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A61119 Reasons for vnitie, peace, and love with an answer (called Shadows flying away) to a book of Mr. Gataker, one of the assembly, intituled, A mistake, &c. and the book of the namelesse author called, The plea, both writ against me : and a very short answer, in a word, to a book by another namelesse author called, An after-reckoning with Master Saltmarsh, and to Master Edward his second part called, Gangrena, directed to me ... / by John Saltmarsh ... Saltmarsh, John, d. 1647. 1646 (1646) Wing S496; ESTC R11619 30,054 33

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might not have taken you to be more a friend to Truth then I see you are forgive me this injury as the Apostle saies if I accounted you better then you desire to be Love hopeth all things and beleeveth all things And Paul it seems was better perswaded of Agrippa then there was cause and quoted some of the Heathen Poets better then they intended them as it seems I have done with you that being the greatest thing you lay to my charge Master Gataker 1 That our Antinomian Free grace is not the same with that of the Prophets in the Old Testament and the Apostles in the New 2 That in saying the Old Testament was rather a draught of a Legall dispensation then an Evangelicall or Gospell-one was to taxe the Ministery of the Prophets for no Free-grace 3 That in saying the Ministers now by the qualifications they preach do over-heat Free-Grace as your poore soules cannot take it doth make the Prophets Iuglers and deluders of the people Answer To your first That our Antinomian Free Grace is not the same with the Prophets and Apostles Why do you tell us of Antinomians of Prophets and Apostles Free-grace It is not the Free-grace of any of these Free-grace is of God in Jesus Christ Prophets and Apostles are but dispencers of it and Ambassadours of it and Ministers of it and yet Ambassadours not in the same habit The Prophets preached Grace in a rough and hairy garment or more Legally the Apostles in a more clear and bright habit in the revelation of the mystery of Christ The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth by Iesus Christ I could as easily say Master Gatakers Free-grace and the Legalists Free-grace as he sayes Our Antinomian Free-grace but such words and reproaches make neither you nor I speake better truth To your Second That in saying the Old-Testament straine was rather Legall then Gospell taxes the Ministery of the Prophets for no Free-grace That is according to your Inference only Because the Spirit sayes the Law was given by Moses therefore will you put upon the Spirit that Moses taught or gave out nothing but Law● Because I say The Old Testament was a Legall ministration therefore do I say there was no Free-grace in it or doe I not rather say Therefore it was Free-grace legally dispenced or preached or ministred Would not such Inferences be bad dealing with the Spirit and will it be faire dealing with me I wonder you who pretend to write against me as having not dealt justly with your sense will deale so unjustly with mine and commit the same sin your self in the very time of your reproving mine You may see what this Logick hath brought you to To deceive your selfe as well as your neighbour Can you cast out my mo●e and behold a beame in your own eye I have printed all you quoted let the Reader judge from this and compare it with the rest of my Book The whole frame of the Old Testament was a draught of Gods anger at sin And God in this time of the Law appeared only as it were upon tearmes and conditions of reconciliation and all the Worship then and acts of Worship then as of Prayer Fasting Repentance c. went all this way according to God under that appearance And in this straine saith he runnes all the Ministery of the Prophets too in their exhortations to Duty and Worship as if God were to be appeased and entreated and reconciled and his love to be had in way of purchase by Duty and Doing and Worshipping So as under the Law the efficacy and power was put as it were wholly upon the Duty and Obedience performed as if God upon the doing of such things was to be brought into tearmes of peace mercy and forgivenesse so as their course and service then was as it were a w●rking for life and reconciliation Do not these words and termes inserted As it were and in the way and as if and is it were cleare me from such positive and exclusive assertions of Free-Grace as you would make me speake To the Third That in saying the Preachers with their qualifications over-heate Free-grace I doe by that make the Prophets deluders of the people c. I answer That way of preaching the Prophets used pressing as you say Repentance Reformation Humiliation and with Commination and the Law c. was but according to the way and method and straine the Spirit taught them under the Old Testament but if the Prophets should have held forth Jesus Christ under the New Testament and when Christ was manifested in the flesh with such vails over him and so much Law over him as they did before they had sinned against the glory of that ministration as well as some of you who bring Christ back againe under the cool shadow of the Law and make that Sun of Righteousnesse that he warmes not so many with the love of him as he would doe if ye