Candlesticks in the Temple of God as burning and shining Lights among whom Christ hath sometimes delighted to walk and converse in the excellent graces and usefull gifts of his Spirit § How great a sinne and shame must it be Publique Sin and Shame to oppresse good Ministers as well as darknesse to this Church and Nation professing the Christian and Reformed Religion not onely to behold but to cause the faces of so many Nazarites who have from their youth been separated and sanctified to the speciall service of Christ and his Church who were heretofore whiter than snow to cause them to contract by sordidnesse of living such blacknesse and deformity as if they had lain among the pots among the lixae calones black guard which usually attend great mens Kitchins § It is great pity that such goodly Pillars of Gods House should be cast down to the ground and levelled to the dust even to the beasts or meanest of the people Can it be comely to see such ponderous and laborious oxen ploughing with Asses which God in the Law forbad It was a shame and reproach to King Jehojakim that he buried the dead body of the Prophet Vriah in the graves of the meanest of the people How much more will it be to bury Ministers even alive among them That is so to abuse and crush them as to enforce them either to embrace the dunghils or converse only with clods and clowns § All which burthens of life must needs press the more sadly No way of competency or comeliness for Ministers but their calling because they are now toward the evening of their dayes well stricken in years their light growing dimmer and their shadowes both of fears and infirmities larger So that to dig they are not able and to begg they are ashamed I have known many of them very grave and venerable men rather want than ask and contend with poverty rather than conquer their ingenuity Who were wonted to more tender foreheads and a more blessed as well as honorable way of giving rather than receiving If they be now driven into a desolate wildernesse they may probably meet with Firy Serpents to sting them by adding contempt to their want But what Manna or miraculous Food can they exspect What rock will follow them to relieve their thirsty and fainting Souls if they must be utterly turned out from any place as Stewards in Christs Family or Dispensers of Heavenly Mysteries § What commendable frauds I boseech your Highnesse can there be found for the sustenance of so many men and their Relations Who never have been nor now are men of any great secular dealings or receipts and accounts Such as the unjust but wise Stexard used for his preservation when he saw he must be cast out of all bufines A provident practice which we see our Blessed Saviour commended not as to the injustice and immorality of it but as to that worldly prudence and natural policy or sagacity which teacheth and commandeth even Bruit Creatures to be provident for themselves and theirs Shewing us that there is nothing more Bruitish and Barbarous more Vmnanly and Vnchristian than to neglect providing for our selves and our Familyes which who so doth is worse than an Infidel and is by the truth declared as an Apostate or denyer of the Christian Faith Sure if voluntary negligence and improvidence be so much blamed and to be abhorred in reason and Religion There can be nothing commendable in forcible imposing those exauctoratings silencings and restraints upon honest and Industrious men as must compel them to necessitypes when they are more willing to take paines in their callings § I might further add to the hunger and thirst of such mens outward condition Famine of Souls will follow famished Ministers that scarcity and famine of the word which must necessarily follow in many places and that leanness which is like to enter into many poor peoples Souls to whom such able men formerly dispensed the bread of eternal life as the faithful Stewards of Christs family whose absence is not so readily to be supplied with Ministers proportionable to their abilityes industry and gravity as is evident in many sequestred places where people are either almost famished or at the best much infected with the unwholsome food of unsound doctrine yea what if such as succeed these outed and able Ministers give people stones instead of bread and scorpions instead of fishes what if they affect to feed mens Souls after the vaporing of some novices in these dayes with empty mangers and high racks giving them the chaffe of Juvenile Notions and uselesse Speculations instead of those saving practical Instructions with which those veterane Teachers were wont to furnish and feed their Auditors both elder and younger what account can be given to the great Bishop and Pastor of Souls if his Sheep be starved for want of their Shepherds If wast and weaknesse diseases and death eternal fall upon mens precious Souls for want of saving knowledge § Certainly nothing should be done in civil affairs with more deliberation and circumspection than the silencing of Christs Minisiers Of changing the