He sayes that no Prophesie of the Scripture is of private Interpretation That is so calculated or Meridianized to some select minds understandings that it shall hold the candle to them only and leave All others in the Darke But if you will consent to the Comment of the most primitive Fathers on that Text The meaning of it is That as God by his Spirit did at first dictate the scripture so he dictated it in those thingswhich are necessary to Salvation intelligible to all the world of Men who will addict their minds to read it It being therefore a Rule held out to all mankind for them to order their lives and actions by and therefore universally intelligible to them it should else cease to be either Revelation or a Rule for you to hold that it cannot be understood without a second Revelation made by the same Spirit that wrote it to the private spirit of you the more-Cabinet Reader is as if you should inclose and impale to your self the Ayre or Sun-beames And should maintain that God hath placed the Sun in the firmament and given you only eyes to see him In short sir 't is to make his word which was ordained to give light to all the World a Dark Lanthorn In which a candle shines to the use of none but him that bears it Your Eighth Paragraph being the third of your eleven Questions as also the close of your ninth shall receive a latine Answer from me in the Divinity School Your next Paragraph is againe the Hydra with repullulating Heads Where first you put me to prove the purity of the Doctrine Discipline and Government in England Which being managed by a Prelaticall faction whom you say I call the Church was not excellent if I reckon from the yeare 1630. to 1640. As for the Doctrine Sir I told you before that the Primitive Church it selfe was not free from Heresies If therefore I should grant you which I never shall till you particularly tell me what those erroneous doctrines were that some men in our Church were heterodox nay hereticall in their opinions yet I conceive it to be a very neere neighbour to heresie in you to charge the doctrines of persons upon the Kingdome or Church Such Doctrines might be in England as you whether out of Choice or Luck have said yet not by the Tenets or Doctrines of the Land No more then if you should say that because M. Yerbury and some few oâ—…hers hold the Equâ—…lity of the Saints with Christ the whole Kingdome is a blasphemer and was by you confuted at S. Maries The publick doctrine of the Church of England I call none but that which was allowed to be so by an Act of Paâ—…liament of England and that Sir was contained in the 39. Articles If any Prelate or inferiour Priest for the Cicle of yeares you speak of either held or taught any thing contrary to thâ—…se as it will be hard I beleeve for you to instance in any of that side who did you shall have my consent in that particular to count them no part of our Church In the meane time Sir I beseech you be favourable to this Island and think not that for ten yeares space 't was hereticall in all the parts of it on this side Berwick Withall Sir I desire since you have assigned me an Epocha to reckon from that you will compare the worst doctrines which wore the date of the Trojan Warre among us with those which have since broke loose in the space of a Warre not halfe so long and you will find that our Church for those ten yeares you speak of wore a garment I will not say as seamless and undivided as Christs coat But since the Soldiers did cast lots upon it so much heresie as well as schisme hath torne it asunder that 't is now become like Iosephs coat imbrued in bloud where no one piece carryes colour or resemblance to another As for the Discipline and Government of our Church if you would speak your conscience and not your gall you would confess that the frame and structure of it was raised from the most Primitive Modell that any Moderne Church under the Sunne was governed by A Government so well sized and fitted to the Civill Government of the Kingdome that till the insurrection of some false Prophets who presumed to offer strange fire before the Lord and reduced a Land which flowed with milk and honey into a wildernesse they agreed together like the two Scripture-brothers Moses and Aaron and were the two banks which shut up schisme within its channell and suffered not heresie or sedition to overflow their bounds In short Sir I know not into what new forme this Kingdome may be moulded or what new creation may creep forth from the strife-full heap of things into which as into a second Chaos we are fallen But if the Civill State doe ever returne to its former selfe againe your Presbyterian Government which was brought forth at Geneva and was since nursed up in Scotland mingled with it if I be not deceived in the principles of that Government will be but a wild Vine ingrafted into a true Vpon which unequall disproportioned Incorporation we may as well expect to gather Figs of Thistles or grapes of thornes as that the one should grow so Southerne the other so Northerne that one harmonious musicall Body should arise from them thus joyned What Errors in Government or Discipline were committed by the Prelates I know not neither have you proved them hitherto chargeable with any unless this were an error that they laid an Ostracisme as you say upon those that opposed your Government I beleeve Sir