one to the conscionable performance of the duties of their particular places and callings so be ye perswaded to do the like in this juncture of time Press upon your Hearers and charge upon their Consciences who are forward enough to make profession of the Duties of the First Table to be conscionable in the observance of the Duties of the Second and especially of that Fifth Command to which the Promise of long life is made and the violation whereof we have cause to fear hath shortned the daies of many in this Nation and sent them to their Graves in Coffins of Blood Many there are I suppose which have offended in this kind through Ignorance for want of Information from their Teachers But that both good Ministers and People are apt to forget themselves as to this Particular though the Drums should never have beaten it out of their Heads is evident by the memento that Paul giveth to Titus Chap. 3. v. 5. Put them in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers and that they be obedient to Magistrates Certainly this Duty was never more in season than now to urge upon your Hearers to be subject to Principalities and Powers and to be obedient to all the Lawful Commands of Magistrates without disputing their expediency to judge whereof they have no Call from God or man And as a further means to reconcile us unto one another insist much upon those Duties which follow in the next verse and pathetically exhort them thereunto and disswade from those contrary impediments to Peace and Love V. 2. That they speak evil of no man be no Brawlers but gentle shewing all meekness to all men Doubtless were but this Gospel Precept in this verse conscionably practised it would exceedingly tend to the healing of all our Breaches and the making up of our Rents and Divisions by which we are almost consumed We have in order hereunto bitten and devoured one another not so much with our Teeth as with our Tongues To cure us Put them in mind that they speak evil of no man There is none of us but take too much liberty even to this day to speak contumeliously of those which are not of their own Party whereas there is nothing more clear than this that we are under a Divine Charge and prohibition to speak evil of no man of what Party soever And that we be no Brawlers but gentle shewing all meekness to all men is also another Gospel Precept To be affable gentle and peaceable towards those of our own judgments and that are of our own Party is no singular Act of Humanity Our Saviour tels us if we be friendly only to our Brethren What singular thing do ye Do not even the Publicans the same But to shew all meekness to all men of what Party soever you see is the bounden duty of those to whom the Grace of God hath appeared Make use therefore of your Divine Oratory to urge these aforesaid Duties upon your Hearers by all those Arguments which are drawn up by the Holy Ghost to your Hands in the 3 4 5. verses of the same Chapter and I doubt not but by Gods Blessing who is the God of Peace he will once more bless his people with Peace according to his Promise The Lord who sitteth upon the Flood yea the Lord who sitteth King for ever the Lord will give strength unto his People the Lord will bless his People with Peace Psal 29. 10 11. And that this Peace may not be obstructed but as vigorously pursued and followed after as Holiness to both which we are equally engaged Jure Divino Let me now make my particular address to ye of the Independent To the Independent Party or Gathered Churches Party and of the Gathered Churches to whom though I have many things to say which lie upon my heart and I find my self bound in Spirit to make mention of yet in this time of trouble and day of Rebuke which the Righteous Lord hath most justly brought upon us for our sins I find the sense of our many Provocations very much afflicting my heart with grief and soul with sorrow under this aggravation That though I have all this while looked upon my self and all that were in our congregational way as the only Saints of the most High separated from the rest of the world by the strictness of our Profession of Purity of Ordinances and Church-Administrations and that I judged those who joyned not with us therein either as the Prophane Rabble of the world or at the best but as a company of Carnal Moral and Formal Persons yet that many of us by our Practises in reference to the publick Affairs of the Common-wealth and to our righteous Administrations in order thereunto have not only fallen very short of many of those whom we have thus censured but have acted in such waies that some Heathen Patriots that knew not God would blush and be ashamed of Ye may peradventure look upon this as a very uncharitable or at least a very unseasonable passage from a Friend in this day of our calamity But if you do consider what I have already spoken to ye amongst the rest wherein I sincerely discover the reason of my plain dealing and if God hath awakened any of you by his stupendious and amazing Providential Dispensations as I hope he hath done many who for these late years have been fast asleep and have had many Golden Dreams of being Godly in Christ Jesus without suffering and of ruling others while our Lusts ruled us you will be of another mind I do profess unfeignedly that were our miscarriages to be concealed I should