as a profession of Christianity And as to the Act it must be first A signification of the mind by word or writing or some intelligible sign Secondly it must seem to be understood For no man consenteth to that which he understandeth not But herein any intelligible sign of a tollerable understanding must be accepted though we find that the persons conceptions are raw and not so distinct and clear as they ought nor the expressions ready orderly or compt Thirdly it must seem to be serious For that which is apparently dissembled or Iudicrous is null Fourthly It must be de presenti a present giving up our selves to Christ and not only a promise de futuro that we will hereafter take him for our Saviour and Lord and not at present Fifthly it must seem to be voluntary and not constrained for then it is not serious Sixthly it must seem to be deliberate and resolute and setled and not only the effect of a mutable passion This goeth to make it a real Profession in the common sense of all mankind Obj. But how few among us do so much as seem be understanding serious and resolved in covenanting with Christ Answ. In the Degree of these we all fall short of that which is our duty But if you accuse any of the want of so much as is necessary to an acceptable Profession First you must be sure that you speak not by uncharitable surmise and hear-say but upon certain proof or knowledge Secondly and that therefore you speak it not at a venture of whole Parishes or families but only of those persons by name whom you know to be guilty Thirdly and that you remember that it is the Pastors office to judge and that you expect not that every one must give an account of their knowledge to you And if there be a mis-judging it is the fault of the Pastor and not yours of which more anon Fourthly that persons Baptized are already admitted into the Church and therefore if they make profession of Christianity they must not be put to bring any other proof of their title but it lies on you to disprove it if you will have it questioned And to reject them from communion without a proved accusation is Tyranny and Lording it over the Church of God These are Gods terms of Church-communion And if you will needs have stricter you must have none of his making but your own Obj. But all visible Christians and Churches are visible Saints and Regenerate and so are not ours Answ. To be a Visible Saint is to profess to be a Saint And whosoever doth profess the Baptismal Covenant professeth to be a Saint Conversion Regeneration Faith and Repentance are all contained into taking God the Father Son and Holy Ghost for our Father Saviour and Sanctifier Obj. But you may teach a Parrot to speak those words Answ. It s true And perhaps to speak any words which you use your selves But if you will thence conclude that words must not be taken as a Profession you grosly err or abusively wrangle or if you infer thence that your neighbour understandeth himself no more than a Parrot doth you must prove what you say to the Pastor of the Church For God hath not allowed him to excommunicate baptized persons because you say that they are ignorant And if they are willing to learn it is fitter to teach them than to excommunicate them And here I must lament it that I have met with many censorious Professors who would not communicate with the Parish Churches because the people are ignorant who when I have examined themselves have proved ignorant of the very substance of Christianity so that I have been much in doubt whether I ought to admit them to the Lords Table or not They knew not whether Christ was Eternal or whether he was God when he was on earth or whether he be Man now he is in heaven nor what Faith is or what Iustification or Sanctification is nor what the Covenant of grace is nor what Baptism or the Lords Super are nor could prove the Scripture to be the word of God or prove mans soul to be immortal but gave false or impertinent answers about all these And yet could not joyn with the ignorant Churches And next I desire you here to observe the different Priviledges as well as the different Conditions of Visible and Invisible Churchmembership The members of the Church mystical or Regenerate have the pardon of all sin and acceptance with God and communion with him and with his Church in the spirit and are the adopted children of God and heirs of everlasting life and shall live in heaven with Christ for ever The meer Visible Members of the Church that are not regenerate by the spirit as well as sacramentally by water have only an outward Communion with the Saints and have only the Bread and Wine in the Sacrament and only a name to live when they are dead And are these such great matters that we should envy them to poor sinners that must have no more Have we the Kernel and do we envy them the Shell Have we the Spirit and do we envy them the flesh or outward signes alone Yea consider farther that it is more for the sake of the truly faithful than for their own that all Hypocrites have their station and priviledges in the Church God maketh use of their Gifts and Profession for his elect to many great services of the Church And is it not then a foolish ingratitude in us to murmur at their presence Understand well the conditions and Reasons of this visible state of membership and how far it is below the state of the Regenerate and it will turn your separating murmuring into a thankful acknowledgment of the wisdom of God DIRECT VII Get right and deep aprehensions of the Necessity and Reasons of Christian Unity and Concord and of the sin and misery of Divisions and Discord WHen we have but slight apprehensions of a duty we easily neglect it and scarce reprove our selves for it or repent of our omission And when we have but slight apprehensions of the evil of any sin a little temptation draweth us to it we are hardly brought to through-repentance for it And there is in many Christians a strange inequality and partiality in their apprehensions of good and evil Some duties they dare not omit and they judge all ungodly who omit them when some others as great are past by as if they were no part of religion And some sins they fear with very great tenderness when we can scarce make their consciences take any notice of others as great And usually they let out all their zeal on one sâ—de only while they over-look the other The Papist seemeth so sensible of the good of Unity and the evil of Divisions that he thinketh usurpation of an Universal Church-Monarchy and Tyranny and horrid bloud-shed to be not only lawful but necessary for the prevention and the cure
are but the effects of your prejudice passion or weakness of understanding 28. Do not too much reverence the revelations impulses or most confident opinions of any others upon the account of their sincerity or holiness but try all judiciously and soberly by the word of God 29. Take heed least the trouble of your own disquieted doubting minds do become a snare to draw you to some unâ—outh way of Cure and so make the fancy of some new opinion sect or practice to seem your remedy and give you ease and soperswade you that it is the certain truth 30 Keep in the rank of a humble disciple or Learner in Christs Church till you are fit and called to be Teachers your selves 31. Grow up in the great substantial practical truths and duties and grow downwards in the roots of a clearer belief of the Word of God and the life to come And neither begin too soon with doubtful opinions nor ever lay too much upon them 32. Lay not a greater stress upon your different words and manner of prayer than God hath laid And take heed of scorning reproaching or slighting the words and manner of other mens worship when it is such as God accepteth from the sincere Where the Case about forms of prayer is handled 33. When you are sure that other mens way of worship is sinful yet make it not any other or greater sin than indeed it is and speak not evil of so much in it as is good And slander not God as a hater or rejecter of all mens Services which are mixt with infirmities or as a partial hater of the infirmities of others and not yours 34. Think not that all is unlawfully obeyed which is unlawfully commanded 35. Think not that you are guilty of all the faults of other mens worship with whom you joyn no not of the Ministers or Congregations Nor that you are bound to seperate from all the worship which is faultily performed For then there must be no Church-Communion upon Earth Where is more about extemporary prayer and imposed forms 36. Yet know what Pastors and Church-Communion you may joyn with and what not And think not that I am perswading you to make no difference 37. In your judging of Discipline reformation and any means of the Churches good be sure your eye be upon the true End and upon the particular Rule and not on either of them alone Take not that for a means which is either contrary to the Word of God or is in â—ts nature destructive of the end 38. Neglect not any truth of God much less renounce it or deny it But yet do not take it for your duty to publish all which you judge to be truth nor a sin to silence many lesser truths when the Churches peace and welfare doth require it 39. Know which are the Great duties of a Christian life and wherein the nature of true Religion doth consist And then pretend not any lesser duty against these greater though the least when it is indeed a duty is not to be denyed or neglected 40. Labour for a sound judgement to know good from evil least you trouble your selves and others by mistakes Forsake not the guidance of a judicious Teacher nor the Company of the agreeing generality of the Godly 41. Let not the bare fervour of a Preacher or the loudness of his voice or affectionate utterance draw you too far to admire or follow him without a proportion of solid understanding and judiciousness 43. Your belief of the necessary Articles of faith must be made your own and not taken meerly on the Authority of any And in all points of belief or practice which are necessary to Salvation you must ever keep company with the Universal Church For it were not the Church if it erred in those And in matters of Peace and Concord the major vote must be your guide In matters of humane obedience your Governours must be your guides And in matters of high and difficult speculation the judgment of one man of extraordinary understanding is to be preferred before the Rulers and the major Vote 43. Reject not a good cause because it is owned by some bad men And own not a bad cause for the goodness of the Patrons of it Iudge not of the Cause by the persons when you should judg of the persons by the Cause 44. Yea take the bad examples of religious men to be one of your most perillous temptations And therefore labour to discover what are the special sins of professours in the age you live in that you may be specially fortified against them 45. Desire the highest degree of holiness and to be free from the Corruptions of the times But affect not to be odd and singular from ordinary Christians in lawful things 46. When you have to do only with stigmatized scandalous ones to vindicate the honour of Christianity from their Scandal go as far from them as lawfully you can But with the Common sort of Sinners whose Conversion you are bound to seek go not as far from them as you can but purposely study to come as near them as lawfully you may that you may have the better advantage to win them to the truth 47. Whenever you are avoiding any error forget not that there is a contrary extream to be avoided of which you are not our of danger 48. Think more and talk more of your faults and failings against others especially against Princes Magistrates and Pastors than of their faults and failings against you 49. Take notice of all the good in others which appeareth and talk rather of that behind their backs than of their faults 50. Study the duty of instructing and exhorting more than of reproof and finding fault 51. The more you suffer by Rulers or any mâ—n the more be watchful lest you be tempted to dishonour them or to withdraw or abate the Love which is their due 52. Make Conscience of heart-revenge and tongue-revenge as well as of hand-revenge 53. When you are exasperated by the hurt which you feel from Magistrates remember also the Good which the Church receiveth by them 54. Learn to suffer by good people and by Ministers and not only by ungodly people or by Magistrates 55. When you complain of violence and persecution in others take heed lest the same inward vice work in you by Church cruelties and dimning censures against them or others Persecution and separation often have the same Cause 56. Keep still in your eye the State of all Christs Churches upon earth that you may know what a people they are through the world whom Christ hath Communion with and may not ignorantly separate from almost all the Church of Christ while you think that you separate but from those about you Queres about separation 57. Yet ler not any here cheat you by the bare namees and titles of Unity to the papal usurping head of the Church nor must you dream of any Head and Center of Unity to the universal
