Reputations of the greatest Worthies and Ornaments of the English Nation Whitgift and Bancroft and Laud empty Pretenders Know Wretch their Works shall live to remote and distant Ages Monuments of their own Glories and the Churches Triumphs when thy Spiritual Bombast shall never survive to be devoured by Famine or the Teeth of Time but shall in a few days be reduced to the shameful and dishonourable condition of Waste-paper and when thy wretched Pamphlets shall be expell'd Libraries and banish't the Company of Learned Authors and be entertain'd no where but in the Corners of old Womens Closets and Cooks Shops But the Rashness of this bold and busie Man has since been justly and I think sufficiently chastised by some of these Empty Pretenders whom he would continue to affront and challenge till he forced them to expose him to the scorn and pity of all Learned Men For certainly there is not a more bafled Person upon Record then the Considerator upon the Biblia Polyglotta Sir you may think this blunt Work but what other way have we to check and take down the Confidence of such bold and abusive Scriblers then to discover them to themselves and to the World However such Insolencies against the most Reverend Fathers of the Church are not to be endured from every pert and conceited Fellow and proud Men must not be suffer'd to raise their own petty Names upon the Ruines of the greatest Reputations Indeed as for the Ignorance of the Bishops and the Episcopal Clergy in Ecclesiastical Antiquities 't is so notorious to all the Christian World that I confess I should think him a very strange Man that should undertake their defence And how piteously have they in their Treatises against the Church of Rome exposed both their Cause and themselves to the scorn of Papists and what is more shameful to the grief of Puritans 'T is evident no doubt by Archbishop Laud's Book against Fisher he had never so much as look't into any of the Fathers or Primitive Writers yet however methinks it is not manners for every Vicar in his Province to upbraid his Grace with Ignorance and want of Letters But suppose this dishonourable Brand should have been clapt upon the Memory of that great and immortal Prelate by one that was then so far from having any thorough insight into Church-Antiquities that after that he was forced to put himself upon no small pains in the first Rudiments of Literature to enable him to deal with the Boys at Westminster-School would you not have set up this Man for a Pillar of Modesty and Bashfulness to all future Ages But whatever sort of Learning we may pretend to yet as for skill in solid Divinity they are the onely able Men. And in this lies the difference between your empty Pretender and your true substantial Divine But what is this Dainty Thing they value at so dear a Rate Why 't is a sort of Opinionative Knowledge or rather Learned Ignorance that makes Men confident and talkative 't is a skill in Schemes and Systemes of New Opinions and a power in Talk and Disputation And to wrangle for a Scholastick Hypothesis is to contend for the Faith once deliver'd to the Saints and to rend their Throats in Scolding for the Calvinian Rigours is to spend themselves for the Lord Jesus Christ. They are a sort of Men that first submit their Understandings to the Opinions of some haughty and imperious Dictator and stuff themselves with uncertain and vulgar Prejudices before they attain the very first Rudiments of Knowledge and so never arrive at freedom of Judgment enough to examine the folly of their Proleptick Absurdities and but to question their undoubted Truth is an Injection of Satan and a Temptation to Infidelity And therefore ever after this they expound all Articles of Faith by Analogy to their own Prejudices and fond Perswasions and they either wrack or suborn the Holy Scriptures till they force them in spight of their plainest and most unquestionable Intendment to give in their suffrage to their own wild and unwarrantable Tenets and here they set bounds to their Zeal and to their Knowledge and all their after-industry is swallowed up in vain Endeavours to make out the Reasonableness and Divine Authority of their own Dreams and Subtilties And what indefatigable Pains will they take to distinguish rank Blasphemy into Orthodox Divinity With what Zeal will they justifie the Equity and Good-Nature of a fatal and irrespective Decree of Reprobation With what assurance will they excuse its seeming Horrour and Cruelty with a more horrid Injustice when they plead in behalf of the Almighty that at the same time he devoted so many Myriads of his Creatures to Eternal Anguish he also resolved to take care they should commit those Sins that might deserve it that so he might not want a fair and plausible pretence to wreak his Indignation upon them With what Evidence of Demonstration will they make out from the Tenour of the Covenant of Grace the Believers Title to Heaven and Everlasting Happiness by a naked Faith in Gods absolute Promises without any Conditional Obligations to an Holy Life This is the Imployment of their Wit and these the Objects of their Studies