most industriously promote such a Christian and Catholick accord as were most for the honour of Christ and the peace of Christendome I know the youthfull fervours of some are jealous of all such motions and for fear of seeming luke-warme they resolve to boyle over all bounds till they quench both Truth and Charity among Christians and make way for Atheisme Turcisme Confusion and Barbarity These hotter heads possibly dread what I calmly desire that such a grand Catholick Convention of able Ecclesiasticks in these Western Churches might by the consent of Princes and chief Magistrates be so orderly convened with Freedome Impartiality and due Authority as might enable them to consent in one Canon or rule of Faith and good manners that the clear and concurrent sense of Scriptures might be owned by all in which all things necessary are contained either literally or by just deductions that what is dark or dubious should be left indifferently to Christians use and judgements that all would agree in the same ancient fundamentall Articles of Faith contained in primitive Creeds also in the same Sacraments or holy Mysteries to be devoutly celebrated so in the same way of good works to be practised that we might all have the same Catechise the same publick Liturgies so composed that all Christians might with Faith and Charity say Amen to them and in their severall Languages understand them that a Commentary on Scriptures and Sermons containing all Christian necessary Doctrine might be agreed upon that neither curiosities nor controversies should be couched in publick Prayers or Preachings that all might enjoy the same Catholick Source and course of Ecclesiastick Ordination Ministry and Authority so tempering Government and Discipline in the Church that none should justly think others too much exalted nor themselves too much depressed that Catholick Customes ancient Ceremonies and Traditions truly such being consonant to Gods Word and practically interpreting the meaning of it might be observed by all leaving yet such freedome in other things to particular Churches as might be most convenient yet still subordinate to and to be regulated by the judgement of such a General Council contrary to which none should affect extravagant liberty to the ruine of Christian Charity Blessed Lord What good Christian could be injured by such a Christian accord in the main concernments of Religion which cannot be impossible in the nature of the thing because it was of old enjoyed and many hundreds of years generally preserved among all Christians and Churches of any name and repute in all the world Nor did either the heat of Persecution or Prosperity as warm and soultry weather dispirit this charity of Christians who might still be as capable subjects of so great a blessing from God on earth if Passion Prejudice Partiality and private interests on all hands were laid aside without parting with any true and reall interest that concerns a wise or good man either in Conscience or Honour in civil or religious regards CHAP. XVIII WHich blessed accord so good and so pleasant to behold how much more to enjoy being not onely possible but most desirable and commendable among all good Christians two great Impediments or obstructions seem to me chiefly to hinder as to man besides our ill deservings on all sides at Gods hands which however I do not hope by my weak shoulders to remove they being like the Grave-stone on Christs Sepulchre whose sad and massy weight requires some mighty Angel from heaven to do it yet I cannot but here express my sense of them the more sensibly by how much I see the miserable distractions of the poor Church of England and the advantages given by some mens late immoderations and madnesses to alienate the very best and soberest of the Roman party from all propensity or thoughts of any happy close by reforming and so reconciling the parts of divided and distracted Christendome Which evil effect now more exasperated than ever I here instance in as one of the saddest consequences following the divided dissolved and deplored state of this Church of Engl. which was the grand mirrour or example of Christianity and Reformation from which neither Romanists nor others did so much withdraw by many degrees heretofore as now they do The first great hinderance is that exteme pertinacy and height of those of the Roman party who so much magnifie themselves their chief Bishop their Church and Communion upon the specious names of Antiquity Infallibility and Primacy as if no Church or Christians in the world were to be considered other then as novices ignorants and underlings in comparison of the Roman Name and Majesty Their Antiquity is not denied by sober men but their great Age is evidently attended with many decayes and infirmities which are novelties from which even primitive Churches were not wholly free both as to Humane frailty and Divine reproofs as we read in the Epistles of the Apostles and of Christ to the seven Churches Nor doe I know any priviledge the Roman Church hath above others unlesse they could make good their Infallibility either as to their chief Bishop or as to any Council in which he should preside That their persons have erred in Doctrine and Moralities that they have varied from and clashed against each other in their publick Decrees and Councils yea and from not onely pious Antiquity but the Scripture-verity is so evident in what my self have here lightly touched and others amply demonstrated that no ingenuous and honest Romanist at this day can deny it For the affected Supremacy or Primacy which they so glory in and challenge not onely before but above and over all Churches not as a matter of order and precedency but of power and authority as there is no Law of God which requires this or any Church so farre to own that of Rome or to be subject to it so nor did the ancient Ecclesiastical Lawes and distinctions lay more to the Roman Inspection or Jurisdiction than the Suburbicarian Regions which extended 100 miles from the City That the Roman Bishop was owned as the first or chief Patriarch in Order and Precedency in Place or Vote was not a regard to the persons of the Bishops or their authority as if it were more than other Bishops by any Divine or Humane right but a regard to the pristine Majesty of the City and the Apostolick eminency of that Church in which the two great Apostles S. Peter S. Paul had not onely placed much of their pains but ended their lives Lay aside the Roman pomp and insolency no sober man but will allow the Bishop of Rome his Civil and Ecclesiastical Primacy as King James and other Protestant Princes offered long ago nor would any of the great Reformers Luther or Calvin or Cranmer have grudged this if the Bishop of Rome would have submitted either to a General Council or to the Word of Christ If the Roman Arrogancy will needs claim and usurp more than its due which
to excommunicate here and there several Christians and their families as single Slips and Off-sets of Christianity which might grow apart by themselves but their aim was with preaching Verity to plant Unity and with true Faith to graft fraternal Charity which conjoyned them to and with Christ and all Christians in the world This being a most visible mark of Christs Disciples also a special means for mutual assistance and comfort amidst the many persecutions which Christians would meet with sufficient utterly to discourage them if when they were scattered from each other they were presently without any joynt harmony greater combination and ampler communion of Saints by which means whereever Christians fled from one place to another if they met with Christians they were sure of hospitable friends bringing as they ever did letters of communication or commendation from their Bishops which presently made their way to such a kind reception and communion in all holy duties as that station permitted as Catechumens or Penitents or Eucharistical Communicants in which they stood whereever they had lived Therefore as the Apostolical wisdom so all their successors diligently gathered single believers and private families of Christians into greater Congregations these they led on to larger combinations which comprehended the Christians of many Villages Towns Cities and Territories according as the Spirit of Christ directed them for the greater conveniency and benefit of both Ministers and people who scattered in small bodies or parcels must needs be both more cold and more feeble but so united in grand Societies they would be both warmer stronger and safer and besides more eminent and conspicuous in the eyes of all the world Such beyond all doubt were those Apostolical and famous Churches distinguished by the Spirit of God according to the chief Cities which were the centre of their Religious addresses for Church-Order Authority and Communion as the Church of Jerusalem Antioch Rome Ephesus Corinth Sardis Smyrna Colosse with many more whose Cities being most-what Metropolitan or Mother-cities as to secular power and distribution of civil justice they were chosen as meetest for the principal residency of Religious Order Polity and Authority wherein as was meet the blessed Apostles did during their lives preside as Bishops either in their persons or by those faithful Apostolick men whom they as St. Paul did Timothy Titus Archippus others appointed as Rulers or Bishops under them for the carrying on of the service of Christ his Church partly by the common duty and office Ministerial which was to preach baptize celebrate other holy Mysteries in an orderly way even in lesser Congregations yea to private Families and single persons as occasion required which was the work of Bishops and Presbyters in common and partly to manage that presidential power and Episcopal Authority over both Presbyters and people united in larger combinations and Churches as might best preserve the Purity Unity and Honor of the Church and Christian Religion in doctrine and discipline also derive by way of right Ordination after the pattern given to Timothy and Titus and others a continued succession of an holy and authoritative Ministry by such an eminent power of Order as was specially delivered to the chief Apostles and by them to their principal successors as Bishops in those great Apostolical and complete Churches where as Christians increased many Presbyters were ordained by the chief Pastor or Bishop to be both Counsellers and Assistants to him in that Evangelical work of teaching and governing the Church committed to him First as appointed immediately by the chief Apostles while they lived and after as chosen by the surviving Presbyters in every precinct or Diocese to succeed so far in that Apostolical eminency and presidential authority as was necessary for the Churches constant Order and good Government according to that precedent Charter and Commission which all Churches had received from the Apostles and they from Christ not as a temporary Ordinance but such as for the main end and method the Lord would have continued till his coming again by a succession of ordinary Bishops who are a lesser or second sort of Apostles in many things short of their gifts yet having the same ordinary power to ordain Presbyters and Deacons to appoint them their offices and places in the Churches Ministry and to see they execute the same as is meet for the edifying of the Church in Truth and Love to rebuke and reject them in case of failing and obstinacy As the Church daily thus increased spreading its boughs even to the utmost seas still its Polity or Government as the bark or rinde of the Tree enlarged with the body or bulk being most necessary for the preserving both of lesser and greater branches to knit and bind all together to convey the sap and juice to every part and to the whole This once peeled or broken or cut wounds the tree weakens and oft kills that part which is so injured Trees may as well thrive without their bark and bodies live without their skins as Churches without setled and united Government Therefore that all true Christians might still keep a Catholick Correspondence Subordination and holy Communion between the whole and every branch or member they had not onely Deacons above the people but Presbyters above Deacons and Bishops above Presbyters yea and as the borders and numbers of the Church so increased that not onely Presbyters but Bishops grew many and so fit to be put into some method and order they had Archbishops or Metropolitanes above ordinary Bishops and Patriarchs above Archbishops or Metropolitanes and a generall Council above all thus still drawing nearer to a center of union and mutuall intelligence So that first three afterward five Patriarchs had the general Episcopacy Superintendency and Inspection over all the Christian world Nor were these Bishops Metropolitans and Patriarchs any ambitious affectations or forcible intrusions of pride or tyranny upon the Churches of Christ but by a wise and general consent on all sides Christian Bishops did so cast themselves into comely rancks of Subordination after the Apostolical pattern as might most suit to the good order correspondence and unanimity of all Christians as but one Church there being in the first 300. years of sore persecution no other motives to these eminent places and regular orders in the Church of Bishops Archbishops Metropolitans Primates and Patriarchs but onely those of Labours and Cares of Sufferings and Martyrdoms which still pressed most upon the Presidents and chief Governours or Bishops of the Churches as was evident in the glorious marks of the Lord Jesus to be seen on the Faces Hands and other parts of the Bodies of those venerable Bishops 318 which met at the first great gaudy-day of the Church in the Council of Nice which all made but one Episcopacy and were Representers as well as Presidents or Rulers of but one Catholick Church After which time by the favour of
Christian Emperors the Churches Polity and Government being carried on by the same Apostolical power and Episcopal spirit was highly promoted even to secular Dignities and Estates Bishops being not onely every where unfeignedly venerated by all sorts of Christians as chief Pastors and spiritual Fathers succeeding to the chief Apostles by an uninterrupted and undoubted succession of which every Church had pregnant Records and Memorials but they were invested in such civil honors as make them Peers to the Senators Nobles or Patricians of the Empire which was more to their pomp and lustre but not more to their Episcopal authority and that filial respect which was paid to Bishops by all good Christians even then when they and their Clergy had nothing to live upon but the dona Matronarum oblationes Communicantium the contributions and offerings of devout people In this fair and sun-shine-weather as secular Peace and Plenty increased to the Church so Christianity spread very far as to the Fashion Profession and Form of it in branches and leaves but grew among many less fruitful in the real effects of Piety and Charity many now thronged into Christs Church but fewer touched him with the hand of Faith so as to heal their infirmities Yea as in the very first times under the Apostolical Episcopacy the Simonians Nicolaitans Gnosticks Corinthians and others afterward during the still-persecuting Ages the Marcionites Carpocratians Valentinians Montanists and others so in the most prosperous times the Manichees Novatians Donatists Arrians and Pelagians with diverse others became as branches either miserably split and slivered by their own schismatick and separate humors or quite wholy broken off by blasphemous Apostasies and the just sentences of Excommunication from that one Catholick Church and the unanimous Bishops of its communion for whom one Bishop did rightly excommunicate by the lesser or greater câ—nsure all Bishops Presbyters and Christians in all the world did the same virtually Hence many lesser and greater branches even some Bishops with their whole Presbyters and Churches grew sometimes scare and withered twice dead and pulled up by the roots by Error and Obstinacy by voluntary Desertion and Ecclesiastick Abdication as many Arrian and Donatist Bishopâ— Yet still by the correspondence and care of the excellently learned resolute and unanimous Bishops of the fourth fifth and sixth Centuries with their orderly Presbyters and faithful Flocks the Church ceased not to flourish for the most part in Verity and Unity in Piety and Charity as well as in civil Peace Plenty and Honour the holy and good Bishops every where still clearing the mosse and cankers which grew upon this fair Tree they pruned the Excrescencies and superfluities both of Jewish presumptions and Heathenish superstitions all and every one being prudently intent as far as times and the manners of men would bear to preserve his lot part or Diocese committed to him by consent of the people by the choice of his Presbyters and by the comprecation or consecration of his collegues the Neighbour-bishops so as became the relation they had to the whole Church after the grand patterns and models received from the blessed Apostles who first as Bishops of equal size and authority yet as men using an orderly precedency sprang from that one Root Christ Jesus and by their united Ministry spread abroad the Church far and neer 'T is true the primitive severity and rigour of Christian discipline much abated in times of greater peace and plenty many primitive signs of Christian love and communion as the Holy Kisse their Love-feasts their Oblations their Hospitality to all Christian strangers and the like were crowded out by the Wantonness Factiousness Hypocrisie Luxury and Avarice of some Christians besides Church-mens Ambition and Hereticall Furie none of whom would indure the sharp yoke of primitive Pennances Abstentions Castigations and many wayes of Mortification by Watching Sackcloth Fasting Prostrating Weeping Confessing c. At length Mahometan poyson and power cruelly pressed upon the divided and debauched Eastern Churches after this the Papal policy and power by insensible degrees in ignorant and turbulent Ages so prevailed upon the blindness and credulity of these Western Churches who were much wasted also with wars in Spain Italy Franee and here in Britanny by domestick Rebellions and barbarous Invasions that the face of this goodly Tree was much battered and altered from the primitive floridnesse and fruitfulnesse the Roman Church and its Bishop or Patriarch being like an Hydropick body swoln by secular Pride and Usurpation so much beyond its pristine comelinesse and honor that in stead of an holy and humble Apostolick Bishop of the same Order and Authority with his other brethren he must be owned in a superecclesiastical and a superepiscopal and a superimperial height as Lord and Soveraign and Prince above that is called God in Church and State Yet still while this Papal branch presumed thus to grow beyond its proportions to the over-dropping and dwindling of all other parts of the Church its form or fashion as a Tree in its winter or less-thrifty state remained even under those sad seasons of Papal perturbations and presumptions God never suffering the Church to be quite deformed much less hewen down because it was never so barren even in those dayes but it brought forth some tolerable Bishops Presbyters and other Christians yea many of them very commendable ones Neither Papal Foxes nor Mahometane Wild Bores had ever power to lay it quite wast or overthrow it both root and branch as to its saving foundations or its orderly constitutions or its authoritative successions in Bishops Presbyters and Deacons still holy Mysterys and holy Orders the holy Ministry and holy Scriptures holy Examples holy Doctrines holy Duties and holy Lives were continued in such order and by such conduct as easily represented the primitive pattern and Apostolick figure of this Tree though with many accressions and some deformities which time and ignorance and superstition or humane policy and secular pride had affixed to some main Branches of it in these Western parts of the Church yet the ancient Lineaments and true Model were very visible in Christian People Christian Deacons Christian Presbyters and Christian Bishops directed into several stations as Helps for the more orderly carrying on of the Churches Government in grand and national combinations In this posture stood the state of the Catholick Church as in all other places where the Vastations of Saracens and Turks had left any miserable Remnants of Christian Churches so most eminently in this Western world which the Providence of God had not yet wholly delivered over to Gog or Magog none of these Churches were without their Deacons Presbyters and Bishops untill that great Reparation rather than Alteration of Christian Religion began in these Western Churches about the Year 1520. which was justly called a blessed Reformation in many respects as to clearing the corruptions of Doctrine and Manners which had been contracted every where which
great bond of Christian communion and subordination into which by the wisdome of the Apostles the providence of God did at first and ever after cast his Church in its severall parts throughout all the world for their greater safety strength comfort counsell honour peace and stability which are then most like to be enjoyed when Religious power and the Churches authority run not in small and shallow rivulets which are contemptible and soon exhausted but in great rivers with faire and goodly streams in the united counsels and combined strength of many learned wise grave and godly men Nor may it be thought in any probability of reason that when the Spirit of Christ wrote by Saint John to the seven Churches in the lesser Asia which was about ninety years after the birth of Christ and above fifty after his Ascension or when the Apostle Saint Paul wrote to the Churches eminent in other great Cities that there were then no Christians or no congregations and assemblies of them in the other cities towns or villages of those large countries and spacious territories or that those Christians were not at all considered by the Spirit of Christ or the Apostle as to their further confirmation instruction regulation order and government No but all those Christians and congregations in those respective limits territories or towns belonging to such a principall city or renowned Metropolis were comprehended and included in the dedication or direction given to the Angel or Bishop and chief overseer under or after the Apostle of that whole Church which was contained in that Precinct or Province Which method and form of uniting constituting and governing such ampliated and completed Churches was Primitive and Apostolical whence it also grew Catholick in all Nations and Churches without exception no Christians or Congregations till these last and worst times ever seeing any cause to think themselves wiser than the Apostles or the Spirit of Christ nor ever either finding or feigning or forcing any necessity to alter that constitution order and subordination by any unwarrantable breakings Schismes Separations which are the ready way to weaken and waste the Churches of Christ in their order safety and majesty by unbinding and dissolving what was once and ever well combined breaking the staff of Beauty and Bands of Unity Defence and Stability Certainly as no Reason so much less Religion doth perswade any men to shrink themselves from their manly stature and full growth to become dwarfs and children again who but children mad-men or fools would rend a goodly and fair garment into many beggarly shreds and tatters which are good for nothing but to trim up Babies How savage a cruelty is it in any as Medea did her children to cut a fair strong and well-compacted body into severall limbs bits and mammocks which thus divided are both deformed and dead It argues no lesse a fierce and ferine nature in any men to ravell and scatter themselves from all civil fraternities and sociall combinations which strongly twist the joynt interest of mankind together meerly out of a lust to return to their dens and acorns or out of a fancy to enjoy such liberty as exposeth men by their own infirmities and others malice both to necessities wants and injuries Who but mutinous and mischievous mariners will cast their wise Pilots and skilfull Masters over-boord or shipwreck and cut in pieces a fair and goodly Ship in which many men being sociably strongly embarqued they were able to encounter with and overcome the roughest seas and storms meerly out of a cruell wantonnesse and dangerous singularity which covets to have each man a rafter or plank by themselves or out of a vain hope to make many little skiffs and cock-boats in which to expose themselves first to be ludibrium ventorum the scorn of every blast tossed to and fro with every wind next after a little dalliance with death and dancing over the mouth of destruction to be overwhelmed and quite sunk by such decumane billowes as those small vessels have no proportion to resist Alike madnesse and folly would it be in the Souldiers of an Army to scatter themselves into severall troops and companies of fifties and hundreds that should be absolute of themselves under no Generall or Commander in chief as to joynt discipline united they may be strong and invincible divided they will be weak and despicable The Polity Wisdome Stability Authority and Majesty of those ancient ample and Apostolick Churches was such of old that all good Christians had infinite comfort relief safety and support in their communion with them if any injury were done by any private Minister or particular Bishop to one or many Christians remedy was to be had by appeale to such whose judgement was most impartiall and whose authority as well as wisdome was least to be doubted or disputed by any sober Christian Such as were imprudently erroneous or impudently turbulent Innovators of true doctrine forsakers of Christian Communion disturbers of Peace or despisers of Discipline either they were soon cured and recovered by wholsome applications from the authoritative hands and charitable hearts of many not onely Christians but Congregations and their united Presbyters with the joynt consent of their respective Bishops so far as the evil and contagion had spread in particular persons Congregations or Churches or in case of obstinacy they were not onely silenced and infinitely discountenanced by the notable censures and just reproches of many but they were at last as it it were with the thunderbolts of heaven so smitten bruised astonished and disanimated by the dreadfull Anathema's which from the concurrent spirit of those great Churches and Synods were solemnly denounced in the name of Christ by the chief Pastors or Bishops succeeding in the authority and place of the Apostles that every good Christian feared and trembled they wept and prayed for such sinners repentance and in case of desperate contumacy or incorrigiblenesse they gave them over to the Devil as certainly as if the sentence of Gods eternall doom had passed upon them This this was the pristine polity unity beauty majesty and terrour of the Churches of Christ in their ample and Apostolical combinations when each of those Churches were as sometimes in England faire as the Moon bright as the Sun beautifull as the tower of Tirzah comely as Jerusalem a city of God at unity in it self also terrible as an army with Banners for so they are prophecied of and described under the name of the Spouse of Christ Can any Christian that is not utterly fanatick and wild with his Enthusiastick fancies ever expect such harmony weight lustre authority and efficacy from any of those petty Conventicles and pigmy Churches into which some men seek first by Independent principles and practises to mince all Episcopall and National Churches next by Presbyterian policies to mould and soulder them up again as Medea did Jasons-limbs either to partiall Associations or to parochial Consistories or little
of the Temple and city of God were wont to do to the joy or amazement of all Spectators so grand so stately so august so amiable so venerable so formidable that no man could with any modesty despise them or with any ingenuity refuse their sense and sentence Whereas Schismaticall scraps and scambling separations of Christians either in their persons or parties as disjoyned and Independent from these Primitive polities and Catholick integrations of Churches make their scattered fractions unsociable societies appear not onely to the scornfull world and to perverse minds but to all sober Christians and rationall men like so many poor Cottages or like the late ruined pieces of our Cathedralls like a flock of Sheep or Pigeons scattered by Wolves or Kites or like the parts of a Lamb or Kid which a Lion or Bear hath torn without that Grandeur Majesty Authority and Efficacy which ought to accompany Ecclesiasticall judicatures and Christian Churches In which pitiful posture so feeble so desolate so despicable if the wisdom of our blessed God and Saviour had intended to have alwayes kept his multiplied Church and numerous people which were to beas the Stars of the Firmament that they should ever be like the small parties of wild Arabs and wandering Scythians certainly those Primitive and purest Churches nominally distinguished and locally defined by the Word of God the Spirit of Christ and the Pens of the Apostles would never have grown by an happy diffusion and holy coalescency to such great and goodly combinations such vast yet comely statures and extensions to so large combinations and harmonious subordinations as contained great Cities Provinces and whole Countreys For such Churches those are which are signally described and punctually circumscribed in the New Testament as well as in all other records of the Primitive Churches Which fair and firm models of Churches comprehending many Christian people Deacons Presbyters and Congregations under one chief Pastor Bishop Angel or Apostolick â—resident who was as the nave of the wheel the centre of Union the anchor of Fixation I make no doubt but the Spirit of Christ in the Apostles which so framed and setled them did intend to have them so preserved as much as morally prudentially and providentially they could be yea rather to have them ampliated and enlarged as time use and the Churches occasions required than curtailed like the garments of Davids messengers or pared and divided into small shreds and shavings The reason is evident because the life and spirit the truth and charity the honour and vigour of Christian Religion and Church-polity like Wine are better preserved in great quantities than in small parcels in Tuns than in Terces Christian people Presbyters Congregations and Bishops like live-coals united glow to a more generous fervour scattered they cool and extinguish themselves unlesse in cases of persecuted Churches where Martyrly fervencies are kept high and intense by the Antiperistasis of persecution the most heroick love and ambition of suffering and dying for Christ and his Church then uniting Christians spirits most when their persons are most scattered BOOK I. CHAP. II. THe Primitive Piety and Charity so perfectly abhorred all fractures and crumblings of Churches that we see they kept for many hundred of years as Ignatius Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian Clemens Alexandrinus Cyprian Eusebius and all Ancient both Fathers and Historians tell us their respective Combinations Fraternities and Subordinations to their Bishops Patriarchs and mother-Churches according to those Sedes principales Cathedrae Apostolicae or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 limits or boundaries which were laid out and distinguished either by the Apostles first lots and Episcopall portions or by their chief residencies and setled inspections governed either by themselves or their Vicegerents and Successors most of them Primitive Martyrs and Confessors which was done even till the famous Council of Nice which in the point of distinguishing Churches and keeping their severall Dioceses or bounds took care to preserve to after-ages and successions of the Church those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ancient customes measures or dimensions some of which begun by the Apostles and carried on by their Successors had passed through and endured the hottest persecutions without ever being so melted and dissolved as to run into any such new moulds and fashions as this last Century in these Western Churches and these last seventeen yeares in the Church of England have produced to such frustula fragments chips and fractions as look more like factious confederacies and furtive subductions of yesterday than like those Primitive combinations and that ancient and ample Communion of Christians and Churches The endeavour of many People and Preachers too being now like that of Plagiaries to entice and steal children from the care of their mothers and the custody of their fathers to ruine as Tertullian speaks rather than to edifie themselves or the Churches of Christ to that full measure and complete stature which the love of Christ and the wisdome of his Apostles first designed and assigned to the Church of Christ in its severall limits and distributions In order to preserve which Unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace not onely as to private veracity and charity but as to publick polity and harmony for strength and safety we find the Primitive Bishops and Presbyters forewarned by S. Paul of grievous Wolves who first divide then devour such as should be authors and fautors of Hereresies and Schismes too affecting to lead Disciples after them apart from the Churches setled order and communion The Roman Christians are commanded to mark with the black brand of schismatick pride those that caused divisions among them not onely as to private differences in judgement opinion and affection which are of lesse danger and easily healed among Christians where the health and soundnesse of the whole as to publick order and entireness is preserved which as the native Balsam easily heals green wounds in any part of the body But the Apostles caution as to the Corinthians seems chiefly against those that divided the publick polity and unity of the Church of Corinth which having many Christians many Congregations and many Preachers in the city and countrey adjacent was united by one Church-communion under some one Apostle or such a Vicegerent as in the Apostles absence was over them in the Lord To break which holy Subordination Harmony and Integrality the simplicity or subtilty of some factious spirits made use of those Names which were most eminent in that Church as Planters Waterers or Weeders of it such as Paul Apollos Cephas were seeking by factious sidings and adherings to those principall Teachers to withdraw themselves into severall Churches or Bodies from that grand Communion and Subordination which they received first from the Apostle converting them next from that chief Pastor or Bishop which had the rule inspection and authority over them by his appointment Which practises in the Churches
