2. The full casting out and rejecting of all Will-worship and their attendant Abominations 3. A most glorious and dreadful breaking of all that rise in Opposition unto him never such Desolations So that we see nothing will ever satisfie their desires and demands unless all Gospel-Ordinances be reformed to their primitive power and purity according to the appointment and unto the acceptation of the Lord Iesus Or as the same Author expresses himself more fully in his Sermon of April 29. 1646. p. 29. The darling Errours of late years of the Bishops were all of them stones of the old Babel closing and coupling with that tremendous Fabrick which the Man of Sin had erected to dethrone Jesus Christ came out of the belly of that Trojan Horse that fatal Engine which was framed to betray the City of God They were Popish Errours such as whereof that Apostacy did consist which onely is to be looked upon as the great adverse State to the Kingdom of the Lord Christ. Heedless and headless Errours may breed disturbance enough unto the people of God but such as tend to a peace and association â—um Ecclesiâ malignantium tending to a total subversion of the sacred State are far more dangerous Now such were the Innovations of the late Hierarchists in Worship their Paintings Crossings Crucifixes Bowings Cringings Altars Tapers Wafers Organs Anthems Litany Rails Images Copes Vestments what were they but Roman Varnish an Italian Dress for our Devotion to draw on Conformity with that Enemy of the Lord Jesus In Doctrine the Divinity of Episcopacy a notable piece of Popery that Auricular Confession Free-will Predestination on Faith yea Works foreseen what Antichristian Doctrine is that too Limbus Patrum Justification by Works falling from Grace Authority of a Church which none knew what it was Canonical Obedience Holiness of Churches and the like innumerable what were they but helps to Sancta Clara to make all our Articles of Religion speak good Roman-Catholique How did their old Father of Rome refresh his spirit to see such Chariots as those provided to bring England again unto him This closing with Popery was the sting in the Errours of those days which caused pining if not death in the Episcopal Pot. § 15. Here is no shuffling nor any shifting pretences 't is plain dealing and plain English Antichrist and all its Adherents must be destroyed by Wars and horrid Desolations This is the way that the Lord Christ has chalkt out to his people both by his Promises and his Providences to introduce the purity and beauty of his Ordinances The Prelatists are Members of the Whore and the Beast and imitate the Antichristian Apostacy both from the Worship and the Doctrine of the Gospel nay the Vial of Popery is poured out upon the very Throne it self as it was when Charles the First sate in it And now what is the result of all this Gibberish but that the Saints when-ever Providence alarms or as he manageth the business opportunity invites them to the great and glorious Work of a more Thorough Godly Reformation may and ought to shake and subvert the establish't Government of the Nation that is combined with the Interest of Antichrist to set up their way of Gospel-worship or the purity and beauty of Christs Ordinances which is the onely thing urged and pleaded for by our Author You see Sir to bate him some worse Inferences what stout Patrons these Men are of the Indulgence they plead for when every Opinion that they judge erroneous must be branded for a Popish and Antichristian Errour when every slight Difference shall be resolved into Atheism and Blasphemy when a Scholastick Nicety about the unaccountable workings of Eternal Providence shall be made an eminent instance of Antichristian Apostacy and when to dissent from him in a thing of no greater importance then a Metaphysical Speculation shall amount to no less Charge then of betraying the Gospel of Christ and hewing at the very root of Christianity as he speaks of some Systematick Niceties that he is pleased to call Arminian Heterodoxes and whose Abettors he denounces with the Confidence of an Apostolical Authority uncapable of our Church-Communion Nay his Zeal against them did not confine it self to his own Native Country but extended its fervours as himself informs us to a Foreign Commonwealth and vented its heats against their Indulgence and plea for Toleration and a Liberty of prophesying beyond the Seas To what party of Dissenters is it that this tender-hearted Man would extend the favour of his Indulgence that resolves every petty dissent into an inexpiable Apostacy from the Gospel and has branded all parties with such foul names as render them unworthy the Compassion of the State and uncapable of the Communion of the Church 'T is true many Pamphlets he has publish't in behalf of Toleration and Liberty of Conscience but yet he still so orders the matter as to exclude all Men whatsoever from claiming any benefit or advantage from that pretence excepting onely the salvage and the frantick Sectaries of the Army And that is the whole mystery of his Good-Nature The Independents had vanquish't the Royalists and supplanted the Presbyterians and were perkt up into a Supremacy of Power and Interest But being unable either to secure or to support their Tyranny unless by the assistance of those Religious Miscreants who were the onely faithful Adherents to their Godly Interest they must sooth and treat them with all brotherly love and tenderness and all their Fanatick Frekes and horrid Blasphemies must be winkt at as pitiable Mistakes and Miscarriages of weak Brethren For if we exasperate them by giving check to their Exorbitances we lose our Friends and Confederates abate our Power and endanger our Interest and 't is more eligible for humble and self-denying Men to bear with all the wild and Fanatick Enormities in the World rather then part with the delicious sweets of Government and Sovereign Authority What other imaginable account can be given of this Mans Zeal for Toleration when he has so peremptorily stript all Parties of their right to it excepting onely those Sons of Anarchy and Confusion For not onely the Papists the Prelatists and the Arminians but even their dear Brethren of the Presbytery were transformed into Limbs of the Antichristian Lâ—viathan so that not to pursue this advantage too far you see the naked and undisguised Truth of these Mens Perswasions maugre all their demure Concessions and jugling Pretensions All the World are fallen short of the Truth of God but themselves and out of the Churches of their Pale there is none Orthodox no not one We have all revolted from the Kingdom of the Lord Christ to the Corruptions and Superstitious Idolatries of Antichrist and therefore we are all to be accounted and treated as Members of that Whore whom the Saints hate and shall make desolate and naked and shall eat her Flesh and suck her Blood This is the true state of
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
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
and confident in their demands from those that they have so lately treated so barbarously and yet are so far from giving any tokens of their repentance that they publickly suggest that if ever it comes to their turn in the course of Providential alterations they shall again expect the same usage But is it not a pleasant Topick of Perswasion to move us to treat them with all tenderness and civility because they never did shew us any mercy and if it lie in their power never will a thing in which we have reason enough to be satisfied without any of these Publick Declarations Like the Country Swain that resolved upon his Death-bed if he died to forgive his Enemy but swore the utmost revenge if he ever recovered Thus will these Men when their Reformation is in danger of breathing its last pretend to tolerate us only because they cannot help it but when they can any thing is tolerate but Popery and Episcopacy And this Man this tender Man that will not endure any of his Disciples to be so much as present at our Antichristian way of Worship is no doubt a fit Agent not to mention some other excellent Qualifications to treat with us for Indulgence and mutual Forbearance and he that declares by his most avowed Principles he will not allow us permission when he is out of Power would no doubt be so generous as to grant us all civil Liberty were he in it Go thy way for a wretched Apologist thy Perswasions are just as wise as thy Arguments § 7. But farther Is this the Plea of all Nonconformists or but of one Party If of all then have we them at old Burleigh's Lock that engaged to grant their demands when they had agreed among themselves what to demand 'T is well known into how many different Rendezvouses the whole Body of the Nonconformists are subdivided and withal that their Pretences and Perswasions stand at as wide a distance and open defiance to each other as to the Church of England and therefore the whole Body can neither reasonably pretend this Plea nor possibly be allowed it For howsoever the different Factions may at present seem to piece together for the common Interest yet when this comes to be put in practice they immediately fall all in pieces again every Party has its different meaning and appropriates the claim of Divine Right to its own way and every Faction bandies against every Faction for its own Ius Divinum They are all zealous for erecting the Throne of Jesus Christ but the onely contention is which of them shall sit at his Right and his Left hand or rather in it And whenever they are mounted they lord it with the Insolence of young Usurpers And certainly the Scepter of Jesus Christ was never such an Iron Rod no not in the Kirk it self as when it was in the hands of the Triers the tender-hearted Triers And this is our Authors particular design and intention that the Independent way of Worship is the onely way that is prescribed and appointed in the Word of God and therefore that that and none other is lawful and warrantable so that 't is plain this pretence as he manages it is not the Plea of the Nonconformists in their combined strength but purely of the Independents in their separated Interest and that as much in opposition to the Presbyterians on one hand and the lower swarms of Sectaries on the other as to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England so that here every Clan of the Fanaticks is engaged as much as we to stand upon their Guard and 't is made our common Interest to join Forces against his usurping Pretensions But this has ever been the crafty method of the Independents first to preach general Doctrines but still to make the particular Applications to themselves i. e. to decoy Men into their snares by their Text and hidden meaning and then devour them in the opening of the Plot that was always reserved for Use and Application Thus are the People of England enraged against them for murthering their Soveraign The Doctrine is Instruments of Gods greatest works and glory are oftentimes the chiefest Objects of a Professing Peoples Curses and Revenges And Men that under God deliver a Kingdom may have the Kingdoms Curses for their pains Are the People transported into Rage against them for running our Confusions beyond all visible hopes of setlement and recovery by that horrid Act upon the Person of their Prince The Doctrine is Men every way blameless and to be imbraced in their own ways are oftentimes abhorred and laden with Curses for following the Lord in his ways What precious Men should many be would they let go the work of God in this Generation Do any of those wretched Miscreants begin to think of Hell and Halters and with Iudas stand agast at the horrour of their Crime The Doctrine is In dark and difficult Dispensations of Providence Gods choicest Servants are oftentimes ready to faint under the burthen of them Do some of the old Souldiers and Officers begin to whisper Cavalierism and Loyalty The Doctrine is Plausible compliances of Men in Authority with those against whom they are imployed are treacherous Contrivances against the God of Heaven by whom they are imployed Do the Presbyterians and Royalists begin to make head against those bold and bloody Usurpers The Doctrine is God oftentimes gives up a sinful People to a fruitless contention and fighting with their onely Supporters and means of Deliverance And thus the Doctrine of this Book is 't is the Duty of King and Parliament to tolerate tender Consciences i. e. says this Application Independents And the Text wherewith he vouches this Doctrine is Matth. 28.20 where our Saviour binds his Disciples to observe his Commands and Institutions to the end of the World but onely the Independents observe that form of Worship and Discipline that he has prescribed and appointed to the practice of his Church in all Ages Ergo. So that the most moderate Inference that can be extracted from these Premises is That no form of Publick Worship or Ecclesiastical Government ought to be establish't in this Nation till his Majesty is in good earnest convinced that I. O.'s Independent Catechism as shamefully as 't is baffled is faithfully collected out of the Word of God These are hard sayings and yet methinks the two following Propositions seem to be somewhat more unreasonable viz. 1. That nothing ought to be added to what is injoined in Scripture without some cogent Reason Or 2. If any things be found necessary onely those must be prescribed that are most consonant to its general Rules and Institutions Now the only pertinent result of these Pleas as to the difference between us is that they apprehend not any such cogent Reason for our Prescriptions nor any such exact suitableness in them to the Rules of Scripture as in their own Models of Worship and Discipline and this
and govern all the Designs of the Princes of Christendom And his Mandates and Decretal Epistles must ever be flying about into all Parts and Provinces and when any doubt or difficulty arose away to Geneva to consult the Oracle that always return'd his Answers with the Confidence and Authority of an Apostle And thus did this hot and eager Man bear down all before him by the boldness of his Nature to attempt and indefatigable vehemence of his Spirit to prosecute what he had once attempted till he made himself at once both Pope and Emperour of the greatest part of the Reformed World All his Dictates were Articles of Faith and all his Censures Anathema's and every dissent from his least important and most unwarrantable Principles was Heresie and every Heresie capital and damnable All Schemes and Models of Truth were coin'd in his Name and warranted by his Authority it was his Decree that stampt them Orthodox and no Opinion that did not bear his Image and Superscription might pass for current Divinity And whoever was so hardy or so unhappy as to oppose himself to this bold and insolent Usurpation or but to demur upon the Infallibility of his Determinations he was immediately assaulted with Volleys of Anathema's and they pour'd upon him showres of Invectives and hated Names and he was shunn'd like Infection and dreaded as the Pest and Plague of the Reformed Communion and if they wanted power to persecute him with Fire and Faggot they would kill him with Noises and Anathema's And thus has this man and his followers intricated the way to Heaven with their own new Labyrinths and wild turnings trifling Questions and uncertain talkings they have smother'd and buried the Truths of God under the superstructures of their own foolish Inventions they have blended their own dreams and Visions with the Divine Oracles and then require the same Assent to their ill-spun Systems and Hypotheses as to the inspired Writings of St. Paul and obtrude pure non-sense and contradictious Blasphemies upon our Belief with as much rigour and boisterous zeal as the most indispensable Truths of the Gospel requiring as confident an Assent to the black Doctrine of irrespective Reprobation as to our Saviours Death and Resurrection and making it as necessary a point of Faith to believe that the Almighty thrust innumerable myriads of Souls into Being only to sport himself in their endless and unspeakable Tortures as that he sent his own Son into the world to dye for the Redemption of mankind Nay this they stick not to discard and disavow for its inconsistency with the Hypothesis of absolute Decrees This is the Fundamental Article of their Creed and all other points of Divinity must be so modell'd as to suit and accommodate themselves to this Foundation of their Faith And thus in most places did the design of Reformation degenerate into a furious Zeal for the Calvinian Rigours the seeds of which Doctrine have produced nothing but thorns and briars of Contention that have eaten out the life and power of true Religion and make men barren in every thing but discords and disputations The woful effects whereof are visible in most Foreign Churches where Piety is exchanged for Orthodoxy and Devotion for speculation where their Religion is a zeal for a Scheme of Opinions and their Learning an Ability to maintain them § 13. But in the setling or modelling of our Reformation by the Providence of God and our Governours this mans assistance was refused and his advice rejected they understood him too well to admit him into their Counsels and resolved to keep up close to their first design of reforming the Church to the Apostolical simplicity Though afterward this Doctrine took root here by the industry of some zealous youths that had been train'd up at the feet of that great Gamaliel and return'd home Seminary Priests of the Calvinian Theology This was the only errand and design of Whittingham Travers Cartwright and others and the only original of all the Schisms and disturbances that have ever since infested the Church of England was the unseasonable zeal of these men to reduce its Doctrine and Discipline to the platform of Geneva And though they were immediately check't in their attempt upon the Discipline that they thought good to assault with fierce and open Violence yet as for the leaven of their Doctrine they insensibly spred and conveyed it into the minds of their Disciples and it grew and prosper'd mightily in all places because as it was cultivated with much zeal and water'd with much preaching so was it not encountred with any publick opposition the Church not having declared it self positively in any thing but against the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome and as for all the other Disputes of Christendom she contrived the Articles of her Communion with that prudence and moderation as to take in all men of whatsoever different Perswasions in other matters into her bosom and protection She embraced Trojans and Tyrians with equal Favour and would not wed her self to the narrow Interests of a Party nor determine all the quarrels and differences of disputing men No she left them to the Liberty of their own Opinions only reserving to her self a power to quash and silence their Disputes for the ends of Peace and Government But this moderation was too cool for these warm and hot-headed men they thought it not enough for the honour of Mr. Calvin and therefore resolved to declare themselves expresly for him in defiance to all other Doctors and Heads of Parties But the Pulpits must make good this and they are resolved to make good the Pulpits and therefore they make them and the People to groan with nothing but the continual noise of Decrees and the depths of Election and Reprobation were always ratling and thundering in their ears The whole Circle of their preaching and practical Divinity was reduced to Calvin's Interpretation of the ninth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans And when they had scared and astonish'd the People into an admiration of these gloomy Mysteries nothing will satisfie their restless heads unless they may be voted the Doctrine of the Church and the cause of the Reformation And all the men of the first moderation must be branded for Apostates and the People let loose to rail at them as Papists or under some other hated name that they abhorr'd but did not understand And this is the Interpretation of our Authors malicious suggestion of his being aggrieved to observe such evident declerisions from the first establish't Reformation towards the old or a new and it may be worse Apostasie such an apparent weariness of the principal doctrines and practices which enlivened the Reformation i. e. A wicked schismatical Relapse to Popish Arminian Errors an Apostasie from the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches to worship the old Pelagian Idol Free-will with the new Goddess Contingency or an halting between Iehovah and Baal Christ and Antichrist admitting the Belgick
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-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
