by learned and godly men Bishops and other Ministers were notably discovered and by some Christian Princes or States happily amended with great order and by due authority as in other places so no where with more Wisdom Justice and Moderation than in England Where as in most of the Churches protesting against the Roman deformities especially those of the Lutheran denomination the ancient Orders and Authority both of Bishops and Presbyters were preserved as is evident in the Augustane confession which finds no fault with but highly approves the Government of the Church by Bishops under Episcopacy provided Bishops would joyn in a just Reformation of those gross abuses which were the Churches intolerable grievances as well as the dishonour of Christian Religion and Christian Bishops whose deserved Honours Estates and Eminencies in Authority they saw no cause to envie grudge or diminish So far were these first Reformers from hewing down Episcopacy as if it cumbred the ground that they onely digged about it and mended it that it might bring forth good fruit as it did in England and elsewhere While the Western Churches Reformation was yet but crude and in motion by Luthers means there arose Mr. John Calvin about the Year 1541. a man of good Learning acute Wit copious Eloquence great Industry quick Passions sharp Pen of reputed Piety and of no less Policy Him the people of Geneva thought the fittest man in the world to settle their distracted Church and State after they had with the wonted arts of tumultuating and discontented people forced Eustace their Bishop and Prince to flye from his Palace and City his Bishoprick and his Seigniorie because he would not presently gratifie them with such a Reformation as they imperiously demanded rather than modestly desired Mr. Calvin as Mr. R. Hooker hath excellently set it forth undertook with much difficulty and after many indignities worthy of popular levity fury and petulancy put upon him to settle their Church-affairs together with the civil State in such order as he thought not most Scriptural primitive and Catholick but most prudential plausible and probable in humane reason and honest policy to take and hold the tumultuating inconstancy of that people so to bring them to something of civil and religious order acting herein not upon any Wiclefian or the after Presbyterian and Antiepiscopal Principles as imagining either Episcopacy to be unlawful or sole Presbytery to be necessary as of Divine Institution neither of which were his judgement as is sufficiently and vehemently declared by his passionate approbation of reformed Bishops and his esteeming so honourably of regular Episcopacy that he passeth all Anathemas or curses on those that are against them so far was Calvin from laying the Axe to the root of this Tree which with Christianity had ever as he confessed born Episcopacy But he rather went upon Erastian principles and politick grounds looking it seems upon the Government of the Church as he did upon the Lords-day which is not elder nor more authentick or Catholick as to the Churches use and observation than Episcopacy to be in their nature mutable as of Ecclesiastick yet Divine prescription according as Times Occasions and Minds of men might fall out He well knew being a learned man and oft confesseth in his Writings the primitive blessing and universal authority of presidential Episcopacy in all Churches yet he neither thought it nor any forme of Government any more than clothes to be essential to the substance and body or any Church or of the Christian Religion but variable to several forms and polities as prudence might invite or necessity require so that he never set up any soveraign and unepiscopal Presbytery as an Idol or Moloch to which not onely the children but the Fathers of the Churches even very godly and reformed Bishops were all sacrificed He thought it did not misbecome his policy and prudence to serve the times and humors of the Citizens so far as to seem to vary the outward mode of their and all other Churches ancient government provided he served the Lord and that people in setling such a government as might preserve the Christian Reformed Religion among them in true Doctrine and good Manners which was the main work which Calvin seemed to mind most To have reconciled the City and their former Bishop was a matter impossible unless he or they had changed their minds in Religion to have perswaded them to elect a new Prince and Bishop of their own profession and opinion had been very imprudent considering either the fair offers they made to himself of being not titularly indeed but virtually and really both the Prince and Prelate or remembring that strong fancy of Liberty which had now so filled and intoxicated all sorts of Citizens In the last place to have set up himself in the pomp and formalities of a Bishop and a Prince had been an act of too much Impudence and Envy for a person of his Ingenuity Policy and Dexterity in publick managements it sufficed his design so far to gratifie both the Populacy with seeming Liberty and the Optimacy with some civil and Magistratick Authority all of them with such reformed purity in Religion as most pleased them and yet to keep up himself and his collegues of the Ministry to such an height of Ecclesiastical Influence and Church-power as made them far from being either slaves to the Vulgar or cyphers to the Government for all cases civil and criminal as well as religious were one way or other reducible and so responsible either by way of comprimising or upon scandal or repentance or satisfaction to the cognizance and consistory of him and his collegues himself being as the Caesar they as his Bibuli In effect his Wisdom Reputation Eloquence and Courage set him up in Geneva and other places to so high an eminency of respect and authority as he equalled yea exceeded most Bishops however his pomp train and pension were but small after the usual bounty expectable from any State or City that list to make their Reformations of Religion compleat by robbing the Church and Clergy of their ancient Lands and Revenues which doubtless in that City had been so great and princely as upon the confiscation of them to their Town-box or Exchequer they might well have allowed Mr. Calvin their great Reformer and chief Pastor and his Associates a Salary much beyond an hundred pounds per ann with a little provision of Corn. But he wisely dissembled this Indignity finding that as Riches Pomp and Luxury had undone former Bishops so a voluntary kind of Poverty and Austerity would now best conciliate to him and his collegues a greater Reverence and Authority nor was it considerable to have a gay or rich scabbard provided they had sharp and well metall'd swords their Ambition was rather to intend Gods work in reforming Religion of its Leprosie with Elisha than in taking mans rewards with Gehazi In this Presbyterian Prelacy or Prelatick Presbytery
a steddy judgement and unpopular spirit who pressed upon his Unepiscopal much more against his Antiepiscopal Presbytery so strongly that he forced his Antagonist to stoop and subscribe to Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy yea and to acknowledge Bishops even from the Apostles dayes to have been the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ◠Presidents or chief Rulers among Presbyters in all Churches Mr. Beza's Essayes not so much to have undermined Episcopacy as to have fixed or earthed his Presbytery better being thus notably countermined yet upon his very breaking the earth and promising at least pretending to spring some rich Mine of Scripture and Antiquity to prove if not the sole yet at least the concurrent Divine right of Presbytery on both sides of it both as to its preaching ruling Elders as stamped with the mark of Christ and his Apostles besides his and others terrifying the world as if Popery had begun with Prelacy and Antichrist had sucked the breasts of Episcopacy it is not imaginable what industrious Pioneers and Souldiers followed these charms this alarme for Presbytery against Episcopacy who sifting every name of Bishop Presbyter Elder Evangelist Messenger Apostle Prophet Pastor Teacher Ruler Governments Helps c. in Scripture and Antiquity found or fancied upon all of them something that made very much if not onely for Presbytery and very much if not wholly against Episcopacy so far that they would not allow so much as the twelve or thirteen prime Apostles any Episcopal Presidency Eminency or Authority above the seventy Disciples or any Presbyters whom they ordained much less any Bishop after them above the youngest meanest and pettiest Presbyter rather suspecting yea aspersing all Antiquity even in the primitive and purest times for Ignorance and Error or Falsity and Ambition in following the Catholick custom of Episcopacy after the great Apostolical pattern which was in them given to all Churches by the Spirit of Christ and after continued by the Apostles own appointment than any way admitting any Innovation Flaw or Defect to be in their new-formed Presbytery Heats unhappily growing great and Eruptions many from the Etna or Vesuvius of mens passions the sulphur and ashes at last came from Geneva Franckfort and Edenborough over to England where at first they onley fell upon the square Caps and Rochets of our excellent reformed and reforming Bishops but at last they flew in their very Faces and Eyes without any respect to their Age Learning Piety Sanctity and Martyrly Constancy besides the honourable places they still held both in Church and State according to our Laws For the Undertakers for the Cause as they called it of Jesus Christ first picking at the outworks of Ceremonies next at the spiriritual Courts or Jurisdictions of Bishops after that at the excellent Liturgy at last they laid amain at the whole Body as well as the Branches of Episcopacy going much further than ever their first Founders of Presbytery abroad or the modester Non-conformists at home ever designed or desired Thus a bolder Generation of men stopping their ears against all the charms of Scripture Antiquity Universality Prudence personal Merits publick Blessings and all proportions of Government and Polity only urging a peremptory necessity and a self-inforcing novelty perfected that in a dreadful War which was neither begun nor promoted nor desired by the chief Magistrate nor by his chief Council in its pristine fulness and freedom nor ever before was acted in any reformed Church whatsoever against their reformed Bishops After much bustling and blood-shed in perilous times this crooked and low shrub of Presbytery which having never much thriven or grown handsomly in Scotland or in any other Kingdom where it had been happily and handsomly grafted by King James with a renewed and well-reformed Episcopacy this bitten mangled and mis-shapen was brought over on the swords point and wrapped up in the cover of a Covenant as Plants in Mats to be set in this good soyl of England after sweating Smectymnuus and the industrious Assembly with many Heads Hands Tongues and Pens had digged and prepared the ground for it by gaining the minds of some wel-affected Members in the two Houses and others in other places About the Year 1649. the Fasces Imperiales and the Sacrae Secures the Holy Rods and Imperial Axes of Presbytery were displayed to England in their Ruling and Teaching Elders in their High and Mighty Consistories Parochial Classical Provincial National Oecumenical for the Presbyterian power was in all the world to prevail against Episcopacy as Daniels He-goat did against the Ram casting him to the ground and stamping upon him Every Presbyter young and old ripe and raw was to have not onely a sword in his mouth but a switch of correption in his hand which lest he should use too rashly and sharply he was to be pinioned and surrounded with certain Lay-Elders each of them furnished also with a Rod of Disciplinarian or ruling power equal to the Minister All this dreadful dispensation of Presbyterian discipline was pontifically and punctually set out by many discourses to the no small wonder of all wise men who knew the disproportions to all Government generally which were both in younger Ministers and in most Lay-men of plain parts and plebeian breeding such as in most places these herds of ruling Elders must be into whom the spirit of Government must presently enter And no less terrible was this paradox and parado of Presbyterian Discipline and Severity even to Common-people yea and to the most of the ablest Gentry and Nobility except some few whose itch and ambition of a Lay-elderships place had possibly biassed them to smile upon their persons and their now Presbytery to which they were invited solemnly to be Gossips Thus armed and marshalled in its Ranks and Regiments Presbytery began to hasten its March in its might furiously enough setting up its Conventions Ordinations Jurisdictions trying the metal and temper of its Censures by Ebaptizations Correptions Abstentions Excommunications and new Examinations even of ancient Christians old and eminent Disciples to whom they had formerly given the Sacrament twenty times some of which they sought to win by fair speeches some people they perswaded others they menaced and scared to submit to their new Scepter Daily Intelligences and brotherly Correspondencies were zealously kept every where very quick and warm among the Presbyterian Fraternity Bishops never so aged learned unblameable venerable and meritorious for their Labours and good Examples were as Underlings and conquered Vassals not so much as pittied but despised and trampled under foot exautorated and vilified by every young stripling that had got the switch of Presbytery in his hand which he saw now was beyond the Bishops Keyes or Crosier Presbytery thus driving at Jehu's rate for some time some of its wheels or pins like Pharaohs began to drop off which forced it to drive more heavily than its natural genius can well bear being spirited like Ezekiel's wheels with so
Foxes and wild Boars of Romish Power and Policy to enter in and not onely secretly but openly as occasion shall serve to destroy all the remaining stock of the true Protestants and Professors of the Reformed Religion who at first soberly protesting against Popish Errours and Deformities afterwards praying in-vain for a joynt and just Reformation did at last reform themselves after the rule of Gods Word interpreted by the Catholick Practise of purest Antiquity What without a miracle can hinder the Papall prevalency in England when once sound Doctrine is shaken corrupted despised when Scriptures are wrested by every private interpreter when the ancient Creeds and Symbols the Lords Prayer and Ten Commandements all wholsome forms of sound Doctrine and Devotion the Articles and Liturgy of such a Church together with the first famous Councils all are slighted vilified despised and abhorred by such English-men as pretend to be great Reformers when neither pristine Respect nor Support Credit nor Countenance Maintenance nor Reverence shall be left either to the Reformed Religion or the Ministry of it without which they will hardly be carried on beyond the fate of Pharaohs Chariots when their wheeles were taken off which is to be overwhelmed and drowned in the Romish red Sea which will certainly overflow all when once England is become not onely a dunghill and Tophet of Hereticall filth and Schismaticall fire but an Aceldama or field of blood by mutuall Animosities and civil Dissentions arising from the variations and confusions of Religions All which as the Roman Eagle now foresees and so followes the camp of Sectaries as Vultures and Birds of prey are wont to doe Armies so no man not blinded with private passions and present interest is so simple as not to know that it will in time terribly seize upon the blind dying or dead carkase of this Church and Nation whose expiration will be very visible when the Purity Order and Unity of Religion the Respect Support and Authority of the Ministry is vanished and banished out of England by the neglect of some the Malice Madnesse and Ingratitude of others your most unhappy Countrey-men Then shall the Israel of England return to the Egypt of Rome then shall the beauty of our Sion be captive to the bondage of Babylons either Superstition or Persecution from both which I beseech God to deliver us As an Omen of the future fate how many persons of fair Estates others of good parts and hopefull Learning are already shrewdly warped and inclined to the Church of Rome and either actually reconciled or in a great readinesse to embrace that Communion which excommunicates all Greek and Latine Churches Eastern Western and African Christians which will not submit to its Dominion and Superstition chiefly moved hereto because they know not what to make of or expect from the Religion and Reformation of the Church of England which they see so many zealous to reproch and ruine so few concerned to relieve restore or pity As for the return of you my noble Countrey-men and your Posterity to the Roman Subjection and Superstition I doubt not but many of you most of you all of you that are persons of judicious and consciencious Piety doe heartily deprecate it and would seriously avoid it to the best of your skill and power as indeed you have great cause both in Prudence and Conscience in Piety and Policy yet I believe none of you can flatter your selves that the next Century shall defend the Reformed Religion in England from Romish Pretensions Perswasions and Prevalencies as the last hath done while the Dignity Order and Authority of the Ministry the Government of excellent Bishops the Majesty and Unity of this reformed Church and its Religion were all maintained by the unanimous vote consent and power of all Estates Nay the Dilemma and distressed choice of Religion is now reduced to this that many peaceable and well-minded Christians having been so long harrassed bitten and worried with novell Factions and pretended Reformations would rather chuse that their Posterity if they may but have the excuse of ignorance in the main controversies to plead for Gods mercy in their joining to that Communion which hath so strong a relish of Egyptian Leeks and Onions of Idolatry and Superstition besides unchristian Arrogancy and intolerable Ambition that their Posterity I say should return to the Roman party which hath something among them setled orderly and uniform becoming Religion than to have them ever turning and tortured upon Ixions wheel catching in vain at fancifull Reformations as Tantalus at the deceitfull waters rolling with infinite paines and hazard the Reformed Religion like Sisyphus his stone sometime asserting it by Law and Power otherwhile exposing it to popular Liberty and Loosenesse than to have them tossed to and fro with every wind of Doctrine with the Fedities Blasphemies Animosities Anarchies Dangers and Confusions attending fanatick Fancies quotidian Reformations which like botches or boiles from surfeited and unwholsome bodies do daily break out among those Christians who have no rule of Religion but their own humours and no bounds of their Reformations but their own Interests the first makes them ridiculous the second pernicious to all sober Christians Whereas the Roman Church however tainted with rank Errours and dangerous Corruptions in Doctrine and Manners which forbid us under our present convictions to have in those things any visible sacred communion with them though we have a great charity and pity for them Charity in what they still retain good Pity in what they have erred from the Rule and Example of Christ and his Catholick Church yet it cannot be denied without a brutish blindnesse and injurious slander which onely serves to gratifie the grosse Antipathies of the gaping vulgar that the Church of Rome among its Tares and Cockle its Weeds and Thornes hath many wholsome Herbs and holy Plants growing much more of Reason and Religion of good Learning and sober Industry of Order and Polity of Morality and Constancy of Christian Candor and Civility of common Honesty and Humanity becoming grave men and Christians by which to invite after-Ages and your Posterity to adhere to it and them rather then to be everlastingly exposed to the profane bablings endless janglings miserable manglings childing confusions Atheisticall indifferencies and sacrilegious furies of some later spirits which are equally greedy and giddy making both a play and a prey of Religion who have nothing in them comparable to the Papall party to deserve your or your Posterities admiration or imitation but rather their greatest caution and prevention for you will finde what not I onely but sad experience of others may tell you that the sithes and pitch-forks of these petty Sects and plebeian Factions will be as sharp and heavy as the Papists Swords and Faggots heretofore were both to your religious and civil Happinesse CHAP. XXIX FOr however the feeblenesse and paucity of lesser Sects and Factions in Religion in some places their mutuall
