ne ipsa delet iniquitas as St. Aust speaks that Law written in mens hearts which sin it self could not blot out This was that Law to which a penalty was annext in case of Transgression to be taken upon the verdict or testimony of Conscience i. e. that reflection the Soul makes Conscience what and the judgment which by that reflection it passes upon it self according to Law without which Law as there could be no guilt so without guilt there could be no Conscience Therefore if the Law makes not distinctively good or evil we can neither do well or ill or have either comfort or regret in the sense of one or other Conscience can never act without respect to a Law and to the Maker and Judge of that Law Its reflexion would be an useless and idle thing if all other things were indifferent because the sense of guilt would be incompossible with the praeclusion of Law and therefore every mans experience as it feels the one so it proves the other Witness the perplexity that haunts the Soul of the most cautious and closest sinner Witness the lashes that the Monarch feels from the hand of Conscience though freed from the touch of any other patiturque suos mens conscia manes Witness the fears and horrors of dying men who are then most afraid of this when they are nighest out of the reach of all other punishment But besides the testimony of Conscience we have the universal consent of Mankind there having never yet been any Nation so barbarous that believed every thing naturally alike or that had not some Principles and Practices too of Morality And indeed were it not thus were not good and evil made such by nature distinctly and antecedently to humane Laws these Laws could signifie nothing for were there no antecedent obligation to obey those Laws Rebellion would presently be as lawful as obedience is necessary Vain names of Oaths of Allegiance or Promises of Fidelity if it be not first a duty in it self to keep ones word I wonder who would then be a Subject that could hope to better himself by being otherwise Besides were it not thus how should humane Laws bind as we see they do in those places where Revelation has not yet been if the Obligation of Conscience to Obedience in such places be not resolv'd into the Law of Nature enjoyning Obedience as due to Governours Yea precluding the Law of Nature I speak now with becoming reverence how could God himself bind us to obedience by any Positive Law for unless it be first my duty to believe God because of his Veracity I am after the clearest Revelation left at my liberty to believe whether the Law be from God or no and if I should be so kind as to believe him yet if nothing be good or bad in it self then to despise the authority of God cannot be evil and therefore I may chuse as an indifferent thing whether I will obey him or not Yea why may not men if they please invert the very frame of all moral things and turn Vice into the place of Virtue So absurd as we have seen is this false and dangerous Hypothesis so directly thwart to the first Principles of Reason and to the common sence of mankind so plainly effective and introductive of all the evil and misery that can be done or suffer'd in the world that if it could be reasonably believed that the Author a man I doubt not eminently Learned should not be aware of what so follows thereupon it might also be charitably hop't that he would have denyed himself upon the first sight of such mischievous consequents were it not that we see many other and some not unlearned men who while they abhor the Principles in terms yet embrace those inferences which must needs come from them in course Tell the Schismatick there is no God oh Abominable that 't is abominable and the Atheist shall feel his arm but tell him Kings are not or obedience due to them is not Gods and you may shake his hand Suum euique tribuaere Tell him there is a natural or original Law of justice c. out upon these Atheists he 'l say so too tell him right reason is that instrument by which we discern this Law to be given to our natures still he 's content but tell him that therefore Obedience is both rational and natural and he begins to start what do you mean Sir Tell him that therefore it is due to man as Governour i. e. as the Ordinance of God you amaze him what though he be a Papist where by the way we cannot but acknowledge this same though Modern Papist or Infidel c. to be so much the more considerable as it carries with it an Emphasis of the loudest and harshest sound Papist in our English Reformed Translation being in a manner the same reading with Infidel or Mahometan but whilst I think it the severest I may also suspect it for the unjustest too as being a supposition however made at first God knows not I yet since that time manifestly as enviously urg'd and improved by some to such a popular height that it now seems more than probable they had rather suppose it though false than truly not suppose it and that they would not quit their advantage or exchange the pleasure of fixing the guilt and odium for my comfort in or my hope of the improbability of that imputation Their busie floating upon the top or surface of common fame will not let them sink to the depth and bottom of such humble reflexions as supposing what they suppose would certainly help us more and become us better for whether is more Evangelical think we the language of Ashdod or the speech of Canaan that roaring clamour he is Popishly affected and shall never Reign c. or that still remorseful voice righteous art thou O Lord and thy judgments