us we ought not to goe to law with one another before those that are without for temporall things much lesse about spirituall things For the Apostle hath declared that the Saints shall judge the world yea the Angels If this be true as no understanding man can deny then it would be a more greivious sinne and woefull adultery for the Spouse of Jesus Christ to seeke or sue to a power that is neither Jure Divino nor Jure Humano And now I will speake something to these your 8. reasons against tolleration though they are of the same nature with the other in the first book and so have been answered already yet to satisfie the Reader more fully I will here give answer unto them particularly But I would have you all men know that I doe not neither doe any that are truly religious plead for such a Toleration as you would father upon us even a Toleration to sinne We plead not for a Toleration of all sorts of persons who are members of the Church of England for that were to plead for a Toleration for Theeves and Murderers and Adulterers and Sabbath-breakers and all sorts of wicked livers that all men might doe as they list But the thing wee plead for is a peaceable enjoyment of our liberty to worship God publikely according to his revealed word most especially upon that time instituted for his publike worship even the first day of the weeke being the Lords day And that all the 6. dayes we may follow our callings without feare of the execution of such unjust Lawes which former Parliaments have made against such who would not come to their Common Prayer book or submit to all the orders of the Parishes of England for such a Toleration as this we plead IN your first reason you affirme that a Toleration of Independent Churches and governement with their opinions and practise is against the Magistrates duty laid down in the Scripture But I have proved it to be the Magistrates duty to Tolerate the true worship of God and those practises which are according to the word But you would insinuate still your old slander that we plead for a toleration of herisie and Scisme which we know is against the Magistrates duty and this maketh against your evill way For if a Parliament may not as you say displease God to please men nor winke at evill to content some persons And if Parliaments in making lawes for religion must depend on the will of God revealed in his word and not upon the consciences of some People Then it is dangerous for a Parliament to constraine men to submit to the decrees of a Synod or Presbytery when neither the Presbytery nor their decrees have ground in the word of God YOur second reason is that The Toleration desired is against the Solemne League and Covenant taken by the Parliament and Kingdomes and therefore the Toleration desired comes to late the doores being shut Ans. Here you lay a fearfull aspertion upon the Parliament for requiring such an Oath and Covenant as if they intended to shut the Kingdome of Christ and his true worship out of the three Kingdomes for you say further If the toleration were lawfull in it selfe yet because of the Oath and Covenant it is unlawfull though it might have beene granted before it cannot be granted now least the Kingdome should be guilty before God of Covenant breaking Ans. Surely you will make the Parliament all like Herod they must take poore John Baptists head off because of their oath But is this oath so foule as you would make it and yet is it like the Decree of the Medes and Persians that it may not be altered WellsGod can deliver * poore Daniell in the Lyons denne and it may be you shall come in our stead when once the Parliament discerneth your wicked intentions But Mr. Edwards bethinke your selfe will not you blush and be ashamed to give in the oath in these termes as you have ever exprest it in this your second Reason pag. 283. that we are to endeavour the reformation of Religion in the Kingdomes of England and Ireland in Doctrine Worship Governement and Discipline according to the example of the best reformed Churches forgetting the word of God which ought to have beene set before you as it was indeede by the Parliament But you deale by the Covenant as you deale by the Scriptures hack them and mangle and labour to make them fit for your owne turne and yet you jeered the Apologists when they spake of the way and practise of their Churches because they did not name the Law or Oâ—d Testament in expres words though they in the same place testifie that they reverence and adore the fulnesse of Scriptures and their sufficiency to make us perfect c. but here you have shamefully forgotten your selfe and overslipt both Law Gospel And so tye your selves to mens patterns without the word of God And surely I cannot beleeve that the Parliament hath Covenanted so as you inferre in the same page of your booke How say you can they grant a tolleration so different as their way is that will not depend upon a Synod And in the next page of the same Reason you say that there is in the Covenant a clause in the second branch that wee shall without respect of persons endeavour the extirpation of Scisme and whatsoever shall bee found contrary to sound Doctrine and the power of godlinesse least we pertake in other mens sinnes Now surely Mr. Edwards I wonder that wise men can smile upon you