observing or laying to Heart the strict Commands of the Lord herein as if there had been no such Passages in our Bibles But blessed be the Lord that beginneth mightily to awaken the Hearts of his Servants and cause them to observe the Truths which they overlook'd and at last to lay to heart the Duty so much neglected We now hear from many Countries of this Nation the Voice of the Spirit of Peace our Brethren begin to get together and consult of the means of reparing our Breaches and in many Places are associated and though the Work be but beginning and mightily resisted by the Enemies of Holyness and Peace yet are we in great Hopes that these Beginnings do promise more and that God hath not awakened us to this Work in vain And now by the Tidings of your Concord we have received an increase of these our Hopes and Consolations Go on dear Brethren as One in the Centre of Unity and prevail in the Strength of the great Reconciler This is the way that will prevail at last and however it be thought of by others will certainly be comfortable to ourselves in the review when dividing ways will be all disgraced and look with another Face than now they do He that is for Vanity and Love is likest to have his Approbation who is one and who is Love Our Hearts are with you and our Prayers shall be for you that you may abundantly reap the Fruits of Concord in the Conviction of Gain-sayers and the farther Confirmation and Edification of your own Your Motion for a Correspondency we gladly entertain and shall rejoice in the Assistance of your Advice and Prayers and willingly to that end communicate our Affairs We are now upon a joint Agreement to bring all the ancient Persons in our Parishes who will not do it in the Congregation to our Houses on certain Days every Week by turns to be catechised or instructed as shall be most to their Edification A Work that requireth so much unwearied Diligence Self-denial and holy Skill and wherein we are like to meet with so much Resistance and yet doth appear to us of great necessity and use that we earnestly crave your Prayers for such Qualifications and Successes The State of your Affairs we partly understand by the Information of Coll. Bridges We heartily pray the Lord of the Harvest to send forth more Labourers among you and could we contribute any thing to so good a Work we should willingly do it But able Ministers fit for the Work with you are too few and many of them so weak of Body that they are unfit for Travel and most of them so engaged to their Godly People and the People so impatient of a Motion for their remove that the Work will be very hard but we hope to be faithful in our Endeavours whatever be the Success Brethren we crave your Prayers to God that we may be faithful and Successful in his Work as also that Brotherly Correspondency which you motion might abide and we remain Your Brethren in the Faith of Christ Rich. Baxter Teacher of the Church at Kiderminster Jarvis Bryan Teacher of the Church at Old Swinford Henry Oasland Teacher of the Church at Bewdeley Andr. Tristram Teacher of the Church at Clent Tho. Baldwin Minister at Wolverly In the Name of the associated Ministers meeting at Kiderminster August 12. 1655. To the Reverend our much honoured Brother Dr. Winter Pastor of the Church at Dublin to be communicated by him to the associated Churches in Ireland These They wrote us also a Second Letter which I here subjoin Reverend and much valued Brethren YOUR Affectionate Letter in Answer to ours by that Honourable Person we have received and do desire that these Lines may testify our Thankfulness to you for your loving and free Acceptation of our Desires of a Brotherly Correspondency Those Pantings of yours for the Peace and Union of the Saints we doubt not will be to your Comfort at the great Day of your Account God is not unjust to forget your Work and Labour of Love Go on therefore dear Brethren in his Strength whose work it is and of whose Power and Presence you have had so great Experience We trust as our Hearts are with you so our Prayers shall not be wanting for you at the Throne of Grace We thank you for your Ioy at our Association and Success and that we still breath after that happy Work Surely if after our long Experiences of those woful Desolations that Divisions and Dissentions have involved the Saints in our Hearts should not be enlarged after Union and Peace that must repair our Breaches we should have Cause to suspect our Union with and Love to our Head We are not ignorant how much the Self-love and Pride of some and the misguided Zeal of others of approved Sincerity have advanced the Design of the grand Enemy by over eager and unbrotherly Bitterness even in matters circumstantial Neither are we altogether ignorant how subtilly that old Serpent and Deceiver hath laboured by a pretext of Love to swallow up Truth it being for a while the only Cry Love Love yet not the least hint of Truth which had most need of their Charity being miserably torn and mangled To which our Charity leads us to attribute the Praise of many of our Brethren as being unwilling to buy Love with the Loss of Truth It is the Apostles Advice that the Truth should be spoken in Love and that we should contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the Saints But Thanks be to the Lord God of Truth that hath preserved his Darling from the Devourer making the way of Love exceeding aimable because of Truth so that we trust it will not lie untrodden by the Lord's People through circumstantial Differences whilst all hold the Form of wholesom Words considering one another and walking together in what they are agreed and waiting upon the Lord for the revealing of that wherein they differ perfection being reserved for another World That there are any Beginnings and that by you we hear of more we earnestly desire our Hearts may be duly and thankfully affected therewith praying the God of truth and Peace to uphold his Truth and to shower down plentifully the Spirit of Love and Peace that at the Lord is One so his People may be One. Your present Work we are in some measure sensible of its Necessity and Weightiness Wherefore our Prayers shall be for you that the Lord whose Servants ye are and whose work it is would be with you to counsel encourage strengthen and prosper you in it as we crave your daily Prayers for these Infant Churches that our God may vouchsafe his Spirit and Presence to us whose lot is cast in this Wilderness having many Enemies to conflict withal from within as well as without your Advice and brotherly Assistance we request as we shall have Occasion and Opportunity to communicate our Affairs to you Lastly the deep
for I consider'd that my Father's Exercise of Reading the Scripture was better than theirs and would surely be better thought on by all men at the last and I considered what it was for that he and others were thus derided When I heard them speak scornfully of others as Puritans whom I never knew I was at first apt to believe all the Lies and Slanders wherewith they loaded them But when I heard my own Father so reproached and perceived the Drunkards were the forwardest in the reproach I perceived that it was mere Malice For my Father never scrupled Common-Prayer or Ceremonies nor spake against Bishops nor ever so much as prayed but by a Book or Form being not ever acquainted then with any that did otherwise But only for reading Scripture when the rest were Dancing on the Lord's Day and for praying by a Form out of the end of the common-Common-Prayer Book in his House and for reproving Drunkards and Swearers and for talking sometimes a few words of Scripture and the Life to come he was reviled commonly by the Name of Puritan Precision and Hypocrite and so were the Godly Conformable Ministers that lived any where in the Country near us not only by our Neighbours but by the common talk of the Vulgar Rabble of all about us By this Experience I was fully convinc'd that Godly People were the best and those that despised them and lived in Sin and Pleasure were a malignant unhappy sort of People and this kept me out of their Company except now and then when the Love of Sports and Play enticed me § 2. The chiefest help that I had for all my Learning in the Country Schools was with Mr. Iohn Owen School-master at the Free-School at Wroxeter to whom I went next who lived in Sir Richard Newport's House afterward Lord Newport at Eyton and taught School at that ancient Uriconium where the Ruins and old Coin confirm those Histories which make it an ancient City in the Romans Times The present Lord Newport and his Brother were then my School-fellows in a lower Form and Dr. Richard Allestree now Dr. of the Chair in Oxford Canon of Christ's Church and Provost of Eaton-Colledge of whom I remember that when my Master set him up into the lower end of the highest Form where I had long been Chief I took it so ill that I talkt of leaving the School whereupon my Master gravely but very tenderly rebuked my pride and gave me for my Theme Ne sutor ultra crepidam § 3. About that time it pleased God of his wonderful Mercy to open my Eyes with a clearer insight into the Concerns and Case of my own Soul and to touch my heart with a livelier feeling of things◠Spiritual than ever I had sound before And it was by the means and in the order following stirring up my Conscience more against me by robbing an Orchard or two with rude Boys than it was before And being under some more Conviction for my Sin a poor Day-Labourer in the Town he that I before-mentioned that was wont to read in the Church for the old Parson had an old torn Book which he lent my Father which was called Bunny's Resolution being written by Parson's the Jesuit and corrected by Edm. Bunny I had before heard some Sermons and read a good Book or two which made me more love and honour Godliness in the General but I had never felt any other change by them on my heart Whether it were that till now I came not to that maturity of Nature which made me capable of discerning or whether it were that this was God's appointed time or both together I had no lively sight and sense of what I read till now And in the reading of this Book when I was about Fifteen years of Age it pleased God to awaken my Soul and shew me the folly of Sinning and the misery of the Wicked and the unexpressible weight of things Eternal and the necessity of resolving on a Holy Life more than I was ever acquainted with before The same things which I knew before came now in another manner with Light and Sense and Seriousness to my Heart This cast me first into fears of my Condition and those drove me to Sorrow and Confession and Prayer and so to some resolution for another kind of Life And many a-day I went with a throbbing Conscience and saw that I had other Matters to mind and another Work to do in the World than ever I had minded well before Yet whether sincere Conversion began now or before or after I was never able to this day to know for I had before had some Love to the Things and People which were good and a restraint from other Sins except those forementioned and so much from those that I seldom committed most of them and when I did it was with great reluctancy And both now and formerly I knew that Christ was the only Mediator by whom we must have Pardon Justification and Life But even at that time I had little lively sense of the Love of God in Christ to the World or me nor of my special need of him for Parsons and all Papists almost are too short upon this Subject And about that time it pleased God that a poor Pedlar came to the Door that had Ballads and some good Books And my Father bought of him Dr. Sibb's bruised Reed This also I read and found it suited to my state and seasonably sent me which opened more the Love of God to me and gave me a livelier apprehension of the Mystery of Redemption and how much I was beholden to Jesus Christ. All this while neither my Father nor I had any Acquaintance or Familiarity with any that had any Understanding in Matters of Religion nor ever heard any pray ex tempore But my Prayers were the Confession in the Common-Prayer Book and sometime one of Mr. Bradford's Prayers in a Book called his Prayers and Meditations and sometime a Prayer out of another Prayer-Book which we had After this we had a Servant that had a little Piece of Mr. Perkins's Works of Repentance and the right Art of Living and Dying well and the Government of the Tongue And the reading of that did further inform me and confirm me And thus without any means but Books was God pleased to resolve me for himself § 4. When I was ready for the University my Master drew me into another way which kept me thence where were my vehement desires He had a Friend at Ludlow Chaplain to the Council there called Mr. Richard Wickstead whose Place having allowance from the King who maintaineth the House for one to attend him he told my Master that he was purposed to have a Scholar fit for the University and having but one would be better to him than any Tutor in the University could be whereupon my Master perswaded me to accept the offer and told me it would be better than the University to me I believed
him as knowing no better my self and it suited well with my Parents minds who were willing to have me as near to them as possible having no Children but my self And so I left my School-master for a supposed Tutor But when I had tried him I found my self deceived his business was to please the Great Ones and seek Preferment in the World and to that end found it necessary sometimes to give the Puritans a flirt and call them unlearned and speak much for Learning being but a Superficial Scholar of himself He never read to me nor used any savoury Discourse of Godliness only he loved me and allowed me Books and Time enough So that as I had no considerable helps from him in my Studies so had I no considerable hinderance And though the House was great there being four Judges the King's Attorney the Secretary the Clerk of the Fines with all their Servanâ—s and all the Lord President 's Servants and many more and though the Town was full of Temptations through the multitude of Persons Counseâ—lors Attorneys Officers and Clerks and much given to tipling and excess it pleased God not only to keep me from them but also to give me one intimate Companion who was the greatest help to my Seriousness in Religion that ever I had before and was a daily Watchman over my Soul We walk'd together we read together we prayed together and when we could we lay together And having been brought out of great Distress to Prosperity and his Affections being fervent though his Knowledge not great he would be always stirring me up to Zeal and Diligence and even in the Night would rise up to Prayer and Thanksgiving to God and wonder that I could sleep so that the thoughts of God's Mercy did not make me also to do as he did He was unwearied in reading all serious Practical Books of Divinity especially Perkins Bolton Dr. Preston Elton Dr. Taylor Whately Harris c. He was the first that ever I heard pray Ex tempore out of the Pulpit and that taught me so to pray And his Charity and Liberality was equal to his Zeal so that God made him a great means of my good who had more knowledge than he but a colder heart Yet before we had been Two years acquainted he fell once and a second time by the power of Temptation into a degree of Drunkenness which so terrified him upon the review especially after the second time that he was near to Despair and went to good Ministers with sad Confessions And when I had left the House and his Company he fell into it again and again so oft that at last his Conscience could have no Relief or Ease but in changing his Judgment and disowning the Teachers and Doctrines which had restrained him And he did it on this manner One of his Superiours on whom he had dependance was a man of great Sobriety and Temperance and of much Devotion in his way but very zealous against the Nonconformists ordinarily talking most bitterly against them and reading almost only such Books as encouraged him in this way By converse with this Man my Friend was first drawn to abate his Charity to Nonconformists and then to think and speak reproachfully of them and next that to dislike all those that came near them and to say that such as Bolton were too severe and enough to make men mad And the last I heard of him was that he was grown a Fudler and Railer at strict men But whether God recovered him or what became of him I cannot tell § 5. From Ludlow Castle after a year and half I returned to my Father's House and by that time my old School-master Mr. Iohn Owen was sick of a Consumption which was his Death and the Lord Newport desired me to teach that School till he either recovered or died resolving to take his Brother after him if he died which I did about a quarter of a year or more After that old Mr. Francis Garbett the faithful learned Minister at Wroxeter for about a Month read Logick to me and provoked me to a closer Course of Study which yet was greatly interrupted by my bodily weakness and the troubled Condition of my Soul For being in expectation of Death by a violent Cough with Spitting of Blood c. of two years continuance supposed to be a deep degree of a Consumption I was yet more awakened to be serious and solicitous about my Soul 's everlasting State And I came so short of that sense and seriousness which a Matter of such infinite weight required that I was in many years doubt of my Sincerity and thought I had no Spiritual Life at all I wondred at the sensless hardness of my heart that could think and talk of Sin and Hell and Christ and Grace of God and Heaven with no more feeling I cried out from day to day to God for Grace against this sensless Deadness I called my self the most hard hearted Sinner that could feel nothing of all that I knew and talkt of I was not then sensible of the incomparable Excellency of Holy Love and Delight in God nor much imployed in Thanksgiving and Praise But all my Groans were for more Contrition and a broken Heart and I prayed most for Tears and Tenderness And thus I complained for many Years to God and Man and between the Expectations of Death and the Doubts of my own Sincerity in Grace I was kept in some more care of my Salvation than my Nature too stupid and too far from Melancholy was easily brought to At this time I remember the reading of Mr. Ezek. Culverwell's Treatise of Faith did me much good and many other excellent Books were made my Teachers and Comforters And the use that God made of Books above Ministers to the benefit of my Soul made me somewhat excessively in love with good Books so that I thought I had never â—now but scrap'd up as great a Treasure of them as I could Thus was I long kept with the Calls of approaching Death at one Ear and the Questionings of a doubtful Conscience at the other and since then I have found that this method of God's was very wise and no other was so like to have tended to my good These Benefits of it I sensibly perceived 1. It made me vile and loathsome to my self and made Pride one of the hatefullest Sins in the World to me I thought of my self as I now think of a detestable Sinner and my Enemy that is with a Love of Benevolence wishing them well but with little Love of Complacency at all And the long continuance of it tended the more effectually to a habit 2. It much restrained me from that sportful Levity and Vanity which my Nature and Youthfulness did much incline me to and caused me to meet Temptations to Sensuality with the greatest fear and made them less effectual against me 3. It made the Doctrine of Redemption the more savoury to me and my
