c. After Baptism put Seing this Child is Sacramentally Regenerated And in the Prayer following put it That it hath pleased Thee Sacramentally to Regenerate and Adopt this Infant and to incorporate him into thy Holy Church Instead of the new Rubrick it is certain by God's Word c. put True Christian Parents have no cause to doubt of the Salvation of their Children dedicated to God in Baptism and dying before they commit any actual sin In the Exhortation put it thus Doubt not therefore but earnestly believe That if this Infant be sincerely dedicated to God by those who have that power and trust God will likewise favourably receive him c. Let not Baptism be privately administred but by a lawful Minister and before sufficient Witnesses and when it is evident that any was so Baptized let no part of the Administration be reiterated Add to the Rubrick of Confirmation or the Preface And the tolerable Understanding of the same Points which are necessary to Confirmation with this owning of their baptismal Covenant shall be also required of those that are not confirmed before their admission to the holy Communion Let it be lawful for the Minister to put other Questions besides those in the Catechism to help the Learners to understand and also to tell them the meaning of the Words as he goeth along Alterations in the Catechism or another allowed Q. WHat is your Name A. N. Q. When was this Name given you A. In my Baptism Q. What was done for you in your Baptism A. I was devoted to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and entred into his Holy Covenant and engaged to take him for my only God my reconciled Father my Saviour and my Sanctifier And to believe the Articles of the Christian Faith and keep God's Commandments sincerely all the Days of my Life Renouncing the Devil and all his works the Pomps and Vanities of this wicked World and all the sinful Lusts of the Flesh. Q. What Mercy did you receive from God in this Covenant of Baptism A. God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as my reconciled Father my Saviour and my Sanctifier did forgive my Original Sin and receive me as a Member of Christ and of his Church and as his Adopted Child and Heir of Heaven Q. Do you think that you are now bound to keep this Covenant and to believe and live according to it A. Yes Verily c. Q. Rehcarse c. A. I Believe c. Q. What c. A. First c. Q. What be the Commandments of God which you have Covenanted to observe A. The Ten Commandments written by God in Stone besides Christ's Precepts in the Gospel Q. Which be the Ten Commandments After the Answer to What is thy Duty towards God add And to keep holy the Day which he separateth for his Worship In the next let to bear no malice c. be put before to be true and just In the Answ. to the Quest. after the Lord's Prayer after all People put that we may Honour and Love him as our God That his Kingdom of Grace may be set up in our Souls and throughout the World and his Kingdom of Glory may come and that God's Law and not Men's sinful Lusts and Wills may be obeyed and Earth may be liker unto Heaven And I Pray c. Q. How many Sacraments of the Covenant of Grace hath Christ Ordained in his Church A. Two only Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. Q. What meanest thou c. A. I mean that Solemn Covenanting with God wherein there is an outward visible sign of our giving up our selves to Him and of his giving his Grace in Christ to us being ordained by Christ himself as a means whereby we receive that Grace and a pledge to assure us of it To Q. What is the inward Spiritual Grace A. The pardon of our Sins by the Blood of Christ whose Members we are made and a death unto sin c. Q. Why are Infants Baptized A. Because they are the Children of the Faithful to whom God's Promises are made and are by them devoted unto God to be entered into Covenant with Him by his own appointment which when they come to Age themselves are bound to perform After the next Answer add And for our Communion with Him and with his Church To Q. What are the Benefits c. A. The renewed Pardon of our Sins and our Communion with Christ and his Church by Faith and Love and the strengthening c. In the Visitation of the Sick let the Minister have leave to vary his Prayer as Occasions shall require And let the Absolution be conditional If thou truly believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and truly repentest of thy sins I pronounce thee absolved through the Sacrifice and Merits of Iesus Christ. If any who is to kept from the Communion for Atheism Infidelity Heresie or Impenitency in gross sin shall in sickness desire Absolution or the Communion And if any Minister intrusted with the power of the Keys do perceive no probable sign of true Repentance and therefore dare not in conscience absolve him or give him the Sacrament left he profane God's Ordinance and harden the wicked in presumption and impenitency let not that Minister be forced to that Office against his conscience but let the sick chuse some other as he please And at the Burial of any who were lawfully kept from the Communion for the same causes and not absolved let the Minister be at liberty to change the words thus For asmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take out of this world the soul