S. Paul tells Philemon as to whatever they can rightly pretend of the true honour priviledge and power of Christiany What is less Saintly than to cry up novell partiall and factious Reformations to magnifie uncouth and exotick wayes of Ministry and Christianity Church-fellowship and Communion while in the mean time they ungratefully despise and cruelly crucifie their proper Mother the Church of England together with those whom they sometime justly esteemed as their Fathers in God and brethren in Christ What is less Saintly than to endeavour to rob God in a land of peace and plenty to expose his servants and service after the order of Christs Evangelicall Priesthood to as great contempts deformities and diminutions in all points both for order and authority learning and maintenance as ever Julian the Apostate did design with great impudence crying down the rare and indeed incomparable Ministers of the Church of England who had been liberally treated and honourably maintained that they may with vulgar easiness and credulity by a penurious covetous and sacrilegious sophistry cry up some cheap new-fashioned Teachers as rare Angels that had no stomachs and would preach gratis who I believe are found in many places as greedy and voracious as Bell and the Dragon in the Apocrypha Nor can I think them other than Apocryphall Preachers so far from Angels of light sent from God to comfort the Reformed Religion in its bloody sweat and agonies that they seem rather as Messengers of Satan sent to buffet this Reformed Church and the renowned Clergie of England whose fame and flourishing whose piety and prosperity whose honour and unity whose Catholick order and authority heretofore was so conspicuous by the rare indulgence of Gods providence by the generous munificence of pious Princes and by the moderation of wise and worthy Parliaments that God it seems saw it in danger as S. Paul to be exalted above measure by reason of those excellent endowments and enjoyments both spirituall and temporall which were bestowed upon it All which are prone to threaten themselves by their excess the usuall temper of humane frailty being such that it is never so fixed sweetened and seasoned by any temporall blessings in the best of men but it is subject to warp to sowre or to putrifie if it stand too long in the warm sun of prosperity However it becomes all holy and humble Ministers to bless God with holy Job though he take what he once gave it is his mercy that he chuseth rather by impoverishing of us to correct us than to leave us wholly to that crookedness and putrefaction which we were ready of our selves in peace and plenty to contract it is better for any Church any Clergie any Christians to be healed by the sharpness of Gods corrosives and vinegar than too much softned by the suppleness of his oyles and lenitives I hope the health and soundness of the Church and Clergie of England are Gods last designs that his blessings to both shall in due time be restored and enjoyed again when being better prepared to use and value them we shall be less subject to abuse and loose them CHAP. XX. MEan time while many grave and excellent Ministers are faine patiently to hang their harps upon the willowes while they and other sober Christians daily weep over the waters of Babylon our sad confusions a generall astonishment hath seised upon all sober and serious wise and worthy men true lovers of this Church and Nation who with sad hearts and moistened eyes do hear and see the more then childish petulancies the rude insolencies the impudent familiarities the irreverent behaviours which in many places the common sort of people are grown to affect and presume to use even in our religious duties and sacred assemblies expressing less outward respect or reverence in the presence of God when his Ministers and his people assemble to worship him than they are wont to use either for fear or civility or shame before the Steward and Jury of a Court Leet or the meanest Justice of Peace and his Clark in the countrey From the rude examples and daring indulgences of some men whose years and education might have taught them better manners there daily growes up a numerous generation a rustick heady and impudent fry of younger people who carry no more regard to any duties of Religion or respect to the Ministers of them than the fourty children did to the Prophet Elisha when they mocked him and were for their ill breeding and irreligious rudeness torn in pieces by the she-Bears to teach both parents and children better manners towards Gods Prophets as was of old observed Yea there are some grown so clownish and Cyclopick Christians that their very Religion consists not a little in their morose undecent uncivil untractable spirits and demeanour if others have their heads reverently uncovered in the presence and service of God these must have their hats on not to relieve the tenderness and infirmity of their heads but to shew the liberty and surliness of their wills and spirits If others testifie their inward veneration of the divine Majesty by their outward comely gestures as either standing or kneeling according to the variety of duties these by all means affect to fit or loll after such a lazy and neglective fashion that easily discovers and openly proclaims neither much fear of God nor reverence of man yea some people are not satisfied thus to express their sullen tempers by their churlish and unconformable gestures as to our religious duties and decencies in case they vouchsafe to be present but they must be railing and reviling prating and opposing cavilling and disputing in publick What eare not wholly uncircumcised can bear the vain bablings the unprofitable unpleasing and profane janglings of such sophisters the unharmonious noise of such Low-bels whose sound is neither with verity certainty harmony nor gravity yet do they every where seek to drown or confound the sacred concent of Aarons bells and that sweet musick which was wont to be in Gods sanctuary in our Churches here in England when good Christians did orderly and reverently meet together with their lawfull Ministers in one place with one accord with one heart one mind one mouth to serve the Lord and to edifie one another in truth and love with all modesty humility decency and solemnity CHAP. XXI WHich comfort honour solemnity and blessing of Religion formerly enjoyed in most Congregations of the Church of England how many of later yeares have dared not more with rudeness than profaneness to exchange for a kind of Sibylline ravings Bacchinal raptures They obtrude upon poor people sudden correptions licentious rantings ridiculous quakings fanatick ravings senselesse vapourings and such like rallieries or gallantries in Religion which seek to turn Christianity to a kind of buffoonery If these corrept corrupt extasies or extravagancies be not permitted to such fanatick triflers troublers of travagancies be not permitted to such
most industriously promote such a Christian and Catholick accord as were most for the honour of Christ and the peace of Christendome I know the youthfull fervours of some are jealous of all such motions and for fear of seeming luke-warme they resolve to boyle over all bounds till they quench both Truth and Charity among Christians and make way for Atheisme Turcisme Confusion and Barbarity These hotter heads possibly dread what I calmly desire that such a grand Catholick Convention of able Ecclesiasticks in these Western Churches might by the consent of Princes and chief Magistrates be so orderly convened with Freedome Impartiality and due Authority as might enable them to consent in one Canon or rule of Faith and good manners that the clear and concurrent sense of Scriptures might be owned by all in which all things necessary are contained either literally or by just deductions that what is dark or dubious should be left indifferently to Christians use and judgements that all would agree in the same ancient fundamentall Articles of Faith contained in primitive Creeds also in the same Sacraments or holy Mysteries to be devoutly celebrated so in the same way of good works to be practised that we might all have the same Catechise the same publick Liturgies so composed that all Christians might with Faith and Charity say Amen to them and in their severall Languages understand them that a Commentary on Scriptures and Sermons containing all Christian necessary Doctrine might be agreed upon that neither curiosities nor controversies should be couched in publick Prayers or Preachings that all might enjoy the same Catholick Source and course of Ecclesiastick Ordination Ministry and Authority so tempering Government and Discipline in the Church that none should justly think others too much exalted nor themselves too much depressed that Catholick Customes ancient Ceremonies and Traditions truly such being consonant to Gods Word and practically interpreting the meaning of it might be observed by all leaving yet such freedome in other things to particular Churches as might be most convenient yet still subordinate to and to be regulated by the judgement of such a General Council contrary to which none should affect extravagant liberty to the ruine of Christian Charity Blessed Lord What good Christian could be injured by such a Christian accord in the main concernments of Religion which cannot be impossible in the nature of the thing because it was of old enjoyed and many hundreds of years generally preserved among all Christians and Churches of any name and repute in all the world Nor did either the heat of Persecution or Prosperity as warm and soultry weather dispirit this charity of Christians who might still be as capable subjects of so great a blessing from God on earth if Passion Prejudice Partiality and private interests on all hands were laid aside without parting with any true and reall interest that concerns a wise or good man either in Conscience or Honour in civil or religious regards CHAP. XVIII WHich blessed accord so good and so pleasant to behold how much more to enjoy being not onely possible but most desirable and commendable among all good Christians two great Impediments or obstructions seem to me chiefly to hinder as to man besides our ill deservings on all sides at Gods hands which however I do not hope by my weak shoulders to remove they being like the Grave-stone on Christs Sepulchre whose sad and massy weight requires some mighty Angel from heaven to do it yet I cannot but here express my sense of them the more sensibly by how much I see the miserable distractions of the poor Church of England and the advantages given by some mens late immoderations and madnesses to alienate the very best and soberest of the Roman party from all propensity or thoughts of any happy close by reforming and so reconciling the parts of divided and distracted Christendome Which evil effect now more exasperated than ever I here instance in as one of the saddest consequences following the divided dissolved and deplored state of this Church of Engl. which was the grand mirrour or example of Christianity and Reformation from which neither Romanists nor others did so much withdraw by many degrees heretofore as now they do The first great hinderance is that exteme pertinacy and height of those of the Roman party who so much magnifie themselves their chief Bishop their Church and Communion upon the specious names of Antiquity Infallibility and Primacy as if no Church or Christians in the world were to be considered other then as novices ignorants and underlings in comparison of the Roman Name and Majesty Their Antiquity is not denied by sober men but their great Age is evidently attended with many decayes and infirmities which are novelties from which even primitive Churches were not wholly free both as to Humane frailty and Divine reproofs as we read in the Epistles of the Apostles and of Christ to the seven Churches Nor doe I know any priviledge the Roman Church hath above others unlesse they could make good their Infallibility either as to their chief Bishop or as to any Council in which he should preside That their persons have erred in Doctrine and Moralities that they have varied from and clashed against each other in their publick Decrees and Councils yea and from not onely pious Antiquity but the Scripture-verity is so evident in what my self have here lightly touched and others amply demonstrated that no ingenuous and honest Romanist at this day can deny it For the affected Supremacy or Primacy which they so glory in and challenge not onely before but above and over all Churches not as a matter of order and precedency but of power and authority as there is no Law of God which requires this or any Church so farre to own that of Rome or to be subject to it so nor did the ancient Ecclesiastical Lawes and distinctions lay more to the Roman Inspection or Jurisdiction than the Suburbicarian Regions which extended 100 miles from the City That the Roman Bishop was owned as the first or chief Patriarch in Order and Precedency in Place or Vote was not a regard to the persons of the Bishops or their authority as if it were more than other Bishops by any Divine or Humane right but a regard to the pristine Majesty of the City and the Apostolick eminency of that Church in which the two great Apostles S. Peter S. Paul had not onely placed much of their pains but ended their lives Lay aside the Roman pomp and insolency no sober man but will allow the Bishop of Rome his Civil and Ecclesiastical Primacy as King James and other Protestant Princes offered long ago nor would any of the great Reformers Luther or Calvin or Cranmer have grudged this if the Bishop of Rome would have submitted either to a General Council or to the Word of Christ If the Roman Arrogancy will needs claim and usurp more than its due which
pruning fencing and preserving this goodly Tree in its several Branches which have spread forth to several parts of the world but were never quite parted or separated from either Christ or one another but grounded in Christ they have alwayes grown up in him to such an holy Harmony without any Schismatical slipping breaking off or moral dividing from one another every small twigg every bigger branch every mainer arme of it either for private Christians or publick Congregations or Episcopal Combinations still holding that mutual Communion which became them both to Christ and his Church in general also to each other in particular according to the several Places Duties Stations and Proportions wherein the God of Order and Peace had set them under the Authority Power and Episcopacy of his Son Jesus Christ as Lord of all the King Priest and Prophet the chief Bishop and great Shepherd the principal Teacher Pastor and Ruler of his Church From our Lord Jesus Christ whose love to Mankind intended to enlarge the branches of his Church beyond the Jews even to all Nations under Heaven this small and tender Plant was afterward as a fruitful Vine and flourishing Tree carefully husbanded and orderly extended by such workmen as the Lord was pleased to chuse and appoint for this holy care and culture whom he endued with the spirit of power both for Authority when he solemnly breathed on them and for Ability when he powerfully sent the Spirit upon them enabling them not onely with such ordinary gifts as were necessary for all true Ministers and such ordinary authority as was fit to governe the Churches they gathered but also with such extraordinary and miraculous endowments as were meet for the Apostles to carry on the first plantations of the Gospel to all the world without any Interpreter beyond all contradiction the doctrine they taught of Jesus Christ being confirmed to be the Will and Wisdome of God by the concurrence of his Omnipotency in infallible signes and wonders By these twelve Apostles when their number was completed and the Apostasie of Judas made up by the choise of Matthias to succeed and supply his Episcopal charge and Office for the teaching and ruling of the Church to whom as a supernumerary help and great additional St. Paul was afterward joyned by these I say as by so many chief Pastors or Oecumenical Bishops who had the general care and joynt oversight or Episcopacy of the Catholick Church both Jews and Gentiles was this Tree mightily advanced in a few years both in bigness and bredth in strength and extention so that the Gospel according to Christs command was preached more or less to every Nation under Heaven and as the beams of the Sun are seen so the Evangelical sound of the Apostles was heard in all Lands so loud and audibly that every Nation might have applied themselves to listen and seek after the Lord and have heard and found him in the voice of his glorious Gospel if they would have followed that news which they heard of according to the curiosity after novelties which is in the nature of man The news of which so good and so great was every where reported to be as foretold by so many Prophets long before so attested and confirmed by so many Eye witnesses who not onely spake to every Nation in their several tongues but also wrought great miracles in every place where they came according to those several lots or portions which they had taken by the Lords appointment or by mutual consent as their particular Bishopricks or Dioceses for the more orderly carrying on of the work some staying at Jerusalem as St. James the Elder and the other James surnamed the Just where they were slain others dispersed themselves as St. Peter who went to Antioch Alexandria and Rome there planting eminent Churches appointing Bishops over them as Euodius at Antioch Mark at Alexandria Clemens and Linus at Rome one for the Circumcision the other for the Uncircumcision which Churches ever after even before the Nicene Council had the eminence of Patriarchal seats as afterward Jerusalem and Constantinople had The Histories of the Church either Sacred or Ecclesiastical are not punctual or exact in setting forth the several Countries to which the Apostles divided themselves or where they most resided and at last ended their days nor is it material it being sufficiently clear that as they did not at first so confine themselves to one place or Country as to exclude any other Apostles from coming thither so they went some one or more of them to all chief parts to Syria Arabia Persia India Ethiopia Armenia Scythia Asia the Less and Greater all Greece Illyricum Italy Spain France Germany Cyprus Britanny Africa and all the rest of the grand parts of the then-known World Continents and Islands where at last they either fixed in their old age as St. John did at Ephesus or were martyred leaving besides the Monuments of their preaching and miracles their Apostolical Seats supplied by an orderly Subordination and authoritative Succession of such Bishops and Presbyters Pastors and Teachers able and faithful men as they had Commission to ordain and did authorize for their successors in that holy Ministry spirit and power of Christ which was to continue to the end of the World for the further planting propagating and preserving the Church of Christ by such Doctrine Government and Discipline as they for the main rules and ends clearly by word and practise delivered to them which was then as their Faith Baptism and Hope but one among all Churches in the all world single Christians private Families of them small Congregations little Villages greater Cities ample Territories large Provinces great and small Churches as to their several distributions for conveniency of actual converse and communicating in holy Mysteries had still but one and the same Polity Order Discipline Ministry Government and Communion no Variety no Difformity no Deformity in Doctrine or Discipline among any Orthodox Christians but every one observed that Place Office Duty and Proportion wherein God by the Apostles and their successors had set him or them in relation to the whole Church as well as to that particular part or Congregation of it to which he was more locally and personally joyned yet mentally spiritually charitably cordially and consentiently he still adhered to the Catholick Conformity and Unity according to that holy Polity and Oeconomy which the Spirit of Christ in the Apostles first and for ever established so far as the nature of times and Gods providence would permit that as there was but one God and one Lord Jesus Christ so there might be but one Church one chast Virgin as the Spouse of Christ in all places For these holy Husbandmen and chief Labourers in Christs Vineyard the twelve or thirteen Apostles did not think it sufficient to teach to catechize to convert to baptize to confirm to communicate to admonish
