indeed you say as much that the King and Parliament because of the Liturgie imposed have denyed Jesus to be Christ Tiburne for you if you doe You indeed seem rather stained with this blasphemie who hath boldly and prophancly averred that bowing at that sacred name is idolatrie and as you jeere with the bad thiefe on the crosse Jesu-worship But let me from your own principles use one argument against you whosoever prescribeth to their people a set forme of prayer doe Lord it over the conscience and are the very Antichrist but your extemporarie prayers in publike are to your people a set forme of prayer you therefore are the Antichrist The major is your owne the subsumption is proved by this inevitable dilemma when you pray before your hearers either it is as their mouth to God or for your selves only if you say the last you contradict the action it selfe your expressions and the cause of your meeting and if the first must not the people joyne with you in word or at least in thought and is not this to bee stinced and tyed to aforme of prayer how raw and senselesse so ever By your sole Law-giver you expresse your thoughts of authoritie you can heare of no generall commission for ordering the House of God as place and time shall require but pardon me to beleeve the Apostle better then you who hath not in vaine appointed this qualification Omnia fiant decenter ordine if the Kings and States of Europe would bee pleased from this your tenet to learne what a moath a cancer-worme you are to all Superioritie and Iurisdiction you would be sent novos quaeritare orbes And for this cause the Pope say you is proved to be the Antichrist in that hee fitteth in and over the Temple of God that is as you please to Paraphrase it The consciences of men it had beene well you had spoken with application you are the onely men I know who must have all mens consciences squared by the supposition of your owne The will-worship you name is truely that you practise that is an affected contradictorious way in the service of God to Scripture to Antiquitie to the Church you live in to Discretion yea to Christianitie it selfe If by a Liturgie devised by men you understand mans devise it is a grosse calumnie a notorious untruth not a syllable in that Booke which is not either as the greater part the words of Scripture it selfe or cleerely deducible in the very Phrase from thence if your sense be that it is imposed by humane power you are no lesse mistaken there is either a particular warrant from Scripture or at the least a generall Commission granted for the ordering of the House of God which extends to the full latitude of the Booke if you had either impartialitie to conceive aright or conscience to obey but it may be you meane that men have contrived the Booke of Liturgie so they have the Apostles Creed which perhaps you for the same reason have rejected nor was ever the Church of God since the first Congregation of the Jewes in a politicke bodie to your last and worst dayes without a publike forme of service and worship We bid you therefore with Saint Augustins Erigere scalâ—â— and goe up to heaven alone but againe Datâ— veniaâ—â— nos non credimus that all the Churches of the Christian world have beene over-laid with Idolatrie and Antichristianisme till this late one of yours Having choaked as you think the Liturgie with this illpeec't discourse of yours concerning the Antichrist your second onset is upon the Ceremonies of the Church these you say because of mans devising and imposed upon the Conscience are also Popery you give no new reason nor I any new answer onely this there is no greater errour committed by you Sectaries then that because the Church of Rome hath thrust upon us some unnecessary many superfluous Ceremonies you would have the reformation to have none at all not confidering that Ceremonies as the hedge doe fence the substance of Religion from the indignities that prophanenesse and irreligion oftentimes put upon it Ceremonies though in the particular that is This or that be not necessarie in the generall they are how long we are men and do inhabite these our dull bodies we had much need of some visible helps to stiâ—re up our Devotion and to give a being a continuitie to publike decencie and order It is true the inward worship of the heart is the great service of God but the outward worship of God is the great witnesse to this whereby our light shineth to the world that men may glorifie our Father which is in Heaven now no outward worship without Ceremonies they the ancienter superfluity and Superstition laid aside the better so they fit time and place for you your are so spirituall though some think you no lesse carnall then your neighbours I am afraid your Religion may evapour in words turne in the smoak of a thin airy profession and as no substance of good works so leave no visibility of worship behind it though now while the heat of a party keeps in the fire you seem to have some zeal in your breasts if you were settled on your dregs and after this great motion returned to your cold bloud it is very possible you shall have no Religion 〈◊〉 all It were not hard to tell you here what happinesse Christians doe enjoy by the wholsome constitutions of a Church or State what peace what unity what concord what increase of â—â—ll pâ—ety and vertue from thence And unity if it be not nature it selfe it is the first principle riveted by the hand of nature no essence no action without this sicknesse and Rebellion the two great confusions of the naturall and politique body do evidence this truth no subsistence no continuation of other but by a first cause a prime agent even your discipline must have unity and order in it if it have life and motion and this the more generall it is the better It s true the extension of good is not its touchstone yet this doth not hinder it to be communicative and that to the dimension of the body which is to be governed But now the matter imposed is left in its own nature indifferent still though not so in the practice and why this very same restraint enlargeth then Christian liberty for otherwise they would be in conscience obliged to abstain from every thing that the nice and peevish humorist should conceive to be offensive now being tyed by a Law they may use their freedome yea must preferre a necessary duty to an imaginarie scandall But this were to digresse nor are you for such peaceable thoughts for you love that order and not any besids it that may be raked out of the ashes of Monarchy but your late injuries meeting with its discretion will teach a necessity of foresight not to adventure huge bodies as you are quia suâ— feruntur pondere
