forbidden to have any thing to do in matters of blood though but in a way of Civil Judicature Among the Romans Pontifici non licuit quenquam â—ccidere Suet. in Vespas which was pure and peaceable and gentle and easie to be intreated by walking in the good old ways of meekness patience gentleness and Christian Charity Ministers were heretofore so highly esteemed in this Church That nothing was thought too much or too dear for them But when by worldly passions and secular engagements they are found too light for the balance of the Sanctuary where onely learned humility gives weight and an holy gravity to them when these sons of God court the daughters of men and disguise themselves into the forms of Politicians when they carry on vain and violent projects and opinions by pride choler fierceness tumultuariness faction and sedition or by rusticity grossness levity and credulity or in ways of scurrility popularity and cruelty when to advance themselves to some shew of power they cry up the Scepter and * John 18.36 My Kingdom is not of this world i. e. After the way and forms of the Kingdoms of the World Luke 17.21 The Kingdom of God is within you Rom. 14.17 For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink muchless thâ— flesh and blood of Christians but righteousness and peace c. Dan. 11.38 Kingdom of Jesus Christ to be carried on after the fashions of this world with Arms and Engines of War to be erected upon the Bones and Skulls of their Brethren and Fathers when Reformation of Religion must be squallid and besmeared with the blood of Christians when they make the Throne of Christ to be supported as Solomons on both sides with Lyons or Tigers Bears and Wolves instead of Lambs and Doves As if Ministers had changed or lost their meek humble patient silent crucified Messias and had got some Manzzim a Mahumetan God of forces who is to be served in * Laudant Deum in tympano non in Choro Classicum tenunt non pacem praedicant Jonum aperiunt quo clauso Christus natus Bellâ—nae sacerdotes non eccl siae Martis faces â—itiones non Evangelii lumina Cometae infausti pestes dira omina non stella salutares Christâ—m pranuncianter Greg. Buff-Coats and Armor with the Opima spolia the goodly spoils and victims of slain Christians their Neighbors Brethren and Fathers Alas who is so blinde as not to see who so dull as not to consider how destructive such distempers are even in the justest secular conflicts to the dignity how contrary to the duty of true Ministers of the Gospel Whose honor consists in meekness patience humility constancy diligence charity tenderness and gravity in their Preaching Praying and Living joyned to good learning and sound knowledge The want of these holy deportments conjured up those evil spirits of sacrilege sedition perjury cruelty contempt and confusion against them and among them which are not easily laid again No man ordinarily being ashamed to offer that measure of scorn evil speaking ruine and oppression which they see even some Ministers themselves have offered liberally to their Brethren and Betters Who can make conscience to destroy those that make so little to consume and devour one another And this at length with the greater odium because with the greater defeat Honest meaning Christians expecting nothing less than such conclusions from the specious premises of zeal for Religion and a through Reformation when it is too evident how much not onely the mindes and maners of men but the general form and face of the Christian and Reformed Religion was never tending to more deformity either in Doctrine Government or true Discipline than now it is as other where so in England through the miscarriages of many Ministers as well as people No wonder if ordinary men who naturally love not a Minister of Gods truth do easily disesteem those who so little reverence themselves and their holy Function No marvel if men make so little conscience to hear or believe them whose actions so contradict and palpably confute their former doctrine and maners Yea many now make conscience to neglect despise forsake and separate from them yea some seek utterly to depose and destroy them not onely as useless but as dangerous and pernicious creatures who seem to have more of the Wolf and Fox than of the Sheep and Lamb. Thus from Ministers of Gods truth peace and salvation they are too much faln to be esteemed as State-firebrands and by some as vessels of wrath onely fitted for destruction What was sometime cryed up as a commendable zeal and who but Phinehas with his Javelin was then thought fit to be a Priest to the Lord is now looked upon as either miserable folly or detestable fury And certainly 10. Ministers duty in civil dissentions in the calmest representation of things if some warmth of natural zeal and sparks of humane affections were allowable to Ministers who are still but men in civil and secular affairs relating as they thought to the good and safety of their Country their Laws Religion Liberties Estates and Governors yet should these warmer gleams in Ministers hearts rather