to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost Acts 4. 2 c. 3. Experience assureth us that from the beginning of the Church to this present day Christ never gave too many able faithful Ministers to his Church Supernumeraries of such were never its disease nor the amputation of them its cure There is still need of the Lords-prayer Thy Kingdom come And Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers c. That man is but a Christian or a Pastor in jest and Image and not in earnest and reality who thinketh that the Pastors now allowed are so sufficient for the great employment of the Ministry that more are but supernumerary and the rest may be spared without any detriment to the souls of men Even in the Apostles age of Miraculous gifts Dr. Hammond thinketh the Pastors were so scarce that every Episcopal Church had no more than one Bishop with some Deacons without ever a Subject-Presbyter And that there was de facto none of the Order of subject-Presbyters in Scripture-times And so think all the Presbyterians too And it is a notorious truth that afterwards the Presbyters were so low in abilities that publick preaching in the Church was mostly used by the Bishops only And many Countries have lost the Gospel for want of Preachers And wherever ignorance and prophaneness have broken in upon the Church as the Greeks Abassines Armenians Moscovites Papists and too many Protestant Churches it hath commonly been by the decay of able godly faithful Pastors And if one City or Parish of ten thousand have had too many their near neighbours have so much wanted them that they could not be esteemed supernumerary And in England there are few Parishes which need not helps even where the ablest men are placed much more where Is it seasonable then or doth it answer the Will or Providence of to call in so many when the Church hath always had too few 4. The punishment which you inflict upon the Ministers doth fall a thousand times more heavily on the souls of the innocent people who without being accused or speaking for themselves in a Legal trial have so great a penalty inflicted on them as none but a believer that judgeth of things in reference to Eternity is able to estimate a right Alas to the Preacher the suffering is small in comparison of the peoples What if they live poorly what if they want house or clothes or bread How small a matter is that in comparison of the want of knowledg and faith of grace and salvation I confess their sufferings will cost them dear that are the true cause when Christ condemns those that do not relieve them But to themselves it is no such dreadful business Nay if they were but discharged in conscience from the Ministerial Office most of them might live in much more peace and plenty in the world There are many other Callings to betake themselves to in which they might live quietly and not be as the Hare before the Hunters pursued from place to place with cryes as if they that will imitate Paul in labours must bear also his reproach as pestilent fellows and movers of sedition among the people that do contrary to the decrees of Cesar and turn the world upside down Yea many are already turned Physicians and they have better words and kinder usage But every man that hath the eyes of a Christian in his head and seeth what the people of England VVales and Ireland are for members and for quality and seeth and heareth also what Ministers for number and quality do instruct them doth know as certainly that many hundred thousand souls do wofully need more Ministerial helps as he knoweth that five hundred Scholars do need more than one School-master or five hundred sick men need more than one Physician But O what a plague is it to the Church and World to have Ministers who when they read of the necessity of knowledg holiness and salvation do neither believe Christ nor themselves Argue not the people into such hard thoughts of you as if this were your case by perswading them that it is no matter whether their souls have any more Ministerial helps than now is given them Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost and that the cure of gross ignorance hard-heartedness unbelief and sensuality are of necessity to salvation or not If not deal openly and silence both your selves and us If yea then either you know how these maladies abound in the people and how much labour the cure doth usually cost or not If not then take not on you to be Pastors or English men or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to But if you do know this then I need to say no more to you but to desire you to fuppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors The worldling drunkard and fornicator is most miserable that would have no reproof or help Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cryes and that you hear them calling to you for help O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance unbelief insensibility worldliness and sensuality that are utter strangers to that life of faith and love and holiness without which none can please or see God and must quickly be converted and made new creatures or they are lost for ever Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints you heard them expostulating with you for their souls O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation Alas our ignorance and deadness and worldly-mindedness and fleshly affections are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used what shall we do then if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed Alas say not that the reading of the Scriptures and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn We confess that it should do so if our disease were so light as to need no more the thing it self is good and every word of God is precious but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep and hardned in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone It is the skilful choice of pertinent Truths convincingly and clearly uttered and closely applied with life and seriousness that our case requireth We confess that if a School-boy or a raw ignorant youth from the University did but read a chapter or say over a less pertinent cento of good words we should be moved
others will call that Solitude which you call concord uniformity and peace And our unity will be like theirs in Moldavia and VValachia And who shall compensate the Kings damage 3. And Foreign Churches and posterity will be brought by it to so great a hatred of Prelacy that they will never be reconciled to it more but prefer a poor and humble Ministry And indeed it is already so known by its fruits that I am much in doubt the experience of it will alienate the people from that Primitive lawful Episcopacy which I would have them to desire They say already Give us the old honest humble serious Puritans that lived not upon Gold and Worldly greatness and cherished not mens sins that they might cherish them Fruatur vocibus obscaenis omnique libidinis arte Qui Lacedomonium Pytismate lubricrat orbem Namque ibi fortunae veniam damus alea turpis Turpe adulterium mediocribus haec eadem illi Omnia cum faciant Hilares nitidique vocantur Juv. I suppose you know how much it alienateth men from Popery that their Religion must be fed and live by blood yea by precious blood Some of you have written your wishes that the course