when Presbytery is set up and you placed in your Consistory with your Spirituall and Lay-Brethren you will not be so negligent or so much asleep in your place as not to find an Ostracisme for those who shall oppose you in your office In the meane time Sir to call them or those who submitted to their Government A Prelaticall faction because the then wheels of their Government moved with an unanimous undisturbance is I beleeve a calumny which you would faine fasten upon them provoked I suppose by the description which I have made of the conspiracy of the False Prophets of Ierusalem in my Sermon I must deal freely with you Sir do but probably make it appear to me that this Faction in your letter was like the Conspiracy in my Sermon Do but prove to me that the Prelates devoured soules That they took to themselves the Treasure and precious things of the Land That to effect this they kindled the first spark towards a CivilWar then blew it into such a flame as could not be quencht but with the bloud of Husbands ravisht from their Wives and the slaughter of parents prest and ravisht from their children Doe but prove to me that they made one widdow or built their Honours upon the ruine or calamity of one Orphane Lastly do
comparison or examination to reject and despise al others I am of opinion we should quickly make one Church againe if those new-borne names and words of Independent and Presbyter did not divide us And I am also Perswaded that our severall Disciplines and Doctrines have not kept the Church of Rome at a greater distance with us then the style and compellation of Protestant and Papist Thirdly that we Schollars in those high mysterious poynts which have equall argument and proofe on both sides and which both sides for ought I know may hold yet meet in heaven doe factiously or peremptorily betake our selves to neither But either lay them aside as things of meere contemplation not of practise or use or else speak of them to the people onely in that generall sense wherein all sides agree and as that generall sense is laid downe to us in the Scripture Lastly that in matters of Ceremony and forme things either altogether indifferent or at most neither enjoyned nor forbidden in the Scripture that our carriage and words be alwayes as indifferent That we call not that scandalous which is decent or that decent which is scandalous That we presse not things as necessary which are meerly ornamentall nor impose ornaments as things of necessity That where no well-establisht Law is broken by it both in Actions and Language where ever we come we conforme our selves to the harmelesse though to us unusuall custome of the place Herein imitating that sure example of S. Paul by being strong with the strong and weak with the weak as neere as we can to become all things to all men In things meerly Ceremoniall to part with our Christian liberty and peaceably to yeeld to those who being otherwise perswaded will contentiously refuse to part with theirs And where our salvation or the salvation of our neighbour is not concerned charitably to comply and sort with their infirmities neither crossing them by our practice though perhaps the better nor perplexing them with our disputes though perhaps the more rationall But if it be possible as much as lies in us not only to have peace with all men in words and speech but in society and conversation and Church-Assemblies too Which is the next degree of Unity here petitioned for that is an unity of meeting together in the same house of God set downe in these words I beseech you Brethren that there be no divisions among you That I may the clearlier proceed in the interpretation of this part of the Text I shall desire you to observe that the word which we here in English doe translate Divisions is in the Originall Greek by which we are to order our exposition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A word which signifies not every kinde of rent or division or disagreement among men but such a division onely as is accompanied with a perverse unreasonable deniall of society and communion together in the same Church A division which carries with it an obstinate separation upon unnecessary grounds Which unnecessary separation upon weake slight grounds is that which Saint Paul here in this Text by way of difference and distinction from lighter Rents calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Schismes A sin my Brethren of which if I should discourse to you at large and should shew you the hainousness of it by its dangerous effects I might tell you that it is not only a sin against the sociable nature of men who are borne for Communion and Commerce and the mutuall help of one another but it is a sin directly against that unity and peace which Christ as his last Legacy bequeath'd to his Church A sin which besides the uncharitable opinion which accompanies it which is that they who are separated from must therefore be separated from because they are wicked deplorably wicked men men reprobated and utterly lost in the wayes of Errour and with whom all communion is destructive to our Salvation doth not alwaies confine it selfe within the retired sequestred limits of a bare separation But that which at first began from a scruple hath many times proceeded to a Tragedy and massacre They who at first causelesly separated themselves from