poor Plowmen understood but little of these Matters but a little would stir up their Discontent when Money was demanded But it was the more intelligent part of the Nation that were the great Complainers Insomuch that some of them denied to pay the Ship-money and put the Sheriffs to distrain the Sheriffs though afraid of a future Parliament yet did it in obedience to the King Mr. Hampden and the Lord Say brought it to a Suit where Mr. Oliver St. Iohn and other â—Lawyers boldly pleaded the Peoples Cause The King had before called all the Judges to give their Opinions Whether in a Case of need he might impose such a Tax or not And all of them gave their Opinion for the Affirmative except Judge Hatton and Judge Crook The Judgment passed for the King against Mr. Hampden But this made the Matter much more talk of throughout the Land and considered of by those that thought not much of the Importance of it before § 25. Some suspected that many of the Nobility of England did secretly Consederate with the Scots so far as to encourage them to come into England thinking that there was no other way to cause the Calling of a Parliament which was the thing that now they bent their minds to as the Remedy of these things The Earl of Essex the Earl of Warwick the Earl of Bedford the Earl of Clare the Earl of Bullingbrook the Earl of Mulgrave the Earl of Holland the Lord Say the Lord Brook and I know not how many more were said to be of this Conâ—ederacy But Heylin himself hath more truly given you the History of this That the Scots after they came in did perswade these Men of their own danger in England if Arbitrary Government went on and so they petitioned the King for a Parliament which was all their Consederacy and this was after their second Coming into England The Scots came with an Army and the King's Army met them near Newcastle but the Scots came on till an Agreement was made and a Parliament called and the Scots went home again But shortly after this Parliament so displeased the King that he Dissolved it and the War against the Scots was again undertaken to which besides others the Papists by the Queens means did voluntarily contribute whereupon the Scots complain of evil Counsels and Papists as the cause of their renewed dangers and again raise an Army and come into England And the English at York petition the King for a Parliament and once more it is resolved on and an Agreement made but neither the Scottish or English Army disbanded And thus began the Long Parliament as it was after called § 26. The Et caetera Oath was the first thing that threatned me at Bridgenorth and the second was the passage of the Earl of Bridgwater Lord President of the Marches of Wales through the Town in his Journey from Ludlow to the King in the North For his coming being on Saturday Evening the most malicious persons of the Town went to him and told him that Mr. Madestard and I did not sign with the Cross nor wear the Surplice nor pray against the Scots who were then upon their Entrance into England and for which we had no Command from the King but a printed Form of Prayer from the Bishops The Lord President told them That he would himself come to Church on the morrow and see whether we would do these things or not Mr. Madestard went away and left Mr. Swain the Reader and my self in the danger But after he had spoken for his Dinner and was ready to go to Church the Lord President suddenly changed his purpose and went away on the Lord's Day as far as Lichfield requiring the Accusers and the Bailiffs to send after him to inform him what we did On the Lord's Day at Evening they sent after him to Lichfield to tell him that we did not conform but though they boasted of no less than the hanging of us they received no other Answer from him but that he had not the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and therefore could not meddle with us but if he had he should take such order in the business as were fit And the Bailiffs and Accusers had no more wit than to read his Letter to me that I might know how they were baffled Thus I continued in my Liberty of preaching the Gospel at Bridgenorth about a year and three quarters where I took my Liberty though with very little Maintenance to be a very great mercy to me in those troublesome times § 27. The Parliament being sate did presently fall on that which they accounted Reformation of Church and State and which greatly displeased the King as well as the Bishops They made many long and vehement Speeches against the Ship-money and against the Judges that gave their Judgment for it and against the Et caetera Oath and the Bishops and Convocation that were the formers of it but especially against the Lord Thomas Wentworth Lord Deputy of Ireland and Dr. Laud Archbishop of Canterbury as the evil Counsellers who were said to be the Cause of all These Speeches were many of them printed and greedily bought up throughout the Land especially the Lord Falklands the Lord Digbies Mr. Grimstones Mr. Pims Mr. Nath. Fiennes c. which greatly increased the Peoples Apprehension of their Danger and inclined them to think hardly of the King's Proceedings but especially of the Bishops Particular Articles of Accusation were brought in against the Lord Deputy the Archbishop the Judges Bishop Wren Bishop Pierce and divers others The Concord of this Parliament consisted not in the Unanimity of the Persons for they were of several Tempers as to Matters of Religion but in the Complication of the Interest of those Causes which they severally did most concern themselves in For as the King had at once imposed the Ship-money on the Common-wealth and permitted the Bishops to impose upon the Church their displeasing Articles and bowing towards the Altar and the Book for Dancing on the Lord's Day and the Liturgy on Scotland c. and to Suspend or Silence abundance of Ministers that were conformable for want of this Super-canonical Conformity so accordingly the Parliament consisted of two sorts of Men who by the Conjunction of these Causes were united in their Votes and Endeavours for a Reformation One Party made no great matter of these Alterations in the Church but they said That if Parliaments were once down and our Propriety gone and Arbitrary Government set up and Law subjected to the Prince's Will we were then all Slaves and this they made a thing intolerable for the remedying of which they said every true English Man could think no price to dear These the People called Good Commonwealth's Men. The other sort were the more Religious Men who were also sensible of all these things but were much more sensible of the Interest of Religion and these most inveyed against the Innovations in the
of Fact was false by which they proved me so vile a Person yet I was the less careful so to clear my self as I might because I take it to be a thing as justifiable as to eat Bread if I had taken the Sequestration because the man 's own Fundamental Right as it was a thing Consecrated to God was null he being so insufficient as not to be owned for a Minister As I have great reason by all the trial I made of him to think that he understood not the Substance of Religion the common Catechism or Creed so he was unable to teach the People the very Substantials of Christianity Once a quarter he scrapt a â—ew words together which he so said over as to move pity in his Auditors but woe to the People that have no other Pastor then such as he And God's Right being the first in Dedicated Things and the Law also annexing them to the Office for the Work 's sake and for the sake of the Peoples Souls he that cannot at all do the Work and so is uncapable of the Office can have no Title to the Place and Maintenance And I cannot believe that the Peoples Souls must be all untaught and sacrificed to his pretended Legal Right And another Pastor they were not like to have without the Maintenance unless they could have got one that had an Estate of his own and would go on warfare at his own Charges or could live without Food and Raiment for the Peoples Poverty disabled them from maintaining him 〈◊〉 it had been but a Physician 's or Surgeon's Place in an Hospital which a meer 〈◊〉 had got for his life I think to let the People perish for fear of dispossessing him of his Place and Pay had been to be righteous over much and charitable over little And the fifth part was allowed them for their Wives though they did nothing for it And yet this ignorant man was not dispossest by force but by the Power then in possession even by Parliamentary Power when the Lords who are the highest Judicture sate as well as the Commons by the King 's â—aw And he was cast out on Articles sworn for Insufficiency and Scandal And yet this was done by others before I came near them And must the place be void of a Teacher because the Parliament would not give the Maintenance to a man that knew not what the Work of a Pastor was § 129. Besides this ignorant Vicar there was a Chappel in the Parish where was an old Curate as ignorant as he that had long lived upon Ten pound a year and unlawful Marriages and was a Drunkard and a Railer and the Scorn of the Country I know not how to keep him from reading for I judged it a Sin to tolerate him in any Sacred Office I got an Augmentation for the Place and got an honest Preacher to instruct them and let this scandalous Fellow keep his former Stipend of Ten pound for nothing and yet could never keep him from forcing himself upon the People to read nor from unlawful Marriages till a little before Death did call him to his account I have Examined him about the familiar Points of Religion and he could not say â—alf so much to me as I have heard a child say And these two in this Parish were not all In one of the next Parishes called The Rock there were two Chappels where the poor ignorant Curate of one got his living with cutting Faggots and the other with making Ropes Their Abilities being answerable to their Studies and Employments § 130. In my Labours at Kidderminster after my return I did all under languishing Weakness being seldom an hour free from pain Of which I shall give a brief Account together as an addition to the general one foregoing that I may not be oft upon it mentioning only some of those passages in which God's Mercy most affected me Many a time have I been brought very low and received the Stentence of Death in my self when my poor honest praying Neighbours have met and upon their Fasting and earnest Prayers I have been recovered Once when I had continued weak three Weeks and was unable to go abroad the very day that they prayed for me being Good-Friday I recovered and was able to Preach and Administer the Sacrament the next Lord's Day and was better after it It being the first time that ever I administred it And ever after that whatever Weakness was upon me when I had after Preaching administred that Sacrament to many hundred People I was much revived and eased of my Infirmities Another time I had a Tumour rose on one of the Tonsills in my Throat white and hard like a Bone above the hardness of any Schyrrhous Tumour I feared a Cancer being it was round and like a Pease as it beginneth And when I had by the Physician 's Advise applied such Remedies as he thought fittest and it no whit altered but remained as hard as at the first at the end of about a quarter of a Year I was chek'd in Conscience that I had never publickly praised God particularly for any of the Deliverances which he had vouchsafed me And being speaking of God's Confirming our Belief of his Word by his fulfilling of Promises and hearing Prayers as it is published in the second part of my Saints Rest I annexed some thankful mention of my own Experiences and suddenly the Tumour vanished and no sign wherever it had been remained Nor did I either swallow it down or spit it out nor knew what went with it to this Day Another time having read in Dr. Gerhard the admirable Effects of the swallowing of a Gold Bullet upon his own Father in a Case like mine I got a Gold Bullet and swallowed it between 20 s. and 30 s. weight and having taken it I knew not how to be delivered of it again I took Clysters and Purges for about three Weeks but nothing stirred it and a Gentleman having done the like the Bullet never came from it till he died and it was cut out But at last my Neighbours set a Day apart to fast and pray for me and I was freed from my Danger in the beginning of that day Another time being in Danger of an Aegilops and to be brief at divers times in divers Weaknesses Pains and Dangers I have been delivered upon earnest Prayers such as have assured me that God heareth such extemporate Prayers as many now deride And because I am speaking of Prayer I will add one Instance more or two of the Success of it for my Neighbours as well as for my self § 131. There liveth yet in Kidderminster a grave and honest Widow Mrs. Giles Widow to Mr. Giles of Astley one of the Committee of that County she had a Son of about 14 or 15 Years of Age Apprentice in Worcester to a Mercer he fell into a Feaver which being removed ended in a most violent Epilepsie The Physicians used all ordinary means for a
long time in vain so that she was fain to take him home to her to Kidderminster where the Physician of the Place and my self did what we could for him in vain he had 4 or 5 violent fits in a Day they were fain to hold a Key between his Teeth to save his Tongue At last the People of the Town at her Request kept a Day of Fasting and Prayer at her House and the second day as I remember he was suddenly cured and never had a Fit since to this Day but some little Weakness of his Head sometimes He is now an Apothecary in Wolverhampton § 132. Another Instance Rich. Cook of Kinver a Mercer an ancient sober Godly Man being desirous to live at Kidderminster took the next House to mine The House proved so secretly crackt and Ruinous that he was afraid it would undo him to repair it This seized him with a Trouble on his Conscience whether he had done well to remove from Kinver where he had been long a comfortable Neighbour to old Mr. Crosse To revive his Spirits he drank much hot Waters which inflamed his Blood and so from Melancholy he fell quite Mad. We were forced by the Wars to leave him but his Wife procured what means she could but all in vain When he had continued thus four Years the excellentest skilful Men at that Disease undertook him and did what they could but all in vain He had exceeding Quantities of Blood taken from him Some that had seen the Success would have set upon Fasting and Praying for him in his Presence But I discouraged them as thinking it a tempting carnal Men to contemn Prayer when they saw it unsuccessful and I thought they had no cause to expect a Miracle I had no hope of his Cure because it was natural or heridatory to him his Father having much about his Age fallen Mad before him and never recovered When he had continued in this sad Case about ten or twelve Years some of these Men would not be dissuaded but would Fast and Pray at his House with great importunity and many Months they continued it once a Fortnight or thereabouts and he was never the better But at last he sensibly began to amend and is now as well almost as ever he was before and so hath continued for a considerable time § 133. I the rather mentioned these Passages of the Force of Prayer because being not one in any of them my self nor being present with them there is no matter of appearing Ostentation they being a few poor humble Weavers and other Tradesmen only and no Minister with them whose Prayers God hath thus frequently heard for others and for me though at this present some of the Chief of them lye in Prison only for praying and singing Psalms and repeating Sermons together when they come from the Publick Congregation And now I return to the Recital of my own Infirmities After abundance of Distempers and Languishings I fell at last into a Flux Hepaticus and after that into manifold other Dangers successively too long to be recited from all which upon earnest prayer I was delivered Once riding upon a great hot-metled Horse as I stood on a sidelong Pavement in Worcester the Horse reared up and both his hinder Feet slipt from under him so that the full Weight of the Body of the Horse fell upon my Leg which yet was not broken but only bruised when considering the Place the Stones the Manner of the Fall it was a Wonder that my Leg was not broken all to Pieces Another time as I sat in my Study the Weight of my greatest Folio Books brake down three or four of the highest Shelves when I sat close under them and they fell down on every side me and not one of them hit me save one upon the Arm whereas the Place the Weight and greatness of the Books was such and my Head just under them that it was a Wonder they had not beaten out my Brains one of the Shelves right over my Head having the six Volumes of Dr. Walton's Oriental Bible and all Austin's Works and the Bibliotheca Patrum and Marlorate c. An other time I had such a Fall from an high Place without much hurt which should I describe it it would seem a Wonder that my Brains were whole All these I mention as obliged to record the Mercies of my great Preserver to his Praise and Glory § 134. At last my Weakness was grown so great that I was necessitated to use Breast Milk four Months together and as much longer or more I remained somewhat repaired But then I fell into a Disease in my Eyes almost incredible I had near every Day for one Year and every second Day for another Year a fresh Macula commonly called a Pearl in one Eye besides very many in the other the first that I had continued divers Weeks till by the ordinary Method of Cure I had almost lost my Eye At last I found that Honey alone or with other things six or seven times a Day applied constantly discussed and cured it in one Day and the next Night in my Sleep another still came a spurious Opthalmy going before and leaving the Macula behind it And I found it came from the extreme thinness of the Blood with the extreme Laxity of the debilitated Vessels and the Fatulency pumping up the Matter Thus I continued two Years curing the Spot one Day and finding it still returned the next Morning so that I had about three hundred Pearls in those two Years and though for the first Month I could neither read nor endure the Light yet the rest of the time I went on with my Studies though not without Pain and much Disturbance No Purging nor outward Applications nor other Medicines would Prevent the Return of it till at two Years end I wrote to Dr. G. Bates for his Advice The Humidities of my Stomach at the same time tasting like boiled Vinegar or Vitrial he prescribed me the use of Chalk in Substance a spoonful shaved in a convenient Liquor which powerfully precipitateth and dulcifieth acid Humours and also hath a harmless corroborating Astriction like Magisterial of Corall or Crabs Eyes the use of this gave a check to my Distemper so that my Spots came seldomer than before At last I had a Conceit of my own that two Plants which I had never made trial of would prove accomodate to my Infirmity Heath and Sage as being very drying and astringent without any Acrimony I boiled much of them in my Beer instead of Hops and drank no other When I had used it a Month my Eyes were cured and all my tormenting Tooth-aches and such other Maladies Being desirous to know which of the two Hearbs it was which I was most beholden to I tryed the Heath alone one time and the Sage alone anotherwhile and I found it was the Sage much more than the Heath which did the Cure whereupon I have used it now this ten
Years and through God's great Mercy I never had a Spot more for many Years nor many since at all Also these other Effects have followed it 1. It easeth my Headach 2. I have no other Remedy for my terrible Toothach inward or outward that will serve nor did this ever fail me if it hath had but twelve or twenty hours to work 3. Whereas before I could endure no strong Drink but was fain to drink very small Beer or Iulep Alexande and a Spoonful of Wine would have disturbed me a Fortnight with Ophthalmies Toothaches c. since I used Sage I can bear the strongest Beer so I disuse not my Medicine the while 4. The vitriolate cutting Acidity of my Stomach is more dulcified than I could possibly have believed it would be In a Word God hath made this Herb do more for me not for Cure but for Ease than all the Medicines that ever I used from all Physitians in my Life So that though still I am very seldom without pain yet my Languishings and Pains have been much less these last ten Years than long before How it doth all this I am not certain but I suppose principally by its great Astriction mightily corroborating the relaxed Stomach and Vessels and Brain and by Astriction of the relaxed Vein doth hinder the Motion and Shedding abroad of the corrupted Blood they contain And also I am sure it mightily precipitateth and taketh off Acidities The way I use it is 1. Well boiled in the Wort in all my Beer 2. Well boiled in my Gruel for every Mornings Breakfast 3. Upon any special Necessity I take a Spoonful of the Powder of the Leaves dryed and mixed with two or three Parts of Sugar which is the Strongest way of all So that I find the Vertue is most in the terrene and salive Parts and not in any thing superficial and volatile For the Infusion and Ale made by Infusion doth me little Good nor the Conserve of the Flowers I have tried it on others and find no such marvelous Effects as on my self but least on the fat and strong and most on the lean old and weak and that have thin fluid Humours and laxity of Vessels and some inordinate Acrimony This I thought my self obliged to mention to the Praise of my heavenly Physician in Thankfulness for these ten Years Ease and to give some hint to others in my Case Though now through Age and constant Use this Herb doth less with me than at the first yet am I necessitated still to use it and quickly to return to it when I have omitted it After sixteen or seventeen Years benefit it now saileth me and I forsake it § 135. I shall next record to the Praise of my Redeemer the comfortable Employments and Successes which he vouchsafed me during my abode at Kiderminster under all these Weaknesses And 1. I will mention my Employment 2. My Successes And 3. Those Advantages by which under God it was procured in order 1. I preached before the Wars twice each Lord's Day but after the War but once and once every Thursday besides occasional Sermons Every Thursday Evening my Neighbours that were most desirous and had Opportunity met at my House and there one of them repeated the Sermon and afterwards they proposed what Doubts any of them had about the Sermon or any other Case of Conscience and I resolved their Doubts And last of all I caused sometimes one and sometimes another of them to Pray to exercise them and sometimes I prayed with them my self which beside singing a Psalm was all they did And once a Week also some of the younger sort who were not fit to pray in so great an Assembly met among a few more privately where they spent three Hours in Prayer together ever Saturday Night they met at some of their Houses to repeat the Sermon of the last Lord's Day and to pray and prepare themselves for the following Day Once in a few Weeks we had a Day of Humiliation on one Occasion or other Every Religious Woman that was safely Delivered instead of the old Feastings and Gossipings if they were able did keep a Day of Thanksgiving with some of their Neighbours with them praising God and singing Psalms and soberly Feasting together Two Days every Week my Assistant and I my self took 14 Families between us for private Catechising and Conference he going through the Parish and the Town coming to me I first heard them recite the Words of the Catechism and then examined them about the Sense and lastly urged them with all possible engaging Reason and Vehemency to answerable Affection and Practice If any of them were stalled through Ignorance or Bashfulness I forbore to press them any farther to Answers but made them Hearers and either examined others or turned all into Instruction and Exhortation But this I have opened more fully in my Reformed Paster I spent about an Hour with a Family and admitted no others to be present lest Bashfulness should make it burthensom or any should talk of the Weaknesses of others So that all the Afternoons on Mondays and Tuesdays I spent in this after I had begun it for it was many Years before I did attempt it And my Assistant spent the Morning of the same Days in the same Employment Before that I only catechised them in the Church and conferred with now and then one occasionally Besides all this I was forced five or six years by the Peoples Necessity to practise Physick A common Pleurisie happening one year and no Physician being near I was forced to advise them to save their Lives and I could not afterwards avoid the Importunity of the Town and Country round about And because I never once took a Penny of any one I was crowded with Patients so that almost Twenty would be at my Door at once and though God by more Success than I expected so long encouraged me yet at last I could endure it no longer partly because it hindred my other Studies and partly because the very fear of miscarrying and doing any one harm did make it an intollerable burden to me So that after some Years Practice I procured a godly diligent Physician to come and live in the Town and bound my self by Promise to practise no more unless in Consultation with him in case of any seeming necessity And so with that Answer I turned them all off and never medled with it more But all these my Labours except my private Conferences with the Families even preaching and preparing for it were but my Recreations and as it were the work of my spare hours For my Writings were my chiefest daily Labour which yet went the more slowly on that I never one hour had an Amanuensis to dictate to and specially because my Weakness took up so much of my time For all the Pains that my Infirmities ever brought upon me were never half so grievous an Affliction to me as the unavoidable loss of my time which
