nor so feeble and impotent as this here described much less do we number it with things indifferent or that are left to our liberty or with those that some call either works of Supererogation or of Evangelical perfection as answering to counsels and not to commands We are not ashamed of our judgment in this point whoever shall account it heresie or error we hold that it is our duty to love our neighbours as our selves and that this is not an act of extraordinary charity unless as the malice of uncharitable men doth eventually make and denominate it extraordinary But that it is essential to all true saving love and common to every true member of Christ that shall be saved We believe that this love must be extended to the proud and peevish and unto our very enemies and therefore we pray more conformably to the Liturgy than such Conformists that God will forgive our enemies persecutors and slanderers and turn their hearts Accordingly it is part of our Religion that we are obliged to do good to the proud and peevish as well as others yea unto all men to the utmost of our power except those who by Law are taken out of our care by being destined to death for their crimes whose bodies we may not endeavour to save but their souls are as much under our necessary duty as others we hold that even a Traytor Murderer or Felon going to the Gallows must be so far loved pitied and helped that we must do much more than forbear a thing indifferent to save their souls For we long ago received Pauls opinion that we should rather chuse never to eat flesh while we lived than to hinder their Salvation for whom Christ died We believe very confidently that if a proud or peevish man were cutting his own throat or hanging or drowning himself that by an ordinary obligation common to men we are bound in charity to do our best to save his life to cut the rope to pull him out of the water though we lost for it the liberty of a lawful game or feast or rest yea though it must cost us dear And we believe that if we do not this we do not only fail of an extraordinary height of charity but that we are murderers and that we do not only cross the tenderness of good nature but common humanity we cannot deny but we take him for a beast and worse than an Infidel that will not only famish his family but stand by and let them cut their own throats if he can but say they are stubborn proud and peevish or drunk or that will see his neighbours drown or hang themselves if they do it in pride or peevishness or stubbornness rather than he will forsake his liberty in a thing indifferent And therefore it is contrary to our Religion to sell a soul much more many thousands for a Ceremony We take the sixth Commandment to mean Thou shalt not murder the good or the bad the patient or the peevish by commission or by omission And as much as Souls are more worth than Bodies and everlasting life than temporal so much the greater sin do we take it for to be the murderers of Souls by omission than of Bodies And that it will be an insufficient excuse for omissive soul-murdering to say He was peevish and I should have parted with my freedom Could we once think that doing no harm is all our necessary Religion and that doing good is only the work of an extraordinary height of charity then we could be in this of another mind and could think a stone or tree more Religious than a mortal Saint But we have not so learnt to be Religious 2. And indeed we think that this opinion would almost excuse the whole world from works of charity to any at least except Ideots and Infants For to confess all our cross opinions freely we deny not but that we hold the Doctrine of Original sin as inherent in all the seed of Adam and we must have pardon in our Nonconformity for Conformity so far to the Scriptures and the Articles and Doctrine of the Church of England and of the Universal Church And therefore we hold that the whole nature of man is corrupted from the womb with some vicious Principle yea more than so with the particular Principles of pride humour and stubbornness and peevishness And therefore that according to this rule which we dissent from all the world should be suffered to be hanged and damned for ever rather than a Conformist should lose a game at Chess or a cup of Sack or abate a Ceremony Because if it proceed from humour pride or peevishness or any other vicious principle no man is bound to part with his own freedom because his neighbour is froward and humourous And we hold that there are few men or none that have lived so innocently but that if Original sin were denied they have by practice contracted some vicious principles even of pride and humour and frowardness And we hold that it was to cure such viciated souls and such principles that Christ came into the world and that he made the Gospel and instituted the Ministry and that we are workers under Christ in this work and that this seeking and saving of that which is lost even of the proud and froward and humour some and peevish is the very employment of our office And that none of these are that blasphemy of the Holy Ghost that maketh sin unpardonable and uncurable And that though dogged hearing us and swinish contempt of the Gospel it self may excuse us from further importunity with some and allow us to shake off the dust off our feet against them yet so will not every vicious principle nor the frowardness and humour here described Nor yet will a particular humour or peevishness allow us to neglect the souls of them that in the main have received the Gospel of Salvation I confess we are of the number of them that mourn for the reproach of those pitified Churches where the Pastors are of these opinions and think that if all the Children of Christs family be but peevish and froward the Nurses may let them all sin and be damned and not part with any of their freedoms to cure them or to save them Were I also of this opinion I should not stick to make merchandize of souls and to sell an hundred for a Benefice and twenty thousand for a Bishoprick nor to give over Preaching to prevent my suffering were fouls so contemptible and of so little value And consequently we think that the School-distinction of Scandal given and taken is not so false and impertinent as is here said The sense of the distinction is that the fault is sometimes in the giver and sometimes only in the taker Scandal being a snare a trap a stumbling-block or a temptation to sin we think there are several sorts of scandal First Scandal given is by actions otherwise sinful for it
in his glory which is much in the LOVE and Concord of his servants II. The Interest of the Universal Church is the pleasing and glorifying God in its unity and strength in the same Faith Hope Love and Obedience to Christ the sole Universal King III. The Interest of particular Churches is their pleasing and glorifying God by their union with Christ and the Church Universal by Faith Love and Obedience and their holy Union between Pastors and people and of the people among themselves IV. The Interest of the Kingdom is its pleasing and glorifying God and the welfare of the whole by a holy unity with God the Universal King and of the Soveraign and Subjects and of the Subjects among themselves V. The Interest of the King is the pleasing and glorifying God in the foresaid welfare and just government of the Kingdom his own salvation and his Political strength and honour which consisteth much in the most inseparable twist of union and interests with his united subjects VI. The Interest of the Pastors of the Church is the pleasing and glorifying God in the ministerial uniting of souls to God in Christ and among themselves in the same holy Life and Light and Love and their own salvation and consolation herein VII The Interest of each particular Christian is his pleasing and glorifying God in his holy union with Christ and with the Church Universal and subordinately his holy unity and concord with the Ecclesiastical and Civil Society where he liveth VIII The true Interest of an honest Separatist and Papist in England supposing them uncurably such requireth them to live quietly and peaceably in subjection to the King and in love with others in the concordant practice of so much of Religion even the Laws of Nature or common Christianity which we are all agreed in and in such tolerated exercises of their several errors as is consistent with the common welfare and not to exasperate others by reproaches or striving to get into suspected power IX The mistaken Interest of the Pope and Papal Clergy is to have their own wills in ruling all the world and to that end to weaken and disable Kings and States by divisions contentions and diversions and to draw them by deceit to a voluntary subjection as necessary to their salvation and to the concord of their subjects and the Christian world and to silence and disgrace all such as are against them X. The mistaken Interest of English Papists Quakers and all true uncurable Separatists is to encrease and strengthen their several parties and if it may be to get into power and to that end to unite in the bond of a common Toleration and to make the tolerated party as strong as they can and to weaken the united Ministry and Churches and therefore to cry down a Comprehension or Union of the sober Conformists and Nonconformists and to desire that those Impositions which themselves account sinful may be continued that good may come by the evil viz. lest the union of the rest should weaken the tolerated party and render them inconsiderable and to bring the established Ministry and all that are for union with them into contempt by reproaches XI The true Interest of a meer Nonconformist requireth him to commit no known sin on pretence of obedience unity or peace nor forsake his Ministry whatever he suffer for it but to live in loyalty peace and patience and in love and communion with the Parochial Churches and all Christians so far as they are agreed XII The true Interest of a Conformist requireth him to use all lawful means to procure as comprehensive a Union and Concord of all sound and faithful Ministers and Christians as they are capable of and to bear with tolerable differences to live in peace among themselves and by Ministerial skill fidelity diligence and holy living and by condescending humility and love to all men to win Dissenters to edifie and unite the people and so to advance the true honour of the Ministry and to encrease and corroborate the Church Octob. 27. 1675. R. B. FINIS THE CONTENTS A Prefatory History of our Case Page 1 c. Our judgment how far we are bound to Preach p. 14. Our Reasons for Preaching I. We judge it sacriledge to for sake the work to which we were consecrated p. 20. II. We cannot be ignorant of mens obliging necessities p. 22. III. Many express texts of Scripture oblige us p. 32. Many Objections answered to p. 44. Whether Princes may silence us Largely answered Of mans binding Conscience Of the Peoples choice of Pastors IV. By deserting our Ministerial Work we shall sin against the Natural Law of Love and be guilty of soul-murder p. 45. Objections and Accusations answered 1. That our preciseness falsly pretendeth mens necessity p. 52. 2. That we think too highly of our own Preaching as necessary p. 55. 3. That our Preaching doth more harm than good p. 56. 4. That we have made the People disobedient hypocrites c. p. 64. 5. That when we had liberty we cast out Catechising the Creed the Lords-Prayer Decalogue and Church-Government c. p. 69. 6. That we lived in sequestrations on other mens bread Mr. Durel's accusations of my self herein answered p. 77. 7. That we silenced and ejected others when we had power p. 83. 8. The better must suffer with the worse if they will joyn with them p. 85. 9. That our Preaching will increase mens dislike of Government p. 86. 10. That our pretended Piety is Pharisaical hypocrisie pride zealous Villanies The Pharisees described p. 91. 11. Of gathering Assemblies and separating from the Church p. 97. 12. For coming into Cities and Corporations within five Miles p. 102. 13. The Church giveth you power and may take it from you as the old Conformists in Mr. Rathbands book c. confess p. 104. 14. You are against Bishops because you cannot be Bishops Why did you demur so long before you refused Preferments p. 106. 15. Must the Laws be changed as oft as tender heads will scruple p. 108. 16. Obedience beseemeth tender Consciences Disobedience is as the sin of Witchcraft p. 110. 17. The only reason why some forsook the Ministry is that they durst not abjure the Covenant Why do they not do the rest p. 111. 18. Why not all tolerated as well as you and so let in Popery p. 113. 19. Preaching was necessary before the World became Christian c. p. 114. 20. Why do you not go preach among the Indians p. 115. 21. The folly and villany of your Religion is so opened by the Debater and the Ecclesiastical Politician that you should be ashamed to ask leave to preach ibid. 22. You overthrow all Principles of Government p. 120. This is answered since in a full Volume called The 2d Plea for Peace 23. They object our Doctrine as Calvinism and Puritanism c. The intended Scheme of my Reconciling doctrine since published p. 121. 24. You would make our Reconciliation with the Church of Rome impossible which is more desirable than with you p. 128. 25. Abating would countenance your scruples by authority and make you thought to be true Reformers p. 134. 26. It is rebellion that is in your hearts as your not renouncing the Covenant and resistance sheweth The foresaid 2d Plea for Peace fully answereth this accusation p. 137. 27. We remember your practices heretofore c. p. 140. 28. Dr. Goods Charge of the Kings death answered in a Letter to him p. 142. 29. The inhumane Calumnies of a book called The Modern Pleas for Comprehension Toleration c. considered p. 147. 30. The errors and faults of Sectaries imputed to us p. 155. 31. Dr. Ashtons and the Debate-makers Accusation of us of covetousness and pride and delaying to refuse preferment p. 157. 32. The Calumnies of a book called A free and impartial enquiry into the Causes of the very great esteem and honour that the Nonconformists are in c. p. 165. A notable passage of Clemangis and another of Bernard p. 173. The true Case of the Nonconformists sufferings which they are said to under go by Covetousness for gain p. 175. 33. Mr. Hollingworths Story of a Nonconformists cruelty p. 182. 34. Henry Fowlis heaviest accusation examined p. 182. Twenty Reasons why the Bishops and conformable Clergy should desire and endeavour the Nonconformists Ministry Plainly and seriously urged to their consciences p. 186. A Postscript Answering Mr. H. Dodwell's Reasons against our Preaching and publick worship when forbidden by the Bishops What he cannot deny us what we grant him what we cannot grant with the reasons of our dissent p. 237. An Account of the Interests of all the several Parties among us Interest ruleth the World p. 250. Reader I have not time to gather the Errata of the Press All this was written 1669. * 1669. â—y Gods merâ—y since theâ—riting of this have publiâ—hed it called â—atholick Theâ—ogy * The Earl of Orery who was present all the while at both times that ever I spake to Cromwell which was plainly and faithfully to his displeasure †The Lord Chief Justice Hale told me he had Hookers last books before and I now have the last printed long before Bishop Gauden published them ☞ â—his was writâ—â—n when we â—ad the Kings â—icense
