behold without seven dayes silence and astonishment like Job's friends the rufull and dismall spectacle of the Church of England which is like Job or Lazarus living indeed but almost buried in its Sores and Sorrowes not onely lying but even dying on its dunghill like the sometime lovely and beautifull Daughter of Zion now grovelling in the dust deserving another tender-hearted Jeremy who might write the book of England's Lamentations with his Teares since the History of her Fall and Ruine is written in blood Her own brood like the young Pelicans feeding upon her without any pity or remorse growing daily fiercer after they have once tasted of her flesh and more resolute as Absalom by the rapes they have rudely made upon a Matrone lately so comely chast and honourable whom Her destroyers dare now to count and call the filth and off-scouring of all Churches crying down Her holy habitations and conventions as cages and flocks of unclean birds Her holy Ministrations as impious and odious Her holy Bishops and Ministers as Antichristian usurpers and impostors Her whole Constitution as Babylonish and abominable worthy of nothing but their curses and comminations CHAP. VII HAth any Nation changed Her Gods though they are no Gods saith the Prophet expostulating with the inconstant and Apostatizing Jews who had despised the Word forsaken the Law and broken the everlasting covenant of God made with their forefathers What people that owns a God or a Saviour or a Soul immortall or any Divine Veneration under the name of their Religion was ever patient to heare their and their fore-fathers God blasphemed or to see that Religion wherein to the best of their understanding they agreed and professed publickly to serve and worship their God vulgarly baffled and contemned Was ever any part of mankind so stupidly barbarous as to behold without just grief and resentment their Oracles and Scriptures vilified and abused their solemn Prayers and Liturgies torn and burnt their Temples profaned and ruined their holy Services scorned and abhorred their Priests and Ministers of holy Mysteries impoverished and contemned In matters of Religion the light of nature hath taught every Nation to be commendably zealous and piously pertinacious esteeming this their highest honour to be very tender of any diminution dishonour or indignity offered to their Religion which reflects upon the majesty of their God whom every Nation may in charity be presumed to serve in such a way as they think to be most acceptable to their God every man being convinced that he ought to pay the highest respects to that Deity which he adores from which to be easily moved by vulgar clamours and inconstancy without grand and weighty demonstrations convincing a man of his own errour and his Countreys mistake or contrary to the dictates of conscience for any man shamefully to flatter or silently to comply with any such designs as appear first reproching their Religion next robbing their God and at last destructive to all publick Piety is certainly a temper so base so brutish so ignoble so servile so sordid so devilish that it is worse than professed or avowed Atheisme for he sins lesse that owns no God than he that mocks him or so treats him as the world may see he neither loves nor feares Him And can it I beseech you O noble Christians and worthy Gentlemen become the piety wisdome and honour of this so ancient and renowned Nation of England to behold with coldnesse and indifferency like Gallio the scamblings and prostitutions the levellings and abasings the scorns and calumnies so petulantly and prodigally cast by mechanick and plebeian spirits for the most part or by mercenary insolency upon that Christian and Reformed Religion which hath so long flourished among you and your fore-fathers and which was first setled among you not slightly nor superficially not by the preposterous policies passions and interests of our Princes not by the pusillanimity or partiality of over-awed Parlaments nor yet by the superstitious easinesse or tumultuary headinesse of the common people but upon learned publick and serious examination of every thing that was setled and owned as any point or part of our Religion There was godly grave mature and impartial counsel of most learned Divines used there was the full and free Parlamentary consent of all estates and degrees in this nation there was a strict and due regard had to the Word of God and the mind of Christ as to doctrine and duties to the faith and fundamentals of Religion without any regard to any such antique customes or traditions as seemed contrary to that rule As for the rituals and prudentials the circumstantiating and decorating of Religion great regard was had in them to the usages of pure and Primitive Antiquity so as became modest wise and humble Christians who seeing nothing in the ancient Churches Rites and Ceremonies contrary to Gods Word or beyond the liberty allowed them and all Churches in point of order and decency did discreetly and ingenuously study such compliance with them as shewed the least desire of novellizing or needless varying from and the greatest care of conforming to sober and venerable Antiquity Against all which sacred suffrages and ecclesiasticall attestations for the true Christian and Reformed Religion once setled in the Church of England now at last to oppose either popular giddinesse and desire of novelties or any secular policies and worldly designes or any brutish power that is neither rationall nor religious but meerly arbitrary and imperious altering and abolishing as the populacy listeth matters of Religion which are the highest concernments of any nation and so require the most publick counsels impartial debates and serious consent of all estates by such pitiful principles and the like unconscientious biasses for a Nation to be swayed in or swerved from the great and weighty matters of Religion once well established is certainly a perfect indication of present basenesse also an infallible presage of future unhappinesse Which I beseech God to divert from this Nation of England by your prayers and teares by your counsel and courage by your moderation and discretion who are too knowing to be ignorant and too ingenuous to be unsensible of your duty to God and your own souls of your respect and deserved gratitude to your Countrey and to this Church of England which was heretofore loved by its children applauded by its friends reverenced by its neigbours dreaded and envied by its enemies and this not onely for that long peace and prosperity it enjoyed which alone are no signs of Gods approbation but chiefly as Irenaeus observes for those rare spirituall gifts ministeriall devotionall and practicall which were evidently to be seen in Her those pious proficiencies those spirituall influences which preachers people found in their own hearts those gracious examples and frequent good works which they set forth to others those heavenly experiences they enjoyed in themselves those charitable simplicities they
who have brought forth as good Scribes instructed for the Kingdom of Heaven out of the good treasuries of their hearts things both new old the Learning of the ancient Fathers Councills and Historians set off with later Experiments and Improvements of all spirituall operations and gracious comforts the forgetting I say of these Ministers cannot be worthy of that pious gratitude which becomes noble-minded Christian How meane uncomely and much below you must it needs appeare to all wise and sober Christians in the present age and all posterity if you suffer their holy orders to be despised their spirituall offices to be neglected their divine authority to be usurped their primitive orders and constant succession to be interrupted their persons to be abused and shamefully treated their support as to double honour to be so abuted that their maintetenance shall be very small sharking and uncertaine also their respect and esteem none at all especially among the common people whose civil and religious regards are much measured either by the bag and bushell or by the examples of their betters their Landlords and Governours The wilfull dividing debasing discrediting disordering and discarding of the ancient Clergy as to their Ordination Government Ministry Authority and succession in England which was most Christian Catholick and reformed must needs be as the sin and shame so the great injury and misery of you and your posterity being the ready way to bring in First a scrupulous unsatisfiednesse and unsetlednesse as to our former Religion as if either not true or not reformed Secondly next it raiseth a jealousie and suspicion of any Religion under the name of Reformation as if it would not long hold and had no bottom or bounds Thirdly after this followes a lukewarmenesse coldnesse and indifferency as to all Religion whatsoever as Reformed and as Christian Fourthly then will there creep in by secret steps a generall Apostasie at least from our pristine wise Reformation and happy constitution of Religion to the Roman errors superstitions and usurpations which wait for such a time and temper in England whereby to make their advance upon peoples mindes wildred and confounded when they shall see the shamefull retreates recoilings and variations made in England by the Reformed Religion upon it self whose disorders disgraces and deformities necessarily following the contempt of their Ministers or the change and rupture of their Ministeriall descent and succession will make most if not all men in time to recede from it and rather adhere to its grand Roman rival its implacable enemie Popery whose policies will bring you and your posterity by the contempt and want of true Bishops to have no Pastors or Ministers of any uniforme validity of Catholick complete and most undoubted authority If any man may be a preacher that listeth to pirk up into a Pulpit certainly in a few yeares you shall have no Preachers worth your hearing no Ministers of any reputation and authority either among the Idiots and vulgar or among the more ingenious and wiser sort of people who are not naturally either very solicitous or industrious in the concernments of Religion or the choise of their Ministers If neither God nor good men have any further pleasure in their servants the ancient Clergy of England if they really are as uselesse and worthlesse as they have been made vile and reproched by some mens tongues and pens if they have deserved to be thus tossed in an eternall tempest of factious divisions vulgar depressions and endlesse confusions beyond any other order or rank of men if this be their evill fate and merit after all their studies and paines after all their Praying Preaching Writing and Living to the honor of this Nation and the great advantages of the Reformed Religion if to have equalled at least if not exceeded the Clergy of any Church in any age since the Apostles departure be the unpardonable fault of the Reformed Bishops and their Clergy in England if their very sufferings as the vipers seizing on St. Pauls hand make them appear to barbarous and vulgar minds as sinners therefore despicable because they are so much despised and so thought fit to be destroyed if this lingring and shamefull death of being thus Crucified is that by which the Clergy of England must glorifie God if this bitter cup must not passe from them truly it will be a mercifull severity to hold them no longer in ambiguous calamities but rather wholly to expose them to the last outrages of Fanatick Popular and Schismatick fury the Lions that hunger and roare to have these Daniels wholly cast into their dens and jawes that so your eyes may no longer see your poor despised distressed and miserable Clergy many of whom both Bishops and Presbyters are forced as you know to embrace the dunghil being destitute of order honour and estate some of them having neither food convenient nor any abiding place nor any fitting employment that so that Episcopall Clergy now rendred so odious who under God formerly redeemed you and your fore-fathers out of the bondage and darknesse of Egyptian superstition may by an Egyptian Magick and fate be drowned in the Red-Sea of vulgar contempt popular confusion and inordinate oppressions that thus the new Jannes and Jambres may not onely resist but wholly prevaile by their inchantments against your Moses and Aarons But if your Consciences O worthy Gentlemen who are the Beauty Strength and Honour of this Nation do on the other side tell you not with faint and dubious whispers but by loud and manifest experiences proclaiming to all the world that the ancient Clergy of England have generally deserved better of you by their Learning Preaching Praying Writing and Living what I beseech you can be more worthy of the Wisdome Justice Piety Honour and Gratitude of this Nation than to assert with their publick love and favour the dignity of their worthy Divines the honour of their Clergy the Sanctity of their Religion and Reformation against that plebeian petulancy and insolency which hath so pressed upon them and daily depresseth all their Authority not onely by reason of some Lay-mens folly and insolency but even by their variations and inconstancy who presumed to be Preachers and challenge upon what score they please a share or lot in the Evangelicall Ministry Truly it is high time to redeeme the Sacred Orders the Divine Authority the Catholick succession the ancient and authentick dignity of the Evangelicall Ministry in the Church of England from the obloquies contempts and oppressions of ignorant and unreasonable men who are great enemies to the piety and prosperity of this Nation and but back friends to the Reformed Religion being at so deadly a fewd against the ancient Clergy and Catholick Ministry of this Church whose totall extirpation both root and branch Bishops and Presbyters they have so resolutely designed and restlessely endeavoured that they long for nothing more than the natural death of all the reverend Bishops and all Episcopall
for which no Apology but made and affected necessity is alledged which none but God Almighty can convince confute and revenge hence those convulsions faintings swoonings and dyings which are befaln the Church of England and its holy profession the Reformed Religion which heretofore was a pure and unspotted Virgin free from the great offence constant to her principles and duties both to God and man alwayes victorious by her patience This seems now besmeared all over with blood this is sick deformed and ashamed of her self so many sanguinary and sacrilegious spirits pretend to court and engross her such foul spots are found upon Her which are not the spots of Gods children which no nitre no sope no fullers earth no palliations or pretensions of humane wit policy or necessity can wash away or make clean til He plead Her cause take away Her reproch whose love induced him to shed his own precious blood for his Church a noble eminent uniform and beautifull part of which I must ever own the Church of England to have been Of whose former holy and healthfull constitution I am daily the more assured by those modern eruptions and corruptions defections and infections errours and extravagancies blasphemies and impudicities which have so fiercely assaulted and grievously wasted the Truths the Morals the Sanctities the Solemnities the Mysteries and Ministrations the Government and Authority the whole Order and Constitution of the Church of England clearly evincing to me that this Church was heretofore not onely tolerably but most commendably reformed and happily established upon the pillars of piety and prudence verity and unity purity and charity Nor do I doubt but the blessed Apostle S. Paul with all those Primitive planters and Reformers of Churches would have given the right hand of fellowship to the Christian Bishops Presbyters and people of this Church of England cheerfully communicating with us in all holy things blessing God and greatly rejoycing to have beheld that power and peace that stedfastness and proficiency that beauty order and unity which was so admirably setled and happily preserved many years in this Church by the joynt consent and suffrage of the Nation Princes Parlaments and People cheerfully giving up their names to Christ and willingly yielding themselves to the Lord and to his Ministers Nor do I believe those Primitive and large-hearted Christians who brought the price of their estates and laid it down at the Apostles feet testifying their esteem of all things but as loss and dung in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ that these would have ever repined or envied at the riches plenty civil honours peace and prosperity wherewith the Governours and Ministers of Christs Church were here endowed No those first-fruits of the Gospel had too good hearts to have evil eyes because the eyes of Princes Peers and people had been good to the Clergie investing them with that double honour which the Spirit of God thinks them worthy of while they rule well and labour in the Word and Doctrine so as the godly Bishops and Presbyters of the Church of England did abundantly since the Reformation nor was their labour of love in vain in the Lord. What was really amisse or remisse in any Ministers as to their minds or manners as some Errata's we find even in those Pastors and Churches which were of the Apostolicall print the very first best Edition certainly there wanted not sufficient authority and wisdom skill or will in the Governours of Church and State to have reformed all things in such a way of Christian moderation as should have gratified no mens envies revenges ambitions covetousness and the like inordinate passions but have kept all within those bounds of piety justice charity and discretion which would have satisfied all wise and honest mens desires and consciences Such an Apostolical spirit and method of Reformation as would have cleared the rust and not consumed the metall sodered up the flaws but not battered down the whole frame of so goodly a Church this spirit might have mended all things really amiss in England at a far easier and cheaper rate than either calling for fire from heaven or calling in the Scots to quench our intestine flames with oyl To purge the English floor from all chaff there was no need to raise up such fierce winds as the Devil did when he overthrew the whole house and oppressed all Jobs children with the rubbish and ruine both of superstructures and foundations No work requires more wary wise and tender hearts and hands too than Church-work or that which men call Reformation of Religion which easily degenerates to high deformities if bunglers that are rash rude deformed and unskilfull undertake it Nothing is more obvious than for Empiricks to bring down high and plethorick constitutions to convulsions and consumptions by too much letting blood and other excessive evacuations those are sad purgations of Churches which with threatning some malignant humours do carry away the very life spirit and soul of Religion the whole order beauty unity and being of a Church especially so large so famous so reformed so flourishing an one as the Ch. of Engl. was which some mens ignorance malice and excess hath a long time aimed at impatient not to forsake yea and quite destroy both It and all its true Ministers to whose learning and labours they owe whatever spiritual gifts Christian graces priviledges or comforts they can with truth pretend to All which I believe they have not much bettered or increased since their rude Separations and violent Apostasies by which they have shewed themselves so excessively and unthankfully exasperated against the Fathers that begat them and the Mother that bare them more like a generation of vipers full of poysonous passions which swell the soul to proud and factious distempers than like truly humble meek and regenerate Christians who cannot be either so unholy or so unthankfull as to requite with shame despite and wounds the womb that bare them and the breasts that gave them suck not feeding them with fabulous Legends superstitious inventions or meer humane Traditions but with the sincere milk of Gods word as it was contained in the holy Scriptures which were the onely constant fountain from whence the Church of England drew and derived both its Doctrinals and its Devotionals its Ministry and Ministrations Of which truth having such a cloud of witnesses so many pregnant and undeniable demonstrations before God and the world before good Angels and Devils before mens own consciences in this Church and before all other reformed Churches round about I suppose these are sufficient Testimonies in the judgement of You O my worthy Countrey-men and of all other sober Christians to vindicate the Church of England that it never deserved either of Princes Parlaments or People so great exhaustings and abasings as some men have sought to inflict upon Her Over which no tongue is
fanatick triflers troublers of Religion which no sober Christian can tolerate in their publick and religious meetings they presently meditate the most desperate separations they instantly fall to set up new Churches and Pastors after their own heart their full revenge must be had not onely by dividing themselves but by seducing and poysoning other silly people as much as may be withdrawing them from that good esteem they had and respect they formerly bare to the Church of England and their lawfull Ministers Then the followers of these pragmatick Preachers are taught to bear with patience as horses are the noise of drummes and trumpets all manner of scurrilous railings against the Church and Clergie of England At last they are by troops brought up in front to charge them with such insolency of speech and behaviour of writing and acting as sufficiently discovers their evil hearts to be like mines or Petars full fraught and charged with all kinds of bitterness contempt and animosity against them in order to destroy them utterly as soon as they have power and opportunity to do it In the room of whose orderly beauty learned gravity sober sanctity and exemplary piety so famous conspicuous and prosperous heretofore these bold extirpators and bitter Antagonists have hitherto produced as the eructations of Aetna and earth-quakes are wont with much swelling noise and terrour nothing but darkness smoke and thick vapours full of sulphureous obfuscations Sure their executions and conclusions must be full of mischiefs subversions confusions desolations to the Reformed Religion because there is not one dramme or iota that ever I could observe of sound knowledge of usefull piety of gracious effects of holy patterns of Christian principles to be found in them any way comparable to those proportions of wisdome and good understanding of justice and charity of meekness and moderation with all which the English world was heretofore well acquainted by the learned industry and exemplary piety of its reverend Bishops and other godly Ministers who were ever highly honoured passionately loved and worthily treated by pious Princes peacefull Parliaments and unpassionate people long before either tumultuary rabbles or schismatick agitators or the Scotch sword or the Smectymnuan juncto or a sifted sequacious Assemblie or covenanting Houses or Committee-Consistories or Military Superintendents undertook by an unwonted authority and severity not onely to catechise but to chastise the Church and Clergie of England even all the Bishops and most of the Presbyters among whom many one person might be found whose learning and worth every way might modestly be put into the balance against all that any or all those parties can pretend to or ever yet discovered to the wiser and better world who have been and are the most rigid exactors severest censurers and sorest enemies to the Reformed Clergie and Church of England Whos 's more crafty rivalls and cruellest persecutors finding themselves as heretofore so still vastly exceeded and infinitely out-done as to all reall endowments commendable practises and visible sufficiencies for learning knowledge utterance prudence for praying preaching writing and living they are now of late after the way of those old fanaticks who called themselves the pure elect inspired and spirituall ones flown to the retreats and refuges of their inward graces to more secret and spiritual perceptions to hidden and unseen acquaintances with God Which are as I formerly touched the old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of elect Manichees and paraclete Montanists meer shifts and sleights blinds and evasions where the light of mens works and gifts shines not to the glory of God as our Saviour speaks for these are a nemo scit as easily denied as they are rashly affirmed being indiscoverable and incommunicable to any but Gods and a mans own spirit The hidden manna the white stone the new name which none can read but he that hath it these if meant of Graces are best asserted or most confuted by mens works No man is of God who doth not the will and works of God as they are revealed in his Word in all righteousness and holiness with meekness and humility with sobriety and good order in all which if any the best of these Novellers do at any time come neer to the parts graces and merits of those that were and are dutifull sons and servants to the Church of England yet I am sure they cannot without intolerable impudence pretend to exceed them so far that no fair quarter may be allowed to the former Preachers and Professors in this Church that no place or naile should be left them in Gods sanctuary here in England CHAP. XXII INto which as I have by many instances evinced some mens folly or fury hath of later years sought to bring so much filth and confusion that they have almost made this Church an Augean stable so that it is an Herculean work to cleanse it of all those debordments and debasements faln upon Christian Religion of those fedities and deformities brought upon its reformed profession of those disorders and undecencies which have invaded Ecclesiastick duties and mysteries all which necessarily follow the invasions and usurpations of popular libertie in Religion which though already full of squallor and sordidness yet are still eagerly challenged loudly clamoured and fiercely asserted by the common people and their parasites the most plebeian spirits Who not capable to comprehend or not willing to understand the gracious beauty the holy modesty and divine majesty of true Christian liberty which most excludes all base licenciousnesse as the brightest light doth all darkness and the perfectest health all sickness have excessively doted in later years upon this Image of imaginary liberty as if it had newly come down from heaven in a whirlwind of Civil war and Schisme whereas in good earnest the most vociferant vulgar who most cry up this their Diana like the riotous rabble at Ephesus do least know what the matter is nor what true Christian liberty means which undoubtedly puts the severest restraints that may be upon it self as to doing any thing offensive to God or injurious to its neighbour in private and single much more in publick and sociall respects in civil much more in religious relations which as men and Christians we bear to one another True Christian liberty is as far as heaven from hell from any thing that looks like incivility rudeness barbarity inhumanity frenzy fedity disorder deformity Rationall and religious liberty is not the freedome of an untamed heifer of an unbridled horse of a mad dog or an unyoked hog which will ramble and wallow and bite and root up where they list which seeks to subvert not whole houses onely but famous Churches to infect as many as they can with the plague and contagion of mens own evil hearts It is not Christian liberty but an earthly sensuall and devillish lazinesse or licentiousness for men and women that have been baptised in the name of Christ and so
Attorneys among whom although Ministers find some very just ingenuous and generous Gentlemen lovers of Learning Religion Equity Order and of their Mother the Church of England yet others of them savour so strong of the apron antipathy of a rustick mechanick and illiterate breeding besides that factious and peevish temper which they have lately added to their other perfections that in good earnest the sober and sound Ministers of the Church of England are as unwelcome to them as cold water is to their feet in winter or vinegar to their aking teeth or smoke to their sore eyes which they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many wayes and oft expressed by their looks words gestures actions some of them treating aged grave godly venerable and most deserving Divines much their betters God and man knows in all true worth not onely with rudenesse and petulancy but with such bitternesse haughtinesse and disdain as they would not shew to a Foot-man or Lacquey related to any person whom they either fear love or esteem Herod was civill to John Baptist in comparison These puffe and swell they bite and threaten as Ahab did at Eliah or Micaiah counting these Ministers though never so supple humble tame trembling before their good Worships as enemies because they hold to the Catholick truth and as troublers of their Israel because they will not be flatterers of their new fancies in Religion because they persist in a judicious and consciencious owning their Orders and asserting their Ministry which is their chiefest honour because they will not yet fall down and worship the imaginations which some men seek to set up in England because they follow the Primitive order constancy and verity not complying with that ignorance levity vulgarity Schisme and Apostasie against the Church of England wherewith some men are so delighted without any sense of sin or shame though never so much against that duty gratitude love honour estimation and communion which they owed to the Church of England and the worthy Ministers of it CHAP. XXX THis I write to you O nobler Christians and my Honoured Countrymen as with great certainty sorrow and sympathy in regard of my Brethren the Ministers of this Church so with the greater freedome because it neither hath been nor is my particular case through Gods mercy either to be considerably injured or in any degree over-awed by common people much lesse by any men in Power either Military or Civill Nor have I any cause to complain of the generality of my own people as to any want of justice gratitude or civility expectable from persons of their size and proportion Yet my own experience teacheth me to have the more sensible belief of many other Ministers sad complaints who having it may be lesse advantages above their people and much depending upon them are forced in a very low posture to truckle under such factious imperious and injurious spirits as they meet withall There is I find no flock of Pigeons so pure and entire but there will be some Stares Jack-dawes and Rooks among them no people so modest and ingenuous so respective and submissive to their Ministers but there will be some surly and supercilious petulant and insolent spirits among them No Minister of any good name and merit is so exalted in the love and respect of his people but he will have some messenger of Satan to buffet him some Judas among his Disciples that will be prone to betray him to traduce him privately and publiquely to make him an offender for a word to suck poyson as Spiders out of the sweetest flowers of his zeal piety charity and oratory turning honey into gall and requiting evill for good I could give you if you wanted daily experiences some neer and notable instances how respective how gentle how good-natur'd how gratefull how civill some people are to their Ministers since they have taken the liberty to be rude petulant insolent unholy unthankfull I have seen how much they disdain to pay any more civility or outward respect to their Minister than they challenge to themselves or than they give to their meanest comrades which are of the same bran and barrell with themselves yea some of them have taken a glory and pleasure to shew incivility rudenesse contemptuousnesse in words and behaviour as well as looks more passionate malapert and imperious to their Ministers than they durst be toward a petty Constable or a Bum-baily some of them so unthankfull that for twice seven years constant pains among them they never returned any acknowledgment some have not been ashamed to use down-right railing scorn and ruffling to their faces others behind their back Some are so conceited of themselves that they have adventured to dictate and prescribe in a way even haughty and menacing what their Minister should doe and say There want not some aguish and feaverish Auditors who heare onely by fits when they list others are great criticks and severe censurers whose wanton curiosity useth Sermons as Walnuts they crack them and peel them and cast away the greatest part of them with great nicety eating little and digesting lesse of sound doctrine Some have high conceits that they can preach better than my self I or any Minister Some have begun a clownish contest with their Minister at the Font bringing their children to Baptism with such indifferency as when one was asked by his Minister if he desired to have his child baptized in the Christian Faith he answered very surlily Yes if you can doe it Another with great peremptorinesse refused to have his Child baptized unlesse the Minister would doe it himself though he pleaded with truth his great wearinesse after twice Preaching that day and desired another Minister then assistant and present might doe it as was usuall But he stiffe-girl and inexorable went with a short turn out of the Church carrying his child with him nor ever after offered it that I know to be baptized although he was intreated with great gentleness and kindness These are the religious demeanours and deeds of some people that I have known Nor am I a stranger to those garlands and flowers of rustick oratory and civil behaviour wherewith some true plebeians do crown the heads of their Ministers with as much love and respect as those did who platted a crown of thorns on Christs head I have heard and read the language of some of their tongues and pens too for they dare to scribble as well as babble nor doth their goose-quill want teeth any more than their lips do the poyson of Asps sufficient to exercise the best Antidotes of Christian patience and charity which any true Minister bears about him I have seen sometime the virulent letters of some of these Scribes and Pharisees as full of contempt insolency and menacing as their little wits and great malice could invent and this from such as have been sometime personally obliged and to whom their Minister willingly never gave the
possibly as Valiant Pious and Morall yet Wisdome being the highest humane endowment and politick or gubernative prudence being the noblest exercise of wisdome in this world for the publick and common good of mankind few of whom are fit to governe themselves or others it is but fit that greater publick incouragements and preferments of Honor and Estate should be given to these than onely to strength which alone is but brutall the endowment of a body which men have common with beasts but the other is proper to our reasonable soules by which we are not far from Angels and neer of kin to God In which excellencies since some Ministers may and do exceed others which makes these want Governours and the others fit to govern what is there of Humane or Divine Law that can be against so prudent so necessary an Order and Polity in the Church as Bishops are and ever have been Whose so envied Estates and Dignities were still no more than that double honour which the Apostle challengeth from all Christians as due to those that rule well and labour in the Word and Doctrine not onely by teaching and writing themselves but by taking care that others do so too within the limits of sober Life and sound Doctrine which works many yea most I hope of our Bishops did and all might yea should have done since the Reformation with as much paines and to as much publick good as this or any other Antiprelatist can pretend to So far was the case of Bishops and Deanes and Prebends different from that of Monks and Abbots which this great D. seeks to parallel as equally needlesse idle odious and pittiless when he cannot be ignorant that Bishops being immediate Successors to the Apostles with whom were anciently resident in Cities the Venerable Colledges of Presbyters which were Deanes and Prebends as their ordinary Counsel these must needs be much elder than any Monastick Orders unlesse he think Jo. Baptist began those Bishops were as placed by the Apostles ever owned in all Ages and Places and reverenced by all orderly Presbyters and Christian people yea and by all Christian Princes by whose pious munificence they were endowed with Revenues and Honors long before ever Presbyters had their Glebes apart and Tithes appropriate to them yet were these Bishops and the Colledges of Presbyters more severely used than the Monks and Abbots who had pensions for life allowed them if they staied in England I appeale to all that are not Levellers in Church or State Is not Government good order and comely subordination as necessary in the Church among all men both of the Laity and Clergy as the family of Christ the Household of faith and an holy Polity City or Common-wealth as it is in all civil Fraternities Companies and Communities or in this paintiffs family Where besides food and other necessaries which he provides for himself in common with his Servants and Children yet doubtless he still reserves for himself a Benjamins portion as to the eminency of his Estate and Authority above them as a Father and Governour Were it robbery and violence to take away any thing unjustly from his children and not so to take all from him as a Father Let this great advocate who pleads I suppose without his see uncalled and unhired against the poor Bishops let him freely declare next bout to all the world whether if he had been a Bishop which honor few men are of the Heresie to think he would have refused being a double-Beneficed and very Conformable man he would have been content that measure should have been offered to him which he thus justifies and triumphs in as offered to his Fathers the Bishops men much his betters every way some of whose shooe-latchets he was not worthy to unloose unlesse he have more worth in him than ever yet he discovered to the world whose agitations have yet been as various as many and as importune to and fro as any Presbyters in England Besides that he endeavours for ever to obstruct any generous return of this Nation to put the Church and Clergy into any Estate of Order Honor and Estate worthy of such Learned and Worthy men as might be bred up if such publick incouragements were not wanting I do in no sort doubt of his Tenderness Touchiness and Impatience if the case had been his own I find how he is netled for a little portion of Bishops Lands to which he pretends a right of purchase I have ever heard this character of this plaintiff that he was ad rem satis intentus nor was he among Pharaohs lean Kine that needed to have fed upon the fatter Quo teneam modo How partial are the principles of some Protestant Preachers of some Quodlibetick Presbyters They may well be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who are so far 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 self-tormenting who are self-condemned who seek to ingratiate and corroborate with men of power by an absolute commending of that for lawful just and good without any peradventure which hath alwaies been a case scarce disputable among Learned and Godly men in all Ages so much did they ever not onely incline but generally resolve the case quite contrary to this great Casuist However it is the safer side no doubt not to alienate any Church-lands and in dubious cases a Divine yea a Doctor and a great one that undertakes to be Confessor and Absolver to Parl. and people he should rather advise in tutiorem partem to the safer side than adventure upon or incourage to that which hath any thing dubious or dangerous in it as to sin yea and a sin of an high nature as Sacriledg is esteemed by all Nations by all Christians that have not buried Christianity and Christ in the Mount Calvary of covetous hearts the Golgotha's or places of skulls where no Helena will ever look for the Crosse of Christ in hope to find it They are far enough from being true Christians who dare Crucifie the Pastors Preachers and Ministers of this Crucified Savour O how glorious and gracious an example to all sorts of men in the present and after-Ages hath this Rabbi this great Master now in our Israel given Prima est haec ultio quod se judice c. May not all men hereafter venture in any case never so doubted to follow this one Doctors opinion if any way plausible or probable against the generall streame and current of all Learned men A latitude which of late I find some Jesuits have allowed in cases of conscience Truly it might seem veniall for secular and military men in cases of civil urgencies and as they imagined necessities of self preservation to seize upon the shew bread the Priests portion and Goliahs sword too as David and his men did by the good leave of the Priests but it had become a Clergy-man and an eminent one who still ownes I think his Academick degrees as deserved and his Ecclesiastick Orders which sure were from
