be a wicked errour meerly because the Canon saith so He that can believe what his list believeth nothing truly If this Belief be necessary to Church Communion and to escape damning Schism it is necessary to Salvation Why then is it not in the Creed Ten Commandments or Bible Do you call them the things Indifferent and then call it a wicked errour to hold them sinful Is not this to make it necessary to Salvation or Communion to have so much Learning or Knowledge as to know all Indifferent words and things in the world to be indifferent which men will impose I would all Church-Members with your and others knew all necessary things Do you believe in your heart that all or half the Parishioners do know these things to be lawful or understand any more of them than those that think otherwise when thousands cannot answer a necessary question of the Creed or Catechism nor know who Christ is and how he saveth us Why is there not a Catechism made containing the sound proof that Lay-Chancellors power of the Keys and Diocesan Bishops that have no Bishops under them and our present Court-Church discipline and all the Rubrick Ceremonies and Forms are lawful if all must be excommunicate that think and say otherwise Obj. If they are so ignorant that they cannot know Church Orders to be lawful they are not fit to communicate with the Church Ans. Make no Church Orders necessary to Communion but what Christ and his Apostles have made necessary to it and then cast out and spare not all as ignorant that refuse them 2. But again do you believe that most or all that you keep in are wiser and more knowing than those that you cast out How shall such as I believe you who know that in all the Parishes which my cohabitation allowed me to know it is the most knowing and religious part that most dissent and the generality of the grosly ignorant that understand few Articles of the Creed do conform As ignorant as I am and hundreds of my calling and mind I would I were not only silenced and imprisoned but put to death on condition that all that you now receive as Members of the Church had no more ignorance than we have But it 's our lot to tire our selves with teaching poor people to understand their Baptism Christianity Creed Lords Prayer and Ten Commandments and leave most ignorant when all 's done and yet our selves after our hardest and longest study to be judged so ignorant about some Indifferent things as to be unfit for Ministry or Communion Accus If men will not obey Church Governours and Laws they are Rebels and unfit for Christian Society If every man shall follow his own fancy what Order will there be Do not all Churches require obedience to their Orders Ans. 1. The Church hath One Universal King who hath made Universal Laws for all which must be first obeyed and against which no man hath power And yet his own Laws have things necessary to all in which they must unite and Integrals and Accidents which all know not in which they must bear with one another No man understandeth all the Bible And are many Laws and Books more necessary than Gods 2. Whoever depraveth the necessary points of Religion by his own fancies should be rejected But all men living err in many lesser things 3. In what Countreys is it that your Rule holds that Rulers must be thus far obeyed in Religion Is it in China or Pegu or Indostan or Turky Or is it in Italy Spain Poland Silesia Bavaria or France Or is it at Geneva Holland or the Presbyterian Countreys Or is it only in England Scotland and Ireland And was it so here before Henry the 8th or only since And how shall any know where it is unless he try and judge his Rulers Commands by the Laws of God Will you follow this Rule in France or Spain Or shall all Subjects judge of Kings capacities Accus But they hold unlawful Assemblies of their own and worship God contrary to Law and yield not so much as Passive Obedience Ans. 1. You know the Ministers are forbidden their Office unless they will take those Oaths Subscriptions Professions and Practices which they dare not take for fear of sin and damnation And they would be thankful if their reasons may be heard and if any will instruct them better And they are confirmed in their Opinion by the answers or no answers rather made to the reasons already given in And they are devoted or vowed to the sacred Ministry in their Ordination And if there be such a sin as Sacriledge in the world they are confident it were Sacriledge in them to alienate themselves from the Office which they have undertaken As it is Apostacy from Christianity to violate our Baptismal Vow though men should command it they doubt not but it is perfidious Apostacy from the sacred Ministry to violate the Ordination Vow though Bishops silence them As it is Adultery to violate the Conjugal Contract though a Bishop should require it seeing he that married them hath no power to unmarry them unless they do it first themselves and prove Desertors or Adulterers 2. And the people that are excommunicate or forbidden to worship God publickly unless they will do that which they think is sin are still under Gods command to worship him and not to forsake Church-assembling for his worship What would you have these Ministers and People do They study and pray to God to convince them if they take these Oaths Subscriptions Professions and Practices to be sin and they be no sin They resolve to be ruled by Gods Word They are willing to hear any thing that may better inform them They wonder that men accuse them that have no more to say to change them If they desert the Ministry they fear Gods vengeance If these poor people give over all Gods Publick Worship and live like Atheists Conscience living or dying will torment them If they do that which they are perswaded is sin when the Imposers call it but Indifferent Paul hath antidated their Sentence He that doubteth is damned if he eat because he eateth not of faith for whatsoever is not of faith is sin Rom. 14. Change their Judgment they cannot sin they dare not To give over worshiping God is to renounce Salvation Change the Law or Canon men will not It seems to me a strange penalty to forbid men to worship God at all because they think some Subscriptions or Forms to be sin More strange than to say All that will not wear Crape shall go naked Or all that will not eat Anchovies shall eat nothing If a man think the use of a Crucifix in Worship sinful sure to give over all Worship is more sinful But men have their ways 3. What Worship is it that they offer God contrary to Law They are willing to do all required in Scripture by Christ and his Apostles And were they Rebels and
