interrupted innovated divided destroyed while the reverence of primitive customes and examples is so slighted abated by Popish innovators while the cords of Christian harmony and Church-policy are so loosened and ravelled on every side while the just honour and encouragements of learning and learned men are so much damped and exhausted while the Ecclesiastick Glory of his Nation which was the chiefest in being and owning it self as a true and Reformed Church of Christ is so much eclipsed to the great reproach of this present age and the infinite hazard of posterity which will hardly ever recover the honour order beauty and unity of Christian and Reformed Religion formerly enjoyed in this Church and Nation when once the Jewels of it the learned ordained orderly and authoritative Ministers of the Gospel with all their Ministry and Ministrations Come to be either trampled under feet by Schismatical fury or invaded and usurped by vulgar insolency which in time will rake them all up and bury them in the dunghil of Romish superstitions and Papal usurpations From the Deformities Divisions and Degenerations 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 successful 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 Advantagâ—s 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 subtil superstitious and malicious sort of Papists as deformed divided dissolved desolated so conclamat 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 Vnity 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 restless interests which have been and still are mightily promoted not by the reverend Bishops and the other Episcopal Clergy who are men of Learning Piety Prudence and Martyrlike constancy as some men with more Heat than Wit more Spite than Truth have in their mechanick and vulgar Oratory of late miserably and falsly declaimed but by those who have most done the Popes work while they have seemed most furiously to fly in the Popes face as popularly zealous against Popery and yet at the same time by a strange giddiness headiness and madness 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 sight the illiterate weakness and rudeness 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-man-aged 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 Vsher who deserved to be Primate not only 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 Crakenthorps Sutcliffs 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 merciless mowing down and scattering of the Clergy of England like Hay with the withering and decay of Government Regularity and Order in this Church these have infinitely contributed to the Papal harvest and Romish agitations the gleamings of whose Emissaries will soon amount to more than the sheaves of any the most zealous and reformed Ministers in England By the Papal interest and advantages I do not mean the Roman Clergies preaching or propagting those truths of Christians Doctrine and Dâ—ties which for the main they profess in common with us and all Christian Churches if any of them be thus piously industrious I neither quarrel at them nor envy their successes but rather I should rejoyce in them with Saint Paul because however Christ crucified is preached by some whom common people will either more reverence or sooner believe than they generally do the decayed despised and divided Ministers of England who seem to have many of them so small abilities and carrying so little shew or pretence of any good authority for their work Ministerial nor can they be potent or esteemed abroad who are so impotent and disesteemed at home But I mean that Papal Monarchy or Ecclesiastical Tyranny by which the Church of 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 imperial 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 and abuse that ancient Purity Simplicity and Liberty of Religion which was preserved among Primitive Churches and their co-ordinate 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 superstitious Duties as seem at best impertinent to true Piety but some of them are erroneous sâ—crilegious pernicious In somethings they are boldly adding to or detracting from the Doctrine and Institutions of our blessed Lord Jesuâ— Christ in other things they impose for sacred and necessary
such opinions and customes which are but the rust and drosse the disease and deformity of Christian Religion contracted in the long ignorance darknesse and almost barbarity of times which God winked at but now they appear highly and justly scandalous yea intolerable to more judicious and lesse credulous Christians who are very sensible not onely of that offence which many Papal Injunctions and Observations give to themselves as Christians but also to the very Heathens to Jews and to Mahometans who cannot teconcile in any Reason or Religion the Idolatrous use of Images and Hoasts among Papists to which they must submit if they will be in communion with them or converted to be Christians nor yet those Tridentine Terrours and Anathemas of eternal damnation which are thundered by them against all those who will not against God's expresse Words own as Truth and submit to as necessary those opinions and practices among Papists which seem either impious or impertinent as to true Faith and a good Conscience Against all which burthens too heavy for any wise and generous Christians to bear when once duly informed of the weight and danger of them and duly reformed from them as the great Wisdom Piety and Order of the Church of England in its sacred Ministry and holy Ministratious was heretofore the greatest barre and bulwark in all the Christian world so the