not oppose Sect. XVIII We find proof thar ordinarily Churches were first planted in Cities there being not then in the Villages Christians enough to make Churches But we find no proof that when there are Christians enough to constitute Churches they may not be planted in Villages also Nor yet that there may not be more Churches than one in the same City For so Grotius saith There were even then when Christians were comparatively but few and that they were as the Jewish Synagogues in this respect And Dr. Hamond largely asserteth that Peter had a Church of Jews and Paul another of Gentiles at Rome and that so it was in other Cities Sect. XIX Much less is it by Divine Institution that Bishops and their Churches or Seats be only in such as we now call Cities which by their priviledges are distinct from other great Towns and Corporations whenas the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then signified a great Town or Corporation such as our Market-Towns and Corporations now are Sect. XX. But it is the Law of God that all things about Churches and Church-affairs which he hath left to humane prudence should be done according to such general Rules as he hath prescribed for their regulation SECT IV What Princes and Pastors may do in such matters I. THese foresaid General Laws of God do both give the Rulers their Power for determining things committed to them and also limit their power therein II. These General Laws are that All things be done to Edification the circumstances fitted to the End the Glory of God and the Publick Good the promoting of Truth and Godliness that all be done in Love to the promoting of Love and Unity and that all be done in Order and Decently and as may avoid offence or scandal to all both those without and those within Gal. 6. 15 16. Phil. 3. 15 16. 1 Cor. 14. 3 5 12. 26. 17. Rom. 14. 19. 15. 2. 1 Cor. 10. 23. Ephes 4 12 16 19. 2 Cor. 12. 19. 6. 3. 11. 7. 1 Cor. 8. 13. III. Therefore no Rulers Civil or Ecclesiastical have their power to scandalize and destroy but only to edifie being the Ministers of God for good Rom. 13. 3 4 5. 2 Cor. 10. 8. 13. 10. IV. The great Dispute is handled excellently against the Papists for Kings by Bishop Bilson of Christian Obedience Bishop Andrews Tortura Torti Bishop Buckeridge Spalatensis and many more whether the Kings of Christian Kingdoms have not the same power about Church-matters as the Kings of Israel and Judah had David Solomon Hezekiah Josiah c. which cannot be answered by an only Yea or Nay without a more particular consideration of the compared Cases V. We suppose it certain that Christian Kings have no lesser power than the Kings of Israel except 1. What any such King had as a Prophet or in peculiar by an extraordinary grant 2. And what alteration is made by alteration of Church-offices Laws and Worship which may make a difference of which hereafter VI. And 1. It must be remembred that God then reserved the Legislation to himself which he exercised by Revelation and by special Prophets And so the Prophet Moses delivered them that Law which no King had power to abrogate suspend or alter by adding or diminishing Deut. 12. 32. Jos 1. But they had a mandatory power and of making some subordinate By-laws as Cities and Corporations have from and under the King VII 2. Yea great and special Mandates were oft sent from God by Prophets against which the Kings of Israel had no power VIII 3. The Executive or Judicial Power was divided part was in the Kings and Magistrates and part was in the Priests and Levites which the King could not usurp himself as appeareth in Uzziahs offering Incense nor yet forbid the Priests to use it according to God's Law nor change or abrogate their Office For he and they were subject to God's Laws IX 4. God himself settled the High Priesthood on the line of Aaron and all the Priesthood on the Tribe of Levi and it was not in the power of the King to alter it X. 5. God stated the High Priesthood on the Priests during life Numb 35. 25 28. Jos 20 6 c. which Law the Kings had no power to violate XI 6. There are more particular Laws made by God for the duty of the Priests describing their office and work than for any other particular case as many hundred Texts will tell us And none of these Laws might be altered or suspended by the Kings of Israel Nor those by which God stated some of the Judicial Power in the Congregation Num. 35. 12. to 26. XII 7. Solomon's putting out Abiathar and putting in Zadok is not contrary to any of this For supposing the words 1 King 2 35. to be not only a history of the bare matter of fact but a justification of it de jure 1. It poseth learned men to resolve how Zadok and Abiathar are oft said to be both High Priests before and Zadok still put before Abiathar 2. It is certain that Zadok had the right both of Inheritance and especial Promise Numb 25. 11 12 13. 1 Chron. 6. 3 4 c. And what Solomon did was that the word of the Lord might be fulfilled How the possession came into the hands of the line of Ithamar Expositors cannot find It is like it was by occasion of the confusions of their oft Captivity and Anarchy in the interspace of the Judges 3. Even the Priests were the King's subjects and might be punished for their crimes so it were according to God's Laws And if Abiathar forfeited his life he forfeited his Office XIII 8. The Priesthood then depended not on the institution or will of the King or People He might not put out a lawful Priest that had not forfeited his Life or Office He might not have put any one in his place that had not right from God or that was unqualified He might not have forbid the Priests the work appointed them by God But yet if he had injurioâ—slâ— deposed one Abiathar and put in a Zadok the loss had been little to the Church But if he had deposed so great a number of the Priests and Levites as that a great part of God's commanded work must needs thereby have been lest undone and Religion so far destroyed or had as Jeroboam put of the basest of the people or uncapable persons into the Priesthood the loss had been greater and the thing unwarrantable and such as he had not power from God to do XIV And the quality of Moses Law and its Works as different from the Laws of Christ and the Works thereof must be considered that we may discern the difference of the Cases A man that did attempt to draw the people to Idolatry was then to be put to death yea the City to be destroyed that concealed him Deut. ch â—3 so were they that blasphemed and such as committed other heinous
28. When able faithful Pastors are lawfully set over the Assemblies by just Election and Ordination if any will causelesly and without right silence them and command the people to desert them and to take others for their Pastors in their stead of whom they have no such knowledge as may encourage them to such a change we cannot defend this from the charge of Schism which puts a Congregation on so hard a means of Concord as to judge whether they are bound to that Pastor that was set over them as Christ appointed or must renounce him and take the other when they are Commanded So Cyprian in the case of Novatian sayes that he could be no Bishop because another was rightfull Bishop before XXXI 29. In England it belongeth 1. to the Patron to present 2. to the Bishop to ordain and institute and therefore to approve and invest 3. to the people jure divino to be free Consenters 4. and to the Magistrate to protect and to judge who shall be protected or tolerated under him If now these four parties be for four Ministers or for three or two several men and cannot agree in one the culpable dissenters will be the causes of the Schism XXXII 30. If a Church have more Presbyters than one and will be for one way of worship discipline or doctrine and another for another as at Frankford Dr. Cox Mr. Horn and others were for the Liturgie and others against it so that the people cannot possibly accord it is the culpable party which ever it be that must answer for the Schism So much of enumerated Schisms XXXIII On the Negative we suppose that none of these following are Schisms in a culpable sense 1. All are agreed that it is no Schism for the Christian Church to separate from the ancient Jewish or from the Infidel Heathen World XXXIV 2. All Protestants are agreed that it is no Schism to deny obedience to the Roman Pope nor to deny that communion with them which they will not have without obedience To separate from other Churches is to deny them meer Communion But to separate from the Roman as Papal is but to deny them subjection To deny any other Christian Church to be a true Church is Schismatical if they have the Essentials of a Church But to deny the Papal Church or Monarchy to be a true Church of Christ's institution is true just and necessary though they be Christians because we mean only the Papal Church form as it is an Universal Ecclesiastical Monarchy of the whole Christian world which no other Church but that doth claim XXXV 3. It is no Schism to deny Subjection to Pope Councils or Patriarchs of other Kingdomâ— or to any forein Power by what names or titles soever called XXXVI 4. It is no Schism to deny that Christ hath any such Visible Church on Earth as is one by Union with any Universal Head Personal or Collective besides himself XXXVII 5. It is no Schism to Preach and gather Churches and elect and ordain Pastors and Assemble for God's Worship against the Laws and will of Heathen Nahometan or Infidel Princes that forbid it For thus did the Christians for 300 years And if there be the same cause and need it is no more Schism to do it against the Laws and will of a Christian Prince Because 1. Christ's Laws are equally obligatory 2. Souls equally precious 3. The Gospel and Gods worship equally necessary 4. And his Christianity enableth him not to do more hurt than a Pagan may do but more good If therefore either out of Ungodly enmity to his own profession or for fear of displeasing his wicked or Insidel Subjects he should forbid Christian Churches he is not to be therein obeyed XXXVIII 6. If a Prince Heathen Infidel or Christian forbid Gods Commanded worship and any Commanded part of the Pastors office as in Papists Kingdoms Prayer in a known tongue and the Cup in the Lords Supper is forbidden and as they say all preaching save the reading of Liturgies and Homilies is forbidden in Moscovie and as the use of the Keyes is elsewhere forbidden It is no Schism to disobey such Laws what Prudence may pro hic nunc require of any single person we now determine not XXXIX 7. If any Prince would turn his Kingdom or a whole Province Diocess or County into One only Church and thereby overthrow all the first order of Churches of Christs institution which are associated for Personal present Communion allowing them no Pastors that have the power of the Keyes and all essential to their office though he should allow Parochial Oratories or Chappels which should be no true Churches but Parts of a Church It were no Schism to gather Churches within such a Church against the Laws of such a Prince Many write that there is but One Bishop in Abassia though some say that others have Episcopal power under him some that read the old Canons which confine Bishops to Cities and take not the word as then it was taken for any great Town or Corporation but for such priviledged Towns only as are called Cities in England hence gather that as the King may disfranchise Cities and reduce them to ten two or one in a Kingdom he may by consequence do so by Churches that have Bishops which if it be spoken but of Episcopi Episcoporum we resist not But if of Episcopi Gregis of the first Order of Churches called Particular we suppose that out of such a Kingdom-Church Provincial or Diocesan-Church it is no Schism to gather particular Parochial Churches though forbidden And the same reason will prove that if in a lesser circuit the same things be done though in a lower degree viz were it but three four or ten particular Churches of the largest size capable of Personal Communions turned into one which is capable only of distant Communion per alios it is lawful to gather particular Churches out of that larger sort of Church If the Bishop of Rome Alexandria Antioch Cesarea Heraclea Carthage c. should have put down the Bishops of ten twenty an hundred or many hundred Churches about them and set up only Oratories and Catechists in their stead making them all but part of their own Churches it would have been lawful to have gathered Churches in their Churches For God never made them proper Judges whether Christ should have Churches according to his laws nor whether God should be worshipped and souls be saved or his own nstitutions of Churches be observed XL. 8. If Bishops would ordain Presbyters by limiting words restraining them from any Essential or Integral Part of the Office or Power as instituted by Christ and yet profess that they ordain them to the Office which Christ hath instituted it is no Schism for those Presbyters afterward to claim and execute in season all the power which by Christ's institution belongeth to their Office though against the Bishops Wills Because the Bishops are not the Authors or Donors of
If God ask us why we did not teach our families visit the sick instruct ignorant neighbours study better for to discharge our Ministerial work that we might be men of knowledge and such like the doubt is whether it will pass for a good answer to say we had not time because we must twice a day read the Common-Prayer XXI Assenting Approving and Consenting to all things even to all forms orders c. includeth the order of the Liturgy Two Rules of the order of Prayer are commonly acknowledged 1. The nature and order of the matter to be expressed 2. The Lords Prayer us a directory delivered by Christ 2. The Nonconformists that think that for the main there is nothing but good contained in most of the Prayers of the Liturgy yet think that they are greatly disordered and defective neither formed according to the order of matter nor of the Lords Prayer but like an immethodical Sermon which is unsuitable to the high subjects and honourable work of holy worship 3. They have oft offered whenever it will be well taken to give in a Catalogue of the disorders and defects of the Liturgy Which yet they think it lawful to use in obedience or for unity or when no better may be used But not to approve of such disorder as we do not approve of the failings of any of our own duties though we are daily guilty of them unwillingly XXII The Preface to the Book of Ordination saith that It is evident to all men diligently reading holy Scriptures and ancient Authors that from the Apostles time there have been these ORDERS in Christ's Church Bishops Priests and Deacons as several OFFICES which are repeated oft in the Collects at Ordination To this all must Assent and Consent 2. Some of us are conscious that we have diligently read the holy Scriptures and ancient Authors and yet three ORDERS and OFFICES are not evident to us 3. We have great reason to believe that Calvin Beza and many more Reformers Blondell Salmatius Robert Parker Gersom Bucer Calderwood Cartwright John Reynolds Ames Ainsworth and multitudes of such Protestants did diligently read both Scriptures and Ancients As also Dr. Sâ—illingfleet Bishop Edw. Reynolds and many such who thought that Scripture instituted no particular forms of Government As also Armachanus and many other Papists who think that Bishops and Priests do not differ ordine but gradu which the R. Reverend Archbishop Usher ordinarily professed We cannot assert that none of these diligently read Scripture or ancient Authors 4. But especially when we find that even the ancient Church of England was of another mind as is legible in the Canons of Aelfrick to Wulfine in Spelman pag. 573. 576. which conclude that in the old large sense there were but seven Ecclesiastical Orders or Degrees and that the Bishops and Presbyters are not two but one Hand pluris interest inter Missalem Presbyterum Episcopum quam quod Episcopus constitutus sit ad ordinationes conferendas ad visitandum seu inspiciendum curandumque ea quae ad Deum pertinent quod nimiae crederetur multitudini si omnis Presbyter hoc idem faceret Ambo siquidem UNUM tenent EUNDEMQUE ORDINEM quamvis dignior sit illa pars Episcopi 18. Non est alius ORDO constitutus in Ecclesiasticis Ministeriis c. Et Leg. Canuti p. 551. Pastores vocamus Episcopos Sacerdotes quorum partes sunt eruditione at que doctrina gregem Domini speculari ac desendere c. 5. And Dr. Stillingsleet hath proved by sufficient evidence that the same was the judgment of Archbishop Cranmer and other Reformers of the Church of England And it is the judgment of some of our Bishops and Conformists now All which we speak not to shew which side we think to be in the right but that the state of the question is Whether we can assent to this as true and approve and consent that it be used as is appointed That it 's evident to all men diligently reading c. that de facto there were three ORDERS and Offices from the Apostles times XXIII The ordering of Priests requireth the Bishop to speak to the people at the Ordination of Priests calling them to come forth in the name of God and shew what crime or impediment they know in the persons to be ordained c. In imitation of the ancient Churches when the Congregation over which they were set had their voice in his election or reception 2. The doubt is whether such a solemn invitation as in God's name be not too vain to be Assented and Approved and Consented to in a Church where the people over whom he is set never use to be present nor invited to it nor have any notice of it or any call to meddle therein being usually many miles and often many score miles distant nor any other people called to that work and rarely any people there that have any knowledge of the man and his conversation XXIV The Ordaining of Priests and the Consecration of Bishops both use these words as concerning the Office Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and work of a Priest of a Bishop c. 2. It is not doubted but that the Holy Ghost must set Pastors over the Flocks 1. By qualifying men for the Office and making them desirous of it Both Grace Ability and Willingness are of him 2. By giving the Ordainers a discerning skill to know whom to ordain 3. By giving the flock a discerning and a willing mind We yet know not of any other Collation of the Holy Ghost which Ordination can make Nor know we that in any of these senses these words can be well understood For 1. Grace Gifts and Willingness are the dispositio recipient is presupposed we see not how it can be lawful to ordain him that seemeth not before to have them what else are they examined about Nor know we that God hath given any power to the Ordainers now by the laying on of hands to make an ungodly man godly or an unlearned or ignorant man to be learned or wise or a man of ill utterance to have a better tongue or an unwilling man to be willing The Apostles had a miraculous power of giving the Holy Ghost for extraordinary works and for abilities suddenly infused and they did it we never knew of any in our age that did it and therefore suppose that they have no promise or power so to do 2. And to give a discerning skill to the Ordainers 3. Or to give a discerning or willing mind to the people are neither of them a giving the Holy Ghost to the Priest The doubt is whether this be not an abuse of the words which Christ himself or his Apostles used and so not to be assented to approved and consented to 3. Yet is it not denyed but that Ministerial Authority is given by the ordainers as Ministers Deliverers or Investers But Authority is not the Holy Ghost so called 4. Nor
