which in Paul's time was the greatest cause of rents then was the primitive Church in her highest stature being as the sun in its full Meridian then were all things here spoken of fulfilled then and but till then was a growing rising time and after that was a gradual declining from that time Heresies and Errors the renters of union crouded in apace Euseb lib. 3. chap. 29. In little time after the three highest spheres of the Ministerial Office were wholly resolved and expired and that remaining of Pastors and Teachers grew in every succession more corrupt and so increased in pride and usurpation till at length the Angel totally apostated from heaven to earth lost the true key of Office and instead thereof had the key of the bottomless pit which brought a gloomy night on all Object 2. Your second Scripture is 1 Tim. 6.13 14 where say you is a strait charge laid upon Timothy to keep that course of discipline prescribed to him in that Epistle Answ This solemn command of the Apostle doth not comprehend the whole Epistle but onely that immediately going before which is to fight the good fight of faith in following after righteousness godliness love patience meekness and avoiding covetousness thereby to obtain eternal life and this is doctrinal and to be observed till the last coming of Christ Now that it is thus is clear from the text for the Spirit faith not Thâ—s but this as pointing at that immediately preceding nor commandments in the plural as respecting all the several precepts of the whole book but commandment in the singular number as respecting one The Apostle in this Epistle gives other charges by the particle these in the plural number as Chap. 4.11 These things charge and command and Chap. 5.21 having before given rules about discipline enjoyns him to do these things without partiality and lay on hands suddenly on no man The phrase of abiding is not at all annexed to these former charges they containing many things that failed but onely to this later singled out by it self which it well reviewed will further clear up our assertion and by a direct diameter contradict the sence which you would force it to To your fourth Objection from Matth. 28.19 20 we shall reply to in the conclusion of this Paragraph Section 2. Our second is that Ministery Prayer c. being perpetuated in the Word have always the life and power of the same Word in some measure accompanying them whereby to preserve their vital being Rev. 11.1.3 But the later wanting the same Word to uphold their abiding had the winde of the Spirit with-held from them whereby they became as a carcase without a soul Rev. 7.1 We are to observe that the outward matter of Ordinances are in themselves either barren empty elements or at most external formalities a meer carcase or void cask 't is the Name and power of Jesus Christ and the Spirit sent from him that is their internal and essential form when the same Spirit of life deserts them they then remain as a dead body is when the soul is severed from it or as an empty cabinet out of which the Jewel is taken Now the former of these answerable to the Prophecies are experimentally found to have some degree of their vital faculty subsisting There is the same light power and vertue in Ministery Prayer and Praisings that was in the primitive age though not in the same degree likewise for Baptism the badge of the Covenant there was some secret vertue in the Covenant to beget and preserve a sealed company amongst the Israelites which there was not amongst Turks and Heathens quatâ—nus sic also the Communion received upon the ground of our spiritual union with all the godly may confer some influence of comfort and refreshing flowing from the death of Christ For as there was a mystical relation of the scattered Saints which knit them to Christ the head and one to another by a spiritual bond so was there a mystical communion and feeding together with respect to the same inseparable union But for the later that are proper to a Church stated and invested with full power though in the first Gospel-day they held forth the glory and face of Jesus Christ yet afterwards when the external Government was taken from Christ's shoulders and placed upon Antichrist as it was generally in the hands of Popes Patriarchs and Archbishops thorowout the world according to what was prophesied that it should be given to the nations Rev. 11.2 then was the winde of the Spirit withheld from breathing in them then was the glory of God departed from them since which time they have been but as an empty shell out of which the kernel of their ancient truth was taken since then the lively efficacie and power of Christ is not found to accompany them wherever used Consider them as they are in the Romish Church who alone in all our Horizon can claim a succession from the primitive and where because your Office is derived from thence you are inevitably driven to hold their true being to remain What tender hearted Protestant who holds the Pope to be Antichrist can cordially embrace that his