Liturgy and Ceremonies we most humbly represent unto your Majesty 1. First For Church-Government that although upon just Reasons we do dissent from that Ecclesiastical Hierarchy or Prelacy disclaimed in the Covenant as it was stated and exercised in these Kingdoms yet we do not nor ever did renounce the true Ancient and Primitive Presidency as it was ballanced and managed by a due Commixtion of Presbyters therewith as a fit means to avoid Corruptions Partiality Tyranny and other Evils which may be incident to the Administration of one single Person Which kind of attempered Pesidency if it shall be your Majesty's grave Wisdom and gracious Moderation be in such a manner constituted as that the forementioned and other like Evils may be certainly prevented we shall humbly submit thereunto And in Order to an happy Accommodation in this weighty Business we desire humbly to offer unto your Majesty some of the Particulars which we conceive were amiss in the Episcopal Government as it was practised before the Year 1640. 1. The great Extent of the Bishops Diocess which was much too large for his own personal Inspection wherein he undertook a Pastoral Charge over the Souls of all those within his Bishoprick which must needs be granted to be too heavy a Burthen for any one Man's Shoulders The Pastoral Office being a Work of Personal Ministration and Trust and that of the highest Concernment to the Souls of the People for which they are to give an Account to Christ. 2. That by Reason of this Disability to discharge their Duty and Trust personally the Bishops did depute the Administration of much of their Trust even in matters of spiritual Cognizance to Commissaries Chancellors and Officials whereof some were Secular Persons and could not administer that Power which originally appertaineth to the Pastors of the Church 3. That those Bishops who affirm the Episcopal Office to be a distinct Order by Divine Right from that of the Presbyter did assume the sole Power of Ordination and Jurisdiction to themselves 4. That some of the Bishops exercised an Arbitrary Power as by sending forth their Books of Articles in their Visitations and therein unwarrantably enquiring into several things and swearing the Church-Wardens to present accordingly So also by many Innovations and Ceremonies imposed upon Ministers and People not required by Law and by suspending Ministers at their Pleasure For reforming of which Evils we humbly crave leave to offer unto your Majesty 1. The late most Reverend Primate of Ireland his Reduction of Episcopacy unto the Form of Synodical Government received in the ancient Church as a Ground-work towards an Accommodation and fraternal Agreement in this Point of Ecclesiastical Government Which we rather do not only in regard of his eminent Piety and singular Ability as in all other Parts of Learning so in that especially of the Antiquities of the Church but also because therein Expedienâ— are offered for healing these Grievances And in order to the same end we further humbly desire that the Suffragans or Corepiscopi mentioned in the Primate's Reduction may be chosen by the respective Synods and by that Election be sufficiently authorized to discharge their Trust. That the Associations may not be so large as to make the Discipline impossible or to take off the Ministers from the rest of their necessary Imployments That no Oaths or Promises of Obedience to the Bishops nor any unnecessary Subscriptions or Engagements be made necessary to Ordination Institution Induction Ministration Communion or Immunities of Ministers they being responsible for any Transgression of the Law And that no Bishops nor any Ecclesiastical Governors may at any time exercise their Government by their own private Will or Pleasure but only by such Rules Canons and Constitutions as shall be hereafter by Act of Parliament ratified and established and that sufficient Provision be made to secure both Ministers and People against the Evils of Arbitrary Government in the Church 2. Concerning the Liturgy 1. We are satisfied in our Judgments concerning the Lawfulness of a Liturgy or Form of publick Worship provided that it be for the matter agreeable unto the Word of God and fitly suited to the Nature of the several Ordinances and the necessity of the Church nether too tedious in the whole nor composed of too short Prayers unmeet Repetitions or Responsals nor too dissonant from the Liturgies of other Reformed Churches nor too rigorously imposed nor the Minister so confined thereunto but that he may also make use of those Gifts for Prayer and Exhortation which Christ hath given him for the Service and Edification of the Church 2. That inasmuch as the Book of Common Prayer hath in it many things that are justly offensive and need amendment hath been long discontinued and very many both Ministers and People Persons of Pious Loyal and Peaceable Minds are therein greatly dissatisfied whereupon if it be again imposed will inevitably follow sad Divisions and widening of the Breaches which your Majesty is now endeavouring to heal We do most humbly offer to your Majesty's Wisdom that for preventing so great Evil and for setling the Church in Unity and Peace some Learned Godly and Moderate Divines of both Perswasions indifferently chosen may be imployed to Compile such a Form as is before described as much as may be in Scripture words or at least to Revise and effectually Reform the old together with an Addition or Insertion of some other varying Forms in Scripture phrase to be used at the Minister's Choice of which Variety and Liberty there be Instances in the Book of Common Prayer 3. Concerning Ceremonies We humbly represent that we hold our selves obliged in every part of Divine Worship to do all things decently in order and to Edification and are willing therein to be determined by Authority in such things as being meerly Circumstantial are common to Humane Actions and Societies and are to be ordered by the Light of Nature and Christian Prudence according to the General Rules of the Word which are always to be observed And as to divers Ceremonies formerly retained in the Church of England We do in all Humility offer unto your Majesty these ensuing Considerations That the Worship of God is in it self perfect without having such Ceremonies affixed thereto That the Lord hath declared himself in the Matters that concern his Worship to be a Iealous God and this Worship of his is certainly then most pure and most agreeable to the Simplicity of the Gospel and to his holy and jealous Eyes when it hath least of Humane Admixtures in things of themselves confessedly unnecessary adjoyned and appropriated thereunto upon which account many faithful Servants of the Lord knowing his Word to be the perfect Rule of Faith and Worship by which they must judge of his Acceptance of their Services and must be themselves judged have been exceeding fearful of varying from his Will and of the danger of displeasing him by Additions or Detractions in such Duties wherein they must
Officers in the Court Freemen in Cities and Corporate Towns Masters and Fellows of Colledges in the Universities c. are required at their Admission into their several respective places to give Oaths for well and truly performing their several respective Duties their liableness to punishment in case of Non-performance accordingly notwithstanding Neither doth it seem reasonable that such Persons as have themselves with great severity prescribed and exacted antecedent Conditions of their Communion not warranted by Law should be exempted from the tye of such Oaths and Subscriptions as the Laws require § 17. 4. We agree that the Bishops and all Ecclesiastical Governours ought to exercise their Government not Arbitrarily but according to Law 5. And for Security against such Arbitrary Government and Innovations the Laws are and from time to time will be sufficient provision Concerning Liturgy § 18. A Liturgy or Form of Publick Worship being not only by them acknowledged lawful but by us also for the preservation of Unity and Uniformity deemed necessary we esteem the Liturgy of the Church of England contained in the Book of Common Prayer and by Law established to be such a one as is by them desired according to the Qualifications here mentioned 〈◊〉 1. For Matter agreeable to the Word of God which we 〈◊〉 all other lawful Ministers within the Church of England have or by the Laws ought to have attested by our Personal Subscription 2. Fitly suited to the Nature of the several Ordinances and the Necessities of the Church 3. Nor too tedious in the whole It 's well known that some Mens Prayers before and after Sermon have been usually not much shorter and sometimes much longer than the whole Church Service 4. Nor the Prayers too short The Wisdom of the Church both in ancient and latter times hath thought it a fitter means for relieving the Infirmities of the meaner sort of People which are the major part of most Congregations to contrive several Petitions into sundry shorter Collects or Prayers than to comprehend them altogether in a continued stile or without interruption 5. Nor the Repetitions unmeet There are Examples of the like Repetition frequent in the Psalms and other parts of Scripture Not to mention the unhandsome Tautologies that oftentimes happen and can scarce be avoided in the Extemporary and undigested Prayers that are made especially by Persons of meaner Gifts 6. Nor the Responsals Which if impartially considered are pious Ejaculations fit to stir up Devotion and good Symbols of Conformity betwixt the Minister and the People and have been of very ancient practise and continuance in the Church 7. Nor too dissonant from the Liturgies of other Reformed Churches The nearer both their Forms and ours come to the Liturgy of the Ancient Greek and Latin Churches the less are they liable to the Objections of the Common Enemy To which Liturgies if the Form used in our Church be more agreeable than those of other Reformed Churches and that it were at all needful to make a Change in either it seemeth to be much more reasonable that their Form should be endeavoured to be brought to a nearer Conformity with ours than ours with theirs Especially the Form of our Liturgy having been so signally approved by sundry of the most Learned Divines of the Reformed Churches abroad as by very many Testimonies in their Writings may appear And some of the Compilers thereof have Sealed the Protestant Religion with their Blood and have been by the most Eminent Persons of those Churches esteemed as Martyrs for the same § 19. As for that which followeth Neither can we think that too rigorously imposed which is imposed by Law and that with no more rigour than is necessary to make the Imposition effectual otherwise it could be of no use but to beget and nourish factions Nor are Ministers denied the use and exercise of their Gifts in praying before and after Sermon Although such praying be but the continuance of a Custom of no great Antiquity and grown into Common use by Sufferance only without any other Foundation in the Laws or Canons and ought therefore to be used by all sober and godly Men with the greatest inoffensiveness and moderation possible § 20. If any thing in the Established Liturgy shall be made appear to be justly offensive to sober Persons we are not at all unwilling that the same should be changed The discontinuance thereof we are sure was not our Fault But we find by experience that the use of it is very much desired where it is not and the People generally are very well satisfied with it where it is used which we believe to be a great Conservatory of the chief Heads of Christian Religion and of Piety Charity and Loyalty in the Hearts of the People We believe that the difuse thereof for sundry late years hath been one of the great Causes of the sad Divisions in the Church and that the restoring the same will be by by God's blessing a special means of making up the Breach There being as we have great cause to believe many Thousands more in the Nation that desire it than dislike it Nevertheless we are not against revising of the Liturgy by such discreet Persons as his Majesty shall think fit to imploy therein Of Ceremonies § 21. We conceived there needs no more to be said for justifying the Imposition of the Ceremonies by Law established then what is contained in the beginning of this Section which giveth a full and satisfactory Answer to all that is alledged or objected in the following Discourse which is for the most part rather Rhetorical than Argumentative Inasmuch as lawful Authority hath already determined the Ceremonies in question to be decent and orderly and to serve to Edification and consequently to be agreeable to the General Rules of the Word We acknowledge the Worship of God to be in it self perfect in regard of Essentials which hindereth not but that it may be capable of being improved to us by addition of Circumstantials in order to Decency and Edification As the Lord hath declared himself Jealous in Matters concerning the Substance of his Worship so hath he left the Church at liberty for Circumstantials to determine concerning Particulars according to Prudence as occasion shall require so as the foresaid General Rules be still observed And therefore the imposing and using indifferent Ceremonies is not varying from the Will of God nor is there made thereby any addition to or detraction from the holy Duties of God's Worship Nor doth the same any way hinder the Communication of God's Grace or Comfort in the performance of such Duties § 22. The Ceremonies were never esteemed Sacraments or imposed as such nor was ever any Moral efficacy ascribed to them nor doth the significancy without which they could not serve to Edification import or infer any such thing § 23. Ceremonies have been retained by most of the Protestant Churches abroad which have rejected Popery and have been approved by the
Vera Effigies RICHARDI BAXTERI Ministri Iesu Christi Reliquiae Baxterianae OR Mr. RICHARD BAXTERS NARRATIVE OF The most Memorable Passages OF HIS LIFE AND TIMES Faithfully Publish'd from his own Original Manuscript By MATTHEW SYLVESTER Mihi quidem nulli satis Eruditi videntur quibus nostra ignota sunt Cic. de Finib lib. 1. Quibus ergò rectè dem non praetermittam Sic habeto me cum illo re saepe communicatâ de illius ad te sententiâ atque authoritate Scribere Cic. Epist. 7. ad Lentul Lib. 1. LONDON Printed for T. Parkhurst I. Robinson I. Lawrence and I. Dunton M DC XC VI. TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL Sir Henry Ashhurst Bar. SIR I Am not a little sensible of the great Obligations you laid upon the Reverend Author of this following Narrative of which neither was his Sense small 'T is well known to me and others how great a Veneration he had for your deceased Father whom he took to be one of the liveliest Instances and Emblems of Primitive Christianity that ever he was acquainted with Neither am I ignorant of the very great Respects he deservedly bore to your Self and Family The remembrance of your so firm and generous adherence to him in the Day of his Trial and Distress seems to me greatly to justifie your Title to the Dedication of this Account of the Person and Labours which you so greatly valued so publickly own'd He took your resolute Appearance for him as a delightful demonstration of your great Respects to his great Master and for the same Master's sake unto himself He ventur'd his All for God and you expos'd your Self for him to the severely trying Entertainments which he met with in open Court from Men of Place and Figure in that Day wherein their indecent Carriages reflected great Honour both on him and you tho' not a little Disreputation was thereby contracted to themselves Had not the Reverend Author plac'd great Confidence in you so great a Trust as his last Will and Testament repos'd in you had never been your Lot To be Executor to two such Excellent Persons as Mr. Baxter and Mr. Boyle fixes great Honour upon your Name and cannot but raise great Expectations in the World from you of answering that Character which it appears you had obtain'd with two Persons of so great Eminence But Sir Give me leave to tell you that the Eye of God is upon you and that his Claims and Expectations must be answer'd by you Men judge charitably but God judges of us as we are indeed God cannot be deceiv'd Men may Pardon me if I add what he once said to me concerning my own self Sir I think I know you but I am not sure I do The Word came close to me and it may possibly be of use to you it may awaken us both intimately to consider to whose Iudgment we all must stand The Lord fulfil in you and your hopeful Issue all the good pleasure of his Goodness and the Work of Faith Labour of Love and Patience of Hope with power so as to heighten and compleat your Faithfulness and Figure in your Generation This is the Prayer and Hope of Right Worshipful Yours Humbly Thankfully and faithfully in the best Services and fastest Bonds whilst MATT. SYLVESTER THE PREFACE TO THE READER § I. I Am very sensible that this Memorial of Mr. Baxter and his Historical Accounts of the Times which went over him have been long expected and much desired by the World And the greater the impatience the more severely the delay is like to be resented But he that well considers 1. How confusedly a great quantity of loose Papers relating thereunto came into my hands all which were to be sorted and reduced to their proper places 2. How much other work was then incumbent on me 3. How little my indisposed and weak hand can write not an Octavo page in a competently great character in an hour 4. How many uncomfortable Providences have since diverted me and could not but do so 5. How much time the orderly disposal of his bequeathed Library to young poor Students according to his Injunctions on me took up 6. How much time my Ministerial Work required together with the unavoidable removal of my Habitation and Meeting Place and the Setling of my Congregation thereupon He that I say well considers these things and more that I could say were it expedient so long to detain the Reader from the more profitable and delightful Entertainment of the Book it self will at least abate his Censures if not quite lay them by However I must and shall submit my self unto what Constructions the Reader shall think fit to make of my Apology for its delay so long § II. As to the Authour of the ensuing Treatise he appears Par negotio as being very Sagacious Observant Impartial and Faithful The Things here treated on were Things transacted in his day quaeque ipse vidit Et quorum pars magna fuit Much he knew and felt and was himself actively and passively concerned in and the rest he was inquisitive after observant of and acquainted with And being himself an hater of false History he gave the greater heed and diligence to enter into the depths and springs of what was in his day upon the Theatre of Action Much he must be inform'd of by others necessarily and yet he was greatly averse from the reception of things as true upon too loose reports He fanned Intelligence and was not easily imposed upon in things of moment Credulity Rashness Partialicy and Persidiousness Ignorance and Injudiciousness do ill become Historians Quis nescit primam historiae Legem esse me quid falsi dicere audeat deinde ne quid veri non audeat Nequa suspicio gratiae sit in scribendo nequa simultatis Cic. de Orat. lib. II. and he had reason for this thought in that as the Lord Bacon well observes the Examples of our Ancestors the Vicissitudes of Affairs the Grounds of Civil Prudence and Mens Names and Reputations do depend upon the Knowledge the Judiciousness and Faithfulness of Historians Diligent Searches deep and wise Thoughts faithful Representations and Reports with honest Intentions and generous Designs and Aims at Publick Good render Mens Histories of Things and Persons as influential upon others pleasant and advantageous Every one is not fit to tell the World the History of his own Life and Times Who liv'd therein what Post and Station Trust and Business was their assigned Province what Characters they bore through their deportment therein what were the regent Principles the genuine Spirit and main End and Scope of what they did what they pretendedly or really design'd what was the Conduct Tendency and Result of their Consults and Actions wherein they truly failed and how and why Such things as these call for the greatest Clearness Freedom and Sincerity Pains and Judgment and I may add a great Concern for Publick Good which is the loveliest Property and clearest
Worship to be unlawful to them that have not Liberty to do better Discipline I wanted in the Church and saw the sad Effects of its neglect But I did not then understand that the very Frame of Dioceâ—â—n Prelacy excluded it but thought it had been only the Bishops personal neglects Subscription I began to judge unlawful and saw that I sinned by temerity in what I did For though I could still use the Common Prayer and was not yet against Diocesans yet to Subscribe Ex Animo That there is nothing in the three Books contrary to the Word of God was that which if it had been to do again I durst not do So that Subscription and the Cross in Baptism and the promâ—â—â—â— giving of the Lord's Supper to all Drunkards Swearers Fornicators Scorners at Godliness c. that are not Excommunicate by a Bishop or Chancellor that is out of their Acquaintance These three were all that I now became a Nonconformist to But most of this I kept to my self I daily disputed against the Nonconformists for I found their Censoriousness and Inclinations towards Seperation in the weaker sort of them to be a Threatning Evil and contrary to Christian Charity on one side as Persecution is on the other Some of them that pretended to much Learning engaged me in Writing to dispute the Case of Kneeling at the Sacraments which I followed till they gave it over I laboured continually to repress their Censoriousness and the boldness and bitterness of their Language against the Bishops and to reduce them to greater Patience and Charity But I found that their Sufferings from the Bishops were the great Impediment of my Success and that he that will blow the Coals must not wonder if some Sparks do fly in his face and that to persecute Men and then call them to Charity is like whipping Children to make them give over Crying The stronger sort of Christians can bear Mulcts and Imprisonments and Reproaches for obeying God and Conscienceâ— without abating their Charity or their Weakness to their Persecutors but to expect this from all the weak and injudicious the young and passionate is against all Reason and Experience I saw that he that will be loved must love and he that rather chooseth to be more feared than loved must expect to be hated or loved but diminutively And he that will have Children must be a Father and he that will be a Tyrant must be contented with Slaves § 20. In this Town of Dudley I lived not a Twelve-month in much comfort amongst a poor tractable People lately famous for Drunkenness but commonly more ready to hear God's Word with submission and reformation than most Places where I have come so that having since the Wars set up a Monthly Lecture there the Church was usually as much crowded within and at the Windows as ever I saw any London Congregations Partly through the great willingness of the People and partly by the exceeding populousness of the Country where the Woods and Commons are planted with Nailers Scithe-Smiths and other Iron-Labourers like a continued Village And here in my weakness I was obliged to thankfulness to God for a convenient Habitation and the tender care of Mr. R. Foley's Wife a Genlewoman of such extraordinary Meekness and Patience with sincere Piety as will not easily be believed by those that knew her not who died about two years after § 21. When I had been but three quarters of a year at Dudley I was by God's very gracious Providence invited to Bridgnorth the second Town of Shropshire to preach there as Assistant to the worthy Pastor of that place As soon as I heard the place described I perceived it was the fittest for me for there was just such Employment as I desired and could submit to without that which I scrupled and with some probability of peace and quietness The Minister of the place was Mr. William Madstard a grave and severe Ancient Divine very honest and conscionable and an excellent Preacher but somewhat afflicted with want of Maintenance and much more with a dead-hearted unprofitable People The Town Maintenance being inconsiderable he took the Parsonage of Oldbury near the Town a Village of scarce twenty Houses and so desired me to be one half day in the Town and the other at the Village but my Lot after fell out to be mostly in the Town The place is priviledged from all Episcopal Jurisdiction except the Archbishop's Triennial Visitation There are six Parishes together two in the Town and four in the Country that have all this Priviledge At Bridgnorth they have an Ordinary of their own who as an Official keepeth a constant Ecclesiastical Court having the Jurisdiction of those six Parishes This reverend and good man Mr. Madstard was both Pastor and Official the Place usually going along with that of the Preacher of that Town though separable By which means I had a very full Congregation to preach to and a freedom from all those things which I scrupled or thought unlawful I often read the Common Prayer before I preached both on the Lord's-days and Holy-days but I never administred the Lord's Supper nor ever Baptized any Child with the Sign of the Cross nor ever wore the Surplice nor was ever put to appear at any Bishop's Court. But the People proved a very ignorant dead-hearted People the Town consisting too much of Inns and Alehouses and having no general Trade to imploy the Inhabitants in which is the undoing of great Towns so that though through the great Mercy of God my first Labours were not without Success to the Conversion of some ignorant careless Sinners unto God and were over-valued by those that were already regardful of the Concernments of their Souls yet were they not so successful as they proved afterwards in other places Though I was in the fervour of my Affections and never any where preached with more vehement desires of Mens Conversion and I account my Liberty with that measure of Success which I there had to be a Mercy which I can never be sufficiently thankful for yet with the generality an Applause of the Preacher was most of the success of the Sermon which I could hear of and their tipling and ill company and dead-heartedness quickly drowned all § 22. Whilst I here exercised the first Labours of my Ministry two several Assaults did threaten my Expulsion The one was a new Oath which was made by the Convocation commonly called The Et caetera Oath For it was to swear us all That we would never Consent to the Alteration of the present Government of the Church by Archbishops Bishops Deans Arch-deacons c. This cast the Ministers throughout England into a Division and new Disputes Some would take the Oath and some would not Those that were for it said That Episcopacy was Iure Divino and also settled by a Law and therefore if the Sovereign Power required it we might well swear that we would never consent to
very young but that could not be helpt because there were no other to be had The Parliament could not make Men Learned nor Godly but only put in the learnedest and ablest that they could have And though it had been to be wisht that they might have had leisure to ripen in the Universities yet many of them did as Ambrose teach and learn at once so successfully as that they much increased in Learning themselves whilst they prosited others and proportionably more than many in the Universities do § 118. To return from this Digression to the Proceedings of Cromwell when he was made Lord Protector he had the Policy not to detect and exasperate the Ministers and others that consented not to his Government having seen what a stir the Engagement had before made but he let Men live quietly without putting any Oaths of Fidelity upon them except his Parliaments for those must not enter the House till they had sworn Fidelity to him The Sectarian Party in his Army and elsewhere he chiefly trusted to and pleased till by the Peoples submission and quietness he thought himself well settled And then he began to undermine them and by degrees to work them out And though he had so often spoken for the Anabaptists now he findeth them so heady and so much against any settled Government and so set upon the promoting of their Way and Party that he doth not only begin to blame their unruliness but also designeth to settle himself in the Peoples Favour by suppressing them In Ireland they were grown so high that the Soldiers were many of them re-baptized as the way to Preferment and those that opposed them they crusht with much uncharitable Fierceness To suppress these he sent thither his Son Henry Cromwell who so discountenanced the Anabaptists as yet to deal civilly by them repressing their Insolencies but not abusing them or dealing hardly with them promoting the Work of the Gospel and setting up good and sober Ministers and dealing civilly with the Royallists and obliging all so that he was generally beloved and well spoken of And Major General Ludlow who headed the Anabaptists in Ireland was fain to draw in his head In England Cromwell connived at his old Friend Harrison while he made himself the Head of the Anabaptists and Fanaticks here till he saw it would be an applauded acceptable thing to the Nation to suppress him and then he doth it easily in a trice and maketh him contemptible who but yesterday thought himself not much below him The same he doth also as easily by Lambert and layeth him by § 119. In these times especially since the Rump reigned sprang up five Sects at least whose Doctrines were almost the same but they sell into several Shapes and Names 1. The Vanists 2. The Seekers 3. The Ranters 4. The Quakers 5. The Behmenists 1. The Vanists for I know not by what other Name to make them known who were Sir Henry Vane's Disciples first sprang up under him in new England when he was Governor there But their Notions were then raw and undigested and their Party quickly confounded by God's Providence as you may see in a little Book of Mr. Tho. Welds of the Rise and Fall of Antinomianism and Familism in New-England where their Opinions and these Providences are recorded by him that was a reverend Minister there One Mrs. Dyer a chief Person of the Sect did first bring forth a Monster which had the Parts of almost all sorts of living Creatures some Parts like Man but most ugly and misplaced and some like Beasts Birds and Fishes having Horns Fins and Claws and at the Birth of it the Bed shook and the Women present fell a Vomiting and were fain to go forth of the Room Mr. Cotton was too favourable to them till this helpt to recover him Mrs. Hutchinson the chief Woman among them and their Teacher to whose Exercises a Congregation of them used to assemble brought forth about 30 mishapen Births or Lumps at once and being banished into another Plantation was killed there by the Indians Sir Henry Vane being Governor and found to be the secret Fautor and Life of their Cause was fain to steal away by Night and take Shipping for England before his Year of Government was at an end But when he came over into England he proved an Instrument of greater Calamity to a People more sinful and more prepared for God's Judgments Being chosen a Parliament man he was very active at first for the bringing of Delinquents to Punishment He was the Principal Man that drove on the Parliament to go too high and act too vehemently against the King Being of very ready Parts and very great Subtilty and unwearied Industry he laboured and not without Success to win others in Parliament City and Country to his Way When the Earl of Strafford was accused he got a Paper out of his Father's Cabinet who was Secretary of State which was the chief Means of his Condemnation To most of our Changes he was that Within the House which Cromwell was without His great Zeal to drive all into War and to the highest and to cherish the Sectaries and especially in the Army made him above all Men to be valued by that Party His Unhappiness lay in this that his Doctrines were so clowdily formed and expressed that few could understand them and therefore he had but few true Disciples The Lord Brook was slain before he had brought him to Maturity Mr. Sterry is thought to be of his Mind as he was his Intimate but he hath not opened himself in writing and was so famous for Obscurity in Preaching being said Sir Benj. Rudiard too high for this World and too low for the other that he thereby proved almost Barren also and Vanity and Sterility were never more happily conjoined Mr. Sprig is the chief of his more open Disciples too well known by a Book of his Sermons This Obscurity by some was imputed to his not understanding himself but by others to design because he could speak plainly when he listed the two Courses in which he had most Success and spake most plainly were His earnest Plea for universal Liberty of Conscience and against the Magistrates intermedling with Religion and his teaching his Followers to revile the Ministry calling them ordinarily Blackcoats Priests and other Names which then savoured of Reproach and those Gentlemen that adhered to the Ministry they said were Priest-ridden When Cromwell had served himself by him as his surest Friend as long as he could and gone as far with him as their way lay together Vane being for a Fanatick Democracie and Cromwell for Monarchy at last there was no Remedy but they must part and when Cromwell cast out the Rump as disdainfully as Men do Excrements he called Vane a Jugler and Martin a Whoremonger to excuse his usage of the rest as is aforesaid When Vane was thus laid by he wrote his Book called The retired Man's Meditations
