selves while we are in his presence we must honour God too in the same manner that is by the gravity and reverence of our words and actions postures habits behaviour c. when we approach his presence There may be indeed and is a great difference between the particular expressions of civil and religious Honour that which may become a Prince is not always fit for religious Worship and that which is proper for the Worship of God must not always be given to Princes But the Comparison consists onely in this That since the external signs of Honour consist in our words postures looks habit behaviour and such-like external circumstances of action as he who does not observe such a good decorum in all these as is required in civil Honour affronts the Majesty of his Prince so does he who neglects such a Decency in these things as is proper to religious Honour profane the Worship and pollute the Name and Majesty of God But still we want some Rule whereby to determine what that Decency is in these external Circumstances which is proper for religious Worship and to explain this I shall lay down these three Rules I. That the external Decency of Worship consists in a peculiar regard to the Majesty of that God who is the sole Object of our Worship II. In a regard to the particular nature of those acts of Worship in which we are employed III. In a regard to the quality conditions and relations of those Persons who worship God I. The external Decency of Worship consists in a peculiar regard to the Majesty of that God who is the sole Object of our Worship This Rule God himself gives us by the Prophet Malachi A son honoureth his father and a servant his master If then I be a father where is my honour if I be a master where is my fear Which plainly signifies that we must worship God in such a manner as is expressive of a just Honour and Reverence for his excellent Majesty As he adds For I am a great King saith the Lord of hosts and my Name is dreadful among the heathen Now we express a just regard to the Majesty of God these two ways 1. When we worship him with all the external significations of Awe and Reverence When our words and actions postures and behaviour declare to all the world what a great sence we have of the Majesty of God and that infinite distance which is between him and us that is when our words are few and wise as Solomon directs when we worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker and not onely bind our hearts but our bodies to him and are very cautious of being guilty of the least indecency in his presence 2. Then we honour the divine Majesty when we worship him in a peculiar and appropriate manner and do make a visible distinction between the Worship of God and all the other actions of our lives The sanctification of Gods Name consists in the peculiarity of his Worship when we separate him from all other beings and ascribe incommunicable and eminent Perfections to him and therefore that Worship is most suitable to the divine Majesty to his peculiar and incommunicable Perfections which is performed in the most peculiar and distinguishing manner We know the Worship of God under the Law was by his own command performed in the most peculiar and appropriate manner by peculiar persons by Aaron and his Sons and the whole Tribe of Levi who were separated to the service of the Altar and Tabernacle in a peculiar place at the Tabernacle or Temple and at peculiar and appropriate times the seventh-day-Sabbath and those other annual Festivals and by peculiar Rites and Ceremonies The Priests had their peculiar Garments to minister in before the Lord and all the Vessels and Utensils of the Tabernacle were appropriated to those uses not to mention now their Sacrifices and Oblations and Incense c. Now though these Persons Times Places Rites and Ceremonies which by the Law of Moses were appropriated to the Worship of God had something mystical and typical in their signification yet the appropriation of peculiar Persons Times Places and Habits to the Worship of God is not mystical and typical but besides other uses it may serve is the natural Decency of Worship and that which the peculiar Excellencies of God and the peculiarity of the divine Worship requires The Light of Nature instructed all mankind in this as much as in the necessity of religious Worship insomuch that there never was any Nation which paid publick and solemn Adorations to any Deity but had their Priests their Temples their holy Garments and other Ceremonies appropriated to religious uses And if it be thought enough to say that these men were Idolaters and their Worship idolatrous and therefore we cannot learn from them what is proper and decent in the Worship of God we ought to consider that when the Devil set up for a God he challenged divine Honours to himself and therefore retained all the external form of religious Worship though he corrupted it with impure and obscene and inhumane Rites He would not have valued either Priests or their Vestments or Temples or Altars had not these been very necessary and essential to religious Worship and always judged so by mankind When a Rebel usurps the Throne he usurps the Honour too of a natural Prince and when the Devil would be thought a God he challenges such a Worship as according to the general sence