disadvantge of the Reformed Religion are now so palpable and the danger of the people of this Nation as so obvious in their returning to that Egypt and Babylon again which is not the Church of Rome but its disease and opression that I know not in ordinary providence any means can be used or is left to stop the daily prevalencies of Popery and the great Apostasie of England to the Romish superstition and subjection in after-times unlesse God stir up such Wisdome Zeal and Care in those that have honest hearts joyned with publick power and influence not so much to fleece and depress Popish Recusants by pecuniary exactions which is to set Religion to sale and to make merchandize of mens errours rather than fairly to perswade and win them by the proper and perswasive engines of true Religion but rather duly to restore and speedily assert the Honour Order Succession Unity Authority and Majesty of this Reformed Church and its Catholick Ministry from which when the Papists see our selves to be such profound Revolters with what face can we expect they should ever come into our Reformation which they now behold with joyful and disdainful eyes so mangled so deformed so massacred by our owns hands How can we with Justice Honor or Humanity inflict severe penalties upon Papists as refusing to conform to our Church and Religion when they protest with so much truth to our faces they cannot see any Church any Religion among us as uniform publick authentick constant What they say formerly had the goodliest figure and fairest presence of a Christian Church and the best Reformed of any is now deformed ruined demolished nothing but scattered rafters and pieces of that ship-wrackt vessel now appear floating up and down in a restless and foaming sea of faction opposition and confusion between Bishops Ministers and People some are Episcopal others Presbyterian a third sort Independant all are disparate or opposite in Discipline some are Heterodox in Doctrine the Anabaptists rise against all and the Quakers so are above all To which of all these with many other Sects shall an honest-hearted Papist apply himself to be safe and setled in Religion If to the poor and depressed remains of Bishops and the Episcopal Clergie who yet adhere to the Church England alas they are weak and exhausted contemned by many pitied some but asserted by few or none according to their true merit in former ages or their present Worth Courage Constancy and Patience in this If the Romanists go to the Presbyterian party which like small shoots spring out so thick in England upon the cutting down of Episcopacy to which they all formerly submitted these besides their Levity Parity and In constancy as to their former Stations Opinions and Oaths seem so unseasonably insolent and magisterially domineering before they had got a full and just dominion that all sober men think them rather popular plebeian and impertinent in their heats transport and passions than so modest wise and grave as becomes those who will undertake to wrest Government out of the hands of their superiours and betters every way and to impose a novelty of untried and undesired Discipline upon such a great and stout Nation as England is which disdaining the insolency of Popes and offended at the indiscretion of some Bishops will hardly ever bear the pertnesse of petty Presbyters who cannot want Vanity Impudence and Arrogancy when they fancy themselves in a supremacy of Power above people Parliaments and Princes for they affect no lesse as Christ's due and theirs too If the tossed Romanists run to the spruce and self-conceited Independents for shelter because these fine new Masters seem to have patents for Christian Liberty and urge a Magna Charta from Christ to be accountable to none in matters of Religion but their own little Congregation Church or Body in which as in an Ecclesiastick Corporation or free Borough of Religion they may hang and draw exercise high and low Justice upon mens souls as they list in their little Conventicles yet here the poor Papist finds so much of a rude and exotick novelty such a grosse shew of Schisme such variety such an inconsistency such a plebeian petulancy such pitiful and ridiculous affections and arrogating of Church-power in some of the plebs and such contempt of it in others that he cannot think it is other than some pieces of Josephs bloody coat or some torn limbs of his body Compared to what Splendour Order Strength Beauty Unity Decency and Majesty in Doctrine and Discipline in Faith and holy Duties was formerly to be observed even to the envy and admiration of sober Papists in the Church of England how much more in the Antient and Catholick Churches grand combinations from which these petty fractions and crumblings of Christians seem most abhorrent and dissonant This goodly Cedar then of the Church of England being thus broken and hewn down and nothing like it or comparable to it planted in its room but such Shrubs and Mushromes as grow of themselves out of the rankness of the earth vulgar humours and passions under whose shade any Egyptian Vermine Frogs or unclean Birds may hide themselves no wonder if the Papists triumph in their sufferings and constancies if they despise all our Presbyterian Independent Anabaptistick and fanatick Novelties if they rejoyce in that vengeance which they conclude God hath made upon our Schismes Errours Obstinacies and Persecutions against them by our mutual confusions Hence must daily and necessarily follow secret inclinations and accessions to the Roman party by all those who are not well grounded in the Reformed Religion
