and without choyse by which their most hated Adversaries Climbe up and could not cry up themselves and their Cause as they doe but by them P. I shall have here occasion and that in sundry respects to be more large upon your words First for the Substance of the matter being of such moment Secondly for the Circumstance of the Person to whom you speak his Sacred Majesty which makes your matter of the greater Consequence and Lasty in respect of the Excellency of the Person Iesus Christ whose honour and regall Soveraignty is here undermined by you For when Kings are misinformed and miscounselled in matters of Religion especially and that by those whom they repose greatest confidence in and whose judgement they most rely upon and have that high opinion of both for Learning and Sanctity which they conceive to be in them 't is a matter full of weight And when we see the glory of Christ and of his Kingdome troden under foot it will ought to stirre up and kindle the Zeale of every true Servant of Christ to vindicate his Masters honour to the utmost of his power Now to your words And to deale truely with your Majesty What els Surely one of your honourable place and in whom such trust is reposed should deale clearely with Kings at all times and in all things But wherein doe you deale clearely with his Majesty In this as you say in telling him These thoughts are they and no other which have made me labour so much as I have done for Decencie and an Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church Is it so Why a little before if you remember you told his Majesty that you put forth this worke wherein you have bestowed so much paines for the vindicating of your Reputation And now you tell him that your thoughts for Decencie c. and no otherâ— made you thus to labour And no other then Then what 's become now of your Reputation Yea and pag. 9. before cited doe you not tell his Majesty expresly saying I have thus acquainted your Majesty with all occasions which both formerly and now againe have led this Tract into the Light All But how all where here is one more comes in the Reare not mentioned before which excludes all other Saying These thoughts are they and no other which have made me labour so much as I have done for Decencie and an Orderly Settlement c. And herein you say you deale Clearely with his Majesty Did you not then deale Clearely in the rest You have occasion now to cleare your selfe But to let this passe we can easily beleeve that setting your Reputation aside these thoughts of yours were of greatest force with you to set upon such a worke For I beleeve you have been no small time in hammering this Project how to beat and fashion it to such a Decencie and Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church of England as you speak of But what doe you call Decencie Certainly that onely is Decent in the worship of God which God himselfe approveth and that is onely That which himselfe commandeth in his word But you account and call that onely Decent in the worship of God which either your selfe or that Whore of Babylon hath devised for Decent as the seting up of her pompous Devotion and voluntary humility in Rites and Ceremonies in Gods worship as ye pretend And can you Say that your decencies are not just the Same with those of Rome Perhaps you cannot yet attain to all hers And if not hers how could they with you be Decent But She being That Whore and marked out for such even by her very attyre Rev. 17. Will Christ trow you aporove that for decent in his Spouse which is the Whores Fashion Is not this enough to provoke his jealousie and if he knew it not to suspect your Church of England for Scarce an honest Woman Yea an honest Woman for her Credit sake will not goe in gaudey and garish garbe proper and peculiâ—r to such as are notorious Strumpets and such too as whereby famous Whores are known from honest and vertuous Matrons But let it be the Decencie of your Church of England to be suited like her Sister Rome that so they may be the better known for Sisters and both of one House and to prove your words true both one and the Same Church But decencie is not all Your thoughts are also for an Orderly Settlement of the externall worship of God in the Church Why what Settlement Were not all things sufficiently settled yea and upon the Lees too in the Church you speake of before you were settled in the Throne of Canterbury Was there not settled an universall conformity to those Ceremonies prescribed and limited by Act of Parliament Are not all Non-conformists Silenced and casheered Was not all quiet then Yea so quiet that the Church of England was fallen quietly asleep and so securely setled I say againe upon her Lees. What hath now then made the disturbance and unsetled the State of things Did not that begin with your Primacie How so For just then when you were Scarce warm in the Chaire began there not to be republished with an Addition that Edict to dispense with the due Sanctification of the Lords day by giving liberty for profane Sports wherein also Gods people whom you call Puritans were marked out as not worthy to be suffered in any Countrey Then also began there not to be published a Declaration with and before the Booke of your 39. Articles prohibing all Disputes about all the Controverted Points in those Articles and commanding to keep to the letter of the Text which yet as it saith might be taken either way So as was not this a most grosse unsettling of the Doctrines of your Church and a strowing of the way to Fr. a S. Clara his Booke wherein he goes about to prove that the Doctrines of England and Trent are one and the Same or with but small difference which Book coming forth was much Graced by you in Court And so that Declaration because also a Shelter to Shroud your Arminian Faction against a Storm if ever it should come yea and to defend their Heresies and defeat the truth had it no surer footing then your prevaricating Articles when once you could make your party good Began not then an Order to be a new set forth with an Inlargement of restraint reaching even to Deanes and Prelates and the greatest Rabbies of your Church not to meddle in their Sermons with those controverted points as of Predestination Election c. but strictly to observe the said Declaration Under your Primacie began there not a more remarkable restraint of writing or at least of Printing against the Pope and a larger licensing of most notorious Popish Books As Shelfords five Sermons or Treatises wherein among many other like things he indeavours to prove Iustification by Charity and the
to defend their ancient and accustomed Liberty Regiment and Laws they may not well be countod Rebells So he But this by the way But I have somthing more to say about the shaking of the Foundations of Faith and Good Manners though I mentioned it before but now upon this occasion And that is concerning Ceremonies of humane ordinance in Gods worship which being imposed upon mens Consciences is not onely a shaking of the Founâ—ation of Faith but an overthrowing of it for thereby Christ is denyed to be the onely King of his Church And therfore as the Kings of Israel did nothing in reforming of Religion and the worship of God but what was expresly commanded and prescribed in Gods Law so Christian Kings and Magistrates ought not to doe any thing no not to impose any one humane Ceremony or Ordinance in Gods service besides that which is written in Gods word otherwise the Foundations of Faith is overthrown Of such moment is the least Ceremony in Gods service that it is of the substance and Foundation of Faith L. p. 210. But 't is time to return For A.C. in this Passage hath been very carefull to tell us of a Parliament and of living Magistrates and Iudges besides the Law books Thirdly therfore The Church of England God be thanked shines happily under a Gratious Prince and well understands that a Parliament cannot be called at All times and that there are visible Iudges besides the law-Law-books and one supreme long may he be and be hapâ—y to settle all Temporall Differences which certainly he might much better perform if his Kingdome were well ridde of A. C. and his Fellows And she beleeves too that our Saviour Christ hath left in his Church besides his Law-books the Scripture Visible Magistrates and Iudges that is Arch-bishops and Bishops under a Gratious King to governe both for Truth and Peace according to the Scripture and her own Canons and Constitutions as also those of the Catholicke Church which Crosse not the Scripture and the Iust Laws of the Realme But she doth not beleeve there is any Necessity to have one Pope or Bishop over the whole Christian world more then to have one Emperour over the whole world P. It were time indeed for you to return from your Course when once there is mention of a Parliament For thriving If you mean that your Church of England hath of late dayes well thriven in her prevailing for the seting up of Images and Altars for bringing in more Superstitions into your Service for puting down sincerity Purity and power of the true Religion and of the Preaching of Gods word for suppressing the Doctrines of Grace forementioned for hampering the Puritans as you call them by puting down suspending and silencing of Godly and painfull Preachers and by crying down both the Doctrine and Practise of the sanctification of the Sabbath or Lords day and by smothering in the birth all sound and Orthodox Books against Popery and other Heresies not suffering them to be Printed and by licencing of Popish Books to be Printed and Publâ—shed and the like and if this be the way of the well thriving of your Church whomsover you have cause to thanke yet surely you have small cause to thanke God whose Name herein you doe abuse and blaspheme as perhaps your own Conscience may tell you as if he favoured such practises of yours because for a time he patiently suffers and winks at them and that in judgement to a sinfull Land and for tryall of his own servants and people and for a preparative to your certaine ruine if speedy repentance prevent it not For God is not mocked with such thanks though he be mocked but whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reape How then doth it concerne all Christian Magistrates to look to it least if they suffer Christs Kingdome to be betrayed into the hands of Antichristian Usurpers by giving way unto them to doe what they list while themselvs seem to sleep they provoke God too much For as Samuel sayd to the People If ye doe wickedly you shall perish both you and your King For my part though I will not joyne in Prayer with such a Profane Hypocrite as you are and an enemy of Iesus Christ and his Truth no more then the Apostle Iohn would be in the same Bath with that Heretick Cerinthus yet my dayly Prayer is and shall be that God would more and more let the King see how miserably he is abused and the Peace and safety of his Kingdome distracted and indangered both by the late violent practises which have been held in Church-affaires and now by the publishing of such a Book as this so notoriously perillous or rather most pernicious and so much the more in these times of troubles about Religion lately sprung up in the Iland of Great Britaine Which Book though it make many faire pretences for Peace yea Peace and Truth yet in truth it will prove the greatest troubler of Israel and the falsest friend to true Truth that the light hath seen these many yeares This I speake not by conjecture much lesse out of malice to the Authors Person but from the cleare evidence of the word of Prophecy in Scripture in such cases But how comes your Church of England to be so well seen in State-Mysteries I pray you as so well to understand that a Parliament cannot be called at all times Or by the Church of England doe you not meane the the Chaire of Catnterbury as the Church Collective or representative of England For you should better understand such State-matters especially for the not calling of Parliaments at all times or suppose it were at Notime or Nevermas least perhaps it might prove as a Frost to nippe your thriving and overforward spring then your Lordship For my part I am no States-man and so I leave State matters to States-men who should best understand them But if your A.C. and his Fellows be such troublesome fellows why doe you trouble your selves with them when a good honest Parliament might ease the King and Kingdome â—oo of that trouble provided that good Laws already enacted and by the next Parliament if ever there shal be any quickned by a new Law to put them in better execution there may be also a good season to bring forth such Visible Iudges as without straining the strings either of their Purses or Consciences coming clearly to their Benches and not making them as Banks but siting Rectè in Curia they may without feare of any Prepotent Prelate or Partiality in respect of Persons do Justice I passe now from the understanding of your Church of England to her Beliefe which you also tell us of She beleeves too What doth she beleeve That our Saviour Christ hath left in his Church besides his Law-books the Scriptures visible Magistrates and Iudges that is Arch-bishops and Bishops How Is this come already to be an Article of the Faith of the Church of
