Semipelagians into the Communion of our Church and joyning with a Spanish Plot by opposing the Calvinists to reduce the people again to Popery all which are the Methods of Satan and the Designs of some who sit aloft in the Temple of God to hew at the very roots of Christianity As I. O. expresses himself in the Preface to his Display of Arminianism Yes no doubt it was the great design of our first Reformers to state as he has done the order and succession of eternal Decrees to reconcile a fatal and irresistible determination of our Actions with the Liberty of our Wills to account for the consistency of the Decree of irrespective Reprobation of the greatest part of mankind with the Truth and the Goodness of God when he so plainly protests he would not any should perish but that all should come to repentance and to set up a secret and reserved will in God in defiance to his revealed will and then make it consistent with the honour of his Attributes to profess one thing and at the same time resolve another It was no doubt their Zeal for these weighty and fundamental Truths that was the avowed cause of their Protestations against the Church of Rome and those great Prelates that first arose to that great Attempt chose to fall Martyrs to the cause only to justifie their own absolute Election and to prove the Impossibility of their Relapse from Grace And among Mr. Foxes wooden Cuts we find many Pictures of Martyrs for the supralapsarian way and the chain that tied them to the Stake was no doubt the noose of Election and the Label that hangs out at their mouths the decretal Sentence So that they that will not burn and broil for these Fundamental Articles of the Geneva Zeal are the Iulians and Apostates from the Protestant Faith the Popes or the Devils Instruments as our Author speaks to betray us to the old or a new and it may be a worse Apostasie Men may mince the matter and pretend only a dislike of the Doctrine of Reprobation but alas who knows not this to be the Serpents subtilty wherever she gets in her head she will wriggle in her whole body sting and all give but the least Admission to these Heterodoxies and the whole poison must be swallowed This Apostasie from the single Article of Reprobation unavoidably brings in the whole body of Popish-Arminian Errors And therefore whoever offends but in this particular is absolutely fall'n from the Catholick Faith and the Orthodox Doctrine of the Church of England and then he has pronounced his Doom and pronounced him uncapable of our church-Church-Communion Admirable Doctrine this for a Patron of Indulgence not to endure a Poor man that dares not dogmatize in the mysteries of Reprobation but to deliver him up without mercy or any sense of Compassion to the exterminating Censures and Anathema's of the Church and what was then more dreadful the Parliament too Thus you see what are the Articles of these mens Zeal and Orthodoxy and by what Doctrines and Principles they take their measure of Reformation making a Rigour in the Calvinian Tenets the only estimate of the Purity of Churches So that because we are willing to clear our Church from the Incumbrance and Incroachment of these innovations and are resolved not to trouble our selves with abetting the modern Controversies and Mushrome Sects of Christendom but to stick fast to the wisdom and moderation of the first design of returning to the antient and unblended Doctrines of Christianity And are therefore careful in our discourses and representations of Religion to avoid all new and unwarrantable mixtures and to represent the Truths of the Gospel with the same simplicity as we should have done before these Novelties were started in the World For this are we taxed by these Imperious Dogmatists of perfidious Designs to betray the Protestant Cause and to return back to the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome and the People must be alarm'd and confounded with hideous Outcries against Popery and Babylon Spanish Plots and Jesuitical Designs and then must they stand upon their Guard and nothing must asswage their Choler but an humble submission to their sturdy humour They must not attend to any Articles of Agreement or Overtures of Pacification and mutual Forbearance and unless we will declare our Assent and Consent to all the curious and perplex'd Opinions of their Sect they will hear of no other Conditions of Peace and there is no Remedy but we must part Communion They must as I. O. speaks proclaim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an holy War to such Enemies of Gods Providence This is hard measure but yet such as was strictly meted out without a grain of Allowance not only by the Rigid Presbyterians but the Indulgent Tryers those Patriots of our Christian Liberty those renowned subverters of Ecclesiastical Tyranny Now there can be nothing more mischievous or intolerable in any Church or Common-wealth then these