Holiness or his Clergie by laying on of hands can confer a true spiritual gift or that Christ accompanies their hand with so much glory as to make it the prime key on earth to beget the truth of Membership and Office Who would not blush to imagine that the Popes Excommunications or Bulls deliver over to Satan and by consequence that the Church of Rome â—nto which by these keys and doors they are entered and out of which they are shut is such a Church as may be named a kingdom of heaven or that what she bindes on earth is bound in heaven or that what she looses on earth is loosed in heaven or that she can forgive and retain sins All which powers she must have if the really possess the keys of the Kingdom For these can no more be severed from the keys while abiding true then the soul from the body while a living organ But if Rome be fundamentally a false Church as she is held to be by the Protestant party and stript naked of that primitive excellencie in her external government then what may be thought of you who deduce your interest from her by descent Experience hath taught the Saints that there was as little efficacy of the true Spirit if not as much of that Antichristian spirit of Cruelty Partiality Covetousness Enmity against the power of godliness in the Bishops Courts as was before in Rome And what the Presbytery hath been in Scotland where they had the full and uncontroulable command we leave to such to determine who have felt the rod. If it be true that Effectus sequitur virtutem causae The effect follows the vertue of its cause then surely no good fruit is like to spring from an Antichristian root The lifelesness formality contentions divisions c. that
in profession were beyond the sphere of Satan For the inward created principle in the soul breaking forth in and by these means and Ordinances the Spirit in and by the Word sustaining its perpetuity and Christ supporting the same are all far above the reach of Antichrist had these been in the power of that destroyer he would have utterly marred all the springs yea the very fountain of grace In the same manner the communion taken on the ground work of the spiritual union of all the godly wherever scattered when the corporated was false and Christ therein fed upon by faith was not altogether subverted for the mystical relation betwixt Christ and the heart and the godly with the godly was beyond the compass of Popes Bishops or any humane authority whatsoever Also for Baptism though the Antichristian Church was in her constitution and order unmeasured to truth and therein Babylon yet she was not utterly shut out from the Covenant but had the call of Israelites had the Name of the Father Son and holy Ghost put on them with a common grace to believe the Covenant and an elect sealed number in and amongst their tribes none of which properties can be attributed to those wholly without Though Antichrist in some things infected the externality of this Ordinance yet could he not fundamentally raze the Covenant nor utterly abolish the name of Christ from amongst Christians nor make invalid the power of the Word perpetuating that name Isai 56.5 In like sort the ten apostated tribes were in their Church-order set up by Jeroboam radically false and yet were Israelites within the Covenant and had the signe of Circumcision Thus also men excommunicated are excluded from Church-fellowship but not from their Baptism and the Covenant Likewise Hereticks who fell from the Church were received again not by new Baptism but by laying on of hands Euseb l. 7 cap. 2 3. 2. Our Reasons why the later sort as Ordination Confirmation c. abode not are these following 1. They are not promised in the Word to continue Isai 56.5 2. They wanting that promise were forsaken by God when corrupted 3. All the external Order became Antichristian and so the Ordinances proper thereto must be bestial or else how could there have been a Babylon wherein the sealed number were captives 4. Our last taken from this text Rev. 9 is that these were wholly resolved into the Pope to whom was given another key with other smoke and Officers These being altogether external and Christ leaving them Antichrist might have and had absolute power therein to make them bottomless Object Against this you assert that though the Pope have another false key yet withal he hath the keys of Christs discipline in Ordination Excommunication Suspension c. Answ Though the Pope usurp the carcase of those Ordinances that were Christs before yet their true essential form which makes them to be Christs and true Office and Membership on which they depend he and his whorish Church have not For confirmation whereof these grounds do naturally arise from the text 1. The first Reason is drawn from the nature of the Pope and Antichristian Hierarchies vers 1. the Star or Angel fell from heaven the orb in which he was fixed before unto the earth or wilderness Chap. 12.6 a total apostacie from his former office and sphere and was not in the least degree heavenly but terrene earthly and meerly