which was by that sea represented 5. Nor is it inconsiderable in this point the custome of washing or baptizing among the Jews as a religious ceremony used in admitting proselytes of the Gate which were not circumcised these were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 baptized with their whole houshold servants and children as the Talmudists report This usuall ceremony and custome of Baptisme chosen by Christ for an Evangelical Sacrament or sign of admittance to his Church may justly be thought in Christs use and intention to extend to the like latitude in its use or applying to Infants among Christians as it did among the Jewes especially where neither Christ nor the Apostles make any restraint or exception in the case of Infants 6. Who under the Gospel as S. Austin proves against the Pelagians are in as much want by nature of Evangelical mercy as they were under the Law and Jewish polity Nor is it to be imagined without great absurdity that Christ lessened Gods mercy or favour to them under the Gospel short of what was under the Law seeing they are every way as capable of this new Sign and Seal as they were of the former and want this as much which Origen urgeth as the ground of Infant-baptisme 7. Neither the Analogie of the Scripture nor the proportion of Gods dispensations of grace to his Church-Christian will allow us to think that God under the Gospel denies to believing parents or their children such latitudes of mercy and holy priviledges in the visible means of grace and salvation which were in another form afforded to the Jews that God hath no regard or makes no claim to children as his or any parts of his Church till they come to years of discretion that he would have the children of Christians while Infants now in no better state and capacity of his mercy by Christ than the children of meer Heathens and Infidels that either no Infants are now to be saved or not by the Blood of Christ or by no visible sign and means or by the Spirit alone without Water which Christ joyns together affirming that none can enter into the Kingdome of Heaven either the Kingdome of Grace or Glory the visible or invisible Church in the ordinary methods of Gods dispensation of grace now under the Gospel unlesse they be born again of Water and the Spirit 8. If children are capable to be sanctified by the Spirit they are no lesse capable to be washed by baptismall water which is consecrated by the Word and Spirit or power of Christ in his Church to so holy an use and spirituall washing away of sin as is attained by his blood represented by baptismall water for the sign is of less value than the thing signified as the wax and parchment are far less than the land or estate consigned and conveyed by them Since then Christ hath joyned these together in so full express and large a manner extending to all it must needs appear not onely a petulancy but arrogancy in any Christians to separate them and in order to gratifie a novell fancy or exotick opinion to run counter to all these proportions of Evangelicall Truth and Mercy which evidently crosse all those mentioned absurdities as inconsistent with Evangelicall promises favours and dispensations of grace which are much ampliated and enlarged but no way straitned or abated 9. This general tenour and scope of the Scriptures so highly favouring Christian Infants as a great part of those many nations and families which are prophecied and promised shall come in to Christ is in my judgement sufficient to satisfie all those that list not to be contentious especially where the words and actions of Christ do further expresly intimate yea largely declare his speciall favour indulgence toward 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 little Infants in his Church as Irenaeus justly urgeth in favour of them who lived anno 150. Christ having himself been an Infant and received then the seal of Circumcision as an Infant to denote his grace for them and favour to them suffering and shedding his blood in infancy for infants he afterward as three Evangelists tell us invited infants to come or be brought to him testified a favour for them blessed them and declares them capable of the Kingdome of Heaven as members of the Church both in grace and glory For as Infants have the spirit and principles of reason even then when they cannot exercise or exert them so may they have as Tertullian observes the spirit and principles of grace and glory of sanctification and salvation even then when they are as under Circumcision onely passive receivers not active employers of the grace of God given them by Christs merits The magnetick vertue may be communicated to a needle although it be not presently put into such an even posture or aequilibrium as will actually shew it so is the grace of God in Infants Which mercy and indulgence of God to the Infants of his Church is a gracious counterpoizing of that native misery and pravity which as Origen and Austin observe they derive from the old Adam to which they are not actively contributive but passively receptive In like manner by the second Adam Christ Jesus the Antidote or remedy is early and so preventive of their agency that as S. Cyprian urgeth the means of life and salvation is dispensed to them also in Baptisme before they can know their calamity CHAP. X. 10. ALl which weight and strength of reasoning drawn from Scripture in many instances and most conform to the love grace philanthropy mercy and benignity of God through Christ to his Church under the Gospel are sufficient to out-weigh those two small and weak cavils urged by the Anabaptists either from the Scriptures silence not naming Infants in the precept or history of Baptisme or limiting as they fancy for ever which was but in the first planting of Churches Baptism only to such as are taught and actually believe which is true as in Abrahams case and such as were men grown in his house he and they were first taught of God the meaning of that Evangelicall mystery but the Infants who in the second place received it could not be instructed and yet were circumcised that is owned for Gods dedicated to him distinguished by this visible sign from the children of Aliens and by this means of grace brought no doubt to glory so is it in Baptisme where the root of parents believing is once holy by baptismall relation and dedication to God keeping communion with Christ and his Church there the branches or children are also holy and belong to the Lord. 11. Nor is this reasoning from Scripture as to the harmony and concurrent sense of it either scepticall or curious or infirm but farre more pregnant and potent in Religion both as to faith and manners than any urging of one or two particular places contrary to this tenour and Analogie of faith or those proportions
reformed profession which is truly Christian ancient and Catholick thereby justifying that mercy and truth that grace and peace of God which was plentifully manifested and faithfully dispensed to the people of this land by the piety and wisdome of the Church of England notwithstanding that the Lord seems now to hide his face from Her the want of whose favour which her great and sore afflictions have seemed to cloud is far beyond the triumphs of her enemies or the coldnesse of her friends the oppositions of many the withdrawings of some and the indifferencies of others who have all contributed to her miseries but none of them have yet convinced her that ever I could see of any sin or errour as to ignorance or iniquity superstition or irreligion dangerous defect or excesse If the Church of England had as many Mouths as she hath Wounds as many Tongues as Maims as many hearty Mourners as she hath cruel Destroyers if there were as many that durst pity and relieve her as there are that dare spoile and ruine her these would fill not England onely but all the Christian world with the bitternesse of her Complaints as a learned and pious Minister for his part hath lately done If the Church of England had many such pious Orators whose potent and pathetick eloquence were more proportionable to her calamities than the narrownesse of my heart and tenuity of my pen are like to be certainly heaven and earth would be moved with compassion flints would melt and rocks be mollified with commiseration the upper and the nether milstones partiall Presbytery and popular Independency between whom she hath been so ground to powder that Papists and Anabaptists and Familists and Quakers and Seekers and Ranters with all the rabble of her proud and spitefull enemies hope to fill their sacks with her grist those I say might possibly repent if they have not much mended their fortunes by this Churches ruines of their occasioning her so long and sharp a warfare so many and sad Tragedies while by infinite jealousies grievous reproches and unjust scandals cast upon their and your Mother this Reformed Church of England they have made her implacable enemies the Papists and others to blaspheme her for a meer Adulteresse all this while to condemn all her Children as a Bastard brood of illegitimate Christians from the first Reformation to this day Her most desperate deserters of late in order to take away their own reproch to expiate as they imagine the sin and shame of their former profession have laboured first to destroy the eldest brethren and chiefest sons in this Church next to cast out and exautorate the principall Stewards and dispensers of holy things after this they have endeavoured to rob her both of her dower and patrimony hoping at last to famish the whole Family when there shall be neither nursing fathers nor nursing mothers in this Church neither milk left for Babes nor stronger meat for the elder ones neither plain catechising nor profitable preaching neither ordaining Bishops nor ordained Presbyters CHAP. IV. SUch as have eares to heare and charity to lay to heart may with me hear the Church of England thus lamenting and bemoning Her self while she sits upon the ground covered with ashes clothed with sackcloth besmeared with blood drowned in teares and almost buried with her owne ruines O all you that pass by me stand and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow if it hath been done to any Christian Reformed Church under Heaven as it hath to me in the day wherein the Lord hath afflicted me with his fierce anger My Wounds my Wasts my Ruines my Deformities my Desolations are not by the barbarous inundations of Goths and Vandals not by the rude invasions of Saracens and Turks not by the severe Inquisitions and cruel persecutions of Papists I do not ow my miseries to the incursions of Forrainers to a nation of a strange Language of professed Enmity of different Interests and Religion They are not professed Neroes Domitians Diocletians and Julians Heathen Princes and Persecutors that have done me this despight for then perhaps I and my children could have born it with a like heroick patience and Christian courage as those did their Primitive Persecutions the splendour and constancy of whose Martyrdomes contributed more than all their preaching to the honour advantage and propagation of the Christian Religion when Churches and Christians being happily united in love and onely persecuted by professed enemies they knew in what posture of defence to cast themselves so as to suffer and die becoming Christians But I alas am ambiguously wounded by those that are of my own house family and profession Such as have been washed at my baptismall fountain of living water such as have freely and fully tasted of my Sacramentall Bread and Wine feasting at my Table which is the Lords these these have lifted up the heel against me Such as have been bred and born by me taught and brought up in the same true Christian Faith and reformed Profession by these am I hated and despised by these am I stripped and wounded by these am I torn and mangled by these am I impoverished and debased below any Church Christian or Reformed by these am I scorned and abhorred by these am I made an hissing and astonishment to all that see me by these am I made a derision and mocking-stock to my enemies round about me by these am I in danger to be quite devoured and destroyed who envy me so much breath and life as serves me to complain of my calamities Hear O heavens and give ear O earth be not ye also cruel or uncompassionate since one of you cannot but behold the deformity of my Sufferings the other cannot but feel the burthen of my complaints one of you is blasted with my Sighs the other is bedewed with my Tears Be not ye also accessory to my injuries by concealing them or guilty of my Blood by covering it which cries aloud against my ungratefull my unnaturall my rebellious children Those that came forth of my own bowels these have risen up against me to whom I liberally afforded milk when they were babes and stronger meat as they were able to bear it for whom I provided the sacred Oracles of God in a language they best understood I furnished them with such formes of wholsome devotion agreeable to the mind and Word of God as might best suit the common necessities of all and the capacities of the meanest I concealed no part of Gods sacred Counsel from them nor detained any necessary saving Truth out of any principle of unrighteous policy I neither denied nor diminished nor deformed any Ordinance of Christ to them I coloured no errours with shews of truth nor disguised any Truth with fallacious sophistries I set forth to them with all plainnesse and freedome the blessed fulnesse and excellencies of my Lord Jesus Christ in such a manner
the Churches of Christ both as to good doctrine and orderly conversation First if you consider the Magna Charta grand charter of your souls the holy Scriptures Those lively oracles which were given by inspiration and direction of Gods Spirit which beyond all books in the world have been most desperately persecuted and most divinely preserved having in them the clearest characters of divine Truth love mercy wisdome power majesty and glory the impressions and manifestations of greatest goodness grace both in morals mysteries in the prophecies and their accomplishment in the admirable harmony of prescience performance of Prophets Apostles setting forth the blessed Messias as the prefigured Sacrifice the promised Saviour the desire of the world those Books which have been delivered to us by the most credible testimony in the world the uniform consent of the pillar and ground of Truth the Catholick Church of God which the Apostle S. Paul prefers before that of an Angel from Heaven that divine Record which hath been confirmed to us by so many miracles sealed by the faith and confession the repentance and conversion the doctrine and example the gracious lives and glorious deaths of so many holy Confessors and Martyrs in all ages besides an innumerable company of other humble professors who have been perfected sanctified and saved by that word of life dwelling richly in them in all wisdome Yet even in this grand concernment of Religion the holy Scriptures whose two Testaments are as the two poles on which all morality and Christianity turn the two hinges on which all our piety and felicity depend much negligence indifferency and coldness is of late used by many not onely people but their heaps of Preachers under the notion and imagination of their Christian liberty that is seldome or never seriously to read either privately or publickly any part of the holy Scripture unless it be a short Text or Theame for fashion sake which like a broken morsell they list to chew a while in their mouths but the solemn attentive grave devout and distinct reading of Psalms or Chapters or any other set portion of the holy Scriptures old or new to which S. Chrysostome S. Jerome S. Austin and the other ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin so oft and so earnestly exhorted all Christians this they esteem as a poor and puerile business onely fit for children at school not for Christians at Church unless it be attended with some exposition or gloss upon it though never so superficiall simple and extemporary which is like painting over well-polished marble being more prone to wrest darken and pervert than rightly to explain clear or interpret the Scriptures which of themselves are in most places easie to be understood obscure places are rather more perplexed than expounded when they are undertaken by persons not very learned or not well prepared for that work which was the employment anciently as Justin Martyr tells us chiefly of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Bishop or President then present whose office was far above the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Readers who having done his duty the other as Pastor of the flock either opened or applyed such parts of the Scripture as he thought best to insist upon Yet there are now many such supercilious and nauseous Christians who utterly despise the bare reading or reciting of the Word of God to the Congregation as if no beauty were on it no life or power in it no good or vertue to be gotten by it unlesse the breath of a poore man further inspire it unlesse a poore worm like a snaile flightly passing over it set a slimy varnish upon it as if the saving truth and self-shining light of Gods Word in the precepts examples promises prophecies and histories were not most cleare and easie of it self as to all things necessary to be believed obeyed or hoped as if honest and pure-hearted Christians could not easily perceive the mind of God in the Scriptures unlesse they used alwayes such extemporary spectacles as some men glory to put upon their own or their auditors noses Certainly such new masters in our Israel forget how much they symbolize with the Papists in this fancy while denying or disdaining all reading of Scriptures in publick unless some expound them though never so sorrily slovenly and suddenly they must by consequence highly discourage yea and utterly forbid common people the reading of any portion of them privately in their closets or families where they can have no other expositors but themselves and it may be are not themselves so confident as to undertake the work of expounding the hard and obscurer places as for other places which are more necessary and easie sure they explain themselves sufficiently to every humble diligent and attentive reader or hearer the blessed use and effects of which if these supercilious Rabbies had found in themselves while the Word of God is publickly distinctly and solemnly read in the Church to them doubtlesly they would not have so much disused despised and decried this godly custome in the Church of England of emphatick reading the Word of God in the audience of Christian Congregations O rare and unheard of Christian Liberty which dares to cast so great a slighting and despiciency upon the publick reading of the Scriptures which are the Churches chiefest Jewel so esteemed and used by Jewes and Gentiles full of its own sacred innate and divine lustre then indeed most spendid and illustrious when handsomely set that is when the Priests lips preserve the knowledge of them and duly impart them to Christian people both by discreet reading and preaching that is explaining and applying them CHAP. VI. AFter these vulgar slightings and depreciatings cast upon the publick reading of the Word of God by some novellers I shall in vain set forth to You what is less strange yet very strange and new in the Church of Christ that is the supercilious contempt and total rejection of all those ancient venerable forms of sound words and wholsome doctrine either literally contained and expresly commanded in the Scripture such as are the Ten Commandements and Lords Prayer or evidently grounded and anciently deduced out of the Scriptures such as are the Apostles Creed with other ancient Symbols and Doxologies which were bounds and marks of all Christians unity and soundness in the faith generally used by all pristine and modern Churches of any renown who mixed with their publick Services of God these great pillars and chief foundations of piety these constant rules standards and measures of Religion by which they took the scantlings or proportions of all their duties and devotions of their sins and repentance of their faith and hope hence the humble confession of their sins the sincere agnition of their duties the earnest deprecations of divine vengeance the fervent supplications for mercy and pardon the hearty invocations for grace the solemn consecration of the sacramentall elements
Austin as a most setled and Catholick practise owned by S. Chrysost Athanas Ambr. Paulinus Gregory Nazian S. Basil Epiphanius so before them by Origen and Irenaeus Of whose testimonies I shall not need here to make more particular mention or repetition for they are in many books of late duly cited which have wrote in English and in Latin of this subject nor can any Anabaptists teeth so gnaw that chain and series of successive Infant-baptisme in the Church of Christ as to break any one link of it or instance in any one author or century where it appears to have been otherwise in the judgement or practise of any one Church or famous person 13. Which Catholick custome of the Church so fully consonant to Scripture and the evident mind of Christ set forth in all his Evangelicall dispensations both general to all men and specially to infants in the Church no judicious sober humble and charitable Christian can either doubt with any shew of reason or dispute against with any shew of modesty Considering that as the custome of the Churches of Christ is stamped with the authority of a law silencing all contradiction and suppressing all novelty by the Apostle S. Paul so Christ himself bids us to heare the Church which if it hold good in lesser censures and determinations of private Congregations how much more is it our duty to be attentive to and observant of the Churches directions which are Catholick whose authority is very great and sacred as the pillar and ground of Truth holding it forth by doctrine and example by Scripture and practise Nor do I doubt that Christ and his Apostles left many things as to the outward polity practise and ministration of Religion lesse clear and expresse in the letter of the Word that thereby the credit and authority of the Catholick Church might be more conspicuous and venerable with all peaceable and orderly Christians who may safely defer this honour to the Catholick Church and to every particular Church agreeing to it as to acquiesce in a conformity to its judgement and practise no way contrary to the Word of God from which it cannot be presumed that the Catholick Church of Christ from the beginning or in any Age did vary either through ignorance or wilfulnesse however particular Churches and Teachers might 14. The Catholick testimony of the Church of Christ is more than a bare humane or historick witnesse it is so sacred so divine so irrefragable that it is more to be valued than an Angels from heaven and therfore ought in all reason and conscience to end such controversies lately raised in the Church and so it would have done long ago if humane passions and interests had not swayed more with some men than matter of conscience and Religion or if the Baptisme of infants were the onely thing that some Anabaptists have an aking tooth at or a mind to pull down No that cannot much hurt them nor doth any mischief or inconvenience follow that pious custome either to parents or children yea much good and comfort accrues to both Religion never thrived but with it no point of faith is prejudiced by it no Evangelicall truth or mercy is diminished or over-stretched but rather asserted and magnified to its due and divine extent Yet Infant-baptisme must be still crucified between the policy of the Anabaptists and their partiality their partiality urgeth one or two limited places against many pregnant and large ones their policy I fear would attain something beyond and more to the advantage of their popular spirits and designes which have in many places been discovered as far from equity and charity in civil regards as they are in this of Baptisme far from verity modesty and antiquity scornfully slighting the testimony of the Churches of Christ in all ages for which undoubtedly they had sufficient warrant from Christ and his Apostles even before the letter of the New Testament was written or the Canon setled Nor did they either need or expect a more explicite commission of baptizing of infants of believing parents than that which was sufficiently expressed as in the generall command to make Disciples in all nations baptizing them so also by the particular words and actions of Christ toward infants not without check to his Disciples also by his requiring all to be born again of Water and the Spirit who pretend to be of the Kingdome of Heaven that is the visible Church and lastly by the former parallell-dispensations of Gods mercy in the Covenant of grace by Circumcision to the members of his Church as children of faithfull Abraham both young and old men and infants 15. Contrary to all which for a few new men spitefully peevishly and everlastingly thus to contest and indeed onely cavill I conceive is not onely a great irreverence and scorn put upon the Church of Christ which we should respect love and honour as the mother of us all but it is an high affront to Christ to his Word Truth and Promise to be ever with it even to the end of the world by his Spirit leading it into all Evangelicall Truths for precept and duty as well as promise and comfort also keeping it from all Catholick Apostasies into any errour destructive to the foundation If they that reject or despise any one of Christs Messengers despise himselfe and his father how much more they that disbelieve despise and discredit so many of his Messengers and Ministers who in all ages have by uniforme word and practise declared to us the mind of Christ as to this point of Infant-baptism By which unhappy Controversie as by many other the strange but just judgements of God have of late in full vials of wrath been poured upon this Church of England by the Anabaptistick spirit chiefly after so much light and truth peace and unity grace and piety poured forth upon us by Gods former munificent mercy sanctifying and sealing with his Spirit and grace in due time that Sacrament of Baptisme which thousands had received in their infancy to their parents comfort to the infants happinesse dying and living also to the great glory of God in this as other Churches in all ages Nor is there to this day after so many bickerings and contests so many publick heats and flames kindled upon this and other accounts any way of wisdome and meeknesse publickly used by which to quench these flames of wild-fire which threaten not onely to scorch but utterly to consume this Reformed and truly Catholick Church with all its true Ministers and holy ministrations in which the Anabaptists are highly subservient to the Papists grand projects and designs which is to deface disgrace and quite overthrow all the frame of Reformed Religion and the face of any either uniform or reformed Church in England CHAP. XII FOr my part I freely professe that if the administration of Baptisme in point of age and time