as David in another case admonish all that have any respect to the Honour of the Gospel that they tell them not in Gath that they publish them not in the streets of Askelon lest the Daughters of the uncircumcised rejoyce But alas our sinful and irregular actings for these late years have been committed in the sight of the Sun They are like the sins of Judah written with a Pen of Iron with the point of a Diamond they are recorded in the several Declarations and Remonstrances of the Army In the first and second Part of the History of Independency and such other Books of that nature which now walk abroad without Controul And now while I am speaking of Books I cannot but tell you of that which should be a very cutting Consideration and should deeply humble us That although in that hour of Temptation that power of darkness we were under some of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Party by their publick addresses in Print did pathetically diswade from and bear witness against those unwarrantable waies into which some of us were running in a full Career in Anno 1648. Yet amongst our selves I do not find any dissent or disswasion from them published to the world by any of our Congregational Party but rather such Books as did justifie and approve the same Excepting
THE Moderate Independent PROPOSING A Word in Season TO THE GATHERED CHURCHES The EPISCOPAL AND PRESBYTERIAN Parties Tending to Their Humiliation for what is past To be Reconciled to each other for the time to come AND Joyntly to Acquiesse in the Determinations of this Present PARLIAMENT as to the Government of CHURCH STATE By SALEM PHILALATHES A Church-Member Let your Moderation be known unto all men Phil. 4. 5. LONDON Printed in the Year 1660. was retiring from his Court was presented by him with a little Book in the Beginning Middle and End thereof was only written Moderation Moderation Moderation By which he insinuated that Moderation was the only way to make both Prince and People happy in each other And if so to restore both Prince and People to it that have lost it by running into Extreams Though therefore our Breaches seem to be like the Breaches of the Sea which can hardly be resisted or made up again and the fierce Contentions devouring Divisions and Differences that have been between all Parties seem to be like the Contentions amongst Brethren which Solomon tels us are like the Bars of a Castle which naturally are baracadoed to reconciliation and accomodation with each other again A Brother offended being harder to be won than a strong City Prov. 18. 19. Yet if that our own iniquities and the Jesuits subtilties hinder not there is a way to unite us all together and to pluck up the Causes of all our Dissentions by the Roots and that is by Moderation Moderation Moderation Now it is Moderation a Christian Condescention to and Reconciliation with each other that I profess that I propound as the end of my impartial and plain dealing with you all And that I may remove that which is the great Impediment and Hinderance thereof amongst all parties viz. the high opinion and conceit they have of themselves all their waies being as Solomon saith right in their own eyes that all others have wronged them and they have been injurious to none Though I may seem peradventure to some of you to speak as one more likely to widen than to heal the Breaches now amongst us by some smart passages and expressions Yet I intreat you all to consider that what I have written that may give any of you occasion so to think is only out of my unfeigned desire to remove that great Impediment aforesaid to Moderation out of the way from all Parties And that we may not be slightly healed it is that I so often seem to search you to the quick Let not therefore I beseech you any thing that hath dropt from my Pen be taken by the wrong Handle and be so far perverted as to heighten your passions and prejudices against one another but as all Parties have joyned together by their sins to provoke the Divine Majesty thus wofully to wound us and almost tear us all to pieces so let us call upon one another in the words of the Prophet Come and let us return unto the Lord for he hath smitten us and he will heal us he hath torn us and he will bind us up To this purpose let me in the first place make my address to you of the Episcopal Party whether of the Clergy or Laytie as you distinguish Far be it from me to suggest any thing that might irritate and provoke you except to Love and good works Yet give me leave to tell you that the great encouragement that generally hath been given to Prophaneness and the Scorn Opposition and Persecution of Godly men in all ages from the time of Reformation till God brought this Judgment upon us I fear hath much provoked the Holy One of Israel That it hath been a sinne of a long standing amongst you whereof you are highly guilty * And Dr. Jackson of C. C. he also confirms what I affirm in many places of his works especially in Fol. 3660. In a Sermon of his Preached to the University of Oxford speaking to such persons whom he stileth the Reverend Fathers of the Church and his Respective Brethren saith he speaking of the stupidity of this Nation under Gods Hand who had lately visited it with the Plague c. and the City of Oxford in particular saith he should a Stage-Player or other