75 DIAL III. PResbytery and Prelacy how falsly said to be only mere distinguishing names 78 The present looseness most unjustly charged upon Non-Conformists 79 Unanswerable arguments against Episcopacie 84 Whether this Title of Lord be due to Bishops 85 That Scripture 1. Pet 5. 3. cleared from the false Glosses of Adversaries 87 c. The Ius Divinum that Presbyterians plead for together with these things that do fairly exhibite the Platform of Presbyterian Government 90 c. Of Lay-Elders 96 c. Of Deacons 99 Of Diaconesses 102 Of Evangelists 103 Of the Classical Subordination of Sessions to Presbyteries c. 104 Of Discipline and whether the Penitence of Lent the Table altar-wayes and officiating in a surplice may be as lawfully appointed by the Church as the circumstances of publick repentance to wit so many dayes a place of repentance and the use of Sackcloath for scandalous persons 109 c. Of the decree of the first Council at Ierusalem 113 Of the washing of Feet where you have the Conformist's design of resolving the necessity of Sacraments into the arbitrement of the Church discovered 115 c. Anointing the sick with oyl why not used by N. C. 117 Of the change of the Sabbath 119 Whether the Scriptures contain direct Rules for the Churches Policy which is wholly Ecclesiastick 121 Of the Kingdom of Christ how the Officers Laws Censures and Order of his House are by himself established 126 c. Whether the Angels of the Churches assoord any ground for Bishops 144 The plea of Antiquity for Bishops together with a short delineation of the rise progress and product of Prelacy in the first Churches 144 c. DIAL IIII. SUbmission to and complyance with the present Prelatick Government cannot be without sin 165 Whether Paul's conforming to Iews and Gentiles doth enforce Compliance with Prelacie 166 167 c. Whether it be unsufferable Peevishness if the Magistrate enjoin a thing declaring it free in itself and only necessary because commanded upon that score to refuse obedience 170 Of Christian Liberty and wherein it stands 174 Prelatick exactions high impingements upon Christian Liberty 175 Why Non-Conformist's cannot joine in Prelatick Courts for Church Discipline 181 182 376 c. The Conformist's reasoning for joining answered where that Question why ought we not to submit to the Bishops as wel as to the late Usurpers in the State Is fully answered 182 c. The just ground People have of disowning Curats and charging them with that Schisme whereof they would make N. C. guilty 189 190 The Conformists arguments for owning and hearing Curats fully answered 192 c. How and in what cases Children are bound by their Fathers Oath 205 c. That charge of breach of Covenant in some things viz. silence and not declaring against the Apostacy Tyranny and Perjury of the Usurpers and a faint giving over to pray for the King answered 219 220 The National Covenant vindicated 222 c. Whether the Laws annulling the Covenant doth loose its obligation where you have a plain account of the Nature obligation both of Vows and Laws 230 c. The Conformist's allegations for justifying the King's setting up of Prelacie false and calumnious 236 DIAL V. THe grosness of the Conformist's perswasion of extemporary prayer redargued 244 That Qâ—estion about the composing and imposing Set-forms fully handled 246 c. The Conformists reasoning against extemporary Prayer answered 258 Whether singing Psalms and Scripture-songs be a restraining of the Spirit 272â— Why all David's Psalms is used in Praising together with the right way of singing Psalms-prayers 274 Of the English Liturgie 285 c. Of the 5. Articles of Perth 288 c. DIAL VI. ANent the name and Principles of Latitudinarians 305 306 The opinion of the Author of the Dialogues anent Justification â—xamined and found unsound 313 c. The men of the Latitude more inclineable to favour Papists Arminians or any Sect or party rather then Conscientious Non-Conformists 345 346 c. DIAL VII WHether the Conformist doth sufficiently purge himself of Socimanisme Popery and Arminianisme 365 366 Non-Conformists unjustly charged with the progress of Quakerisme 369 370 Whether the Prayers and actions of the Prelatick Conformists evidence any tenderness of Love towards Non-Conformists 378 c. Naphtali's Doctrine vindicated specially his Doctrine upon Phineas his Act. 382 c. The Surveyer's calumnies and objections against Naphtali removed 393 c. That Doctrine concerning private Persons their punishing of Crimes in case of the Supinnels of the Magistrat cleared 401 402 That Religion was maintained by resistance is no vulgar error but a thing undenyable 1. From the Waldenses their resisting of the King of France 418 c. 2. From the Bohemian wars under Zisca 424 c. 3. From the wars in Germany 427 428 4. From Sweden 441 5. From the Practice of Helvetia and Genevâ— 442 6. From the Practice of Basile 444 7. From the wars in the Netherlands 446 c. 8. From the Civil wars of France 454 That allegeance that the Church of Scotland was condemned by the Churches abroad for her maintaining Reformation by Armes shown to be false 460 461 That the Pop's usurpation is not abolished in Brittain and Irland but in effect only transferred from him to the King Of the Supremacy and whether it takes away the Churches intrinseck power 472 473 Arguments for the Supremacie answered 479 What account is to be had of the Indulgence as flowing from the Supremacie 487 Whether there can be an accommodation with the present Prelatick party 493 494 Whether Peace Love and Charity be due to Conformists 496 READER Ere thou read correct with a pen these Errata as followeth PAg. 9. Lin. 6. read mightily p. 17. l. 18. r. directions ibid. l. 19. r. out p. 23. l. 17. r. it is p. 25. l. 12. Peter r. Pilat p. 26. l. 19. is r. it p. 31. l. 12. r. off p. 33. l. 22. r. stipend p. 34â— l. 30. r. suffering p. 37. l. 22. r. in p. 38. l. 24. r. into in p. 41. l. 22. r. thought p. 45. l. 28. r. place p. 50. l. 33. r. poenitentem p. 56. l. 6. r. the. ibid. l. 32. r. are p. 62. l. 12. r. your p 65. l. 5. r. Preachers p. 66. l. 20. r. acknowledge p. 82. for first Dialogue r. third Dialogue p. 87. l. 16. r benches p. 90. l. 33. r. least p. 97. l. 1. r. inconsistence p. 101. l. 12. r. least p. 102. l. 1â— r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 103. l. 3. r. do p. 112. l. last r. continued p. 127. l. 12. r. Kingdomes p. 130. l. 29. dele whrest p. 133. l. 9. r. purity p. 135. l. 4. r. the. p 137. l. 7. r. appointment p. 146. l. 22. r. contrary p. 147. l. 32. r. perceive p. 154. l. 21. r. thing p. 162. l. 28. r. restless p. 196. l. 32. r. subjected p. 199. l. 1. r. out p. 207. l. 33. r. concerned p.
Ministerie of the word without usurping a stated superior Order of Governing as their special work let be immixing themselves by privilege in secular Courts and affaires 3. That they should be obeyed is this their power for discipline and Government set down in Scripture not also its rules limites Were the Apostles more then Ministers of Christ and Stewards of the Mysteries of God was not the sure word of Prophecie their great warrant When the Apostle Paul is about to set order in the Church of Coriath hear his Preface by ye followers of me even as I also am of Christ And as in the ordinance of the Lords Supper he only delivers what he had received of the Lord so even as to that smallest of matters the Length and Fashion of the hair doth he use any other Authority then what he seconds with rational persuasion How far was he then from that dominion over our Faith which you ascribe to the Church not only of appointing significant instructing Ceremonies but of abrogating things as expresly ordained in your opinion as the true Sacraments 4 You say That things should be done to Order Edification and Peace keep within these bounds and invert not this Method and we are agreed but if you subsist not in the regulation of the manner but wil impose New things which the Lord requireth not nay which he abhorreth even your own inventions framed to your own lusts and interests or produced by your delusions then make peace your Argument because ye will not allow it to such as in Conscience cannot conforme the Lord who hath founded Zion Reigns in it who hath builded his House rules over it will one day judge Thus you see how these your everlasting obligations do fully conclude all the truths that we assert Where you adde that the other Rules are now altered with the alterable state of things whereunto they were accommodate if you understand it soundly of these things only which are indeed ceased it is a very certain and allowable truth but you remember not that in the very Page preceeding you impute this alteration so groslyâ— to the bare Practice of the Catholick Church a very doubtfull terme and thereby not only unsetle Scripture foundations as to the Sacraments but endeavour to introduce such an arbitrary authority in the Church that in place of establishing true Christian Liberty which you seem here to assert it is evident that you go about plainly to set up an absolute Spiritual tyranny over the Church of God and so to load it with the Ceremonies and innovations a bondage more severe then the old dispensation from which we are liberate but blessed be our Lord Jesus Christ who hath delivered us not only from that old Law of Ordinances but hath made us free that we should be no more the Servants of Men nor liable to be judged in meat or drink or in respect of an holy Day or of the new Moon or of the Sabbath and having blotted out the hand writting of God's Ordinances that was against us hath put no new blank in Mens hands for their own devices and superstitions To conclude then in your own words these things are so rationall and also so clearly deduced from your own concessions that I see nothing either to be excepted against our Conformity to the Scripture pattern and the true Christian liberty both in opinion and practice which we maintain or to be alleaged for your pretended liberty consisting in a Licentious absurd imposing on such whom you acknowledge to be free But in order to this last point viz. your attempt to remove a Scripture rule easie in it self and imparting true Libertie to its observers and to set up an unwarrantable Yoke of Church Authority in its place I conceive it is that here you go about to represent your N. C. as a vain and clamorous boaster of the Crown Throne and Kingdome of our Lord on purpose to prejudicate against our just complaint of your invasion and Robbery but waving your Calumnious Methods I shal only endeavour to speak â—urth the words of truth and sobernesse I shall not here discourse of the Kingdom of Christ in all its parts whereunto we finde in Scripture both the outward Protection of the Church vengeance upon Adversaries and all judgement even the great and last ascrived but in order to our present purpose I affirme plainly that our Lord Jesus as the Redeemer is in a peculiar manner exalted to be Head and King in and over his Church by vertue of which Kingdome he sendeth forth and Authorizeth his Ministers hath defined their Order and Power determined Censures and given and declared Laws to be observed in his house and that in such a manner and in that perfection that in all things properly thereto relating he hath only left to the Officers by himself appointed a Ministerial power of administration so that there is neither place left nor power given to diminish from or adde to the Officers Laws Censures and Orders which he hath therein established that these things are so cannot be better cleared then by remitting you to our larger Catechisme where as you will finde satisfying Scripture proof for their confirmation so really I cannot but by the way recommend to you its more serious study for the curing of that loosenesse in Principles which almost in every thing you discover My part at present shall be to consider your strange discourse on this subject You say then Christ's throne Crown and Kingdom are inward and spirituall not of the World nor as the Kindoms of the World Sir though I acknowledge the Scripture phrase in this matter to be Metaphoricall Yet I wish you had better observed it and forborn the hard and unused expression of an Inward Crown But to the question Christs Kingdom is indeed in its power and effects the restriction a little above premised being remembred internall and Spirituall but doth it therefore follow that its administration is not externall and visible when the Lord declared all power to be given unto him and by vertue thereof sent forth his Apostles and Ministers and gathered Churches having peculiar Rulers Laws and Ordinances was not this both visible and audible Are not all the acts of Discipline and Government properly thereto referable of the same Nature Our Lords Kingdom is truely not of the World nor as the Kingdomes thereof is it therefore not in the World What doth this arguing conclude You proceed a great part of his Kingdom is the liberty whereto he hath called us and I grant that as liberty and deliverance from Sin and Satan are among its choise benefites and therefore the exultation of Zachariah his thanksgiving so our liberation from the yoke of Jewish Ceremonies and all such bondage is that which we readily acknowledge in opposition to youâ— unwarrantable exactions but what would you thence inferre because Christ hes liberate us from the former slavery and Pedagogie hath he
Innovations of Prelacie and the Perth Articles thereafter introduced were by this Oath condemned Notwithstanding that its obvious meaning doth abundantly import the same both in the particular abjuration of the Popes corrupt Doctrine anent the nature number and use of the holy Sacraments his unwarrantable dedication of Dayes and his worldly Monarchie and wicked Hierarchie and also in the generall detestation which it contains of all Rites and Traditions brought into the Kirk without or against the word of God And that the generality of the Godly in the Land did so understand it yet such was the tenderness then used that the practice was only at first agreed to be forborn and the determination of the Question for the gaining of the doubtfull and refractory referred to a lawfull Assembly Now if this Assembly in the light of the reasons already touched and others mentioned in their Act did clearly determine this matter and the Covenant was thereafter taken with an agreeable Declaration where can you fixe your challenge To alledge after an Oath is taken that to be thereby abjured which doth no where appear in it is certainly as false as the termes you use are scurrilous but to declare from undeniable grounds these things to be contained in a prior Oath which only the temptation and darknesse of an after-defection did make to be questioned is nothing els then a just vindication and application requisite to a faithfull pursuance and whereof the instance of Nehemiah his renewing Covenant with God with a more large declaration of the manner of the Sabbaths observance then is to be found in the Law is an undeniable warrant But reason failing your passion and big words must be made use of to supply that deâ—ect for you say what violence did we use to oblige all to bow on this Idole Church-men refusing were deposed yea both they and Lay-men also excommunicat 'T is answered A faithfull and zealous prosecution of the Lords Oath from the Conscience of his holy jealousie is only the just and laudable effect of his fear and no wayes to make it an Idol But seing you love such expressions to sweare and forsweare as your partie hath done without either constancie or repentance is certainly to make an Idol not of the Covenant only but of the Great God thereto invocked who infallibly will one day avenge it As for the Censures you speak of if the perfidie of that refusall with the other transgressions and delinquencies whereof the persons particularly censured were for the most part if not all notoriously known and found to be guilty be duely pondered they will rather be found to fall short of then exceed the proportions of righteousness And though I deny not but the heats prejudices and other temptations inevitable in such changes to humane infirmity may possibly have rendered the lot of some few and these very few recusants rather obstinate then malitious a little hard and apparently rigid yet this is most obvious that the late revolution hath so infinitly exceeded not only for iniquity but also in the measure of its oppressions all the excesses chargeable on former times that nothing less then an impudence sutable to the late perjury could prompt you or any of your partie to move such an objection but let us hear your conclusion What man of common sense can think this the Cause of God which had such monstruous errours in its first conception Sir though I think that in the matters of God you do appeal to an ill Judge yet I am so little diffident of the cause which I maintain that only wishing you to be more sparing in obtruding your own ridiculous delusions for monstruous errours I heartily referre our discourse to my greatest Opposite In the next place making a step of your N C. weak and groundless concession That there were faults in the imposing of the Covenant and taking it up at your own hand That the matters of the Covenant are in themselves indifferent you go on to argue that seing in these things a man is not his own Master but by the command of God obliged to obey the Magistrat in all things lawfull a tye before all Oaths as by no act of ours we can be bound to break the Command of God so no more can we oblige our selves to do any thing in prejudice of anothers right our Soveraign's Authority and therefore since the King and Parliament have by Law annulled the Covenant and required submission to Episcopacie our antecedent Oath a voluntary deed of our own can no longer â—ind us against the commands of the Powers which are the mediatâ— commands of God I have set down this argument of yours more fully to the effect you may perceive that if I have not so much of your common sense as to comprehend it as a clear demonstration yet it is not for want of a just and true apprehension but really from the greater evidence of the answeres subjoined and first I say your foundation fails the matters of the Covenant are not things indifferent but in themselves true righteous and holy importing such an antecedent obligation as in the occurrence of the preexistent circumstances did render the taking and requiring of that Oath an indispensable dutie And this when you think good to quarrell I am most ready to make out 2. Supposing with you that the matter of the Covenant is indifferent and that in such things the Magistrates power of commanding cannot by any Oath or deed of ours be prevented or prelimited yet Sir think you that your Omission must so farre charme us to oblivion as to make us forget that as King Charles the first did in plene Parliament An. 1641. under his hand-writing ratifie the Nationall Covenant with the explication and Bond thereto annexed and prior Acts made anent it with such solemnities and concurrent considerations as it is impossible to question it so his Son who now Reigns did in the year 1650. and 51. take and confirme both it and the Solemn League and Covenant with such Oaths Subscriptions as well private and unrequired as publick Declarations and Acts that greater grounds of assurance were never heard of amongst men if then this was the case of the obligation of these Covenants at his Majesties returne admitting all that you suppose dare you or any say that the King and Parliament had power either to resile or to loose others from the Bonds which they themselves had thus established If a Fathers silence and non-contradiction to a Daughters vowing and whose vowes he may disannull do make her vowes to stand so that he cannot thereafter make them void how can the express solemn and sworne confirmation of King and Parliament in favours of a Covenanting people with any colour of reason be thought to be either in it self ambulatory or toward others less effectual But 3 to undeceive you of the vain esteem you have for this argument the very grounds of it are manifestly fallacious For