among learned godly and wise men Nor doe I beleeve that in point of conscience they have hitherto found any great improvement of piety in themselves their families children and servants Yea I cannot but think they must be very sensible of those many breaches flawes and leakings which daily grow as upon their Country so upon their Parishes and Families by the extravagancies of their children strangenesse of their acquaintance and irreligiousnesse of their servants besides the factiousnesse of their neighbours and coldnesse of their very kindred who all affect according as they are cunning proud or simple the name of LIBERTY in Religion that is in some mens sense neither much to feare God nor to reverence Man However I wonder that any persons of great worth and prudence can with indifferency see the publique Nationall interests of Religion sinking which are the greatest jewels ornaments and honour of any Nation so as themselves may but have liberty to swim or paddle in what new pond puddle or plash of Religion they list to fancie 'T is strange to me that any persons of steady and sober brains should not easily foresee that these strange vertigo's these tempests and continuall tossings of Religion will in a short time if they have not already make the whole Nation quite giddie and as it were sea-sick even to a vomiting up of its Reformation But if there be indeed a Libertie indulged to every one for the picking and choosing what way of worship Religion Church and Ministery best likes them sure it will be the greatest honour and noblest freedome of all true English Christians to own and adhere to that solidly soberly Reformed Religion which was duly setled in this Church of England by better heads and I think as honest hearts as any either brochers or abetters of novelties can justly pretend to who as I conceive come vastly short in all their variations and new inventions of that Scripturall verity Catholick antiquity yea and of that Parlamentary authority and majesty which had once happily reformed and established Religion in this Church of England by the full counsell and free consent of all Estates Princes and People Clergy and Laity What is of late by Novellers pretended of an Apostolique rudenesse plainnesse illiteratenesse and simplicity which ought to be in Ministers of the Gospel is ridiculous unlesse these new Teachers could shew us their speciall gifts and extraordinary inspirations better than yet they have done which were indeed miraculously bestowed upon the Primitive Planters and Preachers but very superfluous in a Church so full and blest with the ordinary endowments of pious literature and all good learning both Humane and Divine as England was How childish an affectation were it in the Gentrie of England to forbeare to ride on good horses because Christ once rode upon an asse shewing that the greatest triumph of all Christians is humility lowlinesse and meeknesse How silly were it in them to expect that Asses should alwayes be able to instruct them because Balaams asse did once with great justice and a prodigious gravity rebuke his masters madnesse Much lesse should Gentlemen of worth and breeding be such silly sots and children as to fancie that every jingling hobby-horse will be sufficient to carry them to heaven No the ministery of your souls is a far greater work requiring greater ability and better authority to convince men of their sins to encounter their lusts to moderate their passions to purge out their corruptions to break and soften their hearts to terrifie and appease their consciences to prepare them for God to graft them by true faith into a crucified God and Saviour to wean them from the world to win them to goodnesse to pull them out of hell and the devils snares to bring them to heaven and into the arms of Christ All which are the great works of true able and authoritative Ministers requiring other-gates workmen than are now in many places much in fashion among common people though not so in favour with the wiser and better sort of Christians in England as to prefer these mens new and various fancies before the wise constitutions the ancient customes the Catholick and Religious Orders of the Church of England established by their pious and prosperous Progenitors All the world at home and abroad sees that after all the many changes and troublesome essayes of new-modelling the civill state of this Nation yet true reason of State and publique peace doe command yea inforce us to justifie the wisdome of our Fore-fathers by bringing back matters of Soveraigntie power and government to the former plat-form and polity as to reality onely changing a few formalities Truly this makes me not despaire but when all new fangles of Religion and popular models of Churches have been tryed in vain and are found as they will be both impertinent and incompetent for the happy state of Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation we may by Gods blessing return to those pristine and primitive forms of sound doctrine uniform order and government which were never taken up by any private inventions here or elsewhere but were of Catholick observation and so no doubt of Apostolique direction and divine institution Which if all men should silently forsake and in so doing reproch not onely the Church of England but the very first Catholique and Apostolique Churches yet let me cease to live when I cease to sympathize with them in their unjust reproches and with Her in her great distresses and 't is fit my tongue should cleave to my mouth when I forbear or am afraid to pray for the peace and happy restitution of our Jerusalem I who have seen Her in such order beauty peace plenty honour prosperity and piety I who have received in her bosome and tuition so many and great mercies not onely temporall but I hope spirituall and eternall I who desire my posterity kindred friends and countrey may never have other God or Saviour than what was owned and worshipped in the Church of England no other Scriptures and Gospel than what have here been excellently preached and comfortably believed no other Sacraments than such as were here duly administred and devoutly received no other Liturgie or prayers and holy offices than such as were here both publiquely proposed and privately used no better Bishops Presbyters pastors and guides of their souls both for learned abilities exemplary life than such as I have known frequent and flourishing in the Church of England I pray God they may but have as good for better Ministers and better means of salvation as they shall not need them so they cannot have them without miracles of which God is no prodigall I should greatly sin if I should not daily sigh and weep over the Church of England if I should not poure our my soule to the God and Father of Mercies for Her since she is now counted by many as Jeremie complains an out-cast and forsaken whom no
true ministeriall authority precious liberties what sober men count defections from the ancient Catholick Apostolick pattern they boast of as perfections what plain-hearted Christians esteem as decayings of the Reformed Religion and ill omens and presages of its ruine these Seraphicks affirm to be edifyings and repairings of that structure which since the Apostles times they pretend was alwayes decaying and dropping down to Apostasy being overladen with the fair roof or covering of Episcopacy of which burthen some blessed Reformers seek totally to have lightened this Church as they have done some Cathedrals of their Leads that they may leave this Church and the Reformed Religion as without any roof and defence against the injuries of foul weather so without any band or coping to keep the walls and sides together What others call Extirpations these magnifie as rare Plantations in which they fell down Cedars and set up Shrubs they root up Vines and plant Brambles rejecting venerable Bishops and orderly Presbyters who are of the Primitive Stock and Apostolick descent that they may bring in a novel brood of Heteroclite Teachers equivocall Pastors and new-moulded Ministers whose late Origine without all doubt ariseth no higher at best than Geneva or Frankfort or Amsteldam or Arneheim or New England some are such popular pieces so much terrae filii of obscure rise of base and mean extraction that they have no name of men or place to render them remarkable being like Mushromes perking up in every molehill and in a moment making themselves the Ministers of Jesus Christ To whose strange and novell productions in Old England the late civill distractions finding it seemes much prepared matter gave not onely life and activity but so great petulancy and insolency that many do not onely change their former profession and utterly abdicate their Church-standing and communion in England but as meer changelings they prefer the saddest Succubaes and Empusa's the most fanatick apparitions of modern fancies in their poor and pitifull Conventicles before the Church of England as some children do the Queen of Fairies before their genuine Mothers instead of whose sound Doctrine sacred Order and Catholick Councils they betake themselves each to their private dotages and ravings to meer nonsense and blasphemies which some cry up as strong reasonings high raptures extatick illuminations to which all men must subscribe though no wise man know what they mean Such confidence some men have that Christians in England have lost not onely their Religion but their Reason upon whom they hope so rudely and grosly to impose their most childish novelties and frivolous follies that as Erasmus speaks of some monkish corrupters or interpolators of S. Jeroms works who had made it harder for him to find out what that acute and learned Father wrote than ever it was for him to write his excellent works so in England what was formerly plain and easie sound and wholsome orderly and Catholick as to true Religion both in Faith Manners Ministry and Government the modern Novelties Whimseys Factions Intricacies and Extravagancies of some men have made not onely perplexed confused but contemptible and ridiculous Yet these are the trash and husks which some mens nauseo us wanton palates in this age do prefer and chuse rather than that wholsome food and sincere milk of Gods word with which the Reformed Church of England alwayes entertained her children untill an high-minded and stiff-necked generation of rank appetites like Jewes growing sick of quailes and surfeited of manna longed for the garlick and onions of Egypt legendary visions fabulous revelations and fanatick inspirations Which Egyptian diet hath of late by a just anger of Heaven upon mens ingratefull murmurings and wanton longings brought many in England to those high calentures and distempers in Religion that like frantick people they flye in the faces of their Fathers and tear the very flesh of their Mother Though civil troubles and State-furies seem much allayed yet these Clero-masticks and Church-destroyers still maintain a most implacable war against the Church of England thinking yea professing some of them that they shall do God good service utterly to destroy it with all its assistants and adherents In order to which design they have sought every where to vilifie and set at nought to crown with thorns and crucifie or at best to counterfeit and disguise the merit worth and majesty of all the sacred Solemnities and Rites the Peace and Polity the Ministry and Ministrations of the Church of England yea and fancying they have a liberty to mock them first and after to naile them to the Cross Good God! how have they buffeted them how importunely do they obtrude upon them amidst their many Agonies gall and vinegar to drink what cruell contempts what virulent pamphlets what scandalous and scurrilous petitions do they frequently vent against all Churches and Church-men relating to or depending upon the Church of England some of them ripping up by a Neronean cruelty the womb that bare them others cutting off by a more than Amazonian barbarity the breasts that gave them suck Nor do they despair to pierce at last this bleeding Church to the very heart if ever the power of the sword come into such hands as are professed enemies to all other Reformed Churches as well as this of England whose languishing but living fate they now behold as with great pleasure so with no small impatience while they see that notwithstanding all their sedulous and industrious machinations against learning and Religion against the Church and Universities of England against Ministers and their maintenance yet there is still some life and spirit some liberty and hope left through the mercy of God and the moderation of some men in power for those Christians that have the courage and conscience to own the Reformed Church of England as their Mother and the Reformed Clergy as their spirituall Fathers Whose just Honour and Interests as I must never desert while I live because I think them linked with those of Gods Glory my Redeemers Honour the Catholick Churches veracity the peace of my conscience and my countrey's happinesse both as to the present age and to posterity so I have thought it my duty in her deplorable condition and in the despondency of many mens spirits to apply the cordiall of this confection mingled with her teares and with her sighs presented to you my most honoured Countrey-men by the help of which you may both fortify your own honest minds and oppose that diffusive venome which you cannot but daily meet in some mens restlesse malice who neither know how to speak well of the Church of England nor how to hold their peace By the example of your judicious favour and generous compassion I doubt not to excite like affections of courage and constancy in all worthy Protestants honest-hearted English whose duty it is amidst the pertinacy of all other parties and factions who like Burres hang together to hold fast that holy and
behold without seven dayes silence and astonishment like Job's friends the rufull and dismall spectacle of the Church of England which is like Job or Lazarus living indeed but almost buried in its Sores and Sorrowes not onely lying but even dying on its dunghill like the sometime lovely and beautifull Daughter of Zion now grovelling in the dust deserving another tender-hearted Jeremy who might write the book of England's Lamentations with his Teares since the History of her Fall and Ruine is written in blood Her own brood like the young Pelicans feeding upon her without any pity or remorse growing daily fiercer after they have once tasted of her flesh and more resolute as Absalom by the rapes they have rudely made upon a Matrone lately so comely chast and honourable whom Her destroyers dare now to count and call the filth and off-scouring of all Churches crying down Her holy habitations and conventions as cages and flocks of unclean birds Her holy Ministrations as impious and odious Her holy Bishops and Ministers as Antichristian usurpers and impostors Her whole Constitution as Babylonish and abominable worthy of nothing but their curses and comminations CHAP. VII HAth any Nation changed Her Gods though they are no Gods saith the Prophet expostulating with the inconstant and Apostatizing Jews who had despised the Word forsaken the Law and broken the everlasting covenant of God made with their forefathers What people that owns a God or a Saviour or a Soul immortall or any Divine Veneration under the name of their Religion was ever patient to heare their and their fore-fathers God blasphemed or to see that Religion wherein to the best of their understanding they agreed and professed publickly to serve and worship their God vulgarly baffled and contemned Was ever any part of mankind so stupidly barbarous as to behold without just grief and resentment their Oracles and Scriptures vilified and abused their solemn Prayers and Liturgies torn and burnt their Temples profaned and ruined their holy Services scorned and abhorred their Priests and Ministers of holy Mysteries impoverished and contemned In matters of Religion the light of nature hath taught every Nation to be commendably zealous and piously pertinacious esteeming this their highest honour to be very tender of any diminution dishonour or indignity offered to their Religion which reflects upon the majesty of their God whom every Nation may in charity be presumed to serve in such a way as they think to be most acceptable to their God every man being convinced that he ought to pay the highest respects to that Deity which he adores from which to be easily moved by vulgar clamours and inconstancy without grand and weighty demonstrations convincing a man of his own errour and his Countreys mistake or contrary to the dictates of conscience for any man shamefully to flatter or silently to comply with any such designs as appear first reproching their Religion next robbing their God and at last destructive to all publick Piety is certainly a temper so base so brutish so ignoble so servile so sordid so devilish that it is worse than professed or avowed Atheisme for he sins lesse that owns no God than he that mocks him or so treats him as the world may see he neither loves nor feares Him And can it I beseech you O noble Christians and worthy Gentlemen become the piety wisdome and honour of this so ancient and renowned Nation of England to behold with coldnesse and indifferency like Gallio the scamblings and prostitutions the levellings and abasings the scorns and calumnies so petulantly and prodigally cast by mechanick and plebeian spirits for the most part or by mercenary insolency upon that Christian and Reformed Religion which hath so long flourished among you and your fore-fathers and which was first setled among you not slightly nor superficially not by the preposterous policies passions and interests of our Princes not by the pusillanimity or partiality of over-awed Parlaments nor yet by the superstitious easinesse or tumultuary headinesse of the common people but upon learned publick and serious examination of every thing that was setled and owned as any point or part of our Religion There was godly grave mature and impartial counsel of most learned Divines used there was the full and free Parlamentary consent of all estates and degrees in this nation there was a strict and due regard had to the Word of God and the mind of Christ as to doctrine and duties to the faith and fundamentals of Religion without any regard to any such antique customes or traditions as seemed contrary to that rule As for the rituals and prudentials the circumstantiating and decorating of Religion great regard was had in them to the usages of pure and Primitive Antiquity so as became modest wise and humble Christians who seeing nothing in the ancient Churches Rites and Ceremonies contrary to Gods Word or beyond the liberty allowed them and all Churches in point of order and decency did discreetly and ingenuously study such compliance with them as shewed the least desire of novellizing or needless varying from and the greatest care of conforming to sober and venerable Antiquity Against all which sacred suffrages and ecclesiasticall attestations for the true Christian and Reformed Religion once setled in the Church of England now at last to oppose either popular giddinesse and desire of novelties or any secular policies and worldly designes or any brutish power that is neither rationall nor religious but meerly arbitrary and imperious altering and abolishing as the populacy listeth matters of Religion which are the highest concernments of any nation and so require the most publick counsels impartial debates and serious consent of all estates by such pitiful principles and the like unconscientious biasses for a Nation to be swayed in or swerved from the great and weighty matters of Religion once well established is certainly a perfect indication of present basenesse also an infallible presage of future unhappinesse Which I beseech God to divert from this Nation of England by your prayers and teares by your counsel and courage by your moderation and discretion who are too knowing to be ignorant and too ingenuous to be unsensible of your duty to God and your own souls of your respect and deserved gratitude to your Countrey and to this Church of England which was heretofore loved by its children applauded by its friends reverenced by its neigbours dreaded and envied by its enemies and this not onely for that long peace and prosperity it enjoyed which alone are no signs of Gods approbation but chiefly as Irenaeus observes for those rare spirituall gifts ministeriall devotionall and practicall which were evidently to be seen in Her those pious proficiencies those spirituall influences which preachers people found in their own hearts those gracious examples and frequent good works which they set forth to others those heavenly experiences they enjoyed in themselves those charitable simplicities they
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
think their own refractoriness to be Religion and other mens honest devotion to be but superstition of which I confess I never thought either this Church or any other to be in the least degree guilty while they did observe such holy memorials with publick celebrity as were appointed to the honour of God and to the imitation of those graces which were remarkable in the eminentest servants of God renowned in the Gospel such as are the blessed Virgin and Mother of our Lord as also his prime Apostles by whose means the light of the Gospel shone through all the world Nor do we find our Saviour himself withdrawing in such cases his conformity to the Churches practise in those Encaenia or Feasts of dedication which were thankfull and joyfull memorials of the restauration of that material Temple which was to be demolished whereas these holiday-celebrations used in this Church have respect to such things as are never to be forgotten abolished or changed while the world continues and Christ hath any Church upon earth which I believe he will have to the end of the world according to his promised assistance to all his faithfull Ministers who continue in the fellowship and succession both for doctrine and authority of the blessed Apostles But I have done with these long and unhappy debates about the sacred Festivalls and other Ceremonies authorized by the Church of England on which some flesh-flies mistaking them for galls and sores when they were but decent variations of beautifull colours in its garment have so importunely fastened especially in the hotter season of these late dog-dayes that they have very much flye-blown the reformed Religion and endangered not onely the putrefaction but the utter corruption of the whole state of this Church of England whose quarrel and right in these things I should not have thus far revived or vindicated if I had not thought it necessary by this salt of sound speech to represse those further putrifying principles which upon this account are daily suggested to simple and well-meaning people against the whole frame and constitution of the Church of England Whose publick commands and setled constitutions as I alwayes approved and obeyed but most readily since I best understood them in their late fiery triall because I have found them in great and weighty matters serious solid scripturall in lesser things moderate discreet and charitable so I never had either heart or hand tongue or pen to assert any thing that was by private or particular mens fancies brought in either to a peevish non-conformity or to a pragmatick super-conformity Though I willingly allow many of my calling to be much wiser and better than my self yet I cannot look upon them as wiser than the whole Church of England which saw with many more eyes both forward and backward than any one Bishop or Presbyter can do whose reall Innovations in later times beyond what either the letter or usage of this Church which best interprets Its meaning did enjoyn and authorize I am no way concerned to maintain nor was I ever discontent to have them both gainsaid and removed as insolencies mis-becoming any Church-man never so wise or great to impose upon the Majesty of so famous a Church as England was which never needed any other additions innovations or decorations either in Doctrine or Discipline or Worship than those which It self had soberly chosen as a wise Mother and grave Matron which justly disdains to be made gayer or finer by such ribbands feathers and toyes as any of her Children shall list to pin upon her It had better become in my judgement the learning gravity and discretion of those men who most admired and obtruded their own supernumerary and unwonted ceremonies to have confined themselves to the Churches known Injunctions and Customes for it were endless if every man never so good should be gratified in his Church-projects and religious inventions which became the great pest and oppression of the Western Churches when the Bishops of Rome by their own incroachments and other Bishops connivence undertook to innovate or regulate all things in all Churches which should have been ordered either by generall Councils or by the Synods of particular Churches as was most convenient for them Nor in England could ever prudent men with reason have doâ—ed on any of their novelties when they plainly saw that even those few sparks of ancient Ceremonies with which the Church of England contented her self and which neither made nor marr'd Religion being rather spangles than spots on the Churches garments even these I say have a long time been made beyond their merit not onely occasions for some to rail others to scorn a third sort to blaspheme the purity and honour of the Church of England but also to schismatize in Her and separate wholy from Her Yea from the later obtrusions of some mens either renovations of things antiquated or innovations of Ceremonies never enjoyned by the Church those dreadful conflagrations have grown which have almost quite consumed Her the quenching of which deserves as it needs not onely these drops of my pen but of all your tears and prayers most worthy Gentlemen who find your selves as I am very much concerned for the honour and happiness of this Church which was in all points prudently reformed and excellently constituted CHAP. XIV A Second grand Objection very popular and plausible which the enemies of the Church of England have made great use of to decry and destroy if possible the whole frame constitution of It is taken from the private infirmities personall failings male-administrations which some men have either suspected or really observed in some of the Clergie either Arch-bishops Bishops or Presbyters of the Church of England against whom it is objected that either they were not so warm and voluble Preachers as those men do most fancy or possibly less learned and industrious then was fit for Ministers or not so prudent it may be and compassionate toward weaker Christians as became those that were stronger in the faith or lastly not so morally strict unblamable in their lives as indeed all Ministers of the Gospel ought to be at all times Hence the Adversaries of the Church of England do conclude that both head and heart were sick that there was no sound part that all was full of bruises and putrified sores that in the Church of England nothing could be found worthy of a true Church a true Minister or a true Christian My answer is That all the modest Clergie in England desire to be so humble so ingenuous so impartial as not to forget their own infirmities while they coÌ„plain of others injuries For my self being conscious how little removed I am from fallings as a mâ—n and Minister I shall willingly confess and strive to amend what any mans charity shall with truth convince me of and for others my Fathers and Brethren I presume I have because I humbly crave their leaves to
