for the further satisfaction of my reader I will look a little more particularly into the waies and pretensions of all parties and as brlefly too as may be The Quaker for I have both read their books and conversed frequently with their persons is in appearance very just and honest his open pretenses good and plausible and books spiritual enough to one of our vulgar readers unto whose judgment they be well proportioned for good words are put together to promote solid and sincere honesty and to evacuate that empty show of piety which has now generally taken place in the world in lieu of the real substance that is in a manner quite vanished out of our hearts and hands But these words are so strangly jumbled together that every line has good sens in it but all together none for as they carry no reference to any one supreme scope to which as the utmost object of the whole discours all those phrases may be applied so being well examined and compared together they will be found very frequently to gainsay one another and he that looks for connexion and correspondence either of sens or sentence will lose his labour I have never seen any thing that for the stile and context of the speech doth more nearly resemble Mahomets Alcoran than a good Quakers book for in both be handsom words som dreaming conceits interlarded with undeniable truths much imperious censur of all mankind that will not submit to that way endles tautologies and no connexion and it would even amaze a man to see how pathetically the good Quaker decries all mortal men and tramples them under his feet with pious words most uncouthly put together in a manner as far as I am able to imitate it to this purpos The Lord hath begun a good work upon earth and he will finish it men shall see it with their eyes and all darknes shall be confounded before his feet a little thing within thee shall lay thy shame open and strike thee hip and thigh his goings are mighty and nothing can resist the breath of his nostrils when he shall make the mountains to smoak and the hills to tremble before the arm of his power when he begins to make his Saints glorious he will do it all that has exalted it self shall fall root and branch and the proud cedar must down thou shalt see it in that day for it will come upon thee even as pangs upon a woman in travel Babylon shall fall and all the glory of men be laid in the dust when Christ shall reign in his little ones and they in him for there must be an end an end to adulteries and darknes an end to pride to tiranny to all the sons of men that the Lord may be all in all woe woe woe is it not told thee is not the truth preached is not the light already com and yet men hate it the sons of men hate it they persecute that light but light cannot be hurt it cannot be prevailed over they may show their spleen to the truth but all their spight it must end it must yield at last nothing is stronger than truth not wit not strength not policy not wealth not pride not falshood the horns of the beast must fall off as well the little as the great one when the beast is slain and cast out into the wildernes to the fouls of the air to be devoured by the beasts of the field does not the Presbyterian preach for hire does he not walk in black the colour of the whore does he not frequent steeplehouses or bellhouses built by Papists and prophaned with adulteries and fornications with idols does he not set open his wares in his shop commonly called a pulpet a popish name does he not court and cap and cringe for lucre filthy lucre according to men is there any power of godlines in him truth and the word of God does not consist in words it is not written in paper 't is here within thee hearken to it yield obedience there attend what it sayes there Protestant what is protestant a meer carnal idol a cheat abomination an imp of popery the eldest brat of the whore thou canst not thou canst not thou canst not stand thou art assuredly to fall before the arm of the lord which is bared against thee and all thy cheating lies shall be laid open in the dust for men to trample and go over and tread under their feet O popery idolatry sin lies thefts tyrannies wickedness darknes hearken unto me come to the light and heart it speak it will guide thee it will guide thee to the truth it is a sweet thing within thee it speaks comfort it makes thee see and hate all kind of corruption if thou wilt heed it and hearken to it and follow it it will make thee contemn thy self contemn all mortal men contemn pride and the glory of this world and all popish superstitions and all that exalts it self popes cardinals principalities steeplehouses to lye in the dirt and dust of the earth which will be sweeter to thee with that light within thee than the silks and gold and earthly pelf of this world ministery and magistracy and wordly power the two horns of the beast is invented only by Antichrist to oppress Christ the Pope is the old serpent the grand seducer he it is that shows the apple that is fair to the eye and sweet to the taste but poison in the stomach the Saints and little ones must rule and all iniquity shall be don away the light will dissolv all the beasts ten horns c. Well good neighbour it is enough When Christ comes we will worship him and beg to be admitted into his kingdom till then let us have peace which is I am sure some part of it We cannot answer you if that will satisfy you whom I know no answer will Every good man in the world wishes