except it be in consideration of your folly for you are made all of contradictions unlesse you would have us take it for granted that it is according to sound doctrine and the power of godlinesse that a number of Priests should bee called together of contrary religions some for the Bishops and some for the Presbyterie and some for Christ and that the two first casting aside the last should agree to make decrees a Parliament should bee bound to establish them Would this bee now to extripate scisme nay it would be to establish a grand scisme For godlinesse is cast out by the two first and the Parliament must establish what ever shall be thought of those two first to be sound whether it be for the Bishops the antient fathers or for the Presbyters their younger sonnes and so you would have the Parliament to bee indeede guilty of their sinnes YOur third Rreason is that A Tolleration is against the nature of a Reformation and here you discover your selfe in this Reason that the Reformation you intend to make is to force all men in the Kingdom to submit to some perticular forme for you say you cannot make a reformation but it must offend many consciences But if it be so it will be the consciences of them that have knowledge in the word of God For the ignorant multitude will bee offended at
matters by your juggling where there is none to resist you nor hold out the light in opposition to your false figures But if they were there they might not be admitted there to opose you nor to use any meanes to undeceive the people But it is an old saying though somewhat grosse that every cocke croweth on his owne miksen and that makes you so bold where you are sure you shall have no oposition But Mr. Edwards now I will counsell you to muster up all your army you bragge of and come forth set up your colours and pitch a field with the Separation bring forth all your strong reasons not only the last conceived your latter thoughts and studies but also your large tractates against the whole way of Separation which were the first conceived of old which you promised in your former booke * for you have brought no argument in your Antipologia against Separation from a false Church and false Ministry but you have challenged all high and low Anabaptists Separatists and Semiseparates c. to bring a ground from Scripture for the lawfulnesse of seperating from a true Church which thing wee never strived for for we know it is utterly unlawfull But this was your policie especially when you preached upon the house top to make the people beleeve that those who seperate from the Church of England seperate from a true Church But this is yours to prove I therfore challenge you now to prove by the Scripture that the Church of England is a true Church and the Ministry thereof a true Ministry and that they have a true outward calling which yet you have not done neither have you brought any argument neither in your former booke nor in this Antipologia that proves your Church and Ministry true And I thinke you dare not deny but that these bee substantialls and not some of your meere circumstances which you would have decided without the word of God * for if the Church be but a circumstance and the calling of the ministry a meere circumstance then you neede not stand so much for it and upon ordination from the Pope for if ever you be true Ministers of Jesus Christ it must be without that and therefore it appeareth to bee you who have ordination by persons that are not ordained and not the Ministers of the Separation for God hath ordained his Church to ordaine their owne Ministers but hath not ordained the Church of England nor the Ministry thereof at all wherefore it appeareth that you can have no true ordination unlesse you become Separate And all your arguments in your former booke tended to the keeping downe of the kingdome and power of Jesus Christ And all the tales which you tell in your Antipologia tend to the defaming of your Brethren as they came from you But as your tales are in themselves many of them turne to the praise of those whom you would defame As for instance you tell us of their humility and that they say that they dare not take upon them to determine all the waies of God For ought I know they doe well for the Prophet David who was not onely a King but a Prophet of God and a man after Gods owne heart thought not himselfe sufficient for that worke of universall determining which you may plainely see in the 119. Psalme where he so often desireth of the Lord to teach him his waies statutes precepts commandements testimonies lawes and to direct him in his word yet David refresh not there but strikes Covenant with God promising that he will run the waies of Gods commandements when hee hath learned them * and also that he would teach others when the Lord had taught him even as you say these men have done for you report that they are active for their way Now if God have made knowne his way to them more fully then he hath done heretofore they ought to be more active for it and as God enlargeth their hearts so to enlarge his praise You tell us of a sort of Anabaptists that would preach on the top of houses because they would imitate the Apostles But have you not now taken their turne for these men as you say even the Apologists with divers