Meekness and Justice Mercy and Patience Contentedness and Pity Kindness Obedience and Humility And now if the Gospel be an Institution so pregnant with Vertue and Wisdom and Holiness how can any Man that is tender of his Saviours Reputation tamely suffer these brain-sick People to debauch the Divine Wisdom of his Religion with childish and trifling Follies And to represent the design of Christianity in so odde a guise as to suit it chiefly to the Conceptions of Children and inclinations of old Women and make it most agreeable to weak Reasons soft Spirits and little Understandings And how can any Man that is enamour'd of the Beauty of real Goodness think any Satyrs too rough for such bold Impostors as make it a Mask for Pharisaick Hypocrisie and stave off their Proselytes from the practice of real Righteousness by amusing their little Understandings with trifling and unprofitable Gayeties That employ a seeming Godliness to supplant all that is real and oppose all the great ends and designs of Religion under more gorgeous Pretences to advance them and are not onely content to exchange the Reality and Substance of true Goodness for its Varnish and Colours but have been so untoward as to contrive a seeming and hypocritical Sanctity that does not more counterfeit then oppose true Holiness in brief choaking all the most beautiful Graces of Christianity by over-running them with rank and noisom Impostures Now if these things are so who can charge the utmost severity of Expression with intemperance of Speech And that they are so if I have not sufficiently proved it already I shall have occasion to enforce its Evidence by some too clear and convictive Proofs in the sequel of this Discourse And therefore 't is but a vain thing to make loud and tragical Complaints of railing and intemperate Speeches unless they had first discover'd that there is not truth enough in my Accusations to warrant the sharpest and most vehement Expressions I have not thrown out hard words at all adventure nor confuted the Cause by giving bad Language as 't is some Mens custom to stick an Odious Name upon an Adversary and then he is baffled No I first endeavoured to convict them by Evidence of Reason and after that to reprove their Errour and if they resolved to continue obstinate to upbraid their peevishness with some sharpness of Expression And if Men will not distinguish between Railing and sharp Reproofs there is no remedy but the best and wisest Persons of all Ages must pass for the greatest Railers And so far am I from recanting my severity towards them that I am rather tempted to applaud it by the glorious Examples of the greatest Wits of our Nation King Iames Archbishop Whitgift Archbishop Bancroft Bishop Andrews Bishop Bilson Bishop Mountagne Bishop Bramhall Sir Walter Rawleigh Lord Bacon c. And what can you imagine more hateful to such wise Men as these then to see mean People borrow the Face of Religion to make them bold and impudent against Government In short I could name some Persons so vile and abominable that 't is not in the power of Slander to abuse them and there is a Faction of Saints in the World whose Villanies and Falshoods and Perjuries are so utterly destitute of excuse or palliation that no History of any Age or Nation can afford us the like impudent and execrable Examples of Baseness and Hypocrisie And therefore let not the living man complain c. § 20. 3. Another pregnant and serviceable Topick of Argumentation is to load his Adversary with Consequences of Atheism Popery and Mahumetanism though for any Reason I have given him he might as plausibly have charged me of Magick or Necromancy or what perhaps may seem more monstrous of Fanaticism But this is one of the most elegant Idiotisms of their Language and most powerful Figures of their Logick whatsoever they touch is immediately turn'd into Atheism they can wring this Conclusion out of all Premises as they can draw some Doctrines out of all Texts 'T is an odious Inference and then 't is no matter for its Truth and Coherence a wide Mouth and a bold Face shall make good the Charge and what they want of Rational Deduction is easily supplyed by Noise and Confidence Their Followers they know never examine things by the Rules of Reason and Discourse put but an ugly Consequence into their Mouths and they swallow it with a glibber satisfaction then the purest and most refined Reasonings and peremptorily conclude you guilty of all the horrid Tenets and Assertions that their Leaders will throw upon you And there lies all their strength in the Ignorance and Credulity of the Multitude Instances of this nature are innumerable their great Anak of Disputation I. O. to mention no more never commenced a Dispute against any Perswasion but he immediately brought the Controversie to this issue He cannot Arraign the Lords Prayer it self but Atheism and Blasphemy must into the Indictment The asserting that Form of Words says he confirms many in their Atheistical Blaspheming of the Holy Spirit of God and his Grace in the Prayers of his People And when some Learned Men of the Church of England publish't the Biblia Polyglotta the chief Contriver of that Noble Work writes some Prolegomena suitable to the nature and design of the Undertaking especially to defend and assert the Certainty Integrity and Divine Authority of the Original Texts but among other Discourses he happens to assert the Novelty of the Hebrew Punctation an Opinion own'd by the concurrent suffrage of almost all the best skill'd in the Hebrew and Oriental Learning and to acknowledge various Readings in the Original Text and lastly to prove that to be no way prejudicial to their Purity and Integrity Now with what outragious Declamations does I. O. set upon these harmless Assertions and with what foul-mouthed Crys and Consequences does he pursue them and what an horrid Noise do we hear of Atheism Atheism Atheism We are told of a new Plot or design amongst Protestants after they are come out of Rome a design which they dare not publickly own p. 329. The Leprosie of Papists crying down the Original Texts is broken forth among Protestants with what design to what end or purpose he knows not God knows and the day will manifest Epist. p. 14. That this design is own'd in the Prolegomena to the Bible and in the Appendix that they Print the Original and defame it gathering up Translations of all sorts and setting them up in competition with it Epist. p. 9. That they take away all certainty in and about sacred Truth Epist p. 25. That there is nothing left unto men but to chuse whether they will turn Papists or Atheists Epist. p. 9. That there are gross Corruptions befaln the Originals which by the help of Old Translations and by Conjectures may be found out and corrected p. 205. As pernicious a Principle as ever was fixed upon since the Foundation of the
know who has so neither have I refused to set off Arguments with Allusions but have ventur'd sometimes to express them by borrowed and allusive terms where it might be done without hazarding the strength or the perspicuity of the Discourse I have no where played with Phrases nor argued from Metaphors and Similitudes and if any of my Words may happen to be fine they are none of them empty and the most pompous and lofty Expressions contain under them Notion and Thing enough to fill out their Sense and warrant their Truth A multitude of Evil Touches and less important Intimations I must both forgive and omit as well to avoid the suspicion of being too unmerciful as the inconvenience of being too tedious Nay to what a Voluminous Bulk must I swell should I specifie all the more weighty and unexcusable Miscarriages and reckon up all his palpable Untruths affected Calumnies labour'd Falsifications studied Mis-understandings shameless Impertinencies ridiculous Evasions numberless Tautologies and infinite Repetitions together with his frequent Challenges Appeals to Heaven and the Day of Judgment denouncing Woes and letting flie Threatnings of the Divine Wrath and Vengeance with innumerable other Tricks of shuffling and bold impertinency In short when I first perused this Reply if I may give it so fair a Name I ran it over with equal Wonder and Satisfaction with Wonder at the boldness of the Man that blush't not to impose upon the Publick as well as upon my self with such an heap of foul and notorious Falsifications With Satisfaction when I consider'd whoever undertakes to contradict the evidence of that Truth I had pleaded for must first do violence both to his Reason and to his Conscience for you will meet with some Forgeries so palpable that Inadvertency can never excuse them And it confirm'd me in the Reasonableness of my Opinion when I saw Men were forced to pervert and falsifie its plain meaning before they could pretend its Confutation Prodigious Instances of this kind you will meet with in the sequel of this Discourse when I proceed to more particular Remarks to which Work 't is high time to address my self And I shall first begin with his Review of my Preface CHAP. II. The Contents THe Vanity of our Authors Pretence of the Reluctancy of his Writing The Arrogance of his Boast of making Books at Idle Hours The Vanity of their Way of Preaching Our Author challenged to justifie the Sermons of J. O. His Seditious Way of Preaching A Character of the Pedling Theologues and Preachers among the Nonconformists Their main Artifice lies in tampering with the Female Sex The Learning of the Episcopal Clergy vindicated from the insolent Censure of J. O. The silliness of his own solid and profound Divinity The Divines of the Church of England vindicated from our Authors malicious Suggestions The unjust Grounds of his and his Brethrens Slanders and Calumnies discovered Their Way of blasting their Adversaries with oblique and ugly Insinuations Our Authors Disingenuity in attempting to defame me upon occasion of my Satyr against Atheism My Remark upon our Saviours behaviour in the Temple vindicated against his Charge of Irreverence And proved That it was out of the Court of the Gentiles not of the Jews that he whipt the Buyers and Sellers Our Authors shift to discharge themselves of the Friendly Debate His confident way of trifling in answering Arguments with May-be's What mischief those Men do to Religion by feeding People with their Nonsense and empty Phrases The Cowardise of their Demands of Personal Conferences The Insolence and Impertinency of our Authors Suggestion against the Immorality of our Clergy The onely Crimes we charge them with are such as they esteem Gospel-Mysteries The Vanity of our Authors Comparison between the Friendly Debate and the Comedies of Aristophanes Socrates no Independent The Pride and Hypocrisie of the Nonconformists Confessions in their Prayers This discovered by their appropriating to themselves all the Titles of Godliness upon the score of this counterfeit Humility Their Arrogance particularly proved out of the Writings of J. O. I reproach them not with the deep sense of their sins but with their irksom dissimulation Our Authors excuse that their Confessions have chiefly a respect to the pravity of their Natures exploded The Precedents of St. Paul Ezra Daniel and David unduly alledged by our Author The utter unacquaintance with the deceitfulness of my own Heart confessed 'T is presumption for an habitual sinner to expect the pardon of his sins The pretence of Ministers being the Mouths of the Congregation cashier'd The sad Influence that their Prodigal Confessions have upon the Lives of their Followers § 1. THe first considerable passage we meet with after his first unfortunate sally of which you have heard already is the Account he gives us of his Humour and his Undertaking how he prevail'd with himself much against his Inclinations to spend a few hours in the Examination of the principal parts and seeming Pillars of my whole Fabrick I shall not mind him of the uncouthness of his Language though if it were consider'd it will be found that to examine a Pillar is scarce more proper English then to explicate a Post but shall onely observe that some Men are so accustomed to Hypocrisie that they dissemble when they least design it and this trifling Pretence is now grown so familiar with this trifling Man that it thrusts its self in of course and challenges a place in all his Writings by the right and title of Prescription and though he has served himself so often of it in all his former Squabbles yet he can no more forbear to mention this Apology then he can to need it But methinks 't is strange this cold and watry Elf should survive thus long out of its proper Element and had it been a Salamander born it could not have better endured the heats of Contention And yet methinks 't is more prodigious still that a Man should do perpetual violence to the most puissant bent of his own Inclinations and for ever doom himself to irksom and unpleasant Employments Had he been possest by the Spirit of Scribbling and Contention he could not have been more pragmatical in his medlings with other Mens Writings then he has ever been without any other provocation then that of his own petulant Humour And is it not pleasant to see him excuse himself of unkindness to his own temper by forcing it to such unagreeable Undertakings when he is the known and common Barreter of the Age he lives in He falls foul upon every Book he meets with and there is scarce an Author that can escape the disgrace of his publick Censure and Correction and what Motto could have better suited him then that wherewith he has flourish't and adorned his Title Page Sed sumpsimus Arma 'T is pity he should have borrowed a Bush so proper to his purpose from another Mans Door But had this Mighty Hero sought opportunities of Chivalry abroad and
God and to be ignorant of the Mysteries of the Covenant of Grace What a vain thing is this Humane Learning without Grace and the Teachings of the Spirit How is this Man puft up with a conceit of his own Knowledge and yet what a silly Wretch is it in the Mysteries of Religion What strange Conceptions has the poor Soul of Regeneration of the Spirit of Bondage and the method of Conversion Alas poor Thing he understands it no more then I do his Arabick or Algebra What a comfortable Light have I that am but an unlearned Idiot in the most inward and experimental parts of the Mysteries of Godliness by the Teachings of the Spirit and precious Mr. whilst a Vail of Darkness hides these gracious Comforts and Priviledges from the Eyes of this Natural Man And thus they prostitute the Dignity of Religion to the Impertinencies of every Gossip and uphold the Noise and seeming Interest of the Party by the Zeal and Clamour of that Sex Nothing so resolute as they at holding fast Conclusions they will die Martyrs to their Truth before they know their Premises and if they once chance to fasten upon a Proposition they will never quit their Hold while they have either Teeth or Tongue § 5. And therefore it has in all Ages been the peculiar Artifice of such creeping Impostors to tamper with the warmth and the weakness of that Sex Wo unto you ye Scribes and Pharisees Hypocrites for ye devour Widows houses and for a pretence make long Prayers Why Widows Houses more then any others Why because they had the management of their Estates at their own disposal and so were more liable and likely to be cheated but chiefly because their sorrowful Spirits were more prone to Superstition and Melancholy Devotions and so more apt to give good Entertainment to these demure and white-eyed Comforters And St. Paul giving a personal Character of some Religious Juglers in his days describes them to be such as creep into houses and lead captive silly women i. e. such as under great shews and pretences of Holiness insinuate themselves into Wealthy Families and by their plausible Arts and demure Pretensions seduce the weaker Sex that by reason of the feebleness of their Minds and timorousness of their Consciences are most apt to credit their sad and sorrowful Stories and suffer themselves to be abused and led any way by these precise and Saint-like Pretenders and which is the main to reward their pains with good Fees and good Meals Neither are the foolish Women so easily taken by these holy Cheats modest sober and vertuous but they are wicked as well as silly laden with many lusts and vices such as are willing to reconcile their passions and lustful desires with a state of Religion and under its vizor to maintain their pride their peevishness and their wantonness And the more handsomly to delude such silly Wretches these Gospel-Pharisees are ever canting to them in empty and senseless forms of Speech and stuff their Memories with a set of insignificant and unintelligible Phrases that they may know how to prate perpetually of Religion without knowing any thing of its true Nature and Efficacy and all the fruit of their much Hearing is much Talking and as I once heard it observed in the Pulpit 't is their highest emprovement to be able to gossip in the Language of St. Paul By these and such like little Arts they decoy in Female Proselytes to their Party and 't is their onely Master-piece to inveigle their hot and eager Spirits An Artifice that any Sot may manage that can but whine and flatter 'T is such Mountebanks as these that are the great Apostles of the Cause and whom I branded with the Marks of Pride Ignorance and Sedition How my Character suits with their Humour I must leave to your own Experience and Observation though I could give you in a sufficient Catalogue of some of their most famous Preachers and choicest Wits that you would deem better qualified to plant Tobacco then to propagate the Gospel The greatest Idols of the People would have a mighty Resemblance to that hated one of Bell that as the Story tells us was Brass without and Lead within were it not that they want no assistance to devour their own Sacrifices And now who can endure not onely to hear such Idiots to talk as if they were infallible but to set up their Standard and display their Colours in defiance to all the Wisdom of Government and the Authority of Laws You see I never upbraided them with their meer Ignorance it was their Pride and their Insolence that I laid open to Publick Severity would they learn to be humble and submissive and be sensible of their own Folly and Ignorance and would not every Mas Iohn set up for a Patriarch we would never expose them for their weakness and simplicity but when they will combat Government affront the Decrees of Princes trample upon all Publick Constitutions and oppose their own singular Conceits to the Prescription of Ages and the Consent of People when they will not yield up so much as a Metaphysical Speculation to the will of their Prince and peace of their Country and when all the Laws and Fundamental Rules of Government must be subverted rather then the least of their Sentiments shall be reversed in brief when their Folly must prescribe to the Wisdom of Mankind is it not time think you to take down their Stomachs and to expose their Ignorance to the Publick Scorn and their Insolence to the Publick Rods § 6. But suppose my Censure of their Ignorance and defect of Learning had aimed at their chiefest Rabbies and their deepest Clerks I could have justified my self by some great Examples of his own Fraternity where a Man can scarce ever want Authentick Presidents for any sort of Rudeness and Ill-manners Particularly what thinks he of his Friend I. O. who giving a Character of the Episcopal Clergy beside Tyranny Persecution and a rank hatred of all Godliness adds A false Repute of Learning I say A false Repute for the greater part especially of the Greatest and yet taking Advantages of Vulgar Esteem they bear out as though they had engrossed a Monopoly of it though I presume the World was never deceived by more empty Pretenders especially in respect of any solid Knowledge in Divinity or Antiquity Goodly How does this Modest Censure of the greatest Prelates that ever flourish't in the Church of England become the State and Grandeur of the Vicar of Coggeshal What empty and shallow Pretenders to Knowledge were Archbishop Laud and all his Favourites if compared to this unfledged Curate And to what an heighth of Confidence was the young Sizer perk't with the success of his Rumford-Performances But who so presumptuous as those Smatterers that have onely Learning enough to prefer them to the Pillory And what less Disgrace can that Caitiff deserve that shall dare to Arraign the Ghosts and invade the
same design as they say Aristotle writ some of his Books onely to be understood by the Sons of Art and Mystery However by this Artifice they inveigle the silly and unwary People both to follow and admire them for when they are perswaded the outward Element of the Text is but the Cabinet to the Jewel and the precious Mystery they so manage the business as to possess them with an apprehension that no Key can open it but what is made at their own Forges And if any of us attempt to explain a Text by the Coherence of the Discourse by the Propriety of the Phrase and by the Idiom of the Language we are Moral Men and dull Literalists and utter strangers to the inwardness of the Spirit but 't is they that are the practical experimental Preachers and that see into the depths of the Mystery of the Covenant of Grace And by this means do they gain the advantage to obtrude upon the People whatever can neither be proved nor understood as Profound Divinity § 7. But whatsoever Truth Candor and Ingenuity there is in my Character of these Men of the Flock he knows how to revenge their wrongs by bold and confident Recriminations if Reproaches be the Weapon he understands his advantage and when Controversies come to be managed by mutual Accusations there they never want for Ammunition their Magazine is inexhaustible Thus our Author stands amazed that Heresie should complain of Schism Quis tulerit Gracchos c. Shall the Pot call the Pan Burnt And is it not strange that whilst one writes against Original Sin another preaches up Iustification by Works and scoffs at the imputation of the Righteousness of Christ to them that believe Yea whilst some can openly dispute against the Doctrine of the Trinity the Deity of Christ and the Holy Ghost Whilst Instances may be collected of some Mens impeaching all the Articles almost throughout there should be no reflection in the least on these things Some Mens guilt in this nature might rather mind them of pulling out the beam out of their own eyes then to act with such fury to pull out the eyes of others for the motes which they think they espy in them c. What a strain of Flattery is here There is questionless no Poison nor Calumny in these leering Suggestions it is an harmless Character and strikes at no Mans Reputation no doubt he nev'r intended to relieve himself and his Party from my foul Reproaches by false or fierce Recriminations nor to write any thing that might disadvantage me in my Reputation or Esteem But some Mens Tongues traduce by instinct and are so venomous that they cannot touch but they will poison your Reputation Their Throats are open Sepulchres and the poison of Asps is under their Lips and they cannot open their Mouths but out flie stings and blasting vapours So that I am now forced to confess my self a dull and trifling Satyrist that have charged them with nothing but their own avowed Principles and notorious Practices and never use tart Language but to express vile Things and go far about to convict them of their Guilt before I dare venture to lash and chastise them for their Folly and all my Satyrical Reflections are the natural Results and Inferences of some foregoing Reasonings But this Man strikes with more sure and deadly Blows he can stab with a doubtful Intimation and dispatch with an oblique Look 't is no matter for evidence of Argument and certainty of Fact this fending and proving is a tedious course 't is but dropping a Train of sly and malicious suspicions and that is enough to blow up your Reputation He knows all Men have a touch of Ill-nature and are apt enough to make the hardest surmises upon these ugly suggestions Nothing sets an handsomer Gloss upon a Lye then to shew it by these dark Lights and indirect Insinuations are the most artificial Schemes of Slandering they heighten and enrage Mens Curiosity and then leave it to their ill Humour to finish the Story and then it shall never be spoil'd for want of spiteful and ill contrived Suspicions And every Man has Wit enough to pick out the Categorical meaning of these oblique Reproaches and had he in direct terms charged me for impeaching the most Fundamental Articles of Christianity it had not been more familiar and intelligible English But as for my own part I am no more moved with the Charge then I am concern'd in the Crime I know none in the Church of England that publish any such false and Heretical Doctrines or if there be any that vent them in Corners and Conventicles I can onely say as one did that was treated as I am Let him be Anathema But the Ingenuity of these Men can dispose of other Mens Faith and Religion at their pleasure and they can with as much ease make Heretiques as they once could Witches and Malignants if a Neighbour incur their displeasure that is enough to make the Indictment and to be charged is enough to make it good Thus you know they dealt with the Ghost of the great Hugo Grotius one would needs have him a rank Socinian and another a thorough Papist though how he could be both can never be unriddled unless Hugo were one and Grotius the other though the evident reason why he might be either is no other then that he was no Calvinian and then he might be any thing what they pleased This way of aspersing has ever been the offensive Weapon of peevish and angry Disputers though never did any Man weild it with more Dexterity then our Author he never encountred Adversary that he did not transform either into Atheist or Papist or Socinian But it seems the Charge of Socinianism is become the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our Age and many Men suffer under its imputation though as it always happens in Cases of Slander I know none more clear from the Infection then those that have been most suspected and avoided for it Of which Injustice I can conceive no other imaginable account then some Mens proud imperious Confidence that have adopted their own unlearned Wranglings into the Articles of Religion and put as great a weight upon their own novel Doctrines as upon the plain and easie Propositions of Scripture Now if a sober Man discard their wild and unwarrantable additions 't is all one as if he renounced the Article it self They will not endure a contradiction nor suffer you to suspect the infallible certainty of their Resolutions and if you doubt or dispute the Ius Divinum of a Systematick Subtilty you make them impatient and they make you an Heretick If we are not confident that our blessed Saviour suffered the extremity of Hell-torments at the hour of his Passion even to the Horrours of Despair 't is with some positive people the same thing as if we called in question the Merits of his Death and Sufferings If we smile at the