give God the glory of his own justice of other mens malice and of our own failings My design is not to reproch any man in particular but to excite my self with all other Ministers to such repentance amendment as God requires the better world expects the malice of our enemies exacts our own safety and this Churches distresses command of us The Clergie of England of all degrees have endured too many sufferings beyond any other rank or order of men to fancy they have not had many sins Not to own our distempers after the long application of so rough physick were indeed to tax the wisest and gentlest Physician not of severity but cruelty and superfluity whereas the father of our souls never chastiseth his children so much for his own pleasure as indeed for their profit Gods judgements are in this very mercifull and his severities the fruits of his loving kindness that he chuseth rather to punish us than forsake us and to afflict us by his own justice than to betray us to the cruel flatteries of our own lusts which would prove ours and his greatest enemies too if we were left to our selves The smart eye-salve which the Clergy of England have endured of late years may well cleare our sight so farre at least as to discern and confess those faults which heretofore it may be we over-looked or slighted or excused upon the common score of humane infirmity which indulgence may better be allowed to any men than to Ministers of the Gospel especially if persons of eminency and conspicuity Of all Clergie-men beyond all other men the world justly expects and so doth God sobriety gravity exactness even in their younger years as S. Paul doth of Timothy how much more in their maturity and age Little sins in them if publicated grow great by their scandall and contagion O how ponderous how immense how flagitious are the presumptions the vicious habits the wilfull open obstinate and constant deformities of Ministers In all which if the just God should be extreme to mark what hath been amisse among us both young and old great and small who is able to abide it Before the Lord who hath done it we must with old Eli and holy Job put our mouths in the dust and smother our sense in silence Nevertheless we are and ever must be pertinacious even to the death with holy and afflicted Job to maintain not onely the innocency but also the merit of the Clergie or Ministry of England as to the greater and better part of them in respect of the people of this Nation in all degrees Although as David did when Shimei reproched and cursed him bitterly disdainfully and injustly we cannot but be sensible complain of some mens excessive malice immoderation against us yeâ— we cannot but make an humble submission to with an agnition and justification of that divine wrath justice which seems to be gone out against us before the Almighty we desire to be either silent or confitent or suppliant as becomes those that are justly ashamed and truly penitent T is fit we hide and abhor our selves in dust and ashes before his presence who onely can pity and repair us by turning the causeless curses of men into a blessing making the sacrilegious impoverishings and indignities the ingratefull abasings and insoleâ—â—ies of some unreasonable and violent men an occasion of his gracious favour and all good mens compassions toward the afflicted Clergie and Church of England for where Church-men are miserable the Church cannot be happy where the Clergie are distressed the Laity cannot be prosperous We are so far willing to gratifie the malice of our bitter adversaries to whom no musick is so pleasing as any evil report brought upon the Ministers of England as with S. Austin to make our confession to God that we may be more vile in our own eyes before the Lord and cover our selves with that cloke of confusion which God hath suffered some men to cast upon us after they have stripped us of those ancient Honours and Ornaments with which we were by the piety gratitude and munificence of former times happily invested not more to our own than the whole nations great renown in all the world Without all peradventure the most holy and all-seeing God who walketh in the midst of the golden Candlesticks whose pure eyes are most intent upon the Ministers of his Church hath found out the iniquity of his servants the Bishops and other Ministers of the Church of England not onely in our persons but in our professions not onely in our morals but in our ministrations Who being solemnly consecrated and duly set apart to the service of God his Church in the name place power and authority of Jesus Christ and drawing neer to his speciall presence with Moses in the Mount with Aaron in the Holy of Holies in those glorious manifestations of God in Christ to his Church by publick ordinances and spirituall influences yet have not so sanctified the name of the Lord our God by our hearts and lives by our doctrine and duties as we ought to have done Many of us doing the work of God which is a great work of eternal concernment to our own and other mens souls either so unpreparedly negligently and irreverently or so partially popularly and passionatly or so formally pompously and superciliously that our very officiatings have been offences to God and man our oblations vain our prayers the sacrifices of fooles our pains in preaching how much more our idleness hath been no better than the foolishnesse of preaching in good earnest Some of us have been prone to place the highest pitch of our Ministeriall care exactness and duty in ceremonious conformities which alone are meer chaffe miserable empty formalities neglecting the substance life and soul of Christian Religion which consists in righteousness and true holiness while we too much intended the meer shadow shell and out-side of it others have so eagerly doted upon their sticklings against what was duly and decently established in this Church as to the outward circumstances and ceremonies the decent manner and form of sociall Religion that they feared not as far as in them lay to make havock of the power of Religion together with the peace unity order and very being of this famous Church Many of us so over-preached our peoples capacities that the generality of our auditors after many years preaching were very little edified nothing amended being kept at too high a rack both of affected Oratory and abstruse Divinity for want of plain catechising and charitable condescending to them others in a supine and slovenly negligence have sunk so much below the just gravity solidity and majesty of true preaching that the meanest sort of illiterate people have undertook to vie with them and to match them infinite swarms of mechanick rivals rose up into desks and pulpits when once they saw such pitiful preaching
piety than in the barren heights of uselesse sublimities Then was it that the sweet and fruitfull dews of heaven crowned those true Ministers labours with all spiritual proficiencies and heavenly blessings then was the Church of England and thousands of pious souls in it like Gideons fleece full of holy distillations or like the garden of Eden liberally watered with the rivers of God I mean the faithful endeavours of able honest and Orthodox Ministers both Bishops and Presbyters duly ordained and divinely authorized for that service then was the time common people had less of curiosity and liberty but more of piety and charity they were more kept to their bounds and inclosures but enjoyed far better pastures than they now find in the ramblings and extravagances of those commons where they have chosen to enjoy their Pastors and Preachers after their own heart Nor is this insolency of people any wonder though it be a great grief to sober Christians when they consider how far this gangrene of abused liberty hath spread among men and women too the meanest and most mechanick He or She as Tertullian observes of some bolder Hereticks and Schismaticks in his dayes dare contrary to all Primitive pattern and Scriptural precept to preach to baptize to consecrate to censure to excommunicate scorning and opposing all things that are not branded with their schismaticall marks their novell badges and factious discriminations Wherewith so soon as any silly men or women come once to be dubbed and signalized their first vow and adventure is against the whole frame and constitution of the Church of England but specially against the orderly ancient and Catholick Ministry of it which is the rind or bark of Religion by which the sap life and nourishment of it is preserved and conveyed from the root Christ Jesus to the severall branches of his Church in every place This this must by all means be peeled round stripped off and cast away under pretence of Christian liberty and a better because freer course of deriving Chirstian Religion to peoples eares and hearts by another Ministry than that Ancient Apostolick Catholick and Primitive way of an orderly ordained Ministry which consisted of Bishops Presbyters Deacons be brought in Against the constitution succession of all these as corrupt adulterous Popish Babylonish spurious and superstitious in England whole troops of plebeian spirits have been and still are engaged whose fierce onsets and encounters were at first begun and are still carried on with as great resolution and errour as his that assaulted a Windmill instead of a Giant The great alarm given by their chief leaders is First to rail bitterly against the whole Clergie and all sacred orders used in the Church of England thence they proceed to wipe off their Baptisme as vain and invalid to vomit up their Lords Supper as nauseous and superstitious to read their Creeds backward to an unbelief of all things have been preached next they cancell the Decalogue as a Judaick phylactery a legall prescription lastly they learn to account and call the Lords Prayer a kind of spell and conjuration being perfect enemies to any thing that looks like a Liturgy or set form of prayer and devotion After this with stiff necks and haughty looks they scornfully defie all ancient ordination all Catholick succession all Apostolick commission derived to any Bishops and Presbyters as Ministers of Christ altering and annulling as much as in them lies all the order descent and power of the Evangelicall Ministry both in this and all other Christian Churches since the Apostles dayes the right of resumption and redemption of which they challenge to themselves according as their severall fancies list to make themselves or others Ministers or to have none at all which is the highest pitch of their Christian liberty counting all Ministers to be but their curbs and manacles Having thus commenced Masters of mis-rule their next work is to tuâ—n the garden of God any setled Church as this of Engl. was into ruinous heaps or a very dunghil to expel the Priests of the Lord out of his Temple to make Churches of Stables and Stables of Churches to bring in the lips of bleating calves there where the calves of learned devout and eloquent lips were wont to be offered It is not liberty enough for them to separate from the Church of England and apostatize from those Ministers that baptized them unless they utterly destroy them both setting up instead of one National and renowned one uniform and flourishing Church in which were truth and order unity and beauty strength and safety all Christian gifts and graces every good word and work to admiration innumerable little swarms in severall Conventicles with Ministers strangely multiform mutable and mis-shapen in which novell confederacies both Preachers and people rather catch and hang together by chance like burres in confused knots than grow like Olive-branches or the kernels of Pomgranates with order and comeliness from the same root Christ Jesus after the methods of those ancient Churches which were the prime and exemplary branches whereto after-successions should conform themselves As these factious people are so must their new Priests and Ministers be Grave and godly Bishops with their learned Presbyters must be set aside as broken vessels that they may set up by popular and plebeian suffrages some miserable mechanicks some antick engines some pittifull praters and parasites of the vulgar who have had no higher breeding or degree in Church or State than that of poore tradesmen for the better bred and more ingenuous sort of men abhor such impudence and usurpation their shop hath been their school their hammers or shuttles or needles have been their books At last coachmen footmen ostlers and grooms despair not to become Preachers by a rare and sudden metamorphosis coming from the office of rubbing horses heeles to take care of mens souls as some Farriers in time turn Physicians It matters not how sordid how silly how slovenly how mercenary how illiterate they are provided they have cunning enough to pretend a call impudence enough to display their ignorance and hypocrisie enough by much talk of Gods grace in them to supply the reall wants of all competent ability as well as authority to be Ministers of the Gospel Yet these these O my noble Countrey-men are in many places rude intruders insolent usurpers doughty undertakers to discharge the duty of Evangelicall Ministers in any one of these you must seek and may find as they pretend a Bishop a Presbyter and a Deacon all Evangelicall power Ecclesiasticall offices and Ministeriall authority these are the new-invented Machines or Engines which the Church of England and all others since the Apostles times were not so happy as to know or use which must set up the decayed Kingdome of Jesus Christ these must propagate the glorious Gospel these must exalt Christ crucified these must consecrate for you holy Elements these must administer to you the blessed Sacraments
sacred office charge and ministration how infinitely ought you to be ashamed and regretted to see them usurped many times by the dogs of your flocks by your hinds and foot-men your grooms and serving-men by threshers weavers and coblers by taylors tinkers and tapsters any mean and mechanick people whose parts and spirits are onely fit for those trades to which their breeding and necessities have confined them Not that I despise or reproch these honest though mean employments but I highly blame their insolence and other mens patience to see these usurp upon the dignity of the Ministry Certainly such proud poor wretches may to some men possibly seem fittest Ministers in a disordered State and decaying Church as factors for Satan and Antichrist setters for Ignorance and Superstition turning Faith into Faction but they will never prove after that fashion of preparing and admitting either able or faithfull or fruitfull Ministers of Christ or his Church seeming themselves and making others despisers of Christ with the blasphemous Jews while they so look upon him and treat him as under the notion of the Carpenters son as their equall or inferiour in some handicraft forgetting his divine glory and majesty as the onely-begotten son of God to whom all power is given in heaven and earth who hath executed this power most visibly in sending forth his Ministers to teach and baptize all nations out of which to gather and govern his Church in his name They rudely slight Christs ministerial authority in such as are truly excellent and duly ordained Ministers that they may proudly challenge it to themselves without any reason or Scripture law or order command or example either from Christ or his Church These men who say they are Apostles Prophets and Preachers and are not will be in the end and already are found liars against God and their own souls deceitfull workers false Apostles Mock-ministers Pseudo-pastors disorderly walkers authors of infinite scandall and confusion of scorn and contempt to Christian and Reformed Religion both here and elsewhere many of them serving their bellies and gratifying their carnall lusts and momentary wants much more than designing to advance the glory of God the Kingdome of Christ or the eternall good of mens souls which are not to be carried on save in Gods way that is by fit abilities and with due authority both are required as necessary for a true Minister the first though reall is not sufficient without the second For as the meer outward materiall action cannot be a divine sacramentall or ministerial transaction more than every killing of an Ox was a sacrificing so nor are meer naturall or personall abilities sufficient to acquire any office or authority much less this of the Ministry which is divine or none any more than every able Butcher was presently enabled to be a Priest Any mans ability fully to understand or handsomely to relate the mind of his Prince makes him not presently an Embassador or Minister of State unless there be a commission or letters of credence to authorize the person The blessed Apostle S. Paul who was extraordinarily converted called and sent of God as a Christian a Minister or Apostle yet we see did not take upon him the exercise or office till first Ananias had by Gods speciall command laid his hands on him and he became endowed with the ministerial gift or power of the holy Ghost which were afterward in like sort solemnly confirmed and increased by the express command of God when Paul and Barnabas were separated and sent upon special service with fasting prayer and laying on of the hands of some Prophets and Teachers in Antioch where the Apostle had formerly preached in the Church a whole year among much people This same Apostle oft blames and bids Christians beware of false Apostles not onely false in their doctrine but in their ordination and mission as the Prophets of the Lord did of old the false Prophets whom God had not sent yet they ran The Spirit of Christ commends the Angel of the Church of Ephesus where as Irenaeus and others tell us S. John lived long and left the most pregnant examples of Ecclesiasticall order Episcopall power and Ministeriall succession for trying those that said they were Apostles and were not for finding esteeming and declaring them as liars no way listning and adhering to or communicating with them as being Falsaries and Impostors enemies at once to the truth order and peace of Christs Church For 't is seldome that a bastardly generation of Preachers doth not bring forth some false and base doctrines for it is observable in this as in civil Histories that Bastards in nature and so in office are commonly most daring and adventurous spirits Certainly the late illegitimate Ministers or spurious Preachers of new and strange originals in England have in less than fifteen years brought more monsters of opinions and factions in Religion than have arose in so many hundred years before in any one Church I know some Christians are prone to gratifie their curiosity as those do who sometime go to see monsters in making some triall and essay of these pretended Preachers that once knowing their ignorance and insolence they may upon juster grounds ever after abhor them If this be tolerable for some persons of able and sober judgements yet it is no better than a snare and dangerous temptation for others that are weak and unstable nor may the venture be oft made by the more steddy Christians lest they seem thereby to countenance and encourage so great a confusion innovation usurpation and scandal in the Church of Christ besides the abetting of that high profanation of holy duties and mysteries which ought not to be transacted but in the name power and authority of our God and Saviour Certainly good Christians ought not at any hand to communicate with such usurping intruders in any sacramentall action nor ought they to own any thing more of a Minister of Jesus Christ in them than they would of a King or Magistrate in a Stage-player Doubtless as no good Christian so least of all those that profess to be Ministers of Christ ought to live as sons of Belial disorderly refractory unruly after the arbitrary rude and presumptuous dictates of their own wills The spirit of true Ministers and Prophets will be subject as it ought to that rule order and custome which in all ages hath been the canon measure and commission of all Evangelical Ministers and Pastors of Christs Church As naturall and morall endowments are no plea to invest any man into any office military or civil much less into any power and authority Ecclesiastical The pretenses of new and extraordinary calls of missions immediate from God are not in any reason expectable nor in Christian Religion credible where the ordinary power and commission was continued and might duly be had as it was and yet is in the Church of England