peremptory Dictators of Truth and profest Masters of Polemick Skill they are so exact and curious in their own Speculations and impose them with that severity upon the Consent of Mankind and by consequence require such hard and impracticable Conditions of Agreement and Church-Communion as must unavoidably break any society of men into Factions and Parties For what so vain as to expect an Unity of Judgment in such a multitude of uncertain and undeterminable Opinions And therefore those men that stand with such an unyielding and inflexible stiffness upon the admittance of their own Conceits make all reconcilements impossible and all ruptures incurable Every little Opinion must make a great Schism and the bounds of Churches must be as nicely determined as the Points of a Dutch-Compass Their bodies of Orthodoxy are as vast and voluminous as Aquinas Sums and they have drawn infinite numbers of wanton and peevish Questions into the Articles of their Belief and now when they have swoln up their Faith to such a mighty bulk and refined it to such a delicate subtlety 't is unavoidable but that this must perpetuate Disputes and Divisions to all eternity And for this reason it is that these perverse and imperious Asserters are the most insufferable sort of men in any Christian Commonwealth in that they are such incorrigible enemies to peace and are so good for nothing else but to raise disturbances and contentions in the Church So that though we should suppose Liberty of Religion to be the common and natural Right of mankind yet these Persons apparently forfeit all their Claims and Pretences to it not only because their principles are directly repugnant to the quiet of States and Kingdoms but because they invade other mens rights and offer violence to their Neighbours just Liberties And so cast themselves into the condition of Out-laws and Banditi that once indeed had a natural Right of Protection from the Government under which they were born but if they will not submit to the
aside their Prejudices corrupt Interests and Passions they would see at first view that this Principle is not foreign unto what is in an hundred places declared and taught in the Scripture But Sir Big words break no shins nor will Brags and Threatnings pass for current Demonstrations This is the only thing to be proved and the Principle it self refuses to accept of any other evidence but what is expresly approved and warranted by holy Writ yet when he comes to vouch its sacred Authority he only gives in his own Affidavit And if you will take his word you may rest assured there are hundred of Texts in the sacred Volume that have adopted the Patronage of his Cause though at present he is not at leisure to check and rebuke our Confidence with one single Testimony And therefore is it not strange that when the Issue of the whole Controversie depends so absolutely upon this Performance yet whenever they are forced upon its Attempt they still adjourn the Dispute and respite the only Proof that we demand and they ought to produce to a fairer and more seasonable Opportunity And this has ever been one of their most serviceable Arts of trifling in matters of a more remote Concernment and secondary Evidence they are confident and abound with Noise and Reasoning but when they come to approach the Vitals of the Question their Fury immediately abates and they are struck with a sudden speechlessness and you must wait for the farther Prosecution of their Argument till they are restored to the Power of Speech and use of Tongue and then do they entertain you with all the old Tale over again till they come just to the former difficulty and then are they seized upon by the former Astonishment And by this Artifice have they so long kept up this Controversie in spite of so many publick and dishonourable Baffles They have always been brisk and talkative in the beginning of the Dispute till they are run up into the main difficulty and driven into the streights of the Enquiry and there they fling down their Arms sometimes cry Quater and sometimes escape by flight and so at present the War ends and Peace ensues till some other pert Fellow chance to take up the Cudgels and he uses the same Play till he is brought to the same foil and there is an end of him and so on from Generation to Generation And hence it is not unobservable that all their Writers have ever begun and ended with Cartwright and as he wrangled himself into Obedience and Conformity so have they all at length either disputed themselves out of their former folly or into a farther Madness And the zeal of their warmest Bigots has ever ended either in a peaceable Reduction to the Church or in some wilder and more extravagant separation By continual wrangling they contract a sowr and froward Humour Every thing annoys their fretful and exulcerated Minds They are peevish and displeased with their own Friends and their own Fraternity and