of the Temple and city of God were wont to do to the joy or amazement of all Spectators so grand so stately so august so amiable so venerable so formidable that no man could with any modesty despise them or with any ingenuity refuse their sense and sentence Whereas Schismaticall scraps and scambling separations of Christians either in their persons or parties as disjoyned and Independent from these Primitive polities and Catholick integrations of Churches make their scattered fractions unsociable societies appear not onely to the scornfull world and to perverse minds but to all sober Christians and rationall men like so many poor Cottages or like the late ruined pieces of our Cathedralls like a flock of Sheep or Pigeons scattered by Wolves or Kites or like the parts of a Lamb or Kid which a Lion or Bear hath torn without that Grandeur Majesty Authority and Efficacy which ought to accompany Ecclesiasticall judicatures and Christian Churches In which pitiful posture so feeble so desolate so despicable if the wisdom of our blessed God and Saviour had intended to have alwayes kept his multiplied Church and numerous people which were to beas the Stars of the Firmament that they should ever be like the small parties of wild Arabs and wandering Scythians certainly those Primitive and purest Churches nominally distinguished and locally defined by the Word of God the Spirit of Christ and the Pens of the Apostles would never have grown by an happy diffusion and holy coalescency to such great and goodly combinations such vast yet comely statures and extensions to so large combinations and harmonious subordinations as contained great Cities Provinces and whole Countreys For such Churches those are which are signally described and punctually circumscribed in the New Testament as well as in all other records of the Primitive Churches Which fair and firm models of Churches comprehending many Christian people Deacons Presbyters and Congregations under one chief Pastor Bishop Angel or Apostolick â—resident who was as the nave of the wheel the centre of Union the anchor of Fixation I make no doubt but the Spirit of Christ in the Apostles which so framed and setled them did intend to have them so preserved as much as morally prudentially and providentially they could be yea rather to have them ampliated and enlarged as time use and the Churches occasions required than curtailed like the garments of Davids messengers or pared and divided into small shreds and shavings The reason is evident because the life and spirit the truth and charity the honour and vigour of Christian Religion and Church-polity like Wine are better preserved in great quantities than in small parcels in Tuns than in Terces Christian people Presbyters Congregations and Bishops like live-coals united glow to a more generous fervour scattered they cool and extinguish themselves unlesse in cases of persecuted Churches where Martyrly fervencies are kept high and intense by the Antiperistasis of persecution the most heroick love and ambition of suffering and dying for Christ and his Church then uniting Christians spirits most when their persons are most scattered BOOK I. CHAP. II. THe Primitive Piety and Charity so perfectly abhorred all fractures and crumblings of Churches that we see they kept for many hundred of years as Ignatius Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian Clemens Alexandrinus Cyprian Eusebius and all Ancient both Fathers and Historians tell us their respective Combinations Fraternities and Subordinations to their Bishops Patriarchs and mother-Churches according to those Sedes principales Cathedrae Apostolicae or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 limits or boundaries which were laid out and distinguished either by the Apostles first lots and Episcopall portions or by their chief residencies and setled inspections governed either by themselves or their Vicegerents and Successors most of them Primitive Martyrs and Confessors which was done even till the famous Council of Nice which in the point of distinguishing Churches and keeping their severall Dioceses or bounds took care to preserve to after-ages and successions of the Church those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ancient customes measures or dimensions some of which begun by the Apostles and carried on by their Successors had passed through and endured the hottest persecutions without ever being so melted and dissolved as to run into any such new moulds and fashions as this last Century in these Western Churches and these last seventeen yeares in the Church of England have produced to such frustula fragments chips and fractions as look more like factious confederacies and furtive subductions of yesterday than like those Primitive combinations and that ancient and ample Communion of Christians and Churches The endeavour of many People and Preachers too being now like that of Plagiaries to entice and steal children from the care of their mothers and the custody of their fathers to ruine as Tertullian speaks rather than to edifie themselves or the Churches of Christ to that full measure and complete stature which the love of Christ and the wisdome of his Apostles first designed and assigned to the Church of Christ in its severall limits and distributions In order to preserve which Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace not onely as to private veracity and charity but as to publick polity and harmony for strength and safety we find the Primitive Bishops and Presbyters forewarned by S. Paul of grievous Wolves who first divide then devour such as should be authors and fautors of Hereresies and Schismes too affecting to lead Disciples after them apart from the Churches setled order and communion The Roman Christians are commanded to mark with the black brand of schismatick pride those that caused divisions among them not onely as to private differences in judgement opinion and affection which are of lesse danger and easily healed among Christians where the health and soundnesse of the whole as to publick order and entireness is preserved which as the native Balsam easily heals green wounds in any part of the body But the Apostles caution as to the Corinthians seems chiefly against those that divided the publick polity and unity of the Church of Corinth which having many Christians many Congregations and many Preachers in the city and countrey adjacent was united by one Church-communion under some one Apostle or such a Vicegerent as in the Apostles absence was over them in the Lord To break which holy Subordination Harmony and Integrality the simplicity or subtilty of some factious spirits made use of those Names which were most eminent in that Church as Planters Waterers or Weeders of it such as Paul Apollos Cephas were seeking by factious sidings and adherings to those principall Teachers to withdraw themselves into severall Churches or Bodies from that grand Communion and Subordination which they received first from the Apostle converting them next from that chief Pastor or Bishop which had the rule inspection and authority over them by his appointment Which practises in the Churches
and measure as I received from his Word and Spirit for I learned not those manifestations of Divine love from any other Church Pristine or Modern so much as the speciall dispensations and discoveries of Gods Graces and Gifts to me in which few equalled none seemed to exceed me in all the world From this great and pure fountain of all perfection and comfort the sweetnesse merit and fulnesse of my Saviour I recommended to my children every Grace every Vertue every holy Duty every necessary Precept every precious Promise every imitable Example and this was done with all the advantages of good Learning of sound Knowledge of most potent and pathetick eloquence which at once was able to inform the weakest capacity to satisfie any sober curiosity and to silence the subtilest adversary To this purpose that the great work of saving their souls might be effectually carried on with order power and authority I furnished them not with precarious praters bold intruders or pitifull pieces of Plebeian oratory in whom ignorance and impudence inability and inauthoritativeness contend which shall be greatest but I provided and prepared for them with much study and industry with many prayers and teares with long education and diligent care excellent Bishops orderly Presbyters able and authoritative Ministers workmen that needed not be ashamed of a lawful ordination and right descent of a mediate divine mission after the Apostolick line and Catholick succession after the form of an uninterrupted and authentick commission duly and truly exemplified in the consecration of Bishops and ordination of Presbyters and Deacons through all ages of the Church agreeable to that originall Institution which was from Christ Jesus the great High Priest the unerring Prophet the soveraign King of his Church the chief Preacher of Righteousnesse and Bishop of our souls who instituted first his twelve Apostles afterward the seventy Disciples whose commission was not so large nor their mission so solemn as that of the twelve whose Episcopacy and number was to be completed and upon whom the promised power from on high specially came in the miraculous and ministeriall gifts of the Holy Ghost After this pattern which was ever followed by all Churches in all the world I supplied those under my care with such a succession of Bishops and Ministers of holy things as for solid learning for powerfull preaching for devout and discreet praying for reverend celebrating for acute disputing for exact writing for wise governing and holy living were no where exeeded in all the Christian world and hardly equalled in any age since the Apostles times whose ministeriall sufficiencies and successes were sometime highly magnified and almost deified by many of those that now would stone them and destroy me by a late transport of malice as much unexpected as undeserved by me which looks more like a fascination and fury than any thing of true Zeal and sober Reformation For no men of any weight or worth for parts and piety for judgement and ingenuity for conscience and integrity have hitherto convinced me or those men that were my prime servants sons and supports of any Heresie or Idolatry of any Superstition or Apostasy of any just scandall or notable defect What some have urged for my not exercising a more severe and strict Discipline after the manner of some ancient Primitive Churches it is not imputable to any unwillingnesse in those worthy Bishops and Presbyters whom I employed but to the general wantonness or refractorinesse of all sorts of people in that point who were so farre from enduring a stricter discipline to be set up that many grudged at any Ecclesiastick authority exercised over them though it were established by their own publick consent and lawes If any of my Bishops Presbyters or people failed to do the duties which I required or rather Christ commanded them it was to be reckoned as the fruit of mens private temptations and personall infirmities but not of my constitutions or directions which were so pious and perspicuous that people could not justly plead invincible ignorance to excuse their immoralities and impieties which indeed they owed to their own negligences or corruptions Yea where the seeds of Religion were thinnest sown and thrived least in some parts of this nation it was not so much from the want of labourers as from the labourers wants the poverty of many places and barrennesse of the soyle was such that either impropriations or sacriledge or both had not left for any competent workman a competent maintenance both my Dower and Patrimony Glebes and Tithes being almost wholly alienated by hard lawes and evil customes from my use and enjoyment that holy Portion which is Gods being oft perverted to feed Hinds and Dogs and Horses which was originally devoted to feed such Shepherds as might feed my flock in every place Nor could in those cases either my prayers or teares the sordid necessities of many poor Ministers or the cryes of poor peoples famished souls ever yet move the civil State effectually to restore or remit or to make other necessary supplyes for Pastors and peoples good Yet even in this distresse which befell too many places much against my will my care and endeavour was so to keep up the life health and soundnesse of the true Reformed Christian Religion that people every where had what was necessary wholsome and decent for their souls good though possibly they had not nor was it needfull the same plenty variety dainties and superfluity in a constant way which some places did so long enjoy untill as with the Jews the Manna and Quailes Sunday Sermons and week-day Lectures came out of their nostrils while the heavenly food was rowling in their curious palates and wanton jawes the wrath of God brake forth upon them and upon me as upon Moses for their sakes who was indeed as jealous of their surfeitings of holy things as of the others famishings both being contrary to my care and desire which were God knows first to preserve the Foundation of necessary and saving Truth among them next to adde the beauty of holinesse to humility to joyn decency to sincerity to maintain the power of godlinesse with the wholsome formes of it that so Truth and Peace Order and Unity the leaves and the fruits of the tree of life might grow together for the nutriment muniment and ornament of piety Nor do I doubt to plead and affirm before Gods Tribunall That if those people who seemed to fare hardliest though the greatest complainers against my treatment of them were such as enjoyed most and fared deliciously every day wantonness being more querulous than want if they had made so good use as they might and ought to have done of that holy light and rule which was duly held forth to them in the plain parts of Scripture every year read to them in the Sacraments duly administred among them in the Articles Creeds Homilies Catechise and Liturgy with which they were
either keeping for the main to the same matter method and tenour of devotion which was in the Church of England or with great artifice varying so much as it may be thought to be new and unpremeditated yea and inspired too rather than from any ordinary gift or common habit acquired which sober Christians know full well to be neither an hard nor a rare matter for any men to attain who have quick inventions moderate judgements and voluble tongues Lastly even in the point of Ceremonies which they have clamoured for dangerous and rendred so odious in the Church of England even these men that are so impatient to be concluded under any ceremonies upon publick order and injunction yet many of them use two ceremonies for one after their own fancies and inventions not only by those emphatick looks dreadful eagernesses vehement loudnesses long and extatick silences antick actions odde and theatrick postures which they peculiarly chuse to personate in hereby setting off as they think with the greater grace and gusto their religious performances before the people but further they require of their Disciples and all that will be their followers some things of a ceremonial nature besides words and phrases as speciall marks and discriminations both of admission to and communion with their Churches or parties who may commonly be known by those omissions no less than by those expressions which they affect to use 'T is Religion with some not to give the title of Saint to any but their own partie never to use the Lords prayer Creed or ten Commandements They have also speciall times and gestures yea vestures too observed by them in their holy duties some chuse to sit others to stand at the Lords Supper neither of which was the posture of Christ or his Apostles which was a leaning or recumbency some take it after their own suppers others before some familiarly hand the elements one to another most of them use such words in consecration and distribution as they like best or as come first to their lips sometimes such rude expressions which I have known by some that were no little Idols of the vulgar that truly no wise man or good Christian could approve them There are that abhor to appeare as Ministers of the Church of England by wearing any gown or so much as black clothes in their officiatings many of them rather than wear a black cap which is most grave and comely in case they need one chuse to put on a white cap though they need none appearing as if they went to execution when they go to preaching some love to preach in cuerpo casting off their clokes as if they went like boyes to wrestling when they go to preaching How ill would these men take it if any of those that are lovers and esteemers of the Ch. of Engl. should so severely circumcise their devotions as not to suffer them to use any of those new forms exotick fashions or affected Ceremonies which they have thus chosen to themselves as the discriminations of their factions the decencies of their profession and the solemnities no doubt of their devotions how angry would they be to hear any men crying down all their fine new modes which no doubt themselves think very demure and Saintly as very undecent and superstitious as superfluous and scandalous as unnecessary yea impious because not expresly commanded by Christ not punctually practised by the Apostles nor any other holy men in any Church To many of whom the strange and affected carriages of some new men in their duties and devotions would certainly seem very ridiculous and indiscreet if not worse while they are such imperious and severe censurers of a few Ceremonies thought fit to be used by the wisdome of the Church of England Whatever these men can plead for those ceremonious customes and observations used by them in their religious performances which have no other signature or note upon them but onely their own fancy choice and use that I am sure and much more may any sober Christian plead in behalf of the Ceremonies chosen by and used in the Church of England as seemed fittest and best for the common good There is a necessity of decency reverence order and convenience for the adorning of religious duties that are sociall and exemplary related not onely to God but to men in outward profession quickening thereby and incouraging our selves winning and alluring others yea instructing and edifying all sorts in some degree like the flourishings of capitall letters which make them not more significant but more remarkable These are no less lawfull and necessary than discretion is to devotion or prudence is to piety though they are not of the highest and most absolute necessity which constitutes what these adorn gives being to what these onely beautifie gives the inward and essentiall form to what these adde onely outward and visible forms to Ceremonies making religious duties not more pious but more conspicuous not more sacred but more solemn not more spirituall and holy but more visible and imitable In all which things of a circumstantiall and ceremoniall nature for Ceremonies seem no other but modified or limited circumstances such as are time place gesture vesture posture action c. all which in the generall do attend as shadows do gross bodies in the Sun-shine all the outward actions of men either naturall civil or religious in this life of mortality if any men may lawfully use as these enemies to the Church of England now do what their private fancy skill and will list to set up in opposition to and derogation from the custome wisdome and publick consent of such a Church as England was Certainly wise and godly men may with much more modesty safety and discretion follow the joynt advice and direction of so famous a Church to whom and to its followers some of these new Reformers will not now allow so much liberty as to follow their own judgement and the Churches appointment too in matters of Religion either for substance or ceremony which liberty they alwayes boldly demanded and lately challenged to themselves and their adherents as a right or priviledge belonging to them not onely as men but as Christians which yet by their good will no Christians should enjoy besides themselves and such as receive the Lawes of Religion from their lips It is possible indeed for one man to be in some things at some time and occasion wiser than many men for truth doth not alwayes go in crowds never in rabbles as one Lay-man seemed in the great Council of Nice who was as Socrates Ruffinus and Nicephorus tell us a very plain and simple man yet he relieved those Fathers when they were shrewdly perplexed by a subtill sophister in the point of Christs Divinity and the most adorable Trinity whose disputative insolency that one plain man as David against Goliah did so rebuke not by subtilty of his reasonings but by the majesty of his faith