are true and as we sin'd by thrusting out as we did a Protestant King and Nursing Father so shouldst thou punish us by bringing in the contrary yet still righteous art thou O Lord c. But besides that we may be jealous of this jealousie as seeing no more sufficient ground than we think they have good cause for it and that we are not to suspect rashly without such ground or tumultuously and irreverently with it methinks we have this good reason against it that it got no higher than a Supposition there where we doubt not it would if it could have been lifted up to an Assertion and I know some very near the subject of this praedicate that know no more of it than I do and I now thank God that thus I do not know it and thence may infer my duty not to believe it my duty I say and the rather because I believe verily such a Supposition can hardly be well made of any man or Christian without making another of the ignorance or unsincerity of the same man
no incorporeal substance for that it would be a contradiction and so impossible there should be any as if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were nothing akin to Entity Leviathan p. 214. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which we all know 't is nearer allied than to matter or corporeity but as we also know they are some kind of deformities in our bodies which make us most asham'd of being stript so it must be some such cause that makes us so afraid of a separate existence If I should say as I need not the disciple of the Leviathan is mad the Reader knows what I mean and I speak intelligibly or if I say he is besides himself I am allowed to speak pertinently and he could he come to himself again would grant me to speak as truly that he was not himself and that he was when he was not so how then can he confess the lesser Separation which is in Lunacy whilst he cannot so much as conceive that greater Divorce which is in Ecstacy whenas it is manifestly repugnant to know any thing in kind which we cannot also apprehend in degree to know any thing to be actually at a lesser which we cannot imagine to be possibly at a greater distance So then 't is not any contradiction in the terms of incorporeal substance that can be the cause why there is none such What then why truly this or nothing and this less and worse than nothing because if there were such a substance then there must be a Spirit and that would put the hook into this Leviathan for then there will be a God whereas otherwise the Monster were free to take his pleasure and pass time for there could be no God and so no Religion and then no good or evil but as forc't and made such by our selves For that supposing God is or may be he must be infinite and indivisible and therefore also must be incorporeal because otherwise he must have parts and so be divisible and so finite Diogenes Laertius reports of Pyrrho In vita ejus that he denyed any difference between good and evil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 other than what Positive law or custom had made and I think Seneca tells as much of Epicurus Besides these two I am not presently aware of any third till Mr. Hobbs will needs be teaching ubi nulla respublica p. 72. de Cive c. 12. c. nullum injustum c. nihil absolute bonum aut malum c. Natura est ad mandatum relativa omnis actio suâ naturâ adiaphora c. that there 's nothing good or evil in it self or naturally just or unjust but all so or so in reference to the Magistrate being otherwise and in themselves indifferent c. But this Gentleman hath forgot what yet he must needs have learnt from one of his great Masters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that there is an Eternal Law every way inclining us to that which is just and equal Aristot de mundo c. 16. and that as the Being of God must needs be infinite as we have shewn already so must it by the like necessity of his Nature be infinitely holy because the perfections of God are not Adjuncts but Essential to his Nature wherefore he cannot act but agreeably to them he cannot approve or disapprove any thing but suitably to these so that to imagine one thing to be as congruous to him as another good as evil must needs be Blasphemy and contradiction to boot and make God both to be and cease to be what he is because that God abhors evil is rather from the Sanctity of his Nature and Essence than from the determination of his Will and therefore whatever is properly and essentially good must rather be so by its resultanco from this Holy Being than by any positive Sanction or precept of Law and therefore also 't is in respect of its Sanctity rather than Soveraignty that the Will of God becomes the measure of good and evil which is not such because his Will is Arbitrary but because it must be agreeable to his Holiness Though we are not born with congenit Notions of good and evil yet we are born with such Faculties as duely exercised between acts and objects will make us necessarily apprehensive of congruity or incongruity in this or that whilst yet this apprehension ows it self not only to the moral but to the connate and essential rectitude of those Faculties which shew us by consideration such a manifest proportion between some and disproportion between other acts and their objects that without repugnancy and doing violence to those powers we cannot judge otherwise of them than that they are right or wrong equal or unequal from that proportion or disproportion we thus perceive in them and have thereby as certain rational Principles of Moral