as Civil It is no less dangerous to teach that People may rebel upon grievances on the outward State and that Nature then teaches them by the meer force of rationality to constitute another Governour or institute another Government My answer to this is manifold first Who shall be judge of those grievances If you say the Common People alas what incompetent Judges are they in weighty matters especially where they are concerned themselves If you say the Nobles and chief of the People why these are not infallible see Num. 16.1 2 3. Corah Dathan and Abiram and two hundred and fifty Princes of the Assembly famous in the Congregation men of renown gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said unto them ye take too much upon you Wherefore lift you up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord Will ye put out the eyes of this people c. It is as possible now adays people may be ignorant or ambitious as in former times But be it granted for argument sake there be a real grievance is not the Law open to redress it Will not the great Council of the Kingdom think you move the King to give him up to justice who durst advise the King to go against Law thereby weakening his Throne which is upheld by Justice thereby dishonouring the King and making him less valuable to his People Will nothing serve but stretching forth the hand against Gods Anointed or rising up in Rebellion Certainly both these courses are as plainly forbid in Scripture as the Word of God can speak it If objected But those that killed Tyrants were always admired for sacrificing their own lives for the good of their Country I answer It was greatly done for Lucretia Cato or Cleopatra in their circumstances to kill themselves but yet done wickedly and so here only the greatness of the action causeth men to take false measures of it and so admire and commend it especially if good follow upon it it more blinds their judgments But you must not judge by the good event the goodness of the action for sometimes a bad one hath a good event and a good one bad success nor by the good meaning for Peter meant well when he drew his Sword to defend his Master but by a lawful call they had to undertake it Now who made those private persons judges or avengers in such cases Or how can they be sure that Anarchy and Confusion will not follow upon such attempts Which if it do they have sacrificed their lives to the ruine of their Country There ought to be none but lawful courses taken to redress unlawful grievances but Rebellion is judged an unlawful course both by the Law of God and the Law of the Land Again grant it but lawful in any one case to rebel and you give Rebels an Inch which they will soon make an Ell And every small grievance shall be made that very case or cousin-german to it As men we ought to consider humane frailty even in Governouts and bear with small faults considering what great benefits we still enjoy by their Government I have read of a Nation that upon the death of their King would permit by a Law made to that effect that every body might do what was right in his own eyes for three days but the murtherings and plunderings and outrages in so short a time were usually so many that the next King needed not so much his own virtues as the remembrance of the interregnum Vices to endear his Government to his People even Tyranny it self is not so bad as Anarchy There is a mean between Rebellion and losing our Liberty even when it is intrencht upon namely a patient waiting until a redress may legally be had and Reason and Law be heard in cold bloud to speak untill we give away our Liberties or give up our Laws we have still a birthright to them even under oppression And if we repent of our sins which caused God to set such a Governour over us he can change the Governour 's heart for it is in his hands to turn whether he pleases or he can change the Governour for another provided we change first One way or other we may hope deliverance will come for God doth not willingly grieve the Children of men but until it do come we must patiently bear Gods scourge in this kind as we do sickness ill weather at Sea or Land Pestilence Famine or the like This is Christian Doctrine of the Church of England witness the first part of the Homily against Rebellion where having said God gives a People such Kings usually as they deserveat subjoyns for Subjects to deserve for their sins to have an evil Prince set over them and then rebel against him were double and treble evil Nay let us either deserve to have a good Prince or let us patiently suffer and obey such as we deserve If People rebel one of these three things must happen Either the King must conquer and then the Subjects have fairly mended the matter have they not If it were a Rod in his hands before they may justly now expect a Scorpion Or else they must conquer if so who shall keep them from tyrannizing over the King and their fellow Subjects Or who shall keep from Factions and Change of Government every month I hope we have had too late experience in both these kinds to trust to any fair pretence again in hast Or thirdly there will be an Accommodation if so yet many dear lives are like first to be lost and then we are at best but where we are now for at last some body must be trusted with the Supremacy upon their honesty So that to Rebel seems to me a remedy worse than the disease at all times for Rebels always go without a Commission and therefore whatever they do cannot be said to go beyond it many times they complain without a just cause or upon a very slender one not worthy of such a decision as the Sword It is usually said of the English man that he never knows when a thing is well insomuch that being over-curious intending still to amend his work he often mars all or at leastwise makes it worse Certainly our English Constitution of Government is well enough in all reason We are at this day blessed be God and our gracious King at least as free as any Nation in the known world let us not screw the strings so high till they break and all the Harmony be spoiled there remains nothing to make us happy under this Government but to think our selves happy in it to bless God for it and to pay our duties unto it Some of which are these that follow First To live quietly under it God and the Law hath given the King the Sword and whoever else takes it is an Usurper of another mans right and deserves to perish by it Hazael was confident he should never do so wickedly with his power as the