and confession that the Philosopher confessed himself evicted convicted converted Such a solitary rock of Christian constancy was that one great Athanasius deservedly master of an immortall name because in the sea and inundation of Arian perfidy and the Apostasy of most He He persisted a constant professor a couragious Confessor a patient Martyr by his sufferings for so great a truth which is of greater price than all Christians temporall lives better all men die as to their mortality than Christ be deprived of the honour of his Divinity which is the life of a believers faith and hope for eternall life by the meritorious excellency and infinite goodness of the blessed Jesus both God and man Notwithstanding these instances in cases of great concernment which had the Scriptures testimony the consent of all the ancient Churches to buoy up their undertakers against all the oppositions of men or devils yet in things of a lesse nature which being indifferent in their kind are best determinable by publick prudence it argues as S. Austin speaks insolentissimam insaniam no small pride and arrogancy which is the mother of folly and faction for any one man or some few men whom all order and polity hath made inferiour to others either as their betters or as the rulers and representatives of the whole Society to prefer their own private opinions and judgements before the well-advised results and solemn sanctions of those that are far more in number and every way as eminent for piety prudence and integrity besides the advantage they have of more publick influence and just authority Such indeed were the first Reformers and Constituters of the Church of England both as to its fundamentals and what they thought ornamentals or ceremonies who I believe had much more religious reason for what they then approved and appointed both as to piety and policy than we at this distance of times and different state of things can well discern I am sure they were masters of as much learning and as great searchers of divine verities as any of those new masters who now so much blame them and pert upon them yea and I believe they had much more of true zeal and meekness of humility and charity attending their learned counsels and pious endeavours than will be at last found in those men who are so far from suffering as martyrs for Christ and his Church that they seek to make this Church one of the greatest sufferers and martyrs that ever was of any Christian and Reformed Church Those forenamed gifts and graces which sowed by Gods blessing those good seeds of Piety and Peace whence a long and plentifull harvest of Blessings spiritual and temporal did grow and was reaped for many years in England by us and our fore-fathers those I believe will carry the honest and humble Conformists sooner and nearer to heaven than the pride passion and petulancy of these is like to do who now seem the most supercilious and triumphant Non-conformists against the Church of England to some of whose violences immoderations and imprudencies that I name not sacriledges profanenesses and cruelties the Church of England and its Children next their sins do now owe so much of their miseries dangers and undoings for which I doubt not but in the day of impartiall doom they will find that Gods thoughts were not as their thoughts nor his wayes as their wayes To the jealousie and contempt which some men expressed against the Ceremonies of the Church of England they added their perpetual quarrelling with those Festival solemnities which were appointed to be annually observed in a religious way to Gods glory and Christians improvement by fasting or feasting by prayer preaching and communicating which uses and ends being sufficient to justifie all things that any Church particularly appoints or observes agreeable to the generall tenour of Gods Word yet some mens divinity hath been alwayes bent to condemn and discountenance even the solemn and speciall memorials of Christs Nativity Passion Resurrection Ascension and sending of the holy Ghost which celebrate no other mysteries or memorials than those which the grand Articles of Christian faith do teach us The wisdome and piety of the Church having in all ages written in Dominicall or great Letters those most remarkable Histories of our Saviours transactions on earth in order to our Redemption which certainly are never more observed by common people than when they are set forth in such Holidayes and are kept with more than ordinary solemnity and festivity or joy such as becomes sober Christians for which we have not onely the ancient Churches general practice but Gods own command and precedent among the Jews to prevent forgetting or slighting of Gods signall mercies Against all which some men are so envious among Christians that they will not endure either Ministers or neighbour-Christians to benefit their own and others souls by preaching upon any of those speciall dayes or occasions and subjects They can allow State Fasts Civil Festivals and Common-wealths Thanksgivings upon petty and inconsiderable accounts comparatively but by no means upon such as are purely Christian either for mortification or gratulation in which they are so peevishly partiall that they superciliously fancy their not observing such a day to be a service to the Lord but they have not so much charity as to grant that anothers observing such a day is an observing it to the Lord which affirmative the blessed Apostle allows no less than the others negative whose uncharitableness seems in this not onely superstitious as to their own liberty but injurious against anothers while they count them Jewish and ceremonious in observing those dayes which all the world knows do not look forward to Christ as yet to come but backward as to Christ already come both in the Flesh and in the Spirit having as to his meritorious part finished the glorious work of our Redemption which ought to be had in everlasting remembrance and left such a ministeriall authority in his Church as ought to preserve the memorials of his Incarnation Passion Resurrection and Ascension untill his coming again by all such means both ordinary and extraordinary which may with most piety and prudence best attain that great end Which the ancient and Primitive Churches undoubtedly did among whom so early and eager a controversie rose as to the punctuall day of Christs Resurrection nor have the modern and best reformed Churches failed in these grand celebrations to conform as the Ch. of Engl. did to pious Antiquity finding no reason or Religion why they should in such lawfull and laudable customes affect to vary from the Catholick patterne so conform to the word and will of God From which private Christians would not so easily dissent if they did not too much lean to their own understandings and so fall under that woe of being wise in their own conceits which biasses easily betray weak and wilfull men to count good evil and evil good to
Idolatry Heresie Schism and Apostasie in all the world if God had not in the place of primitive miracles supplied the Church with such Ministers both Bishops and Presbyters whose admirable learning undaunted courage indisputable authority uniform order and constant succession was beyond any miracle which did at once both wonderfully attest and mightily preserve the sanctity mystery and majesty of Christian Religion from the subtilty of persecutors the sophistry of Philosophers the contumacy of Schismaticks and contumelies of Hereticks being too hard by Gods assistance for the malice of men and the wiles of Satan All which are then under severall new notions and disguises probable to prevaile over this or any Christian Church when such liberty shall be used by vulgar spirits and inordinate minds as shall not onely diminish and abate but quite in time destroy and vacate the divine reverence and inviolable sanctity of religious mysteries and holy ministrations which will inevitably follow where the Catholick order and divine authority of Ministers derived through all ages is not onely questioned and disputed but denied despised variated prostituted usurped by whosoever list to make himself a Minister in any new way which cannot be true if new nor authentick if it be exotick unwonted in the Church of Christ either broken off or different from that primitive commission and constant exemplification or Catholick succession which was owned and observed in Bishops and Presbyters throughout all the Christian world For my part I abhor all intrusion and obtrusion of dangerous Novelties both from Papists and Separatists either in Doctrine Discipline or Government of the Church and those I account dangerous yea detestable Novelties which not upon any plea of ignorance or necessity but meerly out of wantonness and wilfulness seek to alter the sacred streams and currents of Ecclesiasticall power authority and order from those fountains where Christ first broached it and those conduits by which the Apostles derived it which unquestionably was by Bishops and Presbyters I know that the sacred office and Angelick function of the Evangelicall Ministry as it is from my Lord Jesus Christ and is in his name and stead so it ought to be managed reverenced esteemed transmitted and undertaken among all true Christians as a visible supply of Christs absence in body as an authoritative embassie or delegation from Him as a sacred dispensation of that Ministry to his Church by chosen and duly ordained men setting forth his History his Precepts Promises Sacraments and other holy Institutions together with the Ministrations and Gifts of his holy Spirit by which he promised to his Apostles to be with them to the end of the world in that holy work wherein he employed them and their lawfull successors to be his witnesses among all nations whither he should send them So that every true Minister as with the ancients Mr. Calvin observes in his proper place and order as Bishop or Presbyter is first a Prophet to teach and instruct in the truths of God that part of Christs Church over which he is constituted next he is as a Ruler Shepherd and Governour over them in the Lord to feed and guide them in that holy order and discipline which becomes the lesser and the greater the single and sociall parts of Christs flock according as they are under their several care and inspection lastly every true Minister is in his proper station to perform in Christs stead those offices of his Evangelicall Priesthood which he hath assigned to be dispensed for his Churches good as the solemn consecration and celebration of that Eucharisticall memoriall of the great oblation of Christ to his Father upon the Cross for the redemption of the world by which all mankind is put into a conditionall capacity of salvation and upon their true faith and repentance Christs body and blood with all his meritorious benefits are evidently set forth signally confirmed and personally exhibited in that great Sacrament and most venerable mystery to every worthy Receiver He is further to offer up upon the altar of Christs merits the spiritual sacrifices of the Church in prayers praises thanksgivings alms and charities Besides this there is in the true Pastor or Minister of the Church of Christ according to their proportion and degree their line and measure as Bishops and Presbyters a power of mission and propagation in order to maintain that holy succession of an Evangelicall Priesthood which Christ Jesus hath appointed and which the Apostles with their successors the Bishops and Pastors of the Church in all the world have to this day continued without any interruption or any variation as to the maine of the power and practise of Ordination So then as these three offices are eminently in Christ as the great Prophet Prince and Priest of his Church to all which he was consecrated by the mission of his Father by his own Blood-shed and Passion also by the anointing of his eternall Spirit which filled him with all divine Graces ministeriall Gifts and miraculous Power necessary for so great a work so the Lord Christ being absent in body but present in his power and Spirit had derived and committed the outward ministeriall execution of these his offices to chosen and ordained men as over-seers and workers together with Christ of themselves but earthen vessels yet the fittest instruments for the present dispensations of his Gospel and grace which yet are to be carried on according to the first appearance of Christ in the flesh in such darkness weaknesse and meannesse as may most set forth the present excellency of Gods gracious power and set off the future manifestations of his glory to his Church which even in this inferiority and obscurity of the Gospel hath yet as three that bear witnesse to its truth in heaven the wisdome of the Father contriving the love of the Son effecting and the power of the holy Ghost applying Evangelical mercies to poor sinners so it hath three that bear witnesse on earth to that glorious truth and mystery of the Gospel the water of Baptism which sprinkles to Regeneration the blood of the Lords Supper which feeds and refreshes believers also the Spirit of ministeriall Power and Authority which hath been and still is from Christ continued in all true Christian Churches As the first three are one in an essentiall unity of divine nature so these later three as S. John tells us agree in one that is in one Soveraign author Jesus Christ and in one sacred order and office of Church-Ministry or Evangelical dispensations successively derived from the Apostles Elders and Deacons by a power and commission peculiar to those who are duly ordained to be Christs Deputies Lieutenants and Vicegerents in his Church for those holy offices and divine ministrations whereto they are severally appointed in an higher or lower degree as Apostles or Elders as Bishops or Presbyters as Pastors or Teachers either over-seeing as
the firm ground less indeed to vulgar admiration but more to their own safety and others benefit S. Paul seriously represseth the vanity of knowledge falsly so called when men intrude themselves into things they understand not being puffed up as those primitive Gnosticks in their fleshly minds not holding the Truths as they are in Jesus nor content with the simplicity of the Gospel as it hath been delivered received understood believed and practised by the Catholick Church of Christ this check the Apostle gave to humane curiosities and Satanick subtilties even then when speciall gifts and revelations were at the highest tide CHAP. XVII THe better learned and more humble Ministers of the Church of England both Bishops and Presbyters ever professed with S. Austin and the renowned Ancients an holy nescience or modest ignorance in many things no less becoming the best Christians the acutest Scholars and profoundest Divines than their otherwayes vast knowledge and accurate diligence to search the Scriptures and find out things revealed by God which belong to the Church The modesty and gravity of their learning commends the vastness and variety of it as dark shadowes and deep grounds set off the lustre of fair pictures to the greater height They were not ashamed to subscribe to Saint Paul's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unfathomable depth the divine Abyss of unsearchable wisdome and knowledge they were not curious to pry into things above them or to stretch their wits and fancies beyond that line and measure of truth which God had set forth to his Church in his written Word and in those Catholick summaries thence extracted as the rule of Christian Faith Manners and Devotion whereto the spirits of all good Christians great and small learned and idiots were willingly confined of old as Irenaeus tells us they never boasted of raptures revelations new lights visions inspirations special missions and secret impulses from Gods Spirit beyond or contrary to Gods Word and the good order of his Church thereby to exercise their supposed liberties and presumptuous abilities that is indeed to satisfie their lusts disorders and extravagances in things civil and sacred to discover their immodesties and impudicities like the Cainites Ophites Judaites and Adamites to gratifie their luxuries and injuries their sacriledges and oppressions their cruelties against man and blasphemies against God their separations divisions and desolations intended against this Church The godly Pastors and people of Christs flock never professed any such impudent piety or pious impudence because they were evidently contrary to sound Doctrine and holy Discipline beyond and against the sacred precepts and excellent patterns of true Ministers sincere Saints and upright Christians whose everlasting limits are the holy Scriptures sufficient to make the man of God and Minister of Christ perfect to salvation They were not like children taken with any of these odde maskings and mummeries of the Devil who is an old master of these arts in false Prophets and false Apostles with their followers whose craft ever sought to advance their credits against the Orthodox Bishops Presbyters and professors of true Religion by such ostentations of novelties and unheard of curiosities in Religion which never of old or late made any man more honest holy humble or heavenly they never advanced Christians comforts solitary or sociall living or dying but kept both their Masters and Disciples in perpetual inquietudes perplexities and presumptions which usually ended in villanies outrages and despairs Nor will these new Masters late discoveries prove much better whereof they boast with so insolent and loud an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for all their rarities are but dead carkases which are become mummy by being long dried in the sands or wrapped up in searcloths they are not less dead though they seem less putrified to those whose simplicity or curiosity tempts them thus to rake into the skulls and sepulchres of old Hereticks idle Ecstaticks such as the very primitive times were infinitely pestred withal but blessed be God they were all long ago either extinct of themselves and gone down to the pit or crucified dead buried and descended into hell by the just censures Anathemaes and condemnations passed against them by the godly Bishops and Ministers of the Church in those ages Nor have these Spectres ever much appeared in this Church of England till these later years in which by the ruines and rendings of this Church they have gained a rotten kind of resurrection not to their glory but to their renewed shame and eternall infamy I trust in Gods due time when once the honour of the true Christian and Reformed Religion once happily setled and professed in the Church of England shall be again worthily asserted and re-established by your piety and prudence my noble and religious Countrey-men who have been and I hope ever will be the chief professors and constant Patrons of it under your God and your pious Governours Your prudence and piety your justice and generosity is best able to see through all those transports which are so transparent those specious pretences those artificiall mists and vapours which are used by some novel Teachers to abuse the common people that engaging them into eternall parties animosities and factions they may more easily by many mouths and hands not onely cry but utterly pull down this Reformed Church of England in its sound Doctrine wholsome Discipline Catholick Ministry sacred Order solemn Worship and Apostolick Government All which must now be represented to the world by these new Remonstrants as poor and pittifull carnall and common meer empty forms and beggarly elements fit to be cast out with scorn as reaching no further than Christ in the letter Jesus in the flesh Truth in the outward court Religion in the story or legend but they say the Ministers and other Christians of Old England are not come within the vaile to the Spirit and Mystery they have not that light within which far out-shines the paper-lanthern of Gods word without them CHAP. XVIII THese and such like are the uncouth expressions used to usher in under the names of liberty curiosity sublimity nothing but ignorance idlenesse Atheisme barbarity irreligion and utter confusion in this Church or at best as I shall afterward more fully demonstrate they are but van-courriers or agitators for Romish superstitions and Papall usurpations the end of all this gibberish is Venient Romani Put all these fine fancies and affected phrases together with all those strange phantasms in Religion which of late have haunted this Church like so many unquiet vermin or unclean spirits truly they spell nothing but first popular extravagances which are the embasings and embroylings of all true and Reformed Religion next they portend Popish interests and policies prevailing against this Church and State whose future advantages are cunningly but notably wrapt up in these plebeian furies and fondnesses as grocery wares are in brown paper Be confident the spirit of Rome which is
