the Characterismes of her Lord the marks of the Crosse of Jesus that is when she suffered for a holy cause and a holy conscience when the Church of England was more glorious then at any time before Even when she could shew more Martyrs and Confessors then any Church this day in Christendome even then when a King died in the profession of her Religion and thousands of Priests learned and pious men suffered the spoiling of their goods rather then they would forsake one Article of so excellent a Religion So that serioufly it is not easily to be imagined that any thing should move you unless it be that which troubled the perverse Jews and the Heathen Greeks Scandalum crucis the scandall of the Crosse You stumbled at that Rock of offence You left us because we were afflicted lessened in outward circumstances and wrapped in a cloud but give me leave only to reminde you of that sad saying of the Scripture that you may avoid the consequent of it They that fall on this stone shall be broken in pieces but they on whom it shall fall shall be grinded to powder And if we should consider things but prudently it is a great argument that the sons of our Church are very conscientious and just in their perswasions when it is evident that we have no temporall end to serve nothing but the great end of our souls all our hopes of preferment are gone all secular regards only we still have truth on our sides and we are not willing with the losse of truth to change from a persecuted to a prosperous Church from a Reformed to a Church that will not be reformed lest we give scandall to good people that suffer for a holy conscience and weaken the hands of the afflicted of which if you had been more carefull you would have remained much more innocent But I pray give me leave to consider for you because you in your change considered so little for your self what fault what false doctrine what wicked or dangerous proposition what defect what amiss did you finde in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England For its doctrine It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament all that which is in the three Creeds the Apostolical the Nicene and that of Athanasius and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councels or many other truly such and whatsoever was condemned in these our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith their hopes of heaven was upon this and a good life their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone they denied Communion to none that professed this faith This is the Catholick faith so saith the Creed of Athanasius and unless a company of men have power to alter the faith of God whosoever live and die in this faith are intirely Catholick and Christian So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dispute that the Church had for 400 or 500 years and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith if we live according to our beleef 2. For the Liturgy of the Church of England I shall not need to say much because the case will be very evident First Because the disputers of the Church of Rome have not been very forward to object any thing against it they cannot charge it with any evil 2. Because for all the time of K. Edw. 6. and till the 11th year of Q. Elizabeth your people came to our Churches and prayed with us till the Bull of Pius Quintus came out upon temporal regards and made a Schism by forbidding the Queens Subjects to pray as by Law was here appointed though the prayers were good and holy as themselves did beleeve That Bull enjoyned recusancy and made that which was as an act of rebellion and disobedience and schisme to be the Character of your Roman Catholikes And after this what can be supposed wanting in order to salvation We have the Word of God the faith of the Apostles the Creeds of the Primitive Church the Articles of the four first generall Councels a holy Liturgy excellent prayers perfect Sacraments Faith and Repentance the ten Commandements and the Sermons of Christ and all the precepts and counsels of the Gospel We teach the necessity of good works and require and strictly exact the severity of a holy life We live in obedience to God and are ready to die for him and do so when he requires us so to do We speak honour of his most holy Name we worship him at the mention of his Name we confess his Attributes we love his Servants we pray for all men we love all Christians even our most erring Brethren we confess our sinnes to God and to our Brethren whom we have offended and to Gods Ministers in cases of scandall or of a troubled Conscience We communicate often We are enjoyned to receive the holy Sacrament thrice every year at least Our Priests absolve the penitent our Bishops ordain Priests and confirm baptized persons and blesse their people and intercede for them and what could here be wanting to Salvation what necessity forced you from us I dare not suspect it was a temporal regard that drew you away but I am sure it could be no spirituall But now that I have told you and made you to consider from whence you went give me leave to represent to you and tell you whither you are gone that you may understand the nature and conditions of your change For do not think your self safe because they tell you that you are come to the Church You are indeed gone from one Church to another from a better to a worse as will appear in the induction the particular of which before I reckon give me leave to give you this advice if you mean in this affair to understand what you do it were better you enquired what your Religion is then what your Church is for that which is a true Religion to day will be so to morrow and for ever but that which is a holy Church to day may be heretical at the next change or may betray her trust or obtrude new Articles in contradiction to the old or by new interpretations may elude ancient truths or may change your Creed or may pretend to be the Spouse of Christ when she is idolatrous that is adulterous to God Your Religion is that which you must and therefore may competently understand You must live in it and grow in it and govern all the actions of your life by it and in all questions concerning the Church you are to choose your Church by the Religion and therefore this ought first and last to be enquired after Whether the Romane Church be the Catholique Church must depend upon so many uncertain enquiries is offered to be proved by so long so tedious a method hath in it so many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly strait and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unless it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Romane Church were
