of the Earth are Idolaters and Heathens And do I need to say how ignorant wicked and miserable they are Many of them publickly worship the Devil as Witches do with us and he deludeth them and appeareth in divers shapes to them and ruleth them as he doth Witches And those that are more civil are strangers or enemies to Christ Six parts of the thirty are Ignorant Mahometans destroyers indeed of Heathenish Idolatry and such as take Christ for a great and true Prophet but know him not as a Saviour but equal or prefer a gross Deceiver and live under barbarous Tyrants who by violence keep them in the dark The other five parts that are called Christians alas consist most of people bred up in lamentable Ignorance mostly barbarous or debased by the oppression of Tyrants such as the Moscovites most of the Greeks the Abassines Armenians and many Eastern Sects and Nations What Ignorance the vulgar Papists are bred in in Italy Spain Germany Poland France and other Countreys and what enmity to true Reformation prevaileth in Princes Priests and People and by what Lying and Cruelty they fight against Truth and what Inquisitions Murders and inhumane Massacres have been their powerful means I need not use many words to tell And are the Protestant Reformed Churches free from fleshly worldly wicked men from ignorant malignant cruel Enemies to Truth and Piety and Peace § 3. Our Kings Dominions are the best and happiest Nations on Earth Here is most Knowledge of the Truth and most proportionably that truly Love it and live in a holy obedience thereto and fain would live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness honesty and sobriety But alas they must be contented with their own personal uprightness and reward and the peace of their Consciences in Gods acceptance But with men there seemeth to be no hopes of common Wisdom Piety Love and Peace We are all baptised with one Baptism we all profess to be the servants of one God and the faithful followers of one Christ and to believe in one Holy sanctifying Spirit and to believe the same Canonical Scriptures as the Word of God indited by that Spirit and to be of one Holy Catholick Church which is all the Members of Christ on Earth and to hold the Communion of Saints We mostly in England and Scotland agree in the Protestant Reformed Doctrine and Sacraments Our concord in profession is so great that if some men had not devised some Oaths Professions Covenants Practices and Knacks and Engines of their own which they dare not say God made to become the matter of our unavoidable dissent they could hardly have known how to pretend any difference in religion among us and hell would scarce have found any Cloak for malicious accusations enmity and discord You shall scarce meet with a man that will not speak well of Love and Peace and say that we must Love God above all and our Neighbours as our selves and do as we would have others do to us And yet is there any Enmity or Disagreement Alas how great and how uncureable § 4. Who would think that knew us not by our Profession but only by our Actions but that the three Kingdoms consisted of the deadliest Enemies to each other Of Turks and Christians of Wolves and Sheep that I say not of Devils and Men Yea Turks and Christians can live together in Hungary and all the Eastern Countreys Orthodox and Hereticks can live together in Poland Helvetia Holland c. But Protestants and Protestants cannot live together in Britain Cities and Corporations Countreys and Churches i◠not Families also are distracted in enmity and more than mental feuds and war. Guelphes and Gibelines party against party studying Accusations against each other as if they were Scholars daily exercised in the School of him that is the Accuser of the Brethren All their Learning and Wit is called up and poured out to render others as odious as they are able All their power interest friends and diligence are used to ruine and destroy each other No lies or perjury with some seem unlawful to accomplish so desired an effect In all companies the discourse and converse that should be to edifie each other in Love and comfort each other by the hopes of dwelling together in Heaven is taken up with slanders backbitings scorning railing and plotting the overthrow of the best of their neighbours Innocency never wants odious or scornful names As if they were acting their part that called Christ and his Apostles and the ancient Christians Deceivers Blasphemers Enemies to Caesar Ring-leaders of Sedition that taught men to worship God contrary to the Law. Every drunkard and wicked liver can as easily make his conscionable neighbour a Rogue or a Traitor or a Schismatick or an Hypocrite as he can open his mouth and speak And to justifie all this malice is become a virtue hating the most religious is Zeal for Government and Order destroying Christs Members is standing up for the Church hunting them as Dogs do Hares or as Hawks do the lesser birds is a meritorious work of supererogation no doubt and will not finally lose its reward God is served by hating and scorning them that are serious in his service It is Religion to make Religion odious and call it Hypocrisie and to be for that which is uppermost and befriends their worldly Interest and to make him