gravity prudence and Eminence of godly and Reverend Bishops by the brotherly assistance and son-like subordination of sober and orderly Presbyters by the service and obsequiousness of humble and diligent Deacons and by the meek submission of Christian people to the Care Monition Counsel and respective Superiority of every order as sheep to their Chief shepherds and their Assistants or Attendants Divide this chain of Church-Vnion Order and Communion in vain shall we talk of healing the Flock of its scabs and scratches or hurts I confess that I own and ever shall do Primitive Episcopacy with Presbytery so that as St. Paul speaks in another case Neither of them should be without the other in the Lord Neither of them oppressed or extirpated but so regulated and incouraged as I believe all moderate and learned men desire if it be my fault and errour that I prefer this Holy and Catholick Composition before any other late simple receipts of Church Government by which to heal any Church Truly I owe this my Judgement to all the Councils to all the Fathers to all the Church Historians to be best witnesses of truth in all times who have unanimously conspired to lead me into this opinion agreeable to the Word of God the example of Christ the practise of the Apostles and the parallel customes of all Churches which is besides mightily confirmed in me by the wisdom piety and prosperity of this Church under good Bishops since its Reformation which none in the world exceeded for health and happiness for sound and sincere Christians till some mens itching and scratching too much even till the blood came and others either not applying seasonable Salves or else sharper Remedies than perhaps were necessary or prescribed by the wisdom of our Church Laws have festred the hurts and sores of Religion that they now seem almost incurable till such hands are by Gods goodness applyed and such Medicines used as are most proper for a sick and diseased Church which hands and Medicines I cannot think ought to be Secular but rather Ecclesiastick Such in a free Synod of learned Divines should as a Colledge of spiritual Physitians advise and prepare for there is as much need of calling for free Synods as Free Parliaments The want of the former G. Naz. deplores as the occasion of so much Faction and Vexation in the Church in his times Lay-men though learned able and honest have enough to do in Lay Matters Church-men have nothing left them to do as to Secular Councels or State Concernments therefore ought not to be excluded from their proper sphere Church affairs being the best skilled of any men else they are ill imployed in the things of God for the searching supplying and healing the hurts of the Church and true Religion in its Doctrine Discipline Order Vnity and Authority That maxime is true of the Clergy as well as of other Orders of men Vnicuique credendum est in sua arte Every man is most to be credited in what he is most skilled I am sure as to the point of Physitians no people that are wise and would be healed in good earnest but are careful to get the best and ablest unless they undervalue their health and lives and to save charges will venture to dye Fourthly They That is those Souldiers and Military men Chief Commanders and Others under them these heal but sleightly when either they will be as the Clowns all-heal the onely Professors of State Physick and undertake all cures in Church and State or else they think and act as if there were no such way to heal soundly as to make greater wounds and bruises by irreconcilable distance by preposterous power and violent impressions even on those that both commissionate them and recompence them They are Iron Heads Brazen Faces and Stony Hearts who crye that Might gives Right And all power is of God though unjustly gotten and so used against the Word of God and the Laws of the Land such is a commission the Devil may boast of as well as any evil doers but little to the comfort of either when mens will is their onely warrant in Law and sad successes their onely security in Conscience when Souldiers make their backs and bellies the Commonwealth putting their Interest of pay and power into the ballance against all others when they are but as the dust of the ballance to the weight of the Nation for number and estates When men of War know not the way of peace but onely to avoid it seeking to make themselves necessary by keeping the wounds open and the sores raw of a Nation pleading necessity and native Liberty and I know what Good Old Cause or Metaphysical godly interests unknown to our Lawes or fore-fathers and it had been happy if we never had known them Lastly When Military men are injurious rapacious and insolent lovers of themselves more than of God or the Church or their Countrey when they look more to their Guns and Pistols than to God or godliness to their swords than to his Word and to the Riddles of Providence more than the Rules of conscience resolved to sacrifice the