diseases that infect all about and distracting and dividing all the world separating the East from the West by the noise of meus et tuus antiquus et novus nobilior aut ignobilior multitudine opulentior aut tenuior raging like furious horses in battel and like madmen casting dust into the air and under their heads fulfilling their own contentions and becoming the determiners of wicked ambition and magnificence and unrighteousness and absurd Judges of matters The same men saith he are to day of the same throne or side and judgement as we are if so our leaders and chief men carry them To morrow if the wind do but turn they are for the contrary seat and judgement Names or votes follow hatred or friendship And which is most grievous we blush not to say contrary things to the very same hearers nor are we constant to our selves being changed up and down by contention you would say we are tossed like the waving Euripus Therefore he professeth it unseemly for him to joyn with them as he would not leave his studies and peace to go play with the Lads in the streets pag. 524. The like he hath in his Poems de vita sua pag. 24 25 26 27. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Etenim Magistri plebis atque antistites Sancti datores spiritus qui thronis Fundunt ab alt is verba queis patitur salus Cunctisque pacem jugiter qui praedicant In aede media vocibus clarissimis Tanto surore se petunt sibi invicem Tumultuando contrahendo copias Carpendo sese mutuo linguâ efferâ Saliendo mentis ut solent sanae impotes Praedando quos quis ante praedari queat Rabida imperandi dum tenet mente sit is Quinam ista verbis quibus digne eloquar Orbem universum prorsus ut divulserint Ortumque jam Hesperum scindit magis Ardens simultas quam loci vel climata Namque illa si non sinis media uniunt At hos ligare vinculum nullum potest Non causa Pietas bilis hoc excogitat Ad mentiendum prona sed Lis ob Thronos Quidnam hoc vocarim Praesules Non Praesules * Some say that Gregory himself forsook the place but it was when he saw that they would put him out Some say that it was not the same Council that put him in but it is an errour When Melecius was dead more Bishops came from Egypt and turned the stream And they named many to suceed him to the Emperour ' out of whom he chose an unbaptized Layman Nectarius Niceph. l. 12. c. 15. so that the Emperour then chose the Bishop in that manner Are not these doleful Narratives and Characters of those Primitive Bishops even in those happy daies of good Theodosius But all this is yet little to what the same man saith of Bishops in his last Oration de Episcopis Vol. 2. too sharp and large to recite Perhaps it will be said that it was the Macedonian or Arrian Bishops that he meant So one Papist was not ashamed to answer me when the whole scope of his writing speaketh the contrary that he spake of the Council at Constantinople and other such and expresly saith in his Epist 59. to Sophronius pag. 816. si eos inveneritis non ob sidei doctrinam sed ob privatas simultates inter se distractos divulsos quod quidem ipse observavi But some will say that he was wrongfully cast out by that Council of Constantinople and he speaketh but of that or that injury made him satyrical by exasperation But 1. The places cited shew that he speaketh not of that Council only And Epist 55. Procopio pag. 814. he saith refusing to come to a Council ego si vera scribere oportet hoc apimo sum ut Omnem Episcoporum Conventum sugiam quoniam nullius concilii sinem laetum faustum vidi nec quod depulsionem malorum potius quam accessionem incrementum habuerit pertinaces enim contentiones dominandi capiditates ne me quaeso gravem molestum existimes haec scribentem ne ullis quidem verbis explicari queant citiusque aliquis improbitatem arcessetur dum aliis judicem se praebet quam ut aliorum improbitatem comprimat And that injury made Gregory injurious is an injurious conjecture seeing all his endeavours in these businesses were for piety and peace And it was partly for his speaking for the Peace of the Church of Antioch which had long had two Bishops Paulinus and Meletius and Flavianus who had taken an oath not to be their Bishop while either of them lived intruded by Perjuries and the Bishops wills that this Council turned against Gregory and because they chose him not And for peace he quit his place and many and earnest Epistles he wrote after to the Civil Magistrates to keep the Bishops in peace at the next Councils lest Religion should be quite shamed and weakened by them And was not the contention at the two Councils of Ephesus more stigmatized by Historians than this that Gregory so lamenteth when they seemed rather to fight than peaceably to seek for Truth in the latter of which Flavianus received his deaths hurt and the history of the better of them between Cyril and Nostorius and Johan Antiochenus is sad to read The very controversie with its consequence was lamentable when one Council of Bishops at Constantinople had cast out excellent Gregory another neer cast out excellent Chrysostom his free speech and strict life being not endured and chose an old useless man Arsacius Atticus and Sisinius that succeeded him being dead the people did so dislike all the clergy of Constantinople that they would have one like Chrysostom of a Monastery by Antioch Nestorius a man of study retirement a poor garb a strict life abhorring publick contentions and loving quietness but of a pievish zeal against dissenters called hereticks as enemies to the Churches unity and peace so that he presently persecuted many of them even the Novatians themselves and stirred up the Emperour to root them all out and by Gods just judgement received such measure as he had measured A quarrel arose whether Saint Mary should be called The Mother or Parent of MAN or that Parent of GOD Nestorius to the end the controversie was against both and would have her called The Parent of Christ who was God and man but not of God Some Startled at this And Cyril of Alexandria a man of great parts spirit and power the head of a turbulent people the first Bishop saith Socrates that assumed the Sword wrote Letters of reproof to him and Celestine Bishop of Rome seconded him yea Cyril followeth it with writing upon writing to prove that S. Mary must be called the Parent of God with so great a number of words and so many Anathematisms as made the noise and slame great but ambiguity made it seem dangerous to many so that it grew to a great and open controversie
THE NONCONFORMISTS PLEA for PEACE OR An Account of their Judgment In certain things in which they are misunderstood written to reconcile and pacifie such as by mistaking them hinder Love and Concord Exhort in the Liturgy before the Communion If any of you be an hinderer or slanderer of God's Word or be in malice or envy Repent of your sins or else come not to the holy Table lest after the taking of that Sacrament the Devil enter into you as he did into Judas and fill you full of all iniquities and bring you to destruction both of body and soul By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for Beni Alsop at the Angel and Bible over against the Stocks-Market 1679. To the Reverend Conforming Clergy Reverend Fathers and Brethren IT is now seventeen years since neer two thousand Ministers of Christ were by Law forbidden the exercise of their Office unless they did conform to Subscriptions Covenants Declarations and Practices which we durst not do because we feared God Foreseeing what this would do to the destroying of Love and Concord and of mens souâ—s weakning the Land encouraging Popery Heresie and Schism we did our best betime by Reason submissive petitioning the Bishops to have prevented it but in vain We never made one motion for Presbytery or against Liturgies nor to abate any of the Bishops Wealth or Honour nor any thing as to Church-Government but Arch Bishop Ushers Model of the Primitive way And we thankfully accepted of much less exprest in His Majesties Gracious Declaration about Ecclesiastical Affairs which we hoped would have ended all our discords The Reasons of the Great Change and New Impositions it is God and not we that must have an account of from the Convocation c. and of the consequents Since then as we foresaw contrary interests have increased contrariety The Laws against our Preaching to more than four the Penalties of forty pound a Sermon and long imprisonment in common Gaols and driving us five miles from Corporations and places where we lately preacht and the reasons given are not unknown to you Many Books are written and Sermons preached earnestly pressing Magistrates to execute these Laws against us And though when demanded we gave in a Catalogue of divers things in the old Impositions which we underâ—ook to prove to be great sins and in our Petition for Peace protested that nothing but avoiding sin should hinder our Conformity and we had never call or leave to give our reasons against the New Conformity I my self have been reported to my Superiours to be one that confesseth the Lawfulness of all save the renouncing of a rebellious Covenant And while the Law and Canons imprison and excommunicate us ipso factâ— if we do but give the reasons of our Nonconformity and I have offered to Reverend Bishops and others to beg leave to do it on my knees and nothing more grieved me than that I might not so endeavour to save men from the damning sins of Hating false accusing and ruining their Brethren and sacrilegious hindering the Preaching of Gods Word yet have I been called on to tell them what it is that we would have and told that our Superiours judge us not sincere but meer factious Schismaticks that will neither Conform nor tell them why we do not Vehement Letters of accusation are sent me Many Books charge us with heinous Schism even as wilfully done against our consciences Yea that Covetousness and Pride and not Conscience cause our Nonconformity that we are the worst men alive and unfit for humane society c. while we are made their scorn and many want bread and many of us preach for nothing save the spiritual benefits and rewards And those of us that have bread know of so many that have families and nothing but alms to maintain them that we are glad to give them all that our necessities can spare And we suppose our accusers would not think that if they chose beggery and scorn or lived only on mens charity it would prove them to be covetous or proud I have read the Books of Bishop Morley Mr. Sâ—ileman Mr. Fulwood Mr. Durel Mr. Fowlis Mr. Falkener Mr. Nanfen Dr. Boremâ—â— Dr. Parker Dr. Tomkins the Friendly Debate Dr. Ashton Mr. Hollingworth Dr. Good Mr. Hinkley the Counterminer Mr. L'Estrange Mr. Long and many more And as my flesh is no more in love with poverty and scorn than yours nor was I more uncapable of such a lot as yours so I here testifie that no man is more inexcusable than I that have dwelt so long in pain so neer the grave if I have been so mad as to silence my self and chose a Gaol among malefactors where I have lain and bitter accusations and prosecutions for any thing of this world that I could hope for or for any thing less than my salvation And either I am an utter stranger to my self or else I was willing to know the Truth and Liberty and Wealth is liker to be a byas than that which the Law decreeth against us But if I be so unhappy as to be uncapable of understanding the lawfulness of all that is made necessary to the Ministry you should better think of it before you beg the ruine of all that are as ignorant as I Had you told us how to come to your measure of knowledge we would thank you When I askt Bishop Morley such a question he advised me to read Bilson and Hooker where I found more than I approved for resisting or restraining Kings and had long before read them and Saravia Bishop Downam Spalatensis Petavius Sancta Clara Dr. Hammond and abundance more for Prelacy c. He is not worthy the name of a man that would not know that truth which maketh both for his temporal and eternal welfare Under these accusations my conscience urged me to acquaint the accusing Clergy with our Case believing it be uncharitable to impute all their false report to Malignity or Diabolism but that it was STRANGENESS to our Case while wrath and cross interest kept them from hearing us But my prudent friends perswaded me silently to leave all to God assuring me it would but more exasperate till they called us themselves to speak Twice we were since invited to a Tryal for Concord and both times came to an Agreement with the moderate and eminent Persons that we treated with But it was buried in privacy and still we are called on to give the reasons of our Dissent Having long forborn for fear of offending them that require it at last I have here adventured not so far as to urge the Case but only to state it and tell you barely what it is that I dare not do If I find that you can bear this if I have leave from God and man I shall venture on more and give you my reasons This unarmed Account is easily trampled on I doubt not but it will meet with such usage as I have had already But I must say that if
I nor any other person is obliged by the vow to endeavour any such alteration of Church Government V. 12. The fifth Part of the Matter The Declaration and Oath as not understood of not resisting any Commissioned VI. 13. The sixth Part of the Matter To cease preaching and administring Sacraments till we conform at least not to preach to more than a family and four persons VII 14. The seventh Part Consequential Not to come within five miles of any City or Corporation which sendeth Burgesses to Parliament or of any place where we have preached to more than aforesaid since the Act of oblivion 15. The Adjuncts and the other Matters agreed on which affright the Nonconformists 16. The case and practice of the Ministers since they were silenced Additions occasioned by Mr. L. Fresh Suit and some others about National Churches THE Question stated § 3 c. Whether we are obliged by or to the Jewish National Polity § 5 c. or by scripture to a National limitation of them Whether a National Church-form be lawful § 30 c Whether it be a prudential desirable form § 38 c The resolution of this by a short history of Prelacie and Councils § 39 c. Obj. From the necessity of Appeals § 40 c. Obj. Shall all gather Churches that will ib. Obj. The Apostles have successours ib. Q. Whether the King or who is the National Church Head § 41. 42 c A Christian Kingdom what § 43 Q. Must real holyness in the judgment of rational Charity be required in all Church members § 1 Q. What Covenanting is necessary to particular Church relation § 5 c. The spirit maketh Ministrs how I. The Epistle of an African Council in Cyprian Ep. 68. p. 200. to Felix a Presbyter and the Laity at Legio and Asturica and to Laelius the Deacon and the Laity at Emerita concerning their Bishops Bafilides and Martial worthy to be read as to our present controversies II. The Letter of Rob. Grosthead the good Bishop of Lincoln to Pope Innocent containing the reason of his Nonconformity and shewing that hindring preaching is the greatest sin next Divelism and Antichristianism Out of Mat. Parâ— An. 1253. p. 871. 872. III. An extract from Bishop Saunderson de juramento SECT I. The Reasons of this writing and the sense of the word CHURCH IT was the saying of acute and holy Augustine though we call him not with Fromondus Omniscâ—um that no man ought to be patient under an accusation of Heresie He meaneth by Patience a silent neglect of his own Just Vindication Not that we must be like Hectoring Duellers that would kill or hurt others in revenge or in a sinful way of Vindication But by silence those that slander men may be encouraged in their sin to their own destruction and those that value the slandered persons may be tempted to think too well of Heresie for their sakes And the honour of God and his Truth and our own good names so far as they are serviceable are none of them to be disregarded We have with grieved souls beheld the Land of our Nativity distracted by Divisions and much if not most about Religion we wish it were not against Religion by some that indeed have no true Religion Teachers against Teachers in Discourses Sermons Books rendring each other despicable and unlovely and some calling out aloud to Rulers to draw the Sword against their Brethren so learnedly and industriously pleading the Cause against each other with the Laity high and low as if the destroying of their Love and kindling Wrath and Hatred were the Evangelical necessary work and without this zeal and skill and diligence hard to be accomplished No wonder then if we have people against people families divided and all confounded and this grievous Schism carryed on by crying out against each other as Schismaticks and implacably causing it while we loudly inveigh against it The case is lamentable that distraction should be thus expressed and promoted and when God hath warned us by the mischiefs of an odious Civil War and hath tryed us again with peace with all Nations about us when most of them are involved in grievous Wars that yet we will not give peace to one another but live as if Peace were the Plague which we most desire to escape Yet as it is the good providence of God that the Names of Wisdom Godliness Truth Justice Mercy Honesty and Vertue are all still honourable even among those that hate and oppose them and the names of Folly Ungodliness Lying Unjustice Unmercifulness Dishonesty and Vice are all dishonourable where the things themselves are followed and prevail so Love Peace and Concord are names that are by most commended when if most were for the things indeed we were in a hopeful way of recovery And Malice Schism and Discord are cryed down by those whom no intreaty will prevail with to forbear them or to accept any remedy against them Yet we are thus far prepared for peace that if we be not false Hypocrites if we did but know which is the true way of Love Peace and Concord we would follow it And if we knew what is Schism indeed we would avoid it And its pity that men that think themselves wise should yet not know the way of Love and Peace Especially that the Learned Preachers of the Gospel of Love and Peace should still be the incendiaries and stir up the Laity that would be more peaceable against each other And that after so many Volumes of History have these thirteen hundred years at least asperst the Clergy with the reproach of being the contentious troublers of the world And yet must we despair of a cure of so odious a disease The thing that Books Sermons and Discourses cry out against those called Non Conformists for is Humorous Obstinate Schism and Disobedience in Preaching when forbidders and keeping up Assemblies not allowed and gathering Churches out of Churches separating from the Parish-Communion and Church of England If we can find out the Schismatick we hope he will be condemned by us all But that the Cause may be heard at least in some part before it is judged we that publish this here give an account of our own judgment and those that we are best acquainted with how far we hold it lawful or unlawful to gather Churches or to separate from Churches or to differ from what is established by Authority But the Application to our particular Case and our Arguments thereabout we must not here presume to publish They that accuse others as Schismaticks and Separatists for deserting Churches or gathering Churches out of Churches and will not tell us what they mean by the word Church nor give us leave to tell them what we mean but judge in confusion and despise explication and necessary distinction are men that we can neither be edified by nor edifie in this way SECT II. The Various Opinions of such us we have to do with
