reason to be angry with an eternall light because we have a changeable and a mortall faculty But however do not think thou didst contract alliance with an Angel when thou didst take thy friend into thy bosome he may be weak as well as thou art and thou mayest need pardon as well as he and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theog that man loves flattery more then friendship who would not onely have his friend but all the contingencies of his friend to humour him 5. Give thy friend counsel wisely and charitably but leave him to his liberty whether he will follow thee or no and be not angry if thy counsel be rejected for advice is no Empire and he is not my friend that will be my Judge whether I will or no. Neoptolemus had never been honoured with the victory and spoiles of Troy if he had attended to the tears and counsel of Lycomedes who being afraid to venture the young man faine would have had him sleep at home safe in his little Island He that gives advice to his friend and exacts obedience to it does not the kindnesse and ingenuity of a friend but the office and pertnesse of a Schoolmaster 6. Never be a Judge between thy friends in any matter where both set their hearts upon the victory If strangers or enemies be litigants what ever side thou favourest thou gettest a friend but when friends are the parties thou losest one 7. Never comport thy self so as that thy friend can be afraid of thee for then the state of the relation alters when a new and troublesome passion supervenes ODERUNT quos METUUNT Perfect love casteth out feare and no man is friend to a Tyrant but that friendship is Tyranny where the love is changed into fear equality into empire society into obedience for then all my kindness to him also will he no better then flattery 8. When you admonish your friend let it be without bitternesse when you chide him let it be without reproch when you praise him let it be with worthy purposes and for just causes and in friendly measures too much of that is flattery too little is envy if you doe it justly you teach him true measures but when others praise him rejoyce though they praise not thee and remember that if thou esteemest his praise to be thy disparagement thou art envious but neither just nor kind 9. When all things else are equal preferre an old friend before a new If thou meanest to spend thy friend and make a gain of him till he be weary thou wilt esteeme him as a beast of burden the worse for his age But if thou esteemest him by noble measures he will be better to thee by thy being used to him by triall and experience by reciprocation of indearments and an habituall worthiness An old friend is like old wine which when a man hath drunk he doth not desire new because he saith the old is better But every old friend was new once and if he be worthy keep the new one till he become old 10. After all this treat thy friend nobly love to be with him do to him all the worthinesses of love and fair endearment according to thy capacity and his Bear with his infirmities till they approch towards being criminal but never dissemble with him never despise him never leave him * Extra fortunam est quicquid donatur amicis Quas dederis solas semper habebis opes Mart. l. 5. ep 43. Et tamen hoc vitiū sed non leve sit licet unū Quod colit ingratas pauper amicitias Quis largitur opes veteri fidoque sodali ep 19. Give him gifts and upbraid him not †Non bellè quaedam faciunt duo sufficit unus Huic operi si vis ut loquar ipse tace Crede mihi quamvis ingentia Postume dones Authoris pereunt garrulitate sui ep 53. and refuse not his kindnesses and be sure never to despise the smallness or the impropriety of them Confirmatur amor beneficio accepto A gift saith Solomon fasteneth friendships for as an eye that dwels long upon a star must de refreshed with lesser beauties and strengthened with greens and looking-glasses lest the sight become amazed with too great a splendor so must the love of friends sometimes be refreshed with material and low Caresses lest by striving to be too divine it becomes less humane It must be allowed its share of both It is humane in giving pardon and fair construction and openness and ingenuity and keeping secrets it hath something that is divine because it is beneficent but much because it is eternal THE END TWO LETTERS TO PERSONS Changed in their RELIGION A Copy of the First Letter written to a Gentlewoman newly seduced to the Church of Rome M. B. I Was desirous of an opportunity in London to have discoursed with you concerning something of nearest concernment to you but the multitude of my little affairs hindred me and have brought upon you this trouble to read a long Letter which yet I hope you will be more willing to do because it comes from one who hath a great respect to your person and a very great charity to your soul I must confesse I was on your behalf troubled when I heard you were fallen from the Communion of the Church of England and entred into a voluntary unnecessary schism and departure from the Lawes of the King and the Communion of those with whom you have alwayes lived in charity going against those Lawes in the defence and profession of which your Husband died going from