prosecute them or cast them out as it is against the nature of the body to dismember it self by cutting off any of the parts And it is easie to bring such Persons to Agreement at least to live in Charitable Communion But on the other side the Carnal Selfish and Unsanctified of what Party or Opinion soever have a Nature that is quite against holy Concord and Peace They want that love which is the natural Balsom for the Churches wounds They are every one Selfish and ruled by Self-Interest and have as many Ends and Centres of their Desires and Actions as they are individual Men. They are easily deceived and led into Errour especially in Practicals and against Spiritual Truths for want of Divine Illumination and Experience of the Things of God and a Nature suitable thereto Their Designs are Carnal Ambitious Covetous as Worldly Felicity is their Idol and their End God is not taken for their highest Governour his Laws must give place to the Desires of their Flesh Their very Religion is but Pride and Worldliness or subject to it They have a secret Enmity against a holy spiritual Life and therefore against the People that are holy They love not them that are serious in their own Religion and that go beyond their dead Formality This Enmity provoked by Self-interest or Reproof doth easily make them Persecutors of the Godly if they have but power And their carnal worldly hearts incline them to the carnal worldly side in any Controversies about Religion and to corrupt it and make it a carnal thing These Hypocrites in the Church do betray its Purity and Peace and â—ell Christ's Interest and the Gospel for as small a price as Iudas sold his Lord for And though in a time when God's Providence setteth his own Cause on the higher ground and giveth it the advantage of holy Governours these Men may possibly be serviceable to its welfare as finding it to serve their carnal Ends yet ordinarily they will â—ell the Peace of the Church for Preferment and are either imposing persecuting Dividers or discontented humourous Dividers and hardly brought to the necessary terms of a just and holy and durable Peace of whom I have more largely written in my Book called Catholick Unity These and many more Impediments do rise up against all conciliatory endeavours § 22. But I found not all these alike in all the disagreeing Parties though some of both Sorts in every Party The Erastian Party is most composed of Lawyers and other Secular Persons who better understand the Nature of Civil Covernment than the Nature Form and Ends of the Church and of those Offices appointed by Christ for Men's Spiritual Edification and Salvation The Diocesan Party with us consisted of some grave learned godly Bishops and some sober godly People of their mind and withal of almost all the carnal Politicians Temporizers Prophane and Haters of Godliness in the Land and all the Rabble of the ignorant ungodly Vulgar Whether this came to pafs from any thing in the Nature of their Diocesan Government or from their accommodating the ungodly Sort by the formal way of their Publick Worship or from their heading and pleasing them by running down the stricter sort of People whom they hated or all these together and also because the worst and most do always fall in with the Party that is uppermost I leave to the Judgment of the considerate Reader The Presbyterian Party consisted of grave orthodox godly Ministers together with the hopefullest of the Students and young Ministers and the soberest godly ancient Christians who were equally averse to Persecution and to Schism and of those young ones who were educated and ruled by these As also in those places where they most prevailed of the soberest sort of the well-meaning Vulgar who liked a godly Life though they had no great knowledge of it And this Party was most desirous of Peace The Independant Party had many very godly Ministers and People but with them many young injudicious Persons inclined much to Novelties and Separations and abounding more in Zeal than Knowledge usually doing more for Subdivisions than the few sober Persons among them could do for unity and Peace too much mistaking the Terms of Church Communion and the difference between the Regenerate invisible and the Congregate or visible Church The Anabaptists Party consisted of some but fewer sober peaceable Persons and orthodox in other Points but withal of abundance of young transported Zealots and a medley of Opinionists who all hasted directly to Enthusiasm and Subdivisions and by the Temptation of Prosperity and Success in Arms and the Policy of some Commanders were led into Rebellions and hot Endeavours against the Ministry and other Ioandalous Crimes and brought forth the horrid Sects of Ranters Seekers and Quakers in the Land § 23. But the greatest Advantage which I found for Concord and Pacification was among a great number of Ministers and People who had addicted themselves to no Sect or Party at all though the Vulgar called them by the Name of Presbyterians And the truth is as far as I could discover this was the Case of the greatest number of the godly Ministers and People throughout England For though Presbytery generally took in Scotland yet it was but a stranger here And it found some Ministers that lived in conformity to the Bishops Liturgies and Ceremonies however they wisht for Reformation and the most that quickly after were ordained were but young Students in the Universities at the time of the change of Church Government and had never well studied the Point on either side And though most of the Ministers then in England saw nothing in the Presbyterian way of practice which they could not cheerfully concur in yet it was but few that had resolved on their Principles And when I came to try it I found that most that ever I could meet with were against the Ius Divinum of Lay Elders and for the moderate Primitive Episcopacy and for a narrow Congregational or Parochial Extent of ordinary Churches and for an accommodation of all Parties in order to Concord as well as my self I am sure as soon as I proposed it to them I found most inclined to this way and therefore I suppose it was their Judgment before Yea multitudes whom I had no converse with I understood to be of this mind so that this moderate Number I am loth to call them a Party because they were for Catholicism against Parties being no way pre-engaged made the Work of Concord much more hopeful than else it would have been or than I thought it to be when I first attempted it § 24. Things being in this Case I stood still some years as a looker on and contented my self to wish and pray for Peace and only drop now and then a word for it in my practical Writings which hath since been none of my smallest troubles The Reasons were 1. Because I was taken up in Practicals and in such
Gospel will convince you to great Satisfaction as also of what Oppositions and Deâ—iverances and Preservations he met with there And you have here some Taâ—â—s and Informations of his Thoughts and Studies and of his Books and Letters to divers Persons of different Stations and Quality and also of what Pens and Spirits wrote against him He was of such Repute and Figure in his day as that many coveted to see his Face to hear his Voice and to receive his Resolution of weighty Cases of Conscience proposed to him And in all this you will find that verified of him which the Lord Bacon hath deliver'd from his Pen viz. Much Reading makes Men full Much Writing makes them judicious and acute and much Conversation makes them ready I have been amazed to see how hastily he turned over Volumes how intimately he understood them how strangely he retained his Reading and how pertinently he could use it to every proposed Case Men stayed not long for what they wrote to him about and what he wrote was to great satisfaction and to the purpose He wrote his Books with quick dispatch and never but when he thought them needful and his duty then to write them And when as the Reader well considers his Apology for his Books hereafter mentioned let him but seriously weigh what is alledged and accordingly form his Censures His mentioned and recited Casuistical Letters and Books savour at least of Thought and Pains and perhaps the Reader 's patient and attentive minding of both his mention'd Books and Letters will not be loss of time and pains And though through too much haste and heedlesness some few Escapes perhaps Inaccuracies in the beginning may distaste his curious eye yet a very few Pages following will yield him better Entertainment § VII But the great things which are as the Spirit of this History are the Accounts he gives of the Original Springs and Sources of all these Revolutions Distractions and Disasters which happen'd from the Civil Wars betwixt King Charles the First to the Restoration of Charles the Second and whaâ— was Consequent after thereupon to Church and State And here we shall find various and great Occurrences springing from different Principles Tempers and Interests directed to different Ends and resolved into different Events and Issues The Historian endeavours to be faithful candid and severe Nothing of real serviceable Truth would he conceal Nothing but what was influential on and might or did affect the Publick Interest would he expose to Publick View Nothing that might be capable of candid Interpretation or Allay would he severely censure Nothing notoriously criminal and fatal to the Common Good would he pass by without his just Resentments of it and severe Reflections on it As to his immediate Personal acquaintance with or knowledge of the things reported by him I know no further of that than as he himself relates As to what he received from others by Report how far his Information was true or false I know not Indeed I wrote with tender and affectionate respect and reverence to the Doctors Name and Memory to Madam Owen to desire her to send me what she could well attested in favour of the Doctor that I might insert it in the Margent where he is mentioned as having an hand in that Affair at Wallingford House or that I might expunge that passage But this offer being rejected with more contemptuousness and smartness than my Civility deserved I had no more to do than to let that pass upon Record and to rely upon Mr. Baxter's report and the concurrent Testimonies of such as knew the Intreagues of those Times Yet that I might deal uprightly and upon the square I have mention'd this though obiter to testifie my Respects to him with whom I never was but once but I was treated by him then with very great Civility indeed § VIII I cannot deny but it would have been of great advantage to the acceptableness and usefulness of this Book had it's Reverend Author himself revised compleated and corrected it and published it himself I am sure it had ministred more abundantly to my satisfaction for I neither craved nor expected such a Trust and Legacy as his Manuscripts Nor knew I any thing of this his kind purpose and will till two or three days before he dyed My Heart akes exceedingly at every remembrance of my incumbent Trust and at the thoughts of my Account for all at last I am deeply sensible of my inability for such Work even to discouragement and no small Consternation of Spirit I want not apprehensions of the Pardon which I shall need from God and Candour from Men both which I humbly beg for as upon the knee I know the heart and kindness and clemency of my God through Jesus Christ But I know not yet what Men will think speak write concerning me God speak to Men for me or give me Grace and Wisdom to bear and to improve their Censures and Reflections if such things must be my Discipline and Lot Quo quisque est major magis est placabilis ira Et faciles motus mens Generosa capit Corpora Magnanimo satis est prostrasse Leont Pugna suum sinem cum jacet hostis habet At lupus turpes instant Morientibus ursi Et quaecunque minor nobilitate fera est Ovid. Trist. Eleg. iv However let the Reader bear with me if I attempt to obviate what I apprehend most likely for Men to reply and urge upon me by offering these things to serious and impartial Thoughts relating to 1. The Author 2. The Treatise 3. The Publication And 4. My self First the Author 1. He was one who lov'd to see and set things in their clearest and most genuine Light he well considered what sort and size of Evidence and Proof all things were capable of Matters of Sense are evident by their due Appulses on the Senses Matters of Doctrinal Truth by Demonstration Matters of History by credible report and he could consider well how Certainty and Probability differed Nor was he willing to he imposed upon or deceived through Prejudice Laziness Interest or a factious Spirit To say he never was mistaken for undoubtedly he had his Errours and Mistakes some of them retracted and publickly acknowledg'd by him when discern'd is to attribute more to him than any meer Man can say and more than any impartial and severe Student will arrogate to himself I shall never call the Retractation of a discovered Errour or Mistake a Fault but rather a commendable Excellence and I judge it better to argue closely than bitterly to recriminate or traduce Truth needs neither Scoff nor Satyr to defend it 2. This made him so solicitous to leave behind him such an Impartial Account of the History of his Times and of his own Endeavours in his place and day to promote Holiness Truth and Peace 3. He hence observ'd how these great Concerns were either promoted or obstructed and by whom What was
Rest and coming in it to answer the Question How in Matth. 25. the reward is adjudged to men on the account of their good works The chief Propositions of that Book did suddenly offer themselves to me in order to that Resolution But I was prepared with much disputing against Antinomianism in the Army At Sir Thomas Rous's House in my weakness I wrote most of that Book and finished it when I came to Kidderminster I directed it to Mr. Vines and Mr. Burgess out of my high esteem of them though my personal acquaintance with them was but small Mr. Vines wrote to me applaudingly of it Mr. Burgess thought his Name engaged him to write against it Two Faults I now find in the Book 1. It is defective and hath some Propositions that need Correction being not cautelously enough expressed 2. I medled too forwardly with Dr. Owen and one or two more that had written some Passages too near to Antinomianism For I was young and a stranger to mens tempers and I thought others could have born a Confutation as easily as I could do my self and I thought that I was bound to do my best publickly to save the World from the hurt of published Errours not understanding how it would provoke men more passionately to insist on what they once have said But I have now learned to contradict Errours and not to meddle with the Persons that maintain them But indeed I was then too raw to be a Writer This Book was over-much valued by some and over-much blamed by others both contrary to my own esteem of it It cost me more than any other that I have written not only by mens offence but especially by putting me upon long and tedious Writings Some that publickly wrote against it I publickly answered And because of the general noise about it I desired those that would have me of their mind to send me their Animadversions which proved so many that took me up too much of my time to answer them But it was a great help to my Understanding For the Animadverters were of several minds and what one approved another confuted being further from each other than any of them from me The first that I craved Animadversions from was Mr. Burgess and with much ad extorted only two or three Letters against Justification by Works as he called it which with my Answers were afterward published when he had proceeded to print against me what he would not give me in writing The next and full Animadversions which I received were from Mr. Iohn Warren an honest acute ingenious man to whom I answered in freer Expressions than to others because he was my Junior and familiar Friend being a School-Boy at Bridgenorth when I was Preacher there and his Father being my Neighbour Next his I had Animadversions from Dr. Iohn Wallis very judicious and moderate to which I began to write a Reply but broke it off in the middle because he little differed from me The next I had was from Mr. Christopher Cartwright of York who defended the King against the Marquess of Worcester he was a man of good reading as to our later Divines and was very well verst in the Common Road very like Mr. Burgess a very good Hebrician and a very honest worthy Person His Animadversions were most against my distinction of Righteousness into Legal and Evangelical according to the two Covenants His Answer was full of Citations out of Amesius Whittaker Davenant c. I wrote him a full Reply and he wrote me a Rejoynder to which my time not allowing me to write a full Confutation I took up all the Points of Difference between him and me and handled them briefly confirming my Reasons for the ease of the Reader and my self The next Animadverter was Mr. George Lawson the ablest Man of them all or of almost any I know in England especially by the Advantage of his Age and very hard Studies and methodical Head but above all by his great skill in Politicks wherein he is most exact and which contributeth not a little to the understanding of Divinity Though he was himself near the Arminians differing from them in the Point of Perseverance as to the Confirmed and some little matters more and so went farther than I did from the Antinomians yet being conversant with Men of another Mind to redeem himself from their Offence he set himself against some Passages of mine which others marvelled that he of all Men should oppose especially about the Object of Faith and Iustification And afterwards he published an excellent Summ of Divinity called Theopolitica in which he insisteth on those two Points to make good what he had said in his M. S. against me though the Reader that knoweth not what past between him and me will not understand how these Passages there fell in and some Divines have told me how excellent a Book it had been if he had not been led aside in those Particulars not knowing how it came to pass the ablest Men being sometimes most hardly drawn to desert any thing which they have once affirmed He hath written also Animadversions on Hobbes and a piece of Ecclesiastical and Civil Policy according to the Method of Politicks an excellent Book were it not that he seemeth to justify the Kings Death and meddle too boldly with the Political Controversies of the times though he be a Conformist Also I have seen some ingenuous Manuscripts of his for the taking of the Engagement to be true to the Commonwealth as established without a King and House of Lords his Opinion being much for submitting to the present Possessor though a Usurper But I thought those Papers easily answerable His Animadversions on my Papers were large in which he frequently took occasion to be copious and distinct in laying down his own Judgment which pleased me very well I returned him a full Answer and received from him a large Reply instead of a Rejoinder to which I summ'd up our Differences and spoke to them briefly and distinctly and not verbatim to the Words of his Book I must thankfully acknowledge that I learnt more from Mr. Lawson than from any Divine that gave me Animadversions or that ever I conversed with For two or three Passages in my first Reply to him he convinced me were Mistakes and I found up and down in him those hints of Truths which had a great deal of Light in them and were very apt for good Improvement Especially his instigating me to the Study of Politicks in which he much lamented the Ignorance of Divines did prove a singular Benefit to me I confess it is long of my own Uncapableness that I have received no more good from others But yet I must be so grateful as to confess that my Understanding hath made a better Improvement for the sudden sensible increase of my Knowledge of Grotius de Satisfactione Christi and of Mr. Lawson's Manuscripts than of any thing else that ever I read and they
peaceable Reformation among us than to break down This Partition-Wall for there is nothing provokes more than this doth to deny such Churches to be true Churches of Christ. For do but think with your selves and I will give you a familiar Example You come to a Man whom you think to be a godly Man you tell him He hath these and these Sins in him and they are great ones It is as much as he can hear though you tell him he is a Saint and acknowledge him so but if you come to him and say besides this You are a Limb of the Devil and you have no Grace in you this provoketh all in a Man when there is any Ground in himself to think so or in another to judge him so so it is here Come to Church and say You have these Defects among you and these things to be reformed But if you will come and say Your Churches and your Ministers are Antichristian and come from Babylon there is nothing provoketh more Therefore if there be a Truth in it as I believe there is Men should be Zealous to express it For this is the great Partition Wall that hindreth of twain making one Then again This is that which I consider and it is a great Consideration also I know that Jesus Christ hath given his People Light in Matters of this Nature by degrees Thousands of good Souls that have been bred up and born in our Assemblies and enjoy the Ordinances of God and have done it comfortably cannot suddenly take in other Principles You must wait on Christ to do it In this Case Men are not to be wrought off by Falshoods God hath no need of them no rather till Men do take in Light you should give them all that is comfortable in the Condition they are in we should acknowledge every good thing in every Man in every Church in every thing and that is a way to work upon Men and to prevail with them as it is Philem. v. 6. That the Communication of thy Faith may become effectual acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Iesus It is that which buildeth Men up by acknowledgment of every good thing that is in them Lastly The last Inconvenience is this It doth deprive Men of all those Gifts that are found amongst our Ministers and in this Kingdom that they cannot hold any Communion or fellowship with them So that I profess my self as Zealous in this Point as in any other I know And for my part this I say and I say it with much Integrity I never yet took up Religion by Parties in the Lump I have found by tryal of things that there is some truth on all Sides I have found Holiness where you would little think it and so likewise Truth And I have learned this Principle which I hope I shall never lay down till I am swallowed up of Imortality and that is that which I said before To acknowledge every good thing and hold Communion with it in Men in Churches or Whatsoever else I learn this from Paul I learn this from Jesus Christ himself He filleth All in All He is in the Hearts of his People and filleth them in his Ordinances to this Day And where Jesus Christ filleth why should we deny an Acknowledgment and a right Hand of Fellowship and Communion My Brethren this Rule that I have now mentioned which I profess I have lived by and shall do while I live I know I shall never please Men in it Why It is plain for this is the Nature and Condition of all Mankind if a Man dissents from others in one thing he loseth himself in all the rest And therefore it a Man do take what is good of all sides he is apt to lose them all But he pleaseth Christ by it and so I will for this particular Thus far Dr. T. Goodwin prefaced and commended by Thankful Owen and Iames Barron worthy and peaceable Men deceased The Transcriber craveth judicious Resolutions of these two Questions 1. Whether it be lawful to be a fixed Member of a grosly Schismatical Church that is guilty of such separating from slandering almost all others as is here reproved when Communion with better may be had Quest. 2. How far others are bound to reprove and Testify against such dividing Principles Ministers and Churches especially after and under doleful Experience of their sinful calamitous Effects Dear Brother I Have felt that in my own Soul and seen that upon my Brethren for these two or three Years last past which persuadeth me that God is about the healing of our Wounds having communicated more healing Principles and Affections and poured out more of the Spirit of Catholick Love and Peace than I have perceived heretofore Love is arisen and shineth upon the Children of the Day and your congealed Stiffness begins to vanish and a Christian Tenderness to succeed The Prince of Peace erects his Banner and the Sons of Peace flock in apace It is a shame to be the last but a misery to be none God will bring his divided distracted Servants nearer together and it is Pity he should be put to bear down any resisting Saints among the Instruments of Satan and that any of their Carcasses should be found on the Ground when he conquereth the Enemies of Peace The Lord is about revealing to his Servants the Error of their Consoriousness Harshness Uncharitableness and Divisions and how grievously they have wronged him and themselves by departing so far from Christian Love and Unity He will let them see how much of the Cause was secret and undiscerned Pride and Self-conceitedness and want of Holy Christian Love while little was pretended or discerned but Strictness and Obedience He will shew them more fully wherein the true Nature of Grace and Holy Obedience doth consist and teach them by the Impress of his Spirit what he so emphatically commanded them by his Word to go learn what that meaneth I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice It 's pity we should not understand the meaning of Words so plain but it 's Sin and Shame as well as Pity that we have studied them no better after such a Memorandum and Command as this But many of God's Servants have in the Points of Unity and Peace been like those miserable Souls that are described to have Eyes and see not Ears and hear not Hearts and understand not these blessed Precepts of Love and Unity though none more plain and frequent and urgent for the time was not come that they should be recovered and healed though this Defection be not in the Essence of Christianity but the Degrees nor for Perpetuity but a Time yet it 's sad that such a Spirit of deadness should so far prevail that Men inquisitive after Truth and zealous of Holiness should least understand the plainest nearest frequent Precepts and so little feel their Obligations to such weighty Duties that the Lord is pleased to stir upon their
Faction or Turbulency who preacheth but to a few in his own House And where should he use his Ministry if not in so vast a Parish where so many Thousands are untaught and where he is not sure that his old relation is dissolved though the Tythes and Temple be given to another One Mr. Grove that oft heard me being lately dead and his Widow sick she sent for Mr. Sanger to visit her who after a short Instruction prayed with her while he was at Prayer Dean Lampley the Parson or Vicar of the Parish came in and heard him at Prayer staying till he had done in an outer Room and as soon as he had done as Mr. Sanger affirmeth came in upon him and fiercely askt him What he did there He told him Nothing but what beseemed a Minister of the Gospel to visit the Sick when he was sent for And to the second Expostulation told him That he thought he should be thankful to him for helping him in such a Parish To which the Doctor answered That then he should have done it according to the Liturgy fiercely adding Get you out of the Room At which when he demurred he more fiercely took him by the breast and thrust him and said Get you out of the Room which to avoid unpeaceableness he forthwith did I saw not this but I think no Man that knoweth Mr. Sanger will question the Truth of his deliberate Affirmation of it In what Parish of England should a Man expect leave to visit the Sick when sent for rather than in St. Martins From what Minister in England should one rather expect leave than from Dr. Lampley who hath so many Thousands more than he and his Curate and Lecturer can suffice to teach and visit and who I hear is a very worthy Man and a Teacher of more than ordinary diligence and especially excelleth almost all that I hear of in Constancy in the needful Work of Catechising for which though I know him not I do much honour him And what Minister in England may expect leave to visit the Sick or privately help the Peopleâ— if not Mr. Sanger who was lately the Publick Incumbent himself and is a man as unlikely to stir up any Man to Envy or Wrath as most that ever I knew I will not parallel my own Case with his If I be unworthy of such liberty might not such as he be tolerated so far This being our Case will you be the Man that shall tell us and the world that we should have kept our Residence and joyned with the succeeding Ministers in private helps and how well we and Religion had then sped as if you had not lived in England to make Men think that the Parish Ministers are willing of this Yet I will again say Necessity is laid upon me and wo be to me if I preach not the Gospel though Men forbid it And if I either give but to one poor Man when I might give to a thousand or teach but one ignorant Sinner when I might teach a thousand how shall I look my Judge in the Face who gave me that terrible warning 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. as well as Matth. 2â— And did I think that ever you would have been one that should publickly have perswaded us to this When it is the grand Work of Satan to Silence the Preachers of the Gospel and the great Character of all sorts of his Agents one way or other on their various pretences to effect it Papists would silence me Prelatists would silence me Quakers Anabaptists Antinomians and Separatists would silence me and would my dear and judicious and experienced Friends silence me also Alas how many Difficulties have we to overcome while our weary Flesh and too cold Love and the Relicks of Sloth and Selfishness which loveth not a laborious suffering Life doth hinder us more than all the rest But the Judge is at the Door To Mr. W. Allen. Number V. SIR I Find that in a Book of yours defending Schism against Mr. Halis on pretence of opposing it you were pleased to think many Passages in my Writings worthy of your Recital to your ends I thank you that you chose any Words for Peace which some may make a better use of than your self But I think if you had referred Men to my own Books to read them with what goeth before and after they would have been more easily understood I understand by your Book that you think that you are in the Right which is the most that I have yet learned out of it unless it be also that you think the Nonconformists be not yet hated and afflicted enough or that he that sweareth must ascend by treading upon him that feareth an Oath I am in some doubt least you have wronged our Prelacy by so openly proclaiming the Enmity of so great a Man as Hales against them and by enticing Men by your Noise to read his Book which you contradict which if they do I doubt your Confutation will not save them from the Light But the Reason of my troubling you with these Lines is only to crave some Satisfaction about two or three Matters of Fact in your Book which would seem strange to me did I not find such things too common in Invectives against the silenced Ministers and did I not know that is part of Satan's Work to persuade the World that no History hath any certainty of Truth that so sacred History may be disadvantaged I. One is in these Words p. 101. When they had in the gand Debate given in their Objections to the Liturgy some of the Brotherhood had prepared another Form but a great part of their Brethren objected many things against that and never as yet did as I hear of agree upon any other nor I think ever will I crave the Justice of you to tell us which was that you call the Grand Debate and who those were that dissented or what Proof you have of any such thing Either you knew what you say or not If not and publish it in such a manner while you are accusing others of Sin What is this to be called if you did it is yet far worse either you speak of the Westminster Assembly which made the Directory or of the Commissioners in 1660. Not the first sure for none I think was yet ever vain enough to pretend that they thus drew up another Liturgy It must needs then be the latter Of which this is past denyal by any but the 1. That the King's Commission under the Broad-Seal authorizing to make some Additional Forms 2. The late Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Sheldon when we came according to appointment to try by Friendly Conference what Alterations each Party might yield to for our desired Concord without any injury to their Consciences began with a Declaration that we being the Plaintiffs they would no farther proceed or treat with us till we had given them in entirely in Writing 1. What we blamed in the Liturgy and our
and the Rule of his Faith and Life And repenting unfeignedly of his Sins he did resolve through the Grace of God sincerely to obey him both in Holiness to God and Righteousness to Men and in special Love to the Saints and in Communion with them against all the Temptations of the Devil the World and his own Flesh and this to the Death If therefore these things were Believed and Consented to by him and if these things do essentiate our Saving Christianity and so be sufficient to make us all one in Christ why should some different Modes and Forms of Speech wherewith these great Substantials may and do consist obtain of Men to think him Heterodox because he uses not their Terms And why should such Distances and Discords be kept up amongst us whilst we all of us own all the forementioned Articles and are always ready on all sides to renounce whatever Opinions shall appear to overthrow or shake such Articles of Faith and Covenanting Terms with God and Christ And I cannot but believe that all Christians seriously bound for Heaven and that are fixed upon these Truths are nearer each to other in their Judgments than different Modes of Speech seem to represent them Of such great Consequence is true Charity and Candour amongst Christians 3. The Reverend Prelates and the Ministers and Members of the Church of England may possibly distaste his plainness with them and think him too severe upon them But 1. they are no Strangers to his professed and exemplified Moderation Who valued their Worth and Learning more than he did Who more endeavoured to keep up Church Communion with them by Pen Discourse and Practise though not exclusively Who more sharply handled and more throughly wrote against and reprehended total Separation from them than himself And what Dissenter from them ever made fairer and more noble Overtures or more judicious Proposals for a large and lasting Comprehension with them than they knew he did And who more fairly warned them of the dismal Consequences and calamitous Effects of so narrowing the Church of England by the strict Acts procured and executed against so many peaceable Ministers who thereby were silenced imprisoned discouraged and undone And how many Souls and Families were ruin'd and scandaliz'd by their imposed Terms another and that a solemn and great Day will shew e're long 2. Our Author never yet endeavoured to unChurch them nor to eclipse their Worthies nor did he ever charge their great Severities on them all He ever would acknowledge and he might truly do it that they had great and excellent Men and many such amongst them both of their Laiâ—y and Clergy 3. He thought what I am satisfied is true that many of them little knew who and what was behind the Curtain nor what designed nor great Services were doing to France and Rome hereby 4. And his great Sufferings from them may well even as other things abate their Censuring if not prevent too keen Relentments of these Historical Accounts of them 5. And to leave these things out was more than Mr. Baxter would allow me or admit of Pardon one who acts by Order not of Choice 4. That such copious and prolix Discourses should be here inserted about Things fitter for oblivion than to be remembred may seem liable to Exceptions and Distast from some viz. such Discourses as respect the Solemn League and Covenant the Oxford Act c. Things now abandon'd and repealed by Act of Parliament for Liberty of Conscience But 1. those pressing Acts are yet upon Record and so exposed to the view of Men from Age to Age. 2. They represent Dissenters as an intolerable Seed of Men. 3. All Readers will not readily discern what here is said by way of Apology for those of whom such Acts took hold 4. Hereby Dissenters will appear to all succeeding Generations as a People worthy of nothing but National Severities and Restraints Whence 5. their Enemies will be confirmed in their groundless Thoughts and Censures of them 6. This will not lead to that Love and Concord amongst all Protestants which God's Laws and the Publick Interest and Welfare of Church and State require 7. Those things abode so long in force and to such fatal dreadful purpose as that the Effects thereof are felt by many Families and Persons to this day 8. And all this was but to discharge some of no small Figure in their Day from all Obligations to perform what had been solemnly vowed to God Surely such as never took that Covenant could only disclaim all Obligations on themselves to keep it by virtue of any such Vow upon themselves but to discharge those that had taken it from what therein they had vowed to God to do till God himself discharge them or that it be evident from the intrinsick unalterable Evâ—â— of the Matter vowed that no such Vow shall stand is more than I dare undertake to prove at present or to vindicate in the great Day However a Man 's own Latitude of Perswasion cannot as such absolve another nor eo nomine be another's Rule or Law But 9. if these long Discourses be needful pertinent clear and strong as to the state of that Aâ—â—air their length may be born with 10. The Author thought it needful to have this set in the clear open Light to disabule all that had been imposed on by false or partial and defective History in this Matter and to remove or prevent or allay Scandal and Censure for time to come 11. And if such things be also published to make our selves and others still more sensible of what we owe to God and to our most gracious King and his late Soveraign Consort and our then most gracious Queen Mary not to be parallel'd in any History that I know of by any of her Sex for All truly Royal Excellencies and to his Parliaments who have so much obliged us with freeing us from those so uncomfortable Bonds what Fault can be imputed to the Publisher herein Shall Gratitude be thought a Crime though more copious in the Materials of it than may every way consist with the stricter Bounds of Accuracy 12. I am apt to think and not without cogent ground that very many Readers now and hereafter would with the Author have thought me unfaithful to themselves and him had I not transmitted to Posterity what he left and as he left it for their use And I hope therefore that the Reader will not interpret this Publication as the Product of a Recriminating Spirit God himself knows it to be no such Birth Thirdly The Publication 1. The Author wrote it for this End 2. He left it with me to be published after his Death 3. He left it to the Iudgment of another and my self only by a Writing ordered to be given me after his Death as my Directory about the Publication of his other Manuscripts which are many and of moment And if thâ— rest entrusted with me about their being printed one or