share proportion and capacity hath now if not altogether almost quite driven themselves and all others of that calling name and profession out of that paradise of peace plenty and respect which they did heretofore as Ministers enjoy in England and still might have done if they had used such modesty prudence and piety as best became wise and worthy men who had been masters of any prudence and providence But now alas who ever professeth to be a Minister of the Gospel in England not as an interloper or mungrel who ekes out his other mechanick trade by putting the new patch of a plebeian Preacher to that old garment for these wretches are deservedly despicable to all consciencious sober and ingenuous men but even those who have destinated and confined themselves wholly to the Ministeriall work and function whatever account they go upon for the derivation of their mission ordination and authority whether Episcopall Presbyterian Independent or Plebeian yet if they make their Ministry their work and businesse and not their wantonness and sport if they give themselves to that painful plough and sacred husbandry which tills rocky hearts and sowes in hopes of an eternall harvest they shall be sure to find work enough both to do and to suffer enemies enough to encounter with indignities more than enough to digest necessities enough to contend withall at their very best estate they are altogether vanity accounted as the scorn and out-casts of the people the filth and off-scouring of all things by some party or other Even those Ministers that fancy themselves most favoured by the potent or impotent by Prince or people yet still they are attended with many evil eyes bitter speeches contemptuous reproches spitefull affronts from some side or other This this is the portion of Ministers of all sorts to drink this is the cup which vulgar liberty and their own dissentions have mingled for them as to all civil respects and worldly enjoyments CHAP. XXVII TRuly they had need make much of good consciences for little comfort else is left to most of them as to any civil splendour competency or certainty in this world Look but to the point of estate and that moderate subsistence which all ingenuous industrious men may justly expect and aim at for themselves and their relations in the way of honest labour no mens salary subsistence or maintenance is generally so dubious and uncertain so arbitrary and hazardous so burdened and exhausted so thin driven and as it were wire-drawn both by their own necessities and other mens injurious sharkings insomuch that many Ministers very well-deserving are reduced not onely to tenuities but to difficulties necessities extremities they are forced to live by faith and some of them have as I have heard even died with famine others had so perished if charity had not interposed wanting those necessary supports which their aged and languishing condition did require The truth is not one of ten I might say of an hundred of any sort of common people make it a matter of conscience to pay them their dues if they can hold their livings few do pay them without delayings defalkings and defraudings many people make it a great point of conscience to pay them nothing either by the Laws of Justice or Gratitude Ministers must in most places onely learn how to want for in few they shall ever learn how to abound Many of them have been a long time quite turned out of Gods Husbandry from their Livings and Labours many such as have leave to labour have most-what their labour for their paines forced to study how to live when they should live to study such as should dispense the bread of eternall life and consecrate the Sacramentall bread which is the Communion of Christs blessed Body to his Body the Church these are solicitous for that perishing bread which is the staffe of this momentary life Many Angels of Christs Church and Stewards of his houshold are exposed many wayes and many times to sordid necessities and scurrilous indignities The chief Pastors and ablest Shepherds are very much levelled to the meanest of the flock while yet the weakest and most scabbed sheep affect to be shepherds the very abjects of the people every where dare if they list contemne their Ministers to their faces they make no scruple yea they take pleasure to be petulant peevish refractory and insolent even in publique The ayme of many is to have such Preachers as shall be not Fathers Rulers and Heads in the Church but either as sequacious and flexible tayles following the frowns and flatteries of the people on whose good will they must depend if they will eate or as firebrands of unquenchable factions engaging the populacy to infinite parties and sects under the notion of new Ministers and new Religion These these are the treatments these the methods used by some to bury not the dead carkases of Ministers in the graves of common people which fact is branded in King Jehoiakim as a token of great irreligion to God and irreverence to the Prophet Uriah but they seek to cast them yet alive into a most plebeian state the graves of ignominie poverty contempt and shame yea many hope at length to make the Reformed Clergie or Ministery of England as odious as those Heathen Priests became when as the Church-Historians tell us their Temples were rifled when their despicable Deities their deformed Idols and worm-eaten gods were discovered Nor is this deplorable estate befaln those incruders onely who from the basest of the people have of late consecrated themselves to serve those calves that list to set them up or follow them but many great Prophets like Jeremy stick to this day in the mire and dirt of those dungeons into which they are cast others are become miserable as Eli's posterity crouching for a morsell of bread even to their enemies I mean those factious and sacrilegious spirits who would be glad to see the most learned Ministers in England advanced to no higher preferment than Musculus was in Germany who though an excellent Preacher and Writer yet was forced for his livelyhood sometime to help a Weaver at his Loome otherwhile to work as a Scavenger in purging the Towne-ditch Nâ—r is this a Parable of Misery or an artificiall and Theatrick Tragedie made by me No I solemnly protest to you my honoured Countrymen the World affords not greater more numerous or more calamitous objects of Christian pity and humane charity than are many Ministers at present in England if you consider their calling their abilities their education and their sad condition Many of them are already implunged into the horrible pit of darknesse others are upon the very brink and precipice of extreme poverty meannesse and contempt through the trialls or displeasures of God executed by the restlesse malice and immoderate revenge of some men against this Church its Ministry and the Reformed Religion whose spite and passion
Attorneys among whom although Ministers find some very just ingenuous and generous Gentlemen lovers of Learning Religion Equity Order and of their Mother the Church of England yet others of them savour so strong of the apron antipathy of a rustick mechanick and illiterate breeding besides that factious and peevish temper which they have lately added to their other perfections that in good earnest the sober and sound Ministers of the Church of England are as unwelcome to them as cold water is to their feet in winter or vinegar to their aking teeth or smoke to their sore eyes which they have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many wayes and oft expressed by their looks words gestures actions some of them treating aged grave godly venerable and most deserving Divines much their betters God and man knows in all true worth not onely with rudenesse and petulancy but with such bitternesse haughtinesse and disdain as they would not shew to a Foot-man or Lacquey related to any person whom they either fear love or esteem Herod was civill to John Baptist in comparison These puffe and swell they bite and threaten as Ahab did at Eliah or Micaiah counting these Ministers though never so supple humble tame trembling before their good Worships as enemies because they hold to the Catholick truth and as troublers of their Israel because they will not be flatterers of their new fancies in Religion because they persist in a judicious and consciencious owning their Orders and asserting their Ministry which is their chiefest honour because they will not yet fall down and worship the imaginations which some men seek to set up in England because they follow the Primitive order constancy and verity not complying with that ignorance levity vulgarity Schisme and Apostasie against the Church of England wherewith some men are so delighted without any sense of sin or shame though never so much against that duty gratitude love honour estimation and communion which they owed to the Church of England and the worthy Ministers of it CHAP. XXX THis I write to you O nobler Christians and my Honoured Countrymen as with great certainty sorrow and sympathy in regard of my Brethren the Ministers of this Church so with the greater freedome because it neither hath been nor is my particular case through Gods mercy either to be considerably injured or in any degree over-awed by common people much lesse by any men in Power either Military or Civill Nor have I any cause to complain of the generality of my own people as to any want of justice gratitude or civility expectable from persons of their size and proportion Yet my own experience teacheth me to have the more sensible belief of many other Ministers sad complaints who having it may be lesse advantages above their people and much depending upon them are forced in a very low posture to truckle under such factious imperious and injurious spirits as they meet withall There is I find no flock of Pigeons so pure and entire but there will be some Stares Jack-dawes and Rooks among them no people so modest and ingenuous so respective and submissive to their Ministers but there will be some surly and supercilious petulant and insolent spirits among them No Minister of any good name and merit is so exalted in the love and respect of his people but he will have some messenger of Satan to buffet him some Judas among his Disciples that will be prone to betray him to traduce him privately and publiquely to make him an offender for a word to suck poyson as Spiders out of the sweetest flowers of his zeal piety charity and oratory turning honey into gall and requiting evill for good I could give you if you wanted daily experiences some neer and notable instances how respective how gentle how good-natur'd how gratefull how civill some people are to their Ministers since they have taken the liberty to be rude petulant insolent unholy unthankfull I have seen how much they disdain to pay any more civility or outward respect to their Minister than they challenge to themselves or than they give to their meanest comrades which are of the same bran and barrell with themselves yea some of them have taken a glory and pleasure to shew incivility rudenesse contemptuousnesse in words and behaviour as well as looks more passionate malapert and imperious to their Ministers than they durst be toward a petty Constable or a Bum-baily some of them so unthankfull that for twice seven years constant pains among them they never returned any acknowledgment some have not been ashamed to use down-right railing scorn and ruffling to their faces others behind their back Some are so conceited of themselves that they have adventured to dictate and prescribe in a way even haughty and menacing what their Minister should doe and say There want not some aguish and feaverish Auditors who heare onely by fits when they list others are great criticks and severe censurers whose wanton curiosity useth Sermons as Walnuts they crack them and peel them and cast away the greatest part of them with great nicety eating little and digesting lesse of sound doctrine Some have high conceits that they can preach better than my self I or any Minister Some have begun a clownish contest with their Minister at the Font bringing their children to Baptism with such indifferency as when one was asked by his Minister if he desired to have his child baptized in the Christian Faith he answered very surlily Yes if you can doe it Another with great peremptorinesse refused to have his Child baptized unlesse the Minister would doe it himself though he pleaded with truth his great wearinesse after twice Preaching that day and desired another Minister then assistant and present might doe it as was usuall But he stiffe-girl and inexorable went with a short turn out of the Church carrying his child with him nor ever after offered it that I know to be baptized although he was intreated with great gentleness and kindness These are the religious demeanours and deeds of some people that I have known Nor am I a stranger to those garlands and flowers of rustick oratory and civil behaviour wherewith some true plebeians do crown the heads of their Ministers with as much love and respect as those did who platted a crown of thorns on Christs head I have heard and read the language of some of their tongues and pens too for they dare to scribble as well as babble nor doth their goose-quill want teeth any more than their lips do the poyson of Asps sufficient to exercise the best Antidotes of Christian patience and charity which any true Minister bears about him I have seen sometime the virulent letters of some of these Scribes and Pharisees as full of contempt insolency and menacing as their little wits and great malice could invent and this from such as have been sometime personally obliged and to whom their Minister willingly never gave the
successions of Christianity imparted to the Infants of Christian Parents who own their own Baptisme and continue in the Churches communion professing to believe that covenant of God made to them and their children as Gods people or Christs Disciples for the remission of sins original and actual through the blood of Christ Against which gracious sign of the Evangelicall covenant sealing the truth of the Gospel conferring the grace of it also distinguishing as by a visible mark of Church-fellowship the Infants of Christians or believers from those of heathens and professed unbelievers who are strangers to the flock of Christ the Anabaptists have ever since their rise in Germany which is about 130 years been not so much fair and candid disputants as bitter and reprochfull enemies for the most part not modestly doubting or civilly denying it as to their own private judgements with a latitude of charity to such in all the Christian world who from the Apostles dayes have and do retain Infant-Baptisme but as if all the Church had erred till their dayes they imperiously deny it they rudely despise it they scurrilously disdain and mock at the baptisme of Infants as wholly void and null therefore they repeat Baptisme to their Disciples whence they have their name CHAP. VII IN this one vexatious Controversie heretofore happily setled in the Church of England both by doctrine and practise conform to all Antiquity I presume as much hath been said and wrote on either side as the wit of man can well invent or the nature of the thing bear and possibly more than can well agree with Christian Charity on either side if the difference were onely as to a circumstance of time and not about the very essence or substance of our Baptisme against which the spirit and design of the Anabaptists doth so fiercely drive that by absolutely nulling all Infant-baptism in the Church of Christ they might overthrow not onely the honour fidelity and credit of this Church but of all other yea and the whole frame even to the foundation of all Christian ministrations priviledges comforts and communion both in England and all Christian Churches through the world as if all we had done said or enjoyed as Christian Ministers and people had been irregular confused inauthoritative invalid all things of Religion having been begun and continued exhibited and received by such Ministers and people as had no visible right to any Christian duties or priviledges in a Church-communion as having never been baptized after the way which Christ instituted so that their claim to be Christians or Churches is as false and insufficient as theirs is to an estate of which they have no deed seal or seisin but what are false or counterfeit By which high and bold reproch of the Anabaptists against this and all other Churches from the beginning it must follow that contrary to Christs promise the gates of Hell have so long prevailed against the Catholick Church in so great a concern as this Sacrament must needs be which being made void and null as to any initiation obsignation and confirmation of all Evangelicall gifts graces and priviledges it will follow not onely that all the Ministry and ministrations of the Church have been illegitimate invalid irregular being acted dispensed and received by such as had no right title or authority to them being persons unbaptized but also all the faith and repentance all the confessions and absolutions all the celebrations and consecrations of the Lords Supper all the perceptions of grace and spirituall comfort all sense of peace joy love of God and Christian charity all the patience and hopes of all Christians as Believers Confessors Martyrs all must be either very defective of Christs order and method or meerly fancifull and superstitious or grosly presumptuous preposterous and wholly impertinent because wanting the first root of Christian Religion the badge and band of Christs Disciples right or lawfull true and valid Baptisme So that however God guided his Church in all other things aright yet in this it seems to have erred a Catholick errour so far that in stead of one Baptisme which the Apostle urgeth as concurrent with other unities of Christian accord as one God one Faith one Body one Christ one Head c. all which the true Church retained constantly there must have been no Baptisme at all for the greatest part of 1600 years in which time as generally before so universally after the Church had peace all Christians brought their Infants to Baptisme Which abominable consequence or conclusion following the Anabaptistick opinion and practise seems to me so uncharitable so immodest so absurd so cruel so every-way unworthy of any good Christian who understands the fidelity exactnesse and constancy of primitive and persecuted Churches in following the way once delivered to them by Christ and his Apostles from which they were so far from an easie receding that they rather chose to die that this jealousie and scandall rather becomes Turks Jews Heathens Hereticks and Infidels or down-right Atheists than any good Christians so far to charge openly or but secretly indeed to suspect the fidelity honesty and integrity of the Catholick Church nor do I see how any judicious sober and humble Christian can with charity comfort and good conscience entertain and promote so horrid a jealousie and censure of all the Christian world as if having kept the two Testaments intire which I suppose the Anabaptists do not deny or doubt yet they had lost one of the two Sacraments and that which is the first foundation main hinge and centre of all the Churches polity priviledges community and unity in this world both to Christ and to each other It is not my purpose in this place or work which is rather to deplore the lapsed state of this Church than to dispute this or any other point long ago setled in this and all true Churches my aim is not to tire you my honoured Countrey-men with drawing over the rough sand of this controversie at large which hath of late by sharp reciprocations made such deep wounds or incisions on this Churches face and peace agreeable to the practise and spirit of the Anabaptists wherever they come and prevail Onely give me leave since this Anabaptistick poyson is still pregnant in this Nation in order to move your compassions to the Church of England and your love to the truth of God as it is in Jesus to shew you how unjustly She hath and still doth suffer yea and is daily more threatned by this sort of men who upon weak and shallow pretensions seek to overthrow so great so ancient so Catholick so Primitive so Apostolick so Scriptural so Christian a practise and priviledge as that is of baptizing the Infants of Christian Professors First the Anabaptists cannot with any forehead or face of reason and therefore the soberest of them do not deny but that the Infants of Christians have both in respect of sinfull
of truth and mercy which are so manifest in the Scriptures that the contrary opinion or practise however seemingly drawn from some Scripture as Tertull. Cyprian S. Austin observed in the quotations of Hereticks yet carries great incongruities and absurdities such as are inconsistent with the Evangelical dispensations many wayes in other Scriptures declared and easily to be observed by those that bring no prejudice or prepossessions with them Our blessed Saviours wisdome hath taught us thus to understand the mind of God by this collective or deductive sense of Scriptures Thus he evinceth a grand article of Christian faith the resurrection of the dead against the blind cavils of the Sadduces first by alledging such Scriptures as named not but implied the Resurrection yea rather the souls immortality then he doth by principles and consequences of right reason draw forth the force of those places shewing as the souls existence so the possibility and certainty of the Resurrection also the state of those that are once risen and in glory In like manner our Saviour by comparing Scriptures proves Gods dispensations of labour as to works of piety charity and necessity both to God to man and to beasts even on the Sabbath where the letter of the command was expresse and fully negative Thou shalt doe no manner of work c. yet doth Christ redargue those Sabbaticall rigours which were by the Pharisees both hypocritically and uncharitably urged from the letter of that command Christ tells them they erred though they insisted on the letter of the command not knowing the Scriptures in their harmonious and concurrent sense which is by sober and right reasonings to be fairly understood rather than by harsh and dissonant exactings so urged as to make one part of Scripture clash with another or one place enterfeare and jarre with the whole tenour and Analogie of Divine wisdome truth mercy and grace Which in this point of Baptisme the Anabaptists do if not to their own damnation yet very much to the subversion of the faith of many to the dividing undermining and destroying of a famous and well-setled Church which hath suffered infinitely of late by some Anabaptistick petulancy pertinacy and peevishnesse Which in this point of Baptisme is much upon the same lock as they are in the point of Ministers maintenance under the Gospel by Tithes which is clear by the Analogie equity and intent of the Scriptures comparing the old and new together in which the mind and measure of the just and gracious God is evidently as liberall to the Gospel-Ministers as to the Jewish as S. Paul urgeth Even so hath the Lord ordained c. The force of which place I have unanswerably proved in a particular discourse upon Tithes Yet what out-cries and clamours what reproches and calumnies what a Tragick and Judaick businesse hath the covetous scrupulosity and sacrilegious nicety of some men made against Tithes and Ministers now receiving them pretending Scriptures against them which are most fully for them still wresting in this as other things the Scriptures silence or letter by the bias and scrue or rack of their own prejudices or depraved lusts and passions against the equity force and reasonings of Scripture concurrent and manifest from many places CHAP. XI 12. BUt in case the Scripture-meaning and letter were lesse clear in this point of Infant-baptisme than indeed they are if severall places do seem to stand in such defiance and opposition against each other that it were necessary to have an umpire to reconcile them so as might moderate limit and qualifie the seeming literall difference of some places in order to bring them to a compliance with others which are possibly lesse explicite in the letter but more comprehensive of and conform to the generall tenour sense and meaning of them and that Analogie of Faith or Evangelicall dispensations which are the whole scope and design of the Scriptures In this case to quiet the consciences of Christians and to compose the state of the Church of Christ in a way most charitable most comfortable and no way inconform to the will of God in his Word I appeal to all sober minds whether the constant practise Catholick custome of the Church of Christ in all ages and places be not the best interpreter and reconciler of Scripture when so Universall and Primitive as this of Infant-baptism is owned by all witnesses that it must needs be derived from Apostolick men yea and Apostles themselves who best knew the mind of Christ and without doubt most exactly in this as all things conformed to it No Anabaptist ever did or can prove by any one ancient Writer that from the beginning it was not so that Christian parents either ordinarily did not or that any one Doctor of the Church held it unlawfull to baptize their infants no not Tertullian the onely ancient which the Anabaptists urge in favour of their novel fancy who yet doth acknowledge otherwhere the prerogative of Christian Infants wholly yea and the use and practise of the Church in his dayes to baptize Infants with eagerness and hast even in that place where rather with wit and fancy than with argument he speaks of the inconvenience and impertinency of committing heavenly riches to those that are not capable to manage earthly and urgeth their innocency not having any sin and so needing no remission which was true as to actuall but not to originall sin for which cause as Origen Cyprian and Saint Austin urge Baptisme is applied to Infants The same flourish might have been made against the Covenant and grace of Circumcision yea against Christs blessing the little children when brought to him yea and it may as well be urged against giving the right or investiture of any estate temporall to Infants which is usuall and good in law because they cannot use or manage them at present These are strains of wit not weight of reason or Religion in Tertullian or any man nor may they sway with any Christian in this or any case contrary to the judgement and practise of the Church even then and at all times Which S. Cyprian in his large Epistle to Fidus owns as his own and others uniform judgement without any question as to Infant-baptisme who certainly in this differed not from his beloved Master Tertullian as he called him yea he would not so fully have allowed baptisme of Infants without any limitation to the eighth day which was the question put to him if he had thought Tertullian seriously doubting in the main of their being at all to be baptized I am sure Cyprian is as valid a testimony for it as Tertullian against it who yet is not against it unlesse it may be in some cases where persecution may hinder parents care of their childrens education and so there may be danger of childrens Apostasie The judgement of Cyprian with 66. Bishops is followed and commended by S. Hier. and S.