of mankind is due to God though he adapts the particular Rites and Ceremonies of it to his own impure nature and barbarous and cruel inclinations As for appropriate Persons Times and Places I suppose our Reconciler will not dispute the fitness and decency of it under the Gospel And there is as little reason why he should dispute the Decency of an appropriate and peculiar habit for religious Worship which God himself commanded under the Law and which has been used in all Religions and in the early Ages of the Christian Church Appropriate Times and Places are as Jewish as appropriate Habits and whoever considers the peculiarity of the divine Worship cannot think it indecent that it should be distinguisht from other common actions by peculiar Times and Places and Habits as well as Persons II. The Decency of Worship consists in adapting the Rites and Ceremonies of it to the nature of those particular acts of Worship in which we are employed Thus when we beg of God the pardon of our sins or that he would bestow on us those Blessings which we want it becomes us to do this with the greatest humility and therefore kneeling and prostration are very decent postures of Prayer as being natural expressions of great modesty and a just sence of our own unworthiness When we profess our Faith in God or offer up Hymns of Praise and Thanksgiving standing may be a very decent posture as expressive both of our
the Lord and bow my self before the high God shall I come before him with burnt-offerings with calves of a year old Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousand rivers of oyl shall I give my first-born for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God Now because God prefers true and real goodness before the externals of Religion does it hence follow that there must be no external Worship or that the Church must make no Laws for the decent or orderly performance of it or must repeal these Laws when any ignorant people refuse to submit to them Just as much as that God did not require them to offer Sacrifice because he preferred Mercy before it Our Reconciler obsâ—rves two Cases to which our Saviour applies this saying 1. To justifie his Disciples who pulled the ears of Corn as they walked through the fields and rubbed them in their hands and eat them on the Sabbath-day which the Pharisees expounded to be a breach of the Sabbatick rest as being a servile work and our Saviour does not dispute with them upon that point but justifies what they did by their present necessity and by this Rule I will have mercy and not sacrifice That God who prefers acts of Kindness and Mercy before Sacrifice when they come in competition with each other is not such a rigorous exacter of obedience to any positive Institutions as to allow no Indulgence to necessity it self and it becomes Church-Governours to imitate the goodness of God in this and our Church does so as I have already observed but how this proves that the Church must make no Laws about Ceremonies or repeal them if men won't obey them I do not understand The next instance is our Saviour's justifying himself against the accusations of the Pharisees for his eating and drinking with Publicans and Sinners which he tells them was onely in order to reform them as a Physician converses with the sick and certainly it was lawful to converse with them upon so charitable a designe since God preferred Mercy before Sacrifice and therefore certainly God will be better pleased with our conversing with Sinners in order to make them good men than with our abstaining from their company though a familiar conversation with them upon other accounts be scandalous And how this proves what our Reconciler would conclude from it I cannot see Well but this is a general Rule which may be applied to more cases than one or two Right But if we will argue from our Saviour's authority and application we must apply it onely to such cases as are parallel to those cases to which our Saviour applies it otherwise we must not pretend the authority of our Saviour but the reason of the thing and let him set aside our Saviour's authority and we shall deal well enough with his Reason All that can be made of this Rule is this That where there happens any such case that there is a temporary competition between two Duties which are both acknowledged to be our duty there the greatest and most necessary duty must take place and particularly that all Rituals must give place to Mercy So that to make this a parallel case our Reconciler must grant that it is the duty of Church-Governours to prescribe Rules for the external Decency and solemnity of Worship what is the other Duty then to which this must give way To the care of mens Souls says our Reconciler No say I there is no inconsistency between the care of mens Souls and the care of publick Worship which is the best way of taking care of mens Souls and therefore there can never be a competition between these two O but some men are ignorant and scrupulous and wilful and if you prescribe any Rules of Worship they will dissent from them and turn Schismaticks and be damned and thus accidentally it affords occasion to these great and fatal evils Let him prove then if he can from these words of our Saviour that the Governours of the Church must never do their