did before possess as far as I can learn from History Sure I am that when it became a matter of Reputation and Honour to be Godly it abundantly furthered the Successes of the Ministry Yea and I shall add this much more for the sake of Posterity that as much as I have said and written against Licentiousness in Religion and for the Magistrates Power in it and though I think that Land most happy whose Rulers use their Authority for Christ as well as for the Civil Peace yet in Comparison of the rest of the World I shall think that Land happy that hath but bare Liberty to be as good as they are willing to be and if Countenance and Maintenance be but added to Liberty and tollerated Errors and Sects be but forced to keep the Peace and not to oppose the Substantials of Christianity I shall not hereafter much fear such Toleration nor despair that Truth will bear down Adversaries 5. Another Advantage which I found was that Acceptation of my Person which Bishop Morley and Dean Warmstry so vehemently dissuaded them from in vain Though to win Estimation and Love to our selves only be an end that none but proud Men and Hypocrites intend yet it is most certain that the Gratefulness of the Person doth ingratiate the Message and greatly prepareth the People to receive the Truth Had they taken me to be Ignorant Erroneous Scandalous Worldly Self-seeking or such like I could have expected small Success among them 6. Another Advantage which I had was by the Zeal and Diligence of the Godly People of the Place who thirsted after the Salvation of their Neighbours and were in private my Assistants and being dispersed through the Town were ready in almost all Companies to repress seducing Words and to justify Godliness and convince reprove exhort Men according to their needs as also to teach them how to pray and to help them to sanctifie the Lord's Day For those People that had none in their Families who could pray or repeat the Sermons went to their next Neighbour's House who could do it and joined with them so that Some House of the ablest Men in each Street were filled with them that could do nothing or little in their own 7. And the holy humble blameless Lives of the Religious sort was a great Advantage to me The malicious People could not say your Professors here are as proud and covetous as any But the blameless Lives of godly People did shame Opposers and put to Silence the Ignorance of foolish Men and many were won by their good Conversation 8. And our Unity and Concord was a great Advantage to us and our freedom from those Sects and Heresies which many other Places were infected with We had no private Church though we had private Meetings we had not Pastor against Pastor nor Church against Church nor Sect against Sect nor Christian against Christian. There was none that had any odd Opinions of his own or censured his Teacher as erronious nor questioned his Call At Bewdley there was a Church of Anabaptists at Worcester the Independents gathered theirs But we were all of one Mind and Mouth and Way Not a Separatist Anabaptist Antinomian c. in the Town One Journeyman Shoemaker turned Anabaptist but he left the Town upon it and went among them When People saw diversity of Sects and Churches in any Place it greatly hindred their Conversion and they were at a loss and knew not what Party to be of or what Way to go and therefore would be of no Religion at all and perhaps derided them all whom they saw thus disagreed But they had no such Offence or Objection there they could not ask which Church or Party shall I be of for we were all but as one Nay so Modest were the ablest of the People that they never were inclined to a preaching way nor to make Ostentation of their Parts but took warning by the Pride of others and thought they had teaching enough by their Pastors and that it was better for them to bestow their Labour in digesting that than in Preaching themselves 9. And our private Meetings were a marvellous help to the propagating of Godliness among them for thereby Truths that slipt away were recalled and the seriousness of the Peoples minds renewed and good desires cherished and hereby their knowledge was much increased and here the younger sort learned to pray by frequent hearing others And here I had opportunity to know their Case for if any were touched and awakened in publick I should presently see him drop in to our private Meetings Hereby also idle meetings and loss of time was prevented And so far were we from being by this in danger of Schism or Divisions that it was the principal means to prevent them For here I was usually present with them answering their Doubts and silencing Objections and moderating them in all And some Private Meeting 's I found they were exceeding much inclined to and if I had not allowed them such as were lawful and profitable they would have been ready to run to such as were unlawful and hurtful And by encouraging them here in the fit exercise of their parts in Repetition Prayer and asking Questions I kept them from inclining to the disorderly exercise of them as the Sectaries do We had no Meetings in opposition to the Publick Meetings but all in subordination to them and under my over-sight and guidance which proved a way profitable to all 10. Another thing which advantaged us was some publick Disputations which we had with Gainsayers which very much confirmed the People The Quakers would fain have got entertainment and set up a Meeting in the Town and frequently railed at me in the Congregation But when I had once given them leave to meet in the Church for a Dispute and before the People had opened their deceits and shame none would entertain them more nor did they get one Proselyte among us Before that Mr. Iohn Tombes being Lecturer of Bewdley two miles off us who was reputed the most Learned and able Anabaptist in England we kept fair Correspondence for a long time and I studiously avoided all Debates with him about Infant Baptism till at last he forced me to it as I shall shew further anon And after one days Dispute with him of Bewdley my Hearers were more setled and the course of his Infection stopt How mean soever my own Abilities were yet I had still the advantage of a good Cause and thereby easily opened the vanity of all Pretenders Deceivers and Dividers that came among us 11. Another advantage was the great honesty and diligence of my Assistants When I came first to Kidderminster after the Wars I found Mr. Richard Sergeant there received as their Preacherâ— whom they took in a Case of Necessity when they could get no other I found him very honest but of no extraordinary Learning and of no taking utterance so that some that were more for Learing than
and Reasons of Dissent and enquire of their Lives and on the same Terms I admit Dissenters also to the Lord's Supper viz. if there be no Charge against their Lives and they come to me before hand and satisfie me of their fitness Still letting them know it is a dangerous case to live from under Order and Discipline and that I do this to them but for a time till they can be satisfied as I would do for a Stranger Your Brother Ri. Baxter To our Reverend and Beloved Brethren the Associated Ministers in the County of Cumberland § 35. Upon the Publication of our Agreement the Ministers in most Counties began to take the Business into consideration and though some few of the ancient Presbyterians were against it and thought it would bring the Presbyterian Government into Contempt or hinder the Execution of it when it had been agreed on by so grave a Synod at Wâ—stminster and established by the Parliament and therefore they rather desired a strict Execution of the Ordinance of Parliament and an Agreement on those Terms yet the most of the godly faithful Ministers as far as I could learn were for it For as we hindered no Man from following his own Judgment in his own Congregation so we Evinced beyond denial that it would be but a partial dividing Agreement to agree on the Terms of Presbyterians Episcopal or any one Party because it would unavoidably shut out the other Parties which was the principal thing which we endeavoured to avoid it being not with Presbyterians only but with all Orthodox faithful Pastors and People that we are bound to hold Communion and to live in Christian Concord so far as we have attained Phil. 3. 15 16. § 36. Hereupon many Counties began to Associate as Wiltshire Dorsetshire Somersetshire Hampshire Essex and others And some of them printed the Articles of their Agreement In a word a great desire of Concord began to possess all good People in the Land and our Breaches seem'd ready to heal And though some thought that so many Associations and Forms of Agreement did but tend to more Division by shewing our diversity of Apprehensions the contrary proved true by Experience For we all agreed on the same Course even to unite in the practice of so much of Discipline as the Episcopal Presbyterians and Independants are agreed in and as crosseth none of their Principles And they that thought the Expression of the Churches desires in various words of Prayer in Publick was better than a stinted Form for all Churches necessarily to use should not think that the Expression of our Consent to the same things is a dividing way because it is done in various Expressions for this Liberty greatly helped Unity for many a one would have scrupled some particular words in such an imposed Form of Concord who yet would accord in the Substance of the Work The Essex Agreement was printed to the same purpose with ours The Wiltshire Ministers were so strictly held to it by the Independant Party that they could get them but to these following preparatory Articles WE whose Names are Subscribed Ministers of the Gospel in the County of Wilts being humbly sensible of our many Failings in the Work of the Ministry by the Lord Christ committed to us and of the great need wherein we stand of the mutual help of our Brethren for Advice Encouragement and Strengthning herein And sadly bawailing the Corruptions of the People in our several Congregations the want of Christian Reformation Love and Unity and the Power of Godliness the breaking in of destroying Errours and the prevailing of Ignorance and Profaneness among them have consented and resolved through God's Grace and in Expectation of his Blessing on our weak Endeavours as fellow Servants to the same Lord Jesus Christ the Great Shepherd of Souls to acquaint our selves one with another and to joyn together and assist each other to the uttermost in the promoting of Gospel Truth Peace Love and the Power of Godliness in our selves and all those that have the Name of Christ upon them in the places wherein we live For the Effecting whereof we desire and purpose if God permit to meet together at Sarum on the 26th of Octob. 1653. for the end hereafter specified First In some publick Place on the same day where any others whose hearts are inclined thereunto may joyn with us by Fasting and Prayer to seek unto God for pardon of our former Failings and for Direction and Strength of his Spirit for the future Work of the Ministry which lyeth upon us in the instructing and ordering of our several Congregations according to the Word of God Secondly After the said Publick Duty discharged to come together more privately in some convenient place And there First Jointly and Solemnly as in the presence of God to testifie our sincere purpose of heart for the time to come in dependence upon the Lord's Strength to take heed unto our selves and to our Doctrine and to continue therein that in doing this we may both save our selves and them that hear us Secondly To testifie to each other our Conscionable readiness as Servants and fellow Labourers to afford and receive Assistance to and from each other in the Work of the Lord committed to us as any occasion shall be offered to us in this kind and accordingly to advise together thereupon Thirdly To Promise and Engage to one another according to our Duty in all Humility Tenderness and Brotherly Love Yet faithfully to admonish one another of any Miscarriage or Neglect which we shall know or be daily informed of which in any of us bringeth Reproach upon the Name of God and his Ways upon the Gospel and the Administration of the same And we shall all of us likewise seriously promise humbly and thankfully to accept of such Admonition from any Brother as a Fruit of Christian Love and Fidelity and without Anger Clamour or Recrimination either to clear our selves to the Brother which Admonisheth us being free from the Crime objected or else endeavour Reformation in what we have offended Fourthly At the same Publick Meeting to appoint some other fit time to meet together in the same manner further to carry on the Work of mutual Brotherly Advice concerning such Courses as conduce to God's Glory the Good of the People and the Discharge of our Duty in the place wherein God hath set us And in this our Meeting we fully resolve through the help of our God First Not to meddle in word or deed with any Matter of Civil Government further than to stir up one another if any just occasion be offered conscionably to maintain and exercise all Christian Obedience to Magistrates as an Ordinance of God Secondly Not to soment any Breaches amongst Brethren but to study to the uttermost of our power that all who accord in the Fundamentals of Gospel Truth and Holiness may be brought to keep the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace And for
observing or laying to Heart the strict Commands of the Lord herein as if there had been no such Passages in our Bibles But blessed be the Lord that beginneth mightily to awaken the Hearts of his Servants and cause them to observe the Truths which they overlook'd and at last to lay to heart the Duty so much neglected We now hear from many Countries of this Nation the Voice of the Spirit of Peace our Brethren begin to get together and consult of the means of reparing our Breaches and in many Places are associated and though the Work be but beginning and mightily resisted by the Enemies of Holyness and Peace yet are we in great Hopes that these Beginnings do promise more and that God hath not awakened us to this Work in vain And now by the Tidings of your Concord we have received an increase of these our Hopes and Consolations Go on dear Brethren as One in the Centre of Unity and prevail in the Strength of the great Reconciler This is the way that will prevail at last and however it be thought of by others will certainly be comfortable to ourselves in the review when dividing ways will be all disgraced and look with another Face than now they do He that is for Vanity and Love is likest to have his Approbation who is one and who is Love Our Hearts are with you and our Prayers shall be for you that you may abundantly reap the Fruits of Concord in the Conviction of Gain-sayers and the farther Confirmation and Edification of your own Your Motion for a Correspondency we gladly entertain and shall rejoice in the Assistance of your Advice and Prayers and willingly to that end communicate our Affairs We are now upon a joint Agreement to bring all the ancient Persons in our Parishes who will not do it in the Congregation to our Houses on certain Days every Week by turns to be catechised or instructed as shall be most to their Edification A Work that requireth so much unwearied Diligence Self-denial and holy Skill and wherein we are like to meet with so much Resistance and yet doth appear to us of great necessity and use that we earnestly crave your Prayers for such Qualifications and Successes The State of your Affairs we partly understand by the Information of Coll. Bridges We heartily pray the Lord of the Harvest to send forth more Labourers among you and could we contribute any thing to so good a Work we should willingly do it But able Ministers fit for the Work with you are too few and many of them so weak of Body that they are unfit for Travel and most of them so engaged to their Godly People and the People so impatient of a Motion for their remove that the Work will be very hard but we hope to be faithful in our Endeavours whatever be the Success Brethren we crave your Prayers to God that we may be faithful and Successful in his Work as also that Brotherly Correspondency which you motion might abide and we remain Your Brethren in the Faith of Christ Rich. Baxter Teacher of the Church at Kiderminster Jarvis Bryan Teacher of the Church at Old Swinford Henry Oasland Teacher of the Church at Bewdeley Andr. Tristram Teacher of the Church at Clent Tho. Baldwin Minister at Wolverly In the Name of the associated Ministers meeting at Kiderminster August 12. 1655. To the Reverend our much honoured Brother Dr. Winter Pastor of the Church at Dublin to be communicated by him to the associated Churches in Ireland These They wrote us also a Second Letter which I here subjoin Reverend and much valued Brethren YOUR Affectionate Letter in Answer to ours by that Honourable Person we have received and do desire that these Lines may testify our Thankfulness to you for your loving and free Acceptation of our Desires of a Brotherly Correspondency Those Pantings of yours for the Peace and Union of the Saints we doubt not will be to your Comfort at the great Day of your Account God is not unjust to forget your Work and Labour of Love Go on therefore dear Brethren in his Strength whose work it is and of whose Power and Presence you have had so great Experience We trust as our Hearts are with you so our Prayers shall not be wanting for you at the Throne of Grace We thank you for your Ioy at our Association and Success and that we still breath after that happy Work Surely if after our long Experiences of those woful Desolations that Divisions and Dissentions have involved the Saints in our Hearts should not be enlarged after Union and Peace that must repair our Breaches we should have Cause to suspect our Union with and Love to our Head We are not ignorant how much the Self-love and Pride of some and the misguided Zeal of others of approved Sincerity have advanced the Design of the grand Enemy by over eager and unbrotherly Bitterness even in matters circumstantial Neither are we altogether ignorant how subtilly that old Serpent and Deceiver hath laboured by a pretext of Love to swallow up Truth it being for a while the only Cry Love Love yet not the least hint of Truth which had most need of their Charity being miserably torn and mangled To which our Charity leads us to attribute the Praise of many of our Brethren as being unwilling to buy Love with the Loss of Truth It is the Apostles Advice that the Truth should be spoken in Love and that we should contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the Saints But Thanks be to the Lord God of Truth that hath preserved his Darling from the Devourer making the way of Love exceeding aimable because of Truth so that we trust it will not lie untrodden by the Lord's People through circumstantial Differences whilst all hold the Form of wholesom Words considering one another and walking together in what they are agreed and waiting upon the Lord for the revealing of that wherein they differ perfection being reserved for another World That there are any Beginnings and that by you we hear of more we earnestly desire our Hearts may be duly and thankfully affected therewith praying the God of truth and Peace to uphold his Truth and to shower down plentifully the Spirit of Love and Peace that at the Lord is One so his People may be One. Your present Work we are in some measure sensible of its Necessity and Weightiness Wherefore our Prayers shall be for you that the Lord whose Servants ye are and whose work it is would be with you to counsel encourage strengthen and prosper you in it as we crave your daily Prayers for these Infant Churches that our God may vouchsafe his Spirit and Presence to us whose lot is cast in this Wilderness having many Enemies to conflict withal from within as well as without your Advice and brotherly Assistance we request as we shall have Occasion and Opportunity to communicate our Affairs to you Lastly the deep
no fixing any more Diocesses in the World than Twelve or Thirteen and whoever since pretended to succeed them in those Twelve or Thirteen Diocesses 3. And if following Bishops or Princes fixt Diocesses that is no divine nor unalterable Law 4. We never read that an Apostle claimed any Diocess as proper to him or forbad any other to officiate in it or blamed them for so doing 5. It is certain that while they went themselves from Country to Country they fixed Bishops to every Church or City Act. 14. 23. Yit 1. 5 6. Ad 9. 1. The Apostles fixed not Bishops of the lowest Rank Vicatim nor Rigionatim but in every Church which was then in every City where were Christians even the same Church that had Deacons and Presbyters fixed 2. Bishops preached to Infidels to whom they were not Bishops but Preachers 3. The Christians of neighbour Villages came to the City-Church and when they had Oratories or Chappels there it made them not another Parish and excluded not such from personal Communion with the Bishops Church nor extended to such as by Distance or Numbers were uncapable of such personal Communion 4. Titus was either an ambulatory Evangelist to go about as the Apostles gathering and Setling Churches as I think or if fixed he was an Archbishop who was to settle Bishops under him in every City as Dr. Hammond judged It followeth not that a meer Bishop may have a Multitude of Churches because an Archbishop may who hath many Bishops under him 5. As the Magnitude of human Body so also of a particular Church hath its Limitation suited to its Ends Communion by Delegates or Officers only is the Case of many Churches associated But Personal Communion in Doctrine Worship Conversation and Discipline is the End of each particular Church and if you extend the Form to more than are capable of that End even to many such Societies by so doing the Species is changed § 38. About this time a reverend learned Brother Mr. Martin Iohnson being of the Judgment of Dr. Hammond and Dr. Gunning and yet a Lover of all honest peaceable Men and constant at our Meetings Lectures and Disputations was pleased to write to me about the Necessity of Episcopal Ordination I maintained that it was not necessary ad esse Ecclesiae and that he might be a true Minister who was ordained by Presbyters and that in Cases of Necessity it was a Duty to take Ordination from them He opposed this with Modesty and Judgment being a very good Logician till at last he yielded to the Truth These Letters with their Answers are added in the Appendix § 39. A little after this an Accident fell out that hindered our Concord with the Episcopal Party and is pretended at this Day by many to justifie the Silencing of all the Ministers that were afterward put out Oliver Cromwell who then usurped the Government being desired by some to forbid all Ministers of all Parties whatsoever to officiate who were notoriously insufficient or scandalous taketh hence Occasion to put in with the rest all those that took part with the King against the Parliament and so by offending them hindred our Agreement with them which provoked me then to protest against it and publish my Judgment against the hindering of any Man to preach the Gospel upon the Ground of such Civil Controversies as those § 40. And about the same time Experience in my Pastoral Charge convinced me that publick Preaching is not all the ordinary Work of a faithful Minister and that personal Conference with every one about the State of their own Souls together with Catechising is a Work of very great Necessity For the Custom in England is only to catechise the younger sort and that but by teaching them the Words of the Catechism in the Liturgy which we thought besides the Doctrine of the Sacrament had little more explicatory than the Words themselves of the Creed Lord's Prayer and Decalogue Therefore I propounded the Business to the Ministers and they all upon Debate consented that I should â—â—rn our brief Confession into a Catechism and draw up a Form of Agreement for the Practising of that Duty I drew up the Catechism in Two leaves in 8 vâ— comprehending 〈◊〉 is necessary to be believed consented to and practised in as narrow â— room and just a Method as I thought agreeable to the Peoples Understandings And I proposed a Form of Agreement for the Practice which might engage the 〈…〉 to go through with the Work And when I brought it in it was conseâ—â—ed to and subscribed and many neighbouring Ministers of other Countries desired to join with us and we printed the Catechism and Agreement together § 41. Of all the Works that ever I 〈◊〉 this yielded me most Comfort in the practice of it All Men thought that the People especially the ancienter sort would never have submitted to this Course and so that it would have come to nothing But God gave me a 〈◊〉 willing People and gave me also interest in them and when I had 〈◊〉 and my People had given a good Example to other Parishes and especially the Ministers so 〈◊〉 concurring that none gainsayed us it prevailed much with the Parishes 〈◊〉 I set two Days Week apart for this Employment 〈◊〉 faithful unwearied Assistant and my self took fourteen Families every Week those in the Town came to us to our Houses those in the Parish my Assistant 〈…〉 to 〈◊〉 Houses besides what a Curate did at a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 to us a Family only being present as a 〈◊〉 and no Stranger admitted after that I first helpâ— them to understand it and next enquired modestly into the State of their Souls and lastly endeavoured to set all home to the convincing awakening and resolving of their Hearts according to their several Conditions bestowing about an Hour and the Labour of a Sermon with every Family and I found it so effectual through the Blessing of God that few went away without some seeming Humiliation Conviction and Purpose and Promise for a holy Life and except half a dozen or thereabouts of the most ignorant and senseless all the Families in the Town came to me and though the first time they came with Fear and Backwardness after that they longed for their turn to come again So that I hope God did good to many by it And yet this was not all the Comfort I had in it § 42. For my Brethren appointing me to preach to them about it on a Day of Humiliation at Worcester when we set upon it I printed the Sermon prepared for that use with necessary Additions containing Reasons and Directions for this Work in a Book called The Reformed Pastor which excited so many others to take the Course that we had taken that it was a far greater Addition to my Comfort than the profiting of the Parish or County where we lived Yea a Reverend Pastor from Switzerland wrote me word that it excited
Church where he is President and where he Ordaineth if there be any left I suppose as to a Parochial or Congregational President in one Eldership you will grant this and why not to the President of the Association for Peace when he that is Ordained a Pastor of your particular Church is thereupon made an Officer in the Universal therefore others should have some care of it or else I 'le let Objections pass in silence only desire you if these two last dislike you not therefore presently to reject the rest but lay these by On these Terms in the two last Propositions Bishop Usher when I propounded them to him told me That the Episcopal Party might well agree with us and the moderate would but the rest would not To my Reverend Brother Mr. Philip Nye § 47. After this I was yet desirous to make a fuller Attempt for the reconciling of those Controversies so far as that we might hold Communion together And I drew up a larger Writing instancing in about Ten Points of Difference between the Presbyterians and Independants proving that the Differences were not such as should hinder Concord and Communion The Writing being too large to be here inserted you shall have with the rest at the end of the History Since Prelacy was restored there hath been no Opportunity to Debate these Matters for the Reasons aforesaid and many others Only I put these Papers into Mr. G. Grissith's hand who speaketh much for Reconciliation And when I call'd for them about a year after he had shewed them to none nor made any use of them which might tend to the desired Concord and so I took them away as expecting no more success § 48. About the same time the great Controversie that troubled all the Church being about the Qualification of Church Members I apprehended that the want of a due and solemn manner of Transition from the Number of Infant-Members into the Number of the Adult was the cause both of Anabaptistry and Independency and that the right performance of this as Calvin and our Rubrick in the Common Prayer would have Confirmation performed would be the most excellent Expedient both for Reformation and Reconciliation finding that the Independants themselves approved of it I meditated how to get this way of rectified Confirmation restored and introduced when in the mean time came forth a Treatise for this way of Confirmation by Mr. Ionathan Hanmer very judiciously and piously written And because it was sent me with a Request to write my Judgment of it I put an Epistle before it further to prove the desirableness of the thing The Book was very well accepted when it came abroad but some wrote to me desiring me not only to shew the usefulness of it but also to produce some fuller Scripture Proofs that it is a Duty whereupon I wrote a little Treatise that is called Confirmation the way to Reformation and Reconciliation And in my own Congregation I began so much of the Practice of it as is acknowledged to belong to Presbyters to do § 49. And about the same time while Cromwell professed to do all that he could for the equal promoting of Godliness and Peace and the Magistrates Assistance greatly facilitating the Work of the Ministers and many Ministers neglected their Duty because the Magistrate compelled not the People to submit to them and some never administred the Lord's Supper because they thought nothing but Constraint by the Magistrate would enable them to do it aright And on the other Extream Cromwell himself and such others commonly gave out that they could not understand what the Magistrate had to do in Matters of Religion and they thought that all Men should be left to their own Consciences and that the Magistrate could not interpose but he should be ensnared in the Guilt of Persecution I say while these Extreams prevailed upon the Discourses of some Independants I offered them a few Proposals suited to those Times containing those few Duties by which a willing Magistrate might easily settle the Church in a safe and holy Peace without incurring the guilt of Persecution or Profaneness or Licentiousness but having no Correspondency with Cromwell or any of his Council they were never shewed or made use of any further than for the perusal of him to whom I gave them who being one of their Faction I thought it possible he might have further improved them The Paper was this which followeth By the Establishment of what is contained in these Twelve Propositions or Articles following the Churches in these Nations may have a Holy Communion Peace and Concord without any Wrong to the Consciences or Liberties of Presbyterians Congregational Episcopal or any other Christians 1. FOrasmuch as God hath appointed Magistracy and Ministry as Functions of a different kind but both necessary to the welfare of Mankind and both for the Church and the Salvation of Men and the maintaining of due Obedience to God Therefore let not either of them invade the Function of the other Let Ministers have no Power of Violence by inflicting Corporal Penalties or Mulcts nor be the Judges though in Cases of Heresie or Impiety who is to be 〈◊〉 punished and who not but let them not be denied to be the Ministers of Christ and Guides of the Church And therefore let the Word of God be their only Rule what they must Preach and whom they must Baptize and receive into the Church and to whom they must Administer the Lord's Supper and whom they must Reprove Admonith Reject or Absolve and so for the rest of their Ministerial Work And let not Princes or Parliaments make them Rules and tell them whom to admit or reject otherwise than from the Word of God for according to this Rule we are bound to proceed whatever we suffer for it But yet as the Magistrate is by us to be instructed and guided according to the Word of God so we are by him to be commanded and punished if we offend And therefore we acknowledge it his Duty to command us to Teach and Govern the Churches according to the Word of God and to punish us if we disobey and we must submit to such commands and punishments And therefore if the Parliament see cause to make any Laws according to which their Judges and Officers shall proceed in punishing Ministers for Male-administration we shall not disobey them if agreeable to God's Word if not we shall obey God and patiently suffer from them 2. Seeing there is very much difference between an Infant state of Church-Membership and an Adult one being but imperfect Members in comparison of the other and one being admitted on the Condition they be but the Seed of the Faithful and the others Title having another Condition even a Faith or Profession of their own and one having right only to Infant Priviledges and not to the Lord's Supper and other parts of Communion proper to the Adult because they are not capable of it And seeing
manifested that the Western Creed now called the Apostles wanting two or three Clauses that now are in it was not only before the Nicene Creed but of such farther Antiquity that no beginning of it below the Apostles Days can be found So it is past doubt that in other Words the Churches had still a Symbol or Sum of their Belief which was the Test of the Orthodox and that which the Catechumeni were to be instructed in Origen Tertullian Irenaeus to speak of none of these below them do mention and recite them The Doctrine of this Creed they affirm themselves to have received from the Apostles by verbal Tradition as well as by Writing This then hath been a collateral way of delivering down the saving Truths of the Gospel though a far more imperfect way than by the Scriptures 4. Another means hath been by Parents teaching these Principles to their Children which as they were commanded to do and did before the writing of the Gospel so did they successively continue it as a collateral way 5. Another collateral means was in the constant use of the Lord's Supper in Commemoration of Christ's Death till he come to receive us to Glory where the very Sum and all the Fundamentals of our Religion are contained which hath been continued by uninterrupted Succession even from the time that preceded the writing of the Scriptures it is therefore conceived possible for some Souls to be converted in darker parts of the World by these or some of these means without the written Word 3. The ancient Doctors of the Church affirmed that they had their Doctrine from the Apostles by verbal as well as by written Tradition Yea and that if there were no Scripture yet Tradition might resolve the Doubts against the Hereticks and that in those Days which were nearer the Spring-Head Tradition was a better way than Scripture to confute Hereticks as Tertullian de Praescript at large and Irenaeus's Words are well known Whether in this they mistake or not I don't determine yet certainly this may tell us that we cannot conclude that there was then no co-ordinate way of delivering down the Sum of Christian Verity 4. He that will prove your negative Assertion must either know all the World and that de facto there is among them no such Tradition or else must have some Revelation from God that there is not any such nor shall be But we have neither of these Ergo we cannot certainly conclude it 5. We see by Experience that more in substance of other common Precepts and History can be delivered down to Posterity by other means without formal Records Ergo so may these For though they cannot have the golden Cabinet of Scripture but from the Spirit nor without the Spirit can Men believe Yet the Truths may be remembred and delivered as aforesaid 6. God can deliver the Marrow of the Gospel by other means than the Writing and he hath not told us that he will not Ergo for ought we know he doth 7. We ought not absolutely to exclude extraordinary means when God hath not tyed himself from them It is a dangerous Sin of them that leave the ordinary means and look out for extraordinary as Spirit of Prophesy Angels c. But to conclude that God will never reveal Christ by an Angel to one that hath not the Scripture is more than we may do I know not therefore why it is that you would not be prevailed with so much as to add the Word ordinarily when yet it 's by some affirmed to be your Sense and by all that it is your Duty to deliver your Sense as plain as you may So much of my Reasons against the certainty of the Truth of your Assertion 3. I next add that it seems not a Point so weighty as to cast out all that are different from us in this Opinion My Reasons are 1. From the Nature of the Thing 1. It hath so much to be said against the very Truth of it and so is doubtful 2. There can no ill Consequences be manifested to rise from the contrary Opinion Much less so ill as to deserve such a Censure It is no wrong to Scripture that there is a more imperfect collateral way of delivering some part of the same Truths no more than it is a wrong to Scripture that the Law of Nature delivers some other Part of them 2. From the Persons that were of the Opinion contrary to your Assertion who were the ancient Doctors of the Churches and many of the most learned judicious and godly of the Reformed Divines as I undertake to manifest when I have Opportunity and it is necessary For my own part if it were only my self that should be cast out by this Engine I should say the less but as I know not how many Hundred may be of the same Mind and as I think it to be the most common Judgment of Divines so I know such here among us of that Mind with whom I am not worthy to be named who would not subscribe to this your Assertion whereby it seems to me to be more tollerable to diffent from you 4. Seeing you have voted to lay down only Fundamentals to Salvation first and upon that Vote have put this as one you do not only damn all that believe any other way than by the written Word but you damn all those that will not damn them by owning this condemning Article Now that it is not Fundamental appears 1. In that the Fathers and choicest reformed Divines were else no Christians 2. No Creed of the ancient Churches did contain it 3. It is not of necessity to our believing on Christ the Foundation A Man may be brought himself by the Scripture to believe that yet thinks another may believe by verbal Tradition 4. No Scripture doth expresly no not implicitly deliver it much less as a Fundamental 5. My next Reason was that your Assertion and Reason are injurious to the Christian Cause For 1. When Gospel Truth is delivered down by two Hands you wrong it when you cut off one when neither is needless 2. We are able by other ways of Proof to confute those Infidels that deny the Authority of Scripture especially when they tell us that we cannot prove that our Doctrine was delivered from Christ and his Apostles and not since devised or corrupted by later Hands Now you would force our Arguments out of our Hands to the Advantage of the Enemy Upon the Experience of some late Debates with subtil Apostates now Infidels I am bold with Submission to say that I would not for all the World so wound the Christian Cause as it is wounded by those who bereave the Scripture of the Advantage of other Tradition And think that a Bible found by the way by one that never heard of it hath the same Advantages to procure Belief as Scripture and Scripture-Doctrine and matters of Fact delivered to us by the Hand of certain Tradition And 3. By the