Instruments of Vanity turn or have entred these suburbs within two moneths after our 4th or 5th visitation past more of better rank amongst us would have been more afraid of being censured as Puritans for speaking 〈…〉 though in this place then would have blushed to have been spectators of their most unseasonable sporting I shall present you with a complaint of that Pious and Learned Bishop Downam in his Sermon preached at Spittle above forty years ago called Abrahams Trial p. 72. Even in these times saith he the Godly live amongst such a generation of men that if a man do but labour to keep a good Conscience in any measure though he meddle not with matters of State or Discipline or Ceremonies As for example If a Minister diligently preach or in preaching seek to profit rather then please remembring that saying of the Apostle If I seek to please men I am not the Servant of Christ Gal. 1. 10. Or if a private Christian make Conscience of swearing sanctifying the Sabbath frequenting Sermons or abstaining from the Corruptions of the times he shall straightway be condemned for a Puritan and consequently find less favour than either a Carnal Gospeller or a close Papist It seemeth in those daies persons of meek and quiet Spirits though conformable to the Government of Church and State met with the persecution of the Tongue under the odious and reproachful name of Puritan and found less favour than Prophane ones or Papists How you proceeded to higher degrees not only of the Tongue but Hand to the Silencing Suspending and imprisoning of many Pious and Conformable Ministers that would not publish that woful Book for the Prophanation of the Lords Daies forcing many Godly Ministers and Christians to leave their Native Country and flee into New-England Holland and other Places The first Remonstrance of the Parliament begun in Nov. 1640. doth at large demonstrate together with those many Speeches spoken by Sir Edward Deering my Lord Digby and others that were no Puritans nor yet for the total abolition of Episcopacy * Speeches and Passages of Parliament p. 98. Printed for William Cooke at Furnifuls Inne Gate in Holbourne 1641. Saith Sir Edward Deering The Pride the Avarice the Ambition the Oppression of our ruling Clergy is Epidemical it hath infected them all There is not any or scarce any of them which is not practical in their own great cause in hand which they impiously do miscall the Piety of the times but in truth so wrong a Piety that I am told to say In Facinus jurasseputes So he And saith my Lord Digby P. 65. of the same Collections There is no man within these walls more sensible of the heavy
you were gone towards Rome in this respect your silencing many Godly Orthodox and Able Preachers for not conforming to your Superstitious Ceremonies doth witness against you And that you remain still of the same mind that there is no Religion nor Service without these Ceremonies your violent Desires and high Hopes to see them again imposed doth abundantly declare Let me therefore perswade you to more Moderation And though you have as our aforesaid Author saith fallen too much upon that Spartans Pag. 170. Conceit that in his Travels seeing the Beams and Posts of Houses squared and carved asked if the Trees grew so in those Countries so having been long acquainted with a Form of Worship squared and carved trickt and set out with shew and Ceremony have been apt to think that Trees grow so that there is no natural shape and Face of Gods Worship Yet he will tell you that abinitio non fuit sic and this he doth learnedly and largely prove p. 171. To which I refer you Let therefore the woful miseries and calamities which you have brought upon the Land by so altering the Face of the English Church since the Reformation thereof in Queen Elizabeths daies through your so Popish and Superstitious Innovations that you made it look so like the Painted Whore of Babylon that Sancta Clara hath published That the Face of our Church began to alter the Language of our Religion to change and setting Puritans aside our Articles and their Religion would soon be agreed Let also your violent urging conformity to these Ceremonies which you made the Devils Sieves to winnow Pious men of Tender Consciences out of their Ministerial Employments I say let these with your many other Provocations of the Divine Majesty meeken and moderate your Spirits restrain your eager pursuit of Episcopacy in statu corrupto with its superstitious vanities especially considering how much Blood and Treasure hath been expended in this Quarrel My Lord Digby was of another mind before a Drop of Blood was spilt Saith he P. 74. Let us not destroy but make Bishops such as they were in the Primitive times Do their large Territories their large Revenues offend let them be retrencht The good Bishop of Hippo had but a narrow Diocess Do their Courts and Subordinates offend let them be brought to govern as in the Primitive times by Assemblies of their Clergie Doth their intermedling in Secular Affairs offend Exclude them from the capacity it is no more than what reason and all antiquity hath interdicted them That you may be glad of this when you can get it and may meet with no further Obstructions I shall now direct my Discourse to you of the Presbyterian Party Who also have as great Cause to be humbled and repent