And now when such gross Errours lie at the bottom of all their Endeavours I leave it to you to judge whether all that Knowledge that is built upon such Principles be not a more laborious and improved Duncery i. e. a greater Confidence and Ability to Talk Nonsense This is that profound Theology in which these Gospellers so much excel the Regular Clergy and they never make their People more gaze and admire then when they discourse to them of the Order of Gods Eternal Decrees of the Conditional Obligation of Absolute Promises and of the Fatal Determination of Free-Will These are their Abilities in the Schools but in the Pulpit their Subtilty improves into down-right Impertinency And it were not unpleasant did not the Cause of Religion suffer by their folly to observe in their Practical Discourses what Mysteries they will descry and what Oracles they will extract out of every obscure Text. With what Curiosity will they strain for knackish and extravagant Applications of Holy Writ With what labour will they beat about into the most secret corners of the old Prophets for Articles of Faith and find them out among their Rods and Pots and Trees and Wheels and Lamps and Axes and Vessels and Rams and Goats And with what dexterity will they fetch about a Prophetick Parable and draw the Fundamentals of Christianity out of Ezekiel's Wheels So that if the sense of Scripture were as clancular and Mystical as 't is made by their uncouth way of applying it the Spirit of God has left us rather Hieroglyphicks then Articles of Religion and our Faith is lockt up in Cabalistick Schemes and no Man is able to unriddle the Secret but by the Helps and Rules of Mythology and the Scripture is written with the
branch of Godliness and Duty of Religion signifies as much as all the rest that is nothing at all As for Spiritual Evangelical Obedience 't is but a canting Phrase if by it he intend any thing more than a sincere and habitual Conformity to the Moral Precepts of the Gospel Moral Obedience to the Gospel and Spiritual Evangelical Obedience are but coincident Expressions of the same thing And lastly as for the Tenour of the Covenant as they are wont to discourse of it it requires nothing but a bold Confidence setting up with Gods irrespective Decrees and trading in his absolute Promises For I. O. as well as W. B. informs us That the Promises comprehensive of the Covenant of Grace are absolute which as to all those that belong to that Covenant do hold out thus much of the Mind of God that they shall be certainly accomplished in and towards them all But who are they that belong to this Covenant He answers Every poor Soul that will venture to trust it self on these absosolute Promises Faith in the Promises and the Accomplishment of the Promises are inseparable He that believeth shall enjoy and this wholly shuts up the Spirit from any occasion of staggering O ye of little Faith wherefore do ye doubt Ah! lest our share be not in this Promise Poor Creatures there is but one way of keeping you off from it i. e. disputing it in your selves by unbelief So that the onely Condition he requires to vest Men in a right to these absolute Promises is nothing but meer Confidence Though there cannot be more horrid Non-sense in the World than that Faith or Boldness should be required as the Condition of absolute Promises yet it were as well if they were altogether absolute as demand no better Qualification for their accomplishment than a Bold Face And suitable to this it follows some Pages after that there neither is nor can be any other Ground or Reason of Doubtings but Unbelief It is not the greatness of Sin nor continuance in Sin nor backsliding into Sin that is the true cause of thy staggering whatever thou pretendest but solely from thy Vnbelief So that though a Man persevere in an habitual course of the greatest Wickednesses yet for all that he has an undeniable claim to all the Promises of the Gospel if he will at all-adventure resolve to be stomachful in his Conceit that they were particularly made and designed to himself Now if this be one as 't is the choicest one of the Mysteries of their New Godliness I leave it to you to judge whether it be possible to invent any Doctrine more apparently destructive of an Holy Life or repugnant to the Tenour of the New Covenant which is plainly nor more nor less than Gods Stipulation of Eternal Life upon no other Condition than of an habitual and uniform Obedience to the Gospel So that all these Spiritual Graces resolving themselves so easily either into Duties or Helps or Hindrances of Morality he has given us an abundant proof of their canting and imaginary Godliness when he produces these Instances as things of a more precious and spiritual Nature than Moral Vertues and yet unless they signifie them they signifie nothing § 6. But this is not all the main ground of my Charge against them for making an inconsistency between Grace and Vertue is That they make Moral Goodness the greatest Let to Conversion insomuch that in their Case-Divinity the Conversion of a morally Righteous Man is judged more hopeless than that of the vilest and