Religion For I have found by experience that no men have proved move factious affected and fanatick than those men and women who have been most conscious to their youthful Enormities They presently apply to the gentlest Confessors and easiest Repentance which is rather to quarrel with and forsake the Religion they have most violated than seriously to repent and amend without which severities Papists and Separatists think their Converts sufficient if they do but turn to their side and party The second Novellers will be content with any meer fancies or factions in Religion The third the Jesuited Papists with no pure united and well-reformed Religion among us And the fourth the Devil will be content with any Religion that is called Catholick Reformed and Christian so it be not true or not pure or not well-reformed or not orderly setled and uniform or not charitably united or not authoritatively managed and governed Any of which will in time very much unchristen any Christians and unchurch any Church by deforming and dividing them from the Beauty and Communion of the Church Catholick Take heed of betraying your selves and your posterity to Atheisticall licentious immorall and irreligious courses by your Apostasies from and despiciencies of the Learning and Piety Gifts and Graces Ministry and Ministrations Order and Government which were happily setled in the Church of England Go over all the world search all successions of the Church from the Apostles to our daies you shall not find any thing more worthy your Love and Esteem your Veneration and addiction Have you found any thing comparable to it in all the new vapours and florishes of Reformations in any new Inventions Conventions Associations Separations Distractions Distortions Confusions Which may make you giddy by turning you round but they will never make you any progresse in Wisdome or Piety or Charity The Church of England was a most rare and Paragon Jewel shining with admirable lustre on all sides First in its Doctrine or Articles of Religion which were few cleare and sound Secondly in its Sermons or Homilies which were learnedly plain pious and practicall Thirdly in its Liturgy or Devotions which were easie to be understood very apt pathetick and complete Fourthly in its paucity and decency of ceremonies which adorned not incumbred Religion or over-laid the Modesty and Majesty of a comely Reformation Fifthly in the Sanctity and Solemnity of its publick duties which were neither excessive nor defective Sixthly in its Ministry which had good Abilities due Ordination and divine Authority Seventhly it its good Government and Ecclesiasticall Discipline where good Presbyters and good Bishops had leave and courage to do their duties and discharge their consciences whose Fatherly Inspection Catholick Ordination and Ecclesiastick Jurisdiction being wisely managed by worthy men in their severall stations did justly deserve the name of an Hierarchy an holy Regiment or happy Government when it was exercised with that Authority yet Charity and discretion which were ever intended by the Church for the common good of all those Christians that were within her bosome and kept her Communion If others do forget her through fatuity or faction covetousnesse or ambition pride or petulancy as undutifull and ungratefull children yet you may not you will not you cannot so far neglect your own and your posterities happinesse or forfeit your own honor or violate your consciences as to neglect the relief and recovery of your Spirituall Mother But if you of the better sort of men and Christians from whom all good men expect all good things should slight and neglect Her after the vulgar rate which God forbid yet must I never so far comply with you or all the world as to call her former light darknesse or her present darknesse light Pretious with me must the name of the Church of England ever be whose record is in Heaven and in all gracious hearts who were Born and Baptized Instructed Sanctified and Saved in her To this Church of England as I owe with many thousands so I returne with some few the Charity of a Christian as to all Christian Churches the duty of a Son as to a deserving parent the order of a part or member as united and devoted to the whole the obedience of an Inferiour as to a Superiour the gratitude of acknowledging Her Worth and Merit the love of adhering to her unity the candor of approving and conforming to her decent ceremonies the modesty of preferring her Wisdome before my own or any other mens understanding the Humility of submitting to her Spirituall Authority and Governours the Piety and Prudence of relieving and restoring as much as lies in me Her Catholick Order Polity Peace and Government all which I believe were allowed of God and I am sure have been approved by as Learned Wise and Holy men as the world affords I am deeply sensible of the many and great obligations which I have to this Nationall Church and to its Ministers and Bishops for my Baptisme Instruction Confirmation Communion and Ordination not onely as a Member but as a Minister which I account my greatest Honour notwithstanding the great depression of the times in which I have late ward lived I am ambitious to do not onely what becomes my private station but to preserve and expresse the publick respects which are due to this Church whose Despisers and Destroyers have never appeared to me with any Remarques of Beauty or Honour for Learning or Grace for Modesty or Charity for Prudence or Policy comparable to those that were the first Founders Reformers Defenders and Preservers of this Church I must ever professe that I find nothing like her Adversaries nor any thing exceeding her friends in all that was commendable in Catholick and true Antiquity In behalf of this Church having offered many things to the consideration of all good Christians which are my worthy Countrymen I hope as my infirmities may exercise their Charity so my integrity may expiate my infirmities if I have in any thing expressed my self lesse becoming the honest and holy designe which I undertook and have now by Gods help finished which was to set forth First the Teares and Sighâ— of the Church of England Secondly the originall of her Disorders and Distractions Thirdly the dangers and distresses if not remedied Fourthly the probable waies of cure and recovery by Gods blessing to such Order Honour Unity Purity and Peace as becomes so famous a Church and so renowned a Nation whose greatest Crown was Christianity I know there will be many who cannot well beare that freedom of sobernesse and Truth which either my self or others may use in speaking or writing for the Church of England and its pristine Honour Order and Government although themselves use never so great Liberties Reproches and Injuries in Speaking Writing and Acting against them For my part I appeare in this onely as wrapt my self in my Scholastick and Ecclesiastick Gown I meddle not with any civil affaires or Military transactions properly
well as in a triumphant Chariot Ambitious vanities are never seasonable or comely for any humble Christians and least for the Ministers of Christ who ought to be crucified to the world and the world to them Gal. 6.14 especially at my years and in my condition 'T is honour and grandeur enough for Me if I may next the advance of Gods glory promote Your and my Countries common good which I must tell you doth not a little depend upon the good order unity and government the honour peace and safety of the Reformed Religion duly established in this Church and Nation of England Of whose festred scratches and deep wounds since I cannot but have a great sense both of Grief and Shame and toward whose healing since I am indeed very ambitious to drop one drop of soveraigne balsome before I die I have here endeavoured to seek Your face and to recommend Her distress to Your compassions It is for Her sake and for Yours in Her that I again adventure for truly it is an adventure and no small one in this age thus to appeare in publique possibly with more forwardnesse and zeale than prudence and discretion in some mens censure Who it may be have not so much charity or courage in them as to own an afflicted friend an impoverished father or a distressed mother Yet to justifie my discretion this may be said That nothing seems to me in Policy as well as Piety more rationally and religiously necessary than a publique tender regard to the state of the Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation To me Noblemen and Gentlemen Citizens and Yeomen all sorts in their private and publique capacity seem if not to want yet to expect something in this kind from some of us Ministers of the Church of England which might handsomely excite to honest industry those sparks of piety and generosity which heretofore flamed in their Fore-fathers liberall breasts toward this Church of England as Christian and as Reformed Nor are they I presume quite extinct in yours who now succeed them whom I doe not arrogantly instruct as if I thought you ignorant but humbly provoke to doe what you know when opportunity shall answer your abilities and good will Not but that I have also pleasing speculations many times of that silent safetie and secure latencie in which I see others my betters or equals hug themselves I know there are men otherwayes of good worth and parts who dare not speak one good word either of or for the best Bishops the best Presbyters or the best Nationall Church in the world as this of England was These over-bred and too much Gentlemen may consider That a good man may be more wary than wise more fearfull than faithfull more cautious than consciencious The Prophet Jeremie resolved by reason of the danger and ingratitude of the Jewes to speak no more to them in the name of the Lord but the word of God was as fire in his breast he could not hold his peace and keep peace in his soule I could as easily wrap my self up in silence and privacie as some others doe if I did not feare sins of omission as well as commission which was the jealousie a most learned and godly person had of himself lately dying who yet had been an earnest intercessor for the relief of many distressed Ministers in England I would also covet the reputation of a wise man by keeping silence in an evill time if I had not many and great stimulations while my life is declining and my death approching to give what further constant and comely proofs I may to this and after-ages of my zeal for God of my love to my Saviour of my communion with his Catholick Church of my particular respect to this noble part of it The Church of England and in this of my due observance to my Reverend Fathers and beloved brethren the godly Bishops and orderly Presbyters of this Church yea and lastly of my charitable ambition to heap coals of fire not scorching and consuming but melting and refining even upon the heads of those who still professe to be remorslesse enemies to my calling and to the whole Church of England who seem to me as if they sought totally to debase the Clergie of England yea utterly to destroy the ancient Catholique order and government succession and authority of the Evangelicall Ministery in this Reformed Church while they endeavour to remove able ordained and autoritative Teachers into corners and to obtrude I know not what volâ—ntiers new and exotick intruders into that holy function These will certainly in a few years make the Sun goe down upon England at noon-day bringing upon this Nation the shadows of the night Superstition ignorance profanenesse irreligion and confusion leading Posterity to Popery by the way of popularity poverty parity despiciency and Anarchy falling upon the Ministery and the Reformed Religion of this Church In which blacknesse of darknesse debasings and disorders the Seers of this people will in time grow blind the guides unguided the teachers will be untaught the Pastors unbred the flock unfed by a mushrome and novell Ministery multiforme miserable mechanick Grows-up neither duly ordained nor decently maintained nor much deserving either of them being crest-faln in themselves and contemptible to others I cannot be satisfied in Reason or Religion in honour or conscience in policy or piety how it can be happy for You your Posterity and this whole Nation to live after a vagrant loose and indifferent way of Christian administrations and profession according to every mans private fancy choice and humour without any such Nationall setling and combination such publique Ecclesiasticall union as hath in all Ages and Nations best edified and fortified counselled and corrected excited and increased both gifts and graces in a most comely and most Christian order with such harmony unity majesty and authority as best becomes the Disciples and Churches of Christ I confesse I am ashamed to see and heare any Gentlemen of honour or other persons of commendable qualities of good estates of ingenuous parts and breeding poorly and meanly to forsake the waters of Siloah and to follow the brooks of Teman to discountenance at least if not quite discard their learned grave godly and experienced Ministers who are of the true metall and stamp too which a Minister of the Gospel ought to be that is really enabled and duly ordained or authorized to that great work And this most what not out of any serious advice and consciencious choise becoming Christians in so great a concernment but rather out of easinesse levity curiosity popularity or some pittifull complyances with novell upstarts and rude intruders into that Sacred office Among whom if they doe save their purses which is by some deserters of their lawfull Ministers much looked after yet I am afraid they too much venture their souls I am sure they lose much of their credit both in present and after-ages
which seemed to bow Church-government to the ground and make it like a Bramble take root at the neather end Mr. Calvin lived and died at Geneva never either rigid for a parity of Presbytery as of any Divine Institution nor against a comely eminency of Episcopacy which he owned as a very commendable useful venerable ancient and universal Order of Church polity and Government where it was paternal not imperious as an elder Brother among brethren not as a Master among servants Such Bishops presiding as Fathers among Presbyters yet gravely and kindly advising with them and assisted by them in all the grand and joynt concernments of the Churches wellfare these he never wrote nor said nor thought nor dreamed to have any thing in them Papal Antichristian Intolerable or Abominable to God or good men as some hotter and weaker spirits afterward declaimed Episcopacy and so Presbytery had indeed as other holy Mysteries Orders and Customes of the Church suffered very much smut soyle darkness and dishonour by the Tyrannies Fedities Luxuries Sotteries and Insolencies of some Bishops and other Church-men under the Papal prevalency but Reformed Episcopacy which in many Churches continued with reformed Doctrine never received the least blame or blemish from Mr. Calvins Tongue Pen or Judgement no nor from any of his collegues and successors in Geneva who were learned men and of sober minds But from the reputation of Mr. Calvins name this new and rather necessitated than elected project of Church-government and Discipline under the name of a Presbyterian parity or Consistorian conclave grew to be looked upon with very favourable eyes by other free Cities petty States and Princes as their Interest lead them each crying it up together with the reformed Doctrine to such an height as if the new paper and packthred in which Mr. Calv. had wrapped those old yet good spices were of equal value with them Several Interests advanced the businesse shews of Liberty with the people parity of Empire and power with the ordinary Preachers and hope of gain by confiscation of Church-lands and Bishops Revenues with some States and Princes as in the Palatinate Hassia and other parts of Germany so in Scotland with some Suitzer Cantons and Hans-towns the zeal for Reformation which was very plausible the zeal for Imitation after the copie of so renowned a person which was very popular and the zeal of Confiscation where so opulent and profitable a booty would fall into some mens purses and Coffers all these together carried many men with ful sails to Presbytery and with a strong tyde against Episcopacy by whose spoiles many hoping to be enriched they rather chose to ruine than reform it that extirpating might justifie their stripping of it which had more Revenues but not more deformities than Presbytery had under Episcopacy To make this Transport of some men good which not onely deserted but defamed despised and in some places destroyed the Ancient Catholick and Apostolick state of the Churches polity of old by Episcopacy hereby varying even from the Lutheran Moderators and Superintendents which were reformed and qualified Bishops as well as from all the present Roman Greek Armenian Abyssine and all other ancient Churches in the world to their great and insuperable scandal yea and from some eminently reformed Churches as England and Ireland were in which Episcopacy was still continued as the Honour Centre and Fixation of all Ecclesiastical Order Unity and Authority to avoid the odium and envy of this scandal all plausible wayes were taken by the great Admirers and Adorers of the new Geneva-platform to set further glosses and titles upon this new Presbyterian-government and discipline finding that the water-colours of Prudence Necessity Policy and Conveniency which Mr. Calvin had used would not hold long especially where Episcopacy now kept its pristine power and possession in so many famous reformed Churches and States as Denmark Sweden Saxony Brandenburg and others besides England which outshined them all All these so asserted the honour of true and reformed Episcopacy that all sober men saw Prelacy was no more of kin to Popery than Regality is to Tyranny or Magistracy to Oppression or Presbytery to Popularity or natural Heat to a Fever or Wine to Drunkenness or Good cheer to Gluttony or Good order to Insolency or due Subordination to Slavery 'T is true great Indulgencies and soft Censures were carried by those Churches which were Episcopal toward such of their reformed Brethren who were not opinionatively but practically Presbyterial pleading for themselves not choice so much as force and urgency of their present Affairs and Condition considering either the pressures even to Persecution which some were under or peoples impatiencies or Princes sacrilegious aimes all which made their deviation from the confessed Catholick and primitive pattern of Episcopacy so long venial as their Judgements were right and their Charity candid toward Episcopacy either approving of it or deploring their want of it or wishing for it as the best Government where it might be enjoyed with the Reformed Religion While Presbytery continued thus humble and poor in spirit it was esteemed honest and excusable upon Christian charity pleading not pervicacy but necessity not a schismatick Faction or Usurpation against Episcopacy but an humble submission to a condition which as Peter Moulin owns was far short of the happinesse they desired under good Bishops But this equable and charitable temper was too lukewarm and cold for some hotter Zelots for the Presbyterian way they did not like that their new platform which they called the pattern in the Mount should thus take any quarter from Bishops any where but rather be in a capacity to give no quarter to any Bishops or any presidential Episcopacy From private and amicable contests which began at Franckfort and so by degrees were fomented in other Cities between some reformed Divines it grew to higher flames of contention than those between Paul and Silas at length it rose to a Rivalry to Reproches Menacings Fewds Despites and bitter Animosities between such as adhered to ancient Episcopacy and those that admired the new-sprung plant of Presbytery To dig about to muck and mend this last the Learning Wit and Credit of Mr. Beza contributed not a little who first of any man openly inscribed Presbytery with a Title looking very like to Divine as Christs true and onely Discipline in which yet he was not so punctual and peremptory as many that followed him in his supposed Opinion but came far short of his real Learning which still forbad him to deny primitive paternal and reformed Episcopacy its due Honour Use and Place in the Church of Christ or to demand the extirpation of it where it was setled and reformed which he deprecates as an intolerable arrogancy in him or any man To which moderation if his Judgement and Conscience had not led him yet he was shrewdly driven by the notable charges of learned Saravia a man of veterane courage of
bestowed on his Church in all the world who never till of later yeares knew any thing of other Church-governments besides that of Episcopacy any more than they saw new Suns or new Moons in the Heavens It may be these Parelii or Paraselenes these Meteors Comets and blazing Stars that now appear in despite of primitive Episcopacy will not be so long lasting nor so benign to this or any Church as that was though they seem to emulate yea and strive to eclipse nay quite to extinguish the shining of those ancient lights to which they owe their best light of sound Knowledge and Religion Episcopacy joyned with an orderly Presbytery Mean time what Inconveniencies yea Mischiefs and Miseries have or may attend these Fractions Diversities Divisions and Confusions upon the account of religious forms and Church-ambitions in this and other Churches between both Ministers and other sorts of Christians what spoyle and havock they may be tempted in time to make upon one another while they seek either to overdrop or to destroy each other as they have done beyond all moderation and mercy upon Episcopacy how little hopes there is that any or many or all of them can ever thrive and ascend to any height not of secular glory but of Christian proficiency in Truth and Love comparable to the pristine or modern Beauty Fruitfulnesse Usefulnesse and Goodlinesse of a right Episcopacy in England or any other Church is left to the sober judgement and prudent presages of all wise and worthy Christians that list to be spectators and Readers before whose eyes this Scheme is with Truth and Love plainly and impartially set forth as to the historick and politick Description of these several and unproportionable Figures which are lively Emblemes of the Catholick and ancient Unity and Uniformity under Episcopacy compared to moderne Diminutions Divisions and Deformities as to Ecclesiastical Polity Order and Government since Presbytery was planted in blood and Independency self-sown of late years in England whose Honor as a Church Christian and Reformed will then be most advanced together with its civil Peace when both Presbytery and Independency as to the just Interests of godly Ministers and people are re-ingrafted or re-incorporated with those of primitive Episcopacy which is beyond all dispute and ever was in the best and worst times the best Conservator as of Bishops Apostolick Authority and Succession so of Presbyters worthy priviledges and of all faithful peoples comely advantages so far as they are joyntly concerned in Ordination or Approbation of Ministers in Consecration and Communication in holy Mysteries in mutual Counsels Supports and Assistances both private and publick The just ballancing or even twisting of which three together makes Christian Churches and States at once ample honourable and happy both in Order and Unity in Strength and Beauty in Unanimity and Uniformity which are the best constitution and complexion of any Church that desires to thrive in Piety and Charity in Truth and Love which the wise and blessed God in mercy restore to us BOOK I. SETTING FORTH THE Present DISTRESSES OF THE CHURCH of ENGLAND CHAP. I. LEst any one should stumble at the very threshold of my Discourse and by their too much prejudice coynesse and easiness to take offence from Names should frustrate my whole design of doing them good by forbearing to read what I write upon such a subject I am at first as briefly and plainly as I can to assert the Name of the Church of Engl. Which Title is certainly the crown of our Country the honour of our Nation the highest holiest and happiest band of our society the surest foundation of our peace with God and men which under this name and in this relation becomes sacred as well as civil religious as wel as rational It was a very sad and bad exchange if this Nation then began to be no Ch. of Christ when it began to be a Common-wealth if it ceased at once to be an earthly heavenly kingdome which last as the Emperour Theodosius said was the greater honour of the two We eate and drink and sleep we beget our like we die or kill and devour one another as beasts we build and plant we buy and sell we rule and obey as meer men But we believe and worship the true God we professe the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ we are partakers of the gifts and graces of the blessed spirit we have an holy communion with that adorable Trinity and with one another in love and charity as Christians that is visible members of Christ our Head and of his Church which is his mysticall body our noblest life sweetest society and divinest fraternity is as we are Christians that is Emulators of the holy Angels Imitators of God children and servants in the family of Christ candidates of heaven expectants of happinesse partakers of grace and daily preparing for eternall glory All which are the dispensations capacities and priviledges of that nation and people onely which are and own themselves the Church of Christ A title of so much honour and reall advantages that in earnest no Nation or people once called and converted to be Christians and by publick vote or profession owning themselves to be such should ever be patient to be robbed or under any specious pretences and novel fallacies deprived of it since the Empire of the whole world and the riches of both Indies are not equivalent to this honour for a people to be called Gods people which were not his and for a Nation which sate in darknesse and in the shadow of death to be professedly and really the houshold of faith the Church of Christ as this of Engl. was heretofore owned to be by the solemn and publick profession of its Kings and Princes its Nobles and Peers its Parlaments and Synods its Magistrates and Ministers by the consent suffrages and submissions of all estates and degrees of people ever since its first conversion who never thought it any impropriety or barbarity of speech much lesse any disgrace to call themselves according to their joynt and declared profession of the name and faith of Christ The church of England Which Title I use according to the good old style and generall phrase of all learned godly and wise men both at home and abroad Ancient and Modern With which Inscription that excellent Bishop Jewell set forth his just and accurate Apologie ful of honest learning potent reasonings and unfeigned Antiquity besides Scripture-demonstrations which got It and this Church so great an applause both at home and abroad that all Reformed Churches and Divines admired it both this Church and that Book The more learned and modest Romanists either found they had not abilities to confute it or not confidence enough to despise it nor did any Non-conformists then boggle at this Title of The Church of England when they found it convenient to enjoy the benefit of Her shadow and protection however in some things they
and Reformation Notwithstanding the shew of all these I abhorred Her as a Synagogue of Satan a den of Thieves a cage of unclean birds a very Babylon worse than that Church was from which Peter wrote his first Epistle I called Her sacred things execrable I counted her Ministers no better than the Magicians of Egypt and Baals Priests Her ministrations as Magick enchantments Her Sacraments insignificant neither sanctified nor sanctifying So far am I from being a poor and sneaking Schismatick which like a viper secretly gnawes the bowels where it is bred and lodged That out of an higher spirit of Zeal and Reformation I have like Saturn or Time quite devoured the old and wholly begat a new Church notwithstanding that I saw heretofore many seeming notes of a true and reformed Church in England many specious fruits of Christs holy Spirit in many formall good words and works of his seemingly gracious servants in Doctrine Faith and Manners by which temptations I sometimes had been a great Zelot and eager Professor having an high esteem both of the Ministers and Ministrations of the Church of England But afterward a new light breaking in upon me I first began to scruple some things in the Church of England after to suspect more at last I was jealous of all things but my own heart From jealousie I soon fell to enmity from enmity to a divorce from being divorced to prostitute the name honour peace and patrimony of that Church to the most insolent spoilers profaners and persecutors from cavilling I fell to calumniating then to condemning at last to contemning all its professed Christianity and noised Reformation as meer nullities uncapable to invest any man in the priviledges honour and happinesse of a true Christian Church or holy Society Thus bogling cruelly at the too great authority and revenues of Bishops scared also with some ceremoniall shadows and no lesse frighted with the late Presbyterian rigour and severity I was so driven by I know not what impulse but I am prone to believe well of it because I have got well by it that I at last fled from the very substance shew and name of the Church of England chusing rather to be a rank Separate a meer Quaker an arrant Seeker or nothing at all of an old-fashioned Christian than to continue in any visible communion with so corrupt so false so lewd so no Church by which high-flown resolution all this while I thank God I am become no Schismatick because neither being nor owning and therefore not being because not owning my self as any member of that Church from which I rather chose boldly to separate than poorly to schismatise in it Having a while wandered alone as Lot when he fled out of Sodom and standing by my self as holier than others finding none meet to joyn with me in Church-fellowship but growing weary and a little ashamed of my solitude neither hearing nor praying nor receiving with any Christians for many moneths nay yeares at last I had an impulse to preach and prophecy that so I might erect and create a pure and perfect Church after my own heart and call it after my own name In which though I began but with a little handful whom I gleaned most-what out of the Presbyterian late harvest which proved too big for their barns and so was never yet well inned yet we two or three met together in Christs name though upon our own heads and by our own authority expecting yea challenging his promise to be in the midst of us with all that plenitude of his spirit with those clear illuminations and assurances with that divine power and supreme Church-authority which next and immediately under Christ we judge to be in and among us as the first subject capable of it and is by us to be dispensed to what Pastors Members and Officers we list to chuse Being thus happily agreed as men we further covenanted as Saints to live together in this Church-fellowship we organized our body with all Church-Officers some of us ordained our selves to be Ministers of the Gospel others of us begat our Fathers and formed our Pastors we equally exercised Church-discipline upon one another so long as we could hold together some indeed went out from us because they were not of us the remaining faithfull Members of Christs little flock still cemented themselves and kept together as a Church where was prophecying and dipping and breaking of bread and excommunicating and all manner of censuring and discipline to far better uses and effects than ever were in that spurious as well as spacious and over-grown Church of England All this I have ordered and done by a power of Christian liberty with my Church or Body without any check or controll from any above us in a way indeed new and strange to the world but more pure free and perfect than ever was used or known in this of England or any other pretended Reformed Church which were all grosly deformed yea we are gone beyond any of those famous Primitive Churches which were by some called pure but I find them leavened with the mysterie of iniquity universally governed by Bishops our bitter enemies and Presbyters our not very fast friends The Lands of Bishops are now happily sold and some of us have bought a good part of them the Livings Tithes and Places of Presbyters we now gape for and crowd into yet are we neither guilty of sacriledge nor schisme the two Prelatick scare-crows or Episcopall bug-beares because nothing could be sacred which was never consecrated or devoted to the true God in a right way as nothing could be which was given to maintain Episcopacy with and Presbytery a meer Idol which we and so God no doubt perfectly abhors however it got footing so early in all Churches and immediately perked up in the place of the Apostles This seems to be the summarie sense of that pious Apology lately offered in behalf of all through-pac'd Separates and perfect Apostates from the order and constitution of the Church of England where either these men extremely dissemble or they first learned Christ and became Christians at least in profession many yeares being baptized and instructed confirmed and communicated in this Church from which being now totally divided they thus most ingeniously seek to wipe off the shame ingratitude levity sin suspicion of Schism by their owning no true Church at all in England and declaring plenary Separation or Independency fancying that he is lesse blameable who quite burns up his neighbours coat than he that onely singeth it and he that flayeth off ones skin is lesse insolent and injurious than he that onely scratcheth it as if every Schisme were not a partiall Separation and every Separation a plenary Schisme How justifiable the ground of such a plea is I leave to wiser men to their own more coole and impartiall spirits and to the great judge of all hearts whose Word hath much deceived his Church in
home and to all the Christian world abroad as a Church in folio as a fair Book of royall paper written with the finger of God and Apostolick characters well bound up and nobly adorned as an holy Nation a royal Priesthood publickly owning it self to be Gods people taught by the Word of God sprinkled with the blood of the Son of God that immaculate Lamb slain for us and partaker of that holy Passeover which gives us of Christs flesh to eat his blood to drink All which Christian profession priviledges practise of this Nation are I conceive sufficient without vanity or falsity to denominate and distinguish it with the glorious Title of the Church of England which was the thing I had to prove against the peevish Schismaticks envious Scepticks and rude Separatists of these times CHAP. III. NOr may the Church of Englands present afflictions eclipse or diminish its true glory in this point any more than Jobs misery did lessen his innocency nor may they abate your value love and honour to Her who are her loyal children because she needs your pity 'T is true it hath sadly suffered the late dreadful tempest which came from the North which hath ever been as the magazine of men so the fatall scourge of the Southern parts of the world hoping to mend their condition by changing their climate they never wanted occasions to quarrel and invade Thence the Assyrians invaded Syria Palestina and Egypt the Goths and Vandals swarmed into Italy and Africk the Gaules into Greece the Normans into France the Picts Saxons and Danes into England the barbarous Scythians and Tartars into Asia This Hyperborean impression hath indeed beyond any Civil War that ever was in this nation grievously peeled barked shattered and defaced the Church of England as to its pristine strength peace unity order beauty riches sanctity and glory when Kings were its nursing Fathers and Queens its nursing Mothers yet is its condition such as makes it not so much the object of your despiciency or despair as of your all good mens compassion prayers and real endeavours for Her relief Her calamitous state is not like that of the object of Davids pity the sick servant of the Amalekite from innate distempers but as his whom the good Samaritan found stripped wounded and half dead an object capable to stir up the bowels of any good Christian while her enemies who have sought to cast her down to the ground who sometime roar in her Sanctuaries and hope to set up their banners for ensigns of an absolute victory do contemn her as a dead carkasse and have long ago cast her off as an unclean thing fit to be abhorred of God and man Yet this is the Church most worthy Gentlemen which hath been and is the mother of us all To this you and your forefathers for many ages have owed under God your Baptisme your Christian institution your holy communion with Christ and his Catholick Church to this you owe your vertues your graces your faith your charity your hopes your evidences and preparations for Heaven your Christian priviledges characters and seals by which you are distinguished from Heathens and Aliens as much as their naturall reason morality and humanity distinguisheth them from Beasts This is the Church this the Mother which some children of Belial would teach you by most preposterous wayes of piety and rude reformation to divide to debase to despise to destroy this now craves your compassion Nor do I doubt but you are infinitely sensible how much it hath deserved as it extremely wants your filial gratitude relief comfort and countenance as testimonies of your love and duty better becoming you than anything you can do under heaven most worthy of your most generous piety Nor may your Christian charity holy courage and ingenuity be discouraged because you every where find so many of your and mine unhappy countrey-men rejoycing to see the Church of England brought to so broken and infirm so poor and despicable so mean and miserable a condition as she now appears and deplores her self in I know there are on every side of her busie mockers who gnash upon her with their teeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 evil-speakers false accusers bold calumniators delighters in her destruction These have helped forward her affliction when the hand of God was against her as Edom did against Judah in the day of Sions calamity these cry down with her down with her even to the ground now she is faln let her rise up no more raze the very foundations of her let not one stone be left upon another no Bishops no Presbyters no Catholick Succession no right Ordination no true Ministers no Baptisme no Confirmation no Consecration no Liturgie no Polity no Church let her destruction be like that of Sodom and her desolation like that of Gomorrah that there may be room enough for Ijim and Ohjim for Owles and Dragons for rough and deformed Satyrs to dwell in the ruines of her palaces and Sanctuaries her Pulpits and Temples There are I know too many such proud scorners who laugh and triumph at what your and all sober minds deplore both at home and abroad with infinite grief and astonishment through whose pious hearts a very sword daily pierceth when they behold how the Church of England is faln from being the beauty of the Western world and chief among all both Christian and Reformed Churches to be like Babylon full of licentiousnesse divisions confusions and many abominations both as to mens practises and opinions some of which are so petulant so fanatick so putid so impudent so blasphemous so inordinate so unbeseeming the gravity of men or sanctity of Christians that the ancient Hereticks and Schismaticks of all ages sorts and sizes would be ashamed if they could revive to see themselves so outvyed in ignorance despight malice monstrosity impiety impudence The Gnosticks Valentinians Cataphrygians Marcionites Montanists Manichees Novatians Arians Aerians Circumcelians were tender-foreheaded and simple-spirited people compared to those high-crested and Scraphick Sophisters who study to shake and subvert to defile and destroy all that was sacred or setled in the Church of England At whose sad aspect proud and mercilesse men who as one said sharply of them have guts but no bowels mingle their scornfull smiles with your mine and other mens unfeigned tears they triumph in her rubbish and dance in her dust they count her ashes their beauty her waters of Meribah and Marah strife and bitternesse to be their wine and refreshing they cry up their rendings of her to be rare Reformations their rags and patches to be new Robes for Christs Spouse which they pretend to have been dead and stark naked till the rough touches of some later Prophets happily revived her and till their cruel charities revested her they call the dissolutions of all Ecclesiastick orders of Primitive Government of