Journey-men from hand to mouth but only that they laboured not altogether so hard And it is the Poor that receive the glad Tidings of the Gospel and that are usually rich in faith and heirs of the heavenly riches which God hath promised to them that love him Iames 2. 5. Do not rich men oppress you and draw you before the Iudgment Seats As Mr. George Herbert saith in his Church Militant Gold and the Gospel never did agree Religion always sides with Poverty Usually the Rich are Proud and Obstinate and will not endure the due Conduct of the Ministry Let them be never so ignorant they must not be crost in their Conceits and Way and if they be they storm and raise Persecution upon it or at least draw away a Faction after them Let them be never so Guilty unless it be some swinish inexcusable Sin they will not endure to be told of it Their Gentility seemeth to allow them in the three or four Sins of Sodom Pride Fulness of Bread and Abundance of Idleness and not considering the Poor and Needy And their fulness and idleness tempt them to further Voluptuousness and Sensuality to Filthiness or to Time wasting needless kinds of Sports And they must not be crost in any of this Do but offer to Exercise Christ's Discipline upon any of these and tell them of their Faults alone and then before two or three and when they hear not tell the Church and you will make them hate both you and Discipline and say you affect a Domination and to trample upon your Superiours and are as proud as Popes Christ knew what he said when he said How hardly shall a Rich Man enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Even as a Camel through the Eye of a Needle But if a poor man be bad and hate both Piety and Reproof yet his opposition is not so fierce or so significant he maketh not so much ado nor engageth so many with him nor is so much regarded by the rest One Knight Sir R. C. which lived among us did more to hinder my greater Successes than a multitude of others could have done Though he was an old Man of great Courtship and Civility and very temperate as to Dyet Apparel and Sports and seldom would Swear any lowder than By his Troth c. and shewed me much Personal Reverence and Respect beyond my desert and we conversed together with Love and Familiarity yet having no relish of this Preciseness and Extemporary Praying and making so much ado for Heaven nor liking that which went beyond the pace of Saying the Common Prayer and also the Interest of himself and his Civil and Ecclesiastical Parties leading him to be ruled by Dr. Hammond his coming but once a day to Church on the Lord's days and his Abstaining from the Sacrament c. as if we kept not sufficiently to the old way and because we used not the Common Prayer Book when it would have caused us to be Sequestred did cause a great part of the Parish to follow him and do as he did when else our Success and Concord would have been much more happy than it was And yet Civility and yielding much beyond others of his Party sending his Family to be Catechized and personally Instructed did sway with the worst almost among us to do the like Indeed we had two other Persons of Quality that came from other places to live there and were truly and judiciously Religious who did much good Col. Iohn Bridges and at last Mrs. Hanmer For when the Rich are indeed Religious and overcome their Temptations as they may be supposed better than others because their Conquest is greater so they may do more good than others because their Talents are more But such comparatively are always few 28. Another thing that helped me was my not medling with Tythes or Worldly Business whereby I had my whole time except what Sickness deprived me of for my Duty and my Mind more free from Entanglements than else it would have been and also I escaped the offending of the People and contending by any Law Suits with them And I found also that Nature it self being Conscious of the Baseness of its Earthly Disposition doth think basely of those whom it discerneth to be Earthly and is forced to Reverence those whose Converse is supposed to be most with God and Heaven Three or Four of my Neighbours managed all those kind of Businesses of whom I never took Account and if any one denied to pay their Tythes if they were poor I ordered them to forgive it them After that I was constrained to let the Tythes be gathered as by my Title to save the Gatherers from Law-Suits But if they were able I ordered them to seek it by the Magistrate with the Damage and give both my Part and the Damages to the Poor for I resolved to have none of it my self that was recovered by Law and yet I could not tollerate the Sacriledge and Fraud of covetous Men But when they knew that this was the Rule I went by none of them would do the Poor so great a Kindness as to deny the Payment of their Tythes that were able And in my Family I had the Help of my Father and Mother in Law and the Benefit of a godly understanding faithful Servant an ancient Woman near Sixty Years old who eased me of all Care and laid out all my Money for House-keeping so that I never had one Hour's trouble about it nor ever took one Day 's Account of her for Fourteen Years together as being certain of her Fidelity Providence and Skill 29. And it much furthered my Success that I stayed still in this one Place near Two Years before the Wars and above Fourteen Years after for he that removeth oft from Place to Place may sow good Seed in many Places but is not like to see much Fruit in any unless some other skilful Hand shall follow him to water it It was a great Advantage to me to have almost all the Religious People of the Place of my own Instructing and Informing and that they were not formed into erroneous and factious Principles before and that I stayed to see them grown up to some Confirmedness and Maturity 30. Lastly Our Successes were enlarged beyond our own Congregations by the Lectures kept up round about To divers of them I went as oft as I was able and the Neighbour Ministers ofter than I especially Mr. Oasland of Bewdley who having a strong Body a zealous Spirit and an earnest Utterance went up and down Preaching from Place to Place with great Acceptance and Success But this Business also we contrived to be universally and orderly managed For besides the Lectures set up on Week-days fixedly in several Places we studied how to have it extend to every Place in the County that had need For you must understand that when the Parliament purged the Ministry they cast out the grosser sort of insufficient and scandalous ones
their own Infirmity nor yet the nature of Pastoral Government which ought to be Paternal and by Love nor do they know the way to win a Soul nor to maintain the Churches Peace 23. My Soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of the miserable World and more drawn out in desire of their Conversion than heretofore I was wont to look but little further than England in my Prayers as not considering the state of the rest of the World Or if I prayed for the Conversion of the Jews that was almost all But now as I better understand the Case of the World and the method of the Lord's Prayer so there is nothing in the World that lyeth so heavy upon my heart as the thought of the miserable Nations of the Earth It is the most astonishing part of all God's Providence to me that he so far forsaketh almost all the World and confineth his special Favour to so few That so small a part of the World hath the Profession of Christianity in comparison of Heathens Mahometans and other Infidels And that among professed Christians there are so few that are saved from gross Delusions and have but any competent Knowledge and that among those there are so few that are seriously Religious and truly set their hearts on Heaven I cannot be affected so much with the Calamities of my own Relations or the Land of my Nativity as with the Case of the Heathen Mahometan and ignorant Nations of the Earth No part of my Prayers are so deeply serious as that for the Conversion of the Infidel and Ungodly World that God's Name may be sanctified and his Kingdom come and his Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Nor was I ever before so sensible what a Plague the Division of Languages was which hindereth our speaking to them for their Conversion nor what a great Sin Tyranny is which keepeth out the Gospel from most of the Nations of the World Could we but go among Tartarians Turks and Heathens and speak their Language I should be but little troubled for the silencing of Eighteen hundred Ministers at once in England nor for all the rest that were cast out here and in Scotland and Ireland There being no Employment in the World so desirable in my Eyes as to labour for the winning of such miserable Souls which maketh me greatly honour Mr. Iohn Eliot the Apostle of the Indians in New-England and whoever else have laboured in such work 24. Yet am I not so much inclined to pass a peremptory Sentence of Damnation upon all that never heard of Christ having some more reason than I knew of before to think that God's dealing with such is much unknown to us And that the Ungodly here among us Christians are in a far worse Case than they 25. My Censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at first I then thought that their Errours in the Doctrines of Faith were their most dangerous Mistakes as in the Points of Merit Justification by Works Assurance of Salvation the Nature of Faith c. But now I am assured that their mis-expressions and mis-understanding us with our mistakings of them and inconvenient expressing our own Opinions hath made the difference in these Points to appear much greater than they are and that in some of them it is next to none at all But the great and unreconcilable Differences lye in their Church Tyranny and Usurpations and in their great Corruptions and Abasement of God's Worship together with their befriending of Ignorance and Vice At first I thought that Mr. Perkins well proved that a Papist cannot go beyond a Reprobate but now I doubt not but that God hath many sanctified Ones among them who have received the true Doctrine of Christianity so practically that their contradictory Errours prevail not against them to hinder their Love of God and their Salvation but that their Errours are like a conquerable Dose of Poyson which Nature doth overcome And I can never believe that a Man may not be saved by that Religion which doth but bring him to the true Love of God and to heavenly Mind and Life nor that God will ever cast a Soul into Hell that truly loveth him Also at first it would disgrace any Doctrine with me if I did but hear it called Popery and Antichristian but I have long learned to be more impartial and to dislike Men for bad Doctrine rather than the Doctrines for the Men and to know that Satan can use even the Names of Popery and Antichrist against a Truth 26. I am deeplier afflicted for the disagreements of Christians than I was when I was a younger Christian. Except the Case of the Infidel World nothing is so sad and grievous to my thoughts as the Case of the divided Churches And therefore I am more deeply sensible of the sinfulness of those Prelates and Pastors of the Churches who are the principal Cause of these Divisions O how many millions of Souls are kept by them in ignorance and ungodliness and deluded by Faction as if it were true Religion How is the Conversion of Infidels hindered by them and Christ and Religion heinously dishonoured The Contentions between the Greek Church and the Roman the Papists and the Protestants the Lutherans and the Calvinists have wofully hindered the Kingdom of Christ. 27. I have spent much of my Studies about Terms of Christian Concord and have over and over considered of the several ways which several sorts of Reconcilers have devised I have thought of the Papists way who think there will be no Union but by coming over wholly to their Church and I have found that it is neither Possible nor desirable I have thought and thought again of the way of the moderating Papists Cassander Grotius Balwin c. and of those that would have all reduced to the state of the Times of Gregory the First before the Division of the Greek and Latin Churches that the Pope might have his Primacy and govern all the Church by the Canons of the Councils with a Salvo to the Right of Kings and Patriarchs and Prelates and that the Doctrines and Worship which then were received might prevail And for my own part if I lived in such a state of the Church I would live peaceably as glad of Unity though lamenting the Corruption and Tyranny But I am fully assured that none of these are the true desirable Terms of Unity nor such as are ever like to procure an Universal Concord And I am as sure that the true Means and Terms of Concord are obvious and easie to an impartial willing mind And that these three Things alone would easily heal and unite all the Churches 1. That all Christian Princes and Governours take all the Coercive Power about Religion into their own hands though if Prelates and their Courts must be used as their Officers in exercising that Coercive Power so be it And that they make a difference between the approved
and the tolerated Churches and that they keep the Peace between these Churches and settle their several priviledges by a Law 2. That the Churches be accounted Tolerable who profess all that is in the Creed Lord's Prayer and Decalogue in Particular and generally all that they shall find to be revealed in the Word of God and hold Communion in Teaching Prayer Praises and the two Sacraments not obstinately preaching any Heresie contrary to the particular Articles which they profess nor seditiously disturbing the Publick Peace And that such Heretical Preaching and such Seditious unpeaceableness or notorious Wickedness of Life do forfeit their Toleration 3. And that those that are further Orthodox in those Particulars which Rulers think fit to impose upon their Subjects have their publick Maintenance and greater Encouragement Yea and this much is become neccessary but upon supposition that Men will still be so self-conceited and uncharitable as not to forbear their unnecessary Impositions Otherwise there would be found but very few who are Tolerable that are not also in their measure to be approved maintained and encouraged And if the Primitive Simplicity in Doctrine Government and Worship might serve turn for the Terms of the Churches Union and Communion all would be well without any more ado supposing that where Christian Magistrates are they keep the Peace and repress the Offenders and exercise all the Coercive Government And hereticks who will subscribe to the Christian Faith must not be punished because they will subscribe to no more but because they are proved to preach or promote Heresie contrary to the Faith which they profess 28. I am farther than ever I was from expecting great matters of Unity Splendor or Prosperity to the Church on Earth or that Saints should dream of a Kingdom of this World or slatter themselves with the Hopes of a Golden Age or reigning over the Ungodly till there be a new Heaven and a new Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness And on the contrary I am more apprehensive that Sufferings must be the Churches most ordinary Lot and Christians indeed must be self-denying Cross-bearers even where there are none but formal nominal Christians to be the Cross-makers And though ordnarily God would have Vicissitudes of Summer and Winter Day and Night that the Church may grow extensively in the Summer of Prosperity and intensively and radicatedly in the Winter of Adversity yet usually their Night is longer than their Day and that Dâ—y its self hath its Storms and Tempests For the Prognosticks are evident in their Causes 1. The Church will be still Imperfect and Sinful and will have those Diseases which need this bitter Remedy 2. Rich Men will be the Rulers of the World and Rich Men will be generally so far from true Godliness that they must come to Heaven as by Human Impossibilities as a Camel through a Needles Eye 3. The Ungodly will ever have an Enmity against the Image of God and he that is born of the Flesh will persecute him that was born after the Spirit and Brotherhood will not keep a Cain from killing an Abel who offereth a more acceptable Sacrifice than himself And the Guilty will still hate the Light and make a Prey to their Pride and Malice of a Conscionable Reprover 4. The Pastors will be still troubling the Church with their Pride and Avarice and Contentions and the worst will be seeking to be the Greatest and they that seek it are likest to attain it 5. He that is highest will be still imposing his Conceits upon those under him and Lording it over God's Heritage and with Diâ—trephes casting out the Brethren and ruling them by constraint and not as Volunteers 6. Those that are truly judicious will still comparatively be few and consequently the Troublers and Dividers will be the Multitude and a judicious Peace-maker and Reconciler will be neglected slighted or hated by both Extreams 7. The Tenour of the Gospel Predictions Precepts Promises and Threatnings are fitted to a People in a suffering State 8. And the Graces of God in a Believer are mostly sured to a State of Suffering 9. Christians must imitate Christ and suffer with him before they reign with him and his Kingdom was not of this World 10. The Observation of God's dealing hitherto with the Church in every Age confirmeth me and his befooling them that have dreamed of glorious Times It was such Dreams that transported the Munster Anabaptists and the Followers of David George in the Low Countries and Campanella and the Illuminati among the Papists and our English Anabaptists and other Fanaticks here both in the Army and the City and Country When they think the Golden Age is come they shew their Dreams in their extravagant Actions And as our Fifth Monarchy Men they are presently upon some unquiet rebellious Attempt to set up Christ in his Kingdom whether he will or not I remember how Abraham Scultetus in Curriculo Vitae suae confesseth the common Vanity of himself and other Protestants in Germany who seeing the Princes in England France Bohemia and many other Countrys to be all at once both Great and Wise and Friends to Reformation did presently expect the Golden Age But within one year either Death or Ruines of War or Back-slidings had exposed all their Expectations to Scorn and laid them lower than before 29. I do not lay so great a Stress upon the external Modes and Formes of Worship as many young Professors do I have suspected my self as perhaps the Reader may do that this is from a cooling and declining from my former Zeal though the truth is I never much complyed with Men of the Mind But I find that Iudgment and Charity are the Causes of it as for as I am able to discover I cannot be so narrow in my Principles of Church-Communion as many are that are so much for a Liturgy or so much against it so much for Ceremonies or so much against them that they can hold Communion with no Church that is not of their Mind and Way If I were among the Greeks the Lutherans the Independants yea the Anabaptists that own no Herisy nor set themselves against Charity and Peace I would hold sometimes occasional Communion with them as Christians if they will give me leave without forcing me to any sinful Subscription or Action Though my most usual Communion should be with that Society which I thought most agreeable to the Word of God if I were free to chuse I cannot be of their Opinion that think God will not accept him that prayeth by the Common-Prayer-Book and that such Forms are a self-invented Worship which God rejecteth Nor yet can I be of their Mind that say the like of extemporary Prayers 30. I am much less regardful of the Approbation of Man and set much lighter by Contempt or Applause than I did long ago I am oft suspicious that this is not only from the increase of Self-denial and Humility but partly from my being glutted and