their Brethren because they were wicked have many times as their strength and numbers have encouraged them and as the time hath favoured their Reformation as they have called it proceeded from the rectifying of mens Errors to the lessening of their fortunes And they only have at length been called the wicked who have been rich and have had estates to lose That onely which I shall further say to you of it is this Separation is a sin which hath alwaies veyl'd it selfe in the disguise of sanctity Thus Montanus and his followers broke off Communion with the whole Christian Church then in the world because forsooth 't was revealed to them by divine illumination that the Holy Ghost was no where to be found but in their Conventicle An Heresie which beginning in Schisme proceeded at length to this monstrous conceit among them That only the house of Montanus was the true Church and that Montanus himselfe was the Holy Ghost Thus also the Donatists an over-scrupulous Sect of men divided themselves from the then Catholique Church because it was not pure enough for such sanctified Communicants nor complied with the inspired doctrines of the Father of that Sect. And this it seems was the fault of these Corinthians here in this Text who having intitled themselves to severall Teachers proceeded by degrees to divide themselves into severall Churches and Congregations every one of which challenging to themselves the true and right Religion and charging the others with the name of the false thought at length that no way was left to keep themselves pure and unspotted but by breaking off all Religious nay Civill Commerce and Communion with each other Hence for feare of infection it was held a crime for any but the Righteous to assemble or converse with any but the Righteous or for any to meet together at a spirituall Exercise but such who first agreed in the same purity of Opinions Here then if I may once more take the liberty to parallel one people with another is not this our very case Hath it not been the practice of many many yeares for those who call themselves the godly the righteous the children of the most High to breake off society and communion nay almost neighbourly civility with those whom they call the wicked As there were among the Jewes certaine uncleane places and things and persons which whosoever toucht were for that time uncleane too so hath not the like opinion past among us that there have been certaine unholy unsanctified places and persons which make those who touch or approach neer them unholy too Have not some Pulpits been thought unsanctified because forsooth the Preacher hath been ungifted And wherein I pray hath his ungiftedness appeared Because hee hath not expressed himself in that light fluent running passionate zealous stile which
Sir and much more of him not by the Help of a borrowed Illumination I could not trespasse so much against my own studies and Conscience as to allow of any picture of God And therefore in this particular challenging me as you impertinently do to produce my strong reasons and overthrow if I can your Doctrine or Corollary deduced from Eâ—…ay 40. 25. where God by his Prophet sayes To whom will ye liken me or shall I be equall saith the Holy One You would fain have me be your Adversary in an undefensible Cause that your conquest of me might be the easier In short you would have me profess my selfe to be an Anthropomorphite that you might have the advantage to confute me for an Heretike Sir since you deny that you said in your Sermon that I made Images equall with God which if you had said my Sermon without any new confutation would have disproved you I am in that particular satisfied and shall think it was though not a wilfull one yet a mistake in the reporter But then Sir I must tell you that I am not at all satisfied with that which followes Where you say that Images are not like unto God and Thereupon wonder that I took upon me to plead for the retaining of those Images which have been too often turned into Idols not by the piety but superstition of former times For here Sir if I would take the advantage of expression not well considered upon you in saying that Images are not like unto God and thereupon that I did ill to plead for the retaining of other Images not of God a Sophister would make the world believe that you think all Images superstitious and therefore fit to be banisht out of the Church but onely such Images as are made of God which would expose you to the opinion of being thought very subject to speak contradictions But being a meer poet Sir whose ability you know lies not in making use of Aristotles Eleuchs but in the soft harmless composure of an Elegie or Ode I shall deal more gently with you That is take you in the most advantagious sense which you possibly upon your better morning thoughts can put to your words believe that the fault you finde with me for the retainment of Images is because by the superstition of former times they have been turn'd into Idols Sir if I be not deceiv'd my Sermon in this particular is able to save me the labour of a reply Where I have once for all said that which you wil never be able to controul how poetically that is not dully soever you may think it exprest that by the same reason that Ornaments are to be turn'd out of the Church because some out of a mis-guided devotion have adored