such things would be But I say so such things would not be and so there is an end of our dispute and at this lock have we stood gazing at one another at least this hundred years here Cartwright begun the Objection and here he was immediately check't in his career by Whitgift who told him plainly He could not be ignorant that to the making of a Sacrament besides the external Element there is required a Commandment of God in his Word that it should be done and a Promise annexed unto it whereof the Sacrament is a seal Here they stopt and his Adversary never proceeded in his Argument but some that came after him resolved not to part so easily with so big an Exception though perhaps for no other reason than because Cartwright had started it and the truth is all his followers have done little more than lickt up the Vomit and Choler of that proud Schismatick and therefore they never pursued this new-fangled Cavil beyond his first Syllogism where himself was repuls't and rebuked and ever since this has been their post and they are resolved to keep it with unyielding and invincible confidence and their foreheads are so hardned that you may sooner beat out their brains than shame or convince them out of their Folly and though they have been so frequently and vehemently urged to a Proof and Prosecution of their Argument they could never be made to stir one foot backward or forward but here they stand like men enchanted and whatever Demands or Questions you propose to them they return you not one syllable of reply but Sacraments Sacraments And in this Posture do they continue to this day to haunt us with the stubbornness of unlaid Ghosts and 't is the only voice this Head of Modesty is able to utter upon this Subject He is resolved upon it that all significant Rites instituted in the Worship of God are real Sacraments and that so they shall be And that is stubborn and indisputable Proof and 't is not modest to bear up against so much Brass and Boldness and yet I am resolved for once to rub my forehead and not to be brow-beaten but to look him in the Face with the confidence of a Basilisk and upbraid him either to make good or to renounce his Argument and if he will neither yield nor proceed to scorn and affront and point him out of his intolerable Confidence Here then I fix my foot and dare him to his Teeth to prove that any thing can be capable of the Nature or Office of Sacraments that is not establish'd by divine Institution and upon Promise of divine Acceptance These are inseparable Conditions of all Sacramental Mysteries and whatsoever other Properties and Qualifications they may have beside these are always necessary and indispensable Ingredients of their Office so that without them nothing can lay claim to their Name or Dignity however any thing may happen to symbolize with them upon other Accounts and by other Circumstances For the Christian Sacraments are the inseparable Pledges and Symbols of the Christian Faith and are establish'd to that Intent by the Author of the Christian Institution and they are such outward Rites and Ceremonies whereby we openly own the Covenant and pass mutual Engagements to stand to its Terms and Conditions and therefore he alone that appointed the Religion is able to appoint by what outward Signs or Acts of stipulation we shall signifie and express our acknowledgment of and submission to his Institutions So that the meaning and intention of it is to assign some particular Act of Worship whereby we may express our Engagements and Resolutions of Obedience to the whole Religion and who then can declare and specifie what Rite he will accept as a full acknowledgment of our duty of Universal Obedience but he alone that requires it And therefore unless it pretend to his Institution there is no imaginable ground why it should be thought to pretend to the Office and Dignity of a Sacrament And certainly they have a very mean opinion of these sacred Mysteries that require nothing more to their Nature and Function but bare significancy and make every external sign capable of that holy and mysterious Office and what can more derogate from the Credit of those great Pledges of our Faith and Instruments of our Salvation As if they carried in them nothing of a more useful or spiritual Efficacy than what every common Rite and Ceremony may acquire or pretend to by Custom and humane Institution § 12. But 't is still more pleasant and more prodigious to see men that are so stiff and dogmatical in their Talk have so little regard to their own Pretences thus whereas they will admit no other Umpirage of our present Disputes about Divine Worship but what may be fetch'd from immediate Divine Authority yet in this grand Exception they take no notice of its Decrees and Determinations and though our Author will have every significant Circumstance of Devotion to partake of the Nature and Mystery of a Divine Sacrament yet he makes no attempt to prove it out of the Word of God No there is not a Text in the four Gospels that may be abused to that purpose And Paul for to allow him the Title of Saint is Popish and Idolatrous and our Author is as shy in all his Writings of bestowing it upon an Apostle as upon Cain or Iudas though he will vouchsafe the Title of Holy that is coincident with it to every Zealot of his own Brotherhood but by what name or title soever dignified or distinguish'd the Apostle Paul is utterly silent in the Case and