Vulgar Errors IN DIVINITY REMOVED Qui erranti comiter monstrat viam quasi lumen de suo lumine accendit facit nihilominus ut ipsi lucet Mat. 22.29 Ye err not knowing the Scriptures 2 Pet. 3.16 In St. Pauls Epistles are some things hard to be understood which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do also the other Scriptures LONDON Printed for Benj. Tooke and Joanna Brome in St. Pauls Church-Yard MDCLXXXIII Academiae Cantabrigiensis Liber TO The Right Honourable THOMAS Earl of Sussex Baron Dacres One of the Gentlemen of His Majesties Bed-Chamber Health and Happiness My Lord I Am bold to Dedicate these my first fruits to your Honour as a testimony of my grateful mind for your Lordships favours towards me Three things prompted me on to this undertaking First The great honour I bear to Almighty God whose Nature being mistaken his Name is blasphemed whilst he is rendred so unlovely as fatally to doom the greatest part of Mankind to everlasting fire chiefly for his own glory and not for the bad usage of the Talents they have received at his hands by making their sins but the subordinate cause of their damnation and Gods omnipotent power to justifie such a Decree Now I would fain know how these fatal Dogmatizers could paint out the Devil in worse colours than they do our gracious God if he had Gods omnipotent power to abuse towards the far greatest part of mankind But certainly God is more merciful than these men would have him be else such blasphemers of his merciful nature had not died the common death of all men Secondly The great honour I bear to the King and the great love I bear to Kingly Government as least subject to oppression or renting the State in pieces by Faction In all Governments some body must necessarily be trusted with the Supremacy upon their honesty and who is fitter to be trusted than he whom God and Nature shall design for so great a trust If ungodly men have a mind to change still they must trust or again rebel and so in infinitum for unless somebody be trusted at last there can be no peace Who shall keep the Keeper is an unanswerable question unless you say God alone If you say the Law that indeed ought to keep him in the Right and to be the Kings Director but the Law cannot keep him as his Superiour so as to touch life or limb if he be a Transgressour He that hath a Prerogative to save other mens lives when by Law condemned must needs be supposed to be above Law for his own And blessed be God for the Kings Prerogatives without which the Nation could not long continue in peace and safety If we revolve the English Histories of King Henry III. in the Grant given the Douze Peers as they were called or of King Charles I. in the Grant to the Long Parliament and consider the fatal destruction of Simon de Montford their General and most of the Peers in the end although so triumphant at Lewis in Sussex at the first as a consequence of the one and of King Charles of blessed memory after so much bloudshed and oppression as a consequence of the other it may teach us how unsafe it is for the People to desire any thing of the King or for the King to grant away any Prerogative to the People which may make him too weak for Government upon any difficulty or fair pretence whatsoever Thirdly The great love I bear to the truth as desirous to raise the decayed credit of it that so men may walk in it For Error embraced debases the understanding as a Noble person his bloud by marrying one of mean Parentage and base conditions and men acting generally according to those Principles they have espoused for all their after reasonings and deliberate actions are founded on those Principles when they are erroneous they take false measures of honour and dishonour of right and wrong and the more zealous they are for them the wrose they are as the Arrow ill levelled at hand the further it flies the further it is off the Mark. That God would give your Lordship length of days riches and honour and at the end of those days everlasting felicity is the Prayer of Your Lordships obliged Servant and Chaplain Ralph Battell To the Reader AS I have seen a double or pleated Picture on one side appear a beautiful Woman but if you go to the other side of the Room it would appear an odious Serpent So although truth be but one and not double yet it will appear diversly according as we look upon it For if with solid judgment we behold it it will appear lovely as it is if with prejudice being wrong byassed with interest or education it will appear a foul error Wherefore thou art desired that readest this Book to lay aside all prepossession and to weigh what is said with candour and ingenuity with naked and impartial reason One adviseth very well to suppress at least nine years any Notions we have a mind to make publick and if then upon so long consideration we still like them to set them forth I assure thee I have done so by most of these herein contained and upon mature deliberation bring them into light and if God lend me life and opportunity intend a Second part of a like nature If any thing seem contrary to the Church of England I am confident it is thy error to think so but if my Superiours judge so I here disown it for I never thought any new Notion of mine so good but the authority and peace of the Church was much better and to be preferred before it Shall I speak plain English Those that are brought up in Error I have but little hopes to recover but rather think I shall provoke such to produce their little exceptions and vulgar plausible blinds to keep up their Party But I nourish a good hope that those that are disengaged from error in the particulars herein mentioned this Book may prevent them from embracing it which is the hearty desire of the Author THE CONTENTS Vulgar Errors concerning 1. REprobation Page 1 2. Kingly Government Page 25 3. Gods House and Service in it Page 53 4. Mans Will Page 71 5. Mans Redemption Page 99 6. Praying by the Spirit Page 117 Vulgar Errors CONCERNING REPROBATION Removed THat some are Reprobates is out of question broad is the way that leads to destruction and many there be go in it But how they come to be so is not without great controversie nor without great mistake Some say that God meerly for his glory made some Vessels of wrath according to the good pleasure of his Will So that the object of Gods Decree of Reprobation was not mankind considered as sinners but meerly as his Creatures which is such a Doctrine that whosoever brings I shall never bid God speed Now the Texts of Scripture at which they have stumbled and fallen into