that not the second Table all this time you respect we pray for your health and doe protest against your madnesse Now I have found you out Qualem primo qui sâ—rgere mense Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila iunam And know how to take a direct aime the reformation you ayme at is shorter laced then either consistories or parishes there is a necessity of setting up other Congregations besides these here your intent is to have all reduced to families old 〈◊〉 must be your Doctor and pastor his wife Tib your diaconesse his Sonne Die your ruling Elder and the serving man Will your Deacon a pretty Church indeed and where none are to be admitted but such as are approved by the whole assembly he And his houshold the supreame and only congregation upon earth not any beyond it in purity above it in jurisdiction no more contest now for consistories or Parochial Churches you for the avoyding of profanenesse have assigned us a lesser circle ipse ratem conto subigit all will be well and you be at the Stearn Is this your modell your patterne of reformation It is so ridiculous children will point at you and it in the streets if not for Christianity yet for shame â—ake abstaine from such motions for the which the enemies dreaming you and the Church of England to be concentrike namâ— us no more Heretickes but mad men nor are you lesse dangerous then they the innocent Sheepe are no lesse terrified by the barking of the dogs within then by the handling of the Wolves without my very soule bleedeth to thinke what discouragements you give us at home what ignominy and scandall and disgrace you are to us abroad But you proceed and tell us If there must bee a nationall Church let not this exclude and barre out the free use of congregations Here you play the Libertine give you freedome and you care not what religion is at the next doors this is the Golden branch let you once see this though your mouths were as maine and wide as these of Cerberuss tumida ex ira tune corda recedunt This is indeed the confusion your parity aymes at that every man may do what seemeth him good in his own eyes now let any Christian judge whether it is your love to purity that perswaded your Separation from the Church now your reformation of the Church or your desire of license when if that be granted to you you are willing to be dayly spectatours of the Antichristianisme and their patron such is all to you beside your sanctified Conventicle of a nationall Church Order as they call it and how doe you You have no use no name for order at all all beâ—de your humour though prescribed by the state must be order as they call it this is your respect to Parliaments you are the onely mouths I know of all power and Iurisdiction Nor must the consciences of Gods people in things indifferent for order and unities sake be regulated by wholesome Lawes when every mans conscience must be tyed to yours in the very principles of religion how farre they decline from this so farre from purity from salvation without this no admission to your society to your communion nor as you will have it to the Kingdome of Heaven It is said of Aristotle he disputed against monarchie least any beside his master should affect that just so you against government when you are the hardest Tax-masters the most curious searchers of opinions in the world nothing can passe your censures and that is either to be saved or damned which is not borrowed from your selves You wil have us to believ that though you are in yet you are not of the world you good men are separated from the world in the corruptions thereof whether is this that you cannot sin or that you do not sin whether boast you here of your opinion or your practise If the first take it with you and that of the Apostles when you say you have not sinne you are lyers and the truth is not in you but if the last I will tell you you are now too grosse not to bee discerned all your figge-tree leaves of Purity and reformation will not cover your nakednesse violence rebellion deceit cruelty dissimulation wrath incharity in a word all the titles that attend you in the first page are your individuall Lackeys and doe your best will acknowledg no other Master I have knowne men of honest civill dispositions ere they joyned to your sect but then as if Sathan had entered with the Sop immediately became proud testie hollow-hearted and whose charity dar'd nor so much as extend it selfe to the respects of nature or acquaintance these in the Children of disobedience might be accompted sinnes what they are in you I know not it may be as by the accesse of trueth and light your natures are essentialy changed so the qualities and viciousnesse of your actions But I have mistaken you all this time it is a Separation from the world in Doctrin not in practise you intend you are as farre from this as you are from Rome Meane time you beare us in hand you are not Separate and woes me for it from the civill state but are peacâ—able members thereof subject and obedient to all good and just Lawes how long they may happen to fit your iâ—ching humours go beyond this traine the Laws will be neither good nor just you must have the power to interpret them as you have the Protestation and thereafter obey not them but your fancy concerning them Here you bring in your fulminatrix legâ—o as if all we were Pagans about you what your prayers have procured to us let these last thundring dayes witnesse the almost ruines of a poore Church by your Schismes wil testifie it to the succeeding ages The Apostle indeed exhorts us to pray for Kings your hearers know how you obey this exhortation when by your praiers you teach them how to suspect their Princes of Luke-warmenesse and oppression in your wavering petitions to God for their reformation their amendment as Ioab did to Amasa you stab their authority their reputation beneath the fifth Rib. But if it were not proprium convertibile with your Sect to make bold with Scripture I could fit you better with texts and tell you of a Miriam who said hath the Lord spoken onely by Moses and not by us also and of a Core of whom you learned your Dialect you take too much upon you seeing all the congregation of the Lord are holy wherefore lift you your selves above the Congregation of the Lord But you are worse then both these no speech by Moses as by your selves not all the Congregation of the Lord but onely you are holy I will therefore assigne you a third that comes more home to the point To your Tents O Israel what Inheritance have we in the Sonne of Iesse validior est oris quà m operis vox Let the condition