Vanity of his Attempt who would demonstrate out of the Canticles that the Saints enjoy distinct Communion with the three Persons of the Trinity it exasperates some bold and confident Men that are fond of their own thin and crazy Conceits as much as if we should pervert the first Chapter of St. Iohn's Gospel And we scoff at Justification by Faith if we despise a Thousand vain and empty Speculations wherewith they have involved that Article As whether Faith justifies from any peculiar Excellency of its own nature or barely from the Divine Appointment whether it be an instrumental Cause of Justification or onely a Procatarctick Cause if instrumental whether an active or a passive Instrument if Procatarctick whether Procatarctick formal or Procatarctick objective with a multitude more of the like wise and important Enquiries that could never have enter'd into the most curious and whimsical Understanding had not some idle people loved to amuse themselves with inventing profound and curious Nothings and had not one Keckerman and some other dull Fellows been at leisure to write foolish Books of Logick and Metaphysicks whose Theorems must be blended with the Doctrines and Propositions of St. Paul and then Mens little Quarrels about this Motley-Divinity must make new Sects and Opinions in Religion and they must measure the Orthodoxy of their Faith by their subtilty in wrangling and their power in disputing by their skill and dexterity in Terms of Art and by their being able to understand the precise and Orthodox Notion of a Procatarctick Cause These are the useful and wonderful Profundities to which the disputing Men of this Age are such zealous Votaries they value their Learning by their skill in these dry and sapless Enquiries and their Agility in the Combats of Disputation and a Disputant with them signifies the same thing as a great Scholar To this purpose they furnish their Memories with abundance of notional Querks and Subtilties to keep up their pert and talkative Humour and spend all their time in learning Distinctions that may maintain and reconcile palpable Contradictions With what fetches of Wit will they distinguish themselves round about till they come at last to affirm what at first they denied And with what severity of Judgment will they spin out a long train of wary Aphorisms and subtile Propositions to prove that 't is Faith alone that justifies and yet so explain the Notion of justifying Faith as to make it imply and include in it all other parts of the Condition of the New Covenant i. e. Good Works and those that are able Divines can write whole Volumes of Problems and Disputations to make out this important Mystery That Faith alone justifies i. e. as 't is not alone And now if you compare the vanity of the Opinions with the talkative Humour of the Opiniators you will cease to wonder at their rude Carriage toward persons that profess to pursue more useful and less difficult Studies they are brim-full of talk and no Man that pretends to Learning can come in their way but they immediately engage him in Disputation and if he with some Railery expose their learned and studied Ignorance and confute the silliness of their Systematick Notions 't is a bold affront to the Orthodox Faith and he drolls upon the most Fundamental Articles of Divinity for they lay no less weight upon their own Subtilties and singular Conceits then on the plain and practical Precepts of the Gospel so that you cannot sweep away their Cobwebs but down drops the whole Fabrick of Religion Neither does this pragmatical Humour run onely among the Pretenders to Learning but the Infection spreads among the People every sage Trades-man sets up for a deep and an able Divine and talks as confidently of Predestination as if he had served his Apprenticeship to a Dutch Professour Every zealous Shop-keeper understands the management of Ecclesiastical Discipline as well as the Nicene Fathers and a Jury of Button-sellers shall determine a Controversie of Faith with more assurance then a General Council These of all others are the fiercest and most implacable Assertors because their Zeal is proportion'd to their Ignorance and therefore you cannot make your self pleasant with their pert and conceited Pedantry and 't is a piece of Railery that is hardly to be forborn but you draw upon your self whole Volleys of Anathema's and hard Names they can endure any Indignity rather then an affront to their Clerkship and you may with more safety play with a Spaniard's Beard then sport with their grave Ignorance That is an Insolence that can never pass unrevenged but your Reputation is immediately stabbed with some ugly word or poisoned with some malicious Report and it becomes the great business of their Zeal to brand you with foul imputations and in all places and upon all occasions to blazon abroad your gross Errours and your horrid Blasphemies This short Character of their Humour may serve for a satisfactory account of their dirty and disingenuous Demeanour towards such persons as pretend to so much knowledge as to despise the Ignorance of their Learning I design it not for an Apology either for my self or any of my Friends I know none so poor-spirited as to stand in awe of such petty Arts the most pertinent Reply to such a poor and beggarly Malice is Neglect and Disdain though in truth such Wretches as stick not upon every slight occasion to sacrifice not onely our Good-Names but our Livelyhoods for that is our Case to their own Childish Picks deserve to be answered by the Pillory and the Whipping-Post § 8. Many other ugly Insinuations he has as if I were prompted to this Undertaking by lewd and naughty Intentions or as if he knew some Stories that he can but out of Tenderness and Civility to my Reputation will not vent I will not so much assist his Malice as to transcribe all his white-liver'd Suggestions to this purpose but whether in this way of proceeding he has discover'd more Boldness or more Imprudence is hard to determine when he knows himself to lie under such vast disadvantages at this Weapon by lying open to so many stabbing and inevitable Hits But this is one of their Topicks and comes in by the Rules of their Method and Ingenuity and all the Defenders and Champions of the Church of England have ever been thus accosted by their civil and unpassionate Adversaries And never did any Man give them a smart and severe Blow but immediately they threatned to tell Tales And where Men have not the advantage of Truth Calumny is their best and surest Weapon For though its Wounds do not always fester yet they usually leave a scar behind them at least he gains the Advantage of his Enemy that gives him the diversion to wipe off Reproaches and all Apologies in defence of a Man 's own Innocence leave behind them through the common Ill-nature of Mankind some ill-contrived suspicion of Guilt in the Minds of Men. And therefore I
foul and thick a Cause the more they struggle the faster they stick and therefore they would be well advised not to dally too much with that Author for though I know him to be far from an angry or a Cynical Humour yet I am able to discern such an hatred and antipathy to Hypocrisie from the Genius of his Writings that if they will tempt him to unrip all their Folly and Knavery he is apt enough to discover such thick Blasphemies against Divine Providence and such unparallel'd Abuses of Religion in their most sumptuous Pretences and most plausible Practices as shall represent the Men of greatest Reputation amongst them for Wisdom and Learning in as ridiculous a Guise as T. W. and the Men of greatest Vogue for Conscience and Integrity under as seditious a Character as W. B. and no Man more obnoxious upon both accounts then I. O. And who can endure to see Men that are so horribly bemired bear up with so much State and Confidence § 14. But the great Nuissance of my Preface is some unkind and unhappy Reflections that I chanced I know not by what Mis-fortune to cast out upon their Gift of Prayer This is the dear Palladium of their Pulpits and they will as soon fling up the whole Cause as forego this Priviledge of Talking 'T is the Ephod and the Teraphim of the House of Micah and nothing shall ever wrest it from them but Fine Force and Invincible Resolution and therefore where this is endanger'd or invaded our Author you may be sure will lay about him with all the power of Words and vehemence of Zeal so that here I must struggle to purpose to carry off this Darling of the Cause In the first place then the Man is Wonder-strucken that I should design all along to charge my Adversaries with Pharisaism and yet should instance in their Confession of Sin when it is the Characteristical Note of the Pharisees that they made no Confession of Sin at all But to awaken him out of his amazement he may know that the Pharisaick Hypocrisie consists neither in long Prayers nor short Confessions no more then it does in long Robes or short Cloaks Spiritual Pride is its onely Essential Character and it is of no Concernment which way and in what Expressions it vents and discovers its self There is a creeping as well as a vaunting Arrogance and this Vice is never so confident as when it appears in the Garbs and Postures of Humility And thus when Men dissemble with the Almighty when they know that they belye themselves with false Accusations when they mourn for Sins of which they think they stand clear and innocent and pretend to be humbled for those Offences of which they are not seriously convinced Tell me a greater instance of Pride and Insolence in the World then this jugling and counterfeit Humility for what else can these Men think within but that they oblige and complement the Almighty by being content to be thought viler Wretches then they think themselves onely to advance the Interest of Gods Glory and set off the greatness of his Free Grace And what an obliging Favour is this when they will sacrifice their own Reputation to the Glory and Renown of his Attributes So that 't is apparently a coarser piece of vanity to confess those Sins of which we are not guilty then not to acknowledge those of which we are And that there is something of this Leven lurking at the bottom of all this Humiliation is notoriously evident for as much as howsoever humble and complemental they are in their Talk to God yet in their Conversation with Men the Scene immediately alters then they return to the old Pharisaick Vomit and then Publicans keep your distance and then they censure and despise their Neighbours as Carnal Gospellers and applaud themselves that they are not as the Men of the World Then we bless the Lord for humbling our proud Hearts and for emptying us of all our Self-righteousness thereby to bring us effectually to an experimental sense of the deep and more spiritual Mysteries of the Gospel to an heavenly taste and relish of the sweetness and preciousness of the Lord Jesus and of that Soul-ravishing delight wherewith his People are affected in their spiritual Closings with him and lastly to an inward feeling of the glorious Discoveries Manifestations and Comings in of his Spirit upon the Hearts of Believers in all his Ordinances This is the inward practical and experimental part of the Mystery of Godliness whereas your Formalists and meer Moral Professors make a great Noise about their dry Devotions and Self-wrought-out-Mortifications But alas poor deluded Wretches they never viewed the Ugliness of their Nature in the Glass of the Law they never lay under the Horrours of the Spirit of Bondage they never had a humbling sight and thorough sense of their Sins and were never perfectly emptied of their own Self-righteousness and though they can do good Actions yet they cannot deny them and make woful Complaints to Almighty God that all the Duties they perform though they know them to be agreeable to his Laws are wicked and abominable Ah! this Corrupt Nature is a proud Thing and hardly driven out of its Trust and Confidence in its own Righteousness nothing but an absolute and thorough Conviction of its own Self-emptiness Self-abhorrency and Self-despair can ever bring it to a full and absolute Close with the Lord Christ. This is the Block at which Millions of poor Souls stumble everlastingly and 't is the Lords distinguishing Mercy that has taken the Veil from off our Eyes and enabled us to see the danger of a Self-righteousness So that this Pageantry is the main ground of all their Spiritual Pride and Arrogance upon this they build the lofty Conceits of their own peculiar Godliness and their insolent Contempt of all others that have more Wit or less Vanity then to be as fond and phantastick as themselves and in the result of all this formal and counterfeit Humility is made the specifick difference between the People of God and the Men of the World But here his Pen takes occasion to flie out for 't is very unruly upon a Censure of mine against an Insolence of theirs for confining the Elect and the Godly to their own Party and esteeming of us as no better then the Wicked and the Reprobate of the Earth Wherein says he I am satisfied that he unduly chargeth those whom he intends to reflect upon However I am none of them I confine not Holiness to a Party not to the Church of England or to those that dissent from it This his Confidence dares affirm though 't is so notorious that never any Party of Men in the World no not the Jews did with greater assurance appropriate to themselves all the Titles and Characters of the People of God For what else mean their Accounts and Descriptions of the Power of Godliness by the Singularities of their own
Superstition What mean those Flatteries and Congratulations wherewith they besprinkle their Followers as if they were the onely People that are acquainted with the Mysteries and Spiritualities of the Gospel What means their Confinement of the Preaching of the Covenant of Grace to their own Doctrines and their own Congregations What means their boasting of themselves as the onely powerful Soul-searching experimental and spiritual Preachers In brief what means their bestowing nothing but fair Words upon themselves and nothing but foul Language upon us Sure he cannot forget the Words of their own Party and who they were that were The Godly Professors Sion God's Jacobs the Israel of God God's Inheritance when we were Aegypt and Babylon Enemies of the Power of Godliness scoffing Edomites Men of the World Antichristian Apostates Idolaters and Followers of the Whore He certainly must needs be a very young Professor that is unacquainted with this Language But however what is all this to our Author He you may take his word is none of them But what is that to me Did I ever accuse him My design was to describe the Genius of the Party and not the Humour of every individual Professor But 't is the mis-fortune of indiscreet People to betray themselves by their own unnecessary Apologies and to cry Not guilty before they are indicted when their own Consciences Arraign and Convict them For our Author I perceive by sundry Passages and Notions in his Book is a Brother of the Independent Communion and therefore let him seeing he has put himself upon it produce me but one Writer of that Fraternity that is not notoriously guilty of this piece of Pride and Partiality I confess I am not very conversant in their Writings yet I have by chance read one of whom I am confident he has no very small Opinion that exceeds all the Scriblers I ever had the fortune to meet with or the leisure to peruse in these foul and malapert Censures and that is I. O. one of the great Patriarchs of the Congregational Churches All whose Pamphlets are little better then so many Libels against the Church of England and had we been down-right Miscreants or the most wretched Apâ—states in the World he could scarce have given us more unfriendly Language 'T is hard to dip into a Page of his Writings that is not embellish't with some or other of these decent and beautiful Expressions It was the peculiar way of his Sermons and Discourses to magnifie the Parliament-Reformation for a wonderful and providential Recovery of the departed Gospel to these Nations and to represent the design of that Holy War as begun and carried on by the Power and Procurement of the Lord Christ in order to the final Overthrow of the Episcopal Antichrist and the Restauration and Establishment of his own Kingdom He has publish't many excellent Sermons to this purpose such is that entituled A Vision of unchangeable Free Mercy in sending the Means of Grace to undeserving Sinners wherein Gods uncontroulable eternal Purpose in sending and continuing the Gospel by which they all along intend nothing else but their sweaty way of Preaching unto this Nation in the midst of Oppositions and Contingencies is discovered c. preached before the Honourable House of Commons April 29. 1646. Where beside the apparent scope of the Sermon it self he reckons up three Departures of the Gospel from England That by the Saxon Conquest that by the Roman Harlot and that in our days by an almost universal treacherous Apostacy from the Purity of Worship from which the Free Grace and good Pleasure of God has made a great Progress again towards a Recovery So that the Episcopal way of Worship is a perfect Apostacy from the Purity of the Gospel and had it been universal it had been total And again such is his Sermon Of the Branch of the Lord or the Beauty of Sion preached at Edinburgh 1650. where compiling a Catalogue of the Enemies of the House of God in all Ages he reckons up Pharaoh Nebuchadnezzar Dioclesian Iulian and the late Prelates whose Rochets he adds were for that Reason together with other Garments of their Adherents and the Imperial Robes of the forementioned Emperours roll'd up in Blood by the Divine Vengeance and hung up in Gods House as the Spoils of Gods Enemies And 't is no doubt no unpleasant reflection to his People to consider how willing and prodigal their gracious Father is to sacrifice Crowns and Mitres Kingdoms and Churches to the Interest and Plunder of his secret ones For so our Author stiles them I suppose because no body knows or suspects them to be Gods People beside themselves And in his Dedication to the Supreme Authority of the Nation the Commons Assembled in Parliament prefixed to his Sermon preached Octob. 24. 1651. being a Solemn Day of Thanksgiving for the Destruction of the Scots Army at Worcester with sundry other Mercies he tells his Patrons That as whatever there has been of Beauty Glory or Advantage unto the People of God in the late Transactions at Worcester hath been eminently of undeserved Grace so the dreadful Vengeance which the Lord hath executed against the Men of his Enmity and Warfare hath been most righteously procured by their clothing cursed designs of Revenge Persecution Bondage in Soul and Body Spoil and Rapine with the most glorious Pretences of Zeal Covenant and Reformation and such like things which never came into their Hearts Here the dear Brethren of the Presbytery as well as the Reprobate Cavaliers were Listed among the Enemies of the Cause and of the Church of God and now all People and all Parties in the three Kingdoms except onely the Army-Saints and their Adherents were become perfect Aegyptians And so they were upon this Account that the People of God had gain'd a certain Right to Rob and Plunder them by Divine Commission And here also you may observe that I.O. bold Man and God Almighty were always of the same side and the same Communion and whatever he was for was doubtless the Cause of God They were for Presbytery and Independency and Democracy together and never parted Counsels and Designs till the Lord grew weary of these right Godly Men and so was at length pleased to turn Cavalier And that upon good grounds for by this time his old Friends were become as bad or worse then his old Enemies For so the same Author informs us to mention but one place more though I omit as many as would make a Volume in a little Treatise of Temptation pag. 65 66. where giving an Account of the Temptations which in those days had even cast down the People of God from their Excellency and had cut their Locks and made them become like other Men he reckons in the first place the specious Pretence of Christian Liberty and Freedom from a Bondage-frame at which door sundry had gone out into Sensuality and Apostacy into a neglect of Sabbaths Publick and Private