Bishop Usher had before occasionally spoken of him in my hearing as a Socinian which caused me to hear him with suspicion but I heard none suspect him of Popery though I found that it was that which was the end of his Design This Jugler hath this Twenty years and more gone up and down thus secretly and also thrust himself into places of Publick Debate as when the Bishops and Divines disputed before the King at the Isle of Wight c. And when we were lately offering our Proposals for Concord to the King he thrust in among us till I was sain plainly to detect him before some of the Lords which enraged him and he denied the words which in secret he had spoken to me And many Men of Parts and Learning are perverted by him § 61. In this time of my abode at the Lord Broghill's fell out all the Acquaintance I had with the most Reverend Learned Humble and Pious Primate of Ireland Archbishop Usher then living at the Earl of Peterborough's House in Martin's-Lane Sometimes he came to me and oft I went to him And Dr. Kendal who had wrote pettishly against me about Universal Redemption and the Specification of Saving Grace desired me when I had answered one of his Invectives and had written part of the Answer to the other to meet him at Bishop Usher's Lodgings and refer the matter to him for our Reconciliation and future Silence which I willingly did and when the Bishop had declared his Judgment for that Doctrine of Universal Redemption which I afferted and gloried that he was the Man that brought Bishop Davenant and Dr. Preston to it he perswaded us who were both willing to Silence for the time to come § 62. In this time I opened to Bishop Usher the motions of Concord which I had made with the Episcopal Divines and desired his Judgment of my Terms which were these 1. That every Pastor be the Governour as well as the Teacher of his Flock 2. In those Parishes that have more Presbyters than one that one be the stated President 3. That in every Market Town or some such meet Divisions there be frequent Assemblies of Parochial Pastors associated for Concord and mutual Assistance in their Work and that in these Meetings one be a stated not a temporary President 4. That in every Country or Diocess there be every year or half year or quarter an Assembly of all the Ministers of the County or Diocess and that they also have their fixed President and that in Ordination nothing be done without the President nor in matters of common or publick concernment 5. That the coercive Power or Sword be medled with by none but Magistrates To this Sense were my Proposals which he told me might suffice for Peace and Unity among moderate Men But when he had offered the like to the King intemperate Men were displeased with him and they were then rejected but afterward would have been accepted And such Success I was like to have I had heard of his Predictions that Popery would be restored again in England for a short time and then fall for ever And asking him of it he pretended to me no prophetical Revelation for it to himself but only his Judgment of the Sense of the Apocalyps § 63. I asked him also his Judgment about the validity of Presbyters Ordination which he asserted and told me that the King asked him at the Isle of Wight whereever he found in Antiquity that Presbyters alone ordained any and that he answered I can shew your Majesty more even where Presbyters alone successively ordained Bishops and instanced in Hierom's Words Epist. ad Evagrium of the Presbyters of Alexandria chusing and making their own Bishops from the Days of Mark till Heraclus and Dionysius I asked him also whether the Paper be his that is called A Reduction of Episcopacy to the Form of Synodical Government which he owned and Dr. Bernard after witnessed to be his § 64. And of his own Accord he told me considently That Synods are not properly for Government but for Agreement among the Pastors and a Synod of Bishops are not the Governors of any one Bishop there present Though no doubt but every Pastor out of the Synod being a Ruler of his Flock a Synod of such Pastors may there exercise Acts of Government over their Flocks though they be but Acts of Agreement or Contract for Concord one towards another Quere If the whole Synod have no governing Power over its Members hath the President of that Synod any qua talis § 65. When Oliver Cromwel was dead and his Son almost as soon pull'd down as set up or upon their Tumults voluntarily resigned their Places the Anabaptists grew insolent in England and Ireland and joining with their Brethren in the Army were every where put in Power and those of them that before lived in some seeming Friendliness near me at Bewdley began now to shew that they remembred all their former Provocations by my publick Disputation with Mr. Tombes and writing against them and hindring their increase in those parts And though they were not much above twenty Men and Women near us they talk'd as it they had been Lords of the World And when Sir Henry Vine was in Power and forming his Draught of a not Free but Fanatick Common-wealth and Sir George Booth's Rising was near and the look't for Opposition they laid wait upon the Road for my Letters and intercepting one written to Major Beake of Coventr◠they sent it up to Sir Henry Vane to London who found it so warily written thought himself was mentioned in it that he could have nothing against it yet sent he for Major Beake to London and put him to answer it at the Committee where by examination they sought to have made something of it but after many Threatnings they dismissed him This was the Anabaptists Fidelity § 66. The People then were so apprehensive of approaching Misery and Consusion while the Fanaticks were Lords and Vane ruled in the State and Lambert in the Army and Fifth Monarchy Men as they called the Millenaries and Seekers and Anabaptists were their chief Strength that the King 's old Party called then the Cavaliers and the Parliaments Party called the Presbyterians did secretly combine in many parts of the Land to rise all at once and suppress these insolent Usurpers and bring in the King Sir Ralph Clare of Kiderminister acquainted me with the intended Rising the Issue of which was that the Cavaliers failing except a few at Salisbury who were suddenly disperst or taken Sir George Booth and Sir Tho. Middleton two old Commanders for the Parliament drew together an Army of about 5000 Men and took Chester and there being no other to divert him Lambert came against them and some Independants and Anabaptists of the Country joining with him his old Souldiers quickly routed them all and Sir George Booth was afterwards taken and imprisoned I told Sir R. Clare that if the
he would first but spend two Hours in verbal Disputation in the way I had proposed viz. That he should spend one Hour in giving his Reasons for her Change and I might answer them and the other Hour I would give my Reasons against it and he should answer me And after that we would go to it by Writing But a Day or two after when I came for Answer to this Proposal the Lady was gone being secretly stolen from her Mother in a Coach and so I understood the meaning of this Offer and never could see the Face of any of her Priests § 85. At last it was discovered that the Man that seduced her and refused Disputation was this Mr. Iohnson oâ— Terret the same Man that I had before conferred and wrote with And yet when I asked her whether it were he she plainly and positively said it was not and when a Servant went after her Coach and overtook her in Lincolns-Inn-Fields she positively promised to come again and said she went but to see a Friend Also she complained to the Queen-Mother of her Mother as if she used her hardly for Religion which was false in a Word her Mother told me that before she turned Papist she scarce ever heard a Lye from her and since then she could believe nothing that she said This was the Darling of that excellent wise religious Lady the Widow of an excellent Lord which made the Affliction great and taught her to moderate her Affections to all Creatures This Perversion had been a long time secretly working before she knew of it all which time the young Lady would join in Prayer with her Mother and jeer at Popery till she was detected and then she said she might join with them no more § 86. They that stole her away conveyed her to France and there put her into a Nunnery where she is 〈◊〉 dead Not long after her departure she sent a Letter superscribed to her Lady Mother c. and subscribed Sister Anna Maria c. It contained the Reasons of her Perversion And though I knew they were not like to suffer her to read it I wrote an Answer to it at her Mother's desire which was sent to her by her Mother The Letter which I sent her the day before she was stoln away and tthe Answer to that her Letter from the Nunnery I thought meet here to insert which are as followeth The Letter to the Lady Anne Lindsey Madam THE Reasons that moved me to be so importunate with you for a Conference in your hearing with the ablest Jesuit Priest or other Papist you could get were as I told you 1. My very high esteem of your truly Honourable Mother whose Sorrow hath been so great for your Delusion that I must confess though but a Stranger I suffer much with her by Compassion And as it would much relieve her if you were recovered so if God deny her that Mercy it will somewhat satisfie her Conscience that she hath not been wanting in the use of means 2. And for your own sake whom I the more compassionate because you are not only the Daughter of such Parents but of so modest and sober a Disposition your self that I am not out of hopes of your Recovery though the Disease be such as few are cured of that catch it by relapse and desertion of the Truth I can imagine nothing but Consciousness of a bad Cause that can cause them thus to decline a Conference You say the Person well knoweth me though I know not him and dare trust himself c. why then will he not meet me to debate the Case He cannot but have exceeding great odds or advantages of me as to personal preparations for they are trained up meerly to this work I am loath to say to deceive and have all the helps that Art can afford them I was never of any Universitie nor had one Months assistance of any Tutor in all my Studies of Sciences or Theology If you can get no Jesuit Fryar 〈◊〉 Priest that will fairly debate his Cause with one of so poor Preparations and Abilities doth it not shew that they are lamentably diffident of their Cause All the Conditions or Terms that I desire to be before agreed to are but these 1. That I may one day produce my Reasons why you should not have turned Papist and therefore should return and he Answer them as I urge them And that the next day or the first if he desire it he will produce his Reasons why you ought to turn to them as you did and I answer them 2. That we may speak by turns without interrupting one another 3. That whatever Passages must be determined by Books or Witnesses that are not at hand they may be noted down and left till there be leisure to peruse them 4. That there be two Witnesses on each side of whom one to be a Scribe and as many more as he desireth And I and those with me shall be engaged to do him no wrong by any discovery of his Person to endanger him as to the Law or Governours This is all that I should oblige him to beforehand I again intreat you if one will not get another to moderate the Work I understand by you that the Person you depend on avoideth me not in any Contempt for you tell me he hath honourable thoughts of me and well knoweth me If so why will he not confer with me as well as he hath done with Dr. Gunning For Writing 1. It 's like he knoweth that I am here engaged in so much unavoidable Work that I have scarce time to eat or sleep 2. You cannot but know that by Writing it's like to be a year or many years work And themselves have cut me out Work enough already for my Pen if I had no more and now would take me off it that I might be forced to omit one I look not to live to end a Dispute by Writing so many are my Infirmities and are you content to stay so long before you have the benefit 3. If Writings will be useful to you may you not as well read what is written already Many great Volumes are yet unanswered by them 4. I have already written divers Writings against their Delusiâ—ns viz. The Safe Religion A Key for Catholicks c. A Winding sheet for Popery The true Catholick and the Catholick Church described A Disputetion with Mr. Johnson about the Successâ—â—â— Visibility of the Church and they never answered any one of them no not so much as the single Shet that ever I heard oâ— When they have answered them all let them call for more or offer writing 5. But yet rather than be wanting to you let the Person but vouchsafe 〈◊〉 this Verbal Conference first and try what we can do in a few hours there and if there shall then appear to be cause â—o prosecute it by Writing I intend not to fail of taking the first opportunity for it that greater
those whose Liberty is desired Not that we are against subscribing the proper Rule of our Religion or any meet Confession of Faith Nor do we scruple the Oath of Supremacy or Allegiance Nor would we have the Door left open for Papists or Hereticks to come in 2. We take the boldness to say that since we have had the Promises of your gracious indulgence herein and upon divers Addresses to your Majesty and the Lord Chancellor had comfortable Encouragement to expect our Liberty yet cannot Ministers procure Institution without renouncing their Ordination by Presbyters or being re-ordained nor without Subscription and the Oath of Canonical Obedience 3. We must observe with Fear and Grief that your Majesty's Indulgence and Concessions of Liberty in this Declaration extendeth not either to the abatement of Re-ordination or of subscriptional Ordination or of the Oath of Obedience to the Bishops We therefore humbly and earnestly crave that your Majesty will declare your Pleasure 1. That Ordination and Institution and Induction may be conferred without the said Subscription or Oath And 2. That none be urged to be reordained or denied Institution for want of Ordination by Prelates that was ordained by Presbyters 3. And that none be judged to have forfeited his Presentation or Benefice nor be deprived of it for not reading those Articles of the 39 that contain the controverted Points of Government and Ceremonies Lastly We humbly crave that your Majesty will not only grant us this Liberty till the next Synod but will indeavour that the Synod be impartially chosen and that your Majesty will be pleased to endeavour the Procurement of such Laws as shall be ne-necessary for our security till the Synod and for the Ratification of moderate and healing Conclusions afterwards and that nothing by meer Canon be imposed on us without such Statute Laws of Parliament These Favours which will be injurious to none if your People may obtain of your Majesty it will revive their Hearts to daily and earnest Prayer for your Prosperity and to rejoice in the thankful Acknowledgment of that gracious Providence of Heaven that hath blessed us in your Restoration and put it into your Heart to heal our Breaches and to have compassion on the faithful People in your Dominions who do not petition you for Liberty to be Schismatical Factious Seditious or abusive to any but only for leave to obey the Lord who created and redeemed them according to that Law by which they must all be shortly judged to everlasting Joy or Misery And it will excite them to and unite them in the cheerful Service of your Majesty with their Estates and Lives and to transmit your deserved Praises to Posterity A little before this the Bishops Party had appointed at our Request a Meeting with some of us to try how near we could come in preparation to what was to be resolved on Accordingly Dr. Morley Dr. Hinchman and Dr. Cosins met Dr. Reignolds Mr Calamy and my self and after a few roving Discourses we parted without bringing them to any particular Concessions for Abatement only their general talk was from the beginning as if they would do any thing for Peace which was fit to be done and they being at that time newly elect but not consecrated to their several Bishopricks we called them my Lords which Dr. Morley once returned with such a Passage as this we may call you also I suppose by the same Title by which I perceived they had some Purposes to try that way with us § 107. This Petition being delivered to the Lord Chancellor was so ungrateful that we were never called to present it to the King But instead of that it was offered us that we should make such Alterations in the Declaration as were necessary to attain its Ends But with these Cautions that we put in nothing but what we judged of flat necessity And 2. That we altered not the Preface or Language of it For it was to be the King's Declaration and what he spake as expressing his own Sense was nothing to us but if we thought he imposed any thing intollerable upon us we had leave to express our Desires for the altering of it Whereupon we agreed to offer this following Paper of Alterations letting all the rest of the Declaration alone But withal by Word to tell those we offered it to which was the Lord Chancellor That this was not the Model of Church-Government which we at first offered nor which we thought most expedient for the healing of the Church But seeing that cannot be obtained we shall humbly submit and thankfully acknowledge his Majesty's Condescention if we may obtain what now we offer and shall faithfully endeavour to improve it to the Churches Peace to the utmost of our Power Having declared this with more we delivered in the following Paper The Alterations of the Declaration which we offered 1. WE do in the first place declare that our Purpose and Resolution is and shall be to promote the Power of Godliness to encourage the Exercises of Religion both publick and private and to take care that the Lord's Day be appropriated to holy Exercises without unnecessary Divertisements and that insufficient negligent non-resident and scandalous Ministers be not permitted in the Church And as the present Bishops are known to be Men of great and exemplary Piety c. 2. Because the Diocesses especially some of them are thought to be of too large Extent we will appoint such a Number of suffragan Bishops in every Diocess as shall be sufficient for the due Performance of their Work 3. No Bishops shall ordain or exercise any part of Jurisdiction which appertains to the Censures of the Church without the Advice and Consent of the Presbyters and no Chancellors Commissaries Archdeacons or Officials shall exercise any Act of Spiritual Jurisdiction 4. To the end that the Deans and Chapters may be the better fitted to afford Counsel and Assistance to the Bishops both in Ordination and in the other Ordinances mentioned before we will take care that those Preferments be given to the most learned and pious Presbyters of the Diocess And moreover that at least an equal Number of the most learned pious and discreet Presbyters of the same Diocess annually chosen by the major Vote of all the Presbyters of that Diocess shall be assistant and consenting together with those of the Chapter at all Ordinations and all other Acts of spiritual Jurisdiction Nor shall any Suffragan Bishops ordain or exercise any act of spiritual Jurrisdiction but with the Consent and Assistance of a sufficient Number of the most Judicious and pious Presbyters annually chosen by the major Vote of all the Presbyters in his Precincts And our will is that the great Work of Ordination be constantly and solemnly performed at the four set times and Seasons appointed by the Church for that purpose 5. We will take care that Confirmation be rightly and solemnly performed by the Information and with the Consent of
the Minister of that Place Who shall admit none to the Lord's Supper till they have made a credible Profession of their Faith and promised Obedience to the Will of God according as is expressed in the Consideration of the Rubrick before the Catechism and that all possible Diligence be used for the Instruction and Reformation of scandalous Offenders whom the Ministers shall not suffer to partake of the Lord's Table until they have openly declared themselves to have truly repented and amended their former naughty Lives as is partly expressed in the Rubrick and more fully in the Canons Provided there be place for due Appeals to superior Powers 6. No Bishops c. 7. We are very glad to find that all with whom we have conferred do in their Judgments approve a Liturgy or a set Form of publick Worship to be lawful which in our Judgments for the Preservation of Unity and Uniformity we conceive to be very necessary And although we do esteem the Liturgy of the Church of England contained in the Book of Common-Prayer and by Law established to be the best that we have seen and we believe that we have seen all that are extant and used in this part of the World and we know what Reverence most of the reformed Churches or at least the most learned Men in those Churches have for it yet since we find some Exceptions made against several things therein We will appoint an equal Number of learned Divines of both Persuasions to review the same and to make such Alterations as shall be thought most necessary and some additional Forms in Scripture Phrase as near as may be suited unto the Nature of the several Ordinances and that it be left to the Minister's choice to use one or the other at his Discretion In the mean time and till this be done although we do heartily wish and desire that the Ministers in their several Churches because they dislike some Clauses and Expressions would not totally lay aside the use of the Book of Common Prayer but read those Parts against which there can be no Exception which would be the best Instance of declining those Marks of Distinction which we so much labour and desire to remove Yet in compassion to divers of our good Subjects who scruple the use of it as now it is our Will and Pleasure is that none be punished or troubled for not using it until it be reviewed and effectually reformed as aforesaid In the Preface concerning Ceremonies we desire that at least these Words be left out Not that themselves do in their Iudgments believe the Practice of these particular Ceremonies which they except against to be in it self unlawful As concerning Ceremonies our Will and Pleasure is 1. That none shall be required to kneel in the act of receiving the Lord's Supper but left at Liberty therein 2. That the religious Observation of Holyâ—days of human Institution be left indifferent and that none be troubled for not observing of them 3. That no Man shall be compell'd to use the Cross in Baptism or suffer for not using it 4. That no Man shall be compelled to bow at the Name of Jesus 5. For the use of the Surplice we are contented that all Men be left to their Liberty to do as they shall think fit without suffering in the least Degree for wearing or not wearing it And because some Men otherwise pious and learned say they cannot conform unto the Subscription required by the Canons nor take the Oath of Canonical Obedience we are content and it is our Will and Pleasure so they take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy that they shall receive Ordination Institution and Induction and shall be permitted to exercise their Function and to enjoy the Profits of their Livings without the said Subscription or Oath of Canonical Obedience And moreover that no Persons in the Universities shall for the want of such Subscription be hindred in taking their Degrees Lastly That such as have been ordained by Presbyters be not required to renounce their Ordination or to be re-ordained or denied Institution and Induction for want of Ordination by Bishops And moreover that none be judged to forfeit their Presentation or Benefice or be deprived of it for not reading of those of the 39 Articles that contain the controverted Points of Church-Government and Ceremonies § 108. After all this a Day was appointed for his Majesty to peruse the Declaration as it was drawn up by the Lord Chancellor and to allow what he liked and alter the rest upon the hearing of what both sides should say Accordingly he came to the Lord Chancellor's House and with him the Duke of Albermarle and Duke of Ormond as I remember the Earl of Manchester the Earl of Anglesey the Lord Hollis c. and Dr. Sheldon then Bishop of London Dr. Morley then Bishop of Worcester Dr. Hinchman then Bishop of Salisbury Dr. Cosins Bishop of Durham Dr. Gauden after bishop of Exeter and Worcester Dr. Barwick after Dean of Paule Dr. Hacket Bishop of Coventry and Litchfield with divers others among whom Dr. Gunning was most notable On the other part stood Dr. Reignolds Mr. Calamy Mr. Ash Dr. Wallis Dr. Manton Dr. Spurstow my self and who else I remember not The Business of the Day was not to dispute but as the Lord Chancellor read over Declaration each Party was to speak to what they disliked and the King to determine how it should be as liked himself While the Lord Chancellor read over the Preface there was no Interruption only he thought it best himself to blot out those Words about the Declaration in Scotland for the Covenant That we did from the Moment it passed our Hand ask God Forgiveness for our Part in it The great matter which we stopt at was the Word Consent where the Bishop is to confirm by the Consent of the Pastor of that Church and the King would by no means pass the Word Consent either there or in the Point of Ordination or Censures because it gave the Ministers a negative Voice We urged him hard with a Passage in his Father's Book of Meditations where he expresly granteth this Consent of the Presbyters but it would not prevail The most that I insisted on was from the end of our Endeavours that we came not hither for a Personal Agreement only with our Brethren of the other way but to procure such gracious Concessions from his Majesty as would unite all the soberest People of the Land And we knew that on lower Terms it would not be done Though Consent be but a little Word it was necessary to a very desirable end if it were purposed that the Parties and Divisions should rather continue unhealed then we had no more to say there being no Remedy But we were sure that Union would not be attained if no Consent were allowed Ministers in any part of the Government of their Flocks and so they should be only Teachers without any Participation and
the ruling of the People whose Rectors they are called And when I perceived some Offence at what I said I told them that we had not the Judgments of Men at our command We could not in reason suppose that our Concessions or any thing we could do would change the Judgments of any great Numbers and therefore we must consider what will unite us in case their Judgments be not changed or else we labour to no purpose § 109. But Bishop Morley told them how great our Power was and what we might do if we were willing and he told the King that no Man had written better of these Matters than I had done and there my five Disputations of Church Government c. lay ready to be produced and all was to intimate as if I now contradicted what I had there written I told him that I had best reason to know what I had written and that I am still of the same mind and stand to it all and do not speak any thing against it A great many words there were about Prelacy and Re-ordination Dr. Gunning and Bishop Morley speaking almost all on one side and Dr. Hinchman and Dr. Cosens sometimes and Mr. Calamy and my self most on the other side But I think neither Party doth value the rambling Discourses of that Day so much as to think them worthy the recording Mr. Calamy answered Dr. Gunning from Scripture very well against the Divine Right of Prelacy as a distinct Order And when Dr. Gunning told them that Dr. Hammond had said enough against the Presbyterains Cause and Ordination and was yet unanswered I thought it meet to tell him that I had answered the Substance of his Arguments and said enough moreover against the Diocesan Frame of Government and to prove the validity of the English Presbyters Ordination which indeed was unanswered though I was very desirous to have seen an Answer to it which I said because they had got the Book by them and because I thought the unreasonableness of their dealing might be evinced who force so many hundreds to be Re-ordained and will not any of them answer one Book which is written to prove the validity of that Ordination which they would have nullified though I provoked them purposely in such a Presence § 110. The most of the time being spent thus in speaking to Particulars of the Declaration as it was read when we came to the end the Lord Chancellour drew out another Paper and told us that the King had been petitioned also by the Independants and Anabaptists and though he knew not what to think of it himself and did not very well like it yet something he had drawn up which he would read to us and desire us also to give our Advice about it Thereupon he read as an Addition to the Declaration That others also be permitted to meet for Religious Worship so be it they do it not to the disturbance of the Peace and that no Iustice of Peace or Officer disturb them When he had read it he again desired them all to think on it and give their Advice But all were silent The Presbyterians all perceived as soon as they heard it that it would secure the Liberty of the Papists and one of them whispered me in the Ear and intreated me to say nothing for it was an odious Business but let the Bishops speak to it But the Bishops would not speak a word nor any one of the Presbyterians neither and so we were like to have ended in that Silence I knew if we consented to it it would be charged on us that we spake for a Toleration of Papists and Sectaries But yet it might have lengthened out our own And if we spake against it all Sects and Parties would be set against us as the Causers of their Sufferings and as a partial People that would have Liberty our selves but would have no others have it with us At last seeing the Silence continue I thought our very Silence would be charged on us a Consent if it went on and therefore I only said this That this Reverend Brother Dr. Gunning even now speaking against Sects had named the Papists and the Sâ—â—inians For our parts we desired not favour to our selves alone and rigorous Severity we desired against none As we humbly thanked his Majesty for his Indulgence to our selves so we distinguish the tolerable Parties from the intolerable For the former we humbly crave just lenity and favour but for the latter such as the two sorts named before by that Reverend Brother for our parts we cannot make their Toleration our request To which his Majesty said That there were Laws enough against the Papists and I replyed That we understood the Question to be whether those Laws should be executed on them or not And so his Majesty brake up the Meeting of that Day § 111. Before the Meeting was dissolved his Majesty had all along told what he would have stand in the Declaration and he named four Divines to determine of any Words in the Alteration if there were any difference that is Bishop Morley Bishop Hinchman Dr. Reignolds and Mr. Calamy and if they disagreed that the Earl of Anglesey and the Lord Hollis should decide it As they went out of the Room I told the Earl of Anglesey That we had no other business there that day but the Curches peace and welfare and I would not have been the Man that should have done so much against it as he had done that day for more than he was like to get by it for being called a Presbyterian he had spoken more for Prelacy than we expected And I think by the Consequent that this saying did some good for when I after found the Declaration amended and asked him how it came to pass he intimated to me that it was his doing § 112. And here you may note by the way the fashion of these Times and the state of the Presbyterians Any Man that was for a Spiritual serious way of Worship though he were for moderate Episcopacy and Liturgy and that lived according to his Profession was called commonly a Presbyterian as formerly he was called a Puritan unless he joyned himself to Independents Anabaptists or some other Sect which might afford him a more odious Name And of the Lords he that was for Episcopacy and the Liturgy was called a Presbyterian if he endeavoured to procure any Abatement of their Impositions for the Reconciling of the Parties or the ease of the Ministers and People that disliked them And of the Ministers he was called a Presbyterian that was for Episcopacy and Liturgy if he conformed not so far as to Subscribe or Swear to the English Diocesan Frame and all their Impositions I knew not of any one Lord at Court that was a Presbyterian yet were the Earl of Manchester a good Man and the Earl of Anglesey and the Lord Hollis called Presbyterians and as such appointed to direct and help