humane or a wilde beast Rev. 13.1 and is numbered not to God but to man vers 18. It is a true Rule Corruptio optimi est pessima The corruption of the best things is always worst and most contrary to its former goodness Satan who was the noblest is by his fall the basest of creatures and most unlike to an angel of light which he was before he fell So here that Angelical Office which shined as a fixed Star in the bright firmament of the primitive purity holding forth the liveliest glory of Christ for the perfecting of the Saints being once apostated from his former sphere became not onely an humane Hierarchie but a meer Antichrist as most opposite to Christ of any other 2 Thess 2.3 and the man of sin as that wherein the quintessence of evil and deceit is epitomized and grown to its perfect maturity and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one in office altogether without and besides the Law and likest to sin it self which is termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Joh. 3.4 nay he is the principal vicegerent of Satan on earth to whom he commits his chiefest power Rev. 13.2 throne and authority in the exercise whereof he is Abaddon or Apollyon Chap. 9.11 destruction it self in the abstract recorded in the two most famous Languages and is most emphatically stiled by Paul The son of perdition being one who hath caused the greatest ruine and desolation and is termed by John the King of the bottomless pit Thus we may see that the Office of the Pope and his Hierarchy is most corrupted of any thing else being that wherein the being of Antichrist doth subsist who is not a particular person but a corporation And this Official Hierarchy being stript naked of its primitive truth and becoming meerly Antichristian cannot in the least degree beget a lawful Office for Nâ—l dat quod non habet If the fountain be polluted how can the streams be pure None can bring a clean thing out of an unclean not one Job 14.3 2. This Angel had another key different in nature from the former And it is impossible the keys of the kingdom of heaven can subsist with the key of the bottomless pit or the power of Jesus Christ be united with the power of Satan Contraries in their extremes cannot stand together but the one must destroy the other 3. The Church opened by this key is a bottomless pit bottomless she being void of the groundwork of Truth in her order a pit or prison being as a hell on earth in which men are captivated Prov. 7.27 Chap. 9.18 Isai 51.14 Chap. 49.9 Zech. 9.11 12. also a Church excommunicated of God and Babylon Rev. 11.2 Chap. 17.5 and so cannot in her constitution have the keys of the kingdom of heaven for the key must be of the same nature with the Church Besides if Confirmation Ordination Excommunication c. be true in Rome then must that Romish Church into which by these keys she enters and out of which she shuts be a kingdom of heaven and a Sion and not a bottomless pit and Babylon which we conceive you will be ashamed to affirm 4. The smoke or dispensation of this pit or false Church is hellish and diabolical eclipsing and darkning the whole Horizon vers 2. and how can the smoke or winde of Gods glory spiriting these Ordinances and making them lightsome dwell together with the darksome false and delusive smoke of the bottomless pit surely the Lord will not so much honour Antichrist his greatest adversary If the
Pope have the true smoke or winde of the primitive Church then what he bindes or looses on earth is bound or loosed in heaven Matth. 16.19 as is further cleared in the second Section 5. The Officers coming from hence are locusts of a divers kinde from the true they proceeding from another key king pit and smoke If Office had been true in Rome then Membership must be the like for he can be no true Officer that is not withal a Member and if Office and Membership be both right in that Catholike Synagogue then must she be a true Church being radically right both in Ministers and people Sir have you exclaimed against Rome as Babylon for so many yeers and do you now by this argument prove her to be Sion However we may from this text observe that as the pit is bottomless so is the key the smoke and the locusts arising from it and that fundamentally so that your Ordination Excommunication Suspension coming from hence cannot have any parcel of the keys of the kingdom of heaven but must pertain to this bottomless key Object But say you these Ordinances may remain the Ordinances of Christ though in wrong hands and abused as the Great seal of the kingdom is still in the right and true seal though in the hand of an usurping Lord Keeper c. Answ If you should prove these constitutive Ordinances to be Seals yet in the Broad Seal there be two things requirable 1. The Power and Authority from whence the Seal proceeds 2. The confirming of an act coming from that power by the Seal When the writing sealed is derived from a lawful authority then the Seal carries the name and majestie of that true and rightful power which makes it a legal