Sins by the Merits of Christ and vouchsafed by his Spirit to Renew and Seal me as his own and to moderate and bless to me my long Sufferings in the Flesh and at last to sweeten them by his own Interest and comforting Approbation who taketh the Cause of Love and Concord as his own Now let the Reader judge whether any thing in all this can in the least infer his Doubting or Denial of a Future State or any Repentance of the Pains he took to establish others in the Belief and Hopes of what the Gospel tells us of as future It is strange to see how Men can trifle in their Soul-affairs and how easily they can receive whatever may mortifie the Life and Joy of Christian Godliness But we read of some that have been led Captive by the Devil at his will But this we may believe and all shall find that the Hell which they gave no credit to the report of they shall surely feel and that they shall never reach that Heaven which they would never believe Existent and worth their serious looking after Were it but a meer probability or possibility who will have the better of it When we reach Heaven we shall be in a Capacity of Insulting over Inâ—idels But if there be no Future State they can never live to upbraid us And it is but folly madness and a voluntary cheating of themselves for Men to think that Honour Parts or Learning or Interest or Possessions can ever skreen them from the Wrath of a neglected and provoked God And one would think that such a Spirit that can so boldly traduce and asperse Men is much below what has acted a Pagan Roman for even one of them could say Compositum jus fasque animi Sanctosque recessus Mentis incoctum genoroso pectus â—onesto Da cedò Pers. How little of this Spirit was in the Author and Promoter of this Aspersion I leave to his own and others Thoughts to pause on who he is I know not But for the sake of his Honour Soul and Faculty I must and will request of God that he may have those softer Remorses in his own Spirit in due season which may prevent a smarter Censure from the universal awful Judge and that he would soberly pause upon what that great Judge has uttered and left upon record in Matth. 12. 36 37. for it is what that Judge will abide and try us by I can easily foresee that Readers of different sorts are likely to receive this Work with different Sentiments 1. The Interested Reader in things related here will judge of and relish what he reads as he finds himself concerned therein He may possibly look upon himself as either commended or exposed blamed or justified whether justly or unjustly he may best know But I would hope that his Concernedness for the Interest of Equity and Truth and for the Publick Good will rather make him candid than severe 2. The Impartial Reader is for knowing Truth in its due and useful Evidence and for considering himself as liable to Imperfections if engaged in such work as this and thus he will allow for others Weaknesses as he would have his own allowed for 3. Should any Reader be censorious and stretch Expressions and Reports beyond their determin'd Line and Reach sober and clear Conviction in this Case may be their Cure 4. As to the Judicious Reader he loves I know to see things in their Nature Order Evidence and Usefulness and if he find Materials he can dispose them easily and phrase them to his own Satisfaction and at the same time pity the injudiciousness of a Publisher and the imperfections of the Author 5. As to the weak Reader for judiciousness is not every sober Person 's Lot it will be harder to convince him beyond his ability of discerning things in their distinctness truth and strength 6. As to the byassed Reader it is hoped that his second serious Thoughts may cure him of his Partiality 7. As to the selfish Reader it is bold for any Man to think himself Superiour to the rest of Men and that all must be a Sacrifice to his own Concerns and Humour A narrow Soul is a great Inâ—elicity both to its self to others and the Publick Interest 8. The Publick Spirited Reader is more concern'd for Truth than for any Thing that Rivals it his Thoughts and Motto is Magna est veritas praevalebit and he will think himself most gratified when Publick Expectations and Concerns are answered and secured best 9. Those that are perfectly ignorant of what the History is most concerned in will be glad of better Informations and the Things recorded will be as being Novel most grateful to him 10. As to those that were acquainted mostly with the Things here mentioned they will have their Memories refreshed and meet with some Additions to their useful Knowledge 11. And as to my self if there be any thing untrue injurious or unfit as to either Publick or Personal Concerns the Publisher hopes that the Reader will not look upon him as obliged to justifie or espouse whatever the Author may have misrepresented through his own Personal Infirmities or Mistakes for all Men are imperfect and my Work was to publish the Author's Sentiments and Reports rather than my own Nor will I vouch for every Thing in this History nor in any meer Humane Treatise beyond its Evidence or Credibility But let the Reader assure himself that I am his in the best of Bonds and Services whilst I am M. S. London May 13. 1696. A BREVIATE OF THE CONTENTS OF THE Ensuing Narrative Which was written by Parts at different Times PART I. Written for the most part in 1664. AFter a brief Narrative of his Birth and Parentage and large one of his School-masters Mr. Baxter proceeds to an Account of the means of his coming to a serious sense of Religion and of his perplexing Doubts and their Solutions to page 9. of his bodily weakness and indispositions to p. 11. of several remarkable Deliverances â—e met with viz. from the Temptations of a Court Life from being run over by a Waggon in a fall from a Horse and from Gaming p. 11 12. His applying himself to the Ministry Ordination by the Bishop of Worcester and Settlement in Dudley School as Master p. 12 13. His studying the Matter of Conformity and Iudgment about it at that time p. 13 14. His removal from Dudley to Bridgnorth and success there p. 14 15. of the coming out of the Etcaetera Oath and his further studying the point of Episcopacy upon that occasion p. 15 16. Upon occasion of this Etcaetera Oath he passes to the Dissatisfactions in Scotland on the account of the imposition of the English Ceremonies thence to Ship-money in England thence to the Scots first coming â—ither and so to the opening of the Long Parliament p. 16 17. After an Account of their Proceedings till such time as a Committee was chosen to hear Petitions
through all my Life to be an unvaluable mercy to me For 1. It greatly weakned Temptations 2. It kept me in a great Contempt of the World 3. It taught me highly to esteem of time so that if any of it past away in idleness or unprofitableness it was so long a pain and burden to my mind So that I must say to the Praise of my most wise Conductor that time hath still seemed to me much more precious than Gold or any Earthly Gain and its Minutes have not been despised nor have I been much tempted to any of the Sins which go under the name of Pastime since I understood my Work 4. It made me study and preach things necessary and a little stirred up my sluggish heart to speak to Sinners with some Compassion as a dying Man to dying Men. These with the rest which I mentioned before when I spake of my Infirmities were the Benefits which God afforded me by Affliction I humbly bless his gracious Providence who gave me his Treasure in an Earthen Vessel and trained me up in the School of Affliction and taught me the Cross of Christ so soon that I might be rather Theologus Crucis as Luther speaketh than Theologus Gloriae and a Cross-bearer than a Cross-maker or Imposer § 33. At one time above all the rest being under a new and unusual Distemper which put me upon the present Expectations of my Change and going for Comfort to the Promises as I was used the Tempter strongly assaulted my Faith and would have drawn me towards Infidelity it self Till I was ready to enter into the Ministry all my Troubles had been raised by the hardness of my heart and the doubtings of my own Sincerity but now all these began to vanish and never much returned to this day And instead of these I was now assaulted with more pernicious Temptations especially to question the certain Truth of the Sacred Scriptures and also the Life to come and Immortality of the Soul And these Temptations assaulted me not as they do the Melancholy with horrid vexing Importunity but by pretence of sober Reason they would have drawn me to a setled doubting of Christianity And here I found my own Miscarriage and the great Mercy of God My Miscarriage in that I had so long neglected the well settling of my Foundations while I had bestowed so much time in the Superstructures and the Applicatory part For having taken it for an intolerable Evil once to question the Truth of Scriptures and the Life to come I had either taken it for a Certainty upon Trust or taken up with Common Reasons of it which I had never well considered digested or made mine own Insomuch as when this Temptation came it seemed at first to answer and enervate all the former Reasons of my feeble Faith which made me take the Scriptures for the Word of God and it set before me such Mountains of Difficulty in the Incarnation the Person of Christ his Undertaking and Performance with the Scripture Chronology Histories and Stile c. which had stalled and overwhelmed me if God had not been my strength And here I saw much of the Mercy of God that he let not out these terrible and dangerous Temptations upon me while I was weak and in the infancy of my Faith for then I had never been able to withstand them But Faith is like a Tree whose Top is small while the Root is young and shallow and therefore as then it hath but small rooting so is it not liable to the shaking Winds and Tempests as the big and high-grown Trees are But as the top groweth higher so the root at once grows greater and deeper fixed to cause it to endure its greater Assaults Though formerly I was wont when any such Temptation came to cast it aside as fitter to be abhorred than considered of yet now this would not give me satisfaction but I was fain to dig to the very Foundations and seriously to Examine the Reasons of Christianity and to give a hearing to all that could be said against it that so my Faith might be indeed my own And at last I found that Nil tam certum quamquod ex dublo certum Nothing is so firmly believed as that which hath been sometime doubted of § 34. In the storm of this Temptation I questioned a while whether I were indeed a Christian or an Infidel and whether Faith could consist with such Doubts as I was conscious of For I had read in many Papists and Protestants that Faith had Certainty and was more than an Opinion and that if a Man should live a godly Life from the bare apprehensions of the Probability of the Truth of Scripture and the Life to come it would not save him as being no true Godliness or Faith But my Judgment closed with the Reason of Dr. Iackson's Determination of this Case which supported me much that as in the very Assenting Act of Faith there may be such weakness as may make us cry Lord increase our Faith We believe Lord help our belief so when Faith and Unbelief are in their Conflict it is the Effects which must shew us which of them is victorious And that he that hath so much Faith as will cause him to deny himself take up his Cross and forsake all the Profits Honours and Pleasures of this World for the sake of Christ the Love of God and the hope of Glory hath a saving Faith how weak soever For God cannot condemn the Soul that truly loveth and seeketh him And those that Christ bringeth to persevere in the Love of God he bringeth to Salvation And there were divers Things that in this Assault proved great Assistances to my Faith 1. That the Being and Attributes of God were so clear to me that he was to my Intellect what the Sun is to my Eye by which I see it self and all Things And he seemed mad to me that questioned whether there were a God that any Man should dream that the World was made by a Conflux of Irrational Atoms and Reason came from that which had no Reason or that Man or any Inferiour Being was independent or that all the being Power Wisdom and Goodness which we conversed with had not a Cause which in Being Power Wisdom and Goodness did excel all that which it had caused in the World and had not all that formaliter vel eminenter in it self which it communicated to all the Creatures These and all the Suppositions of the Atheist have ever since been so visibly foolish and shameful to my Apprehension that I scarce find a Capacity in my self of doubting of them and whenever the Tempter hath joyned any thing against these with the rest of his Temptations the rest have been the easier overcome because of the overwhelming cogent Evidences of a Deity which are always before the Eyes of my Soul 2. And it helped me much to discern that this God must needs be related to us as our Owner
and silly Preachers whose Performances were so mean that they had better kept to the Reading of the Homilies and many of these were of Scandalous Lives Hereupon the Disciplinarians cried out of the ignorant scandalous Ministers and almost all the scandalous Ministers and all that studied Preferment cried out of the Nonconformists The name Puritan was put upon them and by that they were commonly known when they had been called by that name awhile the vicious Multitude of the Ungodly called all Puritans that were strict and serious in a Holy Life were they ever so conformable So that the same name in a Bishops mouth signified a Nonconformist and in an ignorant Drunkards or Swearers mouth a godly obedient Christian. But the People being the greater number became among themselves the Masters of the Sense And in Spalatensi's time when he was decrying Calvinism he devised the name of Doctrinal Puritans which comprehended all that were against Arminianism Now the ignorant Rabble hearing that the Bishops were against the Puritans not having wit enough to know whom they meant were emboldened the more against all those whom they called Puritans themselves and their Rage against the Godly was increased and they cried up the Bishops partly because they were against the Puritans and partly because they were earnest for that way of Worship which they found most consistent with their Ignorance Carelesness and Sins And thus the Interest of the Diocesans and of the Prophane and Ignorant sort of People were unhappily twisted together in England And then on the other side as all the Nonconformists were against the Prelates so other of the most serious godly People were alienated from them on all these foresaid conjunct Accounts 1. Because they were derided and abused by the Name of Puritans 2. Because the Malignant Sort were permitted to make Religious Persons their common Scorn 3. Because they saw so many insufficient and vicious Men among the Conformable Clergy 4. Because they had a high esteem of the Parts and Piety of most of the Nonconformable Ministers 5. Because they grieved to see so many Excellent Men silenced while so many Thousand were perishing in Ignorance and Sin 6. Because though they took the Liturgy to be lawful yet a more orderly serious Scriptural way of Worship was much more pleasing to them 7. Because Fasting and Praying and other Exercises which they found much benefit by were so strictly lookt after that the High Commission and the Bishops Courts did make it much more perillous than common Swearing and Drunkenness proved to the Ungodly 8. Because the Book that was published for Recreations on the Lord's Day made them think that the Bishops concurred with the Prophane 9. Because Afternoon Sermons and Lectures though by Conformable Men began to be put down in divers Counties 10. Because so great a number of Conformable Ministers were suspended or punished for not reading the Book of Sports on Sundays or about Altars or such like and so many Thousand Families and many worthy Ministers driven out of the Land 11. Because when they saw Bowing towards Altars and the other Innovations added they feared worse and knew not where they would end 12. And lastly Because they saw that the Bishops proceeded so far as to swear Men to their whole Government by the Et caetera Oath and that they approved of Ship-money and other such incroachments on their Civil Interests All these upon my own knowledge were the true Causes why so great a number of those Persons who were counted most Religious fell in with the Parliament in England insomuch that the generality of the stricter diligent sort of Preachers joyned with them though not in medling with Arms yet in Judgment and in flying to their Garrisons and almost all those afterwards called Presbyterians were before Conformists Very few of all that Learned and Pious Synod at Westminster were Nonconformists before and yet were for the Parliament supposing that the Interest of Religion lay on that side Yet did they still keep up an honourable esteem of all that they thought Religious on the other side such as Bishop Davenant Bishop Hall Bishop Morton Archbishop Usher c. But as to the generality they went so unanimously the other way that upon my knowledge many that were not wise enough to understand the Truth about the Cause of the King and Parliament did yet run into the Parliaments Armies or take their part as Sheep go together for Company moved by this Argument Sure God will not suffer almost all his most Religious Servants to err in so great a matter And If all these should perish what will become of Religion But these were insufficient Grounds to go upon And abundance of the ignorant sort of the Country who were Civil did flock in to the Parliament and filled up their Armies afterward meerly because they heard Men swear for the Common Prayer and Bishops and heard others pray that were against them and because they heard the King's Soldiers with horrid Oaths abuse the name of God and saw them live in Debauchery and the Parliaments Soldiers flock to Sermons and talking of Religion and praying and singing Psalms together on their Guards And all the sober Men that I was acquainted with who were against the Parliament were wont to say The King hath the better Cause but the Parliament hath the better Men Aud indeed this unhappy Complication of the Interest of Prelacie and Prophaneness and Opposition of the Interest of Prelacie to the Temper of the generality of the Religious Party was the visible Cause of the overthrow of the King in the Eye of all the understanding World that ever was capable of observing it § 50. And whereas the King's Party usually say that it was the seditious Preachers that stirred up the People and were the Cause of all this I answer 1. It is partly true and partly not It is not true that they stirred them up to War except an inconsiderable Number of them one perhaps in a County if so much But it is true that they discovered their dislike of the Book of Sports and bowing to Altars and diminishing Preaching and silencing Ministers and such like and were glad that the Parliament attempted a Reformation of them 2. But then it is as true that almost all these were conformable Ministers the Laws and Bishops having cast out the Nonconformists long enough before insomuch that I know not of two Nonconformists in a County But those that made up the Assembly at Westminster and that through the Land were the Honour of the Parliaments Party were almost all such as had till then conformed and took those things to be lawful in case of necessity but longed to have that necessity removed § 51. When the War was beginning the Parties set Names of Contempt upon each other and also took such Titles to themselves and their own Cause as might be the fittest means for that which they designed The old Names of Puritans
Reputation of his Word and Cause Major General Skippon fighting valiantly was here dangerously wounded but afterwards recovered The King's Army was utterly lost by the taking of Leicester for by this means it was gone so far from his own Garrisons that his Flying Horse could have no place of Retreat but were utterly scattered and brought to nothing The King himself fled to Lichfield and it is reported that he would have gone to Shrewsbury his Council having never suffered him to know that it was taken till now and so he went to Rayland Caâ—â—â—◠〈◊〉 which was a strong Hold and the House of the Marquess of 〈◊〉 a Papist where his Dispute with the Marquess was said to be which Dr. Baâ—ly published and then turned Papist and which Mr. Christopher Cartright continued deâ—ending the King Fairfax's Army pursued to Leicester where the wounded Men and some others stayed with the Garrison in a day or two's time the Town was re-taken And now I am come up to the Passage which I intended of my own going into the Army § 73. Naâ—â—by being not far from Coventry where I was and the noise of the Victory being loud in our Ears and I having two or three that of old had been my intimate Friends in Cromwell's Army whom I had not seen of above two Years I was desirous to go see whether they were dead or alive and so to Naseby Field I went two days after the sight and thence by the Armies Quarters before Leicester to seek my Acquaintance When I found them I stayed with them a Night and I understood the state of the Army much better than ever I had done before We that lived quietly in Coventry did keep to our old Principles and thought all others had done so too except a very few inconsiderable Persons We were unfeignedly for King and Parliament We believed that the War was only to sive the Parliament and Kingdom from Papists and Delinquents and to remove the Dividers that the King might again return to his Parliament and that no Changes might be made in Religion but by the Laws which had his free consent We took the true happiness of King and People Church and State to be our end and so we understood the Covenant engaging both against Papists and Schismaticks And when the Court News-book told the World of the Swarms of Anabaptists in our Armies we thought it had been a meer lye because it was not so with us nor in any of the Garrison or County-Forces about us But when I came to the Army among Cromwell's Soldiers I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of I heard the plotting Heads very hot upon that which intimated their Intention to subvert both Church and State Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed and Thomas Moor's Followers a Weaver of Wisbitch and Lyn of excellent Parts had made some shifts to joyn these two Extreams together Abundance of the common Troopers and many of the Officers I found to be honest sober Orthodox Men and others tractable ready to hear the Truth and of upright Intentions But a few proud self-conceited hot-headed Sectaries had got into the highest places and were Cromwell's chief Favourites and by their very heat and activity bore down the rest or carried them along with them and were the Soul of the Army though much fewer in number than the rest being indeed not one to twenty throughout the Army their strength being in the Generals and Whalleys and Rich's Regiments of Horse and in the new placed Officers in many of the rest I perceived that they took the King for a Tyrant and an Enemy and really intended absolutely to master him or to ruine him and that they thought if they might fight against him they might kill or conquer him and if they might conquer they were never more to trust him further than he was in their power and that they thought it folly to irritate him either by Wars or Contradictions in Parliament if so be they must needs take him for their King and trust him with their Lives when they had thus displeased him They said What were the Lords of England but William the Conquerour's Colonels or the Barons but his Majors or the Knights but his Captains They plainly shewed me that they thought God's Providence would cast the Trust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as Conquerours They made nothing of all the most wise and godly in the Armies and Garrisons that were not of their way Per fas aut nefas by Law or without it they were resolved to take down not only Bishops and Liturgy and Ceremonies but all that did withstand their way They were far from thinking of a moderate Episcopacy or of any healing way between the Episcopal and the Presbyterians They most honoured the Separatists Anabaptists and Antinomians but Cromwell and his Council took on them to joyn themselves to no Party but to be for the Liberty of all Two sorts I perceived they did so commonly and bitterly Speak against that it was done in meer design to make them odious to the Soldiers and to all the Land and that was 1. The Sots and with them all Presbyterians but especially the Ministers whom they call Priests and Priestbyters and Drivines and the Dissemby-men and such like 2. The Committees of the several Countries and all the Soldiers that were under them that were not of their Mind and Way Some orthodox Captains of the Army did partly acquaint me with all this and I heard much of it from the Mouths of the leading Sectaries themselves This struck me to the very Heart and made me Fear that England was lost by those that it had taken for its Chiefest Friends § 74. Upon this I began to blame both other Ministers and my self I saw that it was the Ministers that had lost all by forsaking the Army and betaking themselves to an easier and quieter way of Life When the Earl of Essex went out first each Regiment had an able Preacher but at Edg-hill Fight almost all of them went home and as the Sectaries increased they were the more averse to go into the Army It s true that I believe now they had little Invitation and its true that they must look for little Welcome and great Contempt and Opposition besides all other Difficulties and Dangers But it is as true that their Worth and Labour in a patient self-denying way had been like to have preserved most of the Army and to have defeated the Contrivances of the Sectaries and to have saved the King the Parliament and the Land And if it had brought Reproach upon them from the Malitious who called them Military Levites the Good which they had done would have wiped off that blot much better than the contrary course would do And I reprehended my self also who had before rejected an Invitation from Cromwell When he lay at Cambridge long before with that
for serious Piety would have had me taken in his stead a very grave ancient Doctor of Divinity who had a most promising Presence and tolerable Delivery and reverend Name and withal was my Kinsman But I found at last that he had no relish of serious Godliness nor solid Learning or Knowledge in Divinity but stole Sermons out of printed Books and set them off with a grave Delivery But Mr. Sergeant so increased in Ability that he became a solid Preacher and of so great Prudence in Practical Cases that I know few therein go beyond him but none at all do I know that excelleth him in Meekness Humility Self-denial and Diligence No Child ever seemed more humble No Interest of his own either of Estate or Reputation did ever seem to stop him in his Duty No Labour did he ever refuse which I could put him to When I put him to travel over the Parish which is near 20 miles about from House to House to Catechize and Instruct each Family he never grudged or seemed once unwilling He preached at a Chappel above two miles off one half the day and in the Town the other and never murmured I never heard of the Man or Woman in all that Town and Parish that ever said This Fault he did This Word he spake amiss against me This Wrong he did me nor ever one that once found fault with him save once one man upon a short mistake for being out of the way when he should have baptized a Child This admirable blamelesness of Life much furthered our work And when he was removed two miles from us I got Mr. Humphrey Waldern to succeed him who was very much like him and carried on his work 12. Another Advantage was the Presence and Countenance of honest Justices of Peace Colonel Iohn Bridges a prudent pious Gentleman was Patron of the Church and lived in the Parish and was a Justice of Peace And a Bailiff and Justice were Annually chosen in the Corporation who ordinarily were godly men and always such as would be thought so and were ready to use their Authority to Suppress Sin and promote Goodness And when once a Sabbath-breaker thought to have overthrown the Officers at Law Serjeant Fountain being then Judge of Assize did so repress his Malice as discouraged all others from any more such attempts But now the World is changed 13. Another help to my Success was that small relief which my low Estate enabled me to afford the Poor though the Place was reckoned at near 200 l. per Annum there came but 90 l. and sometimes 80 l. per Annum to me Besides which some years I had 60 l. or 80 l. a year of the Booksellers for my Books which little dispersed among them much reconciled them to the Doctrine which I taught I took the aptest of their Children from the School and set divers of them to the Universities where for 8 l. a year or 10 l. at most by the help of my Friends there I maintained them Mr. Vines and Dr. Hill did help me to Sizers places for them at Cambridge And the Lady Rous allowed me 8 l. a year awhile towards their Maintenance and Mr. Tho. Fowley and Col. Bridges also assisted me Some of them are honest able Ministers now cast out with their Brethren But two or three having no other way to live turned great Conformists and are Preachers now And in giving that little I had I did not enquire whether they were good or bad if they asked Relief For the bad had Souls and Bodies that needed Charity most And I found that Three pence or a Groat to every poor Body that askt me was no great matter in a year but a few pounds in that way of giving would go far And this Truth I will speak to the encouragement of the Charitable that what little Money I have now by me I got it almost all I scarce know how in that time when I gave most And since I have had less opportunity of giving I have had less increase 14. Another furtherance of my work was the Writing's which I wrote and gave among them Some small Books I gave each Family one of which came to about 800 and of the bigger I gave fewer And every Family that was poor and had not a Bible I gave a Bible to And I had found my self the benefit of reading to be so great that I could not but think it would be profitable to others 15. And it was a great Advantage to me that my Neighbours were of such a Trade as allowed them time enough to read or talk of holy Things For the Town liveth upon the Weaving of Kidderminster Stuffs and as they stand in their Loom they can set a Book before them or edifie one another whereas Plowmen and many others are so wearied or continually employed either in the Labours or the Cares of their Callings that it is a great Impediment to their Salvation Freeholders and Trades-men are the Strength of Religion and Civillity in the Land and Gentlemen and Beggers and Servile Tenants are the Strength of Iniquity Though among these sorts there are some also that are good and just as among the other there are many bad And their constant Converse and Traffick with London doth much promote Civility and Piety among Trades-men 16. And I found that my single Life afforded me much advantage For I could the easilier take my People for my Children and think all that I had too little for them in that I had no Children of my own to tempt me to another way of using it And being discharged from the most of Family Cares keeping but one Servant I had the greater vacancy and liberty for the Labours of my Calling 17. And God made use of my Practice of Physick among them as a very great advantage to my Ministry for they that cared not for their Souls did love their Lives and care for their Bodies And by this they were made almost as observant as a Tenant is of his Landlord Sometimes I could see before me in the Church a very considerable part of the Congregation whose Lives God had made me a means to save or to recover their health And doing it for nothing so obliged them that they would readily hear me 18. And it was a great advantage to me that there were at last few that were bad but some of their own Relations were Converted Many Children did God work upon at 14 or 15 or 16 years of Age And this did marvellously reconcile the Minds of the Parents and Elder sort to Godliness They that would not hear me would hear their own Children They that before could have talkt against Godliness would not hear it spoken against when it was their Childrens Case Many that would not be brought to it themselves were proud that they had understanding Religious Children And we had some old Persons of near Eighty years of Age who are I hope in Heaven and the