and scorn And Sulpitius Severus his sharp Invective against Ithacius Idacius and the rest of the Bishops in their Synod was that in prosecuting the Priscillian Gnosticks they brought the matter to that pass that if Godly men did but fast and pray and read Scripture the Bishops made them suspected as Priscillianists even St. Martin himself Woe to them that turn the sacred Offices of Magistracy and Ministry against God that did ordain them to be used as in his name and in some representation of himself sacrilegiously blaspheming him as an Enemy to himself Shall the Throne of Iniquity have fellowship with God that frameth mischief by a Law to make sin common and allowed By this the Reader may see that there is a double History needful to the full understanding of this Book and of the nature and causes of Malignity that is 1. The History of Adam's fall and the great depravation of humane nature thence arising and the true meaning of the Enmity thence put between the Womans and the Serpents seed exemplified in the two first Brothers born into the world as also in Ishmael and Isaac Esau and Jacob and frequently mentioned by Christ and his Apostles 2. The History of the advantages that Malignity hath got in England since the Reformation and especially since the return of Charles the second This must contain the sad differences begun at Frankford in Q. Marys days the errours and extreams of both the differing Parties the by assing determinations of Q. Elizabeth the difference between the first Bishops that had been exiles and their Successors the Presbyterians provocations by over-opposing Episcopacy and the Bishops design to root them out and the making of the Canons to that end The rise of a new sort of Bishops begun in Laud Neile Howson Corbet and Buckeridge with Mountague and their growth under Buckingham against the old Churchmen The design of a Coalition with Rome and the French and English attempts thereto The interruption of this design by the first Long Parliament and the Wars The Scots forcing the Parliament that in their straits asked their help to take their Covenant The imposing that Covenant on the whole Ministry and making it a dividing Engine on pretence of Unity The Parliaments casting out with a multitude of flagitious Ministers some Doctors for being against them for the King contrary to the desires of Peace-makers The Presbyterians under Monk restoring King Charles the second The return and preferment of his Doctors and their revengeful resolutions Their design to get all church-Church-power and Preferment and Academick Rule into the hands of them that most hated Puritans or would endeavour their extirpation and would educate Youth in bitter prejudice and hatred of them The vulgar hatred of serious Godliness in Conformists and Nonconformists under the name of Puritans The power that a few returned Doctors had with the King and Chancellor in the dispose of Preferments and thereby to over-rule the Parliament and to procure the Acts of Uniformity Corporation Oaths Vestry and Militia Oaths and the Acts for Banishments Confinements Imprisonments Fining Ejecting Silencing and Ruining such whose Consciences pleaded Gods Law and Authority against any of their Oaths Impositions and silencing Prohibitions to preach the Gospel The great difference in the Wars I meddle not with the Cause between the Adherents and Souldiers of the K. Ch. I. and the Parliaments in point of Piety and Sobriety The Animosity and implacable heat by which the before Conquered and now Ruling Party proceeded towards the ruine of those that they took for Enemies to the Cause Civil or Ecclesiastick which they had owned The unhappiness of the then present Ministry that being young then had never medled with Wars that they must equally suffer as Enemies for fearing the Imposed Oaths Subscriptions Covenants and Practices The rejoycing of the common sort of the luxurious drunkards whoremongers and Infidels that they had got so many of the Religious into contempt and scorn and ruine The woful increase of Whoredom Luxury and Impiety and Sadducism hereupon The great numbers of Religious people who before hoped for Peace and a pious Prelacy that fell hereupon into an hatred of Prelacy and a great disesteem of the Conforming Ministry and so our Divisions are grown to a fixed factious Enmity and malice and worldly interest will hear no motions or petitions for Peace and yet madly plead all for Love and Peace while they implacably fight against them and accuse those as the Enemies of Peace who beg Peace of them and cannot obtain it This is the sum of the doleful History which this Book presupposeth But should I write it the rage would be increased The foregoing Narrative is as much as is fit for this brief Discourse which if you will you may style Acris correptio with Gildas or Planctus Ecclesiae with Alv. Pelag. Or the Groans of the Church with a late Conformable Divine It hath been cast by four years at first because it would not be endured and after in a vain hope that our Church Reformation would make such a complaint less necessary But now I perceive the Devil will be the Devil and Mankind will be born blind sensual and malignant till there be a new Heaven and Earth in which dwelleth Righteousness Come Lord Iesus August 24. 1689. The fatal Day of Silencing in England in 1662. Chap. I. A Lamentation for the case of the Deluded Malignant Militant World. § 1. THE depraved and miserable condition of Mankind hath long been the astonishing wonder of the sober and inquisitive part of the world Philosophers were puzzled with the difficult questions whence it first came and why it is no more remedied Christians are taught by the sacred Scriptures how to answer both by laying it on mans misusing of his free will supposing Gods permission of his tryal and temptations and on his resistance and rejection of remedying grace in the degree that it is vouchsaft or offered But still there are difficulties and our understandings are dark and hardly satisfied And whence ever it comes the case is doleful and we cannot but think of it with astonishment and lamentation When we saw an hundred thousand made dead corps by the London Plague 1665. it did not take off the terrour to know how it begun And when we saw the City on a dreadful flame which none could stop it cured not the general astonishment to conjecture how it was kindled or carried on No doubt but Hell it self proclaimeth that God is Holy Wise and Iust and Devils and Men are the cause of their own everlasting punishment But yet if we had a sight of it amazement and dread would overwhelm us And alas what a Map of Hell is the greatest part of Earth Hell is a place of Lying Malignant and murderous hurtful Spirits miserable by and for their wickedness And is not this in a lower degree a true description of most of the Earth § 2. Nineteen parts in Thirty
they say that there are some things that will be closely united by no cement so well as by humane blood Doubtless the Gospel as used in English and Preached by true Protestants such as the Pseudo-Bellamie in Philanax Anglicus hatefully calleth Protestants off Sincerity goeth not with many beyond Sea for the same Gospel which they believe And therefore no wonder if the Preachers of it be unpleasing to them and he that will please them and unite with them must silence or oppose those that they would have to be silenced and disgraced And some think that Union with many Kingdoms of Christians which call themselves the Catholick Church is much to be preferred before the Love and Concord of a hated party in our Island And as Dr. Saywell the Master of a Colledge and Bishop Gunnings Chaplain saith to prove that there is a Universal Legislative and Judicial power in the Clergy over Kingdoms as well Persons If more persons or particular Churches give offence by Heresy Schism c. The CHURCH UNIVERSAL or the rest of the Bishops may reprove them for it and then there is no Reason why one man should be censured and many should go free and consequently our Saviour hath established the Authority of his Church over all Christians as well particular Churches as private men Churches of Kingdoms and Nations have a SOVERAIGNTY over them to which they must yield obedience Isa. 60. 