reformed profession which is truly Christian ancient and Catholick thereby justifying that mercy and truth that grace and peace of God which was plentifully manifested and faithfully dispensed to the people of this land by the piety and wisdome of the Church of England notwithstanding that the Lord seems now to hide his face from Her the want of whose favour which her great and sore afflictions have seemed to cloud is far beyond the triumphs of her enemies or the coldnesse of her friends the oppositions of many the withdrawings of some and the indifferencies of others who have all contributed to her miseries but none of them have yet convinced her that ever I could see of any sin or errour as to ignorance or iniquity superstition or irreligion dangerous defect or excesse If the Church of England had as many Mouths as she hath Wounds as many Tongues as Maims as many hearty Mourners as she hath cruel Destroyers if there were as many that durst pity and relieve her as there are that dare spoile and ruine her these would fill not England onely but all the Christian world with the bitternesse of her Complaints as a learned and pious Minister for his part hath lately done If the Church of England had many such pious Orators whose potent and pathetick eloquence were more proportionable to her calamities than the narrownesse of my heart and tenuity of my pen are like to be certainly heaven and earth would be moved with compassion flints would melt and rocks be mollified with commiseration the upper and the nether milstones partiall Presbytery and popular Independency between whom she hath been so ground to powder that Papists and Anabaptists and Familists and Quakers and Seekers and Ranters with all the rabble of her proud and spitefull enemies hope to fill their sacks with her grist those I say might possibly repent if they have not much mended their fortunes by this Churches ruines of their occasioning her so long and sharp a warfare so many and sad Tragedies while by infinite jealousies grievous reproches and unjust scandals cast upon their and your Mother this Reformed Church of England they have made her implacable enemies the Papists and others to blaspheme her for a meer Adulteresse all this while to condemn all her Children as a Bastard brood of illegitimate Christians from the first Reformation to this day Her most desperate deserters of late in order to take away their own reproch to expiate as they imagine the sin and shame of their former profession have laboured first to destroy the eldest brethren and chiefest sons in this Church next to cast out and exautorate the principall Stewards and dispensers of holy things after this they have endeavoured to rob her both of her dower and patrimony hoping at last to famish the whole Family when there shall be neither nursing fathers nor nursing mothers in this Church neither milk left for Babes nor stronger meat for the elder ones neither plain catechising nor profitable preaching neither ordaining Bishops nor ordained Presbyters CHAP. IV. SUch as have eares to heare and charity to lay to heart may with me hear the Church of England thus lamenting and bemoning Her self while she sits upon the ground covered with ashes clothed with sackcloth besmeared with blood drowned in teares and almost buried with her owne ruines O all you that pass by me stand and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow if it hath been done to any Christian Reformed Church under Heaven as it hath to me in the day wherein the Lord hath afflicted me with his fierce anger My Wounds my Wasts my Ruines my Deformities my Desolations are not by the barbarous inundations of Goths and Vandals not by the rude invasions of Saracens and Turks not by the severe Inquisitions and cruel persecutions of Papists I do not ow my miseries to the incursions of Forrainers to a nation of a strange Language of professed Enmity of different Interests and Religion They are not professed Neroes Domitians Diocletians and Julians Heathen Princes and Persecutors that have done me this despight for then perhaps I and my children could have born it with a like heroick patience and Christian courage as those did their Primitive Persecutions the splendour and constancy of whose Martyrdomes contributed more than all their preaching to the honour advantage and propagation of the Christian Religion when Churches and Christians being happily united in love and onely persecuted by professed enemies they knew in what posture of defence to cast themselves so as to suffer and die becoming Christians But I alas am ambiguously wounded by those that are of my own house family and profession Such as have been washed at my baptismall fountain of living water such as have freely and fully tasted of my Sacramentall Bread and Wine feasting at my Table which is the Lords these these have lifted up the heel against me Such as have been bred and born by me taught and brought up in the same true Christian Faith and reformed Profession by these am I hated and despised by these am I stripped and wounded by these am I torn and mangled by these am I impoverished and debased below any Church Christian or Reformed by these am I scorned and abhorred by these am I made an hissing and astonishment to all that see me by these am I made a derision and mocking-stock to my enemies round about me by these am I in danger to be quite devoured and destroyed who envy me so much breath and life as serves me to complain of my calamities Hear O heavens and give ear O earth be not ye also cruel or uncompassionate since one of you cannot but behold the deformity of my Sufferings the other cannot but feel the burthen of my complaints one of you is blasted with my Sighs the other is bedewed with my Tears Be not ye also accessory to my injuries by concealing them or guilty of my Blood by covering it which cries aloud against my ungratefull my unnaturall my rebellious children Those that came forth of my own bowels these have risen up against me to whom I liberally afforded milk when they were babes and stronger meat as they were able to bear it for whom I provided the sacred Oracles of God in a language they best understood I furnished them with such formes of wholsome devotion agreeable to the mind and Word of God as might best suit the common necessities of all and the capacities of the meanest I concealed no part of Gods sacred Counsel from them nor detained any necessary saving Truth out of any principle of unrighteous policy I neither denied nor diminished nor deformed any Ordinance of Christ to them I coloured no errours with shews of truth nor disguised any Truth with fallacious sophistries I set forth to them with all plainnesse and freedome the blessed fulnesse and excellencies of my Lord Jesus Christ in such a manner
or might have been well acquainted they might even in these so much nauseated and despised means sufficient I fear to damn those who despised Salvation by them have found as plain and easie as sure and compendious a way to heaven through Faith Repentance Humility Charity holy Obedience to God and Man as they are likely now to do after they have stirred up so great a dust and smoke as hath put out poore peoples eyes leading them into endlesse mazes and confusions under the name and noise of a better Reformation and safer Religions In this posture of peace and plenty of piety and prosperity as to Christian and Reformed Religion had the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ the Founder of his Church once setled me out of his abundant mercy to the people of England by the patience and prayers by the preaching and writing of godly Bishops and other Ministers who were not onely Gods painfull Labourers but his faithfull Martyrs and Confessors some of them whose great worth drew the favour of pious Princes to me who were my nursing fathers and the love of peaceable Parliaments who were my faithfull friends insomuch that for one hundred years next preceding my miseries I had no cause to envy any Christian or Reformed Church that ever was or is in all the world nor had any sober Christian just cause to complain of me much lesse thus to murmur mutiny and fight against me for no other cause but this That I would not suffer them rudely to bite off those full and fair breasts which they had so long sucked ingratefully deforming those conduits of plenty order and peace which they had so long enjoyed both in Word and Sacraments in Ministrations and Ministers Yet behold how I am faln suddenly shamefully ingratefully indignly and almost desperately my doctrine not duly examined but rashly condemned my Tenets not confuted but blasphemed by my various adversaries my publick service and solemn worship of God sharply indeed corrected even to blood but no whit improved or amended yea infinitely impaired and neglected my holy Sacraments those two great Seals of a Christians Charter and Gods Covenant those fair marks and badges of Christian profession the two poles and pillars on which all mysterious and spirituall comforts temporall and eternall joyes do constantly turn these are most what rarely used in many places either totally disused or grosly abused by the execrable consecrations of unwashed unholy unordained hands Many of my Oratories Temples and Churches Houses so called because dedicated to the service of the Lord and his Church are by some men first profaned with all the sordidnesse of men and beasts next they are suffered to ruine of themselves while they are robbed of what should repaire them and at last that Sacriledge may be the better husband they are threatned to be sold and utterly demolished The Sanctity of Christian marriages which were wont to be solemnized by prayers instructions benedictions by mutuall solemn and sacred stipulations according to the Word of God and Ecclesiastick practise is sought to be reduced by some to new wayes either very brutall and meerly naturall or at best but civil and politick The infants of Christians who were ever esteemed as the lambs of Christs flock are partially carelesly disorderly many of them dubiously yea not at all baptized neither sprinkled nor washed nor marked with any note of Christs blood to distinguish them from the herd of Heathens the brats of Aliens Jews Pagans Mahometans The sacred dreadfull and venerable Symbols of the Lords Supper which I had happily purged from all rust and rubbish of Superstition in many places have been supinely neglected for many years in others strangely consecrated irreverently celebrated partially distributed denied to many worthy and desirous Christians as if those were not Catholick signes and seals of the truth of the Gospel the Covenant of Grace those common rights or priviledges which belong to every one that professeth to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and keeps communion with his Church but onely marks to discriminate sides and parties in Religion to divide Christians into uncharitable factions As for my Dead for they are still mine as they sleep in Jesus and are Gods deposita these are in many places put into their grave with no other solemnity than a silent procession and a demure perambulation as if all that attended were as dumb as the corps and the dead buried the dead without any difference expressed between those bodies that are charitably presumed to have been Temples of the holy Ghost that are candidates of Heaven and expectants of a blessed Resurrection and the bodies of meer infidells or miscreants being now treated in many places like the carkases of beasts or the burial of an Asse for whom men do usually as much as this comes to namely the covering their corps with earth to avoid the noysomness and offence of them without any further hopes of them And all this late supercilious novelty and neglect of dead Christians is grounded upon a strange scrupulosity of some either silly or superstitious men who pretend to boggle at my office which was more for the living than the dead not meerly humane and naturall but Christian and spirituall which they count as a kind of Necromancy or strange superstition to the dead while I onely made the dead an occasion of godly instruction and Christian hope of comfort warning and lawfull devotion to the living which how they should offend any sober Christian I could never yet be convinced and I am sure came farre short of those commemorations yea comprecations for the dead which were anciently used without offence in the Primitive Churches All other offices of piety and charity for the sick and well the young and old the penitent or impenitent prescribed by me are now either wholly laid aside or performed in so various and exotick forms as common people cannot easily understand them their very novelty obscurity and affected variety makes some Ministers prayers a kind of Latin Service to the simple common people Lastly my whole frame and polity Ecclesiastical all my ancient constitution order and communion as a Nationall Church of Christ in which brethren did happily dwell together in unity all is by some men not onely quite forsaken and abandoned on their parts but they seek utterly to rout and destroy me by defaming and discouraging those that most love approve and obey me as if there had nothing been setled in me with any piety or prudence reason or discretion by the wisdome of their fore-fathers who were sometimes esteemed blest Reformers by most of these modern Renegers Separates and Apostates How justly they have done me this despite I appeal to the just and impartiall Judge before whom I can thus far with truth and comfort assert my innocency that as to the foundations of Faith and rule of Holinesse I have onely adhered to his blessed Word as
of England O venerable censors O severe Aristarchusses of a more than Catonian gravity to whose ploughs and looms and distaffs and clubs and hammers 't is meet as to so many sacred scepters this later English and Christian world should no lesse submit their souls than the Jews and Gentiles Greeks and Barbarians Romans and Scythians did to the nets and fish-hooks of the Apostles who were authorized with miraculous gifts and assisted by the speciall power of the holy Spirit of Christ to plant settle and reform and purge Christian Churches To whose holy Doctrine and Divine Institutions delivered in the Old and New Testament and followed by all the Primitive Catholick Churches notwithstanding that the Church of England did in its first Reformation diligently and exactly conform it self if we may believe the integrity of those Reformers who had the courage and constancy to be Martyrs whose learning worth piety hath been confirm'd by the testimony of so many wise religious Princes by the approbation sanction of so many honourable and unanimous Houses of Parliament by the suffrages of so many learned and reverend Convocations by the applauses of so many Sister-reformed Churches if we may believe the preaching living and dying of so many hundred excellent Bishops and Presbyters or the prayers praises and proficiencies of so many thousands of other good Christians or lastly if we may believe the wonderful blessings and speciall graces of a merciful God attesting to the verity sanctity and integrity of this Church-Reformation and Christian Constitution for many happy years Yet against all these some peevish Momusses some spitefull Caco-zelots some evil-ey'd Zoilusses some insolent and causelesse Enemies of the Church of England have not so much modesty as to conceale their malice or to smother their insolent folly and intolerable arrogancy which dares to put the ignorance giddinesse emptinesse vulgarity rashnesse precipitancy and sinisternesse of their silly censures into the balance of Religion contrary to the renowned learning piety gravity grace and majesty of all those who have had so great favour love respect and honour for the Church of England Whom her spitefull and envious adversaries now presume to follow with nothing but Contumelies and Anathema's with pillagings and spoylings with railings and revilings with waste and ruine to the excessive joy of Her Papall enemies whose deeply-designed policies have a long time desired and hoped to see that wofull day befall the Church of England in which her Bishops might beg her Presbyters be starved her Ministry contemned her Liturgie ejected her Unity dissolved and broken her Ancient and Primitive Government abolished her undoubted ordination and succession of Ministers interrupted her whole Christian Frame and Nationall Constitution which was for the main truly Catholick Primitive and Apostolick destroyed dissipated desolated What invincible Armadoes could not atchieve what monstrous Powder-plots could not accomplish what wily Jesuits and other subtile Sophisters despaired to attain having been oft defeated and repelled by the learned care and vigilant puissance of wise Princes sober Parlaments reverend Bishops and other able Ministers of the Church of England that the weaknesse wantonnesse and wickednesse of some of our own petty Sectaries Schismatick Agitators superâ—reforming Reformers is likely to bring to passe whom the most admired and devout Lord Primate of Armagh a great Prophet of God and Pillar of the Reformed Religion sometime told me he esteemed no other than Factors for Popery and Engines for Roman designs by divisions and domestick confusions of Religion to bring in Popish Superstition and Tyranny Indeed a prudent Conjecturer may in this case easily make a true Prophet For the Roman Eagle a watchfull powerfull and voracious bird can never fail at last to seise on these parts of Christendome for her prey where she shall see Ignorance prevail against Knowledge Barbarity against Learning Division against Unity Confusion against Order People against their Priests Novelty against Antiquity Anarchy against Catholick Authority and infinite deformities ushered in under the title of speciall Reformations That cunning Conclave which overlooks the Christian world as the greatest constellation of policy in the West knows full well that such feaverish distempers in any Church or Christian State as now afflict the Church of England will not faile if they long continue to bring it to such an hectick consumption as will quite destroy its former healthfull constitution and prepare it for those Italian Empiricks who will come then to be in request with common people when they find no good to be got by the best-reputed Physicians the most specious Reformers when these are at their wits ends so differing in their judgements and practise that they know not what to do by reason of the madnesse impatiency and petulancy of people those foraign Mountebanks will alwayes promise men help and cure at an easie rate for they require no more of the most desperate patients than to credit their receipts to be confident of and reconciled to the skill and artifice of the Church of Rome their Mother and the Pope their Father CHAP. VI. I Cannot believe that any of you who are persons of Learning Honour and Integrity lovers of your Countrey and the Reformed Religion can be wholly strangers to the sad and dangerous condition of the Church of England Nor can you if rightly set forth to you be unaffected with it unlesse your designs and fortunes are to be advanced by the rents and ruines of this Church of England In which as the Lord liveth before whom we all stand distempers are risen not onely to Divisions but Distractions not onely to Injuries but Insolencies not only to Obloquies but Oppressions not onely to Schismes but Abscissions not onely to Factions but Confusions not onely to Lapses but Apostacies not onely to rude Deformities but they tend to absolute Nullities as to any Christian Harmony Fraternity Order Beauty Unity Strength Safety and publick setling of that Reformed Religion which was once professed in the Church of England And this by reason of the Envies Despites Rudenesses Animosities Seditions Strifes Separations Raylings Reproches Contumelies Blasphemies and prophane Novelties every where pregnant and predominant among vulgar spirits and odiously cast upon all things that you and your forefathers esteemed as religious and sacred in this Church of England The torrent of rebukes and troubles like Ezekiels waters is now risen not onely to the ankles and knees but to the loyns and neck growing too rapid and deep for the common people to wade over or venture into nor are they safe for any to engage upon but those who as S. Christopher is represented in the Legendary Emblem are heightned by their own integrity and supported by Gods heroick Spirit for it is a black and dangerous a red and dead Sea upon which he adventures who will now seriously assert the Church of England whose troubled state is more stormy than those waters were on which S. Peter ventured to walk or
wherein our blessed Saviour slept with whose Disciples we may well cry out Master save us we perish What tongue what pen can sufficiently set forth the rudenesses outrages barbarities despites diminutions and indignities which some have offered in their speeches and writings in their pamphlets and petitions in their restlesse agitations and implacable malice against all that was established in the Church of England contrary to that duty of Charity they owed and that profession of Communion they sometimes professed being possessed now with so fierce a spirit that they have broken all cords and bands of Humanity Civility Charity and Piety both private and publick I shall not need to mind you or any of them of their many oaths and subscriptions of those Protestations Vowes and Covenants which many of these now deserters and destroyers of the Church of England so easily and eagerly swallowed by which last three-fold cord most of them I believe tied themselves to maintain the Protestant Religion as it was established in the Church of England If any of them were so wise and cautious as to avoid such politick gins which how far they intended well to Church or State God only knows this to be sure all sober Christians see that they have little advanced the state of the Reformed Religion in England yet still they must know that themselves and all that are good Christians and honest English are bound by far higher and nobler bonds of their baptismall Vow and Covenant to their God and Saviour from whence do necessarily flow those of Christian gratitude duty love and charity obliging every good Christian to pray for and preserve the welfare of this Church and that Reformed Religion which was once happily established in it in which the glory of our God the honour of our Saviour the good of our Countrey and the salvation of many thousand souls are highly concerned Against all which for any man upon small or no account rashly proudly spitefully out of envy covetousnesse ambition or any other depraved lust and passion to offend especially where so great light of Divine Truth and Grace such a presence and pregnancy of Gods Spirit clearly shines as doth in the Church of England to the very dazling of the eyes of these Adversaries must needs be such a complicated and resolved wickedness a sin of so enormous and transcendent a nature that Irenaeus counts it a mangling or killing of Christ again and in earnest it seems scarce pardonable because 't is scarce a repentable sin or repairable malice therefore hardly to be repented of because few can plead with S. Paul they do it ignorantly and so hope to obtain mercy being wilfull persecutors and vastators of such an excellent and illustrious Church as this of England was before these spoilers thus came upon it to make havock of it In which Church if those holy Means and Divine Graces which accompany salvation were not professed and enjoyed for my part I despair any where to find the way of Truth and Peace of holinesse and happinesse I know nothing truly excellent and necessary in any Church ancient or later which this Church of England did not enjoy yea I find many things which seem lesse convenient or more superfluous in others we were happily freed from Nor can I yet discover any materiall defect in the Church of England as to Christians outward polity inward tranquillity and eternal felicity Nothing either pious or peacefull morall or mysterious rituall or spirituall orderly or comely that may contribute to the good of mens souls but was plentifully to be enjoyed in the Church of England whose rare accomplishments and prosperity both inward and outward were I believe the greatest eye-sore and grievance in the world both to evil men and devils when they saw that Truth and Holinesse those Graces and Vertues those spirituall gifts and comforts which were here entertained with excellent learning noble encouragements ingenuous honours peaceable serenity and munificent plenty in all which the Reformed Church of England so flourished many years by Gods and mans indulgence that nothing in truth was wanting to the perpetuity of its prosperity but moderation humility and charity these would on all sides have kept out luxury and lazinesse pride and envy the usuall moths and worms which breed in all things that are full and fair opulent and prosperous Which humane defects justly blameable on mans part and punishable on Gods may no way be imputed to the Church of England which afforded so great advantages of wel-doing wel-being to all good Christians but to us poor mortalls who were prone to abuse so great Indulgences of God and man so uncharitable unthankfull and unreasonable are those malecontents who blame the fulnesse of the breast or the sweetness of that milk honey of which they have eat and drank too much who either from other mens failings and infirmities or from their own corrupt fancies and conceits do take occasion to blast and blaspheme all that was Reformed sacred and setled as to Religion in the Church of England so filling all places with their dust and clamours against this Church that the levity and easinesse of many people have quite forsaken it running like those that are scared with Earthquakes out of their houses cities and temples to heaths woods and wildernesses Some out of a sequacious easinesse and vulgar basenesse studying to comply with their leaders interests and their own advantages affect to appear to the world not onely neglective and indifferent but scorners and high opposers of all that ever the Church of England pretended to as to the Truth Reformation Wisdome Spirit Power or Grace of Religion neither caring what they condemn nor much minding upon what grounds they do it Others taking advantage of the levity loosenesse covetousnesse sacriledge arrogancy injuriousnesse and madnesse of some that heretofore professed speciall purity and strictnesse in Religion do resolve as those Heathens of old who excused their own thefts and wantonnesses by the lubricities and pranks of their Gods fully to gratifie their own licentious native inclinations how inordinate soever utterly casting off and abhorring all outward form and profession as well as all inward power and perswasion of godlinesse counting all Religious duties to be no better than consecrated rattles which Polititians put into the hands of the common people to please and compose their childish frowardnesse The ground and rise of all which is from those many scandals which loose and unsetled tempers take from those endlesse strifes and janglings the continued disorders and deformities the poverty and contempt the maimes and wounds the cruelty and uncharitablenesse with which some high-flown Reformers have of late treated the Church of England and those that have most constantly adhered to it What man or woman capable of such profound serious and grave thoughts as become Christian Religion whose lusts or interests have not quite decocted all Humanity as well as Piety can
exercised to each other their numerous conventions their fervent devotions their reverent attentions their unanimous communions their cheerfull Amens those blessed hopes and unspeakable comforts which thousands enjoyed both living and dying in the obedience to and communion with the Church of England All these holy fruits and blessed effects as most certain seals and letters testimoniall were I conceive most pregnant evidences and valid demonstrations of true Religion and of a true Church so happily setled by the joynt consent and publick piety of this Nation that it was not in reason or conscience in modesty or ingenuity to be suddenly changed much lesse rashly deserted and rudely abandoned chiefly upon the giddinesse of common people or by the boysterousnesse of common souldiers whose buff-coats and armour cannot be thought by any wise and worthy Souldiers to be like Aarons breast-plate the place from which Priests and people are to expect the constant oracles of Urim and Thummim Light and Reformation Such of that profession as are truly Militant Christians that is humbly wise and justly valiant as I hope many Souldiers may be will think it enough for them modestly to learn and generously to defend as Constantine the Great said to the Nicene Bishops not imperiously to dictate or boldly to innovate matters of Religion in such a Church and Nation as England which was I am sure and I think still is furnished with many able Divines many Evangelicall Priests and Ministers of the Lord whose lips preserve saving knowledge who have many a one of them more learning and well-studied Divinity in them than a whole Regiment nay than an whole Army of ordinary Souldiers whose weapons are not proper for a spirituall warfare nor apt as Davids hands either to build or repair a Church otherwaies than as Labourers who may possibly assist the true Ministers who are and ought to be the Master-builders of Gods house whose skill is not to destroy mens bodies but to save their souls not to kill but to make alive It must ever be affirmed to Gods glory because without any vanity or flattery that the Church of England for this last golden century came not behind the very best Reformed Churches nor any other that profess Christianity in any part of the world which is not my particular testimony who may seem partiall because I unfeignedly professe my self a son and servant of it but it is and hath been the joynt suffrage of all eminent Divines in all forraign Reformed Churches who have written and spoken of the Church of England ever since its setled Reformation not with commendation onely but admiration especially those who coveting to partake of the gifts and labours of English Divines have taken the pains to learn our hard and untoward language Yea I may farther with truth and modesty affirm that saving the extraordinary gifts of Tongues Miracles and Martyrdomes the Church of England since its setled Reformation under Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory came not much short of the Primitive Churches in the first and second Centuries Which had at least some of them as I shall after shew rather more than fewer ceremonies partly Judaick partly Christian yea far greater errors and abuses were found among some of them than were generally among any professors in communion with the Church of England witnesse those touching the Resurrection of the body and in the celebrating of the Lords Supper among the Corinthians The first some denied the other many received covetously uncharitably drunkenly disorderly undecently in the Church of Corinth Besides the scandalous fact of the incestuous person with which they were not so offended as became Christians they were also full of factions and carnall divisions going to law one with another before Infidels undervaluing the blessed Apostle S. Paul and other faithfull labourers preferring false Apostles and deceitfull workers with no lesse folly than ingratitude challenging in many things disorderly and uncomely liberties which amounted to clokes of malice and a licentiousnesse tending to confusion These and other corruptions were among Christians of an Apostolicall Church newly planted carefully watred and excellently constituted Nor are there lesse remarkable faults found by the Spirit of God in six of the seven Asian Churches mentioned in the second and third Chapters of the Revelation while yet they were under Apostolicall inspection For the Devil who is a great rambler but no loyterer began betimes to sow his tares in Gods field by false Apostles unruly walkers deceitfull workers meer hucksters of Religion schismatick Spirits proud Impostors sensuall Separatists wanton Jezebels curious and cowardly Gnosticks with all the evil brood of Nicolaitans Simonians Cerinthians and other crafty Hypocrites brochers of lies patrons of lewdnesse extremely earthly and sensuall yet vaunters in proud swelling words of spirituall and heavenly gifts but more covetous of filthy lucre and sedulous to serve their own bellies than zealous to serve the Lord or to save souls In all which instances of diseases growing even upon any of those Primitive Churches however Christians are commanded to repent and do their first works to keep themselves pure from contagion private or epidemick yet are they no where put upon the pernicious methods of reproching rending and separating from the very frame and constitution of their respective Churches as they were holy Polities Constitutions or Communions setled by the Apostles in decent subordinations and convenient limits of Ecclesiasticall order government authority and jurisdiction without which all humane societies civil or sacred run to meer Chaosses and heaps of confusion Which as the God of order and peace perfectly abhors so he no where by any Divine precept or approved example recommends any such practises to Christians under the name notion or intention of reforming abuses crept into any Churches presently to rend revile contemn divide destroy and make desolate the whole order polity frame and constitution of them which is very Christian and very commendable If the grand example of Divine Mercy was ready to spare Sodom upon Abrahams charitable intercession in case ten righteous persons had been found in that city and Jerusalem in case one man could have been found there who executed judgement and sought the truth how little are those men imitators of Gods clemency or Abrahams pity who have studied and still endeavour by all acts of power and policy utterly to destroy such a Church as England was in which many thousands of good Christians may undoubtedly be found who are constant adherers to the Faith gratefull lovers of the Piety and most pathetick deplorers of the miseries of the Church of England Whose excellent Christian state and Reformed constitution deserved much better treatment from those at least who were her children carefully bred born and brought up by her however now they appear many of them better fed than taught more puffed up with the surfeits of undigested Knowledge than increased in humble
both their cure and the preservation of the whole which may be still sound and entire as to the vitall more noble and principall parts I well know that it is not meet for the Church of England or the most deserving Member of it to dispute with Divine Justice nor is it either safe or wise to contest with his Omniscient and Almighty power but rather to lay our hands upon our hearts to put our mouths in the dust and to abhor our very righteousnesse than to quarrel with Gods judgements which are alwayes just though they are deep and dark past our finding out I think it an high presumption in the sawcy Criticks of these times who pretend to read the hand-writing upon the wall and to have such skill in sacred Palmestry as to know the mind of God by the operation of his hands conceiting both vainly and wickedly That God is such an one as themselves delighted with the spoiles and deformities the plunder and confusion of Churches they boldly interpret the meaning of all the troubles in England to be no other than this Gods anger against Bishops and Ceremonies against Steeple-houses and Common Prayer against Ordination and Ministry against the whole Polity and Constitution of the Church of England which they believe were so offensive and nauseous to God that he was forced to spue them out of his mouth justifying by this great argument of Gods providence as their chief shield and defence all their Schisms and Separations their Rapines and Sacriledges their Reproches and Blasphemies their Insolencies and Injuries committed and intended both against this Church in generall and against many most worthy and eminent Church-men in it I do not I dare not vindicate the Church of England before the most holy God whose pure eyes behold folly in his Saints and darknesse in his Angels as to the people in it either Preachers or Professors the Governours or governed the Shepherds or the Flock This is sure that where God had planted this Church as a pleasant Vine on a fruitfull hill where he had watered it with his Word as with the dew of Heaven fenced it by his speciall power and providence as with a wall expecting it should bring forth good grapes and good store there his contrary dealing with this his Vineyard taking away the hedge breaking down the wall thereof suffering it to be eaten up and trodden down to lie thus faâ— wast without its just pruning weeding and digging to be overgrown with briars and thornes commanding the clouds that they rain little or nothing upon it c. These sad dispensations and desolating experiments sufficiently proclaim Gods controversie with the Land and complaint against this Church that when he looked his vineyard should bring forth good grapes behold it brought forth wild grapes in so great a proportion that there was no remedy but God must be avenged on so unfruitfull so ungratefull a Nation which was second to none in temporall and spirituall mercies which are now become the aggravations of its sins and miseries it being condemned to punish it self by its own hands not for that it wanted the means of true Religion for what could the Lord have done more for his vineyard but for not using them yea for wantonly abusing those liberall advantages it enjoyed equall to if not beyond any Church or Nation under heaven Thus before the Bar and Tribunall of Divine Justice it is meet that we all as men and Christians confess our personall prevarications and cry out bitterly Wo unto us for we have sinned against the Lord. Yet as to mans judgement looking upon the Church of England not in the concrete or subject matter as consisting of many Preachers and Professors in many things possibly much depraved and deformed but considering it in the abstract in the reformed form and state of it in its former pious and prudent Constitution I must profess to You my honoured countrey-men and to all the World that in the greatest maturity of my judgement and integrity of my conscience as most redeemed now from juvenile fervours popular fallacies vulgar partialities and secular flatteries yea apart from the sense of my private obligations to the Church of England which are great and many I owing to it my Baptisme and Education as a Christian my office and ordination as a Minister all these laid aside and looking onely upon the consideration of its Religion as grounded upon Scriptures in the main and guided by the prudence of Primitive Antiquity I must profess that I cannot understand how the Church of England hath deserved to fall under those great reproches oppressions and miseries which the weakness wantonness and wickedness of some men hath sought to heap upon Her whose causeless malice and excessive passions against the Church of England are I think by a fatall blindness and most heavy judgement of God upon some men made the sorest punishers of their own and other mens sins their former unprofitableness ingratitude despite disorderliness and undutifulness against so venerable a Matron so good a Mother as the Church of England was at least it desired and offered it self to be so even to Her most ungracious and unthrifty children whom neither piping nor weeping prosperity or adversity she could ever move or affect with such conformities to Her or compassions for Her as she deserved of them I do here declare to the present age and to all posterity if any thing of my writing be worthy to survive me that since I was capable to move in so serious a search and weighty a disquisition as that of Religion is as my greatest design hath been and still is through Gods grace to find out and to persevere in such a profession of the Christian Religion as hath most of Truth and Order of Power and Peace of Sanctity and Solemnity of Divine Verity and Catholick Antiquity of true Charity and Martyr-like Constancy in it being farthest from Ignorance Errour Superstition Partiality Vulgarity Faction Confusion Injustice Immorality Hypocrisie Sacriledge Cruelty Inconstancy so I cannot apart from all prejudices and prepossessions find in any other Church or Church-way ancient or modern either more of the good I desire or less of the evil I endeavour to avoid than I have a long time discerned and daily do more and more since the contentions and winnowings of these times have put it and me upon a stricter scrutiny in the frame and form the constitution and setled dispensations of the Church of England No where diviner Mysteries or abler Ministers no where sounder Doctrinalls holier Morals warmer Devotionals apter Rituals comelier Ceremonials all which together by a meet and happy concurrence of piety and prudence brought forth such Spirituals and Graces both in their habits exercises and comforts as are the quintessence and life the soul and seal of true Religion those more immediate and special influxes of Gods holy Spirit upon the soul those joynt operations of the blessed