ratification but if it issue forth from an usurped Primacy though the matter and print may be the same with the other yet the act sealed bears the substance of that usurpation which puts another form upon it and makes it illegitimate nay treasonable So these Ordinances pertaining to Church-order in the primitive times arising from Christ and his Spirit working in the Apostles c. were accompanied with the name and power of Christ which made them true as representing the lively image of himself but these coming from other usurping lords as Popes Bishops or the like receive the character of the same usurpation which changeth their essence makes them unlawful and to carry the image of the Beast And your Office flowing from this bestial and exorbitant key must be false in its foundation The Key the Church the Smoke is another and thereof not Christ but Antichrist the king of the bottomless pit We informed you how the truth of this was verified by the event that there was no other Office but that of the Locusts kinde even in Luther's time who himself was a Monk In opposition to this you reckon up some Bishops Monks Friers Priests or of some such Popish Order that for 1260 yeers stood up to witness the Truth who were not locusts Answ These men whom you reckon up with any other of the like sort of godly men officiated by Antichrist had no other Office but that of the locust-kinde You your self acknowledge the Officers called Monks Friers Priests Abbots Cardinals and the Popish Clergie to be of the series of the locust a little before in the same page of your book And whatsoever excellencie and honour these men gained beyond others arose simply from the gift of Jesus Christ not at all from their Popish function that being but the defiled rags with which the same Witnesses were clothed No man not Popishly minded can imagine that their Frierhood Monkery Priesthood or the like could confer any dignity to their piety or that these men thus gifted by the Lord Jesus did attribute any esteem to their Popish Orders It is observable that God should rear up such men who had no Office but what was meerly invented to be such noble instruments to testifie in some degree the Truth which may teach you us and all others not to give any worth to such difiled Offices but onely to their qualifications which unless sanctified from heaven they had been locusts as well as the rest of their Orders and to conclude that this their grace and the right to dispense the same came not from their officiating but onely from the gift and grant of the Lord of life So that herein we must distinguish their inward gift with its administration from their outward investment the one distilling from Christ was radically true and holy the other coming from Antichrist was utterly false and polluted Object You assert further that Ockam John of Gaunt Dante 's John Wickliff Jerome of Prague Luther were men that amongst others made up the series of the three Angels Rev. 14. and yet lived in the Church of Rome had their external calling from that Church were of some of the Popish Orders c. Answ Bare saying is no proving and ipse dixit he said so will hardly pass for currant amongst men of judgement We shall deny that the men you name were of the rank of the three Angels specified Rev. 14.6 8 9. much less that they were called Angels by vertue of their Popish Office which you would insinuate For they lived within the circuit of the one thousand two hundred and sixty yeers of tribulation wherein they were mourners and being as you confess men that lived in the Church of Rome that had their external calling from that Church and of some of the Popish Orders must be those Witnesses clothed in sackcloth Rev. 11.3 Whereas these three Angels were of the rejoycing Harpers who arose not till after the expiration of that sorrowful time were clothed in white Robes of joy and greater purity and had gotten the victory over the Beast his image mark name and the number of his name Chap. 7.9 Chap. 15.2 Again neither the Ministery nor Writings of those you mention were so pure and full as might be termed an everlasting Gospel which the first Angels ministery was vers 6 neither did they with the second vers 8 unmask the root of Mysterie Babylon great part whereof was sealed up from their understandings neither did they discover the Beast his image and mark in its whole latitude with the third who with a thundering voice crieth against all such defiled Offices with which they were outwardly arayed vers 9. 2. These ministers or instruments of this threefold discovery are not intitled Angels by vertue of any outward call to an Office by the Pope Bishops or any other authority on earth but onely by the priviledge of a gift dispensed immediately by the Angel of the Covenant Rev. 10.8 9 10 11. Here their commission or sending forth Go comes simply from God their furnishing for this ministration or their taking and eating the book from the Angel and being thus divinely impowered they must prophesie though all the earth oppose it their