Churches of the people in their Communion and Worship but only from a prevailing company and Synod of the Bishops that were guilty of cruelty and of bringing reproach upon the serious practisers of Godliness in those times And as for the many Volumes which have been written against my self I thought it not necessary to confute them nor seasonable to stand upon a Personal Vindication when I knew it would exasperate the accusers to be accounted injurious and false and would increase the breach Yea when it was judged against me that my presence would be injurious to the people that I had long preached to and that my absence would more conduce to their Conformity and that they were none of my Charge I so far denied my self and them as that I never since came near them nor unless very rarely sent them one line Though I thought if I had been allowed so much it might have better answered the ends of those that were most for my removal Yet did I not take this for any perfidious forsaking them when upon many accounts I believed it to be for their good and I sent them all the Books which I wrote If any think that I should not say so much of my self in an Apology for others I answer 1. It is because that men will needs have it so whether I will or not I say not a word to them and yet what a multitude of Volumes have these seven years and more been tossing my Name as a football of reproach about the land And when the cause is pleaded they presently let fly at the persons and say what you can it 's there that they will stick and till they are answered there they think they are unanswered 2. And because I am best acquainted with my self and can speak with more certainty of my own case and reasons than of any others 3 But chiefly because as our late Tilenus hath stiled me Purus putus Puritanus so the late Episcopal Indignation published me the Antesignanus of the Presbyterians I deserve not so much honour But hence the world and posterity may know that whereas but a few years ago a Puritan was one that was against Bishops and Ceremonies and Liturgy and a Presbyterian was one that was for Lay-Elders and the power of Classes composed partly of such not only for concord but as Governours of all the particular Churches now in England a Puritan is one that is no more against and as much for Archbishops Bishops Liturgy and Ceremonies as in my Books I have long published my self to be And a Puritan as a Puritan is no worse a person than I am whose life and writings have had the happiness to have some share in their commendations And a Presbyterian now is one that is against Lay-Elders and in his judgment against the Regimental power of Classes and Synods as over the Pastors of the particular Churches and only for their consultation and their use to concord and one that is as aforesaid for Archbishops Bishops c. as far as in my dispute for Church-Government I have declared my self to be It is of some use to know the mutability of the world and what a purus putus Puritanus and a Presbyterian now is But having thus far related the History of our true endeavours for peace it must be my next task to Apologize for our supposed unpeaceableness And I cannot better know what is the matter of offence than by knowing what is charged on my self He that was one of the first restrained from Preaching and hath been laid in the Goal as I have been will be supposed to be one of the most guilty And therefore I may hope that they that have escaped better have deserved less and that my own defence will be also theirs And I owe the offended an account of the practise by which I have so much offended them When the Act of Uniformity was not yet made or talkt of I went to the now Archbishop of Canterbury then Bishop of London even whilest the Kings Declaration gave us liberty and I desired his License to preach in his Diocess which he was pleased to grant me upon my Voluntary subscription to the Doctrine of the Church and those terms of peaceableness which he accepted When the said Act of Uniformity was in fieri I ceased that seeming Lecture which I had before 1st of May 1662. When that Act came out it forbad all to hold any Benefice Cure Lecture c. who had possession of any Ecclesiastical Promotion the 1st of May 1662 and did not subscribe and declare as required of them in that Act and also forbad the reception of any into such Promotion or Cure for the future that should not so subscribe and declare Neither of these being my case for I was out of all before May 1st 1662 and I sought no new Cure or Benefice the Law did no more require me to subscribe and declare than it did the Bishops or any conformable man that for so long had Cure Promotion or stated employment So that I was no Nonconformist in the sense of the Law because I conformed as far as the Act required me to conform And that Act not forbidding occasional Sermons to any but those that were not Licensed my License enabled me to Preach occasionally as many that had no places did yet because I knew that the Bishop might revoke my License at his pleasure and that if I so far used it being reputed a Nonconformist it would give offence to my superiors I never since made use of it to this day nor ever Preached a publick Sermon And though the Act forbad me not publick Catechising or the Administration of the Sacraments I never did either to avoid offence And when about three years after the Oxford Act came forth for the restraining Nonconformists from coming within five miles of a Corporation or of any place where they had been Teachers or kept a Conventicle I found that I was not concerned in that Act because by Law I was no Nonconformist to whom the Act by the very title and matter was limited So that being neither a Nonconformist by Law nor my License to preach occasionally ever nulled nor yet concerned in this Oxford Act which imposeth the new Oath I supposed my peace not endangered by the Law which the Lawyers whom I consulted also did conclude Yet did I forbear to come within five miles of a Corporation except on the rode to avoid offence All this while I lived in a place where sew desired me to preach they being poor and worldly people that minded most their labours and necessities So that I contented my self to instruct my family with three or four more that sometimes desired to be present But the chief reason why I did no more was because as none called me to it so I was engaged in certain writings A Body of Practical Divinity the Reasons of the Christian Religion and others which I thought
of old will tell posterity whether the Nonconformists preached loose licentious Doctrine 5. But the fullest decision of this case will be from their cause it self The Liturgy and Canon 1. obligeth us to refuse no Child that is offered us in baptism 2. The Rubrick pronounceth the baptized Infants so dying certainly saved not excepting any child of any Infidel or Atheist or open denier of a life to come or derider of Christ and the holy Scripture of which there are now great store 3. When the baptized Children can say the words of the Creed Lords Prayer c. though they know not what they say they are confirmed by the Bishop 4. Being confirmed they are to be admitted to the Lords-Supper though they know not what it meaneth yea they are compelled for fear of Imprisonment and ruine to communicate 5. When they are sick if they will but say they repent and desire it they must be Absolved in absolute terms though they give the Minister no satisfaction that they are truly penitent and have lived till then a most ungodly life and perhaps lie cursing and swearing and railing at a holy life on their sick-bed 6. And being dead we must pronounce our hope of every one in England except unbaptized ones excommunicate and self-murderers that God in mercy hath taken to himself the Soul of this our dear brother out of the miseries of this world Though they were professed Atheists Infidels scorners of Christ notorious adulterers or other criminals and never once so much as said I repent 7. And the Discipline of the Church being managed by one Lay-Chancellor and his Court with some small assistance in a Diocess of many hundred Parishes is utterly uncapable of calling one of an hundred to repentance or keeping clean the Church And these are much of that which the Nonconformists refuse to subscribe their full Assent and Consent to and to Covenant never to endeavour to reform for which they suffer the loss of all And now judge which side hath the looser principles and cause And add their refusal to approve of that which they fear to be in many thousands Perjury and the rest which the Conformists never scruple and try who are the looser and have the greater Latitude of Conscience And never did we yet meet with many that do believe that we live in more fulness and idleness and fleshly liberty than most of the Conformists do which we speak not as accusing any but in our necessary defence But he pretendeth to prove it 1. By our Books 2. By particular doctrines of Election Justification Good-works c. But 1. Doth not the world know that the Nonconformists offer to subscribe the same Doctrine of the Church of England as the Conformists do in the 39. Articles and the Book of Homilies If one then have a wrong faith professed so hath the other And let them that must contradict the Doctrine which they subscribe bear the greatest shame and punishment and spare us not if it be we 2. Why is there no publick accusation against us these years in which by his Majesties License we have preached openly as for any unsoundness of our doctrine 3. Who knoweth not that such accusing inferences are usually brought by all factious quarrel some Divines against their adversaries Whence such Writings as Caivino-Turcesinus c. have sprung up 4. The Reporter here either chargeth on the Nonconformists the Doctrines of the Antinomians which none have more confuted and of a few half Antinomian erroneous men against whom he might have read the Writings of Mr. Burges Mr. VVoodbridg Mr. Gibbons Mr. Warren Mr. Jessope Mr. Gataker and many other Nonconformists or else he falsifieth their doctrine He citeth the Marrow of Modern Divinity written thirty years ago by a Barber tainted with Antinomianism and though he cite the names of five Independents that then approved or commended it too hastily he never tells you how commonly both the Presbyterian and Episcopal Nonconformists and very many Independents reject and condemn it and how many have confuted it more than Conformists ever did And blessed be God that our forecited Books are visible to report our Doctrine to the World 5. But he singleth out one of us from the report of a Conforming Contradictor as making heinous sins such as Peters Lots c. consistent with true Grace Reader this is the true case in which you will still see what justice we have from this kind of men Baxter about near thirty years ago endeavoured with all his power and diligence to reconcile the Episcopals Presbyterians and Independents at least to joyn in the same Communion He found the two latter full of distast against the Prelatical party of Ministers but especially of the common people even his own hearers still saying they are swearers drunkards meer worldly loose ungodly people that have no seriousness in Religion and it is not lawful for us to have communion with such To cure them of this distast he stretcht his charity as far as he thought just to extenuate their faults and told the people That though many of these Prelatists would swear and curse and had divers such faults in the exercise of Church-communion they that were not-Pastors but private men must bear what they could not reform and withall must compassionately consider that many foul faults committed more through passion and custom than love and interest might stand with grace and Pauls counsel Gal. 6. 1 2. was to be well considered This being the scope of his discourse and the end what doth Mr. Tho. Pierce but retort it on him unthankfully to his reproach as holding too loose a doctrine Which this man here also now repeateth But as he told Mr. Pierce that for all this if one were necessary he had rather dye in the case of Noah Lot and Peter in the time of their sin than in the case of Mr. Pierce when he wrote that book being perswaded that they had then more of the love of God and man than he the same also he still professeth to this Enquirer and all of his spirit that so unthankfully requite men for perswading the people to judge as charitably as they could for Concord sake of scandalous Prelatists But if we be odious for pleading for charitable censures to such what are they that live in the sin it self and they that receive them constantly to their Communion And here as a proof he tells us how Dr. Hammond's Catechism and Mr. Fowlers book of Holiness being the design of Christianity have been censured and Mr. Baxter for daring to justifie the argument of that book p. 109. To which we say 1. We highly value Dr. Hammonds Practical Catechism And it 's strange that if one of us have justified the argument of the other that our Doctrine should not rather be gathered from such as he than from we know not whom For we must say that we know of none accounted Orthodox among us who have at all disowned
AN APOLOGY FOR THE Nonconformists Ministry CONTAINING I. The REASONS of their PREACHING II. An Answer to the Accusations urged as Reasons for the Silencing of about 2000 by Bishop Morley Bishop Gunings Chaplain Dr. Saywell Mr. Durel the nameless Ecclesiastical Politician and Debate-maker the Counterminer H. Fowlis Dr. Good and many others III. Reasons proving it the duty and interest of the Bishops and Conformists to endeavour earnestly their Restoration With a POSTSCRIPT upon Oral Debates with Mr. H. Dodwell against his Reasons for their Silence And a Scheme of INTERESTS Written in 1668 and 1669 for the most of it and now Published as an Addition to the Defence against Dr. Stillingfleet and as an Account to the Silencers of the Reasons of our Practice By RICHARD BAXTER 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom Preach the Word Be instant in season out of season reprove rebuke exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine London Printed for T. Parkhurst and D. Newman at the Bible and three Crowns in Cheapside and at the Kings Arms in the Poultry 1681. To the Right Reverend Dr. Compton Lord Bishop of London Dr. Barlow Lord Bishop of Lincoln Dr. Crofts Lord Bishop of Hereford Dr. Rainbow Lord Bishop of Carlisle Dr. Thomas Lord Bishop of St. Davids Dr. Lloyd Lord Bishop of Peterborough and as many more as are of their Moderation and love of our Common Peace and Concord Right Reverend Fathers and Honourable Lords YOU are not the men that resisted and frustrated our earnest endeavours and hopes of Concord at his Majesties return 1660 and 1661 nor made the Act of Uniformity or the rest by which we suffer nor have you been the makers of any Engines to wrack and tear in pieces the Church and Kingdom at such a time when they groan'd and beg'd and hoped for healing I therefore direct this Apology to you and all others of your moderation in some hope though evil men and deceivers grow worse and worse You are reputed among us Nonconformists not only true to the Protestant Cause but lovers of good men and no lovers of cruel silencings violence or blood Though I know but few of you I have reason to believe this fame and some of you have publickly declared your moderation to the world If then the ancient Christians might present their Apologies in hope to Heathen Emperors may I not do so much more to Christian Bishops to moderate Bishops and lovers of peace If yow are wiser and better than we you are as much more merciful and peaceable than we and as much more against all hindering the Gospel and weakening or dividing the Churches of Christ by unjust silencing restraining or persecuting any faithful Ministers or Christians and you are more sensible than we with what deep sense men will shortly hear In as much as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me You have then more of the wisdom from above which is first pure then peaceable gentle c. Jam. 3. 17. and you have a deeper Impress of that holy LOVE by which all Christs disciples must be known Interest is supposed to Rule the World And the grand design of Satan is to set up some fleshly sinful interest in Rulers and Teachers and People which is contrary to the Laws and interest of Christ and then he hath made a Virtual War Carnal Interest will not yield and Christ will not yield nor change his Laws Carnal interest will expound them for it self and so secretly and powerfully byas the judgment that even Learned men when they warp and err shall not perceive it but verily think that it 's all for God We are commonly supposed to be against your interest and that this will make us continue unreconciled to the gratifying of them that have no low game to play by the contrived means of our divisions If your chosen Interest be the furthering of holiness and everlasting happiness by sound and serious preaching of Christs Gospel worshipping God that is a Spirit in spirit and truth and yet with all reverent decency and order and living according to the Laws of our Universal Head in soberness righteousness godliness and in love and peace with one another God forbid that we should be against your interest And this is your interest indeed He that is most for it we account the best and wisest man And if your Dignity Wealth and Honour be your Interest subordinate to the greater as it is highest in the ungodly I beseech you think not we are more even against that than we are indeed I had rather be ruled than rule but God must be first obeyed God knows I envy not your dignity or wealth I have proved in the end of this book that our Restoration is greatly for your interest and that none have done more against you than those of your own tribe that have had the greatest hand in our silencing and suffering Give me but a sober understanding man to deal with and I undertake to shew him that by a meer Reforming of the parish-Parish-Churches so far as your selves confess to be desirable and just with such a limited Toleration of peaceable sound Christians as Christian Reason must acknowledge necessary We may be brought yet to an happy Concord and a better Reformation than England yet ever saw without doing the least wrong or hurt to the Diocesans It is usually said that England had more respect to the principles of Augustine in Doctrine and of Melancthon and Bucer in the points of Reformation than of Calvin Luther or any other And as to Cranmer Ridley Cox and the other Reforming Bishops I verily believe it I know no Divines whose judgment I more consent to than Bucers and Melancthons O that all our Clergy would read and weigh what Bucer saith copiously and vehemently for Parish-Discipline and pure Communion de Regno Dei de Animarum Cura in censura Liturg. specially de Confirmatione and what he saith of Pastoral Government Ordination and Order and of imposing such Ceremonies as ours It was written in England and for England And that they would read what Melancthon saith in his Epistles of the Pestilent design of the Papists that would lay the validity of our Ministry and Sacraments on an uninterrupted succession of Canonical Episcopal Ordination that they may make the judgment of their Councils more effectual than of Christ and his Spirit in the Scriptures and what he saith against these cheats And verily we have little worldly interest to draw us to be enemies to yours And I still profess that in all my experience those called Nonconformists did heartily love honour praise and hear a Bishop or Conformist that preached and lived seriously spiritually and in Christian Love such as through Gods mercy we have had many yea if he preached and lived better than Nonconformists they