12. The Nation and Kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish yea those Nations shall be utterly wasted pag. 343. Though Kings have no Civil Universal Soveraign over them but Christ yet it seems all the world both Kings and Kingdoms have an Ecclesiastical Soveraignty over them all Communion of equalls and Christian Counsel and Reproof is not enough such as all Neighbour Princes may use towards one another Nor the denial of such Communion to the uncapable But all Kings and Kingdoms must be under one Church Soveraignty which hath a Legislative Judicial power over them all to excommunicate absolve them c. And how much more in ordine ad Spirituaâ—ia the common exposition of Ecclesiastical Power tells you As experience long told many Kingdoms what the Excommunicating of a King and Interdicting a Kingdom the worship of God do signify towards their Dethroning or Invasion And all this must be done not as for the Pope but under the name of a General Council and the poor Pope shall have no power but say some to call that Council and call it General when there is no such thing and preside in it and rule us as chief Patriarch and St. Peters Successor in the Intervals of General Councils that is continually and that not Arbitrarily but by the Laws of the Church or Councils and no mortal man can tell which those Authorized Legislative Councils are among the hundreds of erroneous or contradicting ones So that Popery in England is an abhorred thing for it is nothing with some but the Popes absolute Government of the whole Church as without or above Laws and Ecclesiastick Parliaments And can you reconcile all this to our Oath of Supremacy and the Canons that establish it renouncing all forreign Iurisdiction Yes easily we have been told it meaneth only forreign Civil Iurisdiction which belongs to the King and not forreign Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction which is all that the sober Popes do claim save indirectly in ordine ad Spiritualia To Command a Nation on pain of Excommunication and Damnation according to divers Councils to renounce their Allegiance to their Excommunicate Prince and to depose him and set up another is no act of Civil but of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction which yet hath dethroned Emperours and overthrown Dominions And saith A. Bishop Laud in Dr. Stillingfleet's defence of him p. 540. It doth not follow because the Church may err therefore She may not Govern. For the Church hath not only a PASTORAL Power to Teach and Direct but a PRETORIAN also to controul and censure c. And for external obedience to General Councils when they err Consider whether it be not fit to allow a General council that honour and priviledge which all other Great Courts have Stillingfleet p. 534. So that instead of a Council of equals for concord as Princes use for peace with their neighbours We have an Vniversal Soveraign Court set up with Pretorian Power to make binding Laws and pass Iudgment to all the Christian World and say some They are Schismaticks that obey not these Vniversal Laws and obedience to them and suppressing all forbidden Assemblies for Gods worship is the only way to Christian concord And where this forreign Jurisdiction is made of such absolute necessity that without subjection to it by Kings and Kingdoms there is no concord to be had nor any avoiding of the guilt of Schism what wonder if some can wish that silencings reproaches ruines and confusions may be thought no dear price to obtain an universal union for which Christ and his Law are insufficient They that have read Grotius Cassander Baldwin Hoffmeister Erasmus A. Bishop Laud Dr. Heylin of his Life Bishop Sparrow A. Bishop Bromhal and the Prefacer Bishop Parker Thorndike Bishop Gunning and his Chaplain Dr. Saywell and such others and against them all have read Dr. Isaac Barrow of the Supremacy against Thorndike c. may understand where our difference and danger lyeth § 8. And is Englands self destroying disease uncureable God hath in wonderful mercy given us peace from forreign Enemies And is there no hope of prevailing with English men to live together in peace Must that of Isa. 49. 36. be our case to eat our own Flesh and be drunken with our own Blood as with sweet Wine Alas no counsel no petitions no tears no experience no judgments of God by Plagues and Flames have hitherto one jot prevailed But the Ulcer of mens minds grows more and more putrid and malignant Two ways are by some proposed First that all the Consciencious worshippers of God in the Kingdom should bring their judgments to a full conformity in every particular to their rulers Whenas first they cannot tell us who these must be some say to the King or Law Some say to the Bishops in a National Convocation Others say to the foresaid forreign universal Soveraignty of General Councils with the Patriarchs If the first be the way what Kingdoms must it be in Is it no where but in Britain Or also in France Spain Italy Germany Poland And must there be as many Religions as Kings and Laws will make And how far must this go And where must we stop Must Kings choose us a God Or chuse whether we shall have any God any Christ any Bible any worship of God and so any Heaven If it be the Bishops that must be the common rule of our Religion what Countreys and Ages doth this rule serve for Was it the rule where Princes and Prelates were Arians or Nestorians or Eutychians or Monothelites or Papists Is it
Prelates against their Oaths and against the known truth and against their duty to God and the King. § 10. But though it be notorious that Domination and Jurisdiction be the things which cause the Papal Clergy to trouble and tear the Christian world what is it that makes the Laity so mad getteth this Clergy such a militant crowd against their own Tranquillity and Salvation It 's as visible as any moral thing that the Churches Divisions and Wars and Miseries have about a thousand years risen from Satans thrusting such worldly fleshly unholy men into holy Offices who seek them but to serve their Pride and Covetousness and Fleshly Appetites and Ease and who are Enemies at the heart to the serious obedience to Christ which formally they preach Christs own Apostles in their time of ignorance began to strive which of them should be greatest of which we have recorded his sharp rebuke which St. Peter himself did after second in 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3. in words so plain that if his pretended Successours had not first claimed a power as the Church to be the determining expounders of all the Bible they had lain under the Condemnation of Christ and Peter Naked without a Defence or Cloak But this Church-expounding authority sets them above all the Word of God which is now but what they please to make it and an instrument to execute their wills And indeed it is now rather the Pope and his Prelates and Councils than Christ that are the Law-makers to the Church For it is not he that maketh the words only that makes the Law but he that giveth them their sense The words are but as the body and the sense is the Soul of the Law. The Ministerial Church now scorn the name of Ministers and being become Pretorian and Magisterial they give Christ and his Spirit in the Apostles leave to make the words and body of the Scripture or Divine Law as God formed Adams body of the dust so that they may give it the breath of Life and also may make far more Voluminous Laws of their own and cut off and condemn all the Children of God that cannot believe that it 's lawful to obey them And though the Ignorant think that the claim of universal Legislation and Judgment in the universal Church and General Councils be no