duty for fear those men should be damned who will not do theirs Such cases as these if they be truly pitiable must be left to the mercy of God but the Church can take no cognizance of them especially when this cannot be done without destroying the publick Decency and Solemnities of Worship and renouncing her own just Authority the maintaining of which is more for the general good of Souls than her compliance with some scrupulous persons would be I shall onely farther observe his great civility to theChurch and Kingdom of which he is a Member For his third Observation from these words is That they were used by the Prophet upon the occasion of the strictness of the Israelites in the observance and the requiring these Rituals whilst charity and mercy to their Brother was vanished from their hearts there being no truth no mercy nor knowledge of God in the land but killing committing adultery stealing lying and swearing falsly c. Now certainly it was no fault in the Jews at that time to be zealous for the external Worship instituted by the Law of Moses though our Reconciler seems to insinuate that it was for he matters not how he reproaches the Institutions of God himself so he can but reflect some odium on the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church yet they betrayed their Hypocrisie by their Zeal for the Externals of Religion while they neglected the weightier matters of the Law And left any man should be so dull as not to understand the meaning of this Observation he thetorically introduces it with a God forbid Now God forbid that I should say that it is thus in England but he is pleased to put men in mind of it if they please to think so This is true Fanatick Cant and Charity There must be no Rules prescribed for the Worship of God the Church must not take care to reclaim or restrain Schismaticks because our Reconciler thinks the State does not take sufficient care to punish other Vices Certainly there never was any Age of the Church wherein the publick Ministers of Religion took more care to decry this Pharisaical Hypocrisie of an external Religion and to teach men that nothing will recommend them to God without the practice of an universal Righteousness than at this day who will not flatter the greatest men in their Vices nor think any man a Saint because he expresses a great Zeal for the Church when his life and actions proclaim him to be a Devil We leave this good Reconciler to your beloved tender-conscienced Dissenters who can strain at a Gnat and swallow a Camel who cannot see a Surplice without horror but can dispence with Lying and Perjury with Slanders and Revilings and speaking
are which Magistrates can never know Hypocrites may pretend conscience as well as the sincere and Government could never be secure if Justice must be administred not by known and standing Laws but in compliance with every mans Conscience which is or may be no body knows what 3. The onely doubt then is about the Governours of the Church whether they in making Laws and in the exercise of Discipline ought not to have great regard to the Consciences of men Now I would fain know a reason why they are more bound than either God or civil Magistrates to suffer men to do what they please according to their various and different pretensions of Conscience If there be any equity in it that every man should enjoy the liberty of his own Conscience it holds in other matters as well as these I suppose our Reconciler will not say that the Governours of the Church are bound to suffer every man to be of what Religion he pleases to believe what he will to deny the Divinity and Satisfaction of our Saviour to worship an Image or the Host or the Virgin Mary c. and therefore the most considerable things in Religion are not left at liberty and yet of the greater moment any thing is the greater imposition it is upon Conscience I had rather submit to twenty Ceremonies than to be required to subscribe to one new Article of Faith But our Reconciler pretends onely to this Indulgence in inferiour matters Let us then consider his reason for that for certainly the less the things are the less need there is and the less reason to humour mens Consciences about them The onely reason he assigns for it is this That those who do observe or do refuse observance of the Constitutions of our Church in these inferiour matters do really observe them or not observe them out of Conscience towards God And if this be a good reason why every man should be left to the government of his own Conscience it is good in all other cases as well as in such inferiour matters for why should we impose upon men in any thing which they observe or not observe in conscience towards God But you 'll say this is St. Paul's Argument not the Reconciler's No say I it is the Reconciler's Argument not St. Paul's But does not St. Paul say He that regardeth a day regardeth it to the Lord and he that regardeth not a day to the Lord he doth not regard it He that eateth eateth to the Lord for he giveth God thanks and he that eateth not to the Lord he eateth not and giveth God thanks Yes I grant that these are St. Paul's words And does not this signifie that they who did eat and they who did not eat acted out of conscience towards God Yes I grant that too The converted Gentiles