4. Most Presbyters that I know do perform all Ecclesiastical Matters upon supposition of a Divine Direction and not upon the Command of Humane Powers Ad 9m. The Ordination of meer Presbyters is not null and the Presbyters so ordained now in England are true Presbyters as I am ready to maintain But wait for the Accuser's proof of the nullity Ad 10m. 1. This calls me to decide the Controversie about the late Wars which I find not either necessary or convenient for me to undertake 2. The like I must say of deciding the Legality of Inductions and Admissions 3. If a worthy Man be cast out had you rather that God's Worship were neglected and the People perished for lack of Teaching then any other Man should be set over them though one that had no hand in casting him out Must the People needs have him or none as long as he lives Was it so when Bishops were cast out heretofore by Emperours or Councils I think may take the Guidance of a destitute People so I hinder not a worthy Man from recovering his Right 4. I never desired that any should be Excluded but the Unworthy the Insufficient or Scandalous or grosly Negligent And I know but too few of the Ejected that are not such And this Question doth modestly pass over their Case or else I should have said somewhat more to the Matter Ad 11m. 1. It is a necessary Christian Duty to see that we do not the least Evil for our own safety And all God's Ordinances must be maintained as far as we can But as I before disclaimed the Arrogance of determining the Controversie about our Diocesan Episcopacy so I think not every Legal Right of the Church which it hath by Man's Law nor every thing in our Liturgy to be worthy so stiff a maintenance as to the loss of Life nor the loss of Peace Nor did the late King think so who would have let go so much But I think that they that did this carnally for Self-interest and Ends did grievously sin whether the thing it self were good or bad especially if they went against their Consciences 2. I think there is no unlawful Prayers or Service now offered to God in the Church ordinarily where I have had opportunity to know it And I think we pray for the same things in the main as we were wont to do and offer God the same Service And that Mr. Ball and others against the Separatists have sufficiently proved that it is no part of the Worship but an Accident of it-self indifferent that I use These Words or Those a Book or no Book a Form premeditated or not And no Separatist hath yet well answered them Ad 12m. Such as you described you can hardly know and therefore not knowingly scruple their Communion for a Man's ends and knowledge are out of your sight You can hardly tell who did this against Knowledge and Conscience carnally for Self interest But if you mean it of your ordinary Ministers and Congregations I am past doubt that you are Schismatical if not worse you avoid the Assemblies and Ordinances mentioned upon such Accusations and Suppositions And I shall much easier prove this than you will make good your Separation Ad 13m. Permitting you to suppose Orthodox and Episcoparian to be the same at present you may easily know that the Episcopal are not all of a Mind but differ I think much more among themselves than the moderate Episcopal and Presbyterians differ some maintaining that the Ordination of meer Presbyters is not null with divers the like things which the novel sort doth disclaim The old Episcopal Protestant may not only take a Cure of Souls now without any Contradiction to his Principles but may comfortably Associate with the peaceable Ministry of the Land and may not conscionably avoid it The Novel sort before mentioned ought to rectifie their mistakes and so to take up their duty but as they are I see not how they can do it in consistency with their Principles unless under the Jurisdiction of a Bishop Ad 14m. For the Point of the legality of the Liturgy you call me to determine Cases in Law which I find my self unfit for And for the Directory its Nature is according to its Name not to impose Words or Matter nor bind by human Authority but to direct Men how to understand God's Word concerning the Ordering of his Worship Now either it directeth us right or wrong If wrong we must not follow such Directions If right it 's no unlawful disturbance of the Churches Peace to obey God's Word upon their Direction Circumstances wherein some place most of their Government they very little meddle with And indeed I know but few that do much in the order of Worship eo Nomine because it is so in the Directory but because they think it most agreeable to God's Word or most tending to Concord as things now stand Would you have us avoid any Scripture or orderly Course meerly because it is expressed in the Directory And think you those are Ways of Peace Ad 15m. I think on the Credit of others that the Jewish Church had a Liturgy I am sure they had Forms of Praises and Prayer in some Cases I know Christ taught his Disciples the Lord's Prayer I will not determine whether as a Directory for Matter and Order or whether as a Form of Words to be used or when or how oft used I conjecture you regard the Judgment of Grotius who saith in Matt. 6. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In hunc Sensum Non enim praecipit Christus verba recitari quod nec legimus Apostolos fecisse quanquam id quoque fieri cum fructu potest sed materiam precum hinc promere i.e. Pray thus that is to this Sense For Christ doth not command the saying of the Words nor do we read that the Apostles did it though that also may profitably be done but hence to fetch the Matter of Prayer You know the Directory adviseth the use of the Words And how it was that Iohn taught his Disciples to pray I cannot tell nor will herein pretend my self wiser than I am The Example of the Primitive Church is never the more imitable for the Cessation of Persecution and its Example before is most to be regarded that being purest that is next the Fountain We are sure that the Church long used extemporate Prayers and its probable betimes some Forms withal I think they are strangely Dark and addicted to Extreams that think either that no Forms are lawful or that only prescribed or premiditated Forms are lawful And if you will condemn all publick extemporate Prayers you will err as grosly as they that will have no other Ad 16m. I know no necessity of any Godfather or Godmother beside the Parents unless you will call those so that in case of their necessary Absence are their Delegates Nor do I know that ordinarily among us any Dictates or Prayers are used that
call it self and such Men Holy Dare you read what I have written of their Holiness in my Key chap. 34. Detection 25. or procure them to answer that and the rest there 2. Are all that are Holy the Rule or Rulers to all others when you have conversed among the Papists one seven Years if Delusion leave you Reason and impartiality you will be more capable of comparing them with your own Parents and such as you lived amongst here and judging which were the more holy 3. As Catholick signifieth a Member of the Church Catholick or such is hold the Catholick Faith so other Churches are much more such than Rome As it signifieth the universal Church Rome is none such The same I say of Apostolick Those that are most exactly of the Apostolick Faith are to be called Apostolick but Woe to us if we were in that no better than Rome 14. You may see now what pitiful Grounds you have for flying into a Pest-house as a City of Refuge or for 〈◊〉 all the cleanest Rooms in the House of God and 〈◊〉 your self to that Room that hath the most leprous infected Persons in it as if it were the only Church of God And for Novelties O that the whole Case 〈◊〉 there be tried and let that Church that hath introduced most Novelties in Faith and Discipline and Worship be most rejected as unclean Were you impartial the several 〈◊〉 of our Religion might put that part of the Controversy 〈…〉 you For our Rule of Religion is only the Holy Scripture if you shew 〈◊〉 that we misunder stand it we shall renounce that misunderstanding but to misunderstand Scripture is to make a new Rule no more than to understand your Councils And you know the Scripture is no Novelty but the Eldest Your Rule is Councils and Papal Decrees which are new contradictory and endless and you never know when you have all and when your Faith is at its maturity and no more to be added under pretence of Determinations If you dare read my 24th 25th and 35th Decection in my Key you may see quickly who are the Novelties One chief Reason of my abhorring Popery is that I am absolutely certain of its Novelty Madam I must take the freedom to say That when your Priests dare neither Dispute in your hearing upon all the provoking offers that I made not yet will answer the Books that I have written nor yet give you leave to read them they have imprisoned your Soul in the partiality of a Sect and while you are so unfaithful to your self if you be miserable because you would not make use of the Remedy and deluded because you are resolved or obliged from coming into the Light your Friends will have an easier account to make for you before God than your self as having discharged their Duty when you wilfully refuse yours What you read formerly against Popery before you doubted or heard their Fallacies was as nothing I suppose for I do not think you observed or remember the stress of the Argumentation which you read We will have leave to pray for you though we cannot have leave to instruct you and God may hear us when you will not which I have the more hopes of because of the Piety of your Parents and the Prayers and Tears of a tender Mother poured out for you and your own well-meaning pious disposition I have known some such Piety bred among us carried by mistake into their Church but little initially bred there Though they pretend that Persons of Charity and the Spirit of God with us must go to them to receive it I would I knew whether you can say by true Experience I felt no true Love of God in my Soul before but as soon as I turned Papist I did and have now the Spirit of God and his Image which before I never had Sure the Change of an Opinion about your Pope and Church is one thing and the Renewing Grace and Love of God and Heavenly mindedness is another I fear not your Prayers bringing your Delusions and Idolatry in your Mother's Chamber as to her self while she walks uptightly with God Nothing that I find in your Manual or the Mass-Book will ever have that power For the Liberty of your Religion which you say you hope for on the Grounds of the King's Declaration I have no more to say but 1. That I never loved Cruelty in any and it hath increased my version to Popery that I still observed that lying and uncharitable cruelty have been the two Hands by which it makes such a bustle in the World 2. And that i◠Italy Spain and Austria Bavaria c. would grant Liberty to Protestants we should see more Equality in the Expectations of it here but if you get Dominion as well as Liberty it will be no Evidence of the Truth and Goodness of your Cause Our God our Rule our Hope our End and Portion are the same in the Inquisition Prison and Flames as in Prosperity We have a Kingdom that cannot be moved and Treasure that none can rob us of It is for that and not for Worldly Prosperity that we renounce all Sensuality Heresie Superstition Idolatry Tyranny and false Worship and desire in Pure and Spiritual Worship with Faith and Patience to wait for the Coming and Righteous Judgment of the Lord. Who with the Spirit of his Mouth and the brightness of his Coming will destroy that wicked One the Son of Perdition 2 Thess. 2. Madam I rest your Servant for and in the Truth of Christ Rich. Baxter London Ian. 29. 1660. Since the Writing of this I am informed that Mr. Iohnson is the Person that you would have had to Dispute for you and that did now and formerly Dispute with Dr. Gunning If so I like your Condition or Religion never the better for your denying it◠when you confessed he feared not any injury from me Our Religion is more a Friend to Truth For the honourable Lady Anne Lindsey at Calice This. § 87. When the King was received with the General Acclamation of his People the Expectations of Men were various according to their several Interests and Inducements Some plain and moderate Episcopal Men thought of Reconciliation and Union with the said Presbyterians yea and a Reward to the Presbyterians for bringing in the King The more Politick Men of the Diocesan way understood that upon the King's Return all the Laws that had been made in Nineteen Years viz. since his Father's departing from the Parliament were void and so that all their Ancient Power and Honour and Revenues would fall to them without any more ado and that they had nothing to do but to keep the Ministers and People in quietness and hopes till Time should fully do the work Some few Presbyterians thought the King would favour them as well as others for stirring up the Soldiers and City to restore him In London I found that Mr. Calamy for his Age and Political Understanding and
effectual with none but wicked Men and Hypocrites who dare Sin against their Consciences for fear of Men And is it worth so much ado to bring the Children of the Devil into your Church The third way of Efficacy is but to kill or banish all the Children of God that are not of your Opinion for it is they that dare not Sin against Conscience whatever they suffer And this is but such an Efficacy as the Spanish Inquisition and Queen Mary's Bonfires had to send those to God whom the World is not worthy of You know every Man that is true to his God and his Conscience will never do that which he taketh to be Sin till his Judgment is changed and therefore with such it can be no lower than Blood or Banishment or Imprisonment at least that is the Efficacy which you desire And if no such rigour be too much its pity the French that murthered 30000 or 40000 at their Bartholoâ—â—ew days or as Dr. Peter Moulin saith 100000 within a few Weeks and the Irish that murthered 200000 had not had a better Cause For they took the most effectual way of rigour But when God maketh Inquisition for the Blood of his Servants he will convince Men that such rigour was too much and that their Wrath did not fulfil his Righteousness You shew your Kindness to Men's praying in the Pulple without your Book Make good what you say that such Praying is of no great Antiquity and we will never contradict you more Or if we prove it not the Ancientest way of Praying in the Christian Church we will give you free leave to hang or banish us for not Subscribing to the Common Prayer Book which the Apostles used and which was imposed on the Church for some hundred years But it seems you think that we are beholden to meer Sufferance without Law or Canon for conceived Prayers How long then it will be suffered we know not if we must live by your Patience § 20. It seemeth that our Converse and yours much differ The most that we know or meet with had rather be without the Liturgy and you say That the People generally are well satisfied with it By this time they are of another Mind If it were so we take it for no great honour to it considering what the greater Number are in most places and of what Lives those Persons are of our Parishes and Acquaintance generally or for the most part who are for it Or what those are that are against it and whom for itsâ— sake you desire your effectual rigour may be exercised against The Lord prepare them to undergo it innocently § 21. Doth there need no more to be said for the Ceremonies How little will satisfie some Men's Consciences Lawful Authority hath in other Countreys cast out the same Bishops and Ceremonies which are here received Doth it follow that they are good in one Country and disorderly and undecent in another Or that our Authority only is infallible in judging of them Is not God's Worship perfect without our Ceremonies in its Integrals as well as its Essentials As for Circumstantials when you saw us allow of them you need not plead for them as against us But the Question is whether our Additions be not more then Circumstances § 22. We suppose that you give all to the Cross in Baptism which is necessary to a Humane Sacrament And this we are ready to try be just Dispute When you say that never was Moral Efficacy ascribed to them you seem to give up all your Cause for by denying this ascribed Efficacy you seem to grant them unlawful if it be so And if it be not so let us bear the blame of wronging them The informing and exciting the dull mind of Man in its duty to God is a Moral Effect from Moral Efficacy But the informing and exciting the dull Mind of Man in its Duty to God is an Effect ascribed to our Ceremonies Ergo a Moral Effect from Moral Efficacy is ascribed to our Ceremonies The major cannot be denied by any Man that knoweth what a Moral Effect and Efficacy is that which worketh not per modum Naturae in genere Causae efficientis naturalis only but per modum objecti vel in genere causae finalis upon the Mind of Man doth work morally but so do our Ceremonies Ergo sure the Arminians that deny all proper Physical Operations of God's Spirit as well as his Word and reduce all to Moral Efficacy will not say that Ceremonies have such a Physical Efficacy more than Moral And if not so the good Effects here mentioned can be from no lower Efficacy than Moral And the minor which must be denied is in the words of the Preface to the Common Prayer Book and therefore undeniable The Word of God it self worketh but moraliter proponendo objectum and so do our Ceremonies § 23. There is a great difference between Sacramental Ceremonies and meer Circumstances which the Reformed Churches keep These we confound not and could have wished you would not Our Cross in Baptism is A dedicating sign saith the Canon or transient Image made in token that this Child shall not be ashamed of Christ crucified but manly fight under his Banner against the Flesh the World and the Devil and continue Christ's faithful Servant and Soldier to his Lives end So that 1. It is a Dedicating Sign performed by the Minister and not by the Person himself as a bare Professing Sign is 2. It engageth the Party in a Relation to Christ as his Soldier and Servant 3. And in the Duties of this Relation against all our Enemies as the Sacramentum Militare doth a Soldier to his General and that in plainer and fuller words than are annexed to Baptism 4. And it is no other than the Covenant of Grace or of Christianity it self which this Sacrament of the Cross doth enter us into as Baptism also doth It is not made a part of Baptism nor called a Sacrament but as far as we can judge made essentially a Humane Sacrament adjoyned to Baptism The Reformed Churches which use the Cross we mean the Lutherans yet use it not in this manner § 24. This is but your unproved Assertion That the Fault was not in the Ceremonies but in the Contenders we are ready to prove the contrary but if it had been true how far are you from Paul's mind expressed Rom. 14. 15. and 1 Cor. 8. You will let your weak Brother perish and spare not so you can but charge the Fault on himself and lay Stumbling-blocks before him and then save him by your effectual rigour by Imprisonment or Punishment § 25. Those seem a few to you that seem many to us Had it been but one hundred such as Cartwright Amesius Bradshaw Parker Hildersham Dod Nicolls Langley Paget Hering Baynes Bates Davenport Hooker Wilson Cotton Norton Shephard Cobbet Word c. they had been enough to have grieved the Souls of many Thousand godly
hath been granted will be easilier granted again than that which was never granted before This Testimony is more worth than all our labour for it 2. The Ministers and People of the Land that were concerned in it had a Twelve months time by it in their Ministerial Liberty and Maintenance for this suspended the Execution of the old Laws which were in force against them till the new ones were made 3. We got which was a valuable benefit the Liberty in our Treaty to speak for our Cause under the protection of the King's Commission and justly to state our Differences which else would have been fasly stated to our prejudice and none might have contradicted them § 132. But for the fulfilling of it there was nothing at all done which the Declaration mentioneth save only this years Suspension of the Law against us And some Men were so violent at a distance in the Country that they indicted Ministers at the Assizes and Sessions notwithstanding the Declaration taking it for no Suspension of the Law which put us on many ungrateful Addresses to the King and the Lord Chancellour for their Deliverance For the Brethren complained to us from all Parts and thought it our Duty who had procured the Declaration to procure the Execution of it And when we petitioned for them they were commonly delivered from that Suffering But as to the Matter of Church-Government mentioned in the Declaration 1. The Power of Godliness hath been promoted as the Act of Uniformity and the Act against Conventicles and the Ejecting of 1800 Ministers at once and many Hundred before with much more to the same purpose express 2. The publick and private Exercises of Religion have been encouraged just as those two forementioned Acts express Of which to English-men I need not give an Exposition 3. Of the applying the Lord's Day wholly to holy Exercises without unnecessary Divertisements I have least to say because in these Times we expect only Liberty to do so our selves leaving all others to take their own way And through God's mercy we have liberty to meditate or pray in our Closets and to pray in our Families so there be not above four others present and to hear Common Prayer and Sermon too in Publick in those Parishes that have a Minister that can and will preach And if others think a Play or publick Games or Drinking or Ryoting to be necessary Divertisements they cannot constrain us to the like 4. That Clause of not permitting insufficient negligent scandalous Ministers for the word Non-resident could not pass I believe is executed according to the Judgment of the Executors for I suppose they take him that cannot discern the lawfulness of the Subscriptions Declarations and Practises of Conformity about Oaths Prelacy and Ceremonies to be more insufficient for the Ministry how learned and able otherwise soever than an ignorant Reader is And I suppose they take one that renounceth not the Obligations of the Vow and Covenant and Subscribeth not to Prelacy and Ceremonies to be more scandalous than a Drunkard or a Whoremonger and one that neglecteth any of these to be more negligent than he that neither preacheth to his Flock nor personally instructeth them § 133. As to the Appointment of such a number of Suffragan Bishops in every Diocess as is necessary to the due performance of the Work there was never a one appointed in any one Diocess in the Land that ever I heard of but yet this may be thus far excused that the Parliament having done so much of the Work of Church Discipline themselves as to cast out 1800 of us at once there was the less need of Suffragans afterwards and the Bishops themselves were sufficient to cast out or keep out the rest if ever any such more as we should seek to get into the Ministry § 134. That no Bishop shall ordain or exercise any part of Iurisdiction c. without the Advice and Assistance of the Presbyters may be performed for ought I know for perhaps the Bishop or Chancellor hath the Advice of his Chaplain in private to do it himself and I believe many of his Presbyters assist him by their Information telling him who they be that scruple Ceremonies and who meet in private to Worship God and what nonconformable Ministers presume to preach the Gospel § 135. That no Lay Chancellor Commissaries or Officials as such shall excommunicate absolve c. may for ought I know be fulfilled For though they do it Familiarly as they did before and few Countries have not some that are excommunicated by them for not receiving the Sacrament against their Consciences or some such Matter Yet whether they do it as such or in any other unknown Capacity is more than a Stander-by can tell and they say that when it comes to the Sentence of Excommunication some of them use a Priest pro Formâ § 136. Nor did I ever yet hear of an Archdeacon who exercised his Iurisdiction by the Advice and Assistance of six Ministers chosen as is there mentioned p. 11. § 137. Nor did I ever hear that an equal Number to the Canons and Prebends were annually or ever once chosen in any one Diocess by the Vote of the Presbyters to be always assisting to the Bishop in all Church-censures c. But indeed the Suffragans did never exercise their Iurisdiction without them because such Suffragans never were § 138. Nor did I ever hear that the Ministers Consent was desired for the Confirming of any in his Parish nor of any other than the old way of Confirmation that is for any that will run into the Church though never so unknown to kneel down and have the few Words mentioned in the Liturgy said with the Bishop's Hand on his Head § 139. Nor did I yet ever hear of any one who before he was admitted to the Sacrament was called to any other credible Profession of Faith and Promise of Obedience than to stand up at the Creed or to be present at the Common-Prayer Nor of refussing Scandalous Offenders till they have openly declared themselves to have truly repented and amended their former naughty Lives But I have oft heard them threatned for not receiving § 140. Much less did I ever hear of any such thing as a Rural Dean with his Neighbour-Minister meeting monthly or ever once for any of those excellent Works there mentioned Nor of any Attempt of such a thing § 141. As for the Bishop's not using Arbitrary Power but according to the known Law of the Land I suppose they take the Canons to be the Law of the Land or according to it which other Men never dream'd of that desired that Provision § 142. And whether ever the Alterations mentioned were made of the Liturgy and the additional Forms in Scripture Phrase suited to the Nature of the several Parts of Worship you may know by perusing it and by that which here followeth § 143. Yet I think