said than never to hear it and also that it was said That this Baker was one that he had elected to be a Bishop This greatly troubled the King and he called for the Book that had the Catalogue of the Bishops which Secretary Nicholas brought and said there was no such Name But the King presently spied the Name and said There it was and charged that he should be enquired after The next day we learned that it was another Baker of the same Name with the Bishop And though we also learned that the Bishop himself was a Good-fellow yet because it was not the same Man I went the next day to Mr. Secretary Morrice and intreated him to certifie the King that it was another Baker that so the Bishop might receive no wrong by it which he promised to do Yet was it given out that we were Lyers and â—anderers that maliciously came to defame the Clergy And shortly after the Bishop put it into the News-Book That some Presbyterians had maliciously defamed him and that it was not he but another of his Name So that though the Fact was never questioned or denied yet was it a heinouser matter in us to say that it was reported to be an elect Bishop when it was as ancient a Priest of the same name than for the Man to preach and pray in his Drunkenness I never heard that he was rebuked for it but we heard enough of it § 147. Upon this Fact when we met and dined one day at the Lord Chamberlains among other talk of this Business I said That if I wished their hurt at one of their Enemies I should wish they were more such that their shame might cast them down Mr. Horton a young Man that was Chaplain to the Lord Chamberlain and then intended to conform answered That we must not wish evil that good may come of it To which I replyed There is no doubt of it far is it from me to say that I wish it but if I were their Enemy I could scarce wish them greater hurt and injury to their Cause than to set up such Men and that those are their Enemies whoever they be that perswade them to cast out learned godly Ministers and set up such in their room as these Yet did this Mr. Horton in his complying weakness to please that Party tell Dr. Bolton That I wished that they were all such And Dr. Bolton told it from Table to Table and published it in the Pulpit And when he was questioned for it alledged Mr. Horton as his Author When I went to Mr. Horton he excused it and said That he thought I hâ—d said so and when I told him of the additional words by which then I disclaimed such a sence he could not remember them and that was all the remedy I had though none of the Brethren present remembred any such words as he reported But when the Lord Chamberlain knew of it he was so much offended that I was fain to intercede for Mr. Horton that it might not prove any hurt to him And by this following Letter he exprest his distast For my esteemed Friend Mr. Baxter These SIR I Have just Cause to intreat your Excuse for so abrupt a breaking from you I confess I was under very great trouble for the folly of my Chaplain and could not forbear to express it to him I am concerned with a very true resentment for so imprudent a Carriage Let me intreat you that it may not reflect upon me but that you will believe that I have so great a value of you and am so tender of your Credit as I cannot easily pass by my Chaplain's indiscretion Yet I shall endeavour to clear you from any untrue Aspersions and shall approve my self Your assured Friend Ed. Manchester § 148. I shall next insert some account of the Business which I had so often with the Lord Chancellour at this time Because it was most done in the inter-space between the passing of the King's Declaration and the Debates about the Liturgy In the time of Cromwell's Government Mr. Iohn Elliot with some Assistant in New-England having learnt the Natives Language and Converted many Souls among them not to be baptized and forget their Names as well as Creed as it is among the Spaniards Converts at Mexico Peru c. but to serious Godliness it was found that the great hinderance of the progress of that Work was the Poverty and Barbarousness of the People which made many to live dispersed like wild Beasts in Wildernesses so that having neither Towns nor Food nor Entertainment fit for English Bodies few of them could be got together to be spoken to nor could the English go far or stay long among them Wherefore to build them Houses and draw them together and maintain the Preachers that went among them and pay School-masters to teach their Children and keep their Children at School c. Cromwell caused a Collection to be made in England in every Parish and People did contribute very largely And with the Money beside some left in stock was bought 7 or 800 l. per Annum of Lands and a Corporation chosen to dispose of the Rents for the furthering of the Works among the Indians This Land was almost all bought for the worth of it of one Colonel Beddingfield a Papist an Officer in the King's Army When the King came in Beddingfield seizeth on the Lands again and keepeth them and refuseth either to surrender them or to repay the Money because all that was done in Cromwell's time being now judged void as being without Law that Corporation was now null and so could have no right to Money or Lands And he pretended that he sold it under the worth in expectation of the recovery of it upon the King's return The President of the Corporation was the Lord Steele a Judge a worthy Man The Treasurer was Mr. Henry Ashurst and the Members were such sober godly Men as were best affected to New-Englands Work Mr. Ashurst being the most exemplary Person for eminent Sóbriety Self-denial Piety and Charity that London could glory of as far as publick Observation and Fame and his most intimate Friends Reports could testifie did make this and all other Publick Good which he could do his Business He called the Old Corporation together and desired me to meet them where we all agreed that such as had incurred the King's Displeasure by being Members of any Courts of Justice in Cromwell's days should quietly recede and we should try if we could get the Corporation restored and the rest continued and more fit Men added that the Land might be recovered And because of our other Business I had ready access to the Lord Chancellour they desired me to solicit him about it so Mr. Ashurst and I did follow the Business The Lord Chancelloor at the very first was ready to further us approving of the Work as that which could not be for any Faction or Evil end but honourable to
only your Labours but also your special Assistance in a time of need unto the promoting the welfare of this poor Country certified unto us by Captain Leveret upon which account our General Court thought good to return unto you their Thanks in a Letter which I hope before this is received have made your Name both known and precious to us in these Parts The Occasion of these is in the behalf of one Mr. William Leet Governour of New Heven Jurisdiction whose Case is this He being conscious of indiscretion and some neglect not to say how it came about in relation to the expediting the Execution of the Warrant according to his Duty sent from his Majesty for the apprehending of the two Colonels is not without fear of some displeasure that may follow thereupon and indeed hath almost ever since been a Man depressed in his Spirit for the neglect wherewith he chargeth himself therein His endeavours also since have been accordingly and that in full degree as besides his own Testimony his Neighbours attest they see not what he could have done more Sir If any report prejudicial to this Gentleman in this respect come unto your Ear by your prudent Enquiry upon this Intimation or otherwise so far as the signification of the Premises unto his Majesty or other eminent Person may plead for him or avert trouble towards him I assure my self you may report it as a real Truth and that according to your Wisdom you would be helpful to him so far therein is both his and my desire The Gentleman hath pursued both others and my self with Letters to this effect and yet not satisfied therewith came to Boston to disburden his heart to me formerly unacquainted with him only some few times in Company where he was upon issue of which Conference no better Expedient under God presented it self to us than this So far as you shall see cause as the matter requireth to let the Premises be understood is finally left with your self under God Sir The Author of these Lines it shall be your favour and a pledge of Love undeserved to conceal farther than the necessity of the End desired shall call for And if hereby you shall take occasion being in place of discovery to intelligence the Writer touching your observances with relation to the concernments of this People your Advertisements may not only be of much use unto this whole Country but further your account and minister unto many much cause of Thansgiving on your behalf And I shall be bold upon such encouragement if God permits to give you a more distinct account how it fareth with us I mean of the steps of Divine Providence as to the Publick both in our Civils and Ecclesiasticks which at some spare time may hapâ—y be looked at as a matter of contentful Meditation to your self I crave now pardon for being thus bold with you and will not presume any further to detain you The Lord Jesus be with your Spirit and let him also be remembred by you in your Prayers who is in chief SIR Yours in any Service of the Gospel John Norton Boston Sept. 23. 1661. For the Reverend and his much Honoured Friend Mr. Baxter Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty Reverend and much esteemed in the Lord HOwever black the Cloud is and big the Storm yet by all this the Work and Design of Jesus Christ goeth on and prospereth and in these Clouds Christ is coming to set up his Kingdom Yea is he not come in Power and great Glory When had the Truth a greater or so great and glorious a Cloud of Witnesses Is not this Christ in Power and great Glory and if Christ hath so much Glory in the slaughter of his Witnesses what will his Glory be in their Resurrection Your Constancy who are in the heat of the Storm and Numbers ministers matter of humbling and quickning to us who are at a distance and ready to totter and comply at the noise of a probable approach of our Temptation We are not without our Snares but hitherunto the Lords own Arm hath brought Salvation Our Tents are at Ebenezer However the trials and troubles be we must take care of the present Work and not cease and tarry for a calm time to work in And this Principle doth give me occasion to take the boldness to trouble you with these Lines at present My Work about the Indian Bible being by the good hand of the Lord though not without difficulties finished I am meditating what to do next for these Sons of this our Morning they having no Books for their private use of ministerial composing For their help though the Word of God be the best of Books yet Humane Infirmity is you know not a little helped by reading the holy Labours of the Ministers of Jesus Christ. I have therefore purposed in my heart seeing the Lord is yet pleased to prolong my life to translate for them a little Book of yours intituled A Call to the Unconverted The keenness of the Edge and liveliness of the Spirit of that Book through the blessing of God may be of great use unto them But seeing you are yet in the Land of the Living and the good Lord prolong your days I would not presume to do such a thing without making mention thereof unto your self that so I might have the help and blessing of your Counsel and Prayers I believe it will not be unacceptable to you that the Call of Christ by your holy Labours shall be made to speak in their Ears in their own Language that you may preach unto our poor Indians I have begun the Work already and find a great difference in the Work from my former Translations I am forced sometime to alter the Phrase for the facilitating and fitting it to our Language in which I am not so strict as I was in the Scripture Some things which are fitted for English People are not fit for them and in such cases I make bold to fit it for them But I do little that way knowing how much beneath Wisdom it is to shew a Man's self witty in mending another Man's Work When this Work is done if the Lord shall please to prolong my Life I am meditating of Translating some other Book which may prescribe to them the way and manner of a Christian Life and Conversation in their daily Course and how to worship God on the Sabbath fasting feasting Days and in all Acts of Worship publick private and secret and for this purpose I have Thoughts of translating for them the Practice of Piety or some other such Book In which Case I request your Advice to me for if the Lord give opportunity I may hear from you if you see cause so far to take Notice hereof before I shall be ready to begin a new work especially because the Psalms of David in Metre in their Language are going now to the Press which will be some Diversion of me from a present
become a Divine Colledge And Lastly when Antichrist is overthrown and a divine Form of Church-Government is put in practice in all Places then all the World would become Divine or at least all the World would become very Divine or very Prophane Rev. 22. 11 15. And so the World should end as it began Gen. 4. 26. some calling on the Name of the Lord and some prophaning it eminently distinguish'd from each other I rejoice to see and taste the wonderful gracious Savour of God's Spirit among his Saints in their humble Retirements Oh! how sweet is the trodden Cammomile How precious and Powerful is the Ministry of the Cross It is a dryer time with us who are making after Compliances with the Stream Sir I beseech you let us have a share in your holy Prayers in your holy Retirements in your blessed Chambers when the Lord shuts the Door and yet is among you himself and maketh your Hearts to burn by the Power of his Presence Thus commending you and all your holy Labours to the Lord and to the Word of his Grace I rest Your unworthy Fellow-Labourer In the Lord's Vineyard John Eliot Roxbury this 6th of the 5th 1663. To his Reverend Friend and Brother Mr. Baxter The Answer Nov. 30. from Acton near London Reverend and much honoured Brother THough our Sins have separated us from the People of our Love and Care and deprived us of all publick Liberty of preaching the Gospel of our Lord I greatly rejoice in the Liberty Help and Success which Christ hath so long vouchsafed you in his Work There is no Man on Earth whose Work I think more Honourable and Comfortable than yours To propagate the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ unto those dark Parts of the World is a better Work than our hating and devouring one another There are many here that would be ambitious of being your Fellow-Labourers but that they are informed you have access to no greater a Number of the Indians than you your self and your present Assistants are able to instruct An honourable Gentleman Mr. Rob. Boyle the Governor of the Corporation for your Work a Man of great Learning and Worth and of a very publick universal Mind did Motion to me a publick Collection in all our Churches for the maintaining of such Ministers as are willing to go hence to you partly while they are learning the Indian Language and partly while they after labour in the Work as also to transport them But I find those backward to it that I have spoke to about it partly suspecting it a Design of those that would be rid of them but if it would promote the Work of God this Objection were too carnal to be regarded by good Men partly fearing that when the Money is gathered the Work may be frustrated by the alienation of it but this I think they need not fear so far as to hinder any partly because they think there will be nothing considerable gathered because the People that are unwillingly divorced from their Teachers will give nothing to send them further from them and those that are willingly separated from them will give nothing to those that they no more respect But specially because they think on the aforesaid Grounds that there is no work for them to do if they were with you There are many here I conjecture that would be glad to go any whither to Persians Tartarians Indians or any unbelieving Nation to propagate the Gospel if they thought they could be serviceable but the Defect of their Languages is their great Discouragement For the universal Character that you speak of many have talked of it and one hath printed his Essay and his way is only by numeral Figures making such and such Figures to stand for the Words of the same signification in all Tongues but no body regards it I shall communicate your Motion here about the Hebrew but we are not of such large and publick Minds as you imagin every one looks to his own Concernment and some to the things of Christ that are near them at their own Doors But if there be one Timothy that naturally careth for the State of the Churches we have no Man of a Multitude more likeminded but all seek their own things we had one Dury here that hath above thirty Years laboured the reconciling of the Churches but sew regarded him and now he is glad to escape from us into other Countries Good Men that are wholly devoted to God and by long Experience are acquainted with the Interest of Christ are ready to think all others should be like them but there is no hope of bringing any more than here and there an experienced holy self-denying Person to get so far above their personal Concernments and narrowness of Mind and so wholly to devote themselves to God The Industry of the Jesuits and Fryars and their Successes in Congo Iapan China c. shame us all save you But yet for their personal Labours in the Work of the Gospel here are many that would be willing to lay out where they have Liberty and a Call though scarce any that will do more in furthering great and publick Works I should be glad to learn from you how far your Indian Tongue extendeth how large or populous the Country is that useth it if it be known and whether it reach only to a few scattered Neighbours who cannot themselves convey their Knowledge far because of other Languages We very much rejoice in your happy Work the Translation of the Bible and bless God that hath strengthened you to finish it If any thing of mine may be honoured to contribute in the least measure to your blessed Work I shall have great cause to be thankful to God and wholly submit the Alteration and use of it to your Wisdom Methinks the Assemblies Catechism should be next the holy Scriptures most worthy of your Labours The Lord prolong your Days and prosper you As to your Case about God's Image and Likeness 1. The Controversy de Nomine is of no great Moment I know the Schoolmen make the two Words signifie two things I think it 's a groundless Conceit But dere call them what you will Image or Likeness it consisteth of three parts or a Trinity in Unity 1. The natural substantial Part. 2. The qualitative moral part 3. The relative honorarary part I rather call them three Parts of God's Image than three Images though here also the Controversy de Nomine is small 1. Man's high superanimal or rational Life in Unity hath his Trinity of noble Faculties an Intellect or Reason capable of knowing God a free or self-determining Will capable of adhearing to him and an executive Power capable of serving him That these Natural Essential Powers are the Natural Part of God's Image appears Gen. 9. 6. where Man as Man is supposed to have it else the Murder of none but Saints is there forbidden This no Man loseth 2. Holiness or the Spirit in Unity
was done to my knowledge in Sixteen years of that kind was but this that when the Scots fled from Worcester as all the Country sought in covetousness to catch some of them for their Horses so two idle Rogues of Kedderminster that never communicated with me any more than he did had drawn two or three of their Neighbours with them in the Night as the Scots fled to catch their Horses And I never heard of three that they catcht And I appealed to the Bishop and his Conscience whether he that being urged could name no more but this did ingenuously Accuse the Corporation Magistrates and People to have appeared on all occasion in Arms for Cromwell And when they had no more to say I told them by this we saw what measures to expect from Strangers of his mind when he that is our Neighbour and noted for eminent Civility never sticketh to speak such things even of a People among whom he hath still lived § 159. About the same time about Twenty or Two and twenty furious Fanaticks called Fifth-Monarchy-men one Venner a Wine-Cooper and his Church that he preached unto being transported with Enthusiastick Pride did rise up in Arms and fought in the Streets like Mad-men against all that stood in their way till they were some kill'd and the rest taken judged and executed I wrote a Letter at this time to my Mother-in-law containing nothing but our usual matter even Encouragements to her in her Age and Weakness fetcht from the nearness of her Rest together with the Report of this News and some sharp and vehement words against the Rebels By the means of Sir Iohn Packington or his Soldiers the Post was searched and my Letter intercepted opened and revised and by Sir Iohn sent up to London to the Bishop and the Lord Chancellour so that it was a wonder that having read it they were not ashamed to send it up But joyful would they have been could they but have found a word in it which could possibly have been distorted to an evil sence that Malice might have had its Prey I went to the Lord Chancellour and complained of this usage and that I had not the common liberty of a Subject to converse by Letters with my own Family He disowned it and blamed Mens rashness but excused it from the Distempers of the Times and he and the Bishops confessed they had seen the Letter and there was nothing in it but what was good and pious And two days after came the Lord Windsor Lord Lieutenant of the Country and Governour of Iamaica with Sir Charles Littleton the King's Cup bearer to bring me my Letter again to my Lodgings and the Lord Windsor told me The Lord Chancellour appointed him to do it After some expression of my sense of the Abuse I thanked him for his great Civility and Favour But I saw how far that sort of Men were to be trusted § 160. And here I will interpose a short Account of my Publick Ministry in London Being removed from my ancient Flock in Worcestershire and yet being uncertain whether I might return to them or not I refused to take any other Charge but preached up and down London for nothing according as I was invited When I had done thus above a year I thought a fixed place was better and so I joyned with Dr. Bates at St. Dunstan's in the West in Fleâ—tstreet and preached once a week for which the People allowed me some Maintenance Before this time I scarce ever preached a Sermon in the City but I had News from Westminster that I had preached seditiously or against the Government when I had neither a thought nor a word of any such tendency Sometimes I preached purposely against Faction Schism Sedition and Rebellion and those Sermons also were reported to be Factious and Seditious Some Sermons 〈◊〉 Covent Garden were so much accused that I was fain to print them the Book is called The Formal Hypocrite detected c But when the Sermons were printed I had not a word more against them The Accusations were all general of Sedition and Faction and against the Church but not one Syllable charged in particular § 161. The Congregations being crowded was that which provoked Envy to accuse me And one day the Crowd did drive me from my place It fell out that at Dunstan's Church in the midst of Sermon a little Lime and Dust and perhaps a piece of a Brick or two fell down in the Steeple or Belfray near the Boys which put the whole Congregation into sudden Melancholy so that they thought that â—he Steeple and Church were falling which put them all into so confused a haste to get away that indeed the Noise of the Feet in the Galleries sounded like the falling of the Stories so that the People crowded out of Doors the Women left some of them a Skarf and some a Shoe behind them and some in the Galleries cast themselves down upon those below because they could not get down the Stairs I sate still down in the Pulpit seeing and pitying their vain Distemper and assoon as I could be heard I intreated their Silence and went on The People were no sooner quieted and got in again and the Auditory composed but some that stood upon a Wainscot-Bench near the Communion Table brake the Bench with their weight so that the Noise renewed the Fear again and they were worse disordered than before so that one old Woman was heard at the Church Door asking forgiveness of God for not taking the first warning and promising if God would deliver her this once she would take heed of coming thither again When they were again quieted I went on But the Church having before an ill name as very old and rotten and dangerous this put the Parish upon a Resolution to pull down all the Roof and build it better which they have done with so great Reparation of the Walls and Steeple that it is now like a new Church and much more commodious for the Hearers § 162. While I was here also the daily Clamours of Accusers even wearied me No one ever questioned me nor instanced in any culpable words but in general all was against the Church and Government Upon which and the request of the Countess of Balcaries one of my Hearers a Person of exemplary worth I was fain to publish many of my Sermons verbatim on 2 Cor. 13. 5. in a Book called The Mischiefs of Self-ignorance and Benefits of Self-acquaintance And when the Book was printed without alteration then I heard no more of any Fault § 163. Upon this Reparation of Dunstan's Church I preached out my Quarter at Brides Church in the other end of Fleetstreet where the Common Prayer being used by the Curate before Sermon I occasioned abundance to be at Common Prayer which before avoided it And yet my Accusations still continued § 164. On the Week days Mr. Ashurst with about Twenty more Citizens desired me to preach a Lecture in
the rest might not be unintelligible and the whole defective 6. I put in the Forms and Order of Discipline partly because else we should never have had Opportunity therein to express our Minds and partly because indeed it belongeth to the Integrity of the Work and to shew the difference between their kind of Discipline in Chancellors Courts and ours by Pastors in Christian Congregations 7. Note that the method of the Litany and general Prayers is according to the Direction of the Lord's Prayer of which and the Ten Commandments it is a Commentary The first Commandment falleth in with the Preface and the three first Petitions of the Lord's Prayer All the other Commandments with the Evangelical Precepts come in under the third Petition Thy Will be done and then I proceeded to the other three Petitions and the Conclusion Doubtless the Lord's Prayer is the most perfect method for universal Prayer or holy Desires that can be possibly invented § 174. When I brought my Draught to the Brethren I found them but entring on their Work of Exceptions against the Common-Prayer and so I was fain to lay by mine above a Fortnight longer till their work was done In which divers of them took their Parts The chief Actors in that part were Dr. Reignolds Dr. Wallis Mr. Calamy Mr. Newcomen Dr. Bates Mr. Clarke Dr. Iacomb c. Dr. Horton never came among us at all nor Dr. Tuckney alledging his backwardness to speak though he had been the Doctor of the Chair in Cambridge nor Dr. Lightfoot but once or twice nor Mr. Woodbridge but twice or thrice dwelling far off Mr. Clarke brought in that large Enumeration of Corruptions in the Liturgy recited in the Abridgment of the Lincolnshire Ministers but it was refused because we would be as little querulous as possible lest it should offend and hinder our desired Accommodation and what Passages soever seemed to make the Common-Prayer-Book odious or savour of Spleen and Passion they did reject whoever offered them My principal Business was to keep out such Accusations as would not bear weight and to repress the Opinions of one of the Brethren who came from far and so came not till late among us who was absolutely against all parts of the Common-Prayer because they had been used by Papists to Idolatry And I drew up such Faults as in perusing the Common-Prayer-Book it self did occur to me and which were they which I most disliked in the Forms being not so much offended with some other things as some others were But the Brethren reduced it to a few brief Exceptions in general and would not by so particular an Enumeration of Faults provoke those that we had to do with which I misliked not But from the begining I told them that I was not of their Mind who charged the Common-Prayer with false Doctrine or Idolatry or false Worship in the Matter or Substance nor that took it to be a Worship which a Christian might not lawfully join in when he had not Liberty and Ability for better And that I always took the Faults of the Common Prayer to be chiefly Disorder and Defectiveness and so that it was a true Worship though imperfect and Imperfection was the Charge that we had against it considered as distinct from the Ceremonies and Discipline I looked at it as at the Prayers of many a weak Christian that I have heard who prayed with Disorder and Repetitions and unfit Expressions I would not prefer such a weak Christian in Prayer before a better but yet if I separated from such an one or thought it unlawful to join with him I should be sinfully Curious and Uncharitable And I think this was the Mind of all our Brethren save one as well as mine And old Mr. Ash hath often told us that this was the Mind of the old Nonconformists and that he hath often heard some weak Ministers so disorderly in Prayer especially in Baptism and the Lord's Supper that he could have wish'd that they would rather use the Common-Prayer Yet when we desired the Reformation of it especially at a time when the Peoples Hearts were so much set against it I thought it best to open the true Disorders that they might be reformed The Paper which I offered and we laid by lest it should offend them was this following The Exceptions against the Common-Prayer which I offered the Brethren when they were drawing up theirs The Common-Prayer-Book is guilty of great Defectiveness Disorder and vain Repetitions and therefore unfit to be the common imposed Frame of Worship to the God of Order without Amendment when we may do it 1. ORDER requireth that we begin with Reverent Prayer to God for his Assistance and Acceptance which is not done 2. That the Creed and Decalogue containing the Faith in which we profess to assemble for God's Worship and the Law which we have broken by our Sins should go before the Confession and Absolution or at least before the Praises of the Church which they do not 3. The Confession omitteth not only Original Sin but all actual Sin as specified by the particular Commandments violated and almost all the Aggravatious of those Sins and instead thereof it containeth only the repeated Confession that we have erred and strayed from God's ways That we have followed the Devises and Desires of our Hearts That we have offended against his Laws That we have left undone those things that we ought to have done c. which is but to say We have sinned by Omission and Commission Whereas Confession being the Expression of Repentance should be more particular as Repentance it self should be 4. When we have craved help for God's Prayers before we come to them we abruptly put in the Petition for speedy Deliverance O God make speed to save us O Lord make haste to help us without any Intimation of the Danger that we desire deliverance from and without any other Petition conjoined 5. It is disorderly in the Manner to sing the Scripture in a plain Tune after the manner of reading 6. The Lord be with you And with thy Spirit being Petitions for Divine Assistance come in abruptly in the midst or near the end of Morning Prayer And Let us Pray is adjoined when we were before in Prayer 7. Lord have Mercy upon us Christ have Mercy upon us Lord have Mercy upon us seemeth an affected Tautologie without any special Cause or Order here And the Lord's Prayer is annexed that was before recited And yet the next Words are again but a Repetition of the foresaid oft repeated General O Lord shew they Mercy upon us 8. The Prayer for the King O Lord save the King is without any Order put between the foresaid Petition and another General Request only for Audience And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee 9. The second Collect is intitled for Peace and hath not a Word in it of Petition for Peace but only for Defence in Assaults of Enemies and
