party when you preach to them of the tendency and effects of sin and error you would easily see the fault in them Your talk of a prostituted Conscience I forgive But if you must not be told of the dangerous tendency of an unsound doctrine lest you seem to be reproached you will leave your selves in a sad condition when your cure is rejected as a reproach EXCEPT XXXIX Answered Very good You grant that if the same spirit be restored to the same words they will be as good as they were at the beginning But what spirit was that brother that first took up the forms and words that now we speak of It was not only a spirit of miracles tongues or supernatural inspiration Why do you say then that no man can restore the same spirit to them and we cannot believingly expect that God will do it because we have no promise for it It was but the spirit of Illumination and Sanctification And have not all Christs members this same spirit Judge by Rom. 8. 9. 1 Cor. 12. Eph. 4. 3 4 5 to 16. You have here then by consequence given up your whole cause You grant that If the same spirit be restored which first used the prayers and responses and praises of the Liturgie it is very true that they may be used now But the same spirit is in all the truly faithful Ergo by all the truly faithful they may be used now EXCEPT XL. p. 20. Answered You say It is unbecomingly done in Mr. Baxter to compare Cromwell to the Tyrant Maximus who dedicated a flattering book to his son Answ. 1. Maximus is by most Historians made so good a man of himself that I more feared lest many would have made me a praiser of Cromwell by the comparison 2. He is called a Tyrant because he was a Usurper And do you think that Cromwell was not so when he pull'd down both King Parliament and Rump Nay Maximus was chosen in England by the Souldiers at a time when pulling down and setting up by Souldiers was too common and when his predecessors had little better Title than himself Therefore I pray you judge not too roughly of Maximus But Cromwell did usurp at a time when the case was otherwise Our Monarchy was hereditary by the undoubted Constitution and Laws of the Land and our Parliament by an Act was to sit till they had dissolved themselves and he had by solemn promises obliged himself to the Parliament as their servant and had fought against and kill'd the King among other things on this pretence that he fought against his Parliament and would have pulled them down which thing he actually and finally did himself Sir God is not well pleased with the justifying or palliating of these things though men may be tempted to do it in faction and for a divided interest 3. It is publickly known that I did openly and constantly speak the same things all the time of Cromwell's Usurpation Why then is it unbecoming now Among other places see my book of Infant Baptisme pag. 147 to 152. and 269 270 c. Where the passages spoke with caution are yet fuller than all these that displease you If Cromwell's party endured me then cannot you endure me to say one quarter as much now 4. What if I had done otherwise Shall such a suffering Preacher as you teach us all that its unbecoming to Repent 5. That I dedicated a flattering book to his son is your 31st Untruth For common sense here will discern that you distinguish between the Book and the Dedication And two books at once I directed to him The books were one against Popery and the other against the English Prelacy and Re-ordination and the imposing of the Liturgie and Ceremonies And there is not one syllable of his son in all the book save in that Dedication Nor did I ever see him speak to him or write to him else nor hear from him But only hearing that he was disposed to peace and against such turbulent Church-destroying waies as you here plead for I thought it my duty then to urge him to do that which was right and just EXCEPT XLI Answered Having my self been bred up under some Tutors and with acquaintance that kept up a reputation of great learning and wisdom by crying down the Puritans as unlearned fellows when themselves were more unlearned than I will here express on the by I said that I had known such and also that there were some such now who having clumsie wits that cannot feel so fine a thred nor are capable of mastering difficulties do censure what they understand not And that many that should be conscious of the dulness and ignorance of their fumbling unfurnished brains have no way to keep up the reputation of their wisdom but to tell men O such a one hath dangerous errors c. To this he saith that if Ben. Johnson or Hudibras had writ it but for Learned Mr. B. mortified Mr. B. judicious Mr. Baxter to fall into such levity will I hope warn all to take heed how they over-value themselves left God in judgement leave them to themselves as he hath evidently done this poor man c. And he concludeth with an invitation of me to a second and more seasonable retractation Answ. I heartily thank you for your pity and for any zeal of God though it be not according to knowledg And for my retractation I suppose you would have called it a third You quarrelled not with my suspension of my Aphorisms of Justification And for my retractation of my Political Aphorisms I have no more to say to you and others of your mind but that you would better consult your own peace and other mens and your innocency too if you would meddle with your own matters or with that only which concerneth you And to conclude 1. I unfeignedly forgive you all the revilings and other injuries of this your Book 2. I intreat you to review what is against God and his Church against Faith Love and Peace and to repent of it in time 3. I beseech you to give over this pernicious flattery of Professors and daubing over their ignorance injudiciousness pride and divisions 4. I intreat you to be more impartial towards dissenters and let not your Judgment be blinded by your passions 5. To help you to impartiality I beseech you consider how you tempt the Bishops to think it no harm to silence men that bold and do such things as you have vented and done in this book 6. I beseech you to that end better to study your self and to know what manner of spirit you are of Besides all the intimated Untruths here are 30 or 31 gross Untruths in matter of fact which I have set before you For my self it is not the least part of my Non-conformity That I dare not lie by publick Declaration to say I Assent and Consent where I do not Now shall a man aggravate the crime of such things