daughter of their people as Agamemnon did Iphigenia or Jephta his on the Altar of the Military interest These will be smart and chargeable healers of the hurts of the daughter of their people when they shall be such as prepare Warre against any that speak of Peace when such as esteem the speedy healing of their Countrey to the publick peace to be their greatest hurt when they grow so desperate as they had as live be damned as fairly disbanded though in order to the publick ease and tranquillity When as no good Souldier that either fears God or loves his Countrey or reverences the Church or hopes to save his own Soul but will most seriously strive to avoid the latter and most willingly submit to the former without the sin of Rebellion or Mutiny being content with his wages and more that his sharp work is at an end and no more need of cutting and lancing remembring that it is not multitude or Power or Armies or Armes that shall help injurious and dissolute Souldiers from the vengeance of God when they have deserved it by such wicked Counsels and Actions as cannot be carried on but with the Devils maxime Scelera sceleribus tuenda continued injuries and cruelties to the daughter of their people to Church and State to their brethren and Countrey men yea to their fathers and posterity But our hope is that God hath by his sore rebukes and defeats of some who trusted too much in the swords and spears in their own Armes their horses legs taught others more wisdome justice and modesty yea and stirred up such a spirit of Christian valour moderation and honour in some gallant Souldiers of more just Principles and nobler Spirits that they will not rest till they have put the hurts of the daughter of their people
we have wrestled for many years Indeed your City ows some Reparation now payd it to the whole Nation not only for the advantages it hath from all parts but for the disadvantages which all have suffered not from the ill intentions but from some tumultuating dispositions which as Porpusses were pregnant in your sea of people when our troubles first began I hope God hath prepared blessings for you and by yours for the whole Nation by opening your eyes humbling your hearts disposing your minds and exciting your spirits to thoughts of Justice and Piety of Repentance Restitution and Peace We have had wounds and hurts enough healings and strong Delusions too many It is high time if it be Gods time to speak comfortably to Zion and tell her Warfare is accomplished to pour in the Balm of Gilead by sober and aquanimious Counsels to bind up by orderly just power what hath been long broken to make up the grand defects in our Government and to lay foundations of future peace and happiness in Righteousness and Truth That the enemies of our now Religion and this reformed Nation may not rejoyce in our continued miseries and say So would we have it I have sought to do my duty if some think I have overdone it I must crave your patrociny to assert that which by your acceptance seemed to be your sense as well as mine and is as I hope the sense of all honest and judicious men For men that are fanciful fanatick we need them not to make us happy I am sure they have made a shift to make us very miserable And if God had not in mercy set bounds to the rage of that sea and the madness of that people they would have made your City an heap of ashes and our Countrey a field of Blood It will be your Wisdom Honour and Happiness to keep in the bounds of just moderate religious and sober Counsels to aim at legal honest and tried wayes of settlement to apply to such Physicians as you find most able and faithfull so will health and salvation break forth upon you and the three Nations which is the earnest prayer Of your humble servant in Christ J. GAVDEN A SERMON PREACHED Before the Lord Mayor Aldermen c. of London IER. 8.11 For they have healed the hurt of the Daughter of my people slightly saying Peace peace when there is no peace BEing called to this publick service by the piety and civility of this great City Right honorable and worthy Auditors I could not well tell how to avoid it because it seemed so good a work nor yet upon so short warning how to accept of it being so great a work if either I regard the importance of the occasion which looks like a door of hope opened to the healing of these Nations and composing of their sad distractions by the counsels of a full and free Parliament and by the assistance of regular and orderly power Or if I consider as I ought in prudence the difficulty and danger of touching though in order to heal the old sores and fistulating ulcers of this Church and State which are now vetuscentia mala annosi morbi inveterate dolors obstinate evils and pertinacious maladies not only impatient to be touched freely and searched throughly but are prone to plead as the Devils in the Gospel who had possessed the poor man now a long time against all health and recovery Many men like Canters and Lazars