which I am sure give all the seeing world in this point so clear so perfect so full a light and so uniform a testimony that no learned impartiall and conscientious Christian can desire more nor can they but acquiesce in these unless they dare to doubt and deny the veracity and fidelity of all authors that have given us account of any Ecclesiasticall Catholick affairs and customes since the Apostles times in all which no one point or practise hath less doubt or dispute less variation or diversity than this of Ecclesiasticall order both as to the Ministry and government of the Church What the ignorant vulgar who are the bran and courser sort of people may endlesly fancy and affect or what others of better parts but as base passions may cunningly pretend I know not the better to bring in their new modelings of Ministers and Churches but I am sure it will very ill become you O noble Gentlemen who are the best and finest flower the beauty and honour the strength and stability of this English Nation who are the choice and chiefest sons of the Church of England it ill becomes you to suspect all those burning and shining lights both Bishops and Presbyters Fathers and Historians single and sociall in their Closets and in their Councils even in the first innocent ages when the Church was most pure and persecuted as if they had all been either grosly ignorant of or supinely negligent in following the mind of Christ and methods of the blessed Apostles as to these great affairs of the Church which were openly uniformly universally both preached and practised by the Apostles also delivered to and received by their successors as in other things so most indisputably in this which so much concerned not onely the right ordering and well-being and polity of the estate of the Church militant but it s very being and Essence in Doctrine Ministry Duties Discipline and Government Can it I beseech you without great uncharitableness and pervicacy unworthy of any ingenuous soul be imagined that from the beginning during the life of some Apostles and their scholars the whole Church and the most eminent persons in it Ministers Martyrs and Confessors did all conspire to delude themselves and to deceive all posterity in so clear great and sacred concernments as those of the Churches Ministry and Polity were ever esteemed The incomparable and unanswerable Mr. Rich Hooker who is not to be read without admiration nor named without veneration long ago urged this Absurdity against the then more modest Sticklers for their Disciplinarian Innovations in the Ministry and Polity of the Church of England Sure saith he it were a very strange thing that such a Discipline meaning the Presbyterian as ye speak of should be taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God and no Church hath ever found it out nor received it till this present time or contrariwise that the Government of the Church against which you bend your selves should be observed every where through all generations and ages of the Christian world and no Church ever perceive it to be against the word of God We require you to find out but one Church upon the face of the earth that hath been ordered by your Discipline or that hath not been ordered by ours that is Episcopall government for ordination and jurisdiction since the times that the blessed Apostles were conversant upon earth This unanswered challenge did that excellent person heretofore make in order to prevent if possible these innovations and mischiefs which are now grassant in England to the hazard of quite overthrowing all that ancient Order Ministry succession and Government which had been conserved in this Church conform to all parts of the Catholick Church If your other employments and studies have hindred you from being so well acquainted with the authentick works and authoritative testimonies of the ancientest writers of Church-affairs as those grand Authors deserve and your ingenuity cannot but desire yet far be it from your prudence piety and charity to derogate from the honour and credit of your own Countrey-men who have in the Histories of England both Civil and Ecclesiasticall to which you cannot well be strangers sufficiently shewed from the originall of these British Churches what Ministry and Orders they had If you are yet strangers to those eldest ages times and authors of your own and so cannot maturely ground your judgements upon their testimony yet what think you of the learning piety honesty and courage of those later and reall and renowned Reformers of this Church whether Clergie or Lay-men who lived in your fathers memories whose blood and ashes as Martyrs and Confessors against Papall innovations and corruptions is still warm and precious These did not lay new foundations of a Christian Church a true Religion or an authentick Ministry here in England but they onely repaired the decayes of the old and lightned them of those either erroneous or dangerous superstructures with which long ignorance and superstition had over-laded them and not so much built upon them as almost quite buried them These Heroes these worthy men I say who were worthy of the name of Christians English-men and Reformers did not ever design or go about to broach new fountains nor to cut new channels nor to lay new pipes by which to convey the Ecclesiasticall order and Ministeriall authority here in England but they cleansed the foulness they removed the obstructions they sodered the ruptures of the former Catholick way which was very good as well as very old yet not the antiquity but the veracity and divinity of it attested both by Scriptures and by the Catholick usage of all Churches made those blessed Reformers now an hundred years ago cheerfully subscribe to that polity Ministry and authority Ecclesiasticall which they mended but changed not these they recommended to all estates in this nation by whose Parlamentary votes and sanction they were established as the best means to preserve this Church both Christian and Reformed After these famous Fathers of England's happy Reformation whose judgement is manifest in the point of ministeriall power and holy order to be carried on by Bishops and Presbyters can you suspect that their later successors in office and judgement I mean all those learned grave and godly Ministers of England whom your eyes have seen and your ears have heard heretofore with great respect love and admiration dispensing the word of God and holy mysteries to you who till the divisions and deformities of these last and worst dayes have baptized instructed and guided both you and your hopefull posterity in the way to heaven and happiness in truth and peace in faith and repentance in humility and holiness in all graces vertues and good works powerfully set forth to you by their excellent Sermons and fervent Prayers by the blessed Sacraments and worthy Examples they have communicated to you can you I say suspect that all these together with the
pride covetousness and other discontented lusts and partly by Jesuitick arts and Papall policies whose joynt aims are at this day to extirpate the whole race root and branch of the Reformed Catholick Christian Church and Ministry in England They conspire nothing more than that they may serve both the Bishops and Presbyters of England as Elias and Jehu did Baals Priests for this is the sense some men have of us and this is the sentence they have passed and seek to execute upon us as upon so many Cretians not Christians as if we were onely liars evil beasts and slow-bellies either imperious masters or unprofitable servants to the Church that so these new Masters may on all sides freely enjoy those superstitious and fanatick liberties which they have designed for their divided parties who despaired to prevail in England untill they had brought the English Clergie to undergo all manner of indignities and injuries CHAP. XII ALl which Tragedies that the people of England might behold and bear with the greater patience and stupidity they must by popular orators be perswaded 1. That all Bishops or presidentiall Fathers and Over-seers among the Clergie such as the Apostles and their immediate Successors first were are Antichristian truly so are Fathers in families Magistrates in cities and Chieftains in armies 2. That the ordaining of Presbyters by Bishops is meerly Popish so is the celebrating of Baptisme or the Lords Supper or the Lords day 3. That Christs Ministry appropriated to one order of men is a monopoly or a taking too much upon mens selves when others of the congregation may be as holy and able so is all order office and authority civil and military a meer monopoly when others may be as able and wise as the best Magistrates and Commanders 4. That all humane Learning is not onely superfluous but pernicious in the Ministers of the Gospel so is all skill industry and ability in all other workmen 5. That Ministers maintenance by Tithes Glebe-lands and other oblations is Jewish so is all justice and gratitude in paying labourers their wages 6. That the distinction of Clergie and Laity is arrogant and supercilious so are the titles of Master and Scholar Teacher and Disciple Priest and People Minister and ministred 7. That it was proud and insolent for any Clergie-men to be invested with honour to be stiled and respected as Lords Truly if it be no dishonour to any temporall Lord to become a Minister or Christs glorious Gospel nor doth he thereby lose his civil Lordship and dignity no more is it misbecoming learned grave and venerable Ministers of the Gospel the chief Fathers and governours of the Church to be adorned with honours and to enjoy as the favours of Christian Princes and States both the Titles and Revenues of their temporall Baronies and Lordships which they might for ought I could ever see as well deserve and use as any other Lords who had their Lordships by birth by purchase or by favour nor did Honour less become Ecclesiastick Rulers than it doth those military Commanders who I see can endure themselves to be called treated as Lords I confess under favour I do not understand how Church-government should be less capable of degrees and distinction in Governours than those which are civil or military since order and subordination must be in them all nor do I more understand how such chief Governours of the Church-militant as Bishops were and ought to be might not as well both merit and manage such honours and estates as any men who by far less abilities or pains do get to be Major-generals or Colonels and chief Commanders in an Army over poor Souldiers Sure the saving of souls is every way as hard and honourable a work as the killing of mens bodies which is the worst of a souldiers work or as the saving of mens temporall lives and estates which is the best of that employment nor is it less of true valour vigilance and resolution in learned and good Scholars to fight with and overcome the ignorance errours and barbarity of mankind than it is fortitude in good souldiers to suppress the rapines and injustice of mens extravagant actions But these and such like are the envious cobwebs the thin and ridiculous sophistries formerly used by some men of evil eyes and worse hearts out of principles full of ignorance or envy or covetousness or licentiousness or Atheism whereby to perswade silly people to follow these novell easie and more thrifty methods of saving souls which some swelling Libertines propound who have the confidence earnestly to invite this noble Nation to commit the whole managery of Christian Religion and of their souls eternall salvation to such new cheap and bold undertakers who adventure to minister in Christs name without any such character commission or conscience of divine authority which as Irenaeus and all the Ancients tell us were ever in a solemn visible and orderly manner derived by the hands of Bishops to the Presbyters or lawful Ministers of the Church as from Christ and the Apostles in an undoubted and uninterrupted succession of which Tertullian gives so excellent an account in his Book of prescription against Hereticks Their ostentations of naturall liberty of civil indulgence of rationall abilities of speciall gifts and undiscernable graces or which is most incredible of extraordinary calls from God All or any of these if they were really true yet will not be allowed as a justifiable ground for any mans usurpation or intrusion into any office military or civil without a visible commission derived from the supreme power in both much less are they sufficient pleas for any man to officiate in the Ministry Ecclesiasticall whose Supreme Authority is confessedly in Christ and the derivation or deduction of it in all ages is so visible constant and uniform that no man honestly learned can be ignorant where it resided or how it was derived Certainly it never was dispensed by the hands or power of Emperours Kings Protectors Princes or any civil Magistrates whose duty I conceive if they will act as Christians is not to alter or innovate this sacred authority and method used by Christ the Apostles and the Catholick Church but to preserve it as sacred and inviolable much less was it left to the spontaneous confidence the passionate suffrages and confused petulancies of common people who are the great and infallible prostrators of all Religion vertue honour order peace civility and humanity if left to themselves but it was divinely setled by Christ in the Apostles and by the Apostles in their successors the ordained Bishops and Presbyters of the Catholick Church in its severall branches and combinations who ever have been and ought to be under Christ the great Conservators the onely complete and regular Distributers of this holy ministeriall power as they have been to this day in this and all other orderly Churches of Christ without any controversie or contradiction without dispute or doubt
till of later years CHAP. XIII THe late licentious Invasions made upon this Church of England the Reformed Religion the Ministerial Order Office and Succession established in it through all ages since the Nation was Christian were yet something tolerable justifiable if those Ministers who profess to be of the ordination and communion of the Ch. of Engl. either wanted ability or industry skill or will to serve God and to deserve well of you O worthy Gentlemen and all their Countrey-men or if you and the rest of the nation were already better provided in order to your souls good by any new generation of Preachers better learned more rarely gifted more spiritually extracted or more regularly consecrated and duly ordained if these new-minted Ministers these self-intruding Teachers did afford you weightier Sermons warmer Prayers more solemn Sacraments more sacred Examples more usefull writings if they brought you with all this bustling and parado a better God a better Saviour a better Gospel better Scriptures or a better Spirit than those were which the excellent Bishops and other Ministers of the Church of England set before you and this nation many wayes for many years with mighty successes while they were countenanced encouraged and ingenuously treated if the advantages of Religion as Christian and Reformed or of your and your posterities souls were either reall or probable by these new intruders we might well bear with your and the common peoples pious inconstancy when it should tend to the improvement and happinesse of your souls But these great and good interests of your souls for my part as I have not yet found any where in any new wayes so I do not think that any wise and honest-hearted Christian can by any one instance prove that those Libertines who are Levellers of the Ministeriall duty and dignity either have been hitherto able or will ever be probable to advance them in the least kind or degree beyond or equall or any way comparable to what the former Clergy of England have done and are still both able and willing to do As for these new Rabbies you shall have commonly their best at first by soft and as they think saintly insinuations they first creep into houses next into bosoms at last into pulpits The small and light bundle of the gifts they have picked up are soon set on fire by the least sparks of popular desire and applause then as squibs or granadoes they flie off amain with more extravagant motion panick terrour thick smoke foul stench and vapour than with any great or good execution done against Sin or Satan or the World After a few godly prefacings about the Spirit Grace Christ and the new Covenant together with some gallantries or light skirmishings with some starveling errors and useless sins you shall know the utmost of their sufficiencies which is with egregious impudence to scorn what they cannot attain that is all good learning and the manners of their betters When they have loudly ratled at more than confuted any thing which they list to call an Error when they have huddled together wrested distorted a great many places of Scripture without any regard to the Grammaticall and genuine sense of the words or to the propriety of phrases or to the main scope of the place or to the clear Analogie of faith after all these flourishings you shall see the bottom and dregs of their hearts poured forth in vile and uncomely railings scurrilous and odious rantings against all Bishops and Ministers against the whole Hierarchie Ministry and Church of England At last with equall vociferation and emptinesse without any principles of reason or grounds of Religion without proof or plausibility with more lungs than brains they cry up their own new lights their rare discoveries their excellent Reformations and pure Ordinances of Jesus Christ all which are as much beyond all former dispensations and ministrations in this or any Church as the deceits of Mountebanks excell all that Fernelius Galen or Hippocrates could ever use or invent especially when these are in a new Paracelsian way applied and dispensed not by the old Empiricks the Papall and Episcopall Clergy but by new-called and ordained Preachers by specially-inspired Prophets by precious men extraordinarily qualified and sent either by the inward and unknown impulses of Gods Spirit or by the call and election of some godly select people who casting off all ancient Christian Communion with this Nationall or the Catholick Church do first body themselves to a new way of Church-fellowship then they assume to themselves some Brother and Member as they can agree to be their spirituall Pastor him they invest by their bare suffrages with all ministerial power and authority as from Jesus Christ himself Such a kind of confused noise doe these land-floods these popular torrents these turbulent Teachers make where once they have found a vent and course for their liberty to break through all bounds of law and order being indeed very muddy shallow fatuous and feeble in all things divine and humane for the most part onely they have a strong high conceit of themselves and a perfect Antipathy against those Ministers in the Church of England to whom they owe all they have of Knowledge and Religion which is worth owning Do but look near to their new doctrines and opinions and you will easily see how loose how false how futile how fanatick they are look to their speech and writing how rude how improper how incoherent how insignificant how full of barbarismes soloecismes and absurdities mark their whole form of preaching how raw how rambling how immethodicall how incongruous how obscure impertinent consider their Prayers how are they farced with odde expressions with forced affected confused dull dead and insipid repetitions weigh their lives and actions how pragmatick licentious injurious sacrilegious spitefull uncharitable pernicious scandalous are they to many sober and quiet men and specially to such as they have most cause to suspect to be much their betters and their most accurate censurers Last of all look to all their novell principles and you shall see how various versatile ambiguous temporizing and dangerous they are while much of their Divinity depends upon Diurnalls their Religion is most-what calculated by the Almanack or Ephemeris of their hopes and feares their interests and lusts their prevalences and advantages measured not by Scriptures but by Providences These distempers evidently appearing as they daily do in your new Teachers must not you and all sober Christians confess that these Comets these blazing and wandring stars mostly made up of gross vulgar and earthy exhalations full of portentous malignity to this Reformed Church are infinitely short of that benign light and that divine sweet and heavenly influence which heretofore shined from the fixed starrs of this Church which were in the right hand of Christ the godly Bishops and other Ministers to the great honour and unspeakable happiness of this
who are set up by them as the great rivals and Antagonists of the Ancient Catholick and Apostolick Ministers of Christ and Vastators of the whole frame of the Church of England Can you O worthy Gentlemen or any sober Christians who are not strangers to the prayings preachings and writings heretofore brought forth by the worthy Ministers Bishops and Presbyters of the Church of England can you think that either the godly Ministers or the Christian people in England were ignorant of or strangers to those spirituall influences those inward powers and secret experiences of Religion till these new Pedlers of piety began to open their packs or till these rare Rabbies turned their shops into Synagogues and their Conventicles into the onely true spiritualized Churches of Christ Did we never know before these new Illuminates and Spiritaties rose up what belonged to the humble seeking the happy finding and holy acquaintance with God by the union and communion of Gods Spirit working and witnessing with ours Had we neither the root nor the fruit of true Religion till these new planters sprung up Were we utterly strangers to Faith Repentance Charity and good works or to that joy love peace blessed hopes sweet satisfactions evident sealings sincere sanctifyings and undoubted assurings of the holy Ghost which are wrought by and conform to the Word of God first casting the Christian into that holy mould and then filling him with such comforts as are unspeakable and glorious whose nature is rather to be humbly enjoyed modestly owned and tenderly treated in a gracious soul than vulgarly discovered and vapouringly ostentated in a rude and vain-glorious fashion The brightest lustre of Gods Jewels is rarely shewn and hardly seen being most glorious within the richest wares are least set upon the stalls or shop-boords These Arcana magnalia sublimia Dei secrets of the Lord these whisperings of the blessed Spirit these oscula Christi kisses of Christ as S. Bernard calls them these aromata gratiae perfumes of his soft breath these glowings of grace in the heart these holy fervours and heavenly raptures of humble devout meditative fervent souls who the more they believe the more they love and the more they love the better they live more humanely and more divinely more justly more charitably and more orderly these real pregustations of glory and anticipations of heaven blessed be God were long ago known and experimentally set forth in the Prayers Sermons writings and actions of thousands of good Christians both Ministers and others long before these novell and exotick masters began to lisp out the Soboloths of fine phrases before they dared to assault and not onely cry but beat down this and all National Churches all Clergie of the ancient and right order all Universities and Nurseries of good learning together all Tithes all Liturgies all studied Sermons and premeditated prayers all wholsome forms and sober compendiums of religious duties and devotion as if all these were meerly carnall literall formall and superficiall naturall and papall meer husks and shells the rind and out-side of Religion Yea we had the comfort and God the glory of his grace in the Ch. of Eng. long before either Anabaptists or Familists or Seekers or Quakers or Ranters or any other spawn of Libertinism and Independency of Schism and Separation had amused the silly vulgar as S. Austin tells us by his own experience the subtill but sordid Manichees were wont to do with their new motions and strange expressions of being Godded with God Christed with Christ Spirited with the Spirit and the like affectations which are either barbarities and simplicities or blasphemies insolencies and impossibilities of speaking for no sober Christian ever did or in Religion ought or in true reasoning can understand that by a believers being partaker of a diviner nature through Christ he is presently Deified that is personally invested and plenarily possessed with all the infinite Attributes essence and glory of God which are incomprehensible by any finite understanding and personally incommunicable to any creature excepting Christ Jesus the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Immanuel God Incarnate who onely may without robbery be equall with God esteemed called and adored as God So that they can religiously mean no more by all this pomp of their words than what was long ago far better understood and expressed in more humble wholsom and intelligible words also better enjoyed by sober meek just and quiet-spirited Christians who well knew the glorious priviledges of every gracious and sincere Christian which is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to whom being related by faith they are in some sense united to God As the eye that sees the suns light and glory by its beams is in some sense truly enlightened by it united to it partaker of it not as to the vastnesse of its Globe essentiall glory which is far too big and too bright for the eyes small capacity but as to its pleasing influences in like manner the Christian that is illuminate and regenerate by Baptism instructed by the Word of God and sanctified by the Spirit of God is so drawn to Christ by the sweet attractions of the cords of his love and engraffed in him that he is not now his own but Christs not enslaved to his own sinfull and depraved nature but endued with the new powers and principles of an holy and heavenly nature which is truly and soberly that divine nature of which S. Peter speaks which while we behold by true faith and obedience we are changed into the same image from Glory to Glory CHAP. XVI IF then a wise and serious Christian who is not so idle or impudent as to play with Religion to trifle in holy things or to mock with God if such an one will lose so much time as to sift all that these new masters vent that these vapouring Prophets say or write as rare and precious spirituall and heavenly beyond all the fleshly forms learned ignorance and litterall darknesse under which they say we other Christians and Ministers in England have lain long and laboured all night in vain if he will do himself and them so much right as to winnow away the chaff of their affected language their bumbast tearms their insolent expressions drive them from the refuge and confidence they have in the sillinesse of their Auditors the easinesse of their Disciples and the sequaciousnesse of their followers who most admire when they least understand this done he shall find that either nothing remains that is wholsome and good in their swoln heaps of new notions and expressions which are many times the gildings of some of their pills the palliations of their poysonous opinions the daring-glasses or decoyes to bring men into the snares of their dangerous or damnable doctrines or at best all this froth and swelling this noise and ratling of their Novellizings is reducible into a few drops a