Spiritual Militia of the Ministry and the divorcing of them from their people where God hath placed and prospered them every one ought to take heed what they do to those that are the servants of the most High God and teach the way of Eternal Life There should be no lesse care and caution in altering disbanding or cashiering this spiritual Militia than in that of the secular Nor should therein Reason of State onely be considered but Reason of Religion with Christs Interests and the good of Souls for these are of eternal concernment to poor mortals the other but momentary § Since then the temporal welfare of so many worthy Ministers The blessings accruing to the Publique by able Ministers by enjoying their liberty to officiate is so agreeable to the Glory of God the Honor of Jesus Christ and the Salvation of poor Sinners I hope they will not seem to your Highnesse inconsistent with the publique Peace and and security yea since there appears no probable means under God for the covenient support of so many honest and useful Preachers besides other Scholars but onely your Highnesse Clemency and Benignity in indulging them their honest liberty Since necessity drives the poor to the rich the weak to the strong and the miserable to the merciful yea even to the God of Mercy whom though we cannot move by any merit of our own yet we may by such humble importunities as only obtrude upon him our miseries § Let it not displease your Highnesse that I have thus far presumed not onely by soft and suppliant words but by potent and I hope prevalent reasons to perswade you to such equanimity and charity as may in real effect obtain some such merciful qualifications remissions or suspensions as to the execution of your Highnesse Declaration That Pious and
dares onely whisper to themselves or it may be with some hard speeches and odious reflections jealously suggest to your Highnesse that have I undertaken by Gods help freely and fully to represent to You that so your Highnesse may not be ignorant nor remorselesse as to their calamitous condition which is like to be such that of all Men they are indeed condemned to be the most miserable in this world if the want of all things can make those miserable who want not the continual feast of a good Conscience and the support of Gods Spirit to be patient § But because I know that great Statists and wise Polititians Two Reasons of State considered as grounds of the Declaration against Ministers do not lightly apply so publique and sharp severities in the method of Government but either they aime at First exemplary punishing former Offences Or secondly at preventing future Insolencies which may endanger publique safety For private Feuds and personal despights or revenges upon any men that are subject to their power are impotencies or passions most unworthy of great and valiant Spirits and not incident to them because much below them § Give me leave to Remonstrate to your Highnesse That the exercise of such Charity Clemency and Equanimity as is desired by me for such worthy Ministers and other Scholars can no way either First abate that Prudent Justice which must punish Offenders to preserve the Innocent in peace Nor secondly can it incourage for the future such licentiousnesse or presumption as may any way endanger that publique tranquillity which your Highnesse professed to me was your impartial and highest designe in Government in which all honest men of all Principles and Perswasions might enjoy themselves in peace § First As to the first point of punitive State-policy First as to punitive Justice for past Offences I humbly conceive it was not so much an Act of Justice and Legality as of Military caution and prevention while the Interest of Parties were sadly divided in Warre which at first inflicted so great losses and restraints as upon others so upon many Learned Grave and godly Ministers not as Penalties but Securities And certainly those principles or perswasions which first lead them to undergo so many Miseries by the improsperity of that Cause to which they chose to adhere holding themselves obliged thereto in Conscience by the Lawes of God and Man these can in no Justice of God or Man deserve to be alwayes so sorely punished However possibly in reason of State it might for a time be rather necessary than just that they should be restrained or weakned flagrante bello during the hot fits and Paroxysms of war not quia nocuerunt but ne nocere possint § Past Offences more than sufficiently punished Yet when this Rivalry jealousie and contest by Armes was once decided and publique Oppositions were reduced to publique Subjections certainly such as were at first sufferers onely by way of caution and prevention do not want very just Pleas now for their liberty and present indemnitie notwithstanding their supposed Constancy to their former Principles of which as no wise man is concerned to be curiously inquisitive so they cannot be injurious to any publique Power and Peace so long as they are modestly smothered and in-offensively