have vented themselves in soft dews and sweet showres than in lightnings and hot thunderbolts or coals of fire Their politick Preaching their earnest Prayers their unfeigned Tears should have attempered both their own and other mens passionate heats and propensities to civil flames Vide Joel 2. v. 3 10 11 13 c. They should as * V. 17. Let the Priests the Ministers of the Lord weep Let them say Spare thy people O Lord c. the Priests of the Lord have stood and wept between the Porch and the Altar crying mightily to Heaven that God would spare his Church and people And with men on Earth they should have interceded that they would pity themselves and one another Ministers of all men should have studied preached prayed wept and fasted all sorts and degrees of men in this Nation who were so many ways neerly related to one another into calmness moderation Christian temper forbearings mutual condiscendings and proneness to reconciliation If this would not do they should have * Ezek. 22.30 I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedg and stand in the gap before me for the Land that I should not destroy it but I found none Caecina cùm milites nec antoritate nec precibus nec manis retinere possit projectus in limine miseratione demum quia per legati corpus eundum erat clausit viam Tacit. An. l. 1. stood in the gap or lain prostrate as Caecina did in the unhappy breach and rather chose to be trodden under the feet of Armies Men and Horses than to see the woful day in which their King and Country-men and Fellow Christians and Brethren should rush into an unnatural war to cut one anothers throats This I say godly and tender-hearted Ministers
fail in the matter of a Church the faithful and holy Thirdly In the essential Form an explicite Covenant or Church agreement to serve the Lord in such a way Fourthly and lastly In our chusing ordaining and appointing Ministers and other Church Officers In whom they say Church power is onely executively as to the exercise or dispensation but it is primarily and eminently in that Body of the people never so small which is so combined together Yea they complain that we in England have neglected and deprived the people of that glorious power and liberty by which every Christian is to shew himself both King and Priest and Prophet Thus the Tabernacles of Edom and the Ismalites Psal 83.6 7 8. Nunquam deorunt hostes ubi adest ecclesia nec inimici ubi veritas agâ—â—scitur Tert. of Moab and the Hagarenes Gebal and Ammon and Ammaleok the Philistims and they of Tyre Assur also Men of our own Tribes all conspire against the true Religion the antient orders and holy Ministry of the Church of England And finding this Church forely torn bruised and wounded they either leave it and its Ministry to die desolate by separating wholly from them or else they seek by their several instruments of death wholly to dispatch it as the Amalekites did King Saul But blessed be God though this Church and its true Ministers be thus afflicted and persecuted yet are they not quite forsaken of God or of all good Christians 2 Cor. 4.8 9. Though we be cast down yet we are not quite destroyed There want not many sons of Sion to mourn with their Mother and to comfort her if they cannot contend for her Although the Lord is righteous Lam. 1.2 Isai 30.19 who hath smitten us and to whom we will return and wait till he be gracious to this Church Yet these sons of Edom our unnatural Brethren Micah 7.8 9 19. are very injurious and uncharitable who seek to enflame the wrath of God more against her rejoycing in her calamities and crying now she is faln let her rise up no more But the Lord will remember his compassions of old which have not failed and will return to build her up nor shall this furnace of affliction be to consume this Reformed Church but onely to purge her from that dross which she had any way contracted As to these mens first quarrel 17. Of Religion as established and protected by Laws in England against the frame of our Church and Ministry as setled and defended by Civil Laws and Politick Constitutions They seem in this rather offended at the clothes and dress or the defence and guard than at the body and substance of the Church Possibly they are angry that they had not power or permission sooner to deform and destroy that flourishing polity of this Church which by the princely piety of nursing fathers and mothers hath been so long preserved to the envy of enemies and admiration of friends We never thought that any civil sanctions which were in favor of our Reformed Church Religion and Ministry ever constituted the Being of our Church which is from Christ by the Ministry but they onely established and preserved it in its Ministry and polity from those abuses and insolencies to which we see them miserably exposed if they should want Magistrates to be protecting fathers and indulgent mothers to them Every rude and unclean beast delights to break in and waste the field of the Church when they see the fence of civil protection is low But this defence and provision made for this Church and its Ministry by Humane Laws doth no more lessen the strength and beauty of it than the Laws for property and safety do diminish any mans wisdom valor or care to defend his own Christians as men ought to be subject to Magistrates as men although they were Heathens Rom. 13. 