Civil Power as far as they concern the ends and interests of Publick Tranquillity though how far that may reach as it was here asserted so it was in the following Chapters more largely proved and stated However 't is apparent from the manifest scope and the last issue of my whole Discourse that I stand not obliged to ascribe any more absolute Power to the Civil Magistrate than what is necessary to warrant that Authority they exercise in prescribing those Rites and Ceremonies of Worship that are injoin'd and practised in the Church of England that is all I contend for at present and will as for what concerns this Dispute be content to lop off any other Branches of their Jurisdiction that relate not to this Enquiry And if this cannot be justified unless it be granted that the Commands of Soveraign Power must always over-rule all Obligations of Conscience then I confess I must submit to this disadvantage that this Man would impose upon me but if it can 't is no part either of my Duty or my Interest to assert any thing that is neither true in it self or pertinent to my purpose But whether it can or cannot I have already sufficiently accounted for both in that Treatise and in this Rejoinder For what our Author would here charge upon me as my Duty is no more than what he has heretofore charged upon me as my Doctrine viz. That the Magistrate has Power to bind the Consciences of his Subjects to observe what is by him appointed to be professed and observed in Religion and nothing else are they to observe making it their Duty in Conscience so to do and the highest crime or sin to do any thing to the contrary and whatever the precise truth in these matters be or whatever be the apprehensions of their own Consciences concerning them The falshood of which horrid Calumny I have there baffled with so much evidence and reproved with so much severity that after that it were an affront to the Readers Understanding to warn him against every Repetition of so foul and groundless a slander though it is the Burthen of every Page § 2. In the next Paragraph I proceeded to account for the nature and extent of Christian Liberty where I both founded our Right to it upon this natural and inward Freedom of our Minds and also proved it to be sometimes coincident with it But says our Nicodemus for he is very thick of Understanding when he pleases How can these things be When Christian Liberty as I have stated it is a priviledge whereas Liberty of Conscience is common unto all Mankind This Liberty is necessary unto Humane Nature and cannot be divested of it and so it is not a priviledge that includes a specialty in it To this I answer That Natural Liberty is a freedom of the Mind and Judgment from all Humane Laws in general and Christian Liberty is the same freedom from the Mosaick Law in particular which because it was bound upon the Jews by virtue of a Divine Authority it was a restraint not onely upon their Practices but upon their Minds and Consciences and prescribed to their inward Thoughts and Opinions as well as their outward Actions they had no Liberty to judge of their Goodness but were bound to submit their Understandings to the Wisdom of God And this is the main difference between the Obligation of Divine and Humane Laws that these reach onely to our Wills and those affect our Judgments and determine our Apprehensions to whatsoever they command our Obedience and we are bound to acquiesce in the Counsels of God though we understand not their Reasons and therefore whatever Law comes with the impress of Divine Authority it bears down all before it and supersedes all the weak Disputes and Reasonings of our little Understandings and as long as we are assured it proceeds from God that alone without any farther enquiry gives our Minds infinite satisfaction of its Wisdom and Goodness So that during the whole Period of the Mosaick Institution all freedom of Judgment in reference to the particular Commands of his Law was retrenched by the Authority of God but when their Obligation was repeal'd and the impress of his Authority was taken off then did the things themselves return of their own accord to the indifferency of their own Natures and so were restored to the Judgment of the Minds of Men and therefore though Christian Liberty be a Priviledge with a specialty yet 't is a Branch of that Liberty that is natural to Mankind in that 't is nothing but a Restauration of the Mind of Man from the restraints of the Law of Moses to its native freedom which though it cannot be devested by any Humane Power yet it may then was and always is abridged by Divine Commands in that they pass an equal Obligation upon the Judgments and the Practices of Men upon which account alone all matters of the Law of God are absolutely exempt both from our Natural and our Christian Liberty but when he is pleased to reverse his own Obligation and to leave things to their Original indifferency that is a restitution to our natural Liberty and that is our Christian Liberty But for a more full and exact Account of the nature and true signification of this Pretence 't is necessary to examine how 't is stated in the Word of God and as it is there discoursed of it is certain it relates meerly to those Priviledges that are granted or restored to the minds of men by the Repeal and Abrogation of the Law of Moses The whole Case whereof is plainly this This Law was establish'd in the Jewish Common-wealth by Divine Authority and was the only Covenant and Revelation of God to mankind that was at first consign'd with mighty Miracles and ratified to after-Ages with their great Sacrament of Circumcision upon which Accounts the Jews concluded it to be of an Eternal and Immutable Obligation But God sends his Son into the World to take down this whole frame and fabrick of the Mosaick Religion and in its stead to set up a better and more manly Institution of things to repeal the Laws and Obligations of the old Covenant and to govern his Church by new measures of Duty and new Conditions of Obedience And this is properly the Priviledge of Christian Liberty and it comprehends all the peculiar Advantages and Exemptions granted to mankind by vertue of the Christian Institution It is a deliverance from the Dominion of Sin from the Curse of the Law from the severity of a Covenant of Works and from the Yoke of Ceremonial observances These are the matters of our Christian Liberty and those Doctrines that tend to bring us under any of these old Fetters and hard services are attempts of Jewish Bondage And this was the plain state of the Question in the Apostolical Age and the whole dispute of Christian Liberty was only a Controversie between the Jews and the Christians concerning
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
careful to admit and practise nothing in the Worship of God unless it comes in his Name and with Thus saith the Lord Iesus You know how many in this Nation in the days not long since passed yea how many thousands left their Native Soils and went into a vast and howling Wilderness because they made it so in the utmost parts of the World to keep their Souls undefiled and chaste to their dear Lord Iesus as to this of his Worship and Institutions So that they scorn to pretend any less Authority than our Saviours own express Warrant for any thing wherein they differ and divide from the Church of England And this is a ruder and more insolent Affront to our Christian Liberty than the most confident Jew could ever have been guilty of for though he might endeavour to enslave us to his own Customs and Prejudices yet they are such as once bore the impression of Divine Authority whereas these Men would stamp the Authority of God upon their own Dreams and phantastick Conceits and vouch their humour and their ignorance with a Thus saith the Lord Iesus and so would bore the Ears and enslave the Understandings of all Christendom to their own folly and confidence And certainly there never were greater Tyrants and Usurpers in the Church of Christ than these exact and curious Judges of Divine Rights with what Confidence will they prescribe Truth to Mankind and adopt their own uncertain Problems and Scholastick Fooleries into the Fundamentals of Religion With what Assurance of Authority will they restrain all Mens Faith to the Standard of their own Apprehensions How briskly will they warrant this Opinion and explode that And how dogmatically will they assign the precise bounds of Orthodoxy All their Sentiments are the Decrees of the Medes and Persians all their Rules of Worship are Obligatory as Apostolical Canons all their Opinions are Oracles and had they sate in the Infallible Chairs of Rome or Geneva they could not have been more confident and peremptory in their Determinations But thus is the Church of England requited for her modesty and because she does not abuse the Consciences of Men to a rigid Observance of her Institutions under a false pretence of Divine Authority the gentle and moderate exercise of her own lawful Jurisdiction is by these Men branded with Tyranny and Usurpation whilst themselves in the mean while are not ashamed to obtrude their own Fancies and little Conceits upon their credulous Proselytes with the counterfeit Seal of Heaven and inslave their Consciences to their own imperious dictates by exhibiting forged Commissions from God himself and then the People dare not murmur against their unreasonable Impositions for that reverence they bear to that Authority which as they are told is imprinted on them But this has ever been the subtilty of these Men as it is of all Malefactors to rail most at their own Crimes and to avoid the suspicion of their own Guilt by deriving its imputation upon some of their innocent Neighbours But once more to return to our Authors Inference If then he means that the Church of England imposes her Ceremonial Institutions with an Opinion of their antecedent Necessity and so it is apparent he is willing enough to be understood 't is a bold Calumny if he means that they become consequentially necessary onely by virtue of their Institution 't is a woful impertinence and is no other infringment of our Liberty than what is inseparable from the Nature of Humane Laws And so all the Civil Laws of Commonwealths are apparently as chargeable with this sort of Usurpation as any of our Ecclesiastical Constitutions And therefore by the way I would willingly be satisfied that seeing the Judicial as well as the Ceremonial Law of Moses was annull'd and abrogated by the Establishment of the Christian Faith and seeing by consequence it was part of their Christian Liberty to be freed from its Obligatory Power what imaginable Reason can be assign'd why Authority should more invade the Rights of our Christian Liberty by establishing new Ecclesiastical Canons than by enacting new Civil Constitutions Or why the Common Law of England should not as much infringe that part of our Gospel-Priviledges whereby we are exempt from the Judicial Law as the Canons and Determinations of the Church do that other part whereby we are rescued from the Ceremonial To this Enquiry they will never be able to return any tolerable answer but by shifting the matter of their plea and then they forsake their hold of Christian Liberty and shelter themselves in a new Pretence Perhaps they may plead that God has reserved the Appointment of the way manner and circumstances of his own Worship to his own immediate Jurisdiction but has vested Civil Magistrates with a power to govern the secular Affairs of Common-wealths But then this is an open Flight from our present Engagement and now the thing pleaded in behalf of their Disobedience is not their Christian Liberty or their exemption from the Law of Moses but their Christian Duty or their subjection to the Law of Christ. Though when this Refuge comes to be attaqued it will be found more weak and defenceless than this that is already demolish'd and you may well expect wise work when they are urged to produce Testimonies of Scripture that restrain the Civil Magistrate from enacting Ecclesiastical Laws and Constitutions for the due government and performance of external Worship Here their Pleas are so horridly vain and ridiculous that in comparison of them the Celebrated Text of the Romanists super hanc Petram in behalf of the Infallibility of the Papal Chair is as Impertinent as it is Reason and Demonstration But after this I suppose we may have occasion to enquire elsewhere In the mean time 't is enough that we have beaten down this Paper Fort of Christian Liberty in which if men may be allowed to take sanctuary for their disobedience to the Churches Constitutions it will not only be a plausible Refuge for all Schismaticks and Male-contents but an eternal Annoyance to the Churches Peace and a perpetual Nursery of incurable Schisms and Divisions For all parts of outward Worship save only the two Sacraments being left undetermined in the Word of God and some particular determinations being absolutely necessary to prevent Disorder and Confusion and these being not capable of any force or obligatory Power and by consequence of any Usefulness to their proper End but by vertue of the Authority of the Civil Magistrate It follows unavoidably that if laying Restraints and Injunctions upon men in the outward Exercise of Publick Worship be a violation of their Christian Liberty that 't is absolutely impossible to make any effectual Provisions for the orderly and regular performance of the Worship of God or to provide any security against eternal Tumults and Seditions in the Church of God And whenever Phanatick spirits have a mind to be peevish and humoursom they have here a sacred and
upon the World by the Institution of Christianity that they should ever lose it § 9. The last thing pleaded by our Author for the Divine Institution of Sacrifices is the words of St. Paul By Faith Abel offered Sacrifice And faith hath respect unto the Testimony of God revealing commanding and promising to accept our Duty And therefore this was not done by his own Choice but by warrant of a divine Command This Argument indeed is often insisted upon by some sort of Writers out of whom our Author whose custom it is to pour forth his crude Dictate rather from his Memory than his Reason transcribes it in haste without weighing its Force and Validity But it bottoms upon such a short and narrow account of the nature of Faith as would make wild work with the Phaenomena of Providence in the World And therefore to be brief the proper and last Resolution of this vertue as I have already intimated is into the Goodness and not the bare Testimony of God and we therefore trust the truth of divine Revelation because we believe him so essentially good that he nor can nor will deceive his Creatures So that our Belief of the Testimony of God is not the full and adequate Notion of Faith but 't is one particular Instance of our Confidence in his essential goodness and therefore there may be acts of this Duty without any supposal of divine Revelation and such was the Faith of Abel as the Apostle there describes it For he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him This upright man therefore being so amply satisfied of the Existence and goodness of his heavenly Father and conscious of his own Integrity in the offering of his Sacrifice rested secure from the Testimony of his own Conscience of Gods gracious acceptance However might not the Faith ascribed to Abel relate to the discharge of his Duty and not to the manner of its Performance And though he worshipped God in obedience to his Command which was an Act of Faith yet that is no more proof that he had any more divine warrant for the manner of his Worship than for the kind of his Sacrifice yet it was indifferent as to divine acceptance whether he had offered the Fruits of his Tillage or the Products of his Flock for the Sacrifice of Cain was not rejected because not of the same kind with that of Abel but had it been presented with the same Qualifications it had been rewarded with the same acceptance And thus does our Authors way of Arguing multiply difficulties upon himself for if it be of any force it will infer a necessity of a divine Command to determine the kind of Sacrifice as well as the manner of Worship and then is he obliged not only to produce a Law for Sacrifices but one to Cain to offer the Fruits of the Field and another to Abel to offer Living Creatures and this is competent evidence that God never prescribed their patticular mode of Worship but left it to the choice of their own Convenience and Discretion and therefore they both chose that which was most proper sutable to their respective conditions of life God entail'd his acceptance not upon the outward Expressions of their worship but the inward Qualifications of their minds To conclude this Argument is utterly impertinent unless upon supposition of this Principle that men have not any Rational Ground to expect that God should accept the faithful discharge of their Duty unless himself have prescribed all particular ways and circumstances of the manner of its Performance but this is to betake themselves to the lazy trade of Begging and this man is bold enough for this shameless employment And though he is not so confident as to take up his Bush so near home yet when he gets aloof off into my sixth Chapter he grows as bold and sturdy as the Gentlemen Cripples of Southwark are in Lincolns-Inn Fields For there to secure the Fundamental Mystery of Puritanism against all opposition viz. that nothing ought to be practised in the Worship of God but what is warranted in the Word of God he lays down certain Proleptick and self-evident Principles the first whereof is That wherever in the Scripture we meet with any Religious Duty that had a preceding Institution although we find not expresly a consequent Approbation we take it for granted that it was approved and so on the contrary where an Approbation appears and Institution is conceal'd And in another Theorem in the same Chapter to the same purpose for People of that Trade and Way of Life are much given to Repetitions he gives in this very Instance of Sacrifices for proof viz. Whatever they the Patriarchs did they had especial warranty from God for which is the case of the great Institution of Sacrifices it self It is a sufficient Argument that they were divinely instituted because they were graciously accepted What figure this is called in his Pedling Logick I know not but in ours 't is yâ—lep'd begging the Question A singular way of dispute this is it not First to take the Conclusion for granted and then challenge it for a Principle to prove it self and to lay down the main matter in debate for a truth so certain that a man is obliged by the Laws of Reasoning to grant it before he is capable of any right to dispute it Who would ever contradict this Author in these Enquiries that would admit those Postulata for self-evident Propositions But this man is so bold and obnoxious a Beggar that if he will continue to follow this Trade 't is impossible he should long escape the Beadles watchful eye but more cruel hand I know no Refuge he has to protect his Back against this severe Executioner unless by listing himself into some Society of Gypsies for whom he is admirably qualified as to the two great Offices of Canting and Begging and wants not above one accomplishment more to compleat him at all points for that Imployment and 't is more noble and generous than to beg after this stragling rate After this Discourse of the Original of Sacrifices and after another to give an account of the reason of Gods prescribing every particular Rite and Ceremony of his Worship under the Mosaick Pedagogy I proceeded to shew that the main design of the Christian Institution was to establish the great Duties of Vertue and real Righteousness and not to determine Rites and Ceremonies of external Worship in so much that we find none prescribed in the New Testament save only the two Sacraments and upon this I challenged the unpeaceableness of these Men that upon their Principle must be Rebels and Schismaticks to all Churches in Christendom as well as the Church of England But to this hush not one syllable of reply 't is close and immediate to my purpose and therefore of no concern to his he cares not
such things would be But I say so such things would not be and so there is an end of our dispute and at this lock have we stood gazing at one another at least this hundred years here Cartwright begun the Objection and here he was immediately check't in his career by Whitgift who told him plainly He could not be ignorant that to the making of a Sacrament besides the external Element there is required a Commandment of God in his Word that it should be done and a Promise annexed unto it whereof the Sacrament is a seal Here they stopt and his Adversary never proceeded in his Argument but some that came after him resolved not to part so easily with so big an Exception though perhaps for no other reason than because Cartwright had started it and the truth is all his followers have done little more than lickt up the Vomit and Choler of that proud Schismatick and therefore they never pursued this new-fangled Cavil beyond his first Syllogism where himself was repuls't and rebuked and ever since this has been their post and they are resolved to keep it with unyielding and invincible confidence and their foreheads are so hardned that you may sooner beat out their brains than shame or convince them out of their Folly and though they have been so frequently and vehemently urged to a Proof and Prosecution of their Argument they could never be made to stir one foot backward or forward but here they stand like men enchanted and whatever Demands or Questions you propose to them they return you not one syllable of reply but Sacraments Sacraments And in this Posture do they continue to this day to haunt us with the stubbornness of unlaid Ghosts and 't is the only voice this Head of Modesty is able to utter upon this Subject He is resolved upon it that all significant Rites instituted in the Worship of God are real Sacraments and that so they shall be And that is stubborn and indisputable Proof and 't is not modest to bear up against so much Brass and Boldness and yet I am resolved for once to rub my forehead and not to be brow-beaten but to look him in the Face with the confidence of a Basilisk and upbraid him either to make good or to renounce his Argument and if he will neither yield nor proceed to scorn and affront and point him out of his intolerable Confidence Here then I fix my foot and dare him to his Teeth to prove that any thing can be capable of the Nature or Office of Sacraments that is not establish'd by divine Institution and upon Promise of divine Acceptance These are inseparable Conditions of all Sacramental Mysteries and whatsoever other Properties and Qualifications they may have beside these are always necessary and indispensable Ingredients of their Office so that without them nothing can lay claim to their Name or Dignity however any thing may happen to symbolize with them upon other Accounts and by other Circumstances For the Christian Sacraments are the inseparable Pledges and Symbols of the Christian Faith and are establish'd to that Intent by the Author of the Christian Institution and they are such outward Rites and Ceremonies whereby we openly own the Covenant and pass mutual Engagements to stand to its Terms and Conditions and therefore he alone that appointed the Religion is able to appoint by what outward Signs or Acts of stipulation we shall signifie and express our acknowledgment of and submission to his Institutions So that the meaning and intention of it is to assign some particular Act of Worship whereby we may express our Engagements and Resolutions of Obedience to the whole Religion and who then can declare and specifie what Rite he will accept as a full acknowledgment of our duty of Universal Obedience but he alone that requires it And therefore unless it pretend to his Institution there is no imaginable ground why it should be thought to pretend to the Office and Dignity of a Sacrament And certainly they have a very mean opinion of these sacred Mysteries that require nothing more to their Nature and Function but bare significancy and make every external sign capable of that holy and mysterious Office and what can more derogate from the Credit of those great Pledges of our Faith and Instruments of our Salvation As if they carried in them nothing of a more useful or spiritual Efficacy than what every common Rite and Ceremony may acquire or pretend to by Custom and humane Institution § 12. But 't is still more pleasant and more prodigious to see men that are so stiff and dogmatical in their Talk have so little regard to their own Pretences thus whereas they will admit no other Umpirage of our present Disputes about Divine Worship but what may be fetch'd from immediate Divine Authority yet in this grand Exception they take no notice of its Decrees and Determinations and though our Author will have every significant Circumstance of Devotion to partake of the Nature and Mystery of a Divine Sacrament yet he makes no attempt to prove it out of the Word of God No there is not a Text in the four Gospels that may be abused to that purpose And Paul for to allow him the Title of Saint is Popish and Idolatrous and our Author is as shy in all his Writings of bestowing it upon an Apostle as upon Cain or Iudas though he will vouchsafe the Title of Holy that is coincident with it to every Zealot of his own Brotherhood but by what name or title soever dignified or distinguish'd the Apostle Paul is utterly silent in the Case and now we have no higher Authority to vouch our Cause but the Schoolmen and Austin As for the former not to dispute the impertinency of the Quotation whenever they speak sense we are ready to subscribe to their Reason but their bare Authority is of no more force in the Church of England than the Decrees and Oracles of Mr. Calvin their Writings are no part of the Canon of Scripture or the four first General Councils and 't is well known what wise accounts they are forced to give of the Nature of Sacraments to justifie the unwarrantable Determinations of their own Church that had rashly and needlesly enough defined some things to be so that are in themselves infinitely uncapable of that sacred Name and Office And I know nothing for which any part of their coarse and frieze Discourses is more ridiculous in it self or more unanimously condemned by Protestant Writers of all Communions than their loose and groundless descriptions of the Nature and Office of Sacramental Pledges But this is one of their old ways of trifling when the pursuit of their Principles forces them upon an absurdity to father it upon the Schoolmen as if because these men sometimes talk absurdly that shall justifie their Impertinencies And as for his Citation out of St. Austin viz. Signa cum ad res divinas pertinent sunt
