed by them in that station and communion must be cryed down yea thrown down as the adulteratings and prostitutions of the Churches Liberty and of the purity of Christs Ordinances The hands of Bishops and Presbyters too though joyned and imposed in Ordination must be declared as impure vile and invalid yea a flat novel and impertinent distinction must be found out to vacate the Bishops eminency and yet to assert the Presbyters parity and sole power as resting in any three two or one of them though never so petty poor and pittifull men in all respects naturall and civill sacred and morall Yet these forsooth some fancy as Presbyters may still ordain because a Bishop say they did so meerly as a Presbyter of the same degree and order not as having any eminency of office degree authority or jurisdiction above the meanest Minister which St. Jerom and all antiquity acknowledged as a branch of Apostolicall dignity and eminency peculiar to a Bishop above any one or more Presbyters Which reproches against the persons power and practise of Bishops in England as usurpers and monopolizers in this point of ordination which they ever challenged and exercised as their peculiar honor office and dignity in this as all Churches if they could by any Reason or Scripture by Law of God or Man by any judgement or practise of any one Church or of any one godly and renowned Christian in any age or History of the Church be verified so as to make their power of ordination to be but a subtile or forcible usurpation in Bishops it would have been not onely an act of high Justice to have abrogated all the pretensions of Bishops to that or any power in the Church but it will be a work of admiration yea of astonishment to the worlds end in all after-ages and successions of Christian Religion which will hardly last another 1500 yeares to consider the long and strong delusion which possessed the Christian world in this point of Ordination as onely regular and complete by Bishops where their presence and power might be enjoyed Nor will it be more matter of everlasting wonder to ponder not onely Gods long permission of such a strong delusion but his prospering it so much and so long as a principall meanes to preserve and propagate the Ministry Order Government Peace and Power of true Religion and the true Churches of Christ which were never without Bishops as Spirituall Fathers begetting as Epiphanius speakes both Presbyters and people to the Church Nor will it be the work of an ordinary wit whether Presbyterian or Independent to salve all those aspersions and diminutions of either ignorance and blindness or fatuity and credulity or weaknesse and impotency which must necessarily fall from this account not onely upon the wisest and best Church-men but upon the most Christian and wise Princes the most zealous and reformed Parlaments of England who in the grand Reformation of this Church and ever since for neer an 100. yeares have after grave counsell and mature debate approved and appointed countenanced by a law and incouraged by their actuall submission the ordination of Ministers chiefly by the authority of Bishops never without them And this they did certainly not out of policy but piety not in prudence onely but in conscience convinced not only of the lawfulnesse of Bishops but of the necessity of them where Providence doth not absolutely hinder or deny them as it never did in England or elsewhere by the example of the Apostles by the ancient constant and uniform practise of this and all Churches by the suffrages of all Learned and Godly men of any account in all ages To all which were added as great preponderatings in behalfe of Episcopacy the many and most incomparable Bishops that have been in all successions of the Church the many Martyrs Confessors excellent Preachers Writers and Governours of that order lastly the unspeakable blessings which by their Ordination Consultation and Jurisdiction have been derived to the Church of Christ If all Estates in the Reformed Church of England have been hitherto deceived as to this point of Episcopall Ordination by Bishops sure they are the more excusable because they have erred with all the Christian world Nor could they be justly blamed if when they reformed superfluous Superstition they yet abhorred in this point so great and dangerous an innovation which must needs shake and overthrow the faith of many if the peculiar office and power of Bishops to ordaine Ministers and governe the Church were either onely usurped or wholly invalid as some of late have pretended not with more clamor than falsity But if all these jealousies and reproches cast upon Bishops and their Authoritative Ordination as a peculiar office and exercise of power eminently residing in them be most false and by some mens calumnies heightned to such impudent lies that no eructations of Hell or belchings of Beelzebub had ever more blackness of darknesse in them or more affrontive to the glory God and the Honor of the Catholick Church whence I beseech you O my Noble and worthy Countrymen is that dulness stupor and indifferency come upon us in England so far as not onely connives at the arrogancy of some Presbyters who without Scripture-precept or Catholick-patterne challenge this ordaining and Governing power as onely and wholly due to themselves discarding all Episcopall Eminency and Authority above them but
serve the turn which consisted not in study meditation and reading but in a bold look a confident spirit and a voluble tongue so that neither such preaching nor praying seemed many degrees removed from meer vulgar prating from triviall extemporary chat 'T is true few Bishops few Presbyters among us but may confess that either in our accesses to that great and terrible work unfitted and unfurnished in great part or in our converse and exercises in it with less mortified affections and less exemplary actions either by our ambitions or our envies or our covetousness or our impatience by our looseness or luxury or laziness or vulgarity we have too much abased the dignity of our calling and the honour of our profession whence justly and necessarily follows the darkning and eclipse of our credit esteem and reputation among the people when they see their Physitians themselves infected their Surgeons ulcerous their Antidotes poysonous their Ministers helping to fill up the measure of the sins of the people doing wickedly in a land of uprightnesse while justice was done to them while all favor shewed them in plenty peace dignities honours while the fruits of Gods and mans indulgence were bestowed upon them and continued to them then for Clergie-men and Pastors to wax wanton to feed themselves and to neglect the flock which was purchased with the precious blood of Christ Who can wonder if the wrath of God break out against us when as the sons of Aaron and Eli the Priests of the Lord adventure to approch the glory of God with strange fire with dead and unreasonable instead of living and acceptable sacrifices Who of us can doubt or complain that we bear the iniquity of our holy things while the anger of the Lord is thus gone out against us and presseth sore upon us in the saddest wayes of temporall calamities loading us at once with poverty reproch and contempt cast upon us by popular fury and plebeian despite which knows no bounds of justice moderation pity or charity much less of any reparation and restitution which possibly might have been hoped from the magnificence of Princes and great men when once their anger had been asswaged and their displeasure pacified against the distressed and despised Clergie But vulgar fury like the fire of hell is consumptive and unquenchable when once it hath leave to rebell and rage against their betters especially such as have been their Governours and Teachers the reprovers or restrainers of their ruder lusts and follies nothing is more insolent precipitant boysterous brutish implacable inexorable irreparable 'T is like that divine vengeance which was executed by the earths opening its mouth as it did upon Korah and his complices scaring all and threatning to swallow up the whole Congregation of the Lord as it doth at this day still gaping upon the whole Clergy and the remnant of this Church of England which yet hath escaped the bayardly blindness of common people being such that they are neither able nor willing to discern between what is precious and what is vile to distinguish between the use and abuse of things between persons and their functions between divine Authority and humane Infirmity between the essentiall constitution of things and their accidentall corruptions The headiness of such Reformers would seek to put out the seeing eyes of all Bishops and Ministers because of the weaknesse or wantonnesse of some Nor do these popular flames know at length how to spare their own Idols and Teraphims their Lares and Penates those Houshold and familiar Gods whom they formerly most dearly embraced adored and doted upon but now they have cast them to the Moles and Bats For it is very observable in these times that the plebeian rudenesse coldnesse mutability licentiousnesse petulancy and ingratitude of some men hath vented it self against no sort of Ministers more spitefully and insolently than those who heretofore were their great favourites and darlings because they soothed them up many times contrary to their own private judgements and the Churches publick appointments either in a weak and wavering non-conformity or in a wilfull and wanton refractorinesse even to a despising calumniating and separating humour against the whole Church of England 'T is evident many Ministers have found those their keenest persecutours of whom themselves were sometimes the greatest flatterers and compliers slightly healing or lightly skinning over those raw sores of non-conformity even to a greater pain and festring as now it hath proved which they should have seriously searched throughly healed by sound demonstrations asserting at once both their own judgments and the Churches wisdome in the pious use of its power and liberty All which Ministers did then shamefully betray when they daubed with untempered mortar complying for their private interests and advantages both with this Churches injunctions and Its enemies oppositions which shuffling at last put the common people into such a confusion and uncertainty of mind that they knew not what to chuse or refuse whom to believe or follow what to preserve or what not to destroy severely punishing even the authors occasioners and abettors of their irresolutions resolving at last to be destructive of all things that had any mark of the Church of Englands wisdome and authority upon them not content to prune off superfluous suckers they concluded to lay their rude axes to the root as well as branches of this Church Yea while the Clergie or Ministers of England do justly and humbly in the freedome and integrity of their souls thus make their penitent agnitions to the Divine Justice every one seeing his own sins in his and the Churches sufferings and best knowing the plague of his own heart while they are with Daniel humbly prostrate before the majesty of God and the throne of his grace some people are of such impotent malice that they make them the more the foot-stool for their pride and insolency thereby to exalt themselves the more against us I would have such monsters of cruelty and uncharitablenesse to know that however the Clergie of England do shrink to nothing before God condemning all their own righteousnesse and themselves as unprofitable servants that they may be found clothed with the righteousnesse of Christ yet as to the exorbitancies of some mens malice revenge passion covetousness cruelty and ingratitude which hath vented it self beyond all bounds of Christian charity modesty and equity against the whole frame of the Church of England against all its Ministry and Ministers as well Presbyters as Bishops great and small good and bad one and all no man can hinder me or them from this just plea for our selves in the words of sobernesse and truth First whatsoever the Clergie of England either as Bishops or inferiour Ministers did enjoy and act according to the lawes established and agreeable to their own consciences they are in those things not to be blamed in the least kind by any sober and
