adoring and praising God and praying for the remission of their sins Your being so much a stranger to our Church Prayers has inclined me to give you this large account of them and of my own thoughts I might here undertake also to satisfie your scruples of kneeling at the Sacrament and the Ring in Marriage but there has been so many good reasons given of them in several small Treatises for the justification of them that I will decline that trouble both for yours and my own sake And offer unto you the few following observations and so put an end both of yours and my own trouble And in order to doing this I desire you to look back with me to the beginning of the late Long Parliament 1640. at which time we were the quietest and happiest people in the Christian World And praised be God we yet are so we had then a prudent and consciencious King whose life was a pattern of Temperance Patience Piety and indeed of all the Christian Graces He governed I think by the known Laws of the Nation Every man sate then under the shadow of his own Vine and did eat his own Grapes that is enjoy'd the benefit of his own labour and eat his own bread in peace We had then no need of a Court of guard to keep the discontented inferiour people from rising against Government We had then no need to raise those Monthly Taxes to pay those Courts of guard and other Charges that are now come to be of necessity to secure us from the yet unseen Commotions of a malicious restless discontented Party which were first made so by the example of the ill-natured Presbyterians And continue to be so by retaining the destructive Principles they then taught them and which do still threaten us with new Commotions thus happy we were then and he that considers the present miseries of Germany Poland France and indeed of all Christian Nations how many Cities lately were and at this time are besieged what devastations and ravishings and fears follow running Armies what terrours and wants those poor distressed people now groan under he that considers all this and compares our present condition with theirs ought to say that England is at this time the happiest Nation in the Christian world But our unhappiness is that peace and plenty will not suffer us to think so and study to be quiet and thankful This I beseech you to consider seriously and good Cosin let me advise you to be one of the thankful and quiet Party for it will bring peace at last Let neither your discourse or practice be to encourage or assist in making a Schism in that Church in which you were baptized and adopted a Christian for you may continue in it with safety to your soul you may in it study sanctification and practise it to what degree God by his grace shall enable you You may fast as much as you will be as humble as you will pray both publickly and privately as much as you will visit and comfort as many distressed and dejected Families as you will be as liberal and charitable to the poor as you think fit and are able These and all other of those undoubted Christian graces that accompany Salvation you may practise either publickly or privately as much and as often as you think fit and yet keep in the Communion of that Church of which you were made a Member at your Baptism These Graces you may practise and not be a busie-body in promoting Schism and Faction As God knows your Fathers Friends Hugh Peters and John Lilbourn did to the ruine of themselves and many of their Disciples Their turbulent lives and uncomfortable deaths are not I hope yet worn out of the memory of many He that compares them with the holy life and happy death of Mr. George Herbert as it is plainly and I hope truly writ by Mr. Isaac Walton may in it find a perfect pattern for an humble and devout Christian to imitate And he that considers the restless lives and uncomfortable deaths of the other two who always liv'd like the Solamander in the fire of contention and considers the dismal consequences of Schism and Sedition will if prejudice or a malicious Zeal have not so blinded him that he cannot see reason be so convinc'd as to beg of God to give him a meek and quiet spirit and that he may by his grace be prevented from being a busie body in what concerns him not The reasons that I have offered to your consideration have crouded so fast into my present memory that they have made my Letter more perplext and longer and indeed some expressions in it bitterer than I intended when I began it But I beg your pardon for both And supposing I have it I will close all with this friendly advice and caution Remember you and I are but Citizens and must take much that concerns our Religion and Salvation upon trust I will explain my meaning for what I say and have said by this following Parable There was a man that was and continued under so great a mistake that though he thought and granted his Neighbour to be strong enough to lift a hundred pound weight from the ground yet could not be brought to believe or grant that he was able to lift fifty pound weight from it which was doubtless a great mistake But if you will give me leave I will explain my self by a more proper Parable and then make my Application The same mistaking-man offered and was willing to lend his Neighbour a hundred pound though it were his whole Estate upon his single Bond but being desired to lend him fifty pound upon his Bond he durst not trust him with that lesser Sum lest the Borrower should not be able to repay him And so he the Lender prove to be undone by the Borrowers inability to repay him Before I make my Application of what I have told you give me leave to tell you the Papists would obtrude upon