all ages if his prohibition be not against Separation Apostasy and total forsaking of the Churches communion both in Discipline and Doctrine in Polity and Verity as well as against Schisme The difference is not much between S. Pauls censure of Schisme and division as carnall and a work of the flesh Gal. 5.20 and that of S. Jude against such as separate as being sensuall and not having the Spirit especially where such communion is offered and required by a Church Christian and Reformed as is no way against the Word of God the Apostles example and the Primitive Catholick practise of all Churches such I believe and hope to prove that of the Church of England was and is as to those main essentialls of Religion which constitute a true Church both in the being and well-being But I needed not and therefore I crave your pardon worthy Gentlemen have spent so much breath to blow up and break the late thin bladders or light bubbles these new Corpusculas of separate Churches compared to the Catholick eminency unity and solidity of the Church of England and others of like size An easie foot will serve to beat down such new-sprung Mushromes of late perked up in this English soyle through the licentiousnesse of times and luxuriancy of mens humours since it hath been watered with Humane and Christian blood whose ambition seems to be not onely to divide and share but wholly to possess and engross this good land or else to leave desolate that field out of which they are sprung which bare far better fruits than now it doth long before their name was heard of under the new titles or style of bodyed and congregated associated or independented and new-fangled Churches Who have now the confidence to cry down the Church of England in its late visible polity harmony order and unity as a meer name and notion an insignificant Idea and empty imagination as if it were neither bonum nor jucundum good nor pleasant for Brethren in Christ to dwell together in unity or for men in one nation to be Christians in one Church as if bonds of civil polity reached farther than Ecclesiastick Some are so vain and vulgar as to boast that all Church-fellowship in England is no better then floten milk when once they have taken off the cream of some Saintly professors which they think worthy to make up and coagulate into their new and small bodyed Churches which are carried on by some with so high an hand and brow that a young master of that sect hath been heard to say not more magisterially than uncharitably he would sooner renounce his Baptism than own the Church of England to be a true Church And this notwithstanding that it is evident these new Rabbies have added nothing new and true to the Doctrine of the Church of England nor yet to the divine Worship and holy Ministrations or Duties used and professed in it with as much solemnity judgement and sincerity I believe as they can pretend to without blushing on mans part and with infinite more spirituall blessings and proficiency in all graces so far as yet appeares on Gods part Nor have they ever shewn any cause why It should be denyed the name honour priviledge and comfort of a true Church of Christ both in its principall parts and in the whole visible community or polity afflicted indeed at present but sometime famous and flourishing as in favour both with God and good men nor did it ever recede from its love or apostatize by any publick act or vote from such a profession of Christian and Reformed Religion as gives her a good Title to be and to be called a true Church of Christ in spight of men and Devils If any still list to quarrell at the name of a Nationall Church the same schismaticall sophisters may as well slight all those proportions and expressions used in all the grand Combinations and visible Constitutions of such ancient Churches throughout all descents of Christian Religion which never doubted to cast themselves into and continue in such Ecclesiasticall forms and parallel distributions as they found laid out by the blessed Apostles and the Spirit of Christ which without doubt most eminently guided those Primitive Churches When these new projectors have answered the Scripture style and the Apostolick patterns and pens followed by all antiquity which call and account all those Christians conjoyned in one Churches communion in point of Ecclesiasticall polity subordination chief power and jurisdiction who yet were dispersed in many places and so distinguished no doubt into many congregations as to the duties of ordinary worship throughout their Cities respective Provinces which I am sure were many of them far larger than any one Diocese or Province in England yea and possibly not much lesse than all England as Ephesus Crete Jerusalem Antioch whose province was all Syria as Ignatius tells us so Corinth Philippi Laodicea Rome c. with their Suburbs Territories and Provinces which extended as far as their proconsulary jurisdictions reached in one of which that learned and pious but fancifull interpreter Mr. Brightman doubted not to find a prophetick Type representing the Nationall Church of England with much more aptitude than his other Satyrick correspondencies were applied When the wit and artifices of Independent brethren if they allow me that relation have shrunk those great and famous Churches so distinguished and nominated by the Scripture line and record into little handfulls such as one mans lungs can reach at one time in one place when the Presbyterian brethren who have cast off yea cast out their Fathers the Bishops can manifest that the severall Congregations of Christians in those Parishes Classes or Associations which they fancy had as many Bishops properly so called and fully impowered as there were Presbyters or Preachers when by their joynt skill and force they can evince out of any Ecclesiasticall Records or Scripturall that there was not some one eminent person as the Apostle Angel Bishop and President or chief Governour among them over all those people and Presbyters who lived within such large Scripture-combinations as Churches such as was Timothy in Ephesus Titiâ— in Crete S. James the Just in Jerusalem either succeeding the Apostles after death or supplying their places during their absence from particular Churches who in their severall lots portions or Episcopal charges and divisions had while they lived the chief inspection rule authority and jurisdiction When I say these grand difficulties are cleared and removed as scales from our eyes who still honour the Church of England then we shall be willing and able to turn the other lessening end of the Optick glasse and to look upon the great and goodly Church of England as fit to be shrunk into decimo sexto volumes or to be divided into small pamphleting Congregations and bound up in Calves leather which heretofore by an happy deception of sight appeared to us at
exercised to each other their numerous conventions their fervent devotions their reverent attentions their unanimous communions their cheerfull Amens those blessed hopes and unspeakable comforts which thousands enjoyed both living and dying in the obedience to and communion with the Church of England All these holy fruits and blessed effects as most certain seals and letters testimoniall were I conceive most pregnant evidences and valid demonstrations of true Religion and of a true Church so happily setled by the joynt consent and publick piety of this Nation that it was not in reason or conscience in modesty or ingenuity to be suddenly changed much lesse rashly deserted and rudely abandoned chiefly upon the giddinesse of common people or by the boysterousnesse of common souldiers whose buff-coats and armour cannot be thought by any wise and worthy Souldiers to be like Aarons breast-plate the place from which Priests and people are to expect the constant oracles of Urim and Thummim Light and Reformation Such of that profession as are truly Militant Christians that is humbly wise and justly valiant as I hope many Souldiers may be will think it enough for them modestly to learn and generously to defend as Constantine the Great said to the Nicene Bishops not imperiously to dictate or boldly to innovate matters of Religion in such a Church and Nation as England which was I am sure and I think still is furnished with many able Divines many Evangelicall Priests and Ministers of the Lord whose lips preserve saving knowledge who have many a one of them more learning and well-studied Divinity in them than a whole Regiment nay than an whole Army of ordinary Souldiers whose weapons are not proper for a spirituall warfare nor apt as Davids hands either to build or repair a Church otherwaies than as Labourers who may possibly assist the true Ministers who are and ought to be the Master-builders of Gods house whose skill is not to destroy mens bodies but to save their souls not to kill but to make alive It must ever be affirmed to Gods glory because without any vanity or flattery that the Church of England for this last golden century came not behind the very best Reformed Churches nor any other that profess Christianity in any part of the world which is not my particular testimony who may seem partiall because I unfeignedly professe my self a son and servant of it but it is and hath been the joynt suffrage of all eminent Divines in all forraign Reformed Churches who have written and spoken of the Church of England ever since its setled Reformation not with commendation onely but admiration especially those who coveting to partake of the gifts and labours of English Divines have taken the pains to learn our hard and untoward language Yea I may farther with truth and modesty affirm that saving the extraordinary gifts of Tongues Miracles and Martyrdomes the Church of England since its setled Reformation under Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory came not much short of the Primitive Churches in the first and second Centuries Which had at least some of them as I shall after shew rather more than fewer ceremonies partly Judaick partly Christian yea far greater errors and abuses were found among some of them than were generally among any professors in communion with the Church of England witnesse those touching the Resurrection of the body and in the celebrating of the Lords Supper among the Corinthians The first some denied the other many received covetously uncharitably drunkenly disorderly undecently in the Church of Corinth Besides the scandalous fact of the incestuous person with which they were not so offended as became Christians they were also full of factions and carnall divisions going to law one with another before Infidels undervaluing the blessed Apostle S. Paul and other faithfull labourers preferring false Apostles and deceitfull workers with no lesse folly than ingratitude challenging in many things disorderly and uncomely liberties which amounted to clokes of malice and a licentiousnesse tending to confusion These and other corruptions were among Christians of an Apostolicall Church newly planted carefully watred and excellently constituted Nor are there lesse remarkable faults found by the Spirit of God in six of the seven Asian Churches mentioned in the second and third Chapters of the Revelation while yet they were under Apostolicall inspection For the Devil who is a great rambler but no loyterer began betimes to sow his tares in Gods field by false Apostles unruly walkers deceitfull workers meer hucksters of Religion schismatick Spirits proud Impostors sensuall Separatists wanton Jezebels curious and cowardly Gnosticks with all the evil brood of Nicolaitans Simonians Cerinthians and other crafty Hypocrites brochers of lies patrons of lewdnesse extremely earthly and sensuall yet vaunters in proud swelling words of spirituall and heavenly gifts but more covetous of filthy lucre and sedulous to serve their own bellies than zealous to serve the Lord or to save souls In all which instances of diseases growing even upon any of those Primitive Churches however Christians are commanded to repent and do their first works to keep themselves pure from contagion private or epidemick yet are they no where put upon the pernicious methods of reproching rending and separating from the very frame and constitution of their respective Churches as they were holy Polities Constitutions or Communions setled by the Apostles in decent subordinations and convenient limits of Ecclesiasticall order government authority and jurisdiction without which all humane societies civil or sacred run to meer Chaosses and heaps of confusion Which as the God of order and peace perfectly abhors so he no where by any Divine precept or approved example recommends any such practises to Christians under the name notion or intention of reforming abuses crept into any Churches presently to rend revile contemn divide destroy and make desolate the whole order polity frame and constitution of them which is very Christian and very commendable If the grand example of Divine Mercy was ready to spare Sodom upon Abrahams charitable intercession in case ten righteous persons had been found in that city and Jerusalem in case one man could have been found there who executed judgement and sought the truth how little are those men imitators of Gods clemency or Abrahams pity who have studied and still endeavour by all acts of power and policy utterly to destroy such a Church as England was in which many thousands of good Christians may undoubtedly be found who are constant adherers to the Faith gratefull lovers of the Piety and most pathetick deplorers of the miseries of the Church of England Whose excellent Christian state and Reformed constitution deserved much better treatment from those at least who were her children carefully bred born and brought up by her however now they appear many of them better fed than taught more puffed up with the surfeits of undigested Knowledge than increased in humble
preach that Gospel which Christ hath taught he industriously omits the use of that prayer which Christ hath not onely commended but enjoyned and commanded as an Evangelicall institution Which shamefull compliance of many Ministers with vulgar levity and licentiousnesse seems to me so far from really advancing their own honour or the true interests of the Christian and Reformed Religion that in earnest they have by these and the like mean desertings of their own judgements duties very much exposed themselves and the Reformed Christian Religion to the insolencies and contempts of the meanest people which as easily crowd and prevail upon them as waters do against crazy and yielding banks when once they see Ministers so stoop and debase themselves to the dictates and censures the fears and frowns the fancies and humours of giddy and inconstant people who naturally affect such liberty or looseness in Religion as may have least shew of divine Ligation and Authority but onely such as being of mens own choice and invention they may as easily reject as others obtrude The very Directory and its ordinances which gave the supersedeas or quietus est to the Liturgie of the Church of England doth not yet seem to intend any such severity as wholy to silence sequester eject the Lords Prayer ten Commandements or the Apostles Creed out of childrens Catechisms Ministers mouths or Christians publick profession and devotion in which they seem to me to appear a rich and invaluable Jewels giving the greatest lustre price and honour to their religious Solemnities CHAP. VII I Have already shewed you O worthy Gentlemen one great and evil instance of that inordinate liberty which some people have challenged of late to themselves in England to the great dishonour and detriment of the Christian Reformed Religion besides the disgrace and indignity cast upon this sometime famous and flourishing Church while they have endevoured to abolish all those holy Summaries and wholsome Forms which are the best and meetest preservers of true Faith holy Obedience and mutual Charity among the community of Christian people Nor are these the onely extravagancies of vulgar licentiousnesse whose inordinate and squalid torrent like an inundation of waters knows not how to set any bounds of modesty reason or conscience to it self but they have farther adventured as a rare frolick of popular freedome to invade and usurp upon to confound and contemn to divide and destroy the office honour authority the succession and derivation yea the source and original of that sacred Priesthood or Evangelical Ministry and mission which was ever so highly esteemed reverenced and maintained among all true Christians as well knowing that Its rise and institution was divine from our Lord Jesus Christ as sent of God his Father who alone had authority to give the Word and Spirit the Mission and Commission the Gifts and Powers that are properly ministeriall Which as the blessed Apostles first received immediately from Christ so they duly and carefully derived them to their Successours after such a method and manner as the Primitive and Catholick Churches in all places and ages both perfectly knew and without question exactly followed in their consecrating of Bishops and ordaining of Presbyters with Deacons as the onely ordinary Ministers of Christs Church whose ministeriall authority never was any way derived from depending upon or obnoxious to the humour fancy insolency and licentiousness of the common people To which miserable captivity and debasement as the Aaronicall or Levitical Priesthood was no way subjected so much less ought the Melchisedekian Christian and Evangelicall Priesthood which is no less soveraign and sacred nor less necessary and honourable in the Church of God So that those licentious intrusions which some people now affect in this point of the Ministry cannot be less offensive to Gods Spirit than they are directly contrary to those holy rules of power and order prescribed in the New Testament which both the Apostles and their successors both Bishops and Presbyters together with all faithfull people precisely observed in all those grand Combinations and Ecclesiasticall Communions whereto the Church of Christ was distributed in all nations where if sometime the peoples choice and suffrage were tolerable as to the person whom they desired and nominated for their Bishop or Presbyter yet it was never imaginable that either Bishop or Presbyter was sufficiently consecrated and ordained that is invested with the power office and authority ministeriall meerly by this nomination and election of the people which indulgence in time grew to such disorder as was intolerable in the Church much less was any esteemed a Minister of Christ onely because he obtruded himself upon that service The late licentious variations innovations invasions corruptions and interruptions even in this grand point of the Evangelicall office and Ministry in England have partly by the common peoples arrogancy giddiness madness and ingratitude and not a little by some Preachers own levity fondness flattery and meanness of spirit not onely much abated and abased to a very low ebbe that double honour which is due but they have poured forth deluges of scorn contempt division confusion poverty and almost nullity not onely upon the persons of many worthy Ministers but upon the very order and office the function and profession whose sacred power and authority the pride petulancy envy revenge cruelty and covetousness of some people have sought not onely to arrogate and usurp as they list but totally to innovate enervate and at last extirpate For nothing new in this point can be true nothing variable can be venerable that onely being authentick which is ancient and uniform that onely authoritative which is Primitive Catholick and Apostolick both in the copy and originall in the first commission and the exemplification I confess I formerly have been and still am infinitely grieved to hear and ashamed to report what enormous liberties many men have of late years taken to themselves in this point of being Ministers of the Gospel what contradictions of sinners what cruell mockings sawings asunder what buffetings strippings crucifyings and killings all the day long the Ancient and Catholick Ministry of this all Churches hath lately endured in England since the wicked wantonness of some men hath taken pleasure to be as thorns in the eyes goads in the sides of the Ch. of England and Its Ministers be they never so able successfull and deserving whom to calumniate contemn impoverish and destroy in their persons credits estates liberties yea and lives hath seemed like Mordecai to Hamans malice and wrath so small a sacrifice to the fierceness and indignation of some men that they have aimed at the utter extirpation of the Nation the nullifying cashiering and exautorating of their whole office and function either owning no Ministers in any divine office place and power or obtruding such strange moulds and models of their own invention as are not more novell and unwonted than ridiculous and preposterous
son Henry the eighth into Gods vineyard for the work office and honour of a Church-man Now a Gentleman of the first head disdaines it a Yeoman disputes it If the Fathers piety can digest to make the meanest of his sons a Minister the Mothers tenderness dreads it if the good Mothers zeal devotes the poor youth to that perpetuall servitude yet the Fathers prudence and policy rather chuseth for him a life of more activity ease peace pleasure and honour if it be but to make him as the last refuge a common trouper or a foot-souldier who may in time over-awe the best Bishop and Minister in a County yea a whole Diocese and association of them if Ministers shrink the next ten years as they have done of late Nor may any wise men that wish well to their Countrey and the Church of England ever flatter themselves that one man of a thousand who hath good abilities of mind or any competent estate sufficient to redeem himself from the servilities of poverty and popularity will ever condemne himself in a monastick or melancholy humour to be a Minister The old stocks already are dwarft in great part or hewn down and generally they will be but shrubs on which the Ministry hereafter will be grafted in a foile and age that growes so barren stingy ungenerous unbenigne to them Possibly there may be now and then an heroick resolution in a Gentleman of worth for family parts and estate to assert the honour of his Saviour and the declining dignity of his blessed Ministry by undertaking holy orders but these are rare birds and will be Phoenixes in after-ages not more admirable than commendable indeed when they come in at the right doore of Catholick ordination and Apostolick succession which are the visible seales of Divine Authority and Commission conferred of old even from the first age by none that ever I read without Episcopall power and precedency which immediately succeeded the Apostles in that ordinative and gubernative eminency which I believe was to be ordinary and constant in the Churches Oeconomy both to preserve an orderly polity and to confer holy orders with due that is Divine authority in an uninterrupted succession But where a childs portion must be wholly raised by a mans own industry and Gods blessing upon his employment in the Ministry O how cruell will those parents seem to their sons at years of discretion when once they come to tast and drink deep of that cup of gall and vinegar tenuity and contempt which some mens charity designes to mix for Ministers How will such poor and despised Preachers all their tedious and necessitous lives condemn and in the bitterness of their souls sometime be ready to curse as Job and Jeremiah did the dayes of their birth that preposterous zeal and pitiless piety which bred them up with no small care cost and pains onely to condemn them to the pulpits as to the gallies of plebeian slavery and necessity when they shall by wofull experience find that all their costly learning and education their ingenious parts and excellent abilities have made them like the sacrifices of old adorned with ribbands and garlands that they may with the greater pomp and solemnity be slain by popular insolency when parents devoting their hopefull sons to the service of the Church is to prefer them to labour and sorrow to pains and poverty to scorn and shame to vulgar contempt and contradiction Which very unpleasing and horrid apparitions of all manner of discouragements have of later years so evidently damped and discouraged many worthy men that not onely very hopefull scholars have diverted their studies to any other design than that of Divinity and the Ministry but few parents who can find any other way to dispose of their sons are so unnaturall as to expose them to that sad fate which they see attends every Minister that dares own the right way of acquiring and exercising the sacred authority of that function Certainly Origens juvenile impatience not to be a Martyr was not many degrees above the resolution of those young men who will now adventure to be Ministers in England upon a good and Catholick account which equally abhors plebeian petulancy popular dependency and uncatholick novelty And to hope that common people will in time grow better-natur'd toward Ministers by enjoying whatever liberties they list to arrogate or indulge to themselves in Religion is so high a presumption as is next door to despair unless it can be imagined that mankind naturally enemies to God and all grace will of themselves learn to value their souls and their eternall interests which are so remote from their senses as much as they do their bodies and estates or that they will look upon Divines and Ministers as no less necessary for their good than Lawyers and Physicians are whose fees and entertainments tell the world that men willingly or necessarily bestow many pounds in order to secure their bodily health and wealth when they miserably and basely grudge at three half-pence spent upon their Ministers and their souls on which to bring men to set a due value hath been in all ages the chief end of true Religion the great work of all the Prophets Apostles holy Bishops and godly Ministers yea the main design next the divine glory of God himself and our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ. Men are miserably betrayed to themselves when they are suffered to live at that liberty or looseness which will certainly debase despise and damn their souls Which sad events being chiefly imputable to common peoples own folly and madness yet will those men be highly responsible for them in whose power it was either to teach them better or to restrain them from those profligate humours by which prodigal and poor wretches are prone to destroy as well as to despise both their Ministers and themselves whom to perswade to a true value and reverence of themselves is an high point of Philanthropy and Theologie of charity and piety of humanity and Divinity which foundation once well laid would soon recover the decayed and desolating condition of Ministers who will never be valued loved or rewarded proportionably to their worth labours and dignity untill men think they have infinite need of them yea more need than of the most learned and honest Lawyers or the most faithfull Physicians who have so great an influence yea empire upon mankind because men sensibly feel and find the want of them which they do not of their able Ministers every prating intruder being enough to serve their turn But I have done with the causes and occasions the instances and evidences of the decayes and deformities of Religion in the Church of England which chiefly rising from the licentiousness of people and the inordinateness of Ministers have been the main subject of this second Book BOOK III. SETTING FORTH THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES Felt or feared from the Distractions of RELIGION in ENGLAND CHAP. I. HAving in the FIRST BOOK
