or Light of Reason or Learning or other help they may be received so they be not against the Word of God but according at leastwise unto the general Rules of Scripture they must be made Which is in effect as much as to say We know not what to say wel in defence of this Position And therefore lest we should say it is false there is no remedy but to say that in some sense or other it may be true if we could tell how First that Scholy had need of a very favorable Reader and a tractable that should think it plain construction when to be commanded in the Word and grounded upon the Word are made all one If when a man may live in the state of Matrimony seeking that good thereby which Nature principally desireth he make rather choice of a contrary life in regard of St. Pauls judgment That which he doth is manifestly grounded upon the Word of God yet not commanded in his Word because without breach of any Commandment he might do otherwise Secondly whereas no man in Justice and Reason can be reproved for those actions which are framed according unto that known Will of God whereby they are to be judged and the Will of God which we are to judge our actions by no sound Divine in the World ever denied to be in part made manifest even by the Light of Nature and not by Scripture alone If the Church being directed by the former of these two which God hath given who gave the other that man might in different sort be guided by them both if the Church I say do approve and establish that which thereby it judgeth meet and sindeth not repugnant to any word or syllable of holy Scripture who shall warrant our presumptuous boldness controuling herein the Church of Christ But so it is the name of the Light of Nature is made hateful with men the Star of Reason and Learning and all other such like helps beginneth no otherwise to be thought of then if it were an unlucky Comet or as if God had so accursed it that it should never shine or give light in things concerning our duty any way towards him but be esteemed as that Star in the Revelation called Wormword which being faln from Heaven maketh Rivers and Waters in which it falleth so bitter that men tasting them die thereof A number there are who think they cannot admire as they ought the power and authority of the Word of God if in things Divine they should attribute any force to Mans reason For which cause they never use reason so willingly as to disgrace Reason Their usual and common Discourses are unto this effect First The Natural Man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God For they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned Secondly It is not for nothing that St. Paul giveth charge to beware of Philosophy that is to say such knowledge as Men by Natural Reason attain unto Thirdly Consider them that have from time to time opposed themselves against the Gospel of Christ and most troubled the Church with Heresie Have they not always been great admirers of Humane Reason Hath their deep and profound skill in Secular Learning made them the more obedient to the Truth and not armed them rather against it Fourthly They that fear God will remember how heavy his sentences are in this case I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will cast away the Understanding of the Prudent Where is the Wise Where is the Scribe Where is the Disputer of this World Hath not God made the Wisdom of this World foolishness Seeing the World by Wisdom know not God In the Wisdom of God it pleased God by the foolishness of Preaching to save Believers Fifthly The Word of God in it self is absolute exact and perfect The Word of God is a two-edged sword as for the Weapons of Natural Reason they are as the Armor of Saul rather cumbersome about the Soldier of Christ then needful They are not of force to do that which the Apostles of Christ did by the power of the Holy Ghost My Preaching therefore saith Paul hath not been in the inticing speech of Mans wisdom but in plain evidence of the Spirit of Power that your Faith might not be in the Wisdom of men but in the Power of God Sixthly If I believe the Gospel there needeth no reasoning about it to perswade me If I do not believe it must be the Spirit of God and not the Reason of Man that shall convert my heart unto him By these and the like Disputes an opinion hath spred it self very far in the World as if the way to be ripe in Faith were to be raw in Wit and Judgment as if Reason were an enemy unto Religion childish simplicity the Mother of Ghostly and Divine Wisdom The cause why such Declamations prevail so greatly is For that men suffer themselves in two respects to be deluded one is that the Wisdom of Man being debased either in comparison with that of God or in regard of some special thing exceeding the reach and compass thereof it seemeth to them not marking so much as if simply it were condemned another That Learning Knowledge or Wisdom falsly so termed usurping a name whereof they are not worthy and being under that name controuled their reproof is by so much the more easily misapplied and through equivocation wrested against those things whereunto so precious names do properly and of right belong This duly observed doth to the former Allegations it self make sufficient answer Howbeit for all Mens plainer and fuller satisfaction First Concerning the inability of Reason to search out and to judge of things Divine if they be such as those properties of God and those duties of Men towards him which may be conceived by attentive consideration of Heaven and Earth We know that of meer Natural Men the Apostle testifieth How they knew both God and the Law of God Other things of God there be which are neither so found nor though they be shewed can ever be approved without the special operation of Gods good Grace and Spirit Of such things sometime spake the Apostle St. Paul declaring how Christ had called him to be a Witness of his Death and Resurrection from the Dead according to that which the Prophets and Moses had foreshewed Festus a meer Natural man an Infidel a Roman one whose ears were unacquainted with such matter heard him but could not reach unto that whereof he spake the suffering and the rising of Christ from the dead he rejected as idle superstitious fancies not worth the hearing The Apostle that knew them by the Spirit and spake of them with Power of the Holy Ghost seemed in his eyes but learnedly mad Which example maketh manifest what elswhere the same Apostle teacheth namely that Nature hath need of Grace whereunto I hope we are
calling been always so eminent above the rest in the same Church And what need we to seek far for proofs that the Apostles who began this order of Regiment by Bishops did it not but by divine instinct when without such direction things of far less weight and moment they attemdted not Paul and Barnabas did not open their mouths to the Gentiles till the Spirit had said Separate me Paul and Barnabas for the work whereunto I have sent them The Eunuch by Philip was neither baptized nor instructed before the Angel of God was sent to give him notice that so it pleased the most High In Asia Paul and the rest were silent because the Spirit forbad them to speak When they intended to have seen Bythinia they stayed their journey the spirit not giving them leave to go Before Timothy was imployed in those Episcopal affairs of the Church about which the Apostle St. Paul used him the Holy Ghost gave special charge for his Ordination and prophetical intelligence more then once what success the same would have And shall we think that Iames was made Bishop of Ierusalem Evodius Bishop of the Church of Antioch the Angels in the Churches of Asia Bishops that Bishops every where were appointed to take away factions contentions and Schisms without some like divine instigation and direction of the Holy Ghost Wherefore let us not fear to be herein bold and peremptory That if any thing in the Churches Government surely the first institution of Bishops was from Heaven was even of God the Holy Ghost was the Author of it VI. A Bishops saith St. Augustine is a Presbyter's Superior but the question is now wherein that superiority did consist The Bishops pre-eminence we say therefore was twofold First he excelled in latitude of the power of Order secondly in that kind of power which belongeth unto Iurisdiction Priests in the law had authority and power to do greater things then Levites the high Priest greater then inferiour Priests might do therefore Levites were beneath Priests and Priests inferior to the High Priest by reason of the very degree of dignity and of worthiness in the nature of those functions which they did execute and not only for that the one had power to command and controul the other In like sort Presbyters having a weightier and a worthier charge then Deacons had the Deacon was in this sort the Presbyters inferior and where we say that a Bishop was likewise ever accompted a Presbyters superior even according unto his very power of Order we must of necessity declare what principal duties belonging unto that kind of power a Bishop might perform and not a Presbyter The custom of the primitive Church in consecrating holy Virgins and Widows unto the service of God and his Church is a thing not obscure but easie to be known both by that which St. Paul himself concerning them hath and by the latter consonant evidence of other mens writings Now a part of the pre-eminence which Bishops had in their power of Order was that by them onely such were consecrated Again the power of ordaining both Deacons and Presbyters the power to give the power of order unto others this also hath been always peculiar unto Bishops It hath not been heard of that inferiour presbyters were ever authorized to ordein And concerning Ordination so great force and dignity it hath that whereas Presbyters by such power as they have received for Administration of the Sacraments are able only to beget Children unto God Bishops having power to Ordain do by vertue thereof create Fathers to the people of God as Epiphanius fitly disputeth There are which hold that between a Bishop and a Presbyter touching power of Order there is no difference The reason of which conceipt is for that they see Presbyters no less then Bishops authorized to offer up the prayers of the Church to Preach the Gospel to Baptize to Administer the holy Eucharist but they considered not with all as they should that the Presbyters authority to do these things is derived from the Bishops which doth ordain him thereunto so that even in those things which are common unto both yet the power of the one is as it were a certain light borrowed from the others lamp The Apostles being Bishops at large â—deined every where Presbyters Titus and Timothy having received Episcopal power as Apostolique Embassadors or Legates the one in Greece the other in Ephesus they both did by vertue thereof likewise ordein throughout all Churches Deacons and Presbyters within the circuits allotted unto them As for Bishops by restraint their power this way incommunicable unto Presbyters which of the ancients do not acknowledge I make not Confirmation any part of that power which hath always belonged only unto Bishops because in some places the custom was that Presbyters might also confirm in the absence of a Bishop albeit for the most part none but onely Bishops were thereof the allowed Ministers Here it will be perhaps Objected that the power of Ordination it self was not every where peculiar and proper unto Bishops as may be seen by 2 Council of Carthage which sheweth their Churches Order to have been That Presbyters should together with the Bishop lay hands upon the ordained But the answer hereunto is easie For doth it hereupon follow that the power of Ordination was not principally and originally in the Bishop Our Saviour hath said unto his Apostles With me ye shall sit and judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel yet we know that to him alone it belongeth to judge the World and that to him all judgement is given With us even at this day Presbyters are licensed to do as much as that Council speaketh of if any be present Yet will not any man thereby conclude that in this Church others than Bishops are allowed to ordain The association of Presbyters is no sufficient proof that the power of Ordination is in them but rather that it never was in them we may hereby understand for that no man is able to shew either Deacon or Presbyter ordained by Presbyters only and his Ordination accounted lawful in any ancient part of the Church every where examples being found both of Deacons and of Presbyters ordained by Bishops alone oftentimes neither ever in that respect thought unsufficient Touching that other chiefty which is of Jurisdiction amongst the Jews he which was highest through the worthiness of peculiar duties incident into his function in the legal service of God did bear alwaies in Ecclesiastical jurisdiction the chiefest sway As long as the glory of the Temple of God did last there were in it sundry orders of men consecrated unto the service thereof one sort of them inferior unto another in dignity and degree the Nathiners subordinate unto the Levites the Levites unto the Priests the rest of the Priests to those twenty four which were chief Priests and they all to the High Priest If any
as a Supplement of any maim or defect therein but as a necessary Instrument without which we could not reap by the Scriptures perfection that fruit and benefit which it yieldeth The Word of God is a two-edged sword put in the hands of reasonable men and Reason as the weapon that flew Goliah if they be as David was that use it Touching the Apostles he which gave them from above such Power for miraculous confirmation of that which they taught endued them also with Wisdom from above to teach that which they so did confirm Our Saviour made choice of Twelve simple and unlearned Men that the greater their lack of Natural wisdom was the more admirable that might appear which God supernaturally endued them with from Heaven Such therefore as knew the poor and silly estate wherein they had lived could not but wonder to hear the Wisdom of their speech and be so much the more attentive unto their teaching They studied for no Tongue they spake withal of themselves they were rude and knew not so much as how to premeditate the Spirit gave them speech and cloquent utterance But because with St. Paul it was otherwise then with the rest in as much as he never conversed with Christ upon Earth as they did and his education had been scholastical altogether which theirs was not Hereby occasion was taken by certain Malignants secretly to undermine his great Authority in the Church of Christ as though the Gospel had been taught him by others then by Christ himself and as if the cause of the Gentiles conversion and belief through his means had been the learning and skill which he had by being conversant in their Books which thing made them so willing to hear him and him so able to perswade them whereas the rest of the Apostles prevailed because God was with them and by a miracle from Heaven confirmed his Word in their mouths They were mighty in deeds As for him being absent his Writings had some force in presence his Power not like unto theirs In sum concerning his Preaching their very by-word was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 addle speech empty talk His Writings full of great words but in the Power of miraculous Operations His presence not like the rest of the Apostles Hereupon it ariseth that St. Paul was so often driven to make his Apologies Hereupon it ariseth that whatsoever time he had spent in the study of Humane Learning he maketh earnest protestation to them of Corinth that the Gospel which he had preached amongst them did not by other means prevail with them then with others the same Gospel taught by the rest of the Apostles of Christ. My Preaching saith he hath not been in the perswasive speeches of Humane Wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of Power that your faith may not be in the wisdom of men but in the Power of God What is it which the Apostle doth here deny Is it denied that his speech amongst them had been perswasive No for of him the sacred History plainly restifieth that for the space of a year and a half he spake in their Synagogue every Sabbath and perswaded both Jews and Grecians How then is the speech of men made perswasive Surely there can be but two ways to bring this to pass the one Humane the other Divine Either St. Paul did onely by art and natural industry cause his own speech to be credited or else God by miracle did authorise it and so bring credit thereunto as to the speech of the rest of the Apostles Of which two the former he utterly denieth For why If the Preaching of the rest had been effectual by miracle his onely by force of his own learning so great inequality between him and the other Apostles in this thing had been enough to subvert their Faith For might they not with reason have thought that if he were sent of God as well as they God would not have furnished them and not him with the power of the Holy Ghost Might not a great part of them being simple haply have feared lest their assent had been cunningly gotten unto his doctrine rather through the weakness of their own wits then the certainty of that Truth which he had taught them How unequal had it been that all Believers through the Preaching of other Apostles should have their Faith strongly built upon the evidence of Gods own miraculous approbation and they whom he had converted should have their perswasion built onely upon his skill and wisdom who perswaded them As therefore calling from men may authorise us to teach although it could not authorise him to teach as other Apostles did So although the wisdom of man had not been sufficient to enable him such a Teacher as the rest of the Apostles were unless Gods miracles had strengthned both the one and the others Doctrine yet unto our ability both of teaching and learning the Truth of Christ as we are but meer Christian men it is not a little which the wisdom of man may add Sixthly Yea whatsoever our hearts be to God and to his Truth believe we or be we as yet faithless for our Conversion or Confirmation the force of Natural Reason is great The force whereof unto those effects is nothing without grace What then To our purpose it is sufficient that whosoever doth serve honor and obey God whosoever believeth in him that man would no more do this then innocents and infants do but for the Light of Natural Reason that shineth in him and maketh him apt to apprehend those things of God which being by grace discovered are effectual to perswade reasonable mindes and none other that honor obedience and credit belong aright unto God No man cometh unto God to offer him Sacrifice to pour out Supplications and Prayers before him or to do him any service which doth not first believe him both to be and to be a rewarder of them who in such sort seek unto him Let men be taught this either by Revelation from Heaven or by Instruction upon Earth by Labor Study and Meditation or by the onely secret Inspiration of the Holy Ghost whatsoever the mean be they know it by if the knowledge thereof were possible without discourse of Natural Reason why should none be found capable thereof but onely men nor men till such time as they come unto ripe and full ability to work by reasonable understanding The whole drift of the Scripture of God what is it but onely to teach Theology Theology what is it but the Science of things Divine What Science an be attained unto without the help of Natural Discourse and Reason Iudge you of that which I speak saith the Apostle In vain it were to speak any thing of God but that by Reason Men are able somewhat to judge of that they hear and by discourse to discern how consonant it is to Truth Scripture indeed teacheth things above Nature things which our Reason by
must be by Reason found out And therefore To refuse the conduct of the Light of Nature saith St. Augustine is not Folly alone but accompanied with Impiety The greatest amongst the School Divines studying how to set down by exact definition the Nature of an Humane Law of which nature all the Churches Constitutions are found not which way better to do it then in these words Out of the Precepts of the Law of Nature as out of certain common and undemonstrable Principles Mans Reason doth necessarily proceed unto certain more particular determinations Which particular determinations being found out according unto the Reason of Man they have the names of Humane Laws so that such other conditions be therein kept as the making of Laws doth require that is If they whose Authority is thereunto required do establish and publish them as Laws And the truth is that all our controversie in this cause concerning the Orders of the Church is What particulars the Church may appoint That which doth finde them out is the force of Mans Reason That which doth guide and direct his Reason is first the general Law of Nature which Law of Nature and the Moral Law of Scripture are in the substance of Law all one But because there are also in Scripture a number of Laws particular and positive which being in force may not by any Law of Man be violated we are in making Laws to have thereunto an especial eye As for example it might perhaps seem reasonable unto the Church of God following the general Laws concerning the nature of Marriage to ordain in particular that Cosin-Germans shall not marry Which Law notwithstanding ought not to be received in the Church if there should be in the Scripture a Law particular to the contrary forbidding utterly the Bonds of Marriage to be so far forth abridged The same Thomas therefore whose definition of Humane Laws we mentioned before doth add thereunto this Caution concerning the Rule and Canon whereby to make them Humane Laws are Measures in respect of Men whose actions they must direct howbeit such Measures they are as have also their higher Rules to be measured by Which Rules are two the Law of God and the Law of Nature So that Laws Humane must be made according to the General Laws of Nature and without contradiction unto any Positive Law in Scripture otherwise they are ill made Unto Laws thus made and received by a whole Church they which live within the bosom of that Church must not think it a matter indifferent either to yield or not to yield obedience Is it a small offence to despise the Church of God My Son keep thy Fathers Commandment saith Solomon and forget not thy Mothers instruction binde them both always about thine heart It doth not stand with the duty which we ow to our Heavenly Father that to the Ordinances of our Mother the Church we should shew our selves disobedient Let us not say we keep the Commandments of the one when we break the Law of the other For unless we observe both we obey neither And what doth let but that we may observe both when they are not the one to the other in any sort repugnant For of such Laws onely we speak as being made in form and manner already declared can have in them no contradiction unto the Laws of Almighty God Yea that which is more the Laws thus made God himself doth in such sort authorize that to despise them is to despise in them him It is a loose and licentious opinion which the Anabaptists have embraced holding That a Christian Mans liberty is lost and the Soul which Christ hath redeemed unto himself injuriously drawn into servitude under the yoke of Humane Power if any Law be now imposed besides the Gospel of Jesus Christ In obedience whereunto the Spirit of God and not the constraint of man is to lead us according to that of the blessed Apostle Such as are led by the Spirit of God are the Sons of God and not such as live in thraldom unto men Their judgment is therefore that the Church of Christ should admit no Law-Makers but the Evangelists The Author of that which causeth another thing to be is Author of that thing also which thereby is caused The light of Natural Understanding Wit and Reason is from God he it is which thereby doth illuminate every man entring into the World If there proceed from us any thing afterwards corrupt and naught the Mother thereof is our own darkness neither doth it proceed from any such cause whereof God is the Author He is the Author of all that we think or do by vertue of that Light which himself hath given And therefore the Laws which the very Heathens did gather to direct their actions by so far forth as they proceed from the Light of Nature God himself doth acknowledge to have proceeded even from himself and that he was the Writer of them in the Tables of their Hearts How much more then is he the Author of those Laws which have been made by his Saints endued further with the Heavenly Grace of his Spirit and directed as much as might be with such instructions as his Sacred Word doth yield Surely if we have unto those Laws that dutiful regard which their Dignity doth require it will not greatly need that we should be exhorted to live in obedience unto them Iâ— they have God himself for their Author contempt which is offered unto them cannot chuse but redound unto him The safest and unto God the most acceptable way of framing our lives therefore is with all Humility Lowliness and Singleness of Heart to study which way our willing Obedience both unto God and Man may be yielded even to the utmost of that which is due 10. Touching the Mutability of Laws that concern the Regiment and Polity of the Church changed they are when either altogether abrogated or in part repealed or augmented with farther additions Wherein we are to note that this question about the changing of Laws concerneth onely such Laws as are Positive and do make that now good or evil by being commanded or forbidden which otherwise of it self were not simply the one or the other Unto such Laws it is expresly sometimes added how long they are to continue in force If this be no where exprest then have we no light to direct our judgments concerning the changeableness or immutability of them but by considering the nature and quality of such Laws The nature of every Law must be judged of by the end for which it was made and by the aptness of things therein prescribed unto the same end It may so fall out that the reason why some Laws of God were given is neither opened nor possible to be gathered by the Wit of Man As why God should forbid Adam that one Tree there was no way for Adam ever to have certainly understood And at Adams ignorance of