by learned and godly men Bishops and other Ministers were notably discovered and by some Christian Princes or States happily amended with great order and by due authority as in other places so no where with more Wisdom Justice and Moderation than in England Where as in most of the Churches protesting against the Roman deformities especially those of the Lutheran denomination the ancient Orders and Authority both of Bishops and Presbyters were preserved as is evident in the Augustane confession which finds no fault with but highly approves the Government of the Church by Bishops under Episcopacy provided Bishops would joyn in a just Reformation of those gross abuses which were the Churches intolerable grievances as well as the dishonour of Christian Religion and Christian Bishops whose deserved Honours Estates and Eminencies in Authority they saw no cause to envie grudge or diminish So far were these first Reformers from hewing down Episcopacy as if it cumbred the ground that they onely digged about it and mended it that it might bring forth good fruit as it did in England and elsewhere While the Western Churches Reformation was yet but crude and in motion by Luthers means there arose Mr. John Calvin about the Year 1541. a man of good Learning acute Wit copious Eloquence great Industry quick Passions sharp Pen of reputed Piety and of no less Policy Him the people of Geneva thought the fittest man in the world to settle their distracted Church and State after they had with the wonted arts of tumultuating and discontented people forced Eustace their Bishop and Prince to flye from his Palace and City his Bishoprick and his Seigniorie because he would not presently gratifie them with such a Reformation as they imperiously demanded rather than modestly desired Mr. Calvin as Mr. R. Hooker hath excellently set it forth undertook with much difficulty and after many indignities worthy of popular levity fury and petulancy put upon him to settle their Church-affairs together with the civil State in such order as he thought not most Scriptural primitive and Catholick but most prudential plausible and probable in humane reason and honest policy to take and hold the tumultuating inconstancy of that people so to bring them to something of civil and religious order acting herein not upon any Wiclefian or the after Presbyterian and Antiepiscopal Principles as imagining either Episcopacy to be unlawful or sole Presbytery to be necessary as of Divine Institution neither of which were his judgement as is sufficiently and vehemently declared by his passionate approbation of reformed Bishops and his esteeming so honourably of regular Episcopacy that he passeth all Anathemas or curses on those that are against them so far was Calvin from laying the Axe to the root of this Tree which with Christianity had ever as he confessed born Episcopacy But he rather went upon Erastian principles and politick grounds looking it seems upon the Government of the Church as he did upon the Lords-day which is not elder nor more authentick or Catholick as to the Churches use and observation than Episcopacy to be in their nature mutable as of Ecclesiastick yet Divine prescription according as Times Occasions and Minds of men might fall out He well knew being a learned man and oft confesseth in his Writings the primitive blessing and universal authority of presidential Episcopacy in all Churches yet he neither thought it nor any forme of Government any more than clothes to be essential to the substance and body or any Church or of the Christian Religion but variable to several forms and polities as prudence might invite or necessity require so that he never set up any soveraign and unepiscopal Presbytery as an Idol or Moloch to which not onely the children but the Fathers of the Churches even very godly and reformed Bishops were all sacrificed He thought it did not misbecome his policy and prudence to serve the times and humors of the Citizens so far as to seem to vary the outward mode of their and all other Churches ancient government provided he served the Lord and that people in setling such a government as might preserve the Christian Reformed Religion among them in true Doctrine and good Manners which was the main work which Calvin seemed to mind most To have reconciled the City and their former Bishop was a matter impossible unless he or they had changed their minds in Religion to have perswaded them to elect a new Prince and Bishop of their own profession and opinion had been very imprudent considering either the fair offers they made to himself of being not titularly indeed but virtually and really both the Prince and Prelate or remembring that strong fancy of Liberty which had now so filled and intoxicated all sorts of Citizens In the last place to have set up himself in the pomp and formalities of a Bishop and a Prince had been an act of too much Impudence and Envy for a person of his Ingenuity Policy and Dexterity in publick managements it sufficed his design so far to gratifie both the Populacy with seeming Liberty and the Optimacy with some civil and Magistratick Authority all of them with such reformed purity in Religion as most pleased them and yet to keep up himself and his collegues of the Ministry to such an height of Ecclesiastical Influence and Church-power as made them far from being either slaves to the Vulgar or cyphers to the Government for all cases civil and criminal as well as religious were one way or other reducible and so responsible either by way of comprimising or upon scandal or repentance or satisfaction to the cognizance and consistory of him and his collegues himself being as the Caesar they as his Bibuli In effect his Wisdom Reputation Eloquence and Courage set him up in Geneva and other places to so high an eminency of respect and authority as he equalled yea exceeded most Bishops however his pomp train and pension were but small after the usual bounty expectable from any State or City that list to make their Reformations of Religion compleat by robbing the Church and Clergy of their ancient Lands and Revenues which doubtless in that City had been so great and princely as upon the confiscation of them to their Town-box or Exchequer they might well have allowed Mr. Calvin their great Reformer and chief Pastor and his Associates a Salary much beyond an hundred pounds per ann with a little provision of Corn. But he wisely dissembled this Indignity finding that as Riches Pomp and Luxury had undone former Bishops so a voluntary kind of Poverty and Austerity would now best conciliate to him and his collegues a greater Reverence and Authority nor was it considerable to have a gay or rich scabbard provided they had sharp and well metall'd swords their Ambition was rather to intend Gods work in reforming Religion of its Leprosie with Elisha than in taking mans rewards with Gehazi In this Presbyterian Prelacy or Prelatick Presbytery
it hath been delivered to me by the most credible testimony of the Catholick Church in the books of Canonicall Scripture truly so called Nor did I ever teach for Doctrines the Traditions of men which some have blasphemed As for the circumstantial and ceremonial parts of Religion I used in Them modestly cautiously and charitably that liberty and power for order and decency which I conceive Gods indulgence who is not the author of confusion but of peace allowed me no lesse than any of those Primitive or later Churches whose best examples I sought to follow If any of my children had discovered something in me lesse agreeable to that beauty order and gravity which had been desirable by them in a Christian and Reformed Church if any matter of reall uncomelinesse had been espied in me as what Church is there upon earth so fair but as the Moon it may have some spots wainings and eclipses what state of Christians so complete that God may not have a few things against them yet it had been their duty with the veile of Christian love and pity modestly to have covered silently concealed and dutifully reformed what was indeed amisse and not like so many Chams to have exposed such a parent such a mother to the petulancy and derision both of her enemies abroad and the plebs at home who are as prone as ever the Jews were to worship any new Calves they fancy to set up and to cast off Moses and Aaron that God and those Governours who had done such wonders among them If while men slept the enemy sowed some tares there where my Saviour had plentifully sowed good seed was I presently to be trampled under the feet of the beasts of the people or quite to be rooted up burnt and consumed because some tares appeared if my garments were in time a little spotted and sullied yet was my honour still unblemished and the sanctity of my profession as Christian and Reformed unviolated nor did my garments deserve thus to be rinced in the blood of my Children if the ceremonious lace and fringe of my coat were a little unript or torn with time yet there was no cause to rend it quite off or tear my coat in pieces if my garb and fashion seemed somewhat more grave Catholick and ancient than agreed with some mens singular and novellizing fancies yet did I not deserve to be stripp'd and stigmatiz'd to be thus exposed to shame and nakednesse much lesse to have my Flesh thus torn my Eyes pull'd out my Throat cut and my Skin to be flayed off which are the merciful endeavours of some of my reforming that is ruining enemies If some weak or unwise servants whom I trusted with the management of my affaires discharged their duties less piously or prudently than I expected or exacted of them as Church-Governours Ministers if the licentiousnesse of others was impatient to be governed so strictly as they should have been most men abhorring true Christian Discipline even then when they most clamoured for it intending extravagancies when they pretended severities yet was I not on the sudden to have been wholly deprived of all Church-government and order once duly established untill such time as my new Discipliners and wise Masters had found out some fitter way for me than that Catholick fabrick form and fashion which all Churches ever had and enjoyed from the Apostles times and constitutions Certainly the failings of Church-Governours ought not to have been so severely avenged upon the Church-government it self nor are any mens male-administrations to be laid to the charge of those good lawes and constitutions which are setled in either Church or State The very Apostolick Churches are oft blamed yea and threatened for their early degenerations without any reproch to their first institution which certainly was holy and good It savours too much of humane passion to pervert divine order under pretence of Reforming humane disorders Which in me were never so predominant as to remove me from that posture of Christian piety honour order and integrity wherein I stood firm and conspicuous in all the world as a Christian and well-Reformed Church hated indeed and many times opposed by my forraign adversaries of the Papall interest and perswasion but they despaired ever to prevail against me unlesse they first divided my children within me and armed my own bowels by home-bred and strange animosities against me These by infinite artifices and undiscerned stratagems have by them been heightened of late to such factious petulancies and furies as to adde scorns to the others thornes contempt to the others crosses gall to my vinegar scurrility to my agonies As if I could not be miserable enough to satisfie the malice of my enemies abroad unlesse I were made a scorn to my children and a shame to my friends both at home and abroad leaving me few that dare pity me fewer that can plead for me and fewest that are able and willing to relieve me My spitefull persecutors are so cruell that they are impatient to see any sympathize with me threatning those my children that dare yet own me for a true Church or their Mother the very name of which they seek to deprive me of hoping to make me quite forgotten who was sometime so renowned among the most celebrated Churches of the world Alas among some Furies it is not safe for sober Christians to speake one good word of me or for me they cannot endure any should pray for me no nor weep for me Teares are offensive and Charity it self is scandalous to my implacable enemies who labour to be my cruell and totall oppressors To this dreadfull height hath the Lord been pleased to afflict me with my children in the day of his fierce wrath in which He hath given me ashes for bread and mingled my drink with weeping filling me with blacknesse instead of beauty with war for peace with faction for union with confusion for order with impudent patricides and ungratefull matricides instead of modest thankfull and tender-hearted children Behold He hath smitten me into the place of Dragons and given me a cup of deadly wine to drink But it is the Lord let him do as seemeth good in his sight If my prayers and sighs and teares cannot yet possibly the exorbitant and implacable malice of my enemies who in the end will not appear Gods friends may provoke him to remember his tender mercies which have been ever of old and to repent him as a Father of the evil he hath suffered to be brought upon me by those that delight not in His justice but in their own sacrilegious advantages It may be he will return to be gracious as in former times and not shut up his loving kindnesse wholly from me since his oft-repeated mercy endureth for ever yea it is because his compassions fail not that I am not utterly consumed Though thou kill me yet will I trust in thee O Lord who hast wounded
give God the glory of his own justice of other mens malice and of our own failings My design is not to reproch any man in particular but to excite my self with all other Ministers to such repentance amendment as God requires the better world expects the malice of our enemies exacts our own safety and this Churches distresses command of us The Clergie of England of all degrees have endured too many sufferings beyond any other rank or order of men to fancy they have not had many sins Not to own our distempers after the long application of so rough physick were indeed to tax the wisest and gentlest Physician not of severity but cruelty and superfluity whereas the father of our souls never chastiseth his children so much for his own pleasure as indeed for their profit Gods judgements are in this very mercifull and his severities the fruits of his loving kindness that he chuseth rather to punish us than forsake us and to afflict us by his own justice than to betray us to the cruel flatteries of our own lusts which would prove ours and his greatest enemies too if we were left to our selves The smart eye-salve which the Clergy of England have endured of late years may well cleare our sight so farre at least as to discern and confess those faults which heretofore it may be we over-looked or slighted or excused upon the common score of humane infirmity which indulgence may better be allowed to any men than to Ministers of the Gospel especially if persons of eminency and conspicuity Of all Clergie-men beyond all other men the world justly expects and so doth God sobriety gravity exactness even in their younger years as S. Paul doth of Timothy how much more in their maturity and age Little sins in them if publicated grow great by their scandall and contagion O how ponderous how immense how flagitious are the presumptions the vicious habits the wilfull open obstinate and constant deformities of Ministers In all which if the just God should be extreme to mark what hath been amisse among us both young and old great and small who is able to abide it Before the Lord who hath done it we must with old Eli and holy Job put our mouths in the dust and smother our sense in silence Nevertheless we are and ever must be pertinacious even to the death with holy and afflicted Job to maintain not onely the innocency but also the merit of the Clergie or Ministry of England as to the greater and better part of them in respect of the people of this Nation in all degrees Although as David did when Shimei reproched and cursed him bitterly disdainfully and injustly we cannot but be sensible complain of some mens excessive malice immoderation against us yeâ— we cannot but make an humble submission to with an agnition and justification of that divine wrath justice which seems to be gone out against us before the Almighty we desire to be either silent or confitent or suppliant as becomes those that are justly ashamed and truly penitent T is fit we hide and abhor our selves in dust and ashes before his presence who onely can pity and repair us by turning the causeless curses of men into a blessing making the sacrilegious impoverishings and indignities the ingratefull abasings and insoleâ—â—ies of some unreasonable and violent men an occasion of his gracious favour and all good mens compassions toward the afflicted Clergie and Church of England for where Church-men are miserable the Church cannot be happy where the Clergie are distressed the Laity cannot be prosperous We are so far willing to gratifie the malice of our bitter adversaries to whom no musick is so pleasing as any evil report brought upon the Ministers of England as with S. Austin to make our confession to God that we may be more vile in our own eyes before the Lord and cover our selves with that cloke of confusion which God hath suffered some men to cast upon us after they have stripped us of those ancient Honours and Ornaments with which we were by the piety gratitude and munificence of former times happily invested not more to our own than the whole nations great renown in all the world Without all peradventure the most holy and all-seeing God who walketh in the midst of the golden Candlesticks whose pure eyes are most intent upon the Ministers of his Church hath found out the iniquity of his servants the Bishops and other Ministers of the Church of England not onely in our persons but in our professions not onely in our morals but in our ministrations Who being solemnly consecrated and duly set apart to the service of God his Church in the name place power and authority of Jesus Christ and drawing neer to his speciall presence with Moses in the Mount with Aaron in the Holy of Holies in those glorious manifestations of God in Christ to his Church by publick ordinances and spirituall influences yet have not so sanctified the name of the Lord our God by our hearts and lives by our doctrine and duties as we ought to have done Many of us doing the work of God which is a great work of eternal concernment to our own and other mens souls either so unpreparedly negligently and irreverently or so partially popularly and passionatly or so formally pompously and superciliously that our very officiatings have been offences to God and man our oblations vain our prayers the sacrifices of fooles our pains in preaching how much more our idleness hath been no better than the foolishnesse of preaching in good earnest Some of us have been prone to place the highest pitch of our Ministeriall care exactness and duty in ceremonious conformities which alone are meer chaffe miserable empty formalities neglecting the substance life and soul of Christian Religion which consists in righteousness and true holiness while we too much intended the meer shadow shell and out-side of it others have so eagerly doted upon their sticklings against what was duly and decently established in this Church as to the outward circumstances and ceremonies the decent manner and form of sociall Religion that they feared not as far as in them lay to make havock of the power of Religion together with the peace unity order and very being of this famous Church Many of us so over-preached our peoples capacities that the generality of our auditors after many years preaching were very little edified nothing amended being kept at too high a rack both of affected Oratory and abstruse Divinity for want of plain catechising and charitable condescending to them others in a supine and slovenly negligence have sunk so much below the just gravity solidity and majesty of true preaching that the meanest sort of illiterate people have undertook to vie with them and to match them infinite swarms of mechanick rivals rose up into desks and pulpits when once they saw such pitiful preaching