silenced in their own Brests or Consciences whose Dictates your Highnesse knows are not under any mans Empire Whether mens private Perswasions are to be made publique Offences The ablest men cannot change their Opinions when they will nor will honest men pretend a Change where is none Since then their former Sufferings were made use of for the security of that side which now prevailes sufficiently over them as to the outward man Since their present Constancy proceeds not from Factious pertinacy which is soon either subdued or softned by sufferings but onely from Consciencious Integrity which is in Wise and Good men as a Diamond unmalleable and invincible Lastly since this is so modestly carried as no way either invades or affronts the prevalent Power or publique Peace and Safety Surely such men may well appear rather the Objects of just Indulgence and Remission than of any further renewed rigours and endlesse coercions especially since their Principles kept private as they are can do no hurt and their Ministerial abilities being made publique may do much good § Adde to this His Highnesse declared tendernesse as to Liberty of Conscience what your Highnesse hath highly pretended to and much sought to gaine beliefe in from the World That no man or Magistrate is more indulgent to reall liberty of conscience none more tender of making rude Scrutinies into mens hearts which are Gods Prorogative and reserve or of laying either rigid impositions upon mens Consciences or penaltys on their opinions when their Conversation is such as becometh the Gospell and our Lawes neither impious nor injurious neither idle nor Pragmatick All which being granted I cannot under favour see how it can confist with your Highnesses many other Declarations and Professions to preserve rational and Religious liberty unviolated How then I beseech you should the constancy of these mens private perswasions joyned with honesty and innocency of life in any equity render them so burthensome and intolerable to the Common-wealth as to exclude them for ever from all civil and Sacred Industry in such wayes of honest subsistence as are sutable to their education and abilityes § Who doubts but that in civill addictions and adherences His Highnesse approving of mens constancy to their Principles in his own Interest even your Highnesse doth passionately desire and highly approve such servants subjects friends and followers who are not upon sinister but sincere respects so devoted to your Safety Honor Power and Interest that they will not easily suffer themselves to be removed from them whereto they once have applied themselves not more with prudence which will onely hold in the Summer and prosperity of your affairs and family than with conscience love and gratitude which will last in Winter and adversity as the life and sap of Trees doth when their leaves are faln That virtue which is commendable in your Highnesses case cannot be blameable in anothers though an enemy because it is a virtue The Antiquated or obsolete Causes of many Ministers sufferings § Nor is it to be forgotten as to the examining of the point of Justice in many excellent Ministers and other Scholars past sufferings That long before the scene of our civill affaires was thus altered and setled as now it is under your Highnesses Government many of them were Silenced Sequestred and Ejected out of their Livings preferments and Fellowships meerly upon the score of I know not what Occasionall Covenants new Vowes and State Engagements which were but temporary Stratagems serving such various and Particular Interests as in their times were sometimes on foot and prevalent in their partyes and designes All which having been long since justly antiquated
and abolished as to their secular virtue and civill influence it were great pity they should still continue their destructive power upon any good mens consciences Estates or Libertyes as Comets are thought to do their malignancy long after they are vanished and dis-appear What justice can there be that men should continue under penaltyes when the partiall causes or temporary occasions of their sufferings are quite ceased and suppressed nor did they suffer at first upon any morall but onely politick considerations as they were then presented by severall Acters on the English Stage Now the Lawes both of Tragedies and Comedies do permit that those Actors which in one scene may seem judged beaten bound and killed may in another act returne to be free and in favour according as the vicissitudes of humane affaires doe variously entertaine this life of man § If it be objected Objection as to some Ministers unquiet carriage Answered to make all Ministers of that unsuccesfull adherency seeme dangerous and odious that some of them enjoying common freedom and protection under your Highnesse Government have yet behaved themselves other wayes then became pious peaceable and prudent men under power yea and contrary to that wisdome which affliction should have taught them in reference to both publique