suspected of Disloyalty who is for obedience to God. Conscience and fear of sinning and of damnation is the mortal enemy to be conquered or driven out of the Land as if there were no quietness to be expected in mens minds no concord in the Church no obedience to the Clergy or the Laws no safety from Sedition till Conscience be silenced or banished and men give over fearing God or as if Christ and Caesar could not both reign but God or Princes must be dethroned And O that the sacred Tribe were innocent and none of them were the leaders in such hypocritical malignity Their Canons ipso facto excommunicate all not excepting Princes Parliaments or Judges that do but say that any of their Ceremonies Liturgy or Officers in Church Government not excepting the lowest or Lay-mens power of the Church Keys by decreeing Excommunications and Absolutions are repugnant to the Word of God And when they have ipso facto Excommunicated them all they call them Separatists for not coming to their Communion Think not the contradiction and hypocrisy incredible read but the 5 6 7 and 8. Canons and judge They have a Law and by their Law he is cut off from the Church or Christ that doth but call any of these the Inventions of Prelates sinful or say that God forbids them And the Jail must be his dwelling till he die there who in ten cases remaineth Excommunicate and doth not openly profess that he repenteth and judgeth that to be sinless which he is utterly unable so to judge When we have preached seven and seven years to
Prelates against their Oaths and against the known truth and against their duty to God and the King. § 10. But though it be notorious that Domination and Jurisdiction be the things which cause the Papal Clergy to trouble and tear the Christian world what is it that makes the Laity so mad getteth this Clergy such a militant crowd against their own Tranquillity and Salvation It 's as visible as any moral thing that the Churches Divisions and Wars and Miseries have about a thousand years risen from Satans thrusting such worldly fleshly unholy men into holy Offices who seek them but to serve their Pride and Covetousness and Fleshly Appetites and Ease and who are Enemies at the heart to the serious obedience to Christ which formally they preach Christs own Apostles in their time of ignorance began to strive which of them should be greatest of which we have recorded his sharp rebuke which St. Peter himself did after second in 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3. in words so plain that if his pretended Successours had not first claimed a power as the Church to be the determining expounders of all the Bible they had lain under the Condemnation of Christ and Peter Naked without a Defence or Cloak But this Church-expounding authority sets them above all the Word of God which is now but what they please to make it and an instrument to execute their wills And indeed it is now rather the Pope and his Prelates and Councils than Christ that are the Law-makers to the Church For it is not he that maketh the words only that makes the Law but he that giveth them their sense The words are but as the body and the sense is the Soul of the Law. The Ministerial Church now scorn the name of Ministers and being become Pretorian and Magisterial they give Christ and his Spirit in the Apostles leave to make the words and body of the Scripture or Divine Law as God formed Adams body of the dust so that they may give it the breath of Life and also may make far more Voluminous Laws of their own and cut off and condemn all the Children of God that cannot believe that it 's lawful to obey them And though the Ignorant think that the claim of universal Legislation and Judgment in the universal Church and General Councils be no Service to the Domination of particular Clergy men no nor to any seeing there will never be a General Council They understand not the mystery of iniquity and mistake We have English Writers that have told them 1. That indeed Power is first given to the body fine doctrine for Royalists but by the Body it is given to the Prelates to use for them 2. That as a General Council hath the Supream power so the Prelates under them have the Inferior Ruling power and the executive in the intervals of Councils 3. That as Councils represent the Church in Soveraignty so every Bishop is by his office the true Representative of the Clergy of his Diocess and every Metropolitan the Representative of his Province and every Patriarch of his Patriarchate And then are not the Patriarchs at least with the Metropolitans Universal Rulers in such Intervals 4. And the Pope is the Patriarch of the West and hath a primacy in the Church universal and must be confest to be principium unitatis Catholicae and say some to be the President of Councils 5. To which others add that it belongs only to the president to call Councils and to Iudg which are Lawful without whose call they are so far from binding us that they are themselves but unlawful Routs And what would you have more But what 's all this to the poor Priests What Why 7. The people know not what the volumes of Councils say and it is the Priests or no body that must tell it them both what their exposition of Scripture is and what their own additional Laws