Judges or your selves determine the integrity of the Law if they why doe not you attend their determination how is it that the hand must reforme the head the people their Prince and doe you thinke petitions covenants and insurrections the surest gradations to the Kingdome of Heaven But if your selves onely what need have you of Judges Magistracie and Trienniall Parliaments are to you but cyphers and visible nothings your consent is the figure which makes the number for if old Lawes be to be repealed it is sufficient if you say These are against the Word of God no more obedience from you your Sic volo sic jubeo is more than powerfull the wall of each Citie must to the ground at the voyce of your rams-hornes And if new Lawes be to be made it seemes it is you that truch with the Scepter unlesse your wise heads finde them agreeable to the Word of God all is voyde ipso facto What language is this Is it not the Dialâ—ct of rebellion the very {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} the Tactus physicus of all disorder mutinie and confusion Now let the world judge betwixt us whether or not this your Doctrine strikes home to the very life of government and destroyes it insensibly as the worme that Gourd of Jonas every man by this ipso facto of yours is left with a supreame power to bee King and Priest to himselfe Your third ground is of the same bullion and carryeth your Image that is of Schisme and Democracie You have vowed against all Popery and finding the particulars mentioned to be so you will have no more communion with them What if you should finde the Decalogue and the Lords Prayer as you have already the Creed to be Popish must not all the Principles of our Religion for your pleasure be drawne within the verge of a thundring abjuration nor is this feare in vaine your precisest Gospellers already deny the Law as only suteable to the Climate of the Jewes and some of your best Rabbies make it a case of conscience not to say the Lords Prayer that Magicum canticum as they tearme it Pontificorum if therefore this wantonnesse of yours bee not restrained I appeale to your selves that is to prejudice and faction it selfe if we shall have more certainty of Religion left us then what may subsist with the ebbing and flowing of your distempered and Moone-changing braines It is your next care to draw the Parliament to your party but there is no communication betwixt light and darkenesse nature hath taught all Entities to intend their owne preservation nor can that Honourable Court forget its beeing and ioyne with you plant you at such a distance whether your antipathy may reach you shall no lesse exhaust the priviledges and authority of that most honourable meeting then the Cabage doth the sap and life and vigour of the noble Vine can this bee more evident than by the case in hand where you take the Supremacie upon you and with intollerable pride and foolishnesse presumes to give us the infallible sense and meaning of the Parliament I know you had no such Commission from their Honours as to bee their trenchman and to print a Declaration for them But let us examine your reasons First They intended the Protestation against all Papery It is granted but are you not like the doore that turneth all day upon the hinges and never changeth its place Have you yet proved these things to be Popish nay though you had which you shall never doe rumpantur utilia codro were the probabilities of your arguments a warrant good enough for your reformation without the approbation of your Superiours you indeed never desire a better whilst you doe what seemes good in your owne eyes acknowledging no King in Israel But who gave you authority to cleanse the Temple unlesse you mantaine that all power is from the people your hands and that you may stop the wel-spring the fountaine when the fit takes you Secondly You remember us that the Honourable House of Commons will not have the Protestation extended to the maintenance of any forme of worship discipline and government nor of any Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England and therefore they condemne them as Popish What a wild consequence is this if that pious Judicatory did not finde it convenient as it is not to assert the grounds of Doctrine and Discipline with the same oath did they therefore condemne all as Antichristianisme that they did not is cleare to any that will not shut his eyes first from the maine distance they put betwixt Popery and Popish Innovations and the forme of Worship Discipline Government and Ceremonies of the Church of England interserted by such a period as your ends shall never be able to draw together Secondly from their laudable and religious practice in being at all occasions present at the service of the Church wherein none but Familists who doe conforme themselves to any publike worship can imagine their integrity and noblenesse for all the world would prevaricate if they had but thought much lesse declared the Liturgie as you would have it to be the masse-booke And for the government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops this is the heell you would most willingly bruise because it bruiseth your head it is no lesse evident that the protestation doth not condemne that First from their actuall sitting in the House should these members integrate that body if they were already adjudged as â—ims of the Antichrist this were a too heterogenious fancie Secondly what needed the late dispute concerning the present Discipline if the sentence had beene already past Thirdly would so considerable men for honesty wisedome and power of that number whose reasons militates for Episcopacie have stood up in defence of a maine branch of Popery and not have beene ashamed if not punished for publike maintaining the Antichrist and contradicting their late vow and order These reasons nill you will you doe convince you that it was not the intention of the Parliament as you to arme them against Ecclesiasticall persons and orders in every corner of the kingdome would beare the people in hand to protest against though it seemed not fitting to protest for the present Discipline Government and Ceremonies of the Church if you had a fore-head you would be ashamed of this boldnesse but your obduration hath no more sense Quam si dura silex aut stet Marpesia cautes These great patrons of Church and State shall no doubt punish this malepert saucinesse of yours for their love to peace and truth cannot permit such a firebrand to belie their intâ—ntion and abuse the credulous simplicity of the multitude I am confident this reply of mine shall first visit you in the Gate-house Did you I beseech you ever thinke it possible that the roarings and out-cries of such braying schismatikes as your selfe could have induced the honourable Court of Parliament to change upon a sudden