which can by no persons of any right understanding be thought to be the temper of any thing that is worthy to bear the name inscription of the true God or the Christian and Reformed Religion This is not the pulse of piety nor can be the influence of Gods holy wise and peaceable spirit No Christian can be so uncatechised as not to know that these wounds and scarres which are upon the face of Religion and made by Christians of the same countrey and communion are not the marks of Christs sheep nor the characters of his Disciples who have been in all ages most eminent for all graces and vertues for all things true comely orderly just generous benigne charitable none exceeded or equalled them for mutuall love while they were neer or far off insomuch that primitive Assemblies of Bishops Presbyters and people were most lively resemblances of that Angelick Order Quire and Harmony which is in Heaven before the Throne of God and of the Lamb. This union and subordination kept up the reverence of Religion and the dignity of the Evangelicall Ministry among Christians even then when persecution most raged against them when the persons of holy Bishops and Presbyters were imprisoned banished mangled and massacred by Heathenish and Jewish persecutors yet then was the authority of Ministers looked upon as sacred and divine not from the earth but heaven not from Kings and Princes not from Parlaments and civil Senates not from Protectors and Major-Generals or new Triers much lesse from any principle or power which is now challenged by popular arrogancy and vulgar usurpation but from Christ Jesus and so from the blessed God who sent his Son and He his Apostles and other Ministers as his Father sent him for the same end and work in those measures and proportions of his Spirit which were necessary for the calling converting continuing and perfecting the Church as the Body of Christ While these continued in an holy and uninterrupted succession of undoubted Authority as Apostles Bishops Pastors and Teachers of one mind and mission of one ordination and succession they easily preserved the doctrine of Christian Religion uncorrupted the Mysteries unprophaned the Ministry unviolated the reverence of Religion unabased but these once divided against each other in opinions and factions their ranks and order broken their succession interrupted their commission counterfeited or varied their office invaded their authority doubted denied and destroyed who knowes not what spring-tides what whole seas of faction and fury of negligence and irreverence of Atheisme and irreligion must necessarily flow in upon the face of any Church when the truest and compleatest Ministers shall be questioned or scorned the dubious defective or false ones magnified by secular policy or popular levity when Lay-men shall either think there are no Ministers invested with any due authority or themselves as good as the best set up after some novell and arbitrary modes of their own invention which must not onely vye with the true ancient and Catholick ordination of 1500 years standing but justle it quite out of the Church like the bastard Abimelech who slew all the legitimate issue of Gideon his Father Who can heare with trembling or pray with devotion or receive with reverence or be reproved with patience or be comforted with peace or be terrified with judgement or mortified to any lust or moderated to any passion or confined to new obedience or won to true repentance or moved in conscience or raised in hope when he applies to any or all these duties out of faction novelty curiosity levity custome affectation or hypocrisie when he thinks the Minister that officiates hath no more power than himself or his groom and footman when he looks upon his Minister as a poor man confined to his teddar staked to his petty living dependant upon mens charity exposed to plebeian contempt at best but an almesman of the State a publick pensioner or an Evangelicall Trooper whose commission is ad placitum hominum after the will of man having no divine power or authority to his office and work no legall right or title as to certainty or perpetuity in any thing he enjoyes as his wages further than the arbitrary favours or frowns of men are dispensed to him a very trembling and precarious orator whose pulpit is like the Ara Lugdunensis soon made his scene his coffin and his sepulchre especially if either fervently praying or faithfully preaching or justly yet wisely reproving he displease any captious and peevish Auditor who hath confidence enough to make him an offender for a word and influence enough to sequester to silence yea to starve him and his family if he use an honest and innocent parrhesy or freedome of speaking such as becomes the Messenger of heaven the Minister of Christ and the Ambassadour of God When the mouths of Gods oxen are thus easily muzled when his Prophets are so cheaply despised when his neerest servants are thus despitefully used no wonder if irreverence Atheisme and profanenesse in all sorts of people attend all religious exercises as necessarily as shadows doe those grosse bodies which intervene between the sight and light which is the first sad and bad consequence following and flowing from the inconstancie and unsetlednesse of Religion CHAP. V. BEsides the decayes of Piety and Charity in mens hearts both as to the principles power and practice becoming Christians which like a Lethargick numbnesse and stupor is come upon the old stock of Christians in England together with that unsetlednesse irreverence contempt Atheisme and profanenesse which grows upon the younger sort of people who have been bred amidst these our divisions distractions and extravagancies of Religion to very much of irreligion the lusts and vanities of their minds being not any way so curbed and repressed by the incumbent majesty and authority of any such setled and uniform Religion as is necessary either to perswade men to be good or to over-awe and restrain them from being so bad as they would be Besides these mischiefes which I have already set forth to you my Honoured Countrymen there is a second sad and bad consequence which like a Gangrene or spreading Canker daily frets the spirits and as it were eats up the very substance and vitals of Religion in this Nation by reason of those endlesse and vexatious disputes which agitate the spirits and exasperate the minds of all sorts of Christians and of none so much as Ministers who are looked upon as those that expose and offer themselves to be the chief heads or Champions of Religion in their severall parties who are to undertake the combates and challenges of all opposers which truly were no very hard province if either Ministers were unanimous and mutually assisted by concurrent judgement among themselves or if they were protected by the shield of this Churches declared Doctrine and uniform profession of Religion Which heretofore was justly esteemed as sacred inviolable and invulnerable having
Austin as a most setled and Catholick practise owned by S. Chrysost Athanas Ambr. Paulinus Gregory Nazian S. Basil Epiphanius so before them by Origen and Irenaeus Of whose testimonies I shall not need here to make more particular mention or repetition for they are in many books of late duly cited which have wrote in English and in Latin of this subject nor can any Anabaptists teeth so gnaw that chain and series of successive Infant-baptisme in the Church of Christ as to break any one link of it or instance in any one author or century where it appears to have been otherwise in the judgement or practise of any one Church or famous person 13. Which Catholick custome of the Church so fully consonant to Scripture and the evident mind of Christ set forth in all his Evangelicall dispensations both general to all men and specially to infants in the Church no judicious sober humble and charitable Christian can either doubt with any shew of reason or dispute against with any shew of modesty Considering that as the custome of the Churches of Christ is stamped with the authority of a law silencing all contradiction and suppressing all novelty by the Apostle S. Paul so Christ himself bids us to heare the Church which if it hold good in lesser censures and determinations of private Congregations how much more is it our duty to be attentive to and observant of the Churches directions which are Catholick whose authority is very great and sacred as the pillar and ground of Truth holding it forth by doctrine and example by Scripture and practise Nor do I doubt that Christ and his Apostles left many things as to the outward polity practise and ministration of Religion lesse clear and expresse in the letter of the Word that thereby the credit and authority of the Catholick Church might be more conspicuous and venerable with all peaceable and orderly Christians who may safely defer this honour to the Catholick Church and to every particular Church agreeing to it as to acquiesce in a conformity to its judgement and practise no way contrary to the Word of God from which it cannot be presumed that the Catholick Church of Christ from the beginning or in any Age did vary either through ignorance or wilfulnesse however particular Churches and Teachers might 14. The Catholick testimony of the Church of Christ is more than a bare humane or historick witnesse it is so sacred so divine so irrefragable that it is more to be valued than an Angels from heaven and therfore ought in all reason and conscience to end such controversies lately raised in the Church and so it would have done long ago if humane passions and interests had not swayed more with some men than matter of conscience and Religion or if the Baptisme of infants were the onely thing that some Anabaptists have an aking tooth at or a mind to pull down No that cannot much hurt them nor doth any mischief or inconvenience follow that pious custome either to parents or children yea much good and comfort accrues to both Religion never thrived but with it no point of faith is prejudiced by it no Evangelicall truth or mercy is diminished or over-stretched but rather asserted and magnified to its due and divine extent Yet Infant-baptisme must be still crucified between the policy of the Anabaptists and their partiality their partiality urgeth one or two limited places against many pregnant and large ones their policy I fear would attain something beyond and more to the advantage of their popular spirits and designes which have in many places been discovered as far from equity and charity in civil regards as they are in this of Baptisme far from verity modesty and antiquity scornfully slighting the testimony of the Churches of Christ in all ages for which undoubtedly they had sufficient warrant from Christ and his Apostles even before the letter of the New Testament was written or the Canon setled Nor did they either need or expect a more explicite commission of baptizing of infants of believing parents than that which was sufficiently expressed as in the generall command to make Disciples in all nations baptizing them so also by the particular words and actions of Christ toward infants not without check to his Disciples also by his requiring all to be born again of Water and the Spirit who pretend to be of the Kingdome of Heaven that is the visible Church and lastly by the former parallell-dispensations of Gods mercy in the Covenant of grace by Circumcision to the members of his Church as children of faithfull Abraham both young and old men and infants 15. Contrary to all which for a few new men spitefully peevishly and everlastingly thus to contest and indeed onely cavill I conceive is not onely a great irreverence and scorn put upon the Church of Christ which we should respect love and honour as the mother of us all but it is an high affront to Christ to his Word Truth and Promise to be ever with it even to the end of the world by his Spirit leading it into all Evangelicall Truths for precept and duty as well as promise and comfort also keeping it from all Catholick Apostasies into any errour destructive to the foundation If they that reject or despise any one of Christs Messengers despise himselfe and his father how much more they that disbelieve despise and discredit so many of his Messengers and Ministers who in all ages have by uniforme word and practise declared to us the mind of Christ as to this point of Infant-baptism By which unhappy Controversie as by many other the strange but just judgements of God have of late in full vials of wrath been poured upon this Church of England by the Anabaptistick spirit chiefly after so much light and truth peace and unity grace and piety poured forth upon us by Gods former munificent mercy sanctifying and sealing with his Spirit and grace in due time that Sacrament of Baptisme which thousands had received in their infancy to their parents comfort to the infants happinesse dying and living also to the great glory of God in this as other Churches in all ages Nor is there to this day after so many bickerings and contests so many publick heats and flames kindled upon this and other accounts any way of wisdome and meeknesse publickly used by which to quench these flames of wild-fire which threaten not onely to scorch but utterly to consume this Reformed and truly Catholick Church with all its true Ministers and holy ministrations in which the Anabaptists are highly subservient to the Papists grand projects and designs which is to deface disgrace and quite overthrow all the frame of Reformed Religion and the face of any either uniform or reformed Church in England CHAP. XII FOr my part I freely professe that if the administration of Baptisme in point of age and time
conferences occasion better understanding between many of them and so by Gods blessing in time produce some such counsels as may be worthy of them and the publick But if their aime be slily to get into some hands such popular advantages by their soft insinuations of seeming equanimity and moderation as shall further displace and disparage the former Catholick Government of this and all ancient Churches they will be but as new patches put to an old garment which will make the rent and deformity the greater Certainly the state of the Reformed Religion in England will never be happy till it is setled nor setled till it be uniform nor uniform till the office and authority of Ministers be valid and venerable nor will this ever be untill the sanctity and samenesse of ordination together with the use of Ecclesiasticall power and holy Ministrations be rendred so August so Sacred and Complete as may be most conforme to Scripture and to pure Antiquity for while Ministers are of diverse makes and moulds they will be of diverse minds nor can they produce other than multiforme Christians of different fashions and deformed factions in Religion which do as necessarily bring forth infinite mischiefs in any Church or Christian State as the itch breeds scratching and scratching fetches blood As the blessed Apostles so their holy successors kept to one way of Religious Order and Power which preserved the unity of faith and love among Christian Bishops Presbyters and people I confess I do sometimes in my sad and retired solitudes hope that our common calamities may by Gods softning and calming grace upon mens spirits make both all Godly Ministers and all good people so wise as humbly sincerely and charitably to search into the cleare steps of Primitive prudence Apostolicall order and Ecclesiacall Authority which had due and tender regard to all sorts of Christians so as to keep up a meet subordination with a Christian communion To which end I was willing to hope this shew of Association might conduce But when I find in some of them nothing that looks civilly upon Episcopacy many things cast reprochfully and scornfully upon the excellent Bishops of England and all the Episcopall Clergy who were not inferiour in any regard to the best Associators when I find that some of them have the confidence to exclude all that have of late yeares been ordained by any Bishop with Presbyters though such an one as the late most venerable Bishop of Norwich Dr. Hall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when I see that some rigid Presbyterians and popular Independents affect with great Magistery to Duopolize all Church-power to grasp into their hands and bosomes as the sides of a drag-net meeting together all Ministeriall Authority not onely not owning the best surviving Bishops with any respect nor yet in any faire way applying to any of them after all their undeserved indignities but spitefully and professedly abdicating all communion with them under the name of Bishops reducing them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the levell and parallel of Presbyters which the 630. Orthodox Fathers in the fourth generall famous Councell of Chalcedon which all Ministers of England approved and I think subscribed to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an absurd and unreasonable practise yea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a great sacriledge and Zonaras upon that Canon makes it a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fighting as Giants against God as a dethroning of Christ the Bishops eminent authority and presidency in the Church being a lively representation of Christs sitting in the midst of the throne who did undoubtedly delegate his visible authority of governing the Church to the chief Apostles above the 70. and all other Teachers after which manner and proportion these chief Apostles who were the first and great Bishops after Christ did both commit and derive their authority to the following Bishops their successors who were a lesser sort or second edition of Apostles when I see what an Idol some Ministers and people make of their Scotch-Covenant by which great Engine or Military Ram they still think themselves bound to batter Episcopacy as if their Covenanting against it as it then stood in England were an obligation to persecute all Episcopacy for ever when in earnest the least variation of its former constitution both satisfies and absolves from that bond which some men still superstitiously venerate as if it were an image faln from heaven a matter of divine precept and institution and not rather of humane machination and politick invention which we are sure it was as if it were the solemn result of the pious or of the peaceable and publick sense of this Nation and not rather the issue of troubled braines and broken times indeed many forget that the Covenant smells more of fire smoke of sulphur and gun-powder than of the Spouses myrrh and perfumes of Christian Love and Charity Again when I consider how passion and pride betrayes many men to rashnesse rashnesse to folly folly to obstinacy obstinacy to presumption presumption to animosities and these to unchristian fewds everlasting despite and bitternesse which must still be vented as cholerick humors once in a month against the most innocent and Primitive Episcopacy yea against the most deserving and yet most suffering Bishops of this Church and of all the world old and new when I see the personall errata's and exorbitances or infirmities of some few Bishops by most uncharitable Synecdoches which put a part for the whole are in a pittifull fallacious way of vulgar oratory urged against all Episcopacy and Bishops in any orderly eminency or presidentiall authority in the Church contrary to the faith and honour of all antiquity and the former happy experiences of this Reformed Church when I find how wary and shy some Ministers are in their zeal and forwardnesse for their petty Associations to seem to own even their own judgements and reall inclinations toward any such condescentions and close with Episcopacy as may reflect upon their former transports how loth they are really and freely to offer such proposals as are equable and ingenuous pure and peaceable to the Episcopall party who aim at no more than such a paternall presidency and order as may best preserve the undoubted power of ordination and Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction as it was Primitively setled in and transmitted by the hands of the first Bishops who immediately succeeded the Apostles When I see as I plainly do this partiality restivenesse and cowardise in some Ministers of good parts then do I almost sink in despaire ever to see or enjoy while I live in England any thing in the Order Government and Discipline of this Church that may look like the Primitive pattern which was indeed a Catholicon approved in all Churches used in all ages and submitted to by all sorts of good Christians the onely proper Antidote I think against the poysons of our times farre beyond any of these kind of new confections which tampering and partiall Empiricks
and tyrannies of some Bishops as if all were to be blamed none to be commended and highly magnifying the zeal themselves have for a through Reformation that is that they might freely and fully gratifie their own and peoples ambitions by setting Episcopacy and all Bishops quite beside the saddle on purpose to make way for themselves who are for the most part as fit to governe Churches alone as apes are to build houses I crave leave in order to promote a faire and firme accommodation with all ingenuous freedom and candor to make some more particular application of my desire and designs to those Ministers of the Presbyterian and Independent waies who have opposed their faces sharpned their tongues or pens and hardened their hearts most against all Episcopacy even in the most innocent usefull regular and moderate constitution of it I meane that Primitive order and paternall residency which was universally acknowledged to be eminently in one President as Bishop or chief Pastor over many Presbyters in his Diocese after the pattern of the 12. Apostles who were by Christs appointment above the 70. and so their declared successors as Timothy Titus Archippus those others who are called the Angels of the 7. Asian Churches with many others to whom they derived not onely their example and practical constitution but their Authority and Power Ecclesiastical as is evident by the Canons and Rules set forth not onely in ancient Councils but in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus for the setling and managing of Church-order Discipline and Government in such a way as clearly gives not to any consistory or company of Presbyters and people but to one man a Paramount Authority as Bishop or Superiour both in Ordination and Jurisdiction above others as his inferiours and so subordinate to his spirituall power so far as to reprove examine censure reject c. All which being to me immoveable and immutable foundations for the establishing of Episcopall presidency as the onely succession of that ordinary Apostolick power and authority which is necessary to be alwaies in the Church of Christ they do make me dayly by these considerations more restive and lesse compliant to any new waies or Associatings than perhaps otherwise I should be both by the sociablenesse of my temper and my earnest desire for another way of happy union among Ministers of worth and moderation This uncorrespondency to which I am upon those grounds compelled is with the greater regret to me because I know the learning the industry the zeal the piety the ingenuity the potency of some of those my dissenting brethren in their preaching writing praying and living I am charitably perswaded of many of their sincerity in aiming at Gods Glory and at the purity of holy Ministrations I do not see wherein many of them differ from the best Episcopall Divines ancient or modern as to any main matter of Religion in doctrine or duty Nor can I find any reason yet alledged by any of them sufficient to justifie that pertinacious distance and defiance which of later yeares onely they have taken up against Episcopacy meerly upon the account of jealousie and impatiency to choose and admit a learned grave and worthy Bishop as a fixed Father or constant Governour and Grave Moderator authoritatively to preside among them in their severall grand distributions or Dioceses after that order and eminency which were most comely for them and most unquestionable as to the fixing and completing of Church-order and Government to all sober Christians satisfaction I will not tax or suspect the soberest of my Presbyterian or Independent brethren of such pride and arrogancy as can endure no superiour or chief among them I rather conceive it was a Sympathethick impulse at first from those Scotish motions and pretentions which swerved them not onely from the former good constitution of the Church of England to which they heretofore very orderly and happily submitted but also from their conformity to the Catholick Church in that point to which I believe their judgement heretofore ahd inclination now may incline and lead them as apparently best for their publick and private interests Some are prone to suspect that the best of them did not heretofore submit so humbly and heartily to their Lawfull Superiours and Governours in the Church as in duty and conscience by the lawes of God and man they ought to have done others challenge them for want as of piety and honesty so of Christian charity yea and of common humanity or compasâ—ion for their forwardnesse and fiercenesse to undoe all Bishops and all dignified Clergy-men at least for their ready consent to their utter ruine holding the garments of those that stoned them to death never so much as praying heartily for them while they were in power nor yet pittying them in their miscarriages or calamities no nor so far interceding for or listning to any just moderation which was oft proposed and offered as might have been not more happy for the Bishops than for themselves as Presbyters yea for this whole Church and all Christian people in England I am willing to hope that many Ministers mutations began with good affections and were carried on at first with principles of sincerity and zeal though not with that knowledge meekness and wisdome which was requisite But to many of them that are now the most haughty stiffe and obstinaâ—e against all accommodating with Episcopacy I cannot but still appeale whether they do not in their consiences find that either at first or afterward some secular advantages and private hopes did not a little warp and sway their inclinations to novelties whether they felt not the secret but dissembled strokes of discontent anger envy revenge popularity ambition feigned jealousies inordinate affectations of liberty exciting and animating them to the utter extirpation of Episcopacy whether they did not by a self-conceit generally imagin themselves not onely jointly but severally as fit and able to govern the Church in the whole or in parcels as any yea all the Bishops in England whether any of them do believe the case of Episcopacy to have ever been fully heard freely discussed and impartially stated by the peaceable wisdom and piety of this nation whether many of these Ministers as Politicians and Statesmen did not rather comply with the streame and vogue of times running fiercely against Episcopacy than with their own clear convictions in reason law scripture antiquity conscience whether they kept that equanimity and moderation in all things of this nature which became wise and good men of an Evangelicall Spirit and temper or were not biassed yea transported by something that was popular and sinister whether they do not think that the violence and precipitancy of some of their examples was beyond all solid arguments to drive many well-meaning Ministers and People to such heady and hot petitionings against Episcopacy and to such pittilesse Antipathies against all the most excellent Bishops which were then and still are England
Last of all I appeal to all sober Ministers whether they do not think that Episcopacy as now it is stripped and devested of all secular greatnesse and reduced to Primitive poverty might be as safely restored as any of their crude and new Associations in their severall stations and formations with their mutable moderators and temporary Presidents either in greater or lesser Circles which are but the thin parings small shreds and weaker shivers of Episcopacy whether they do not in their consciences think that some righteous and just compensation ought to be done to good Bishops and to the case of true Episcopacy which have suffered so hard measure a long time now in England that so we might not in this nation beyond any place in the Christian world cast eternall and indeleble reproches not onely upon this Church since its first plantation but upon the Catholick Church of Christ in all ages and places as if wilfully for ignorantly they could not they had from the beginning swerved from the Apostles prescript and example in the Order and Government Discipline and Authority which was to be in the Church of Christ I will not suspect any honest-hearted or worthy Minister of having been so base and sacrilegious in his Spirit as therefore to cry down Episcopacy root and branch new and old good and bad out of secret hopes of filthy lucre and secular glory expecting some benefit by plundring the personall estates of Bishops or by sequestring the revenues of their Churches or gaging to buy at last some good peniworths of them These temptations were so black and base so sordid and Plutonian that they may not be suspected of any Ministers or other men but those whose notorious actions have put them beyond all suspicion Presuming therefore in charity that those precipitant alterations in Church-Government which have produced so sad consequences and calamities in this Church were from principles of honesty and purposes of integrity in the best Ministers on all sides at first and finding now that the itch of former novelties is past and the pleasure of Ministers scratching one another is now very little because of the rawnesse and sorenesse of all their common conditions besides the distractions and confusions of ordinary people and foreseeing that this painfull posture is not onely very grievous to all honest Protestants but dangerous to this Church and Nation if they be not speedily healed Give me further leave to ask of the greatest Zelots and sticklers against all Episcopacy and the admirers of either Presbytery or Independency whether after they reflect upon the rough meanes used and the sad events which have followed the design of extirpating Episcopacy and introducing any other waies they do still believe was pretended that either the God of order or the Saviour of his Church who is the Bishop of our soules and the exemplary Institutor of Episcopall eminency in his chief Apostles for Power and Authority over all parts of his Church who accordingly transmitted their ordinary power and superintendency to others as Bishops or successive or minor Apostles in all Churches whether I say they do in earnest believe that God or Christ or the Apostles ever were or are such enemies to all Episcopall order and presidentiall eminency as hath been vulgarly clamored and passionately pretended so that now after 1600. yeares prescription and succession of Episcopacy in all Churches God is not to be pleased unlesse Episcopacy be extirpated and Presbytery or Independency as waies of parity and popularity be brought in Can they sufficiently wonder at the patience of God and our Saviour Christ that for 1500. yeares bare with Episcopacy yea continued it in the peaceable possession of Church-Government as to the Primacy and priority of it both in Order and Authority without any notable check from any Martyr or holy man T is strange that Aarons Rod should never bud before nor Presbytery challenge its Divine right in all that time nor Christ ever enjoy the freedome of his Kingdom and Scepter till these last and worst times Do they in earnest think that no Scripture no word of God old or new no precepts and paternes of the Apostles no Primitive practise no true testimonies of Fathers Councils and credible historians do any way favour a right Episcopacy further than they were misunderstood warped and wrested by all antiquity from the mind of God the will of Christ and the way of the Apostles onely to gratifie the ambition of some few Bishops and Clergy-men who made way for Popes and Antichrists T is strange all should conspire thus to eject Christ from his Kingdom and Government or to abuse the whole Christian world from holy Polycarp Polycrates and Ignatius his daies all Primitive Bishops yea from St. Johns dayes and yet none detect or decry the fraud none persevere in the first way if it were as is now pretended Independent or Presbyterian in the many shepherds or many sheep without any prime pastors and Governours among them as Bishops Yea further I demand whether their divisions at least into such a Dichotomy as they now are in be not a just jealousie to sober men that both of these novelties may be in the wrong since both of them cannot be in the right whether regular Episcopacy may not yet be as the virtue or medium between these vicious extremes which are made up either of parity popularity or of Tyrannick and Papall Episcopacy whether they now find that either of thse new waies have any thihg so much to plead out of Scripture for themselves as Episcopacy hath or the thousandth part so much out of any good Antiquity whether they be not pure novelties of later invention and unprosperous use hardly yet formed and never well setled in this or any other famous or Reformed Church that enjoyed its just freedom without the oppression of either sacrilegious Princes or heady and mutinous people Can any learned and sober Minister either Presbyterian or Independent now flatter himselfe that there is no light or shadow no shew of Reason or Religion of Scripture or Antiquity for Episcopacy Can they any longer wonder without ignorance or impudence that learned and moderate Episcopall Divines are so firme to their first principles and perswasions which are not easily answered or with any reason overthrown by any ancient example at least Episcopall men are very excusable in adhering to their ancient and Primitive way till they find these novell opposites to Episcopacy and rivals to each other so well reconciled by a firme Associating together as may wholly supply the Office Power and place of Episcopacy which yet they have not done as to the Order Polity Peace and Unity of the Church or to the satisfaction of the most learned and godly men at home and abroad Where I beseech you O my good and gracious brethren of Presbyterian and Independent principles where do you think were the Eyes the Learning the Wits the Hearts the Honesty the Conscience