are without which they cannot be obeyed so that indeed the peoples Faith is ultimately resolvedly into the authority of the Priest who tells them what the Bishop saith who tells them what the Metropolitan and his Synod saith who tells them what the Patriarch and his Synod saith who tells them what the chief Patriarch and a General Council saith who tell them determinatively what Christ and the Scripture saith and meaneth But what 's this to Councils when there are none Yes 8. Those that are past and gone have left all those binding Laws by which the present Bishops as an Aristocracy must govern all the Christian World. But are not they for Monarchy in the state How come they then to plead for a Soveraign Aristocracy over the Catholick Church and how come even the French Clergy to be for the power of a Church Parliament above the Pope I cannot answer that let the Pope and they debate it But I wonder that A. Bishop Laud should be for the derivation of all power from the Body as Richard Hooker is See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence of him p. 544. 545. c. No Body collective whensoever it assembled it self did ever give more power to the representing body of it than a binding power upon it self and all particulars Nor ever did it give this power otherwise than with this Reservation in nature that it would call again and reform and if need were abrogate any law or ordinances upon just cause made evident that the representing Body had failed in trust or truth And this power no Body collective Ecclesiastical or Civil can put out of it self or give away to a Parliament or Council or call it what you will that represents it The power which a Council hath to order settle and define differences arising concerning faith it hath not by any immediate institution of Christ but it was prudently taken up by the Church from the Apostles example See Dr. Stillingfleets Defence I confess that the generality of Politicians and Lawyers Heathens Papists and Protestants go much this way as to Civil Government and say that the Majestas personalis is in the King or Senate but the Majestas realis in the Body which giveth the Organical power and on just cause may take it away It is no honour to be singular in Politicks and I have said enough of this elsewhere Christ. Direct p. 1. But if it be the Body of the whole Church on Earth that must give Church Officers and Councils their power and recal it when there is cause if ever the whole Christian World meet together to vote it when it cometh to Poling we will give both the Monarchical and the Aristocratical Conciliar Papists three for one to try who hath the power given by the Body But while two or three parts do already disown almost all their Councils the case is decided But if an old Councils Heresies Errours or Tyranny can be invalidated only by a new one that is truly General or a new one as Papal as the last we confess that Trent
Oaths the Oath of Allegeance and the Oath called the Covenant that by them overcame the opposition of the other Army and brought home the King. It was this that engaged the Ministers of England against both Cromwel and a Common-wealth and the Ministers were followed by most of the religious people of the land which broke the adversaries strength It was this that engaged the excluded members of the then long Parliament It was this that engaged the City of London It seems it was this that engaged Gen. Monk's Army when they say in their address to him see it in Englands Triumph for K. Charles the 2d p. 85. We hope to evince to his Majesty and all the world that we and all those that have been engaged in the Parliaments cause are his Majesties best and most real subjects and that your Excellency and the Armies under your command have complied with the obligations for which they were first raised for the preservation of the true Protestant Religion the Honour and Dignity of the King the Priviledges of Parliament the Liberty and Property of the Subjects and the Fundamental Laws of the land I am not justifying all that I recite I doubt not but they were much mistaken But if they had then been told that shortly all the Corporation Offices and Trusts in England shall be constituted by a personal Declaration of every one that There is no obligation on any person from the Oath called the Solemn Covenant to restore the King oppose Schism or to any thing whatever the effect would have been such as makes me wonder that the Royalists as then called should be very eager to make all such declare that all these Souldiers Ministers Parliament and Citizens that restored the King as bound to it by that Oath were therein mistaken and no such obligation thence was on them Qu. 7. I need not name to you the sorry fellows out of the Jails where they lay for inhuman villanies that have been our zealous ranting tearing prosecuters And do you think such actors are an honour to your cause If it be good use good men in it Qu. 8. Why do you play your game under board and behind the Curtain If you are not ashamed of your cause openly own it Is falshood lying and dissembling beseeming them that say they are of a Church out of which none can be saved I remember when Terret alias Iohnson had seduced the eldest Daughter of the