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A26871 Cain and Abel malignity that is, enmity to serious godliness, that is, to an holy and heavenly state of heart and life : lamented, described, detected, and unananswerably [sic] proved to be the devilish nature, and the militia of the devil against God and Christ and the church and kingdoms, and the surest sign of a state of damnation / by Richard Baxter, or, Gildas Salvianus ... Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 1689 (1689) Wing B1195; ESTC R2643 73,886 164

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Oaths the Oath of Allegeance and the Oath called the Covenant that by them overcame the opposition of the other Army and brought home the King. It was this that engaged the Ministers of England against both Cromwel and a Common-wealth and the Ministers were followed by most of the religious people of the land which broke the adversaries strength It was this that engaged the excluded members of the then long Parliament It was this that engaged the City of London It seems it was this that engaged Gen. Monk's Army when they say in their address to him see it in Englands Triumph for K. Charles the 2d p. 85. We hope to evince to his Majesty and all the world that we and all those that have been engaged in the Parliaments cause are his Majesties best and most real subjects and that your Excellency and the Armies under your command have complied with the obligations for which they were first raised for the preservation of the true Protestant Religion the Honour and Dignity of the King the Priviledges of Parliament the Liberty and Property of the Subjects and the Fundamental Laws of the land I am not justifying all that I recite I doubt not but they were much mistaken But if they had then been told that shortly all the Corporation Offices and Trusts in England shall be constituted by a personal Declaration of every one that There is no obligation on any person from the Oath called the Solemn Covenant to restore the King oppose Schism or to any thing whatever the effect would have been such as makes me wonder that the Royalists as then called should be very eager to make all such declare that all these Souldiers Ministers Parliament and Citizens that restored the King as bound to it by that Oath were therein mistaken and no such obligation thence was on them Qu. 7. I need not name to you the sorry fellows out of the Jails where they lay for inhuman villanies that have been our zealous ranting tearing prosecuters And do you think such actors are an honour to your cause If it be good use good men in it Qu. 8. Why do you play your game under board and behind the Curtain If you are not ashamed of your cause openly own it Is falshood lying and dissembling beseeming them that say they are of a Church out of which none can be saved I remember when Terret alias Iohnson had seduced the eldest Daughter of the Countess of Balcarres whom they stole away and made a Nun in France and she was after askt why she did so long go to our Churches join in family worship read Protestant Books and talk against the Papists and deride them after she was a Papist her self she answered that they had leave to do all that as long as they did not openly Profess their Religion and were not detected But when once they were discovered and openly professed themselves Roman Catholicks they must then suffer any thing rather than conform to us Gods cause needeth not such jugling and lying Qu. 9. Why do you not ingenuously plead your cause against us so as may satisfy an understanding Conscience before you seek our destruction 1. Your arguings are commonly fitted only to cheat the ignorant by ambiguities and confusion and equivocal terms Your queries or methods to the French sufferers are only a formed cheat by confounding 1. Subjection to Governours and Communion with neighbour Churches 2. Communion with your Church in Christianity and Communion with its sins 3. A Catholick Church informed only by the soveraignty of Christ and a pretended universal Church informed by the soveraignty of Man a Monarch or a Church-Parliament 4. The office of keeping delivering and teaching men Gods Laws and an absolute power to Judge of their sence and to make more as a supplement to their defects obliging all the world on pain of Excommunication and Death And more such 2. Any writings which undeniably open your frauds you take no notice of nor vouchsafe to answer upon the importunity of Mr. Iohnson and divers others I have lately written 1. A reply to Iohnson 2. A small book in answer to one of your Papers to prove that we have a certainty of Christianity without Popery 3. In answer to another a small Book called Full and Easy satisfaction which is the true Religion None of them will you answer nor those before written But instead of a sober investigation of the