which we have oft blusht and sighed to see laid in our dish by Popish Authors who it was that said Kings Princes and Governors have their authority of the people and upon occasion they may take it away againe as men may revoke their proxies who it was that said It is not enough for subjects not to obey but they must withstand wicked Princes Sure they were no fautors of Episcopacy that have written so bloody lines against the safety and lives of lawful Princes as I dare not transcribe that have so undervalued their power and so abased their originall small reason had you to twit me with this hatefull guilt It is but a poor put-off that you censure not my words as treasonable from my pen which from yours had received no better construction The words are the same the intimation evident and not lesse evincible then your vilifying of the judgement of that wise above all examples learned K. Iames whom whiles you smooth in words and directly oppose in his well-grounded Edict concerning the Liturgy of the Church what do you but verbally praise and really check Ye cannot therefore so easily wipe off these aspersions of uncharitablenesse by either stiffe deniall or unjust recrimination For me such is my malice towards you that I can at once convince your want of charitie and forgive it IF the Religion of King William Rufus or the infallible judgement of Pope Pius may do you any service make your best of them to me they are much alike Whatsoever Daniel the Poet not the Prophet pleased to say All Historians were not Monks nor all Monks false-tongued Would God all Divines were true The actions of this Prince blazon him more then the Historians pens whereof some have taxed him for favour of Judaisme others for touches of Atheisme all for indevotion As for the Bishops of those times I say they were Popish and in that notion tyrannicall for that dependance which they had upon him who exalts himself above all that is called GOD exalted them to their proud contestation with Princes It was their Popery therefore that made them insolent and their insolence that made them odious to Kings It hath been ye say the usuall quality of former and later Bishops to tyrannize over such as fear them and to flatter such as they fear Your tongues are your own But Brethren if this be their qualitie it is your fault that you will not suffer it to be their propertie There are those that can do this and more can tyrannize over those whom they ought to reverence and flatter those whom they should not fear As for your Pius should not the Pope have been my Antichrist I am sure he is yours Little reason therefore could you have to use his testimonie against your own profession But Why may we not you say use the testimony of Antichrist against Antichristian Bishops Brethren I understand you not I hope you have more grace then to call ours so If you have so much of the Separatist in you many good hearts will justly grieve to see that ye pretend to come forth under License sure you dare not mean you dare not say that the publique Government established here by Law is Antichristian this were to strike where you would not or if you could be so bold Authoritie might over-see but would never allow so lawlesse an affront If our Bishops be Antichristian whence is your Ordination Good speed may you have Brethren towards Amsterdam Full wittie and sound is the inference which you draw from the grounds which I give of the Popes unwillingnesse to yeeld a Divine Right to Bishops for that hee would have them derive their authoritie meerly from himself Therefore say you it follows That they have no more Divine Right then the Pope Just for the Pope thinks so pretending his own false Right and disclaiming their true But what 's this I ask to our Bishops who professe notwithstanding the Apostolicall that is Divine Right of their calling to hold the places and exercise of their Jurisdiction wholly from His Majestie You answer Surely ours have begun to affect the same exemption from secular power to make large and haughty strides towards an independent Hierarchie Where or wherein Brethren Will any Justice hold it enough to accuse I challenge your instances If you can finde an universall guiltinesse this way spare us not I shall yeeld we cannot suffer too much But if your exceptions be either none as your silence argues or particular why should not you smart for the unjust branding of a whole Order Me thinks you should shame and feare to speake of our affected independence of Hierarchy when ye know that an independent parochiall Hierarchy if it could be worth so high a name is in publique Pamphlets and open Sermons set a-foote with much earnestnesse by those who would be thought no meane ones in your fraternity And when you cannot but know that the Bishops Bench is openly challenged in the name of too much dependence upon Soveraignty Away with these idle sclanders of your innocent grave and modest governors For Mr Hooker we know you love and honour his memory dearly nothing of his can be unwelcome to us neither doubt we