this transports them into some new-fangled Pranks and Projects Hence Coppingers Raptures and Visions and familiar Conferences with Almighty God hence Hackets Ecstasies and Revelations and blasphemous Prophesies and hence the mad Frekes and Treasons of Penry that precious Martyr of Jesus Christ. An habitual discontent and restlesness of mind heated their choler and melancholy bloud into perfect Frenzy and Outrage But the most remarkable Instance of this Capricious Humour is the story of Robert Brown who you know left Cartwright and the Disciplinarians in Babylon as well as the Church of England and could find no Church in the World pure enough for his own Communion till he had establish'd one of his own Draught and Projectment and then nothing was or could be agreeable to the Word of God but what was contained in his Pamphlets of Reformation But having run his Followers into such an obstinate and unfortunate Schism the man himself becomes unsetled in his own mind and unconstant to his own Principles and consumes the Remainder of his days in discontent and restlesness of Thoughts Sometimes in his lucid Intervals he would suffer himself to be reclaimed to some sobriety of behaviour by and by in a sullen and peevish humour he falls into his old fits of Raving and then every thing dislikes him and he falls out with his own draughts of Reformation Anon in a pensive and melancholy mood he breaks all into Tears and Invectives against Cartwright and the Disciplinarian Brethren the natural Pursuance of whose Principles had run him into all those miseries and Calamities of life and thus by reason of his frequent Relentings and perpetual Relapses the miserable Wretch was continually tossed from Gaol to Gaol till having tried his Fortune in two and thirty Prisons and being tired with grief and poverty he at last setles in Conformity for a good Benefice where he lived to a great Age without making any more disturbances and defections in the Church till he died frekish in Northampton Gaol whither he had been committed for breach of peace and disorderly behaviour and so as it was meet perish'd this great Prophet in that little Ierusalem And 't is nothing but this mixture of Pride and Peevishness that bewitches men into a love of Schisms and Divisions they are so highly conceited of themselves and so willing to censure and despise others that nothing shall either suit or satisfie their humour unless it be of their own ordering and contrivance And then must these phantastick Sots attempt to reform the World they must be sure to condemn and vilifie the wisdom of Superiours and fancy themselves as Men appointed by special Providence to give check to the errours and follies of Mankind And what so delicious to people of this complexion as to be the first Founders of Changes and Innovations And the most famous Impostors and Enthusiasts of all Ages have ever bewrayed rank symptoms of this spightful humour both in their principles and practices And I know some Men in whose haughty and contracted Looks Schism and Singularity are as legible as if they carried the mark of a thorough godly Reformation in their Foreheads and what will not such Persons attempt or endure for the glory and satisfaction of leading a Party § 3. In the next place to skip over his old complaint of the vehemence of my stile he adds a caution of his own to limit and explain this general Position viz. That nothing ought to be established in the Worship of God as a part of that Worship or made constantly necessary in its observance without the Warranty before mentioned for this is expresly contended for by them who maintain it and who reject nothing upon the Authority of it but what they can prove to be a pretended part of Religious Worship as such This is another eminent instance of their shuffling way of talk for whereas this Principle was first framed and managed by themselves as the most forcible
with an opinion of the antecedent Necessity of the thing it self Now from hence how natural is it to conclude that the Yoke of the Mosaical Institutions consisted in their Imposition on the minds of men with an Opinion of their necessity antecedent to that Imposition when Heaven and Earth stand not at a wider distance than these Propositions No Train of Consequences nothing but Iacobs Ladder unless our Author be able to fly can ever convey him from one to the other And if he shall undertake to make good the Logick of his Conclusion I will cross my self at his Confidence but if he shall perform it I will fall down and worship for to me it would be Prodigie and Miracle and that man need not in my opinion despair of removing Mountains who thinks he can prove that because humane Authority cannot impair the Liberty of our minds but by pretence of an antecedent Obligation to its Commands that therefore when God himself abridges it he must do it by vertue of some authoritative obligation antecedent