and private peace Yet no justice will permit that some mens pragmatick petulancie who may possibly have more breath of passion in their sailes then balast of discretion in the hold of their judgements should be imputed to all men of that learned Tribe who may be of the same perswasion but of far more prudence and moderation § Nothing seemes harder measure No Justice will punish many innocents for a few nocents and remoter from Christian Justice than for a few mens sakes who may be infected with the itch or leprosy of impatient and turbulent spirits for which they deserve to be confined till they are healed to shut up all others who were not at all infected with or are cured of their diseases It is great pity some mens inordinate activity should condemne others to utter idlenesse and exclude such able men even from those mean imployments as to the emolument to which they have cheerfully condescended since the frowns and burden of the times have greatly depressed them in order to maintaine themselves and their familyes which must be undone if these may do nothing for which they are apt and proper § And since all proportions of both divine Why Ministers are punished more than any men of the same Principles and humane justice do assure us that those opinions or perswasions by which no private advantages are obteined nor publique dangers threatned cannot be such a plague disease or Gangrene as are onely to becured by these dispiritings and exhaustings which must needs follow extreme idlenesse and indigence wise men cannot sufficiently admire what Councel or designe puts your Highness upon executing those high severities only upon men of literature Ministers other Scholars denying them all such ingenious libertyes to subsist by their honest callings which yet are granted fully freely to all other men even the meanest tradesmen and mechanicks who are of the same principles and prone to be much more active in asserting them and the wonder is the greater because your Highnesse hath in my hearing as well as many others professed an impartiall value of all able and good Ministers much commending some of the Episcopall way yea and almost preferring them for their Graces and Gifts Lastly because your Highnesse is pleased to own your selfe not onely as Protector in generall but as the speciall Patrone of both the Vniversities and in them of all good Literature and Scholars by being Chancellour of one of them greater degree of favour may be hoped § I professe to plead for no Ministers or Scholars Plea for Ministers as to their Innocency and multitudes that are scandalously criminous or morally noxious such I beleive and hope few of these men are who now fall under the milstone of your Highnesses late Declaration which must needs grinde them to powder If it excecute what it threatens § But if the most of them were persons lesse commendable or for some misdemenors justly blamable yea and by law punishable yet still the very multitude of them is no small Plea If not for totall impunity yet for such clemency as may not seeme an outrage of severity and extremity of justice what is more usual in civill and Christian States than to suffer the edge of Justice to be blunted and the stroke of it defeated rather then over-sharply executed against the many Crouds of offenders though they cannot oppose the siroakes of justice by force yet they do as it were smother and oppresse them pinioning the armes even of just power with the cords of a man the softer sense of humanity and which is more of Christian pity we find our blessed Saviour had more then once compassion on the multitude not onely as necessitous but as numerous § Both which number and necessity multitude and misery do here so meet together in the Objects of my Plea and Petition presented before your Highnesse that your eye could not but affect your heart if you could at one view behold the great quantities and deplorable companies of venerable Ministers and other ingenious Scholars together with their dependances and relations as wives children servants and necessitous kindred all which do infinitely dread and earnestly deprecate those miseryes which hang over their heads if the Fathers or cheif of their Families be forbidden to work in their callings which is to forbid them all to eat or to live at least honestly § I am confident so rufull a spectacle even amidst the pomp The sad spectacle of Ministers and their Families who are many thousands ready to perish and splendor of your court would more move your Highnesse to compassionate them than the prospect of Xerxes his Army did that Great King when he wept to think how a few years would moulder to dust so vast a number of valiant men for these last must perish by the Common Law and inevitable fate of mortality but those many and good men for whom I am bold to intercede must it seemes be undone and die meerely by their arbitrary necessityes to which your Highnesses Declaration onely doth drive and condemne them § And which way I beseech your Highnesse without a miracle can these men by any unwonted industry get livelyhood for themselves and their families whose number cannot amount to lesse then Twenty or Thirty thousand Soules considering that above halfe of the Ministers and Scholars of England and Wales have been upon one account or other Sequestred from their livings which are above Nine Thousand besides Fellowships or Free-Schooles many other also have been wholy deprived of their Prebendaryes Denaryes Bishopricks and Highest Dignityes in the Church who upon the first Figure or Head cannot be lesse then Six or Seaven