had been followed which was begun in the days of Whitgift and Bancroft when divers Nonconformists were hanged And some have written that it was not for Religion but for Treason As for Hacket and Coppinger it 's known they were crackt-brain'd men pretending to be sent to judge the World whom the Nonconformists condemned which Bancroft himself in part confesseth And whereas Dr. Sutliffe conjectured that Cartwright was privy to all Mr. Simeon Ash gave me a Manuscript supposed to be Mr. Cartwrights own writing fully confuting that accusation And as for the rest it 's true that the Bishops then laboured by exposition of a Law to make Treason by consequence of that which was spoken against themselves But it will be long ere the confutation of that is well answered which is written by some one learned in the Law called A Petition to her Majesty c. And what the same Author saith Pag. 25. of that Pious man Mr. Udal will by others and perhaps one day by your consciences be thought on with respect to the 2000 silenced Ministers of late and the many that have dyed in and by imprisonment and much more of so many as if you prosecute what you have begun you must destroy His words are That the Bishops should be so unnatural as to seek the life of a right godly and faithful Preacher of the Gospel I mean Mr. Udal to whom Life was offered if he would take his Oath that he did not make a book whereof he was supposed to be Author A rare example that a man should be known standing at a bar shackled in bolts but quaere quo jure and coupled with a murderer whose conscience was thought so faithful and sound by the Judg himself that he would not swear falsly to gain his life He had not learnt some mens rules for expounding Oaths Nor loved his life so well as some men do a Benefice But were no worse men suffered 8. You may have all that is truly desirable and to be expected in this world as necessary to Unity and Concord to Order and Decency and to your own honour accomplished ten thousand times easilier surer and better by obvious honest lawful means God never putteth men upon such bloody and desperate courses as some advise It is no necessity of Gods making that is pleaded for such means but of their own sinful making or false imagining God never wanteth lyes or cruelty to his service or glory They are usually wicked selfish ends whatever is pretended for which men chuse and use such means Or if the ends were never so good they will not justifie such means nay good ends will condemn them as contrary incongruous and destructive But when there are easie suitable and honest means enow at hand the choice of such as are forementioned beseemeth none but those whose design is to destroy If you say What be those means They are easily told you but your little self-interests will not give you leave to think them tolerable I shall tell you more particularly anon I will now speak but of the generals Quest. 1. What if you would learn of the Holy Ghost to impose no other than Necessary things Act. 15. What if you had the patience to endure the Apostolick Primitive way of Discipline and Worship and suffered men to go to Heaven in the same way as the Apostles and Christians of those times did What if you kept all that Wisdom to your selves in which you excel the Apostles and put no more upon the Churches than they did Would the inconveniences of this weigh down the mischiefs which are now upon the Churches throughout the world by the contrary course Let not your passion make you run away with a conceit of an intollerable conclusion and say I would reduce you to the Primitive poverty or persecution No I talk not of matters extrinsick to Discipline and Worship for faith we will yet suppose we are agreed in I suppose you think not that Poverty or Riches are parts of the instituted worship of God I am as far from expecting that you should consent to be as poor and persecuted as the Apostles as that you should be as good as the Apostles Those that you have to do with believe that the Scripture hath more exactly determined how God will be worshipped than hâ—w much a year shall be the Revenues of a Bishop We meddle not with your Lands or Lordships whatever our own opinion be of such matters Though we are ambitious of your higher and wealthier condition yet we neither envy it nor think it our duty to diminish your wealth But the question is If you let men worship God without any more yokes or burdens than Christ and his Apostles laid upon the Churches what harm would it do Did they then want any needful uniformity Did they not pray decently without a Surplice Did they not baptize decently without the Cross If you say that they had their rites of decency then though not the same that we have now I answer Impose no other than they imposed Leave those free which they left free Though you think your own to be better than theirs so do not all Christians If it be mens infirmity to think that the Scripture-rites are better than yours yet what harm will it do you to bear with that infirmity What if you required no more Oaths of obedience to the Bishops than the Apostles required to themselves or to any Pastors of the Church What if you required no Subscription to any thing as certain truth but only to the infallible Oracles of the Spirit Nay the Apostles required not any to subscribe to all the books of Sacred Scripture but only to receive them in general as the Doctrine of Christ and the Holy Ghost and they
are so large and the Churches so small and the Preachers voice so low that one of ten or twenty of the Parishioners cannot hear if they were never so willing 7. That many Ministers are insufficient and the Parson of the Parish where I live hath been suspended ab officio these two or three years or at least hath not officiated 8. That therefore the silence of all the Nonconformists is like to prove the damnation of many thousand souls 9. That if the King only forbid us preaching and not the Bishop we are not bound to such silence as he requireth 10. That our Bishops are not chosen by the Presbyters of the Diocess or the people but by the King whatever formality seem to contradict this 11. That the extent of their Diocesses is not jure divino 12. That none of them is jure divino the Bishop of me or any other such 13. That National Churches are but of humane institution 14. That what man instituteth man may abrogate or undo 15. That if King or Bishop forbid me to relieve the poor in true necessity or to feed any family or teach them I must not obey 16. That the prime part of Religion is in positives and but the second in negatives and therefore sins of omission are the first sins 17. That no sin must be matter of obedience to Bishops or any man 18. That the Apostles had their power to edification and not to destruction 19. That in case of controversies of Faith the Church may not judg in partem utram libet but only for the truth 20. That all Bishops power is limited and not absolute 21. That when they command without power only passive obedience is due 22. That Bishops are not made Judges whether there shall be preaching and worshipping God or not but only to order it aright and judg by whom it shall be done 23. That Bishops cannot dispense with the Law of God nor humane power prevail against Divine 24. That order is for the end and for the thing ordered and not against