did conclude his own Prayer with it a great part of his Auditory would presently depart out of the Church as if it were impossible for them to be edified by such a Preacher as had no better Gift of Prayer And thus to make a thorough Reformation they first agreed on no more Addresses unto God before they Voted no more Addresses to the King The Creed and Commandments suffer the same Indignities being generally omitted in their Publick Worship and in many places especially at their Lectures scarce a Chapter of the Holy Scripture read to the People the whole Exercise being made up of Extemporary Prayer and Preaching the best of their Sermons if I may account them so that are printed and were preached in the greatest Congregations on most Solemn Occasions abounding with such Invectives against the King such Arguments and Motives to Rebellion and Shedding of Blood as will be an indelible Reproach to the Presbyterian Party who so taught others the Doctrine of Resisting their Superiours that they soon felt it to be practised against themselves who had broken down all the Fences of Government and opened those wide Breaches by which so many Heresies and so great Confusion overflowed the Nation so that the Pulpit-Drums exceeded those of the Field in doing Mischief drawing on more Souls to Destruction than the other did Bodies Mr. Baxter p. 43. of his Life tells us what Chaplains were in Essex's Army Abundance of famous excellent Divines were Chaplains to his Army Stephen Marshal and Dr. Burgess to Essex 's Regiments Obadiah Sedgwick to Col. Hollis Calibut Downing to the Lord Roberts John Sedgwick to the Earl of Stamford Dr. Spurstow to Hamden 's Mr. Perkins to Col. Goodwin 's Mr. Moore to the Lord Wharton 's Adoniram Bifield to Sir Henry Cholmley 's Mr. Nalton to Col. Grantham 's Mr. Simeon Ash to the Lord Brooks Mr. Morton of Newcastle to Sir Arthur Haslerigge with many more These were the first Incendiaries Boutefew's that first kindled and continued the Wars and such of the King's Friends as escaped the mouth of the Armies Swords were sentenc'd to a worse Death by the Sword of these Mens mouths In the Year 43. when the Parliaments Army were worsted and weakned by the King and they thought themselves in danger of being overcome they intreated help from the Scots who taking advantage of their straits brought in the Covenant as the Condition of their help Thus Mr. Baxter p. 127. of his first Plea who confesseth it was contrived as a Stratagem of War to bind the Faction in both Nations in a Confederacy against the King and strengthen the War against him for the doing whereof they pawned their Souls to each other as his Majesty observes in the Chapter of the Covenant And if it be considered by how many Solemn Oaths and Protestations the Subjects of both Nations as well as by the Laws of God and Nature were obliged to defend his Majesty's Person and the Laws and Government established it will appear to be true as Mr. Philip Nye observed concerning the Covenant That for Matter Persons and other Circumstances the like hath not been in any Age or Oath we read of in Sacred or Humane Story But it did the work for which it was designed it brought in the Scots Armies by by the promised hopes of dividing the Church Lands upon the Extirpation of Episcopacy and was as fatal to the King as to the Bishops For the King's Forces being broken he withdraws from Oxford where he was besieged and commits himself to the Scots Army who sollicite him to take the Covenant and sign their Propositions for the Presbyterial Government Henderson is sent to dispute the point with the King and he being baffled Mr. Cant Blaire and Douglas endeavoured the same but more by railing than reasoning with him One of them besides many rude expressions in his Sermon before the King called for the 52 Psalm which begins thus Why dost thou Tyrant boast abroad Thy wicked works to praise Whereupon the King presently stood up and called for the 56 Psalm which begins thus Have mercy Lord on me I pray For men would me devour Which the People readily sung leaving the other And the Commissioners of the General Assembly resolved That if the King be excluded from Government in England for not granting the Propositions concerning Religion and the Covenant it was not lawful for that Kingdom to assist him for the Recovery of the Government Nay they threaten to deliver him up to the Parliament of England as shortly after they did for 400000 l. for the raising of which Sum an Ordinance is past for Sale of the Bishops Lands at Ten years value Nov. 16. And by another Ordinance Febr. 8. none were to bear any Office Civil or Military that refused to take the Covenant The Parliament having gotten the King in their power thought themselves very secure