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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A34532	An account given of the principles & practices of several nonconformists wherein it appears that their religion is no other than what is profest in the Church of England in vindication of themselves and others of their perswasion, against the misrepresentation made of them, and in hearty desire of unity in the Church, and of peace and concord among all true Protestants, for the strengthening of their common interest, in this time of their common danger / written by Mr. John Corbet ...	Corbet, John, 1620-1680.	1682 (1682)	Wing C6251; ESTC R224970	23,021	37

may to preserve a worthy esteem of the Religion of the Church of England and we humbly supplicate them who have cast us out to consider how they may receive us again upon the account of this common interest which God is our witness we value more than our own particular inlargement 36. A great part of the invectives written against us is made up of the pretended weaknesses and mis-behaviours imputed to those that go under the name of Non-Conformists To this we say first that it is a palpable injury to burden us with the various parties with whom we are now herded by our ejection in the general state of Dissenters and to make us responsible for them all Nor are we justly chargeable with all the absurdities and miscarriages of such as are of our own perswasion But let it here be minded what the Scripture saith in many things we off end all and that none of ours pretend to be more than men in their imperfect state as also that besides the huge multitudes of common hypocrites who by open intemperance unrighteousness and ungodliness notoriously discover the falshood of their profession by which sort in general none are more hated than we are there be many specious hypocrites who are the servants of sin under the shew of greater zeal for God and these will be the blemish of all Religious societies into which they are admitted Now we would not that any detected hypocrisie should be palliated nor that the real faults of the sincere should be unreproved But promiscuously to asperse a whole ●●rt of men known to be strict and serious in their profession and to describe their way in general as a course of hypocrisie or folly is like to do no good but much mischief especially in exposing seriousness in Religion on all sides to the scorn of the irreligious VVhen we look through the big and swelling words of crimination into the matter it self we find little more in it than their meer inconformity blazond with ugly tearms and the names of horrid sins put upon it For the accusers call them proud froward false fierce sullen traytorous seditious clamourous and an unruly generation upon no better proof than that they have said it The farrago of the late cunningly contrived defamations if well examined will be found really to produce against them little more than such weaknesses and swervings as are common to any even the most moralized sort of men Indeed we find this against us if it be material that our Religion hath not made our Plough-men Courtiers nor our Trades-men Philosophers VVe never took it for any part of the work of true grace to make men of rustick wits and breeding to become gentile or to raise our plain people to the accomplishments of the learned Yea such as excell in grace may be very mean and low in the gifts of nature and speak so incongruously as to make themselves ridiculous to proud wits But should Ministers make a scorn of them for defects in this kind and have more value for an ungodly sort that are of finer wits and better breeding If so there is not the same mind in them that was in Christ who said with rejoycing I thank thee O Father Lord of Heaven and Earth that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them to babes Nevertheless for ought we find the people of our perswasion according to their rank and quality in the VVorld are not inferior to others in point of discretion civility good neighbourhood and acceptable conversation among men in all which their Religion is a furtherance and no disadvantage to them VVe vvill not justif●● our favourers in vvhat they are reproveable but then let every one bear his ovvn guilt and let not the innocent be burdened vvithout cause VVe as well as the accusers take notice of divers things in some of ours which are not justifiable and yet not remediable by us in our present state The weaker sort of true Christians are liable to errors and failings that occasion trouble to themselves and others and there be many that have no troublesome differences in Religion because they have no Religion Shall those irreligious persons because they are not troublesome be more esteemed and thought better Christians than serious zealous and conscientious persons because peradventure they give us some trouble through their mistakes The Pastors should not value people by the interest of the flesh but of Christ. To what end have they received their Pastoral Office which is to help the weak and to heal that which is lame that it be not turned out of the way if they cannot bear with such nor restore them in the Spirit of meekness Besides let the breaches offences and exasperations of these times be considered and it cannot seem strange that the weaker sort of sufferers should be more averse than they ought to be from those by whom they suffer especially when in many places their more able teachers are driven from among them by the five mile Act and they are left to such as will heighten their aversation We would our reprovers would help us for their parts to make our people better Whereas some have charged us with cherishing their naughty humours for unworthy ends we thought all might understand that if we basely sought our own profits we might make a better trade of Conformity than of seeking a sorry maintenance by serving the sins of our adherents in this poor condition of outcasts VVe desire not to hold the people as appropriated to our selves but teach them highly to esteem all faithfull Ministers for their works sake and we are glad of their profiting by others as by our selves VVe are not conscious of willfull connivence at their faults VVe humour none in their injurious thoughts of Governors or speaking evil of dignities VVe teach men to fear God and honour the King yea to honour all men and love the Brotherhood to bridle their tongues to be meek and lowly no busie bodies but to do their own work with quietness VVe exhort all to unity with the whole Catholick Church and to be at peace among themselves The truth is there is too much wrath and bitterness railing and intemperate language on all sides and we condemn it as much in those that are among us as in others and are more offended at it in them than in others And we think our accusers have little reason so to accuse and judg us and ours as if they took themselves and theirs to be sinless in this kind The Lord forgive and heal us all and increase the number of the sons of peace and true peace-makers 37. VVhereas a remarkable writer hath published these words we should be reconciled if the Presbyterian Ministers would perswade their people to do what they can do themselves We declare to the world that we heartily embrace these tearms of reconciliation And as we have done already we will not cease