others have of late preached not only to the Parliament but also to the people in divers places which you name as Margrets Westminster Michaell Cornewell Magâ—es at the bridge foot and Stepney with other places These men I say preaching true doctrine there in the eares of the people you have published it as it were upon the house top for you have put them in print that so we that are Separatists who dare not come to your Church and all the men in England may know it And you have threatned to print them at large * You say their doctrines make for their way and they are active for their way Indeede Mr. Edwards though Gods waies be not as mens waies yet when men make Gods waies their waies they ought to be active for the same for they are the waies of peace the waies of truth and the waies of life and though they are narrow waies because there is no rule leading unto them but the Word of God yet he that is guided by Gods spirit shall bee led into all truth Therefore it is good for you and all persons to labour to be clothed with humility for God hath promised to teach the humble his waies You say there are foure passages in the Apologeticall Narration which are good and usefull amongst so many bad Therefore wee will consider of these which are good usefull amongst those which you say are bad The first being their acknowledgement of the Parliament Herein I conceive they give Caesar his due The second of the Assembly of Divines They did not give them the Title of a Synod nor atribute authority to them to determine for the Church of Christ lawes rites or cerimonies c. For I thinke they did not understand them to have or to be capable of any such power from God for if these had knowne they had assumed it they would not as I thinke have beene of them The third is their taking notice of the miscarriages of the Separatists In this they did very well and made a good use thereof as I may judge from your owne speeches concerning their way and I pray you tell me Mr. Edwards for what end were the miscariages of Gods people written by the direction of Gods spirit but to warne others of the Saints from falling into the like for wherefore did God at any time punish his people for their Sinnes but to recall them back that so he might bee reconciled unto them againe but never to deterre them from his holy waies wherein they walked before or when they practised those miscarriages If Adam should have offered no more sacrifice because Caine fell out with his Brother for offering a
good reason or else you shall have the conquest But you have in this your Antipologia named some learned Authors who have written against Separation amongst which Mr. Rutherford is one And I have seen Mr. Rutherfords booke and also weighed it But I could not discerne that he hath set down any thing against Separation that hath any force neither hath hee proved any thing sufficiently but hath propounded many queeries which have been both framed and answered long agoe and he hath in his discourse expressed and repeated many answers which have been made to those queeires by the Separation and running them over he telleth us what this man saith and what that man saith and what another man saith but he in declaring his owne conceptions following his blind zeale and popish Authors runneth himselfe headlong to justifie the Church and Ministry of Rome against the Separates arguments there specified bringing no sufficient proofe either of his owne or other mens against them Therefore I would have understanding men to consider whether this of his be learned or pious writing yea or no The generall scope of his booke tendeth to prove that the power of the Church resteth in the hands of her Officers But he should consider that Christ hath given the power to his Church which is his body and spouse of which and of whom he himselfe is the head and Husband neither can any Officer in the Church move Ecclesiastically without the power of the Church no more then a mans Arme or Leg or prime member can move except it derive power from the body of which it is a naturall member Yea the power of the Keyes is as absolutely the Churches which is Christs wife as the power of the Keyes of the Family are the Mistrises to whom the Husband giveth full power and I thinke no reasonâ—â—le man will affirme if her Husband give her sole power in his absence that she is subordinate to any of her servants Now the Scripture is cleere that Christ who is ascended up on high hath delivered the power to his Church therefore it is against the light and law of nature to conceive the Church to be thus subordinate to the servants but rather we may speake with reverence to Christ that her servants are subordinate unto her and it is a dishonour unto Christ for them to usurp ecclesiasticall authority over her But in case they should so doe she hath received commission from Christ her Husband to deale with them according to the offence committed by them and if need require to cast them out and then not to suffer them to enter in againe but by the dore of Repentance But as Mr. Rutherford by pleading for the Ecclesiasticall power to be in the Officers hath given great advantage to the Pope so hath he to the Anabaptists by pleading the universallity of his Church bringing in the seed of wicked men to be baptized