world to charge the soundest Christians with Hypocrisie because then they talk of the secrets of the heart which we cannot open for our own vindication 2. As for self estimation our judgment is that Pride is one of the worst of sins and Pride of Wisdom and Godliness is one of the worst sorts of Pride and there are too many guilty of it in the world and we would fain have leave to Preach against it In the mean time we spare not by Writing and Conference and such Preaching as we use to do against it what we can And we shall heartily thank you for any true help to detect and mortifie it more in our selves But remembring from my childhood that the sots and drunkards of the Town and Countrey where I lived were used to speak the very same words with this Objection against all serious godly Christians how conformable soever I presume to ask you these few Questions Q. 1. Are the Conformists more Godly or Holy than all the ignorant drunken unchast voluptuous carnal rabble or are they not Q. 2. If not why do they take it for a wrong to hear of much less If they are as I doubt not but very many are do they so esteem themselves or not If not why should they be angry with others for thinking of them as they think of themselves If yea Q. 3. May they not take it for a greater mercy than all the riches of the World If all are none of Christs that have not his spirit may not they give God thanks for it that have received it Rom. 8. 9. Q. 4. And do you never give God thanks for his grace of Sanctification your selves Q. 5. If you do how shall a man know that you are not as very Hypocrites in so doing as the Nonconformists When they and you thank God for the same mercy how shall we know but by the fruits which of you is sincere Q. 6. Do you know that there are any or many among us that live after the flesh an ungodly sensual worldly life If not you are strangers to the Land which you inhabit If yea Q 7. Do you think all these are in a good and safe condition If yea give over Preaching against them If not do not better men differ from them Q. 8. And must not our light so shine before men though not for their applause that they may see our good works and glorifie God Matth. 5. 16. 4. And seeing we are accounted the Pharisees Come on and let us recite the Pharisees Character and see who is likest him 1. The Pharisees were the chiefest members of the Sanhedrim and Rulers of the Church and so are not we Act. 5. 34. Mat. 12. 14. 23. 2. 27. 62. John 7. 32 48. 2. The Pharisees were against the Scripture-sufficiency for the customs and traditions of their ancestors Mat. 15. 2. 3. They imposed these Traditions as Laws on others and accused the Christians for not observing them Mat. 15. 2. 4. They preferred these Tradition before the practice of some Moral duties Mat. 15. 9. 5. 6. 5. They were so much for Ceremony that they were precise and strict in the observance of their Ceremonies Mat. 23. 5. 23. 25 c. and for them neglected mercy and saith Mat. 23. 23. 6. They were covetous and sought after Riches even by oppression Mat. 23. 14. 7. They were proud and Lordly and strove for preferment the highest places and the highest titles Mat. 23. 6 7 c. 8. They wore a different sort of garments which was openly to signifie their special holiness Mat. 23. 5. 9. They were very zealous to make men Proselytes and conformable to all their Ceremonies Mat. 23. 15. 10. They foolishly and preposterously preferred small matters before great v. 16 17 c. 11. They laboured to silence Christ and the Preachers of his Gospel and forbad them with threatnings to Preach any more Mat. 23. 13. Act. 4. 18 c. 12. They persecuted Christ and his Apostles and sought first to intrap them in their speech and then to bring them into sufferings Luke 6. 7 c. If you know any that ever silenced or persecuted any faithful Minister he is none of the men that I am speaking for 13. They pretended Law for all their cruelties John 15. 7. and accused them as breakers of the Law Luke 6. 2. 4. 3. 14. They urged Christ to decide State-Controversies about Caesars right which he warily avoided knowing they did but seek matter of accusation Mat. 22. 17. Mark 12. 14. 15. Yet did they accuse him as an enemy to Caesar and as guilty of disloyalty even to his crucifixion Luke 23. 2. John 19. 12. And were not contented to take away his life unless they put on him the infamy of Treason 16. They would not understand the meaning of the Law of Love or I will have mercy and not sacrifice Mat. 9. 13. 17. They were stricter for Tything and such Levitical Rights than for the spiritual worshipping of God Mat. 23. 23. 18. Their Righteousness was more in outside Religious pomp and bodily exercise than in the inward part and moral practise Mat. 23 24 c. 19. They pretended great veneration for the dead Saints and built them Monuments for an honourable memorial while they imitated those that murdered them and persecuted the living Saints that imitated them Mat. 23. 26 27 c. 20. They had their set-days of formal fasting twice a week turning even extraordinary duties and all into form and ceremony Luke 18. 2. And were inquisitive after them that conformed not herein Mat. 9. 14. Mark 2. 18. 21. They counted it the folly and ignorance of the Law in the common people whom they took for cursed to be such admirers of the preaching of Christ John 7. 49. 