all Christians a belief that all those doubtful Books which the Church of England calls Apocryphal were certainly writ by Divine Inspiration and ought to be of equal Authority with those which we call Canonical Scripture and that the foundation for our faith and manners to God and man may and must be laid equally upon both But I think we agree with the Papists concerning all the Books of the New Testament that is that all were writ by Divine Inspiratione But the Lutherans deny some part of the New Testament which both the Papists and we believe and grant to be writ by Divine Inspiration And now for my Application let me ask you seriously Are not you like this mistaking-man that durst trust a greater but not trust the Borrower with a lesser Sum of money You have trusted the Bishops and a select Clergy in a Convocation to tell you These you shall take to be Canonical Books of Scripture and no other Upon the truth of those and only those that they declare to be the holy Scripture you lay the foundation of your Faith and hope of Salvation You have trusted the Bishops that is the Church of England first their Learning and Wisdom to know and then their Integrity to tell you truly which is the blessed and holy Scripture With these great and necessary concerns of your Faith and Salvation you have trusted them and yet like the mistaking man you dare not trust them with what is of less concern Namely you do not believe them when they tell you how the Primitive Christians did worship and praise and pray to God And though you have trusted them to translate the Scriptures into English as being best learned in the Original Languages yet you dare not or do not trust them with the explanation of many words which have in the Original an ambiguous or doubtful meaning especially to us of the Laity who cannot know the Customs and Phrases of those Nations where our Saviour and his Disciples preached the glad tidings of our common Salvation Cosin I hope I have in this made some unforc'd and so useful Observations as an humble and good Christian will not gainsay And doubtless a soul truly humble will both think and say Almighty God hath appointed me to live in an Age in which Contention increases and Charity decays and it is certain that variety of Opinions and Controversies in Religion declare difficulty to know them truly but my comfort is That without Controversie there is so much Religion without Controversie as by the true practice of what is so I may save my Soul And therefore to make sure of that I will first become an humble Christian and conclude that I will in all doubtful things obey my Governours for sure they see a reason which I neither can or need to know why they command them I will be sure to be humble to fast and pray to be Charitable to visit and comfort dejected Families to love my Neighbours to pardon my Enemies and to do good to all Mankind as far as God shall enable me For I am sure these be Sacrifices which please Almighty God and will bring peace at last And I am sure that by using these graces these graces and my faith in Christs Merits for my Salvation will be more and more confirmed and by still using them more and more new graces will be still added and all be still more and more confirmed so confirmed as to bear witness with me and be my comfort when I must make my last and great account to the Searcher of all hearts Almighty God give me grace to practise what I have commended to your consideration for this and this only can and will make my life quiet and comfortable and my death happy And my dear Cosin as I wish my own so I wish yours may be September 12 1679. Your Affectionate Kinsman R. W. THE END
TWO LETTERS TO A FRIEND Concerning the DISTEMPERS OF THE Present Times LONDON Printed for Charles Brome at the Gun in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1686. THE FIRST LETTER CONCERNING COMPREHENSION Written 1667. Good Cousin I Am sorry that the Parliaments casting out the Bill of Comprehension should so much concern you as to put you into such a passion as you exprest against them and me at our last nights meeting Sure the Company you now converse with and the strange Principles with which they have now possest you have alter'd your nature and turn'd your former reason into prejudice and unbelief if not you would have believed what I did so seriously affirm to be a known truth namely That this Age is not more severe against the disturbers of the settled Peace and Government of the Church and State than they were in the very happy days of our late and Good Queen Elizabeth Some of the Reasons why I said so I do with very much affection tender to your Consideration and to your Censure too and that the last may be the more charitable and you not apt to make the errours or failings of your Governours seem more or greater than indeed they are let me intreat that you remember what I have very often said to you namely That malicious men of whom really I do not take you to be one are the best Accusers and the worst Judges And indeed I fear it would prove to be a very bitter truth if some did attain that power which too many labour for in these days in which Schism and Sedition are taken to be no sins even by men who pretend a tenderness of Conscience in much smaller matters And that I may keep some order and you be the better satisfied in what I intend in this Letter I earnestly intreat that you will at your next leisure read in Mr. Cambdens true History of the Life and Reign of our Good Queen Elizabeth in which you may find what care was then taken to prevent Schism and the sad confusion that attends it and how the Contrivers