Christians but not a Political Church which we now define If they are not joyned with a Pastor that hath all the foresaid Powers of Teaching Ruling by the Word and Keys and going before them in Worship and if they consent not to his relation as such they may make a School or an Oratory but not a proper particular Church simpliciter so called but only a Church secundum quid or as to some part for an Essential part is wanting But it is not the defect of Exercise that unchurcheth them while there is the Power and that consented to for Men cannot be Pastors or Churches against their wills Sect. V. 3. As all Christians grant that the Apostles had a general Commission to call Infidels to Christ and to plant Churches with their particular Pastors as aforesaid and to take care that their Pastor and they do the duties not compelling them by their Sword but by the Word so we are far from denying that yet some Ministers of Christ may and should seek the conversion of Infidels and plant Churches of the converted ordaining Pastors over them by their consent and taking due care by their grave advise that such Churches walk in the obedience of Christ as far as they can procure it And such Seniors which have so planted these Churches and Pastors by Gods blessing on their labours should be much reverenced by the Churches which they have planted and their just advise exhortations and admonitions should be heard by the People and the Pastors whom they ordained and all their juniors And though the Apostles have no successours in their extraordinaries yet that some should in this ordinary work succeed them we deny not because 1. We find that it is a work still necessary to be done 2. And others as well as Apostles did it in those times as Silas Luke Apollo Timothy Titus c. and since all such as have planted the Gospel among Infidels 3. Because Christ promised to be with them that did this work to the end of the world Mat. 28. 21. But whether such men be of a different office or order from the junior Pastors whether any true Presbyter that hath ability opportunity and invitation may not do the same work with Infidels and by his success and seniority may not so ordain Pastors over the Churches which he gathered and have an answerable right to reverence and regard from those that he so planteth and ordaineth are controversies which we presume not now to decide And we cannot prove that this maketh a distinct form of a Church no not in the Apostles time and case For we cannot prove that they distributed the Countrys into Provinces or Dioceses peculiar to each Apostle and had any Churches which they supposed to be peculiarly under this or that Apostles Government so as that any of the rest might not with Apostolical power have come resided preacht and governed in the same No Scripture tells us of such limits Provinces Nay the Scripture tells us that many of them were as Apostles at once in the same places As at Jerusalem oft Paul and John had Apostolical power at Ephesus Peter and Paul as is commonly held at Rome And its probable that as Christ sent forth his disciples by two and two so the Apostles went in company as Paul and Barnabas did so that such appropriate settlement of Provincial or Diocesan Churches we cannot see proved though such a Generall Ministry is easily proved and we doubt not but by consent they might have distributed their Provinces had they seen cause and that actually they did so distribute their labours as their work and ends required But if they had become proper Provincial Bishops over several Districts or Provinces it seemeth strange to us that no history telleth us which were the twelve or thirteen Provinces and how limited and that they continued not longer and that instead of three Patriarchs first and four after and five next we had not twelve or thirteen Apostles or Patriarchs seated over all the world with their known divisions And that men seek not now to reduce the Churches to this Primitive State rather than to the said Imperial Constitution and rather to subject us all to the Apostolical Seats than to five Patriarchs in the dominions of another Prince and now mostly subject to an Infidel Yea it is strange to us that the first Seat Rome should derive its pretended power from two Apostles as if our Church might have two Bishops and the second Alexandria from Saint Mark who was no Apostle and the third Antioch from the same Apostle that Rome did as if one Bishop might have two such Dioceses and the fourth Ierusalem from St. James commonly said to be no Apostle and the last which became the second or the first from no Apostle nor make any such pretence if thirteen Apostolick Provinces were then known But we easily acknowledge that as Apostles having planted many Churches staid a while in each when they had setled it and some time visited it again so they are by some historians called the first Bishops of those Churches being indeed the transient Governours of them In which sense one Church might at once have two or many Bishops and one Bishop many Churches and he be Bishop of one Church this week who was Bishop of another where he came the next Sect. VI. Christian Community prepared to be a Polity and a Christian family and a Christian Kingdom we doubt not may all prove their Divine Right And if any will call these Churches let us agree of the definition and we will not strive about the name Sect. VII We know not of any proof that ever was produced that many Churches of the first Rank must of duty make one fixed greater compound Church by Association whether Classical Diocesan Provincial Patriarchal or National and that God hath instituted any such Form And we find the greatest defenders of Prelacy affirming that Classes Provincial Patriarchal and National Churches are but humane institutions of which more anon Sect. VIII We find no proof that ever God determined the Churches should necessarily be individuated by Parish-bounds or limits of ground and that men in the same limits might not have divers Bishops and be of divers particular Churches Sect. IX We never saw any satisfactory proof that ever Christ or his Apostles did institute any particular Church taken in a Political sense as organized and not meerly for a Community without a Bishop or Pastor who had the power of Teaching them Ruling them by the Word and Power of the Church-Keys and leading them in publick Worship Sect. X. Nor did we ever see it proved that any one Church of this first Rank which was not an Association of Churches consisted in Scripture-times of many much less many score or hundred such fixed Churches or Congregations Or that any one Bishop of the first Rank that was not an Apostle or a Bishop of Bishops of whom we now speak
not had more than one of such fixed Societies or Churches under him Or might have more stated members of his Church than were capable of Personal Communion and mutual assistance at due seasons in holy Doctrine Discipline and Worship Though we doubt not but as now there are many Chapels in some Parishes where the aged weak children and all in soul weather or by other hinderances may hear and pray and occasionally communicate whose proximity and relation to the Parish-Churches do make them capable of Personal Communion in due seasons with the whole Parish at least per vices in those Churches and in their conversation And as a single Congregation may prudently in persecution or foul weather meet oft-times in several houses so the great Church of Jerusalem though it cannot be proved a quarter so big as some of our Parishes might in those times when they had no Temples hold their publick Meetings oft at the same time in divers houses and yet be capable of Personal Communion as it is before described Sect. II. It is not inconsiderable to our confirmation that so worthy a man as Dr. Hamond doth over and over in his Dissertations against Blondell and in his Learned Annotations on the new Testament assert all the matter of fact which we are pleading for viz. That the word Presbyter and Pastor in the New Testament is ever taken for a Bishop That it belonged to the Bishops office to be the Preacher to his Church to visit all the Sick to take care of all the Poor and to take Charge of the Churches stock to administer the Sacrament c. And as he saith on Acts 11. 6. That although this Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Elders have been also extended to a second order in the Church and is now only in use for them under the name of Presbyters yet in the Scripture-time it belonged principally if not alone to Bishops there being NO EVIDENCE that any of that second Order were then instituted though soon after before the writing of Ignatius's Epistles there were such instituted in all Churches Sect. XII By this it followeth that 1. the office of a subject Presbyter that was no Bishop was not in being that can be proved in Scripture-times 2. That no Bishop had more than one worshiping assembly at once For all Christians assembled for worship on the Lords dayes and their worship still included somewhat which none but a Minister of Christ might do and when there was no other Minister in being but Bishops and a Bishop can be but in one place at once a Bishop could have but one assembly Though for our parts we think that we have just reason to believe that Churches then had more Ministers than one when we read how Paul was put to restrain and regulate their publick officiating at Corinth 1 Cor. 14. Sect. XIII And it further confirmeth us that the said Doctor tells us that for ought he knoweth the most of the Church then were of his mind And Franciscus a sancta clara de Episcop tells us that this opinion came from Scotâ—â— And Petavius that Learned Jesuit was the man that brought it in in our times viz. That the Apostles placed only Bishops with Deacons in the Churches and that it is only these Bishops that are called Presbyters in Scripture So that the Matter of fact for the whole Scripture-times is granted us by all these learned men Sect. XIV It being the Divine Institution of the Office of this second Order of Presbyters which we are unsatisfied about and these Reverend men confessing that de facto they were not in being as can be proved by any evidence in Scripture-times and those times extending to about the hundredth or ninety ninth year after Christs Nativity when St. John wrote the Revelation we must confess that we know not how that Order or Office can be proved then to be of God's institution 1. As to the Efficient who should do it as the certain authorized Instruments of God 2. Or how it shall be certainly proved to us to be of God when Scripture telleth it not to us and what Records of it are infallible And whether such pretended proofs of Tradition as a supplement to Scripture be not that which the Papacy is built on and will not serve their turn as well as this Sect. XV. And whereas it is said that the Bishops made in Scripture-times had authority given them to make afterward that second Office or Order of Presbyters 1. We cannot but marvel then that in such great Churches as that at Jerusalem Ephesus Corinth c. they should never use their Power in all the Scripture-times And when they had so many Elders at Jerusalem so many Prophets and Teachers at Antioch and Corinth that Paul was fain to restrain their exercises and bid them prophesie but One by One and one said I am of Paul and another I am of Apollo c. there should yet in that age be none found meet for Bishops to ordain to this second sort of Presbyters as well asmen to make Deacons of 2. But we never yet saw the proof produced that indeed the Bishops had power given them to institute this other Species of Elders Sure it belonged to the Founders of the Churches Christ and his Apostles to institute the Species of Ecclesiastical Officers though the Bishops might make the Individuals afterwards And where is the proof that the Apostles did institute it If Ecclesiastical generation imitate natural the Bishops would beget but their like men beget men so Physicians make Physicians and so Bishops may beget Bishops But he that saith they could morally first beget this other Species must prove it Sect XVI When Presbyters were first distinct from Bishops we see no proof that it was as a distinct Office or Order in specie and not only as a distinct degree and priviledge of men in the same Office Nor hath the Church of Rome it self thought meet to determine this as de fide but suffereth its Doctors to hold the contrary Sect. XVII It much confirmeth us in our judgment that no mere Bishop then had more Churches than one as afore described when we find that Ignatius whose authority Dr. Hamond Dissert cont Blondel Laieth so much of the cause upon and whom Bishop Pierson hath lately so industriously vindicated doth expresly make ONE ALTAR and ONE BISHOP with the Presbyters and Deacons to be the note of a Church Unity and Individuation And that by one Altar is meant one Table of Communion or place where that Table stood is past doubt with the judicious and impartial Whence learned Mr. Joseph Mede doth argue as certain that then a Bishops Church was no other than such as usually communicated in one place Yea saith Ignatius the Bishop must take notice and account of each person even of Man-servants and Maids that they come to the Church And this was the Bishop of a Seat that after was Patriarchal Such Bishops we do
were cut out by the King's command and they spake freely by miracle after they were cut out as is testified by Aeneas Gaze◠and by Victor Uticensis who saw and spake with and heard the persons when this miracle was wrought upon them and by Procopius XXIV It will be objected that Constantius Valeus Gensericus Hunnericus c were Arrians and the later conquering Usurpers Answ 1. Even Heathen Emperours and Kings are our Governours though they want due aptitude to their duty as also do many wicked Christian Princes And we owe them obedience when their Laws or Mandates are not against the Laws of God We must not say as Bellarmine that Christians should not tolerate such Princes and that the ancient Christians suffered for want of Power to resist 2. Let the Emperours called Arrians be made no worse than they were Some were for Concord and Toleration of both Parties and so are more suspected than proved to be Arrians And Arrians themselves though unexcusably erroneous were not like the Socinians that utterly deny Christ's Deity They subscribed to all the Nicene Creed save the the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They would say that Christ was Light of Light very God of very God begotten not made c. They thought that as the Sun-beams or Light are its immediate emanation but not its substance as commonly Philosophers say they are not how true we say not so Christ was an immediate emanation from the Father before and above Angels by whom all things else were made And how dangerously Justin and most of the ancientest Doctors before the Nicene Council speak hereabout and how certainly Eusebius and other great Bishops were Arrians and how lamentably the Council at Ariminum endeavoured an uniting Reconciliation by laying by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And even old Osius by their cruelty yielded to them as Liberius subscribed to them we need not send any men to Philostorgius nor Sondius for proof it being so largely proved by D◠Petavius de Trinitate who fully citeth their dangerous words And if the heterodoxies of the Prince shall be made the reason of the Subjects disobeying him in a matter lawful in it self as some that we speak to now suppose we shall hardly know where to stop nor what bounds to set the Subjects when they are made Judges of the Princes Errours and what examination of cognisance of it they must have 3. Constantine that banished Athanasius who kept in while he could against the Emperours will is not proved an Arrian Nor Valentinian who commanded Ambrose not to cease Prenching himself nor to forsake his Church nor to subscribe to Arrianism but only to tolerate the Arrians to meet in one spare Church which was in Millan as an act of moderation But Ambrose resolutely disobeyed the Emperour we justifie not the manner because he thought that God's Law made it his office as Bishop so to do 4. And as to Gensericus and Hunnericus's Usurpation it was then ordinary with the Bishops even of Rome to submit to men that had no better title and alas how few of many of the old Roman Emperours had any better at least at first XXV We doubt not at all but that Kings are the Governours of Bishops and Churches by coercive power as truly as of Physicians or other Professions And though they have no Authority to abrogate or suspend the Laws of Christ yet they have a Power of Legislation under Christ as Corporations for By-laws have under them which power is only about those things which God hath left to their determination and not either above Christ against Christ or in coordination with Christ but only in such subordination to him and to his Laws XXVI How far Rulers have power or not to command things indifferent and how far things scandalous and evil by accident some of us have opened already distinctly and need not here repeat XXVII And we have there shewed that as they may regulate Physicians by General and Cautionary Laws but not overthrow their Calling on that pretence by prescribing to the Physician all the Medicines which he shall use to this or that Patient at this or that time c. so they may make such General and Cautionary Laws circa sacra 1. As shall drive Bishops and Pastors on to do their certain duties 2. And as shall duely restrain them from sin and doing hurt 3. And they may punish them by the sword or force for such crimes as deserve that punishment And a King of England may depose or put to death a traiterous Bishop Priest or Deacon as lawfully as Solomon deposed Abiathar XXVIII And as we have there said we suppose that there are some circumstances of the Ministers work which it belongeth to his own office to determine of and are a true part of his Ministerial works But there are others which it is meet should be universally determined of for the Concord of all the Churches in a Kingdom These the Pastors and Churches by consent may agree in without a Law it Kings leave it to them And Kings by the advise of such as best understand Church Cases may well by their own Laws make such determinations As for instance in what Scripture Translations what Versions and Metres of Psalms the Churches shall agree Much more may they determine of the Publick Maintenance of Ministers and the Temples and such other extrinsick accidents XXIX Princes and Rulers may forbid Atheists Infidels Hereticks and Malignant opposers of necessary truth and godlyness and all that preach rebellion and sedition that propagate such wicked Doctrine and may punish them if they do it And may hinder the incorrigible and all that provedly or notoriously are such whose Preaching will do more hurt to men than good from exercising the Ministry or Preaching in their jurisdiction or Dominions For such have not any power from Christ so to Preach but serve the Enemy of Christ and man XXX Princes and Rulers may for order sake distribute their Christian Kingdoms into Parishes which shall be the ordinary bounds of particular Churches And such distribution is very congruous to the Ends of the Ministry and Churches and conduceth to orderly settlement and peace And experience hath shewed us that such Parish Churches where the Pastors are faithfull and fit may live as Christians should do to their mutuall comfort in Piety Love and Peace And such Parish-order we desire XXXI But no Rulers may hence conclude 1. that Parishes are distributed by God immediately or that he hath commanded such a distribution as a thing of absolute necessity to a Church But the Generall Rules of order and Edification do ordinarily in Christian Kingdomes require it 2 Nor may any make a Parish as such to be a Church and all to be Church members that are in the Parish as such for Atheists Infidels Hereticks Impenitent Rebels may live in the Parish and many that consent not to be members of that or any Church And not