and therefore resolves to disband the whole Army Horse and Foot and to send a good part of them for Ireland which so startled the Army that they began to take new measures And first they demand their Arrears for 56 Weeks Next that a Declaration against the Army March 13. might be recalled and they secured for what had been done in the late Wars which things at a general Rendezvouz they petition the Parliament for who being under great fears Vote all that was desired But the Army had a farther design and by 1000 Horse under Cornet Joyce seize the King's Person and detain him in the power of the Army which was Cromwel's design who though he sate with the Members at Westminster and protested there with Execrations against himself and his Family that he was ignorant of the Fact yet he told his Considents that having got the King into his hands he had the Parliament in his Pocket And presently he falls to purging of the House impeaching Eleven of the chief Presbyterians of High Treason and secluded them the House and afterward got the Militia of London into their hands for the Army being drawn up on Hounslow-heath marched up to the Parliament House and gave it a second purge of many more Members and marching triumphantly through London did demolish their Works and never left till he had setled the Parliament to his own liking But to return to Mr. Baxter Four years he says he was a Member of the Army part of which time by what follows will appear to be after that the Independent Party was predominant and the Army new modelled yet he tarried with this Army under Cromwel until the King was murthered and till Richard the Protector was cast out of the Government by those that had placed him in it Hear what Mr. Baxter says p. 14. of his Answer to Bagshaw Is it possible for any sober Christian in the World to take them to be blameless or these to be little sins What the violating of the King's Person and the Life of so good a King and the Change
Theological Differences but Law Differences Letter to Mr. Hinckley p. 25. The first open beginning was about the Militia says Mr. B. And how then did the Bishops begin it The Commons wrested it from the King and by one Order after another seized his Forts and Magazines the Tower of London and his Navy Had any of the Bishops a hand in this They all did and now do own That the sole command and disposition of it is and by the Laws of England ever was the undoubted Right of his Majesty and that both or either of the Houses of Parliament cannot nor ought to pretend to the same They were such Conformists who begun the War as Mr. B. who taught That the Law that saith the King shall have the Militia supposeth it to be against Enemies and not against the Commonwealth nor them that have a part in the Soveraignty and to resist him here is not to resist Power but Vsurpation and private Will And where the Soveraignty is divided into several hands as into King and Parliament and the King invades the other part they may lawfully defend their own by War and the Subject lawfully assist them yea though the power of the Militia be expresly given to the King unless it be also expressed that it shall not be in the other H.C.W. Thes 363. Another beginning of the War was a Confederacy with the Scots then in the Bowels of the Nation with whom the King was informed that some of the Parliament held Correspondence with The Earls of Essex of Warwick Bedford Clare Bullingbrook Mulgrave Holland the Lords Say and Brook and many more were said to be of this Confederacy p. 17. of B's Life with the five Members and Kimbolton whom the Parliament and City protected from the hands of Justice and procured and countenanced armed Tumults Mr. B. makes an Objection p. 474. of H.C.W. That Tumult at Westminster drove him i.e. the King away Answ Only by displeasing not by endangering or medling with him though the King tells us otherwise in his Chapter of Tumults to which I refer and observe Mr. B's Account p. 19. of his Life That too great numbers of Apprentices and others emboldned by proceedings of Parliament not fore-knowing what fire the sparks of their Temerity would kindle did too triumphingly and disorderly urge the Parliament as they had done the King crying Justice Justice the King called these Tumults the Parliament called them City Petitioners which in the end did more than displease the King So that his Report of an Episcopal War was but a Dream of his own though he affirms he was as sure of it as of any thing that he saw yet elsewhere he says no Man can tell where and when and by whom the War was begun Confessions p. 61. Mr. B. knows another sort of five Members that begun the War who were no Episcopal Men I mean the Smectymnuans who wrote so insolently and pedantickly against that meek pious and learned Bishop Hall And how Isaac Pennington brought a Petition of 15000 Londonners against Archbishops Bishops c. which was seconded by the like from several Counties And on March 10. 