the Religion in which you were Baptized in which for so many years you lived piously and hoped for Heaven and all this without any sufficient reason without necessity or just scandall ministred to you and to aggravate all this you did it in a time when the Church of England was persecuted when she was marked with the Characterismes of her Lord the marks of the Crosse of Jesus that is when she suffered for a holy cause and a holy conscience when the Church of England was more glorious then at any time before Even when she could shew more Martyrs and Confessors then any Church this day in Christendome even then when a King died in the profession of her Religion and thousands of Priests learned and pious men suffered the spoiling of their goods rather then they would forsake one Article of so excellent a Religion So that seriously it is not easily to be imagined that any thing should move you unlesse it be that which troubled the perverse Jewes and the Heathen Greek Scandulum crucis the scandall of the Crosse You stumbled at that Rock of offence You left us because we were afflicted lessened in outward circumstances and wrapped in a cloud but give me leave only to reminde you of that sad saying of the Scripture that you may avoid the
consequent of it They that fall on this stone shall be broken in pieces but they on whom it shall fall shall be grinded to powder And if we should consider things but prudently it is a great argument that the sons of our Church are very conscientious and just in their perswasions when it is evident that we have no temporall end to serve nothing but the great end of our souls all our hopes of preferment are gone all secular regards only we still have truth on our sides and we are not willing with the losse of truth to change from a persecuted to a prosperous Church from a Reformed to a Church that will not be reformed lest we give scandall to good people that suffer for a holy conscience and weaken the hands of the afflicted of which if you had been more carefull you would have remained much more innocent But I pray give me leave to consider for you because you in your change considered so little for your self what fault what false doctrine what wicked or dangerous proposition what defect what amisse did you find in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England For its doctrine It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament all that which is in the three Creeds the Apostolical the Nicene and that of Athanasius and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councels or in any other truly such and whatsoever was condemned in these our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith their hopes of heaven was upon this and a good life their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone they denied Communion to none that professed this faith This is the Catholick faith so saith the Creed of Athanasius and unlesse a company of men have power to alter the faith of God whosoever live and die in this faith are intirely Catholick and Christian So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dlspute that the Church had for 400 or 500 years and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith if we live according to our belief 2. For the Liturgy of the Church of England I shall not need to say much because the case will be very evident First Because the disputers of the Church of Rome have not been very forward to object any thing against it they cannot charge it with any evil 2. Because for all the time of K. Ed. 6 and till the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth your people came to our Churches and prayed with us till the Bull of Pius Quintus came out upon temporal regards and made a Schism by forbidding the Queens Subjects to pray as by Law was here appointed though the prayers were good and holy as themselves did believe That Bull enjoyned Recusancy and made that which was as an act of Rebellion and Disobedience Schisme to be the character of your Roman Catholikes And after this what can be supposed wanting in order to salvation We have the Word of God the Faith of the Apostles the Creeds of the Primitive Church the Articles of the four first generall Councels a holy Liturgy excellent Prayers perfect Sacraments Faith and Repentance the ten Commandements and the Sermons of Christ and all the precepts and counsels of the Gospel We teach the necessity of good works and require and strictly exact the severity of a holy life We live in obedience to God and are ready to die for him and doe so when he requires us so to doe We speak honour of his most holy Name we worship him at the mention of his Name we confesse his Attributes we love his Servants we pray for all men we love all Christians even our most erring Brethren we confesse our sinnes to God and to our Brethren whom we have offended and to Gods Ministers in cases of Scandall or of a troubled Conscience We commnicate often we are enjoyned to receive the holy Sacrament thrice every year at least Our Priests absolve the penitent our Bishops ordain Priests and confirm baptized persons and blesse their people and intercede for them and what could here be wanting to Salvation