Communion To which the Fathers reply was A man may live in an inficted City and not have the Plague My Judgment and publick Practice in Religion are both so well known here and at Rome and both to my danger and damage that I may continue in it with more safety than others And separation may be a sin in me who Judge the unity of the Church in which I was baptized and confirmed and the peace of the State in which I was born to be preforred before my private opinion interest or satisfaction and I think to commit a Schisin and separate from that Church would make me guilty of the sin of a Scandal justly given and therefore live in it and die in it I must though it be the impurest of Christian Churches But let him that now is not of it never be of that Church which is so far departed from the Primitive purity and now maintained only by splendour and the maxims and practice of polity If you doubt the truth of this relation I will give you unquestionable confirmation of it at our next meeting It has been longer than I intended and I beg your pardon and beg you also to consider with what inconsiderable zeal you and your Party rush into Schism and give just cause of Scandal by opposing Government and affronting that Church in which you were born and baptized and I hope confirmed by a Bishop I think the doing so requires your sad and serious consideration For if there be such sins as Schism and Scandal and if there were not they could not have names in Scripture then give me leave to tell you I cannot but wonder that you and the scruple-mongers of your Party should rush into them without any tenderness or scruple of Conscience And here let me tell you the Church of England which you oppose enjoyns nothing contrary to Gods Word and hath summed up in her Creeds and Catechism what is necessary for every Christian to know and to do And can you that are a Shop-keeper or private man think that you are fit to teach and judge the Church or the Church fit to teach and judge you Or can you think the safety or peace of the State or Church in which you live should depend upon the scruples and mistakes of a party of the Common People whose indiscreet and active zeal makes them like the restless Scribes and Pharisees Mat. 13. 15 who compass Sea and Land to get Parties to be of their opinions and by that means beget confusion in both No doubtless Common reason will not allow of this belief for a liberty to preach and persuade to your dangerous Principles would enflame the too hot and furious zeal of so many of your Party and beget so many more restless and dangerous contentions that there could be neither quiet or safety in a Nation but by keeping a standing Army which I know you detest and from the cause of which God deliver us I have told you often that Samuel says 1 Sam. 15. 23. Rebellion is like the sin of Witchcraft and I cannot tell you too often that Schism is too like that mysterious sin for when the fire of Schism and Rebellion is kindled no man knows where it will end Consider this and remember that St. Jude accounts them that make Sects to be fleshly and not to have the Spirit of God which too many of your Fraternity pretend to And now after so long seriousness give me liberty to be so pleasant as to tell you a Tale by which I intend not to provoke you but to explain my meaning There was a North-Country man that came young and poor to London to seek that which he call'd his fortune and it proved to be an Hostler in an Inn of good note in that City in which condition he continued some years and by diligence and frugality get and saved so much money that in time he became the Master of that Inn. And not long after his arrival to that happiness he sent for three of his Neeces one to serve him in his Kitchin and the other two did serve for some years in a like condition in other houses 'till mine Host their Unkle died who at his death left to each of them a hundred pound to buy each of them a North-Country Husband and also to each of them ten pound to buy new Cloaths and bear their charges into the North to see their Mother The three Sisters resolved to go together and the day being appointed two of them bought very fantastical Cloaths and as gaudy Ribbands intending thereby to be noted and admired but the third was of a more frugal humour yet aimed at admiration too and said she would save her money wear her old Cloaths and yet be noted and get reputation at a cheaper rate For she would hold some singular new fantastical opinion in Religion and thereby get admirers and as many as they should and it proved so And doubtless this is the Ambition of many Women Shop-keepers and other of the Common People of very mean parts who would not be admired or noted if they did not trouble themselves and others by holding some odd impertinent singular opinions And tell me freely do not you think that silence would become our Cosin Mrs. B than to talk so much and so boldly against those Clergy-men and others that bow at the Altar she says to the Altar and use other like reverence in Churches where she and her Party are so familiar with God as to use none And concerning which let me tell you my thoughts and then leave you to judge Almighty God in the Second Commandment says he would have none to bow down or worship a graven Image Intimating as I suppose a Jealousie lest that reverence or worship which belongs only to him be ascribed or given to an Idol or Image But that reverence and worship does belong to him and was always paid to him is to me manifest by what the Prophet David says Psal. 5. I will in thy fear worship towards thy holy Temple And again I will praise thy name and worship towards thy holy Temple And again Psal. 132. 