it 25. That natural morals are to be preferred caeteris paribus before positives much more before humane orders and God will have mercy and not sacrifice 26. That the silencing of the faithful Preachers of the Gospel greatly pleaseth the Devil and that he is so far of the Silencers mind 27. He accuseth not the silenced Ministers with any false doctrine 28. He chargeth them not with Immoralities or a bad life saving his supposed sin of Schism for preaching Christs Gospel when forbidden 29. He confesseth that Paul must preach though forbidden and that he chargeth Timothy before God and Angels to preach in season and out of season 30. He confesseth that the Pastors for 300. years preached when lawful Magistrates were against it and for bad them 31. I acquaint him that I my self have the Bishops ordination the Bishop of the Diocess License not repealed and the Kings License and yet unless I will say that I trust to the Bishops License as that without which all were Schism it is Schism still so that it seemeth to be made necessary not only to have it but to believe in it or trust it On the other side we grant as followeth 1. That we must not over-value our own grace or gifts nor undervalue other men nor pretend that our labours are more necessary than they are 2. We must not disobey our lawful Rulers by omission or commission in any thing which it belongeth to their office or power to command or forbid us 3. That if they command or forbid without power that which belongeth not to their office as that which belongeth to a mans private Trade or self-government or family-government c. if it be not in it self evil we should materially obey them finis gratia to preserve order and reverence to their office and that we embolden not men to disobey in other things though formally that particular injunction be powerless of itself 4. That if they command us that which God forbiddeth or forbid that which God commandeth we must patiently suffer what unjust punishment they inflict on us for not obeying them and not resist them in their executions by force Though we cannot say that this hath no exceptions as if a Bishop would ravish a woman she may resist him to save her chastity yet at least no resistance is lawful which deposeth the Governour or disableth him to govern 5. We think it not lawful to invade or take the publick Temples or Tythes or other maintenance of the publick Ministers against the Kings will or without authority 6. We believe that lawful Rulers have power to forbid such ministers to preach in this or that place or any where in their dominions whose preaching is such as tendeth to do more harm than good 7. Had we any reasonable conviction that our Ministry is unnecessary we would obey our Rulers though they silenced us causlesly and would seek some other place or way of serving God 8. In those times places and circumstances which perswade us that more hurt than good will come by it if we preach we will then and there forbear it though it be not as an act of formal obedience nor a desertion of our Office or of the exercise of it at other times 9. We judg it our duty to further the good success of the Conformable Ministers to the utmost of our power 10. And we take Schism to be a great sin and that which we are bound to do the best we can not only to avoid our selves but to cure or hinder in others But we cannot in our present case give over the preaching of Christs Gospel for the Reasons before given 1. We judg it a violation of the grand Law of Charity to agree with the Bishops that the people shall be damned by thousands and content our selves that not we but they shall answer for it 2. We judge it perfidiousness to violate our Ministerial Covenant with God in which we gave up our selves to his service 3. We judge it also heinous sacriledge it being a holy work to which we are devoted 4. It is an Idolatrous setting up mans will and power above and against Gods 5. It is a preferring of pretended Order before the thing ordered and that which is less than sacrifice even sin before Mercy yea the greatest mercy 6. It is a pleasing of the Devil who is the great enemy of Preaching the Gospel and of sinners repentance and salvation and whose instruments the hinderers of the Gospel are we leave to consideration 7. It is a contradicting of the prayer taught us by Christ Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers For we are sure he hath not sent forth supernumeraries 8. It is a wilful running on Christs damning sentence after his premonition Matth. 25. by omitting greater matters than feeding cloathing visiting c. 9. It will be a burying our talent with the unprofitable servant and denying God
And I knew that if I were no Bishop my self I could far more effectually perswade men to Conformity than if I were And this was the reason I gave of my refusal But if the Kings Declaration should not be ratified as I verily did believe it would not I knew if I took a Bishoprick I must quickly leave it And then it was better refuse it at the first And this being our case methinks I might refer the judgment of it even to the Censurer himself whose civility to my self through the rest of his Debate I do acknowledge 15 Obj. If the King must change or relax his Laws as oft as men will be scrupulous or discontented there will be no setledness consistency or order Your tender Consciences are but tender heads And soft-headed people must be Rulers of us all if we must change as oft as their weakness will desire it Ans. You cannot think that when you talk at this rate the readers and hearers can be all so simple as not to understand that your words only signifie that you stand on the higher ground and not that you have the better cause For 1. you were not only importuned before these Laws were made to have done your part for a more universal Concord but you were also Commissioned by the King under his Broad Seal to consult for the making such alterations in the Liturgy as were necessary to satisfie tender Consciences When instead of so doing you have made the burden heavier than before And is this a fit plea for men that before the new Laws and Impositions had so much power and opportunity to have prevented the matter of our grievance and were so long importuned to it in vain to talk afterward of the inconvenience of changing or relaxing Laws 2. Have the Nonconformists so often changed their cause that you should be put to talk of so frequent change of Laws Do you not tell them that their arguments and exceptions are but the same that have been answered to their predecessors long ago If their cause be the same one alteration since the first Imposition of Conformity would have served their turn If after the troubles or differences at Frank ford they had been brought to an agreement by mutual accesses and concessions what need any more as to the Nonconformists to this day 3. Who were the Changers when you put your new clauses into the Liturgy as the doctrine of Baptized Infants salvation without distinguishing of them that were baptized Rightfully or without right c. If all the new Oaths Subscriptions and Declarations be imposed by your advice surely it was you that were in that the Changers Changes then will do well and be laudable when they serve your ends but they are dangerous when they are against your minds What changes doth Thorndike