Trinity for the justification sanctification and salvation of Sinners in all these I never found by my reading and experience nor do I know where to seek for any thing beyond or every way equall to what was graciously dispensed in the Church of England Upon which grounds appearing to me and all the unpassionate Christian World most certain no man can wonder if I so much magnifie and prefer the Church of England that in the communion of its Doctrine Worship Ministry and Order I chuse to live in the communion of its Faith Hope and Charity I desire to die Let my soul be numbred among those Martyrs and Confessors those renowned Bishops and orderly Presbyters those holy Preachers and humble Professors whose labours lives and deaths whose words works and sufferings helped to plant and propagate to reform settle and preserve to so great a conspicuity of piety grace and glory the Catholick Church of Christ in all ages and places and particularly this part of it which we call the Church of England I am so far from envying or admiring any novel pretenders who boast of their folly and glory in their shame in their endeavours to destroy and devour this Church that I rather pity their childish fondnesses their plebeian petulancies their insolent activities their unlearned levities their ingratefull vanities who have demolished much and edified nothing either better or any way so good as what they have sought to pull down as to the order honour tranquillity beauty and integrality of a Christian Church So little am I shaken or removed from my esteem love and honour to the Church of England that I am mightily confirmed in them by all the poor objections made against it by the unreasonable indignities cast upon it which are as dirt to a Diamond but the further test and triall of its reall worth and splendor nor do I conceive that by those afflictions which are come upon us God pleads against the Church of Engl. but rather for Her against the lewd manners of her ungracious and ungratefull children for whose wickednesse He makes so fruitfull a Mother to grow barren so fair an House to become desolate so flourishing a Church to decay and wither It is no news where the lives and manners of Christians are much depraved from the holy rule of Christ evidently set forth among them to see famous Churches like the Moon in the wane or eclipse clothed with sackcloth and turned into blood to see Order subverted Unity dissolved Peace perverted Beauty deformed Holy things profaned It is no news to read of holy Prophets blessed Apostles orthodox Bishops and godly Presbyters ill treated and despitefully used by Heathens Hereticks Schismaticks No men but ignorant and unlettered can wonder at Bibles and other holy Books burned at Church-lands alienated the houses demolished and the Preachers silenced banished destroyed All Church-histories tell us it was many times so even among the Primitive Churches even then when their pious and Apostolick constitution was no doubt at best it was most violently and desperately so just before the Churches enjoyed the greatest prosperity longest tranquillity the blackest darkness usually going immediately before the welcomest break of day as was remarkable in the serenity of Constantine the Great 's time succeeding the dreadfull storm of Diocletians persecution which was looked upon and intended as an utter extirpation of Christian Religion Which distressed estate of the Primitive Churches of Christ in all the Roman world Eusebius Bishop of Caesaria who lived in those worst dayes describes with so much pious oratory and so parallel in many things to the temper of our times that I cannot but present you my honoured countrey-men with the prospect of them because the fury and darknesse of that tempest reached even to the then British Churches in England under which many Bishops and Presbyters Noblemen and Gentlemen perished and among others that famous Martyr S. Alban who as Bede tells us in his History l. 1. rather then he would deliver or discover a pious Presbyter whom he had hid in his house by whom he was either converted or much confirmed in the Christian Faith chose to offer himself in the Priests habit to the Inquisitors and owning himself for a Christian though yet unbaptized he died for that profession Hereby the world may see how much poor mortalls are prone to mistake in their calculations of Gods judgements upon any Church both as to their own sins and other mens sufferings where the greatest sufferers are commonly the least sinners and the greatest inflicters are the least Saints Having in the former seven Books sayes Eusebius set forth that holy succession of Bishops which followed the Apostles in all the famous Primitive Churches in their several limits and proportions under the various seasons and storms of times the Churches had now in the Roman Empire so great liberty serenity and quiet that Bishops in many places were much honoured even by the civil Magistrates the Temples and Oratories of Christians were every where full and frequented new Churches were every day erected more goodly costly and capacious nor could the malice of men or Devils hinder the growing prosperity of the Churches every where while God was pleased to shine upon them with his favour Afterward too great liberty and ease degenerated to luxury and idlenesse these betrayed Christian Bishops Presbyters and people to mutuall emulations and contentions these sowred to hatred and malice these brake out to fury and faction Christians persecuting each other with words and reproches as with armes and weapons murmurings and seditions of governed and governours justling against each other grew frequent arising from desperate hypocrisies and dissemblings At last being generally less sensible of their sins than their sides and factions and less intent to the honour of the Church and its holy Canons than to their private passions and ambitions the wrath of God overtook them all Then saith that Historian as Jeremy complains did the Lord bring darknesse upon the beauty of the daughter of Sion then did He cast down to the ground the glory of Israel He remembred no more the place of his footstool in the day of his wrath then did he profane the habitation of his honour in the dust and made Her a reproch to all her enemies c. then were Churches commanded to be pull'd down to the ground holy Books and Bibles to be burnt the Bishops and Pastors some banished others imprisoned tortured and killed all silenced impoverished disgraced abhorred by the Emperour with his followers and flatterers Christians were forbidden all holy meetings and duties commanded and forced to sacrifice to popular Idols and plebeian Gods upon pain of death and torture seventeen thousand Christians slain in one month an utter extirpation of Bishops Presbyters Professors Churches and Christianity it self designed enjoyned and publickly solemnized by a triumphant pillar erected in Spain with this Inscription An Imperial monument of
varying in this as in other things from the whole ancient Churches constitution no less than from this of England are likely to differ among themselves even till Doomesday unless they return under some new name and disguised notion of moderators and superintendents to what they have rashly deserted the true pattern in the Mount that paternall Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy which was the centre and crown of the Churches unity peace order and honour which imports no more after all this clamour and terrour than one grave and worthy Presbyter duly chosen in the severall Dioceses limits to be the chief Ecclesiastick Overseer and Governour succeeding in the managing of that Ecclesiasticall power and authority which without an Apostolick President or Bishop properly so called Presbyters alone in parity or equality never did enjoy and so never ought to exercise in the Churches of Christ as to ordination and jurisdiction no more than Bishops regularly may without the counsel and assistance of Presbyters Which ancient Order eminent Authority of Primitive Episcopacy if neither right Reason nor the Word of God either in the Old or New Testament did clearly set forth to us as best if neither Apostles at first nor the Primitive Fathers after them if neither Church-history nor Catholick custome nor Primitive Antiquity nor the approbation of the best Reformed Churches and Divines if all these did not commend it as they evidently do to my best understanding yet the late mad and sad extravagancies in Religion do highly recommend it yea the great want of it in England shews the great use necessity and excellency of it especially if advanced to its greatest improvement of counsel order and authority I may adde the votes of all sober and impartiall Christians even now in England who are grown so wise by their woes as generally to wish for such Episcopacy whose restitution would be more welcome to the wiser and better sort of Christians in this nation than ever the removall of it was or the medlies of Presbytery and Independency is like to be Nor do I believe that the restauration of a right Episcopacy would be unacceptable to many of the soberest men even of those two parties if any expedient could be found to salve and redeem the reputations of some lay-leaders and popular Primates of those sides whose credits lie much at pawn with the people upon this very score as having been by them rashly biassed against all Episcopacy the abusing of which Apostolick order on one side and the abolishing of it on the other side were I think two of the greatest Engines the Devil used to batter the Church of Christ withall pride and parity insolency and Anarchy being equally pernicious to Church-polity and Christian piety The overboylings of some mens passions which the Scotch Thistles being set on fire under them chiefly occasioned having now almost quenched themselves by bringing infinite fedities and deformities upon the whole face of the Christian Reformed Religion in this Church as well as otherwhere these sad events may save me the labour of further asserting in this place the use and honour of Catholick Episcopacy in the Churches of Christ which is already done as by my owne so many abler pens as it was also done by Mr. Hooker sufficiently proving that the Church of England deserved not upon the account of its retaining the Catholick and Apostolick order of Episcopacy to have suffered these many calamities which have ensued since the Schismes and Apostasy of many from this Church and from that Primitive Government other than which was not so much as known or thought of in the Catholick Church of Christ for 1500 years nor then when the Church of England began its wise and happy Reformation which did not indeed abolish but reform and continue as became its wisdom that Ancient and Apostolick government of the Church which was primitively planted in these British Churches as in all others throughout the world long before the Bishop of Rome had any influence or authority among them being highly blessed of God and honoured of all good men nor hath yet any cause appeared why it should be blasted or accursed or scared by Smectymnuan terrors CHAP. XI AS for the Doctrinals of Christian Religion this Church of England ever had so high an approbation from the best Reformed Churches and so harmonious a consent with the most Orthodox and Primitive Churches that it must be extreme ignorance or impudence on this part to esteem the present miseries of this Church as merited by Her wherein it was indeed most exact and compleat as wholly consonant to the Word of God so nothing dissonant from the sense and practise of the ancient and purest Churches Yea I find that the bitterest enemies of the Church of England do in This least shew their teeth or clawes except onely in the point of Infant-Baptism not for want of ill will for nothing more pincheth them then the Doctrine of the Church of England which was according to godliness teaching all men that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts they should live righteously soberly and godlily in this present world but for want as of just cause so of skill and abilitie most of them being such as have no great stock of knowledge learning or judgement nor very capable on this side to assault the Church of England whose strength and shield is the invincible Word of God rightly understood Therefore the cunning Adversaries and Vastators of the Church of England drive a lesser trade of small cavellings and bitings rather as the serpent at the heel than head not much engaging themselves in any grand controversies of Divinity which are generally above the reach of their capacities whose feeble assaults the Church of England hath no cause to fear against the Doctrine set forth in Her 39. Articles Her Catechisme Her Liturgy and Her Homilies since She hath so many years mightily maintained this post of her Doctrine against the Learning Power and Policy of the Roman party who are veterane Souldiers and mighty Troopers weightily armed in comparison of whose puissance these light-armed Schismaticks and small Skirmishers are like Pot-guns to Canons or Pigmies to Giants seeking to deface the Pinnacles and Ornamentalls of Religion but not capable to shake the foundations of it as it was happily established and duly professed in the Church of England CHAP. XII NOr have they had either more cause for or better successe in their disputings against the Devotionals of the Church of England in its publick worshipping of God by Confessions Prayers Praises Psalmodies and other holy Oblations of rationall and Evangelicall Services offered up to God by the joynt devotion of this Church the subject and holy matter of which ever was is too hard for their biting therefore most of them contented themselves to bark at the manner of performing them chiefly quarrelling at that prescript form or Liturgie used in this Church under the title
extemporary prayer which to the hearers hath the same aspect of a crutch or staff no less than that set form which by many is composed and proposed to the congregation As for the humours of common people they are an ill compass to steer by in concernments of Church or State It is no wonder to see wontedness breed weariness and weariness wantonness wantonness loathing of the most holy duties and heavenly dainties as of Manna to the Jews unless the hearts of men be alwaies humbly devout and sincerely fervent and such can I am sure daily follow wonted wholsome forms with new fervours and give a fresh Amen to known oft-repeated petitions as well as a fiduciary assent to such precepts and promises as they have heard or read from Gods Word a thousand times Without which sacred flames of constant zeal and successive devotion upon mens hearts as the holy fire which was never to go out upon Gods altar not onely the extemporary varieties of mens own inventions will prove perfunctory and superficiall but even Scripture it self and the Oracles of God will grow to be meer Crambe yea the repeated Celebration of the most divine and adorable mysteries of the blessed Sacraments which Christ instituted as constant solemn Services in his Church will prove nauseous burdens and hypocriticall loades to the dull and indevout spirits of men whom if they be such in their hearts and tempers no variety or novelty will quicken ther niauseous and lazy hypocrisy if they be not such no constancy or wontedness will dull their sincere fervency and holy fragrancy of their affections The late ramblings barrenness and confusion of some mens sad and extemporary rhapsodies their rude and rusticall devotions are especially in solemn and Sacramentall Celebrations observed by many wise Christians to be such since the Cadet or younger Brother of the Directory if it deserves the honour of that name which to many seems but as a by-blow the illegitimate issue of partiall spirits Apostatizing from their former conformity to the Church of England in that point of its Liturgy since I say it crowded or as Jacob supplanted its elder brother out of the house of God though it self be now little used and less regarded even by its first patrons and sticklers that it makes them and me highly admire and more magnifie the wisdome of the Church of England in first composing after perfecting and prescribing that excellent Liturgie to common people which contained the very quintessence of all that we find used by the ancient piety and charity of Churches agreeable to Gods Word which is the onely pattern pillar and support for Christians prayers both publick and private Nor did the Church of England ever intend as I conceive by Her Liturgie so to stint and confine any discreet and able Minister or private Christian but they might further pour out their souls to God in prayers and praises publickly and privately so as occasion required and good order permitted onely it judged as I doe with pious Antiquity and all the most learned Reformers particularly Mr. Calvin that it is a great and reall concernment in every true and Orthodox Church that care be taken to settle and preserve wholsome forms and solemn Devotionalls for the publick celebrating of Prayers Praises holy Duties Christian Mysteries Sacraments and Ordinations next to the care of propounding and establishing sound Doctrine or true Confessions and Articles of Faith Which care of all Christians good in that behalf first induced the Ancient and Primitive Churches as S. Austin and others tell us next to their laying of Scripture-grounds in their Creeds and Confessions to enlarge and fix their Liturgies and Devotions finding that fanatick Errour and Levity would seem an Euchite as well as an Eristick Prâ—yant as well as Predicant a Devotionist as well as a Disputant insinuating it self with no less cunning under a Votary's Cowle than in a Doctors Chair in Prayers Sacraments and Euchologies as well as in Preachings Disputations and Writings This I am sure The Liturgie of the Church of England was so usefull so well advised so savoury so complete so suitable so solemn and so significant a form of publick Worshipping God so highly approved by wise and worthy men at home and abroad as composed by the speciall assistance of the holy Spirit of God in the judgement of the first Heroes and Martyrs of this Reformed Church so reverently used by many even lesse conformable in some things ceremoniall to the Church of England that beyond all question it deserved a longer question a more calm debate a more serene serious and impartiall triall before it should have been so utterly abdicated or expulsed out of the Church as Hagar was out of Abrahams family I humbly conceive that neither Recusants should have had so great a gratification to their refractoriness nor this so famous flourishing and wel Reformed Church should have had so great a slurr aspersion cast upon its Princes its Parlaments its Bishops its Presbyters all its faithfull people as if they had hitherto served God so far superstitiously irreligiously and unworthily that the very Book it self containing the method form matter and words of their publick service of God must be first vilified and scorned by the vulgar insolency next utterly abrogated and quite ejected out of this Church by such as passionately undertook to abett and patronize the present humours and distempered fits of popular surfeitings and inconstancy lately risen up not onely against their own former approbation and practise but against the piety wisdome and gravity of this Nation and all other setled Churches in the world Yea further the partiality and immoderation of some men seems in this most excessive that to shew their implacable despite against the Liturgie of the Church of England they cannot endure nor would if they had power permit any Christians to use it though they find it as our Marian Martyrs did very beneficiall to their souls comfort and therefore earnestly desire highly value and duly use it So imperious Dictators would some men be over other mens liberties and consciences even in Religion who are rigid asserters of their own impatient to be imposed upon by others and yet most insolently ambitious to impose upon other men how far they may or may not serve God in a religious way and manner fancying that nothing can please God which doth not please them What some men have preached and printed against the English Liturgie and all set forms of Prayers never so good and fit as if they were stintings and dampings of Gods Spirit c. I must confess I understand rather the jeer and contemptuousness of their words than the wit reason or Religion of them for certainly the same may be said against all Scriptures Psalms Sermons preached or printed against Ministers own Prayers and any other proposed helps for the advancing of knowledge or devotion in mens hearts And however some
think their own refractoriness to be Religion and other mens honest devotion to be but superstition of which I confess I never thought either this Church or any other to be in the least degree guilty while they did observe such holy memorials with publick celebrity as were appointed to the honour of God and to the imitation of those graces which were remarkable in the eminentest servants of God renowned in the Gospel such as are the blessed Virgin and Mother of our Lord as also his prime Apostles by whose means the light of the Gospel shone through all the world Nor do we find our Saviour himself withdrawing in such cases his conformity to the Churches practise in those Encaenia or Feasts of dedication which were thankfull and joyfull memorials of the restauration of that material Temple which was to be demolished whereas these holiday-celebrations used in this Church have respect to such things as are never to be forgotten abolished or changed while the world continues and Christ hath any Church upon earth which I believe he will have to the end of the world according to his promised assistance to all his faithfull Ministers who continue in the fellowship and succession both for doctrine and authority of the blessed Apostles But I have done with these long and unhappy debates about the sacred Festivalls and other Ceremonies authorized by the Church of England on which some flesh-flies mistaking them for galls and sores when they were but decent variations of beautifull colours in its garment have so importunely fastened especially in the hotter season of these late dog-dayes that they have very much flye-blown the reformed Religion and endangered not onely the putrefaction but the utter corruption of the whole state of this Church of England whose quarrel and right in these things I should not have thus far revived or vindicated if I had not thought it necessary by this salt of sound speech to represse those further putrifying principles which upon this account are daily suggested to simple and well-meaning people against the whole frame and constitution of the Church of England Whose publick commands and setled constitutions as I alwayes approved and obeyed but most readily since I best understood them in their late fiery triall because I have found them in great and weighty matters serious solid scripturall in lesser things moderate discreet and charitable so I never had either heart or hand tongue or pen to assert any thing that was by private or particular mens fancies brought in either to a peevish non-conformity or to a pragmatick super-conformity Though I willingly allow many of my calling to be much wiser and better than my self yet I cannot look upon them as wiser than the whole Church of England which saw with many more eyes both forward and backward than any one Bishop or Presbyter can do whose reall Innovations in later times beyond what either the letter or usage of this Church which best interprets Its meaning did enjoyn and authorize I am no way concerned to maintain nor was I ever discontent to have them both gainsaid and removed as insolencies mis-becoming any Church-man never so wise or great to impose upon the Majesty of so famous a Church as England was which never needed any other additions innovations or decorations either in Doctrine or Discipline or Worship than those which It self had soberly chosen as a wise Mother and grave Matron which justly disdains to be made gayer or finer by such ribbands feathers and toyes as any of her Children shall list to pin upon her It had better become in my judgement the learning gravity and discretion of those men who most admired and obtruded their own supernumerary and unwonted ceremonies to have confined themselves to the Churches known Injunctions and Customes for it were endless if every man never so good should be gratified in his Church-projects and religious inventions which became the great pest and oppression of the Western Churches when the Bishops of Rome by their own incroachments and other Bishops connivence undertook to innovate or regulate all things in all Churches which should have been ordered either by generall Councils or by the Synods of particular Churches as was most convenient for them Nor in England could ever prudent men with reason have doâ—ed on any of their novelties when they plainly saw that even those few sparks of ancient Ceremonies with which the Church of England contented her self and which neither made nor marr'd Religion being rather spangles than spots on the Churches garments even these I say have a long time been made beyond their merit not onely occasions for some to rail others to scorn a third sort to blaspheme the purity and honour of the Church of England but also to schismatize in Her and separate wholy from Her Yea from the later obtrusions of some mens either renovations of things antiquated or innovations of Ceremonies never enjoyned by the Church those dreadful conflagrations have grown which have almost quite consumed Her the quenching of which deserves as it needs not onely these drops of my pen but of all your tears and prayers most worthy Gentlemen who find your selves as I am very much concerned for the honour and happiness of this Church which was in all points prudently reformed and excellently constituted CHAP. XIV A Second grand Objection very popular and plausible which the enemies of the Church of England have made great use of to decry and destroy if possible the whole frame constitution of It is taken from the private infirmities personall failings male-administrations which some men have either suspected or really observed in some of the Clergie either Arch-bishops Bishops or Presbyters of the Church of England against whom it is objected that either they were not so warm and voluble Preachers as those men do most fancy or possibly less learned and industrious then was fit for Ministers or not so prudent it may be and compassionate toward weaker Christians as became those that were stronger in the faith or lastly not so morally strict unblamable in their lives as indeed all Ministers of the Gospel ought to be at all times Hence the Adversaries of the Church of England do conclude that both head and heart were sick that there was no sound part that all was full of bruises and putrified sores that in the Church of England nothing could be found worthy of a true Church a true Minister or a true Christian My answer is That all the modest Clergie in England desire to be so humble so ingenuous so impartial as not to forget their own infirmities while they coÌ„plain of others injuries For my self being conscious how little removed I am from fallings as a mâ—n and Minister I shall willingly confess and strive to amend what any mans charity shall with truth convince me of and for others my Fathers and Brethren I presume I have because I humbly crave their leaves to
give God the glory of his own justice of other mens malice and of our own failings My design is not to reproch any man in particular but to excite my self with all other Ministers to such repentance amendment as God requires the better world expects the malice of our enemies exacts our own safety and this Churches distresses command of us The Clergie of England of all degrees have endured too many sufferings beyond any other rank or order of men to fancy they have not had many sins Not to own our distempers after the long application of so rough physick were indeed to tax the wisest and gentlest Physician not of severity but cruelty and superfluity whereas the father of our souls never chastiseth his children so much for his own pleasure as indeed for their profit Gods judgements are in this very mercifull and his severities the fruits of his loving kindness that he chuseth rather to punish us than forsake us and to afflict us by his own justice than to betray us to the cruel flatteries of our own lusts which would prove ours and his greatest enemies too if we were left to our selves The smart eye-salve which the Clergy of England have endured of late years may well cleare our sight so farre at least as to discern and confess those faults which heretofore it may be we over-looked or slighted or excused upon the common score of humane infirmity which indulgence may better be allowed to any men than to Ministers of the Gospel especially if persons of eminency and conspicuity Of all Clergie-men beyond all other men the world justly expects and so doth God sobriety gravity exactness even in their younger years as S. Paul doth of Timothy how much more in their maturity and age Little sins in them if publicated grow great by their scandall and contagion O how ponderous how immense how flagitious are the presumptions the vicious habits the wilfull open obstinate and constant deformities of Ministers In all which if the just God should be extreme to mark what hath been amisse among us both young and old great and small who is able to abide it Before the Lord who hath done it we must with old Eli and holy Job put our mouths in the dust and smother our sense in silence Nevertheless we are and ever must be pertinacious even to the death with holy and afflicted Job to maintain not onely the innocency but also the merit of the Clergie or Ministry of England as to the greater and better part of them in respect of the people of this Nation in all degrees Although as David did when Shimei reproched and cursed him bitterly disdainfully and injustly we cannot but be sensible complain of some mens excessive malice immoderation against us yeâ— we cannot but make an humble submission to with an agnition and justification of that divine wrath justice which seems to be gone out against us before the Almighty we desire to be either silent or confitent or suppliant as becomes those that are justly ashamed and truly penitent T is fit we hide and abhor our selves in dust and ashes before his presence who onely can pity and repair us by turning the causeless curses of men into a blessing making the sacrilegious impoverishings and indignities the ingratefull abasings and insoleâ—â—ies of some unreasonable and violent men an occasion of his gracious favour and all good mens compassions toward the afflicted Clergie and Church of England for where Church-men are miserable the Church cannot be happy where the Clergie are distressed the Laity cannot be prosperous We are so far willing to gratifie the malice of our bitter adversaries to whom no musick is so pleasing as any evil report brought upon the Ministers of England as with S. Austin to make our confession to God that we may be more vile in our own eyes before the Lord and cover our selves with that cloke of confusion which God hath suffered some men to cast upon us after they have stripped us of those ancient Honours and Ornaments with which we were by the piety gratitude and munificence of former times happily invested not more to our own than the whole nations great renown in all the world Without all peradventure the most holy and all-seeing God who walketh in the midst of the golden Candlesticks whose pure eyes are most intent upon the Ministers of his Church hath found out the iniquity of his servants the Bishops and other Ministers of the Church of England not onely in our persons but in our professions not onely in our morals but in our ministrations Who being solemnly consecrated and duly set apart to the service of God his Church in the name place power and authority of Jesus Christ and drawing neer to his speciall presence with Moses in the Mount with Aaron in the Holy of Holies in those glorious manifestations of God in Christ to his Church by publick ordinances and spirituall influences yet have not so sanctified the name of the Lord our God by our hearts and lives by our doctrine and duties as we ought to have done Many of us doing the work of God which is a great work of eternal concernment to our own and other mens souls either so unpreparedly negligently and irreverently or so partially popularly and passionatly or so formally pompously and superciliously that our very officiatings have been offences to God and man our oblations vain our prayers the sacrifices of fooles our pains in preaching how much more our idleness hath been no better than the foolishnesse of preaching in good earnest Some of us have been prone to place the highest pitch of our Ministeriall care exactness and duty in ceremonious conformities which alone are meer chaffe miserable empty formalities neglecting the substance life and soul of Christian Religion which consists in righteousness and true holiness while we too much intended the meer shadow shell and out-side of it others have so eagerly doted upon their sticklings against what was duly and decently established in this Church as to the outward circumstances and ceremonies the decent manner and form of sociall Religion that they feared not as far as in them lay to make havock of the power of Religion together with the peace unity order and very being of this famous Church Many of us so over-preached our peoples capacities that the generality of our auditors after many years preaching were very little edified nothing amended being kept at too high a rack both of affected Oratory and abstruse Divinity for want of plain catechising and charitable condescending to them others in a supine and slovenly negligence have sunk so much below the just gravity solidity and majesty of true preaching that the meanest sort of illiterate people have undertook to vie with them and to match them infinite swarms of mechanick rivals rose up into desks and pulpits when once they saw such pitiful preaching
any justice or reason to be odiously charged upon the whole Church or their profession no more than the fall of some Angels is imputable to the whole Angelick nature Nor do I see any reason why the infirmities or deformities of some Clergie-men and those not many in comparison should be more a stain and reproch to their calling than other mens misdemeanours are to their either civil or military professions in which though there ever will be some Cheats and Pettifoggers others Quacks and Mountebanks a third cowards and traitors yet these do not diminish the just honour and use of learned Lawyers discreet Physicians or gallant Souldiers whose imployments are then liberall and ingenuous when they are honest and usefull to the Common-wealth It were a madness to quarrel with all Candles and put them out because some are small others want snuffing a third sort burn dimly and have as we say Thieves in them the foggs and vapours rising from the earth and oft darkening the Suns light are no diminution to its native lustre which is the greatest visible blessing in the world as a good Bishop and Ministry is in the Church nor may the miscarriages of some Bishops and Presbyters in the Church of England be cast as reproches or made disparagements to their holy orders much less to the whole Church especially when we consider that the defects and faults of some Clergie-men in England were mightily recompensed yea and over-balanced by that learning piety industry and virtue which was generally competent and in many of them so eminent that I believe the whole world did not exceed them and few in any Church did match them yea many both Bishops and other Ministers who seemed less plausible or popular in their preaching were yet not less sound in their doctrine potent in their writing prudent in their governing and exemplary in their godly lives having that in height and depth which others had in breadth and length Who but persons of egregious ignorance or profligate impudence without wit modesty or conscience can or dare deny what blessed be God is and ever will be most evident to all the world that ever since the happy Reformation of the Church of England there have been and still are though their number seems now much diminished by death and other disorders without any due recruiting such Clergie-men both Bishops and Presbyters who for all worth divine and humane will be had as they deserve in everlasting and honourable remembrance After-ages more remote from partiality passion and faction will better know how to value them by the want of them than this Age hath done which did sometime enjoy them and still might if having had so liberall experience of their other Christian vertues and Ministeriall abilities in preaching praying writing and living it had not sought further to satisfie its curiosity by trying the patience and perseverance of many grave and good Ministers to which purpose the most heavy log-end of Christs Cross is laid upon many of them not onely supplicia but ludibria silence prisons and poverty which have befaln some of them but undeserved shame with popular contempt and this from their own countrey-men and from many of their own converts these now press upon their persons and profession too threatning an utter extinction of their ancient order authority and succession in this Church and Nation if their enemies might have their wills upon them which God be thanked they have not yet obtained to the latitude of their malice though it hath reached very far God help us I know that the present sufferings of Bishops and other Ministers as chief members of the Church of England have been and still are in many mens eyes the greatest signs and indications of their sins vulgar justice ever judging those men criminous whom they see calamitous like dogs in a countrey village which are ready to flie upon any strange one not for any offence he gives them but because they see some currs have begun not onely to bark at him but to bite and worry him The plebs or common people are first injurious and then censorious Prosperity and Power are their great Idols they easily trample upon those Gods whose hands and feet are off they conclude them unworthy of any Resurrection who are once cast down and buried by them Nothing is more common with the community of people than to condemn the generation of Gods children who have generally been rather passive than pragmatical Holy Polycarp is called for as an Atheist to be sacrificed in the fire of vulgar zeale S. Paul not fit to live Christ himself worthy to be crucified if the rabble may have their vote the chief part of whose innocency consists in finding fault with others that are vastly better than themselves I believe that if the Bishops and Ministers of this Church had been stoned by none but such as had not faults and infirmities equall to nay exceeding theirs they had to this day been untouched To whose score and account this now is added that they must needs be great sinners since they are so great sufferers they cannot but be murtherers on whose hands people see such vipers hanging Thus carnall and sensuall Christians are prone to judge who are strangers to the crosse of Christ not understanding that the afflictions of Christians are mysterious as well as then faith and their Sufferings as well as their Sacraments that God doth as our heavenly Father many times love most where he most rebukes that they have oft most of his heart from whom he most hides his face as to temporal prosperity and on whom his hand lies heaviest as to visible chastisements which if they mend us they argue not enmity but love It is no token that because he punisheth our faults therefore he hates our persons much less our calling and profession the rod and staff of God lying upon us or lifted up against us is not to drive us from him but as a Shepherds crook to draw us neerer to him nor is it with any design to scare us from our duties or to make us desert our station or to force us to renounce our Ordination to his holy service as some have shamefully done but as with goads to excite us the more to persist in our office stedfastly and to discharge our Ministry the more diligently so that it is but a plebeian and fanatick fancy from hence to imagine that the God of order is now after 1600. years grown out of love with Primitive and Apostolick Episcopacy or with regular and orderly Presbytery in his Church because he afflicts both Bishops and Presbyters or that Jesus Christ the Ancient of dayes the Alpha and Omega of immutable wisdome now designs to set up a meer novelty of parity and popularity in his Church which tend experimentally and so most apparently to the fedity nullity and Anarchy of Religion in this and all other Churches