Conversion of their own Children was the chief means to overcome their Prejudice and old Customs and Conceits 19. And God made great use of Sickness to do good to many For though Sick-bed Promises are usually soon forgotten yet was it otherwise with many among us And as soon as they were recovered they first came to our private Meetings and so kept in a learning state till further Fruits of Piety appeared 20. And I found that our disowning of the Iniquity of the Times did tend to the good of many For they despised those that always followed the stronger side and justified every wickedness that was done by the stronger Party Though we had judged the Parliaments War to be lawful and necessary to save themselves and us from the Irish and their Adherents and to punish Delinquents in a Course of Law while we believed that nothing was intended against the King or Laws yet as soon as ever we saw the Case changed and Cromwell's Army enter into a Rebellion against King and Parliament and kill the King and invade the Scots and fight against the King that should have succeeded c. we openly disowned them and on all just occasions exprest our abhorrence of their Hypocrisie Perjury and Rebellion except two or three idle drunken Fellows that thought to live by flattering the Times this was the Sense of all the Town And had I owned the Guilt of others it would have been my shame and the hinderance of my work and provoked God to have disowned me 21. Another of my great Advantages was the true Worth and Unanimity of the honest Ministers of the Country round about us who associated in a way of Concord with us Their Preaching was powerful and sober their Spirits peaceable and meek disowning the Treasons and Iniquities of the times as well as we they were wholly addicted to the winning of Souls self-denying and of most blameless Lives Evil spoken of by no Sober Men but greatly beloved by their own People and all that knew them adhering to no Faction neither Episcopal Presbyterian nor Independent as to Parties but desiring Union and loving that which is good in all These meeting weekly at our Lecture and monthly at our Disputation constrained a Reverence in the People to their Worth and Unity and consequently furthered my Work such were Mr. Andrew Trisham Minister of Bridgnorth Mr. Tho. Baldwin Minister at Chadsley Mr. Tho. Baldwin Minister of Clent Mr. Ioseph Baker Minister in Worcester Mr. Henry Oasland Minister of Bewdley Mr. William Spicer Minister of Stone an old man since dead Mr. Richard Sergeant last Minister of Stone Mr. Wilsby of Womborne Mr. Iohn Reignolds of Wolverhampton Mr. Ioseph Rocke of Rowley Mr. Richard Wolley of Sallwarp Mr. Giles Wolley Mr. Humphrey Waldern of Broome Mr. Edw. Bowchier of Church-hill Mr. Ambrose Sparry of Martley Mr. William Kimberley of Ridmarley Mr. Benj. Baxter of Upton upon Severn Mr. Dowley of Stoke Mr. Stephen Baxter Mr. Tho. Bromwick of Kemsey Mr. I. Nott of Sheriff-hales with many others to whom I may adjoyn Mr. Iohn Spilsbury and Mr. Iuice one of Bromsgrove and the other of Worcester Independants and very honest sober and moderate men who were all of them now silenced and cast out though not one of them all had any hand in the Wars for the Parliament or any Military Employment only Mr. George Hopkins of Evesham was in the Army a worthy faithful Minister also and no other of our Association that I know of besides my self in all the County 22. Another Advantage to me was the quality of the Sinners of the place There were two Drunkards almost at the next Doors to me who one by night and the other by day did constantly every Week if not twice or thrice a Weak roar and rave in the Streets like stark-madmen and when they have been laid in the Stocks or Gaol they have been as bad as soon as ever they came out And these were so beastly and ridiculous that they made that Sin of which we were in most danger the more abhorred 23. Another Advantage to me was the quality of the Apostates of the place If we had been troubled with meer Separatists Anabaptists or others that erred plausibly and tollerably they might perhaps have divided us and drawn away Disciples after them But we had only two Professors that fell off in the Wars and one or two at most that made no Profession of Godliness were drawn in to them They that fell off were such as before by their want of grounded Understanding Humility and Mortification gave us the greatest suspicion of their Stability And they fell to no less than Familism and Infidelity making a jest of the Scripture and the Essentials of Christianity Though they so carefully hid it that we could never possibly have known their Minds but from the Alehouse and Companions with whom they were more free And as they fell from the Faith so they fell to Drinking Gaming furious Passions horribly abusing their Wives and thereby saving them from their Errours and to a vicious Life So that they stood up as Pillars and Monuments of God's Justice to warn all others to take heed of Self-conceitedness and Heresies and of departing from Truth and Christian Unity And so they were a principal means to keep out all Sects and Errours from the Town 24. Another great help to my Success at last was the fore-described Work of Personal Conference with every Family apart and Catechising and Instructing them That which was spoken to them personally and put them sometime upon Answers awakened their Attention and was easilier applyed than publick Preaching and seemed to do much more upon them 25. And the Exercise of Church-Discipline was no small furtherance of the Peoples Good For I found plainly that without it I could not have kept the Religious sort from Separations and Divisions There is something generally in their Dispositions which inclineth them to dissociate from open ungodly Sinners as Men of another Nature and Society and if they had not seen me do something reasonable for a Regular Separation of the notorious obstinate Sinners from the rest they would irregularly have withdrawn themselves and it had not been in my power with bare words to satisfie them when they saw we had liberty to do what we would It was my greatest Care and Contrivance so to order this Work that we might neither make a meer Mock-shew of Discipline nor with Independants un-church the Parish-Church and gather a Church out of them anew Therefore all the Ministers Associate agreed together to practice so much Discipline as the Episcopal Presbyterians and Independants were agreed on that Presbyters might and must do And we told the People that we went not about to gather a new Church but taking the Parish for the Church unless they were unwilling to own their own Membership we resolved to exercise that Discipline with all Only because there are some Papists and Familists or Infidels
sporting with them but he thought Secrecy a Vertue and Dissimulation no Vice and Simulation that is in plain English a Lie or Perfidiousness to be a tollerable Fault in a Case of Necessity being of the same Opinion with the Lord Bacon who was not so Precise as Learned That the best Composition and Temperature is to have openness in Fame and Opinion Secrecy in habit Dissimulation in seasonable use and a power to feign if there be no remedy Essay 6. pag. 31. Therefore he kept fair with all saving his open or unreconcileable Enemies He carried it with such Dissimulation that Anabaptists Independants and Antinomians did all think that he was one of them But he never endeavoured to perswade the Presbyterians that he was one of them but only that he would do them Justice and Preserve them and that he honoured their Worth and Piety for he knew that they were not so easily deceived In a word he did as our Prelates have done begin low and rise higher in his Resolutions as his Condition rose and the Promises which he made in his lower Condition he used as the interest of his higher following Condition did require and kept up as much Honesty and Godliness in the main as his Cause and Interest would allow but there they left him And his Name standeth as a monitory Monument or Pillar to Posterity to tell them The instability of Man in strong Temptations if God leave him to himself what great Success and Victories can do to lift up a Mind that once seemed humble what Pride can do to make Man selfish and corrupt the Heart with ill designs what selfishness and ill designs can do to bribe the Conscience and corrupt the Iudgment and make men justifie the greatest Errours and Sins and set against the clearest Truth and Duty what Bloodshed and great Enormities of Life an Erring deluded Judgment may draw Men to and patronize and That when God hath dreadful Judgments to execute an Erroneous Sectary or a proud Self-seeker is oftner his Instrument than an humble Lamb-like innocent Saint § 145. Cromwell being dead his Son Richard by his Will and Testament and the Army was quietly setled in his place while all Men look'd that they should presently have fallen into Confusion and Discord among themselves the Counties Cities and Corporations of England send up their Congratulations to own him as Protector But none of us in Worcestershire save the Independants medled in it He interred his Father with great Pomp and Solemnity He called a Parliament and that without any such Restraints as his Father had used The Members took the Oath of Fidelity or Allegiance to him at the Door of the House before they entred And all Men wondred to see all so quiet in so dangerous a Time Many sober Men that called his Father no better than a Trayterous Hypocrite did begin to think that they owed him Subjection They knew that the King was by Birth their Rightful Sovereign and resolved to do their best while there was hopes to introduce him and defend him But they were astonished at the marvellous Providences of god which had been against that Family all along and they thought that there was no rational probability of his Restoration having seen so many Armies and Risings and Designs overthrown which were raised or undertaken for it They thought that it is not left to our liberty whether we will have a Government or not but that Government is of Divine Appointment and the Family Person or Species is but of a subservient less necessary determination And that if we cannot have him that we would have it followeth not that we may be without That twelve years time from the Death of the last King was longer than the Land could be without a Governour without the Destruction of the Common Good which is the End of Government Therefore that the Subjects seeing they are unable to restore the King must consent to another That the House of Commons having sworn Allegiance to him have actually subjected the Nation to him And though his Father Trayterously made the Change yet the Successor of a Traytor may by the Peoples consent become a Governour whom each Individual must acknowledge by Subjection That the Bishops and Churches both of East and West as all History sheweth have professed their Subjection to Usurpers in a far shorter time and upon lighter Reasons That this Man having never had any hand in the War but supposed to be for the King nor ever seeking for the Government and now seeming to own the Sober Party was like to be used in the healing of the Land c. Such Reasonings as these began to take with the minds of many to subject themselves quietly to this Man though they never did it to his Father as now despairing of the Restitution of the King And I confess such Thoughts were somewhat prevalent with my self But God quickly shewed us the root of our Errour which was our limiting the Almighty as if that were hard to him that was impossible to us So that the Restoration of the King which we thought next impossible was accomplished in a trice And we saw that twelve or eighteen years is not long enough to wait on God The Army set up Richard Cromwell it seemeth upon Tryal resolving to use him as he behaved himself And though they swore Fidelity to him they meant to keep it no longer than he pleased them And when they saw that he began to favour the sober People of the Land to honour Parliaments and to respect the Ministers whom they called Presbyterians they presently resolved to make him know his Masters and that it was they and not he that were called by God to be the chief Protectors of the Interest of the Nation He was not so formidable to them as his Father was and therefore every one boldly spurned at him The Fifth Monarchy Men followed Sir Henry Vane and raised a great and violent clamorous Party against him among the Sectaries in the City Rogers and Feake and such like Firebrands preach them into Fury and blow the Coales But Dr. Owen and his Assistants did the main Work He gathereth a Church at at Lieutenant General Fleetwood's Quarters at Wallingford House consisting of the active Officers of the Army this Church-gathering hath been the Church◠scattering Project In this Assembly it was determined that Richard's Parliament must be dissolved and then he quickly fell himself Though he never abated their Liberties or their Greatness yet did he not sufficiently befriend them Dictum factum almost as quickly done as determined Though Col. Richard Ingolsby and some others would have stuck to the Protector and have ventured to surprise the Leaders of the Faction and the Parliament would have been true to him yet Berry's Regiment of Horse and some others were presently ready to have begun the Fray against him and as he sought not the Government he was resolved it should cost no
The Uniting of the Churches upon the Primitive Terms and the tollerating not of all but of tollerable Differences is the way to Peace which almost all Men approve of except those who are uppermost and think they have the Reins in their own hands And because the side which is uppermost are they that have their Wills therefore the Churches had never a settled Peace this Thousand years at least the true way of Settlement and Peace being usually displeasing to them that must give Peace to others But this way hath the mark of being the best in that it is the only way which every Sect acknowledge for the second and next the best and is it which all except the predominant Party liketh But Wisdom is justified of her Children § 149. To consummate the Confusion by confirming and increasing the Division the Independants at last when they had refused with sufficient pervicacy to associate with the Presbyterians and the Reconcilers too did resolve to shew their proper strength and to call a General Assembly of all their Churches The Savoy was their Meeting-place There they drew up a Confession of their Faith and the Orders of their Church Government In the former they thought it not enough expresly to contradict St. Iames and to say unlimitedly That we are justified by the Righteousness of Christ only and not by any Works but they contradicted St. Paul also who faith That Faith is imputed for Righteousness And not only so but they expresly asserted that we have no other righteousness but that of Christ. A Doctrine abhorred by all the Reformed and Christian Churches and which would be an utter shame to the Protestant Name if what such Men held and did were indeed imputable to the sober Protestants I asked some honest Men that joyned with them Whether they subscribed this Confession and they said No. I asked them why they did not contradict it and they said that the meaning of it was no more than that we have no other Righteousness but Christ's to be justified by So that the Independant's Confessions are like such Oaths and Declarations as speak one thing and mean another Also in their Propositions of Church Order they widened the breach and made things much worse and more unreconcileable than ever they were before So much could two Men do with many honest tractable young Men and had more Zeal for separating Strictness than Iudgment to understand the Word of God or the Interest of the Churches of the Land and of themselves § 150. But it hath pleased God by others that were sometime of their way to do more to heal this Breach than they did to make it wider I mean the Synod of New-England who have published such healing Propositions about stated Synods and Infants Church Membership as hath much prepared for a Union between them and all other moderate Men And some One hath strenuously defended those Propositions against the opposition of Mr. Davenport a dissenting Brother I take this to be more for healing than the Savoy Propositions can be effectual to divide because the New-England men have not blemished their Reputation nor lost the Authority and Honour of their Judgments by any such Actions as the leading Savoyers have done § 151. When the Army had brought themselves and the Nation into utter Confusion and had set up and pull'd down Richard Cromwell and then had set up the Rump again and pull'd them down again and set up a Council of State of themselves and their Faction and made Lambert their Head next under Fleetwood whom they could use almost as they would at last the Nation would endure them no longer nor sit still while the world stood laughing them to scorn as acting over the Minster Tragedy Sir George Booth and Sir Thomas Middleton raised Forces in Cheshire and North-Wales but the Cavaliers that should have joyned with them failed them almost all over the Land a few rose in some places but were quickly ruined and came to nothing Lambert quickly routed those in Cheshire Sir Arthur Haselrigge with Col. Morley get into Portsmouth which is possessed as for the Rump Monk declareth against them in Scotland purgeth his Army of the Anabaptists and marcheth into England The Rump Party with Haselrigge divided the Army at home and so disabled them to oppose Monk who marcheth on and all are afraid of him and while he declareth himself against Monarchy for a Commonwealth he tieth the hands of his Enemies by a lie and uniteth with the City of London and bringeth on again the old ejected Members of the Parliament and so bringeth in the King Sir William Morrice his Kinsman and Mr. Clarges were his great Advisers The Earl of Manchester Mr. Calamy and other Presbyterians encouraged and perswaded him to bring in the King At first he joyned with the Rump against the Citizens and pull'd down the City Gates to master them but at last Sir Thomas Allen then Lord Mayor by the perswasion of Dr. Iacomb and some other Presbyterian Ministers and Citizens as he hath oft told me himself invited Monk into the City and drew him to agree and joyn with them against the Rump as they then called the Relicts of the Parliament And this in truth was the Act that turned the Scales and brought in the King whether the same men expected to be used as they have since been themselves I know not If they did their Self-denial was very great who were content to be silenced and laid in Gaols so they might but bring in the King After this the old Excluded Members of the Parliament meet with Monk He calleth them to sit and that the King might come in both by him and by them He agreeth with them to sit but a few days and then dissolve themselves and call another Parliament They consented and prepared for the King's Restoration and appointed a Council of State and Dissolved themselves Another Parliament is chosen which calleth in the King the Council of State having made further preparations for it For when the Question was Whether they should call in the King upon Treaty and Covenant which some thought best for him and the Nation the Council resolved absolutely to trust him Mr. A. especially perswading them so to do And when the King came in Col. Birch and Mr. Prin were appointed to Disband the Army the several Regiments receiving their Pay in several places and none of them daring to disobey No not Monk's own Regiments who brought in the King Thus did God do a more wonderful Work in the Dissolving of this Army than any of their greatest Victories was which set them up That an Army that had conquered three such Kingdoms and brought so many Armies to destruction cut off the King pull'd down the Parliament and set up and pull'd down others at their pleasure that had conquered so many Cities and Castles that were so united by Principles and Interest and Guilt and so deeply engaged as much
the several Articles which I did in a small Book called Christian Concord In which I gave the reasons why the Episcopal Presbyterians and Independants might and should unite on such Terms without any change of any of their Principles But I confess that the new Episcopal Party that follow Grotius too far and deny the very being of all the Ministers and Churches that have not Diocesan Bishops are not capable of Union with the rest upon such Terms And hereby I gave notice to the Gentry and others of the Royalists in England of the great danger they were in of changing their Ecclesiastical Cause by following new Leaders that were for Grotianism But this Admonition did greatly offend the Guilty who now began to get the Reins though the old Episcopal Protestants confessed it to be all true There is nothing bringeth greater hatred and sufferings on a Man than to foreknow the mischief that Men in power are doing and intend and to warn the World of it For while they are resolutely going on with it they will proclain him a Slanderer that revealeth it and use him accordingly and never be ashamed when they have done it and thereby declared all which he foretold to be true § 170. 15. Having in the Postscript of my True Catholick given a short touch against a bitter Book of Mr. Thomas Pierce's against the Puritans and me it pleased him to write another Volume against Mr. Hickman and me just like the Man full of malignant bitterness against Godly men that were not of his Opinion and breathing out blood-thirsty malice in a very Rhetorical fluent style Abundance of Lies also are in it against the old Puritans as well as against me and in particular in charging Hacket's Villany upon Cartwright as a Confederate which I instance in because I have out of old Mr. Ash's Library a Manuscript of Mr. Cartwright's containing his full Vindication against that Calumny which some would fain have fastened on him in his time But Mr. Pierce's principal business was to defend Grotius In answer to which I wrote a little Treatise called The Grotian Religion discovered at the Invitation of Mr. Thomas Pierce In which I cited his own words especially out of his Discussio Apologetici Rivetaini wherein he openeth his Terms of Reconciliation with Rome viz. That it be acknowledged the Mistress Church and the Pope have his Supream Government but not Arbitrary but only according to the Canons To which end he defendeth the Council of Trent it self Pope Pius's Oath and all the Councils which is no other than the French sort of Popery I had not then heard of the Book written in France called Grotius Papizans nor of Sarravius's Epistles in which he witnesseth it from his own mouth But the very words which I cited contain an open Profession of Popery This Book the Printer abused printing every Section so distant to fill up Paper as if they had been several Chapters And in a Preface before it I vindicated the Synod of Dort where the Divines of England were chief Members from the abusive virulent Accusations of one that called himself Tilenus junior Hereupon Pierce wrote a much more railing malicious Volume than the former the liveliest Express of Satan's Image malignity bloody malice and falshood covered in handsome railing Rhetorick that ever I have seen from any that called himself a Protestant And the Preface was answered just in the same manner by one that stiled himself Philo-Tilenus Three such Men as this Tilenus junior Pierce and Gunning I have not heard of besides in England Of the Jesuites Opinion in Doctrinals and of the old Dominican Complexion the ablest Men that their Party hath in all the Land of great diligence in study and reading of excellent Oratory especially Tilenus junior and Pierce of temperate Lives but all their Parts so sharpened with furious persecuting Zeal against those that dislike Arminianism high Prelacy or full Conformity that they are like the Briars and Thorns which are not to be handled but by a fenced hand and breathe out Tereatnings against God's Servants better than themselves and seem unsatisfied with blood and ruines and still cry Give Give bidding as lowd defiance to Christian Charity as ever Arrius or any Heretick did to Faith This Book of mine of the Grotian Religion greatly offended many others but none of them could speak any Sence against it the Citations for Matter of Fact being unanswerable And it was only the Matter of Fact which I undertook viz. To prove that Grotius profest himself a moderate Papist But for his fault in so doing I little medled with it § 171. 16. Mr. Blake having replye to some things in my Apology especially about Right to Sacraments or the just subject of Baptism and the Lord's Supper I wrote five Disputations on those Points proving that it is not the reality of a Dogmatical or Justifying Faith nor yet the Profession of bare Assent called a Dogmatical Faith by many but only the Profession of a Saving Faith which is the Condition of Mens title to Church-Communion Coram Ecclèsiâ and that Hypocrites are but Analogically or Equivocally called Christians and Believers and Saints c. with much more to decide the most troublesome Controversie of that Time which was about the Necessary Qualification and Title of Church-Members and Communicants Many men have been perplexed about that Point and that Book Some think it cometh too near the Independants and some that it is too far from them and many think it very hard that A Credible Profession of True Faith and Repentance should be made the stated Qualification because they think it incredible that all the Jewish Members were such But I have sifted this Point more exactly and diligently in my thoughts than almost any Controversie whatsoever And fain I would have found some other Qualification to take up with 1. Either the Profession of some lower Faith than that which hath the Promise of Salvation 2. Or at least such a Profession of Saving Faith as needeth not to be credible at all c. But the Evidence of Truth hath forced me from all other ways and suffered me to rest no where but here That Profession should be made necessary without any respect at all to Credibility and consequently to the verity of the Faith professed is incredible and a Contradiction and the very word Profession signifieth more And I was forced to observe that those that in Charity would belive another Profession to be the title to Church-Communion do greatly cross their own design of Charity And while they would not be bound to believe men to be what they profess for fear of excluding many whom they cannot believe they do leave themselves and all others as not obliged to love any Church-Member as such with the love which is due to a True Christian but only with such a Love as they owe to the Members of the Devil and so deny them the Kernel of Charity by giving
Prayer by all the Ministers at Worcester where they desired me to preach But Weakness and other things hindered me from that Day but to compensate that I enlarged and published the Sermon which I had prepared for them and entitled the Treatise Gildas Salvianus because I imitated Gildas and Salvianus in my Liberty of Speech to the Pastors of the Churches or The reformed Pastor I have very great Cause to be thankful to God for the Success of that Book as hoping many thousand Souls are the better for it in that it prevailed with many Ministers to set upon that Work which I there exhort them to Even from beyond the Seas I have had Letters of Request to direct them how they might bring on that Work according as that Book had convinced them that it was their Duty If God would but reform the Ministry and set them on their Duties zealously and faithfully the People would certainly be reformed All Churches either rise or fall as the Ministry doth rise or fall not in Riches and worldly Grandure but in Knowledge Zeal and Ability for their Work But since Bishops were restored this Book is useless and that Work not medled with § 178. 23. When the part of the Parliament called the Rump or Common-wealth was sitting the Anabaptists Seekers c. flew so high against Tythes and Ministry that it was much feared lest they would have prevailed at last Wherefore I drew up a Petition for the Ministry which is printed under the Name of the Worcestershire Petition which being presented by Coll. Iohn Bridges and Mr. Thomas Foley was accepted with Thanks and seemed to have a considerable tendency to some good Resolutions § 179. But the Sectaries greatly regard against that Petition and one wrote a vehement Invective against it which I answered in a Paper called The Defence of the Worcestershire Petition which by an Over-sight is mained by the want of the Answer to one of the Accusers Queries I knew not what kind of Person he was that I wrote against but it proved to be a Quaker they being just now rising and this being the first of their Books as far as I can remember that I had ever-seen § 180. 24. Presently upon this the Quakers began to make a great Stirr among us and acted the Parts of Men in Raptures and spake in the manner of Men inspired and every where railed against Tythes and Ministers They sent many Papers of Queries to divers Ministers about us And to one of the chief of them I wrote an Answer and gave them as many more Questions to answer entiâ—uling it The Quakers Catechism These Pamphlets being but one or two Days Work were no great Interruption to my better Labours and as they were of small Worth so also of small Cost The same Ministers of our Country that are now silenced are they that the Quakers most vehemently opposed medling little with the rest The marvellous concurrence of Instruments telleth us that one principal Agent doth act them all I have oft asked the Quakers lately why they chose the same Ministers to revile whom all the Drunkards and Swearers rail against And why they cryed out in our Assemblies Come down thou Deceiver thou Hireling thou Dog and now never meddle with the Pastors or Congregations And they answer 1. That these Men sin in the open Light and need none to discover them 2. That the Spirit hath his times both of Severity and of Lenity But the Truth is they knew then they might be bold without any Fear of Suffering by it And now it is time for them to save their Skins they suffer enough for their own Assemblies 181. 25. The great Advancement of the Popish Interest by their secret agency among the Sectaries Seekers Quakers Behmenists c. did make me think it necessary to do something directly against Popery and so I published three Disputations against them one to prove our Religion safe and another to prove their Religion unsafe and a third to shew that they overthrew the Faith by the ill Resolution of their Faith This Book I entituled The safe Religion § 182. 26. About the same time I fell into troublesom Acquaintance with one Clement Writer of Worcester an ancient Man that had long seemed a forward Professor of Religiousness and of a good Conversation but was now perverted to I know not what A Seeker he profest to be but I easily perceived that he was either a jugling Papist or an Infidel but I more suspected the latter He had written a scornful Book against the Ministry called Ius Divinum Presbyterii and after two more against the Scripture and against me one called Fides Divina the other 's Title I remember not His Assertion to me was that no Man is bound to believe in Christ that doth not see confirming Miracles himself with his own Eyes By the Provocations of this Apostate I wrote a Book called The unreasanableness of Infidelity consisting of four Parts The first of the extrinsick Witness of the Spirit by Miracles c. to which I annexed a Disputation against Clement Writer to prove that the Miracles wrought by Christ and his Apostles oblige us to believe that did not see them The Second part was of the intrinsick Witness of the Spirit to Christ and Scripture The Third was of the Sin or Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost And the Fourth was to repress the Arrogancy of reasoning against Divine Revelations All this was intended but as a Supplement to the Second Part of The Saints Rest where I had pleaded for the Truth of Scripture But this Subject I have since more fully handled in my Reasons of the Christian Religion At the time Mr. Gilbert a learned Minister in Shropshire wrote a Small concise Tractate in Latin as against a Book of Dr. Owen's though his intimate Friend to prove that Christ's Death was not necessary absolutely but of Divine Free Choice and in answer to that Book I wrote a brief Premonition to my Treatise against Infidelity to decide that Controversy § 183. 27. Mr. Tho. Foley being High Sheriff desired me to preach before the Judges which I did on Gal. 6. 16. and enlarged it to a Treatise entituled The Crucifying of the World by the Cross of Christ for Mortification and put an Epistle somewhat large before it to provoke rich Men to good Works § 184. 28. Some Men about this time persuaded me that if I would write a few single Sheets on several Subjects though the Style were not very moving yet it would do more good than larger Volumes because most people will buy and read them who will neither buy nor read the larger Whereupon I wrote first One Sheet against the Quakers containing those Reasons which should satisfie all Sober Men against their way § 185. 29. The Second Sheet I called A Winding Sheet for Popery containing a Summary of Moderate and Effectual Reasons against Popery which single sheet no Papist hitherto hath answered §
the Saints Rest where I have not said half that should have been said and the Reason was because that I had not read any of the fuller sort of Books that are written on those Subjects nor conversed with those that knew more than my self and so all those things were either new or great to me which were common and small perhaps to others and because they all came in by the way of my own Study of the naked matter and not from Books they were apt to affect my mind the more and to seem greater than they were And this Token of my Weakness accompanied those my younger Studies that I was very apt to start up Controversies in the way of my Practical Writings and also more desirous to acquaint the World with all that I took to be the Truth and to assault those Books by Name which I thought did tend to deceive them and did contain unsound and dangerous Doctrine And the Reason of all this was that I was then in the vigour of my youthfull Apprehensions and the new Appearance of any sacred Truth it was more apt to affect me and be highlyer valued than afterward when commonness had dulled my Delight and I did not sufficiently discern then how much in most of our Controversies is verbal and upon mutual Mistakes And withal I know not how impatient Divines were of being contradicted nor how it would stir up all their Powers to defend what they have once said and to rise up against the Truth which is thus thrust upon them as the mortal Enemy of their Honour And I knew not how hardly Mens Minds are charged from their former Apprehensions be the Evidence never so plain And I have perceived that nothing so much hindreth the Reception of the Truth as urging it on Men with too harsh Importunity and falling too heavily on their Errors For hereby you engage their Honour in the business and they defend their Errors as themselves and stir up all their Wit and Ability to oppose you In controversies it is fierce Opposition which is the Bellows to kindle a resisting Zeal when if they be neglected and their Opinions lie a while despised they usually cool and come again to themselves though I know that this holdeth not when the Greediness and Increase of his Followers doth animate a Sectary even though he have no Opposition Men are so loth to be drenched with the Truth that I am no more for going that way to work and to confess the Truth I am lately much prone to the contrary Extream to be too indifferent what Men hold and to keep my Judgment to my self and never to mention any thing wherein I differ from another or any thing which I think I know more than he or at least if he receive it not presently to silence it and leave him to his own Opinion And I find this Effect is mixed according to its Causes which are some good and some bad The bad Causes are 1. An Impatience of Mens weakness and mistaking frowardness and Self-conceitedness 2. An Abatement of my sensible Esteem of Truth through the long abode of them on my Mind Though my Judgment value them yet it is hard to be equally affected with old and common things as with new and rare ones The better Causes are 1. That I am much more sensible than ever of the necessity of living upon the Principles of Religion which we are all agreed in and uniting these and how much Mischief Men that over-value their own Opinions have done by their Controversies in the Church how some have destroyed Charity and some caused Schisms by them and most have hindered Godlyness in themselves and others and used them to divert Men from the serious prosecuting of a holy Life and as Sir Francis Bacon saith in his Essay of Peace that it 's one great Benefit of Church-Peace and Concord that writing Controversies is turned into Books of practical Devotion for increase of Piety and Virtue 2. And I find that it 's much more for most Mens Good and Edification to converse with them only in that way of Godliness which all are agreed in and not by touching upon Differences to stir up their Corruptions and to tell them of little more of your knowledge than what you find them willing to receive from you as meer Learners and therefore to stay till they crave Information of you as Musculus did with the Anabaptists when he visited them in Prison and conversed kindly and lovingly with them and shewed them all the Love he could and never talkt to them of their Opinions till at last they who were wont to call him a Deceiver and false Prophet did intreat him to instruct them and received his Instructions We mistake Mens Diseases when we think there needeth nothing to cure their Errors but only to bring them the Evidence of Truth Alas there are many Distempers of Mind to be removed before Men are apt to receive that Evidence And therefore that Church is happy where Order is kept up and the Abilities of the Ministers command a reverend Submission from the Hearers and where all are in Christ's School in the distinct Ranks of Teachers and Learners For in a learning way Men are ready to receive the Truth but in a Disputing way they come armed against it with Prejudice and Animosity 3. And I must say farther that what I last mentioned on the by is one of the notablest Changes of my Mind In my youth I was quickly past my Fundamentals and was running up into a multitude of Controversies and greatly delighted with metaphisical and scholastick Writings though I must needs say my Preaching was still on the necessary Points But the elder I grew the smaller stress I layd upon these Controversies and Curiosities though still my intellect abhoâ—reth Confusion as finding far greater Uncertainties in them than I at first discerned and finding less Usefulness comparatively even where there is the greatest Certainty And now it is the fundamental Doctrines of the Catechism which I highliest value and daily think of and find most useful to my self and others The Creed the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments do find me now the most acceptable and plentiful matter for all my Meditations They are to me as my daily Bread and Drink And as I can speak and write of them over and over again so I had rather read or hear of them than of any of the School Niceties which once so much pleased me And thus I observed it was with old Bishop Usher and with many other Men And I conjecture that this Effect also is mixt of good and bad according to its Causes The bad Cause may perhaps be some natural Infirmity and Decay And as Trees in the Spring shoot up into Branches Leaves and Blossoms But in the Autumn the Life draws down into the Root so possibly my Nature conscious of its Infirmity and Decay may find it self insufficient for numerous Particles and