A Discourse of the Nature Offices and Measures of Friendship With Rules of conducting it Written in answer to a Letter from the most ingenious and vertuous M. K. P. By J. T. D.D. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Dion orat 1. de regno LONDON Printed for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivie-lane 1657. To which are added Two Letters written to persons newly changed in their Religion The first to a Gentlewoman seduced to the Roman Church The other to a person returning t the Church of England By J. T. D.D. Volo Solidum Perenne A Discourse of the Nature and Offices of Friendship In a Letter to the most ingenious and excellent M. K. P. Madam THe wise Bensirach advised that we should not consult with a woman concerning her of whom she is jealous neither with a coward in matters of warr nor with a merchant concerning exchange and some other instances he gives of interested persons to whom he would not have us hearken in any matter of Counsel For where ever the interest is secular or vitious there the bias is not on the side of truth or reason because these are seldome serv'd by profit and low regards But to consult with a friend in the matters of friendship is like consulting with a spiritual person in Religion they who understand the secrets of Religion or the interior beauties of friendship are the fittest to give answers in all inquiries concerning the respective subjects because reason and experience are on the side of interest and that which in friendship is most pleasing and most useful is also most reasonable and most true and a friends fairest interest is the best measure of the conducting friendships and therefore you who are so eminent in friendships could also have given the best answer to your own inquiries and you could have trusted your own reason because it is not only greatly instructed by the direct notices of things but also by great experience in the matter of which you now inquire But because I will not use any thing that shall look like an excuse I will rather give you such an account which you can easily reprove then by declining your commands seem more safe in my prudence then open and communicative in my friendship to you You first inquire how far a Dear and a perfect friendship is authoriz'd by the principles of Christianity To this I answer that the word Friendship in the sense we commonly mean by it is not so much as named in the New-Testament and our Religion takes no notice of it You think it strange but read on before you spend so much as the beginning of a passion or a wonder upon it There is mention of friendship of the world and it is said to be enmity with God but the word is no where else named or to any other purpose in all the New-Testament It speakes of friends often but by friends are meant our acquaintance or our Kindred the relatives of our family or our fortune or our sect something of society or something of kindness there is in it a tenderness of appellation and Civility a relation made by gifts or by duty by services and subjection and I think I have reason to be confident that the word friend speaking of humane entercourse is no otherwayes used in the Gospels or Epistles or Acts of the Apostles and the reason of it is the word friend is of a large signification and means all relations and societies and whatsoever is not enemy but by friendships I suppose you mean the greatest love and the greatest usefulness and the most open communication and the noblest sufferings and the most exemplar faithfulness and the severest truth and the heartiest counsel and the greatest Union of mindes of which brave men and women are capable But then I must tell you that Christianity hath new Christened it and calls this Charity The Christian knows no enemy he hath that is though persons may be injurious to him and unworthy in themselves yet he knows none whom he is not first bound to forgive which is indeed to make them on his part to be no enemies that is to make that the word enemy shall not be perfectly contrary to friend it shall not be a relative term and signifie something on each hand a relative and a correlative and then he knows none whom he is not bound to love and pray for to treat kindly and justly liberally and obligingly Christian Charity is friendship to all the world and when friendships were the noblest things in the world charity was little like the sunne drawn in at a chinke or his beames drawn into the Centre of a burning-glass but Christian charity is friendship expanded like the face of the sunne when it mounts above the Eastern hills and I was strangely pleas'd when I saw something of this in Cicero for I have been so push'd at by herds and flocks of people that follow any body that whistles to them or drives them to pasture that I am grown afraid of any truth that seems chargeable with singularity but therefore I say glad I was when I saw Laelius in Cicero discourse thus Amicitia ex infinitate generis humani quam conciliavit ipsa natura contracta res est adducta in angustum ut omnis charitas aut inter duos aut inter paucos jungeretur Nature hath made friendships and societies relations and endearments and by something or other we relate to all the world there is enough in every man that is willing to make him become our friend but when men contract friendships they inclose the Commons and what Nature intended should be every mans we make proper to two or three Friendship is like rivers and the strand of seas and the ayre common to all the world but Tyrants and evil customes warrs and want of love have made them proper and peculiar But when Christianity came to renew our nature and to restore our lawes and to increase her priviledges and to make her aptness to become religion then it was declared that our friendships were to be as universal as our conversation that is actual to all with whom we converse and potentially extended unto those with whom we did not For he who was to treat his enemies with forgiveness and prayers and love and beneficence was indeed to have no enemies and to have all friends So that to your question how far a Dear and perfect friendship is authoris'd by the principles of Christianity The answer is ready and easy It is warranted to extend to all mankind and the more we love the better we are and the greater our friendships are the dearer we are to God let them be as Dear and let them be as perfect and let them be as many as you can there is no danger in it only where the restraint begins there begins our imperfection it is not ill that you entertain brave friendships and worthy societies it were well if
