common with that impropriated part of it the Church and therefore in the business of Religion supposed as general Preliminaries and as it is in all other Arts and Sciences confessed Principles for he that cometh unto God as Candidate in this Sacred Profession must believe that God is and that he is a Rewarder of them that diligently seek him A Godhead Religion Concomitant Reward and Happiness Common-Creed wherein all Heathens and Pagans Jews Mahometans c. whose several Testimonies I must not here insert as well as Christians universally throughout the world are Joynt Confessors save here and there a Protagoras Diagoras Lucian the Author of the Contempt of the Clergy c. and such like Desperadoes who yet never durst out of a Feaver expresly deny any of all the Three a GOD his WORSHIP or a FVTVRE STATE or suppose they live the Pope's Life questioning what they dare not cannot deny Clement the Seventh is the Man I mean his Three Dying-Resolves will be their certain though too late Conviction viz. Whether there be a God Whether the Soul be Immortal Whether there be a Heaven and Hell Again Sir That in order to the due knowledg of this God the right and acceptable performance of this worship and the discovery and attainment of this happiness a special Revelation of the Divine Mind Will and Rule of Faith Life is to the creature absolutely necessary that a scriptural Rule and Revelation is most convenient and that to afford the creature such a Rule is most congruous to the sacred nature honour of God are all rational truths aswell as the former For Sir as touching the necessity of such a Rule and Revelation although a person might by the conduct of the Light and Law of Nature emproved by the accessary help of the works of Nature discover and learn That there is a God yea and in some degree what He is both in his negative Attributes independency infinity immutability c. and in his affirmative-goodness wisdom power c. yea and those in their very eminencies omnisciency omnipotency c. and the like as the necessary and essential properties of the first Cause Likewise that there is religious worship due to this God yea and that he ought to be worshipped 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a way and manner most acceptable to himself Lastly that reward and happiness attends and depends upon that Worship yea and in some respect what objective happiness chief good is viz. God himself qui omnis beatitudinis fastigium meta finis as said the Divine Plato like as his Master Socrates the former the very sum adequate measure and boundary of all real blessedness yet notwithstanding all this What Vnity of Essence in Trinity of Persons is One in Three without division Three in One without confusion God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost all one individual Spirit the proper object of divine Worship What the right and acceptable manner of performing that Worship Wherein that true formal happiness consists which attends thereupon and by what means attainble c. Those Sir believe it are not at all discoverable by that common Light by reason of that infinite disproportion which is between such a defective medium and the object and hence in the Academy the Lyceum the Stoa and other Athenian Phrontisteries would have found no more credit then the doctrine usually preached for a hundred yeares last past in the Church of England hath in your books Follies Lett. 1. pag. 59. else what mean't the Heathenish polytheisme and great Armado of mock-Deities alias Mortals bewrayed by the Tombs they had aswell as Temples thirty thousand strong as it is in Hesiod's muster-roll copied by St. Augustine of whom three thousand amongst the very Graecians as it is in Homer's whose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if with you as Canonical as belike his Iliades and Odysses are then we know at once what is your Creed your Bible and Practice of Piety six thousand amongst the Romanes as it is in Varro's more Gods then there are of Contemned Clergy all England over what mean't their monstrous Idolatries their two hundred eighty eight Beatitudes recounted by the learned Roman now mentioned and such like stuff of which to speak with the Father me piget quod illos non puduit and that not amongst the ruder Plebeians only but even persons of more defecated intellectuals their polished Sophies Ingeniosoes Vertuosoes and the most refined of all Nations and professions the Egyptian Priests the Persian Magi the wisest Graecian Philosophers Stoicks Peripateticks Platonicks c. the most inquisitive Roman Naturalists the Graecian and Roman both Orators and Poets even the very Princes in either Faculty Demosthenes and Tully in the one and in the other which your Reader may chance to wonder at Protestant-Homer Let. 2. pag. 43 45 46. and which is yet stranger Virgil the undoubted Nonconformist had he but held out to Bartholomew the Famous the onely persons of either Perswasion I assure you that I ever read or dream'd of to have come from Rome or Athens What I say can the Pagan Mock-deities Idolatries and imaginary Beatitudes in the very judgement of the most strenuous Advocates of pure Naturals portend other then an utter Insufficiency of natural light for the ends and purposes above specified namely the administring of the due Knowledge of the True God True Worship and True Happiness Therefore a New Light or supernatural Rule and Revelation is absolutely necessary Again Sir the expediency of a