of this deceased person we commit his body c. believing a Resurrection of the just and unjust some to joy and some to punishment And to leave out in the Prayer We give thee hearty thanks for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world And instead of it put And the souls of tne wicked to wo and miseryâ— We beseech thee to convert us all from sin by true and speedy repentance And teach us to spend this little time in an holy and heavenly conversation that we may be always prepared for Death and Iudgment And And in the next Collect to leave out as our hope is this our brother doth But in the Rubrick before Burial instead of any that die unbaptized put anythat die unbaptized at years of discretion That the Infants of Christian Parents who die unbaptized be not numbered with the Excommunicate and Self-murderers and denied Christian Burial Let the Psalms in the Parish-Churches be read in the last Translation Let the Liturgy either be abbreviated by leaving out the short Versicles and Responses Or else let the Minister have leave to omit them and in times of cold or haste to omit some of the Collects as he seeth cause In Churches where many cannot read let the Minister read all the Psalms himself because the confused
increase my Faith and give my Soul a clear fight of the Evidences of his Truth and of himself and of the invisible World § 37. Whilst I was thus employed between outward Labours and inward Trials Satan stirr'd up a little inconsiderable rage of wicked men against me The Town having been formerly eminent for Vanity had yearly a Shew in which they brought forth the painted forms of Giants and such like foolery to walk about the Streets with and though I said nothing against them as being not simply evil yet on every one of those Days of Riot the Rabble of the more vicious sort had still some spleen to vent against me as one part of their Game And once all the ignorant Rout were raging mad against me for preaching the Doctrine of Original Sin to them and telling them that Infants before Regeneration had so much Guilt and Corruption as made them loathsome in the Eyes of God whereupon they vented it abroad in the Country That I preached that God hated or loached Infants so that they railed at me as I passed through the Streets The next Lord's Day I cleared and confirmed it and shewed them that if this were not true their Infants had no need of Christ of Baptism or of Renewing by the Holy Ghost And I askt them whether they durst say that their Children were saved without a Saviour and were no Christians and why they baptized them with much more to that purpose and afterward they were ashamed and as mute as fishes Once one of the drunken Beggers of the Town raised a slander of me That I was under a Tree with a Woman an ill-fam'd Beggar of the Town All the Drunkards had got it in their mouths before I could find out the Original I got three or four of them bound to the Good Behaviour and the Sot himself that raised the Slander confessed before the Court that he saw me in a rainy day on Horseback stand under an Oak which grew in a thick Hedge and the Woman aforesaid standing for shelter on the other side the Hedge under the same Tree and that he believed that we saw not one another but he spake it as a Jest and the Company were glad of the occasion to feed their Malice So they all askt me forgiveness and I desired the Magistrate immediately to release them all There lived at Kinver an ancient prudent Reverend Divine Mr. Iohn Cross who died since Pastor of Matthews Friday-street in London This godly Man had been the chief means of the good which was done in Kidderminster before my coming thither when I came I got him to take every second day in a Weekly Lecture It came to pass once that a Woman defamed him at Kidderminster openly and told the People that he would have ravished her Mr. Cross being a wise Man sent one before to desire the Bailiff and Justice to call her to Examination and he came after and sate in a common dark coloured Coat among many others in the Bailiff's Parlour as if he had been one of the Magistrates The Bailiff called her in and she stood impudently to the Accusation The Bailiff askt her whether she knew the Man if she saw him which she confidently affirmed He askt her Is it this Man or that Man or the other Man or any there And she said O no God forbid that she should accuse any of them Mr. Cross said Am not I the Man and she said No she knew the Man well enough And when they had told her that this was Mr. Cross she fell down on her knees and askt him forgiveness and confest that one of his Neighbours who was his great Accuser at the Bishops Courts had hired her to report it But the Good Man forgave them all § 38. And here I must return to the Proceedings of the Parliament because the rest will not be well understood without connoting the Occasions of them which were administred When the Londoners cried to the House for Iustice and honoured those Members who were for the punishment of Delinquents and dishonoured those that pleased the King a Breach began to be made among themselves And the Lord Digby the Lord Falkland and divers others from that time forward joyned with the King being not so immoveable as many of the rest whom neither hope nor fear nor