the whole face of the Church as that of a scene upon the daring and misgrounded information of your ignorant malicious libels the drosse the off-scourings of the multitude are yours these and these only you are able to induce by promises or deceive by pretences Tell them as you doe that they are the people of God set apart for the great worke and shall not this ambition blow up the unconstant vulgar Shew them they may change their fortunes and last share in the publike government you may draw them along with you to the slaughter though there you leave them with your grand-father Munsers benediction Si quidem populus vult decipi decipiatur But doe you expect that the grave States-men of the kingdome shall be pleased to venture upon this Chaos and let you shuffle the cards againe in hopes of a better set your parity brings along with it an Anarchie and that all imaginable ruine and confusion I 'll tell you in your eare you had better keepe your Pamphlets at home and have restrained the late zealous sturs at Southwarke and Saint Margarets if you would not have had your passions detected these staring lookes of yours so soone after the change do fore-tell what madnesse you may come to at the heighth of the Moone and will no doubt perswade that supreme Judicatory either to draw blood of you in time or to provide manacles for binding up your furious attempts lest you teare out your owne bowells Your third reasons leanes to a thought a supposition and is a straine of your old lunacy That the honourable House of Commons did intend to exclude whatsoever should be found to be a branch of popery But who should finde it so themselves or you Have they resigned that power which God his Majesty and their ancient privileges have indued them with into your hands must they and we be tyed to what fancy your humour shall be pleased to thrust upon their just commands and our due obedience This were a dangerous implicit faith and of as large bounds and great variety as there is judgements and opinions in a kingdome for shame if you be reasonoable creatures spare this non-sense and rather thinke that the protestation hath an edge to cut out your tongue than to cut off what your unsetled imagination after a Fridayes supper from the back of an Oister shall Dictator-like happen to belch up You tell us in the fourth place That you are all in an erected hope of a reformation from this most noble Parliament and so are we too yea no lesse confident than your selves that all Popish trash shall be made packing but may it please you to go along with that baggage and attend the safe transportation of these fopperies we shall be rid of two great evils at your returne from Rome you may take your rest by the way with your brethren at Amsterdame no peace for Israel how long the Jebusites are thornes in our sides and if the Papists and you I cannot tell how to name you unlesse it be Legions you are so many the Foxes the boutefeux joyn'd by the tailes were once removed wee should have good hopes no more to see our corn-fields in a fire The reformation you expect is a deformation your active zeale extends to the purifying of Churches yea of Church-yards as lately one of your societie was buried in the fields lest his sanctified body might be polluted by consecrated that is superstitious ground a strange separation that hold even amongst the dead But when you have banished from us all that can speake as Christians what shall be the event the sad ruines of a torne Church and State yea of Religion it selfe is at the stake for the more weake and conscientious people who expect salvation in some Church will rather joyne with Rome then have no Church at all like the fish changing the hot water with the hotter fire others who have made Religion their hand-maide shall be bold to laugh at piety and thinke it nothing but an invention of policy to bridle the humours of the lesse daring and to encompasse the designes of the more active wits so the fruits of your reformation shall be like these of Gomorra pleasing to the sight but in effect either Apostacie or Athisme In your fifth ground I acknowledge your perfect idiome the compleat language of Amsteldame their you tell me that suppose the House of Commons had not intended the removall of these things but the protection rather of the same yet private Christians must put to their bands and reforme themselves and live no longer schoole-boyes and punies under the fernla of that discipline Now you speake to the point and have but dallied hitherto Bishops I see and Parliaments are in the same respect to you if once they crosse your humour if this be not a trumpet of sedition there is nothing so Goe on and give not over till the Common-wealth be fitted to your Church as one of yours said the hangings to the roome let us have that prodigious monster your parity in both without so much as distinction of head and feet and then you may reforme when and what and how you please Can there be the least thought of loyalty and subjection beneath this when such an o yes is made for every man to take up armes and to reforme what first comes unto his hand nor is it a wonder to heare this from you e're all be done you will speake with a higher tone even that the propriety of all goods is your owne For it is your doctrine that wee have fallen from all dominion and right to the creature by the mortall sinne of Adam this say you was restored by Christ who reserved the dominion to himselfe there your love to Magistracy but gave the right to his children the sonnes of the Church these whom the conventicle hath assured that they are marked with the white stone you may therefore possidere terram and who besides you doe so are but usurpers Yet give mee leave to wonder if in a settled Church and state some care be not taken to supresse this madnesse whereby every man is invited to a freedome and liberty of doing what his humour suggesteth as if this Diana of yours inspired nothing else but phrensie and rebellion You will by this your exorbitancie make the Bishops enemies long after them and while they are going out at doores pull them backe by the gownes in the time of their power which of you durst vent such dangerous whimsies now you teach us that by one blow wee cannot lop off the inconveniencie of Bishops and the inconveniencie of no Bishops and that the greatest danger in a mutation is that all daugers cannot be fore-seene if this popular reformation of yours take root for Religion Learning and civilitie wee must content our selves with prophanenesse ignorance and barbarity nay all the evills that anarchie and confusion can produce must attend upon us But the