as the Party before spoken to though not for the very same sins The great and cogent Argument by which God would restrain his people of old from oppression of others was this the sense of the oppressions which they had lain under in the Land of Egypt And one would think this should have restrained you that groaned so much under the oppression of your Consciences and Estates And yet no sooner were you come out of great Tribulation your selves but like that cruel Servant in the Gospel you fell to beating and wounding of your Fellowes in both All that woful cruelty and severity which you inflicted by Sequestration and Imprisonment upon those that could not joyn with you in taking up of Arms and in the Eradication in stead of the Reformation of the Government of the Church while you were in Power should very much melt and molifie your hearts and much incline them to accomodation and moderation Especially considering with what little respect unto the Consciences of others ye violently imposed upon them vowes and Oaths wherein you only were satisfied your selves For refusing whereof many Orthodox Ministers lost their Livings that could not otherwise have been ejected as scandalous and insufficient but only for this particular Malignancy Forgetting how much you cried out against the Bishops new Oath which they would have imposed Surely had you in this observed that Golden Rule of our Saviour to do to others as you would be done by you would not to promote the Interest of your own Party have hewed out a Reformation with so much violence and to impose a rigid Presbytery have spared none of a different judgment from you that stood in your way I hope in all this time that God hath laid you aside ye who are what you profess your selves to be whether Ministers or people such as fear to offend the Divine Majesty and avoid all appearances of evil have made some serious reflexions upon your selves and have humbled your Soules before the Lord for your many miscarriages while you were in power and for those extreams into which you have run with the rest I am sure it was your Duty in the day of Adversity to consider You should have considered what might provoke the Lord against you not only to disappoint your hopes of setling your so much admired Church-Government but also to bring the whole Ministry of these Nations as near to an utter extirpation as you had brought those that ordained you and set you apart to the work of the Ministry But the violence of many of your Spirits which appeareth in this day-break of your hopes of deliverance from men of Antimonarchical and Anti-ministerial spirits makes me think you have not truly and throughly been humbled for what is past No marvel therefore that so many of you are so pertinacious in your way I beseech you therefore let your Modesty and Moderation be known unto all men in giving over your violent pursuit of an absolute and independent Presbytery from the Angels of the Churches and be of a condescending towards others who may have as much Reason and Scripture on their side and may appear to be as pious and conscientious as your selves Do not think that there can be no purity of Ordinances but where there is a Parity in their Administrators Neither any Reformation of Church-Government without the extirpation of it root and branch The great Objection that lieth against this Motion is that you lie under an Obligation by Covenant to extirpate the Government of the Church by Arch-Bishops Bishops c. And therefore you cannot recede from it To which I Answer that an unlawful Oath bindeth not Now whether that long League or Covenant wherein were too many words to be without sin were lawful yea or no I desire you to compare it with those Rules and Qualifications of a lawful Oath or Vow laid down by the Assembly of Divines in their Humble Advice § 11. An Oath say they must be imposed by lawful Authority whoso takes it is to avouch nothing but what he is fully perswaded is the truth what is good and just and what he is able to perform and bindeth not to sin Now I say if you
Common-wealth which Mr. Sedgwick calleth a Hoddy Doddy and all Breach such a one as derogates from the Majesty of God and the wisdom of man Though it had a precious Foundation and the Mortar thereof was tempered even with the Blood of all degrees of men in the Kingdom and of all Parties but our own and hath consumed more Millions then any if not all the Kings of England ever did I say let us be weaned from this Novelty and now let our Spirits be reconciled to Kingly Government again Even that Ancient Government by Kings which oweth its Original to the Ancient of Daies who hath said By me Kings reign and to Jesus Christ who is the Lord of Lords the King of Kings the true Fountain of Honour That Government by which God hath promised in Gospel times that his Church shall be provided for and protected that Kings shall be their Fathers and Queens their Nursing Mothers That Government in the want of which we have found by experience all those wickednesses perpetrated as were done in those daies when there was no King in Israel Judg. 17. 6. 19. 