138. O let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord These and many more might be urged out of the Old Testament And in the New you may see it is a duty to worship God First St. Paul says Heb. 13. 10. We have an Altar And you may note Rev. 22. 9. where the Angel that had shewed St. John a Vision forbad him to fall down to him but bad him fall down and worship God And again Chap. 14. 7. Worship him that made heaven and earth I omit more Testimonies which might be multiplied and shall tell you next that Churches are sacred and not to be used prophancely For you may note that our Saviour did with a divine indignation whip the money-changers out of the Temple for polluting it and said His house should be
Love and Truth IN Two modest and peaceable LETTERS CONCERNING The distempers of the present Times WRITTEN From a quiet and Conformable Citizen of LONDON to two busie and Factious Shop-keepers in CONVENTRY 1 Pet. 4. 15. But let none of you suffer as a busie-body in other mens matters LONDON Printed by M. C. for Hâ—nry Brome at the Gun in St. Pauls Church-yard 1680. TO Mr. HENRY BROME in St. Paul's Churchyard LONDON SIR I Here send you two Letters the first writ in the year 1667. both writ by a prudent and Conformable quiet Citizen of London to two Brothers that now are or were zealous and busie Shop-keepers in Conventry to which place I came lately and by accident met with a grave Divine who commended them to my reading And having done what he desired I thought them to speak so much real truth and clear reason and both so lovingly and so plainly that I thought them worth my transcribing and now upon second thoughts think them worth Printing in order to the unbeguiling many men that mean well and yet have been too busie in medling and decrying things they understand not Pray get them to be read by some person of honesty and judgment And if he shall think as I do then let them be Printed for I hope they may turn somewhat to your own profit but mnch more to the benefit of any Reader that has been mistaken and is willing to be unbeguiled May 29. 1680. God keep you Sir Your Friend N. N. THE FIRST LETTER CONCERNING COMPREHENSION Written 1667. Good Consin I Am sorry that the Parliaments casting out the Bill of Comprehension should so much concern you as to put you into such a passion as you exprest against them and me at our last nights meeting Sure the Company you now converse with and the strange Principles with which they have now possest you have alter'd your nature pue turn'd your former reason into prejudice and unbelief if not you would have believed what I did so seriously affirm to be a known truth namely I bat this Age is not more severe against the disturbers of the settled Peace and Government of the Church and State than they were in the very happy days of our late and Good Queen Elizabeth Some of the Reasons why I said so I do with very much affection tender to your Consideration and to your Censure too and that the last may be the more charitable and you not apt to make the errours or failings of your Governours seem more or greater than indeed they are let me intreat that you remember what I have very often said to you namely That malicious men of whom really I do not take you to be one are the best Accusers and the worst Judges And indeed I fear it would prove to be a very bitter truth if some did attain that power which too many labour for in these days in which Schism and Sedition are taken to be no sins even by men who pretend a tenderness of Conscience in much smaller matters And that I may keep some order and you be the better satisfied in what I intend in this Letter I earnestly intreat that you will at your next leisure read in Mr. Cambdens true History of the Life and Reign of our Good Queen Elizabeth in which you may find what care was then taken to prevent Schism and the sad confusion that attends it and how the Contrivers of Libels and dispersers of them have been severely punish many of them even to death as namely Henry Barrow and many of his Sectaries for disturbing the publick peace of the Nation by scattering abroad their monsterous Opinions as also for affirming the Church of England to be no true Church and the like Which you may find written by the said Mr. Cambden in the thirty-sixth year of that Good Queens Reign But I commend more especially to your Consideration the story and sad death of Hacket and his Adherents as namely of Wigirton Arthington and Copinger all Schismaticks and of one Sect and Brotherhood But I say I do most seriously commend to your Consideration the beginning and death of the said Hacket who was first a pretender to a tenderness of Conscience but a Schismatick and stopt not there but became by degrees so fully possest by