as wasting fire proceedeth from the incendiaries The Texts recited DIRECTIONS FOR VVeak Christians How they may escape the troubling dividing and endangering of the Church by their Errours in Doctrine Worship and Church-Communion IF we had never been warned by the History of the Sacred Scripture or of the former Ages of the Church yet our experience in this present Age is enough to tell both us and our Posterity how great perturbations and calamites may come to the Church of Christ by the miscarriages of the more zealous Professors of Religion and how great a hinderance such may prove to the prosperity of the Gospel to the Love and Unity of Christians to the Reformation and holy order of the Congregations and to all those good ends which are desired by themselves How great a dishonour they may prove to the Christian name and what occasions of hardening the wicked in their contempt of Godliness to their everlasting ruine and the sufferings of Believers Therefore seeing the peace and welfare of the Church is much more valuable than the peace and welfare of an individual soul as I have Directed you how to escape your own disturbance and undoing so I think it as necessary to direct you how to escape being the Plagues and disturbers of the Church and the instruments of Satan in resisting the Gospel and destroying others And you should be the more willing to hear me in this also because by hurting others you hurt your selves and by wronging the Church of God you cross your own desires and ends if you are Christians indeed and by doing good to others and furthering the cause of Godliness and Christianity you do good to your selves and further your own Cosolation and Salvation DIRECT I. FIrst observe this General direction see that you forget not the great difference between Novices and experienced Christians between the babes and those at full age between the weak and the strong in grace Level them not in your estimation It is not for nothing that the Spirit of God in Scripture maketh so great a difference between them as you may read in Heb. 5. 11 12 13 14 6. 1 2. 1 Tim. 3. 6. 1 Iohn 2. 12 13 14. There are babes strong men and fathers among Christians There are some that are dull of hearing and have need of milk and are unskilful in the word of righteousness and must be taught the principles and there are others who can digest strong meat who by reason of Use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil Novices must not be made Pastors of the Church It is not for nothing that the Younger are so often commanded reverence and submission to the Elder and that the Pastors and Governors of the Church are usually called by the name of Elders because it was supposed that the elder sort were the most experienced and wise and therefore Pastors and Rulers were to be chosen out of them And why is it that children must so much honour their fathers and mothers and must be governed by them It is not meerly because generation giveth the Parents a propriety in their children For God would not have folly to be the governour of wisdom upon pretense of such propriety But it is also because that it must ordinarily be supposed that Infants are ignorant and Parents have understanding and are fit to be their Teachers as having had longer time and helps to learn and more experience to make their knowledge clear and firm If the young and unexperienced were ordinarily as wise as the aged or mature why are not children made governors of their Parents or at least commanded to instruct and teach them as ordinarily as Parents must do their children The Lord Jesus himself would be subject to his mother and reputed father in his Child-hood Luke 2. 51. Can there be a livelier conviction of the arrogancy of those novices who proudly sleight the judgments of their elders as presuming groundlesly that they are wiser than they Yea Christ would not enter upon his publick Ministry or Office till he was about thirty years of age Luke 3. 23. He is blind that perceiveth not in this example a most notorious Condemnation of the pride of those that run with the shell on their head into the Ministery or that hasten to be Teachers of others before they have had time or means to learn and that deride or vilisie the judgments of the aged who differ from their conceits before they understand the things in which they are so confident It was thought a good answer in Iohn 9. 21. He is of age ask him But they that are under age now think their words to be the wisest because they are the boldest and the fiercest The old were wont to bless the young and now the young deride the old It is the character of a truculent people Deut. 28. 50. that they regard not the person of the old that is They reverence not their age How many vehement commands are there in Solomons Proverbs to the younger sort to hearken to the counsel of their Parents The contrary was the ruine of Eli's sons and the shame of Samuels 1 Sam. 8. 1 5. Was Rehoboam unwise in forsaking the counsel of the aged and harkning to the young and rash And are those people wise that in the Mysteries of Salvation will prefer the vehement passions of a novice before the well-setled judgment of the experienced aged Ministers I know that the old are too oft ignorant and that wisdom doth not always increase with age But I know withall that Children are never fit to be the Teachers of the Church And that old men may be foolish but too young men are never wise enough for so high a work We are not now considering what may fall out rarely as a wonder but what is ordinarily to be expected Most of the Churches confusions and diviâ—â—ons have been caused by the younger sort of Christians Who are in the heat of their zeal and the infancy of understanding Who have affection enough to make them drive on but have not judgement enough to know the way None are so fierce and rash in condemning the things and persons which they understand not and in raising clamours against all that are wiser and soberer than they If they once take a thing to be a sin which is no sin or a duty which is no duty there is no person no Minister no Magistrate who hath age or wisdom or piety enough to save them from the injuries of juvenile temerity if they do not think and speak and do according to their green and raw conceits Remember therefore to be always sensible of the great disadvantages of youth and to preserve that reverence for experienced age which God in nature as well as in Scripture hath made their due If time labour were not necessary to maturity of knowledge why do you not trust another with your health as well as a studyed experienced
bound to be more afraid of giving scandal to them than unto you Are not men most afraid of overthrowing the children and the weak rather than those that are stronger than themselves If you are apter to sin and turn from Christ than the people of the Parish Churches we should rather separaâ—e from you than from them If not we must more take heed of scandalizing them than you Obj. But Christ pronounceth a â—o to them that offend his little ones Answ. If by offending them be meant only persecuting and hurting them as many think then it is nothing to the question in hand For I hope communicating with others is not a persecuting you And bare displeasing them it is certain that the text doth not mean at all But if by offending them be meant scandalizing them that is laying snares before them whether by fraud or persecution to turn them from Christ and draw them to sins then it confirmeth all that I say And the term little ones conteineth the reason of the words Because as little children are easily overthrown easilier deceived so the young weak believers of little faith are most in danger of being turned away from Christ or ensnared in any sin or errour And therefore if you think the Parish Churches to consist of weaker persons than your selves the woe is to you or us if we offend them The truth is offending and giving scandal is commonly taken in the Gospel for any action which is not our necessary duty by which either Heathens and Inâ—idels and enemies to Christ are like to be drawn to harder thoughts of the Christian faith or any wicked man is like to be kept from a godly life or else by which the young ungrounded and unsetled sort of Christians may be tempted to turn back and forsake the faith which they have professed or fall into any dangerous sin And therefore seeing the separatists profess to be setled in the faith already and many in the Parish Churches are weak and many averse to some duties of Religion and more in danger of being turned away we are bound to be much more afraid of giving scandal to the Parishes than to the separatists Obj. But Christ cared not for offending such perverse ones as Herod or the Pharisees Answ. Christ feared not to displease the greatest when it would be done by doing good No more must you or they be pleased by our neglect of any duty But Christ was against laying any trap before either Herod or the Pharisees to make them sin And it is not your censure of others that will warrant us to use them as Reprobates forsaken of God If every man that can be uncharitable enough to call his neighbours Pharisees or enemies of Christ without proof shall keep us from communion with them then the worse any man is the more he shall be Lord of all other mens consciences DIRECT XXV Be not over-tender of your reputation with any sort of men on earth nor too impatient of their censures displeasure or contempt THe fangs of the censorious are a common scandal and as strong a snare or temptation to some men as worldly preferments are to others When we come among men whom we take for the most Religious and hear them keenly censure all for hypocrites or formalists profane or schismaticks who are contrary to them in opinion or practise at the first we are in danger of being carried away as Barnabas in dissimulation and to say as they say or at least comply with them by our silence and practise lest we should be censured by them as others are Especially Ministers are greatly in danger of this snare For the prophane hate them for their doctrine and their holy lives And it is the godly that are the fruit of their labours and the satisfaction which they have for all their sufferings and the comfort of their lives And if these forsake them and despise them with whom shall they find any comfort in the world Therefore they are very much in danger of complying too far with their errours and weaknesses to keep their interest in them And they think it is that they may do them good And perhaps this was the case of Peter and Barnabas with the weak Judaizing Christians For Paul telleth us Rom. the 14. that it was the use of the weak who thought those things to be duties and sins which were not so to judge the strong who knew their liberty And it was the custome of the strong to despise the weak Just as at this day the mistaken superstitious Christian saith They are prophane that are not against all that he is against And those that see his errour say what giddy whimsical fanaticks are these So was it then and so it is like to be till God give the world a better mind Many a faithful Minister I have known who have freely confessed to me that the censures of peevish self-conceited Christians enclined to separation was a far stronger temptation to them to forsake or overrun their own understandings than all the offers of honours or riches could be on the other side It is a hard thing when we have spent our labour and lives to bring men to Christ and have got them into a state of hope and forwardness to be shortly after cast off by them as formalists oâ— temporizers or any thing that their sick fancies will call us But for all this it is but one of those trials which God will have his servants undergo And both Ministers and private persons must be above the praise and the dispraise even of self-conceited Religious persons before they can be sit to follow Christ as tried and firmly setled men Stand your ground if you are in the right Truth will bear all your charges at the last and will defend it self and you If you please men whoever they be contrary to God and conscience you are servants of men and verily you have your reward Math. 6. But you are no longer the servants of Christ. Gal. 1. 10. And you will never be setled but change as the Moon as the parties or opinions of the censurers change But if you stick to the words of truth and soberness at last the sober part of the Religious will be your encouragers and many of the giddy will come to you by Repentance when experience hath shewed them that which they would not learn of you That which is vertiginous will at last settle its rest on that which is permanent and firm As boys when they have made themselves wheel-sick with turning round will lay hold on the next post to keep them from falling Therefore bear the censures of the ignorant Please them in all things lawful for their good and edification and become all things to all men in a lawful way But depart not from the principles or practise of Christian-union Communion Charity or Sobriety to please a dividing hot-brain'd party nor to escape their sharpest censures He is
to purchase them DIRECT XXXVII In your judging of Discipline Reformation and any means of the Churches good be sure your Eye be both upon the true End and upon the particular Rule and not on either of them alone Take not that for a means which is either contrary to the word of God or is in its nature destructive of the End THere are great miscarriages come for want of the true observation of this rule First If a thing seem to you very needful to a good end and yet the word be against it avoid it For God knoweth better than we what means is fittest and what he will bless As for instance some think that many self-devised ways of worship contrary to Col. 2. 21 23. would be very profitable to the Church And some think that striking with the sword as Peter did is the way to rescue Christ or the Gospel But both are bad because the Scripture is against them Secondly and if you think that the Scripture commandeth you this or that positive means if Nature and true Reason assure you that it is against the End and is like to do much more harm than good be assured that you mistake that Scripture For first God telleth us in general that the means as such are for the End and therefore are no means when they are against it The Ministery is for edification and not for destruction The Sabbath is for man and not man for the Sabbath Secondly God hath told us that no positive duty is a duty at all times To pray when I should be saving my neighbours life is a sin and not a duty though we are commanded to pray continually So is it to be preaching or hearing on the Lords day when I should be quenching a fire in the town or doing necessary works of mercy Wherefore the Disciples Sabbath-breaking was justified by Christ and he giveth us all a charge to learn what this meaneth I will have mercy and not sacrifice which must needs import I prefer mercy before sacrifice and would have no sacrifice which hindereth mercy Therefore if a Sermon were to be preached so unseasonably or in such unsuitable circumstances as that according to Gods ordinary way of working it were like to do more hurt than good it were no duty at that time Discipline is an Ordinance of Christ But if sound reason tell me that if I publickly call this man to Repentance or excommunicate him it is like to do much hurt to the Church and no good to him it would be at that time no duty but a sin As Physick must be forborn where the Disease will but be exasperated by it Therefore Christ boundeth our very preaching and reproof with a Shake off the dust off your feet as a testimony against them And give not that which is holy to dogs c. When treading under foot and turning again and rending us is lâ—kest to be the success the wisdome of Christ and not that of the flesh only requireth us to take it for no duty This is to be observed by them that think that Admonitions and excommunications and exclusion from the Sacrament must be used in all places and at all times alike without respect to the End come of it what will Or that will tempt God by presuming that he will certainly either bless or at least justifie their unseasonable and imprudent actions as if they were a duty at all times To be either against the Scripture or against the End is a certain proof that an