and my Conscience might have been bolder and less fearful of sin And though I love not to displease them I must say this great truth that I had never been like to have lived in so convincing sensible experience of the great difference of the main body of the Conformists from the most of the Nonconformists as to the seriousness of their Christian Faith and hope and practice their victory over the flesh and world c. I mean both in the Clergy and Laity of mine acquaintance O how great a difference have I found from my youth to this day Though I doubt not but very many of the Passive Conformable Ministers to say nothing of the Imposers have been and are worthy pious men and such as would not perswade their hearers that the Jesuits first brought in spiritual prayer And I had the great blessing of my Education near some such in three or four neighbour Parishes § 4. It grieved me to hear of Mr. Glanvile's death for he was a man of more than ordinary ingeny and he was about a Collection of Histories of Apparitions which is a work of great use against our Sadducees and to stablish doubters and the best mans faith hath need of all the helps from sense that we can get And I feared lest that work had perished with him But I gladly hear that by the care of Dr. H. More that worthy faithful man of peace who never studied preferment it is both preserved and augmented And as for his Origenisme as I like it not so I confess in matters of that nature I can better bear with the venturousness of dissenters than hereticators can do But when I saw this Rag called a Letter left behind him my grief for him was doubled And I saw what cause we have all to fear the snares of a flattering world and what cause to pray for Divine preservation and for an unbyassed mind and a humble sense of our own frailty that we may neither over-value prosperity nor our own understandings I did not think that he that had wrote the Vanity of Dogmatizing could so soon have come to perswade men in power that dissenting from our Churches dogmatizing and imposed words formes and ceremonies was worthy of so severe a prosecution of us as he describeth and that all their danger is from the forbearing such prosecution of us and that though for their own ends he could abate us some little matters the only way to settled peace is vigorously to execute the Laws against us He that can think the silencing and imprisoning of about 2000 such Ministers is the way to bring this Land to Concord hath sure very hard thoughts of them in comparison of Conformists And that you may see how little his judgment against such should weigh with others who is so lately changed from himself I will give you here one of several Letters which I had from him and leave you to judge whether he have proved that he was much wiser at last than when he wrote this or whether his character of me agree with his motion to silence and ruine all such I am so far from owning his monstrous praises that I fear I offended him with sharply rebuking him for them But lest his wit and virulence here do harm I give it you to shew the unconstancy of his judgment or if he would have excepted me from his severities I must profess that I believe the most of the Nonconformable Ministers of my acquaintance are better men than my self and therefore his excessive praise of me is the condemnation and shame of his persecuting counsel § 5. As to his praise of the Bishops Writings against Popery I had rather magnifie than obscure their deserts But I am not able to believe that the old ones who write to prove the Pope Antichrist c. and the new ones who would bring us to obey him as Patriarch of the West and principium unitatis Catholicae were of one mind because both are called Protestants and that such as Bishop Bramhall and the rest of the defenders of Grotius were of the same judgment with Bishop Usher Bishop Morton Bishop Downame c. nor that Grotius who describeth a Papist to be one that flattereth Popes as if all were right which they said and did did disclaim Popery in the same sense as the old Church of England did Two men may cry down Popery while one of them is a Papist or near one in the others sense As to the folly of calling that Popery which is not I have said more against it in my Cath. Theologie than he hath done And as to his excuse of an ignorant vicious sort of Ministers because no better will take small Livings It is not true The silenced Nonconformists would have been glad of them or to have preached there for nothing The tolerating of ignorant scandalous men were more excusable if better were not shut out that would have taken such places But it 's notorious that for the interest of their faction and prosperity they had rather have the ignorant and vicious than the ablest and most laborious Nonconformist Bishop Morley told me when he forbad me to preach that It was better for a place to have none than to have me when I askt him Whether I might not be suffered in