to his own Impositions when his authority is the first Fountain and original Reason of all Obligations and therefore 't is an infinite contradiction to the nature of things to talk of any Authority antecedent or superiour to the divine Law And this is the evident Reason of my Conclusion that the Nature of our internal Liberty relates to the power of God over the minds of men and so is in its self uncapable of being restrain'd or imposed upon by any other Jurisdiction and therefore whatever restraints our Superiours may lay upon our Practices provided they do not bind us with an Opinion of some necessity stamp't upon the things themselves antecedent to their Commands that is no abatement to the inward Liberty of our minds which nothing can abridge but the Authority of God himself and therefore unless they pretend an antecedent and authoritative Obligation tied upon the Consciences of men by his own immediate and explicite Command whatever they may bind upon them by virtue of their own Authority though it may be blameable upon other accounts yet it cannot be charged of offering violence to the Rights of Christian Liberty So that though their Laws cannot of themselves restrain it unless by pretence of an antecedent Necessity imprinted upon the things themselves by virtue of a Divine Command yet the Laws of God may because they are the formal Reason of their restraint and the ground of their necessity But he adds That when St. Peter disputes against the Mosaick Rites and calls them a Yoke which neither they nor their Fathers-were able to bear and St. Paul chargeth Believers to stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free they respect onely Mens practice with regard unto an Authoritative Obligation thereunto which they pleaded to be now expired and removed Whereby however he intends to shuffle with his vulgar Reader he apparently grants all that is desired or demanded viz. That all the Apostolical Discourses upon this subject respect not the bare practice of these things but their practice upon the account of the Authoritative Obligation of the Law of Moses for nothing less was pretended by the Jews so that the onely thing that made them prejudicial to the Claims of Christian Liberty was an Opinion of their necessity by virtue of that antecedent Obligation which being repeal'd their practice upon other grounds and reasons was not thought to infringe or check with the Rights and Priviledges of the Gospel And for this we have the unquestionable warrant of their own Examples when they not onely submitted to Restraints in the Exercise of their own Liberty but prescribed it in some Cases and Circumstances as a Duty to other Christians that they would take heed lest their Liberty should become a stumbling block to them that are weak Though they were intirely free from any Obligation tied upon them by virtue of the Law of Moses yet did St. Paul se◠fresh restraints upon them by virtue of his Apostolical Authority And now were it not strange that Men should be bound to yield more to the humour of a peevish Jew than to the Commands of a Christian Magistrate For the first ground and reason of his imposing their Obligation was then nothing but meer prudence and condescension to their folly but in our case 't is matter of Duty and Obedience For in the days of the Apostles nothing less was pleaded by the Jewish Christians for the necessity of their Ceremonies than the unchangeable Obligation of the Law of Moses and yet for the sake of peace they would submit so far to their strong Prejudices as outwardly to comply with their weak demands though it were with some hazard of forfeiting their Christian Liberty for it was not impossible but that their complyance might have confirmed the Jews in their obstinacy and have drawn in the Gentiles to an imitation of their example and so have begun a Prescription for the necessary observance of the Law of Moses to all Ages of the Church of Christ. Whereas in our case the danger of that pretence is as much abolish't as Circumcision it self it being a granted and establish't truth among all the dissenting Parties of Christendom unless we may except the Judaising Sabbatarians who do somewhat more than squint toward Moses that the Ceremonial Law is for ever rescinded to all intents and purposes and no Magistrate pretends a Power of imposing things indifferent by virtue of a Divine and perpetual Obligation but onely by force of a transient and temporary Institution of Humane Authority for the ends of Discipline the Uniformity of Worship and the security of Government § 4. And therefore our Authors next Inference is either a woful impertinence to our present Enquiry or a bold Affront and Calumny to the publick Declarations of our Church when he concludes That if Christian Liberty be of force enough to free us from the necessary practice of indifferent things instituted by God it is at least of equal