did eat indifferently of all sorts of meats and thanked God for that liberty he had granted them the converted Jews abstained from all meats forbidden by their Law and thanked God for their Law which preserved them from all legal pollutions but this is peculiar to this case and cannot be applied to our Dissenters that they refuse to observe our Ceremonies out of conscience towards God God had given a positive Law to the Jews by the hands of Moses which enjoyned the observation of new Moons and Sabbaths and other Festivals and made a distinction between clean and unclean meats and though this Law was now out of date yet it was not repealed in as publick a manner as it was given and God had no way declared that they should observe this Law no longer and therefore those Jews who embraced the Faith of Christ durst not renounce the Law of Moses out of reverence to the Authority of God who gave it and therefore these believing Jews might well be said to observe days and not to eat to the Lord that is out of reverence to the authority of God who gave that Law The believing Gentiles were never under the obligation of the Law of Moses and therefore were more easily instructed in their Christian liberty which God declared by sending his holy Spirit on them in their uncircumcision and by the Decrees of the Apostolical Synod at Ierusalem and they were very well assured by these divine Testimonies that God had delivered them from the Jewish observation of days and meats and therefore they did eat and they did not observe days to the Lord out of reverence to the divine authority which had delivered them from the Mosaical Law But where there is no positive Law nor any publick Declaration of Gods Will whatever our particular Perswasions and Opinions may be we do not act out of conscience towards God For no man can be said to do any thing to the Lord or out of conscience towards God in such cases wherein God has not interposed his authority And therefore unless our Reconciler can shew any positive Law either against Ecclesiastical Ceremonies in general or against the Cross in Baptism the Surplice or Kneeling at the Sacrament in particular how much soever his beloved Dissenters pretend to Conscience it is absurd to say that they do not observe these things out of conscience towards God nor do Conformists observe them out of conscience towards God any otherwise than as they obey that Authority which God hath set in his Church For there can be no other foundation for Conscience but either the express Laws of God or obedience to that Authority which God hath set over us But you 'll say may not that man also be said to act out of conscience toward God who does or forbears doing any thing out of a perswasion that God has commanded or forbid it though he should be mistaken in it and he can produce no Law of God to that purpose While men designe to please God in what they do surely they may be said to act out of conscience towards God I answer I will not contend about words and phrases with any man but let them call things by what names they please All that I say is this That St. Paul does not use it in this sence nor is any man in Scripture said to do any thing to the Lord who cannot produce a plain Law for what he does Other men may intend Gods glory in what they do but they may miss of their aim when they have no Rule and incur the divine displeasure instead of pleasing God and neither God nor men can grant any Indulgence to such a Conscience as this But when both contending Parties can produce a divine authority for doing or not doing the same thing which never did and never can happen but in this case concerning the obligation of the Law of Moses there is great reason for them to receive one another because they both act out of reverence to the divine Authority In a word two contrary Parties as the Jews and Gentiles were in this Controversie can never both of them
be said to do what they do to the Lord but onely in such cases where there is a divine positive Law or a divine Indulgence permission or liberty on both sides which was the case between the Jews and Gentiles but has no parallel that I know of Our Dissenters indeed pretend the authority of Scripture to justifie their non-observance of Ecclesiastical Rites and Ceremonies and so did the Jews for putting our Saviour to death so do all Hereticks and Schismaticks and even Rebels themselves and if the Government must take notice of every foolish Reasoner who pretends Scripture it is in as ill a case as if every unscriptural Dream and Fancy must pass for an Oracle This will make no difference before God whether men pervert the Scripture to their own destruction or follow the wild Enthusiasms of their own brains and I see no reason that Governours have to make a difference neither By these Arguments St. Paul perswades the believing Jews and Gentiles at Rome notwithstanding their Disputes about the observation of the Law of Moses to maintain Christian communion with each other and they are very proper to this purpose but can by no parity of Reason be applied to the case of our Dissenters as I hope abundantly appears from what I have already discours'd Secondly The Apostle by these Arguments having perswaded them to receive one another to Christian communion proceeds to perswade