but in general that what we ask may be granted the four and twentieth for forgiveness the five and twentieth for Good works all which are without any special reason both appropriated to the several days and placed where they stand in the order of our Requests The Petition on St. Thomas's day for so perfect a Faith as shall never be reproved in the sight of God is of doubtful conveniency because contrary to the Scripture prediction of the event In the Collect on St. Iohn Baptist's day the preaching of Penance is a word of a more misleading tendency as now used than the preaching of Repentance 14. The Lord's Prayer is a third time to be recited before the Communion when yet as it is a Rule of Prayer as to order it is forsaken through the Book The next Prayer for loving and magnifying God's Name is most necessary but there out of order The Commandments come in also out of order without any special reason of connexion to what goeth before and followeth So do the following Prayers for the King which yet in themselves are very good And the Epistle and Gospel and Creed The Churchwardens are not directed to an orderly collection for the Poor In the Sentences exciting to remember the Poor the Scriptures and Apochryphal Passages of Tobit are confounded without any note of sufficient distinction as if we would have the People believe that Tobit is Canonical Scripture The Prayer for the Church Militant one of the best is very defective having no Petition for the Church but those for Truth Unity Love and Concord The Exhortation biddeth all and intreateth them for the Lord Jesus sake even the worst and most unprepared that be present to come to the Lord's Table as invited thereto by God himself which is a great wrong to him and them And it misinterpreteth the Parable Matth. 22. to which it seemeth plainly to allude which speaketh not of our coming to the Sacrament but of our coming to Christ and into his Church Though indeed the Exhortation is very good if it were made at a sufficient distance before the Sacrament that they might have time of Preparation The next Admonition against unworthy Receiving is very good but impertinent and unseasonable while it perswadeth them to come to the Minister for Advice in order to the Sacrament which is perfectly to be administred It is a disorder for one of the Communicants to be invited to be the Mouth of the rest in Confession of Prayer If the People may pro tempore make a Minister why not for continuance and so the Common Prayer Book is for the Principles of Popular Separatists The proper Prefaces for Christmas-day and Whitsunday repeat the word at this day which is either a falshood or impertinent and non-intelligible to the most It is a disorder in the next words to begin in a Prayer and end in a Narrative It is disorderly for the Minister to receive the Sacrament in both kinds himself before the other Ministers or People do receive it in either There is no sufficient Explication of the Nature and Use of the Sacrament premised which is the greater defect where the Sacrament is allowed to be administred without a Sermon and where so many of the People never learned the Catechism or understood what a Sacrament is The Exhortation is too defective for the exciting the Faith and other Graces of the Communicants which yet we can bear with if the Minister may be allowed himself to speak such other quickening Words of Exhortation as he findeth suitable to the temper of the Communicants The Confession of Sin before the Communion is too general and defective The Consecration Commemoration and Delivery and Participation are not distinctly enough performed Sometime the Minister is to kneel at Prayer and sometime to stand up without any special reason given for it It were more orderly to make the Delivery distinct in Scripture words and not to confound Prayer and the Delivery together It is more suitable to Christ's Example that the Words of Delivery be ordinarily in the Plural Number and to the Church or to many at once Take ye Eat ye Drink ye than in the Singular Number recited to each one It is disorderly for the People to repeat every Petition of the following Prayers after the Minister That the Hymn be sung in Prose seemeth disorderly The Collects appointed to be said after the Offertory have no reason of order or connexion with what went before or followeth after The first of them beggs Assistance in these our Supplications and Prayers which should rather be towards the beginning than when we are concluding And it beggs but the oft repeated benefit of Defence against the Changes and as it is inconveniently called the Chances of this Life And another of them again asketh those things which we dare not ask But it is the greatest disorder of all that every Parishioner shall Communicate at least thrice in the year whether he be fit or unfit and be forced to it In Baptism it is the greatest disorder that Ministers must be forced though against their Consciences to baptize all Children without Exception the Children of Atheists Infidels Hereticks unbaptized Persons Excommunicate Persons or Impenitent Fornicators or such like It is disorderly that the Parents are neither of them required ordinarily to be present and present their Child to Baptism but it is left to Godfathers and Godmothers that have no power to consent for them or enter them into the Covenant unless it be in the Parents name or they be Pro-parents taking the Child as their own And it frustrateth due Enquiry and Assistance when the Parents may choose whether they will come before to the Minister to be instructed about the Nature and Use of Baptism and may choose whether they will let him know of it till the Night or Morning before The Exhortation before Baptism is very defective omitting many weighty Points So are the two Prayers before it where also it is inconveniently said That God by Christ's Baptism did sanctifie the Flood Jordan and all other Waters to the mystical washing away of Sin The ascribing of the Gift of the Holy Ghost to Infants by their Baptism as its ordinary Effect and necessary to their Regeneration is to bring an undetermined uncertain Opinion into our Liturgy The Arguments for Infant-Baptism are so defectively exprest as have tempted many into Anabaptism The third Prayer saith very little but what was said in one of those foregoing Sureties that have not the Parents power are unjustly required to promise in the Infant 's Name or the Infant by them And so it is a doubt whether many Infants have ever indeed been entred into the Covenant of God when they cannot be said to Promise or Covenant by Persons whom neither Nature or Scripture or any sufficient Authority hath enabled to that Office The Sureties are unjustly and irregularly required to profess present Actual Faith in the Infant 's name
are increased We do humbly conceive it therefore a Work worthy of those Wonders of Salvation which God hath wrought for his Majesty now on the Throne and for the whole Kingdom and exceedingly becoming the Ministers of the Gospel of Peace with all holy Moderation and Tenderness to endeavour the removal of every thing out of the Worship of God which may justly offend or grieve the Spirits of sober and godly People The Things themselves that are desired to be removed not being of the Foundation of Religion nor the Essentials of Publick Worship nor the Removal of them any way tending to the prejudice of the Church or State Therefore their Continuance and rigorous Imposition can no ways be able to countervail the laying aside of so many pious and able Ministers and the unconceivable grief that will arise to multitudes of his Majesty's most Loyal and Peaceable Subjects who upon all occasions are ready to serve him with their Prayers Estates and Lives For the preventing of which Evils we humbly desire that these Particulars following may be taken into serious and tender Consideration Concerning Morning and Evening Prayer Rubrick Exception THat Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in the accustomed place of the Church Chancel or Chappel except it be otherwise determined by the Ordinary of the place and the Chancel shall remain as in times past WE desire that the words of the first Rubrick may be expressed as in the Book established by Authority of Parliament 5 6 Edw. 6. Thus the Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in such place of the Church Chappel or Chancel and the Minister shall so turn him at the People may best hear and if there be any Controversie therein the matter shall be referred to the Ordinary Rubrick Exception And here is to be noted that the Minister at the time of the Communion and at other times in his Ministration shall use such Ornaments in the Church as were in use by Authority of Parliament in the Second year of the Reign of Edward the Sixth according to the Act of Parliament Forasmuch as this Rubrick seemeth to bring back the Cope Albe c. and other Vestments forbidden by the Common Prayer Book 5 and 6 Edw. 6. and and so our Reasons alledged against Ceremonies under our Eighteenth general Exception we desire it may be wholly left out Rubrick Exception The Lords Prayer after the Absolution ends thus Deliver us from Evil. We desire that these words For thiâ—â— is the Kingdom the power and the glory for ever and ever Amen May be always added unto the Lord's Prayer and that this Prayer may not be enjoyned to be so often used in Morning and Evening Service Rubrick Exception And at the end of every Psalm throughout the year and likewise in the end of Benedictus Benedicite Magnificat Nunc Dimitis shall be repeated Glory to the Father c. By this Rubrick and other places in the Common Prayer Books the Glâ—riâ— Patri is appointed to be said six times ordinarily in every Morning and Evening Service frequently eight times in a Morning sometimes ten which we think carries with it at least an appearance of that vain repetition which Christ forbids for the avoiding of which appearance of evil we desire it may be used but once in the Morning and once in the Evening Rubrick Exception In such places where they do sing there shall the Lessons be sung in a plain Tune and likewise the Epistle and Gospel The Lessons and the Epistles and Gospels being for the most part neither Psalms nor Hymns we know no warrant why they should be sung in any place and conceive that the distinct Reading of them with an audible voice tends more to the Edification of the Church Rubrick Exception Or this Canticle Benedicite omnia opera We desire that some Psalm or Scripture Hymn may be appointed instead of that Apocryphal In the Letany Rubrick Exception FRom all Fornication and all other deadly sin IN regard that the wages of sin is death we desire that this Clause may be thus altered From Fornication and all other heinous or grievous sins Rubrick Exception From Battel and Murther and sudden Death Because this Expression of sudden death hath been so often excepted against we desire if it be thought fit it may be thus read From battel and murther and from dying suddenly and unprepared Rubrick Exception That it may please thee to preserve all that travel by land or by water all women labouring with child all sick persons and young children and to shew thy pity upon all prisoners and captives We desire the term All may be advised upon as seeming liable to just Exceptions and that it may be considered whether it may not better be put indefinitely those that travel c. rather than universally The Collect on Christmas Day Rubrick Exception ALmighty God which hast given us thy only begotten Son to take â—â—r Nature upon him and this day to be born of a pure Uirgin c. WE desire that in both Collects the word This day may be left out it being according to vulgar acceptation a Contradiction Rubrick  Then shall follow the Collect of the Nativity which shall be said continually unto New-years-day  The Collect for Whitsunday Rubrick  GOd which upon this day c.  Rubrick  The same Collect to be read on Monday and Tuesday in Whitson-week  Rubrick Exception The two Collects for St. John's day and Innocents the Collects for the first day in Lent for the fourth Sunday after Easter for Trinity Sunday for the sixth and twelfth Sunday after Trinity for St. Luke's day and Michaelmas day We desire that these Collects may be further considered and debated as having in them divers things that we judge fit to be altered The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper Rubrick Exception SO many as intend to be partakers of the Holy Communion shall signifie their Names to the Curate over-night or else in the Morning before the beginning of Morning Prayer or immediately after THe time here assigned for notice to be given to the Minister is not sufficient Rubrick Exception And if any of these be a notorious evil liver the Curate having knowledge thereof shall call him and advertize him in any wise not to presume to the Lord's Table We desire the Ministers power both to admit and keep from the Lord's Table may be according to his Majesty's Declaration 25 Octob. 1660. in these words The Minister shall admit none to the Lord's Supper till they have made a credible Profession of their Faith and promised Obedience to the Will of God according as is expressed in the Considerations of the Rubrick before the Catechism and that all possible diligence be used for the Instruction and Reformation of Scandalous Offenders whom the Minister shall not suffer to partake of the Lord's Table until they have openly declared themselves to have truly repented and amended their
interpreted in a wrong part and yet because brotherly Charity willeth that so much as conveniently may be Offences should be taken away therefore are we willing to do the same Whereas it is ordained in the Book of Commonâ—Prayer in the Administration of the Lord's Supper that the Communicant kneeling should receive the holy Communion which thing being well meant for a signification of the humble and grateful Acknowledging of the Benefits of Christ given unto the worthy Receivers and to avoid the prophanation and disorder which about the holy Communion might else ensue lest yet the same Kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise We do declare that it is not meant thereby that any Adoration is done or ought to be done either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received or unto any real or essential Presence there being of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood For as concerning the Sacramental Bread and Wine they remain still in their very natural Substances and therefore may not be adored for that were Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians and as concerning the natural Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ they are in Heaven and not here for it is against the Truth of Christ's natural Body to be in more places than in one at one time Of Publick Baptism THERE being divers Learned Pious and Peaceable Ministers who not only judge it unlawful to Baptize Children whose Parents both of them are Atheists Infidels Hereticks or Unbaptised but also such whose Parents are Excommunicate Persons Fornicators or otherwise notorious and scandalous Sinners We desire they may not be enforced to Baptize the Children of such until they have made due Profession of their Repentance Before Baptism Rubrick Exception Parents shall give notice over night or in the morning We desire that more timely notice may be given Rubrick Exception And the Godfathers and the Godmothers and the people with the Children c. Here is no mention of the Parents in whose right the Child is baptised and who are fittest both to dedicate it unto God and to covenant for it We do not know that any Persons except the Parents or some others appointed by them have any Power to consent for the Children or to enter them into Covenant We desire it may be left free to Parents whether they will have Sureties to undertake for their Children in Baptism or no. Rubrick Exception Ready at the Font. We desire it may be so placed as all the Congregation may best see and hear the whole Administration In the first Prayer  By the Baptism of thy Welbeloved Son c. didst sanctifie the Flood Jordan and all other waters to the Mystical washing away of Sin c. It being doubtful whether either the Flood Iordan or any other Waters were sanctified to a Sacamental Use by Christ's being baptized and not necessary to be asserted we desire this may be otherwise expressed The third Exhortation  Do promise by you that be their Sureties We know not by what right the Sureties do promise and answer in the Name of the Infant it seemeth to us also to countenance the Anabaptistical Opinion of the necessity of an actual Profession of Faith and Repentance in Order to Baptism That such a Profession may be required of Parents in their own Name and now solemnly renewed when they present their Children to Baptism we willingly grant but the asking of one for another is a Practice whose warrant we doubt of and therefore we desire that the two first Interrogatories may be put to the Parents to be answered in their own Names and the last propounded to the Parents or Pro-parents thus Will you have this Child Baptized into this Faith The Questions  Doest thou forsake c.  Doest thou believe c.  Wilt thou be Baptized c.  The second Prayer before Baptism  May receive remission of Sins by spiritual Regeneration This expression seeming inconvenient We desire it may be changed into this May be regenerated and receive the Remission of Sins In the Prayer after Baptism  That it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Infant by thy holy Spirit We cannot in Faith say that every Child that is baptized is regenerated by God's Holy Spirit at least it is a disputable point and therefore we desire it may be otherwise expressed After Baptism  Then shall the Priest make a Cross c. Concerning the Cross in Baptism we refer to our 18th General Of Private Baptism WE desire that Baptism may not be administred in a private place at any time unless by a lawful Minister and in the presence of a competent Number That where it is evident that any Child hath been so baptised no part of the Administration may be reiterated in publick under any Limitations And therefore we see no need of any Liturgy in that Case Of the Catechism Catechism Exception 1 Quest. WHat is your Name c. 2 Quest. Who gave you that Name WE desire these three first Questions may be altered considering that the far greater number of Persons Baptized within these Twenty years last past had no Godfathers or Godmothers at their Baptism The like to be done in the seventh Question Ans. My Godfathers and my Godmothers in my Baptism  3 Quest. What did your Godfathers and Godmothers do for you in Baptism  2 Ans. In my Baptism wherein I was made a Child of God a Member of Christ and an Inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven We conceivâ— it might be more safely expressed thus Wherein I was visibly admitted into the number of the Members of Christ the Children of God and the Heirs rather than Inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven Of the Rehearsal of the Ten Commandments We desire that the Commandments be inserted according to the New Translation of the Bible 10 Ans. My Duty towards God is to believe in him c. In this Answer there seems to be particular respect to the several Commandments of the first-Table as in the following Answer to those of the second And therefore we desire it may be advised upon whether to the last word of this Answer may not be added particularly on the Lord's day otherwise there being nothing in all this Answer that refers to the fourth Commandment 14 Quest. How many Sacraments hath Christ ordained c That these words may be omitted and Answer thus given Two only Baptism and the Lord's Supper Ans. Two only as generally necessary to Salvation  19 Quest. What is required of Persons to be Baptized We desire that the entring Infants into God's Covenant may be more warily expressed and that the words may not seem to found their Baptism upon a really actual Faith and Repentance of their own and we desire that a promise may not be taken for a performance of such Faith and Repentance and especially that it be not asserted that they perform these by the promise of their Sureties it being to the Seed of
Believers that the Covenant of God is made and not that we can find to all that that have such believing Sureties who are neither Parents nor Prâ—parents of the Child Ans. Repentance whereby they forsake sin and Faith whereby they stedfastly believe the Promises of God c.  20 Quest. Why then are Infants baptized when by reason of ther tender Age they cannot perform them  Ans. Yes they do perform by their Sureties who promise and vow them both in their Names  In the general we observe That the Doctrine of the Sacraments which was added upon the Conference at Hampton-Court is much more fully and particularly delivered than the other parts of the Catechism in short Answers fitted to the memories of Children and thereupon we offer it to be considered First Whether there should not be a more distinct and full Explication of the Creed the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer Secondly Whether it were no convenient to add what seems to be wanting somewhat particularly concerning the Nature of Faith of Repentance the two Covenants of Justification Sanctification Adoption and Regeneration Of Confirmation The last Rubrick before the Catechism  ANd that no Man shall think that any detriment shall come to Children by deferring of their Confirmation he shall know for truth that it is certain by God's Word that Children being baptized have all things necessary for their Salvation and be undoubtedly saved ALthough we charitably suppose the meaning of these words was only to exclude the necessity of any other Sacraments to baptized Infants yet these words are dangerous as to the misleading of the Vulgar and therefore we desire they may be expunged Rubrick after the Catechism  So soon as the Children can say in their Mother-tongue the Articles of the Faith the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments and can answer such other Questions of this short Catechism c. then shall they be brought to the Bishop c. and the Bishop shall Confirm them We conceive that it is not a sufficient qualification for Confirmation that Children be able memoriter to the repeat the Articles of the Faith commonly called the Apostles Creed the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments and to answer to some Questions of this short Catechism for it is often found that Children are able to do all this at four or five years old 2dly It crosses what is said in the third Reason of the first Rubrick before Confirmation concerning the usage of the Church in times past ordaining that Confirmation should be ministred unto them that were of perfect Age that they being instructed in the Christian Religion should openly profess their own Faith and promise to be obedient to the Will of God And therefore 3dly we desire that none may be Confirmed but according to his Majesty's Declaration viz. That Confirmation be rightly and solemnly performed by the Information and with the Consent of the Minister of the place Rubrick after the Catechirm  Then shall they be brought to the Bishop by one that shall be his Godfather or Godmother This seems to bring in another sort of Godfathers and Godmothers besides those made use of in Baptism and we see no need either of the one or the other The Prayer before the Imposition of Hands  Who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy Servants by Water and the Holy Ghost and hast given unto them the forgiveness of all their sins This supposeth that all the Children who are brought to be confirmed have the Spirit of Christ and the forgiveness of all their sins Whereas a great number of Children at that Age having committed many sins since their Baptism do shew no Evidence of serious Repentance or of any special Saving Grace And therefore this Confirmation if administred to such would be a perillous and gross Abuse Rubrick before the Imposition of Hands  Then the Bishop shall lay his hand on every Child severally This seems to put a higher value upon Confirmation then upon Baptism or the Lord's Supper for according to the Rubrick and Order in the Common-Prayer-Book every Deacon may Baptize and every Minister may consecrate and administer the Lord's Supper but the Bishop only may Confirm The Prayer after Imposition of Hands  We make our humble Supplications unto thee for these Children upon whom after the Example of thy Holy Apostles we have laid our Hands to certifie them by this Sign of thy Favour and gracious Goodness towards them We desire that the Practice of the Apostles may not be alledged as a ground of this Imposition of Hands for the Confirmation of Children both because the Apostles did never use it in that Case as also because the Articles of the Church of England declare it to be a corrupt imitation of the Apostles practice Acts 25. We desire that Imposition of Hands may not be made as here it is a Sign to certifie Children of God's Grace and Favour towards them because this seems to speak it a Sacrament and is contrary to that fore-mentioned 25th Article which saith That Confirmation hath no visible Sign appointed by God The last Rubrick after Confirmation We desire that Confirmation may not be made so necessary to the Holy Communion as that none should be admitted to it unless they be confirmed None shall be admitted to the holy Communion until such time as he can say the Catechism and be confirmed  Of the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony THe Man shall give the Woman a Ring c. shall surely perform and keep the Uow and Covenant betwixt them made whereof this Ring given and received is a Token and Pledge c. SEeing this Ceremony of the Ring in Marriage is made necessary to it and a significant Sign of the Vow and Covenant betwixt the Parties and Romish Ritualists give such Reasons for the Use and Institution of the Ring as are either frivolous or superstitious It is desired that this Ceremony of the Ring in Marriage may be left indifferent to be used or forborn The Man shall say With my Body I thee worship This word worship being much altered in the Use of it since this Form was first drawn up We desire some other word may be used instead of it In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost These words being only used in Baptism and herein the Solemnization of Matrimony and in the Absolution of the Sick We desire it may be considered whether they should not be here omitted least they should seem to favour those who count Matrimony a Sacraâ—â—â— Till Death us depart This word depart is here improperly used Rubrick Exception Then the Minister or Clerk going to the Lords Table shall say or sing this Psalm We conceive this Change of Place and Posture mentioned in these two Rubricks is needless and therefore desire it may be omitted Next Rubrick  The Psalm ended and the Man and the Woman kneeling before the Lord's Table the Priest
upon us and our Posterity after us § 175. When the Exceptions against the Liturgy were finished the Brethren oft read over the Reformed Liturgy which I offered them At first they would have had no Rubrick or Directory but bare Prayers because they thought our Commission allowed it not That at last they yielded to the Reasons which I gave them and resolved to take them in But first to offer the Bishops their Exceptions § 176. At this time was the Convocation chosen for till now it was deferred Had it been called when the King came in the inferiour Clergy would have been against the Diocesan and Imposing way But afterwards many hundreds were turned out that all the old sequestred Ministers might come in And the Opinion of Reordination being set afoot all those Ministers that for Twenty years together while Bishops were laid aside had been Ordained without Diocesans were in many Countreys denied any Voices in the Election of Clerks for the Convocation By all which means and by the Scruples of abundance of Ministers who thought it unlawful to have any thing to do in the choosing of such a kind of Assembly the Diocesan Party wholly carried it in the Choice § 177. In London the Election was appointed to be in Christ's Church on the Second day of May 1661 The London Ministers that were not yet ejected proved the major Vote against the Diocesan Party and when I went to have joyned with them they sent to me not to come as they did also to Mr. Calamy and without my knowledge they chose Mr. Calamy and me for London But they carried it against the other Party but by Three Voices And the Bishop of London having the power of choosing Two out of Four or Four out of Six that are chosen by the Ministers in a certain Circuit did give us the great use of being both left out and so we were excused and the City of London had no Clerk in the Convocation How should I have been there baited and what a vexatious place should I have had in such a Convocation § 178. The fourth day of May we had a meeting with the Bishops where we gave in our Paper of Exceptions to them which they received § 179. The seventh day of May was a Meeting at Sion-Colledge of all the London Ministers for the choice of a President and Assistants for the next Year where some of the Presbyterians upon a pettish Scruple absenting themselves the Diocesane Party carried it and so got the Possession and Rule of the Colledge § 180. The eighth day of May the new Parliament and Convocation sat down being constituted of Men fitted and devoted to the Diocesan Interest § 181. On the two and twentieth day of May by order of Parliament the National Vow and Covenant was burnt in the Street by the Hands of the common Hangman § 182. When the Brethren came to examine the reformed Liturgy and had oft read it over they past it at last in the same Words that I had written it save only that they put out a few Lines in the Administration of the Lord's Supper where the Word offering was used and they put out a Page of Reasons for Infant Baptism which I had annexed to that Office thinking it unnecessary and they put the larger Litany into an Appendix as thinking it too long and Dr. Wallis was desired to draw up the Prayer for the King which is his Work being after somewhat altered by us And we agreed to put before it a short Address to the Bishops professing our readiness in Debates to yield to the shortning of any thing which should be too long and the altering of any thing that should be found amiss § 183. And because I foresaw what was like to be the end of our Conference I desired the Brethren that we might draw up a plain and earnest Petition to the Bishops to yield to such Terms of Peace and Concord as they themselves did confess to be lawful to be yielded to For though we are equals in the King's Commission yet we are commanded by the Holy Ghost If it be possible and as much as in us lieth to live peaceably with all men Rom. 12. 18. and to follow peace with all men Heb. 12. 14. and if we were denied it would satisfy our Consciences and justify us before all the World much more than if we only disputed for it However we might this way have that opportunity to produce our Reasons for Peace which else we were not like to have § 184. This Motion was accepted and I was desired to draw up the Petition which I did and it was examined and with a Word or two of Alteration consented to § 185. When we met with the Bishops to deliver in these Papers I was required to deliver them and if it were possible to get Audience for the Petition before all the Company I told them that though we were Equals in the present Work and our appointed business was to treat yet we were conscious of our Place and Duty and had drawn up a Petition to them which though somewhat long I humbly craved their Consent that I might read it to them Some were against it and so they would have been generally if they had known what was in it but at last they yielded to it But their Patience was never so put to it by us as in hearing so long and ungrateful a Petition When I had read it Dr. Gunning beginneth a long and vehement Speech against it To which when he came to the end I replyed But I was interrupted in the midst of my Reply and was fain to bear it because they had been patient with much ado so long before § 186. I delivered them the Petition when I had read it and with it a fair Copy of our reformed Liturgy called Additional Forms and Alterations of theirs And they received both and so we departed Our said Writings are too long to be here inserted § 187. After all this when the Bishops were to have sent us two Papers one of their Concessions how much they would alter of the Liturgy as excepted against and the other of their Acceptance of our offered Forms or Reasons against them instead of both these a good while after they sent us such a Paper as they did before of their Reasonings against all our Exceptions without any Abatements or Alterations at all that are worth the Naming Our Brethren seeing what they were resolved to bring it too and how unpeaceably they managed the Business did think best to write them a plain Answer to their Paper and not to suppress it as we had done by the First This Task also they imposed on me and I went out of Town to Dr. Spurstow's House in Hackney for Retirement where in eight Days time I drew up a Reply to their Answer to our Exceptions and the Brethren read it and consented to it only wished that it had been larger in the
latter end where I had purposely been brief because I had been too large in the beginning and because Particulars may be answered satisfactority in a few Words when the General Differences are fully cleared § 188. By this time our Commission was almost expired and therefore our Brethren were earnestly desirous of personal Debates with them upon the Papers put in to try how much Alteration they would yield to Therefore we sent to the Bishops to desire it of them and at last they yielded to it when we had but Ten Days more to treat § 189. When we met them I delivered them the Answer of their former Papers the largeness of which I saw displeased them and they received it And we earnestly prest them to spend the little time remaining in such pacifying Conference as tended to the ends which are mentioned in the King's Declaration and Commission and told them that such Disputes which they had called us to by their manner of Writing were not the thing which we desired or thought most conducing to those ends § 190. I have reason to think that the Generality of the Bishops and Doctors present never knew what we offered them in the reformed Liturgy nor in this Reply nor in any of our Papers save those few which we read openly to them For they were put up and carried away and I conjecture scarce any but the Writers of their Confutations would be at the Labour of reading them over And I remember in the midst of our last Disputation when I drew out the short Preface to this last Reply which Mr. Calamy wrote to enumerate in the beginning before their Eyes many of the grossest Corruptions which they stifly defended and refused to reform the Company was more ashamed and silent than at any thing else that I had said by which I perceived that they had never read or heard that very Preface which was as an Epistle to themselves Yea the chief of them confessed when they bid me read it that they knew no such thing So that it seems before they knew what was in them they resolved to reject our Papers right or Wrong and to deliver them up to their Contradictors § 191. When we came to our Debates I first craved of them their Animadversions on our Additions and Alterations of the Liturgy which we had put in long before and that they would tell us what they allowed or disallowed in them that we might have the use of them according to the Words in the King's Declaration and Commission But they would not by any Importunity be intreated at all to debate that nor to give any of their Opinions about those Papers There were no Papers that ever we offered them that had the Fate of those Though it was there that some of them thought to have found recriminating matter of Exception yet could we never prevail with them to say any thing about them in Word or Writing but once Bishop Morley told us of their length to which I answered that we had told them in our Preface that we were ready to abbreviate any thing which on debate should appear too long but that the Purity of the Prayers made the ordinary Lord's day Prayers far should than theirs And since we had given our Exceptions against theirs if they would neither by Word nor Writing except against ours nor yet give their Consent to them they would not honour their Cause or Conference But all could not extort either Debates on that Subject or any Reprehensions of what we had offered them Nor have they since to this Day in any of their Writings which ever I could see or hear of said a Word in way of Exception against those Papers Yea when Roger L'Estrange himself wrote according to his manner a malicious Invective against our several Papers when they were afterwards printed he could find little to say against our Liturgy but that we left it to the Liberty of the Minister in several Cases to pray in these Words or to this Sense And is that all the fault besides the Length forementioned Did they not know that it belongeth to the Prelates and not to such as we to deprive Men of their Liberty in praying If they had desired it how easy had it been for them to have dasht out that one Clause or to this Sense and then it had been beyond their Exception What measure of Liberty Ministers shall have it is not we but they that must determine § 192. When they had cast out that part of our desired Conference our next business was to desire them by friendly Conference to go over the Particulars which we excepted against and to tell us how much they could abate and what Alterations they could yield to This Bishop Reignolds oft prest them to and so did all the rest of us that spake But they resolutely insisted on it that they had nothing to do till we had proved that there was any necessary of Alteration which we had not yet done and that they were there ready to answer to our Proofs We urged them again and again with the very Words of the King's Declaration and Commission 1. That the ends expressed are for the removal of all Exceptions and Occasions of Exceptions and Differences from among our good Subjects and for giving Satisfaction to tender Consciences and the restoring and continuance of Peace and Unity in the Churches 2. And the means is to make such reasonable and necessary Alterations Corrections and Amendments therein as shall be agreed upon to be needful and expedient for the giving Satisfaction to tender Consciences and restoring and continuing Peace c. We plainly shewed hence that the King supposeth that some Alterations must be made But the Bishops insisted on two Words necessary Alterations and such as should be agreed on We answered them That the Word necessary hath reference to the Ends expressed viz. the satisfying tender Consciences and is joined with Expedient And its strange if when the King hath so long and publickly determined of the End and called us to consult of the means we should presume now at last to contradict him and to determine that the End it self is unnecessary and consequently no means necessary thereto What then have we all this while been doing 2. And when they are called to agree on such necessary means if they will take the Adventage of that Word to agree on nothing that so all Endeavours may be frustrated for want of their Agreement God and the World would judge between us who it is that frustrateth the King's Commission and the Hopes of a divided bleeding Church Thus we continued a long time contending about this Point Whether some Alterations be supposed by the King's Declaration and Commission to be made by us or whether we were anew to dispute that Point But the Bishops would have that to be our Task or none to prove by Disputation that any Alteration was necessary to be made while