because their fore father was a beleeving Parent but upon this ground all the Infants in the world are baptizable because a beleever was the father of them all But the Scripture teacheth us otherwise for the House of Jacob was forsaken by the Lord because they enlarged themselves from the East and were Southsayers like the Philistime and pleased themselves with the children of strangers YOu have joyned to your Antipologia certaine reasons against Tolleration which are the same in substance with those which you brought in your former And seeing they have beene largely answered there in the answer to your ten reasons and in my reply to your answer to their six reasons It is folly for you to study to relieve those reasons to serve your turne For untill you are able to stand out and prove by the word of God that the Church of England which you call your Church is the Church of Jesus Christ as it now stands in confusion And the ministry thereof either in the Synod or out of the Synod is the ministry which Christ gave to his Church when he ascended up on high Till this is proved which can never be all the arguments which you have brought or can bring against the Separates under the names of Sectaries are still against your selfe For whether there be Sectaries or Scismaticks whether Athists or Papists whether wanton witted Christians as you tearme them disobedient to Magistrates unfaithfull to King and State Obstinate Rebels nay what ever wickednesse can be named the persons practising the same are found to be Members of the Church of England Therefore I would advise you hereafter to let Baal plead for himselfe And goe not about to make the Magistrates beleive that it is their duty to suppresse the Church of Christ to heale the Rents of your confused Church state for though all the Prophets in the land would heale Babel yet she shall never be healed for in a generall Apostasie there can be no true Reformation but by a totall visible Separation of the pretious from the vile And therefore you come short when you would intimate there is nothing between you and us in point of the ministery but that our Ministers must sease from their outward temporall labours imployments or trades for our Ministers have no false calling upon them as yours have which is a great gulfe betwixt your Ministers and ours and betwixt you and us And concerning our Churches you say the controversie were at an end if our ministers would grant to our Churches that Assemblies and Synods might judge and passe sentence upon our members as often as they see just ground But truely Mr. Edwards this were to adulterate from the true patterne left unto us and as this argueth in you great slothfullnesse and pride so if your councell were followed it would make others like you but as our Ministers doe not desire to live Idly as you would have them doe neither doe our Churches desire the thing which you would have our Ministers grant them you may know that you doe not goe according to the rules of Scripture when you perswade the Ministers of the Gospel to sease labouring with their hands For when Paul called the Elders of Ephesus to give them their charge He set before them his owne example I pray you read the 20. Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles And see whether Paul required any to leave working with their hands no sure he commanded the direct contrary where he expressed that he Coveted no mans Silver or Gold or Apparrell But saith that they knew that his owne hands ministered to his necessities and them that were with him And further saith he hath shewed them in all things how that so labouring they ought to support the weake Remembring the words of our Lord Jesus how he said It is a more blessed thing to give then to receive And concerning our Churches submitting to Synods to judge their cases That were to make themselves foole * For if ther be a wise man amongst
nothing but of what ever Religion their King will be of they will be of the same therefore you are a contentious man indeede that will offend the consciences of the godly to make your Church great that so your revenewes may be large YOur fourth Reason is A tolleration of men in their errors is against the judgements of the greatest lights Ans. It is granted Therefore you might have spared your labour in citing your antient fathers For in all that you doe herein I oppose you not YOur fifth Reason is that the Magistrates tollerating of errors and new opinions is a kinde of invitation to them c. Ans. This thing I grant And therefore the Magistrates ought not to tollerate errors or any opinion that is not grounded upon the word of God And therefore I conceive it to be the Magistrates duty to make tryall of the Synod whether their gathering together bee according to the word of God or according to the customes of this Kingdome And whether they bee not of the same nature with the Synod which used to sit in the Convocation house And whether any decree which they shall now pitch upon not having the Scripture for their warrant may be consented unto And though it have the Scripture for their warrant whether there bee ever the more weight in it for their decreeing of it and it greatly concerneth the Parliament to consider whether the Assembly have any thing to do with the things