serve the turn which consisted not in study meditation and reading but in a bold look a confident spirit and a voluble tongue so that neither such preaching nor praying seemed many degrees removed from meer vulgar prating from triviall extemporary chat 'T is true few Bishops few Presbyters among us but may confess that either in our accesses to that great and terrible work unfitted and unfurnished in great part or in our converse and exercises in it with less mortified affections and less exemplary actions either by our ambitions or our envies or our covetousness or our impatience by our looseness or luxury or laziness or vulgarity we have too much abased the dignity of our calling and the honour of our profession whence justly and necessarily follows the darkning and eclipse of our credit esteem and reputation among the people when they see their Physitians themselves infected their Surgeons ulcerous their Antidotes poysonous their Ministers helping to fill up the measure of the sins of the people doing wickedly in a land of uprightnesse while justice was done to them while all favor shewed them in plenty peace dignities honours while the fruits of Gods and mans indulgence were bestowed upon them and continued to them then for Clergie-men and Pastors to wax wanton to feed themselves and to neglect the flock which was purchased with the precious blood of Christ Who can wonder if the wrath of God break out against us when as the sons of Aaron and Eli the Priests of the Lord adventure to approch the glory of God with strange fire with dead and unreasonable instead of living and acceptable sacrifices Who of us can doubt or complain that we bear the iniquity of our holy things while the anger of the Lord is thus gone out against us and presseth sore upon us in the saddest wayes of temporall calamities loading us at once with poverty reproch and contempt cast upon us by popular fury and plebeian despite which knows no bounds of justice moderation pity or charity much less of any reparation and restitution which possibly might have been hoped from the magnificence of Princes and great men when once their anger had been asswaged and their displeasure pacified against the distressed and despised Clergie But vulgar fury like the fire of hell is consumptive and unquenchable when once it hath leave to rebell and rage against their betters especially such as have been their Governours and Teachers the reprovers or restrainers of their ruder lusts and follies nothing is more insolent precipitant boysterous brutish implacable inexorable irreparable 'T is like that divine vengeance which was executed by the earths opening its mouth as it did upon Korah and his complices scaring all and threatning to swallow up the whole Congregation of the Lord as it doth at this day still gaping upon the whole Clergy and the remnant of this Church of England which yet hath escaped the bayardly blindness of common people being such that they are neither able nor willing to discern between what is precious and what is vile to distinguish between the use and abuse of things between persons and their functions between divine Authority and humane Infirmity between the essentiall constitution of things and their accidentall corruptions The headiness of such Reformers would seek to put out the seeing eyes of all Bishops and Ministers because of the weaknesse or wantonnesse of some Nor do these popular flames know at length how to spare their own Idols and Teraphims their Lares and Penates those Houshold and familiar Gods whom they formerly most dearly embraced adored and doted upon but now they have cast them to the Moles and Bats For it is very observable in these times that the plebeian rudenesse coldnesse mutability licentiousnesse petulancy and ingratitude of some men hath vented it self against no sort of Ministers more spitefully and insolently than those who heretofore were their great favourites and darlings because they soothed them up many times contrary to their own private judgements and the Churches publick appointments either in a weak and wavering non-conformity or in a wilfull and wanton refractorinesse even to a despising calumniating and separating humour against the whole Church of England 'T is evident many Ministers have found those their keenest persecutours of whom themselves were sometimes the greatest flatterers and compliers slightly healing or lightly skinning over those raw sores of non-conformity even to a greater pain and festring as now it hath proved which they should have seriously searched throughly healed by sound demonstrations asserting at once both their own judgments and the Churches wisdome in the pious use of its power and liberty All which Ministers did then shamefully betray when they daubed with untempered mortar complying for their private interests and advantages both with this Churches injunctions and Its enemies oppositions which shuffling at last put the common people into such a confusion and uncertainty of mind that they knew not what to chuse or refuse whom to believe or follow what to preserve or what not to destroy severely punishing even the authors occasioners and abettors of their irresolutions resolving at last to be destructive of all things that had any mark of the Church of Englands wisdome and authority upon them not content to prune off superfluous suckers they concluded to lay their rude axes to the root as well as branches of this Church Yea while the Clergie or Ministers of England do justly and humbly in the freedome and integrity of their souls thus make their penitent agnitions to the Divine Justice every one seeing his own sins in his and the Churches sufferings and best knowing the plague of his own heart while they are with Daniel humbly prostrate before the majesty of God and the throne of his grace some people are of such impotent malice that they make them the more the foot-stool for their pride and insolency thereby to exalt themselves the more against us I would have such monsters of cruelty and uncharitablenesse to know that however the Clergie of England do shrink to nothing before God condemning all their own righteousnesse and themselves as unprofitable servants that they may be found clothed with the righteousnesse of Christ yet as to the exorbitancies of some mens malice revenge passion covetousness cruelty and ingratitude which hath vented it self beyond all bounds of Christian charity modesty and equity against the whole frame of the Church of England against all its Ministry and Ministers as well Presbyters as Bishops great and small good and bad one and all no man can hinder me or them from this just plea for our selves in the words of sobernesse and truth First whatsoever the Clergie of England either as Bishops or inferiour Ministers did enjoy and act according to the lawes established and agreeable to their own consciences they are in those things not to be blamed in the least kind by any sober and
to destroy that holy order and Evangelicall function from whose declared rules and injunctions in the Church they had degenerated for neither the infirmities nor the presumptions of men ought to annull that office or abolish that authority which is Divine Christs commission which is given to the Church must not be voyded or cancelled by reason of any Ministers omissions Sacred institutions such as the Ministry and government of Christs Church are ought to continue notwithstanding the intervening of mans ignorance errour profaneness or Idolatry The plagues and leprosies arising from mens persons and adhering to them are not imputable to that place power station and authority which they have in the Church Men may be unworthy of their holy function but the function it self is not made unworthy no more than Aarons joyning with the people in making the golden calf did disparage the sacred dignity of that Priestly office to which he was by the Lord designed The enormous folly of Eli's sons did not make the sacrifices they offered of none effect nor yet nullifie the honour and office of that Priesthood wherewith they were duly invested Judas his being an Hypocrite a Thief a Traitour and a Devil yet did not abrogate that Apostolical office and Episcopall authority which he had received from Christ equally with the other Apostles untill by open Apostasy he fell into open rebellion desperation and perdition Which gross and open Apostasy either from Christ or his Gospel from the Christian faith or their Ministeriall office and ordination cannot with any truth or fore-head be charged upon the Clergie or Ch. of England who for the main both in the consecration of Bishops and ordination of Presbyters in the administration of holy duties execution of their offices generally and for the main kept to the Ancient Primitive and Apostolick customes of all the Churches of Christ since the Apostles dayes so that whatever blame charge or reproch is cast upon the Clergie or Church of England must equally lie upon all Christian Churches since the first complete and setled constitution of any Church I know the mouths of some men like moths and their tongues like worms are prone to corrode by infinite scruples scandalls and reproches all the beauty of the Church of England with all the merit and honour of its Clergie but blessed be God we stand or fall with the Catholick Church of Christ with the whole order race and Apostolick succession of Christian Bishops and Presbyters we more fear the rudeness and heaviness of mens hands than the sharpness of their wits or weight of their arguments which are as spiteful and yet as vain as the vipers biting of the file when from some Ministers personall failings they fasten their venomous teeth upon the whole state and constitution of the Church of England In whose behalf I am neither afraid nor ashamed to appeal to you my most honoured countrey-men as the nearest and best Judges in the world of this matter First as to the Church of England in its godly care and Christian constitution whether you do believe or really find that in any thing it hath been wanting which is necessary for the good of your souls Next as to the Bishops and Ministers of England whether abating personall infirmities they have not generally been ever since the Reformation both able and faithfull in the work of the Lord whether as Mr. Peter du Moulin confesseth you and your fore-fathers do not chiefly owe to them both the beginning and continuance of the Reformed as well as Christian Religion next under the mercy of God and the care of your pious Princes whether the tenuity or weakness of some Ministers who had less abilities and perhaps too little incouragements were not abundantly supplied by the eminent sufficiencies of many others and if every Diocese had not an excellent Bishop at all times or every Parish enjoyed not a very able Preacher yet I am sure neither of the two Provinces in England nor any one County ever wanted since the Reformation either excellent Bishops or excellent Preachers in them to a far greater store than was to be enjoyed in Primitive times when Dioceses were larger and petty Parishes not at all in the Church of Christ So then I may justly quere whether one odious century of Ministers branded some of them for scandalous because they were more exactly conform to the Laws and Customes established in the Church of England were a just ground to reproch the whole Clergie or to abolish the order function and succession both of Bishops and Presbyters which some men aim at officious compilers of that uncomely Centâ— Whether they might not with as much truth and more reason have enumerated the scandalous livings of England as so many not convicted but supposed scandalous Ministers many of whose maintenance was worse than their manners and more unworthy of their profession Whether any thing truly objectable against any Bishop or Minister of England as scandalously weak wicked and unworthy may not with as much more truth be objected against their severest enemies No man in England not grosly ignorant or passionately impotent can deny what I here affirm and proclaim to all the world That the Clergie of England both Governours and governed taking them in their integrality or unity as they were esteemed a third estate in the Body politick or as an Ecclesiasticall fraternity and corporation have been not onely tolerable but commendable yea admirable instruments of Gods glory and the good of mens souls in this Church and Nation That as they did at first in the morning of the Reformation so ever since during the heat and burthen of the day they have with great learning and godly zeal with Christian courage constancy integrity and wisdome every way asserted vindicated and maintained the truth purity and power also the peace order and honour of Christian and Reformed Religion against Atheists and Infidels against the superstitions of the Romanists on one side and the factions of the Schismaticks on the other Nor have they onely built with the trowel but fought also with the sword of the Word What Giantly error what Papal Goliah hath ever appeared defying this Reformed Church whom some excellent Bishops and other learned Divines who were Episcopal have not encountred prostrated confounded and beheaded the spoiles and trophies of them are still extant in their works as eternall monuments of the incomparable prowess worth and merit of the English Clergy What wholsom saving and necessary truth did they ever wilfully deprive You of In what holy institution and ordinance of Jesus Christ have they ever conspired to defraud or diminish you In what holy work or duty have they come short of any In what excellent doctrine gift grace or vertue have they been so defective as not to give your forefathers your selves and all the world most illustrious proofs and generous examples To which testimony no ingenuous knowing and conscientious
the due celebration of holy mysteries the high Doxologies or exaltations of the glorious Trinity the joynt testifications of Christians mutuall charity harmony and communion All these I say were carried on and consummated in the Churches publick worship which was excellently improved heightened and adorned by the use and recitation of those Summaries of Religion amidst the congregations of Christians to which they assented with a loud and cheerfull Amen Yet which of them is there now that is not openly not onely disused but disdained disgraced and disparaged by some men as nauseous crambe which their souls abhor so far as they from reverent attending or hearing when any Minister reciteth them that they scarce have any patience or can keep within those looks and postures of civility which become them yea they endure not to have their children taught them as the first rudiments of Religion the seminaries of faith and nurseries of devotion which being rightly planted and duly watered by catechising may in time by Gods blessing bring forth the ripe fruits of wisdome and holiness of faith and obedience both to power and order to an uniformity and constancy of Godliness The ancient Christian writers as Irenaeus Tertullian Cyprian Ruffinus Jerome Austin and others sufficiently tell us That these compendious forms of duty faith and devotion the Decalogue Creed Lords Prayer and Doxologies were highly valued and solemnly used in Christian Conventions as the gracious condescendings of our God and Saviour to the weakest memories and meanest capacities some of them being of their express and immediate dictating according to which pattern the blessed Apostles and the Churches of Christ after them took care that both those and other forms like to them should be used among Christians that so by frequent repeating and inculcating those excellent summaries of Faith and Catholick principles of Religion all sorts of Christian people young and old learned and ideots might be either catechised or confirmed in the very same things to be believed prayed for and practised in order to their own and others salvation Which great work can never be safely built upon Seraphick sublimities and Scholastick subtilties much less upon imaginary raptures childish novelties idle dreams and futile whimseys which of late do seek very impiously to justle out of all Churches use and out of all Christians memories those wholsome solidities and holy summaries which have in them both the warmth of Christian love and the light of Divine truth in comparison of which all novel affectations are dark and cold dull and confused silly and insipid Yet what sober Christian doth not see that of late years this popular liberty in England is risen to such a nauseating niceness and curiosity of Religion as hath not onely infected the simpler sort of common people with an abhorrence of all those usefull and venerable forms which the prudence piety of this or any Church commended to them in their publick celebrations but to the great incouragement and advance of ignorance Atheism and profaneness uncharitableness and insolence among the vulgar many persons of very considerable parts and good quality are shrewdly leavened with these Novellismes and Libertinismes Yea which is worst of all many Ministers especially of the Presbyterian and Independent parties yea and some of the ancient order and Catholick conformity of the Church of England even these as S. Peter was over-awed to a dissimulation misbecoming the freedome and dignity of so great an Apostle by too great fears and compliances with the circumcised Jews have been so carried down this stream of plebeian prejudice and popular indifferency more than liberty to say or silence to do or omit what they list that they have not onely much neglected all the devotionall set forms of this Churches prescription which in my judgement merited a far better fate and handsomer dismission than they found from many mens hands but some have wilfully disused and so discountenanced even all those sacred formes which have either Divine or Apostolick or Catholick characters of honour antiquity and Religion upon them How miserably are many publick Preachers either afraid or ashamed solemnly to recite so much as once every Lords day the ten Commandements or the Apostles Creed or any other of those ancient Symbols yea when is it that some Ministers dare use either so much courage or conscience as to use the Lords Prayer either by it self or in the conclusion of their own voluminous supplications before or after their Sermons in which neither much regard is had to the method nor the matter of the Lords Prayer which they pretend is the use of it but it is made to stand like a meer cypher silent and insignificant while men love to multiply the innumerable Logarithmes of their own crude inventions and incomposed devotions when as that Prayer which the wisdome of our Lord Jesus twice taught his Disciples upon severall occasions and in them all his Church both in a doctrinall and devotionall way as a method matter and form of Prayer is in it self and ever was so esteemed and used by all good Christians not onely as the foundation measure and proportion but also as the confirmation completion crown and consummation of all our prayers and praises to God Instead of which and wholy exclusive of it how many poor-spirited Preachers of late more to gratifie and humour some silly and self-will'd people than to satisfie their own consciences yea highly to the scandall of many worthy Christians and the dishonour of the Reformed profession are become not onely strangers but almost enemies to that and all other holy forms of Religion contenting themselves with their own private composures or their more sudden conceptions in all publick celebrations and solemn worship not having so much modesty and humility as to consider what is most evident to wise men that no private mans sufficiencies in point of publick prayer and celebrious duties can be such for method comprehensiveness clearness weight solidity sanctity and majesty as may compare much less dispense with and neglect yea utterly reject those sacred summaries and solemn formes which have been divinely instituted whose foolishnesse is wiser then the wisdome of men and whose shortness is beyond the amplest prolixity and largest spinnings of humane lungs and invention there being more spirit in one drop of Christs Prayer as in cordiall and hot waters than in whole seas of vulgar effusions which at best having much in them very flashy insipid and confused had need to have at last the sacred infusion of Christs prayer added to them to give them and us that sanctity spirit life completeness comfort and fiduciary assurance of acceptance which all good men desire in their service of God Certainly they seem much to overvalue their own prayers who wholy disuse or despise the Lords nor do I see how a Minister of Christ can comfortably discharge his duty to the flock of Christ if while he professeth to