sin of omission yours are sins of commission in case you are in the wrong as we believe you to be therefore you must needs be in the greater danger then we can be supposed by how much sins of omission are less then sins of commission 11. Your very way of arguing from our charity is a very fallacy and a trick that must needs deceive you if you rely upon it For whereas your men argue thus The Protestants say we Papists may be saved and so say we too but we Papists say that you Protestants cannot therefore it is safest to be a Papist consider that of this argument if it shall be accepted any bold heretick can make use against any modest Christian of a true perswasion For if he can but out-face the modesty of the good man and tell him he shall be damn'd unless that modest man say as much of him you see impudence shall get the better of the day But it is thus in every error Fifteen Bishops of Ierusalem in immediate succession were circumcised believing it to be necessary so to be with these other Christian Churches who were of the uncircumcision did communicate Suppose now that these Bishops had not onely thought it necessary for themselves but for others too this argument you see was ready you of the Uncircumcision who do communicate with us think that we may be saved though we are circumcised but we do not think that you who are not circumcised can be saved therefore it is the safest way to be circumcised I suppose you would not have thought their argument good neither would you have had your children circumcised But this argument may serve the Presbyterians as well as the Papists We are indeed very kinde to them in our sentences concerning their salvation and they are many of them as unkind to us If they should argue so as you do and say you Episcopal men think we Presbyterians though in errors can be saved and we say so too but we think you Episcopal men are Enemies of the Kingdome of Jesus Christ and therefore we think you in a damnable condition therefore it is safer to be a Presbyterian I know not what your men would think of the argument in their hands I am sure we had reason to complain that we are used very ill on both hands for no other cause but because we are charitable But it is not our case alone but the old Catholicks were used just so by the Donatists in this very argument as we are used by your men The Donatists were so fierce against the Catholicks that they would rebaptize all them who came to their Churches from the other But the Catholicks as knowing the Donatists did give right baptisme admitted their converts to repentance but did not rebaptize them Upon this score the Donatists triumphed saying you Catholicks confess our Baptism to be good and so say we But we Donatists deny your Baptism to be good therefore it is safer to be of our side then yours Now what should the Catholicks say or do should they lie for God and for religion and to serve the ends of truth say the Donatists baptism was not good That they ought not Should they damne all the Donatists and make the rent wider It was too great already What then They were quiet and knew that the Donatists sought advantages by their own fierceness and trampled upon the others charity but so they hardned themselves in error and became evill because the others were good I shall trouble you no further now but desire you to consider of these things with as much caution as they were written with charity Till I hear from you I shall pray to God to open your heart and your understanding that you may return fâ—â—m whence you are fallen and repent and do your first work which that you may do is the hearty desire of Your very affectionate Friend and Servant Iâ—â—â— Taylor The Second Letter Written to a Person newly converted to the Church of England Madam I Bless God I am safely arrived where I 〈…〉 after my unwilling departure from the place of your abode and danger and now because I can have no other expression of my tenderness I account that I have a treble Obligation to signifie it by my care of your biggest and eternal interest And because it hath pleased God to make me an Instrument of making you to understand in some fair measure the excellencies of a true and holy Religion and that I have pointed out such follies and errours in the Romane Church at which your understanding being forward and pregnant did of it self start as at imperfect ill-looking Propositions give me leave to do that now which is the purpose of my Charity that is teach you to turn this to the advantage of a holy life that you may not only be changed but converted For the Church of England whither you are now come is not in condition to boast her self in the reputation of changing the opinion of a single person though never so excellent She hath no temporal ends to serve which must stand upon fame and noises all that she can design is to serve God to advance the honour of her Lord and the good of souls and to rejoyce in the Cross of Christ First Therefore I desire you to remember that as now you are taught to pray both publikely and privately in a Language understood so it is intended your affections should be forward in proportion to the advantages which your prayer hath in the understanding part For though you have been often told and have heard that ignorance is the Mother of devotion you will finde that the proposition is unnatural and against common sense and experience because it is impossible to desire that of which we know nothing unless the desire it self be fantasticall and illusive it is necessary that in the same proportion in which we understand any good thing in the same we shall also desire it and the more particular and minute your notices are the more passionate and materiall also your affections will be towards it and if they be good things for which we are taught to pray the more you know them the more reason you have to love them It is monstrous to think that devotion that is passionate desires of religious things and the earnest prosecutions of them should be produced by any thing of ignorance or less perfect notices in any sence Since therefore you are taught to pray so that your understanding is the praecentor or the Master of the Quire and you know what you say your desires are made humane religious express material for these are the advantages of prayers and Liturgies well understood be pleased also to remember that now if you be not also passionate and devout for the things you mention you will want the Spirit of prayer and be more inexcusable then before In many of your prayers before especially the publique you heard a