set up a false Christ in regiment This was not so palpable in outward shew but came in Christ his name under very specious pretences of Order Unity repressing heresies holiness advancing Christ and his Kingdom and therefore did the more universally deceive If the natures persons and offices our Lord Jesus had been directly originally and fundamentally razed in the Romish Church then Gods people could never have remained for so many ages in such a visible stand Object 3. The Popes extravagant exercise of discipline in excommunicating suspending not onely simple persons but whole Nations and disposing of all Ecclesiastical dignities was founded on this false doctrine that the Pope is universall Bishop Christs Vicar c. Answ 1 The same barely considered as a Notion or thing taught was not the ground-work of the beast but as usurped and layed in discipline a stone in the quarrie is not the foundation of a house till it be hewen out thence and disposed in the bottom of the building 2 This false Tenent of universality and visible headship is not a doctrinal if doctrine be minded as opposed to discipline but a disciplinall principle as any rational man may apprehend Object 4 None can comply with the Beast in the foundation of his estate without the loss of his salvation as who doth rely on another besides Christ and acknowledgeth him to be supream head under him vicar of Christ and submit to his new Articles of faith but many godly Christian have complyed with him in discipline as Ridly Latimer c. Answer 1 The beast it is true layed another foundation which primarily and radically was in discipline and secondarily struck against doctrine as is shewed before his visible headship and vicarship are principles of discipline and thence flow his articles of faith Besides he was fundamentally both in matter and forme a Beast for 1260 yeares and some time after and so long the Church is Babylon as before is cleared and all that time the world worshipped him but his Articles of faith are not of so long standing most whereof were framed in the Council of Trent And then that cannot be his groundwork which in order of nature and time followed his being the Cause must be before the Effect 2 This was damnable as to all so only to those Christians not truely grounded upon the Rock Jusus Christ Rev. 13.8 who having a meer outside shallow and sandie bottome might be radically supplanted by such a totall and delusive externality but the Elect having a deeper root then that of the Beast could not in the inward work of grace be by him subverted though they were outwardly clothed with his Livery Thus Gregory and other Popes of Rome before him might be in the Election yet their Office was essentially a Beast they living within the aforenamed time of the tribulation the like may be said of Ridly Hooper with the rest by you nominated If this beast had been originally false in the essentials of doctrine it had been damnable to them as well as to the rest of the world for if the foundations be utterly destroyed how can the righteous stand Psal 11.3 We desire the Reader rightly to observe the difference betwixt Mr. Elmestone and us in this particular subject He pleads that the Church of Rome is fundamentally false in doctrine which you may finde by his Arguments above and yet that in her order or Church-constitution she is in her ground-work true for he avers that the Pope hath the true key of Christs discipline in Ordination Excommunication c. and that Friars Monks Priests Bishops c. were radically right in their membership and orders which they had in and from that Church as you may read in the 29 and 30 pages of his book The former he is driven to maintaine or else he must contradict in writing what he and his party have published for many years in open Pulpits before the Nation that Rome is a false Church and that woman Babylon described in Revel 17. that the Pope is Antichrist and the beast delineated chap. 13. the latter he is inforced to manage or else he must yeild their office to be false which lineally descended from the Romish Church But how the body of discipline can retaine life in its binding and loosing where the soul of doctrine is departed or how she can be a bottomless pit and a stranger to Sion who is bottomly true in her order and hath the keyes of the Kingdome of heaven to let into and shut out of such a visible Kingdome we conceive cannot be proved by Scripture nor agree with any reason On the contrary we affirme that Church to be in visible Order false in her membership Babylonish in her office bestial but yet as the Prophecies foretold and the event hath manifested that there should be a godly people in that false visibility so for their sakes the Lord reserved the root of the Covenant of doctrine faith profession issuing thence in prayer praises c. as also a gifted ministery coming not from the bottomless key of that Church but from the immediate gift of Jesus Christ which you may see evinced in the Cessation the former must be fundamentally false or else