though we hear that some of them take us as not sincere for keeping up a difference and giving no more reasons of it The thing which we so greatly desire leave to do but dare not be so bold yet as to venture by it to displease them who condemn us for not doing it lest their anger would be sharper to us if we do it so great is our difficulty between this Soylla and Charybdis But we hope we may adventure to open some part of the Matter of Fact which Conformity and Nonconformity are concerned in that so men may conjecture at the Case themselves which will be no reflexion on the Government barely to tell what they command nor a challenging any of our Superiours to a disputation nor a charging them as faulty that cannot bear it 1. Matters of Fact to be foreknown to the true understanding of the Cause 1. THE root of the difference between the Old Nonconformists and the Conformists was that one sort thought they should stick to the meer Scripture Rule and simplicity and go far from all additions which were found invented or abused by the Papists in Doctrine Worship and Government and the other side thought that they should shew more reverence to the customs of the ancient Church and retain that which was not forbidden in the Scripture which was introduced before the ripeness of the Papacy or before the year 600 at least and which was found lawful in the Roman Church and common to them with the Greek that we might not seem singular odd and humorous or to go further from the Papists than reason and necessity drave us And the Laity seemed no where so sensible of the difference as between the way of Ceremony and unceremonious simplicity and the way of our many short Liturgick Prayers and Offices and the way of free-praying from the present sense and habits of the speaker while pacificators thought both seasonably good 2. The sad eruption of this difference among the Exiles at Frankford while Dr. Cox and Mr. Horn and their party strove for the English Liturgie and the other party strove against it for the freer way is at large reported in a book called the troubles at Frankford 3. Queen Elizabeth and King James discountenancing and suppressing the Nonconformists they attempted in Northamtonshire and Warwickshire a little while to have set and kept up private Churches and governed them in the Presbyterian way But that attempt was soon broken and frustrate by the industry of Bishop Whitguift and Banctoft And the Nonconformists lived according to their various opportunities some of them conformed some were by connivence permitted in peculiars and small impropriate places or Chappels that had little maintenance in the publick Ministry which kept them from gathering secret Churches some of them had this liberty a great part of their lives as Mr. Hildersham Mr. Dod Mr. Hering Mr. Paget Mr. Midsley senior and junior Mr. Langley Mr. Slater and Mr. Ash at Bremicham Mr. Tailor Mr. Pateman Mr. Paul Bayne Mr. Fox of Tewksbury John Fox and many more Some had this liberty all their lives as Mr. Knewstubs Dr. Chadderton Dr. Reignolds Dr. Humphrey Mr. Perkins Mr. John Ball Mr. Barnet Mr. Geeree Mr. Root Mr. Atkins Mr. Gilpin John Rogers and many others some were fain to shift up and down by hiding themselves and by flight and these preached sometimes secretly in the houses where they were and sometime publickly for a day and away where they could be admitted so did Mr. Parker Mr. Bradshaw Mr. Nicols Mr. Brightman Mr. Brumskil Mr. Humphrey Fen Mr. Sutchff Mr. Thomas and many more and after their silencing Mr Cotton Mr. Hooker and many more that went to America Mr. Cartwright was permitted in the Hospital at Warwick Mr. Harvey and Mr. Hind at Bunbery in Cheshire and many more kept in having small maintenance being in peculiar or priviledged places Mr. Rathband Mr. Angier Mr. Johnson Mr. Gee Mr. Hancock and many others oft silenced had after liberty by fits Mr. Bowrne of Manchester Mr. Broxholm in Darbyshire Mr. Cooper of Huntingtonshire at Elton and many others suffered more and laboured more privately Dr. Ames was invited to Franekera some were further alienated from the English Prelacie and separated from their Churches and some of them called Brownists were so hot at home that they were put to death Mr. Ainsworth Johnson Robinson and others fled beyond seas and there gathered Churches of those that followed them and broke by divisions among themselves The old Nonconformists being most dead and the later gone most to America we cannot learn that in 1640 there were many more Nonconformist Ministers in England than there be Counties if so many 4. The Conformists shortly fell into dissension among themselves especially about three things Arminianism as it was called and Conciliation with the Church of Rome and Prerogative Dr. Heylin in the Life of ArchBishop Laud doth fully open all these differences and tells us that Archbishop Abbot was the Head of one party and in point of Antiarminianism even Archbishop Whitgist before him with Whitaker and others had made the Lambeth Articles driven the Arminians from Cambridge King James had discountenanced them in Holland and sent six Divines to the Synod of Dort who owned and helpt to form those Articles And he tells us that Bishop Laud had no Bishops on his side but Bishop Neale Bishop Buckeridge Bishop Corbet and Bishop Howson and after Bishop Mountague and thought it not safe to trust his Cause to a Convocation the major part called then The Church of England 1. Cryed down Arminianism as dangerous Doctrine 2. Cryed down any neerer approach to the Papists and the Toleration of them 3. And were much for the Law against absoluteness in the King and Dr. Heylins and Rushworth's Collect. will tell you the full story of Manwaring Sibthorp and Archbishop Abbots refusing to license Sibthorp's Book and the Consequents of all Thus these two Parties grew into jealousies the Old Church-men accusing the New on these three accounts and the New ones striving as Dr. Heylin describeth them to get into power and overturn the Old 5. In this contention the Parliaments also involved themselves and the Majority still clave to the Majority of the Bishops and Clergy then called the Church of England And in all or most Parliaments cried up Religion Law and Propriety and the Liberty of Subjects and cried down Arminianism Monopolies Connivence and Favouring of Papists and their increase thereby expressing by Speeches and Remonstrances their jealousies in all these points till they were dissolved 6. The writings of Bishop Jewel and much more Bishop Bilson and most of all Mr. Richard Hooker and such as were of their mind shew us what Principles there and then were by the Laiety that followed them received We will not recite their words lest our intent be misunderstood neither Bishop Bilsons instances in what cases Kings may be resisted by armes Nor Mr. Hookers that
Can. 27. And also that their Children are not to be baptized unless they will submit them to the dedicating sign of the Cross no nor to be buried with Christian Burial of which more afterward 3. If they have a Minister in their own Parish that never preacheth or so bad as that they dare not commit the Pastoral care of their souls to him they must not be admitted to Communion in any other neighbour Parishes Can. 28. That they are ipso facto excommunicated shall be anon shewed SECT IX The Matters of Fact that concern the Conformity and Nonconformity of the Ministers And 1. of Assâ—nt Consent and Subscription that nothing is contrary to God's Word 1. THE Canon to be subscribed 36th willingly and ex animo is That the Book of Common-Prayer and of ordaining of Bishops Priests and Deacons containeth in it NOTHING CONTRARY TO THE WORD OF GOD and that he himself will use the form in the said Book prescribed in publick Prayers and Administration of the Sacraments and none other 2. The meaning of this subscription is not agreed of by the Conformists that take it As to the first clause some say that by Nothing Contrary to the word is meant as it is spoken Nothing indeed Others say by Nothing is meant Nothing which I have discerned so to be Or Nothing except such failings as all humane writings are lyable to And by Contrary Some say Contrary in the Common sense of the word is meant But others say that by Contrary is meant so far Contrary as should drive us from Communion with the Church or Contrary to any great doctrine or precept of the Word of God And the Nonconformists interpret it as the first sort do according to the usual and proper meaning of the words 3. So the later clause that he himself will use that form in publick prayer and administration of the Sacraments and none other Dr. Heylin and very many others suppose is meant properly as is spoken viz. That by the form is meant all the words and orders and that by publick prayer is meant as is spoken All publick prayer used by a Minister in the publick assemblies And that by None other is meant neither wholly nor in part But others think that by Form is meant only the form of words and not the orders And that by none other is meant only No other Book of Common-Prayer or set Liturgie Or No other entire form and order excluding this And that it doth not mean No other form before or after Sermon in the Pulpit or in some parts of Worship so it be of our own Composure Nor yet that we may not use sometime some other order than is prescribed in the Rubricks viz. 1. Sometime read other Chapters than the Calender prescribeth because that Liberty is expressed in the Preface to the second Book of Homilies 2. Sometimes to give the Sacrament to some that kneel not 3. To baptize some without the Cross c. of which more hereafter Because the Rubrick saith only you shall do thus but saith not you shall do no otherwise But to this the former sort answer 1. That if any universal Negative none other may be particularly or limitedly interpreted upon our own surmises no Laws Covenants or Promises signifie any thing and no words are intelligible 2. That we subscribe strictly to this Article to use no other form But not so to the Book of Homilies but only that we take it for wholsom Doctrine 3. That if the Rubrick for Crossing Kneeling c. exclude not all other inconsistent forms of administration it signifieth nothing but leaveth every man to his own will 4. It is yet a greater doubt with the Conformists themselves whether these words be not at least a Covenant that They will use no other printed prescribed Liturgy And so some think that it plainly obligeth them not to use those printed Forms which the Archbishops and Bishops have used to draw up and impose for several Publick Fasts Thanksgivings and particular occasions But others think that it doth not bind them to disobey the Bishops therein but that such exceptions were intended though not exprest or at least had been inserted if not forgotten II. The Act of Uniformity requireth that every Minister that officiates Do openly and publickly before the Congregation there assembled declare his unseigned Assent and Consent to the Use of all things in the 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 eatâ—tuled The Book of Common-Prayer Administration of the Sacraments and other Râ—tes and Ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England together with the Psâ—â—ter or Psalms of David pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches and the form or mâ—â—â—er of making ordaining and consecrating of Bishops Priests and Deacons And page 10. He shall declare his unfeigned Assent and Consent unto and Approbation of the said Book and to the use of all the Prayers Rites and Ceremonies Forms and Orders therein contained and prescribed according to the form aforesaid 2. The Conformists themselves are not agreed of the meaning of these plain words One party expounding them as the Nonconformists do according to the properest and ordinary use of the words and the other party otherwise The former hold that as many Acts of Parliament Contein more in the body of the Act than in the Title and make the means more extensive than the end so here the ASSENT and CONSENT to the USE of the Book is the END in the first clause and APPROBATION also in the second And that the Declaring that form of words is the Means to that end That Assent signifieth Assent to the Truth and Consent and Approbation relate to the Goodness rectitude and use And that this is not only of the Prayers and other parts which the subscriber is to Read to the people but as is exprest of all things without exception Conteined in and prescribed by it particularly to all the Prayers Rites Ceremonies Forms and Orders without collusion or equivocation The other part hold that all this signifieth no more but that I Assent that I may lawfully use and I Consent to use so much as belongeth to my place and that I will not unpeaceably oppose it Their argument is Because to the Use is mentioned before the Form of words To which the other answer as before that 1. That Approbation is mentioned after as well as Use 2. That the Means are larger than the end As in the Corporation Act the end is the preventing of Rebellion but the Means is Declaring that There is no obligation on me or any-other from that Oath 3. That without gross violence Assent can be judged to mean no less than Assenting that it is true 4. That there is not a'word in the Book which was not intended for
some Use And therefore to Assent Approve and Consent to the Use is more than meerly to Assent to the Truth The Preface hath its Use and the Calendar its Use and the Rubrick its uses and the rest of the parts their several Uses But did we believe it to be false how could we Approve it or of what Use would it be 5. To put all out of doubt the Parliament-men long ago told us none Contradicting it to us that into another Bill the house of Lords added a Proviso that the Declaration in the Act of Vniformity should be understood but as obliging men to the Use of it and that the House of Commons refusing at a Conference about it they gave in such Reasons against that sense and proviso to the Lords upon which they did acquiesce and cast it out III. By this General Declaration we are obliged to Assent to as true to Approve and to Use these words after the Calender Rules to know when the Moveable Feasts and Holydaies begin Easter-day on which the rest depend is alwaies the first Sunday after the first full Moon which happens next after the one and twentieth day of March. 2. This Rule is false As 1. Every Almanack will shew 2. The Table following to find out Easter-day for ever 3. And the practice of our Church that keepeth Easter on another day 3. To consent to Use this is to consent to keep Easter-day contrary to all Christian Churches and contrary to another Rule in the same Book and to consent to use both Rules is to consent to keep two Easter-days in one year and so of Easter Term. 4. Hereupon some Conformists say that Assenting to Approving of and Consenting to All things contained and prescribed signifieth but as to humane fallible writings so far as there is no mistake or Assenting and Consenting to be peaceable But others say that it is but to Assent that it is true where it is not false and Apprâ—ve it as good where it is not bad and to Consent to use it where I have no cause to the contrary And they ask 1. Whether this be the usual or proper signification of such words 2. Whether any Nonconformists would refuse it in that sense 3. Whether they will give leave to the Papists and all other subjects to take the Oath of Allegiance in such a kind of sense and exposition But there is one that hath defended this as true and tells us that by the full moon is not meant that which we call the full moon or the same that 's meant in the other parts of the Book but by the full moon is meant the mean Conjunction and the fourth of April that year 1664. Or 14 daies after the ancient new moon found by the Golden number the 14th day of the Ecclesiastical Cylclic month For an old Mass Book saith Post veris aequinoctium Quaere plenilunium Dominica proxima sacrum celebra Pascha Non vâ—rius inveneris si mille legas Codices Quest 1. Are we sure this Mass Book meant not pleniluniam as we do properly Quest 2. And are we sure they erred not that wrote this Quest 3. And yet are you sure what they meant Quest 4. Would you perswade us that our Convocation now borrowed their Direction from this Mass Book Quest 5. Are you sure that this Mass Book should be our rule herein of speaking or interpreting Quest 6. And yet not in the Calendar and other passages in our Liturgy Quest 7. Did the the Convocation intend that we should not here understand The full moon properly nor as in all the rest of the Book Quest 8. If this defender be in the right was there ever a plainer way made to bring all men to an Implicit Faith to believe as the Convocation believeth even in Calendars when we know not what they believe themselves For my part I must confess that after all this Dr. Pell they say hath said of another sense of the word full Moon I know not yet what he meaneth Qu. Whether the Convocation meant that none should Preach Christs Gospel that understood not this strange sense of the full Moon that is no full Moon and yet would not by one line expound it to us to keep us from being cast out and ruined Or whether they meant that all men should be forced and taught to subscribe or declare assent to that which they never understood when I had never yet the advantage of speaking with one Bishop or conformable Dr. that understood the word full Moon as this Doctor taught them whether in good earnest I know not And if our Conformity must be thus performed by equivocation implicitly contrary to the common sense of mankind we shall yet suspend it till we know how much further we have to go if it be blindfold that we must be led and refer all to God our final Judge whose judgment we are near 4. We Assent to Approve of and Consent to these words in the Preface we are fully perswaded in our judgements and we here profess it to the world that the Book as it stood before established by Law doth not contein in it any thing contrary to the Word of God or to sound Doctrine or which a Godly man may not with a good Conscience Use and submit unto or which is not fairly defensible against any that shall oppose the same c. 2. Psal 105. 28. The words in the Liturgy and old Translation are They were not obedient to his word And the new Translation according to the Hebrew is They rebelled not against his word Clear contrary Therefore the Nonconformists think that one of them is Contrary to the word of God and this old Translation is Continued still in the Church 3. In the old Book in the Gospels these texts are thus translated Rom. 12. 2. Epist to 1. sunday after Epiph. Be ye changed in your shape The new Translation is Be transformed by the renewing of your mind Phil. 2. 7. Epist for sunday next before Easter found in his apparel as a man In the new Translation it is Was made in the likeness of men Gal. 4. Ep. to 4th sunday in Lent It is Mount Sinai is Agar in Arabia and bordereth on the City which is now called Jerusalem In the new Translation it is For this Agar was mount Sinai in Arabia and answereth to Jerusalem which now is Mathews day Ep. 2. Cor. 4. The old Book has it We go not out of kind The new is We faint not John 2. for third Sunday in Lent When men be drunk is the old Books Translation But the new is When men have well drunk Luke 11. for third Sunday in Lent the old Book hath When one house doth fall upon another the new hath A house divided against an house falleth Luke 1. for the Annunciation the old Book sayeth This is the sixth month which was called barren in the new Translation it is This is the sixth mouth with her who was