1. That Ancient way of Government by which God ruled his people of old even by Moses who was King in Jesurun and by which this Nation hath been Governed for many hundred years and never by a Common-wealth before I say let us by these Arguments shake hands and be friends again with Kingly Government with which we have been at odds these many years And to bring us together again I shall to these Arguments give you one Quotation more from our Friend Mr. Sedgwick saith he P. 11. Kingliness agreeth with all Christians they who are of a Royal Nature and made Kings with Christ cannot but be Friends to it It is a Bastard Religion that is inconsistent with the Majesty and Greatness of the most absolute Monarch And such Spirits are strangers from the Kingdom of Heaven and know not the Glory in which God liveth and are of narrow and evil minds that are corrupt themselves and not able to bear Greatness and so think God cannot or will not qualifie men for such high Places with answerable and proportionable Goodness and Power In my mind there is very much of Truth in this Quotation and I wish he be of the same mind still that then uttered it Without all doubt they which know any thing of the waies of Gods administrations either in the Kingdom of Grace or of Glory should not be of Anti-monarchical Spirits Their Spirits as he saith are narrow their Minds are evil Especially those amongst us who have loaded with such reproaches him whom I am apt to believe the Divine Providence hath so wonderfully preserved to rule these three Kingdoms And now the very naming of Providence doth furnish me with a most cogent Argument in my judgment to prevail with us all to incline to what I move you For how hath the Divine Providence overturned overturned overturned all the waies of Government we have attempted to set up contrary to the Right both of Prince and People as Mr. Sedgwick teacheth us Doubtless we have cause to fear we have highly offended in walking so by Providence making that to legitimate those Actions of ours for which the Word gave no warrant but condemned rather This was the Argument by which we answered all our Opposers Oh the Providence of God hath declared from Heaven the justness of our Cause and Waies Our Protector though in his long Speech at the Dissolution of the Parliament so called Jan. 22. 1654. he doth very much in many places press all to observe the voice of Providence which had done such great things wondering that they could not proceed further to the Settlement of the Government of the Nation according to his desire for which he broke them up yet he was somwhat loath to own the Providence of God therein For saith he I cannot apprehend what it is I would be loath to call it a Fate that were too Paganish a Word but there is somthing in it that we have not our expectation P. 26. And sure there was the Divine Providence counter-working But how evidently it hath appeared since is our Duty as Christians to own and acknowledge especially since this remarkeable passage in his Speech aforesaid P. 27. As for this Cause it is either of God or man If it be of God it will bear up if it be of man it will tumble as every thing that hath been of man hath done since the World began And as this is so the all wise God deal with it Now let us who have made the Providence of God our Rule contrary to this express Command amongst others that we should do no evil that good might come of it Let us I say as becometh Christians acknowledge the all-wise Providential Dispensations in so stupendiously tumbling down the chief Actors and Agitators in those unwarrantable waies we have too too much owned and justified Truly me thinks the strange Tumblings that we have seen since the Protector was laid in his Grave and how by an evil Spirit the all-wise God hath sent among the men of Sechem he hath so strangely Judg. 9. 23. tumbled down the Family of Abimelech I say that the neer Relations of the Old Protector should be so instrumental in pulling down the New One and in that to lay the Foundations of that Disgrace that is come upon themselves And how strangely the Providence of God hath brought about the Calling of this Parliament defeated Col. Lambert since his escape scattering the Disturbers of the Nations Peace and disappointed their hopes of hindring the peaceable Meeting of this great Convention I say these strange and most admirable Providences which would fill a Volume with the Observations of all the Circumstances of them should now convince us that it is hardkicking against the pricks and should very much bring us into a low Opinion and esteem of our selves and encline us to a peaceable and Christian Accommodation with all Parties and to shew forth more Moderation of mind than we have yet made known to the World It is only for these ends that I have spoken so home and dealt so impartially with you being acquainted with the temper of many of your spirits which require it But if any Prophanatick shall make this cursed use of what I have written as thereby to heighten that hatred of holiness that is so natural to all unregenerate men or to harden himself in his way of wickedness stumble and be scandalized at the fallings of some I have here presented I say no more to him but at his eternal peril be it For though it be true which our Saviour hath said Wo be to them by whom offences come so it is as true also Wo be to the world Matth. 18. 7. because of offences As for many of the late Kings Party that have been the greatest sufferers for him I fear not that any such ill