whose constitution may be commendable although the execution of things may be blameable and punishable upon the merit of personall defaults not Ecclesiasticall defects No Chaldean no Magician no Soothsayer no Astrologer no Enchanter can spell any such meaning as to Gods displeasure against the frame and constitution of the Church of England out of that hand-writing which seems to be directed against the Clergie and Ministers of England 'T is true every one ventures to read and interpret it as they list to flatter their own parties opinions passions and interests so did the Philosophers the Heathens the Atheists the Idolaters the Scoffers the Julians the Apostates the Hereticks the Schismaticks of old grosly mistake the meaning of those hot and sharp persecutions which oft befell the Primitive Christians and Orthodox professors of faith in Christ crucified concluding they deserved true Crosses who so much gloried in the Cross of Christ not knowing what Theriak God makes out of those Serpents that sting us nor what Antidotes he extracts out of those deadly poysons which destroy us The royal Title over Christs head was never more deserved than when he was hanging upon the Crosse for on that as a King on his Throne he most conquered and after triumphed over both his and his Churches greatest enemies nor were his sufferings the least of his solemnities and glories his Father being never better pleased with him than when he cryed out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me I am perswaded in like sort that the great afflictions now incumbent upon the Clergie and Church of Engl. do no way signifie that It or they are forsaken of God any more then Christ then was nor do they import any dislike that the God of peace and order hath against the respective office and subordination of Presbytery or the ordination and eminent gubernation of Bishops as they were designed and established in the Church of England according to the Primitive and Catholick pattern for both these God hath heretofore highly and signally approved if imploying blessing and prospering of them in his Church if accepting so many holy sacrifices and services from them be as much a sign of Gods approving their function as his now afflicting them is a sign of his reproving their faults But the plain sense of our sufferings is as S. Cyprian observes The Lord punisheth us that he may bring us to repentance for our sins both personall and professionall for those disorders by which we blemished or prophaned our holy orders 'T is not the government in it self but our own mis-governments that have offended God he aims not to consume that primitive and pure gold that is in this Church but to refine us from that dross we had as men contracted Nor do I doubt but God intends to improve us to his service in better times of which we may not despair if we find our selves amended by those bitter potions which in bad times and by evil men a good God administers to us for our health How glorious will both godly Bishops and orderly Presbyters in England appear to this Church and to all the world when coming out of this fiery furnace they shall shine brighter than ever they did with the love of Christ and of his Church both as to the care of those private charges and publick inspections committed to them in excellent order and administred by due authority when neither pride nor envy pomp nor popularity neither the upper nor the lower springs of ambition rising from Prince or people shall distract the counsels or divide the hearts or cross the endeavours of venerable Bishops and worthy Presbyters and pious people from that Christian subordination unanimity and conjunction which best becomes them as men and Christians which Ignatius so highly commends and which is so necessary both as to counsel and order government and proficiency for the good of all sorts of Christians in any Church Mean time it is no small mercy that exacts from some Ministers and enables them to give publick experiments of true Christian courage patience magnanimity and constancy which are our highest conformity to Christ by which the world may see that the honour of true Christian Bishops and Ministers doth consist as much or more in their sufferings as in their speaking and doing well in their losses as well as in their injoyments of all things Then will Princes Parlaments and People think us most worthy to enjoy the ancient estates honours liberties priviledges and immunities which the pristine piety charity munificence and gratitude of your and their fore-fathers bestowed upon the Clergie and devoted to God when they shall see that without these we are not onely willing but zealous to serve God and solicitous to save their souls as the greatest reward and wages of our work nor will the incumbent distresses upon the worthy Clergie of England much abate the love and value of them with those that are worthy of them certainly as mens sins should be esteemed their greatest afflictions so no mens sufferings are to be counted their sins If any Ministers have justly suffered as unable and so intruders as incorrigible and so unworthy having had the justice of being accused by two or three witnesses and the charity of receiving two or three admonitions before they were suspended silenced sequestred and ejected giving no hopes of their being amended yet even the grossest defects and immoralities of such Clergie-men who are indeed the shame and reproch of their profession may not be imputed to or revenged upon the whole calling and Church considering that the Church of England by her good Lawes wholsome Canons and wise Constitutions did strictly require not onely the best minds and abilities but the best manners and examples both from Bishops and Presbyters agreeable to those respective duties and instructions set before and charged upon them at their ordination which they were not onely to know but to do not onely to believe but to live that so the Ministers of this Church might appear not only the best of civil men but the best of Christians who ought to be holy men and the holiest of holy men as specially consecrated to the service of Christ and his Church It was by the Church intended that Church-men should be the most savoury salt in themselves and carefull seasoners of others if some proved unsavoury yet I am sure it is most unseasonable and unseasoned rashness to cast all Bishops and Presbyters yea the whole order and oeconomy of the Ministry and Church of England upon the dunghill of vulgar contempt among whom beyond all dispute were so many most accomplished Preachers and excellent Practisers of true Christianity whose breath was so good that their lungs could not be bad But if there had been a visible and generall Apostasy in many or the most part yea in all the Bishops and Ministers of England from their duty yet I conceive this is no argument
grave godly and industrious men fit to govern and apt to teach the Church of Christ are still maintained and repeated daily yea raked up and increased by the popular oratory of some novel Ministers so far as to raise eternall prejudices and antipathies even against all those Presbyters which were or are of Episcopall ordination And the better to justifie these Novelties and Schisms in the Church of England which some were so eager and easie to begin so loth and unwilling to retract they still entertain their nauseous credulous and itching Disciples with all those odious stale and envious Crambes which are most welcome to vulgar ears and sacrilegious aims as how unfit it was for the Ministers of Jesus Christ who was the great pattern of piety and poverty to have great revenues stately Palaces and noble Lordships which more godly men do want for Preachers to have any titles of honour and respect as Lords to have any part of civil power or indeed of Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction All which honest employments and enjoyments I conceive under favour the excellent Bishops and other deserving Clergie-men in England were as worthy to enjoy and as able to use with honour conscience and charity as any of those men either military or civil who were most zealous to deprive to debase and to destroy the Hierarchy or just honour of the Ecclesiastick state in England Nor do I think it was any way displeasing to God or in the least kind unbecoming the name of Christ for Bishops and other Ministers of his Church to have such ample estates and honourable preferments for their double honour in so plentifull a land as England was this I am sure it was far less beseeming any good Christian to repine at them and unjustly to deprive them of them If this envious vein of popular oratory grow at length fulsome vile and ridiculous as it is now to all sober and judicious auditors then the Anti-episcopall parties of Ministers devoutly rip up and sadly repeat whatever they have heard or others invented of any Bishops faults or the Episcopall Clergies past infirmities whatever they can they rake up though long ago buried as it ought to be in the charitable forgetfulness of all good men who either consider their own frailties or remember how many holy Bishops were Martyrs and Confessors in all ages of persecution how learned how diligent how commendable how admirable how useful they were to this Church for their preaching writing and living in times of persecution as well as peace even here in England All good Bishops and other Clergie as I have formerly expressed confess themselves as men to be subject to infirmities and temptations the best Bishops and Ministers least deny this truth being every day most vigilant to resist the one and amend the other These allegations then like the Devils quoting of Scripture though they may have some squint-ey'd truth in them yet they are spitefully partially and most impertinently alledged against all Bishops especially by those fierce Presbyterians or other implacable Preachers who have now liberally taught the English world that however the riches pomp and honours of Presbyterian or Independent or other Preachers are much against their wills far less than those which God and man reason and Religion order and polity devotion and gratitude Law and Gospel allowed to Bishops and Presbyters heretofore that the eminency of their office and place in the Church might have something of honourable splendour and hospitable magnificence proportionable to its venerable authority and great antiquity yet men are not so blinded by that popular dust stirred up against the faults and names of Bishops as not to see that the pride covetousness and imperiousness of the most furious and factious Anti-episcopall Ministers come not one jot behind any of those Bishops whom they look upon and represent with the most malignant aspect O how magisteriall are many new masters in their opinions how authoritative in their decisions how supercilious in their conversations how severe in their censures how inexorable in their passions how implacable in their wrath how inflexible in their factions how irrevocable in their transports though never so rash heady plebeian and unsuccessfull by which they at once forsook their duties to others and their own mercies And this many of them did to please others or themselves contrary to their former judgements their sworn and avowed subjection to Bishops for many years when they paid that respect to those Fathers and Governours of this Church which the laws of God and man required long before either Presbytery was hatched or Independency gendered in England The sharp severities and early rigours of both which parties and their Consectaries grew quickly both remarkable and intolerable to sober Christians for as they were bred and born like Pallas armed full of anger revenge and ambitious fierceness so they have acted even in their infancy and minority far beyond what regular sober and true Episcopacy ever did in its greatest age and procerity here in England yea its greatest passion and transports did not exceed the aims of these new masters both Ecclesiastical civil which was either to rule all or to ruine all Bishops commonly justified their reall or seeming severities by those lawes either civil or Ecclesiasticall which were in force against all such as did not conform to them Hence were occasioned much I am confident to the grief and against the desire of the most grave and godly Bishops sometimes those so oft declaimed against and aggravated persecutions of some unconformable yet otherwayes godly Ministers by silencings suspensions deprivations c. which sometimes were but just and necessary exercises of Discipline as I conceive if men will maintain any order and government in any Church or State sometimes it may be some Bishops pressed too much upon the strictness and rigour of law aggravated by their private passions beyond what might with charity and moderation safely have been indulged to some able and peaceable Ministers though in some things dissenters yet as to the main good and usefull to the Church Yet all these old Almanacks these stale and posthumous calculations of Episcopall severities did not upon true account no not in one hundred years equal the number and measure of those pressures and miseries which have been acted or designed in one fifteen years by such as now profess Presbyterian and Independent principles against all Bishops and all those Ministers which are of the Episcopal perswasion I think it may without any stroke of Rhetorick or Hyperbole be said with sober truth that the little finger of Presbytery and Independency with the warts and wens of other factions growing upon them hath been heavier upon the Episcopal which was the onely legal Clergie of England of late years than the loins of any sober and godly Bishops ever were for any one century yea and equal to the burdens of the most passionate and immoderate Bishops whatsoever in any age