and a few idle Men CHAP. VI. The Contents OVr Authors perseverance in Cavil and Calumny His disingenuous way of shifting the proof and pursuit of their own Arguments All their Writers have ever begun and ended with Cartwright and either wrangle themselves into Conformity as he did or run themselves into perfect Enthusiasm and Phanatick Madness Their impertinent way of defending their own Objections when they should prove them Nothing can be charged of being a Part of divine Worship unless it pretends to divine Institution This mans stubbornness and invincible Resolution in Schism A speech to the Non-conformists to encourage them in their separation in the Language and out of the Writings of J. O. Their bold way of abusing the People and the Word of God by laying the same stress upon their own Fancies as upon the Fundamentals of the Gospel Our Authors Plea in their own behalf from the Prescription of one way of Worship in the Word of God the most effectual Argument against Toleration This Plea as managed by this Author is as directly levelled against all other Parties excepting only the Independents as against the Church of England 'T is the only Pretence of all Impostures and 't is serviceable to no other end The silliness and palpable disingenuity of our Authors Quotations out of the Fathers Their Fundamental Principle equally overthrows all manner of Church-setlement By his Principles and Good-will nothing is to be tolerated but Independency The Precedents alledged both out of the Old and New Testament in the former Treatise for the warrantableness of uncommanded Ceremonies cleared and vindicated Our Adversaries way of affrighting the Rabble with hard and sensless words The vanity of attending to these mens Proposals of mutual Condescension A farther Prosecution of my Challenge to the whole Party of Non-conformists to answer Mr. Hooker A notorious and intolerable Instance of our Authors disingenuity in falsifying the design of my Discourse § 1. THus far have I made good my ground against all this mans Talk and Confidence for there and there alone lies all his strength and should now proceed to an Examination of his Censures against the fifth Chapter of my former discourse For against the fourth he only drops his old Calumny viz. that what I have there discoursed against the absolute and uncontroulable Power of the Civil Magistrate as 't is stated in Mr. Hobs's Hypothesis of Government is destructive of my own Pretensions in the foregoing part of my discourse where as he is resolved to bear me down I have made humane Laws the sole and supreme Rule of Religious Worship insomuch that the Magistrate of every Nation hath Power to order and appoint what Religion his Subjects shall profess and observe and thereby binds their Consciences to profess and observe that which is by him so appointed and nothing else are they to observe making it their Duty in Conscience so to do and the highest Crime or sin to do any thing to the contrary and that whatever the precise Truth in these matters be c. The horrour of which bold Calumny I have already I hope competently enough discover'd and detested But 't is the choicest Topick of this mans Logick to falsifie Arguments and represent his own Inferences as his Adversaries Opinions and then load them with loud and lusty Conclusions And then they are Oracles and Demonstrations to the People that understand neither the Truth nor Consequences of things and therefore does he repeat this fundamental Forgery in all Places and upon all Occasions and 't is the only thing that gives strength and colour to all his other Trifles and Impertinencies upon this he at first founds all his Reasonings and into this he at last resolves them insomuch that his whole Book is but one huge Lye 400 Pages long And this Confidence takes so successfully with the believing Disciples that they will at all adventure lay wagers that all those Prodigious Untruths he has obtruded on me are my own positive and direct Assertions But having manfully quit himself in this Performance he baulks the whole discourse of this Chapter as being of no Concern to himself and his dear Brotherhood and so advances to the next where we might trace him through all his former Methods of Truth and Ingenuity but at present we will wave that Province and rather chuse first to discharge our selves of those froward Exceptions wherewith he labours to entangle and perplex the design of my sixth Chapter because the matters there debated are of a more close and immediate Affinity to the nature of those things that fell under our last Consideration and therefore seeing he has been pleased to break the Coherence of my method I conceive it will be a more perspicuous and useful way of proceeding to dispatch them both together especially when what remains to be there examined is either meer impertinence to the drift of my Discourse or relies meerly upon the Principles here already confuted For what he dictates in defence of their darling Principle that nothing ought to be practised in the Worship of God but what is prescribed in the Word of God is either such loose and general Tattle as whether it be true or false it does neither service nor disservice to our present Enquiry Or if there be any thing more close and direct to the Purpose it resolves it self entirely into the Dispute of the last Chapter in that he restrains the Universality of this Maxim to instituted and significant Ceremonies which being exempted upon this score he seems not unwilling to allow the Governours of the Church a Power of determining natural Circumstances for the ends of Order and Decency so that in the last Result of things all this Cluster of Trifles and Impertinencies grows upon the stock of the former Principle and therefore that being cut down root and branch this that depends so entirely upon it must by consequence fall and perish with it For which reason I had once resolved with my self wholly to omit its distinct Examination and only to put them upon the proof of this Principle as 't is here stated by our Author out of the written Word of God But because he here counterfeits more assurance and pretends more Accuracy and to speak in his own stile by the Longsomness of his Discourse and the number of his Propositions seems more elaborate than in all the former Parts of his survey and withal to avoid their Clamour and other mens suspicion of dealing with him as he has dealt with me in wholly baulking the last Chapter of my Discourse that was most pertinent and material to his Pretences I have at last resolved to undergo the Penance of a Reply and thus it follows § 2. In the first place then he flings down the Ball viz. that nothing ought to be establish'd in the Worship of God but what is authorized by some Precept or Example in the Word of God and then tells us If men would lay
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
Objection to beat down the establish't Institutions of the Church it was immediately replyed That 't is neither true nor certain and they have always been prest and demanded from its first starting to prove its evidence and make good its certainty out of the Word of God but in stead of hearkning to so hard a task they have only studied to defend and guard it with a multitude of precarious Distinctions and unwarrantable Limitations all which amounts to nothing higher than a proofless and impertinent Circle of talk For 't is nothing to us whether they are able to defend it from being apparently false unless they are able to prove it apparently true because there are swarms of Opinions in the World that are certainly neither and therefore unless they will undertake to make good its undoubted truth 't is of no force to condemn and confute the lawfulness of any establish't Practice and Prescription in the Church of God which nothing can make criminal but some inconsistency with some certain Duty so that till it is competently demonstrated that this Aphorism is prescribed as a Rule to all Christians they shoot shamefully both short and beside the Mark whilst they onely endeavour to guard and secure its probability with their own arbitrary Limitations Thus whereas it was first urged by the Authors of the Admonition it was immediately answered It is most true that nothing ought to be tolerated in the Church as necessary unto Salvation or as an Article of Faith except it be expresly contain'd in the Word of God But that no Ceremony Order Discipline or kind of Polity may be in the Church except the same be expressed in the Word of God is a great and intolerable absurdity The Church being trusted with an Authority to make Orders and Ceremonies as shall from time to time be thought most expedient and profitable for the same so that nothing be done contrary to the Word or repugnant to the same To which T. C. replies It is true indeed if they be not against the Word of God and profitable for the Church they are to be received as those things which God by his Church does command but there is the Question But there is not the Question and it is so far from attempting to prove or justifie the Argument that it utterly relinquisheth it to the Mercy of the Adversary For the Question is Whether the Institutions of the Church ought to be repeal'd by virtue of this Principle that they are not expresly prescribed and authorized in the Word of God But this he forsakes by this Answer and flies to a new Argument that they ought to be removed not because they are uncommanded in the Word of God but purely because they are unprofitable to the Church of God So that the old untenable pretence was immediately yielded up at the first Summons and a new one taken up that was never before pretended nor ever after proved And in this shifting way of arguing is that Man exactly followed by this Author who is admirably accomplish't in his choicest Abilities viz. a bold Face and a loose Tongue For by the Limitation here by him assign'd he shifts the old Enquiry Whether any thing may be practised in the Worship of God that is not authorized in the Word of God No he is willing to allow it provided it be not extended to such things as are parts of Divine Worship and he will reject nothing upon its Authority but what he is able but never willing to prove to be a pretended part of Religious Worship as such so that the state of the Controversie is now shifted to this dispute Whether the Ceremonies injoin'd and establish't in the Church of England are pretended parts of Religious Worship and if they are not he good Man for his part has nothing to except against them upon the score of this Proposition and yet that they are so it therefore concerns not him to prove because 't is the onely thing pleaded And barely to affirm it is it seems enough to his purpose onely to tempt us to a new trouble of proving that the Ceremonies prescribed in the Church of England do not pretend to the Dignity of being parts of Divine Worship And when that is done these Squirrels can as easily frisk to a fresh pretence and a new Limitation and thus by this dancing and capering humour 't is an easie matter to perpetuate all the Controversies in the World how plainly soever determinable to the coming of Elias and after this rate shall the Barbers Bason remain Mambrino's Helmet and the Asses Pannel a Furniture for the Great Horse till the Day of Judgment However this advantage I have gain'd that this Principle is yielded up as to the general and unlimited Import of the words and therefore I hope hereafter I may justly challenge them not to impose it upon the credulity of the People without the allay of the former Caution for at present I am sure that their Followers understand it in the broad and literal sense of the words and that themselves are wont to discourse of it without any regard to these new Restraints and Limitations And if hereafter they will forbear these loose and general Expressions they will lay upon us some Obligation to acknowledge their Ingenuity and may possibly contribute somewhat towards disabusing the People who though they have so easily swallowed this Proposition in its unlimited meaning are yet unacquainted with the Antidote of this restriction and therefore when they have cast up their old prejudice perhaps they will not so easily take in this new Notion In the mean time I have nothing more to press upon our Author than that he would be perswaded to slake his Zeal in this Controversie till he has at least attempted to prove the Institutions of the Church of England to be pretended parts of Divine Worship though this he can never hope to perform but either by out-facing her Publick Declarations she having so expresly protested against it in the account of her Ceremonies that she has for that purpose prefix't to the Book of Common Prayer or else by proving that how innocently soever she may intend they of their own accord commence parts of Religious Worship by virtue of their Institution And if this he will undertake 't is easie to foretel without being Prophet or Prophets Son that his whole attempt will spend it self meerly upon significant Ceremonies and there I hope I have already prevented all their weak and little Arts. However to make all secure let me onely add That no Power whatsoever can adopt any thing into the Worship of God under any less pretence than of Divine Authority so that whatsoever Ceremonies the Church may deem expedient to prescribe for Order and Comeliness unless she go about to warrant her Injunctions by pretending Divine Institution circumstances of Worship they may be but parts they never can And of this I thought I had already given
a passable proof and so satisfactory that our Author has nothing to except against it but by pretending its inconsistency with some other parts of my Discourse but for the present that is no Objection against the positive truth and direct reason of the Argument it self and in short 't is this All Rituals and Ceremonies and Postures and Manners of performing the outward Expressions of Devotion are not from their own nature capable of being parts of Religion and therefore unless we used and imposed them as such 't is lamentably precarious to charge their Determination with Will-Worship because that consists in making those things parts of Religion that God has not made so so that when the Church expresly declares against this use of them and professeth to injoin them only as meer circumstances of Religious VVorship 't is apparent that it cannot by imposing them make any Additions to the VVorship of God but only provides that what God has required be performed in a decent and orderly manner And this is the real difference between the Christian and Mosaick Ceremonies in that theirs were made lasting and necessary parts of their Religion by being establish't with the same impress of Divine Authority as the Duties of the Moral Law whereas ours are not any integral parts of Divine VVorship but purely accidental and alterable circumstances of Religious Services and so are not of the same standing Necessity and Obligation as were the Mosaick Rites but as they were first established by our Superiours according to the common Rules of decency and discretion so may they be reversed by the same Authority In a word they are of the same Nature and Obligation with all other matters of humane Laws that are only disposed of by the publick Wisdom as it shall by the common notices of things judge them most convenient to publick Ends. § 4. And now upon this Bottom we might fairly wind up this Controversie for I am secure this ever has been and ever will be its real Issue But our Author cries no no. For if this Principle should fail us there are yet other general Maxims which Non-conformists adhere unto and suppose not justly questionable which they can firmly stand and build upon in the management of their Plea as to all differences between me and them i. e. He is a resolved and incorrigible Schismatick and the plain design of these words is only to encourage the People to stand firm to their Principles what though we may be stormed out of our old Elsibeth-pretensions let us not immediately resign up our Colours and march out of our Cause we have when all is lost unknown retreats and fastnesses as all Banditi and Moss-Troopers have to secure our selves from perfect discovery and destruction This man is a Demetrius a Ring-leader in sedition and therefore it more peculiarly concerns him to bestir himself and keep the Mutineers together and raise and animate their fainting spirits against discouragements and despondencies The People may murmur among themselves Is this poor Pretence the only ground of all our Schisms and Disturbances Have our Leaders no greater grievance against the publick Laws than this lank and pitiful Story which themselves it seems dare not own without mincing and disguising it with their own shuffling and to us unintelligible Reservations Is this all the Popery and Idolatry of the Church of England against which they are still inveighing with so much Zeal and Bitterness at the Meetings Must all this noise and stir be made and the King and Parliament thus disturbed for this Neighbours let us be advised and not create all this needless trouble to our selves and others only to countenance their Pride and Peevishness The plain troth is their Zeal was so flush'd with success in the late Tumults as transported them to too much Outrage and Cruelty against the Church and now because forsooth they are ashamed to acknowledge their fault and folly for what disgrace so grievous to proud and self-opinionated men as to confess an Error we fools as we are must be inveigled and drawn in to bear out their Extravagances Come come this is the true Mystery of Separation For you may see they themselves whatever they pretend are not so fond as seriously to believe the Publick Worship Popish and Idolatrous Do we not know that the Chiefs of the Presbyterians came constantly to Church and to Common Prayer till of late and those that are more modest and peaceable do so still which 't is apparent they could never have done had they really deem'd it Idolatry How then shall we justifie our selves in running thus giddily into these wild and unwarrantable Schisms Does not common sense tell us though perhaps we understand nor their School subtilties that 't is a base and unworthy thing thus insolently to affront the Kings Laws when we may avoid it without breaking Gods And therefore seeing whatever Reasons they may have for their own Non-conformity we are satisfied by their own example they have none big enough to warrant our Separation Let us then resolve with one Consent to be peaceable and ingenuous and return every man to his own home and his own Parish-Church But bear back this great Chieftain appears for he is still upon all Occasions the most bold and forward Oratour to hearten his back-sliding Brethren against Doubts and Despondencies witness Ianuary 31. in the year 48. when those wretched Miscreants wanted some spiritual Comfort and Cordial against the horrour of their Yesterdays villany And thus he appears in this present streight and thus you may suppose him after Preface of solemn wink to bespeak the mutinous Churches My Friends do you consider what you attempt Do you know what dreadful and horrible things are still behind Alas False Worship Superstition Tyranny and Cruelty lye at the Bottom and when these have possessed the Governours of a Nation and wrapt in the consent of the greatest Part of the People who have been acquainted with the mind of God that People and Nation assure your selves without unpresidented Mercy is obnoxious to remediless Ruine If you think Babylon is confined to Rome and its open Idolatry you know nothing of Babylon or the new Ierusalem no no their darling Errors are stones of the old Babel closing and coupling with that tremendous Fabrick which the man of sin has erected to dethrone Jesus Christ. You may venture to taste if you please but remember who forewarned you there is death in the Episcopal Pot. But as for your own Parts let all the World know and let the House of England know this day that you lie unthankfully under as full a dispensation of mercy and grace as ever Nation in the World enjoyed well you will one day know what it is to undervalue the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ i. e. the seditious Preachings of I.O. Good Lord What would helpless Macedonians give for one of your Enjoyments O that Wales O that Ireland O
mouth 't is but crying out The Cause of God and popular zeal is immediately in Arms and Mutiny do but tell them the Gospel lies at stake and the Rabble will die Martyrs to their own Credulity This sacred Imposture will as much secure their Obedience as the Roman Discipline and the Roman Legions could never be more forward for the glory of the Common-wealth then the Congregational Churches will be for the Beauty and Purity of Christs Ordinances And such has ever been the boldness of this man he scorns to vouch any less warrantable Commission for his own Dreams and Fancies than the express and immediate Commands of divine Authority all his singularities must be Gospellized and all his seditious Doctrines broach'd out of St. Paul The wisdom of God must be prostituted to his folly and boldness the Word of God prophaned to authorize his pride and zealous madness all his phanatick Pranks must be charged upon the Scriptures and he has a Text for every extravagant Attempt and whatever the Principles of Reason and common Honesty cannot account for the old Prophets shall not only foretel but sanctifie And perhaps never did all the Prophane Wits in the World make more bold with the Word of God than this daring man there is scarce any more remarkable Text in the whole Bible that he has not turn'd into Ridicule he can guard every thing he says and does with files of Chapter and Verse as it were with Pikes and Protestations and can draw up Remonstrances and Declarations as well as Primers out of the Word of God in brief with him every thing is Scripture Scripture is every thing And this is the true Mystery of all our Schisms and Divisions it is not their Contest about Ceremonies and things Indifferent but it is their Pulpit-talk about the Cause of God and the Gospel that transports the Peoples Zeal and there still things are so represented as if they alone were the People of God and we the professed Enemies of the Lord Christ and the least thing they will say when they are most cool and moderate is that we are revolted from the Purity of the Gospel to Superstition and Will-worship and that there is no Beauty and Purity of Ordinances but in their Meetings and Conventicles The Fox in the Fable says I. O. had a thousand wiles to save himself from the Hunters but the Cat knew unum magnum one great thing that would surely do it Earthly supports and contentments are but a thousand failing wiles which will all vanish in the time of need The Gospel and Christ in the Gospel is that unum magnum that unum necessarium which alone will stand us in any stea◠Our Adversaries may discourse like Politicians and make a thousand pretences for the necessity of Uniformity in order to the peace and security of Government but we will trust to one great pretence the Command of God and the Cause of the Gospel and that with the People will do our business more effectually than all their Stratagems of Policy § 6. And thus is it our Authors present design to enlarge and prolong the Controversie and to set up new Mormo's in our Churches to fray away the People from our Communion though they all run themselves into the same Principle that the VVord of God is the adequate Rule of the VVorship of God yet the very appearance of number is no little security to the Cause and satisfaction to the Proselytes and though they are but so many several Repetitions of the same thing yet that makes a shew that they have a great deal to say for themselves and that is enough And thus were our Author put upon the proof of these general Maxims here by him laid down he would and must wholly setle himself upon this bottom Let us briefly examine them the two first are 1. Whatever the Scripture has indeed prescribed and appointed to be done and observed in the Worship of God and the Government of the Church that is indeed to be done and observed 2. That nothing in conjunction with or addition unto what is so appointed ought to be admitted if it be contrary to the general Rules or particular preceptive Instructions of the Scripture VVhere you may observe that these Maxims are such as they will adhere unto and stand upon in the management of the Plea as to the differences between us So that their plain meaning as applied to their present contest with the Church of England is that the Nonconformists way of VVorship is prescribed and appointed in the VVord of God whereas our Additions to it are contrary either to the general Rules or particular Instructions of Scripture and if this be not the design of these Propositions they are no other way pertinent to the management of this Plea And now are not these admirable Principles to be pleaded in an Apology for Liberty of Conscience The Governours of the Nation are bound to indulge us in our different Practices and Perswasions about the VVorship of God because there is but one particular Form allowable only that which is prescribed and injoin'd in the VVord of God and that is ours and therefore are they and all the Princes of Christendom tied up to an exact Conformity to that Rule and not to endure any other Forms that deviate from its Prescription unless they will tolerate Men in an open and avowed violation of the Law of God So unhappy is this Man as still to turn his own VVeapons upon himself and stab his Cause in its own defence as desperate Men chuse to die by their own hands that they may escape their Enemies Swords He could not have invented a Principle more expresly destructive of his own Pretences for if nothing be lawful in the Worship of God but what is prescribed in the Word of God and if nothing that is unlawful may be tolerated by the Civil Magistrate and if there be but one particular Form appointed in the Word of God it cannot avoid to be concluded that all others are unlawful and by consequence intolerable And thus are the Tables turned and now the state of the Controversie is not whether both Parties may be safely and innocently tolerated no but whether they or we onely they says he because their way of Worship is indispensably prescribed and appointed by God himself not we because ours is contrary to his own Rules and Prescriptions and therefore the case is plain it ought to be abolish't without mercy or delay unless Men may be permitted by connivence of Publick Authority to contradict the express Will of God under pretence of his own Worship But if this be our case there is no remedy but we must hereafter play a new Game in our own defence They that declare they will give no Quarter have no reason to expect any And this is a mighty aggravation of these Mens former miscarriages and present impenitence that they can be so bold
