no wise take well at their hands viz. that they should put themselves under the Ministry of another they will grow to such a degree of strangeness to him as to shun common neighbourhood and acquaintance with him yea they will easily account him their greatest Enemy as Ahab did Elijah or the Galatians did St. Paul because he doth not flatter them in tha◠which how wicked and unlawfull soever it be is therefore the sweeter to them because forbidden and enjoyed as it were by stealth For stollen waters are sweet and bread eaten in secret is pleasant though the end of such ill gotten delight be in the depth of hell What esteem can they have of their Minister's Person or Office which are look'd upon by them as either needless or indifferent if not tedious and burthensome What regard to his Doctrine which as experience shews us is and will be so lightly set by that some will wholly forsake attendance on it others come to hear as there is too much cause to doubt more out of curiosity than necessity and as some have not been ashamed to confess rather to 〈◊〉 as those that listned to our Saviour's Sermons to catch him in his discourse than to learn or to practise And so the Pulpit which is God's Tribunal is made their bar and they become not doers of the Law but Iudges What dependance can a People have on their own pastour in his discharge of ministerial Duties amongst them where some are reduced into a perfect revolt from him other brought to a loose indeterminacy in Divine worship and Church-communion and all to a Lukewarm indifference what Ministry they enjoy and Church-Assemblies are made matter of Complement rather than necessity Usurpation and intrusion as it shall never want store of friends and favourers among the ignorant and unstable vulgar be it never so unjust so the more abbettours and maintainers it hath in any place the greater must the defection needs be from him to whom they own their adherence And thus will that golden chain of relation that is and ought to be betwixt a Pastour and his People by this means be wholly dissolved and those put asunder whom God bath joined together For as it is in a marriage it is not the having of an Husband that makes the Wife honest chast and undefiled but her loving her Husband and keeping her self wholly to him otherwise the Wedlock bond is broken so in this union betwixt Pastour and People it is not the having a Minister that maintains and upholds the relation and conjunction that God would have to continue between them but the acknowledging of him keeping to him and depending on him in the Lord for all ministerial Acts to be performed by him among them otherwise the knot of unity that ought to be betwixt them is untyed Now here I could tell the Reader so lamentable a story of the truth of this sad effect which upon mine own experience I have found of this usurpation and intrusion I am now disputing against that if he be such a one as hath any fear of God before this eyes any zeal for his house worship and service or any care of the Unity and Peace of the Church it would make both his ears at the hearing of it tingle My Parish was a Virgin pure and undefiled free from all invadours and underminers of her Chastity till about four years since when the Act of Parliament for the removal of such of the Nonconformist ministers as refused to take the oath therein prescribed out of all Corporations sent or occasioned one of them not to preach but to inhabit amongst us Before whose coming there was not a Congregation in the Country that I know for so many People being near 1000 souls more entire more unanimous more constant at all parts of publick worship more free from all inclination to schism separation or any of the raigning Epidemical faults of this Age. We had then what happiness we could desire and it seems greater than we deserved When the ground all about us was wet with the showres of schism and prophaneness we like Gideon's fleece were dry But because we gave not God thanks sufficient he suffered Satan to erect Altare contra Altare for so went the style of the ancient Church for schism which in our modern Dialect is a Conventicle against the Church Now that Congregation which was before entire is now miserably divided and those that lived under the oversight and teaching of one lawfull Pastour as a chast Wife under the guidance of her own Husband according to God's Holy Ordinance are gone aside to others and admit of the unlawfull embraces of strangers I could tell the Reader of some of those people who were formerly constant attendants on all parts of divine Worship that are now by this means totally gone off non fugati sed fugitivi as say the Brethren of the Presbyterian way of the Independents and for the space of several years have not set their foot over the threshold of God's house yea so far are they withdrawn and to so high and impious an abhorrency of God's publick Worship are they brought as to detain their very Children from publick Baptism They are modelled as they call it into a new Church-way for the enjoyment of Ordinances And no wonder for the Scripture tells us that besides God's Church Satan will have his too There is Ecclesia Credentium and Ecclesia Malignantium according to that of David odi Ecclesiam