the evil spirit the spirit of pride and opposition that he publickly reviled the Queen the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chanceilour and being transported with a furious Zeal did at last become from a Schismatick to be so infamous an Heretick that he was condemned to death for his abominable Errors at which time he reviled and curs'd his Judges and died blaspheming and reproaching his Creator This you may read in the Thirty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth as it is written by honest learned Mr. Cambden who concludes this sad story of Hachet with this observation Thus doth the enemy of Mankind bewitch those men whom he seeth are not concent to he wise unto sobriety These stories I say and too many like them you may find in Mr. Cambdens History of Queen Elizabeth and you may find the like in Bishop Spotswoods History of the Church of Scotland and also find the like in Mr. Fullers History of the Church of Great Frittain in which you may observe what labour hath been used by the discontented Non-conformists to unsettle the Government of the Church of England and consequently of the State and may there also find how severely many of them have been punished So that you need not wonder at what said last night nor think these the only times of persecuting men of tender Consciences And for the better confirmation of what I now write I will refer you to one testimony more in the time of our late peaceful King James Which testimony you may view in the second Volume of the Reports of Judge Crook a man very learned in the Law But I shall first tell you the occasion of that Report which was this The Non-conformists which are in that Report called by the name of Puritans had given out that the King had an intent to set up or give a Toleration to Popery and they had also compos'd a large Petition complaining of the severity of some usage and of some Laws that concerned themselves and defired that the severity of those Laws might be mitigated these and other like desires were in the said Petition to which they had procured not less than seven hundred hands and the close of the Petition was That if these desires were not granted many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented Which indeed was not a threatning but was understood to be somewhat like it This report of his Majesties intent to set up or tolerate Popery begot many fears and discontents in the Nation and to prevent greater disturbances the King did appoint many of his Privy Council and all the Judges of the Land to meet together in the Star-Chamber in which Assembly the Lord
and yet no man hath a greater desire to have Bishops and all Church-men so reformed that they may best deserve and use not only what the pious munificence of my Predecessors have given to God and the Church but all other additions of Christian bounty But no necessity shall ever I hope drive me or mine to invade or sell the Priests Lands which Pharaoh's Divinity and Joseph's true Piety abborred to do I had rather live as my Predecessor Henry the Third sometimes did on the Churches Alms than violently to take the Bread out of the Bishops and Ministers mouths There are ways enough to repair the breaches of the state without the ruins of the Church as I would be a restorer of the one so I would not be an Oppressor of the other under the pretence of publick debts the occasions of contracting them were bad enough but such a discharging of them would be much worse I pray God neither I nor mine may be accessary of either Sir I have been longer than I intended for which I crave your pardon and beg of God that you may at last see and well consider the many errors that your indiscreet zeal hath led you into and that you and your Party may see also the many miseries it hath helpt to bring upon others and that for the remainder of your days you and they may redeem the time past by repenting your indiscreet zeal and study to be quiet and to do your own business to this I shall encourage you and that done to live as unoffensively to others and as strictly to your self as you do intend and by God's grace added to your endeavours he shall make you able and I humbly beseech Almighty God that you and I may daily practice an humble and a peaceable piety so humble and peaceable a piety as may stop the mouths of all gain-sayers for it is certain such holy and quiet living will bring peace at the last And in this the Almighty God give me grace to be like you Study to be quiet and to do your own business 1 Thes. 4. 11. February the 18. 