to a Hive of Bees you say Now the King and the Priest more then any other are bound to look to the Integrity of the Church in Doctrines and Manners and that in the first place And a little after Now in this great and busie worke the King and the Priest must not feare to put their hands to the Hive though they be sure to be stung The Kings case as King Davids is to be stung with Bees but when it comes to the Priest the case is altered they come about him like Waspes or like Hornets rather All sting and no honey there And all this for no offence nay sometimes for service done them would they see it c. P. However you may please your selfe in your conceits in playing with this your similitude of Bee-hive yet perhaps upon a review of all circumstances you will begin to discerne no small incongruity except you can salute it with Similitudo non currit quatuor pedibus A Similitude runs not upon all foure For first A Hive of Bees you know is a kind of compleat Common-weale within it selfe Such is Christs true Church The Chiefe and great Master-Bee in this Hive is Christ and his holy Spirit A Christian King who is in and of the Hive is under Christ a kind of Subordinate Master-Bee whose Office it is to see that the expresse voyce and Law of Christ and that alone both touching Doctrines and Manners be duely observed both by the Ministers and People and that the Delinquents and Offenders be either reformed or punished according to the same Law of Christ. As for the Priest whom you name and set Cheeke by Jowle with the King and that twice here for fayling let me tell you that the New Testament and so the true Christian Church knoweth not neither acknowledgeth any Priest besides Christ who is as the onely Altar so the onely Priest of his Church as is noted before And did not I say That Altar and Priest would ever goe together Here you are up with your Priest And who is this Priest Even no lesse then the Metropolitan of all England Poore humble Priest But a Priest however Otherwise what should you doe with your Altar we spake of if you had not a Priest to it And having an Altar and Priest you must needs have a Sacrifice too els all would be lame As Isaack said to his Father My Father here is fire and wood but where is the Sacrifice So you may Say we have here an Altar and Priest we must have a Sacrifice too But I say the true Church of GOD acknowledgeth no Priest but Christ as no Altar no Sacrifice but Him Onely indeed all true beleevers are called and made of GOD Kings and Priests and a royall Priesthood as were also the beleeving Jewes under the Old Testament to whom Moses saith Ye shal be unto me saith God a Kingdome of Priests and an holy Natiâ—n As for Aarons Priesthood it is abolished and swallowed up in our onely High Priest Iesus Christ made a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech Yet every beleever is a Priest to offer up Spirituall Sacrifices to God by Iesus Christ. Which shews a plain difference between Christs Priesthood and our royall Priesthood For We offer up Spirituall Sacrifices to God by Iesus Christ but he by himselfe offered the Sacrifice of himselfe to GOD for us So as not even Ministers of Gods word are otherwise Priests but as they are beleevers onely in their publick Ministry they are the mouth of Gods people in offering up to GOD Spirituall Sacrifices of Prayer and thanksgiving by Iesus Christ. But your Priesthood my Lord is a new Order of humane Ordinance and Ordination not found in nor founded upon Gods word and therefore a false and unlawfull Priesthood For no man takes this honour upon him but he that is called of GOD as was Aaron But your Priesthood hath no calling from GOD. Nor doth the New Testament once call a Minister of the Gospell hierùs Sacerdos Priest It calls them Presbutèrous indeed Presbyters or Elders but never hiereis Sacerdotes Priests for hiereùs is properly such a Priest as offereth a slaine Sacrifice as hiereion is a Sacrifice that is slaine And thus are you Priests in Sacrificing either Christs body as in the Masse or els the Bodies of his Saints who are in this respect accounted as Sheep for the Slaughter Rom. 8.36 Let therefore the Church of Rome and yours of England if ye will have her Priests Altars Sacrifices as for the true Church of Christ she admitteth none of all these And though you yoak your Priest or as at after your very aliâs the Archbishop of Canterbury with the King yet we must put kasma méga a vast difference and disparity between them For first a Christian King or Magistrate Supream is as we touched before both within and of the Hive but the Priest you speake of is quite without the Hive and none of the Hive no Priest of Christs true Church but an intruder Droane Waspe or Hornet Secondly good Christian Princes executing their office aright are Nursing Fathers to the Church and helpe to bring in supply to the Hive and