difference of Judgment about the expediency of things shall abundantly warrant their disobedience to the King and their separation from the Church and every Man that has folly or confidence enough to insist upon this pretence may claim the priviledge of his Conscience to make new Schisms and Divisions in pursuance of the best Light God has given him Is not this an admirable contrivance to keep us for ever wandring in the endless Mazes and Labyrinths of Reformation when every pert and hot-headed Preacher that dreams the Laws of the Church are not altogether so agreeable in every point and nicety to the Word of God as his own Phantasms and singular Hypothesis shall be permitted the Liberty to withdraw his Obedience and Conformity to the Church to set up new Schisms of his own projectment and to demand of Publick Authority a more thorough godly Reformation It is not possible for any Church in the World upon the allowance of such delicate Principles to avoid the mischief of everlasting Schisms and Confusions But these pretences are so infinitely pettish and unreasonable that I will not insist any farther upon their Confutation especially because what I have already discoursed both of our Obligations to Obedience in all things that are not certainly and apparently evil and also of the deep silence of Scripture as to Forms and Institutions of outward Worship does so visibly both anticipate and surmount all appearance of difficulty in such slender Exceptions § 8. But our Author having it seems provided himself of these Retreats that will give as fair shelter and protection to all the peevish and troublesom Men in the World as to himself he thinks he may now proceed with more safety and confidence to a particular state and defence of the present Controversie Whether nothing may be warrantably establish't in the Worship of God but what is expresly authorized in the Word of God But here for what reason himself best knows and you may shrewdly conjecture he chuses to engage in a Wood rather than in open Champaign and in stead of a frank and pertinent account of his own thoughts if he have any he bewilders himself and his Readers in a Wilderness of Propositions and at last leaves them as himself speaks in the Briers of his own unscriptural Distinctions He lays down a confused heap of positive and uncertain Assertions without any Concern in or Reduction to the particular matter in debate To which they have so little relation that whether true or false the Cause is not likely to gain any mighty advantage or suffer any considerable damage by them In the first place he repeats his old trite Story and Systematick Distinction of innate and revealed Light where after some Positions partly true partly false but all impertinent he tells us and 't is great News that the Enquiry in our present Contest is onely about the latter and then here he distinguisheth between occasional and stated Revelation under the former he reduces the Institution of Sacrifices before the Law according to the Liberty he takes of founding Principles which is to suppose any thing that he ought to prove and thus because there remains no publick Record for the stated Institution of Sacrifices it ought to be presumed they were warranted by private Commission though for that presumption there is as little ground as for their publick appointment But of this we have discoursed already and 't is the latter that he contends to be the sole Rule of Religious Worship And this Principle he tells you has ever been so universally own'd in the World that the Postmisnical Jews were forced to refer their Oral Traditions to a Divine Original and that the Papists dare not resolve their present Church-determinations into a less Authority Though in those very pretences lies the very Imposture of those Men in that they ascribe their own Inventions to the Wisdom of God and impose upon the Consciences of Mankind by virtue of a Divine Command and with a false pretence of Divine Authority and in the very same abuses lies the presumption of these Men in that nothing will satisfie them but they must have a Divine Right for all their own fancies and practices So that as far as I am able to discern the only use this Principle serves to is to justifie Mens Tyranny and Usurpation and under its protection to obtrude their own conceits and unreasonable fancies upon the Minds of Men. And 't is seldom pretended but where Mens Impositions are so wild and exorbitant that nothing less can bear them out than the Authority of God himself All Cheats in all Ages have ever shrowded themselves under this pretence and the truth is it does not only encourage but makes them too For when the Word of God has really prescribed no particular forms of outward Worship and when all Churches have and must have their own peculiar Customs and Usages then if Men are resolved to own and stand to this Principle they bring themselves under an inextricable necessity of ascribing something to the Command of God which God never commanded But would other Churches lay on their Impositions as the Church of England does hers with the Obligations of Humane Power that which now may be a bold Imposture would then unless it were faulty upon some other score have been an exercise of lawful Jurisdiction But thus is our Church requited for her frankness and ingenuity The succeslesness of such an honest and well-ordered Discipline upon these Men would almost incline one to suspect that the Generality of Mankind will not be govern'd but by Imposture and Superstition After this follows another train of Propositions to except natural Circumstances and limit the sense of the Proposition to significant and instituted Ceremonies all which we have already routed in our former Engagement and he does not rally up with that metal and briskness as to put us upon the necessity of a second Conquest Here are no fresh Forces and Succours nothing but some straggling Repetitions out of the former Chapter and 't is not worth while to pursue them after I have defeated the whole Body But he having thus scholastically finish't the state of the Question because he fears all these Forces will not stand the shock of an Assault he doubles his Files backs them with new Subtilties and Scholastick Pikes and states all over again in Ten Additional Propositions though they are all apparently either coincident with the former or new Impertinencies or old Beggaries such as that of which I gave you an account in the former Chapter viz. Wherever we find in the Scripture any Religious Duty approved though we find no preceding Institution we must take it for granted that it was instituted I have already begged his pardon to excuse me this civility of granting up a Principle so contradictory to my pretences as an avowed and common Notion between us and if he will but give me leave to
except this single one I will in requital freely grant him all his other Nine if that will do him any service though for what use he intends them in our present Enquiry I confess I am not able to divine however I am not at all concern'd in them and therefore if he can make any advantage of their service much good may they do him And now having driven the Nail thus home with hard Notions out of the School-men he clincheth it with Testimonies out of the Fathers and if I will not be born down by strength of Reason no nor Confidence he resolves to sweep me away with the Torrent of Authority But though he argues very ill yet he quotes much worse For you know it has been an old and beaten Controversie between us and the Church of Rome whether the written Word of God be the adequate Rule of Faith and in this both sides have hotly engaged with all sorts of Weapons viz. Reason Scripture and the Opinion of the Ancients to which last purpose many Protestant Writers have collected a vast variety of express Assertions out of their VVritings in behalf of the Protestant Opinion Now some of these our Author gravely transcribes for my Confutation and what they plainly affirm'd of necessary Articles of Faith he confidently applies to Ceremonies of outward VVorship Out of what particular Author he made bold to borrow them they are so common and trivial it is impossible to determine you may meet them all together with some other Company out of which he has cunningly drawn these to escape discovery in Chamier tom 1. Lib. 10. where he maintains the perfection and sufficiency of the Canon of Scripture for a Rule of Faith And the passages themselves do so plainly limit their own sense to this subject that they are utterly uncapable of any other Application and if you can prevail with your self barely to run them over that without any farther trouble will satisfie you of their wretched and palpable Impertinency for my own part I have neither leisure nor patience to waste precious time and good Paper upon such woful Trash Let him take his liberty in his own wild Rangings whilst he roves aloof off from my Concerns and therefore I am resolved without regard to his unnecessary digressions to confine my discourse only to those things that pretend a direct and immediate attempt upon my former Treatise § 9. In the Prosecution of this Argument I shewed this Principle to be so perpetually pregnant with mischiefs and disturbances that 't is impossible any Church should establish any Rules of Decency or Laws of Discipline or any setled frame of things appertaining to the Offices of external Religion that it will not of necessity contradict and abrogate in that there never was nor ever can be any Form of Worship as to all Circumstances prescribed in the Word of God because that has actually determined no exteriour parts of Religion beyond the two Sacraments and therefore as long as men lie under the power of a Principle so equally false and troublesom they can never want what themselves may apprehend a just Pretence to warrant Disturbance and Disobedience So that we found by experience that when once it was let loose upon the Institutions of the Church of England it worried every thing that stood in its way and turn'd its fury alike upon every Party that pretended to peace and setlement it was merciless as some bodies rage and lust and spared nothing that Sacriledge could devour And as by this the Puritans assaulted and ruin'd the Church of England so when they subdivided among themselves and mouldred into new Churches and Factions it was still the Offensive Weapon of every aspiring Party with it the Independents vanquish'd the Presbyterians with it the Anabaptists attempted the Independents and with it all the little Under-sects set up against the Anabaptists and with it as soon as they were born like the Dragons Teeth they fell foul upon each other and had they crumbled into a thousand farther divisions and subdivisions for nothing so endless as Phanatick Innovations it would equally have served both for and against all because whatever particular Customs and Rules of Decency they should have agreed upon in the Worship of God it was apparently enough impossible they should ever vouch and warrant their Prescription out of the Word of God the Reason is evident because that has prescribed and determined none at all And therefore after the Liturgy it sent the Directory with Church musick it silenced Sternholds Rhimes with the Cross it cashier'd sprinkling in Baptism and when it had at least in design pluckt down Cathedral Churches it fell upon Steeple-houses And what could ever stop the fury of so endless and so unreasonable a Principle for when it had wandred as far as Tom of Odcomb through a numberless variety of Changes and Reformations it would ever have been at as great a distance from its intended End as the foolish Traveller when he had compassed the Top of Olympus was from touching the Sun For how should men with all their search and travel be ever able to discover that in the Word of God which the Word of God has no where discover'd in it self But 't is no matter for that our Author appeals to all mankind whether an issue and setled stability be not likelier to be effected by all mens consenting unto one common Rule whereby these differences may be tried and examined than that every Party should be left at Liberty to indulge to their own Affections and Imaginations about them In plain troth Sir I must take some severer course with this man if nothing else will reclaim him from this lazy Trade of Begging I had taken pains to prove both from the Nature of the Thing and the Experience of the World that this Principle carries disquiet and disturbance in its bare supposition because it stands upon demands impossible to be satisfied But this man without taking any notice of my Arguments replies like himself i. e. boldly and impertinently to my Assertion and gravely supposes there is or ought to be a common Rule established in the World whereby differences concerning outward Worship may be tried and examined which is the very thing in Question between us and all my Proofs to which this is intended for a satisfactory Answer are directly levell'd against the very supposition it self in that it invites and engages men to remonstrate to any setled Form of Worship upon such unreasonable grounds of Exception as it is impossible for any Church in the World either to avoid or to redress If indeed there were any such common Rule prescribed in the Gospel it would no doubt be a certain and admirable way to determine Controversies but in the mean while to suppose it against flat experience because we apprehend it convenient for our own Ends and Interests is just such another way of arguing as the Romanists insist upon to prove the
and sanctified use and all things whose use is holy and sanctified are I think of a Religious Importance and therefore if Humane Power may warrantably institute such civil Observances as these that alone is sufficient to my purpose for they as such are religious Rites and Customs However by this Mans Principles what Authority has any Person to direct civil Observances to religious Ends and Uses unless as he argues against the Institution of Symbolical Ceremonies he could change their Natures or create a new Relation between them If he can his grand scruple for all his Atoms are as big as Mountains of applying things of one kind to signifie things of another is of no force against instituted Symbols For the only thing that seems to grieve and offend him is the arrogance of attempting to create new Relations 'T is presumption for any finite Being to assume to it self such an infinite Power Works of Creation are proper to Omnipotence so that it can be no less than Blasphemy and presuming our selves equal to the Almighty to pretend to his Power of creating Relations Thus 't is read in his Philosophy and yet according to the more modern and reformed Metaphysicks this is judged so common and feasible an exploit that some Doctors are of Opinion that any Child is able with the allowance of a Truss of Straw to create him Fifty thousand in a day What then think you of the force and truth of that Argument that supposes this so great and so known an absurdity that to reduce you to it is to drive you into contradictions and run you up against first Principles Well! were Duns alive he would break a Lance or pluck a Crow with our Author about this subtlety and would maintain to his Teeth that the Power of creating Relations is competent to finite Beings But to be short and serious Were you ever in all your Life entertain'd with such Fairy Tales and meer Romances in matters of this importance Consider with your self after what rate this Man has behaved himself towards the Church of England and then consider how all his implacable Zeal and Indignation against her Laws and Customs resolves it self entirely into an Antipathy against Significant Ceremonies and then consider how the only ground of his hatred and aversation to them is the Giant-like Impiety of assaying to create Relations between signs and things signified and then in the last place consider the infinite vanity and triflingness of this pretence and when you have considered all these things I leave it to your own Natural Logick to draw out one farther Conclusion But I have entertain'd you too long with the Musick of this Mans Rattles and therefore to be short after all this sport and dalliance with these childish Notions and gay Nothings 't is beyond all peradventure certain that the Love-Feasts and Kiss of Charity were meer Religious Rites and Customs and pecuculiar Appendages to some publick Offices and Solemnities of Religion and this is so vulgarly known that no Man living but our Author could ever with such a slight and easie confidence have turn'd them over for civil Observances when they were never used upon any occasion but in their Religious Assemblies And what stronger evidence can we desire to prove them Religious Rites than their being appropriate to Religious Duties Who almost is ignorant that in the Primitive Church they always concluded their publick Prayers in form of Benediction wishing Peace and Unity And this being finish't they always seal'd their mutual affections with the Holy Kiss for so it is called by St. Paul Rom. 16.16 And what Quotation out of the Fathers more trite and vulgar than that of Iustin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When Prayers are ended we salute each other with a Kiss And therefore 't is by Tertullian stiled Signaculum Orationis their publick Prayers being ever concluded with this friendly Ceremony And then as for the Agapae and Feasts of Charity they were certain sacred Meetings where Christians of all conditions were wont to eat promiscuously together without making any difference between the Rich and Poor the Mean and Honourable in token both of their friendship and equality And they were so meerly intended for the ends of Piety and Devotion that they were inseparable from the holy Communion and indeed made up part of the Solemnity § 12. And now upon the review of these things such shadows and vanishing appearances are these Mens excuses and exceptions that I cannot imagine they are serious and in good earnest in their pretences but they are fitted to puzzle and amuse the common people and that is sufficient to their purpose to keep up the Party and perpetuate the Faction And if they do but bolt out upon them with an hard or what to them is the same an insignificant word a Child is not more afraid of a Church-porch at Midnight than they of our Churches at Noon-day and they dread the appearance of a Surplice as they would a Ghost or a Spectre Though they as little understand the Principles and Pretensions of their Ringleaders as they do Aristotle's Metaphysicks and are not so subtle as to discern the iniquity of a Symbolical Rite and if any of them have by converse with their deeper Rabbies pickt up a pittance of this Learned Gibberish as Peasants and Country Swains do shreds of Latin as well as our Author they talk it by rote with impertinent zeal and clamour and passion But if you demand of them Where lies the real exception against Symbolical wickednesses they can give you as wise an account as if their Preachers had rail'd at them under the horrid Names of Tohu and Bohu So that the tenderness of vulgar Conscience is nothing else but the stubbornness of popular Folly They have been abused into absurd Principles and seditious Practices and then to be at all adventure tenacious of their casual Prejudices against the Convictions of Reason and the Commands of Authority shall be gloried in as the pure Result of a nicer Integrity and more precise Godliness And this reminds me of a suggestion that I before intimated upon this occasion What a vain thing it is to have any regard to these Mens Proposals of Condescensions and Accommodations when nothing but Schism lies at the bottom of all their Designs and Principles and when their Demands and their Resolutions are so unreasonable that 't is as impossible to satisfie as convince them and they scarce agree in any one common Principle unless this by all ways to keep up the Faction and therefore though they are resolved never to be quiet till they have brought Authority to bend to their will and humour yet whenever the notorious folly of their Principles is unravell'd and the palpable unreasonableness of their Schism exposed and by consequence the Cause endangered then all their Out-cry is mutual Forbearance and Condescension Though we can never learn either the nature of their Grievances or the end of