Common Prayer the manifold confusions which they fall into where every man 's private Spirit and Gift as they term it is the only Bishop that ordaineth him to this Ministry the irksome deformities whereby through endless and senseless effusions of indigested Prayers they oftentimes disgrace in most unsufferable manner the worthiest part of Christian duty towards God who herein are subject to no certain Order but pray both what and how they list to him I say which weigheth duly all these things the reasons cannot be obscure why God doth in Publick Prayer so much respect the Solemnitie of Places where the Authority and calling of Persons by whom and the precise Appointment even with what Words or Sentences his Name should be called on amongst his People 26. No man hath hitherto been so impious as plainly and directly to condemn Prayer The best stratagem that Satan hath who knoweth his Kingdom to be no one way more shaken than by the Publick devout Prayers of God's Church is by traducing the form and manner of them to bring them into contempt and so to shake the force of all men's devotion towards them From this and from no other forge hath proceeded a strange conceit that to serve God with any set form of Common Prayer is superstitious As though God himself did not frame to his Priests the very speech wherewith they were charged to bless the People or as if our Lord even of purpose to prevent this fancy of extemporal and voluntary Prayers had not left us of his own framing one which might both remain as a part of the Church-Liturgy and serve as a Pattern whereby to frame all other Prayers with efficacy yet without superfluity of words If Prayers were no otherwise accepted of God then being conceived always new according to the exigence of present occasions if it be right to judge him by our own Bellies and to imagine that he doth loath to have the self-same supplications often iterated even as we do to be every day fed without alteration or change of diet if Prayers he Actions which ought to waste away themselves in the making if being made to remain that they may be resumed and used again as Prayers they be but instruments of Superstition surely we cannot excuse Moses who gave such occasion of scandal to the World by not being contented to praise the Name of Almighty God according to the usual naked simplicity of God's Spirit for that admirable victory given them against Pharaoh unless so dangerous a President were lest for the casting of Prayers into certain Poetical moulds and for the framing of Prayers which might be repeated often although they never had again the same occasions which brought them forth at the first For that very Hymne of Moses grew afterwards to be a part of the ordinary Jewish Liturgy not only that but sundry other sithence invented Their Books of Common-Prayer contained partly Hymns taken out of thē Holy Scripture partly Benedictions Thanksgivings Supplications penned by such as have been from time to time the Governours of that Synagogue These they sorted into their several times and places some to begin the service of God with and some to end some to go before and some to follow and some to be interlaced between the Divine Readings of the Law and Prophets Unto their custom of finishing the Passeover with certain Psalmes there is not any thing more probable then that the holy Evangelist doth evidently allude saying That after the Cup delivered by our Saviour unto his Apostles they sung and went forth to the Mount of Olives As the Jews had their Songs of Moses and David and the rest so the Church of Christ from the very beginning hath both used the same and besides them other also of like nature the Song of the Virgin Mary the Song of Zachary the Song of Simeon such Hymnes as the Apostle doth often speak of saying I will pray and sing with the Spirit Again in Psalms Hymnes and Songs making melody unto the Lord and that heartily Hymnes and Psalms are such kindes of Prayer as are not wont to be conceived upon a sudden but are framed by Meditation before hand or else by Prophetical illumination are inspired as at that time it appeareth they were when God by extraordinary gifts of the Spirit inabled men to all parts of service necessary for the edifying of his Church 27. Now albeit the Admonitioners did seem at the first to allow no Prescript form of Prayer at all but thought it the best that their Minister should always be left at liberty to pray as his own discretion did serve yet because this opinion upon better advice they afterwards retracted their Defender and his Associates have sithence proposed to the World a form such as themselves like and to shew their dislike of ours have taken against it those exceptions which whosoever doth measure by number must needs be greatly out of love with a thing that hath so many faults whosoever by weight cannot chuse but esteem very highly of that wherein the wit of so scrupulous Adversaries hath not hitherto observed any defect which themselves can seriously think to be of moment Gross Errours and manifest Impiety they grant we have taken away Yet many things in it they say are amiss many instances they give of things in our Common Prayer not agreeable as they pretend with the word of God It hath in their eye too great affinity with the form of the Church of Rome it differeth too much from that which Churches elsewhere reformed allow and observe our Attire disgraceth it it is not orderly read nor gestured as beseemeth it requireth nothing to be done which a Childe may not lawfully do it hath a number of short cutts or shreddings which may be better called Wishes than Prayers it intermingleth Prayings and Readings in such manner as if Supplicants should use in proposing their Sutes unto mortal Princes all the World would judge them madd it is too long and by that mean abridgeth Preaching it appointeth the People to say after the Minister it spendeth time in singing and in reading the Psalms by course from side to side it useth the Lord's Prayer too oft the Songs of Magnificat Benedictus and Nune Dimittis it might very well spare it hath the Letany the Creed of Athanasius and Gloria Patri which are superfluous it craveth Earthly things too much for deliverance from those Evils against which we pray it giveth no Thanks some things it asketh unseasonably when they need not to be prayed for as deliverance from Thunder and Tempest when no Danger is nigh some in too abject and diffident manner as that God would give us that which we for our unworthiness dare not ask some which ought not to be desired as the deliverance from sudden Death riddance from all Adversity and the extent of saving Mercy towards all men These and such like are the Imperfections
infinite and eternal Being which Angels and glorified Saints do intuitively behold we on Earth apprehend principally by Faith in part also by that kinde of knowledge which groweth from experience of those effects the greatness whereof exceedeth the powers and abilities of all Creatures both in Heaven and Earth God is glorified when such his excellency above all things is with due admiration acknowledged Which dutiful acknowledgment of Gods excellency by occasion of special effects being the very proper subject and almost the onely matter purposely treated of in all Psalms if that joyful Hymn of Glory have any use in the Church of God whose Name we therewith extol and magnifie Can we place it more fitly then where now it serveth as a close or conclusion to Psalms Neither is the Form thereof newly or unnecessarily invented We must saith St. Basil as we have received even so Baptize and as we Baptize even so Believe and as we Believe even so give Glory Baptizing we use the Name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Confessing the Christian Faith we declare our Belief in the Father and in the Son and in the Holy Ghost Ascribing Glory unto God we give it to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the token of a true and sound understanding for matter of Doctrine about the Trinity when in ministring Baptism and making Confession and giving Glory there is a conjunction of all three and no one of the three severed from the other two Against the Arians affirming the Father to be greater then the Son in honor excellency dignity majesty this form and manner of glorifying God was not at that time first begun but received long before and alledged at that time as an argument for the truth If saith Fabadius there be that inequality which they affirm then do we every day blaspheme God when in Thanksgivings and offerings of Sacrifice we acknowledge those thing common to the Father and the Son The Arians therefore for that they perceived how this did prejudice their cause altered the Hymn of Glory whereupon ensued in the Church of Antioch about the year Three hundred forty nine that jar which Theodoret and Sozomen mention In their Quires while they praised God together as the manner was at the end of the Psalms which they sung it appeared what opinion every man held for as much as they glorified some the Father And the Son And the Holy Ghost some the Father By the Son In the Spirit the one sort thereby declaring themselves to embrase the Sons equality with the Father as the Council of Nice had defined the other sort against the Council of Nice his inequality Leontiuos their Bishop although an enemy to the better part yet wary and subtile as in a manner all the heads of the Arians Faction were could at no time be plainly heard to use either form perhaps lest his open contradiction of them whom he favored not might make them the more eager and by that mean the less apt to be privately won or peradventure for that though he joyned in opinion with that sort of Arians who denied the Son to be equal with the Father yet from them he dissented which thought the Father and the Son not onely unequal but unlike as AEtuis did upon a frivolous and false surmise that because the Apostle hath said One God of whom one Lord by whom one Spirit in whom his different manner of speech doth argue a different Nature and Being in them of whom he speaketh Ou◠of which blinde collection it seemeth that this their new devised Form did first spring But in truth even that very Form which the Arians did then use saving that they chose it to serve as their special mark of Recognisance and gave it secretly within themselves a sinister construction hath not otherwise as much as the shew of any thing which soundeth towards impiety For albeit if we respect Gods glory within it self it be the equal right and possession of all three and that without any odds any difference yet touching his manifestation thereof unto us by continual effects and our perpetual acknowledgment thereof unto him likewise by vertuous Offices Doth not every tongue both ways confess That the brightness of his Glory hath spred it self throughout the World By the Ministery of his onely begotten Son and is In the manifold Graces of the Spirit every way marvellous Again That whatsoever we do to his Glory it is done In the power of the Holy Ghost and made acceptable By the Merit and Mediation of Jesus Christ So that glory to the Father And the Son or glory to the Father By the Son saving onely where evil mindes do abuse and pervert most holy things are not else the voices of Error and Schism but of sound and sincere Religion It hath been the Custom of the Church of Christ to end sometimes Prayers and Sermons always with words of glory wherein as long as the Blessed Trinity had due honor and till Arianism had made it a matter of great sharpness and subtilty of Wit to be a sound believing Christian men were not curious what Syllables or Particles of speech they used Upon which confidence and trust notwithstanding when St. Basil began to practise the like indifferency and to conclude Publick Prayers glorifying sometime the Father with the Son and the Holy Ghost sometime the Father by the Son in the Spirit whereas long custom had enured them unto the former kindealone by means whereof the latter was new and strange in their ears This needless experiment brought afterwards upon him a necessary labor of excusing himself to his Friends and maintaining his own act against them who because the Light of his Candle too much drowned theirs were glad to lay hold on so colorourable matter and exceeding forward to traduce him as an Author of suspicious Innovation How hath the World forsaken that course which it sometime held How are the judgments hearts and affections of men altered May we not wonder that a man of St. Basils authority and quality an Arch-Prelate in the House of God should have his Name far and wide called in question and be driven to his painful Apologies to write in his own defence whole Volumes and yet hardly to obtain with all his endeavor a pardon the crime laid against him being but onely a change of some one or two syllables in their usual Church Liturgy It was thought in him an unpardonable offence to alter any thing in us as intolerable that we suffer any thing to remain unaltered The very Creed of Athanasius and that sacred Hymn of Glory then which nothing doth sound more heavenly in the ears of faithful men are now reckoned as superfluities which we must in any case pare away left we cloy God with too much service Is there in that Confession of Faith any thing which doth not
that which ordereth his Work is Wisdom and that which perfecteth his Work is Power All things which God in their times and seasons hath brought forth were eternally and before all times in God as a work unbegun is in the Artificer which afterward bringeth it unto effect Therefore whatsoever we do behold now in this present World it was inwrapped within the Bowels of Divine Mercy written in the Book of Eternal Wisdom and held in the hands of Omnipotent Power the first Foundations of the World being as yet unlaid So that all things which God hath made are in that respect the Off-spring of God they are in him as effects in their highest cause he likewise actually is in them the assistance and influence of his Deity is their life Let hereunto saving efficacy be added and it bringeth forth a special Off-spring amongst men containing them to whom God hath himself given the gracious and amiable name of Sons We are by Nature the Sons of Adam When God created Adam he created us and as many as are descended from Adam have in themselves the Root out of which they spring The Sons of God we neither are all nor any one of us otherwise then onely by grace and favor The Sons of God have Gods own Natural Son as a second Adam from Heaven whose Race and Progeny they are by Spiritual and Heavenly Birth God therefore loving eternally his Son he must needs eternally in him have loved and preferred before all others them which are spiritually sithence descended and sprung out of him These were in God as in their Saviour and not as in their Creator onely It was the purpose of his saving Goodness his saving Wisdom and his saving Power which inclined it self towards them They which thus were in God eternally by their intended admission to life have by vocation or adoption God actually now in them as the Artificer is in the Work which his hand doth presently frame Life as all other gifts and benefits groweth originally from the Father and cometh not to us but by the Son nor by the Son to any of us in particular but through the Spirit For this cause the Apostle wisheth to the Church of Corinth The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost Which three St. Peter comprehendeth in one The participation of Divine Nature We are therefore in God through Christ eternally according to that intent and purpose whereby we are chosen to be made his in this present World before the World it self was made We are in God through the knowledge which is had of us and the love which is born towards us from everlasting But in God we actually are no longer then onely from the time of our actual Adoption into the Body of his true Church into the Fellowship of his Children For his Church he knoweth and loveth so that they which are in the Church are thereby known to be in him Our being in Christ by Eternal fore-knowledge saveth us not without our Actual and Real Adoption into the Fellowship of his Saints in this present World For in him we actually are by our actual incorporation into that Society which hath him for their Head and doth make together with him one Body he and they in that respect having one name for which cause by vertue of this Mystical Conjunction we are of him and in him even as though our very flesh and bones should be made continuate with his We are in Christ because he knoweth and loveth us even as parts of himself No man actually is in him but they in whom he actually is For he which hath not the Son of God hath not Life I am the Vine and ye are the Branches He which abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much Fruit but the Branch severed from the Vine withereth We are therefore adopted Sons of God to Eternal Life by Participation of the onely begotten Son of God whose Life is the Well-spring and cause of ours It is too cold an interpretation whereby some men expound our Being in Christ to import nothing else but onely That the self-same Nature which maketh us to be Men is in him and maketh him Man as we are For what man in the World is there which hath not so far forth communion with Jesus Christ It is not this that can sustain the weight of such sentences as speak of the Mystery of our Coherence with Jesus Christ. The Church is in Christ as Eve was in Adam Yea by Grace we are every of us in Christ and in his Church and in his Church as by Nature we were in those our first Parents God made Eve of the Rib of Adam And his Church he frameth out of the very Flesh the very wounded and bleeding side of the Son of Man His Body crucified and his Blood shed for the Life of the World are the true Elements of that Heavenly Being which maketh us such as himself is of whom we come For which cause the words of Adam may be fitly the words of Christ concerning his Church Flesh of my Flesh and Bone of my Bones a true Nature extract out of my own Body So that in him even according to his Manhood we according to our Heavenly Being are as Branches in that Root out of which they grow To all things he is Life and to men Light as the Son of God to the Church both Life and Light Eternal by being made the Son of Man for us and by being in us a Saviour whether we respect him as God or as Man Adam is in us as an original cause of our Nature and of that corruption of Nature which causeth death Christ as the cause original of Restauration to Life The person of Adam is not in us but his nature and the corruption of his nature derived into all men by Propagation Christ having Adams nature as we have but incorrupt deriveth not nature but incorruption and that immediately from his own Person into all that belong unto him As therefore we are really partakers of the body of Sin and Death received from Adam so except we be truly partakers of Christ and as really possessed of his Spirit all we speak of Eternal Life is but a dream That which quickneth us is the Spirit of the Second Adam and his Flesh that wherewith he quickneth That which in him made our Nature uncorrupt was the Union of his Deity with our Nature And in that respect the sentence of Death and Condemnation which onely taketh hold upon sinful flesh could no way possibly extend unto him This caused his voluntary death for others to prevail with God and to have the force of an Expiatory Sacrifice The Blood of Christ as the Apostle witnesseth doth therefore take away sin because through the Eternal Spirit he offered himself unto God without spot That