honourable House of Commons against whom by this reason you have taken up the bucklers will provide for that fire that gangrene of yours which hath already inflamed the bed-straw and ceased almost upon the very heart of the Kingdome In your sixt answer you ld delt your strokes about you your first blow is at the Liturgy this you observe to bee popish in two respects First in regard of the whole frame and matter of it as being translated out of the Romish Latine Liturgie But is it not the Romish Liturgie translated That is are there any thing in the Masse Booke which is not in the booke of service if your answer be negative I leave you to bee hissed at but if affirmative What advantage have you gotten by this envious calumny Doe you thinke we may not use what is in the Masse booke consonant to Scripture and purest antiquity to say otherwise were to deny the Lords prayer and the Decalogue because they are there Indeed I thinke you intend no lesse then a perfect reformation from Rome that is a flat denyall of all that ever Rome maintained so much doth your new Creed proport God grant you doe not deny Christ to be the Sonne of God because the Devills confessed him to be so Tell mee in good earnest are you so silly as to conceive that there have beene Heretiques before your selves who durst adventure to have nothing common with preceding Christianity And why may there not be some few pearles in that dung-hill the masse-booke If these be culled out and according to Scripture and the best patterne of ancient Liturgies most judiciously framed for the service of our Church what can malice or ignorance say against it no greater errour in you and our other enemies of Rome than not to distinguish betwixt the purging of an old Church and the building of a new they upbraid us because they say it is so you because you thinke it is not so all must be admitted from them errours with truths all rejected by you truthes with errors they destroy the perfection of the Scripture you the being of the Church you no lesse enemies to the authoritie of this then they to the beliefe of that But let both of you roare like the Lyonesse bereaved of her whelps and mixe heaven and earth together by your lowings Naaman shall be the same man to us before and after his washing wee will in despight of papists cleanse the leprosie in spight of you retaine the substance you mention the late parallel in a Mathematicall sense justly so called for as Lines parallel cannot be in one point coincident so neither the Service booke with that of the Masse he is an ungratious sonne of the Church who hath falsly invented these whoredomes and they the unworthy off-spring of such a mother if they rest unrevenged Meane time what a death it is to thinke of the sport and advantage our watchfull enemies will be sure to make of our self-confession that we have the same publike worship which in them we doe condemne as heresie as idolatrie what exporbrations what triumph of theirs will hence ensue How shall we argue against them without bespattering our owne faces in time to come all our helpe is that the Treatise it selfe the parallell is so ridiculous a peece that it will bee thought the dreames of a sleeping person and they say Dormientes non tenentur de jâ—re we are not answerable for the fact You tell us you omit to say what you cannot you dare not say all your frivolous exceptions are so fully answered by the learned Mason judicious Hooker and others that it will be three ages yet ere you attaine to so much judgement as to understand their discourses why doe you gull the world with these bravadoes such generall flashes and when it comes to the close to the dispute frustra comprensa manus affugit imagâ— Par levibus ventis volucrique fimillima somâ—â— No word of you then if we dare call the settled Lawes of Church and State in question we shall by the meanest of five thousand in England stop your blacke and ignorant mouthes and make you confesse there is nothing conteined in that Booke which is not agreeable with Scripture suteable to Antiquitie and allowable by the confessions and writings of the best reformed Churches and Divines in Europe And you Sir who hath made all this dinne how should a man finde your out either to convert you or to be converted by you your name it seemes was affrighted of the title-page but it may be you had none and that this libell hath been penn'd by you in the interiâ—â— betwixt your renunciation of that name you had from the Church of England and your anabaptization You adde there is vitious things animus meminisse horret that runne thorow all the veines of the Service Booke all the letters of the Alphabet cannot furnish censures for this blasphemous Rabshakeh God rebuke thee Satan Sufficiently discovered by whom in whose age Did your Separatists ever produce any thing upon this subject but lazie indigested fables as farre from learning as their authors from sense King Arthurs storie a tale of Robin Hood or the Bookes of Chivalrie were ever thought more profitable non-sense more judicious stuffe Your second generall respect is The imposition of the Liturgie upon all mens consciences let the matter be never so landable yet the manner the imposition is a wile of the Antichrist Here I entreat Geneva to answer you whose Church hath an imposed a set forme of Liturgie and whose worthiest men Calvin and Beza doe stoutly maintaine the Churches power in prescribing Ceremonies and Orders for Unitie and Peace sake It were easie to have loaden the Margine with quotations if I had not abhorred the ostentive foolishnesse of your sect. Who runnes may reade here that in terminis terminantibus you brand all superioritie Ecclesiasticall whether of King Church or Parliament for all these are included in this imposition with the minsing titles of Popery and Antichristianisme if this be the reformation you intend that no law can please you much good may it doe you and those that desire it I am confident the Church and State of England are not so wearie of themselves as to become slaves to your fancie this perhaps may fit America where there is no government at all but how it may subsist with a being of a kingdome here I understand it not Popery you say is Antichristianisme hence every Papist must be the Antichrist nor stay you here but bring the matter home from Italie to England and tell us by a necessarie consequence that not Bishops onely but all Superiours doe oppose and overthrow the Kingly office of Christ which is incommunicable to any creature and power in heaven or earth bona verba quaeso The Scripture you bring 2 Ioh. 22. is as farre from the point as you from truth and judgement Speake out dare you say it in open termes though
