Fifty Books against the Profane the Jews and the Mahumedans I will not enquire to what purpose for I am very confident none of those did ever read what you have written against them But adde to these your several other Treatises as about Baptism Confirmation Church Government Commonwealth c. Your Books will in all amount to as many Volumes as Tostatus writ concerning whom and all such kind of Writers you once gave this true Character though since you have most unhappily forgotten it I cannot but account all those Tostatus's impudently proud who think the world should read no Bodies Works but theirs Pray Sir read this passage again and compare it with what you have already writ and what as I hear you do yet farther intend to write and then tell me in earnest what you think of your self for here according to your own Words Evidence must decide the Case I think Sir I may say to you with every whit as much truth and candour what you dis-ingeniously reply upon me I have no mind to make you odious nor to open your sin to others but you have opened it to the world and I must open it to you if possibly you may repent and therefore having said this to your self that by setting before you some few of your many failings you might be Humbled and come to a more sober understanding of your self and way I come now to speak something and that very briefly to the Question about Conformity which hath occasioned all this heat betwixt us and in the handling of this I think I may also say as you sometimes did I approve not Tautologies nor a tedious stile nor the heaping up of useless matter and words which Rule in writing though you forget to observe yet I shall keep close to for Truth needs not many words to defend it In the stating of this Question you do your self grant so much that you scarce leave any thing to be either disputed or denyed by those whom you pretend with so much vehemency to oppose For First you grant that we are not to have Communion with a Diocesan Church as such and that we are not to own Diocesan Bishops Secondly You allow that we are not to have Communion with Persecutors nor with such as have consented to our Silencing Thirdly You affirm that we are not to communicate with Parish Churches only nor with all of them and particularly not with such whose Pastours are through insufficiency Heresie and Impiety Intolerable And this you tell us was your own Practise For you say you resolved if you lived where was an intollerable Minister you would not hear him nor come near him so as to encourage him in his undertaking of that Sacred Office All this and more of this nature which you assert being granted I scarce see what it is that you contend for or so earnestly declaim against since from these Grounds Separation at this day may easily be justified For First every Parish Church is a Part of the Diocesan and if a Diocesan Church as such is not to be communicated with then a Parish Church as such is to be seperated from since there is the same Reason of the Parts as of the Whole And you must find out a new Logick before you can prove that if the Whole be Corrupt any of the Parts are clean and fit for our Communion Secondly a Parish Minister is in that station and office but a Servant of the Diocesan Bishop and therefore rightly called a Curate and if we may not own as you grant the Bishop I think it will necessarily follow that his Substitute and Curate hath no reason to expect any Respect from us We doe not use in other cases to Regard the Man when we think it a duty to despise the Master Thirdly If Persecutors are not to be communicated with nor such as have consented to our Silencing which you also allow though I could wish you had proved it better then by the obscure and disputable Example of Martin then I think very few if any of the Parish Ministers but must even upon this account also be separated from since either by Open Consent or else by an Vndoing and Pernicious silence they have all made themselves guilty of that grievous sin There being but little difference in the sight of God between the persecuting of Brethren ourselves and by not sharply reproving it seeming to approve of it in others Lastly admitting there are some Worthy and able men among the Parish Ministers which for my own part I believe never a whit the more because you affirm it yet this we must say that their sin is great in submitting to so undue a way of entring into the Ministry and therefore we both forbear our selves and warn all others not to hear them because we cannot think our Lord Christ ever sent such to Preach in his Name who directly and by a solemn Oath have Renounced their Christian liberty under pretence of Preaching Christ and are indeed nothing else as to the whole discharge and exercise of their Office but Servants of men which we have already fully learned from the Apostles is altogether inconsistent with being Servants of Christ Galatians 1.10 1 Corin. 