lunatick Religion aims to abolish the use of all those things which have at any time been abused though never so holy and good in their use and institution they condemn every House every Church as well materiall as rationall to Ruine and utter Desolation on whose walls they fancy there are or ever have been any spots of leprosie or superstition though neither incurable nor infectious nor indeed any way dangerous to Religion or mens Salvation yea they have such malevolent spitefull and envious principles in their spitefull and gainfull Reformations that they judge all things in Religion to be unclean out of which they may make any temporall gain or benefit that Bells and Steeples Cups and Chalices Churches and Chancels Glebes and Tithes all Ecclesiastick Honours and Revenues are Popish Superstitious Antichristian never sufficiently reformed till utterly alienated and confiscated to the publick Exchecquer or their private purses that neither Church nor Church-men are duly or throughly reformed till they are made like a barren wildernesse who were as the garden of God till like Naomi they be empty and destitute of all worldly comforts and supports till they look like Pharaoh's lean Kine till Ministers preach and pray themselves into absolute hunger and thirst their souls fainting within them and their eyes failing while in vain they look to be satisfied with bread These are the holy sparks these the blessed flames of uncharitable and unquenchable zeale which the Romanists see burning in some mens reforming breasts so long till they become predatorious and adulterous consumptionary and culinary false and base fires which are not to be maintained but by such sacred fuel as pristine Piety Charity and Munificence bestowed on the Church and Church-men for Gods service and Christs sake Thus covetous hands and sacrilegious hearts hold the nose of Religion so long to the grindstone of their Reformations till they have utterly defaced the Justice and Charity the Order and Beauty of Christian Religion nothing is well reformed they think while there is any thing left at which they can repine either in the hospitable houses or at the charitable tables of Church-men Certainly the Romanists must needs be eternally resolved against such Reformations as follow the dictates of mens stomacks more than their consciences and serve mens bellies more than the Lord whom they scruple not to rob and spoyl while they pretend to purge his Temple and reform his Ministers ever finding fault with the Church while any thing is left to Church-men or any booty yet to be extorted from the Clergy never thinking them or their Religion sufficiently circumcised till they are quite excoriated exsected eunuchised that is made so poor and dispirited so mean and embased that they are wholly unfit and unable to do any thing that is Generous Ample or Charitable either in their Studies Preaching or Living aspiring no higher than that vulgar softnesse and popular easinesse of some mens praying and preaching which costs men of competent boldnesse and voluble tongues neither much Study Charge nor Pains beyond a few hours loose meditating and as much time in confident Praying or Preaching as raw and confused notions can stretch into When once the Clergy or Ministers of Christs Church are thus reduced to be as poor and mean in Spirits Parts and Estates as hackney horses which have long journeys to go and little provender given them to eat when Ministers of the Gospel the Preachers and Professors of Divinity are one and all levelled to the condition of Pesants in France or Boors in Germany when they are endowed with Scotch stomacks and stipends either at the mercy of the impropriating Laird or at the sad charity of godly and well-affected people to Mammon when Church-men appeare in England as they have for the most part in other Reformed Churches and now in many places here thred-bare indigent necessitous exposed to all shamefall and mechanick shifts Then O then these gracious Sacrilegists and godly Reformers can at once endure them and despise them without finding any great fault with them when they find nothing but beggery and ignorance attending them then their Preachers shall be what they will in Title and Name Apostles Evangelists Bishops Presbyters Moderators Pastors Shepherds Angels gracious and precious men men of God c. though they be never such silly sots shamelesse sycophants and slavish flatterers either to Prince or People provided they neither have nor crave any thing It matters not how little Learning Piety or Prudence they have provided they have no courage in their hearts and no money in their purses they will not then dare to have many reproofs in their mouths against their good Masters and Dames their Lords and Ladies upon whose Alms and Trenchers they must feed and upon whose Frowns or Favours they either thrive or starve CHAP. XIX THis this hath been the project and plat-forme at which some mens Reformation hath aimed even here in England the better to perswade Papists to renounce their Superstition and embrace the Reformed Religion which like a sharp Razor or keen Ax however it hath yet spared some Underwood and Copices of inferiour Ministers Presbyters and Independents most-what for the better shelter and covert of their designs yet they have felled to the ground all the fairest trees and choicest timber whose bark boughes and bodies afforded most advantage to the fellers Not that these trees were uselesse or fruitlesse saplesse or decayed in this Church but some Reformers had evil eyes at their goodly bulk and breadth their stately heights and tops What wise and impartiall men at home or abroad in present or after-ages but must and doe confesse that the greatest faults of most of the dignified Clergy in England were their fair Houses and Revenues their Manours and Honours For they were never legally charged or convinced either as to their Persons in particular or their Functions in generall as Archbishops or Bishops Deans or Prebends of any such misdemeanours as deserved by any Law of God or Man the forfeiture of all their lawfull Enjoyments and Ecclesiastick Preferments which were as the just rewards of their personall Worth and private learning so the publick nationall and honorary encouragements of their calling and profession to the dignifying of Christian Religion and the magnifying of wise and moderate Reformations such as became the Honour Piety Gratitude Munificence and Majesty of this English Nation towards its God and its Clergy being blest of God with abundance of all good things and no lesse with excellent Governours and able Preachers as well Bishops as Presbyters who well deserved whatever the pristine noblenesse and bounty of this State had bestowed on men of Learning and Desert as publick Ministers of Religion sent from God to his Church whose true and just reformation was no diminution to their just enjoyments or deserved preferments that so it might be no discouragement check or hinderance to others from embracing such an innocent reformation of Christian
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
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
wisely than to enjoy pompously superciliously luxuriously and idly others are brought almost to utter consumptions of Religion by their own Calentures and those Hectick fevers which have so long afflicted themselves and as contagious or spotted sicknesses infected others Some of all sides and sorts have suffered I am sure all are threatned because each party hath by their passionate transports rather studied to advance their private opinions parties and interests than the common and publick good of this Church and Nation mutuall sufferings which have taken from all sides the confidence of their innocency have so wrought upon all men of serious piety and honest purposes as by this fiery triall to purge them from their drosse of common infirmities and to refine them for some further service to this Church and State Nor do I doubt but as other wise and good men so particularly Ministers of parts and piety could they once amicably and authoritatively meet confer and correspond together would sincerely and cheerfully by Gods blessing agree upon some expedient to recover the truth order honour peace uniformity and authority of the Reformed Religion and its Ministry in this Church and Nation that neither they nor you nor your posterity may be ever thus possessed distorted torne and tormented with evill Spirits which sometimes cast us into the waters of cold and Atheisticall irreligions otherwhile into the fires of intemperate zealotry and contentions For so hath the Church of England passed through all the poetick racks and tortures which if not remedied will be the portion of your posterity one while rolling Sysiphus his restlesse stone of endlesse Reformation whose recoilings and relapsings sink the true Reformed Religion to lower deformities than ever it was in after this they must be put upon Ixions wheel tossed up and down with continuall circulations and giddinesse of Religion as every mans whimsicall braines list to turne it round whereas Religious orderly motions ought to have as their due bounds and circumference of truth so their fixed centre of Christian unity and publick communion both which would in no long time by Gods blessing be regained in England if some mens private policies and sinister projects did not as wedges still hinder the closing and agreement of honest and impartiall men in such waies as would restore Religion to its just honor Authority and consistence from the enjoying of which after all the specious pretences made on all sides we are still as far remote as Tantalus was from eating those fruits or drinking those waters which onely deluded but never satisfied his famished soul Yet many good grapes and some faire clusters are still left upon this battered vine of the Church of England in which I hope may be a blessing which neither the little foxes of peevish Schismaticks have much bitten nor the greater bores of Romish seducers have wholly subverted Many well-meaning people and not a few Preachers too who formerly had their Midsummer-fits and shorter Lunacies as to their religion are now so sober in their senses and well recovered to their right wits that having once tried that vanity and vexation that froth and futility of Spirit which attends all factious inquietudes and exotick innovations obtruded upon a well setled Church they are resolved ever hereafter to avoid and abhorre them as being no better than specious poysons delicate delusions spirituall debaucheries and religious lucuries which growing from plethorick tempers in mens soules especially where they are high fed with duties do easily tempt them that are lesse cautious and moderate both to wandrings and wantonnesse in Religion first to simple fornications and at last to grosse and foule adulteries to which men otherwise of commendable strictnesse and purposes are easily betrayed if as Dinah they give way to the temptations of novelty curiosity popularity and ambitious vanity in Religion there where it hath been well and worthily setled by publique counsell and joynt consent yea and hath been happily enjoyed for many Ages with almost miraculous I am sure very marvellous prosperities so as it was beyond all dispute here in the Church of England The inconsiderate ruflings and disorderings of whose religious constitution many men of all sorts are now ready to recant and expiate if by any honest endeavours they may recover the order unity beauty authority and stability of Religion in this Nation To whose Ecclesiastick communion I perceive many heretofore more warme than wise more credulous than considerate are now cordially returned as to their judgements and consciences to which no doubt their conversation would willingly conforme if once they could see any ensigne of religious uniformity authoritatively set up in England Many Ministers would willingly recant and return from their violent and vulgar transports if they could but have a protection for their foreheads or a skreen to hide that shame and discountenance which they feare hangs over them for their levity from the common-peoples censures and scorns Not a few Ministers sometimes orderly and regular enough would fain get free from those popular lime-twigs which have too long held them if they did not feare to lose some of their feathers either as to their reputation or maintenance who flying from that good sense which was heretofore set in the Church of England for their defence would needs light on that bare hedge for their refuge and perch which proves to most of them no better than the beggars bush fuller of gins and snares than of berries or food O how glad would hundreds of popular preachers and preaching people be to be commanded by superiours to make not verball but reall retractations of their errors seductions surprises schismes and apostasies that so their variablenesse in Religion might seem to arise not from their private innate levities but from either fatall or soveraigne necessities which are alwaies good salvo's and go for current excuses among common people either to plead for their extravagancies or to justifie their changes especially when they are reduced to the better Many Ministers of Presbyterian and Independent practises rather than perswasions or principles now together with their followers who formerly were highly a-gog even when they were yet in their downe pin-feathered and scarce fledge in those fine speculations and rare projects which they had fancied for erecting new models of Church-work after the formes of Consistories and Elderships Classes and congregations of Corporal Spiritualties Spirituall Corporations which were to be reared out of the ruinous nay out of the most intire parts of the Reformed Church of England which was by them to be wholly ruined though it were by the Lawes of God and man by constitutions Ecclesiasticall and Civill both wisely formed and happily fixed in the Primitive and Catholick form of order and dependency yet even these men and Ministers of destruction not edification with their late Chappels of Little-Ease would I am confident be now very glad to be handsomely sheltered under the protection of some such Episcopall