to preserve to themselves the Honor and to others the happinesse of their Clemency that they might appear to mankind not only worshippers of warlike Deities such as Mars and Bellona but also of Jupiter who was esteemed not only the King but the helping Father of both Gods and men whose defective name borrowed its supply from the Sacred name Jehovah whose glory passed by in that Proclamation The Lord gratious and merciful c. § Tertullian's generous councel is good Christian Charity must exceed Heathens Humanity Plus debet Christi discipulus quam mundi philosophus gloriae animal et secularis aurae vile mancipium Christians act much below their patern if they do not exceed the best of Heathens in humanity and holinesse too as much as their true God doth others Idols Since they have the Word of God for their rule the Servants of God for their copies the Son of God for their Original and the Nature of God for the perfect and eternal Idaea of all charity mercy and benignity who will also be at last their exceeding great reward We read that Joseph easily secured his Brethrens feares of his reveng by telling them he feared God intimating that he was resolved to follow God in his wayes of Mercy and Gentlenesse David a man of Warr gives it as one of the Characters of a good man he is ever merciful Our blessed Saviour enjoynes it to his Disciples Of Mercy and Benignity in Christians Be ye merciful as your Heavenly Father is merciful and this not onely to the just and good but also to the bad and unjust yea God himself capitulates with such wormes as we are If we shew mercy we shall receive mercy according to the measure we mete to each other The Syrians gave the Kings of Israel this Honor that they were merciful Kings For such as know most of the true God will be ready most to imitate him in this attribute of mercy which is above all his works § As for my self my Lord I have more than my reward If I have done or endeavoured as becomes my duty to my God and Saviour Next to my conscience and calling and lastly to that charity which I ow my brethren and fellow labourers whose distresses I am sure require though their modesty did not expect this service from me of which they are wholly ignorant I know many of them I heare of many more whose worth is not to be measured by the false weights and scanty measure of civil sidings and factions These are many of them reduced to their cottages to their dry morsels to their water and bread of affliction which yet they greatly feare to loose So much doth a little seem to those moderate and humble minds who know how to be thankful yea content with that which is next door to nothing § I should suspect my self to be no living member of Christs Body Of Sympathy among Ministers whose very life consists in charity and compasson If I found in my self no sympathy with the afflictions of so many Josephs yea I should not onely be ashamed but much and justly suspect my own plenty and Gods undeserved bounty to me least my table should become my snare and my very food be digested into sin If I had no sence and sorrow for others hungry and afflicted souls It were farr better for me to be levelled to the tenuity of the meanest of my Brethren that I might be experience learn to be compassionate than with an epicurean indifferency and uncharitable stupidity to behold them wanting competency and indeed necessaries which they must do If your Highnesse decree that is gone forth be rigidly executed not against Magicians and Astrologers but against grave Divines and godly Ministers of the gospel to their utter undoing § It will be favour enough and a most ample returne of my prayers If by this pious importunity I have any way perswaded Conclusion deprecating displeasure I have any way perswaded If need be or confirmed your Highnesse clemency to them Whose pardon I should now of course formally crave for my self and thereby add to your Highnesse troubles by some solemne apology which I would willingly add if I were conscious to my self of the least fault in my designe If there be any it is only such as charity I hope may and will easily cover fince it is charity only that commits it Nor sin or shame in charity Not but that I know some moreoser polititians are prone to censure even compassion for a kind of conspiracy and such charity for malignancy like those scepticks who not only disputed but denyed the snow to be white but I hope your Highnesse eye will not be lesse good because