would be established and the tranquillity of the Nation highly setled and confirmed upon the best foundation of peace that can be among mankind In all which things we have and do on all sides so far extremely suffer as we differ by such unreasonable distances and uncharitable defiances first among Ministers which are presently followed with all disorder lukewarmenesse irreligion profaneness arrogancy Atheism Affectation and Faction among the people in England chiefly as I conceive upon this account The needlesse variating shifting and changing of that Primitive plat-forme that Apostolick and Catholick order and succession of Ecclesiasticall Authority and Ministeriall power in this Church which hath ever been owned with religious reverence and conscience in Engl. ever since it was Christian preserved as sacred by the most pious Princes honored as Divine by the most Religious and reformed Parlaments prospered by the speciall benignity and grace of God peaceably enjoyed by all devout judicious and humble Christians to the unspeakable comfort of their souls living and dying when they knew who were their Bishops Pastors and spirituall Fathers owning them with all due respect and love as in Christs stead submitting to them for conscience sake as to the Lord and receiving from them good instructions just reproofes holy comforts and heavenly Mysteries not as from man but God after the rule of the Scriptures and the example of the best Christians in all ages who looked upon Episcopacy or the Government of the Church as fixed completed and exercised chiefly by Bishops assisted with worthy Presbyters not onely as a book of a larger volume greater print and fairer binding than Presbytery or Independency that is the sole power of Presbyters or people by themselves but they looked upon the Episcopall eminency as having more in it of Apostolick power and Ecclesiasticall Authority both in point of ordination and jurisdiction than is either in Presbyters or people by themselves Bishops and Presbyters being as the eyes and hands which are not more members of the body than the leggs and feet yet they are the more noble parts and have more of publick use and virtue as to inspection direction and operation for the common good of all parts in the body No wonder then if the honor of all Religion be much abated if the renown of this Reformed Church be thus abased no wonder that Presbytery it self is so baffled and Independency despised no wonder that all the Office Power and Authority of Ministers together with their persons be reduced to such a low ebb and almost quite exhausted when Bishops the grand Cisternes and chief Conduites of all Ecclesiasticall Orders and Ministeriall Authority as derived from Christ and his Apostles are not onely bruised and crackt but utterly broken cut off and cast away whom yet no Presbyter or Independent of any learning or forehead can deny actually to have been in all ages used and esteemed as the constant successors and immediate substitutes of the Apostles first invested with that power by the Apostles themselves after their decease chosen by the Presbyters and after consecrated by other Bishops to be as the prime receptacles conservators and conveyers of all Ecclesiasticall Power and Ministeriall Authority not onely as Teachers of Divine truths preachers of the Gospell and dispensers of holy Mysteries in common with Presbyters but as chief Fathers Pastors and Rulers of those larger flocks which constituted those famous ancient Churches which were not limited to the bounds of one family or one congregation or one little parish in which one Preacher or Presbyter may in ordinary duties suffice but they extended to such ample combinations as contained large Cities and their Territories in which were many thousands of Christians many congregations and many Presbyters who all made but one Church or polity Ecclesiasticall under one chief Pastor or Bishop residing with the Presbyters at first in the chief City afterward these were fixed to particular parishes or villages by the care of the Bishops Without whose authority and consent nothing of consequence was done by any in the publick managing of Religion without the just brand and censure of Schismaticall arrogancy it being ever judged that Bishops had derived to them an higher degree of Apostolick power and Church jurisdiction than ever was or could be in any one or many Presbyters or people without them who could not regularly nor never did unblamably ordaine of themselves or by their own sole Authority any Ministers or exercise the censures of the Church in a plenary and absolute jurisdiction without deriving their power from their respective Bishops without whom and against whom few ever acted in any age of the Church and never any good Christian refused subjection to and communion with their lawfull and orthodox Bishops no nor did ever any Hereticks or Schismaticks proceed to such extravagancy as to reject and disclaime all Episcopall order till of later yeares whose example hath little in it to make it compared with much lesse preferred before Catholick customes and Primitive patternes of all ancient Churches what ever glosses the wit of men or their craft or their successes or their Godly and necessary pretences may put upon their variations and schismes CHAP. XII IT is not now my design either to spin out or to wind and summe up that long and tedious thread of dispute which hath been so much snarled and entangled of late yeares in England by popular pens or cleared and unfolded by more able learned and impartiall Writers Who is not weary now and ashamed of those thread-bare allegations drawn from the samenesse or promiscuous use of Names which we know vary with time and must yield to use and custome as if Apostle Evangelist Bishop Presbyter Pastor Preacher Teacher and Ruler they may adde Deacon and Servant and Minister were all one in the equivalency of their power order and authority in the Church For any one nay all these names are in the latitude of their sense given to some one man or officer in the Church yet in the more strict precise and Emphatick sense they denote different gifts orders authorities dispensations and functions as well as degrees in the Church of Christ which did never confound Deacons with Presbyters nor Presbyters with Bishops nor all with the Apostles because the chief Apostles who contained in their ample authority and commission all Ecclesiasticall powers eminently under Christ are sometimes called Presbyters Compresbyters and also Deacons or Ministers of Jesus Christ and servants of the Church deriving all these powers in their severall degrees and orders to Bishops Presbyters and Deacons after them To the first as to a lesser sort of Apostles but chief Rulers or Overseers in the Church they gave the eminent and peculiar power of ordaining Presbyters and exercising spirituall jurisdiction over them as is evident in the power that Timothy and Titus had given them by Commission from the great Apostle St. Paul who certainly in this was conforme to
the necessity and use of Bishops yea they deny any flaw or defect to be in their new Presbyterian and popular ordinations for want of any other Bishops but themselves who are as pert in their novelty as ever any Prelates were in their antiquity That these Heteroclite or equivocall ordinations have of late been acted in England with much self applause and popular parade by meer Presbyters I well understand but quo jure by what right from God or man by what authority civill or Ecclesiasticall I could never yet see yea I am sure no law of God or men heretofore ever was thought to give any such power to meer Presbyters without yea against their lawfull Bishops insomuch that many learned and sober men have much blamed at least suspected these Presbyterian transactions for Schismaticall presumptions these ordinations for disorderly usurpations at least in such a Church as England was where there were and still are venerable Bishops of the orthodox faith reformed profession and ancient constitution willing and able to do their duty in the point of ordination Which in all ordinary cases appeares to have ever been their peculiar right specially derived to them as Bishops from the Apostles through all successions of times and Churches without any interruption except when some factious and insolent Presbyters ventured to be extravagant and usurpant whom all the learned Fathers venerable Councils and good Christians in the Church every where condemned as most injurious because usurping that Authority which no Apostle no Councill no Bishop ever gave to any that were meer Presbyters in their Ordination and Commission no more than the Lawes or Canons of this Church and State Nor is there as far as I can perceive any one place in Scripture that by any precept or example invests either one or more simple Presbyters with the power of trying and examining of laying on of hands of giving holy orders as from themselves alone of committing or transmitting what they had received to other faithfull men that should be able to teach All which were given to Timothy and Titus as chief Bishops The Pope of Rome indeed animated by those flatterers which would make him the sole Bishop by Divine right and all other Bishops as surrogates to him dependants upon him and derived from him as if there had not been 12 or 13 but onely one â—â—sion â—lick Chaire or prime seat of Episcopacy hath some â—eath given power of ordination to such as were but Presbyters as â—nd read of some Abbots and Priors but it was alwaies to the great scandall of the best Bishops and Presbyters of the Church as contrary to all ancient Orders Canons and Customes of the Church unlesse he first made them as Chorepiscopi or suffragane Bishops But in earnest it is hard to judge whether Popes or Presbyters be most enemies to Catholick Bishops As for the pious pomp and the specious apparences the formall dressings and verball adornings which they say are used by Presbyters in their late Ordinations in England though I never saw any of them yet I have heard and read so much of them as gives me to judge far less to be in them of authority true complete and valid than ought to be For besides the persons not impowered or commissionated to that office there is as I heare no transmitting and so no receiving of the holy Spirit as to that Ministeriall Order and Power which is thereby derived to Ministers as from Christ whatever there may be of godly solemnity and plausible formalities which are usually more studied and affected to please the people there where men are most conscious to the defect of authentick reall and righteous power But all these saintly shewes to wise men signifie nothing no nor the personal abilities either of the ordainers or ordained who cannot by their personall power knowledg virtues graces or private gifts make any Officer in State or in Armies in War or in Peace much lesse in the Church and Ministry of Jesus Christ Alas no private capacity in any man can make the least petty Constable or Bailiffe or Corporall or Serjeant without they first have a publick and lawfull Commission from the fountains of Authority to give them an Authority far beyond any private arrogancy and presumed sufficiency of their own Possibly extraordinary cases may in time be their own excuses in such Churches where Bishops may be all dead or banished or where such as are Orthodox cannot be had and they that are will not ordain any Presbyters without imposing upon them such things as are erroneous and unlawfull but nothing can be pleaded that I yet see no nor doth the candor and charity of Bishop Usher know how to excuse such Presbyters from being Schismaticks factious presumptuous and disorderly who first cast off and forsake such Bishops as are of the same faith and reformed profession worthy and willing able and ready every way authorized by Church and State to do their duty The contempt and rejecting of such Bishops is I fear a great sin before God I am sure a great grievance to such Churches as first suffer those distractions And no doubt it is as a great so a needlesse scandall to most Churches and the best Christians in all the world nor can it be other then a foule reproach and scorn cast on all pious antiquity nor will it prove other than a lasting misery to any Church and Nation that wilfully continues that guilt and defect upon themselves and their posterity especially when God â—s them sufficient meanes to remedy that mischief to supply thâ—â—fects and to compose those differences which are ever followâ—â—he waâ— much more the needlesse expulsion of Primitive Episcopacy For whose power and authority while either Presbyters or people are scrambling they do but make Religion a May-game bring as we see both themselves and their Ministry into contempt for no Presbyters or people can while the world stands ever stamp such an honor and Authority Ecclesiasticall upon themselves as was in all ages and by all Churches consent besides the Scripture-Character and Apostolick signature set upon Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy which ever united centred and confirmed power in one man not over all which the Pope affects but over their Dioceses or Provinces A 4 th Objection much flourished by some popular Preachers against Bishops and all Episcopacy in any Authority and eminency above Presbyters is that Episcopacy is the root of Popery that Prelates were the parents of Antichrist that every Bishop hath a Pope in his belly and that the Pope is no other than an overgrown Bishop that to rout all Popery and raze the foundations of Romes pride all Prelacy or Episcopacy must be stubbed up My answer to this is that this objection sounds as little of truth as it savours much of malice especially in any Presbyters of any learning and ingenuity who well know the abasing of Bishops is the design and hath
been the magnifying of the Popes of Rome beyond their line and measure of old That if Episcopacy could have held its Primitive and ancient parity according to the Apostolick seates and paternes that one Chaire of Rome had not so far exalted it self in this Western Church above all those that are therefore called Gods because the power of Christ and the word of God came to them as much as to Rome and is to be derived by them to their successions T is certain that Bishops did not at first as Nimrod set up themselves by any private ambition they were either constituted by the Apostles yet living as Irenaeus Eusebius Tertullian and others tell us or when the Apostles were dead the Presbyters of every chief city and Territory or Diocese did as S. Jerom tells us choose some Apostolick and eminent person from among themselves to be their Bishop not compelled hereto by any civill powers nor by any popular force or faction but meerly moved so to do by the precept and pattern the constant custome and imitation of the Apostles which were so full of pregnant reason necessary order and holy policy that nothing could be better If any then be to be blamed for giving occasion to the Papal ambition and what some count the great Antichrist who is as Isid Hispal defines by so much the more Antichrist by how much more he professeth Christ yet lives or teacheth contrary to the rule and example of Christ it must be either the Apostles themselves who first designed Bishops as their successors or the succeeding Presbyters of every Church who to avoid Schisme and Confusion first chose successive Bishops in every Church after the death of the Apostles not onely in obedience to their commands and conformity to their pattern but in order to preserve necessary polity Primitive unity and Apostolick authority in the Church of Christ And yet now behold by a strange vertigo or change of Counsels Presbyters must in all hast pull down all Bishops the better to avoid Antichrist who lies as much in confusion as error in schisme as in heresie none of which will ever advance Reformation or setling of true Religion So that it is an intolerable insolency and rudenesse of some men to say or suspect that every Bishop whom the Apostles themselves or the Presbyters after them first constituted were but spawnes and embryo's of Antichrist when many yea most if not all the first and best Bishops for 300. yeares were not onely excellent preachers and wise governours after the way of the Apostles but such resolute Martyrs and confessors as few of the more delicate Presbyters and softer-fingred Independents of our age would willingly carry the least stick of their fagots or touch the least coale of their fires or bear the least stroke and burden of their torments As then the Papall Tyranny so the Presbyterian Parity and Independent Anarchy may and will give I fear greater advantages to Antichrists than ever Episcopall order and eminency either did or can do while wisely setled and managed Fifthly another great bugbeare or terriculament which scares some from looking back with the least cast of favour on Episcopacy is the terror they pretend to have had of some Bishops sharpnesses and severities of which say they many godly men feel the smart to this day My answer is I do not go about to justifie or excuse any unreasonable unseasonable indiscreet or uncharitable actions of any Bishops who are justly to be blamed so far as they exceeded their Commission and power by the Lawes of man or Christ and the Church given to them not for destruction but edification Though some Bishops might shew themselves to be but men yea and some of them to be harsh and rash enough in their passions yet these failings and infirmities they neither had nor discovered as they were Bishops no more than tyrants do tyrannize as they are Magistrates or Judges are corrupt as they are Judges or Presbyters are partiall popular and imprudent as they are preachers It must still be granted that not onely some but very many yea most Bishops in England since the Reformation were as Angels of God in their light and love in their excellent learning and worthy living every way which sufficiently proves that piety and Episcopacy may as well meet in one man as piety and Presbytery or sanctity and Independency If any of these good Bishops seemed sometime too severe to some that were rudely refractory against the lawes then in force in this Church and State possibly those very persons that most complaine of them will be found not short of the sharpest of them if any of these complainers have suffered by any Bishops rigors I am sure they have had their full and excessive revenge upon them But to avoid the feared exorbitancy of Episcopacy for the future it will be sufficient effectually to restore that Commune Consilium Presbyterorum common Counsel and concernment of worthy Presbyters to their pristine use and assistance without which Bishops should do nothing publick and authoritative according to the Canon of the Councel of Cartharge and agreeable to the judgement as of St. Jerom so of St. Cyprian Ignatius and all the ancients This as I formerly touched is the best preservative of Bishops authority of Presbyters priviledges of peoples liberty and the Churches safety As I believe Episcopacy by this time sees it did it self as much wrong as any men could design in doing many things of publick concern without the presence counsel and concurrence of their gravest and most discreet Presbyters and as I think that modest and sober Presbyters shall do not onely themselves a right but the best Bishops too in their Christian advise and assistance to bear partem solicitudinis part of the care trouble odium and envy which is prone to offend all good Bishops as all good Governours in Church and State so I conclude that violent Presbyters have done themselves the Bishops the people and this whole Church as much injury and indignity as they well can by rudely rejecting and obstinately refusing as much as in them lies to readmit the Order and Honor of Episcopall Presidency which indeed was the common Honor of the whole Clergy Episcopacy we know preferred many Ministers of the Gospel to be as Lords and Peers in England whereas Presbytery Independency have purely levelled and abased all Clergy-men to a plebeian condition if not to be slaves and vassals yet to be very vile and servile even in the esteem of the vulgar Certainly it was in prudence to be desired by all wise Presbyters and other Ministers rather to bear much under the burden of the Episcopal yoak which was to them more honos than onus a dignity than any depression than thus by a precipitant impatiency to run themselvs their whole Order or function into a plebeian slavery while they affected an inordinate liberty It is better for birds to be
to content themselves either with no idoneous Physitians and fit medicines or with such quacking applications and applicators as are no way apt for the work having neither skill nor dexterity to handle so tender yet so dangerous sores and wounds as those of Religion many times are not onely affecting the heads of men but coming neerest the very hearts of them yea and I may say these Church-distempers affect the very heart of Christ himself both God and man We find secular Magistrates and Judges many times with Herod and Pilate ready to set Christ at nought and condemne him souldiers we know have mocked him buffeted him crucified him and parted his garments among them But they were his choise Apostles with other ordained Ministers that professed and preached him These these first planted fenced and watered Christian Religion these preserved propagated and pruned the Church of Christ to this day as the husbandmen or labourers of Christs own sending into his vineyard as workers together with God in the great work of saving soules with these Apostles and Ministers he promised to be meaning them and their true successors to the end of the world as he hath been to this day never failing to assist Godly Bishops and other faithfull Presbyters of his Church to do his work as in private so in publick when they did orderly meet as his servants in his name to his glory and his Churches good suffering themselves to be impartially guided by his word and Spirit without serving the factious interests and sinister policies either of Prince or people Then then was it that Councils and Synods appeared to all sober-minded and humble-hearted Christians as the Starre did to the wise men at Jerusalem guiding them to Christ with exceeding great joy in orderly waies of truth and peace becoming Christian Ministers and people which was the blessed effect of the first Church Council we read of where James Bishop of Jerusalem with the Apostles of the Lord as chief and other Elders or Presbyters being met in the presence of Christian people did so consult discusse and resolve the dissensions then risen in the Churches as to send their determinations with this style and title It seemed good to the holy Ghost and to us whose Canons were read and received not onely with reverence and conscience but with joy and consolation So welcome and usefull to all good Christians are those meanes which are fitly and wisely applied after Gods method and the Apostles pattern to the reliefe and recovery of the Church The care of summoning and convocating such Ecclesiasticall Parlaments when need requires is worthy the piety and Majesty of Christian Princes and soveraigne Magistrates in whom that Authority resides as nursing Fathers of the Church but certainly the management and transaction of Religious affaires in them by way of devotion disputation and determination is the proper work of Church-men that are Godly Learned Wise and Honest both of Bishops as fixed and chief Rulers of the Church and of grave Presbyters as the Representees of the other Clergy chosen deputed intrusted and empowered by them fully and freely to deliberate and determine in those great concernments as Gods word and their own consciences shall direct them without any to over-awe them or to dictate to them I am not ignorant of the jealousies and prejudices that many even wise and good Christians have of such Assemblies Synods Convocations or Councils as are made up onely of Ecclesiasticks or Clergy-men Whos 's oft unhappy successes Gregory Nazianzen that great Divine and good Bishop complaines of in his dayes when the Arrian faction by the partiality of Emperours infected with their poyson strongly vyed in their Conventions against the Orthodox decisions the ancient Faith and Catholick customes of the Church setting up ever and anon in their juncto's and conventicles as St. Hilary expresseth it Diurnall Creeds and Menstruous Faiths being many times but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 theevish Synods furtive Conventicles suborned and slavish Assemblies either transported by humane passions or biassed by partiall affections or levened with popular factions or over-awed by secular powers and sacrilegious policies which made such conventions as the hills of the robbers predatorious oppressors of true Religion pillagers and spoilers of the Church of Christ of which too many sad instances have been in ancient and later daies both at home and abroad Especially when such Assemblies meet not summoned by lawfull Authority not chosen with Ecclesiastick freedome not sitting with completeness of members not voting or disputing with rationall ingenuous and Christian liberties but all things must be carried not after the Nicene but Tridentine fashion as if the holy Ghost were sent to the Assessors in a carriers cloke-bag or a souldiers knapsack the most learned and sober men must be mute and not dare freely to speak their minds without being posted and exposed to popular hatred even to the outraging and hazard of their persons unlesse they speak to that key and tune to which the organe of faction is set These methods of Church Councils and Assemblies I confesse are so Mechanick so Tyrannick so Satanick that nothing is more mischievous to the Church of Christ and true Religion whose condition instead of being thus mended is alwaies marred and betrayed to further errors factions and confusions I pray God deliver his Church from such Conventions where either Lay-men shall over-number and over-awe the Clergy or Clergy-men shall vassalate their consciences to gratifie any potent party and novell faction to the prejudice of that truth faith order ministry and government which were once delivered to the Churches of Christ Not onely England but all Christendome hath cause to curse the day when such snares and stratagems of Satan began to be laid in Synods and Assemblies from thence to take effect on the whole or any part of the Christian Church as eminently in the second Council of Nice the last of Trent and that at Westminster the first setting up Images in Christian Churches to the scandall of Religion the other a thousand new imaginations never owned before as of Christian faith the last which is the first of any that cryed down Episcopacy or Prelacy But the abuses incident to good things through the distempers of men and evill hearts must not exterminate or deprive us of the right use of them for then we should not onely forsake our wits and reason but our meat and drink our clothes and sleep yea and the light of the Sun and breathing in the aire yea our very Sacraments and Scriptures our frequent Sermons and extemporary as well as set prayers yea our Presbyters as well as our Bishops for in all these hony-combes or hives do hornets wasps and drones very oft shrowd themselves by these as St. Austin observes all errors heresies and schismes seek to support and shelter themselves But where such Ecclesiasticall Synods and Councils as were the first so famous Generall ones of
the very beasts of the people are so far flattered as to be suffered with their foule feet daily to trouble and confound that cleare fountain and constant streame of Ministeriall Authority and Ecclesiasticall succession by way of Episcopall Ordination which was ever of so solemn and conspicuous use in all Churches of so venerable a succession of so ancient and uninterrupted a derivation from the very Apostles dayes and hands that it never failed to keep its course as some rivers do through salt waters amidst all the confusions which either heathenish hereticall or schismaticall persecutions raised in the Church Yea no Hereticks no Schismaticks except Aerius and his few complices who discontent for not obtaining a Bishoprick which â—e sought and turning Arrian was the first the onely and the fitâ—â—st engine to oppose Episcopacy as Epiphanius observes were ever so wild so fanatick so desperate as to cast off all Episcopall succession Authority over them both in Ordination and jurisdiction yea they knew no meanes to keep their confederacies and factions better together than that which they saw had alwaies been serviceable to preserve the true Churches communion Though the Manicheans Arrians Macedonians Nestorians Pelagians and others together with the Novatians Donatists withdrew from or were justly excluded by the Bishops of the sound and orthodox profession yet still these Heterodox Opiniasters had not onely Deacons and Presbyters but Bishops of their own Some of which Bishops afterward returning to the Catholick Communion were not degraded from their Episcopall power but onely suspended from the exercise of it in another Bishops jurisdiction or Diocese without his leave which being granted to some of them gave occasion to those Chorepiscopi which were Bishops without particular title and locall jurisdiction but yet enjoying and using this power of Ordination in some Country-Townes and Villages by the permission of the Bishop or Metropolitane of the Diocese or Province residing in the chief City which indulgence was after as the Church-Histories tell us taken away from the Chorepiscopi when it was found to occasion great inconveniences by admitting two Bishops in one Precinct or Diocese Certainly what is so pregnantly Catholick and usefull that not onely all good men but even such as were evill could not but approve and use it it were not onely folly but frenzy to cast quite away if it were the full vote and free act of the Nation What Apology could be sufficient to excuse this Nation either among Churches abroad or to posterity at home when they should see that by a rash partiall and popular precipitancy we have been hurried against all Reason Honor and Religion to forsake or to stop up the ancient fountaines of living waters which have alwaies flowed from Episcopall Ordination supplying this as all Churches in all places and offices with orderly Presbyters and usefull Deacons onely to try what those pits will afford which novellers have digged to themselves and which they eagerly obtrude upon this Church notwithstanding they are already found by sad experience to hold no such cleare and pure waters either for Doctrine or Discipline for Authority or Unity for Order or Peace as those were which the Apostles digged and the Catholick Church ever used and esteemed for sacred In this great point then of Right Ordination and true Ministeriall Authority of which the Learned Mr. Mason professeth next his salvation he desires to be assured it is as I humbly conceive not onely piously but prudently necessary for our Reformed Church Religion and Ministry to be effectually vindicated and by all possible meanes fairly united If there were ever any other way of Ordination used or allowed in the Church of Christ let the Authors Histories and instances be produced either as to their grounds or their practise If there were never any other either used or approved or thought of besides that which was in the Church of England managed by Bishops as necessary and chief agents in it truly it is but Justice Reason Conscience and Honor to own this Truth to follow this Catholick precedent to returne to an holy conformity with pious Antiquity which neither invented nor induced Bishops or Episcopall Ordination and jurisdiction as an affected novelty or a studied variety but they followed doubtlesse herein what was received from the very first Bishops who succeeded to the Apostles as authorized and placed by them So that as the succession of Bishops was lineally reducible to the Apostles which Irenaeus Tertullian Cyprian Eusebius Nicephorus and others evidently prove not onely by their publick Registers but by their private memories when the names of Bishops were fresh in Christians minds and not very numerous as in the second and third Centuries No lesse may be affirmed of Ordination by Bishops it had its precept and pattern from the Apostles expresly committed and enjoyned to some persons as chief Bishops never trusted to meer Presbyters alone much less to people in common so far as any Record of the Church Sacred or Ecclesiastick doth informe us whose constant silence in this case is a better Testimony against all innovation of Ecclesiasticall Ordination than all the Sorites the Rhapsodies heapes and scamblings of I know not what broken scraps and wrested allegations out of any Scriptures or Fathers can be by which I see some men have sought with much dust sweat and blood to bring in their new uncertaine unaccustomed and unauthentick formes of Ordination exclusive of any President or Bishop who ever was as the principall Verb in a sentence which cannot be wanting without making the sense of all other words very lame defective incoherent and insignificant These grand perswasions joyned to the sad experiences made in Englands late variations do thus far command me to be more intent and earnest that in this point of valid complete undoubted and most authoritative Ordination we might be made uniform that all Ministers like currant money might have the same image and superscription upon them It is most certaine that the Christian and Reformed Religion will never be able to shine either clearly or constantly or comfortably upon the consciences of Christians either as Ministers or people while it is in this great point of Ordination so darkned clouded and eclipsed that it lookes like the Sun wrapped in sackcloth or the Moon turned into blood What Ministry what Ministers what Ordination what Ordained what Ordainers what Ordinances of Christ will in time be much esteemed in England by the Nobility Gentry or Yeomanry when they shall see various waies of Ordination daily invented and obtruded pittifull Novelties induced uniform Antiquity discarded Primitive Episcopacy exautorated a subordinate Presbytery scorned a popular parity and petulancy indulged every where to make what extemporary Priests and Preachers they list of the dregs and meanest of the people as little God knowes to their own soules benefit as to the Churches peace or to the honor of this Nation though they do it with as much