Service to the Domination of particular Clergy men no nor to any seeing there will never be a General Council They understand not the mystery of iniquity and mistake We have English Writers that have told them 1. That indeed Power is first given to the body fine doctrine for Royalists but by the Body it is given to the Prelates to use for them 2. That as a General Council hath the Supream power so the Prelates under them have the Inferior Ruling power and the executive in the intervals of Councils 3. That as Councils represent the Church in Soveraignty so every Bishop is by his office the true Representative of the Clergy of his Diocess and every Metropolitan the Representative of his Province and every Patriarch of his Patriarchate And then are not the Patriarchs at least with the Metropolitans Universal Rulers in such Intervals 4. And the Pope is the Patriarch of the West and hath a primacy in the Church universal and must be confest to be principium unitatis Catholicae and say some to be the President of Councils 5. To which others add that it belongs only to the president to call Councils and to Iudg which are Lawful without whose call they are so far from binding us that they are themselves but unlawful Routs And what would you have more But what 's all this to the poor Priests What Why 7. The people know not what the volumes of Councils say and it is the Priests or no body that must tell it them both what their exposition of Scripture is and what their own additional Laws are without which they cannot be obeyed so that indeed the peoples Faith is ultimately resolvedly into the authority of the Priest who tells them what the Bishop saith who tells them what the Metropolitan and his Synod saith who tells them what the Patriarch and his Synod saith who tells them what the chief Patriarch and a General Council saith who tell them determinatively what Christ and the Scripture saith and meaneth But what 's this to Councils when there are none Yes 8. Those that are past and gone have left all those binding Laws by which the present Bishops as an Aristocracy must govern all the Christian World. But are not they for Monarchy in the state How come they then to plead for a Soveraign Aristocracy over the Catholick Church and how come even the French Clergy to be for the power of a Church Parliament above the Pope I cannot answer that let the Pope and they debate it But I wonder that A. Bishop Laud should be for the derivation of all power from the Body as Richard Hooker is See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence of him p. 544. 545. c. No Body collective whensoever it assembled it self did ever give more power to the representing body of it than a binding power upon it self and all particulars Nor ever did it give this power otherwise than with this Reservation in nature that it would call again and reform and if need were abrogate any law or ordinances upon just cause made evident that the representing Body had failed in trust or truth And this power no Body collective Ecclesiastical or Civil can put out of it self or give away to a Parliament or Council or call it what you will that represents it The power which a Council hath to order settle and define differences arising concerning faith it hath not by any immediate institution of Christ but it was prudently taken up by the Church from the Apostles example See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence I confess that the generality of Politicians and Lawyers Heathens Papists and Protestants go much this way as to Civil Government and say that the Majestas personalis is in the King or Senate but the Majestas realis in the Body which giveth the Organical power and on just cause may take it away It is no honour to be singular in Politicks and I have said enough of this elsewhere Christ. Direct p. 1. But if it be the Body of the whole Church on Earth that must give Church Officers and Councils their power and recal it when there is cause if ever the whole Christian World meet together to vote it when it cometh to Poling we will give both the Monarchical and the Aristocratical Conciliar Papists three for one to try who hath the power given by the Body But while two or three parts do already disown almost all their Councils the case is decided But if an old Councils Heresies Errours or Tyranny can be invalidated only by a new one that is truly General or a new one as Papal as the last we confess that Trent
I call them not Malignant Enemies I find Bishop Gunnings Chaplain thinks that he doth say well when he saith that Not only Murderers Adulterers Drunkards but such Schismaticks as disturb the peace and weaken the authority of the Churches Discipline their 's are to be excommunicated and reckoned among Heathens and Publicans and Enemies to the Gospel of Christ if they preach it without a Diocesanes license p. 214. And that it is already our case that it 's a very difficult matter to find a Iury and Witnesses especially among the Dissenters upon whose credit we may rely All this signifieth how little blind Faction is to be believed and how far it conquereth even humane modesty and veracity But yet I difference it from the Enmity to Godliness which I speak of And that you may see that he is no Papist though for a Forreign Iurisdiction he tells you of Cromwell that There is too great reason to suspect that he intended to settle Popery in the Nation when matters had been ripe to go through with it I confess this is news to me I have roundly told him to his face of his Disloyalty in deposing our English Monarchy and told the world then of his treacherous Usurpation but it never came into my thoughts that he intended to settle Popery in the Nation But if these words come from Clergy Truth and Modesty they are very considerable I hope the old Royalists will be against Popery the more if Cromwel was for it And the Papists I hope will be no more angry with Dr. Moulin that answereth Philanax Anglicus for making the Kings death to be caused and concluded by the Papists if Cromwel was for them But Faction will face men down that Snow is black So on the other side I hear some that are against Infant Baptism sharply censure all that are not of their mind And some over-sharply censure the Prelatists and Conformists And almost all the Christian world is divided into parties that too little stick at the injurious censuring of others The Papists Greeks Abassines Armenians Nestorians Jacobites c. And among the Papists the Dominicans and Molinists and Jansenians c. And among the Protestants too many This is no small sin but it is not that enmity to Godliness it self which I mean. § 9. 