least offence No touch-wood or dry gun-powder sooner kindles to flames of wrath indignation and disdain than some ordinary and mean men dare yea delight now to do against their Ministers I have seen both by their pasquils and practises some instances of their ingenuous manners of their great respects love and gratitude all which in good earnest I might I think without any vanity have challenged and expected from all men especially from my own Parishioners and auditors whom for many years I have endeavoured to entertain with so much industry civility candour charity and hospitality as is not inferiour to most if any Ministers in the countrey and in some things as to publick charges and burthens I believe I have exceeded any man of my estate and calling in England As for private charities to the poorer and richer to the well and the sick for food physick clothing c. it is fitter others assert me than I should vindicate my self against the petulant ingratitudes of some men among whom one had his tongue so much at liberty that uninjured unprovoked yea almost unknown to me yet one of my many hearers he doubted not openly to joyn me with my man and put upon us both the title of a couple of proud Jack anapeses when he was but after two or three years forbearance demanded to pay what was due professing he would not maintain any proud Parson Such spirits as these I must leave to be punished with their own manners I must pardon them as David did Shimei and pray for them as Samuel did for the ingrateful Israelites the rather because I thank God I meet with few of them in a very numerous people who for the greater and better part of them do indeed deserve all that care love labour kindness and constancy which I have shewed to them for 15 years together Onely by these experiments both my self and others may easily conjecture how the pulse of people beats in most if not all places toward their Ministers whatever they be if they be men of any worth spirits and parts above them 'T is sure enough that even the best of them in the best places they meet with are brought to a low ebb in comparison of what respect they formerly enjoyed in England Indeed some Ministers perhaps have some little sleights and popular artifices to win and please the vulgar whom rather than offend they will do or say or omit or silence any thing not grosly a sin and shame and rather than not please they will rub ever and anon some salt upon the Bishops the ancient Clergy upon the Liturgy and the former constitution of the Church of England for this gall is honey to the palates of some plebeian spirits And rather than displease some people there are Ministers that will never use the Creed Decalogue or Lords prayer in twice seven years Nay some people so rule the tender mouths and ride the galled backs of their Preachers with so sharp a snaffle and hard a saddle that they are afraid to offend these their great Censors rather than good Masters and Dames by putting the title of Saint to any holy Evangelist or Apostotick writer no not when they name their Text or cite any place out of their holy writings but those holy and reverend men are named with as little respect or honor to their memory and merit in the Church as if they spake to Matthew and James and Peter and John in their kitchin as their servants or fellowes and familiars Yea so spongily soft timorous and sequacious some Ministers are that what they own as their judgement among men of learning parts and courage this they smother with great wariness and cowardise among those plainer Hees and Shee s by whom they are over-awed as it were by a kind of necessary sportulary dependence CHAP. XXXI WHat the sufferings dejections dâ—basements indignities are which many Ministers have and do endure no man can imagine who doth not see and feel the weight of high shoes or the ponderousness of Weavers beams when they dare to tread on Ministers toes If as I have experimentally instanced it be thus done to a green tree to one that hath been not barren or unfruitfull among them whom God of his mercy and bounty hath planted in an upper ground and in many degrees of eminency above the vulgar how think you will rustick spirits lift up their flailes and sithes their hooks and bills their shuttles and shovels against those of my brethren whom they look upon as much their underlings and shrubs by reason of the tenuity of their condition though they be never so tall Cedars in learning piety and all true worth How do they threaten and scorn and molest them if they do not suffer them to enjoy those shaking and sacrilegious compositions which they will make or none at all for their Tithes else Articles and Committees sequestrations and suits are loudly threatned at best parties factions schisms and separations are presently hatched and nourished against him if the Minister do not sacrifice with great tameness a great part of his small means as a peace-offering or atonement to these turbulent spirits who if they may not be his Masters and Commanders resolve to be his oppressors and undoers if they can however they take the freedome to be his declared deserters and enemies discouraging and disparaging him what they can by separating from him and from the Congregation or Parish to some private and spitefull Conventicle Which reserve of malice never fails to follow there where any Minister hath the courage and confidence so far to own himself as not to submit either to the injuries or insolencies of some proud and pragmatick spirits If the conscience of his own integrity sets him immovably as a sluce against the tide of their folly and petulancy O how excessively will their spleen swell against the good man Rather than fail of having some revenge upon him they will take this most severe revenge against themselves as malice is oft its own mischief wholly to deprive themselves of all the benefit to be enjoyed by his learned judicious and devout Ministry which they labour to cry down as that by which they cannot profit that to refresh their souls they are forced to seek out some more warm complying creeping and inspired Preacher such an one though a meer rhapsodist and rambler must presently be cryed up as a rare soul-saving Preacher And indeed it may justly be feared that most Separates of later years have taken the rise and occasion of their schismes and separations from their lawfull Ministers and from the Church of Engl. not so much upon any scruple of conscience as upon pride covetousness ambition revenge and other inordinate lusts with which their Ministers would not comply from which centre of order union and consistence in the Church when countrey people are once removed no wonder if like their cart-wheels they run round in a vertigo of Religions
Thunder enough have ever that I have heard or seen faln upon this execrable sin of Sacriledge by pen or tongue to reprove it or represse it nay some of my own coat have made no bones to be Actors and Applauders of it to eat the Flesh and gnaw the Bones which some Lay-men as over-gorged have left who probably would not have ventured thus on holy things if they had not been animated by some Pulpiteers to prey upon the Church and Clergy Yea some Preachers have been not onely perswaders to invade and alienate Church-Lands but themselves have purchased them to their private Estates and secular uses to the perpetuall infamy of their Names and horrour of their Souls and their Children that shall enjoy those sacred morsels Hence is it that the warmest and most over-boyling Reformers of later dayes never so much as summoned arraigned questioned or censured this Monster of Sacriledge this reforming Extortion before their new Consistorian tribunals The lean sin of Sabbath-breaking even to a poor mans gathering a few sticks or earning a penny to relieve his hungry belly or walking abroad to refresh his spirits this is oft scared catched and scratched together with swearing and drunkennesse private personall and petty sins in comparison in the renewed nets of State-Acts and Ordinances but the fat sin of Sacriledge ever goes scot-free as if it had the Priviledge of Parliament not to be arrested it was never yet called to the bar of Lords or Commons never examined by civil Justice never presented or promoted by the reverend Scot-English Assembly which were as the grand Inquest the Promoters or Apparitors so long to the long Parliament For even these Rabbies sitting so long in Moses his Chair and helping to displace all Bishops with all dignified Church-men from their Convocations and Cathedrals upon I know not what supposed misdemeanours yet in their large catalogue of scandalous sins which they had long studied and at last with much gravity presented to the Honourable Houses in order to a Presbyterian perfect Reformation of all things amisse as to Conscience and Religion in Church and State they had not either so good memories or so good courages or so good consciences as to reckon among that black rabble or to impeach no not so much as to mention or once to name either the sin of Sacriledge or of Schism Good men sure they either over-saw these sins in the crowd though they are one of them at least higher by the shoulders than most they there enumerate or they saw that a dispensation of course was to be granted to these sins which became so popular and epidemick yea so specious and gallant as being clothed with the spoiles of the Church and wearing the Liberties of the people for their Liveries It is not a lesse true than pertinent observation which a very prying and perspicacious eye hath made as to those larger Annotations on the English Bible printed 1646. by persons of commendable Learning and Industry some of them if they had been of more impartiality These Annotators in every place through the Bible where the Word and Spirit of God signally commands them to brand the sin of Sacriledge with a black mark as one of the Devils hindmost herd do so slily and slightly passe it over as if they had neither seen nor smelt that foul Beast as if there were no Gall in their pens no Reproof in their mouths no Courage in their hearts against this Sin they scarce ever touch it never state it make no perstrictive or invective stroke against it which he thought could not be their ignorance or inadvertency but the cowardise cunning and parasitisme of the times in which they were content for some Presbyterian ends to connive at Sacriledge in those good Lords and Masters whose charity they hoped yea I heard some of them professe they expected would turn all that stream which Bishops Deans and Chapters enjoyed to drive the Presbyterian Mills to keep up the honour of Ruling and Teaching Elders Otherwise it had been impossible that any thing besides a studied silence and affected palpation in men of any light and sight could have so gently slid over that place of Achans sacriledge Josh 6.7 or that of Belshazzars Dan. 5.2 where they blame his drunkennesse but not his sacrilegious profanenesse which the emphasis of the Text more points at than the other Nay upon Acts 5. they urge against Ananias and Saphira the sin of Lying Covetousnesse and Hypocrisie but not that of their Sacriledge and defrauding God of what now was his and not theirs being put out of their power by pretended donation of the whole which was the capitall crime withdrawing and purloyning from God and the Church part of that estate which they had pretendedly devoted in solidum the whole to sacred uses and so put it out of their own power to resume or detain it as S. Peter tells them yea on Rom. 2.22 these soft-fingred Censors very gently touch that rough Satyr of Sacriledge where it is expresly put in the balance with Idolatry and overweighs it as the more enormous So on Levit. 25.34 where the Levites lands are forbidden to be sold and on Gen. 47.22 where Joseph's Piety and Pharaoh's Policy forbear to buy or sell the Priests lands and on Ezek. 47.1 48.14 where in order to support the Evangelicall Service and Ministry care is taken to appoint an holy portion of land to be laid out for the Priests as an holy oblation to the Lord which might never be sold In all these places which are as a bright cloud of witnesses against Sacriledge these wary Annotators shut their eyes as if they could not see the prodigie there is altum silentium in all their Glossaries this Agag was to be spared by a grave and prudent silence they doe not so much as put in any caution against it much lesse passe any crimination or condemnation upon it but as if they were Chaplains at once serving the Lord their Bellies and the Times as partaking of the Table of the Lord and the Table of Devils so do they rather coaks than crush this Cockatrice seeming forsooth fearfull of appearing superstitious men or but luke-warm Reformers if they damped some of their good Masters zeale by bitterly inveighing against and justly damning this darling and damnable sin of Sacriledge which puts on the form not onely of Godlinesse and Reformation but of Thrift and good Husbandry to save the publick purse in the necessary expences of a Civil Warre which in some mens desires as I believe it had never been begun but onely in order to destroy the Government of the Church and confiscate those Revenues so all things computed I no lesse believe that the State or secular purse hath had but a dear penniworth of those Church-Lands at so vast a charge as hath attended the War first commenced by Presbytery against Episcopacy CHAP. XXII WHich Flames having soon consumed the Lands Houses and
Revenues of Bishops and Cathedrals whose honour was the publick Honour of this Nation of this reformed Church and of every sober Minister grew so masterlesse that they threatned not onely the Livings of Parochiall Ministers but the very Nurseries of Learning the Schools of the Prophets the Colledges and Lands of both Universities which seemed to be spared and reprieved a while by the loud outcries of those men who had there got into the warm nests of other Birds whom they had driven from thence but the wide jawes of some sacrilegious spirits did and do still gape and grin upon these Ecclesiastick and Academick remaining Morsels grudging that they are not satisfied with them nor will they faile to be devoured in a few yeares if persons of Soveraign power and Nobler spirits doe not protect them as hitherto they have done from that ever-craving leech of Sacriledge which lives unsatiably crying Give give in some Lay-mens breasts nor may they be too confident of every Parlament to be their Friends or Defenders A notable alarm and instance of which danger the Lord Herbert gives in the reign of our Henry the 8. who as an Helduo or unsatiable gulph having swallowed up digested and egested as much Treasure and Lands as would have purchased a good Kingdome and maintained it in all equipage both Military and Civil becoming Majesty yet still indigent and necessitous he was offered by the House of Commons in a Parlament toward his later end all the Lands and Houses of the two famous Universities to be confiscated to his Exchecquer by a most mechanick prostitution of the Learning the Honour and the Piety of the Nation But that dreadfull Prince told them not without a just scorn that he had too much of a Scholar in him to destroy two such Universities as the world had not the like And he had so much of a Christian Prince too as not to destroy Bishops and Cathedrals or to take away their Houses and Estates but he rather added to them and erected four new Bishopricks out of the Lands of some Collegiate and Monastick Churches Had he with the same moderation and justice then restored Impropriations to the Church for the competent maintenance of Ministers in all places he had done a work so glorious and usefull to Religion as might have expiated all other his Royall Extravagancies For my part I am confident the just God will visit this sin of Sacriledge upon any Person Family or Nation that are guilty of it nor will the Controversie ever be taken up till either full vengeance or due restitution and redemption be made of what was Gods portion for the Order Honour and Maintenance of his Service and this Church no more than Israel could stand in battel while Achan and the accursed or devoted thing was among them The Safety Honour Peace Plenty Happinesse and chiefly the Piety and Religion of any Nation professing the Name and Worship of the true God all these will fatally decay and be upon not onely great hazards but diminutions and distresses while Professors of Religion and Reformation make God the Father and Christ the Godfather of any Sacriledge as if it were as acceptable a service to them to take away from such a Christian and Reformed Church such meanes as was fit to maintain and anciently devoted to the honour and encouragement of Christs Ministers and Governours of his Church as it was to burn the Chariots and hough the horses of the Sun in pieces 'T is true all that is dedicated to false that is no Gods is an injury and a sacrilegious robbing of the true God therefore those Donations may lawfully in some mens judgements be taken away but none ever allowed true men to be false to the true God to rob and defraud him who is the maker and giver of all Shall Christians grudge to give that to Christ yea and rapine that from him which others have given to him who is the repairer and restorer of all No good Angels can guard those men or that Nation which they see guilty of robbing that good God they professe to worship Certainly Sacriledge is the more notorious sin and of deeper die by how much it is committed among Christians and most where they professe to be most reformed who should best know how much they owe to God how they should value the gift of his Son Jesus Christ to die for them and the feet of his Messengers who preach those glad tidings to poor sinners Nor can I but observe how God hath already visited with no small or light strokes of his vengeance as the whole Nation so in particular the sinfull and shamefull silence even of those Ministers who were so cold cunning and indifferent as to the reproving of Sacriledge and Schism provided they might in other designes gain their processe They and their dictators too have for the most part both in England and Scotland reaped nothing but Shame and Infamy Reproch and Contempt which is the shadow ever following Sacriledge even among honest Heathens and true Christians while they could liberally declaim and lift up their voices like Trumpets in an Oratory not more loud and popular than flat and insipid against a few decent and innocent Ceremonies against a handsome and wholsome Liturgy against learned godly and reverend Bishops farre their betters against Ancient and Catholick Episcopacy which preserved the Order and Unity of the Church but in the great concerns of Gods Glory this Churches Honour the Clergies Maintenance the good of mens souls and the credit of the Christian and Reformed Religion which were all so invaded by a bold and resolute Sacriledge threatning all setled Livings and Maintenance of Ministers and Scholars there they peep and mutter like Obs and Pythons whispering as out of the earth and their bellies not from their hearts more dubiously than the Oracles of Apollo and more obscurely than the Sibyls leaves Thus artificiall are some men at the swallowing of Camels and sticking at Gnats I doe not forespeak or imprecate a further evil day upon any but rather I pray for Personall yea Nationall Repentance Amendment and Pardon without which I am confident God will vindicate his great Name and the name of Jesus Christ together with the Honour and Principles of both Christian and true Reformed Religion from so great a scandal as Sacriledge is against all those men whatever they are their Parties and Posterities who not onely dare to commit it but to connive at it yea commend it yea to boast of it yea impute it to the impulses of Gods spirit to their zeal for Religion and to their aimes at a perfect or through Reformation After all which noise and rattle God knowes much is more deformed than ever in Religion both as to the Polity and power of it the outward Order and inward Efficacy nothing truly reformed by robbing the Church but onely the tenuity of some mens former fortunes If the persons of