especially in the height of their lusts and hopes which are as their rutting time which secular ambitions and popular acclamations raise them to I believe as they will never obtaine the consciencious respect of the wisest and best men so nor will they in conclusion constantly enjoy the vulgar flatteries and applaudings of weak or wicked men who having not cast any anchor of fixation to their judgements and affections either in clear Reason or sound Religion in Equity or Charity in Faith or Love in holy Antiquity or Primitive conformity but preferring factious and fancifull novelties before Catholick and Uniforme Antiquity they must needs be everlastingly fluctuating in their endlesse inventions ambitions inconstancies and vertiginous Reformations of Ministry and Religion which are commonly biassed by some private advantages over-swaying them to invent or embrace some gainfull novelty contrary to that due veneration and humble submission which all sober Christians owe to Primitive simplicity and that Catholick Authority which is indelebly stamped upon the Universall Churches custome consent and practise agreeable to the Scripture-Canon or rule which it ever was All which are in no one thing more evident than in this of the Originall constitution derivation and transmission of the Ministeriall Order Office and Authority by the way of Episcopall eminency where Bishops with their Presbyters did ever rightly ordaine Evangelicall Ministers but Presbyters without any Bishops above them never did by any allowed example or usuall practise in any Church from the Apostles daies till the last Century CHAP. XVII THe Essentials or Being of true Ministers thus restored and preserved both in their Ability and Autority the first to be searched by due Examination the second conferred by lawfull and Catholick Ordination the next thing which craves your counsell care and charity most worthy Christians is the bene esse well-being of your Clergy both for their maintenance and their respect for their single support and their sociall consorting For poor and alone or rich yet scattered like disjoyned figures and cyphers they will signifie not much as to publick reputation or gubernative influence But together their Competency and Communion will make up that double Honor which the Apostle by the Spirit of God requireth as due to such Evangelicall Bishops and Ministers as rule well labouring in the Word and Doctrine according to the place and proportion wherein God and the Church have set them The personall maintenance of Ministers by which they may comfortably subsist diligently attend and cheerfully dispense the things of God to their severall charges I put in the first place not as the more noble in respect of the common good and joynt honor of the Clergy but as naturall and most necessary for as Ministers will have no great spirit or ability for private employment so much lesse joy or confidence in any publick Church-Government if they have not such convenient support as may countenance and embolden them to appear in publick Without doubt nothing is more unbecoming the Honor and Grandeur the Plenty and Piety of any Christian Nation than to keep their Clergy poor indigent and dejected so beyond measure is it vile for any Christian people to rob their able Ministers of that honorable maintenance which once they have been lawfully possessed of and long enjoyed as devout donations given to Gods Church and his more immediate Servants the Ministers of the Gospel by pristine piety for the publick good of mens soules but above all things to be abominated is that Atheisticall Hypocrisy whose fraud pretends to Reforme Religion as Herod promised to worship the babe Christ when he intended to kill him by reducing the dispensers of it to sordid poverty and sharking necessity by compelling Preachers to use Mechanick Trades and extemporary preachings yea and after all this by laying the weight even of Church-Government upon such weak and low shoulders either of such poor Bishops or Pygmy-Presbyters who must forsooth live upon popular contributions and arbitrary Almes after the Primitive and Apostolick pattern as some men urge even of St. Paul and of other prime Preachers at first who they say preached gratis having no set salary and exacting nothing as due from the people Which Primitive and Apostolick patterne is not more impertinently and injuriously than falsely and impudently urged by illiberall men in sacrilegious times For they may easily find that the justice and power of demanding hire or wages as due for their work was urged and owned by St. Paul as due by the Law of God under the Gospel as well as before it though sometime remitted in tendernesse to the temper of mens hearts and Estates in those hard yet charitable times when there was so much of gratitude and charity in zealous Christians that there needed nothing as of compulsion and necessity and in which very cheap though extraordinary gifts did most-what enable the Apostles and others beyond what Ministers may now expect under the rate of much Time Charge Study and Paines Alas those Primitive Preachers needed not to be very solicitous for their support or salary among true Christians when t is evident that Christian people had generally such largenesse of hearts as offered not onely the Tithe but the Totall of their Estates Goods and Lands too to the support of their Preachers and their poor However it is not to be doubted but that as the Apostles so all Bishops and Ministers of the Gospel may with as much equity as modesty demand receive and enjoy whatever was then or afterward either occasionally or constantly conferred upon them by any Christian people or Princes the distribution of which was in Primitive times chiefly intrusted to the care of the Bishops who appointed both rewards to Presbyters and relief to the poor So that it must needs be barbarously covetous and Judasly sacrilegious for any Christian people violently and unjustly to take away from their Learned and deserving Clergy either such other Lands and Revenues or those very Tithes which people have once put out of their power by giving them to God by an act of solemn and publick consent testified in their nationall Lawes every way agreeable to the Will and Word of God to the Light and Law of Nature to the Patriarchicall Tradition and Practise before the Law of Moses to Gods own proportion and appointment among the Jewes to the Apostolical comprobation and the parallel ordaining of the Lord under the Gospel or to the right and merits of Jesus Christ beyond the type of Melchisedech whose Evangelicall Priesthood being to continue in the Church surely deserves no lesse honor and maintenance than the Aaronicall and Leviticall and much more sure than any Priestly office among the heathens Yet who hath not either heard or read in all Histories that the very heathens out of an instinct of gratitude and Religion did every where offer the Tenth of their Fruites Corn Spices Gumms Minerals Metals and spoiles in war to the Temples
Seates they had most evidently continued in all Churches without any interruption or variation of the forme or power however the persons had been oft changed by mortality Certainly it is most easie for all learned honest and unbiassed men to see what the uniform and Catholick form then was of all Churches orderly combinations I dare appeale to Independents and Presbyterians as well as Episcopall men to declare bona fide what they find it was in the first and best times after Churches were once fully formed and setled in their severall partitions No man not more bold than bayard or more blind than a beetle but must see and confesse that according to the first platform which we read of in the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles the Order Polity and Government of the Church was completed setled and continued first in Deacons who had the lowest degree of Church-office order and Ministry consisting in reading the Scriptures in making collections for the poor in distributing of charity in visiting the sick in providing things necessary safe convenient and decent for Christian Ministers and people when they met to serve the Lord in one place which place or house from hence was called Dominicum or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Church or House of the Lord. Next these in order degree and office were Presbyters that is ordained preachers to whom was committed by the Apostles first and after by Bishops their successors the Charge and Office of Catechizing the younger of Preaching to the elder of Baptizing believers and their children of consecrating the holy Elements of the Lords Supper and of admitting worthy Communicants to receive them besides the grave and venerable Presbyters had as brethren the priviledge of electing their Bishops also of counsell confessions and assistance with their respective Bishop's in publick concernment and grand transactions of the Church Above both these in eminency of place degree and power as to gubernative Authority were those prime Bishops or overseers of the Church first called by the name of Apostles as immediately set by Christ in that Episcopacy next were those that were personally appointed by the Apostles to supply their absence or to succeed them in that ordinary presidency and constant jurisdiction which was necessary for the Churches peace union and good Government of which we have two pregnant instances in Timothy and Titus who to be sure had Episcopall power given them not as Evangelists or Preachers but as Ordainers and Rulers of many Presbyters After these Bishops of a lesser size constantly succeeded being first chosen by the Presbyters of each grand Church or Diocese to that power and office and then consecrated to it or confirmed in it by neighbour-Bishops who solemnly imparted to them and invested them in that Eminency of Ordaining and Ruling power which is properly Episcopall not onely for the dispensing of holy mysteries for the preaching of the word and absolving penitents as Presbyters who were a minor sort of Bishops but for confirming those who had in infancy been baptized for solemn excommunication and absolution for examining and ordaining Presbyters and Deacons for transmitting that Episcopall and Ministeriall power in a constant and holy succession according as they had received it so for judging of and inflicting publick censures and reproofes likewise for all Synodal Conventions and representations of the Churches lastly for the authoritative enacting and executing of all Ecclesiasticall decrees and Church-disciplines all which things Bishops did as a Major sort of Presbyters though a Minor sort of Apostles if we may believe the judgment practise and testimony of all Antiquity in the purest times which are diligently collected evidently set down and unanswerably urged by many late writers who have brought forth such a cloud of witnesses as to this point of Ecclesiasticall Order and Government by Deacons Presbyters and Bishops a threefold cord not to be broken that men may as well deny the Evangelicall History as the Original Institution and Succession of the Evangelicall Ministry and the orderly constant Government of the Church by the service of Deacons the assistance of Presbyters and the superintendency of the Apostles whom no sober man denies to have been while they lived the eminent Rulers authoritative Overseers and chief Governours and Bishops of all the Churches where they were fixed or which they had under their particular care and charge Nor may it with any more shadow of reason or truth be denied that Bishops in a distinct place and eminent power were a successive and secondary sort of Apostles inferiour to them in their immediate call in their extraordinary gifts and the latitude of their power but equall to them in that ordinary constant and regular jurisdiction which was and is ever necessary for the Churches good Order and Government If all sorts and sides would look beyond their own later prejudices and presumptions to this holy patterne this so cleare constant and Catholick prescription they would be ashamed of such grosse ignorance or impudence such peevishnesse or partiality as should beyond all forehead or modesty affect any novelty or variety from an Ecclesiastick custome and an Apostolick precedent so undeniably Primitive so famous so glorious so prosperous so never altered or innovated as to the maine that all true believers all humble Deacons all orderly Presbyters all Confessors all Martyrs all Synods all Councils submitted and subscribed to the same form and kind of Government in its severall stations and degrees according as the wisdome of the Church saw cause to use its prudence power and liberty as Calvin Zanchy and Bucer tell us in having not onely Bishops but Metropolitanes or Arch-Bishops Primates and Patriarchs ad conservandam disciplinam as Calvin ownes for the better Order Unity and Correspondency of the Church in all its parts which were never quarrelled at till pride begat oppression and envy schisme in the Church till foolish and factious spirits chose to walk contrary to the true principles and proportions of all right Reason and Religion of all prudence and polity which are to be observed in all Societies sacred or civil which the Divine wisdome as St. Jerom observes had exemplified in the ancient Church of the Jewes and directed us to as Salmasius confesseth in all successions of Churches by the Spirit of wisdom which Christ gave to his Apostles and all their immediate successors the Bishops who were conform to them and impowered by them to be a kind of Tutelary Angels of presidentiall Intelligences in the larger circles and higher orbes of the Church where as in Ephesus and the other grand Metropolitane Churches which are denominated by the Spirit of Christ and the pen of the Apostle from the chief Cities in those Provinces there were no doubt many Christian people Presbyters and Deacons yet all these subject as Beza glossing on St. Jerom confesseth to that one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Provost or President as their
Bishop in that Precinct or Oeconomy which either the Apostles had constituted or the Church had digested it self into as it increased Contrary to which meridian patterne and most manifest exemplar of Church-Government if as learned Zanchy acknowledgeth any one instance in any age or place of any Father Councill or Historian could be found of any one Church in its grand Polity or larger Communion I confesse I should then make some scruple whether Episcopall Government however it might seem the best were the onely one to be used in all times and places whether Church-Government were not a matter of Ecclesiastick prudence rather than of Apostolick prescription or Divine appointment To which opinion St Jerom that he might qualifie and moderate the incrochings of some Bishops upon Presbyters or gratifie perhaps his own passion and discontent sometimes seems to have inclined contrary to his cooler and more constant judgement set forth at other times in many passages of his potent and vehement writings as well as in his practise Which allay as to the Divine institution and absolute necessity of Episcopall Government as established by the Apostles seemes also to have swayed with Mr. Calvin and his followers when they found themselves put upon such a necessity as they thought might justifie their altering of it for a time though not their rejecting or reprobating of it for ever which he never did however his reputation interest and engagement carried him off from the more pompous and usuall way of Episcopacy as it was abused in the Church of Rome but he well knew ever judged and confessed that Primitive Episcopacy which consists in a presidentiall eminency of power and jurisdiction in one Minister over many appears to have been laid out by the wisdome and Spirit of Christ in the Apostolicall patterne and prescription as is evident in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus not as a matter of arbitrary freedome which might be lightly changed as people or Ministers or Magistrates listed for their conveniences but as an holy method and wise proportion of Government best in it self fittest for the Churches Order Peace and Communion sacred by the Characters of Gods direction Christs designation constitution of his Church in the Apostles execution and derivation of it also in the Churches Catholick imitation upon all which grounds it hath ever been esteemed by all godly and learned Christians not onely venerable but as to the main modell and fabrick of it inviolable so that they who first factiously presumptuously and rashly change it must needs highly sin against God his Church and their own soules however others that are forced to follow such changes may be excusable The superstructures of Episcopacy as to civill Honor and Estate may indeed be variable by publick consent with times and manners of men but the foundations I believe are not to be removed which are laid upon the naturall civill and religious grounds of diversity disparity and excellency of one man above many proportionable to which Polity Order and Authority are best setled and managed and not upon the loose or slippery bottomes of parity or popularity neither of which have either those principles proportions or perfections of Government which the Spirit and wisdome of God hath laid out by the Apostles practise in Primitive Episcopacy and transmitted by a constant succession for the Churches good which cannot be preserved or advanced where there wants comely gravity due authority and a diviner beame of Majesty in Government and Governors than can be found in any way of levelling and abasing them which are the high-waies as all wise men ever observed to all faction sedition and confusion both in Churches and States of which truth no Age hath seen and suffered greater or sadder experiments than ours since some pragmatick or ambitious Spirits have made miserable essayes to alter and abolish the ancient authority and order of Episcopacy onely to bring in their various novelties which are so far from the true Grandeur and solid Majesty of Government that they are already found to be pittifull and petty projects rather than pious or profound inventions confuting themselves as much as confounding others Could we then on all sides in England be so ingenuous and candid as to lay aside all moderne designes disputes and differences which have made mens eyes so squinted bleared or blood-shotten in the point of Church-Government could we remove the fancy of secular pride pomp and ambition in one sort of Ministers the vulgar passions prejudices and envies of a second sort also the pragmatick and plebeian humors of a third sort with the private designes and worldly interests of all cleare all our hearts of these prepossessions and distempers no doubt the face of holy order and wise Government in the Church will easily appeare to the satisfaction of all wise and good men who are either worthy to govern or willing to be governed in a true Christian and charitable way For certainly Church-Government or Ecclesiasticall Polity about which we have had of late in England so great contests even to much bitternesse and blood is no Scholasticall subtilty no intricate nicety no speculative sublimity no metaphysicall profundity which require either accurate Criticks or long-winded Divers or Logicall Disputers or Scepticall Sophisters to find out the Primitive form the true proportions or ancient patterne of it It is plaine as Beza and Bucer observe in right Reason pregnant in the proportions of all order naturall civill military religious It is palpable in Scripture-patternes as Mr. Calvin confesseth it is most apparent in the practise of all Churches It must be weaknesse or wilfullnesse passion or peevishnesse that hinders any man from seeing the true Idea of it It is made up of wisdome and power not onely humane but divine of due authority cemented with true charity a modest and moderate superiority with meek subordination faithfull counsell with equanimous commands meeting together these make up the holy Oeconomy or Polity of Church-Government In which first many humble Christians of one congregation do submit to one duly ordained Minister as set over them in the Lord so far as concernes their private duties and relations secondly many grave and discreet Presbyters with their people submit to one venerable Bishop as a Father or chief Pastor chosen to be over them in things that concerne more publick relations and common duties in which their joynt counsell assistance or obedience is required The Bishops office and work is not only Ministeriall in common with their brethren the other Ministers but Juridicall or Judiciall declaring and exercising the necessary power and eminent acts of Ecclestasticall Discipline and authority with them among them and over them not in the way of secular dominion gotten and kept by civill force or factious ambition which our blessed Lord forbids to those that are chiefest or greatest of his Disciples and flock but in a way of paternall authority which chides with love chastens with
and Government of the Church as to that power and authority which is meet in all offices and Ministrations Who can deny that the Primitive Churches and Pastors best understood the appointments of Christ and his Apostles in this point of Government as in all things else when they had such an anointing of the Spirit and Truth to teach them how to constitute and govern all Churches as needed not any Presbyterian or Independent Tutors to teach them new modes who are as Irenaeus speaks of some Innovators in his time much younger than those Bishops who were the successors of the Apostles who as they could not possibly be ignorant of the Apostolick appointment so nor probably could they be so impertinent as presently to alter it even in the first Century while some Apostles or Apostolick men were yet living and not onely preaching as Presbyters but so ruling as Presidents or Bishops among them and above them that they were far enough from the Incubus of popularity or the Polypus of parity among Ministers Both which methods must have left the enlarged and numerous Churches of Christ either Acephalists confused without any head or Polycephalists burdened with many heads and divided into infinite fragments far enough from any such influence and autority God knows as was capable to preserve such large combinations of Churches as then and after were combined in any regular order subordination and communion wherein primitive Churches as in all other things most excelled being furthest from any such distractions defectivenesse or deformities as are monstrous in Christianity because most contrary to those constant proportions of Modesty Humility Order Wisdom Peace Unity and Polity which God hath set before all sober men and specially wise Christians both in reason and religion in the systeme of all bodies natural or social in all communities civil and military oeconomick or politick yea in all magistracies or eminencies which are either paternal fraternal or despotical In the ordering of all which there ever is and must be some Parent or Elder brother or Master or Chieftane or Superiour or Commander who in a kind of Episcopacy over-see and over-rule those that are under their several charges and within the several combinations which order strictly established by God in his ancient Church of the Jews can never be made to appear either as Paradox or Heterodox from the wisdom and will of God in the several families fraternities or polities of his Christian Church nor may it be thought that in this Christ suffered his Church to erre a Catholick error which in all things else he ever preserved according to his promise from all general defection Can it then seem other then Juvenility Peevishness Partiality Pride Petulancy Love of novelty and factious inclination or some other impotent passion which may as diseases be sometime too popular prevalent and Epidemick among Christians so grosly to blemish suspect despise and discredit as some do the veracity and fidelity of the Church of Christ in the point of Catholick Episcopacy as most ancient and venerable which is indeed and ever was both used and esteemed as he onely crown and completion of all well governed Churches as in latter so in primitive times before whose gray head and reverent age it well becomes such Novices as we are to rise up and pay a due respect Since then presidential or paternal Episcopacy is beyond all cavil or dispute the elder Brother by far to Presbytery or Independency since it had possession as in all other so in these British Churches of which Tertullian who lived in the second Century after Christ makes mention from the first Constitution of them in their just proportions which St. Jerom calls Adultas ecclesias adult or full-grown Churches which had attained their due stature and dimensions since the quiet possession and long prescription of fifteen or sixteen hundred yeares is a valid title in justice and invincible prejudice against all novell pretenders and violent disseisors of Episcopacy it were but modest and ingenuous reasonable and religious equall and charitable for all Ministers and others of any Learning Worth and Honesty as many I hope are of all sides to make some handsome if not retractations yet retrogradations and returnes toward this Apostolick and Catholick Ancient and Primitive Episcopacy O How well would it become Presbyterians and Independents that have a due sense of things comely honest praise-worthy and honorable in stead of making up their new Associations which is but a marriage or medly of Presbytery and Independency to offer or receive some faire offers and fraternall proposalls in order to an happy accommodation with those Learned and worthy men who are still firme to the Episcopall interests and just Authority as Ancient Primitive and Catholick which are not to be slighted by any men of Learning and Worth however the Cause may be more afflicted and the men lesse favoured at present It ill becomes any Grave Godly and ingenuous men still to take those poor advantages against Episcopacy which arise from popular ignorance vulgar prejudices or covetous jealousies much lesse from the plebeian petulancies used against all Bishops and the undeserved depressions faln on many Episcopall Divines over whom disdainfully to triumph and with a kind of scorne to crow and insult is both base and barbarous nor is it much more ingenuous to pass them by with a supercilious silence and neglect which I see some new masters affect to do counting them all as unsavoury salt not fit to be gathered from those Dung-hills on which they have been cast God knows not for want of savour in themselves but of favour from others A third sort there are of Associaters who that they might seem more civil and candid to Episcopacy and to Episcopal Ministers of whose worth they are convinced as much as of their sustained injuries have sometime yet not without the strictures of some brow and glorying invited them to joyne with them that is to subscribe and submit to their new Associations For in these as the designe and Opera is laid those men whose judgement and conscience hath most confined and confirmed them to Episcopacy must either as Cyphers signifie nothing and when they convene but sit still and say nothing being onely tame Spectators of other mens rare activities who would fain Christen their Presbytery and Independency with some drops and sprincklings of Episcopacy and so have some Episcopall Divines as Gossips to their new Births or else they must first as good as openly renounce Episcopacy and desert their former both opinion Ordination and station in the Church as Christians and as Ministers next they must admit the rare and new invention of a particular Church-Covenant as they call it or an incorporating engagement by word or subscription contrary to what they formerly had explicitely passed to this Church and its Government in their ordination and subscription yea and beyond that Baptismall Covenant which every Christian professor
ownes as the badg or bond of his admission into Communion with Christ and his Church both Catholick and congregationall generall and particular This it seemes must now not at all be owned or slighted nulled and forgotten by the superfetation of a new form of Christian confederation more solemn sacred and obliging as they fancy to Christian duties than that was which was solemnly made in the presence of the congregation ratified in the blood of Jesus Christ and testified in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost yea and after this the poor Episcopall Divines if they will gently comply and for feare Associate must quietly permit either the community of the people or the parity of the Presbyters in their severall lesser bodies and congregations or in their greater classes and conventions to challenge to themselves the plenary sole absolute perfect and unappealable power of not onely ordination which of old they never had as St. Jerom confesseth but of all Ecclesiasticall Jurisdiction and Discipline and this under the conduct and auspicious management of onely some Diurnall Dictator some temporary prolocutor or extemporary moderator who is forsooth to have the Image of a superficiall Bishop and the shadow of a short-liv'd superintendent a thing meerly occasional and unauthoritative as to any office or power inherent in him or of right to be challenged or exercised by him enjoying onely an horary arbitrary and humane presidency for fashion and civility sake without any Ecclesiasticall eminent or constant Authority residing in him as derived from Christ the Apostles or their successors or any Churches custome designation and consent in former times Such as was ever committed to owned in and used by the Bishops of the Church as regularly succeeding to the Apostles in that ordinary eminency of power which was necessary to keep both Presbyters and all Christian people and Churches good Order Peace and Unity which blessings they never more enjoyed or more happily than under a right Episcopacy Whose cause however of later yeares it hath been run down and trampled in a hurry under foot by some men in England Scotland and Ireland yet hath it suffered no reall diminution as to the true Honor of its Apostolick Authority its Primitive Antiquity its Catholick succession its high descent and its holy Originall which was never denyed or much disputed by any men of any considerable Learning and Piety till these later Dog-dayes in which not onely some single Stars of nebulous and dubious light but whole Constellations of them like Sirius or the Canicular Juncto erected under the new name and figuration of Smectymnuus to calculate the Nativity of a new Reformation became Lords of the Ascendent being filled contrary to their former Conformity and declared submission with a very unbenigne that I say not malignant influence not only against Episcopacy but in effect against the whole visible Constitution of this Church in which as Goods in a sunk ship all things are much wasted and abased by the ruine of Episcopacy Their destructive fires kindled from the colder parts of this Island first flamed into strange Logomachies thredbare cavillings and triviall strifes about Words and Names as if after sixteen hundred years all the Christians and Ministers of England its Princes and Parliaments its Synods and Councels yea all the Christian world elsewhere were to be Catechized by a few petty Presbyters in comparison and their Scot-English Assembly what the names of Bishop and Presbyter of Pastor and Teacher of Elder and Ruler of Helps and Governments of Apostle and Evangelist of Ecclesiastical Stars and Angels did mean which not onely all Writers but all times and practises of all Churches had sufficiently interpreted and cleared from the first promiscuous use of some general names which called the chief Apostles Prophets Evangelists Bishops Presbyters Elders Ministers and Deacons too in whose offices authorities and duties there were real and great differences to more proper and peculiar distinctions according to the several ranks degrees orders offices and powers then established in the Church After the Squibbs and Crackers of paper had been lighted and cast in the face of venerable Episcopacy at last as the manner is things came to dreadful Chiromachies such scufflings and fightings with hands and arms of flesh against that Government which is as the Ancient of dayes that they looked more like that Gigantomachy the Giants assaulting Heaven and the Gods than that Good fight of faith which ought to contend earnestly onely for that which was once uniformly delivered to all true Saints and received by all true Churches of Christ in doctrine order and government among whom all lesser disputations and differences circumstantial rising among good Christians were wont to be fairly debated and determined in lawful Assemblies in Ecclesiastical Synods and National or general Councils from which Christian and Orthodox Bishops were never either terrified or excluded but principally called and admitted as the chief Fathers of those holy Oeconomies or Christian Polities Nor was Episcopacy ever condemned by any of those Councils Synods or Assemblies in any Age of the Church much less was it ejected and extirpated as uselesse unlawful and abominable no not by any Synods and confessions of any Protestant and reformed Churches of note notwithstanding they could not conveniently enioy the blessing of it for so they accounted it either by reason of the petulancy of people or the impatience of civil Magistrates or the Sacrilegious humours and designes of all against the Clergy After all these prepossessions and just presumptions thus challenged to the cause and state of Episcopacy in point of its venerable and undeniable Antiquity I cannot but offer to its still scrupulous or implacable Adversaries these following Quaeres 1. How sad I beseech you and wretched how confounded and astonished must the awakened Consciences of those men be who have been the chief Authors and Fautors of our late troubles variations and miseries chiefly upon the account of their Antiepiscopal Antipathies if after all these combustions perturbations and plunderings of Religion which have rather pleased mens private passions and opinions than any way profited the publick welfare of this Church or State if I say these great sticklers against Episcopacy should be either grosly mistaken or malitiously perverted from the right path that good old way of which former Ages can better inform us then those that are but of yesterday and can know nothing but by their light 2. What if it should be as true as it is most probable because generally so believed in all Ages parts and places of the Church that the cause of Primitive Episcopacy is indeed the cause of God of Christ and of the whole Church the cause of all the Apostles of all Primitive Bishops their immediate successors yea the cause of all true Presbyters and all true Christians a cause in which the glory of God the wisdome of Christ the honor of the Apostles the fidelity of their successors the