Countess of Balcarres whom they stole away and made a Nun in France and she was after askt why she did so long go to our Churches join in family worship read Protestant Books and talk against the Papists and deride them after she was a Papist her self she answered that they had leave to do all that as long as they did not openly Profess their Religion and were not detected But when once they were discovered and openly professed themselves Roman Catholicks they must then suffer any thing rather than conform to us Gods cause needeth not such jugling and lying Qu. 9. Why do you not ingenuously plead your cause against us so as may satisfy an understanding Conscience before you seek our destruction 1. Your arguings are commonly fitted only to cheat the ignorant by ambiguities and confusion and equivocal terms Your queries or methods to the French sufferers are only a formed cheat by confounding 1. Subjection to Governours and Communion with neighbour Churches 2. Communion with your Church in Christianity and Communion with its sins 3. A Catholick Church informed only by the soveraignty of Christ and a pretended universal Church informed by the soveraignty of Man a Monarch or a Church-Parliament 4. The office of keeping delivering and teaching men Gods Laws and an absolute power to Judge of their sence and to make more as a supplement to their defects obliging all the world on pain of Excommunication and Death And more such 2. Any writings which undeniably open your frauds you take no notice of nor vouchsafe to answer upon the importunity of Mr. Iohnson and divers others I have lately written 1. A reply to Iohnson 2. A small book in answer to one of your Papers to prove that we have a certainty of Christianity without Popery 3. In answer to another a small Book called Full and Easy satisfaction which is the true Religion None of them will you answer nor those before written But instead of a sober investigation of the truth some of you raise odious slanders of my life and threaten and seek my destruction I never hurt any of you as I said before nor ever perswaded any to severity against you I have long ago publickly proposed terms on which we might live together as neighbours in peace But destruction and misery are in your way that I have observed and the way of peace you have not known There are three things which alienate common Christians from you more than all other disputes 1. That you can go so openly against the plainest words of God as in blotting out the Second Commandment in notorious contradicting 1 Cor. 12. and Rom. 14 and 15. about the terms of Church Union and Communion about Latin Prayers and Worship to the ignorant denying the Cup to the Laity denying sense in Transubstantiation 2. That you befriend Ignorance so much by the said Latin Worship forbidding most to read the Scripture translated and accuse Gods Spirit of writing obscurely to cover this 3. That your Religion liveth by cruelty and blood and cannot stand without it Which at least in prudence you should hide as long as you can Or at least not design to make the ignorant and vicious Protestants your Proselytes and Agents conjunctly to ruin those whom your Consciences know to be the most Consciencious and seriously religious By which already the flock of Christ do under your Sheeps cloathings so judge of you by your fruites that if any man that is called a Protestant Clergy-man do but Write and Preach for cruelty and ruin towards serious Conscionable Christians people by this very mark do presently suspect that he is either a Papist or so near them as that he is ready to pass over to them whom he so assisteth in destructive work Qu. What must be the cure of Malignity Ans. When the heel of the holy seed is sufficiently bruised the Serpents Head must be broken 1. The War in Heaven which formerly cast down the Dragon must break the supream Serpentine Head. II. Then his Heads military on Earth will be broken I. The usurping universal Head called Ecclesiastical II. The national Serpentine Heads I. Exterior Mahometan and Heathen II. Interior called falsly Christian I. Serpentine Monarchs that War against Christ. II. Serpentine Prelates and their Patrons that fight against Christ as in his own name and by his pretended commission And all this by Christ and not by sinful means Reformation is begun à Minoritis at the lowest for personal Salvation of the Elect But a Majoritis at the Heads for publick welfare And God must raise Reforming Princes and Pastors to that end FINIS A Catalogue of Books Printed for and Sold by Tho. Parkhurst at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside near Mercers Chapel Mr. Baxter's Catholick Theology Folio A Third Volume of Sermons Preached by the late Reverend and Learned Tho. Manton D. D. In two parts Folio A Hundred Select Sermons on several Texts of Fifty on the Old Testament and Fifty on the New. Folio Choice and Practical Expositions on four Select Psalms Folio Both by the Reverend and Learned Tho. Horton D. D. late Minister of St. Hellens London The true Prophecies and Prognostications of Michael Nostrodamus Physician to Henry the Second Francis the Second and Charles the Ninth Kings of France and one of the Best Astronomers that ever were Folio Sixty one Sermons Preached mostly on publick occasions whereof five formerly Printed by Adam Littleton D. D. Rector of Chelsea in Middlesex Folio The Saints Everlasting Rest or a Treatise of the Blessed State of the Saints in their Enjoyment of God in Glory 4to The English Nonconformity as under King Charles II. and King Iames II. Truly Stated and Argued By Richard Baxter 4to A Discourse concerning Liturgies By the late Learned and Judicious Divine Mr. David Clarkson 8vo A Discourse of the Saving Grace of God. By the late Reverend and Learned David Clarkson Minister of the Gospel 8vo The Vision of the Wheels seen by the Prophet Ezekiel opened and applyed Partly at the Merchants Lecture in Broad-street and partly at Stepney on Ianuary 31. 