discontent would alienate from the Cause which they thought well of Yet others were tried with the offer of Preferments The Lord Say was made one of the Privy Council Mr. Oliver St. Iohn was made the King's Sollicitor c. But as this did not alter them so others of them would accept of no Preserment left they should be thought to seek themselves or set their Fidelity to Sale When the Earl of Strafford was Condemned and the King desired to sign the Bill many Bishops were called to give him their Advice and it is commonly reported that Archbishop Usher and divers others told him that he might lawfully concur with the Judgment of his Parliament proceeding according to Law though his own Judgment were that their Sentence was unjust But Dr. Iuxon the Bishop of London advised him to do nothing against his Conscience and others would give no Advice at all When the King had Subscribed and Strafford was beheaded he much repented it even to the last as his Speeches at his Death express And the Judgments of the Members of the Parliament were different about these Proceedings Some thought that the King should not at all be displeased and provoked and that they were not bound to do any other Justice or attempt any other Reformation but what they could procure the King to be willing to And these said When you have displeased and provoked him to the utmost he will be your King still and when you have sate to the longest you must be dissolved at last you have no power over his Person though you have power over Delinquent Subjects And if he protect them by Arms you must either be ruined your selves by his displeasure or be engaged in a War Displeasing him is but exasperating him and would you be ruled by a King that hateth you Princes have great Minds which cannot easily suffer Contradiction and Rebukes The more you offend him the less you can trust him and when mutual Confidence is gone a War is beginning And if it come to a War either you will conquer or be conquered or come to Agreement If you are conquered you and the Common-wealth are ruined and he will be absolute and subdue Parliaments and Govern as he pleaseth If you come to an Agreement it will be either such as you force him to or as he is willing of If the latter it may be easilier and cheaper done before a War than after If the former it will much weaken it And if you Conquer him what the better are you He will still be King You can but force him to an Agreement and how quickly will he have power and
very young but that could not be helpt because there were no other to be had The Parliament could not make Men Learned nor Godly but only put in the learnedest and ablest that they could have And though it had been to be wisht that they might have had leisure to ripen in the Universities yet many of them did as Ambrose teach and learn at once so successfully as that they much increased in Learning themselves whilst they prosited others and proportionably more than many in the Universities do § 118. To return from this Digression to the Proceedings of Cromwell when he was made Lord Protector he had the Policy not to detect and exasperate the Ministers and others that consented not to his Government having seen what a stir the Engagement had before made but he let Men live quietly without putting any Oaths of Fidelity upon them except his Parliaments for those must not enter the House till they had sworn Fidelity to him The Sectarian Party in his Army and elsewhere he chiefly trusted to and pleased till by the Peoples submission and quietness he thought himself well settled And then he began to undermine them and by degrees to work them out And though he had so often spoken for the Anabaptists now he findeth them so heady and so much against any settled Government and so set upon the promoting of their Way and Party that he doth not only begin to blame their unruliness but also designeth to settle himself in the Peoples Favour by suppressing them In Ireland they were grown so high that the Soldiers were many of them re-baptized as the way to Preferment and those that opposed them they crusht with much uncharitable Fierceness To suppress these he sent thither his Son Henry Cromwell who so discountenanced the Anabaptists as yet to deal civilly by them repressing their Insolencies but not abusing them or dealing hardly with them promoting the Work of the Gospel and setting up good and sober Ministers and dealing civilly with the Royallists and obliging all so that he was generally beloved and well spoken of And Major General Ludlow who headed the Anabaptists in Ireland was fain to draw in his head In England Cromwell connived at his old Friend Harrison while he made himself the Head of the Anabaptists and Fanaticks here till he saw it would be an applauded acceptable thing to the Nation to suppress him and then he doth it easily in a trice and maketh him contemptible who but yesterday thought himself not much below him The same he doth also as easily by Lambert and layeth him by § 119. In these times especially since the Rump reigned sprang up five Sects at least whose Doctrines were almost the same but they sell into several Shapes and Names 1. The Vanists 2. The Seekers 3. The Ranters 4. The Quakers 5. The Behmenists 1. The Vanists for I know not by what