loved and honoured him more though with some weak partial persons it was otherwise If then we have any Interest opposite to yours it is not Riches it is not Power we wisht no more than to be Pastors to the Volunteers of a Parish-Church And what more do the Independents wish than that persons have the same liberty to chuse to whom the Pastoral care of their Souls shall be entrusted as they have to chuse Physicians or Schoolmasters and Tutors for their Children and Wives or Servants Husbands or Masters in the family living under Laws of sobriety and peace And if you think that our cross interest is the praise of a few that follow us in a reproached suffering state you think we have a very low mind and game Why then do we so much desire to be out of this state and to take up with reformed Parish-interest And why doth not a far stronger worldly interest more prevail with us But such accusations are answered in this book As for that party of men among us Archbishops Bishops and Doctors that have made it their office and interest to set up as for Christ 1. A Catholick Church formed by a vicarious Universal Government viz. A General Council or a feigned Universal Colledge of Bishops 2. And the Patriarchal power which was in the Roman Empire 3. And the Pope as the President or Principium unitatis Catholicae 4. And the same Pope as our Western-Patriarch and the six or eight first General Councels as the Laws or Rule of Government and so would bring us under a foreign Jurisdiction and turn the orders of a Catholiok Empire into those of the Catholick Church through the World 6. And that pretend that the Papists Churches have an uninterrupted valid succession and therefore are true Churches and that the Protestant Churches that have no uninterrupted Canonical Episcopal succession are no true Churches nor have valid Sacraments or any ordinary title to salvation I say as for this party of men whose Writings and Names I need not tell you of we profess that we have no hope that ever they will be reconciled to us because it will not stand with their desired reconciliation described by themselves with a more powerful and numerous party which they prefer before us And though as much as in us lyeth we must live peaceably with all men we can never receive their unpeaceable principles and terms And it much more alienateth us against the Church of Rome to find that the nearer any are to them the more they are for uncharitableness and cruelty and trust not to the Church-Keys but to the Sword as if blood banishment or destroying conscionable Christians that are not of their minds were the strength of their Religion and Church and still cry Strike home and execute the Laws Abate nothing Tolerate none of them Let them make their task and have no straw Away with them as pestilent fellows and movers of seditions just contrary to the Christian Nature and Interest and Law And if he that dwells in Love dwells in God and God in him who dwells in them that dwell in wrath and imitate Cain and bear thorns and thistles and devour the flocks which they should gather and feed and shew that they love their brethren by destroying them Right Reverend Fathers and Lords we have far better thoughts and hopes of you and though I have beg'd in vain these Twenty years for Peace and Concord of others of your Order I address my self to you beseeching you patiently to read this Apology and pardon the earnestness of it for it is for a weighty cause It was most written 1668 or 1669 before most of you were Bishops Dr. Stillingfleet hath newly told us that If we will but allow that by virtue of the Rule Phil. 3. Men are bound to do all things lawful for preserving the peace of the Church we have no further difference about this matter pag. 176. We have still allowed it we have solemnly protested it Were it lawful to us to conform and cease our Ministry which we were vowed to we would do it I beg of you as on my knees for your own sakes for Englands for the Churches for Christs that you will agree with us on these terms I ask nothing of you for my self I need nothing that you can give me My time of service is near an end But England will be England and Souls and the Churches peace will be precious and the Cause will be the same when all the present Nonconformists are dead And Bishops must dye as well as we Our Lord delayeth not his coming to encourage any to smite their fellow-servants If it be not a Lawful thing for the peace of the Church to forbear the dividing Impositions and Prosecutions I need not name them then let us all suffer still But if it be do not only privately wish but zealously as Lovers of the Church endeavour and that with speed and all your might for Peace to abate what may lawfully be abated It is not in our power to procure Union For sin and self-condemning will not do it How much is in yours the Lord cause you to know and practice I rest Your Servant R. B. AN APOLOGY FOR THE SILENCED MINISTERS Especially for their not ceasing to Preach Christs Gospel Being the Third Part of their Plea for Peace Humbly directed to those of the Lord Bishops and to the rest of the Conformable Clergy of their mind who have procured our Silence and Sufferings or the continuance thereof Most Reverend and Right Reverend Lords and Fathers and Reverend Brethren HAVING once tryed in vain though by the favour of His Majesties Gracious Encouragement and Commission what speaking might do and since that tryed as much in vain what silence in this kind will do I have resolved once more before the expiring of my gasping hopes to resist despair and to try whether so many years experience hath opened your ears and hearts to the Reasons and humble Requests of those who not so much for their Sufferings as for the Souls of men do daily eat the bread of sorrow At least before I resign this Skeleton to the dust to leave one more testimony of my zeal for Unity and Peace and make one more attempt for the Gospel and the Church of Christ that I may not appear before my Judg in the guilt of negligence cowardize or unprofitableness Not to be your Accuser nor a Justifier of any of the weaknesses or miscarriages of the present Nonconformists nor yet of those of former times but humbly to re-mind you of the things that concern the interest of Christ the people and your selves When it pleased the most Gracious Soveraign of the World to restore his Majesty by the concurrence of the desires of his Subjects and the wonderful dissolution of that Army and Government which resisted his returns as we knew that our divisions had been our sin and ruine and our enemies strength and that
of idleness and not considering the poor Your selves believe that schism sedition and disloyalty are too common swearers and cursers and railers and drunkards accuse themselves in the open streets and to all that talk with them in daily converse To say nothing of Athiests Infidels Hereticks Schismaticks which sure need help what a multitude are they that never set their hearts on Heaven nor seek first Gods Kingdom and its Righteousness nor labour for the meat which never perisheth Col. 3. 11. Mat. 6 20 21 33. Joh. 6. 27. But their god is their belly they glory in their shame and mind earthly things Phil. 3. 18. How many mind not the things of the Spirit but of the flesh and live and walk according to the flesh and do but complement with God and make Religion a Ceremony or a matter on the by and take Heaven but for a lesser evil than Hell and for a reserve when they can keep this world no longer Either you know that the evidences are notorious that there are thousands among us in this sad condition or you do not If you do you grant what we now assert If you do not you are such strangers in England that you are neither fit to condemn us nor to be judges at all of the peoples case And Oh how hard a matter is it to cure one of all these miserable souls As for the Ignorant many of them are unwilling to learn if you take them not at the best advantages and those few that are willing must have long and laborious teaching before they will come to any competent knowledg If you have but tried the ignorant servants of your own Families how hard and long a task it is to bring them to know the needful things you may easily judg how hard it is for a Minister to teach them that hath them not in his house and scarce knoweth how to meet them any where but in the Church where they have learnt to hear as if they heard not And when they have a little dark confused knowledg alas what is this to the light that Christ hath sent into the world in which the children of light should walk and which is needful to the work of light which they must do What is this to that abounding in wisdom and knowledg to which the Scripture doth exhort men and by which they must resist temptations discharge their duties and honour Christ and Piety in the world Is it not Christs charge Mat. 28. 20. that when men are made disciples they must be taught all things else that he hath commanded And is it not smattering ignorant half-wited Christians which your selves much complain of and which make most of the trouble in the world And did you ever consider what a work it is to bring many thousands or hundreds of those in a Parish unto solid understanding And when men have knowledg how hard is it still to make a due impression on their hearts and bring them really which every tongue must confess is necessary to love God above all and our neighbours as our selves O! words soon spoken O difficult work above the skill and strength of the wisest Minister to accomplish How hard to cure a drunkard a fornicator a swearer a railer of his most beastly or unprofitable sin much more to cure the Infidel the ambitious the proud the worldling But O how hard to get up mens hearts to a Heavenly frame and to bring them daily to live after the Spirit and to live by faith and not by sight and to set their affections on the things above and in hope and love to long and wait for the coming of the Lord Sirs Either you take these things for necessary or you do not if you do not you deny Christianity and our Controversie lyeth lower first Whether there be a life to come and the Gospel be true and how quiet and happy would England be if we were but all heartily agreed in that much But if you do then there remaineth no more controversie whether our Ministerial helps be needful 3. And what is one Minister in a Parish for the doing of all this work yea or his poor Curate if he have one as few have for his help By that time he hath read all the Common-Service twice a day and Preached twice or once if you had rather and hath baptized all the Children and visited all the Sick and buried all the Dead and married all that are to be Married and performed the common Civilities necessary to friends and neighbours and taken care for food and raiment and all the necessaries of his house or life and instructed and governed aright his family and if he have Children taken sufficient care of their education what time what strength what spirits are left for most of all the work forementioned It irketh me to think that I should have need to repeat these things and to tell seeing men with so many words that there is a Sun in the firmament or feeling men that it is cold when frost and snow do cover the earth 4. And we must say that which we are most unwilling to say even when you constrain us Alas how many Parishes are there in his Majesties three Kingdoms where the youth the ignorance the rawness the dulness the carelesness the idleness the want of Ministerial utterance in the Teachers doth perswade all the hearers that they have need of more and better help The hearers I say that should best know their own necessities do commonly believe it if you deny it The Sons of the Church do groan out often in my hearing Alas what dry and pitiful work is this we are afraid all the people will be driven into Conventicles Ichabod or the five Groans of the Church hath long since told you somewhat of this But the most of England especially Wales and Ireland need no Syllogisms to prove it For my own part I hear and encourage any that is tollerable and I speak the best and conceal the rest when I speak to the auditors But truth is truth and our modesty will not satisfie the hungry nor save the miserable souls of men Is it enough to the instructing of the grosly ignorant and the changing of an earthly mind to a heavenly and to pull down the strong holds of sin for a young raw man to read or say a few good words perhaps least pertinent to the peoples needs in a tone like a School-boy saying his lesson Or to talk against Presbyterians to the poor people that never knew what Presbytery was and know not what Faith Repentance Justification or Sanctification are To deny these things is but to deceive them that are already deceived but England will no more believe the denial than him that would deny that the Snow is white And to talk as one in Latin lately what learned Pastors the Church of England hath is an impertinency to fill up paper If there be some such which none deny