3. And I mean not by malignity mens Differences in Civil and Political Controversies Though I take Popery to be half a Civil Controversy and to be unsufferable by such Princes and People whom they bind themselves to depose and destroy And that to Subject all the Christian world to the Legislative Judicial and Executive Government of one Pope or one Pretorian Court is no better than to proclaim such a Pope or Court to be publick enemies and usurpers to all Christian Princes and States But yet abundance of Political differences may consist with serious Piety My reason is because God hath not made Political Controversies so clear as that all good Christians can resolve them Neither the Light of Nature nor the Bible nor Tradition endeth them Nor hath he put them into our Creed or the ten Commandments nor laid mens Salvation on them as he hath done on the Essentials of Religion Nor commanded all men to be so well Skill'd in Statute Books and Common Law as to be able to know which party is in the right And therefore I joyn not with those Clergy or Lay-Gentlemen who damn all that are not of their mind and side in differences of that nature I often hear some say that Kings and States do all receive their Authority from the Body of the Nation who are the chief seat of it So Hooker so Laud and indeed as aforesaid so Heathen Papist and Protestant Politicks ordinarily hold I call not all these malignants though I am fully satisfied 1. That God is the Instituter of Magistracy in genere 2. And that he hath so far specified it as to determine of its unchangeable Essentials that they shall as his Officers promote obedience to the ten Commandments 3. And that he never gave this governing power to the people 4. But that all that the people do is 1. To specify it as to the number of persons a Monarchy Aristocracy or mixt of these and some Democracy 2. To limit it by determining of the Degrees of power about Property and Liberty and all things which Gods Law hath left undetermined and mutable 3. And to determine of the persons and Families that shall receive the immutable power from God and the mutable from men I often hear some most magnify Democracy and some Aristocracy and some Monarchy and some a mixture and some English Clergy men are for a Civil Monarchy Subject to a Catholick Clergy-Aristocracy I call none Malignants for any such differences I find some Papists and Protestants Politick writers saying that when it proveth hurtful to the Common-wealth the people may retract the power given the Prince and change the Government and Hooker saith No doubt in such a case a Prince will part with it And A. Bishop Laud before cited saith of the like and abrogating Laws This power no Body Collective Ecclesiastical or Civil can put out of it self and give away And I find many that extol Hooker and Laud call this a principle of Rebellion It is neither of them that I call Malignants I find most writers of Politicks agreed that the Law of nature Alloweth and Commandeth Kingdoms and Commonwealths self-defence against any publick Enemies that seek to destroy them And that no man on pretence of Right to a Crown hath any right to destroy the body of the people or the Bonum publicum which is the Essentiating end of Government nor can be simul rex publicus hostis I hear others take this for an unchristian doctrine of Rebellion and say that if a King would destroy all the people of a Kingdom in revenge or in siding with another Kingdom of his own or anothers they ought not to resist him or any that he Commissioneth to do it And that if he should Commission a few men to kill all the Parliament as they sit or to burn the City it is Rebellion to resist by self-defence I hear Lawyers themselves at great difference on such matters some for more power and some for less I find the great Defenders of Monarchy such as Barclay and Grotius de Iure Belli naming many cases in which Kings may be resisted yea and forfeit all And I find others among us of a contrary mind Yea I find the Conformable and Diocesane Pillars quite differ in such cases Bishop Bilson naming many cases in which resistance is no rebellion To Subject his Kingdom to a Forreign Realm or to change the form of the Common-wealth from Impery to Tyranny or neglect the Laws Established by common consent of Prince and People to execute his own pleasure In these and other such cases which might be named if the Nobles and Commons joyn together to defend
their ancient and accustomed Liberty Regiment Laws they may not well be counted Rebels saith he of Obedience pag. 520. But I hear many now say the contrary and Condemn such Doctrine as disloyal I find some joyn with the Papists in accusing the Reformation as caused by Rebellions in Germany Geneva France Belgium c. And I find Bishop Iewel Bilson and other Bishops defending the French defence and Dr. Peter Moulin of Canterbury in his answer to Philanax Anglicus Contradicting their accusers as false in Point of History Abundance of such Political Controversies are now lately agitated some charging their adversaries with Rebellion and some with Tyranny Some saying they are guilty of Treason against the King and others They are Traitors against the Kingdom And too ordinarily damning one another as if these matters were Articles of our Creed What a dismal difference is there now about those words in the Declaration in the Corporation Act There is no Obligation on me or any other person from the Oath called the solemn League and Covenant Some say there are none but Rebels will refuse it And that if any obligation had been granted to things lawful or necessary some would have extended it to Rebellion or Schism And therefore all Obligation is to be renounced Others say that National perjury is a forerunner of National Calamity or ruine and that where Oaths bind not there can be no Trust and no Trust no Commerce And they think as Dr. Sanderson and Casuists Papists and Protestants do that though an Oath or Vow be unlawfully Imposed and Sinfully taken and part of the matter of it be unlawful and the Imposers and Takers are bound to repent and no one is bound by it to the unlawful part yet the taker is bound to that part of the matter which is lawful or necessary And they take it to be lawful and necessary to Repent of sin to oppose Prophaneness Schisms Heresy and Popery to defend the King and therefore that it obligeth them to these I meddle not with the Roman opinion that it is the Henrician Heresy to say that Kings have a power of investing Bishops and disobeying the Popes Excommunication and of such as Cardinal Perron that dare not question or deny the power of the Pope and Councils to Excommunicate and depose Kings because then they must condemn approved General Councils which are their religion itself and saith he must grant that the Pope is Antichrist and the Church erroneous that hath so long used this I name all these Political Controversies 1. To tell you that it is not factious and passionate enmity to each other on such accounts which I mean by enmity to Religion 2. And to remember men that if in so many and great points of Politicks and Government the Learned and Christian World have so great difference what reason is there that we should Damn or Excommunicate or hate each other about a hard opinion in Religion or a Ceremony 3. And to tell the Popish Church that if it were a good argument that there must be one Pretorian Court or Church to oblige all the World by an universal determination in what sence to expound the Scripture because it is abused to errour by mens mistake and there must be an end of Controversies by the same reason there must be an universal Pretorian Court to expound all human Laws and end the controversies of Lawyers Yea and to master all mens Reason for Scripture is no more commonly controverted and abused than Law is And not half so much as Reason is which is pleaded for almost all the falshood and wickedness in the World. § 10. Moreover it is not personal feuds between Man and Man that I mean by Enmity to Godliness No though any such be against an Innocent and Godly Man where it is not for his Godliness but some other difference § 11. I will say more though some dislike it it is not a Papist as such that I mean by a Malignant Enemy of Godliness I know that Education and Temptation and want of hearing the confutation of their errours judiciously made may cause