most notorious Sinners Than which our Author affirms there is nothing more openly taught in the Gospel Than which I affirm there is no Blasphemy more grosly false and wicked For what viler and more dishonourable Representation can Men make of the Doctrine of the Gospel than to make Vertue the greatest Prejudice to its Entertainment Is that Institution worthy the Divine Contrivance that is more befriended by Debauchery and Prophaneness than by sincere Obedience to the best and most essential Laws of Goodness Nothing can be more suitable to the Design and the Doctrine of the Gospel than the practice of Moral Vertues and is it not strange that it should be destructive of its own Ends and purposes and that Men should indispose themselves for the Discipline of Christianity by being adorn'd with its best and choicest Qualifications We never read of any Man that was hindred from embracing the Christian Faith by any of his Good Qualities Cornelius's Integrity in fearing God and working Righteousness was the onely thing that prepared and disposed him to Conversion and the young Gentleman in the Gospel wanted but one Moral Vertue to make him an entire Christian he was upon the Borders of the Kingdom of Heaven one step more would have placed him in it The onely thing that kept him out was Covetousness which though it may in some persons escape for an Infirmity was never yet rank't in the Catalogue of Moral Vertues The usefulness the purity the excellency of the Doctrine of the Gospel cannot but endear it to a Mind that is inclined to Goodness and to a Vertuous Soul the Beauty and Perfection of its Laws is its strongest and most effectual Obligation It was this that ravish't some of the first Fathers out of their state of Heathenism into the Bosom of the Church their Minds were prepared to embrace true Goodness by the study of Wisdom and Philosophy they were onely at a loss where to find it and therefore when they met with such a Divine Religion and that establish't upon such firm and undeniable Principles 't is scarce to be conceived with what transports of Joy and Zeal they run into its Profession In brief the Gospel is all that tends to the Glory of God to the Perfection of Humane Nature to the Relief of my Neighbor and to the Security and Happiness of Societies and all this it enforces under the severest Penalties and endears by the noblest Promises And now let any Man tell me which way 't is possible for Vertue to tempt aside from such an admirable and Godlike Institution How says our Author were not the Pharisees a People morally righteous and yet were they not at a farther distance from the Kingdom of God than Publicans and Harlots the vilest and most notorious Sinners because they trusted in their own Righteousness Yes yes they were right-worthy Moral Men bright and shining Examples of the great Vertues of Pride Peevishness Malice Revenge Injustice Covetousness Rapine Cruelty and Unmercifulness These were the Graces and the Ornaments of those precious and holy ones Go thy way for a woful Guesser no Man living beside thy self could ever have had the ill fortune to pitch upon the Scribes and Pharisees for Moral Philosophers And Sir were any of them now alive they would tell him to his teeth they are no more Moralists than himself Their Parts and Vertues lay another way They were a fasting and
Semipelagians into the Communion of our Church and joyning with a Spanish Plot by opposing the Calvinists to reduce the people again to Popery all which are the Methods of Satan and the Designs of some who sit aloft in the Temple of God to hew at the very roots of Christianity As I. O. expresses himself in the Preface to his Display of Arminianism Yes no doubt it was the great design of our first Reformers to state as he has done the order and succession of eternal Decrees to reconcile a fatal and irresistible determination of our Actions with the Liberty of our Wills to account for the consistency of the Decree of irrespective Reprobation of the greatest part of mankind with the Truth and the Goodness of God when he so plainly protests he would not any should perish but that all should come to repentance and to set up a secret and reserved will in God in defiance to his revealed will and then make it consistent with the honour of his Attributes to profess one thing and at the same time resolve another It was no doubt their Zeal for these weighty and fundamental Truths that was the avowed cause of their Protestations against the Church of Rome and those great Prelates that first arose to that great Attempt chose to fall Martyrs to the cause only to justifie their own absolute Election and to prove the Impossibility of their Relapse from Grace And among Mr. Foxes wooden Cuts we find many Pictures of Martyrs for the supralapsarian way and the chain that tied them to the Stake was no doubt the noose of Election and the Label that hangs out at their mouths the decretal Sentence So that they that will not burn and broil for these Fundamental Articles of the Geneva Zeal are the Iulians and Apostates from the Protestant Faith the Popes or the Devils Instruments