1640. a Bill is read in the House against Episcopacy and their Vote in Parliament taken away and many of them sent to the Tower for entring a Protest for their Priviledge Did any of the Bishops call in the Scots or promote the Covenant or sit in the Assembly who were chosen to that very end that they might stir up the People to assist the Parliament against the King Though all these things be left on Record yet Mr. B. thinks by his bare Authority to perswade the present and succeeding Generations that the War was begun by Bishops and carried on by a Parliament an Army and Assembly of Conformists yet to excuse the Presbyterians he says p. 26. that the Separatists and Anabaptists began the War Mr. B. will not say that Bishop Hall whom he so frequently commends had any hand in the beginning of our Wars nor will he ever be able to perswade others that what he hath written and publickly delivered as Matter of Fact in the beginning of our Troubles is false I therefore refer the Reader to that Treatise written with his own hand May 29. 1647. having first given you part of a Speech delivered by this excellent Prelate in the House of Lords p. 425. of his Remains My Lords It is a foul and dangerous Insolence which is now complained of to you in the Petitions against Bishops but it is but one of an hundred of those which have of late been done to the Church and Government The Church of England as your Lordships cannot but know hath been and is miserably infested on both sides with Papists on one side and Schismaticks on the other The Psalmist hath of old distinguished the Enemies of the Church into wild Boars out of the Wood and little Foxes out of Burroughs the one whereof goes about to root up the very Foundation of Religion the other to crop the Branches and Blossoms and Clusters thereof both of them conspire the utter ruine and devastation of it As for the former of them I do perceive a great deal of good zeal for the remedy and suppression of them and I do heartily congratulate it and bless God for it and beseech him to prosper it But for the other give me leave to say I do not find many that are sensible of the danger of it which yet in my apprehension is very great and apparent Alas my Lords I beseech you to consider what it is that there should be in London and the Suburbs and Liberties no fewer than fourscore Congregations of several Sectaries as I have been credibly informed instructed by Guides fit for them Coblers Taylors Felt-makers and such like Trash which all are taught to spit in the face of their Mother the Church of England and defile and revile her Government From hence have issued those dangerous assaults of our Church Governours from hence that inundation of base and scurrilous Libels and Pamphlets wherewith we have been of late over-born in which Papists and Prelates like Oxen in a Yoke are still matched together O my Lords I beseech you to be sensible of this great indignity do but look on these Reverend Persons Do not your Lordships see here sitting on these Benches those that have spent their time their strength their bodies and lives in preaching down and writing down Popery and which would be ready if occasion were offered to sacrifice all their old blood that remains to the maintenance of that Truth of God which they have taught and written And shall we be thus despightfully ranged with them whom we do thus professedly oppose But alas this is but one of those many scandalous Aspersions and intolerable Affronts that are daily cast upon us My Lords if these Men may with freedom and impunity thus beat down Ecclesiastical Authority it is to be feared they will not
of Nature did warrant them But it stopt not here for the Lord Mazarine and others of Ireland did so far prosecute the Cause as that the Marquess of Antrim was forced to produce in the Parliament of England in the House of Commons a Letter of King Charles the First 's by which he gave him Order for his taking up Arms which being read in the House put them into a silence But yet so egregious was their Loyalty and Veneration of Majesty that it put them not at all one step out of the way which they had gone in But the People without doors talked strangely Some said Did you not perswade us that the King was against the Irish Rebellion And that the Rebels belied him when they said they had his Warrant or Commission Do we not now see with what mind he would have gone himself with an Army into Ireland to fight against them A great deal more not here to be mention'd was vended seditiously among the People