as to question the usual and approved practise of it from all times which S. Austin so vehemently affirmes that in his Epistle to Volusia he sayes The custom of our Mother the Church in baptizing Infants as it is not to be neglected as superfluous so nor would it have been either practised or believed unlesse it had been so delivered by the Apostles as their undoubted sense and practise which Pelagius did not yea could not with any colour deny as S. Austin observes though it had much served his design about original sin if he could in that point have baffled the credit custome and authority of the Catholick Church which S. Cyprian who lived in the second Century so beyond all cavill or scruple so industriously and fully sets down that if there were no other testimonies of the Ancients that alone would satisfie any sober man being written not upon any heat of dispute but calmly and clearly as of a matter ever done and never under dispute in the Church to his dayes But I have in this part done more than I designed in order to advance not strifes and further contention but Christian peace and charity on all sides in this Church and Nation as to those religious differences which are a great occasion of our miseries CHAP. XIV FRom the Deformities Divisions and Degeneration of Religion also the Falsifications Usurpations and Devastations which of later years have been made by the violent sort of Anabaptists and other furious Sectaries against the Unity and Authority the Sanctity and Majesty of the Church of England destroying its Primitive Order and Apostolick Government its Catholick Succession its holy Ordination its happy and most successfull Ministry to the great neglect and contempt of all holy ministrations and duties of Religion I cannot but further intimate to your piety and prudence O my honoured Countrey-men that which is most notorious and no lesse dangerous both in religious and civil respects namely the great Advantages Applauses and Increases which the Roman or Papal party daily gain against the Reformed Religion as it was once wisely honourably and happily established professed and maintained here in England which is now looked upon by the more subtill superstitious and malicious sort of Papists as deformed divided dissolved desolated so conclamate for dead that they fail not with scorn to boast that in England we have now no Church no Pastors no Bishops no Presbyters no true Ministry no holy Ministrations no Order no Unity no Authority no Reverence as to things Divine or Ecclesiastick Insomuch that we must in this sad posture not onely despair of ever getting ground against the Romanists by converting any of them from the errours of their way to the true Reformed Religion but we must daily expect to lose ground to the Popish party and their Proselytes there being no banks or piles now sufficient to keep the Sea of Rome from over-flowing or undermining us in order to advance their restlesse interests which have been and still are mightily promoted not by the reverend Bishops and the other Episcopal Clergie who are men of Learning Piety Prudence and Martyr-like constancy as some men with more Heat than Wit more Spite than Truth have in their mechanick and vulgar Oratory of late miserably and falsely declaimed but by those who have most done the Popes work while they have seemed most furiously to flie in the Popes face as popularly zealous against Popery and yet at the same time by a strange giddinesse headinesse and madnesse they have risen up against that Mother-Church which bare them and those Fathers in it who heretofore mightily defended them and theirs from the talons and gripes of that Roman Eagle and this not with childish scufflings or light skirmishings to which manner of fight the illiterate weaknesse and rudenesse of our new Masters and Champions hath reduced those Controversies but with such a Panoply or compleat Armour of proof such sharp Weapons such ponderous Engines such rare dexterity of well-managed Powers raised from all Learning both Divine and Humane that the high places and defences of Rome were not able to stand before them heretofore when they were battered by our Jewels our Lakes our Davenants our Whites our Halls our Mortons our Andrews and the late invincible Usher who deserved to be Primate not onely of Ireland but of all the Protestant Forces in the world All these were Bishops Worthies of the first three seconded in their ranks by able and orderly Presbyters as Whitakers Perkins Reynolds Whites Crakanthorps Sutliffs and innumerable others while our Regiments were orderly our Marchings comely and our Forces both united and encouraged Whereas now there is no doubt but the mercilesse mowing down and scattering of the Clergie of England like Hay with the withering and decay of Government Regularity and Order in this Church these have infinitely contributed to the Papall harvest and Romish agitations the gleanings of whose Emissaries will soon amount to more than the sheaves of any the most zealous and reformed Ministers in England By the Papall interests and advantages I doe not mean the Roman Clergies preaching or propagating those Truths of Christian Doctrine Duties which for the main they profess in common with us and all Christian Churches if any of them be thus piously industrious I neither quarrell at them nor envy their successes but rather I should rejoyce in them with S. Paul because however Christ crucified is preached by some whom common people will either more reverence or sooner believe than they generally doe the decayed despised divided Ministers of Engl. who seem to have many of them so small abilities and carrying so little shew or pretence of any good authority for their work ministeriall nor can they be potent or esteemed abroad who are so impotent and disesteemed at home But I mean that Papall Monarchy or Ecclesiasticall Tyranny by which the Church or rather the Court of Rome by such sinister Arts and unjust Policies as were shamefully used and discovered in the Tridentine conventicle seeks to usurp and continue an imperiall power over all Churches and Bishops as if there had been but one Apostle or one Apostolick Church planted in the world also to corrupt abuse that ancient Purity Simplicity and Liberty of Religion which was preserved among Primitive Churches and their coordinate Bishops Further without fear of God or reverence of man opposing some Divine Truths and undoubted institutions of Christ also imposing such erroneous Doctrines and superstitious Opinions upon all Christians to be believed and accordingly practised as become not the severity and sanctity of true Religion adding to that holy foundation which was indeed first laid by the great Apostles and continued happily for many hundred years by the successive Bishops of Rome those after superstructures not of ceremonies onely which are tolerable many of them like feathers making but little weight in Religion but of corrupt Doctrines and
without which the welfare of this polity and intire Nation both in secular and religious regards could not be preserved by honest Magistrates conscientious Ministers or wise and valiant Princes Yet as our wise godly and sober Reformers first and last did worthy of the Honour and Piety of this Church and Nation vindicate the civil and religious Rights of both in all necessary points and interests of Doctrine and Government so their charity was no less cautious and commendable than their courage in this that as they did duly reforme what they thought amisse and establish what they judged in Piety and Prudence best so they did not by any heat and fury of popular transport either unnecessarily or uncharitably affect to give any offence to the Romanists by such distances as needlesse and groundlesse Innovations must needs occasion either to that or any other Christian Church in the world with all whom they ever aimed by their moderation to preserve merit a Christian communion correspondency not intending to schismatize or separate from them or their Christian Predecessors as to any Christian band and tie of Christian Verity or Charity not as to any point of Faith Morality or Sanctity not as to any right Order and Catholick succession of the Evangelicall Ministry not as to that Apostolick Government Inspection and Authority which either was of old or still is preserved in the Roman Church or any other nor last of all did they intend to vary from them in those things of honest policy and decent ceremony which were most commended by the Prudence and Piety of Antiquity onely they retained and rejected as they thought most became this Church in the use of its Liberty in matters Ceremonial wherein the Roman as all Churches have like freedome left them to be used with that Modesty Conscience and Charity which becomes all Christian Churches without giving or receiving any offence as St. Ambrose long ago expressed his sense to S. Austin But the aim of our wise Reformers who rather chose to be Martyrs Confessors for the Truth than popular Praters or Compliers with State-policies and private interests was onely this to purge away that drosse and dust which Christs floor had contracted by slovenly labourers in his husbandry They cast away the chaff but retained the wheat well winnowed they reformed those grosse Superstitions in Prayer Sacriledges in Sacraments Superfluities in Ceremonies Usurpations as to this Churches liberty and authority with all blind Innovations of later date compared to true primitive Antiquity all which were as evidently discernable by the reformed or restored light of Learning and Religion which God then brought into the Christian world to be upon the face of the then Roman Church as the leprosie of Naaman was upon Gehazi's forehead if neither they nor we may be judges but the pregnant testimonies of holy Scriptures evidently setting forth the institutions of Christ the Doctrine and Practises of the Apostles and the primitive constitutions of Churches All these further cleared to us if any thing be dark or dubious by the joynt and concurrent suffrages of the first Councils the ancient Fathers and all Ecclesiastical Historians which together ought to be valued far beyond the sense or example of the Roman or any one particular Church as the immovable bounds and unalterable measures of true Religion as to the substance and essentialls of it Nor doth any particular Church though heretofore never so justly famous as that of Rome was merit the honourable name and title of Christs Church or Catholick but rather of so far Apostatick and Antichristian when the Pastors and People of it do not by insensible degrees unawares slide into venial errours and small abuses but after so clear a light and conviction as the last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 regeneration of Learning and Religion hath afforded these parts of the world they yet wilfully and obstinately persist to corrupt no lesse than pervert the Doctrine and Institutions of Christ Jesus who is the great Pastor of his Church and chief Bishop of our Souls whose voice all parts of it ought readily to heare and humbly to obey at all times without regard to the antiquity or prevalency of any errours or abuses in former times to which no time or use can give authority or validity against the first appointments of Christ which are every way as the ancientest so the best for Truth Comfort and Safety to any Church and to every Christians Soul CHAP. XVI I Shall not need here to enumerate at large and in particular points those many and great differences in Religion which make your and your posterities return to the Roman compliance and communion impossible if you have judgements to understand or consciences to act according to their dictates out of the Word of God understood in the sense of the Catholick Doctors and Councils of the first 600 years after Christ The work is already done by so many able Writers in this Church that it is needlesse to repeat and scarce possible to adde more weight to what hath been by them alledged to justifie their protestation against and reformation of the errours abuses and corruptions of the Church of Rome He that seriously considers the Fraud Falsity and Pertinacy of the Romanists in that one grand point the Canon of the Scripture which is and must be when all is done that Policy and Art can invent the main pillar and standard of true Religion cannot but grow very jealous of their honesty in particular points of lesser concernments when he shall see beyond all reply or forehead that they have in the Council of Trent under the highest Anathema's or Curses of all that differ from them assumed into the Canon of Scriptures divinely inspired written and delivered to the Church as the Word of God those Apocryphal Books which however we with the Ancient Churches value according to their Worth Truth Credit and use yet we receive them not into the canon or rule of Faith because we find for certain that neither the Greek nor Latin Churches of old neither Jews nor Christians Councils nor Fathers for 1400 years did ever so own or receive them Which Truth after many others and beyond any other if I may say it without envy is exactly and fully cleared of late by a person whose reputation formerly clouded by some popular jealousies as to his Sincerity and Constancy in the Reformed Religion of the Church of England deserves to have its true lustre for Love and Honour with every true Protestant at home as he hath abroad for that learned Industry Courage and Honesty which he hath shewed in that particular to assert the main hinge of Religion the Canon of the Scriptures against the Papists effrontery in that particular which hath engaged them in such a Dilemma as is hard to be avoyded by the greatest sophisters of the Roman party For if the Canon of the Scriptures be such as
the liberty honour and purity of the Church of England For they well knew that the secular interests and Ecclesiastick designes of the Church and Court of Rome ever have been and still are carried on with a mighty tide and strong current not onely of Papal authority and popular credulity as of old but of Learning Eloquence Riches Honor Power Pomp Policy yea with great plausibilities of Piety Sanctity Unity and Charity of later Ages All which popular and potent biasses will easily and unavoidably over-beaer in time as to the generality of people all those feeble resistances or oppositions that can be made by such an equivocall generation and dubious succession of poor despised and dispirited Ministers whatever they are whether of Episcopall Presbyterian or Independent characters who in great part naked and unarmed unfed and unstudied reduced to a sneaking and starveling habitude both of Body and Mind of Honour and Estate will prove pitifull Champions for the true Reformed Religion when they shall neither have just Ability nor justifiable Authority to assert the true and just measures of Religion and true Reformation Who is there that in after-Ages will adventure his Soul his Religion with those men Ministers that can have neither Learning nor Livelihood capable to bear up with their spirits and parties or the Authority and Honour of their calling especially when they are to encounter with such sons of Anak such Zanzummims and Goliahs who will ever appear on the Papall side to defie all Reformation that seems to reproch their deformities Alas will not the predicant or rather mendicant Patrons of so divided Religion and deformed parts of Reformation seem in their own eyes unlesse they be strangely swelled with the puffe and breath of Popularity but as Zanies and Dwarfs as Grasse-hoppers before them with their thred-bare Coats hungry Bellies and servile Spirits How will these that never had means or leisure to advance their studies of Divinity or practise of preaching beyond a modern Synopsis and an English Concordance being raw and infants in dogmatick Truths perfect strangers to Polemick Historick and Scholastick Divinity to Councils Fathers and Languages how will they be affrighted to read or hear of the great names of Baronius Bellarmine Possevine Perron Petavius Sirmundus and many other Grandees of the Roman side great Clerks great Church-men and great Statesmen too who are able to carry with them Troops of Auxiliaries Legions of Assistants being as rich as learned very wise and weighty to use and improve all the strength and advantages they have of Estate and Honour Studies and Parts for the advance of their side in their Errours and Superstitions which of late years their followers have done with unhappy successe and great encrease of their faction against the Reformed Religion of the divided Church of England whose scattered Remains in a short time will be like a flock of silly and helpless Sheep that have neither safe folds nor any skilfull and valiant Shepherds to defend and rescue them CHAP. XXVIII NOr do these wilely Romanists exercise their malice against this Reformed Church onely with their own strength and dexterity but they have other oblique Policies and sinister Practises by which they set on work the hot heads and pragmatick hands of all other Sects who pretend the greatest Antipathies to Popery and yet most promote its interests by their Factions and fanatick Practises by their heedlesse and headlesse their boundlesse and endlesse Agitations which blast all true Reformation and bring in nothing but Division and Confusion For among these there are a sort of people who affect Supremacy in Church and State too a spirituall and temporall Dominion no less than doth the Pope of Rome there are among them many petty Popes who would fain be the great and onely Dictators of Religion whose opinionative pride and projects are as yet of a lesser volume blinder print but they every day meditate agitate new Editions of their power and larger additions to their parties and designes being as infallible in their own conceits as imperious in their spirits and as magisteriall in their censures as the proudest Popes of Rome not doubting to condemn and excommunicate any private Christians and Ministers yea whole Christian Churches yea and the best Reformed in the world such as England was if they be not just of their form and fashion or if they will not patiently submit to their multiform and deformed Reformations by which they daily wire-draw true Reformation to such a small thread that losing its strength and integrity it must needs snap in pieces and become uselesse the strange fires of blind popular preposterous and sacrilegious Zeal so overboyling true Religion and sober Reformation till they are utterly confounded and quenched with such sordid and shamefull deformities as must needs follow their Divisions Distractions and Despiciencies as to all Church-order Christian unity and Ministeriall authority Thus many heady and giddy Professors have been so eager to come out of Babylon that they are almost run out of their wits and far beyond the bounds of good consciences so jealous of Superstition that they are Panders for Confusion so scared with the name of Rome that they are afraid of all right Reason and sober Religion so fearfull of being over-righteous by following vain traditions of men that they fear not to be over-wicked by overthrowing the good foundations of Order Honour Peace and Charity which Christ and his Apostles have laid in his Church fierce enemies indeed against the Idolatry of Antichrist but fast friends to Belial and Mammon to Schisme and Sacriledge which having no fellowship with God and Christ must needs belong to the party of Antichrist which contains a circle of Errours while Christ is the centre of Truth and we know that parts diametrally opposite to each other may yet make up the same circumference and be at equal distance from the centre so may Practises and Opinions which seem most crosse against each other yet as Herod and Pilate alike conspire against Christ and true Religion like vicious extremes which are contrary to each other and yet uncorrespondent with that vertue from which they are divided They are children in understanding who do not already discern and deplore what wise and godly men have long ago foreseen and foretold that by these two Papall policy and fanatick fury the superstitions of the Romanists and the confusions of Schismaticks the happy state of the reformed Church of England was alwayes in danger to be mocked stripped wounded and crucified some men already fancy that they see it weeping and bleeding crying and dying using in its sad expirings the last words of its Saviour first to her God Why hast thou forsaken me next for her Enemies and Destroyers Father forgive them they know not what they do While the Papists on the one side rob God of his glory giving religious worship to Creatures the Sacrilegists on the other side