are in love with their wounds and ulcers getting their living more easily by keeping their sores open raw and running than if they should quite heal them up I am further conscious not only to the touchiness of the times and the tenderness of many mens minds who are only for lenitives and oyles for soft smooth and supple applications even to their most desperate hurts but to that my own native parrhesia or freedom of speaking which is both customary and consciencious not that I affect unseasonable severities of speech and such rudeness under the pretence of freedom as rather exasperates the wound and inflames the humor than purgeth allays or easeth them But I profess to chuse not to preach at all than to preach timorously or precariously Vt Lugdunensem Rhetor dicturus ad aram as if I should ask men leave to be honest or were afraid to speak the Word of God to them When I am called to speak in Gods name I must be Parrhesiastes as well as Ecclesiastes I am to do it as a workman that needs not to be ashamed either for his ignorance or cowardise or indiscretion whether men will hear or forbear the whole counsel of God must be delivered in its season so as becomes the words of soberness and truth for the Church or Pulpit must not be a sanctuary for insolency or a burrow or a retreat for rudeness No however men may become our enemies for speaking the truth yet it is better so than to have God our enemy for smothering it when it is just and seasonable and such it is when necessary and soveraign to heal the hurt of a Church or State It hath been my fate frequently to offend some men when I have been most intent to serve them by Texts and Sermons which I thought most apt useful and innocent When I preached at the Court Anno 1640. upon that Heb. 12.14 Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see God When before the long Parliament at its first convening upon Zach. 8.19 Therefore love the truth and peace When at another great and epidemick Assembly upon 1 Cor. 3.19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God Of all three though wholsom and innocent Texts and I hope accordingly handled yet I heard some unpleasing Ecchoes and reflexions the sore and itching ears of some men in all ages are such that they will not endure {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} healing or sound and wholesom doctrine though the pain riseth from the soreness and inflammation in themselves and not from the plaister or hand which honestly applies it yet they are prone as in fell boils and acute tumors when touched though but gently to fly upon those that are next them and cry aloud O you hurt me when the hurt is within and from themselves Sound parts will endure free and rough handling such as are unsound do most want it and therefore if we will be faithful to God to our own souls and to our hearers we must not flatter their sores to their ruine but rather chuse to heal them though at present we be thought to hurt them nor shall our labor of love be in vain either in the Lord or before good men who at length will finde by experience that the wounds of a friend which let out the putrified matter of painful tumors are better than the kisses of an enemy which do infidis cicatricibus cuticulam
cruelty than so spare me by a cruel clemency as to spoil and damn me for ever saith the devout man There are spiritual maladies and miseries too which give a people over to Dementation and astonishment to blindness and madness to seek after and trust in lying vanities and desperate hypocrisies to rest in the flatteries of successes or the applauses of the vulgar who think every one that prospers to be a God or a good Angel and every one that is unfortunate to be a Devil or a great offender as the Barbarians did St. Paul when the Viper seised on his hand and he shaked it off unhurt Hence any Idol of Superstition any meteor of Enthusiasm any glow-worm of fanatick fancy and fury serves the turn and instead of Gods candles and lamps of pure Religion in well-ordered Churches as golden candlesticks God takes away these burning and shining lights and leaves a people to the sparks they have kindled to be satisfied with their own delusions to believe lyes to rejoyce and glory in their evil and perverse ways and when God hath taken away his peace and truth from them both in Church and State they will fall under grievous violences oppressions and exactions of men whose mercies are cruel and their healings further hurts which shall make their very souls bow down to the ground that proud men may pass over them when nothing but fury and sedition at home nothing but war and invasion from abroad is in reason to be expected yet then some people will easily smile and fawn on their oppressors they poor wretches being prone to believe as Country fellows do the Montebanks that all is well and whole which powerful hands undertake to touch they will eccho peace peace in Church and State and cry up a Commonweal when indeed