malignantium I have hated the Congregation of Evil doers And Tertullian tells us faciunt favos vespae faciunt Ecclesias Marcionitae Wasps make Combs but empty ones Schismaticks and Sectaries make Churches but false ones Singuli quique coetus haereticorum se potissimum Christianos suam esse Ecclesiam Catholicam putant saith Lactantius Of others I could relate that upon this sad occasion are in part revolted from the publick Assemblies of the Saints and though they live near enough to the Church yet come thither but now and then and that to hear a Sermon onely and to no other part of divine Service To satisfie curiosity I suppose rather than Conscience wherein they seem to discover much of Hypocrisie but nothing of Piety For I would demand of them doe they well or ill when they come If well why then come they not at all times when they may If ill why then come they at any time What moves them at any time to approach the place where God's honour dwells Is it because he hath commanded it or to doe him any service thereby I ask him again whether hath not he commanded the publick Service of the whole day as well as a part A Lamb at the Evening as well as a Lamb in the Morning Of every Lord's day as well as of one now and then Why else did the Lord call the Sabbath of old an holy Convocation As if
the habitation of thine house and the place where thine honour dwelleth And of his desire to remain in God's house all the days of his Life that he might behold the beauty of the Lord. And we have waited for so the word may be read for the loving kindness of the Lord in the midst of thy Temple There promises of God's special and extraordinary blessings on the Church Assemblies of his People in former ages were so generally known and believed of holy men in those times that when any of them prayed for any spiritual grace or mercy in behalf of any other they usually expressed it in this from The Lord bless thee out of Sion For there the Lord commanded the blessing even life for evermore So again We bless you out of the house of the Lord. They seem to be the words of the Priests whose office it was at the dismissing of the Congregation of God's People to bless them in his house They being appointed of God there to bless in his name Whose benedictions there pronounced did not prove an empty sound of words in the air but from the Temple at Ierusalem where they were spoken they mounted up to Heaven where they were heard and answered For the Priests and Levits arose and blessed the People and their voice was heard and their prayer came up to his holy dwelling place even unto heaven In which respect the publick worship of God is called his face and presence Cain for the Murther of his Brother being debarred the benefit of God's publick worship complains I shall be hid from thy face i. e. from the face and presence of God in his Church as appears afterward And Cain went out from the presence of God and dwelt in the Land of Nod i. e. from the place of God's publick worship which in all likelyhood was celebrated by Adam the Father who being a Prophet had taught his Children how to sacrifice and to serve the Lord. Thither God's People resorted in multitudes and David professeth that nothing in all his Life hapned to him more pleasant than to see such flocking to God's house and that he could goe thither with them as nothing aggravated his misery more in his persecution by Saul or by his Son Absolom's rebellion for 't is uncertain whether of the two was the occasion of Psal. 42. than that he could not have the happiness that formerly he enjoyed of being one of the first and forwardest in going thither When I remember these things saith he I pour out my Soul in me And why because there he enjoyed God in a more special manner than he could elsewher thither he came and appeared before the face of God What longings he shewed for God's publick worship at another time when By Saul's persecution he was forced from the Temple at Ierusalem into the Wilderness of Iudah and wandered in the desart may be seen in Psal. 63. Though it was grievous to him to fall from that dignity and favour he formerly had and wherein he flourished in Saul's court though it was hard for him to lose all his goods to be alienated from all his friends to be forced to converse among strangers and infidels and to expose his life to all sorts of hardships and hazards yet all these he counted small and Light matters in comparison of this one great evil that he was forced to be absent from Church and to abide there where there was no publick Ministry or worship of God And therefore making no mention at all of any of those other evils he makes this his onely request that he might be restored again ut sacris publicis Coetui piorum interesse possit that he might have the liberty of God's house again Though he might and doubtless did converse with God in the Desart pouring out his Prayers to him which was the onely support he had in his exile And though no doubt those godly friends he had left about him for he had such in whose society he might take great comfort in his banishment he had both a Prophet and a Priest did join with him in the private service of God yet this contented him not he longs still for the publick worship