granting that in things indifferent we are by the command of God obliged to obey the Magistrat yet this subjection is nothing so absolute as is requisite to the inferring of your conclusion viz. that therefore he hath such a right as no antecedent deed or Oath of ours can stand in the case of a subsequent annulling command But the solid principles whereby this matter is clearly resolved are 1. That as the Magistrat is vested from above with power requisite and proportional to the ends of Government whereunto he is appointed so such is his right by virtue thereof that no Subject can either decline his lawful Commands or yet bind himself in all events by any such antecedent Oath or other deed as being inconsistent with the condition of a Subject may fall to interfere with a supervenient rational command for example sitting standing walking are certainly things indifferent and in a mans power if then in these things a man should bind himself by an Oath as never to stirre from such a place or walk without certain bounds though without question the man left to his own liberty be rather to observe his Oath yet it is as little to be doubted that in opposition to or for exemption from the Magistrat's lawful and rational command it could neither be binding nor relevantly alledged I say Rational Command because I am of the opinion that if the Magistrat without any necessity should for meer oâ—tentation of his power command the person contrary to his Vow on purpose to make it void such an injunction would be both sinful in the Magistrat and no liberation to the poor Votarie The 2 principle I lay down is That as the Magistrat's lawful power doth indeed grant him a large right over a mans liberty in manner just now explained so it is most certain that there are many things still left to himself and at his own free dispose wherein he may freely vow and having vowed must not break his word but do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth and which are plainly of that nature that the Magistrat's countermand would be only an accession and no excuse to a breach I need not adduce examples every passage of our life doth obviously exhibite them if a man vow the Tenth of his substance to the Lord it is evident that the Magistrat's power cannot discharge the performance and the Lord 's expresse and well-cautioned concession of this dissolving power only to a Husband over his Wife and a Father over his Daughter in familia and that by way of exception to the general command whereby all other free Vowes and Bonds are ratified is such a confirmation and extension of the Rules to the case in hand as admits no evasion But to give you entire satisfaction in this point the summe is first That God hath bestowed upon men a faire liberty suted to their dignity Next He hath also ordained the Powers and cloathed them with authority and right requisite to the ends of their appointment whereof the preservation of our just liberties is not the meenest as therefore by virtue of the former a man in recognizance of the Lord's bountie so farre as his liberty is not restrained either by a lawfull command or by a visible inconsistencie of the thing vowed to any other dutie may freely vowe and ought to performe so all the effect of the latter is only to make void such vowes as are directly or designedly made to frustrate its right and to suspend the execution of others in so farre as the famine doth eventually cross its lawful exercise if you had perpended these things you would not have obtruded on us such a raw discourse for a clear demonstration the Magistrat hath right to command and it is the will of God that we obey him in all things lawful and this tye is before all voluntary Oaths but doth it therefore so swallow up our Liberty that it leaves a man no power in the same things to binde himself by a vow unto the Lord or may the Magistrat annul and make void the same at his pleasure I am certain your own Common sense tells you these things are too laxe and liable to another regulation No act of ours can indeed oblige us to do any thing in prejudice of anothers right neither can any Covenant binde to deny obedience to the Kings just Laws but as I have already told you that the Magistrat hath no such right as doth wholly evacuate our liberty and leave us no power in things indifferent of binding our Souls by an Oath to the Lord and that the outmost extent of his power in these things is only to make void the Vow or restrain the execution which is inconsistent with his Government or doth check its lawful exercise So I allow no such Covenant as bindeth directly to deny lawful obedience but such a Covenant such a Vow such an Oath yea such a Promise as being freely taken without any direct or designed inconsistencie to the Magistrat's lawful power and whereof the performance doth not eventually thwart any of his rational commands I affirme to be so binding that it is neither in the Prince his power at his Pleasure to dissolve it nor can a supervenient Law enacted expressly for that purpose make void its obligation And this is the true and plain account of the nature and obligation both of Vows and Laws which while you in your design to exalt the power of the late Acts above the Bond of the Covenant do so iniquously ballance as to make laws the mediate commands of God and Oaths only our own voluntarie deeds to which we are not bound by any Divine precept you grossly forget that he who hath commanded Rulers to be obeyed in all things committed to their trust hath on the other hand not only ratified the Subjects their reserved liberty but also by his own sanction confirmed all the Vowes and Oaths that by virtue thereof they do freely make whereby it is most manifest that as the obligation and binding virtue of Lawes and Vowes is coordinate and not subordinate so nomore can an arbitrary after-law dissolve our Vowes at first freely and lawfully made then our voluntary prior Oaths can impaire or prejudge the Magistrat's righteous Power and Edicts As for the application of these things to the case in hand viz. whether the Covenant being once sworne in matters at present supposed to be indifferent the Magistrat could thereafter by an after-act render the matter unlawful and so make the obligation to cease It is very easie to expede for seing all the laws which you plead for its dissolution and submission to Episcopacie are such as do most arbitrarily condemn it without the least conviction to any serious person of the unlawfulness of our entering into that Oath either from its matter or inconsistencie with Government and its righteous ends it is evident that to admit such as sufficient to make it void were to
John his base râ—signation exercise over England a particular authority that after the Reformation and the shaking of the papal voke the Oath of Supremacie was brought in to exclude all forraign Iurisdiction and reinstate the King is his Civill Authority That Henrie the 8th did indeed set up a Civill Papacie but the Reformation of England was never dated from his breach with Rome that the Oath of supremacie was never designed to take away the Churches intrinseck Power or to make the power of Ordination of giving Sacraments or of Discipline to flow from the King that however because the generality of the words might suggest scruples they are explained in an Act of Parliament of Q. Elizabeth and in one of the 29. Articles and morefully by B. Usher with King Iames approbation And lastly since we have this oath from England none ought to scruple the words being sufficiently plain and the English meaning ours This is the full and clear account which you promise But who knows not these poor and insignificant pretenses King Iohn's resignation was indeed so base that by all disinterested it was ever held to be invalid and in after times scarce ever mentioned let be pleaded It is therefore the Pop's general tyrannie and what it was and whether abolished in these Kingdomes or in effect only transferred from him to the Prince that we are here to consider And I think I may take it for granted that you judge the Pope's exorbitant usurpation specially his assumming to himselfe not an external assisting oversight which we grant to be the proper right of Princes but by way of an intrinseck and direct power the sole and uncontrolable care of the Church her ministry and ministers with his arrogating an architectonick power in the ordering of Gods Worship so that in all Ecclesiastick meetings and matters therein proposed he may enact what canons he pleases to be parts of the Papal tyranny not only as in him but in all men under our Lord Jesus Christ unwarrantable and antichristian nay some of these are points of so high a nature that the greater part even of the members of the Romish Church do reclaim against them Now questionlesse if this power be to the Pope unlawful and incompetent all secular persons and Princes are therefore much more excluded in asmuch as the Pope being at least in shew a Church-man and according to the hypothese even of your Hierarchy the first Bishop of the westerne if not of the whole Church he is fortified by certain seeming pretenses of which the clame of civil Princes is wholly destitute To come then to our purpose that after the Reformation the Popish yoke not only as to the particulars above mentioned but also as to his forreign Jurisdiction unlawfully usurped over Church-men in civills to the prejudice of the King's Soveraignity was righteously shaken off and the King re-instated in his Civil authority over all Persons and also in all Causes in so far as they are committed to his royal direction and tuition is not at all denyed If that matters had here sisted and upon the abolition of the Papal domination the things of God and of Caesar had been equally restored who could have gain-said it But that on the contrary by the Pop's exclusion and in place of this righteous restitution the King under pretence of the vindication of his own Supremacy did procure to himself a very formal and full translation of what the Pope had not only usurped from him but arrogate from God specially in the things above-specified both the occasion of this change and the manner how this Supremacy hath since been exercised do aboundantly declare And for clearing the occasion it may be remembred 1. That the Peter-pence called in the beginning the King's almes imposed by on Ina King of the West Saxons was discharged by Act of Parliament in the reigne of Edward the Third and the contention anent the exemption of Church-men from the King's Courts most hotly agitate in the reigâ—es of Henry Second and King Iohn was composed many years before the dayes of Henry the Eight So that neither that exaction nor this old debate and far less King Iohn's most invalide resignation not worth the naming could be the cause of King Henry his acclaiming the Supremacy 2. The only motive that we find in History whereby Henry was instigat to reject the Pope and to declare himself to be supreme in causes Ecclesiastick aswell as civil was his purpose of divorce from Queen Katharine wherein finding himself abused by the Pope and his Legates their delayes he discharges all appeals to Rome appointing them to be made from the Comissary to the Bishop from the Bishop to the Archbishop and from the Archbishop to the King and is thereafter first called by the Clergy and then declared by the Parliament to be Supreme head of the Church in liew of the Pope whose authority was abrogat by the same Act These things then being certain and you your selfe acknowledging that King Henry did set up a civil Papacy It is easy to determine that this change was not a bare exclusion but a plain translation of the Popes usurped power We know the Reformation of England was never dated from that breach with the Bishop of Rome But what then Can you deny that this was both the rise and establishment of the Supremacy which being transmitted to Edvard the sixth and then renounced by Queen Mary and again restored to the Pope was by Queen Elizabeth reassumed and so continueth untill this day It is true that after the breaking up of the more clear light of Reformation whereby not only Rom's Superstition bot also the Popes usurpation and tyranny in many things was upon better reasons rejected and especially after the succession of Queen Elizabeth to whose Sexe the former title of headship for all the smoothings that had been before used was nevertheless construed not to be so agreeable Many explications were adhibite for qualifying the Supremacy both in answer to the opposition of Papists and for removing the offence of the Protestant Churches But the truth is these explications though more sound in their grounds yet in their explication were nothing conclusive as to the present debate and their Authors arguing for the Supremacy from the examples of reforming Kings and Emperours acting not by vertue of an assumed prerogative but only from that extraordinary power which the necessity of the end upon the failzour of other midses doth measure out to Princes first and to others also if in a competent capacity did rather infer the justification of the work then conclude the approbation of the Supremacy notwithstanding it was therein imployed Nay while by these their reasonings they went about from such extraordinary interpositions only warranted by the exigence of necessity and the rectitude of the work thereby effectuat to establish to the Prince a constant setled authority properly conversant about these matters the argument is far more
absurd then if because a Governour may in a manifest incident disorder falling for example in a Family repone the Father and head thereof to his paternal oversight one should thence conclude to the same Governour a proper power and faculty of placeing and displaceing Heads of Families and appointing the Rules thereof at his pleasure Now that thus it fell out in England after the Reformation and that the same if not a more exorbiâ—ant power taken from the Pope was transferred and setled upon the Crown as a perpetual privilege thereof is in the second place by the manner of its exercise and its ensuing fruits veâ—y evidently held out For proofe whereof the office and actings of the Lord Cromwell as Vicare General appointed by Henry the eight over the spirituality though by the good providence of God ordered to be a notable mean for advance of the Reformation is an undeniable argument And as to the continuance of the same usurpation in order to other effects in themselves evill and not to be justified there needeth no curious search the frequent practices of after Princes laying claime to this power namely Elizabeth Iames and Charles in their ecclesiastick medlings but especially of his Majesty now regnant in his interposing in Church-matters and thereby overturning a true Gospe-â—ministry introducing a new model of Church-government absolutely dependent upon himselfe reviving vain groundless and antiqâ—â—â— ceremonies appointing and imposing new Religions Dayes and Forms And lastly giving Rules to Ministers their doctrine what points to preach and what to omit all according to the device of his own heart are an obvious demonstration which things are in themselves so evident that I strange you should accuse Henry the Eight of a civil Papacy and so inconsequently acquit al his Successors Whereas in effect they not only acted in Church-matters after the same method by him observed using the same prerogative in the grant of their High Commissions and in other acts which he exercised in his vicarious deputation but he is the Prince who waving his haltings upon the other side and considering the necessity there was at that time of an extraordinary remedy for the good things that he did seemeth to have employed their usurped Supremacy most excusably and also very advantageously for the promoving of the Reformation Bot you tell us that the Oath of Supremacy was never designed to take away the Churches intrinseck power or to make the power of Ordination of Sacraments and of Discipline flow from the King It is answered seing the many evill effects of this Supremacy do so plaâ—â—ly evince its direct and proper tendency and its late explanation by Act of Parliament doth put its nature and extent beyond all controversy to tell us what at first it was or was not designed for is but a vain suggestion And therefore according to these â—urer grounds I must now tell you 1. That although the King not likely to be tempted by such an empty curiosity hath neither expresly declared in his own favour nor assumed to himselfe the exercise of this power of administration yet that by vertue of his Supremacy as it now stands explained he may do both or either when he pleaseth is not to be doubted I need not reminde you that any Church-power not acknowledging a dependence upon and subordination unto the Soveraign Power of the King as Supreme is abrogate and discharged But pray Sir he who may enact what he thinketh fit concerning all Ecclesiastick meetings and matters may he not if he think fit declare himself to have the power of the ministerial function Nay what may he not do But 2. admitting that this was not meaned by the Parliament in their explanation and that in probability the