as our Author speaks to betray us to the old or a new and it may be a worse Apostasie Men may mince the matter and pretend only a dislike of the Doctrine of Reprobation but alas who knows not this to be the Serpents subtilty wherever she gets in her head she will wriggle in her whole body sting and all give but the least Admission to these Heterodoxies and the whole poison must be swallowed This Apostasie from the single Article of Reprobation unavoidably brings in the whole body of Popish-Arminian Errors And therefore whoever offends but in this particular is absolutely fall'n from the Catholick Faith and the Orthodox Doctrine of the Church of England and then he has pronounced his Doom and pronounced him uncapable of our Church-Communion Admirable Doctrine this for a Patron of Indulgence not to endure a Poor man that dares not dogmatize in the mysteries of Reprobation but to deliver him up without mercy or any sense of Compassion to the exterminating Censures and Anathema's of the Church and what was then more dreadful the Parliament too Thus you see what are the Articles of these mens Zeal and Orthodoxy and by what Doctrines and Principles they take their measure of Reformation making a Rigour in the Calvinian Tenets the only estimate of the Purity of Churches So that because we are willing to clear our Church from the Incumbrance and Incroachment of these innovations and are resolved not to trouble our selves with abetting the modern Controversies and Mushrome Sects of Christendom but to stick fast to the wisdom and moderation of the first design of returning to the antient and unblended Doctrines of Christianity And are therefore careful in our discourses and representations of Religion to avoid all new and unwarrantable mixtures and to represent the Truths of the Gospel with the same simplicity as we should have done before these Novelties were started in the World For this are we taxed by these Imperious Dogmatists of perfidious Designs to betray the Protestant Cause and to return back to the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome and the People must be alarm'd and confounded with hideous Outcries against Popery and Babylon Spanish Plots and Jesuitical Designs and then must they stand upon their Guard and nothing must asswage their Choler but an humble submission to their sturdy humour They must not attend to any Articles of Agreement or Overtures of Pacification and mutual Forbearance and unless we will declare our Assent and Consent to all the curious and perplex'd Opinions of their Sect they will hear of no other Conditions of Peace and there is no Remedy but we must part Communion They must as I. O. speaks proclaim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an holy War to such Enemies of Gods Providence This is hard measure but yet such as was strictly meted out without a grain of Allowance not only by the Rigid Presbyterians but the Indulgent Tryers those Patriots of our Christian Liberty those renowned subverters of Ecclesiastical Tyranny Now there can be nothing more mischievous or intolerable in any Church or Common-wealth then these peremptory Dictators of Truth and profest Masters of Polemick Skill they are so exact and curious in their own Speculations and impose them with that severity upon the Consent of Mankind and by consequence require such hard and impracticable Conditions of Agreement and Church-Communion as must unavoidably break any society of men into Factions and Parties For what so vain as to expect an Unity of Judgment in such a multitude of uncertain and undeterminable Opinions And therefore those men that stand with such an unyielding and inflexible stiffness upon the admittance of their own Conceits make all reconcilements impossible and all ruptures incurable Every little Opinion must make a great Schism and the bounds of Churches must be as nicely determined as the Points of a Dutch-Compass Their bodies of Orthodoxy are as vast and voluminous as Aquinas Sums and they have drawn infinite numbers of wanton and peevish Questions into the Articles of their Belief and now when they have swoln up their Faith to such a mighty bulk and refined it to such a delicate subtlety 't is unavoidable but that this must perpetuate Disputes and Divisions to all eternity And for this reason it is that these perverse and imperious Asserters are the most insufferable sort of men in any Christian Commonwealth in that they are such incorrigible enemies to peace and are so good for nothing else but to raise disturbances and contentions in the Church So that though we should suppose Liberty of Religion to be the common and natural Right of mankind yet these Persons apparently forfeit all their Claims and Pretences to it not only because their principles are directly repugnant to the quiet of States and Kingdoms but because they invade other mens rights and offer violence to their Neighbours just Liberties And so cast themselves into the condition of Out-laws and Banditi that once indeed had a natural Right of Protection from the Government under which they were born but if they will not submit to the