to love God and to give him thanks to hate God is so intrinsically evil that it is impossible but that it should be forbid If it were possible for this not to be forbid it were possible for this to be lawful for where there is no Law there is no Transgression but it is utterly impossible it should be lawful therefore it must be granted there is an evil in order of nature before the prohibition of it and so some things must needs be good in their own nature as bearing a resemblance of the Image and goodness of God before any external Law pass upon them These things premised my answer is Although the Will of God be a rule of justice to us yet it is not a rule of justice to himself but his justice is rather a rule of his Works and of his Will and he works all things according to the Counsel of his Will and that Counsel adviseth nothing rashly or unmercifully unreasonably or unjustly but according to the greatest Equity and Chancery in the world and therefore cannot without the greatest violence to Reason and Religion be thought to make irrespective Decrees to torture for ever the greatest part of mankind chiesly for the pleasure of his Will Again they say Omnipotent Power authorizes all actions Now if God will make Vessels of wrath what hath any one to do with it May he not do what he pleases with his own Creatures My answer is we must not magnifie Gods Power so much as to eclipse his goodness or his truth which doth assure us that he is loving unto every man and that he delights not in the death of any sinner These men make God a Tyrant rather than a King and attribute such Prerogatives to God as are broadly inconsistent with his nature Acts of Power are not good in themselves but as they are accompanied with Justice and Mercy otherwise they are bad and lay a mans honour in the dust we must not so magnifie one Attribute in God as to justle out all the rest The Lord proclaimes his name to Moses Exod. 34.6 after this manner The Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin Now Gods name is every ways agreeing to his nature which is rather than his Creature should perish to forgive iniquity transgression and sin and not to decree everlasting fire to it without the intuition of sin Let us not therefore entertain any hard thoughts of Almighty God Rev. 20.12 13. when the earth and the Sea gave up their dead they were all judged according to what was found in the Books and those Books were written only according to their works Conscience is one of those Books which shall be opened at the last day and it will acquit God of all hard dealing towards men that perish When Moses prayed thus Exod. 32.32 Either forgive this People or blot we out of the Book which thou hast written The Lord said Whosoever sins against me him will I blot out of my book Where you see sin only blots out of Gods Book and not any Fatal Decree If it should happen to men according to their Lots to be under such or such a Decree and not according to their Works there would nothing be remaining for us to do but only patiently to obey Fate for if an irrespective Decree do shut up the most of men under Condemnation can any one of those men by all his industry alter his Destiny Surely no unless he were stronger than he that made that Decree To what purpose then were all his endeavours or to what purpose should we beat the air and persuade him to impossiblities Yes to good purpose say the Abettors of such a Decree because no particular man knows under which Decree he is I confess this answer is the best they have to give but it nothing enervates the Argument for it is not the knowing of a Decree or the being ignorant of a Decree makes any thing to the altering of a Decree for neither if I know it will it be repealed neither if I be ignorant of it will it cease to be accomplished Now then although no particular man knows under which Decree he is yet he must needs know he is under one of them if there be such Decrees and under which soever he be he is bound with an Adamantine Chain unto it and his end is fixt by reason of it as unalterably as the Laws of the Medes and Persians Who then believing this can believe that his fasting weeping or mourning renting heart or garment can avail any thing to the altering of that Decree under which it was his Lot to be born So that he that hath imbibed this Doctrine hath cut the Sinews of all industry if he acts consequentially to what he himself doth believe Nay but the means are ordained as well as the end may some say True they are so But to the far greatest part of men if their opinion were true God should command them to seek his face in vain for those means could never attain the end for which men should use them namely the Salvation of their souls For never any man from the foundation of the world under that Decreo was sav'd neither indeed can be though Moses and Samuel should pray for him or an Angel from heaven preach unto him he could not believe To what purpose now was the means ordained to these or the use of them Nay to what purpose should God wish the conversion of such sinners send his Embassadors to intreat and beseech them expostulate the case with them Why will ye die swear unto them As I live I had rather you should live if in the mean while he hath decreed their death before they did good or evil and in order to that Decree was resolved never to afford them power to perform any one act of saving grace Now whether there be insincerity in these Expressions or in their Opinions judg ye Nay let God be true and every man a liar Let us heartily believe that every mans destruction is wholly from himself and not from any fatal Decree of God Lastly it is objected the seventeenth Article of the Church of England says God hath decreed before the foundations of the world were laid by his Counsel secret to us to deliver from Curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind From whence they thus argue Before the foundations of the world were laid no man could do good or evil but even then some were chosen and consequently some not therefore those that were not chosen were rejected before they had done good or evil To this I answer as some were chosen in Christ and consequently others not chosen before the foundations of the world were laid so known unto God were all things before the foundations of the world were laid He knew the first man would fall