their Demands how far and to what we must yield For must we discard any or all of our Ceremonial Constitutions To what purpose If out of compliance with their scruples they are eternally destructive of Peace and Setlement For whether it be because they are not expresly prescribed in the Word of God or because they are offensive to weak and tender Brethren or because their own Consciences remain doubtful and not fully satisfied of their lawfulness or for any the like regards if these are granted there can never be any end of unreasonable demands and there is no Rule of Decency that can ever be injoin'd that is not as obnoxious to the same trifling Exceptions And if we shall submit the Laws of the Church to such slender pretences we do but betray it and our selves into a fatal necessity of endless Schisms and Distractions For no Man that has a mind to be peevish can want plausible pretensions to put a baffle upon publick Authority if these Principles are sufficient to warrant Remonstrances and protect Dissenters And therefore in stead of indulging Men their Liberty upon the account of such perswasions as we ever hope to see peace and setlement in the Church we must root them up as seeds of eternal Sedition and brand and punish all persons that publickly profess them as Men resolved to be turbulent and unpeaceable in the Commonwealth But if they shall be content publickly to disclaim these and the like pretensions and after that continue their cry for Condescension then all the sense of their Proposal is that we forsooth must cancel the establish't Laws of the Church only to gratifie their wayward and capricious humour for when the aforesaid Principles are discharged there remains no other ground of scruple or separation but their own unyielding wilfulness And the Interpretation is that they are resolved to persist in their demands because they are resolved not to confess their errour and will rather ruine the peace of the Church than hazard the reputation of their own Understandings and having once engaged themselves in an unjust and defenceless Cause will rather embroil the Church for ever than retire with a little dishonour And now are not these brave humble melting and broken-hearted Christians that dare under pretence of scruple and tenderness thus resolutely affront the convictions of their own Conscience they are satisfied both that Peace and Unity ought not to be violated where it may be innocently preserved and that so it may be in the Communion of the Church of England and yet in spight of these Premises the conclusion of their practice is that they are resolved to keep up this Schism that they confess to be unnecessary and by consequence unlawful And now as for the remaining part of this Chapter our Author runs perfect dregs his Fancy tires and his Pen faulters and nothing holds out but brave Confidence and that trusty Vertue will never fail him however methinks 't is time for me to take up and not waste my own pains and your patience in resisting old Repetitions for 't is a small pittance of matter behind that is worth our search and enquiry and I am not so greedy of Confutation as to improve every grain of advantage Thus what he replies to what I have discoursed concerning Popery Will-worship Superstition adding to the Law of God c. resolves it self entirely into the unwarrantableness of mystical Rites so that the force of this faint Exception being already so thoroughly broken the reasonableness of those Discourses must be supposed to stand firm and unattempted and the Arguments I retorted upon them from these vulgar Topicks of their own unanswered And therefore seeing all his Answers whatever they are relie upon the Supposition of the Truth of that Principle and seeing I have so sufficiently demonstrated their vanity and falshood 't is to no purpose to continue our Contention about those other Matters till we have brought the former Controversie to some issue because whatever I can urge from their consideration shall be shuffled off by him upon the meer determination of that Debate and therefore as many and as great advantages as I have against this part of his Surveigh I shall rather chuse to wave them all for I must not expose all Forgeries and pursue all Impertinencies and devolve the whole Dispute upon the Argument of significant Ceremonies seeing in that as they manage it lies the only strength and all the sinews of their Objections And I confess I am not at all averse from reducing the whole Contest to that single head not only because it would shorten it in that 't is the bottom of all their other pretences but because I am so fully assured what woful work they must make if we could once bring them to alledge Prohibitions out of the Word of God against the Institution of Mystical and Symbolical Rites By which means though I am forced with some regret to pass by a vast heap of Rebukes that I had remarked and after the rate and genius of this Mans Writing whatever his cause is it is impossible to want matter of Confutation only that my Reply might not swell beyond the Bulk of a just Volume yet that may in some measure be recompensed by the fairer advantage the Reader may have to see more particularly and search more narrowly into their dearest and most fundamental Trifles And I had much rather confute the Cause than the Man But beside these heads there are two or three passages altogether foreign to the Enquiry of significant Ceremonies them I shall briefly consider and so put an end to this Chapter § 13. First then whereas I had upbraided them with a Challenge to vouchsafe so much honour to Mr. Hooker in particular among many other learned and worthy men as but to take notice of his Book of Ecclesiastical Polity in that as long as that remained unanswered it would stand for a lasting and eternal Trophee over their baffled Cause and therefore I advised them and I thought it was a friendly Office instead of continually pelting us with their three-half-peny Pamphlets if they would consult their own and their Causes Reputation to bend their Forces upon his single Performance seeing upon that we were content to cast the Issue of the whole Controversie So that how ably and successfully soever they might discourse and argue about these things it was all in vain whilst this great Champion stood unattempted in that when they had done their poor utmost as it is apparent they have this cross Objection would still remain in every Adversaries mouth why do you not answer Mr. Hooker And therefore whatever they shall do 't is all but labour lost till that is done and his Books being unanswered amounts to a stronger proof against them than all their Pamphlets against my self and all other Adversaries are able to assoil seeing then they want not for zeal or good-will for the credit of their Cause he
swoln his Fancy with admiring at the boldness of such lewd Assertions he at last bursts forth into an impetuous fit of preaching against them But seeing he has so lamentably mistaken his Text he may talk his Lungs and his heart out and never talk to the purpose and therefore let him take his full Career of Impertinency it concerns not me either to stop or follow him only this let me tell him for his comfort that I have there proved and here defie him and all the World to disprove it that whoever shall contradict that proposition as I have laid it down viz. that in all doubtful and disputable Cases of a publick Concernment Subjects are not to attend to the Results of their own private Judgment but to acquiesce entirely in the determinations of publick Authority whoever I say shall contradict this is an enemy to the peace of mankind and a Traitor to all Societies in the World For Government is a word that signifies nothing if it be not a Power to determine and appoint what it judges most useful and expedient for the Concerns and Interests of the Common-wealth and if you will cancel this Authority of the publick Judgment whatever you may call it 't is really nothing but Anarchy And this is the last and unavoidable Issue of all their Pretences For as to their general Pleas for Indulgence they still press for an entire and absolute exemption of Conscience from all the Commands of Authority and in effect vest it in a Power Paramount to the supremacy of Princes so that in case of Competition its Dictates must over-rule all their Laws and therefore no Government shall ever be able to pass an Obligation upon it but by its own consent and this if any thing is perfect Anarchy every man is entirely left to the guidance of his own discretion and is as much at liberty whether he will or will not obey as if he were absolutely free from all Superiority and Jurisdiction And then as to their particular Exceptions their scruples are so nice and delicate so peevish and splenetick so giddy and phantastick so impossible to be prevented of redressed that no form of setlement can ever be contrived upon which they will not beat with equal fury for they are indifferently applicable to all Cases and their strength depends not at all upon the Reasons of things but the Humours of men And if the offence of a weak Brother or the scruple of a Tender Conscience are sufficient exceptions against the Power and Efficacy of Laws then farewell all the Reverence and Authority of Government for setle things with never so much Exactness it will be impossible upon these Principles to avoid these Cavils as long as there are either Fools or Knaves in the World And do but observe the untenable weakness of all their Pretences apart and how they shuffle from their general Demands to their particular exceptions and then when they are pursued to their defence how they rowl back to their general Demands and so dance perpetually in a manifest circle of shifting and disingenuous Cavil and you need no farther proof to satisfie you of the Intolerable Impertinency of their Clamours and unexemplified Peevishness of the Men. CHAP. VII The Contents THat some Men from a Belief of the Imposture of all Religions argue for the Liberty of all farther clear'd and justified That some Sects of Men are strongly inclined to Sedition proved by their Practices and Principles Our Authors intolerable Confidence in denying his own Principles especially that that to pursue Success though in Villany and Rebellion is to follow Providence This proved by various Instances out of the Writings of J. O. The Arguments whereby they drew in Providence and the Rabble were 1. By applying old Prophesies to present Transactions 2. By believing God is obliged to do the same things for his People now that he ever did for his People in all former Ages 3. By believing Providence is in good earnest for them though it is in all appearance against them 4. By flat Presumption and down-right Enthusiasm That the Interest of Religion was pretended as a cause of our late Civil Wars proved at large against our Author from the Declarations of Lords and Commons and the Sermons of J. O. The Nonconformists are bound to give us assurance of their Repentance before they may presume to offer us any security of their Allegiance Their Plea for Toleration because Protestants invalid An Account of the Reformation of the Church of England both as to Doctrine and Discipline The manifest Apostacy of the Nonconformists from both The Reformation in most places over-run and destroyed by Calvinism Our Adversaries Notion of Protestancy is nothing else than a Zeal for the Calvinian Rigours Religion is not onely the best but a necessary disguise for Rebellion Men cannot gain an opportunity of committing any more enormous Wickednesses but under shews and pretences of Piety The danger and vanity of balancing different Parties of Religion The Civil Wars of France an eminent instance of this An account of the Original of all peevish and ill-natured Religion The Nonconformists loose way of discoursing of Conscience as if it were a Principle of Action distinct from the Man himself Conscience is nothing but the Soul or Mind of Man Nothing in Humane Nature beside Conscience is capable of subjection to Humane Laws Conscience is not its own Rule nor of it self any Plea of Exemption from Obedience If it be abused by evil Principles nothing more mischievous Vulgar Conscience the most mistaken Guid in the World In the common People 't is for the most part either Ignorance or Pride or Superstition or Peevishness or Enthusiasm The Conclusion § 1. OUr Authors Adventures in this Chapter are such ordinary and possible things that now to reherse Enterprizes so lank of prodigy after all these wonders were to darken the lustre and abate the admiration of his former Performances Many faint Essays we may observe of his ancient Courage and Confidence but alas Deeds of a greater strain and more stupendious Prowess are kept for Holy-day Atchievments Now and then we may meet with a lowd and rapping Falsification but every Page does not entertain our wonder with Forgeries of a Garagantuan bulk and boldness Once indeed we are inform'd how I discourse that the use and exercise of Conscience will certainly overthrow all Government and fill the World with confusion yet however the old Calumnies are not continually ratling in our Ears as That the Civil Magistrate is vested in an absolute and immediate Soveraignty over Conscience in all Affairs of Religion in so much that whatever the precise truth of the thing may be he has power to order and appoint what Religion his Subjects shall profess and observe That Conscience has nothing to do beyond the inward Thoughts of Mens Minds and That as to all their outward Actions the Commands of Authority over-rule all its Obligations c.
and as to this particular business of the Scots they speak thus When they i. e. Papists Clergy and other Enemies of Religion conceived the way sufficiently prepared they at last resolved to put on their Master-piece in Scotland where the same method had been followed and more boldly unmask themselves in imposing upon them a Popish Service-Book for well they knew the same Fate attended both Kingdoms and Religion could not be altered in one without the other God raised the Spirits in that Nation to oppose it with so much zeal and indignation that it kindled such a flame as no expedient could be found but a Parliament here to quench it i. e. By hiring and tempting them to a new Rebellion at the price of one hundred thousand Pound beside the reward of Pay and Plunder for the common Souldiers the promise of Church-Revenues for the chief Promoters of the service the sacrifice of the Archbishop of Canterbury to their malice and revenge and what was most likely to endear the Cause the Reformation of the Discipline and Worship of the Church of England by the Model of the Kirk of Scotland that absolute Pattern of a thorough godly Rebellion Again The Declaration of Lords and Commons March 2. orders this Kingdom to be put in a posture of defence by Sea and Land because there was a design by those in greatest Authority about the King for the altering of Religion That the Scottish War was fomented and the Irish Rebellion framed for that purpose That they had Advertisements from Venice and Paris and Rome that the King was to have four thousand men out of France and Spain which could be to no other end than to change his own Profession and the Publick Religion of the Kingdom In the 19 Propositions sent Iune 2. 1642. the eighth is this That your Majesty will be pleased to consent that such a Reformation be made of the Church-Government and Liturgy as both Houses of Parliament shall advise c. And the 17th That the King should enter into a more strict Alliance with the Protestant Princes and States for the defence of the Protestant Religion against the Attempts of the Pope and his Adherents And the Propositions made by Lords and Commons Iune 10. 1642. for bringing in Money and Plate to maintain Horse and Arms runs upon this ground first That Religion else will be destroyed and this is particularly recommended to all those that tender their Religion And when the King countermanded the Propositions they re-inforce them by the endearments of Religion And Tuesday 12 Iuly 1642. resolve it upon the Question That an Army be forthwith raised for its defence and preservation Their Declaration of Aug. 8. 1642. grounds its self upon this That the Kings Army was raised for the Oppression of the true Religion And therefore they give this account to the World for a satisfaction to all Men of the Justice of their proceedings and a warning to those who are involved in the same danger with them to let them see the necessity and duty which lies upon them to save themselves their Religion and Country Where they tell us at large and in great passion That Papists ambitious and discontented Clergy-men Delinquents and ill-affected persons of the Nobility and Gentry have conspired together and often attempted the alteration of Religion c. That all was subject to will and power that so mens minds being made poor and base and their Liberties lost and gone they might be ready to let go their Religion whensoever it should be resolved to alter it which was and still is the great design and all else made use of but as instrumentary and subservient to it And then after an horrible harangue about the King and Queens going away the Lord Digby's Letter the Members going to York c. They the Papists Prelates c. come to crown their work and put that in execution which was first in their intention that is the changing of Religion into Popery and Superstition The Scots in answer to a Declaration sent them by their Commissioners at London from the two Houses did Aug. 3. 1642. return another wherein they give God thanks for their former and present desires of a Reformation especially of Religion which is the glory and strength of a Kingdom c. Protest that their hearts were heavy and made sad that what is more dear and precious to them than what is dearest to them in the whole World the Reformation of Religion has moved so slowly To which they add that 't is indeed a work full of difficulties but God is greater than the World and when the supreme Providence giveth opportunity of the accepted time and the day of salvation no other work can prosper in the hands of his Servants if it be not apprehended and with all faithfulness improved This Kirk and Nation when the Lord gave them the calling considered not their own deadness nor staggered at the Promise of an hundred thousand Pound through unbelief but gave glory to God And who knoweth but the Lord hath now some Controversie with England which will not be removed till first and before all the Worship of his Name and the Government of his House be setled according to his own will when this desire shall come it shall be to England after so long desired hopes a tree of life And therefore they proceed to press earnestly for an Uniformity in both Kingdoms but it must be after their own model What hopes say they can there be of Unity in Religion in one Confession of Faith one form of Worship one Catechism till there be first one form of Ecclesiastical Government yea what hope can the Kingdom and Kirk of Scotland have of a durable Peace till Prelacy be pluckt up Root and Branch as a Plant which God hath not planted and from which no better Fruits can be expected than such sowre Grapes as this day set on edge the Kingdom of England In answer to this goodly Declaration the Lords and Commons desire it may be considered that that Party which has now incensed and armed his Majesty against us is the very same which not long since upon the very same design of rooting out the Reformed Religion did endeavour to begin the Tragedy in Scotland c. And having thanked the Assembly of the Church of Scotland for proposing those things which may unite the two Churches and Nations against Popery and all superstitious Sects and Innovations whatsoever do assure that they have thereupon resumed into their Consideration the matters concerning the Reformation of Church-Government and Discipline which say they we have often had in consultation and debate since the beginning of this Parliament and ever made it our chiefest aim though we have been powerfully opposed in the Prosecution and Accomplishment of it And in another Declaration to the Convention of Estates they remonstrate that the honourable Houses have fully
Gibellines another Party of professed Enemies to the Church of England But to take down the Confidence of these forward Pretenders and to give a more distinct and satisfactory Account of this Affair you may know that our Reformation consists of two parts Doctrine and Discipline the design of the former was to abolish the corruptions and innovations of the Church of Rome and to retrieve the pure and primitive Christianity and the design of the latter was to abrogate the Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome and to annex all Superiority and Preheminence over the Ecclesiastical State to the Imperial Crown in both which attempts the Non-conformists or Puritan-Recusants have absolutely forsaken our Communion 1. As to Discipline The design of those great men that first arose to that great work was to redeem the Christian World from the shameless and exorbitant Usurpations of the Bishop of Rome that had invaded the Thrones of Princes and made their Scepters do homage to St. Peters Keys and enslav'd the Royal Dignity to the Interests and Insolences of a proud Vicar And this was the Schism of the Church of England its defection to its lawful Prince and its first departure from the Church of Rome was nothing but its Revolt to its due Allegiance and at this day its greatest Heresie is the uncatholick Doctrine of Obedience to Sovereign Authority Whereas the great project of the men of the Separation was never to abrogate but only to exchange the Papal Usurpation and to setle that Power and Supremacy of which they stript his Holiness of Rome upon the Presbyterial Consistory The Holy Discipline is but another name for the Papal Power it equally disrobes Princes of their Ecclesiastical Supremacy and entirely setles its Jurisdiction upon the Presbytery and vests them with an Authority to controul their Commands restrain their Civil Power and punish their Persons in that by the Principles of the Holy Discipline Kings must be subject to the Decrees of the Presbytery in all matters of Religion neither small nor great may be exempted from subjection to the Scepter of Iesus Christ by which they mean the same thing that the Papists do by the Keys of St. Peter viz. an Original Power in themselves of exercising a temporal Jurisdiction over the Kings of the Earth under pretence of their Spiritual Sovereignty So that in this part of the work we have not been encountred with more disturbance and opposition from the Jesuites than from the Presbyterians that are as to the Doctrine of Regal Supremacy as arrant Recusants and therefore it as much imports Princes for security of their own Rights and Prerogatives to have an eye to the Factors of Geneva as to the Emissaries of Rome They are both men of bold and fiery spirits and all the late Combustions of Europe have either been procured or occasion'd by the seditious and aspiring attempts of these two daring Sects But the Tumults and disorders of the Jesuites concern not our present Enquiry nor may I enter upon the History of all the Leagues Conspiracies Seditions Spoils Ravages and Insurrections of the Puritan Brethren It has been lately performed by an Elegant Pen to purpose that has thereby done that Right to the Cause of Reformation as to absolve the true Protestant from the Charge of Seditious Doctrines and Practices and to score all the Embroilments of the Kingdoms and Estates of Christendom on the Account of the Calvinists who thrust themselves into all Places and Designs and if any where they were suffer'd to grow into any considerable strength and Interest were upon all occasions drawing in the zealous Rabble into holy Leagues and Confederacies against their Governours And if you will but compare the first practices and proceedings of the Hugonots in the Kingdom of France of the Gheuses in the Belgick Provinces of the Kirk-faction in the Realm of Scotland with the Actings Treasons and Disloyalties of the English Puritans as you will discover a strange agreement in the issues of their principles and proceedings so you will find their disorders to exceed the common mischiefs and exorbitancies of Mankind But I must not pursue particular Stories the History of their Tumults Outrages and Desolations would require a larger Volume than the Book of Martyrs It was these hot and fiery Spirits that in most places spoil'd this gallant Enterprize and by their seditious Zeal and madness drove up the Reformation into down-right Rebellion and were so outragious against the Church of Rome that they had not patience to wait the lazy temper of Authority for the Reformation of Abuses It s Wisdom and Moderation was Carnal Policy and if Governours would not set upon it in regular and peaceable ways at their first alarm then the only Doctrine they thunder'd from the Pulpit was That if Princes refuse to reform Religion themselves 't is lawful for their godly Subjects to do it though by violence and force of Arms. These are the Men that are so forward to thrust themselves into the Reformed Communion and whom we are so resolved to disclaim as shameful Apostates from the Reformed Cause and judge just such Protestants as the Gnosticks were Christians the scandal and dishonour of their Profession and whom the true Sons of the Church were forced to avoid as much if not more than Heathens and Infidels though it were only to secure their own Reputation that their Tumults and Disorders might not be scored upon their Reckoning This is plain matter of Fact though how it will relish with our Author 't is easie to foretel and it is not to be doubted but he may have the confidence to remonstrate to the most credible evidence of History that has the boldness in defiance to so many publick Ordinances and Declarations to deny that the Pretences of Reformation had any concern in our late Confusions But however he would be well-advised not to dare to Apologize for other Men unless he could first clear his own innocence for if a Man shall undertake to plead the Cause of a notorious Offender that stands himself chargeable of the deeper guilt he does not defend but betray and upbraid his Client his very Apology becomes a strong Accusation and all the World will suspect that Mans innocence when they shall see a person so scandalous so forward in his defence He is but an ill Apologist for the peaceableness or Loyalty of any Party that has himself been a famous Trumpeter not to say a great Commander in Rebellion and when our late Thirsty Tyrants had gorged themselves with Royal Blood was the first Chaplain that proffer'd his service to say a long Margarets Grace to the Entertainment § 11. This short account may suffice to let you see that the Nonconformists as to this particular however they may glory in the Name of Protestant are but another sort of Papists that pluckt down one Popery to set up another and justled his Holiness out of the Chair only to seat themselves in it