this answer you are assured that the Government is protested against If such a worme as my self might presume to speak of that Honorable Iudicaturie and the pâ—otestation made by it I might upon better grounds argue that you and your sectaries are within the reach of the same my instance shall be in one point when I might in a hundred that of Magistracie your doctrine concerning it is point-blanck against the doctrine of the Church of England the Kings honor and estate the power and priviledg of Parliaments and that for to use your termes deserveth to be cut off and cast out as a fruitlesse withered branch and to be plucked up by the roots as a tree twice dead and as a plant not of Gods Planting Hitherto I might have taken you up by some paines but now you passe all understanding fall you once upon the businesse of reformation you rave perfectly like these Lunaticks who will perhaps speak sense doe they encounter with the purpose that first chased them out of their witts then streight they run out Sir by laughing at you you have spared me the cost of Physick for expelling malancholy Your first assertion is that it will be impossible to constitute a nationall Church agreeable in all points to the visible Congregation of Christ here you no lesse crosse the Consisteries than the Bishops and therefore it shall be convenient to leave you to their refutation It is your bragge that there is many thousand Saints whose hearts are perfect before God that is pleasing to you and shall these empty Pitchers these factious lights these trumpets of intent multiplyed to make a noyse afright the Kingdome I dare say that if from your party you deduce mad men and fooles and none of these are men envied with such as love for their owne ends to fish in your muddy waters scarâ—e a number yea scarse an unity shall remaine though you try the Sword of the Lord and of Geddon as a friend of yours did in another Kingdome the Church and state of England will ever have prudence to detect your Stratagems and courage to award your blowes What you meane by defiling of garments I know not but I know you have lately provided against that by your naked meetings Now you speake plaine Language in perswading a separation and forcing us to believe we are in no better condition than those Heathens to whome the Apostles first peached the Gospell for you tell us the Sheep must be called forth and gathered into Christs Folds and that it is a strange speech be you separate You therefore will begin ab ovo and call together the Holy ones to make up your new houshold congregations but how shall these be discended Onely by the infallibility and presumed omniscience of your spirit that of Errour not that of truth you onely know these few names and here you tell us that scaâ—se a number shall bee found to make up these holy meetings what are all your thousands evanished you boasted of in the last page oportuit mendacem esse memorem but I take you at your last word if there be so few as you profanely abuse that Scripture marked with the white stone in his Kingdome pray you spare us the paines of Separation separate your selves for some new colonie in Virginia and trouble not your pates about unpossibilitiâ—s would to God you would leave us or your madnesse you and then both of us should be at rest Now let the whole world judge if you be a fit man to usher in a reformation and thus boldly to thrust your impious sense upon the protestation made by the most honourable Parliament whose head is fraughted with such whimses and who can heare of nothing but the gathering of a new Church in this Kingdome And if we all had made a totall apostasy from the faith we should descry you blasphemously as the Apostles did when they came to plante Churches in a Country where the Gospell had not beene formerly preached not your eares but your neck is in danger for this But what answer you to the question if they have not received Baptisme Or are they not Christians Here something sticks in your throat you answer negatively by an equipollent Metaphor that the lame and blind are not to be offered up in a Sacriâ—ice to the Lord Do you thus tempt the patience of the Prince and people Is it nothing for you to object Paganisme to them at every word To call them profane ignorant unbaptized unchristian persons This were intollerable to any free soule and must induce all those who have the smallest affection to generosity and Religion to provide a way how such monsters as your selfe may be supprest You goe on and tell us the godly may not communicate with the profane Quo Donate ruis are not al profane to you that are good Church-men and obedient Subjects And must all these fall within the verge of your excommunication May we expect dum viatores sumus your contemplative perfection or that the wheate shall be here without the chaffe And know you what iniquity some of your holy Sisters might have committed yesternight if you communicate with them doe you partake of their profanation It may be you have so before nor is it a sinne in you or her but an oversight I see there is a necessity laid upon us to search the hearts of men to have their brests made of christall to finde out their very thoughts else no fellowship no communion But if every knowne sin be every mans where is Christs burthen What difference put you betwixt the head and the branch Others uncleannesse can no more defile you then your holinesse excuse them if you be for this separation you must either flye out of the world or your flight is in vain the best metal here hath its drosse the best graine its oftall there is need indeed of a Fanne and a Furnace but not that of yours destructive not purging Nor stay you here all are Dogges and Swine to you that will not be of your kennell nor wallow in your Puddle so your Founders the Pharises upbraided Christ with the name of a Wine bibber and said he had a Devill because he haunted with sinners and publicans while they themselves cleansed onely the outside of the Platter beware of their woe A little Leaven leaveneth the whole Lumpe never better knowne then of late by you what couzenage and hypocrisie have these yeares by-gone hid up in the Masse from the eye of Disciplin none must come to the Passeover except your selves who have not washen your hands in innocency but your tongues in the gall of Asps You seeme to speake of knowne evill doers if you meane such as are under the Churches censures you fight against your owne shadow none such are admitted to partake of our holy mysteries but if you understand as you doe those of a contrary judgement to your selfe for it is the first and your fancie about
your selves it seemes you are erecting the Babel you so much talke of if the confusion of tongues hearts and opinions be sutable to the work one calls for an elder another brings a widow one will have a parish another a family one for the separation another against it This man that the Doctor is an office-bearer this that he is not he for a diaconisse he against her one sayes the Doctors may excommunicate another contradicts that he gives the right of prophecying to the inspired-lay-elder he denies it another denies all Church superiority and jurisdiction he maintaines it in a Presbyterie this man in a parish non si linguae centum oraeque centum ferrea vox and yet all of these mirum dictu leaning to the like immediate the like infallible revelation neither learning Church nor fathers must assist to find out the genuine sense of Scripture concerning any of these The Poets tell us that the mistaken History of Babylon was {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} this in a twofold meaning may be so Settle the busines among your selves and say you who maintaine the discipline and government of