practice as any we can have of Science and know as well that we are to give every one their due as that two and two make four and therefore two taken from four leave two still and those certain determinations which the Soul makes in this rational exercise of comparing acts and objects are those very issues which Philosophers call common Notions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. the Rudimental innate or ingrafted Principles of Rational nature whereby we find our Intellectual Faculties to be as much affected with moral evil as our Sensatories are by the most incongruous or ingrateful Objects Rhet. l. 1. c. 14. Rom. 12.17 Thus we find some things as Aristotle observes right or wrong by nature or in St. Pauls language 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 just or honest in the sight or esteem of all men q. d. no rational creature can possibly esteem them other than such because the faculties wherewith he judgeth are created by God who hath made man with such Faculties as make him necessarily judge so and so and therefore this judgment of his must be Gods too and so must be a Law from God given to man which man as rational cannot depart from it being the Law written in his heart or wrought into the essential frame or composition of his reasonable nature What imaginable account can there be given how the Gentiles who had not the Law could be a Law unto themselves or do by nature the things contained in the Law c. if there were not a Law in and to that nature abstracted from and antecedent to all other Sanctions and Precepts whatsoever They had not the Law written or revealed to them what Law had they then but this in their nature which was born with them They could have nothing but that Natural light or the dictates of right reason by whose conduct notwithstanding they did those things which were also commanded in the Law of God or as the Poet words it sponte suâ sine lege fidem rectumque colebant This was that Lex scripta in cordibus hominum quam
affronted either slighted by the ingratitude of some or justled or perhaps assaulted by the perverseness of others or betrayed by her own goodness if she were not sometimes attended and guarded by severity Without this how easily might she be stroakt and softned into a cruel and dangerous impunity by indulging not the weaklings or fearful ones but the stout and stubborn the obstinate and malitious the designing and incorrigible offenders such as corrupt themselves with goodness and turn the flat of indulgence into the edge of presumption and at the next turn into the point of direct enmity The Prince sees all this and more than this when he considers his Purple of so pure a dye that the smallest soil will spot it and the least spot will discolour it his Crown of so fine a make so eminent a site such a transparent splendour that even a mote of imperfection may be seen in it much more would any cloud be notorious which besides what it gathered of its own from any noxious morbifick exhalations would not fail of some malevolent aspects to thicken it into the darkness and then spread it into the inauspiciousness of some strange and prodigious Eclipse Prognosticated by the conjunction caused by the inter-op-position and harangued into the defection of some great bodies So much need and use has the Prince of this true glass to see himself when so many false ones are made by others to see him with Hitherto we have beheld the Prince viewing himself impartially and looking graciously upon all his Subjects that are or should be such and they again beholding their Prince in the same glass but not with the same eyes some with an eye of reverence or religious fear and love some with an eye of jealousie or fear designed for hate as that for destruction and these because they look not like those directly from God to the command and from that to the duty but asquint or across from God obliquely or in pretence but then most directly to the Party or Interest and from that cross again upon the prescribed duty we cannot see them sufficiently who look so many several ways at one view Sometimes they amuse us with close and warm insinuations of fears and jealousies and so scatter the seeds of discontent thus by a pretended Tyranny they make way for Anarchy and by fictitious for real Popery the Devil and shame together teaching them to colour Schism with Zeal and to sute their mediums of suggestions or accusations with their ends of ruin and destruction Sometimes like Tumblers they see best with one of their eyes their left eye sharp-sighted enough when their right eye is full of darkness thus they obtrude upon us worldly wisdom which we see they have for divine light which we know they have not Thus they teach humor and confidence instead of Conscience and act accordingly through thick and thin they 'l boggle or stop at nothing when the devil rides them i. e. as they love to mistake it when conscience overacts them then shew them if you can those impieties which they dare not act to make them sure of their Election In this carier they have done such feats in our memory so black and execrable exploits so exactly Theatrical and infernal that their own Father might learn to act after them that charity it self could do them no greater kindness than to make them if not penitently innocent less nocent unavoidably that so if they will not chuse the honour or comfort they might be mercifully compelled to enjoy the common benefits of obedience so that however they will perish by other sins they might not