action is no duty because no means DIRECT XXXVIII Neglect not any truth of God much less renounce it or deny it For lying and contempt of Sacred truth is always sinful But yet do not take it for your duty to publish all which you judge to be truth nor a sin to silence many lesser truths when the Churches peace and welfare doth require it TO speak or subscribe against any truth is not to be done on any pretense whatsoever For lying is a sin at all times But it is the opinion of injudicious furious spirits that no truth is to be silenced for peace Truth is not to be sold for carnal prosperity but it is to be forborn for spiritual advantage and true necessity First if the publishing of all truths were at all times a duty then all men live every moment in ten thousand sins of omission because there are more than so many truths which I am not publishing Nay which I never shall publish whilest I live Secondly Positives bind not always and to all times Thirdly while you are preaching that opinion which your zeal is so much for you are omitting far greater and more necessary Truths And is it not as great a sin to omit them as the lesser Fourthly Mercy is to be preferred before sacrifice What if the present uttering some truth would cost many thousand mens lives Were not that an untimely and unmerciful word And is it not as bad if but accidentally it tend to the ruine of the Church and the hurt of souls It were easie to instance in unseasonable and imprudent words of truth spoken to Princes which have raised persecutions of long continuance and ruined Churches silenced Ministers and caused the death of multitudes of men Fifthly And where is there any word of God which commandeth us to speak all that we know and which forbiddeth us to forbear the utterance of any one truth Sixthly And for the most part those men who are most pregnant and impatient of holding in their opinions on the pretense of the pretiousness of truth do but proudly esteem their own understandings precious and do vend some raw undigested notions vain janglings or errors under the name of that truth which must by no means be concealed though the vending of it tend to envy and strife and to confusion and every evil work When those that have the Truth indeed have more wisdome and goodness to know how to use it It is not Truth but Goodness which is the ultimate object of the soul. And God who is infinite Goodness it self hath revealed his Truths to the world to do men Good and not to hurt them And the Devil who is the Destroyer so he may but do men hurt will be content to make use even of Truth to do it Though usually he only pretendeth Truth to cover his lies And this angel of Light hath his ministers of Light and Righteousness who are known by their fruits whilest the pretenses of Light and Righteousness are used to Satans ends and not to Christs to hurt and destroy and to hinder Christs Kingdome and not to save and to do good As the Wolf is known by his bloody jaws even in his sheeps cloathing DIRECT XXXIX Know which are the great duties of a Christian life and wherein the nature of true Religion doth consist And then pretend not any lesser duty against those greater though the least when it is indeed a duty is not to
be denied or neglected HEaven-work and Heart-work are the chiefest parts of Christian duty Christ often giveth us his summaries of the Law and inculeateth his great Command Iob. 13. 35. Matth. 22. 37 38 39. Luk. 10. 27. And so doth the Apostle Rom. 13. 10. 1 Pet. 1. 22. 1 Iohn 3. 11 14 23. 4 7 11 12 20. 2 Ioh. 5. And the fruits of the spirit are manifest Gal. 5. 22 23. Iames saith that pure Religion and undefiled before God even the father is this to visit the fatherless and widows in adversity and to keep our selves unspotted of the world Jam. 1. 27. Paul saith 1 Tim. 1. 5. The end of the Commandement is Charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned And then addeth From which some having swarved have turned aside to vain janglings In a word The effectual belief of pardon and eternal Glory given through Christ and the Love of God and man with the denial of our selves and fleshly desires and contempt of all things in the world which are competitors with God and our salvation with a humble patient enduring of all which must be suffered for these ends is the nature and sum of the Christian Religion Do nothing therefore as a duty which is a hinderance to any of this Contentious preachings and factious sidings which weaken Love are not of God The servant of the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men 2 Tim. 2. 24. When you come into a family and find that their Religion consisteth in promoting some odd opinion and pleading for a party and vilifying others be sure that this is a Religious way of serving the devil being contrary to the great and certain duties of a godly liâ—e When you fall into company which stiâ—leth all talk of Heaven and all Heart-searching and Heart-humbling conference by pleading 〈◊〉 this or that opinion be sure that it is but one way of enmity to Holiness though not so gross as scorning and persecuting it That which I said before of Truth is applyable to this of Duty It is one of the most important things in the world for the resolving of a thousand cases of conscience and the directing of a Christian life to know which Duties are the Greater and which are the lesser and so which is to be preferred in competition For that which is a duty at another time is a sin when it is done instead of a greater as Christ hath resolved in the case of the Sabbath If Good must be loved as Good then the Greatest Good must be most loved and sought Sacrifice instead of mercy is a sin Our gift must be left at the altar while we go to be reconciled to our brother Math. â— Never hearken to those men who would set up their controverted duties or any positives and lesser things against the duties of nature it self or the great substantial parts of godliness DIRECT XL. Labour for a sound judgement to know good from evil left you trouble your selves and others by mistakes And till you grâ—w so judicious forsake not the guidance of a judicious Teacher nor the company of the agreeing generality of the Godly ALmost all our contentions and divisions are caused by the ignorance and injudiciousness of Christians especially the most self-conceited They are for the most as children that yet need to be taught the very principles of the divine Oracles and to be fed with milk when they think themselves fit to be teachers of others Heb. 5. 11 12. And therefore as children they are tossed to and fro and caried about with every wind of doctrine Eph. 4. 14. And when they have many years together been crying up an opinion and vilifying dissenters at last they turn to some other opinion and confess that they did all this upon mistake And was it not a pitiful life that they lived that while and a pitiful zeal which did set them on and a pitiful kind of worship which they thus offered to God Alas to hear a man pray and preach up Antinomianism one year and Arminianism the next and Socinianism the next To hear a man make Separation and Anabaptistry a great part of his business to men in preaching and to God in prayer for seven and seven years together and at last confess that all this was his errour and his sin Or if he confess it not it is so much the worse Is it not sad that ignorance and hasty rashness should so much injure the Church and mens souls that so many well meaning people should put evil for good and good for evil darkness for light and light for darkness Isa. 5. 20. But because there is no hope that most should be judicious there is no other remedy for such but this of Christs prescript which I have here set down First Happy is he that chooseth a judicious faithful Guide and learneth of him till his own understanding be better illuminated And that escapeth the conduct of ignorant erroneous self-seeking proud dividing Teachers Secondly Continue in the Communion of the generality of agreeing Christians The generality of the godly are more unlikely to be forsaken of Christ than a few odd self-conceited singular professours This is the way of peace to your selves and to the Church of Christ. DIRECT XLI Let not the bare Fervour of a Preacher or the Lowdness of his voice or affectionate manner of utterance draw you too far to admire or follow him without a proportionable degree of solid understanding and judiciousness IT is pity that any wise and judicious Minister should want that fervour and seriousness of speech which the weight of so great a business doth require And it is greater pity that any serious affectionate Minister should be ignorant and injudicious And it is yet greater pity that in any good men too much of their fervour should be meerly affected and seem to be what it is not or at least be raised by a selfish desire to advance our selves in the hearers thoughts and to exercise our parts upon their affections But it is most pitiful that the Church hath any hypocrites who have no other but such affected dissembled fervency And it is not the least pity that so many good people especially youths and women should be so weak as to value an affectionate tone of speech above a judicious opening of the Gospel I confess there is something in an affectionate expression which will move the wisest And as light and judgement tend to generate judgement so heat of affection tendeth to beget affection And I never loved a senseless delivery of matters of eternal consequence As if we were asleep our selves or would make the hearers to be so Or would have them think by our cold expressions that we believe not our selves when we set forth the great inestimable things of the life to come But yet it grieveth my very soul to think what pitiful raw and ignorant kind of preaching is crowded
is ready to over-run his consideration and abuse his conscience in the extent of his compliance with all impositions through the indignation or contempt against the unreasonable humours of the Sectaries And thus mens own judgement and practise is depraved while they think more from whence to go than whither Secondly you lose your advantage of doing good to those you flye from And therein disobey the will of God and have a hand in the loss of the souls of men Paul became a Jew to the Jews and all things to all men to save some 1 Cor. 9. 19 20 21 22. I pray you mark his words It had been no strange thing if he had become wise to gain the foolish and shewed himself strong to win the weak c. But to become a Iew as when he circumcised Timothy and shaved his head because he had a vow c. and to be as under the Law to them that are under Law and as without Law to them that are without Law and to become as weak to them that are weak to gain the weak and to be made all things to all men to save some this is far from the religion of the Separatists What abundance of things do many now blame and censure others for as temporizers which they have nothing against that may be called Reason but only that their neighbours use them If a man stand up at the profession of the Belief or if he stand up when the Psalms and Hymns of Praise to God are uttered they say he conâ—ormeth to the gestures of the Congregation and make that his dispraise which is his praise And what Is not standing a fit gesture to profess our Faith in and a fit gesture to praise God in Or is it praise-worthy to be odd and singular in the Church and not to do as the rest of the Church doth Austin professed his resolution in all such gestures and lawful orders to do as the Church doth where he is And Paul would have us with one mouth as well as with one mind to glorifie God I entreat these men to mark whether it was Christ or the Pharisees that came nearest to their way and whom they now imitate Was it for going too far from sinners that the Pharisees did censure Christ Or was it not for eating and drinking with Publicans and sinners though he did it not to harden them in their sin but as a Physician conversing with the sick to heal them was it not for Sabbath-breaking and not being strict enough in such matâ—ers that they were offended with Christ and his disciples The case is plain But corrupted nature more favoureth the separating zeal of the Pharisees than the Loving winning zeal of Christ And will easilier suffer us to be imitators of the Pharisees than of Christ. Thirdly This going too far from those whom we should win doth not only lose our advantage to do them good but greatly tendeth to harden them in all their prejudices against a religious life and to hinder their conversion and to undo their souls When they hear and see us place any of our Religion in avoiding a lawful recreation or a lawful use of words or a lawful fashion of apparel or a lawful gesture or circumstance in Gods worship they will judge of the rest of our Religion by that part And this is one thing that hath hardened thousands especially of the rich who are enclined to excesses in a scornful contempt of strictness in Religion under the name of Puritans and Bigots and Precisians and such like They think they are but an ignorant humorous sort of people who are almost mad with a pride of their singularity in Religion And think that when you tell them of a Conversion you would have them become such whimsical fanaticks And that the difference between their Religion and yours is but whether such a form of prayer or such a gesture or such a fashion of apparel or such musick or other recreation be lawful or unlawful In which they are confident that they are in the right And what greater cruelty can you shew to souls than thus to harden them in their sin and misery Little do such persons think how many be in Hell through these scandals and snares which they have set before them And yet they take on them that is because they would not encourage men in sin that they thus flye from them When they do their worst to make all the world believe that strict religiousness is but the whimsie of a giddy sort of people who are almost out of their wits with pride And what greater injury can men do to Christ and to Religion than this To make it the scorn and contempt of the world I know they will say that Religion was ever scorned by the wicked and ever will be But if it be scorned for its genuine nature its heavenly wisdome purity and goodness this is the disgrace only of them that scorn it Or if they maliciously and causelesly call wisedome folly or call good evil this will redound to the speakers shame where true Reason hath but leave to work But if you will therefore do as the Jews did and cloath Christ in a fools Coat and put a Reed in his hand for a Scepter to expose him to the laughter and scorn of the beholders it is you that will be found his deriders and crucifiers If you blind-fold him and others smite him and say Read who smote thee his buffetting will prove to be caused by you If you will paint a saint in the garb of a mad man the countries hatred and abuse of saints will be imputed unto you Fourthly yea I may add that you are the great cause of the persecutions of the godly and of the damnation of the persecutors While godly people appear in their own likeness in wisdome and love and humility and meekness and sobriety the world doth usually bear some reverence to them though it hate them But when you have made men believe that those that call themselves Godly people are but a company of superstitious Pharisees that cry Touch not tast not handle not or a sort of melancholly humorists who must sit because their neighbours stand or must go out of the way because their neighbours go in it This maketh them justifie all their cruelties to you and others and think persecution to be their duty and to say that the whip is for the fools back and wanton children must be made wise by the rod and that it is no wrong to a mad man to lie in Bedlam If you say that Godliness hath been alwayes perseâ—uted I answer But if you are the causers of it though it must needs be that scandal or offence come yet wo to him by whom it cometh Math. 18. 7. Luk. 17. 1 2. The way of heavenly wisdome is pure but peaceable and gentle and easie to be entreated The way that Christ and his Apostles have led us is to draw as