King will never affect the imployment yet that the intrinseck power of Government belonging to the Church both as to a Society of our Lords erection and by his express gift and concession is by the Supremacy taken away I beleeve it will be so far from being disowned that it is rather vaunted of as its principal end and advantage But referring the truth and evidence of this point anent the power of Government given by our Lord immediatly to his Church to what hath been very fully by others declared and is by me above hinted at I verily think that though we had no other argument save the sad changes that of late have ensued upon the usurpation of this Supremacy the usefulness and excellency of this intrinseck Government is thereby rendered apparent beyond the evidence of any further confirmation And really when together with the authority of its founder I consider the undeniable necessity and expedience of an internal power of Government in the Church as the most significant mean for making all its other gifts powers offices effectual And how much it is commended by the signal usefulness of a proper Government in every Society but more especially to our adversaries by that high yea sacred estimat which they so much inculcat of that Civil-government and all its punctilios whereupon their interest depends and when on the other hand I reflect upon the peâ—â—â—â—ous and woful influences that in all ages have constantly attended either the suppression or usurpation of this great divine ordinance I cannot sufficiently regrete that the pride ambition and vanity of men in setting up and advancing this Supremacy should be so sinfully subservient to the Divell 's great design of crossing the progress of the Gospel and propogating irreligion Which evil is the more to be lamented that nothwithstanding that our own experience of its wretched consequences doth evidently redargue this usurpation yet these men who in the matter of Civil government make every circumstance sacred and exclaime against the smallest innovation as if all confusion were imminent can and do in the business of Ecclesiastick government with a more then Gallio indifferency and coldness slight all its concerns in opposition to their carnal designes as questions of meer outward forms and the skirts and suburbs of Religion far removed from its life and substance Whereas it is very certain that eternal life and salvation the great end is not more preferable to temporal peace and outward tranquillity then our zeal for the government of God's House institute by himselfe in his Church in order to our everlasting welbeing ought to exceed our regard to Civil government which in this respect are but the ordinances of man in order to our temporal interests Nay so apparent is the lukwarmness hypocrisy of mens reasonings in behalfe of this Supremacy that though in the supposition that our Lord had by himselfe immediatly erected in any Kingdom a Society or incorporation with masters laws and a competent jurisdiction in order to some temporal advantage as he hath in the acknowledgement of all institute his Church with Ordinances Officers and Government suited to its great ends all rationâ—â— men let be the members of that Society would judge the
King 's pretending to an arbitrary and absolute disposal of these previleges thus granted to be an injurious invasion and usurpation Yet in order to the Church and her rights and immunities they are not ashamed to cut off â—o even and just a parallel and deny so evident a consequence in behalf of her righteous liberty But wisdome is justified of her children And how much were it to be wished that at the least the children of light were as wise as the children of this world are in their generation 3. Beside the invasion threatened to the Church in its power of administration and the usurpation from the Church of the power of Government which this Supremacy imports it further attributes to the Prince according to our Parliaments late explication an illimited power in matters of Religion proper and reserved to God alone To enact whatever a man thinketh fit in Ecclesiastick meetings and maâ—â—ers I am certain is that which the Lord did never allow to any meer man under heaven and yet that this power is assumed and how by vertue thereof old unwarrantable superstitions have been retained new rites and ceremonies in Divine Worship devised and Churches turned and overturned according to mens pleasure is sufficiently known without my condescendence And therefore seing the King by vertue of his Supremacy doth not only intermedle by giving his civill sanction and confirmation to the intrinseck powers of the Church by you mentioned as you do allege or by acts imperate as others in contradistinction to elicite acts in these matters doe use to express it but doth lay claime to an absolute power in and over all Church-matters and persons the filly pretense whereby you go about to smooth it is not worthie of any mans notice In the next place you tell us of some explications provided for removing of the scruples which the generality of the words of the oath of Supremacy might suggest And to this it may suffice for answer that seing these explications are certainly confined to England and by no publick Act received or owned among us your allegeance with your childish ground that we have this oath from them is wholly impertinent as to our releifeâ— But seing the setting down of these explications contained in the English act and Articles above cited Which you do counningly omit will not only by comparing therewith the far different practices of the Kings of that Realme discover the inadequatnesse not to say the slightnesse of these sensings in effect meerly devised to palliat an excess in it self nowise justifiable but more fully manifest the strange extravagance both of the practical acceptation and late express interpretation of this Supremacie You may read them as follows the words of the Act in quinto Elizab. Declare her power and Authority to be a soveraignity over all manner of persons borne within the Realme whether they be ecclesiastical or temporal so that no forreigne power hath or ought to have any superiority over them and these of the Articles run thus Art 37. We give not to our Princes the ministring either of Gods Word or of the Sacraments the which thing the injunctions also lately set forth by Elizab our Queen do most plainly testifie but that only prerogative which we see to have been given alwayes to all godly Princes in holy Scriptures by God himselfe that is that they should rule all Estates and degrees committed to their charge by God whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal and restrain with the civill sword the stubborne and evill doers These being the termes of these explications what consonancie the medlings of their Princes in imposing rites ceremonies and formes of Worship enjoyning their own dayes and profaning God's commanding what Doctrine Ministers should forbear permitting excomunication in their own name jointly with the Lords and finally by sitting and ruling in the Temple of God as in their own Court do hold therto is obvious to the first reflection Only this I must say that if the Kings of England their Ecclesiastick actings be indeed sufficiently warranted by the foregoing explanations the Author of the late discourse of Ecclesiastick policy who in prosecution of the King's Supremacie doth plainly annexe unto it the Authority of the preisthood and power over the conscience at least the obedience of men in matters of Religion in place of that applause wherwith he is generally received at Court deserves rather to be demeaned as the highest calumniator and depraver of his Majesties government But not to trouble you further with these double English senses viz that pretended by their Acts of Parliament and Articles which I grant to be more sound and such wherewith many godly men have rested satisfied and the other more true received and followed by their Court and Clergie nor yet to insist upon your incomparable and blessed Who now hath mens persons in admiration Bishop Usher his more full interpretation equally redargued by what I have alreadie said Let us consider our Scots most excessive though more ingenuous explanation and although I do apprehend the words of the Oath of Supremacie to be in themselves capable of a sound sense and that by understanding supreme Governour of this Kingdomeâ— not to be a limiting designation but a plain qualification of the nature of the government as being in order to its correlat this Kingdome in it selfe civil and only in this notion to be extended to persons and causes ecclesiastick all difficulties may be salved yet when to the rise and manner of this Supremacie above declared I adde how of late it hath been made the ground of the King his restoring of Bishops and framing their government to an absolute dependence upon himselfe granting of the high Commission appointing the constitution of a National Synod and of other strange acts before touched and especially that as the Act Parl. 1592. expresly and justly limiting this Supremacy was by the first Act 〈◊〉 2. Parl. 1661. Wholly abrogate and made voidâ— so by the first Act of the Par. 1669. The same Supremacie is assâ—rted to that absurd hight as doth import a plain surrender of Conscience and submission of all Matters of Religion for as to civills we are not so rash to his Majesties pleasure in a more absolute manner then ever to this day hath been acclaimed either by Pope or general Council These things I say being weighed I think I may safely conclude that I look upon the Supremacie not only as a civill Papacie but an height of usurpation against our Lord King in Zion whereunto never Christian Prince nor Potentate did heretofore aspire And here your N. C. seconding my assertion tells you that this Supremacie clearly makes way for Erastianisme To which you answer That this is one of our mutinous arts to find out long hard names and affixe them to any thing displeaseth us But passing the childishness of this conceite as if either a long or hard name were more odious then a short in my opinion
Kingdome But can you or any man thence conclude that therefore he acted from an ordinary power and facultie a priviledge proper to his office Why then should men be so absurdly unequal as from the like extraordinary interpositions of Princes in Church perturbations to attribute to them a proper inherent right and perpetual prerogative Next you say That the Emperours also judged in matters of Schisme But seing that any judgement given by them was consequent to the Churches determination though perhapes with a little attemperation for conveniency whereof determinations in these matters do very naturally allow the instance is no more favourable then the rest you have adduced But the Code Basilicks Capitulers of Charles the great shew that they never thought it without their sphere to make laws in Ecclesiastick matters 'T is answ This objection shewes that either you are little acquainted with what is in these Books or little advertent to the conclusion you have in hand The laws you mention are either imperial confirmations of the truth owned by the Church or for condemning and punishing of declared hereticks or for authorizing and ordering a slender umbrage of jurisdiction called episcopalis audientia granted to Church-men in charitable and favourable cases or for restraining and correcting their dissolute manners or lastly anent the regulating of Hospitals Alms-houses other things pertaining to the outward policy of the Church Pray Sir what make these for your Supremacie Or was ever this part of his Majesties power by us questioned But where wil you finde in all approven antiquity that ever a Prince by vertue of a pretended inherent right in his Crown or any acclaimed prerogative and Supremacie in causes Ecclesiastick took upon him with one blow summarily to overturne the established Ministery of a Church by himselfe formerly by solemn Oath confirmed introduce new Office-bearers set up a new frame of Church-government declaring himselfe to be the sole head and fountain thereof to whom all others as subordinat must be accountable for their admistrations In what antient record did you ever read of a Commission granted by a King for Ecclesiastick affaires impowering Secular persons to appoint Ministers to be censured by suspension and deposition and Church-men to punish by fining confining incarcerating and other corporal paints What Emperour or Prince did ever assume to himselfe in the right of his royal power at once to impose upon a whole Church a new liturgie and form of service never before heard of among them Or did it ever enter in the heart of a Christian Potentat to declare for a Law that what ever he should please to enact anent Church-meetings and matters should upon the publication be by all obeyed and observed and in suite of it to statute that if either Minister or other person not allowed by his or his Bishops authority do preach expone Scripture or pray except in his own house and to these only of his own family it shall be judged a Coventicle and liable to pains of Law These are a part of the native fruits of your Supremacie If you look back to confirme it by antient precedents pray give us but one parallel I grant that Iustinian in some of his Constitutions after having declared and confirmed the truth received by the Church and dâ—termined by her Councils not only condemnes but anathematizes the contrary heresies But seing his using of that phrase peculiar to the Church and properly importing a power acknowledged not to be competent to secular Athority doth only express his more enixe detestation of these errours and approbation of the Church her censures against them it cannot with any colour of reason be made use of for your purpose But you proceed to tell us that the Bishops not excepting the Bishope of Rome were named at least their elections approven by the Emperours And what then For my part if the Emperour and all Christian Princes should agree at once to reduce them aswell as they advanced them it should not be accounted an invasion of the Churches power or priviledge But because it is like that these Emperours you speak of did indeed regard them as true Church-officers nevertheless medled as is mentioned in their elections I answer further that the true cause of Princes their first medling in the elections of Bishops was either the diffidence of the Bishops as to that office and title wherein not being satisfied from Scripture-warrant they were inclined to apply to the Emperour for the supplement of his confirmation or els their solicitous ambition which in thesearly contests that they had for precedency did prompt them among other artifices to fortify their pretensions by the Emperour's favour and suffrage However this is very certain that whether the Emperour 's medling was first procured by the Bishops address or did flow from their own proper motive had these Church-men contained themselves within the rules and limits set to them by our Lord they had never judged the Emperours confirmation requisite to the validity of their office and title and therefore seing the true account of this matter is that the aspiring of Ecclesiasticks did give the first rise unto this secular medling whether we take it to be no usurpation as being conversant about that which to say the truth is not Christian let be Ecclesiastick or to be a partaking in the Church-men their usurpation either of the two doâ—h equally make void your argument After the reasons which we have heard you conclude That Kings their medling in Ecclesiastick affaires was never controverted till the Romane Church swelled to the hight of tyranny and since the reformation it hath been still stated as one of the differences betwixt us and them It is answered If Princes had at first exceeded and intruded too far in Church-matters and then the Pope acted by a worse spirit and no less aspiring had risen up against his Masters and thrust himselfe into their rooms what would this make for your advantage Or doth it to either of them conclude a right Suppose a Papist debating this question should argue thus that the Pope his headship in Ecclesiastick affaires in England was never controverted till Henry the Eight impatient through lust did arrogate to himself the Supremacy and since that time it hath still been stated as one of the controverted differences would you think this reasoning pungent Why then is not your discerning equall to your judgement But the clear truth in this matter is that although the Emperours of old did at no time lay claime to this Supremacy questioned yet they and the succeeding Princes having too much connived at and countenanced the Antichristian ambition working in Prelacy toward the Papacy it was from the righteous judgement of God that upon its exaltation they were blinded and involved in these contentions and justly plagued by the transcendent insolence of an evill which they had too much fomented And therefore your dating the period of these contests