the Master of the harvest the blessed God tolerates as to mans Discipline those to grow in the same field of his visible Church in this world who differ as much in point of true grace as wheat and tares do in their nature and worth So that as the curiosity and confidence of Episcopall Divines is far lesse than that of those other preachers so their candor modesty and charity is much more becoming wise grave and sober Ministers whose care must be humbly to do that work which God hath required of them and to leave his own operations discoveries and judgements to his all-seeing eye and Almighty power as St. Cyprian expresseth the sense and practise of Christian Bishops and Presbyters in his time as to Church-scrutiny and examination The strictnesse of worthy Episcopall Divines is such in things that are rationall grave wise and truly religious that no man exceeds their desires designes endeavours and principles in soundnesse and diligence of preaching in the warmth and discretion of praying in the sanctity and solemnity of celebrating Christian mysteries in the serious dispensation of Ministeriall power and the usefull execution of Church-censures or Discipline even to fasting prayers teares penitentiall mortifications in themselves and due restitutions to others in cases of injury so for reconciliation and some speciall works of bounty and charity which may testifie a self-revenge and most satisfaction to others They are ambitious to excell in nothing more than in well-doing and patient suffering in all the waies and offices of Piety Humility Obedience Peace and Charity yea such is their moderation concession and recession from their wonted practise and indulged priviledges or power by mans law that they not onely approve but desire the joynt counsell and concurrence of grave and worthy Presbyters in all things of Ecclesiastick Ministry and publick concernment yea they allow Christian people their sober Liberty as of presence and conscience so of objection and approbation in all proceedings where they are interessed that they may either fairely testifie their full satisfaction or else produce the grounds of their dissatisfaction in all things that concern their advantages in Religion All which the glorious Primate of Armagh testifies in his late printed Treatise of reconciling Episcopall and Synodicall power in the Church-Government If the earnest pleaders for Presbytery and the sticklers for Independency which are the professed extirpators of Episcopacy had the same equanimity and calmnesse in them as the moderate Episcopall men have I do not see what could hinder them from giving the right hand of fellowship to each other certainly it cannot be the reall concernments of Christs glory and the good of Christian soules but particular factions oblique biasses and some partiall popular respects which continue such mis-understandings distances and animosities between the Episcopall Divines the Presbyterian Preachers and the Independent Teachers who thus severed from each other lose all the great advantages and blessings which they and the whole Church might enjoy if they could wisely humbly and meekly close in one subordination and harmonious order as did all Christian Bishops Presbyters Deacons and People in Primitive times of which St. Ignatius Irenaeus Tertullian St. Cyprian St. Ambrose St. Austin St. Jerom with many other writers give us a thousand clear instances and happy experiences The inordinate heates of the chief patrons and ring-leaders as to any of these new waies and parties would soon allay and coole if their petty policies secular interests self-seekings and popular complacencies were wholly laid aside if these wedges were once pulled out of mens hearts their hands would soon close together Momentary advantages would soon give way and vanish if all Ministers were possessed with that great and good Spirit which directs all believers to things that are eternall chiefly looking at Gods glory Christs honor the Churches peace and the salvation of all mens souls Petty spirits opinions and projects are the pests of the Church and of Christian Religion these betray it to the enemies of it such as seek to abase it to divide it and to destroy it CHAP. XI And here because I suspect and see that the designe of the new Associating parties seems chiefly to unite Presbyterian and Independent principles and interests together that Presbyters and people as Teaching and Ruling Elders might fully possesse themselves of all Church-Power though to their own confusion and this Churches desolation excluding all Ministers of Episcopall principles pleas and perswasions further than they list humbly to submit to truckle under and comply with those Ministers who resolve to ordain to censure and suspend to excommunicate and anathematize to dictate and regulate all things in Religion without owning any authority in or making any ingenuous offer or addresse to the venerable Bishops yet surviving in Engl. or to those Divines who are still conform to the Church of England but all the claimes and interests of Episcopacy must be either smothered or slubbered over or shuffled into the meteor of a moderator and the phantasme of a Prolocutor as if there never had been nor yet were any thing considerable either in the persons of these Bishops and Ministers or in those many strong pleas and cleare allegations of Scripture-pattern and divine prescription of Apostolick practise and imjunction of Catholick imitation and perswasion in all the consent of ancient Councils Fathers and Historians yea in the judgment of all the best Christians Presbyters and people of old nay nor in the confessions votes and desires of the most learned pious Reformers both at home and abroad that either enjoy Episcopacy or feel their want of it and heartily wish for it but all must be slighted as childish or popish as obsolete or ridiculous which is brought and believed by so many excellent persons in behalf of Episcopall eminency and authority Yea as if all the losses sorrowes and sufferings of so many pious learned reverend and most excellent Bishops in England together with the miseryes of many orderly and worthy Clergy men that were subject to them and the laws were so just that they were never to be pittied nor any way relieved as if all the insolencies of many Presbyters and the petulancies of many people were highly to be commended as great helps and furtherances to a new Reformation of Religion as if there were nothing of uncharitableness oppression revenge sacriledg and exorbitancy so much as to be thought on or repented by any one of them no lesse than complained of by their Episcopal brethren who are become their enemies because they have told them the truth and charge them with inconstancy immoderation popularity schisme faction sedition and the like so stiffe and unrelenting are some Antiepiscopall men to this day who after all these representations of truth wipe their mouthes and harden their hearts as if there were no error evill or transport in their hands or hearts alwaies aggravating by a vile and vulgar oratory the rigors
the necessity and use of Bishops yea they deny any flaw or defect to be in their new Presbyterian and popular ordinations for want of any other Bishops but themselves who are as pert in their novelty as ever any Prelates were in their antiquity That these Heteroclite or equivocall ordinations have of late been acted in England with much self applause and popular parade by meer Presbyters I well understand but quo jure by what right from God or man by what authority civill or Ecclesiasticall I could never yet see yea I am sure no law of God or men heretofore ever was thought to give any such power to meer Presbyters without yea against their lawfull Bishops insomuch that many learned and sober men have much blamed at least suspected these Presbyterian transactions for Schismaticall presumptions these ordinations for disorderly usurpations at least in such a Church as England was where there were and still are venerable Bishops of the orthodox faith reformed profession and ancient constitution willing and able to do their duty in the point of ordination Which in all ordinary cases appeares to have ever been their peculiar right specially derived to them as Bishops from the Apostles through all successions of times and Churches without any interruption except when some factious and insolent Presbyters ventured to be extravagant and usurpant whom all the learned Fathers venerable Councils and good Christians in the Church every where condemned as most injurious because usurping that Authority which no Apostle no Councill no Bishop ever gave to any that were meer Presbyters in their Ordination and Commission no more than the Lawes or Canons of this Church and State Nor is there as far as I can perceive any one place in Scripture that by any precept or example invests either one or more simple Presbyters with the power of trying and examining of laying on of hands of giving holy orders as from themselves alone of committing or transmitting what they had received to other faithfull men that should be able to teach All which were given to Timothy and Titus as chief Bishops The Pope of Rome indeed animated by those flatterers which would make him the sole Bishop by Divine right and all other Bishops as surrogates to him dependants upon him and derived from him as if there had not been 12 or 13 but onely one â—â—sion â—lick Chaire or prime seat of Episcopacy hath some â—eath given power of ordination to such as were but Presbyters as â—nd read of some Abbots and Priors but it was alwaies to the great scandall of the best Bishops and Presbyters of the Church as contrary to all ancient Orders Canons and Customes of the Church unlesse he first made them as Chorepiscopi or suffragane Bishops But in earnest it is hard to judge whether Popes or Presbyters be most enemies to Catholick Bishops As for the pious pomp and the specious apparences the formall dressings and verball adornings which they say are used by Presbyters in their late Ordinations in England though I never saw any of them yet I have heard and read so much of them as gives me to judge far less to be in them of authority true complete and valid than ought to be For besides the persons not impowered or commissionated to that office there is as I heare no transmitting and so no receiving of the holy Spirit as to that Ministeriall Order and Power which is thereby derived to Ministers as from Christ whatever there may be of godly solemnity and plausible formalities which are usually more studied and affected to please the people there where men are most conscious to the defect of authentick reall and righteous power But all these saintly shewes to wise men signifie nothing no nor the personal abilities either of the ordainers or ordained who cannot by their personall power knowledg virtues graces or private gifts make any Officer