1689. Being the Day of Solemn Thanksgiving to God for the great Deliverance of this Kingdom from Popery and Slavery by His then Highness the most Illustrious Prince of Orange Whom God raised up to be the glorious Instrument thereof By Matthew Mead Pastor of a Church of Christ at Stepney 4to The Life of Faith in every State. By Rich. Baxter 4to Alderman Ashurst's Funeral Sermon 4to A Key for Catholicks to open the Juglings of the Jesuits The first part of answering all their common Sophisms The second against the Soveraignty and necessity of General Councils 4to Full and easy satisfaction which is the true Religion Transubstantiation shamed 8vo Naked Popery Answering Mr. Hutchinson 4to FINIS
perswade a Drunkard a Liar and Prophane swearer an Atheist to Repent he liveth quietly out of the Jail though he repent not But if a man repent not when he cannot of judging that God forbids such humane inventions and impositions in Religion take him Jaylor He that will not be for our humane Offices Ceremonies and Impositions shall not be of our Church And when we have cast him out we 'll say He separateth and if he be not of our Church he shall be in Jail As if the Church and the Jail would hold all the land except his sin be such a Peccadillo as Atheism Sadduceism Bestiality Hobbism Popery Man-slaughter Adultery Drunkenness Swearing c. not aggravated by the crimes of breaking the Canons in point of conformity Or if many thousands cannot or will not come within the Doors of the Parish Church so they will go to no unlicensed preacher nor worship God in House or Church at all they live quietly out of Prison But if the mote of an Oath or Ceremony scrupled be in their eye that eye must be pulled out if the mote cannot or else the whole body be cast into their Hell. And if the Preacher be but a Candidate of Domination his way is oft to call to the Magistrate to execute the Law upon such as dare presume to worship God openly till they hold all such imposed Oaths Covenants Professions and Practices to be lawful He is to make his auditory believe that such men are dangerous intolerable persons and that their meeting to worship God and learn their duty is to cherish Sedition Heresy and Schism and that Rebellion is in their hearts and that the Preachers that even to a thing indifferent are not of their mind and obedience are deceivers and factious and it is no sacriledge but a duty to forbid them to preach the Gospel If the People dare not trust the Parson Vicar or Curate of the Parish be he what he will whom a Patron chooseth for them with the Pastoral Ordinary conduct of their Souls or if he Preach not at all if they go to the next Parochial conformist for the Sacrament he is to be driven home and used as disobedient Through the great mercy of God while the Bible is Licensed a Preacher in England knoweth not how to spend his hour if he say not somewhat for Faith and Godliness Love and Peace And when they come down none are so hated by some of them as those that believe and do to their utmost what they for fashion sake perswaded them to believe and do Their neighbours who have not a word with the Priest of any thing but this World nor read a chapter or put up a prayer in their families these are good and quiet neighbours But if any seriously prepare for their everlasting state and mind their Salvation above the World especially if he pray without-book and dislike the ignorance and scandalous lives of sorry Priests these are the dangerous troublers of the land away with them and give us those that trouble us not with the talk of God and of death and Heaven or Hell of Scripture or of Conscience and that scruple nothing that we would have them say or do If such pray it is but in hypocrisy If they go to hear any other Preacher it is in faction If they speak any words to God which are not written down for them to read they sawcily prate to God and speak but nonsence If they be earnest as knowing what they pray for they do but whine and cut faces and speak through the Nose or are a pack of groaning Hypocrites It is confest that the spirit of Adoption and Supplication is Gods Gift and that this Spirit taught the Bishops and Convocation in what words to pray to God But if the most holy or learned man besides them pretend to it and think that any may pray by the Spirits help but the Convocation there are reverend men that will deride that Spirit or that prayer I would at least they would let men pray by reason and the sense of their Souls necessities as a Child will beg pardon of an offended