you do further urge particular Authorities when you have answered all my just scruples against the former and satisfied me in all their other opinions in the matter of Armes then you shall have my Answere but in the mean time pardon me if while I do indeed admire and praise the Grace and Glory of these Primitive sufferings I be neither too credulous of the mistakes of men nor do condemn the diversitie of the operations of the same God which worketh all in all specially seeing that by the same sufferings whereby you go about to impugne he hath so signally confirmed these practises which I do maintain But to this last you answere that you are far from thinking the better of a Cause because some die handsomlie for it Neither Atheisâ— Heresies nor Murthers want their pretended Martyres Sir I neither approve your too much magnifying pag. 7. nor your too much undervaluing pag. 9. of mens sufferings And therefore as at best I account them only a confirming and accessory and not a principal and leading argument so I must tell you that I conceive the force of its inference to flow from a certain lustre and insinuation of grace which your jejune Epithets of handsomnesse and gallantrie do but meanly expresse whether or not this appeared in our late Sufferers I wonder nothing that you deny it but sure I am that all the sincere lovers of the Truth have to their joy both acknowledged it been established by it After this by a transition of your own framing making your N. C. faintly and childishly disown and wave bygones whereof to deal plainly I do as little fear the odium as I account your Aâ—ologies taxing them of Rebellion to be most odious you come to enquire wherefore wee keep not the day of thanksgiving for the Kings restauration and seing you are not pleased with your N. C. answere I will give you mine Aud first it is not because you make it a holy day I know this is as much above your power as your act is presumptuous in ordaining it to be observed and your practices are far from keeping it as a holy day Nor do I now debate the Magistrates power in appointing pro re nata dayes of solemne thanksgiving wherein it is more then certain that the apparent abuse that hath been in institutions of this kinde and the end and designe of the appointment do give the Church a very necessary interest of advice Nor lastly will I detain you in the application of the difference of designing a day as a Circumstance for thanksgiving to be performed on it and dedicating a day to be kept as Holy in Commemoration a Popish error expressely by us abjured and by you revived he who desires a full clearing in this matter with a satisfying answere to all objections may find it in the English popish ceremonies but the great reason wherefore N. C. neither doe nor ought to keep that day is because you have assigned for the cause of it not only the mercie of the Kings returne but also the wicked overturning of the work of God and that with such a libeling preface of blasphemies against God and his cause and vile reproches upon the whole Nation that no true hearted man can read the Act without abhorrencie Now before you reject this my answere I only desire you to peruse and consider the Act and I am almost certain that although perhaps you will not come the length of the character I have made of it yet you will think it strange that men accessorie to many of these Righteous things against which it so foully railes should have been on the one hand indulgently indemnifyed without any acknowledgementâ— and on the other obliged under the pain of losing their sâ—ipends to a thanksgiving expressing the highest recantation Are these wayes equal Think not that my indignation against this Act is all and only from my disaffection to your establishment that is indeed one cause sufficient to produce a just detest but ingenuously I have so much of true Loyaltie to my Prince and affection to my Countrey that the disservice done to the King in rendering the celebration of that day which in its righteous and proper use might have been an acceptable kindly warming of his Subjects affection a very odious provocation to aversion and alienation is to me not a more just then powerfull incentive but such were the healings of these violent Physitians and such have been and will be the effects Again making a stepping stone of both your N. C. and his cause after you have made him confess disloyaltie because you are not able to prove it you hold out his way to be evil because of its crueltie and rigor in forcing men to take the Covenant and punishing such as refused and your N. C. granting this to be a fault also you charge it home very odiously against our Leaders as Men unacquainted with the meek spirit and obstinat in those severities It s answered whether these things be objected or not in a meek spirit is more your concernment then mine who regard not your bitternesse in any dresse That which you call cruelty if counter-ballanced with the guilt of the recusancie will quickly be alleviat to moderation If the Covenants for I shall touch both pressed had been new Oaths arbitrarely imposed there were some ground for your challenge but as to the first was it not the same wherein the Nation stood engaged from the first beginning almost of the Reformation and if after a great and visible defection it was upon our returning renewed and with a more expresse application against these corruptions whereunto we had backslidden required to be taken by all who could not decline without a manifest declaration of both their unsoundnesse and insinceritie in the Oath of God call you this Rigor And as to the second the League if the Communion of Saints and that sympathie wee ought to have with all Christs sufferings Members did persuade it as a dutie and if your then ejected Prelats did by their restlesse instigations and the breaches of Faith and Hostile invasion from England thereby procured render it convincingly a most necessary meane for the preserving and prosequuting the ends of the first was it not both rational and righteous that they who stood thus obliged by vertue of the first Covenant to take the Second upon their recusance should be proceeded against as Deserters And the truth is as they were not many that were troubled simply for not taking the Covenants so there were but few if any who refused the second who either before were not or thereafter became not directly opposite to the First Nor did these few refusers subsist in a quiet dissatisfaction but for the most part turned violent and bloudy Enemies or at least partakers with such Adversaries Notwithstanding of all which perjury and wickedness the procedour against these recusants or rather Apostates was so litle adequate either to
therefore left us to the worse Tyranny of mens pretended and corrupted power and deluded imagination God forbid but as the hath set us free for ever so he hath only laid on us his own easie â—â—oke and light burthen of Pure and Evangelick ordinances by which our Liberty is so far from being intringed that it is thereby both preserved and enlarged In the next place you say Since no Allegorie holds it is ridiculous to argue because offices in a Kingdom are named by the King therefor it must be so in the Church It 's answered 1. do you then think that our Lords Kingdom is only Allegorick Or because the symboles and badges usuall in Earthly Kingdoms are in a figure thereto transferred is it therefore wholly a figure but God hath set his King upon his holy Hill of Zion and Know you assuredly that God hath exalted him to be both Lord and Christ bâ—wisâ— therefore and be instructed Kiss the Son lest he be angrâ— and learn to acknowledge his Kingdom in all the parts and privileges thereof by him declared Next it is most evident that not only Christs Kingdom in and over his Church is reall and certain and that Officers truely such vested with his Authority and therefore depending on Christ as King are held forth by the Scripture and to be really found therein but seing he himself hath in the Gospel so expressly founded their mission upon that All power given unto him and Paul so plainly referres the giving of Apostles c unto his Ascension and exaltation are you not ashamed to alledge these things to be only by us concluded from the vain appearance of an Allegory And thus to make your self ridiculous in that scorne you intended for others But poor wretch you adde That we may as wel say that there must be coin stamped by Christ as Officers appointed by him in his Church for this is the runing of your words Lord deliver you from this profane Spirit thinkest thou that the Kingdom of Christ hath need of money as it hath indeed need of Officers Or because money is current and symony a frequent practice in your Church hes it therefore any place in Christs true Church Sir your profane scoffing at the Kingdome of Christ is one passage amongst many that give me Confidence to say arise O God plead thine own cause remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee dayly But I professe I am confounded in my self when I think of my own provocations and on the iniquitie of his Sons and Daughters for if the abuse of the Glorious Gospel shineing amongst us in so much puritie had not been great he would not have given up the dearly beloved of his Soul into the hand of such persecuting adversaries and such scoffers at him who justifie these malicious mockers in Cajaphas Hall with an over-plus of wickednesse O if he would returne he would quicklie emptie Pulpits and Chairs in Universities of such who bend their tongues for lies and make the world see because they have rejected knowledge he hath also rejected them that they shall be no Priests to him The next thing you subjoin is what King will think his prerogative lessened by constituting a Corporation to whom he shall leave a liberty to cast themselves into what mould they please providing they obey the General Laws and hold that liberty of him Thus you will alwayes aspire to enter into the Counsel of God if your vote had been here asked it is very like you would have bestowed large privileges upon that Church where you might have been a sharer But we bless him to whom the Church is committed and on whom the Government is laid who hath provided better and given unto his Church complete Officers perfect Ordinances true Laws and good Statutes and ordered his house in all things and therefore as we are not to enquire what the Lord might have done but humbly and thankfully to acknowledge what he hath done so in these things for men to disown his Authority and deny his bounty and usurp to themselves a power of altering what he hath established and fashioning the worship and Government of Gods house according to the device of their own heart is no doubt no lawful liberty but a licentious invasion of Christ's prerogative and a jealousie-provoking sin of Laese Majestie Divine That thus it stands betuixt you and us the preceeding passages do plainly witness and the faithfulness of Jesus Christ as a Son over his own house so expresly commended and preferred before the faithfulnesse of Moses is an argument which you will never dissolve You say his faithfulnesse consisted in his discharging the Commission given him by his Father Most certain but you ask who told us that it I suppose you mean the appointing the Officers Ordinances and Government of the house of God was in the Fathers Commission Herein is a marvellous thing You know that Jesus Christ whrist was sent by the Father to redeem gather feed guid and Govern his Church and you see that as the things in question are thereto necessarie so in discharge hereof he sends out Apostles and Ministers Ordains Officers vests them with power and Authority instructs them to a Ministerial and lowly administration and deportment defines Censures appoints his Ordinances and Laws liberats the Worship of God from the shadows and types of the Jewish Pedagogie and cleares its true and spiritual exercise and liberty and finally acquits himself faithfully in all his house do you then question if he did these things or doubt you that he did them by Commission it is a hard Dilemma which you will never evade but you adde that if we argue from Moses it will inferre that all particulars must be determined whereupon you urge that as Moses determines the dayes of Separation for a legal uncleannesse why doth not the Gospel the like for spirituall uncleannesse It 's answered if you had taken up the Argument aright and considered the faithfulnesse of Christ and Moses not in order to the same but with relation to their respective Commissions You had not fallen into this mistake but the Scripture parallel is clear Moses as a servant did faithfully completely order Gods house therefore Our Lord much more as a Son hath thus ordered the Church his own house Whence as it doth no wayes follow that whatsoever things were institute by Moses ought to have been in like manner imitate by our Lord so this is most concludent that as Moses as a Servant did diligently and exactly execute his Commission in order to the Tabernacle its service Ministers and all its appurtinents so Christ both by reason of a command received and of his interest and power hath exceeded the faithfulnesse of Moses in the Ordering and appointment of things appertaining to his Church But for the better confirming our Reasoning and the removing of your Mistake I do only recommend to you this obvious truth viz. that the Commendation of our Lord held
Christians ought not to press or judge one another in the performance or forbearance of things in themselves indifferent as acceptable and well-pleasing to God without his warrant and therefore the force and effect of humane Laws ordering and commanding things in order to the Politick ends of Government and in so farre by the Lord commanded to be obeyed are not by this Doctrine in the least demurred Now that your Ceremonies and other impositions being all relative to the service and worship of God wherein as every thing is to be observed with the faith of the Lords acceptation so nothing can be acceptable without his warrant are not of the nature of things as objected to civill commands but plainly such wherein Paul pleads for liberty is manifest Nay you your self know so well that the very things scrupled at by us as enjoyned toward a religious observance would be readily complied with upon any other reasonable occasion and that thousands who detest the Surplice would chearfully engadge in a Camisado for their Prince's service that I add nothing If you say that the things in debate though commanded for religious uses are never the less enjoyned not as acceptable to God and under this formality but are only necessary because commanded You bewray not only a sinful gaudie licentiousness of doing things for and in the house of the God of Heaven not commanded by the God of Heaven wherein even Heathens let be Christians have been tender but expose the purity and simplicity of Religion to all the corruptions of mans vain imagination As to what you adde anent the pretext which this liberty may give to offenders to decline Discipline it is yet less to the purpose in as much as submission to Discipline doth in effect flow from the Lords Authority whereby it becomes necessary and Mens part therein is only a naked ministerial application Lastly if you object that publick Peace and Order require your conforming obedience Your opinion and method in this point is much different from the Apostles he makes it his great argument not only for not judging and censuring Non-conformists but also in the case of offence for complying with them in their forbearance That we ought to follow the things which make for peace and wherewith one may edisie another But you and your partie for all the noise you make for publick Peace before you tolerat a Non-conforming in the greatest indifferencies and howsoever tender and innocuous will sooner both deprive your Brethren of Peace and for your vain trifles destroy the work of God whereas though you had faith in these things yet you ought to have it to your selves before God But Sir it is already too manifest that as in practice you know not the way of Peace so in this discourse by pressing a strict obedience from the free Spirit of Christian liberty which you seem to commend you palpably condemn your self in that which you appear to allow Having thus farre in the pursute of your reasonings digressed in the explanation of true Christian Liberty because of its after use in the perusal of your remaining purposes I shall not stick in the considering of what you make your N. C. add That we forbear the things pressed for avoiding the scandal of others I have already told you that the reasons of our forbearance have no less then the indispensable motive of the will and Oath of God Yea suppose the things required were meere externals and indifferent as they are not yet I have so clearly proven that your abridging of our Christian liberty therein by vertue of your commands is in it self repugnant to the Apostles Doctrine and in its effects pernicious that your requiring to make the restraint of Authority abused to these impositions the warrant of Practice to the forcing of Conscience and the offending of a Christian Brother is a Sophisme no better then if the hardie practiser or proud imposer who is expressly commanded in Christian tenderness to regard his Brothers offence should by a vain pretending of his own offence taken from the others indulged forbearance or recusancie thereby turne the Argument and elude the exhortation to the very scorne of Scripture That which I rather observe is that seing that to give Scandal is not ill defined by you to be a stretching of our liberty to practice to the drawing of others to the like or grieving or making them weak who have not the same clearness why do you not begin your application at Prelats Who having first streatched their practice to the ensâ—aring do also frame unjust decrees to the forcing of such who have no clearness to conform And on the other hand ought you not to indulge such who only desire to reâ—uge their Conscience in the Sanctuary of an allowed forbearance But these are the men whom having first sinfully spoiled of liberty you scornfully abuse by telling they may now act without regard to Scandal since you do permit them no liberty to the contraire But I hasten to your more closs examination of the matter of Conformity And first you ask why do not our Ministers join with your Courts for Church-discipline It 's answered it were tedious to examine the follies of you and your N. C. in this point we join not in your Courts because they are not the Courts of Jesus Christ but of the King and Prelates If this you deny read the Act Par 1. 1661 Sessâ— 1. Concerning Religion and Church-Government the proclamation of Councel thereafter discharging all Presbytries untill Authorized by the Bishops and the Act Par. eod Sess. 2. For the restitution of Bishops where as you will finde that Presbytries were made Precarious as to their continuance not as to their right which is indeed Divine by the first Act and then simpliciter discharged and broken up by the Proclamation so that which returnes in their place by the last Act and what ensued is not the former Presbyteries but only the Exercises of the Brethren having both their regulation and authority from the Bishops who have all their Church-power and Jurisdiction in a dependance upon and subordination unto the soveraign power of the King as Supream So that the Kings Authority and Prerogative Royal is plainly the proper fountain and last resort of all the power and jurisdiction to be found either in your Church or its Meetings Nay further this 〈◊〉 so certain that as his Majesty doth not so much as pretend a Commission from Jesus Christ as the anointed King of his Church for this effect which yet the Pope in his most wicked usurpation did alwayes Judge necessary so if it be Treason as it is dict sess of the same Parliament act 3. to derogat from the prerogative of the Imperial Crown of this Realm and if absolute supremacie in Ecclesiasticks incapable either of superior or conjunct do thereto by the late Act of Supremacie appertain certainly to make our Lord so much as a sharer with the King in