Rome could not be Babylon the latter must be radically true or else there had been no subsistence for the Saints And thus we shall end with this third Paragraph Paragraph IV. OUrs in brief was this that the call of God in our times is only for separation without stating or without constituting and modelling visible Churches and sitting down therein Rev. 18.4 You may finde it declared in the Cessation that there are two bright and manifest dayes of Jesus Christ in the clear administration of his glory 1. That of the primitive apostolical day which continued till the key of the bottomless pit was given and thereby the Sun and aire darkned which shut up that brightness with darkness of a succeeding night 2. The day of his coming like lightning when the marriage of the Lamb doth againe return after the final subversion of Antichrist Betwixt these two periods is the time of the Babylonish age wherein neither of those two dayes are to be seen in such an open dispensation of his power the kingdome then being inward This latter season containes two distinct special and very observable revolutions 1. The time of the Saints tribulation lasting 1260 yeers in which term the true Church is only a sealed number disrobed of the beauty of her exterior order and visibly seated in the desart of nations where her choicest witnesses were outwardly invested with defiled and mournful garments and prophesied in that earth before the God of the earth where the beast had power to prevaile and tread them under foot making their estate mournful This begun about the yeer three hundred and ninty when the Bishop of Rome obtained the primacy of seat and is expired in the yeer 1650 as is shewed in the Cessation and
for this later coming of the Bridegroom by the pouring glory of his Spirit shall go in with him to the Marriage and not all they but properly the wise virgins shall be thus immediately invested from heaven * See Parag 4. Matth. 25.10 what may be afterwards by the sons of the Church we leave to the times to manifest If you will bring all our new-stated Churches to this touch-stone you may finde them to be of a different metal from the true and however so neer the primitive they seem to be in the outward shell yet in reality to be grounded upon another foundation to wit upon believers not possessed with such a power visibly sent down from heaven Now that faith or the profession thereof without such a divine call and spiriting cannot be a ground-work for stating Churches I shall further prove by these following Arguments 1. Faith must foot on a call as done in obedience to the heavenly voice but now there is no call for visible Church-marriage as is declared in our first Rule and no call no faith nay it wanting that must bottom upon our own call name and time which is presumptuous disobedience 2. God having promised to spirit this again faith must rely upon the same promise till fulfilled and not upon its own power the hundred and twenty were believers and yet begun not any constitution by vertue of that but waited till the keys were given 3. Profession alone can no more give life unto Ordinances from which the glory of God is departed then it can infuse a living soul into a dead carcase It is God's sole prerogative to create their breath of life which he will do in his own season according to what he hath promised Faith and profession are but effects and to attribute such a causal vertue to them is to confound and turn the causes upside down and to set the creature in the place of his Creator 4. This pretended saith void of the call and promise of God and the vital influence of its prime original cause is but a meer work a bare creature-foundation by far too weak to lay a Gospel-fabrick upon and being but humane must in divine things be bottomless and whether the smoke or dispensation arising thence be not then that of the bottomless pit we leave it to wise men seriously to consider We are sure that this is the proper distinguishing character to difference the true from the false The true begins with the smoke or winde Gods glory inspiring the follow the keys opening and entering and by that it becomes a spiritual building the false begins with the key the smoke ensueth and thence is it a building made with hands grounded on tradition Rev. 9.1 2. The true is as smoak descending from heaven the false as smoke ascending from an humane bottom I shall now speak a little to you of the Separation who are modeled into the form of stated Churches I know there are many precious Saints amongst you in whom the character of Jesus Christ is printed and confess that some of you have been instruments to bring to light some solid Truths and prepared way for greater You hold a Separation from all National Hierarchies according to the Scriptures have in part cleared that the Beast reacheth further then the Papal Chair of Rome have renounced prelacies and precedencies have vindicated the consciences of the godly from the Laws and Canons of Courts and Classes maintain the Gospel to come in the