the rest might not be unintelligible and the whole defective 6. I put in the Forms and Order of Discipline partly because else we should never have had Opportunity therein to express our Minds and partly because indeed it belongeth to the Integrity of the Work and to shew the difference between their kind of Discipline in Chancellors Courts and ours by Pastors in Christian Congregations 7. Note that the method of the Litany and general Prayers is according to the Direction of the Lord's Prayer of which and the Ten Commandments it is a Commentary The first Commandment falleth in with the Preface and the three first Petitions of the Lord's Prayer All the other Commandments with the Evangelical Precepts come in under the third Petition Thy Will be done and then I proceeded to the other three Petitions and the Conclusion Doubtless the Lord's Prayer is the most perfect method for universal Prayer or holy Desires that can be possibly invented § 174. When I brought my Draught to the Brethren I found them but entring on their Work of Exceptions against the Common-Prayer and so I was fain to lay by mine above a Fortnight longer till their work was done In which divers of them took their Parts The chief Actors in that part were Dr. Reignolds Dr. Wallis Mr. Calamy Mr. Newcomen Dr. Bates Mr. Clarke Dr. Iacomb c. Dr. Horton never came among us at all nor Dr. Tuckney alledging his backwardness to speak though he had been the Doctor of the Chair in Cambridge nor Dr. Lightfoot but once or twice nor Mr. Woodbridge but twice or thrice dwelling far off Mr. Clarke brought in that large Enumeration of Corruptions in the Liturgy recited in the Abridgment of the Lincolnshire Ministers but it was refused because we would be as little querulous as possible lest it should offend and hinder our desired Accommodation and what Passages soever seemed to make the Common-Prayer-Book odious or savour of Spleen and Passion they did reject whoever offered them My principal Business was to keep out such Accusations as would not bear weight and to repress the Opinions of one of the Brethren who came from far and so came not till late among us who was absolutely against all parts of the Common-Prayer because they had been used by Papists to Idolatry And I drew up such Faults as in perusing the Common-Prayer-Book it self did occur to me and which were they which I most disliked in the Forms being not so much offended with some other things as some others were But the Brethren reduced it to a few brief Exceptions in general and would not by so particular an Enumeration of Faults provoke those that we had to do with which I misliked not But from the begining I told them that I was not of their Mind who charged the Common-Prayer with false Doctrine or Idolatry or false Worship in the Matter or Substance nor that took it to be a Worship which a Christian might not lawfully join in when he had not Liberty and Ability for better And that I always took the Faults of the Common Prayer to be chiefly Disorder and Defectiveness and so that it was a true Worship though imperfect and Imperfection was the Charge that we had against it considered as distinct from the Ceremonies and Discipline I looked at it as at the Prayers of many a weak Christian that I have heard who prayed with Disorder and Repetitions and unfit Expressions I would not prefer such a weak Christian in Prayer before a better but yet if I separated from such an one or thought it unlawful to join with him I should be sinfully Curious and Uncharitable And I think this was the Mind of all our Brethren save one as well as mine And old Mr. Ash hath often told us that this was the Mind of the old Nonconformists and that he hath often heard some weak Ministers so disorderly in Prayer especially in Baptism and the Lord's Supper that he could have wish'd that they would rather use the Common-Prayer Yet when we desired the Reformation of it especially at a time when the Peoples Hearts were so much set against it I thought it best to open the true Disorders that they might be reformed The Paper which I offered and we laid by lest it should offend them was this following The Exceptions against the Common-Prayer which I offered the Brethren when they were drawing up theirs The Common-Prayer-Book is guilty of great Defectiveness Disorder and vain Repetitions and therefore unfit to be the common imposed Frame of Worship to the God of Order without Amendment when we may do it 1. ORDER requireth that we begin with Reverent Prayer to God for his Assistance and Acceptance which is not done 2. That the Creed and Decalogue containing the Faith in which we profess to assemble for God's Worship and the Law which we have broken by our Sins should go before the Confession and Absolution or at least before the Praises of the Church which they do not 3. The Confession omitteth not only Original Sin but all actual Sin as specified by the particular Commandments violated and almost all the Aggravatious of those Sins and instead thereof it containeth only the repeated Confession that we have erred and strayed from God's ways That we have followed the Devises and Desires of our Hearts That we have offended against his Laws That we have left undone those things that we ought to have done c. which is but to say We have sinned by Omission and Commission Whereas Confession being the Expression of Repentance should be more particular as Repentance it self should be 4. When we have craved help for God's Prayers before we come to them we abruptly put in the Petition for speedy Deliverance O God make speed to save us O Lord make haste to help us without any Intimation of the Danger that we desire deliverance from and without any other Petition conjoined 5. It is disorderly in the Manner to sing the Scripture in a plain Tune after the manner of reading 6. The Lord be with you And with thy Spirit being Petitions for Divine Assistance come in abruptly in the midst or near the end of Morning Prayer And Let us Pray is adjoined when we were before in Prayer 7. Lord have Mercy upon us Christ have Mercy upon us Lord have Mercy upon us seemeth an affected Tautologie without any special Cause or Order here And the Lord's Prayer is annexed that was before recited And yet the next Words are again but a Repetition of the foresaid oft repeated General O Lord shew they Mercy upon us 8. The Prayer for the King O Lord save the King is without any Order put between the foresaid Petition and another General Request only for Audience And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee 9. The second Collect is intitled for Peace and hath not a Word in it of Petition for Peace but only for Defence in Assaults of Enemies and
that we may not fear their Power And the Prefaces In knowledge of whom standeth our eternal Life and whose Service is perfect Freedom have no more evident respect to a Petition for Peace than to any other And the Prayer it self comes in disorderly while many Prayers or Petitions are omitted which according both to the method of the Lord's Prayer and the Nature of the things should go before 10. The third Collect intituled for Grace is disorderly in that it followeth that for Peace which belongs to the last Petition of the Lord's Prayer and in that in the Conclusion of Morning Prayer we begin to beg the Mercies for the Day And it is defective in that it is but a General Request for defence from Sin and Danger And thus the main parts of Prayer according to the Rule of the Lord's Prayer and our common Necessities are omitted as may be seen by comparing our Forms with these 11. Most of our Necessities are passed over in the like defective Generals also in the Evening Prayer 12. The Latany which should contain all the ordinary Petitions of the Church omitteth very many particulars as may appear in our offered Forms compared with it It were tedious to number the half of its omissions And it is exceeding disorderly following no just Rules of method Having begged pardon of our sins and deprecated vengeance it proceedeth to Evil in general and some few Sins in particular and thence to a more particular enumeration of Iudgments and thence to the recitation of the parts of that Work of our Redemption and thence to the deprecation of Iudgments again and thence to Prayers for the King and Magistrates and then for all Nations and then for Love and Obedience and then for several states of men and then for all men and for Enemies and then for the Fruits of the Earth and then for Repentance Forgiveness and Grace again and then turneth to Repetitions of the same Petitions for Pardon and Mercy and after the Lord's Prayer returneth to the same request again Next this in the midst of Prayer it repeateth Let us pray Next is a Prayer against Adversity and Persecutions which was done before and both here and through the rest of the Prayers the deprecation of bodily suffering hath very much too large a proportion while spirituals are too generally and briefly touched which is unbeseeming the Church of Christ which mindeth not the things of the flesh but of the spirit Rom. 8. 5 6 7. Next followeth a reduplicate Petition that God would arise and help us and deliver us with an interposed Argument from his Ancient Works which comes in without any reason or order and is the same that was before petitioned and seems to be fitted to some special distress or danger of the Church and yet mentioneth not that distress or danger and is to be used equally in the prosperity of the Church Next this followeth the Doxology as if we were concluding and then we go on to the same Requests so oft before repeated for deliverance from afflictions and sorrows though perhaps it be not a time of Affliction with us but of Joy and so it proceeds to ask forgiveness so often asked and then four time repears the Petition for Audience when we draw near an end and twice repeats the general Petition for Mercy Next this while we are praying we agains say Let us pray And then again pray against deserved Evils and for Holiness in general all out of any order and oft repeated while abundance of most weighty Particulars are never mentioned Next this the Prayer for the King and the Royal Family is again repeated which went before If that were the due place why should not our Petitions have been there put in together for them but the minds of the Church are thus tossed up and down like the Waves of the Sea from one thing to another and then to the first again without any regard to order in the presence of the God of Order Next this the Bishops and Curates are prayed for without the Parish Incumbent Presbyters or else it 's intimated that they are but the Bishops Curates or else they are called Bishops themselves and no Man can tell certainly which of these is the sence And the Preface would intimate to the People that it is some special great marvel for Bishops and Curates to have Grace And after all this there are no particular petitions for them according to the nature and necessity of their Work or of their Congregation but only this one General Request that they may have God's Grace and Blessing to please him Lastly before the Blessing is Chrystsostom's Prayer meerly for the granting of our Requests with two Petitions one for Knowledge the other for Life Eternal The following Prayers and Thanksgivings on particular extraordinary Occasions are with the Confession the Prayers for the King and the Church Militant the best composed of all the daily Common Prayers But that these Prayers and Thanksgivings are all placed after the Benediction is disorderly And though it 's most probable that yet it was intended they should go before it in use there is no such thing expressed in the Book And thus we see how unlike the Litany is to the Lord's Prayer and how far from all just Order which is a deformity that such Holy Works should not be guilty of 13. The like defectiveness and disorder is in the Communion Collects for the Day That for the first Sunday in Advent hath no Petition for any thing in this Life but the Generals To cast away the Works of Darkness and put on the Armour of Light That for the second Sunday in Advent is a very good Prayer viz. to learn and obey the Scripture but there is no more reason why it should be appropriate to that day than another or rather be a common Petition for all days The same is true of that for the third Sunday in Advent which begs no more but hearing our prayers and lightning our darkness As little reason is there for the appropriating that for the fourth Sunday in Advent to that day which is a General Request that God would come among us and succeur us and speedily deliver us who through our sin and wickedness are sore let and hindered without acquainting us what the wickedness or the lett is which is meant The Prayer on Christmas-day determineth that Christ was born as on that day when the world of learned Men are not agreed of the Month or Year much less the Day And the same Prayer is appointed for divers days after so that if by day is meant any other space of time than a Natural Day then it is no fitter for Christmas day than another If it mean a Natural Day then it is an untruth on the following days in the sence of the Imposers The Collect on St. Stephen's day hath but one Petition That on St. Iohn's day hath nothing in it proper to him
but in general that what we ask may be granted the four and twentieth for forgiveness the five and twentieth for Good works all which are without any special reason both appropriated to the several days and placed where they stand in the order of our Requests The Petition on St. Thomas's day for so perfect a Faith as shall never be reproved in the sight of God is of doubtful conveniency because contrary to the Scripture prediction of the event In the Collect on St. Iohn Baptist's day the preaching of Penance is a word of a more misleading tendency as now used than the preaching of Repentance 14. The Lord's Prayer is a third time to be recited before the Communion when yet as it is a Rule of Prayer as to order it is forsaken through the Book The next Prayer for loving and magnifying God's Name is most necessary but there out of order The Commandments come in also out of order without any special reason of connexion to what goeth before and followeth So do the following Prayers for the King which yet in themselves are very good And the Epistle and Gospel and Creed The Churchwardens are not directed to an orderly collection for the Poor In the Sentences exciting to remember the Poor the Scriptures and Apochryphal Passages of Tobit are confounded without any note of sufficient distinction as if we would have the People believe that Tobit is Canonical Scripture The Prayer for the Church Militant one of the best is very defective having no Petition for the Church but those for Truth Unity Love and Concord The Exhortation biddeth all and intreateth them for the Lord Jesus sake even the worst and most unprepared that be present to come to the Lord's Table as invited thereto by God himself which is a great wrong to him and them And it misinterpreteth the Parable Matth. 22. to which it seemeth plainly to allude which speaketh not of our coming to the Sacrament but of our coming to Christ and into his Church Though indeed the Exhortation is very good if it were made at a sufficient distance before the Sacrament that they might have time of Preparation The next Admonition against unworthy Receiving is very good but impertinent and unseasonable while it perswadeth them to come to the Minister for Advice in order to the Sacrament which is perfectly to be administred It is a disorder for one of the Communicants to be invited to be the Mouth of the rest in Confession of Prayer If the People may pro tempore make a Minister why not for continuance and so the Common Prayer Book is for the Principles of Popular Separatists The proper Prefaces for Christmas-day and Whitsunday repeat the word at this day which is either a falshood or impertinent and non-intelligible to the most It is a disorder in the next words to begin in a Prayer and end in a Narrative It is disorderly for the Minister to receive the Sacrament in both kinds himself before the other Ministers or People do receive it in either There is no sufficient Explication of the Nature and Use of the Sacrament premised which is the greater defect where the Sacrament is allowed to be administred without a Sermon and where so many of the People never learned the Catechism or understood what a Sacrament is The Exhortation is too defective for the exciting the Faith and other Graces of the Communicants which yet we can bear with if the Minister may be allowed himself to speak such other quickening Words of Exhortation as he findeth suitable to the temper of the Communicants The Confession of Sin before the Communion is too general and defective The Consecration Commemoration and Delivery and Participation are not distinctly enough performed Sometime the Minister is to kneel at Prayer and sometime to stand up without any special reason given for it It were more orderly to make the Delivery distinct in Scripture words and not to confound Prayer and the Delivery together It is more suitable to Christ's Example that the Words of Delivery be ordinarily in the Plural Number and to the Church or to many at once Take ye Eat ye Drink ye than in the Singular Number recited to each one It is disorderly for the People to repeat every Petition of the following Prayers after the Minister That the Hymn be sung in Prose seemeth disorderly The Collects appointed to be said after the Offertory have no reason of order or connexion with what went before or followeth after The first of them beggs Assistance in these our Supplications and Prayers which should rather be towards the beginning than when we are concluding And it beggs but the oft repeated benefit of Defence against the Changes and as it is inconveniently called the Chances of this Life And another of them again asketh those things which we dare not ask But it is the greatest disorder of all that every Parishioner shall Communicate at least thrice in the year whether he be fit or unfit and be forced to it In Baptism it is the greatest disorder that Ministers must be forced though against their Consciences to baptize all Children without Exception the Children of Atheists Infidels Hereticks unbaptized Persons Excommunicate Persons or Impenitent Fornicators or such like It is disorderly that the Parents are neither of them required ordinarily to be present and present their Child to Baptism but it is left to Godfathers and Godmothers that have no power to consent for them or enter them into the Covenant unless it be in the Parents name or they be Pro-parents taking the Child as their own And it frustrateth due Enquiry and Assistance when the Parents may choose whether they will come before to the Minister to be instructed about the Nature and Use of Baptism and may choose whether they will let him know of it till the Night or Morning before The Exhortation before Baptism is very defective omitting many weighty Points So are the two Prayers before it where also it is inconveniently said That God by Christ's Baptism did sanctifie the Flood Jordan and all other Waters to the mystical washing away of Sin The ascribing of the Gift of the Holy Ghost to Infants by their Baptism as its ordinary Effect and necessary to their Regeneration is to bring an undetermined uncertain Opinion into our Liturgy The Arguments for Infant-Baptism are so defectively exprest as have tempted many into Anabaptism The third Prayer saith very little but what was said in one of those foregoing Sureties that have not the Parents power are unjustly required to promise in the Infant 's Name or the Infant by them And so it is a doubt whether many Infants have ever indeed been entred into the Covenant of God when they cannot be said to Promise or Covenant by Persons whom neither Nature or Scripture or any sufficient Authority hath enabled to that Office The Sureties are unjustly and irregularly required to profess present Actual Faith in the Infant 's name