what necessity forced you from us I dare not suspect it was a temporal regard that drew you away but I am sure it could be no spirituall But now that I have told you and made you to consider from whence you went give me leave to represent to you and tell you whither you are gone that you may understand the nature and conditions of your change For doe not think your self safe because they tell you that you are come to the Church You are indeed gone from one Church to another from a better to a worse as will appear in the induction the particulars of which before I reckon give me leave to give you this advice if you mean in this affair to understand what you do it were better you enquired what your Religion is then what your Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old or by new interpretations may elude ancient truths or may change your Creed or may pretend to be the Spouse of Christ when she is idolatrous that is adulterous to God Your Religion is that which you must and therefore may competently understand You must live in it and grow in it and govern all the actions of your life by it and in all questions concerning the Church you are to choose your Church by the Religion and therefore this ought first and last to be enquired after Whether the Romane Church be the Catholique Church must depend upon so many uncertain enquiries is offered to be proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly strait and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unlesse it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Roman Church were the Catholike that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendome must also perish like Heathens which thing before any man can beleeve he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman
of men there are I hope and charitably suppose many pious men that love God and live good lives yet there are very many doctrines taught by your men which are very ill Friends to a good life I instance in your Indulgences and pardons In which vitious men put a great confidence and rely greatly upon them The doctrine of Purgatory which gives countenance to a sort of Christians who live half to God and half to the world and for them this doctrine hath found out a way that they may go to Hell and to Heaven too The Doctrine that the Priests absolution can turn a trifling repentance into a perfect and a good and that suddenly too and at any time even on our death-bed or the minute before your death is a dangerous heap of falshoods and gives licence to wicked people and teaches men to reconcile a wicked debauched life with the hopes of Heaven And then for penances and temporal satisfaction which might seem to be as a plank after the shipwrack of the duty of Repentance to keep men in awe and to preserve them from sinking in an Ocean of Impiety it comes to just nothing by your doctrine for there are so many easie wayes of Indulgences and getting Pardons so many con-fraternities stations priviledg'd Altars little Offices Agnus Dei's amulets hallowed devices swords roses hats Churchyards and the fountain of these annexed indulgences the Pope himself and his power of granting what and when and to whom he list that he is a very unfortunate man that needs to smart with penances and after all he may choose to suffer any at all for he may pay them in Purgatory if he please and he may come out of Purgatory upon reasonable terms in case he should think it fit to go thither So that all the whole duty of Repentance seems to be destroyed with devices of men that seek power and gain and find errour and folly insomuch that if I had a mind to live an evil Life and yet hope for Heaven at last I would be of your religion above any in the world But I forget I am writing a Letter I shall therefore desire you to consider upon the premises which is the safer way For surely it is lawfull for a man to serve God without Images but that to worship Images is lawfull is not so sure It is lawfull to pray to God alone to confesse him to be true and every man a liar to call no man Master upon Earth but to relie upon God teaching us But it is at least hugely disputable and not at all certain that any man or society of men can be infallible that we may put our trust in Saints in certain extraordinary Images or burne Incense and offer consumptive oblations to the Virgin Mary or make vows to persons of whose state or place or capacities or condition we have no certain revelation we are sure we doe well when in the holy Communion we worship God and Jesus Christ our Saviour but they who also worship what seems to be bread are put to strange shifts to make themselves believe it to be lawfull It is certainly lawfull to believe what we see and feel but it is an unnaturall thing upon pretence of faith to disbelieve our eyes when our sense and our faith can better be reconciled as it is in the question of the Reall presence as it is taught by the Church of England So that unlesse you mean to prefer a danger before safety temptation to unholinesse before a severe and a holy religion unlesse you mean to lose the benefit of your prayers by praying what you perceive not and the benefit of the Sacrament in great degrees