truth some of you raise odious slanders of my life and threaten and seek my destruction I never hurt any of you as I said before nor ever perswaded any to severity against you I have long ago publickly proposed terms on which we might live together as neighbours in peace But destruction and misery are in your way that I have observed and the way of peace you have not known There are three things which alienate common Christians from you more than all other disputes 1. That you can go so openly against the plainest words of God as in blotting out the Second Commandment in notorious contradicting 1 Cor. 12. and Rom. 14 and 15. about the terms of Church Union and Communion about Latin Prayers and Worship to the ignorant denying the Cup to the Laity denying sense in Transubstantiation 2. That you befriend Ignorance so much by the said Latin Worship forbidding most to read the Scripture translated and accuse Gods Spirit of writing obscurely to cover this 3. That your Religion liveth by cruelty and blood and cannot stand without it Which at least in prudence you should hide as long as you can Or at least not design to make the ignorant and vicious Protestants your Proselytes and Agents conjunctly to ruin those whom your Consciences know to be the most Consciencious and seriously religious By which already the flock of Christ do under your Sheeps cloathings so judge of you by your fruites that if any man that is called a Protestant Clergy-man do but Write and Preach for cruelty and ruin towards serious Conscionable Christians people by this very mark do presently suspect that he is either a Papist or so near them as that he is ready to pass over to them whom he so assisteth in destructive work Qu. What must be the cure of Malignity Ans. When the heel of the holy seed is sufficiently bruised the Serpents Head must be broken 1. The War in Heaven which formerly cast down the Dragon must break the supream Serpentine Head. II. Then his Heads military on Earth will be broken I. The usurping universal Head called Ecclesiastical II. The national Serpentine Heads I. Exterior Mahometan and Heathen II. Interior called falsly Christian I. Serpentine Monarchs that War against Christ. II. Serpentine Prelates and their Patrons that fight against Christ as in his own name and by his pretended commission And all this by Christ and not by sinful means Reformation is begun à Minoritis at the lowest for personal Salvation of the Elect But a Majoritis at the Heads for publick welfare And God must raise Reforming Princes and Pastors to that end FINIS A Catalogue of Books Printed for and Sold by Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside near Mercers Chapel Mr. Baxter's Catholick Theology Folio A Third Volume of Sermons Preached by the late Reverend and Learned Tho. Manton D. D. In two parts Folio A Hundred Select Sermons on several Texts of Fifty on the Old Testament and Fifty on the New. Folio Choice and Practical Expositions on four Select Psalms Folio Both by the Reverend and Learned Tho. Horton D. D. late Minister of St. Hellens London The true Prophecies and Prognostications of Michael Nostrodamus Physician to Henry the Second Francis the Second and Charles the Ninth Kings of France and one of the Best Astronomers that ever were Folio Sixty one Sermons Preached mostly on publick occasions whereof five formerly Printed by Adam Littleton D. D. Rector of Chelsea in Middlesex Folio The Saints Everlasting Rest or a Treatise of the Blessed State of the Saints in their Enjoyment of God in Glory 4to The English Nonconformity as under King Charles II. and King Iames II. Truly Stated and Argued By Richard Baxter 4to A Discourse concerning Liturgies By the late Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. David Clarkson 8vo A Discourse of the Saving Grace of God. By the late Reverend and Learned David Clarkson Minister of the Gospel 8vo The Vision of the Wheels seen by the Prophet Ezekiel opened and applyed Partly at the Merchants Lecture in Broad-street and partly at Stepney on Ianuary 31. 1689. Being the Day of Solemn Thanksgiving to God for the great Deliverance of this Kingdom from Popery and Slavery by His then Highness the most Illustrious Prince of Orange Whom God raised up to be the glorious Instrument thereof By Matthew Mead Pastor of a Church of Christ at Stepney 4to The Life of Faith in every State. By Rich. Baxter 4to Alderman Ashurst's Funeral Sermon 4to A Key for Catholicks to open the Juglings of the Jesuits The first part of answering all their common Sophisms The second against the Soveraignty and necessity of General Councils 4to Full and easy satisfaction which is the true Religion Transubstantiation shamed 8vo Naked Popery Answering Mr. Hutchinson 4to FINIS