of Libels and dispersers of them have been severely punisht many of them even to death as namely Henry Barrow and many of his Sectaries for disturbing the publick peace of the Nation by scattering abroad their monsterous Opinions as also for affirming the Church of England to be no true Church and the like Which you may find written by the said Mr. Cambden in the thirty-sixth year of that Good Queens Reign But I commend more especially to your Consideration the story and sad death of Hacket and his Adherents as namely of Wigirton Arthington and Copinger all Schismaticks and of one Sect and Brotherhood But I say I do most seriously commend to your Consideration the beginning and death of the said Hacket who was first a pretender to a tenderness of Conscience but a Schismatick and stopt not there but became by degrees so fully possest by the evil spirit the spirit of pride and opposition that he publickly reviled the Queen the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellour and being transported with a furious Zeal did at last become from a Schismatick to be so infamous an Heretick that he was condemned to death for his abominable Errors at which time he reviled and curs'd his Judges and died blaspheming and reproaching his Creator This you may read in the Thirty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth as it is written by honest learned Mr. Cambden who concludes this sad story of Hacket with this observation Thus doth the enemy of Mankind bewitch those men whom he seeth are not content to be wise unto sobriety These stories I say and too many like them you may find in Mr. Cambdens History of Queen Elizabeth and you may find the like in Bishop Spotswoods History of the Church of Scotland and also find the like in Mr. Fullers History of the Church of Great Brittain in which you may observe what labour hath been used by the discontented Non-conformists to unsettle the Government of the Church of England and consequently of the State and may there also find how severely many of them have been punished So that you need not wonder at what I said last night nor think these the only times of persecuting men of tender Consciences And for the better confirmation of what I now write I will refer you to one testimony more in the time of our late peaceful King James Which testimony you may view in the second Volume of the Reports of Judge Crook a man very learned in the Law But I shall first tell you the occasion of that Report which was this The Non-conformists which are in that Report called by the name of Puritans had given out that the King had an intent to set up or give a Toleration to Popery and they had also compos'd a large Petition complaining of the severity of some usage and of some Laws that concerned themselves and desired that the severity of those Laws might be mitigated these and other like desires were in the said Petition to which they had procured not less than seven hundred hands and the close of the Petition was That if these desires were not granted many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented Which indeed was not a threatning but was understood to be somewhat like it This report of his Majesties intent to set up or tolerate Popery begot many fears and discontents in the Nation and to prevent greater disturbances the King did appoint many of his Privy Council and all the Judges of the Land to meet together in the Star-Chamber in which Assembly the Lord Chancellour declared to them the occasion of this their publick Convention and asked the Judges this following question As you may read it in the very same words in the said learned Judges Reports in the second year of the Reign of King James Whether it were an offence punishable and what punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and collected a multitude of hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denied their Suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented Whereto all the Judges answered that it was an offence finable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising Sedition Rebellion and Discontent among the People To which Resolution all the Lords agreed And then many of the Lords declared That some of the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the King That he intended to grant a Toleration to Papists Which offence the Judges eonceived to be bainously finable by the Rules of the Common Law either in the Kings Bench or by the King and his Council or now since the Statute of the Third of Henry the Seventh in the Star-Chamber And the Lords severally declared How much the King was discontented with the said false rumour and had made but the day
the remainder of your days you and they may redeem the time past by repenting your indiscreet zeal and study to be quiet and to do your own business to this I shall encourage you and that done to live as unoffensively to others and as strictly to your self as you do intend and by God's grace added to your endeavours he shall make you able and I humbly beseech Almighty God that you and I may daily practise an humble and a peaceable piety so humble and peaceable a piety as may stop the mouths of all gain-sayers for it is certain such holy and quiet living will bring peace at the last And in this the Almighty God give me grace to be like you Study to be quiet and to do your own business 1 Thes 4. 11. February the 18. 