credit of the Church Catholick the comfort and authority of all true Ministers the surest test and Character of due Ordination the peace and unity of all good Christians are bound up and mainly concerned 3. What if these new masters these sharp censors and imperious dictators whom perhaps not Piety so much as Policy not Religion but Reason of State not reforming severities but needlesse jealousies and imaginary necessities have put upon such violent sticklings against Episcopacy and reprobating all worthy Bishops what if they have been deceived themselves and deceivers of others in that point which is much more veniall to think and say of the very best of them than to passe any such censure or suspicion of error or ignorance upon all Churches even in their purest and Primitive Antiquity when one spark of Martyrly zeal which was as holy fire from Gods Altar had more divine light and heat in it than all the blazes and flashes of Moderne Zelotry 4. I do in all Christian candor demand of the severest Presbyterian and sharpest Independent whether when they ask of the generations of old and enquire of all Ages from the beginning of Christian Churches whether ever they find any Christians or congregations at any time either Christening or Churching themselves either by their own vote choise and authority or by separating from their ordained Presbyters and Bishops which were sound in the faith and regular in their administrations who had duly taught baptized confirmed and ruled them in the Lord. When did any Presbyters or Ministers ever pretend to ordaine themselves or one another without some Apostle or Bishop When where and by whom was the first Schisme Rupture or Chasme of Ecclesiasticall parity as to Mission and Commission begun When and where was the first intrusion or encroachment upon the pretended authority of Presbytery made by Episcopacy Did not all Presbyters owe ever own their legitimate birth breeding to their respective Bishops whose Authority was ever as much above meer Presbyters in degree and office as it was before them in the order of nature and causality no lesse than in time and antiquity 5. If then all the novel presumptions pretentions and objections of either Presbytery or Independency against Primitive Catholick and Apostolick Episcopacy should in earnest be nothing but passionate false and frivolous mistakes arising from ignorance and error carried on by envy and arrogancy in many men O what needlesse troubles what heedlesse angers what inordinate furies what dreadfull disorders must they all this while have been guilty of what causelesse contentions innovations confusions vastations have they brought into the Churches of Christ what cruell and uncharitable contentions have they raised as elsewhere so in this famous and flourishing Church of England without any just cause God knowes and beyond the merits of Episcopacy even in its greatest defects declinations and deformities to which as all holy Institutions may in time be subject so they ought to be humbly wisely and moderately reformed by the prayers teares counsels honest and orderly endeavours of all sober Christians of all sorts and sizes in their places and stations with due regard to the first pattern and originall But certainly as the whole order and office of Presbytery which may have had its personall depravations also so the ancient and venerable Authority of Episcopacy as to its Primitive Institution and Catholick succession ought not on any hand to be utterly ruined rased and extirpated root and branch by any tumultuary rashnesse or popular precipitancy which can never become any Church of Christ or any wise and godly Christians nor can such methods of sharp and soure Reformations ever end in the peace or comfort of good men who if they find themselves guilty of excesses so dangerous and destructive to the true Church true Religion and true Reformation have nothing lesse to do than to persevere in their extravagancies or pertinaciously to assert their former transports yea they have nothing more to do speedily and conscienciously than humbly to recant seriously to repent and effectually to amend as much as lies in their power the affronts and assaults the breaches and wasts they have made of the Churches Peace and Unity Power and Authority by returning to that duty which they owe to God and that obedience they owe to their spirituall Governours and that reverence which they owe to uniform antiquity which so fully commends the presidentiall authority of Apostolicall and Primitive Episcopacy Their first errors may be weaknesse but their obstinacy must needs be wickednesse who still sin when they are convinced silenced and afflicted 6. What if after all this dust and noyse which hath so blinded and deafned the eyes and eares of many Presbyters and people that they cannot and will not see the Truth and Testimony of Antiquity which is no lesse cleare for the presidentiall authority and eminency of Episcopacy than for the subordination counsel and assistance of Presbytery what if it should be the mind of God the order and Institution of Jesus Christ the designation and direction of his blessed Spirit evidently signified and setled in and by the blessed Apostles in all Primitive Churches and so continued to this day according to the measures of Divine Wisdome and Order though not without mixtures of humane infirmities and disorders incident to all holy Institutions 7. What if after all these seditious and schismaticall distempers in Ministers and people the Lord should say to these refractory and irreconcilable spirits against Episcopacy as he did to the Jewes when they revolted from Samuels Government They have not rejected you O my faithfull servants the Bishops whom I have constituted and used in all ages as vigilant Over-seers and wise Rulers of my flock but they have rejected me who in this point of Episcopacy have so sufficiently declared my will and pleasure to all the world that no Church was ever ignorant of it or varied from it being manifested from heaven First in the evident instances of divine wisdome among the Jewish Church and Priests yea as it is an orderly and gubernative method in all societies where right reason and so true Religion necessarily command and commend superiority and subjection Secondly in the paterne and Rules of Ecclesiasticall Polity set down by my Son Jesus Christ and followed by his Apostles who setled all Churches in such an orderly subordination Thirdly in the constant custome and Catholick testimony of all succeeding Churches whose joynt suffrages and uniform practises in cases of any darkness dispute or difficulty where Scripture-precepts may seem lesse clear and explicite ought by all sober Christians to be esteemed as the safest measures of conscience and surest rule of religious observance especially as to things of outward Polity Order and Government nor may any novel inventions or pretentions never so specious be put into the balance against the Authority of the Catholick Church which is the pillar and ground of Truth the great
degenerous persons as deserved not to bear the name or knew not how to use the Office of a Bishop Doubtless their Enemies being Judges no place no Age no one Nation or Church in the world since the Apostles ever exceeded the Bishops of England for piety and learning for useful and exemplary vertues of which I shall afterward give more exact account no Church ever more happy flourishing or prosperous then the reformed Church of England was under such worthy Bishops as some men so despitefully used Could Bishops in this and all Churches be so blessed of God and yet Episcopacy deserve to be so abhorred of men Were the Evangelical labours of godly Bishops so plentifully watered with the Dew of Heaven and yet doth their function deserve to be rooted out of the Earth If Episcopacy in its secular riches and honours must needs be destroyed in order to confiscate the Churches Lands yet at least primitive though poor Episcopacy might have been preserved whose ancient eminency would have been both authoritative and conspicuous among good Christians through the Clouds of such undeserved poverty Though some men might presume to deprive Bishops of their deserved and lawful Estates yet sure they were too bold to rob the Church of all excellent and deserving Bishops such as England ever afforded both before and since the Reformation which the Romish and Jesuitick policies never hoped more effectually to deforme and destroy than by helping to carry on the routing of Episcopacy Certainly the excellent Bishops of England were the greatest Eye-sore of the Pope and his Conclave nor did they care to fight by their secret and open Engines against small or great Presbyters so much as against these Prelates who had so long stood in their way They knew when these chief Shepherds were smitten the Sheep would soon be scattered nor were Papists ever more gratified than when Episcopacy was extirpated out of England What if the God the Lord of his Church the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath laid the Government of it on the Shoulders of Christ Jesus and he derived the external administration or dispensation of it to the Apostles and they to succeeding Bishops as spiritual Pastors and venerable Fathers of his Church what if he should thus plead the cause of Episcopacy in the eminency of its Apostolical order and primitive authority against all those that have spoken acted and written so many peevish spiteful popular partial and perverse things against it What if he should lay to their Consciences what is visible to their and all mens eyes the sad divisions miserable confusions and horrid vastations of this Church and the Reformed Religion which have followed the destroying of harmlesse honourable ancient venerable useful and necessary Episcopacy Would they not be infinitely ashamed and mightily confounded for the new Modes which they have taken up for the Oakes which they have chosen to over-shadow themselves yea for the Briars and Brambles which they fancy as fittest to rule themselves and the Church of Christ in this Land either by way of parity or popularity which are not fit methods to rule their own families withall Will a few arbitrary precarious Presbyters and unautoritative Preachers or their new Associations serve their turn Or will a few petty Congregations or Schismatizing Conventicles here and there scattered and scrambled together in Cities and Countries be able to countervail the damage or to recompence the unspeakable defects and detriments which this Church and Nation which all estates and degrees of Christian people have sustained by the totall loss and overthrow of primitive Episcopacy which was as it were smothered to death in a crowd and huddle never legally examined or fairly condemned by the free and full suffrages of all estates so as its Antiquity worth and honour did deserve What learned prudent and conscientious Ministers or other Christians can be fully satisfied with those new-fashioned ordinations and ministrations of holy things which neither they nor their Fore-fathers nor any ancient Churches ever knew and wherein that Divine Authority which they challenge is so justly doubted or disputed as by no Catholick hand or regular course committed to them If that Ministeriall power which is challenged and exercised upon such new accounts of humane policies and later inventions if it should really be none at all or as weak and defective as it is dubious for Ordination as it is for Jurisdiction which is very much feared and suspected by very wise and good men especially where not want and necessity deny but wantonnesse and wilfulnesse seek to deprive Christians of their true Bishop O how vain how invalid how arrogant how insignificant must those Ministers and all their holy Ministrations appear to many Christians who have of later years set themselves up by a Presbyterian Commission or Popular Election not onely without but against their lawful Superiours who were every way so able so worthy and so lawfully authorized for that office and eminency not onely as they were ordained Presbyters but as they were further consecrated Bishops that is placed by Christ and appointed by the Church in an higher degree capacity use and exercise of Ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction then ever was in any Presbyters Of which eminency Episcopal as that famous Council of Nice took such care to have it continued after the cient mode and patern of publick Election and solemn Consecration or the Churches Benediction so all this formality must have been very superstitious and ridiculous if it added nothing of authority and power peculiar to them as Bishops but onely what they formerly had received in common as Presbyters Doubtless reordination as rebaptization to the same office and degree in the Church was ever condemned in the Church of Christ as impious because superfluous a meer mockery of Religion a taking the name of God in vaine forbidden by the African Canons and many Councils never practised by any but such as St. Basil the Great reports one Eustathius of Sebastia to have been whom he calls an infamous Heretick a notorious deserter of the Churches Catholick Communion If St. Chrysostome in the fourth Century had judged it enough to complete him in his Episcopall power and Authority to have been once ordained a Presbyter as he was in Antioch where he so lived twelve yeares sure he would not have troubled himself to have been after ordained or consecrated a Bishop by Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria and others of that order when he was chosen to be Bishop of Constantinople Nor would St. Austin a person no lesse pious and learned who had been ordained Presbyter by Valerius Bishop of Hippo been ordained anew by Megalius Patriarch of Numidia when he was chosen to be Bishop of Hippo. In like sort was one Alexander a Presbyter ordained by St. Chrysostome to be Bishop of Bassinopolis according to the uniforme method of Antiquity which judged that the Presbyters chusing the peoples approving and the
in any posture of Stability Unity Beauty and Honor untill Episcopacy be beheld and embraced in its native lustre and Primitive posture First as designed by the Orderly Power and Wisdome of God Secondly as instituted and actuated by the Spirit of Christ and his Apostles Thirdly as received and used without any scruple in all Primitive Churches when once they were fully planted and established in Ecclesiasticall Polities or Spirituall Corporations not one Church in all Ages either denying or doubting or disputing the Catholick Authority of Bishops Fourthly which they saw every way most agreeable as to the nature of mankind so to the different stations of Christians and to that necessary order which ought to be among Ministers as well as other people Fifthly and to none more than to the English Nation where the blessings by Episcopacy are now the more remembred and remarkable by the Miseries Disorders Divisions Insolencies Horrors and Confusions which have befaln us since we took away the chief buttresses and pillars of the Church as if they were burthensome and superfluous when indeed they were not lesse ornamentall than usefull and necessary to the well-being of it at least if not to the very being of it in us integrality and completeness I am sure the ejection of Episcopacy like the banishment of St. Chrysostom out of Constantinople hath hitherto been attended and followed in England with great Earthquakes and terrible shakings of other mens Palaces and Houses as well as those of Bishops whose turning out of the House of Lords by the Vote of about twenty Lords made so wide a doore and breach to that House that none of those Peeres who were more impatient to sit with such Learned and grave men under the same roof than St. John was to be in the same bath with Cerinthus could long stay within those walls the justice of Heaven as some conjecture so far retaliating mens passions with speed upon their own heads the Divine wisdome I doubt not seeing and approving as much of Beauty Order Prudence Unity and Stability in true Episcopacy as he sees and abhors much of Novelty Weaknesse Fatuity Partiality Deformity and Confusion in any other waies of Church-Government which cannot but be as defective and dubious as they are novel and partiall no way conform to the Catholick Custome of the Churches of Christ nor any way either invented approved or authorized by the sociall wisdome and joynt consent of all those in this Church and State who were concerned as highly in all changings of Government as any of those men are who have been most forward to make strange alterations and to remove the ancient Land-marks CHAP. XXV BUt it is high time to take my last Farewel of this long and oft-debated Cause of Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy which truely I think in my Conscience to be the Cause First of God as he is the God of Order and Wisdom and not of Folly or Confusion Secondly the Cause of Jesus Christ our blessed Saviour whose Spirit constituted guided the Apostles with all their holy Successors in this Method of Ecclesiastical Communion and Subordination Thirdly the Cause of Christs Catholick Church which we ought not in modesty or charity so highly to reproch as to impute ignorance or perversness to it that either it knew not the way of Christ at first or it wilfully and presently forsook it by an universal Apostasie to gratifie some few mens ambition Fourthly I esteem it the special Cause of this Church and Nation first because it was never blessed with any Church-government but that by Bishops secondly it hath been and is miserably shattered and abased by the casting off and want of Episcopacy and thirdly for the native temper of the people who are not apt to be governed by any men not duely invested with the Majesty of some eminent Worth adorned with special Power Honor and Estates which together give Authority Fifthly I think it the Cause of all good Ministers that desire to keep themselves in a true Church-Order and Catholick Communion who will find themselves and leave their Posterity at a great losse as to the Honor Setledness and Safety of the Christian and Reformed Religion unless they be restored to some such uniform way of publick Subordination and Unity as hath most safety consistency and authority in it self also most satisfaction to all learned wise and honest men All which things are no where that I see to be found but in a regular and primitive Episcopacy which ows its late total ruine and shipwreck in England not to its own age and leakinesse as if it sunk of it self nor to the general dislike and weariness of it as if the wisdom and power of the Nation Prince and People of all estates had upon serious free and impartial advice concluded to sink it having provided a better Vessel but its ruine is the effect of a terrible and fatal storm which came first out of the North upon us this ran Episcopacy so aground that many despairing of her ever coming off with any intireness betook themselves to the Cock-bote of Presbytery and the Skiff of Independency when yet I conceive it were no hard matter to recover Episcopacy as to the primitive structure of it although much of its Ornaments and Gallantry be lost Certainly the Restitution of primitive Episcopacy for the Unity Honor and Happiness of the Nation as well as of all the Clergy seemeth a Work as of far more prudence justice and piety so of much less charge and trouble than the Ruine of it hath cost us all nor can it be strange to see some men change their minds in religious concernments who we see have soon done it in our civil settlements This and other Blessings of Church-order and Unity will easily flow in upon us by a kind of Tide or Reciprocation of providence beyond expectation when once the God and Saviour the King and Bishop the great Protector and President of his Church shall please to breath a spirit truely Evangelical and Christian upon this Nation when all of us accepting of our punishment and repenting of our sinful follies and presumptions the Lord will also repent of the evil which he hath brought upon us all and think thoughts of Mercy toward this languishing afflicted divided and deformed Church whose Order Peace Honor Unity and Happiness some of us weakly others wantonly and not a few of us wickedly have sinned away to a state in point of Ecclesiastical Government deplorable enough and almost irreparable For it is not new Associations or Confessions of Faith or pretty Paraphrases on the Heads of Religion which do salve our sore blessed be God the Church of England needed not these Crambes It is onely the God of Love and Father of Mercies who can allay the spirits of Men and bring them out of those contentious and câ—uel dispositions which are divisive and so destructive to each other True we have been three dayes
a steddy judgement and unpopular spirit who pressed upon his Unepiscopal much more against his Antiepiscopal Presbytery so strongly that he forced his Antagonist to stoop and subscribe to Primitive and Catholick Episcopacy yea and to acknowledge Bishops even from the Apostles dayes to have been the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ◠Presidents or chief Rulers among Presbyters in all Churches Mr. Beza's Essayes not so much to have undermined Episcopacy as to have fixed or earthed his Presbytery better being thus notably countermined yet upon his very breaking the earth and promising at least pretending to spring some rich Mine of Scripture and Antiquity to prove if not the sole yet at least the concurrent Divine right of Presbytery on both sides of it both as to its preaching ruling Elders as stamped with the mark of Christ and his Apostles besides his and others terrifying the world as if Popery had begun with Prelacy and Antichrist had sucked the breasts of Episcopacy it is not imaginable what industrious Pioneers and Souldiers followed these charms this alarme for Presbytery against Episcopacy who sifting every name of Bishop Presbyter Elder Evangelist Messenger Apostle Prophet Pastor Teacher Ruler Governments Helps c. in Scripture and Antiquity found or fancied upon all of them something that made very much if not onely for Presbytery and very much if not wholly against Episcopacy so far that they would not allow so much as the twelve or thirteen prime Apostles any Episcopal Presidency Eminency or Authority above the seventy Disciples or any Presbyters whom they ordained much less any Bishop after them above the youngest meanest and pettiest Presbyter rather suspecting yea aspersing all Antiquity even in the primitive and purest times for Ignorance and Error or Falsity and Ambition in following the Catholick custom of Episcopacy after the great Apostolical pattern which was in them given to all Churches by the Spirit of Christ and after continued by the Apostles own appointment than any way admitting any Innovation Flaw or Defect to be in their new-formed Presbytery Heats unhappily growing great and Eruptions many from the Etna or Vesuvius of mens passions the sulphur and ashes at last came from Geneva Franckfort and Edenborough over to England where at first they onley fell upon the square Caps and Rochets of our excellent reformed and reforming Bishops but at last they flew in their very Faces and Eyes without any respect to their Age Learning Piety Sanctity and Martyrly Constancy besides the honourable places they still held both in Church and State according to our Laws For the Undertakers for the Cause as they called it of Jesus Christ first picking at the outworks of Ceremonies next at the spiriritual Courts or Jurisdictions of Bishops after that at the excellent Liturgy at last they laid amain at the whole Body as well as the Branches of Episcopacy going much further than ever their first Founders of Presbytery abroad or the modester Non-conformists at home ever designed or desired Thus a bolder Generation of men stopping their ears against all the charms of Scripture Antiquity Universality Prudence personal Merits publick Blessings and all proportions of Government and Polity only urging a peremptory necessity and a self-inforcing novelty perfected that in a dreadful War which was neither begun nor promoted nor desired by the chief Magistrate nor by his chief Council in its pristine fulness and freedom nor ever before was acted in any reformed Church whatsoever against their reformed Bishops After much bustling and blood-shed in perilous times this crooked and low shrub of Presbytery which having never much thriven or grown handsomly in Scotland or in any other Kingdom where it had been happily and handsomly grafted by King James with a renewed and well-reformed Episcopacy this bitten mangled and mis-shapen was brought over on the swords point and wrapped up in the cover of a Covenant as Plants in Mats to be set in this good soyl of England after sweating Smectymnuus and the industrious Assembly with many Heads Hands Tongues and Pens had digged and prepared the ground for it by gaining the minds of some wel-affected Members in the two Houses and others in other places About the Year 1649. the Fasces Imperiales and the Sacrae Secures the Holy Rods and Imperial Axes of Presbytery were displayed to England in their Ruling and Teaching Elders in their High and Mighty Consistories Parochial Classical Provincial National Oecumenical for the Presbyterian power was in all the world to prevail against Episcopacy as Daniels He-goat did against the Ram casting him to the ground and stamping upon him Every Presbyter young and old ripe and raw was to have not onely a sword in his mouth but a switch of correption in his hand which lest he should use too rashly and sharply he was to be pinioned and surrounded with certain Lay-Elders each of them furnished also with a Rod of Disciplinarian or ruling power equal to the Minister All this dreadful dispensation of Presbyterian discipline was pontifically and punctually set out by many discourses to the no small wonder of all wise men who knew the disproportions to all Government generally which were both in younger Ministers and in most Lay-men of plain parts and plebeian breeding such as in most places these herds of ruling Elders must be into whom the spirit of Government must presently enter And no less terrible was this paradox and parado of Presbyterian Discipline and Severity even to Common-people yea and to the most of the ablest Gentry and Nobility except some few whose itch and ambition of a Lay-elderships place had possibly biassed them to smile upon their persons and their now Presbytery to which they were invited solemnly to be Gossips Thus armed and marshalled in its Ranks and Regiments Presbytery began to hasten its March in its might furiously enough setting up its Conventions Ordinations Jurisdictions trying the metal and temper of its Censures by Ebaptizations Correptions Abstentions Excommunications and new Examinations even of ancient Christians old and eminent Disciples to whom they had formerly given the Sacrament twenty times some of which they sought to win by fair speeches some people they perswaded others they menaced and scared to submit to their new Scepter Daily Intelligences and brotherly Correspondencies were zealously kept every where very quick and warm among the Presbyterian Fraternity Bishops never so aged learned unblameable venerable and meritorious for their Labours and good Examples were as Underlings and conquered Vassals not so much as pittied but despised and trampled under foot exautorated and vilified by every young stripling that had got the switch of Presbytery in his hand which he saw now was beyond the Bishops Keyes or Crosier Presbytery thus driving at Jehu's rate for some time some of its wheels or pins like Pharaohs began to drop off which forced it to drive more heavily than its natural genius can well bear being spirited like Ezekiel's wheels with so