by falling from Christs institution and taking half instead of all unlesse you desire to provoke God to jealousie by Images and Man to jealousie in professing a Religion in which you may in many cases have leave to forfeit your faith and lawfull trust unlesse you will still continue to give scandall to those good people with whom you have lived in a common Religion and weaken the hearts of Gods afflicted ones unlesse you will choose a Catechism without the second Commandment and a Faith that grows bigger or lesse as men please and a Hope that in many degrees relyes on men and vain confidences and a Charity that damns all the world but your selves unlesse you will doe all this that is suffer an abuse in your Prayers in the Sacrament in the Commandments in Faith in Hope in Charity in the Communion of Saints and your duty to your Supreme you must return to the bosome of your Mother the Church of ENGLAND from whence you have fallen rather weakly then maliciously and I doubt not but you will find the Comfort of it all your Life and in the Day of your Death and in the Day of Judgment If you will not yet I have freed mine own soule and done an act of Duty and Charity which at least you are bound to take kindly if you will not entertain it obediently Now let me adde this that although most of these objections are such things which are the open and avowed doctrines or practices of your Church and need not to be proved as being either notorious or confessed yet if any of your Guides shall seem to question any thing of it I will bind my selfe to verifie it to a tittle and in that sense too which I intend them that is so as to be an objection obliging you to return under the pain of folly or heresie or disobedience according to the subject matter And though I have propounded these things now to your consideration yet if it be desired I shall represent them to your eye so that even your self shall be able to give sentence in the behalf of truth In the mean time give me leave to tell you of how much folly you are guilty in being moved by such mock-arguments as your men use when they meet with women and tender consciences and weaker understandings The first is where was your Church before Luther Now if you had called upon them to speak something against your religion from Scripture or right reason or Universal Tradition you had been secure as a Tortoise in her shell a cart pressed with sheavs could not have oppressed your cause or person though you had confessed you understood nothing of the mysteries of succession doctrinal or personall For if we can make it appeare that our religion was that which Christ and his Apostles taught let the truth suffer what eclipses or prejudices can be supposed let it be hid like the holy fire in the captivity yet what Christ and his Apostles taught us is eternally true and shall by some means or other be conveyed to us even the enemies of truth have been conservators of that truth by which we can confute their errors But if you still aske where it was before Luther I answer it was there where it was after even in
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and I know no warrant for any other religion and if you will expect I should shew any society of men who professed all the doctrines which are now expressed in the confession of the Church of England I shall tell you it is unreasonable because some of our truths are now brought into our publick confessions that they might be oppos'd against your errors before the occasion of which there was no need of any such confessions till you made many things necessary to be professed which are not lawfull to be believed For if we believe your superinduc'd follies we shall do unreasonably unconscionably and wickedly but the questions themselves are so uselesse abstracting from the accidental necessity which your follies have brought upon us that it had been happy if we had never heard of them more then the Saints and Martyrs did in the first ages of the Church but because your Clergy have invaded the liberty of the Church and multiplyed the dangers of damnation and pretend new necessities and have introduc'd new articles and affright the simple upon new pretensions and slight the very institution and the Commands of Christ and of the Apostles and invent new Sacramentals constituting Ceremonies of their own head and promise grace along with the use of them as if they were not Ministers but Lords of the Spirit and teach for doctrines the commandments of men and make void the Commandment of God by their tradition and have made a strange body of Divinity therefore it is necessary that we should immure our Faith by the refusal of such vain and superstitious dreams but our faith was completed at first it is no other then that which was delivered to the Saints and can be no more for ever So that it is a foolish demand to require that we should shew before Luther a systeme of Articles declaring our sense in these questions It was long before they were questions at all and when they were made questions they remained so a long time and when by their severall pieces they were determined this part of the Church was oppressed with a violent power and when God