Episcopacy and Conformity much more for being in arms against the Parliament or Preaching against them And I published it as our earnest request that all men that were utterly ignorant Heretical and scandalous or of vicious debauched lives might be cast out without respect to other opinions or Civil causes and that all the rest might unite their labours and be encouraged This is yet in Print And I met with few of my acquaintance in the Ministry that were not of the same mind And I had some more trial as to practise when Cromwell forbad as even now I said the sequestred Ministers to live within two miles of their old Benefice and commanded tâ—em to quit the houses our Vicar was never disturbed nor I never came within the house I never forbad him to preach And at a Chappel we had another conformable Minister that read Common-prayer and said somewhat like a Sermon often one Mr. Turner infamous for ignorance drunkenness railing and living by unlawful marryings and making his Ministry a scorn This Curate I connived at many a year till his death I provided a Preacher at first once a day and afterwards twice to be resident on the place I allowed Mr. Turner his Stipend but intreated him not to meddle with the Ministry For besides his vicious life I examined him and could not perceive that he understood scarce any Article of the Faith nor had the fortieth part of the knowledg or ability of many of the Wevers or some of the Plowmen of the Parish Musculus his Common-places Englished was all the Books that I could perceive he had and that he Preached out of But he would continue to read Common-prayer and did though he might have had his Stipend as much without it Judg by this whether we were over-forward to silence the Sons of the Church or cast them out 3. But what reason or conscience is it that if you can say Cromwell or the Parliament or Rump cast out such Ministers that therefore we that had no hand in it must be silenced Or if you can name forty Ministers in England as I cannot that consented unto this that therefore eighteen hundred that never consented should be forbidden to Preach Yea those that declared themselves to be against it 4. And you know that even the Usurpers allowed the Wives of the sequestred Ministers the fifth part For my part I never asked you so much 5. And either the unjust silencing of Ministers by the Usurpers was well done or ill done If ill done it should be your warning to take heed of sinning as they did for sure their practices seem not so right and lovely to you as to be worthy of imitation They Beheaded Mr. Love and Imprisoned many London Ministers and others for the Kings sake and you think not sure that you must therefore do so too 8 Obj. But we are not to distinguish of Nonconformists when Conformity is necessary to the order of the Church If a few honest men suffer among a company of Schismaticks Presbyterians Independents Rebells they must take it patiently and not blame their Rulers but themselves that chuse so bad companions The greater part of you deserve it Ans. We are not blaming our Governours but our selves not for our Nonconformity but for serving God no more diligently when we had time But 1. can you not distinguish and yet be just what not the innocent from the guilty nor friends from foes This is not the first confusion and evil that want of distinguishing hath caused in the world 2. If your I say your Conformity be more necessary than all our Preaching and Ministry and will help more souls to Heaven go on with it and let it prosper But be sure that you are not mistaken 3. Are Presbyterians so intollerable a sort of people Or will the bare opinion that singular Churches have all Church-power of Christs institution among themselves while they submit to the Civil Government prove men otherwise sober to be unsufferable You know Dr. Hammord and other Episcopal Divines do assert an Independency of Diocesan Churches which he saith de facto in Scripture-times had no Presbyters but one Bishop and his few Deacons And you know Dr. Stillingfleet of whose judgment Bishop Reinolds and many Conformists have profest themselves to be maintaineth that no one form of Church-Government is of Divine Right and Institution And if so then the Independents and Presbyterians refuse none that is of Divine Institution 4. But are you sure that you mistake not to the injury of the sufferers I can tell the world and you that I knew but one Presbyterian Minister in all VVorcestershire and that one was not of our Association nor any one Independent associated with us though there were three worthy Ministers in the County so esteemed there was not one of the Associated Ministry that was so much as reputed Presbyterian or Independent but Episcopal some were that now conform much less Anabaptists or of any other Sect but held the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and loved a Christian as a Christian and were for the uniting of all the Churches that are sound in the faith and in the things necessary to Church-Communion even upon the ancient Primitive terms And when I think of the Association of VVestmorland VViltshire Dorcetshire and other Countrys I have reason by their Articles to think they were of the same mind And must such abundance be silenced for the opinions of a few whom they never signified any consent to 9 Obj. If you are suffered to Preach you will but confirm the people in their Nonconformity and dislike of the Government For though you say nothing of it they will become a faction for the sake of your opinions and what confusion will it cause to have one party of the Church for one Preacher and another for another yea as you would have it for one to cross the baptized child and another not or for one to wear a Surplice and another a Gown Ans. 1. There is nothing in this imperfect life that shall attain perfection nor can any publick good be done without any inconveniencies But O cure not an inconvenience with a mischief Kill not a fly that sitteth on your brothers forehead with a Beetle or a Butchers axe It 's strange that wise men can be so partial or narrow-sighted as to look so intensly after their own desires or interests as to spy out possibilities of inconvenience and never see the loss of souls and great calamities that attend the other way 2. And indeed are you conscious of no frailties in your selves which are as great an inconvenience to the souls of men and the successes of the Gospel and honour of the Church as different practisings of the Cross or Surplice Are you humble men and teachers of humility Do you know your selves and teach the people to know themselves Are you penitent men and Preachers of Repentance and yet have never found
of sinning than your selves 3. We are so tender of disobeying our Rulers that we will do any thing to obey and please them except disobeying God and damning our own or others Souls And if you must have us yet go further you must excuse us we had rather go to your prison under all your obloquy Your furnace is not so hot as Gods 17 Obj. The only reason say most of them why they forsook their Ministry was that they durst not abjure the Covenant Dispense with them for this and they are Conformists But if that be the only thing they scruple then why are they not Conformists in all other particulars against which they pretended no such exceptions And what doeth renouncing the Covenant concern the people c Thus the Ecclesiastical Polititian Pag. 242 243. Ans. 1. Is this flaming-hot Disputer so much better acquainted with us than we are with our selves and one another Hath he talkt with the most of us or have the most ever said or written that it is only the Covenant that we stick at I must profess of all the Nonconformists that ever I knew or spake with I never knew any one of this mind which he saith the most of them say they are of Nay I never heard of any one Nonconformist of that mind And if the world and posterity must be told so confidently that most say and hold that which I that am supposed so much on their side did never know nor hear of any one man that said or held you may judge what a history posterity is like to have of this age and also with whom we have to do and upon what terms I confess I know one that hath suffered the loss of all these many years and been denied so much as leave to teach School that is for Episcopacy Liturgy and Ceremonies as lawful and never took the Covenant nor was ever for it nor for the Parliaments War but against both that yet cannot disoblige every one that ever did take the Covenant so far as is required to Conformity nor cannot subscribe or declare Assent and Consent to every word in the three Books so to be consented to But such a one as sticks at the Covenant only I never knew nor heard of 3. But if the accusers of the Brethren do believe themselves they tell the world the little charity that is among them who had rather so many Ministers were silenced to say nothing of their bodily sufferings and so many thousand souls want their Ministry than abjuring the Covenant should be dispensed with when a fuller security for loyalty and peace is offered 4. It is either the Episcopal Presbyterian or Independent Nonconformists for all these sorts there be at least that he meaneth by most of them or most as mixt 1. The Episcopal Nonconformists are not for the Covenant but stick most at consenting and swearing to the English Hierarchy and Discipline and Church-state as it differeth from the old Episcopacy described in Archbishop Ushers Reduction 2. The Presbyterians surely have told the world by Books enow that they are Nonconformists in more things than abjuring the Covenant And in good sadness doth not England know that call them what you will the Divines commissioned by the King did give their reasons against more 3 And the Independents are so far from being to be numbered with his most of them that I know not if you would free them from the rest of Conformity whether the leaders would not yield in this For when Scotland was invaded and Mr. Love Beheaded it was pleaded that the Covenant was as an Almanack out of date And Mr. Eaton hath written a Book to prove that the Covenant and the Oath of Allegiance bind not 5. But as for abjuring I never heard that it was required of the Ministers and how can that possibly be their only Nonconformity which never was imposed on them 6. But what he and others mean to pretend that the Laity are unconcerned in the renouncing of the Covenant when it is known by Printed Laws and by practice that all the Cities and Corporations in England as to the Governing or trusted part are constituted by the Renunciation of the Covenant and also all the Vestries as the Corporation Act and the Vestry Act declare is but more matter of wonder to men that have not been used to such things So many new Printed Laws and the visible state of all the Cities and Corporations in England are not evidence enough on a Nonconformists part to decide a controversie of fact But if they shall say that they meant that the Laity are not on such terms forbidden to come to Church I answer if we also had learned the trick of speaking writing and swearing in universal terms or equipollent and meaning not universally but particularly as many do we could say or subscribe or swear as far as you desire us 18 Obj. If you be tollerated why not all others as well as you And so the Quakers and the Papists may come in And it 's well if the Presbyterians do not thus let in Popery Ans. 1. What if the Law imposed one word on you which you could not conform to and you differed from the Church in nothing else what answer would you give to such an Objection as this which equally excludeth Chillingworth and Knot Would you not say that a difference should be made O how hardly can men understand that are unwilling to know How easie a case were this to the willing Mr. John Rogers of Dedham Mr. John Ball and sometime Mr. Dod and Mr. Hildersham had liberty to preach without conforming and did it infer the necessity of such a Toleration as you talk of 2. I pray you take heed of bringing Conformity more into contempt than yet it is by seeming to judg it such a thing as men will not yield to without constraint and punishment Take off the penalty of subscribing declaring crossing c. and all that are willing will use them without force And if most must be forced it intimates that they do not like or love them What good doth subscribing a sentence which he believeth not do either to the soul of the lyar himself or to the Church 3. If so large a Toleration as you talk of be so dangerous and the Presbyterians are like to occasion it for their liberty why will you not prevent so great a danger at so cheap a rate as it might be prevented at Are you indeed against a Toleration of Heresie and Popery and yet would you rather venture on the danger of it than abate to Protestants a needless ceremony or subscription 4. I cannot tell whether you are indeed such strangers to the thoughts and talk of the people of England concerning your selves as you seem to be If you are I will not now tell you what they say of you But they rejoice that they have a King so far from Popery that he hath by a Law made it a
Wadsworth Dr. Annesly and abundance more about the City or on the generality of the silenced Ministers in all the Counties of the Land 9. But do you consider how heinously you dishonour the Conformists by the disparity of the charge which you lay on the Nonconformists and which they have laid on you I am not justifying either of your accusations But if I were a stranger in England and had seen the Chair-man of the Committee of Parliament publish his Century of Conformists accused on witness of so many Crimes especially drunkenness and negligence and insufficiency in so many and had seen the like charges before the Committees of the several Counties attested on Oath and had heard both your Icabods Groans and the Gloucester Coblers History of the present Ministry And then had read the most learned and sharp of the Nonconformists adversaries charging them with heart-hypocrisie with disobedience to those Laws for Oaths and Ceremonies which they think are contrary to the Laws of God and with cutting faces and prating phrases and incongruous expressions in praying and preaching to the vulgar c. I should suspect that their cases were not alike 10. Is it a thing possible that a Divine in England should not know that there are in all Countries such Readers and young raw ignorant Conformable Preachers O that they were but here and there one that in understanding in method in phrase and all Ministerial abilities may learn seven years and seven before they are like to reach the measure of W. B. and T. W. whom he reproveth And could he forget that it is as just and solid reasoning to say This multitude of Conformists frequently speak non-sense confusedly c. Ergo the Conformists have such a Religion as to say W. B. and T W. did not express this or that congruously Ergo the Nonconformists Religion is such 22 Obj. You overthrow all principles of Government while you say that the Magistrate may not command things evil by accident And while you allow doubting or scrupling persons to disobey authority as oft as they are but pleased to question their Commands whereas if you are uncertain whether the matter be lawful you are bound to obey because you are certain that Governours must be obeyed and being uncertain that the thing is evil the certain part must prevail against the uncertain Ans. We have long been silent at such accusations supposing by this time they would have been ashamed of themselves Had we read such Moral Divinity as some would teach us in Father Banny Escobar or other such Jesuits we had been like to have found it in the Collection of their Morals which the Jansenists published 1. I never read or heard man yet say that the Magistrate may not command any thing evil by accident But I have said my self that His Commands of things evil by accident may be sinful that is that it is not all things that are evil by accident that he may command But because some men will not understand till they are constrained against their wills I shall elsewhere open the truth about this so plainly as that they shall hardly avoid the understanding of it but by refusing to read it And I will shew them what it is to maintain that men may command any thing that is evil by accident only 2. And the other accusation is the forgery of passionate enmity also we believe that a man is not to obey authority at all times whenever he doubteth of the matter commanded or in every case of doubting But we never thought that all doubtings will excuse his obedience We use to speak more distinctly and leave them to confusion that either cannot distinguish or must have troubled waters to fish in for matter of calumniation Of this also I shall elsewhere give you a satisfactory account of our judgment Done since in my 2d Plea for Peace 23 Obj. But the grand accusation against us by Dr. Heylin in his life of A. B. Laud and elsewhere is for Calvinism or Puritanism in Doctrine against that which is commonly called Arminianism which he maketh the matter of our great contentions and calamities And many other say as he And Mr. Thorndike carrieth it yet much higher accusing us not only of the Doctrine of imputed Righteousness but others in which we have departed from the Church of Rome See his Just Weights and Measures and his Greater Volume Ans. 1. By this it further appeareth how unjustly and partially we are used and how unnecessary they themselves hold Unity in Doctine it self to be in matters which some account so great to the liberty of Preaching the Gospel For in all the Arminian Controversies the Conformists differ among themselves as much as we do from any of them if not more Nothing more common now in our Pulpits than for one man to preach up Free-will and another to preach it down and neither of them know what Free will is and for one to preach for absolute Election perseverance of all Saints c. and another to preach the contrary and shew the tendency of these opinions to all wickedness And yet all these men are suffered to preach because they all subscribe the same doctrine though they neither believe nor preach the same The Articles of the Church of England are subscribed by them all They Assent and Consent to all the Doctrine of the Church And indeed is it because the Articles are not intelligible or have they contrary meanings to fit the use of every subscriber Are they hot to one and cold to another Or rather do many of the Subscribers take heed of Tenderness of Conscience because it is but tenderness of Head and is more sensible of hurt and smart than a feared Conscience is or is a word and thing that is grown into disgrace and scorn in our times For my own part I doubt not but the Compilers of the Articles and Liturgy were in these things of Augustines judgment who was for absolute Election but for no other Reprobation but non-election and the decree of damnation and desertion only upon foresight of sin But as to the differences themselves it would grieve a man of any understanding to read such a History as Dr. Heylins Life of the Archbishop which intimateth to the world that such points as these were the occasion of all the contrivances against each other and of the enmities and calamities which these Kingdoms have undergone When-as the things are such as never bred any such dissention in the first ages of the Church nor would do among us if we had their piety and simplicity I long ago began a Treatise which the agitations of my Troublers have interrupted to reconcile the Arminians and Anti-Arminians in these matters in which I should easily have manifested how unfit such Subjects were to be so fiercely and implacably contended about And because I know not whether ever I shall live to re assume it being toss'd about and having neither