would let them behold with open face as in a glasse the glory of the Lord and if you would give his beams more liberty to shine upon them doth not the ministration of the Spirit exceed in glory Nor were the Prophets deluders of the people then because it was the peoples time of Pupillage and being under Bondage they were shut up under the Law till faith came they were under Tutors and Governors till the time appointed So as that was truth and right dispensation in them to preach so much of the Law of curse and judgement c. as they did and of Repentance and Reformation in that straine they did But in ye who pretend to preach Christ come in the flesh ye who pretend to be Preachers in the Kingdome of God and so greater then the greatest Prophet then he that was more then a Prophet in ye such preaching were delusion because it were not as the truth is in Christ nor according to that glory of the Gospell to that grace revealed to that manifestation of Christ in the flesh to that ministration of glory but rather to those deceitfull workers the Apostle speaks on to those that troubled them with words subverting their souls who preached Law and Gospell Circumcision and Christ Master Gattaker 1 That we gird at those that bid men repent and be humbled and be sorry for sinnes and pray c. as Legall Teachers 2 That Christ preached repentance humiliation self-deniall conversion renouncing all in purpose this is not the same Gospell with that they preach as in Free-grace pag. 125 126 152 153 163 191 193. Answer To your first for our girding at those that bid men repent and be humbled c. as Legall teachers If ye presse repentance and humiliation legally why wonder ye at such words as Legall teachers Will ye doe ill and not be told of your faults must we prophesie smooth things to you and say ye are able Ministers of the New Testament when we are perswaded that truth is
Christ and not seeking your own things not making a gaine of godlinesse Whether all your Fastings and Repentance were from true meltings of heart sound humiliation or because the State called for it and constrained it Whether your praying and preaching was not much of it Self of Invention of Parts of Art of Learning of seeking praise from men Oh should the light of the Spirit come in clearnesse and glory upon your spirit Oh! how much of Self of Hypocrisie of Vanity of Flesh of Corruption would appeare how would all be unprofitable For my part I cannot be so uncharitable but to wish you a better assurance then what you and your Brethren can find in your own works or righteousnesse For it is not what we approve but what God approves is accepted And I am perswaded however you are now loth it may be to lose reputation by going out of an old track of Divinity as Luther once yet when once your spirit begins to be unclothed of forms of darknesse and art of self-righteousnesse and that you with open face behold the glory of the Lord you will cry out Wo is me I am undone for I have seen the Lord and Lord depart from me for I am a sinfull creature and What went I out to see My owne unrighteousnesse or rather A Reed shaken with the winde An Answer to a Book intituled A Plea for Congregationall Government or A Defence of the Assemblies Petition c. YOu write thus 1 That the independents confesse you a true Church and Minstery 2 Those that are ordained by Bishops may be true Ministers else how am I a Preacher or they true Ministers 3 Succession is not necessary to the essence of a true Ministery 4 If no true Ministery no true Baptisme 5 Must not there be persons ordaining and persons ordained And so the dissenting Brethren held 6 That you abuse the Assembly in ●●ing their Humble Advice touching the Divine Right of a Congregationall Presbyteriall and not of the other The Independents assert a Divine Right there and in Synods too as they do They hold a Divine Right in one as well as the other 7 Their ordination by Bishops though it should be null yet they have all you can alleadge necessary to a Preacher 8 Parishes here are but as in New-England as in Jerusalem Antioch 9 Some of the dissenting Brethren hold Synods an holy Ordinance of God and this Assembly so to be 10 If no Presbyteries must be of Divine Right because not infallibly gifted this concludes against Presbyteries and Ordinances 11 If you would have them content with a mixed power partly prudentiall because of their mixt ●●ointing you contradict that pure one you plead for 12 The Apostles and Elders and Angels of the Churches of Asia were not infallible as in divers practices 13 To say the Apostles did advise in place of the written Word is little lesse then Blasphemy 14 The Presbyterians in France and Scotland and the Netherlands do 〈◊〉 so imbroyle Kingdoms The feare of excommunicating Parliaments and Kingdoms is but a Bugbeare 15 They aske not of the State an Ecclesiasticall power but a liberty to exercise that power 16 Hath Christ said that in a sound Church Church-Officers shall excommunicate and in an unsound the Magistrate shall do it 17 He may in time say as much against Equity and justice living upon voyces in Assemblies as against Truth Answer To the first That the Independents confesse you a true Church and Ministery You are not to prove what others confesse or hold you to be but what you are indeed according to Truth Nor do