now we have no higher Authority to vouch our Cause but the Schoolmen and Austin As for the former not to dispute the impertinency of the Quotation whenever they speak sense we are ready to subscribe to their Reason but their bare Authority is of no more force in the Church of England than the Decrees and Oracles of Mr. Calvin their Writings are no part of the Canon of Scripture or the four first General Councils and 't is well known what wise accounts they are forced to give of the Nature of Sacraments to justifie the unwarrantable Determinations of their own Church that had rashly and needlesly enough defined some things to be so that are in themselves infinitely uncapable of that sacred Name and Office And I know nothing for which any part of their coarse and frieze Discourses is more ridiculous in it self or more unanimously condemned by Protestant Writers of all Communions than their loose and groundless descriptions of the Nature and Office of Sacramental Pledges But this is one of their old ways of trifling when the pursuit of their Principles forces them upon an absurdity to father it upon the Schoolmen as if because these men sometimes talk absurdly that shall justifie their Impertinencies And as for his Citation out of St. Austin viz. Signa cum ad res divinas pertinent sunt
2. The full casting out and rejecting of all Will-worship and their attendant Abominations 3. A most glorious and dreadful breaking of all that rise in Opposition unto him never such Desolations So that we see nothing will ever satisfie their desires and demands unless all Gospel-Ordinances be reformed to their primitive power and purity according to the appointment and unto the acceptation of the Lord Iesus Or as the same Author expresses himself more fully in his Sermon of April 29. 1646. p. 29. The darling Errours of late years of the Bishops were all of them stones of the old Babel closing and coupling with that tremendous Fabrick which the Man of Sin had erected to dethrone Jesus Christ came out of the belly of that Trojan Horse that fatal Engine which was framed to betray the City of God They were Popish Errours such as whereof that Apostacy did consist which onely is to be looked upon as the great adverse State to the Kingdom of the Lord Christ. Heedless and headless Errours may breed disturbance enough unto the people of God but such as tend to a peace and association â—um Ecclesiâ malignantium tending to a total subversion of the sacred State are far more dangerous Now such were the Innovations of the late Hierarchists in Worship their Paintings Crossings Crucifixes Bowings Cringings Altars Tapers Wafers Organs Anthems Litany Rails Images Copes Vestments what were they but Roman Varnish an Italian Dress for our Devotion to draw on Conformity with that Enemy of the Lord Jesus In Doctrine the Divinity of Episcopacy a notable piece of Popery that Auricular Confession Free-will Predestination on Faith yea Works foreseen what Antichristian Doctrine is that too Limbus Patrum Justification by Works falling from Grace Authority of a Church which none knew what it was Canonical Obedience Holiness of Churches and the like innumerable what were they but helps to Sancta Clara to make all our Articles of Religion speak good Roman-Catholique How did their old Father of Rome refresh his spirit to see such Chariots as those provided to bring England again unto him This closing with Popery was the sting in the Errours of those days which caused pining if not death in the Episcopal Pot. § 15. Here is no shuffling nor any shifting pretences 't is plain dealing and plain English Antichrist and all its Adherents must be destroyed by Wars and horrid Desolations This is the way that the Lord Christ has chalkt out to his people both by his Promises and his Providences to introduce the purity and beauty of his Ordinances The Prelatists are Members of the Whore and the Beast and imitate the Antichristian Apostacy both from the Worship and the Doctrine of the Gospel nay the Vial of Popery is poured out upon the very Throne it self as it was when Charles the First sate in it And now what is the result of all this Gibberish but that the Saints when-ever Providence alarms or as he manageth the business opportunity invites them to the great and glorious Work of a more Thorough Godly Reformation may and ought to shake and subvert the establish't Government of the Nation that is combined with the Interest of Antichrist to set up their way of Gospel-worship or the purity and beauty of Christs Ordinances which is the onely thing urged and pleaded for by our Author You see Sir to bate him some worse Inferences what stout Patrons these Men are of the Indulgence they plead for when every Opinion that they judge erroneous must be branded for a Popish and Antichristian Errour when every slight Difference shall be resolved into Atheism and Blasphemy when a Scholastick Nicety about the unaccountable workings of Eternal Providence shall be made an eminent instance of Antichristian Apostacy and when to dissent from him in a thing of no greater importance then a Metaphysical Speculation shall amount to no less Charge then of betraying the Gospel of Christ and hewing at the very root of Christianity as he speaks of some Systematick Niceties that he is pleased to call Arminian Heterodoxes and whose Abettors he denounces with the Confidence of an Apostolical Authority uncapable of our