the new fry of any Factionists or Enthusiasts were known in the English or Christian world Then will the honor of the Reformed Religion recover take root flourish and fructifie again in England when it is by due authority and just severity cleared of all that rust and canker that mossy and barren accretion which of later yeares it hath contracted chiefly for want of those Ecclesiasticall Councils sacred Synods and Religious Conventions which being called and incouraged by civill authority will best do this great work of God and the Church freely and impartially solidly and sincerely learnedly and honestly discussing all things of difference disorder or deformity in Religion These these would by Gods blessing and your encouragement remove in a short time all that putid matter from which the scandals offences and factions do chiefly arise and by which they are nourished in the licentious hearts and lives of some men who dare do any thing that they safely may against Religion These as the ablest and meetest Judges of Religion would soon discerne between the vile and the precious and separate the wheat and the chaffe in Christs floore wisely using the flaile and fan of his word and Spirit CHAP. XV. THerefore is our Religion so miserably lapsed and decayed through the ignorance negligence and impudence of men because it hath not for these many yeares been under such hands as are most proper either for its care and preservation or its cure and recovery Courts of Princes and Councels of State the Spirit of Armies and the Genius of Parliaments are not alone apt agents or instruments for this work though they may be happy promoters and authoritative designers and contrivers of it Saint Ambrose and others of the Ancients observe that it never went well with the sound part of the Church when the disputes of Religion as between the Arrians and the Orthodox were brought into Princes Courts and determined by their Counsellors and Courtiers It was not more piety and modesty than prudence and generosity in Constantine the Great when he had conquered Licinius with other enemies and entirely obtained the Roman Empire when he had power absolute and soveraign enough to have made what Edicts he listed for Religion yet that he then called the Bishops of the Church throughout the Roman world and other venerable Teachers attending them to discusse the differences in Religion to compose the breaches to allay the jealousies to reforme the disorders to search and establish the true faith to confirme the ancient Government to adde vigor to the just Discipline of the Church and due authority to its true Pastors or Bishops All which were happily done by the wisdome piety and moderation of the famous Nicene Council in which Constantine himself was oft present as to his person and Counsell though he never voted or determined any thing of Religion among the Fathers of that glorious Assembly lest he should seem to over-balance or over-awe the truth by his authority or to eclipse the Church by the State This this was that Primitive and Catholick way of Ecclesiasticall Councills and Synods used first by the Apostles and after by all their successors the Martyrly Bishops and Pastorly Confessors of the Church which endured the fiery trialls of heathenish and hereticall persecutions who had Ecclesiasticall Councills and Synods of Church-men for their reliefe and remedy before they had the favour of Christian Princes for their refuge or defence To this proper method for Reforming of any Church and restoring Religion all Princes that were true Patrons and Protectors of the true Church have applied their powers and counsels for the repairing of decayes rectifying disorders condemning heresies vindicating fundamentall truths composing differences and restoring peace in the Church of Christ calling together such Synods and conventions of the Clergy as did beare most proportion to those inconveniences or mischiefes which they sought to remedy either in greater or lesser circuits according as the poyson and infection of Heresie or Schisme had spread it self The welfare of Religion and healing of the Church of Christ was never heretofore left to every private Christians fancy or to particular Presbyters nor yet to single Bishops to act according as their opinions passions and interests might sway them nor was it ever betrayed into the hands of onely secular men either Civill Magistrates or Gentlemen or Tradesmen who are as fit generally for Church-work as Clergy-men are to marshall Armies or to manage battels The building of Gods Tabernacle and his Temple required men of extraordinary gifts and excellent Spirits proper and proportionate to those works As the Leviticall Priests of old did judge not onely of plagues and leprosies but of all controversies about the Law and Religion to whose determination all men were to submit under paine of death And as Aaron standing between the living and the dead stopped the spreading of a plague and mortality among the people even so hath the Lord ordained the Evangelicall Ministers to be as shepherds feeders defenders and rulers in his Church also as Physitians and Fathers of the flock of God whose lips ought to preserve knowledge so as to discerne both the contagion and the cure applying as their duty is such 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sound Doctrine and Discipline as are both wholesome food and healing physick Certainly all other Lay-undertakers and tamperers with Reformation and Religion are but as Empiricks and Mountebanks having neither that ability nor that authority which is requisite in Religious undertakings But after much paines and charge they alwaies leave Reformation and Religion Church and Clergy more unsearched and unsound unbound and ulcerous than they found them God never following those with the blessing of the end who disdaine to use those orderly meanes which his holy wisdome hath directed them to who lay the Ark of God upon the cart and think to draw it by the beasts of the people when it should be orderly and solemnly born by the shoulders and hands of those that are consecrated to that holy service as the Priests of the Lord which method is not onely more for the honor and solemnity of Christian Religion than for the glory of the blessed God that his name might be sanctified even before the world in the managing of true Religion not flightly or slovenly not with unwashen hands and preposterous confusions but with that holy respect and humble reverence which is due to the Majesty of that God and Saviour whom Christians professe to worship T is ridiculous for Princes and States-men to have the best Musitians for their pleasure the most learned and experienced Physitians for their bodily health the most able and renowned Lawyers for their secular Counsels the gallantest souldiers for their military officers the best Mathematicians for their Engineers and the best Mariners for their Pilots that so these things might succeed to their worldly honor and happinesse and yet in matters of Religion
Bishop in that Precinct or Oeconomy which either the Apostles had constituted or the Church had digested it self into as it increased Contrary to which meridian patterne and most manifest exemplar of Church-Government if as learned Zanchy acknowledgeth any one instance in any age or place of any Father Councill or Historian could be found of any one Church in its grand Polity or larger Communion I confesse I should then make some scruple whether Episcopall Government however it might seem the best were the onely one to be used in all times and places whether Church-Government were not a matter of Ecclesiastick prudence rather than of Apostolick prescription or Divine appointment To which opinion St Jerom that he might qualifie and moderate the incrochings of some Bishops upon Presbyters or gratifie perhaps his own passion and discontent sometimes seems to have inclined contrary to his cooler and more constant judgement set forth at other times in many passages of his potent and vehement writings as well as in his practise Which allay as to the Divine institution and absolute necessity of Episcopall Government as established by the Apostles seemes also to have swayed with Mr. Calvin and his followers when they found themselves put upon such a necessity as they thought might justifie their altering of it for a time though not their rejecting or reprobating of it for ever which he never did however his reputation interest and engagement carried him off from the more pompous and usuall way of Episcopacy as it was abused in the Church of Rome but he well knew ever judged and confessed that Primitive Episcopacy which consists in a presidentiall eminency of power and jurisdiction in one Minister over many appears to have been laid out by the wisdome and Spirit of Christ in the Apostolicall patterne and prescription as is evident in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus not as a matter of arbitrary freedome which might be lightly changed as people or Ministers or Magistrates listed for their conveniences but as an holy method and wise proportion of Government best in it self fittest for the Churches Order Peace and Communion sacred by the Characters of Gods direction Christs designation constitution of his Church in the Apostles execution and derivation of it also in the Churches Catholick imitation upon all which grounds it hath ever been esteemed by all godly and learned Christians not onely venerable but as to the main modell and fabrick of it inviolable so that they who first factiously presumptuously and rashly change it must needs highly sin against God his Church and their own soules however others that are forced to follow such changes may be excusable The superstructures of Episcopacy as to civill Honor and Estate may indeed be variable by publick consent with times and manners of men but the foundations I believe are not to be removed which are laid upon the naturall civill and religious grounds of diversity disparity and excellency of one man above many proportionable to which Polity Order and Authority are best setled and managed and not upon the loose or slippery bottomes of parity or popularity neither of which have either those principles proportions or perfections of Government which the Spirit and wisdome of God hath laid out by the Apostles practise in Primitive Episcopacy and transmitted by a constant succession for the Churches good which cannot be preserved or advanced where there wants comely gravity due authority and a diviner beame of Majesty in Government and Governors than can be found in any way of levelling and abasing them which are the high-waies as all wise men ever observed to all faction sedition and confusion both in Churches and States of which truth no Age hath seen and suffered greater or sadder experiments than ours since some pragmatick or ambitious Spirits have made miserable essayes to alter and abolish the ancient authority and order of Episcopacy onely to bring in their various novelties which are so far from the true Grandeur and solid Majesty of Government that they are already found to be pittifull and petty projects rather than pious or profound inventions confuting themselves as much as confounding others Could we then on all sides in England be so ingenuous and candid as to lay aside all moderne designes disputes and differences which have made mens eyes so squinted bleared or blood-shotten in the point of Church-Government could we remove the fancy of secular pride pomp and ambition in one sort of Ministers the vulgar passions prejudices and envies of a second sort also the pragmatick and plebeian humors of a third sort with the private designes and worldly interests of all cleare all our hearts of these prepossessions and distempers no doubt the face of holy order and wise Government in the Church will easily appeare to the satisfaction of all wise and good men who are either worthy to govern or willing to be governed in a true Christian and charitable way For certainly Church-Government or Ecclesiasticall Polity about which we have had of late in England so great contests even to much bitternesse and blood is no Scholasticall subtilty no intricate nicety no speculative sublimity no metaphysicall profundity which require either accurate Criticks or long-winded Divers or Logicall Disputers or Scepticall Sophisters to find out the Primitive form the true proportions or ancient patterne of it It is plaine as Beza and Bucer observe in right Reason pregnant in the proportions of all order naturall civill military religious It is palpable in Scripture-patternes as Mr. Calvin confesseth it is most apparent in the practise of all Churches It must be weaknesse or wilfullnesse passion or peevishnesse that hinders any man from seeing the true Idea of it It is made up of wisdome and power not onely humane but divine of due authority cemented with true charity a modest and moderate superiority with meek subordination faithfull counsell with equanimous commands meeting together these make up the holy Oeconomy or Polity of Church-Government In which first many humble Christians of one congregation do submit to one duly ordained Minister as set over them in the Lord so far as concernes their private duties and relations secondly many grave and discreet Presbyters with their people submit to one venerable Bishop as a Father or chief Pastor chosen to be over them in things that concerne more publick relations and common duties in which their joynt counsell assistance or obedience is required The Bishops office and work is not only Ministeriall in common with their brethren the other Ministers but Juridicall or Judiciall declaring and exercising the necessary power and eminent acts of Ecclestasticall Discipline and authority with them among them and over them not in the way of secular dominion gotten and kept by civill force or factious ambition which our blessed Lord forbids to those that are chiefest or greatest of his Disciples and flock but in a way of paternall authority which chides with love chastens with
credit of the Church Catholick the comfort and authority of all true Ministers the surest test and Character of due Ordination the peace and unity of all good Christians are bound up and mainly concerned 3. What if these new masters these sharp censors and imperious dictators whom perhaps not Piety so much as Policy not Religion but Reason of State not reforming severities but needlesse jealousies and imaginary necessities have put upon such violent sticklings against Episcopacy and reprobating all worthy Bishops what if they have been deceived themselves and deceivers of others in that point which is much more veniall to think and say of the very best of them than to passe any such censure or suspicion of error or ignorance upon all Churches even in their purest and Primitive Antiquity when one spark of Martyrly zeal which was as holy fire from Gods Altar had more divine light and heat in it than all the blazes and flashes of Moderne Zelotry 4. I do in all Christian candor demand of the severest Presbyterian and sharpest Independent whether when they ask of the generations of old and enquire of all Ages from the beginning of Christian Churches whether ever they find any Christians or congregations at any time either Christening or Churching themselves either by their own vote choise and authority or by separating from their ordained Presbyters and Bishops which were sound in the faith and regular in their administrations who had duly taught baptized confirmed and ruled them in the Lord. When did any Presbyters or Ministers ever pretend to ordaine themselves or one another without some Apostle or Bishop When where and by whom was the first Schisme Rupture or Chasme of Ecclesiasticall parity as to Mission and Commission begun When and where was the first intrusion or encroachment upon the pretended authority of Presbytery made by Episcopacy Did not all Presbyters owe ever own their legitimate birth breeding to their respective Bishops whose Authority was ever as much above meer Presbyters in degree and office as it was before them in the order of nature and causality no lesse than in time and antiquity 5. If then all the novel presumptions pretentions and objections of either Presbytery or Independency against Primitive Catholick and Apostolick Episcopacy should in earnest be nothing but passionate false and frivolous mistakes arising from ignorance and error carried on by envy and arrogancy in many men O what needlesse troubles what heedlesse angers what inordinate furies what dreadfull disorders must they all this while have been guilty of what causelesse contentions innovations confusions vastations have they brought into the Churches of Christ what cruell and uncharitable contentions have they raised as elsewhere so in this famous and flourishing Church of England without any just cause God knowes and beyond the merits of Episcopacy even in its greatest defects declinations and deformities to which as all holy Institutions may in time be subject so they ought to be humbly wisely and moderately reformed by the prayers teares counsels honest and orderly endeavours of all sober Christians of all sorts and sizes in their places and stations with due regard to the first pattern and originall But certainly as the whole order and office of Presbytery which may have had its personall depravations also so the ancient and venerable Authority of Episcopacy as to its Primitive Institution and Catholick succession ought not on any hand to be utterly ruined rased and extirpated root and branch by any tumultuary rashnesse or popular precipitancy which can never become any Church of Christ or any wise and godly Christians nor can such methods of sharp and soure Reformations ever end in the peace or comfort of good men who if they find themselves guilty of excesses so dangerous and destructive to the true Church true Religion and true Reformation have nothing lesse to do than to persevere in their extravagancies or pertinaciously to assert their former transports yea they have nothing more to do speedily and conscienciously than humbly to recant seriously to repent and effectually to amend as much as lies in their power the affronts and assaults the breaches and wasts they have made of the Churches Peace and Unity Power and Authority by returning to that duty which they owe to God and that obedience they owe to their spirituall Governours and that reverence which they owe to uniform antiquity which so fully commends the presidentiall authority of Apostolicall and Primitive Episcopacy Their first errors may be weaknesse but their obstinacy must needs be wickednesse who still sin when they are convinced silenced and afflicted 6. What if after all this dust and noyse which hath so blinded and deafned the eyes and eares of many Presbyters and people that they cannot and will not see the Truth and Testimony of Antiquity which is no lesse cleare for the presidentiall authority and eminency of Episcopacy than for the subordination counsel and assistance of Presbytery what if it should be the mind of God the order and Institution of Jesus Christ the designation and direction of his blessed Spirit evidently signified and setled in and by the blessed Apostles in all Primitive Churches and so continued to this day according to the measures of Divine Wisdome and Order though not without mixtures of humane infirmities and disorders incident to all holy Institutions 7. What if after all these seditious and schismaticall distempers in Ministers and people the Lord should say to these refractory and irreconcilable spirits against Episcopacy as he did to the Jewes when they revolted from Samuels Government They have not rejected you O my faithfull servants the Bishops whom I have constituted and used in all ages as vigilant Over-seers and wise Rulers of my flock but they have rejected me who in this point of Episcopacy have so sufficiently declared my will and pleasure to all the world that no Church was ever ignorant of it or varied from it being manifested from heaven First in the evident instances of divine wisdome among the Jewish Church and Priests yea as it is an orderly and gubernative method in all societies where right reason and so true Religion necessarily command and commend superiority and subjection Secondly in the paterne and Rules of Ecclesiasticall Polity set down by my Son Jesus Christ and followed by his Apostles who setled all Churches in such an orderly subordination Thirdly in the constant custome and Catholick testimony of all succeeding Churches whose joynt suffrages and uniform practises in cases of any darkness dispute or difficulty where Scripture-precepts may seem lesse clear and explicite ought by all sober Christians to be esteemed as the safest measures of conscience and surest rule of religious observance especially as to things of outward Polity Order and Government nor may any novel inventions or pretentions never so specious be put into the balance against the Authority of the Catholick Church which is the pillar and ground of Truth the great