this Relator professeth and teacheth a blind Charity sutable to his Faith which he boldly affirmeth to be not a mistaken Charity in granting that a silly ignorant Papist so living and dying may be Saved by his Ignorance in that Religion conforming himselfe to his Religious life and on the contrary condemning such Protestants of stiffenesse and churlishnesse that are not of the same Charity with him though the Replyer proveth that there is no true Charity without true Faith and Verity And whereas the same Relator is shewed in this Reply to give much more liberty to your Majesties Protestant People to goâ— to the Romish Masse as being with him one and the same undiffering Religion with that of England then the Jesuite doth to his blind Romanist to come to the English Church And whereas the same Relator hath many passages wherein he makes a Generall Councell of Prelates Iudge in all Controversies of Faith ascribing unto them an Infallibility and in case they shall erre and that even in grosse things and points of Faith yet that all men are bound to yeeld obedience at least externall till another Generall Counsell equall to the former reverse those Errours whereupon by Consequence of this Prelaticall doctrine as the Replyer doth instance the Church of England it self is bound to observe the worship of Images and the forbearance of the Cup in the Sacrament c. decreed in Generall Councels and not yet reversed by other Generall Councels equall to those And whereas the Relator calls Transubstantiation Purgatory and the forbearance of the Cup but disputable and Improbable Questions the nature of which is to be taken indifferently Pro and Con And whereas he never once in all his Relation calls the Romish-worship of Images and of the Sacrament or any other Idolatry in all the Romish Church but onely by the name of Superstition abstaining altogether from the name of Idolatry as if with him the Roman Church were no Idolatresse And whereas he much lamenteth the Seperation and rent between the Protestants and Rome with the continuance of it although with the Iesuite he confesse that errour in Faith is just cause of separation And whereas he the same Relator doth cunningly yet palpably enough in sundry passages of his Booke as also he hath openly done viva voce at the High-Commission-Board exclude all the Reformed Protestant Churches beyond the Seaes as no Churches of Christ as not admitting the Hierarchy Finally also in his Book quipping Luther and in him all the Reformed Churches as having made a rent not onely from Rome with her corruptions but even from the Catholick Church it selfe which indeed in the Relators sense and difinition of the Catholicke Church is most true to wit from the universall Hierarchy And whereas he the Relator doth every where highly extoll his Ceremonies in Gods worship as without which he saith there is no light left to shine before men that they may see his Devotion and so glorify GOD therein most foulely and odiously perverting and abusing the holy Text of Scripture uttered by CHRIST to a cleane other purpose as the Replyer hath noted all which Ceremonies being a will-worship after the Tradition and Commandement of men the Apostle doth utterly condemn as wherby the very merits of Christs death are made of none effect who in his death destroyed All Ceremonies in Religion obliging the Conscience and not onely the Leviticâ—ll but all other whatsoever of humane Ordinance as the Replyer clearely proveth So as it is not left to any Power on Earth to impose the least Ceremony yea though it be of nature indifferent to bind the Conscience in the service of GOD seeing all such imposition is Antichristian Tyranny And whereas all Prelaticall Hereticall and Antichristian Faction erected by the Prince of darkenesse against Iesus Christ and his Kingdome as is apparent both by their profession and practice wherein they have nothing at all yea not any one thing to show wherein they resemble either Christ or any one of his Apostles except Iudas Christs Kingdome being altogether spirituall and not of this world but the Hierarchy a meere carnall and worldly Kingdome onely guilded over with the bare name of spirituall And whereas the Relator throughout his whole Booke bewrayeth his most palpable and profound ignorance and notorious blindnesse in the whole mystery of Faith and all true divinity in so much as when ever he Cites Scripture he still perverts it to a wrong sense and is not able to bring any proofe either from Scripture or Common Reason except from some of his Jesuiticall Authors for any of his Paradoxes and strange doctrines delivering all without Book tanquam è Cathedra as but of some Papall unerring Chaire upon the Authority of his bare word and upon meere trust And whereas the Relator saith That worth once misled is of all other the greatest misleader and who of greater worth in the Church of England and in the Esteem of Great ones too then the Great Primate himselfe whose very word with many is taken as a divine Oracle So as if the Church and State of England will but pin their soules upon this Leaders sleeve he will not fayle to lead them in that way the issue whereof seem it never so right in the eyes of credulity will certainly prove to be as Solomon saith the wayes of death And whereas by the Relator sundry occasions are ministred to the Replyer of instancing divers practises charged upon the Prelate as the principall Agent or Instrument of setting up sundry Innovations in Religion in the Church of England all which have been done under his Primacie as The republishing under your Majesties Name the Book for liberty of profane Sports on the Lords day with pressing Ministers to read the Sayd Book in their severall Congregations and upon refusall extreamely persecuting them and thrusting them from their Ministry and meanes with their poore wives and children The authorizing and licencing of some Doctors Books which cry down the Morality of the 4 th Commandement for the Sanctifying of the Lords Sabbath day The setting forth of a New Order to restraine Preachers from Preaching in the Afternoones on the Lords dayes much pressed by the Prelates and their Officers in all their visitations The setting forth of a Declaration in your Majesties Name prefixed to the Articles of Religion which the Prelates practises plainly interpret to be for the restraining and prohibiting altogether the Doctrines of Saving Grace to be preached and wherein the genuine sense of those Articles touching Grace which formerly were universally interpreted to have but one sence agreeable to the Scripture is confounded with the heterodox hereticall doctrines of the Pelagians and Arminians so as none can tell what to make of those Articles saving that by this meanes the Orthodox Ministers must not preach the truth and the Adverse party and Faction may find footing and countenance for their groundlesse and gracelesse heresies and all this to the manifest
against Iesus Christ and his High-Throne in oppressing and trampling upon his sacred Word and Ministers and People least by standing out in open defiance against God and in the defence and maintenance of her Rebellion with a high hand God be provoked altogether to confound her So as if a more mature Reformation of such hideous enormities whereof the Relator is here by the Replyer convinced be not seriously thought of and speedily and effectually put in execution to be secure in looking for Peace or any Good not having thus made peace with God were but to bewray a mind desperate and past all hope of remedy And lastly whereas the Replyer to all these his high Charges upon the Relator hath for some speciall reasons to himselfe not set his Name it being neither out of any distrust of the goodnesse of his Cause nor yet feare of men by others Example when as your Majesty shal be pleased to send forth your Royall Edict commanding that the Repyer whoever he be come forth and appeare to make proofe of all his Allegations against the Relator assuring him of an equall just and faire unpartiall hearing in such a Court of Iustice as the Replyer himselfe shall nominate and appeale unto which is not cannot be lesse then the most High and Honourable Court of Parliament which the necessity of things so nearely concerning the whole Land doth with all importunity call for he the Replyer will then be ready God giving him life and health in all humble duty and allegeance to present himselfe and personally face to face before the Honourable Court by the assistance of that Grace which first set him aworke and inabled him to finish it make good his whole Reply against the Relator It would therefore please your most Excellent Majesty the waighty Premises seriously consiâ—ered and upon your mature Revisall of this Reply or at least of the brief contents thereof prefixed to the Reply with the eye of your soundest and sollidest judgement directed by the wisdome of Gods owne Spirit which hath the hearts of Kings in his all-swaying hand and for vindicating of Gods glory and your own honour so deeply suffering in the forenamed respects and for staying of Gods hand stretched out and the preventing of further calamities not onely to take to heart and into your Royall hand the speedy reformation of such things as have been done and all in your Majesties Name still for that must beare all the burthen since the Relators Primacy as namely in the first place to send forth your Royall Edict for the taking downe of all Altars which where ever they stand doe stand in open defiance against Christ another for the calling in of your Book for Sports on the Lords dayes a third for the calling in of your Declaration before the Articles of Religion a fourth for the calling in of all Orders for the restraint of Preaching a fift for the restoring in Integrum that is not onely to their Ministry and Charge but to their liberty in Christ from the bondage both of Prelates and Ceremonies all those godly Ministers who out of Coâ—scienâ—e and duty towards God and not out of any disrespect or mucâ— lesse disloyalty towards your Majesty for refusing to read the said Book have been by the Prelates thrust out of all a Sixt if not the First for the quite releasing and setting at full liberty your three poore banished Prisoners that the loud cry of their oppressions breake not through the walls and barres and roofes of their straight inclosure to the piercing of the heavens and the provoking of their wrath to dart downe the thunderbolt of Divine revenge to the blasting of the beauty of your State while as a tall Ceder or sturdy Oake it stoutly lifts it selfe up on high as if it would threaten heavens throne and lastly all this done without which what can prosper and that you may make your Peace with GOD as you have done with Scotland to Proclaime a Publick Fast with Prayer and Humiliation for the deprecating of Gods high displeasure for what is past and the procuring of his favour and blessing upon you and your Kingdome and thereupon send forth your Royall writs for the calling of a Parliament for the redressing and removing of the maine Causes of all the disorders and enormities in the Church and State So shall your Kingdome be established and your Crowne flourish in abundance of Peace and Prosperity to your Majesty and your Royall Posterity which the Petitioners the true Church and Children the true Faith and Religion of Iesus Christ will never be wanting to sollicite the throne of Grace for THE CONTENTS OF THE PRINCIPALL PASSAGES IN THIS INSUING REPLY AND first to the Relators Epistle Dedicatory The left-hand Figure notes the Page of the Relators Book the right-hand the Replyers L. page 1. HOw the Prelate by pinning his Booke upon the Kings Patronage doth thereby expose him to the perill of being guilty of patronizing all the blasspemies falsities therein page 2. 2. What Truth and how the Prelate seeks it ibid. 7. What use the Prelate makes of Gods restoring him from his Fever p. 3. 7. What he meanes by the Scandalous and Scurrilous pennes of some bitter men with a short Narration of their Cause and Tragicall suffering ibid. Notorious Hypocrisie of the Prelate and taking Gods name in vaine pag. 3 4.6.8 Prelates mercies exceed all Heathen cruelty 6. A strange Precedent without Precedent to censure a Man because he would not consent to the condemning of his Cause before the Hearing 7. The Prelate Shrewdly put to it for his blood-guiltinesse and shamelesse hypocrisie 7 8. A new-found Art under colour of Answering Jesuites to strike a leagve with Popery 9. 7. The Prelates notorious perverting of Scripture which is retorted upon himselfe by a true Application 10 11 12. 7. Gods Ministers for sharpe and particular reproving of sin and sinners proved not to be Libellous nor Scandalous by many examples 11 12 13. How Prelates with the High Priests and Pharisees are guilty of all the blood of the Saints shed from Abel hitherto 15 16. True marks of a Minister of Christ extraordinarily raysed up of God ibid. 7. What kind of Men the Prelates Divines of worth and Note be 16 17. How the Prelate publisheth his Booke to vindicate his Reputation and with whom ibid. 7. A Prosopopaeia representing the Prelates Divines speaking to him 17 18. 7. The Prelate selfe-deluded by the unanimous Councels of his Divines as Ahab was by his false Prophets 19. The Prelates Booke like Caesars sacrifice ibid. The Replyers Councel to the Prelate 19. The Prelates Booke how reprobate Silver 21. The Mystery of burning Salis his Devotions opened 20. How the Prelates Tract needs leading into the light 21. 11. Notorious hypocrisie of a most persecuting Prelate detected as most detestable 21 22. worse then that of Stephen Gardiner and Bonner ibid. The Prelate sore pressed with sundry Scriptures by the