in State or in Armies in War or in Peace much lesse in the Church and Ministry of Jesus Christ Alas no private capacity in any man can make the least petty Constable or Bailiffe or Corporall or Serjeant without they first have a publick and lawfull Commission from the fountains of Authority to give them an Authority far beyond any private arrogancy and presumed sufficiency of their own Possibly extraordinary cases may in time be their own excuses in such Churches where Bishops may be all dead or banished or where such as are Orthodox cannot be had and they that are will not ordain any Presbyters without imposing upon them such things as are erroneous and unlawfull but nothing can be pleaded that I yet see no nor doth the candor and charity of Bishop Usher know how to excuse such Presbyters from being Schismaticks factious presumptuous and disorderly who first cast off and forsake such Bishops as are of the same faith and reformed profession worthy and willing able and ready every way authorized by Church and State to do their duty The contempt and rejecting of such Bishops is I fear a great sin before God I am sure a great grievance to such Churches as first suffer those distractions And no doubt it is as a great so a needlesse scandall to most Churches and the best Christians in all the world nor can it be other then a foule reproach and scorn cast on all pious antiquity nor will it prove other than a lasting misery to any Church and Nation that wilfully continues that guilt and defect upon themselves and their posterity especially when God â—s them sufficient meanes to remedy that mischief to supply thâ—â—fects and to compose those differences which are ever followâ—â—he waâ— much more the needlesse expulsion of Primitive Episcopacy For whose power and authority while either Presbyters or people are scrambling they do but make Religion a May-game bring as we see both themselves and their Ministry into contempt for no Presbyters or people can while the world stands ever stamp such an honor and Authority Ecclesiasticall upon themselves as was in all ages and by all Churches consent besides the Scripture-Character and Apostolick signature set upon Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy which ever united centred and confirmed power in one man not over all which the Pope affects but over their Dioceses or Provinces A 4 th Objection much flourished by some popular Preachers against Bishops and all Episcopacy in any Authority and eminency above Presbyters is that Episcopacy is the root of Popery that Prelates were the parents of Antichrist that every Bishop hath a Pope in his belly and that the Pope is no other than an overgrown Bishop that to rout all Popery and raze the foundations of Romes pride all Prelacy or Episcopacy must be stubbed up My answer to this is that this objection sounds as little of truth as it savours much of malice especially in any Presbyters of any learning and ingenuity who well know the abasing of Bishops is the design and hath
and moves upon this one hindge give me leave with all humble and earnest advise to commend to your Christian consideration First the preservation of the very being or essence of a true and authoritative Ministry upon which depends the visible polity and orderly being of any true Church also the powerfull dispensation and comfortable reception of all holy mysteries Secondly the bene esse well-being or flourishing estate of such a true Ministry by which it may be kept in such order honor and unity as may redeem it both from vulgar arrogancies contempts and confusions also from mutuall factions and divisions by which meanes of later yeares the very face of a Church as to any Nationall harmony fraternity subordination and Communion in England is either quite lost or so hidden deformed and disguised that not onely the sacred dignity and authority but the very Name and Office of a true Minister is become odious infamous and ridiculous among many people who either will have no Ministers at all or onely such as themselves list to create in their severall Conventicles which are in respect of the true Church and Clergy of England no more to be esteemed than the concubines of jealousie and harlots of adultery are to be compared to lawfull wives that are Matrons of unspotted honor 1. The Essentials of a true Christian Ministry consist First in the person or subject fitly qualified for that callings Secondly in the commission or power by which the proper Forme and Authority Ministeriall is duly applyed to any person so qualified 1. The person subject matter or recipient of Holy Orders ought to be such persons as are furnished with those Ministeriall gifts and abilities both internall and externall for knowledge and utterance for unblamable life and good report as may make them not onely competent for that holy work in generall but likewise fit for that particular place whereto God by man doth call them Of these reall and discernable competencies besides those sincere and gracious propensities in charity to be hoped and presumed to glorifie God in that service not out of ambition covetousness popularity or meer necessity but out of an humble zeal and an holy choice a judicious serious strict solemn publick and authoritative triall and approbation ought to be made as was appointed in the Church of England by such Ecclesiasticall persons as are in all reason most able and so most meet to be appointed by law for the examining and judging of Ministers both as to their personall sufficiencies and the publick testimonies of their life and manners In this point I know some men are jealous that some Bishops in former times were too private remisse and superficiall approving and ordaining Ministers onely upon the Chaplaines triall and testimony which after proved but sorry Clerks for which easinesse they had many times to plead the meannesse of those Livings to which such Ministers were presented as could not bear an exacter triall Poor people must have such preachers or none in such starving entertainments as were in many places which like heathy grounds neither can breed nor feed any thing that is grand or goodly Were the maintenance of Ministers every where made competent nothing shouid be more severely looked to by the ordainers of Ministers than the competent abilities and worth of those to whom they transmit and impart that sacred power charge and Ministration For not onely the consciences of the ordained but of the ordainers stand here highly responsible to God and the Church that God may be glorified that the Church both in generall and particular may be satisfied that both other Ministers may cheerfully joyne with them in the work of the Lord and that their peculiar charge may receive them with that due respect love and submission which becomes those that minister to them the holy things of God in the stead of Jesus Christ as his Stewards Lieutenants and Embassadors No men will conscienciously no nor civilly regard any Minister when once the plebeian heat of faction is allayed of whose sufficiency and authority too they have no just confidence because no publick triall credible testimony or authoritative mission How much lesse when men shall have pregnant evidences of a Ministers weaknesse ignorance folly schisme and scandall many waies T is true in the highest and exactest sense as the Apostle sayes none are sufficient for those things but yet in a lower and qualified sense none ought to be ordained who are not in some sort sufficient for them Because none are by way of Divine equivalency worthy we must not therefore admit such as are in humane morall or intellectuall proportions utterly unworthy since the Lord of his Church is pleased in all ages to give such gifts and blessings to mens tenuity as may in some sense fit those earthen vessels to be workers together with God by the help of the excellency of his Divine power whose operations in this kind are not miraculous as without any fit meanes but morall and proportionate to the aptitude of such meanes as God hath appointed and required in his Church for humane ability and industry When the Materiall qualifications of one that is a Candidate or Expectant of the Ministry are thus examined by the ordainers discovered to all those who are concerned the next care for the Essentials of a Minister consists in applying that true Character stamp and Authority wherein the Essential Form and Soule as it were of a Minister of the Gospel doth consist which as I have in another work largely declared doth not arise from any thing that is common in Nature or Grace from any morall civill or religious respects for then all men and women too that have naturall or acquired abilities religious or gracious endowments might presently either challenge to themselves the place power office and authority of a Minister of Christ and his Church or communicate it to others as they please which would be the originall of all presumption and confusion in the Church of Christ as much as parallel practises would be in civill States if every man should put himself into what place and imployment publick he listeth either magistratick or military without any Commission or expresse authority derived to him from the fountaine of civill or magistratick power No the true valid and authentick authority of an Evangelicall Minister of any rank and degree as Deacon Presbyter or Bishop in the Church consists in that Divine mission and Ecclesiasticall Commission which is duly derived and orderly conferred to meet persons by those who are the lawfull and Catholick conduits of that power to whom it bath been in all ages and places committed and who are in a capacity to transmit or communicate and impart it to others by way of holy ordination such as Jesus Christ received from his Father such as he derived to his Apostles such as they committed to their deputed successors the Bishops and Pastors of the
counted arrogancy their very zeal seems either impatient oâ—â—â—â—â—olent All nations ever abhorred a beggerly Priesthood as a blasphemous disparaging of the honor of their God Nor is indeed in my judgement any thing at this day more worthy of the Wisdome Piety and Honor of this Nation after all its long war and vast expences military than to begin to think of doing their duty to God by finding out and effectually using some fit meanes to put on Christs cloaths again to make every Church-living in England and Wales so competent as may maintaine one and in some great populous places two competent Ministers that both Preaching Catechizing and Visiting with other offices may be more fully performed Alas what can twenty or thirty or fifty pound or less than an hundred pound a year do to supply the studies and families of any able and ingenuous Minister to keep up his Spirits from rusticity and sordidnesse to preserve his person and calling from contempt to make him in some measure Charitable and Hospitable cheerfull and considerable Much we know was once pretended for the setling and enlarging the maintenance even of the inferiour Clergy even then whâ—n much was intended to be taken away from the chiefest of the Clergy both of Lands Houses and Honors This last I am sure hath been sorely executed the former is yet for the most part to begin nay most Livings in England are abated twenty yea thirty in the hundred since those specious proposals just as the burthens of the Israelites were sorer after the newes of their deliverance O when will that blessed day come in which the just pitty and generous piety of this Nation will by some most prudent and equable waies make either a just restitution or some moderate compensation to Church-men not onely to maintaine something of publick Order Polity Honor and Government among them but so as may support private and painfull Ministers in their little Parishes where unlesse they be able to live in some decent sort in their own Houses and Tables they can never serve well at the Temple and Altar They ought at least to be redeemed from biting and debasing poverty though they be not tempted to grow rich a blessing now denyed to most Ministers beyond any that are publick agents or officers yea and the meanest Farmers mechanick Artisans Much envy spleen and bitternesse have by some popular and envious orators been heretofore vented against pluralities of benefices when two or three would scarce make one competent living A like censorious sharpness hath been used by some against Bishops ordaining and admitting to poor and pittifull Livings some poor and pittifull Ministers Alas better Ministers cannot in reason be expected without better maintenance Mend this and then in Gods name mend the other good workmen will not be had nor can they live upon small wages This deep and old core of this Nations sin and shame its sore and suffering in Religion ought first to be pulled out and