1667. Your Affectionate Friend and Cosin R. W. THE SECOND LETTER Dear Cousin I Return you my unfeigned thanks for your Letter of the 15. instant which I received three days past it was mixt with love and anger but I shall in this my answer observe what you so earnestly desire namely not to justifie the Errors or Irregularities of those that you call my Party or my Clergy And for some testimony that I will do what I prosess I will begin with a Confession that I think as you say That when a Clergy-man appears in a long curled trim Periwig a large Tippet and a silk Cassock or the like vain and costly Cloathing If he preaches against Pride and for Mortification his Hearers are neither like to believe him or practise what he preaches either then or at other times though what he says be an undoubted truth Because Example is of greater power to incline men to Vice than Precepts have to persuade to Virtue And I wish as heartily as you do that all such Clergy-mens Wives as have silk Cloaths be-daubed with Lace and their heads hanged about with painted Ribands were enjoyned Penance for their pride And their Husbands punisht for being so tame or so lovingly-simple as to suffer them for by such Cloaths they proclaim their own Ambition and their Husbands folly And I say the like concerning their striving for Precedency and for the highest places in Church Pews And I wish as heartily as you do that double Benefices were not dispensed with to such an inconvenience as is now too visible And that no Dispensations might be granted for any man to be Prebend or Canon-Residentiary of two Churches Such as Westminster and Durham or Windsor and Wells Because Residence and the other duties required in those places is not consistent with their distance from each other nor with the Donors inteution And also because such a single Prebend is a fair support for an humble Clergy-man and if he be proud or covetous he deserves not so much And I confess also what you say of a Clergy-mans bidding to fast on the Eves of Holy-days in Lent and the Ember Weeks And I wish those biddings were forborn or better practised by themselves for it is too visible they do not what the Church for good reasons enjoyns them and they others in the Churches name And I wish as heartily as you can that they would not only read but pray the Common Prayer and not huddle it up so fast as too many do by getting into a middle of a second Collect before a devout Hearer can say Amen to the first But you ought to consider that there be Ten thousand Clergy-men in this Nation for there are Nine thousand Parish Churches in it besides Colledges and Chappels and the number of them that be thus faulty are not many when compared with those that be grave and regular And I could name many of the Episcopal Clergy whose lives are so Charitable Humble and Innocent that they might say to their Parishioners as St. Paul of himself to his Philippians Walk so as you have me for an Example But I must confess there are too many that do not live so and with whom I am as much offended as you express your self to be And now having unbowelled my very soul thus freely to you and I protest as sincerely and truly as I can express my self My hope is that I shall in what follows appear to be so uninterested in any Party that where I speak evident truth and reason you will assent unto it in which hope I will endeavour to lay before you in my plain way the many inconveniences that would I think follow if that liberty were granted which you and your Party have so long and do still so earnestly strive for the effects of which liberty would be Schism Heresie Rebellion and Misery from which God prevent us I did in a Letter writ now some years past endeavour to unbeguile your Brother And though it did not at that present wholly do what I designed yet it abated so much of that furious zeal that had prepossest him that he declared on his death-bed The remembrance of those hours spent in devotion and acts of Charity were then his comfort and those spent in disputes and opposition to Government were now a Corrosive or as Solomon says of ill-gotten riches like gravel in his teeth And my dear Cozen in hope of the like good success I shall in the following part of my Letter commend the same or like Arguments to your consideration in order to the undeceiving you And I shall not be so curious for words or method as diligent to speak reason and truth plainly and without provocation And first I will consider our happiness that were born baptized and do now live in the Church of England which is believed by the
most learned of all Foreign Churches to be the most Orthodox and Apostolical both for Doctrine and Discipline of all those very many that have reformed from the corruptions of the Church of Rome And I think it is worthy your noting that those Bishops and Martyrs that assisted in this Reformation did not as Sir Henry Wotton said wisely think the farther they went from the Church of Rome the nearer they got to heaven for they might go too far but they did with prudent and deliberate consideration retain what was consistent with Gods Word and the practice of the most Apostolical Primitive and purest times as may appear by the many unanswerable reasons that have been given against both the Non-Conformists and Papists that have excepted against our Reformation The first for retaining too much and the latter for not enough For you ought to note that neither of them have ever writ against the Doctrine or Discipline of this Church but they have received answers to their damage And this being considered you ought to lay to heart the disturbance that many of you that pretend to tenderness of Conscience have formerly made and do still make in this Church and State even at this present time And you ought to consider that if this Church were overthrown the Church of Rome would make it their great advantage and