of God while they stand Priests by their OLD-POPISH-CALLING And that upon your ground namely that the Magistrates ought not to tollerate errors or new opinions And all waies and practises are new and strange which have not warrant in the word of God IN your sixt Reason you pleade against a tolleration of different formes of Church governement for feare of division among Ministers and families you say it will not stand with Christian policie but it will stand with Matchevillian Mr. Edwards If Christian policie might take place in the Kingdome of England and all your Matchivillian pollicie banished out there would be no striving then about different formes of Religion but Christs true Religion and Gospel would then have a free passage without interposing for the free tollerating of it will produce no mischiefes nor evills at all And it is not wee that pleade for different formes of Church governement but your owne party We pleade but for one intire governement established upon sound principles unalterable And not a government which may looke with severall faces in severall times upon severall occasions according to mens fancies And therefore it had beene better for you to have held your tongue then made so many repetitions of things which have beene sufficiently answered long agoe YOur seventh Reason is that Independency or the Church way as being a scisme in forsaking the Reformed Churches and constituting new the way of constituting Churches by the people the way of making their Ministers the refusing of beleevers and their children to the Sacraments unlesse they bee Church members with many more are all flat against the primative patterne c. In these words you have so jumbled things together as it were in a broken language If you meane that the way of Separation from your false Churches their way of making ministers constituting Churches is contrary to the primative patterne you speake untruly for they make the primative patterne their rule And then for their refusing of beleevers and their children from the Sacraments unlesse they be members of their Church in this you accuse them unjustly also for they doe admit beleevers and their Infants to the ordinance of Baptisme though they bee not members of a particular congregation for they are not capeable to be members before Baptisme in respect of order and to partake of the Supper till they be in particular Church fellowship And this I will engage my selfe to maintaine against you if it please you to dispute the case And therefore you had no neede to have branded this practise with such a blacke badge to call it the fountaine of evill and root of bitternesse and manifold errors and other mischiefes For this is but your bitter language against the truth And if you intend to make your rejoynders and large tractates which you brag of of such stuffe as you have made this Antipologia It were better for you to put on a buffe coate to go fight in the Army against your enemies then to sit at home to slander and accuse your friends even those who neâ—er did nor thought harme to you or any other YOur eighth Reason is a commendation of the Presbyteriall way and that by the testimony of many fathers and the testimony of the Scottish Commishioners But you say there will be objected a passage against it in a booke lately printed of M. Simpsons Answ. I leave Mr. Simpson and you to try it ouâ— But if you had so defined your Presbyterian governement and set downe your bounds and limitts what and what not according as you call upon the Apologists to define their Church way then you should have had my judgement of it here to the full But to judge and determin so of a thing which is not yet begotten or brought forth in this Kingdome is not so easie a matter neither do we know what forme or shape it will have when it is brought forth It may for ought I know be a MONSTER like the Image of the seven beaded beast and if it bee found defective then all who have taken the Nationall Covenant are by your own confession to endeavour the exterpation of it Yea And further you say as the Parliament will not be respecters of persons or partiall they must grant no tolleration but what is agreeable to sound doctrine In this you speake very true although indeed you crosse many of your former speeches And therefore the way to deside the controversie is to sease writing of such large tractates wherein you doe but as it were picke strawes and make abundance of repititions to tryfle away the time In my judgement I say It were better for your selfe and Mr. Samuel Rutherford and Mr. A.S. or any of you or whomsoever the Parliament shall apoint to produce Scripture and good reason for your way if you can and let as many of the Ministers of the Congregations of the Separation have freedome to produce Scripture and sound reason for their way in a free conference And let the houses of Parliament who are able to judge of the great and weighty businesses of the Kingdome let them I say have the hearing and tryall of the conference and as things are cleared so let them allow or disallow And this is according to your counsell in pag. 304. of your Antipologia where you say To conclude If the way of Independencie be of God and the Apollogists can make that good let it be established by Parliament and let all