gave opportunity then the yoke was broken and this is the whole progresse of this affair But if you will still insist upon it then let the matter be put into equall ballances and let them shew any Church whose confession of Faith was such as was obtruded upon you at Trent and if your Religion be Pius Quartus his Creed at Trent then we also have a question to ask and that is Where was your Religion before Trent The Councel of Trent determined that the souls departed before the day of Judgment enjoy the Beatificall Vision It is certain this Article could not be shewn in the Confession of any of the ancient Churches for most of the Fathers were of another opinion But that which is the greatest offence of Christendome is not only that these doctrines which we say are false were yet affirmed but that those things which the Church of God did alwayes reject or held as Uncertain should be made Articles of Faith and so become parts of your religion and of these it is that I again ask the question which none of your side shall ever be able to answer for you Where was your Religion before Trent I could instance in many particulars but I shall name one to you which because the thing of it self is of no great consequence it will appear the more unreasonable and intolerable that your Church should adopt it into the things of necessary belief especially since it was onely a matter of fact and they took the false part too For in the 21. Sess Chap. 4. it is affirmed That although the holy Fathers did give the Sacrament of the Eucharist to Infants yet they did it without any necessity of salvation that is they did not believe it necessary to their salvation which is notoriously false and the contrary is marked out with the black-lead of every man almost that reads their Works and yet your Councel sayes this is sine controversiâ credendum to be believed without all controversie and all Christians forbidden to believe or teach otherwise So that here it is made an Article of Faith amongst you that a man shall neither believe his reason nor his eyes and who can shew any confession of Faith in which all the Trent doctrine was professed and enjoyned under pain of damnation De potest Eccles cons 12. and before the Councel of Constance the doctrine touching the Popes power was so new so decried that as Gerson sayes he hardly should have escaped the note of Heresie that would have said so much as was there defined so that in that Article which now makes a great part of your belief where was your Religion before the Councel of Constance and it is notorious that your Councel of Constance determined the doctrine of the half communion with a Non obstante to Christs institution that is with a defiance to it or a noted observed neglect of it and with a profession it was otherwise in the Primitive Church Where then was your Religion before John Hus and Hierom of Pragues time against whom that Councel was convened But by this instance it appears most certainly that your Church cannot shew her confessions immediately after Christ and therefore if we could not shew ours immediately before Luther it were not halfe so much for since you receded from Christs Doctrine we might well recede from yours and it matters not who or how many or how long they professed your doctrine if neither Christ nor his Apostles did teach it so that if these Articles constitute your Church your Church was invisible at the first and if ours was invisible afterwards it matters not For yours was invisible in the dayes of light and ours was invisible in the dayes of darknesse For our Church was alwayes visible in the reflections of Scripture and he that had his eyes of faith and reason might easily have seen these truths all the way which constitute our Church But I adde yet farther that our Church before Luther was there where your Church was in the same place and in the same persons for divers of the errors which have been amongst us reformed were not the constituent Articles of your Church before Luthers time for before the last Councels of your Church a man might have been of your Communion upon easier terms and Indulgences were indeed a practice but no Article of Faith before your men made it so and that very lately and so were many other things besides So that although your men cozen the credulous and the simple by calling yours The old Religion yet the difference is vast between Truth and their affirmative even as much as between old Errors and new Articles For although Ignorance and Superstition had prepared the oare yet the Councels of Constance and Basil and Trent especially