guard it from vermine and weather but your Priest even the whole Generation and swarme of them are Step-fathers to the Bees and are Droanes eating up the Honey as you confesse here of some if not Waspes and Hornets also Stinging and Killing the Bees or chasing them out of the Hive into some hollow tree in the Desert Lastly the King doing his office in and to the Hive is loved reverenced and obâ—yed by the Bees and they yeeld him a Tribute of their Honey But when your Priest puts his rough hand to the Hive the Bees are ready to fly about his eares as not acknowledging any such Usurper And have you never read nor heard that if one that is chaste come among the Bees not offering violence unto them they will never offer to sting him but if an adulterous person come amongst them they will quickly smell him out and be all about his eares And be sure Christs Bees cannot brooke such Priests as smell of the whore of Babels Smocke and commit spirituall whoredome with her or have any hankering affection after her And therefore mervaile not if as you say when it comes to the Priest the Bees come about like Waspes or Hornets all sting and no honey for your Priest there And you seem to speak it feelingly Surely if you deale roughly with the Bees and begin to lay about you they wil be about your Eares Therefore be not curst unto them least you make them as angry as a Bee Thus by your patience I have truely and genuinely applyed your Similitude As for the occasion what ever it be or may be whereupon you bring it in and so apply it so much complaining of the Bees for their stinging as if you felt the present
be so mortified as to be dead to these things and not any more to suffer themselves in such things to be vassalized by men which to doe is to deny Christs death and so to fall away from Christ not holding the Head that is not holding Christ as the Apostle Saith v. 19. And therefore he chargeth Saying Let no man beguile your reward or the Crowne of your victory as the word imports in a voluntary humility c. That is Subject not your selves to mens devises in matters of Religion though they have never so faire pretences of voluntary humility and devotion for so you suffer your selves to be spoyled of your Crown that you fight for as Christ Saith Hold fast that thou hast that no man take thy Crown Thus we see that it is a matter of no small moment and consequence to be subject to Mans devises in matters of Religion and Gods worship when it is a denyall of Christs death yea a falling from Christ and so a loosing of our eternall Crown And here againe on the other side such as wil be Masters of Ceremonies in the service of God may take notice of their damnable pride and presumption in daring to bring into bondage the people of God whom Christ with his own precious blood hath redeemed from all such Slavery And for matter of decencie Is it decent for a Judge set over a Province by the King or Supreame Magistrate with expresse written Laws how to govern and no otherwise to take upon him to rule them as he list and to yeeld what service to the King he pleaseth Or is it decent that one King subordinate to a higher as Emperour or so as King Herod was to Caesar Augustus should presume to make Laws to bind Caesars Subjects without any expresse warrant so to doe Now all earthly Princes are subordinate to Christ as his vice-gerents who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords Nay more then this Christs Kingdome here on earth is Spirituall and the Laws therof altogether spirituall enacted by his Spirit and recorded in the Scripture Is it decent then that earthly Powers or Princes or Priests how ever styled should make Laws according to their carnall fancies for the government of this Spirituall Kingdome and the service of God who wil be served in Spirit and Truth Yea in this Spirituall Kingdome Christ our King keeps his perpetuall residence by his Spirit immediatly and that in the heart soule spirit and conscience of every one of his Subjects and Saints the true beleevers So the Apostle But Christ as the Son â—ver his own house whose house we are c. And you are the Temple of the living God as God hath Said I will dwell in them and walke in them and I wil be their God and they shal be my people Wherfore come out from among them and be ye Seperate Saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you And I wil be a Father unto you and ye shal be my Sons and Daughters Saith the Lord Allmighty And Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you If any man defile the Temple of God him will God defile or destroy For the Temple of God is holy whose Temple ye are And Ye are built up a Spirituall house an holy Priesthood to offer up spirituall sacrifices acceptable to God by Iesus Christ. Now is every true beleever the Temple of God a Spirituall house over which the Son of God ruleth as King and in