I contend with those that hold you so but with you that hold your selves so as the Spirit to the Laodiceans Thou sayest thou art full c. and behold thou art poore c. To the second That they ordained by Bishops are true Ministers as the Independents and I a Preacher for all that Ordination If you meane that the Bishops Ordination makes not one for ever a false or Antichristian Minister I grant it because it is no marke to them that renounce it Babylon is no more Babylon to them that are gone out of it But what is this to your Ministery or Ordination who are yet under the Marke and Babylonish Ordination Renounce it come out as the Spirit cals ye and then your being Antichristian is no more to ye then to the Ephesians that they should be lesse light because they were once darknesse or lesse alive because they were once dead To the third That Succession is not necessary to a true Ministery It is both true and false in severall acceptions When there was a true power they ordained others and others them There was succession But that being lost under Antichrist so far as visibly to derive it to us there can be no such true visible Succession appearing And yet you that pretend to stand by the first power must prove your Succession if you will prove your power To the Fourth If no true Ministery no true Baptism For that as you please I dare not exalt the truth of your Baptism above that of your Ministery no more then you To the Fifth The dissenting Brethren hold there must be persons ordaining and ordained as well as we Ye● but do they hold Bishops ordaining and Presbyters ordained by Bishops and Presbyters of their ordaining ordaining others as you do To the Sixth of my unjust citing the Assemblies Modell or Humble Advice and that there is no more Divine Right asserted in the Congregationall Presbytery then in the Classicall c. which is done so by the dissenting Brethren I answer Let the Modell be printed to the world to end the difference betwixt you and me And for the Divine Right of the one and the other I am of your mind they are able to prove both alike of Divine Right that is in their Presbytery The one is no more of Divine Right then the other and neither of them of any And for the dissenting Brethren it is not them but you I deale with Why come you under their shadow in a storme and yet will let them have no liberty under yours but would turne us all abroad as Hereticks and Schismaticks To the Seventh Though the Ordination by Bishops be null yet they have the other necessaries to a Preacher Will ye undertake for the Assembly they shall stand to this that all their former Ordination by Bishops is null If so we are agreed if not all their other necessaries are no more then Ahabs peace What peace saith Jehu so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Iezebell are alive So what Ministery so long as the whoredoms of Babylon yet remaine To the Eighth That the Parishes are but as in New-England as in Ierusalem c. I pray forbeare this it is too manifest an errour Are the Parishes of England and Churches of Ierusalm one and the same so discipled so constituted Were all of Ierusalem and Antioch
begin but not when ye end and they will be first in the Presbytery before ye in the Prelacy Therefore consider things 10. That these Ministers though some of them were old Non-conformists and have a power of God in them which I desire to love under any Forme yet according to their Interests they are not so nor to the flesh they are not so and it is their old man I write against not their new so far as they are men and so far as they are persecuters so far as they are lovers of gaine not of godlinesse so far as they are accusers of their Brethren so far as they are in the Forme of Godlinesse not in the power Therefore consider these men are not all spirit and truth we are not to call one of them Iubiter nor the other Mercurius They are men of like passions with us and ye and the worst I wish saving their humour of Persecution is that the Lord would make them love us in the Spirit and we shall in all love allow them their Formes To Mr. GATAKER SIR I Hope I shall answer all things materiall in your Book but your Margin I shall not meddle with I observe you commonly in all your books fill that with things and Authors of little value to Christ crucified As in your last leafe where you quote Sophecles the Poet comparing your selfe to an old prancing horse I should not rebuke your yeers but that I find you Comicall and Poeticall and for my part I am now ashamed to own those Raptures though I am young having tasted straines of a more glorious Spirit how much more you that are old and call your selfe a Divine ought not to have any fruit in those things I hope I shall be in no more passion with you than with your Brother of the Assembly Mr Ley. I write to edifie not to conquer nor to teach others but that we may be all taught of God JOHN SALTMARSH To the Author of the PLEA for the Congregationall or as he should have said Parishionall Government SIR A word to you the Author of the Plea You have so entangled and wrapped your selfe in the Congregationall and Church-principles as if you meant to engage me at once against your Presbytery and the dissenting Brethren But that Spirit which makes me oppose you makes me discerne your designe and so I hope I