Godly persons to think that the universal Church must be united in some humane Head or Soveraign power and that there is no other way to end controversies and schisms and that as Dr. Saywell saith there must be some over Kingdoms or National Churches as well as over particular persons that many may not escape while a few are punished It is easy to be deceived by the pretences of Unity and Concord while men see the divisions and discords of others And the false pretences of Antiquity are so confidently uttered by their Clergy that men unacquainted with the history may verily believe them And the plea for an uninterrupted succession of Ministerial ordination and that a Superior must give power to the Inferiors deceiveth many If there must be a Diocesane to ordain and rule all Presbyters and a Metropolitan to ordain or rule the Diocesanes and a Patriarch to rule them from whom shall the Patriarchs receive their power or commands but from a Pope The poor reasoning which the French now use with the Protestants puzleth unskilful persons viz. Was there any Church before your reformation If yea where was it And had not you your Ministerial power from it It was Rome or none And if it was the true Church then it is so now We answer them there was and is one only Catholick Church Of this Christ only is the Head or Universal governour and no man or men Of this all Lawful Pastors are his official guides in their several Provinces as many Justices and Mayors of Corporations under one King That all these having one King Jesus and one Law of Christ and one Spirit and one Faith and Hope are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to use Synods when needful to that end but not as a Pretorian or Regent Aristocracy or Court. That the Church before Luther was all over the World where ever there were Christians in Ethiopia Egypt Syria Armenia Georgia Circassia Asia and where ever the Greek Christianity is in Moscovy and in all Europe where there were true Christians That the envious man having sowed Tares this Church is unhappily fallen into many corruptions diseases and factious sects almost all censuring one another no part of it is perfect That the Papal part is in Doctrine Worship and Government one of the most corrupted parts Yet so far as their diseases or errours nullify not their profession of Christianity they are parts though leprous And therefore though they are the most uncharitable and schismatical part as they cut off or unchurch all the Christian World save themselves yet being as Christians united to the rest in the common faith their Baptism Ordinations are not nullities as they invest men in the Christian Society and Christian Ministry though that part of them is a nullity which engageth men
in a schism and in sin That the Ministerial power is not the gift of Man but only of Christ who by the Charter of his recorded Word giveth the power and the obligation to that person who is duely chosen and called thereto As the Kings Charter giveth the power to the Mayor of a Corporation duly qualified and chosen that the ordainers are but partly Judges of due qualification and partly Ministerial Investers and not at all the Donors of the Power that ordination is for order sake needful when it may be had to keep men from being Judgers of their own sufficiency But order being only for the thing ordered as the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath is not necessary against the end That there is no necessity that a Superior must ordain but as the Colledge of Physicians Philosophers c. make Physicians Philosophers as approved so may equals in the Ministry Do not Bishops make or consecrate Bishops If this were not so who makes the Pope If he did not pretend that his power is given him immediately from Christ he must grant that there are some men above him to give it him and so he is not the Soveraign If they say that the power of Popes and Kings is given by the whole body the Church he is then no Pope for it 's known that three parts of the Christian World are against him If he will say None are the Church but those that are his party any sect or rebels may say the like and appropriate authority to themselves Nothing more cheateth the ignorant than ambiguous words and confusion And explaining those words and needful plain distinction would save the writing of many volumes and would make truth easily meet the seeker and unravel all the spider Webs of deceivers Do but well use these few distinctions and all Popery vanisheth into smoak 1. Distinguish between a Catholick Church as headed by Christ This we are all members of and a pretended Catholick Church headed by the Pope or any men This is another Church as to the denominating form having another informing unifying head And this is it which we deny 2. Distinguish visibility Christs Church is so far visible as to have a Head who was visible on Earth is visible in Heaven and will visibly come to Judgment and visibly reign for ever It hath visible Laws Protection and Officers The subjects bodies and their profession are visible And it is no farther visible no not as to the Souls or real faith of the subjects The Papists Church hath an Usurping Visible Humane Head on earth 3. Distinguish of Baptism and Ordination as into Christs Catholick Church and done by Papists as Christians And as into the Popes Catholick Church and done by Papists as Papists 4. Distinguish of Subjection and Communion We owe Communion when we owe no Subjection and where men have no right to be our Governours 5. Distinguish between Communion in Christianity and that in Essentials Integrals or Accidents and Communion in errours and corruptions or defects We have Communion with Papists and all Christians in Christianity if they be Christians indeed But we renounce Communion in the errours and sins of them and all others as far as we are able to avoid them All Christians have Union and Communion in the Essentials of Christianity No Christians have Union and Communion in all the Integrals on Earth all being imperfect But the more such Union and Communion the better No Christians have or ought to have Communion in all the Accidents All should avoid Communion in sin 6. Distinguish between Communion of Hearts Communion of Profession and Communion in Local presence We have Heart Communion in one Essential Faith Hope and Love with all true Christians on Earth We profess all one Faith in the Essentials We have nearer Communion or fuller with the Reformed Churches which are soundest in the Integrals than we have with the more faulty and corrupt But we have Local presence but in one place at once and we ought to avoid Local presence where we cannot have it without sin though we have Communion in Faith Love and Profession with the same men If a Reformed Church will not admit our Local presence without subscribing some one untruth we must be absent when we may be present with a worse Church which excludeth us not by any such Imposition 7. Accordingly distinguish of Separation We separate not at all from Union or Communion with Papists as they are Christians or as they hold any Truth But 1. We separate from Subjection and Obedience to them which we never owed them or any other Church 2. We separate from Communion with their Church as it is a Policy informed by an Usurping Humane King or Head. 3. We separate from all their sins so far as we know them 4. We deny Local presence in their Mass-worship because of the sin imposed on us both before it and in it 5. We are uncapable of Communion