a Heretick or an impenitent sinner and to be excommunicated or not and the Church where he liveth is divided about it if the matter be but referred to the Pope as the supream Judg it is but going to Rome and sending thither all the parties and witnesses on both sides and the Pope can decide it much more judiciously than those that are on the place and know the persons and all the circumstances And all this may be done in three years time or less if wind and weather and all things serve And if all the persons die by the way the controversie is ended If one part only die let the longer liver have the better and be justified Or if the Pope will rather send Governours to the place to decide the controversie whether the next Lords day you shall hold communion with such a man or not and so forward its like in a few years time some of them may live to come thither And if you must still appeal to the Pope himself for fear lest a Priest be not the infallible or final Judg and can do no better than other folks Priests you may after all have the liberty of the voyage And if you cannot in that age get the case dispatched yet you must believe that you have appeared to the only center of Unity This cheating noise and name of Vnity hath been the great divider of the Christian world And under pretense of suppressing Heresie and Schism and bringing a blessed peace and harmony amongst all Christians the Churches have been set all together by the ears condemning and unchurching one another and millions have been murthered in the flames inquisition and other kinds of death and those are Martyrs with the one part who are burnt as Hereticks by the other And more millions have been murdered by wars And hatred and confusion is become the mark and temperament of those who have most loâ—dly cried up Vnity and Concord Order and Peace It is a common way to set up a sect or faction by crying down schism sects and factions And a common way to destroy both Unity and Peace by cryâ—ng up Unity and Peace Therefore let not bare Nâ—mes decâ—ive you Remember that one of the old sects or factions of carnal Christians cried up Cephas that is Peter and said we are of Cephas which I know not how they could be blamed for if he was the Churches Constitutive or Governing Head 1 Cor. 1. 12. and 3. 22. And remember that the Church is not the body of any Apostle but of Christ and that all the Apostles are but the nobler sort of members and none of them the Head 1 Cor. 12. 27 28. Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular and God hath set some in the Church first Apostles secondarily Prophets thirdly Teachers c. But Bellarmine aware of this hath devised this shift that the Pope succeedeth Peter in more than his Apostle-ship even his Head-ship But when he hath proved Peter more than an Apostle and the Pope his successor he will do the business Till then we must say that if the Pope were but a good Priest or Bishop below an Apostle we should give him more honour than his treasonable usurpation of Christs prerogatives is like to procure him For he that will needs have all shall have none and he that exalteth himself shall be brought low and he that will be more than a man shall be less than a man DIRECT LVIII Take heed of Superstition and observe well the circular course of zealous superstition malignity formality and peevish singularity and schism that you may not be misled by respect of persons I mean that First Indiscreet zeal and devotion hath been the usual beginner of Superstition Secondly Malignity in that age hath opposed it for the Authors sake Thirdly In the next age the same kind of men have adored the Authors and made themselves a Religion of the formal part of that superstition and persecuted those that would not own it Fourthly And then the same kind of men that first made it do oppose it in enmity to those who impose and own it and suffer and divide the Church in dislike of that which was their own invention IT is marvellous to observe this partial dance But Church-History may convince the understanding Reader that so it hath been and so it is First the zeal of some holy persons doth at first break forth in some lawful and in some indiscreet and unwarrantable expressions Secondly the malignant enemies of Godliness hate and oppose these expressions for the sake of the persons and the zeal exprest 3. When they are dead God performing his promise that the memory of the just shall be blessed Prov. 10. 7. The carnal party of that age as welâ— as others do honour those whom their fore-fathers hated and murthered Math. 23. 29 30. Wo to you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites because ye build the tombs of the Prophets and garnish the sepulâ—hres of the righteous and say If we had been in the dayes of our Fathers we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets Wherefore ye be witnesses to your selves that ye are the children of them which killed the Prophets Fill you up then the measure of your fathers The wicked of one generation kill Gods servants and the wicked of the next Generation do honour their names and celebrate their memorial The reason is because it is the Life of Godliness which the sinner is troubled with and hateth And therefore it is the living saint whom he abhorreth But the name and form of Godliness is less troublesome to him yea and may be useful to make him a Religion of to quiet his conscience in his sin And therefore the name of dead saints he can honour and the form of their worship and corps of piety he can own And having become so Religious both his former enmity to living holiness and his carnal zeal for his Image of Religion engage him to make a stir for it and persecute those that are not of his way And when the zealous and devout people of that age see this they loath that carkass or Image which the formalist contendeth for and many â—lye from it with too great abhorrence for the persons sake who now esteems it forgetting its original and that it was such as they that set it up and were the first inventers For instance The most of the persons whom the Papists now keep holy dayes for were very religious godly people And the zealous Religious people of that age did think that the honouring of the memories of the Martyrs was a great means to invite the infidels to Christianity and to encourage the weak to stick to Christ And therefore they kept the dayes of their martyrdome in thanksgiving to God and in honour of them The wicked of that age hated and persecuted both the Martyrs and them that honoured them In the next age Religion
being uppermost in the world the wicked did turn Hypocrites and keep Holy dayes for the honour of their names whom their fore-fathers murthered At last when it was observed that the Papists who burned the living Saints were the greatest honourers of the dead the most religious people turned quite to dislike and reject those very dayes which their predecessors had set up in thanksgiving to God for the doctrine example and constancy of the Martyrs The same all along I may say about the Relicts of Martyrs and pilgrimages to their shrines which the Religious sort begun at first and loathe at last So also those forms of Liturgy which now are most distasted were brought in by the most zealous religious people at the first The many short invocations versicles and responses which the people use were brought in when the souls of the faithful did abound with zeal and in holy servours break out into such expressions and could not well endure to be bare auditors and not vocally to bear their part in the praises of God and prayers of the Church And in time those very words which signified their raptures were used by formal hypocrites without their zeal who first exprest them and so being mortified and made dead Images and used but by rote in a senseless canting among the Papists and also forced upon others it is now become a point of zeal to avoid them and take them as unlawful and it is a great reason because they are in the Mass-book when the Mass-book received them from the predecessors of many of those men that now refuse them But though indeed the highest expressions of zeal and rapture are most lothsome when they are counterfeited and turned into a meer lifeless form Yet it is the privation of life which is the fault of the Image and not the thing as in it self Restore the same spirit to those words and they will be as good as they were at the beginning I might instance in most of the Popish superstitions and shew you that for the most part it was the godliest sort of people of that age who at first did either set them up or that which did occasion them and that the hypocrite after made them his Religion taking up the form without the life and that upon this the godly of after ages did abhor them But what is my inference from all this Why first I would advise you to look more to the nature of the things themselves and less to the persons and regard the honour of humanity if you regard not the honour of Religion and make not the Infidel world deride you while they see you alter your opinions and practise in meer opposition to one another and to take up and lay down as the two ends of the ballance move which must be contrary to each other Secondly that you truly understand what interest such zealous persons as your selves had in those opinions forms and practises at the first that if you will avoid them for some mens sake you may think the better of them for other mens so far as to bring you to some impartiality Thirdly that you suspect that zeal in your selves which you think so much miscarried in your ancestors I do not take all that I have mentioned for superstition but I shew you the circulation which zeal and formality and maligniâ—y make both in things warrantable and unwarrantable But especially take heed of that which is true superstition indeed By which here I mean the making of any new parts of Religion to our selves and fathering them upon God who never made them Of this there are two sorts Positive and Negative When we falsly say This is a Duty commanded by God or when we falsly say This is a sin forbidden by God Take heed of both I do not speak here of doing or not doing the same things upon any other account as humane duties or meer conveniences or the like but as they are falsly pretended to be Divine For first this is properly a belying of God and that adding to his word whether precepts or prohibitions which he hath so strictly forbidden us Ier. 5. 12. Deut. 12. 32. Secondly it debaseth Religion objectively considered as mixture of base mettals debaseth the Kings coyn To joyn things humane with things divine and say they are Divine when they are not is putting of dung into the treasuries of God Nothing will be found fit for Divine reverence and honour which is not Divine indeed Thirdly it corrupteth Religion in the minds of men and causeth them to fear where no fear is and to be devout erroneously As if one should mistake the person of the King and give his honour to another who is like him or should run into a play-house to do his devotion and think that he is in the Church Ye worship ye know not what we know what we worship Ioh. 4. 22. Fourthly This superstition tendeth to destroy true Religion by gratifying and increasing aversation and opposition by making it seem an unlovely tiresome thing All that is truly of God is Rational and amiable and wisely contrived for our good And the enemies of Godliness have not a word of solid Reason to say against it But that which is brought in by corrupters may be confuted And unnecessary things become a burden Act. 15. 28. What a toilsome task doth Popery contain of positives and negatives ceremonies and austerities and useless labours And then they that take their pilgrimages and penances and night-risings and multiplied formalities to be a burden and hear them called by the name of Religion do account Religion it self a burden as taking this to be a part of it And when Religion is not loved it is lost To make it seem bad and unlovely is the way by which the devil destroyeth it in the world Fifthly Superstition is the great dividing engine which satan useth to cut the Churches of Christ into Sects and pieces and consequently to stir up party against party to the hating and persecuting of one another For while some take that for Religion which is none others will see their errour and avoid it And thus the division will lay the foundation of disputes and quarrels of enmity and opposition For who can think that all the Churches should ever be so blind and slavish as to take up that as a part of Religion and a divine institution which was forged by the private spirit of some erroneous person of an over-heated brain Sixthly Lastly Superstition much displeaseth God and maketh us sinners even in that in which we think especially to honour him Math. 15. 9. In vain do they worship me teaching for doctrines the commandements of men Though God in mercy can distinguish between his own and ours and doth not count the whole worship to be in vain where any degree of superstition is mixed For then most zealous persons were undone yet the superstitious part of worship is alwayes in vain and all the