but that you will bee no lesse edified by his last works if they may see the light then with his first That man doth not looke as if hee meant to contradict his owne truths YE doubt to bee chid for this licentiousnesse of your pen and so you well may for it can be no lesse then a foule sclander to charge that faction upon whole Episcopacy which you dare upon urging impute but to a few The more ye say is your misery that a few Bishops can put both the Kingdomes into so dangerous a combustion True But if it be your miserie it is not our sinne Blame the guilty strike not the innocent But if but a few can doe this ye say what a stir would they all make if they should unite their powers This is in your owne phrase argumentum galeatum If a few factious Preachers in our neighbour Pulpits since the entring of this Parliament have kindled such a fire in the City and Kingdome what would they all do if their seditious tongues were all united But now ye speake to purpose If but a few were factors for this attempt how was it that one of the Episcopall tribe in open Court called the Scottish designe Bellum Episcopale Who can forbeare to smile at this doughty proofe Why Brethren was that word too big for one mans mouth Could hee not utter it without help of his fellowes Did they either say or think it the more because hee spake it What reason have you to feoffe a private conceit on all especally when the words may be capable of a lesse evill construction as referring to the Northerne rise of that quarrell not to our prosecution But where ye say were the rest of the peaceable and
by Divine Right 2. Part. 4. and to second it they are challenged in my Defence to name any one of our Writers that hath not proclaimed this truth Where then lyes the contradiction The clear nominall distinction of the three Orders of Bishops Presbyters Deacons I professed to prove onely out of the writings of those who were the next successors to the Apostles What is here of either yeeldance or contradiction And if I have ingenuously granted that the Primitive Bishops were elected by the Clergie with the assent of the people That Bishops neither do nor may challenge to themselves such a sole interest in Ordination or Iurisdiction as utterly to exclude Presbyters from some participation in this charge and Act That they ought not to devest themselves of their Iurisdictive power by delegating it to others That the ordinary managing of secular imployments is improper for them If in all these I have gratified them why do they complain and if I have disadvantaged my cause why is it not urged to my conviction It is warily said of these men that I almost grant Lay-Elders in Antiquity I do so almost grant them in my own sense that I utterly deny them in theirs Why should I make any doubt to yeeld unto the Iustice of their complaints in the Post-script against the insolence and tyrannie of Popish Prelates What lose we by this condescent Or how can they plead they are not justly taxed for diffusing other mens crimes to the innocent when their consciences cannot but flye in their faces for this injustice Lastly I am charged with shamefull self-contradictions which surely must needs argue great rashnesse or much weaknesse of judgement See the instances In the same Epistle I professe not to tax their abilities and yet call them impotent assailants And why not both of these He that taxeth not their abilities doth not therfore presently approve them they may perhaps not want good abilities in themselves and yet be unable to prove their cause they may be able men and yet impotent matches The contradiction they would raise in the words concerning Euangelists is meerly cavillatory May you be pleased to turn to the ninety fourth Page of my Defence you shall clearly acknowledge it The word in a common sense signifies any Preacher of the Gospel but in the peculiar sense of the New Testament it signifies some persons extraordinarily gifted and imployed not setled in any one place but sent abroad by the Apostles on that blessed errand Now to say that any of these latter were such as had ordinary places and ordinary gifts as they do Sect. 13. pag. 48. I do justly blame as a meer fancie not herein contradicting any thing but their light imagination In the contradiction pretended to be concerning the extent of Episcopacie sure they cannot but check themselves In my Remonstrance and Defence they report men to say somewhere but where no man can tell that Bishops had been every where and that all Churches through the whole Christian world have uniformly and constantly maintained Episcopacie Elswhere that I say they were not every where and that there are lesse noble Churches that do not confer to Episcopall government Words are more easily accorded then acknowledged There are not there have not been every where setled Christian Churches Where ever there have been setled Christian Churches there have been Bishops From the Apostles times to this present Age there have been Bishops in all Christian Regions now some late Reformed