be able to damn themselves by Rebellion Popish Schismaticks Some of them that have traded longer than the rest and set up for whole-sale have ingrost that most comprehensive falshood Infallibility as the surest staple error to advance trade and help off the rest 't is odds but some of them heretofore were near choaking for I think they eat bones and all with their Transubstantiation and this infallible crust was first prepared to cure them and ever since administred to all for prevention of the like danger surely a most soveraign remedy for by keeping the gullet thus at stretch and the swallow wide enough open it makes all safe Pope Pius the IV. in Counc of Trent Since that they have been able to take down XII Articles more than ever the Apostles took up into their Creed prescribed by one of their infallible Doctors and prepared by his trusty Trojans his Apothecaries of Trent they can swallow the whole 24 together at one gulp without check or chewing and can we think now they should stick or strain at a Bolus of one man the man Jesus Christ they are foully wrong'd if they be not now endeavouring to do as much by St. George for England and his horse too Some of them look cross upon the whole Law of Moses Antinomians as if our freedom from the rigour of that were our exemption from the bond of all humane Laws and licentiousness of life were the true Christian liberty or as if that liberty were not a manumission from the bondage and dominion of sin and Satan but from the yoke of Christ and the precepts of Christianity and from the not only Positive but Moral Law of Moses which we know is the Law of Nature and of Christ too as if they were free to regulate the Laws by their own humours and not these by those as if no errours of judgment no not blaspheming or denying God were to be corrected or restrained by Laws as if it were not the sin but the duty of the Magistrate when he beareth the sword in vain Some look upward with such bold and fixed staring upon the decrees of God as such absolute irrespective and irreversible things Predestinarians as do eternally determine both the end and the means and necessitate both our sins and our punishments and therefore warrant us to live as we were born without care for that our vices cannot hurt us if Elect nor our vertues help us if Reprobate for that either we cannot repent if we would or that we must repent do what we can that whatever comes to pass was antecedently unavoidable and we thereby fully discharged of any farther care or solicitude concerning our actions or our ends and may therefore as our complexions dispose us go merrily or despairingly to hell but go however whereas would they but consider themselves as bound in duty not to think or speak any thing unworthy of God or any thing which they would be ashamed should be thought or spoken of themselves they could not but conceive and acknowledge that God's promises and threats are general and conditional that his decrees are just and so inclusive of his dealing with all men according to their deeds and exclusive of any respect of persons and therefore that justification doth not precede Repentance nor repentance avail
disorderly in contempt of all authority and publick order we must then whether we would or no for Christ has made it our duty Matt. 18.17 2 Thes 3.6 2 Cor. 5.11 and re-inforc't it upon us by St. Paul we must then I say deal with all such as the Jews did with Heathens and Publicans we must withdraw from them in their disorders and in case of irreclaimable contumacy not only not religiously but not so much as civilly entertain them or as St. John expresses it we must not receive them into our houses or bid them God speed And indeed what reason can there be that we should eat or drink with them at their or our own Table who are therefore too unworthy because they think themselves too good to eat or drink with us at the Lords Table Or what Charity can bid any man God Speed in the way of Corah or how can I affect his Society that hates my Religion and my God How can I bear it when I see my Saviour so manifestly Crucified afresh between the Heretick breaking the Vnity of the Church in point of Doctrine by denying one or more of her Fundamental Articles and the Schismatick in point of Discipline endeavouring to overthrow her Government How can I endure another down-right Judas to betray the whole Cause of Christianity with a complement of Religion or a Kiss of Zeal Surely if we must withdraw from the Heretick who if he keeps his error to himself Schism worse than Heresie may be no bodies foe but his own then much more certainly from the Schismatick as the more Scandalous Mischievous and Impious of the two as necessarily offending against Peace and Charity together And why because the Schismatick cannot possibly keep his Schism to himself that being publick in its own nature as being a positive separation from publick Worship erecting Altar against Altar and more than a bare negative suspension of Communion and by consequence an affront to the Governours and a scorn to the Government of the Church by setting up a Conventicle prohibited by God and man against a Church establisht by the Laws of both The Schismatick is an actual divider in and of the Church and therefore worse by odds than any other who is but passively divided or cut off from her as much worse as to subvert the whole Legislative power is worse than any violation of a particular Law or to make way for all the Heresies and Immoralities in the world is worse than any one of