them we should not have a Sun or Moon or Starres in the firmament but they should long since have been banisht the skies because some of the deluded Heathen worshipt them The little fallacy with which you think to entrap me when you say that hence you collect that I will be forced to maintaine that Images are as necessary in the Church as the Sunne in the Firmament will expire like all other thin Sophisâ—…es in vanity smoke when I have shewn the weakness and infirmity of it which will be briefly done by repeating onely the sense of my Sermon in other words and saying that if Images doe agree with the Sâ—…nne in that they have both been made Idols though one be no necessary part of the Church and the other be a necessary part of the building of the world yet if for that reason wherein they agree one must be banisht any man that hath Logick though he be a Poet may inferre that 't will be as reasonable that the other should be banisht too In your next Paragraph or fardell of I know not what you say that I plead for Copes and for those parts of the Common-Prayer-booke which were borrowed from Rome And then confute me with the threats of an ere-long Visitation Sir there is neither Logick nor School-Divinity in this As for Copes you know I joyne them with Surplices in my Sermon and say that by the same reason that the false Prophets of our times would perswade the people that Surplices are unlawfull because Papists weare them they may endeavour to perswade them that Linnen is also unlawfull because Papists shift and so conclude Cleanliness to be as superstitious as Surplices or Copes Sir you may call this Poetry but there is a Logick in it which I hope doth not ceafe to be Logick which you cannot resist because 't is not watrishly or slegmatickly exprest As for those parts of the Common-Prayer-booke which I doe not say were borrowed from Rome as you impose upon me but are to be found in the Rubrick of the Church if I had said they had been borrowed from that Church yet you have said nothing to prove that upon this supposition 't is Popery to use those Prayers in Ours Foreseeing I beleeve that if you had offered to maintaine that what ever is in the Popish Lyturgie is Popery that is superstitious and fit to be proscribed out of the Church you would meeting with a good Disputant and one not addicted to Poetry have been compelled to confess that the Lords Prayer and Davids Psalmes are Popery too though the one were delivered by Christ the other by one who lived long before Antichrist because they are bound up in the same volumne with the Masse Sir if this be your Logick 't is Socrate ambulante coruscavit and will be a false fire to lead you for ever out of the way But here Sir though I need not take the paines to confute the Nothings you have said against me in this particular yet whenever you shal call upon me to make good my undertaking I doe promise to make it evident to you that all the ancient parts of the Common-Prayer-booke which I plead for I doe not plead for because they are used by the Church of Rome but because they were part of the Lyturgie of those Churches which were thought primitively pure and not superstitious and were in the world long before Popery or Antichrist was borne I must therefore for ought you have yet said to alter my opinion still stand to my former conclusion which is that by the same reason that either the whole or any part of our Comon-Prayer-Book is to be turned out of the Church because in some things it agrees with the Lyturgie of the Church of Rome Italy and Rome it self is to be turned out of the world so a new Map to be made of it where these places are not because they are the Popes Territories and lye under his Iurisdiction Lastly Sir as for the Visitors you threaten both me and Christ-Church withall of whom some report that you are one when you come to execute your Commission so you will not urge it as a Topicke to convince my understanding
but as a Delegary of power to examine my studies life and manners I shall bring all the submission with mewhich can be expected from one subject to the tryall and examination of such a power Being withall very confident that when that time comes however you may perhaps finde an old Cope or two in our Colledge yet you will never bring Logick enough with you to prove that they are either Idolatrous or have been put to a superstitious use And therefore Sir in this particular you have lost your friendly counsell there being no need at all that we should against that time study for an Answer In your next Fascicle you say that I maintaine that some things in the Excellency and Height of the Doctrines of Christian Religion depend for their credit and the Evidence of their Truth upon the Authority of Christs Miracles convey'd along in Tradition and Story And therefore conclude that my Religion leaues too hard and too heavy upon Tradition Sir though I have alwayes lookt upon the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the New as two glorious lampes which to all eyes that have not lost the use of seeing by being kept sequestred from the sunne too long in the darke mutually give light to one another so that a vigilant Reader by comparing Prophecies with their Accomplishments will have very great reason to beleeve that both are true yet because this amounts but to the discourses and perswasions