to destroy that holy order and Evangelicall function from whose declared rules and injunctions in the Church they had degenerated for neither the infirmities nor the presumptions of men ought to annull that office or abolish that authority which is Divine Christs commission which is given to the Church must not be voyded or cancelled by reason of any Ministers omissions Sacred institutions such as the Ministry and government of Christs Church are ought to continue notwithstanding the intervening of mans ignorance errour profaneness or Idolatry The plagues and leprosies arising from mens persons and adhering to them are not imputable to that place power station and authority which they have in the Church Men may be unworthy of their holy function but the function it self is not made unworthy no more than Aarons joyning with the people in making the golden calf did disparage the sacred dignity of that Priestly office to which he was by the Lord designed The enormous folly of Eli's sons did not make the sacrifices they offered of none effect nor yet nullifie the honour and office of that Priesthood wherewith they were duly invested Judas his being an Hypocrite a Thief a Traitour and a Devil yet did not abrogate that Apostolical office and Episcopall authority which he had received from Christ equally with the other Apostles untill by open Apostasy he fell into open rebellion desperation and perdition Which gross and open Apostasy either from Christ or his Gospel from the Christian faith or their Ministeriall office and ordination cannot with any truth or fore-head be charged upon the Clergie or Ch. of England who for the main both in the consecration of Bishops and ordination of Presbyters in the administration of holy duties execution of their offices generally and for the main kept to the Ancient Primitive and Apostolick customes of all the Churches of Christ since the Apostles dayes so that whatever blame charge or reproch is cast upon the Clergie or Church of England must equally lie upon all Christian Churches since the first complete and setled constitution of any Church I know the mouths of some men like moths and their tongues like worms are prone to corrode by infinite scruples scandalls and reproches all the beauty of the Church of England with all the merit and honour of its Clergie but blessed be God we stand or fall with the Catholick Church of Christ with the whole order race and Apostolick succession of Christian Bishops and Presbyters we more fear the rudeness and heaviness of mens hands than the sharpness of their wits or weight of their arguments which are as spiteful and yet as vain as the vipers biting of the file when from some Ministers personall failings they fasten their venomous teeth upon the whole state and constitution of the Church of England In whose behalf I am neither afraid nor ashamed to appeal to you my most honoured countrey-men as the nearest and best Judges in the world of this matter First as to the Church of England in its godly care and Christian constitution whether you do believe or really find that in any thing it hath been wanting which is necessary for the good of your souls Next as to the Bishops and Ministers of England whether abating personall infirmities they have not generally been ever since the Reformation both able and faithfull in the work of the Lord whether as Mr. Peter du Moulin confesseth you and your fore-fathers do not chiefly owe to them both the beginning and continuance of the Reformed as well as Christian Religion next under the mercy of God and the care of your pious Princes whether the tenuity or weakness of some Ministers who had less abilities and perhaps too little incouragements were not abundantly supplied by the eminent sufficiencies of many others and if every Diocese had not an excellent Bishop at all times or every Parish enjoyed not a very able Preacher yet I am sure neither of the two Provinces in England nor any one County ever wanted since the Reformation either excellent Bishops or excellent Preachers in them to a far greater store than was to be enjoyed in Primitive times when Dioceses were larger and petty Parishes not at all in the Church of Christ So then I may justly quere whether one odious century of Ministers branded some of them for scandalous because they were more exactly conform to the Laws and Customes established in the Church of England were a just ground to reproch the whole Clergie or to abolish the order function and succession both of Bishops and Presbyters which some men aim at officious compilers of that uncomely Centâ— Whether they might not with as much truth and more reason have enumerated the scandalous livings of England as so many not convicted but supposed scandalous Ministers many of whose maintenance was worse than their manners and more unworthy of their profession Whether any thing truly objectable against any Bishop or Minister of England as scandalously weak wicked and unworthy may not with as much more truth be objected against their severest enemies No man in England not grosly ignorant or passionately impotent can deny what I here affirm and proclaim to all the world That the Clergie of England both Governours and governed taking them in their integrality or unity as they were esteemed a third estate in the Body politick or as an Ecclesiasticall fraternity and corporation have been not onely tolerable but commendable yea admirable instruments of Gods glory and the good of mens souls in this Church and Nation That as they did at first in the morning of the Reformation so ever since during the heat and burthen of the day they have with great learning and godly zeal with Christian courage constancy integrity and wisdome every way asserted vindicated and maintained the truth purity and power also the peace order and honour of Christian and Reformed Religion against Atheists and Infidels against the superstitions of the Romanists on one side and the factions of the Schismaticks on the other Nor have they onely built with the trowel but fought also with the sword of the Word What Giantly error what Papal Goliah hath ever appeared defying this Reformed Church whom some excellent Bishops and other learned Divines who were Episcopal have not encountred prostrated confounded and beheaded the spoiles and trophies of them are still extant in their works as eternall monuments of the incomparable prowess worth and merit of the English Clergy What wholsom saving and necessary truth did they ever wilfully deprive You of In what holy institution and ordinance of Jesus Christ have they ever conspired to defraud or diminish you In what holy work or duty have they come short of any In what excellent doctrine gift grace or vertue have they been so defective as not to give your forefathers your selves and all the world most illustrious proofs and generous examples To which testimony no ingenuous knowing and conscientious
the world whose divided and deformed aspect even now in England if as Clem. Alex. observes in his time a prudent Heathen or morall Turk or sober Jew or grave Philosopher should behold as to the effect of some mens principles and practises who glory much in their Christian liberty would they not conclude that Christ their Master was the Author and Christion profession the favourer of all manner of Licentiousnesse Which is not more a dehonestation of the Doctrine Spirit Disciples and Mysterie of Christ Jesus than an infinite damp and hindrance to the propagation and spreading of the Gospel in the world yea it is the high-way through the justice of God upon the wanton wickedness and hypocriticall profaneness of such Christians utterly to extirpate the power peace comfort yea and profession of Christian Religion The Mahometan power and poyson had never spread so over those famous Asian African and Eastern Churches if Heretical and Schismatical liberty had not first battered the strength and corrupted the health of Christianity Hence those inundations of barbarity those incursions of forraign enemies following those intestine wars and confusions by which the wise and just God hath in all ages punished the folly and presumption of petulant and licentious Christians who first dare to think then to speak at last to act what they fancy and affect instead of what God commands and the Catholick Church hath observed in all ages These popular provocations of God which are full of impudent impiety commonly are revenged by dreadfull and durable judgements long and lasting miseries For the pertinacious mischiefs of Heresie and Schisme once prevailing upon any Church Nation are like frenzy or madness rarely cured without loss of much blood besides the iron goads and sharp harrows of mutuall depredations and oppressions which are used between parties and factions once in religious respects engaged against each other 'T is not expectable that Christians thus tearing and massacring each other should recover their wits till sharp and successive afflictions have shewed them how unholy and unthankful they are without naturall and spirituall affections who dare at once despise their Fathers reproch their Mother and devour their Brethren who being baptized instructed communicated and converted as they pretend to the same Lord Jesus Christ and to his holy profession by the Ministry of such a Church as England was so Christian so Reformed yet by a voluntary separation and desperate defection as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 self-condemned dare to execute such bold and rash censures of excommunication both upon themselves and others as a sober Christian should greatly tremble to undergo if the sacred authority of such a Church by its Bishops Ministers and other Members should joyntly pass such a censure upon them as their own pride passion superstition and licentious humours daily dare to do May they not justly fear lest God should satisfie them with their own delusions and ratifie that judgement which they have uncharitably chosen of being ever separated from his Church and from himself might not God justly despise and reject them who have despised and rejected such means such Ministers such Ministrations as some have done and still do in the Church of England If the dust of his Ministers feet will rise up in judgement against ingrateful refusers how much sorer punishment may they expect who are the insolent abusers of such messengers of peace and cruell vastators of such a Church as England was before it felt the sad effects of this Christian liberty which common people are prone not more to magnifie than to mistake and misuse CHAP. IV. WHo doubts but if the plebs or populacy in any Nation or Church be left to themselves to cut out Religion Liberty into what thongs they list they will soon be not only unshod ungirt unblest but so quite naked and unclothed as to any Christian grace or vertue gravity or decency truth or sanctity that their shame and nakedness will soon appear in all manner of fedity deformity errour and ignorance insolence and confusion They have little studied the vulgar genius who do not find by all reading and experience that the common temper of people is rude and perverse light and licentious petulant and insolent as S. Bernard well expresseth it They are not convincible with reason because incapable they despise good examples because they love not to imitate them they are too proud and peevish to be sweetly won and perswaded to goodness they are mad and impatient to be curbed Yea they are undone and perish eternally if they be betrayed to themselves if God and good men be not better to them than they deserve desire or design for themselves either in things civil or sacred if there be not by just and honest policies such holy restraints and wholsome severities put upon them as are not their chains but their girdles not their bannacles but their bridles Alas what wise Magistrate or Minister is there who doth not find by daily experience that if you will but save peoples purses they are not very solicitous how to save their souls most of them think Taxes and Tithes farre greater burthens than all their sins and trespasses not much valuing their sanctification or salvation so as they enjoy that rustick thrifty and unmannerly liberty which they naturally affect against their teachers and betters What immense summes of money have of late years been spent upon military and secular accounts If the hundredth part had been desired of them in order to have procured a competent maintenance for an able Preacher in every parish without which there is little hope ever to enjoy competent Ministers O what an out-cry would have been made what an oppression would it have seemed to the common people beyond ship-money yea beyond the bricks and bondage of Egypt as if their very life-blood and the marrow of their bones had been taken from them so much doth the beast and naturall man over-weigh the Christian in the most of men and women The freest easiest and cheapest Religion is thought the best among them what is most grateful is most godly then they fancy themselves most happy when least obliged to be holy and then most zealously religious when they may be most securely licentious The more factious and pragmatick spirits among them do think that all Polity and Religion things civil and sacred must needs be shipwreckt and utterly miscarry unless they have an oar in the boat unless they put their hand to the helm of all government It doth not suffice their busie heads and hands to trimme the sailes as common Mariners when commanded but they must be at the steerage not considering what balast of judgement what anchor of constancy what compass of sound knowledge both divine and humane is necessary for those who undertake to be Pilots and guides of States and Churches The rude plebs like mutinous mariners are prone so to affect
these must exercise all Church-power and Divine authority over your consciences whereas for my part I do not think that the best of these new Masters and Ministers can have from their own fancies or peoples forwardness so much authority because they have none either from God or the Church of Christ or the laws of this Land as would make them petty Constables or Bom-baylies a Lay-elder or an Apparitor This I am sure that in the purest and primitive times as Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian S. Cyprian and others assure us the holy mysteries of Christian Religion the power of the Keyes the sacrating of Sacraments the pastorall ruling and preaching as of office duty and necessity to any part of Christs flock was esteemed the peculiar and proper work of Bishops and Presbyters in their order and degree as the true and onely Pastors and Teachers that succeeded the twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples in their ordinary Ministry nor were men branded for other how able soever than insolent and execrable usurpers who did adventure to officiate unordained that is not duly authorised as Ministers Such intruders Tertullian notes both some men and women to have been in his time who were leavened with Schisme and Heresie so Epiphanius and S. Austin tell us of the Quintilliani Pepuziani and Colliridiani who were confounders of the Ministeriall order Sozomen Socrates Nicephorus and other Church-historians sharply censure one Ischyras or Ischyrion who unordained pretended to be a Presbyter and so to officiate calling him a detestable person and worthy of more than one death whom Athanasius finding about to consecrate or rather desecrate the Eucharist he in an holy and heroick zeal as Christ in the Temple brake the Communion Cup overthrew the Table and repressed his insolent impiety counting him as another Judas Iscariot a traitor to Christ and the Church Yet in the place of the Ministers of the Church of England I beseech you how few Athanasiusses how many Ischyrasses may you now see challenging to themselves the care of mens souls as Ministers of Christ undertaking the managerie of mens eternall interests confident to interpret Scriptures to resolve doubts to decide controversies to satisfie mens consciences to keep up the truth power and majesty of Christian Religion by new undue and exotick wayes against the torrent and impetuous force of ignorance Atheism profaneness errour malice and madness of men and Devils For all which grand designs of Gods glory and the Churches good those men are as fit agitators as Phaeton was to drive Phoebus his Chariot and truly with like success they will do it for instead of enlightening the world these Incendiaries will set all on fire as far as they meet with any combustible matter in which sad conflagrations begun and blown up by them in this Church of England some of them are so vain as to glory calling them the spirituall day of judgement an invisible doomesday a coming of Christ in the spirit of burning and refining to purge his Church For this purpose they say the Sun must be turned into darknesse and the Moon into blood government of Church and State must be subverted nor do they according to their severall fancies and interests fail to presage and expect a glorious Resurrection to their parties which they hope shall reign with Christ if not a thousand years yet as long as they can prevail so as to get power and preserve those liberties they have ravished to themselves CHAP. VIII NOr are these novell undertakers ever more ridiculous than when they sow pillowes under their own rustick arms and others elbows excusing yea abetting their illiterate rudeness and idiotick confidence with the primitive plainness and simplicity of the Apostles when Christ first chose them who were Fishermen Tent-makers or the like Which is truly but very impertinently alledged as any parallel case with these impotent and pragmatick intruders unless they could manifest to the world which they never yet did nor ever will such miraculous endowments such power and anointing from above as came upon the Apostles which in one moment was able to furnish them with more sufficiency and authority than all study and industry can ever do any of us which are the now ordinary means appointed and blessed by God succeeding in the place of miraculous gifts where Churches are once fully planted and Christianity setled To all which the constant testimony of an uninterrupted Ministery and holy succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters from the very Apostles as they from Christ is a more pregnant witnesse and conviction than any new miracles could be much more than any such pittifull accounts can be as these wonders of ignorance and arrogancy can give to the world of any extraordinary matters they say or do either as Ministers or Christians The best of some of whose lives would deform I fear the golden legend which seems to be written by a man of a brazen forehead a leaden wit and an iron heart We the despised Clergie of England do profess to use and pray God to bless our long preparative studies meditations writings readings also our immediate care concomitant labours in this kind habitually to fit us for that dreadfull work and for every actuall discharge of it We find these methods practised by the most famous lights of the Church recommended by S. Paul to Timothy though a person in some things extraordinarily gifted that he should attend didiligently to those exercises that his profiting might appear We do not now expect fire from heaven with Elias to come down upon our sacrifices but we are glad to take the ordinary coals of Gods altar which may by his Word and Spirit going along with our pains and prayers both enlighten our minds and kindle our hearts so as to make us burning and shining lights in Gods house which is his Church Truly those proud and poor wretches who know no coals but those of their own chimney-corners may possibly have a few embers on their hearths or in their potsheards they may like dark lanthorns have a bit of a farthing-candle in them that shines with a little dim and dubious light on one side onely as in the smatterings of some plain primer-knowledge which they have gathered either by superficiall reading the Scriptures or by hearing some Sermons heretofore from the able Ministers of England or by gleaning a little out of the plainest of their writings but 't is most apparent that on three sides of them that is for Grammaticall skill historicall knowledge and polemicall learning they are so horridly black and dark that they seem fitter implements to bring in such ignorance irreverence Atheism superstition and confusion as shall quite put out the Christian and Reformed Religion in this nation reducing all to pristine darkness deformity and barbarity than probable ever to be either propagators purgators or preservers of it which had long ago been over-run with the rank weeds of
Bishops and Presbyters of the Catholick Church the East and West the old and new the Greeks and Latines the Roman and Reformed that all these have conspired to erre so great so universall so constant an errour themselves and to mis-guide you me and all the Christian world in such wayes of receiving and conferring Ecclesiastick order Evangelicall Ministry Church-government as were unchristian yea Antichristian diverse from Christs mind yea contrary to it offensive to the godly odious to God himself as some men have lewdly declamed whose tongues I judge to be no slander since they appear persons of so little conscience and less forehead either grosly ignorant of the practise and platform of Antiquity or most uncharitably impudent in branding so many thousands of godly Bishops and other gracious Ministers both in England and all other places who were justly famous in their generations for their learning and piety as if they were either so many blind guides or so many bold intruders meer usurpers juglers impostors hypocrites as if to gratifie their own private ambitions they had from the very beginning in the sight and in despite of S. John and other Apostolick Pastors perverted the way of Christ as to that Ministeriall power Church-order which he had appointed setting up of their own heads a paternall presidency or Episcopall eminency instead of these newly discovered wayes of either a Presbyterian parity or a popular Independency by which Presbyters and people in common challenge to themselves the sole possession dispensation and managery of all Ecclesiasticall office power and authority inventions so pragmatick so turbulent so contrariant to one another as well as to the ancient orders of the Church that we in England were happily unacquainted with them till of late years as were all other Churches in the world till this last century who cannot be thought in all former ages to have wanted such Pastors and Teachers such Rulers and Governours as were after Gods own heart to carry on his great work of saving souls in the preserving and propagating of his Church by the Ministers of it If the great cloud of ancient and Catholick witnesses who ever owned all Ecclesiastick power to be magisterially indeed and primarily in Christ but ministerially and secondarily in the Apostles and their successors as to all Church-ministration ordination and jurisdiction which power resided chiefly in Bishops and from them was regularly derived to Presbyters if these I say can fall under your hard censure as either deceived or deceivers yet truly their errour in this point may be the more veniall because the case was not so much as once doubted or disputed for three hundred years in those best and first ages of the Church It will be more charity in their censurers to suspect they wanted ability to see the light of Christs mind and the Apostles examples than honesty to follow them But for my self and other Ministers my Fathers and Brethren of the Church of England who after so high contests about the Ministry of the Church both as to ordination and jurisdiction in which we have examined all Scriptures and rifled all Antiquity if we do still bona fide humbly honestly and conscientiously chuse to follow what seems to us Christian Catholick and uniform antiquity rather than any partiall and divided wayes of novelty I hope we are excusable to you if not commendable how ignorant or obstinate soever we seem to others who think we ought to be confounded if we will not be converted or rather perverted by them But if you do indeed judge that after so clear demonstrations and potent convictions from Scripture and Antiquity which either Geneva or Edenburgh or Amsterdam or New-England have alledged we do still persist in our Primitive opinions and Catholick Errours touching the office power and derivation of the Evangelicall Ministry and Authority such as was established in this Church of England meerly out of either passion pertinacy and obstinacy or for private interests sinister ends and secular policies if you can think us so base and false such sots and beasts so unworthy of the names of Ministers Christians Englishmen or men if this be your sense of us truly you and the whole State shall do but an act of high Justice speedily to cast us all out as well Presbyters as Bishops for unsavoury salt to expose us yet more upon the dunghill of vulgar contempt and worldly poverty which some Satyrick tongues and pens have earnestly importuned and petulantly endeavoured against all the ancient Ministers and orderly Clergie of England under the name of Prelaticks and Episcopall If the bitter and bold invectives of spitefull Papists and fierce Separatists of rash Presbyterians and rude Independents of Erastians and Anabaptists if these have been or can be made good to you against the Ministry and ordination of the Church of England against all its Bishops and Presbyters both in office and exercise as if we had not either before or since the Reformation any due ministeriall office or authority no true ordination or succession little of ministeriall gifts and less of graces no sound doctrine faithfully preached no Sacraments rightly consecrated no holy mysteries lawfully celebrated no Church-discipline dispensed no right government constituted no true Ministry or authoritative Ministers any way deserving either love or honour from you and your posterity If all your and our faith repentance charity and other graces be in vain if your Christian peace and hopes be all but imaginary if neither we are made true Ministers of Christ nor you true Members or Disciples of Christ if all your and your fore-fathers piety devotion charity Christianity hath been onely a fantastick pageantry a mummery and mockery of Religion Christianity and Reformation if hitherto you have onely been deluded and abused in so high concernments of your consciences and souls to eternity truly 't is but high time for you and your new Common-weale to offer up the wretched remnant of those Bishops and Presbyters who have yet survived the calamities and contempts of these times and who yet retain their former judgement ministeriall office and holy orders conformably to the Church of England to be an acceptable Sacrifice a welcome Holocaust or much longed-for Burnt-offering to the malice of their adversaries and persecutors both Gog and Magog first to the more secret but implacable despite of Papists who have infinitely longed and no less rejoyce to see poverty obscurity silence scorn division confusion extirpation to be the portion of the English Clergie whom they heretofore either envied or dreaded beyond the Ministry of any Christian or Reformed Church in all the world next you shall in so doing highly gratifie the bitter and bolder enmity the fouler-mouth'd fury of all other sharp-tongu'd brazen-fac'd and heavy-handed Schismaticks who have a long time grudged at the Clergie of England envying both Bishops and Presbyters their honours liberties livelihoods and lives prompted hereto partly by their own
heavy sharp persecutions fixed by the solidity and patience honoured by the charity and constancy of Christian people even all these solid supports of Religion are sought by some men to be either sawn in sunder or to be cut into chips and shavings by their infinite scrupulosities by their importune longing after novelties by their affectations of Schisms and separations and usurpations Alas how many poor souls rather weak than wicked of easie heads yet honest hearts have in these later years since the vertigo of Religion befell this Nation ravelled out their time and ended their dayes in Obs and Sols in cavilling and contending in shifting their sides and parties in seeking and shaking in ranting and raving in quarrelling and jangling about their Religion What new models of Churches what new methods of worshipping God what new forms for Ministry and Ministers have distracted and distorted them while they have been picking and chusing what way they could best fancy and with most advantages follow Thus poor mortalls who have infinite sins to be pardoned and infinite wants to be supplied who have precious and immortal souls to be saved by the happy improvement of their short uncertain moment are by a pragmatick vanity continually itching and scratching while they should be cleansing and healing sceptically and miserably disputing and doubting while they are decaying and dying while they should in all piety and prudence by sound faith and serious repentance be doing that great work which is evidently set forth in the Word of God and faithfully delivered unto them by the Ministers of his Church Behold the terrours of death prevent them Eternity presseth upon them before they are resolved what side to take when to begin where to fix what to hold fast the flower of age passeth gray hairs are here and there giddiness in their heads stupor in their minds hardness in their hearts searedness in their conscience a Manichean dotage and delirancy seiseth upon them before ever they are resolved whether the Scriptures be the true onely and sufficient revelation of the Word and will of God whether it be their duty to live righteously soberly and holily in this present world toward all men whether this Church of England and all the Churches of Christ in all ages have not till now cheated them and all the world whether there be any Ministers in the Church of England that are duly set over Christian people in the Lord to whom they owe double honour whether they may not in some cases follow their own fallacious fancies and other mens flattering suggestions rather than the Scriptures plain and pregnant precepts in order to carry on the covetous ambitious factious fanatick and novell designs of such as call themselves godly whether they may not in some junctures of times and things when opportunity suits with their lusts and worldly interests dispense with Gods revealed will in his word that they may fulfill his secret will hinted as they suppose by his providences whether in order to advance the glory of God men may not sometimes break his express commands presuming that then they please God best when they most please or profit themselves as the onely people of God These strange scrupulosities or extravagancies rather in Religion do ordinarily not onely intangle but debauch the minds of common people when once they please themselves with inordinate liberties and ramblings in Religion which fill their heads and hearts with such snarlings and intrigues as resemble those deformed knots of burres which colts get upon their manes and tails when they run loose upon heaths or commons they are easily got on but very hardly shaken off or cleared mens interests lusts and passions once leavening their Religion and blinding no less than biassing their judgments it is not imaginable what sport the Devil makes with them and with what compasses and fetches of godliness he plays his game by them Have we not enough and too much hitherto in England of verball sanctity and titular Saints not after the Catholick Christian account which was Scripturall and orderly unblamable and charitable most imitable and honourable in an uniform and constant holiness full of equity and charity purity and sincerity but upon new notions names and factions We have sects of self-canonizing Saints as well as self-ordaining Ministers every petty Schismatick every solitary Seeker every extatick Quaker every Independent Noveller every Presbyterian temporiser each of these have learned of late to tip their tongues crown the heads of their parties with these precious names which are the ambition of Angels the beauties of heaven and glory of God himself And this they do not in a way of charitable communion and Christian emulation as allowing others with them an interest in that honour which I have the charity to believe some of the soberest in most of those sects may deserve but peculiarly and exclusively as if none that had or still have communion with the Church of Engl. either as Bishops or Presbyters or people ever had or have any right or claim to be called or esteemed Saints yea some of the most noysome weeds of late grown up in the garden of this Church the most vile polluted and profane wretches affect to style themselves the onely herbs of grace hereby causing the silly people to mistake hemlock for parsley and to gather hen-bane for hearts-ease Thus while either with great superstition many men scruple or with great pride they disdain to give the name honor of Saints to those holy men and women whom the judgement of the Catholick Church or the Scripture-Records have ever counted and called Saints yet they very superciliously and Pharisaically arrogate nay some monopolize these Titles to themselves and their comrades as absolutely and magisterially as Popes have done that of His Holinesse though they be never so black and abominable as some Popes even by Roman writers are reported to have been in the darkness and degeneracy of times very monsters of men and prodigies of all impiety such as Guicciardine describes Pope Alexan. the sixth a Father worthier of such a Son as Caesar Borgia or the Duke of Valentinois was than to enjoy so high a place of paternal presidency in the Church of Christ For what I pray can be more unsaintly than to desire yea delight and glory as some in England now do in most unjust and uncharitable actions in immoderate revenges in the poverties disgraces and dejections of their lawfull Pastors in the divisions distractions and destructions of that nobly Christian and Reformed Church in whose bosome they were duly baptized and instructed legitimately begotten wholsomely nourished and carefully educated as Christians and as Reformed to all excellent proportions of piety What is less Saintly than for Christians to mutiny nay rebell as S. Cyprian calls it against those reverend Fathers orthodox and godly Bishops and other worthy yea excellent Ministers to whom they and their fore-fathers do really owe themselves as
who commonly were most imperious when the Church had most peace and civil prosperity but the Presbyterian thunder and Independent lightning urged most upon all Bishops and all Episcopall Ministers then when they were most scared pillaged and harrased by a civil war when most tossed by those sad storms and almost overwhelmed by the impressions of those sad dissentions Then then was it that Bishops and other Episcopall Ministers whose consciences were guided in their judgements by the wisdome of this Church and Nation together with all other Christian Churches in all ages having lost their clokes in the wars must be deprived of their coats also chiefly for their innocent opinion and honest adherency to Catholick Episcopacy then was it that where Episcopacy had at any time and that by special command from their Governours silenced or sequestred refractory or turbulent Ministers by tens or hundreds possibly Presbytery and Independency inflicted either those mulcts or terrours at least upon thousands of Ministers dissenting from them not as to the Religion established or Laws in force in England but meerly as to their private opinions and principles about Church-government Hence so many learned pious and painful Preachers since the civil digladiations ceased had been condemned to chains of everlasting darkness to remediless distresses both they and their families if there had not been some more generous mercy and connivence shewed than those mens spirits intended or can well bear Through which miseries and terrours many Ministers gray hairs have been brought down with sorrow to their graves After all which dreadful severities either intended or executed against the Episcopall Clergie yet as far as I can see the condition of any sort of Ministers now in England is not any whit better as to the generality nor comparable to what the Clergie enjoyed in former times who in my judgement might well have born the yoke of Episcopacy with as little disparagement and with as much ease and honour every way as they have for some years done the examination and inspection the rebukes and frowns the terrours and jurisdictions of Major Generals or Countrey Committees not onely in secular and military but even in religious respects among which few I believe were to be found equal or exceeding such Bishops and other grave Divines as England afforded both able Preachers and excellent Governours much more fitted in all respects except their swords to be the superintendents of Ministers being of the same education office and calling than most of those men can be who are generally so much Heteroclites different from learned men both in their breeding learning studies and course of living that even from hence they have sometimes secret Antipathies even against all Ministers or Clergy-men as persons of another genius of more refined minds and if men were impartially weighed of greater worth and merits As then I cannot find that Ministers of any new name form title and extractions whatsoever have much mended their condition by that great alteration they have made or sought in this Church and State so I am sure their mutual enmities and divisions do very much heighten their common afflictions and add exceedingly to that general darkness and diminution in all respects civil and sacred which is come or coming upon them as upon wicked men in the strict account of Gods justice or as weak men in the vulgar process of mans severity Indeed the worst of Ministers miseries they generally owe to themselves who in piety and prudence above all men should by united counsels and cares avoid them because it is sport to the most and worst of men to see those men together by the ears hating despising biting and devouring one another who are esteemed the severe censurers of other mens sins and follies sharp curbs to the childish petulant and licentious humours of people Ministers scufflings and contests with one another is beyond any Cock-fighting or Bear-baiting to the vulgar envy malice profanenesse and petulancy In the midst of all which sufferings first from Divine Justice which calls upon every one to examine the plague of his own heart next from humane ingratitude and insolency though every sober and prudent Minister cannot but see that precipice and gulph of irreligion irreverence and contempt to which the Reformed Religion and the whole office of the Ministry is now falling in England through the endless capricios and extravagances chiefly of some Ministers though most Ministers on all sides that have any learning worth or abilities for that office do generally agree in the same Scriptures and Sacraments in the same Faith and Salvation in the same God and Saviour in the same Graces and Vertues in the same Doctrine for morals and Mysteries in the same Precepts and Promises in the same holy duties and blessed hopes yet even these Ministers which is a thousand pities are sharply and for ought I can see unless God work miracles upon some of their spirits and tempers resolutely and eternally divided by those wedges of differences touching external Church-order and Discipline the manner of worship and power of managing of Church-government so that the way of peace few have known nor are they patient to learn contrary to their presumptions To recant their errours they are ashamed remit their rigour they must not lest they abate their parties and followers exchange their animosities as men for moderations becoming brethren and Christians they will not lest their credit decay and their factions abate lest those shews and shadows of popular empire vanish which they have seemed or fancied themselves to enjoy upon these accounts of rare inventions and new models of Reformation Ministry c. All which must by some men be kept up though all things else do fall to the ground though the Church of England lies languishing and sighing weeping and bleeding though the Reformed Religion is deformed decaying dying though both piety and sincerity be much dispirited though they cannot but see Ichabod wrote upon all their foreheads though all Ministerial order office employment and authority as to mens inward respect and consciences no less than in their outward reverence and obedience is infinitely slackned and in many places as well as in many hearts quite dissolved though the Catholick Character or Christs cognizance of Christians which is sincere charity be much defaced the Devils badges of factious confederacies be much worn though the purity and simplicity the warmth and worth the words and works of true Religion be much out of fashion giving way to fanatick follies and impudent vanities daily vented in every place though the beauty serenity of the true Christian Religion as of old and of the well-reformed Religion as it was of later years well established in Engl. be much hidden defaced disguised by many hypocritical masks new dresses though the palpable cunning of some men hath taught them to abuse this credulous age by shaving off the hair primitive ornament of this Church which was