those can be The Schismatick must needs be so much worse than the Heretick as a vicious practice is worse than a false opinion The Communion of Saints The Schismatick a Heretick too and as a Schismatick is for the most part ipso facto an Heretick too for I pray tell me does he not renounce the IXth Article of the Creed does he not disown did I say does he not despise and detest that great Fundamental and essential to all Christian Religion submission to every Ordinance of man for the Lords sake as well as our own or tell me if this be not a most principal and fundamental doctrine Gentlemen I beseech you speak out Is it not a part of our Obedience to God himself Is it not the aptest of all others to keep the Vnity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace and is it not therefore that we find no Doctrine in the Holy Scriptures more earnestly or more affiduously 1 Pet. 2.18 more plainly or more expresly prescrib'd to us than that of Uniform obedience to all that are over us in authority worst as well as best and therefore tell me again Is it not both a most foolish and a most nefarious pretence that the Religion or irreligion of our Governours can either widen or straiten our divine obligation to strict obedience Tell me Was there ever more incarnate devils than Nero or Tiberius whom yet both Christ and St. Paul obeyed themselves and commanded others to obey Tell me Is not our obedience to Magistrates due to that Authority which has commanded us to pay it them and therefore cannot be paid as due to the men as men or to the good as good but reduplicatively to the Magistrates as such let them be otherwise what they will so they be not Usurpers or command contrary to God and then does not the very exception of those cases confirm the doctrine in all other Tell me Are we not when the commands of God and the King are inconsistent then to give our whole active obedience to God and to his Deputy our passive only and is not the Kings command otherwise the command of God too and is not the same Law mediately divine which is immediately humane or are we more obliged by strict precept to fear God than we are to honour the King or more forbidden the Worship of Idols than disobedience to lawful Authority or is any man able so much as in his conception to separate the sin of Schism from such disobedience or such disobedience from rebellion against the Law of Christ or a state of damnation from either of them Tell me Does not St. Jude put all these together in his description of the Gnosticks the first and worst Schismaticks Jude 4 8 12 16 19. Hereticks and Rebels in the Primitive Church when he calls them Murmurers Complainers walking after their own lusts separating themselves from what I beseech you ver 6. if not from the Church establisht having not yet questionless pretending to have the Spirit whom he therefore parallels for their misery as well as sin with those that made a Schism as it were in Heaven and separated from the Church Triumphant reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the Judgment of the great day Tell me Are not those who do not hold fast the Profession of the Faith but forsake the assembling themselves together at stated times and places by just authority appointed as the manner of some is Heb. 10.23 25. are not they inferr'd to sin wilfully and that therefore there remains nothing for such but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation Do we not find the Holy Pen-men thundring out the Terrors of the Lord against this single sin more than all the rest and why do we so but because this sin gives the greatest scandal to the enemies of Christ and helps to justifie them in their highest prejudices to his Name and Gospel Do we not find the Schismaticks singled out from the whole herd of scandalous and notorious sinners to be markt and avoided as the worst of all as most destitute of Christian meekness not consenting to wholesom words but proud knowing nothing doating about questions and strifes of words whereof cometh envy strife c. presumptuous self-will'd despising Governments c. Can any pride be more monstrous than to be proud of knowledge and yet know nothing or can it be any other thing than such an
more learned and this so much the rather if it be well considered that however Christians ought to serve one another in love yet obedience to inferiours is grievous and not without some excuse for being so whereas that of Superiours as of Christ who according to his humane nature was a subject to Caesar is a most noble natural and necessary duty as that which supports the whole Fabrick of the Church and of all the Kingdoms upon earth and in Heaven too that which is so equally essential to Policy and Religion that 't is plainly impossible either for Saints to be Schismaticks or Rebels or for such to be Saints without making our Faith our Scriptures our Religion vain without a downright welcome to Anarchy and farewel to all Society The contempt of Authority linked with an obstinate contumacious and seditious humour is so very a monster that it makes an error of judgment which might otherwise have been venial in it self a diabolical and damning quality So that if Schism were no such sin as it is yet it were worth the parting with for the purchase of publick peace of which rightly improved piety and prosperity strength and safety are the genuine and precious fruits It was for this that our Lord himself complyed in some things both with Jews and Gentiles that he might gain both It was for this that we find