22. They used long prayers as a cloak for their oppression Query Whether they were a Liturgy or not If yea so let it pass in their Character If not then it is scarce like that there was any other Liturgy than the Scriptures in those times else it is most like that the Pharisees would have used it For 23. they went up into the Temple to pray and sometime in other publick places as Bishop Hall notably describeth the Hypocrite in his Characters that he kneeling down behind a Pillar in the great Church muttereth over certain words praying to that God whom he all the week at home forgetteth and disobeyeth and rising up commendeth the devotion of our ancestors He boweth at the name of Jesus and sweareth by the name of God c. This is the sense for being separated from books I pretend not to recite verbatim So did these Pharisees make ostentation of their prayers in the Temple but we read not of their family or secret prayers which Christ enjoineth to his Disciples that they may differ from the Pharisees Mat. 6. 24 They insulted over the followers of Christ as an accursed ignorant vulgar sort when they were
Son of God but not indifferently as he please but only in the affirmative He may judg if it become a publick Controversie whether God shall be worshipped whether he may be blasphemed whether there be a life to come whether the Scripture be Gods word and so whether there shall be a Ministry whether Ministers shall preach in his Dominions or so many as is necessary to mens Salvation But he is bound before hand to judg only one way and hath no power to judg on the other side at all Else he might judg that men shall not be saved and that Christ shall have no Ministers or Church and consequently be no Christ. 3. Yet if Rulers do judg amiss in any such cases they are not by force of arms to be resisted though they are not to be obeyed Obj. By this pretence of a private judgment of discerning you will set up two Soveraigns or make every mans conscience his King and so the King having lost his power over conscience a zealous conscience will be the unruliest beast in the world Answ. 1. In good sadness would you have men have a judgment of private discerning or not If you would all this concerneth you as well as us If not then no man must discern that it is his duty to obey the King rather than an Usurper or rather than to rebel against him Such excellent assistance would brutish principles give to Government then men must not discern whether to preach or be silent or what to preach on Nor whether to be drunk or sober chaste or unchaste To think and speak well or ill whether God should be honoured or blasphemed or what Religion we should be of Christians or Infidels Then only the King must be a man and his subjects bruits that must use no reason and so the King be made a herdsman to govern beasts instead of men And then what Councellors Judges and Justices shall he have and O then what excellent Preaching shall the people hear Absolute obedience is due only unto God 2. And as to what you say of Conscience to bind conscience that is science is an improper expression but as to that which is commonly meant by it it is one thing to bind a mans soul to make conscience of his duty and another thing to bind his soul to go against the conscience of his duty Binding conscience is an ambiguous word We flatly affirm as well as you That the Kings Laws do bind the mind or soul or Conscience if you will so call it to a conscionable performance of all his lawful commands for nothing but cords and irons bind the body without the soul and he that obligeth not the soul obligeth not the man and he that obligeth not ruleth not As God bindeth by a primary obligation as God so Kings bind the mind by a secondary obligation by the power which they derive from God as men I say not only that God bindeth us in conscience to obey the King but that the Kings derived power enableth him to oblige the soul in subordination to God which is no more than to say that he may make Laws and rule by them But whether this shall be called a binding of conscience is only lis de nomine Conscience is sometime taken as largely as conscire and so we are conscious of our duty to the King But in Theology it is usually taken more strictly for a mans judgment of himself as he stands related to the judgment of God And so when the very definition appropriateth Conscience to our relation to God it cannot so be subject to man 3. Conscience is no King no Competitor with the King no Ruler of any man at all in a true proper sense It is but only a discerner of our duty and not a maker of it a knower and applier of the Law and not a Law-giver And is it not fine reasoning to say If a man must be the discerner of his duty to God and the King he can be no good subject 4. And Conscience discerning duty to God is it that is here to be orderly distinguished from Conscience discerning duty to man God and man are our Governours if we are not agreed which of them is the greater stay a while and we shall be agreed Conscience is but a discerner of our respective duty to each of them or taken strictly and Theologically of our duty to God only so that this is the question Whether when a man is conscious of his duty to God he may omit it because that man forbiddeth it Or when a man is conscious what God forbiddeth he may do it if man command it so that for man to bind Conscience if you will speak ineptly to duty is one thing and for man to bind us to go against conscience is another thing For that 's all one as to bind us to do that which as far as we can discern is against Gods Law and so the issue of all is whether conscience of Gods command or conscience of mans command is to be preferred And this being the plain English of the case is it not a blessed time and land think you when confident raw confused wits shall by such questions as VVhether the King or Conscience