efficacy to exempt us from the necessary practice of things imposed on us in the Worship of God by Men. This implies as if the Church of England imposed the same necessity upon its own Determinations as upon the positive Laws of God notwithstanding it so industriously disclaims all Divine Impositions either for Legal or Evangelical Ceremonies and so expresly declares all its own Institutions to bind onely with an humane temporary and changeable Obligation Whereas they for so it still happens that their dearest Pretences are always the strongest and most unhappy Objections against themselves would needs obtrude upon us their own Fancies and singular Conceits as our Saviours own Commands and Institutions and call their separation from the Church of England their departure from Antichristian Idolatries and Whoredoms to the chastity of Worship and the purity of Gospel-Ordinances And as we are informed by I. O. they who hold Communion with Christ are
for coming so near home and loves to keep aloof off from present Transactions A Man may talk confident Conjectures of things that hapned so many thousand years ago and tell fine Stories of Men that begot Sons and Daughters before the Flood But 't is dangerous to talk of the History and Constitution of Affairs in the present World a Man may possibly contradict known and undeniable experience and every Novice that is never so little acquainted with the present state of Forreign Churches will be able to check and shame our confidence And there are two unhappy Books of Mr. Durel that plainly demonstrate that we are a new Race of Men in the World that are not yet sufficiently polish't and civilized for Humane Society and such as whilst we continue fond of our wild and barbarous Principles must be banish't all establish't Churches and Commonwealths in Europe § 10. In the close of this Chapter I gave an account of the nature and use of significant Ceremonies that are the same thing with external Worship under a different Name outward Worship consisting in nothing else but signifying our inward thoughts and sentiments of Religion either by Words or Actions where I shewed that it might be indifferently exprest and performed by either and that Gestures of Reverence were of the same use in the Worship of God as solemn Praises and Acknowledgements and that to bow the Body at the mentioning the Name of Jesus was the same kind of honour to his Person as to celebrate his Name with Hymns and Thanksgivings and therefore that the Magistrates Prerogative of instituting significant Ceremonies amounted to nothing more than a Power of defining the import of words and by consequence that 't is no other Usurpation upon his Subjects Consciences than if he should take upon him to refine their Language and determine the proper signification of all Phrases imployed in Divine Worship as well as in Trades Arts and Sciences and therefore I could not but profess my admiration at the prodigious confidence and impertinence of those Men that could raise such hideous Noises and Out-cries against the Laws of a setled Church and State upon such slender grounds and pretences But here our Author quickly requites me with a counter-wonder That I cannot express my dissent from others in controverted Points of the meanest and lowest concernment but with crying out Prodigies Clamours Impertinencies and the like Expressions of astonishment in my self and contempt of others I might reserve some of these great words for more important occasions And the truth is these are not any matters of the greatest importance and were our Dispute meerly concern'd in their Speculation I could discourse as coolly and carelesly about them as about a Mechanical Hypothesis or a Metaphysical Notion and should not be more eagerly concern'd to resolve the truth of the Question than I am to determine the Principle of Individuation But when the establish't Government of a Nation shall be subverted by such nice and new-invented Subtilties when never any Church in the World was more rudely treated by her own Children than the Church of England by the Puritan Schismaticks when Men shall cry out Antichrist Popery and Superstition and all for the Idolatry of a significant Ceremony and when this clamorous Exception is so vain so groundless and impertinent is it not infinitely prodigious to see Men so confident and troublesom upon such slight and vanishing appearances What scurrilous Language do they continually pour forth against the Church of England What ignominious Titles do they fasten upon her Friends and Followers And with what disdain and insolence do they spit at her way of Worship and Devotion Into what woful and endless Schisms do they drive their Proselytes from her Communion What Disturbances do they create in the State and what Ruptures in the Church And how do they imbroil and discompose the peaceable setlement of a flourishing Kingdom and all this meerly