some place which no one else will take Most of the old Nonconformists were suffered by connivance in small obscure places which was the chief reason why they set not up other meetings which Dr. Stillingfleet thought they avoided as unlawful because forbidden § 6. And as to his excuse by blaming ill Patrons I would know then by what true obligation all men in England are bound to commit the Pastoral conduct of their Souls to such men only as our English Patrons chuse § 7. And when he so blameth the tepidity and irreligiousness of the Members of their own Church I would know 1. Whether all men that are more seriously religious must be forsaken by us and ruined by them if they be not of their mind and form 2. And whether the numbers of the irreligious that are for their way and the numbers of the religious that are against it should not rather breed some suspicion in them than engage them to ruine so many such men § 8. And when page 3. he confesseth that the sword is their Churches strength and Government and how contemptible words paper Arguments and excommunications are without force doth he not shame their whole cause and shew that it is not the same Government which the Church used for many hundred years which they desire and that their whole power of the Keys which they talk so much for seems to themselves a dead and uneffectual thing while we Nonconformists desire no coercive power but to guide Consenters § 9. As to his project to save religion under a Papist King if the Dean and Chapter may but chuse the Bishop I leave it to other mâ—â—â— consideration But
would have all walk by he will not do it but instead of that with unusual gentleness tells me he will not differ about it if I do but grant that it is a Rule that binds us all to do all that lawfully we can for peace which I cheerfully grant And if it be not lawful for peace and concord to forbear silencing us imprisoning us accusing us as odious for not wilful sinning and urging Magistrates to execute the Laws against us and making us seem Schismaticks for not forbearing to Preach the Gospel to which we were vowed and consecrated by Ordination I know not lawful from unlawful I cannot yet get him to tell us what he would have the many score thousands do on the Lords Days that have no room in the Parish-Churches with many such which our case is concerned in § 14. I thought his Book had been an Answer to mine and other mens Prefaces but I find that I was mistaken Indeed he nameth five Books written against his Accusation what he saith to Dr. Owen and Mr. Alsop I leave to themselves to consider of The Countrey Gentlemans Case in sense was this Whether all they that think Parish Communion under the present impositions to be sin are bound till they can change their judgment to forbear all Church-worship and live like Atheists and so be damned And who can find any Answer to this Mr. Barret's Queries out of his Books he saith next nothing to but a dark retracting his Irenicon And far be it from me to blame him for growing wiser But why took he no notice of his own words cited in the Epistle out of his late Book against Idolatry threatning us all with no less than damnation if me prefer not the purest Church And as to my Defence his Book is nothing like an Answer unless his naming me and citing out of that and other Books a few broken scraps which he thought he could make some advantage of may be called an Answer § 15. I confess he hath made some attempt to tell me what the National Church of England is but so Independently as I doubt his party will disown it with great offence In short he holds that there is no such thing as a Church of England in the usual Political sense having any Constitutive Ecclesiastical Supreme Power Monarchical or Aristocratical or Democratical but it 's only the many Churches in England associated by the common consent in Parliament c. Remember that he and I are so far agreed As I was writing this I saw a Book against him of a friend too much for me and somewhat freely handling the Dr. which in this point would help them by saying that the Convocation having the Legislative Church-Power may be the Constitutive Regent part But he confesseth to me that he spake not what is but what he counts should be or wisheth for the Dr. himself had before told us that the Convocations of Canterbury and York are two and not united to make one National supreme power so that this proveth no one political Church of England at all but only 2 Provincial Churches in England § 16. The Dr. hath so judiciously and honestly pleaded our Cause in his defence of A. Bishop Laud and his Book against Idolatry that I have made his words the first Chap. of this Book which if he candidly stand to I see not but our principles are the same § 17. His book is made up of 3 parts I. Untrue Accusations II. Untrue Historical Citations abundance III. Fallacious Reasonings Would you have an undeniable Confutation ad hominem in few words