Pope not to be Antichrist and no necessity of frequent Preaching and none to preach but Bishops and Deanes and that onely and especially at the three Solemn times in the yeare Also another Book intituled the Femall Glory as full fraught thoughout with the most grosse blasphemous Idolatrous Popish Stuffe as it can hold and this in plain English allowed by one of your Chapleins or of London house and for ought I heare not yet suppressed or call'd in Besides many other of the same branne some whereof are printed but kept up under deck not daring yet to peep forth till the Storm as in Starre Chamber you call'd it raysed by BURTON and others be over and least they should be made Popish Martyrs in Smithfield as Salis his Devotions were which for feare were burned as afore Under your Primacy hath there not been a mighty stirring and stickling for the seting up of Altars c. yea of Images too and Crucifixes and that in Collegiate Churches or Chappels both in Oxford you being Chauncellour and in Cambridge where you want not a Vice-Chauncellour and which you indeavour in all the Churches of England Under your Primacie have not your pregnantest wits and profoundest Divines been set aworke to write Books to unmorallize the 4th Commandement for the perpetuall keeping of the Lords Sabbath day and so unbind Christians from the sanctification of the Lords day and their Books allowed by your Authority and Dedicated to great ones and much applauded by your Faction Under your Primacie have not your Doctors also written stoutly for your Altars and that even unto blasphemy Saying that the use of the Altar is to sanctifie the Sacrifice and without an Altar the Sacrifice is not Sanctified or dedicated by the Bishop Under your Primacie began not Ministers to be Suspended Silenced Excommunicated put out of their Benefices and Cures of Soules for refusing to read the Book of Liberty for Sports on the Lords day and to set up Altars in their Churches at their Ordinaries Command These these my Lord being thus doe you complaine of unsettlednesse Who hath troubled the Fountain The Wolfe above at the Spring head or the Lamb below To recollect then and recapitulate these things When Profanation of the Lords day is by publick Edict allowed when the Articles of Religion are made as the Delphick Oracles to be taken two contrary wayes when the Doctrines of Gods Grace are universally restrained and forbid to be preached when Popish Books publickly allowed in Print and Orthodox Books against Popery restrained when Altars set up in all Churches where there was none before when Books published by Authority to disanull Gods Morall Law when Books allowed publickly to maintain the seting up of Altars in Churchs when Godly Ministers by multitudes put down for not yeelding to those things which are contrary to the Laws of God and man and all this in the State of England where from the first Reformation such as it was have been universally and constantly maintained both by writing and preaching the morality of the 4th Commandement for the sanctification of the Lords Day the Articles of Religion concerning Grace to have but one Orthodox sense the free and unrestrained preaching of Gods word and confuting of all opposite Errours that the Pope is that Antichrist that the Lords Supper was to be celebrated onely at the Lords Table that Ministers Conformity was extended no further then was limited by the Law all these things considered in the tumult of so many bold Innovations Innovation I cry you mercy Renovations I should say of old Popish ragges and outcast reliques for you disclaim Innovation against Gods law and Mans law what settlement what peace what tranquility can be expected and then again al these new Attempts for Uniformity and Conformity coming in under and with your Primacie can they vindicate your Reputation from a generall opinion of your being the most perillous and pernicious Instrument of unsettling and troubling the State oâ— the Land and of Religion and you may if you will take Scotland in to boot with generall discontents and heart burnings to see the State of Religion thus turned topsie turvie And doe you complain notwithstanding that you cannot attain to an Orderly Settlement Stay my Lord be not so eagre See Scotland first settled before you proceed further in the settlement of England least you unsettle all Be not deceived in the confidence of your own active brain and borrowed power And see also how your Booke will take For Certainly therein you have run your selfe upon the Pikes get off as you can Your Reputation if you meane it for the Repute to be a good Protestant unlesse you meane it that you would be accounted what you are a member of one and the Same Church with Rome is now bound to the Stake ready to be Sacrificed for a whole-burnt Offering For what your Ordinary practises proclaimed to the world of you now in your Book you stick not openly to professe that you desire for the Church and State of England to be reconciled to the Sea of Rome So as your Book besides the turbulent matter in it like the Trojan horse full of armed enemies could not possibly have been borne into the world in a more unhappy time then now when you see two Kingdomes all in a combustion which the Sprinkling of your Romes Holy water wil be so farre from quenching or allaying that it will prove rather as Oyle to increase and feed the flame But GOD give the King the Spirit of Wisedome and Iudgement to see into these things betimes both for the preventing of further mischiefes and for the reuniting of the great rent between his two Kingdomes But as Iehu said to Iehoram when he asked Is it peace Iehu What peace said he so long as the Whoredomes of thy Mother Iezabel and her Witchcrafts are so many So what peace can be expected in the Land where such an Uniformity and Settlement is required as is so repugnant to the Laws of Christs Kingdome and conformable to Antichrists Tyranny and conducible to a reconciliation with that old Iezabel of Rome Certainly the case being so as Deborah said in her Song They chose new gods then was warre in the gates So when a Nation falls to advance higher and higher a new and false Religion where it had been formerly in some good measure cast out to set up Idolatrous and Romish Altars whereby Christ the true and onely Altar of true Christians as hath been shewed is denyed and renounced and to cry down Gods holy Commandements and to oppresse Gods holy Word in the Ministry of it and to persecute Gods faithfull Ministers and People and like the Aegyptians to oppresse Gods People more and more with intolerable burthens of humane inventions to the great reproach of Christ and the throwing down of his incommunicable Royall Soveraignty over his Church and People in matters of Faith and the worship of God Can peace or settlement
especially if he be a fat Parson But you will say he may Preach the seldomer and when he doth Preach it may be the shorter For better Preaching be omitted then the least of your Ceremonies should be neglected But yet for shame of the world at least in the Church of England which is not yet grown so Romish as that Ceremonies should altogether thrust out Preaching me thinks you might doe well as men doe for their wearing apparell to have some habits for Summer and some for Winter But now I remember my selfe that will put many a poore Priest to the more charge And therefore to prevent both trouble and charge I remember a pretty device of Dionisius who coming into an Idols Temple and finding rich cloth of gold very Massy upon the Idols he tooke away their Robes of gold Saying they were both too heavy for Summer and too cold for Winter and he put upon them good course Freeze saying this would be both light wearing for Summer and warme for Winter But I suppose you would be loth to have your rich cloth of gold Copes and the like to be turned into course Freeze as preferring Aurei Calices Lignei Sacerdotes before Lignei Calices Aurei Sacerdotes which were of old in fashion Golden Chalices and Woodden Priests before Woodden Chalices and Golden Priests I meane such Golden Priests so called as then were when the Chalices were of Wood that is Learned Godly and Preaching Presbyters For otherwise as Rome so you want not your Golden Priests sutable to your Golden Chalices as Bernard in his Booke De Consideratione to Pope Eugenius the Fourth hath liberally taxed in the Pope and his Clergie of Priests But these things I leave to your Lordshippes Cosideration But to returne to the point in plaine termes my Lord till you doe resolve us justy how many Ceremonies you will have and no more for burthening the Service or how few Ceremonies and no fewer for leaving all naked though I think you incline rather to the extremity of Excesse in the too many then to the extremity of Defect in the too few as loth to leave your Service naked you doe to a haires breadth resolve us you must give us leave with one voyce or Kéleusma to cry downe all your Ceremonies of what sort soever whereof the very least is a burthen intollerable to Gods People in the service of God For as we said before Gods service admits not of any Will-worship at all no not in the least Ceremony wherewith the Conscience as it is bound so it is overburthened One Fetter or Linke or Chaine or Bolt makes a Prisoner as sure as many As the Israelites were enslaved by the Aegyptian Taske-masters as well when they were allowed Straw as when it was denyed them Though the bondage was the greater But when a man is once made a Slave who shall hinder his Master to lay as much burthen upon him as he pleaseth And if you have a power to impose one Ceremony who shall stint you for more for ten twenty an hundred if you doe but say the word that too few leave the Service naked But you will not have too many for burthen But how will you know when 't is a burthen for you touch it not with one of your fingers and so feele it not as the Aegyptian Taske-masters did while the poore people of God cry out for intolerable burthens All your burthen is to get it but up upon the peoples and your Priests shoulders and then you are so farre from feeling any more burthen as you turne it into no small benefit in Case any for very wearinesse and irksomnesse of the burthen doe either lay it downe or cast it quite off yea or doe but rest himselfe a little with some intermission Then your High Commission shall ring of him Nor can we in any reason imagine that a few Ceremonies will serve the turne For your maine Scope is to bring your Church of England to a full Reconciliation with Rome the way to which must be strowed with many Ceremonies as at a Marriage they strow the way to the Church with Herbes that so when you have brought the matter to a pretty Conformity with as many Ceremonies as Time and Place will permit the Match being already agreed upon and concluded between the parties and friends there may nothing be wanting to hasten the full and finall consummation But herein the maine burthen will lye upon you For it can little be hoped that Rome for her part will abate any of her Ceremonies so as the greater addition and accumulation wil be required on your part to make up tò Ãson an equality in some reasonable proportion at least For Amiciâ—ia est inter pares Friedship is between Equalls But howere in any Case not too few for then your Service would be naked and it might either hinder your Project or hurt your reputation with Rome when upon your coming home to Rome She should find you naked such guests as Rome useth not to entertaine unlesse you will trust to her Kindnesse in furnishing you out of her rich Wardrobe and Magazin of Ceremonies wherein She hath a large Overplus of Treasure which your Church of England might afterwards recompense either with reviving the Peter-pence or returning his Holinesse his Old Tribute of Annates But in the meane time how would too few leave your Service naked Surely many wayes now when I better consider it Without the Surplice and Hood the Minister naked without rich Ornaments and a Crucifix the Altar naked without a Signe of the Crosse Baptisme is naked without Kneeling before the Altar at the Communion the Sacrament naked without a devout Crindge when Iesus is named Iesus is naked without looking towards the East when you Pray Prayer naked without goodly Images the Walls naked without the rich Copes the Epistle and Gospel naked without a faire payre of Organs and Chanting to it the whole Service naked But what if the whole Service were thus naked God neither requires nor respects any such pomp in his Service You will say 'T is sightly and stately But one of the Heathen Poets could tell you that God regards more a simple and honest heart then all such gifts or pompous Service As he saith Dicite Pontifices in Sancto quid facit aurum c. Compositum jus fasque animi sanctosque recessas Mentis incoctum generoso pectus honesto Tell us ye Pontifies what such glittering gold Makes on your Temples c. A mind compos'd of justice and of right And holy contemplation Gods delight A brest well dipped in the purple grain Of noble honesty That will not stain Another of them saith Immanis Aram si tetigit manus Non sumptuosa blandior hostia Mollibit aversos Penates Farre pio saliente mica Th' innocent hand if it the Altar touch The sumptuous offring pleaseth not so much T' appease the anger