Assurgency to the attempting of difficult thing and so my Mind may retire to the Root of Christian Principles and also I have often been afraid lest ill-rooting at first and many Temptations afterwards have made it more necessary for me than many others to retire to the Root and secure my Fundamentals But upon much Observation I am afraid lest most others are in no better a Case and that at the first they take it for a granted thing that Christ is the Saviour of the World and that the Soul is Immortal and that there is a Heaven and a Hell c. while they are studying abundance of a Scholastick Superstructures and at last will find cause to study more soundly their Religion it self as well as I have done The better Causes are these 1. I value all things according to their Use and Ends and I find in the daily Practice and Experience of my Soul that the Knowledge of God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Truth of Scripture and the Life to come and of a Holy Life is of more use to me than all the most curious Speculations 2. I know that every Man must grow as Trees do downwards and upwards both at once and that the Roots increase as the Bulk and Branches do 3. Being nearer Death and another World I am the more regardful of those things which my Everlasting Life or Death depend on 4. Having most to do with ignorant miserable People I am commanded by my Charity and Reason to treat with them of that which their Salvation lyeth on and not to dispute with them of Formalities and Neceties when the Question is presently to be determined whether they shall dwell for ever in Heaven or in Hell In a Word my Meditations must be most upon the matters of my Practice and my Interest And as the Love of God and the seeking of Everlasting Life is the Matter of my Practice and my Interest so must it be of my Meditation That is the best Doctrine and Study which maketh men better and tendeth to make them happy I abhor the Folly of those unlearned Persons who revile or despise Learning because they know not what it is And I take not any piece of true Learning to be useless And yet my Soul approveth of the Resolution of Holy Paul who determined to know nothing among his Hearers that is comparatively to value and make Oftentation of no other Wisdom but that Knowledge of a Cruchfied Christ to know God in Christ is Life Eternal As the Stock of the Tree affordeth Timber to build Houses and Cities when the small though higher multiâ—arious Branches are but to make a Crowns Nest or a Blaze So the Knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ of Heaven and Holyness doth build up the Soul to endless Blessedness and affordeth it solid Peace and Comfort when a multitude of Schoolâ—Niceties serve but for vain Janglings and hurtful Diversions and Contentions And yet I would not dissuade my Reader from the perusal of Aquinas Scotus Ockam Arminiensis Durandus or any such Writer for much Good may be gotten from them But I would persuade him to study and live upon the essential Doctrines of Christianity and Godliness incomparably above them all And that he may know that my Testimony is somewhat regardable I presume to say that in this I as much gainsay my natural Inclination to Subtilty and Accurateness in Knowing as he is like to do by his if he obey my Counsel And I think if he lived among Infidels and Enemies of Christ he would find that to make good the Doctrine of Faith and of Life Eternal were not only his noblest and most useful Study but also that which would require the height of all his Parts and the utmost of his Diligence to manage it skilfully to the Satisfaction of himself and others 4. I add therefore that this is Another thing which I am changed in that whereas in my younger Days I never was tempted to doubt of the Truth of Scripture or Christianity but all my Doubts and Fears were exercised at home about my own Sincerity and Interest in Christ and this was it which I called Unbelief since then my soreft Assaults have been on the other side and such they were that had I been void of internal Experience and the Adhesion of Love and the special help of God and had not discerned more Reason for my Religion than I did when I was younger I had certainly Apostatized to Infidelity though for Atheism or Ungodliness my Reason seeth no stronger Arguments than may be brought to prove that there is no Earth or Air or Sun I am now therefore much more Apprehensive than heretofore of the Necessity of well grounding Men in their Religion and especially of the Witness of the indwelling Spirit For I more sensibly perceive that the Spirit is the great Witness of Christ and Christianity to the World And though the Folly of Fanaticks tempted me long to over-look the Strength of this Testimony of the Spirit while they placed it in a certain internal Assertion or enthusiastick Inspiration yet now I see that the Holy Ghost in another manner is the Witness of Christ and his Agent in the World The Spirit in the Prophets was his first Witness and the Spirit by Miracles was the second and the Spirit by Renovation Sanctification Illumination and Consolation assimilating the Soul to Christ and Heaven is the continued Witness to all true Believers And if any Man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his Rom. 8. 9. Even as the Rational Soul in the Child is the inherent Witness or Evidence that he is the Child of Rational Parents And therefore ungodly Persons have a great disadvantage in their resisting Temptations to unbelief and it is no wonder if Christ be a stumbling block to the Jews and to the Gentiles foolishness There is many a one that hideth his Temptations to Infidelity because he thinketh it a shame to open them and because it may generate doubts in others but I doubt the imperfection of most mens care of their Salvation and of their diligence and resolution in a holy Life doth come from the imperfection of their belief of Christianity and the Life to come For my part I must profess that when my belief of things Eternal and of the Scripture is most clear and firm all goeth accordingly in my Soul and all Temptations to sinful Compliances Worldliness or Flesh-pleasing do signifie worse to me than an invitation to the Stocks or Bedlam And no Petition seemeth more necessary to me than Lord increase our Faith I Believe help thou my unbelief 5. Among Truths certain in themselves all are not equally certain unto me and even of the Mysteries of the Gospel I must needs say with Mr. Richard Hooker Eccl. Polit. that whatever men may pretend the subjective Certainty cannot go beyond the objective Evidence for it is caused thereby as the print
on the Wax is caused by that on the Seal Therefore I do more of late than ever discern a necessity of a methodical procedure in maintaining the Doctrine of Christianity and of beginning at Natural Verities as presupposed fundamentally to supernatural though God may when he please reveal all at once and even Natural Truths by Supernatural Revelation And it is a marvellous great help to my Faith to find it built on so sure Foundations and so consonant to the Law of Nature I am not so foolish as to pretend my certainty to be greater than it is meerly because it is a dishonour to be less certain nor will I by shame be kept from confessing those Infirmities which those have as much as I who hypocritically reproach me with them My certainty that I am a Man is before my certainty that there is a God for Quod facit notum est magis notum My certainty that there is a God is greater than my certainty that he requireth love and holiness of his Creature My certainty of this is greater than my certainty of the Life of Reward and Punishment hereafter My certainty of that is greater than my certainty of the endless duration of it and of the immortality of individuate Souls My certainty of the Deity is greater than my certainty of the Christian Faith My certainty of the Christian Faith in its Essentials is greater than my certainty of the Perfection and Infallibility of all the Holy Scriptures My certainty of that is greater than my certainty of the meaning of many particular Texts and so of the truth of many particular Doctrines or of the Canonicalness of some certain Books So that as you see by what Gradations my Understanding doth proceed so also that my Certainty differeth as the Evidences differ And they that have attained to greater Perfection and a higher degree of Certainty than I should pity me and produce their Evidence to help me And they that will begin all their Certainty with that of the Truth of the Scripture as the Principium Cognoscendi may meet me at the same end but they must give me leave to undertake to prove to a Heathen or Infidel the Being of a God and the necessity of Holiness and the certainty of a Reward or Punishment even while he yet denieth the Truth of Scripture and in order to his believing it to be true 6. In my younger years my trouble for Sin was most about my Actual failings in Thought Word or Action except Hardness of Heart of which more anon But now I am much more troubled for â—nward Defects and omission or want of the Vital Duties or Graces in the Soul My daily trouble is so much for my Ignorance of God and weakness of Belief and want of greater love to God and strangeness to him and to the Life to come and for want of a greater willingness to die and longing to be with God in Heaven as that I take not some Immoralities though very great to be in themselves so great and odious Sins if they could be found as separate from these Had I all the Riches of the World how gladly should I give them for a fuller Knowledge Belief and Love of God and Everlasting Glory These wants are the greatest burden of my Life which oft maketh my Life it self a burden And I cannot find any hope of reaching so high in these while I am in the Flesh as I once hoped before this time to have attained which maketh me the wearier of this sinful World which is honoured with so little of the Knowledge of God 7. Heretofore I placed much of my Religion in tenderness of heart and grieving for sin and penitential tears and less of it in the love of God and studying his love and goodness and in his joyful praises than now I do Then I was little sensible of the greatness and excellency of Love and Praise though I coldly spake the same words in its commendations as now I do And now I am less troubled for want of grief and tears though I more value humility and refuse not needful Humiliation But my Conscience now looketh at Love and Delight in God and praising him as the top of all my Religious Duties for which it is that I value and use the rest 8. My Judgment is much more for frequent and serious Meditation on the heavenly Blessedness than it was heretofore in my younger days I then thought that a Sermon of the Attributes of God and the Joys of Heavenâ— were not the most excellent and was wont to say Every body knoweth this that God is great and good and that Heaven is a blessed place I had rather hear how I may attain it And nothing pleased me so well as the Doctrine of Regeneration and the Marks of Sincerity which was because it was suitable to me in that state but now I had rather read hear or meditate on God and Heaven than on any other Subject for I perceive that it is the Object that altereth and elevateth the Mind which will be such as that is which it most frequently feedeth on And that it is not only useful to our comfort to be much in Heaven in our believing thoughts but that is must animate all our other Duties and fortifie us against every Temptation and Sin and that the Love of the end is it that is the poise or spring which setteth every Wheel a going and must put us on to all the means And that a Man is no more a Christian indeed than he is Heavenly 9. I was once wont to meditate most on my own heart and to dwell all at home and look little higher I was still poring either on my Sins or Wants or examining my Sincerity but now though I am greatly convinced of the need of Heart-acquaintance and imployment yet I see more need of a higher work and that I should look often upon Christ and God and Heaven than upon my own Heart At home I can find Distempers to trouble me and some Evidences of my Peace but it is above that I must find matter of Delight and Ioy and Love and Peace it self Therefore I would have one thought at home upon my self and sins and many thought above upon the high and amiable and beatifying Objects 10. Heretofore I knew much less than now and yet was not half so much acquainted with my Ignorance I had a great delight in the daily new Discoveries which I made and of the Light which shined in upon me like a Man that cometh into a Country where he never was before But I little knew either how imperfectly I understood those very Points whose discovery so much delighted me nor how much might be said against them nor how many things I was yet a stranger to But now I find far greater Darkness upon all things and perceive how very little it is that we know in comparision of that which we are ignorant of and and have
published in this Age in matters of Fact with unblushing Confidence even where thousands or Multitudes of Eye and Ear-Witnesses knâ—w all to be false doth call Men to take heed what History they believe especially where Power and Violence affordeth that Priviledge to the Reporter that no Man dare answer him or detect his Fraud or if they do their Writings are all supprest As long as Men have Liberty to examine and contradict one another one may partly conjecture by comparing their Words on which side the Truth is like to lie But when great Men write History or Flatteries by their Appointment which no Man dare contradict believe it but as you are constrained Yet in these Cases I can freely believe History 1. If the Person shew that he is acquainted with what he faith 2. And if he shew you the Evidences of Honesty and Conscience and the Fear of God which may be much perceived in the Spirit of a Writing 3. And if he appear to be Impartial and Charitable and a Lover of Goodness and of Mankind and not possest with Malignity or personal ill Will and Malice nor carried away by Faction or personal Interest Conscionable Men dare not lye but Faction and Interest abate Mens Tenderness of Conscience And a charitable impartial Heathen may speak Truth in a love to Truth and hatred of a Lye But ambitious Malice and false Religion will not stick to serve themselves on any thing It 's easy to trace the Footsteps of Veracity in the Intelligence Impartiality and Ingenuity of a Thuaâ—â—s a 〈◊〉 a Pâ—â—lus Vâ—â—et though Papists and of Secrates and Soâ—â—â—â— though accused by the Factious of favouring the Novations and many Protestants in a Mâ—lanctâ—â—â— a 〈◊〉 and many more and among Physicians in such as Cratâ— Plaâ—â—â—us c. But it 's 〈◊〉 easy to see the Footsteepâ— of Partiality and Faction and Design in a Gensbâ—â—rd a 〈◊〉 and a Multitude of their Companions and to see reason of Suspicion in many more Therefore I confess I give but halting Credit to most Histories that are written not only against the Albigouses and 〈◊〉 but against most of the Ancient Hereticks who have left us none of their own Writings in which they speak for themselves and I hartily lament that the Historical Writings of the Ancient Schismaticks and 〈◊〉 as they were called perished and that partiality suffered them not to shâ—viâ—â— that we might have had more Light in the Church-Affairs of those times and been better able to judge between the Fathers and them And as I am proâ—e to think that few of them were so â—ad as their Adversaries made them so I am apt to think that such as the Novations and Luciâ—â—rians and 〈◊〉 c. whom their Adversaries commend were very good Men and 〈◊〉 Godly than most Catholicks however mistaken in some one Point Sure I am that as the Lies of the Papists of 〈◊〉 Zwinglius Câ—lvin and 〈◊〉 are visibly malicious and impâ—dent by the common plenary contradicting Evidence and yet the Multitude of their Seduced ones believe them all in despight of Truth and Charity so in this Age there have been such things written against Parties and Persons whom the Writers design to make odious so notoriously false as you would think that the Sense of their Honour at least should have made it impossible for such Men to write My own Eyes have read such Words and Actions asserted with most vehement iterated unblushing Confidence which abundance of Ear-Witnesses even of their own Parties must needs know to have been altogether false and therefore having my self now written this History of my self notwithstanding my Protestation that I have not in any thing wilfully gone against the Truth I expect no more Credit from the Reader than the self-evidencing Light of the matter with concurrent rational Advantages from Persons and Things and other Witnesses shall constrain him to if he be a Person that is unacquainted with the Author himself and the other Evidences of his Veracity and Credibility And I have purposely omitted almost all the Descriptions of any Persons that ever opposed me or that ever I or my Brethren suffered by because I know that the appearance of Interest and partiality might give a fair excuse to the Readers incredulity Although indeed the true Description of Persons is much of the very Life of History and especially of the History of the Age which I have lived in yet to avoid the suspicion of Partiality I have left it out Except only when I speak of the Cromwellians and Sectaries where I am the more free because none suspecteth my Interest to have engaged me against them but with the rest of my Brethren I have opposed them in the obedience of my Conscience when by pleasing them I could have had almost any thing that they could have given me and when before-hand I expected that the present Governours should silence me and deprive me of Maintenance House and Home as they have done by me and many hundreds more Therefore I supposed that my Descriptions and Censures of those Persons which would have enriched and honoured me and of their Actions against that Party which hath silenced impoverished and accused me and which before-hand I expected should do so are beyond the Suspicion of Envy Self-interest or Partiality If not I there also am content that the Reader exercise his Liberty and believe no worse even of these Men than the Evidence of Fact constraineth him Thus much of the Alterations of my Soul since my younger years I thought best to give the Reader instead of all those Experiences and Actual Motions and Affections which I suppose him rather to have expected an account of And having transcribed thus much of a Life which God hath read and Conscience hath read and must further read I humbly lament it and beg pardon of it as sinful and too unequal and unprofitable And I warn the Reader to amend that in his own which he findeth to have been amiss in mine confessing also that much hath been amiss which I have not here particularly mentioned and that I have not lived according to the abundant Mercies of the Lord. But what I have recorded hath been especially to perform my Vows and declare his Praise to all Generations who hath filled up my days with his unvaluable Favours and bound me to bless his Name for ever And also to prevent the defective performance of this Task by some overvaluing Brethren who I know intended it and were unfitter to do it than my self And for such Reasons as Iunius Scaltetus Thuanus and many others have done the like before me The principal of which are these three 1. As Travellers and Seamen use to do after great Adventures and Deliverances I here by satisfie my Conscience in praising the Blessed Author of all those undeserved Mercies which have filled up my Life 2. Foreseeing by the Attempts of Bishop Morley what Prelatists and Papists are like to say of me
is a Peace of Actual Communion in the Worship of God as Members of the same particular Church Thus we owe not to every Christian though sincere in the main 3. There is a Peace which is among the Members of all particular Political Churches in the World as related to each other and obliged to hold Communion as far as is necessary for the Common Good 4. There is a Peace which is common to all professed Christians Members of the Universal Church though perhaps of no particular Political Church 5. There is a Peace to be kept with sober Heathens or Infidels 6. And there is a Peace to be kept with Enemies both of us and the Gospel as far as we can I shall give you my Thoughts about the present Question in these following Propositions Premising that 1. It is not the Peace of bosom Friendship that the Question intendeth and Ergo we need not stand on that 2. Nor is it the Peace that is due to Enemies or that is due to Infidels and those without but it is the other sorts due to the several sorts of Christians Prop. 1. We may not have that Peace which is proper to Christians much less that which is proper to Christians in Church-Order with any that deny the Essentials of Christianity Prop. 2. As for those Anabaptists that in zeal for their Opinion do endeavour the Extirpation of the Ministry or of those of them that are against their Opinions or any other way do attempt that which would tend to the ruine or great damage of the Church we may not have that Peace and Communion with them as with inâ—ffensive Brethren but must admonish them as scandalous and gross Sinners and avoid them if after due admonition they desist not and repent not Prop. 3. Those that deny the Divine Institution or present Existence of Ministry or Worship and Ordinances or governed Churches are uncapable of being Members of any true Political Church and Ergo we cannot have such Church-Communion with them and because their Doctrine is of heinous Consequence as tending to the destruction of all Church-Order Worship and Communion we must reject them if they shall teach it after due Admonition Prop. 4. As for them that think it unlawful to have Communion with us unless we will renounce our Infant Baptism and be rebaptized we cannot have Communion with them in that Case though we would because they refuse it with us Prop. 5. We cannot lawfully disown the Truth of God nor own their Errours for Communion with them nor may we yield for any such Ends to be rebaptized Prop. 6. We may not lawfully be Members of a Church of Anabaptists separated on that Account from others nor of any other unlawfully separated Church nor ordinarily Communicate with them in their way of Separation though we might be admitted to it without any other disowning the Truth or owning their Mistakes Except it were in a case of Necessity as if such a Church were removed among Infidels or gross Hereticks where we could have no better Communion in worshipping God Prop. 7. If any one that Erreth but in the bare Point of Infant Baptism or other Errours that subvert not the Christian Faith shall yet take it to be his duty to propagate those Errours it will be the duty of every Orthodox Minister when he hath a Call and findeth it Necessary to defend the Truth of such Errours and to endeavour the establishing of the Minds of the People and not to let them go on without Controll or Contradiction lest he be guilty of betraying the Truth and Peace of the Church and the Souls of the People who are usually sorely endangered hereby The like must be done by Private Christians privately or according to their Places and Capacities So much for the Negative The Affirmatives follow Prop. 1. The Common Love which is due to all Men and the Common Peace which must be endeavoured with all must be held or endeavoured as to them that deny the Essentials of Christianity But as is before said this is not it that the Question doth intend Prop. 2. It is our Duty to do the best we can to reclaim any Erroneous or Ungodly Person from his Errour or Impiety that so they may be capable of that further Love and Peace and Communion with us which in their present state they are uncapable of Prop. 3. Those that believe not some Points that are necessary to the Constitution or Communion of Political Churches if yet they believe in Christ and worship God so far as they know his Will and live uprightly may be true Christians and so to be esteemed even when they make themselves uncapable of being Members of any Political Church Prop. 4. Some Anabaptists and others that make themselves uncapable of being Members of the same particular Churches with us or of local Communion in God's Worship may yet be acknowledged to be Christian Societies or truly particular Political Churches though in tantum corrupt and sinfully separated I mean this of all those that differ not from us in any Article of our Creed or Fundamental of Christian Religion nor yet in any Fundamental of Church Policy As e. g. those that only re-baptize and deny Infant Baptism or also hold some of the less dangerous Points of 〈◊〉 or Pâ—lagianism but withal hold all the Fundamentals necessary to Salvation and Church Policy or Communion Prop. 5. If any Person disclaim his Infant Baptism and be Re-baptized and then having so satisfied his Conscience shall continue his Communion with the Church where he was a Member and not separate from them and shall profess his willingness to embrace the Truth at soon as he can discern the Evidence of 〈◊〉 and shall live 〈◊〉 and inoffensively under the Oversight of the Church-Guides 〈◊〉 may not Exclude such a one from 〈◊〉 Communion but must continue him a Member of that particular Church and live with him in that love and peace as is due to such Prop. 6. If such an one should also mistake it to be his Duty publickly to enter his Dissent to the Doctrine of Infant Baptism and so to acquiesce and live quietly under the oversight of the Ministry and in the Communion of that Church he ought not to be rejected Prop. 7. It is our Duty to invite those called Anabaptists now among us to loving familiar Conferences of purpose 1. To narrow our Differences as far as is possible by a true stating of them that they seem not greater than they are 2. And to endeavour if possible yet to come nearer by rectifying of Mistakes 3. And to consult how to improve the Principles that we are all agreed in to the Common Good and to manage our remaining Differences in the most peaceable manner and to the least disturbance or hurt of the Church Here come in two more Questions to be resolved 1. How should such an Attempt be managed 2. What hope is there of Success For the first I shall
briefly give in my Thoughts in some Directions Direct 1. Let the Attempt be made with none that deny the Principles of Christianity or Church-Communion but with those only that Err and have such Errours as are tolerable 2. Let only the most Sober and Judicious be the Agents in this Attempt who do manifest some esteem for the Honour of God and the Common Good and a willingness to prefer these before any private Interests of their own or any others 3. Let prudent hands draw up all those Points wherein we are agreed leaving the Difference no wider than it is and let these be all subscribed to by each Party 4. Let all these Points wherein we are agreed be published in our several Congregations that the People may not by our disagreement in other things be staggered in these nor make that their pretence for any ungodly Principles or Practices but may be the more ashamed of them when they see they are condemned by us all 5. Let us next agree to make these Common Truths the common and ordinary Matter of our Preaching and endeavour with our first and greatest diligence to promote them and to perswade all our hearers to do the like 6. Let each Party openly disown all those that reject the great and common Truths though they may agree with us in those Particulars wherein we oppose each other And if they be intolerable Errours which they Err in let us renounce their Communion 7. Let us next draw up the State of our Difference as clearly and in as narrow room as is possible 8. Let us agree upon some necessary Rules for the most harmless managing of these Differences that the Common Truths and the Souls of Men may be as little hazarded by them as may be and the known and necessary Duties of Christian Love and Communion as little hindered E. g. The moderate Anabaptists that take not their Opinions to be a sufficient ground for Separation from our Churches may agree on such Terms as these following 1. Let there be no withdrawing from the Ministry and Church of that Place upon the meer ground of Baptism If the Minister be an Anabaptist let not us withdraw from him on that ground and if he be a Paedobaptist let not them withdraw from us 2. If the Pastor be for or against Infant Baptism and think he have a Call to deliver his Judgment let not the private Member think he is still bound to contradict him or withdraw but having once publickly entered his diffent to that Doctrine and protested that his Presence and Patience doth not signifie an Owning of it if his Conscience urge him to go so far let him afterward acquiesce and walk respectfully lovingly and obediently to the Pastors in all lawful things 3. Those that are so moderate as to take Infants for Church Members though not to be Baptized let them openly make profession of it 4. Those that do not take them for Members if yet they have any more hope of them than of Heathen Children or think it a Duty in any sort to dedicate them to God let them bring them to the Congregation and there in general prosess their hopes and the grounds of them and either dedicate them to God or profess their willingness to do it to the utmost of their Interest and Capacity and desire God to accept them and bless them 5. Let those that are for Infant Baptism profess that a Personal Faith and Repentance is of Necessity to the Salvation of all that live to years of Discretion and Baptism without it will not serve the turn 6. Let all that are Baptized in Infancy publickly own and renew that Covenant when they come to years of Discretion before they are admitted to the Lord's Supper Thus far in Consistency with the Principles of the Moderate we may yield to each other and so hold Communion in the same Congregations and the practice of this doth belong most to the People But for those that joyn Separation to Anabaptism yet if they be any thing moderate though they go much further from us than the rest we may agree on these following Terms with them to manage our Differences to the least wrong to the Church and Common Truths R. 1. Let us promise to go no further from each others Communion than after serious Consideration our Consciences shall tell us it is our Duty to do 2. Let us declare that though one part be confident that Infant Baptism is a Duty and the other that it is a Sin yet we judge that they that Err here while they sincerely desire to know the Truth may be saved notwithstanding that Errour What it will prove to the Children if the Parent accept not the Covenant for them and devote them not to God will be a hard dispute which I shall not now presume to meddle in 3. Let it be declared that we take each other for Christians and Churches of Christ. 4. Let it be declared that we take the rightly called Ministry of each Church for true Ministers 5. If any of each others Flock shall reproach or disown their Ministers and the Churches they are of meerly because of their Judgment about Infant Baptism let the contrary part having opportunity reprove them sharply and help to humble them and bring them to the Confession of their Sin and to Reformation that so proud unruly ungodly People may not take shelter under either Party by the means of any factiousness or partiality of ours 6. Let us never intrude into each others Charge without the Pastors Consent 7. Let us agree that we will not preach for or against Infant Baptism when our Consciences tell us that the Peoples ignorance of greater Truths or their Ungodliness doth require us to deal with them on more weighty Points 8. Let us preach as seldom for or against Infant Baptism as Conscience will permit and particularly let that which herein we account the Truth have but its due proportion of our Time compared with the multitude and greatness of other Truths 9. Let these Points also have but an answerable proportion of our Zeal that we make not People believe that they are greater Matters than they are 10. Let us not endeavour to reproach one another when we think we are bound to speak for our Opinions that we make not each other uncapable of doing the People good 2. As to the second Question What hope of Success I shall not presume to determine it Let every Man conjecture as he seeth Cause for my own part I am not quite out of hope of some measure of Success with some few particular Persons but my hopes are very low as to the generality Object 1. It is not our Duty to attempt a Work where there is no hope of Success Answ. The Case is not so desperate as to excuse us from the Duty A possibility with the least probability may serve to oblige us Object 2. What! shall we consent to the Exclusion of Infants