Churches have been necessitated to forbear them Where I beseech you lies the contradiction I have often granted that the name of Bishops and Presbyters was at the first promiscuously used and yet I do no lesse justly maintain that for this sixteen hundred years the name of Bishops hath been ordinarily appropriated in a contra-distinctive sense to Church-governors in an apparent superiority Distinguish times and reconcile Histories The two next exceptions concerning Diocesan Bishops and Civill government are fully cleared and convinced in the due places of this insuing Answer I shall not blur paper in an unseasonable anticipating my own Discourse Sole Ordination and sole Iurisdiction we so disclaim as that we hold the power of both primarily in the Bishop the concurrent assistance in the Presbyters What opposition is there in an orderly subordination The last contradiction clearly reconciles it self In stating the question concerning Episcopacie I distinguish betwixt Divine and Apostolicall Authority professing not to affirm that Bishops were immediatly ordained by Christ and yet averring that Christ laid the grounds of this imparity in his first agents What discordance is in these two Is the ground-work of an house the whole frame of it Can they finde the roof in the foundation In the Epistles to the seven Asian Churches Christ I truly say acknowledges at least intimates the Hierarchie of those seven Angels Do I imply that he did immediately ordain them Readers ye have seen the poor stuff of these their selected exceptions Beleeve it such are all their contradictions to me as these contradictions which they finde in me to my self groundlesse and worthlesse As I shall make good in this following Discourse concerning the ancient holy and beneficiall use of set-Leiturgies in the Church This subject because as it is untracked with any frequent pens of others so it is that wherein my Adversaries seem most to pride themselves as supposing to have in it the most probable advantages against me I have somewhat largely handled to your ample satisfaction But as for that other head of Episcopacie which hath already filled so many rhemes of waste-paper for as much as I see they offer nothing but that which hath passed an hundred ventilations Transeat I have resolved to bestow my time better then in drawing this Sawe to and fro to no purpose Let them first give a full and punctuall Answer to that which hath been already in an intire body of a Treatise written concerning the Divine Right of Episcopacie and then let them expect that I should trouble my self with sweeping away these loose scraps of their exceptions Till then let them if they can be silent at least I shall as one that know how to give a better account of the remainder of my precious hours A Short ANSWER To the Tedious VINDICATION OF SMECTYMNVVS SECT. I. I Am sorry Brethren that your own importunitie will needs make you guiltie of your further shame Had you sate down silent in the conscience of a just reproof your blame had been by this time dead and forgotten but now your impetuous Defence shall let the world see you did in vain hope to face out an ill cause with a seeming boldnesse I may not spend Volumes upon you but some Lines I must enow to convince the Reader of the justice of my Charge and the miserable insufficiencie of your Vindication It is not your stiff deniall that can make it other then Gods truth which I maintain or that can justifie your
it be repent of your confidence and recant your errour and grant at last that out of most venerable Antiquity the approvers of Liturgies have produced such evidences for their ancient use as your insolent wisdome may jeer but can never answer HOw I admire your goodnesse Mercifull men you pardon that fault which in justice ye could not find or cannot prove my confident assertion of the prayers wherewith Peter and Iohn joyned when they went up into the Temple at the ninth hour of prayer that they were not of a sudden conception but of a regular prescription shall be made good with better authority then your bold and braving deniall I say the prayers wherewith they joyned not the prayers which they made the prayers which they made were their own which wipes away your stout instance in the Pharisee and Publican but the prayers wherewith they joyned were publike and regular For in all their Sacrifices and Oblations the Jews had their set Service of prayers which gave life to those otherwise dead or at least dumb actions The noble and learned Lord Du-Plessis the great glory of the Reformed Church of France speaks home to this purpose so doth the renowmed P. Fagius the dead Martyr of our Cambridge besides learned Cappellus whom we cited in our late Defence Confessio olim in sacrificio solennis ejus praeterquam in lege vestigia in prophetis formulam habemus In ipsis Iudaeorum libris verba tanquam concepta extant quae sacerdos pronunciare solitus saith the said Mornay Du-Plessis There was a solemn confession in their sacrifice of old whereof besides that we have certain