consented not to this at all Are we made by it the by-word and hissing of the Nations and the shame and pitty of all our friends And yet is all this to be justified or silenced and name of it at all to be openly repented of I openly profess to you that I believe till this be done we are never like to be healed and restored and that it is heinous gross impenitence that keepeth Ministers and people under their distress And I take it for the sad Prognostick of our future woe and at best our lengthened affliction to read such writings against Repentance and to hear so little open profession of Repentance even for unquestionable heinous crimes for the saving of those that are undone by these scandals and for the reparation of the honour of Religion which is most notoriously injured To see men still think that their Repentance is the dishonour of their party and Cause whose honour can no other way be repaired To see men so blind as to think that the silencing of these things will hide them as if they were not known to the World That man or party that will justifie all these heinous Crimes and still plead Conscience or Religion for them doth grievous injury to Conscience and Religion I have told you truly in the book which is bitter to you that Gods way of vindicating the honour of Religion is for us by open free Confession to take all the shame to our selves that it be not injuriously cast upon Religion And the Devils way of preserving the honour of the Godly is by justifying their sins and pleading Religion for them that so Religiousness it self may be taken to be hypocrisie and wickedness as maintaining and befriending wickedness For my own part I thought when I wasted my strength and hazarded my life in the Army against these fore-named Crimes and afterwards preached and wrote against them so openly and so many years that I had not been so much guilty of them as you here affirm But if I was I do openly confess that if I lay in sackcloth and in tears and did lament my sins before the World beg pardon both of God and man and intreat all men not to impute it to Religion but to me and to take warning by my fall which had done such unspeakable wrong to Christ and men I should do no more than the plain light of nature assureth me to be my great and needful duty EXCEPT II. ib. There is daily much greater prophaneness and the Consequent of prophaneness Immorality acted by those 4 whom yet Mr. Baxter never mentioneth but with honour As if no sins or miscarriages were to be blamed but theirs who are unable to defend themselves Answ. 1. IF this were true I were much too blame it being the very usage of others against my self which I have great reason to complain of 2. But if it was possible for you to believe your own words that I never mention them but with honour I shall think that there are few things that you may not possibly believe Reader if thou peruse the book and yet believe this Author I am not capable of satisfying thee in this nor will I undertake it in any thing else Are these terms of honour Pref. p. 18. How long Lord must thy Church and Cause be in the hands of unexperienced furious fools c. Do I honour them when I so much display their sin And when in the scheme in the conclusion I describe it And when I tell you of many of such Ministers and that it is a duty to separate from them or disown them And when in the history of Martin I tell you how neer it I am my self as to such as Martin separated from And when I cite Gildas calling such no Ministers but enemies and traytors c. Were you not very rash in this 3. But what if in this book I write neither against the prophane nor the Iews nor the Mahometans Is it nothing that I have written the greater part of above fifty books besides against them 4. What if there be Prophaneness to be reproved doth it sollow that we must not be reproved also Must we not repent because they must repent 5. O how hard is it to please all men What man in Eagland hath been less suspected to be a flatterer of such as he moaneth than my self or more accused of the contrary that hath any reputation of ministerial sobriety Ask the Bishops that Conferred with us at the Savoy 1660 Ask your self that read our Reply then Ask any that ever did Converse with me whether ever I was suspected of flattery or dawbing with men sins 6. But seeing you so far honour me as to vindicate me from other mens accusations I shall confess that it is my judgement both that we should honour all men 1 Pet. 2. 17. especially our superiors and also that in our eyes a vile person should be contemned while we honour them that fear the Lord Psal. 15. 4. EXCEPT III. He alloweth himself a great and masterly liberty to call his brethren fierce self-conceited dividers feaverish persons c. Answ. IF there be none such or but a few I will joyfully confess my error But if all ages of the Church have had such and if this Kingdom have been so troubled by such as all men know and if they yet live in this sin to their own trouble and ours why should it be contrary to meekness to mention it Should I hate my Brother in suffering sin to lie upon him Every paragraph almost inviteth me to remember Christs words to the two fierie Disciples and to say O how hard is it to know what manner of spirit we are of Tell me Reader whether this be not true that if I had called the Bishops sacrilegious silencers of a faithful Ministry murderers of many hundred thousand souls perjurious proud tyrannical covetous formal hypocrites malignant haters of good men c. I might not very easily have come off with many of these angry brethren without any blame for want of Meekness Nay whether they would not have liked it as my zeal when as such a gentle touch upon themselves doth intollerably hurt them Is there not gross partialitie in this Note also that these brethren that plead for Libertie do call it a masterly Libertie in me thus to name their faults And do you think that they would not have silenced my book if it had been in their power Note then whether the silencing imperious Spirit be not common to both extreams EXCEPT Ib. He useth the same frothy and unsavoury words that others prophane Prayer and the name of God by and which at the best is that foolish talking or jesting which we are commanded not so much as to mention Eph. 5. 3 4. Answ. THE words are I am only perswading all dissenters to Love one another and to forbear but all that is contrary to love And if such