is it denyed but that as Father Son and Holy Ghost do enter into Covenant with us as Christians in our baptism so do they with Ministers as such in their ordination-covenant But such a Relation to the Holy Ghost as the Ministers future helper in his work cannot well be supposed to be all that is meant by the words Receive the Holy Ghost both Scripture and common use taking them in another sense XXV This Oath in the Consecration of Bishops is to be taken by every Bishop In the name of God Amen I. N. Chosen Bishop of the Church and See of N. do profess and promise all due reverence and obedience to the Arch Bishop and to the Metropolitical Church of N. and to their successours so help me God through Jesus Christ 2. It is not pretended that any such Oaths of obedience were instituted by Christ or his Apostles or were used in the Churches for many hundred years nor till the Papacy was rising which was furthered by such Oaths 3. They that suppose Bishops to be successours of the Apostles cannot make them subjects to any other Ecclesiastical Rulers without asserting that the Apostles were Governours over one another which we find not that they do 4. It was many hundred years before Arch-Bishops had any Governing power over Bishops or exacted any obedience from them being not Episcopi Episcoporum as the Carthage Fathers in Cyprian professed But were only such as had the first seats and voices in the Synods 5. The question therefore is whether such Oaths as necessary to a Bishops consecration be to be Approved and consented to XXVI An Oath of Canonical obedience also is put upon all that are made Priests and Deacons And Priests at their ordination must make this Covenant that they will reverently obey their Ordinary and other chief Ministers unto whom is committed the charge and Government over them 2. The ordinary is not only the Bishop but also the Chancellour Officials Surrogates Comissaries Arch-Deacons and all that are Judges ' in the Ecclesiastical Courts 3. to obey them that are thus de facto set over us is no less than to obey them in the excercise of that power which is given them as so set over us 4. The doubt is whether they that take any of them to be Usurpers of an Ecclesiastical power which indeed they have not and can prove it to be so should swear or Covenant obedience to them as such e. g. It is commonly confessed by the Conformists that the true power of the Keys of excommunication and Absolution is appropriated by Christ to the Clergy And yet our Chancellours being lay men do decretively excercise that power The question is may we swear or Covenant to obey them 5. And seeing Christ never gave one Presbyter the Government of others as Archdeacons Surrogates Officials c. whether all the rest may swear obedience to them or Approve of and consent to the use of such Oaths And divers Councils have condemned it as a dangerous practice for Bishops to tle subject Presbyters to them by Oaths XXVII Ministers that live among the people have greatest advantage to know the penitent from the impenitent 2. But it is the foresaid lay Chancellours who usually know nothing of them but by reports that excommunicate and absolve them And the Parish-Minister must as a cryer readeth a proclamation or sentence of a Judge openly read these excommunications and absolutions 3. These excommunications must pass according to the Canons against all that shall affirm that there is any thing in the book of Common-Prayer râ—pugnant to the Scripture or any of the 39 Articles â—rroneous or any of the Rites and Ceremonies such as he may not with a good conscience subscribe to or that the Government by arch-Arch-Bishops Bishops Deans Arch-Deacons and the rest that bear Office in the Church of England is repugnant to the word of God or that any thing in the form and manner of making consecrating Bishops Priests or Deacons is repugnant to the word of God c. 4. The present doubt is whether a Minister who knoweth such of his Parish to be godly peaceable men whom the Chancellour decretively excommunicateth may both openly read and declare such excommunications and also swear or Covenant so to do in obedience to the Ordinary And whether when he knoweth that a wicked impenitent man is absolved he may pronounce such absolutions XXVIII The Oath of Canonical obedience seemeth to mean obedience according to the Canons And he that Covenanteth to obey his ordinary must be supposed to mean no less than According to the Canon Laws by which he is known to govern and as Government thereby is excercised 2. And if so then there are more things in the Canons and present Government which the Nonconformists dare not swear or Covenant to obey besides those already named than we will now stand to enumerate XXIX The Rubrick saith that the Minister who repelleth any from the Sacrament shall be obliged to give an account of the same to the Ordinary within 14 daies after at the furthest 2. If all that by gross ignorance Atheism Infidelity Sadducism Heresie Schism Drunkenness Whoredom Stealing Malice c. are uncapable of the Communion be presented to the Ordinary within 14 daies no charity that is guided by knowledge of the common state of the people can think that in London Diocess there would be fewer than many score thousands presented at once And in other Diocesses many score hundreds at least 3. Some Ministers dwell a hundred Miles or neer from the Bishops And the Bishops are divers of them so much at London or abroad as that it cannot be expected that all these must be presented to the Bishop himself but to the Chancellours court as is usual 4. The Chancellours Court is so far from most Ministers in the Land and the prosecuting so many when proof is demanded will be so chargeable and take up so much time as that it will undo many poor Ministers that have scarce enough to maintain their families and it will take up the time which they should use in the necessary labours for their flocks 5. The Chancellour is a lay man to whom they must be presented And the issue will be but a lay mans excommunicating them if obstinate or absolving them Which is not justified by the Bishops themselves 6. At the said Chancellours court things are managed as at a civil judicature There is not that endeavour to convince sinners by Scripture and to draw them to true Repentance by humbling evidence intreaties and prayers for them as should be for the saving of a soul from sin But the charges of the court fees and the fears of a prison after excommunication maketh it an unacceptable and as unlikely means to convert men as the stocks 7. Therefore for a minister to present all his Parishioners to such courts whom he is bound to deny the Sacrament to were but to make him seem their greatest
perish Dead Images of all good things is but the last and most effectual means of destroying the life and real good Dead shews and Images of good are Hypocrisie sincerity is reality seriousness and life We take our Baptism to be our Christening or the summe of the Christian Religion And it is but for men to do that seriously at Age which they did in Infancy by others authorized or others for them which is the Conversion which we daily preach And it grieveth us to see what multitudes when aged never seriously think either what they did or received in their Infancy and how many hate such a life as they have vowed and yet think that they stand to their Baptismal Covenant And till the Pastors of the Church make a serious work of it to bring all their Parishes to a serious understanding and consideration of their Baptism and a serious owning it and renewing of that Covenant we cannot hope that the people will be serious Christians or that men will not think that serious Anabaptists are better than Hypocrites that contemn their Baptism SECT II. The Second Part of the Matter of Conformity THE First Part de facto being contained in the Canonical Subscription and the Declaration hath been opened The Second Part is the case of Reordination Either they that require Episcopal Ordination for all that were otherwise ordained when Bishops were put out do intend it a second Ordination or not If yea then it is a thing condemned by the ancient Churches by the Canons called the Apostles c. and by Gregory M. and others likened to Anabaptistry If not then they take such mens former Ordination to be null and consequently no Ministers to be true Ministers that are so ordained and not by Diocesans and consequently all such Churches to be no true Churches while they take the Roman Ordination to be valid To speak of the consequences of this as to the nullity of Baptizings and Consecration of the Lords Supper c. and of the taking of God's name in vain in the Office if it prove evil would be to go further than the Matter of Fact SECT XI The Third Part of Conformity THE Third Part of Conformity is the Subscribing against the obligation from the Vow To endeavour any change or alteration of Government in the Church with the Oxford Oath That we will never endeavour any alteration and the Articles for our Prelacy and the Ordination-promise and Oath of Canonical Obedience before-mentioned as to this point together 2. Even those Nonconformists that are for the lawfulness yea the need and desirableness of Bishops and Archbishops have so much against this Subscription as that to avoid prolixity we will forbear reciting the particulars any further than to tell you that while a thousand or many hundred Parish-Churches are all without any particular appropriate Bishops great Towns and Villages when in Ignatius's daies the Unity of each Church was known by having One Altar and One Bishop with the Presbyters and Deacons And Jerom defineth a Church to be Plebs unita Episcopo and consequently they are without the Discipline and Pastoral oversight of such Bishops and while all these Parishes are in the old sense become No Churches for ubi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia but only Parts of a Diocesan Church And while the old form of Churches Presbyters and Bishops is thus changed And while one Bishop hath now more work of Discipline besides Confirming and all his other work than an hundred of the ablest and best men can do and so such Discipline is necessarily undone And while the Case is as if the Bishop of Carthage had put down six hundred neighbour-Bishops and become the sole Bishop of all their Churches or as if all the Schools in a Diocess have but one Governing School-master who had power to judge what Scholar to receive or to refuse And while the Keys are to be exercised by Lay-men these will be unsatisfying things 3. The Conformists are not agreed of the meaning of these Subscriptions and Oaths some think that they covenant only to submit to them though they dislike them But others think that it is also to approve the Government Some think that it is only Bishops that they are bound to But others say that the word Ordinary certainly signifieth more than Bishops even Lay-Chancellours And that the forâ—cited Canon expresly nameth many others even with an catera the rest that bear Office And any alteration must needs mean more as any alteration in State sure extâ—nleth to more than not endeavouring to change Monarchy or the King himself Some say that by nâ—t endeavouring is mâ—ant only not unlawfully endeavouring but not that all endeavours are forbidden viz. not petitioning speaking when called c. Others say that if exceptions had been allowed the Law makers would have made us know it and not have spoken universally And that if you expound it of unlawful endeavours you leave all men at liberty to judge what is unlawful and all Schismaticks will take the Oath or Subscription because they hold their endeavours to extirpate Prelacy to be lawful Some say that one may endeavour in his place and calling to take the Church-Keys out of the hands of Lay-Chancellours notwithstanding this Subscription and Oath But others more ingenuously say that the very actual Government or Keys being in the hands of Lay-Chancellours if it bind us not against endeavouring to change these it binds us to nothing that can be understood And that if Subjects thus take liberty after Universal Oaths and Promises to make such exceptions they reproach the Law-makers as if in such tremendous things as these they knew not how to put their Laws in words intelligible and of common sense And they relax all such sacred bonds Some say that in not endeavouring is excepted unless the King commission or command us But others say that if the Law-givers would have had such exceptions they had wit enough to have put them in And that if you leave it to men to except from universals you cannot tell them where to stop And that the use of the Oath and Subscription is that the Church-Government be taken for unalterable SECT XII The Fourth Part of Conformity IV. THE Fourth Part of Conformity is the Subscription against the obligation of the Oath called the Solemn Vow and Covenant Corporations are constituted by Declaring that there is no obligation from it to any one without exception But Ministers must only subscribe that there is no obligation on me or on any other person from the Oath to endeavour any change or alteration of Government in the Church 2. It is none of the Controversie here 1. Whether that vow was lawfully imposed or contrived 2. Nor whether it were lawfuly taken 3. Nor whether part of the matter was unlawful But supposing all these unlawful 1. Whether all alteration of Church Government be unlawful whether it be not in the power of the King and Parliament