I. As to his Principles he saith himself as aforesaid Of Idolat p. 7. We are sure that wilful ignorance or choosing a worse Church before a better is a damnable sin II. As to his History of the old Nonconformists read A. Bishop Bancrofts dangerous Positions and Heylins History of Presbytery charging them odiously with the clean contrary and the Canons made against them on that supposition III. As to his History and Doctrine against the Election of Bp s which I pleaded as I have fully proved his abuse of History in it I repeat Mr. Thorndikes words Forbear of Penalty It is to no purpose to talk of Reformation of the Churchtoregular Government without restoring the liberty of choosing Bishops and priviledg of enjoying them to the Synods Clergy and people in the making of those of whom they consist and by whom they are to be governed that I need make no other reason of the neglect of Episcopacy than the neglect of it O pray hard to God to provide greater store of skilful holy and peaceable Labourers for his Harvest that by the sound belief of a better world have overcome the deluding love of the honours prosperity and pleasures of the flesh and wholly live to God and Heaven POSTSCRIPT DR Edward Stillingfleet Irenic P. 114. saith The Episcopal men will hardly find any evidence in Scripture or in the practice of the Apostles for Churches consisting of many fixed Congregations for worship under the charge of one Pastor nor in the Primitive Church for the Ordination of a Bishop without the preceding Election of the Clergy and at least consent and approbation of the people and neither in Scripture nor Antiquity the least foot-step of the delegation of Church-power so that upon the matter all of them at last make use of those things in Church-Government which have no other foundation but the principles of humane prudence guided by Scripture and it were well if that were observed still P. 370. Surely then their Diocesses we re not very large if all the several Parishes could communicate on the same day with what was sent from the Cathedral Church P. 361. I doubt not but to make it appear that Philippi was not the Metropolis of Macedonia and therefore the Bishops there mentioned could not be the Bishops of the several Cities under the jurisdiction of Philippi but must be understood of the Bishops resident in that City P. 157. There must be a form of Ecclesiastical Government over a Nation as a Church as well as of Civil Government over it as a Society governed by the same Laws For every Society must have its Government belonging to it as such a Society And the same reason that makes Government necessary in any particular Congregation will make it necessary for all the particular Congregations joyning together in one visible Society as a particular National Church For the Unity and Peace of that Church ought much more to be lookt after than of any one Congregation P. 131. The Churches power as to Divine Law being only directive and declarative but as confirmed by a Civil Sanction is juridical and obligatory P. 113. Where any Church is guilty of corruptions both in Doctrine and in practice which it avoweth and professeth and requireth the owning them as necessary conditions of Communion with her there a Noncommunion with that Church is necessary and a
or form wich another may speak The help of knowledge hearing use and passion may help him to words Therefore they never take a man to be proved godly or sinceer by his bare words but by the grace of Prayer which is holy desire c. and not by the speaking gift or habit 11. But we think that it was not the Jesuits that first said out of the aboundance of the heart the mouth speaketh and though the tongue may lie it is made to express the mind and we must judge of other mens minds by their words till somwhat else disprove them And its natural for the Heart to lead the Tongue And men are more affected by words which come from affection than by those that do not and Reading words written by another when we speak to God is not so natural a signification of desire or other affection as speaking them from the present dictate of the heart For any Child that can read may do the one and it is not the usual signification of seriousness in other actions A beggar that should only read his begging lesson or a Child or Servant that should only read some words to his Father or Master would be thought less sensible of his wants 12. Ministers should be men better aquainted than the people how to speak to God and man It is their office and therefore it belongeth to them to choose the words which are fittest and to set up a Ministry that can do neither is to befriend the Prince of darkness against the Kingdom of Light and to be a deadly enemy to the Church and Souls And to set up a ministry that need not do it but may choose or is not obliged to it is the way to set up a ministry that cannot do it Let the Ministers be bound to no more than to Read and a