the Gentile Converts or those strong Jewish Christians who understood their Christian liberty not to give any needless offence and scandal to the weak by an uncharitable use of their liberty from v. 13. to the end of the Chapter These two to receive into communion and not to give offence and scandal are of a very different consideration though our Reconciler makes no distinction between them and therefore I shall briefly state this matter also and shew how remote it is from the case to which our Reconciler applies it The scandal which he supposes the Church gives to the Dissenters is this That by enjoyning the use of some indifferent Ceremonies in Religion which are scrupled by them or condemned as unlawful she tempts them to separate from her Communion and rather to involve themselves in the guilt of Schism than to submit to such unscriptural Impositions Let us then consider what that Scandal is of which St. Paul speaks and by what Arguments he disswades them from it and how â—ar it is applicable to our case 1. Then I shall consider what this Scandal was 2. By what Arguments he disswades them from giving Offence and Scandal First What this Scandal was Now the persons who were scandalized were the weak that which gave this scandal to them was as they apprehended an open contempt and violation of the Law of God in eating such meats as were on all hands agreed to be forbidden by the Law the danger of this scandal was lest it should tempt them to renounce Christianity Let us then compare this with the case of our Dissenters 1. The weak Jew was scandalized and offended So far you 'll say the Parallel holds good for whatever the Dissenters think of themselves I suppose the Church looks upon them as a sort of weak Christians and it is not what they think but what they are which is to be considered in this case for these Jews did not think themselves weak no more than our Dissenters do and yet the Apostle declares them to be weak and requires the strong to treat them as weak Brethren So far I agree but then we must consider what this weakness was for all weakness is not alike nor equally the object of our charity Some men are weak because they are ignorant and because they will not be instructed others are weak out of prejudice and some vicious inclinations some weakness is to be chastised and corrected not indulged and therefore because St. Paul requires them not to offend the weak Jew it does not follow that the Church must use the same Indulgence to the weak Dissenters unless their weakness be alike pityable Now the weakness of the Jew consisted in this that though they had embraced the Faith of Christ yet they were not convinced that the Law of Moses was out of date and therefore durst not do any thing which was forbidden by that Law nor omit doing what the Law commanded nor could they endure to see others do so so that their weakness consisted in a profound reverence for an express positive Law which all men agâ—eed was given by God but which was not yet repealed in so visible a manner as to satiâ—fie the believing Jews that it was repealed Now this was a very favourable case so favourable that God himself still indulged the Jews in the observation of their Law and therefore there was great reason why the strong Christian should avoid giving offence to the weak by the use of his Christian liberty But now this is such a case as never was before and never can be again Our Dissenters may be weak but not weak as the believing Jews were out of reverence to an express positive Law because there is no such Law which ever did forbid the use of those Ceremonies which they condemn and certainly there cannot be the same pretence to indulge those who foolishly reason themselves into mistakes and scruples as there was to indulge those who could produce a plain positive Law to justifie their dissent The case is so vastly different that I doubt not but St. Paul who pleaded for such Charity and Indulgence to the Jews would himself have censured our Dissenters For both the Governours of the Church and private Christians are in an ill state if they are bound to humour those mistakes and scruples which are owing to mens ignorance folly interest prejudice or unteachable and refractory dispositions 2. These weak Jews took offence at the open violation of an express Law of God For the Gentile Christians did not observe the Law of Moses but acted in direct opposition to it Now this was a just matter of offence to the Jew while he retained such a great veneration for the Law of Moses which at least he had some fair appearance of reason to do It is true the strong Christian in eating those things which were forbidden by the Law of Moses did nothing but what was lawful for him to do but it does not hence follow as our Reconciler infers that the scandal the weak Christian took at the freedom of the strong who used his Christian liberty in eating these things was scandalum acceptum non datum scandal received but not given the action being such as the weak Christian could not justly be offended at For the weak Christian had as much reason to be offended at this as he had to believe that the Law of Moses was still in force and this was the true reason of his offence No man can be justly charged with giving offence or scandal who does