rest is made as vain where that is the predominant and denominating part Thus over-doing is undoing and thus the superstitious are materially righteous overmuch And not only much cost and pains is lost but the soul corrupted the Church divided Religion debased and endangered and God displeased by ignorant zeal Here note to prevent mistakes First that as God is related to our actions either as the efficient commanding or as the final cause so there is a double superstition One which is the greatest as comprehending the other when that which God never commanded or forbade is feigned to be commanded or forbidden by him The other when we feign him finally to be pleased with a Religious worship of our own invention though we confess it to have no higher an original than our selves Secondly That the matter of this later sort of superstition is either that which God forbiddeth and so is displeased with or that which he hath made and holdeth indifferent and so is neither pleased or displeased with in any moral consideration in it self considered He that ofâ—ereth God a â—â—crifice of sin or things prohibited or of a worthless and indifferent thing and taketh God to be pleased with the later or not displeased with the former doth indeed displease him by either of these conceits And the general prohibition of not adding or diminishing rightly understood may notifie things as under the former head Thirdly But it is no superstition to hold a good thing to be good a bad thing to be bad or an indifferent thing to be indifferent Fourthly Nor yet to determine of those circumstances of worship which God hath left to humane determination being made necessary in genere by nature or scripture Nor yet to judge that God is pleased with such a prudent determination Fifthly it is not superstition to do the same material thing which another doth superstitiously if we have not the same superstitious conceit of it as he hath If a Papist should ananoint the sick as a Sacrament and a Protestant do it as a medicine the former is snperstition and not the later And so in other things Sixthly Whether that indifferent thing remain indifferent to our use which others use to superstition is a case which a judicious collation of circumstances must determine His superstitious use doth not make it simply a sin in any other who hath none of his false conceits and ends else some superstitious persons so abusing meat and drink and cloaths and all things in the world might make all things become unlawful to us or at least deprive us of all our liberty in things indifferent Seventhly If we avoid anothers uperstition as to the form or intention which maketh it superstition and this as a sin we do well If we avoid the matter it self which he useth superstitiously because it is by him made scandalous we do our duty when it is scandalous indeed no contrary greater accident maketh it our duty But if we take it to be simply superstition or sin to do materially the same action which a snperstitious person doth we are superstitious in avoiding his superstitious act For instance a Papist viâ—iteth the Lady of Lauretto as a divine duty This is superstition A Protestant goeth thither upon lawful and necessary business This is no superstition Another Protestant who hath no necessary business there avoideth it that he may not be scandalous and encourage others to it This is well done A Sectary thinketh it superstition or other sin simply to go thither what ever his necessity or intention be This is superstition Or a feigning God to forbid that which he forbiddeth not A Papist fasteth on Friday or avoideth flesh in Lent as a Divine duty superstitiously A Protestant fasteth the same day because an Act of Parliament commandeth it which renounceth the Papists religious end Or because his Physician prescribeth it as necessary for â—is health This is not superstition Another Protestant avoideth it through necessity for his health And another in Popish Countries avoideth it only as scandalous Neither of these are superstitious Another fasteth on a Friday for his own necessity or conveuience as a time which he may lawfully choose And another fasteth on a Friday because the Master of the family or the Pastors of the Church have appointed a fast on that day This is no superstition A Sectary thinketh that it is superstition or some other sin to fast the same day that the Papists do because the Papists do it superstitiously This is superstition unless in the case of scandal as aforesaid The multitudes of superstitions by which the Papists or any others have corrupted and debased the Christian Religion I shall not nâ—w digress to mention But only touch upon a few instances of the superstitions of those godly persons of this age to whom I am now writing To shew them that it is the Religious sort that are the common beginners of superstition by over-doing out of a mistaken zeal or fear of sinning I refer the Reader to Biâ—â—on for full proof But here again I must first crave the patience of those that love not errour better than information and desire them not to be too angry with me for telling them what I confidently hold though it diffâ—â— from the opinions of many whom I greatly reverence and honour while I profess withall that I do it not in a Magisterial imposing way nor as slighting the persons from whom I differ but as offering my brethren that Light which I think needful to their own and to the Churches cure And I will thank them if they will do the like by me if I be guilty of any superstitious errour First the Scripture telleth us of no Church-Elders but what were ordained and of none but such as were of the same Office with the preaching Pastors or Elders of none that had not authority to baptize and administer the Lords supper Nor doth Church-history tell us of any other as a Divine office But when one Assembly had many Elders or Pastors those that were best gifted for publike Sermons did preach and the rest did help to rule the Church and to catechize and instruct and visit particular families and persons and other parts of the office as there was cause But now we have concluded that there is a distinct office of Ruling-Elders who need not be ordained and who have no power to baptize or to administer the Lords Supper This I think is a superstition For we feign God to have made a Church-office which he never made And though we must honour and hold Communion with the Churches which have this blemish yet still it cannot be freed from superstition Secondly God hath required nothing but profession of the Baptismal Covenant to prove a mans title to his enterance and priviledges in the universal Church And a consent to our Relation to the particular Churches to our membership in them But mistaking-zeal hath accounted this too loose a way and hath
day above another Another esteemeth every day alike Let every man be fully perswaded in his own mind Rom. 15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please our selves Let every one of us â— ease his neighbour for his good to edification For even Christ pleased not himself Now the God of Patience and Consolation grant you to be like minded one towards another according to Christ Iesus That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorifie God Wherefore RECEIVE ye one another as Christ also received us to the Glory of God Rom. 14. 17 18 19 20. For the Kingdome of God is not meat and drink but Righteoâ—sness and PEACE and Ioy in the Holy Ghost For he that in THESE THINGS serveth Christ is Acceptable to God and APPROVED of MEN. Let us therefore follow after the things which make for PEACE and things wherewith one may Edifie another For meat destroy not the work of God Happy is he that condemneth not himself in the thing which he alloweth that is acknowledgeth to be indifferent or lawful And he that doubteth is damned if he eat The rest and some of the same again you shall have in the Conclusion and I shall not accuse my self of vain repetition but account my self and England happy if twice or ten times warnâ—ng you of your undoubted duty in the plain words of God which you cannot without professed Infidelity deny will but perswade you to heal our grievous wounds at so cheap a rate as the doing of that good and blessed work which NONE may so EASILY do as YOU and none are more OBLIGED to do nor shall suffer more everlastingly for not doing it if no Scripture no reasons no experience no petitions no groans and tears of the distressed Church of Christ can intreat you to it But alas Rom. 3. 16 17 18. Destruction and misery are in their wayes The way of PEACE they have not known There is no fear of God before their eyes Eccles. 7. 7. SURELY OPPRESSION MAKETH A WISE MAN MAD. Rev. 6. 10. QUAMDIU DOMINE SANCIE VERAX Psal. 120. 6. DIU HABITAVIT ANIMA MEA INTER OSORES PACIS The Preface THE Reason why I think it needful to adjoyn these few Directions to the Pastors are First Because I think that the rest will do but little good without them Though the people are more inclined to separations than the Pastors yet are the Pastors the greater causes of most of the Divisions in the Church And therefore must be the chiefest in the Cure Because the advantage of their parts and place doth make them most significant in both And their office obligeth them to be the most skilful and forward in the Cure Secondly Because I should be chargeable with such partiality as beseemeth not a Minister of Christ if I should fall upon the miscrariages of the people only and say nothing to my self and brethren who are as deeply concerned in the matter in hand Yet I must here premise that as I have done this part with greater brevity so also with submissive tenderness and respect And that I do not at all intend any of the Directions following as a Magisterial Dictator to those in authority nor any of the admonitions as factious reflections upon superiors or inferiors or as pleading for or against any party now among us To the reasons after given for tenderness to Religious dissenters though too much inclined to separations I shall here only add First That the general weakness even of the Pastors through most of the Churches upon earth should make us rather pity the weakness of the people than angrily revile them And to think of Christs words Let him that is without sin cast the first stone Alas our preaching our praying our conference our living tell all the world too lowdly that we are weak How few are there that be not either ignorant or injudicious or imprudent or dull and liveless or dry and barren or of a stâ—mmering tongue in our Ministerial work And in so high a business any one of these is a lothsome blemish If we are put to defend our Religion or any necessary part thereof how weakly and injudiciously is it usually done In a word Our great divisions among our selves with our censures and usage of one another do tellâ—all the world not only that we are weak but that too many of us account one another to be worse than weak even intollerable and unworthy of our sacred office And shall we by our weakness and faultiness become the peoples scandal and tempt them to undue separations and when we have done be impatient with their weakness while we overlook our own Secondly Let us be so impartial as to remember how far some have spoken to their sense who have been of most veneration in the Church I instance but in two First The wise and ancient Britain Gildas who saith no less than Apparet ergo eum qui vos sacerdotes sciens ex corde dicit non esse eximium Christianum Sane quod sentio proferam O inimici Dei non sacerdotes O licitatores malorum non pontifices traditores non sanctorum Apostolorum successores â— impugnatores non Christi ministri Sed quomodo vos aliquid solvetis ut sit solutum in coelis a coelo ob scelera adempti immanium peccatorum sunâ—bus compediti c. If the Author of these words â—e Venerable account not the speakers of such like now to be utterly intollerable The second is St. Martin whose story out of Sulpitius Severus I have afterwards abbreviated If a Sainted Bishop most famous for myracles pretend to Angelical Revelation for so much as is there mentioned let us be charitable and patient to those tender conscionable Christians who mistakingly go in such like wayes I am my self so sensible of the evil and danger of Dividing separating principles and â—ayes that it is much of my labour to cure them with all And therefore I have written what I have here done though I am sure I shall displease the guilty But overdoing and illdoing will prove but undoing The Lord give more Wisdome Holiness and Love to Pastors and people and open our ears to healing counsels before we are incurable Amen Directions to Pastors how to deal with those weak Christians who are inclined to Divisions WHen the young and ungrounded sort of Christians do by their errors pride or passions disturb the Churches peace orde it is the Pastors usually that are first and most assaulted by their abuses and therefore are most impatient and exasperated against them And it were well if we were so innocent our selves as that our consciences need not call us to enquire whether all this be not partly the fruit of our own miscariages However seeing that both the eminency of our grace and the nature of our office should make us more sensible of the Churches