cured then will strength health and beauty follow in all parts It is poverty tenuity and despaire that commonly tempts Ministers that are conscious to their neglected and unrewarded abilities to be either factious and popular or debauched and discontent This Church had fared much better if some Ministers bellies had been fuller Some were ready to flatter any factious spirit that kept but a good Table and would feed them without an affront others having an envy at some of their brethrens and Fathers preferments were ready to turne all to confusion just as Josephs brethren resolved to make him away because of his gay coate and his dreames of honor Men are then most willing to be quiet when they are at their ease There was scarce one Minister that had any dignity or Church-preferment yea or a good Living in England that was either forward or fomenting of our late troubles upon a Religious account Men that have most wool on their backs will be most wary of the briars and most obedient to Lawes both Civill and Ecclesiasticall As to the relief of Church-livings much might in a few yeares be done if the work were once well begun by publick advise and consent partly by buying in of Impropriations which are usually little improvements to any Gentlemens Estates and I believe no great cordiall to their consciences especially while they see the necessities to which poor Vicars and Stipendiary Incumbents are driven besides the sorry provision that is made for poor peoples soules in those Livings where there is scarce bran enough left to make aloafe of bread for the Priest or a cake for the Prophet Some advantage might be further made by uniting two or three little Livings that are contiguous or neerly adjacent it being no sacriledge for two sixpences or three groates to give a good shilling to the Temple Much help also might be by abolishing all injurious and defrauding customes which ought not to prejudice Gods right or the Churches Dues Nor would it be a small comfort to Ministers moderate Livings if their rights and dues by Law or Custome were once so valued and stated by an equable rate in every parish that there might be a power in some officer as in other parish-rates to levy them as they were setled and due without any further vexatious and chargeable suites at Law For if the Labourer be worthy of his hire it is but just he should have it without spending one half of it and much time to get the other yea in most cases the charge of a suite at Law comes to more than that is worth which is detained I know some petty Lawyers and progging Atturnies will not favour this motion thinking it will take grist from their Mills but such of them as are pious just and generous Christians will as readily vote for and advance such an Act for setling Ministers rights as they did that for treble dammages Last of all it would be an act of great ease and favour if Ministers might be exâ—mpted in part from publick taxes and Town Charges or at least be rated as for Goods and not for Lands Certainly these and such like as just as pious projects were not hard to be executed as well as invented if men had as quick a sense of their soules interests as of those which concern their Estates Greater matters by far have been done of late yeares with far greater expense and far lesse benefit to the Nation The value of one yeares tax laid in for a stock or foundation together with the additions of private bounty which I am confident would be cheerfully cast into this Treasury or Exchequer of the Church would in a few yeares do this great work I meane purchase in Impropriations which the Learned and pious Bishop Bedel calls Badges of Babylons captivity and plain Church-Robberies in his Sermon on Rev. 17.18 lately set out by Dr Barnard This Redemption should begin there where is most need We know that small stock which was
they ever turne any lawfull Prince out of doores to make way for themselves and their Episcopall Authority or party Which method as I touched appeares to have been used even by the first Presbyterians in the world even at Geneva as some report where popular fury violently expelled not onely the Bishop but the lawfull Prince of that City who had of right not onely the spirituall jurisdiction but also the civil dominion of that Place and Territory as Bodin and Mr. Calvin confesse After this copy in many places turbulent spirits did endeavour arte vel Marte by power or policy by hook or by crook to bring in that new way into Cities and Countries and no where I find more remarkably than in Scotland during the minority of King James and the raigne of his mother How little regard was had to the Lawes or Religion then established to the Will or Authority of the supreme Magistrate how insolent petulant imperious audacious were some Presbyterian spirits there against Princes as well as Bishops is no newes to those that have read the histories of that Church among which none exceeds that of Dr. Spotswood Arch-Bishop of St. Andrewes set forth by the care of Dr. Duppa the Learned and Reverend Bishop of Salisbury a person of such Piety Patience and Prudence under his undeserved sufferings that not onely his friends but his and all Bishops enemies admire the Christian gravity and heroick greatnesse of his mind as well as others of his Order How far the like spirit plotted threatned acted and attempted in England in Queen Eliz. time so afterward in K. James his raigne and now at last in K. Charles his compleat Tragedies ful sore against his will and conscience no lesse than against the Lawes not then by any power repealed both Mr. Hooker Bishop Bilson Bishop Bancroft Archbishop Whitgift Mr. Cambden and many more of old together with our own late sad experience sufficiently informe us They of old began with scandalous petitions scurrilous libels bold admonitions rude menacings cunning contrivances which were followed at last with fire and sword with blood and ruine with sad division and great devastation to Church and State to Prince and People Which events are no wonder when any new thing pretending to Religion and Reformation may be carryed on by principles and practices of violence and force and these not because lawfull but because they are said to be necessary for Gods interest yea as instances of the highest zeal and most conscientious courage as if there never were nor could ever be any truth or faith any piety or sanctity any Christ or Christianity any Grace or Gospel in the Church or any Christians hearts unlesse Anabaptisme or Presbyterisme or Independentisme had not gently contested but rudely justled Episcopacy out of the Church of England as well as Scotland though full sore against the will of the Chief Magistrate Certainly military or mutinous methods of Religion and Reformation were never preached or practised meditated or endeavoured by any worthy Prelates Presbyters or people of that perswasion For they doe not think that Secular Arms are fit Engines to set up Jesus Christ or his Kingdome in this world which is not of this world nor after the methods of worldly power and force yea they hold that Soveraigne Princes as Christians ought not by brutish force to compel but by reason and due instruction to perswade their Subjects at first to the true Religion much lesse are weapons in the hands of Subjects meet instruments to convince or convert Princes forcibly to yield to any popular presumptions and meer innovations in Religion especially when contrary not onely to the Catholick Customes of all Churches but to the present constitution of that Church of which the Prince is a chief part yea against that personall oath by which a Prince hath sworn to preserve the setled and just rights and priviledges both of that Church and those Church-men which are in his Dominion What is more horrid than to have Reformation or Religion never so good and true thus crammed down the consciences of Kings or States whether they will or no which is the way to make all secular powers jealous of all Christianity and Reformation to set their faces and their forces against them as seditious injurious mutinous and rebellious against the publick peace the civil Rights Honors and Authorities of all Governours in Kingdoms and States The Episcopall and Evangelicall methods have been quite other as I have said by preaching and praying by patient sufferings and frequent Martyrdomes by attending Gods leisure and their Princes pleasures Thus they obtained the protection and favour of the Lawes other projects or policies other arts or armes were never known to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ or its unseparable attendant Episcopacy Thus did Evangelicall Bishops and their Clergy conquer by a meek gentle and unbloody Conquest the vast Roman world and that part of it which was here in Britany no people were so barbarous no Princes so tyrannous whom they did not soften and sweeten by that Evangelicall way and spirit which is called an anointing because it is a sacred balme or oyle which breaks not heads but hearts wounds not the bodies but the spirits of Princes and others with an healing stroke with a soft and mercifull wound Thus did the Crosse of Christ and the Crosiers of Bishops ever go together into all places not pulling down but exalting not shaking but setling the Crownes of Kings and Princes Though they were Heathens Unbelievers and Persecutors as all at first were yet did holy Bishops and their Clergy so far submit to their civil power as to pray and preach not onely faith in Christ but fidelity to Kings teaching not onely Religion but Allegeance yea they made the Allegeance of Christian subjects and souldiers even to heathen Emperours as Tertullian saith a great part and note of true Religion which perfectly abhors all rebellion against God or man as the sin of witchcraft it being as an apostasie from and an abnegation of the true God and true Religion when upon any godly and specious pretentions of Piety or Reformation as by so many charmes and enchantments of the Devil turning himself into an Angel of light Christian Preachers or Professors do begin and carry on factious tumultuous and rebellious motions against the civil Powers Lawes and Polities of any Prince or State It is upon the point a denying of the faith and setting up a new Gospel a Judaick or Mahometan not a Christian Messiah whose true servants and souldiers were alwaies armed with weapons that were spirituall not carnal ministerial not military or martial which in Church-men rather stab and wound all true Religion and Reformation to the heart by infinite scandals injuries and deformities than any way advance it either to a greater power or approbation and acceptance among men of any sober reason or morall sense of things No violence and injustice
for their Gods any Calf or Idol which their Superiours please to set up in the Church to serve or secure the civil Interests But in England where people have much light and dare to use it such policies and projects would now be not onely preposterous but vaine and ridiculous There is no putting among us Eagles wings or Feathers upon the bodies of Jack-dawes Rookes or Crowes which rather incumber them than inable them for any orderly motion much lesse do they make them Imperiall birds fit to rule or over-aw the other winged inhabitants of the world which will be ready to scorne and despise them And what indeed for instance hath more abased the condition and abated the common honor of Ministers in England of later yeares than some of their unseasonable and unreasonable affectations to govern in common as beyond their due proportion for Age Gifts Parts Ornaments so before they had complete Commission to empower them either from God or any man in Soveraign power Even such Presbyters as most affected like Icarus to fly above their Fathers my self and the English world have seen to have so melted their own artificiall wings that they have miserably faln into a Sea a black and a red Sea of confusion contempt and contention both among their own people and all the Nation Out of which Abysse they will never be able to wade or swim in my judgement unlesse they can with such Unity Humility and Charity as St. Austin adviseth some Donatists revoke their exotick errors retract their Schismes and transports returning from their pertinacious novelties to the true proportions of Ancient Church-Government which I think are in no degree to be found either in Presbytery Independency or any way apart from Episcopacy both which new waies have so grievously blasted and singed themselves by the exorbitancy of those terrible flames which they kindled utterly to consume Episcopacy that there is little likelihood either of these novelties should ever appeare to be entertained with any publick beauty honor esteem or approbation in England where nothing is lesse tolerable than Governours that are contemptible