which he dwelleth and walketh in which also spirituall Sacrifices and Services are offered up in Christs Name as himselfe hath commanded in his word And is all strange service devised by men a profaning of the Temple of God as the Scripture every where teacheth And must Gods people Seperate themselves from all such profanesse and touch no unclean thing by subjecting themselves to profane ordinances of men whereby they should cast off God for their Father and Christ for their King and the Holy Ghost from his residence and dwelling in them Then how not onely undecent but unholy profane and impious is it for any sort of men whatsoever to impose the devices of their own brains upon the Consciences of Gods people in the worship of their God What is this but to thrust Christ out of his Throne as before and to set up an Antichristian Throne of Tyranny like Caesars Image in the Temple the abomination of desolation in the living and spirituall Temples of Iesus Christ Thus Christ being that Oâ—kodespotes the Father of the Family of God is it decent for any Steward Such whose Office you doe usurpe of his own head without warrant to give carnall Lawes to the Family for their spirituall Service to their Lord and to beat them if they refuse to conforme unto them Secondly neither is it according to Order for men to Set up Ceremonies in Gods service First because they have no order from God so to doe So as God may Say unto them Who required these things at your hands And In vain they worship me teaching for Doctrines the Commandements of men Againe 'T is the greatest violation of Order in the World for any Man to usurpe and exercise a Tyranny over his Fellow-Servants which the Lord hath expresly forbidden and which he will most severely punish And of all Tyrannies in the world is not this the greatest and most intolerable to hold under the yoake of bondage the Consciences of Gods people in the observation of humane rites in the worship of God from all which Christ hath freed them by the shedding of his blood And will a King think it to be according to Order and not the highest degree of rebellion for a Subject to usurpe his Throne Can it then be either decent or orderly for any power on earth Prince or Priest or altogether to invade Christs Throne and therein exercise their Tyranny over his people Certainly such as doe so 't is just with God to thrust them out of their Thrones and to breake the Staffe of their Tyranny wherewith they beat his Children over their heads Thus this Scripture the Same weapon which you violently wrest and take out of Gods Armory to beat us withall we vindicate out of your hands and turne both edge and point against your usurped Tyranny And so being beaten out of the maine Fort which you had violently seased you can have small confidence in the rest But you goe on and Say Ceremonies in Religion the ancienter they be the better So they may fit Time and Place We all know your Lordship to be no small adorer of venerable and hoary Antiquity in point of Ceremonies Indeed Salomon Saith The hoary head is a Crown of glory if it be found in the way of Righteousnesse Els not And Tertullian an ancient writer of the Church Saith Antiquity without
poore Sheepe and Lambs of Gods fold there you feare not most stoutly to make wide wounds and make no bâ—nâ—s of it Put true Protestants doe hold that the wider the rent is made between them and Rome the better it is I know this is to you as the widening of a ghastly wound But it is the truth Yet you put us in some hope to heare what you will say when you are forced to it As Cowards will fight most terribly when they are forced to it Though I hope you will not indanger Rome more then her errors indanger her own salvation L. p. 149. Nor can you say that Israel from the time of the separation was not a Church for there were true Prophets in it Elias Elizeus and others and thousands that had not bowed knees to Baal P. But I can say and that upon good evidence that Israel the ten Tribes from the time of their setting up and following the Calves were no true visible Church of God For they had no visible signes or markes of a visible Church Their whole Religion consisted in the worship of the two Calves neither had they any Leviticall Priesthood or Priests of Aarons order nor went they up three times in the yeare to worship at Ierusalem according the Law 1 King 12.28 29 30 31 32 â—3 Here was not one footstep of a visible true Church of God but of the Devil indeed whom they worshiped in the Calves But say you there were true Prophets in it True But that was upon some extraordinary occasion when they were sent and prophecied But for all their Prophecyings did the King and People abandon their Calves Yea when Elias had caused Baals Prophets to be slain or when Iehu slew all the remainder of them and their worshipers both he and the People followed the Calves