zelotries Anarchicall furies deformed reformings and desperate hypocrisies by which some men have like very foul chimneys not onely taken fire themselves according as their own lusts kindled them but they have sought to set this whole house of God the Reformed Church of England on fire under pretence forsooth of cleansing the soile and soot of it which appear now to have been more in their own hearts than any where else Have we not had enough of insolent railings bitter calumnies odious indignities and endless divisions brought upon this Reformed Church of England upon its Apostolick Ministry and all its Evangelical Ministrations as invalid superstitious Popish Antichristian abominable Besides the tragick depressions and undoings of many sober Ministers in their persons credits and estates who were justly esteemed by good Christians for very pious painfull and peaceable men yet have the storms of times not onely faln heavily upon them during the paroxysme of our civil wars but even since that tempest hath been allayed many poor Ministers beyond all other men have been afflicted with the strifes of tongues with schismatical despites with opinionative and disputative besides operative persecutions so far that many a grave and godly Minister hath not known whither to flie not so much for employment as for his safety or quiet that he might in any corner or cottage of the land be free from the molestations of those importune wasps those ill-natur'd Factionists who are his eternall Antagonists who first separating from him at length they preach or prate against him against his office orders and function counting themselves as a new swarm of Teachers sent of God to be to the former stock of Preachers like the hornets sent against the Canaanites that driving all the ancient orthodox duly ordained and well-learned Ministers out of the employment and communion of the Church this Canaan of England this good land this famous Church may wholly be in their possession Have we not had enough and too much of petulant practises scurrilous expressions and blasphemous insolencies cast even upon that God that Saviour that holy Spirit that blessed Trinity whom we adore and admire besides the neglects contempts and profanations cast upon our Sacraments our Sermons our Prayers I need not to adde and repeat the diminutions and indignities under which many worthy Ministers both Bishops and Presbyters do lie together with that whole Evangelical order and office which planted preserved and reformed this Church of England How many have questioned others derided a third sort divided from and not a few have utterly denied and as much as in them lies destroyed them all Hence many are grown to esteem all our Religion all our Reformation all Christian duties all Worship and Devotion no better than meer politick frauds specious fables popular fallacies cunning captivities witty mockeries and delusions of the people Yea that nothing might be wanting which malice can invent or act there are some so fierce and cunning enemies of the Church of England that to bring our Reformation into further defiance and disgrace among Papists Atheists and profane livers they dare to impute even their most putid errours their most extravagant fancies their most factious and flagitious practises either to reforming principles or to Gods Spirit and divine impulses O what astonishment what stupor what a lethargie what a dumbnesse what searednesse what deadnesse must needs possess the spirit of any Nation so Christian so Reformed so knowing and enlightened as the people of England sometime was to hear with patience yea with silence yea with connivence yea with smiles and seeming approbation such insolencies such extravagancies imputed to their Religion yea to their Reformation nay to the Spirit of their God and Saviour horrid and black enormities which deserve to be expiated with teares of blood as Gregory Nazianzen speaks of some abuses of Religion in his times O blessed God stir up such a pious shame sorrow and abhorrence in the generality of the people that these fedities may not become the sins of the nation Have we not had enough and too much of scepticall disputes and unedifying contests of unhealing questions and uncharitable quarrellings of bitter strifes and bloody contradictions of evil eyes and envious emulations prevailing like gangrenes or cancerous distempers even among those that profess to be godly and contend for the superiority of Sanctity By all which as S. Hilary passionately complains after the Arian fury had poysoned the Church in his times not onely unkind distances but mutuall defyances and damnings the Christian Reformed Religion sometime setled uniform and flourishing with verity charity decency divine authority and publick majesty in the Church of England is now made an annual menstruall and diurnall Faith or Religion as S. Hilary aptly deplores All things are either so snarled and intangled by infinite doubts and scruples or so wire-drawn by popular and petty disputes or so broken in sunder by factious divisions or so horrid by reciprocall Anathemaes like thunder-bolts cast on all sides in each others faces that the common sort of people know not what to make of Christian or Reformed Religion nor to what Ministers or Ministry to apply themselves with comfort and conscience The solid masse of pure gold which was the highest riches and honour of this nation the true and invaluable treasure of your souls while Religion as Christian and Reformed was carefully preserved as a precious and holy depositum this well-refined gold is now so dim and embased with dross or so malleated and beaten thin by perverse disputations that most men use Religion onely as leaf-gold to tip their tongues or gild over the superficies of their conversation withall or to set off as S. Austin observed of old in the crafty Manichees and others both Hereticks and Schismaticks of his time with the shew and lustre of Christian Religion all the new fancies projects policies and opinions of severall parties which are presently by their authors and abettors cryed up as the pure Ordinances of Jesus Christ the perfect mind of the Spirit the true meaning of the Scripture Gospel-truths hidden treasures Evangelick rarities yea that nothing might be thought to have been Christian Catholick clear and constant setled and indisputable as to Religion in this or any other Church of any other frame and fashion some men have sought not onely to shake and batter but to demolish and utterly overthrow the whole house of wisdome beating down all the grand and goodly pillars on the one side of faith repentance charity good works on the other side of Scriptures Ministry Worship and Sacramentall Mysteries as to the validity authority majesty sanctity solemnity and saving efficacy of them all Upon which the Catholick Church was every where anciently built even then when it was by the hands of the Apostles their successors the Primitive Bishops Presbyters Martyrs Confessors hewn out of the rock of heathenish barbarity idolatry polished by
who commonly were most imperious when the Church had most peace and civil prosperity but the Presbyterian thunder and Independent lightning urged most upon all Bishops and all Episcopall Ministers then when they were most scared pillaged and harrased by a civil war when most tossed by those sad storms and almost overwhelmed by the impressions of those sad dissentions Then then was it that Bishops and other Episcopall Ministers whose consciences were guided in their judgements by the wisdome of this Church and Nation together with all other Christian Churches in all ages having lost their clokes in the wars must be deprived of their coats also chiefly for their innocent opinion and honest adherency to Catholick Episcopacy then was it that where Episcopacy had at any time and that by special command from their Governours silenced or sequestred refractory or turbulent Ministers by tens or hundreds possibly Presbytery and Independency inflicted either those mulcts or terrours at least upon thousands of Ministers dissenting from them not as to the Religion established or Laws in force in England but meerly as to their private opinions and principles about Church-government Hence so many learned pious and painful Preachers since the civil digladiations ceased had been condemned to chains of everlasting darkness to remediless distresses both they and their families if there had not been some more generous mercy and connivence shewed than those mens spirits intended or can well bear Through which miseries and terrours many Ministers gray hairs have been brought down with sorrow to their graves After all which dreadful severities either intended or executed against the Episcopall Clergie yet as far as I can see the condition of any sort of Ministers now in England is not any whit better as to the generality nor comparable to what the Clergie enjoyed in former times who in my judgement might well have born the yoke of Episcopacy with as little disparagement and with as much ease and honour every way as they have for some years done the examination and inspection the rebukes and frowns the terrours and jurisdictions of Major Generals or Countrey Committees not onely in secular and military but even in religious respects among which few I believe were to be found equal or exceeding such Bishops and other grave Divines as England afforded both able Preachers and excellent Governours much more fitted in all respects except their swords to be the superintendents of Ministers being of the same education office and calling than most of those men can be who are generally so much Heteroclites different from learned men both in their breeding learning studies and course of living that even from hence they have sometimes secret Antipathies even against all Ministers or Clergy-men as persons of another genius of more refined minds and if men were impartially weighed of greater worth and merits As then I cannot find that Ministers of any new name form title and extractions whatsoever have much mended their condition by that great alteration they have made or sought in this Church and State so I am sure their mutual enmities and divisions do very much heighten their common afflictions and add exceedingly to that general darkness and diminution in all respects civil and sacred which is come or coming upon them as upon wicked men in the strict account of Gods justice or as weak men in the vulgar process of mans severity Indeed the worst of Ministers miseries they generally owe to themselves who in piety and prudence above all men should by united counsels and cares avoid them because it is sport to the most and worst of men to see those men together by the ears hating despising biting and devouring one another who are esteemed the severe censurers of other mens sins and follies sharp curbs to the childish petulant and licentious humours of people Ministers scufflings and contests with one another is beyond any Cock-fighting or Bear-baiting to the vulgar envy malice profanenesse and petulancy In the midst of all which sufferings first from Divine Justice which calls upon every one to examine the plague of his own heart next from humane ingratitude and insolency though every sober and prudent Minister cannot but see that precipice and gulph of irreligion irreverence and contempt to which the Reformed Religion and the whole office of the Ministry is now falling in England through the endless capricios and extravagances chiefly of some Ministers though most Ministers on all sides that have any learning worth or abilities for that office do generally agree in the same Scriptures and Sacraments in the same Faith and Salvation in the same God and Saviour in the same Graces and Vertues in the same Doctrine for morals and Mysteries in the same Precepts and Promises in the same holy duties and blessed hopes yet even these Ministers which is a thousand pities are sharply and for ought I can see unless God work miracles upon some of their spirits and tempers resolutely and eternally divided by those wedges of differences touching external Church-order and Discipline the manner of worship and power of managing of Church-government so that the way of peace few have known nor are they patient to learn contrary to their presumptions To recant their errours they are ashamed remit their rigour they must not lest they abate their parties and followers exchange their animosities as men for moderations becoming brethren and Christians they will not lest their credit decay and their factions abate lest those shews and shadows of popular empire vanish which they have seemed or fancied themselves to enjoy upon these accounts of rare inventions and new models of Reformation Ministry c. All which must by some men be kept up though all things else do fall to the ground though the Church of England lies languishing and sighing weeping and bleeding though the Reformed Religion is deformed decaying dying though both piety and sincerity be much dispirited though they cannot but see Ichabod wrote upon all their foreheads though all Ministerial order office employment and authority as to mens inward respect and consciences no less than in their outward reverence and obedience is infinitely slackned and in many places as well as in many hearts quite dissolved though the Catholick Character or Christs cognizance of Christians which is sincere charity be much defaced the Devils badges of factious confederacies be much worn though the purity and simplicity the warmth and worth the words and works of true Religion be much out of fashion giving way to fanatick follies and impudent vanities daily vented in every place though the beauty serenity of the true Christian Religion as of old and of the well-reformed Religion as it was of later years well established in Engl. be much hidden defaced disguised by many hypocritical masks new dresses though the palpable cunning of some men hath taught them to abuse this credulous age by shaving off the hair primitive ornament of this Church which was
least offence No touch-wood or dry gun-powder sooner kindles to flames of wrath indignation and disdain than some ordinary and mean men dare yea delight now to do against their Ministers I have seen both by their pasquils and practises some instances of their ingenuous manners of their great respects love and gratitude all which in good earnest I might I think without any vanity have challenged and expected from all men especially from my own Parishioners and auditors whom for many years I have endeavoured to entertain with so much industry civility candour charity and hospitality as is not inferiour to most if any Ministers in the countrey and in some things as to publick charges and burthens I believe I have exceeded any man of my estate and calling in England As for private charities to the poorer and richer to the well and the sick for food physick clothing c. it is fitter others assert me than I should vindicate my self against the petulant ingratitudes of some men among whom one had his tongue so much at liberty that uninjured unprovoked yea almost unknown to me yet one of my many hearers he doubted not openly to joyn me with my man and put upon us both the title of a couple of proud Jack anapeses when he was but after two or three years forbearance demanded to pay what was due professing he would not maintain any proud Parson Such spirits as these I must leave to be punished with their own manners I must pardon them as David did Shimei and pray for them as Samuel did for the ingrateful Israelites the rather because I thank God I meet with few of them in a very numerous people who for the greater and better part of them do indeed deserve all that care love labour kindness and constancy which I have shewed to them for 15 years together Onely by these experiments both my self and others may easily conjecture how the pulse of people beats in most if not all places toward their Ministers whatever they be if they be men of any worth spirits and parts above them 'T is sure enough that even the best of them in the best places they meet with are brought to a low ebb in comparison of what respect they formerly enjoyed in England Indeed some Ministers perhaps have some little sleights and popular artifices to win and please the vulgar whom rather than offend they will do or say or omit or silence any thing not grosly a sin and shame and rather than not please they will rub ever and anon some salt upon the Bishops the ancient Clergy upon the Liturgy and the former constitution of the Church of England for this gall is honey to the palates of some plebeian spirits And rather than displease some people there are Ministers that will never use the Creed Decalogue or Lords prayer in twice seven years Nay some people so rule the tender mouths and ride the galled backs of their Preachers with so sharp a snaffle and hard a saddle that they are afraid to offend these their great Censors rather than good Masters and Dames by putting the title of Saint to any holy Evangelist or Apostotick writer no not when they name their Text or cite any place out of their holy writings but those holy and reverend men are named with as little respect or honor to their memory and merit in the Church as if they spake to Matthew and James and Peter and John in their kitchin as their servants or fellowes and familiars Yea so spongily soft timorous and sequacious some Ministers are that what they own as their judgement among men of learning parts and courage this they smother with great wariness and cowardise among those plainer Hees and Shee s by whom they are over-awed as it were by a kind of necessary sportulary dependence CHAP. XXXI WHat the sufferings dejections dâ—basements indignities are which many Ministers have and do endure no man can imagine who doth not see and feel the weight of high shoes or the ponderousness of Weavers beams when they dare to tread on Ministers toes If as I have experimentally instanced it be thus done to a green tree to one that hath been not barren or unfruitfull among them whom God of his mercy and bounty hath planted in an upper ground and in many degrees of eminency above the vulgar how think you will rustick spirits lift up their flailes and sithes their hooks and bills their shuttles and shovels against those of my brethren whom they look upon as much their underlings and shrubs by reason of the tenuity of their condition though they be never so tall Cedars in learning piety and all true worth How do they threaten and scorn and molest them if they do not suffer them to enjoy those shaking and sacrilegious compositions which they will make or none at all for their Tithes else Articles and Committees sequestrations and suits are loudly threatned at best parties factions schisms and separations are presently hatched and nourished against him if the Minister do not sacrifice with great tameness a great part of his small means as a peace-offering or atonement to these turbulent spirits who if they may not be his Masters and Commanders resolve to be his oppressors and undoers if they can however they take the freedome to be his declared deserters and enemies discouraging and disparaging him what they can by separating from him and from the Congregation or Parish to some private and spitefull Conventicle Which reserve of malice never fails to follow there where any Minister hath the courage and confidence so far to own himself as not to submit either to the injuries or insolencies of some proud and pragmatick spirits If the conscience of his own integrity sets him immovably as a sluce against the tide of their folly and petulancy O how excessively will their spleen swell against the good man Rather than fail of having some revenge upon him they will take this most severe revenge against themselves as malice is oft its own mischief wholly to deprive themselves of all the benefit to be enjoyed by his learned judicious and devout Ministry which they labour to cry down as that by which they cannot profit that to refresh their souls they are forced to seek out some more warm complying creeping and inspired Preacher such an one though a meer rhapsodist and rambler must presently be cryed up as a rare soul-saving Preacher And indeed it may justly be feared that most Separates of later years have taken the rise and occasion of their schismes and separations from their lawfull Ministers and from the Church of Engl. not so much upon any scruple of conscience as upon pride covetousness ambition revenge and other inordinate lusts with which their Ministers would not comply from which centre of order union and consistence in the Church when countrey people are once removed no wonder if like their cart-wheels they run round in a vertigo of Religions