grace And though God give grace without and against desert he never denieth it to any without desert and that more than the desert of Original sin not now interupting our discourse with the Case of Infants 12. That when common Grace hath brought one man much nearer the Kingdom of God than another the same degree of further Divine operation and help which would be uneffectual to make a distant and unprepared man a believer may make him a believer that is nearer and more prepared 13. All effectual grace proceedeth from an effectual will of God to work it 14. The great question therefore Whether none are converted but by special effectual grace or any also by that which in its own nature is meerly sufficient and made effectual by mans will is captious and partly past the reach of man It being certain 1. That Grace is the chief agent in all that believe 2. That the will and mind of man is the immediate actor in believing 3. That whoever believeth hath such grace as cometh from an absolute certain fixed will of God that it shall attain the effect 4. And that in what degrees of influx God worketh on one that is converted more or less than on another is no enquiry for any man that knoweth what he talketh of Nor can we well tell when one mans will deth do its part better than anothers by the same degree of Grace 15. I should shew when Free-will and Necessity are consistent or inconsistent 16. And also how God hath his will as much when man hath greatest freedom as if he had none and that man hath as much freedom under the will and decrees of God as if they were none Nay without them as a cause he could have no freedom 17. I should shew that the Calvinists that run not with some few into extremity do acknowledge as much common Grace to all men as the Arminians do For they confess the universal conditional promise or Covenant and they say that all men that hear the Gospel have pardon and sanctification and salvation brought to their own wills and that if they refuse it not they they shall have it and that they have the posse credere And the difference is that the Arminian thinketh that none ordinarily have any more than this with such perswasions as make it possible antecedently but the Calvinists think the elect have more that is that Grace maketh them actually willing which is certain But how Grace and the will concur is as uncertain as aforesaid 18. All creatures are Passive or Receptive as to Gods efficiency or influx on them And so is mans soul And therefore it is true that it is meerly Passive not only in receiving the first gracious influx of God but in all the influxes which it is under in every action of our lives But it is a truly vital active soul or power which is thus passive first and therefore is ever the next agent in all its Acts of believing c. and never meerly passive for that were a contradiction Nor can it be proved that the soul is meerly recipient or passive as to the true habits of Grace but only as to that Influx which exciteth us to act and by that act done by God and the Soul the habit is produced which yet is called Infused because it is caused by a special Influx what ever more than this is possible no more can be proved de facto 19. Our differences about Universal Redemption and of the Decrees depend on those about Operations and are easily reconciled with them Christ died for all men so far as to procure them all the Grace that he giveth them And he giveth all men the Universal Grace fore described the Conditional pardon c. therefore so far he died for them But of this I have written a peculiar Treatise not yet published 20. The Doctrine of Gods antecedent and consequent will must be better explained as being but his governing will so called from Legislation and Judgment which are the antecedent and consequent parts of Government 21. So must Gods will de naturalibus moralibus and his Legislative antecedent will be well opened and the uselesness and confusion of the distinction of signi bene placiti manifested 22. I would prove that God hath no Decree or will of meer Negatives as not to give grace faith glory not to save c. and therefore hath no Decree to permit because permitting is but not-hindering which is nothing By which one sort of Reprobation as now called will be disproved 23. That Reprobation to positive damnation is only upon foreseen and not decreed impenitency or unbelief 24. That Election and Reprobation therefore go not pari passu but as Austin and Prosper taught the one is a positive absolute Will or Decree of God the other only upon fore-sight 26. Predetermination by Physical premotion to evil materially and as necessary to all actions natural and free is to be left to the Dominicans and not owned by any that know the consequences 27. The numbering and ordering of Decrees secundum ordinem intentionis executionis is to be discussed and the vanity of mens fictions here about made known 28. The nature of futurition and the falshood of founding it necessarily in an eternal cause is to be opened 29. The foolish disputes of the manner of Gods knowing future contingents are by clear reason to be cast out of the Church and Schools 30. In a word a convenient explication will manifest that the difference in all these Controversies really is next to none except in the point of Perseverance and that in that point those that hold with Augustine and Prosper that not all the truly justified and sanctified do persevere but all the Elect and those that hold that all the justified and sanctified are Elect and do persevere have great reason to number this difference among those School-disputes which should break no charity nor communion among Christians But of Perseverance I have long ago published my thoughts in a peculiar Treatise I have said thus much to shew the world not only that we ought not to be silenced or oppressed as an odious sort of people for those Doctrines which some abhor when we subscribe to the same Articles of the Churches Doctrine as they do but also that it is a mixture of that ignorance and pride which is the disease and calamity of Church-men as well as of the world which hath caused most of the heats on both sides and the Cruelties in Holland or in England thence proceeding about these Controversies And that when men have more Understanding or Humility these differences will but little disturb the Church And again I say that those Church snuffers who put out the lights should have remembered our moderation in this point that whereas Parliaments have complained so long and zealously against Arminianism and when Bishops have been so hot about it against each other as Heylin will
better attain your just ends than violence can do Obj. 25. But if we should abate you any thing though but a ceremony or a Subscription or Oath or should make any alteration in the Church Government though it were but to take the Church keys from Lay Chancellors or if we should reform Discipline or any thing at your desires you will be taken by the people to be their deliverers and reformers and your cause will be taken to be good when we yield to it in any part and it will be said that you did not dissent from us and make all this ado in vain and we shall be thought to have been in the wrong and all this while opposed Reformation Or as the young Eccl Politician speaketh pag. 258 This would but give the countenance of authority to their scruples and superstitious pretences and leave the Church of England under all those calumnies to posterity with which themselves or their followers labour to charge it and oblige future ages to admire and celebrate these peevish and seditious persons as the founders of a more godly and through Reformation Ans. 1. It is the nature of all sin to blind the mind and engage the affections to it that the more men have of it the less they may either see or hate it And so it is with Faction Schism and selfishness which is the root of all as the case of the Roman Clergy witnesseth And if any besides your selves had reported you to speak such words which are the full significants of these vices selfishness faction and schism I should have judged him uncharitable Alas that ever men that call themselves Ministers of Christ and Pastors of his flocks should and would be thought to be the wisest and worthiest of his Ministers in comparison of whom we are worthy to be silenced banished and ruined should yet dare before God and man to vent and own the language of pride and faction and envy while they cry out against pride and faction and envy But they that think they know something know nothing as they ought to know The Lord teach me to become a fool and escape their wisdom that I may be wise and to know my self better than such men do before I pretend to know the folly and hypocrisie and unworthiness of men that are wiser and more sincere and worthy than my self What little need had you to disgrace your selves by telling the world that you will not amend lest you be thought to have done amiss and lest those that desired it be celebrated as the founders of a godly Reformation Hath not self-seeking and siding done enough against us yet but you must keep up the distinction of Parties and their Merits for your own reputation against them whose desire is to have unity setled upon terms of common agreement that there may be no more names or signs of faction among us Thus is the Church or Kingdom rather of Rome kept from Reformation lest they should part with the honour of their Infallibility and seem to confess that they needed Reformation 2. But it is a gross mistake to think that this course will keep up your honour to posterity or hinder the estimation of them who desire you to amend For when you and we are in the dust the world will not be afraid of you nor silence truth lest they incur the danger of your frowns but will freely tread upon your Hic jacet and cast up your bones to make room for others and talk of you and your acts as freely as King Henry the Eighth Queen Mary Bishop Bonner and Gardiner are now talkt of And there will such men survive us as will take it for a greater fault and shame to have sinned impenitently than to have repented and to have refused amendment when peace and common interest required it and so many arguments were used for it yea and to have so afflicted their brethren that desired and sought it of them than to have been guilty of the mutability and weakness of amending or of being more for love and unity and peace 3. But if that be the matter men of half your pretended wisdom might easily know how to heal the Church and yet to salve your honour too yea and to deny the feared honour of the Dissenters so far as such as you can hinder it And if you will not interpret it as an approving of your act I will tell you how Cannot you abate the Subscriptions Oaths and other such Impositions and tell the world that you do it not as convinced by the Nonconformists arguments nor as supposing that the things have any evil in them but only out of your eminent charity as bearing with the weak and your love of the Churches peace and concord more than the dissenters love them Nay you may rail at the Nonconformists in your very Concessions and call them as bad as you do in your writings so you will but yield to healing terms and do it not as a Reformation but as a peaceable forbearance of these Schismatical peevish disobedient Reformers that they may have no more pretence for Schism 4. Did Peter Heylin or Archbishop Laud and his adherents if Heylin belie him not deal with the Papists on such terms as these Did they say They will justifie their Invasion 88 and their Powder-Plot and all their Treasonable Practises and Bulls and all their false Doctrines for which these were done if we abate them any thing or yield them the least and therefore we will yield them nothing at all Did Grotius did your Bishop Forbes doth your Mr. Herbert Thorndike go upon such terms with them or not Speak out Do you think us or the Papists nearer to you If they are nearer you than we are then you are nearer them than us Even than us who subscribe to all the faith of the Church of England and differ as you say but in indifferent things Than us whose Writings declare our judgments to the world But if you be really nearer to us than to the Papists why may you not yield as far to us for peace and concord as the Episcopal Reconcilers would have done to them Even Dr. R. Cox would have yielded to Church-Images Vid. Epist. ad Cassand 5. Lastly O that you would remember that he that denieth not himself cannot be Christs disciple And that you would never tempt the world to think that we should all have peace if there were none that were cast down because Abel offereth a more accepted sacrifice than their own yea or if there were none that made it the chief point of difference whether we should be seriously or only seemingly Christians and live as men that believe indeed that there is a life to come and that the Scripture is true I hope I may recite Dr. Hammonds Paraphrase on Act. 4 9. 14 18 21. If we this day be examined of an action which is so far from being a crime that it is a special act