Church-Communion Nay his Zeal against them did not confine it self to his own Native Country but extended its fervours as himself informs us to a Foreign Commonwealth and vented its heats against their Indulgence and plea for Toleration and a Liberty of prophesying beyond the Seas To what party of Dissenters is it that this tender-hearted Man would extend the favour of his Indulgence that resolves every petty dissent into an inexpiable Apostacy from the Gospel and has branded all parties with such foul names as render them unworthy the Compassion of the State and uncapable of the Communion of the Church 'T is true many Pamphlets he has publish't in behalf of Toleration and Liberty of Conscience but yet he still so orders the matter as to exclude all Men whatsoever from claiming any benefit or advantage from that pretence excepting onely the salvage and the frantick Sectaries of the Army And that is the whole mystery of his Good-Nature The Independents had vanquish't the Royalists and supplanted the Presbyterians and were perkt up into a Supremacy of Power and Interest But being unable either to secure or to support their Tyranny unless by the assistance of those Religious Miscreants who were the onely faithful Adherents to their Godly Interest they must sooth and treat them with all brotherly love and tenderness and all their Fanatick Frekes and horrid Blasphemies must be winkt at as pitiable Mistakes and Miscarriages of weak Brethren For if we exasperate them by giving check to their Exorbitances we lose our Friends and Confederates abate our Power and endanger our Interest and 't is more eligible for humble and self-denying Men to bear with all the wild and Fanatick Enormities in the World rather then part with the delicious sweets of Government and Sovereign Authority What other imaginable account can be given of this Mans Zeal for Toleration when he has so peremptorily stript all Parties of their right to it excepting onely those Sons of Anarchy and Confusion For not onely the Papists the Prelatists and the Arminians but even their dear Brethren of the Presbytery were transformed into Limbs of the Antichristian Lâ—viathan so that not to pursue this advantage too far you see the naked and undisguised Truth of these Mens Perswasions maugre all their demure Concessions and jugling Pretensions All the World are fallen short of the Truth of God but themselves and out of the Churches of their Pale there is none Orthodox no not one We have all revolted from the Kingdom of the Lord Christ to the Corruptions and Superstitious Idolatries of Antichrist and therefore we are all to be accounted and treated as Members of that Whore whom the Saints hate and shall make desolate and naked and shall eat her Flesh and suck her Blood This is the true state of
imposed upon themselves they grow zealous and impatient they are deaf to all Remonstrances incurious of all Rational Pleas and Defences and you cannot prevail with them no not to attend to the Perswasions of their own Understandings and in defiance to all Syntax and Propriety of Speech this shall be your meaning and be it enacted and decreed That all the Godly Party embrace this and no other And then 't is a Law of the Medes and Persians and your Sentence is as irreversible as the decree of absolute and irrespective Reprobation But to conclude You already see what work I am like to have with this Man not so much to vindicate the honest Truth as the sense and Grammar of my Assertions They have sufficiently upbraided my presumption for the boldness of my Conclusion viz. What I have written I have written and now I am convinced I was too confident for I see that is the onely thing in all my Book I shall be put to prove But my Resentments of his shameless Rudeness and Dis-ingenuity have carried me beyond my design and beside my method into this particular Skirmish to let you see his Weapons his Wiles and his way of Fighting before I closed and engaged with the main Battel to which I now proceed as it follows under the next Head § 13. III. The Multitude having by the fore-mentioned ways of Incivility and foul Language performed their part and discharged their Duty their last method of defence is to engage particular Champions that are known to be mighty in dispute to enter the Lists against all Adversaries And then they are secure of Triumph though not of Victory Every reply shall be voted unanswerable obscure words shall pass for depth of Reason and huge Confidence for strength of Demonstration Popular Noise shall make good the Performance and the Vogue of the Party shall justifie all their Arguments and baffle all our Answers The Cattel they stear are hood-winkt and as long as they drive will never boggle at any thing And therefore they never stand upon regular Proofs and Reasonings but their Weapon is their Confidence and bold Affirmations are self-evident because their boldness is their onely proof They presume upon the Understandings and are secure of the Suffrages of their own Herd To them all their Empty Talk is infallible as Oracle and Inspiration every slight Presumption is a mighty Proof and every shadow of Proof bright and forcible as Demonstration And to this purpose have I been assaulted by three puissant Aggressours the first whereof I conjecture by his Latine his Wit and his Manners to have been either Pupil or Apprentice to the Renowned Cobler of Glocester And the truth is from