the like complyances of St. Paul of whom we should all be followers as he was of Christ yielding to circumcise Timothy Act. 15.28 29. and refusing again to circumcise Titus To gain the Jews he denyed himself the use of his Christian liberty and resum'd it again to gain the Gentiles It was for peace and to unite dissenters that the Apostles made that conciliar establishment of things indifferent by a Law whereby they induced a necessity à parte post upon things indifferent à parte antè And this Apostolical practice as it plainly informs our judgments in the true subject matter of humane Laws and whereabout they are properly conversant and as plainly directs our practice of obedience in such cases so will it never be made to serve their purposes who by binding the whole force and weight of it upon their Governours shoulders so as they themselves may not touch it so much as with one of their own fingers would make it a ground of exception from the general rule of submission and a warrant to dispute at least and as it constantly follows to deny at last that obedience which they pretend according to this practice should not have been commanded as if the condescension and indulgence of Governours were not to the ignorance or frowardness to the intellectual or moral infirmities of dissenters as if the Jews had not been culpable in their tenaciousness of the Law of Moses when St. Paul purposely stoopt to them and approved its observance by his own practice as if the bowels and forbearings of any injur'd and incens'd Parent did not make it more the childs duty to love and honour him and should not make it more his shame and grief to displease him more his sin and guilt to disobey him as if not presently to take the forfeiture were reasonably to avoid the debt or cancel the debtors obligation or as if it were equally of duty as it is of power in the Prince to suspend the execution of a known Law for some weighty reasons of State and upon the prospect of publick benefit and to tolerate a practice against Law and without hope of any common good and not without just apprehensions of the greatest experience of the contrary and therefore against all the reason in the world but that of his own courtesie and meer pity 'T is true indeed when Kings are said to be Gods we best understand how they are such when they are said also to be nursing Fathers and therefore without fear either of contradiction to sense or of courtship against reason we can say they are humane Gods their deity best asserted by their humanity and both by a joynt supremacy of power and goodness and we cannot chuse but wonder at the Anti-supremacy of Schism that our ready obedience should not confess the one as irresistible as our rebellions have prov'd the other 'T is as true that there is no such mirrour so clear and true to look in no such optick or perspicil to see with as is the Crystal of the Word of God a glass of such virtue that it not only most perfectly discovers the object but also disposes the medium and directs the faculty a glass that will never suffer us to behold any thing with or through prejudice or base interest or without Christian charity and meekness a glass that never shews us the spots of others but by reflexion upon our own in this glass we can neither behold the virtues or vices of our fellow-subjects with envy or without pity nor the blemishes or beauties of our Governours without a reverence becoming both a reverence I say as being a mixt affection of fear and love by which I fear the power whilst I love not the fault of the person and love the person whilst I fear the evil whether sin or punishment of the fault In this glass we see what we must piously bewail yet may not proudly censure in our Superiors what we must reprove with caution and without arrogance in our equals and what we must judge and condemn impartially positively absolutely and irrespectively to any though more scandalous sins of others in our selves St. Paul was the greatest of sinners with the greatest assurance of Salvation and the Publican was a sinner with more comfort than the Pharisee was not a Publican In this glass the most absolute Soveraign Prince may best see himself in the fullest proportion he sees by and for whom he reigns absolutely and without whom he reigns not independently he sees that his Government is arbitrary as that is supream and unquestionable by man but not as any way unaccountable but as every way most strictly and most especially accountable to God for he sees him that is properly and originally King of Kings under whose most supreme and comprehensive Title and by vertue of whom he sees himself constituted and authorized and accordingly to which he is to be directed limited and subordinate and therefore by no means to intrench upon the Prerogatives Royal of his Lord Paramount and therefore not to govern by his own Will which is Gods peculiar a rule to himself and a Law to the Sons of men the root and source of all Government which so spreads and runs it self through the whole nature of man that it makes Government not more divine in it self than connatural to us and as effective of our well-beings in Societies as of our social and conjugal propensions and therefore as old as Paternity it self or the First of the First-born making every man naturally sociable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Supremum medium