nor Seditious but a People that quietly followed their hard Labour and learned the Holy Scriptures and lived a holy blameless Life in Humility and Peace with all Men and never had any Sect or separated Party among them but abhorred all Faction and Sidings in Religion and lived in Love and Christian Unity Yet when the Bishop was gone the Dean came and preached about three hours or near to cure them of the Admiration of my Person and a month after came again and preached over the same perswading the People that they were Presbyterians and Schismatical and were led to it by their over-valuing of me The People admired at the temerity of these Men and really thought that they were scarce well in their Wits that would go on to speak things so far from truth of Men whom they never knew and that to their own faces Many have gone about by backbiting to make People believe a false report of others but few will think to perswade any to believe it of themselves who know themselves much better than the Reprover doth Yet besides all this their Lecturers were to go on in the same strain and one Mr. Pitt who lived in Sir Iohn Packington's House with Dr. Hammond was often at this work being of the Judgment and Spirit of Dr. Gunning and Dr. Pierce calling them Presbyterians Rebellious Serpents and Generation of Vipers unlikely to scape the Damnation of Hell yet knowing not his Accusation to be true of one Man of them For there was but one if one Presbyterian in the Town but plain honest People that minded nothing but Piety Unity Charity and their Callings This dealing instead of winning them to the Preacher drove them from the Lecture and then as I said they accused the People as deserting it and put it down § 252. For this ordinary Preacher they set up one of the best parts they could get was far from what his Patrons spake him to be who was quickly a weary and went away And next they set up a poor dry Man that had been a School-master near us and after a little time he died And since they have taken another Course and set up a young Man the best they can get who taketh the contrary way to the first and over-applaudeth me in the Pulpit to them and speaketh well of them and useth them kindly And they are glad of one that hath some Charity And thus the Bishop hath used that Flock who say that till then they never knew so well what a Bishop was nor were before so guilty of that dislike of Episcopacy of which they were so frequently and vehemently accused I hear not of one person among them who is won to the Love of Prelacy or Formality since my removal § 253. Having parted with my dear Flock I need not say with mutual sense and tears I left Mr. Baldwin to live privately among them and oversee them in my stead and visit them from House to House advising them notwithstanding all the Injuries they had received and all the Failings of the Ministers that preached to them and the Defects of the present Way of Worship that yet they should keep to the Publick Assemblies and make use of such Helps as might be had in Publick together with their private Helps Only in three Cases to absent themselves 1. When the Minister was one that was utterly insufficient as not being able to teach them the Articles of the Faith and Essentials of true Religion such as alas they had known to their sorrow 2. When the Minister preached any Heresie or Doctrine which was directly contrary to any Article of the Faith or necessary part of Godliness 3. When in the Application he set himself gainst the Ends of his Office to make a holy Life seem odious and to keep Men from it and to promote the Interest of Satan Yet not to take every bitter Reflection upon themselves or others occasioned by difference of Opinion or Interest to be a sufficient Cause to say that the Minister preacheth against Godliness or to withdraw themselves § 254. When I was gone from them I wrote not a Letter to them past onec in a year left it should bring Suffering upon them the Cause also why I removed my Dwelling from them was because they apprehended themselves that my presence would have been their ruine as to Liberty and Estates For had they but received a Letter from me any displeasing thing that they had done would have been imputed to that As for instance not long after there came out the Act that all that had any Place of Trust in Cities Corporations or Countreys should be put out unless they declared that they held That there is no Obligation lying upon them or any other person from the Oath called The Solemn League and Covenant Hereupon all the Thirteen Capital Burgesses Bailiff Justice and all save one that had been an Officer in the King's Army were turned out though I suppose never any more than two or three of them took the Oath and Covenant themselves and almost all the 25 inferiour Burgesses were turned out with them Whereupon it was charged upon them that I had perswaded them to refuse this Declaration till it was manifest that I had never once spoke a word to them about it nor written one Line to them about that or anything else of a long time At such a distance were we forced to remain § 255. After a short time the Lord Windsor who was Lord Lieutenant of the County and Governour of Iamaica bought a House in the Town and lived among them as most thought to watch over them as a dangerous People which turned to their great Relief For before his coming they were many of them imprisoned and hardly used but when he lived among them and saw their honesty and innocency they have had Three years of as great quietness and liberty as any place I know in the Land When he first came thither I was there and went to wait upon him and told him truly that I was glad of his coming for my Neighbour's sakes for an innocent People are never so safe as under their Governour 's Eye seeing Slanders have their power most on strangers that are unacquainted with the persons or the things § 256. Just at the time that the Bishop was Silencing me it was famed at London that I was in the North in the Head of a Rebellion And at Kidderminster I was accused because there was a Meeting of many Ministers at my House which was no more than they knew had been their constant Custom many a year to visit me or dine with me And while we were at Dinner it fell out that by publick Order the Covenant was to be burnt in the Market-place and it was done under my Window and the Attendance was so small that we knew not of it till afterwards Yet because I had preached the Morning before which as I remember was my
not the Primitive Episcopacy or any other sort but the present Diocesan Prelacy which was in being in England Ergo no other could be extirpated 2. Because when the Covenant was debated first in the Synod at Westminster abundance of Divines who Subscribed the Covenant did openly profess that they were not against Episcopacy and would not consent to it in any such sence 3. Because the said Divines upon that profession caused the Description of the word Prelacy to be exprest in a Parentheses which is only the Description of our Diocesan Frame which is to be seen in the words of the Covenant 4. Because when the House of Lords who imposed it did conjunctly and solemnly take the Covenant Mr. Tho. Coleman who preached and gave it them did openly declare at the giving and taking of it that it was not all Episcopacy that they renounced or vowed by this Covenant to extirpate but only the Diocesan Prelacy there described All this with the words themselves I think is sufficient Evidence of the matter of that Clause § 365. 2. And for the Persons here are especially three sorts in question 1. The King 2. The Parliament 3. The People The first question is Whether the People in the number allowed by the Act may not by humble petition endeavour a reforming Alteration of the Prelacy 2. Whether Parliament Men may not lawfully speak and vote for it 3. Whether King and Parliament may not alter it by altering the Laws If all these Actions be the endeavouring of a Duty or of a lawful Thing in their several Places and Callings and that be the very thing which the Vow obligeth them to then the question is Whether hereto it do not bind them § 366. 1. To say that the People may not so much as petition for a Thing so much concerning their Felicity is to take away not only that Liberty which the King hath in many of his Declarations against the Parliament professed to maintain but also such Liberty as Lawyers say is woven into the Constitution of the Kingdom by the Fundamental Laws and cannot be taken from them but by changing the Constitution yea and reducing them to a state below that of a Subject § 367. 2. To say that a Parliament Man may not speak or vote for such an alteration seemeth to be against the old unquestioned Priviledge of Parliaments which was never denied by the King who opposed them in other things And this Opinion also by such an Alteration of Parliaments would alter the Constituted Government of the Land § 368. 3. To say that the King and Parliament may not alter Prelacy by altering the Law doth seem to be the highest Injury to Soveraignty by denying the Legislative Power § 369. If it be a thing which the People may not petition for nor Parliament vote for nor speak for nor King and Parliament alter then either because the Law of God disableth them or the Common Good forbiddeth them or the Laws of the Land restraineth them from But it is none of these Ergo 1. It is before shewed That no Law of God hath established the English Form of Prelacy nay that the Law of God is repugnant to it 2. And that the Common Good forbiddeth not the Alteration but requireth it 3. And that no Law restraineth in any of the three formentioned Cases is plain in that there is no Law against the Peoples Petitioning as aforesaid nor can be without alteration of the Government And the King with his Parliament are above Laws and have power to make them and to abrogate them So that it seemeth a thing that may be done and a Vow turneth a may be into a must be where it is of force And thus far they think that there is no great difficulty in the Controversie § 370. Before I tell you their Answers to the contrary Reasons I may tell you that not only Dr. Sanderson granteth but all Conformists that ever I talkt with hereabout do agree with us in these following Points 1. That we must here distinguish between the Actum Imperantis the Actum Iurantis and the Materiam Iuramenti the Act of the Parliament imposing it the Act of the Persons taking it and the Matter of the Oath or Vow 2. And also between the Sinfulness of an Oath the Act of the Swearer and the Nullity of it 3. And that if the Imposers Act be sinful and the Taking Act be sinful yet the Oath is obligatory if the Matter vowed be not unlawful and the Actus Iurandi were not a Nullity as well as a Sin 4. That if there be six Articles in a Vow and four of them be unlawful this doth not disoblige the Swearer from the lawful part Otherwise an unlawful Clause put in may free a Man from a Vow for the most necessary Duties 5. That if a Nation take a Vow it is a personal Vow to every individual Person in that Nation who took it 6. That if there be in it a mixture of a Vow to God and a League Covenant or Promise to Men the Obligation of the Vow to God may remain when as a League or Covenant with Man ceaseth unless when the Vow is not co-ordinate but sabordinate to the League or Covenant as being only a Vow or Oath that it shall be faithfully performed 7. That if a Vow be imposed in lawful proper Terms it is not any unexpressed Opinion of the Imposers that maketh the Matter unlawful to the Taker 8. That if the Imposers be many Persons naturally making one collective Body â—o â—ence of theirs is to be taken as explicatory but what is in the words or otherwise publickly declared to the Takers Because they are supposed to be of different 〈◊〉 among themselves when they agree not in any Exposition 9. That though a Subject ought to take an Oath in the sence of his Rulers who impose it as far as he can understand is yet a Man that taketh an Oath from a Robâ—eâ— to sive his Life is not alway bound to take it in the Imposers sence if he take it not against the proper sence of the words 10. That though a Subject should do his best to understand the Imposers sence for the right taking of it yet as to the keeping of it he is bound much to the sence in which he himself took it though possibly he misunderstood the Imposers § 371. Now to their Answer to the Reasons of the Conformists Object 1. The End was evil to change the Government of Church and State withâ—â—â— Law which was setled by Law The Bishops were a part of the House of Lords and therefore could not be cast out but by their own consent and the whole Parliament's with the King Answ. 1. It is not the ill ends of the Persons imposing that can disoblige the Taker unless it had been the fiâ—is proximus ipsius Iuramenti essential to the Vow it self and inseparable from it The Ends of Parliaments may be manifold and unknown
Prelatical Dignity is not some way retrenched and whether they bear still that irreconcileable hatred against good and godly Presbyterians that they may not be suffered to exercise their Charge and Duty Or if they are wholly deprived of the power and authority to serve their Parishes as to our great Scandal we are informed I had many things more to write to you but dare not trouble you most worthy Sir any further fearing to keep you from your weighty Business Only I crave very humbly your Answer and as much Information of the true present Estate as opportunity will give you leave Whether we have so much cause to fear the Introduction of Popery in England as some by the News amongst us are wholly perswaded In the mean while we will continue to pray the Lord our God and most merciful Father with all our Hearts and Souls to preserve your Person for the General Good and Edification of his whole Catholick Church that your great Light may shine more and more and so I remain Reverend and most worthy Sir Your humble and most Affectionate Servant Iohn Sollicâ—ffer unworthy Servant of Christ. Saingall in Helvetia Reformatâ 16 April 1663. The vigilant Eye of Malice that some had upon me made me understand that though no Law of the Land is against Literate Persons Correspondencies beyond Seas nor have any Divines been hindered from it yet it was like to have proved my ruine if I had but been known to answer one of these Letters though the Matter had been never so much beyond Exceptions So that I neither answered this nor any other save only by word of mouth to the Messenger and that but in small part for much of this in the latter part was Matter not to be touched Our Silencing and Ejection he would quickly know by other means and how much the Judgments of the English Bishops did differ from theirs about the Labours and Persons of such as we § 443. About this time I thought meet to debate the Case with some Learned and Moderate Ejected Ministers of London about Communicating sometimes in the Parish Churches in the Sacraments For they that came to Common Prayer and Sermon came not yet to Sacraments They desired me to bring in my Judgment and Reasons in writing which being debated they were all of my mind in the main That it is lawful and a duty where greater Accidents preponderate not But they all concurred unanimously in this That if we did Communicate at all in the Parish Churches the Sufferings of the Independents and those Presbyterians that could not Communicate there would certainly be very much increased which now were somewhat moderated by concurrence with them I thought the Case very hard on both sides That we that were so much censured by them for going somewhat further than they must yet omit that which else must be our Duty meerly to abate their Sufferings that censure us But I resolved with them to forbear a while rather than any Christian should suffer by occasion of an action of mine seeing God will have Mercy and not Sacrifice and no Duty is a Duty at all times § 444. In Iuly 1665. the Lord Ashley sent a Letter to Sir Iohn Trevor That a worthy Friend of his in whose Case the King did greatly concern himself had all his Fortunes cast upon my Resolution of the enclosed Case which was Whether a Protestant Lady of strict Education might marry a Papist in hope of his Conversion he promising not to disturb her in her Religion It came at Six a Clock Afternoon and knowing it was a Case that must be cautelously resolved at the Court I took time till the next Morning that I might give my Answer in Writing The next day the Lord Ashley wrote again with many words to incline me to the Affirmative for the Lady told them she would not consent unless I satisfied her that it was lawful Who the Lord and Lady were I know not at all but have an uncertain Conjecture So I sent the following Resolution The Case was thus expressed Whether one that was bred a strict Protestant and in the most severe ways of that Profession lived many years without giving offence to any well known in her own Country to be such may without offence to God or Man marry a profest Roman Catholick in hopes of taking him off the Errour of his ways he engaging never to disturb her My Lord's Letter was as follows SIR THere is a very good Friend of mine and one his Majesty is very much concerned for that this enclosed Case has the power of his Fortunes None but that worthy Divine Mr. Baxter can satisfie the Lady this has been the way by which the Romanists have gained very much upon us they are more powerful in perswasion than our Sex besides the putting this Case shews some inclination to the Person though not to the Religion Sir If Mr. Baxter be with you pray let me have his Opinion to this Case in writing under it Wherein you may oblige more than you think for Your very affectionate Friend to serve you ASHLEY For his much honoured Friend Sir Iohn Trevor at Acton To this Case I drew up the following Answer and sent it to Sir John Trevor to be by him conveyed to my Lord Ashley SIR THough I cannot be insensible how inconvenient to my self the Answer of this Case may possibly prove by displeasing those who are concerned in it and medling about a Case of Persons utterly unknown to me yet because I take it to be a thing which Fidelity to the Truth and Charity to a Christian Soul requireth I shall speak my Judgment whatever be the Consequents But I must crave the pardon of that Noble Lord who desired my Answer might be Subscribed to the Case because Necessity requireth more words than that Paper will well contain The Question about the Marriage is not An factum valeat but An fieri debeat There is no affirming or denying without these necessary Distinctions 1. Between a Case of Necessity and of no Necessity 2. Between a Case where the Motives are from the Publick Commodity of Church or State and where they are only Personal or Private 3. Between one who is otherwise sober ingenuous and pious and a faithful Lover of the Lady and one that either besides his Opinion is of an ungodly Life or seeketh her only to serve himself upon her Estate 4. Between a Lady well grounded and fixed in Truth and Godliness and one that is weak and but of ordinary setledness Hereupon I answer Prop. 1. In general It cannot be said to be simply and in all Cases unlawful to marry an Infidel or Heathen much less a Papist 2. In particular It is lawful in these following Cases 1. In Case of true Necessity when all just means have been used and yet the Party hath a necessity of Marriage and can have no better If you ask Who is better I answer A suitableness
any thing amiss in the Government of Church or State Established by Law If Endeavour be taken in its Latitude it is a perfect contradiction to this Law 3. The Testimonies of several Members of both Houses who assured us that in the Debate this was the declared Sense of the Parliament Sir Heneage Finch told me the intention of it was only to have security from us without any respect to our Iudgments concerning the Government that we would not disturb the Peace and that it was imposed at this Season in regard of our Wars with France and Holland He added it was a tessera of our Loyalty and those who refused it would be looked on as Persons reserving themselves for an Opportunity My Lord Chamberlain said the Bishops of Canterbury and Winchester declared it only excluded Seditious Endeavours and upon his urging that it might be expressed the Arch Bishop replyed It should be added but the King being to come at Two of the Clock it could not with that Explication be sent down to the House of Commons and returned up again within that time The Bishop of Exeter told Dr. Tillotson That the first Draught of this Oath was in Terms a Renunciation of the Covenant but it was answered they have suffered for that already and that the Ministers would not recede it was therefore reasonable to require security in such Words as might not touch the Covenant 4. The concurrent Opinion of the Iudges who are the Authorized Interpreters of Law who declared that only tumultuous and seditious Endeavours are meant Iudge Bridgman Twisden Brown Archer Windham Atkins who were at London had agreed in this Sense Some of the Ministers were not satisfied because the Opinion of a Iudge in his Chamber was no Iudicial Act but if it were declared upon the Bench it would much resolve their Doubts I addressed my Self to my Lord Bridgman and urged him that since it was a Matter of Conscience and the Oaths were to be taken in the greatest simplicity he would sincerely give me his Opinion about it He professed to me that the Sense of the Oath was only to exclude seditious and tumultuous Endeavours and said he would go to the Sessions and declare it in the Court He wrote down the Words he intended to speak and upon my declaring that if he did not express that only seditious Endeavours were meant I could not take the Oath be put in the Paper before me that word and told me that Iudge Keeling was of his Mind and would be there and be kind to us The Ministers esteemed this the most publick Satisfaction for Conscience and Fame and several of them agreed to go to the Sessions and take the Oath that hereby if possible they might vindicate Religion from the Impâ—tation of Faction and Rebellion and make it evident that Consciences only hindereth their Conformity Some of the most unsatisfied were resolved to take it We came in the afternoon on Friday to the Court where seven Ministers had taken it in the Morning At our appearance the Lord Bridgman addrest himself to us in these Words Gentlemen I perceive you are come to take the Oath I am glad of it The intent of it is to distinguish between the King 's good Subjects and those who are mentioned in the Act and to prevent Seditious and Tumultuous Endeavours to alter the Government Mr. Clark said in this Sense we take it The Lord Keeling spake with some quickness Will you take the Oath as the Parliament hath appointed it I replyed My Lord We are come hither to attest our Loyalty and to declare we will not seditiously endeavour to alter the Government He was silent and we took the Oath being 13 in number After this the Lord Keeling told us He was glad that so many had taken the Oath and with great vehemency said We had renounced the Covenant in two Principal Points that damnable Oath which sticks between the Teeth of so many And he hoped That as here was one King and one Faith so here would be one Government And if we did not Conform it would be judged we did this to save a stake These Words being uttered after by his Silence he had approved what my Lord B. had spoke of the Sense of the Act and our express Declaration that in that Sense we took it you may imagine how surprizing they were to us It was not possible for us to recollect our selves from the Confusion which this caused so as to make any reply We retired with sadness and what the consequences will be you may easily fore-see Some will reflect upon us with severity judging of the nature of the Action by this check of Providence Others who were resolved to take the Oath recoil from it their Iealousies being increased I shall trouble you no longer but assure you That notwithstanding this accident doth not invalidate the Reasons for the lawfulness of it in our apprehensions yet the fore-sight of this would have caused us to suspend our proceedings The good Lord sanctifie this Providence to us and teach us to commit our dearest Concernments unto him in the performance of our Duty to whose Protection I commend you and remain Yours intirely William Bates London Feb. 22. After my Lord Keeling's Speech Sir Iohn Babor enquired of Lord Bridgman whilst he was on the Bench Whether the Ministers had renounced the Covenant He answer'd the Covenant was not concerned in it Mr. Calamy Watson Gouge and many others had taken the Oath this Week but for this unhappy Accident My Lord Bridgman came to the Sessions and declared the Sense of the Oath with my Lord Chancellor's allowance But all the Reasons contain'd in this Letter seem'd not to me to enervate the force of the fore-going Objections or solve the Difficulties § 24. A little before this L. B. and Sir S. committed such horrid wickedness in their Drinking acting the part of Preachers in their Shirts in a Balcony with Words and Actions not to be named that one or both of them was openly censured for it in Westminster-Hall by one of the Courts of Justice You will say Sure it was a shameful Crime indeed And shortly after a Lightning did seize on the Church where the Monuments of the were and tore it melted the Leads and brake the Monuments into so small pieces that the people that came to see the place put the Scraps with the Letters on into their Pockets to shew as a Wonder and more wonderful than the consumption of the rest by fire § 25. In this time the Haunting of Mr. Mompesson's House in Wiltshire with strange Noises and Motions for very many Months together was the Common Talk Of which Mr. Ios. Glanvil having wrote the Story I say no more § 26. The Number of Ministers all this while either imprisoned sined or otherwise afflicted for preaching Christ's Gospel when they were forbidden was so great that I forbear to mention them particularly § 27. The War began with
went away to another place And this especially with the great discontents of the people for their manifold payments and of Cities and Corporations for the great decay of Trade and the breaking and impoverishing of many Thousands by the burning of the City together with the lamentable weakness and badness of great Numbers of the Ministers that were put into the Nonconformist's places did turn the hearts of the most of the Common people in all parts against the Bps. and their ways and enclined them to the Nonconformists tho fear restrained men from speaking what they thought especially the richer fort § 59. Here Ralph Wallis a Cobler of Glocester published a book containing the Names and particular histories of a great Number of Conformable Ministers in several Parishes of England that had been notoriously scandalous and named their scandals to the great displeasure of the Clergy And I fear to the great temptation of many of the Nonconformists to be glad of other Mens sin as that which by accident might diminish the interest of the Prelatists § 60. The Lord Mohune a young man gave out some words which caused a Common Scandal in Court and City against the Bp. of Rochester as guilty of most obscure Actions with the said Lord the reproach whereof was long the talk of many sorts of persons who then took liberty to speak freely of the Bishops § 61. About this time Ian. 1668. the news came of the Change in Portugal where by no means of the Queen the King who was a debanched person and Charged by her of insufficiency or frigidity was put out of his Government tho not his Title and his brother by the consent of Nobles was made Regent and marryed the Queen after a Declaration of Nullity or a divorce and the King was sent as a Prisoner into an Island where he yet remaineth Which News had but an ill sound in England as things went at that time § 62. In Ian. 1668. I received a Letter from Dr. Manton that Sir Iohn Barber told him that it was the Lord Keeper's desire to speak with him and me about a Comprehension and Toleration Whereupon coming to London Sir Iohn Barber told me that the Lord keeper spake to him to bring us to him for the aforesaid end and that he had certain proposals to offer us and that many great Courtiers were our friends in the business but that to speak plainly if we would carry it we must make use of such as were for a Toleration of the Papists also And he demanded how we would answer the Common Question What will satisfie you I answered him That other Mens Judgments and Actions about the Toleration of Papists we had nothing to do with at this time though it was no work for us to meddle in But to this question we were not so ignorant whom we had to do with as to expect full satisfaction of our desires as to Church-Affairs But the Answer must be suited to the Sense of his Question And if we knew their Ends what degree of satisfaction they were minded to grant we would tell them what means are necessary to attain them There are degrees of satisfaction as to the Number of Persons to be satisfied and there are divers degrees of satisfying the same Person 1. If they will take in all Orthodox Peaceable Worthy Ministers the Terms must be the larger 2. If they will take in but the greater part somewhat less and harder Terms may do it 3. If but a few yet less may serve for we are not so vain as to pretend that all Nonconformists are in every particular of one mind And as to the Presbyterians now so called whose Case alone we were called to consider 1. If they would satisfie the far greatest part of them in an high degree so as they should think the Churches setled in a good condition the granting of what was desired by them in 1660. would do it which is the setling of Church-Government according to that of A. Bp. Vsher's Model and the granting of the Indulgences mentioned in his Majestie 's Declaration about Eccles. Affairs 2. But if they would not give so high satisfaction the Alterations granted in his Majestie 's Declaration alone would so far satisfie them as to make them very thankful to his Majesty and not only to exercise their Office with Chearfulness but also to rejoice in the Kingdom 's happiness whose Union would by this be much promoted 3. But if this may not be granted at least the taking off all such impositions which make us uncapable of Exercising our Ministry would be a mercy for which we hope we should not be unthankful to God or the King § 63. When we came to the Lord Keeper we resolved to tell him That Sir Iohn Barber told us his Lordship desired to speak with us left it should be after said that we intruded or were the movers of it or left it had been Sir Iohn Barber's Forwardness that had been the Cause He told us why he sent for us to think of a way of our Restoration to which end he had some Proposals to offer to us which were for a Comprehension for the Presbyterians and an Indulgence for the Independents and the rest We askt him Whether it was his Lordship's pleasure that we should offer him our Opinion of the means or only receive what he offered to us He told us That he had somewhat to offer to us but we might also offer our own to him I told him That I did think we could offer such Terms no way injurious to the welfare of any which might take in both Presbyterians and Independents and all found Christians into the Publick Established Ministry He answered That that was a thing that he would not have but only a Toleration for the rest Which being none of our business to debate we desired him to consult such persons about it as were concerned in it And so it was agreed that we should meddle with the Comprehension only And a few Days after he sent us his Proposals § 64. When we saw the Proposals we perceived that the business of the Lord Keeper and his way would make it unfit for us to debate such Cases with himself And therefore we wrote to him requesting that he would nominate Two Learned peaceable Divines to treat with us till we agreed on the fittest Terms and that Dr. Bates might be added to us He nominated Dr. Wilkins who we then found was the Author of the Proposals and of the whole business and his Chaplain Mr. Burton And when we met we tendered them some Proposals of our own and some Alterations which we desired in their Proposals for they presently rejected ours and would hear no more of them so that we were fain to treat upon theirs alone § 65. The Copy of what we offered them is as followeth I. That the Credenda and Agenda in Religion being distinguished no Profession of Assent be required but