this matter would fall under the compasse of this crime However not to rake into this abysse of wickedness that Act of Supremacie giving to the King over all Persons Meetings and in all Causes of the Church all the power that Christ as head of the Church in these things hath or can acclame a piece of such desperat solly that I am assured that as he that sitteth in the Heaven doth laugh so shall he one day have all its contrivers and abettors in dirision in this I am very positive that according to the present legall establishment made in these matters to derive the power of your Courts from or connect the same with the power and headship of our Lord Jesus is utterly impossible That we then who as Ministers of the Gospel do take upon us and exercise no power save that which is our Lords cannot join and partake with your Meetings your self may judge But you say That all that is Divine in Discipline is that scandalous persons be noted and separated from worship but how this shall be administred can be no matter of Religion or of the concernment of Souls providing it be done 'T is answered to argue thus all that is Divine in Preaching is that the truth of the Gospel be declared but how this shall be performed can be no matter of Religion or of the concernment of Souls providing it be done would it not be false and weak reasoning 2. As your Providing it be done viz. rightly is a salvo whereby a man may as pertinently argue against all means whatsomever which certainly are nothing useful providing the end for which they are appointed be rightly done so this quality hath such an exigence even of these midses which you suppose to be of no import that it plainly subverts your Argument But 3. Your position that all that is Divine in Discipline is that scandalous persons be noted c. Is false in as much as this is no more clearly to be found in Scripture then the Persons and Officers therewith incharged are evidently thereby ordained yea this matter is so certain that there is scarce one place to be seen in Scripture for the warrant of Discipline which doth not with the same evidence hold out the persons intrusted with its administration And I will give unto thee the keyes of the Kingdom of heaven Whose sins soever ye remit they are remitted unto them Feed Over-see Rule the slock are Commissions so full ordaining the persons as well as designing their work that I can hardly impute the laxeness of your reasoning to your oversight In the next place for as for your quibling with your N. C. anent the foolish answere which you put in his mouth it is altogether frivolous as shall be shewed in your 7. Dial. you urge That seing that Presbytries do by Divine right acclaime a power oâ— jurisdiction they ought to meet in these Courts let the Law call it what it will even as iâ— the King should abrogate all Laws for the worship of God and declare that all that assemble to worship God shall be understood to worship Mahomet and thereupon command all to meet though we meet not on that ground yet you hope we would sâ—ill meet to worship God how ever it be interpret 'T is answered If the jurisdiction competent to Presbyteries by Divine right were in these Courts your Argument might have some weight but seing they are not the former Presbyteries but new Courts set up as I have already declared no more deriving power from Jesus Christ then your late High-commission how can you think in reason that either the right and power of Presbyters or his Majesties call should oblige Ministers to com to the one more then the other For my part as I esteem it a less sin upon the Kings call to come to a Court of his own erecting then to abuse Christs warrant to the establishing of a Court as his which by its institution manifestly disowns him So I should sooner resolve upon the Kings command to meet in the High-Commission then by coming from the motive of our Lords warrant acknowledge your Exercises of the Brethren for his Courts which are so palpably setled upon the basis of another Authority As for your Similitude not to insist upon such claudicant Arguments it is like to the legs of the lame which are not equall but make it straight thus the King dissolves all Christian Churches and erects Mahometan Mosches charging all to repaire there to worship and declaring that he will account thâ—ir so doing a testimony of their compliance with the change by him made Now if one should stand up and for the perswading of just recusants say that they may safely go there and worship God without either owning of Mahomet or regarding the construction may be made of it Pray Sir how would you understand it And what ever you or any reasonable man think should be the practice or Christians in this case I am content the N. C. be thereby judged I confesse the termes of the Similitude are hard But remember they are of your own choosing and my work is only to make them just to conclude therefore it is not Mens interpretation or mis-interpretation although in many cases these homologations whereby either Enemies may be hardened or friends stumbled require also a very weighty consideration that we regard in this matter but the reall state of things whereby as Christ's power is ejected forth of your Courts So the Divine jurisdiction of Presbyters cannot possibly therein have place To this you subjoin that suppose Episcopacie were Tyrannie and Bishops were Tyrannes in the Church Why ought you not to submit to them as well as you did to the late Tyrannes in the State It is answered if I did think there were any Emphasis more then the strain of your discourse in this your urging Our submission to the late Usurpers I could tell you that though the cases were parallel as they are not all the submission made by us to Oliver would not make out your inference And that it is Your and not Our submission which only can serve your turn I need not mention that Mr. Sharp Now of St. Andrews was the first if not the only Minister in Scotland that took the Tender and thereby deserting his Fellow-prisoners procured his own liberty Nor how the late introductors of Episcopacie were most or many of them such as by subscriving the Tender abjuring the King and the like compliances had wholly deboshed their Consciences unto the perfidious re-establishing of your abjured Prelacie whereas the tenacious honesty of the faithfull of the Land was both then and is now accounted their bigotrie and folly But to the purpose 1. If Bishops had only been intruded upon Presbytries as they were in former times it is not questioned but Faithfull Presbyters not Outed of their possession founded on Divine right might have continued the same with a due Testimony and opposition
against unlawfull usurpations conforme to the old practice of Gods Servants among us in the like case but seing in the late revolution not only Presbytries were broken and discontinowed but the very foundations razed a new foundation of the Kings Supremacie laid and a new superstructure thereon built Our compliance now as you require it would not be an act of Submission but a plain partaking in this wickedness 2. The case of mens usurpation in the State is so vastly different from that of your usurpations in the Church that it greatly alters the latitude of these submissions which you go about to equiparat for though in Civils the aspiring and usurpation of wicked men be a hainous transgression before God Yet such is the nature and condition of the Kingdoms of the Earth in themselves mutable and at the disposal of the most high who ruleth therein and giveth them to whomsoever he will and setteth up over them sometime the basest of men that the attaining thereto becometh such a providentiall title as may sufficiently warrant not only necessary submission and obedience in things lawfull but even these other acts of seeming compliance that do directly acknowledge the Usurper to be in titulo providing that they proceed no further either to anticipate Divine Providence in the establishment or homologate the wickedness of the usurpation If of this you have any doubt I remit you to Scripture-practice the customes of all Nations the opinion of most Casuists and Reason it self whereby the taking and exercising of inferior offices under undeniable Usurpers is most certainly confirmed And this is plainly the case both of State-usurpations and of the largeness of that submission which it admittes Now as for Church-usurpations the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus not being mutable and perishing like unto the Kingdoms of this world but his dominion of it self extra Commercium as Lawyers speak of things not acquirable and by Divine decree an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his Kingdom that which shall not be destroyed As it is therefore incapable of all acquisition and his Crown such whereunto however the great ones of the Earth may bandie together and boast themselves against it neither violence nor possession can intitle So in case of a pretended usurpation though Providence may order a passive submission yet most certain it is that in this case where there neither is nor can be any title all deeds so much as of simple recognizance are utterly unlawful And therefore albeit that under the late Usurpation it was Lawfull to partake in the capacity of inferior Magistracie of that power whereunto the Usurper had in providence attained yet in the case of our present Church-usurpation to acknowledge it in the least by partaking of a jurisdiction founded in the pretended Supremacie and not derived from Christ to which neither the events of of Providence nor immemoriable possession can give the least shadow of title is altogether unlawfull Thus I have unfolded to you the disparity that invalidates your Argument and have also granted the passive submission which Providence and Christian patience do alwayes recommend If the grounds here insinuate do not so easily engage you assent when you shall add thereto these certain truths 1. That in Civils though the manner of purchasing may be in many cases injurious and unlawful yet it may be sufficient to acquire the dominion 2. That whereever the length of time or prescription may superinduce a Right there even from the beginning naked possesion is quasi titulus qui pro suo possidet potest usucapere 3. That although Lawyers speak of certain vitia that in private rights hinder definite prescription Yet all Polititians grant that immemorial possession or even that of three ages is sufficient to confirme over any people the most violent usurpation And lastly that on the other hand our Lords Throne and Scepter are everlasting and such as can never be moved I doubt not but all your difficulties will evanish You proceed to say that our Ministers are content to Preach and quite Discipline a part of their Rights why may they not aswell exercise Discipline though not with a full liberty 'T is answered 1. As I have already told you that to sit in your Courts is not at all to exercise Christs Discipline but a pretended power dependent upon another head so you do not truely accuse our Ministers of quiting Discipline it is well known that in so farre as is permitted they do not separate Doctrine and Discipline which our Lord hes conjoined And if full liberty be not permitted and they necessitat to acquiesce to what the Powers will allow it is very disingenuous in you to misconstrue this force which they suffer unto a voluntaire quiting 2. Though by the manner of your proposing the objection you would have us to believe that the cases are parallel and that in the case urged as well as in that instanced there is only a restraint laid upon a more full liberty yet the disparity is most manifest in this that in the matter of Preaching without the exercise of Discipline we are by force debarred from doing full dutie in which case the doing of a part permitted cannot be censured whereas in the compliance you require the very act is sinful and is therefore and not because we are denied a more full liberty very justly by us refused but having vainly concluded upon the poor arguments which we have heard our Ministers to be Peevish and made your pitiful N. C. confess himself non-plust by his general pretence of Conscience You ask him what he can pretend for the peoples withdrawing from your Churches since there is only a small alteration made in point of Government 'T is answered if all the matter be a small alteration in point of Government it had farre better become that charitable healing and free spirit whereunto you so often pretend to have reflected thus since the change lately made by its previoâ—s perjury and subsequent deluge of profanity the desolating of Churches and dispersing of Shepherds and flockes the disquieting and vexing of thousands unquestionably Godly and Loyal the fiering and filling all the corners of the Land with contention and discontent the burdening of a Countrey formerly exhausted and now expecting relief with heavie impositions and strange exactions And lastly the necessary and worst result of all these evils the provocking the Lord to Anger and rendering his Majesties Government less comfortable and desireable hath occasioned so great a perturbation and yet is in it self and imports so small a matter why do not our King and Nobles consider for what the Land perisheth Wherefore do not all men bend their knees and pour out their prayers to God and the King that so seen destructive and easily remedied a cause may be removed but seing for all your sparingness in passing judgment yet you cease not scornfully to censure a poor people needlessly and unchristianly by you
ensnared and thereafter more cruelly persecute and oppressed not repeating what hath been said by others in their vindication I shall briefly run over what you here subjoin You say then That Separation being a tearing of the Body of Christ to forsake the unity of the Church when there is scarce a colour of pretence for it must be a great sin 'T is answered I will not stand to descant upon the nature and several degrees of Separation and how that non-conforming to and compliance with a prevalent backsliding partie in effect the worst of Separatists which is our present case is very different from the case of Separation from a Church formerly acknowledged and joined with nor love I to inquire how farre a mans entrie into the Ministrie by open perjury and violence and his profane and flagitious deportment therein notourly known may in the perturbed state of the Church supply the want of a declarative sentence making void his mission Nor lastly will I make use of your own plain laws viz. the Act anent the restitution of Bishops and the late Act of Supremacie whereby all church-Church-power mark it is made dependent upon and subordinat unto the Kings Supremacie to prove your Ministers to be but Court Curats But in this I am plain and confident that if the Prophets who by their lyes and lightness cause the people to erre and speak peace to such as despise the Lord and strengthen their hands who walk in the imagination of their own heart be not to be hearkened unto if we ought to bewarre and flee from false Prophets whose fruits of ungodliness as well as heresie as is clear from the context do discover them to be but ravening wolves destroying Souls under the sheeps cloathing of an exterior call and hypocritical composure if such who cause divisions and offences contraire to the received truth and who serve not our Lord Jesus but their own belly are to be avoided and lastly if these Destroyers and Offenders be the only persons guilty of all the Separation and other inconveniences which ensue then are your Curates as dignoscible by all or one or other of these characters as the night is by darkness justly yea necessarily to be disowned fled from and avoided and only chargeable with that schisme whereof you endeavour to make us guilty But you add That in a schismatical time-serving humour we come sometimes to Church to â—vite the punishment of Law but seldom that we may retain our interest with our partie that we hear some of you but not others that some go to Churches in the Countrey but not in the City and finally some join with you in the ordinary Worship of Prayer and praise yet will not join in the Eucharist which is but solemn praise Sir if you had been candid in this reflection in place of imputing this variety to humour and faction it would indeed have moved you to pity the strait of so many good people redacted to such a multiâ—arious perplexity which yet in its outward appearance is but light in comparison of these inward inquietudes wherewith the contraire workings of the fear of God love of truth abhorrencie of wickedness tenderness toward Authority respect to union and peace and fear of punishment do continually sollicite them If I might presume so farre upon your credite I could tell you that in my certain knowledge some have been against their Consciences forced by violence and spoill to hear your Curates who therefore have mourned many Moneths thereafter and certain of them even unto death That others whom the generality of your Curates did either offend or according to the Lords prediction Ier. 23. v. 33. after long triall not profite at all have searched by a choise to remedy the evill for that there are better and worse not only as to private but also as to Publick transgressions you groundlessly deny and lastly that some have prevailed with themselves to hear and join with you in prayer and praise who have yet still scrupled in their Consciences to communicate with you in that Sacrament which beside the adjunct of solemn praise is designedly institute to signify and confirme our communion in as well as our union with Christ from whom we have reason to apprehend that many of you according to Scripture-rules and the grounds which your conversations hold out are at great distance If then these things be so let it satisfy you in this point that as the Generality of the whole land would account it a great reliefe to be delivered of all your Tribe and many of the godly are convinced that your Ministery being neither of nor for our Lord Jesus is not to be owned so all these umbrages of compliance which you observe are only the effects of curiosity fear or some other humane frailty wherewith by you we can neither in Charity nor ingenuity be urged But you are so desireous to win us to this conformity of owning your Curates that you are willing to suppose them to be but Intruders occupying the places of our faithfull shepherds violently torn away and yet you argue that although the high priest-hood was in our Lords dayes violently invaded by the Romans and by them exposed to sale and those Symoniacks did also usurp thâ— right of others yet we find Cajaphas as high Priest Prophesâ—ing and our Saviour answering to his authoritative adjuration and though the Pharisees were wretched teachers and very guilty persons yet our Saviour saith hear them for they sit in Moses chair which you saâ— is unanswerable and was the doctrine of our own Teachers 'T is answered not to insist upon the particular and full answere already made by others for dissolving the apparent force of this objection it is to be considered 1. That as this argument doth proceed upon parallel instances and similitudes for the most part lame and unequal so the Jews their particular customes and observances in the examples adduced are to us so hid and unknown and the Jewish constitution in General of a Church and Nation joined in one special people unto God by virtue of a Divine Law for matters both Civil and Religious committed even in its Civil part to the custody and interpretation of their Religious Officers is so manifestly different from that of the Christian Church gathered in one out of all and every Nation only for things Religious without any alteration in their Civil State under Jesus Christ their Head and King and the Ministers by him sent forth that little light as to our present purpose can be thence concluded 2. That not only in the point of the Churches Ministerie but also in its worship and other ordinances to reason from the dispensations of Soveraigne Providence in the decline of Churches the lawfull compliance of good men with these Churches in owning them in things found and bearing with corruptions which they could not remedy and lastly from the Lords assistance and presence that never the less hath therein