Ministers usually to be as full as will consist with the peoples hearing the voice which in many places will not reach to a great part of the Congregation we find such Preachers whether Conformable or Nonconformable every where almost crouded after which shews that it is not meer faction that moveth the hearers and that worthy men have no cause of discouragement And if none of either side be valued much above their worth for the bare Office sake we cannot help it nor would it be helped if there were no Nonconformists Some of us well remembring the time 1632. till 1640. when we were troubled or threatned also for going out of our own Parishes to hear worthy able men that were very conformable XXXV It is very ordinary with Gentlemen and others that are zealous for the present Church State in London to go from their own Parishes though the Canon be against it so that it is not sure the breach of the Canon that they stick at XXXVI We shall never disswade men from making the strictest Laws to punish any Nonconformist that shall be proved guilty of Sedition Disloyalty Drunkenness Fornication Swearing and any other immorality but we know of none of them that was silenced ejected or punished on any such account Nay if they Preach against their Church Government Liturgy or Ceremonies we must expect that they should be restrained Our earnest desire is that the Magistrate would keep up Peace and Order in the Church that Popish Clergy men may not think that it belongeth to them alone to do it XXXVII Whereas there is a sort of ignorant or ill meaning men that still say we know not what the Nonconformists would have and why will they not tell us what would satisfie them While we offer to beg on our Knees for leave to do it we humbly intreat them to weary men awake no more with that canting 1. As long as the Kings Declaration about Ecclesiastical affairs is visible 2. And as long as our Reply and our Reformed additions to the Liturgy and our Petition for Peace which respected the old Conformity remain unanswered by those to whom in 1660 we did present them 3. And till we are once called or allowed to speak for our selves against the new conformity a favour which the justice of old Romane Heathens yea and splenetick Jews did grant to all that were accused before they punished them but since Popery prevailed in the world is become a thing among them not to be expected 4. And as long as men know that Bishop Wilkins and Dr. Burton appointed by the Lord Keeper Bridgman to treat with some of us of the terms of Union saying it was His Majesties Pleasure did come to a full agreement with us in terminis which was drawn up into the form of an Act by no worse a man than that PILLAR OF JUSTICE the excellent Judge Hale and the Parliament presently Voted that no such Act should be brought in and offered Dear Brethren God is the father of Lights and with him is no darkness Men may be mocked but God is not mocked If the day that will bring works of darkness to light and finally clear the Innocent be not the object of certain faith and hope let our cause be bad and let us as fools be judged such as have forsaken our best hopes But that it is otherwise we believe and therefore appeal to a righteous God from an unrighteous world XXXVIII What harm our Preaching the doctrine of salvation can do to the Bishops or people of the Land while they may punish us for any word that we speak amiss And why we should not rather speak openly where men may bear witness of our errours than in secret where men are tempted to too much boldness And what but a spirit of envy or a carnal interest cross to the interest of Christ and mens salvation should grudge at such Preaching while we are responsible for all that we say or do amiss we cannot tell XXXIX Nor can we tell if our not swearing or not entering into the Bishops National Covenant be as great a crime as our penalties import why no other mulct or penalty will serve turn to expiate such crimes but our ceasing to preach the Gospel of Salvation while we are willing to do it under the strictest Laws of Peace and Order XL. It is visible that the Parish-Churches of those Ministers caeteris paribus are fullest of Auditors who are most willing that the Nonconformists help them in due time and place and desire to live with them in Love and Concord For all that have the spirit of holy love and peace do love those that have the same spirit And such serious holy Conformists as Bolton Whately Fenner Preston Sibbs Stoughton Gouge and such other were formerly as much crouded after as Nonconformists But it is those that Preach against holy Love and Concord and wrangle with the most Religious sort whom they should encourage whose Congregations are thinest usually through the tepidity of their followers and the distaste of others XLI When we read in the Council of Calced the Egyptian Bishops crying so long miseremini miserimini lying prostrate on the earth even when they could say Non dissentimus and beging of their fellow Bishops for their lives and consciences and their Brethren crying against all Away with them They are Hereticks while they professed the same Faith while the men that with such out-crys were condemning those of their own confession had newly cryed Omnes peccavimus for condemning Flavianus and the Truth and saying that they did it for fear and owned that Eutychianism which yet these Egyptian Bishops now disowned it mindeth us that even Bishops had need to be remembred that while the wheel is turning the upper side should not tempt men to forget what side will be uppermost shortly and for ever Additions more particularly of National Churches §1 THere are some worthy persons who plead more specially for National Churches as of Divine Institution whose Doctrine calls us to a special consideration of it But though some of us have oft desired it we have not hitherto obtained any satisfaction what they mean by A National Church or any true definition which they agree in Some of them deride us for doubting and asking the question and some answer it to the increase of our doubt §2 It must be presupposed that we speak not of a meer Community that hath no Pastors but strictly of a Society called by some Political by others Organized constituted of Pastors and People mutually related which is the ordinary sense of the word Church And we must premise what being commonly agreed on is none of our doubt or question §3 The question is not whether any or all Nations and Kingdoms should be Christians and so be the Kingdoms of Christ That 's past doubt 2. Nor is it whether in such Kingdoms the King be the Head as to the power of the sword that is
the state be prudently to be chosen we only say so that Gods establishment be not violated whatever we might think best we presume not herein to give Laws to the Lawgivers nor to obtrude our Counsel uncalled on our superiours much less seditiously to oppose their Lawful institutions § 34. But to those that think that Gods foresaid General Laws of order concord edification do make such a policy ordinarily necessary in the Churches as imitateth the Jews or the civil form of Government we humbly offer to their consideration 1. If so then it would have been the matter of an Vniversal Law with its due exceptions And then Christ the only Vniversal Lawgiver would have made it For if he have not made all necessary Vniversal Laws his Laws are imperfect And then there should be some other Vniversal Lawgiver to supply that defect But there is no other upon earth whether Pope or Council 2. It is contrary to the nature of undetermined circumstances to be alwaies the same and so to be fit matter of such Vniversal or fixed Laws The cases will vary and then so will the duty 3. There will be great diversity of the interest and ingeny of the Judges of the case in several Countries and ages And therefore though some think the said imitation of the civil state alwaies best vet others will not § 35. But if such a settlement were certainly best let it be remembred 1. That the Jews had not under the chief High-Priest one in every City or Tribe like Diocesane Bishops 2. That their Synagogues had discipline within themselves ever where there was but a Village of ten persons there was a Presbyter that had the power of judging offenders § 36. What man doth prudently set up man may prudently alter as there is cause Greg. Nazianzen earnestly wisheth that there were no difference of Place or seats among the Pastors of the Church And therefore he neither thought their Government of each other to be of Divine right nor of prudential necessity or use Else he would have been against it And the whole Greek Church did and still doth take the seats of preeminence to be but of mans appointment or else they would never have changed them and set Constantinople so high as they did And the Council of Calcedon expresly determineth that Rome was by the fathers made the chief seat because it was the seat of the Emperour which was mutable § 37. The Councils in those daies were about Popes or Patriarchs and could depose them And yet it is most evident to any man considerately reading such history that all the Councils called before Christian Emperours gave them more power and conjoyned their authority did meet only for acts of Agreement and not of Regiment over each other Many such synods are mentioned by Eusebius And the Right Reverend Arch-bishop Usher declared his judgment so in general that Councils had but an agreeing power and not a Regent power over the particular Bishops Yet these two things must be supposed 1. That the Pastors in a synod are still Rectors of their slocks and their Canons to them may be more authoritative than a single Pastors words 2. That Gods Law bindeth us to keep love and concord and the Agreements of Councils may determine of the matter in alterable points and so even absent and present Bishops may concordiae gratiâ be obliged by Gods Law to keep such canons as are made for concord and so they may be the matter of our duty But seeing the Church for 300 years judged Councils to have no proper Governing power over particular Pastors and Bishops or Patriarchs singly had ever less power than Councils it followeth that then a Churches Government of disparity and supraordinate Bishops like the civil or like the Jews was not then taken to be of divine right nor then of any right at all § 38. And as to the doubt whether it began after 300 years to be a prudential duty or at least most desirable when we hear what is said on both sides we think it not easie to judge either how much in such a case Christ hath left to humane prudence nor which way the scales of prudence herein will ordinarily turn On one side it is said 1. That it is absurd that there should be no appeals for injured persons to a superiour power 2. And that the dissensions of the Church else will be remediless and all will be broken into heresies and sects 3. And that Apostolical men of a higher rank than meer Presbyters will else have no convenient opportunity to excercise their Governing power if it be not tyed to fixed seats § 39. On the other side they plead 1. That it is safer for the Church to have Religion in the power of many Bishops or Pastors than that one High Priest or Patriarch should have power to corrupt it or silence the faithful preachers or persecute the people when ever he proveth a bad man Yea they say it must be rare if he be not bad seeing it is certain that the most proud and worldly men which are the worst will be the most earnest seekers of rich and honourable places and he that seeketh will usually find 2. They say Christ directly forbad this to his Apostles Luk. 22. That which they strove for was it that he forbad them But that which they strove for was who should be the chief or greatest and not who should tyrannize 3. They say that all Church history assureth us that there have been more Schisms and scandalous contentions about the great superiour Bishopricks far than any of the rest It is a doleful thing to read the history of the Churches of Alexandria Antioch Constantinople and Rome Gregory Nazianzen giveth it as the reason why the contention at Cesarea was so lamentable because it was so high an Archbishoprick The whole Christian world hath been scandalized torn and distracted by the strife of Bishops of and for the highest seats Their famous General Councils which we justly honour for their function and that which they did well were shamefully militant even the first and most honoured Council at Nice was with great difficulty kept in Peace by the personal presence wisdom and authority of Constantine preaching peace to the preachers of peace burning their libels of mutual accusation silencing their contentious wranglings and constreining them to accord Nazianzens descriptions of the ignorance and insolence and naughtiness of the Clergy Orat 1. and of the shameful state of the Bishops Orat. 32. must make the readers heart to grieve The people he describeth as contentious at Constantinople yet as endued with the Love of God though their zeal wanted knowledge pag 528. But the Courtiers as whether true to the Emperours he knew not but for the greatest part perfidious to God And the Bishops as fitting on adverse thrones and feeding adverse opposite flocks drawn by them into factions like the clefts that Earthquakes make and the pestilent
before he dyed he joyned with Peter of Alexandria by synodal Letters to Anathematize the Council of Calcedon and yet wrote to the Bishop of Rome that he renounced Communion with Peter and he wrote to Peter that he renounced Communion with the Bishop of Rome Euphemius succeeded him and he rased Peters name out of the Book and joyned with the Roman Bishop Peter and Euphemius as Generals were gathering synodical Armies against each other and Peter dyeth Athanasius that succeeded him would fain have reconciled his Church but could not Palladius succeeded Peter Cnapheus at Antioch Both these Patriarchs joyn together to curse the Council of Calcedon They die John succeeded at Alexandria and Flavianus at Antioch These also joyn to curse the Council while the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople are for it and curse them Zeno dieth and Anastasius Dicorus is chosen Emperour He saith Niceph. l. 16. c. 25 being a man of Peace and desiring the ceasing of all contention left all to their liberty to thank of the Council of Calceaon as they pleased Hereupon the Bishops fell into three Parties some fervent for every word of the Council some cursed it and some were for Zeno's Henoticon or silence or suspension These renounced communion accordingly with one another the East was one way the West another and Libya another Nay the Eastern Bishops among themselves the Western among themselves and the Lybian among themselves renounced communion with each other Niceph. c. 25 Tanta confusio ment iumque Caligo saith the Historiaâ— orbem universum incessit The Emperour having resolved to keep peace and make no change was forced to fall upon those of both sides that were most turbulent At Constantinople he put out Euphemius or for dislike of him This Emperour before his inthroning had given under his hand to Euphemius a promise to stand for the Council He demanded his writing again Euphemius denied him and was cast out Macedonius succeeded him He had the same writing The Emperour demanded it of him He also denied him The Emperour would have put him out The people rise up in sedition and cryed It is a time of Martyrdom Let us aâ—l stâ—â—k to the Bishop And they reviled the Emperour calling him a Manichee unworthy the Empire The Emperour was fain to submit to Macedonius who sharply rebuked him as the Churches enemy but in time he remembred this and cast out Macedonius and burnt the Councils Acts and put Timothy in his place who presently pull'd down the Image of Macedonius The Patriarchs also of Alex. Antioch Bishop of Jerusalem were all cast out even those that were against the Council Pet. Cnapheus had made one Xenaâ—as a Persian servant unbaptized Bishop of Hierapolis He was against Images and brought a troop of Monks to Antioch to force Flavianus the Bishop to curse the Council Flavianus denied it The people stuck to the Bishop and so unanswerably disputed down the Monks that so great a multitude of them were slain as that they threw their bodies into the River Orontes to save them labour of burying of them Nicep c. 27. But this was not all another troop of Monks of Caelosrria that were of Flavianus side hearing of the tumult flockt to Antioch and made another slaughter as great as the former saith the Historian For this the Emperour banished Flavianus whose followers thought his punishment too great after all these murders Peter being dead the Bishops of Alexandria Egypt and Lybia fell in pieces among themselves each having their separate Conventions The rest of the East also separated from the West because the West would not communicate with them unless they would curse Nestorius Eutyches Dioscorus Moggus and Acacius And yet saith Niceph. l. 16. c. â—8 Qui Germani Dioscori Eutychetis sectatores suere ad maximam paucitatem redacti sunt Xenaias bringeth to Flavian the names of Theodore Theodorite Ibas and others as Nestorians and tells him if he anothemarize not all these he is a Nestorian whatever he say to the contrary Flavian was unwilling but his timerous fellow-Bishops perswading him he wrote his curse against them and sent it to the Emperour Xenaias then went further and required him to curse the Council They prevailed with the Isaurian Bishops to consent and all renounced the refusers as Nestorians And thus the Council having in name condemned the Nestorians and Eutychians the Eutychians called all Nestorians that cursed not the Council and got many cast out After Flavian Severâ—s got in at Antioch The first day he cursed the Council though it 's said that he swore to the Emperour before that he would not Nicep c. 29. In Palestine there were renewed the like confusions about the condemnation of Flavian and Macedonius About Antioch Severus Letters frightened many Bishops to curse the Council and those that held two Natures Some Bishops revoked their sentence and said they did it for fear Some stood out And the Isaurian Bishops when they repented condemned Severus himself that drove them to subscribe And some Bishops fled from their Churches for fear Cosmas and Severianus sent a condemnation to Severus The Emperour hearing of it sent his Procurator to cast them out of their Bishopricks for presuming to condemn their Patriarchs The Procurator found the people so resolute that he sent word to the Emperour that these two Bishops could not be cast out without blood-shed The Emperour answered that he would not have a drop of blood shed for the business Helias Bishop of Jerusalem found all the other Churches in such confusion condemning one another that he would communicate with none of them but Euphemius at Const Nicâ—p c. 32. And that you may see how people then were moved a Monk or Abbot Theodosius gathering an Assembly loudly cryed out in the Pulpit If any man equal not the four Councils with the four Evangelests let him be Anathema This voice of their Captain resolved them all and they took it as a Law that the four Councils should be sacris libris accensenda and wrote to the Emperour certamen se de eis ad sanguinem usque subituros This was then the submission to Princes by the adherents to the Councils of the Bishops And they went about to the Cities to bring them to joyn with them The Emperour wrote to Helias to reform this He rejecting his Letters Souldiers were sent to compel them The Orthodox Monks gathered by the Bishops tumultuously cast the Emperours Souldiers out of the Church c. 34 After another conflux they anathematized those that adhered to Severus The Emperour provoked sent Olympius with a band of Souldiers to conquer them He came and cast out Helias and put in John The Monks gather again and the Souldiers being gone they cause John to engage himself to be against Severus and stand for the Council though unto blood which contrary to his word to Olympius he did The Emperour deposed Olympius and sent another Captain Anastasius who put the Bishop in prison and