Father if they will not give them leave to pray by that Spirit which all must live by that will be saved Physicians use their patients with some humanity and will not say to him that saith My stomach cannot take down this Potion I shall cast it up You shall take it or die or go to Prison Or if one say This Pill is bigger than my Throat can swallow They will rather say It shall be made less than they will cut his Throat wider to get it down And sure the reason is because the Law doth make them Physicians to none but Volunteers and give them no compelling power If it did I know not what inhumanity they might come to For I will not believe that there is any thing in Divinity which tendeth to make men more inhumane than Physicians I have seen Iews and others that will eat no swines flesh And I have known many that a tast of Cheese would cast into a swound near death And I never knew any say you shall eat this or die Nor that ever motioned the making of a Law that all men should be imprisoned or forbidden all other meat who refused to eat Swines-flesh for fear of tolerating Jews But we have Priests too many that will say Take every Oath Promise or Ceremony required of you or preach not nor worship God openly at all Take me for your Pastor or you shall have none Hear me or hear no man Receive the Communion from me or from none Deny not the lawfulness of a Ceremony or be Excommunicate § 4. And is it now any wonder that the people say as they are taught And these are lessons easilier learnt than a Catechism or the Creed or the meaning of Baptism How quickly can a man learn to call his Neighbour Whig or Tory Or to hate a Godly man or in a Tavern or Ale-house to scorn them or drink and curse to their confusion and to say I hope to see them all hang'd or banished out of the Land As a Priest that knows not what Divinity or the Priestly Office is may before he taketh many degrees attain the ability learnedly to call his Godly Neighbours Schismaticks or Hypocrites or worse So no doubt a few such Sermons if not a Tavern can quickly teach them that never knew what Religion is yea that can scarce speak sense to revile the wisest and best men as if they were sinners against the true Religion if they will be serious in any true Religion at all § 5. O sinful O miserable Land Who kindled all the hellish flames of thy malignity and mad divisions And who continueth them and for what What cloven foot hath entred and expelled concord What Spirit ruleth thee Were it the Spirit of Christ it would be for healing Love and Concord It would set men on studying
to promote Love to all even unto enemies but much more to the most holy It would make men zealous of good works and if it were possible as much as in them lieth to live peacebly with all men to bless those that curse them to pray for those that hate and persecute them forbearing and forgiving one another even as God for Christs sake forgiveth us It would teach them while they have time to do good to all men but especially to them of the houshold of Faith Mens hearts would be constituted of Love It would become a nature in them Their Speech and Converse would be the Savoury breath of Love Their dealings towards all men would be the works of Love Their sharpest reproofs would be but to do the sinner good But alas another Spirit hath possessed thee which rageth and teareth thee and is blind and deaf It calleth for Fire from Heaven and it kindleth a fire of Hell And sure his name is Legion for there are many It passeth under the names of Wisdom and Hatred of some evil But it must needs be Earthly Sensual and Devilish for it is neither Pure nor Peaceable Gentle or Merciful and Impartial but foameth with bitter envy and strife unto confusion and every evil work And yet thou knowest not what manner of Spirit thou art of Is it God that setteth rulers and people against each other Doth he divide his own Kingdom against it self when he tells us that the Devil will not do so by his Is it God that sets the parts of the same body in a hatred and War against each other As if it were the interest of the nobler and the Servile parts to weaken or destroy each other And it were an addition to the health and welfare of the one which is gotten by Conquest from the other Is it God that maketh people despise or dishonour their lawful Governours or any Rulers to hate the best Subjects and desire more to be feared than to be loved and rather to have power to do hurt than actually to do good Is it God that sets Corporations and Churches and Neighbours and Families in a state of Malice Vexation Strife and a kind of War against each other Doth the Spirit of God indite the malicious Pamphlets which exercise the utmost of Wit and Hatred to destroy Love and to call the Nation into the Devils Camp by mutual hatred to live as Enemies and Fight against the Lord and the ways of Peace And if any endeavour a reconciling healing of our wounds it 's turned into scorn and his healing motions are represented as the grand causes of division and to beg for peace is heinous Schism and next Rebellion against the Church and a crime sufficient to forfeit that mans Peace and Reputation And he that tells men of the only possible terms of Concord is made the chiefest cause of discord To