plead for 4. When the New Canons and Oath were made 1640 and when Rails and Altars were set up and bowing towards the Altar recommended there was no danger in these changes But if an Oath or Subscription of seven years age be abated how dangerous would such changes be 5. The Kings Majesty when he published his Declaration about Ecclesiastical affairs did not take those changes there made to be so dangerous Nor did the Commons in Parliament who gave him thanks for that Declaration We may know then by that much whence the noise of danger cometh 6. If a needless Subscription or a Ceremony have burdened so many and considerable Subjects an hundred years and more and if the calamitous attempts of change that have been made unlawfully in the Land have been occasioned by mens differences about those things and if they are still the burden of so many as are now against Conformity Let impartial persons then be judges whether the removing of those troublesome unnecessary burdens were not the likest means imaginable to prevent any more ill attempts of change 7. Is there any thing in the world that you think unlawful No doubt there is Suppose that one thing were by a Law imposed on you would you think that a change of that Law would be a dangerous thing and would you exclaim against it as now you do What if King Charles I. his Concessions in his restraint in the Isle of Wight had past into a Law as they had if the Parliament had not suddenly been broken and that Episcopacy had received as great a change as was then intended in those Concessions Would you have taken the rescinding of all these Laws for a dangerous change 16 Obj. It is obedience that beseemeth tender consciences Disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft And would you have any countenance you in so great a sin If Subjects must have the Laws changed instead of obeying them they will be Rulers and not Subjects Why are you not more tender of offending and disobeying your Governours Ans. 1. Are not you and we agreed that God is the chief Ruler and to be first obeyed and no man against him but only under him In this sure we do not differ To disobey God is as the sin of witchcraft and obedience to him is better than sacrifice And when it is only our obedience to God that maketh us disobey any Governours judge whether we were not more chargeable with disobedience if we obeyed men and disobeyed God We have no reason to cast our selves under all your reproach and so much suffering but only to avoid disobedience to God And when our costliest obedience must go for odious disobedience and if we disobey God to please men it would go for obeeience what remedy but to wait for a more righteous judgment where obedience and disobedience will be better known 2. Again I ask Is there any Oath that you dare not take any thing that you dare not subscribe to and declare any thing that in Gods worship you durst not use Suppose that one thing were imposed on you would you Conform to it or not If you were but put to subscribe all to the truth of Dr. Hammonds opinion that there were no Presbyters but Bishops in the Scripture-times and that no Church then was bigger than one Bishop with his Deacons did efficiate with would not some part of you scruple subscribing to it If any one thing or word which you judge unlawful to be done or subscribed were put on you by a Law would not you then be the Nonconformists And were it not as easie then to declaim against your Disobedience and Nonconformity as it is now for you to do it against ours Might not Volumes as plausibly be written to shew the mischief of Subjects disobedience and quarrelling with the Laws and being judges of what is unlawful And might not you be as largely characterized as a stubborn unquiet people as we are by you now So that all this still doth only tell us that you are got up in the highest seat from whence you have advantage to look down with scorn upon those that are more fearful
silencing to lose our friends to gratifie them that thus abuse us and to take pains to exchange kindness for cruelty and to strive hard to leap out of the ashes into the fire But I will tell the truth to the world and you we do what you desire of us or reasonably can desire I constantly Preached till the Goal restrained me against Separation and much more against sedition and rebellion We do it openly and plainly I am the man that am reproached in Print for want of this And the same hand so far justified me as before the Kings Majesty and Lords and before the Right Reverend Bishops to say of me and my Disputes of Church-Government about the Ceremonies c. No man hath written better of these things And can we speak louder than by the Press Or can they prove that we preach not as we write O wonderful that ever the world can degenerate to so much unrighteousness as to condemn men upon such defamations as these Besides that Book many a year before and since I have still written to the same purpose I have Preached to the same purpose But thinking it more seasonable in private Conference I have an hundred and an hundred times more pleaded for the like in private And my Disputes before mentioned are accused by many offended persons as having made a hundred Ministers at least conformable And had they not been written in the very height of Usurpation before the Kings return I should have been taken for the vilest temporizer This is our course and yet if wrath and partiality and ill will do but dream that we do infect the people and cherish them in Separation and do not contradict but flatter them in their extreams against our own judgments the world must ring of all these dreams and they think it fit that we be used as if all were certain truth We have need to bless our selves against dreaming neighbours if we must be estimated and used and described to the world according to their dreams Nay I will tell the world here the certain truth of our success and usage I preach I write and I frequently and openly talk against Separation and for the lawfulness of joining with the Church in the use of the Liturgy and to rebuke mens extreams and censures of the Episcopal Clergy and for an impartial love of all true Christians I sharply reprove the weak reasonings of those that are otherwise minded and by this I occasion the true Sectarians every where to speak against me and yet even these Sectaries wish me well and would do me no harm and the generality of my hearers bear all this well and seem to be of the same mind And yet when I am loved by those that I plead against I am reviled and abused by those that I plead for Yea more I must profess it before the world that I plead your cause as far as conscionably I can and its you that hinder me and none like you You would have us do your work with the people and you would not let us do it You use us as I saw a man lately do by a Colt who tyed him fast to a great tree and lashed him most cruelly to make him draw You make our work difficult if not impossible and then think us worthy of your smarting wrath for not performing it Were it not for two things we could do much to reconcile the people to you 1. If you would not impose those Oaths Subscriptions and such like burdens which we are our selves unable without fraud and falshood to defend 2. If you would not silence their faithful Teachers but would encourage