the Sons of God in which number how far soever one may seem to excel another yet touching this that all are Sons they are all equals some happily better Sons then the rest are but none any more a Son then another Thus therefore we see how the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father how they both are in all things and all things in them what Communion Christ hath with his Church how his Church and every Member thereof is in him by original derivation and he personally in them by way of Mystical Association wrought through the Gift of the Holy Ghost which they that are his receive from him and together with the same what benefit soever the vital force of his Body and Blood may yield yea by steps and degrees they receive the compleat measure of all such Divine Grace as doth sanctifie and save throughout till the day of their Final Exaltation to a state of Fellowship in glory with him whose partakers they are now in those things that tend to glory As for any mixture of the Substance of his Flesh with ours the Participation which we have of Christ includeth no such kinde of gross surmise 57. It greatly offendeth that some when they labor to shew the use of the holy Sacraments assign unto them no end but onely to teach the minde by other seases that which the Word doth teach by Hearing Whereupon how easily neglect and careless regard of so Heavenly Mysteries may follow we see in part by some experience had of those Men with whom that opinion is most strong For where the Word of God may be heard which teacheth with much more Expedition and more full Explications any thing we have to learn if all the benefit we reap by Sacraments be instruction they which at all times have opportunity of using the better mean to that purpose will surely hold the worse in less estimation And unto Infants which are not capable of instruction who would not think it a meer superfluity that any Sacrament is administred if to administer the Sacraments be but to teach receivers what God doth for them There is of Sacraments therefore undoubtedly some other more excellent and Heavenly use Sacraments by reason of their mixt Nature are more diversly interpreted and disputed of then any other part of Religion besides for that in so great store of Properties belonging to the self-same thing as every Mans wit hath taken hold of some especial consideration above the rest so they have accordingly seemed one to cross another as touching their several opinions about the necessity of Sacraments whereas in truth their disagreement is not great For let respect be had to the duty which every Communicant doth undertake and we may well determine concerning the use of Sacraments that they serve as Bonds of Obedience to God strict Obligations to the mutual exercise of Christian Charity Provocations to Godliness Preservations from Sin Memorials of the Principal benefits of Christ respect the time of their institution and it thereby appeareth that God hath annexed them for ever unto the New Testament as other Rites were before with the Old regard the weakness which is in us and they are warrants for the more security of our belief Compare the receivers of then with such as receive them not and Sacraments are marks of distinction to separate Gods own from strangers so that in all these respects they are sound to be most necessary But their chiefest force and vertue consisteth not herein so much as in that they are Heavenly Ceremonies which God hath sanctified and ordained to be administred in his Church First As marks whereby to know when God doth impart the vital or saving Grace of Christ unto all that are capable thereof and secondly as Means conditional which God requireth in them unto whom he imparteth Grace For sith God in himself is invisible and cannot by us be discerned working therefore when it seemeth good in the eyes of his Heavenly Wisdom that men for some special intent and purpose should take notice of his glorious Presence he giveth them some plain and sensible token whereby to know what they cannot see For Moses to see God and live was impossible yet Moses by fire knew where the glory of God extraordinarily was present The Angel by whom God endued the Waters of the Pool called Bethesda with Supernatural Vertue to Heal was not seen of any yet the time of the Angels presence known by the troubled motions of the Waters themselves The Apostles by Fiery Tongues which they saw were admonished when the Spirit which they could not behold was upon them In like manner it is with us Christ and his Spirit with all their blessed Effects though entring into the Soul of Man we are not able to apprehend or express how do notwithstanding give notice of the times when they use to make their access because it pleaseth Almighty God to communicate by sensible means those Blessings which are incomprehensible Seeing therefore that Grace is a consequent of Sacraments a thing which accompanieth them as their end a benefit which they have received from God himself the Author of Sacraments and not from any other Natural or Supernatural Quality in them it may be hereby both understood That Sacraments are necessary and that the manner of their necessity to Life Supernatural is not in all respects as food unto Natural Life because they contain in themselves no vital force of efficacy they are not Physical but Moral Instruments of Salvation duties of Service and Worship which unless we perform as the Author of Grace requireth they are unprofitable For all receive not the Grace of God which receive the Sacraments of his Grace Neither is it ordinarily his Will to bestow the Grace of Sacraments on any but by the Sacraments which Grace also they that receive by Sacraments or with Sacraments receive it from him and not from them For of Sacraments the very same is true which Solomons Wisdom observeth in the Brazen Serpent He that turned towards it was not healed by the thing he saw but by thee O Saviour of all This is therefore the necessity of Sacraments That saving Grace which Christ originally is or hath for the general good of his whole Church by Sacraments he severally deriveth into every member thereof Sacraments serve as the Instruments of God to that end and purpose Moral Instruments the use whereof is in our own hands the effect in his for the use we have his express Commandment for the effect his Conditional Promise So that without our obedience to the one there is of the other no apparent assurance as contrariwise where the Signs and Sacraments of his Grace are not either through contempt unreceived or received with contempt we are not to doubt but that they really give what they promise and are what they signifie For we take not Baptism nor the Eucharist for bare resemblances or memorials
of words as Alchymy doth or would the substance of Mettals maketh of any thing what it listeth and bringeth in the end all Truth to nothing Or howsoever such voluntary exercise of wit might be born with otherwise yet in places which usually serve as this doth concerning Regeneration by Water and the Holy Ghost to be alledged for Grounds and Principles less is permitted To hide the general consent of Antiquity agreeing in the literal interpretation they cunningly affirm That certain have taken those words as meant of Material Water when they know that of all the Ancients there is no one to be named that ever did otherwise either expound or alledge the place then as implying External Baptism Shall that which hath always received this and no other construction be now disguised with a toy of Novelty Must we needs at the onely shew of a critical conceit without any more deliberation utterly condemn them of Error which will not admit that Fire in the words Iohn is quenched with the Name of the Holy Ghost or with the name of the Spirit Water dried up in the words of Christ When the Letter of the Law hath two things plainly and expresly specified Water and the Spirit Water as a duty required on our parts the Spirit as a Gift which God bestoweth There is danger in presuming so to interpret it at if the clause which concerneth our selves were more then needeth We may by such rate Expositions attain perhaps in the end to be thought witty but with ill advice Finally if at the time when that Baptism which was meant by Iohn came to be really and truly performed by Christ himself we finde the Apostles that had been as we are before Baptized new Baptized with the Holy Ghost and in this their latter Baptism as well a visible descent of Fire as a secret miraculous infusion of the Spirit if on us he accomplish likewise the Heavenly work of our New birth not with the Spirit alone but with Water thereunto adjoyned sith the faithfullest Expounders of his words are his own Deeds let that which his hand hath manifestly wrought declare what his speech did doubtfully utter 60. To this they add That as we err by following a wrong construction of the place before alledged so our second over-sight is that we thereupon infer a necessity over-rigorous and extream The true necessity of Baptism a sew Propositions considered will soon decide All things which either are known Causes or set Means whereby any great Good is usually procured or Men delivered from grievous evil the same we must needs confess necessary And if Regeneration were not in this very sense a thing necessary to eternal life would Christ himself have taught Nicodemus that to see the Kingdom of God is impossible saving onely for those Men which are born from above His words following in the next Sentence are a proof sufficient that to our Regeneration his Spirit is no less necessary then Regeneration it self necessary unto Life Thirdly Unless as the Spirit is a necessary inward cause so Water were a necessary outward mean to our Regeneration what construction should we give unto those words wherein we are said to be new born and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 even of Water Why are we taught that with Water God doth purifie and cleanse his Church Wherefore do the Apostles of Christ term Baptism a Bath of Regeneration What purpose had they in giving men advice to receive outward Baptism and in perswading them it did avail to remission of sins If outward Baptism were a cause in it self possessed of that power either Natural or Supernatural without the present operation whereof no such effect could possibly grow it must then follow That seeing effects do never prevent the necessary causes out of which they spring no man could ever receive Grace before Baptism Which being apparently both known and also confest to be otherwise in many particulars although in the rest we make not Baptism a cause of Grace yet the Grace which is given them with their Baptism doth so far forth depend on the very outward Sacrament that God will have it embraced not onely as a sign or token what we receive but also as an Instrument or Mean whereby we receive Grace because Baptism is a Sacrament which God hath instituted in his Church to the end that they which receive the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ and so through his most precious Merit obtain as well that saving Grace of Imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness as also that infused Divine Vertue of the Holy Ghost which giveth to the Powers of the Soul their first disposition towards future newness of life There are that elevate too much the ordinary and immediate means of life relying wholly upon the bare conceit of that Eternal Election which notwithstanding includeth a subordination of means without which we are not actually brought to enjoy what God secretly did intend and therefore to build upon Gods Election if we keep not our selves to the ways which he hath appointed for men to walk in is but a self-deceiving vanity When the Apostle saw men called to the participation of Jesus Christ after the Gospel of God embraced and the Sacrament of Life received he feareth not then to put them in the number of Elect Saints he then accounteth them delivered from death and clean purged from all sin Till then notwithstanding their preordination unto life which none could know of saving God what were they in the Apostles own account but Children of Wrath as well as others plain Aliens altogether without hope strangers utterly without God in this present World So that by Sacraments and other sensible tokens of Grace we may boldy gather that he whose Mercy vouchsafeth now to bestow the means hath also long sithence intended us that whereunto they lead But let us never think i◠safe to presume of our own last end by bare conjectural Collections of his first intent and purpose the means failing that should come between Predestination bringeth not to life without the Grace of External Vocation wherein our Baptism is implied For as we are not Naturally men without birth so neither are we Christian men in the eye of the Church of God but by New birth nor according to the manifest ordinary course of Divine Dispensation new born but by that Baptism which both declareth and maketh us Christians In which respect we justly hold it to be the Door of our Actual Entrance into Gods House the first apparent beginning of Life a Seal perhaps to the Grace of Election before received but to our Sanctification here a step that hath not any before it There were of the old Valentinian Hereticks some which had Knowledge in such admiration that to it they ascribed all and so despised the Sacraments of Christ pretending That as Ignorance had
lest the sense and signification we give unto it should burthen us as Authors of a new Gospel in the House of God not in respect of some cause which the Fathers had more then we have to use the same nor finally for any such offence or scandal as heretofore it hath been subject unto by Error now reformed in the mindes of Men. 66. The ancient Custom of the Church was after they had Baptized to add thereunto Imposition of Hands with effectual Prayer for the illumination of Gods most holy Spirit to confirm and perfect that which the Grace of the some Spirit had already begun in Baptism For our means to obtain the Graces which God doth bestow are our Prayers Our Prayers to that intent are available as well for others as for ourselves To pray for others is to bless them for whom we pray because Prayer procureth the blessing of God upon them especially the Prayer of such as God either most respecteth for their Piety and Zeal that way or else regardeth for that their place and calling bindeth them above others unto this duty as it doth both Natural and Spiritual Fathers With Prayers of Spiritual and Personal Benediction the manner hath been in all ages to use Imposition of Hands as a Ceremony betokening our restrained desires to the party whom we present unto God by Prayer Thus when Israel blessed Ephraim and Manasses Iosephs sons he imposed upon them his hands and prayed God in whose sight my Fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk God which hath fed me all my life long unto this day and the Angel which hath delivered me from all evil bless these Children The Prophets which healed diseases by Prayer used therein the self-same Ceremony And therefore when Elizeus willed Naaman to wash himself seven times in Iordan for cure of his foul disease it much offended him I thought saith he with my self Surely the man will come forth and stand and call upon the Name of the Lord his God and put his hand on the place to the end he may so heal the â—â—eprosie In Consecrations and Ordinations of Men unto Rooms of Divine Calling the like was usually done from the time of Moses to Christ. Their suits that came unto Christ for help were also tendred oftentimes and are expressed in such forms or phrases of speech as shew that he was himself an observer of the same custom He which with Imposition of Hands and Prayer did so great Works of Mercy for restauration of Bodily health was worthily judged as able to effect the infusion of Heavenly Grace into them whose age was not yet depraved with that malice which might be supposed a bar to the goodness of God towards them They brought him therefore young children to put his hands upon them and pray After the Ascension of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that which he had begun continued in the daily practice of his Apostles whose Prayer and Imposition of Hands were a mean whereby thousands became partakers of the wonderful Gifts of God The Church had received from Christ a promise that such as believed in him these signs and tokens should follow them To cast one Devils to speak with Tongues to drive away Serpents to be free from the harm which any deadly poyson could work and to cure diseases by Imposition of Hands Which power common at the first in a manner unto all Believers all Believers had not power to derive or communicate unto all other men but whosoever was the instrument of God to instruct convert and baptize them the gift of miraculous operations by the power of the Holy Ghost they had not but onely at the Apostles own hands For which cause Simon Magus perceiving that power to be in none but them and presuming that they which had it might sell it sought to purchase it of them with money And as miraculous Graces of the Spirit continued after the Apostles times For saith Irenaus they which are truly his Disciples do in his Name and through Grace received from him such works for the benefit of other men as every of them is by him enabled to work Some cast one Devils in so much as they which are delivered from wicked spirits have been thereby won unto Christ and do constantly persevere in the Church and Society of Faithful Men Some excel in the knowledge of things to come in the grace of Visions from God and the gift of Prophetical Prediction Some by laying on their hands restore them to health which are grievously afflicted with sickness yea there are that of dead have been made alive and have afterwards many years conversed with us What should I say The gifts are innumerable wherewith God hath inriched his Church throughout the World and by vertue whereof in the Name of Christ crucified under Pontius Pilate the Church every day doth many wonders for the good of Nations neither fraudulently nor in any respect of lucre and gain to her self but as freely bestowing as God on her hath bestowed his Divine Graces So it no where appeareth that ever any did by Prayer and Imposition of Hands sithence the Apostles times make others partakers of the like miraculous gifts and graces as long as it pleased God to continue the same in his Church but onely Bishops the Apostles Successors for a time even in that power St. Augustine acknowledgeth That such gifts were not permitted to last always lest men should wax cold with the commonness of that the strangeness whereof at the first inflamed them Which words of St. Augustine declaring how the vulgar use of these Miracles was then expired are no prejudice to the like extraordinary Graces more rarely observed in some either then or of latter days Now whereas the Successors of the Apostles had but onely for a time such power as by Prayer and Imposition of Hands to bestow the Holy Ghost the reason wherefore Confirmation nevertheless by Prayer and Laying on of Hands hath hitherto always continued is for other very special benefits which the Church thereby enjoyeth The Fathers every where impute unto it that gift or Grace of the Holy Ghost not which maketh us first Christian men but when we are made such assisteth us in all vertue aimeth us against temptation and sin For after Baptism administred there followeth saith Tertullian Imposition of Hands with Invocation and Invitation of the Holy Ghost which willingly cometh down from the Father to rest upon the purified and blessed Bodies as it were acknowledging the Waters of Baptism a fit Seat St. Cyprian in more particular manner alluding to that effect of the Spirit which here especially was respected How great saith he is that power and force wherewith the minde is here he meaneth in Baptism enabled being not onely withdrawn from that pernicious hold which the World before had of it nor onely so purified and made clean that no stain or blemish of