the sum of which was intimated in a Pamphlet which was printed called Murder will out in which they published the King's Letter and Animadversions on it Some that were still Loyal to the King did wish that the King that now is had rather declared that his Father did only give the Marquess of Antrim Commission to raise an Army as to have helped him against the Scots and that his turning against the English Protestants in Ireland and the murdering so many hundred thousands there was against his will but quod scriptum erat scriptum erat Although the old Parliamentarians expounded the Actions and Declarations both of the then King and Parliament by the Commentary of this Letter yet so did not the Loyal Royalists or at least thought it no reason to make any change in their Judgments or stop in their Proceedings against the English Presbyterians and other Non-conformable Protestants Mr. Baxter adds in the Margin We are not meet Judges of the Reasons of our Superiours Actions p. 83. part 3. of Mr. Baxter's Life By which he seemeth to intimate that the Matter of Fact how odiously and maliciously soever reported by him is true but he leaves it to others to consider and judge of the Reasons of it He might with much more Ingenuity and Candor have practised himself that Advice which he gives to others in the second part of the Non-conformists Plea for Peace p. 16. That if Subjects saw a Commission under the Broad Seal to seize the Guards destroy the Kingdom or deliver it to Forreigners they were bound to judge that the King was not the Author of that Commission Subjects should not have ill thoughts of Kings though they be sinful their Faults are neither to be aggravated nor divulged This is good Advice and would have utterly destroyed the pretence of Sir Phelim O Neale and those bloody Papists that joyned with him in that execrable Massacre for which they pretended a Commission under the Broad Seal whereas it appeared that the Broad Seal then in Scotland See Burlace's Hist of that War p. 29. part 2. had not been applied to any Commission or Patent in some months before the date of that pretended Commission And the Forgery plainly appeared at the Trial of Sir Phelim O Neale who at his Trial and also at his Execution though he was offered Pardon for Life and Restitution of his Estate if he would own that he had a Commission from the King to Authorize what he had done he affirmed constantly That he had no such Commission from the King nor was his Majesty privy to their Insurrection This Relation is attested by Dr. Ker Dean of Ardah who was present at his Trial and Execution and affirms the same in a Letter printed Febr. 28. 1681. a Copy of which I shall give you when I have told another part of his Confession viz. That he having found a Patent of the Lord Caulfield's when he seiz'd on Charlemount-Castle to which the Broad Seal was annexed he caused a Commission to be drawn agreeable to his own purpose and caused that Broad Seal to be affixed to it and so gave it out that he had the King's Commission for what he did Now for the further clearing of the Royal Martyr from this foul Imputation it will appear that he had Intelligence from abroad that great Companies of Priests and Soldiers were from several Countries hastening into Ireland and that others from Ireland held Correspondence with divers Soldiers of that Nation then in Forreign Service which gave Suspicion that there would be some Trouble in that Nation whereupon his Majesty in a Letter drawn by Sir Henry Vane and sent to the Lords Justices in that Kingdom charged them with great Care and Diligence to secure themselves against what was likely to happen a Copy whereof is subjoyned DR John Ker of Ardagh being present in the Court in Dublin when Sir Phelim O Neale was Tried and Examined about a Commission which as was said he had from Charles Stuart for levying the War in Ireland did testifie that the said Sir Phelim O Neale answered That he never had any such Commission and that it being proved in Court by Joseph Travers and others that the said Sir Phelim had such Commission and did show it unto the said Joseph and others in the beginning of the Irish Rebellion the said Sir Phelim confessed That when he surprized the Castle of Charlemount that he ordered one Mr. Harrison and another Gentleman to cut off the King 's Broad Seal from a Patent of the Lord Caulfield's which he found in Charlemount and to affix it to a Commission which Sir Phelim had ordered to be drawn And the said Mr. Harrison did in the face of the whole Court confess that by Sir Phelim's order he did stitch the silk Cord or Label of that Seal and fixed the Label and Seal to the said Commission And the Court urging the said Sir Phelim to declare why he did so deceive