serve and worship God no otherwise than Peter and Paul did and than God prescribeth is enough to render us unworthy to live on English Earth And if England may not suffer such why should any other nation suffer them There are men that keep holy days for St. Peter and St. Paul and dedicate Churches to them and their bellies are maintained at Dives rates and their Wealth and Revenues and Grandure held up by that which is dedicated to these Churches and to alienate any of this superfluity from their flesh were worse Sacriledge than to cast out and silence a thousand faithful Preachers And yet if St. Paul were a Preacher now in France Spain Italy or England and would worship God but as he did when he was on Earth and would not swear say and do as much more as the Bishops Canons bid him I think we should again hear those words Acts 22. 22. Away with such a fellow from the Earth for it is not fit that he should live here Unless he wrought miracles to convince men And whether those would prevail is a doubtful case or whether he would not pass for a Deceiver and Fanatick § 6. As in times of War all broken beggarly and idle fellows turn Souldiers as the easiest trade to live by and are never after good for any other trade but to kill and rob men So the Love-killing Regiments have forsaken other trades and this is like to put down all Booksellers complain that they can fell few Books but News and Scorning or Invective Libels And what is the subject of our formerly weekly and now daily News Books Why they tell us that such a City or Corporation are altogether by the Ears as Enemies some choosing one Mayor and some another Some called Whigs and others Tories Some seeking the ruine and Blood of others and some hardly escaping the power of false Witnesses and Oaths One Jury acquitting a man whose life is sought and another condemning him In such a Town or City so many find and so many distreined on and so many crowded into Jails and such and such Preachers cast into Prison and such a one dead there for praying to God and openly worshipping him without-book or by no book but his own In such and such a Country the people prosecuting each other on such accounts and some flying into other parts and some into America to seek that peace among Savages and Wolves and Serpents in Wildernesses which they could not have under sacred Protestant Prelates and their Clergy In France the poor Protestants hunted like Hares neither suffered to live at home nor to flie naked to beg their bread in other Lands and all this for the concord and peace of the holy Catholick Church a pattern so worthy of imitation that even such excellent men as Grotius think that it 's worth all hazards labour and cost to reduce England and the Lutherans to the French-Church-Consistence and to silence and ruine all as Calvinists that are against it From Hungary we must read how the persecuted Protestants after their utmost suffering and patience are fain to call in Turks to save them from the cruelties of Christians And that those parts that are under the Turks have far more prosperity and freedom in Religion than those that are under the Emperor Papists And Protestants under them are kept in coâ—â—â—â—al fear as knowing that it is their Law and Doctrine that Princes are bound to do their best to exterminate or destroy them on pain of Excommunication Deposition and Damnationâ— And remembring the Inquisitions the Piedmont French Dutch Irish c. Massacres So that they are brought to this hard dilemma Chuse whether you will be Dead men or be proclaimed Rebels If whole Countreys will not lie down and die patiently without self-defence they are odious Rebels These and such other are the subjects of our News-books which have broken the poor Booksellers who were wont to live by selling Books of Learning and of practical Divinity And too many Preachers are fain to be short as well as formal in their Sermons
Canons are like to be the Law to the end of the World. § 11. But again what is it that maketh so many of the Laity serve the Popish Prelates universal claim or keep up the destructive enmity and divisions of the Christian World A stranger would think that it were chiefly caused by some great contrariety of real Interests or that one party adhered to some principles or practices which were really hurtful to the others rights While both were serious for Christianity But it is become by long experience notorious that all the Christian Worlds calamitous divisions are principally from the old enmity between the Womans and the Serpents Seed and that all is but the Prosecution of that which their first Patriarch Cain began exemplified after in the discrimination of the Children of men and the Sons of God and in Esau and Iacob Ishmael and Isaac and so down to the days of the Apostles And saith Paul As he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit even so it is now Among us it is notorious that if we knew how to cure men of the radical Enmity of the flesh against the spirit and of a carnal minds averseness to God and serious Godliness the rest of our differences were never like to continue our Wounds and cruel Factions In Families you may hear that this is the fundamental difference Husband and Wife Parents and Children Master