in all accidents or mutable indifferent things Understand and use well these few plain distinctions and you need little more to answer all the Papists And I fear not to add that were the Papists in my power as I never did I never would use any inhumanity or cruelty towards them yea I would use no Offensive but only Defensive force against them nor hurt one of them further than they made it necessary for the Defence of the Land or those whom they would hurt I knew not till a Book called The Liberties of England lately told me how many very severe Laws are against them I am no Judge of the times that they were made in nor of their occasions But I think that of late they have done more hurt than good For 1. Some of them seem too severe 2. Some I cannot prove to be justifiable viz. Those which would compel them to come to our Sacramental Communion when many a good Minister would not receive them if they came And that which excommunicateth them that never were of our Communion And that which layeth the Excommunicate as such in prison c. 3. It greatly tendeth to misinform Forreigners who seeing these Laws think they are all put in Execution and so believe those that tell them that the Catholicks here are under constant Cruelties and frequent Martyrdoms whenas I never in all my life knew of one Papist that suffered so much for his Religion as I have done my self within these few years past though my sufferings are so small as to be no meet matter of very great complaint 4. These Laws being a continual danger to them should there be Governours that would execute them doth put them on continual plotting and striving against them Sufferings or great dangers put men by fear upon self-defence and the utmost endeavours for deliverance who would be more quiet if they found themselves in safety and though their Clergy would be still plotting the recovery of the Papal power to
knows not that some things are lawful to avoid suffering which else would not be lawful It is lawful to cast your goods into the Sea to save the Ship and mens lives Which else were a sin It 's lawful to give a Thief your purse to save your life which else were unlawful It 's lawful to blow up neighbours houses to stop a fire Christ proved it lawful to break the Sabbath in cases of necessity he withdrew into the Wilderness and far from Ierusalem to avoid the pharisees persecution And Paul was let down by the Wall in a basket Which without danger of suffering had not been lawful Though no sin must be done to avoid suffering yet that may and must be done which self-preservation makes no sin but a duty To kill a man that assaults you in your own defence is not the same crime as unnecessarily to kill him But as to the other case of taking the Corporation Oath and Declaration if you know the case as you should do before you accuse men you know that it is the true sence of them that is all the controversy No body scruples swearing Loyalty and renouncing Rebellion and Sedition and all unlawful means of reformation That which makes it difficult is that on one side the proper universal sence of the words seems to them unlawful and Oaths must be taken in the usual sence unless our Rulers give another yet on the other side learned sober Conformists profess that they take such words in the limited sence or else they would not take them And they argue subtilly to prove that to be the true sence And our Law-makers to whom it belongs will not end the controversy by an exposition And can you wonder here if men fluctuate in uncertainty And a late writer having given subtiler arguments for the limited sence than were published before did perswade many And in that limited sence twenty Nonconformist Ministers took the oath long ago in London at one time But I justify none that mistake in so great a matter And doubtless if they sinned God will not bless it to their good It will prove their snare And I am glad that we are agreed that Perjury is a heinous sin I beseech you then to consider 1. Whether those men are fit to accuse them who drive them to it and say to Ministers Swear or lye in Iail 2. Or those who are of the mind of Grotius Bishop Taylor and such others that Lying is Lawful when it saves our selves and wrongs no other And of those Divines that say It 's as lawful to defend my self from pernicious Imposers with my tongue as with my hands 3. Let us all with fear who believe there is a God avoid the dreadful crime of perjuring the whole land This whole Kingdom is sworn against all Forreign Iurisdiction in the Oath of Supremacy and against all endeavours to alter the Government of Church or State by 1. the Corporation Act 2. The Vestry Act 3. The Militia Act 4. The Oxford of Confinement 5. And obliged by the Act of Uniformity Is it not perjury than to endeavour any alteration of it 1. What shall we then think of them that would bring in Popery would they not perjure the Kingdom 2. What shall we say of them that write for a Forreign Church Jurisdiction under the name of General Councils or a Colledge of Bishops or of Forreign Patriarchs of whom the Pope is chief and the Principium unitatis to the universal Church Is it no change of our Church Government to bring us under a forreign Jurisdiction Is it no change of State Government to make the King and Kingdom Subject to that forreign Jurisdiction who may excommunicate him and so bring on him all the evil which Excommunication inferreth And what man in his wits knoweth not that Prelates and Priests are much at the will and power of the Princes under whom they live Doth not our King expect that his Bishops obey him And those that must have this Universal Jurisdiction over our King and us are the Subjects of other Princes of which the far greatest part are Papists Mahometans Infidels Heathens or such as are called Hereticks And if our King and we be made Subject to the Subjects of the Turk the Pope the Kings of Spain France Poland the Emperor the Moscovite the Dukes of Bavaria Tuscany and such like is he not made a Subject to their Lords and Masters and much worse Will not this project perjure England 3. Whether it be any alteration of Government by them that would change the Power and use of Parliaments I leave to Lawyers 4. But I would fain be satisfied of another case These Kingdoms of England and Scotland took a Covenant and Vow some Voluntarily some at their Compositions who had been sequestred for the King This Vow contained divers matters of which some are notorious duties as to repent of their sins to oppose Popery Schism and Prophaneness to defend the King c. It 's not denied by most that I meet with that this Oath or Vow was unlawfully imposed and unlawfully taken and many think some of the matter was unlawful viz. to oppose Prelacy c. But seeing Casuists are agreed that an Oath unlawfully both imposed and taken bindeth to that part of the matter which is lawful and necessary notwithstanding the Conjunction of the rest And the Corporations of England are all formed by a Declaration taken by all in power and trust that There is no Obligation without the least exception on me or any other person from the Oath called the Solemn League and Covenant The doubt is whether every man may declare that of all the thousands of three Kingdoms whom he never knew no one is bound by that Oath or Vow to repent of his sins or in his place and calling to oppose Schism Popery or Prophaneness or to defend the King and whether all may declare that the Londoners and Ministers and the restored old Parliament and General Monks Army who restored the King as supposing they were bound to it by that Oath were all deceived and were under no such obligation thence And whether I am not bound in charity to think that the sequestred Royalists put a good sence on it when they took it And so whether all the Corporations of England are free from And for what it is that God hath singled them out for Judgment If you be agreed with us and with manking against so great a sin as Perjury especially national let us help one another with Love and Patience to resolve such doubts Accus But they have been guilty of Rebellion in a Civil War and therefore are justly suspected to Preach or hold Rebellious Doctrine Ans. 1 Are those men lovers of Love and Concord who purposely make use of pardoned acts to keep the Kingdoms wounds still open Did not the King tell you in his Declarations and Act of Oblivion that the putting up of all save to the excepted