for want of Ability Authority and Dignity as to Estate and Honor. Amidst all which immoderate and mercilesse fires destinated to consume all the pristine beauty and honor of Catholick Episcopacy both root and branch in one day yet to shew not more the wonder of Gods mercy than the true temper of the English people behold not onely Primitive Episcopacy but Primitive Bishops that is persons of Learning Piety and Vertue becoming that sacred Office Dignity have retained all this while and will do while they live yea and when they are dead so much of reall honor and true respect due to their worth that no Assemblies no Armies no Votes no Ordinances no Terrors no Calumnies of inordinate Presbyters no insolencies of licentious people nothing can ever deprive them of or degrade them from an high respect and esteem in the hearts and desires in the loves and compassions of all unbiassed learned sober and wise men throughout the Nation Who are not yet grown so dull and degenerous as not to preferre the Primitive Catholick and Venerable Authority of Episcopacy as to order and Ordination so to Government and jurisdiction as much before the novel inventions and ostentations of any Presbyterian and Independent models as one would value the English Roses before the Scotch Thistles freely to handle or feed upon which is no such precious Christian Liberty as any wise men Ministers or others have either cause to envy in others or to congratulate in themselves since their former subjection to Episcopacy was far more to their Safety Order Plenty and Honor than what they now enjoy in their petty Signiories The lowest parts of that Mountaine of God Episcopacy on which the Church of Christ for many Ages stood and flourished were higher than the top of these new mole-hils the skirts of Bishops clothing were more venerable than the very Crownes of these Ministers heads the unanointed corners of whose haire and beards are now so deformedly shorne or shaven by a sharp and popular rasor The renowne and value of Episcopacy is much risen since English-men have seen added to the other excellencies of our English Bishops the miracle and magnanimity of their Christian patience who after their hard and long studies attended with many meritorious and usefull vertues after they had lawfully obtained and many yeares peaceably enjoyed such Honors and Estates as adorned Episcopacy in England after they had no way and by no law forfeited these or misused them yet in the decline of their lifes in the colder and darker winter of their Age these grave and gallant men can beare with Christian patience and heroick composednesse of mind the losse of all and that from their own Country-men Professors of the same Christian yea and Reformed Religion and this without any respect had either to their present and future support or their pristine dignity A fate so sad and Tragicall as is scarce to be parallell'd in any Age or History yet have none of them been heard to charge God foolishly They say and write either nothing or onely the words of Sobernesse Truth and Charity they still possesse their soules in silence and patience when dispossessed of all things whereever they live their lustre shines through their greatest obscurity and tenuity as the bright Sun through small crevises far beyond the most sparkling Presbyters or glittering Independents whose new popular projects for Church-Government compared to Primitive and old Episcopacy are like Comets or blazing Starres compared to the Sun and Moon The Gravity the Constancy the Contentednesse the Meekness the Humility of these Venerable yet afflicted Bishops now reduced God knowes to a great paucity as well as tenuity yet still keeps up their price and commands from all wise and worthy men a veneration both of their persons and of that comely Authority which they heretofore enjoyed and worthily exercised in this Church Who almost of any considerable people in England that are not either ignorant fanatick or sacrilegious but either openly or secretly wish the happy restauration of Venerable Episcopacy to this Church and Nation who that hath sense of honor justice or ingenuity doth not deplore and is not discountenanced to consider the Crowds and Loades of indignities cast upon such excellent persons as for the most part the Bishops of England were even then when they were to be sacrificed by I know not what strange fire as a peace-offering to the discontented Presbyters of Scotland and their ambitious Symbolizers in England I know some of those Lords and Commons who in the huddle helped to destroy Bishops and their Order now not onely pitty the undeserved sufferings of such brave men but repent of their own compliance and so do many Ministers The usefulness worth and necessity of excellent Bishops and of true Episcopacy were never so well understood in England as since the
of many particulars that Episcopacy is no enemy to Piety no way prejudiciall to Church or State yea a maine pillar to support the welfare of both Many Bishops may have been bad yet is Episcopacy good as many Priests of old were like Elies Sons vile men yet was the Priesthood Honorable and Sacred many Judges and Justices may be base and corrupt yet is Judicature good many Magistrates unworthy yet is Magistracy an excellent and necessary Ordinance of God He that should sift all the Presbyters or Ministers of any sort that have been or now are even the greatest zealots against Bishops and Episcopacy I believe he would find among them drosse enough yet must not the Office of Presbytery or the Function of the Ministry be cast off or abhorred He that shall examine by right Reason Religion Conscience and Honor what some Princes yea some Parlaments have been and done as to the persons of men will find they have been neither Gods nor Angels nor Saints nor Saviours alwaies but poor sinfull men of common passions and infirmities yet is the honor and use of Soveraigne power in Princes and supreme Counsel in full and free Parlaments of admirable concern to the publick good So is it in point of Episcopacy notwithstanding that many Bishops were but men yet some yea many nay I hope the most of them especially since the Reformation were as Mortall Angels Faithfull Pastors and Venerable Fathers There are upon account reckoned up by Bishop Godwin and others 1479. Bishops in England and Wales for above 1100. yeares of which time some Histories remaine though Bishops were long before but of these there are some Records both before and since the Reformation Who will wonder that in so great an harvest in so large a field there be found some light some empty some blasted eares This is certaine that till these last tempestuous times Bishops in England had given so ample and constant experiments of their Prudence Piety Worth and Usefulness in all Ages and States for Ecclesiasticall and Civil Affaires that they did abundantly conciliate and conserve those great measures of Love Respect Honour and Estate both publick and private which their Persons and Function by Law enjoyed Insomuch that as there were no where to be found better Bishops so no where had they better entertainment before and since the Reformation while they enjoyed the favour of Princes and the love of Parlaments who never heretofore listned to the plebeian envy or petulancy of those who sometime petitioned and prated against Bishops and Episcopacy as Diotrephes did against St. John The Wisdome Gravity Piety and Honor of this Nation never thought it worthy of them to overthrow so Venerable so Usefull so Ancient so Catholick so Honorable an Order meerly to gratifie the peevishnesse or passion or revenge or discontent or ambition or envy of inferiour people or inferiour Presbyters who were at their best every way when kept in compasse by wise Bishops No men heretofore never so much fly-blown with faction could so far prevaile by their insinuations and agitations as to have any Vote passed in England against Episcopacy all men of Learning Gravity and Prudence for these thousand yeares and more in England as in all Christian States owned and highly reverenced as Episcopacy in generall so good Bishops as the chief Conduits that had conveyed to them their Fore-father and their Children all Christian Ministry and Ministrations all Christian Mysteries and Comforts yea Christianity and Christ himself Which Spirituall Divine Eternall and Inestimable blessings this as other Nations and Churches ever owed as chiefly to Gods mercy so instrumentally to the hands of Bishops by whose Ministry they were taught by whose Authority they had many other Ministers duly ordained and sent into the harvest when it was great and required many Labourers These in their order assisted as Presbyters their respective Bishops in Teaching and Governing the Church but without or against their Bishops they never acted upon any account of Parochiall or Congregationall pretentions of Ministers Equality or peoples Immunity and Liberty Alas what ground was there for either of these pretenders in England when there were no Parishes divided as now they are till the yeare of Christ 634. when Honorius an Archbishop of Canterbury began that way for the more easie and orderly carrying on of Religion among the Country-people who had now generally received the Christian faith and Baptisme Till then the Pagani or Country-people either repaired to their Bishops and his Clergy in the Cities and chief Townes where they resided or they occasionally attended their Bishops in their visitations of them or such Presbyters as were sent out by the Bishops to officiate among them There was then no fancy nor many hundred yeares after of any petty Churches either of Associated Presbyters or Independent people without yea against the Episcopall Ordination Inspection and Jurisdiction still Bishops and Episcopacy were preserved and honored in England And this not onely by private persons of all ranks and qualities who were considerable for their honesty or Devotion but by our most admired Princes our noblest Peers our wisest Parlaments who did ever keep up the use and honor of Episcopacy in England nor did they ever disdaine to have Bishops their Assessors and Assistants in Parlaments esteeming it a rustick and plebeian temper to admit men to publick Counsel and Honors for their Valour and Estates and not for their Learning and Religion by which all worthy Bishops did as much ennoble themselves in all wise mens esteem if they wanted that of blood and descent which many of them had as those who most swelled in the conceit of their great Ancestors who left them great noble Estates but many times ignoble minds little wits and lesse honesty or vertue which hath been the fate of some who have most puffed against Episcopacy and despised those Bishops who were in all Morall Rationall Religious and reall Excellencies not their equalls but far their betters What Prince was ever more sage in her Counsel or more solemn in her Government more advised in her favours and frownes than our Augusta Queen Elizabeth what Soveraigne ever more reconciled Empire and Liberty or held the balances of Justice more impartially and more prosperously between all interests and degrees of men both in Church and State between Clergy and Laity Nobility and Communalty for neer half an hundred yeares In all which time she had no greater blemish than her yielding sometime too much to the sacrilegious importunities of begging Courtiers who terribly fleeced and sometimes flayed the Estates of some Bishopricks in England and Wales not so much out of her malice or covetousness as out of her mistaken munificence For never any Prince did more really religiously and constantly honor her Bishops as Fathers in God one of whom She had for her God-Father namely Archbishop Cranmer another I think it was Archbishop Whitgift she called her black Husband most-what