liberty and power of the Spirit have rightly pleaded that members of true Gospel-Churches must at least have a visible Saintship have to this day been real and cordial in that noble Cause beginning in our ends of the earth For these good things found amongst you I protest in the presence of the great Tribunal I am obliged by the bond of entire affection and desire your spiritual welfare as my own salvation Yet I must not dare not flatter or dissemble in matters divine but because I love I am compelled to deal plainly and faithfully resting confident that those who are truely pious will desire to see their combustible works burn by the fiery trial of the Vials What I shall expostulate with you I have already convinced in my self Consider seriously whether consultations be not weak grounds to bottom Gospel-Churches or whether the primitive the patern you labour to model by was ever laid upon such sandy foundations or whether these your actings do not contradict many of your own tenents before named Did the Kingdom of God in that first day come by observations or by the descending majesty of the Spirit Or will Christ think you be less glorious in this later Reformation then in the former View I beseech you the Scriptures treating of the dignity of this later marriage Or if you cannot search primarily into the cause look into the effects that follow these your undertakings For knowledge in the ordinary way comes to us secundum posterius so that by those signes or symptomes which break out in manifestation we are directed to look into the fountains whence they issue forth Why was there so great efficacy in the outward order of the primitive Government but because it proceeded originally from the manifest blast of the Spirit Why is there so little in your externalities if not because arising from weak humane principles You that are most discerning do you not see too much of formality too little of power Nay why was that one and the same in every particular drawing the flock of Christ into a general unity unless because it footed in the Spirit which by its illuminating glory virtual operation and perswasive attraction congregated the whole body of Sions sons unto it Why are yours manifold disagreeing and occasions of dividing the Saints but because basing on obscure carnal apprehensions Experience informs us that your various constitutions have rent the Lords people in pieces and are as so many walls to keep them asunder and that which divides is carnal Tell us To which of you shall we joyn to come to the general Assembly Yea to what form shall we come and not in the very act of sitting down sequester our selves from the major part of the godly By a narrow search you may finde your union to ground in division your gathering in scattering View Ezek. 34.5 6 and compare them to your divisions Peter James and John chosen vessels were like in their minority to fall into the same relapse Matth. 17.4 Master if thou wilt let us build tabernacles but alas they knew not what they said understood not that Gospel-tabernacles were not to be made with hands but by the powerful dispensation of the Spirit Much like to this do you Let us build temples let us erect Gospel-Churches Well if you must needs be doing the proper work of your Master observe what censure he gives of such designes Matth. 24.23 24 26. Iuke 17.20 21 22 23. Mark rightly the secret chambers
are in and caused by our new-built models are too well known in England and how they ground upon an humane bottom is to be seen in the second Querie of the Cessation Object Against this you quaerie What means then hath been left for which the Lord would make due provision for his people from whence then came the conversion of the one hundred and fourty four thousand living under the Apostaciâ— and of multitudes in these later times were they aborigines a people springing out of the earth or let down from heaven Answ 1. You cannot I hope think that the conversion or edification of any soul under the Romish defection came from the Ordination Confirmation Admission Absolution c. of the Pope or any of his Hierarchy nor hath the least good but rather hurt come from these as exercised by the Bishops or you for they have been utterly empty of any true spiritual breathings as before is cleared 2. Gods ways of conversion are various his Spirit worketh when where and how it pleaseth sometimes he calleth from the womb Isai 49.1 Jer. 1.5 Luke 1.15 Rom. 9.11 sometimes by the godly conversation of the Saints by their holy walk and seasonable admonition Josh 2.1 Ruth 1.16 17. and 1 Pet. 3.1 Thus godly men in our times going into places where the Ministery hath been blinde and formal were instruments to work on and enlighten others and by this means many have been spiritualized in the Antichristian times Sometimes the Lord may sanctifie great outward afflictions and the sence of hainous sins as he did to Manasseh 2 Chron. 