bewails greatly the want of it his speeches are all of the heavenly benefit of it and the happiness of such as had free access to it He know he could no where perform divine worship with so free and glad an heart with so much comfort and assurance of so large a blessing as in that place where the Ministry was publick and where the Multitude of God's people did serve and worship him There he vows his service I will give thee thanks in the grâ—at Congregation I will praise thee among much people I will praise thee with my whole heart in the assembly of the upright and in the Congregation And calls upon others to doe the like Give the Lord the glory due to his Name worship him in the beauty of holiness It was no small blessing promised to good King Hezekiah that his recovery from his sickness should be so soon effected that he should not be detained from going to Church but the third day he should be able to go up to the house of the Lord. The hearing whereof was equal comfort to him with the news of the enlargement of the lease of his life It hath even been a sad affliction to the Souls of God's people to see the Church-assemblies neglected and the Congregations more empty than they were wont to be and to be debarred the liberty of frequenting them as being thereby deprived of the most lively representation of Heaven on Earth to the obscuring much of God's Glory which is seen and spoken of in the Sanctuary and the seducing them from the mutual and comfortable Fellowship one of another in his ordinances and from much refreshing and help they had by these means I will gather them which are sorrowfull for the solemn Assemblies who are of thee to whom the reproach of it is a burthen 'T is the Character the Holy Ghost makes of a true Child and Member of the Church to be thus affected When ever God's people did shew a more then ordinary desire to prevail in prayer they have shewed more than ordinary care that the Assemblies might be as publick and as full as could be as 't is noted by a worthy Divine of Ours Blow the Trumpet in Sion sanctifie a Fast call a solemn Assembly gather the People assemble the Children c. In the Fast which King Iehosaphat proclaimed it is said All Judah stood before the Lord with their Little ones their Wives and their Children And it was in the publick place of God's worship the house of the Lord that they met The People of Israel went up to the House of the Lord to ask counsel concerning their
Ordinances of Christ in unity and uniformity as far as is possible Which our Liturgy sets up by prescribing the manner of it Whereas otherwise all will be left to the chance of mens wills which saith Doctour Hammond can no more be thought like to concur in one form than Democritus's Atomes to have met together into a world of beautifull Creatures without any kind of providence to dispose them For the Scriptures call for unity and uniformity as well as purity and verity And surely it is not impossible to obtain this so much desired unity and uniformity because that God hath promised that his Children shall serve him with one heart and with one way and with one shoulder And that in the days of the Gospel there shall be one Lord and his Name one And Christ hath prayed that we may be all one as the Father is in him and he in the Father And he adds a most prevalent reason That the World may believe that thou hast sent me Nothing hinders the propagation of the Gospel so much as the division and separation of Gospel-professours If it be God's promise and Christ's prayer it is certainly a thing possible to be obtained and a duty incumbent upon all good Christians to labour after Secondly as it cannot be denyed that the Civil Magistrate hath authority over the persons of Ministers so 't is as true that he hath power to act for the regulation of all their Ecclesiastical meetings and assemblies though not to act in sacris Yet circa sacra non ad docendum quod est sacerdotale yet ad jubendum quod est regale As Constantine the Emperour told the Bishops whom he invited to a banquet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye are Bishops within the Church and I am ordained by God's Grace a Bishop without the Church That the King of England saith Sir Henry Spelman is persona mixta endowed as well with Ecclesiastical authority as with temporal is not onley a solid position of the Common Law of this Land but confirmed unto us by the continual practice of our ancient Kings ever since and before the Conquest even in hottest times of Popish fervency For this cause at their Coronation they are not onely Crowned with the Diadem of the Kingdom and girt with the Sword of justice to signisie their temporal authority but are anointed also with the oil of Priesthood and cloathed stola Sacerdotali and veste Dalmatica to demonstrate this their Ecclesiastical jurisdiction whereby the King is said to be in Law the Supremus ordinarius and in regard thereof among other Ecclesiastical rights and prerogatives belonging to him is to have all the tithes through the Kingdom in the places that are not of any Parish for some such there be and namely divers Forests Magistrates we grant can neither preach the word nor administer the Sacraments any more than Vzziah could burn incense