Preachings by word of mouth of the Lawfully sent Pastors and Doctors of the Church are able to breed in us Divine and Infallible Faith Nay are the very word of God So A. C. expresly And no lesse then so have some accounted of their owne Factious words to Say no more then as the word of God †in the margent at this marke For the freeing of Factious and Silenced Ministers is termed The restoring of Gods word to its Liberty In the Godly Author of the Late Newes from Ipswitch p. 5. P. That the Sermons and Preachings by word of mouth of the Lawfully sent Pastors and Doctors of the Church are able to breed in men Divine and Infallible Faith being according to the Rule and Evidence of Scripture as true Preaching is what good Christian makes a doubt though you deride it I pray you you that are the great Rabbi and Champion of the present Church of England What Say you of the Apostles words How shall they call on him in whom they have not beleeved And how shall they beleeve in him of whom they have not heard And how shall they heare without a Preacher And how shall they Preach except they be Sent So then Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God But we shall heare your judgement by and by As for A. C. with whom you yoak the precise party in the same sentence surely were he no Jesuite nor illegitimate Priest but either a Sound Christian or a Lawfully sent Pastor and Doctor of the Church of Christ the words rightly meant and understood are most true I remember I have read a Story of a Grecian State I take it of Athens where when a vitious Senator in Court on a time gave very good Counsell for the Common-Weale they approved of the Counsell but would not have it Registred in his name but caused an honest man to utter the same forme of words in Court and so under his name it was recorded So I may here Let a good Christian or if you will one of the precise party you mention utter these words and not A. C. and then the sense wil be good and true And by your own words we shall convince you of folly by and by Now for the precise party in the Reformed Churches doe you not meane those who are most reformed in their life and conversation and most refined from the drosse and dregges of all Deformed Churches Superstitions and Idolatries in the pretended worship of God and from all grosse errours in Faith and Doctrine Surely those you must and do meane as whom you most deadly hate and therefore in your wretched malice do couple them with A. C. Of which precise party Iesus Christ is the head that pure and precise Nazarite and Seperatist from all sin and errour with all the Apostles Prophets and Martyrs And what do they say No lesse say you then A. C And what faith A.C. Expresly that Sermons c. as before are the expresse word of God And how prove you that this precise party saith no lesse Nay you say more that they account their own Factious words no lesse to say no more then as the word of God To Say no more Nay surely you have said enough if it be true But if not true a great deale too much Well true or not true 't is enough you Say it and so you make this precise party to be ten times worse then the Jesuite And so you would have it For say you the Jesutie saith Sermons are the very word of God but the Precise That their own factious words are What The word of God No but As the word of God Why do you call them factious words because they are As the word of God Doe you not know that true Preachers words should be hoes logâ—â—â—eou as the Oracles or word of God as Peter speakes such words as become Sound Doctrine Sound Speech that cannot be condemned but unjustly by such as doe heterodidaskalein teach strange Doctrines and agree not to wholsome words keeping the Forme of Sound words But you charge here the precise party with factious words How prove you that For Si sat est accusasse quis innocens erit If your single Accusation be sufficient who shal be Innocent But you bring your proofe è Scriptis good evidence sure What 's that †For the freeing of factious and Silenced Ministers is termed The restoring of Gods word to its Liberty But where do you find these factious words In the Godly Author of the late Newes from Ipswich Well then here be 2 things obserbable 1. The Matter 2. the Author 1. The Matter charged The freeing of factious and Silenced Ministers is termed The restoring of Gods word to its Liberty And who are these factious and Silenced Ministers Namely a matter of about an hundred godly and Conscientious Ministers in Norfolke Suffolk Essex Kent Surrey and other Shâ—res who were in one Summer and the most in the Circuit of one Visitation some silenced some suspended some also excommunicated from Church and Chimney ab Aris ac Focis aqua igni and with their Wives and Children exposed to beggery and all calamity Wherefore They were factious Wherein They would not obâ—y and conforme to the Orders of their Ordinary What Orders For the reading in their severall Congregations the Book for Sports on the Lords dayes For the setting up of Altars in their Chancels For the causing of their People never accustomed to it before to come up to the Altar and there receive the Communion or the Lords Supper on their knees For these and the like which they refused to do they are doomed Factious But the Ministers aledged these were new Impositions praeter praescriptum Legis besides the prescript Law or Statute so as their obedience should have incurred a Premunire No matter for that They are a sort of factious fellows and ringleaders of Puritan-people as you apologised in the Starre-Chamber and so being once silenced 't is too late to talk Yet these men were all Conformists to the Discipline by Law established and lived peaceably How then were they Factious Why surely they would not observe Orders They would notwithstanding an Order to the Contrary preach twice every Lords day They would open the Catechisme-points and not content themselves with the bare words of Question and Answere as it is in the Booke they would hold the people so long with their preaching in the Afternoons that they had no time left to goe to their Laudable Sports nor could the people enjoy their pleasures with a quiet Conscience the Ministers would so trouble them with pressing the Sanctification of the Sabbath according to the 4th Commandement and the like Well then diligent Preachers they were and they preached the word of God by expounding and applying it which we shall heare you by and by to commend if we may beleeve your words when we see your deeds contrary So
Moris-dances teach us Nemo saltat sobrius could the very Heathen say No man Danceth that is sober And as an English Author saith licenced too but in diebus illis A Dancer and a mad man different but in the duration And to helpe to shake this Foundation yet more you have licenced Books that do unmoralize the Fourth Commandement as before as antiquated now and of no force to bind us Christians to the observation of a seventh day or the Lords day which we have proved before to be the Rest-day or the Sabbath day of the Lord our God Iesus Christ. And did not your Tyranny suppresse all Truth all your Doctors had been ere now answered to the shame of their Divinity-Profession and the confusion of their accursed Opinions and Blasphemies against the holy Truth and eternall Law of God Well here you are charged with shaking this Great Foundation of Faith and Religion And though my Name be not here to the Bill which therfore you wil be ready by another Bill to make a Libell yet as I sayd before I say againe let the King be but pleased to send forth a Proclamation commanding the Author of this Charge to come forth and avouch it before the High and Honourable Court of Parliament where he shall have a faire just unpartiall and honourable hearing and where your Lordship shall as well stand at the Barre as your Accuser and you shall see your Antagonist dare shew his face But to prevent the trouble of Calling a Parliament you will answere this is none of Your doing 't is the Kings Edict and of King Iames before him and now by the Kings speciall command republished Is it so And therein are the Foundations of Faith and Good Manners shaken And that not onely in overthrowing the Morality of the 4 th Commâ—ndement by Dispensaton of profane sports but by dispensing with youth to use their libâ—rty on that day without controule of their Superiours as Parents or Masters who if they shall hinder them the Magistrate shall punish them and so the 5 th Commandement which is a Foundation of Good Manners in all obedience due to Superiours is shaken if not pull'd down to the ground as the Aprentices of London were wont on Shrove-Tuesday to pull down Infamous houses Is all this so Why then did you not step in as good Azariah and withstand the coming forth of such an Edict and tell the King It pertaineth not to Thee ô King to set forth such an Edict to dispense wâ—th Gods Holy Morall Eternall Commandements whereby the Foundations of Faith and Good Manners are shaken least thereby shaking the Foundations both of Church and Common-Wealth you doe through Gods just wrath bring your own Kingdome to suddain ruine But did you at all interpose your selfe Or did you use Prayer and Patience rather undergoing the Kings displeasure then being either Agent or Instrument in the publishing of such an Edict No such thing For it was the handsel of your Primacy to publish the Edict as being the best Office whereby you could testifie your thankfullnesse for so high a Preferment For why should you here leave the King alone in so weighty a Cause when you tell us before that the King and the Priest more then any other are bound to looke to the Integrity of the Church in Doctrine and Manners and that in the first place And would you now leave the King in the lurch to doe that whereby the Foundations of Faith and Good Manners are shaken and the Church in Doctrine and Manners corrupted But you were an Instrument at least and that at both endâ— of the businesse As for Prayer and Patience you were willing to leave them to others that had more need and could make better use of them to wit those poore honest Ministers who seeing the danger of their publicke reading of the said Booke in their severall Congregations so straightly imposed by the Prelates and thâ—inâ— the Kings Name wherein they well understood that the very Foundations of Faith and Good Manners are shaken so as their reading of it to their people would make themselves accesâ—ary to all the mischiefe that might come thereby as whereby the wrath of God must needs be greatly incensed against the whole Land did thereupon refuse to read it committing the Cause to God in Prayer and arming themselves with resolved Patience to indure all the Censure and punishment threatned in the Booke and left to be inflicted by the Bishops As not long after the Bishops thunderclap of threatning they feele the thunderbolt it selfe by Suspension Silencing Excommunication Dispossession out of their Benefices Cures Houses Freeholds Dispersion of Family Wife and Children now exposed to the wide world and made a Prey to Wolves and Lyons Here is indeed the Patience and Faith of the Saints Here is use of their spirituall Armour Prayer Patience Teares the onely weapons of their warfaire against such enemies so as if Solomon the Preacher were now alive he might see his words as truly and fully verified in these times as ever they were in his I returned saith he and considered all the Oppressions that are done under the Sun and behold the teares of such as were oppressed and they had no Comforter and on the side of their Oppressors there was power but those had no Comforter But it is well that you left the poore soules those weapons which you could not take from them but with their lives Prayer and Patience Although how doe you labour to deprive them even of Prayer when you will not suffer them to pray together that suffer together in and for the same Cause but your Beagles hunt them out And would you not reduce all Prayer and conjure down the very Spirit of Prayer by confining it to the prescript letter and form in your Service Book where there is never a Prayer for poore afflicted and distressed soules in such a Case complaining of the Bishops Cruelty and Tyranny over them So as you see they patiently suffer they use no opposition by force And yet what say you to one of your Predecessors who when the King would not agree to his Nobles in the casheering of his Favorites who were his Privy Councellors to the ruine of his Realme he being then but Lord Elect of Canterbury took with him his Clergy and went to the King and threatned him if he would not yeeld in the matter he would Excommunicate him Neither I suppose are you of opinion with once a Brother of Winchester who in a Book of his published by Authority and Printed at Oxford hath these words If a Prince should goe about to subject his Kingdome to a forraigne Realme or change the forme of the Common-wealth from Empery to Tyranny or neglect the Laws establlished by common consent of Prince and People to execute his own Pleasure In these and other Cases which might be named If the Nobles and Commons joyne together