Godliness and good men impartially and would exercise LOVE as openly and largely as you exercise WRATH But we must tell the world and you that we are unable utterly unable to justifie the Corporation-Oath and Declaration and to bring the people to like those Bishops whom they think are the chief cause of depriving of them of their long tried painful faithful Pastors and setting over them such as in too many places are set When our people are in Goals for meeting as they have done these twenty yea thirty or forty years only to repeat their Teachers Sermon and pray and sing a Psalm together between the publick Exercises on the Lords-day where they have reverently attended It is a hard task that you put on them to like you but a harder that you put on us that we must Preach them to it even when we must not Preach at all That we must go to the Gaols to them or after they come out to their houses to teach them to like the Bishops and their Impositions They will tell us VVe love them with a love of Benevolence as we must our enemies we wish them no harm but the greatest good but we cannot love them as such complacentially nor think approvingly of their ways Whether you do well or ill in promoting their sufferings I am not now judging I only tell you that it is the greatest hinderance to our reconciling them to you and your ways that you could easily have devised I never saw that wooing speed well that said Love me or I will send thee to Gaol When I was a child I never thought any correction more unreasonable than whipping children to make them give over crying when whipping was an unresistible means to make them cry if they had not cried before While I am Voluminously reproached for not reproving the spirit of Separation or Nonconformty as afore limited when I did it last I was sent to Prison and when I would do it by Preaching I have not leave And if your meaning be Speak when we have shut thy mouth and teach men to like us when they suffer our wrath you increase our task when you have taken away our straw I conclude therefore with repeating it you will not suffer us to serve you as we can but are our greatest hinderers while you blame us And lastly as to their scrupling the Corporation Declaration and Oath I can speak best for my self The Bayliff Justice and all the twelve Capital Burgesses besides inferior Burgesses did refuse it and were every one displaced save one now dead that had been a Soldier in the Kings Army what men were put in their stead I am not now to tell you And they were so far from being perswaded to this by me at almost an hundred miles distance that I never once spake to them nor wrote to them one Letter or word about it And it being no part of the old Conformity how could this be put into their heads by me especially when they know that I had kept the Covenant from ever being put upon that Town and Country 4 Obj But the issue sheweth how little good your Teaching doth where are any more against Bishops and Conformity than your hearers You make men hypocrites and teach them to prate phrases and cut faces and rail at carnal
tell you of Abbot and Laud c. and when yet the Conformists preach against one another about it yet did we never speak a word to the King or them of any such matter Because if all men will subscribe the same wholsome Doctrine of the Articles we cannot hinder any from dissembling and destroying what they do subscribe Obj. 24. Agreement with the Church of Rome is more desirable on the terms described by Dr. Heylin in A. B. Lauds life and you would make it impossible Ans. We are for a just concord with all Christians but true Popery we cannot agree with and as to Papists they are but a part a third or fourth part saith your Primate Bishop Bramhall of the Catholick Church We must unite with the whole Church or else we are Schismaticks To embody in the faction of the Papists is as Schismatical as to do it with a smaller faction And if you will unite with all Christians I still say you must unite on Vinc. Lirinensis terms on that which all Christians are agreed in that indeed deserve the name of Christians Now if you establish your concord on the Scripture and on universal terms all Christians in the world will confess that your Religion yea all your Religion is certain truth and that it hath also all things universally necessary to Salvation and this is a fair degree of unity though they say that yet you want their Traditions And then you can tell a Papist quickly where your Religion was before Luther Even where ever the Scripture was received And you do not wilfully and resolvedly cut off your selves from Communion with all the Protestant Churches who do not hold the Traditions and Decrees of Rome But you are united with all the Christians in the world in Christianity and so far as they have any union among themselves And then all those that will needs go further do run the hazard of their own additions We will live in peace with them if they will live in peace with us But if the Papists be such men that they will hold no communion with any that hold not all their Religion that is all the Decrees of their Councils than neither Abassines Armenians Greeks nor Protestants can be received into their Communion And do you think it desirable to comply and embody with them in such a schism and factious combination against all the rest of the Churches of God If you will deal like Christians Catholicks and wise men let us first be as moderate as may be in our Doctrinals and not pretend that we are further disagreed with Papists or any other Christians than indeed we are I am one of those who believe that in many Doctrines quarrelsome ignorant men have made differences where there are none and have made those that be seem wider than they are cut off these superfluities and spare not and then reduce your terms of Union and Communion to the Primitive simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Discipline and if any will have more let it be a matter of liberty and not of necessity or if they will not be limited as we are let them take their scope Or if you your selves will needs have more yet hold it with liberty as matter of conveniency and not of necessity to the union or communion of the Church If you will take this course we shall deny Papists no love no peace no communion with us on our terms which they justifie for the truth of them in our Churches And if they will fly from us and refuse our Communion or will put unlawful terms on us and drive us from them we shall have no accusation for this by our consciences or any wise man He is the Schismatick that maketh communion impossible by his Additions or Impositions or runs away from those that will not receive all his Supernumeraries Usurpation is the peace breaker in the Church of God Christs sheep know his voice and follow him but they will not be so obedient to an unknown voice Why cannot a man be content to be a Lord Bishop and to have many hundred or thousand pound a year for promoting the preaching and practice of Christianity and for punishing Hereticks rebels drunkards sensualists c. and serve God himself with what garb or forms or ceremonies he please as well as to have the same wealth and honour to prosecute much wiser and better men than himself with a burning zeal for not swearing obedience to him or for not subscribing that