the People he answered That no Man could blame him to use all means to promote the Cause he had so far engaged in And upon the second day of his Trial some of the Judges told him That if he could produce any material proof that he had such a Commission from Charles Stuart to declare and prove it before Sentence had passed against him that he the said Sir Phelim should be restored his Estate and Liberty But he answered That he could prove no such thing Nevertheless they gave him time to consider of it till the next day upon which day Sir Phelim being urged again by the Court he declared again That he never could prove any such thing and that he could not in Conscience calumniate the King though he had been frequently sollicited thereunto by fair Promises and great Rewards while he was in Prison And proceeding further in this discourse he was stopt before he had ended what he had to say And the Sentence of Death was pronounced against him And
Laws â—…ainst Dissenters which yet says he all did not Yet Mr. Baxter spares none nor doth Dr. Maurice in his Vindication of the Primitive Church and Diocesan Episcopacy in answer to Mr. Baxter's Church History of Bishops c. spare him for whoever reads the Preface to that Answer and Chap. 8. p. 276. where he abundantly proves Mr. Baxter's ignorance and scandalous imputation of the Heresies Schisms and Troubles which were raised by several Presbyters against their Orthodox Bishops to those Primitive Fathers he will be of the same mind that I am That there never was any School-boy more justly though severely chastised for any Fault than Mr. Baxter is for that Treatise which he says is very elaborate and unconfuted Mr. Baxter in a Preface to his Penitent Confession Sect. 9. hath this Question and Answer Quest How should one have the better of any Adversary that blamed him Answ Speak and do things that are most odious as Perjury Lying Persecution c. and cover them with Sacred Pretences and then all that accuse thee will be taken for uncharitable Railers This method Mr. Baxter useth for Confutation of his Adversaries Thus he answered the Bishop of Worcester's Sermon against Separation calling it A Schismatical Sermon in his Preface to his second Defence p. 12 and says That the Bishop's Book is made up 1. Of untrue Accusations 2. Vntrue Historical Relations 3. Fallacious Reasonings And that in writing that Book against the Bishop he felt so little Passion that he thought verily that he sinned all the while for want of a livelier sence of the sin and hurt which he was detecting by his Confutation And which is to be noted in an Epistle Dedicatory to the Bishop he confesseth That he answered him in a manner that required his Patience and if it was too provoking he beggs his pardon But afterwards adds I doubt that I took advantage of his temerity and confuted him in too provoking terms and that some meer impertinent noise was made to his Answer by some one that is confuted But the Bishop sheweth what kind of Confutation it was p. 59. of the History of Separation Mr. Baxter discovered so much anger and unbecoming Passion that I truly pitied him and was so far from being transported by it that it was enough to cure an indecent Passion to see how ill it became a Man of his Age Profession and Reputation for he seems to have written the whole Book in one continued fit of anger For which and the scurrility of his Preface wherein having in twenty particulars described the most unskilful proud partial obstinate cruel and impertinent Adversaries he could think of places of Scripture or Similitudes for he thus concludes Though all this be not the Case of the Reverend Bishop c. which the Bishop notes to be a malicious way of Reproaching to name so many very ill things and leave the Reader to apply as much as he pleaseth And in p. 63. the Bishop complains that Mr. Baxter says That his Principles overthrow all Religion and that he was a secret Vnderminer of the Proofs of a Deity p. 63. of the Bishop's Preface After the same manner he confutes Bishop Morley's Letter concerning him saying It is most shameless for untruths in publick matters of fact and adds Ironically the Accuser is a Member of the best Church in the World but is this bundle of his gross untruths a proof that he is one of the best men in the World In the like manner he reflects on Bishop Patrick's Friendly Debate That his Book was so disingenious and virulent as caused most religious People to abhor it for the strain and tendency and probable effects Baxter's Life part 2. p. 39. As for Dr. Sherlock he thinks it Confutation enough of his former and latter Writings that they were virulent and ignorant p. 198. of his Life part 3. But Dr. Sherlock's Practical Treatises whereof we have many are as