7.23 and therefore as such we cannot own them For the question is not as you weakly and insignificantly word it Whither a Defective Faulty True Church may ordinarily or at least sometimes he joyned with but whither a defective faulty imposing Church is not to be separated from This we affirm Because First we know not how else to preserve our Christian Liberty which it is an indispensible duty to maintain but by separating from those who would unduly take it from us Secondly Being present where those things are used in the Worship of God which God hath not commanded This would involve us in the guilt and contagion of them nor doe we believe however we have your Word for the contrary the Lord will otherwise interpret it since he hath so strictly charged us To keep far from a false matter and not to partake in other mens sins Lastly whatever pretences may be used as it is easie to write Declamations for the keeping of Peace yet to speak strictly and so as to satisfie conscience Peace is but ill bought if we must purchase it at so dear a rate as with the loss of Truth And this Truth concerning the sole Sovereign power of our Lord Christ in appointing all matters of his Worship He being the Lord of his House and Faithful in all things as Moses Heb. 5. this is a point so necessary to be maintained and so utterly inconsistent with the supposing that any thing is to be Obtruded which he hath not Commanded that we dare not allow our selves in the practise of any thing which may prejudice that Fundamental And we judge we have sufficient warrant from what the Apostles did in a like case Acts 15.24 For if
be guilty himself of uttering many Falsities both of my self and of others I will not conceive my self concern'd with what he speaks Part. 2. p. 31. touching his Dispute with Mr. Brown An Army Chaplain which I never was about the Godhead of Christ which I ever owned That Person was another of the same name whom I never knew and his Principles so far as I have understood them opposing the Doctrine of the Gospel I utterly detest so that all wherein I may by any be supposed to be concerned is what he mentions pag. 58 59. Part. 2 d. First That I am the Author of that Treatise mentioned by him as written against Mr. Tombe against the lawfulnesse of Communion with Parish Churches this is more than Mr. Baxter or any of his Informers can prove and were he able yet I think his mentioning of it when in that place there is not the least occa Wsion for it is scarce becoming those Principles of Love and Charity he is so great a pretender to Whether I writ the Book or not I conceive it not requisite to give him an account for I should be unwilling to trust one with a secret who will it seems when the humor takes him publish to the World what he cannot dares not swear is true although occasion be thereby given to such as are no backward to lay hold upon every such opportunity utterly to ruine the Person of whom he reports it I shall only add that whoever the Author was I see no cause to disown any thing considerable in that Book and when Mr. Baxter shall undertake a through discussion of the Arguments contained in it not like a Dictator but as an humble modest Christian I will either publickly Recant what I have now affirmed or in meeknesse debate it with him provided he doth more candidly represent Arguments than he hath done many of yours particularly that about Idolatry in which you give the general sense of all the Protestants almost that have writ upon the second Command who do universally reduce to it as Forbidden there whatever is added or devised by men in the worship of God So that how the present Conformises can be excused from some degree of Idolatry remains to be better proved than to call all those that fear this of them Ignorant Rash and self-conceited This in another would be Railing perhaps Mr. Baxter thinks it Rethorick Religion I am sure it is not nor will it be accounted so by those that conceive of God as Holy and Jealous and therefore dare not join in any thing which he hath not commanded lest he should charge folly and sin upon them for doing ignorantly they know not what More may be said but in this Point I shall leave Mr. Baxter to you and if you do not take notice of his perverting his Adversaries arguments and imposing upon them a strange new sense of his own if you do not reprove him for his vanity in making men of straw and then unmercifully fighting against them as if he took a pleasure in demolishing the work of his own hands if you do not observe and call him to an account for this you will much wrong your Cause and deceive my expectation of you To come more closely to my self He informs us that I am the Author or Publisher of a Book concerning the Experiences and strange work of God upon a Gentlewoman in Worcester and that I am uncontrouledly affirmed so to be Give me leave to tell you Sir that I cannot but