be supream deceive and mislead poor people in a maze and confound them as to all Religion when an ordinary wit that had been but preserved by Humility and Catholicism or freedom from faction might easily have distinguished and set them in the open light 13. It went for current in the Catholick Church not only for the first 300 years but long after there were Christian Emperors that the people were to chuse their Pastors Cyprians Epistle that earnestly pleadeth for the peoples power and duty in this kind and chargeth the guilt upon them if they forsake not seducing and schismatical Pastors is well known The common practise of the Churches also is known as well And long after there were Christian Emperours though some Dignitaries as Patriarchs and a few great Bishops were obtruded on the people by the Emperours choice when they could not agree among themselves yet the people constantly kept their former custom and priviledg and chose all the ordinary Bishops and Pastors in conjunction with the Presbyters The Bishops sometimes chose alone who should be a Minister in general as the Colledg of Physicians licenseth general Physicians But who should be their own Pastors was always or usually at the peoples choice with the Ordainers as every man chuseth his own Physician See Blondels copious Testimony de jure plebis in regimine Ecclesiastico adjoined to Grotius his Excellent Treatise de Imperio sumar potestat circa sacra Now this being so the old Christians never believed that the Emperour could justly so frustrate their choices as to make it unlawful by his prohibition for their Pastors to preach to them when their Preaching was necessary to the Churches good nor that the Emperours were the only Judges of
heinous crime for any to vent any suspicions of his constancy which through so many temptations he hath approved And indeed it were a crime that deserved no small punishment as imputing that to our Sovereign which is scarce to be thought of a rational man even to give up most of his power and Kingdom to a foreign Usurper after his power is shaken off and that without any cause Princes that ever got loose from the Roman yoke do not use to come under it again at least except as King John resigned his Crown constrained by meer necessity But Godfrey Goodman a Papist was the last Bishop of Gloucester and I must profess that if I were a Papist and studied to help them to a Toleration I would by writings and by all my interest endeavour to bring as many more of you as I could into a necessity of seeking Liberty or Toleration that when the party that needed and sought it were considerable and the cry for it were great we might look for our part among the rest and say why not we as well as others And yet I would have the Papists and all conscientious persons used like men and not with any cruelty or inhumanity 19 Obj. There was indeed a necessity of much Preaching before the world was converted to Christianity but there is no such necessity now when we are all Christians Ans. This is fully answered before Do you think the bare name of a Christian and his Baptism will save those thousands that know not what Christianity is or those that live in enmity contempt or neglect of the Laws of Christ Is a wicked Christian that sinneth against the greatest means and his own Covenant vow and profession a happier man than the poor Infidels that never heard the Gospel If not these have need of teaching here at home as well as men in foreign parts But I will add no more to my former answer 20 Obj. But why do you not go preach among the Indians or in other lands where there is more need if liberty of Preaching be all that you desire Ans. 1. Some are sickly and weak and some aged unable to travel 2. Some have families which they are obliged to and must not desert and cannot carry with them If you say they should have kept themselves without I answer they were born in a land where good men were suffered to serve God quietly and therefore they thought they might fix themselves therein But if they could have foreseen that they should have been forbidden to Preach at home I believe that many would not only have forborn Marriage but also have set themselves to learn some foreign languages that they might have been able to Preach abroad But 3. our great impediment is that we have not the vulgar tongue of any other Country and therefore cannot preach to any of the vulgar there and if we could in a long time learn the Tartarian or Indian tongue c. a half learnt broken tongue doth but make the speaker ridiculous to the vulgar To say nothing of our want of maintenance to sustain us thither and there For my own part had I strength and any vulgar tongue which I might use in Preaching in other lands I think I should have left England long ago and not been an eye-sore to you so long 21 Object Have not the Friendly Debate and the Politician fully and unanswerably opened the folly and villany of your Religion and can you yet for shame desire leave to preach and propagate such a Religion as that Ans. Because so great prejudice is taken against us from those Books I intended in the end to have given a full answer to all that concerneth us not in their mode but in my own that is in certain Propositions containing our judgment and our reasons about those matters which I leave out now to avoid length having written Books enow to declare what my Religion is and so have others And therefore now only say this in general concerning the Authors and their dealing with us 1. As to the men I judg them to be of more than ordinary parts as to Ratiocination and expression