Believers that the Covenant of God is made and not that we can find to all that that have such believing Sureties who are neither Parents nor Prâ—parents of the Child Ans. Repentance whereby they forsake sin and Faith whereby they stedfastly believe the Promises of God c.  20 Quest. Why then are Infants baptized when by reason of ther tender Age they cannot perform them  Ans. Yes they do perform by their Sureties who promise and vow them both in their Names  In the general we observe That the Doctrine of the Sacraments which was added upon the Conference at Hampton-Court is much more fully and particularly delivered than the other parts of the Catechism in short Answers fitted to the memories of Children and thereupon we offer it to be considered First Whether there should not be a more distinct and full Explication of the Creed the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer Secondly Whether it were no convenient to add what seems to be wanting somewhat particularly concerning the Nature of Faith of Repentance the two Covenants of Justification Sanctification Adoption and Regeneration Of Confirmation The last Rubrick before the Catechism  ANd that no Man shall think that any detriment shall come to Children by deferring of their Confirmation he shall know for truth that it is certain by God's Word that Children being baptized have all things necessary for their Salvation and be undoubtedly saved ALthough we charitably suppose the meaning of these words was only to exclude the necessity of any other Sacraments to baptized Infants yet these words are dangerous as to the misleading of the Vulgar and therefore we desire they may be expunged Rubrick after the Catechism  So soon as the Children can say in their Mother-tongue the Articles of the Faith the Lords Prayer and the Ten Commandments and can answer such other Questions of this short Catechism c. then shall they be brought to the Bishop c. and the Bishop shall Confirm them We conceive that it is not a sufficient qualification for Confirmation that Children be able memoriter to the repeat the Articles of the Faith commonly called the Apostles Creed the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments and to answer to some Questions of this short Catechism for it is often found that Children are able to do all this at four or five years old 2dly It crosses what is said in the third Reason of the first Rubrick before Confirmation concerning the usage of the Church in times past ordaining that Confirmation should be ministred unto them that were of perfect Age that they being instructed in the Christian Religion should openly profess their own Faith and promise to be obedient to the Will of God And therefore 3dly we desire that none may be Confirmed but according to his Majesty's Declaration viz. That Confirmation be rightly and solemnly performed by the Information and with the Consent of the Minister of the place Rubrick after the Catechirm  Then shall they be brought to the Bishop by one that shall be his Godfather or Godmother This seems to bring in another sort of Godfathers and Godmothers besides those made use of in Baptism and we see no need either of the one or the other The Prayer before the Imposition of Hands  Who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy Servants by Water and the Holy Ghost and hast given unto them the forgiveness of all their sins This supposeth that all the Children who are brought to be confirmed have the Spirit of Christ and the forgiveness of all their sins Whereas a great number of Children at that Age having committed many sins since their Baptism do shew no Evidence of serious Repentance or of any special Saving Grace And therefore this Confirmation if administred to such would be a perillous and gross Abuse Rubrick before the Imposition of Hands  Then the Bishop shall lay his hand on every Child severally This seems to put a higher value upon Confirmation then upon Baptism or the Lord's Supper for according to the Rubrick and Order in the Common-Prayer-Book every Deacon may Baptize and every Minister may consecrate and administer the Lord's Supper but the Bishop only may Confirm The Prayer after Imposition of Hands  We make our humble Supplications unto thee for these Children upon whom after the Example of thy Holy Apostles we have laid our Hands to certifie them by this Sign of thy Favour and gracious Goodness towards them We desire that the Practice of the Apostles may not be alledged as a ground of this Imposition of Hands for the Confirmation of Children both because the Apostles did never use it in that Case as also because the Articles of the Church of England declare it to be a corrupt imitation of the Apostles practice Acts 25. We desire that Imposition of Hands may not be made as here it is a Sign to certifie Children of God's Grace and Favour towards them because this seems to speak it a Sacrament and is contrary to that fore-mentioned 25th Article which saith That Confirmation hath no visible Sign appointed by God The last Rubrick after Confirmation We desire that Confirmation may not be made so necessary to the Holy Communion as that none should be admitted to it unless they be confirmed None shall be admitted to the holy Communion until such time as he can say the Catechism and be confirmed  Of the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony THe Man shall give the Woman a Ring c. shall surely perform and keep the Uow and Covenant betwixt them made whereof this Ring given and received is a Token and Pledge c. SEeing this Ceremony of the Ring in Marriage is made necessary to it and a significant Sign of the Vow and Covenant betwixt the Parties and Romish Ritualists give such Reasons for the Use and Institution of the Ring as are either frivolous or superstitious It is desired that this Ceremony of the Ring in Marriage may be left indifferent to be used or forborn The Man shall say With my Body I thee worship This word worship being much altered in the Use of it since this Form was first drawn up We desire some other word may be used instead of it In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost These words being only used in Baptism and herein the Solemnization of Matrimony and in the Absolution of the Sick We desire it may be considered whether they should not be here omitted least they should seem to favour those who count Matrimony a Sacraâ—â—â— Till Death us depart This word depart is here improperly used Rubrick Exception Then the Minister or Clerk going to the Lords Table shall say or sing this Psalm We conceive this Change of Place and Posture mentioned in these two Rubricks is needless and therefore desire it may be omitted Next Rubrick  The Psalm ended and the Man and the Woman kneeling before the Lord's Table the Priest
medling with State Matâ—â— nor Secular Affairs and therefore well spoken of by all Only the Interest of the piece of the Long Parliament which ejected the rest and was called The Rump and cherished Cromwell till he pull'd them down also did cause them to persecute Mr. Nalton with many other London Ministers at the time when Mr. Love was beheaded by them for being true to the Covenant in endeavouring to restore the present King And then when good old Mr. Iackson Dr. Drake a very holy man Mr. Ienkins and many more of them were in the Tower Prisoners Mr. Nalton and Mr. Cawton were glad to fly into Holland where the latter died and the former lived to see himself and every one of those imprisoned Ministers with the rest of their Brethren all cast out and forbidden upon pain of Imprisonment and Banishment to preach the Gospel in the King's Dominions § 422. And as we were forbidden to preach so we were vigilantly watcht in private that we might not exhort one another or pray together and as I foretold them oft they would use us when they had silenced us every Meeting for Prayer was called a dangerous Meeting for Sedition or a Conventicle at least I will now give but one instance of their kindness to my self One Mr. Beale in Hatton-Garden having a Son his only Child and very towardly and hopeful who had been long sick of a dangerous Fever as I remember a Quartan and by relapse brought so low that the Physicians thought he would die desired a few Friends of whom I was one to meet at his House to pray for him and because it pleased God to hear our Prayers and that very night to restore him his Mother shortly after falling sick of a Fever we were desired to meet to pray for her Recovery the last day when she was near to Death Among those that were to be there it fell out through some other occasions that Dr. Bates and I did fail them and could not come But it was known at Westminster that we were appointed to be there Whereupon two Justices of Peace were procured from the distant parts of the Town one from Westminster and one from Clerkenwell to come with the Parliaments Serjeant at Arms to Apprehend us They came in the Evening when part of the Company were gone there were only a few of their Kindred there besides two or three Ministers to pray They came upon them into the Room where the Gentlewoman lay ready to die and drew the Curtains and took some of their Names but missing of their Prey returned disappointed What a joy would it have been to them that reproached us as Presbyterian seditious Schismaticks to have found but such an occasion as praying with a dying Woman to have laid us up in Prison Yet that same Week there was published a witty malicious Invective against the silenced Ministers in which it was affirmed that Dr. Bates and I were at Mr. Beal's House such a day keeping a Conventicle But the Lyar had so 〈◊〉 extraordinary modesty as within a day or two to print a second Edition in which those words so easily to be disproved were left out Such Eyes were every where then upon us § 423. Many holy excellent Ministers were about these times laid in the Jails in many Counties for private Meetings to preach and pray and some for venturing to preach publickly in Churches which had no Ministers for so many were cast out that all their Places could not presently be supplyed In Cheshire Mr. Cook of Chester was imprisoned who not long before had lain long a Prisoner in Southwark by Lambert's Faction for Delivering up Chester to Sir George Booth for the Restoring of the King In Somersetshire were imprisoned Mr. Norman of Bridgwater Mr. Allen of Taunton and other In Dorsetshire were imprisoned Mr. Francis Bampfield Mr. Peter Ince taken at a private Meeting in Shaftsbury Mr. Sacheverill and divers others In Dorchester Jail they preached to the People of the Town who came to them every day once and on the Lord's Day twice till at last the Jaylor was corrected and an Order made against Jaylors letting in People into the Prisons to hear The rest at last were released upon some Bonds given for their good Behaviour but Mr. Francis Bampfield abode in the Common Jail several years although he was all along against the Parliament War His Brother Mr. T. Bampfield was a Member of many Parliaments and Speaker of the Parliament in Richard Cromwell's time which the Army broke He was Recorder of Exeter and though he sequestred Recorder had Satisfaction from the City for his Place yet he succeeding him in time of Cromwell's Usurpation restored to the Poor of the City all that he had received in that place and perswaded Ministers to restore all that they received from Sequestrations in time of the Usurpation because it was not Law that gave it them Though they had but their Bread while they preached which was hardly restored He was chosen by 〈◊〉 Gentlemen of the West to carry their Remonstrance to encourage General Monk when he came in He is a Man of most exemplary Sincerity and Conscientiousness He never took the Covenant nor any other Oath in his Life till he was a Member of the Parliament that brought in the King and then he was put upon taking the Oath of Supremacy which I had much ado being my dear and much valued Friend to perswade him to so fearful was he of Oaths or any thing that was doubtful and like to sin Yet hath this prudent holy Man been laid in Jail as well as his Brother because having a worthy Minister Mr. Philips in his House he would set open his Doors and meet freely for preaching and prayer in his House forbidding none But though he and his Brother were the likest Men I knew in England successfully to have perswaded those that are contrary minded that it is unlawful for a Parliament to take up Arms to defend themselves or punish Manufactures against the Will and Word of the King yet this would not keep either of them out of Prison And so their endeavours for that work were stopt against their wills § 424. It is worthy the mentioning how God's strange Judgments about this time were turned by the Devil to his own advantage Most certainly abundance of real Prodigies and marvellous Works of God were done which surely he did not cause in vain But the over-fervent spirits of some Fanaticks Fifth-Monarchy-men caused them presently to take them up boldly with the Commentary of their own Applications and too hastily venting Matters of Common Report before they were tried they published at several times three Volumes of the History of these Prodigies in which there were divers lesser Matters magnified and some things which proved false And though upon strictest Examination both I and all Men are convinced that very many of the Things were true as the drying up of the River Derwent
429. And now came in the Peoples Trial as well as the Ministers While the Danger and Sufferings lay on the Ministers alone the People were very couragious and exhorted them to stand it out and Preach till they went to Prison But when it came to be their own Case they were as venturous till they were once Surprized and Imprisoned but then their Judgments were much altered and they that censured Ministers before as Cowardly because they preached not publickly whatever followed did now think that it was better to preach often in secret to a few than but once or twice in publick to many and that Secrecy was no sin when it tended to the furtherance of the Work of the Gospel and to the Churches Good Especially the Rich were as cautelous as the Ministers But yet their Meetings were so ordinary and so well known that it greatly tended to the Jailor's Commodity § 430. It was a great Strait that People were in especially that dwell near any busie Officer or malicious Enemy as who doth not Many durst not pray in their Families if above four Persons came in to dine with them In a Gentleman's House it is ordinary for more than four of Visitors Neighbours Messengers or one sort or other to be most or many days at Dinner with them and then many durst not go to Prayer and some durst scarce crave a Blessing on their Meat or give God thanks for it Some thought they might venture if they withdrew into another Room and left the Strangers by themselves But others said It is all one if they be but in the same House though out of hearing when it cometh to the Judgment of the Justices In London where the Houses are contiguous some thought if they were in several Houses and heard one another through the Wall or a Window it would avoid the Law But others said It is all in vain whilst the Justice is Judge whether it was a Meeting or no. Great Lawyers said If you come on a visit or business though you be present at Prayer or Sermon it is no breach of the Law because you met not on pretence of a Religious Exercise But those that tried them said Such Words are but Wind when the Justices come to judge you § 431. And here the Fanaticks called Quakers did greatly relieve the sober People for a time for they were so resolute and gloried in their Constancy and Sufferings that they assembled openly at the Bull and Mouth near Aldersgate and were dragged away daily to the Common Jail and yet desisted not but the rest came the next day nevertheless So that the Jail at Newgate was filled with them Abundance of them died in Prison and yet they continued their Assemblies still And the poor deluded Souls would sometimes meet only to sit still in Silence when as they said the Spirit did not speak And it was a great Question Whether this Silence was a Religious Exercise not allowed by the Liturgy c. And once upon some such Reasons as these when they were tried at the Sessions in order to a Banishment the Jury acquitted them but were grievously threatned for it After that another Jury did acquit them and some of them were fined and imprisoned for it But thus the Quakers so employed Sir R. B. and the other Searchers and Prosecutors that they had the less leisure to look after the Meetings of Soberer men which was much to their present ease § 432. And now the Divisions or rather the Censures of the Non-conforming People against their Ministers and one another began to increase which was long foreseen but could not be avoided and I that had incurred so much the displeasure of the Prelates and all their Party by pleading for the Peace of the Non-conformists did fall under more of their displeasure than any one man besides as far as I could learn And with me they joyned Dr. Bates because we went to the Publick Assemblies and also to the Common Prayer even to the beginning of it Not that they thought worse of us than of others but that they thought that our Example would do more harm For I must bear them witness that in the midst of all their Censures of my Judgment and Actions they never Censured my Affections and Intentions nor abated their Charitable Estimation of me in the main And of the leading Prelates I had so much favour in their hottest Indignation that they thought what I did against their Interest was only in obedience to my Conscience So that I see by experience that he that is impartially and sincerely for Truth and Peace and Piety against all Factions shall have his Honesty acknowledged by the several Factions whilst his Actions as cross to their Interest are detested Whereas he that joyneth with one of the Factions shall have both his Person and Actions condemned by the other though his Party may applaud both § 433. My Judgment was for the holding of Communion with Assemblies of both Parties and ordinarily I went to some Parish Church where I heard a Learned Minister that had not obtruded himself upon the People but was chosen by them and preached well as Dr. Wilkins Dr. Tillotson Mr. Nest c. and I joyned also in the Common Prayers of the Church And as oft else as I had fit opportunity I privately preached and prayed my self either with Independents or Presbyterians that desired me And I professed to all upon all occasions that though I justified not all things which they held or did in any of their Churches yet as long as they made not any Sin of mine a Condition of my Communion with them I would occasionally joyn with any true Church in publick or private so be it they preached not for Heresie nor against a holy and peaceable Life nor turned not their Strein to Sedition or uncharitable Reviling one another Even as I would hold occasional Communion with a Church of Lutherans or Greeks or Abassines if I passed through their Countreys Though caeteris paribus I preferred Publick Assemblies which have the Magistrates Countenance before Private yet I more preferred those that have pure Worship and Discipline and powerful Preaching before the scandalous undisciplined ignorant Churches of ignorant and formal lifeless Ministers And so far as I had my choice my most usual Communion should be with those Assemblies that I thought the best yet would I have occasional Communion with others as Members of the Catholick Church to shew my Catholick Communion with all the Body of Christ. Yea and my ordinary Communion should be with a Church that used the Common Prayer rather than with none or with a worse And the Lord's Day I would spend in Church Communion it being principally appointed to that end and not in any meer Family Worship or Meetings with a few Christians occasionally which met not as a Church This was my Resolution But the confidence of many on the other side was as great as mine