or offer Sacrifice to God Yet they are nursing Fathers of the Church not to give the milk of the word and Sacraments but of disclipline and Government During the old Testament times the King's power extended to the instituting and commanding of such Religious meetings as do no where appear to be either instituted or commanded of God or his Servant Moses v. g. The solemnity of the Passover which was to be kept by the Law of Moses but seven days by a special Command of King Hezekiah with the consent of the people was commanded to be kept other seven days The Feast of Purim in Commemoration of the deliverance of the Nation of the Iews under Ahasuerus the Persian King was instituted by Hester and Mordecai Moses onely Commanded one day of Fasting to be yearly observed viz. in the seventh month But the Kings and Magistrates of the people instituted other yearly solemn Fasts So that in the times of the latter Prophets there were four yearly Fasts observed viz. besides that yearly in the seventh month three others in the fourth fifth and tenth month Now if they may by their authority institute and enlarge why not then as well abridge and restrain Provided the publick assembling together of God's people according to Divine appointment be no-way prejudiced or infringed If the Magistrate may appoint then he may forbid too Law reason and sense teach that appointing and forbidding belong to one power Thirdly neither can there be any ground of quarrell made against the justness of these Laws forbidding Conventicles For as it is well observed by a worthy Divine before me that Law is undoubtedly just in which there is a concurrence of the justice of these four causes of Law wherein the whole of a Law doth consist viz. the justice of the final efficient formal and material causes of Laws 1. The final Cause of End of a just Law is that it tend to the common and publick good And of this the Lawgivers are to be Judges and not the Subjects And most unreasonable it were that what the Lawgivers shall adjudge to be for the publick good should be made to yeild to private and particular mens interests 2. The efficient Cause of a just Law is the lawfull power of the person or persons in authority that made the Law Otherwise Laws are onely so in name and not indeed And as Aquinas Violentiae magis quam leges They are rather acts of violence than Laws And it is a sure rule in Logick Causa aequivoca non infert effectum a sentence passed by one that is no Judge binds not the party 3. The right form of a Law is that it be a rule of rectitude for humane actions according to the guidance of distributive justice giving to every one according to his demerits 4. The matter of a Law must be a thing that is good according to the rule of universal justice at leait indifferent A Law wherein these 4 things concur must needs be good and obligatory to all persons that are concerned in it Now in which of these the aforesaid Laws against Conventicles are faulty I know not Perhaps some will say in the latter the Matter of it is not good to lay a restraint on Religious Assemblies and Meetings It were so indeed if Religious Assemblies and Meetings were forbidden But I think it will appear in the sequel that these in question are not such whatsoever some conceive them to be It were so if all Religious Meetings or Assemblies were forbidden But blessed be God 't is otherwise We have still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the publick ancient lawfull and orderly assemblies allowed commanded and encouraged by Authority in all places of the Kingdom and onely such meetings by the Law forbidden as are private new and disorderly and tend to Faction and Schism and such other evils as are not without trembling to be mentioned Lastly I answer with that learned Casuist Dr. Sanderson that it is not necessarily requisite that whatsoever is established
it ought to be nothing else as if the whole day were to be spent at Church and in keeping publick Assemblies so far as conveniency and edification of the people will permit Why else did Holy David desire to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever Why prayed he that he might be so happy One thing have I desired of the Lord that I will seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life Therefore if Conscience to obey God or desire to doe him service did draw them to his house at any time or to any part of his Worship the same would induce them at all times and to all parts of it The liberty then that such persons take in God's service as if all were Arbitrary argues much of hypocritical wantonness nothing of sound or sincere godliness They who are fed with Corn from Heaven meat to the full are thus faln to loath the Mannah that Rained down upon them twice every Sabbath-day Of a third sort I could inform the Reader who being weak yet I hope well-meaning Christians not knowing the depths of Satan under a specious pretence of Piety are not content with what they hear at Church but must afterwards fill their heads with notions which they hear at Conventicles wherewith they feast themselves without fear after they have been fed to the full in God's house with Angels food Without fear I say of offending God by breaking the order he hath