with you that all iniquity were done away and well may you I should think content your selves with them to wish it so to all and see it done in your own persons Why do you trouble the world with your useles clamours and put it so out of tune that Christ when he coms can find no quiet entertainment in the land for the wars and broils his great Saints have made in it If you talk a little longer of Christs coming and make way for him as the fanaticks did last January with bright steel armour and shining head pieces sharp cimiters pistols and harquebusses stoutly fighting and severely declaring against the whole earth whom they condemned to ruin we have reason to fear that the sirname of this your Christ will be Oliver and your golden dayes but the slaughter and bloudshed of your innocent neighbours If your meaning be good show it by your peaceable conversation and speak no more to us for we need it not and heed it as little but say your prayers in your closets and prepare your selves
time of our late civil warres wherein our Monarchy once subverted we all perished with it and our rights and welfare at such a loss that no man could say that aught he had remaining was his own It must needs be so for the government what ever it be is before the laws and the laws receiv all their strength and vigour from the acknowledged autority of that power from whence they are derived Now that the Christian Church was first monarchicall under one Sovereign Byshop when Christ who founded it was upon earth no man will deny for aristocracy or democracy it could not be sith all his twelve apostles were under him as his disciples and not fellow doctours or legislatours with him nor did he ever pretend to receiv his autority from men but immediately from God above unto whom he was personally united and this autority of his must first be accepted before his word can be believed or his law acknowledged and these must have all their force from that power which according to its firmitude of truth gives them all their life and vigour which remains and dies with it and with the government under which the laws and doctrin began It appears then that all the laws and rules and promises and whole doctrin of Christianity and founded upon the spiritual monarchy of Jesus who was Man-God that he might be both unto human kind a fit and proportioned head as man and uncontroulable independent and infallible as God And hence it must needs follow that the subversion of episcopacy which is the spirituall monarchy in which our Lord founded his Christianity must needs weaken and by degrees utterly destroy all faith for the ruin of the polity is the death of all its laws founded in it Nor will it suffice if an Independent or Presbyterian say that they are still under their head Christ who being in heaven hath his spirituall influences over them I say this suffices not for the true Church of Christ whersoever it is must have the very same head she had at first or else she cannot be the same body and that head was man-God personally present in both his natures with the body of his Church here on earth and although Christ may and does supply the invisible part of his God-head influence upon his mystick body yet a visible head or byshop if the Church hath not now over her as at first she had she is not the same she was and consequently in the way to ruin What then you will say cannot God preserv his Church without the help of man I answer we must not here dispute what God can do but what he will do God can warm the earth and make fruits to grow and us to see without the sun but if he have otherwise ordained we must expect those effects from the caus he hath set and no other wayes And that all truths are to be expected from his Church and from him he hath substituted in his place to govern us as our only visible Pastour is manifestly apparent both by his own law and practise and our experience By his law when he sayes that he who will not hear his Church must be as a publican and reprobate by his practise when he would not have his own supernatural vocation and endowment and light from heaven to suffice St. Paul either to make him a Christian or a Teacher till he had received both from the hands of his Church and pastors by our experience while we see from age to age that all those that withdraw themselves from the Catholick Church and from her chief Byshop and pastour let the occasion be what it will or never so little do run themselves restlesly into endles schisms denying one thing after another still from less to more till at length all Christianity be cancelled and beginning with schisme they end with atheisme all truth unity and peace being to be had onely from and in that one Church which as St. Paul does well and wisely call it Christs Body so is it only animated with his spirit of truth and from the government there appointed which is episcopal and in a special manner from the chief pastour there presiding ruling and directing in place of Jesus Christ unto whom all obey in yielding obeysance unto him in spiritual affairs according to his own order and appointment Nor is there any more certain rule of discerning the approaching ruin of Christianity in any person or people than when we see them either secretly to undermine or openly to oppugn papal autority No pope no byshop no byshop no Church no Church no salvation This being once well pondered as a thing of such weighty concernment deservs we shall begin both to