and had they with humility patience and impartiality taken but a dozen or twenty years more time to have furnished their minds according to their capacity before they had permitted themselves with so great considence to say what they have said I believe they would have been as excellent persons as most ages have produced But they have put off the habit of little children too soon 2. I imagin by their writings that they have been unhappy in their converse and acquaintance and that they have had more to do with Sectaries and weak women and boys and the weaker sort of serious Christians among those called Puritans than with the sober understanding sort and so judg of the party by such as they have been acquainted with For most of the weak expressions and passages which they fill their Books with I have heard from some Sectaries or true Fanaticks and from some weak women and ignorant persons but never from the grave and sober sort of Nonconformists Nor have I used to converse with many of the Laity that talk at so low a rate as they feigned them to talk 3. I doubt also that their converse hath been more at the Universities and with Scholars and with the richer and well-bred sort of persons besides those Sectaries than with Plowmen and other of the lower rank and therefore that they are strangers to the condition of the vulgar which faithful Country Ministers know whose work hath been to Catechise them and personally instruct them 4. They cannot but know that most of those things which they blame in the people which are real weaknesses and faults we tell them of as loud as they do and as plainly as they though not so wrathfully or flamingly as they Mr. Pool's Vox calmentis hath told the si'enced Ministers even in Latin in the hearing of the world of more of their faults then both these Authors could remember and not only in my Directions for weak Christians but in divers other Books I have dealt as plainly with the people 5. Saving therefore the Debaters civility to my self I must ask him whether it savoured of common equity and justice to make the Nonconformist in the general the author or owner of all those weaknesses follies impudences falshoods c. which he could fasten only on Sectaries or on the ignoranter sort And especially when scarcely ever Books were written by any man as against Nonconformists that so little touch upon Nonconformity it self or any of the points in difference Is Gersom Bucer or Altare Damascenum or Amesius Fresh Suit or any other of the Nonconformists writings answered there except a late Nehushtan that few men own and he thought he could more easily say somewhat to 6. If he say that he told us that he spake it not of all I answer what if he
Catalogue of Questions for our Disputations at those Meetings and never then talkt to us of what he here writeth in a Book called Dubitantius Firmianus 2. Mr. Thomas Foley a Nonconformist Gentleman eminent for Charity having built near Stourbridge a Hospital and endowed it with about 500 l. per annum being my friend Dr. Good wrote to me to move him to give maintenance for two Scholarships in Baliol-Colledge and I wrote this Letter in answer to that but the sending was delayed till he was dead Accus 29. Another to save the Nation from the labours of a Concordant Ministry and from the blessings of Unity Peace and Innocence hath written a book lately called The Modern Pleas for Comprehension Toleration c. considered who at his enterance saith I would fain have any of our dissenting brethren to answer directly Whether there be any one thing sinful in her Communion the Churches as by Law established or only some things as they conceive inexpedient And p. 11. he saith Suppose that the terms of the Communion of the Church are not only inexpedient but really sinful if so then I shall readily grant that the Church ought not to be communicated with while the terms of her Communion are such But I shall presume to say with some confidence that it is not easie to find a considerable man among them who will not be ashamed to own it publickly or who doth himself really believe it And p. 12. I have been credibly informed not to say that I am able to make it good that Mr. Calamy did before his Majesty and divers Lords of the Council profess that there was not any thing in the constitution of the Church to which he could not conform were it not for the scandalizing of others so that in his esteem the Constitutions of the Church were in themselves innocent and the whole objection against them lay in the mistakes of other men Yet saith he p. 11. That the separation from the Church is so avowed and pressed upon the people as if that it were highly necessary and that communion with the Church was highly criminal at least in the opinion of the teachers Ans. And now Reader what a shake doth this instance give to the credit of History at least such as is written by interessed factious men yea what a reproach to humane nature For what untruth can be imagined so gross and what thing so nakedly evil as may not be expected to be found in Man yea in professed Christians yea in Divines of such a character Either this man and such others believe what they say themselves or not If not what Preachers what Christians what Men are these If they do what matter of fact can ever be so notorious as that we can hope that such men can know it What History of such Writers can deserve any credit What regard can the people be encouraged to give to the Words and Writings of such Doctors that no better know such publick notorious matters of fact and so confidently and boldly deceive the world in cases