few years will transform them to such as can do no more than read Moscovy proveth that and too many other Countries 13. If it be praying freely from present knowledge and desire without a book or set form which you call Spiritual prayer either you are for the use of it in the Pulpit or not If you are did the Jesuits teach it you or will you go on to follow them If not what a divided party are the Conformists while so many use it and pray spiritually And what a Case is the Church of England in that hath still so many Ministers that pray as the Jesuits Disciples Or why do you so reproach your Church and Ministry 14. Do you think that there is more force in the name of a Jesuit to disgrace Spiritual prayer or in the name of Spiritual prayer to honour the Jesuits And do you not seem to prevaricate and highly honour the Jesuits on pretence of dishonoring Spiritual prayer If you had said that the Jesuits first brought in Spiritual preaching and discourse and Spiritual living would it not have more honoured them than dishonoured Spirituality Will freedom from Spiritual prayer honour your Church as Seneca thought Cato's name would do more to honour Drunkenness than Drunkenness could do to dishonour Cato I am not such an Antipapist as to fall out with Father Son or Holy-Ghost because the Jesuits own them You do but help to confirm my charity who have long thought that among the Papists there are many persons truly godly though their education converse and proud tyrannical wordly Clergy have sadly vitiated them 15. All prayers written or unwritten are made by some body Those that the Bishops write down for us in the Liturgy and for our Fasts were made by their invention Either they had the help of the Spirit in making them or not If yea then why is it not as Jesuitical to write a Spiritual prayer as to speak one If not excuse them that say Gods Spirit made not your Liturgy nor are they Spiritual prayers 16. And were it not too like high and dangerous Pride if such a one as Bishop Bancroft Bishop Laud Bishop Morley Bishop Gunning in a Convocation or before every publick Fast should be appointed to write the words of Prayer and should in effect say to all the most Learned Divines in England The Spirit caused us to write these prayers and our measure is so sure and great that none of you may presume to question it nor to think that you can pray Spiritually in any words of your own but only in ours at least in the Assemby The Spirit will help you if you say our words but not your own It now cometh into my mind what may be some of the meaning of Bishop Gunning's Chaplain Doctor Saywell in his last Book that none hath power to ordain Bishops but they that have power to give the Holy Ghost for the work of their Office It may be it is The Holy Ghost to write Doctrine Sermons and Prayers for all their Clergy to use But do you not say also to the Presbyters Receive the Holy Ghost If they have him why cannot they speak their own hearts in other words than yours Is Spiritual prayer appropriated to your Liturgy words or forms any more than at the Council at Trent he was to the Popes instructions 17. We all confess that as all the actions of imperfect men have their imperfections so have all our prayers and these are easily aggravated Sudden free prayer and book prayer have both their conveniencies and inconveniencies The question is which hic nunc hath the greatest and whether forbidding either be not worst of all I have named the conveniencies and inconveniencies of each in my Christian Directory 18. Experience telleth the world that the daily saying over only the same words and that read out of a paper imposed by others by one that no further sheweth any sense of what he doth is not so apt as more free and well varied words in season to keep people from sleepy senseless prophanation and praying as the Papists do with their Masses Rosaries and Beads And the variety of Subjects preached on and variety of occasions and all accidents require some diversification of words and methods 19. It is a work of reverence to speak to the King yet as it is lawful to write a Petition to him so to speak to him without Book Judges have serious work to do for estate and life and yet they are trusted to speak without prescribed words and so are Advocates Lawyers Ambassadors Physicians Philosophers and all men in their Professions except Ministers and Christians as such 20. We know not why men may not be intrusted to speak to God in the name of imperfect man without imposed books and words as well as to speak to man from the most perfect God and in his name in preaching Mans actions will be like man Nothing that is not divine and spiritual should be spoken as from God and in his name And as after our frustrated Treaty for Concord 1661. one of them nameless wrote a Book against free praying