define not the Church by that which the Church essentially is but by that wherein they imagine their own more perfect then the rest are Touching parts of eminency and perfection parts likewise of imperfection and defect in the Church of God they are infinite their degrees and differences no way possible to be drawn unto any certain account There is not the least contention and variance but it blemisheth somewhat the Unity that ought to be in the Church of Christ which notwithstanding may have not onely without offence or breach of concord her manifold varieties in Rites and Ceremonies of Religion but also her Strifes and Contentions many times and that about matters of no small importance yea her Schisms Factions and such other evils whereunto the Body of the Church is subject sound and sick remaining both of the same Body as long as both parts retain by outward profession that vital substance of truth which maketh Christian Religion to differ from theirs which acknowledge not our Lord Jesus Christ the Blessed Saviour of Mankinde give no crecit to his glorious Gospel and have his Sacraments the Seals of Eternal Life in derision Now the priviledge of the visible Church of God for of that we speak is to be herein like the Ark of Noah that for any thing we know to the contrary all without it are lost sheep yet in this was the Ark of Noah priviledged above the Church that whereas none of them which were in the one could perish numbers in the other are cast away because to Eternal Life our Profession is not enough Many things exclude from the Kingdom of God although from the Church they separate not In the Church there arise sundry grievous storms by means whereof whole Kingdoms and Nations professing Christ both have been heretofore and are at this present day divided about Christ. During which Divisions and Contentions amongst men albeit each part do justifie it self yet the one of necessity must needs err if there be any contradiction between them be it great or little and what side soever it be that hath the truth the same we must also acknowledge alone to hold with the true Church in that point and consequently reject the other as an enemy in that case faln away from the true Church Wherefore of Hypocrites and Dissemblers whose profession at the first was but onely from the teeth outward when they afterwards took occasion to oppugne certain principal Articles of Faith the Apostles which defended the truth against them pronounce them gone out from the Fellowship of sound and sincere Believers when as yet the Christian Religion they had not utterly cast off In like sense and meaning throughout all ages Hereticks have justly been hated as Branches cut off from the Body of the true Vine yet onely so far forth cut off as they Heresies have extended Both Heresie and many other crimes which wholly sever from God do sever from God the Church of God in part onely The Mystery of Piety saith the Apostle is without peradventure great God hath been manifested in the Flesh hath been justified in the Spirit hath been seen of Angels hath been preached to Nations hath been believed on in the World hath been taken up into Glory The Church a Pillar and Foundation of this Truth which no where is known or profest but onely within the Church and they all of the Church that profess it In the mean while it cannot be denied that many profess this who are not therefore cleared simply from all either faults or errors which make separation between us and the Well-spring of our happiness Idolatry severed of old the Israelites Iniquity those Scribes and Pharisees from God who notwithstanding were a part of the Seed of Abraham a part of that very Seed which God did himself acknowledge to be his Church The Church of God may therefore contain both them which indeed are not his yet must be reputed his by us that know not their inward thoughts and them whose apparent wickedness testifieth even in the sight of the whole World that God abhorreth them For to this and no other purpose are meant those Parables which our Saviour in the Gospel hath concerning mixture of Vice with Vertue Light with Darkness Truth with Error as well and openly known and seen as a cunningly cloaked mixture That which separateth therefore utterly that which cutteth off clean from the visible Church of Christ is plain Apostasie direct denial utter rejection of the whole Christian Faith as far as the same is professedly different from Infidelity Hereticks as touching those points of doctrine wherein they fail Schismaticks as touching the quarrels for which or the duties wherein they divide themselves from their Brethren Loose licentious and wicked persons as touching their several offences or crimes have all forsaken the true Church of God the Church which is sound and sincere in the Doctrine that they corrupt the Church that keepeth the Bond of Unity which they violate the Church that walketh in the Laws of Righteousness which they transgress This very true Church of Christ they have left howbeit not altogether left nor forsaken simply the Church upon the main Foundations whereof they continue built notwithstanding these breaches whereby they are rent at the top asunder Now because for redress of professed Errors and open Schisms it is and must be the Churches care that all may in outward Conformity be one as the laudable Polity of former Ages even so our own to that end and purpose hath established divers Laws the moderate severity whereof is a mean both to stay the rest and to reclaim such as heretofore have been led awry But seeing that the Offices which Laws require are always definite and when that they require is done they go no farther whereupon sundry ill-affected persons to save themselves from danger of Laws pretend obedience albeit inwardly they carry still the same hearts which they did before by means whereof it falleth out that receiving unworthily the Blessed Sacrament at our hands they eat and drink their own damnation It is for remedy of this mischief here determined that whom the Law of the Realm doth punish unless they communicate such if they offer to obey Law the Church notwithstanding should not admit without probation before had of their Gospel-like behavior Wherein they first set no time how long this supposed probation must continue again they nominate no certain judgment the verdict whereof shall approve mens behavior to be Gospel-like and that which is most material whereas they seek to make it more hard for dissemblers to be received into the Church then Law and Polity as yet hath done they make it in truth more easie for such kinde of persons to winde themselves out of the Law and to continue the same they were The Law requireth at their hands that duty which in conscience doth touch them nearest because the greatest difference between us and
them Powers then gifts of Cures Aides Governments kindes of Languages Are all Apostles Are all Prophets Are all Teachers Is there power in all Have all grace to cure Do all speak with Tongues Can all interpret But be you desirous of the better graces They which plainly discern first that some one general thing there is which the Apostle doth here divide into all these branches and do secondly conceive that general to be Church-Offices besides a number of other difficulties can by no means possibly deny but that many of these might concurr in one man and peradventure in some one all which mixture notwithstanding their form of discipline doth most shun On the other side admit that Communicants of special infused grace for the benefit of Members knit into one body the Church of Christ are here spoken of which was in truth the plain drift of that whole Discourse and see if every thing do not answer in due place with the fitness which sheweth easily what is likeliest to have been meane For why are Apostles the first but because unto them was granted the Revelation of all Truth from Christ immediately Why Prophets the second but because they had of some things knowledge in the same manner Teachers the next because whatsoever was known to them it came by hearing yet God withal made them able to instruct which every one could not do that was taught After Gifts of Edification there follow general abilities to work things above Nature Grace to cure men of bodily Diseases Supplies against occurrent defects and impediments Dexterities to govern and direct by counsel Finally aptness to speak or interpret foreign tongues Which Graces not poured out equally but diversly sorted and given were a cause why not onely they all did furnish up the whole Body but each benefit and help other Again the same Apostle other-where in like sort To every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith When he ascended up on high he led Captivity captive and gave gifts unto men He therefore gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers for the gathering together of Saints for the work of the Ministery for the edification of the Body of Christ. In this place none but gifts of Instruction are exprest And because of Teachers some were Evangelists which neither had any part of their knowledge by Revelation as the Prophets and yet in ability to teach were farr beyond other Pastors they are as having received one way less than Prophets and another way more than Teachers set accordingly between both For the Apostle doth in neither place respect what any of them were by Office or Power given them through Ordination but what by grace they all had obtained through miraculous infusion of the Holy Ghost For in Christian Religion this being the ground of our whole Belief that the promises which God of old had made by his Prophets concerning the wonderful Gifts and graces of the Holy Ghost wherewith the Reign of the true Messias should be made glorious were immediately after our Lord's Ascension performed there is no one thing whereof the Apostles did take more often occasion to speak Out of men thus endued with gifts of the Spirit upon their Conversion to Christian Faith the Church had her Ministers chosen unto whom was given Ecclesiastical power by Ordination Now because the Apostle in reckoning degrees and varieties of Grace doth mention Pastors and Teachers although he mention them not in respect of their Ordination to exercise the Ministery but as examples of men especially enriched with the gifts of the Holy Ghost divers learned and skilfull men have so taken it as if those places did intend to teach what Orders of Ecclesiastical Persons there ought to be in the Church of Christ which thing we are not to learn from thence but out of other parts of holy Scripture whereby it clearly appeareth that Churches Apostolick did know but three degrees in the power of Ecclesiastical Order at the first Apostles Presbyters and Deacons afterwards in stead of Apostles Bishops concerning whose Order we are to speak in the seventh Book There is an errour which beguileth many who doe much intangle both themselves and others by not distinguishing Services Offices and Orders Ecclesiastical the first of which three and in part the second may be executed by the Laity whereas none have or can have the third but the Clergy Catechists Exorcists Readers Singers and the rest of like sort if the nature onely of their labours and pains be considered may in that respect seem Clergy-men even as the Fathers for that cause term them usually Clerks as also in regard of the end whereunto they were trained up which was to be ordered when years and experience should make them able Notwithstanding in as much as they no way differed from others of the Laity longer than during that work of Service which at any time they might give over being thereunto but admitted not tyed by irrevocable Ordination we finde them alwayes exactly severed from that body whereof those three before rehearsed Orders alone are natural parts Touching Widows of whom some men are perswaded that if such as Saint Paul describeth may be gotten we ought to retain them in the Church for ever Certain mean Services there were of Attendance as about Women at the time of their Baptism about the Bodies of the sick and dead about the necessities of Travellers Way-faring men and such like wherein the Church did commonly life them when need required because they lived of the Alms of the Church and were fittest for such purposes Saint Paul doth therefore to avoid scandal require that none but Women well-experienced and vertuously given neither any under threescore years of age should be admitted of that number Widows were never in the Church so highly esteemed as Virgins But seeing neither of them did or could receive Ordination to make them Ecclesiastical Persons were absurd The antientest therefore of the Fathers mention those three degrees of Ecclesiastical Order specified and no moe When your Captain saith Tertullian that is to say the Deacons Presbyters and Bishops fly who shall teach the Laity that they must be constant Again What should I mention Lay-men saith Optatus yea or divers of the Ministery it self To what purpose Deacons which are in the third or Presbyters in the second degree of Priesthood when the very Heads and Princes of all even certain of the Bishops themselves were content to redeem life with the loss of Heaven Heaps of Allegations in a case so evident and plain are needless I may securely therefore conclude that there are at this day in the Church of England no other than the same Degrees of Ecclesiastical Order namely Bishops Presbyters and Deacons which had their beginning from Christ and his blessed Apostles themselves As for Deans Prebendaries Parsons Vicars Curates Arch-deacons
that respect meet before men to be acknowledged particularly But in Sins between Man and God there is no necessity that Man should himself make any such open and particular recital of them to God they are known and of us it is required that we cast not the memory of them carelesly and loosly behind our backs but keep in mind as near as we can both our own debt and his grace which remitteth the same Wherefore to let pass Jewish confession and to come unto them which hold confession in the ear of the Priest commanded yea commanded in the nature of a Sacrament and thereby so necessary that Sin without it cannot be pardoned let them find such a Commandment in holy Scripture and we ask no more Iohn the Baptist was an extraordinary person his Birth his Actions of Life his Office extraordinary It is therefore Recorded for the strangeness of the Act but not set down as an everlasting Law for the World That to him Ierusalem and all Iudea made confession of their Sins Besides at the time of this confession their pretended Sacrament of Repentance as they grant was not yet instituted neither was it Sin after Baptism which Penitents did there confess When that which befel the seven sons of Seeva for using the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in their conjurations was notisied to Jews and Grecians in Ephesus it brought an universal fear upon them insomuch that divers of them which had believed before but not obeyed the Laws of Christ as they should have done being terrified by this example came to the Apostle and confessed their wicked deeds Which good and vertuous act no wise man as I suppose will disallow but commend highly in them whom Gods good Spirit shall move to do the like when need requireth Yet neither hath this example the force of any general Commandment or Law to make it necessary for every man to pour into the ears of the Priest whatsoever hath been done amiss or else to remain everlastingly culpable and guilty of Sin in a word it proveth Confession practized as a vertuous act but not commanded as a Sacrament Now concerning St. Iames his Exhortation whether the former branch be considered which saith Is any sick among you let him call for the Ancients of the Church and let them make their prayers for him or the latter which stirreth up all Christian Men unto mutual acknowledment of faults amongst themselves Lay open your minds make your confessions one to another is it not plain that the one hath relation to that gift of healing which our Saviour promised his Church saying They shall lay their hands on the sick and the sick shall recover health relation to that gift of healing whereby the Apostle imposed his hands on the Father of Publius and made him miraculously a sound man relation finally to that gift of healing which so long continued in practice after the Apostles times that whereas the Novatianists denyed the power of the Church of God in curing Sin after Baptism St. Ambrose asked them again Why it might not as well prevail with God for spiritual as far corporal and bodily health yea wherefore saith he do ye your selves lay hands on the diseased and believe it to be a work of benediction or prayer if haply the sick person be restored to his former safety And of the other member which toucheth mutual confession do not some of themselves as namely Cajeâ—an deny that any other Confession is meant then only that which seeketh either association of Prayers or reconciliation or pardon of wrongs is it not confessed by the greatest part of their own retinue that we cannot certainly affirm Sacramental Confession to have been meant or spoken of in this place Howbeit Bellarmine delighted to run a course by himself where colourable sâ—â—ifts of wit will but make the way passable standeth as formally for this place and not less for that in St. Iohn than for this St. Iohn saith If we confess our Sins God is faithful and just to forgive our Sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness doth St. Iohn say If we confess to the Priest God is righteous to forgive and if not that our Sins are unpardonable No but the titles of God just and righteous do import that he pardoneth Sin only for his promise sake And there is not they say any promise of forgiveness upon confession made to God without the Priest Not any promise but with this condition and yet this condition no where exprest Is it not strange that the Scripture speaking so much of Repentance and of the several duties which appertain thereunto should ever mean and no where mention that one condition without which all the rest is utterly of none effect or will they say because our Saviour hath said to his Ministers Whose sins ye retain c. and because they can remit no more than what the offenders have confest that therefore by vertue of his promise it standeth with the Righteousness of God to take away no mans Sins until by auricular confession they be opened unto the Priest They are men that would seem to honour Antiquity and none more to depend upon the reverend judgement thereof I dare boldly affirm that for many hundred years after Christ the Fathers held no such opinion they did not gather by our Saviours words any such necessity of seeking the Priests Absolution from Sin by secret and as they now term it sacramental confession Publick confession they thought necessary by way of Discipline not private confession as in the nature of a Sacrament necessary For to begin with the purest times it is unto them which read and judge without partiality a thing most clear that the ancient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Confession defined by Tertullian to be a Discipline of humiliation and submission framing mens behaviour in such sort as may be fittest to move pity the confession which they use to speak of in the exercise of Repentance was made openly in the hearing of the whole both Ecclesiastical Consistory and Assembly This is the reason wherefore he perceiving that divers were better content their sores should secretly fester and eat inward then be laid so open to the eyes of many blameth greatly their unwise bashfulness and to reform the same perswadeth with them saying Amongst thy brethren and fellow servants which are partakers with thee of one and the same nature fear joy grief sufferings for us was common Lord and Father we have all received one spirit why shouldest thou not think with thy self that they are but thine own self wherefore dost thou avoid them as likely to insult over thee whom thou knowest subject to the same haps At that which grieveth any one part the whole body cannot rejoyce it must needs be that the whole will labour and strive to help that wherewith a part of it self is molested St. Cyprian being grieved with the dealings
Tyrant it self must of necessity endure perpetual Anguish and Grief For as the Body is rent with stripes so the Minde with guiltiness of Cruelty Lust and wicked Resolutions Which Furies brought the Emperour Tyberius sometimes into such perplexity that writing to the Senate his wonted art of dissimulation failed him utterly in this Case And whereas it had been ever his peculiar delight so to speak that no man might be able to sound his meaning he had not the power to conceal what he felt through the secret scourge of an evil Conscience though no necessity did now enforce him to disclose the same What to write or how to write at this present if I know saith Tyberius let the Gods and Goddesses who thus continually eat me only be worse to me than they are It was not his Imperial Dignity and Power that could provide a way to protect him against himself the fears and suspitions which improbity had bred being strengthned by every occasion and those Vertues clean banished which are the only foundation of sound tranquility of minde For which cause it hath been truly said and agreeably with all mens experience that if the vertuous did excel in no other priviledge yet farr happier they are than the contrary sort of men for that their hopes be alwayes better Neither are we to marvel that these things known unto all do stay so few from being Authors of their own woe For we see by the antient example of Ioseph's unkinde Brethren how it commeth to remembrance easily when Crimes are once past what the difference is of good from evil and of right from wrong But such consideration when they should have prevented Sinne were over-match'd by inordinate desires Are we not bound then with all thankfulnesse to acknowledge his infinite goodnesse and mercy which hath revealed unto us the way how to rid our selves of these mazes the way how to shake off that yoke which no Flesh is able to bear the way how to change most grisly horror into a comfortable apprehension of heavenly joy Whereunto there are many which labour with so much the greater difficultie because imbecillity of minde doth not suffer them to censure rightly their own doings Some fearful lest the enormity of their Crimes be so unpardonable that no Repentance can do them good some lest the imperfection of their Repentance make it uneffectual to the taking away of Sinne The one drive all things to this issue whether they be not men that have sinned against the Holy Ghost the other to this what Repentance is sufficient to clear Sinners and to assure them that they are delivered Such as by Error charge themselves of unpardonable Sinne must think it may be they deem that unpardonable which is not Our Saviour speaketh indeed of Blasphemy which shall never be forgiven But have they any sure and infallible knowledge what that Blasphemy is If not why are they unjust and cruel to their own Souls imagining certainty of Guiltiness in a Crime concerning the very nature whereof they are uncertain For mine own part although where this Blasphemy is mentioned the cause why our Saviour spake thereof was the Pharisees Blasphemy which was not afraid to say He had an unclean Spirit and did cast out Spirits by the Power of Beelzebub Neverthelesse I dare not precisely deny but that even the Pharisees themselves might have repented and been forgiven and that our Lord Jesus Christ peradventure might but take occasion at their Blasphemy which as yet was pardonable to tell them further of an unpardonable Blasphemy whereinto he foresaw that the Jews would fall For it is plain that many thousands at the first professing Christian Religion became afterwards wilful Apostates moved with no other cause of revolt but mere indignation that the Gentiles should enjoy the benefit of the Gospel as much as they and yet not be burthened with the yoke of Moses his Law The Apostles by Preaching had won them to Christ in whose Name they embraced with great alacrity the full remission of their former sinnes and iniquities they received by the imposition of the Apostles hands that Grace and Power of the Holy Ghost whereby they cured Diseases Prophecyed spake with Tongues and yet in the end after all this they fell utterly away renounced the Mysteries of Christian Faith Blasphemed in their formal Abjurations that most glorious and blessed Spirit the Gifts whereof themselves had possest and by this means sunk their Souls in the Gulf of that unpardonable Sinne whereof as our Lord JESUS CHRIST had told them before hand so the Apostle at the first appearance of such their revolt putteth them in minde again that falling now to their former Blasphemies their Salvation was irrecoverably gone It was for them in this Case impossible to be renewed by any Repentance because they were now in the state of Satan and his Angels the Judge of quick and dead had passed his irrevocable Sentence against them So great difference there is between Infidels unconverted and Backsliders in this manner fallen away that always we have hope to reclaim the one which only hate whom they never knew but to the other which know and Blaspheme to them that with more than infernal malice accurse both the seen brightnesse of Glory which is in him and in themselves the tasted goodness of Divine Grace as those execrable Miscreants did who first received in extraordinary miraculous manner and then in outragious sort blasphemed the Holy Ghost abusing both it and the whole Religion which God by it did confirm and magnifie To such as wilfully thus sinne after so great light of the Truth and Gifts of the Spirit there remaineth justly no fruit or benefit to be expected by Christ's Sacrifice For all other Offenders without exception or stint whether they be Strangers that seek accesse or Followers that will make return unto God upon the tender of their Repentance the grant of his Grace standeth everlastingly signed with his blood in the Book of Eternal life That which in this Case over-terrifieth fearful Souls is a mis-conceit whereby they imagine every act which they doe knowing that they doe amisse and every wilful Breach or Transgression of God's Law to be mere Sinne against the Holy Ghost forgetting that the Law of Moses it self ordained Sacrifices of Expiation as well for Faults presumptuously committed as Things wherein men offend by Errour Now there are on the contrary side others who doubting not of God's mercy towards all that perfectly repent remain notwithstanding scrupulous and troubled with continual fear lest defects in their own Repentance be a barr against them These cast themselves into very great and peradventure needlesse Agonies through mis-construction of things spoken about proportioning our griefs to our Sinnes for which they never think they have wept and mourned enough yea if they have not alwayes a stream of Tears at command they take it for a heart congealed and hardned in sinne when