any Church-men in England had by their misdemeanour legally forfeited their use and enjoyments of such holy things as they had in Gods name and as the Churches servants yet certainly the whole Church and Nation had not lost their right in them Posterity could not consent to be deprived of those advantages of Learning and Religion and I am sure Gods title to them can never fall under any forfeiture or escheat whose speciall patrociny those Demesnes were In the Goods and Lands belonging to the Ministry and Church of Christ for the Service of God for the Education and Maintenance of his Ministers for the well-ordering and Government of the Church and Relief of the Poor who ever presumes to impropriate them by meer Power or purchase them to his private Estate had need have either a very good penniworth of them for they will destroy more than they bring or a better title than Ananias had to what was once his own or than God himself hath to them when once devoted and given to him yea they need more power to preserve such Estates to their use and their Posterities than God hath to blesse or curse both them and theirs I have read it as an observation made out of many Authors that the holy vessels of the Temple which were taken from Jerusalem by Titus Vespasian and tossed up and down to many Countreys and Cities in Europe Asia and Africa did as the Ark among the Philistins carry alwayes a storm and calamity with them with such a sacred horrour that no man durst melt them or divert them to secular uses or private benefit untill they were at last brought out of Africa from Carthage as I remember to Constantinople and there dedicated by a Christian Emperour to the service and honour of Christ in the goodly Church of Sancta Sophia which Constantine the Great built and endowed with many goodly both Vessels and Revenues as Eusebius tells us yea and commanded all goods taken from Christian Churches in former times to be restored Sacriledge what fair face soever it carries hath the taile and sting of a Serpent nor can any man die with peace or hope for the prosperity of his Family after him who knowingly is guilty of that Sin Modest and Honest Christians will not no not in their extremities take from God and his Church so much as a shooe-latchet to make them rich David would have been famished I believe rather than by force have taken the Shew-bread or Priests portion from them which was a work onely fit for Doeg who durst take away their lives CHAP. XXIII I Know it will be pleaded by some that are more politick than pious Religionis trapezitae 1. That civil Polities have the absolute supreme power over all things of civil Rights and secular Enjoyments to dispose of them as seems most for the publick Safety Profit and Honour 2. That whatever is acted passed and possessed by such Authority seems valid and unquestionable 3. that those Lands and Revenues which nourished Bishops Deans and Prebends were superfluous if not superstitious as to the point of Christian and Reformed Religion 4. That if there be any fault in any mens first invading and alienating things sacred yet private possessors either by gift or purchase of them are afterward in no fault as having the highest civil Right to what they so enjoy 5. Besides divers Princes and States have disposed as they pleased of Church-Revenues To all these pretensions every mans own reason and conscience will first and best give answer if it be not partiall and bribed by its own private gain but to open the eyes of such as are willingly blind I must tell them in words of sobernesse and truth with all due respect to whatever powers are ordained of God as supreme among men 1. No man as to his own private civil Estate to which he hath a good right in Law would think it just without any fault done by him or proved against him to be deprived of it and turned out of all by any reason of State How then can he think it just as to any Church-mens Ecclesiastick Estates that they should be outed of their Estates to which they have both a civil and religious Title both Gods Right and Mans Donation No Christians should offer that measure to Christ and his Ministers which they would not have offered unto themselves 2. Though civil polities mâ—y have the supreme power over particular mens Estates among men yet 't is a power sub graviore regno subordinate to Gods Soveraignty and ought to be subject to those rules of Reason Justice and Religion which he hath given mankind and especially Christians the greater any mens Power is the more strict the Piety and Equity of it should be for they are subject to erre and to sin no lesse than private men and are no lesse punishable by Divine Vengeance both singly and socially whole Nations may rob God and be accursed of him 3. Civil polities in their due conjunctures are indeed justly counted supreme upon earth being as they ought to be free and full when all Estates called convened and concerned in publick Counsels and Transactions have liberty to plead and vote deny and grant to hear and argue to judge and determine according to the conscience of all and not according to the prevalency and bias of any one party nor exclusive of any mens consent which ought to be had in such cases either as to the right of Enjoyment or as to the joynt legislative and supreme power which onely can make a legall alienation of any civil rights 'T is evident that the most united and excellent Parlaments in England for Piety and Peace did abhor and avoid Sacriledge as a sin against God his Church and all good men The Kings of England were bound by Oath to preserve the State and Rights of the Church nor were Peers and People lesse bound in duty and gratitude to God and man than if they had been sworn 4. It doth not appear by any Law of God or Man in Reason or Religion that any humane or civil power hath any authority or jurisdiction to the prejudice of Gods Rights and Interest whose the Estate and Revenues of the Church are in Fee as chief Lord being dedicated to his Service Worship and Glory and are indeed in no mans property however in Church-mens use as Gods Tenants The acts of power and will may prevaile among men and hold good in Westminster-Hall in foro soli humano but they cannot give a right in foro coeli conscientiae before Gods Tribunall or in a mans own Conscience which regard not actuall and arbitrary Power but internall Right and Equity which forbids any injury to be done to any man and specially to those that are the Ministers or Servants of Christ and his Church whose injuries redound to God himself Good Christians must consider not quid factum valet among
time prove extreamly pernicious to the peace piety honour and welfare of this Nation not onely in respect of the Reformed Religion whose authoritative Ministry and maintenance they will ever seek to devour and utterly destroy but even in respect of secular interests and civill peace For the first The integrity and true interests of the Reformed Religion who that hath read what I have already not more passionately then impartially written can be so blind as not to see That the pride petulancy and despite the ignorance licentiousnesse and covetousness of some of these men hath been and still is such that they have not onely sought to wast and deforme to reproach and defame all that outward order visible beauty polity support and unity which became so famous a Church and Nation but they have further studied to weaken and destroy the most solid and essentiall parts of Religion by many grosse errours damnable Doctrines bold blasphemies high Atheismes and rude immoralities all which do naturally boile up in the corrupt hearts and violent lusts of mankinde when they have any fire of temptation or encouragement What is then so immodest so impudent against the glory of God against the honour of our Lord Jesus Christ against the written word of God against the reputation of the Catholick or any well-reformed Church against the Lawes of nature civill societies and common justice against the good of men and Christians their temporall and eternall welfare which some of these Abaddons these Apollyons will not adventure to broach and abet to act own and applaud when they see their raveries are apt not onely to amuse the vulgar people but to mend their own fortunes which are the first and neerest designes they aime at as the chief ends of the agents But the end or effect following their actions though possibly not some of their intentions will be this to prepare by these various windings confused circulations and distorted wrestings of the Reformed Religion the way for Roman factors Papall interests and Jesuitick designes whose learned abilities orderly industry and indefatigable activity is such that by that time the old stock of Reverend orderly and authoritative Bishops and Presbyters the truest and most unquestionable Ministers of the Church of Christ are worn out in England and the reformed Religion is reduced with its titular and extenuated Ministers to a meer medly or popular Chaos of confusions the most of sober people being either sick or ashamed or weary of their home-bred disorders and unremedied diseases in Religion by this time I say the Romish agitators will not onely devoure all these petty parties and feeble factions of Reformers with as much ease as the Stork did the Froggs but they will in time utterly destroy the remaines of the defamed Doctrine and deformed Religion which your fore-fathers owned and to the death professed as most true and well reformed with great Honour Holinesse and Happiness which yet the ignorance and insolence the Illiterateness and Rusticity the Barrennesse and Barbarity of novel Sects have already rendred poor and despicable much to be pitied and deplored both at home and abroad I must ever so far own my reason as to professe that I look upon the Defamers Dividers and Destroyers of the Church of England whatever they are or seem to be no other than the perdues or forelorn hope of Popery which by lighter skirmishes open advantages to the Popes maine Battaglio the Vancourriers or Harbingers sent and excited in great part from the Pragmatick Policies of Rome whose grand interest since the Reformation hath been not more to advance the House of Austria and preserve the Papacy than to regain the Church of England to the Romish slavery In whose present calamities may easily be discerned a far greater reach and deeper Spirit than is usuall to be found in ordinary Sectaries and Schismaticks who are commonly of low and mean parts short-sighted and short-spirited of very shallow wits and extemporary designes rarely aiming at any thing that is of a publick concern of a grand notable and durable proportion but rather gratifying their sudden passions and occasionall fancies or correptions which are pitifully poor and plebeian seldome reaching higher than the pleasure of scratching their own or other mens itching ears with some novel fancies and opinions or setting up themselves by a sorry ambition to be Heads and Leaders the Pastors and Teachers of some credulous company which makes it self into some new mode and very superciliously calls it self The Church not in charity and communion with but in contempt and defiance of all other Churches Parochiall Provinciall Nationall or Catholick owning none of the Primitive Grand and Apostolicall Combinations or their Successions to be truly constituted Churches By such little arts some of them feed their bellies and cloth their backs better than heretofore when they made no such cakes for their Queens of Heaven nor Shrines for their severall Diana's but were confined to their lesse gainfull trades some of them feed meerly upon popular breath which as the wind will never last long in one point or corner lastly some of them keep up their vulgar Pride and sad Ambitions by nothing else but by the fame of their Antagonists the glory they have to contest with the Church of England and her ablest Ministers who are in earnest so much superiour to these sorry Rivals and Ruiners of them in all Learning Religion Vertue Wisdome Honesty and Modesty as the Stars in the firmament are beyond the glittering of rotten chips in the dark or the shining of Glow-wormes in a ditch Certainly these petty parties who scarce know what they drive at and are full of varieties in their Fancies Forms and Factions these cannot produce so constant a current and so strong a tide as is alwaies urging against the Church of Engl. and the honour of the Reformed Religion but they are driven on by a subtill and secret yet potent impulse as waves of the sea not onely dashing and breaking upon each other but all of them battering the Honour and Stability of the Church of England as the great rampart or bank which stands in the way of the Sea of Rome mightily opposing and hindering heretofore both fanatick Confusions Papal Usurpations and Romish Superstitions whose advantages now are evidently prepared and carried on by those that under the name of Reformation will most effectually at last overthrow it For after these petty spirits who have been and are the great Dividers Despisers and Destroyers of the reformed Church of England have a few years longer played their mad pranks in this sometime so flourishing and fruitfull vineyard of the Lord pulling up the hedge of Ecclesiasticall Canons and Civil Sanctions throwing down the wall of Ancient Discipline and Catholick Government breaking in pieces the wine-press of holy Ordination and Ministeriall Authority and Succession pulling up both root and branch of holy Plants and regular Planters what I beseech you can hinder these subtill
lustre for Learning Honor Order Estate and Unity How much lesse are they now to be exercised by poore pusillanimous and petty Preachers with their pittifull Lay-Elders Yet amidst all the obstructions either in Doctrine or Discipline which either the pride and policies of men or the subtilties of devils have hitherto put amidst the peevishnesse of Schismaticks and the spite of Romanists amidst all the damps and dispiritings that this Church of England and the worthy Clergy thereof have long found and felt from all sides that were factious and had evill eyes or evill wills against them yet even then did the Lord of his Church so highly exalt them and this Nation in the eyes of all the world to such degrees of Piety Learning Peace Plenty Honor Love and all prosperity that could blesse any Christian Church or Nation that in good earnest there was no need any of these new patches should be put as deformities to that old garment which was so goodly and gracefull for true Christian Religion and due reformation that no novelty from private heads or hands could mend it especially when obtruded as a rent or forcibly pinned upon it as rags and hangby's of Religion by every petty Master whose fingers itch to be medling and innovating in Church affaires without any publick and impartiall counsell and authority Such preposterous endeavours no way worthy of the honor of this Nation nor contributive to its happinesse God hath already soon all sides blasted that they have been not onely unprosperous but many waies pernicious dishonourable ridiculous divine vengeance at once discovering their follies and confuting their confidences which instead of further setling or better Reforming Religion as was on all sides vapored and pretended have as much as in them lyes reduced a famous and flourishing a well-reformed and united Church almost to ruinous heaps and sordid confusions to the great shame and dishonour of this Nation both reproching your pious progenitors and you their posterity as if for this last hundred yeares none of them or you had served God as they and you should have done with holy and acceptable service because neither they nor you did permit every man or Minister to choose what Religion he would broach what Opinions he liked or to use what Discipline he pleased or beget what Churches and Pastors he fancied best and this after every free-man had either in Person or by his Proxy consented to that religious establishment which bound all men either actively to obey or passively to submit with silence and patience because it was of his own appointing being the result of all Estates in this Nation who without doubt were much more able to consider and conclude what was best for the publick Piety Peace and Honour of this Church and State than any private man could do whose self-overvaluing and overweening is generally the first step of their own and other mens undoing yea many times from these practises which at first are not much regarded much mischief accrews to the publick as the plague is thought to begin first in private alleys and by-lanes or from some one man or woman that hath a foul body or a very stinking breath which easily poysons the ambient ayre in which they walk especially when disposed to putrefaction and so diffusive of the Infection to others The stop and cure of which Epidemick pestilence which beginning from some mens ill lungs or lives hath now seised upon Religion it self and this whole Nation by your applying seasonable Antidotes and safe defensatives is a work most worthy of the Wisdome and Honor of this Nation which can be in no point more concerned or conspicuous than in this of true Religion so setled and maintained as best becomes both the Majesty of Religion and the renowne of the Nation Fourthly to which great and good work you stand obliged not onely in duty to God in love to your Saviour in charity to posterity and in just respects to your selves all which are great ingredients in true Honor but further give me leave to tell you something of Gratitude and just retribution lyes upon you as to the ancient Clergy or Ministry of this Nation who have faithfully served God and his Church you and your forefathers for many yeares in all Ecclesiasticall duties and religious offices If you and your Forefathers most honored Gentlemen and beloved Countrymen did well and worthily in a grave and orderly way of publick consent and by due Authority purge this Church and redeeme this Nation in its Doctrine and Duties its Ministry and Worship its Discipline and Government its just Liberties and immunities from the drosse and druggery of Romish errors and superstitions of Papall Tyrannies and Usurpations reserving or restoring that Purity Decency Authority Order Uniformity of Christian Religion which became the wisdome and honor of this Church and Nation by the exactest conformity with the Catholick Church in its purest and primitive constitution If you have effected and enjoyed this happinesse by Gods blessing chiefly upon the pious Counsells devout Prayers potent Preachings and learned Writings as of the first reformed and reforming Bishops and Presbyters subordinate to them so of their worthy Successors in the same Orders Offices and Functions who have many thousands of them confirmed their Doctrine sealed their labours asserted and authorised their Ministry by their holy lives and comfortable deaths yea some of them with their patient sufferings and Martyrdomes If the Clergy of this Reformed Church in their severall stations and degrees have by the Divine assistance ever since preserved this holy depositum of the true Christian Religion duly Reformed according to the Primitive gravity and Scripturall verity for above one hundred years to your and your forefathers inestimable honor and happinesse and this as with great Learning and all sorts of holy abilities so with no lesse industry and fidelity though not wholly without humane frailties and personall infirmities which God in mercy will pardon and man in charity ought to passe by where there was so much integrity and proficiency so much of commendable worth and constant excellency as to the maine If you cannot deny the many signall testimonies which God hath given of his being well-pleased with this Churches Reformation with the Ministry Worship and publick Profession of Religion in this Nation not so much by that long peace plenty and prosperity which you and your pious predecessors have to a wonder enjoyed at home besides the great Honor and renowne abroad nor yet by those nationall and signall deliverances from deep designes and imminent dangers which threatned the utter subversion of Church and State these preservations and lengthnings of our tranquillity being then surest signes of Gods favour and approbation of our waies when they are honestly obtained thankfully received and modestly enjoyed but beyond these conjecturall fruits of common providence we have those speciall tokens and testimonies wherein the Lord hath as I conceive evidenced