other Name to make them known who were Sir Henry Vane's Disciples first sprang up under him in new England when he was Governor there But their Notions were then raw and undigested and their Party quickly confounded by God's Providence as you may see in a little Book of Mr. Tho. Welds of the Rise and Fall of Antinomianism and Familism in New-England where their Opinions and these Providences are recorded by him that was a reverend Minister there One Mrs. Dyer a chief Person of the Sect did first bring forth a Monster which had the Parts of almost all sorts of living Creatures some Parts like Man but most ugly and misplaced and some like Beasts Birds and Fishes having Horns Fins and Claws and at the Birth of it the Bed shook and the Women present fell a Vomiting and were fain to go forth of the Room Mr. Cotton was too favourable to them till this helpt to recover him Mrs. Hutchinson the chief Woman among them and their Teacher to whose Exercises a Congregation of them used to assemble brought forth about 30 mishapen Births or Lumps at once and being banished into another Plantation was killed there by the Indians Sir Henry Vane being Governor and found to be the secret Fautor and Life of their Cause was fain to steal away by Night and take Shipping for England before his Year of Government was at an end But when he came over into England he proved an Instrument of greater Calamity to a People more sinful and more prepared for God's Judgments Being chosen a Parliament man he was very active at first for the bringing of Delinquents to Punishment He was the Principal Man that drove on the Parliament to go too high and act too vehemently against the King Being of very ready Parts and very great Subtilty and unwearied Industry he laboured and not without Success to win others in Parliament City and Country to his Way When the Earl of Strafford was accused he got a Paper out of his Father's Cabinet who was Secretary of State which was the chief Means of his Condemnation To most of our Changes he was that Within the House which Cromwell was without His great Zeal to drive all into War and to the highest and to cherish the Sectaries and especially in the Army made him above all Men to be valued by that Party His Unhappiness lay in this that his Doctrines were so clowdily formed and expressed that few could understand them and therefore he had but few true Disciples The Lord Brook was slain before he had brought him to Maturity Mr. Sterry is thought to be of his Mind as he was his Intimate but he hath not opened himself in writing and was so famous for Obscurity in Preaching being said Sir Benj. Rudiard too high for this World and too low for the other that he thereby proved almost Barren also and Vanity and Sterility were never more happily conjoined Mr. Sprig is the chief of his more open Disciples too well known by a Book of his Sermons This Obscurity by some was imputed to his not understanding himself but by others to design because he could speak plainly when he listed the two Courses in which he had most Success and spake most plainly were His earnest Plea for universal Liberty of Conscience and against the Magistrates intermedling with Religion and his teaching his Followers to revile the Ministry calling them ordinarily Blackcoats Priests and other Names which then savoured of Reproach and those Gentlemen that adhered to the Ministry they said were Priest-ridden When Cromwell had served himself by him as his surest Friend as long as he could and gone as far with him as their way lay together Vane being for a Fanatick Democracie and Cromwell for Monarchy at last there was no Remedy but they must part and when Cromwell cast out the Rump as disdainfully as Men do Excrements he called Vane a Jugler and Martin a Whoremonger to excuse his usage of the rest as is aforesaid When Vane was thus laid by he wrote his Book called The retired Man's Meditations
the Dutch whom the French assisted § 28. The Plague which began at Acton Iuly 29. 1665. being ceased on March 1. following I returned home and found the Church-yard like a plow'd field with Graves and many of my Neighbours dead but my House near the Church-yard uninfected and that part of my Family which I left there all safe thro' the great mercy of God my merciful Protector § 29. About this time the French surprized St. Christophers and some other of our Plantations in the West Indies and the Dutch took our Plantation of Siranam And the Wars proceeding nearer home in the end of Iune 1666. in the which many were kill'd on both sides and the D. of York so near the danger as that he ventured himself in fight no more Among others the E. of Marlborough being slain there was found about him a Letter written to Sir Hugh Pollard Comptroller of the King's Houshold in which being awaken'd by Sea-dangers he disclaim'd Sadducism and pleaded for the Soul's Immortality which was Printed because being intimate Friends they were both before supposed to be Infidels and Sadducees that believed no Life after this § 30. On Iuly 25. was the 2d great Sea-fight in which the English had the better And in August we seemed to prevail yet more insomuch that Monk was said to proceed so far as to enter their Harbour and burn 120 Ships in the River and to burn a Thousand Houses