for their Gods any Calf or Idol which their Superiours please to set up in the Church to serve or secure the civil Interests But in England where people have much light and dare to use it such policies and projects would now be not onely preposterous but vaine and ridiculous There is no putting among us Eagles wings or Feathers upon the bodies of Jack-dawes Rookes or Crowes which rather incumber them than inable them for any orderly motion much lesse do they make them Imperiall birds fit to rule or over-aw the other winged inhabitants of the world which will be ready to scorne and despise them And what indeed for instance hath more abased the condition and abated the common honor of Ministers in England of later yeares than some of their unseasonable and unreasonable affectations to govern in common as beyond their due proportion for Age Gifts Parts Ornaments so before they had complete Commission to empower them either from God or any man in Soveraign power Even such Presbyters as most affected like Icarus to fly above their Fathers my self and the English world have seen to have so melted their own artificiall wings that they have miserably faln into a Sea a black and a red Sea of confusion contempt and contention both among their own people and all the Nation Out of which Abysse they will never be able to wade or swim in my judgement unlesse they can with such Unity Humility and Charity as St. Austin adviseth some Donatists revoke their exotick errors retract their Schismes and transports returning from their pertinacious novelties to the true proportions of Ancient Church-Government which I think are in no degree to be found either in Presbytery Independency or any way apart from Episcopacy both which new waies have so grievously blasted and singed themselves by the exorbitancy of those terrible flames which they kindled utterly to consume Episcopacy that there is little likelihood either of these novelties should ever appeare to be entertained with any publick beauty honor esteem or approbation in England where nothing is lesse tolerable than Governours that are contemptible for want of Ability Authority and Dignity as to Estate and Honor. Amidst all which immoderate and mercilesse fires destinated to consume all the pristine beauty and honor of Catholick Episcopacy both root and branch in one day yet to shew not more the wonder of Gods mercy than the true temper of the English people behold not onely Primitive Episcopacy but Primitive Bishops that is persons of Learning Piety and Vertue becoming that sacred Office Dignity have retained all this while and will do while they live yea and when they are dead so much of reall honor and true respect due to their worth that no Assemblies no Armies no Votes no Ordinances no Terrors no Calumnies of inordinate Presbyters no insolencies of licentious people nothing can ever deprive them of or degrade them from an high respect and esteem in the hearts and desires in the loves and compassions of all unbiassed learned sober and wise men throughout the Nation Who are not yet grown so dull and degenerous as not to preferre the Primitive Catholick and Venerable Authority of Episcopacy as to order and Ordination so to Government and jurisdiction as much before the novel inventions and ostentations of any Presbyterian and Independent models as one would value the English Roses before the Scotch Thistles freely to handle or feed upon which is no such precious Christian Liberty as any wise men Ministers or others have either cause to envy in others or to congratulate in themselves since their former subjection to Episcopacy was far more to their Safety Order Plenty and Honor than what they now enjoy in their petty Signiories The lowest parts of that Mountaine of God Episcopacy on which the Church of Christ for many Ages stood and flourished were higher than the top of these new mole-hils the skirts of Bishops clothing were more venerable than the very Crownes of these Ministers heads the unanointed corners of whose haire and beards are now so deformedly shorne or shaven by a sharp and popular rasor The renowne and value of Episcopacy is much risen since English-men have seen added to the other excellencies of our English Bishops the miracle and magnanimity of their Christian patience who after their hard and long studies attended with many meritorious and usefull vertues after they had lawfully obtained and many yeares peaceably enjoyed such Honors and Estates as adorned Episcopacy in England after they had no way and by no law forfeited these or misused them yet in the decline of their lifes in the colder and darker winter of their Age these grave and gallant men can beare with Christian patience and heroick composednesse of mind the losse of all and that from their own Country-men Professors of the same Christian yea and Reformed Religion and this without any respect had either to their present and future support or their pristine dignity A fate so sad and Tragicall as is scarce to be parallell'd in any Age or History yet have none of them been heard to charge God foolishly They say and write either nothing or onely the words of Sobernesse Truth and Charity they still possesse their soules in silence and patience when dispossessed of all things whereever they live their lustre shines through their greatest obscurity and tenuity as the bright Sun through small crevises far beyond the most sparkling Presbyters or glittering Independents whose new popular projects for Church-Government compared to Primitive and old Episcopacy are like Comets or blazing Starres compared to the Sun and Moon The Gravity the Constancy the Contentednesse the Meekness the Humility of these Venerable yet afflicted Bishops now reduced God knowes to a great paucity as well as tenuity yet still keeps up their price and commands from all wise and worthy men a veneration both of their persons and of that comely Authority which they heretofore enjoyed and worthily exercised in this Church Who almost of any considerable people in England that are not either ignorant fanatick or sacrilegious but either openly or secretly wish the happy restauration of Venerable Episcopacy to this Church and Nation who that hath sense of honor justice or ingenuity doth not deplore and is not discountenanced to consider the Crowds and Loades of indignities cast upon such excellent persons as for the most part the Bishops of England were even then when they were to be sacrificed by I know not what strange fire as a peace-offering to the discontented Presbyters of Scotland and their ambitious Symbolizers in England I know some of those Lords and Commons who in the huddle helped to destroy Bishops and their Order now not onely pitty the undeserved sufferings of such brave men but repent of their own compliance and so do many Ministers The usefulness worth and necessity of excellent Bishops and of true Episcopacy were never so well understood in England as since the
or a vindication from any such aspersion of being either a practical or dogmatical Papist wherewith many have more pleased themselves than proved it against that Bishop But no Net playes with wider wings or larger bosom than that popular Drag which sweeps as it listeth into its bosom all men for Papists Pelagians or Arminians who are not just of some mens private opinions in all things taking what freedomes and latitudes they please themselves in their opinions and actions but allowing none to other men no not in points that admit of dispute without scratching the Conscience violating the true Faith or breaking Christian Charity It is a wonder of wise and just men how this Bishop if he were so evil a doer as was voiced hath not been long agoe publickly heard and sentenced according to his deeds but is punished beforehand by a long imprisonment when as he was committed to prison not as his sentence I think but as his security to be forth-coming at his lawful tryal to which in eighteen years he hath not been brought If then neither of these two Prelates whose eminency and activity drew so many eyes of envy upon them were really popish which was not very probable when they knew the Prince whose favour they injoyed to be so stedfast and able in his judgement against Popery as I have oft heard the Earl of Holland and others affirm I presume the other late Bishops of Engl. upon whom the Tower of Siloam fell may find so much justice and charity as to be freed from that suspicion and not to be thought greater sinners as to that particular than many Presbyterians who joyed most in their destruction Never any of them that ever I heard gave any occasion to be thought a Papist except onely the last Bishop of Glocester Dr. Goodman Vir sui nominis as some report a man of good learning and good life who having suffered in his old age almost to a distraction by the storme and distresses of times which wet many other men to the skin but it stripped off the clothes flayed off the very skins of many Clergymen and all Bishops especially was driven it seems beyond his pace something beyond his patience for thus provoked beyond all measure and merit as he thought by those who much professed Reformation and yet so much in his sense and experience did deform and destroy the Church of England it is no wonder if dying and dejected he chose rather to depart in communion with the Church of Rome than to adhere to the Church of England which as Eliah he thought now decayed and dissolved at least as to its visible Order and Polity if not quite destroyed Not that he owned I hope a communion or Conciliation with the Romane Church as Popish but as far as it was Christian not as erroneous in some things but as Orthodox in many others from which as Bishop Bedel saith no good Christian doth or ought to separate And since we hold Baptism among the Papists to be valid which is the sign of a Christians new birth and first admittance to the Churches Catholick Communion he might hope that dying in that Communion so far as it was Catholick would be no hindrance to his admission to the Church in Heaven At worst it seems his discontent and despair drove him rather to think of returning to the Confines of Egypt where he believed there might be found some Bread of life in an orderly way of House-keeping than to dye in the Wildernesse of a Church which was now howling and starving and self-desolating in his apprehension that as Lots Daughters were so far excusable for their incests with their Father as they believed all men were destroyed besides so may this poor Bishop now made poor when he had been very rich have this to plead for his resting at last in the bosom of the Church of Rome that he knew not any other so visible and conspicuous a Church either fit or worthy or willing to receive one that had so long lived a Protestant and a Bishop in the Church of Engl. and was now no longer permitted either to live or dye either a Protestant or a Bishop according to the constitution of the Church of England from which at its best many of those have more separated themselves living and dying who are the sharpest Censurers of this Bishop for dying a Papist which is but a greater kind of Separatist from the Church of England and the Church Catholick in some Opinions and Practises But I have done with this Bishop who was dying most declared and with the other two who living were most dubious and ambiguous in the censures of the world as to their Religion What their Morals Prudentials or Devotionals were who had so long and so great an influence of power and favour I must leave to the Supreme Judicature of God above them and that subordinate or lower Bench of their Consciences within them If we should take their dimensions by the successes and events truly they have been very unhappy after-Counsels are prone to think it had been easie to have prevented such calamities but the race is not to the swift nor the battail to the strong Though true Piety is alwayes the best Policy yet it is not alwayes attended with Prosperity No doubt the sins of all sorts were ripe for wrath and in common calamities the best may suffer as well as the worst the afflictions of the first being their tryals of the second their punishment My concern is onely to examine the ground of that Charge cast upon them and for their sakes upon all our Reformed Bishops as if ranckly popish as if Prelacy and Popery were no more separable then Gehezies Bribery and his Leprosie which I justifie to be as false a calumny as it is foul and no way becoming the mouths or thoughts of those who aim to judge righteous judgement or consider the account they must give to God of what they say and do in truth or falsity in justice or iniquity This I am sure if our Bishops and many other grave Divines had no inclination to Popery in their Prosperity their Adversity might have been a great temptation to them less to approve that Reformed Religion not for which but from which they have suffered so hard measure as untried and unconvicted to be condemned punished destroyed beyond any men that lived orderly and peaceably CHAP. XXIV THat I may for ever silence the harsh braying and tedious barkings of all Antiepiscopal Pens and Tongues against our Godly Bishops and Venerable Episcopacy which is as much or more an enemie to Popery than either Presbytery or Independency I crave leave to insist a little more largely upon the name worth and memory of one of our Bishops very well known not onely to the British Churches but to all the Christian world that hath any correspondency or commerce with Learned men It is Dr. James Usher
late Archbishop of Armagh and Lord Primate of Ireland whom I reckon as ours because not onely his ashes and mortal remaines are deposited with us but he lived his last yeares of exile and ended his mortality amongst us in Engl. where besides his constant paines in Preaching even to his last he hath left us many of his Learned works which are enjoyed by and highly esteemed of all worthy men who were blest with the example of his great and unspotted worth which no envy no malice can I think be so impudent as to blemish With this rare and Reverend Prelate this great and gracious Bishop I was rather happy than worthy to be acquainted many yeares so far as to be able more neerly to discover his genius and temper both before and after the storme of blood and Massacre in Ireland had driven this holy man to fly from that Terra irae Dei land of Gods wrath and to take such Sanctuary or shelter as then he hoped might be had in England for Protestant Bishops where he little thought good man he should have found some Protestants in England as fierce to undoe and destroy their Bishops though of the same Reformed Faith and of unblameable Profession as the most Jesuited Papists were in Ireland who were and are sworne enemies against them not as Christian Bishops but as of the Reformed Religion which had nothing in it more Primitive Illustrious and Honorable than this that in England it shined with the glory of those Apostolick Stars Godly and Venerable Bishops which did not depend on the Pope of Rome The reall excellencies of this Bishop every way were such that they exceeded all ordinary measures of humane commendation and capacity extending to something of admiration or ecstasie None but those whose minds are enlarged to some proportions of his accomplishments can be able to comprehend his worth and amplitude so vast so transcendent so astonishing was his Learning and Understanding in all kinds of knowledge Divine and Humane that he was as the Cynosure by which all great Divines steered and as the Sun-Diall by which all great Scholars set their watches Much of this Treasure was discovered in his writings printed and not yet printed of all sorts both of greener and riper studies in all which he was exact and complete He wrote as he studied not in the beaten paths of Plagiary Compilators or Systematicall Collectors as Scriba doctus ad regnum Caelorum but he brought forth out of his large heart and vast reading new as well as old things of rare hidden and untroden observation even out of Manuscripts which scarce any but his Eagle-eye had seen and but few could read All which he judiciously collected methodically disposed clearly explained and aptly applyed yet it was with him as with copious and living springs the least part of his innate acquired and unexhausted fulnesse was to be discerned by any of his outward emanations So accurate was he in all usefull and Learned Languages Occidentall and Orientall so cleare a prospect he had of all History and Chronology of all Controversies ancient and modern that nothing escaped him nor was he onely as a Reader and Spectator but as a Judge and Censor as an Arbitrator and Dictator in Disputes as one that sate in a Tribunall of Soveraigne Learning above all Nothing was new or hidden to him in Philology Philosophy Geography Astronomy Mathematicks and least of all in Theology or Divinity he had conquered all others but in this he Triumphed which was the Trophee Crown and Center of all his other studies There was scarce any Book printed or Manuscript worth reading in private or publick Libraries throughout all Christendome which he had not read either in the Copy or Originall and digested into the method or designe of his studies yea and to a miracle remembred as to the maine contents of it To the Immensity of his Learning there was added excellent principles of Politick prudence as a Governour of the Church and as a Counsellour of State wherein he was conspicuous not for the crafty projects and practises of policy or for those sinister waies of Artifice and Subtilty which are the usuall unreasonable Reasons of State the so admired depths of devillish Hypocrisie but indeed the flats and shallowes of all Truth and Honesty no the Measures and Rules of his Politicks and Prudentialls were taken from that great experience he had gotten and many excellent observations he had made out of all Histories as well Humane as Divine though he alwaies laid the greatest weight upon the grounds and instances of holy Scripture which gives the truest judgement of wisdom or folly These great abilities managed with so much Piety Prudence and Integrity could not but make this Bishop as fit to be a Counsellor of State for so he was in Ireland or a Privy Counsellor to his Prince which other Bishops were who lived in England as any of those Misepiscopists were who most envied and denyed that honour to this or any other Bishops with whose sufficiencies few of their enemies the chiefest of whom I well knew were to be compared either for Wisdom Gravity Goodnesse Learning Experience and Eloquence or for that Sanctity Severity and Integrity which make a complete Counsellour All which are hardly learned by the juvenile Gallantry of a little travelling or by seeing many Men or by courting many Mistresses or by passing through many Cities and Countries in a negligent way or by wearing ample plumes on mens heads or by shewing fair clothes on their backs or by fanciful and affected conformities to all the modes and fashions which may be observable in forreign places all which Leven do usually so puff up many young Gallants who glory most in their Nobility and Gentry with Amorousnesse Futility Vapouring Vanity and Folly that it is a long time before they can throughly decoct them or settle themselves to that clear and serious study of Piety and Policy of Wisdom Divine and Humane which onely can furnish out fit and able Counsellours of State who are to be not onely as the Eyes Guides and overseers of the Publick but even of the Prince whose hand of power if he be wise will steer according to the Card and Compass set before him by his Council which cannot be good if it be not godly nor prudent if it be not pious So that it is not onely my wonder but it will be so to all Posterity what should move any sober and religious wise men to exclude all Bishops and Clergymen from all capacity of being either Members of the great and Parlamentary Council or of the Privy Council of any Prince or State When 1. Religion ought alwayes to be as much under the care counsel and inspection of Christian Princes Parlaments and Councils of State as any secular or civil affairs which never prosper where Religion is put in the rear and Crupper of business or where the Clergy beyond all men must be
and Reformed hath suffered very much in England when it was best setled we have upon us the wounds both of peace and war As our former long peace and undeserved prosperity treasured up much morbifick matter so the civil war by mutual chafings and exasperatings did breed higher inflammations and festrings yea and our late truce rather than tranquillity hath been so far from a serious consideration and well-advised setling of our distractions in Religion that many men have had but more leisure and liberty to scratch their own and other mens scabious itchings and to make wider the gaping corifices of our religious Ulcers Indeed private hands can do no other who besides their petulant passions being under no publick restraint and modesty have infinite partialities both as to self-flatteries and designs It must be the Gravity and Majesty the Nobleness and Ampleness of publick Wisdom and Authority which must by prudence and impartiality both in counsels and actions reach the depth and equal the proportions either of our maladies or our remedies to which if wise and worthy men do not in time contribute their counsels prayers and endeavours for the help and healing of our Religious Affairs doubtless the disorders and sinister policies of either weak or wicked men will utterly ruine the very remains and ruines of this Church Nor can the Civil State be ever steddy or permanent where Prince and Subjects Preachers and People are so divided in their principles and practises of Religion both as to their Ministry and Ministration as to the original and exercise of all Ecclesiastical Authority and Communion that they still think it a great part of their Religion either to reform or ruine each other It is observed to be one main pillar of the Turkish Polity Peace and Empire which is so vast and diffused yet generally so peaceable and unanimous that their Religion or Holy Law as they call it being once setled is never permitted by any man to be shaken or disputed much less altered or innovated in the least kind I know it is not fit for Christians to follow all Mahometan rigors and severities no more than their follies and simplicities yet if the setledness of so wild a Rhapsody of Religion as the Alcoran contains which is made up of Truth and Falshood of Fables and Fancies of Dreams and Dotages be of so great moment to preserve their civil peace where no wise man can be much concerned what is believed or disbelieved by him or any man in such a meer Romance of Religion of how much more consequence and conscience would it be to all Christians in any Polity or Nation to have their Religion well fixed and setled which is so Ancient so Holy so True so Venerable so Divine so in its Nature Centre and Circumference but one so deserving to be most United and Uniform both as to its Doctrine and Profession It is a shame to see Mahometans wiser in their generation than Christians who are or ought to be the children of that Wisdom and that Light which shines upon them all by the Scriptures as the Beams of the Sun of Righteousness It is childish for us who are cunning careful enough to preserve civil peace to be so careless of religious Unity and Harmony as to be tossed to and fro with every wind of Doctrine according to the sleight of men who lye in wait to deceive the hearts of the simple serving not the Lord but their own bellies We should rather study to be rooted and grounded in the Catholick Truth which is according to Holiness Justice Order and Charity after the primitive pattern and constant practise of all true Churches Preachers and Professors whose Authority and Reverence ought to sway more with us than any new and private mens Inventions which no man will admire that well understands the old which were so founded upon Verity so fortified by Charity so edified in Unity so reverend for Antiquity so permanent in their Constancy according to the particular constitutions of every Church which still kept the great and Catholick Communion as to the main amidst some little varieties of outward profession not as to substance but onely in Circumstances or Ceremony For as to the main every Christian Layical or Clerical Catechumens Penitents and Communicants Deacons and Presbyters kept the stations in which God and the Church had set them Every member kept to its Congregation every Congregation to its ordained Presbyter or lawfull Minister every Presbyter to his own Bishop every Bishop to his Metropolitane every Metropolitane to his Patriarch every Patriarch not to the Pope but to the Generall Councills and every Generall Councill to the Scriptures and those Apostolick Traditions which were Catholick and so agreeable to them All which orderly gradations were certainly in the Catholick Church as lawfull as those which the policy of Presbytery hath invented for Congregationall Classicall Provinciall and Nationall Consistories I am sure they were much more usefull For those of old preserved every private Christian every Family every City every Country every Province every Nation that was Christian not onely in a Church-way or Ecclesiasticall Communion and Correspondency as to their particular bounds and neerer relations in every Parish or Congregation or City or Country but as to that Catholick bond of Charity which binds up all Christians in all the world in one fellowship of one body and one Church whose head is Christ to whom every true believer and visible Professor in the whole latitude of the Church being by the Word and Spirit of Christ fitly joyned together and compacted by that which every joynt supplyeth according to the effectuall working in the measure of every part doth both edifie and increase it self and others in Truth and Love without which all Churches all Religion and all Reformation are but like parts or members separate from their body not without flesh sinewes substance or bones but yet without blood and Spirits Life and Soul For as the particular parts and members of the naturall body do not live thrive and move onely by that particular substance spirit life and aptitude which is apart in them but by a concurrence with an influence from and a participation of that common Spirit Life Virtue which they have from the whole while they are in Communion with it so is it with Christians singly and severally considered their virtue is small and separated none at all because they want so much of Authority and Validity as they want of Catholick Unity and Ecclesiasticall harmony which keep Christians and Churches intire to Christ and to each other by that one and common spirit which runs through all true Christians by virtue of which and not of any private spirit all publick transactions which concern any nobler part or portion of Christs Church are to be carried on and anciently were in all orderly Churches as branches of the Catholick This this great and publick Communion in the