suspect that the first reformers Luther and Calvin who being Priests under that Papal hierarchy flew out against the Church whereof they had been members and furiously cryed down both Pope and all episcopacy were not sent from God and likewise conclude that the counsel of Queen Elizabeth did wisely reassume that ancient form of Church government though it were opposite to the principles of reformation and judgment of all the first reformers becaus it was both most conformable to times of primitive Christianity and in all reason most likely to conserve the land in unity And if we were once by Gods grace freed from preconceived prejudice we should all of us as clearly see and love the beauty of papal doctrin as now some of us allow of papal government nor is there any thing commendable in any reformation but that and only that which it hath in it of Popery And lastly we shall easily discern that the the Presbyterian plea and all its arguments or whatever else they can have to say against episcopacy are of no value and indeed too slight for me to insist upon their solution I had a mind here to decipher the Protestants plea against the Papist but I finde that there cannot be made any one scheme of it as of the Independent and Presbyterians becaus these the first of them speaks so generally of all things that he seldom touches upon any one particular the other so insists upon one particular that he troubles himself with nothing else and a man may know what both of them would have But all these and several other reformations when they set their face against the Roman Catholick go all under the generall name of Protestants and yet speak several and contradictory things one accusing them for that which the other approves And generally they do neglect their doctrin and inveigh against the vices and follies which either they put upon them or are indeed found amongst som people or persons that do profess that faith in France Spain Italy or other parts as pride tyranny drunkennes leachery foolish gambols and usages of Countreys with which Protestant books against popery are lustily stuft up or if they do indeed speak to their doctrin it is either done onely with some
witty jest and jeer and so having given it a flap with a fox tail they pass on soberly to other matters in hand as is commonly done in the pulpits of witty preachers or if they handle it more seriously they do either for their own advantage mistake the doctrin or the proofs they bring against it whether through fraud or ignorance 't is hard to say and the foundations of catholick religion which be tradition and scripture they do so variously expound in severall times and places that one text shall have twenty several interpretations which if they be not catholick pass all for good here and at one time an autority of a father or councel shall be accepted and diversly interpreted in another time and place quite rejected now one piece of catholick doctrine shall be vehemently cryed down and at another time taken up again and maintained and at one and the same time in several parts of the world twenty points for example of catholick faith shall all of them be somewhere received and somewhere rejected amongst Protestants for they being still their own maisters may choos and throw away what they pleas and as long as they list without controul wheras the Romans keeping still one and the same treasury of religion and faith afford matter for them all either to take or leave either to approve or laugh at as they lâ—st as a well furnished table affords wanton children both what they may feed upon themselves and what being full they may spoil and play with and cast to the dogs §. 15. Scripture ANd whence com all these divisions only from this that every man hath a reason an interpretation a light a spirit of his own by which the bible which is now in all mens hands is made to speak what we pleas and our thoughts and tongues are our own what lord shall us controul This is a sad case while all of us upon those only motives which all men may take up at any time to abuse his innocent neighbour proceed to mutual hostility without end The very books that have been written against Roman catholick this last hundred years as they be furious and virulent so be they also so many and various that they would if they were all brought together fill up the Tower of London and by them have people been inflamed to such a height against the Romans that their bodies dignities honours fame houses and goods have been ineffably harrassed to this day And yet no body can say what ill that religion ever did in the world until Henry the eights dayes when it was first rejected and persecuted and when we have laid them in the dust we fly upon one another and pull and tear upon the same motiv all that stands in our light Reflect countrimen upon your selves shall we continue in a contest that can never possibly be ended and being prosecuted to the utmost must needs infer a general ruin upon all for whatsoever we say against any one may be said by any other against our selves and proved by the same argument and the same thing may be done to us upon the same account we do it to another All appellation to a visible judg is by anticatholicks jointly excluded and to the Roman catholick with whom unity hath ever dwelt we will not return nor can it be yet expected for the general disrepute unto that way hath so filled our ears and hearts that hating the very name of