where so many thousands yea the Churches Peace and Concord is so much concerned Reader judge by these notorious evidences of fact of these mens credibility and usage 1. The judgment of the ancient Nonconformists is declared to the world by abundance of Writings in which they thought that they proved much in the English Constitutions to be sinful and such as men must suffer deprivation and death rather than consent to And are all these Writings no evidence of their judgments nor their sufferings neither 2. Since his Majesties Restoration the present Nonconformists still distinguished 1. Between Diocesan or National Churches and Parish-Churches 2. Between the Communion and Conformity of private men and of Ministers And 3. Between Approbation of the Church-Constitutions Practising all imposed and peaceable behaviour and submission And though some exasperated persons have by the late sufferings of conscionable men been tempted to separate from the Prelates and their party as far as St. Martin did from the Bishops about him and their Synods yet the main body of the Nonconforming Ministers as far as ever we could learn did judge as followeth 1. That those Parish-Churches which had true Ministers not utterly uncapable persons were true Churches of Christ. 2 That the ordinary Liturgy appointed for the publick worship was such as a good Christian may lawfully joyn in not speaking of Baptizings Burials c. in which some things they thought more dubious 3. That though combined Churches whether you call them Diocesan or National are not any otherwise a Divine Institution than as Concord is commanded us in general and may not be set up to the detriment of the particular Churches which are of Divine Institution yet a good Christian may and must live peaceably and submissively where some such combined Churches are guilty of Usurpation and sinful abuse 4. That Conformity to all the Subscriptions Declarations Oaths Covenants and Practices now imposed on Ministers would be to us a very great and heinous sin modesty forbidding us to meddle uncalled with the Consciences of the Conformists 3. Their judgment of the sinfulness of Ministerial Conformity they declared to his Majesty and the Bishops in many Writings when they had encouragement to attempt once the healing of the divisions And when because they agreed to leave out all harsh provoking words in their accusations of the Church-Orders and Ceremonies the Lord Chancellor had put into the first draught of a Declaration That we do not in our judgments believe the practice of those particular Ceremonies which we except against to be in it self unlawful In our next Address we desired that those words might be expunged and so they were Yet this extended not to Subscriptions Oaths c. And afterward many particulars were mentioned which we thought sinful and the supposition vindicated in a Reply to which the Bishops never answered And in a long Petition for Peace p. 6. we make this Protestation following Who can pretend to be better acquainted with their hearts than they are themselves For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him And they are ready to appeal to the dreadful God the searcher of hearts and the hater of hypocrisie that if it were not for fear of sinning against him and wounding their consciences and hazarding and hindering their salvations they would readily obey you in all these things That it is their fear of sin and damnation that is their impediment they are ready to give you all the assurance that man can give by the solemnest professions or by Oath if justly called to it And one would think that a little charity might suffice to enable you to believe them when their non-compliance brings them under suffering and their compliance is the visible way to favour safety and prosperity in the world And if men that thus appeal to God concerning the intention of
Physicians otherwise than by forbidding them to help the sick Deal not worse with Christ and Souls But if still you say that there is no other way to save mens souls from our false doctrine or false worship or any other danger which our Ministry will bring upon them We still answer you Make Canons and Laws against false Doctrine or against Seditious Rebellious Schismatical or other intollerable Preaching or against Idolatrous or superstitious Worship or against either Tyranny or omission of Church-discipline or against a worldly fleshly idle or otherwise vicious life and let us be lyable to the penalty of those Laws as others are But the next shall further answer this 6. It is a most certain thing that your method will not attain the Churches Edification Unity or Concord but is the directest way to subvert all these No nor your own establishment or honour in the world if that be it which you mean still by the Interest of the Church And why should any men use a means that will subvert and will never attain his ends Did you know this you would never chuse or use it But I perceive you do not and for ought I see you will not know it I shall give you those reasons that should make you know it if you have but the understanding of ordinary men supposing what is distinctly said in the Propositions Every wise man in the use of means will both foresee the probable effect and fore resolve how far to carry them on Either you think that your silencing and other hard usages of the Ministers shall convince and change them or disable and destroy them The former I have shewed you is a most vain surmise For 1. Kindness is more forcible to change the judgment than violence and hard usage This useth oftener to set men in