Religion For I have found by experience that no men have proved move factious affected and fanatick than those men and women who have been most conscious to their youthful Enormities They presently apply to the gentlest Confessors and easiest Repentance which is rather to quarrel with and forsake the Religion they have most violated than seriously to repent and amend without which severities Papists and Separatists think their Converts sufficient if they do but turn to their side and party The second Novellers will be content with any meer fancies or factions in Religion The third the Jesuited Papists with no pure united and well-reformed Religion among us And the fourth the Devil will be content with any Religion that is called Catholick Reformed and Christian so it be not true or not pure or not well-reformed or not orderly setled and uniform or not charitably united or not authoritatively managed and governed Any of which will in time very much unchristen any Christians and unchurch any Church by deforming and dividing them from the Beauty and Communion of the Church Catholick Take heed of betraying your selves and your posterity to Atheisticall licentious immorall and irreligious courses by your Apostasies from and despiciencies of the Learning and Piety Gifts and Graces Ministry and Ministrations Order and Government which were happily setled in the Church of England Go over all the world search all successions of the Church from the Apostles to our daies you shall not find any thing more worthy your Love and Esteem your Veneration and addiction Have you found any thing comparable to it in all the new vapours and florishes of Reformations in any new Inventions Conventions Associations Separations Distractions Distortions Confusions Which may make you giddy by turning you round but they will never make you any progresse in Wisdome or Piety or Charity The Church of England was a most rare and Paragon Jewel shining with admirable lustre on all sides First in its Doctrine or Articles of Religion which were few cleare and sound Secondly in its Sermons or Homilies which were learnedly plain pious and practicall Thirdly in its Liturgy or Devotions which were easie to be understood very apt pathetick and complete Fourthly in its paucity and decency of ceremonies which adorned not incumbred Religion or over-laid the Modesty and Majesty of a comely Reformation Fifthly in the Sanctity and Solemnity of its publick duties which were neither excessive nor defective Sixthly in its Ministry which had good Abilities due Ordination and divine Authority Seventhly it its good Government and Ecclesiasticall Discipline where good Presbyters and good Bishops had leave and courage to do their duties and discharge their consciences whose Fatherly Inspection Catholick Ordination and Ecclesiastick Jurisdiction being wisely managed by worthy men in their severall stations did justly deserve the name of an Hierarchy an holy Regiment or happy Government when it was exercised with that Authority yet Charity and discretion which were ever intended by the Church for the common good of all those Christians that were within her bosome and kept her Communion If others do forget her through fatuity or faction covetousnesse or ambition pride or petulancy as undutifull and ungratefull children yet you may not you will not you cannot so far neglect your own and your posterities happinesse or forfeit your own honor or violate your consciences as to neglect the relief and recovery of your Spirituall Mother But if you of the better sort of men and Christians from whom all good men expect all good things should slight and neglect Her after the vulgar rate which God forbid yet must I never so far comply with you or all the world as to call her former light darknesse or her present darknesse light Pretious with me must the name of the Church of England ever be whose record is in Heaven and in all gracious hearts who were Born and Baptized Instructed Sanctified and Saved in her To this Church of England as I owe with many thousands so I returne with some few the Charity of a Christian as to all Christian Churches the duty of a Son as to a deserving parent the order of a part or member as united and devoted to the whole the obedience of an Inferiour as to a Superiour the gratitude of acknowledging Her Worth and Merit the love of adhering to her unity the candor of approving and conforming to her decent ceremonies the modesty of preferring her Wisdome before my own or any other mens understanding the Humility of submitting to her Spirituall Authority and Governours the Piety and Prudence of relieving and restoring as much as lies in me Her Catholick Order Polity Peace and Government all which I believe were allowed of God and I am sure have been approved by as Learned Wise and Holy men as the world affords I am deeply sensible of the many and great obligations which I have to this Nationall Church and to its Ministers and Bishops for my Baptisme Instruction Confirmation Communion and Ordination not onely as a Member but as a Minister which I account my greatest Honour notwithstanding the great depression of the times in which I have late ward lived I am ambitious to do not onely what becomes my private station but to preserve and expresse the publick respects which are due to this Church whose Despisers and Destroyers have never appeared to me with any Remarques of Beauty or Honour for Learning or Grace for Modesty or Charity for Prudence or Policy comparable to those that were the first Founders Reformers Defenders and Preservers of this Church I must ever professe that I find nothing like her Adversaries nor any thing exceeding her friends in all that was commendable in Catholick and true Antiquity In behalf of this Church having offered many things to the consideration of all good Christians which are my worthy Countrymen I hope as my infirmities may exercise their Charity so my integrity may expiate my infirmities if I have in any thing expressed my self lesse becoming the honest and holy designe which I undertook and have now by Gods help finished which was to set forth First the Teares and Sighâ— of the Church of England Secondly the originall of her Disorders and Distractions Thirdly the dangers and distresses if not remedied Fourthly the probable waies of cure and recovery by Gods blessing to such Order Honour Unity Purity and Peace as becomes so famous a Church and so renowned a Nation whose greatest Crown was Christianity I know there will be many who cannot well beare that freedom of sobernesse and Truth which either my self or others may use in speaking or writing for the Church of England and its pristine Honour Order and Government although themselves use never so great Liberties Reproches and Injuries in Speaking Writing and Acting against them For my part I appeare in this onely as wrapt my self in my Scholastick and Ecclesiastick Gown I meddle not with any civil affaires or Military transactions properly
Nation to the flourishing of the Christian and Reformed Religion when men knew what it was to have and to honour Gods Ministers and to be good Christians that is judicious humble honest charitable orderly and constant in the true Religion CHAP. XIV BUt suppose in very deed it were true that you the Nobility Gentry and Commons of England did find an irreparable decay and dotage now grown upon the ancient Clergie and that you might now be cheaper and better served by these new-sprung Gourds which are but of yesterday like Mushromes the sons of a night yet since the ancient race and stock of Apostolick Bishops and Presbyters is not onely of so venerable an age as 1600 years in the Catholick and this Church of Christ which is a great plea of priority honour and prepossession against any novell intruders and pretenders since they and their predecessors both before and since the Reformation even from the first plantation of Christianity in this Island have done their best to deserve well of you and your fore-fathers who this last century especially in your own memory greatly rejoyced in the lustre of these burning and shining lights justly and gratefully esteeming the learned ability industry and piety of the English Clergie a great crown honour and rejoycing to this Nation since they have thus far premerited of you in their former age strength and vigour truly it must needs be not more their grief and misery than your shame and eternall dishonour if you should use your ancient Clergie and Ministers as you would your old dogs and harrased horses casting them off to seek new masters or turning them into the high wayes to graze upon what alms they can pick up among their timorous and ungratefull friends or their supercilious and disdainfull enemies Surely it were but charity and humanity in you to provide rather some Almes-houses and Hospitalls for your cast and decayed Ministers as well as you do for your veterane and unserviceable Souldiers who have in their time and station been valiant faithfull and orderly that at least the prouder Jesuits and the less charitable Papists besides other pestilent enemies of the peace and piety of England may not too much triumph to see so many so venerable Bishops and other worthy Ministers of this Reformed and sometimes flourishing Church of England either begging or starving which if it be not as I fear it is I am sure it would be the sad fate of many of them if God did not stir up some mercifull Obadiahs to relieve them not that they want ability or industry but either such liberty or such opportunity as their adversaries presume to enjoy But against all this that I plead of Justice and Mercy for the English Clergie some mealy-mouth'd and hen-hearted men are prone secretly to object Alas there is now no hope to recover the pristine honour either as to reputation reverence or revenue of the Ministry of England neither to Bishops nor Presbyters Alas they have been and still are so vulgarly slighted and abased We see these new Teachers have most-what got the upper hand they are brisk and bold young men who have disgraced displaced and baffled many of the old stock they have decried affronted and over-awed in a manner all of them the new-fashioned Ministers ride on the fore-horse and are fancied by many wary and wise men to be most useful advantageous and conform to the present state of civil interests and affairs so that men are prone to think they had better rest satisfied with these new Preachers upon any account if they be but tolerable speakers and livers rather than go about to restore much less to prefer the former Ministers and Ministry which grow daily more antiquated and exautorated both as to their persons and pretensions among the common sort of people besides many others who are their friends yet look upon the very names of Bishop and Presbyter of ordination and succession as terms extremely unpopular unpleasing and growing out of fashion in England Well much good may these new Ministers do to these new-fashioned Christians these wary men and their posterity 'T is well however if Christ be preached whether of envy or good will whether in truth or in pretence onely Yet I cannot forbear in an honest and Christian freedome to offer this to the judgement of you and other Gentlemen who are of more noble minds and more prudent spirits Do but foresee and consider I beseech you what pitifull Ministellos what pigmy Presbyters what plebeian Preachers this Nation in after-ages is like to have if the Ministers of the glorious Gospel of J. Christ your Saviour must ever grow up live under such vulgar scamblings contempts insolencies obloquies molestations intrusions confusions which are and ever will be as so many nipping frosts and horrid discouragements to all able ingenious grave and godly men when they shall see under the pretence of Novelty and Christian liberty not only themselves very much impoverished curbed despised and depressed as to that order dignity office and authority which they claim and exercise upon grounds Divine Catholick and Ecclesiasticall but they shall further behold all sacred solemn and venerable mysteries as well as offices of the Evangelicall Ministry and Christian Religion exposed to such plebeian insolencies such petulant extravagancies such fanatick fancies such fulsome affectations such empty pretensions such uncharitable janglings such miserable manglings and such proud usurpations under any notions and pretensions which common people please to call their Christian Liberties CHAP. XV. WHich are indeed little else than novell vanities opposing pious Antiquity weaknesse vaunting it self against strength ignorance darkness and confusion boasting against sound knowledge true light and holy order folly crying it self up for wisdome the rapes and stuprations of Religion styling themselves rare Reformations melancholy ravings are cried up for divine Revelations schismatick conventicles voted for the onely pure and organized Churches of Christ being bodies as Tertullian accurately observes so homogeneous similary and inorganick that it is hard to discern which is the head or tail hand or foot Pastor or people like earth-worms they crawl with either end forward all are Prophets inspired all grow Seers Teachers Elders and Rulers of the Church If they can but light on some new notions some strange fancies some odde and unwonted expressions they are presently set forth for rare and spiritfull discoveries when indeed they are but old and rotten errours protrite and putid opinions of the ancient Gnosticks or Valentinians or Manichees or Montanists or Circumcellians or Donatists who affected either to invent poetick fancies or to darken and bury plain and wholsome Truths by words without understanding And such are for ought that ever I could discern those Seraphick Anabaptistick Familistick Hyperboles those proud swelling words of vanity and novelty with which those men use to deceive the simple and credulous sort of people
who are set up by them as the great rivals and Antagonists of the Ancient Catholick and Apostolick Ministers of Christ and Vastators of the whole frame of the Church of England Can you O worthy Gentlemen or any sober Christians who are not strangers to the prayings preachings and writings heretofore brought forth by the worthy Ministers Bishops and Presbyters of the Church of England can you think that either the godly Ministers or the Christian people in England were ignorant of or strangers to those spirituall influences those inward powers and secret experiences of Religion till these new Pedlers of piety began to open their packs or till these rare Rabbies turned their shops into Synagogues and their Conventicles into the onely true spiritualized Churches of Christ Did we never know before these new Illuminates and Spiritaties rose up what belonged to the humble seeking the happy finding and holy acquaintance with God by the union and communion of Gods Spirit working and witnessing with ours Had we neither the root nor the fruit of true Religion till these new planters sprung up Were we utterly strangers to Faith Repentance Charity and good works or to that joy love peace blessed hopes sweet satisfactions evident sealings sincere sanctifyings and undoubted assurings of the holy Ghost which are wrought by and conform to the Word of God first casting the Christian into that holy mould and then filling him with such comforts as are unspeakable and glorious whose nature is rather to be humbly enjoyed modestly owned and tenderly treated in a gracious soul than vulgarly discovered and vapouringly ostentated in a rude and vain-glorious fashion The brightest lustre of Gods Jewels is rarely shewn and hardly seen being most glorious within the richest wares are least set upon the stalls or shop-boords These Arcana magnalia sublimia Dei secrets of the Lord these whisperings of the blessed Spirit these oscula Christi kisses of Christ as S. Bernard calls them these aromata gratiae perfumes of his soft breath these glowings of grace in the heart these holy fervours and heavenly raptures of humble devout meditative fervent souls who the more they believe the more they love and the more they love the better they live more humanely and more divinely more justly more charitably and more orderly these real pregustations of glory and anticipations of heaven blessed be God were long ago known and experimentally set forth in the Prayers Sermons writings and actions of thousands of good Christians both Ministers and others long before these novell and exotick masters began to lisp out the Soboloths of fine phrases before they dared to assault and not onely cry but beat down this and all National Churches all Clergie of the ancient and right order all Universities and Nurseries of good learning together all Tithes all Liturgies all studied Sermons and premeditated prayers all wholsome forms and sober compendiums of religious duties and devotion as if all these were meerly carnall literall formall and superficiall naturall and papall meer husks and shells the rind and out-side of Religion Yea we had the comfort and God the glory of his grace in the Ch. of Eng. long before either Anabaptists or Familists or Seekers or Quakers or Ranters or any other spawn of Libertinism and Independency of Schism and Separation had amused the silly vulgar as S. Austin tells us by his own experience the subtill but sordid Manichees were wont to do with their new motions and strange expressions of being Godded with God Christed with Christ Spirited with the Spirit and the like affectations which are either barbarities and simplicities or blasphemies insolencies and impossibilities of speaking for no sober Christian ever did or in Religion ought or in true reasoning can understand that by a believers being partaker of a diviner nature through Christ he is presently Deified that is personally invested and plenarily possessed with all the infinite Attributes essence and glory of God which are incomprehensible by any finite understanding and personally incommunicable to any creature excepting Christ Jesus the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Immanuel God Incarnate who onely may without robbery be equall with God esteemed called and adored as God So that they can religiously mean no more by all this pomp of their words than what was long ago far better understood and expressed in more humble wholsom and intelligible words also better enjoyed by sober meek just and quiet-spirited Christians who well knew the glorious priviledges of every gracious and sincere Christian which is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to whom being related by faith they are in some sense united to God As the eye that sees the suns light and glory by its beams is in some sense truly enlightened by it united to it partaker of it not as to the vastnesse of its Globe essentiall glory which is far too big and too bright for the eyes small capacity but as to its pleasing influences in like manner the Christian that is illuminate and regenerate by Baptism instructed by the Word of God and sanctified by the Spirit of God is so drawn to Christ by the sweet attractions of the cords of his love and engraffed in him that he is not now his own but Christs not enslaved to his own sinfull and depraved nature but endued with the new powers and principles of an holy and heavenly nature which is truly and soberly that divine nature of which S. Peter speaks which while we behold by true faith and obedience we are changed into the same image from Glory to Glory CHAP. XVI IF then a wise and serious Christian who is not so idle or impudent as to play with Religion to trifle in holy things or to mock with God if such an one will lose so much time as to sift all that these new masters vent that these vapouring Prophets say or write as rare and precious spirituall and heavenly beyond all the fleshly forms learned ignorance and litterall darknesse under which they say we other Christians and Ministers in England have lain long and laboured all night in vain if he will do himself and them so much right as to winnow away the chaff of their affected language their bumbast tearms their insolent expressions drive them from the refuge and confidence they have in the sillinesse of their Auditors the easinesse of their Disciples and the sequaciousnesse of their followers who most admire when they least understand this done he shall find that either nothing remains that is wholsome and good in their swoln heaps of new notions and expressions which are many times the gildings of some of their pills the palliations of their poysonous opinions the daring-glasses or decoyes to bring men into the snares of their dangerous or damnable doctrines or at best all this froth and swelling this noise and ratling of their Novellizings is reducible into a few drops a