Church of Rome and of the Church of England And that the greatest too And I am perswaded the Church of England since it professed the Gospell never had such a monstrous and Bayeyard-like bold misleader as this Great worth of Canterbury hath proved to be or will certainly proove in effect if it find as blind Disciples to deale witthall as it selfe is a Master Although it is much hoped that if any Man hath conceived such an high Opinion of your worth as to account you for the most Profound Divine the most Pregnant Politician and the most potent Champion of the Church of England the very Reading of this your Book with a corrected judgement will either convert him from this errour or at least prevent that this errour of your Doctorship shall not Commence or Proceed to the degree of Heresie L. p. 303. 'T is safest to beleeue the Article of Christs Descent into hell as both the Churches of England and of Rome do agree upon that is That he descended into the place of the damned And this is the truth P. Surely if this be the truth that Christ descended locally into hell the place of the damned it were safest to beleeve it whether you and Rome consent in the beliefe of it or no. But because you beleeve as the Church of Rome beleeves will you thereupon conclude This is the truth Certainly we have the more cause to suspect that truth for a falshood wherein you and Rome doe both agree But how true your beliefe with Rome is and how true this Truth we have before sufficiently discovered But will this hold for a good Rule that in what you and Rome agree it is safest to beleeve it You agree in Altars Priests Sacrifice all manner of wil-worship Antichristianisme and many things more forespecified Ergo is 't safest to beleeve these things Or for whom safest safest for all those that affect to be of your Church Tryumphant here and would not come under your persecution But how agrees this with that which you adde ibid. that Rome will not indure this that Christ descended into the place of the damned but onely in Limbum Patrum a Region in the upper part of Hell Ergo rather then faile if Rome will not beleeve as you doe That Christ discended into the place of the damned you will beleeve as she beleeves that he dâ—scended in Limbum Patrum For agree you must and that 's the safest beliefe L. p. 307. I my selfe have heard some Iesuites confesse that in the Liturgie of the Church of England ther 's no positive errour P. 'T is a signe then your Liturgie agrees pretty well with the Romish Messal as is noted by the way before For surely such a Testimony from a Jesuites mouth gives us the more cause of suspicion that all is not so well in your Liturgie as it should be As Diogenes sayd when the people applauded him he began to suspect himselfe that he had committed some absurdity or other saying Wherein have I miscarryed my selfe that this people doth so commend me L. p. 318. Though Dr. White late Bishop of Ely was more able to answere for himselfe yet since he is now dead and is thus drawn into this Discourse I shall as well as I can doe him the right which his learning and paines for the Church deserved And I grant as well as he that there must be some one Church or other continually visible P. First for Dr. White he being now dead which he was long before I will say no more but this For his deserving pains for the Church the Church of England you meane as now it stands the same Church with that of Rome and of the same Faith with her and of which Faith he also declared himselfe to be when he told a Minister that the Difference between the Church of Rome and of England in the Doctrines of the sixt Session of Trent and by name of Grace and Justification was little or nothing how great it was his Works extant can witnesse as namely his Approbation prefixed to your now Brother of Chichester his Appeale to Caesar wherein is maintained the whole Body of your Arminian Heresie together in all or most of the grossest points of Popery as worship of Images at least with Doulia and the like and assaying to prove the Pope not to be Antichrist as if he would solem è coelo tollere also Dr. Whites Book of the Sabbath to prove no Sabbath to Christians and the fourth Commandement not to be Morall for the keeping of one day in the weeke as the Lords Day allowing also of vaine sports and profane pastimes on that Day and commending of praying towards the East where your Altar is placed and such like stuffe in all which he so well deserved of your Church of England as he scarce had his fellow onely if he were now living againe he would yeeld the Bucklers to your Lordship as the bravest Champion of the now Chuch of England that hath risen up in this latter Age or yet succeeding times may hope to produce But let us now heare the right which your Lordship does him and which his paines for the Church deserved But first let me tell you you forget here to give him his Title of Lord Bishop which you indeed gave him in the very first page of your Booke But now his Lordship is dead let not Lord and Bishop be separated in any case no not by death it selfe For indeed Lord-Bishop is a peculiar Title differencing you from all true Bishops indeed as the Scripture commendeth for the onely Bishops as is shewed before yet I know not how it is come to passe that in the best Reformed Churches beyound the Seas the Pastors are never called Bishops I suppose it is because as Kings of old were stiled Tyranni and that in meliorâ—m partem untill degenerating into Lawlesse Tyrants indeed good Kings would thereupon never after be called Tiranni but Kings so the Reformed Churches seeing how the name of Bishop grâ—w to be odious the Office and Calling of it being changed 〈◊〉 that of a Parochiall Pastor into a Diocesan Lordship and so 〈◊〉 have for this cause layd aside the Name of Bishop though otherwise the Name is good as it pertaines to the true 〈◊〉 and Presbyters over particular Congregations as is before shâ—wed so as the Reformed Churches doe herein as the Ancient Romans did who when their Kings turned Tyrants the lâ—st wheâ—of was Tarquinius surnamed Superâ—us for his extreme 〈◊〉 they for ever banished both the name of Kings and 〈◊〉 out of their Commonweale But let us see how you recompense the omission of this Lordly Title in this place to such a well deserving man You adde And I grant as well as he that there 〈◊〉 be some one Church or other continually visible Aâ— well aâ— he This then may seem to be some recompense by way of honour and 〈◊〉 some doing of him Right for indeed his main
A REPLIE TO A RELATION OF THE CONFERENCE BETWEEN WILLIAM LAUDE and Mr. FISHER the Jesuite By a Witnesse of JESUS CHRIST JOB 38.2 Who is this that darkeneth Councell by words without knowledge 1 KINGS 18.21 How long halt you between two opinions If the LORD be GOD follow him but if Baal then follow him CANT 2.15 Take us the Foxes the little Foxes that spoyle the Vines for our Vines have tender Grapes IMPRINTED Anno MDCXL A SAD AND SERIOVS CONSULTATION OF A DISCONSOLAE MOTHER CHRISTS VIRGIN-Spouse with twelve of her Children about her whose names are Faith Hope Charity Zeale Humility Prudence Piety Patience Iustice Mercy Verity Prayer whose severall judgements the Mother requireth in a doubtfull case MOTHER MY Deare Children how doth the very sight of you revive my dolefull spirits almost drowned in the Dragons flood You are to me as that twelve-starred Crowne upon my head But to the purpose for which I have called you together though indeed you are never asunder nor absent from me and it is this You have taken notice of a notorious Booke lately published by the Prime Prelate of England which he calls a Relation of a Conference c. And how to that Relation a Sonne of mine no lesse known to you all then assisted by you in the worke hath made here a Reply and presented it to me But now how to improve and dispose of it for the best is the doubt The Relator the Prelate ingageth the King in it by two bonds the one of Patronage the other of Command as if the King had first commanded it to be published and now did give it Patronage and protection which if true it puts me in a straight what to doe with this Reply For who so fit to take notice of it yea and to give it Protection too if both the matter and the consequence of it being of so high a nature be well and wisely weighed It hath much perplexed me Now therefore give me your best advice And first Faith what sayst thou Faith Deare Mother put away from you all such perplexed thoughts 'T is true If we looke on worldly meanes with a carnall eye we are all in a straight But this is our safety 'T is well the world hath never an object to allure our confidence to pitch upon it And best of all when all the world is banded against us and our Christ. Is not he alone sufficient to cope with them Doth he not laugh at their proud but vaine attempts which are no lesse against him then against us Is not the Cause then his And are not we his And is not he for us Who then shall be against us What though Principalities and Powers and Spirituall wickednesses in high places be with all the power and pollicie of the world with all the craft and cruelty of the Dragon and Devill armed against us why still Christ is for us That 's sufficient Therefore there be moe with us then against us We are a little flock against a world of Wolves and Foxes Lyons and Beares but we have a watchfull and powerfull Shepheard whose Legions of mighty Angels those heavenly Hosts doe pitch their tents round about us We are his Paradise on earth which he defends continually with his Cherubims flaming sword that proud Apostates cannot so invade us as to take one Tree of life from us Let the wild Beasts then rage and warre upon us let the Aegyptian troopes pursue us as with open mouth to devuore us but stand we still and see the salvation of the LORD He that led his people through the Sea never wants power to deliver his when in most desperate straights Mother Cheare up Not a haire of your head shall perish The faithfull and True hath said it As for outward meanes if we have them we use them as Gods ordinances if we have them not nay if all be against us yet our Faith in GOD is the same and ever greater stronger and nobler without and against meanes then with them And much more is our GOD the same and his glory most shineth where outward meanes are either least helpfull or most opposite My resolution then is this The Reply in my judgement is very necessary to be published and withall as most pertinent and important to be presented to the King But whether he will read it or no leave that to GOD. We shall neither loose our labour nor reward For great is the Truth and shall prevaile what ever opposition Men or Devils make against it And in this Reply the true Faith is defended against the Prelates false and counterfeit Faith I have said Mother Well Hope what sayst thou Hope Deare Mother I am of the same mind and spirit with my Sister Faith By all meanes cast away all anxious and perplexed thoughts and be of good comfort though