can so easily sting what will the old ones do And if your infancy here begin with such destructive zeal what will you do when you are at full growth Qu. 3. You cannot be ignorant what cause to accuse your Church with Cruelty and Blood hath been given the world by your Church Laws and Practices By the Council at the Laterane under Innocent 3d the Council for damning Henrician Hereticks even Kings that claim Investiture of Bishops and those that decree the burning of all that you call Hereticks By the murder of so many thousand Albigenses Waldenses Bohemians c. By the Inquisitions more inhumane cruelties in Belgium and Spain c. By the Massacres in France and the murder of Henry III. and IV. By Queen Maries flames By the two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland And there be many among you who disown all this and say it is not from the principles of your Religion when yet General Councils approved are your Religion it self This being copiously opened as I said before by Henry Fowlis Bishop Barlow c. had it not been more prudent for you to have begun with Lenity and Love to have drawn men to think that you are better minded than to perswade them that you are of your rulers and forefathers mind and mean to imitate them Qu. 4. Have you not observed that all parties have faln by forcing multitudes to be their enemies by seeking to destroy or hurt them Most men love quietness and will live in peace if others will give them leave But when they see that they must offend others or not defend themselves it sets all their wit and power on work against their intolerable enemies There are few creatures in the world that have not some power and inclination to hurt others for their own defence The Bee hath a Sting to defend her Hive and Honey And do you not remember that your sufferings in England came most by Queen Maries flames and the Spanish Invasion and the many Treasons against Queen Elizabeth and by the Powder Plot And how the French Massacre and Murders of Kings and the horrid Inquisition set all our Parliaments against you And how the Murder of 200000 in Ireland drove many thousands into the Parliaments Army that else would not have gone And will you yet stir up all the Land to fear and hate you Qu. 5. Is it not both imprudent and unrighteous for you of all men to turn those Laws against us which were made against you and have so much slept and little troubled you You will by this call people to take notice of them that did not before For my own part as I never hurt any of you so I know not that any of the Ministers did whose ruine you endeavour We hear of none of your sufferings by any such Indeed these late years many have died as for the Plot so much talkt of But by whom did they die Was it not by the accusation and witness of Papists Were not Oats Bedlow Dugdale Turbervile Prance Dangerfield Ienison Smith alias Barry the York-shire Witnesses and the rest besides the Irish all men of your selves that came out of your own Bosoms whether the men died justly or unjustly I leave to God But sure it was men of your own selves that did it And will you be revenged for this on such Protestants that medled not in it And you should remember that you and we have a Protestant King who hath sworn all his Kingdom against all forreign jurisdiction and all endeavour of any alteration of Government in Church or state and so much abhors Popery that he hath made a law severely to punish all that shall but raise any suspicion that he is a Papist And you must in reason take heed of dishonouring and defaming him by defaming Protestants in general And sure since Queen Elizabeths days we have had no Kings whom you can justly accuse of cruelty towards you No not King Iames when the Powder Plot had provoked him if half be true that the Bishop of Ambrun saith of his conference with him or that Rushworth and others say of the Oath of the King Prince and Council for Toleration you are disingenuous if you accuse them of cruelty or rigorous severity In you Philanax Anglicus as formerly in the Image of both Churches you make all called Protestants of sincerity to be of Rebellious principles and their Religion introduced by it and yet profess that you honour the King as if you would have men doubt whether he be a Protestant of sincerity or else were as bad as you describe Had the severe Laws been executed against you especially for meer Religion no one could wonder if you desired relief But while you live quietly and Words and Paper hurt you not that I hear of to begin with so much hurtfulness to them that medled not with you will disserve your cause Qu. 6. And is it consistent with reasonable modesty to go about to make the World believe that the Protestant Doctrine is less loyal than yours Do you think your Books are invisible all your practices forgotten It is none of the business of this writing to accuse you herein of any thing but falsly accusing others and seeking to destroy us on such accusation Though you may thus deceive the ignorant that know no more of you than what you tell them that will but turn to your dishonour at last Are not your foresaid Council Canons which are your Religion visible Have not the forecited writers truly cited them and multitudes of your Doctors which may better inform men Are all the Wars of Italy Germany c. against Princes and Emperors for the Pope forgotten Was it not a Council of your Bishops that decreed that all the carcasses of those Bishops that were for the Henrician Heresy that is for the Emperors power of investing Bishops and his exemption from being excommunicated and deposed by the Pope should be digged out of their Graves and Burnt Was it not a council that deposed Ludovicus Pius How many more such acts have they done And are not your most learned Doctors allowed to publish the justification of the Popes power to excommunicate depose Kings if they deserve it in his judgment Do not your politick Writers Casuists and Divines ordinarily hold that the people give Kings their power and may take it away when they forfeit it and that tyranny is such a forfeiture And that the people should not suffer a Heretick to reign And that subjects may be absolved from their Oaths of Allegiance according to the foresaid Laterane and Greg. 7. Roman Councils But too much is said of this by many and the case is past a modest denial Even those Protestants that were in Arms for the Parliament and restored the King were so far from thinking that their Oaths of Allegiance may be dispensed with that if I knew any thing of those men and times it was principally the Conscience of two