refused them we should have thought it a sign of their humility What a case are we in with such men as these when we must needs be proud whether we accept or refufe 5 Would not the favour and honour of those that would have advanced us to Dignities have weighed down the displeasure of those that we should have offended Do you not think that they are more and more honourable persons whom our conformity would have pleased 6. What scorn or derision does Bishop Reignolds now undergo or many of your Doctors who some were and some reputed formerly of our mind 7. What scorn would it have been to Baxter who had written two years before the change for moderate Episcopacy and Liturgies and whose Books was pleaded and produced at the great meeting at Worcester-house before the King and Lords and Bishops and Nonconformists with these words of the now Bishop of Winchester No man hath written better of these things than Mr. Baxter Who answered That he stood to all that he had there written And why doth he now suffer so much obloquy and displeasure from the separating part of the Nonconformists if it be reputation that he stuck upon Why do your party tell him that he is more calumniated by the Nonconformists than by any others Why hath he lost the esteem of so many as he had once almost done of his own quondam flock for perswading them from going too far in heart and practice from the Bishops when it was their silencing Himself and such others that was the thing which turned his old hearers hearts against them 8. But judge all men of common Reason sobriety and honesty of these mens Accusations now by the matter of fact it self which I opened before as to a former Objection Again Let common reason and equity here be judge of the ingenuity and credit of both these Defences When of three men that were offered Bishopricks but one delayed his resolution and two that were offered Deaneries and when the notorious reason was to see whether the refused Conformity would stand or fall when no one of them ever talkt of accepting if that Conformity should stand and when these were but three men among Eighteen hundred Nonconformists that after were cast out and that Conformity was Actually dispensed with at the time when one refused one accepted and three delayed Whether this be a good proof that it was not Conscience but Interest that these men stuck upon and that consequently this is the chief reason that 1800 men subscribed not And will not posterity rather think that the change may prove sad to the Church of England when instead of so many men that are silenced for avoiding that which they fear to be Perjury Lying and Covenanting against the Commands of Christ such men are set up that dare talk at this rate and that in Print and with the mention of God and the day of judgment And whereas the Debate-maker saith That he heard some of them acknowledge that they scruple not what others do through Gods mercy they are all save Mr. Calamy yet living and solemnly profess that they never so thought or said to him or any other but have oft openly profess'd the contrary But if he means any others what proof is that of these accused persons thoughts His second proof runs thus If this excellent Author shall be condemned as Apocryphal and it is a very easie confutation to cry Fie upon him when they are not able to answer his Arguments Alas for the Church of England if her Doctors take such inhumane Calumnies for unanswerable Arguments I shall then give them an Authority formerly little less than Canonical How the case stands with him at present I am wholly ignorant However he is one that fullwell understands the Intrigues of his party Baxters Def. of the Princip of Love p. 92. And here he reciteth the Authors words against that pride and self-interest which we are accused of And here again we appeal to common ingenuity 1. Whether this man who professeth himself wholly ignorant of the Authors case and to him is utterly unknown be liker to know the secrets of his and other mens hearts it 's like as much unknown to him than he himself who he saith knoweth the intrigues of his party 2. Whether it be a good proof that Nonconformists are chiefly moved by Pride because they openly write against it and condemn those that are so moved with words which the Accuser himself highly approveth Obj. But it seemeth by your words that some such there are among you and it is not Baxter himself that he accuseth Ans. 1. Yes for his application followeth Ex ore tuo which properly should mean that he condemns himself 2. But suppose it otherwise Know Reader that the person against whom that Book was written was Mr. Edward Bagshaw an Anabaptist Fifth Monarchy man and a Separatist and a man of an extraordinary vehement spirit who had been exasperated by many years hard and grievous imprisonment and that it was such as he that were described and that the Nonconformists of England were so far from being of his mind and spirit that when Baxter had written three Books against him and such as he even as Separatists without medling with him as an Anabaptist or a Millenary no one Minister of England wrote in his Defence nor that ever his Confuter heard of pleaded for him And did we ever dream that no Sectary is moved by Pride to Nonconformity Do we justifie the secret thoughts of all Nonconformists whom we know not Or is it a proof that Pride chiefly moveth the Nonconformists because they call out to Sectaries to take heed lest it be so with them 3. But because this Doctor hath told the world that Baxter fullwell understands the intrigues of his party as he calls them Let the world judge whether his testimony then of that party be not more credible than his that so little knoweth them And he solemnly professeth to the world that though he hath reason to call the best of men to be very jealous of their hearts lest pride and self-interest should pervert them yet he verily believeth that there is not this day on earth that he heareth of a more conscionable godly faithful party of Ministers of the Gospel than those that are now ejected silenced Nonconformists in England though they are not all equal in judgment or Ministerial ability or self-denyal As far as his credit will go let posterity believe this And his testimony shall be believed when the Defamers and Calumniators shall not 2. He thus proceedeth A second reason why they conform not is their Interest If this be thought a Paradox it being a strange method to consult their interest by losing their Livings the dissatisfied person is desired to consider that the Ringleaders of the faction having possessed themselves of other mens preferments and foreseeing that they should be restored to the right owners thence made a virtue of
necessity by assuring their Proselytes that they were resolved to stick to them and as they had defended the Cause with their Tongues and Pens they were now ready if Providence call them to it to seal it with their blood And is it a sign of covetousness to dye for what they hold But by this he tells us that the people were melted into such kindness as that the Preachers are no losers by their silence Here 's the wonder Hear the proof 1. Many of them gain more at present from their party than they could from the Church if they conformed Ans. 1. O that he would name those many and let us try the case and see also whether they are a considerable number The Independents are commonly thought to be best provided for in London But how small is their maintenance to what they had or might have had heretofore And why might they not now have more if they could conform We were just now accused by him and another about our deliberate refusing of Church Dignities And doth he think that we get more now than a Bishoprick or Deanery would have amounted to And as for what he talks of our being in other mens preferments we took our Labours indeed for preferment but not our maintenance and those that are now Conformists as well as the Nonconformists were formerly in sequestrations and some were out and others where the old sequestred Incumbents were dead were setled by Law long before the time of silencing And would not covetousness rather have perswaded them all to conform and take new Livings than to leave all Is it possible for an English man to think that we live more plenteously upon our Neighbours charity than the Conformists do upon their Dignities Tythes and Charity together even such as live in the houses and favour of the Nobles and great men of the Land Doth he not here much commend the charity of those that are for the Nonconformists before he is aware in comparison of others But the Reader shall know the truth of this anon But suppose some did gain so much by their Nonconformity would that cause many hundred to continue Nonconformists who live in want and have no such hopes His second proof runs thus They retain a power and interest in their party to prefer their conforming sons And this is such a piece of impiety as were there not too much ground for the suspition I should not think any Christian could be guilty of Ans. And this is such a kind of charge and proof as we think a just and sober Heathen or Mahometan would abhor and would be as a wonder to us if the sight and hearing of the like from such men did not tell us what Monstrous pravity hath corrupted the nature of man And we are sorry that posterity must know by such passages that the Church of England hath such Doctors to succeed the silenced Nonconformists and the houses of the Nobility such Chaplains whose most deliberate Writings when they appeal to the day of Judgment are such as may make human nature blush 1. Of 1800 or 2000 silenced Ministers we know not of twenty that have sons that are Conforming Ministers suppose there should be 40 or 50 such in England would 1750 others be purposely Nonconformists that those 40 or 50 sons of other men might get Livings What are they to them or what get they by it 2. Would it not be a greater prey for covetousness for both Father and Son by conforming to have Livings than for the Son alone Yea for 1800 Ministers to have Livings than 40 or 50 of their sons alone 3. And who knoweth not as they boast themselves that Nobility and Gentry who have presentations to Church Livings are so many of them conformable and distast the Nonconformists as shameth this accusation Do not the Parliament and Laws tell us how they are affected And doth not the prosecution of the Nonconformists tell it us Will they that make Laws to eject silence confine imprison and banish the Nonconformists if they preach prefer their sons because their fathers are Nonconformists Were not those few sons liker to get Livings if their fathers got favour by conforming and if all the rest conformed too Either he would have men think that the Nobility and Gentry who most like the Nonconformists are many or but few if many there is sure some cause that so many who live with them and know them should like them better than the Conformists they take them not to be such as these Doctors do describe them If but few is not Preferment rather to be got from many than from few Another Book called A free and impartial Enquiry into the causes of that very great esteem and honour that the Nonconforming Preachers are generally in with their followers in a Letter to H. M. Proceeding from the like spirit useth the like but more Accusations His first assigned cause is p. 36. A preaching up of an empty formal notional kind of Religion and causing and encouraging men to build their hopes of heaven upon very easie and pleasing conditions And p. 54. No men have ever given people ground to hope for the salvation of the spirit with less pain trouble to the flesh than these men have done Ans. Wonderful that so many thousands should be so deceived Make their hearers believe this and they will soon forsake them We know no one thing that causeth mens dislike of the Conformists so much as that they take them to be just such as he describeth the Nonconformists to be We cannot express their opinion of too many of them in apter words Nor do we know of any thing in the world that causeth men to like the Nonconformists so much as that they judg them to be just contrary to this mans character And have the people no sense nor acquaintance with the persons This is a charge which we meet with few of our enemies that believe Let these evidences decide the case 1. Which side hath generally the strictest followers Which side are the generality of the Blasphemers Whoremongers Drunkards and Debauched persons on And which side hath the most serious religious sort of persons 2. Why is it that the Nonconformists and their followers are commonly accused for preciseness and overmuch strictness for being hypocrites as counterfeiting more holiness and austerity of life than others 3. How many of the Ministers were ever cast out for drunkenness fornication deceit swearing perjury or any loose living or immorality Not one of the 1800 that ever we heard of but all for Nonconformity alone 4. If you should turn your charge upon the Sectaries who hath written more against the Antinomian loose opinions than the Nonconformists have done The many Volumes of Mr. Anthony Burges the Writings of Mr. Richard Allen Mr. Joseph Allen Mr. John Howe with many more of late and of Mr. Hildersham Mr. Ball Mr. Dod Mr. Greenham Mr. Rogers Mr. Perkins and many more such
continued But some charitable persons pitied the needy and kept them from famishing and utter distress And some few Ministers of more than ordinary Parts and Name and Acquaintance were better supplied than the rest But those that were as conscientious but of meaner parts and more obscure and small acquaintance and lived in poor Countreys were in great necessities some have long lived with many Children with almost nothing but brown-bread and water and some have been put to work for their living at very low and fordid employments as Musculus once did with a Weaver and in the Town-ditch some took Farms and for want of stock and skill run into greater poverty and debts some that had studied Physick turned Physicians and so escaped want some left the obscure Villages through meer necessity and betook them to London and other Cities and great Towns where the Numbers and Ability of the inhabitants might afford them some relief And some by this siege did yield up their Consciences and stretched them by forced interpretations of the words of the Declaration and Subscription to Conform and upon the review were cast into miserable distress of soul which was more troublesome than poverty and famine And some that thought it not their duty to be very scrupulous and because they had not taken the Covenant or medled in matters of Civil Contention or War did judge themselves more capable than others of Conforming did after upon review repent and give up the places they had taken and the practice which they had begun But all found that the Number of persons that were both able and willing to relieve so many needy families was small and that most were either unable or tenacious of their money so that the sufferings of many were very great 3. But the service that the silenced Ministers did being now in private an Act was made against Conventicles and such penalties annexed as I need not here recite And when the Act was expired it was again revived with many additions And because that these Ministers lived mostly now on Cities and Corporations or their former flocks that were acquainted with them an Act was made in the heat of all the grievous Plague at Oxford imposing on them an Oath which he that took not having kept any Conventicle and after came within five miles of any City or Corporation or place where he had lately preached was to be sent six Months to the Common Jayl and pay 40 l. This Law was harder to them than the former For 1. many men that had made some shift to settle their habitation in the cheapest or most convenient place they could get were forced to remove yea most of the Nonconformists in England were constrained to change their dwelling 2. Some lived with some friends or relations who would give them house-room or help and they were thus driven away from their friends and relations and such entertainments 3. Abundance of them had their houses for a certain time having Leases of them for years or life And they knew not how to get Tenants to take such houses which were incommodious to Farmers though fit for them And they that before wanted bread and cloathing were put to the streights of paying Rent for houses that must stand empty being driven from them 4. And they were hard put to it to find places in England to fix their dwellings in for Corporations in most Counties are so near that he that withdraweth five miles from one doth come within five miles of another or at least within five miles of some place where they had preached And some laborious men that thirsted after mens salvation had gone about preaching over a great part of the Countrey or the Land and so were almost sentenced to banishment by this Law And when they did find out a place that was five miles distant from all the prohibited places it would be strange if there they should find empty houses when Landlords use not to leave their houses untenanted and unpossessed And if a house were empty that it should be fit for a poor Minister that could not take the ground or farm would be strange And 5. when they found a capable place they had not money to take it Being poor before and poorer by their removal 6. And when they borrowed money to take it they wanted money to pay for the removing of their goods and the furnishing of their new habitations Those that have tryed such changes know how chargeable as well as troublesome they are But the thing that most eased them in all these straights was that Market-Towns were not put into the Act with Corporations and so many Market-Towns being no Corporations and there being houses to be had without farms or ground many Ministers got into those Towns which gave Dr. Fullwood occasion to reproach them as dwelling in populous places which had least need of them of which more anon And some Ministers finding their streights so great as that their imprisonment in the common Jayl was not more to be feared and finding especially that they were no more warranted by God to desert the Souls in all Cities and Corporations and all their ancient flocks and all places where they had preached and five miles round about all these than the rest of the Land yea that populous places had the greatest need and their former Hearers might claim the greatest interest in them and that Christ commanded his Apostles when they were prosecuted in one City to fly to another they resolved to follow their work where they were invited and to commit their liberties and lives to God But Gods dreadful judgments were the great cause of their freedom from these streights The terrible Plague consumed so many thousands a week in London that some Nonconformable Ministers durst not leave them in that distress but stayed and preacht to them and visited them and gathered money abroad for the poor which greatly won the peoples hearts and the face of death so prevailed with multitudes to awaken them from security that the success of the Ministers was very great and so great as fixed their resolution to hold on whatever it cost them Multitudes of young people penitently lamenting their former sins and begging of the Ministers not to forsake them in their distress And so many of the Conformable Ministers fled from the infection that the Bishop thought it best to connive at the preaching of the Nonconformists during that necessity And quickly after the lamentable fire consumed with the Houses Eighty nine Churches which made the necessity of preaching in other places more extensive and notoririous it being unmeet that so famous a Christian City should forsake all publick worshipping of God till the Houses and Churches should be all rebuilt So that by this necessity a greater number of Nonconformists were needed and entertained in London yea many Countrey-Ministers that came thither and by their example the rest throughout England were much encouraged to appear