sin which caused it and remember that you have aggravated your own transgression If you are children in parts and goodness your selves you are unfit either to upbraid the people with their childish weaknesses or to cure them DIRECT III. In all your publick Doctrine and private Conference inculcate still the necessary conjunction of Holiness and Peace and of the Love of God and Man And make them understand that Love is their very Holiness and the sum of their Religion the end of Faith the heart of Sanctification and the fulfilling of the Law And that as Love to God uniteth us to Him so Love to man must unite us to one another And that all Doctrine or practice is against God and against Christ and against the great work of the Spirit and is enmity to the Church and to mankind which is against Love aâ—d Unity Press these things on them all the year that your hearers may be bred up and nourished with these principles from their youth IF ever the Church be recovered of its wounds it must be by the peaceable Disposiâ—ions of the Pastors and people And if ever men come to a peaceable Disposition it must be by peaceable Doctrine and principles And if ever men come to peaceable Principles it must be by the full and frequent explication of the nature pre-eminence necessity and power of Love That they may heat of it so much and so long till Love be made their Religion and become as the very Natural Heat and Constitution of their souls And if ever men be generally brought to this it must be by daily sucking it from those breasts which nourish them in the infancy and youth of their Religion and by learning it betimes as the sum of Godliness and Christianity And if ever they come to this the Aged experienced ripe and mellow sort of Ministers and private Christians must instil it into Schollars and into the younger sort of Ministers that they may have nothing so common in their ears and in their studies as Uniting-Love That they may be taught to know that God is Love and thaâ— he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him 1 Ioh. 4. 16. And that the Love of God doth ever work towards his image in man 1 Ioh. 4. 7 11 12 20. And that all men as men have some of his Image in their Nature as they are Intellectual Free Agents exalted above the bruits Gen. 9 6. And therefore we must Love men as men and Love Saints as Saints That it is Love to God and man which is the true state of Holiness and the New creature and which Christ came to recover lapsed man to and which the Holy Ghost is sent to work and all the means of grace are intended and fitted for and must be used for or they are misused In a word that FAITH WORKING BY LOVE or LOVE and THE WORKS OF LOVE KINDLED BY THE SPIRIT BY FAITH IN CHRIST is the sum of all the Christian Religion Gal. 5. 6 13 22. 1 Tim. 1. 5. He that crieth up Holiness and Zeal without a â—ue commemoration of Love and Peace doth first deceive the hearers about that very Holiness and Zeal which he commendeth whilest he lamely and so falsly representeth and describeth it and doth not make them know how much of Holiness consisteth in Love nor that true zeal is Love it self in its fervâ—ur and intense degree And so people are enticed to think that Holiness is nothing but the passions of fear and grief and earnest expressions in preaching and praying or scrupulousness and singularity about some controverted things or some other thing than indeed it is And they are tempted to think that Christian zeal is rather the violence of partial passions and the fervor of wrath and the making things sinful which God forbiddeth not than the fervors of Love to God and man And when the mind is thus mocked with a false Image of Holiness and Zeal it is cast into a sinful mold and engaged in the pursuit of an erroneous dangerous course of life And at last it cometh to an enmity and contempt of that which is Holiness and Zeal indeed For it accounteth Love but a Moral-vertue which they ignorantly take for a diminutive title of the great and primitive duties required by the light and law of nature it self And zealous Love is accounted by them but a carnal and selfish compliance and temporizing and a pleasing of men instead of God And â— zealous promoting of Unity and Peace is taken but for a cowardly neutrality and betraying of some truth which should be earnestly contended for And on the other side they that preach up Love to man and Peace and Concora without putting first the Love of God and a Holy and Heavenly mind and life they will cheat the poor ignorant carnal people by making them believe that God and Heaven may be forgotten and good neighbourhood to each other is all that is needful to make them happy And they will tempt the more religious sort to sin more against Love and Peace than before Because they will think that it is but a confederacy for Satan against Christ and a submission to the wills of proud usurpers to strengthen their worldly interest against godliness which these preachers mean when they plead for peace And thus as I have known ungodly Preachers by crying down Schism bring Schism into request while it was no such thing as real schism which they meant in theâ—r exclamations till at last the true eruption of schism with its monstrous effects made good people see that such an odious sin there is Even so I have known that a carnal Preacher contemning Holiness and crying up Love and Peace hath tempted the people to have too light thoughts of Love and Peace because it was but a confederacy in sin with a neglect of godliness which the preacher seemed to cry up Till riper knowledge better taught good people to perceive that Love and Peace are more Divine and excellent things than carnal preachers or hearers can imagine The wisedome from above is first pure then peaceable Let it therefore be a true conjunction of Holiness and Peace which you commend DIRECT IV. If others shew their weakness by any unwarrantable singularities or divisions shew not your greater weakness by passions impatiency or uncharitable censures or usage of them especially when any self-interest doth provoke you NOne usually are so spleenishly impatient at the weakness of Dissenters or Separatists as the Pastors are And what is the cause Is it because they abound most in Love to the souls of those who offend or them who are endangered by them If so I have no more to say to such But when we see that the Honour and Interest of the Pastors is most deeply concerned in the business and that they are carried by their impatiency into more want of Charity than the other express by their separations and when we see that they
offend all Therefore be not many Masters too imperious or too censorious towards dissenters and the infirm lest ye receive the greater condemnation Jam. 3. 1 2. GOD who is One hath made the creatures MANY and divers And the further they go from Him the more they run into multiplicity and diversity It is admirable in Nature to see that among the millions of persons in the world there are no two that differ not sufficiently to be discernable from each other And among the bruits and inanimates it is so too Among horses and oxen and sheep and all creatures yea though non ovum ovâ— similius be a proverb yet there are no two that do not differ No nor among the millions of stones which lye scattered over the surface of the earth There are no two persons in all the world who are just of the same intellectual complexion and degree nor no two who are in all things of the same opinions or apprehensions No nor any one man who is in all things long of the same apprehensions and opinions with himself Nor is there any man whose thoughts and affections do perfectly consent with themselves in matter and order any two hours in all his life And if multiplicity and diversity have so much cause in nature how much more must needs be added by the common corruption and pravity of nature When all mankind hath so much ignorance of the mysteries of Religion and so many degrees of enmity and unsuitableness to holy things a great difference of judgement is an unavoidable consequent of this And mens various educations and converse and employments must needs cause a great variety of apprehensions As their nature so their education may agree in some generals But there are no two persons at age in the world whose educations have been the same in all particulars Though they were children of the same parents and bred in the same house and time yet all that they have seen and heard and medled with hath not been in all points just the same the same in matter and time and order and all circumstances And we see what great diversity of judgements any one of these doth daily cause To have parents of several minds and tempers To be bred in families where there is great diversity of knowledge and practise To live among company of contrary principles and practise when one man heareth one thing talkt of and maintain'd in his daily converse and another the contrary When one hath a teacher of one opinion and another of another Or one hath a teacher that is cold and another one that is servent one a judicious one and another a rash and intemperate one what diversity of apprehensions may arise from any one of these And so there may from variety of passions of the mind through a diversity of bodily temperatures One that is naturally fearful is apt to apprehend a thousand things as terrible and consequently to be filled with scruples and to run away from doctrines and practises as dangerous where another doth apprehend no danger And one that is dark or incredulous or rash or stupid or hardened by any sinful course is apt to conceive that he is safe in every dangerous way and to sleep quietly at the brink of death and hell and to laught at them that tell him of his peril As men sit under the same instructions with variety of affections of fear or hope of Love or hatred of joy or sorrow so variously are they disposed to apprehend what they hear seeing recipitur ad modum recipientis And variety of Gods disposing providences must needs also have some such effect While one is rich and another is poor one hath crosses of divers sorts and another hath prosperity one is full and another is hungry one is observed admired and honoured and another is taken little notice of or is vilified and despised One hath many friends and another many enemies One hath friends that are kind and constant and the other such as are unkind and mutable One is preferred by Rulers and the other is ruined or oppressed All these will occasion variety of apprehensions As it was with the Lady who coming in very cold in a frosty day pitied the naked beggars at the door but when she was well warmed chid them away We all find that our apprehensions are very apt to vary in sickness from what they were in health and in poverty from what they were in plenty and when we are angred displeased or abused from what they were when we were pleased Yea when we have but read a lively book or heard a lively Sermon from what they were before our affections were so excited Also variety of Temptations may occasion great variety of apprehensions When one mans temptations are all alluring to lust or gaming or stage-playes or Romances or drunkenness or gluttony or pastime and anothers temptations are all to melancholy and inordinate at sterities and despair When one man is tempted to errours of one kind and another to the contrary Even he that overcometh in the main yet seldome so far conquereth as to receive no misimpression upon his mind Moreover variety of Callings studies and employments occasioneth variety of apprehensions A mans mind is much wrought upon by the business and objects which he is daily conversant about And therefore we find that usually the Courtier the Souldier the Sea-man the Citizen and the Country-man much differ in their apprehensions And usually though not every individual yet as to the most part all men are wisest in their own professions Lawyers are wisest in matters of Law and Divines in matters of Divinity Opportunities of study and instruction make exceeding great differences in the world The Lawyer and Physician perhaps may on the by have bestowed a few years time in Divinity in the midst of other interrupting studies When the Divine hath studied almost all his life and drawn out his meditations in one uninterrupted thred And so we discern that Lawyers and Physicians have oft different apprehensions of matters of doctrine worship and discipline from those of the best Divines And diversity of Interests maketh no small difference of apprehensions And those that are advantaged by their helps and studies may be disadvantaged by their interests And therefore we say the Magistrate and the subject the Lawyer and the Divine the Prelate and the Presbyter the Papist and the Protestant both Princes Prelates and People so strangely differ in their thoughts that one seemeth certain of that which another seemeth certain to be false and one ventureth his salvation on that which another ventureth his salvation against Interest worketh secretly and too much with the best but openly and predominantly with the worst And then the interest and opinion of the several Kingdomes Churches Pastors parties or Sects which men are related to or are engaged with doth strongly tend to different apprehensions in all matters which those interests are concerned in And
thus to seek themselves and overvalue their own esteem If it be the former 2 Why doth it not please you then that they are edified by others though not by you Do you think that it is not the same Gospel which others preach to them And may not that Gospel edifie and save them by the Preaching of another as well as by yours And if their dis-esteem of you be a sign or means that they are not edified by you is not their great esteem of others who are as faithful a sign and means that they are or may be edified by them Thirdly And why are you not much more troubled at the state of all those who are not converted or edified by you though they do not slight you or forsake you How many be there that seem to love and honour you and yet do not love and honour God but despise religion and their own Salvation If it be for their sakes and not your own that you are offended you will grieve most for them that are most ungodly though they honour you never so much and you will be glad for them that are faithful and Godly whose Ministery soever it be that they most esteem Fourthly But suppose them yet so foolish and faulty as to run from you to their own perdition The question is What is the way to câ—re them Is Love caused by hard words or stripes Will you say to them Love me or you shall be fined or imprisoned Christ doth not teach you to use such arguments when you speak for him but to beseech men in his name and stead tobe reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5. 