from their Churches Answ. No but consent to improve the common Truths and perform our Duties even to such as differ from us in this Object 3. There is not one of an hundred of them that will consent to these Terms Answ. If they will not who can help it when we have tried them we have done our Duty and left them without Excuse Object 4. Shall we confess a Schismatical Church for a true Church Answ. Every Schism nulleth not the Church or Ministry that is guilty of it else most of the Churches in the World were nulled If they reject the Essentials of a Church they are none Object 5. Baptism is Essential to a Church The Apostle Heb. 6. 1. putteth it among the Principles Answ. 1. It is only the thing signified by Baptism that is Essential 2. The Apostle calls it a Principle because it is one of the first things taught but not because it is Essential to a Church 3. The Anabaptists have Baptism in their Churches though not of Infants Object 6. To make a League with Schsmaticks is to be guilty of their Schism Answ. True If by that League you own approve or consent to their Schism But not by agreeing with them to perform Common Duties Object 7. They are undermining the Church and Ministry and shall we seek peace with such Answ. 1. Those that we speak of are not such 2. If they were yet it is our Duty to hinder them by agreeing to moderate Ways and Common Duties Object 8. They are guilty of their Infants Damnation as much as in them lyeth by not believing their part in the Covenant nor dedicating them to God Answ. They virtually consent for their Infants in that they would actually do it if they knew the Promise Object 9. They are under God's visible Displeasure Ergo c. Answ. So far as God disowneth them we must do so but no further Object 10. We shall be reproached as complying with them Answ. Slanderous Tongues cannot excuse us from plain Duties Object 11. Those whom we should Excommunicate we may not have Communion with But the Anabaptists should be Excommunicated Ergo c. Answ. I deny the Minor taken of such Anabaptists as we have now in question Object 12. It is a scandalous Sin unrepented of Answ. 1. So is many a greater Errour which Men must not be Excommunicated for 2. It is virtually repented of seeing if they knew the Evil of it they would repent Object 13. You would have a looser Discipline than the Prelates or Papists for they would not Communicate with Anabaptists Answ. 1. I only avoid dividing rigour and cruelty 2. They have Multitudes in their Communion that know not what Baptism is nor to what use nor who Christ is whether God or Man nor many other Fundamentals Ergo Their Discipline is far looser than I desire but too partial also The Anabaptists object We are bound to propagate the Truth and if you will have Communion with us you must be baptized Answ. 1. You are bound to propagate first the greatest Truths that Salvation lyeth on and to do nothing that may hinder this by promoting your own Opinions 2. If you reject Communion with all but Anabaptists you reject all the Church through most Ages of the World And no Church no Christ and no Christ no Christians nor any Salvation 3. Blame us not if we be not easily brought to your Opinion if we had but these Reasons 1. You confess no thanks to you that Infants were once Church-Members by God's appointment and have never yet proved that he cast them out again And we must have good proof of that before we can be satisfied with your way 2. We cannot be hasty to believe an Evil and we know that it is a sad Penal Evil for Infants to be put out of the Church And Ergo we will have proof of it before we believe it 3. It must be no easie matter with us to believe that the Head and Shepherd of the Church hath de facto had a Church of a false Constitution as to the very Materials and Enterance from the beginning to this day except a few within this twenty years that troubled it in a Corner of the World and that now in the end of the World we must expect a right Constitution as if Christ had slept or regarded not his Church or been the Head of a Body which he disowned We cannot hastily believe such things I say again No Church no Christ for No Body no Head And if no Christ then there is no Christ now Take heed therefore how you unâ—Church or difown the whole Church of Christ in the very frame for so many Ages An Offer of Christian fraternal Communion to the Brethren that are against or doubtful about Baptizing Infants of Believers IT is our exceeding Joy that we have all one God one Saviour one Spirit one Faith and one Baptismal Covenant one Rule of Faith and Life one End and Hope and are Members of one Catholick Church and agree about God's Worship in the most and greatest parts And it is our Grief and the Matter of our great Humiliation that we can come no nearer and that by the Remnants of our Differences the Wicked are so hardened the Weak offended our Charity hindered our holy Communion and mutual Edification disturbed our Minds discomposed and the Gospel the Catholick Church and our Saviour dishonoured Lamenting this with the rest of our Unhappiness while we are in the Flesh and absent from the Lord the Centre of Perfect Unity and Concord and knowing it to be our Duty to walk by the same Rule and mind the same things so far as we have attained and being taught of God to love one another and observing how frequently and urgently Brotherly Love and Forbearance and the Unity and Concord of Christians is prest in the holy Scriptures and Uncharitableness and Divisions condemned that as far as may be we may promote our Common Ends of Christianity and with one Mind and Mouth may glorifie God We whose Names are under-written do make this following Offer of Communion 1. To all those that joyn with us in the foregoing Profession of the Christian Faith and have been Baptized since their Infant-Baptism as thinking it unlawful or insufficient we offer free Communion in our particular Churches with leave to Enter your dissent from our Infant-Baptism into the Church-Register or Records so be it you will thence-forth walk in that Love and Holiness and that Obedience to the faithful Overseers of the Flock and that Concord and Brotherly Communion with the Church as is required in the holy Scriptures according to your power and will resist Uncharitableness Discord and Divisions and joyn with us in our Common Work for the Common Ends. 2. To all those that joyn with us in the foregoing Profession of Faith though they have been baptized since their Infant-Baptism or think that Baptism unlawful and dare not hold Local Communion with us in
our particular Churches we yet offer that we may at that distance that our Infirmities have set us maintain unfeigned Brotherly Love and acknowledge our several Churches for Christian Congregations and hold a Correspondency by Delegates or other convenient Means for the strengthening of each other and observe the Rules exprest in the following Offer 3. To all those that joyn with us in the foregoing Profession of Christianity and yet through their dissent from our Baptizing the Infants of Believers dare not hold Local Communion with us nor yet acknowledge our Churches to be true Instituted Particular Churches we yet offer 1. That we may acknowledge each other for Members of Christ supposing the foresaid Profession of Christianity to be solemnly and credibly made and Members of the Church Universal 2. And that we may converse in the World together in a faithful Observance of these following Rules 1. That we addict our selves heartily to the promoting and exercising of Brotherly Love towards one another and take heed of all things contrary thereto in Word and Deed. 2. That we addict our selves to preserve the Unity of the Church Catholick and Concord of true Christians and the Common Interest of the Godly and to farther the Cause of Christ in the World and take heed of so managing our different Opinions as may be a hinderance to these 3. That we study and addict our selves to promote the Conversion of ignorant ungodly People and the building up of the Weak and that we take great heed lest in the managing of our different Opinions or opposing one another we should hinder these Works hardening the Wicked and offending the Weak 4. That we always in our esteem and industry prefer the greater common Truths that we are all agreed in before the lesser Points that we differ in And that we take heed of so managing our Differences publickly or privately as may tend to hinder the Reception or Success of those greater common Truths in which we are agreed 5. That we publish our Agreements and profess our Christian Love and Resolutions for Peace in our several Congregations and profess there our joynt disowning and detestation of all Errours Heresies and Ungodliness contrary to the Profession wherein we are agreed 6. That we will not preach publickly for our differing Opinions in each others Congregations without the Pastor's consent nor privately to speak for them as is like to tend to the hinderance of God's greater Work in that Place nor hold any private Assemblies in one anothers Parishes which shall be more to the distracting of each others Societies than for common Christian Edification 7. That in our Preaching and Conference we will allow the greater and common Truths such a proportion of our Time and Zeal and Speech as the Nature Necessity and Number doth require and not lay out inordinately such an undue proportion of Zeal and Time and Speech for our different Opinions as shall be injurious to those Truths 8. That we will avoid in Publick and Private all unbrotherly scornful reproachful Speeches of each other especially before ungodly People And that we will not to them dishonour one anothers Ministry so as may hinder their profiting by it but will rebuke all such ungodly Persons that we hear reproaching the Ministers or Brethren of either part 9. That we will not receive into any of our Churches any Scandalous Persons that fly from the Discipline of other Churches and pretend a Change of Opinion to cloak their Scandals but will impartially hear what Accusations shall be sent in against them and proceed accordingly 10. That we will upon any Defamations or Accusations or Rumours of Injury against one another or of violating our Profession by contrary Doctrine or breaking this Agreement be responsible to each other as Brethren and will forbear divulging private or uncertain Faults or censuring or reproaching one another till we have either conferred together to give and receive Satisfaction and duly admonished each other or tendered such Conferences and Admonitions seasonably till we see they are wilfully rejected OFFERERS Richard Baxter Pastor of the Church at Kiderminster c. c. c. WE whose Names are Subscribed dissenting from Infant-Baptism heartily accept this Offered Agreement as followeth In the first Rank In the second Rank In the third Rank Optatus Adv. Parm. l. 3. p. 75. EUM qui ad Deum so conversum esse professus est Paganum vocas Paganum vocas eum qui Deum Patrem per filium ejus ante eram rogaverit 〈◊〉 enim crediderit in nomine Patris Filii Spiritâ—â— Sancti credidit Et tu eum Paganum vocas post confessionem Fidei Siâ—aliquid Christiâ—â—â—â— quod absit unâ—squisque delinquerit peccator dici potest Paganus iterum esse non potest Sed haeâ— omnia vultis nullius esse momenti At si tibi ipsi consenserit quem seducis unus consensus manâ—â— tuae porrectio pauca Verba jam tibi Christianum faciunt de Christiano Et ille vobie videbitur Christianus qui quod vultis fecerit non quem fides adduxerit Lib. 5. p. 86. Denique vos qui baptisma quasi libenter duplicare contenditis si datis alterum baptisma date alteram fidem si datis alteram Fidem alterum Christum Sidatis alternum Christum date alterum Deum Deus Unus est De Uno Deo Unus est Christus Qui rebaptizatur jam Christianus fuerat Quomodo dici potest iterum Christianus Lib. 4. p. 76. Sâ— tu non vis esse Frater ego esse incipio Impius si de nomine isto â—â—cuero Vid. Lib. 1. Fol. 1. § 46. Before this I had occasion to make a more particular tryal for Union with the Independent Brethren I knew Mr. Phil. Nye had very great power with them and he being in the Country I desired him to give me in Writing all those things which of necessity must be granted them by the Presbyterians in order to Concord and Conjunction in the same Associations and Communion He referred me to the Debates in the Assembly at Westminster which are in print I urged him to give them me under his Hand which at that time he did not but the next Year I prevailed with him and he wrote down these two as sufficient Concessions to our desired End The first was that they might have Liberty to take Church-Members out of other Parishes And the second that they might have all Church Power within themselves in their several Congregations I asked him if I accommodated them in both these whether really they would unite with us as aforesaid And he told me that they would Whereupon I drew up this Form of Agreement following which I thought granted them both these But so as that they should be Members of constant Associations and meet with us in our Synods and that they should do this not as subject to the Government of those Synods but as using them for Concord between the Churches and so
between us whether Men should wait for farther objective Revelations or Additions to the written Word or whether we should condemn the Errors of the Enthusiasts herein we are agreed in all this 5. Nor is the Question de Officio whether it be the Duty of all Men to look out after the written Word as far as they can and rest in it 6. Nor is the Question whether the Scripture only have the proper Nature of a Rule to Judge Controversies by 7. Nor yet whether Scripture be of necessity to the Church in General 8. Nor whether it be necessary as a means to the Salvation of all that have it 9. Nor whether it be the only sufficient means of safe keeping and propagating the whole Truth of God which is necessary to the Church 10. But the Question is of every particular Soul on Earth whether we may thus assert that there is no Salvation for them unless they know Christ by the Revelation of the Scripture And I cannot assent to the Article for these Reasons 1. It seems a Snare by the unmeet Expressions 2. We cannot be certain of the Truth of it 3. It is not of so great necessity as that all should be cast out of the Ministry though in other things Orthodox that will not own it 4. Much less is it a Fundamental Nor dare I judge all to Damnation that are not herein of your Opinion 5. It seems to me to be injurious to Christianity it self 6. And to the present intended Reformation 7. And to the Parliament 8. And to our selves 1. For the First of these Reasons It is confessed by some here that a Man may be converted by the Doctrine of the Scripture before he know the Writings or their Authority and that you intend not to assert that the divine Authority of the Scripture is that primum credibile which must needs be believed before any Truth therein contained can be savingly believed And it is thought by some that your Assertion is made good if it be but proved that all saving Revelation that is now in the World is from Scripture originally and subordinate to it and not co-ordinate But the obvious Sense of your Words will seem to many to be this that the particular Knowledge of that Person who will be saved must be by Scripture Revelation as the objective Cause or Instrument even under that Consideration either in the Mind of the Speaker or Hearer or both If it should be said that the Revelation which converted this or that Sinner did arise from the Scriptures a Thousand Years ago But hath since been taken up as coming another way and so there hath been an Intermission of ascribing it to the Scripture as to those Men by whom it was carried down this will not seem to agree with your Expressions And seeing many others must be Judges of your Sense who shall have Power to trie Ministers hereby you enable them by your obscure Expressions to wrong the Church oppress their Brethren and introduce Errors And so it seems you frame a â—nare 2. And you will put every poor Christian in these Places where Christ's Faith is known to many but by Verbal Tradition into an Impossibility of knowing that they have any true Faith because they cannot know that it came from the Scriptures 2. That we are not certain of the Truth of this Assertion nor can I be Judge 1. Because there was Salvation from Adam to Moses by Traâ—â—â—ion without the written Word and there was a considerable space of time after Christ's Assention before the Scriptures of the New Testament were written The first Christians were savingly called and the Churches gathered without these Writings by the preaching of the Doctrine which is now contained in them And though that be now necessary to the Safety of the Church and Truth which was not so necessary when the Apostles were present yet it is unproved that there is more necessary to the Salvation of every Soul now than was in those Days And it is considerable that it was not only the preaching of the Apostles but of all other Publishers of the Gospel in those Times that was in suo genere sufficient for Conversion without Scripture Yea and to the Gentiles that knew not the Scriptures of the Old Testament 2. If there be no Salvation but by a Scripture Revelation then either because there is no other way of revealing the Marrow of the Gospel or because it will not be saving in another way But neither of these can be proved true Ergo for the latter 1. The Word of God and Doctrine of his Gospel may save if revealed supposing other Necessaries in their Kinds For it sufficeth to the formal Object of Faith that it be veracitas revelantis and to the material Object that it be Hoc verum bonum revelatum but it must be truly revelatum though not by Scripture Ergo 2. God hath promised Salvation to all that truly believe and not to those that believe only by Scripture-Revelation nor hath he any where told us that he will annex his Spirits help to no other Revelation 2. For the former That there is now in the World no other way of revealing the Marrow of the Gospel but by Scripture or from it 1. It cannot be proved by Scripture as will appear when your Proofs are tryed 2. The contrary is defended by most learned Protestants 1. A Praecepto another collateral way of Revelation is commanded by God Ergo there 's another 2. From certain History and Experience which speak of the Performance of those Commands and the Instances they give of both are these 1. Ministers are commanded to preach the Gospel to all Nations before it was written and a Promise annexed that Christ would be with them to the end of the World In Obedience whereunto not only the Apostles but Multitudes more did so preach which was by delivering the great Master-Verities which are now in the written Word This Command is not reverst by the writing of the Word And therefore is still a Duty as to deliver the Gospel Doctrine in and by the Scripture so collaterally to preach the Substance of that Doctrine as delivered from the Mouth of Christ and his Apostles 2. Christ commanded before the Gospel was written to baptize Men into the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost for the Pardon of Sin upon repenting and believing and for the hope of everlasting Glory upon a holy Life This was done accordingly both before and since the writing of the Gospel And so the very Sum and Kernel of the Gospel and indeed all the true Fundamentals and Essentials of the Christian Faith have been most certainly and constantly delivered down by Baptism as a collateral way distinct from the written Word which is evident in the very Succession of Christians to this Day 3. Another means hath been by Symbols called Creeds and Catechising which was mostly by opening the Creeds As Reverend Bishop Usher hath
only your Labours but also your special Assistance in a time of need unto the promoting the welfare of this poor Country certified unto us by Captain Leveret upon which account our General Court thought good to return unto you their Thanks in a Letter which I hope before this is received have made your Name both known and precious to us in these Parts The Occasion of these is in the behalf of one Mr. William Leet Governour of New Heven Jurisdiction whose Case is this He being conscious of indiscretion and some neglect not to say how it came about in relation to the expediting the Execution of the Warrant according to his Duty sent from his Majesty for the apprehending of the two Colonels is not without fear of some displeasure that may follow thereupon and indeed hath almost ever since been a Man depressed in his Spirit for the neglect wherewith he chargeth himself therein His endeavours also since have been accordingly and that in full degree as besides his own Testimony his Neighbours attest they see not what he could have done more Sir If any report prejudicial to this Gentleman in this respect come unto your Ear by your prudent Enquiry upon this Intimation or otherwise so far as the signification of the Premises unto his Majesty or other eminent Person may plead for him or avert trouble towards him I assure my self you may report it as a real Truth and that according to your Wisdom you would be helpful to him so far therein is both his and my desire The Gentleman hath pursued both others and my self with Letters to this effect and yet not satisfied therewith came to Boston to disburden his heart to me formerly unacquainted with him only some few times in Company where he was upon issue of which Conference no better Expedient under God presented it self to us than this So far as you shall see cause as the matter requireth to let the Premises be understood is finally left with your self under God Sir The Author of these Lines it shall be your favour and a pledge of Love undeserved to conceal farther than the necessity of the End desired shall call for And if hereby you shall take occasion being in place of discovery to intelligence the Writer touching your observances with relation to the concernments of this People your Advertisements may not only be of much use unto this whole Country but further your account and minister unto many much cause of Thansgiving on your behalf And I shall be bold upon such encouragement if God permits to give you a more distinct account how it fareth with us I mean of the steps of Divine Providence as to the Publick both in our Civils and Ecclesiasticks which at some spare time may hapâ—y be looked at as a matter of contentful Meditation to your self I crave now pardon for being thus bold with you and will not presume any further to detain you The Lord Jesus be with your Spirit and let him also be remembred by you in your Prayers who is in chief SIR Yours in any Service of the Gospel John Norton Boston Sept. 23. 1661. For the Reverend and his much Honoured Friend Mr. Baxter Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty Reverend and much esteemed in the Lord HOwever black the Cloud is and big the Storm yet by all this the Work and Design of Jesus Christ goeth on and prospereth and in these Clouds Christ is coming to set up his Kingdom Yea is he not come in Power and great Glory When had the Truth a greater or so great and glorious a Cloud of Witnesses Is not this Christ in Power and great Glory and if Christ hath so much Glory in the slaughter of his Witnesses what will his Glory be in their Resurrection Your Constancy who are in the heat of the Storm and Numbers ministers matter of humbling and quickning to us who are at a distance and ready to totter and comply at the noise of a probable approach of our Temptation We are not without our Snares but hitherunto the Lords own Arm hath brought Salvation Our Tents are at Ebenezer However the trials and troubles be we must take care of the present Work and not cease and tarry for a calm time to work in And this Principle doth give me occasion to take the boldness to trouble you with these Lines at present My Work about the Indian Bible being by the good hand of the Lord though not without difficulties finished I am meditating what to do next for these Sons of this our Morning they having no Books for their private use of ministerial composing For their help though the Word of God be the best of Books yet Humane Infirmity is you know not a little helped by reading the holy Labours of the Ministers of Jesus Christ. I have therefore purposed in my heart seeing the Lord is yet pleased to prolong my life to translate for them a little Book of yours intituled A Call to the Unconverted The keenness of the Edge and liveliness of the Spirit of that Book through the blessing of God may be of great use unto them But seeing you are yet in the Land of the Living and the good Lord prolong your days I would not presume to do such a thing without making mention thereof unto your self that so I might have the help and blessing of your Counsel and Prayers I believe it will not be unacceptable to you that the Call of Christ by your holy Labours shall be made to speak in their Ears in their own Language that you may preach unto our poor Indians I have begun the Work already and find a great difference in the Work from my former Translations I am forced sometime to alter the Phrase for the facilitating and fitting it to our Language in which I am not so strict as I was in the Scripture Some things which are fitted for English People are not fit for them and in such cases I make bold to fit it for them But I do little that way knowing how much beneath Wisdom it is to shew a Man's self witty in mending another Man's Work When this Work is done if the Lord shall please to prolong my Life I am meditating of Translating some other Book which may prescribe to them the way and manner of a Christian Life and Conversation in their daily Course and how to worship God on the Sabbath fasting feasting Days and in all Acts of Worship publick private and secret and for this purpose I have Thoughts of translating for them the Practice of Piety or some other such Book In which Case I request your Advice to me for if the Lord give opportunity I may hear from you if you see cause so far to take Notice hereof before I shall be ready to begin a new work especially because the Psalms of David in Metre in their Language are going now to the Press which will be some Diversion of me from a present
containeth 1. The Wisdom of the Mind which is the Knowledge of God 2. The Rectitude of the Will which is the Love of God And 3. The Promptitude Obedience and Fortitude of the Executive Power in and for the Service of God and this is the moral Part of God's Image 3. God having the only Aptitude by his three great Properties Infinite POWER WISDOM and GOODNESS and the only Right Iure Creationis and since Redemptionis Regenerationis immediately stood related to Man in the three great Relations contained expressively in the Name God 1. Our absolute proprietary Owner or Lord. 2. Our Supreme Rector 3. Our bountiful Benefactor or Father and End all flowing from his Relation of our most potent wise good CREATOR Man is related to him 1. As his own to be wholly at his dispose 2. As his Subject to be wholly at his Government 3. As his Beneficiary or Child to love him with all the Heart Now God hath given Man to bear his Image in these Relations which is in Unity caled his Dominion over the bruit Creatures And in Trinity containeth 1. That we are their Owners and they our own 2. we are their Governors according to their Capacities 3. We are their Benefactors and they have and had more dependance on us and were made for us as their End as we were immediately for God as our End This part of God's Image is partly not totally lost The moral part is that which the Spirit restoreth The Wisdom of the Mind the Righteousness or Rectitude of the Will and the Holiness and Obedience of the Life If we had a right Scheme of Theology which I never yet saw Unity in Trinity would go through the whole Method It 's easy to follow it a little way and to see how God's three grand Relations of Owner Ruler and Father or End and chief God and the Correspondent Relations in Man and the mutual Expressions go far in the great parts of Theology But when we run it up to the Numerous and small Branches our narrow Minds are lost in the search But the Day is coming when all God's Works of Creation and Providence and all his Truths shall be seen to us uno intuitu as a most entire perfect Frame Pardon my too many words to you on this As for the divine Government by the Saints which you mention I dare not expect such great Matters upon Earth lest I encroach upon the Priviledge of Heaven and tempt my own Affections downwards and forget that our Kingdom is not of this World Certainly if Christianity be the same thing now that it was at first it is much unsuitable to a reigning State on Earth Bearing the Cross Persecution Self-denial c. found something of another Nature The Rich will rule in the World and few rich Men will be Saints He that surveyeth the present State of the Earth and considereth that scarcely a sixth Part is Christian and how small a Part of them are reformed and how small a part of them have much of the Power of Godliness will be ready to think that Christ hath called almost all his Chosen and is ready to forsake the Earth rather than that he intendeth us such blessed Days below as we desire We shall have what we would but not in this World As hard as we think God dealeth with us our King's Dominions are yet for the Power of Godliness the Glory and Paradise of the Earth Success tempted some here into reigning Expectations and thence into sinful Actions and Attempts and hardened them in all but God hath done much already to confute them Through Faith and Patience we must inherit the Promise May I know Christ crucified on Earth and Christ glorified in Heaven I shall be happy Dear Sir the Lord be your Support and Strength I rest Your Weak Fellow-Servant Richard Baxter § 403. That you may the better understand these Letters and many other such Passages you must know that the great Reason why my self and some of my Brethren were made the King's Chaplains in Title was that the People might think that such Men as we were favoured and advanced and consequently that all that were like us should be favoured and so might think their Condition happy And though we our selves made no doubt but that this was the use that was to be made of us and that afterward we should be silenced with rest in time yet we thought that it was not meet to deny their Offer The People at London who were near judged as we did and were not much deceived But those in the Country that were further off understood not how things went above But especially those in France and in New-England who were yet more remote were far more deceived by these Appearances and the more ready to bless us in our present State and almost wish it were their own Insomuch that there grew on a sudden in New-England a great Inclination to Episcopal Government For many of them saw the Inconveniencies of Separations and how much their way did tend to Divisions and they read my Books and what I said against both the Souldiers and Schismaticks in England and they thought that the Church-Government here would have been such as we were pleased with so that these and many other Motives made them begin to think of a Conformity Till at last Mr. Norton with one Mr. Broadstreet a Magistrate came over and saw how things went and those in New-England heard at last how we were all silenced and cast out And then they began to remember again that there is something beside Schism to be â—eared and that there lyeth as perilous an Extreme on the other side But they have in their Synod past some such moderating Conclusions about Baptism and constant Synods as have ended most of the Differences between them and the moderate Presbyterians § 151. I am next to insert some Businesses of my own which fell in at this same time When I had refused a Bishoprick I did it on such Reasons as offended not the Lord Chancellor and therefore instead of it I presumed to crave his Favour to restore me to preach to my People at Kidderminster again from whence I had been cast out when many hundreds of others were ejected upon the Restoration of all them that had been sequestred It was but a Vicaridge and the Vicar was a poor unlearned ignorant silly Reader that little understood what Christianity and the Articles of his Creed did signifie but once a Quarter he said something which he called a Sermon which made him the Pity or Laughter of the People This Man being unable to preach himself kept always a Curate under him to preach Before the Wars I had Preached there only as a Lecturer and he was bound in a Bond of 500 l. to pay me 60 l. per An. and afterward he was sequestreâ— as is before sufficiently declared my People were so dear to me and I to them that I would
but in general that what we ask may be granted the four and twentieth for forgiveness the five and twentieth for Good works all which are without any special reason both appropriated to the several days and placed where they stand in the order of our Requests The Petition on St. Thomas's day for so perfect a Faith as shall never be reproved in the sight of God is of doubtful conveniency because contrary to the Scripture prediction of the event In the Collect on St. Iohn Baptist's day the preaching of Penance is a word of a more misleading tendency as now used than the preaching of Repentance 14. The Lord's Prayer is a third time to be recited before the Communion when yet as it is a Rule of Prayer as to order it is forsaken through the Book The next Prayer for loving and magnifying God's Name is most necessary but there out of order The Commandments come in also out of order without any special reason of connexion to what goeth before and followeth So do the following Prayers for the King which yet in themselves are very good And the Epistle and Gospel and Creed The Churchwardens are not directed to an orderly collection for the Poor In the Sentences exciting to remember the Poor the Scriptures and Apochryphal Passages of Tobit are confounded without any note of sufficient distinction as if we would have the People believe that Tobit is Canonical Scripture The Prayer for the Church Militant one of the best is very defective having no Petition for the Church but those for Truth Unity Love and Concord The Exhortation biddeth all and intreateth them for the Lord Jesus sake even the worst and most unprepared that be present to come to the Lord's Table as invited thereto by God himself which is a great wrong to him and them And it misinterpreteth the Parable Matth. 22. to which it seemeth plainly to allude which speaketh not of our coming to the Sacrament but of our coming to Christ and into his Church Though indeed the Exhortation is very good if it were made at a sufficient distance before the Sacrament that they might have time of Preparation The next Admonition against unworthy Receiving is very good but impertinent and unseasonable while it perswadeth them to come to the Minister for Advice in order to the Sacrament which is perfectly to be administred It is a disorder for one of the Communicants to be invited to be the Mouth of the rest in Confession of Prayer If the People may pro tempore make a Minister why not for continuance and so the Common Prayer Book is for the Principles of Popular Separatists The proper Prefaces for Christmas-day and Whitsunday repeat the word at this day which is either a falshood or impertinent and non-intelligible to the most It is a disorder in the next words to begin in a Prayer and end in a Narrative It is disorderly for the Minister to receive the Sacrament in both kinds himself before the other Ministers or People do receive it in either There is no sufficient Explication of the Nature and Use of the Sacrament premised which is the greater defect where the Sacrament is allowed to be administred without a Sermon and where so many of the People never learned the Catechism or understood what a Sacrament is The Exhortation is too defective for the exciting the Faith and other Graces of the Communicants which yet we can bear with if the Minister may be allowed himself to speak such other quickening Words of Exhortation as he findeth suitable to the temper of the Communicants The Confession of Sin before the Communion is too general and defective The Consecration Commemoration and Delivery and Participation are not distinctly enough performed Sometime the Minister is to kneel at Prayer and sometime to stand up without any special reason given for it It were more orderly to make the Delivery distinct in Scripture words and not to confound Prayer and the Delivery together It is more suitable to Christ's Example that the Words of Delivery be ordinarily in the Plural Number and to the Church or to many at once Take ye Eat ye Drink ye than in the Singular Number recited to each one It is disorderly for the People to repeat every Petition of the following Prayers after the Minister That the Hymn be sung in Prose seemeth disorderly The Collects appointed to be said after the Offertory have no reason of order or connexion with what went before or followeth after The first of them beggs Assistance in these our Supplications and Prayers which should rather be towards the beginning than when we are concluding And it beggs but the oft repeated benefit of Defence against the Changes and as it is inconveniently called the Chances of this Life And another of them again asketh those things which we dare not ask But it is the greatest disorder of all that every Parishioner shall Communicate at least thrice in the year whether he be fit or unfit and be forced to it In Baptism it is the greatest disorder that Ministers must be forced though against their Consciences to baptize all Children without Exception the Children of Atheists Infidels Hereticks unbaptized Persons Excommunicate Persons or Impenitent Fornicators or such like It is disorderly that the Parents are neither of them required ordinarily to be present and present their Child to Baptism but it is left to Godfathers and Godmothers that have no power to consent for them or enter them into the Covenant unless it be in the Parents name or they be Pro-parents taking the Child as their own And it frustrateth due Enquiry and Assistance when the Parents may choose whether they will come before to the Minister to be instructed about the Nature and Use of Baptism and may choose whether they will let him know of it till the Night or Morning before The Exhortation before Baptism is very defective omitting many weighty Points So are the two Prayers before it where also it is inconveniently said That God by Christ's Baptism did sanctifie the Flood Jordan and all other Waters to the mystical washing away of Sin The ascribing of the Gift of the Holy Ghost to Infants by their Baptism as its ordinary Effect and necessary to their Regeneration is to bring an undetermined uncertain Opinion into our Liturgy The Arguments for Infant-Baptism are so defectively exprest as have tempted many into Anabaptism The third Prayer saith very little but what was said in one of those foregoing Sureties that have not the Parents power are unjustly required to promise in the Infant 's Name or the Infant by them And so it is a doubt whether many Infants have ever indeed been entred into the Covenant of God when they cannot be said to Promise or Covenant by Persons whom neither Nature or Scripture or any sufficient Authority hath enabled to that Office The Sureties are unjustly and irregularly required to profess present Actual Faith in the Infant 's name