endeavour it When you say or hear all the ten Commandments you pray Lord have mercy upon us and incline our hearts to keep this Law And do you hate men for endeavouring to keep it If you come to the Lords Table you confess your sins and bind your selves in Covenant to forsake them and to live a holy life and you take the Sacrament upon it And the Liturgy warneth you to take heed that you dissemble not nor be hinderers of Gods holy word lest the Devil enter into you as he did into Judas and fill you with all unrighteousness And if you hate or oppose that holy obedience to God which you profess after all this what must be the portion of such hypocrites And in your Creed you profess to believe in God the Father Son and Holy-Ghost and to hold a Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints And yet do you hate Saints that obey the Father Son and Holy-Ghost and hate their Communion 10. Hath not God printed on mans nature such a sense of the difference between Good and Evil as that all Laws and Government are founded in that sense And no man loveth to be counted or called a bad or ungodly or unconscionable man A Lyar a Knave a Perjured man or a wicked man And yet do you hate men for avoiding wickedness 11. Do not you use to accuse Religious men of some sin or other Truly or falsly and think by that to make them odious And yet do you accuse them and hate them most for not sinning To be Sober Just and Godly is but to avoid sins of Omission and Commission And do you at once accuse them as sinners and hate them for obeying God and sinning no more 12. Doth it never affright you to find the Devils nature in you as hating the Divine or holy nature which is in faithful Godly men And to think how openly you serve the Devil and do his work No man that believeth there are Devils can doubt but that the hatred of God as holy and the hatred of his holy Word and Work and Servants is the Devils malignity and the opposing of them his work If he were to write you his Commandments they would be contrary to Gods and the chief of them should be Thou shalt not Love God nor serve him with all thy Heart and Soul and Might nor Love those that do so but hate deride oppose and persecute them And is it honourable openly to serve the Devil Christ tells such men Ioh. 8. That the Devil is their Father because they have his nature and that his work they do for he was from the beginning a Lyar and a Malignant Murderer and turned man from obeying God. And can you think that he loveth you or that his Service against God is better than Gods or his reward better 13. Doth it never touch your Consciences to consider that you are the Children and followers of cursed Cain and how punctually his case against Abel and yours against Gods Servants is the same By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain by which he obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his Gifts and by it he being dead yet speaketh Heb. 11. 4. Cain hated him because God more accepted him and his offering 1 Ioh. 3. 10 11 12. In this the Children of God are manifest and the Children of the Devil Whoever doth not righteousness is not of God nor he that loveth not his Brother For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning that we should love one another Not as Cain who was of that wicked one and slew his Brother And wherefore slew he him because his own works were evil and his brothers righteous 14. Is it possible that any man can unfeignedly believe a Heaven as the reward of holy obedience and yet think we can do too much to obtain it or be too careful to make it sure Is not everlasting glory worth the cost of a holy life Or can it be too dearly bought 15. Or is it possible to believe Gods Judgment and Hells Punishment and yet to hate those that do their best according to Gods own Counsel to escape it 16. What monstrous cruelty is it in you to wish poor Souls to do that which God hath told us they shall be damned for God saith Without holiness none shall see God Heb. 12. 14. Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees you shall in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Mat. 5. 20. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God Mat. 5. If ye live after the Flesh ye shall die but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the Body ye shall live Rom. 8. 7 8. 13. What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy Conversation and Godliness 2 Pet. 3. 11. We receiving a Kingdom which cannot be moved let us serve God acceptably with Reverence and Godly fear for our God is a Consuming Fire Heb. 12. 