his Books are faultless or for not wearing a Surplice or signing Children with the transient Image of the Cross. But we must suppose that we cannot make Papists to be Protestants If they will not turn Protestants and we will not turn Papists the contrivance or supposition of a turn or half-turn is but a vain imagination not the way to unity and peace We must take them as they are and they must take us as we are and we must take all the Christian Churches as they are in our design for concord if we will do any good in it The question is not how or how far we shall change one anothers minds or be changed but how we shall maintain so much love and peace as is due to one another in the capacity that we are in and how far we shall endure the different opinions and practices of another to such an end And such a Conciliator with Rome I would be my self and magnifie the design as much as Heylin doth and be as zealous in it as Grotius Laud or Forbes were in theirs For it is but the service of Love and Peace and that is certainly the service of God I would treat with any Papists on such a design If peevish or suspious Protestants should try out on me and defame me for such a design as some have done I would no more regard it than the crying of a child If Christian Princes would make such a Treaty their business by their Embassadors that Love and Liberty might be regulated by the just rules of Equality and not be pretended only by a faction for their own ends even by them that will seek Liberty but will not give it I would bless God for such Princes and for so good a work And I would be and am ready to manifest to all wise impartial men whose Religion is Love and not Malice under the name of Zeal that in many Doctrines that we are by some supposed to differ in Fundamentals ignorance hath feigned the difference to be doubly greater than it is And I think many of Forbes and Spalato's Arguments in his very Learned Books de Republ. Eccles. to be worthy the serious study of every Learned man I know Luther took the Doctrine of uncertainty of Salvation alone to be cause enough of our unreconcileableness with Rome and yet I know as well that it is not one godly person of many yea very many of them that are farthest from the Papists who do
their own hearts cannot be believed even when the state of their worldly interest bears witness to their professions but another shall step into the throne of the heart-searching God and say It is not as they say or swear It is not conscience but obstinacy or singularity All humane converse upon these terms will be overthrown And what remedy have they but prtiently to wait till God whom they have appealed to shall decide the doubt and shew who were the assertors of truth or falshood And p. 19. They are not Indifferent in the judgment of dissenters though they be so in yours And p. 13. And if it be said that men do willingly keep out the Light we must say that few men are obstinate against the opinions which tend to their ease and advancement in the world and to save them from being vilified as Schismaticks and undone And when they profess before the Lord that they do impartially study and pray for knowledge and would gladly know the will of God at the dearest rate we must again say that those men must prove that they know the dissenters hearts better than they are known to themselves that expect to be believed by charitable Christians when they charge them with wilful ignorance or obstinate resisting of the truth This was then the profession which the Nonconformists consented to no man of them once contradicting it and Mr. Calamy here accused among the first 4. After this in their debates with the Bishops at the Savoy they undertook to prove the sinfulness of several things then imposed And when Bishop Cousins then in the Chair gave them in a writing desiring them to distinguish sins from inconveniences and to debate only that which they accounted flat sin they gave him in eight particulars reserving liberty to add the rest and one of them was That it is sinful for a Minister of Christ to exclude or reject from the Churches Communion in the Sacrament persons Godly and otherwise duly qualified meerly because that fearing it though causelesly to be a sin they dare not receive the Sacrament kneeling This they earnestly desired to have begun with and dispute at large and offered to have then given in their arguments and then to have proceeded to the other seven particulars 5. The Kings Declaration about Ecclesiastical affairs had a little before given them a relaxation or indulgence as to those things which they accounted the greatest sins such as in the Declaration may yet be seen especially the Subscription that there is nothing in all the books there mentioned contrary to the word of God c. And it did not concern us or become us to talk at the the Savoy against the sinfulness of those particulars which his Majesty had in Clemency and as a healer so lately freed us from But why were they in the Declaration suspended as for our Concord if they had not been judged to be unlawful by the dissenters when we ever professed that in all lawful things we would obey 6. But yet the part of our Answer is that at that time the new Subscription and Declaration since imposed and the alterations in the Liturgy and the Corporation and Oxford Oath c. were not invented or in being and so we had never opportunity and leave to declare our judgment and reasons of the sinfulness of the new Conformity which to us was the heaviest part 7. But surely our Nonconformity on terms so hard declared it sufficiently to all reasonable men If 1800 Ministers none of them cast out as accused of any other crime should have ceased the work of their office and occasioned divisions in the Land and have cast themselves and families into so many years distress and poverty and all this for to avoid that which they took to be no sin they had not deserved the name of Christs Ministers of Christians or of men 8. Lastly Those Writings which any of the Nonconformists have since ventured to publish for their cause have all of them downright endeavoured to prove that Conformity is a sin Let Mr. Cawdrey's Mr. Hickman's Dr. Collins's or any of all the rest be perused and this will be found the scope of the books Yea he that they judged moderate in these matters in his book called Sacrilegious Desertion of the holy Ministry rebuked saith O be not too angry with those that censure you as sinners God hateth sin and so must all that truly love him And they are our best friends that do most to preserve us from it and they are our greatest enemies that would flatter us into it To preach against sin is your Ministerial office And if any man think that you make a solemn Covenant to sin that you may have leave to preach against it yea that you deliberately commit a greater one that you may have leave to preach against a lesser in other men this man deserveth to be heard though he mistake If we say nothing to you yet it is easie to gather by the costly terms on which we avoid it that we take Conformity to be a sin I must tell you that we cannot but think that you need repentance great repentance for sinning more and that by publick deliberate chosen convenanted ministerial sin protesting against repentance in the day when judgments called us all to renew our repentance