the church to bee so cleerly and perticularly set down in Gods word hitherto shall our proud wits that casteth up dirt and myre continually come Then it is possible we may joyne with you and that safely too because you are no more your selves if you once but listen to unity and concord but this were dangerous agreement amongst your selves might at the last end in the Monarchicall government of the Church of Rome your purity and peace are compositio incompossibilium and that is even what you are in your most formall essence a very notion of the braine Christ told us in his apologie for himself that the old serpent would not have regnum in se divisum his poyson is yours not his policy you are not so far learned yet In the close of this answer you tell us that your independent congregations will not plead for tithes Now you take the title of independence upon you from church and state such is the liberty of your familie meetings Nor will you meddle with tithes this were God save us to Iudaise It is your custome to ingratiate the people to you by preaching sacriledge rebellion and usury King Preist and people are too cheap sold for your 5. s. freewill-offering Nor shall you thus avoid the reward of Balaam your purchase it may bee is as good as the set rent of others to live by the chimney corner is sometimes as profitable as to live by the Altar Twenty or thirty pounds of collection is a mean reward for some of your houshold lectures even for one exhortation if some godly families about midnight be pleased to joyne themselves together That peece of Scripture is practically yours indeed Godlinesse is great gaine nor must the good women the conceit of whose devotion is measured by their reward want their oblation though they should borrow it from the Pockets of their sleeping husbands or send their cloathes to Long-lane to fetch it not many wise you can tell us these are likely to detect your Knaveryes but as rich as may be they will drop the more oyle for your zeale and you out of your Christian pitty will adventure to disburthen them of part of their goods that they may have the more easie passage through the needles eye your small tithes you gather them ipsa Corpora at your chamber Conferences and long feasts which you repay with as long graces praying to the extent of your belly where not a morsell may passe your censure if your hand be not in the dish fastings unlesse it be with the Manichaes upon the Lords day fall not out in your Callendar till the 32 day of the moneth The Parliament you tell us is about a reformation a glorious work indeed God prosper them and send it us to the rooting out of you and all who have wrought our unquiet and troubled the peace of Israel these Convulsions and renting paines which in a part you to the horror of every Christian soule do stir up admonish us what humors what obstructions are yet to be purged but under favour you must not prescribe the Medicine such a measure of acrimony should then be administred that not the diseases only but the vitall spirits might readily be exhausted you are a part of our consumption and in such a case strength not weaknesse is to be studyed whereby the kingdome may worke out the malignity of the sicknesse But what reformation do you conceive when shall you make a stand must every yeere produce you a new religion every moneth a new faith nor shall the Rabbyes of the next moone be content with what you doe a new inspired-eldership upon a new pretended revelation will perhapps demolish this Platforme you have indeed reached home to the first the Patriarchall each of them were Priests to themselves so you thus is was before the law before ceremonies were in custome and therefore is the only means for you who are without all law to reclaime the Church your houshold from Ceremonies You perswade your self the Parliament wil remove that government you name Hierarchicall and we hope it wil not you indeed labour what you can to throw sparks in the flax to put the kingdom in a flame that you may see to finde out Popery or rather the treasure and revennues of the Church hid up in the time of darknesse hence your zeale is active yea so hot that it is strange that it melt not the plate the bells the very lead of the Church into coyne But those of that honourable that religious Iudicature are lately taught by your madnesse that essentially to change the present state of things were no lesse present death to the state then to open a veine and disable nature in the highth the rage of a feaver If in the time of your seeming interdict you have been so excessive how should we find superlatives to expresse your carriage if the Church Government were totally removed sure no more difference propriety nor distinction of person things and conditions should be left amongst us Then if that dreame that Idea of Platoes were made reall did you imagine these noble and conscientious Pilots of this great body would resigne their present tranquility for the fancies of you distempered Humorists nay though they should animpossible supposition God himselfe would preserve some order amongst us lest the Harmony of Nature should be dissolued by you and all reduced to the Mother Chaos Goe therefore with this your conceit to New-England there convert the Americans from Popery every thing beside your owne opinion is so to you we hope never to see this confusion of Government this parity of beings this annihilation of lawes and Magistracy you bring along with you received with any thing but laughter and derision in this kingdome It is true you have some reason no more
to brag of your connivance hitherto not is it wonderfull that is without a known cause though you would bear the world in hand that as your knowledge so your helps are immediately from heaven it wil be possible to tel you what angeli â—otores what great agents have turned the sphear and racked their heads if not their consciences these I know they have I doubt if those to advance your ends for their own I speak no misteries now blindnesse it self hath gotten eyes to see it But the never sufficiently admired Parliament by the hand of wisdome and providence will a midst all these distractions pull off your Mask and having made you visible to the world either reduce you to a non-entity or restraine you within the limits of your proper vocations no more to intermeddle your selves with Church and state Doe not you too much rejoyce over the perhaps deserved afflictions of others If Judgement begin at the house of God what doe you expect the brim of the Cup may purge may refine them the dregges plague and confound you and such fierce scourges as your selves after their just chastisment may be if your proper element can punish you thrown into the fire That a nationall Church hath no patterne no direction in scripture is false and scandalous and because no lesse repugnant to