scriptural or written Rule may appear from a three-fold danger and inconveniency which an unwritten one is liable to namely that of oblivion and forgetfulness that of depravation and corruption by unjust additions detractions falsifications and forgery and lastly that of utter destruction and suppression the first through the treachery of Humane memory the two last through the implacable enmity of Satan and his Accomplices against God his Truth and Church From all which a written Rule and Revelation is more secure as being a publick Record and Repertory whereunto recourse may be had upon all occasions as well for relief to Memory as for trial or redress of questioned and impeached Truth hence called by St. Peter a surer word of Prophecy than Vocal or Vnwritten to wit not by a certainty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of veracity for all Divine Revelation is equally sure in this sense because equally true but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of security upon the accounts mentioned True it is God was pleased to instruct his Church for the first Two thousand years and upwards onely viva voce by a vocal Revelation of his Mind and Will for ought certainly known to the contrary but then Sir the constitution of the Church was during that long Aera onely domestical confined within the Line and Limits of particular Families which compared with the longaevity and great age of the Aborigines of the World gives us plainly
Years last past is full of such Follies c. Then the conclusion followeth by clear consequence viz. that therefore the Preaching usual in the Church of England for an Hundred Years last past is such as is at present usual therein and consequently by your own position a hinderance of Salvation rather then the means to it the Preachers Fools and the Preaching Murther That is to say the Faith and Doctrine usually Preached yea and Printed too for both Press Pulpit Writings as well as Sermons are by you charged contended for lived and dyed in yea and by many of them sealing with their Blood what they professed by Tongue or Pen dyed for by our first Reformadoes Protestant-Champions and Church-Worthies our Marian Martyrs all our Orthodox Learned Pious Painful Preachers under the Reign of Q. Elizab. K. James Charles the first in times past and what hath been still is under our present Soveraign King Charles the II. usually Preached published is a hindrance of Salvation rather then the means to it consequently the Church of England since the Sun of Righteousness arose in it with his healing wing of Reformation no true Church for as extra Ecclesiam nulla salus there is no ordinary Salvation without the Line of Church-Communion so there is no true Church without the appropriated meanes of Salvation and then according to your Divinity Ichabod farewell Church of England And now Sir what do you think of your self upon recollection or what will your Reader think of you have I not here convincingly made out against you from your own Principles and positions a base unworthy pestilent designe upon the Reformed Religion and Clergy and in them upon our Church to what in you lies the utter subverting and nullifying of the whole And what you mean by your mysterious reserves namely that what you intend by usual Preaching Lett. 1. p. 81. Lett. 2. p. 101. you will not here go about to explain and the reasons of your Letters might be further explained when occasion should require but I have done it to your hand in a paraphrase very congruous to the original what you mean I say by such Reserves and shrew'd hints as those are we may by this time very plainly perceive especially with the additional help of a short Glosse of your own dropt from you it seemes unawares a great way off from the Text where you explain the good time by those despaired of dayes of vertue Lett. 1. p. 124. of having the Tithes restored to the Church most unjustly robb'd of them by the Sacrilegious Church-Publican Henry the Eight to wit when like a wise Man he rejected the Yoak of Papal Supremacy Anglia non patitur duos Caesares which other Christian Princes Issachar like couch and crouch under and forraged its Antichristian supports Monkish Nests and Nurseries with which the Nation was at that time much more over-stock'd then now it is with an Orthodox Clergy though in so doing he onely kill'd the Pope's Body as Luther said of him in the mean time saving his Soul c. Encrease of Church-Patrimony Sir I do as heartily wish and pray for as your self but I 'll be sure that it be a Reformed Church which upon any such score I enter into my Litany but this you aim to subvert But good Sir pray tell me how comes it to pass that you adventure to explain the good time in the plausible circumstance of Church-Tyth which you doe so mysteriously conceal in the concern of usual-Church Preaching 'T is very odd here you are express but in the case of Preaching you treat your Reader with Morose Reserves what I intend by usual Preaching I shall not here go about to explain the reasons of my Writing may be further explained when occasion shal require Sir I doe not like these odd hints of your hic nunc I understood by your last Lett. 2. p. 200. that you was gon into Devonshire to secure the World from your being ever troublesom in this kind any more Amen said I a good riddance and what other kind of trouble you design for it the God of Heaven knowes your reticentiae's of time place and occasion when where and