1667. Your Affectionate Friend and Cosin R. W. THE SECOND LETTER Dear Cousin I Return you my unseigned thanks for your Letter of the 15. instant which I received three days past it was mixt with love and anger but I shall in this my answer observe what you so earnestly desire namely not to justifie the Errors or Irregularities of those that you call my Party or my Clergy And for some testimony that I will do what I profess I will begin with a Confession that I think as you say That when a Clergy-man appears in a long curled trim Periwig a large Tippet and a silk Cossock or the like vain and costly Cloathing If he preaches against Pride and for Mortification his Hearers are neither like to believe him or practise what he preaches either then or at other times though what he says be an undoubted truth Because Example is of greater power to incline men to Vice than Precepts have to persuade to Virtue And I wish as heartily as you do that all such Clergy-mens Wives as have silk Cloaths be-daubed with Lace and their heads hanged about with painted Ribands were enjoyned Penance for their pride And their Husbands punisht for being so tame or so lovingly-simple as to suffer them for by such Cloaths they proclaim their own Ambition and their Husbands folly And I say the like concerning their striving for Precedency and for the highest places in Church-Pews And I wish as heartily as you do that double Benefices were not dispensed with to such an inconvenience as is now too visible And that no Dispensations might be granted for any man to be Prebend or Canon-Residentiary of two Churches Such as Westminster and Durham or Windsor and Wells Because Residence and the other duties required in those places is not consistent with their distance from each other nor with the Donors intention And also because such a single Prebend is a fair support for an humble Clergy-man and if he be proud or covetous he deserves not so much And I confess also what you say of a Clergy-mans bidding to fast on the Eves of Holy-days in Lent and the Ember Weeks And I wish those biddings were forborn or better practised by themselves for it is too visible they do not what the Church for good reasons enjoyns them and they others in the Churches name And I wish as heartily as you can that they would not only read but pray the Common Prayer and not huddle it up so fast as too many do by getting into a middle of a second Collect before a devout Hearer can say Amen to the first But you ought to consider that there be Ten thousand Clergy-men in this Nation for there are Nine thousand Parish Churches in it besides Colledges and Chappels and the number of them that be thus faulty are not many when compared with those that be grave and regular And I could name many of the Episcopal Clergy whose lives are so Charitable Humble and Innocent that they might say to their Parishioners as St. Paul of himself to his Philippians Walk so as you have me for an Example But I must confess there are too many that do not live so and with whom I am as much offended as you express your self to be And now having unbowelled my very soul thus freely to you and I protest as sincerely and truly as I can express my self My hope is that I shall in what follows appear to be so uninterested in any Party that where I speak evident truth and reason you will assent unto it in which hope I will endeavour to lay before you in my plain way the many inconveniences that would I think follow if that liberty were granted which you and your Party have so long and do still so earnestly strive for the effects of which liberty would be Schism Heresie Rebellion and Misery from which God prevent us I did in a Letter writ now some years past endeavour to unbeguile your Brother And though it did not at that present wholly do what I designed yet it abated so much of that furious zeal that had prepossest him that he declared on his death-bed The remembrance of those hours spent in devotion and acts of Charity were then his comfort and those spent in disputes and opposition to Government were now a Corrosive or as Solomon says of ill-gotten riches like gravel in his teeth And my dear Cozen in hope of the like good success I shall in the following part of my Letter commend the same or like Arguments to your consideration in order to the undeceiving you And I shall not be so curious for words or method as diligent to speak reason and truth plainly and without provocation And first I will consider our happiness that were born baptized and do now live in the Church of England which is believed by the most learned of all Foreign Churches to be the most Orthodox and Apostolical both for Doctrine and Discipline of all those very many that have reformed from the corruptions of the Church of Rome And I think it is worthy your noting that those Bishops and Martyrs that assisted in this Reformation did not as Sir Henry Wotton said wisely think the farther they went from the Church of Rome the nearer they got to heaven for they might go too far but they did with prudent and deliberate consideration retain what was consistent with Gods Word and the practice of the most Apostolical Primitive and purest times as may appear by the many unanswerable reasons that have been given against both the Non-Conformists and Papists that have excepted against our Reformation The first for retaining too much and the latter for not enough For you ought to note that neither of them have ever writ against the Doctrine or Discipline of this Church but they have received answers to their damage And this being considered you ought to lay to heart the disturbance that many of you that pretend to tenderness of Conscience have formerly made and do still make in this Church and State even at this present time And you ought to consider that if this Church were overthrown the Church of Rome would make