sound pious and useful I need not say as any of Mr. Baxter's but as any other on such Subjects as he hath written on as of Death and Judgment of Providence c. Dr. Fulwood though Mr. Baxter had formerly commended him for a Learned Man yet for some Reflections on his Book called Sacrilegious Desertion he calls him railing Russian p. 6. and his Reflections are a few confident silly Reasonings And p. 60. tells him of his want of common sence and modesty P. 113. part 1. of his Life he says That Dr. Pierce wrote a bitter Book against him full of malignant bitterness against godly men and breathing out blood-thirsty malice in a fluent stile abundance of lies are also in it against the old Puritans and me And that he wrote a much more railing malicious Volume than the former the liveliest express of Satan's image malignity bloody malice and falshood cover'd in handsom railing Rhetorick I have not heard saith he of three such railing men in England as Tylenus junior Pierce and Gunning of the Jesuits Opinion in Doctrinals and of the old Dominical complexion the ablest men that their Party hath in all the Land of great diligence in study and reading of excellent oratory and temperate lives but all their parts so sharpned with a furious persecuting Zeal against those that dislike Arminianism high Prelacy or full Conformity that they are like Bryars and Thorns not to be handled but by a fenced hand breathing out threatnings against God's Servants better than themselves and seem unsatisfied with blood and ruins and still cry Give Give bidding as loud Defiance to Christian Charity as every Arius or any Heretick did to Faith I fear I have offended my Reader by spreading before him such heaps of putrid and noisome Garbage But Mr. Baxter offering no matter of Argument for how could he against his own Relations and undeniable Matters of Fact except he had given himself the lye I thought nothing else needful but to shew the temper of the Man and the usual manner of his Communication to convince the Reader that he too often calls evil good and good evil and supplies the want of Argument and Reason with Invectives and Railing As to his Charge that my Book was full of Falshood half Sentences none was more concerned or better able to have shewn a few instances if the Book had been so full And for quoting any retracted Lines I never heard much of Mr. Baxter's Retractations though he had reason enough to have written as largely upon that Subject as St. Augustine did I do not think that his expunging out of his Kalender of Saints the names of Brook Pym White c. amounted to a Retractation because he told us that he did it not as altering his judgment of them but because it gave offence Yet Mr. Baxter shews reason enough to have expunged the Lord Brook for p. 63. of Mr. Baxter's Life part 1. he says That the Lord Brook was known and noted as a gross Sectary in the House of Peers
and Sir Henry Vane in the House of Commons As for the retracted Lines in his Holy Commonwealth it is evident that they also gave offence but that his judgment of them was altered appears not He seemed willing sometime that some of his Maxims in that Book should be taken as not written but finding that he hath in other Writings since that written much to the like purpose I think he continued to be of the same mind that Pilate was Quod scripsi scripsi Page 177. part 3. of Mr. Baxter's Life he says In June 1676. Mr. Jane the Bishop of London's Chaplain preached to the Lord Mayor and turned his Sermon against Calvin and me charging me that I had sent as bad men to Heaven as some that be in Hell because I had said in my Saints Rest of Brook Pym Hampden and White that I thought of Heaven with the more pleasure because I should meet them there This made me blot out those Names after 1659. not as changing my mind but not to give offence For which Reason he should have blotted out those hard Speeches and uncharitable Sentences which there follow These damning Prelatists are for our Silencing Imprisonment and Ruine and Factious Damners that for preferment condemn good men are ordinarily self-condemned Mr. Baxter's handling my Betters so rudely makes me less concerned at his railing on me And this may satisfie the Reader why I took the pains to Review Mr. Baxter's Life as written by himself to enquire what Discovery he had made of Falshoods retracted Lines or half Sentences of which I found not any Instance which made me to wonder because I found in the Appendix to his Life p. 108 109 110 111. a large and scandalous Letter directed to me and dated July 26. 