have hitherto so little justified their inventions or discretions that their mutuall divisions and severall diminutions besides the generall abatement and abasement both of Religion Reformation and Ministry do make the whole face of this Church appeare rather like Babel than Jerusalem which was a City at unity in it self not made up with patches and botches by fits and jobs with deformed angles crooked walls and swelling windowes like some narrow lanes in London whose sides seem built in spite to defie and darken one another but designed and wrought by such a juncture of wise Counsell from grand Architects as had well fore-cast and fore seen their work as those did by divine revelation who were to build the Ark Tabernacle and Temple for God as Moses David Salomon Zerubbabel and Ezekiel who had leisurely and exact visions sober and orderly revelations after due and Mathematicall proportions or plat-formes given them and were not hurried on by sudden raptures extemporary snatches and passionate surprises which are the Convulsions of Religion no fit tempers or motions to build or repaire the Church of Christ which even in Primitive defections as we read in the Epistles Correptory or Consolatory to the seven Asian Churches or others were taught by the Spirit of Christ and the Apostles not to seek out new Formes Fashions and Inventions to make Divisions Schismes and Separations either in or from the Respective Churches or from their Angels or Bishops the Presidents or Presbyters But in their Reformations they were to keep their former Church-communion in the grand and Apostolick Combinations which were constituted and proportioned by the guidance and wisdome of Christs Spirit both Pastors and people were to remember from whence they were faln to have due regard to their severall Rulers and Overseers in the Lord to returne to their first love of truth and peace to restore what was decayed to preserve what remained and was ready to dye to hold fast what was wholesome sound and good while they tryed and pared off what was evill and superfluous to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to them to keep to that forme of Doctrine with those Catholick Traditions and Customes which they had received They were not to invent new waies of Churches or Pastors any more than new Doctrines or new Gospels I am for Primitive Sanctities and Severities in all sorts or degrees of Ministers no lesse than for Primitive subordination and communion Ambitious I am for restoring the Piety and Purity as well as the Polity and Unity of Pristine times And although I find many Ministers so ill natured so peevish and crosse-grained that they can sooner vomit up the meate they have digested than recall or recant any error or extravagancy they have adopted and fomented yet I hope better things of the major part of my Fathers and brethren who are men of more calme and ingenuous tempers furthest from juvenile fervors from private designes and popular dependences Nor do I doubt but all Ministers that are worthy men will easily recede not from their Religion and Consciences but from their various superstitions and presumptions from their immoderate values and Idolatrous adorations of some petite opinions and novel imaginations which they have of late years taken up if once they could happily meet and parley together not in arbitrary Junctos and Associations but being thereto called and incouraged by the command and Counsel the Gravity and Authority of those their Superiours who are most able to advance the good of this Church and the restitution of the Reformed Religion If you O worthy Gentlemen should find us Ecclesiasticks more restive pertinacious or obstinate than becomes us either to retain our needlesse indulgences or superfluous severities and rigors of opinions and practises it will be your honor and candor to supple us and by your exemplary perswasions gently to compell us to be such as best becomes us and your selves You cannot give us the Ministers of England a more signall and ample testimony of your love and regard to us than by your exacting from us in our severall places not onely all morall severities and sanctities of life which are indispensible to our calling and duty but all those reall Ministerial strictnesses in all points of holy Ministrations to which our greatest enemies do so much pretend themselves and complaine of us as most defective in them either as to care or diligence or love towards our people But I beseech you let these sacred exactions as to our lives and Doctrines as to our ordination and Ministration be first Scripturall as to the maine ground rule and end of them next Rationall as to Order Decency and Gravity of them lastly let them be Primitive and Catholick not Novel and Fanatick but as much as may be conforme to the patterne of all ancient Churches who had their formations and fixations from the Apostles long before any of these moderne disputes and factions arose or passion had seized any Ministers judgements as to their particular sides and interests But let us not for Gods sake be urged as some designe utterly to forsake the Church of England to renounce our own former both practises and perswasions our standings and understandings too as Ministers which were so much grounded upon Scripturall directions Apostolick exemplifications Catholick imitations and nationall constitutions onely to conforme to some private mens modern fancies or to preferre as to Church-ordination Ministration and Government the novelties of Amsterdam or Geneva before the antiquities of Antioch and Jerusalem Nor yet may you leave us so far to our selves as to suffer every one of us to invent and do whatever seems good in his own eyes Alas many of us are weak in our Learning Religion and Reason strong onely in our Passions Prejudices and Presumptions easie and soft in our Judgements heady and obstinate in our opinions prone to be biased with private interests and abused with popular pretentions While we meane well yet we are ready to do very ill having much in us either cold and doting or young and raw or over-hot and uncomposed never worse governed than when we are left every man to governe our selves or our private flocks after our own various fancies and affectations which are most-what very partiall plebeian imprudent impolitick not many of us understanding the proportions of true Church-Government any more than we do the designes and dimensions of the most noble and magnificent buildings which were never erected and perfected by the occasionall concurrence of every spontaneous workman that listed to joyne his head and hand to carry on what figure and form he thought best but they are the effects of mature Counsell and grand advise from wise Master-builders who first agree in the whole model or Idea before they put the parts in execution The truth is no sorts of men are lesse tractable generally than we that professe to be Ministers If we have little Learning we are envious
the Lords prayer and the ten Commandements to all which I suppose they all are ready privately to say Amen How sad a prospect is it to see those men who professe such zeal for Church Government and good Discipline to be so little governed or correspondent in any wise communion and discreet subordination among themselves And all this while every plausible preacher is ambitious rather to ordain and governe others after his own fancy than to be ordained and governed as a Minister after the Apostolicall pattern and that one ancient forme which was universally owned and uniformly used in Christs Church both for the ordination and subordination of Ministers CHAP. IX IN order therefore to invite all able Orthodox and honest Ministers to some Christian correspondency and fraternall accord it will not be amisse for me to present both to your equanimous wisdome O worthy Gentlemen and to your piety what I humbly conceive the best Medium to be used in so great and good a work which must be tenderly and impartially carried on by a serious discovery and discerning First what is really good usefull and commendable in any party that this may be allowed and preserved agreed to and embraced by all Secondly what either is or seems defective or superfluous evill or inconvenient scandalous or dangerous on any side that this may be either pared off and removed since it may be well spared or else in reason and Religion in piety and charity so qualified and moderated as may comply with what is truely good and usefull for the publick on all sides First then to begin with Episcopacy not as it enjoyes or loseth the benefits of secular favour in estate honour or jurisdiction which are not essentiall to it any more than cloths are to the man but as it appeares in its Apostolick primacy of Order in its Catholick centre of Unity in its chief power for Ordination and Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction which it ever enjoyed among good Christians though it were never so poore and abased by civill powers as it was in Primitive times of persecution for 300. yeares The reall good of true Episcopacy which undoubtedly hath the clearest best and most ancient title to ordination Church-Government according to the custome and prescription of all Ages for 1500. years is Decency Order Unity Authority Stability Paternall Presidency Grave Government with subordination of younger to the elder and inferiours to superiours agreeable to the rules of right reason and the measures of the best polities military civill and religious Here are the aptest remedies and conservatives against Schismes the fittest mediums for Catholick Councils for correspondencies conventions and Communion of Churches not in popular rabbles and heady multitudes but in their chief Presidents and representatives In this is best kept up as an Uniformity of particular Churches so a Catholick Conformity to the Church universall when Primitive purest and most persecuted which without any peradventure did follow the Apostolick prescription and pattern in all things of so universall use and reception Upon the head of Episcopacy as upon the hill of Hermon hath the dew of heaven the blessings of God as in temporall enjoyments so in all spirituall gifts and graces most plentifully faln and from that to all the lower valleys and inferiour parts of the Church To this it is that all the most learned moderate and wise men in all the Christian world of what ever party or side they are in other things whether Latine or Greek Lutheran or Calvinian Protestant or Papist all agree in this that Episcopacy is the ancientest and aptest the wisest and noblest the onely Apostolick and Catholick consequently the best and compleatest of Governments in the Church containing in its right constitution and use all the pretended excellencies of all other Governments and something more than any of them as the crown and perfection of all The evills defects and dangers incident to Episcopacy and rising not from the function or imployment but from the persons of Bishops are pride ambition secular height and idle pomp a supercilious despiciency and Lordly tyrannizing over other Ministers and the flocks of Christ under their inspection arrogating a power to do all things imperiously arbitrarily and alone without any due regard either to that charitable satisfaction which was anciently given to Christian people or to that fraternall counsell and concurrence which might and ought in reason to be had from learned and grave Presbyters or such Consistoryes of choise Ministers who possibly may for wisdome piety and ability be equall to the Bishop however they are inferiour in order and authority As the complete good of presidentiall and paternall Episcopacy deserves above all other formes to be esteemed desired and used in the Church so it may easily and happily be enjoyed if the personall faults and failings of Bishops be prevented and avoided which is no hard matter where Bishops are chosen as anciently they were by the suffrages of the Presbyters or Ministers of the Diocese either personally present or to avoid noise and tumult incident to many by their proxyes and representees chosen and sent from their severall distributions The Bishop thus chosen is easily kept within bounds of moderation if he do nothing of publick concerne validly and conclusively without the presence counsell and concurrence of his appointed Presbyters being further responsible for any misgovernment to such conventions of the Clergy as are meet to be his judges and are by the Laws appointed so to be Certainly these limits supports and ornaments of Episcopacy would easily restore it to and keep it in the compasse of its Primitive beauty honor and usefulnesse to the Church The good of Presbytery especially in conjunction with Episcopacy is grave and impartiall counsell serious discussion and well-advised deliberation arising from many learned and Godly men which is as the joynt and concurrent assistance of all the Clergy whose publick suffrages may carry all things Ecclesiastick as with lesse partiality so with more authority most satisfactorily to Ministers and people too yea and with lesse odium or envy upon any one man as Bishop or President in cases that seem lesse popular or in censures that are more heavy Beyond all this some men cry up Presbytery in its Aristocratick influence as the great Choak-peare of Antichrist as the best receipt in the world to make the Pope burst in pieces like the pitch and haire which Daniel mixed to split Bel and Dagon This this they say is the strongest sense against all tyranny usurpation and ambition in Church-men the great conservative not of an absolute parity but of those ancient priviledges which are due to all Ministers also of those liberties and indulgences which are the peoples darling while they see all Church-matters managed not by private and partiall monopolies but by publick and generall complacencies of all sober and good men at least the major part of them The evils of Presbytery in a parity or
would be established and the tranquillity of the Nation highly setled and confirmed upon the best foundation of peace that can be among mankind In all which things we have and do on all sides so far extremely suffer as we differ by such unreasonable distances and uncharitable defiances first among Ministers which are presently followed with all disorder lukewarmenesse irreligion profaneness arrogancy Atheism Affectation and Faction among the people in England chiefly as I conceive upon this account The needlesse variating shifting and changing of that Primitive plat-forme that Apostolick and Catholick order and succession of Ecclesiasticall Authority and Ministeriall power in this Church which hath ever been owned with religious reverence and conscience in Engl. ever since it was Christian preserved as sacred by the most pious Princes honored as Divine by the most Religious and reformed Parlaments prospered by the speciall benignity and grace of God peaceably enjoyed by all devout judicious and humble Christians to the unspeakable comfort of their souls living and dying when they knew who were their Bishops Pastors and spirituall Fathers owning them with all due respect and love as in Christs stead submitting to them for conscience sake as to the Lord and receiving from them good instructions just reproofes holy comforts and heavenly Mysteries not as from man but God after the rule of the Scriptures and the example of the best Christians in all ages who looked upon Episcopacy or the Government of the Church as fixed completed and exercised chiefly by Bishops assisted with worthy Presbyters not onely as a book of a larger volume greater print and fairer binding than Presbytery or Independency that is the sole power of Presbyters or people by themselves but they looked upon the Episcopall eminency as having more in it of Apostolick power and Ecclesiasticall Authority both in point of ordination and jurisdiction than is either in Presbyters or people by themselves Bishops and Presbyters being as the eyes and hands which are not more members of the body than the leggs and feet yet they are the more noble parts and have more of publick use and virtue as to inspection direction and operation for the common good of all parts in the body No wonder then if the honor of all Religion be much abated if the renown of this Reformed Church be thus abased no wonder that Presbytery it self is so baffled and Independency despised no wonder that all the Office Power and Authority of Ministers together with their persons be reduced to such a low ebb and almost quite exhausted when Bishops the grand Cisternes and chief Conduites of all Ecclesiasticall Orders and Ministeriall Authority as derived from Christ and his Apostles are not onely bruised and crackt but utterly broken cut off and cast away whom yet no Presbyter or Independent of any learning or forehead can deny actually to have been in all ages used and esteemed as the constant successors and immediate substitutes of the Apostles first invested with that power by the Apostles themselves after their decease chosen by the Presbyters and after consecrated by other Bishops to be as the prime receptacles conservators and conveyers of all Ecclesiasticall Power and Ministeriall Authority not onely as Teachers of Divine truths preachers of the Gospell and dispensers of holy Mysteries in common with Presbyters but as chief Fathers Pastors and Rulers of those larger flocks which constituted those famous ancient Churches which were not limited to the bounds of one family or one congregation or one little parish in which one Preacher or Presbyter may in ordinary duties suffice but they extended to such ample combinations as contained large Cities and their Territories in which were many thousands of Christians many congregations and many Presbyters who all made but one Church or polity Ecclesiasticall under one chief Pastor or Bishop residing with the Presbyters at first in the chief City afterward these were fixed to particular parishes or villages by the care of the Bishops Without whose authority and consent nothing of consequence was done by any in the publick managing of Religion without the just brand and censure of Schismaticall arrogancy it being ever judged that Bishops had derived to them an higher degree of Apostolick power and Church jurisdiction than ever was or could be in any one or many Presbyters or people without them who could not regularly nor never did unblamably ordaine of themselves or by their own sole Authority any Ministers or exercise the censures of the Church in a plenary and absolute jurisdiction without deriving their power from their respective Bishops without whom and against whom few ever acted in any age of the Church and never any good Christian refused subjection to and communion with their lawfull and orthodox Bishops no nor did ever any Hereticks or Schismaticks proceed to such extravagancy as to reject and disclaime all Episcopall order till of later yeares whose example hath little in it to make it compared with much lesse preferred before Catholick customes and Primitive patternes of all ancient Churches what ever glosses the wit of men or their craft or their successes or their Godly and necessary pretences may put upon their variations and schismes CHAP. XII IT is not now my design either to spin out or to wind and summe up that long and tedious thread of dispute which hath been so much snarled and entangled of late yeares in England by popular pens or cleared and unfolded by more able learned and impartiall Writers Who is not weary now and ashamed of those thread-bare allegations drawn from the samenesse or promiscuous use of Names which we know vary with time and must yield to use and custome as if Apostle Evangelist Bishop Presbyter Pastor Preacher Teacher and Ruler they may adde Deacon and Servant and Minister were all one in the equivalency of their power order and authority in the Church For any one nay all these names are in the latitude of their sense given to some one man or officer in the Church yet in the more strict precise and Emphatick sense they denote different gifts orders authorities dispensations and functions as well as degrees in the Church of Christ which did never confound Deacons with Presbyters nor Presbyters with Bishops nor all with the Apostles because the chief Apostles who contained in their ample authority and commission all Ecclesiasticall powers eminently under Christ are sometimes called Presbyters Compresbyters and also Deacons or Ministers of Jesus Christ and servants of the Church deriving all these powers in their severall degrees and orders to Bishops Presbyters and Deacons after them To the first as to a lesser sort of Apostles but chief Rulers or Overseers in the Church they gave the eminent and peculiar power of ordaining Presbyters and exercising spirituall jurisdiction over them as is evident in the power that Timothy and Titus had given them by Commission from the great Apostle St. Paul who certainly in this was conforme to