out of hatred to the Popery and Paganism of a Symbolical Rite For ever since the Scepter of Jesus Christ as they stiled their Presbyterial Consistory has been wrested from them by force of Argument and ever since the divine Right of the holy Discipline has been so shamefully exploded and that time and experience have put a baffle upon the confidence of their old Pleas and Pretences all the out-cry has been against the unwarrantableness of instituted Ceremonies which after innumerable Trains of Distinctions and Limitations about Natural and Customary and Topical Signs still spends it self against the Superstition of mystical and significant Rites so that the substance of this whole Contest is now at length resolved into this single Enquiry and upon this all their deeper and more subtle Men of Controversie spend all their Choler and Metaphysicks 'T is true they defend themselves with the Pleas of Scandal Tenderness of Conscience c. but when they use their Offensive Weapons they scarce annoy us with any other Objections than what are levell'd against the Churches Usurpation in taking upon her to appoint new Ceremonies and Institutions of Worship And therefore if ever I had reason to cry out Prodigies Clamours and Impertinencies it was upon this subject and this occasion when my Thoughts were warm with reflecting upon those mighty Troubles and Inconveniences under which these Men have brought the best establish't Church in the World by their unreasonable folly and curiosity For tell me Sir is it nothing to shake the Foundations and hazard the Overthrow of a setled Church Is it nothing to discompose the Publick Peace and Tranquillity of a setled State Is it nothing for Subjects to withdraw their assistance from their Prince and their Country Is it nothing to violate the Fundamental Laws of Love and Peace and Charity Is it nothing to rend the Body of a Church into numberless Schisms and Contentions Is it nothing to keep up implacable Feuds and Animosities among Members of the same Commonwealths Is it nothing to harden debauch't and ungodly Men against Religion it self by giving them too much reason to suspect it as a thing that is troublesom and mischievous to Government Is it nothing to encourage the designs of sacrilegious Wretches by giving them advantage under the disguise of Zeal and Purity to prey upon the Churches Antichristian Patrimony In a word Is it nothing to gore the Bowels of a Kingdom with everlasting Changes and Reformations and all this upon Pretences as thin as Sope-bubbles and as brittle as Glass-drops § 11. But let us take a brief Surveigh of their particular Reasonings and Exceptions and then our wonder at these Mens confidence will be so far from abating that it will swell into ecstasie and downright astonishment For first says our Author To say that the Magistrate has Power to institute visible signs of Gods honour to be observed in the outward Worship of God is upon the matter to say that he has Power to institute new Sacraments for so
Impenitence then repent at the rate of a publick satisfaction And hence it is that though I. O. has made the door to Atheism so wide yet that to Loyalty is as to them like that to the Kingdom of Heaven Straight is the gate and narrow is the way and few if any there be that find it So that for them to pretend to Loyalty is a ruder and more unhandsom Insolence then all their open Crimes and execrable Practices t is an affront to our understandings when Persons so stain'd with perfidious and disloyal Actions shall go about to perswade us of their Innocence and Integrity and cry up themselves for brave Subjects though they have nothing to shew for it but their zeal in Treason and Rebellion This is bold-fac'd wickedness when men that have done such base and dishonourable things shall look confidently and scorn to accept all your Acts of Indempnity unless they may challenge one of Justification To conclude Plutarch I remember somewhere commends the Wisdom of those Birds that conspired to beat the Cuckow lest in process of time it should grow up to an Hawk but what if the Cuckow had been an Hawk already and they or any of their flock had been grip'd in its Talons what sort of Birds would you have judged them had they been so silly as to suffer it to become an Hawk again only because it sung the old Cuckow Tune The Mythology is plain That Prince that has felt the pounces of these Ravening Vultures if after that he shall be perswaded to regard their fair speeches at such times as they want Power without other evident and unquestionable tokens of their Conversion deserves to be King of the Night § 10. But here our Author adds and 't is suggested a thousand times over Are not we both Protestants and shall we persecute our Brethren of the same Church and Communion with our selves No no we are Papists and Idolaters have you so often branded us with the charge of Popery and so confidently