to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost Acts 4. 2 c. 3. Experience assureth us that from the beginning of the Church to this present day Christ never gave too many able faithful Ministers to his Church Supernumeraries of such were never its disease nor the amputation of them its cure There is still need of the Lords-prayer Thy Kingdom come And Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers c. That man is but a Christian or a Pastor in jest and Image and not in earnest and reality who thinketh that the Pastors now allowed are so sufficient for the great employment of the Ministry that more are but supernumerary and the rest may be spared without any detriment to the souls of men Even in the Apostles age of Miraculous gifts Dr. Hammond thinketh the Pastors were so scarce that every Episcopal Church had no more than one Bishop with some Deacons without ever a Subject-Presbyter And that there was de facto none of the Order of subject-Presbyters in Scripture-times And so think all the Presbyterians too And it is a notorious truth that afterwards the Presbyters were so low in abilities that publick preaching in the Church was mostly used by the Bishops only And many Countries have lost the Gospel for want of Preachers And wherever ignorance and prophaneness have broken in upon the Church as the Greeks Abassines Armenians Moscovites Papists and too many Protestant Churches it hath commonly been by the decay of able godly faithful Pastors And if one City or Parish of ten thousand have had too many their near neighbours have so much wanted them that they could not be esteemed supernumerary And in England there are few Parishes which need not helps even where the ablest men are placed much more where Is it seasonable then or doth it answer the Will or Providence of to call in so many when the Church hath always had too few 4. The punishment which you inflict upon the Ministers doth fall a thousand times more heavily on the souls of the innocent people who without being accused or speaking for themselves in a Legal trial have so great a penalty inflicted on them as none but a believer that judgeth of things in reference to Eternity is able to estimate a right Alas to the Preacher the suffering is small in comparison of the peoples What if they live poorly what if they want house or clothes or bread How small a matter is that in comparison of the want of knowledg and faith of grace and salvation I confess their sufferings will cost them dear that are the true cause when Christ condemns those that do not relieve them But to themselves it is no such dreadful business Nay if they were but discharged in conscience from the Ministerial Office most of them might live in much more peace and plenty in the world There are many other Callings to betake themselves to in which they might live quietly and not be as the Hare before the Hunters pursued from place to place with cryes as if they that will imitate Paul in labours must bear also his reproach as pestilent fellows and movers of sedition among the people that do contrary to the decrees of Cesar and turn the world upside down Yea many are already turned Physicians and they have better words and kinder usage But every man that hath the eyes of a Christian in his head and seeth what the people of England VVales and Ireland are for members and for quality and seeth and heareth also what Ministers for number and quality do instruct them doth know as certainly that many hundred thousand souls do wofully need more Ministerial helps as he knoweth that five hundred Scholars do need more than one School-master or five hundred sick men need more than one Physician But O what a plague is it to the Church and World to have Ministers who when they read of the necessity of knowledg holiness and salvation do neither believe Christ nor themselves Argue not the people into such hard thoughts of you as if this were your case by perswading them that it is no matter whether their souls have any more Ministerial helps than now is given them Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost and that the cure of gross ignorance hard-heartedness unbelief and sensuality are of necessity to salvation or not If not deal openly and silence both your selves and us If yea then either you know how these maladies abound in the people and how much labour the cure doth usually cost or not If not then take not on you to be Pastors or English men or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to But if you do know this then I need to say no more to you but to desire you to fuppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors The worldling drunkard and fornicator is most miserable that would have no reproof or help Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cryes and that you hear them calling to you for help O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance unbelief insensibility worldliness and sensuality that are utter strangers to that life of faith and love and holiness without which none can please or see God and must quickly be converted and made new creatures or they are lost for ever Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints you heard them expostulating with you for their souls O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation Alas our ignorance and deadness and worldly-mindedness and fleshly affections are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used what shall we do then if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed Alas say not that the reading of the Scriptures and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn We confess that it should do so if our disease were so light as to need no more the thing it self is good and every word of God is precious but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep and hardned in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone It is the skilful choice of pertinent Truths convincingly and clearly uttered and closely applied with life and seriousness that our case requireth We confess that if a School-boy or a raw ignorant youth from the University did but read a chapter or say over a less pertinent cento of good words we should be moved
furnace devoured the Executioners and so did Daniel's Lyons too God hath ever shewed himself a God of Love and an enemy to the enemies of it Many are the afflictions of the righteous but God hath many ways to deliver them out of all As I said already who would have thought that enow should have escaped Queen Maries Bonefires to have planted a Protestant Church so soon Or so many escaped the French Massacre as so soon to have made that fact repented of and ring to the Odium of the Actors through the world Yea that so many should survive the Two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland as to see so terrible a revenge Yea that the far greater Murders of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses should be followed with a resurrection of the witnesses of the truth with double advantage and leave the everlasting odium of bloody cruelties upon Rome and that the German-sufferings should so soon be revenged by the Swedes Or that the desolations which for the Interim were made among the German Ministers should so soon be repaired Or that the Prelacy which Constantius and other Arrian Emperors set up should so soon be changed and the Arrian cruelties recorded to their perpetual shame And that the Vandals in Africa should but murder Ministers enow to kill themselves with the stroke Or that the true Persecutions of the Heathen Emperors should but increase the Church of Christ and the blood of Martyrs should be its seed Or that fewer Nonconformist Ministers than there be Counties in England in 1640 should multiply into that number as they did within two or three years Or that the Diocesan-Ministers supprest by Cromwell should revive to the strength that they were in within three years after his death Men may contrive but God will dispose Caiphas may think that one should dye for the people rather than all the Nation perish and the fact may prove their speedy and most dreadful ruine 2. And as blood cryeth loud to God for revenge so it usually maketh the actors so odious in the world that men will hardly leave it unrevenged There is no hope that ever you should be able to extirpate both grace and good nature out of the world There will be some sparks of love and humanity in the minds of men when interest quencheth them not when you have done all And these sparks of charity and humanity will make all the actors of cruelty odious and the people will take them for Bears and Wolves Yea if you were able to perswade others by your words and books as you do your selves by your interest and passions that we are as very fools and disobedient to your Lordships as you describe us yet most men and especially English men will pity the suffering side and will think with heart-rising on the men of blood When the Puritans suffered the people pitied them and cryed out against the Prelates When the Diocesan party suffered the people pitied them and cryed out against Cromwel and those that cast them out And now they are turning about again tho' I know there are many more cases do concur 3. And God having resolved that the memory of the just shall be blessed and that the name of the wicked shall â—ot and that the greatest of the ungodly shall not be the Master of Fame nor any more able to leave an odium on the name of the just than to pursue their souls with malice into heaven no nor so much as to preserve their own names from odium any more than to keep their bodies from corruption It hence comes to pass that the very odor and perfume of sufferers names that endure the wrath of man for the sake of God and conscience doth so invite posterity to their mind and way that multitudes quickly rise up in their steads And the loathed names of the persecutors of the godly doth make posterity shun their courses What a stink hath the name of David Seton in Scotland of Bonner of London and Gardiner Bishop of Winchester left behind The like I may say of all such men 4 Moreover the same reasons that prevail with us will prevail with others when we are dead They will be as fearful of lying and perjury and of swearing Allegiance to Church-usurpers as we have been There will still be a people seriously religious that are Christians in good sadness and really believe a life to come There is no hindering it God will have it so and who can gainsay him And these men will be as loth under pretence of order and decency to have Religion dwindle into a lifeless form of words and ceremonies and to take the chaff and straw for the corn as ever we have been before them And the History of our sufferings will but animate them 5. Besides this 1. While you are doing your work you are dying you are alas that 's the cut-throat of your comforts but mortal men your selves Bonner is dead and Gardiner is dead Guise is dead and D' Alva is dead King Edward's Reformation and Q. Maries Persecution were both cut short by the shortness of their lives When you have destroyed ten or twenty or an hundred Ministers and are resolving Thus we will use them all A Fever or an Apoplexy or some other Messenger of an offended God doth stop you in your course and call you to judgment and tell you that when it is too late which you could not hear from such as we Cum tamen a figulis munitam intraverit urbem Sarcophago contentus erit Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum Corpuscula Nature will not suffer you long and Justice oft anticipateth the time of Nature The strange Histories of Gods Judgments are not all fables Nullane perjuri capitis fraudisque nefandae Poena erit Juv. 6. And sometimes God stoppeth a Saul in his way with greater mercy And sometimes crosses make men melancholy and retire from their cruel course Can you think of two such instance as Dioclesian and Charles the fifth without admiration And oft-times an accusing-conscience beginneth such a hell on earth as interrupteth the execution of malicious purposes And sometimes the very odium of the people turneth them off with shame both which the same Poet intimateth Sat. 13. Exemplo quodcunque malo committitur ipsi Displicet auctori Prima est haec ultio quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur improbae quamvis Gratia fallacis Praetoris vicerit urnam Quid sentire putas omnes Calvine recenti De scelere fidei violatae crimine And domestical afflictions may cool the fire of vour consuming zeal You must not look to be still imposing crosses and making crosses for your neighbours and feel none your selves It may be your great Patrons may dye or fall or forsake you and then your hearts are broken It may be death may enter into your own families and make you think what blood-thirstiness doth tend to Ut Vigeant sensus animi ducenda tamen
people are more averse to your Conformity than most of the Ministers are and they are hardlier kept to the rules of Patience and Charity to those that destroy them and they will chuse Teachers and Pastors out of the best qualified of the people that survive and will not lay down the worshipping of God according to their consciences though they were used for it as Daniel was for praying thrice a day openly in his house contrary to the Law And these new Pastors perhaps will have less moderation than the old And thus you will be troubled with a succession of dissenters 10. And suppose as it is not improbable that one half of the people and some of the Pastors should be constrained to Conformity your Icabod hath told you in his Groans what they will do Their judgments would not be changed but they would only stretch their Consciences to take your Oaths and Subscriptions with their own interpretation contrary to the plainest sense as abundance do who now Conform And these men will do more against you than the open Nonconformists being abler to supplant you as being nearer to you As the Conformable Westminster-Assembly did and the Conformable long Parliament and as Heylin thinks Abbot and the Puritan Bishops and Clergy did by Laud and his party 11. Those that survive as thousands will do when you have done your worst will take their first opportunity to shew their sense of your horrid inhumanity with far greater animosity than if you had never tasted blood and your cruelties will but be the fewel of their fiercer opposition 12. And there are some hypocrites no doubt among those that will suffer by you who are carried on by a self-conceited zeal And these may be tempted by your extremities to break out into Treasons Seditions and Rebellions The truly wise and godly will not But all that are against you are not such Nay you your selves I suppose think that few of them are such And if oppression may make a wise man mad no wonder if it make weak foolish people and hypocrites mad and then you know that one Felton may end the Great Duke of Buckingham Because we abhor the thoughts of such villanies we would not have you lay such temptations on men as you are not able to bear your selves If a little worldly wealth and greatness could tempt you to think that you do God service when you kill'd his Servants why should you think that among many thousands there will no hypocrites be found that will break Gods Laws to save themselves by sinful means You know how deeply the principle of self-preservation is planted in nature and what need there is of considerable grace to make men patiently resign their lives when they think they are taken away injuriously If Peter in fear might deny his Master and all the disciples forsook him and fled an hypocrite may be tempted to a sinful defence against his persecutors I do hereby warn all men that they take heed of such temptations and plead not Nature