1 Pet. 2.13 Tit. 3.1 Hereticks or Persecutors that so in honest things they might merit their civil protection How much more as Christians ought they to be subject to Christian Magistrates that are Patrons and Professors of true Religion Isai 49.23 Whose civil protection and government is so far from being a blemish to it that is the greatest temporal blessing that God hath promised or the Church can enjoy in this World as it was in Constantine the Great 's time and some others after him And however we see that oft-times this sweet wine of civil favor is prone to sowre to the vinegar of factions even among Christians And the honey of peace plenty and prosperity easily turns to pride envy anger ambition and contention through the pravity of mans nature who contrary to the temper of the most savage beasts grows most fierce and offensive to God when he is best treated by him * Omnia comprebantur sactionibus seditionibus querelis odiu invidiis Suspi Sever. de sâ—â— tempor Epâ—s Presbyteris Hist Pace ecclesiis undique concessâ caepit invidia totius orbis communis inimica in media episcoporum frequentia tripudiate Eus in vit Const lib. 2. c. 60. as Eusebius and Sulpitius Severus tell in their times Yet we must not refuse or cast away all good things because evil mindes abuse them much less may we mistake the Being of a Church for its well-being That cannot turn in any reason to this Churches reproach which was the favor of good men and Gods indulgence to this Church Nor do we think these querulous Obâ—ecters are therefore like to be by so much the sooner weary of their new ways by how much they more enjoy connivance protection or countenance from any men The obtaining of which is the thing they so much court and solicite Sure the shining of the warm Sun on men need not make them therefore ashamed or weary of Gods blessing 18. The matter of a Church Saints 2. As for the matter of a Church which those Obâ—ecters say must be onely Saints in Truth as well as shew denying ours to be such I answer We wish all our people were such Saints as are formerly described in truth and power we endeavor to make them such as far as the pains prayers and examples of Ministers may work with the grace of God 2 Cor. 6.1 But we do not think that these severe censurers of this Church of England do believe That all the Churches mentioned in Scripture which were the best that ever were consisted onely of true Saints That in Christs family did not not that to which Ananias John 6.70 Have I not chosen you twelve and one of you is a Devil Acts 5.3 Peter to Ananias Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie to the Holy Ghost Acts 9.13 Simon Magus believed and was baptised and continued with the Apostles c. V. 23. I perceive thou art in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity Saphyra and Simon Magus were joyned in profession nor all those in Corinth Galatia Laodicea and the rest
or some other remarkable judgement fell upon them as on King Uzzah So long as Gods love to the Jews was seconded with his jealousie for their good When indeed their Apostacies and Rebellions had alienated Gods love from them he then suffered those sad and unsanctified levellings to come among them consecrating the meanest of the people and who ever would relieve his worldly necessities by being a Priest to those Talismanick Calves under which new modes and figurations the Israelites were for some wicked reason of State perswaded by Jeroboam to worship their God So Herod when he had got the Kingdom over the Jews ex ima infima â—lâ—be constituit sacerdotes made of the basest people Priests c. Euseb Hist l. 1. c. 7. Which severe indulgence of God to them in suffering them to have such sorry and unsanctified Priests was no other but a fearful presaging of those desolations which soon after befel that people of Israel for the sins of Jeroboam who by his policy of new fashioned Priests and levelled that is abolished and profaned Religion is for ever branded with that mark of making Israel to sin 1 King 13.34 and was the occasion of cutting off his name and destroying his posterity from off the face of the earth Certainly in times when the Jews feared God if all the Priests and Levites whom God had appointed to minister before him had failed by death or defection the Ark in the Wilderness must have stood still or the service of the Temple have ceased till by some new Commission or Authority the Lord had signified his pleasure to his Church and people Nor would the devout and zealous Jews have thought presently every stout Porter or lusty Butcher would well enough supply the room of the Priests and Levites much less would they have beat and crouded the true Priests yet living and serving in their offices and courses out of their places