upon what account you intend it may be by Letters of Credence to be produced in a good time further to explain to us the reasons of your Enquiry and what you understand by usual Preaching in the Church of England I must tell you are very suspicious what do you mean to comment upon it with the sensible gloss of Fire and Faggott or a second dose of the Jesuite's Powder or the new game of Trapp-Law or t'other Coal from the Altar because the first did not the business and thus of Inquisitor turn Executioner In the name of God Father Son and Holy Ghost we defie the Divel and all his Works Being that your Charge Sir is commenced from and coextended with Englands Evangelick Century and blessed Aera of Reformation the hundred Yeares last past whereas had it been limited to the last twenty or thirty we had less suspected your morals and consequently Vulpes Bovem agit the Reformed Religion and Clergy therein attacted and what in you lies subverted insomuch that it is plainly manifest that the Christian Religion founded and fixed in the Nation is with you the Apple of contention who therefore criminates Ministers being two bent upon Preaching of it Lett. 2. p. 72. index sufficient of yours It highly concerns the Church of England to stand in Justification of her first Reformation her original Protestancy and remonstrance against and separation from the Church of Rome the Religion by her professed her Clergy the official Preachers and Publishers of that Religion and the usual Preaching of that Clergy which in her name as her Advocate I have vouch'd to doe Well then The Essentials constitutive of a true Church Sir of the Mystical aswell as of the natural Body being these three namely the Head the Body and intimate Vnion and Communion between both the onely Head of the Christian Church being Jesus Christ God and Man in one Person appointed and anointed by God the Father King Priest and Prophet thereof the only mystical Ligament and bond of Community in this holy Corporation being the Divine Spirit originally derived from the Head through the whole Body the Church as Heiress thereof being the common foundation of that Sacred patronymick Christian under the New Testament as well as of that other Meschiahim as Eusebius notes under the Old or the Catholick Faith the product of that Spirit or both whence it comes to pass that the Founder Foundation Superstructure and medium or instrument of conjunction are all in Holy Scripture propounded as so many Vnites admitting of no consort or collateral One God and Father of all One onely Lord Mediator Saviour Foundation Name Way c. One Body One Spirit Faith Hope and Religion And being that the Religion professed and practised
that I single out such matchless instances of your extemporal and occasional Witt which let me tell you none but some unsanctified Humster for your Hector will ever afford an Amen to or reckon other then facetious villany remember for a check to it though Noah's Flood mentioned in your Hector's Litany be past yet St. Peter's Fire is still to come which all your holy Water cannot quench Ignorant-Poor Clergy indeed if a profligate Hector-Rampant shall out-vie them in their faculty being no further hallowed then with your outside consecration of a double Cap Cassock and Girdle Again As touching the other grand part of the Ministerial Office namely Preaching It is your peremptory assertion Sir in the Words of some great Patron an Intimado possibly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whom you adopt for your mouth that such Preaching as is usual in the Church of England is a hinderance of Salvation Lett. 1. p. 81. rather then the means to it and the explication of what you intend by the epithete usual you reserve to the good time c. but what I will give the World to understand presently and yet plough with no other then your own Heiffer That Preaching of the Word of God by persons of Holy Order duly authorised and qualified hereunto is a Divine Institution that such Preaching is the ordinary meanes of Salvation and that the Preaching usual in the Church of England of which a fuller vindication hereafter is such She and I in her is obliged to believe till She see better Authority for altering of her Creed or Clergy then you or your Masters are like to produce in haste But the emphasis of your assertion lyeth in the adjunct viz. usual with which you epithet the Preaching by you tax'd and what you intend by usual Preaching in the Church of England must be traced by its extreams or opposites Now then the extream or opposite of usual Preaching must either be 1. Extraordinary high performed in the Holy Tongues Hebrew and Greek through an immediate illapse and inspiration of an infallible Spirit and if so Christus corpore Paulus ore nothing less will serve your turn then then St. Augustine's wish the audible Preaching of Christ or an Apostle in person visibly re-incorporated into the Church or else 2. Extraordinary low and mean possibly by way of prescribed Homily the Church speaking in this as the Spirit in the former but this you know is performable by the meanest Desk-Man one of your Contemptibles though never Master of other Language or Literature then what he may owe to a Mothers Nurses or School-Dames discipline or 3. Extraordinary in respect of Church Office order and degree as being performed onely by Primates or Prelates c. but neither do I take this to be the meaning of your unusual Preaching for besides the great