But it is thus in every error Fifteen Bishops of Jerusalem in immediate succession were circumcised believing it to be necessary so to be with these other Christian Churches who were of the uncircumcision did communicate Suppose now that these Bishops had not onely thought it necessary for themselves but for others too this argument you see was ready you of the uncircumcision who doe communicate with us think that we may be saved though we are circumcised but we doe not think that you who are not circumcised can be saved therefore it is the safest way to be circumcised I suppose you would not have thought their argument good neither would you have had your children circumcised But this argument may serve the Presbyterians as well as the Papists We are indeed very kind to them in our sentences concerning their salvation and they are many of them as unkind to us If they should argue so as you doe and say you Episcopall men think we Presbyterians though in errors can be saved and we say so too but we think you Episcopal men are Enemies of the Kingdome of Jesus Christ and therefore we think you in a damnable condition therefore it is safer to be a Presbyterian I know not what your men would think of the argument in their hands I am sure we had reason to complain that we are used very ill on both hands for no other cause but because we are charitable But it is not our case alone but the old Catholicks were used just so by the Donatists in this very argument as we are used hy your men The Donatists were so fierce against the Catholicks that they would re-baptize all them who came to their Churches from the other But the Catholicks as knowing the Donatists did give right Baptisme admitted their Converts to Repentance but did not re-baptize them Upon this score the Donatists triumphed saying You Catholicks confesse our Baptisme to be good and so say we But we Donatists deny your Baptisme to be good therefore it is safer to be of our side then yours Now what should the Catholicks say or doe Should they lie for God and for Religion and to serve the ends of Truth say the Donatists Baptisme was not good That they ought not Should they damne all the Donatists and make the rent wider It was too great already What then They were quiet and knew that the Donatists sought advantages by their own fiercenesse and trampled upon the others charity but so they hardened themselves in error and became evill because the others were good I shall trouble you no further now but desire you to consider of these things with as much caution as they were written with charity Till I hear from you I shall pray to God to open your heart and your understanding that you may return from whence you are fallen and repent and do your first work Which that you may doe is the hearty desire of Your very affectionate Friend and Servant JER TAYLOR The Second Letter Written to a Person newly converted to the Church of England MADAM I Blesse GOD I am safely arrived where I desired to be after my unwilling departure from the place of your abode and danger And now because I can have no other expression of my tendernesse I account that I have a treble Obligation to signifie it by my care of your biggest and eternall interest And because it hath pleased God to make me an Instrument of making you to understand in some fair measure the excellencies of a true and holy Religion and that I have pointed out such follies and errours in the Roman Church at which your understanding being forward and pregnant did of it self start as at imperfect ill-looking Propositions give me leave to doe that now which is the purpose of my Charity that is teach you to turn this to the advantage of a holy life that you may not only be changed but converted For the Church of England whither you are now come is not in condition to boast her self in the reputation of changing the opinion of a single person though never so excellent She hath no temporall ends to serve which must stand upon fame and noises all that she can design is to serve God to advance the honour of the Lord and the good of souls and to rejoyce in the Crosse of Christ First Therefore I desire you to remember that as now you are taught to pray both publickly and privately in a Language understood so it is intended your affections should be forward in proportion to the advantages which your prayer hath in the understanding part For though you have been often told and have heard that ignorance is the Mother of devotion you will find that the proposition is unnaturall and against common sense and experience because it is impossible to desire that of which we know nothing unlesse the desire it self be fantasticall and illusive it is necessary that in the same proportion in which we understand any good thing in the same we shall also desire it and the more particular and minute your notices are the more passionate and materiall also your affections will be towards it and if they be good things for which we are taught to pray the more you know them the more reason you have to love them It is monstrous to think that devotion that is passionate desires of religious things and the earnest prosecutions of them should be produced by any thing of ignorance or less perfect notices in any sense Since therefore you are taught to pray so that your understanding is the praecentor or the Master of the Quire and you know what you say your desires are made humane religious expresse materiall for these are the advantages of prayers and Liturgies well understood be pleased also to remember that now if you be not also passionate and devout for the things you mention you will want the Spirit of prayer and be more inexcusable then before In many of your prayers before especially the publique you heard a voice but saw and perceived nothing of the sense and what