shall single you from them though you have cloathed your selfe in their Apologeticall Narration yet I must deale with you as your self and your Brethren not as theirs and it is but a little I have to say to you But why no Name Is your Divine Right so questionable that you will not own it or are you one of them that sit too neare it to commend it with open face and think you may better and more modestly do it in disguise and without a name Had I not some reason to suspect it came from some of that sort I had passed it by with as little noise as it came abroad And I have but little to say to you now I cannot stand long wrangling in things that grow clearer and clearer every day for the day breaks and the shadowes flie away SHADOWES FLYING AWAY Or A Reply to Master Gataker's Answer to some passages in Master Saltmarsh his Booke of FREE-GRACE Master Gataker 1 THat he was traduced by one Master John Saltmarsh a man unknown to him save by one or two Pamphlets as witnessing to the Antinomian party 2 That he must unbowell and lay open some of the unsound stuffe 3 That some think they have found out a shorter cut to Heaven 4 That my inferences upon his words are not true nor as he intended As if a Protestant with a Papist disputing about the Masse should say the Controversie is not concerning the nature of Sacraments c. Answ To the first ●hat you were traduced by me Let not you and I be judge of that both our Books are abroad and I have quoted your words to the very leafe where they are Your meaning I could not come at the deep things of the heart are out of the power of anothers quotatior For my selfe unknown to you but by two Pamphlets I take your sleighting I could call your Treatises by a worse name then Treatises for I knew one of them some yeers since that of Lots wherein you defended Cards and Dice-playing And it had been happy for others as well as my selfe in my times of vanity had you printed a Retractation I beleeve you strengthened the hands of many to sin I know you love ancient Writers well by your Margin and quotations And I pray remember how Augustine honoured Truth as much by confessing Errours as professing Truths What fruit should you and I have of these things whereof we are now ashamed For your witnessing to the Antinomian party against your will Is that your fault or mine Nor am I to judge of your reserves and secret senses but of words and writings Nor is it an Antinomian party I alleadge you to countenance but a Party falsly traduced and supposed so a Party called Antinomian by you and others and then writ against A setting up Hereticks to deceive the world and then telling the world such and such are the men You may make more by this trick then you find so To the Second that you will lay open the unsound stuffe I shall not be unwilling I hope to be told my failings but I must look to the stuffe you bring in the roome of mine and entreat others to trye the soundnesse of yours It is not my saying that mine is sound will make it better nor your saying it is unsound can make it worse Let every ones work be proved and then he shall have whereof to boast To your Third of some finding out a shorter cut to Heaven then some former Divines I know not what you meane by shorter cuts The Papists find a way they say to Heaven by works some Protestants by Jesus Christ and works and others by Jesus Christ alone and make works the praise of that Free grace in Jesus Christ And is that a shorter cut then theirs as you call it or rather a clearer revelation of Truth Methinks your expressions have too much of that which Solomon cals frowardnesse in old men Argue and prove and bring Scripture as long as you please but be not too quarrelsome But I shall excuse you in part because you tell us you are not yet recovered from sicknesse so as I take this with other of your Books as part or remainders of your disease rather then your judgement and the infirmity of your body not the strength of your spirit But why chose you not a better time to trie Truth in when you were not so much in the body To the Fourth That nothing lesse was intended by you I undertook not to discover your intents to the world You might have don well to have revealed your selfe more at first that I
your other words imply and so far I say too but you will not heare me speak But you would have the best assurance from tryall but so far I say not as you say is that the best Spirituall assurance that is from our own Spirits in part or from Gods alone from our own reasoning or his speaking Can a Spouse argue better the love of her friend from his Tokens and Bracelets or from his owne word and Letter and Seale One of the three that beare witnesse on Earth is the Spirit and in whom after ye believe ye were sealed with that Spirit of promise Can any Inference or Consequence drawn from Faith or Love or Repentance or Obedience in us so assure us as the breathing of Christ himself sealing assuring perswading convincing satisfying I will hear what God the Lord will say for he will speak peace to his Servants A Saint had rather hear that voice then all its own Inferences and Arguments which though they bring something to perswade yet they perswade not so answerably till the voyce speake from that excellent glory To your eighth That I clog men with conditions of receiving as well as you