Nor without their pains and patience in learning But in blessing them by degrees in the use of those means which they must continue learning by while they live which notwithstanding most are long dull and ignorant and injudicious though not in comparison of unbelievers But what if the Text had meant properly yee know all things Do you prove that this is spoken of all true Christians and that in all ages And that it is not partly grounded on the extraordinary anointing of the spirit poured out Act. 2. proper to those primitive times for the obsignation of the Gospel 33. It 's a heinous sin to be a flatterer of mens souls And to sowe pillows under mens elbows and to call evil good and to sooth multitudes up in their Ignorance and tell them It is not an Epithete fit for them 34. And thus you teach them to oppose and hate a faithfuller sort of Ministers who will tell them of that which you would draw them to deny 35. And it is a double sin for a Minister to do this who is a watch-man for the peoples souls 36. And yet more for one that so sharply reprehendeth the faultyness of Conformists as to separate from them 37. And to pretend that the consession of our own faults is not only an easing of other mens but even a meriting of the Pope As if either the Pope must be in the right or no Christians must be said to be Church-Dividers by their ignorance Even in a time when our Divisions so shew themselves that no one can doubt of them What is this but to perswade men to be Papists 38. And what is all this but to expose us to the scorn of all that are inclined to scorn us To teach them to look on us as they do on the Quakers as a proud distracted sort of people that will make the World believe that none of us are ignorant injudicious or dividers against such notorious publick evidence Yea to harden them that have voluminously reproached the non-Conformists and to engage your self to justifie all the ignorant injudicious sayings that they are charged with or else to prove that the speakers were no Christians 39. And this you do in the very day of our scandals and reproach where thousands are already hardened into a distaste of serious Religion by our former divisions and injudicious miscarriages As if you would thrust these miserable souls yet deeper into Infidelity and Atheism And when the scandal of our divisions hath turned many and some old professors of Religiousness unto Popery you take the course to turn off more 40. Yea by making us thus odious you do very much to increase the distaste and displeasure of our Afflicters and to bring more sufferings upon us as a people that are Phanaticks indeed Even while you make Proud imposition and persecution the cause of our divisions And when the world knoweth not only that in the first 300 years of the Church there were swarms of heresies and sects and also after Luther's reformation and among us in Armies Cities and Countrey for about 20 years even to our own confusion yet would you tempt them to take us for a people not to be believed by seeming to deny all this And when I proved to you that it is Gods way after our misdoings to take the shame to our selves that it may not fall on our Religion and the Devils way to justifie the misdoings of Christians that Christianity and Religion may bear the blame you give no confutation of any of this and yet go on to wrong the truth by defending that which is not to be defended If there be none of all this that in your eyes is matter fit for your Repentance I still pray that you may better know what manner of spirit you are of Yet I wish you to observe that I do not say that in terms you assert all these ill consequences nor do I think that you so practically hold them as not in some measure to hold the contraries of them I take you not to be so bad But I only advise both you and others to own no more the opinions which infer such things nor to do that which tends to cherish them And I here protest to all that shall take the occasion of your paper to asperse the Protestants or the non-Conformists in general that they will be inhumanely disingenuous in so doing when none but the guilty should be accused EXCEPT XXV Answered 1. Brother you do ill to intimate either of these Untruths 1. Either that there is no such thing as an ignorant sort of Preachers more valued for their affectionate tone and fervour than abler judicious men When as the whole Christian World knoweth that there are many such Preachers both among the several sects and of our selves there are or have been some and in the publick Assemblies and among all Christian Churches where there is preaching through the World And the worlds experience puts it past doubt that the generality of the vulgar unlearned and injudicious sort of men do value a man by his tone and voice more than for the judgement and excellency of his matter if not put off by such advantage Brother you and I are both known persons Though I look not to mention my self without your imputation of pride I will venture while I put my self on the side which you say I reproach to tell you that I was once commonly taken to have as affectionate a tone of speech as ever you were at the least And I ever found that Matter and Affection together took best But that warm Affection and fervent utterance with common and little matter took more with the far greater part than far more excellent matter delivered with less fervour of affection I have said as much against cold preaching as ever you have done at least And I am as much against it as ever And I am my self much helped in profiting by an affectionate delivery But Brother I take it for no pride to think that I have had more experience of mens cases than you have had If you have had no more Pastoral Charge than I suppose and came but out of the University when I was ready to be turned off from mine And I must tell you that I have been oft sorry to see how the people have been moved in Army and Countreys to value a Quaker a Seeker an Antinomian an Anabaptist a Socinian that preach'd down the God-head of Christ And among the Orthodox such ignorant ones as you know I am acquainted with meerly for the tone and fervency of their delivery Scarce any thing hath more infected the injudicious with errour 2. Or if you deny not that such a thing there is then it is yet worse in you to feign this empty loudness or affected fervency to be the Preaching which God owneth to the Conversion of souls Comparatively This is to reproach the work of Preaching and Conversion so ill do