the Antients termed usually an Arch-Presbyter weat this day name him Dean For most certain truth it is that Churches-Cathedral and the Bishops of them are as glasses wherein the face and very countenance of Apostolical antiquity remaineth even as yet to be seen notwithstanding the alterations which tract of time and the course of the world hath brought For defence and maintenance of them we are most earnestly bound to strive even as the Jews were for their Temple and the High-Priest of God therein The overthrow and ruine of the one if ever the sacrilegious avarice of Atheists should prevail so farr which God of his infinite mercy forbid ought no otherwise to move us than the people of God were moved when having beheld the sack and combustion of his Sanctuary in most lamentable manner flaming before their eyes they uttered from the bottom of their grieved Spirits those voyces of doleful supplication Exsurge Domine miserearis Sion serve tui diligunt lapides ejus pulver is ejus miseret cos VIII How farr the power which Bishops had did reach what number of Persons was subject unto them at the first and how large their Territories were it is not for the question we have in hand a thing very greatly material to know For if we prove that Bishops have lawfully of old ruled over other Ministers it is enough how few soever those Ministers have been how small soever the circuit of Place which hath contained them Yet hereof somewhat to the end we may so farr forth illustrate Church-Antiquities A Law Imperial there is which sheweth that there was great care had to provide for every Christian City Biâ—hop as near as might be and that each City had some Territory belonging unto it which Territory was also under the Bishop of the same City that because it was not universally thus but in some Countrys one Bishop had subject unto him many Cities and their Territories the Law which provided for establishment of the other Orders should not prejudice those Churches wherein this contrary Custom had before prevailed Unto the Bishop of every such City not only the Presbyters of the same City but also of the Territory thereunto belonging were from the first beginning subject For we must note that when as yet there were in Cities no Parish Churches but only Colledges of Presbyters under their Bisâ—ops Regiment yet smaller Congregations and Churches there were even then abroad in which Churches there was but some one only Presbyter to perform amongst them Divine duties Towns and Villages abroad receiving the Faith of Christ from Cities whereunto they were adjacent did as Spiritual and Heavenly Colonies by their subjection honour those antient Mother Churches out of which they grew And in the Christian Cities themselves when the mighty increase of Believers made it necessary to have them divided into certain several companies and over every of those companies one only Pastor to be appointed for the Ministry of holy things between the first and the rest after it there could not be but a natural inequality even as between the Temple and Synagogues in Ierusalem The Clergy of Cities were termed Urbici to shew a difference between them and the Clergies of Townes of Villages of Castles abroad And how many soever these Parishes or Congregations were in number which did depend on any one principal City-Church unto the Bishop of that one Church they and their several sole Presbyters were all subject For if so be as some imagine every petty Congregation or Hamlet had had his own particular Bishop what sense could there be in those words of Ierom concerning Castles Villages and other places abroad which having onely Presbyters to teach them and to minister unto them the Sacraments were resorted unto by Bishops for the Administration of that wherewith their Presbyters were not licensed to meddle To note a difference of that one Church where the Bishop hath his seat and the rest which depend upon it that one hath usually been termed Cathedral according to the same sense wherein Ignatius speaking of the Church of Antioch termeth it his Throne and Cyprian making mention of Euaristâ—s who had been Bishop and was now depoâ—ed termeth him Cathedrae extâ—rrem one that was thrust besides his Chair The Church where the Bishop is set with his Colledge of Presbyters about him we call a See the Local compass of his Authority we term a Diocess Unto a Bishop within the compass of his own both See and Diocess it hath by right of his place evermore appertained to ordain Presbyters to make Deacons and with judgement to dispose of all things of weight The Apostle St. Paul had Episcopal Authority but so at large that we cannot assign unto him any one certain Diocess His positive Orders and Constitutions Churches every where did obey Yea a charge and care saith he I have even of all the Churches The walks of Titus and Timothy was limited within the bounds of a narrow Precinct As for other Bishops that which Chrysostom hath concerning them If they be evil could not poâ—â—ibly agreâ— unto them unless their Authority had reached farther than to some one only Congregation The danger being so great at it is to him that scandalizeth one Soul What shall he saith Chrisostom speaking of a Bishop what shall he deserve by whom so many Souls yea even whole Cities and Peoples Men Women and Children Citizens Peasants Inhabitants both of his own City and of other Towns subject unto it are offended A thing so unusual it was for a Bishop not to have ample Jurisdiction that Theophilus Patriark of Alexandria for making one a Bishop of a small Town is noted a proud Despiser of the commendable Orders of the Church with this censure Such Novelties Theophilus presumed every where to begin taking upon him as it had been another Moses Whereby is discovered also their Errour who think that such as in Ecclesiâ—stical Writings they finde termed Chorepiscopos were the same in the Country which the Bishop was in the City Whereas the old Chorepiscopi are they that were appointed of the Bishops to have as his Vicegerents some over-sight of those Churches abroad which were subject unto his See in which Churches they had also power to make Sub-deacons Readers and such like petty Church-Officers With which power so stâ—nted they not contenting themselves but adventuring at the length to Orâ—â—in even Deacons and Presbyters also as the Bishop himself did their presumption herein was controlled and stayed by the antient Edict of Councils For example that of Antioch It hath seemed good to the holy Synod that such in Towns and Countrys as are called Chorepiscopi do know their limits and govern the Churches under them contenting themselves with the charge thereof and with Authority to make Readers Sub-Deacons Exorcists and to be Leaders or Guiders of them but not to meddle with the Ordination either of
consisteth in the matter about which the actions of each are conversant and not in this that Civil Royalty admitteth but one Ecclesiastical Government requireth many Supreme Correctors Which Allegation were it true would prove no more than only that some certain number is necessary for the assistance of the Bishop But that a number of such as they do require is necessary how doth it prove Wherefore albeit Bishops should now do the very same which the Antients did using the Colledge of Presbyters under them as their Assistants when they administer Church-Censures yet should they still swerve utterly from that which these men so busily labour for because the Agents whom they require to assist in those Cases are a sort of Lay-Elders such as no antient Bishop ever was assisted with Shall these fruitless jarrs and janglings never cease shall we never see end of them How much happier were the World if those eager Task-masters whose eyes are so curious and sharp in discerning what should be done by many and what by few were all changed into painful doers of that which every good Christian man ought either only or chiefly to do and to be found therein doing when that great and glorious Judge of all mens both deeds and words shall appear In the mean while be it One that hath this charge or be they Many that be his Assistants let there be careful provision that Justice may be administred and in this shall our God be glorified more than by such contentious Disputes XV. Of which nature that also is wherein Bishops are over and besides all this accused to have much more excessive power than the antient in as much as unto their Ecclesiastical authority the Civil Magistrate for the better repressing of such as contemn Ecclesiastical censures hath for divers ages annexed Civil The crime of Bishops herein is divided into these two several branches the one that in Causes Ecclesiastical they strike with the sword of Secular punishments the other that Offices are granted them by vertue whereof they meddle with Civil Affairs Touching the one it reacheth no farther than only unto restraint of liberty by imprisonment which yet is not done but by the Laws of the Land and by vertue of authority derived from the Prince A thing which being allowable in Priests amongst the Jews must needs have received some strange alteration in nature since if it be now so pernicious and venomous to be coupled with a Spiritual Vocation in any man which beareth Office in the Church of Christ. Shemaia writing to the Colledge of Priests which were in Ierusalem and to Zâ—phania the principal of them told them they were appointed of God that they might be Officers in the House of the Lord for every man which raved and did make himselfe a Prophet to the end that they might by the force of this their authority put such in Prison and in the Stocks His malice is reproved for that he provoketh them to shew their power against the innocent But surely when any man justly punishable had been brought before them it could be no unjust thing for them even in such sort then to have punished As for Offices by vertue whereof Bishops have to deal in Civil Affairs we must consider that Civil Affairs are of divers kindesâ— and as they be not all fit for Ecclesiastical Persons to meddle with so neither is it necessary nor at this day haply convenient that from meddling with any such thing at all they all should without exception be secluded I will therefore set down some few causes wherein it cannot but clearly appear unto reasonable men that Civil and Ecclesiastical Functions may be lawfully united in one and the same Person First therefore in case a Christian Society be planted amongst their professed enemies or by toleration do live under some certain State whereinto they are not incorporated whom shall we judge the meetest men to have the hearing and determining of such mere civil Controversies as are every day wont to grow between man and man Such being the state of the Church of Corinth the Apostle giveth them this direction Dare any of you having business against another be judged by the unjust and not under Saints Do ye not know that the Saints shall judge the World If the World then shall be judged by you are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters Know ye not that we shall judge the Angels How much more things that appertain to this life If then ye have judgement of things pertaining to this life set up them which are least esteemed in the Church I speak it to your shame Is it so that there is not a wise man amongst you us not one that can judge between his Brethren but a Brother goeth to law with a Brother and that under the Infidels Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you because ye go to Law one with another Why rather suffer ye not wrong why rather sustain ye not harm In which Speech there are these degrees Better to suffer and to put up Injuries than to contend better to end contention by Arbitrement then by Judgement better by Judgement before the wisest of their own than before the simpler better before the simplest of their own than the wisest of them without So that if judgement of Secular affairs should be committed unto wise men unto men of chiefest Credit and Account amongst them when the Pastors of their Souls are such Who more fit to be also their Judges for the ending of strikes The wisest in things divine may be also in things humane the most skilful At leastwise they are by likelihood commonly more able to know right from wrong than the common un-lettered sort And what St. Augustin did hereby gather his own words do sufficiently show I call God to witness upon my Soul saith he that according to the Order which is kept in well-ordered Monasteries I could wish to have every day my hours of labouring with my hands my hours of reading and of praying rather than to endure these most tumultuous perplexities of other men's causes which I am forced to bear while I travel in Secular businesses either by judging to discuss them or to cut them off by intreaty Unto which toyles that Apostle who himself sustained them not for any thing we read hath notwithstanding â—yed us not of his own accord but being thereunto directed by that Spirit which speaks in him His own Apostleship which drew him to travel up and down suffered him not to be any where settled for this purpose wherefore the wise faithful and holy men which were seated here and there and not them which travelled up and down to preach he made Examiners of such Businesses Whereupon of him it is no where written that he had leisure to attend these things from which we cannot excuse our selves although we be simple because even such he requireth if wise men cannot be had rather than
were afterwards published and imposed upon the Churches of the Gentiles abroad as Laws the Records thereof remaining still the Book of God for a testimony that the power of making Ecclesiastical Laws belongeth to the Successors of the Apostles the Bishops and Prelates of the Church of God To this we answer That the Councel of Ierusalem is no Argument for the power of the Clergy to make Laws For first there hath not been sithence any Councel of like authority to that in Ierusalem Secondly The cause why that was of such authority came by a special accident Thirdly The reason why other Councels being not like unto that in nature the Clergy in them should have no power to make Laws by themselves alone is in truth so forcible that except some Commandment of God to the contrary can be shewed it ought notwithstanding the foresaid example to prevail The Decrees of the Councel of Ierusalem were not as the Canons of other Ecclesiastical Assemblies Human but very Divine Ordinances for which cause the Churches were farr and wide commanded every where to see them kept no otherwise than if Christ himself had personally on Earth been the Author of them The cause why that Council was of so great Authority and credit above all others which have been sithence is expressed in those words of principal observation Unto the Holy Ghost and to us it hath seemed good which form of speech though other Councels have likewise used yet neither could they themselves mean nor may we so understand them as if both were in equal sort assisted with the power of the Holy Ghost but the latter had the favour of that general assistance and presence which Christ doth promise unto all his according to the quality of their several Estates and Callings the former the grace of special miraculous rare and extraordinary illumination in relation whereunto the Apostle comparing the Old Testament and the New together termeth the one a Testament of the Letter for that God delivered it written in stone the other a Testament of the Spirit because God imprinted it in the hearts and declared it by the tongues of his chosen Apostles through the power of the Holy Ghost feigning both their conceits and speeches in most Divine and incomprehensible manner Wherefore in as much as the Council of Ierusalem did chance to consist of men so enlightened it had authority greater than were meet for any other Council besides to challenge wherein such kinde of Persons are as now the state of the Church doth stand Kings being not then that which now they are and the Clergy not now that which then they were Till it be proved that some special Law of Christ hath for ever annexed unto the Clergy alone the power to make Ecclesiastical laws we are to hold it a thing most consonant with equity and reason that no Ecclesiastical laws be made in a Christian Common-wealth without consent as well of the Laity as of the Clergy but least of all without consent of the highest Power For of this thing no man doubteth namely that in all Societies Companies and Corporations what severally each shall be bound unto it must be with all their assents ratified Against all equity it were that a man should suffer detriment at the hands of men for not observing that which he never did either by himself or by others mediately or immediately agree unto Much more than a King should constrain all others no the strict observation of any such Human Ordinance as passeth without his own approbation In this Case therefore especially that vulgar Axiom is of force Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari approbari debet Whereupon Pope Nicolas although otherwise not admitting Lay-persons no not Emperors themselves to be present as Synods doth notwithstanding seem to allow of their presence when matters of Faith are determined whereunto all men must stand bound Ubinam legistis Imperatores Antecessores vestros Synodalibus Conventibus interfuisse nisi forsitan in quibus de Fide tractatum est quae non solum ad Clericos verum etiam ad Laicos omnes pertinet Christianos A Law be it Civil or Ecclesiastical is a Publick Obligation wherein seeing that the whole standeth charged no reason it should pass without his privity and will whom principally the whole doth depend upon Sicut Laici jurisdictionem Clericorum perturbare ita Clerici jurisdictionem Laicorum non debent minuere saith Innocentius Extra de judic novit As the Laity should not hinder the Clergy's jurisdiction so neither is it reason that the Laity's right should be abridged by the Clergy saith Pope Innocent But were it so that the Clergy alone might give Laws unto all the rest forasmuch as every Estate doth desire to inlarge the bounds of their own Liberties is it not easie to see how injurious this might prove to men of other conditions Peace and Justice are maintained by preserving unto every Order their Rights and by keeping all Estates as it were in an even ballance which thing is no way better done than if the King their common Parent whose care is presumed to extend most indifferently over all do bear the chiefest sway in the making Laws which All must be ordered by Wherefore of them which in this point attribute most to the Clergy I would demand What evidence there is whereby it may clearly be shewed that in antient Kingdoms Christian any Canon devised by the Clergy alone in their Synods whether Provincial National or General hath by mere force of their Agreement taken place as a Law making all men constrainable to be obedient thereunto without any other approbation from the King before or afterwards required in that behalf But what speak we of antient Kingdoms when at this day even the Papacy it self the very Tridentine Council hath not every where as yet obtained to have in all points the strength of Ecclesiastical Laws did not Philip King of Spain publishing that Council in the Low Countries adde thereunto an express clause of special provision that the same should in no wise prejudice hurt or diminish any kinde of Priviledge which the King or his Vassals a fore-time had enjoyed touching either possessory Judgements of Ecclesiastical Livings or concerning nominations thereunto or belonging to whatsoever right they had else in such Affairs If therefore the Kings exception taken against some part of the Canons contained in that Council were a sufficient barr to make them of none effect within his Territories it followeth that the like exception against any other part had been also of like efficacy and so consequently that no part therof had obtained the strength of a Law if he which excepted against a part had so done against the whole as what reason was there but that the same Authority which limited might quite and clean have refused that Council who so alloweth the said Act of the Catholick Kings for good and