theirs are evill § Onely it is fit to beg your Highnesse pardon for this my intolerable trespassing so much upon your much oppressed time and little leasure by so tedious an addresse in which at the worst aspect I shall yet appear as one that pays your Highness besides other taxes the tribute of double honor First by owning power in your hand to destroy New by hoping for pity in your heart to preserve these Ministers and other Scholars in whose behalf I intercede who if any under Heaven are objects fit for your Clemency and Compassion both for their eminent merits and their impendent miseries § I humbly leave these papers in your Highnesse hand and your heart in Gods who is higher than the highest of whose mercy we all daily partake and shall while we live on earth stand in need whose compassions are his good pleasures but his punishneed Peroration whose compassions are his good pleasures but his punishments his strange work as not willingly afflicting the hildren of men That your Highnesse may in this case imitate so blessed a paterne is the prayer of Febr. 4th 1655. Your Highnesse humble servant J. G. FINIS A POSTSCRIPT to the READER Good Reader THou maist further understand that at the same time when this Addresse was made by the Author in behalfe of those Ministers of the Church of England over whose heads this Black Cloud then hung threatning a deluge of desolation God stirred up the spirit of the then Lord Primate of Armagh Bishop Usher personally to intercede with the then Oliver Protector for his clemency and indulgence toward them It was one of the last endeavours of piety and charity to which that great and most vengerable person applied his most potent Interessions fortified not onely by his pious oratory full of exquisite reason and religion but with his prayers and teares For that divine prelate who was in all things as Nazianzen sayes of Athanasius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather admirable than commendable It being bard to say whether be were doctior or melior ornation or humilior thought himself in nothing more concerned then in shewing those bowels of compassion which became such a Father of the Church to the worthy sons and servants of it whose afflictions he made his own nor was he satisfied to enjoy some degrees of tranquillity and respect himself while he saw as Joseph so many of his Brethren in such great streights and tribulations He attended mollissima tempora fandi the softest opportunities of mediating for them five or six weeks in London impatient not to shew such compassion as became so tender an heart and so fervent a Soul as his was At last he was fain to retreate with little successe and lesse hopes than he expected and deserved to his great grief using this expression to the Author of the foregoing piece That he saw some men had onely intestina not viscera guts but no bowels Thus did this good man go with sorrow to his country retirement and so to the grave presaging further sharp impressions of Gods sore displeasure which would shortly and suddenly light upon this Nation to the great darkning as he said of the reformed Religion and the depression of faithful Ministers § This grand example of Christian commiseration which that excellent Primate made more illustrious by his eminent worth in all things worthy of a good Man a good Christian a good Minister and a good Bishop is worthy to be added to the Records of those many other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 most memorable and imitable actions of that Heroe that Saint that Angel of the British Reformed Churches § So that the Author of the foregoing Petitionary Remonstrance did not alone stand in the gap But was as in all things else many degrees inferiour to that incomparable Primate so in this happy to be his second and assistant § Which regards are sufficient to vindicate his endeavours from all sinister reflections prone to fall from such eyes as are either more cautious or more envious and censorious than becomes good Christians esteeming nothing prudent which is not successful nor valiant which is not victorious § After ages possibly will be better pleased to see the afflicted state of the Clergy and Church of England thus not wholly for saken but asserted and compassionated at least by one so worthy a person who was as an Army or cloud of witnesses who being so well acquainted with the mind of Christ and living in the life of his Spirit It may be a good omen that in his good time the Father of Mercy and God of all Consolation will answere his fervent prayer and return to plead the cause and effectually to intercede in the behalfe of this so afflicted Church and his Servants the worthy Ministers of it who have a long time born the burthen of his sore displeasure and the reproach of all unreasonable men All which hath not yet drivan them to such despaire but that they pray and hope in the midst of Judgement God will Remember his Mercies which endure for ever To which Petition all Lovers of Truth and Peace will say Amen