mischiefs as small parties cannot avoid or remedy In like manner Christians have in all ages grown up from the first Apostolical Plantations of Christianity which were in particular persons and private families to such holy Associations Charitable Combinations and regular Subordinations as reached not onely to the first Families or lesse Congregations and Neighbourhoods which as I said may be called Churches in their Infancy Youth and Minority but they grew up spread and increased by the spirit of Prudence Peace Order Love and Unity even to great Cities large Provinces and whole Nations To all which more publick and extensive relations Christians finding themselves obliged by the ties not onely of their common faith and love but of their own wants and mutuall necessities for Order Safety and Peace they ever esteemed themselves so far bound in duty to every relation both greater and lesser as the generall good and more publick concernments of those Churches of Christ did require of them which were ever esteemed as Ecclesiae adultae Churches in their full growth beauty harmony procerity vigour and completenesse both as to the good to be enjoyed and the evils to be avoided by all Christians not onely in their private but publick and politick capacity 'T is happy indeed when one Sinner or one Family one Village or Congregation give their names to Christ at which the Angels in Heaven rejoyce But how much more august must their joy be how much more magnificent must the glory of Christ and the renown of his blessed name be when whole Cities Countreys and Nations willingly give themselves and be joyned to the Lord and to his Ministers or Ambassadours This carries more proportion as to the merit of Christs Sufferings price of his Blood and power of his Spirit so to the accomplishment of those many cleare and munificent promises foretold with so great pomp and majesty by the Prophets of Gods giving in the Nations with the glory and fulnesse of their multitudes to Christ for his Inheritance so far that many and mighty Kings and Queens should be nursing Fathers and Mothers to the Churches of Christ which should be not onely diffused and scattered according to the latitude and extent of their civil Dominions but piously owned prudently governed and orderly preserved by their princely and paternall care in their severall distributions and orderly jurisdictions according as all true prudence and polity Ecclesiasticall as well as Civil doth require of wise and good men Namely to such a grandeur beauty comelinesse and safety as was and is infinitely beyond any of those modern Models and petty Inventions which seek to slip goodly Boughs into small Twigs or Branches to reduce ancient Churches of long growth of tall and manly stature to their pueriles their long coats and cradles Such famous and flourishing Churches for instance were those in the Apostles times and long after which received their denomination or distinction from those great â—â—ties of Jerusalem Antioch Ephesus Philippi Thessalonica Corinth Rome and the like Mother-Cities According to whose latitude and extensions in point of civil distinction and proconsulary jurisdiction the union and communion of Christians there first converted and formed into severall Churches did extend by the holy and happy Association of their respective Bishops Presbyters Deacons and people into one Ecclesiasticall polity whose orderly and united influence contained in it not onely some one particular Congregation whose number might fitly meet in one place to worship God but it comprised all Christians and Congregations in that city how numerous soever yea and extended not onely to the walls of that city but to the suburbican distributions yea to their several Territories and Provinces appertaining to them in which although there were no doubt many thousands of Christians who were divided into severall Congregations according to the nearnesse of their dwellings and conveniencies of their meetings in one place to serve the Lord yet were they still but one Church as to that Polity Order Authority Government Inspection and Subordination which was among them which cast and comprehended them by a native kind of right and spirituall descent as children to fathers under the care rule and guidance of that Apostle or Apostolick Teacher who first taught and converted them which Apostle afterward committed them together with his own ordinary Authority over them to his Vicegerents Suffragans or Successors in that chief city who residing there was called the Angel Apostle Bishop President or Father of that Church even by the Apostles themselves and by the Spirit of Christ writing to the seven Churches of Asia Ephesus Sardis Pergamus Thyatira Smyrna Philadelphia and Laodicea All which were ever reckoned by Pliny Strabo Stephanus and others as chief Cities or Proconsulary Residencies to which many other Villages and Towns yea some lesser Cities and Countreys were subordinate and united as first in civil dependence and jurisdiction so afterward in Ecclesiasticall Communion and Subjection So that it is most evident by Scripture-dialect by the wisdome of Christs Spirit by the Apostolick prudence and the subsequent practices of all famous Churches as at Alexandria Constantinople Carthage and many other instances that the compleatnesse and perfection of Church-polity order union power and authority was never thought to be seated or circumscribed in every particular congregation of Christians as they were locally divided in their lesser conventions which would make all Churches as small twigs both feeble in themselves and despicable to others but it was placed in those great branches those strong and extensive boughs which had in them the united power or authority not onely of many Christians but of many congregations in which were many godly people many grave Deacons many venerable Presbyters and one eminent Bishop or Father who continued in that Presidentiall authority to water propagate increase preserve and â—overn in order peace and unity those Churches which the Apostles had so planted fixed and established in their severall polities and limits as to Ecclesiasticall union order and jurisdiction In which the chief Pastor President or Bishop so presided in the place power and spirit of the Apostle yea and of Jesus Christ that no private Christian no Deacon no Presbyter yea no particular congregation might as Ignatius and other Ancients tell us regularly doe any thing in publique doctrine discipline worship or ministration without his respective authority consent and allowance Yea all good Christians did ever make great conscience of dividing from the principall succession seat and Pastor who was the centre and conservator of that Church-union and government which was first setled by the Apostles in Primitive Churches and imitated by all others which grew up after them Primitive Christians ever esteeming it as the sin of schisme the work of the flesh a fruit of pride and factious arrogancy for any Christian or any company of Christians to dissolve to divide from and so to destroy that
conscientiously scrupulous nor yet am I so against these or any other innocent Ceremonies recommended in any Church by the joynt consent of all parties and by due authority as for their sakes to withdraw my humble subjection to and charitable communion with this or any other Christian Church in the world that is otherwise sound in the Faith I do not so affect embroyderies in Religion as to have its garments too gay and heavy with the Church of Rome nor yet do I so affect a plainness as to abhorre all decency least of all am I of that curiosity or coynesse in Religion as I will rather rend my garments in pieces and go stark naked than weare such an one as may have possibly some spots or patches which might be spared if they could handsomly be removed but are better suffered than to have rude hands teare and cut them out as they list to the perturbation and injury of the whole Church As to the generall nature of Ceremonies used in the Church of England it may suffice at present in order to vindicate this Church to declare in its behalf First that the Ceremonies enjoyned and used in the Church of England were esteemed and oft so declared to be in the sense of the Church and its chief Governours not at all of the essence or necessary substance of any religious duty no more than the clothes of their opposers were of their constitution or their hair was of their heads yet both clothes and hair are very comely and convenient in the sociall living both of men and Christians together where neither nakednesse I think nor baldnesse would become them Secondly It doth no where appear that our blessed God is so Anti-ceremoniall a God as some men have vehemently fancied and clamoured rather than proved This I am sure the God of heaven whom we worshipped in England did institute many Ceremonies in the ancient religious services required of the Jewish Church which certainly God would not have done if all Ceremonies had been so utterly Anti-patheticall against the Divine nature or contrary to that spirituall sincere worship which he anciently required beyond all doubt of the Jew as well as the Christian as all the Prophets witnesse Nor do we find that God hath any where forbidden any decent Rites holy Customes or convenient Ceremonies to any Christians in order to advance the decency and order of his service or Christians mutuall edification and joynt devotion under the Gospel except onely such as were like the shadows of the night or morning which went before the rising of Jesus Christ the Sun of Righteousnesse importing Christs not being yet come in the flesh or implying the mystery of mans Redemption not yet completed by the Messias such as were Circumcision which was to last no longer in force than the promised seed of Abraham came in whom all nations should be blessed and the Covenant of God should be declared to the Gentiles as well as Jews under another sign or seal which is Baptisme The Mosaick Rites and Ceremonies as the Sacrifices the Passeover the High Priest and other legall Types as fore-going shadows justly vanished when the substance came but those subsequent shadowes Evangelicall Ceremonies and Signs which follow attend upon and betoken the Suns being now risen and present with his Church these in point of outward order and decency also of inward significancy and edification may well consist with the Evangelicall worship of God in Spirit and Truth however it be not founded on them or confined to them as to the inward judgement and conscience of the worshippers We see our blessed Saviour as he conformed to the Judaick Ceremonies both of Divine and Ecclesiastick Institution as in his sitting at the Passeover and celebrating the Encaenia or Feasts of Dedication till his work was finished so He from the Jewish use adopted or instituted some new Evangelicall Ceremonies to be used in a most solemn manner as Sacraments or holy Mysteries in his Church under the Gospel for visible Signs Memorials and Seals of his Love and Grace to us by which his Christian people may be instructed comforted and confirmed in Faith and Charity both to God and to one another Yea our blessed Saviour hath by his Spirit guiding the pens and practises of the Apostles sufficiently manifested as S. Austin observes that grand Charter and Commission of Liberty and Authority given to his Church and the governours of it for the choyce and use of such decent Customes Rites and Ceremonies as may agree with godly manners and the truth of the Gospel best serving for the order decency peace and edification of his Church in its severall states parts and dispersions not as annexing Ceremonies to the nature of the duties or humane inventions to the Essence of Divine Institutions which the Church of England never did but oft declared the contrary nor yet binding the judgement and consciences of those that used them to any such perswasion nor yet invading hereby or prejudicing the liberties of other Churches or any Christians in their respective subordinations but allowing other Churches the like liberty and investing its own members in the use and enjoyment of that Christian liberty as to those particulars which the Church hath chosen and appointed in the name of all its parts and adherents for their sociall order for the solemnity decency and mutuall edification of Christians Which was all that the Church of England intended in its Ceremonies agreeable to that indulgence and authority given by Christ to It as well as to any Church Nor have these enemies to the Church of England upon this account of its Ceremonies ever proved that Christ hath repealed this grant or denied it to this Church more than any others or that this Church hath yet abused its liberty or that themselves have any speciall warrant given them to enter their private dissent and put in a publick prohibition against the whole Church as if it might do nothing in the externalls ornamentalls and circumstantialls of Religion without asking leave of such supercilious censors and imperious dictators who scorn to make the consent of the Church in things of an indifferent and undefined nature to be their rule and law as to outward observance unity and conformity yet arrogate so much to themselves as they would make their private opinion and dissent to be a bar and negative to the whole Church For as the Liturgie so the Ceremonies used and enjoyned in the Church of England were not the private and novell inventions of any late Bishops or other Members of the Church of England much less of any Popes or Papists as some have imagined but they were of very ancient choice and primitive use in the Church of Christ whose judgement and example the Church of England alwayes followed by the consent of all estates in this Nation and Church represented in lawfull Parlaments and Convocations and this they did
Luciferian hereticks flatter themselves that they are meet and competent judges since they find themselves no way directed by any Catholick interpretation nor limited and circumscribed by any joynt wisdome and publick profession of this Church and Nation which heretofore was established and set forth in such a publick confession of their faith such Articles and Canons rules and boundaries of Religion as served for the orderly and unanimous carrying on and preserving Christian Doctrine Discipline Worship Ministry or Government This wide doore once opened and still kept open by the crowding and impetuosity of a people so full of fancy and fury spirit and animosity so wilfull and surly as the English generally are besides that they are naturally lovers and extremely fond as children of new fashions as in all things so in Religion it self it is not I say imaginable as at the pulling up of a great sluce or opening of a flood-gate what vortices voragines opinionum floods and torrents of opinions what precipitant rushings and impetuous whirlings both in mind and manners have every where carried a heady and head-strong people quite headlong in Religion not onely to veniall novelties softer whimsies and lesser extravagances in Religion which are very uncomely though not very pernicious but also to rank blasphemies to gross immoralities to rude licentiousnesse to insolent scandals to endless janglings to proud usurpations to an utter irreligion to a totall distracting confounding and subverting of the Church of Engl. All this under the notion of enjoying whatever liberty they list to take to themselves under the name and colour of Religion which anciently imported an holy Obligation of Christians to God and to each other carried on by a Catholick confession an unanimous profession an uniform tradition an holy ordination and orderly subjection but now they say it is to be learned and reformed not by the old wayes of pious education and Ecclesiastick instruction not from the Bishops or Ministers of this or any nationall Church but either by the new wayes of every private spirit's interpreting of Scriptures or by those new lights of some speciall inspirations which they say are daily held forth by themselves and others of their severall factions or according to the various policies of Lay-men and those pragmatick sanctions which serve the prevalent interests of parties This this is the project so cried up by some men for propagating the Gospel and advancing the Kingdome of Jesus Christ so rare so new so untried so unheard-of in any Christian Church ancient or later that it is no wonder if neither the Church of England nor its learned Clergy nor its dutifull children can either approve admire or follow such dubious and dangerous methods or labyrinths rather of Religion any more than they can canonize for Saints those vagrants and fanaticks of old who were justly stigmatized for damnable hereticks or desperate schismaticks for their deserting that Catholick faith tradition order and communion of the Churches of Christ which were clearly expressed in their Creeds and Canons founded upon Scripture and conform to Apostolick example The Gnosticks Cerinthians Valentinians Carpocratians Circumcellians Montanists Manichees Novatians Donatists Arians and others were esteemed by the Primitive Churches as Foxes and Wolves creatures of a wild and ferine nature impatient of the kindest restraints not induring to be kept in any folds or bounds of Christs flock which ever had an holy authentick and authoritative succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters as its Pastors and Teachers also it had its safe and known limits for Religion in faith and manners Doctrine and Discipline for order and government both in lesser Congregations and larger Combinations The true Christian liberty anciently enjoyed by Primitive Christians and Churches was fullest of verity charity unity modesty humility sanctity sobriety harmonious subordination and holy subjection according to the stations in which God had placed every part or member in those bodies they were the farthest that could be from Schism Separation mutiny novelty ambition rebellion while every one kept the true temper order and decorum of a Christian Certainly if either particular Congregations or private Christians liberty had consisted in being exposed or betrayed as Sheep without their Shepherds to all manner of extravagancies incident to vulgar petulancy and humane infirmity those Primitive Churches and ancient Fathers those godly Bishops and blessed Martyrs those pious Emperours and Christian Princes of old might have spared a great deal of care cost pains and time which were spent in their severall Councils and Synods Parlaments Diets and Conventions whose design was not to make new but to renew those Scripture-Canons and Apostolicall constitutions which were necessary to preserve the faith once delivered to the Saints and to assert not onely the common salvation but also that Catholick succession communion and order of Churches transmitted from the Apostles in which endeavour the piety and wisdome the care and charity of ancient Councils expressed in their many Canons made for the keeping of the unity of the Spirits truth in the bond of peace among Christians were so far in my judgement from being meer heaps of hay straw and stubble burying and over-laying the foundations of Christian soundnesse and simplicity which seems to be the late censure of one whom I am as sorry to see in a posture of difference from the Church of England as any person of these times because I esteem his learning and abilities above most that have appeared adversaries to or dissenters from Her that I rather judge with Mr. Calvin a person far more learned judicious and impartiall in this case They were for the most part very sober wise and suitable superstructures little deviating from no way demolishing any of those grand foundations of Faith Holiness or Charity which were laid by Christ and his blessed Apostles which ever continued the same and were so owned by their pious successors however they used that liberty and authority in lesser matters which was given them by the Scriptures and derived to them by their Apostlick mission or succession for the prudent accommodating of such things as concerned the outward polity uniformity order and peace of the Church or for those decent celebrations and solemnities of Religioâ— which were most agreeable to the severall geniu'ses and civil rites of people and the mutable temper of times all which who so neglects to consider will never rightly judge of the severall counsels customes and constitutions of either ancient or later Churches The best of whose piety and prudence the Reformed Church of England chose to follow as exactly as it could first in Her decerning declaring determining translating and communicating to her children those Canonicall Books of holy Scripture also in the owning professing and propounding to them those Ancient Catholick and received Creeds which are as the summaries and boundaries of Christian Faith containing those articles which are necessary to be believed by all after this it used those
these must exercise all Church-power and Divine authority over your consciences whereas for my part I do not think that the best of these new Masters and Ministers can have from their own fancies or peoples forwardness so much authority because they have none either from God or the Church of Christ or the laws of this Land as would make them petty Constables or Bom-baylies a Lay-elder or an Apparitor This I am sure that in the purest and primitive times as Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian S. Cyprian and others assure us the holy mysteries of Christian Religion the power of the Keyes the sacrating of Sacraments the pastorall ruling and preaching as of office duty and necessity to any part of Christs flock was esteemed the peculiar and proper work of Bishops and Presbyters in their order and degree as the true and onely Pastors and Teachers that succeeded the twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples in their ordinary Ministry nor were men branded for other how able soever than insolent and execrable usurpers who did adventure to officiate unordained that is not duly authorised as Ministers Such intruders Tertullian notes both some men and women to have been in his time who were leavened with Schisme and Heresie so Epiphanius and S. Austin tell us of the Quintilliani Pepuziani and Colliridiani who were confounders of the Ministeriall order Sozomen Socrates Nicephorus and other Church-historians sharply censure one Ischyras or Ischyrion who unordained pretended to be a Presbyter and so to officiate calling him a detestable person and worthy of more than one death whom Athanasius finding about to consecrate or rather desecrate the Eucharist he in an holy and heroick zeal as Christ in the Temple brake the Communion Cup overthrew the Table and repressed his insolent impiety counting him as another Judas Iscariot a traitor to Christ and the Church Yet in the place of the Ministers of the Church of England I beseech you how few Athanasiusses how many Ischyrasses may you now see challenging to themselves the care of mens souls as Ministers of Christ undertaking the managerie of mens eternall interests confident to interpret Scriptures to resolve doubts to decide controversies to satisfie mens consciences to keep up the truth power and majesty of Christian Religion by new undue and exotick wayes against the torrent and impetuous force of ignorance Atheism profaneness errour malice and madness of men and Devils For all which grand designs of Gods glory and the Churches good those men are as fit agitators as Phaeton was to drive Phoebus his Chariot and truly with like success they will do it for instead of enlightening the world these Incendiaries will set all on fire as far as they meet with any combustible matter in which sad conflagrations begun and blown up by them in this Church of England some of them are so vain as to glory calling them the spirituall day of judgement an invisible doomesday a coming of Christ in the spirit of burning and refining to purge his Church For this purpose they say the Sun must be turned into darknesse and the Moon into blood government of Church and State must be subverted nor do they according to their severall fancies and interests fail to presage and expect a glorious Resurrection to their parties which they hope shall reign with Christ if not a thousand years yet as long as they can prevail so as to get power and preserve those liberties they have ravished to themselves CHAP. VIII NOr are these novell undertakers ever more ridiculous than when they sow pillowes under their own rustick arms and others elbows excusing yea abetting their illiterate rudeness and idiotick confidence with the primitive plainness and simplicity of the Apostles when Christ first chose them who were Fishermen Tent-makers or the like Which is truly but very impertinently alledged as any parallel case with these impotent and pragmatick intruders unless they could manifest to the world which they never yet did nor ever will such miraculous endowments such power and anointing from above as came upon the Apostles which in one moment was able to furnish them with more sufficiency and authority than all study and industry can ever do any of us which are the now ordinary means appointed and blessed by God succeeding in the place of miraculous gifts where Churches are once fully planted and Christianity setled To all which the constant testimony of an uninterrupted Ministery and holy succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters from the very Apostles as they from Christ is a more pregnant witnesse and conviction than any new miracles could be much more than any such pittifull accounts can be as these wonders of ignorance and arrogancy can give to the world of any extraordinary matters they say or do either as Ministers or Christians The best of some of whose lives would deform I fear the golden legend which seems to be written by a man of a brazen forehead a leaden wit and an iron heart We the despised Clergie of England do profess to use and pray God to bless our long preparative studies meditations writings readings also our immediate care concomitant labours in this kind habitually to fit us for that dreadfull work and for every actuall discharge of it We find these methods practised by the most famous lights of the Church recommended by S. Paul to Timothy though a person in some things extraordinarily gifted that he should attend didiligently to those exercises that his profiting might appear We do not now expect fire from heaven with Elias to come down upon our sacrifices but we are glad to take the ordinary coals of Gods altar which may by his Word and Spirit going along with our pains and prayers both enlighten our minds and kindle our hearts so as to make us burning and shining lights in Gods house which is his Church Truly those proud and poor wretches who know no coals but those of their own chimney-corners may possibly have a few embers on their hearths or in their potsheards they may like dark lanthorns have a bit of a farthing-candle in them that shines with a little dim and dubious light on one side onely as in the smatterings of some plain primer-knowledge which they have gathered either by superficiall reading the Scriptures or by hearing some Sermons heretofore from the able Ministers of England or by gleaning a little out of the plainest of their writings but 't is most apparent that on three sides of them that is for Grammaticall skill historicall knowledge and polemicall learning they are so horridly black and dark that they seem fitter implements to bring in such ignorance irreverence Atheism superstition and confusion as shall quite put out the Christian and Reformed Religion in this nation reducing all to pristine darkness deformity and barbarity than probable ever to be either propagators purgators or preservers of it which had long ago been over-run with the rank weeds of
Ravens must not be hoped for to feed us where Providence gives us opportunity to get our bread by honest industry Where then there are so many intruders and deceivers gone out as Ministers of the Gospel it is a matter of conscience as well as necessary prudence in all good Christians to be cautious and inquisitive whom they allow and follow as Ministers to be first satisfied in that question which the Jews rationally asked of Christ By what power or authority dost thou these things No discreet person in civil affairs will obey any warrant or order which hath no other authority than a private and pragmatick activity and can it be piety or prudence in Christians to be deluded by any pretenders in the great concernments of their souls to have no more of Sacraments or any other holy duties than the meer sensible shell and husk of them for the spiritual life and power of them is no where to be had but from such dispensers of them as have the authority and power the mission and commission of Christ rightly derived to them which was evident first in Christ after in his holy Apostles and their lawfull successors Certainly the cheat and falsity of such mock-Ministers and Pseudo-pastors is of far greater danger and detriment than those of spurious and supposititious children or of embased coin and counterfeit money Some people have been so wicked as to change their own children steal others from their parents but it was never heard that children of any discretion were so foolish and unnaturall as to abdicate their true Fathers and genuine mothers that they might adopt false parents and superinduce upon themselves the Empire of bastardly progenitors The mischief abuse is not less in Churches than in Common-weales in Christian Congregations than in families Due respect of paternall care and filiall love such as ought to be between Pastor and People can never be mutually expected where the relation is either supposititious or presumptuous or meerly imaginary or at best but arbitrary which is inconsistent with humane much more with divine Authority the measure of which is not the pleasure of man but the will of God whose will is asserted by his power For my part I firmly conclude that as no true Christians may admit of any Gospel or Sacraments or holy Institutions other than such as have been already once delivered to the Catholick Church and preserved by her fidelity against which the preaching of an Angel from heaven is not to be received or believed but accursed so nor may any Church or good Christians either broach invent or admit any new ministeriall power order mission or authority beside or beyond that which the Church of England and the Catholick Church of Christ hath received and transmitted in a constant succession That sacred ordination which began in Christ and flowed from him as the effect of his Melchisedechian Evangelicall and eternall Priesthood must never be interrupted innovated or essentially altered no not under any pretense or removing or reforming what corrupions may possibly be contracted by time and humane infirmities which are but accidentall as diseases to the body to Catholick prescriptions founded upon divine institutions Fields once sown with good corn must not be rooted up or fired because tares may be sown by the enemy while men slept Trees that are full of moss missletow through age yet bearing good fruit ought not to be cut down but pruned and cleared The decayes or dilapidations of the Temple before Hezekiah and Josiah repaired it were no excuse for peoples neglect to frequent it much less were they justified and to sacrifice other where than there onely as the place which the Lord had chosen to put his name there nor did those pious Princes set that house of God on fire because it was decayed but duly repaired it with great cost and care And such indeed was the excellent piety and prudence of the Church of England such wisdome and moderation it observed as in all other things so in this of the ministeriall order and office What injuries it as other holy things had suffered in the darkness of times by the dulness of Presbyters the negligence of Bishops or insolence of Popes it wisely reformed not abrogating the authority or breaking the Catholick succession of Bishops and Presbyters in this as in all Churches not broaching a new fountain not obstructing as Philistins the wells their fathers had digged not diverting the ancient course and conduits of the waters of life but cleansing the fountains and continuing the streams of primitive holy orders in the constant descents degrees and offices of Bishops Presbyters and Deacons They did not raise up new Ministers like Mushromes out of every mole-hill noâ— force them like Musk-melons out of the hot beds of popular zeal and novellizing faction without any regard to the ancient stock and root of Ecclesiasticall power and Ministeriall authority from which as Irenaeus Tertullian S. Cyprian and all the ancients clearly tell us Bishops and Presbyters were ever derived as slips and off-sets of the twelve Apostles and seventy Disciples No time ever did or ever shall render that Primitive plant and root of Evangelicall Ministry so dry dead and barren that they may or ought to be quite stubbed up or new ones set in their room No they are only to be pruned and trimmed that so they may be worthy of that honor which indeed they have to be by an uninterrupted succession derived and descended from the blessed Apostles whom Christ first planted by his own hands nor may any mans presumption undertake to pul up that holy plantation as those design to do who endeavour to destroy the derivation and succession of the power Ministeriall The truth sanctity and validity of which as to the Ministry of the Church of England by its Bishops and Presbyters hath been fully and clearly asserted by able pens against both Papists on the one side and Novellists on the other The one confining all Episcopal and Ministeriall power to one head and origin the Bishop of Rome as if there had not been twelve fountains and foundations of prime Apostles but onely one S. Peter appointed by our Lord Jesus Christ the other lewdly scattering that sacred office and divine authority even among vulgar and plebeian hands that every man may scramble for it as he list according as he fancies that his abilities and liberty in these times may extend The putid and pernicious effects of which in their present usurpations divisions confusions debasements discouragements upon the Clergie and Church of England as I shall afterward in the third Book more fully set them forth so I cannot here but justly condemn those partiall unreasonable and irreligious principles from whence so pragmatick an itch or thirst of novelty in so grand a concernment of Religion must needs arise that fond men should be so eager to stop up the ancient fountains