wonder at the unparallel'd confidence of the man should he be any longer suffered to take this liberty without controul I might be supposed for ought I see to cumber the World with as many Books perhaps to as little purpose as some body else For indeed Sir in two lines there are no lesse than two untruths I may I hope use Mr. Baxters word published to the VVorld concerning me The First That I am the Author and Publisher of that Book which is affirmed by him against the most notorious evidence in the VVorld to the contrary The Author Mr. Timothy Jordain a precious servant of the Lord and now at rest with him subscribed his Name to the Book and in the Epistle prefixed owns and avows himself to be the Author and Publisher of it and all that I did was being desired to write an Epistle wherein I acquaint the Reader that I am not the Author of it but only did joyn in Testimony to signifie what was Recorded in the ensuing Treatise was true The second Vntruth is That I am uncontrouledly affirmed so to be when I believe Mr. Baxter hath never a second in the VVorld that either will or can affirm it As for the Book it self and the matter of fact contained in it I never yet met with any judicious sober Christian that hath seriously perused it who durst adventure to pronounce either of the whole or any considerable part of it that it was an effect of Melancholy Sir one of the great designs of the Devil at this day seems to be to drive men into direct Atheism and there are many too just complaints of its prodigious encrease in the Nation Whether this decrying of experiences this slighting the work of Gods Spirit in the soul the crying out that these things are but the effects of Melancholy be not the ready way to make all supernatural conversion derided and the whole Mystery of Godliness contemned I leave it with you to consider That I was this Gentlewomans Instructer in the Fifth Monarchy Principle and that I was very zealous for it are two more untruths For I was neither zealous for that Principle nor her Instructer but I did at that time ignorantly oppose her in it though indeed now it is my opinion that there is a Glorious State of the Church yet to come before the last end of all things when all Oppression and Oppressors shall cease and every thing of man shall be laid down in a subserviency io the interest of Christ and the Kingdoms of the World shall become his which point I am ready to discourse with Mr. Baxter when ever he shall think fit to doe it He is also lamentably mistaken in the account he gives of the Lords dealing with the Gentlewoman of which I shall give you a few remarks He tells us First that she was suddainly moved to come to hear him Preach whereas she went having been long sick after Child bearing in the accustomed formall manner that others were wont to do Secondly That she had such convictions from his Sermon for so he seems to intimate that she went home resolved for an holy Life whereas she heard little or nothing of his Sermon it was the Reading of the Text Rom. 6.21 that struck her heart yet she wrestled against her convictions and would gladly have got from under them and for that end went into the Company of some friends thinking to forget them Thirdly that she
such an abuse and you say you will not receive it because such a Learned and good man was of another mind you sin in an high degree against God for you oppose the credit of man to the Authority of Gods word In this case we must remember what the Apostle saith Gal. 8 9. Thirdly we are not to rest in the judgement and practise of those good men that have lived before us for as it is with the particular members of the Church so it is with the whole Church it must grow and encrease in grace and knowledge Though Asa was a good King and Reformed much in his first days yet Jehosaphat Reformed more 2 Chron. 17.6 and Josiah went further then either Jehosaphat or any other that had been before him 2 Kings 23.25 And whereas you mention the Holiness and Learning of those Non Conformists thereby to deterr us from going beyond their Line Measure I may reply in that same worthy Authors words Though they were Holy and Learned Men yet it may well be that the Lord hath revealed that to his servants now which they saw not for the Lord hath oft done so David had more understanding than his Teachers had Psal 19.99 and the Disciples of Christ saw many truths which many of the Prophets though they were it may be holier then they did not see Luke 10.24 Many points of Gods Truth are revealed now even to Babes what the Patriarchs and Prophets though Holy Men and highly in Gods favour saw not He adviseth therefore rest not so much on the Judgment advice and example of the best men but examine them by the Scriptures for good men have oft proved Satans instruments to deceive others as Peters example misled Barnabas Gal. 2.12.14 Thus far and much more to the same purpose saith that