and Servants upon the meer account of serious Godliness do live like Enemies that are impatient of each other If the Husband be ungodly the Wife Children or Servants that have but a care of their Salvation are still under his restraints or frowns or scorns This praying especially if it be without Book so much preaching and hearing yea any serious talk of God or Heaven or Scripture is a troublesom weariness to him and he tells them it is but Hypocrisie or more ado than needs If any compassionately tell him of the evil of his swearing or tipling or prophaneness he tells them they are precise Puritanes or Fanaticks and worse than he If they will needs hear Sermons he will have them go but to some cold or ignorant Preacher or one that will please him with a calumny or scorn at Puritans or that will say as he doth that this stir for Salvation and medling so much with Scripture and Religion is but proud self-conceited Fanaticism In a word it is serious Preaching and Hearing and Reading Gods Word serious Praying and Preparation for the Sacrament serious Discourse of the state of their Souls and Preparation for Death Judgment and Eternity serious fearing and avoiding sin and speaking against the sin of others that is the common eye-sore and trouble of the world which they secretly hate and cannot bear with in their Families in their Neighbours in Magistrates in Ministers or People And because it easeth their minds by vent and by keeping up some hopes that they may be saved without this serious Godliness themselves they cherish a conceit that the persons that herein differ from them are as bad if not much worse than others and gladly hear those that slander and deride them Such Company such Pamphlets such Sermons please them And to make them odious they have for them some contemptuous scornful Nickname which though it be of no signification is as effectual as the truest charge Among the Roman Sects do but call a man a Heretick or Schismatick a Lutheran a Calvinist a Zwinglian and elsewhere do but call him a Sectary a Schismatick a Puritan a Calvinist a Nonconformist an Independant a Presbyterian a Round-head a Fanatick a Whig and it serveth the turn as well as if you had proved him a proud Hypocrite or a Rebel And there be among the real Schismaticks also some persons that if you do but call a man Episcopal a Conformist an Arminian a Church of England man that goeth to the Common-Prayer they think that he must needs be a Temporizer Graceless or Dangerously unsound And thus the miseries of the Land are continued and increased But because the spirit of Cain is the Grand Incendiary and the Enmity against serious Holiness throughout all the world is the principal cause of Divisions Hatred Wars and Blood-shed I will here annex many Reasons which with men that have any Reason left them should cure this Malignant Enmity to Holiness if men will but soberly consider them I have said so much to such already especially in my Saints Rest Now or Never my Family Book and a Saint or a Brute that I cannot do this work again without repeating much that 's said But seeing all that doth not serve and the Ulcer breaketh out more dangerously than ever till it come to a Noli me tangere we must continue some hope and use of means and if we lay on fresh Plaisters of the old materials while only New Books are by such regarded we are bound to do our best It is but so much labour lost and it is not utterly lost to our selves while we have peace of Conscience in Gods acceptance But being sure to be misreported when I have done my best to be understood that I be not guilty of it I will first shew what I mean by serious Godliness and next what I mean by Malignity or Enmity to serious Godliness Chap. II. Whom I mean by Godly Persons and whom by Malignant Enemies to Godliness § 1. BY GODLINESS I do not mean 1. Any Superstition or making Religions or Religious Duties which God never made and extolling these and the Party that are for them God hath made us Religious work enough Could we do that well we need no more Religion so far as it is made by men is no Religion but a contradiction or equivocation for Religion is our Obligation and Duty to God and Conscience of it Could I be for Superstition or more Religion than God hath made us I might be for all the New Religions of Rome Franciscans Dominicans Carthusians Jesuits Oratorians and all the rest And I might be for their Works of Supererogation their Massings worshiping Bread Angels dead Saints Images their Pilgrimages Relicks and all their pretended Traditions and Councils their new made Church-Laws and I should know no end § 2. And 2. By Godliness I mean not any singular odd Opinion differing from the Scripture and making a Sect or any Errour whatsoever nor any Opinion which is contrary to any thing which the whole Church on Earth did ever hold as necessary to Salvation or Communion § 3. Nor 3. Do I mean any Truth or Duty of inferiour moment which only makes to the well-being of a Christian though this be an Inferiour part of Godliness at least not that which a godly willing person knows not to be his duty § 4. Much less 4. Do I mean any proud false conceit of a mans own Godliness and becoming one of an unwarrantable Sect that he may be conspicuous to others or