as to question the usual and approved practise of it from all times which S. Austin so vehemently affirmes that in his Epistle to Volusia he sayes The custom of our Mother the Church in baptizing Infants as it is not to be neglected as superfluous so nor would it have been either practised or believed unlesse it had been so delivered by the Apostles as their undoubted sense and practise which Pelagius did not yea could not with any colour deny as S. Austin observes though it had much served his design about original sin if he could in that point have baffled the credit custome and authority of the Catholick Church which S. Cyprian who lived in the second Century so beyond all cavill or scruple so industriously and fully sets down that if there were no other testimonies of the Ancients that alone would satisfie any sober man being written not upon any heat of dispute but calmly and clearly as of a matter ever done and never under dispute in the Church to his dayes But I have in this part done more than I designed in order to advance not strifes and further contention but Christian peace and charity on all sides in this Church and Nation as to those religious differences which are a great occasion of our miseries CHAP. XIV FRom the Deformities Divisions and Degeneration of Religion also the Falsifications Usurpations and Devastations which of later years have been made by the violent sort of Anabaptists and other furious Sectaries against the Unity and Authority the Sanctity and Majesty of the Church of England destroying its Primitive Order and Apostolick Government its Catholick Succession its holy Ordination its happy and most successfull Ministry to the great neglect and contempt of all holy ministrations and duties of Religion I cannot but further intimate to your piety and prudence O my honoured Countrey-men that which is most notorious and no lesse dangerous both in religious and civil respects namely the great Advantages Applauses and Increases which the Roman or Papal party daily gain against the Reformed Religion as it was once wisely honourably and happily established professed and maintained here in England which is now looked upon by the more subtill superstitious and malicious sort of Papists as deformed divided dissolved desolated so conclamate for dead that they fail not with scorn to boast that in England we have now no Church no Pastors no Bishops no Presbyters no true Ministry no holy Ministrations no Order no Unity no Authority no Reverence as to things Divine or Ecclesiastick Insomuch that we must in this sad posture not onely despair of ever getting ground against the Romanists by converting any of them from the errours of their way to the true Reformed Religion but we must daily expect to lose ground to the Popish party and their Proselytes there being no banks or piles now sufficient to keep the Sea of Rome from over-flowing or undermining us in order to advance their restlesse interests which have been and still are mightily promoted not by the reverend Bishops and the other Episcopal Clergie who are men of Learning Piety Prudence and Martyr-like constancy as some men with more Heat than Wit more Spite than Truth have in their mechanick and vulgar Oratory of late miserably and falsely declaimed but by those who have most done the Popes work while they have seemed most furiously to flie in the Popes face as popularly zealous against Popery and yet at the same time by a strange giddinesse headinesse and madnesse they have risen up against that Mother-Church which bare them and those Fathers in it who heretofore mightily defended them and theirs from the talons and gripes of that Roman Eagle and this not with childish scufflings or light skirmishings to which manner of fight the illiterate weaknesse and rudenesse of our new Masters and Champions hath reduced those Controversies but with such a Panoply or compleat Armour of proof such sharp Weapons such ponderous Engines such rare dexterity of well-managed Powers raised from all Learning both Divine and Humane that the high places and defences of Rome were not able to stand before them heretofore when they were battered by our Jewels our Lakes our Davenants our Whites our Halls our Mortons our Andrews and the late invincible Usher who deserved to be Primate not onely of Ireland but of all the Protestant Forces in the world All these were Bishops Worthies of the first three seconded in their ranks by able and orderly Presbyters as Whitakers Perkins Reynolds Whites Crakanthorps Sutliffs and innumerable others while our Regiments were orderly our Marchings comely and our Forces both united and encouraged Whereas now there is no doubt but the mercilesse mowing down and scattering of the Clergie of England like Hay with the withering and decay of Government Regularity and Order in this Church these have infinitely contributed to the Papall harvest and Romish agitations the gleanings of whose Emissaries will soon amount to more than the sheaves of any the most zealous and reformed Ministers in England By the Papall interests and advantages I doe not mean the Roman Clergies preaching or propagating those Truths of Christian Doctrine Duties which for the main they profess in common with us and all Christian Churches if any of them be thus piously industrious I neither quarrell at them nor envy their successes but rather I should rejoyce in them with S. Paul because however Christ crucified is preached by some whom common people will either more reverence or sooner believe than they generally doe the decayed despised divided Ministers of Engl. who seem to have many of them so small abilities and carrying so little shew or pretence of any good authority for their work ministeriall nor can they be potent or esteemed abroad who are so impotent and disesteemed at home But I mean that Papall Monarchy or Ecclesiasticall Tyranny by which the Church or rather the Court of Rome by such sinister Arts and unjust Policies as were shamefully used and discovered in the Tridentine conventicle seeks to usurp and continue an imperiall power over all Churches and Bishops as if there had been but one Apostle or one Apostolick Church planted in the world also to corrupt abuse that ancient Purity Simplicity and Liberty of Religion which was preserved among Primitive Churches and their coordinate Bishops Further without fear of God or reverence of man opposing some Divine Truths and undoubted institutions of Christ also imposing such erroneous Doctrines and superstitious Opinions upon all Christians to be believed and accordingly practised as become not the severity and sanctity of true Religion adding to that holy foundation which was indeed first laid by the great Apostles and continued happily for many hundred years by the successive Bishops of Rome those after superstructures not of ceremonies onely which are tolerable many of them like feathers making but little weight in Religion but of corrupt Doctrines and
as much away from the Charity and Unity of Religion That Passion commonly darkens and sullies more than their pretensions of Piety do polish or brighten Religion That preposterous Reformers instead of snuffing the lamps of the Temple are prone to put them quite out especially when the ignorance and insolence of Lay-men undertake to set the Ark of God upon their Cart to draw it with Beasts and drive it with their whips and whistlings though they whistle to the tune of a Psalm yet Religion alwayes totters is oft overthrown by them being never safe but when it is as the Ark ought to have been carried upon the shoulders of able Priests and Levites such Bishops and Presbyters as ought to bear it up and to whose care that sacred depositum is chiefly committed by Christ and the Apostles Nor hath the learned and godly Clergy in England ever been so weak and unworthy as to want either ability or will Sufficiency or Authority to do this service to God and his Church however now they are so debased discouraged and almost beaten out of the Sanctuary Reformations of Religion ever prove either abortive or misshapen when they are either begotten or brought forth by Ministers factiousnesse or peoples fury tumultuating and irregular wayes of reforming any Church do but cut up and so kill the mother in hope to save that Bastard-child which having neither due form nor legitimation deserves no long life We see by too wofull experiences and infinite expences of blood that Churches when in some things decayed are easier mended in Fancy than in effect in the project than performance That this Church-work requires not onely proper workmen and skilfull Artists but tender hands and cautious fingers That where the Essentialls Vitals and Fundamentalls of Religion in any Church are good as to true doctrine saving faith holy institutions and honest moralls the prudentialls and ornamentalls cannot but be commendable if they be tolerable That the peace and safety of a setled Church ought not to be indangered for circumstances That it is a dangerous practice of Empiricks to give able and otherwise healthfull bodies uncorrected Quick-silver which shall kill them outright in order to kill some little itch or tetter upon them whose breaking forth to the circumference or outward habit of the body is a good effect of an ill cause a sign of firmer health in the nobler and more retired parts I must ever conclude with S. Austin and Dionysius Bishop of Athens it is better for the Churches peace and Christian charity sake to tolerate some inconveniences for some there will ever be or at least to some men seem to be in the best constituted Churches than to admit of such hazardous wayes and means of reforming as will endanger the ruine of Religion and totall routing of a well-setled Church that it is better in all respects to acquiesce in or submit to publick determinations and tried appointments of true Religion than to be still tampering with untried experiments and essayes of Novelty to the wast of that Order Peace and Unity which ought to be preferred before any such Truths as are but probable or so disputable that good men on either side have do and may hold them in some opposition without danger of their salvation It is but a delusion and device of the Devil which prompts men to wind up the strings of Religion to so high a note of Reformation as breaks both the strings themselves and the very ribs of that Instrument which they pretend to set to such a pitch An immoderation which hath as I have endeavoured to set forth by many sad instances in this third Book of the Church of Englands Sighs and Teares so defaced deformed shaken disunited weakned and endangered the state and honour of Religion as Christian and Reformed in this Church and Nation that it threatens like a Fistula Gangrene or Cancer a totall though it may be a lingring fatality both to Church and State unlesse by some wise hearts and worthy hands the Lord of Heaven vouchsafe to apply such Cures as may stop the prevailings of such sad Effects and remove the Causes which began or promoted them so far as to give occasion to this famous Church and her Children thus sadly to bemone themselves BOOK IV. SETTING FORTH THE SIGHS and PRAYERS of the CHURCH of ENGLAND In order to its Healing and Recovery CHAP. I. HAving set before you Honored and beloved Countrymen in the three former Bookes first the well-formed and sometime flourishing constitution of the Church of England Lib. 1. secondly its present decayes or destitutions both in the causes Lib. 2. and consequences Lib. 3. relating to Ministers and people in sacred and civill regards to the great diminution detriment and danger of the Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation It is now time to apply my thoughts and yours in this fourth Book to the Restitution or recovery of that which is the honour and happinesse of this as all Nations which undoubtedly consists in the Purity Unity Stability Sanctity Solemnity Autority and Efficacy of True Religion Hitherto I have powred Wine into the wounds of this Church not so much suppling as searching them by an honest severity The bruises and putrified sores which are all over the body of our reformed Religion were not capable of Oyles and Balsames of softer and sweeter applications till the putid and painfull ulcerations were first opened the cores of them discovered and the pus or sanies of them let out which to conceal and smother by gentle but unsincere salves by civil but cruel plaisters rather palliating our miseries than healing our maladies were a method of so great basenesse and unworthinesse in me as might for ever justly deprive me of the honour of faithfulnesse to God to this Church to true Religion to my Country to my own and to your soules I know the freedom of my pen hitherto like the sharpnesse of a Lancet or probe may be prone to offend on all sides few men are so humble as not to find fault with those that tell them of their faults those are commonly least patient of Phisitians or Chirurgeons hands who need them most crying out of other mens severities which are occasioned yea necessitated by their own debauchnesse and distempers Yet since my aymes are in this writing upon or rather ripping up the bilious inflammations of Religion not to spare my own disorders or theirs with whom I may seem most to symbolize in my opinion and practice I hope no good man great or small will be causelesly offended with the just incisions or scarrifyings I have made which as the gangrenous necessity of our maladies otherwise desperate and incurable have compelled me to so the pious peaceable and charitable intentions of my soul inorder to a common and publick good will then best excuse them when my Readers shall perceive with how liberall an hand and free an heart I do in this fourth Book
Roman Communion must not the fate of your either miscreant or miserable posterity necessarily be such that their teeth will be so set on edge by the sowre grapes you have eaten and left for them that they will not endure sound Doctrine much lesse wholesome Discipline Thus untaught and ungoverned unbred and unfed in Religion can you expect other from them than all debaucheries immoralities and such Atheisticall indifferences and impudencies as the heart of man easily runs into if left to it self as the Horse and Mule without bit or bridle of Religion and conscience to restraine them May they not have cause in their sad reflections upon the Beauty Order Honor and Happinesse of Religion in England which they may read of in former daies besides the many afflictions and civill dissentions which have and will inevitably follow divided Religion to an irreligion in any Nation may they not in their doubting dying and despairing retreates have cause to count you yea and to curse you as their carelesse and cruell parents who are never quiet or content till you settle your honors estates and civill affaires in some safe posture as you imagine but are wholly negligent as to any religious establishment which many men feare oppose and abhorre lest in cleare waters their faces should appeare the fouler varieties and uncertainties of Religion being most fomented by those whose piety is wholly resolved into policy who never tasted how gracious the Lord is in the waies meanes and fruites of true Religion But for you O my noble Countrimen that have seen and rejoyced in that glorious light of Reformed Religion which shined so long and illustriously in the Church of England how can you with any conscience or comfort leave the world and leave your posterity with your Country exposed to such variety uncertainties distractions deformities and confusions as to the Reformed Religion and its Ministry which makes them look like the Temple of God in Jerusalem after Nebucadnezzar and Nebuzaradan had visited it with fire and sword so defacing and deforming it that it was the pitty of all good men and the scorn of the wicked As Augustus Caesar was wont in his most impotent passion of grief and vexation to teare his haire and cry out Ridde Vare Legiones O Varus restore the Legions of brave and veterane souldiers which thou hast so unadvisedly or unworthily lost when they were slaine by the Germane surprises so may you heare the soberest Christians and truest-hearted English-men in their grief and shame cry out Reddite nobis Religionem Reformatam Uniformem Christianam primaevam Catholicam Reddite Ecclesiae Anglicana priscam pietatem pacem ordinem pulchritudinem patrimonium regimen Majestatem debitam decus antiquum Reddite nobis patres fratres filios spiritales Episcopos atate virtute authoritate venerandos Presbyteros literatura industria humilitate unitate ordine conspicuos Plebem probe instructam modestam sobriam mutua charitate amulam non effrâ—nem infrunitam laceram non erroribus lascivam non novitatibus foedam non scabie rigentem non nimia petulantia deformem non irreligiose Religiosam c. This was the voice of the Church of England while it dared to speake Latine which being now scandalous and reprochfull to many as the language of the Beast not understood by them She is forced to expresse her Prayer in English for mens better understanding Restore restore I beseech you to me to your selves to your country to your posterity the purity the peace the sanctity the solemnity the sobriety the order the honor the unity the solidity the stability the power the efficacy the fruites and works of true Christian and Reformed Religion Restore to us the happinesse of living not onely united in one civill polity as men but in one Ecclesiasticall Correspondency Combination and Communion as Christians It is more for our honor and peace to be Members of one Church than of one Commonwealth to have the same Religion and Devotion than the same Lawes and Statutes Restore to us those prime veines and Catholick conduits of Ecclesiasticall order of Church-power and spirituall authority under Christ those paternall Pastors those Primitive Bishops those successive Apostles That so we may have such Presbyters as have the Catholick Character of due Ordination and the most undoubted Derivation of Ministeriall Authority upon them being at once able and willing duly proved and empowered by Christs deputed Ministers and the whole Church to consecrate and dispense holy Mysteries to us not in the new names of Presbyters or people or Parlaments or Princes onely but in the name of Christ and his Church according to the commission he first gave to the Apostles and they transmitted to their successors in a constant undoubted and uninterrupted succession to this day Redeeme this ancient Church and renowned Nation from those lice and flies those locusts and frogs whose importune malice and wantonnesse seeks to deface and devour whatever yet remaines of the Reformed Religion in England Redeeme all sober Christians whose little life affords them no leisure to play with Religion redeeme them from the Rents and Schismes the raggs and tatters the breaks and divisions the fragments and fractions the chaines and fetters the childish and ridiculous janglings the scandalous and pernicious liberties with which pragmatick Spirits seek to poyson and to imprison their judgements and consciences Nothing is at least ought to be more pressive and urging upon your Honors and Consciences who are persons sensible of these two great regards to God and man than these concernments of true Religion whose influence reacheth to the eternall interest of your own and your posterities soules Nor is their lapsed estate to be helped by faire words and soft pretentions by demure silences and â—ary reserves by State-stratagems and politick artifices by vaporing of reformations and conniving at popular insolencies as if they were tendernesses and liberties due to conscience No the recovery of Religion is to be effected by potent convictions and impartiall suppressions of all enormous opinions and actions by serious trying of errors and establishing of sound Doctrine by just restraining all inordinate liberties by incouraging an able and uniform Ministry by discountenancing all fanatick novelties by composing al uncharitable divisions and by punishing all pragmatick arrogancies which evidently vary from or run counter against that truth order ministry authority and holy Discipline of Religion which Scripture and all Catholick conformity to it have commended to all Christians as Christs will and appointment which being accordingly setled in this Church and State ought not to be contradicted or rudely contemned by any new lights by pretended inspirations or the novel inventions of any man or men whatsoever seem they never so holy so devout so well-affected so sincere so saintly This and other true Churches of Christ did know very well what belonged to the unity sanctity charity and constancy of Religion as Christian and Reformed long before
all others to prefer it and so the Bishops of all other Cities made no scruple to yield the precedency of honor and order to the Bishops of Rome which was as lawfull as it was orderly But when the Papall arrogancy lifted up it self above its brethren by a Luciferian height through the subtilty and importunity of Pope Boniface as Platina in his life tels us he afterward sought to exalt himself above all that is called God the Papall ambition very cunningly invading not onely the Rights of Kings and civill powers but of the Ecclesiastick Rulers also for the Roman policy saw that unlesse it got above all Bishops it could not easily get above all Christian Princes and Magistrates which supported the honor and freedome of each other Then Monastick and Jesuitick flattery following pride the Bishops of Rome must be not onely the chief Bishop but the Father the Fountaine the Lord the Prince of all Bishops and all Episcopacy indeed the onely Bishop of Divine and Apostolick Authority all other Bishops must be as his off-sets his Suffragans or his Chaplaines nothing without him and able to do nothing as Bishops but by a power derived from the Pope forgetting the Primitive equality of all Bishops as to their Episcopall Rights Power and Office which followed the parity of the Apostles as to their Apostleship which all Antiquity with St. Cyprian St. Jerom Gregory the Great and others owned as Unicus in solidum Episcopatus but one Tree or source of Ecclesiasticall Authority first rooted in Christ afterward derived to the chief Apostles and from each of them to their successors in all the Christian world This once laid aside and buried in the darknesse and insolency of warlike and superstitious times the degenerated Bishops of Rome by degrees gained their processe and designe which was to have no civill or Ecclesistick power in the world but such as might derive from and depend upon them all Princes and Prelates must be his vassalls or they must have no Principality no Episcopacy This axe was the first and a very heavy sharp one that was laid to the root of Episcopacy by the Papall arrogancy after whose copy all those may be suspected to write who first blot out Episcopacy that they may blot and out-bolt set up and pull down Magistracy upon such principles and pretentions of Religion as they list to set up and fancy for the advancing of Christs cause the Gospel Religion and Reformation words never more used by any than the Popes of Rome since they used the style of Holinesse and Servant of Servants but intended Highnesse and exercised Soveraignty over all according to that Mystery of Iniquity which was by some of them carried on and is not to this day laid aside though more tenderly and warily managed being on all hands either despised or disliked by all Christian Princes that are not forced by dependance or fear to be parasites to the Pope I know in this point other novel Antiepiscopal parties on all hands have sought with all artifices to captate Magistratick favour as well as plebeian applauses representing themselves so submissive and complyant to Princes and Parlaments to all States and civill Polities that they fancy to favour their side as if they onely studied to bear the crosse of Christ and not to weare any Crown of soveraignty But how modest some of them have been in seeking to set up Jesus Christ and themselves not onely without but against the expresse will and consent of the lawfull Princes and chief Magistrates no lesse than against the Lawes in force yea and against the far major part of the community of all sorts I leave it to others yea to themselves to judge who have any just ingenuous or blushing principle in them I am sure the Anabaptists at Munster first pretended to abhor all wars and weapons of blood while their party was small weake and frozen but afterward they could find hands as well as feet As for Presbytery and Independency truly they have given not only terrible alarmes and assaults to both Monarchy and Episcopacy which were both of them their lawfull superiours but they have even now sharpe rigours and ambitious rivalries against each other which of them shall have most power and most hands as well as most favour or indulgence Neither of them are looked upon as making any great scruple to bring in the prevalency of their parties by force of armes when once they presume of numbers sufficient neither of them seem to make any great conscience to set up their new Scepters by absolute power where petition and agitation will not serve their turne because both of them pretend to have Jesus Christ sure on their side who is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords yet I do not find that he hath any where made them his Lieutenants to Rule for him upon the score and Title of any Church-power notwithstanding that they intitle their designes with his cause and inscribe their banners with his name as Pontius Pilate did that Crosse whereon he Crucified Jesus Christ. Many of them I find do hold all Men all Christians all Ministers all Magistrates all Princes Kings and Emperours enemies to Jesus Christ that are not declaredly for them and will not be subject to their Discipline or Government Many Grave and Learned men heretofore and of later times have set them forth not onely in their occasional zelotries and transports but in their meditated principles and declared designes to be such strikers and sticklers that they seem to be born with hornes and hoofes at least with teeth and swords in their mouths preaching as in Gods and Christs Name that if Christian Princes will not Peers and inferiour Magistrates may if these will not the common people may and ought to Reforme any Church or Religion after such a Form as their leaders list to fancy and prescribe Nor is this to be done with gloves and mittens with petitions and prayers but with gantlets and speares with clubs and swords if need be and if they can get power into their hands which they say is to be counted Gods power or a providentiall dispensation to his people thus to carry on his glory his word and his cause as to Religion though against his expresse Word against all Rules of justice against all Lawes and bounds of civill order and obedience yea against common honesty even to the violating of just oathes and superinducing of perjurious superfetations yea even to excommunication and deprivation of the chief Magistrate or Prince of their place and power in case they be refractory Thus do many men tell us they have found the Disciplinarian pulse of Presbytery at least if not of Independency to beat almost ever since they were born so that they have and ever will give no small terror jealousie and trouble to all soveraigne and Magistratick powers where ever they can by popular arts get footing both of them bearing
which he had by any outward token never appearing of later yeares in any other than a plain Gown and Cassock as an ordinary Presbyter A person so rich in all excellencies and yet so poor even to an annihilation in his own Spirit partakes no doubt of that first great Beatitude The Kingdom of Heaven But as if all that burthen while this blessed Bishop lived had no been sufficient to depress this Atlas this Job this Elias there wan-tted not some men who go for Ministers who to shew their despite and insolency against all Bishops and Episcopacy durst own and declare their scorn and disdain against this excellent Lord Bishop and Primate while he lived by not vouchsafing to own or call him by any of these most deserved Titles nor enduring the style of Armachanus to be added to his name O pitiful Parasites most obsequiously courting other men with the nauseous and repeated Crambes of Your Honour Your Lordship My good Lord c. whos 's neither place nor personal worth and merit in Church or State is or ever can be without a miracle comparable to this renowned Lord and Bishop if pious Impartiality and not secular Flattery might be judge Ask all the Christian and learned World what man of any Learning Honor and Ingenuity from home or abroad ever wrote to him or made mention of his name without exquisite Prefaces and studied Epithets of signal honor and respect which attributes of Lordship and Grace given to Bishops are no news nor any way offensive save onely to Mechanick Ignorance or Envy there being nothing in all Antiquity more frequent on all hands than the honourable compellations and additions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Domine and Multùm venerande of Dominatio Dignitas and Paternitas of Honourable Lord and Venerable Father ascribed to worthy Bishops Among whom none was more worthy of all Attributes fit to be given to a mortal man than this Bishop whose greatest diminutions like the seeming Eclipses of the Sun did not lessen his light but onely hide him more from the World He was as truely worthy to be Honoured Emulated Admired Magnified and Imitated of all good men in all Ages as any one person that ever I knew in all my life which as Plato said of Socrates I think much the more blessed of God because I lived in those dayes which gave me the opportunity honor and happinesse both to know and be known to this great Exemplar of all learned worth this grand pattern of Bishops Preachers Scholars and Christians Nor was it the least cordial I had in the difficulties and horrors of later years to remember that I was not far from such an open Sanctuary that I might have frequent recourse to such a full and free Magazin of all Christian Graces and Gifts nor did I think we could be completely miserable and utterly desolated as to the Church while this great Genius was yet alive and in England in whom by a rare and wonderful conjunction such high abilities were mixed with unparallell'd humility such Candor and Gentleness did temper his Gravity and such Serenity did sweeten the severer Sanctity of his life that he seemed to me not so much a man as a kind of miracle or prodigy of humane perfections especially when I remember not long before his death those unfeigned tears which I saw and those humble complaints which I heard not for his losses but for his sins and omissions earnestly deprecating Gods displeasure and dreading his exact Tribunal Who will not fear and tremble who will not wax wan and discoloured when he sees a Rubie of so great price and orient lustre contract pallor and amazement As for the many sufferings or indignities he had sustained I never perceived the least regret or sigh much lesse any bitter and revengfull replies A very great sense indeed he expressed and very often with sadness and compassion for the distractions of this Church the deformities of our Religion and the feared future desolations which he oft and earnestly seemed to presage as neer at hand alwaies jealous that our Religious feuds and factions would at last end in Papall Superstition and mutuall oppressions Against both which this good Bishop and so many yea most of his Brethren were I believe as much enemies and as far removed both in their judgements and endeavours as the most Antiepiscopall Presbyter or Independent in the world being much better able to give a reason of his distance from them than they can for their defiance of him and all Bishops Against the deluge of whose partiality and passion I have thus opposed the Barricado or Peire this one great instance of a most unblameable Bishop purposely to vindicate against all mens impudence ignorance or malice the consistence of Episcopacy with Piety and the vast distance between Primitive Prelacy and after-Popery Truâ—y in my judgement this one Bishop out-weighs all that ever was or can be alledged against Episcopacy who not onely while he lived mightily justified the function but before he died his earnest desire was that such a due succession of Episcopall Authority might be regularly preserved in England as might keep up the completenesse and validity of Ecclesiasticall and Catholick Ordination first against the Calumnies of Papists who infinitely joy in the advantages they have got of such a Schismatick reproch upon us next against the rage and impertinencies of other factions who will in time bring all Reformed and Christian Religion to a consumption if they either quite obstruct or utterly destroy Primitive and Apostolick Episcopacy which that great Bishop esteemed as vena porta the great veine which hath from the Apostles conveyed in all Ages all Ecclesiasticall Order Power Authority and Jurisdiction Which undoubtedly was the judgement of all Antiquity otherwise all Churches would not have been so impatient of being without their Bishops at any time nor would Bishops have been so carefull in the times of persecution to propagate an holy succession of Bishops without any remarkable or long interruption never failing in any Church till this last Age nor in England till of late yeares Primitive Bishops not considering the pleasures or displeasures of men great or small in so grand a concern as what they believed was pleasing to God profitable for the Church and necessary for Ecclesiasticall Authority which they thought could no more stand without Episcopacy than a body can without its leggs Nor did Antiquity either use or know or want the late Crutches of Presbytery or the stilts of Independency which to make themselves seem usefull have sought to cut off the native pillars and proper supports of this Church to the very stumps not without infinite paine to some parts and those principal ones too of the Body besides constant diminution and deformity to the whole Which will in my judgement which willingly followes so great a guide as the Lord Primate never in England be well at its ease or