for that way now which most suiteth with the Inclination of the People who most esteem them which is to go far enough from the Conformists or too far but the rest who are less followed by the People are generally more for Peace and Moderation § 163. This Year the Act against Conventicles was renewed and made more severe than ever And as all that ever I spake with of it supposed with an Eye upon my Case they put in divers Clauses As that the fault of the Mittimus should not disable it that all doubtful Clauses in the Act should be interpreted as would most favour the suppression of Conventicles that they that fled or removed their Dwelling into another County should be pursued by Execution to this Sense What a strait is a Man in among People of such Extremes One side pursueth us with implacable Wrath while we are charged with nothing but Preaching Christ's Gospel in the most peaceable manner we can And the other censureth us as Compliers with Persecutors and Enemies to Piety because we desire to live peaceable with all Men and to separate from them no further than they separate from God § 164. Their own Laws against Conventicles hinder us from doing their own Wills They write and clamour against me for not perswading the People to Conformity And when I would draw them but to that Communion which I had within my self the Law disableth me to Communicate a Letter to them seeing no more than four must meet together which way among many hundred or thousand Dissenters would make many Years work of Communicating that one part of my Advice Thus do our Shepherds use the Flocks § 165. At this time Mr. Giles Firmin a worthy Minister that had lived in New-England writing against some Errors of Mr. Hooker Mr. Shepherd Mr. Daniel Rogers and Mr. Perkins gave me also also a gentle reproof for tying Men too strictly to Meditation whereto I wrote a short answer called A Review of the Doctrine of Meditation § 166. A worthy Lady was perverted from the Lord's Day to the Saturday-Sabbath desiring my Judgment and Mr. Francis Bamfield a Minster who hath lain about seven Years in Dorchester-Goal the Brother of Sir Iohn Bamfield deceased being gone to the same Opinion and many following them I wrote by the Perswasion of some Friends a small Tractate also on that Subject to prove the divine appointment of the Lord's Day and the cessation of the Iewish Sabbath § 167. Dr. Manton though he had the greatest Friends and promise of Favour of any of the Presbyterians vvas sent Prisoner to the Gatehouse for Preaching the Gospel in his own House in the Parish vvhere he had been called formerly to the Ministery and for not taking the Oxford-Oath and coming within five Miles of a Corporation where he continued six Months but it proved convenient to his â—ase because those six Months were spent in London in a hot pursuit of such private Preaching by Bands of Soldiers to the terrour of many and the death of some § 168. Madam the King's Sister dyed in France when she returned from visiting His Majesty in England to his very great grief § 169. Sir Iohn Babor talk'd to the Lord Arlington of our late Treaty upon the Lord Keeper's Invitation with Bishop Wilkins whereupon Dr. Manton sent to me as from him to Communicate the Terms and Papers But they were at Acton from whence they had driven me and I had medled enough in such Matters only to my cost So that though he said the King was to see them I could not then answer his desire and I heard no more of it § 170. Upon the Publication of my Book against Divisions and the Rumour of my Conforming the Earl of Lauder dale invited me to speak with him Where he opened to me the purpose of taking off the Oath of Canonical Obedience and all Impositions of Conformity in Scotland save only that it should be necessary to sit in Presbyteries and Synods with the Bishops and Moderators there being already no Liturgy Ceremonies or Subscription save only to the Doctrine of the Church Hereupon he expressed his great Kindness to me and told me he had the King's Consent to speak with me and being going into Scotland he offered me what place in Scotland I would choose either a Church or a Colledge in the University or a Bishoprick And shortly after as he went thither at Barnet he sent for me and I gave him the Answer following in these Papers besides what I gave him by word to the same purpose But when he came thither such Acts against Conventicles were presently made as are very well worthy the Reader 's serious Persual who would know the true Complexion of this Age. § 171. My Lord BEing deeply sensible of your Lordship's Favours and in special of your Liberal Offers for my Entertainment in Scotland I humbly return you my very hearty Thanks But these Considerations forbid me to entertain any hopes or further thoughts of such a remove 1. The Experience of my great Weakness and decay of Strength and particularly of this last Winter's Pain and how much worse I am in Winter than in Summer doth fully persuade me That I shall live but a little while in Scotland and that in a disabled useless Condition rather keeping my Bed than the Pulpit 2. I am engaged in Writing a Book which if I could hope to live to finish is almost all the Service that I expect to do God and his Church more in the World A Latin Methodus Theologiae And I can hardly hope to live so long it requiring yet near a Years labour more Now if I should go spend that one half Year or Year which should finish that Work in Travel and the trouble of such a Removal and then having intended Work undone it would disappoint me of the ends of my Life For I live only for Work and therefore should remove only for Work and not for Wealth and Honour if ever I remove 3. If I were there all that I could hope for were liberty to Preach the Gospel of Salvation and especially in some Vniversity among young Scholars But I hear that you have enough already for this Work that are like to do it better than I can 4. I have a Family and in it a Mother-in-Law of 80 Years of Age of Honourable Extract and great Worth whom I must not neglect and who cannot Travel And it is to such a one as I so great a business to remove a Family and all our Goods and Books so far as deterreth me to think of it having paid so dear for Removals these 8 Years as I have done and being but yesterday settled in a House which I have newly taken and that with great trouble and loss of time And if I should find Scotland disagree with me which I fully conclude of to remove all back again All this concurreth to deprive me of this Benefit of your Lordship's Favour But
account of Religion earnestly declaming against Popery and becoming the Head of the Party that were zealous for the Protestant Cause and awakened the Nation greatly by his Activity And being quickly put out of his place of Chancellourship he by his bold and skillful way of speaking so moved the House of Lords that they began to speak higher against the danger of Popery than the Commons and to pass several Votes accordingly And the Earl of Shaftsbury spake so plainly of the Duke of York as much offended and it was supposed would not long be born The Earl of Clare the Lord Hollis the Lord Hallifax and others also spake very freely And among the Bishops only that I heard of Sir Herbert Crofts who had sometimes been a Papist the Bishop of Hereford And now among Lords and Commons and Citizens and Clergy the talk went uncontrolled that the Duke of York was certainly a Papist and that the Army lately raised and encamped at Black-heath was designed to do their Work who at once would take down Parliaments and set up Popery And Sir Bucknall told them in the House of such Words that he had overheard of the late Lord Treasurer Clifford to the Lord Arundell as seemed to increase their Satisfaction of the Truth of all but common observation was the fullest satisfaction In a word the offence and boldness of both Houses grew so high as easily shewed men how the former War began aâ—d silenced many that said it was raised by Nonconformists and Presbyterians § 255. The third of February was a publick Fast against Popery the first as I remember that besides the Anniversary Fasts had ever been since this Parliament sate which hath now sate longer than that called the long Parliament did before the major part were cast out by Cromwell But the Preachers Dr. Cradock and Dr. Whitchcot medled but little with that Business and did not please them as Dr. Stillingfleet had done who greatly animated them and all the Nation against Popery by his open and diligent endeavours for the Protestant Cause § 256. During this Session the Earl of Orery desired me to draw him up in brief the Terms and Means which I thought would satisfie the Non-conformists so far as to unite us all against Popery professing that he met with many Great Men that were much for it and particulary the New Lord Treasurer Sir Thomas Osborn and Dr. Morley Bishop of Winchester who vehemently profess'd his desires of it And Dr. Fullwood and divers others had been with me to the like purpose testifying the said Bishop's resolution herein I wisht them all to tell him from me that he had done so much to the contrary and never any thing this way since his Professions of that sort that till his real Endeavours convinced Men it would not be believed that he was serious But when I had given the Earl of Orery my Papers he returned them me with Bishop Morley's Strictures or Animadversions as by his Words and the Hand I had reason to be confident by which he fully made me see that all his Professions for Abanement and Concord were deceitful Suares and that he intended no such thing at all And because I have inserted before so much of such transactions I will here annex my Proposals with his Strictures and my Reply To the Right Honourable the Earl of Orery My Lord I Have here drawn up those Terms on which I think Ministers may be restored to the Churches Service and much union and quietness be procured But I must tell you 1. That upon second Thoughts I forbore to distribute them as I intimated to you into several Ranks but only offer what may tend to a Concord of the most though not of every man 2. That I have done this only on the suppositions that we were fain to go upon in our Consultation with Dr. 〈◊〉 viz. That no change in the Frame of Church-Government will be consented to Otherwise I should have done as we did in 1660 offered you Arch-bishop Vsher's Reduction of the Government to the primitive state of Episcopacy and have only desired that the Lay-Chancellours have not the Power of the Keys and that if not in every Parish at least in every Rural Deanry or Market-Town with the adjacent Villages the Ministers might have the Pastoral power of the Keys so far as is necessary to guide their own Administrations and not one Bishop or Lay-Chancellour's Court to have more to do than Multitudes can well do and thereby cause almost all true Discipline to be omitted 3. I have forborn to enumerate the Particulars which we cannot subscribe or swear to or practise because they are many and I fear the naming of them will be displeasing to others as seeming to accuse them while we do but say what a Sin such Conformity would be in our selves But if it should be useful and desired I am ready to do it But I now only say that the matters are far from being things doubtful or indifferent or little Sins in our Apprehensions of which we are ready to render a Reason But I think that this bare Proposal of the Remedies is the best and shortest and least offensive way In which I crave your Observation of these two Particulars 1. That it is the matter granted if it be even in our own Words that will best do the Cure For while other men word it that know not our Scruples or Reasons they miss our Sence usually and make it ineffectual 2. That the Reason why I crave that Ministers may have impunity who use the greatest part of the Liturgy for the Day is 1. To shorten the Accommodation that we may not be put to delay our Concord till the Liturgy be altered to the Satisfaction of Dissenters which we have cause to think will not be done at all Now this will silently and quietly heal us and if a Man omit some one Collect or Sentence without debate or noise it will not be noted nor be a matter of offence 2. And he is unworthy to be a Minister that is not to be trusted so much as with the using or not using of a few Sentences or words in all his Ministration 3. And almost every Minister that I hear all the Year of the most Conformable do every day omit some part or other and yet are not Silenc'd nor taken notice of as offenders at all And may not as much for our Concord be granted to Dissenters in the present case He that thinks that these Concessions will be more injurious to the Church and the Souls of Men than our Uncharitableness and Divisions have been these Eleven Years and are yet like to be is not qualified to be at all an Healer In Conclusion I must again intreat you that this Offer may be taken but as the Answer of your desire for your private use and that no Copy be given of it nor the Author made known unless we have encouragement from our Governours to
Expressions And this Expedient I gather from my Lord Cook who hath providently as it were against such a season laid in this observation The â—orm of the Subscription set down in the Canons ratified by King James was not expressed in the Act of the 13th of Elizabeth Instit. p. 4. c. 74. And Consequently if the Clergy injoyed this freedom untill then in reference to the particulars therein contained what hinders why they might not have the same restored in reference also to others It is true that it may seem hard to many in the Parliament to undo any thing themselves have done But tho this be no Rule for Christians who are sometimes to repent as well as believe if they be loth to repent any thing what if they shall only Interpret or Explain Let us suppose then some Clause in this Bill or some new Act for Explanations If anâ— Nonconformist cannot come up to the full meaning and intent of these Injunctions rightly Explained let him remain in statu quo under the state only of Indulgence without benefit of Comprehension for so long as those who are not Comprehended may yet injoy that ease as to be indulged in some equal measure answerable to his Majestie 's Declaration whether Comprehension be large or narrow such Terms as we obtain are pure Advantage and such as we obtain not are no loss But if any does and can honestly agree to the whole sense the Parliament intends in such Impositions why should there be any Obstruction for such a Man tho he delivers himself in his own words to be received into the Established order with others Unless men will look on these Injunctions only to be contrived for â—â—gines of Battery to destroy the Nonconfromist And not as Instruments of Vnity to edify the Church of God I will not leave our Congregational Brethren neither so long as I have something more that may be said for them not ordinarily considered by any It is this that tho indeed they are not and cannot seek to be of our Churches as they are Parochial under the Diocess or Superintendency of the Bishops yet do they not refuse but seek to be comprehended within the Church as National under his Majesty I will explain my self The Church may be considered as Vniversal and so Christ alone is the head of it and we receive our Laws from him Or as Particular and so the Pastors are Heads Guides or Bishops over their respective flocks who are commanded therefore to obey them in the Lord Or as National which is an accidental and external respect to the Church of God wherein the King is to be acknowledged the supreme Head of it and as I judge no otherwise For thus also runs the statute That our Sovereign Lord shall be taken and reputed the only supreme Head in Earth of the Church of England called Ecclesia Anglicana Now if it should please the King and Parliament to allow and approve these Separate Meetings and Stated Places for Worship by a Law as His Majesty did by his Declaration I must profess that as such Assemblies by this means must be constituted immediately integral parts of the Church as National no less than our Parish Cougregations So would the Congregate Churches at least those that understand themselves own the King for Head over them in the same sense as we own him Head over ours that is as much as to say for the supreme coercive Governour of all in this accidental regard both to keep every several Congregation to that Gospel-order themselves profess and to supervise their Constitutions in things indifferent that nothing be done but in subordination to the peace of the Kingdom Well Let us suppose then a liberty for these separate Assemblies under the visitation of his Majesty and his Justices and not the Bishops I would fain know that were the Evil you can find in them If it lie in any thing it must be in that you call Schism Separation then let us know in it self simply considered is nothing neither good nor Evil. There may be reason to divide or separate some Christians from others out of prudence as the Cathechumens of old from the fully instructed for their greater Edification and as a Chappel or two is added to a Parish-Church when the people else were too big a Congregation It is not all Division then or Separation that is Schism but sinful Division Now the supreme Authority as National Head having appointed the Parochial Meetings and required all the Subjects of the Land to frequent them and them alone for the Acknowledging Glorifying or National serving and worshiping the only true God and his Son whom we have generally received And this Worship or Service in the nature of it being intrinsecally good and the external Order such as that of time and place and the like Circumstances being properly under his Jurisdiction it hath seemed to me hitherto that unless there was something in that order or way prescribed which is sinful and that required too as a Condition of that Communion there is no Man could refuse his attendance on these Parochial Assemblies without the sin of Disobedience and consequently his separation thereby becoming sinful proves Schism But if the Scene be altered and these separate Assemblies made Legal the Schism in reference to the National Church upon the same account does vanish Schism is a separation from that Church whereof we ought or are bound to be Members if the supreme Authority then loose our obligation to the Parish-Meeting so that we are bound no longer the iniquity I say upon this account is not to be found and the Schism gone Lo here a way opened for the Parliament if they please to rid the Trouble and Scruple of Schism at once out of the Land If they please not yet is there something to be thought on for the Separatist in a way of forbearance that the innocent Christian at least as it was in the time of Trajan may not be sought out unto Punishment Especially when such a toleration only is desired as is consistent with the Articles of Faith a Good Life and the Government of the Nation And now I turn me to the Houses My Lords and Gentlemen I will suppose you honest persons that would do as you would be done unto that would not wrong any or if you did would make them recompence There hath been very hard Acts passed which when the Bills were brought in might haply look smooth and fair to you but you saw not the Covert Art secret Machination and purposely contrived snares against one whole Party If such a form of words would not another should do their business By this means you in the first place your selves some of you were overstript Multitudes dispossest of their Livings The Vineyard Let out to others The Lord Jesus the Master of it deprived of many of his faithful Labourers And the poor sheep what had they done bereft of their accumstomed spiritual
at the Temple the violentest of them and Mr. Rose and Mr. Philips the same two Men that had sent me to the Goal four years before They offered Mr. Bedford the Oath but it proved that he had taken it before and so far defeated them But he was fined accordingly to the Act in 20 l. and the place 40 l. which the Lord Wharton the Countesses of Bedford Manchester and Clâ—re and other hearers paid But two of the Justices swore that he said that the King did not in good earnest desire the execution of this Law which he professed he never said And for this the King sent him to Prison § 284. An Accident at this time fell out which occasioned a little seeming stop of my trouble which I will relate as the Duke of Lauderdail told it me himself who was present The Lord Falcon-brigde being with the Bishop of Salisbury Ward after reported that the Bishop told him that it was nothing of the Bishops but of the Lord Treasurer that the Act was thus Executed The Lord Treasurer charged it as an injury on the Bishop The Lord High Chamberlain E. of Lindsey told it Bishop Morley who told it Bishop Ward who went to the Lord Treasurer and Complained of it as a false injurious report of the Lord Falconbridge The Lord Treasurer took him to the King who sent for the Lord Falconbridge who before the King the D. of Lauderdail the Lord Treasurer the Lord High Chamberlain c. was accused by Bishop Ward for a false report of his words The Lord Falconbridge could not make it good but tho he spake not those very words he took the Scope of his Speech to be of that Importance The King said the Duke to me said I must tell you this my self I called the Bishops to give me their advice what was to be done for the present securing of the Church and the Protestant Religion and they told me that there was something to be done but they thought it not safe for them to give advice in it I told them that I took this for a Libel and askt them who or what they were afraid of And I appointed these Lords to see them give their Answer Among other passages the Lord Falconbridge said that the Bishop called the Execution of the Law a trick The Bishop Answered I said not that the Execution of the Law was a trick but that to begin with Mr. Baxter was a trick of some to make it thought that we are unreconcilable to the most moderate and peaceable Men. And thus they were drawn in to give their seeming Judgment against my suffering tho there was great reason to think that Papists and Prelates were the Contrivers of it § 285. For the better understanding of many of these matters it must be known that at 2 or 3 of the last Sessions of Parliament Bishop Morley had on all occasions in the Company of Lords Gentlemen and Divines cryed out of the danger of Popery and talkt much for abatements and taking in the Nonconformists or else we are like all to fall into the Papists hands so that there were no Lords or others for agreement but he made himself the head of their Design and so got an Interest still in the work as the forwardest desirer of it Dr. Fulwood Mr. Collyer and Divers others came to me to advise about a way of Concord as encouraged by this Bishop's words I sent him word by them all that I had heard these many years of these agreeing peâ—â—emaking purposes and desires of his Lordship but having known so much of his Endeavours to the contrary I intreated him by some Deeds to convince me of his sincerity for till then I was not able to believe it And the Event shewed that my incredulity was not without cause § 286. At this Sessions of Parliament approaching he set upon the same Course again and Bishop Ward as his second and chief Coagent joyned with him and they were famed to be the two Bishops that were for Comprehension and Concord none so forward as they At last Dr. Bates brings me a message from Dr. Tillot son Dean of Canterbury that he and Dr. Stillingfleet desired a Meeting with Dr. Manton Dr. Bates Mr. Pool and me to treat of an Act of Comprehension and Union and that they were encouraged to it by some Lords both Spiritual and Temporal We met to consider whether such an Attempt was safe and prudent or what was not offered by some Bishops as a sâ—are to us I told them my opinion that Experience would not suffer any Charity to believe any better of some Bishops but that they knew Dr. Stillingfleet and Dr. Tillotson to be the likeliest Men to have a hand in an Agreement if such a thing should be attempted and therefore that they would make themselves the Masters of it to defeat it and no better issue was to be expected as from them But yet that these two Doctors were Men of so much Learning Honesty and Interest that I took it as our Duty to accept the offer and to try with them how far we could agree and so try them first whether they would promise us secresy unless it came to maturity to be further notified by Consent And that we might hope for this Success as quickly to agree with these two Men and in time it might be some advantage to our desired Unity that our Terms were such as these two worthy Men consented to § 287. Accordingly Dr. Manton and I were desired by the rest to try them We went to Dr. Tillotson who promised Morley and Bishop Ward that had set them on work and the Earl of Carlile and Halifax chiefly who encouraged them Here-upon we agreed to meet the next week with him and Dr. Stillingfleet to try how far we could agree on the Terms I had before drawn up the form of an Healing Act and read it to no one but Mr. Hampden who told me it would never pass Before the next Meeting Dr. Manton was fain to abscond at the Lord Wharton's being designed as is aforesaid to the Common Goal such was the Treaty which we were invited to But I went alone and met the two Doctors I found them sincere in the business and conceited that Bishop Morley and Ward were so also Upon their promise of secrecy I freely told them my thoughts of the Bishop of Winchester and what an attempt I had lately made with him besides all heretofore at the request of the Earl of Orery and that after his Calls for Concord he granted me no one abatement or alteration or indulgence desired I shewed them the form of the Act which I had prepared They desired me to leave it with them to consider on Shortly after Dr. Tillotson brought me a Draught with several omissions and alterations I drew up my own again with some little alterations required by his Draught This he and I debated till we came to an agreement of the whole
the King to remove him from all publick Enployment and Trust His chief accusing Witness was Mr. Burnet late Publick-Professor of Theologie at Glascow who said That he askt him whether the Scots Army would come into England and said What if the Dissenting Scots should Rise an Irish Army should cut their Throats c. But because Mr. Burnet had lately magnified the said Duke in an Epistle before a published book many thought his witness now to be more unfavoury and revengefull Every one judging as they were affected But the King sent them Answer That the words were spoken before his late Act of pardon which if he should Violate it might cause jelousies in his Subjects that he might do so also by the Act of Indemnity § 294. Their next Assault was against the Lord Treasurer who found more Friends in the House of Commons who at last acquitted him § 295. But the great work was in the House of Lords where an Act was brought in to impose such an Oath on Lords Commons and Magistrates as is Imposed by the Oxford-Act of Confinement on Ministers and like the Corporation-Oath of which more anon It was now supposed that the bringing the Parliament under this Oath and Test was the great work which the House was to perform The Summ was That none Commissioned by the King may be by Arms resisted and that they would never endeavour any alteration of the Government of Church or State Many Lords spake vehemently against it as destructive to the Privileges of their House which was to Vote freely and not to be preobliged by an Oath to the Prelates The Lord Treasurer the Lord Keeper with Bishop Morley and Bishop Ward were the great Speakers for it And the Earl of Shaftsbury Lord Hollis the Lord Hallifax the D. of Buckingham the Earl of Salisbury the chief Speakers against it They that were for it being the Major part many of the rest Entered their Protestation against it The Protesters the first time for they protested thrice more afterward were the Duke of Buckingham the Marquess of Winchester the Earls of Salisbury Bristol Barkshire § 296. The Protesting Lords having many days striven against the Test and being overvoted attempted to joyn to it an Oath for Honesty and Conscience in these words I do swear that I will never by threats injunctions promises or invitations by or from any person whatsoever nor from the hopes or prospects of any gift place office or trust whatever give my vote other than according to my opinion and conscience as I shall be truly and really perswaded upon the debate of any business in Parliament But the Bishops on their side did cry it down and cast it out § 297. The Debating of this Text did more weaken the Interest and Reputation of the Bishops with the Nobles than any thing that ever befel them since the King came in so much doth unquiet overdoing tend to undoing The Lords that would not have heard a Nonconformist say half so much when it came to be their own case did long and vehemently plead against that Oath and Declaration as imposed on them which they with the Commons had before imposed on others And they exercised so much liberty for many days together in opposing the Bishops and free and bold speeches against their Test as greatly turned to the Bishops Disparagement especially the Earl of Shaftsbury the Duke of Buckingham the Earl of Bristol the Marquess of Winchester the Earl of Salisbury the Lord Hollis the Lord Hallifax and the Lord of Alesbury Which set the Tongues of Men at so much liberty that the common talk was against the Bishops And they said that upon Trial there were so few found among all the Bishops that were able to speak to purpose Bishop Morley of Winchester and Bishop Ward of Salisbury being their chief Speakers that they grew very low also as to the Reputation of their parts § 298. At last though the Test was carried by the Majority yet those that were against it with others prevailed to make so great an alteration of it as made it quite another thing and turned it to the greatest disadvantage of the Bishops and the greatest accommodation of the Cause of the Nonconformists of any thing that this Parliament hath done For they reduced it to these words of a Declaration and an Oath I A. B. do declare That it is not lawful on any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King And that I do abhor that Traiterous Position of taking Arms by His Authority against His Person or against those that are Commissioned by him according to Law in time of Rebellion and War in acting in pursuance of such Commission I A. B. do Swear that I will not endeavour an Alteration of the Protestant Religion now established by Law in the Church of England nor will I endeavour any Alteration in the Government of this Kingdom in Church or State as it is by Law Established § 299. This Declaration and Oath thus altered was such as the Nonconformists would have taken if it had been offered them in stead of the Oxford-Oath the Subscription for Uniformity the Corporation and Vestry Declaration But the Kingdom must be Twelve years rackt to Distraction and 1800 Ministers forbidden to Preach Christ's Gospel upon pain of utter ruin and Cities and Corporations all New-Modelled and Changed by other kind of Oaths and Covenants and when the Lords find the like obtruded on themselves they reject it as intolerable And when it past they got in this Proviso That it should be no hinderance to their Free-Speaking and Voting in the Parliament Many worthy Ministers have lost their Lives by Imprisonments and many Hundred their Maintenance and Liberty and that opportunity to serve God in their Callings which was much of the comfort of their Lives and mostly for refusing what the Lords themselves at last refuse with such another Declaration But though Experience teach some that will no otherwise learn it is sad with the World when their Rulers must learn to Govern them at so dear a rate and Countreys Cities Churches and the Souls of Men must pay so dear for their Governours Experience § 300. The following Explication will tell you That there is nothing in this Oath and Declaration to be refused 1. I do declare That it is not lawful can mean no more but that I think so and not that I pretend to Infallible certainly therein 2. To take Arms against the King That is either against his Formal Authority as King or against His Person Life or Liberty or against any of His Rights and Dignity And doubtless the Person of the King is inviâ—â—able and so are His Authority and Rights not only by the Laws but by the very Constitution of the Kingdom For every Common-wealth being essentially constituted of the Pars Imperans and pars subdita materially the Union of these is the Form of it and the Dissolution is the Death of it And
intend only Bishops and King by Church and State 1. It would suppose that King and Parliament do take Bishops and King for two coordinate Heads in governing the Kingdom 2. And that they set the Bishops before the King which is not to be supposed 5. And to put all out of question the Oath is but Conform to former Statutes Oaths Articles of Religion and Canons 1. The Statutes which declare the King to be only Supreme Governour of the Church I need not cite 2. The Oath of Supremacy is well known of all 3. The very first Canon is that the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and all Bishops c. shall faithfully keep and observe all the Laws for the King's Supremacy over the Church of England in causes Ecclesiastical And the 2d Canon is to condemn the dangers of it And the 36. Canon obligeth all Ministers to subscribe that the King's Majesty under God is the only Supreme Governour of this Realm as well in all spiritual and Ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal And as the Parliament are called the Representative of the People or Kingdom as distinct from the Head so the 139. Canon excommunicateth all them that affirm that the Sacred Synod of this Nation in the Name of Christ and by the King's Authority Aslembled is not the true Church of England by Representation So that they claim to be but the Representative of the Church as it is the Body distinct from the Head Christ aud the King as their chief Governour 4. And all that are Ordained are likewise to take the Oath of Supremacy I do utterly testify and declare in my Conscience that the King's Highness is the only Supreme Governour of this Realm as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or Causes as Temporal 5. And It is also inserted in the Articles of Religion Art 35. And it is added expositorily Where we attribute to the Queen's Majesty the Chief Government by which title we understand the minds of some slanderous folks to be offended we give not to our Princes the Ministring either of God's Word or of the Sacraments but that only prerogative which we see to have been given always to all Godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himself that is that they should rule all Estates and Degrees committed to their Charge by God whether they be Ecclesiastcal or Temporal and restrain with the Civil Sword the Stubborn and evil Doers Here it is to be noted that though no doubt but the Keys of Excommunication and absolution belong to the Pastors and to the Civil Magistrate yet the Law and this Article by the word Government mean only Coercive Government by the Sword and do include the power of the Keys under the title of Ministring the Word and Sacraments Church Guidance being indeed nothing else but the Explication and Application of God's word to Cases and Consciences and administring the Sacraments accordingly So that as in the very Article of Religion Supreme Government appropriated to the King only is contradistinguish'd from Ministring the Word and Sacraments which is not called Government there so are we to understand this Law and Oath And many Learned Men think that Guidance is a fitter name than Government for the Pastor's Office And therefore Grotius de Imper. Sum. Pot. would rather have the Name Canons or Rulers used than Laws as to their Determinations Though no doubt but the name Government may be well applyed to the Pastor's Part so we distinguish as Bilston and other judicious men use to do calling one Government by God's Word upon the Conscience and the other Government by the sword as seconding Precepts with enforcing penalties and Mulcts § 301. While this Test was carrying on in the house of Lords and 500 pounds Voted to be the penalty of the Refusers before it could come to the Commons a difference fell between the Lords and Commons about their priviledges by occasion of two Suits that were brought before the Lords in which two Members of the Commons were parties which occasioned the Commons to send to the Tower Sir Iohn Fagg one of their Members for appearing at the Lords Bar without their consent and four Counsellours Sir Iohn Churchill Sergeant Pemberton Sergeant Pecke and another for pleading there And the Lords Voted it Illegal and that they should be released Sir Iohn Robinson Lieutenant of the Tower obeyed the Commons for which the Lords Voted him a Delinquent And so far went they in daily Voting at each other that the King was fain to Prorogue the Parliament Iune 9. till October 13. there appearing no hope of Reconciling them Which rejoiced many that they rose without doing any further harm § 302. Iune 9. Keting the Informer being commonly detested for prosecuting me was cast in Gaol for Debt and wrote to me to endeavour his Deliverance which I did and in his Letters saith Sir I assure you I do verily believe that God hath bestowed all this affliction on me because I was so vile a wretch as to trouble you And I assure you I never did a thing in my Life that hath so much troubled my self as that did I pray God forgive me And truly I do not think of any that went that way to work that ever God would favour him with his mercy And truly without a great deal of mercy from God I do not think that ever I shall thrive or prosper And I hope you will be pleased to pray to God for me c. § 303. A while before another of the chief Informers of the City and my Accuser Marishall died in the Counter where his Creditors laid him to keep him from doing more harm Yet did not the Bishops change or cease Two more Informers were set on work who first assaulted Mr. Case's Meeting and next got in as hearers into Mr. Read's Meeting where I was Preaching And when they would have gone out to fetch Justices for they were known the doors were lockt to keep them in till I had done and one of them supposed to be sent from Fullum stayed weeping Yet went they straight to the Justices and the week following heard me again as Informers at my Lectures but I have not yet heard of their Accusation § 304. But this week Iune 9. Sir Thamas Davis notwithstanding all his foresaid Warnings and Confessions sent his Warrants to a Justice of the Division where I dwell to distrein on me upon two Judgments for 50 pounds for Preaching my Lecture in New-street Some Conformists are paid to the value of 20 pounds a Sermon for their Preaching and I must pay 20 pounds and 40 pounds a Sermon for Preaching for nothing O what Pastors hath the Church of England who think it worth all their unwearied Labours and all the odium which they contract from the People to keep such as I am from Preaching the Gospel of Christ and to undo us for it as far as they are able though these many years they do not for they cannot