voice but saw and perceived nothing of the sence and what you understood of it was like the man in the Gospel that was half blinde he saw men walking like Trees and so you possibly might perceive the meaning of it in generall You knew when they came to the Epistle when to the Gospel when the Introit when the Pax when any of the other more generall periods were but you could have nothing of the Spirit of prayer that is nothing of the devotion and the holy affections to the particular excellencies which could or ought there to have been represented but now you are taught how you may be really devout it is made facil and easie and there can want nothing but your consent and observation 2. Whereas now you are taken off from all humane confidences from relying wholly and almost ultimately upon the Priests power and external act from reckoning prayers by numbers from forms and out-sides you are not to think that the Priests power is less that the Sacraments are not effective that your prayers may not be repeated frequently but you are to remember that all outward things and Ceremonies all Sacraments and Institutions work their effect in the vertue of Christ by some morall Instrument The Priests in the Church of England can absolve you as much as the Romane Priests could fairly pretend but then we teach that you must first be a penitent and a returning person and our absolution does but manifest the work of God and comfort and instruct your Conscience direct and manage it You shall be absolved here but not unless you live a holy life So that in this you will finde no change but to the advantage of a strict life we will not flatter you and cozen your dear soul by pretended ministeries but we so order our discourses and directions that all our ministrations may be really effective and when you receive the holy Sacrament of the Eucharist or the Lords Supper it does more good here then they do there because if they consecrate ritely yet they do not communicate you fully and if they offer the whole representative Sacrifice yet they do not give you the whole Sacrament only we enjoyn that you come with so much holiness that the grace of God in your heart may be the principal and the Sacrament in our hands may be the ministring and assisting part we do not promise great effects to easie trifling dispositions because we would not deceive but really procure to you great effects and therefore you are now to come to our offices with the same expectations as before of pardon of grace of sanctification but you must do something more of the work your self that we may not do lesse in effect then you have in your expectation We will not to advance the reputation of our power deceive you into a less blessing 3. Be careful that you do not flatter your self that in our Communion you may have more ease and liberty of life for though I know your pious soule desires passionately to please God and to live religiously yet I ought to be careful to prevent a temptation lest it at any time should discompose your severity Therefore as to confession to a Priest which how it is usually practised amongst the Romane party your self can very well account and you have complain'd sadly that it is made an ordinary act easie and transient sometime matter of temptation often times impertinent but suppose it free from such scandal to which some mens folly did betray it yet the same severity you 'l finde among us for though we will not tell a lye to help a sinner and say that is necessary which is only appointed to make men do themselves good yet we advise and commend it and do all the work of souls to all those people that will be saved by all means to devout persons that make Religion the business of their lives and they that do not so in the Churches of the Roman Communion as they finde but little advantage by peridiocal confessions so they feel but little awfulness and severity by the injunction you must confess to God all your secret actions you must advise with a holy man in all the affairs of your soul you will be but an ill friend to your self if you conceal from him the state of your spiritual affairs We desire not to hear the circumstance of every sinne but when matter of justice is concerned or the nature of the sinne is changed that is when it ought to be made a Question and you will finde that though the Church of England gives you much liberty from the bondage of innumerable Ceremonies and humane devices yet in the matter of holiness you will be tied to very great service but such a service as is perfect freedom that is the service of God and the love of the holy Jesus and a very strict religious life for we do not promise heaven but upon the same terms it is promised us that is Repentance towards God and Faith in our Lord Iesus and as in faith we make no more to be necessary then what is made so in holy Scripture so in the matter of Repentance we give you no easie devices and suffer no lessening definitions of it but oblige you to that strictness which is the condition of being saved and so expressed to be by the infallible Word of God but such as in the Church of Rome they do not so much stand upon Madam I am weary of my Journey and although I did purpose to have spoken many things more yet I desire that my not doing it may be laid upon the account of my weariness all that I shall adde to the main businese is this 4. Reade the Scriptures diligently and with an humble spirit and in it observe what is plain and beleeve and live accordingly Trouble not your self with what is difficult for in that your duty is not described 5. Pray frequently and effectually I had rather your prayers should be often then long It was well said of Petrarch Magno verborum freno uti decet cum superiore colloquentem When you speak to your superiour you ought to have a bridle upon your tongue much more when you speak to God I speak of what is decent in respect of our selves and our infinite distances from God but if