upon this Church for want of that vigor and authority of Episcopacy which had been the great defense under God the King and the Laws against those foul and filthy inundations A state of Church-religion and Reformation which his Majesty saw was at present and was ever likely to be far distant from that which was enjoyed in England under his Princely Predecessors and in some part of his own reign when England was filled and overflowed with good Christians good Scholars good Presbyters and good Bishops of which order England ever afforded and specially since the Reformation so many learned and commendable yea some rare and admirable instances Insomuch that this Church had cause to envie none in the World ancient or modern as for other things so for this the blessing of excellent Bishops as well as orderly Presbyters and sincere Christians Indeed no Nation for many Ages if we may feel the temper of any people by the pulse of their Parlaments either had more cause or seemed to have more disposition to value and actually did venerate its excellent Bishops than England did yea I have known those Noblemen Gentlemen Ministers and other people who were as to some Ceremonies less satisfied or more scrupulous than the Church and State was yet these men how have they commended how courted how almost adored such Bishops as they thought godly and grave good Preachers and good Livers as well as good Governours But as to the general sense and vote of the Nation which was audible and legible in its Laws and Constitutions for above a thousand years it ever did it self this honour and its Clergy this justice that no where in any Christian or Reformed Church Bishops were more ample more remarkable more reverenced more honoured even to the highest honour of Peerage yea the Archbishop of Canterbury had place next the Royal Blood never diminished or degraded by any Prince or by any Parlament in any Age. Nor is it the least of the Riddles of Providence how Bishops and Episcopacy having so resolute a Prince and so great a King to be their patron and protector should now in England fall under so great diminution dejection yea utter destruction considering that there never had been worthier Bishops in any time of the Church than have been in England this last Century nor in any part of that Century were there more excellent Bishops than were to be found among them at that very time when all their Palaces with Episcopacy were pull'd down about their ears and the best of them buried in the dust and rubbidge by which some men hope that the Names Merits and Memories of all Bishops and the ancient honour of Episcopacy shall be for ever smothered in obscurity or obloquie in scorn or oblivion whose Resurrection Reputation and Eternity as to their deserved honour and to the publick honour of this Church and Nation ever since it was Christian and ceased to be either barbarous or unbelieving I do here endeavour which if I cannot recover to life â—et I have brought these pounds of Spice and sweet Odours for the Enterrement and leave a fair Inscription or Epitaph upon the Grave-stone or Monument of Episcopacy if it must be ever buried in England an Office of Piety in a Son to his Fathers being my self a Person every way as free from suspicion of flattery or partiality as can well be found never either injured or obliged by any Bishop as to any publick advantages further than my Ordination as a Minister which I count a great and holy Obligation because by no other hands I conceive I could have lawfully received Holy Orders in the Church of England Free therefore from all biassings either for against the Episcopal Order which hath now no sinister temptations attending it I do affirm that Episcopacy could never have fallen into its terrible Fits and Convulsions into such excessive and mortal Agonies in a worse time as to the undeserved ruine of so many worthy men nor yet in a better time as to the eminent worth of those Bishops and other Church-men of their subordination who might well have born up the Cause and Honour as well as the weight of the Contest and Ruine of Episcopacy A wise man would wonder how in a full free and fair hearing before competent complete and impartial Judges it was possible for Episcopacy which was founded and supported by so strong foundations and supports to which all Churches all People all Presbyters all Princes all right Reason all due Order all politick Honour all Scriptural Patterns and Divine Precedents gave concurrent ayds besides the Laws and ancient Customs of this Church and State how it should suffer such a rout and reprobation instead of due Reformation where ought was amiss when it was able to bring forth such Armies at that time in England of learned grave godly venerable and incomparable Clergy-men Bishops and others of their perswasion which like so many Heroes and Atlasses were capable to have born up the falling Skie if it had not been over-charged with the Sins of the Nation Doubtless the whole world did not afford in any National Church more excellent Bishops or more able Divines for any Ecclesiastical Convocation Synod or Council singly they were mighty men both of Stature Vertue and Valour higher by head and shoulders than most of the Presbyterian Champions but socially they had been invincible if they had not been encountred with the sword which regarded not the greatness of their Learning or the soundness of their Judgements or the gravity of their Ages or the sanctity of their Lives but jealous of their firmness to Episcopacy presently set up a new Assembly no way representing because not chosen by the Clergy of England according to the wonted custom in which the Clergy of England had their priviledges as well as the Commons of England to chuse their Deputies according to Law and the Kings Commission yet these were to do the Journey-work of Presbytery as well as they could in broken times undertaking to Directorize to Unliturgize to Catechize and to Disciplinize their Brethren their Fathers their Countrymen and their Soveraign without any contradiction there being none among them that either would or could or dared to plead the cause of primitive Episcopacy which had so resolute a patron and so many able defenders at that time in England as among the inferiour Clergy so among those of the Episcopal Degree Among whom we have onely to excuse the indiscretions frailties defects or excesses of two or three later Bishops who possibly forgat the Counsel of Phoebus to use lesse stimulations and more restrictions Do but consider with compassion the great temptations of these Bishops by that favour place and power they had besides their native tempers which might be too quick and passionate also the Scholastick privacy and bluntness of their education not having taught them so well to dissemble at least not to moderate their passions take all together
not many good Bishops then when worse and harder measure befell them and their Order than since England was Christian Indeed many yea most of our Bishops were as Noahs Sems and Japhets yet have all these been drowned in the Presbyterian Deluge Even these made up the so odious so unpopular so decryed Bishops in England The pest and contagion of whose fate as it came first from Scotland where no doubt there were many Bishops of equal vertues though inferiour revenues to the worthy and well-known Dr. Spotswood Archbishop of St. Andrews and Lord Chancellour of Scotland so it reached to Ireland where there wanted not Bishops worthy of the fraternity of Bishop Usher Bishop Bedel and Bishop Bramhal all cruelly persecuted first by Papists and after by Antipapists though persons of the highest form for all excellencies yet must all these be destroyed their whole Order with the destruction of Sodom Although more than ten righteous Bishops I am sure were to be found in each of these British Churches yet all must be routed all rooted up as guilty of the unpardonable sin of Prelacy a new sin and unheard of in the Church of Christ but now to be put into the black Catalogue of scandalous sins when Heresie Schism Sacriledge and Sedition must be left out These these and such like Bishops are the men whose fate I passionately pitty men famous in their generation either for solid Preaching or weighty writing or grave counselling or holy living or prudent governing or charitable giving all of them for some and some of them for all these excellencies These are made the most unsound the most infamous and superfluous parts of this body politick and Ecclesiastick these must be one and all represented to vulgar simplicity and scurrility as the Popes the Antichrists the Bite-sheeps the Oppressors the Tyrants the Greedy and dumb dogs the Cretians the Slow-bellies the Devourers the Destroyers of all godliness and true Religion These foule glosses first made by Martin Mar-prelate of old against Episcopacy and the Bishops of England are now set forth in a new and second edition with larger notes and exquisite Commentaries upon them intimating that these are the men who have by their Learned Grave and Godly Misdemeanours as Bishops forfeited not by any Law but by absolute will and pleasure meerly as Bishops all their Houses and Revenues all their Honors and Preferments yea their good Name and Reputation which by Law and desert they had obtained and enjoyed yea all the Ancient Dignity Apostolick Authority and Constant Succession of their Place and Function in the Church which had not more of eminency than of necessity nor more of necessity than of Primitive and Catholick Antiquity For the reall faults of some and the imaginary of other Bishops whose name was their onely crime must all Ages after them be for ever punished with the want of such Grave Learned Godly and Venerable Bishops as have been destroyed for better cannot be had or desired and posterity must be ever exposed in these British Churches to all those Factions Fedities Divisions Disorders and Confusions which follow the want of due Episcopal order and Government in the Church But Bishops qua tales were enemies to the power of Godlinesse the worst of them and the best of them were men too much devoted to empty formes of Religion they urged Ceremonies so far as to neglect substances straining at gnats and swallowing Camels they justled out preaching by Catechizing and over-layed Ministers private prayers by their long Liturgies they did not kindle but quench damp and resist that spirit of Zeal and Reformation which for many years hath burned in the breasts of many godly Christians by whose flamings and refinings at last all Bishops as drosse with all their ornaments and adherents have been justly consumed I confesse I cannot tell how to answer for all the actions and expressions of every Bishop they were of age and able to have answered for themselves if any of them as offendors of our Lawes had been brought to plead for themselves which not one of them was as to Ecclesiasticall matters that I ever heard of for the weight of the Archbishops charge was chiefly upon civil or secular affaires Who knowes not that Bishops were but men that if left to their private spirits and single Counsels they might as easily over or under-do as their Adversaries have done beyond or short of what becomes wise and good men The greatest blame that I perceive among any of them was that they would injoyne or exact or remit any thing as to publick Order Discipline and Government of the Church without a joynt agreement and uniformity among themselves according to what the Law allowed or commanded This fraternall concurrence and mutuall correspondence had been worthy of Grave Wise and Learned men for all private fancies obtruded by any one or two Bishops in so tender a case as Religion is and upon so touchy a people as the English now are do but breed variety this differences these disputes these dissentions these despites these oppositions these breed confusions All the actions and injunctions all the Articles and disquisitions of Bishops as such should have been as exactly consonant and uniforme as possibly could be But as to the crimination That Bishops like Hernshaws abounded in the wing and feather of Ceremony but had little substance or body as to the power of Godlinesse First Scripture and Christs example teach us that decent and apt Ceremonies publick or private are not in their nature enemies but helps to the power of Godlinesse as putting off all Ornaments eating the bread of Sorrow putting on Sackcloth and Ashes Fasting Weeping Smiting the breast Bowing Kneeling Prostrating to the ground being all night in Solitude and Darkness lying in the Dust c. all these were and are helps to an humble broken contrite penitent and devout temper of Soul Contrary Company Wine and Oyle Singing and Musick Dancing Discourse and Laughter were and are helps to holy joy and thankful jubilations so are lifting up the eyes and hands to Heaven Sighing and Groning to fervency of Prayer and Praises It is but a rude affected and fanatick imagination of clownish Christians that decent Ceremonies of Religion wisely appointed in any Church or fitly applied by any private Christian in his private devotions these cannot stand but the substance and sincerity of Godliness must fall that there can be no forms of Godlinesse but the power of it must vanish or be banished They may as well imagine that they cannot put on their clothes or dresse themselves handsomly but they must presently cease to be wise men or honest men and good women but must turn either spectres or dishonest Do we not find that many such Christians who have of later years cast off all the former decent and wholesome formes of Godliness either by Profaneness or Preciseness or Peevishness or Faction or Atheism or Superstition are most apparently now
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-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