you understood of it was like the man in the Gospel that was half blind he saw men walking like Trees and so you possibly might perceive the meaning of it in generall You knew when they came to the Epistle when to the Gospel when the Introit when the Pax when any of the other more generall periods were but you could have nothing of the Spirit of prayer that is nothing of the devotion and the holy affections to the particular excellencies which could or ought there to have been represented but now you are taught how you may be really devout it is made facil and easie and there can want nothing but your consent and observation 2. Whereas now you are taken off from all humane confidences from relying wholly and almost ultimately upon the Priests power and externall act from reckoning prayers by numbers from forms and out-sides
you are not to think that the Priests power is lesse that the Sacraments are not effective that your prayers may not be repeated frequently but you are to remember that all outward things and Ceremonies all Sacraments and Institutions work their effect in the vertue of Christ by some morall Instrument The Priests in the Church of England can absolve you as much as the Roman Priests could fairly pretend but then we teach that you must first be a penitent and a returning person and our absolution does but manifest the work of God and comfort and instruct your Conscience direct and manage it You shall be absolved here but not unlesse you live an holy life So that in this you will find no change but to the advantage of a strict life we will not flatter you and cozen your dear soul by pretended ministeries but we so order our discourses and directions that all our ministrations may be really effective and when you receive the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist or the Lords Supper it does more good here then they doe there because if they consecrate ritely yet they doe not communicate you fully and if they offer the whole representative Sacrifice yet they doe not give you the whole Sacrament onely we enjoyn that you come with so much holinesse that the grace of God in your heart may be the principall and the Sacrament in our hands may be the ministring and assisting part we doe not promise great effects to easie trifling dispositions because we would not deceive but really procure to you great effects and therefore you are now to come to our offices with the same expectations as before of pardon of grace of sanctification but you must doe something more of the work your self that we may not doe lesse in effect then you have in your expectation We will not to advance the reputation of our power deceive you into a less blessing 3. Be carefull that you doe not flatter your self that in our Communion you may have more ease and liberty of life for though I know your pious soul desires passionately to please God and to live religiously yet I ought to be carefull to prevent a temptation lest it at any time should discompose your severity Therefore as to confession to a Priest which how it is usually practised amongst the Roman party your self can very well account and you have complain'd sadly that it is made an ordinary act easie and transient sometime matter of temptation oftentimes impertinent but suppose it free from such scandall to which some mens folly did betray it yet the same severity you 'l find among us for though we will not tell a lye to help a sinner and say that is necessary which is only appointed to make men doe themselves good yet we advise and commend it and doe all the work of souls to all those people that will be saved by all means to deout persons that make Religion the businesse of their lives and they that doe not so in the Churches of the Roman Communion as they find but little advantage by peroidical confessions so they feel but little awfulnesse and severity by the injunction you must confesse to God all your secret actions you must advise with a holy man in all the affairs of your soul you will be but an ill friend to your self if you conceale from him the state of your spirituall affairs We desire not to hear the circumstance of every sinne but when matter of justice is concerned or the nature of the sinne is changed that is when it ought to be made a Question and you will find that though the Church of England gives you much liberty from the bondage of innumerable Ceremonies and humane devices yet in the matter of holinesse you will be tied to very great service but such a service as is perfect freedome that is the service of God and the love of the holy Jesus and a very strict religious life for we doe not promise heaven but upon the same terms it is promised us that is Repentance towards God and Faith in our Lord Jesus and as in faith we make no more to be necessary then what is made so in holy Scripture so in the matter of Repentance we give you no easie devices and suffer no lessening definitions of it but oblige you to that strictnesse which is the condition of being saved and so expressed to be by the infallible Word of God but such as in the Church of Rome they doe not so much stand upon Madam I am weary of my Journey and although I did purpose to have