was heretofore rather invaded and challenged by them and connived or winked at by others than ever given or granted to them by any power of lawfull donation or concession yet this cannot hold good by any former subtilty on their part or simplicity on the part of this or any Nation and Church to the prejudice of that fundamental Liberty and Honour which are inseparable from the free people of this Nation and Church as men and as Christians untill the Roman power hath made them Vassals again as a conquered Nation and dependent Church upon that Scepter and Mitre too which thing as yet was never done since Rome was Christian and I hope never will be How much more worthy of the Learning Prudence Antiquity Gravity seeming Piety and affected Majesty of that Roman Church were it for them to glory in nothing so much as in the knowledge of Jesus Christ and him crucified in conforming all things of Religion to his Word and example which hath the truest Antiquity onely Infallibility and eminency upon it yea and where they see as by the light of the Sun at noon-day there hath been either aberration from or addition to the rule and pattern of Christ through the ignorance or errour or policy of former Ages and Persons there to return with such holy and handsome Reformations to a conformity with Christ and the ancient Roman purity as will make no lesse for the glory of the present Church of Rome than it was some eclipse and diminution to their predecessors to suffer so much tares to be scattered among Christ's good wheat which by Apostolick hands was first sown and watered to mighty increases for many hundreds of year The misery is when knowing and learned men grow wilfull and serve their own and other mens secular interests more than that of Christ and mens souls they chuse rather to over-load the foundation of Religion than to lighten it of needlesse superstructures How little could it hurt them honestly to restore the cup to the people as was sometimes done to the Bohemians at the importunity of the Nobility and Clergy and offered to Queen Elizabeth as Sir Roger Twisden proves provided she would acknowledge the Popes Supremacy where as Luther urged against Eccius if the Blood of Christ as is pretended by Papists be given Lay-men by concomitancy with the Bread or Body sure they are as capable of the Cup in Christs method as in mans novelty and variation What could it lessen the Romanists if Christians being on all sides taught the reall presence of Christs Body and Blood with the benefits of them in the Sacrament truly offered and reverently received by every worthy Communicant the modus of the Presence were left undefined uninforced upon any Christians belief after the primitive freedome which rather admired and adored that Mystery than disputed it or determined precisely of it So in other things as praying to Angels and Saints worshipping before Images praying and offering for the dead in order to mend their condition how would it no way abate Christian verity or comfort or charity to lay these Superstructures of straw and stubble aside when we all believe that we have by Faith in Christ accesse to the Throne of Grace besides men would more take care to live and die holily when they lesse expect other mens devotions to relieve them after death These and many other humane and impertinent because unprofitable additionals to Sacraments and holy Duties how easily might they be spared without any losse to Religion as with great advantages to Christian and Catholick Communion Nor should these just Reformations prove any diminution to the estates or honours of the Roman Church-men if I might have any vote or influence in so happy an agreement which last jealousies and feares in matter of Honour and Estate are I believe the great wall of partition and terrour that keeps off and scares the wary Romanists from any thought of Reformation since they see the Deformities Uncertainties Beggeries Ruines and Vastations which at last follow some mens Reformations of Religion of Churches and Church-men if they be suffered to run on as far as popular humours have a mind to gratifie their passions with the Spoyls and Scorns of Religion and Church-men This indeed is in my judgement the second great bar the unmovable obstruction and unexcusable scandall which lies in the way of any Reconciliation faire Accommodation and Christian Communion among these Western Churches which in all probability might by Gods blessing have much advanced ere this time not onely just Reformations of what was really amisse but happy Unions in stead of those Rents and Separations which are now every where predominant if those of the Roman party had seen those sober bounds that Christian moderation and those uniform fixations among Reformers in their Doctrine and Manners which did become so good a work as Reformation is Nor were the most sober learned grave and impartiall of the Romanists so much against such a discreet and setled Reformation as they saw flourished in England beyond any Church in all the world in which due regard was had to Primitive Order and Catholick Antiquity to the just rewards and dignities of Church-men together with the sanctity solemnity of true Religion until they discovered that immoderation violence unsatisfiedness tumultuariness giddiness and transport which long ago even here in Engl. murmured and mutinied against the Happinesse and Honour of this flourishing Church and State mens Prejudices Passions and private Interests tyrannizing over their Reason Religion Charity Obedience and Consciences still clamouring for further Reformation and threatening violence if they might not every one set up their fancies in Religion under the name of through-Reformation and bring in intolerable licentiousnesse under the colour of Christian Liberty talking so much of the pattern in the mount till they have laid this Church and its Religion in the valley of death and shadow of darknesse so eager not to have an hoof left in Egypt that they have engaged themselves and this whole Church into a red sea and brought it to an howling wildernesse nor is it easie to be seen without multiplied miracles how they will ever bring Christian Religion to any land of Canaan a state of rest or due Reformation either here in England or other-where Which we must ever despair hereafter to see make any progresse among the Romanists either as to private mens perswasions or whole Churches Reformations especially since the late terrours of some English Super-reformers have given so loud an alarm to all wise Princes and sober People especially to all prudent Church-men assuring them that there is neither bottome nor bounds of some mens preposterous reformations their spirits are the black Abyssus of immodesty injustice disloyalty cruelty sacriledge inhumanity barbarity their teeming fancies are everlastingly spawning with new inventions their restlesse humours are alwayes like a Sea ebbing and flowing casting up mire and dirt their
carried on by Jesuitick Policies Principles and Practises against all rules of Morality and Piety Honor and Humanity when these and some of the like rank leaven are recanted and removed from the Roman party On the other side when the Protestants and all that pretend to any name of Reformation shall be ashamed under any cloak of Piety or Christian Liberty either to rob from God and his Church from his service and speciall servants the Ministers of the Gospell or not to restore to them what is theirs by all Lawes Divine and Humane by right of Testamentary Donation by religious consecration by civill sanction and confirmation by long use and peaceable fruition no way forfeitable by Man or alienable from God whose the fee right and property is as a gratitude and homage payed to the Honour Worship and service of his great Name When Papists forbear their Superstitious Sacriledge and Protestants their Covetous Sacriledge when the first restore the Truth Purity and Integrity of Christian Religion which they have long detained in unrighteousnesse when the other restores that Order Honour and Estate which belongs to the support and government the decency and Majesty of Christ his Church and true Religion Then and not before may we expect some happy close among these so divided Western Churches whom first Papall policy and pride now Plebian loosenesse and insolency on all sides factious and schismaticall covetous and cruell practises have now no lesse divided than former different Doctrines opinions and ceremonies did the reconciliation of which many learned and peaceable men have seriously studied soberly proposed and charitably endeavoured The want almost despaire now without multiplied Miracles of which most desirable atonement the sad consequences which must needs attend the continuance and increase of desperate defiances implacable violences and cruell immoderations on all sides these these I say are calamities more deplorable than any that a Christians eyes can behold in all the world since they are at once the sin shame and misery of Christendom besides the scandall and scorn of all the world It being a farre sadder sight to see Christians thus rob and spoile thus worry and wound one another than to see them persecuted by Heathens and Infidels Jewes and Mahometans as it is farre more horrid to see men fighting with one another than beasts or brethren than strangers Without any doubt the mutuall animosities and barbarities exercised by Christians on all sides as they will in time open a doore for Turkish power to prevaile against them so meane while it makes Christians turn Turkes one against another Besides that these unchristian Practises on all sides do leave not onely the looser sort of men and women to an Atheisticall indifferency as to any Religion but the more sober and just Christians on every side Protestants and Papists are so scandalized and perplexed that they do not wel know what course of Religion to hold nor how to steere between the grosse errors on the one side and the base rapines on the other It being an hard choice for a serious and honest Christian whether he should keep Communion with superstitious and Idolatrous Papists or with schismaticall and sacrilegious Protestants the one refusing to be justly reformed the other deforming even Reformation it self Amidst which miserable distances and disadvantages of Christian Religion this sad event and burden of the Lord may be too easily foretold by one of the smallest Prophets That as Atheisme Profanenesse and Irreligion is like to get ground on all sides through the deformities immoderations varieties inconsistencies of Religion so to be sure the Papall party repute interest will daily prevaile every where as of later yeares it hath against those of the Protestant and Reformed profession since they see even the most famous setled and flourishing Church of England which was the Mirror of Reformation the noblest standard of Religion the ablest Antagonist against Romish pride and superstition in all the world this even this sought now to be so reduced so battered and divided so peeled and spoiled distressed deformed dissipated and despised and this even by those that pretend high to Reformation which must they say be attained and perfected by utter devesting even this so famous a Church and its deserving Clergy of their former Honour and Estate Order and Government Authority and Dignity Revenues and Reputation Uniformity and Unity all which heretofore they enjoyed by the mercy of God and good will of such Princes and Peers Parlaments and People as were the best Christians and best reformed who justly abhorred those sacrilegious and sharking arts which make either Religion or Reformation Preachers or true Professors either avaritious or beggerly and necessitous which their Wisdome and Piety knew would be the way to undermine and obstruct all true Religion and progresse of Reformation all experience teaching us that mankind is naturally prone rather to follow liberall Errours than niggardly Truths few men will adhere to hungry Holinesse and famishing Reformations such as some men have designed and vehemently agitated of late years in England little God knows to the credit or advance of any true Reformation It cannot then but be most evident to you O my noble Countreymen and to all wise men that as the sad condition of the Church of England at once pleaseth and hardneth the Romanists who are glad to see her thus wasted though they abhor the means and methods of her misery so the reall interest of the true Reformed Religion in England seems now much weaker than ever it was much more exposed to the objections and obloquies the Policies and Practices of pragmatick Jesuits and other spitefull Papists who with infinite Industry with all Arts and Alacrity daily undermine all the remaining parts yea and the very foundation as well as the reputation of all reformed Religion in the hearts of the people of England Doubtlesse if Popish Priests which are men of learning and sober lives had liberty in publick to promote their party they would draw most men and women after them in the Novelties Distractions Confusions and Deformities of Religions yea and of Reformations here in England in despite of all the orderly and Orthodox Clergy yet left in England so little would they consider any stop or impediment that either Presbytery or Independency Scotl. or New-Engl can give them who have all been made active and contributive to their own shame and to the generall ruine of this Church and consequently to the reall advantages of Popery which professeth great uniformity and constancy in their Religion Nor can the subtil factors for the Papacy but expect and hope by degrees in a few years to bring in again into England the justly feared and abhorred Inundations of the Sea of Rome in its superstitions and usurpations against both which our wise and pious progenitors both since and before the Reformation did in many Parlaments make severall cautions provisions Premunire's and sanctions to preserve
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
men have been ready to think it were a part of wisdome and State-policy to put in execution the counsel and resolution which once Queen Elizabeth took up in some time of Her Reigne even to forbid all preaching and praying as to ministers own inventions and composures because she found most Ministers passions so inseparable from their pulpits if they were left to themselves The want of Christian harmony and correspondency in publick and lawfull conventions with unanimity and fitting subordination among Ministers in England for these last twenty yeares good God! what havock and confusion what waste and desolation what scorn and contempt hath it brought upon the whole Ministry the Church and the State of Reformed Religion not more in the order and peace than in the power and purity of them while severall Ministers in their partiall conventicles and mutinous meetings go severall waies seek onely to draw Disciples after themselves not to lead them nearer to God and Christ and this Church but to their own private opinions parties and interests according as they can possesse people to comply with their new Ministeriall authority new Church-waies and new spirituall projects which being so horribly divided the good onely way of Christianity is almost destroyed for none that are novell can be so authentick and authoritative but they are by some suspected by others denyed and by most despised Hence mutuall loathings between people and people Pastors and Pastors hence that nauseous abhorrence in many of all Sermons and Religious service hence that Atrophy or indifferency of most people to the blessed Sacraments hence that rudenesse and irreverence shewed by many in all Religious duties hence that looseness in moralities that rottennesse in opinions that coldnesse in devotions that boldnesse in blasphemies that impudence in heresies that fondnesse after novelties that boasting in schismatick rendings hence so many new and strange secular policies are grown up as thistles in the good field of this Church instead of Primitive simplicities hence so many gay and cunning hypocrisies spring up like cockle and poppy among wheat instead of sober honesty and Christian charity which were heretofore so abounding in England A pious and prudent closing a sincere and thorough healing of those wounds which Ministers have given themselves this Church and the Reformed Religion by their easinesse credulity inconstancy popularity and impatience to bear any thing and also by their too much confidence in secular Counsels and armes of flesh while they served diverse lusts and passions of men and times more than the Lord this would advance the reall interest of all parties so farre as they are Christs and bring the whole frame of Religion to such an happy consistency as becomes the honour of such a Nation and such a Reformed Church as England sometime was In which paternal presidency fraternal assistance and filial submission might all meet together to satifie all calme and sober Spirits that are either of Episcopall Presbyterian or Independent perswasions which are I think the most considerable parties yet in England both as to their numbers abilities and worth I know it is very hard for weak and wilfull men to reclaime themselves or others from those transports which they have not chosen but ventured upon it is the work of wise men to recant their own errors and to recall people from those scatterings and extravagancies to which they have been once throughly scared and cunningly driven I have much admired while I have read the prudent Arts and pious guiles which King James a Master of great Learning Wit and Eloquence used whereby to calme the hot Spirits of Ministers in Scotland so as to reduce them to that excellent Church-frame and Government of which many popular factious and covetous Spirits were not more weary than unworthy by the overthrow of which I believe the jealous Presbyters in Scotland that Church and State have got so little that they may well put their gaines in their eyes and yet see both their folly and their misery rather weeping for their destroying than justly triumphing in their extirpation of so excellent a constitution of a Church as indeed they enjoyed with as much happinesse had they known it as they obtained it with much difficulty Great bodies we see cannot move regularly or handsomely unlesse they have such respective heads and presidents as may be principles of order and union of proportionate motions and usefull operations The want of which with the dissolving of all Ecclesiasticall subordinations into popular parities and reducing Nationall Convocations or Synods into partiall Assemblies and Associations all sorts of sober Ministers have found by wofull experience to be so pernicious both to their private and the publick interests of Religion that I believe most of them are now very solicitous how to heale themselves lest they further appeare Physitians of no value to the people who can never think themselves either well taught or governed by such Ministers as know not how to governe themselves and yet are impatient to be governed by any other but themselves who being either meane or weak or wilfull men taken singly will not be much abler or stronger or more valued in any arbitrary precarious or partiall waies of self-combinations or Associatings CHAP. VII I Am neither wholly ignorant of nor averse from those later projects and Essayes of Associations which some Ministers have presented to the world and as I heare practised among themselves in some Countries with what good successe or publick advantage I do not yet understand however this plot of Associating doth proclaime to all the world that the generality of Ministers are very sensible of that shame solitude feeblenesse contempt dissipation and diminution to which their late divisions have exposed them even among those people whom they most gratified with eating that forbidden fruit which by a surfeit of liberty hath brought so great sicknesse and mortality upon the life of Religion as Christian and Reformed also upon the honour of the Clergy and the happinesse of the people of England I see the sense of their own and the peoples nakednesse as to Ecclesiasticall union and Government hath made Ministers seek for some covering for themselves though it be but of fig-leaves in comparison of that goodly Garment which God had formerly clothed them withall after the manner of all ancient Churches who were governed adorned and defended by Episcopall Eminency Presidency and Authority strengthned with Presbyterian Counsells and further helped by the service and care of Deacons or Overseers for the poor to complete the well-Governing of the Church with Charity Wisdome and Orderly Authority So that neither the Wise Strong Great or Rich might be extravagant and unruly nor the Simpler Weaker Lesser and poorer sort of Christians be neglected and contemned A method of Church-Government certainly not more ancient and Catholick than complete in all the requisite proportions of Government which had in it not onely all principles of reason
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
Church in all Ages and places of which we have two expresse witnesses and great exemplifications in the commissions given by Saint Paul to Timothy and Titus both as to ordination and jurisdiction Such as hath been preserved in the Church through all times and places as a sacred depositum of Spirituall power enabling Bishops and Presbyters to act as Ministers of Christ in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit in those holy Offices and Mysteries which are instituted by them for the calling collecting constituting and governing of the Church in a regular society and visible polity which least of all affects or admits any novelty or variety in its holy orders or authority Which great Trust Power and Commission for duly ordaining and sending forth Ministers into the Church of Christ no man not wilfully blind but must confesse that it hath been in all times parts and states of the Church of Christ executed if not onely yet chiefly by the Ecclesiasticall presidents or Bishops in every grand distribution of the Churches polity So as it was never regularly warrantably or completely done by any Christian people or by any Presbyters or Preachers without the presence consent or permission of their respective Bishops in the severall limits or partitions Nor was this great sacred and solemn work of Ordination ever either usurped by Bishops as arrogant and imperious or executed by them as a thing arbitrary and precarious but it was alwaies owned esteemed and used by all true Christians both Ministers and People as an Authority Sacred and Divine fixed and exercised by way of spirituall Jurisdiction and power Ecclesiasticall specially inherent and eminently resident in Bishops as such that is so invested with the peculiar power of conferring holy orders to others even from the hands and times of the Blessed Apostles who had undoubtedly this power placed in them and as undoubtedly ordered such a transmission of it as to Timothy and Titus so to all those holy Bishops that were their Primitive Successors who did as they ought still continue that holy succession to all ages by laying on such Episcopall hands as were the unquestionable Conservators and chief distributers of that Ministeriall power ever esteemed Sacred Apostolick Catholick and Divine being from one fountain or source Jesus Christ and uniformly carried on by one orderly course without any perverting or interrupting from any good Christians either Presbyters or people Nor were they ever judged other than factious schismaticall irregular impudent and injurious who either usurped to themselves a power of Ordination or despised and neglected it in their lawfull and orthodox Bishops upon any pretence of parity or popularity as Learned Saravia proves unanswerably against Mr. Beza when to make good the new Presbyterian Consistory at Geneva he sought in this point to weaken the ancient Catholick and constant prerogative of Episcopall Ordination which never appeares either in Scripture to have been committed or in any Church-History to have been used by any Presbyters or People apart from much lesse in despite and affront of the respective Bishops which were over them This great power of Ordination which the Author to the Hebrewes signifies by the solemn ceremonie or laying on of hands is esteemed by that Apostolick writer as a maine principle or chief pillar of Christian Religion in respect of Ecclesiastick Order Polity Peace Authority and Comfort necessary for all Christians both as Ministers and as people in sociall and single capacities For there is ordinarily no true and orthodox believing without powerful and authoritative preaching and there can be no such preaching without a just mission or sending from those in whom that Sacred Commission hath ever been deposited exemplified and preserved which were the Bishops of the Church beyond all dispute who did not ordaine Presbyters in private and clandestine fashions but in a most publick and solemn manner after fasting preaching and praying so as might best satisfie the Presbyters assistant and the people present at that grand transaction both of them being highly concerned the first what Ministers or fellow labourers were joyned with them in the work of the Lord the other what Pastors and Teachers were set over them as from the Lord and not meerly from man in any natural morall or civill capacity whence the authority of the Christian Ministry cannot be since it is not of man or from man but from that Lord and God who is the great Teacher and Saviour of his Church who onely could give power as gifts meet for the Pastors Bishops and Teachers of it These serious weighty and undoubted perswasions touching one uniforme holy and divine ordination being fixed in the consciences of all wise and sober Christians it will follow without all peradventure that true Religion as Christian and Reformed will never be able to recover in this or any Christian Nation its pristine lustre and Primitive Majesty its ancient life and vigor its due credit and comfort much lesse its just Power and Authority over mens hearts and consciences untill this point of Ordination or solemn investiture of fit men into Ministeriall Office and Power be effectually vindicated and happily redeemed from those moderne intrusions usurpations variations and dissentions which are now so rife among Preachers themselves whence flow those licentious and insolent humors so predominant in common people who by dividing the other by usurping both by innovating in this point of Ordination have brought those infinite distractions contempts and indifferences upon Religion and its Ministry as Christian and Reformed which are at this day to be seen in England beyond any Nation that I know under Heaven It is most certain that the major part of mankind yea and of formall Christians too do not much care for the power of any Religion nor for the Authority of any Ministry no nor for any serious profession or form of Religion further than these may suite with their fancies lusts and interests If custome or education have dipped them in some tincture of Religion during their minority if the cords of counsell and example have bound them up to some form of godlinesse in their tender yeares and tamer tempers yet as they grow elder they are prone to grow bolder to sin and to affect such refractory liberties as may not onely dispute and quarrell some parts but despise and trample under feet all the frame of Religion that is not indulgent to their humors or compliant to their inordinate desires and designes Especially when once they find publick disorders distractions and disgraces cast upon that very Religion in which they were instituted when they see contumelies and affronts cast upon that whole Church in which they were baptized and all manner of contemptuous insolencies offered to those chief Church-men by whom they had received the derivations and dispensations of all Holy Orders Truths and Mysteries When men see new Religions new Churches new Ministers and new modes of Ordination set up to the reproch