Faith and Sacraments And we greatly esteem the soundness of the Doctrine contained in the Homilies We unfeignedly assent to the sense of his Majesties Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs in that Passage wherein he justly rebukes those that had the hardyness to publish that the Doctrine of the Church against which no man with whom he had conferred had excepted ought to be Reformed as well as the Discipline Be it here observed that some Conformists tell us that they heartily subscribe to the Nine and Thirty Articles taking the liberty of interpretation that is allowed by the Church her self though it be most reasonable to presume that she requires subscription to them as to an Instrument of Peace only And for this the Testimony of an eminent Bishop is cited saying The Church of England doth not define any of these Questions as necessary to be believed necessitate medii or praecepti which is much less but only to bind her Sons for Peace sake not to oppose them But for our parts we believe the very truth of the Doctrine contained in them according to the genuine sense of the words 4. We are not ashamed constantly to affirm that the word of God is the perfect Rule of Divine Faith and VVorship and we apprehend that it is not Lawfull for the Church or any power upon Earth to make new worship of the same common nature and reason with those universal and perpetual Ordinances which the word hath already made Nevertheless particular modes and accidents and mere circumstances of worship which are common to it with all Humane actions are left to the determination of Humane Prudence according to the general Rules of Scripture And we take such determination in those matters to be no addition to God's word and no argument of the defectiveness of his Laws but merely an application of the general Law in particular cases as the Law it self doth warrant A firm agreement of the Non-Conformists with the Church of England in the substantial parts of God's worship hath been long since manifested in their Papers presented to his Majesty We still acknowledge the lawfulness of a set form of Liturgy for matter agreable to God's word and suited to the nature of the several Ordinances and to the necessities of the Church yet the Minister should not be so confined to it as not to make use of his own gifts of Prayer and Exhortation VVe still profess that we are obliged to do all things decently and in order but we are not satisfied in the lawfulness of such Ceremonies as in their designed end seem to draw to near to the significancy and moral efficacy of Sacraments and which have been rejected by many of the Reformed Churches abroad And we believe that God's worship is best managed for the Exterior form thereof when it hath least of Humane mixtures in things unnecessary adjoyned and appropriated thereunto 5. We intirely own that Ministry that God hath set in the Church whether extraordinary and temporary as that of the Apostles or ordinary and perpetual as that of Bishops or Pastors and Teachers VVe believe that it is Christs high prerogative transcending all Humane authority to institute Spiritual Offices how be it there may be Offices circa sacra of man's appointment That Spiritual Officers receive their authority from Christ as the immediate Donor thereof by his Charter though their designation to their Office it not ordinarily immediate without man's interposing and consequently they are Christ's immediate Stewards commissioned by him and accountable to him each one for himself in particular That the power of the Keys for binding and losing for retaining and remitting of sins is essential to a Presbyter or Bishop That Ministerial power is delivered by Ordination as by way of solemn investiture and that each particular Church ought to have their proper Bishop or Pastor one or more residing among them for all Ministerial duties who hath no coercive power upon the bodies or estates of men and may rule them by no other instrument than the Sword of the Spirit which is the word of God working upon their Consciences and their outward standing in the Church 6. The Church being the Lord's heritage and portion ought not to lye common but must be fenced with Christ's Spiritual Discipline that it be not laid wast and lost in a VVorld of Ungodliness breaking in upon it This charge is committed to the Pastors who are accountable for the same to the chief Shepherd By the order of the Church of England all Presbyters were charged till very lately in the form of ordaining Ministers to administer the Doctrine Sacraments and Discipline as the Lord hath ordained and as this Realm hath received the same And that they might the better understand what the Lord hath commanded the Exhortation of St. Paul to the Elders of the Church of Ephesus was appointed to be read to them at the time of their Ordination Take heed to your selves and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you over-seers to rule the Congregation of God which he hath purchased with his own blood Admission into the Church by Baptism is one act of Pastoral Government and includes the judging of the title of the party to be so admitted That which we require in the adult for their visible Church-Membership is their intelligent owning of the Baptismal Covenant by a serious profession there being no notoriety or proof of an invalidating contradiction Other parts of Discipline are the publick admonition of scandalous offenders and injoyning of penitence the Excommunication of the obstinate and the absolution of the penitent This Spiritual Government is not to be managed with external force and terror like the secular power but by Reproof Exhortation and Doctrine that the offender may be convinced and judged in his own Conscience And we take it for a great reproach to Christ's Discipline to tell the VVorld that it is a powerless thing of it self and insufficient to obtain its end unless the temporal Sword inforce it Yet we would not have the Church destitute of the Magistrate's due assistance and encouragement 7. As touching the form of Church Government the Scripture-bishop or Evangelical Pastor we do and ever did acknowledge Likewise we neither do nor ever did renounce the Episcopacy or Presidency which was of an ancient Ecclesiastical Custom as in the time of Ignatius yea or of Cyprian Bishop Ushers model of Government by Bishops and Arch-bishops with their Presbyters was by some of us presented to his Majesty as a ground-work of accommodation King Charles the First in his discourse touching the differences between himself and the two Houses in point of Church Government declares his judgment in these words That he is not against the managing of the Episcopal Presidency in one man by the joynt counsell and consent of many Presbyters but that he had offered to restore it as a fit means to avoid those errors and corruptions and partialities