of repenting c. I answer I preach not Receiving as a condition as you do Repenting I Preach Christ the Power and Life and Spirit that both stands and knocks and yet opens the doore to himselfe I Preach not Receiving as a gift or condition given or begun for Christ but Christ working all in the Soul and the Soul working up to Christ by a power from himselfe And if you would Preach Repentance and Obedience as no other preceding or previous dispositions we should agree better in the Pulpit then we do in the Presse To your ninth That the sum of my Divinity is That men may be saved whither they Repent or no or beleeve or no I answer Should I say to you The sum of your Divinity is this That Faith and Repentance and Obedience are helps with Christ and conditions with Christ to mans Salvation and that Salvation in not free but conditionall the Covenant of Grace is as it were a Covenant of Workes Should I do well in this to upbraib you and those of your way Say not then that I thinke men may be saved that never repent nor believe Why do you thus set up and counterfeit opinions and then engrave our Names upon them Could not I piece up your Book so if I would be unfaithfull as make ye appeare as great an Hereticke as any whom you thus fancy because I preach not Repentance or Faith as you do because I make all these as gifts from Gods love in Christ not as gifts to procure us God or his love or Christ because I make all these the fruits of the Spirit given to such whom Christ hath suffered for to such whom God hath chosen in him because I Preach Faith and Repentance and Obedience in that full Revelation in which they are left as in the New Testament and not in that scantling of Doctrine as they are meerly and barely revealed in the History of the Gospel or Acts of the Apostles onely where the Doctrine is not so much revealed as the Practise and the Story in Summaries because we Preach thus therefore we are all Antinomians Hereticks men not worthy to live Brethren must ye forbid us to Preach because we follow not with you because we Preach not the Law as ye do nor Faith as ye do nor Repentance as ye do therefore do we not Preach them at all We Preach them all as we are perswaded the New Testament and Spirit will warrant us and as we may make Christ to be the power of all and fulnesse of all as we may exalt him whom God hath exalted at his own right hand And we wish that ye and all that heare us were both almost and altogether as we are except in reproaches CONCLVSION FRom the 29 Page to the last all your Replyes amount not to any thing of substance but of quarrelsome and humorous exceptions and I shall I hope redeem my time better then in making a businesse of things that will neither edify the Writer nor the Reader There are some things you might had you pleased raised up into some Spirituall discourse as that of Works and Signs for assurance c. But you say of your self how becoming such a one as you I leave that you were like an Old Steed which neighs and prances but is past service so as I must take this of your age and infirmity as a fuller Answer or Supplement to what you faile in against me There are two or three things more observable then the rest 1. That you tax me for saying That the markes in Johns Epistles and James are delivered rather as marks for others then our selves to know us by and I affirme it againe not as you say excluding that other of our selves but as I said rather markes for others though for both in their degrees and kindes of manifestation So in James 2. 24. where he saith By Workes a man is Justified not by Faith So in Vers 18. 21. All which set forth Works a signe to others rather then our selves So in 1 John 3. 14. Hereby know we we are passed from death to life because we love the Brethren compared with Ver. 17. 18. shewes That it is a love working abroad in manifestation to the Brethren and yet I exclude not any evidence which the fruits of the Spirit carry in them as in my Book which yet you alleadge to that purpose after you have been quarrelling so long with it pulling my Treatise in pieces to make your selfe worke and then binde it up againe after your owne fashion For your Story of your Lady and your fallacy That she might as well conclude her selfe damned because she was a sinner as one that Christ would save because she was a sinner And durst you thus sport with a poor wounded spirit that perhaps could see little but sin in her selfe to conclude upon Know you not that Christ came to call sinners to save sinners And durst you make use of your Logick to cast such a mist upon the promises to sinners Suppose one should aske you how you gather up your assurance now you are an old man how would you account to us Would you say such a m●asure of Faith so much obedience so much love to the Brethren so much Zeale Prayer Repentance and all of unquestionable evidence But if we should go further and question you concerning your failings when you writ in the behalfe of Cards and Dice of the Common-Prayer-Book if we should aske ye of your luxuria●cy in quotations in your Books and Sermons whether all be out of pure zeale no selfishnesse no vain-glory Whether all your Love was without bitternesse to your Brethren of a diverse judgement whom you call Antinomian c. Whether you preached and obeyed all out of love to Iesus