commanded him to despise the Council consulting with another Bishop he promised to obey him if he would but let him out of prison two daies before that it might not seem a forced act This being done the Bishop contrarily to the Congregation in the pulpit before the Captain cryeth out If any assent to Eutyches and Nestorius contraries and Severus and Soterichus Caesar let him be Anathema If any follow not the Opinions of the four universal Synods let him be Anathema The Captain thus deluded fled from the multitude and was glad to save himself The Emperour being offended at this the Bishops write to him that at Jerusalem the fountain of Doctrine they were not now to learn the Truth and they would defend the Traditions if need be even to blood Nicâ—p c. 34. Timothy Bishop of Constantinople took the man-pleasing way and one while was for the Calcedon Council another while he cursed it Being to choose an Abbat the Abbat refused his election unless he consented to the Council of Calcedon Timothy cursed those presently that received not the Council His Archdeacon hearing him reproached him that like Euripus roled every way The Emperour hearing it rebuked him and Timotâ—y washt away the charge and presently cursed every one that received the Council Niceph. c. 35. Yet Rome though now under another King Theodorick an Arria Goth had a part in the Schism Festus a Roman Senator was sent from Theodorick to the Emperour on an Embâ—ssie Which when he had done he desired that Constantinople would keep holy daies for Peter and Paul as Rome did and he prevailed And he secretly assured the Emperour that Anastasius Bishop of Rome would receive the Henoticon to suspend the consent to the Calcedon Council and would subscribe it But when the Embassadour came home the Pope was dead To make good his word he got a party to choose Laurentius Pope that would do it The people that then had the chief choice chose Symmachus so there were two Popes And the sedition continued three years not without slaughters rapines and other calamities Niceph. c. 35. till Theodorick an Aâ—rian more righteous than the Popes called a synod and confirmed Symmachus But Laurentius stirred up the people to sedition and was quite degraded The Emperour favouring the addition Qui Crucifixus est pro nobis the people seditiously cut off a Monks head and set it up on a pole inscribing it an enemy to the Trinity The Emperour overcome with their confusion and orthodox rebellions called an assembly and offered to resign his Crown desiring them to choose another which â—note them with such remorse that they desired him to reassume his Crown and promised to forbear sedition But lie dyed shortly after But I must not transcribe historical Volumes Justin succeeded Anastasius in the Empire and Justinian him These were for the Synod But Theodora Justinians Wife was against it Some thought by compact that each part might have a head which was indeed but one Niceph. l. 17. c. 7. Should I tell you in their reigns how the Ecclesiastical war continued how Pope Agathon munus imposuit Menae Constant quod antea nunquam factum est Niceph. c. 9 How Menas and the Pope excommunicated one another and how Justinian used Vigilius the Pope c. it would be over tedious to tell I have wrote this much to shew you how far the Patriarchal seats conduced to the Churches peace and how far the four first Councils of Bishops caused Christian Love and Concord No such things can be said of the Arabians and Novatian Phrygians and others that had Bishops in the villages Should I but now turn to Rome and tell you what was done there all this Confusion blood and misery is but a jeast to it But I have said enough of that in many treatises against Popery and particularly of the above 40 years Schism when they had 2 or 3 Popes at once and of the above 50 Popes that Baronius and Genebrard themselves call Apostatical put in by whores and poyson men not to be named save to keep a reckoning of the times many damned by Councils as horrid Adulterers Murderers Simonists Hereticks or Infidels Nor will I recite how in the many wars between the Popes and Emperours the Bishops swore and unswore and forswore as the upper side compelled them as Urspergensis complaineth Nor will I stand to tell you how the Pope and Patriarch of Constantinople to whom adhere those of Antioch Alexandria and Jerusalem have these thousand years almost divided and distracted the Christian world by striving which should be the greatest when Christ had so fully decided the case But what now if after so many hundred years confusion it should prove that all this stir was in the dark and that Nestorius Eutyches and Dioscorus were of the same mind except in words Can the tongue of man then sufficiently express the Bishops guilt A rare French Divine and Philosopher David Derodon hath written a Treatise de supposito copiously proving that Nestorius was orthodox and Cyril an heretick and all the first Ephesin Council that adhered to him that Eutyches and Dioscorus taught but the same heresie that Cyril did that the Council of Calcedon ignorantly condemned Nestorius and truly stablished his opinion and cryed up Cyril and damned his doctrine And he citeth abundant passages out of Cyril where he expresly denyeth two natures in Christ as Ep. 2. ad success In Christo duas natur as unit as asserimus post unionem vero ademptâ jam in duas divisione unam esse credimus naturam filii incarnati And that Nestorius expresly assureth that there are two natures and but one person The citations are numerous and undeniable But I think that Cyril Eutyches and Dioscorus who were all of one mind did mean that the natures were but one in opposition to division but not in opposition to distinction And that Nestorius said they were two as distinguished but not as divided and all this blood separation and confusion was between men of one mind for want of skill in the explication of words and through worldly designs I know some will say were all these Councils of Bishops such fools in comparison of you But can a man deny notorious truth in reverence to Bishops If so which part of the Bishops must I believe if they say the snow is black The Arrians and Eutychians were far the greater number And now as the best Philosophers think that experiments de facto must be premised to the Theory so we think this touch of history must be considered by them that think Jewish High Priesthood or National Patriarchal or Metropolitical superiority is the necessary means of the Churches Concord Let them compare the dissentions caused by little village Bishops and synods for meer Concord yea or by separating heady people with these which Patriarchall and Metropolitical seats have caused and they will appear to be to them but as a scuffle at Billinsgate to the
may use it in other Churches when called thereto and by consequence it may reach further For few Bishops will think if another Bishop come into their Diocesses or Parishes and excommunicate divers of their flocks that they and all others are bound to stand to such mens sentence and to hold such excommunicate That which a Pastor doth in ordinary Excommunicating is to declare after proof that This person is by his sin and impenitency made uncapable of Communion with the Church and therefore to require him to forbear it and the people to avoid Communion with him and to pronounce him unpardoned before God till he repent Now if this be done by one known to be heretical with whom the other Churches have no Communion those other Churches are not bound to deny that man Communion Nor yet if he offer himself to their Communion and they examine the matter and find him wronged It is concord in good and not in evil that we are bound to by the command of God Therefore if any man be wrongfully put out of this Church the next may and should receive him And what necessity is there then of going a thousand or an hundred miles to a Pope or Patriarch or Diocesan to right him And whoever thought that there was need of an Universal Physician or Schoolmaster or a General Council of such to receive appeals from Patients and Scholars that are wrongfully turned out of the Hospital or School The Caviller will here tell you of disparities in the cases but the question is whether the disrities be such as alter the reason of the Conclusion What man of conscience will be a Physician Schoolmaster or Pastor that hath not power to judge whom to receive for his Patient Scholar or part of his flock but must take all that some other man shall send to him or command him to receive and give them what others command him to give An Apothecary may do so but not a Physician What if a man had no other scandal but to say I will not take you for my Pastor nor take my self obliged to answer you speak with you give you any account of my self nor be questioned by you on any accusation must I be constrained to suppose this man to be one of my flock In despite of his own denyal If the freedom of consent be not mutual but I must be constrained to take those for my charge as Christians that renounce such a relation or will not own it a Pastor is not a free man nor hath any power of the Church-Keys but is as an irrational Slave a Cryer or Executioner that must but execute another mans commands 2. But if there be need of appeals and our own actions must not be free why will not the Synods of Neighbour-Pastors met only for Counsel and Concord and not to command the Pastors suffice for such persons to appeal to And what if I turn a servant out of my house or from his meat and he may take another Master when he will must there be an universal Judge of all family cases that shall force me to keep my servant against my will Is it not enough that I know why I am unwilling to keep him who am no way more bound to him than to others but by my own consent What if as Nazianzen left Sasimis Constantinople and Nazianzum at last I should give up my whole Charge and Bishoprick and say I will be a Pastor to none of them any more upon sufficient reasons as Latimer did Is it not better for the people to take another than to accuse me at Rome or Canterbury as wronging them 3. But if all this serve not neither the sufficiency of Pastors for one single Parish nor yet the Counsel of all the Neighbour-Pastors or Bishops what is there more to be done which the authority of Princes and Magistrates may not do All Christians confess almost that no Bishops or Pastors as such have from Christ any forcing power over the flocks that belongeth to the Magistrates only And they are to keep peace and force us to our certain duty And I would ask the contrary-minded whether if Bishops Patriarchs and Councils had no forcing power but only to excommunicate by the application of Gods word and leaving all men to their consciences would this sort of Government serve their turn and keep out Heresies or maintain order and unity They say no themselves And next whether it be not certain and confessed that the Pastors have no other power but the Magistrates only Obj. But shall all men gather Churches and teach Heresie and do what they will Answ 1. The power of Popes Patriarchs or Councils did not prevent it when there were all the Heresies that fill Epiphanius Volumns And when the far greatest part of the Clergy was long Arrian And when the Nestorians and Futychians so greatly multiplied after the condemnation of the Councils And when the Novatians lived so many years in reputation and when the Donatists nor they were not diminished by Prelates or Councils Censures till the sword dispersed them And cannot the Sword be drawn without such as have no power of it 3. And as to the last and greatest reason that the Apostles have successors who must orderly exercise their Government it is answered 1. The common doctrine of the Church was that all Bishops are their Successors so far as they have successions and every Church of one Altar had a Bishop in the daies of Ignatius and long after 2. The Council of Carthage said None of us calleth himself Bishop of Bishops 3. But if any be set as the Bishop of many Bishops and Churches so be it they use no violence but govern volunteers as all the old Bishops did and sorbid them nothing commanded of God nor command them any thing which God forbiddeth and destroy not the order doctrine worship or discipline of the lesser particular Churches we have before said that we shall submit to such §41 IV. As to the question whether the Government setled by Christ in National Churches be as to the Clergy from all parts Monarchical Aristocratical or Democratical and who must have the summam potestatem The disagreement of the persons that we have herein to do with puts us into utter despair of any solution And what good will it do us to believe that some must be obeyed if we cannot be certain who it is §42 V. And to the question Whether the King be the formal or only the accidental Church-head We find no more agreement 1. Some think that the King as Melchizedek is a mixt person secular and Clergy and hath both Offices to use and communicate as they say the Princes before Aaron had 2. Others say that this is not so but that the Clergy-jurisdiction distinct from the Priestly common power is a branch of the Christian Magistrates power and so derived from the King 3. Others say that the Church formally is distinct from the Civil
For all that he inferreth or can infer from them all is obligation to consent and to other duties after consent But obligation maketh not the relation of a member All that are obliged to be Christians are not Christians All that are obliged to be Pastors are not Pastors Nor all that are obliged to consent first and to do the duty of Pastors after Even as all that are obliged to consent to be subjects Husbands Wives Masters Servants Tutors Scholars c. are not such If meer obligation serve to one relation why not to others 2. Else a man might be a true Pastor unchosen unordained and against his will For he may by his qualifications be obliged to be ordained and to become a Pastor 3. And so the people may be the flock of one that was obliged to be their Pastor when another is set over them and in possession because it was the first that was obliged and they to choose him And so utter Confusion will come in And if a man can prove that another mans wife and servant was obliged to be his he may take them as his indeed 3. By this rule all the Papists Seekers Quakers c. that renounce our Churches should yet be members of them because they live in the Parish and are commanded to be members Which who believeth 4. A member of a Church hath right to Communion and Ministerial vigilancie and help But so hath not every baptized person that is commanded to be a member and obeyeth not that command If a man say to a Pastor I will be none of your flock or Church but yet I require you to do the office of a Pastor to me though I renounce your relation to me and the people to use me as a member of the flock because I am commanded to be a member this were a strange claim 5. If this did hold then no man that liveth in the Parish could be a proper separatist so as to break off himself from that Church nor become a member of another unless he apostatized from Christ For he would be still under the Magistrates Command and obligation But the consequent is absud Why do the same men speak so much against schismatical rending mens selves from the true Churches and gathering other Churches if there be no such thing The Laws change not which oblige them 6. They that are against schism and singularity should be against this opinion because as it is utterly absurd so it is notoriously contrary to the Judgment of all the Christian world in all ages to this day as acquaintance with Church history may fully inform them They have ever taken mutual consent between the Pastors and the flock to be necessary to the being of a particular Church and that whatever they were obliged to they were not actually related to each other as Pastor and flock till they consented And therefore have noted schismatical Churches in the same Cities that have been no parts of the Church which they disowned § 8. But it is objected that this unchurcheth our Parish-Churches and all the Churches in the world Ans Not one But the contrary would Our Parish Churches are associated by mutual consent The Pastor expresseth his consent openly at his institution induction and officiating The Flocks shew their consent by actual submitting to his Ministerial Office They hear him and communicate ordinarily with him and seek Ministerial help from him though all that are in the Parish do not so those do it that are indeed his flock or Church They do not perhaps by word or writing covenant to submit to him as their Pastor but they do it by actual signification of consent to the relation And the Bishops in Consecration enter into a Covenant to watch over the flock as do the Priests and the Priests promise if not swear in England to obey them This is a Covenant §9 It is objected that this is a disparagement to Baptism which is the only Church-making Covenant Ans Baptism only as such maketh us members of the universal Church but is not enough to make us of any Ministers special flock I am not a member of the Church of York Norwich Bristol c. because I am baptized Nor am I a member of the Parish Church now where I was baptized Consent to be a Christian is one thing and consent to be a member of this particular Church and to take this man more than all the rest about us for the Guide of my soul is another §10 And if a man would say I will be a member of this Parish Church and you shall perform so much of your Office as I desire and no more I will hear and receive the Sacrament but when I please and I will not admit you to catechize or instruct any of my family nor visit the sick nor will I be responsible to you for any thing that I hold or say or do nor have any thing to do with you but in the Church is a Minister bound to do his office to men or take them for his special flock on these terms The ancient Churches had abundance of strict Canons if the people should have chosen a Bishop and said We will obey none of these Canons nor you but you shall be our Bishop on our terms was he bound to have consented and to have been such a Bishop This is really the case of no small part of England though they say it not openly by words §11 It is objected that as Apostles so ordained Ministers have their authority before the consent of the people and receive it not from them Ans 1. Who ever questioneth it that is considerate as to an indefinite charge in the Church universal But what 's that to the question Are all the Ministers in the world bound to be the Pastors of this Parish or Diocess Our question is what constituteth the relations between a Pastor and his Particular flock Doth not the ordainer here say Take thou Authority to Preach the Word of God c. when thou art thereto lawfully called Because a man is a Licensed Physician without me doth it follow that he is my Physician without my consent 2. Are all those Church-members that Ministers are authorized to preach to Then all the Heathen-world are Church-members 3. They receive not authority from the people but their consent is necessary to make themselves capable receivers of the relation and right of Church-members God and not the Wife giveth the Husband the superiority but he is no such Husband to any that consenteth not §12 God hath laid mens rights and benefits on their wills so that no man can have them against his will It is a great priviledge to have right to communion with a particular Church and to this or that faithful Pastors oversight And its new Doctrine to say that unwilling persons have this right because they are willing of something else viz. to be members of the Church universal §13 We conclude