share proportion and capacity hath now if not altogether almost quite driven themselves and all others of that calling name and profession out of that paradise of peace plenty and respect which they did heretofore as Ministers enjoy in England and still might have done if they had used such modesty prudence and piety as best became wise and worthy men who had been masters of any prudence and providence But now alas who ever professeth to be a Minister of the Gospel in England not as an interloper or mungrel who ekes out his other mechanick trade by putting the new patch of a plebeian Preacher to that old garment for these wretches are deservedly despicable to all consciencious sober and ingenuous men but even those who have destinated and confined themselves wholly to the Ministeriall work and function whatever account they go upon for the derivation of their mission ordination and authority whether Episcopall Presbyterian Independent or Plebeian yet if they make their Ministry their work and businesse and not their wantonness and sport if they give themselves to that painful plough and sacred husbandry which tills rocky hearts and sowes in hopes of an eternall harvest they shall be sure to find work enough both to do and to suffer enemies enough to encounter with indignities more than enough to digest necessities enough to contend withall at their very best estate they are altogether vanity accounted as the scorn and out-casts of the people the filth and off-scouring of all things by some party or other Even those Ministers that fancy themselves most favoured by the potent or impotent by Prince or people yet still they are attended with many evil eyes bitter speeches contemptuous reproches spitefull affronts from some side or other This this is the portion of Ministers of all sorts to drink this is the cup which vulgar liberty and their own dissentions have mingled for them as to all civil respects and worldly enjoyments CHAP. XXVII TRuly they had need make much of good consciences for little comfort else is left to most of them as to any civil splendour competency or certainty in this world Look but to the point of estate and that moderate subsistence which all ingenuous industrious men may justly expect and aim at for themselves and their relations in the way of honest labour no mens salary subsistence or maintenance is generally so dubious and uncertain so arbitrary and hazardous so burdened and exhausted so thin driven and as it were wire-drawn both by their own necessities and other mens injurious sharkings insomuch that many Ministers very well-deserving are reduced not onely to tenuities but to difficulties necessities extremities they are forced to live by faith and some of them have as I have heard even died with famine others had so perished if charity had not interposed wanting those necessary supports which their aged and languishing condition did require The truth is not one of ten I might say of an hundred of any sort of common people make it a matter of conscience to pay them their dues if they can hold their livings few do pay them without delayings defalkings and defraudings many people make it a great point of conscience to pay them nothing either by the Laws of Justice or Gratitude Ministers must in most places onely learn how to want for in few they shall ever learn how to abound Many of them have been a long time quite turned out of Gods Husbandry from their Livings and Labours many such as have leave to labour have most-what their labour for their paines forced to study how to live when they should live to study such as should dispense the bread of eternall life and consecrate the Sacramentall bread which is the Communion of Christs blessed Body to his Body the Church these are solicitous for that perishing bread which is the staffe of this momentary life Many Angels of Christs Church and Stewards of his houshold are exposed many wayes and many times to sordid necessities and scurrilous indignities The chief Pastors and ablest Shepherds are very much levelled to the meanest of the flock while yet the weakest and most scabbed sheep affect to be shepherds the very abjects of the people every where dare if they list contemne their Ministers to their faces they make no scruple yea they take pleasure to be petulant peevish refractory and insolent even in publique The ayme of many is to have such Preachers as shall be not Fathers Rulers and Heads in the Church but either as sequacious and flexible tayles following the frowns and flatteries of the people on whose good will they must depend if they will eate or as firebrands of unquenchable factions engaging the populacy to infinite parties and sects under the notion of new Ministers and new Religion These these are the treatments these the methods used by some to bury not the dead carkases of Ministers in the graves of common people which fact is branded in King Jehoiakim as a token of great irreligion to God and irreverence to the Prophet Uriah but they seek to cast them yet alive into a most plebeian state the graves of ignominie poverty contempt and shame yea many hope at length to make the Reformed Clergie or Ministery of England as odious as those Heathen Priests became when as the Church-Historians tell us their Temples were rifled when their despicable Deities their deformed Idols and worm-eaten gods were discovered Nor is this deplorable estate befaln those incruders onely who from the basest of the people have of late consecrated themselves to serve those calves that list to set them up or follow them but many great Prophets like Jeremy stick to this day in the mire and dirt of those dungeons into which they are cast others are become miserable as Eli's posterity crouching for a morsell of bread even to their enemies I mean those factious and sacrilegious spirits who would be glad to see the most learned Ministers in England advanced to no higher preferment than Musculus was in Germany who though an excellent Preacher and Writer yet was forced for his livelyhood sometime to help a Weaver at his Loome otherwhile to work as a Scavenger in purging the Towne-ditch Nâ—r is this a Parable of Misery or an artificiall and Theatrick Tragedie made by me No I solemnly protest to you my honoured Countrymen the World affords not greater more numerous or more calamitous objects of Christian pity and humane charity than are many Ministers at present in England if you consider their calling their abilities their education and their sad condition Many of them are already implunged into the horrible pit of darknesse others are upon the very brink and precipice of extreme poverty meannesse and contempt through the trialls or displeasures of God executed by the restlesse malice and immoderate revenge of some men against this Church its Ministry and the Reformed Religion whose spite and passion
have much over-born of late years as by a new unwonted and ponderous bias the ancient noble genius and generous piety of this Nation which was by no people under Heaven heretofore exceeded in its honourable munificence yea magnificence toward their God and Saviour toward learned and religious men especially those who had the honour to be their Teachers Governours and Guides to heaven No men had more priviledges and immunities no men had more tranquillity and leisure to be good none had more means and encouragements to be good and to doe good to live holily hospitably honourably no men had abilities opportunities and hearts to doe more works of piety and charity both to rich and poor great and small both transient and permanent occasionall and monumentall than the Clergie of England Witnesse the severall goodly Foundations and liberall Endowments which the Ecclesiasticks of England have either themselves erected or perswaded others to Found and Endow to Gods glory to the good of Mankind and the honour of the Nation But now alas as the Estates of most Ministers are so small that they hardly reach to their own necessities so their influence upon other mens estates and minds is almost as little They are despised by many valued by few scarce loved by any and honoured almost by none they are all reduced to such a timorous sneaking servile arbitrary dependant and plebeian proportion Nothing grand conspicuous magnificent honourable or venerable is upon any of them especially as to vulgar eyes and censure who are never too liberall of their courtesie civility and respect to Ministers much lesse when they find them at a low ebbe as to the esteem of their betters the rich the noble and the mighty For with common people Learning Wisdome and all intellectuall excellencies generally signifie little or nothing if they see nothing of power authority plenty splendour or eminency in men by which they either hope to be benefited or feare to be punished Certainly that part of the Clergie of England were extreme out as to all Politicks who fancied that common people yea or the better sort of mankind were so good-natur'd as to value them most for Ministers when they enjoyed least as men Angelick vertues doe not weigh so much in the worlds balance as houses lands revenues preferments and honours doe A golden calfe easily tempts people to worship it while desolate and wooden vertues are despised yea they much mistook the interest of Christian and Reformed Religion as well as of the Ministery in England who thought it would turne to any account of honour and advancement of Reformation to serve the Clergie as Hanun did Davids servants not onely stripping them of their upper garments and those comely ornaments which became Gods Ambassadours but cutting off their nether garments and necessary coats to such a curtail'd proportion as renders them both ashamed of themselves and ridiculous to others The reall impoverishings sufferings and abasings of many Ministers have been very great in all bitter extremities nor are the fears terrors or dejections of those few or small who have scaped best who are still permitted either by their gentler neighbours or the lesse severe Lay-Bishops of later inspection to earn their bread with the sweat of their brows For even of these Ministers many of them dare scarce demand their wages when they have dearly deserved it nor can they tell how with safety and peace to get it when they have hardly earned it so terrified and over-awed so threatned and reproched are they some by peevish parishioners others by separating straglers and a third sort which is a very Epidemicall mischief by sharking and shuffling dilatory and grumbling pay-masters who think they deal very bountifully with their Ministers if they pay them at the years end with some difficulty and many importunities which looks very like pure begging after the rate of two shillings in the pound for their Tythes when they are bonâ fide worth foure five or six shillings Few yea very few as I said make it any point of Conscience in Law Religion or Gratitude to doe justice to their Ministers so as their rights are assigned them by Mans laws Few scruple to rob deny shark detain and immodestly to delay the payment of their dues even according to their own agreements If the poore Minister complains though never so softly and whisperingly if Necessities so pinch him that he must either cry aloud or starve with his wife and children if he have so much spirit and courage as he dares roundly to demand or to urge the Law in his behalf presently he is scared with the menaces of some proling Sequestrator or some surly Aproniere who being the fag-end or dregs of a Countrey-Committee and sowred either with Anabaptisticall leven or other factious principles thinks he does God good service to threaten to terrifie to torment to rout to undoe such a quarrelsome Minister who dares thus far to own himself his calling his condition and his rights by Law especially if the Minister be known to be of the Episcopall judgment a lover and honourer of the Church of England and have a Living worth the losing O what arts and policy what windings and shifts what complyings and cringings must this poore perplexed Minister use to fence himself against the crafty agitations of his spitefull neighbours and those pragmatick pieces who in every corner doe hover over the heads of Ministers as Kites doe over Pigeons How many times have Ministers been affronted publiquely even in their Churches amidst Divine Offices and had been much more even to the outraging of their persons if either the piety or the policy of those in power had not intervened and in time repressed this intolerable insolency which was never heard of never indulged never connived at in any Nation under heaven that owned any publique veneration service or Religion to their God If some stop and restraint had not for shame been given to these profane enormities certainly by this time no true or worthy Minister should have opened his mouth in publique but he should have been smitten on the mouth as Ananias commanded them to use St. Paul by some of those rude and facinorous Assassinates whose design is to silence and extirpate all the Reformed Orthodox and orderly Clergie of England not onely Bishops as the Apostolick roots but even all sober Presbyters as the branches of Ecclesiastick ordination For besides the private scorns and contests no lesse than publique affronts which Ministers have personally sustained their enemies have proceeded many times to give even publick alarms to all the tribe function by rude Pamphlets bitter libellings and insolent Petitions importuning an utter extirpation of the Calling Ordination and Succession such as Haman designed against the whole Nation of the Jews together with a total alienation or confiscation of all the setled maintenance of Ministers by Glebes and Tithes At which morsel some mens mouths have a long time
its strength and materialls from the Scripture its model manner and composure from the counsell wisdome experience and authority not onely of this Church of England but of the Primitive Ancient Catholick Church in all ages and places against all which few men had heretofore the confidence or indeed impudence in any grand part much lesse in the whole to oppose their private fancies and suggestions Now no petty people are so clownish or inconsiderable but they dare to cavil question or deny almost every point owned as Religion in the Church of England I shall not need to instance in the grand Mysteries of the Trinity Christs Divinity his satisfaction to divine justice in the resurrection of the body or the souls immortality nor yet in the point of Originall Sin or naturall depravedness and defects of the necessity of Divine Grace of Christians imperfection in the best state of this life of the right use of the Morall Law and the true bounds of Evangelicall Liberties All which with many other grand concernments of Religion are daily not onely ventilated and discussed but contradicted and denyed by many Modern Arrians Socinians Pelagians Antinomians Novatians and others besides the constant Controversies of Papists so far that nothing almost is left sound or setled among us nothing that any Minister can preach or practice as Religion but somewhere or other it finds much snarling quarrelling and gain-saying Every crosse-grain'd piece of pride or peevishnesse or ignorance adventures to bark at what they list yea to bite tear and worry the reputation and integrity together with the learning and ability of any yea all the true Ministers of England who are become miserable not onely by that great and unintermitted pains which they must take if they will be faithfull to their own and other mens souls nor yet by that biting poverty or tenuity of their worldly condition for the most part of them which is so hardly to be relieved by those dribliting pittances which with tedious attendings and shamefull importunings they can get in But beyond both these Ministers are in such a state of perpetuall inquietude as is like that of very poore people who are onely rich in vermine and so troubled with them that they are not permitted night or day to take their rest or to enjoy that sweet sleep and quiet repose indulged to all creatures by which they might sometime deceive their sore labour and forget both their miseries and their sorrowes For when all is done that belongs to a sober Ministers ministeriall duty and charge after indefatigable paines continuall studies invincible patience which like Ostridges must digest the iron morsels and manners of this age when despairing and made incapable of any honorary rewards in Church or State answerable to his gravity and merit every way he onely covets for some ingenuous rest and tranquillity under the shadow and protection of that Church and State which he hath a long time faithfully served yet then even in his age and at all times he must be summoned with daily alarmes and provoked to successive duels by all sorts of factious and fanatick Spirits new or old who list to be contentious T. though he be wearied and almost tired with the long and constant fatigations of his Ministery though he be almost naked and unarmed as to the polemick or controversall part of Divinity yet must he be compassed with Briars and Thornes frequently molested with the perverse disputes and endlesse janglings of those who have no reverence to this Church nor the Catholick Churches constant opinion or practise grounded upon Scripture and manifested by undeniable Tradition The Ministers of England are the common Butt at which every fooles bolt is presently shot If any be lesse apt for disputation through unwontednesse weaknesse depressions poverty and infinite dis-spiritings and so possibly lesse able on the sudden to defend that truth and that Church for which he hath dared to be a suffering Martyr and Confessour against the bitter arrowes and subtill Sophistries of his many-mouthed Adversaries modern Sectaries who make what use they can of the Philistines files and grindstones the wonted cavils sophistries and fallacies of the Papists and Jesuits against this Church the seeming disadvantages of any one Minister when he is publickly surprized and in the very Church assaulted by such impudent Antagonists these are presently voted among the vulgar as the totall rout baffle and disparagement of the whole Ministeriall order yea and of the Church of England As if none of its Fathers or Sons its Bishops or Presbyters so cried up heretofore for their excellent learning dexâ—â—rous fortitude were able to encounter these doughty Champions these men of Gath whose glory now is rather to defie and over-awe the Israel of God by force than to fight lawfully by the rules of right disputation from Scripture or Reason If the enemies of the Church of England would lay aside their Swords and Pistols their Troopers and Musketeers their Guns and Canons which have been so oft their Seconds and so alwaies a terror to the true Clergy of England if they would keep to the lists and weapons of Scripture and reason of Catholick example and constant tradition which armes are proper for Religious contests I believe they would be easily so matched in every point that they would have no cause long to boast of having the better of any Learned and Grave Minister who undertakes to assert the cause of the Church of England both in its Doctrine and Discipline Which is indeed assisted not onely by the Spirit and suffrage of all estates in this Church as Christian and reformed as ancient and modern but also by the wisdome and consent the judgement and practise of all the famous and flourishing Primitive Churches throughout the world so that the justification and honour of the Church of England depends not upon any one Ministers weaknesse or ability but upon that solidity juncture and conformity it hath in all the main parts of it with the Catholick Church of Christ in all Ages He that fights against one fighteth against all he must confute them all before he can justly condemn the Church of England which hath for so many years laboured between the Furnace and the Anvill under the restlesse files and hammers of its various Adversaries who have resolved sooner to die than to suffer the Church of England or its orderly Ministers to live in peace CHAP. VI. AMong other Sects that like swarms are of late risen up against the Church of England and its ancient Ministery none are more numerous petulant and importune none more busie bold and bitter than the haughty-spirited and hotter-headed Anabaptists For all of them have not at least shew not the like horns and hoofs some are persons of more calm grave and charitable tempers These novel Disputers against and despisers of all Infant-Baptisme whom no ancient Church ever knew no lateâ— Reformed Church but ever spewed out and abhorred
these now desire to appear as Goliah in their compleat Armour boldly braving the whole Church of England and this not onely as great Scripturists but great Artists too yea they would seem great Statists Pragmaticks and Politicians They pretend to be curious inspectors beyond all men into all religious mysteries yea rigid and exact Anatomizers of all both Modern and Ancient Churches subtile Insinuators into all Interests and grand Modellers of all Polities both Civil and Ecclesiasticall aiming no doubt in time to erect some Saintly soverainty for their party in England though their former ambitious attempts have every where miscarried as in severall parts of Germany so of late in Ireland These Anti-paedo-baptists who are such hard-hearted Fathers such unkind and unchristian Parents to their Children as to deny them those distinctions and indulgences of divine grace and favour which God of old granted to the Jewish infants and which the Catholick Christian Churches in all ages have thankfully accepted and faithfully applied to the Children of professed believers as a priviledge and donation renewed to them by Christ and confirmed by the Apostles these Birds glorying like Ostriches in their negligence toward their young ones are risen up to be not onely nimble Disputants against children but valiant combatants against men For they find after the way of the world more is got in one year by the terrour of armes than in ten yeares by the shew of arguments And although the pretended principle at first of that party was to go with soft feet as Lions and Cats do hiding and preserving their Clawes till there is use of them crying up Peace and crying down all Warre and sword-work upon Christs or the Gospels score yet the latter sort of their Disciples being in hopes to become more regnant and triumphant have interpreted the meaning of their Grandsires to be onely in prudence and caution not in piety and conscience that fighting was onely forbidden them when they had cause to despair of getting the better or just fear to be worsted but if Providence gives them honest hopes and advantages by the arm of flesh and the sword of Steel to set up the Kingdom of Jesus Christ and his spirit they are ready with S. Peter not onely to fight for Christ but to cut off Malchus his eare yea and his head too if they find any Christian Prince or Prelate Magistrate or Minister stand in their way or if he seemeth to fight against that Anti-infantall Christ which they say is so predominant in them that he ought by their assistance to reform and rule all the Christian world first beginning to destroy the Baptismall rights of Christians Infants and then to go on to invade the rights of their parents both Civil and Ecclesiasticall The ancient Church as in England so every where adored a Saviour who invited infants to him and blessed them These men set up a Christ who will not endure the Infants of his Church and people to come neer him or have any relation to him as Lambs of the flock to that great Shepherd Thus the Papists on the one side agitate an endlesse controversie with this Church of England and all Reformed Churches touching the Lords Supper First in not restoring the Cup to Lay-men agreeable to Christs institution and intention which was best declared by the practise of the Apostles and the Catholick Church after them for a thousand years next in their stating precisely and explicitely as matter of faith under a grievous curse and Anathema the manner of Christs presence in that Sacrament which as we confesse to be very mysterious adorable and ineffable yet most reall true and effectuall to a worthy Receiver according to the proper capacity of Faith receiving its object so we conclude that it is not in that grosse and contradictive manner which they have lately invented and imposed upon the Churches credulity by way of Transubstantiatings which is a strange nulling of the substance nature of the signes Bread and Wine owned as such by the Apostle after consecration and inducing the intire substance of Christs Body and Blood under every crum and drop of those accidents or shadows which seem still to be Bread and Wine to the four Senses And this must be first done even then when Christ was yet at table with the Disciples and had not yet suffered so that they corporally eat of Christs Body made of the Bread when he gave them the Bread and was at once in their eyes and between their teeth Which strange and unheard-of manner of super-omnipotent transmuting or transposing or annihilating of Substances the Papists owe more to the wit and subtilties of some Schoolmen of later ages who scorned to seem ignorant of any thing or to be posed in any Christian mystery than either to the verdict of their senses to the principles of true Philosophy to the grounds of sound Reason to the Analogy or tenour of Scriptures in parallel Mysteries or Sacraments or last of all to the Testimony of the Primitive Fathers and ancient Churches as hath been amply and unanswerably proved by many Reformed Divines at home and abroad Who though they spake very high things of this blessed Sacrament as to its holy use end and relation to the Lord Jesus yet they thought it enough for Christians to believe adore and admire the invisible mysticall and spirituall yet reall presence of Christ in it for truly and fully present they ever believed him to be though they confessed themselves ignorant how and so were both humbly and modestly silent of the manner of his presence In which bounds if the later Church of Rome could have contained it self I believe much trouble and misery much blood-shed and persecution had been saved in these Western Churches which are now divided and destroyed upon no point more than this of the Lords Supper which was the greatest Symbol of Christians communion with Christ and one another till the Papall arts and policies did so maim and mishape that blessed Sacrament of the Lords Supper as to make it a ground of everlasting contention On the other side the peevish and petulant Anabaptists who for many years past almost since the first day-spring of the Reformation visited these Western Churches have by the pens and tongues the writings and preachings of many learned and godly men been brayed in the mortar of Scripture-testimonies Ecclesiastick practise Catholick custome and tradition yet wil not their folly depart from them These I say have heretofore in Transilvania Westphalia and many parts of Germany and the adjacent Countreys and of late in England since it became Africa Septentrionalis the Northern Africa full of Serpents and fruitfull in Monsters with greater boldnesse and freedome than they ever enjoyed under any Christian Magistrate or in any Reformed Church sharply contested against the other great Sacrament of Baptisme so far as it was in the Church of England and ever hath been in all ages and
successions of Christianity imparted to the Infants of Christian Parents who own their own Baptisme and continue in the Churches communion professing to believe that covenant of God made to them and their children as Gods people or Christs Disciples for the remission of sins original and actual through the blood of Christ Against which gracious sign of the Evangelicall covenant sealing the truth of the Gospel conferring the grace of it also distinguishing as by a visible mark of Church-fellowship the Infants of Christians or believers from those of heathens and professed unbelievers who are strangers to the flock of Christ the Anabaptists have ever since their rise in Germany which is about 130 years been not so much fair and candid disputants as bitter and reprochfull enemies for the most part not modestly doubting or civilly denying it as to their own private judgements with a latitude of charity to such in all the Christian world who from the Apostles dayes have and do retain Infant-Baptisme but as if all the Church had erred till their dayes they imperiously deny it they rudely despise it they scurrilously disdain and mock at the baptisme of Infants as wholly void and null therefore they repeat Baptisme to their Disciples whence they have their name CHAP. VII IN this one vexatious Controversie heretofore happily setled in the Church of England both by doctrine and practise conform to all Antiquity I presume as much hath been said and wrote on either side as the wit of man can well invent or the nature of the thing bear and possibly more than can well agree with Christian Charity on either side if the difference were onely as to a circumstance of time and not about the very essence or substance of our Baptisme against which the spirit and design of the Anabaptists doth so fiercely drive that by absolutely nulling all Infant-baptism in the Church of Christ they might overthrow not onely the honour fidelity and credit of this Church but of all other yea and the whole frame even to the foundation of all Christian ministrations priviledges comforts and communion both in England and all Christian Churches through the world as if all we had done said or enjoyed as Christian Ministers and people had been irregular confused inauthoritative invalid all things of Religion having been begun and continued exhibited and received by such Ministers and people as had no visible right to any Christian duties or priviledges in a Church-communion as having never been baptized after the way which Christ instituted so that their claim to be Christians or Churches is as false and insufficient as theirs is to an estate of which they have no deed seal or seisin but what are false or counterfeit By which high and bold reproch of the Anabaptists against this and all other Churches from the beginning it must follow that contrary to Christs promise the gates of Hell have so long prevailed against the Catholick Church in so great a concern as this Sacrament must needs be which being made void and null as to any initiation obsignation and confirmation of all Evangelicall gifts graces and priviledges it will follow not onely that all the Ministry and ministrations of the Church have been illegitimate invalid irregular being acted dispensed and received by such as had no right title or authority to them being persons unbaptized but also all the faith and repentance all the confessions and absolutions all the celebrations and consecrations of the Lords Supper all the perceptions of grace and spirituall comfort all sense of peace joy love of God and Christian charity all the patience and hopes of all Christians as Believers Confessors Martyrs all must be either very defective of Christs order and method or meerly fancifull and superstitious or grosly presumptuous preposterous and wholly impertinent because wanting the first root of Christian Religion the badge and band of Christs Disciples right or lawfull true and valid Baptisme So that however God guided his Church in all other things aright yet in this it seems to have erred a Catholick errour so far that in stead of one Baptisme which the Apostle urgeth as concurrent with other unities of Christian accord as one God one Faith one Body one Christ one Head c. all which the true Church retained constantly there must have been no Baptisme at all for the greatest part of 1600 years in which time as generally before so universally after the Church had peace all Christians brought their Infants to Baptisme Which abominable consequence or conclusion following the Anabaptistick opinion and practise seems to me so uncharitable so immodest so absurd so cruel so every-way unworthy of any good Christian who understands the fidelity exactnesse and constancy of primitive and persecuted Churches in following the way once delivered to them by Christ and his Apostles from which they were so far from an easie receding that they rather chose to die that this jealousie and scandall rather becomes Turks Jews Heathens Hereticks and Infidels or down-right Atheists than any good Christians so far to charge openly or but secretly indeed to suspect the fidelity honesty and integrity of the Catholick Church nor do I see how any judicious sober and humble Christian can with charity comfort and good conscience entertain and promote so horrid a jealousie and censure of all the Christian world as if having kept the two Testaments intire which I suppose the Anabaptists do not deny or doubt yet they had lost one of the two Sacraments and that which is the first foundation main hinge and centre of all the Churches polity priviledges community and unity in this world both to Christ and to each other It is not my purpose in this place or work which is rather to deplore the lapsed state of this Church than to dispute this or any other point long ago setled in this and all true Churches my aim is not to tire you my honoured Countrey-men with drawing over the rough sand of this controversie at large which hath of late by sharp reciprocations made such deep wounds or incisions on this Churches face and peace agreeable to the practise and spirit of the Anabaptists wherever they come and prevail Onely give me leave since this Anabaptistick poyson is still pregnant in this Nation in order to move your compassions to the Church of England and your love to the truth of God as it is in Jesus to shew you how unjustly She hath and still doth suffer yea and is daily more threatned by this sort of men who upon weak and shallow pretensions seek to overthrow so great so ancient so Catholick so Primitive so Apostolick so Scriptural so Christian a practise and priviledge as that is of baptizing the Infants of Christian Professors First the Anabaptists cannot with any forehead or face of reason and therefore the soberest of them do not deny but that the Infants of Christians have both in respect of sinfull
infamous practises attending that opinion wherewith some of them have taught the world long ago in Germany as lately in England to beware lest in stead of water they baptize both infants and elder people with blood and fire as proclaiming all to be no Christians nor better than Heathens who will not come to their new dippings Their errour is not solitary nor the sting of their schisme either soft or blunt or unvenomous which doth not a little discover their opinion to be as far from the Spirit of Christ as it is from the mind meaning and intent of Christ in his Word nor are they now excusable as Luther at first thought but afterward recanted when he saw the bad and bitter fruits of their new doctrine they cannot now with any colour plead simple or invincible ignorance which now is boyled up by the heat of their spirits to obstinacy contumacy and insolency against this and all Churches both peace and practise for they doe still boldly persist in their tedious errour after so many Scripture-demonstrations cleared and confirmed by the Catholick testimony and practise of the Church of Christ Nor is their judgement or practise in other things accompanied with such meeknesse modesty charity humility and innocency as might render this a veniall errour or tolerable difference which may grow as a weed not very noxious or unsavoury among many sweet flowers of Graces Vertues and good Works like that of S. Cyprian in point of rebaptizing such as Hereticks had baptized which S. Austin calls in that holy man and Martyr a wart or mole in a fair and candid breast to be covered with the vaile of Christian charity But the Anabaptistick fury flies in the very face of this and all Churches pulling out the very eyes of Christians by which they obtained their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 first illumination as Baptisme was anciently called by the Fathers and the Apostolick Author to the Hebrews it not onely sliely picks at but violently strives to overthrow the first foundation of all Christian Faith Profession Polity Order and Church-communion Hence besides its novelty and heterodoxie it riseth naturally from so presumptuous an errour to pertness sharpness tumultuariness sedition haughtiness contempt of all Christian men and Magistrates too who wil not either receive or connive at this and other their imperious errours Who is the◠Minister or other that differs from them be he never so sober grave and holy but he must be vilified reproched and openly railed at by their libellous scurrilous either pens or tongues Their greatest spite and malice lies as the Jesuits most levelled and implacable against the best and ablest Ministers who retain both Catholick Ordination and Baptisme whose successfull labours and excellent lives do most confute this and all other novell fancies while themselves are by the blessing of God justified to all the Christian world not willingly blind to be Ministers not onely of the Letter and Water but of the Spirit Grace and Power Such as desert Catholick Ordination and Government by Bishops give greatest advantage to Anabaptists for the pulling out of one corner-stone in a wall makes way for others easily to follow As all Anabaptists are against Bishops so all the Ancients who are for Infant-baptism as Catholick are for Episcopall Government even S. Jerome himself Not that I think all men who it may be lesse approve Infant-baptisme than that of elder years conceiving that practise to be more clear in the letter of the Scripture have the same calentures and cruell distempers many of them I hope may have sincerity to God-ward and charity to those Christians who in this differ from them But I conceive the tumultuating rude violent and uncharitable Anabaptists with all their Spawn of other Sects have greatly sinned against the Lord Christ and against his Church both in England and elsewhere also against his servants the Ministers of all ages and places whom they have most injuriously slandered and shamefully treated with great scorn malice and all manner of indignities that were within their reach and power whom I pray God to forgive giving them that true repentance which may redeem them from that gall of bitternesse and bond of iniquity in which they seem to lie this is the worst I wish any of them In order to which good desire I thought it not amisse thus far to expresse my judgement and as much as in me lies to justifie after many others in the point of Infant-baptisme the doctrine and practise of my Mother the Church of England and both its Fathers and Sons who have suffered so undeservedly and therefore complain so justly of the mischiefs and miseries befaln and threatening them from this dangerous party and faction who resolve never to be satisfied in their perverse disputes and endlesse janglings who with one puffe blow away all that concurrent strength which in the behalf of Infant-baptisme is truly and solidly mustered up from the Covenant of Grace from the tenour of Scriptures from the proportion of Evangelicall priviledges from the relation which Christians in the Church have to God by Christ from the Catholick custome and practise of all Churches old and new from the joynt suffrages of all Councils Fathers and Church-Historians Against all which cloud and army of Witnesses they bring onely two or three literall allegations partially and incompleatly interpreted They boast much but falsely of Tertullian in this point whom they forsake in many others who was a person though excellently learned and of high parts yet immoderately passionate easily transported and in that very point as I have shewed is either different from himself in other places or to be understood in a meaning limited and occasionall either to the children of Heathens yet untaught and unprofessing Christian Religion or the children of Christians hurried up and down by persecutions which in Tertullians times were if not constant yet very frequent After him they have found in six hundred years one Walafridus Strabo who seemed to scruple Infant-baptism as not of primitive use but shews no grounds of his scruple and at last Ludovicus Vives in his notes of late on S. Austin de civitate Dei is produced as a witnesse against Antiquity a Papist in all things else and in this point differing from his own Church and Communion if it were his opinion and judgement which I see no cause to believe because he proveth nothing he not thinking it unlawfull or vain but perhaps not absolutely necessary to baptize all in infancy to which Nazianzen inclines except in case of death But all these are either single Doctors and private opinions or petty Pygmies and Mushromes compared to those many Heroes that Lebanon of tall Cedars which were all advocates of Infant-baptisme in all Ages and Churches from the Apostles dayes There is not any one of the Ancients doth dogmatically deny it as lawfull or so far doubt and dispute it