And as for the under-Sects and farther improved Schismaticks that have since sprung out of the Corruptions of Presbytery our Controversie with them is not between Protestants and Protestants but between Protestants and Anabaptists a sort of people as to this particular worse than Papists whom nothing will satisfie but absolute Anarchy and Confusion in the Church and by consequence in the State for in a Christian Commonwealth they are but one and the same Society which as I have proved over and over and our Author sometimes confesses nothing can avoid but an Ecclesiastical Supremacy or coercive Jurisdiction in matters of Religion The hearty and serious acknowledgment whereof is the true Shibboleth and distinguishing mark of the right English Protestant This is the pride and the glory of the Church of England that she was never tainted with Sedition and Disloyalty and in the management of her Reformation never out run the Laws but always moved under the Conduct of Sovereign Authority It grieved our Prelates to behold the Dignity of the Throne prostituted to a Foreign Tyranny and when chiefly by their counsel and assistance our Princes had disingaged themselves of their ancient Fetters they proceeded to engage and encourage them in the Reformation of the Christian Faith to its ancient purity and with the advice of their Ecclesiastical Senate to establish Rites and Ceremonies of Worship by their own Authority So that there is not a Monarchy in the world that might be so well guarded as the Crown of England by its Orthodox Clergy were they allowed that Power and Reputation that is due to the Interest and Dignity of their Function not only because they hold so entirely from his Majesty and are so immediately dependant upon his favour for their Preferment but chiefly because there is not any sort of Men in the World possessed with so deep a sense of Loyalty 't is become their Nature and their Genius 't is the only thing that creates them so many Enemies exposes them to so much Opposition and divides them from all other Parties and Professions What is it that so much enrages the Roman Clergy but that we will not suffer his Holiness to usurp upon the Rights of Princes And when these Janizaries invade and assault their Thrones and attempt to seat their great Master in the Imperial Primacy 't is we and only we that have ever stept in and beat back all their approaches with shame and dishonour And whatever provisions might have been made against the Encroachments of Rome upon the Crown of England they would have been lamentably weak without the aids and assistances of Religion because 't is that alone that is pretended in their Opposition and its very pretences where they prevail are so strong and powerful that they easily bear down all the Arts of Civil Policy and Government Nothing but Religion can encounter Religion And how easie had it been for Rome considering its Power Interest Cunning and Activity to have either inslaved our Princes to their Tyranny or annoyed them with eternal Broils and Seditions had not the English Clergy bestirred themselves to counterwork all their Mines and to possess the peoples minds with an impregnable sense of Loyalty And this whatever is pretended is the real ground of the breach between us viz. The Interest and Grandeur of the Court of Rome And would we but grant them back that Sovereignty they once exercised over the Kings and Kingdom of England they would never stand so much upon any Controversies about Doctrinal Articles and would willingly permit us to enjoy all our other fancies and perswasions knowing that if they can but regain their absolute Dominion over us they shall soon be able to model our Opinions to their Interest And what was it that so exasperated the Disciplinarians but when these pert Gentlemen would have been perking up into their Spiritual Throne and in imitation of their Kirk-brethren Nosing the Power of Kings both in and out of the Pulpit they pluckt down such pitiful Pretenders with scorn and dishonour exposed their folly and ignorance to the publick Correction and let the world see they were more worthy of a Pillory than a Throne But these bold Youths have at length in pursuance of their designs run themselves beyond their Pretensions and lost their Cause among the Disorders and Confusions of their own procuring out of which have sprung new swarms of Sects and Schisms that were born and bred in Rebellion and were never known to the World by any other visible marks than their Opposition to the Royal Interest Yet have these Men the face to challenge their Right of Liberty and Indulgence and to rail at us for not granting it though the things for which they demand it are nothing but principles of Sedition and Disloyalty The World knows what pranks and practices they have committed with the confidence and under the protection of Religion and they have never given us the least signs and tokens of repentance and that alone is an infallible symptom of their impenitence for were they sincere Converts the World should be sure to know their resentments so that we have all the reason in the World to believe them no Changelings and then would it not be admirable policy to trust Men of such implacable Spirits and Principles to the present setlement of things For if we have no ground but to suppose them Enemies to the Publick Peace we certainly have no Motive or Obligation to treat them as Friends but rather to use them as People that thirst after a Change and aim at nothing more than our ruine Tenderness and Indulgence to such Men were to nourish Vipers in our own bowels and the most sottish neglect of our own quiet and security and we should deserve to perish with the dishonour of Sardanapalus And howsoever their Ring-leaders may whine and cant to the people grievous complaints of our present Oppressions and Persecutions yet would they inwardly scorn us as weak and silly Men that understand not the height of our Interest if we should be prevail'd with to bestow any milder usage upon such irreconcileable Enemies And 't is not impossible but that the Mercy of the Government may have been a great temptation to their insolence and perhaps had some of them been more roughly handled they had been less disobliged They think Lenity and Compassion to an implacable Enemy an effect of weakness and would never forgive themselves should they not use all means to suppress all known and resolved Opposition to their own Interest And therefore as many of these Men as have been Objects of Royal Mercy if they expect to obtain any farther favour to their Party they would do well to give us some publick and competent assurance of their renouncing their former principles of Sedition as to Civil Government Though not a Man continuing in their Communion has ever as yet given the World any satisfaction of this kind and certainly they can never
take it ill in good earnest if we only deny them the Liberty and free Exercise of their Religion till they are willing to give us some security of their being governable § 12. The second part of Protestancy is the Reformation of Doctrine and here the design was to abolish the Corruptions and unwarrantable Innovations of the Church of Rome and to retrieve the pure and primitive Christianity It was not their aim to exchange Thomas Aquinas his Sums for Calvin's Institutions or Bodies of School-Divinity for Dutch Systems but to reduce Christianity to the prescript of the Word of God and the practice of the first and uncorrupted Ages of the Church to clear the Foundations of our Faith from all false and groundless Superstructures and once more recover into the Christian World a pure and Apostolical Religion And therefore the only Rule of our Churches Reformation were the Scriptures and four first general Councils She admits not of any upstart Doctrines and new Models of Orthodoxy but all the Articles of her Belief are ancient and Apostolical and if she her self should teach any other Propositions she protests against their being matters of Faith and of necessity to Salvation And for this reason she imposes not her own Articles as Articles of Faith but of Peace and Communion Nor does she censure other Churches for their different Confessions but allows them the Liberty she takes to establish more or less Conditions of Communion as the Governours of the Church shall deem most expedient for peace and unity And she only requires of such as are admitted to any Office Imployment in the Church subscription to them as certain Theological Verities not repugnant to the Word of God which she has particularly selected from among many other to be publickly taught and maintain'd within her Communion as necessary or highly conducive to the preservation of Truth and prevention of Schism and for this reason she passes no other censure upon the Impugners of her Articles than what she has provided against the Impugners of the Publick Liturgy Episcopal Government and the Rites Ceremonies of Worship because they are all intended to the same end the avoiding Disorders and Confusions These then are the conditional Articles of the Communion of the Church of England and they are necessary and excellent provisions for peace and unity For among all the Disputes and Divisions of Christendom it is but reasonable she should take security of those Mens Doctrines and Opinions whom she intrusts in publick Imployments to prevent her being embroil'd in perpetual Quarrels and Controversies So that Subscriptions to the Articles is required chiefly upon the same account as the Oath of Supremacy whose Penalty is That such who refuse it shall be excluded such places of Honour and Profit as they hold in the Church or Commonwealth And 't is very reasonable that Princes should be particularly secured of the Fidelity of those Subjects that they entrust with their publick Offices And thus all the punishment that the Church of England is willing to have inflicted upon Dissenters from her Articles is to deprive them of their Ecclesiastical Preferments as being unfit for Ecclesiastical Imployments For though she is not so careless of her own peace as to impower Men in the exercise of her publick Offices at all adventure so neither is she so rigorous as to make Inquisition into their private Thoughts And therefore we are not so harsh and unmerciful as somebody you wot of who would be thought a warm Bigot for Toleration and yet has sometime profest he would give his Vote to banish any Man the Kingdom that should refuse their Subscription But as for the absolute Articles of the Faith of the Church of England they are of a more ancient date they were not of her own contriving but such as she found establish't in the purest and most uncorrupted Ages of the Church and in the times nearest to the primitive and Apostolical simplicity That is the measure of her Faith and the standard of her Reformation here she fixes the bounds of her Belief and seals up the Symbol of her Creed to prevent the danger of endless Additions and Innovations But as for all other matters I say with the late Learned Archbishop as he discourses against Fisher If any Errour which might fall into this as any other Reformation can be found then I say and 't is most true Reformation especially in cases of Religion is so difficult a work and subject to so many Pretensions that 't is almost impossible but the Reformers should step too far or fall too short in some smaller things or other which in regard of the far greater benefit coming by the Reformation it self may well be passed over and born withal And withal by virtue of this Fundamental Maxim may in due time and manner be redrest By the wisdom and moderation of this Principle the Church secures her self against the Prescription of Errour So that if she should at any time hereafter discover any defect in any particular instance of her Laws and Constitutions and in a work so great so various and so difficult 't is not impossible as the Archbishop observes for the greatest caution and prudence to be overseen in some smaller things she has reserved a just power in her self to reform and amend it This in brief is a true and honest account of the Protestancy of the Church of England But so it hapned that beyond the Seas there arose another Generation of pert and forward Men the vehemence of whose Zeal and Passion transported them from extream to extream so that they immediately began to measure Truth not by its agreement with the Scriptures and the purest Ages of the Church but by its distance from the See of Rome and the Apostacy of latter times whereby it so came to pass that they did but barter Errours in stead of reforming Corruptions and in lieu of the old Popish Tenets only set up some of their own new-fangled conceits But above all the rest there sprung up a mighty Bramble on the South-bank of the Lake Lemane that such is the rankness of the Soil spred and flourish't with such a sudden growth that in a few days partly by the industry of its Agents abroad and partly by its own indefatigable pains and pragmaticalness it quite over run the whole Reformation and in a short time the right Protestant Cause was almost irrecoverably lost under the more prevailing Power and Interest of Calvinism That proud and busie Man had erected a new Chair of Infallibility and enthroned himself in it and had he been acknowledged their Supreme Pastour he could not have obtruded his Decrees in a more peremptory and definitive way upon the Reformed Churches Nothing can be rightly done in any Foreign Church or State but by his Counsels and Directions He must thrust himself in for the Master-workman where-ever they were hammering Reformation He must be privy to all the Counsels
Conditions of Society and will be preying upon the Lives and Liberties of their fellow Subjects they become publick Enemies to the common Good forfeit all Right of Protection and put themselves out of the benefit of the Laws Such is the outrage of these haughty men they are not content with their own just priviledges but assault those of their Neighbours and will not endure others to live in society with them unless they will yield up the Liberty of their Understandings to their imperious folly and no man shall be suffer'd to live in peace and quiet unless they may be allowed to usurp and exercise a supremacy of Power over the whole Communion and this is a direct subversion of the Authority of Government and a manifest violence to the Fundamental Laws and Conditions of Society and by consequence a Forfeiture of all Claims to its rights and priviledges And yet notwithstanding this savage and insociable humour they suffer not for that but only for their incorrigible stubbornness against the Laws of Government and Rules of Discipline And if they would learn to be modest and yield to be govern'd by any thing but their own intolerable peevishness they would seldom feel the severity of the Churches Discipline for the unmannerly rigour of their own Doctrines these are matters of our mutual forbearance and whatever may be the Opinions of private men our Church does not dogmatize in scholastick speculations and we must never expect to see peace re-enthroned in the Christian world till other Churches shall suffer themselves to be brought to the moderation of the Church of England to have as little Faith and as much Charity as the Primitive Christians But to contend for the same ease and indulgence as these men do in the Laws of Discipline as in the broils of Disputation is to cut the Nerves of all Ecclesiastical Government and remonstrate to all the Conditions of Church-Communion For it leaves every man at liberty to except himself from the Laws of the Society and therefore to conclude hereafter let them not tell us of their being Protestants unless they will satisfie us of their being governable And when that is done they may be secure to find from us more tenderness and moderation in case of their Dissent as to matters of Controversie and Opinion than we ever have found or ever expect to find from their waspish and cholerick humour As for what remains of my Discourse It is says the bold Objecter all resolved into a supposition that they who in any place or part of the world desire Liberty of Conscience for the Worship of God have indeed no Conscience at all For it is thereon supposed without further Evidence that they will thence fall into all wicked and unconscientious Practices This is down-right forgery too but yet 't is weak and modest if compared to the Boldness of his former Calumnies For 't is a small thing for him to pervert my sense by an ill-collected supposition that has wittingly falsified my express words and laid to my charge lewd Assertions of his own pure Contrivance However 't is a popular surmise and suited to the folly of the common People and that is enough to his purpose though the wise Surveyor himself can never be so short-sighted as not to see that the only supposition upon which I all along proceed was founded upon the clearest and most unquestionable experience of mankind viz. that all men are either not so wise as they would seem or not so honest as they would pretend that 't is a familiar thing even for well-meaning Persons to mistake humour and passion for Conscience that Fanaticism is as incident to the Common People as folly and ignorance and yet more mischievous to Government then Vice and Debauchery with divers other common and easie Observations of humane life from whence it is an obvious and natural deduction to conclude that men may easily run into tumults and seditions under mistakes of Conscience though they do not wittingly and out of design abuse its Pretences to wicked and mischievous practices but purely for want of knowledge and understanding in the nature of good and evil and the moral reasons of things whence it comes to pass that there are so few who do not or at least may not mistake their Vices for their Religion and mix their passions with their Zeal But because this suggestion is one of the great burthens of our Authors Complaint and is so pertly glanced at almost in every Paragraph and so industriously pursued upon every occasion I think my self obliged before I conclude to entertain the Reader with some farther Account how Conscience and Religion are the aptest and most suitable instruments to be employed for creating Publick Disturbances 1. First then they are the most usual mask and most plausible pretence to cover the basest and most unworthy ends Sacriledge and Rebellion ever shrowd themselves under the hatred of Superstition and Idolatry bare-faced villany has but an ugly look and has not confidence to shew it self to the World but in the disguise of Reformation The blackest Enterprizes could never have been attempted had they not put on the fairest Pretences for men cannot as the world now goes gain the opportunity of attempting any more enormous Wickedness but under popular shews and affectations of Sanctity and all the more exorbitant Crimes of Disloyalty that were ever committed in the World have shelter'd themselves under glorious Appearances of Godly Zeal The Cause of God is the best spur and stirrup too to the advancement of Ambitious men and there is no such easie way for them to exalt themselves above their Superiours and to trample upon their Equals as when they do it for the Glory of God Nothing else could have so long supported the Credit of his late Highness through so many Murthers Perjuries and manifest Villanies but his great dexterity in Praying and Preaching his counterfeit way of whining his dreadful Appeals and Protestations to Heaven and his great and extraordinary Communion with God And therefore this specious piece of Hypocrisie being so absolutely necessary to give reputation to the basest and most disloyal Actions Princes are thereby sufficiently warned to be jealous of those Designs that are usher'd in under this popular and plausible Pretence of Reformation and to be more watchful to suppress their Attempts than open outrages because it does not only disguise but gives Countenance to any mischief and makes the ugliest Projects appear fair and plausible to vulgar eyes It naturally dazzles and lures in the wild Multitude to any design and there is no way so easie to infuse into their heads an ill opinion of the present State as to inveigle them with conceits and jealousies of miscarriages in or designs upon their Religion No however they may out of a sense of the great duty of Obedience suffer Princes to waste and subvert their civil Liberties yet they must not endure them to encroach