but relinquish the errours and lies of men and keeping the Lords commands remain in the truth of God 10. Therefore most beloved brethren though there have been some of our Colleagues who think that the Divine Discipline should be neglected and do rashly communicate with Basilides and Martial that ought not to trouble our Faith seeing the Holy Ghost in the Psalms doth threaten such saying Thou hatedst Discipline and hast cast my words behind thee If thou sawest a Thief thou concurredst with him and didst place thy portion with Adulterers It sheweth that they are made Consorts and partakers of other mens sins who have been coupled with the sinners And Paul the Apostle writeth the same thing and saith Whisperers detractors haters of God injurious proud boasters of themselves inventers of evil things who when they knew the judgment of God they understood not that they that do such things are worthy of death not only they that do them but they that consent to them that do them He saith that They that do such things are worthy of death He manifesteth and averreth that not only they are worthy of death and come to punishment who do the evils but they also who consent to them that do such things who while by unlawful communication they are mingled with bad men and sinners and impenitent persons they are polluted by the contact of the guilty and while they are joyned in the fault they are not separated in the punishment Wherefore most beloved brethren we both praise and approve the religious care of our integrity and faith and as far as we are able by our Letters exhort you that you do not by sacrilegious communion mingle your selves with prophane and blotted Priests or Bishops but in religious fear do keep entire and sincere the firmness of your Faith I wish most dear Brethren your continual welfare II. A Letter of the famously Learned and Holy Robert Grosthead Bishop of Lincoln to Pope Innocent the fourth and his Cardinals containing the reasons of his Nonconformity to their Commands Translated out of Matth. Paris An. 1253. pag. 871 872. SAith M. Paris In these daies when the Lord Pope Innocent the 4th had signified by his Apostolick Writings commanding the Bishop of Lincoln that he should do somewhat which he took to be unjust and dissonant to reason as he frequently did to him and other English Prelates he wrote back to him in these words Be it known to your discretion that I devoutly and reverently with filial affection obey the Apostolical Precepts And being zealous of the paternal honour I am against and resist the things which are against the Apostolical mandates For I am bound to both by Gods Commands For the Apostolick mandates neither are nor can be any other than consonant and conform to the Apostles Doctrine and to the Doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ himself the Master and Lord of the Apostles whose type and person the Lord Pope chiefly beareth in the Hierarchy of the Church For our Lord Jesus Christ himself saith He that is not with me is against me But the most Divine Sanctity of the Apostolical Seat is not nor cannot possibly be against him Jesus Christ Therefore the tenor of the foresaid Letter is not consonant to the Apostolick Sanctity but very much absonant and discordant First because of the super acoumulated Non obstante of that Letter and such like that are dispersed far and wide not brought in by any necessity of observing the Law of Nature whence a deluge of inconstancy audaciousness and procacity immodesty lying deceiving hardly believing or trusting any doth arise And from these a deluge of innumerable vices moving and troubling the purity of the Ghristian Religion and the tranquility of social humane conversation Moreover next after the sin of Lucifer which in the later times will be also the sin of Antichrist the Son of perdition which the Lord will destroy with the spirit of his mouth there neither is nor can be any other kind of sin so adverse and contrary to the Apostles and the Evangelical Doctrine and so hateful detestable and abominable to our Lord Jesus Christ himself as to kill and destroy souls by defrauding them of the care of the Pastoral Office and Ministry Which sin they are by most evident testimonies of Sacred Scripture known to commit who being placed in the power of Pastoral Care do get the salary of the Pastoral Office and Ministry from the milk and fleece of the sheep of Christ who are to be made alive and saved but administer not their dues For the very not administring of the Pastoral Ministeries is by the Scripture Testimony the killing and destroying of the Sheep And that these two sorts of sins though with disparity are the worst and inestimably superexceeding every other sort of sin is manifest by this in that they are though with disparity and dissimilitude directly contrary to the two said existent things that are best For that is the worst thing that is contrary to the best And as much as lieth in the said sinners One of these sins is the destruction of the very Deity which is superessentially and supernaturally Best the other is the destroying of the Deiformity and Deification which is Best Essentially and Naturally by the gracious participations of the beams of the Deity And because as in good things the Cause of good is better than its Eflect so also in evils the Cause of evil is worse than its Effect And it is manifest that the Introducers of such most evil Murderers of this Deiformity and Deification in the Sheep of Christ in the Church of God are worse than these most evil Murderers themselves and neerest to Lucifer and Antichrist and in this pejority they are gradually the worst by how much they superexcel swâ—o were more obliged to exclude and extirpate such destroyers from the Church of God by the greater and diviner power given them by God for Edification and not for Destruction It cannot be therefore that a most holy Apostolick Seat to which by our most holy Lord Jesus Christ all power is given as the Apostle witnesseth for Edification and not for Destruction should ever command bid or any way endeavour any such thing or any thing verging towards such a sin so odious detestable and abominable to our Lord Jesus Christ and so utterly pernieious to mankind For this were either a defection or a corruption or an abuse of his evidently most holy and full power or an utter elongation from the Throne of the Glory of our Lord Jesus Christ and the nearest coassession in the Chair of Pestilence to the two foresaid Princes of darkness and of the pains of Hell No one that in immaculate and sincere obedience is subject and faithful to the same Seat and not by Schism cut off from the Body of Christ and the same holy Seat can obey such Mandates or Precepts or any endeavours whatever whencesoever they flow though it
were from the Supream Order of Angels but must necessarily with his whole power contradict them and rebel Wherefore Reverend Lords from the duty of obedience and sidelity which I owe to the Parent of the holy Apostolical Seat and out of the Love of Union in the Body of Christ with it I do alone unice filially and obediently disobey contradict and rebel against the things contained in the foresaid Letter and especially as is before touched they most evidently verge towards the sin which is most abominable to our Lord Jesus Christ and most pernicious to mankind and are altogether adverse to the sanctity of the Apostolical Seat and are contrary to the Catholick Faith Nor may your discretion therefore determine any thing hard against me because all my contradiction and action in this Cause is not indeed contradiction or rebellion but a filial honouring of Gods command due to a Father and of you Briefly recollecting all I say that the holiness of the Apostolick Seat can do or hath power to do nothing but that which tendeth to edification and not to destruction For this is the plenitude of power to have power to do all to Edification But these that they call Provisions are not for Edification but for most manifest Destruction Therefore the Apostolick Seat cannot accept them because flesh and blood which shall not possess the Kingdom of God hath revealed them a â—â— not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is in Heaven III. Bishop Sanderson in his Oxford Praelections de Juramento saith as followeth The Reader is desired to see his whole words that he say not they are mangled or any thing omitted which he would have had put in and to consider how far the case of Oaths and Covenants Promises or Professions is the same PAge 30 31. 1. Simplicity above all things beseeineth an Oath That is The nature and obligation of an Oath is such that whoever shall bind himself by so sacred a bond to do any thing he may be altogether held by the Religion of an Oath and seriously from his heart intend and as much as in him lyeth diligently endeavour faithfully to do all that which he hath promised to do without all craft fraud or ill deceit or dissimulation See the rest there Page 32 33 34. Contrary to this simplicity of an Oath are two sorts of simulation one as to the foregoing part which is either antecedent or concomitant with the act of swearing of which though the former be the worser yet neither of them is free from perjury David seemeth to comprehend both in Psal 15. and 24. He that sweareth not deceitfully that is with a mind to deceive And He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not that is who when he hath bound himself by an Oath will rather even to his own great loss perform that which he incommodiously swore than for any temporal commodity violate his faith These things the greater part of men now in being seem to me not to think of or not seriously who fear not to swear without any ambage prolixly and in the very words whatsoever is proposed to them by such as have power to do them hurt Yea and think themselves the only wise men and disdainfully deride their simplicity and vain fear who lest they hurt their consciences forsooth do seek a knot in a rush and vex or sollicit the forms prescribed by such as can proscribe them And they securely free themselves from all crime and fear of Perjury and think they have well cared for themselves and their consciences if when they swear like the Jesuits they can but any how defend themselves by tacite equivocations or mental reservations or subtle forced interpretations and quite allen from the words Or else after they have sworn can find out some artificial evasion as a hole to get out by as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which so to defraud the Oath that taking the words yet the sense may be eluded by some Sophism and all the force of it wholly be enervated The old Christians received not this Theology The sounder Heathens received not this Moral Philosophy Much otherwise out of them saith Augustine They are perjured who keeping the words deceive the expectation of them that they swear to And otherwise saith Cicero That is to be kept which is so sworn as the mind of the Imposen conceived it should be done Read the proofs p. 34 c. 1. From many Texts of Scripture 2. From God's own example 3. From the nature of Truth 4. From the end of an Oath p. 38. which is the confirmation of a doubtful matter that is that of things otherwise uncertain and depending on humane credit there should be had such certainty as humane affairs require For an Oath was instituted by God by force of the Light of Natue for a remedy of humane defects about Truth that among mortals it should be Truths last garrison as oft as all other kinds of proof do fail But this end would be wholly overthrown and there could be no certain credit among men if it were free for the swearer at his own arbiterment what he speaketh in words to cause belief by some tacite ambiguity in swearing or after he hath sworn by finding out some new and as it were posthumous comment so to disable it as that it shall lose all its force and be utterly ineffectual If either of these were lawful an Oath should not be the end of strife but the beginning and should rather give occasion for new contradictions and strifes than end the old ones Open but this window once and then what can be thought of so false for the defence whereof some effâ—ge or lurking-hole may not he devised whereby it may be freed from being a lie In the mean time what perverseness is it that That should by dishonest men be turned into an instrument of deceiving which was instituted by the most wise God to be a help to credit or mens belief of one another Verily unless one will rather use God's sacred institution to another purpose than that to which it was instituted which a godly man will not easily do that which is the end of an Oath the same ought to be the end of the swearer And that is so to make the hearer to believe that he may become more certain and secure of the Truth of that which before was doubtful But he that dissembleth studieth to breed a false belief in the hearers and so doth not only suffer another to be deceived which yet is contrary to Charity when he may and ought to hinder it but also intendeth to deceive which is not only against all Justice and Honesty but it is also conjoyned with the greatest wrong to God and contempt of his name And verily to me scarce any other sort of Perjury doth more diametrically seem to be against either the scope of the third Commandment or the very words of not taking
whether Nestorius or Cyril was a damnable Heretick some so calling one and some the other so that the Emperour Theod. 2. was fain to call a General Council at Ephesus to prevent the utter confusion of the Churches There Nestorius came first and once only appeared and being charged with the Heresie of denying Mary to be the Parent of God he told them that he would not say that God was two or three months old and so departed To Cyrils large writings he returned a short Letter professing that he was for the distinction of Natures only in the Unity of Person but at large proveth that Christs Godhead had no beginning that it could not suffer or die nor rise again and therefore that those things which were said of the Manhood must not be said of the Godhead that it was begotten dyed c. unless they would be Hereticks or Pagans Read their confession brought into the Council against them by Charysius and their Anathemata's after and I think you will see that the errour of Nestorius lay in his want of skill in speaking and that one side spoke of a phrase de abstracto and the other of the Concrete and if so both meant the same thing though Cyril was judged to use the most skilful words Cyril denyed not but that the Deity was not begotten or Crucified but said that God was begotten and Crucified and was passible Nestorius denyed not that he who was God in one person with the manhood was begotten Crucified and passible but not the Deity But Cyril said that the phrase God was born Crucified c. was good yea necessary and not without anathematized heresie to be denyed because in one person the titles and actions are communicable Nestorius said that it was wicked to communicate the infirmities of humanity to the Deity as to say God did grow bigger and was afraid and was hungry and needed help from Angels and died For he thought this phrase applied it to the Deity Let any man that 's impartial judge whether this Controversie were not about words rather than matter Theodoret was a greater Scholar than Nestorius and he became the Champion of his Cause supposing that Locutio formalis est maximo propria and therefore that he that saith God had a beginning increase death passions must be supposed to mean it qua Deus as he is God And so two Saints St. Cyril and St. Theodoret fell at large to prove each other damnable Hereticks John Patriarch of Antioch being far off was long in coming to the Synod Memnon Bishop of Ephesus joyning with Cyril before he 〈…〉 Bishops came begâ—n and condemned and deposed Nostorius as a Heretick Nestorius let them all alone and medled little himself alledging that Candidianus Comes for bad him to appear But when John of Ant. came he took Nestorius's part and gathered a Council with himself and Candidianus the Emperours Officer took his part John's Council condemned and deposed Cyril and Memnon as they had done Nestorius And thus two Councils at Ephesus sate damning one another The Emperour knew not what to do with them but requireth each party to send some of their Bishops to him when they came he permitted them not long to come neerer than Calcedon for fear of tumults while they were there the people of Constantinople flocked to them and most of the people being for Nestorius and most of the Courtiers Clergy and Monks against him they fell into dissention to the stoning of some about their Meetings for Preaching to the People Theodoret and his Associates prosecuted it against Cyril as those that declared their resolution to die rather than yield to his Heresies as they called them and accused him as if he had been the most proud unquiet troubler of the world The other side answerably accused them of dangerous blasphemy and heresie At last the Emperour thought it the best way for peace to send Johan Comes Largitionum with power and commission to depose the Leaders that each Party had deposed viz. Nestorius and Cyril and Memnon But John wrote an Epistle to the Emperour how furious they were against each other and how Cyril's Party would not hear the Emperour's Letters because Nestorius was there and how they raged and sell to fighting a doleful story But at last the Emperour seeing that Cyril had the stronger and the orthodox side and the Court and Clergy being against Nestorius and yet being loth to divide Joh. Antioch and the Oriental Bishops from the rest thought it the most healing way to depose Nestorius alone and restore Cyril and Memnon and to charge magnâ cum severitate jubet saith Bin. Notes Joh. Ant. to be reconciled with Cyril and to unite so that Joh. and Theodoret and the Oriental Bishops moved with fear and desiring peace sent their Confession to Cyril and Cyril said it was the same that he meant and so they were suddenly made all Orthodox that had not understood it but by the Rod But Nestorius returned to his Monastery by Antioch Chrysostom's place and there liv'd four years in great peace and reputation but then he was no longer to be there endured but banished into forein Countries driven about in sufferings in which he died And Theodoret it seems was not well reconciled when hearing of the death of Cyril he wrote to Joh. Antioch that now there was hope the Churches might have peace the great enemy of all peace being gone to the place where such men cease to trouble c. But so great was the rupture thus made that to this day it is not healed great part of the East adhering then to Nestorius and those Country-Christians being called Nestorian Hereticks and out of the Church by the Papists to disgrace them because they will not own their Pope Nestorius being thus condemned Eutyches thought he would be far enough from his Heresie and said that the Union of Christ's two Natures made them to be but one This Heresie one Council at Constant under Flavian condemned Another after by the countenance of the Emperour acquit him The Emperour Theod. 2. commandeth a General Council again at Ephâ—sus and maketh Dioscorus President who being Cyril's Successor though he had held to his Doctrine against Nestorius for the Unitive Predication and though he professed that the Synod medled not de side but about matter of Justice between Flavian and Eutyches yet countenanced by the Emperour he domineered and by threatning got all the General Council save the Popes Legates to subscribe against Flavian and he was beaten and died of the hurt saith Bin. Notes In hoc tam horrendo Episcoporum suffragio sola Naviculd Petri incolumâ—s emergens salvatur The whole Council went against the Pope and the right But sure Christ's United Natures are in several sensâ—s both two and one but two in the primary and most proper sense Thus you see what unhappiness even this National Government of Bishops in those good times was lyable to It was