spoken many things more yet I desire that my not doing it may be laid upon the account of my wearinesse all that I shall adde to the maine businesse is this 4. Read the Scripture diligently and with an humble spirit and in it observe what is plain and believe and live accordingly Trouble not your self with what is difficult for in that your duty is not described 5. Pray frequently and effectually I had rather your prayers should be often then long It was well said of Petrarch Magno verborum fraeno uti decet cum superiore colloquentem When you speak to your superiour you ought to have a bridle upon your tongue much more when you speak to God I speak of what is decent in respect of our selves and our infinite distances from God but if love makes you speak speak on so shall your prayers be full of charity and devotion Nullus est amore superior ille te coget ad veniam qui me ad multiloquium Love makes God to be our friend and our approches more united and acceptable and therefore you may say to God the same love which made me speak will also move thee to hear and pardon Love and devotion may enlarge your Letanies but nothing else can unlesse Authority does interpose 6. Be curious not to communicate but with the true Sonnes of the Church of England lest if you follow them that were amongst us but are gone out from us because they were not of us you be offended and tempted to impute their follies to the Church of England 7. Trouble your self with no controversies willingly but how you may best please God by a strict and severe conversation 8. If any Protestant live loosely remember that he dishonours an excellent Religion and that it may be no more laid upon the charge of our Church then the ill lives of most Christians may upon the whole Religion 9. Let no man or woman affright you with declamations and scaring words of Heretick and Damnation and Changeable for these words may be spoken against them that return to light as well as to those that goe to darknesse and that which men of all sides can say it can be of effect to no side upon its own strength or pretension The End Post-script MADAM IF you shall think it fit that these papers passe further then your own eye and Closet I desire they may be consig'nd into the hands of my worthy friend Dr. Wedderburne For I doe not only expose all my sicknesse to his cure but I submit my weaknesses to his censure being as confident to find of him charity for what is pardonable as remedy for what is curable but indeed Madam I look upon that worthy man as an Idea of friendship and if I had no other notices of Friendship or conversation to instruct me then his it were sufficient For whatsoever I can say of Friendship I can say of his and as all that know him reckon him amongst the best Physicians so I knew him worthy to be reckoned amongst the best friends A Catalogue of some Books Printed for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane London I. Books written by H Hammond D.D. A Paraphrase and Annotations upon all the Books of the New Test in fol. 2. The Practical Catechisme with other English Treatises of the same Author in two vol. 4. 3. Dissertationes quatuor quibus Episcopatûs Jura ex S. Scripturis Primaeva Antiquitate adstruuntur contra sententiam D. Blondelii aliorum in 4. 4. A Letter of Resolution of six Queries in 12. 5. Of Schisme A Defence of the Church of Engl. against the Exceptions of the Romanists in 12. 6. Of Fundamentals in a notion referring to practice in 12. 7. Paraenesis or seasonable exhortatory to all true sons of the Church of England in 12. 8. A Collection of several Replies and Vindications most of them in defence of the Church of England lately published in three Volumes in 4. 9. A Review of the Paraphrase and Annotations on all the Books of the New Testament with some additions and alterations in 8. II. Books and Sermons written by Jer Taylor D.D. viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Course of Sermons for all the Sundayes of the Year together with a Discourse of the Divine Institution Necessity Sacrednesse and Separation of the Office Ministeriall in fol. 2. The History of the Life and Death of the Ever-blessed Jesus Christ second Edition in fol. 3. The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living in 12. 4. The Rule and Exerciseâ— of Holy Dying in 12. 5. The Golden Grove 〈◊〉 A Manual of daily Prayers â—â—ted to the dayes of the Week together with a short method of Peace and Holinesse in 12. 6. The Doctrine and Practice of Repentance rescued from Popular Errours in a large 8. Newly published 7. A Collection of Polemical and Moral Discourses in fol. Newly published The Mysterie of Jesuitisme discovered in certain Letters Written upon occasion of the present differences at Sorbonne between the Jansenists and the Molinists New III. Books written by M. Th Pierce Rector of Brington 1. THe Sinner Impleaded in his own Court wherein are represented the great discouragements from Sinning which the Sinner receiveth from Sin it self 2. A Correct Copy of some Notes concernig Gods Decrees especially of Reprobation The 2. Edition Now at the Presse with some Additionals 3. The Divine Philanthropie defended 4. The Divine Verity defended