on the Land and give the Seamen the Plunder for which in the end of August the King appointed a Day of Thanksgiving to be kept in London which was done though many muttered that it was not wisely done to provoke the Dutch by burning their houses when it was easy for them to do the like by us on our Sea-Coasts and so to teach them the way of undoing us while neither party gained by such doings And that it was no good sign of future prosperity when those that believed not that there is a God or at least that his providence disposeth of such things would give God solemn Thanks for an unprofitable burning of the Houses of innocent Protestants And our Confidence was then grown so high that we talkt of nothing but bringing down the Dutch to our mercy and bringing them to Contempt and Ruine But our Height was quickly taken down by the loss of many Hamborough ships first and then by a loss of many of our men in an Attempt upon their Merchant ships in the Sound at Denmark but especially by the firing of the City of London § 31. On Septemb. 2. after midnight London was set on fire and on Sept. 3. the Exchange was burnt and in Three Days almost all the City within the Walls and much without them The season had been exceeding dry before and the Wind in the East where the Fire began The people having none to conduct them aright could do nothing to resist it but stand and see their Houses-burn without Remedy the Engines being presently out of Order and useless The streets were crowded with People and Carts to carry away what Goods they could get out And they that were most active and befriended by their Wealth got Carts and saved much and the rest lost almost all The Loss in Houses and Goods is scarcely to be valued And among the rest the Loss of Books was an exceeding great Detriment to the Interest of Piery and Learning Almost all the Booksellers in St. Paul's Church-Yard brought their Books into Vaults under St. Paul's Church where it was thought almost impossible that Fire should come But the Church it self being on fire the exceeding weight of the Stones falling down did break into the Vault and let in the Fire and they could not come near to save the books The Library also of Sion-Colledge was burnt and most of the Libraries of Ministers Conformable and Nonconformable in the City with the Libraries of many Nonconformists of the Countrey which had been lately brought up to the City I saw the half burnt Leaves of Books near my Dwelling at Acton six miles from London but others found them near Windsor almost twenty miles distant At last some Seamen taught them to blow up some of the next Houses with Gunpowder which stopt the Fire And in some places it stopt as wonderfully as it had proceeded without any known Cause It stopt at Holborn-Bridge and near St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet-street and at Sepulchre's Church when the Church was burnt and at Christ's Church when the Church was burnt and near Aldersgate and Cripplegate and other places at the Wall and in Austin Friars the Dutch Church stopt it and escaped and in Bishopsgate-street and Leadenhall-street and Fenchurch-street in the midst of the Streets and short of the Tower and all beyond the River Southwark escaped Thus was the best and one of the fairest Cities in the world turn'd into Ashes and Ruines in Three Days space with many score Churches and the Wealth and Necessaries of the Inhabitants The Number of Houses are recorded by others § 32. It was a fight that might have given any Man a lively sense of the Vanity of this World and all the Wealth and Glory of it and of the future confâ—agration of all the World To see the Flames mount up towards Heaven and proceed so furiously without restraint To see the streets filled with people astonished that had scarce sense left them to lament their own calamity To see the fields filled with heaps of Goods and sumptuous Buildings curious Rooms costly Furniture and Houshold-Stuff Yea Warehouses and furnished Shops and Libraries c. all on a flame and none durst come near to receive any thing To see the King and Nobles ride about the streets beholding all these Desolations and none could afford the least Relief To see the Air as far as could be beheld so filled with the smoak that the Sun shined through it with a colour like Blood yea even when it was setting in the West it so appeared to them that dwelt on the West side of the City But the dolefullest sight of all was afterwards to see what a ruinous confused place the City was by Chimneys and Steeples only standing in the midst of Cellars and heaps of Rubbish so that it was hard to know where the streets had been and dangerous of a long time to pass through the Ruines because of Vaults and fire in them No man that seeth not such a thing can have a right apprehension of the dreadfulness of it § 33. The Extent of the Fire consuming the City within the Walls calleth to my remembrance that a Fortnight before one Mr. Caril a Gentleman of a great Estate in Sussex and said to be one of the most understanding and sober sort of Papists first sent and then come to have visited me as earnestly desiring my Acquaintance and then sent me a Paper to answer being Exceptions against the Preface to my book called The â—afe Religion written by one