footsteps in the Law we have the very form in the Prophets In the books of the Iews the very expresse words are extant which the Priest had wont to pronounce Thus he And Lyranus wel acquainted with the Iewish practises as being one of them himself tels us that the Priest was used to confesse in generall all the sins of the people as saith he we are wont to do in the entrance of our Masse But Ludovicus Cappellus the French Oracle of Hebrew learning hath those very words whereat you jeer so oft as falling from my pen Ex quibus videre est orationem cujus causa Petrus Johannes petebant Templum fuisse eam quae à Iudaeis dicitur {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} quae respondet oblationi vespertinae lege praescriptae quae fiebat ut loquitur Scriptura inter duas vesperas Thus he whom I beseech you Brethren laugh at for company Admire with me Reader the subtlety of this deep exception Our Saviour I say prescribed to his Disciples besides the Rule a direct form of prayer What say my great Challengers to this The Remonstrant will have an hard task say they to prove from Scripture that either John or our Saviour gave to their Disciples publike Liturgies or that the Disciples were tyed to the use of this form Truly the task were as hard as the very mention of it is absurd and unreasonable For shame Brethren leave this palpable shuffling the Remonstrant spake of a Prayer ye ask for a Liturgie the Remonstrant speaks of prescribing ye talk of tying which till your Reply came not so much as into question It must be a weak sight that cannot discern your grosse subterfuges The use that our Saviour was pleased to make in his last Supper of the fashions and words which were usuall in the Jewish feasts is plainly affirmed not by Cassander only whose videtur you please to play upon but by Paulus Fagius at large by Mornaeus by Cappellus And if these tooke it from Maimonides who wrote not till a thousand yeares after Christ yet from whom I beseech you had Maimonides this observation A man of yesterday may upon good grounds of authority tell a truth of a thousand yeares old I let passe the meere non-sense wherewith you shut up this Paragraph as more worthy of the Readers smile then my confutation who will easily assume by comparing the place how little I meant to fetch a Liturgy from a feast or necessity out of an arbitrary act TO prove that the Jews had a form of Liturgy even from Moses his time I produced a monument above the reach of your either knowledge or censure a Samaritan Chronicle now in the hands of our most learned and famous Primate of Ireland written in Arabick translated into that tongue out of the Hebrew as Ios Scaliger whose it once was testifies fetching downe the story from Moses to Adrians time and somewhat below it out of this so ancient Record I cited the very words of the Author which these men would faine mistake as my own wherein hee mentions a booke of the old Liturgy of the Jews in which were contained those Songs and Prayers which were used before their sacrifices Adding For before every of their severall sacrifices they had their severall Songs still used in those times of peace all which accurately written were transmitted to the subsequent generations from the time of the Legat Moses unto this day by the ministery of the high Priest Thus he This is our evidence now let us see your shifts First you tel us Those were onely Divine hymns wherein there was alwayes something of Prayer If but thus wee have what wee would for what are prayses but one kind of prayers And what can be more said for a set forme of hymns then of petitions But brethren yee might have seene in the Authors owne words which you are loath to see Songs and Prayers which were ever used before their Sacrifices and were comprised in that ancient Service-book See now Reader whether there bee not something for set Prayers in the Authors own words which these men would wittingly out-face and not willingly see The Testimony cannot be eluded now it must be disparaged Ioseph Scaliger had certainly but two Samaritan Chronicles Who saies he had more I cited but one what needed you but to shew the world you can tell something to talk of two What businesse have we with that shorter Chronicle which you will needs draw into mention Let that bee as fond as your exception is unseasonable What is that to us How else should wee have knowne that you had taken notice of a Samaritane Pentateuch and learned Mr. Sel. dens Marmora Arundeliana Away with this poore ostentation speake to the purpose What can you say against that large Samaritan Chronicle which I produced turned out of Hebrew into Arabick written in a Samaritan Character and now not a little esteemed by the great and eminently judicious Primate in whose Library it is Surely as I have heard some bold pleaders when they have feared a strong testimony pick quarrels at the face of the witnesse so doe you brethren in this case Scaliger himselfe you say the former owner passes this censure upon it that though it have many things worthy