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
life Some other for lack of knowledge follow after willful and blind masters and become Arrians or Pelagians and thus they blaspheme the Son of God Some others give themselves over to their own affections and as he saith rejoyce and triumph in their filthiness without fear of God without conscience of sin and so tread down the blood of the Testament under feet and this do they for lack of teaching because they have not learned men and preachers to shew them what they should do O saith our Saviour Christ the good shepherd and bishop of our souls my harvest is beaten down and lost and there is none that will go abroad and save it My people run headlong to their own destruction not of Malice but of very simplicity only because they are not taught because they know not my father nor me Also it is not my fathers will that any of them should be lost But for the hope of posterity I report me to all you which are fathers and have children for whom you are careful Although your selves have a zeal and care for the house of God yet will you breed them up keep them at School until four and twenty years old to your charges that in the end they may live in glorious poverty that they may live poorly and naked like the Prophets and Apostles Our posterity shall rue that ever such fathers went before them And Chronicles shall report this contempt of learning among the punishments and murrains and other plagues of God They shall leave it written in what time and under whose raign this was done Or if we grow so barbarous that we consider not this or be not able to draw it into Chronicle yet fortain Nations will not spare to write this and publish it to our everlasting reproach and shame In the mean time what may be ghessed of their meaning which thus ravin and spoil the house of God which decay the provision thereof and so basely esteem the Ministers of the Gospel they cannot say to God The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up Howsoever in other things they do well howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means forraign power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done unto us as we be for suffered the truth of God shall be taken away the holy Scriptures burnt and consumed in fire A marvellous darkness and calamity must needs ensue For if the tempest be so dark in the sea that the load-star lose her light and the needle tail to give token of the North Pole no marvel though the ship lose her course and be swallowed in the sands The Gospel of Christ is the fountain of light and of knowledge It cannot be maintained by ignorance and darkness These be the props of their kingdom which take away the Scriptures which hold the people in blindness which flie the light which have their common prayers minister the Sacraments marry bury their dead in a strange tongue that the people may understand nothing which make a famme of hearing the word of God which stop up the springs of the water of life which take away the keys of the kingdom of Heaven and neither enter in themselves nor suffer them that would enter which say ignorance is the mother of devotion and the Church is then in best order and the people most devout when they are hood-winckt and blinded and see nothing These are not fit instruments wherewith we may overcome the adversaries This is not the sword of the spirit these are not the spiritual weapons which cast down holds and every high thing that is exalted against the kingdom of God When man that would keep out his enemy will pull down his holds what Captain that meaneth to give a forcible assault upon the enemy will discourage his fighting souldiers but our Souldiers are out of courage our Castles are falling therefore that which we tear will fall upon us Bishop Gauden THese and such like are the uncouth expressions used to usher it under the names of Liberty Curiosity sublimity nothing but Ignorance Idleness 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 Papalusurpations 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 truely they spell nothing but first popular extravagances which are the embasings and embrovlings 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 very vigilant and and active doth then move most potently upon the face of our English waters when there is to be seen nothing but a sea of confusion a meer Chaos of the Christian and Reformed Religion Which feared deluge and by wise men forseen devastation of the Reformed Religion once wisely established honourably maintained and mightily prospered in the Church of England is already much spread and prevalent among many people under the plea and colour of I know not what liberty to own any or no Minster any or no Religion any none or many Churches in England The visible decayes and debasings of the true and Reformed Religion in England as to piery equity unity and charity as to the authority of its Ministry and solemnity of its Ministrations are so palpable both in the outward peace and profession also in the inward warmth and perswasion that it is high time for all sober and wise men that love God Religion and their Country mightily to importune the mercies of God that breathing upon us with a spirit of meekness and wisdom truth and love humility and honesty he would at length asswage that deluge of contempt and confusion the troubled and bitter waters of wrath and contention which have overwhelmed the highest mountains of this Church over-topping by their salt waves and aspersions the gravest wisest most learned and religious both Preachers and Professors of the Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation Which licentious insolencies have made all sober Christians so sick weary and ashamed of them that they cannot but be infinitely grieved to see and fore-see the low ebbe to which the Reformed Religion in its purity and power must in time fall in England while the pristine dignity and authority of the Evangelical Ministry is so invaded baffled and depised while the authentick derivation and Catholick succession of that holy power is so
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