excellent Author whose words because I thought they might be of weight to you I chose to transcribe at large rather then to say the same things in other words of mine own To the same purpose Mr. Gee when he was urged with the authority of Calvin Bucer Pareus c. who all give an other interpretation then that which he follows in his exposition of Rom. 13. Replyes thus The opinion or averment of man even of the best for Learning and Piety in a Case of Conscience or in the enquiry what is the sense of such and such a Scripture or such a Divine Precept is not an Oracle neither will it pass for such in any controversie The truth is we are very prone to attribute some authority to it and to urge it upon others so far as we find it concurrent with our own perswasions but who is he that will be prejudged or concluded by it contrary to the opinion that he hath received or in what he is otherwise doubtful The words of that Learned Man may be applyed to the present Case for Sir you know how much you have departed from the Doctrine of those Famous Non-Conformists in many the most material points of Religion and therefore cannot justly be allowed in this to make use of their Authority It will I suppose be easily granted that it is a very improper thing for any to seem to magnifie so much the Opinion of those worthy men as to press it now upon their Brethren in the business of Ceremonies and Conformity when they themselves refuse to follow them in their other more sound and substantial Doctrines To give you a few Instances First The former Nonconformists held Armenianisme that is the Doctrines of of Free-will in the things of God of Vniversal Grace and Vniversal Redemption to be so Fundamental and dangerous an Error that they have called it a Beelzebub-Error and Another Gospel But you do not only speak favourably of it but also proudly tell us that of you are very confident not one of many hundreds who speak against Communion with Arminians do understand what Arminianisme is As if the difference were either so small that it was not worth the while to oppose it or else so abstruse and difficult that plain Christians could not easily come to know it Truly Sir I acknowledge my self the meanest of my brethren and yet I think who understands the necessity of being born again and renewed by the Spirit of God must needs understand his own Free will hath not the least power to receive the things of God and whoever doth this knows very well what Arminianisme is though perhaps he may be ignorant of the Name which is not at all material in the Controversie and indeed I wonder you can so confidently plead for Communion with Arminians and that with an c. too when you formerly told us That in the points of Predestination Redemption Free-will Effectual grace Perseverance and Assurance of Salvation the Jesuites and Arminians do teach the same Doctrine Sir I hope you do not intend to enlarge your Communion so far as to take in the Iesuites also if you do pray deal clearly with us and tell us so and do not delude us with an unlimited and untelligible etcetera Secondly The former Nonconformists did so fully hold that the Scripture was to be believed upon it's own authority and Testimony that they all unanimously affirm It is a dangerous thing not to rest in the authority of Scripture not to count it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But you Jesuite-like for I am sorry ◠cannot give it a milder term are not afraid to say The Scripture tells us not sufficiently and particularly which Books in it self are Canonical nor what various Readings are the right nor whether every Text be brought to us incorrupted So that in effect you do resolve the credit of the Holy Scripture into the Truth of Church-History which words are so contrary to the true Protestant Doctrine so derogatory from the Self-evidencing Light and Divine Authority of the VVord of God contained in the Scripture and so fully agreeing with the Doctrine of the Jesuites in this Point that all which you have writ pretendedly for the Defence of the Scripture when indeed you betray it is not able to make any tolerable satisfaction What need I mention more as that the Former Nonconformists thought there was no possibility of Salvation for the Papists no more than for a Samaritan or an Idolater but you tell us that you confesse you affect not the Honour of that Orthodoxousness And in one of your Books if I am not mistaken in my Collections you seem to affirm at least strongly imply that a man may be saved in any Religion that lives morally though he knows not Christ which is as Mr. Hildersham calls it a damnable conceit since it renders the whole mystery of Salvation by Christ alone vain and ineffectual Add to this the Former Conformists said The filth of Nature cannot be sufficiently spoken of nay no Angel can sufficiently point out the mystery of sin and filthiness of nature But you advise us to take