Papist we have not power to consider soberly what their religion may be Nay we are verily perswaded even from our nurses milk that Protestants are the only professors and Papists enemies to the gospel although to all the world besides the gospel is well enough known to be the Roman catholicks own and sole religion by which they walked and lived here in England many hundred years unto a fruitfulnes of all good works before Protestancy appeared and we pretend to fight against them only for the gospel and with the gospel whiles they forsooth are beleeved to have nothing at all to defend themselvs but a little traditional trumpery of mans inventions with a greater heap of vices of their own And upon this account proceed all our books that are written against Papists and popery in effect like unto that picture that was carried not long ago up and down the Protestant world wherein was drawn a fair ballance as a type of the two religions in whose left hand scale hanged beads girdles cardinals caps monks hoods fryars cowles disciplines crosses to signifie Popery in the other a fair great Bible to signifie Protestancy which hanging upon the ground quite weighed up the other scale into the air as light as very vanity And so credulous is the generallity of mankind that by such toies as these we are carried away unto not onely a dislike but even the highest detestation and contempt of a sacred religion without further examination But what do I speak of the generallity of the vulgar Even our sober and most judicious men who in other things speak and think like oracles in this busines of popery are not abashed to speak like children that talk of hobgoblings in the dark so prevalent is a prejudice brought upon us by the virulent impression of often iterated calumnies Nor are we able by the restraint of this great prejudice either to read the books or ponder seriously the reasons of our catholick neighbours for their faith Yea I have heard som Protestants in other things most wise and judicious to say openly that as for Papists he loved their persons but their religion he hated in his heart the reason is clear he knew the one and not the other And as we do all of us by this old imbibed prejudice detest Popery though we know not what it is so by any new-received dislike when we have once bodied with any one faction we revile all the rest and none will yield to another although in all reason that religion that hath precedency of time with all the other helps any juniour way can pretend unto might one would think have so much if not precedency yet equallity of respect as not to be by a way that is new in the world so bitterly reviled especially when all that venemous bitterness which by any junior sect is cast upon his foregoer may and is as heavily thrown upon himself by his successour But thus rancour and malice spreads abroad in our hearts and whole kingdom against his rule and doubtles to his great displeasure who carefully obliged us to the contrary rules of love and which is to be lamented the first sours and origin of all these defamations is the Pulpit where both by word and example we are taught to defame and hate even those we do not know We may fear som great curs lies upon our poor nation for these our unnatural disorders even so far as to blind us that we cannot see the truth Unto his dogs set upon
liars so that you must take it then upon the credit of those who by your own principles may as well deceive you as you me Can you tell who wrote that book O yes you name me presently twenty several persons which you can no more prove to be authours of the books than any thing contained in the writings although their names may be there prefixed Those persons at least as they were men of several conditions priests kings lawyers poets historians fishermen doctours so did they live in several times and places of the world and differ both in these things and also in their very stile and manner of writing as much as any can do A brachman in India teacher of morality two thousand years ago William the conqueror King of England six hundred years ago dictatour of our law and our Sir Kenelm Digby Knight and Philosopher lately author of a Natural Philosophy Do these three differ any more then St. John Moses and Salomon either for time place condition or stile of writing I trow not how then came all those with so much diversity of their own to write the word of God more than these and how they and no other Who first gave them their autority or was it given or onely declared and by what power and vertue could it be declared by any that knew them not and lived so long after them How com laws poems sermons histories letters visions so many several fansies in such diversity of composure to be dictated from one divine hand and how do they conspire together in such variety of times to make at length one vlume of faith And yet too they must not all be either of signification or validity just as they lye and sound but some in this manner some in that Moses law must not bind in its judicial or ceremonial part which makes up in a manner all the whole Pentateuch but onely in the truth of story and morality some books must be taken according to the literal sense and not in any mystical one some in the mystery and not the letter and som again according to both What shall guide us in these things a parable must not be looked on as a story nor yet morallised in all its pars but onely in the capital intention