opposition to what a hurtful adversary reasoneth for It is seldom that an enemies words convert Opposition rather kindleth an opposing zeal 2. You may partly conjecture by your selves If you thought it were Lying Perjury and false Worship which was imposed on you would you change your judgment by threatnings or by punishments There is nothing in force to illuminate the mind If you say It will tame their obstinacy and make them hearken more to reason I answer as before It most powerfully exciteth those prejudices and passions which hinder reason though it may promote hypocrisie in some 3. And experience telleth you and all the world that you are mistaken We read the same books out of a prison as in it if there we may have them And what abundance of Ministers within these ten years have come out of long imprisonment in the same mind as they went in yea much confirmed But who can you name that came out convinced that his way was wrong How long have they suffered not only poverty and reproach but that silencing which they account a greater evil And yet how few are changed by all this For the Novel-Politicians talk of a hundred men that continue to displease you is but a means to tell the world how exactly your Actions and Historical Narratives agree and what posterity must expect from the later as well as we from the former 4. But if 9 or 10 years experience be too little for you look back to the experience of all the world Your Bishop Taylor and many of your own can tell you how opposition inflameth the opposed party into a greater zeal 5. In a word I know not only my self but so many of the Nonconformable Ministers of England that I utterly despair that even silencing or imprisonment should change their judgments 2. The next question then is Whether it will make them hypocrites and force them to go against their judgments And this I am as confident it will never do with the most 1. Because I know so many of them to be truer to God and to their Consciences 2. Because experience also long evinced this 3. And so hath the experience of former ages in such as they some have still shrunk in a time of suffering But enow have suffered to fill up such Volumes as Mr. Fox's and the Century-Writers and many others 4. And here also I ask Would you do so your selves Would you do that which you think to be Lying Perjury renouncing Reformation c. against your consciences rather than suffer or would you not If yea you tell the world what your Religion is If not judge by your own course both now and formerly whether they or you be liker to chuse sin before suffering I know not you so well as them and therefore know not what you would do so well as I and you and all the world may know what they will do 5. And if they were such Villains as to sell their Souls for the safety of their flesh why should not the same principle now prevail with them to stretch their conscience by some distinction and take Livings and Honour among you with Conformity instead of a hunted and afflicted state of life If Satan shall say Skin for skin and all that he hath will a man give for his life Let me touch his body and I will make him curse thee to thy face whereas now he serveth not God for nought Yet God would support and vindicate the integrity of Job and though he may fall into some impatiency he would not yet forsake his Master nor leave his integrity to the death 3. The last question therefore is Whether their destruction will do your work or not seeing neither their change of judgment nor for saking their consciences is to be expected by your means I find that the Novel-Politician is confident of it that sharp execution is the way and would easily do it And so are most that write against us as well as Bishop Gunnings Chaplain But 1. He speaketh but like one of Rehoboams puny Councellors contrary to all the experience of the world I hope God will give his Majesty wisdom to avoid such counsels that would have him make his little finger heavier than Solomons loyns I confess if the work be to extirpate Christianity it self they that will and can follow it to the height of the example of Japon might imagine a possibility of the like success But it cannot be done so in England if there were any that would do it Because the body of the Nation is of the same Religion as the Japonions were against Or if the work were to suppress the Protestant Religion the Inquisition in Spain would be a probable means where there are but very few to be tormented and the thing may be done secretly in vaults out of the peoples sight and noise But for Protestants to destroy each other yea such and so many as must be so destroyed and this for the advancement of the Protestant interest is a course that will not do that work for which it is pretended For 1. Blood was never yet of light digestion Nebuchadnezzars