19 20. But your own work will be done in your own way Obj. But Christ threatneth Hell to the impenitent and Paul pronounceth him Anathematized that loveth not the Lord Iesus and he talketh to his hearers of coming with a rod. Answ. No doubt but the corrupted mind of man hath need not only of Love to draw them home to God and work the cure but of Threatnings to drive them and to help on the cure And though it be Love that causeth Love which is their Holiness yet Fear removeth many impediments But still remember that it is Love which is predominant and fear is but subservient And that the fear which is contrary to Love is a vice and hindereth theâ—r salvation And remember that Fear and Love towards God will better stand together than Fear and Love to you will For men know Gods Soveraignty and Iustice and know that he is not to be questioned or resisted But if they suffer by you it will not be so digested nor will it so consist with love A patient will not bear to be whipt by his Physician to force him to take his medicâ—nes though a child will bear it from his parents whose Love and Power are more unquestionable to him I desire you but to mark your own experience and let your Love be predominant in all your ministrations and use no force or hurting course which will really abate their Love to you and then I shall leave you in the rest to your discretion Secondly Yet still we grant that Christs threatnings may be preached by you and must be Thirdly And that the rod of discipline must be used But this must be done only on the scandalous and such as more dishonour Christ than you And it must be so done that it may appear to be Christs own work and done by you upon his interest and at his commund and not either arbitrarily or for your selves And I shall be bold with confidence to add that in those cases where violent restraint or â—oaction is necessary the Pastor is the unmeetest person to meddle in it It is the Magistrates work to drive and force where it must be done and the Pastors to perswade and draw The flock of Christ is led by himself the Lamb of God and his Ministers must go before with him and attend him in the conduct and the Magistrate must come behind and drive and it is the hindermost and not those before that must be driven Pastors should be so far from calling out for the help of violence unless it be to keep the peace that they should rather shew their love and tenderness by seeking as far as they may to mitigate it And they should desire that no such ungrateful work be at all imposed upon them as to seem the afflicters of their flocks because when once they have lost their love they have lost their opportunity and advantage of edifying them And it is not Pilate's hypocritical washing of his hands that will excuse him Nor the Romish Clergies disclaiming to meddle in a judgement of blood which will reconcile the minds of sufferers to them as long as they are Masters of the Inquisition or deliver them up to the secular power and excommunicate and depose the temporal Lords who will not do such execution as they require Though I have some where else mentioned it I will again request the Reverend Pastors of the Church to peruse the story of Idacius and Martin in Sulpitius Severus The sum of it is this Priscillian and many others some Bishops and some Presbyters and some private persons were zealous in religion but heretical Gnosticks saith Sulpitius Ithacius and Idacius were two Orthodox Bishops who were very hot against these herâ—ticks Both of them men of rash and haughty spirits and one of them at least saith Sulpitius an injurious person that scarce cared what he said or did by others see what persons a good cause may be defended by These Bishops drew in the Bishops of the neighboring Churches in their Synods first condemned the Priscillianists and next provoked the Emperour against them The Priscillianists found that if that were the way an Emperours Court was not so Orthodox or constant but there might be as good hopes for them And therefore they got a powerful friend in Court to undertake their business and got the better of the Bishops The Bishops being born down for a time at last Maximus was proclaimed Emperour and came over with power and victory into Germany such another as Cromwel who by the Bishops was accounted a very Religious Christian but usurped the Empire and fought against and killed one of the Emperours and pretended that the souldiers made him Emperour against his will This Maximus whether sincerely or for his own advantage is unknown did take part with the Orthodox and greatly honour the Bishops and promote Religion and got a great deal of love and honour Ithacius and Idacius and the rest of the Bishops apply themselves to Maximus against the Priscillianists who hearkened to them and to please them put Priscillian and some others to death and punished others by other wayes of violence The more rude ungodly sort of Christians so far concurred or over-went the Bishops that they turned their fury against any that seemed more Religious than their neighbours so that if any one
living acceptable sacrifice Rom. 12. 1. They have need to make a better proof of their authority than Kelley did of his Revelation when he brought Doctor Dee to consent to adultery by the same pretended warrant God who is Love accepteth not such a sacrifice at the hands of Love-killers and Church-destroyers But especially when besides this acrimony of mind there shall other more pernicious diseases be contracted and foment these censures reproaches of their brethren the malignity of the disease is a sad prognostick Two such causes of it Paul layeth open one Act. 20. 30. the other Rom. 16. 17 18. One is the devilish sin of pride and a desire to have many disciples to be our applauders They shal speak perverse things to draw awaydisciples after them The other selfishness carnality and coveteousness They serve not the Lord Iesus but their own bellies And so 2 Pet. 2. 3. Through Coveteousness they shall with feigned words make Merchandise of you They buy and sell mens souls for gain These are Gainsayers in a double sense Their craft bringeth them in no small gain and lest it should be set at nought for gain they do gain-say the truth and raise up tumults against the best of the servants of Christ as Act. 19. 24 27. It is for gain and worldly glory that they say what they say against those that are wiser and sincerer than themselves The sum of all this and most that followeth is in 1 Tim. 6. 3 4 5. If any man teach otherwise and consent not to the wholesome words the words of our Lord Iesus Christ mark it is not to the words of any new faith-makers devâ—sing and to the doctrine which is according to Godliness he is proud though he may cry down pride knowing nothing though he may cry down ignorance but doting about questions though he may seem to be wise and of high attainments and strifes of words while he seemeth to plead for the life of Religion whereof cometh envy strife railings evil surmisings while they pretend to no less necessary a work than the saving of Truth and the peoples souls Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds the impatient scratchings of those whose corrupt blood must needs have vent and therefore causeth this itch of quarrelling and destitute of the truth whilest they think they are saving the life of truth supposing that gain is godliness being so blinded by the love of gain that they make themselves believe that is the cause of truth and Godliness which maketh for their gain and that the raising of them is the raising of the Church and that all tendeth to the interest of religion which tendeth to make them great and rich From such turn away that is own them not in hypocritical wranglings but turn your backs upon them as men unworthy to be disputed with in their way Answer not the fool according to his folly i. e. word it not with him in his foolish way lest you make him think himself worthy to be disputed with Talk not with him at his rates And yet answer him according to his folly by such conviction and rebukes as is meet for fooles and as may make him understand his folly lest he be wise in his own eyes and think that none can stand before him Secondly And it is commonly the most ignorant sort of Ministers who are the liberallest of their supercilious contempt of those whose understandings and worth are above their censures If a controversie be started which they either never studied or have only turned over the pages of a few books to number the sheets and never spent one year in the deep and serious search of the truth which is in question Or if they have clumsie wits that cannot feel so fine a thred nor are capable of mastering the difficulties None then are usually so ready to shoot their bolt and pass a Magisterial sentence and gravely and ignorantly tell the ignorant what eâ—rours such or such a one maintaineth as these that talk of that which they never understood For as I have known many unlearned sots that had no artifice to keep up the reputation of their learning than in all companies to cry down such and such who were wiser than themselves for no schollars but unlearned men so many that are or should be conscious of the dulness and ignorance of their fumbling and unfurnished brains have no way to keep up the reputation of their wisedome with their simple followers but to tell them O such a one hath dangerous errours and such a book is a dangerous book and they hold this and they hold that and so to make odious the opinions or practises of others which they understand not And this doth their business with these silly soals who hear not what can be said against them as well as if they were the words of truth and soberness As for the younger and emptier sort of Ministers it is no wonder if they understand not that which they had never opportunity to study or have taken but a superficial taste of But it were to be wished that they were so humble as to confess that they are yet but beardless and that time and long study is needful to make them as wise as those who with equal wit and grace have had many more years of serious study and greater opportunities to know the truth and that they have not their wisdome by special inspiration or revelation nor so far excel the rest of mankind in a miraculous wit as to know that by a few years lazy study which others know not by the laborious humble fearâ—hâ—s of a far longer time One would think that a little humility 〈…〉 the turn for thus much But it ignorance get possâ—ssion of the ancient and 〈◊〉 headed it triumpheth then and desiâ—◠〈…〉 and saith Give me a man that 〈…〉 with him Or rather Away with 〈…〉 is not worthy to be disputed 〈…〉 groweth not with years 〈…〉 wit may be poaring forty or fifty 〈…〉 that which another may sooner understand Much time and study is necessary to great wisedome But much time and study may consist with very mean attainments and doth not alwayes reach the wisedome which is sought And in such a case the ancient and grey-headed think that veneration is their due and that if they gravely sentence such or such to be erroneous they are injured if they are not believed They have not wisdome enough to make their age honourable and therefore they expect that their age should make their wisdome honourable Thirdly and because they are not able to endure the light nor to stand before the power of open truth they find it necessary to do almost all their work by back-biting When they are out of the hearing of those whom they back-bite among such as are as little sensible of this hateful sin as they then they have this man and that man this party and that party to reproach Fourthly And as Mr. Robert
Bolton well noteth to hide the malignity of their sin and to cheat the hearers and their own consciences they will first seem to praise him and to confess that he is in other respects a very worthy a learned or a pious man and then bring in their back-biting with a but. And that which must sanctifie all this sin and turns it into a work of zeal is the seeming interest of God and of religion They do all out of a zeal of God I cannot say A zeal for God though it be not according to knowledge If it was an untruth which they spake it was for religion If they did back-bite it was to preserve the hearers from errour and danger If they reviled that which they never understood it was to keep the Church from the infection If they tear the Church and use their reputation to murder Love and to make others odious who are wiser than they all this is but for the defence of truth And if it be non-sense or envy which they vent they never repent of it that 's the mischief because they think that the Lord and the Church and the hearers have need of it And so all those Texts are to them Apocripha which condemn their sin Psal. 15. 3. 2 Cor. 12. 20. Rom. 1. 30. Prov. 25. 23. And sin is so be friended in mans corrupted nature that they meet but with few angry countenances to drive away such reverend back-biting tongues Nay that they may abuse Gods word and name against God to the devils service they arm themselves as the Tempter did Math. 4. with Gods authority and scripture and will charge those with sin who would reprove their sin and bring them to repentance And as Master Herbert noteth how the Pope under the reverend garb of Christs Vicar doth do the like things to the suppressing of the Church and Truth as Turks and Heathens do under the name of open enemies so these men find that the names of Ministers and Christians with the words of God abused are among the well-meaning a more effectual means to do that work which God abhorreth I have long used to resist this sin of back-biting and not to justifie the faults of any but to convince the back-biter of his sin And I seldome do it but they report of me that I am a defender of such and such corruptions One backbiteth men as Prelatists and formalists another the Presbyterians another the Independents and another the Anabaptists and say such a one is of such a sect and ever with epithetes of reproach And when I tell them that the way to do them good is to convince them of their errour to their faces and not to talk of them behind their backs they report me presently to be a patron of the sect because I was a reprover of their unchristian vice And many of them having not so far digested their Religion as to see the evidences of it in themselves are fain to take it upon trust from others And they choose that party to cast this great trust upon which they think to be most venerable The Papist chooseth for number and worldly pomp and order The carnal self-seeker chooseth the party which may most further his preferment and honour in the world The honester sectaries do choose the party which seemeth to them to be the most illuminated or most strict And some have the wit to look most at those that set as many of these together as may be hoped for But among whomsoever they cast their lot their way to preserve the reputation of Orthodoxness and the peace of that conscience which made the choice is to be liberal in reproaching those that differ in any thing from the sect which they have chosen For how much of the Christian world is now in sects is a thing which requireth more lamentation than proof As the Dominicans when they have written far much more than Calvin about predetermination they have no way to keep their honour with their sect the Papists but to rail at the Calvinists and belye them and charge them with that which they abhor that so they may seem sufficiently to differ from them But the greatest reason of this contentious back-biting quarrelling humour is Ignorance it self which will not give them leave so much as to see the difficulty of the points which they oppose much less the truth of that which they have not been used to The way which is spoken against they think they may also boldly speak against And hypocrisie though mixed with sincerity hath too great a hand in this with many The less men are taken up in that true religion which consisteth in Heaâ—en-work and Heart-work in the Love of God and man and the mortification of their selfishness and pride the more they are addicted to make it up with a contentious zeal for their several wayes opinions and modes of worship that they may not seen to be cold or neutral in religion They never understood the third Chapter of Iâ—mes nor many other such texts of scripture O that the Ministers of Christ were once sensible not here only but through all the Christian world what a plague the conjunction of their ignorance and contensiousness and their dividing selfish zeal hath been to the Churches of Christ And what they have done against the souls of men by violence and by heading parties and by laying Heaven and Hell upon the opinions which they never understood and by departing from the primitive simplicity and charity And how odious a practise it is of ignorant Ministers to keep up the reverence of their wisedome or Orthodoxness or piety by the secret back-bitings and reproaches of others whose persons perhaps they never saw or whom they never once soberly discoursed with face to face or whose writings perhaps they never read or thought it not worth their time and labour to understand them and yet take it to be their piety to revile by hear-say and blind surmises and judge in a cause which they never impartially heard and understood There is none of those Ministers of Christ whom you reproach but is to be serviceable to hâ—s master for the saving of mens souls And you are satans instruments to block up their way and to turn away the hearts of people from their doctrine If every Minister especially your selves who hath as great an errour should be made odious for it to their hearers you might all put up your pipes and find that your artifice hath first silenced your selves by the righteous law Nec enim lex justior ulla est Quam necis artifices arte perire sua Or in the words of Christ With what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again Did you see the ugliness of Ignorant peevish contentious zeal as contrary to holy Light and Love you would think you saw a devil spitting out fire and brimstone and would never more take it for your honour nor for a mark of a