the position of Consistories then of Bishopps I leave you to their just censures If you loved peace halfe so well as you pretend to love trueth this expression had never dropped from your pen that olive branch I am afraid shall not be brought home to us while it please God by a mighty wind to abate and dry up your waters You would gladly purge the universities and schooles non amonimium diligentes this vomitive of yours may be the evacuation of their Learning and livelihoods I pray God the houses themselves may obtaine favour at your religious hands whose piety extends to the very extirpation of your owne enemy knowledge and a single life that argues your simplicity this your wantonnesse nor shall you want pretext this is Monasticall that vaine Phylosophy either Paganisme or that which is worse Popery But since already the name of a scholar is no lesse odious to you Then that of an Academick to Paul the second and that to know but the titles of schoolemen and in what language the fathers have written is for that to be suspected of heresie for this of superstition â—ro miserere laborum Tantorum miserere auimi non digna ferentis For generosities sake envade not your enemie under the cloud but leave us the title page of two universities that the after ages may know we had once religion and civility amongst us You come at the last to a strange position it is indifferent to you what ever liturgy or Ceremonies or discipline are left to accompany this nationall government is this you that told us all these are popish it is true you did but it is the imposition you only complaine of let you enioy your Christian liberty at home in your parlours and let Mahomatisme reigne in our Cathedralls for you now let your blinded followers themselves judge whether it be prejudice or reason your malice or its misdeserving hath so inflamed you against the present Church government give freedom to you you crave no more it is therefore not the Crimes of the Episcopall office but because it curbes your passions your vagaries that hath stirred your humours against it if the Juditious reader shall take the measure of your whole body by this your foot he shal find that it is nor your purity but your pevishnesse is in the issue betwixt us our Camells shall be but gnats to you if a way may be found to dispence with your obedience and make you something betwixt a King and a subject by this outward pulse a man may find the inward motions of your heart how unequall these are and how this aguish and preternatural heat of yours forespeaks a sweat from my heart I wish not that of bloud You adde that a dangerous error stifly maintained is liable to excommunication I am glad you grant a possibility of errour now there is some hopes you may be instructed since your presumed infallibility permitts you to thinke you can thinke amisse the acknowledgement of a sicknesse is the first step to health but how your excommunication from other Churches and your exempted independent congregations can be soadered together I professe I understand it not to me they seem as contradictorious as independent not independent your herisie divides it selfe in so many crosse wayes that it must sometimes thwart and the more that your extemporary conclusion know neither Premisses nor deliberation In your last words you seeme to cast a smile upon the Civill power and give a haile to your Master by granting that in a reflexive way it may punish the oversights of the sâ—aternity but if hypotheca impossibilis aequipollet simpliciter neganti this is no grant at all so you speake of such crimes as cannot possible fall upon any of that sanctification such as the roote of Apostacy and the errours derived from hence nay if they did such falterers were no more of your society because you are obliged in conscience to seperate from them so it is then that the Magistrate hath not only no power in Ecclesiasâ—icis this is to you directly Antichristianisme but in Civilibus neither to censure any member of your exempted and independent Congregation this is the Gideons fleece that must never be of the Common dependence and condition of the rest of the kingdom See now what necessity his sacred Majesty hath unlesse he would sell all his possession to buy your pearles to curb this feaster of yours doe not flatter your selves his authority and yours cannot breathe under one climate your pretended freedome is wholely incompatible with his due obedience witnesse these sad eclipses these late stormes these clouds that yet threaten a tempest either that or this withall loyalty I speake it is not of God nor deale you more favourably with Parliaments how much you regard the power the integrity of that most honorable Court this your discourse can best give evidence if you once carried the busines you have professed it that no Law no statute shall oblige you further then you find convenient to your exempted Congregation And how have you suted your respects to the better times that light of redresse hath onely served to make your Iett the blacker what horrid Monsters quot Africa non caperet hath a too favourable beame of toleration raised out of the mud and clay of your ignorant presumption and drossie wits how is the pleasant land become a wildernesse Infelix lolium steriles Dominantur avenae Pro molli violâ pro purpureo Narcisso Carduus spinis surgit paliurus acutis And why doe such Batts and Owles as you screech about our Churches enter you may not for pollution as if the ruines and desolations of Babel had already seised upon us the spirits of all good men doe already groane under your spirituall Democracy and doe suffer a forehand when their tendernesse represents to them the rubbish unlesse your violence be prevented of a demolished Church and state it is true you are of flint and the Polititions of the times who do use you as their stalking-horse from whence to shoot their prey abundantly furnish tinder but our prudent King and most careful Parliament shal quench your ignis fatuâ—s not suffer you to consume us all to Ashes you have bin spared hitherto either to try the length of your Arme how far these your designes would reach or that the Kingdom had not yet collected it selfe out of that amazement which by your suddaine irruption as that of many rivers you had caused but it is now high time to throw full buckets of water upon your fiery heads to take the matches from you and either to send you hence or prescribe you bounds lest that the combustible body about you all are now of Gunpowder take hold of your sparks and burn up all to the extirmination first of order then of religion and last of humanity it self These are the prayers and these the feares of all them that with more reall sighes and groanes than you to the hazard of your buttons imploy in charming of your hearers love the prosperity and long after the peace of Jerusalem FINIS