involved us in the grand Antichristian Apostasie and can you now think it a seasonable Argument to work upon our Compassion and Good Nature by declaring your selves Protestants This is an admirable motive to prevail upon the Affections of rank Papists 't is just as if our Author should hope to win us to the grant of an Indulgence by pleading as he often does that they are right Godly men when he has made an implacable hatred of all Godliness the Characteristick note of the Episcopal Clergy But he does ever did and ever will pour out his words at Random and they are any thing and we are any thing and every thing is any thing Truth to day and Heresie to morrow as it shall happen to conduce to their present Interest And therefore to be short and plain with them and to abate the Confidence of this popular pretence The name of Protestant as they use it is but a term of Faction and the word of a Party a Title to which every man may pretend that is no friend to the Pope of Rome and if he be fall'n out with the Papacy upon what Account soever that is enough to list him a Member of the Protestant Communion And if any man through the Licentiousness of his life or principles be forced even for his own security to turn Renegado to the Church of Rome he shall be immediately admitted into the Fellowship of the Reformed Churches and thus shall the Reformation be made the Sanctuary of Romulus a Refuge for Enthusiasts and Hereticks a device to draw together all the lewd and wicked people in the world to unite themselves into one body in defiance to the Roman Interest This is a wild and boundless thing and signifies nothing but popular Tumults and Confusions and shelters all the Sacriledges and Enormities in the world provided they that commit them rail at his Holiness And thus I confess was the Reformation of some places the meer effect of the Tumults and Outrages of Boors the Factions and Seditions of Mechanicks the Crafts and Artifices of Statesmen and the Ambitions of peevish and pragmatical Priests And all that some men who think themselves some of the most refined Protestants contributed to the carrying on of this great work was by breaking Church-Windows demolishing Altars defacing Shrines beating down Images doing despite to Pictures burning Libraries stealing Consecrated Plate plundering Churches of their Sacred Ornaments and adorning their own Houses with the Spoils and Reliques of Popish Trumpery And therefore we must distinguish and 't is Mr. Chillingworths distinction between Protestants and Protestants those that Protest against Imperial Edicts and those that Protest against the Corruptions of the Church of Rome Between those who only remonstrate to the Papal Apostasie and endeavour to retrieve the true ancient and Catholick Christianity and those who under this Pretence shelter State Factions and paint Reformation upon their Banners and purge the Church of Idolatry by Civil Wars and Desolations of States and cast off Allegiance to their Prince together with their Subjection to the Pope enter into Leagues and Associations raise Armies and run into all the Disorders of Treason and Disloyalty against their lawful Sovereign to extort by force of Arms the free exercise of their Religion And it would grieve a man to observe how the sober and moderate Reformers were in many places run down by seditious and hot-headed Preachers and to mention no more how Melancthon with his Disciples were supplanted by Flaccus Illyricus and his Confidents The Flaccinians because he would allow of no Seditious Counsels to carry on the work immediately impeach him of Apostasie to the Papal Cause and send their Complaints abroad to Calvin and other Patriarchs of the Reformed Churches and the good man was put to the expence of much time and paper to prove himself no Jesuite Now the Church of England disclaims the Communion as well as the Principles of these blustering Religionists she abhors Rebellion as much as Idolatry and looks upon defection from Loyalty and Allegiance as an Apostasie from the Christian Faith and therefore men of disloyal Principles or Practices do but abuse her and themselves too when they pretend to her Communion because forsooth they have a mighty spleen against the Pope and Cardinals whereas the rankest and most Jesuitical piece of Popery is the Doctrine of Treason and Rebellion And what Agreement there is between the Jesuite and the Puritan concerning the Civil Magistrate you may see parallel'd in divers material Points of Doctrine and Practice to take down the too absolute and unrestrained Power of the Monarchs of Christendom by Lysimachus Nicanor of the Society of Jesus in his Epistle to the Covenanters of Scotland And therefore what Perswasions soever they may have in other matters contrary to the Church of Rome unless they are Orthodox in this Fundamental Article of the Royal Supremacy if they are not Guelphs they are and that is as bad