no words must be culled forth to prove any thing out of the road of his mind and purpose who spake them no axiom of holy writ is to be taken by halves nor yet in any sense was not thought of by the authour an objection is not to be proposed for a conclusion nor any trope or metaphor perverted all words must speak to the writers scope not against it as he made them to do who brought texts against veneration of Saints out of St. Jo. Chrysostoms speeches made expresly in honour of them and others against monarchy drawn out of the book of Kings and many such like cautions there be I cannot now think of What autority or rule shall conduct us in all these uncertainties The Catholick indeed has one by which he passes on uniformly and quietly in the course of his religion as the sun in the firmament without noise or trouble but others jumble and justle one against another like coaches in a street O the Scripture and truth therein contained will discover it self Does it not very fairly whiles we are all of us together by the ears not for the Bible but with it You must beleeve What should I beleev and why I expect a perswasion to beleev not a command and to hear not that I must beleev but what and not onely what to credit but why and wherefore O but you may discern in these writings the very marks of Gods hand appearing Though there be such marks yet it seems by our many divisions we cannot read of our selves what those marks would have or what Church and doctrin they would establish and to whom can those marks appear to be Gods but to them only who have seen Gods hand aforetime or stood by him when he wrote Porphirius was as good a marks-man and understanding Philosopher as perhaps ever was and yet he deserted Christianity and all the whole Bible for want of the marks of divinity in it as others for the same reason have at times rejected many particular books I justifie neither him nor them but only speak thus much to show how instable a thing man is when he relyes upon his own judgment Have not we known wicked hypocrites to speak as fine words as any be in scriptur and by those their marks to deceiv many and I doubt not but Antichrist when he appears will do so But how came this book into England for it was not it seems any part of it written here It was brought hither you will say at the lands first conversion all of it together in one volume If this be true as true indeed it is then we had it from the Pope of Rome whether we speak of the conversion of Englishmen or Brittons And shall I build my beleef upon the autority of a book if indeed it could make it out sent us from him whom our own ministers do publickly proclaim to be an impostour and antichrist or can I in reason so condemn him and not suspect it If he did not onely present it us but made his catholick beleevers with so much labour and industry to transcribe it all the world over before printing was invented as a sacred and venerable thing a man might think in reason there were somthing in it to favour him and his religion which being once accepted under the notion of divine writings men would not easily dare to contradict and nothing at all against him O but the Pope did not make the book nor any of his predecessors This is more than either you or I can prove sith that book so much of it as belongs to Christianity was never found in our countrey but as taken and sent from him and it is no hard matter to make a book for my own ends and for its ampler autority to father it upon some renowned person the better to promote my design Truly such places as speak so plainly the Churches autority the real presence absolution of sins by man episcopal government and the like papal doctrin are apt enough to suggest such thoughts and some of our first reformers upon that very account did shrewdly suspect and were not afraid to say it that the Pope had at least a finger in many such like places which he might in their opinion easily do when he had once overwhelmed the earth with his mists of errour and made the people so credulous that he might do what he pleased And if I do indeed think the Pope to be Antichrist and a seducer I cannot rationally beleev or trust unto any book he sends me more than I do to his doctrin which he sayes is there grounded sith I have indeed but his word for the autority of
themselves have thought it an addition of honour to sit in that solemn and thrice venerable assembly though in a separated place Shall we I say mock and revile this sacred person Let not such a thing be said of us any more let it not be told in Gath or the streets of Askalon that we use any such rude behaviour lest the very uncircumcised Philistins condemn our vast inexcusable incivility Nor yet let us either envy or malign the respect which Pappists give to Him from whom they received their Christianity and by whose vigilance and care it hath been kept inviolate amongst them from its first ingres into the land even to this very day Shall our eye be therefor evil becaus theirs is good §. 