against the Laws of Grace and that they not only live but dye in honouring their Rulers whatsoever they suffer by them and say not as the Poet that lived among Heathenish impatience Ad generum Cereris sine caede vulnere pauci Descendunt Reges siccâ morte Tyranni The true fear of God will teach men to live and dye in patience But while you your selves think that those that you afflict are wicked and know that cruelty is the most powerful temptation to sinful self-defence do you think that you will be innocent by such temptations What if it were felony to cry Were he innocent that would scourge men women and children till they bleed and then call out for Justice against the felons that cryed Some men will think that your cruelties are of purpose to constrain or tempt some hypocrites into seditious words or deeds that you may have matter to accuse the rest of Rehoboams young Counsellors in my opinion could not justifie themselves from the guilt of all the sufferings of that King by saying It was the rebellious ten Tribes that did forsake him It was an unhappy proof of their own Loyalty to be the Counsellors of so great a temptation We hate Rebellion and Treason so much more than such as these that we would not have you say The King shall have no Loyal Subjects that will not lay down their lives to shew their Loyalty He that striketh the flint is guilty of the fire He that will kill or banish or undo men for nothing to try if he can find any among them all that loveth his life better than his Loyalty or Subjection to Superiors that he may prick him forward to Sedition by torments will prove no Loyal Subject himself at last I remember a person of Quality more great than good was reported to assault a Farmers house to have defiled his daughters But the door being bolted and no threats would open them one of his company bid him throw drown the Hive of Bee's in the Garden in revenge The Bees when the Hive was broken down had almost stung the great man and his company to death If the question was Whether the owner or the Bees must be accused of the crime I can only say that the Counsellor was not innocent And if a Thief should break into a Bishops house and bind his Servants and set a Pistol to the breast of one and bid him disclose his Lords money and he should dye rather than be guilty of disclosing it and all the rest should dye save one and that one should confess to save his life I do not think it would be congruous for him that did affright him to it to say I am innocent though perhaps he took not the gold himself so he that should by cruelties tempt men to such a wicked act as Felton or Card. Betons executioners used would not be found the truest friend to Peace or Government 13. If you say We will not hang or burn but banish them I answer so were some fugitives exiled in Q. Maries days who yet soon returned to head the Diocesan Churches of England And those few of the Clergy that fled from Cromwell returned to see revenge upon Usurpers And what stricter Laws would you have both for banishment and death than is made here against the Romish Priests and yet they live in peace among us Banished men are alive and are exasperated and your guilt will make you think that you are not safe from them till they are dead Amesius at Franekera did more service to the Church of God and more disservice to the English Diocesans than Ames at Cambridg did Some have banished themselves for an opportunity by writing to do the more against their adversaries and said Difficile est satyram non scribere Nam quis iniquae Tam patiens urbis Tam ferreus ut teneat se Si natura negat facit indignatio versum Quando
culled out the few necessary Articles of the faith as the matter of a necessary particular profession I will tell you what good these things will do and do you tell me what harm they will do and let the good and hurt be well compared 1. It would either Unite all Christians or make their Union an easie thing as soon as the minds of men were prepared for it All Christians are agreed that the Holy Scriptures are infallible All Christians are not agreed that your three books are infallible Therefore all Christians may easilier unite in their subscription or belief of the Scriptures than of your three books Perhaps you will say that it will not unite us with the Papists nor with any that require more I answer We shall be so far united as that they will approve of all our Religion though we approve not of all theirs For they confess the truth of all our Canonical Scriptures and confess that all things universally necessary to salvation are contained in them and much more So Bellarmine Costerus and many others and especially the old Schoolmen freely assert And it is a great advance to Concord and to our satisfaction to have the common concession of all Christians that our Religion is all true and nothing of absolute necessity wanting But I have spoken more to this before to which I refer you 2. It would make it as easie for any Protestant to justifie all his Religion as it is to justifie the sacred Scriptures to those that confess them to be true and so to tell the Papist where our Religion hath been in all ages and what succession our Church hath had 3 It would take none of your forms or ceremonies or superadditions from any that will needs have them while you make them not the necessary terms of union and communion he that will may be without them 4. Christian love and saving unity and concord may be thus maintained by mutual forbearance while nothing is done contrary to the nature of love to mortifie it And if any would take occasion by differences to revile and villifie one another the Magistrate may have the approbation of all sober men in keeping the peace and punishing all the fruits of such uncharitableness that tend to the destruction of love or godliness 5. A thousand unhappy crimes will be prevented which will follow the death of Christian love and the exasperation of mens passions and tongues by their sufferings 6. The Pastors when they grow like to Christ in meekness gen tleness and love will be loved and honoured by the flocks and the name of a Bishop will not be odious any more and consequently the lives of faithful Pastors will be more comfortable 7. And then the doctrine and labours of Ministers will be more successul and consequently piety and justice will increase and multitudes more will be sanctified and saved 8. It will be a comfort to the King and Magistrates to be loved honoured and obeyed by an united willing people and to be excused from the unpleasing works of fining imprisoning banishing or hanging their subjects for differing from them about some cases of sin and duty when the fear of offending the God of heaven is that which bringeth them to their sufferings 9. It will be a great strength and beauty to the State and Church and fortifie us against a common Enemy and end our fears of Sedition on account of Religion at home 10. In a word it would make us liker to the primitive believers and lead the way to all Christian States and Churches for the right reconciling of all the Christian World And what now is the hurt that these Scripture primitive terms would bring Obj. It would make as many factions as there be different Opinions or Ceremonies Ans. 1. Do you judg of others by your selves Are all men so proud and void of humanity and love that they must needs be factious if they do but differ in an opinion or ceremony from others or that they cannot live in love and peace with any that differ from them in an opinion or ceremony or that they can endure to see none live at liberty out of Gaols that be not in all such things of their mind 2. If there be any such proud and uncharitable persons the Magistrate may curb the expressions of their folly that it wrong not others 3. If that were true there would be as many Factions as men if you will pardon your contradiction for all men differ in opinion from each other and in as great matters of Religion as a Ceremony 4 Doth the differences forementioned among yourselves as between Dr. Taylor Mr. Thorndike and some others from the Doctrine of the Church of England make any such Factions among you Did the difference mentioned by Heylin between Bishop Mountague and Wren about coming up to the Altar to communicate make any factions Doth the difference now between your Arminians and Calvinists which we ordinarily hear in your own Pulpits make such Factions Doth the different modes of Cathedral and Parish-worship make such Factions If not why should it make a Faction for one man to cross a child in Baptism and another not Do not the very Papists keep up their unity and strength by allowing far more and greater diversities in Doctrines and in Religious Orders Rules and Ceremonies according as every Order hath desired Obj. But if any be allowed to forbear those that use the ceremonies or subscriptions will be censured by the followers of the nonconformists Ans. And is it indeed to preserve your honour that we must undergo all these convulsions Speak it out then plainly that the world may understand you Must all that differ in a ceremony from you be silenced and hunted about the world lest the people should think worse of you than of them 2. But how notoriously do bad means overthrow the ends of them that use them It is Honours Motto Quod sequitur fugio quod fugit ipse sequor Do not the people know that we differ from you in these things as much when we are silenced as when we preach Will imprisonment or banishment make us agreed or make the people think we are agreed Or will they forget all the difference think you when we are out of sight If the bare different opinion and practice make them undervalue you will not they think worse of you when they think you do worse Will they not distast a Conformable man whom they judg an envious persecutor more than a Conformable man whom they judg a meek and loving man One would think that you should need no answer to such objections But I have answered enow before 2. Well! if the Scripture simplicity be too narrow for you my next question is What harm will it do you to unite on such terms as all the Churches did unite in in the days of Tertullian and Cyprian yea for 300. years after the birth of Christ Look whatever was then the
obligation to obey him 3. But they are forced at last to resolve all their power and our duty into Humane will or institution It is Man that must make him my Bishop And this they call the application of the power But by what Act is this application Is it by Election or by another Consecration or how sure they will say by Election And doubtless some one must first Elect him to be a Bishop indeterminately It 's strange that men must be Consecrated that no men chuse Then they chuse themselves And then the Consecrators must Consecrate any one that will chuse himself to be a Bishop But if not so they make the Consecrators chusers and therefore should not say that Election doth nothing to make him a Bishop But who are the second determing Electors They know not who to lay it on nor who it is that maketh a man Bishop of these persons and this place One will say the Consecrators and then they know not who these must be and we may possibly have ten Bishops at once another will say the Clergy which really here chuse not another will say the King and they must all come to that or nothing though they are very loth for none of them will say The People 2. But what is the dependance of our calling on the Bishops supposing them of Gods appointment Is it a dependance 1. Of Essence 2. For Operation 3. Or for the Order and Circumstances of operation And do they mean that we depend 1. On the Bishops first Ordination 2. Or on his continued Will 1. If our Calling as to Authority and Obligation did depend in esse on the will of the ordainer as such that is that we receive it from him of which more elsewhere yet doth it not follow that the continuance of it dependeth on his Will and that he may undo what he hath done For he engageth men to God durante vita in a perpetual office which maketh the Papist call it an indelible Character In Ordination a Contract is made between Christ and the Minister and till they null it that contracted it he cannot do it that did but Ministerially contract them A Priest may Marry man and wise but cannot unmarry them A Bishop may Crown and Anoint the King but cannot depose him 2. And if the Bishop cannot null the esse of our Calling than the operation is not at his Will For 1. the Esse is nothing but the Potestas operandi cum obligatione 2. Else it were left to the Will of Bishops whether Christ should have any Ministers and Worship and whether the Gospel should be preached or Souls be saved 3. But if it be only the Time place and order of our Ministration that is left to Bishops they have no power to forbid the necessary preaching of the Gospel on pretence of ordering it To order operation is not to prohibit it He doth not order my studies writing travel building who biddeth me study write travel build no more 4. As the Bishops of Spain at Trent defended the Divine right of their office against the Pope so must we ours against the Prelates Christ hath instituted the office of Presbyters himself which is more generally agreed on among Christians than that he hath instituted our Prelacy But if Dr. Hammond's opinion hold true that there were no subject Presbyters in Scripture-times we shall think it hard to prove that there ought to be any now And then all Ministers must be of one order 5. Suppose Scotland possessed of the Christian Religion under such Presbyters as Coleman Aidan Finan c. and after a Courtier perswadeth the King to call one man their Bishop and make him be Consecrated Are all those Churches and holy Pastors on a sudden by that act become such dependants on that Bishop as that they must give over preaching when he bids them 6. By your Rules men may enlarge Diocesses at their pleasure and if the King will make all England one Diocess he may put down all the Bishopricks save one and give one man power to chuse whether Christ shall have any Gospel or souls in England and so Christ must shortly be no Christ or Saviour without the Bishops leave II. To the second Reason I deny that by preaching we use any Prelatical power the pretended Office of a Prelate is not to be the sole Preacher but the Governour of Preachers If we made our selves Governours of Preachers we should assume their power But to preach is our own work Obj. You call and govern assemblies Ans. We govern not Diocesses nor other Presbyters and to guide particular Assemblies in worship was ever acknowledged the Presbyters work Obj. Yes under the Bishops government but not without him Ans. To do the work of his own office without him that should govern him could be but a disobedience against that Governour but not a deposing him and usurpation of his Government If a Physician Taylor or Shoomaker exercise his Calling when the King forbiddeth him yea or a Schoolmaster or Minister who governs others this is not to depose the King and take his power but only to disobey his power Can you perswade all Popish Priests in England that they depose the King III. The third Reason is as gross a fallacy supposing that our silence is but passive obedience but passive obedience as it is commonly called is but patient suffering without resistance If the Bishops excommunicate us or imprison us or deprive us of all Ministerial maintenance or take all our Estates we never resist them but endure all But when the first part of Religion is positive and the second negative will any say that it is but passive obedience to omit all our duty if a Bishop forbid it us Then it were but passive obedience to give over loving God and man and maintaining our Families or praying to God or doing any good if the Bishop forbid it us 2. And for keeping peace which you demand how it should be done I answer you 1. Satan keepeth possession of his Kingdom in some peace Peaceable unholiness is the surest way to hell 2. We are commanded but if it be possible and as much as in us lieth to live peaceably with all men But peace is first in the power of Rulers and if they will have no peace it is not in our power to procure it against their wills but only to do our part towards it If a Bishop should forbid all men to feed their children and servants with any wholsome food and then say What peace or order can you have without such obedience This is but to put a scorn on the Churches when they have persecuted them and to take away their peace and then ask them why they will not have it IV. To the fourth Reason That the Bishop is judg who shall preach I answer 1. Were the Bishops Calling justified yet he hath not power to judg in partem utram libet whether there shall be preaching or