lawful must grant that the Canons even of General Councils have but the face of Wise-mens opinions concerning that whereof they-treat till they be publickly assented unto where they are to take place as Laws and that in giving such publick assent as maketh a Christian Kingdome subject unto those Laws the King's authority is the chiefest That which an University of Men a Company or Corporation doth without consent of their Rector is as nothing Except therefore we make the King's Authority over the Clergy less in the greatest things than the power of the meanest Governour is in all things over the Colledge or Society which is under him how should we think it a matter decent that the Clergy should impose Laws the Supream Governours assent not asked Yea that which is more the Laws thus made God himself doth in such sort authorize that to despise them is to despise in them him It is a loose and licentious opinion which the Anabaptists have embraced holding that a Christian man's liberty is lost and the Soul which Christ hath redeemed unto himself injuriously drawn into servitude under the Yoke of Human power if any Law be now imposed besides the Gospel of Christ in obedience whereunto the Spirit of God and not the constraint of men is to lead us according to that of the blessed Apostle Such as are led by the Spirit of God they are the Sons of God and not such as live in thraldom unto men Their Judgement is therefore That the Church of Christ should admit of no Law-makers but the Evangelists no Courts but Presbyteries no Punishments but Ecclesiastical censures As against this sort we are to maintain the use of Human laws and the continual necessity of making them from time to time as long as this present World doth last so likewise the Authority of Laws so made doth need much more by us to be strengthened against another sort who although they do utterly condemn the making of Laws in the Church yet make they a great deal less account of them than they should do There are which think simply of Human laws that they can in no sort touch the Conscience That to break and transgress them cannot make men in the sight of God culpable as Sin doth onely when we violate such Laws we do thereby make our selves obnoxious unto external punishment in this World so that the Magistrate may in regard of such offence committed justly correct the Offender and cause him without injury to endure such pains as Law doth appoint but further it reacheth not For first the Conscience is the proper Court of God the guiltiness thereof is Sin and the punishment Eternal death men are not able to make any Law that shall command the Heart it is not in them to make Inward-conceit a Crime or to appoint for any crime other punishment than corporal their Laws therefore can have no power over the Soul neither can the heart of man be polluted by transgressing them St. Austine rightly desineth Sin to be that which is spoken done or desired not against any Laws but against the Law of the Living God The Law of God is proposed unto Man as a Glass wherein to behold the stains and the spots of their sinful Souls By it they are to judge themselves and when they feel themselves to have transgressed against it then to bewail their offences with David Against thee onely O Lord have I sinned and done wickedly in thy sight that so our present tears may extinguish the flames which otherwise we are to feel and which of God in that day shall condemn the Wicked unto when they shall render account of the Evil which they have done not by violating Statute-Laws and Canons but by disobedience unto his Law and his Word For our better instruction therefore concerning this point first we must note That the Law of God it self doth require at our hands Subjection Be ye subject saith S. Peter and S. Paul Let every Soul be subject subject all unto such Powers as are set over us For if such as are not set over us require our subjection we by denying it are not disobedient to the Law of God or undutiful unto Higher Powers Because though they be such in regard of them over whom they have lawful Dominion yet having not so over us unto us they are not such Subjection therefore we owe and that by the Law of God we are in Conscience bound to yield it even unto every of them that hold the seats of Authority and Power in relation unto us Howbeit not all kindes of subjection unto every such kinde of Power concerning Scribes and Pharisees our Saviour's Precept was Whatsoever they shall tell ye do it Was it his meaning that if they should at any time enjoyn the People to levy an Army or to sell their Lands and Goods for the furtherance of so great an enterprize and in a word that simply whatsoever it were which they did command they ought without any exception forth-with to be obeyed No but whatsoever they shall tell you must be understoud in pertinentibus ad Cathedram it must be construed with limitation and restrained unto things of that kinde which did belong to their place and power For they had not Power general absolutely given them to command all things The reason why we are bound in Conscience to be subject unto all such Power is because all Powers are of God They are of God either instituting or permitting them Power is then of Divine institution when either God himself doth deliver or men by light of nature finde out the kinde thereof So that the power of Parents over Children and of Husbands over their Wives the power of all sorts of Superiors made by consent of Common-wealths within themselves or grown from agreement amongst Nations such power is of God's own Institution in respect of the kinde thereof Again if respect be had unto those particular Persons to whom the same is derived if they either receive it immediately from God as Moses and Aaron did or from nature as Parents do or from men by a natural and orderly course as every Governor appointed in any Common wealth by the order thereof doth then is not the kinde of their Power only of God's instituting but the derivation thereof also into their Persons is from him He hath placed them in their rooms and doth term them his Ministers Subjection therefore is due unto all such Powers inasmuch as they are of God's own institution even then when they are of man's creation Omni Humanae Creaturae Which things the Heathens themselves do acknowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As for them that exercise Power altogether against Order although the kinde of Power which they have may be of God yet is their exercise thereof against God and therefore not of God otherwise than by Permission as all Injustice is Touching such Acts as are done by that power which is according to
that Church never knew the meaning of her Heresies So that although all Popish Hereticks did perish thousands of them which lived in Popish Superstitions might be saved Thirdly seeing all that held Popish Heresies did not hold all the Heresies of the Pope why might not thousands which were infected with other leaven live and die unsowred with this and so be saved Fourthly If they all held this Heresie many there were that held it no doubt but onely in a general form of words which a favourable Interpretation might expound in a sense differing far enough from the poysoned conceit of Heresie As for example Did they hold that we cannot be saved by Christ without good works We our selves do I think all say as much with this Construction salvation being taken as in that sentence Corde creditur ad justitiam Ore fit confessio ad salutem except Infants and Men cut off upon the point of their conversion of the rest none shall see God but such as seek peace and holiness though not as a Cause of their salvation yet as a Way which they must walk which will be saved Did they hold that without works we are not justified Take justification so as it may also imply sanctification and St. Iames doth say as much For except there be an ambiguity in the same term St. Paul and St. Iames do contradict each the other which cannot be Now there is no ambiguity in the name either of Faith or of Works being meant by them both in one and the same sense Finding therefore that Justification is spoken of by St Paul without implying Sanctification when he proveth that a man is justified by faith without works finding likewise that justification doth sometime imply sanctification also with it I suppose nothing to be more sound then so to interpret St Iames speaking not in that sense but in this 21. We have already shewed that there be two kinds of Christian righteousness the one without us which we have by imputation the other in us which consisteth of faith hope and charity and other Christian Vertues And S. Iames doth prove that Abraham had not onely the one because the thing believed was imputed unto him for righteousness but also the other because he offered up his Son God giveth us both the one justice and the other the one by accepting us for righteous in Christ the other by working Christian righteousness in us The proper and most immediate efficient cause in us of this latter is the Spirit of adoption we have received into our hearts That whereof it consisteth whereof it is really and formally made are those infused vertues proper and peculiar unto Saints which the Spirit in the very moment when first it is given of God bringeth with it the effects whereof are such actions as the Apostle doth call the fruits of works the operation of the Spirit The difference of the which operations from the root whereof they spring maketh it needful to put two kinds likewise of sanctifying righteousness Habitual and Actual Habitual that holiness wherewith our souls are inwardly indued the same instant when first we begin to be the Temples of the Holy Ghost Actual that holiness which afterwards beautifieth all the parts and actions of our life the holiness for which Enoch Iob Zachary Elizabeth and other Saints are in the Scriptures so highly commended If here iâ— he demanded which of these we do first receive I answer that the Spirit the vertue of the spirit the habitual justice which is ingrafted the external justice of Jesus Christ which is imputed these we receive all at one and the same time whensoever we have any of these we have all they go together Yet sith no man is justified except he believe and no man believeth except he hath Faith and no man except he hath received the spirit of Adoption hath Faith forasmuch as they do necessarily infer justification and justification doth of necessity presuppose them we must needs hold that imputed righteousness in dignity being the chiefest is notwithstanding in order to the last of all these but Actual righteousness which is the righteousness of good works succeedeth all followeth after all both in order and time Which being attentivly marked sheweth plainly how the faith of true Believers cannot be divorced from hope and loveâ— how faith is a part of sanctification and yet unto justification necessary how faith is perfected by good works and not works of ours without faith Finally how our Fathers might hold that we are justified by Faith alone and yet hold truly that without works we are not justified Did they think that men do merit rewards in heaven by the works they perform on earth The Ancients use meriting for obtaining and in that sense they of Wittenberg have it in their Confession We teach that good works commanded of God are necessarily to be done and by the free kindness of God they merit their certain rewards Therefore speaking as our Fathers did and we taking their speech in a â—ound meaning as we may take our Fathers and might for as much as their meaning is doubtful and charity doth always interpret doubtful things favourably what should induce as to think that rather the damage of the worst construction did light upon them all then that the blessing of the better was granted unto thousands Fiftly if in the worst construction that may be made they had generally all imbraced it living might not many of them dying utterly renounce it Howsoever men when they sit at ease do vainly tickle their hearts with the vain conceit of I know not what proportionable correspondence between their merits and their rewards which in the trance of their high speculations they dream that God hath measured weighed and laid up as it were in bundles for them notwithstanding we see by daily experience in a number even of them that when the hour of death approacheth when they secretly hear themselves summoned forthwith to appear and stand at the Bar of that Judge whose brightness causeth the eyes of the Angels themselves to dazel all these idle imaginations do then begin to hide their faces to name merits then is to lay their souls upon the rack the memory of their own deeds is lothsome unto them they forsake all things wherein they have put any trust or confidence no staff to lean upon no ease no rest no comfort then but onely in Jesus Christ. 22. Wherefore if this proposition were true To hold in such wise as the Church of Rome doth that we cannot be saved by Christ alone without works is directly to deny the foundation of Faith I say that if this proposition were true nevertheless so many ways I have shewed whereby we may hope that thousands of our Fathers which lived in popish superstition might be saved But what if it be not true What if neither that of the Galathians concerning Circumcision nor this of the Church of Rome by Workes be
Faith as we trust by his mercy we our selves are I permit it to your wise considerations whether it be more likely that as frenzy though it take away the use of reason doth notwithstanding prove them reasonable Creatures which have it because none can be frantick but they So Antichristianity being the bane and plain overthrow of Christianity may neverthelesse argue the Church where Antichrist sitteth to be Christian Neither have I ever hitherto heard or read any one word alledged of force to warrant that God doth otherwise than so as in the two next Questions before hath been declared binde himself to keep his Elect from worshipping the Beast and from receiving his mark in their foreheads but he hath preserved and will preserve them from receiving any deadly wound at the hands of the Man of Sinne whose deceit hath prevailed over none unto death but onely unto such as never loved the Truth such as took pleasure in unrighteousnesse They in all ages whose hearts have delighted in the principal Truth and whose Souls have thirsted after righteousness if they received the mark of Errour the mercy of God even erring and dangerously erring might save them if they received the mark of Heresie the same mercy did I doubt not convert them How farr Romish Heresies may prevail over God's Elect how many God hath kept falling into them how many have been converted from them is not the question now in hand for if Heaven had not received any one of that coat for these thousand years it may still be true that the Doctrine which this day they do professe doth not directly deny the foundation and so prove them simply to be no Christian Church One I have alleadged whose words in my ears sound that way shall I adde another whose speech is plain I deny her not the name of a Church saith another no more than to a man the name of a man as long as he liveth what sicknesse soever he hath His Reason is this Salvation is Iesus Christ which is the mark which joyneth the Head with the Body Iesus Christ with the Church is so cut off by many merits by the merits of Saints by the Popes Pardons and such other wickednesse that the life of the Church boldeth by a very thred yet still the life of the Church holdeth A third hath these words I acknowledge the Church of Rome even at this present day for a Church of Christ such a Church as Israel did Jeroboam yet a Church His reason is this Every man seeth except he willingly hoodwink himself that as alwayes so now the Church of Rome holdeth firmly and stedfastly the Doctrine of Truth concerning Christ and baptizeth in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost confesseth and avoucheth Christ for the onely Redeemer of the World and the Iudge that shall sit upon quick and dead receiving true Believers into endless joy faithless and godless men being cast with Satan and his Angels into flames unquenchable 28. I may and will rein the question shorter than they doe Let the Pope take down his top and captivate no more mens Souls by his Papal Jurisdiction let him no longer count himself Lord Paramount over the Princes of the World no longer hold Kings as his Servants paravaile Let his stately Senate submit their Necks to the yoke of Christ and cease to die their Garments like Edom in Blood Let them from the highest to the lowest hate and forsake their Idolatry abjure all their Errours and Heresies wherewith they have any way perverted the truth Let them strip their Churches till they leave no polluted ragg but onely this one about her By Christ alone without works we cannot be saved It is enough for me if I shew that the holding of this one thing doth not prove the foundation of Faith directly denied in the Church of Rome 29. Works are an addition Be it so what then the foundation is not subverted by every kinde of addition Simply to adde unto those fundamental words is not to mingle Wine with Water Heaven and Earth things polluted with the sanctified blood of Christ Of which Crime indict them which attribute those operations in whole or in part to any Creature which in the work of our Salvation wholly are peculiar unto Christ and If I open my mouth to speak in their defence if I hold my peace and plead not against them as long as breath is within my Body let me be guilty of all the dishonor that ever hath been done to the Son of God But the more dreadful a thing it is to deny salvation by Christ alone the more slow and fearful I am except it be too manifest to lay a thing so grievous to any man's charge Let us beware lest if we make too many ways of denying Christ we scarce leave any way for our selves truly and soundly to confess him Salvation only by Christ is the true foundation whereupon indeed Christianity standeth But what if I say You cannot besaved only by Christ without this addition Christ believed in heart confessed with mouth obeyed in life and conversation Because I adde do I therefore deny that which I did directly affirm There may be an additament of explication which overthroweth not but proveth and concludeth the Proposition whereunto it is annexed He which saith Peter was a Chief Apostle doth prove that Peter was an Apostle He which saith Our Salvation is of the Lord through Sanctification of the Spirit and Faith of the Truth proveth that our Savation is of the Lord. But if that which is added be such a privation as taketh away the very essence of that whereunto it is added then by the sequel it overthroweth it He which saith Iudas is a dead man though in word he granteth Iudas to be a man yet in effect he proveth him by that very speech no man because death depriveth him of being In like sort he that should say our Election is of Grace for our Works sake should grant in sound of words but indeed by consequent deny that our Election is of Grace for the Grace which electeth us is no Grace if it elect us for our Works sake 30. Now whereas the Church of Rome addeth Works we must note further that the adding of Works is not like the adding of Circumcision unto Christ Christ came not to abrogate and put away good Works he did to change Circumcision for we see that in place thereof he hath substituted holy Baptism To say Ye cannot be saved by Christ except ye be circumcised is to adde a thing excluded a thing not only not necessary to be kept but necessary not to be kept by them that will be saved On the other side to say Ye cannot be saved by Christ without Works is to add things not only not excluded but commanded as being in their place and in their kinde necessary and therefore subordinated unto Christ by Christ himself by whom
what it is to sit in the shadow of death A grieved spirit therefore is no argument of a faithless minde A third occasion of mens mis-judging themselves as if they were faithless when they are not is They fasten their cogitations upon the distrustful suggestions of the flesh whereof finding great abundance in themselves they gather thereby surely unbelief hath full dominion it hath taken plenary possession of me if I were faithful it could not be thus Not marking the motions of the Spirit and of Faith because they lye buried and over-whelmed with the contrary when notwithstanding as the blessed Apostle doth acknowledge that the Spirit groaneth and that God heareth when we do not so there is no doubt but that our Faith may have and hath her private operations secret to us yet known to him by whom they are Tell this to a man that hath a minde deceived by too hard an opinion of himself and it doth but augment his grief he hath his answer ready Will you make me think otherwise than I finde than I feel in my self I have throughly considered and exquisitely sifted all the corners of my heart and I see what there is never seek to perswade me against my knowledge I do not I know I do not believe Well to favour them a little in their weakness let that be granted which they do imagine be it that they be faithless and without belief But are they not grieved for their unbelief They are Do they not wish it might and also strive that it may be otherwise We know they do Whence commeth this but from a secret love and liking which they have of those things that are believed No man can love things which in his own opinion are not And if they think those things to be which they shew that they love when they desire to believe them then must it needs be that by desiring to believe they prove themselves true Believers For without Faith no man thinketh that things believed are Which argument all the subtilty of infernal powers will never be able to dissolve The Faith therefore of true Believers though it hath many and grievous down-falls yet doth it still continue invincible it conquereth and recovereth it self in the end The dangerous conflicts whereunto it is subject are not able to prevail against it The Prophet Habakkuk remained faithful in weakness though weak in Faith It is true such is our weak and wavering nature we have no sooner received Grace but we are ready to fall from it we have no sooner given our assent to the Law that it cannot fall but the next conceit which we are ready to embrace is that it may and that it doth fail Though we finde in our selves a most willing heart to cleave unseparably unto God even so farr as to think unfeignedly with Peter Lord I am ready to go with thee into Prison and to death yet how soon and how easily upon how small occasions are we changed if we be but a while let alone and left unto our selves The Galatians to day for their sakes which teach them the truth of Christ are content if need were to pluck out their own eyes and the next day ready to pluck out theirs which taught them The love of the Angel to the Church of Ephesus how greatly enflamed and how quickly slacked the higher we flow the nearer we are unto an ebb if men be respected as mere men according to the wonted course of their alterable inclination without the heavenly support of the Spirit Again the desire of our ghostly enemy is so incredible and his means so forcible to over-throw our Faith that whom the blessed Apostle knew betrothed and made hand-fast unto Christ to them he could not write but with great trembling I am jealous over you with a godly jealousie for I have prepared you to one Husband to present you a pure Virgin unto Christ but I fear lest at the Serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty so your mindes should be corrupted from the simplicity which is in Christ. The simplicity of Faith which is in Christ taketh the naked promise of God his bare Word and on that it resteth This simplicity the Serpent laboureth continually to pervert corrupting the mind with many imaginations of repugnancy and contrariety between the promise of God and those things which sense or experience or some other fore-conceived perswasion hath imprinted The word of the promise of God unto his People is I will not leave thee nor forsake thee upon this the simplicity of Faith resteth and is not afraid of famine But mark how the subtilty of Satan did corrupt the mindes of that Rebellious generation whose Spirits were not faithful unto God They beheld the desolate state of the desart in which they were and by the wisdom of their sense concluded the promise of God to be but folly Can God prepare a Table in the Wildernesse The word of the promise to Sarah was Thou shalt bear a Son Faith is simple and doubteth not of it but Satan to corrupt this simplicity of Faith entangleth the mind of the Woman with an argument drawn from common experience to the contrary A woman that is old Sarah now to be acquainted again with forgotten passions of youth The word of the promise of God by Moses and the Prophets made the Saviour of the World so apparent unto Philip that his simplicity could conceive no other Messias than Iesus of Nazareth the Son of Ioseph But to stay Nathaniel left being invited to come and see he should also believe and so be saved the subtilty of Satan casteth a mist before his eyes putteth in his head against this the common conceived perswasion of all men concerning Nzaareth Is it possible that any good thing should come from thence this stratagem he doth use with so great dexterity that the minds of all men are so strangely bewitched with it that it bereaveth them for the time of all perceivance of that which should relieve them and be their comfort yea it taketh all remembrance from them even of things wherewith they are most familiarly acquainted The people of Israel could not be ignorant that he which led them through the Sea was able to feed them in the Desâ—rt but this was obliterated and put out by the sense of their present want Feeling the hand of God against them in their food they remember not his hand in the day that he delivered them from the hand of the Oppressour Sarah was not then to learn That with God all things were possible Had Nathaniel never noted how God doth chuse the base things if this World to disgrace them that are most honourably esteemed The Prophet Habakkuk knew that the promises of Grace protection and favour which God in the Law doth make unto his People do not grant them any such immunity as can free and exempt them from all chastisements he knew that as God said I will continue for ever my