the liberty honour and purity of the Church of England For they well knew that the secular interests and Ecclesiastick designes of the Church and Court of Rome ever have been and still are carried on with a mighty tide and strong current not onely of Papal authority and popular credulity as of old but of Learning Eloquence Riches Honor Power Pomp Policy yea with great plausibilities of Piety Sanctity Unity and Charity of later Ages All which popular and potent biasses will easily and unavoidably over-beaer in time as to the generality of people all those feeble resistances or oppositions that can be made by such an equivocall generation and dubious succession of poor despised and dispirited Ministers whatever they are whether of Episcopall Presbyterian or Independent characters who in great part naked and unarmed unfed and unstudied reduced to a sneaking and starveling habitude both of Body and Mind of Honour and Estate will prove pitifull Champions for the true Reformed Religion when they shall neither have just Ability nor justifiable Authority to assert the true and just measures of Religion and true Reformation Who is there that in after-Ages will adventure his Soul his Religion with those men Ministers that can have neither Learning nor Livelihood capable to bear up with their spirits and parties or the Authority and Honour of their calling especially when they are to encounter with such sons of Anak such Zanzummims and Goliahs who will ever appear on the Papall side to defie all Reformation that seems to reproch their deformities Alas will not the predicant or rather mendicant Patrons of so divided Religion and deformed parts of Reformation seem in their own eyes unlesse they be strangely swelled with the puffe and breath of Popularity but as Zanies and Dwarfs as Grasse-hoppers before them with their thred-bare Coats hungry Bellies and servile Spirits How will these that never had means or leisure to advance their studies of Divinity or practise of preaching beyond a modern Synopsis and an English Concordance being raw and infants in dogmatick Truths perfect strangers to Polemick Historick and Scholastick Divinity to Councils Fathers and Languages how will they be affrighted to read or hear of the great names of Baronius Bellarmine Possevine Perron Petavius Sirmundus and many other Grandees of the Roman side great Clerks great Church-men and great Statesmen too who are able to carry with them Troops of Auxiliaries Legions of Assistants being as rich as learned very wise and weighty to use and improve all the strength and advantages they have of Estate and Honour Studies and Parts for the advance of their side in their Errours and Superstitions which of late years their followers have done with unhappy successe and great encrease of their faction against the Reformed Religion of the divided Church of England whose scattered Remains in a short time will be like a flock of silly and helpless Sheep that have neither safe folds nor any skilfull and valiant Shepherds to defend and rescue them CHAP. XXVIII NOr do these wilely Romanists exercise their malice against this Reformed Church onely with their own strength and dexterity but they have other oblique Policies and sinister Practises by which they set on work the hot heads and pragmatick hands of all other Sects who pretend the greatest Antipathies to Popery and yet most promote its interests by their Factions and fanatick Practises by their heedlesse and headlesse their boundlesse and endlesse Agitations which blast all true Reformation and bring in nothing but Division and Confusion For among these there are a sort of people who affect Supremacy in Church and State too a spirituall and temporall Dominion no less than doth the Pope of Rome there are among them many petty Popes who would fain be the great and onely Dictators of Religion whose opinionative pride and projects are as yet of a lesser volume blinder print but they every day meditate agitate new Editions of their power and larger additions to their parties and designes being as infallible in their own conceits as imperious in their spirits and as magisteriall in their censures as the proudest Popes of Rome not doubting to condemn and excommunicate any private Christians and Ministers yea whole Christian Churches yea and the best Reformed in the world such as England was if they be not just of their form and fashion or if they will not patiently submit to their multiform and deformed Reformations by which they daily wire-draw true Reformation to such a small thread that losing its strength and integrity it must needs snap in pieces and become uselesse the strange fires of blind popular preposterous and sacrilegious Zeal so overboyling true Religion and sober Reformation till they are utterly confounded and quenched with such sordid and shamefull deformities as must needs follow their Divisions Distractions and Despiciencies as to all Church-order Christian unity and Ministeriall authority Thus many heady and giddy Professors have been so eager to come out of Babylon that they are almost run out of their wits and far beyond the bounds of good consciences so jealous of Superstition that they are Panders for Confusion so scared with the name of Rome that they are afraid of all right Reason and sober Religion so fearfull of being over-righteous by following vain traditions of men that they fear not to be over-wicked by overthrowing the good foundations of Order Honour Peace and Charity which Christ and his Apostles have laid in his Church fierce enemies indeed against the Idolatry of Antichrist but fast friends to Belial and Mammon to Schisme and Sacriledge which having no fellowship with God and Christ must needs belong to the party of Antichrist which contains a circle of Errours while Christ is the centre of Truth and we know that parts diametrally opposite to each other may yet make up the same circumference and be at equal distance from the centre so may Practises and Opinions which seem most crosse against each other yet as Herod and Pilate alike conspire against Christ and true Religion like vicious extremes which are contrary to each other and yet uncorrespondent with that vertue from which they are divided They are children in understanding who do not already discern and deplore what wise and godly men have long ago foreseen and foretold that by these two Papall policy and fanatick fury the superstitions of the Romanists and the confusions of Schismaticks the happy state of the reformed Church of England was alwayes in danger to be mocked stripped wounded and crucified some men already fancy that they see it weeping and bleeding crying and dying using in its sad expirings the last words of its Saviour first to her God Why hast thou forsaken me next for her Enemies and Destroyers Father forgive them they know not what they do While the Papists on the one side rob God of his glory giving religious worship to Creatures the Sacrilegists on the other side
plat-forme of so-disciplined Churches but not therefore any way the more or better reformed For these are rather as Cyphers adding some number traine and company to the Ministers than signifying ought of themselves further than prudence policy may make use of them But certainly no Religious necessity commands them as a duty and of divine Institution there being an impossibility to find them in every parochial congregation where there is seldome any one man of the Laity who is meet in any kind to be joyned with the Minister in any such authority which claimes to be Sacred and Divine for which God ever provides fitting instruments where he commands to have any use of them God gave the word and great was the company of Preaching Elders Bishops and Presbyters in all ages but of Lay-Elders and Ruling onely we read so little so no use in any Church or age that we may conclude God gave no such word for them The wise God abhors unequall mixtures such as the plowing with an Ox and an Asse and such seems the joyning of Preachers with these Lay-Elders in the discipline and government of the Church the Asse both disgracing and overtoyling the laborious and more ponderous Ox who hath more hindrance than help from so silly and sluggish an assistant Motly and unsociable conjunctions in sowing mislane or wearing linsy-wolsy garments are also forbidden by the Lord as emblems of his abhoring all things that make any uncomely and unsociable confusion which ought chiefly to be avoided in Church-affaires that order solemnity ability and prudence might keep up the Majesty of Religion the Churches venerable discipline and the Ministeriall divine autority even there where no civill Magistrate would own it Yet if any Presbyter be so wedded to these Lay-Elders that he will never be reconciled to Primitive Episcopacy if he be wholly divorced from his dear Elders for my part he shall have my consent to enjoy them upon a politick and prudent account where he may conveniently have use of them For I do not think the outward Government of the Church to be made of such stuffe or fashion which will not in any case either stretch or shrink as those garments might do on the Jewes bodies when they ware them forty yeares in the wildernesse provided all things be done decently and in order with due regard to the maine end and the best examples But if any contend for these Elders upon a divine and strict account of Religion my answer is with St. Paul we had no such custome in England nor the other Churches of Christ in the world for 1400. yeares who were fed and ruled by Bishops and Presbyters as the onely Elders Pastors and Presidents in Ecclesiasticall Government This is sure Presbytery was at first so confident of its sure standing in England where it never yet had any footing since Christianity was planted that it doubted not to make use of such a wooden leg or crutch as Lay-Elders are to support its new Government and discipline which was hereby rendred very popular and specious to many Ministers and other men of vulgar Spirits who were more ambitious of any small pittance of Church-Government to passe through their fingers than judicious to measure and design the true proportions of it or themselves which certainly ought to be most remote from a Democratick temper Church-Government depending not upon many strong rash and rude hands but upon wise heads and holy hearts of which no great store is ordinarily to be found among common and Country-people upon which crab-stocks neverthelesse this graft of Presbyterian government was to be every where grafted on the one side not without mighty applause and great expectation from the meaner-spirited people of England in every parish some of which were to be found not onely among the very Mechanick and Rustick Plebs onely but among some Citizens Gentlemen and Noblemen too who began to have very warme and devout ambitions to enjoy the title of a ruling Elder as a divine honour added to their other civill honours gently submitting their and their posterities tamer necks to such a yoke as neither they nor their fore-fathers ever knew by which one little Minister with two or three of his Elders might be impowered to excommunicate a King and all his Councell as King James expresseth in his sense of their arrogancy But while the common people of Engl. were every where preparing themselves to admire adore or dread yea to entertain and feed with double honour which was required for its due this new and strange beast of Presbytery which rose out of the sea of Scotish broyles and English troubles being as was thought adorned with seven Heads and ten Horns coming forth conquering and to conquer in the midst of so great glory swelling confidences and superfluity of successes behold a little stone of Independency cut out by no hand of Authority riseth up against the great mountain of Presbytery as its Emulator and Rivall This in a short time hath so cloven it in sunder that it hath quite broken its hoped Monopoly of Church-government and Independency having never had any Patent from any Christian King or people heretofore pleads a Patent as doth Presbytery from Christ Jesus which hath been it seems dormant and unexecuted these 1640 years This some more grosse and credulous spirits do easily believe though they never saw the Commission Only as the more acute and nimble Independents besides the more profound and solid Episcopalians eagerly dispute against the usurped Authority of Presbytery alledging that Classicall Provinciall and Nationall Presbyteries are to them much more Apocryphall than Deanes and Chapters Bishops and Arch-bishops so do both of them no lesse urge a pure Novelty besides the fractions and parcellings of Government against Independency tokens of weaknesse imprudence and inconsistency in Government Yet amidst all this stickling the puny of Independency which enjoyed at first the smiles and cajolings of Presbytery counting it an harmless and innocent Novelty because yet unarmed grew up by strange successes and unexpected favours of power to such a stature procerity and pertness that it not onely now justles with Presbytery but it makes it in many places glad to comply yea to curry favour with and to truckle under Independency which challengeth Seniority before Presbytery with much more probability than Presbytery can alledge any authority for its rejecting Catholick Episcopacy it being more evident that particular Congregations were first governed by one sole Apostle Pastor Teacher Bishop or Presbyter present among them than that many Presbyters ever governed the large and united Combinations of Christian Congregations and Churches without some one Apostle or eminent Bishop as chief President among them to which all Church-history consents without any one exception in all the world Thus hath Independency as a little but tite Pinnace in a short time got the wind of and given a broad-side to Presbytery which soon grew a slug when
the new fry of any Factionists or Enthusiasts were known in the English or Christian world Then will the honor of the Reformed Religion recover take root flourish and fructifie again in England when it is by due authority and just severity cleared of all that rust and canker that mossy and barren accretion which of later yeares it hath contracted chiefly for want of those Ecclesiasticall Councils sacred Synods and Religious Conventions which being called and incouraged by civill authority will best do this great work of God and the Church freely and impartially solidly and sincerely learnedly and honestly discussing all things of difference disorder or deformity in Religion These these would by Gods blessing and your encouragement remove in a short time all that putid matter from which the scandals offences and factions do chiefly arise and by which they are nourished in the licentious hearts and lives of some men who dare do any thing that they safely may against Religion These as the ablest and meetest Judges of Religion would soon discerne between the vile and the precious and separate the wheat and the chaffe in Christs floore wisely using the flaile and fan of his word and Spirit CHAP. XV. THerefore is our Religion so miserably lapsed and decayed through the ignorance negligence and impudence of men because it hath not for these many yeares been under such hands as are most proper either for its care and preservation or its cure and recovery Courts of Princes and Councels of State the Spirit of Armies and the Genius of Parliaments are not alone apt agents or instruments for this work though they may be happy promoters and authoritative designers and contrivers of it Saint Ambrose and others of the Ancients observe that it never went well with the sound part of the Church when the disputes of Religion as between the Arrians and the Orthodox were brought into Princes Courts and determined by their Counsellors and Courtiers It was not more piety and modesty than prudence and generosity in Constantine the Great when he had conquered Licinius with other enemies and entirely obtained the Roman Empire when he had power absolute and soveraign enough to have made what Edicts he listed for Religion yet that he then called the Bishops of the Church throughout the Roman world and other venerable Teachers attending them to discusse the differences in Religion to compose the breaches to allay the jealousies to reforme the disorders to search and establish the true faith to confirme the ancient Government to adde vigor to the just Discipline of the Church and due authority to its true Pastors or Bishops All which were happily done by the wisdome piety and moderation of the famous Nicene Council in which Constantine himself was oft present as to his person and Counsell though he never voted or determined any thing of Religion among the Fathers of that glorious Assembly lest he should seem to over-balance or over-awe the truth by his authority or to eclipse the Church by the State This this was that Primitive and Catholick way of Ecclesiasticall Councills and Synods used first by the Apostles and after by all their successors the Martyrly Bishops and Pastorly Confessors of the Church which endured the fiery trialls of heathenish and hereticall persecutions who had Ecclesiasticall Councills and Synods of Church-men for their reliefe and remedy before they had the favour of Christian Princes for their refuge or defence To this proper method for Reforming of any Church and restoring Religion all Princes that were true Patrons and Protectors of the true Church have applied their powers and counsels for the repairing of decayes rectifying disorders condemning heresies vindicating fundamentall truths composing differences and restoring peace in the Church of Christ calling together such Synods and conventions of the Clergy as did beare most proportion to those inconveniences or mischiefes which they sought to remedy either in greater or lesser circuits according as the poyson and infection of Heresie or Schisme had spread it self The welfare of Religion and healing of the Church of Christ was never heretofore left to every private Christians fancy or to particular Presbyters nor yet to single Bishops to act according as their opinions passions and interests might sway them nor was it ever betrayed into the hands of onely secular men either Civill Magistrates or Gentlemen or Tradesmen who are as fit generally for Church-work as Clergy-men are to marshall Armies or to manage battels The building of Gods Tabernacle and his Temple required men of extraordinary gifts and excellent Spirits proper and proportionate to those works As the Leviticall Priests of old did judge not onely of plagues and leprosies but of all controversies about the Law and Religion to whose determination all men were to submit under paine of death And as Aaron standing between the living and the dead stopped the spreading of a plague and mortality among the people even so hath the Lord ordained the Evangelicall Ministers to be as shepherds feeders defenders and rulers in his Church also as Physitians and Fathers of the flock of God whose lips ought to preserve knowledge so as to discerne both the contagion and the cure applying as their duty is such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sound Doctrine and Discipline as are both wholesome food and healing physick Certainly all other Lay-undertakers and tamperers with Reformation and Religion are but as Empiricks and Mountebanks having neither that ability nor that authority which is requisite in Religious undertakings But after much paines and charge they alwaies leave Reformation and Religion Church and Clergy more unsearched and unsound unbound and ulcerous than they found them God never following those with the blessing of the end who disdaine to use those orderly meanes which his holy wisdome hath directed them to who lay the Ark of God upon the cart and think to draw it by the beasts of the people when it should be orderly and solemnly born by the shoulders and hands of those that are consecrated to that holy service as the Priests of the Lord which method is not onely more for the honor and solemnity of Christian Religion than for the glory of the blessed God that his name might be sanctified even before the world in the managing of true Religion not flightly or slovenly not with unwashen hands and preposterous confusions but with that holy respect and humble reverence which is due to the Majesty of that God and Saviour whom Christians professe to worship T is ridiculous for Princes and States-men to have the best Musitians for their pleasure the most learned and experienced Physitians for their bodily health the most able and renowned Lawyers for their secular Counsels the gallantest souldiers for their military officers the best Mathematicians for their Engineers and the best Mariners for their Pilots that so these things might succeed to their worldly honor and happinesse and yet in matters of Religion
degenerous persons as deserved not to bear the name or knew not how to use the Office of a Bishop Doubtless their Enemies being Judges no place no Age no one Nation or Church in the world since the Apostles ever exceeded the Bishops of England for piety and learning for useful and exemplary vertues of which I shall afterward give more exact account no Church ever more happy flourishing or prosperous then the reformed Church of England was under such worthy Bishops as some men so despitefully used Could Bishops in this and all Churches be so blessed of God and yet Episcopacy deserve to be so abhorred of men Were the Evangelical labours of godly Bishops so plentifully watered with the Dew of Heaven and yet doth their function deserve to be rooted out of the Earth If Episcopacy in its secular riches and honours must needs be destroyed in order to confiscate the Churches Lands yet at least primitive though poor Episcopacy might have been preserved whose ancient eminency would have been both authoritative and conspicuous among good Christians through the Clouds of such undeserved poverty Though some men might presume to deprive Bishops of their deserved and lawful Estates yet sure they were too bold to rob the Church of all excellent and deserving Bishops such as England ever afforded both before and since the Reformation which the Romish and Jesuitick policies never hoped more effectually to deforme and destroy than by helping to carry on the routing of Episcopacy Certainly the excellent Bishops of England were the greatest Eye-sore of the Pope and his Conclave nor did they care to fight by their secret and open Engines against small or great Presbyters so much as against these Prelates who had so long stood in their way They knew when these chief Shepherds were smitten the Sheep would soon be scattered nor were Papists ever more gratified than when Episcopacy was extirpated out of England What if the God the Lord of his Church the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath laid the Government of it on the Shoulders of Christ Jesus and he derived the external administration or dispensation of it to the Apostles and they to succeeding Bishops as spiritual Pastors and venerable Fathers of his Church what if he should thus plead the cause of Episcopacy in the eminency of its Apostolical order and primitive authority against all those that have spoken acted and written so many peevish spiteful popular partial and perverse things against it What if he should lay to their Consciences what is visible to their and all mens eyes the sad divisions miserable confusions and horrid vastations of this Church and the Reformed Religion which have followed the destroying of harmlesse honourable ancient venerable useful and necessary Episcopacy Would they not be infinitely ashamed and mightily confounded for the new Modes which they have taken up for the Oakes which they have chosen to over-shadow themselves yea for the Briars and Brambles which they fancy as fittest to rule themselves and the Church of Christ in this Land either by way of parity or popularity which are not fit methods to rule their own families withall Will a few arbitrary precarious Presbyters and unautoritative Preachers or their new Associations serve their turn Or will a few petty Congregations or Schismatizing Conventicles here and there scattered and scrambled together in Cities and Countries be able to countervail the damage or to recompence the unspeakable defects and detriments which this Church and Nation which all estates and degrees of Christian people have sustained by the totall loss and overthrow of primitive Episcopacy which was as it were smothered to death in a crowd and huddle never legally examined or fairly condemned by the free and full suffrages of all estates so as its Antiquity worth and honour did deserve What learned prudent and conscientious Ministers or other Christians can be fully satisfied with those new-fashioned ordinations and ministrations of holy things which neither they nor their Fore-fathers nor any ancient Churches ever knew and wherein that Divine Authority which they challenge is so justly doubted or disputed as by no Catholick hand or regular course committed to them If that Ministeriall power which is challenged and exercised upon such new accounts of humane policies and later inventions if it should really be none at all or as weak and defective as it is dubious for Ordination as it is for Jurisdiction which is very much feared and suspected by very wise and good men especially where not want and necessity deny but wantonnesse and wilfulnesse seek to deprive Christians of their true Bishop O how vain how invalid how arrogant how insignificant must those Ministers and all their holy Ministrations appear to many Christians who have of later years set themselves up by a Presbyterian Commission or Popular Election not onely without but against their lawful Superiours who were every way so able so worthy and so lawfully authorized for that office and eminency not onely as they were ordained Presbyters but as they were further consecrated Bishops that is placed by Christ and appointed by the Church in an higher degree capacity use and exercise of Ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction then ever was in any Presbyters Of which eminency Episcopal as that famous Council of Nice took such care to have it continued after the cient mode and patern of publick Election and solemn Consecration or the Churches Benediction so all this formality must have been very superstitious and ridiculous if it added nothing of authority and power peculiar to them as Bishops but onely what they formerly had received in common as Presbyters Doubtless reordination as rebaptization to the same office and degree in the Church was ever condemned in the Church of Christ as impious because superfluous a meer mockery of Religion a taking the name of God in vaine forbidden by the African Canons and many Councils never practised by any but such as St. Basil the Great reports one Eustathius of Sebastia to have been whom he calls an infamous Heretick a notorious deserter of the Churches Catholick Communion If St. Chrysostome in the fourth Century had judged it enough to complete him in his Episcopall power and Authority to have been once ordained a Presbyter as he was in Antioch where he so lived twelve yeares sure he would not have troubled himself to have been after ordained or consecrated a Bishop by Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria and others of that order when he was chosen to be Bishop of Constantinople Nor would St. Austin a person no lesse pious and learned who had been ordained Presbyter by Valerius Bishop of Hippo been ordained anew by Megalius Patriarch of Numidia when he was chosen to be Bishop of Hippo. In like sort was one Alexander a Presbyter ordained by St. Chrysostome to be Bishop of Bassinopolis according to the uniforme method of Antiquity which judged that the Presbyters chusing the peoples approving and the
themselves high upon the confidence of Christs Scepter Call and Kingdome which they say admits no stop delay or obstruction whenever Providence opens a door not to the Gospel which is already professed but to such a Form and way as they like to have it in as to Discipline Government and Church-Order and this if not to be had by Princes favour and consent yet by the suffrages and assistance of common people where they may be had who in such cases are not to regard their obedience to any worldly Princes or powers who stand in opposition to or competition with Jesus Christ or any thing that some godly men shall fancy to be an ordinance of his though never heretofore owned or used as such in his Church What is there so fond so fanatick so foolish so mad which such presumptuous fury will not bring into Church or State that is not of their mind That these have been the principles and in many places the endeavours or practises of many for I dare not impute them to all is not to be doubted being evident by their writings and the Histories of those who have truly told the world what their sense agencies and aimes are Nor is there any great cause to expect that other petty parties or novel sects which are generally the spawne of Presbytery should deny themselves that Gospel-Power and Liberty as they call it since every one sees it hath been affected and acted though with no very great or glorious success by their grand-fire Presbytery which both in Scotl. and in England besides other places hath not been sparing to proclaime to all the world what zeal they have for their and Christs cause for his that is their Discipline even to the consuming of their foes their friends and themselves as Penry Udal Hacket and others did in Queen Elizabeths daies of which Mr. Cambden and others give us sufficient account as Sleidan and others do of the like agitations in Germany by such as were first Schismaticks from the Church and then Rebels to their lawfull Magistrates But the true Episcopall principles are wholly Evangelical they neither preach nor practise other than what they have learned from Christ and his Apostles in the Scripture they know no voyce of Providence ever calling them to act contrary to those Rules of civil obedience and good conscience which are signall expresse and emphatick in Gods word to be subject to every Ordinance or Law of man for the Lords sake to obey Kings as supreme and all under them for conscience sake if in any thing they cannot freely and cheerfully act there they must and will patiently suffer what penalties or pressures are laid upon them Thus did all Bishops and all Presbyters of old both pray and preach obey and suffer as Tertullian tells us at large in his Apology whose example and Doctrine all good Christians followed in their constant subjection and submission to civill though persecuting powers even then when Christians wanted not power and numbers to have invited them to have asserted themselves against both persecuting people and Princes Yet still godly Bishops with all Presbyters and people subordinate to them in Religious respects followed exactly the precepts of the two great Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul yea and of their great Master and Saviour Jesus Christ rather suffering by many persecutions than breaking out to any one act or thought of sedition or rebellion No injuries ever made good Bishops forget their Duty and Loyalty to Soveraigne powers though they might have had Legions to have sided with them yet as Christ they chose the Crosse as the best refuge of Christian subjects Thus all holy Bishops both held and did in Primitive times Yea and since the later spring of Reformation in England I am confident there is not one instance of any one Bishop or Episcopall Divine that either wrote or instigated any Christian Subjects to act upon any religious pretentions contrary to the Rules of civil subjection to that Prince or State under which they lived no not to bring in or restore Episcopacy it self which hath far more pleas for it from Catholick Antiquity and Universall prescription from actuall possession in all times and places from the pattern of Christ and the practise of the Apostles from the imitation and uninterrupted succession of after-Ages besides the proportions of Gods wisdome and mans prudence in all setled polities and good Government together with its own Ancient Catholick and Nationall Rights which aggravate its injuries and exasperate mens spirits yet these are not enough to animate or heighten Episcopacy so far as to make or restore its way into any Nation Church State or Kingdom by armed power or tumultuary violence against the will of the chief Magistrate or the Lawes in force it humbly attends Gods time and the Soveraignes pleasure for its reception or restitution So false and foul are the odious aspersions of Fellonies Treasons Seditions and Rebellions which the loosenesse and choler of a Presbyterian Gentlemans Pen then more passionate and popular then now it seems hath cast upon all the Bishops of England as such in that rude immodest and uncharitable pamphlet which he then set forth by a preposterous zeal when having surfeited of an immoderate revenge against one Bishop he aymed so to disguise venerable Episcopacy and to degrade all the most excellent Bishops of Engl. with their Clergy as to expose them all to be the more cruelly baited and worried even to death by the enraged beasts of the people even then when they were to be diverted from considering the actuall combustions which then were raised by and for his Presbytery Such Declamatory and partiall papers were certainly very unbecoming a man of Learning Religion or Ingenuity especially toward such Bishops in his own Country which were men most-what his equals in all things and in many things much his betters and superiours being Peeres of the Kingdome and chief Fathers of that Church with which he held Communion vested in their Authority by our Laws as well as conforme to all Ecclesiastick ancient Constitutions being persons famous most of them for their worth every way answerable to the Piety and Learning of their best Predecessors who were great Preachers wise Governours learned Writers and valiant Martyrs as well as venerable Bishops I confesse this one instance makes me see with horror what a dreadfull tyrant and temptation passion and faction revenge ambition popularity and discontent are when once they transport men of parts beyond the true bounds of Reason and Religion of Charity Patience and Civility which is as apparent in that virulent charging of all Bishops for seditious Traytors as if one should condemn all Lawyers for corrupt and covetous for bribery and oppression as if all were Trissilians Empsons and Dudleys which were a reproch most unjust and false there having been and still are many of them men of great justice and integrity I well know it is
for their Gods any Calf or Idol which their Superiours please to set up in the Church to serve or secure the civil Interests But in England where people have much light and dare to use it such policies and projects would now be not onely preposterous but vaine and ridiculous There is no putting among us Eagles wings or Feathers upon the bodies of Jack-dawes Rookes or Crowes which rather incumber them than inable them for any orderly motion much lesse do they make them Imperiall birds fit to rule or over-aw the other winged inhabitants of the world which will be ready to scorne and despise them And what indeed for instance hath more abased the condition and abated the common honor of Ministers in England of later yeares than some of their unseasonable and unreasonable affectations to govern in common as beyond their due proportion for Age Gifts Parts Ornaments so before they had complete Commission to empower them either from God or any man in Soveraign power Even such Presbyters as most affected like Icarus to fly above their Fathers my self and the English world have seen to have so melted their own artificiall wings that they have miserably faln into a Sea a black and a red Sea of confusion contempt and contention both among their own people and all the Nation Out of which Abysse they will never be able to wade or swim in my judgement unlesse they can with such Unity Humility and Charity as St. Austin adviseth some Donatists revoke their exotick errors retract their Schismes and transports returning from their pertinacious novelties to the true proportions of Ancient Church-Government which I think are in no degree to be found either in Presbytery Independency or any way apart from Episcopacy both which new waies have so grievously blasted and singed themselves by the exorbitancy of those terrible flames which they kindled utterly to consume Episcopacy that there is little likelihood either of these novelties should ever appeare to be entertained with any publick beauty honor esteem or approbation in England where nothing is lesse tolerable than Governours that are contemptible for want of Ability Authority and Dignity as to Estate and Honor. Amidst all which immoderate and mercilesse fires destinated to consume all the pristine beauty and honor of Catholick Episcopacy both root and branch in one day yet to shew not more the wonder of Gods mercy than the true temper of the English people behold not onely Primitive Episcopacy but Primitive Bishops that is persons of Learning Piety and Vertue becoming that sacred Office Dignity have retained all this while and will do while they live yea and when they are dead so much of reall honor and true respect due to their worth that no Assemblies no Armies no Votes no Ordinances no Terrors no Calumnies of inordinate Presbyters no insolencies of licentious people nothing can ever deprive them of or degrade them from an high respect and esteem in the hearts and desires in the loves and compassions of all unbiassed learned sober and wise men throughout the Nation Who are not yet grown so dull and degenerous as not to preferre the Primitive Catholick and Venerable Authority of Episcopacy as to order and Ordination so to Government and jurisdiction as much before the novel inventions and ostentations of any Presbyterian and Independent models as one would value the English Roses before the Scotch Thistles freely to handle or feed upon which is no such precious Christian Liberty as any wise men Ministers or others have either cause to envy in others or to congratulate in themselves since their former subjection to Episcopacy was far more to their Safety Order Plenty and Honor than what they now enjoy in their petty Signiories The lowest parts of that Mountaine of God Episcopacy on which the Church of Christ for many Ages stood and flourished were higher than the top of these new mole-hils the skirts of Bishops clothing were more venerable than the very Crownes of these Ministers heads the unanointed corners of whose haire and beards are now so deformedly shorne or shaven by a sharp and popular rasor The renowne and value of Episcopacy is much risen since English-men have seen added to the other excellencies of our English Bishops the miracle and magnanimity of their Christian patience who after their hard and long studies attended with many meritorious and usefull vertues after they had lawfully obtained and many yeares peaceably enjoyed such Honors and Estates as adorned Episcopacy in England after they had no way and by no law forfeited these or misused them yet in the decline of their lifes in the colder and darker winter of their Age these grave and gallant men can beare with Christian patience and heroick composednesse of mind the losse of all and that from their own Country-men Professors of the same Christian yea and Reformed Religion and this without any respect had either to their present and future support or their pristine dignity A fate so sad and Tragicall as is scarce to be parallell'd in any Age or History yet have none of them been heard to charge God foolishly They say and write either nothing or onely the words of Sobernesse Truth and Charity they still possesse their soules in silence and patience when dispossessed of all things whereever they live their lustre shines through their greatest obscurity and tenuity as the bright Sun through small crevises far beyond the most sparkling Presbyters or glittering Independents whose new popular projects for Church-Government compared to Primitive and old Episcopacy are like Comets or blazing Starres compared to the Sun and Moon The Gravity the Constancy the Contentednesse the Meekness the Humility of these Venerable yet afflicted Bishops now reduced God knowes to a great paucity as well as tenuity yet still keeps up their price and commands from all wise and worthy men a veneration both of their persons and of that comely Authority which they heretofore enjoyed and worthily exercised in this Church Who almost of any considerable people in England that are not either ignorant fanatick or sacrilegious but either openly or secretly wish the happy restauration of Venerable Episcopacy to this Church and Nation who that hath sense of honor justice or ingenuity doth not deplore and is not discountenanced to consider the Crowds and Loades of indignities cast upon such excellent persons as for the most part the Bishops of England were even then when they were to be sacrificed by I know not what strange fire as a peace-offering to the discontented Presbyters of Scotland and their ambitious Symbolizers in England I know some of those Lords and Commons who in the huddle helped to destroy Bishops and their Order now not onely pitty the undeserved sufferings of such brave men but repent of their own compliance and so do many Ministers The usefulness worth and necessity of excellent Bishops and of true Episcopacy were never so well understood in England as since the