influence the minds of men as the sense of kindness without the reason of merit much more against the reason of our demerits But the corruption of humane nature being such as ordinarily nourisheth pride in our selves and malignity against goodness in others it consequently joyns enmity with ingratitude and perverseness to disobedience whence it proves so very hazardous an experiment of ruling as is thought worthy to be checkt by a Proverb of killing with kindness and therefore the experience of all times has made it out of question that Laws would be no more than idle ludicrous things if they were not dignified and asserted by their sanctions of rewards and punishments However if the Subjects of such a Prince would but give him the honour of his own mercy which can never be well done but with the utmost of a grateful obedience no good man would grutch them the benefit of the same and if they should do so ill as to preclude to themselves this yet let them not do worse than so by denying their Prince that Can we now not acknowledge the kindness of that Providence which first gave us then preserved for us and afterward restored to us such a Prince as this and all these in such a manner so signal and above ordinary course by a Star at his Birth by his escape at Worcester and by his un-bloudy Restauration when as ill as we had us'd him he was more desired and wanted by the Nations than they could be by him We cannot for our hearts deny or if we could that yet we cannot for our senses but confess those Testimonies God himself hath thus given of his pity and mercy towards us in the instance of this Monarch of mercy and shall we dare to pervert our apprehensions of this blessing into jealousies and fears against him instead of thankfulness to God for him or make our experience of Gods gracious Providence in this Succession a ground for doubting or shifting it in the next God forbid Let us never hope to prosper by iniquity who are sure we can never be miserable without sin We know we may and how we may be happy in Suffering with comfort and without guilt yet neither so nor so when we suffer for our own sakes and not for Gods when we do against the command that which is not righteous that we may not suffer according to the command for that which is For as he said necesse est ut eam non ut vivam so we all know our Obedience is necessary when our Security may not and our resistance cannot be so He tells us now he will step a while from the glass and make room for our dissenting brethren to come and see and then tell us plainly whether what has been here represented be not so there and as the worst he wishes to them is that what he hath seen or said might be beneficial so the best he can hope for them is that by their compliance with or rather than fail their condescension to their Superious they will make it so This as it is the greatest Charity he can have for them so is it the least as he saith that for his own part he would use towards them For that as long and as steddily as he hath been looking in this Glass and among so many plain and evident rules of Faith and Practice as he hath seen there he cannot discern the least shadow of ground or reason to justifie the making or excuse the maintaining their Separation but much very much to aggravate and condemn both And therefore he warrantably concludes that abstractly from Pride or Ignorance Interest or Humour there can be none And therefore also he Conjures and Obtests his brethren by the mercies of God by the bowels of Christ by the Indulgence of the King and the Love of their Countrey by the Honour of Religion and the Bond of Nature by the Reason of Law and the Obligation of Conscience by the Guilt of their League and the Debt of their Allegiance by the Miseries of the First and the Mercies of the Second CHARLES by the Truth of their Repentance for the one and Gratitude to the other by the Grief and fear of their acknowledged brethren and the Rage and hope of the common enemy by the Memory of former as the Fate of all future disobedience by the dearest and most prevailing names of Christian-Catholick-Reformed-Protestant and English-men they would now give us the right hand of Fellowship and both hands of help and assistance by an hearty compliance with and submission to the most approved equal comely Primitive and Apostolick Establisht Government of this Confessedly True Sound Lawful Reformed Protestant CHVRCH of ENGLAND FINIS Henry Brome's Advertisement 1680. WHereas there are several Discourses and Pamphlets abroad in the World that pass for the Writings of Mr. Roger L'Estrange wherein he never had any hand at all This is to Advertise the Reader that he hath lately Published these following Pieces all but the Two last and no other Toleration Discuss'd in a Dialogue betwixt a Conformist and a Non-Conformist and betwixt a Presbyterian and an Independent Seneca's Morals Abstracted The Guide to Eternity Tully's Offices in English Twenty Select Colloquies of Erasmus in English Tyranny and Popery Lording it over the Consciences and Lives of the King and People The Reformed Catholick The History of the Plot in Folio The Free-born Subject The Case Put for the Duke of York An Answer to the Appeal Seasonable Memorials The Parallel or The Growth of Knavery A Dialogue betwixt a Citizen and Bumpkin A Dialogue betwixt a Citizen and Bumpkin the second Part. A Further Discovery of the Plot with a Letter to Dr. Titus Oates The Gentleman Apothecary Five Love-Letters Translated Discovery on Discovery in a second Letter to Dr. Titus Oates The Committee or Popery in Masquerade curiously done in a Copper-Plate The Way of Peace The Arts and Pernicious Designs of Rome