THE CURE OF Church-divisions OR Directions for weak Christians to keep them from being Dividers or Troublers of the Church With some Directions to the Pastors how to deal with such Christians By Richard Baxter Joh. 17. 21. That they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us that the World may believe that thou hast sent me 22. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be One even as we are One 23. I in them and thou in me that they may be made Perfect in One and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast Loved them as thou hast loved me 1 Cor. 1. 10. Now I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Iesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joyned together in the same mind and in the same judgment 1 Cor. 3. 3. For ye are yet carnal for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions are ye not carnal and walk as men London Printed for Nevil Symmons at the three Crowns over against Holborn-Conduit 1670. The Authors I. Purpose II. Reasons and III. Prognosticks of this Book I. IT is none of the business of this Book to single out any one Party in the world to tell you by Application how far they are under the guilt of Schism I meddle with the Cause and leave each person to make application to himself It is SIMPLE CATHOLICK CHRISTIANITY which I plead for and the Love and Unity and Concord which are its Ligaments and Essential parts And it is a SECT as a SECT and a FACTION as a faction and not this or that Sect or Faction which I detect and blame Yet I doubt not but as in the same City there are the wise and the foolish the sound and the sick and in the same Army there are valiant men and Cowards so in the same Churches there are Christians of various degrees of Wisdom Integrity and strength And all men should earnestly desire to be of the wisest the Holiest and the most fruitful sort and not of the more erroneous impure or scandalous and unprofitable And if the sick will make themselves a Party and call the sound the Aâ—verse Party I will endeavour to be one of a Party in that sense and to obey God as exactly as I am able and to worship him as spiritually and holily as I can and to Love him with all my Mind and Heart and Strength and lament that I can reach no higher and do no more And if any will call this by the name of Heresie or Schism they shall see that I can avoid Heresie and Schism at as dear a rate as enduring the Name and Imputation of that which I avoid It is not the Name of a Schismatick that I am writing against but the Thing by whatever Name it is called It is UNITY LOVE and PEACE which I am pleading for And it is DIVISIONS HATRED and CONTENTION which I plead against And it is the Hypocrisie of men which I detect who betray Love Unity and Peace by a Iudas kiss and will nor or dare not openly renounce them and defie them but kill them with dissembling kindness who cry them up while they tread them down and follow peace with all men that are not of their party as the Dog followeth the Hare to tear it in pieces and destroy it Who fight for LOVE by making others seem odious and unlovely By evil surmisings proud under valuing the worth of others busie and groundless censuring of men whose case they know not aggravating frailties stigmatizing the persons the actions the worship and religious performances of dissenters with such odious terrible names and Characters as their pride and faction do suggest And all this to strengthen the interest of their side and party and to make themselves and their consenters to seem Wise and Good by making others seem foolish and bad Though they thereby proclaim themselves to be so much the worst by how much they are most void of Love They are all for Concord but it is only on their narrow factions terms They are for Peace but it is not of the whole street but of their house alone or not of the whole City but of their street alone or not of the whole Kingdom but of their City alone O what a blessed thing were peace if all would derive it from their Wills and terminate it in their interest and they might be the Center of Unity to the world that is that they might be Gods or Christs such excellent Architects are they that they can build Christs house by pulling it in pieces and such excellent Chirurgeons that they will heal Christs body by separating the members and can make as many Bodies as there are separated parts 2. Nor is it any or much of the business of this book to speak to those that I think are deepliest guilty of the Schisms of the Christian world For they are out of hearing and will not read or regard my writings It is the Roman Head and Center of Unity which hath done most to divide the Church And it is the contending of Rome and Constantinople for the Supremacy which hath made the greatest Schisms that the Christian world hath known And the Regiment of such Lords must be answerable to their Power and Greatness and the simple terms of Christian Unity left us by Christ and his Apostles must be turned into a Religion large as the Decrees of all the Councels and say half of them and the Popes Decretals also And that there may be no way out of this wilderness but the Confessors present will you must not in all these so much as distinguish fundamentals from the rest but so much material belief is necessary to Salvation as each mans opportunities and helps obliged him to receive that is The faith which is necessary to Salvation materially or objectively is as various as the number of persons in the world To one more is necessary to another less to some none at all of the Christian faith And you must suppose that the Priest is well acquainted with the internal capacity of every mans Soul and with all the instructions opportunities and suggestions of his whole life and can tell what measure of belief he hath and whether it be proportionable to his helps and so can tell him whether he be capable of Salvation though neither Pope nor Councel have given any Standard by which to judge And though no man can be assured of his own Salvation and though another man could not be saved by the faith that saveth him So much are we mistaken to think that it is the Pope that hath the Keys of Heaven when it is every Priest who is the onely judge of the measures of the persons faith These new made multiplyed Articles of Religion
these Additions to Christianity this proud Church-tyranny I doubt not is the great cause of Schism in the world And when I have had opportunity to write against it I have born my testimony against it as is yet legible But it is not that sort of men that I am here most to speak to but to them that profess to be more teachable and willing to know the truth 3. And yet I add though this Book be written principally to save the darker sort of honest Christians from the sin and misery of Church divisions I write it not principally for them to read For I know their prejudice weakness and incapacity after-mentioned But I write it to remember the Teachers of the Churches what principles they have to Preach and strengthen and what principles to confute and to destroy if ever they mean to save the people from this state of sin and the Churches from the sad effects And if Ministers neglect the faithful discharge of so great and necessary a duty let them remember that they were warned if they find themselves overwhelmed in the ruines II. The Reasons moving me to this work are these First It is my calling to help to save people from their sins and Church division is a heap of sins 2. The more I love them that I hope are tender Conscienced and dare not sin when they are convinced of it the more I am bound to endeavour their conviction remembring who hath said Thou shalt not hate thy Brother in thy heart thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy Neighbour and not suffer sin upon him Lev. 19. 17. 3. LOVE is not an appurtenance of my Religion but my Religion it self God is Love and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him who can speak a higher word of any thing in all the world Love is the end of faith and faith is but the Bellows to kindle Love Love is the fulfilling of all the Law the end of the Gospel the nature and mark of Christs Disciples the divine nature the sum of holiness to the Lord the proper note by which to know what is the man and what his state and how far any of his other acts are acceptable unto God without which if we had all knowledge and belief all gifts of utterance and highest profession we were but as sounding Brass and as a tinkling Cymbal And if all our goods were given to the poor and our bodies to the fire it would profit nothing Love is our foretast of Heaven and the perfection of it is Heaven it self even the state and work of Angels and of Saints in glory And he that is angry with me for calling men to Love is angry for calling them to Holiness to God and Heaven Holiness which is against Love is a contradiction It is a deceitful Name which Satan putteth upon unholiness All Church principles which are against Universal Love are against God and Holiness and the Churches life And he that saith he loveth God and hateth his Brother is a Lyar. To be holy without Love is to see without light to live without life He that said The wisdom from above is first pure then peaceable gentle c. did no more dream of separating them then of dividing the head of a man from his heart to save his life Iam. 3. 17. Nor no more than he that said Follow Peace with all men and Holiness Heb. 1â— 14. No necessity can justifie such a division Holiness and Love to God are but two names for one thing Love to God and to man are like Soul and Body that are separated no way but by death Love and Peaceableness differ but as Reason and Reasoning Love may be without Passive Peace from others to us but never without Active Peace from us to others 4. I have had so great opportunity in my time to see the working of the mysterie of iniquity against Christian Love and to see in what manner Christs House and Kingdome is edified by divisions that if I be ignorant after such sad experience I must be utterly unexcusable and of a seared Conscience and a heart that seemeth hardened to perdition God knoweth how hardly sin is known in its secret root till men have tasted the bitterness of the fruit Therefore he hath permitted the two Extreams to shew themselves openly to the world in the effects And one must be noted and hated and avoided as well as the other I thought once that all that talk against Schism and Sects did but vent their malice against the best Christians under those names But since then I have seen what Love-killing principles have done I have long stood by while Churches have been divided and sub-divided one Congregation of the division labouring to make the other contemptible and odious and this called the Preaching of truth and the purer worshiping of God I have seen this grow up to the height of Ranters in horrid Blasphemies and then of Quakers in disdainful pride and surliness and into the way of Seekers that were to seek for a Ministry a Church a Scripture and consequently a Christ. I have many a time heard it break out into more horrid revilings of the best Ministry and Godliest people than ever I heard from the most malignant Drunkard I have lived to see it put to the Question in that which they called the little Parliament whether all the Ministers of the Parishes of England should be put down at once When Love was first killed in their own breasts by these same principles which I here detect I have seen how confidently the killing of the King the Rebellious demolishing of the Government of the Land the killing of many Thousands of their Brethren the turnings and overturnings of all kinds of Rule even that which they themselves set up have been committed and justified and prophanely fathered upon God These with much more such fruits of Love-killing principles and divisions I have seen And I have seen what fierce censorious proud unchristian tempers they have caused or signified In a word I have long seen that envious wisdom whatever it pretend is not from above but is earthly sensual and devilish and that where envy and strife is upon pretence of Religious precedency of wisdom there is confusion and every evil work Jam. 3. 15 16. And if after so long so sad so notorious experience you would have me still to be tender of the brood of Hell I mean these Loveâ—destroying wayes and to shew any countenance to that which really hath done all this you would have me as blind as the Sodâ—mites and as obdurate as Pharaoh and his Egyptians and utterly resolved never to learn the will of God or to regard either good or evil in the world 5. The same sins are continued in without repentance The same pride and ignorance is still keeping open our divisions And if after such warnings as the world scarce ever had the like we shall be still impenitent