onely because those others had naturally shouldâ—rs which could bear the Ark and the holy Vessels or hands which had skill to slay a beast and dress a sacrifice I see no reason why the Evangelical Ministry should be less sacred or inviolable since it hath as much of reason order usefulness and necessity also no less express authority from Christ and divine Institution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Is Pel. l. â— together with many hundreds of years holy and constant succession in all Churches That to invade this or violate and abrogate it seems no less to any true Christian than to croud Christ out of his throne to justle him out of his Priestly Prophetick and Kingly Offices It is like Julian the Apostate loudly to blaspheme or proudly to resist and insolently to do despight too that holy Spirit of truth power and order by which these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gifts of power and authority Ministerial have always been and are still given and dispenced to his Church in the way which Christ appointed which the holy Apostles practised and the Christian Churches have always imitated 5. I might yet adde the common notions and universal dictates of all mankinde who by the light of nature 10. Light of Nature in the Heathens Diu proximi sunt Deâ—â—um sacerdotes Tul. and that innate veneration of some Deity which they esteemed the inventer and institutor of their Religion agreed always in this That whatever Gods or Religions they owned their holy Rites and Mysteries were always publickâ—y taught celebrated and maintained by such as were solemnlâ— invest d with and reverenced under the peculiar name and honor of that sacrâ—d Office and sâ—cerdotal Function which they held divine as Herâ—d tus tells us which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 none not initiated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Herod Euterp or not consecrated by the wonted Ceremonies might profanely usurp Plutarch Plutarch Moral p. 778. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tac. Ann. l. 3. A. Gellius l. 3. c. 15. Sacerdotes è rudibus indoctis impolitis sacrandi non sunt quibus non datum est intelligere civilia multo magis denegatum est disserere divina Min. Fael Sacerdotes Egyptii constituebant ex optimatibus tum genere tum scientia Clem. Alex. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Julian Imp. epist Sacerdotalis vita politicae Praestantier 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato Phedo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In bello victores cum sint solent omnes gentes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Al. 2 Tim. 3.3 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Unthankful unholy without natural affections disobedient c. 2 Cor. 4.7 11 12. Earthen vessels Death worketh in us c. tells us both among Romans and Greeks they generally in all Cities paid great honor and respect to their Priests and holy men because those obtained of the gods good things not onely for themselves and their families but for the whole Cities where they lived Tacitus tells us That the cheif Priests were also by the Divine Munificence esteemed the chiefest of men least subject to anger envy or other mean affections from any men So Aul. Gellius setâ— down at large the solemnities and honors for vestments and other regards which among the Romans was used toward the Flamines Diales or chief Priests whom they esteemed next their gods whose word was always to be taken without any oath they thought all holy things profaned if any men unsacred presumed to meddle with them or partake of them much more if such an one officiated in them It cannot be any thing of true Christian piety or holiness which makes any men in the Church of Christ degenerate from the very principles of nature whose light is never despised by any but those that are without natural affections among other their black Characters which are proper to those who have a fâ—rm of godliness but deny the power of it The strangest prodigies that ever were indeed of so profane a wantonness under pretences of enlarged piety striving to remove all bounds of duty and respect to God or man nor did ever sober men think themselves absolved from that honor and respect which is due to God and his holy Service or Ministry because of the personal infirmities which may be seen in those that are his Ministers to us We shall neither as men nor Christians have any to serve God or man in the way of true Christian Religion if we will allow none with their failings The Divine is to be distinguished from the Man there may be the power of God with the weakness of man as in Saint Paul Nor need we be more choise and curious than God himself is 11. A peculiar Office of Ministry necessary for the Church 6. Nor is there a greater benefit and conveniency to the Church than a necessity of having a special calling and divine institution of the Ministers of the Gospel For we may not in this trust to the good natures and good wills of Christians in common if personal