for our former sins We beseech you be not too angry with us for differencing between good and evil between him that sweareth and him that feareth an Oath as long as we do it to the loss and suffering of our own flesh which disputeth in us more cunningly and strongly for Conformity than all the Durells the Fullwoods the Stilemans c. in England We have naturally no more love to poverty to scorn to a prison than you have It is not pleasure profit or worldly preferment that we contend for we would do no man hurt or wrong If our lovers of Church-power do think us intollerable because we obey them not as fully as they desire we profess before God and Man that it is not because we would not be subject and obedient to any as far as will stand with our obedience to God but only because we dare not we will not do that which we believe that God forbiddeth us And if we err it is not for want of studying perhaps as hard and impartially as they to know the truth It is sin and no small or tolerable sin which our consciences fear in our forbearing Subscriptions and Conformity Ch. 12. And now Reader Pity pity pity the Ministry the Church the World that have such men such usage such historical informers as these that can that dare thus publickly and confidently face down the ignorant that we take not Ministerial Conformity and Communion with them to be sin And never wonder at it if the same men should as confidently print that we are all profest Mahometans And as to his report of Mr. Calamy's words before the King we must
that book of Mr. Baxters But we observe that these men most injuriously impute the very opposition of some Sectaries and passionate weak persons to us that are opposed by them because that all go under the name of Nonconformists 2. His second Reason is Our mighty shew of zeal in all Religious performances Ans. And how knoweth he that it is but a shew Are they like to be better that shew no zeal Can a man believe the great things of Heaven and Hell and preach them without great seriousness and zeal and not play the hypocrite Who is it that said Isa. 58. 1. Cry aloud lift up thy voice like a trumpet c. But Christs kinsmen themselves went about to lay hold on him thinking that his zeal was a transportation or distraction Mat. 3. 21. Vid. Dr. Hammond in loc no wonder if mens tongues condemn us for zeal though our consciences condemn us for remisness and coldness in matters of everlasting consequence 3. His third Reason is p. 21. A very great specious seeming sanctity in carriage and common deportment the sheeps clothing worn by the wolves c. Ans. 1. Will not even strangers from such words suspect that our adversaries own not or have not at least so much as such a seeming sanctity of carriage How else could this be noted as a difference 2. And how knoweth he that knoweth not hearts that this is but seeming 3. And how do these charges of a loose doctrine and great seeming sanctity well agree 4. Would he have us not so much as seem holy and so not seem Christians that we may escape such censures 5. And how shew we that we are Wolves Christ meant that Wolves are known by their cruelty and Paul saith Acts 20. 29. that the grievous wolves that shall enter will not spare the flock We confess v. 30. that we ever expected that from our own selves some would arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them by reason of whom the way of truth should be evil spoken of 2 Pet. 2. 2. and it hath accordingly come to pass with some but with fewer of the Ministry than we might have feared according to the experience of the first ages of the Church But sure it is not we that wearing white garments have bloody jaws we persecute none we silence not our brethren And let our enemies judg of our Accuser by his own words p. 125. No men ever were better studied in all the little things that make a fair shew in the sight of the vulgar and carry with them any appearance of piety No men ever were exacter at Oral and Gestural sanctity than they are what their hearts are God and their own consciences know we will not judg them when yet the Book is an opprobrious judging them What can be said more for us than this and how contrary is it to the rest of their Accusations 4. His fourth Reason runs thus p. 126. Another method by which these persons attract a great veneration from their followers is the suffering a seeming persecution They appear evidently on the suffering side and providence hath cast them upon acting the sadder scene the Laws are something smart against them Ans. 1. This man yet confuteth the former that maketh us gainers 2. But what escape is possible from such Accusers Did we make those Laws against our selves Do we persecute our selves Shall Clergy-men provoke Magistrates to make such Laws as he calleth smart and then make our sufferings to be one of our methods If this be the method to obtain Veneration I doubt such as the Accusers will hardly learn it 3. But in our experience the vulgar usually most honour the prospering and upper side and set light by sufferers as if their very usage proved their desert It is like to be the better sort that are so compassionate and so much value men that for conscience are vilified by others But p. 132. he hath found out covetousness in our sufferings which others lay upon us and saith that Calamy found three days in Newgate more gainful than half a years preaching at Aldermanbury so that now we have found out another Vice that may possibly be in this matter Pride and Covetousness too c. Ans. Is this the Justice of Sacred Clergy-men 1. Do they lay us with Rogues in the common Gaols for preaching the Gospel when they forbid us and then envy us that charity there relieveth us and that any are more merciful than themselves Do these men believingly preach Matth. 25. I was hungry and ye fed me I was in prison and ye visited me c. 2. How knoweth this man what Mr. Calamy received Is it likely that he knoweth what he saith to be true which none of us know that better knew Mr. Calamy than he 3. If our friends are so liberal sure they are a better sort of people than the Conformists if those Preachers say true who tell the world what a wretched case their Clergy would be in if their maintenance depended on the will and charity of the people But to make them no better than they are one of us that writeth this can say by experience how like this report is to be false for when he lay for the ordinary cause many times three days in the Common Gaol he was never offered a groat by any but one Countrey Knight one Lady and one Citizen and a by offer from one that he had reason to refuse nor received a farthing from any but these three which did but defray his Prison and Law charges but not by many pounds his Losses by that prosecution 5. His fifth Reason is Their continual applauding and commending their people and crying them up as saints Ans. 1. And what get we by so doing 2. Why are we censured for preaching against mens sins if we are flatterers 3. Whom is it that we cry up for Saints Is it only Nonconformists Let our Writings witness whether our description of Saints be right or wrong But if none must be justified as Saints none will be saved as Saints Which doth the world among us take for the plainer dealers and which party for the more smooth and toothless Preachers And now let it be judged by impartial men whether our sufferings were not enough and the far sadder sufferings of the peoples souls by our divisions and the undeniable want of due teaching in many places without all the addition of these hard reproaches And whether the cited Debate maker Vol. 1. p. 113. spake like a Divine a Christian or a man when he said There can no account be given of their behaviour since in cherishing this fancy among you or suffering it to grow that Conformity is unlawful unless it be this that they think it will make more for their reputation among you if you believe it was conscience not care of their own credit and reputation that kept them from conforming When we can obtain leave to be heard and give