Lives zealously and constantly continue therein against all Opposition and promote the same according to our power against all Lets and Impediments whatsoever And that we are not able our selves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and make known that it may be timely prevented or removed All which we shall do as in the sight of God And because these Kingdoms are guilty of many Sins and Provocations against God and his Son Iesus Christ as is too manifest by our present Distresses and Dangers the Fruits thereof We profess and declare before God and the World our unfeigned desire to be humbled for our own Sins and for the Sins of these Kingdoms especially that we have not as we ought valued the inestimable benefit of the Gospel that we have not laboured for the purity and power thereof and that we have not endeavoured to receive Christ in our hearts nor to walk worthy of him in our lives which are the Causes of other Sins and Transgressions so much abounding amongst us And our true and unfeigned purpose desire and endeavour for our selves and all others under our power and charge both in publick and in private in all Duties we owe to God and Man to amend our Lives and each one to go before another in the Example of a real Reformation That the Lord may turn away his Wrath and heavy Indignation and establish these Churches and Kingdoms in Truth and Peace And this Covenant we make in the presence of Almighty God the Searcher of all hearts with a true intention to perform the same as we shall answer at that great Day when the Secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed Most humbly beseeching the Lord to strengthen us by his Holy Spirit for this end and to bless our Desires and Proceedings with such Success as may be Deliverance and Safety to his People and encouragement to other Christian Churches groaning under or in danger of the Yoke of Antichristian Tyranny to ioyn in the same or like Association and Covenant to the Glory of God the Inlargement of the Kingdom of Iesus Christ and the Peace and Tranquility of Christian Kingdoms and Common-wealths The Oath and Declaration imposed upon the Lay-Conformists in the Corporation Act the Vestry Act c. are as followeth The Oath to be taken I. A. B. do declare and believe That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take up Arms against the King and that I do abhor that Traiterous Position of taking Arms by his Authority against his Person or against those that are Commissioned by him So help me God The Declaration to be Subscribed I. A. B. do declare That I hold there lyes no Obligation upon me or any ot her Person from the Oath commonly called The Solemn League and Covenant and that the same was in it self an unlawful Oath and imposed upon the Subjects of this Realm against the known Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom All Vestry Men to make and Subscribe the Declaration following I. A. B. do declare That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King and that I do abhor that Traiterous Position of taking Arms by his Authority against his Person or against those that are Commissioned by him And that I will Conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England as it is now by Law established And I do declare That I do hold there lyes no Obligation upon me or any other Person from the Oath commonly called The Solemn League and Covenant to indeavour any Change or Alteration of Government either in Church or State and that the same was in it self an unlawful Oath and imposed upon the Subjects of this Realm against the known Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom The Declaration thus Prefaced in the Act of Uniformity Every Minister after such reading thereof shall openly and publickly before the Congregation there assembled declare his unfeigned Assent and Consent to the use of all things in the said Book contained and prescribed in these words and no other I. A. B. do here declare my unfeigned Assent and Consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by the Book Instituted The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England together with the Psalter or Psalms of David pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches and the Forms or Manner of Making Ordaining and Consecrating of Bishops Priests and Deacons The Declaration to be Subscribed I. A. B. d◠declare That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King and that I abhor that Trayterous Position of taking Arms by his Authority against his Person or against those that are Commissionated by him and that I will Conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England as it is now by Law established And I do declare that I do hold there lyes no Obligation upon me or any other Person from the Oath commonly called The Solemn League and Covenant to endeavour any Change or Alteration of Government either in Church or State and that the same was in it self a◠unlawful Oath and imposed upon the Subjects of this Realm against the known Laws and Liberties of this Kingdom The Oath of Canonical Obedience EGo A. B. Iuro quod praestabo Veram Canonicam Obedientiam Episcopo Londinens◠ejusque Successoribus in omnibus licitis honestis § 302. II. The Nonconformists who take not this Declaration Oath Subscription c. are of divers sorts some being further distant from Conformity than others some thinking that some of the forementioned things are lawful and some that none of them are lawful and all have not the same Reasons for their dissent But all are agreed that it is not lawful to do all that is required and therefore they are all cast out of the Exercise of the Sacred Ministry and forbidden to preach the Word of God § 303. The Reasons commonly given by them are either 1. Against the Imposing of the things forementioned or 2. Against the Using of them being imposed Those of the former sort were given into the King and Bishops before the Passing of the Act of Uniformity and are laid down in the beginning of this Book and the Opportunity being now past the Nonconformists now meddle not with that part of the Cause it having seemed good to their Superiours to go against their Reasons But this is worthy the noting by the way that all that I can speak with of the Conforming Party do now justifie only the Using and Obeying and not the Imposing of these things with the Penalty by which they are Imposed From whence it is evident that most of their own Party do now justifie our Cause which we maintained at the Savoy which was against this Imposition whilst it might have been prevented and for which such an intemperate Fury hath
the Man that would assert or did believe that the fore described Discipline was ever exercised by any Man of them throughout his Diocess no nor in any three Parishes in it if in one Bishop Edward Reignolds of Norwich was one that went along with us to the last in our Desire and Treaties for Discipline and Reformation And who heareth of any such Discipline exercised by him who doubtless would do it if he could Nay I am confident that he will say himself that he hath not exercised it on a tenth part that are the due Objects of it in any two Parishes in his Diocess Nay in his Diocess there are as many hundreds of godly People Excommunicated or troubled by Sentence at least for Nonconformity as in any Diocess that I hear of in England and the poor Bishop looks on and cannot hinder it Could it be done some one would do it But none doth it Ergo § 332. 8. The eighth Charge against our Prelacy is That having cast out Christ's Church-Discipline prescribed in the Gospel it setteth up instead of it an unlawful kind of Church-Discipline And the unlawfulness they shew in these Particulars § 333. 1. In that the Judges of the Courts as well as the rest are meer Lay-meâ— the Bishops Chancellors who ordinarily Admonish Excommunicate and Absolve For though the King's Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs did speak against this yet that was dead before it took place and the old Course is now taken in all their Courts And what the Tongue of Man can rationally say for Lay-mens exercising the Power of the Keys most essential to the Sacred Pastoral Office it is beyond my reach to know The common Answer is that Lay-Elders are as bad As if one Man's sin would justifie anothers and warrant all Men to Subscribe to it But yet they know 1. That Church-Elders are not accounted Lay-men but Sacred Officers by those that are for them 2. That they meddle but with one Parish and that but as Assistants to the Pastors whereas the Chancellors meddle with many hundred Parishes and that as the sole Judges in the Court when the Bishop is not there which is the ordinary Case Indeed I hear that pro forma they use to get some Priest or other to pass the Sentence in Court when the Lay-Chancellor hath determined it But this a meer jugling mockery And if they were serious it would confute themselves who say That a Presbyter hath not the power of Excommunication And they justifie the Cause of the Presbyterians who claim it as is aforesaid § 334. 2. As to the Matter of the English Discipline it consisteth not in the fore-described Convictions Reproofs Exhortations to Repentance praying for the Sinner's Repentance telling him before two or three or telling the Church but in a Citation and such a Course of Process as is in Civil Secular Courts § 335. 3. And for the Manner it is not with holy Seriousness and Patience as may tend to the melting of a Sinner's heart into true Contrition nor as may tend to awake him from his Security with the Terrours of the Lord nor is it at all fitted to work upon the Conscience who can expect that Lay-men and such Men in a Publick Court and such a Court should do it Nor do I believe that any Subscribing conscionable Minister will say that he ever heard a Chancellor convert a Sinner or say that which was like or apt to bring him to true Repentance But on the contrary they work on them by Terrour of Corporal Penalties and Mulâ—ts and harden them into a hatred of those that thus vex them so that a Pastor that ever hopeth to do good on his Parishioners will take heed how he presenteth them to one of these Courts left by so much he seem to be their Enemy and they never regard his Doctrine more whereas Christ's Discipline is Paternal by Love and convincing Reason and to the very last extremity is to be done with so much Fatherly Kindness and Compassion as tendeth to melt and win the Sinner § 336. 4. And for the Adjuncts your Discipline of Excommunication is all enforced with Imprisonment and the utter ruine of the Excommunicate upon a Writ de Excommunicato capiendo If you say that it is the Magistrate's Action and not ours I answer 1. You are the Judges and make the Magistrate your Executioners 2. You take the very Life of your Discipline to lye in it How ordinarily do you say That were it not for the Sword and Corporal Penalty who would care for Excommunication And your Confession hath in it much of Truth as to your Excommunications But hereby you corrupt the Discipline of the Church and lamentably corrupt the Church it self It is a great Truth which the Churches welfare lieth on That no Man is fit for the Communion of the Church that so far despiseth it as not to be moved by a meer Excommunication Shall he have the Communion of the Church who will rather be cast out of it than repent when of old Penitents long begg'd the Churches Communion prostrate or at the Church Door before they were re-admitted And now if Ten thousand Men scorn the Churches Communion and will stand out a bare Excomunication you will drive them into the Church and to a feigned Repentance by the fear of a Jail And so all Men shall be Members of your Churches that do but so far love their Skins as rather to endure the Church than the Prison of this also the Scots Presbytery hath been guilty in part And what Churches these are it is easie to judge And you cannot say that this is only Male-administration for it is the very Constitution of your Government § 337. 5. And your Discipline is exercised by Strangers upon Strangers at many Miles distance where the Church that the Sinner is to hold Communion with heareth not the Process nor knoweth of the Matter nor perhaps the Minister that should be his Governour but only they receive a Paper from the Court containing the Sentence which the Parson must read and then in despight of him must admit the vilest to the Churches Communion and read his Absolution if the Court require it let him never so well know the Sinner to be impenitent § 338. 6. Lastly Let any Man of Charity free from Faction judge by the Canons Whether the Discipline of Excommunication be not exercised upon many godly upright Persons for fasting and praying together and such like who are unfit for such Severity And let him that readeth both Liturgy and Canons judge Whether the Communion of the Sacrament be not denied to holy Persons if they do but fear Idolatry in kneeling before the Bread who are not worthy of so great a Penalty So that in a word a kind of Secular Courts are set up instead of the Discipline of Christ and the edge of their Severity is turned against those conscientious People that be not of their Opinions in Ceremonies or
their Lawful Pastors to prevent all ill Effects 6. And for the Minister himself to repeat his Sermon or Catechize or Instruct his People that will come to him And is this the intolerable Evil worthy to be avoided at the rate of all our Calamities Are all our Divisions better than the enduring of this If any Limitations necessary had been omitted I might have expected to have found them named which I do not But 1. No Man's denial can make us ignorant of it that too great a Part of the People in most places know not what Baptism Christianity or the Catechism are and many hundred thousands cannot Read 2. And that few Ministers so personally instruct them as their need requireth nor can do for so many or by their Instruction they have not cured them 3. That to go to their Neighbours on the Lord's Day to hear again the Sermon which they had forgotten and to Praise God and hear the Scripture or a good Book that is Licens'd read hath done great good to many Souls 4. That otherwise such Ignorant Persons as we speak of except at Church-time cannot spend the Lord's Day to any Edification of themselves or Families 5. Men are not hinder'd from Feasting Drinking Playing together frequently and in greater Numbers Why then by Bishops from reading the Scripture or a Licens'd Book or Sermon 6. That God hath Commanded Provoke one another to Love and to good works And exhort one another daily while it is called to day lest any be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin Heb. 10. 24. and 3. 13. And Cornelius had his Friends with him in his House for God's Servics Acts 10. and Acts 12. 12. In Mary's House many were gathered together praying And we find not that even the Iews were ever forbidden it by the Pharisees themselves And he that seeth his Brother have bodily need and shutteth up the Bowels of his Compassion from him how dwelleth the Love of God in him And the need of Souls is more common and to be Compassionated Rules may Regulate Charity in both cases but may forbid it or the necessary Exercises of it in neither He shall Perish as guilty of Murder that lets the Poor Die for want of his Relief tho he be forbidden to relieve them unless when the hurt would be greater than the good Love and Mercy are too great duties for a Bishop to null or dispense with We put no private Man on Ministerial Actions but in his own place to shew mercy to Souls To say that on this pretence Schismatical Meetings will be held is no more to the people than to say that all Errours and Wickedness may be kept up by Pretences of Reason Truth Piety Scripture Honesty c. But we must not therefore say Away with Reason Truth c. But I hope God's Servants will Die rather than desert their Master's Work 4. Prop. 1. The greatest part of it once a Quarter of Reading the Liturgy by Lectures Strict i Why not all as well as the greatest part Why not always as well as once a Quarter Answ. 1. I know that here and there a word may be scrupled as the reading of Bell and the Dragon or such like which silently past by maketh no disturbance And I think the Scrupling of such a word deserveth not that all the Peoples Souls be Punished for it with the loss of all their Teachers Labours 2. I never hear one Conformist that saith it all And why may not one be forborn as well as another 3. All the Liturgy for the day will be work too long and great that weak Men that have no Curates cannot Read all and Preach or Catechize also If you say that Preaching and Catechizing then may be omitted I answer They are God's Ordinances and needful to Men's Souls And seeing Prayer and Preaching are both Duties proportion is to be observed that neither may be shut out If you account the Liturgy better than Preaching yet every parcel of it intirely is not sure of so great worth as to cast out Preaching for it Rich parsons that have Curates may between them do both but so cannot poor Countrey Ministers that are alone and are sickly And as to the Always 1. The Canon limiteth some but to once in half a year which is less 2. The Conformable City-Preachers that have Curates very rarely Read it 3. Else what should Men do with Curates if they must always Read themselves 4. A weak Man may do both once a Quarter that is not able to do it every day 4. Prop. 2. It is supposed it will be done Strict k Yes once a Quarter for you would have no Man obliged to do it oftner nor all of it then neither Answ. Read and believe as you can The words were If in the Congregation where he is Incumbent the greatest part of it appointed for that time be sometimes as once a Quarter used by himself and every Lord's-day ordinarily unless Sickness c. either by himself or by his Curate or Assistant Is every Lord's-day but once a Quarter Or can it be every day done and no one obliged to do it 4. Prop. 3. Let not Christian Parents be forbidden to dedicate their Children publickly c. Strict l Christian Parents are not forbidden to present their Children to be Baptized But the Church in favour to the Infants appoints others in case the Parents should die or neglect their duty to have a Paternal care of them in order to their Education for the performance of their Baptismal Covenant That which follows is not worth the Animadverting being nothing else but an Uncharitable and Scandalous Insinuation Ans. 1. Read and believe what is forbidden Then shall the Priest speak to the Godfathers and Godmothers on this wise Dearly Beloved This Infant must also faithfully promise by you that are his Sureties That he will renounce the Devil c. I demand therefore Dost thou in the name of this Child renounce c. The Godfathers and Godmothers must say I renounce them all Dost thou believe c. Answ. All this I stedfastly believe Quest. Wilt thou be Baptized in this Faith Answ. That is my desire Q. Wilt thou obediently keep c. Answ. I will They are after to Name the Child After the Priest shall say to the Godfathers and Godmothers For asmuch as this Child hath promised by you that are his Sureties to renounce to believe in God and to serve him It is your parts and duties to see that this Infant be taught so soon as he shall be able to learn what a Solemn Vow Promise and Profession he hath here made by you c. See the rest So that here All the Covenanting Action on the Infant 's part is made the proper work of his Sureties called Godfathers and Godmothers without one word of the Parents doing it or any part of it And then cometh the Canon and farther saith Can. 29. No Parent shall be urged to be present nor be
long if there be cause § 315. Whilst this was my Employment in the Countrey my Friends at home had got one Mr. Seddon a Nonconformist of Derbyshire lately come to the Gity as a Traveller to Preach the Second Sermon in my New Built Chappel He was told and over-told all the Danger and desired not to come if he feared it I had left word That if he would but step into my House through a Door he was in no danger they having not Power to break open any but the Meeting-house While he was Preaching Three Justices with Soldiers supposed by Secretary Coventry's sending came to the Door to seize the Preacher They thought it had been I and had prepared a Warrant upon the Oxford Act to send me for Six Months to the Common Goal The good man and Two Weak Honest Persons intrusted to have directed him left the House where he was safe and thinking to pass away came to the Justices and Soldiers at the Door and there stood by them till some one said This is the Preacher And so they took him and blotted my Name out of the Warrant and put in his Though almost every Word fitted to my Case was false of him To the Gatehouse he was carried where he continued almost Three Months of the Six and being earnestly desirous of Deliverance I was put to Charges to accomplish it and at last having Righteous Judges and the Warrant being found faulty he had an Habeas Corpus and was freed upon Bonds to appear again the next Term. § 316. By this means my Case was made much worse For 1. The Justices and other Prosecutors were the more exasperated against me 2. And they were now taught to stop every Hole in the next Warrant to which I was still as liable as ever So that I had now no Prospect that way of Escape And yet though my Charge Care and Trouble had been great for his Deliverance and Good People had dealt very kindly with him my usual Back-biters the Prelatists and Separatists talk commonly of me as one that had unworthily saved my self from Danger and drawn a Stranger into the Snare and therefore deserved to bear all the Charges Though as is said 1. I was Twenty Miles off Preaching publickly 2. They that askt him to Preach told him the Worst 3. He went into Danger from Safety by the Conduct of some Persons of that censorious humour 4. My Danger was Increased by it as well as my Charges But Man's Approbation is a Poor Reward § 317. Just when I came home and was beginning to seek Mr. Seddon's Deliverance Mr. Rosse Died the Fiercest of the Justices who had sent me to Goal before The other Two are one Mr. Grey and Sir Philip Matthews § 318. The Parliament being sate again a Letter was secretly printed containing the History of the Debate in the Lord's House the former Sessions about the Test and it was Voted to be burnt by the Hangman but the more desired and read it In which it appeareth That when it came to be their own case more was said by the Lords for the Cause of the Nonconformists than ever they were permitted to say for themselves § 319. A most Excellent Book was written for the Nonconformists for Abatements and Forbearance and Concord by Dr. Herbert Crofts Bp. of Hereford without his Name of which more afterward § 320. The Lords and Commons Revived their Contests about their Powers and Priviledges and the Lords appointed Four Lawyers to plead their Cause and the Commons set up Orders or Votes to forbid them And the Duke of Buckingham made a Notable Speech against Persecution and desired the Consent of the Lords that he might bring in a Bill for the Ease of His Majesty's Protestant Subjects in matters of Religion but while it was preparing the King on Monday November 21st Prorogued the Parliament till February come Twelve-month § 321. The Speeches of the Earl of Shaftsbury and others about the Test were secretly Printed and a Paper of Reasons for Dissolving this Parliament and Calling a New One which were given in the House of Lords And the Debates of this Test opening a little of the Noncouformists Cause as to the Oxford Oath together with what the Earl of Shaftsbury hath done with Wit and Resolution hath alienated many even of the Conformists from the present prevailing Bishops § 322. The other of the fierce Justices that Subscribed a Warrant for my imprisonment died shortly after viz. Colonel Grey The Death of Mr. Barwell Sir Iohn Medlicot Mr. Ross and Mr. Grey besides the Death of some Informers and the Repentance of others and the Death of some late Opposers of the Clergy made me and some others the more to compassionate Persecutors and dread God's Judgments § 323. The Town of Northampton lamentably burnt § 324. An Earthquake in divers Counties § 325. My Dear Friend Sir Matthew Hale Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench falling into a Languishing Disease from which he is not like to Recover resolvedly petitioned for a Dismission and gave up his Place having gone through his Employments and gone off the Stage with more universal love and honour for his Skill Wisdom Piety and resolved Justice than ever I heard or read that any English Man ever did before him or any Magistrate in the World of his rank since the days of the Kings of Israel He resolved in his weakness that the place should not be a burden to him nor he to it And after all his great practice and places he tells me That with his own Inheritance and all he is not now worth above Five hundred Pounds per Annum so little sought he after gain He may most truly be called The Pillar and Basis or Ground of Iustice as Paul called not the Church but Timothy in the Church the Pillar and Basis of Truth His digested knowledge in Law above all Men and next in Philosophy and much in Theology was very great His sincere honesty and humility admirable His Garb and House and Attendance so very mean and low and he so resolutely avoided all the Diversions and Vanities of the World that he was herein the Marvel of his Age. Some made it a Scandal but his Wisdom chose it for his Convenience that in his Age he Marryed a Woman of no Estate suitable to his Disposition to be to him as a Nurse He succeeded me in one of the meanest Houses that ever I had lived in and there hath ever since continued with full content till now that he is going to his Native Countrey in likely-hood to die there It is not the least of my pleasure that I have lived some years in his more than ordinary Love and Friendship and that we are now waiting which shall be first in Heaven Whither he saith he is going with full content and acquiescence in the Will of a gracious God and doubts not but we shall shortly live together O what a blessed World were this were the
Dr. Tillotson to offer him my Chappel in Oxenden-Street for Publick Worship which he accepted to my great Satisfaction and now there is constant Preaching there Be it by Conformists or Nonconformists I rejoice that Christ is Preached to the people in that Parish whom ten or twenty such Chapels cannot hold § 8. About March 1677. fell out a trifling business which I will mention lest the fable pass for truth when I am dead At a Coffee-House in Fuller's Rents where many Papists and Protestants used to meet together one Mr. Dyet Son to old Sir Richard Dyet Chief Justice in the North and Brother to a deceased dear Friend of mine the some-time Wife of my old dear friend Colonel Sylvanus Tailor one that profest himself no Papist but was their Familiar said openly That I had killed a Man with my own hand in cold blood that it was a Tinker at my door that because he beat his Kettle and disturbed me in my Studies I went down and Pistol'd him One Mr. Peters occasioned this wrath by oft challenging in vain the Papists to dispute with me or answer my Books against them Mr. Peters told Mr. Dyet That this was so shameless a slander that he should answer it Mr. Dyet told him That a hundred Witnesses would testifie that it was true and I was tryed for my Life at Worcester for it To be short Mr. Peters ceased not till he brought Mr. Dyet to come to my Chamber and confest his fault and ask me forgiveness and with him came one Mr. Tasbrook an emiment sober prudent Papist I told him that these usages to such as I and far worse were so ordinary and I had long suffered so much more than words that it must be no difficulty to me to forgive them to any man but especially to one whose Relations had been my dearest Friends and he was one of the first Gentlemen that ever shewed so much ingenuity as so to confess and ask forgiveness he told me He would hereafter confess and un-say it and Vindicate me as openly as he had wronged me I told him to excuse him that perhaps he had that Story from his late Pastor at St. Giles's Dr. Boreman who had Printed it that such a thing was Reported but I never heard before the particulars of the Fable Shortly after at the same Coffee-house Mr. Dyet openly confess'd his Fault and an Ancient Lawyer one Mr. Giffard a Papist Son to old Dr. Giffard the Papist Physician as is said and Brother to the Lady Abergaveny was Angry at it and made Mr. Dyet a weak Man that would make such a Confession Mr. Peters answered him Sir Would you have a Gentleman so disingenuous as not to right one that he hath so wronged Mr. Giffard answered That the thing was True and he would prove it by an Hundred Witnesses Mr. Peters offered him a great Wager that he would never prove it by any but urging him hard he refused the Wager He next offered that they would lay down but five Guinea's to be laid on 't on an Entertainment there by him that lost the Wager He refused that also Whereupon Mr. Peters told him He would cause my friends if I would not my self to call him to justifie it in Westminster-Hall referring the Judgment of Equity to the Company The Papist Gentlemen that were present it 's like considering that the Calumny when opened publickly would be a Slur upon their Party Voted That if Mr. Giffard would not confess his Fault they would disown him out of their Company and so he was constrained to yield but would not come to my Chamber to confess it to me Mr. Peters moderated the business and it was agreed that he should do it there He would do it only before his own Party Mr. Peters said Not so for they might hereafter deny it So it was agreed That also before Mr. Peters and Captain Edmund Hambden he should confess his Fault and ask forgiveness which he did § 9. Near this time my Book called A Key for Catholicks was to be Reprinted In the Preface to the first Impression I had mentioned with Praise the Earl of Lauderdale as then Prisoner by Cromwell in Windsor-Castle from whom I had many Pious and Learned Letters and where he had so much Read over all my Books that he remembred them better as I thought than I did my self Had I now left out that mention of him it would have seem'd an Injurious Recantation of my kindness and to mention him now a Duke as then a Prisoner was unmeet The King used him as his special Counsellour and Favourite The Parliament had set themselves against him He still professed great kindness to me and I had reason to believe it was without dissembling 1. Because he was accounted by all to be rather a too rough Adversary than a Flatteter of one so low as I. 2. Because he spake the same for me behind my back that he did to my face And I had then a New Piece against Transubstantiation to add to my Book which being desirous it should be Read I thought best to joyn it with the other and prefix before both an Epistle to the Duke in which I said not a word of him but Truth And I did it the rather that his Name might draw some Great Ones to Read at least that Epistle if not the short Additional Tractate in which I thought I said enough to open the Shame of Popery But the Indignation that Men had against the Duke made some blame me as keeping up the Reputation of one whom Multitudes thought very ill of Whereas â—owned none of his Faults and did nothing that I could well avoid for the aforesaid Reasons Long after this he professed his Kindness to me and told me I should never want while he was able and humbly intreated me to accept Twenty Guinea's from him which I did § 10. After this one Mr. Hutchinson another of the Disputants with Dr. Stillingfleet and Mr. Wray's Friend one that had revolted to Popery in Cambridge long ago having pious Parents and Relations Wrote two Books for Popery one for Transubstantiation and another in which he made the Church of England Conformists to be Men of no Conscience or Religion but that all Seriousness and Conscience was in the Papist and Puritan and sought to flatter the Puritans as he call'd them into kindness to the Papists as united in Conscience which others had not I Answered these Books and after fell acquainted with Mr. Hutchinson but could never get Reply from him or Dispute § 11. Two old Friends that I had a hand heretofore in turning from Anabaptistry and Separation Mr. Tho. Lamb and William Allen that followed Iohn Goodwin and after became Pastors of an Anabiptist Church though but Tradesmen fell on Writing against Separation more strongly than any of the Conformable Clergy But in Sense of their old Errour run now into the other Extreme especially Mr. Lamb and Wrote against our gathering
Assemblies and Preaching when we are Silenced Against whose Mistaken Endeavours I Wrote a Book called The Nonconformist's Plea for Peace § 12. One Mr. Hollingworth also Printed a Sermon against the Nonconformists and there tells a Story of a Sectary that Treating for Concord with one afterward a Bishop motion'd That all that would not yield to their Terms should be Banished to shew that the Nonconformists are for Severity as well as the Bishops The Reader would think that it was Me or Dr. Manton or Dr. Bates that he meant that had so lately had a Treaty with Dr. Wilkins and Dr. Burton I Wrote to him to desire him to tell the World who it was that by naming none he might not unworthily bring many into Suspicion He Wrote me an Answer full of great Estimation and Kindness professing That it was not me that he meant nor Dr. Manton nor Dr. Bates nor Dr. Iacomb but some Sectary that he would by no means Name but seemed to cast Intimations towards Dr. Owen one unlikely to use such words and I verily believe it was all a meer Fiction § 13. About that time I had finished a book called Chatholick Theologie in which I undertake to prove that besides things unrevealed known to none and ambiguous words there is no considerable difference between the Arminians and Calvinists except some very tolerable difference in the point of perseverance This book hath hitherto had the strangest fate of any that I have written except our Reformed Liturgy not to be yet spoken against or openly contradicted when I expected that both sides would have fallen upon it And I doubt not but some will do so when I am dead unless Calamities find men other work § 14. Having almost then finished a Latin Treatise called Methodus Theologiae containing near Seventy Tables or Schemes with their Elucidations and some Disputations on Schism containing the Nature Order and Ends of all Beings with three more I gave my Lord Chief Justice Hale a Specimen of it with my foresaid Catholick Theologie but told him it was only to shew my respects but desired him in his weakness to read things more directly tending to prepare for death But yet I could not prevail with him to lay those by so much as I desired but he oft gave me special Thanks above all the rest for that book and that scheme And while he continued weak Mr. Stevens his familiar Friend published two Volumes of his own Meditations which though but plain things yet were so greedily bought up and read for his sake even by such as would not have read such things of others that they did abundance of good And shortly after he published himself in Folio a Treatise of the Origination of Man to prove the Creation of this World very Learned but large He left many Manuscripts One I have long ago read a great Volumn in Folio to prove the Deity the Immortality of the Soul Christianity the Truth of Scripture in General and several books in particular solidly done but too copious which was his fault Two or three smal Tractates written for me I have published expressing the simple and excellent Nature of true Religion and the Corruption and great evils that follow Men's Additaments called wrongfully by the Name of Religion and contended for above it and against it and shewing how most Parties are guilty of this sin I hear he finished a Treatise of the Immortality of the Soul a little before he dyed But unhappily there is contest about his Manuscripts whether to Print them or not because he put a clause into his Will that nothing of his should be Printed but what he gave out himself to be Printed before he dyed He went into the Common Church-yard and there chose his grave and died a few daies after on Christmassday Though I never received any money from him save a Quarter 's Rent he paid when I removed out of my house at Acton that he might buy it and succeed me yet as a token of his love he left me forty shillings in his Will with which to keep his memory I bought the greatest Cambridge Bible and put his picture before it which is a Monument to my house But waiting for my own Death I gave it Sir William Ellis who laid out about Ten pounds to put it into a more curious Cover and keeps it for a Monument in his honour § 15. I found by the people of London that many in the sense of the late Confusions in this Land had got an apprehension that all Schism and Disorder came from Ministers and People's resisting the Bishops and that Prelacy is the means to cure Schism and being ignorant what Church Tyranny hath done in the World they fly to it for refuge against that mischief which it doth principally introduce Wherefore I wrote the History of Prelacy or a Contraction of all the History of the Church especially Binnius and Baronius and others of Councils to shew by the testimony of their greatest flatterers what the Councils and Contentions of Prelates have done But the History even as delivered by Binnius himself was so ugly and frightful to me in the perusing that I was afraid lest it should prove when opened by me a temptation to some to contemn Christianity it self for the sake and Crimes of such a Clergy But as an Antidote I prefixed the due Commendation of the better humble sort of Pastors But I must profess that the History of Prelacy and Councils doth assure me that all the Schisms and Confusions that have been caused by Anabaptists Separatists or any of the Popular unâ—uly Sectaries have been but as flea-bitings to the Church in comparison of the wounds that Prelatical Usurpation Contention and Heresies have caused And I am so far from wondering that all Baronius's industry was thought necessary to put the best visor on all such Actions that I wonder that the Papists have not rather employed all their wit care and power to get all the Histories of Councils burnt and forgotten in the World that they might have only their own Oral flexible tradition to deliver to Mankind what their interest pro re nata shall require Alas how small was the hurt that the very Familists the Munster Fanaticks the very Quakers or Ranters have done in comparison of what some one Pope or one Age or Council of Carnal Tyrannical Prelats hath done The Kingdom of Satan is kept up in the World next to that Sensuality that is born in all by his usurping and perverting the two great Offices of God's own institution Magistracy and Ministry and wring the Sword and Word against the Institutor and proper end But God is just § 16. There years before this I wrote a Treatise to end our common Controversies in Doctrinals about Predestination Redemption justification assurance perseverance and such like being a Summary of Catholick reconciling Theology § 17. In November 1677. Dyed Dr. Thomas Manton to the great loss of London