still And besides they had not true Priests but those of Ieroboams Order And if they had no true Priests will you allow them for all their Prophets to be a true Church of God Doe you not exclude all the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas from being true Churches of God because notwithstanding all their Prophets to wit Preachers and Ministers of God they have no Priests no Prelates no Priesthood Would you account or call Rome a true Church if she had not her Priesthood Although her Priesthood is of no other Order then that of Ieroboam of humane Ordinance not of Divine Institution sacrificing Priests as those were Now as Ierome saith as you cite at after Vbi non est Sacerdâ—s non est Ecclesia Where there is no Priest there is no Church Israel had no true Priest and so no true worship of God Nor doth Ierome and so the antient Fathers when they used the word Sacerdos thereby meane any such sacrificing Priests as are at this day in the Church of Rome For the Fathers held no Transubstantiation ergo no sacrificing Priests Whereas your Romish Priests have no other Order but of sacrificing Priests expresly in their Ordination in these words Take thou a power to sacrifice the body of Iesus Christ upon the Altar or to the like effect And this by the way proveth Rome to be no better a Church of God then that of the ten Tribes was when they had their Calves and Priests sutable And as for those Prophets you speake of Elias and Elizeus were their Prophecies regarded Nay were they not persecuted by Ahab and Iezâ—bel and their Son Iehoram Yea and 100 Prophets of the Lord more whom good Obadiah hid in a Cave and fed with bread and water and so preserved them from Iezebels fury Yea and all the Prophets whom the Lord sent were they not persecuted by the State and Court of Israel Was not Amos forbid by Amasiah King Ieroboams Court-Priest to preach at Bethel saying Prophecy no more at Bethel for it is the Kings Chappell and it is the Kings Court And did not this Court-Priest complaine of the Prophet to King Ieroboam saying Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel the Land is not able to beare all his words And it were well if there were no such Priests in Christian Kings Courts that doe such offices against the Lords Prophets and Preachers complaining of them to the King that they are a sort of factious Conspirators against him such as those whom you have called shallower waters as before and the Land cannot beare all their words although they speake nothing but truth which Gods word teacheth and gives them good warrant for But this by the way To return to Israel Is a people presently a Church upon the coming of a Prophet or Minister of God to preach unto them untill they doe imbrace Gods word and set up his pure worship amongst them But those ten Tribes still minced and contemned Gods word and persecuted Gods Prophets that were sent unto them and with a high hand maintained their Calfe-worship the Devils service though they pretend it was Gods service as Exod. 32. These are thy Gods ô Israel that brought thee out of Aegypt untill there was no remedy that the Lord gave them up to perpetuall Captivity Againe I cannot but a little wonder that your Lordship should so grosly forget your selfe as because of a Prophet or two to give such a state the stile of a true Church of God For do you any where allow a true Church which hath no Priests And it is cleare that Israel then had no true Priests but counterfeit such as Rome now hath So in this respect rather I suppose you mean that was then a true Church because of their Priests such as they were Baalish such as your Babylonish Priests as good an Argument to prove Rome a true Church But you alledge there were thousands among them that had not bowed knees to Baal 'T is true God told Elias when he complained he was left alone that he had reserved to himselfe 7000. that had not bowed the knee to Baal nor kissed his mouth But they were all so hid that you see the Prophet himselfe knew no such thing till the Lord told him They made no open profession of the true Religion And if they had any private meetings to pray together and to read and expound the Law will your Lordship call that a Church Though those Assemblies were indeed the true Churches of God But would not you if you had been in Amaziah the Priests stead have called those private meetings Conventicles and would have hunted them out with your Pursuivants And therefore those seven thousand not being of the Kings Religion nor Communion Ecclesiasticall with the other many thousands of Israel and lying hid in Corners here and there they would not denominate the whole state of the ten Tribes a true visible Church of God themselves living as it were invisible at least so invisible as though others took notice of their Persons where they conversed yet they saw not their Religion for