breach of charity implied in it as if all the Preachers in the Church of England were Hinderers of Salvation except onely two saving Graces and twenty four Dominical Vertues if once the inferiour order and Body of the Clergy be brought into Contempt I am sure the Most and Right Reverend must look to share in the Destiny Or else lastly but of that anon It is not a little observable Sir I hope your Reader will sense you accordingly that while you expose our Preachers to the contempt of the Laity you amuse them with dark Reserves touching their Preaching The Clergy and Religion is the very Theme Argument and subject-matter of your Letters those you presuppose a contempt of the Grounds and Occasions of this Contempt you have engaged in an Enquiry into with pretence of friendly redress those grounds and occasions you summarily reduce to two viz the ignorance and Poverty of the Clergy of which anon in the explication and demonstration of those two characters the Preachers are plainly described whose Preaching you averr to be a hinderance of Salvation Now then the usual Preachers of the Church of England are plainly described by you and in them the usual Preaching what then can be the meaning or Mystery of your Reserve that the usual preaching that hinders Salvation which one would think you have sufficiently explained yet you will not here goe about to explain Lett. 1. p. 81. Lett. 2. p. 101. and that the reasons of your scrible might be further explained when occasion should require undoubtedly profound all naught and that I may unmask and detect you according to my promise I will spell out the Original by your own Copy for therein as God would have it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 your speech bewrayeth you and by good consequence draw a summary conclusion touching the designe charged upon you from your own premises and that in A third assault made by you upon both Doctrinal and Ministerial foundation joyntly the Reformed Religion and Clergy more expressely Ad hominem then All such preaching as is at present usual in the Church of England is a hinderance of Salvation rather then the meanes to it But the Preaching used in the Church of England for an hundred Yeares last past is such as is at present usual therein Therefore the Preaching used in the Church of England for an hundred Yeares last past is a hinderance of Salvation c. Sir of this Categorick Syllogisme for form unexceptionable as you must needs know if your Logicks match your Ethicks the premisses are your own and I hope you will not deny the conclusion which is a compendious glosse and Comment upon the pestilent designe of your Letters of Enquiry The Major proposition Consists of your own express words above scann'd onely your indefinite is by me turn'd into an universal which you know the Rules of School will justify me in as well as the matter in debate such preaching and all such Preaching are equivalent The minor proposition or assumption is your own too as appears partly by express words partly by the scope series tenour and contexture of your Discourse disown it if you can Lett. 1. p. 58 59 It would be an endless thing Sir say you to your Correspondent to count up all the Follies that have been for an hundred Yeares last past Preached and Printed of this kind Now what kind of Follies you mean is plain from your foregoing Narrative concerning ridiculous Preaching by way of impertinent nay Lett. 1. p. 32 38 45 c. sometimes Blasphemous Metaphor Similitude Tales or such as is apt to bring Contempt upon the Preacher and that Religion which he professeth of which afterwards when I come to enquire into matter of Fact so that the argument standeth thus That Preaching which is full of Follies or such useless and ridiculous things as are apt to bring Contempt upon the Preacher and the Religion by him professed is such as is at present usual in the Church of England and therefore by you supposing it such exposed to Contempt But the Preaching usual in the Church of England for an Hundred
means methods helps c. conducing hereunto with due explication and application of the same accoâ—â—â—ng to the acroamatick rules of that Divine art must needs be in foro Ecclesiae saving Preachers at leastwise no Hinderers of Salvation As That the condition of all mankind by nature is a state of sin and misery consisting in the loss of beatifick friendly union and communion with God the sum of all created happiness and the incursion of his wrath curse and all the accumulative misery attending his violated Law both in this world and that which is to come That there is no possible way of escape or recovery out of this condition without a Mediator or Redeemer interposing as a third person between God and the Delinquent partly by reason of that infinite both disproportion and opposition distance and repugnance between the two parties and partly by reason of the Sinners own invincible insufficiency hereunto That this only Mediator Redeemer and Saviour is the Christian 's Messias and Immanuel the Son of God incarnate in a true Humane Nature assumed into personal subsistence with the Godhead as being of all persons in Heaven and Earth and indeed a kind of compend of both alone qualified for such a negotiation his twofold-Nature Divine and Humane his threefold Office Kingly Priestly and Prophetical his twofold state of Humiliation and Exaltation his manifold Vertues especially his Spirit and Merit his Laws Ordinances and Institutions