the days of Newman down to our own the Men of that Trade and Profession have been the greatest Instruments and the best Work-men at a Thorough Godly Reformation My second Adversary seems more modest and better bred and is I am confident an upright and well-meaning Man But how desirous soever he has been of a Reply I shall not vouchsafe to do him so much right or rather so much wrong not onely because he has scarce ventured to attaque any thing in my Book beside the Contents but chiefly because I shall have occasion to examine all his more material Impertinencies in my third Assailant And therefore I shall dismiss these two yelping Pamphleters as hurried on to this Enterprise by nothing but their own hot heads and busie humours and address my self entirely to my sage Surveyor as being not onely a man of known puissance and experience in Dispute and of mighty bruit and renown in Controversial Encounters but also as a Champion sent forth if not by the Choice yet at least by the Approbation of the whole Party that have testified their esteem of his Courage and their assurance of his Success by a general shout and applause and nothing less is expected from this Man of Gath then that he should give the Flesh of his Adversary unto the Fowls of the Air and to the Beasts of the Field But as he stalks about to view his helpless prey his bowels begin to melt into tenderness and compassion and he looks down upon the unfortunate Youth with equal pity and disdain It is a pretty and an hopeful Stripling and 't is pity to nip him in his youthful Bloom and therefore in stead of crushing him to death and nothing as men kill Snails he will onely chastize the rash and forward Boy and by the smartness of his Correction make him repent the folly and unadvisedness of his Undertaking And I doubt not but the People insult over the severity of my Rebuke and think I have done sufficient Penance for my presumption They turn over the Leaves and tell the number of his Pages and that is enough to justifie their flattest and most peremptory Censures 't is no matter for an attentive and deliberate perusal they always pass their definitive sentence not according to the evidence of Reason but according to the inclinations of Prejudice an◠the interests of a Party so that the Book be it what it will is secure of their Applauses and Acclamations Never did Man write a more coherent and unanswerable piece of Reason never were Arguments more smartly urged nor Objections more dexterously assoil'd verily it is a wonderful precious Man And yet bating a few Cavils foreign to the main matters in debate they understand not either what he drives at or what he opposes and are not able to give the least tolerable account by what Engines and particular Reasonings he has undermined as he words it the principal parts and seeming pillars of my whole Fabrick and excepting that 't is known by vulgar hear-say that he writes for Liberty of Conscience and I against it they know nothing of the Grounds and Principles of our difference But he braves it confidently in general Terms insults over this Argument despises that tells of lamentable Misadventures in one place and palpable Inconsistencies in another accuses this Proposition as a new and unheard-of Heresie slights that as an old and cashir'd Errour vaunts every where of his own Feats and Performances and upon every occasion drops Censures and Challenges and bears up through the whole against all that either has been or ever shall be objected with Gallantry of Mind and assurance of Success And this is at once both Triumph and Victory Their Confidence is the most effectual and perswasive Argument with their Followers that have no ground for their dislike but the Warrant and Prescription of their Example they have boar'd their Ears to their Dictates and subjected their Reasons and Consciences to their Authority and therefore the Assent of the one is ever proportion'd to the Confidence of the other and if these will be peremptory in their Assertions they will be inflexible in their Belief 't is in vain to attempt their Constancy they are as a Poet speaks of the old Romans immoveable
appropriate to some extraordinary Circumstances wherewith they were attended So that in answer to his severe Interrogatory seeing my Reputation and something else lies at stake I must profess that though I believe the visible and miraculous Immissions of the Holy Ghost to have been peculiar to the first Ages of Christianity yet am I as far and perhaps farther than himself from denying that its ordinary Assistances are equally bestowed upon and continued to all successive Periods of the Church For not to mention that the Conditions upon which the Promise of the Spirit is entail'd agree equally to Christians of all times and places I know not to what purpose men should address their Devotions to Heaven either for Grace or Vertue I care not which when there is no possible way of effecting them but by the Impressions of the Spirit of God upon the spirits of men And did I not believe its Influence upon the minds of men I would list my self among the Followers of I. O. and explode the Lords Prayer it self as a foolish and insignificant Form seeing the greatest part of its Petitions are things of that Nature as that they cannot be accomplish'd any other way than by the efficacy of the divine Spirit upon ours In short the whole state of this Question is plainly