or the superstitious people that must long keep up your reverence and honour We see by daily experience that the Atheists and Infidels and professedly impious ones deride you behind your backs and come very seldom to the publick Assemblies Your Assemblies are more made up of such as dislike your proceedings than of these that are brought beyond all fear of sin or punishment 12. The Preachers whom you silence would do you less hurt in their permitted publick Ministry than they do now or will do when you have done your worst In publick 1. Your friends and multitudes of several sorts will be their hearers and witness against them for every word that they say amiss But in secret they may take more liberty to oppose your way if they affect so doing 2. Your kindness and their own and the Churches interest will more oblige them to forbear you when they have publick liberty than when you prosecute them as foes 3. And the very Assemblies of men separated by expulsion and violence doth seem to invite all the people to a sense of the cause thereof which a liberty of such meetings without danger and unkindness would not do 4. And if you keep them from Assemblies they will make the deeper impressions on the people in the families and secret converse which they use 5. Or if you banish imprison or hang them their sufferings will do far more against you than all their preaching I am assured that it is you that advance the reputation of many Nonconformists and arm them thereby against your selves The truth is though they are commonly the most hearty serious feeling Preachers yet some of them are weaker as to the congruity of expression than the Debate maker or the young Politician But when the people see them true to their consciences they value them much more than they would have done if you had let them alone Whether you like it or not so it is and so it will be Therefore it is you that fight against your selves 13. You take the way to make your Church an unknown thing None are to be reckoned for Christians and Church-members but voluntary professors of it Coacti non est consensus And as Protestants tell the Papists They may know who come within their Temples but they never know who are members of their Church because they know not who professeth voluntary consent and who doth it involuntary by meer constraint And so it may be said of others that go their way 14. By the course fore-described you will have a Church so corrupted as will be a continual temptation to the most religious sort to distaste it if not to separate from it When men that fear sin are the suffering side and fearlesness of sin and a conscience that can do any thing is full security from all those penalties it is easie to foresee what sort of people you will make your friends who will do you more harm than good and what sort will be more and more alienated from you And then the zealous sort of Ministers and people will from age to age be the sharp reprehenders of your vices And then that will encrease your enmity against them And what will this come to at last I will give you but two instances now to calm you Gildas our ancient Britain hath so characterized the British Clergy even in those elder and less tempted times that he doubteth not to call them Wolves and not Pastors and plainly to profess that he that took them for Ministers or Pastors was not eximius Christianus one of the more excellent sort of Christians What could a Separatist have said more of you And yet you can praise Gildas for it is not in your power to eclipse his glory and not endure the same words from any one that is near you The other is that oft mentioned instance of St. Martin who would not come to their Synods nor communicate at all with Ithacius Idacius and the rest of the Prelates of the Synods and Countrey about him though of the very same belief because by their cruel ungodly prosecution of the Priscillian Hereticks they had taught the world the way of violence in matters of Religion and had made the strictest Religious people every where brought under the malignant suspition of being Priscillianists so that having but once for the saving of a condemned mans life communicated with the Bishops being a Bishop himself at the perswasion of the Emperor Maximus he was as he professeth sharply rebuked for it by an Angel in a Vision and would communicate with them no more And what worse do the Separatists do by you as to communion And yet Sulpit. Severus tells you by what abundance of Miracles Martins credibility was confirmed Hear a little of the story from your own Hooker with his application judg you to whom I deny not but that our Antagonists in these controversies may per adventure have met with some not unlike to Ithacius who mightily bending himself by all means against the Heresie of Priscillian the hatred of which one evil was all the virtue he had became so wise in the end that every man careful of virtuous conversations studious of Scripture and given to any abstinence in diet was set down in his Character for suspected Priscillianists For whom it should be expedient to approve their soundness of faith by a more licentious and loose behaviour such Proctors and Patrons the truth may spare Can you endure these words of Hooker too short a scrap of that notable history and can you mark them and learn by them to know your party and to foresee the end and perceive what service such do the Church Nonconformists think that this is too like our present case 15. Sword-severities as coming from the instigations of the Clergy do abundance more harm than if they came from the Magistrate alone Experience telleth us that they have ever made the Clergy much more odious than the Magistrate Because the Sword is the Magistrates weapon And if he err in using it it doth the less abate mens respect to his person because it is but the misdoing of his proper work Or if he drive men into hard thoughts of his person it hath not much influence on the honour of Religion But Ministers have nothing to do with the Sword Their office is exercised by Gods Word alone and that is the only weapon with which they are to strike offenders And their office being only to govern by Light and Love the people cannot bear that from them which they do from Magistrates It seemeth a monstrous and horrible usurpation to them And if the Clergy will play the hypocrites as the Papists do and say We do not meddle with the Sword but only deliver them up to the Secular power to be punished when they tell the Secular power that it is their duty and drive them on to it with the threats of Excommunication or Damnation this will never reconcile the