the same Justices saw that I was thus discharged they were not satisfied to have driven me from Acton but they make a new Mittimus by Counsel as for the same supposed Fault naming the Fourth of Iune as the Day on which I preached and yet not naming any Witness when the Act against Conventicles was expired long before And this Mittimus they put into an Officer's hands in London to bring me not to Clerkenwell but among the Thieves and Murderers to the common Jail at Newgate which was since the Fire which burnt down all the better Rooms the most noisom place that I have heard of except the Tower Dungeon of any Prison in the Land § 132. The next Habitation which God's Providence chose for me was at Totteridge near Barnet where for a Year I was fain with part of my Family separated from the rest to take a few mean Rooms which were so extreamly smoaky and the place withal so cold that I spent the Winter in great pain one quarter of a Year by a sore Sciatica and seldom free from such Anguish § 133. It would trouble the Reader for me to reckon up the many Diseases and Dangers for these ten Years past in or from which God hath delivered me though it be my Duty not to forget to be thankful Seven Months together I was lame with a strange Pain in one Foot Twice delivered from a Bloody Flux a spurious Cataract in my Eye with incessant Webs and Net-works before it hath continued these eight Years without disabling me one Hour from Reading or Writing I have had constant Pains and Languors with incredible Flatulency in Stomach Bowels Sides Back Legs Feet Heart Breast but worst of all either painful Distentions or usually vertiginous or stupifying Conquests of my Brain so that I have rarely one Hour's or quarter of an Hour's ease Yet through God's Mercy I was never one Hour Melancholy and not many Hours in a Week disabled utterly from my Work save that I lost time in the Morning for want of being able to rise early And lately an Ulcer in my Throat with a Tumour of near half a Year's continuance is healed without any means In all which I have found such merciful Disposals of God such suitable Chastisements for my Sin such plain Answers of Prayer as leave me unexcusable if they do me not good Besides many sudden and acuter Sicknesses which God hath delivered me from not here to be numbred his upholding Mercy under such continued weaknesses with tolerable and seldom disabling Pains hath been unvaluable § 134. I am next to give some short account of my Writings since 1665. 1. A small MS. lyeth by me which I wrote in Answer to a Paper which Mr. Caryl of Sussex sent me written by Cressy called now Serenus about Popery § 135. 2 Mr. Yates of Hambden Minister sending me the Copy of a Popish Letter as spread about Oxford under the Mask of one doubting of Christianity and calling the Scholars to a Trial of their Faith in Principles did by the Juggling Fraud and the slightness of it provoke me to write my book called The Reasons of the Christian Religion And the Philosophy of Gassendus and many more besides the Hobbians now prevailing and inclining men to Sadducism induced me to write the Appendix to it about the Immortality of the Soul § 136. 3. Oft Conference with the Lord Chief Baron Hale put those Cases into my mind which occasioned the writing of another short Piece of the Nature and Immortality of the Soul by way of Question and Answer not printed § 137. 4. The great Weaknesses and Passions and Injudiciousness of many Religious Persons and the ill effects and especially perceiving that the Temptations of the Times yea the very Reproofs of the Conformists did but increase them among the separating party caused me to offer a book to be Licensed called Directions to weak Christians how to grow in grace with a second part being Sixty Characters of a Sound Christian with as many of the Weak Christian and the Hyyocrite Which I the rather writ to imprint on men's minds a right apprehension of Christianity and to be as a Confession of our Judgment in this malignant Age when some Conformists would make the World believe that it is some menstruous thing composed of Folly and Sedition which the Nonconformists mean by a Christian and a Godly Man This Book came forth when I was in Prison being long before refused by Mr. Grigg § 138. 5. A Cristian Directory or Summ of Practical Divinity in Folio hath lain finished by me many years and since twice printed § 139. 6. My Bookseller desiring some Additions to my Sermon before the King I added a large Directory of the whole Life of Faith which is its Title which is published § 140. 7. Abundance of Women first and Men next growing at London into separating Principles Some thinking that it was sin to hear a Conformist and more That it is a sin to pray according to the Common Prayer with them and yet more That it is a sin to Communicate with them in the Sacrament And the Conformists abominating their House-Meetings as Schismatical and their Distance and Passions daily increasing even among many to earnest desires of each other's Ruine I thought it my Duty to add another part to my book of Directions to weak Christians being Directions what course they must take to avoid being Dividers or troublers of the Churches The rather because I knew what the Papists and Infidels would gain by our Divisions and of how great necessity it is against them both that the honest moderate part of the Conformists and the Nonconformists be reconciled or at least grow not into mortal Enmity against each other This Book was offered to Mr. Sam. Parker the Archbishop's Chaplain to be Licensed but he refused it and so I purposed to cast it by But near two years after Mr. Grove the Bishop of London's Chaplain without whom I could have had nothing of mine Licensed I think did License it and it was published of which more anon § 141. 8. About this time I heard Dr. Owen talked very yieldingly of a Concord betweent the Independents and Presbyterians which all seemed willing of I had before about 1658. written somewhat in order to Reconciliation and I did by the invitation of his Speeches offer it to Mr. Geo. Griffiths to be considered And near a twelve-month after he gave it me again without taking notice of any thing in it I now resolved to try once more with Dr. Owen And though all our business with each other had been contradiction I thought it my Duty without any thoughts of former things to go to him and be a Seeker of Peace which he seemed to take well and expressed great desires of Concord and also many moderate Concessions and how heartily he would concur in any thing that tended to a good agreement I told him That I must deal freely with him that
who will also sure enough exclude themselves and do from any such Agreement But have you done the same as to the Socinians who are numerous and ready to include themselves upon our Communion The Creed as expounded in the Four first Councils will do it 3. Whether some Expressions suited to prevent future Divisions and Separations after a Concord is obtained may not at present to avoid all exasperation be omitted as seeming reflective on former Actings when there was no such Agreement among us as is now aimed at 4. Whether insisting in particular on the power of the Magistrate especially as under civil Coercition and Punishment in cases of Error or Heresie be necessary in this first Attempt These Generals occurred to my Thoughts upon my first reading of your Proposals I will now read them again and set down as I pass on such apprehensions in particular as I have of the Severals of them To the first Answer under the first Question I assent so also to the first Proposal and the Explanation Likewise to the second and third I thought to have proceeded thus throughout but I fore-see my so doing would be tedious and useless I shall therefore mention only what at present may seem to require second Thoughts As 1. To Propos. 9. by those Instances what Words to use in Preaching in what Words to Pray in what decent Habit do you intend Homilies prescribed Forms of Prayer and Habits superadded to those of vulgar decent use Present Controversies will suggest an especial Sense under general Expressions 2. Vnder Pos. 13. Do you think a Man may not leave a Church and joyn himself to another unless it be for such a Cause or Reason as he supposeth sufficient to destroy the Being of the Church I meet with this now answered in your 18th Propos. and so shall forbear further particular Remarks and pass on In your Answer to the Second Qu. Your 10th Position hath in it some-what that will admit of further consideration as I think In your Answer to the 3d. Qu. have you sufficiently expressed the accountableness of Churches mutually in case of Offence from Male-Administration and Church Censures This also I now see in part answered Prop. 5th I shall forbear to add any thing as under your Answer to the last Question about the power of the Magistrate because I fear that in that matter of punishing I shall some-what dissent from you though as to meer Coercion I shall in some Cases agree Vpon the whole Matter I judge your Proposals worthy of great Consideration and the most probable medium for the attaining of the End aimed at that yet I have perused If God give not an Heart and Mind to desire Peace and Vnion every Expression will be disputed under pretence of Truth and Accuracy But if these things have a place in us answerable to that which they enjoy in the Gospel I see no reason why all the true Disciples of Christ might not upon these and the like Principles condescend in Love unto the Practical Concord and Agreement which not one of them dare deny to be their Duty to Aim at Sir I shall Pray that the Lord would guide and prosper you in all Studies and Endeavours for the Service of Christ in the World especially in this your Desire and Study for the Inâ—â—â—â—â—ing of the Peace and Love promised amongst them that Believe and do beg your Prayers Your truly affectionate Brother And unworthy Fellow-Servant Iohn Owen Ian. 25. 1668. § 143. For the Understanding of this you must know 1. That the way which we came to at last for the publication of the Terms if he and I had agreed secretly should be That as I had Printed such a thing called Vniversal Concord 1660. which was neglected so I would Print this as the Second Part of the Vniversal Concord that it might lye some time exposed to view in the Shops before we made any further use of it that so the State might not suspect us for our Union as if we intended them any ill by doing our Duty which course he approved 2. That I oft went to him and he had written this Letter ready to send me and so gave it me into my hand but we first debated many things in presence in all which there remained no apparent Disagreement at all so far as we went And in particular the great Point about separating in the Cases enumerated he objected no more but what I answered and he seemed to acquiesce 3. But I so much feared that it would come to nothing that I ventured to tell him what a difficulty I feared it would be to him to go openly and fully according to his own Judgment when the Reputation of former Actions and present Interest in many that would censure him if he went not after their narrowed Judgment did lye in his way and that I feared these Temptations more than his Ability and Judgment But he professed full Resolutions to follow the Business heartily and unbyassedly and that no Interest should move him And so I desired him to go over my Proposals again and fasten upon every Word that was either unsound or hurtful or unapt or unnecessary and every such Word should be altered which he undertook to do and so that was the way that we agreed on but when I came home I first returned him this following Answer to his Letter and Exceptions Feb. 16. 1668. SIR UPon the perusal of Yours when I came home I find your Exceptions to be mostly the same which you speak and therefore shall be the briefer in my Answer upon Supposition of what was said To your First Qu. I answer I am as much for Brevity as you can possibly wish so be it our Agreement be not thereby frustrated and made insufficient to its ends I would desire you to look over all the Particulars and name me not only every one that you think unsound but every one which you judge unprofitable or needless But if we leave out that which most or many will require and none have any thing against it will but stop our Work and make Men judge of it as you did of the want of a longer Profession than the Scriptures against Socinianism And it will contradict the Title The Iust Terms of Agreement For our Terms will be insufficient And as to your Words the first attempt my business is to discover the sufficient Terms at first that so it may facilitate Consent For if we purposely leave out any needful part as for a second attempt we bring contempt upon our first Essay and before the second third and perhaps twentieth Attempt have been used to bring us to Agreement by Alterations and cross Humours and Apprehensions things will go as they have done and all be pulled in pieces Therefore we must if possible find out the sufficient Terms before too many hands be ingaged in it Your own Exceptions here say That if too many Explications had not afterward occurred
you had been unsatisfied in that which went before And you know what Mr. Nye is wont to say against drawing a Hose over our Differences though for my part I know no other way where we agree not in particulars but to take up with an Agreement in Generals But where indeed we do agree in Particulars I know no Reason why we should hide it to make our Difference to seem greater than it is 2. The Reasons why I make no larger a Profession necessary than the Creed and Scriptures are because if we depart from this old sufficient Catholick Rule we narrow the Church and depart from the old Catholicism And we shall never know where to rest From the same Reasons as you will take in Four Councils another will take in Six and another Eight and the Papists will say Why not the rest as well as these 3. Because we should Sin against the Churches 1200 Years Experience which hath been torn by this Conceit That our Rule or Profession must be altered to obviate every new Heresie As if you could ever make a Creed or Law which no Offender shall mis-interpret nor hypocritically profess By this means the Devil may drive us to make a new Creed every Year by Sowing the Tares of a new Heresie every Year Hilary hath said so much against this not sparing even the Nicene Creed it self that I need say no more than he hath done upon that Argument of Experience but only that if 30 or 40 Years Experience so much moved him against new Creed-making what should 1200 Years do by us 4. And the Means will be certainly Fruitless seeing that Hereticks are usually Men of wide Consciences and if their Interest require it they will Equivocate as Men do now with Oaths and Subscriptions and take any Words in their own Sense 5. And the Means is needless seeing there is another and fitter Remedy against Heresie provided and that is not making a new Rule or Law but judging Hereticks by the Law of God already made Either they are Hereticks only in Heart or in Tongue also and Expression If in Heart only we have nothing to do to Judge them Heart-Infidels are and will be in the Churches If they be proved to be Hereticks in Tongue then it is either before they are taken into the Communion of the Church or after If before you are to use them as in case of proved Wickedness that is call them to publick Repentance before they be admitted If it be after they must be admonished and Rejected after the first and second contemned Admonition And is not this enough And is not this the certain regular way Is it not confusion to put Law for Iudgment and say there wants a new Law or Rule when there wants but a due Iudgment by the Rule in being 6. Lastly We shall never have done with the Papists if we let go the Scripture-Sufficiency And it is a double Crime in us to do it who Dispute with them so vehemently for it And we harden and justifie Church-Tyranny and Impositions when we will do the like our selves If there be nothing against Socinianism in the Scripture it is no Heresie If there be as sure there is enough and plain enough Judge them by that Rule and make not new ones But if any will not hold to this truly Catholick Course I shall next like your Motion very well to take up with the Creed as Expounded in the 4 First Councils called General which I can readily subscribe my self but it 's better let them all alone and not to be so found of one onely Engine which hath torn the Church for about 1200 Years I mean departing from the Ancient Rule and making new Creeds and Forms of Communion To your Third Qu. 1. I suppose you observe that what I say about Separation is not under the third Head of the Concord of Neighbour Churches but under the second Head of the Concord of Members in the same particular Churches and were you not heretofore at Agreement in your own Churches And is it not the Duty and Interest of your own Churches to keep Unity and that the Members separate not unjustly whether you agree with other Churches or not 2. Either what I say about Separation is that which we are all now Uniting agreed in or not If it be iâ— honoureth our Brethren to profess it and can be no Reproach or Offence to them to declare it If any have sinned against their own present Judgment I hope they are not so Impenitent as to desire us to forbear agreeing with their own Iudgments because it is against their former sins And here is no Word said Historically to upbraid any with these Sins at all But if we are not all agreed thus far against Separation I desire you to name the Terms which we agree not in and then we shall see whether we may leave them out or whether it render our Concord desperate and impossible of which anon To your Fourth Qu. The Iealousies and Errors of these Times do make it necessary to our Peace to make some Profession of our Judgment about Magistracy and I think there is nothing questionable in this I am sure there is nothing but what many of the Congregational-Party do allow but if you come to Particulars I shall consider of them again The particular Exceptions which you Obliterate not your selves are but these 1. To Qu. Prop. 9. Whether I mean prescribed Forms and Homilies and Habits by the Terms what Words to use in Preaching and Prayer c. Answ. That which I say as plain as I can is 1. That a determination of such Circumstances is not a sinful Addition to God's Word nor will allow the People therefore to avoid the Churches Communion 2. That it belongs to the Pastor's Office to determine them what Words he shall Preach and Pray in c. Therefore you have no cause to ask my meaning about imposing upon him but only whether he may so far impose upon the Flock as to use his own Words in Preaching Prayer c. 3. That yet if the Pastor determine these Circumstances destructively the People have their Remedy And is not this enough Why must I tell you whether you may read a Sermon or Homily of your own Writing or another Man 's unto the People Or if you do whether they must separate Or else if you read a Prayer c. Either you determine these things to the Churches hurt or not If not why should they blame you or Separate If you do they have their Remedy But whether you do or not I now decide not If we meddle with all such Particulars we shall never agree more than those must be left to liberty You think our Particulars are too many already and would you have more And if the Controversies of the Times will tempt any to Expound our General Terms of Agreement amiss we must not go from Generals for that To the Tenth Prop. You say
the 1 st 1662 nor ever since had any nor the offer of any And therefore the Law imposeth not on me the Declaration or the Assent or Consent no more than on Lawyers or Judges 2. I have the Bishop of London's License to Preach in his Diocess which supposeth me no Nonconformist in Law-sence And I have the Judgment of Lawyers even of the present Lord Chief Justice and Mr. Pollexfen that by that License I may Preach occasional Sermons 3. I have Episcopal Ordination and judge it gross Sacriledge to forsake my Calling 4. I am justified against suspicion of Rebellious Doctrine many ways 1. By my publick Retractation of any old accused words or writings 2. I was chosen alone to Preach the Publick Thanksgiving at St. Paul's for General Monk's success 3. The Commons in Parliament chose me to Preach to them at their Publick Fast for the King's Restoration and call'd him home the next day 4. I was Sworn Chaplain in Ordinary to the King 5. I was offered a Bishoprick 6. The Lord Chancellor who offered it attested under his hand His Majesty's Sense of my Defert and His Acceptance 7. I am justifyed in the King's Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs among the rest there mention'd 8. When I Preached before the King he commanded the Printing of my Sermon 9. To which may be added the Act of Oblivion 10. And having published above an Hundred Books I was never yet convict of any ill Doctrine since any of the said Acts of King Parliament and others for my Discharge and Justification 5. I have oft Printed my judgment for Communion with the Parish Churches and exhorted others to it And having built a Chappel delivered it for Parish use 6. I was never lawfully Convict of Preaching in an unlawful Assembly for I was not once summon'd by the Justices that granted out the Five Warrants against me to answer for my self nor ever told who was my Accuser or who Witnessed against me And I have it under the hand of the present Lord Chief Justice that a Lawful Conviction supposeth Summons And the Lord Chief Justice Vaughan with Judge Tyrrel Archer and Wild did long ago discharge me upon their declaring that even the Warrant of my Commitment was illegal because no Accuser or Witness was named and so I was left remediless in case of false Accusation 7. As far as I understand it I never did Preach in any unlawful Assembly which was on pretence of any Exercise of Religion contrary to Law I Preached in Parish Churches where the Liturgy was Read as oft as I had leave and invitation And when I could not have that leave I never took any Pastoral Charge nor Preached for any Stipend but not daring perfidiously to desert the Calling which I was Ordained and Vowed to I Preacht occasional Sermons in other Men's Houses where was nothing done that I know of contrary to Law There was nothing done but Reading the Psalms and Chapters and the Creed Commandments and Lord's Prayer and Singing Psalms and Preaying and Praching and none of this is forbidden by Law The Omission of the rest of the Liturgy is no Act but a not-acting and therefore is no pretended Worship according to Law But were it otherwise the Law doth not impose the Liturgy on Families but only on Churches and a Family is not forbidden to have more than four Neighbours at saying Grace or Prayer nor is bound to give over Family-worship when-ever more than Four come in The Act alloweth Four to be present at Unlawful Worship but forbids not more to be present at Lawful Worship And House-worship without the Liturgy is lawful worship And yet if this were not so as the Curate's Omission of the Prayers makes not the Preacher and Assembly guilty suppose it were an Assize-Sermon that for hast omitted the Liturgy so the owner of the House by omitting the Liturgy maketh not him guilty that was not bound to use it nor the Meeting unlawful to any but himself Charity and Loyalty bind us to believe that our King and Parliament who allow more than many Four's to meet at a Play-house Tavern or Feast never meant to forbid more than Four to bâ—â—ogether in a House to sing a Psalm or Pray or Read a Licensed Book or edifie each other by Godly Conference while no Crime is found by any Man in the Matter of their Doctrine or Prayer and no Law imposeth the Liturgy on any but Church-Meetings If after many years Reproach once Imprisonment and the late Distress and Sale of all my Books and Goods and those that were none of mine but another's and this by five or six Warrants for present Execution without any Summons or Notice of Accusers or Witnesses I could yet have leave to die in peace and had not been again persecuted with new Inditements I had not presumed thus to plead or open my own Cause I Pray God that my Prosecutors and Judges may be so prepared for their near Account that they may have no greater sin laid to their Charge than keeping my Ordination-Vow is and not Sacrilegiously forsaking my Calling who have had so good a Master so good a Word so good Success and so much Attestation from King Parliament City and Bishops as I have haâ— If they ask why I Conform not I say I do as far as any Law bindeth me If they ask why I take not this Oath I say Because I neither understand it nor can prevail with Rulers to Explain it And if have a good sence I have not only subscribed to it but to much more in a Book called The second Plea for Peace page 60 61 62. Where also I have professed my Loyalty much further than this Oath extendeth But if it have a bad sence I will not take it And I find the Conformists utterly disagreed of the Sence and most that I hear of renouncing that sence which the words signifie in their common use And knowing that Perjury is a mortal Enemy to the Life and Safety of Kings and the Peace of Kingdoms and to Converse and to Man's Salvation I will not dally with such a dangerous Crime Nor will I deceive my Rulers by Stretches and Equivocations nor do I believe Lying lawful after all that Grotius de Iure Belli and Bishop Taylor Duct Dub. have said for it I think Oaths imposed are to be taken in the ordinary sense of the words if the Imposers put not another on them And I dare not Swear that a Commission under the Broad-Seal is no Commission till I that am no Lawyer know it to be Legal Nor yet that the Lord Keeper may Depose the King without resistance by Sealing Commissions to Traytors to seize on his Forts Navy Militia or Treasure Nor can I consent to make all the present Church-Government as unalterable as the Monarchy especially when the Seventh Canon extendeth it to an caetèra to Arch-bishops Bishops Deans Arch-deacons and the rest that bear Office in the same not