from their supreme Civil-sanhedrin yet through process of time and many revolutions of affaires a confusion of the two grew more and more and at length the Ecclesiastical Sanhedrin whereof the High Priest was President did degenerate into a mixed Court and having the advantage of enjoying their Religion under their civil mutations and keeping their High Priests and his Courts when they lost their King and civil Courts for their greatest matters did exerce by their Ecclesiastical Sanhedrin all the civil power they could be permitted to exerce 4. Particularly it is evident that from the dayes of the Maccabees the High Priest-hood was much changed from its primary institution and as more extended to and busied in civil Rule then conversant in holy things so much exposed to frequent invasions at home and at length with the whole Nation swallowed up by a forraigne dominion Which things being dâ—eâ—y perpended it clearly appears that neither the practice of the Romans founded in the right though an abuse of the exercise of their conquest nor the symony of the purchasers a clandestine crime did make void their Priesthood How much less then do Cajaphas his prophesying a Providential Dispensation or our Lords free answering and confession to his adjuration whether authoritativè made by him as a Judge of the Nation or otherwise scarce sufficient to prove a Non-separation militat against our Non-compliance with your re-introducing of abjured Prelacie and its corrupt Ministery As for your instancing of the Pharisees our Lords words in this matter Math. 23. 2 3. are the Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses seat all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe that observe do but do not ye after their works c. And that hereby you have no advantage appears 1. Because it doth not manifestly appear that the Scribes and Pharisees here spoken of were Intruders but on the contraire it is most probable that they were Doctors of the Law lawfully appointed according to the use of that people 2. The Scribes Pharisees sitting in Moses chair did teach the Law not as appertaining meerly to the Soulâ— Religion toward God but as the Municipal Law of that Nation containing also the rules of external righteousness and policie and therefore are to be regarded not so much as Ecclesiastick Teachers but rather as Doctors of the Law whereby it is evident that your argument from our Lords command is as farre in this respect from concluding our compliance with your intruding Preachers as these National Doctors with whom our Lord was not to medle further then to vindicat the Law of God from their corrupt glosses and practices are different from out Spiritual Pastors who being sent by Jesus Christ cannot by Man be discharged 3. If it be urged that the Scribes and Pharisees were also the Teachers and Directors of all matters of Religion and even in civils did only respondere de jure from the law of God although this do no way remove the disparity immediatly assigned yet this is further to be observed that as our Lord in this regard did expressly warn his disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and in many things correct their vain and perverss doctrines so his tolerance of them in Moses chair was only temporarie as of many other things until the then approaching end of that dispensation which he would not anticipate during which time if our Lord do command a well-cautioned observance for the best improvement of that which was shortly to be abolished can you rationally thence inferre that we ought at the pleasure of men both deserte his sent Ministers whom he hath not recalled and comply with and owne Intruders so lightly violating and abusing his Ordinance But 4. Admit that the Scribes and Pharisees their entrie to that office were not in every point justifiable and that they truely were very wretched Teachers yet their occupying of that charge seing our Lord did not send forth and establish his perpetual Gospel Ministerie until after his resurrection was not circumstantiat with and peccant in the violent exclusion of others lawfully setled in that chair which they possessed Sir this is so casting a difference that I nothing doubt but if you will only pose your self what you think our Lord would have determined in case that there being among the Iews an established order of lawful Teachers the Pharisees had risen up and by open perjury and violence ejected them and that the business being still recent and many of the Teachers remaining on life and by all acknowledged for such whom man could not exauctorate the people had firmly adhered to them Let your Conscience I say in these suppositions sincerely resolve the question and I am most assured the verdict of your own breast will be that whatever was our Lords connivance for a time at a Non-separation from a course whereunto he was shortly to put a period yet in the case here stated he would not have commanded the people to deserte their lawful Guides and follow Intruders and thereby countenance such a wickedness 5. Although I love not to play the Critick and do grant that the observance here enjoined doth indeed inferre Hearing not to be prohibite yet your exhibiting of the command in these words not found in Scripture hear them for they sit in Moses chair doth found so like to that heavenly voice this is my beloved Son c. and that Emphatick hear ye him there commanded whereby the old letter and typical shadows of Moses Law being antiquat life and immortality were brought to light that I cannot but account that however our Lord permitting the hearing of the Pharisees so long as that dispensation did stand not abolished doth here directly aime only at its right improvement the two hear ye him and hear ye them in the same signification to be inconsistent and this representation a Stretch savouring more of favour to your cause then tendernesse of Truth and Scripture-phrase But I am tedious in a matter so obvious the summe wher in I would have you and all to fixe is this that whatever may have been or may be the various dispensations of Providence in the overcloudings of Churches and decline and corruption of Ordinances wherein no doubt the holding the foundation Jesus Christ by sound Faith and sincerity in Gods sight have gone a great length yet as the instancing of such times cannot with any shew of reason or measure of honesty be alledged for a tacite and toward compliance with the re-introducing of the evils of these dark times in Doctrine or Worship contraire to the revelation of a more full and pure light so no more can it be made use of after the manifest and sealed blessing of a sent and faithful Ministery to perswade a voluntaire abandoning at the lust and arbitriment of Man of our true Pastors and a willing and tame imbracing and owning of manifest and profane Intruders According to which Rules if you will
Titulo he was no Tyrannus Exercitio however I am farre from justifying the Usurpers their practices or denying altogether his Majesties Clemencie whereof the indemnity given to the same Usurpers doth exhibite so faire an evidence but this I must say that as I do wholly impute the withholding of much of the Kings goodness and favour from us to the malign influence of the unlucky conjunction of accursed Prelates whereby some even of the great and most solemn acts of his Maiesties intended bountie have been frustrat and depraved so such hath been and is the implacable spite and rigour of their Malice and Persecution that not only it hath surmounted their resentment of the Sectarian invasion and made them ascribe all these Mischiefs to us who were their most constant Enemies but by many degrees exceeded all the violences wherewith the Englishes during their Domination among us can be charged If you require a proof instead of a long condescendence that I might adduce the case of the then Tories in the North and late Risers in the South with the respective measures where with they have been treated being impartially pondered and compared is an irrefragable instance As to the trip you mention of these who ceased for fear of loss of Stipend publick praying for the King which they had in print owned for a dutie As at the worst you can call it but a trip which I think if not the respect you owe to your Arch-master Sharp who at that time not only desisted whith others but as he may remember did overture it to his Brethren to pray in publick for the then Protector yet the many horrid lapses whereof upon smalâ—er temptations yours are guilty might have made you forbear to mention it so all circumstances being examined and the practices of the Prophets and People of God in old times duely considered a Prudent correction of an over-zealous assertion will be found its more just censure But your N. C. adding oyl to your flame by telling you that for our particular failings you have renounced all you go on in your accusation and laying aside our private faults as if our publick alone were more then your indignation can decipher and expressly waving all design of reflection that by this smoothing unguent you may render the spears of your envy better pointed you tell us That all you do is but to let us see we are but as other men and not such wonders as we would have the world believe Sir though the world knowes that this is but your accusation and not our arrogance yet I must add that so strangely hath the apostasie and wickedness of your course prevailed in this Land that a very small measure of Faitfulness is enough without any miracle to make any man both a sign a Wonder but you proced to tell us of Monstruous faults we committed in exacting the Oath of the League over above that it was a bond of Rebellion as you hinted in your first Dialogue I have fully there refuted And as to the Nationall Covenant you say it was a cruell imposing upon Consciences to make a Nation sweare what they could not understand A man would think that you having turned us from being wonders oâ— piety to be Monsters of Cruelty and after so high a charge givenâ— that you were big with some amazing discovery to ensue but behold the ridiculus Mus you made the Nation renounce all the articles of poperie and amongst the rest Opus operatum a Latine word and abstruse conceit with many other niceties that simple people did not understand and to mend the jest you add was it not a contrâ—diction to make them sweare against Worship in an unknown Tongue and yet in the Oath which is an act of Worship to use it yea you made them preface this with a great lâ—e that it was after full mature consideration of all particulars whereof they were not capable beside the Tyranny of making men sweare in matters whereof some were debetable c. Before I enter upon this weighty challenge of words I cannot but note the ingenuity that hath escaped you Your Brethren commence our work from the 37 and tell us that we were false pretenders to old foundations but you by a plain impugnation of the National Covenant as it was first contrived and sworne in the 1580. 81. and 90 do clearly intimate the true consequentiall extent of your common prejudice and very plainly signify that Malignancie and Poperie for all the industrious dissembling of your Partie are nevertheless of a near cognation nay forgetting that this Covenant was framed at first by King Iames his speciall command and by his reiterat authority and example very solemnly confirmed and even by King Charles in the beginning of the troubles expressly ordained to be renewed so prevalent is the malice of your errour that all the regard to the powers whereof at other times you do so vainly boast doth not here in the least restrain you from staging these two Kings with us as Monstruous imposers But to the objection it self 'T is answered first that it is indeed a cruell imposing upon Conscience to make a Nation sweare an Oath they could not understand but do you think that because opus operatum is a Latine word that therefore the people who under Poperie had been too much acquainted with Latine termes and phrases and at the first breaking up of the light oâ— Reformation amongst us had often both in private and Publick heard the Popish errors of Justification by works Opus operatum c. fully explained and refuted neither did nor could understand its meaning Or because to you the opinion of Opus operatum appeares an abstruse conceit and many other Popish tenets renounced in that Covenant seem to be but niceties must they therefore be so to all And was it impossible for these Servants of the Lord who where imployed in the conversion of the Nation and did at first tender that Oath to make the grossness of these popish falshoods and of this in particular though under a Latine name sufficiently plain even to the meanest capacities Certainly Sir the very simple ones whom you despise do laugh at the weakness of this arguing 2. As you do not remember that this Covenant was first taken uâ—on the back of our Reformation from Poperie when all the errors therein renounced were recent in mens memories so you consider not that thereby we first declare the true Christian Religion to be that which is revealed to the world by the Preaching of the blessed Evangell and received and beleeved by the Kirk of Scotland c. And therefore do abhorre and detest all contrarie Religion and Doctrine but chiefly all kinde of Papistrie in generall and particular Heads as they are damned by the word of God and in speciall the Usurpâ—d Authority of that Roman Antichrict c and finally all his vain Rites and Traditions brought into the Kirk without or against
destroy all liberty and render men in every Oath how free and voluntary soever obnoxious to the Magistrat's absolute control and plainly to ranverse both the freedom of making and necessity of keeping all vowes which nevertheless the Lord hath most expressly allowed and confirmed Sir as I have with you supposed the matters of the Covenant to be in themselves indifferent and taken this pains for no other end then to rectifie your Common sense and refell your pretended Demonstration notwithstanding of so faire a concession so give me leave again to remember you and all concerned that seing the matters in these Covenants were antecedently true and righteous and are now concluded under the great Oath of God your pitiful quibling upon the Kings power in matters free and indifferent is so far from licensing us to the least violation that though we do further unanswerably alledge his Majesties supervenient ratification yet it is more for your redargution then our own confirmation whose Consciences are by the former ground most satisfyingly established And here I might put a period to my reflections on this Dialogue seing that what remaines doth nothing convel these sure grounds whereupon we are founded but because in pursuance of your conceit of the Magistrats power of rendering the matter of Vowes antecedently free unlawful and thereby making their obligation to cease you in returne to the Question What could move the King to preferre Episcopacie to Presbyterie pretend to many strong inductives whereby you suppose the change to be undeniably authorized This calumny must also be removed And before I enter upon this matter I cannot but commend your providence who fearing that your allegations would be found false do prudently provide a refuge in the profound and recluse deepth of Princes their secrets which you think should put a stop to the inquirie which indeed neither you nor all men beside are able to answere but as the strange wickedness and folly of this Act is such as all the devices imaginable cannot so much as vernish it with any apparent colour and its consequences have been so pernicious as have left no Subject in the Nations unconcerned in their smart so I hope without the imputation of a mutinous curiosity I may take the liberty to tell you that it was not our Leaders which occasioned the work you hint at to the King's Grand-father his Father and Himself Art thou he that troubleth Israel is an old and royall accusation of the Lord's Ministers I wish the answer now a dayes were as improper as I am tender to use it we have not troubled Israel but thou and thy Fathers house in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and thou hast followed thy own inventions I need not put you in minde of K. Iames his engagements to defend the Gospel and maintain the true and pure Ordinances and Discipline of God's house and how he thereafter turned and corrupted his way by no less then a direct invasion of Christ's Throne manifest perversion of his Ordinances designed subjection of the liberty of the Gospel and its Ministery to his lust and pleasure and open persecution of many faithful Ministers and Professours These things if you were ingenuous you should rather have essayed to answere as being already objected and proven by others then provoked me to the repetition As to what you objecte from latter times I am sorry that by so rude and false an accusation viz. You involved the Nations