Bishop in that Precinct or Oeconomy which either the Apostles had constituted or the Church had digested it self into as it increased Contrary to which meridian patterne and most manifest exemplar of Church-Government if as learned Zanchy acknowledgeth any one instance in any age or place of any Father Councill or Historian could be found of any one Church in its grand Polity or larger Communion I confesse I should then make some scruple whether Episcopall Government however it might seem the best were the onely one to be used in all times and places whether Church-Government were not a matter of Ecclesiastick prudence rather than of Apostolick prescription or Divine appointment To which opinion St Jerom that he might qualifie and moderate the incrochings of some Bishops upon Presbyters or gratifie perhaps his own passion and discontent sometimes seems to have inclined contrary to his cooler and more constant judgement set forth at other times in many passages of his potent and vehement writings as well as in his practise Which allay as to the Divine institution and absolute necessity of Episcopall Government as established by the Apostles seemes also to have swayed with Mr. Calvin and his followers when they found themselves put upon such a necessity as they thought might justifie their altering of it for a time though not their rejecting or reprobating of it for ever which he never did however his reputation interest and engagement carried him off from the more pompous and usuall way of Episcopacy as it was abused in the Church of Rome but he well knew ever judged and confessed that Primitive Episcopacy which consists in a presidentiall eminency of power and jurisdiction in one Minister over many appears to have been laid out by the wisdome and Spirit of Christ in the Apostolicall patterne and prescription as is evident in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus not as a matter of arbitrary freedome which might be lightly changed as people or Ministers or Magistrates listed for their conveniences but as an holy method and wise proportion of Government best in it self fittest for the Churches Order Peace and Communion sacred by the Characters of Gods direction Christs designation constitution of his Church in the Apostles execution and derivation of it also in the Churches Catholick imitation upon all which grounds it hath ever been esteemed by all godly and learned Christians not onely venerable but as to the main modell and fabrick of it inviolable so that they who first factiously presumptuously and rashly change it must needs highly sin against God his Church and their own soules however others that are forced to follow such changes may be excusable The superstructures of Episcopacy as to civill Honor and Estate may indeed be variable by publick consent with times and manners of men but the foundations I believe are not to be removed which are laid upon the naturall civill and religious grounds of diversity disparity and excellency of one man above many proportionable to which Polity Order and Authority are best setled and managed and not upon the loose or slippery bottomes of parity or popularity neither of which have either those principles proportions or perfections of Government which the Spirit and wisdome of God hath laid out by the Apostles practise in Primitive Episcopacy and transmitted by a constant succession for the Churches good which cannot be preserved or advanced where there wants comely gravity due authority and a diviner beame of Majesty in Government and Governors than can be found in any way of levelling and abasing them which are the high-waies as all wise men ever observed to all faction sedition and confusion both in Churches and States of which truth no Age hath seen and suffered greater or sadder experiments than ours since some pragmatick or ambitious Spirits have made miserable essayes to alter and abolish the ancient authority and order of Episcopacy onely to bring in their various novelties which are so far from the true Grandeur and solid Majesty of Government that they are already found to be pittifull and petty projects rather than pious or profound inventions confuting themselves as much as confounding others Could we then on all sides in England be so ingenuous and candid as to lay aside all moderne designes disputes and differences which have made mens eyes so squinted bleared or blood-shotten in the point of Church-Government could we remove the fancy of secular pride pomp and ambition in one sort of Ministers the vulgar passions prejudices and envies of a second sort also the pragmatick and plebeian humors of a third sort with the private designes and worldly interests of all cleare all our hearts of these prepossessions and distempers no doubt the face of holy order and wise Government in the Church will easily appeare to the satisfaction of all wise and good men who are either worthy to govern or willing to be governed in a true Christian and charitable way For certainly Church-Government or Ecclesiasticall Polity about which we have had of late in England so great contests even to much bitternesse and blood is no Scholasticall subtilty no intricate nicety no speculative sublimity no metaphysicall profundity which require either accurate Criticks or long-winded Divers or Logicall Disputers or Scepticall Sophisters to find out the Primitive form the true proportions or ancient patterne of it It is plaine as Beza and Bucer observe in right Reason pregnant in the proportions of all order naturall civill military religious It is palpable in Scripture-patternes as Mr. Calvin confesseth it is most apparent in the practise of all Churches It must be weaknesse or wilfullnesse passion or peevishnesse that hinders any man from seeing the true Idea of it It is made up of wisdome and power not onely humane but divine of due authority cemented with true charity a modest and moderate superiority with meek subordination faithfull counsell with equanimous commands meeting together these make up the holy Oeconomy or Polity of Church-Government In which first many humble Christians of one congregation do submit to one duly ordained Minister as set over them in the Lord so far as concernes their private duties and relations secondly many grave and discreet Presbyters with their people submit to one venerable Bishop as a Father or chief Pastor chosen to be over them in things that concerne more publick relations and common duties in which their joynt counsell assistance or obedience is required The Bishops office and work is not only Ministeriall in common with their brethren the other Ministers but Juridicall or Judiciall declaring and exercising the necessary power and eminent acts of Ecclestasticall Discipline and authority with them among them and over them not in the way of secular dominion gotten and kept by civill force or factious ambition which our blessed Lord forbids to those that are chiefest or greatest of his Disciples and flock but in a way of paternall authority which chides with love chastens with
credit of the Church Catholick the comfort and authority of all true Ministers the surest test and Character of due Ordination the peace and unity of all good Christians are bound up and mainly concerned 3. What if these new masters these sharp censors and imperious dictators whom perhaps not Piety so much as Policy not Religion but Reason of State not reforming severities but needlesse jealousies and imaginary necessities have put upon such violent sticklings against Episcopacy and reprobating all worthy Bishops what if they have been deceived themselves and deceivers of others in that point which is much more veniall to think and say of the very best of them than to passe any such censure or suspicion of error or ignorance upon all Churches even in their purest and Primitive Antiquity when one spark of Martyrly zeal which was as holy fire from Gods Altar had more divine light and heat in it than all the blazes and flashes of Moderne Zelotry 4. I do in all Christian candor demand of the severest Presbyterian and sharpest Independent whether when they ask of the generations of old and enquire of all Ages from the beginning of Christian Churches whether ever they find any Christians or congregations at any time either Christening or Churching themselves either by their own vote choise and authority or by separating from their ordained Presbyters and Bishops which were sound in the faith and regular in their administrations who had duly taught baptized confirmed and ruled them in the Lord. When did any Presbyters or Ministers ever pretend to ordaine themselves or one another without some Apostle or Bishop When where and by whom was the first Schisme Rupture or Chasme of Ecclesiasticall parity as to Mission and Commission begun When and where was the first intrusion or encroachment upon the pretended authority of Presbytery made by Episcopacy Did not all Presbyters owe ever own their legitimate birth breeding to their respective Bishops whose Authority was ever as much above meer Presbyters in degree and office as it was before them in the order of nature and causality no lesse than in time and antiquity 5. If then all the novel presumptions pretentions and objections of either Presbytery or Independency against Primitive Catholick and Apostolick Episcopacy should in earnest be nothing but passionate false and frivolous mistakes arising from ignorance and error carried on by envy and arrogancy in many men O what needlesse troubles what heedlesse angers what inordinate furies what dreadfull disorders must they all this while have been guilty of what causelesse contentions innovations confusions vastations have they brought into the Churches of Christ what cruell and uncharitable contentions have they raised as elsewhere so in this famous and flourishing Church of England without any just cause God knowes and beyond the merits of Episcopacy even in its greatest defects declinations and deformities to which as all holy Institutions may in time be subject so they ought to be humbly wisely and moderately reformed by the prayers teares counsels honest and orderly endeavours of all sober Christians of all sorts and sizes in their places and stations with due regard to the first pattern and originall But certainly as the whole order and office of Presbytery which may have had its personall depravations also so the ancient and venerable Authority of Episcopacy as to its Primitive Institution and Catholick succession ought not on any hand to be utterly ruined rased and extirpated root and branch by any tumultuary rashnesse or popular precipitancy which can never become any Church of Christ or any wise and godly Christians nor can such methods of sharp and soure Reformations ever end in the peace or comfort of good men who if they find themselves guilty of excesses so dangerous and destructive to the true Church true Religion and true Reformation have nothing lesse to do than to persevere in their extravagancies or pertinaciously to assert their former transports yea they have nothing more to do speedily and conscienciously than humbly to recant seriously to repent and effectually to amend as much as lies in their power the affronts and assaults the breaches and wasts they have made of the Churches Peace and Unity Power and Authority by returning to that duty which they owe to God and that obedience they owe to their spirituall Governours and that reverence which they owe to uniform antiquity which so fully commends the presidentiall authority of Apostolicall and Primitive Episcopacy Their first errors may be weaknesse but their obstinacy must needs be wickednesse who still sin when they are convinced silenced and afflicted 6. What if after all this dust and noyse which hath so blinded and deafned the eyes and eares of many Presbyters and people that they cannot and will not see the Truth and Testimony of Antiquity which is no lesse cleare for the presidentiall authority and eminency of Episcopacy than for the subordination counsel and assistance of Presbytery what if it should be the mind of God the order and Institution of Jesus Christ the designation and direction of his blessed Spirit evidently signified and setled in and by the blessed Apostles in all Primitive Churches and so continued to this day according to the measures of Divine Wisdome and Order though not without mixtures of humane infirmities and disorders incident to all holy Institutions 7. What if after all these seditious and schismaticall distempers in Ministers and people the Lord should say to these refractory and irreconcilable spirits against Episcopacy as he did to the Jewes when they revolted from Samuels Government They have not rejected you O my faithfull servants the Bishops whom I have constituted and used in all ages as vigilant Over-seers and wise Rulers of my flock but they have rejected me who in this point of Episcopacy have so sufficiently declared my will and pleasure to all the world that no Church was ever ignorant of it or varied from it being manifested from heaven First in the evident instances of divine wisdome among the Jewish Church and Priests yea as it is an orderly and gubernative method in all societies where right reason and so true Religion necessarily command and commend superiority and subjection Secondly in the paterne and Rules of Ecclesiasticall Polity set down by my Son Jesus Christ and followed by his Apostles who setled all Churches in such an orderly subordination Thirdly in the constant custome and Catholick testimony of all succeeding Churches whose joynt suffrages and uniform practises in cases of any darkness dispute or difficulty where Scripture-precepts may seem lesse clear and explicite ought by all sober Christians to be esteemed as the safest measures of conscience and surest rule of religious observance especially as to things of outward Polity Order and Government nor may any novel inventions or pretentions never so specious be put into the balance against the Authority of the Catholick Church which is the pillar and ground of Truth the great
fancy but in the publick counsels and constitutions of every Kingdome State and Polity Nor was this more true piety and charity than prudence and policy in the Bishops and other Ministers of the Church to whom as to gowned and bookish men and not as to armed souldiers doth all the Christian world owe under God the planting propagating and preserving yea and the due reforming of true Christian Religion For the armes of flesh or any carnal weapons going along with the Gospel which is a spirituall warfare as so many Pioneers with pick-axes and spades to demolish and overthrow civil powers must needs have alarmed and armed all States and Princes all honest and just all wise and morall men against it when they looked upon Christianity as coming not to preach and save but to plunder and spoile for all wise Magistrates know that there was no trusting to the moderation and justice no nor to the mercy of any men who came with force against them Though they professe as Andronicus did and Absalom before him never so much to mend and reform things yet they will at last rob kill and destroy and as the Sons of Jacob dealt with the Sichemites they at first onely pretend to circumcise men yet at last they will not onely geld but kill them Armed Religion like Eagles and Hawkes is alwaies terrible Which considerations do justly harden all mens hearts that have any thing to lose or to keep in this world against all forcible and riotous entries of any Religion or Reformation whatsoever which seldome failes to be sacrilegious as well as rebellious Hence the present feares jealousies and abhorrencies which many Princes and States as well as Bishops and Church-men that are of the Romish Communion have taken up against any Reformation of Religion by such popular methods and principles which they see are seldome begun and never ended without infinite trouble confusion and ruine of all things both sacred and civil every wise man rightly judging that when God is pleased to bring in the beauty and blessing of true Religion or due Reformation to any Church or Nation he will as he did in England most eminently so stir up the spirits of Soveraigne powers the method he anciently used in purging and reforming the Temple and Church of the Jewes by Hezekiah Josiah and others that the work shall go on as without noyse like the building of the Temple so with Order and Honor to the glory of God the safety of Princes the honor of the Clergy and the peace of the people as well as the purity of the Church and true Religion Till this may be done a thousand civil burthens and oppressions yea persecutions are easier than any sinful presumptions yea true Religion will be beautifull when it is black with persecution if then it be comely with patience Scorching Reformations so burn the face of Religion that they leave not onely sad scarres but shamefull Stigmas or brands upon it which look very like rebellion and barbarity engaging men and Christians into mutuall hatred blood-shedding deaths and destruction Let men pretend never so much to be Saints godly yea and inspired too yet as the purest water and the wholsomest flesh when once they come to feel the heat of factions and begin to boyle up to civil perturbations they will soon discover a very black fome and foule scum to rise in their hearts and actions which as Hazael they hardly thought could have been in them carrying them to injustice immoderation uncharitablenesse presumption rebellion sacriledge and cruelty and all unwarrantable actions before they are aware of the folly falsity or foulenesse of their own as indeed all mens hearts at whose bottom lies all manner of filth and villany which is then easily and constantly discovered when they are passionately and inordinately stirred Nor is it at all to be considered how pure men appeare as to that which is upward or outward in their Religious protestations and professions when once they come to that Romantick and Errant spirit which thinks it as much gallantry to fight for their Religion as some do for their Mistresses beauties which exceeds quarrelling and killing each other by civil and heroick murthers for no other offence but the glory of their opinion and the preferring of their fancy What did ever seem more holy than the Euchites and Circumcellions of old what more precise and godly than John of Leiden and his crew what more inspired than our Hacket and Coppinger what less covetous and impartiall than Massaniello All of them were not very warme but very scalding Reformers yet came to nought Adde to all these what was or is more titularly holy than some later Popes of Rome who ever seemed more solicitous to advance Religion Yet by their usurping both St. Peters swords by interpreting Arise Peter kill and eate in a sanguinary sense by making the Bishop of Rome the greater light to rule the day and Emperours or Kings in their dominions to be as the Moon and lesser lights by challenging a power unchristian and inordinate to depose lawfull Princes to absolve Subjects from â—â—eir oathes to expose their lives to their Subjects or any other mens swords to dispose of their Thrones and Kingdomes as they please in order to the Romish Churches or Courts interests they have made all the world now very wary of them Even those Princes that are of the Papall Communion are grown very reserved and vigilant as to their civil power now their eyes are so opened that many moderate men have highly suspected as Padre Paulo the Author of the History of the Councel of Trent and others this Papall arrogancy to be one of the shrewdest markes of the Papall Antichristianism a Bishop thus enormously exalting himself by fraud and force by blood and violence in the Church or Temple of God above all that is called God in civil Magistracy directly contrary both to Christs pattern and the two great Apostles precepts as well as practises who though they laid with the other eleven Apostles the foundations of an Episcopal Hierarchy by the parity or Aristocracy as of the chief Apostles so of Bishops yet they never either exercised or enjoyed or dreamed of a Monarchy in which one Apostle or Bishop should have dominion over all others and over the whole Church Episcopacy as it is Primitive and Apostolicall exactly and conscientiously preserves to all Princes and Soveraigne Magistrates whatsoever their civil peace and safety of their persons their lawes and powers with their just prerogatives as well as it doth the Evangelicall and ingenuous Liberties of all Christian Subjects which are alwaies and onely to do well either in active or passive obedience But as the Papll claimes and flatteries of former Ages did with full mouth and open forehead invade yea and by force insult over the just powers of Soveraigne Princes however of late they have been more cunning modest and tender so other spirits which from Pygmies have
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