of a single mans reason if I prefer Tradition which is the constant universall consent of all Ages as a fuller medium to prove doctrines by which are hardly otherwise demonstrable doe I any more I pray then prefer the universall Testimony and Report of the Church of all Times before the more fallible suggestions of a private spirit Your next Paragraph is perfectly the Hydra with repullulating Heads which I warned you of in my first Letter And multiplies so many causeless questions as make it nothing but a heape partly of such doubts partly of untruths as would make it one of Hercules labours to examine them First you bid me prove that Christ hath put the sole power of Ordination in the hand of a Prelate Sir if the practice of the Apostles in the Scripture in this point were not cleare yet the practice and opinion of the Church for 1500 yeeres ought to be of too great Authority with you to make this a scruple Knowing that no Church in the world thought otherwise till the Presbyterian Modell crept forth of Calvins fancie nor any good Protestant in the Church of England till such as you recalled Aerius from his grave and Dust to oppose Bishops Next you bid me justifie that no Church that ever the sunne lookt upon hath beene more blest with purity of Religion for the Doctrines of it or better establisht for the Government and Discipline of it then the Church of England hath Sir you repeat not the words of my Sermon so faithfully as you should I am not so extravagant as to say that no Church that ever the Sunne lookt upon but that the Sun in all his heavenly course for so many many yeeres that is in my sense for many Ages saw not a purer Church then ours was both for the Doctrines and Discipline of it Against this you wildly object I know not what Doctrines publiquely countenanced but tell me not what these Doctrines were speake of certaine superstitious practices and Prelaticall usurpations but doe not prove them to be either superstitious or usurpt quarrell with the Delegation of Bishops power to Chancellors then proceed to the tyrannie of the High-Commission-Court and at last conclude with I know not what Imaginary corruptions and Innovations introduced into the State Church and University Sir if I should grant this long-winded Charge of yours to be true as truly I think it is onely a seeing of vanity yet my confident Assertion is not hereby enfeebled I hope when I spoke of the purity of our Church you did not think I freed it from all blemishes or spots The Primitive Church it selfe had some in it who broacht strange doctrines Saint Iohn had not else written his Gospell against the Gnosticks nor Saint Paul his Epistle to the Galatians against those that held the necessity of Circumcision The next Ages of the Church have not been more distinguisht by their Martyrs then Heretiques yet the Primitive Church ceased not to be Apostolically pure because it had a Cerinthus or Nicolaitans in it nor the succeeding Churches to be the Spouse of Christ because one brought forth an Apelles another a Marcion a third a Nestorius a fourth an Eutiches a fift an Arius Sir as long as the best Church in the world consists of men not infallible there will be errors But then you must not charge the Heterodox opinions or Doctrines of particular men though perhaps countenanced by some in publique authority upon the Church Besides Sir every Innovation is not necessarily a Corruption unless it displace or lay an Ostracisme upon some other thing more worthy and better then it selfe You your selfe say that the corruptions introduced were brought in by a prevailing faction who were not the Church If they were not my Assertion holds good that notwithstanding such corruptions yet our Church in its time was the purest Church in the world This then being so me thinks Sir you in your pursuit of Reformation by making Root Branch your Rule of proceeding have beene more severe then the lawes of right Reason will allow you If there were such a tyrannie as you speake of streaming it selfe from the High Commission Court why could not the tyrannie be supprest without the abolishment of the Court Or if there were such a thing as Prelaticall usurpation why could not the usurpations be taken away and Episcopacie left to stand Sir if you be Logician enough to be able to distinguish betweene the faults of persons and the sacredness of functions you cannot but pronounce with me that to extirpate an order of the Church ancient as the Christian Church it selfe and made venerable by the never-interrupted Reception of it in all the Ages of the Church but ours for the irregular carriage of a Prelate or two if any such have beene among us is a course like theirs who thought there was no way left to reforme drunkenness in their State but utterly to root up and extirpate and banish Vines The remainder of your Paragraph is very politically orderd which is that because you finde it hard for you to confute my Sermon by your Arguments you will endeavour to make the Parliament my Adversary who you thinke are able to confute it by their power And bid me prove that the proceedings of the Parliament are Turkish Here Sir methinks being a Poet I see a piece of Ben Iohnson's best Comedy the Fox presented to me that is you a Politique Would-be the second sheltring your self under a capacious Tortoise-shell Why Sir can you perswade