in bloud and not satisfyed with all the security you could demand you engaged with the King his Enemies in England and opposed the design of his deliverie An. 1648 you should engage me to reflect upon a worthy but abused Prince all whose faults I think both may and ought to be buried under his mis-fortune but seing this you will not suffer I shall only desire you and others to consider these sad grievances which are elswhere undeniably cleared viz. 1. The Prelatick Tyranny and impositions of these times 2. The rage and fury wherewith they endeavoured to inflame and stirre up all against this Kingdome after that they had first constrained us to just defence 3. Their notorious and reiterate persidies whereby they rendered all securitie desperate And lastly the sin of that backsliding course 48. now so evidently unmasked by the 9 Act of the late Parliament 1661 which instead of delivering did visibly precipitate his Majestie 's sad fate these things are so manifest even from the publick Records of the Nation that I can not but admire the effronterie of your confidence that can so overly pass them But you add a Question In a word what jealousies had you justly raised in the hearts of Princes of your Government Sir I wish you had deigned your self with another word of answere for really I know none except these old and endless ones the temptation and sin of all worldly Powers against the Lord and his Anointed As for our Tyranny 1649. against the Nobility you should first have answered for their breach of trust 1648 But since they themselves have publickly by the Act above mentioned avowed it your charge of Tyranny against the moderately disproportionate censures then inflicted merites no answere In the last place you say our Ministers divided shamefully among themselves I grant and sinfully also though that all engaged were not equally guilty and this was a great triall but since that an excess of charity toward your party on the one hand and a sounder judgement of your principles or rather looseness on the other was the only cause of the difference is it not invidious in you not only to have dissappointed your favourers but to taxe the greater number whom you have since so fully justified as men of maximes incompatible with Government Sir this is the summe of the account you make us of the reasons of his Majesties change with what evidence the Reader and not you must judge If he miss your Sun in its Meridian and finde your light to be but darkness a more simple eye and heart may be both his satisfaction and your remedy If I might enlarge in a more full returne I could easily demonstrate that all things being considered both before at and since the Kings restauration his adhering to the Covenant and owning that interest had been not only his safety and peace but his most certain establishment and Glory if the favour and countenance of the most High the firme love and loyalty of all good men and the undoubtedly equal compliance and submission of the other parties may be fit media in such an argument the conclusion is obvious But lest you say art thou made of the Kings Councel Forbear leaving events to God I shall be silent Having all along endeavoured to burne in the close of this Dialogue you go about to blowe us I am not for triffling with you in such unsincere and mixed complements the Lord purge both you and us from all dross and restore to
distinction will be found but a groundless malicious forgery but to confirm it you remember a passage of one of our Preachers allowing Sharpness in defence of the Truth and to check the proud conceit of Adversaries and though it arise most natively from the words and be clearly verifiable in all times and occasions yet loving to rake in our former divisions you will have it to be directed against the insolence forsooth of the then protesting partie and to serve as a complete apology for any sharpness you have used But Sir as you cannot subsume in the termes of that doctrine either upon your own defense of the Truth or upon our proud conceit and consequently do fall short of your designed apology so your reflecting upon these differences wherein you are nothing concerned being plainly intended for the disgracing of the whole party doth far more discover your malice then our infirmities and therefore to use the words of the Text seeing you use these of the doctrine although there be mockers with us and our eye doth continow in their provocation at which upright men may be astonied yet let the innocent stir up himself against the hypocrite and the righteous hold on his way and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger The next wedge which you set and drive for to divide us is to tell the world that our humors and sollies are not chargeable upon the whole Presbyterian party that the English Presbyterians are â—ar beyond us in moderation as appeares from Baxter's Disputations on Church-government and all they desired in the late treaty was to be joyned with the Bishops in the exercise of Discipline which we refuse 'T is answered what your opinion is of the whole party shall not be taken from your fraudulent insinuations but as these are plainly enough confuted by your more free expressions in other parts particularly in your 1. Dialogue Pag. 6. Where you say Rebellion was the soul of our whole worke and the Covenant the bond thereof and Dial. 4. P. 62. where you charge both English and Scots with all the blood of the late war So these umbrages of differences which you alledge either from a particular person his problematick disputations or a streatch of Accommodation flowing in a great pressure of necessity from men not by oath tyed with us to this preservation of that where unto they had not actually attained but only to endeavour a Reformation according to the sure rules therein set down ought not to be either a matter of stumbling or an excuse to your deceit But now forgetting your distinction with the same breath you exhibite one of your former charges against us all in these words before the late dissorders all the Presbyterians in Scotland did sit in the Courts for Church-discipline and why may not you aswel do the like And to this you make your N. C. Answere upon the old legal establishment then standing and never rescinded untill the year 1662. On purpose that you may surprise him as you speake with a new discovery forsooth of an Act published and printed now 57 years ago whereby you say the Act. 1592. Sâ—tling Presbytery was expresly annulled and hereupon you pretend such amazement and do make such exclamations upon our disingenuous forgery or intolerable ignorance and groundless and presumptuous shisme that this whole passage saving your reverence doth plainly appeare to me to be but the schareleton tricks of a pitiful impostor For 1. I told you before upon your 4. Diâ—l Where I confess I waved this matter as not worthy the answering That the reason of our different practice now in order to your meetings from what was used formerly is plainly this that Prelacy being at first introduced in this Church mostly by cunning and a lent procedure our true Presbyteries were not thereby discontinued but only injuriously invaded and usurped upon of which practices any honest Minister being free and purging himself of all appearance of accession by open protestation might very lawfully sit still and serve his Master therein but in the late overturning all things being carried at a far different rate and not only the old Presbyteries distolâ—ed but a new foundation being laid of the Kings Supremacy and all the power and jurisdiction of this Church therein fountained and both Bishops and the present pretended Presbyteries thereon founded it is most manifest that your present meetings being no lawful Churchâ— inâ—sicatories are not to be countenanced by any true Minister of Jesus Christ. 2. You make your N. C. lay claime to a legal establishment as a necessary warrant to impower Ministers to meet in Ecclesiastick-courts whereas you know that although we judge Magistrats bound to give Christs Church the assistance and protection of their authority and laws yet we constantly hold the power of assembling as well as of Discipline to be intrinseck in the Church derived unto it from Jesus Christ its head and this is certainly a jus divinum to which all true Non-conformists do constantly adhere and which your N. C. doth very foolishly and weakly omit 3. The noise you make that it is in all our mouths that the law for Presâ—yteries was in force untill the year 1662. Which for my own part I may declare I never either thought or heard alledged as the account of the different practice wherewith you here urge us and your pretended surprise and vain account of being undeceived by a person of great honour who shewed you the Act. 1612. Which I hardly believe that there is any in Scotland of your coaâ— ignorant of What do they signify but the dress of a ridiculous fable to impose upon the simple to our prejudice 4. If the matter were worth the contending for I could shew you that that person of great honour is not much oblidged to your report for the credit of his knowledge in as much as your words do import that both he and you do understand the Act. 1592. setling Presbytery to have been by the Act 1612. totally rescinded and Presbyteries thereby totally disolved whereas the clause of the Act runneth verbatim thus annulling and rescinding the 114 Act. Parl. 1592. Aud all and whatsomever Acts Laws Ordinances and Customes in so far as they or any part thereof are contrary or derogatory unto the Articles above written so that there being no Article or provision in the Act. 1612. Making void the approbation given to the being and meetings of Presbyteries by the 1592. Although I grant their power and priviledges are thereby much diminished It is evident that the power of meeting and doing all other things not altered by the posterior did still remain allowed to Presbyteries by vertue of the prior Say not that the first part of the abovementioned rescissory clause relative to the Act. 1592. Is simple and doth there terminat as I heard once affirmed by one of your party not 't is like of so great honour as your informer but I am sure in
the Count of Tholouse was a Peer of France and by Hugo Capetus constitution Peers were rather Vassals then Subjects It is answered ne ultra crepidam if Peers be Vassals as they are indeed being such Peers among themselves only and not with the King that therefore they are of all the most strictly oblidged subjects is notour to all that know the fidelity and gratitude which Vassallage doth import so that whatever priviledge their Peerage may give them over their inferiours yet that in order to their Soveraign and Liedge Lord they are in every respect subjects is uncontroverted But why should I spend time on your triflings Admitting that the Waldenses in this war had not so directly and immediatly resisted the King their Soveraign as not being their direct and immediate Persecutor have we therefore no advantage from this passage And are there not many other precedents in the History of that people which do fully and exactly infer our conclusion And as to the first do we not at least finde even in your own concession the Waldenses persecute for Religion standing to their own defence Now if once you allow to Religion the common priviledge of a defensive resistance the main strength of your arguments founded upon a pretended singularity in the cause of Religion as disowning forsooth all resistance and in a special manner astricted to suffering both by Gospell precept and primitive practice is thereby dissolved and removed I may not here insist on this subject But once for all let me demand you may not Religion be defended aswell as other rights and interests If you say it may but neither that nor any other against the invasion and persecution of the King and soveraign Power This is indeed a consequent but so destitute of all reason that as there is scarce a man in the world so stupid or debauched by flattery that will not in some suppositions grant the lawfulness of resistance so the most precious import of Religion and the atrocity of the injuries whereby it useth to be persecute can not but render it the first and most favourable of all excepted cases But if you say it may not then whether is it your meaning that it may not at all be defended either against Superior equall or inferior And certainly the Scripture and also many of the primitive instances abused to prostrate Religion unto tyranny do seem to run in this latitude without insinuating any distinction so that this generality being manifestly absurd doth of necessity evince them to have an other meaning and to be nothing conclusive to your purpose Or do you understand that in this the cause of Religion is singular that though against persecuting inferiors or equals Religion aswell as other rights doth permit defence yet against the Powers over us it is subject to a special restraint Assigne me for this speciality but any colourable pretext cris mihi magnus Apollo That the Gospel precepts Resist not evill Turn your cheek to the smiter Love your enemies c. Have their holy and Christian use of patience and godliness for all manner of injuries from whatsoâ—ever hand And that these other commands of subjection non-resistance honour and obedience to Kings and all in Authority have also their righteous influence of determining in every occasion our due compliance and submission without the least vestige either in all or any of the places of injoining a singular subjection to Powers persecuting for Religion is obviously evident What speciality you will gather from primitive practices the general mistakes that we find in their opinions as we may understand from Ambrose and Augustine condemning private defence even against Robbers ne dum salutem defendit pietatem contaminet may give us a satisfying conjecture From all which we may assuredly conclude that seing Religion doth lay no speciall prohibition of resistanceâ— in order to Superiors upon Subjects by them persecuted and that the above-written passage of the Waldenses doth at least evince that in other cases it hath the common priviledge your inferring of specâ—al consequences in favours of the Powers from abused generalls is but a politick improving of your lies unto base and selfish flattery Now as to other examples that may be found among the Waldenses Pray Sir was this the only passage in all that History which you conceived did favour our cause or was you loth to follow them over the Alpes unto the valleys of Piemont to meet with instances which indeed you have reason to think can only be best answered by concealing them in the obscurities of the places where acted And really this omission is so grosly supine that you must pardon me to think it designed However the History that I referre you to for a full and particular account aswell of the faith stedfastness and simplicicy of these Waldenses in Piemont as of their many and great persecutions by their own Rulers and Princes and their just and frequent oppositions made against them particularly from the year 1540 to the year 1561. And how in the year 1571 they entered into a League of mutual assistance and from that year did undergo many vicissitudes sometimes of peace and quiet then of cruell and barbarous persecutions wherein they testified great constancy and patience and sometimes of necessary defensive resistances wherein they witnessed no less uprightnesse and courage even until the year 1658 wherein the narration terminates is that of the Evangelical Churches in the valleys of Piemont very faithfully and acuratly collected and written by Mr Morland Where I am confident every ingenuous person will finde the case of defence for the cause of Religion against persecuting Rulers so justly stated so tenderly and submissively proceeded into and lastly so singly and moderatly prosecuted and that not only once or twice but often that as he will be thereby greatly confirmed in the righteousness of this practice so he can not but observe the inexcusable omission of your silence The next instance which you undertake to vindicate is that of the Bohemians under Zisca their fighting and resisting when the chalice was denyed them And for answere to this you bid us consider that the Crown of Boheme is elective in which case certainly the States of a Kingdom share more largely of the Soveraign power But 1. You hereby plainly acknowledge that Religion is not indefendible except by meer subjects against their Soveraign So that again we see it is not from the cause of Religion but from the quality of the persons that you foolishly go about to exclude Religion from defence which yet notwithstanding in several excepted cases all inferior to that of persecution is to subjects against their oppressing Princes by all almost allowed 2. That the States of a Kingdom share more largely of the soveraign Power in an elective then in a successive Kingdom hath no proper dependence upon the way of election but is thereto meerly accidental the Dictators in free Rome were elected and