far to heal us could we obtain it He saith that any one that hath seen them knoweth it to be a mistake to say it was published by John Fox Ans His Reader must be a strong believer and take much on his word 1. I have seen them and spake with men of great understanding that have seen them that yet judge it no mistake 2. The Preface of the publisher is like his Style 3. It is called Praefatio I. F. And can every Reader know that I. F. meaneth not John Fox 4. Ordinary Tradition saith it was Fox's And what should I sooner believe in such a case Instead of proving that they have all a power to their condemnation which we see they exercise not let him procure a real power declared and granted and it will do more than these words Sect. 23. But when it comes to the question whether me may so much as call a sinner to repentance by name before the Church who rejecteth all more private admonition he puts the question whether the obligation to admonish publickly an offender or to deny him the Sacrament if he will come to it be so great as to bear him out in the violation of a Law made by publick authority c. Ans The first question is whether Christ have not made his Church so different a thing from the World that they should be openly differenced by a Communion of Saints 2. And whether he hath not instituted an office to judge of this and by Government execute it And 3. Whether any man have authority to suspend this Law or Office And then 4. I shall grant that not only Discipline but Preaching and Prayer and Sacraments may be forborn hic nunc in the present exercise when else the exercise would do more hurt than good 5. But are these Laws good that forbid it and should we Covenant never to endeavour an Alteration Sect. 24. He next tells us of the great difficulty of exercising true Discipline which is most true and seems thence to defend the forbearance of it with us Answ I have in my Treatise of Episcopacy and oft proved that it is of great importance to Christ's ends and that he would have it continued to the last and that the Communion of Saints is a practical Article of Faith and that making small difference between the Church and the World tends to Church destruction and to the reproach of Christianity and the utter undoing of millions of Souls And though Pope and Prelates have abused it to captivate Princes and Nations the just use of it he knoweth is mentioned by the Universal Church and visibly recorded in the Canons of the several ages Though some Erastians are of late against it And Jesuits and worldly Protestants can dispense with it when it would hurt their worldly Interest and turn it chiefly against Gods Servants that displease and cross them Sect. 25. p. 284. He saith The want of Discipline in the Parish Churches was never thought by old Nonconformists destructive to the being of them Answ They did not confound the Power and the Exercise Nor what the Ministers office is indeed and from God and what it is by the Bishops Mind and Rules of Conformity I say as they 1. The Exercise may be suspended without nulling the Power or Policy 2. They are true Pastors and Churches by Gods will against the will of those that would degrade them Sect. 26. But supposing every man left to his own Conscience for Communion 1. He saith the greatest Offenders generally excommunicate themselves Answ 1. And is it your way to leave all the rest to their Consciences and yet to preach and write against and lay in Jail dissenting godly People that communicate not with you 2. And are not all these Offenders still Members of your Church Albaspineus complaineth of their Roman French Church that he never knew any further cast out than from the Sacrament and left still to other parts of communion as Members And so do you by thousands who are all Sons of your Church but we are none He is again at it what Church I was of and I have told him oft enough CHAP. VIII What the National Church of England is Sect. 1. ACcording to the Doctors Method we come now to the Explication of one of the terms of our Controversie so long and loudly called for viz. what the National Church of England is which we must obey and from which we are said to separate p. 287. And the answer is such as may tell Dr. Fulwood and him that it's time to give over wondering that I understood not what they meant by it Sect. 2. Our question is of the Church Policy and Political Form All writers of Politicks difference a meer Community from a Political Body This is essentiated of the two constitutive Parts the Pars Regens and Pars subdita the former is much like the Soul and the later the Body The Ruling Part is called the Form by most and the sorts Monarchical Aristocratical Democratical or mixt the form in Specie as the rational or sensitive Soul to Animals But the Relative Form is the Union of both in their proper order Such a body Politick is a Kingdom a City a Church in the proper and usual sense But in a loose sense many other things may be called a Church As 1. a Community prepared for a governing Form not yet received 2. An occasional Congregation