our Shippe be shrewdly weather-beaten and shaken yet Christ is at the sterne And I have already cast Anchor in the Havens mouth on a firme ground within the Veile When Noahs Arke floated over the toppes of the highest Mountaines in that dreadfull Deluge when the world was a Sea what Pilot safely guided and steered its course that it should rest upon the Mount Ararat Even the same Pilot we have to conduct us through these Floods to the Haven where we would be Let the Reply for truth against falsehood be published under Christs Patronage and protection that 's sufficient As for Men the lesse we hope in them the lesse we feare them And while we doe our duty with the one hand we lay hold on the Crowne with the other I have sayd Mother Charity what sayst thou Charity Deare Mother as my Sister Hope is the Anchor both sure and stedfast So I am the three-fold Cable not easily broken and therefore be of good comfort For Love not all the floods can drowne it Now for the Relation were those many passages in it noted by the Replyer some common slips of ignorance or humane frailty I would cast my large mantle over them but being of a high nature and full of impiety against GOD and CHRITT and the Holy Ghost and the holy Scriptures and against your holy Spouse-ship and against Faith and against Charity and so against all true Religion yea proceeding also from a Prime Prelate pretending great learning and knowledge and professing such singular eminencie and dexterity of wit and judgement as being the onely able Champion of the Church of England to defend the truth against a Jesuite and all this under the faire white veile of hypocrisie onely his Black-moores skin too grosly appearing in his malignant practises in persecuting the Truth and in those malicious and impious passages in his Booke so as he is left altogether naked of all plea of ignorance therefore I hold it fit that his hypocrisie should be unmasqued his bold falcities confuted his insollencie suppressed his impiety rebuked and the Truth maintained against him
Incendiary For behold Lord what havock is made in the Land What superstitions in will-worship what oppression of the Gospell what persecution of thy Ministers what effusion of their innocent blood What dispersion of their poore families What prophanation of thy holy Sabbaths What erection and adoration of Antichristian Altars and Images What suspension of the doctrines of Grace and Salvation What usurped Tyrannicall Domination over thy Ministers and People What imposition of the intollerable yoake of Ceremonies upon their necks bringing them againe under Antichristian bondage whom Christ by the shedding of his precious blood hath made free And what urging and pressing with furious rage reaching up to heaven the observation of all humane Ordinances while yea and whereby thy divine Ordinances are cast out And what wilt thou now doe to thy great Name Thou hast of late by terrible signes from heaven as it were by sound of Trumpet summoned the whole Land threatning to destroy it Surely the provocations are great were not thy Patience greater But thou expectest Repentance with Reformation of all these abominations But little appearance as yet and as little hope while such Books as this are Patronized and Authorized What then Lord Wilt thou therfore proceed to judge the whole Land for these things Surely the whole Land is defiled and so the cause were just But yet remember Lord that thou hast a remnant yet left therein that have not bowed the knee to Baal And consider withall that they are a Faction principally of some few persons as the Prelates that have caused such confusions in the Land And wilt thou destroy the righteous with the wicked farre be that from thee Shall not the Iudge of all the world doe right And even now do not thy People lift up strong cryes unto thee against their Aegyptian Taskemasters and Babylonian Lords And behold Lord what a desperate Leader this Faction hath got even as Iudas was to the Rowt the Primate and Metropolitan of all England those Antichristian Titles he so much vaunteth of who because he walkes in Factious and lawlesse by-wayes therefore hath this Fox for his better defence gotten upon him the Lyons skin pretending the King for the Author and Patron of all his practises Now the Foundations being thus cast down what can the Righteous doe But thou art in the holy Temple Thy Throne is in heaven wherein and whence thou swayest all Scepters here below Thou art the King of Kings and in whose band the Kings heart is as the rivers of waters turning it which way it pleaseth thee And thou hast of late mercifully turned his heart to grant to his Scottish People their ancient Christian liberty both by freeing them from Ceremonies and from the High Commissions thereby cutting shorter at least the Hornes of the Beast in the exercise of Prelaticall Tyranny Now ô Lord be pleased to perfect this thy worke both in Scotland and England and throughout all Christendome by causing the Kings of the Earth that formerly were as hornes to the Beast and had given their power unto him to hate the Whore and strippe her naked and that by throwing down the Hierarchy the maine Pillar of the Antichristian Throne which is advanced above and against the glorious Kingdome and Throne of our Lord Iesus Christ. And for this cause ô Lord open the Kings eyes clearely to see the notorious hypocrisie of his Prelate who under a Colour of Peace and Truth goes about to overthrow all true Peace and Truth in his Kingdome Let him see ô Lord how dangerous it is to maintaine or countenance an Antichristian Faction within his Kingdome Let him see how naked his Kingdome lyes at this time exposed to all the stormes of heaven through so many crying Sins and desperate iniquities which the whole Land groaneth under ready to sinke to the bottome of hell Let him see and be rowsed up to a more watchfull Care and diligent attention upon the grave and waighty affaires of a King and especially not to commit the Care of Religion to Romish Prelates which are no members of the true Church of Iesus Christ. And withall ô Lord quicken the Kings heart with a Coale from thine Altar even with the zeale of the Spirit of Iesus Christ to enter into a present strict examination of the State of Religion as it now stands in his Kingdome And because thou hast in mercy stirred up and strengthened a Servant of thine to discover to the King not onely the great dishonour his Name sustaineth but the great danger his Kingdome incurreth while such intollerable things are suffered as thy Servant hath in his Reply laid open Now ô Lord let it be thy pleasure to bring this worke to a full perfection by the publishing of it that so both the King and his People by taking knowledge thereof may come to see what a miserable condition they are brought into by one blinde guide and bold Prelate And let thy Spirit ô Lord awaken and quicken the minds of the Lords and Nobles of the King and State to consider what a base vassalage all those are brought under who suffer themselves to be made slaves to serve the lawlesse lusts of one domineering Primate and at length wisely to foresee the mischiefes which the Altering of Religion to the worse and reducing all back againe to Rome may and will certainly bring upon the Land and upon themselves too if not the more speedily prevented by a sound and serious thorow Reformation Make the great ones of the world ô Lord sensible that there is a judgement to come and that there is a terrible GOD above them that shall call them to a strict reckoning for all those ungodly practises wherein themselves have either been Agents or Instruments either Principalls or Accessories as in oppressing thy Word and Truth in persecuting thy faithfull Ministers and the like And Lord stirre up all thy people to fervent and continuall Prayer and strengthen them therein to persevere and watch untill an Answer come forth from thy Throne to all their Petitions and Supplications which from day to day they have and do and shall present unto thee Oh let not our God be angry with his people that pray unto him with unfained hearts and lips nor let their enemies Say Where is now their GOD But Lord stirre up thy strength and come and helpe us Put the wicked in feare O Lord that they may know themselves to be but men And shew some token upon thy servants for good that they which hate us may see it and be ashamed because thou Lord hast holpen us and comforted us And let the Atheisticall Scornfull world see that it is not in vain to serve God and to call upon him and to wait for him And now Lord avenge the Cause of Iesus Christ against Antichrist and break down Antichrists throne and exalt Christs Throne that himselfe alone may sit and rule and raigne over his People and the show◠of that King may
I find such wide gappes wherein you lye so open that you give me advantage to fasten at pleasure And I have unmasked such dark holes as your selfe have made with such artifice as through which men may easily passe thick and three-fold to Rome So as I feare you will rather complain of me as for being too busie in reading some of your dark and mysticall Riddles which perhaps you would not have had all men to have known L. p. 7. I fell into a most dangerous Fever but it pleased GOD beyond all hope to restore me to health P. This was as you there tell us upon your thoughts of giving A. C. an Answer But how ever surely your Fever was as well sent of GOD to admonish you to desist from such an Enterprise as you had then in hand which was under pretence to Answer a Jesuite to overthrow the truth and to reconcile the Church of England with that of Rome as your restoreing was to oblige you to walke more worthy of that mercy for the future and not to renue and prosecute this your Designe Or else it pleased GOD so to restore and reserve you to be not onely a scourge to his People for their further tryall and humiliation for a time untill he had as now he is in hand performed his whole worke upon his Sion but also to be a plague to that sinfull Land upon which since that your restoring you have been an Instrument to bring so many and grievous sins as open profanation of the Sabbath Altars sheding of much innocent blood both of soules and bodies and of terrible discontents and divisions in the State and the like and so at length that he might call you Magor Missabib Feare round-about making you a terrour to your selfe when you shall come to feele the fire of his fiery indignation to kindle upon you L. ibid. How of late I have been used by the Scandalous and Scurrilous Pennes of some bitter men whom I heartily beseech God to forgive the world knoweth little leasure and lesse incouragement given me to Answer a Iesuite or set upon other Services while I am under the Prophets affliction Psal. 50.19 20. P. And what those Scandalous and Scurrilous pennes are and who those some bitter men the marks you have set upon them are sufficient to shew the Scarres whereof they will carry to their graves to be a witnesse against you in the great day of doom And bitter men you may well call them as whose lives you have filled with all manner of bitternesse and that in a high degree as hell could invent Of these THREE Remarkable bitter men one was a Minister of your own Coat saving that his was not of the Scarlet couloured-Dye He preached against the Scarlet-sins of the Land especially in the Church which touched your Lordship not a little and therefore Bitter For this he was extraordinarily summoned to the Court of High-Commission from whence appealing to his Majesty he was notwithstanding proceeded against by suspension in the same Court his house violently broken open and searched his person neither flying nor resisting seased on and carryed away late in the night to prison and made a closse prisoner his very Wife debarred from him brought into the Starre-Chamber and there Censured to be degraded deprived of his living of his Liberty of his Eares on the Pillory fined in five thousand Pounds to the King and to indure perpetuall Closse imprisonment in Lancaster-Castle whence he was after 12. weeks imprisonment there in the base Common Goale where his Wife might not come to him nor any Physitian in his necessity closely conveyed to the Sea side and thence by a Sea-voyage of sixe weeks space in a stormy winter and dangerous Seas to be carryed to Guersosey Castle where ever since he hath indured Banishment in Closse prison where nor wife nor children nor any friend nor acquaintance are permitted to visit him and where he is not allowed the use of pen and inke and paper a little to deceive time withall in his solitary muse the solace of a Scholars life And what was the Cause of all this sharp and teerrible Censure In summe this He had put in his Answer to the Bill into Court and that by speciall Order of the Court where it was upon his Oath to be a true Answer admitted But about a week after the