that the King did most notoriously and tyrannically pass his limits 3. Though we should urge this instance no further then you allow it yet it stil remaines a very agreeable precedent for justifying our late courses it being certain that not only the rights and priviledges of both Kingdomes were violate but that the undoubted priviledges of Parliament and the resticted nature of the Kings soveraignity over us did give us as good and sufficient a warrand for the oppositions then made as upon this head can be alledged and instructed by these of the Netherlands And really when I reflect upon the particular case of the late warres betwixt the King and Parliament and how that in the Papers printed by consent of both for clearing the controversie there appeareth nothing save the pretensions and pleas of prerogative and priviledge and yet all do acknowledge Religion to have been the original cause I think this sole consideration might have made you to forbear this poor vindication It is true Grotius sayes and seems to lay much weight upon it quod Brabanti illud quoque proprium pacisci solent ut principe leges violante ipsi fidei obsequii vinculo liberantur donec demantur injuriae But not to draw you to long discourses anent the effect of an irritant provision adjected to a mutual contract 1. It were no great difficulty to shew you from undeniable reason nay from Grotius himselfe in his de Iur. Bell. that as there is such a connexion in all contracts that the failzeer of the one party doth in so far liberat the other from his mutual corresponding ingagement and repone him to his antecedent condition and liberty so in the present case an irritant provision though in other cases it may sometimes extend its vertue and influence beyond the intrinseck import of the failzie wherby it is committed appears not to have any special use but only to serve ad majorem quia expressiorem cautelam 2. It might here be sufficient to make that answere for us which Grotius a little after in the same place makes for the other Provinces viz. ab aliis quoque Belgarum nationibus idem jus moribus usurpatum which may be verefied as to Scotland and England by many most pregnant and luculent examples Butâ— 3. As I grant that a reservation of these things which otherwse would be imported in the peoples surrender appertain to the Soveraign fortified or not fortified by an irritant provision may give to the people when therein wronged the liberty of asserting their own right which without a special reservation had been none so undoubtedly as to such rights which do reserve themselves and are so much ours that even by an express surrender they cannot be absolutely resigned such as the right of Religion our lives and whole fortunes are the preservation whereof being the very ends of go vernment can not be understood to be permitted to the Governour 's absolute arbitrement the people therein invaded by vertue of the power inherent to rights reserved and the liberation flowing from all such failzeours though not expressed may very justly resist and demand reparation And is it indeed possible that any rational man should think because of a reservation of things of less value and therefore within our power a Prince transgressing may lawfully be resisted and that nevertheless these high and atrocious invasions in matters of the greatest value and which therefore can neither be absolutely surrendered nor do need an express reservation should and ought to be stupidly swallowed down But seing the greatest Royalists do in certain suppositions wherein their own sense and interest do give them a better understanding not stick both to acknowledge and practise according to this principle it is very evident as I have often said that it is only their indifferency in matters of Religion and the security that they thence derive which makes them and us to differ on this subject In the close of this instance you tell us That for all this you refer us to Grotius And for matter of fact I decline him not as you may perceive but if his too manifest prejudice in matters of Religion do make him less express to our purpose I hope the supplement of other Authors and also of solid reason shall obtain from you al men a just acknowledgment The 8th instance that you would vindicate is that of the Civil warrs of France and first you say Their first civil wars were managed by the Princes of the blood who by the laws of that Crown are not ordinary subjects And certainly by all law and common sense extraordinary persons may well be said not to be ordinary subjects but are they therefore not subjects Surely the conferring of high dignities and great Authority may well intend their obligation it doth not alter their condition And how often have we heard and seen them accused and forfeited for rebellion Why do you then render youâ— selfe ridiculous by such a pitiful alledgeance But you add besides the wars were begun in the minority of the King And do you seriously think that setting aside the greater incapacity it might have put them into had the King been major they would have been of another minde But you say that in this case the power of the Princes is greater And we have indeed often heard that the dignity of the Princes doth consist mainly in two viz. their right of succession and privilege of Regencie during the Kings minority or absence but as in the matter of Regencie the nearest and not all the agnati of the royal blood can pretend to it and that only in the case of no nomination made by the preceeding King and during the space of the young King's pupillarity just according to the common rules of tutela legitima so you may remember that the wars we speak of falling out in the reigne of Francis the Second being for the time at least sixteen years of age there was no place for the Princes their pretence of Regencie beside the first appearance of these wars was only supposed to be countenanced but not openly by them owned And as for the continuation of the war in the non-age of Charles the Nynth it is certaine that the King of Navarre to whom as nearest agnat the Regencie belonged did voluntarily renounce his pretension in favours of the Queen mother nay that he joined with her the Guisians and died fighting against the Protestants headed by Conde and the Admiral And likewise these wars were againe renewed in the King his Majority But not to enter further into these iliads of tumults and confusions occasioned by the restles perfidie and unsatiable cruelty of the adversaries though I should admit that these wars were not only incited and provoked to by persecution but that also even on the Protestants their side they were not a little influenced both by particular interests and passions and the general fervor of that Nation
sâ—ch is the manifest wickedness of this your Supremacy that it is one of your â—elusive arts to make your N. C. rather vail it with an obscure name then leave it to an open discoverie and in the same manner it was that the men of your gang after they begun to broach their dangerous dissolute and undermining principles thought fairly to have palliate all with the gentle name of Latitudinarian as apparently obleidging to all parties But now that they are detected they turn their talk and loth to marr their affected smoothness by terming it otherwise then the long name they blame us for loading them with reproach whereas to the best of my knowledge it was their own invention and choise But not to detaine you about names which really I do so little value in any respect that I do not so much as regard the name Fanatick nor these many other wherewith the truth and partie which I maintain have been standered let us proceed to what you say to the things And first you tell us that in the old Testament the Kings of Judah frequently medled in divine matters and the Sanhedrin which was a civill Court determined in all matters of Religion 'T is answered did you not just now give us an account of certain restrictive explications made of the Supremacie What do you then intend by these instance Not that I do exclude Kings from a due medling in divine matters or do decline the righteous practices of the Kings of Iudah in the largest construction that they can receive But certainly if what you say of their Sanhedrin be true it will overturne all your pretended limitatioâ—s at least give to the King a determining judgement in all matters of Religon which neither ought nor can be admitted But. 2. This threed-bare argument taken from the Kings of Iudah and the Sanhedrin for your Supremacie is so fully answered by others specially by Mr. Gillespie in his Aaronâ—s Rod and he hath so evidently cleared that there was a Sanhedrin ecclesiastick distinct from the civill and that these two governments were not confounded that I wonder you are not ashamed of such jejune repetitions And in effect it is so plain in Scripture that none of these Kings did interpose in matters of Religion otherwise then by their extrinseck oversight and assistance except either by immediat commission and direction from God as it happened in the establishment made by David and Solomon not to be drawn in consequence or els in the case of necessary Reformation in which ordinary means ceasing the obligation of the end doth authorize even more extraordinary endeavours that seing the Lord himselfe did immediatly reprove the usurpation of Uzziah I can not imagine from what particular precedent you do designe your advantage However of one thing I am most perswaded and I am charitable to think that all your confidence dare not deny it that had any one of the Kings of Iudah arrogate to himselfe a Supremacie in all causes and over all persons aswell Ecclesiastick as Civill so as to declare that whatsoever he should enact anent Ecclesiastick meetings or matters should be obeyed and observed by all his subjects he had been repute no other then a rebell and usurper against God and a proud contemner of his Law And as for the Sanedrin though it were not proven that there was one Ecclesiastick and â—n other Civill yet their distinct sacred and inviolable Preisthood doth so strangly plead for a constant separation where we find the Lord to have made a divided institution that any conjunction in that Court or any thing beside occasioned by their singularly mixed Policy can nowise infer the conclusion you plead for The next thing you say is That the Christian Emperours did medle in matters of Religion 'T is ans That the first Chistian Emperours did medle in matters of Religion so as to confirme the truth and Ecclesiastick decrees by their Civill sanction to establish the Chuâ—ch in the condition wherein they found her to adorne her with certain priviledges enrich her with revenues and beautifie her with fair structures is not denyed But what is all this to your Supremacie And who is he who doth not wish for a just measure of the like favour and assistance You add that they called the first general Councils And why not Who denyes that the King may within his Dominious do the like But the point you drive is to have this power to the King solely and exclusive of any right and power in the Church to appoint and meet in such Assemblies what ever be the necessity contrary to the Kings prohibition And that for order and decency the King's consent and countenance should first be sought nay that his refusal ought to be of that moment as not to be counter-ballanced but by a very visible urgencie is by all granted Only that he hath an absolute veto in this matter I positively and firmly deny for seing it is evident that the Church while under pagane Princes did enjoy this power how she should lose it upon their becoming Christian otherwise then to be tyed out of respect and for order to make to him the first application to be regulable by his reasons and very tender of his displeasure is utterly unexplicable and were in plain termes to defer to them as Christians though acting as Antichristians and worse then their pagane predecessors And further it may be considered that the power of conveening in Council being founded on the same warrant with the Churches liberty to meet for the duties of Worship the former no more then the later can be made dependent upon the Prince his pleasure But you subjoine that they presided in these Councils And to this there is no answer like unto your own viz. that in presiding they only ordered matters but did not decide in them which together with a Moderator after the example of the first Nicen Synod wherein Constantine presiding Eustathius of Antioch did by prayer open the Council you know we do willingly allow But to help you a little in this point I grant that Theodosius in the Council of Constantinople seems to have gone a great length yet all that we find upon record is that the Council being divided without issue by the opinions of the Orthodoxe of the Macedonians Arrians Ennomians the Emperour requires their several confessions and after much earnest prayer to God for light and direction he declares for the Nicen Faith whereunto the Synod agreeing the contrary heresies are condemned And this was no doubt a very laudable practice warranted both by the exigent and the truth it selfe whereby many things less regular without inferring an ordinary and proper power in the Author for their warrant have very often been sustained A good turne specially when done in the cessation of other midses doth sufficiently subsist by its own merit Iehojada a Priest in a state of necessity armes against a Tyranne and reformes the
by their own interest to teach this doctrine of peace It is not many weeks since the chief of your Fathers as you terme them preaching before the King's Commissioner and many members of Parliament on that Text Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace told his hearers in the very entrie that the particular rules of mutual for bearance and tendernesse given in that Scripture by the Apostle were only convenient for the then state of that Church wanting a Christian Magistrate But now there being a Christian Magistrat his authoritie should quiet all scruples and might not be demurred by these pretenses and going on to show that the only way to peace is to allow to the King not only an outward coercive power but also an inward directive architecktonick uncontrollable power O fear the Lord all ye his Saints over conscience in the matters of Worship with much ado as eye and ear witnesses do attest he stammered through a part of the first chapter of a new Piece entituled a Discours of Ecclesiastical policie And thus he delivered to us the very same doctrine of peace which in several places of your Dialogues you do very plainly hold out Whether or not then it be in the same principle and for the same end that ye do here pray for peace love and charity let men judge For our part your power riches and dignities in themselves to say the truth the very meenest of these trifles are by us neither coveted nor envied Our souls desire and earnest prayer to God both in your and our own behalfe is that God would open our eyes turne back our hearts heal our backslidings and restore unto us his Gospel and blessed Ordinances in power and purity O turne us again Lord God of hosts cause thy face to shine and we shall be saved then shall Glory dwell in our Land mercy and truth meet and righteousnesse and truth kisse each other then should the work of the Lord appear unto his servants and the beauty of the Lord our God even peace unity and love be upon us As for these Scriptures wherewith you second your wish for peace Were I not more tender in opposing Scripture to Scripture then you are in abusing it to your own designe it were easie for me to repay your admonition to love by a more seasonable exhortation to you of repentance But since the very consideration of the words by you cited may rectify your misapplication my single desire is that you had pondered or could yet ponder them If there be therefore any consolation in Christ if any comfort of love if any fellowship of the Spirit if any bowels and mercies let us fulfil the Lords joy that we be first of a sound minde then like minded having the same love being of one accord of one minde Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory a short discharge of all the pride persecution and pompe of your prelatick order but in lowlinesse of minde let each esteeme others better then themselves Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among us let him show out of a good conversation his◠works with meeknesse of wisdome But if you have bitter zeal or envying For seeing that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wanting this adjunct signifieth also envie without the least reflection upon that holy zeal of God's house which is said to eat up even the pattern of meekness Prince of peace your poor criticisme in altering the translation shewes more of your malice then your learning and strife in your hearts glory not and lye not against the truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be Zealous there fore and repent of your perjurie and Covenant breaking this wisdome descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual and devilish for where zeal or envying The word is indeed still the same and so is your folly in this remarke and strife is there is confusion and every evill work But the wisdome that is from above is first pure then peaceable not first peaceable and then impure as that of your partie is Gentle and easie to be entreated full of mercie and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie O desirable quality And the fruit of righteousnesse is sowen in peace of them that make peace Let us put on therefore as the elect of God holy and beloved bowels of mercies kindnesse humblenesse of minde meeknesse long-suffering forbearing one another and forgiving one another if any man have a quarrel against any even as Christ forgave us so let us do and above all things put on charity which is the bond of perfectness And let the peace of God rule in our hearts to the which also we are called in one body and let us be thankfull Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly in all wisdome teaching and admonishing one another in Psalmes and Hymns and Spiritual songs singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord and whatsoever we do in word or deed pray observe this fundamental direction Let us do all in the name of the Lord Iesus What shall we then say to these who in the Bond to the Publict Peace would not admit the name of the Lord to be mentioned Giving thanks to God and the Eather by him In all this I wish we were sincerily agreed And that these words were more deeply infixed in our mindes for I confesse I am wearie of vain janglings as much as you are and do long for truth and peace as much as you do for your much courted peace and indeed there is nothing that doth so much portend the Lords displeasure and imminent wrath as that not any pleadeth for truth they trust in vanity and speak lies they conceive mischief and bring forth iniquitie they hatch cockatrice eggs and weave the spiders web he that eateth of their eggs dieth and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper their works are works of iniquitie and the act of violence is in their hand they do much love outward peace but the way of peace they know not and there is no judgement in their goings they have made them crooked Pathes whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace Therefore is judgement far from us and justice doth not overtake us we waite for light but behold obscurity for brightness bot we walk in darkness for our transgressions are multiplied before thee and our sins testifie against us for our transgressions are with us and as for our iniquities we know them in transgressing and lying against the Lord and departing away from our God speaking oppression and revolt conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falshood and judgement is turned away backward and justice standeth afar off for truth is fallen in the street and equity cannot enter yea truth faileth and he that departeth from evill maketh himself a prey Whether you or your N. C. account these words to proceed from a fretted minde or not I know not sure I am