desire may be extended to themselves The contentions and confusions in Religion must needs be endlesse if they be left to the naturall passions of most men Then they may find happy conclusions when those that are Rulers and Teachers of others and so not onely more learned but more prudent unpassionate and composed as Magistrates and Ministers ought to be beyond any men when I say these men do apply the utmost of their Piety Power Parts Zeal and Discretion by fit meanes to compose all controversies among themselves which will then soon decay and dye among the common people The Spirits and reputation of Ministers are commonly the chiefe sparks and bellowes that first kindle and after increase to publick flames the fires of dissentions and disaffections both among themselves and the people once extinguish or moderate these enormous heates among Ministers there will be no such conflagrations of Religion among ordinary people which have of late been more like the black and confused eructations of mount Aetna than the sweet and holy fires of mount Sion or the flames and perfumes of Gods Altar and Temple Which that I might be some meanes to restore to this Church and Nation I have thus made my amicable humble and Christian addresse as to all good men so chiefly to all my Brethren and Fathers of the Ministry in England who are persons of any competent abilities and considerable worth as to the duty and dignity of that great and holy that dreadfull Angelick Divine employment I confesse I cannot but passionately deplore as other mens so my own solitude for these many yeares by reason of that uncorrespondency as to any fraternall meeting with any of them in any publick way being hereby deprived of that great Comfort Improvement Joy and benefit which might be had by those excellent abilities and graces which are in many of them It is great pitty good and able Ministers should be longer severed whose brotherly union and frequent convenings in orderly and publick meetings would not onely set a greater edge and brightness on their studies and parts which alone and confined onely to Country-auditors and associates grow rusty flat and dull but they would highly advance the progresse of the Reformed Religion both in profession and power giving hereby a mighty check as to the encrease of profaneness atheism so of Popery and superstition mightily conducing also to the generall peace of the Nation by allaying those unchristian feuds and uncivill heates which every where so much at present affect infect and disaffect the minds both of Ministers and people But these meetings of Ministers must be authoritative not arbitrary not precarious but subpenall otherwise the restiveness laziness wantonness and factiousness of some will mar all either forbearing all meetings or perturbing them if they be not kept in some awe as well as order by their betters and superiours If I knew any Motives more prevalent any words more pathetick any charmes of love more effectuall any grounds of piety or polity more pregnant if Writing Preaching Praying Beseeching if any Words any Teares any Sighs might work upon Ministers of all sides to bring them to this blessed accord to publick friendly and fraternall meetings to grave orderly and comely conventions which would be of great use as well as honor to them I should in nothing be more prodigall of my time spirits and paines Then would Ministers be able to redeeme their Persons their Office their Orders their Sacred Authority their Religion from vulgar contempt from mechanick arrogancy from those base prostitutions and levellings to which those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 terrae filii sons of the earth vile and mâ—ane men have of late yeares debased as the holy Ministry so all heavenly Mysteries then would that rust and rusticity that plebeian Spirit and ungenerous temper which possesseth many Ministers out of feare and flattery be removed then would that scurfe and mosse that barrenness and canker which is now upon Christian and Reformed Religion be taken away and that floridness with fruitfulnesse that beauty with holinesse be restored which Tertullian so excellently sets forth among Primitive and persecuted Christians in their assemblies In which were highly conspicuous a reverentiall fear of God a modest and mutuall regard to each other a most intentive diligence to duties a most solicitous care of themselves and others a most prepared and deliberate communicating in holy things carried on by the most deserving eminency of some and the most religious subordination or consciencious subjection of others all parts of the Church and Clergy were happily united and God was all in all his glory the centre his love the circle or band of all their aimes and actions their hearts and thoughts The venerable piety and almost Divine Majesty of such conventions wherein Bishops Ministers and people were of one heart and one mind in the Lord advanced the reverence of their censures monitions reproofes abstentions and excommunications to so great a regard and just dread that no good Christian great or small disdained the authority of the Bishop or slighted the judgement of the Clergy which judged and declared the mind of the whole Church because according to the mind of the Lord Christ and of God himself Then was it that lapsed and scandalous sinners were soonest brought to be penitents in so humble yet comfortable a manner that as St. Jerom saith of Fabiola and St. Ambrose of others They furrowed their faces with sorrowes and plowed their cheeks with teares they paved the Churches with their prostrate bodies which were so penitently pallid and deplorable that they seemed only living corpses and breathing carkases So few Christians did then entertain their sins with smiles or laugh at those Teachers that reproved them or schismatically separate from those Orthodox Bishops with the Clergy that justly censured them as obnoxious to Gods judgements and unworthy of Christian Communion till they amended no man or woman ever lived or died in peace of conscience whose soul was justly wounded with these arrowes the censures of the Church they either drank up their sensuall and proud Spirits and brought them to repentance or they sank them into a desperate state both of obstinate sin and eternall horror Such holy and happy Assemblies of Ministers consisting of authoritative Bishops and orderly Presbyters were farre more to their honor and comfort more befitting their breeding and learning their labours and industry their parts and worth their sacred function and dignity than to be pittifully scared and over-awed by Country-Committees and a new sort of Tryars where grave Ministers are oft catechised chastised and contemned by such men as are some of them at least of very moderate that I say not meane abilities except their estates be instead of all reason and Religion all learning worth and wisdome very incompetent judges God knowes of the Doctrine and Manners of Ministers unlesse in matters of civill misdemeanors for which there
the new fry of any Factionists or Enthusiasts were known in the English or Christian world Then will the honor of the Reformed Religion recover take root flourish and fructifie again in England when it is by due authority and just severity cleared of all that rust and canker that mossy and barren accretion which of later yeares it hath contracted chiefly for want of those Ecclesiasticall Councils sacred Synods and Religious Conventions which being called and incouraged by civill authority will best do this great work of God and the Church freely and impartially solidly and sincerely learnedly and honestly discussing all things of difference disorder or deformity in Religion These these would by Gods blessing and your encouragement remove in a short time all that putid matter from which the scandals offences and factions do chiefly arise and by which they are nourished in the licentious hearts and lives of some men who dare do any thing that they safely may against Religion These as the ablest and meetest Judges of Religion would soon discerne between the vile and the precious and separate the wheat and the chaffe in Christs floore wisely using the flaile and fan of his word and Spirit CHAP. XV. THerefore is our Religion so miserably lapsed and decayed through the ignorance negligence and impudence of men because it hath not for these many yeares been under such hands as are most proper either for its care and preservation or its cure and recovery Courts of Princes and Councels of State the Spirit of Armies and the Genius of Parliaments are not alone apt agents or instruments for this work though they may be happy promoters and authoritative designers and contrivers of it Saint Ambrose and others of the Ancients observe that it never went well with the sound part of the Church when the disputes of Religion as between the Arrians and the Orthodox were brought into Princes Courts and determined by their Counsellors and Courtiers It was not more piety and modesty than prudence and generosity in Constantine the Great when he had conquered Licinius with other enemies and entirely obtained the Roman Empire when he had power absolute and soveraign enough to have made what Edicts he listed for Religion yet that he then called the Bishops of the Church throughout the Roman world and other venerable Teachers attending them to discusse the differences in Religion to compose the breaches to allay the jealousies to reforme the disorders to search and establish the true faith to confirme the ancient Government to adde vigor to the just Discipline of the Church and due authority to its true Pastors or Bishops All which were happily done by the wisdome piety and moderation of the famous Nicene Council in which Constantine himself was oft present as to his person and Counsell though he never voted or determined any thing of Religion among the Fathers of that glorious Assembly lest he should seem to over-balance or over-awe the truth by his authority or to eclipse the Church by the State This this was that Primitive and Catholick way of Ecclesiasticall Councills and Synods used first by the Apostles and after by all their successors the Martyrly Bishops and Pastorly Confessors of the Church which endured the fiery trialls of heathenish and hereticall persecutions who had Ecclesiasticall Councills and Synods of Church-men for their reliefe and remedy before they had the favour of Christian Princes for their refuge or defence To this proper method for Reforming of any Church and restoring Religion all Princes that were true Patrons and Protectors of the true Church have applied their powers and counsels for the repairing of decayes rectifying disorders condemning heresies vindicating fundamentall truths composing differences and restoring peace in the Church of Christ calling together such Synods and conventions of the Clergy as did beare most proportion to those inconveniences or mischiefes which they sought to remedy either in greater or lesser circuits according as the poyson and infection of Heresie or Schisme had spread it self The welfare of Religion and healing of the Church of Christ was never heretofore left to every private Christians fancy or to particular Presbyters nor yet to single Bishops to act according as their opinions passions and interests might sway them nor was it ever betrayed into the hands of onely secular men either Civill Magistrates or Gentlemen or Tradesmen who are as fit generally for Church-work as Clergy-men are to marshall Armies or to manage battels The building of Gods Tabernacle and his Temple required men of extraordinary gifts and excellent Spirits proper and proportionate to those works As the Leviticall Priests of old did judge not onely of plagues and leprosies but of all controversies about the Law and Religion to whose determination all men were to submit under paine of death And as Aaron standing between the living and the dead stopped the spreading of a plague and mortality among the people even so hath the Lord ordained the Evangelicall Ministers to be as shepherds feeders defenders and rulers in his Church also as Physitians and Fathers of the flock of God whose lips ought to preserve knowledge so as to discerne both the contagion and the cure applying as their duty is such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sound Doctrine and Discipline as are both wholesome food and healing physick Certainly all other Lay-undertakers and tamperers with Reformation and Religion are but as Empiricks and Mountebanks having neither that ability nor that authority which is requisite in Religious undertakings But after much paines and charge they alwaies leave Reformation and Religion Church and Clergy more unsearched and unsound unbound and ulcerous than they found them God never following those with the blessing of the end who disdaine to use those orderly meanes which his holy wisdome hath directed them to who lay the Ark of God upon the cart and think to draw it by the beasts of the people when it should be orderly and solemnly born by the shoulders and hands of those that are consecrated to that holy service as the Priests of the Lord which method is not onely more for the honor and solemnity of Christian Religion than for the glory of the blessed God that his name might be sanctified even before the world in the managing of true Religion not flightly or slovenly not with unwashen hands and preposterous confusions but with that holy respect and humble reverence which is due to the Majesty of that God and Saviour whom Christians professe to worship T is ridiculous for Princes and States-men to have the best Musitians for their pleasure the most learned and experienced Physitians for their bodily health the most able and renowned Lawyers for their secular Counsels the gallantest souldiers for their military officers the best Mathematicians for their Engineers and the best Mariners for their Pilots that so these things might succeed to their worldly honor and happinesse and yet in matters of Religion
to content themselves either with no idoneous Physitians and fit medicines or with such quacking applications and applicators as are no way apt for the work having neither skill nor dexterity to handle so tender yet so dangerous sores and wounds as those of Religion many times are not onely affecting the heads of men but coming neerest the very hearts of them yea and I may say these Church-distempers affect the very heart of Christ himself both God and man We find secular Magistrates and Judges many times with Herod and Pilate ready to set Christ at nought and condemne him souldiers we know have mocked him buffeted him crucified him and parted his garments among them But they were his choise Apostles with other ordained Ministers that professed and preached him These these first planted fenced and watered Christian Religion these preserved propagated and pruned the Church of Christ to this day as the husbandmen or labourers of Christs own sending into his vineyard as workers together with God in the great work of saving soules with these Apostles and Ministers he promised to be meaning them and their true successors to the end of the world as he hath been to this day never failing to assist Godly Bishops and other faithfull Presbyters of his Church to do his work as in private so in publick when they did orderly meet as his servants in his name to his glory and his Churches good suffering themselves to be impartially guided by his word and Spirit without serving the factious interests and sinister policies either of Prince or people Then then was it that Councils and Synods appeared to all sober-minded and humble-hearted Christians as the Starre did to the wise men at Jerusalem guiding them to Christ with exceeding great joy in orderly waies of truth and peace becoming Christian Ministers and people which was the blessed effect of the first Church Council we read of where James Bishop of Jerusalem with the Apostles of the Lord as chief and other Elders or Presbyters being met in the presence of Christian people did so consult discusse and resolve the dissensions then risen in the Churches as to send their determinations with this style and title It seemed good to the holy Ghost and to us whose Canons were read and received not onely with reverence and conscience but with joy and consolation So welcome and usefull to all good Christians are those meanes which are fitly and wisely applied after Gods method and the Apostles pattern to the reliefe and recovery of the Church The care of summoning and convocating such Ecclesiasticall Parlaments when need requires is worthy the piety and Majesty of Christian Princes and soveraigne Magistrates in whom that Authority resides as nursing Fathers of the Church but certainly the management and transaction of Religious affaires in them by way of devotion disputation and determination is the proper work of Church-men that are Godly Learned Wise and Honest both of Bishops as fixed and chief Rulers of the Church and of grave Presbyters as the Representees of the other Clergy chosen deputed intrusted and empowered by them fully and freely to deliberate and determine in those great concernments as Gods word and their own consciences shall direct them without any to over-awe them or to dictate to them I am not ignorant of the jealousies and prejudices that many even wise and good Christians have of such Assemblies Synods Convocations or Councils as are made up onely of Ecclesiasticks or Clergy-men Whos 's oft unhappy successes Gregory Nazianzen that great Divine and good Bishop complaines of in his dayes when the Arrian faction by the partiality of Emperours infected with their poyson strongly vyed in their Conventions against the Orthodox decisions the ancient Faith and Catholick customes of the Church setting up ever and anon in their juncto's and conventicles as St. Hilary expresseth it Diurnall Creeds and Menstruous Faiths being many times but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 theevish Synods furtive Conventicles suborned and slavish Assemblies either transported by humane passions or biassed by partiall affections or levened with popular factions or over-awed by secular powers and sacrilegious policies which made such conventions as the hills of the robbers predatorious oppressors of true Religion pillagers and spoilers of the Church of Christ of which too many sad instances have been in ancient and later daies both at home and abroad Especially when such Assemblies meet not summoned by lawfull Authority not chosen with Ecclesiastick freedome not sitting with completeness of members not voting or disputing with rationall ingenuous and Christian liberties but all things must be carried not after the Nicene but Tridentine fashion as if the holy Ghost were sent to the Assessors in a carriers cloke-bag or a souldiers knapsack the most learned and sober men must be mute and not dare freely to speak their minds without being posted and exposed to popular hatred even to the outraging and hazard of their persons unlesse they speak to that key and tune to which the organe of faction is set These methods of Church Councils and Assemblies I confesse are so Mechanick so Tyrannick so Satanick that nothing is more mischievous to the Church of Christ and true Religion whose condition instead of being thus mended is alwaies marred and betrayed to further errors factions and confusions I pray God deliver his Church from such Conventions where either Lay-men shall over-number and over-awe the Clergy or Clergy-men shall vassalate their consciences to gratifie any potent party and novell faction to the prejudice of that truth faith order ministry and government which were once delivered to the Churches of Christ Not onely England but all Christendome hath cause to curse the day when such snares and stratagems of Satan began to be laid in Synods and Assemblies from thence to take effect on the whole or any part of the Christian Church as eminently in the second Council of Nice the last of Trent and that at Westminster the first setting up Images in Christian Churches to the scandall of Religion the other a thousand new imaginations never owned before as of Christian faith the last which is the first of any that cryed down Episcopacy or Prelacy But the abuses incident to good things through the distempers of men and evill hearts must not exterminate or deprive us of the right use of them for then we should not onely forsake our wits and reason but our meat and drink our clothes and sleep yea and the light of the Sun and breathing in the aire yea our very Sacraments and Scriptures our frequent Sermons and extemporary as well as set prayers yea our Presbyters as well as our Bishops for in all these hony-combes or hives do hornets wasps and drones very oft shrowd themselves by these as St. Austin observes all errors heresies and schismes seek to support and shelter themselves But where such Ecclesiasticall Synods and Councils as were the first so famous Generall ones of