28 29. Be stedfast unmoveable always abounding in the work of the Lord for asmuch as you know that your Labour is not in vain in the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. This is the very tenor of the Gospel And would you wish men to damn their Souls for nothing To lose Heaven and suffer Hell for ever and all to avoid a pure and holy life What a bloody motion is this Worse than if you intreated us all to cut our own throats Let us try first whether you will do far less at our request Will you give the poor all your Lands and Estates Will you run into Fire or Water or set your own houses on fire when any will but desire it It 's like you have heard of the Woman who being tempted to adultery desired the tempter first to hold his Finger in the Fire for her Which when he refused she told him it was less reason she should burn in Hell to Satisfy his lust If you will not part with your Life or Estate when another desires you why should we part with Heaven for ever and choose Hell at your desire Yea we see that you will not leave an ill-gotten gain or a Sport or a Whore or a Drunken Cup for all the Love of God the blood of Christ and the hope of Heaven And shall we part with God and Heaven and Christ to humour you And what is it that you offer us instead of all that we must part with And to ease the pain which we must undergo Nothing or worse than nothing If we should renounce God and our hope of Heaven you cannot give us health or wealth for it Much less can you secure these or life to us till to morrow And will any thing that you can give us be better than Heaven to us Or will it make Hell tollerable Will you undertake to answer for it at the bar of God if we are charged with an ungodly fleshly life or
their ancient and accustomed Liberty Regiment Laws they may not well be counted Rebels saith he of Obedience pag. 520. But I hear many now say the contrary and Condemn such Doctrine as disloyal I find some joyn with the Papists in accusing the Reformation as caused by Rebellions in Germany Geneva France Belgium c. And I find Bishop Iewel Bilson and other Bishops defending the French defence and Dr. Peter Moulin of Canterbury in his answer to Philanax Anglicus Contradicting their accusers as false in Point of History Abundance of such Political Controversies are now lately agitated some charging their adversaries with Rebellion and some with Tyranny Some saying they are guilty of Treason against the King and others They are Traitors against the Kingdom And too ordinarily damning one another as if these matters were Articles of our Creed What a dismal difference is there now about those words in the Declaration in the Corporation Act There is no Obligation on me or any other person from the Oath called the solemn League and Covenant Some say there are none but Rebels will refuse it And that if any obligation had been granted to things lawful or necessary some would have extended it to Rebellion or Schism And therefore all Obligation is to be renounced Others say that National perjury is a forerunner of National Calamity or ruine and that where Oaths bind not there can be no Trust and no Trust no Commerce And they think as Dr. Sanderson and Casuists Papists and Protestants do that though an Oath or Vow be unlawfully Imposed and Sinfully taken and part of the matter of it be unlawful and the Imposers and Takers are bound to repent and no one is bound by it to the unlawful part yet the taker is bound to that part of the matter which is lawful or necessary And they take it to be lawful and necessary to Repent of sin to oppose Prophaneness Schisms Heresy and Popery to defend the King and therefore that it obligeth them to these I meddle not with the Roman opinion that it is the Henrician Heresy to say that Kings have a power of investing Bishops and disobeying the Popes Excommunication and of such as Cardinal Perron that dare not question or deny the power of the Pope and Councils to Excommunicate and depose Kings because then they must condemn approved General Councils which are their religion itself and saith he must grant that the Pope is Antichrist and the Church erroneous that hath so long used this I name all these Political Controversies 1. To tell you that it is not factious and passionate enmity to each other on such accounts which I mean by enmity to Religion 2. And to remember men that if in so many and great points of Politicks and Government the Learned and Christian World have so great difference what reason is there that we should Damn or Excommunicate or hate each other about a hard opinion in Religion or a Ceremony 3. And to tell the Popish Church that if it were a good argument that there must be one Pretorian Court or Church to oblige all the World by an universal determination in what sence to expound the Scripture because it is abused to errour by mens mistake and there must be an end of Controversies by the same reason there must be an universal Pretorian Court to expound all human Laws and end the controversies of Lawyers Yea and to master all mens Reason for Scripture is no more commonly controverted and abused than Law is And not half so much as Reason is which is pleaded for almost all the falshood and wickedness in the World. § 10. Moreover it