main body of his Answer which contained his defence of what he had confessed upon Oath to be his which was one onely Book intituled For GOD and the King containing the effect of his two Sermons preached in his own Church on November 5 th 1636. for which he was first questioned by the High Commission together with an Apology of an Appeale all in one Book which was by the two Lords Chiefe Iustices wholly expunged containing about foure-score sheets of paper as Impertinent and Scandalous and all this before the Interrogatories were brought to him in his Closse Prison to Answer the Answer whereunto was to be reckoned as a part of his Answer in Court such as now it was left So as the Interrogatories coming at length to be tendred to him for I have all circumstances by credible intelligence hee refused to make Answer to them alledging that his Answer which he had put into the Court being expunged as Impertinent and Scandalous he saw not himselfe any further bound to Answer Interrogatories for so doing he should assent to the condemning of his Cause before the heareing by assenting to the expunging of his true Answer as Impertinent and Scandalous Hereupon his Censure was drown up in black and white and concluded on before the Day of hearing came in which he tendred to the Court a Copy of his Intire Answer as it was fâ—rst put into the Court desiring the Court it might be there publickly read but it was refused then he tendred a Copy of his Reasons seaven in number of not Answering the Interrogatories desiring they might publickly be read in Court but that was also refused And in all the Kings Attourneys Pleading which was his Speciall Taske against BURTON hee could alledge or object nothing at all in his Book confessed against him but some Few Passages wherein they said hee was too bitter To which he Answered there was Cause for it and that he had not exceeded the Latitude or Liberty of a Minister in reprooving of Sinne and for any thing in his Book hee was there ready as he told the Court to make it good if hee might be heard But his Doom was already set downe in the blacke Booke before the Censure came which for all hee could say must not be reversed So he was Censured as before as one holding Seditious and Schismaticall opinions though none was or could be proved against him And the like censure had the other two with him the one a Physitian the other a Lawyer Now my Lord do not you well enough know all this to be true and
vaine and wicked thought concerning GOD as if he favoured him and his wicked practises and all because GOD was silent and patient in forbeâ—reing to reprove and punish him Now to apply this If you can find any to whom these things may more fitly and truely be applyed then your selfe doe you apply them home unto them But till you doe give us leave to apply them so farre to your Lordship as we have sufficient warrant and good evidence for First do not you in this your Booke in particular pretend at least to declare Gods word and speak of his Covenant as if you would become a Champion to maintain the holy Scripture against the Roman Adversaries thereof This you professe and willingly grant But in the proofe hereof you set us up Mans Authority above the Scripture as we shall see in the due place And doe you not withall hate instruction and cast Gods word behind you when being by Gods Minister as of late reprooved and convinced of such things as you neither could nor can deny to be true as being written in Capitall Letters in your forehead and on the palmes of your hands yet you not onely hated and despised the reproofe and instruction which was according to Gods word and the duty of a Minister whose strict charge is among other things to reproove with all authority but also have manifested this your hatred and contempt in persecuting this poore Minister beyond all measure and example yea and still continue persecuting him to this day and that most Antichristianly and not onely him but his Wife and Children who have done you no offence at all not suffering the one to goe see her Husband nor the other their Father O my Lord heaven rings of this your fury and the earth groaneth under such more then Heathenish inhumanity not sorting with the Law of common humane nature O How shall you escape the damnation of hell And what plagues may not the Land expect for being guilty of such innocent blood and of such unheard of Barbarisme and that also maintained and continued in cold blood Yea and doth not the spirit of the Beast in you breath out persecution and blast many other of Gods faithfull Ministers never leaving them till you have rooted them out And this you neither feare to practise nor shame to professe And then againe Doe you not give your mouth to Evill and frame your tongue to Deceit You frame it as having a special art and Method in it as the Apostle spekas which you expresse in the fourth mark especially Sitting and speaking against your brother and slandering your own Mothers Son as will further yet appeare and doth by your continuall and dayly practises and specially in or at your High Commission chaire or Boord where as else where you have a power to doe what you list without controule or contradiction And for carnall security in an impious and Atheisticall conceit of GOD as if a favourer of wicked practises because a patient forbearer to punish them presently examine your own heart nay may we not both read it in your courses and understand it by your speeches in sundry places of your Booke where you would seem to have a speciall interest in Gods favour as in his admirable restoring you as you say from your dangerous Fever though you there forgot as those nine Lepers that Christ clensed to return him thanks so much as verball And for the further and fuller clearing of the verefying of all this in your selfe I shall call your Book to witnesse In the meane time here Heare Gods doom against this wicked Man But I will reprove thee and set them in order before thee He will bring every worke to judgement with every secret thing whether good or evill And as David elswhere saith Wherefore doth the wicked contemn GOD He hath said in his heart Thou wilt not require it Thou hast seen it O GOD for thou beholdest mischiefe and spight to require it with thy hand the poore committeth himselfe unto thee Thou art the helper of the Fatherlesse Breake thou the arme of the wicked and the evill man Seeke out his wickednesse till thou find none But How long Lord Holy and True Surely when he maketh inquisition for blood he remembreth them he forgetteth not the cry of the Humble There is a day of Gods visitation a comming and it hasteneth yea we may see it even at the doores Therefore Davids inference hereupon will sort well in this place O consider this ye that forget GOD least I teare you in pieces and there be none to deliver Thus you may see what need you have to beware how you meddle with such edg'd tooles in misapplying the holy Word of God for it is a sharpe two edged sword which not skilfully handled as a Sword in a mad mans hand but applyed to a wrong use and object will rebound back upon you and wound you God give you Grace to repent if possible if you be not come to that Sklurâ—tata kai ametanamton kardian as the Apostle speakes hardnesse and impenitent heart treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath I am plain you see if there may be hope and surely 't is no time now to spare when we heare Gods Trumpet sounding the Alarme You proceed L. p. ibid. In the midst of these libellous outcryes against me some Divines of great note and worth in the Church of England came to me one by one and no one knowing of the others coming as to me they protested and perswaded with me to reprint this Conference in my owne Name This they thought would vindicate my Reputation were it generally known to be mine P. What libellous outcryes my Lord Of Scandalous and Scurrilous pennes If Scurrilous I approve not If Scandalous is not that in your sense onely because against you But the Authours names were to the Bookes which they avowed to be theirs How then libellous And Master BURTON in speciall offered to the full Court at his Censure to prove all his Book to be true And how then Scandalous And if just reproofe of Iniquity and Enormities and that by a Minister of GOD in his own Charge be Censured for Scandalous then how shall the writings of the Apostles and Prophets and the words of Christs owne mouth escape this Censure of being Scandalous For Master BURTON was a Minister of CHRIST which under the Gospell is called a Prophet whose Office is to convince and reproove sinne But he named your Lordship and some other of your Brethren in his Book True And what of that Doe you make this to be Scandalum Magnatum Then what say you to the Prophet Elias telling King Ahab to his face Thou art hee that troubleth Israel And in his writing to King Iehoram hee told him his owne which hee shortly after found too true So the Prophet Elisha when hee spake to the Elders of Israel and
your soule the guilt of the bloud of JESUS who under Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession and so of all his Prophets Apostles and Martyrs But you will say BURTON had no such speciall mission and commission as the Prophets had No Could not you see that he was extraordinarily raysed up by GOD and by him extraordinarily assisted both in his Sermons and in his Book and in his free and undanted Spirit in his appearance and Answer before so many Terrible ones in that Court and in that fiery tryall on the Pillory and other tryalls wherein he carryed himselfe from the First to the Last with that constant magnanimity that he seemed rather a Triumphant then a Patient Can you ascribe this to any humane strength of a poore impotent Man wrastling and warring against such a dreadfull and direfull host of Adversaries and not to the sole and extraordinary support of the Spirit of Christ in him So as when being a Spectator of the Tragedy as you had been the maine Author wherein you thought to glut your eyes with such a Spectacle and to make your selfe even drunken with his bloud were you not on the contrary amazed and confounded to see a Man on the Pillory triumphing over your incomparable cruelty Did not your Conscience then at least check you and tell you that you did then Pillory Iesus Christ in his Servant as it were nayling him afresh to the Crosse and putting him to an open shame But you goe on Saying Now in the midst of these Libellous outcryes what some Divines of great note and worth in the Church of England c. 'T is no hard matter to Divine of what stamp your Notable and worthy Divines in the Church of England be But I passe them by as unsaluted it being obvious to all men what kind of Divines doe merit to be accounted of you of Note and Worth in the Church of England who are and must be either Arminian or Popish or both Flatterers and Sycophants Proud and Profane persons by which they are most noted and known and whose worth is valued according to the rate of the magnitude or multitude of their Fat Benefices Prebends Deaneries Prelacies or other dignities and according to their great Scholarship show'd in their seldome preaching in their own Cures and their curious and quaint Rhetorizing in the Court where the plainest part of the Sermon is down-right-rayling against the Puritans and the base and grosse flattering of the Court. â—ut what of these your worthy divines First they come to your Lordship Well that 's but good manners to expresse their officiousnesse though but with a complement Secondly not together but one by one not one knowing of anothers coming Every one thinking perhaps to prevent other in so notable a piece of Service and so to promerit all the thanks Well thirdly What 's the matter of this casuall or rather miraculous confluence To perswade with you to reprint this your Conference in your own name But cui bono To what purpose For it would vindicate your Reputation being generally known to be yours Now least your Lordship may run into a strong misconceit as if this strange concurrence of persons and Spirits not one knowing of anothers coming or occasion were from some Constellation of the Starres or rather from Divine Providence for your good you know your Brother of Chichester protested in his Appeale that he had never read Arminius and yet how pat did he hit upon and hold all the Arminian Points as if he had been an old Disciple of Arminius his Schoole By what Spirit trow you was this But to the point All this was to vindicate your Reputation With whom With Jesuites Certainly not with any good Christians Yet this you labour too with laying on colous enough But this Art of writing against Jesuites is now grown so stale and triviall as in these dayes it begets new Suspicions of a Popish Spirit especially when it once comes forth under the Authority or Name of Canterbury Yet haply your Divines are