such Those are of an other sphere and of other principles which I neither censure nor it may be understand I quarrell with no particular mens persons I encounter onely that colluvies of factions parties and novel principles which like the sewers collected from many sinks and kennells have met together to besmeare or over-beare the Church of England I despise no mans Religion so far as it is Religion deserving that holy name in any Catholick and Christian sense But I abhorre an unreasonable immodest unjust and licentious way in any I esteem and embrace with all Charity whatever of Gods Spirit of Christs Truth of Grace and Vertue of Gifts and Parts of Morall Honesty and Humanity I find in any men of any side But I am too old and serious to be abused with vaporings with affectations with popular pretentions with rude and rash Reformations I am for solid sober orderly humble constitutions or restitutions rather of Order Honor and publick encouragement to Religion the Church and Clergy No man hath justled or offended me in all these turbulent times worth owning nor have I an evil eye or an ill will against any man What I write as to my Ecclesiastick Calling Honor and the Church of Englands common concernments may possibly have something of salt but nothing of gall there may be some corrosive to mortifie and meet with the diseased and proud flesh but no venome to poyson or hurt either the diseased or the whole parts It extremely grieves me to see how far the contagion of Ignorance Impudence Profanenesse Irreligion Faction Division Levity Popularity Disorder and Uncharitablenesse hath spread among some of my brethren of the Ministry and many of my Countrymen without any present advance that I can see or future hopes I say not as to their own Honour or Profit but as to Gods glory or the publick interests of the true Christian and Reformed Religion or the good of mens soules or the improvement of any grace and vertue What any side offers as really good or convenient I allow what they partially cry down and causelesly condemn or change that I defend upon the account of this and all Churches Wisdome Honour and Happinesse If what I have written may do any good to the present or after-Ages I have my designe if not I shall by Gods help hereafter redeem this waste of time and labour by applying to studies more suitable to my Genius Spirit and Age which may more improve those graces which are least in dispute among good Christians yet in this I have not wholly lost my labour because I have hereby further discharged my own soul my conscience and reputation from any approbation of what I judge to be either the sins or imprudencies the wickednesse or weaknesse of this Age in which I do not so much live as dye daily weary that my soul finds so little hope of an happy rest or composure unity or harmony in our Church which I had rather see and enjoy before I dye than to have the greatest preferment in the world I envy no men that have wrapped up their worldly interests in their religious policies and daily gaine by the shrines of godlinesse they have made I do indeed boldly rifle their godly principles and pretentions as to their novelties for I see no reason as yet to yield to any of them no not for an hour though they seem never such pillars while they import as if the Church of England had heretofore consisted of a company of silly people and silly Priests whose either ignorance or superstition or sottishnesse or basenesse had hidden the beauties and blessings of true Religion from all peoples eyes so that neither Bishops nor Presbyters nor Princes nor Parlaments nor Convocations ever till now saw what was fit to know and do in Church-matters which are now to be taught and brought to light by the new methods of Presbytery and Independency or by Anabaptism Quakerism and other rarities of Religion untried and untamed Novelties every way as short of the Piety Prudence Unity and Majesty of the Religion and Church of England heretofore as they are wide of or beyond the true ancient bounds and Catholick grounds of Order Government Unity and due Authority I may adde and of the Blessings or Prosperities internal or external spiritual and temporal which attended Episcopal Order and Paternal Presidency which I profess to value as now it is in its rags and ruines far beyond the others in their silks and sprucenesses Episcopacy is now far from being the object of any sober mens Flattery or Ambition yet I cannot but look upon it with such an eye of pitty and reverence as primitive Christians were wont to do upon their Bishops such as Polycarpus Ignatius Irenaeus Cyprian and other Martyrs when they saw them imprisoned beaten tormented destroyed I know yet I plead for those men and for that cause which was once strong but now is weak was honourable and is now despised was favoured but is now frowned upon by many yea I fear most men of ordinary spirits yet I plead for that reverend Order and those reverend persons who have been made a spectacle to Angels and Men such as to this present hour suffer both hunger and thirst are naked and buffeted having no certain dwelling-place which being reviled do blesse being persecuted have suffered with patience being defamed do intreat and being the Glory of all Churches as to Order Unity and Government in all Ages are now looked upon by many as the filth and off scouring of all things yet am I one of those Angels which attend Lazarus on his Dunghil I have chosen to follow the clear though now more exhausted stream of Antiquity rather than the troubled torrents of any Novelties which may be as short-lived as they have been suddenly started I have looked upon all mens principles and pretensions as to Ecclesiastick affairs with what Candor Equanimity and Sincerity I could If in any thing I was inclinable to be partial it was neither for Presbytery nor Independency I confess which I never was catechized in nor accustomed to nor convinced of as to any such Piety or Policy Wisdom or Worth in them which might make me see cause to desire or esteem them but I was swayed against some things not in the constitution so much as some mens administration of Episcopacy I was originally principled to no small jealousies of Bishops actions when they were in their greatest glory and power nor do I yet think but that some Bishops might have been greater Masters of pious Arts than they have proved yet I find now that in many things people were more afraid than hurt For the main I conclude no Ministers or Governours no Superintendencies or Presbyteries in any Reformed way exceeded the Usefulness Merit and Excellency of our English Bishops and Presbyters nor is any thing as to Church-government comparable to a primitive Episcopacy which includes the just Rights Liberties or
Priviledges both of Presbyters and People I neither dispute nor deny any mens Morals Intellectuals Devotionals or Spirituals further than they seem much warped and eclipsed by their over-eager Heats and injurious Prosecutions against their Antagonists the Episcopal Clergy and Church of England but I absolutely blame those Ministers want of politicks and prudentials who by their Antiepiscopal transports have so far diminished not onely themselves and their Order as Ministers but the whole state of this Church as to its Harmony and Honour its Peace and Plenty its Unity and Authority In whose behalf since all wise and worthy men are highly concerned I cannot conclude with words of greater warmth and weight than those of the blessed Apostle St. Paul who was not more sollicitous to plant Churches in truth and purity than to settle and preserve them in Order and Unity If there be therefore any consolation in Christ if any comfort of Love if any fellowship of the Spirit if any bowels of Mercy Let us all fulfill the Apostles joy this Churches joy the Angels joy yea Christs joy in being like-minded and of one accord in having the same Love in doing nothing through strife or vain-glory but in Lowliness and Meekness looking every man not onely to his own things but also to the things of others that the same mind may be in us which was also in our Lord Jesus Christ. That in the expectation and experience of holy wise and united hearts and hands on all sides the Church of England from whose head the Crown is faln from whose eyes Rivers of teares do flow while she lies weeping under the Crosse may take up the words of Zion in the Prophet Therefore will I look to the Lord I will wait for the God of my salvation my God will hear me Rejoyce not against me O mine Enemie when I fall I shall rise when I sit in darknesse the Lord shall be a light unto me I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him untill he pleas my cause and execute judgement for me he will bring forth my light and I shall behold his righteousnesse To the King Immortal the onely wise and blessed God Father Son and Holy Ghost be all Glory for ever Amen In Oratione Constantini Magni ad Concilium Nicenum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mihi quidem omni bello pugnave gravior atque acerbior videtur intestina in Dei Ecclesiâ seditio quae plus doloris quà m externa omnia mala secum affert THE END The Names of Books written by Dr. Gauden and printed for Andrew Crook at the Green Dragon in St. Pauls Church-yard HIERASPISTES 1. A Defence of the Ministry and Ministers of the Church of England in Quarto 2. The Case of the Ministers maintenance by Tithes in Quarto 3. Three Sermons preached on publick occasions in Quarto 4. Funeralls made Cordialls in a Sermon prepared and in part Preached at the solemn interment of the Right Honorable Robert Rich heire apparent to the Earldom of Warwick in Quarto new A CATALOGUE OF THE NAMES Of all the ARCH-BISHOPS and BISHOPS of England and Wales ever since the first planting of Christian Religion in this Nation unto these later Times With the year of our Lord in which the several Bishops of each Diocese were Consecrated CANTERBURY Arch-Bishops 1 AUGUSTINE the Monk A. D. 596 2 Laurence A. D. 611 3 Melitus A. D. 619 4 Justus A. D. 624 5 Honorius A. D. 634 6 Adeodatus or Deus dedit A. D. 655 The Sea vacant 4. yeares 7 Theodor. A. D. 668 8 Brithwald A. D. 692 9 Tatwin A. D. 731 10 Nothelm A. D. 736 11 Cuthbert A. D. 742 12 Bregwin A. D. 759 13 Lambert A. D. 764 14 Athelward A. D. 793 15 Walfred A. D. 807 16 Theogild A. D. 832 17 Celnoth 18 Atheldred A. D. 871 19 Plegmund A. D. 889 20 Athelm A. D. 915 21 Wulfelm A. D. 924 22 St. Odo Severus A. D. 934 23 St. Dunstan A. D. 961 24 Ethelgar A. D. 988 25 Siricius A. D. 989 26 Alfric or Aluric A. D. 993 27 St. Elphage A. D. 1006 28 Living or Leoving A. D. 1013 29 Agelnoth alias Aethelnot A. D. 1020 30 St. Eadlin A. D. 1038 31 Robert Gemeticensis A. D. 1050 32 Stigand A. D. 1052 33 St. Lanfranck A. D. 1070 The Sea vacant 4. yeares 34 St. Anselm A. D. 1093 35 Rodolph A. D. 1114 36 William Corbell al. Corbois A. D. 1122 37 Theobald A. D. 1138 38 St. Tho. Becket A. D. 1162 39 Richard the Monke A. D. 1171 40 Baldwin A. D. 1184 41 Reginald Fitz-Jocelin A. D. 1191 42 Hubert Walter A. D. 1193 33 Steph Langton Card. A. D. 1206 44 Ri Wethershed A. D. 1229 45 St. Edmond A. D. 1234 46 Boniface of Savoy A. D. 1244 47 Robert Kilwarby Ca. A. D. 1272 48 John Peckham A. D. 1278 49 Ro Winchelsey A. D. 1294 50 Walt. Reynolds A. D. 1313 51 Simon Mepham A. D. 1327 52 John Stratford A. D. 1333 53 Th Bradwardin A. D. 1348 54 Simon Islip A. D. 1349 55 Si Langham C. A. D. 1366 56 Will Wittlesey A. D. 1367 57 Simon Sudbury A. D. 1379 58 Will Courtney A. D. 1381 59 Tho. Arundell A. D. 1396 60 Hen Chicheley Car. A. D. 1414 61 Jo Stafford Car. A. D. 1443 62 Joh Kemp Car. A. D. 1452 63 Tho Bourcheir A. D. 1454 64 John Moorton Card. A. D. 1486 65 Henry Deane A. D. 1502 66 Will Warham A. D. 1504 67 Tho Cranmer A. D. 1533 68 Reginald Poole Car. A. D. 1555 69 Matth Parker A. D. 1559 70 Edm Gryndall A. D. 1575 71 John Whitgift A. D. 1583 72 Rich Bancroft A. D. 1604 73 George Abbot A. D. 1610 74 William Laud. A. D. 1633 Beheaded on Tower-hill Jan 10. 1644. S. ASAPH 1 Kentigern A. D. 560 2 Saint Asaph and after him many hundred yeares 3 Geffrey of Monmouth A. D. 1151 4 Adam a Welshman 5 Reiner A. D. 1186 6 Abraham A. D. 1220 7 Howel ap Edneuet A. D. 1235 8 Anâ—anus I. A. D. 1248 The see vacant 2. yeares 9 Anianus II. of Schonaw A. D. 1268 10 Lewellin of Bromfeild A. D. 1293 11 David ap Blethin A. D. 1319 12 Ephraim 13 Henry 14 John Trevaur I. 15 Lewellin ap Madoc ap Elis. A. D. 1357 16 Will. of Spridlington A. D. 1373 17 Laurence Child A. D. 1382 18 Alexander Bach. A. D. 1390 19 John Trevaur II. A. D. 1395 20 Robert A. D. 1411 21 John Low A. D. 1493 22 Regin Peacock A. D. 1444 23 Thomas A. D. 1450 24 Rich Redman A. D. 1484 25 Dav ap Owen A. D. 1503 26 Edm Birkhead A. D. 1513 27 Henry Standish A. D. 1519 28 Will Barlow A. D. 1535 29 Robert Parfew alias Warton A. D. 1536 30 Tho Goldwell A. D. 1555 31 Richard Davies A. D. 1559 32 Thom Davies A. D. 1561 33 Will Hughes A. D. 1573 34 Will Morgan A. D. 1601 35 Richard Parry A. D. 1604 36 John Hanmer A. D.
exercised to each other their numerous conventions their fervent devotions their reverent attentions their unanimous communions their cheerfull Amens those blessed hopes and unspeakable comforts which thousands enjoyed both living and dying in the obedience to and communion with the Church of England All these holy fruits and blessed effects as most certain seals and letters testimoniall were I conceive most pregnant evidences and valid demonstrations of true Religion and of a true Church so happily setled by the joynt consent and publick piety of this Nation that it was not in reason or conscience in modesty or ingenuity to be suddenly changed much lesse rashly deserted and rudely abandoned chiefly upon the giddinesse of common people or by the boysterousnesse of common souldiers whose buff-coats and armour cannot be thought by any wise and worthy Souldiers to be like Aarons breast-plate the place from which Priests and people are to expect the constant oracles of Urim and Thummim Light and Reformation Such of that profession as are truly Militant Christians that is humbly wise and justly valiant as I hope many Souldiers may be will think it enough for them modestly to learn and generously to defend as Constantine the Great said to the Nicene Bishops not imperiously to dictate or boldly to innovate matters of Religion in such a Church and Nation as England which was I am sure and I think still is furnished with many able Divines many Evangelicall Priests and Ministers of the Lord whose lips preserve saving knowledge who have many a one of them more learning and well-studied Divinity in them than a whole Regiment nay than an whole Army of ordinary Souldiers whose weapons are not proper for a spirituall warfare nor apt as Davids hands either to build or repair a Church otherwaies than as Labourers who may possibly assist the true Ministers who are and ought to be the Master-builders of Gods house whose skill is not to destroy mens bodies but to save their souls not to kill but to make alive It must ever be affirmed to Gods glory because without any vanity or flattery that the Church of England for this last golden century came not behind the very best Reformed Churches nor any other that profess Christianity in any part of the world which is not my particular testimony who may seem partiall because I unfeignedly professe my self a son and servant of it but it is and hath been the joynt suffrage of all eminent Divines in all forraign Reformed Churches who have written and spoken of the Church of England ever since its setled Reformation not with commendation onely but admiration especially those who coveting to partake of the gifts and labours of English Divines have taken the pains to learn our hard and untoward language Yea I may farther with truth and modesty affirm that saving the extraordinary gifts of Tongues Miracles and Martyrdomes the Church of England since its setled Reformation under Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory came not much short of the Primitive Churches in the first and second Centuries Which had at least some of them as I shall after shew rather more than fewer ceremonies partly Judaick partly Christian yea far greater errors and abuses were found among some of them than were generally among any professors in communion with the Church of England witnesse those touching the Resurrection of the body and in the celebrating of the Lords Supper among the Corinthians The first some denied the other many received covetously uncharitably drunkenly disorderly undecently in the Church of Corinth Besides the scandalous fact of the incestuous person with which they were not so offended as became Christians they were also full of factions and carnall divisions going to law one with another before Infidels undervaluing the blessed Apostle S. Paul and other faithfull labourers preferring false Apostles and deceitfull workers with no lesse folly than ingratitude challenging in many things disorderly and uncomely liberties which amounted to clokes of malice and a licentiousnesse tending to confusion These and other corruptions were among Christians of an Apostolicall Church newly planted carefully watred and excellently constituted Nor are there lesse remarkable faults found by the Spirit of God in six of the seven Asian Churches mentioned in the second and third Chapters of the Revelation while yet they were under Apostolicall inspection For the Devil who is a great rambler but no loyterer began betimes to sow his tares in Gods field by false Apostles unruly walkers deceitfull workers meer hucksters of Religion schismatick Spirits proud Impostors sensuall Separatists wanton Jezebels curious and cowardly Gnosticks with all the evil brood of Nicolaitans Simonians Cerinthians and other crafty Hypocrites brochers of lies patrons of lewdnesse extremely earthly and sensuall yet vaunters in proud swelling words of spirituall and heavenly gifts but more covetous of filthy lucre and sedulous to serve their own bellies than zealous to serve the Lord or to save souls In all which instances of diseases growing even upon any of those Primitive Churches however Christians are commanded to repent and do their first works to keep themselves pure from contagion private or epidemick yet are they no where put upon the pernicious methods of reproching rending and separating from the very frame and constitution of their respective Churches as they were holy Polities Constitutions or Communions setled by the Apostles in decent subordinations and convenient limits of Ecclesiasticall order government authority and jurisdiction without which all humane societies civil or sacred run to meer Chaosses and heaps of confusion Which as the God of order and peace perfectly abhors so he no where by any Divine precept or approved example recommends any such practises to Christians under the name notion or intention of reforming abuses crept into any Churches presently to rend revile contemn divide destroy and make desolate the whole order polity frame and constitution of them which is very Christian and very commendable If the grand example of Divine Mercy was ready to spare Sodom upon Abrahams charitable intercession in case ten righteous persons had been found in that city and Jerusalem in case one man could have been found there who executed judgement and sought the truth how little are those men imitators of Gods clemency or Abrahams pity who have studied and still endeavour by all acts of power and policy utterly to destroy such a Church as England was in which many thousands of good Christians may undoubtedly be found who are constant adherers to the Faith gratefull lovers of the Piety and most pathetick deplorers of the miseries of the Church of England Whose excellent Christian state and Reformed constitution deserved much better treatment from those at least who were her children carefully bred born and brought up by her however now they appear many of them better fed than taught more puffed up with the surfeits of undigested Knowledge than increased in humble
sound saving and practicall Understanding Whence then the present lapses depressions diminutions and feared desolations are come upon and befaln this Church of England which threaten you O worthy Gentlemen and your posterity no lesse than they afflict the despised divided and dejected Clergy is a disquisition most worthy of your serious inquiry that discerning the causes which cannot be good with the consequences which must needs be bad you may endeavour with all Christian prudence and good conscience to advance those counsels and remedies which become wise men good Christians and true-hearted English which Christian counsels and pious endeavours in order to the setling of Religion in this Nation his Highnesse professed in his Speech at the dissolving of the last Parlamentary convention to have expected from them Nothing becomes any men or Nation worse than to own no setled Religion as the publick rule measure and standard of peoples piety except onely this which is one of the basest pieces of policy that ever came out of the Devils skull to professe Religion yea the Christian and Reformed with such a loosenesse and latitude as may expose it with its prime Teachers and Professors to vulgar indifferencies and insolencies yea to be profaned blasphemed baffled beggered scorned contemned according to the dictates lusts disorders and levities of popular humours and the vilest of men The first is the temper of sots and beasts who own no God the second of Machiavillians and Hypocrites who fear no God It was a good rule of the Roman policy and Heathenish piety Either pretend not to the Gods or treat them as becometh Gods CHAP. VIII THe outside or visible effects of the Church of Englands troubles and distempers are as manifest as Miriams Uzziahs and Gehazies leprosies on their fore-heads both in respect of secular contestations and Ecclesiasticall contradictions in both which this Church and Nation have been at once so involved that our miseries are not onely the more complicated cumulated and encreased but they are the lesse curable because less compliable with any impartiall way of publique Christian counsels mens hearts being so many wayes extremely divided and differently biassed not onely upon civil but even Religious differences in which the meanest and shortest-spirited men do ever affect to appeare most cruelly zealous and most uncharitably pertinacious The Rivalry and competition for Soveraign power between Princes or Peers which in former ages for many years and in various vicissitudes of civil wars afflicted this English nation were yet so far tolerable as men still preserved the unity of their perswasions and affections touching Religion amidst those deadly feuds and different adherencies in respect of civil affairs with which they were distracted which politick contests were capable of an end either by the extinction of one party or the uniting of both as it came to passe in seventh's dayes who laid the foundation for uniting the Families of York and Lancaster also the Kingdomes of England and Scotland But alas our late distractions like fire from Hell have seized not onely our Barns and Stables our Dwellings and Mansions but our Temples and Churches our Hearts and Souls Religion The Christian Religion the Reformed Religion this staffe of nationall beauty and sociall bands is broken in sunder Religion both as Christian and Reformed this is torn and mangled this is deformed and unchristened Religion whose obligations are most strict and sacred whose breaches are most wide and incurable this is wounded this is ulcerated this is gangren'd Religion whose balsam is most soveraign to close and reconcile a sinner with an offended God which professeth to worship God and Man united in one blessed Redeemer and Mediator Jesus Christ this is faln out with it self and wofully divided Religion whose aim is to unite first God and man in one band of eternal love next all Christian professors in charitable compliance one with another as members of the same body and belonging to one head this this is the poniard this the sword this the spear by which we are in England armed and animated one against another Not onely our heads in policies and our hands in power but our hearts in piety are divided Most men in England fancy they cannot be truly godly or justly hope to be saved unlesse they damn and destroy each other not onely upon civil but religious accounts The silver cord of religious love is ravelled and broken the golden girdle and perfect rule of Evangelicall charity is not onely much worn and warped but quite pulled and snapp'd in sunderâ— we war and fight kill and slay we bite and devour we persecute and oppresse each other not onely upon humane secular and momentary but upon divine spiritual and eternall pretensions So that to find out either our distempers or our cures in England we must search deeper than the skin and superficies of things the poyson is profoundly imbibed the malignity deeply diffused rising in its source from and reaching in its effects to the very hearts of men the venome and spite is hidden in the most retired cels and inaccessible recesses of mens souls the malice and mischief are fled for their refuge or asylum to Gods Sanctuary to the very spirits and consciences of Christians which should be the receptacles of most sacred influences the very Holy of Holyes the Heaven of Heavens in the reasonable soul in which the Oracles of God the special presence and manifestations of his Spirit are most lively to be heard seen felt and enjoyed These are either grosly darkened and defiled or garnished with false lights or swept with the Devils brooâ— lies wrapped up in hypocrisie and strong delusions guilded over with godly pretensions Here I find the greatest enemies and destroyers of the Church of England are very far from confessing or repenting of any folly pride levity ignorance lukewarmnesse lazinesse deadnesse hypocrisie malice presumption rebellion covetousnesse ambition sacriledge profanenesse coldnesse Atheism Apostasie uncharitablenesse disorderly walking disobedience or unthankfulnesse to God or man all which possibly may be in their own hearts and hands and so must needs have as great an ingrediency in our publick calamities as any mens sins in the nation They rather imploy all their wits and skill their artifices and oratory to anatomize the Church of England to dissect every part of its constitution to observe not onely the practick pulse and outward breathings of its Ministers and Professors but the very inward fibres and temper of its heart as to all its holy mysteries religious ministrations and ecclesiastick constitutions Upon the pretended inspection of which as the vitals noble parts of Religion they daily proclaim to the credulous vulgar other amazed spectators as the astonished Augurs Soothsayers were wont of old that in these they discern all the portentous omens of our afflictions all the prodigious causes and effects of our publick troubles and miseries in these they