30. Popery IN the more flourishing doctrins of the Catholick Church I could be largely copious but I have said as much as may suffice my intended purpos which was so far to excuse even that religion also that if all do not embrace yet none may persecute and hate it Wherefor I do purposly omit to speak of other more plausible parts of Popery viz. 1. The obligation which all who beleev in Christ have to attend unto good works and the merit and benefit of so doing 2. The possibility of keeping Gods commandements with the assistance of divine grace 3. The liberty and freedom of human will either to comply with grace or resist it 4. The sacred councel and excellency of divine vowes 5. The right and obligation to restitution when any one shall have wronged his neighbour either in his soul or body fame goods or estate 6. The power and autority of of the Church in her tradition and decisions 7. The fasts and abstinence at certain times from som kind of meats which is all the religion we read Adam was injoined to observ in Paradise that we may therby be more apt to acknowledg Gods gifts and goodnes at those times we enjoy other good things of his bounty and at other times them and to sanctify our spirit for divine retirements 8. The divine ordination and unspeakable comfort and benefit of Confession 9. The caelibate and single life of the clergy who thereby freed from much solicitude of this world though not without som troublesom struggling against unseemly lusts of youth may approach the altar like angels of God who neither marry nor are given in marriage 10. The doctrin of indulgencies which be nothing els but a releas from som temporal penalties due to sin after repentance and remission which the Church does generally bestow by commutation as when for example an indulgence of such penalties for so many daies or years is granted unto such as upon the time appointed shall repent and confess fast pray give almes and communicate for the Churches preservation and concord of Christian princes which is a doctrin as rational and well grounded as any in Christianity though we in England will not understand it 11. Finally the ecclesiastick hierarchy and supremacy whereby catholick religion like a flourishing fair tree spreads his boughs in several kingdoms of the earth even from sea to sea so united all of it in all its parts and connexed together that ther is no catholick upon earth but is under som priest all priests subordinated to their byshops these to their metropolitan all metropolitans to the Patriarchs and Patriarchs united in the Papal cone every leaf cleavs to som twig every twig to som branch every branch to som bough every bough to the bole and the bole to the root And several other such like points of the Roman religion which coming all together from once hand have stood unchangeable in all ages the same and depending all upon the verity of the first revealer have an equality of truth though not of weight These and several others with the other half dozen more offensive doctrins I have cleared and explicated our reformers cut off at one blow when they taught us that it would suffice to salvation only to beleev in Christ without any more ado and that other things were popish superstitions whereby we became a strang kind of servants that beleev their maister but heed not either to fulfil his orders or do his commands For they told us and we have hitherto beleeved it That ther be no such things as good works pleasing to God but all be as menstruous rags filthy odious and damnable in the sight of heaven That if it were otherwis yet are they not in our power That with the assistance of any grace to be had Gods commandements are impossible to be kept and it would be therefor vain to attempt it especially sith we have in us no strength of free will to act any thing but evil That it must needs be foolishnes to vow unto God sith we can do nothing we ought to do and no less foolish if we have vowed to pay it That what wrong soever we do to another God is merciful and restitution fruitles both becaus one sin cannot make satisfaction for another nor any thing clear us but the blood of Christ alone unto which if we should concurr our selves by doing good works or satisfying for ill we should be half our own redeemers That the Church which presumes to teach other things than we allow is a fals mistres distracted and knows not what she sayes That to fast from sin is fast enough without depriving our stomachs of good flesh when we have a mind to it and yet becaus we sin in every thing we do neither is that fast possible to be kept That confession is needless How can man forgive sins That our clergy find themselvs men and not angells and love women as well as others and first revolted from popery principally for their sakes preferring a good wife before the whore of Babylon and the altars that kept them asunder are thrown down the honest pulpit standing now solitary speaks for them and brings them happily together That of indulgencies there is no need since obligation to penalties is shaken off long ago by our own autority without any indulgence from another That papal supremacy is the only obstacle to our liberty and therefor it must be abolished And let popery hang together as close as it can it shall go hard but we will find a battery to shake it So much indeed hath sophistry and continual clamour against popery and state punishments lying ever most heavily upon the professours of it prevailed over our judgments that now ther is no goodnes no worth no truth in it no none at all it is all naught all and every part of it naught nothing but naughtines superstition and vanity All that I will say for the present is this If popery be a bad religion more is the pitty for the professors of it suffer as much for it as might well serv for a good one Millions of people for the beleef they have in it and the love they bear its holy counsels and