about Religion as Prisoners that pray together Men that meet about a Religious Consultation or Dispute c. 3. Many Churches as under one Christian Magistrate as an accidental Head 4. Many Churches associated for mutual help and concord without any governing Head Either of one Kingdom or of many 5. Many Churches as meerly agreeing in Judgment and Love in distant parts of the World None of these are Churches in the political Sense but are equivocally so called But Politically 1. All the Christian World is one Church as formed by their Relation to Christ the Head 2. All single Churches that have Pastors to guide them in the Essentials of the Pastoral Office are true Churches formed by this mutual Relation These two are undoubted 3. The now Roman Catholick Church is one by Usurpation as informed by one Usurping head 4. A Patriarchal Church is one as Governed by a Patriarch 5. A Provincial Church is one as headed by the Metropolitan or as mixt where Aristocratically others are joyned with him 6. An Archiepiscopal or Diocesan Church that hath particular Churches and Bishops under it is one as headed by that Diocesane Jure an injuriâ I dispute not 7. A Diocesane Church of many score or hundred Parishes having no Episcopus Gregis or true Pastors and Pastoral Churches under him but only half Pastors and Chappels that are but partes Ecclesia is one even of the lowest sort in their opinion as headed by that Diocesane 8. A Presbyterian Classical Church is one as headed by the Classes 9. A
I give you his Letter to me because page 34. He â—aith The greatest part of thâ—se that now scâ—tâ—r and run â—bâ—â—â— do it out of Hâ—…â—ancy or Faction or Interest or Aâ—…y or desire of being câ—… godly 〈…〉 really out of Conscience and Conviction of duty and thâ—se the penalties duly exacted would bring back with much more sharp and cruel As if he knew the consciences of the most But see how much otherwise he lately thought of some Agapetus Diacon ad Justinian Adhort cap. 35. Episcopis vi gladio invitos regentibus quam Regibus magis congrua NOMIZE 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Existima tunc regnare te tutò cum volentibus imperas hominibus Quod enim invitò subjicitur seditiones molitur captâ occasione Quod vere vinculis benevolentiae tenetur firmam servat ergatenentem observantiam 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3 4. The Elders which are AMONG you I exhort who am also an Elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the Glory that shall be revealed Feed the Flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly Not for FILTHY LUCRE but of a ready mind Neither as being Lords over Gods heritage bâ—â— being ensamples to the Flock And when the chief Shepherd shall appear ye shall receive a Crown of Glory that fadeth not away See Dr. Hammond on the Text. Mr. Glanviles Letter Reverend and most Honoured Sir I Have often taken my pen in hand with a design to signifie to you how much I love and honour so much learning piety and exemplary goodness as you are owner of And how passionately desirous I have been and am to be known to a person with whom none hath a like place in my highest esteem and value But my affections and respects still growing infinitely too big for mine expression I thought I should but disparage them by going about to represent them And when I sate down to consider how I might most advantagiously set forth my regards and high sense of your great deserts I always found my self confounded with subject And the throng of mine affections each of them impatient to be first upon my paper hindred one another's gratification Great passions are difficultly spoken And I find my self now so pained with the sense that I cannot write suteably to the honour I have for you that I can scarce forbear thâ—owing away my pen being near concluding that 't is better to speak nothing in such a subject than a little But when I consider you as a person that have high affections for those excellent qualifications which in the highest degree are your possession and suteably resent the worth of those that own them I am incourag'd to think that you may conceive how I honour you though my pen cannot tell it you by reflecting upon your own estimate of those that are of the highest form of learning parts and exemplary piety or more compendiously such in your judgment as I take you for Incomparable And yet I have a jealousie that that will not reach it for though I think your judicious esteem of such cannot be surpassed yet I am apt to think that none ever got such an interest and hold upon your passions as hath the object of my admiration on mine Nor yet can I rebuke them as extravagant though at the highest since they take part with my severest judgment and were indeed inflamed by it And I profess I never found my self so dearly inclin'd to those of my nearest blood or so affectionately concern'd for my most beloved friends and acquaintance as for you whom I had