1678. wherein he calls me to an account for three Particulars which I had mentioned in my Examination of Mr. Hales's Treatise of Schism in which I represented Mr. Baxter as a Person of a peaceable Temper and made use of his Arguments to confute those of Mr. Hales which pleaded for Schism for which he ought as he seems to do in the beginning of his Letter to give me thanks yet he that reads that angry Letter may perceive that he sought occasions to quarrel and defame me when there was no Provocation given him But when he says I represented him as the worst Man on Earth and that by Falshoods c. he shuns the Occasion of justifying himself or proving any of his Accusations against me A PREFACE Concerning the Power of Prejudice IT is a Caution necessary to be observed by all Christians which St. Paul gives us 1 Cor. 3.21 Not to glory in Men i.e. not to prefer the Parts or professed Piety of some Men so as to contemn or despise the Ministry of others The reason of which he gives us vers 4. For while one says I am of Paul and another I am of Apollo are ye not i.e. ye are carnal This partiality begets Envying Strife and Divisions which are the works of the Flesh And this Prejudice causeth men to be puffed up one against another chap. 4.6 as the Corinthians were on behalf of false Teachers to an opposition of the Apostles themselves This St. Jude observes to have been the fault of the Gnostick Disciples who had the Persons of Seducers in admiration because of advantage viz. the liberty impunity and temporal accommodations which were permitted and promised by them And by such means St. Paul observes that his Galatians chap. 3.1 were so bewitched that they obeyed not the Truth And Tertullian deservedly chides the Christians in his Age And ex personis probamus sidem an ex fide personas De Praescript c. 3. It is a good Rule which Mr. B. says he had learnt but practised not to contradict Errours but not meddle with Persons Page 107. part 1. of his Life Do we approve of the Faith by the Persons of Men or of their Persons by the Faith The Faith once delivered to the Saints should always be the Rule by which we judge of the Ministry of Men. Though we or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you let him be accursed Gal. 1.8 There are many false Teachers that transform themselves into Angels of Light and mix some precious Truths with their damnable Errours But if they teach any thing for Doctrine contrary to the Word of God any Doctrine that tends to Impiety Disobedience or Divisions it is our duty to reject and withold Communion from them be their parts never so excellent and their pretences never so plausible lest it fares with us as with those silly Larks who being first taken with the glitterings of the Glass do play so long about it till they are also taken in the Net to their destruction For being once dogmatized and captivated by Men of ill Principles it will prove a matter of great difficulty to extricate our selves If we consider how rare a thing it is for Men of great Learning and perhaps of good Conscience too to deliver themselves from those Snares in which by Education and Custom by Prepossession and Carnal Prejudices they have been involved whereof St. Paul himself being bred up as a Pharisee may be an instance for whose Conversion no less than a Miracle was thought sufficient And no other account can be given why so many Learned Men in the Church of Rome do against Scripture Reason and Sense believe and defend such great Errours as they generally do but the tyranny of Prejudice and Education for quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu The ways which we are trained up in from our youth we will not depart from when we are old For as Justin Martyr observed Non Ratione componitur sed consuetudine Senec. Epist 123. Custom having once got the advantage of long continuance insinuates Errors and Impostures into the Minds of Men under the notion and representation of Truth and some Men have told lyes so long that at last they have believed them to be truths And Scripture it self doth intimate that it is morally as impossible for a Man to learn to do well that hath been accustomed to do evil as for an Ethiopian to change his skin or a Leopard his spots And Origen affirms that of all Customs those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 concerning Opinions and Matters of Doctrins are most prevalent for when other Advantages do conspire with our received Opinions facile credimus quod maxime volumus and our religious Opinions being rivited into our minds by the weighty Arguments of temporal and eternal Happiness it must be a power above that of Nature to vindicate us from the Captivity Hear Mr. Baxter on this Subject Take heed of suffering Fancy and Opinion to go for Reason and raise in your Minds unjustifiable Mistakes of any Way or Mode of Worship It is wonderful to see what Fancy and Prejudice can do Get once a hard Opinion of a