separare se debet nec se ad sacrilegi sacerdotis Sacraficia miscere 4. If the Case may be so plain who the Person is that God would have as that there is no room for a Controversy about it then it may possibly be determined by the meer Light of the Law without a Judge But the Case may be so plain Ergo The Antecedent is proved thus When these things following visibly concur then the case is so plain 1. When the Person is visibly qualified with Abilities and Piety and a Righteous Conversation to Men. 2. When he hath a Will to it 3. When he hath Opportunity as having Liberty from secular Power Proximity a known Language Vacancy from other Engagements and Employments of more necessity c. 4. When the Peoples Hearts are moved towards him 5. And when there is no Competitor or none who equalleth him or not so many but that all may be chosen when these concur there is no controversy who should be the Man if you say there may be many such and who knows then which to choose I Answer 1. Congregations should have many Pastors ordinarily 2. Providence answereth that Objection for me It is exceeding hard to find half enough that are competent God hath not given his Church more than they need but contrarily there is need of many more than he hath given It is therefore all Mens Duties that have Ability and Opportunity to be Preachers if they be not taken up with Employments of greater use to the Church as Secular Rulers often are but they must seek an orderly admission where it is possible and not be their own Judges of their fitness where there are other Judges of God's appointment Christ bids us to pray the Lord of the Harvest to send forth Labourers into the Harvest because the Harvest is great and the Labourers few It is visibly true in a great measure to this day what we must pray for that we must endeavour that the Labourers may in Number be proportioned to the Work and we are like to have use for that Prayer still 3. It is not always that there are too many so apparently fit And therefore at least when it is not so the determination of the Individual Person is easie 4. As the Bishops Determination of one among many is valid so is the Determination of others in case of Necessity The Law of Nature and well ordered Common-wealths doth require that every Ignorant Man that thinks himself Skilful should not play the Physician least he kill Men nor the School-master least he delude and corrupt them And therefore that there should be some able Men appointed to try and judge who are fit before they are admitted I think God's Law of Nature requireth this as evidently as the written Law requireth that none be Ministers without Ecclesiastical Ordination or Approbation and in case there be many of equal fitness all must be admitted except they be too many which is not seen there neither for Nature multiplieth not the most noble Parts as it doth the the Fingers or the Hairs c. And if there be too many the Judges must Determine who shall be the Man Yet the same Law of God in nature doth as evidently teach that if either the Tryers and Judges be all dead or gone or enviously resolve to approve of none but such as are Ignorant or Wicked that would Poyson and Kill the People it is Lawful and the indispensible Duty of such as are able to offer themselves for Practise to the People without the Judges Consent rather then the Pestilence should sweep them away for want of a Remedy And there hath scarce yet been sound such an Enemy to Mankind that would forbid such Men to save Mens Lives for want of Approbation Or if there were many at once in an Infected City that were thus able they would rather let all Practise that have opportunity or let the People go to whom they please then to forbid all under pretence of the difficulty of discerning the fittest As scarce any thing is more Inhumane against Nature then to prefer a Commission or other Formality or point of Order before Mens Lives and Common Good which is finis Reipublicae so it is yet more Inhumane as well as Unchristian and against the evident Law of Nature and the main scope of Christ's Merciful Doctrine and Example who often neglected Formalities to save Mens Lives and Souls though to the Displeasure of tâ—t is Pharises for a Man to prefer a Formality or point of Order before the Saving â—as Mens Souls and the publick Good and Safety of the Church but of this before 5. If in case of the want of a lawful Magistrate or of such as they may lawfully use for Judgments the People may determine of an individual Person whom God shall Authorize though Scripture Name no Individual of this Age then they may do so also in regard of the Ministry But the former is true Ergo 1. Else we should have no Magistrates in the World scarce but by violent instrusion which is worse than popular Election 2. 1 Cor. 6. 1 2 3 4 5. Paul would have the Corinthians to choose some of the Church of the Saints to judge between man and man concerning the things of this Life whereabout they were wont to go to Law before Heathen Judges This is plainly to the Office of a Magistrate at least quoad partem Iudicialem tho not quoad violentam executionem They were to choose a wise Man that should be able to judge between his Brethren verse 5. The consequence is grounded on this that the Scripture meddles no more with the Individuals for Magistracy then for Ministry nor gives ordinarily the power of choosing Soveraigns to the People in the Common-wealth then the Power of Ordaining Ministers to the People of a particular Church and the People may determine of one as well though not so easily as of the other but I spoke somewhat of this also before to another Point I have transgressed the limits of the part of a Respondent on this point 1. Because I know it is Light and not Formality of Proceeding that you expect though it be formality before Light and Safety that you plead for 2. Because I know that the whole stress of your Cause lyeth on this Point and I doubt not to say that if I answer you well in this one Argument which you make your Second I easily carry the whole Cause To what you add concerning Authority I confess that it is not the same thing with Fitness c. but I say it may be conveyed sine vicariis Episcopis 2. I deny that any Church-Guides are in point of Government vicarii Christi They are nearest it as Nuncii and so may Beseech and Require in Christ's Name and Stead but they are no more his vicarii then the Magistrate is of the Soveraign They are not Pro-reges nor do they represent his Person They have not
were all distinguished by the Limits of their Habitation or Proximity so that there was never two Churches in the same City or Bounds save Hereticks and Men of divers Tongues at least where one could hold them all But it 's otherwise with the Separatists 4. No lawful Church in Scripture was gathered out of a true Gospel-Church But theirs are 5. Scripture Churches had fixed known Tests to know qualified Members by which was consent to the Baptismal Covenant explained in the Creed Lord's-Prayer and Commandments So that all Churches had the same Test and Terms of Qualification and so had one Profession But these Men leave this Arbitrary to the Pastor or People to try whether Men are converted by uncertain Terms and Words devised by every Minister so that the Terms are unknown and not agreed on among their Churches and may be as various as Ministers 6. Scripture-Churches never divided the Christians of the same Family some to one Church and some to another But these Men do so to great Confusion 7. They are not agreed on any Form of Doctrine to be a Test of their Agreement with other Churches with whom they will have Communion If they say that the Scripture is that Test I answer a General Belief that Scripture is the Word of God is neither sufficient to Salvation nor to Communion Many have this who deny the Essentials of Christianity And an explicite Understanding and Belief of every Text no Man hath Thousands of Texts are not understood by most Christians or Teachers therefore there must be some Collection of the Essentials in a Creed or else there can be no certain Notice whether so much of Scripture Truth be explicitely believed as is necessary to Salvation And if single Pastors require more it must be only in order to Growth and Edification and not as a necessary Qualification for Membership or Communion of Churches I have great Cause to know what I say of them A Parliament once chose Fourteen Ministers to draw up the Fundamentals of Religion as a Test of such as were to be tollerated in Union There were Dr. Owen Mr. Nye Dr. Thomas Goodwin Mr. Sydrak Sympson Dr. Cheynel and others Bishop Usher was chosen and refused and I was chosen in his stead Before I came they had drawn up Fourteen or Fifteen Articles all in new Terms of their own and some neither Essential nor true I told them that we were not to make a new Christianity or Creed but must own that which the Christian Church was known by in all Ages But I could not be heard though Mr. Vines and Mr. Mantâ—n joined with me At last they wrote this for a Fundamental That they that allowed themselves or others in any known Sin cannot be saved I told them that though I could not be heard by them I durst say that I would make them presently blot it out They bid me do it if I could I said The Parliament taketh Independency Separation Anabaptistry and Antinomianism for Sin And they will say These Divines pronounce us all Damned if we allow them They said not a Word but threw away their Fundamental The rest of them they printed But the Parliament were glad with silence to pass by all their Works and take no notice of it lest it should be a publick Reproach that we could not agree on the Fundamentals And I am glad that I hindered such an Agreement as they would have made instead of the old Creeds which they would not rest in And can such Churches be of any known Consistency or Concord If you join with them how know you what Religion they are of Or how know they what other particular Churches are in their Communion for I hope they hold a Communion of Churches Arrians and Socinians say they believe the Scripture No Man understandeth all the Scripture The necessary selected Articles they have no known Agreement in If they say that they own the same Creed that we do why then do they not use it as the Test of Christian Profession but instead of it leave every Pastor to make one in Terms that is only his and no two Churches have the same To agree in Independency or Separation is not to agree in Christianity There are abundance of Books written for very false Doctrines by men called Independents it 's odious to name them Are all the Author of their Communion or not The Assembly could never get them to tell whom they would take to be of their Communion and whom not 8. Therefore their Churches are not compaginate nor confederate so as the Members of our Body should be and as Scripture-Churches were and as Christ would have had the Jewith National Church to be 9. They have no Certainty and Concord in their Church-Worship which they have little more than such Preaching and Praying which cannot be known for true or false sound or unsound till the Words are past And it may justly be expected that Separatists Antinomians Anabaptists Socinians and all erroneous Men should put their Errors into their Sermons and Prayers and sinfully father them all on God And so all God's Worship must be contiually uncertain to the Flocks and of as many different Strains as the Preachers differ in Parts and Wisdom And it must be low and poor and confused wherever the Ministers are young raw erroneous or ignorant They once met at the Savoy and drew up an Agreement of many Pastors But in that they differ from many other Churches called Independants and from the Anabaptists And they expresly contradict the Scripture 1. In saying that we have no Righteousness but Christ's which is imputed to us when as Scripture many Hundred times mentioneth also another personal inherent or acted Righteousness 2. They say that Faith is not imputed for Righteousness I think they mean well But they should rather expound Scripture than flatly deny or contradict what it saith and after defame those falsly that would help them more distinctly to understand it Their People are taught to speak evil of what they understand not and to represent Men as dangerous or odious who think not of many wordy Controversies as confusedly and ignorantly as they Their Churches are too usually constituted of such Novices in Knowledge of both Sexes as are like a School where the Boys call their Teacher a Deceiver for every word by which he would deliver them from their Errours and teach them more than they knew before 10. They lazily gather a few that seem so much better than the rest as will put them to no great labour in Teaching and Discipline But if all the rest of the Parishes lye in Ignorance how little are we beholden to these Separatists for the Cure When I came to Kidderminster some inclined that way importuned to me to take a few Professors of Zeal for my Flock and let the rest follow their ignorant Readers But when I renounced their Counsel and after my own and my Assistants long Catechizing them
Faction or Turbulency who preacheth but to a few in his own House And where should he use his Ministry if not in so vast a Parish where so many Thousands are untaught and where he is not sure that his old relation is dissolved though the Tythes and Temple be given to another One Mr. Grove that oft heard me being lately dead and his Widow sick she sent for Mr. Sanger to visit her who after a short Instruction prayed with her while he was at Prayer Dean Lampley the Parson or Vicar of the Parish came in and heard him at Prayer staying till he had done in an outer Room and as soon as he had done as Mr. Sanger affirmeth came in upon him and fiercely askt him What he did there He told him Nothing but what beseemed a Minister of the Gospel to visit the Sick when he was sent for And to the second Expostulation told him That he thought he should be thankful to him for helping him in such a Parish To which the Doctor answered That then he should have done it according to the Liturgy fiercely adding Get you out of the Room At which when he demurred he more fiercely took him by the breast and thrust him and said Get you out of the Room which to avoid unpeaceableness he forthwith did I saw not this but I think no Man that knoweth Mr. Sanger will question the Truth of his deliberate Affirmation of it In what Parish of England should a Man expect leave to visit the Sick when sent for rather than in St. Martins From what Minister in England should one rather expect leave than from Dr. Lampley who hath so many Thousands more than he and his Curate and Lecturer can suffice to teach and visit and who I hear is a very worthy Man and a Teacher of more than ordinary diligence and especially excelleth almost all that I hear of in Constancy in the needful Work of Catechising for which though I know him not I do much honour him And what Minister in England may expect leave to visit the Sick or privately help the Peopleâ— if not Mr. Sanger who was lately the Publick Incumbent himself and is a man as unlikely to stir up any Man to Envy or Wrath as most that ever I knew I will not parallel my own Case with his If I be unworthy of such liberty might not such as he be tolerated so far This being our Case will you be the Man that shall tell us and the world that we should have kept our Residence and joyned with the succeeding Ministers in private helps and how well we and Religion had then sped as if you had not lived in England to make Men think that the Parish Ministers are willing of this Yet I will again say Necessity is laid upon me and wo be to me if I preach not the Gospel though Men forbid it And if I either give but to one poor Man when I might give to a thousand or teach but one ignorant Sinner when I might teach a thousand how shall I look my Judge in the Face who gave me that terrible warning 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. as well as Matth. 2â— And did I think that ever you would have been one that should publickly have perswaded us to this When it is the grand Work of Satan to Silence the Preachers of the Gospel and the great Character of all sorts of his Agents one way or other on their various pretences to effect it Papists would silence me Prelatists would silence me Quakers Anabaptists Antinomians and Separatists would silence me and would my dear and judicious and experienced Friends silence me also Alas how many Difficulties have we to overcome while our weary Flesh and too cold Love and the Relicks of Sloth and Selfishness which loveth not a laborious suffering Life doth hinder us more than all the rest But the Judge is at the Door To Mr. W. Allen. Number V. SIR I Find that in a Book of yours defending Schism against Mr. Halis on pretence of opposing it you were pleased to think many Passages in my Writings worthy of your Recital to your ends I thank you that you chose any Words for Peace which some may make a better use of than your self But I think if you had referred Men to my own Books to read them with what goeth before and after they would have been more easily understood I understand by your Book that you think that you are in the Right which is the most that I have yet learned out of it unless it be also that you think the Nonconformists be not yet hated and afflicted enough or that he that sweareth must ascend by treading upon him that feareth an Oath I am in some doubt least you have wronged our Prelacy by so openly proclaiming the Enmity of so great a Man as Hales against them and by enticing Men by your Noise to read his Book which you contradict which if they do I doubt your Confutation will not save them from the Light But the Reason of my troubling you with these Lines is only to crave some Satisfaction about two or three Matters of Fact in your Book which would seem strange to me did I not find such things too common in Invectives against the silenced Ministers and did I not know that is part of Satan's Work to persuade the World that no History hath any certainty of Truth that so sacred History may be disadvantaged I. One is in these Words p. 101. When they had in the gand Debate given in their Objections to the Liturgy some of the Brotherhood had prepared another Form but a great part of their Brethren objected many things against that and never as yet did as I hear of agree upon any other nor I think ever will I crave the Justice of you to tell us which was that you call the Grand Debate and who those were that dissented or what Proof you have of any such thing Either you knew what you say or not If not and publish it in such a manner while you are accusing others of Sin What is this to be called if you did it is yet far worse either you speak of the Westminster Assembly which made the Directory or of the Commissioners in 1660. Not the first sure for none I think was yet ever vain enough to pretend that they thus drew up another Liturgy It must needs then be the latter Of which this is past denyal by any but the 1. That the King's Commission under the Broad-Seal authorizing to make some Additional Forms 2. The late Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Sheldon when we came according to appointment to try by Friendly Conference what Alterations each Party might yield to for our desired Concord without any injury to their Consciences began with a Declaration that we being the Plaintiffs they would no farther proceed or treat with us till we had given them in entirely in Writing 1. What we blamed in the Liturgy and our