therefore many of them do encourage and assit you in this present disturbance and for no other end And therefore look about you in time and do not say when it is too late You meant not to bring in Popery But remember I once told you there was a Lawyer that was so ignorant that he thought he spoke against his Clients Adversary when he spoke for him and meant it not And after such a manner you act for the Church of Rome For let me tell you that if ever Popery or a standing Army be set up in this Nation which God grant I may never see it is the indiscrect zeal and restless activity of you and your Party that will bring both in though you mean it not Let me ask you seriously Can you think the powerful man that is now become of the Romish Church did love you so much or like your Principles so well as to get a Suspension of the Laws against Conventicles because he liked your Opinions or your Practices when the power was in your hands in the time of the late mischievous Long Parliament 1640 Or can you think he or his Party did hold a Correspondence with some of the Chief of your Party for any other end but to assist in the ruine of the English Church no doubtless for they know and you ought to consider that if that were but down there were no visible bank to stop the stream of Popery And then farewel the liberty and care of tender Consciences There would be an end of that cajouling and flattery And next let me ask you this friendly question Do you think there is such a sin as Heresie And if you think there be let me ask you Whether he that holds Heretical Opinions should be suffered to go up and down to poyson and persuade others to his belief And if you believe he ought not so to do then I ask Whether Heresie can be known to be Heresie or prevented or punisht but by some power trusted in the hands of some Person or Persons whom the highest Power hath chosen and trusted to judg what is Heresie And then prevent or suppress and punish it And if you grant this which no man of reason will deny I hope you will grant Clergy-men whose time hath been spent in such studies as have enabled them to know truth and falshood are the fittest to Judg what is Heresie And if you grant this then these judges must have some name to distinguish them from others of the inferiour Clergy And if by a name of distinction I hope the known name of Bishop or Church Governour which is so frequently used in Scripture and the Writings of all the Fathers of the Church and so well known in this and all Nations will not be by you excepted against And this is told you in order to remembring you that in the time of the late Long Parliament 1640. the common Citizens had been so madded by the discourse and Sermons of the Nonconforming Ministers which pretended tenderness of Conscience that they being possest with a furious zeal went by troops to the Parliament at Westminster clamoured and assronted the Bishops as they went thither and cried out No Bishops no Bishops that is to say No Judges of Heresie or Schism No punishing of these which you call sins but we know are not We know what is truth and resolve to do what is good in our own eyes And by such clamours and the malicious misguided and active Zeal that then possest those people and a minor part of the Parliament then sitting The major and more prudent part of it were so affronted and threatned that they appeared not and in their absence the Bishops voted as useless as the said Zealous and Ignorant Common people had desir'd And now the hedge of Government and punishment being broken down Dell the Arch-Heretick Printed his Book against the Holy Ghost and that and so many such other Haeresies and Blasphemies were then Vented Printed and Justifified as I am neither willing to remember or name My good Cousin this was the effect of that ignorant zeal then and to this it tends now again And to this it will come if God be not so good to this sinful Nation as to make the Women the Shop-keepers and the middle-witted People of it Jest busie and more humble and lowly in their own eyes and to think that they are neither called nor are fit to meddle with and judge of the most hidden and mysterious points in Divinity and Government of the Church and State And instead of being Busie bodies which St. Peter accounts to be a sin 1 Pet. 4. 15. to follow that counsel which St. Paul gives to his Thessalonians To study to be quiet and to do their own business 2 Thes. 4. 11. I have told you how the major part of the Parliament and the Bishops were used by the minor part and those pretenders to Conscience that were of their Party Now give me leave to tell you how these zealous men having gotten into all power used the two Universities of this Nation and those of the Beneficed Clergy that would not violate those Oaths they had taken both when they took their degrees in the University and at their entring into Holy Orders at their being made Deacons and Priests As also their Oaths to the Bishop at their admission into their spiritual Livings and the care of Souls And first for the usage of the Universities Doubtless all rational and uninterested men cannot but think the Universities fittest to make or judge of all lawful or unlawful Oaths As also of obedience