c. all co-effectual herein That true Faith namely that sacred principle and habit whereby we not only assent to Christ's Revelation of himself but receive and embrace his Person upon his own terms as therein offered and revealed together with true Repentance another pious qualification in turning from sin to God out of a due sense of the hainousness as well as danger of the Offence and Mercy through Christ in the Offended with firm resolutions and endeavours of amendment are the conditions necessarily required in and of all that partake of this Saviour and Salvation That Good Works or the acts of sincere and conscionable Obedience performed to the Moral Law are the necessary and inseparable testificats proofs and evidences of that Faith and Repentance the Decalogue being ever the best justification of the Creed That the Word Sacraments Prayer but your Heathen's touch of Devotion will not serve turn and the like are to be pursued as the ordinary means and methods instituted and appointed of God for the producing of that Faith Repentance and Obedience And Methinks I have waded through great Mysteries in a little time and if I gain a Proselyte by the means my labour is well bestowed Amen say I 't is pity Witt should perish The Publican two I say of such fundamental truths as these represented in this Scheam with due explication and application of the same must needs I think if there be any such in the world be an edifying and saving way of preaching not a hinderance but furtherance of Salvation And to apply That the usual preaching in the Church of England is such saving preaching as well as her Preachers both her first Refromers and their Successors infinitely emproved Answ pag. 25. since the High-Sheriff's Sermon in St. Marie's Pulpit at Oxford in point of Order and Office sufficiently authorised and the Religion by them purged and preached and in community with the People joyntly professed and practised truly Catholick-Apostolick She Sir is very well satisfyed and like to be dayly more and more confirmed in it I hope unless better Authority be offered for an innovation in either Creed or Clergy than what hath ever as yet appeared on this side the Sea or to some of us beyond it from the Learned'st either Men or Books But I 'll assure you for your comfort you have little reason to hope ever to see such days of vertue What! and yet our usual Preaching Folly and a hinderance of Salvation God forbid Sir If I have failed in the premisses disprove them if not pray deny not the conclusion but this is antiquated game 't is ordinary with the Old Serpent to act the Diabolus where he cannot be Apolyon accuse what he cannot destroy when as after a great expence of Venom and Subtilty he cannot thanks be to God either Vnminister our Clergy nor Vn-church our Laity to the ruine of the whole he cunningly playes his after-game in traducing all our Church as Apostate our Religion as Heresy our Discipline as Schism our usual Preaching as Folly and a hinderance of Salvation and Sir supposing I grant part of your charge that the Preaching of the first Reformers of our Church and what is usual in it at present was is the foolishness of preaching what then such was that of the very Apostles yet saving to them that believed and why not ours theirs notwithstanding the Folly charged upon it by the Greeks saving and ours because of the same charge from a Grecizer damning destructive a hinderance of Salvation Segnior no but to read your destiny in theirs by the same Oracle if the usual preaching in our Church be Foolishness it is to them that perish Foolishness and between Convert and Castaway I know and you will find no middle Limbo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then who fool twice or worse Your own dear Minion with whom I will conclude this particular hath told you the same upon the matter in a more intelligible language plain English instead of Greek and that in a cornute and thereby indeed he pusheth you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but fool-hardy takes no warning Answ pag. 80. either you expect saith he that your Reader should believe nothing of what you say throughout your Letters and then you play the Fool and write to no purpose or you would have him believe all and then you do little better than 'twere almost actionable had I not a precedent for it play the Knave And now Sir By way of reflection upon the whole in order to a conclusion of this general What Reader that is not either prepossest with your poysonous Principles and prejudiced or else wholly stupified and insatuated when he shall recollect within himself and duly weigh the premisses What Reader I say thus qualified and considerate will not readily Joyn issues with me in this conclusion viz. that the scope project and designe of your Letters of Enquity can be no other then instead of the pretended redress of the Contempt of the Reformed Religion and Clergy to expose and betray both to it and by meanes thereof propagate what your Rhapsody abounds withall most pestilent and licentious Principles and Practices Atheisme Libertinisme preparatives to Popery Sensuality and what not to the utter subversion of both though you have Politician-like for cautelous Guards to the designe observable throughout your Epistles which I here note once for all cunningly interwoven Sly insinuations with dextrous retrieves prologues from Pilate and Epilogues from the Harlot washing your Hands with the one as if