or not much prejudiced against the Popish Errours or are indifferent for any Religion which is most easie or pleasing These at length will wrap to the Roman party as the most specious of any so that unless there be a speedy restauration of the honour of the Church of England I see not how it is possible to prevent that fatal relapse either to Romish superstition and slavery or else to a dreadful persecution which will in time necessarily follow those dissipations and destructions of this Reformed Church its Minstry Government and Religion which some men have already too much and still do beyond measure so industriously promote to the excessive joy and gratifying of the Popish party and designs which are not onely invasive upon the honour and freedome of this Nation but highly scandalous to our Reformed Profession and dangerous to our consciences especially as we yet stand convinced of the Errors Superstitions and Sacriledges of the Romish Religion since it lapsed from the Primitive Institutions of Christ the patterns of the Apostles the ancient Communion of Christian Churches and the fraternal Co-ordination of Bishops who were alwayes united in orderly happy and harmonious Aristocracies rather than subordinate to any one Monarchical Supremacy as to Ecclesiastical Power and Jurisdiction however they had such regulation and primacy of order by Patriarchs and Metropolitans among Bishops and the representers of several Churches as become wise men that were numerous when they met in great Councils or Church Assemblies 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 Practices 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 hedlesse their boundlesse and endlesse Agitations which blast all true Reformation and bring nothing but Division and Confusion For among these there are a sort of people who affect Supremacy in Church and state too a spiritual and temporal Dominion no lesse than doth the Pope of Rome there 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 lesse volume and blinder print but they every day mediate and agitate new Editions of their power and larger additions to their parties and designs being as infallible in their own conceits as imperious in their spirits and magisterial 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 with-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 over-boyling true Religion and sober Reformation till they are utterly confounded and quenched with such fordid and shamefull deformities as must needs follow their Divisions Distractions and Despiciencies as to all Church-order Christian unity and Ministerial 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 fearful of being over-righteous by following vain traditions of men that they fear not to be over-wicked by over-throwing the good foundations of Order Honour Peace and Charity which Christ and his Apostles have laid in his Church fierce enemites 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 diametrically opposite to each other may yet make up the same circumferences and be at equal distance from the centre so may Practises and Opinions which seem most crosse against each other yet at Herod and Pilate alike conspire against Christ and true Religion like vicious extremes which are contrary to each other and yet uncorrespondent with that virtue from which they are divided But the end or effect following their actions though possibly not some of their intentions will be this to prepare by these various windings confused circulations and distorted wrestings of the Reformed Religion the way for Roman factors Papal interests and Jesuitick designes whose learned abilities orderly industry and indefatigable activity is such that by that time the old stock of Reverend orderly and authoritative Bishops and Presbyters the truest and most unquestionable Ministers of the Church of Christ are worn out in England and the reformed Religion is reduced with its titular and extenuate Ministers to a meer medly or popular Chaos of confusions the most of sober people being either sick or shamed or weary of their home bred disorders and unremedied diseases in Religion By this time I say the Romish agitators will not onely devour all these petty parties and feeble factions of Reformers with as much ease as the Stork did the Frogs but they will in time utterly destroy the remains of the defamed Doctrine and deformed Religion which your fore fathers owned and to the death professed as most true and well reformed with great Honour Holiness and Happiness which yet the ignorance and insolence the Illiterateness and Rusticity the Barrenesse and Barbarity of novel Sects have already rendred poor and despicable much to be pitied and deplored both at home and abroad I must ever so far own my reason as to professe that I look upon the Defamers Dividers and Destroyers of the Church of England whatever they are or seem to be no other than the perdues or forelorn hope of Popery which by lighter skirmishes open advantages to the Popes main Battaglio the Vancourriers or Harbingers sent and excited in great part from the Pragmatick Policies of Rome whose grand interest since the Reformation hath been not more to advance the House of Austria and preserve the Papacy than to regain the Church of England to the Romish slavery Certainly these petty parties who scarce know what they drive at and are full of varieties in their Fancies Forms and Factions these cannot produce so constant a current and so strong a tide as is always urging against the Church of England and the honour of the Reformed Religion but they are driven on by a subtle and secret yet potent impulse as waves of the sea not