it is a common woe as to the grand interests of the Nation in the best and noblest yea in the most of its parts and members which can never be fully happy unless they be of one heart and mind of one Law and Religion as to the main Which leads me to the Third Particular The Medela or sanatio the seeming and pretended yea professed and boasted healing of the Nations hurts They have healed with saying Peace Peace {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} repetita duplicata firma certa pax nothing but peace enjoyed and peace to be expected says Zedekiah and Hananiah the false Prophets who lied in the name of the Lord We may observe the cunning of those Empiricks those false Physicians who are of no value they use this sweet welcome word of peace to the people which is a Catholicon comprehensive of all enjoiments for every want is a kind of war when they cry peace and repeat the crambe of peace peace and sing this song or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} over and over again they hope as Demetrius and his fellow-craftsmen by crying Great is Diana of the Ephesians even to a raving and hoarseness to make the people believe that the image which came down from heaven was certainly a goddess wih this lullaby of peace peace do the Polititians and oppressors of a Nation seek to quiet the trefe and wayward people when they cry out of their ailes and oppressions as poor Micah did when the churlish Danites took away his gods and his Priests yet was he demanded what he ailed so to cry after them So the great Artists of State that they may the better set off their skill make as Montebanks larg Haranges specious and popular orations like Herod most artificial speeches mixed with preaching and praying and sprinklings of Scripture and Gods cause as guiled or syrupped bitter pils to give the better gusto still concluding with the Epiphonema of peace peace when behold nothing but usurpation and oppression grievous exactions and heavy loads bonds and chains and prisons are everywhere prepared for those that dare cry or complain or call for remedy Pessimi medicastri impensius ostentant artem None make ampler prefaces brags and spreadings of their skill and salves and rare feats than the most arrant Quacks and Cheats These as the Magicians of Egypt sometimes so enchant poor people that they believe all to be miraculous at least innoxious which comes from the tongues and hands of those who possess them as Heathens ascribed all blessings to their Idols the most crying Injustice must be thought the highest Justice the greatest contempt and curb the strongest oppression and delusion of a Nation the wildest and most partial toleration must be voyced for liberties yea for precious Christian Liberty purchased with much blood and treasure the grossest Anarchies and most snarled misgovernments whose wheels are oft taken off and whose weight drives heavily over the very heads and bellies Laws and Liberties of the Nation as that Romane Virago Tullia Hostilia did her chariot over her Fathers corps to the depression of the honor and freedom of Princes Peers and best of the people this is voyced peace peace the most irreligious licentiousness in doctrine opinion speech and manners must be reputed freedom of spirit the most novel and unjust just cause that ever was on foot must needs be cryed up for the Good Old Cause when 't is indeed quite contrary to the goodness of Equity and the antiquity of truth Such monstrous soloecisms there are in the world between some mens words and actions between the credulity of cowardly people and the reality of their enjoyments This is the cunning this the confidence and this the cruelty of some State Juglers and their Plebeian Parasites to boast of all they do or say is in order to peace paace when by Peace they mean as Salust expresseth it nothing but the servility or the solitude of a Nation that all interests sacred civil and military may truckle under their high and mighty power their tripple crowns submissis faucibus deferre imperium All that search and try their ways or wounds rather are offendors even for a word if they dare speak whisper think or weep ought but peace peace When such valiant such succesful such holy such praying such preaching such Saintly such Seraphick men have gotten power and place and plenty and palaces O now all is peace peace And the better to colour over the overthrow of three flourishing Nations which from the pile of three united Kingdoms are fillipped to the cross of an ill sodered Commonwealth some men must by all means pretend to set up as John of Leyden and his Complices did the Kingdom of Righteousness the Throne and Scepter of King Jesus Which is justly esteemed a Kingdom of peace being seldom or never advanced by an active war but only by a passive yet is this a principal decoy to impose upon vulgar people for who will not seem willing and forward to submit to Christs Kingdom that he may rule and reign But we are not