pain suddenly surprized in my house by a poor violent Informer and many Constables and Officers who rusht in and apprehended me and served on me one Warrant to seize on my person for coming within five miles of a Corporation and five more Warrants to distrain for an Hundred and ninty pounds for five Sermons They cast my Servants into fears and were about to take all my Books and Goods and I contentedly went with them towards the Justice to be sent to Jail and left my house to their will But Dr. Thomas Cox meeting me forced me in again to my Couch and bed and went to five Justices and took his Oath without my knowledge that I could not go to Prison without danger of Death Upon that the Justices delayed a day till they could speak with the King and told him what the Doctor had sworn and the King consented that at the present imprisonment should be forborn that I might die at home But they Executed all their Warrants on my Books and Goods even the bed that I lay sick on and sold them all and some friends paid them as much money as they were prized at which I repayed and was faint to send them away The Warrant against my person was signed by Mr. Parrey and Mr. Phillips The five Warrants against my Goods by Sir Iames Smith and Sir Iames Butcher And I had never the least notice of any accusation or who were the Accusers or Witnesses much less did I receive any Summons to appear or answer for my self or ever saw the Justices or Accusers But the Justice that sign'd the Warrants for Execution said that the two Hiltons sollcited him for them and one Bucke led the Constables that distreined But though I sent the Justice the written Deeds which proved that the Goods were none of mine nor ever were and sent two Witnesses whose hands were to those Conveyances I offered their Oaths of it and also proved that the books I had many years ago alienated to my kinsman this signified nothing to them but they seized and sold all nevertheless And both patience and prudence forbad us to trie the Title at Law when we knew what Charges had been lately made of Justices and Jurles and how others had been used If they had taken only my Cloak they should have had my Coat also and if they had taken me on one Cheek I would have turned the other for I knew the case was such that he that will not put up one blow one wrong or stander shall suffer two yea many more But when they had taken and sold all and I borrowed some Bedding and Necessaries of the Buyer I was never the quieter for they threatned to come upon â—e again and take all as mine whosesoever it was which they found in my possession So that I had no remedy but utterly to forsake my House and Goods and all and take secret Lodgings distant in a stranger's House But having a long Lease of my own House which binds me to pay a greater Rent than now it is worth when-ever I go I must pay that Rent The separation from my Books would have been a greater part of my small Affliction but that I found I was near the end both of that Work and Life which needeth Books and so I easily let go all Naked came I into the World and naked must I go out But I never wanted less what Man can give than when Men had taken all My old Friends and Strangers to me were so Liberal that I was fain to restrain their Bounty Their kindness was a surer and larger Revenue to me than my own But God was pleased quickly to put me past all fear of Man and all desire of avoiding suffering from them by Concealment by laying on me more himself than Man can do Their Imprisonment with tolerable Health would have seemed a Palace to me And had they put me to death for such a Duty as they Persecute me it would have been a joyful end of my Calamity But day and night I groan and languish under God's just afflicting hand The pain which before only tired my Reins and tore my Bowels now also fell upon my Bladder and scarce any part or hour is free As Waves follow Waves in the Tempestuous Seas so one pain and danger followeth another in this sinful miserable Flesh I die daily and yet remain alive God in his great Mercy knowing my dulness in health and ease doth make it much easier to repent and hate my sin and loath my self and contemn the World and submit to the Sentence of death with willingness than otherwise it was ever like to have been O how little is it that wrathful Enemies can do against us in comparison of what our sin and the Justice of God can do And O how little is it that the best and kindest of Friends can do for a pained Body or a guilty sinful Soul in comparison of one gracious look or word from God Woe be to him that hath no better help than Man And blessed is he whose help and hope is in the Lord. But I will here tell the Reader what I had to say if I had been allow'd a hearing The CASE of R. B. § 79. HAving been prosecuted as offending against the Oxford Confining-Act and finding that my silence may occasion the guilt of such as understand not my Case and being by God's hand disabled personally to appear and plead it I am necessitated to open it by Writing to undeceive them that mistake it 1. As to the Sence of that Law I conceive that it reacheth to none but Noncouformists and that because they are suspected to teach Schism and Rebellion For though the body of a Law someteme extend further than the Title yet when the title containeth both the end of the Law and the Description of the persons meant as hear it doth it is expository to the Law Therefore the words all such in the third Paragraph must mean all such as aforesaid viz. Nonconformists and not all such others viz. Conformists For 1. The Conformists are supposed to be from under the Suspicion 2. And else it may ruin many Churches If the Curate omit the Liturgy or part and the Incumbent Preach it will be made an Unlawful Assembly by the same reason that House-Meetings are so called for want of the Liturgy For the Law imposeth the Liturgy on Churches but not on Houses 3. Many Conformists have still used to repeat their Sermons in their Houses to more than four Neighbours without the Liturgy And if any such thing be judg'd a Conventicle to Fine the Incumbent Forty pounds and Banish him Five Miles from his parish ever after seems contrary to our Discipline II. My Case is this 1. I am no Nonconformist in Law-Sence and my Conscience hath no Judge but God For I Conform to the Liturgy and Sacrament as far as the Law requireth me I was in no place of Ecclesiastical Promotion on May
the 1 st 1662 nor ever since had any nor the offer of any And therefore the Law imposeth not on me the Declaration or the Assent or Consent no more than on Lawyers or Judges 2. I have the Bishop of London's License to Preach in his Diocess which supposeth me no Nonconformist in Law-sence And I have the Judgment of Lawyers even of the present Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Pollexfen that by that License I may Preach occasional Sermons 3. I have Episcopal Ordination and judge it gross Sacriledge to forsake my Calling 4. I am justified against suspicion of Rebellious Doctrine many ways 1. By my publick Retractation of any old accused words or writings 2. I was chosen alone to Preach the Publick Thanksgiving at St. Paul's for General Monk's success 3. The Commons in Parliament chose me to Preach to them at their Publick Fast for the King's Restoration and call'd him home the next day 4. I was Sworn Chaplain in Ordinary to the King 5. I was offered a Bishoprick 6. The Lord Chancellor who offered it attested under his hand His Majesty's Sense of my Defert and His Acceptance 7. I am justifyed in the King's Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs among the rest there mention'd 8. When I Preached before the King he commanded the Printing of my Sermon 9. To which may be added the Act of Oblivion 10. And having published above an Hundred Books I was never yet convict of any ill Doctrine since any of the said Acts of King Parliament and others for my Discharge and Justification 5. I have oft Printed my judgment for Communion with the Parish Churches and exhorted others to it And having built a Chappel delivered it for Parish use 6. I was never lawfully Convict of Preaching in an unlawful Assembly for I was not once summon'd by the Justices that granted out the Five Warrants against me to answer for my self nor ever told who was my Accuser or who Witnessed against me And I have it under the hand of the present Lord Chief Justice that a Lawful Conviction supposeth Summons And the Lord Chief Justice Vaughan with Judge Tyrrel Archer and Wild did long ago discharge me upon their declaring that even the Warrant of my Commitment was illegal because no Accuser or Witness was named and so I was left remediless in case of false Accusation 7. As far as I understand it I never did Preach in any unlawful Assembly which was on pretence of any Exercise of Religion contrary to Law I Preached in Parish Churches where the Liturgy was Read as oft as I had leave and invitation And when I could not have that leave I never took any Pastoral Charge nor Preached for any Stipend but not daring perfidiously to desert the Calling which I was Ordained and Vowed to I Preacht occasional Sermons in other Men's Houses where was nothing done that I know of contrary to Law There was nothing done but Reading the Psalms and Chapters and the Creed Commandments and Lord's Prayer and Singing Psalms and Preaying and Praching and none of this is forbidden by Law The Omission of the rest of the Liturgy is no Act but a not-acting and therefore is no pretended Worship according to Law But were it otherwise the Law doth not impose the Liturgy on Families but only on Churches and a Family is not forbidden to have more than four Neighbours at saying Grace or Prayer nor is bound to give over Family-worship when-ever more than Four come in The Act alloweth Four to be present at Unlawful Worship but forbids not more to be present at Lawful Worship And House-worship without the Liturgy is lawful worship And yet if this were not so as the Curate's Omission of the Prayers makes not the Preacher and Assembly guilty suppose it were an Assize-Sermon that for hast omitted the Liturgy so the owner of the House by omitting the Liturgy maketh not him guilty that was not bound to use it nor the Meeting unlawful to any but himself Charity and Loyalty bind us to believe that our King and Parliament who allow more than many Four's to meet at a Play-house Tavern or Feast never meant to forbid more than Four to bâ—â—ogether in a House to sing a Psalm or Pray or Read a Licensed Book or edifie each other by Godly Conference while no Crime is found by any Man in the Matter of their Doctrine or Prayer and no Law imposeth the Liturgy on any but Church-Meetings If after many years Reproach once Imprisonment and the late Distress and Sale of all my Books and Goods and those that were none of mine but another's and this by five or six Warrants for present Execution without any Summons or Notice of Accusers or Witnesses I could yet have leave to die in peace and had not been again persecuted with new Inditements I had not presumed thus to plead or open my own Cause I Pray God that my Prosecutors and Judges may be so prepared for their near Account that they may have no greater sin laid to their Charge than keeping my Ordination-Vow is and not Sacrilegiously forsaking my Calling who have had so good a Master so good a Word so good Success and so much Attestation from King Parliament City and Bishops as I have haâ— If they ask why I Conform not I say I do as far as any Law bindeth me If they ask why I take not this Oath I say Because I neither understand it nor can prevail with Rulers to Explain it And if have a good sence I have not only subscribed to it but to much more in a Book called The second Plea for Peace page 60 61 62. Where also I have professed my Loyalty much further than this Oath extendeth But if it have a bad sence I will not take it And I find the Conformists utterly disagreed of the Sence and most that I hear of renouncing that sence which the words signifie in their common use And knowing that Perjury is a mortal Enemy to the Life and Safety of Kings and the Peace of Kingdoms and to Converse and to Man's Salvation I will not dally with such a dangerous Crime Nor will I deceive my Rulers by Stretches and Equivocations nor do I believe Lying lawful after all that Grotius de Iure Belli and Bishop Taylor Duct Dub. have said for it I think Oaths imposed are to be taken in the ordinary sense of the words if the Imposers put not another on them And I dare not Swear that a Commission under the Broad-Seal is no Commission till I that am no Lawyer know it to be Legal Nor yet that the Lord Keeper may Depose the King without resistance by Sealing Commissions to Traytors to seize on his Forts Navy Militia or Treasure Nor can I consent to make all the present Church-Government as unalterable as the Monarchy especially when the Seventh Canon extendeth it to an caetèra to Arch-bishops Bishops Deans Arch-deacons and the rest that bear Office in the same not
or the Law and Canon Answ. It is an hard Task to a Minister of Christ either so to practice or so to speak as shall seem to accuse his Rulers and the Laws but when the saving of our own or other Mens Souls requireth it there is no remedy Our own silence if we ceased Preaching and our practice contrary to the Law in Preaching or Praying which is forbidden do against our wills unavoidably intimate that we suppose great sins to be commanded us And whether we preach or be silent while we Subscribe not Declare not Covenant not and Swear not and Practice not all that is required of us this cannot be hid Though our cautelousness and fear of accusing our Governours or the Conforming Ministers have given some Men occasion to affirm That we take not Conformity for a sin or that no considerable persons among us dare say so we spare the Authors whose published Names are dishonoured by themselves when prefixed to such words as he that will but read our Petition for Peace and our Reply unanswered delivered to the commissioned Bishops 1660. will say did ill beseem a Doctor a Preacher a Christian or a Man We profess from the first to this day that it is a great sin in us to forbear our Ministry or to exercise it in a forbidden manner especially when such doleful Divisions and Calamities follow it if it be not sin that is required of us and if it be not many and heinous sins our peace in suffering will have some less reason to that than we have thought it had Therefore being urged I cannot in Conscience deny a plain Answer to this Question But I despair of satisfying those Men that must have that which Augustine said he hated viz. A short Answer to a long and hard Question and that cannot away with distinction when distinct matters must be spoken to Let such Readers cast this Answer aside as being not suited to their Wits and Dispositions 1. We must distinguish between an Infant or Child in the Parents Family and one that is at Age or gone out of the Family 2. Between a thing that is either Duty or Sin or Indifferent in it self by the Law of God and Mens thinking it to be so or not so 3. And particularly between a Minister justly silenced and People justly prohibited to meet and those that are unjustly silenced and forbidden 4. Between the Prohibition or Command of the Civil Magistrate and of the Bishops 5. Between the Command of Laws or Parents to hear such and such Ministers and their Prohibition not to hear others nor joyn in such Assemblies 6. Between an Act of Formal Obedience to a Command and an Act of Prudence moved by the good or hurt that will follow 7. Between guilt of Divine Revenge and guilt of Humane Punishment I make use of all these distinctions in resolving your Doubt by 〈◊〉 following Propositions I. There is no Power but of God and none above God nor agâ—â—â—â—â— or any of his Laws All Laws are null to Conscience as being no Acts of true Authority thereto that are against the Laws of God in Nature or Scripâ—â—â—e II. Though only Rulers be Judges publickly to decide Controversiâ—â— and punish Offenders every rational Man must judge discerningly of his Duty what God's Law and Man's require else we were not governed as Men but 〈…〉 nor were accountable for our Actions to God any further than whether we obeyed Men And else all under Heathens Mahometans Papists Heretiâ—â—◠〈◊〉 be of the Kings Religion And then if the King and a Usurper strive for the Crown we must not be Judges whose part we must take All which are intolerable Consequents III. Every true Minister of Christ is in his Ordination devoted and consecrated to that Sacred Office during Ability and Life And it is from the Law of Christ that their Authority immediately ariseth as the Lord Mayor's from the King's Charter though Men elect and the Ordainers invest them in it by delivery And as he that crowneth the King cannot depose him or he that marrieth Persons cannot unmarry them no more can any depose a Pastor and dissolve his Obligations to his Office but in case of such Crimes as God's Law deposeth him for and enableth them to do it Of which Bishop Bilson of Obedience speaketh soundly too large to be here recited IV. For a Minister of Christ to forsake his Calling or Work while his Vow and the true â—â—cessity of Souls continue his Obligation and this meerly because he is unjustly forbidden by Man is to be odiously persidious and sacrilegious and a Deserter of his great Lord and Master's Work and a Murderer of the Souls which he neglecteth as verily as Parents murder their Children whom they give not food to And no Murderer hath Eternal Life were it but of the Body or Temporal Life such being as Cain of him that was a Murderer from the beginning and contrary to Christ who came to seek and save the lost V. The unjust forbidding Christ's Ministers to preach his Gospel is a sin so exceeding heinous as that no Christian should either concur in the Guilt or be so scandalous as to seem to do it Had I lived in Germany when many hundred Ministers were ejected and thereby the Churches cast into division and confusion and Protestant Preachers turned against each other about the Form or Book called the Interim while Melanchthon and some good Men partly conformed to save the Churches from ruine and Illyricus and more were Nonconformists I would not for all the Riches of the World appear before God in the Guilt of those three Men that did Compile that Book Iulius Pâ—â—ug Sidonius and Islebius Agricola or of those that for it silenced or banished Christs's Ministers 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. I charge thee before God and the Lord Iesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom Preach the word be instant in season out of season reprove rebuke exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine 1. Thess. 2. 15 16. Who both killed the Lord Iesus and their own Prophets and have persecuted us and they please not God and are contrary to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins always for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost When they persecute you in one City flee to another Shake off the dust of your feet against them It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Iudgment than for that City Matth 10. 14 15. and 23. 22. VI. God hath set up more Governments in the World than one and each hath its proper works and bounds and one may not destroy the other There is private Self-Government Family-Government Church-Government and Civil-Government each have their proper Ends also though all have one common End the pleasing of God The King in his manner and measure and to his Ends the Publick Good is
see the Examples of Tyranny and rash Excommunication let him read Iohn's Epistle to Diotrephes and the pious Admonitions of Irenaeus to Victor The Examples of Schisms we have in others not a few To which Optatus Melev prudently ascribeth three Causes Wrath Ambition and Covetousness But how many score Canons Interdicts and Bloody Wars do prove all this XXVIII And had not these Vices conquered Common Reason with Christianity in such men it were a Wonder that so unprofitable and causeless a thing as forcing all Christians to Unite on the profest Approbation and Practice of all the needless Things which such impose and denying them Communion and Peace on the Terms that Christ prescribed for all his Servants to own and love each other on should be thought a sufficient Justification of all that Dividing Cruelty of which it hath been guilty And that Church-Grandees should make such Schisms as are yet in East and West and then hate and persecute the Sufferers as Schismaticks Saith Grotius on Luke 6. 22. Scitum est Veterum Iudaeorum cujus Maimonidememinit siquis Innocentem à Communione arcuerit ipsum excidere jure Communionis And Dr. Stillingfleet on Archbishop Laud and before him Chillingworth conclude That if a Church deny Communion to her Members on those Terms that give them Right to Communion with the Church Universal that Church is guilty of the Schism Were it not more Christian-like easie and sweet to joyn all in the practice of the Laws of Christ by which we shall be judged with the needful use of edifying Order and Circumstances that all Sizes and Ages of Christians might live in Unity and Love than to cast out all that cannot Unite on Terms so far beyond meer Christianity as most Churches on Earth require When the Volume of Councils and Canons were unknown and plain Familiar Discipline was used in the open Church-Meetings Christians were less divided saith Grotius in Luc. 6. 22. Apud Christianos Veteres praesidente quidem Episcopo Senioribus sed Conscia Consentiente Fratrum multitudine morum judicia exercebantur If Christians be partial hear an impartial Heathen Ammianus Marcellinus who scandalized with the murder of Men kill'd in the Church for the Election of Pope Damasus concludeth how well it would have gone with Christianity if those great Roman Prelates had lived like the poor humble inferiour Bishops See his words But if Paul's full Decision on Romans 14. will not bring us to necessary forbearance no Plainness not Authority will serve Numb IX An Act for Concord by Reforming Parish Churches and Regulating Toleration of DISSENTERS I. THE Qualification requisite to Baptism in the Adult for themselves and in one Parent at least or Pro-Parents for Infants is Their understanding Consent to the Baptismal Covenant in which they are solemnly devoted to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as their God and Father Saviour and Sanctifier Renouncing the World the Flesh and the Devil so far as they are adverse And the requisite Qualification of the Adult for proper Church Priviledges and Communion in the Lord's Supper is That they forsake not the said Covenant or Christianity but publickly own it not rendering their Profession invalid by any Doctrine or Practice inconsistent therewith And that they understandingly desire the said Communion II. The Christian Churches have universally taken the Creed the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments as delivered by Christ for the Summary of the Christian Belief Desire and Practice expounding the Matter of the Baptismal Covenant Therefore all Pastors shall Exhort all Housholders to learn themselves and teach their Families the words and meaning of the Baptismal Covenant and of the Creed Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments And shall also thus Catechize such themselves as need their help as far as they or their Assisstants can do it III. No Minister shall Baptize any Person Adult or Infant till the Adult for themselves and the Parent or Pro-Parent who undertaketh the Education of the Child as his own have there professed their Belief of the Christian Faith and their fore-described Consent to the Christian Covenant in which they are to be solemnly devoted to God And such they shall not refuse Nor shall the Pastors admit any to the proper Priviledges of Church Communion and partaking of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ but those who have made Profession that they resovedly stand to their Baptismal Covenant in the foresaid Belief of the Christian Faith and Desire and Obedience to Christ. Which Profession shall be made in the Church or to the Pastor before sufficient Witness or to the Diocesan or some other Pastor who shall give Testimonial of it And if any shall go from the Parish-Church Pastor to be Confirmed by the Bishop or received by any other Minister without the Certificate or Consent of his own Parish Pastor the said Pastor shall not be obliged to admit him to Communion till to him also before Witness he have made the said Profession IV. Because in great Parishes and Cities where Persons live unknown and as Lodgers are transient and too great a Number desire not Communion and many Communicate only with other Churches and it is needful for Order that all Pastors know their Communicating Flock from the rest the Pastor may for his memory keep a Register of the stated Communicants of his Parish and put out the Names of those that deny or remove or are lawfully Excommunicate or that wilfully forbear Communion above fix Months not rendering to the Pastor a Satisfactory Excuse But occasionally he ought not to refuse any Stranger who hath Testimony of his Communion with any other approved Christian Church V. If by the Pastor's knowledge or by just accusation or same any Communicant be strongly suspected of Atheism Infidelity or denying any Essential part of Christian Faith Hope or Practice or to live in any heinous Sin the Pastor shall send for him and enquire of the Truth and if he be proved Guilty gently instruct him and admonish him and skilfully labour to bring him to Repentance And if he prevail not shall again send for him and do the same before some Witnesses And if he yet prevail not or if he wilfully refuse to come or to answer him shall open his Case before the Church Vestry or Neighbour Pastors and if he be present there admonish him and pray for his Repentance And if yet he prevail not to bring him to the profession of serious Repentance he shall declare that he judgeth him a Person unmeet for Church Communion till he Repent and shall till then forbear to give him the Sacrament But when he professeth serious Repentance shall receive him But if after such oft Professions he continue in such heinous Sin he shall not again receive him till actual Amendment for a sufficient time to make valid his Profession VI. Ordination to the Priesthood shall be a valid License to Preach And every just Incumbent being the Pastor Overseer or
est ut res ita tempora rerum c. The Lord Bacon nameth Four Causes of Atheism 1. Many Divisions in Religion 2. The Scandal of Priests 3. A Custom of Prophane Scoffing about Holy Matters 4. Corrupting prosperity Essay 16. p. 91. * Mr. Mitchel as it s said And since this Mr. Elliot of New-England hath sent me a printed Paper of his own contriving a Healing Form of Synods for constant Communion of particular Churches * This is since published She is since married to the Earl of Argyle * Of what is since published see after-ward * Since printed twice * Since printed Since printed as Directions for weak Christians * Now dead * Publisht since the Author's Death by Mr. Ios. Read * Since Printed * Since Printed * Archbishop Bilâ—on frequently and fully professeth See this matter fully cleared in Le Blancis Thesis * 〈…〉 In the Appendâ—x Pardon the tediousness of three or four Sections which repeat some of that which was mentioned before because it is here put in as part of my Pacificatory Endeavours only Though the Conjunction of the matter caused me to speak together of these things yet the matter of this Section and the following was for time about two or three Years after that which followeth In Ian. 1659. the Committee of Parliament the Rump as they were called Voted Liberty of Religion for all not excepting Papists Feb. 28. 1655 6. * This Writing being some how or other mistard cannot as yet be found March 10. 16â—9 A Petition was sent up from Worcestershire to have 〈◊〉 the Long Parliament â—ate till they had done that for King and Church and Country which they were restored for But it was not delivered because Mâ—â—k that recalled them was otherwise benâ— March 16. The Long Parliament â—â—â—tlolâ—ed it self March 25. Dr. Hammond died The last Day of April 1660. I preached to the Parliament May 1. 1660. the Parliament owned the King and voted his Recall This was in the end of Nov. 1660. Iune 25. 1660. I was Sworn the King's Chaplain in Ordinary This was put in because the serious practice of Religion had been made the common Scorn and a few Christians praying or repeating a Sermon together had been persecuted by some Prelates as a heinous Crime This was added because we knew what had been done and was like to be done again This was added because that the utter neglect of Discipline by the over-hot Prelates had caused all our Perplexities and Confusions and in this Point is the chiefest part of our Difference with them indeed and not about Ceremonies This was added because abundance of Ministers had been cast out in the Prelates Days for not reading publickly a Book which allowed Dancing and such Sports on the Lord's Day a a The Form of ordering of Priests b b Ibidem Acts 20 17 18. * * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so taken Matth. 2. 6. Rev. 12. â— 19. 15 c c Rev. 2. 1. e e Ibidem etiam exhortationes castigationes censurae divinae nam indicatur magno cum pondere ut apud certos de Dei conspectu summumque futuri Iudicii praejudicium esse Si quis ita deliquerit ut a communione orationis conventus omnis Sancti commercii relegatur Praesident probati quique seniores hoc norem istum non precio sed testimonio adepti Tert. Apol. Cap. 39. f f Nec de aliorum manibus quam praesidentium sumimus idem de corona militis Cap. 3. g g Dandi quidem baptismi habet jus Summus Sacerdos qui est Episcopus desint Presbyteri Diaconi Idem de Baptismo Cap. 17. h h Omni actu ad me periâ—to 〈◊〉 coâ—trahi Presbyterium Cornel apud Cyprian Epis. 46. i i Florentissimâ— illi clero lecum praesidenti Cyprian Epist. 55. ad Cornel. k k Vt Episcopus nullus caâ—â—sam audiat absque presentiâ clericorum suorum alioquin irrita erit sententia Episcopi nisi clericorum presentiâ confirmetur Concil Carthag 4. Cap. 23. l l Encerption Egberti Cap. 43. m m 15. qu. 7. Cap. Nullus The Parochial Government answerable to the Church-Session in Scotland The Presbyterical or Monthly Synods answerable to the Scottish Presbytery or Ecclesiastical Meeting Diocesane Synods answerable to the provincial Synods in Scotland * * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. Superintendentes unde nomen Episcopi tractum est Hieron Epist. 85. ad Evagrium See Queen Elizabeth's Injunctions and our 39 Articles This is spoken of the Old Common Prayer Book and not of the New where the Doctrine in point of Infants Salvation is changed All this enclosed part was left out of the Petition as presented to his Majesty This only being inserted in the room of it And on the contrary should we lose the Opportunity of our desired Reconciliation and Union it astonisheth us to foresee what doleful Effects our Divisions would produce which we will not so much as mention in particulars lest our Words should be misunderstood And seeing all this may safely and easily now be prevented we humbly beseech the Lord in Mercy to vouchsafe to your Majesty an Heart to discern a right of Time and Judgment * * This was thus expressed in the Petition that was presented not presuming to meddle with the Consciences of those many of the Nobility and Gentry c. ††What follows in this double inclosure was omitted in the Copy presented this only being inserted in the room of it We only crave your Majesty's Clemency to our selves and others who believe themselves to be under its Obligations And God forbid that we that are Ministers of the Word of Truth should do any thing to encourage your Majesty's Subjects to cast off the Conscience of an Oath * * This enclosed part was quite left out of the Copy that was presented * Dr. Wallis Declar. p. 11. p. 11. p. 11. p. 12. p. 12. p. 12. p. 12. p. 13. p. 14. This occasioned Mr. Durel after to say how hardly I was persuaded to let go the Place * But since it is licensed and printed called Directions for weak Christians c. Mr. Hales * Since Bishops of Chester Ely and Norwich upon enquiry of the Inhabitants since I understand that it is no such thing but that Aylesbury was well supplied either by a setled Incumbent or the Preacher of the Garison For somewhat the like Passage see Rushw. Hist. Callect 3 part Vol. 1. 134. Our Arguments Their Answer Note this great Bishop's Acquaintance with Antiquity * Here we had a great Debate they should have proved their penal Imposition lawful but I could get them to no more * This was a mistake in the Speaker or the Scribe * Frewen * Since of his death he made it his request that the ejected Ministers might be used again but his request was rejected by them that had overwitted him as being too late * Referring to something that past