this That in the days of the Apostles the divine Spirit proved it self by some clear and unquestionable Miracle and that was the rational evidence of its Truth and divine Authority but in our days it proceeds in an humane and a rational way and does neither drive nor second us with unaccountable Raptures and Inspirations but joyns in with our Understandings and leads us forward by the Rules of Reason and Sobriety by threatnings and by promises by instructing our Faculties in the right Perception of things and by discovering a fuller Evidence and stronger Connexion of Truths So that whatever Assistances the Spirit of God may now afford us they work in the same way and after the same manner as if all were perform'd by the strength of our own Reason and therefore Men are not to be allowed to pretend to its guidance unless they can prove it by some evident Miracle or at least justifie it either by some clear Text of Scripture or some Rational Argument and then it is that which warrants the Action and not the pretence of the Spirit But as for those that talk of its immediate and unaccountable Workings and confine them not to the ordinary Rules of Reason and Methods of Prudence they unavoidably fall into all the mischiefs and frenzies of Enthusiasm and there is nothing so absurd that they may not believe or so wicked that they may not practise by the instigation of the Spirit of God And now after all this Noise and Cavil I and my Adversary are fully agreed in the main matter of the Quarrel viz. That Grace and Vertue are the same thing For all the difference he assigns between them relates not to the Nature of the things themselves but to the Principles from whence they issue viz. That the same Instances and Duties of Moral Goodness that are called Vertues when they proceed from the strength and improvement of our own Natural Abilities are called Graces when they proceed from the assistances and impressions of the Spirit of God so that even in his account Grace is nothing but infused Vertue and infused Vertue is Vertue still and this is the only difference that I assign'd between them and thus my Challenge that is the Cause and Object of all this Zeal and Indignation stands firm and unattempted viz. That when they have set aside all manner of Vertue they would tell me what remains to be called Grace and give me any notion of it distinct from all Morality He that can do this shall be greater than Apollo and all his Muses And whereas for a farther proof that the Graces or the fruits of the Spirit were nothing but Moral or to speak in the home-spun Language of our Fore-fathers Ghostly Vertues I alledged two evident Texts of Scripture to that purpose with the first he quarrels in the first place that I have not either through my own or the Printers neglect expressed the words in a different Character though I have quoted both Chapter and Verse and if this be a fault I must beg his pardon and seeing it is the first he has been able to discover I hope I may easily obtain it In the next place he excepts that in rendring the words I use Peaceableness in stead of Peace and Cheerfulness as equivalent with Ioy. The Cavil is but a little one and the Fortunes of Caesar and the Roman Empire depend not upon it and therefore I will not trouble the Reader with a Critical Account of the Reason of my Translation 't is enough that these words may and often are used promiscuously and differ no more than Reason and Reasoning The other Text was Tit. 2.11 In which I affirm that the Apostle makes the Grace of God to consist in Gratitude towards God Temperance towards our selves and Justice towards our Neighbours No says he the Apostle says not that Grace consists in these things but that it teaches these things I must confess I was not so subtle and Scholastical as to distinguish between subjective Grace as he there speaks and effective Grace because they are but different terms of Logick for the same thing and that Grace that teacheth us these things consists in doing them they differ only as the Principle and Effect of the same Vertue and whatever the Apostle might there intend by Grace nothing can be more pat to my Purpose than that he places its whole design in teaching and promoting the practice of those Moral Vertues This is obvious to every vulgar eye but our Author is forced for want of better employment to saw the Air. § 5. My last crime is that I slander them with the Truth and charge them of making Vertue and Grace inconsistent whilst they teach that though a man may be exact in the duties of moral goodness yet if he be a graceless Person i. e. void of I know not what imaginary Godliness he is but in a cleaner way to Hell and the morally Righteous man is at a greater distance from grace than the Prophane Though were I destitute of all other proof their very distinguishing between Grace and Vertue or the Spiritual and the Moral Duties of the Gospel is in it self directly destructive of all true and real goodness for if they are the same thing under different Appellations then whilst this Doctrine presses men to a pursuit and acquisition of Excellencies of Grace and spiritual holiness over and above the common vertues of Morality it engages their main industry and their biggest endeavours in the pursuit of dreams and shadows because there is nothing beyond the bounds of Moral Vertue but Chimera's and flying Dragons Illusions of Fancy and Impostures of