none The Churches in London are burnt down the Parishes are many so large that one of ten or twenty cannot hear in publick If it be in the Bishops power to judg that nine parts of London shall have no preaching why may he not so judg of the other tenth part And if he may judg that there shall be no preaching then why not that there shall be no praying and worshipping God And if so in London why not in other places and so whether there shall be any Gospel Religion or Salvation In cases of Faith a Council hath power only to judg truly that there is a Christ a Resurrection a life to come and not to judg that there is no Christ no Resurrection c. And holy practice is as necessary to our salvation as right believing And therefore the Bishops may judg that we shall preach and pray and worship God but not that we shall not Obj But they are to judg who shall preach The Gospel is not cast out if two thousand of you be silenced If there were not Preachers there may be Readers and the Liturgy Ans. Let them set up such competent Teachers in a sufficient number of Churches as will tell a sober conscience that all our labours are become unnecessary and then we shall think further of the case But is it so in London now Or can any be ignorant that it is not so And God useth to work according to the aptitude of means and too many Churches in the Countreys have such Teachers as say over a few cold words as boys do their Lessons and when experience telleth us how few are the better for them we are afraid of being so hypocritally modest as to let souls perish for fear of seeming to undervalue your raw Lads or scandalous ignorant Priests and to overvalue our selves 2. Are the bishops absolute Judges or not If absolute we must obey them if they command murder or idolatry If not what are the limits of their power Sure it is Gods universal Law They have no power against his commanding or forbidding word none against him or against the common good and mens salvation If Popish and other Casuists use so to limit Kings as to say that they are Ministers of God for good and that they have no power against the common good and that all Laws against it are null may we not much more say so of all our Diocesans You grant that they cannot command us to sin or forbid us duty But then either we have a judgment of discerning to know what is duty and sin or not If not then still if they forbid us duty and say it is no duty or command sin and say it is no sin we must obey But if yea then if we prove in an error it will be our sin And if the Bishops prove in the error it will be theirs And to obey conscience before a bishop is in our sense nothing but to obey God before a bishop in doing what we judg to be his will V. The next reason is none to us For if Presbyterians or any other silence Christs Ministers causlesly and forbid that preaching of the Gospel which is necessary to mens salvation we abhor it in one as well as in another VI. And as to the last 1. We believe not that if Christ should ask us Why we preach not it would excuse us to say The bishop forbad us no more than if he ask us Why did you not feed clothe visit me in my servants The Reasons forementioned tell you why we think we cannot be excused 2. But if we could Nature and Grace incline us to do all the good we can do in the world And if thousands were like to be drowned if we did not help the Ship-master when he forbids us Nature teacheth us to prefer their lives before his will And when our first question is Whether according to Gods ordinary operation by means so many thousands shall be saved from ignorance sin and hell or be damned For you to determine that they shall be damned if the Bishop will and then come in with a second question Who shall answer for it is so horrid to us as frightneth us from obeying the Silencers as if we saw Satan himself perswading us to obey them Will you give us leave openly to tell the people where our controversie lyeth That it is the Bishops will that they shall rather be all damned in their ignorance and sin than taught converted and saved by Nonconformists But they say that it 's they and not we shall answer for it As if they said Their blood be on us But we are loth to yeild that you must be untaught and damned though we were never so sure to be excused Whose interest or work it is Christs or Satans to forbid faithful Ministers to preach the Gospel and do their office the light of Grace when you have all done will tell the gracious as the light of Nature telleth men whose interest and work it is to deny to as many their necessary food Should you deny the necessity of either word or food still Grace or Nature would from age to age resist you Of the two methinks those that perswade us to stretch to conform against our consciences that we may preach do look more favourably towards the common good than those that perswade us not at all to conform but meerly to give over preaching the Gospel The very motion hath an ugly aspect it affrights us as perceiving the voice of an affrighting Solicitor in it It amazeth us to think that some Scholars of great parts and humility and obliging carriage dare make such a motion to so many vowed and consecrated to the Ministry while in so many Parishes so many thousand souls are wallowing in ignorance impiety and sensuality and have not a Church to hear in nor a Minister to instruct them but must stay at home or worse for want of room were they never so willing Shall the Churchwarden on his oath present twenty or forty or fifty thousand in a Parish for not coming into a Church where two thousand can scarce hear the Preacher Or shall all those thousands be idle play or drink without trouble and a few hundreds of them be hunted and ruined that rather join in Gods Worship with a silenced Minister O how easie would it be to our flesh and how dreadful to our consciences to forbear and leave men to themselves Have men nothing to accuse us of as our intollerable crimes but the greatest and costliest duties that ever we performed in the world The Lord keep us all from seducing Faction and forgive us the sin which we see and which we see not and cause us to pray harder for his glorious appearing and most righteous final Judgment Come Lord Jesus come quickly Amen INTEREST real or mistaken RULETH THE WORLD Gods Interest is the highest with all the sanctified I. GOD's Interest is the pleasing of his will