is not personal feuds between Man and Man that I mean by Enmity to Godliness No though any such be against an Innocent and Godly Man where it is not for his Godliness but some other difference § 11. I will say more though some dislike it it is not a Papist as such that I mean by a Malignant Enemy of Godliness I know that Education and Temptation and want of hearing the confutation of their errours judiciously made may cause Godly persons to think that the universal Church must be united in some humane Head or Soveraign power and that there is no other way to end controversies and schisms and that as Dr. Saywell saith there must be some over Kingdoms or National Churches as well as over particular persons that many may not escape while a few are punished It is easy to be deceived by the pretences of Unity and Concord while men see the divisions and discords of others And the false pretences of Antiquity are so confidently uttered by their Clergy that men unacquainted with the history may verily believe them And the plea for an uninterrupted succession of Ministerial ordination and that a Superior must give power to the Inferiors deceiveth many If there must be a Diocesane to ordain and rule all Presbyters and a Metropolitan to ordain or rule the Diocesanes and a Patriarch to rule them from whom shall the Patriarchs receive their power or commands but from a Pope The poor reasoning which the French now use with the Protestants puzleth unskilful persons viz. Was there any Church before your reformation If yea where was it And had not you your Ministerial power from it It was Rome or none And if it was the true Church then it is so now We answer them there was and is one only Catholick Church Of this Christ only is the Head or Universal governour and no man or men Of this all Lawful Pastors are his official guides in their several Provinces as many Justices and Mayors of Corporations under one King That all these having one King Jesus and one Law of Christ and one Spirit and one Faith and Hope are to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and to use Synods when needful to that end but not as a Pretorian or Regent Aristocracy or Court. That the Church before Luther was all over the World where ever there were Christians in Ethiopia Egypt Syria Armenia Georgia Circassia Asia and where ever the Greek Christianity is in Moscovy and in all Europe where there were true Christians That the envious man having sowed Tares this Church is unhappily fallen into many corruptions diseases and factious sects almost all censuring one another no part of it is perfect That the Papal part is in Doctrine Worship and Government one of the most corrupted parts Yet so far as their diseases or errours nullify not their profession of Christianity they are parts though leprous And therefore though they are the most uncharitable and schismatical part as they cut off or unchurch all the Christian World save themselves yet being as Christians united to the rest in the common faith their Baptism Ordinations are not nullities as they invest men in the Christian Society and Christian Ministry though that part of them is a nullity which engageth men
knows not that some things are lawful to avoid suffering which else would not be lawful It is lawful to cast your goods into the Sea to save the Ship and mens lives Which else were a sin It 's lawful to give a Thief your purse to save your life which else were unlawful It 's lawful to blow up neighbours houses to stop a fire Christ proved it lawful to break the Sabbath in cases of necessity he withdrew into the Wilderness and far from Ierusalem to avoid the pharisees persecution And Paul was let down by the Wall in a basket Which without danger of suffering had not been lawful Though no sin must be done to avoid suffering yet that may and must be done which self-preservation makes no sin but a duty To kill a man that assaults you in your own defence is not the same crime as unnecessarily to kill him But as to the other case of taking the Corporation Oath and Declaration if you know the case as you should do before you accuse men you know that it is the true sence of them that is all the controversy No body scruples swearing Loyalty and renouncing Rebellion and Sedition and all unlawful means of reformation That which makes it difficult is that on one side the proper universal sence of the words seems to them unlawful and Oaths must be taken in the usual sence unless our Rulers give another yet on the other side learned sober Conformists profess that they take such words in the limited sence or else they would not take them And they argue subtilly to prove that to be the true sence And our Law-makers to whom it belongs will not end the controversy by an exposition And can you wonder here if men fluctuate in uncertainty And a late writer having given subtiler