in storms and in calms ever since they have been beaten from and denyed Anchorage in the fair Haven of Episcopacy which ever was and ever will be the safest and best harbour both for Religion this Church and its Clergy For no men will regard those Ministers who help to make themselves undervalued Who will care to provide for or protect them that cast off so fair a portion of Estate and noble a proportion of honour as the Laws of this Land had given them under the Episcopal covering Whither now shall poor Ministers fly unless they fly from their despised and distressed calling to some more easie quiet and beneficial Mechanick profession unless they renounce their former Orders and take up a new standing either upon their own tip-toes or some Mole-hill which the Ants of the people have cast up neither of which stations is either firm or comely The vulgar favour is too flat dull and shallow for any man of Learning Worth and Wisdom to lanch into he will presently be a-ground for popular respect riseth to no higher a pitch than they see men have some publick influence of favour estate or power Go to the Palaces of such as are Princes and think themselves great persons their Courts and Families are commonly full of deep and rough rapid and dangerous motions the courtesie of country-Justices and true Committee-men is very various much as the Wind and Tide are either with or against the poor Clergy Where are there then any proper Advocates and Judges or any competent Censors and Supports of the Clergy becoming men of Learning and Worth beyond the ordinary rate of most men Whom have they of their cloth and calling that is in any eminency of Place Power or Honour who might by their favour defend a poor Minister as with a shield so as worthy Bishops did without whom the Ministry in England may I think despair of ever recovering themselves to any great value or regard while they are looked upon even one and all under a meer plebeian notion and proletary proportion permitted indeed to marry and beget children but to servility poverty and beggery Few persons of any Worth or Estate will now either make their sons Ministers or match their daughters to them or contract any alliance or friendship with them since no Clergy-men can be great they will not be much valued for being good Thus hath the fall of Episcopacy like a great and goodly Oake crushed all the Under-wood of the Clergy which was safe while those defensatives stood in our Druina nor have those escaped the brush and crush who were most industrious to fell it On all hands the honour of the Clergy is never like to revive in this Nation till something like primitive and authoritative Episcopacy be either replanted or restored the spirit of the Nation being such that it cannot be governed but by those that have some publick eminency and real lustre upon them either as to military power or civil honour or religious presidency set off with the ampleness of some estate and the authority of some fitting jurisdiction As Augustus said to the Egyptians when they desired him to visit their God Apis I worship Gods not Oxen so do the most people of Engl. in their hearts reply to all Presbyterian Independent Ministers who seek to winne them to worship their ways We were wonted to venerate grave and honourable Bishops not every petty Presbyter or Preacher as our chief Church-governours according to the custom and manner of all good Christians in all ancient Churches and in this of England ever since Joseph of Arimathaea or Simon Zelotes converted us ever since K. Lucius was baptized and the British Church had the honour of Primogeniture to any National Church in the World ever since either Palladius in Scotland or Patricius in Ireland or the latter Austin in England by the mission and commission of the devout Gregory the Great either restored or planted Christian Religion and Bishops in England the shortest of which Terms or Epoches is now above a thousand years In all which time England hath been famous for nothing so much as for the great regard this Nation had til of late years both to Christian Religion and to the Clergy which never til now were made to live without the crowns and coronets of their worthy Bishops in every Diocess which were the coverings of power and honour upon the heads of all the Clergy to whom the access of a poor Minister was short and easie his hearing speedy his tryal legal and rational his dispatch without delayes his dismission fatherly and his submission filial and comely insomuch that peaceable and good Ministers were never more blest than when they had the sight of their worthy Bishop or Diocesan who did not onely as a good Shepherd oversee and rule them but tooke care to feed and defend them with Order Plenty Peace and publick Honour blessings of so great price in our mortal pilgrimage that they had need be very pretious Liberties indeed that are to be purchased by parting with them or exchanging them for the dry Martyrdoms of Poverty Contempt and daily Confusion CHAP. XXII IN the last place I do with the more courage and confidence recommend the cause of Venerable Episcopacy to my honored Countrymen because no Nation or Church under heaven ever had more ample and constant experiences of that excellent worth which hath been in their Bishops or of that excellent use which hath ever been made of a regular Episcopacy both in respect of true Piety and Orderly Policy I know it will at first dash with full mouth be here replyed how many Bishops have been superstitious sottish luxurious tyrannous persecutors and what not especially before the Reformation till their wings were so clipped that they could not be so bad as they would yet some of them were bad enough My answer is I do not undertake to justifie every thing that every Bishop hath done in any Age late or long since though I am charitably modest to palliate the shame or uncomliness of my Fathers yet I am no Mercenary Orator or veneall Advocate to plead for their enormities which are in no men lesse tolerable or expiable There were no doubt among Bishops as well as other men of all sorts some weak some wicked as Ezekiels figs some very good some very bad yet take them in the generall view and aspect even in the darkest times I am sure they were in England ever esteemed and employed both in Church and State as Primores Regni men of the greatest abilities and best repute for Learning Wisdome Counsel Piety Charity and Hospitality in all the Nation nor were many of them in those times inferiour by birth and breeding to the greatest Noblemen in the Land I do not censoriously rifle mens personall or private actions but I consider their publick influence and aspect It sufficeth to my designe if I demonstrate by induction
preferring such men to be Bishops as were worthiest of her favour fittest for Gods the Churches and her Majesties service Did this wise Princesse ever listen to the insinuations pretentions petitions and charmes of those men in her daies who so much importuned and molested the publick peace and patience by their despite against Episcopacy and their scurrility against Bishops Some of them possibly might be well-meaning men but I take the best of them to have been popular and superstitious in this point others very pragmatick and juvenile none of them were any great Polititians while they would either have no Church-Government with any Eminency or wholly reduce it to such a parity as they designed for their ambitions which would have made themselves and all the Clergy as at this day more divided and despicable than ever they could have been under Bishops though Bishops had had no more power than an High-Constable or a Country-Justice Besides this the simplicity of those zealous men in those daies who most maligned Episcopacy and disparaged the Church of England having been terribly scared by some Popish Bishops in Queen Maries daies whose sad pictures still frighted them in the Book of Martyrs did then by their needless Divisions Distractions Oppositions and Separations greatly advance the Papall interests as learned Mr. Cambden wisely observes writing of the contests between Archbishop Whitgift and Mr. Cartwright with his Associates whose unhappy Successors could we see never carry on their designes now at last but with the infinite troubles miseries of this Church and State by which they have advanced their Presbytery in England so little so not at all that never any men got so little or lost so much by so dear a bargaine which cost not onely much money but much blood many lives many soules and many sins After this renowned Queen had left Episcopacy not onely standing but fixed and flourishing in England to the content and happiness of the most and best of her Subjects in Court and Country in Parlaments and out of them King James succeeded as supreme Governour in Church and State What Christian King was ever crowned with more learning and a larger heart in all Knowledge Divine and Humane Ecclesiastical and Civil This Prince had been nursed with the milk of Presbytery he had been long dipped and dyed in Presbytery if any sure this King might have seen at least fancied the beauty that Presbytery added either to the Reformed Religion or the Imperial purple His education by Buchanan and his castigations by Mr. Knox and others might in all probability have much devoted him to Presbytery and prejudiced him against Episcopacy of which I believe he seldomer heard one good word than he did Faction Treason and Rebellion from those warmer Presbyters who as his swadling-clouts so straitly wrapped him up in his minority that he could hardly fetch his breath with freedom yea and in his majority too when they made themselves as his chains and fetters to bind Princes as all men to their good behaviour Yet notwithstanding these Presbyterian Prepossessions for so many years did not this great Monarch heartily rejoyce when he came to a Church handsomly and honourably governed by learned grave orderly and venerable Bishops the onely Catholick Government of all Churches of which he had read so much and so much good in the Ecclesiastical Histories and nothing of any other Was it not an infinite content to him to see himself freed from the vexatious Thistles and provoking Thornes of some Presbyterians in Scotland for others were grave and modest men that he might enjoy the fair and sweet Roses of Sharon such Bishops as had ever been the chiefest flowers in the Garden of Christs Church Was he ever satisfied untill he had reduced the Kirk of Scotland from some Presbyterian extravagancies to such Episcopal Order and Constancy as was indeed very excellent and neerest to the primitive pattern of paternall Presidency fraternal Assistance and filial Submission But few people are ever so happy as to know and value their own happiness When this great work was done of restoring Episcopacy to so ancient a Church as Scotland was and confirming it in England contrary to the vain hopes childish presumptions and self flatteries of some popular men who could never with reason expect that so learned and wise a Prince as K. James would exchange the Ark of God for Dagon Episcopacy for Presbytery did he not as seriously triumph in the blessed alteration of his Ecclesiastical Station as he did to remove his habitation from and extend his dominion beyond that Hyperborean horrour of Scotland to this Southern sweetnesse and amaenity of England These things thus well setled as to the Order and Honour of the Church of Christ in his Dominions although this King were a Prince of most profuse and indeed prodigious munificence thinking no Epithet became a King lesse as Tully sayes of Deiotarus than that of homo frugi thrifty or illiberall yet did he never incline to devour the Churches patrimony to keep the Episcopall Seates vacant that he might enjoy the Revenues He once refused the offer of Cathedral Lands which some had projected as very feisable because as a grave Bishop then suggested to him God was twice every day publickly and solemnly worshipped in every Cathedrall and his Majesty there publickly prayed for in his greatest necessities whatever hunger seised his royall appetite in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sharpest famine of his Exchequer yet he never waking or sleeping thought of Confiscating Church-Lands or making Bishops to be superstitious or superfluous in the Church because his condition was necessitious No whatever failings as a man that Prince had yet as a King and a Christian he had this justice and generosity to preserve the honor of Bishops and the Rights of the Clergy Indeed as he was the greatest Scholar of a King in all the world so he was as great a patron of good Scholars as the world had Nor will those that have most quarrelled the Memory and Reigne of King James easily mend the condition of Church or State which he left in Peace Plenty and Safety Nor was it so much policy or reason of State as strength of true Reason and the prevalencies of true Religion which so counterbiassed that Kings judgement against Presbytery as a partial popular novelty or confirmed him in Episcopacy as an Apostolick and Catholick Antiquity between which he thought there was no more compare as to Church-Government than there is between the Majesty of goodly Lions and the subtilty of little Foxes After this great pattern of King James whose learned arguments were more prevalent than his arms in Religion followed his unfortunate Son the last King who amidst all his reproches and improsperities cannot be denyed this Honour than he seemed not inferiour to any King that ever lived in his regard to the Churches ancient Order Estate and Honour although few Princes ever sustained
Darknesse Truth and Falshood Error and sound Doctrine between the Institutions of Christ and the sacrilegious Inventions of Men between the infallible Rule and Oracles of Gods Word in the Scripture and the variable Canons of poor men between the Catholick Custom of pure and Primitive Churches and the particular practises of later Usurpations brought in in the twilight of dark and depraved times These diametral distances ought ever to be preserved by all godly Bishops who may not come neerer to Popery than Popery is neer to Christianity or then Antichristian policies may correspond in some things with Christian piety Which just bounds as far as ever I could understand our pious Bishops in England from the first Reformation till now have religiously observed not one of them much less all deliberately or openly owning any communion with the Church of Rome where they saw the Church of England had made a just clear and necessary separation yea the learned Bishops of England have generally so fully confuted the Falsity Injury and Indignity of that calumny both by their Preaching Writing Living and Dying that men must be blind with despite mad with malice or drunk with passion when they vomit out so foul calumnies against all Bishops and Episcopacy in England as if they were Pandars for Popery and Pimps to the Whore of Babylon for this is the language of some mens oratorious Zeal against our Bishops and all Episcopacy which will in time much more agree with Presbytery and Independency I fear than ever it did with Episcopacy But it wil be demanded of me whence then arose this smoke of Jealousie which was so popular and spread abroad that it made so many pure Eyes to ake and smart yea to grow watry and blood-shotten not onely among the vulgar but even among our greatest Seers and Overseers Was there no fire where there was so great a smoke My Answer is these jealousies of some Bishops and other Ministers who most imitated them being Popishly inclined never had so far as ever I could discern any farther ground than this Some Bishops pleased themselves beyond what was generally practised in England with a more ceremonious conformity than others observed first to the Canons and Injunctions which they thought were yet in force in the Church of England being not repealed but onely antiquated through a general disuse next being aged and learned men and more conversant in the Antiquities of the Church than younger Ministers they found that such ceremonious Solemnities in Religion were then very much used without any sin or scandal no godly Bishop Presbyter or other good Christian ever making scruple of using the sign of the Cross in Baptism and at other times of Bowing Kneeling Prostrating himself or of putting his mouth to the ground and kissing the Pavement when he came to worship God or to celebrate holy Mysteries expressing thereby that Humility Faith Fervency sense of his own sinful Unworthiness and that unfeigned Reverence which he bare in his heart toward God and his Service This I suppose made some of our Bishops hope that they might with the like inoffensivenesse add such Solemnity to Sanctity and such outward Veneration to inward Devotion and yet be as far from Popery or Superstition as the ancient Christians were yea as those Ministers and others now pretend to be who make so much of lifting up their eyes and hands in Prayer or who are pleased to be uncovered in Praying Preaching Singing or Celebrating the Sacraments Besides this many Bishops found a secret genius of Rusticity and Rudenesse of Familiarity and Irreverence strangely prevailing among Country-Preachers and People so far that they saw many of them placed much of their Religion in affecting a slovenly rudenesse and irreverence in all publick and holy Duties loth to kneel not onely at the Sacrament but at any Prayers or to be uncovered at any Duty enemies to any man and prejudiced against all he did if he shewed any ceremonious respect in his serving God They saw some were grown so spiritual that they forgot they had bodies and pretending to approve themselves to God onely as to the inward man they cared not for any thing that was regular exemplary orderly comely or reverent as to the outward celebration in the judgement and appointment of the Church of England Hence some men grew to such great applaudings of themselves as if this were the onely simplicity of the Gospel that they thought every man went about to cut the throat of Reformed Religion who applied any Scissers or Razor to pare off rudeness and rusticity or to trim it to any decency in the outward Ministrations according to what seemed best to the Church of England Many Bishops thought that Religion would grow strangely wild hirsute horrid and incult like Nebuchadnezzars hair and nails if it were left to the boysterous Clowneries and unmannerly Liberties which every one would affect contrary to the publick appointment of the Church If some Bishops pleased themselves in using such outward and enjoyned Ceremonies beyond what was ordinary to some men yet certainly a thousand decent and innocent Ceremonies such as those enjoyned by the Church of England were declared to be do not amount to one Popish Opinion nor are they so heavy as one popular erroneous Principle which tends to Faction Licentiousnesse and Profanenesse Ceremonies may possibly be thought superfluous because not of the substance of the Duty but they are not to be charged as superstitious where the Devotion of the heart is holy and the Duty is sincerely performed for the Essentials of it as it is instituted by Christ enjoyned by the Word of God who hath left the ceremonious part of Religion more or less very much to the prudence of his Church according to the several forms and customs of civil respect and decency used in the world which St. Austin and St. Ambrose with all the Ancients declare placing no further Religion in any Ceremony of humane invention and use than it served aptly to excite or express inward sincerity of Devotion and an outward conformity to the decent customs of any Church Which keeping to the Truth Faith and holy Institutions of Christ for the main were not blameable for that variety of Ceremony which was and might be observed without any damage to Truth or breach of Charity As to the maine charge then that Bishops in England were Popish that is warping from the Reformed Doctrine of the Church of England as it was and is stated opposite to the Romish errors and corruptions I do believe that the Bishops of England were in all Ages since the Reformation and in this last as much removed and as free from Popery as the most rigid censors of them who dare accuse every man for Popish who is not boyled up to the same superstitious height and Ceremonious Antipathy with themselves or who do not presently adopt every mans new fancy opinion and form of Religion though private
shining Truly I find the calmeness and gravity of sober mens judgements is prone to improve much by Age Experience Reading of the Ancients hereby working out that juvenile leaven and lee which is prone to puffe up and work over younger spirits and lesse decocted tempers in their first fervors and agitations Possibly the Archbishop and some other Bishops of his mind did rightly judge that the giving an enemy faire play by just safe and honorable concessions was not to yield the cause or conquest to him but the more to convince him of his weakness when no honest yieldings could help him any more than they did indamage the true cause or courage of his Antagonist For my part I think the Archbishop of Canterbury was neither Calvinist nor Lutheran nor Papist as to any side and partie but all so far as he saw they agreed with the Reformed Church of England either in fundamentalls or innocent and decent superstructures yet I believe he was so far a Protestant and of the Reformed Religion as he saw the Church of England did protest against the Errors Corruptions Usurpations and Superstitions of the Church of Rome or against the novel opinions and practises of any party whatsoever And certainly he did with as much Honor as Justice so far own the Authentick Authority Liberty and Majesty of the Church of England in its Reforming and Setling of its Religion that he did not think fit any private new Masters whatever should obtrude any Forraine or Domestick Dictates to her or force her to take her Copy of Religion from so petty a place as Geneva was or Francfort or Amsterdam or Wittenberg or Edenborough no nor from Augsburg or Arnheim nor any Forraine City or Town any more than from Trent or Rome none of which had any Dictatorian Authority over this great and famous Nation or Church of England further than they offered sober Counsels or suggested good Reasons or cleared true Religion by Scripture and confirmed it by good Antiquity as the best interpreter and decider of obscure places and dubious cases Nor did his Lordship esteem any thing as the voice of the Church of England which was not publickly agreed to and declared by King and Parlament according to the advice and determinate judgement of a Nationall Synod and lawfull Convocation convened and approved by the chief Magistrate which together made up the complete Representative the full sense and suffrage of the Church of England His Lordship no doubt thought it as indeed it is a most pedling partiall and mechanick way of Religion for any Church or Nation once well setled to be swayed and tossed to and fro by the private opinions of any men whatsoever never so godly contrary to Publick Nationall and Ecclesiasticall Constitutions which carried with them as infinitely more Authority so far more maturity prudence and impartiality of Counsel than was to be found or expected by any wise men in any single person or in any little juncto's of Assemblies or select Committees of Lay-men whatsoever And truly in this I am so wholly of his Lordships opinion that I think we haâ—e in nothing weakned and disparaged more our Religion as Reformed in England than by listning too much to and crying up beyond measure private Preachers or Professors be they what they will for their grace gifts or zeal who by popular insinuations here and there aime to set up with great confidence their own or other mens pious it may be I am sure presumptuous novelties against the solemn and publick Constitutions or determinations of such a Church as England was These these agitations and adherencies have undermined our Firmeness and Unity by insensible degrees What was Luther or Calvin or Zuinglius or Knox or Beza or Cartwright or Baines or Sparkes or Brightman not to disparage the worth which I believe was really in any of them or their Disciples to be put into the balance against the whole Church of England when it had once Reformed and setled it self to its content by joynt Counsel publick consent and supreme Authority Which hath had in all Ages and eminently since the Reformation both Bishops and other Ministers of its Communion no way singly inferiour to the best of those men and joyntly far beyond them all whose concurrent judgment and determination I would an hundred times sooner follow than all much more any one of those men yea possibly I could name some one man whom I might without injury prefer to any one of those fore-named persons such was Melanchthon abroad and such was our Bishop Jewel at home And indeed the Church of England had blessed be God so many such Jewels of her own that she needed not to borrow any little gems from any forreigners nor might any of them without very great Arrogancy Vanity and Imodesty as I conceive seek to strip her of her own Ornaments and impose theirs upon her or her Clergy Which high value it is probable as to his Mother the Church of England and her Constitutions was so potent in the Archbishop of Canterbury that as he thought it not fit to subject her to the insolency of the Church of Rome so nor to the impertinencies of any other Church or Doctor of far less name and repute in the Christian world No doubt his Lordship thought it not handsome in Mr. Calvin to be so far 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 censorious of the Church of England as to brand its devotion or Liturgy with his tolerabiles ineptiae who knew not the temper of the Nation requiring then not what was absolutely best but most conveniently good and such not onely the Liturgy was but those things which he calls tolerable toyes This charitable sense I suppose I may justly have of this very active and very unfortunate Prelate as he stood at a great distance from me and eminence above me against whom I confess I was prone in my greener years to receive many popular prejudices upon the common report and interpretation of his publick actions In one of which I was never satisfied as to the Piety or Policy of it that when his Lordship endeavoured to commend the Liturgy of England to the Church of Scotland which was a worthy design as to the uniformity of Devotion yet he should affect some such alterations as he might be sure like Coloquintida would make all distastful Such was that in the Prayer of Consecration and Distribution at the Lords Supper which was after the old form of Sarum and expunged by our Reformers as too much favouring Transubstantiation besides some other changes in that and other things of which possibly his Lordship could give a better reason than I can imagine or have yet heard Toward his decline I had occasion to come a little neerer to his Lordship where I wel remember that a few daies after his first confinement when he seemed not at all to despaire of his innocency or safety having
Adde to all these the famous Bishop Hall who had in him all that was desirable in an excellent Bishop for Learning Meekness Patience Peaceableness his eloquence both in speaking and writing was transcendent yet the least of his excellencies Lest any rust or soyl should grow upon so great graces and abilities he was among other Bishops polished by the Grindstones and roughnesse of these times yea there wanted not to his dying day some men who gave him a greater lustre by their insolencies Who had ever more of the Dove and lesse of the Serpent then Bishop Potter a man severely good and conscienciously not factiously scrupulous in some things but not as to Episcopacy What shall I speak of the Meekness and Tender-heartedness of Bishop West field who frequently softned his auditors hearts not onely with his excellent Sermons but his unaffected tears yet was he forc'd among other Bishops to lye down in sorrow though no doubt he now reaps in joy Nothing was more mild modest and humble yet learned eloquent and honest than Bishop Winniffe I conclude this goodly Regiment of Church-colonels of Ecclesiastical Rulers of venerable Bishops with Bishop Prideaux who was a Miscellany or Encyclopaedy of all Learning after he had by many years diligence honoured the Divinity-professors Chair and the University of Oxford together with the Nation by his vast pains and was deservedly made a Bishop though somewhat too late he was at last so squeezed to nothing by the iron hand of our times that he had nothing left to maintain himself and his children but dying bequeathed them Piety and Poverty as their Legacy May we not cry out as he did of old Bone Deus c. Blessed God to what times hast thou reserved us what terrors hast thou shewed us If it be thus done in the fruitful sound and green trees what will be done with those that are hollow barren and rotten dry twice dead and pulled up by the rootes All these Heroes of Learning and Religion these renowned Bishops the honor of Episcopacy the glory of this Church the just boasting of this Nation together with many others have some long since some of late dyed in the Lord and are at rest from the sore Labour and travells they in the evening of their lives met with under the Sun Many of them were exhausted distressed despised destroyed as to all worldly enjoyments yet not miserable not so afflicted as to be forsaken of God or despairing of Gods mercies though they found little from man Nor is the English world heretofore so full so famous so flourishing with rare Bishops as yet so drained but there are some such left as are worthy to bring on the Reare and close up this gallant Troop of gowned Generals and mitred Commanders If I might without offence to the Modesty and Gravity of such Bishops as are yet living and best known to me I would tell the erring and ingratefull Age that as it was said of Gonsalvo whom Guicciardine calls the great Captaine an Age is scarce able to breed or match such a Scholar such a Writer such a Bishop as Bishop Morton is A most illustrious and invaluable Jewell yet shut up now in a little box a great and rich Vessel driven in his old Age to a small harbour where his safety is tenuity and obscurity Nor may I give a lesse tender touch of Dr. Juxon whose modesty fidelity and exactness was such that when he bare the great envy of being at once a Lord Bishop of London and Lord Treasurer of England yet he never had blame for either of them his Government as a Bishop was gentle benigne paternal his managing of the Treasury was such that he served his Prince faithfully satisfied all his friends and silenced all his enemies of which he had enough as a Bishop though as a man he was so meek and inoffensive that I think he could contract no enmities with any Some men wished they might have oftner heard him preach and truly I was one of those not onely because preaching was so much in fashion at London but because that City needed good preaching and was to be much taken by it Nor could any preacher in my judgement exceed the Bishop of London I confesse I never heard any man with more pleasure and profit so much he had of Paul and Apollos of a Learned plainenesse and a usefull elaboratenesse when he preached of Mortification of Repentance and other Christian practicks he did it with such a stroke of unaffected eloquence of potent demonstration and irresistible conviction that few Agrippa's or Festus's or Felixe's that heard but must needs for the time and fit be almost perswaded to be penitent and mortified Christians I will yet be so modestly and honestly impudent as to mention two or three Bishops yet living not because I know them but because they are worthy to be known loved and honored by all good men Such as Dr. Duppa the Bishop of Salisbury a person of singular Prudence and Piety equally Grave and Good Learned and Religious so eminent in many things that he is worthy to be not onely a Tutor to a Prince but a Counsellour to a King and no lesse to be a Bishop in the Church of Christ. Next I crave leave to mention Bishop King of whom I need say no more but that I think him a Son worthy of such a Father I cannot forbeare to conclude all with a mighty man Dr. Brownrig Bishop of Excester whose name and presence was once very Venerable to many Ministers while they were orderly Presbyters now he is a dread and terror to them since they are become Presbyterians or Independents such Grassehoppers they seem in their own eyes in comparison of his puissance who so filled the Doctors Chaire in Cambridge and the Pulpit in place where he lived and had filled his Diocese had he been permitted to do the office of a Bishop that it would have been hard to have routed Episcopacy if he had sooner stood in the gap being justly esteemed among the Giantly or Chiefest Worthies of this Age for a Scholar an Orator a Preacher a Divine and a prudent Governour so much mildnesse there is mixed with Majesty and so much generosity with gentleness But I earnestly beg his Lordships and the others pardon since the iniquity of the times have compelled me thus far to transgresse as to commend such persons yet living who though most commendable yet are in nothing more than this that they are more pleased to deserve than to heare their just commendation the best consciences being alwaies attended with the most tender modest and blushing foreheads But I will trespasse no further CHAP. XXIII BUt thus far I have set forth the worth of some I am sure of our English Bishops even in those dayes which damned them all that the world may see upon what mens heads the total ruine of Episcopacy and all Cathedral Churches have faln how there wanted
not many good Bishops then when worse and harder measure befell them and their Order than since England was Christian Indeed many yea most of our Bishops were as Noahs Sems and Japhets yet have all these been drowned in the Presbyterian Deluge Even these made up the so odious so unpopular so decryed Bishops in England The pest and contagion of whose fate as it came first from Scotland where no doubt there were many Bishops of equal vertues though inferiour revenues to the worthy and well-known Dr. Spotswood Archbishop of St. Andrews and Lord Chancellour of Scotland so it reached to Ireland where there wanted not Bishops worthy of the fraternity of Bishop Usher Bishop Bedel and Bishop Bramhal all cruelly persecuted first by Papists and after by Antipapists though persons of the highest form for all excellencies yet must all these be destroyed their whole Order with the destruction of Sodom Although more than ten righteous Bishops I am sure were to be found in each of these British Churches yet all must be routed all rooted up as guilty of the unpardonable sin of Prelacy a new sin and unheard of in the Church of Christ but now to be put into the black Catalogue of scandalous sins when Heresie Schism Sacriledge and Sedition must be left out These these and such like Bishops are the men whose fate I passionately pitty men famous in their generation either for solid Preaching or weighty writing or grave counselling or holy living or prudent governing or charitable giving all of them for some and some of them for all these excellencies These are made the most unsound the most infamous and superfluous parts of this body politick and Ecclesiastick these must be one and all represented to vulgar simplicity and scurrility as the Popes the Antichrists the Bite-sheeps the Oppressors the Tyrants the Greedy and dumb dogs the Cretians the Slow-bellies the Devourers the Destroyers of all godliness and true Religion These foule glosses first made by Martin Mar-prelate of old against Episcopacy and the Bishops of England are now set forth in a new and second edition with larger notes and exquisite Commentaries upon them intimating that these are the men who have by their Learned Grave and Godly Misdemeanours as Bishops forfeited not by any Law but by absolute will and pleasure meerly as Bishops all their Houses and Revenues all their Honors and Preferments yea their good Name and Reputation which by Law and desert they had obtained and enjoyed yea all the Ancient Dignity Apostolick Authority and Constant Succession of their Place and Function in the Church which had not more of eminency than of necessity nor more of necessity than of Primitive and Catholick Antiquity For the reall faults of some and the imaginary of other Bishops whose name was their onely crime must all Ages after them be for ever punished with the want of such Grave Learned Godly and Venerable Bishops as have been destroyed for better cannot be had or desired and posterity must be ever exposed in these British Churches to all those Factions Fedities Divisions Disorders and Confusions which follow the want of due Episcopal order and Government in the Church But Bishops qua tales were enemies to the power of Godlinesse the worst of them and the best of them were men too much devoted to empty formes of Religion they urged Ceremonies so far as to neglect substances straining at gnats and swallowing Camels they justled out preaching by Catechizing and over-layed Ministers private prayers by their long Liturgies they did not kindle but quench damp and resist that spirit of Zeal and Reformation which for many years hath burned in the breasts of many godly Christians by whose flamings and refinings at last all Bishops as drosse with all their ornaments and adherents have been justly consumed I confesse I cannot tell how to answer for all the actions and expressions of every Bishop they were of age and able to have answered for themselves if any of them as offendors of our Lawes had been brought to plead for themselves which not one of them was as to Ecclesiasticall matters that I ever heard of for the weight of the Archbishops charge was chiefly upon civil or secular affaires Who knowes not that Bishops were but men that if left to their private spirits and single Counsels they might as easily over or under-do as their Adversaries have done beyond or short of what becomes wise and good men The greatest blame that I perceive among any of them was that they would injoyne or exact or remit any thing as to publick Order Discipline and Government of the Church without a joynt agreement and uniformity among themselves according to what the Law allowed or commanded This fraternall concurrence and mutuall correspondence had been worthy of Grave Wise and Learned men for all private fancies obtruded by any one or two Bishops in so tender a case as Religion is and upon so touchy a people as the English now are do but breed variety this differences these disputes these dissentions these despites these oppositions these breed confusions All the actions and injunctions all the Articles and disquisitions of Bishops as such should have been as exactly consonant and uniforme as possibly could be But as to the crimination That Bishops like Hernshaws abounded in the wing and feather of Ceremony but had little substance or body as to the power of Godlinesse First Scripture and Christs example teach us that decent and apt Ceremonies publick or private are not in their nature enemies but helps to the power of Godlinesse as putting off all Ornaments eating the bread of Sorrow putting on Sackcloth and Ashes Fasting Weeping Smiting the breast Bowing Kneeling Prostrating to the ground being all night in Solitude and Darkness lying in the Dust c. all these were and are helps to an humble broken contrite penitent and devout temper of Soul Contrary Company Wine and Oyle Singing and Musick Dancing Discourse and Laughter were and are helps to holy joy and thankful jubilations so are lifting up the eyes and hands to Heaven Sighing and Groning to fervency of Prayer and Praises It is but a rude affected and fanatick imagination of clownish Christians that decent Ceremonies of Religion wisely appointed in any Church or fitly applied by any private Christian in his private devotions these cannot stand but the substance and sincerity of Godliness must fall that there can be no forms of Godlinesse but the power of it must vanish or be banished They may as well imagine that they cannot put on their clothes or dresse themselves handsomly but they must presently cease to be wise men or honest men and good women but must turn either spectres or dishonest Do we not find that many such Christians who have of later years cast off all the former decent and wholesome formes of Godliness either by Profaneness or Preciseness or Peevishness or Faction or Atheism or Superstition are most apparently now