to common peoples grosser minds might be prescribed than those are of loose rambling arbitrary and diffused preaching where after twenty yeares preaching yea and with great applause many times as well as good paines yet poor people are most-what very ignorant or raw as to the very first and maine principles of Religion which I humbly conceive might be drawn up into so many short discourses and cleare Summaries as might every Lords-day take up one quarter of an hour or little more before and after noon in the Ministers distinct reading some one of them to the people in such a constant order as once in every half year might finish the whole series of them which might be printed for the use of such as can reade and for others that cannot reade this frequent inculcating and constant repeating of those main points so set forth could not but much improve the sound understanding of plainer people in the doctrines mysteries graces and promises precepts and duties of true Religion which now they learne either not at all in some necessary points or so rawly raggedly loosely and confusedly that it comes far short of that judicious and methodicall solidity which they might attaine if they were clearly uniformly and constantly taught so as they could best beare and heare understand and remember Nor would this be any hinderance to preaching praying or catechizing but a great furtherance to them all what ever people had beside from the meanest gifted Minister they might be sure to have every Lords-day one or two heads of good Divinity well set forth to them yea and one or two chapters of the Bible well explained to them till the whole were gone through Which would be a great meanes to prevent the odd idle and addle senses by which silly or pragmatick-spirited people pervert and corrupt the Scripture not onely by their private and weak but by their ridiculous erroneous and blasphemous interpretations the variety and loosenesse besides the easinesse and flatnesse of most mens preaching doth rather confound than build common people in Religion all which by constant Synods might be amended If the Church of England were so barren of godly able learned and honest Ministers that a good and safe choice of fit members cannot be made every time such venerable Synods and usefull Assemblies should meet if we of the Clergy are all so degenerated as to become of late yeares either dunces and unlearned or erroneous and corrupt in our judgements or licencious and immorall in our manners or partiall and imprudent in our designes or base and cowardly in all our dealings that we are not to be trusted in the mysteries or managery of our own calling and function truly t is pitty we should be owned any longer as Ministers of Christ in this or any Church being so unfit for our own sphere and duty Nor can I understand how it should be that Mechanick Artificers Merchants Tradesmen and Souldiers should still be thought fittest to be advised with in their severall waies and mysteries of life onely the Clergy should be thought so defective in all abilities and honesty as not to be trusted with any advise or counsell in publick matters of Religion no more than with any place in any civil counsell or transactions Parlament-men they may not be while the most puny-gentry petty Lawyers and triviall Physitians while Merchants and Milleners Gold-smiths and Copper-smiths while Drugsters Apothecaries Haberdashers of small wares and Leather-sellers and while every handy-crafts-man and prentice aspire to be not onely Committee but even Parlament-men yea and it may be Counsellors of State Onely Clergy-men must be wholly excluded as Monks condemned to their beades and bellies while those lay-Masters challenge not onely all civill Counsels and Honorable employments to themselves but they further seek to engrosse even those great concernments of Religion not allowing any Ministers of what ever size their Learning Wisdome and Worth be to move in their own mystery or joynt and publick interests further than as they are impounded to their parish-Pulpits and tedered to their texts or desks Every sorry and silly mechanick dares to arrogate as great nay far greater Empire-influences and latitudes in the publick management of Religion than the best Divines in England may ever hope to attaine or adventure to use in any sphere private or publick unless there be a more indulgent and equall regard had to the worth and calling of Ministers than of late yeares hath been had O happy England whose Laity and Communalty of late hath so excelled thy Clergy or rather O miserable England who either hast such Church men as are not fit to be advised with or not trusted in Religion or which art so unworthily jealous and neglective of them as not to trust or use them in those great and sacred concernments for which they were educated and in which they were heretofore not onely thought but known to be as able as any Clergy in all the world till they were thus divided and shattered thus disabled and disparaged most of them rather by popular discouragings prejudices and oppressions than by any reall defects in themselves either of Piety Learning or Honesty I cannot sufficiently pitty and deplore thy sad and miserable fate O my Country which either abasing or abusing at least not using thy worthiest Clergy for such publick ends deprivest thy self of the most soveraigne nay onely ordinary meanes under Heaven whereby to recover thy self to the former Beauty Honor Lustre Stability and integrity of true Religion which thou didst enjoy everlasting divisions deformities and confusions wil be thy portion without a miracle if thou trustest to those Egyptian reeds the novel pretensions and usurpations of ignorant and arrogant Lay-men of inspired and aspiring Levellers which will pierce into thy hand and heart while thou leanest on them Nothing can restore or preserve the health and soundnesse of Religion but those waies which are tryed Authoritative and Authentick which have Gods Image Christs Power the Spirits Wisdome the Apostles prescription and the Catholick Churches Character upon them which may first perswade mens judgements and then oblige their consciences to obey for the Lords sake All methods used in Religion that are perverse popular novell arrogant or invasive contrary to the sacred and venerable methods of Gods direction and the Churches Catholick Custome are like sluces and banks ill-bottomed soon blown up having neither depth nor weight foundation nor superstruction to make them good Nor shall I ever think the Lawes of Parlaments more binding to obey in civill things than such Canons of Church-Councils are obligatory as to submission in religious matters where nothing is decreed contrary to Gods express will in his Word nor beyond those generall latitudes and Commissions of Charity Order Peace Decency and Holinesse which God hath indulged to his Church Certainly the Wolves Foxes and Boares Hereticks Schismaticks and heathen persecutors had long ago scattered the severall flocks of Christ into
the Bishops hands and Authority as holy and valid else the Tithes and Glebes and Spirituall Livings cannot be so sacred and inviolable in his use and possession as he affirmes them to be I say it had become such an one at least to have been silent who is too rich and knowing to be a Liveller or an Anabaptist or a Quaker or a disowner of all Order and Office Ministeriall He should not have cast oyle by his eminent example and eloquent plea on that fire which he sees is ready to consume even all Presbyters as well as Bishops setled maintenance However if he could not avoid this rock of purchasing Bishops Lands his modesty had been some expiation and his silence a great abatement of the scandall he might have swallowed those holy but now desecrated morsells in secret and not have proclaimed on the house-top to all the world the rost-meat he hath gotten the Venison or part at least which he hath taken together with his great appetite and good digestion The world is not much concerned to know all these things nor much pleased at his swallowing down without chewing any bit of Bishops Lands or Deanes Houses or a whole Colledg or a Cathedrall Church if he can compasse them by his purse or policy for where a crum of this kind goes easily down in time a loaden cart with six horses may follow Were there not others States-men Lay-men and Military-men enough to have bought those Bishops and Church-lands if they must needs have been sold They might possibly have some Reasons of State and solutions of deeply Learned Lawyers which such an one as I and other simple Divines know not of and therefore may not censure But as to the principles of Schollars and the conscience of all Church-men generally we resolve that if it be but a disputable case where sin lies at the door if there be but any notable appearance of evil we are above all men to abstaine from it If it may be veniall in others pleading their ignorance or urgent occasions yet it must needs seem a most uncircumcized act for a grave Minister and of the Church of England a great Doctor and a Reverend Divine Church-men ought in any things of pregnant scandall to be most circumspect and cautious because their example is most contagious allowing as it were of course many graines of further liberty to Lay-men who never think that their girdles ought to be so strait as Ministers if ours be loose theirs will be unbuckled and at last quite thrown off Hence many of our Domestick and new started Presbyterians whom I well knew Mr. C. Mr. W. Mr. S. and others with all the Smectymnuan Legion who were earnest enough at first for the pruning of the over-grown or seare or too much over dropping boughs of Episcopacy and afterward they so far served the times and their Lords as to conspire to the felling down of those ancient and stately Standards in the Church yet I well know they never intended that Lay-men should have gone away with the Bark Tops Timber Bodies Chips and all no they good men intended very honestly and zealously that these superfluities of Bishops and Deanes Estates c. should have been applyed to buy in all Impropriations to augment poor Livings to put Presbyters generally into so good a plight and habit for back and belly that they might be fit to rule in common and have some Majesty as Aldermen of Cities and Burgesses of Townes usually have in their Cheeks and on their Backs for starveling and thred bare Governours like Consumptionary Physitians discredit their profession and deprecate their dignity We other poor Ministers who follow the sense of all the ancient Fathers and Councills of the Canon and Civil Lawes of School-men and Casuists of Reformed and not Reformed Churches both Greek and Latine we wonder what Angel from Heaven hath whispered to this purchaser and pleader to tell him of Gods non acceptance of Bishops lands Persons or Profession of which he was pleased to make so much and so good use to his glory and his Churches good both in England and all the Christian world for a thousand yeares yet now he is content it seemes they should all be Alienated Extirpated Destroyed Possessions Persons and Function of Bishops as unnecessary yea pernicious to the Church and Ministry in Honour Order Government Charity and Hospitality all which are better Reformed to Parity Popularity and Poverty This he reports as from the Cabinet-Counsell or Committee of Heaven where it seemes he hath been since he purchased Bishops lands Truly if an Angel from Heaven had told some Divines and other Gentlemen thus much they would not have believed him because they are perswaded so much of the Evangelicall Order the Apostolick Authority and the Catholick Succession the prudent necessity the honorable decency of Bishops in the Church of Christ upon which presumptions if not sure perswasions they conceive it had been a modesty in all Learned and weighty Ministers who had received their Ordination from Godly Orthodox and Reformed Bishops such as Calvin and Beza and Vedelius would have honored and submitted unto without any envy or diminishing of their Estates and Honors not to have touched so much as a shooe-latchet of what by Right Law and Merit had been theirs that it might at least have been upon Record to after-Ages for the Honour of the English Reformed Clergy in their lowest ebb and depression Ecclesiae Episcoporum bona inter Presbyteros Ecclesiasticos non invenerunt emptorem There is no doubt there would have been buyers enough beside men of larger Estates yet not of stricter consciences even this great and glorious purchaser who though he hath paid his mony yet hath not so put off his Armour hitherto as to have any great cause to boast seemed not at first so satisfied as to be forward not coming at the beginning of the Faire when sure the best peny-worths for example sake would have been sold to so eminent a D. the better to decoy on other purchasers but alas he seems obtorto collo renitente Minerva against his genius to be drawn in driven and necessitated at the fag end of the Market to take such eggs for his money as had been sate upon by a Bishop so many hundred of yeares and may as it seems be either addle or eggs of contention to this purchaser now so resolved and triumphing in his conscientious freedom to buy and sell in the Temple when other poor Scholars are still wind bound and narrow-soled as imagining that Christ long agoe drove all such kind of Merchandize out of the Church as ill becoming Christians as it did the Jewes yea and St. Paul teacheth Believers equally to abhorre Sacriledg as Idols To conclude this long digression whose scandalous occasion lay so high in my way that I could not avoid it this one great instance telling to all the world what this purchaser hath swallowed and how
most clearly his good pleasure and liking to this Church of England its Religion Reformation and Ministry namely by those eminent gifts and undeniable graces of his Spirit which in great and various measures he hath plentifully poured forth upon the Godly Bishops and other good Ministers of this Church who were subject to them to the edification of his faithfull people among you in all spirituall blessings even to the admiration of our neighbours the joy of our friends and regret of our enemies If the excellently Learned and Godly Bishops whose names and memories are blessed assisted by other able orderly and painefull Ministers of this Church who being duly sent and ordained by them were humbly obedient to them as to spirituall Fathers if they have carefully and happily steered for many yeares the sometimes faire and rich Ship of the Church of England in which so many thousand precious soules have been imbarked for heaven and eternity between these two dangerous gulphs the Scylla and Charybdis of Papall Superstitions and uncharitable Separations steering it by the compasse of Gods word with such Christian prudence order and decency as is therein commanded or allowed in which happy conduct they and their successors were still very able willing and worthy to have proceeded if the wrath of God highly offended for the wantonness wickednesse and unthankfulnesse of the generality of people under so great meanes and mercies had not justly suffered so rude stormes of both religious factions and civil dissensions to arise which having torne the tackling rent the sailes loosened the junctures unhinged the rudder broke the maine mast cast the chiefest Pilots and skilfullest Marriners over-board quite defaced the lesser card or compasse of Ecclesiasticall Canons and civill lawes have at last driven her within the reach and danger of both these dreadfull extremes which she most declined leaving this poor weather beaten Church after infinite tossings like a founder'd ship in a troubled Sea of confusion attending one of these two sad fates either a Schismaticall dissolution or a Papall absorption either to be utterly shattered in pieces by endlesse factions or to be swallowed up at last in the greater gulph of Romane power and Policy which cannot but have alwaies a very vigilant and intentive eye what becomes of the Church of England If the Ministry of the Church of England whilest it was yet flourishing and entire as a City united in it self as an orderly family or holy corporation consisting of Fathers and Brethren of Bishops and Presbyters might justly challenge before God and all good men this merit and acknowledgement from you and your fore-fathers that for Learning and Eloquence both in preaching and writing for acutenesse and dexterity in disputing for solidity and plainnesse in teaching for prudent and pathetick fervency in praying for just terror in moving hard hearts to softnesse and feared consciences to repentance for judicious tendernesse in comforting the afflicted and healing the wounded Spirit lastly for exemplary living in all holy and good waies in all which particulars becoming a Christian Church neither you nor they have had any cause to envy the most Christian and best Reformed Churches in the world as to that honour and happinesse which consists in the excellent abilities honest industry due authority regular order of Ministers also in the decency usefulnesse and power of holy Ministrations all which blessings experience sufficiently tells you were formerly enjoyed by many gracious and judicious Christians farre beyond what hath been or ever can be hoped under these moderne divisions deformities distractions and dissolutions which do indeed threaten in time utter desolation to this Church and the true Reformed Religion if Gods mercy and wise mens care do not prevent If nothing but ignorance or malice blindnesse or uncharitablenesse barrennesse or bitternesse of Spirit in any men can deny this great truth this honest humble just and modest boasting to which the injuries indignities and ingratitudes of these last and worst times have compelled sober Ministers as they did St. Paul who ought to have been better valued and commended by them If you O Noblemen Gentlemen and Yeomen of England are so knowing that you cannot be ignorant of this truth and so ingenuous that you cannot but acknowledge it in behalfe of the Church of England and its worthy Clergy while you and they enjoyed Piety Peace and Prosperity if beyond all cavill or contradiction this right ought to be done to Gods glory this Churches honour the ancient Clergies merit and your own with your fore-fathers renowne that after-ages may not suspect them for Hereticks or Schismaticks nor you for Separates or Apostates as forsaking that good way in which they were reformed and established in the purity power and polity of true Religion If all these suppositions be true as I know you think they are how I beseech you can it be in the sight of your most just God and mercifull Saviour who so abundantly blest this Church and his servants the Ministers of it in teaching comforting and guiding you and your pious predecessors soules to heaven to change and cast off such a Ministry and such Ministers Yea how can it be in the censure of pious and impartiall men other than a most degenerous negligence a Mechanick meannesse a most unholy unthankfulness for you or any Christians to passe by with silence and senselesnesse with carelesnesse and indifferency all those sad spectacles of Church-divisions and distractions of Church-mens diminutions debasements and discouragements lately befaln them by a divine fatality and justice partly through the imprudence of some Clergy-men severely revenged by the malice or mistake of some Lay-men whose heavy and immoderate pressures have faln chiefly upon those Ecclesiasticks who were Christs principall Vicegerents Messengers Ministers and Embassadors his faithfull Stewards his diligent Overseers his vigilant watchmen his wife dispensers of heavenly Mysteries to your Soules From whom so many Apostasies have been commenced and carried on by infinite calumnies indignities and injuries against them and their orderly authority and function as if you and your Children had lately found more grace and virtue better Ministeriall sufficiencies and proficiencies in some Tradesmen Troopers in Mechanick ignorance illiterate impudence in the glib tongues the giddy heads empty hearts of such fellowes as are scarce fit to be your servants in the meanest civill offices as if these were now fit to be your Pastors and Teachers your Spirituall inspectors and rulers of your Soules beyond any of those Reverend Bishops and Learned Doctors and other Grave Divines who heretofore through the grace of God dispensed to you by their incomparable gifts and reall abilities those inestimable treasures of all sound knowledge and saving wisdome of grace and truth which were carried on with comely order and bound up with Christian unity Doubtlesse the forgetting of those Josephs who have been so wise storerâ—s and so liberall distributers of the food of eternall life to our hungry soules