never the happiness to converse with but in your excellent writings nor ever often saw but in the Pulpit Yea I speak unfeignedly I have always interessed my self more in your vindication when your unreasonable prejudic'd enemies have malign'd you and delighted my self more in your just praises from those that know you than ever my self-love or ambition could prompt me to do in any case of mine own Sir I hope you believe that I speak my most real sentiments and do not go about to complement you For I must be very weak and inconsiderate did I think to recommend my self to so much serious wisdom by such childish fooleries Therefore if my expressions savour any thing above common respect I beseech you to believe 't is for that their cause is not common but as much above ordinary as their object I know your humility and remarkable self denyal will not bear to read what I cannot but speak as often as I have occasion to mention your great worth and merits However I cannot chuse but here acknowledge how much I am a debtor to your incomparable writings In which when you deal in practical subjects I admire your affectionate piercing heart-affecting quickness And that experimental searching solid convictive way of speaking which are your peculiars for there is a smartness accompanying your pen that forces what you write into the heart by a sweet kind of irresistable violence which is so proper to your serious way that I never met it equal'd in any other writings And therefore I cannot read them without an elevation and emotions which I seldom feel in other perusals And when you are ingag'd in doctrinal and controversal matters I no less apprehend in them your peculiar excellencies I find a strength depth concinnity and coherence in your notions which are not commonly elsewhere met withall And you have no less power by your triumphant reason upon the judgments of capable free inquirers than you have upon their affections and consciences in your devotional and practical discourses And methinks there is a force in your way of arguing which overpowers opposition Among your excellent Treatises of this nature your Rational confirmation of that grand principle of our Religion the Sacred Authority of Scripture your solid dependent notions in the business of justification and your striking at the Root of Antinomianism in them which I look on as the canker of Christianity and have always abhorr'd as the shadow of death And your excellent Catholick healing indeavours These I say deserve from me particular acknowledgments I profess the loose impertinent unsound cobweb arguings of the most that I had met with in the Matter of the Divine Authority of Scripture had almost occasioned my stumbling at the threshold in my inquiries into the grounds of my Religion For I am not apt to rely on an implicit faith in things of this moment But your performances in this kind brought relief to my staggering judgment and triumph't over my hesitancy As they did also to an excellent person a friend of mine who was shaken on the same accounts that I was And we are both no less obliged by what you have done in the other things formentioned Which I profess I judge so rational that I cannot but wonder almost to stupor to behold the fierce though
Power in Erastus sense and went rather further than Dr. Stilling fleet in his Irenicum And as I was before against him so after this about 12 years ago I wrote that Book against him about the Magistrates Power in Church-matters in which I called him My sincere friend thinking sincere friendship consistent with such a difference and an open Confutation And if the contrary must be repented of I hope such charity is no crime This third Book against him also he took patiently and without breach of Love And when I laboured to perswade him to retract his Writings against Excommunication though he held still to his Conclusion and thought that the great work that God called him to in the World was to discover the Papal and Prelatical Usurpation of the Magistrates power under the name of Ecclesiastical yet I made him confess all the matter that I pleaded for and he made me see that his errour lay most in meer ambiguous words which he had not â—…ateness enough to explicate All this patience signified not uncharitableness rage or fury And I obliged him not by praise but 〈…〉 him for his eagerness for his own indigested conceptions nor gave him any thanks for his indiscreet and excessive praises afterwards given me in his Patronus bonae fidei Upon all this I would put some questions to the sober thoughts of the Author of his Picture 1. Whether there be not as great signs of sincerity humility and patience in such a behaviour and in that great love which he had to all that he thought Godly men though he too hardly judged of others for that which he thought great errour and sin as in those that cannot bear a just defence of dissenters against their unjust accusations nor endure men to