years importuned me to let him Print it 1. The sharp execution of the Law had then brought Multitudes into Prison and Poverty 2. Nonconformists both Presbyterians and Independents had taken the Corporation Oath and Declaration and Communicated in the Parish Churches for to make them capable of Trust and Office in the City And because it seâ—m'd to tend to their protection and advantage we heard of no noise made against them by the Independents but they admitted them as their Members to their Communion as before I was against their taking the Declaration but not against their Communicating but I medled not with them At last when the Earl of Shaftsbury was broken and gone and the City Power and Common Council subdued to the will of the King the foresaid Communion in publick was more freely blamed by the Independents and Anabaptists and some few hot Scots Men. And the private Church Meetings were so much supprest and the prisons so full that my Conscience began to tell me that I should be guilty of injuring the truth the Church and the Souls and Bodily welfare of my brethren if I should by silence harden them against publick worship Specially the Case of the Countrey moved me wherein a great part of the Kingdom scarce two hundred men in a whole Country can have the liberty of any true Church Worship besides Parochial I remembred the Case of the Old Nonconformists against the Brownists and the Writings of Mr. I. Ball Paget Hildersham Bradshaw Gifford Brightman Ames c. I could not but remember what work the separating party had made in England and Scotland in my days from 1644. till 1660 against Government Religion and Concord I saw what I long foresaw each extreme party growing more extreme and going further still from one another And so great a Change is grown on London that the Terms which we offered the Bishops for Concord 1660 are now abhorred as Antichristian I saw multitudes like to be Imprisoned and Ruined for refusing their Duty as if it were sin and disgracing Religion by fathering these Errours on it The Conformists seeing the Errour of the Separatists derided them all and were confirmed in the Justification of all their Conformity thinking that it was but a just differing from a crazed Company of Fanaticks Those that imprisoned and ruined both them and the rest of the Nonconformists thought they did God service by it against an unruly sort of Men The Common people were made believe that this was the true Complexion of all the Dissenters from whatever the Law Commanded The distance growing wider and great sufferings increasing hard thoughts of those by whom Men suffered all real Love did seem to be almost utterly destroyed and Neighbours dwelt together like unplacable Enemies And worst of all Men were frightened to think that they must rather give over all Church Worship than they must Communicate with the best Ministry in the Parish Churches and so the main body of the Land would live like Atheists who can have no other Church-Worship but the Parochial For the Nonconformists Churches were in almost all Countries so suppressed that no considerable Numbers could enjoy them And by this means the Papists were like to have their Wills The Protestants must be told that Recusancy is all their Duties And going to the Publick Churches a sin And who can for shame drive Papists to sin And if thus they could draw all Protestants to forsake the said Churches they would like a deserted City and Garrison'd Fort be open and ready for their possession And while the Papists and Malignants are studying how to cast out all the Godly Conforming Ministers that the Ductile remainder might be prepared for Popery the separating part of the Independents and Anabaptists and some few hot Scotch Presbyterians go before them and tell all the People that it is unlawful to hear them and to own them as Ministers or Churches and to have Communion with them in the Liturgy or Sacraments Even when the rigour of Prosecutors hath brought it to that pass that they must have such or none as to Church worship Seeing so many in prison for this Error to the dishonour of God and so many more like to be ruin'd by it and the separating party by the temptation of suffering had so far prevailed with the most strict and zealous Christians that a great Number were of their mind and the Non-conformable Ministers whose Judgment was against this separation durst not publish their dislike of it partly because of sharp and bitter Censures of the Separatists and who took them for Apostates or Carnal Temporizers that communicated in publick and partly for fear of Encouraging Persecution against the Separatists and partly for fear of losing all opportunity of teaching them and some that had no hope of any other friends or maintenance or Auditors thought they might be silent On all these accounts I that had no gathered Church nor lived on the Contribution of any such and was going out of the world in pain and Languor did think that I was fittest to bear men's Censures and to take that reproach on my self which my brethren were less fit to bear who might live for farther Service And at the Importunity of the Bookseller I consented to publish the Reasons of my Communicating in the Parish-Churches and against Separation Which when it was coming out a Manuscript of Dr. Owen's who was lately dead containing Twelve Arguments against such joyning with the Liturgie and publick Churches was sent me as that which had satisfyed Multitude I thought that if this were unanswered my labour would be much lost because that party would still say Dr. Owen's Twelve Arguments confuted all Whereupon I hastily answered them but found after that it had been more prudent to have omitted his Name For on that account a swarm of revilers in the City poured out their keenest Censures and three or four wrote against me whom I answered I will not name the men that are known and two of them are yet unknown But they went on several Prineiples some Charged all Communion with the Liturgie with Idolatry Antichristianity and perjury and backsliding One concealed his Judgment and quarrel'd at by-words And another turned my Treatise of Episcopacy against me and said it fully proved the Duty of Separation I was glad that hereby I was called to explain that Treatise lest it should do hurt to mistakers when I am dead and that as in it I had said much against one extream I might leave my Testimony against the other I called all these writings together a Defence of Catholick Communion And that I might be Impartial I adjoyned two piece against Dr. Sherlock that ran quite into the contrary Extreames unchurching almost all Christians as Schismaticks I confess I wrote so sharply against him as must needs be liable to blame with those that know not the man and his former and latter Virulent and ignorant Writings § 81. About this time
that Power which they convey to others first in themselves to convey at least in ordinando pares but are only media applicandi legem ad personam Ad 3 um To your Third Argument I answer Invaders of the Ministerial Office may unjustly take Encouragement hence but no just Encouragement is given them The best things are Occasions of encouraging Men in Sin e. g. God's Mercifulness Christ's Satisfaction the Preaching of Free-Grace c. To your Question if this be sufficient why do we not give them the Right Hand of Fellowship I answer They despise or neglect God's Order and therefore deserve not the Hand of Fellowship If God bid them go and work in his Vineyard but for Order's sake go in at this Door he that will not go in at this Door is a disobedient Servant and not to be owned till he reform But if God himself do nail up this Door there needs no express Dispensation for our not going in at it for nemo tenetur ad impossibile nisi ipse sit Causa culpabilis impossibilitatis Nor is it necessary that it be expressed that we go in at another Door for the Command of going to labour in the Vineyard is not abrogated by the locking up of that Door seeing as it was opened non ut fiat opus directly sed ut sic fiat so it is nailed up non ne fiat sed ne sic fiat and therefore the Command requires us to go in at another If by Law every Physician that Practiceth in London must be approved by the Colledge he deserves to be punisht and not taken for a Physician that will profess and practice it without the Approbation of the Colledge and every wise Patient will fear least he be Conscious of such Unworthiness as that he dares not venture a Tryal or at the best he is a disobedient Subject But if the Colledge of Physicians be dead or dissolved any worthy Man may profess and practice without their Approbation and as the law of Nature binds him to do Good so the Obligation that limited him is ipso facto dissolved cessante materia where you say that this extream necessity is their Case I answer Nothing more untrue They slight and despise Ordination they may be ordained if they would submit themselves to tryal if they be found fit But they will not Their false Imaginations create no necessity but a necessity of laying them by and receiving the Truth which is imposed on them by God or if they will call it a Necessity that is imposed on them by their Error it is but a Necessity of not being ordained while they judge it sinful which yet is none because they are still bound to lay by that Conceit but not a Necessity of being Ministers in the mean time without it Besides that as it is a Necessity of Suspension 〈◊〉 Forbearance and not of Acting so it is themselves that are the culpable Cause 〈◊〉 it and exculpa propria nemini debetur commodum If Vaux think he must blow up the Parliament and Ravailliack that he must stab a King doth this necessitate them Such a Necessity as every wicked Man brings on himself of sinning by a Custom in Sin which aggravates and not excuseth his Fault which is evident when the Case is made plain by God and only their Negligence or sinful Prejudice hindereth them from Recovery out of their Error For the Grant that you desire I say I am loath to yield that Christ hath no known Ministry on Earth that I may keep out Invaders To your Case about Apostacy I answer There are many other Cases that may necessitate an Entrance into the Ministry without Ordination besides universal Apostacy 1. So great an Apostacy as was in the Arrian Prevalency 2. Such unlawful Ingredients as are in the Romish Ordination 3. The Death or the violent Proscription of the Ordainers in one Kingdom For if all that are found to work in the Vineyard to exercise the Ministry must but go to another Land for it Poverty Weakness Magistrates Prohibition may so restrain them that not one of a Hundred could enter when God doth by the Churches Necessity call to it Much less could all the World travail for Ordaination to some Corner of the Earth As for the Churches Officers which you mention that went along in Reformation it 's true of Presbyters they were the Leaders but so few Bishops out of England that the Reformed Churches were forced to go on without their Ordination But to this Day there is a necessity of Preaching without Ordination by legitimate Church Guides in many Parts of the World and I doubt not but it is the great Sin of many that it is neglected I suppose did you consider well but the Sence of the Law Natural and Supernaturally revealed you would not be so inclinable to turn Seeker nor to expect new Miracles Apostles or Revelations upon the Supposition you make and for all your Words if it came to the Practice I do not believe that you have so hard a Heart so unmerciful a Nature as to leave this one Nation much less all the World to that apparent danger of Everlasting Damnation and God's publick Worship to be utterly cast out if I can but prove that the Succession of Legitimate Church Ordination is interrupted Ad 4 um To your Fourth Argument I answer I am as far from believing Imposition of Hands essential to Ordination as any of the rest The Bishop that was last save one in this Diocess was so lame of the Gout that he could not move his Hand to ones Head and though his Chaplain did his best to help him yet I could not well tell whether I might call it Imposition of Hands when I saw it Yet I never heard any on that Ground suspect a nullity in his Ordination Nor do I think that a Bishop loseth all his Power of Ordination if he loss his Hands or the Motion of them 1. Imposition of Hands was an old Custom in a Superiors Act of Benediction or setting a part to Office and conveying Power and not newly instituted by Christ but continued as a well known Sign and therefore not of such Necessity as you imagin 2. The End will shew much the degree of Necessity If it be evident that the End was but the Solemnizing of the Work by a convenient Ceremony then it is not essential to Ordination or Authorizing But c. Ergo 3. God did not lay such a stress on Ceremonies no not under the Ceremonial Law no not on the great initiating Sign and Seal of Circumcision without which Men were entered and continued in his Church for Forty Years in the Wilderness Your Argument is Christ hath revealed to his Church that it is his Mind or Will that his Church's Officers be set apart by Imposition of Hands Ergo It followeth that Imposition of Hands is necessary and essential to their Seperation Answ. Negatur sequela It follows a praecepto only
Pinch upon his Cause would fain persuade us that this could yet be no Ordination till afterwards when he came in and submitted to the Solemnities Baron in An. 233. p. 407 408. we will not contend about the Word Ordination but it was an authoritative Consecration to God as a Bishop and a Constituting him over that Church by Prayer and solemn Words of Consecration And it seems Apollos and many others preached in the Apostles Days without Ordination But our Divines having dealt so much with the Papists on this Subject I suppose you may see more in their Writings than you can expect from Your Brother and Fellow Servant Rich. Baxter Sept. 9. 1653 Mr. Iohnson's Second Letter to Mr. Baxter SIR I Have here enclosed sent you back the Papers which I borrowed of you and I have been so scrupelous in sending them back exactly the same as they were first sent to you that I have not so much as mended some Errata which I observed in the Copying them over to have slipt my Pen when I wrote them first I have since I received my own Papers perused the Answer which you make to them but what I am like to return I cannot guess For I cannot yet tell whether you have satisfied my Arguments or not This I know and shall not be ashamed to confess that if you have I have not yet Wit enough to understand you But before I will say you have not I will a little more consider your Answer and try my own Reason a little farther Only this I will venture to say in the mean time that if I can any whit judge of my own Heart I never enquired more unbiassedly after any Truth than I do after this present Question and therefore I do not doubt but if Light be before me I shall at length see it though for the present it be hid from me For as I said if I know my own Heart I can sincerely say that in this Question I could be well content to find the Truth though it ran cross against every Line in my own Papers But I must needs confess if I have Truth on my side in this Question and after the most diligent Examination which I can make it shall still appear that to plead for an uninterrupted Succession be of absolute necessity for the justifying of our Ministry I shall never dispute the other Matters with the like indifferency For in this combat I could be content to take a foyl and it is in a manner all one to me whither of us get the better But in the other matters which I am after to proceed upon I have many temptations before me to be afraid of owning Truth if I should meet with her out of my own Quarters And therefore beside the Pains which it will cost me to discharge the Task the very Fear which I shall be in least I should miscarry in the Managing makes me more than willing to take a Supersedeas here But if this cannot be done you shall have the rest which I promised performed in the same order as your self have stipulated viz. before I make any Reply to yours I shall endeavour to discharge the three other Particulars which remain behind and all in due time from SIR Your Fellow-labourer and Enquirer after Truth M. Iohnson Wamborn Octob. 6. 1653. For my Reverend c. very worthy Friend Mr. Baxter Minister of the Word at Kidderminister These Mr. Johnson's Third Letter to Mr. Baxter SIR IN my late Letter which I sent you I told you That I could not resolve my self whether you had answered my Arguments or not but intended to try my own Reason a little farther before I would say positively that you had not And now upon further Consideration I return you this to your whole Discourse 1. Whereas you say to my first Argument that it was necessary for our English Bishops to prove an interrupted Succession against the Papists because they might thereby argue ad hominem more strongly against them I answer That such learned Men as I have had the luck to meet withal do not intend their Arguments or their Pains to any such end and I prove that sufficiently thus Because they that do use such kind of Replies do usually frame their Answers thus 1. That there is no necessity of such a Succession But Secondly If there was a necessity yet the nullity of our Calling would not follow because we can prove such a Succession But say I the learned Authors which I have hitherto met withal have no such Concessions And because you seem often to hint some such thing I desire you would point me out to some English Bishop who having written about this Subject do concede that a Succession in Office or a Succession of legitimate Ordination is not necessary And I do the more confidently require this from you because I have it from one who is much better acquainted with Authors than my self that the Socinian Faction were the first that ever owned that Assertion And if he be able to make good what he saith you gain as little Credit by abetting such a Faction as they are in your Assertions as we get by abetting the Papists while we plead for the quite contrary But Secondly Whereas you deny the Consequence and tell me that all which they thought necessiary is not necessary they being not infallible I answer that you lay more stress upon my first Argument than I intended For I never intended to argue thus That therefore it was infallably necessary because they thought it necessary but that it was a good inducing Motive to persuade that it was a matter of more consequence than your Papers made of it since learned Men took so much Pains about it And though this indeed will not extend to a Demonstration yet it may serve as far as I intended it viz. as far as an Argument will reach drawn only from that inartificial Topick a Testimonio which you know in all contests is familiarly used and not to be rejected if the Testees be Men of Worth and Learning And if so then this Argument will stand good so far as it will serve or was intended notwithstanding any thing that hath been said to the Contrary To the Second Argument Whereas you doubt not to say That if you answer me well in this you carry the whole Cause afore you I shall so far gratify you as to acknowledge that you have sufficiently answered it though I must also profess that I cannot find wherein you have given a formal answer to it For the Apex or the Quick of the Argument as you are pleased to phrase it was laid down in this Proposition That there is no where in Scripture such a Form of Words as these That they that are thus and thus qualified may Preach the Word Now to this you answer That there is quod sensum And I reply That this will serve my turn if you do but make it
either take it upon himself or the People may be the Judges to call him out to it or the Magistrate either Then they have the same Authority which we must have if the Succession be interrupted and the Door of the Vineyard nailed up by Providence and so their Authority seems built upon your own Principles Now to all this if you say that it is their Error to be Anabaptists and it is their Error to Judge the visible Ministry of England to be no Church-Offices and that it is their Duty to quit themselves of these Errors that they may be in a Capacity to receive Ordinations and the Presbytery in a Capacity to Ordain them as you do in effect say To this I answer that I think as well as you that these are their Errors and that these Errors ought to be laid aside But yet this being said doth not absolve them from the case of extream Necessity which I speak of An erroneous Conscience binding as strongly as a sound and an Error appearing Truth lays as great a Necessity upon the Party to frame his Practise to it as Truth And so the Necessity becomes still as importunate Methinks this Answer which you give may be made â—y Papists to us Protestants and by the Episcopal Party to you Presbyteries when we tell the Papists that we dare not take Orders from them or the Presbyterian tells the Episcopacy that they dare not take Orders from them How easily may the Papists say to us it is our Error how seriously may the Episcopal say to the Presbyterian it is your Error You create Impossibilities and Necessities upon your selves by your erronious Consciences But if we Protestants cannot reject that Necessity which lies upon us of refusing Orders from the Papists or if the Presbyterian cannot reject the Impossibility that lies before them of taking Orders from the Prelates whilst their Conciences tells them they may not Why may not the Sectary upon as good Ground and as justifiable Principles refuse Orders from the Presbyterian and plead as strongly a moral Impossibility and a nailing up the Vineyards Door by Providence whilst their Consciences tells them they may not and so baulking those that we call Church Officers enter as regularly into the Ministry or at least as inconfutably as any other Men if the Succession be interrupted And therefore I cannot think that you have answered this Argument except the two first Lines contains it where you say That the best things may be made use of as Occasions to encourage Men in Sin c. because I think that there is much Truth in that and that the Inconvenience which this Argument hath hanged upon that Assertion is but incommodum per accidens which may be fastened upon most of the Truths of God I supersede likewise in that Answer to my third Argument As for my Fourth Argument I confess it was frivolously urged to the present Question and I have wondered at my self how I came to hoole it in under the present Debate and therefore I will return you nothing to what you have said against it But giving you many Thanks for that Help which you have held out to my Understanding towards that weighty Question of justifying the Calling of the Ministry I beseech the Almighty long continue your Life to the Advantage of his Church And this done without further Ceremony I bid you farewell and rest Your Fellow Labourer in the Gospel of Christâ— M. Johnson Wamborne Nov. 9. 1653. For my Reverend c. very worthy Friend Mr. Baxter Minister of the Word at Kidderminister These Mr. Baxter's Second Letter to Mr. Johnson Reverend Brother I Know not whether I am more glad of your Satisfaction or sorrowful that you will needs supercede the Task which you undertook I confess it is a Labour which I apprehend would be useful to me many ways but a strong Conceit of the Impossibility of performing it did slack my Desires But now you tantalize me expressing here a higher Confidence of the Feaseableness of your Work than before in your defying all the World on the contrary So that I must again renew my suit to you that you would perform that Work and prove de facto an uninterrupted Succession I profess it is for my own Edification that I desire it and if you suspect whether it be to cavil or enter a Quarrel with you mistake me Such a Discovery would dispatch several Difficulties with me in several Controversies As for your Animadversions last sent I shall reply to the substance of them in brief 1. The First I conceive little worth the insisting on because first you confess it is but a Motive to induce you to think there is weight in the Point 2. Because if there were any thing in it the contrary Judgments of all the Learned Divines of France Belgia upper Germany Helvetia Denmark Sweeden Scotland Transilvania Hungary with a great part of the English who are against the necessity of an uninterrupted Succession is as strong a motive to an unprejudiced Man as is the Judgment of the Bishops of England alone But 2. It is a known Case past all doubt that the English Bishops opposed the Papists in this Point till of later Years and to name you more what need I when you know I named you so many in my Book To all which add That even the late exasperated Episcopal Divines whereof some have been suspected of halting do yet confess the Truth of the Reformed Churches and Ministry that have no Bishops as doth Dr. Fern Dr. Stewart's Answer to Fountain's Letter Bishop Bromhall against Militerius who yet would have the Pope to be principium Unitatis to all the Church I do not think you can find one of twenty that wrote against the Papists before the late King's Reign or the Treaty of the Spanish Match but were all against the Papists in this Point of the necessity of uninterrupted Succession if they medled with the Point Ad 2 um The Reason why you saw not a Formal Answer in my Words I conceive was your Oversight you took no notice of the Force of my Answer You required this Proposition to be proved from Scripture They that are thus and thus qualified may preach the Word I told you it is contained in this which is in Scripture Men thus and thus qualified shall be appointed to preach the Word Here you overlook the Strength of my Answer which is in the Word shall and you not only obscure the Emphasis but change the Word and put may for shall Here is contained a Precept comprehensive both of the Preacher's Work and the Ordainers conjunctly Now all my Business was to shew you that as in this there are more Precepts than one so that secundum materiam subjectam they have not the same Degree of Obligation and that though God do lay down together his Law both de re de modo of the Work and the Order of entring on it yet that the
disrelishing the Practices and Assertions of some in unchurching all besides themselves he began to be provoked and pressed much in Spirit to consider the Grounds of separating upon the account of Baptism and in that Survey still their Weakness which appeared the more by reading yours Mr. Io. Goodwin and Homes Books of Baptism begot in him not only a Sight of Weakness in his Grounds about Separating but weakened his Confidence as to the opposing of Infant Baptism In this time as things appeared to him he being free and open Hearted was ready to express his Thoughts to those he conversed with who being rigid about Separation still persuaded him these new Thoughts were Satan's Temptations to hinder him in the Lord's Work Which occasioned much Prayer and Fasting and Prayer that if these Thoughts were not of God's Holy Spirit they might dye from his Soul But still they increased and came with such Light and Power argumentative from Scripture detecting his former Principles as to Separation In this interim he conversed with divers Ministers in Town as Mr. Goodwin's Book Mr. Manton Dr. Reignold's about the meaning of 1 Cor. 12. 13 c. his thoughts still carrying him on till he had formed them into three Sheets of Paper but all the way it was a Fight with Temptations as often is declared yet his Light plainly evincing the evil of Saints dividing upon the account of Baptism although it should stand good Baptism should belong only to believers And as I conceive those Temptations partly occasioned by Friends who out of their Love would charge him to take heed for some Rooâ— of Bitterness or other was the Ground of these Thoughts and some Carnal end he had and was weary of Christ's Yoke and the Woes to Backsliders would be his Portion c. and that never any owned these Principles that forsook them but they became sad Objects of God's Displeasure Satan sitting in when these did occasion great Distress and Searchings of Heart many Fears Prayers and Tears fore Temptations that he was not sincere which was heightened by one Thought that he had espied in his Heart when he was amidst these thoughts namely that to break the Neck of those straiâ— Principles which would not permit any to Marry but to those in their own way would be a Freedom in respect of his Daughters in their Marriages who are but now Ten and Eleven Years of Age the Fears least the having of this in his Thoughts should in answer to this argue the Predominancy of the interest of the Flesh hath filled his Soul with great distress which I declare to you as a spiritual Physician that you may know the whole Case After seeking God a little help was attained in this and he received some Testimony of Conscience that this Thought was not the moving Cause of his change of Mind or any predominant end only an after Thought which had some encouragement in it When this Temptation was over then as bitter Fears about apostacy all those Texts seeming to apply themselves to him as speaks of an evil Heart of unbelief in departing from God of being cast out as a withered Branch and these attended with Tears and woundings of Spirit If he did cease from drawing up his Arguments then be should have ease but the Light of them was so pressing upon his Mind that he could not forbear This hath been his Life for these Eight or Nine Months having declared his Arguments the People to whom he is Elder they grow offended and disturbed if he have any thought of returning to Mr. Goodwin's Church again then nothing but Horror and as it were a flaming Sword in his Spirit is not that a Ground that he ought not return thither He finds most ease in his tender and fair Intreaties of the People he is now with to keep them from Separating to the further prejudice of their Souls Having a little ease about the Fear of Apostacy by finding by Experience that his Soul never went out in such strong Desires and high Praisings of Jesus Christ and earnest Desires to serve him in his Gospel and having in this time more abundantly than ever found his Soul emptied of self-esteem and sence of his need of Christ's Nourishing and Cherishing After this the next Temptation which now he wrestles with is hard Thoughts of God as if he were hard not easy to be intreated c. These sore Temptations hath made him ready to saint saying sometimes O that he were setled in his former Thoughts against Infant Baptism and could practice with a good Concience as he had done the other to this it 's suggested no now it shall be hid from him he received not the Truth in the Love of it c. and Heb. 12. 17. made use of to wound him that he obtained not the Blessing though he sought it carefully with Tears These Thoughts occasioned strong Cryes and Tears and great Distress of Soul Yet Sir take notice that all this while his now Arguments to one Communion with all Saints as Saints are never questioned in his Judgment but all admitted to him nay all that have seen them who are divers of the Re-baptism have not any of them as yet offered any thing to detect them but contrarywise they have had their force in the Minds of some Now dear Sir I hope you understand my Scriblings the end of all is to intreat your help as one that Christ hath set in his Church for the edifying and establishing of his Members judging you faithful and one of a Thousand in experience I have taken the boldness to intreat your Answer to the following Particulars 1. Whether God doth use to leave any of his Servants to such bitter Temptations when they are about a Service acceptable to him If so what his Ends may be in it 2. Whether these Distresses of Spirit can be any Demonstration that his former Practices and Principles about restraining Communion to after Baptism nor more pleasing to God's Spirit which hath seemed to be proved and so Dependant These latter Arguments about largeness in that kind 3. Whether considering his former Relation to Mr. Goodwin's Congregation from whom he withdrew upon the Thought he had of unlawfulness to communicate with unbaptised Persons which now he sees the Vanity of it be not now his Duty to return thither and if so then 1. What should be the Reason that his Conscience though very tender in other things should have little or no sense of that as his Duty And 2. What should then be the Reason that when he hath had any Thoughts tending that way such Terrors like a flaming Sword should pierce his Soul 4. Whether having been an Instrument to draw so many together into this way it be not rather his Duty to continue with them applying himself in all ways of Love and Forbearance to inlarge their Spirits which he judges his Duty because he finds a sensible ease in his Soul upon such Resolutions