33.12 13. Sometimes by the sight of a strange and fearful accident striking a terror on the man as Waldus the first founder of the Waldenses was by seeing a man fall down dead before him also a kinsman of mine was first wrought upon by seeing a Fire-drake fall down beside him Sometimes by a divine light or vision as Paul Act. 9.3 also another precious Saint in our age by his own acknowledgement to me and others Sometimes by reading of the Scriptures 2 Tim. 3.15 which many very godly men in our days have affirmed to be the means God hath used to turn them to himself Sometimes by a powerful officiated Ministery as in the Primitive times Sometimes by a gifted Ministery as shall be in the next place manifested and this gifted Ministery together with the rest of the first sort of Ordinances as Prayer c. were the ordinary means to feed the woman in the wilderness The variety of Gods ways in this noble work of Conversion is beyond the apprehension of any creature and you much forget your self in tying it up onely to an Antichristian Office By what means the one hundred and fourty four thousand and the standers at the glassie sea were spiritually begotten and brought forth we leave it to the Lord sure we are they were not oborigines their birth came not from the earth nor from the earthly key of your Officials but from a grace descending from heaven Object 1. Against thâ—s gifted Ministery is affirmed That it is onely said not proved and may be as castly denied as affirmed Answ There was such a Ministery in the Primitive times as is evident Act. 8.4 Chap. 11.19 20.1 Cor. 14.31 and 1 Pet. 4.10 11 though then the chiefest glory thereof was administred by way of Office but in the Antichristian season the true Ministery was managed by a gift subordinate to and beneath that of a true Office for 1. There was no Office in all the West but what was Romish for many hundred yeers after the first fall and that it is there false and Antichristian shall be declared in the next Section 2. When all Office came from Antichrist and his false key then Christ himself to provide food for his Elect gave power to his two Witnesses not from the hand of a Popish Ordination but from his own immediate gift Rev. 11.3 I will give to my two Witnesses and they shall prophesie their prophecie came from the immediate gift of Christ This gift beginning at that time when the four open windes were held from their blast and the false key was given must be a gift inferiour to the former Office and come not from any mediate power on earth but simply from heaven 3. Experience hath taught us in our generation that there is not the least degree of vertue in Ordination that addes one scruple to the gift of the Ministery or tends to the furtherance of salvation but rather that the Spirit hath breathed forth with with greatest efficacie in such men who either had no Office at all witness Dudly Venner of Cranebrook M. George Frogmorton when he preached at Bennâ—nden with multitudes now in England the truth of whose Ministery is sealed by the conversion of thousands or else by such Non-conformists Ministers who in the closets of their brest renounced or at least disliked their Office and subscription and by these last when Office in your sence was not refined you may ghess how it was when more corrupt Object 2. They always acted as Officers and were so acknowledged Answ This is not true many neither were nor acted as Officers many disliked their Office some renounced it as is before declared and if any did so act and were acknowledged it was the blindness of the times so to account which the Lord in times of ignorance might connive at Certain we are that no good came from their Office that being false but onely from their gifts and the blessings thereof were weak and lowe in comparison of what they were in the primitive times they being darkned and bemudded by their Office And this is so far from being ungrateful as that it is agreeable to the prophecies and the event Object 3. Paul produceth the conversion of the Corinthians not so much to prove his gifts as for a seal of his Apostleship Answ We will first declare the occasion of this argument of Paul and then return to yours The occasion was this There were certain false Apostles who subtilly perswaded the Churches not that he was no Officer but that he was onely an ordinary Minister or one at least inferiour to an Apostle and so not to be looked on as infallible In consutation of whom Paul proves himself to be an Apostle in the strictest sense as is clear by this text compared with Chap. 10.16 Chap. 12.12 Gal. 1.1 17 18 19. Chap. 2.7 8.9 This premised we shall now reply to your chiefest Helena 1. When Office was true it had not onely an ordinary grace common with private Christians but also an addition of a grace and life proper to the Office Thus Apostles Prophets Evangelists Pastors and Teachers having several degrees of order were endowed with a propriety of gift peculiar to each degree and the success was answerable in the heaters Thus Paul being a true Apostle shewed forth all the signes thereof with Apostolical power and authority and the same proper