Apostle speaks not as Baronius would have it washed from sins with holy water but pure that is holy free from the pollution of sin as the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth signifie You may also see here refused those calumnies of the Papists that we abandon all religious Rites and godly duties as also the confirmation of our Doctrine touching certainty of Faith and so of Salvation which is so strongly denied by some of that Faction that they have told the world S. Paul himself was uncertain of his own salvation What then shall we say but pronounce a wo to the most strict observers of St. Francis rules and his Canonical Discipline though they make him even equal with Christ and the most meritorious Monk that ever was registred in their Kalender of Saints But we for our comfort are otherwise taught out of the holy Scripture and therefore exhorted to build our selves in our most holy Faith that so when our earthly house of this Tabernacle shall be destroyed we may have a Building given of God a house not made with hands but eternal in the Heavens This is that which is most piously and feelingly taught in these few leaves so that you shall read nothing here but what I perswade my self you have long practiâ—ed in the constant course of your life It remaineth only that you accept of these Labours tendred to you by him who wisheth you the long joys of this world and the eternal of that which is to come Oxon. from Corp. Christi Colledge this 13. of Ianuary 1613. TWO SERMONS Upon Part of Saint Judes Epistle The First Sermon Epist. JUDE Verse 17 18 19 20 21. But ye beloved remember the words which were spoken before of the Apostles of our Lord Iesus Christ How that they told you that there should be Mockers in the last time which should walk after their own ungodly lusts These are makers of Sects fleshly having not the Spirit But ye beloved edifie your selves in your most holy Faith praying in the Holy Ghost And keep your selves in the love of God looking for the mercy of our Lord Iesus Christ unto eternal life THE occasions whereupon together with the end wherefore this Epistle was written is opened in the front and entry of the same There were then as there are now many evil and wickedly disposed Persons not of the Mystical Body yet within the visible bounds of the Church men which were of old ordained to condemnation ungodly men which turned the grace of our God into wantonness and denyed the Lord Jesus For this cause the Spirit of the Lord is in the hand of Iude the Servant of Iesus and Brother of Iames to exhort them that are called and sanctified of God the Father that they would earnestly contend to maintain the Faith which was once delivered unto the Saints Which Faith because we cannot maintain except we know perfectly first against whom secondly in what sort it must be maintained therefore in the former three verses of that parcel of Scripture which I have read the Enemies of the Crosse of Christ are plainly described and in the latter two they that love the Lord Jesus have a sweet Lesson given them how to strengthen and stablish themselves in the Faith Let us first therefore examine the description of these Reprobates concerning Faith and afterwards come to the words of the Exhortation wherein Christians are taught how to rest their hearts on God's eternal and everlasting Truth The description of these godless Persons is two-fold general and special The general doth point them out and shew what manner of men they should be The Particular pointeth at them and saith plainly These are they In the general description we have to consider of these things First when they were described They were told of before Secondly the men by whom they were described They were spoken of by the Apostles of our Lord Iesus Christ. Thirdly the days when they should be manifest unto the World they told you They should be in the last time Fourthly their disposition and whole demeanour Mockers and Walkers after their own ungodly lusts 2. In the third to the Philippians the Apostle describeth certain They are men saith he of whom I have told you often and now with tears I tell you of them their God is their belly their glory and rejoycing is in their own shame they minde earthly things These were Enemies of the Crosse of Christ Enemies whom he saw and his eyes gusht out with tears to behold them But we are taught in this place how the Apostles spake also of Enemies whom as yet they had not seen described a family of men as yet unheard of a generation reserved for the end of the World and for the last time they had not only declared what they heard and saw in the days wherein they lived but they have prophesied also of men in time to come And you do well said St. Peter in that ye take heed to the words of Prophesie so that ye first know this that no Prophesie in the Scripture cometh of any man 's own resolution No Prophesie in Scripture cometh of any man 's own resolution For all Prophesie which is in Scripture came by the secret inspiration of God But there are Prophesies which are no Scripture yea there are Prophesies against the Scripture My Brethren beware of such Prophesies and take heed you heed them not Remember the things that were spoken of before but spoken of before by the Apostles of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Take heed to Prophesies but to Prophesies which are in Scripture for both the manner and matter of those Prophesies do shew plainly that they are of God 3. Touching the manner how men by the spirit of Prophesie in holy Scripture have spoken and written of things to come we must understand that as the knowledge of that they spake so likewise the utterance of that they knew came not by these usual and ordinary means whereby we are brought to understand the mysteries of our Salvation and are wont to instruct others in the same For whatsoever we know we have it by the hands and Ministry of men which lead us along like Children from a letter to a syllable from a syllable to a word from a word to a line from a line a to a sentence from a sentence to a side and so turn over But God himself was their Instructor he himself taught them partly by Dreams and Visions in the Night partly by Revelations in the Day taking them aside from amongst their Brethren and talking with them as a man would talk with his Neighbour in the way This they became acquainted even with the secret and hidden Counsels of God they saw things which themselves were not able to utter they behold that whereat men and Angels are astonished They understood in the beginning what should come to passe in the last dayes 4. God
which lightned thus the eyes of their understanding giving them knowledge by unusual and extraordinary means did also miraculously himself frame and fashion their Words and Writings in so much that a greater difference there seemeth not to be between the manner of their knowledge than there is between the manner of their speech and ours When we have conceived a thing in our hearts and throughly understand it as we think within our selves â—re we can utter in such sort that our Brethren may receive instruction or comfort at our mouths how great how long how earnest meditation are we forced to use And after much travail and much pains when we open our lips to speak of the wonderful works of God our tongues do faulter within our mouths yea many times we disgrace the dreadful mysteries of our Faith and grieve the spirit of our Hearers by words unsavoury and unseemly speeches Shall a Wise-man fill his Belly with the Eastern winde saith Eliphaz shall a Wise-man dispute with words not comely or with talk that is not profitable Yet behold even they that are wisest amongst us living compared with the Prophets seem no otherwise to talk of God than as if the Children which are carried in arms should speak of the greatest matters of State They whose words do most shew forth their wise understanding and whose lips do utter the purest knowledge so long as they understand and speak as men are they not fain sundry ways to excuse themselves Sometimes acknowledging with the Wise-man Hardly can we discern the things that are on earth and with great labour finde we out the things that are before us Who can then seek out the things that are in Heaven Sometimes confessing with Iob the righteous in treating of things too wonderful for us we have spoken we wist not what Sometimes ending their talk as doth the History of the Macchabees if we have done well and as the Cause required it is that we desire if we have spoken slenderly and barely we have done we could But God hath made my mouth like a sword saith Esay And we have received saith the Apostle not the spirit of the World but the spirit which is of God that we might know the things that are given to us of God which things also we speak not in words which man's wisdom teacheth but which the Holy Ghost doth teach This is that which the Prophets mean by those Books written full within and without which Books were so often delivered them to eat not because God fed them with Ink and Paper but to teach us that so oft as he imployed them in this heavenly Work they neither spake nor wrote any word of their own but uttered syllable by syllable as the Spirit put it into their mouths no otherwise than the Harp or the Lute doth give a sound according to the discretion of his hands that holdeth and striketh it with skill The difference is only this An instrument whether it be a Pipe or Harp maketh a distinction in the times and sounds which distinction is well perceived of the Hearer the Instrument it self understanding not what is Piped or Harped The Prophets and holy men of God not so I opened my mouth saith Ezekiel and God reached me a scroul saying Son of man cause thy Belly to eat and fill thy Bowels with this I give thee I ate it and it was sweet in my mouth as honey saith the Prophet Yea sweeter I am perswaded than either honey or the honey comb For herein they were not like Harps or Lutes but they felt they felt the power and strength of their own words When they spake of our peace every corner of their hearts was filled with joy When they prophesied of mournings lamentations and woes to fall upon us they wept in the bitterness and indignation of Spirit the arm of the Lord being mighty and strong upon them 5. On this manner were all the Prophesie of holy Scripture Which Prophesies although they contain nothing which is not profitable for our instruction yet as one Star differeth from another in glory so every word of Prophesie hath a treasure of matter in it but all matters are not of like importance as all Treasures are not of equal price The chief and principal matter of Prophesie is the promise of Righteousness Peace Holiness Glory Victory Immortality unto every Soul which believeth that Jesus is Christ of the Iew first and of the Gentile Now because the doctrine of Salvation to be looked for by Faith in him who was in outward appearance as it had been a man forsaken of God in him who was numbred judged and condemned with the wicked in him whom men did see busseted on the face scofft at by Souldiers scourged by Tormentors hanged on the Cross pierced to the Heart in him whom the eyes of many Witnesses did behold when the anguish of his Soul enforced him to roar as if his heart had rent in sunder O my God my God why hast thou forsaken me I say because the doctrine of Salvation by him is a thing improbable to a natural man that whether we preach to the Gentile or to the Jew the one condemneth our Faith as madnesse the other as Blasphemy therefore to establish and confirm the certainty of this saving Truth in the hearts of men the Lord together with their Preachings whom he sent immediately from himself to reveal these things unto the World mingled Prophesies of things both Civil and Ecclesiastical which were to come in every age from time to time till the very last of the latter dayes that by those things wherein we see daily their words fulfilled and done we might have strong consolation in the hope of things which are not seen because they have revealed as well the one as the other For when many things are spoken of before in Scripture whereof we see first one thing accomplished and then another and so a third perceive we not plainly that God doth nothing else but lead us along by the hand till he have settled us upon the rock of an assured hope that not one jot or tittle of his Word shall pass till all be fulfilled It is not therefore said in vain that these godless wicked ones were spoken of before 6. But by whom By them whose words if men or Angels from Heaven gainsay they are accursed by them whom whosoever despiseth despiseth not them but me saith Christ. If any man therefore doth love the Lord Jesus and wo worth him that loveth not the Lord Jesus hereby we may know that he loveth him indeed if he despise not the things that are spoken of by his Apostles whom many have despised even for the baseness and simpleness of their Persons For it is the property of fleshly and carnal men to honour and dishonour credit and discredit the words and deeds of every man according to that he wanteth or hath without If a man with gorgeous
apparel come amongst us although he be a Thief or a Murtherer for there are Thieves and Murtherers in gorgeous apparel be his heart whatsoever if his Coat be of Purple or Velvet or Tissue every one riseth up and all the reverend Solemnities we can use are too little But the man that serveth God is contemned and despised amongst us for his Poverty Herod speaketh in judgement and the People cry out The voyce of God and not of man Paul preacheth Christ they term him a Trifler Hearken beloved Hath not God chosen the Poor of this World that they should be rich in Faith Hath he not chosen the Reffuse of the World to be Heirs of his Kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him Hath he not chosen the Off-scowrings of Men to be the Lights of the World and the Apostles of Jesus Christ Men unlearned yet how fully replenished with understanding Few in number yet how great in power Contemptible in shew yet in Spirit how strong how wonderful I would faiâ—â— learn the mystery of the eternal generation of the Son of God saith Hilary Whom shall I seek Shall I get me to the Schools of the Grecians Why I have read Ubi Sapiens ubi Scriba ubi Conquisitor hujus saculi These Wise-men in the World must needs be dumbe in this because they have rejected the wisdom of God Shall I beseech the Scribes and Interpreters of the Law to become my Teachers how can they know this sith they are offended at the Cross of Christ It is death for me to be ignorant of the unsearchable mystery of the Son of God of which mystery notwithstanding I should have been ignorant but that a poor Fisher-man unknown unlearned new come from his Boat with his Cloaths wringing-wet hath opened his mouth and taught me In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God These poor silly Creatures have made us rich in the knowledge of the mysteries of Christ. 7. Remember therefore that which is spoken of by the Apostles Whose words if the Children of this World do not regard is it any marvail They are the Apostles of our Lord Jesus not of their Lord but of ours It is true which one hath said in a certain place Apostolicam sidem seculi homo non capit A man sworn to the World is not capable of that Faith which the Apostles do teach What mean the Children of this World then to tread in the Courts of our God What should your Bodies do at Bethel whose Hearts are at Bethaven The god of this World whom ye serve hath provided Apostles and Teachers for you Chaldeans Wizzards Sooth-sayers Astrologers and such like Hear them Tell not us that ye will sacrifice to the Lord our God if we will sacrifice to Ashtaroth or Melcom that ye will read our Scriptures if we will listen to your Traditions that if ye may have a Mass by permission we shall have a Communion with good leave and liking that ye will admit the things that are spoken of by the Apostles of our Lord Jesus if your Lord and Master may have his Ordinances observed and his Statutes kept Solomon took it as he well might for an evident proof that she did not bear a motherly affection to her Childe which yielded to have it cut in divers parts He cannot love the Lord Jesus with his heart which lendeth one ear to his Apostles and another to false Apostles which can brook to see a mingle-mangle of Religion and Superstition Ministers and Massing-Priests Light and Darkness Truth and Error Traditions and Scriptures No we have no Lord but Jesus no Doctrine but the Gospel no Teachers but his Apostles Were it reason to require at the hand of an English Subject obedience to the Laws and Edicts of the Spaniards I do marvel that any man bearing the name of a Servant of the Servants of Jesus Christ will go about to draw us from our Allegiance We are his sworn Subjects it is not lawful for us to hear the things that are not told us by his Apostles They have told us that in the last days there shall be Mockers therefore we believe it Credimus quia legimus We are so perswaded because we read it must be so If we did not read it we would not teach it Nam qua libro Legis non continentur ea nec nosse debemus saith Hilary Those things that are not written in the book of the Law we ought not so much as to be acquainted with them Remember the words which were spoken of before by the Apostles of our Lord Iesus Christ. 8. The third thing to be considered in the description of these men of whom we speak is the time wherein we should be manifested to the World They told you there should be mockers in the last time Noah at the commandement of God built an Ark and there were in it Beasts of all sorts clean and unclean A Husbandman planteth a Vineyard and looketh for Grapes but when they come to the gathering behold together with Grapes there are found also wilde Grapes A rich man prepareth a great Supper and biddeth many but when he sitteth him down he findeth amongst his Friends here and there a man whom he knoweth not This hath been the state of the Church â—it hence the beginning God always hath mingled his Saints with faithless and godless Persons as it were the clean with the unclean Grapes with sowre grapes his Friends and Children with Aliens and Strangers Marvel not then if in the last dayes also ye see the men with whom you live and walk arm in arm laugh at your Religion and blaspheme that glorious name whereof you are called Thus it was in the days of the Patriarks and Prophets and are we better than our Fathers Albeit we suppose that the blessed Apostles in foreshewing what manner of men were set out for the last dayes meant to note a calamity special and peculiar to the Ages and Generations which were to come As if he should have said As God hath appointed a time of Seed for the Sower and a time of Harvest for him that reapeth as he hath given unto every Herb and every Tree his own fruit and his own season not the season nor the fruit of another for no man looketh to gather Figgs in the Winter because the Summer is the season for them nor Grapes of Thistles because Grapes are the fruit of the Vine so the same God hath appointed sundry for every Generation of them other men for other times and for the last times the worst men as may appear by their properties which is the fourth point to be considered of in this description 9. They told you that there should be Mockers He meaneth men that shall use Religion as a Cloak to put off and on as the weather serveth such as shall with Herod hear the Preaching of Iohn Baptist to day