Sin from dark and doubtful Providences which are not our Rule but only some Effects of the Will of God that as to Events are clear but as to Truth and Duty can tell us nothing or very little but in full Subordination to our Rule from which they must receive their Light And of all Providences few are darker than Motions and Troubles from our own Thoughts so many and secret and powerful Causes are there within us and about us of Misapprehensions and misled Passions that its very dangerous boldly to Judge of the Mind of God by our own disturbed Minds when it is our Duty to judge our own Minds by God's and God's Mind by his Word his particular Providences being mostly but to help the Word in working in a Subordination to it 2. I cannot be sure that know him not but I suspect by the Narrative that this is Mr. L.'s Case 1. His Heart being upright in what he had before done God in Mercy gave into his Mind that Light concerning Catholicism and Brotherly Love and other Truths contained in his Papers which tended to his Satisfaction and Recovery 2. Upon the sight of this much Truth it must needs raise some Trouble in his Mind that he had acted contrarily before and yet the Words of the contrary Minded holding him in suspence and unresolved about his future Practice at least increased his Trouble an unresolved Mind in great Matters being a Burden to it self 3. And the terrible Threats and hard Prognosticks of these Dissenters and their Censures of him might yet sink deeper For it is the way of some to fall upon our Passions instead of our Judgments and stir up Fears in us instead of convincing us As the Papists win abundance by telling them that no others can be saved as if we should be frightened to the Party that will be most uncharitable when Charity is the Christians Badge So I doubt too many do that we have now to speak of 4. The Apprehension of his Peoples Discontent and some bad Consequents to them and himself that he Apprehended would follow his Return did yet make the disturbance more 5. The long and serious Study of the Matter with much Intention might yet go farther 6. And by all these means I conjecture he is somewhat surprized with Melancholy 7. And then if that prove so its very hard to gather the Mind of God from his Disturbances for they will follow the Impresses on his own disturbed Mind But all these are but my distant Conjectures from what you write But to come nearer 3. Whether he have contracted any Melancholy or no this is my Judgment of the Causes of his Changes 1. God caused his Light and Convictions in much Mercy that 's evident by the Conformity of his Assertions here to the Word of God and the Principles of Christianity 2. Satan envyed him and others the Mercy that was given in and therefore I verily think he is the cause of his Horrors and Troubles when he thinks of returning to Unity with others and wholly withdrawing himself from the Schism My Reasons are 1. Because I know that the Work is of God and Ergo who but Satan should be against it 2. Because that Troubling and Terrifying and Disturbing the Passions is usually his Work especially when it is against God's Light God worketh by Light and drawing the Heart to Truth and Goodness But Satan usually worketh by stirring in the Passions to muddy the Judgment 3. Common Experience tells us That it is his ordinary way where once he hath got Power to give quiet in Sin and to trouble and terrify upon Thoughts of Recovery Quest. But how should he have such Power with a Servant of God This leadeth me more particularly to answer your first Question God frequently giveth him such Power over his own Servants 1. When the Service we are upon is a recovering Work which implyeth our former Guilt It was no small Sin though ignorantly committed by an honest Heart for Mr. L. to separate and draw so many with him and put so much Credit and Countenance upon a Cause that hath made such sad and miserable work among the Saints O! What Churches might we have had by this time in England if the Enemy had not made use of our dividing Friends to his Advantage and to do his Work Now you must not marvel if the Accuser and Executioner have some Power given him to be a Vexation to a Godly Man after such Guilt And indeed so few look back that fall into Divisions that Mr. L. should not grudge at a little Perplexity that meets him in the way of so great a Mercy An ingenuous Mind would not come out of so great a Sin whithout some moderate Trouble for it and for it it is meritoriously and should be intentionally 2. Especially if Melancholy give him advantage Satan that commonly worketh by that means and Instrument may do Wonders 3. And I shall tell you of some other ends in the conclusion that I conjecture at To your Second Question I say it seems to me as is said a hard thing yea impossible to judge of his Cause by these his Passions But it 's most probable by far that this Distress of Spirit is for his former Sin in separating to say nothing of Re-baptizing and that it is also a gracious Providence for some further Good that yet he knows not of To the Third Question I answer I know not the State of Mr. Goodwin's Church and Ergo can say nothing to it whether he should return thither But my Judgment is 1. That he should in Prudence a little forbear deserting his separated Church for the ends in the Conclusion mentioned 2. That when he removeth he should preach the Gospel on the Terms in the end 3. That if he must be a private Member he should rather go to Mr. Goodwin's Church than another if it be rightly constituted because he thence removed But if it be disorderly gathered out of many Parishes without Necessity were I in his case I would rather join with another Church and that in the Parish where he lives if there be a Church that is fit to be joined with if not I would remove my Dwelling to the Parish that I would join with Cohabitation is the Aptitude requisite to Church-Membership To Your Question Why his Conscience feels not this Duty I know not unless providence mean as I shall speak anon But I marvel if he feels not the Sin of his Separation To your Fourth I answer Having drawn so many into a Schism it is his great unquestionable Duty to do all that he can to get them out of it and if he cannot to leave them and partake no longer in their Sins yea and do more than this for his Recovery and theirs To your Fifth Question It is answered in the former he ought openly to disown the Sin of Separation To the Sixth If he be Melancholy let him forbear Studies if not he should
the enclosed wishing I knew how to requite your Love and answer that Favour I found with you in your large Letter which is not in vain to us-ward but of much use the Lord requite your Labour of Love I only redouble my Request for an Interest in your Prayers that God would deliver my dear Husband from all his Fears and guide him by his Light our God will hear who keepeth Covenant and Mercy for ever with those that fear him I rest SIR Your Sister and Lover in our Lord Jesus B. L. Sept. 20. 1658. For Mr. Rich. Baxter Minister at Kidderminster Dear Brother AS sure as Love is a Fruit of the Spirit the Character of a Saint yea the more excellent way and as terminated on him whom we love in the Saints is the most high and noble Grace as being the Beginning and End the Spring of all other Holy Affections and Actions and the enjoyning Act that 's next our End so far is that State to you a growing State in which you increase in Holy Love and so sure was that a declining State in which your Charity was streightned and diminished and as sure is that Doctrine of Christ that leadeth to an universal Love of Saints and that against Christ which is against it It is not the least Grief of my own Soul that in the eager Defence of that which still I judge to be the Truth I have done any thing prejudicial to my own or Brethrens Charity Upon perusal I now find that many of my Speeches in my Book of Infant Baptism have been too provoking of which I heartily repent though I dare not of the Doctrine The Frame of our Affections doth much advantage or disadvantage our Judgments and Experience is a help to both This I perceive you have found as well as I All Holy Truths must be entertained with mixt Affections with Sorrow for any thing that we have done against them and with Love and Joy and Gratitude to the bountiful Revealer of them These that you here enumerate as revealed to you are very weighty because of such a practical Nature and publick use and Ergo you must be true to them and use them accordingly they are such as leave no room for Doubting as bearing their Testimony so legible in their Forehead This being concluded that they are certain Truths it may much help you to judge of your following Troubles I shall reduce all that I have to say for Resolution to these Propositions 1. The Word of God and not the Troubles of your own Spirit is the standing Rule by which you must judge of Duty and Sin You cannot know either by your Troubles immediately but as they awaken or help you to understand that Word 2. It is Ergo most certain that none of your Troubles should in the least measure move you from the certain Truths which by the Light of this Word hath been made known to you All the Troubles in the World will not alter Scripture and make Truth to be no Truth You must not once offer to try Scripture Truths by your Feelings but your Feelings by these Truths 3. You must therefore first see whether you obey the Truth revealed to you which plainly requireth you first to manifest Repentance for so much breach of Truth or Unity or Chrity as you have seen your self Guilty of 2. And to be Guilty of the same no more Now whether you live in that Sin or out of it I leave to you to judge And no doubt but it is your Duty to do your utmost to draw all those out of it whom you have encouraged in it and as many more as you can There are but these two Questions then before you What is the Cause of your Trouble and how you should dispose of your self for the future And to the first I answer in this fourth Proposition Though we know in general that Sin is the deserving Cause and God's Wisdom and Love the disposing Cause yet it is not easy to find out the particular Sins nor the particular Design of Love but the former is the more easy by the help of Scripture which sheweth us our Sin more fully than God's future intended Works 5. But as it is certain that no Providence is to be interpreted against a Precept so as far as I can conjecture at this distance your Trouble is most likely to arise from these connexed Causes 1. From some Melancholy that hath got Advantage of your Head by the Thoughtfulness Perplexity and the first actual Disquietments 2. From Satans Temptations working on this Advantage but of the first I am no competent Judge because distant But I strongly suspect it by long Experience in Multitudes of that Distemper who few of them will believe that they have it themselves But of the second I am more confident Satan cannot trouble us when he will but 1. When Sin hath procured him a Permission and 2. When some Melancholy or Disquietments have given him an Advantage I have met with few Persons that ever fell into any Calamity by Sin but Satan did very much trouble them when they attempted the means of their Recovery The Disquietments and Horrors that seize upon most ungodly Persons when they are about coming home by Christ may be from God principally but from Satan as the Instrument of his Wrath and as permitted to try them Whenever any escape any notable Snare of Satan in State or Fact usually Satan roareth and rageth to hinder them if posible till the escape is made and then God meeteth them with further Eight and Love Pharaoh follows them into the Red Sea and God receives them and puts a Song of Praise into their Mouths on the dry Land But this first Question is not such as you need much to stick at You may easily see for what Sin its like you should have this Affliction or if you could not after a faithful Search get rid of all and sweep as clean as possibly you can and then you will remove that Sin with the rest The resolving of the next Question is your principal Business which is to know now where your Duty lyeth for the time to come For when once you are setled in the way of Duty Peace will return and the dark Face of your now disconsolate Soul be cleared up unless any deep Melancholy or unusual Providence should continue your Trouble and indeed it is not very easy to see the way of your Duty to the end but part of it is very easy 1. That you should obey the Light that God hath manifested to you and help to communicate Catholick Principles and Affections to all your People to the utmost of your Power this is certain and do all that you are able to cure uncharitable dividing Principles or Dispositions 2. That you may not live in a Practice contrary to your Doctrine is as plain and Ergo may not be guilty of continuing a divided Church though you may prudently observe the
were all distinguished by the Limits of their Habitation or Proximity so that there was never two Churches in the same City or Bounds save Hereticks and Men of divers Tongues at least where one could hold them all But it 's otherwise with the Separatists 4. No lawful Church in Scripture was gathered out of a true Gospel-Church But theirs are 5. Scripture Churches had fixed known Tests to know qualified Members by which was consent to the Baptismal Covenant explained in the Creed Lord's-Prayer and Commandments So that all Churches had the same Test and Terms of Qualification and so had one Profession But these Men leave this Arbitrary to the Pastor or People to try whether Men are converted by uncertain Terms and Words devised by every Minister so that the Terms are unknown and not agreed on among their Churches and may be as various as Ministers 6. Scripture-Churches never divided the Christians of the same Family some to one Church and some to another But these Men do so to great Confusion 7. They are not agreed on any Form of Doctrine to be a Test of their Agreement with other Churches with whom they will have Communion If they say that the Scripture is that Test I answer a General Belief that Scripture is the Word of God is neither sufficient to Salvation nor to Communion Many have this who deny the Essentials of Christianity And an explicite Understanding and Belief of every Text no Man hath Thousands of Texts are not understood by most Christians or Teachers therefore there must be some Collection of the Essentials in a Creed or else there can be no certain Notice whether so much of Scripture Truth be explicitely believed as is necessary to Salvation And if single Pastors require more it must be only in order to Growth and Edification and not as a necessary Qualification for Membership or Communion of Churches I have great Cause to know what I say of them A Parliament once chose Fourteen Ministers to draw up the Fundamentals of Religion as a Test of such as were to be tollerated in Union There were Dr. Owen Mr. Nye Dr. Thomas Goodwin Mr. Sydrak Sympson Dr. Cheynel and others Bishop Usher was chosen and refused and I was chosen in his stead Before I came they had drawn up Fourteen or Fifteen Articles all in new Terms of their own and some neither Essential nor true I told them that we were not to make a new Christianity or Creed but must own that which the Christian Church was known by in all Ages But I could not be heard though Mr. Vines and Mr. Mantâ—n joined with me At last they wrote this for a Fundamental That they that allowed themselves or others in any known Sin cannot be saved I told them that though I could not be heard by them I durst say that I would make them presently blot it out They bid me do it if I could I said The Parliament taketh Independency Separation Anabaptistry and Antinomianism for Sin And they will say These Divines pronounce us all Damned if we allow them They said not a Word but threw away their Fundamental The rest of them they printed But the Parliament were glad with silence to pass by all their Works and take no notice of it lest it should be a publick Reproach that we could not agree on the Fundamentals And I am glad that I hindered such an Agreement as they would have made instead of the old Creeds which they would not rest in And can such Churches be of any known Consistency or Concord If you join with them how know you what Religion they are of Or how know they what other particular Churches are in their Communion for I hope they hold a Communion of Churches Arrians and Socinians say they believe the Scripture No Man understandeth all the Scripture The necessary selected Articles they have no known Agreement in If they say that they own the same Creed that we do why then do they not use it as the Test of Christian Profession but instead of it leave every Pastor to make one in Terms that is only his and no two Churches have the same To agree in Independency or Separation is not to agree in Christianity There are abundance of Books written for very false Doctrines by men called Independents it 's odious to name them Are all the Author of their Communion or not The Assembly could never get them to tell whom they would take to be of their Communion and whom not 8. Therefore their Churches are not compaginate nor confederate so as the Members of our Body should be and as Scripture-Churches were and as Christ would have had the Jewith National Church to be 9. They have no Certainty and Concord in their Church-Worship which they have little more than such Preaching and Praying which cannot be known for true or false sound or unsound till the Words are past And it may justly be expected that Separatists Antinomians Anabaptists Socinians and all erroneous Men should put their Errors into their Sermons and Prayers and sinfully father them all on God And so all God's Worship must be contiually uncertain to the Flocks and of as many different Strains as the Preachers differ in Parts and Wisdom And it must be low and poor and confused wherever the Ministers are young raw erroneous or ignorant They once met at the Savoy and drew up an Agreement of many Pastors But in that they differ from many other Churches called Independants and from the Anabaptists And they expresly contradict the Scripture 1. In saying that we have no Righteousness but Christ's which is imputed to us when as Scripture many Hundred times mentioneth also another personal inherent or acted Righteousness 2. They say that Faith is not imputed for Righteousness I think they mean well But they should rather expound Scripture than flatly deny or contradict what it saith and after defame those falsly that would help them more distinctly to understand it Their People are taught to speak evil of what they understand not and to represent Men as dangerous or odious who think not of many wordy Controversies as confusedly and ignorantly as they Their Churches are too usually constituted of such Novices in Knowledge of both Sexes as are like a School where the Boys call their Teacher a Deceiver for every word by which he would deliver them from their Errours and teach them more than they knew before 10. They lazily gather a few that seem so much better than the rest as will put them to no great labour in Teaching and Discipline But if all the rest of the Parishes lye in Ignorance how little are we beholden to these Separatists for the Cure When I came to Kidderminster some inclined that way importuned to me to take a few Professors of Zeal for my Flock and let the rest follow their ignorant Readers But when I renounced their Counsel and after my own and my Assistants long Catechizing them
to Troas Acts 20. he and all his Company are admitted among the Disciples in breaking Bread and that not as Members of any particular Church but as Christians Some Christians are lawfully excused and necessarily deprived of stated Church-Membership in a particular Church as Princes Ambassadors that may spend their Lives in motion and action in several places c. And shall all these Christians be deprived of actual Communion Sacraments c. in the Places where they come because they are uncapable of any fixed station Yea when perhaps it may be the Work or Cause of God that is the Cause of their unsettledness 10. Dare you undertake to exempt all but those that you judge Baptized from the frequent Precepts of knowing those that are over them in the Lord and submitting themselves and esteeming them highly in love for their work sake and being at peace among themselves 1 Thess. 5. 12 13. and from giving double honour to the Elders 1 Tim. 5. 17. and obeying those that rule over them c. Hebr. 13. 7 17. All Christians that have opportunity are bound to submit to and obey their Guides and Pastors and that cannot be statedly but in a particular Church And then if you look to the beneficial part it 's plain that when Christ ascended up on high and gave gifts to men it was for the perfecting of the Saints and the work of the Ministry and edifying of the Body of Christ even that Pastors and Teachers were given till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect Man Ephes. 4. 9 11 12 13. And will you exclude twenty if not five hundred parts of the Church from this all this benefit of Pastors and Teachers when Christ provided them for all Consider what you do 11. The Unity of the Catholick Body and their commanded correspondency requireth a Fellowship with all the Parts according to opportunity From Christ the whole Body fitly joyned together or jointed which is by Officers Order and Love and compacted by that which every joynt supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part when you exclude a hundred or many hundred parts from their Communion maketh increase of the Body to the edifying of it self in love not only secret unknown love but love appearing in Communion Ephes. 4. 16. 12. Excommunication out of particular Church-Communion in instituted Ordinances is a grievous Censure and never inflicted on the holy Servants of Christ that never wilfully resist or reject his Truth or Precepts No nor on Offenders but for impenitency or grievous Crimes Durst you Excommunicate me out of your Church if I were in it and professing my owning of Baptism and my hearty longing to know and obey the will of Christ. There is many an honest humble Christian in this Town that I conjecture you may know and deal for that if you should cast out on such an account I am confident infinite Love would be offended with you and say you have toucht the Apple of mine Eye Inasmuch as you cast out these my Members you did that which was too like casting out me And sure you must cast them out upon your grounds if they were in your Church because you judge them uncapable of a station and communion with you and judge your selves bound to separate from such 13. You seem to exalt an outward Act even when the heart disclaims it before a heart that is right with God without the Act. For if you had one twice or thrice Baptized in your Church that afterward disclaimed it and owned none but his Infant Baptism what would you do with this Man If you would retain him you would lay more stress on a disclaimed outward Action than on the Life of Grace If you would reject him then it seems you judge not the Baptism and Entrance which you suppose right to be enough in Fact and Existence but you think a belief of its Necessity necessary and so you put it among the Credenda and not the Agenda only when it was never in the Churches Creed For if it be a necessary Article of Faith they must perish that reject it 14. Paul and other Penmen of the Scripture telling us of many greater Errours than the thing you oppose doth not require an avoiding of the Communion of the Erroneous yea commandeth us to receive them that are weak in the faith but not to doubtful Disputations Rom. 14. 10. and dare you reject a strong Believer upon a doubtful Disputation 15. Search observe and judge whether the abundant earnest Precepts for Special Love and Company and Endearedness of Saints as Saints I could soon fill a Sheet with pertinent Citations will possibly consist with your rejecting them from special Communion and Separating from them Is this the appearance of your honouring them that fear the Lord Psal. 15. and your Loving the Brethren and that with a pure heart fervently Can all Men know you by this to be Christ's Disciples Communion is but the expression of this special Love and holy Improvement of each other for God and our mutual Benefit As he contradicts himself that saith He loveth God and hateth his Brother so doth he that saith he loveth his Brother and yet separateth from him or rejecteth him and most such on Earth for an unavoidable infirmity If you that are strong or think so are bound to bear the Infirmities of the weak then not to Excommunicate them Rom. 15. 1. Though this Body hath some Parts which we think less honourable yet must there be no Schism in it but the Members must have the same care one of another as Suffering being honoured and rejoycing together 1 Cor. 12. 24 25 26. nor must one part say to another I have no need of thee nor cut it off from the Communion of the Body The general command of Love Company Familiarity Edifying and Admonishing one another comprehends the Means in which this Communion must be held or will not be fulfilled in rejecting such Persons 16. When you are in doubt between two Difficulties the clearest and greatest Truth should prevail against the less But much more when on one side there is great weight and no difficulty and on the other much difficulty and far less weight the uncertain smaller Point should give place to the greater and more certain But it is of clearest certainty and greatest weight that we dearly love the Saints as Saints and use them as Saints and have Communion with them as Saints But you are not so sure that you must not reject almost all the Saints on Earth for want of your season of Baptism nor hath God laid weight by Promise upon such a Duty or by a Threatning driven you to it but contrarily condemned it as a sin 17. Doth not your Cause plainly bear an Image contrary to that of God Love is likest him that is Love Charity covereth infirmities and thinketh no evil and
to Day I should be an Infidel to Morrow Besides the plainness of Scripture against it But that this Author is no Dullard is apparent by his ingenuous Writing I meet with few that err so far that write in so clear and judicious a Stile So that I still profess be he what he will I much value the clearness of the Author Being then in a necesity of Judging him either lamentably weak and worse or else to be one that thinks better than he writes Reason and Charity commanded me to judge the latter to be more likely And that likelihood is all that I have asserted But if he had rather that I judged much worse of him viz. that he hath as contemptible Thoughts of the Kingdom and Design of Christ as he expresseth if I may know his Mind I shall consent Will you do me the Favour as to tell me his Name To your other Objections 1. Not Infidels but yet all Christians with us that deny Infant Baptism are commonly called Anabaptists and in that Sense I did intend it But so as that I distinguish between Anabaptists and meer Anabaptists some are only Anabaptists and those I distinguish from other Parties of their Mind some are Anabaptists and more and those are commonly denominated from the greatest Differences The greater Error in the Denomination is to carry it before the less And yet E. G. a Quaker pleading against Infant-Baptism ceaseth not to be an Anabaptist because he is a Quaker but yet is to be entituled from the worst And this distinguished from meer Anabaptists This all know is the common Custom of Speech and a Man should not be well understood that departs from it 2. An after owning proveth guilty though not Agents But I know well of abundance in the Army more than you mention that pleaded against Infant Baptism before and I can easily prove that even the best that ever I knew of the Anabaptist Churches petitioned for Justice on the King and laboured for Hands from others to it I am loath to Name Men publickly and stir in this least it occasion Offence But I intreat you freely give me your Advice in it I purposed not to have answered Stubs's Vindication and the Ministers commonly were the Cause by dissuading me saying none regarded it and that I should exasperate Sir H. V. against them all for my sake But now I am told that some very honest Anabaptists take it for granted that I have written Untruths of Sir H. V. and that I owe him a Recantation and they question History that speaks against them for my sake Hereupon I have changed my purpose and writ a plain Confutation of Stubs's Vindication Now I crave your Advice in Three Things 1. Whether indeed it be best publish the Answer I have prepared or not supposing it true and satisfactory 2. Whether I were best take any Notice of the Offence of the Author of the Sober Word and say as much to him only as I have here done 3. Whether I were best take notice of the Anabaptists Offence I pray deal freely with me and if it may be by the next Post for I shall delay for your Advice because you know the Minds of these People better than I. My own Thoughts are 1. To publish that against Stubs as necessary 2. To say nothing about the Anabaptists because I must name Pastors and People that petitioned for the King's Death and such things that are utterly unsavoury to me and unseasonable and will increase Displeasure and I had rather bear their Displeasure as it is than increase it 3. And as to the Sober Word I am indifferent I received yours but a little before Mr. Lambe's Departure but my own Thoughts had led me to harp on the same String that you directed me to I was very glad to find you jealous of that Extreme that is in it self much worse than Anabaptism in our Thoughts that dissent from both But I hope yet that he hath no liking of Popery or Formality but only Charity for the Men. I told him not of any thing concerning him in your Letters but only afterwards I told him that I heard Mr. Gunning judged him of his Mind but told him nothing whence I had it As to Mr. Tombes Book I shall much refer it to your Advice 1. I resolved not to meddle with it unless he signify his Desire for it would be an abuse of him to meddle with his Works without his Consent I should not take it well my self nor unless I first see the printed Sheets which we ordinarily see before we write Epistles but on these two Suppositions I should do it not only willingly but gladly 1. Because I would further any Work against Popery that is sollid and am troubled that no more turn their Studies and Labours that way 2. Because I would have the World see that Mr. Tombes and I can agree against the common Adversary and for the common Truths But one thing only a little scruples me which I charge you to conceal from him and all Men A great Scandal hath been long raised of him by Collonel Clieve who about two Years ago put it by Letters into my Hands and I caused Mr. Tombes to have the Knowledge of it but otherwise stifled it as well as I fairly could But now Collonel Clieve hath made it very publick and told it the Commissioners for Approbation who greatly resent it c. If you know not of it you shall know no more for me Now whether under the heat of this Scandal the prefacing to his Book will savour well and do more good or harm is a thing that I am willing to be advised and ruled by you in supposing that he desires the thing and hears not of this my Scruple which you should not have heard from me but that it 's publick My Confidence of your Fidelity makes me thus free and bold with you O Brother Must we be all divided in this Day of Peril when we are ready to be assaulted by the common Enemy O pray and strive for Love and Unity and if my Ignorance and Rashness hath done any thing against it pray that I may have Pardon and more Grace I rest Yours unfeignedly Rich. Baxter July 18. 1659. To my Loving Friend Mr. William Allen in London Worthy Sir I Received yours of the 18th Instant and was very glad to see you took so well that which I looked on as somewhat rude in my self and was troubled after the Letter was out of my Hands that I should give you any occasion of Trouble by medling so far as in my Letter I had done As to Advise in the Particulars you mention I count my self very incompetent for such Consultations and do know you are so well able to make Judgment in such Cases that if I should undertake to gratiâ—y your Desire it would signify little As for your answering the Vindication I do acknowledge Your Resolution herein is attended with Difficulties
Spirit among others is a great rejoicing to me And I hope I may tell you that it is in vain as I am sure I may tell you it is no small Sin any more to resist and strive against him If the Hand of our dear and tender Lord be setting you in joint again shrink not on account of present pain much less should you fear the Reproach of being in Communion with the Body but impartially hearken unto him and yield but lay by all Tumults of Spirits and Passions and get out of the Noise of vulgar Clamours for the Voice of Peace is a still Voice and in Calmness must be attended unto And when you are restored if you find not the Sweetness and Advantages of Peace if you are indeed restored in Mind as well as Practice the Lord hath not spoken in this by me I can hardly think that he that hath raised these Thoughts within you and begun these Convictions will let them die In order to the Ends desired and hoped for I shall offer you so much of my present Thoughts as your described Case requires And 1. though I desire not to dispute the Case of Infant Baptism with you now yet I may say we believe you live in a constant Sin against the Lord in neglecting denying and opposing it and that if you will by one erroneous Supposition draw on a Chain of hurtful Consequences you are the Cause of your own Disorders At a fitter Season I should desire you but to answer me this one Argument All that should be sacramentally or solemnly inticed into the Holy Covenant with God as his People should be Baptized or at least be taken as true Members of the Church and their Entrance just but the Infants of believing Parents should be sacramentally and solemnly entred into Covenant with God or his People Ergo c. The Minor we give you the abundant Proof of Law and Promise for before Christ. It was Abraham's Duty and Priviledge according to the Tenour of the Promise which was made with him before the Law to enter his Children sacramentally and solemnly into the holy Covenant It was all the Churches Duty after both Jews and Proselytes both the uncircumcised Females and the circumcised Males and all the uncircumcised Church in the Wilderness Deut. 29 c. Tell me now how I should answer it before the Lord if I tell Parents that they are absolved from this Duty of solemn entring their Children into the Covenant and are divested of the blessed Priviledge especially when you here tell me well that you know of none but his Body that Christ is the Saviour of and that the Church is this Body Ergo you know of no Salvation for Infants if they be not of the Church Ergo Exclussion would be a heavy Case shall I say that Christ hath recalled this Law and Grant but how should I prove it I shew you the Law and Grant do you shew me the Repeal and we have done Christ never speaks a word to repeal it nor any of his Apostles Entring our Children into the holy Covenant is not a Ceremony If God say to a Father why didst thou not dedicate this Child to me and solemnly enter him into Covenant with me what can he say The Precept Promise and long Practice were plain was the Repeal also plain Yes if it be a Repeal for Christ to take such Children into his Arms and bless them and tell us of such is his Kingdom and to be offended with those that would have kept them from him and to command that all Disciples be Baptized He knew well enough when he instituted Baptism and exercised it first upon the adult that the Iews did so too with their Proselites And Ergo when he did in that no more than they did that yet admitted the Infants of Church-Members his baptizing the Adult could no more signify his Denial of Infants to be baptized than the Iews baptizing the Adult could signify it who at that time baptized Infants also nor could the Disciples interpret Christ's Doctrine and Will to be contrary to the Iews when his Practice was no more than theirs And when he never uttered a Syllable to intimate a Repeal of that great Mercy and Duty of entring Infants solemnly into the Covenant which by God's Appointment had continued so long And the Covenant was I will be thy God and thou shalt be my People But all this falls in besides my first intent and therefore I rather expect your Pardon than your regard of it at the present though time may shew you Light in that which now seems Darkness 2. But if our Infant Baptism were irregular how will you prove it a Nullity never by any sound Argument every Irregularity is not a Nullity Whether you take the Word as signifying Faedus Sacramentale a Sacramental Covenant as Scripture commonly doth more notably intending the Covenant than the outward Act or Sacramentum Faederale a Federal Sacrament or Action most notably signifying the Sign or Act it 's all one to our purpose for Infants are capable of both the Covenant and the outward Sign and of all that is essential to Baptism That they are capable of being entred into Covenant 1. Nature tells us we commonly enter them under Princes as their Subjects and into private Contracts with Landlords for Possessions 2. The ancient Law Promise and Practice of the Church before Christ tells us for then it was actually done by God's Command And that they are capable of the outward Sign is undeniable Prove it a Nullity if you can though it were a Sin 3. But if both were granted the Sin and Nullity I come now to give you my Reasons why it warrants you not to deny Communion with the Churches that were thus Baptized in Infancy And 1. I beseech you note that Baptism is as necessary if not much more to the Admission of Men into the universal visible Church as such or into a particular Church Ergo If Men may be admitted into the universal visible Church without adult Baptism then he may be admitted into a particular Church without it But yet here grant that he may be a Member of the universal Church without it Ergo Baptism is indeed appointed to be our regular entrance by way of Sacramental Covenant and Investiture into the Church Universal and not into a particular Church necessarily though it may be into both yet it is but indirectly into the particular Church The Eunuch and all that were baptized first in any place by the Apostles were baptized only into the Church universal and afterward setled in Order under Pastors in particular Churches Baptism as such as it was called our Christening doth only list Men under Christ as Christians and if it do any more as to the thing in Question it is accidentally and not always nor necessarily We are not directly sure baptized to our Pastors and so not to that Particular Church nothing then is more plain