set in his Church by countenancing abetting or joining themselves with such unlawfull and ungospel-like Assemblies without fear of offending or provoking the Rules of the Church which they are bound to obey by seeing their Laws despised and affronted without fear of exposing themselves to the temptation and hazard of falling so fearfully as they cannot but see that some of their Brethren and Neighbours have done And without fear of losing what they have heard in publick by departing immediately from the Church to a Conventicle as if all Religion did consist in nothing but hearing and all the Service of God were but according to the French scoff a mere Preach If this be the way of keeping the Sabbath where is room then for Meditation which the Scripture as much enjoins as hearing Thou shalt meditate on the Law that thou mayst observe to doe according as is written Mary therefore kept Christ's sayings because she pondered them in her heart David therefore grew to be wiser than his teachers because God's Law was his meditation Conference with Neighbours and Family-instructions will by this means also be issued out Thus shall you say every one to his neighbour and every one to his brother what hath the Lord answered and what hath he spoken The best of Hearers even Christ's own Disciples took another course than these now doe When they had heard their Master Preach they spent their time after Sermon in conferring among themselves about what they had heard and went to their Teacher to be better informed and to have all doubts resolved For want of so doing it comes to pass with too many as sometimes it did with some of them that though they had seen their Lord's mighty power in feeding five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes yet their Faith was never the stronger And this was the reason They considered not the miracle of the Loaves for their heart was hardned They had seen the miracle but they had not considered it nor meditated on it and therefore it did them no good at all In the judgment of the Presbyterian Divines themselves the way these people take is not the right For the Assembly of Divines in their Directory for Worship give this rule for the Sanctification of the Lord's day that what time is vacant between or after the Solemn meetings of the Congregation in publick be spent in Reading Meditation Repetition of Sermons especially by calling their Families to an account of what they have heard and Catechising of them holy conferences prayer for a blessing upon the publick Ordinances singing of Psalms visiting the Sick relieving the Poor and such like duties of piety charity and mercy accounting the Sabbath a delight In a word I could inform the Reader what impious devices have been used not onely to make a rent in the Church but also to keep it open that it should never close again by endeavouring that an irreconcileable prejudice might be perpetuated in the minds of people against the publick Ministry and Ministers of the Church And to the end that those poor deluded Souls which have been drawn off from their due attendance to God's publick Ordinances to wait on these men in their clanculary and irregular conventions might never return to the Church any more I have observed that the absence of one of these Masters of Conventicles in the places where they are held have ever been carefully supplied by the presence of some other Domestick Chaplain to keep up their House-meetings As if Ieroboam's impious policy should never be forgotten who not daring to trust his new divided Tribes in a joint resort to the Temple at Ierusalem set up his Calves to be Worshipped by them nearer home But I will not rake any longer in this puddle lest it stink in the nostrils of pious and sober Christians as it cannot but doe in God's already Now I appeal to all my judicious and learned Brethren of the Clergy and to all persons else of stayed principles and piety whether for a stranger thus to pluck the work of a Pastour of a Congregation out of his hands be tollerable in the Church of Christ or no Whether this practice that tends thus to divide betwixt Minister and People breaking the near bond of relation that is and ought to continue between them robbing him of his flock and taking them off from dependance on him for the enjoyment of the work of his ministry be of God or no And whether he hath ordained any such course as the means of Grace in his Church or whether this be not rather a strategem of Satan to introduce all manner of impiety and ungodliness The Presbyterian Divines themselves have given their judgment on my side already in this case In these words To make a Rupture in the body of Christ and to divide Church from Church and to set up Church against Church and to gather Churches out of true Churches And because we differ in something therefore to hold Communion in nothing this we think hath no warrant out of the word of God and will introduce all manner of confusion in Churches and Families and not onely disturb but in a little time destroy the power of Godliness purity of Religion peace of Christians and set open a wide gap to bring in Atheism Popery Heresie and all manner of wickedness So also in their Preface to the Ius divinum of Church-government