tell why they rather suffer than Conform 2. Whether he that maketh him so very bad a man and incredible a lyar for too rash censoriousness of dissenters and some untruths vented in rash zeal do not tempt men to give as odious titles to those Reverend persons who go very far beyond him in untruths and uncharitable censures And whether they that were for the silencing and utter ruining of about 2000 Ministers and call'd to Magistrates to execute the Laws against them and that unchurch all the Reformed Churches which have not a continued succession of Diocesan Bishops shew not as much uncharitableness as he did that described some too hardly And whether most of the Books written against me by Conformists such as the Bishop of Worcester's Letter the Impleader Mr. Hinkley and many more be not much fuller of untruths in matter of fact than the Drs But yet I think it a sin to give them such a Character as this and render the persons as incredible lyars because errour interest and faction made some so unadvised 3. If it deserve such a Character to censure Arminians as dangerously erroneous and befriending Popery whether you do not consequently so stigmatize the old Church of England before Bishop Laud's time Even Arch-bishop Whitgift Bishop Fletcher and the rest who drew up the Lambeth Articles Arch-bishop Abbot and the Church in his time except six Bishops c. King James and the whole Church as consenting by six Delegates to the Synod of Dort And also that Synod and all the Forein Reformed Churches that consented to it And is not this more than Dr. Moulin did 4. And are they not then to be accordingly stigmatized who on the other side make the Calvinists as odious accusing them of Blasphemy Turcisme and doing as much against them as Dr. Heylin in the Life of Arch-bishop Laud tells us was done in England on that account 5. And if such hard thoughts of Arminians as furthering Popery deserve your Character whether by consequence you so brand not all those Parliaments who voted against it accordingly and made it one of the dangerous grievances of the Land And is not that as faulty as for Dr. Moulin too much to blame you 6. Yea I doubt you stigmatize thus so great a part of Christians in all the World as I am loth to mention so rare is it to hear of any Country where they are not so much guilty of sects and factions as by education and interest to run in a stream of uncharitable censures of one another speaking evil of more than they understand as I have proved in my Cathol Theolog. about this subject 7. Seeing it is above 20 years since I wrote that against Dr. Moulin which you cite and he never found fault with it nor justified his mistakes may I not think that he was convinced and repented And you that praise his death-bed repentance should not Characterize him by failings twenty years repented of 8. How do you know that the Dr. repented not of his too hard words of you till his death-bed You are mistaken In his health I more than once blamed him 1. For his censure of Dr. Stillingfleet and the other particular persons whose worth was known and had deserved well of the Protestant Churches 2. For his extending those censures to the Conformists and Church which belong to some particular persons and the most are not guilty of And 3. For his Book of the fewness of the saved as presumptuous And as far as I could then discern he repented of them all but laid the ill Title-page of the last on the Book-seller And he still thought of Causes and Parties as very different he owned not his harsh words or censures aforesaid I found him not raging nor impenitent 9. Doth not your own description of his great readiness to beg forgiveness and lothness to own any thing uncharitable shew a better spirit than your picture doth describe 10. Is not he as like to be a sincere man who asketh forgiveness of his faults rash censures and words as he that repenteth of his former duties his Pacificatory principles and Writings Surely to repent of evil is a better sign than to repent of good 11. Because you call us to acquit our selves by disowning Dr. Moulin may we not disown both his faults and our own without disowning God's grace and mens piety and worth would you be so disowned for your own faults 2. And how should I disown his rashness better than to write what I wrote against him and say what I said to him would you have a Synod called to reprove every rash word 12. Because you justly value mens repentance I will be thankful to you to further mine and give me leave to further yours Only I foretell you that your words shall not offend me by their hardness if they have but truth and you call me to repent of my sin and not of serving God I do not repent of defending Truth and Duty nor of seeking to save the Reader from the infection of false accusation and arguings which would destroy his charity and innocency by the fullest manifesting the falshood and evil of the words and deeds which are the Instruments