Now I taste nothing sweet but the Bread which came down from Heaven to give life unto the World Now mine eys see nothing but Jesus rising from the dead Now my ears refuse all kinde of melody to hear the Song of them that hath gotten victory of the Beast and of his Image and of his Mark and of the number of his Name that stand on the Sea of Glass having the Harps of God and singing the Song of Moses the Servant of God and the Song of the Lamb saying Great and marvellous are thy works Lord God Almighty just and true are thy wayes O King of Saints Surely if the Spirit have been thus effectual in the secret work of our Regeneration unto newness of life if we endeavour thus to frame our selves anew then we may say boldly with the blessed Apostle in the tenth to the Hebrews We are not of them which withdraw our selves to perdition but which follow Faith to the conservation of the Soul For they which fall away from the grace of God and separate themselves unto perdition they are fleshly and carnal they have not God's holy Spirit But unto you because ye are Sons God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts to the end ye might know that Christ hath built you upon a Rock unmoveable that he hath registred your names in the Book of life that he hath bound himself in a sure and everlasting Covenant to be your God and the God of your Children after you that he hath suffered as much groaned as oft prayed as heartily for you as for Peter O Father keep them in thy Name O Righteous Father the World hath not known thee but I have known thee and these have known that thou hast sent me I have declared thy name unto them and will declare it that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them The Lord of his infinite mercy give us hearts plentifully fraught with the treasure of this blessed assurance of Faith unto the end 15. Here I must advertise all men that have the testimony of God's holy fear within their Breasts to consider how unkindly and injuriously our own Countrey-men and Brethren have dealt with us by the space of four and twenty years from time to time as if we were the men of whom St. Iude here speaketh never ceasing to charge us some with Scism some with Heresie some with plain and manifest Apostasie as if we had clean separated our selves from Christ utterly forsaken God quite abjured Heaven and trampled all Truth and Religion under our feet Against this third sort God himself shall plead our Cause in that day when they shall answer us for these words nor we them To others by whom we are accused for Schism and Heresie we have often made our reasonable and in the sight of God I trust allowable Answers For in the way which they call Heresie we worship the God of our Fathers believing all things which are written in the Law and the Prophets That which they call Schism we know to be our reasonable service unto God and obedience to his voyce which cryeth shrill in our ears Go out of Babylon my People that you be not Partakers of her sinnes and that ye receive not of her Plagues And therefore when they rise up against us having no quarrel but this we need not seek any farther for our Apology than the words of Abiah to Iereboam and his Army 2 Chron. 13. O Ieroboam and Israel hear you me Ought you not to know that the Lord God of Israel hath given the Kingdom over Israel to David for ever even to him and to his Sons by a Covenant of Salt that is to say an everlasting Covenant Jesuits and Papists hear ye me ought you not to know that the Father hath given all power unto the Son and hath made him the onely Head over his Church wherein he dwelleth as an Husband-man in the midst of his Vineyard manuring it with the sweat of his own brows not letting it forth to others For as it is in the Canticles Solomon had a Vineyard in Baalhamon he gave the Vineyard unto Keepers every one bringing forth the fruit thereof a thousand pieces of Silver but my Vineyard which is mine is before me saith Christ. It is true this is meant of the Mystical Head set over the Body which is not seen But as he hath reserved the Mystical Administration of the Church invisible unto himself so he hath committed the Mystical Government of Congregations visible to the Sonnes of David by the same Covenant whose Sons they are in the governing of the Flock of Christ whomsoever the Holy Ghost hath set over them to go before them and to lead them in several Pastures one in this Congregation another in that as it is written Take heed unto your selves and to all the Flock whereof the Holy Ghost hath made you Overseers to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood Neither will ever any Pope or Papist under the Cope of Heaven be able to prove the Romish Bishop's usurped Supremacy over all Churches by any one word of the Covenant of Salt which is the Scripture For the Children in our streets do now laugh them to scorn when they force Thou art Peter to this purpose The Pope hath no more reason to draw the Charter of his universal Authority from hence than the Brethren had to gather by the words of Christ in the last of St. Iohn that the Disciple whom Jesus loved should not dye If I will that he â—arry till I come what is that to thee saith Christ. Straitways a report was raised amongst the Brethren that this Disciple should not dye Yet Jesus said not to him He shall not dye but If I will that he â—arry till I come what is that to thee Christ hath said in the sixteenth of St. Matthew's Gospel to Simon the Son of Ionas I say to thee Thou art Peter Hence an opinion is held in the World That the Pope is universal Head of all Churches Yet Jesus said not The Pope is universal Head of all Churches but Ta es Petrus Thou art Peter Howbeit as Ieroboam the son of Nebat the servant of Solomon rose up and rebelled against his Lord and there were gathered unto him vain men and wicked which made themselves strong against Roboam the son of Solomon because Roboam was but a Childe and tender-hearted and could not resist them So the Son of Perdition and Man of Sin being not able to brook the words of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ which forbad his Disciples to be like Princes of Nations They bear rule that are called Gracious it shall not be so with you hath risen up and rebelled against his Lord and to strengthen his arm he hath crept into the Houses almost of all the Noblest Families round about him and taken their
Children from the Cradle to be his Cardinals He hath fawned upon the Kings and Princes of the Earth and by Spiritual Cozenage hath made them sell their lawful Authority and Jurisdiction for Titles of Catholicus Christianissimus Defensor Fidei and such like he hath proclaimed sale of Pardons to inveigle the ignorant built Seminaries to allure young men desirous of Learning erected Stews to gather the dissolute unto him This is the Rock whereupon his Church is built Hereby the man is grown huge and strong like the Cedars which are not shaken with the winde because Princes have been as Children over-tender hearted and could not resist Hereby it is come to pass as you see this day that the Man of Sinne doth war against us not by men of a Language which we cannot understand but he cometh as Iereboam against Iudah and bringeth the fruit of our own Bodies to eat us up that the bowels of the Childe may be made the Mother's grave and hath caused no small number of our Brethren to forsake their Native Countrey and with all disloyalty to cast off the yoke of their Allegiance to our dread Soveraign whom God in mercy hath set over them for whose safeguard if they carried not the hearts of Tygers in the bosomes of men they would think the dearest blood in their Bodies well spent But now saith Abiah to Ieroboam Ye think ye be able to resist the Kingdom of the Lord which is in the hands of the Sonnes of David Ye be a great multitude the golden Calves are with you which Ieroboam made you for gods Have ye not driven away the Priests of the Lord the Sons of Aaron and the Levites and have made you Priests like the People of Nations Whosoever cometh with a young Bullock and seven Rams the same may be a Priest of them that are no gods If I should follow the Comparison and here uncover the Cup of those deadly and ugly Abominations wherewith this Ieroboam of whom we speak hath made the Earth so drunk that it hath retled under us I know your godly Hearts would loath to see them For my own part I delight not to take in such filth I had rather take a Garment upon my Shoulders and go with my face from them to cover them The Lord open their Eyes and cause them if it be possible at the length to see how they are wretched and miserable and poor and blinde and naked Put it O Lord in their hearts to seek white Rayment and to cover themselves that their filthy nakednesse may no longer appear For beloved in Christ we bow our Knees and lift up our hands to Heaven in our Chambers secretly and openly in our Churches we pray heartily and hourly even for them also though the Pope hath given out as a Judge in a solemn Declaratory Sentence of Excommunication against this Land That our gracious Lady hath quite abolished Prayers within her Realm and his Scholars whom he hath taken from the midst of us have in their published Writings charged us nor onely nor to have any holy Assemblies unto the Lord for Prayer but to hold a Common School of Sinne and Flattery to hold Sacriledge to be God's Service Unfaithfulnesse and breach of Promise to God to give it to a Strumpet to be a Vertue to abandon Fasting to abhor Confession to mislike with Penance to like well of Usury to charge none with restitution to finde no good before God in single life not in no well-working that all men as they fall to us are much worse and more than afore corrupted I do not add one word or syllable unto that which Mr. Bristow a man both born and sworn amongst us hath taught his hand to deliver to the view of all I appeal to the Conscience of every Soul that hath been truly converted by us Whether his heart were never raised up to God by our Preaching Whether the words of our Exhortation never wâ—â—â—g any tear of a penitent heart from his eys Whether his Soul never reaped any joy and comfort any consolation in Christ Jesus by our Sacraments and Prayers and Psalms and Thanksgiving Whether he were never bettered but always worsed by us O merciful God! If Heaven and Earth in this case do not witness with us and against them let us be razed out from the Land of the Living Let the Earth on which we stand swallow us quick as it hath done Corah Dathan and Abiram But if we belong unto the Lord our God and have not forsaken him if our Priests the Sons of Aaron minister unto the Lord and the Levites in their Office if we offer unto the Lord every morning and every evening the Burnt-offerings and sweet Incense of Prayers and Thanksgiving if the Bread be set in order upon the pure Table and the Candlestick of Gold with the Lamps thereof burn every morning that is to say if amongst us God's blessed Sacraments be duly administred his holy Word sincerely and daily preached if we keep the Watch of the Lord our God and if ye have forsaken him then doubt ye not this God is with us as a Captain his Priests with sounding Trumpets must cry alarm against you O ye Children of Israel fight not against the Lord God of your Fathers for ye shall not prosper THE SECOND SERMON Epist. JUDE Verse 17 18 19 20 21. But ye beloved remember the words which were spoken before of the Apostles of our Lord Iesus Christ How that they told you that there should be Mockers in the last time which should walk after their own ungodly lusts These are makers of Sects fleshly having not the Spirit But ye beloved edifie your selves in your most holy Faith praying in the Holy Ghost And keep your selves in the love of God looking for the mercy of our Lord Iesus Christ unto eternal life HAving otherwhere spoken of the words of Saint Iude going next before concerning Mockers which should come in the last time and Backsliders which even then should fall away from the Faith of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ I am now by the aide of Almighty God and through the assistance of his good Spirit to lay before you the words of Exhortation which I have read 2. Wherein first of all whosoever hath an eye to see let him open it and he shall well perceive how careful the Lord is for his Children how desirous to see them profit and grow up to a manly stature in Christ how loath to have them any way mis-led either by examples of the wicked or by inticements of the world and by provocation of the flesh or by any other means forcible to deceive them and likely to estrange their hearts from God For God is not at that point with us that he careth not whether we sink or swim No he hath written our names in the Palm of his Hand in the Signet upon his Finger are we graven in Sentences not onely of Mercy but
of Judgement also we are remembred He never denounceth Judgments against the Wicked but he maketh some Proviso for his Children as it were for some certain priviledged Persons Touch not mine Anointed do my Prophets no harm Hurt not the Earth nor the Sea nor the Trees till we have sealed the Servants of God in their Foreheads He never speaketh of godless men but he adjoyneth words of comfort or admonition or exhortation whereby we are moved to rest and settle our hearts on him In the second to Timothy the third Chapter Evil men saith the Apostle and deceivers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and bring deceived But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned And in the first â—â— Timothy the sixt Chapter Some â—â—â—â— lusting after man â—â— have erred drown he Faith and pearced themselves thorgâ— with many â—â—rrows â—â—â—â— thou O man of God â—â—y these â—â—â— things and follow after righteousnesse godlinesse faith love patience meeknesse In the second to the Thessalonians the second Chapter They have not deceived the love of the Truth that they might be saved God shall send them strong delusions that they may believe lies But we ought to give thanks alway to God for you Brethren beloved of the Lord because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctifications of the Spirit and faith in the Truth And in this Epistle of St. Iude There shall come Mockers in the last time walking after their own ungodly lusts But believed edifie ye your selves in your most holy Faith 3. These sweet Exhortations which God putteth every where in the mouths of the Prophets and Apostles of Jesus Christ are evident tokens that God sitteth nor in Heaven carelesse and unmindful of our estate Can a Mother forget her Childe Surely a Mother will hardly forget her Childe But if a Mother be haply found unnatural and do forget the fruit of her own Womb yet God's judgements shew plainly that he cannot forget the man whose heart he hath framed and fashioned a new in simplicity and truth to serve and fear him For when the wickednesse of man was so great and the Earth so filled with cruelties that it could not stand with the righteousness of God any longer to forbear wrathful sentences brake out from him like Wine from a Vessel that hath no vent My Spirit saith he can struggle and strive no longer an end of all flesh is come before me Yet then did Noah finde grace in â— of the Lord I will establish my Covenant with thee saith God thou shots go into the Ark thou and thy sons and thy wife and thy sons wives with thee 4. Do we not see what shift God doth make for Lot and for his Family in the â—â— of Genesis lest the fiery destruction of the wicked should overtake him Over-night the Angels make enquiry what Sons and Daughters or Sons in law what wealâ—â— and substance he had They charge him to carry out all Whatsoever thou hast in the City bring it out God seemeth to stand in a kinde of fear lest some thing or other would be left behinde And his will was that nothing of that which he had nor an hoof of any Beast not a thred of any Garment should be findged with that fire Iâ— the morning the Angels fail not to call him up and to hasten him forward Arise take thy Wife and thy Daughters which are here that they be noâ— destroyed in the punishment of the City The Angels having spoken again and again Lot for all this lingereth out the time still till at the length they were forced to take both him and his wife and his daughters by the arms the Lord being merciful unto him and to carry them forth and set them without the City 5. Was there ever any Father thus careful to save his Childe from the â—lame A man would think that now being spoken unto to escape for his life and not to look behind him nor to â—arry in the Plain but to hasten to the Mountain and there to save himself he should do it gladly Yet behold now he is so far off from a chearful and willing heart to do whatsoever is commanded him for his own weal that he beginneth to reason the matter as if God had mistaken one place for another sending him to the â—â— when salvation was in the City Not so my Lord I beseech thee Behold thy Servant hath found grace in thy sight and thou hast magnified thy mercy which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life I cannot escape in the Mountain lest some evil take me and I dye Here is a City hard by a small thing O let me escape thither is it not a small thing and my Soul shall live Well God is contended to yield to any conditions Behold I have recived thy request concerning this thing also I will spare this City for which thou hast spoken haste thee save thee there For I can do nothing till thou come thither 6. He could do nothing Not because of the weaknesse of his strength for who is like unto the Lord in power but because of the greatness of his Mercy which would not suffer him to lift up his arm against that City nor to pour out his wrath upon that place where his righteous Servant had a fancy to remain and a desire to dwell O the depth of the riches of the mercy and love of God! God is afraid to offend us which are not afraid to displease him God can do nothing till he have saved us which can finde in our hearts rather to do any thing than to serve him It contenteth him not to exempt us when the Pit is digged for the Wicked to comfort us at every mention which is made of Reprobates and godlesse men to save us as the apple of his own eye when fire cometh down from Heaven to consume the Inhabitants of the Earth except every Prophet and every Apostle and every Servant whom he sendeth forth do come loaden with these or the like exhortations O beloved edifie your selves in your most holy Faith Give your selves to Prayer in the Spirit keep your selves in the love of God Look for the mercy of our Lord Iesus Christ unto eternal life 7. Edifie your selves The speech is borrowed from material Builders and must be spiritually understood It appeareth in the sixth of Saint Iohn's Gospel by the Jews that their mouths did water too much for bodily food Our Fathers say they did eat Manna in the Desart as it is written He gave them Bread from Heaven to eat Lord evermore give us of this Bread Our Saviour to turn their appetite another way maketh them this answer I am the Bread of Life he that cometh to me shall not hunger and he that believeth in me shall never thirst 8. An usual practice it is of Satan to cast heaps of worldly baggage in our way that whilst we desire to heap up gold
the Lord's building and as Saint Peter speaketh Heirs of the grace of life as well as we Though it be forbidden you to open your mouths in Publick Assemblies yet ye must be inquisitive in things concerning this Building which is of God with your Husbands and Friends at home not as Delilah with Sampson but as Sarah with Abraham whose Daughters ye are whilst ye do well and build your selves 13. Having spoken thus farr of the Exhortation as whereby we are called upon to edifie and build our selves it remaineth now that we consider the things prescribed namely wherein we must be built This prescription standeth also upon two points the thing prescribed and the adjuncts of the thing And that is our most pure and holy Faith 14. The thing prescribed is Faith For as in a chain which is made of many links if you pull the first you draw the rest and as in a Ladder of many staves if you take away the lowest all hope of ascending unto the highest will be removed So because all the Precepts and Promises in the Law and in the Gospel do hang upon this Believe and because the last of the graces of God doth so follow the first that he glorifieth none but whom he hath justified nor justifieth any but whom he hath called to a true effectual and lively Faith in Christ Jesus therefore St. Iude exhorting us to build our selves mentioneth here expresly onely Faith as the thing wherein we must be edified for that Faith is the ground and the glory of all the welfare of this Building 15. Ye are not Strangers and Foreigners but Citizens with the Saints and of the Houshold of God saith the Apostle and are built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles Iesus Christ himself being the chief Corner-stone in whom all the Building being coupled together groweth unto an holy Temple in the Lord in whom ye also are built together to be the habitation of God by the Spirit And we are the habitation of God by the Spirit if we believe for it is written Whosoever confesseth that Iesus is the Sonne of God in him God dwelleth and he in God The strength of this habitation is great it prevaileth against Satan it conquereth Sinne it hath Death in cerision neither Principalities nor Powers can throw it down it leadeth the World captive and bringeth every enemy that riseth up against it to confusion and shame and all by Faith for this is the Victory that overcommeth the World even our Faith Who is it that overcommeth the World but he which believeth that Jesus is the Son of God 16. The strength of every Building which is of God standeth not in any man's arms or leggs it is onely in our Faith as the valour of Sampson lay only in his hair This is the reason why we are so earnestly called upon to edifie our selves in Faith Not as if this bare action of our mindes whereby we believe the Gospel of Christ were able in itself as of it self to make us unconquerable and invincible like stones which abide in the Building for ever and fall not out No it is not the worthiness of our believing it is the vertue of him in whom we believe by which we stand sure as houses that are builded upon a Rock He is a Wise-man which hath builded his house upon a Rock for he hath chosen a good foundation and no doubt his house will stand but how shall it stand Verily by the strength of the Rock which beareth it and by nothing else Our Fathers whom God delivered out of the Land of Egypt were a People that had no Peers amongst the Nations of the Earth because they were built by Faith upon the Rock which Rock is Christ. And the Rock saith the Apostle in the first to the Corinthians the tenth Chapter did follow them Whereby we learn not onely this that being built by Faith on Christ as on a Rock and grafted into him as into an Olive we receive all our strength and fatness from him but also that this strength and fatnesse of ours ought to be no cause why we should be high-minded and not work out our salvation with a reverent trembling and holy fear For if thou boasteth thy self of thy Faith know this That Christ chose his Apostles his Apostles chose not him that Israel followed not the Rock but the Rock followed Israel and that thou bearest not the Root but the Root thee So that every Heart must thus think and every Tongue must thus speak Not unto us O Lord not unto us nor unto any thing which is within us but unto thy name onely onely to thy Name belongeth all the praise of all the Treasures and Riches of every Temple which is of God This excludeth all boasting and vaunting of our Faith 17. But this must not make us careless to edifie our selves in Faith It is the Lord that delivereth mens souls from death but not except they put their trust in his mercy It is God that hath given us eternal life but no otherwise than thus If we believe in the name of the Sonne of God for he that hath not the Sonne of God hath not life It was the Spirit of the Lord which came upon Sampson and made him strong to tear a Lyon as a man would rend a Kid but his strength forsook him and he became like other men when the Razor had touched his Head It is the power of God whereby the Faithful have subdued Kingdoms wrought Righteousness obtained the Promises stopped the mouths of Lyons quenched the violence of Fire escaped the edge of the Sword but take away their Faith and doth not their strength forsake them are they not like unto other men 18. If ye desire yet farther to know how necessary and needful it is that we edifie and build up our selves in Faith mark the words of the blessed Apostle Without Faith it is impossible to please God If I offer unto God all the Sheep â—â—d Oxen that are in the World if all the Temples that were builded since the dayes of Adam till this hour were of my foundation if I break my very heart with calling upon God and wear out my tongue with preaching if I sacrifice my body and my soul unto him and have no Faith all this availeth nothing Without Faith it is impossible to please God Our Lord and Saviour therefore being asked in the sixth of St. Iohn's Gospel What shall we do that we might work the works of God maketh answer This is the work of God that ye believe in him whom he hath sent 19. That no work of ours no building of our selves in any thing can be available or profitable unto us except we be edified and built in Faith What need we to seek about for long proof Look upon Israel once the very chosen and peculiar of God to whom the adoption of the Faithful and the glory of Cherubims and the