love makes you speak speak on so shall your prayer be full of charity and devotion Nullus est amore superior ille te coget ad veniam qui me ad multiloquium Love makes God to be our friend and our approaches more united and acceptable and therefore you may say to God the same love which made me speak will also move thee to hear and pardon Love and devotion may enlarge your Letanies but nothing else can unless Authority does interpoâ—e 6. Be curious not to communicate but with the true Sonnes of the Church of England lest if you follow them that were amongst us but are gone out from us because they were not of us you be offended and tempted to impute their follies to the Church of England 7. Trouble your self with no controversies willingly but how you may best please God by a strict and severe conversation 8. If any Protestant live loosely remember that he dishonours an excellent Religion and that it may be no more laid upon the charge of our Church then the ill lives of most Christians may upon the whole Religion 9. Let no man or woman affright you with declamations and scaring words of Heretick and Damnation and Changeable for these words may be spoken against them that return to light as well as to those that go to darkness and that which men of all sides can say it can be of effect to no side upon its own strength or pretension The End Martial l. 8. ep. 18. Prov. 27. 10. * Vt praestem Pyladen aliquis mihi praestet Oresten Hoc non fit verbis Maree ut ameris ama Mart. l. 6. ep. 11. * Extra fortunam est quicquid donatur amicis Quas dederis solas semper habebis opes Mart. l. 5. ep. 43. Et tamen hoc vitium sed non leve sit licet unum Quod colit ingratas pauper amicitias Quis largitur opes veteri fidoque sodali ep. 19. †Non bellè quaedam faciunt duo sufficit unus Huic operi si vis ut loquar ipse tace Crede mihi quamvis ingentia Posthume dones Authoris pereunt garrulitate sui ep. 53. De potest Eccles. cons. 12.
the Catholike that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendome must also perish like Heathens which thing before any man can beleeve he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman Subjects and the Article of the Catholike Church was made to dispark the inclosures of Ierusalem but to turn them into the pale of Rome and the Church is as limited as ever it was save only that the Synagogue is translated to Rome which I think you will easily beleeve was a Proposition the Apostles understood not But though it be hard to trust to it it is also so hard to prove it that you shall never be able to understand the measures of that question and therefore your salvation can never depend upon it For no good or wise person can beleeve that God hath tied our Salvation to impossible measures or bound us to an Article that is not by us cognoscible or intends to have us conducted by that which we cannot understand and when you shall know that Learned men even of the Romane party are not agreed concerning the Catholike Church that is infallibly to guide you some saying that it is the virtual Church that is the Pope some that it is the representative Church that is a Councel Some that it is the Pope and the Councel the virtual Church and the representative Church together Some that neither of these nor both together are infallible but only the essential Church or the diffusive Church is the Catholique from whom we must at no hand dissent you will quickly finde your self in a Wood and uncertain whether you have more then a word in exchange for your soul when you are told you are in the Catholike Church But I will tell you what you may understand and see and feel something that your self can tell whether I say true or no concerning it You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtlety and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their mindes to a Church in which you are to be a Subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your promises to men your duty to your Parents in some cases a Church in which men pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to worship Images with the same worship with which they worship God and Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that sacred mystery against the doctrine and practise of the Primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a divine attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the divine Nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christs Institution to a humane invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Tradition to new pretences from prayers which ye understood to prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon creatures from intire dependance upon inward acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and of Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where mens consciences are loaden with a burthen of Ceremonies greater then that in the dayes of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio greater I say then all the Ceremonies of the Jews contained in Leviticus c. You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to reade the Word of God the holy Scriptures from whence you found instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more then you need to abuse the Sacraments or decrees of the Church or the messages of your friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are liable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be ignorant to walk in blindeness to beleeve the man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are liable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you were only taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to worship Saints and Angels with a worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church worships the Virgin Mary with burning incense and candles to her and you give her presents which by the consent of all Nations used to be esteemed a worship peculiar to God and it is the same thing which was condemned for Heresie in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the Virgin Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the worship and your joyning God and the Saints in your worship and devotions is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former I will trouble you with no more particulars because if these move you not to consider better nothing can But yet I have two things more to adde of another nature one of which at least may prevail upon you whom I suppose