arguments for the limited sence than were published before did perswade many And in that limited sence twenty Nonconformist Ministers took the oath long ago in London at one time But I justify none that mistake in so great a matter And doubtless if they sinned God will not bless it to their good It will prove their snare And I am glad that we are agreed that Perjury is a heinous sin I beseech you then to consider 1. Whether those men are fit to accuse them who drive them to it and say to Ministers Swear or lye in Iail 2. Or those who are of the mind of Grotius Bishop Taylor and such others that Lying is Lawful when it saves our selves and wrongs no other And of those Divines that say It 's as lawful to defend my self from pernicious Imposers with my tongue as with my hands 3. Let us all with fear who believe there is a God avoid the dreadful crime of perjuring the whole land This whole Kingdom is sworn against all Forreign Iurisdiction in the Oath of Supremacy and against all endeavours to alter the Government of Church or State by 1. the Corporation Act 2. The Vestry Act 3. The Militia Act 4. The Oxford of Confinement 5. And obliged by the Act of Uniformity Is it not perjury than to endeavour any alteration of it 1. What shall we then think of them that would bring in Popery would they not perjure the Kingdom 2. What shall we say of them that write for a Forreign Church Jurisdiction under the name of General Councils or a Colledge of Bishops or of Forreign Patriarchs of whom the Pope is chief and the Principium unitatis to the universal Church Is it no change of our Church Government to bring us under a forreign Jurisdiction Is it no change of State Government to make the King and Kingdom Subject to that forreign Jurisdiction who may excommunicate him and so bring on him all the evil which Excommunication inferreth And what man in his wits knoweth not that Prelates and Priests are much at the will and power of the Princes under whom they live Doth not our King expect that his Bishops obey him And those that must have this Universal Jurisdiction over our King and us are the Subjects of other Princes of which the far greatest part are Papists Mahometans Infidels Heathens or such as are called Hereticks And if our King and we be made Subject to the Subjects of the Turk the Pope the Kings of Spain France Poland the Emperor the Moscovite the Dukes of Bavaria Tuscany and such like is he not made a Subject to their Lords and Masters and much worse Will not this project perjure England 3. Whether it be any alteration of Government by them that would change the Power and use of Parliaments I leave to Lawyers 4. But I would fain be satisfied of another case These Kingdoms of England and Scotland took a Covenant and Vow some Voluntarily some at their Compositions who had been sequestred for the King This Vow contained divers matters of which some are notorious duties as to repent of their sins to oppose Popery Schism and Prophaneness to defend the King c. It 's not denied by most that I meet with that this Oath or Vow was unlawfully imposed and unlawfully taken and many think some of the matter was unlawful viz. to oppose Prelacy c. But seeing Casuists are agreed that an Oath unlawfully both imposed and taken bindeth to that part of the matter which is lawful and necessary notwithstanding the Conjunction of the rest And the Corporations of England are all formed by a Declaration taken by all in power and trust that There is no Obligation without the least exception on me or any other person from the Oath called the Solemn League and Covenant The doubt is whether every man may declare that of all the thousands of three Kingdoms whom he never knew no one is bound by that Oath or Vow to repent of his sins or in his place and calling to oppose Schism Popery or Prophaneness or to defend the King and whether all may declare that the Londoners and Ministers and the restored old Parliament and General Monks Army who restored the King as supposing they were bound to it by that Oath were all deceived and were under no such obligation thence And whether I am not bound in charity to think that the sequestred Royalists put a good sence on it when they took it And so whether all the Corporations of England are free from And for what it is that God hath singled them out for Judgment If you be agreed with us and with manking against so great a sin as Perjury especially national let us help one another with Love and Patience to resolve such doubts Accus But they have been guilty of Rebellion in a Civil War and therefore are justly suspected to Preach or hold Rebellious Doctrine Ans. 1 Are those men lovers of Love and Concord who purposely make use of pardoned acts to keep the Kingdoms wounds still open Did not the King tell you in his Declarations and Act of Oblivion that the putting up of all save to the excepted