Astrologers observing the Constellations of the times and thereupon divining or conjecturing what fearefull events might come of it and those perhaps prognosticating and ominating little good to your Lordship upon whom they saw a generall bad and malignant Aspect to be cast might strain their wits and use their strongest reasons to perswade you to use the best meanes to prevent the worst whereof they imagined this their motion to be the best And therefore they might perhaps frame their Speech in such a like forme as this My Lord we observe abroad what discontents possesse most men against your Grace about these late Innovations in the Church as they call them and you know the Truth of Religion as they apprehend it as also the Liberty of their Consciences are with the Puritans of high estimation and men will not easily part with them especially those that be Zealous indeed as accounting them their best freeholds Such especially as acknowledge no other King over their Soules and Consciences in matters of Faith and Gods worship as we have heard them say but onely CHRIST And they have shrowd Arguments herein for themselves And you see what necessary occasions and exigents may constrain the King to call a Parliament and how farre that being a meanes to fasten and confirme the Subjects affections to his Majesty now especially upon this Defection of Scotland may draw the King to be willing to give his People contentment in permitting them that purity in Religion in Faith and Discipline which Christ and his Apostles they say have taught and left them without which they say they cannot be freed from the Yoake of Antichristian or humane Ordinance for we use but their words and how dangerous this may be to your Grace whom they have marked out as the maine Active Agent or Instrument in disturbing their peace and distracting their minds and trenching upon their said Liberty as they account it And considering how the whole Land generally groaneth under many heavy Grievances as People now adayes account Grievances as their deep Sighs do interpret their minds and of these your Honour is reputed one of the Prime Movers And however your Lorship may haply conceive that if ye be put to a pinch your Book your late Conference set forth against Fisher will prove sufficient to ward off and beat back all accusations annent Religion yet my Lord it is not put forth in your own Name they may Question whether it be yours or no and say that being namelesse you may in time disclaime it if ever you can bring your pious purpose for peace to passe And besides 't is now a long time since it was Printed and so is forgotten Wherefore our humble advise with all due Submission to your Lordships pregnant wisedome is that your Grace would revise correct and more fully expresse your selfe in some things in the said Book and so republish it in Print under
curse them yet can you not doe as that wicked Prophet did in Counselling King Balack to put a stumbling block before the Children of Israel by inticing them to his Idols with his faire Damosels You can tell us that the Church of England and of Rome are one and the Same Church and that her worship of Images is but a trenching or coming neare Idolatry as at after so as none need fear communion with her so he be but ignorant of her Corruptions Of which more hereafter But though you cannot prophesie what is all your practise but a cleare Prognostication and that not onely foretelling but causing and haling in a Deluge of Atheisme and Irreligion flowing in upon you Yea witnesse this your Book which could not spring but from the root of Atheisme and Sourse of all Irreligion and which doth not onely prognosticate nor onely teach the way how Atheisme and Irreligion may gather strength but doth certainly presage and that by necessary consequence most terrible Judgements and Calamities to fall upon the Church of England I would say rather upon the Hierarchy of England and which you doe with both hands in writing and publishing this Book and by all other your practises pull upon your own heads But this your feare of Atheisme and Irreligion to gather strength is say you while the Truth is weakened by an unworthy way of contending What Truth Or what is that unworthy way of contending for the Truth Or what is your Atheisme and Irreligion For all these termes need your interpretation But your prudent modestly therein we will make bold as well as we can to Supply First for Truth it is much in your mouth I meane the name and word Truth But when you name Truth you alwayes mean Falshood as when you Speake of the Church you meane such a Church as is a false Church and when you Speake of Peace you meane such as is a false Peace when your Reconciliation with Rome is a Conspiracie against Christ and his true Church and when you name Priest you meane such as is a false Priest and when you name Devotion you meane such as is a false Devotion of humane devising and when you name Faith as the gift of God you meane not the true Saving Faith whereof the Apostle speakes where he Saith Faith is the gift of God As we shall see at after So as ever under the green leaves of such faire words as Truth Peace Church Devotion Faith c. we may ever Suspect and shal be ever sure to find a false Serpentine Sense to lurke Secondly your unworthy way of contending for the Truth what is it but that which the Apostle exhorts unto that Christians should earnestly contend for the Faith given to the Saints and Paul that we should sunathlein wrastle together as for Mastery or for a Crown for the Faith of the Gospell Now is not this that which you call an unworthy way of contending for the Truth No doubt of thâ—â— As to write Books or preach Sermons proving the Pope to be Antichrist and the Church of Rome to be a false Church or no Church of Christ and no Salvation to be hoped for in that Church and that all true Christians ought to have no Communion with that Church but to abhorre and abandon her as the Lord commandeth and that Prelates are not Jure divino but are Antichristian and their Hierarchy Tyrannicall and that Altars in Churches are a denying of Christ the Onely Altar and that all Ceremonies invented and imposed by men in the Service of God is a will-worship condemned by Christ and his Apostles and many such like This is that unworthy way of contending whereby you say the Truth is weakened No marvaile Thirdly what is that Atheisme and Irreligion which you feare will gather Strength while the Truth is weakened by such an unworthy way of contending This I take it may be taken two wayes Either that by Atheisme you meane the true Faith of Christ which is opposite to the Romish faith wherewith you hold such correspondence for whatsoever is contrary to Romes faith or which is all one your faith is with you branded for Atheisme Or Secondly Atheisme truely and properly taken gathers strength by such an unworthy way of labouring a Reconciliation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome which to make way for you are glad to say that these two Churches are for substance one and the Same Church Now before your time the Church of England though in many things it symbolized with Rome as hath been shewed yet still it renounced all communion with her as being a Strumpet and that great Whore whose Husband is the great Antichrist But now you have so turned the Cat in the pan by making way to bring the Church of England back againe to an union and communion with Rome that you put the people to a stand to a nonplus so as they know not what to beleeve or what to think but are ready to cast off all further thought of God as if there were no God because they see those to flourish and to goe on unpunished who overthrow the faith formerly professed in England seting up the Romish faith againe where it had been cast out and on the other side Preaching and Preachers to be put down and the true Professors to be persecuted and thrown out of all and forced to quit their native Countrey and the like Now where all this is do you but feare that Atheisme gathers Strength Nay is not the root of all your cruely in persecuting Christs Ministers and People meere Atheisme It is noted of the Sadduces that of all other Sects they were the most cruell in their judiciall Censures As Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 2. c. 14. out of Iosephus And no marvaile They denyed the Resurrection and the Last Iudgement So as they were Atheists This made them dare to practise all cruelty and injustice For Maxima peccandi illaecebra impunitatis Spes So how durst you be so unjust and cruell in your oppressions and persecutions did you certainly beleeve that there is a Resurrection and Last Judgement wherein you shall be Judged But this by the way 't is an Item And Irreligion also what 's that That 's soon resolved to wit Obstinacie in not admitting of Altars in some Churches Irreveverence in not bowing to Altars and worshiping towards the East and adoring the name Iesus and the like This is with you Irreligion because your whole Religion is placed in these things For so you tell us in the words following L. p. 19. The externall worship of God in his Church is the GREAT WITNESSE to the world that our hearts stand right in the Service of God Take this away or bring it into contempt and what light is there left to shine before men that they may see our Devotion and glorifie our Father which is in heaven P. Surely were it not
proof of the things beleeved How say you then that the maine grounds which prove them are concealed from our view and folded up in the unrevealed Councel of God And what main grounds I pray you be those Can you tell Or doe you speake in the Clouds that you may seem to say something which you understand not For certainly this Mystery of Faith is concealed from your understanding as appeareth by your darke and clowdy words And is that unrevealed councell of God the object of our Faith Cometh not Faith by hearing of the word of God wherein God hath revealed his will to us Or doth the Tradition of your present Church lead you to beleeve such sencelesse speculations Indeed the Apostle saith That in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdome and knowledge Hid that is layd up and contained as a Treasure But not hid from his true Church and faithfuâ—l people as the Apostle saith If our Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them that beleeve not least the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ should shine unto them And againe Eye hath not seen nor eare heard neither have entred into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit But where Search the Scriptures saith Christ for in them ye thinke to have eternall life and they are they which testifie of me so to this purpose the Apostle speaketh excellently Ephes 3.4 5 6. and 1.9.17 18 19 and in many other places But to you it seems these things are hid and folded up and therfore no mervaile you know not what you say nor wherof you affirme As the Apostle saith of some Who were turned aside from Charity out of a pure heart and a good Conscience and of Faith unfained unto vaine â—angling Desiring to be teachers of the Law understanding neither what they say nor wherof they affirme Let therfore the Prophet Esay read you a Lecture Stay your selves and wonder Cry ye out and cry They are drunken but not with wine They stagger but not with strong drinke For the Lord hath powred on them the spirit of deep sleep and hath closed your eyes The Prophets and your Rulers the Seers hath he covered And the vision of all is become unto you as the words of a Book that is sealed which men deliver to one that is learned saying Read this I pray thee And he saith I cannot for it is sealed And the Book is delivered to him that is not learned saying Read this I pray thee And he saith I am not learned Wherfore the Lord said Forasmuch as this people draw neere me with their mouth and with their lippes doe honour me but have removed their heart farre from me and their feare towards me is taught by the Precepts of men Therfore behold I will proceed to doe a mervailous worke amongst this people even a marvailous work and a wonder for the wisdome of their wise men shall perish and the understanding of their prudent men shal be hid Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their councel from the Lord and their works are in the darke and they say who seeth us And who knoweth us surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the Potters Clay Loe my Lord I hope this word is not folded up if to you it be you shall one day both see and feele it more clearly and sensibly fulfilled But you goe on God in Christ say you resolving to bring Mankind to their last happinesse by Faith and not by Knowledge What by a blind Faith For by Faith and not by Knowledge is all one as to say by such a Faith as is without Knowledge and so without light in it and so blind Wheras the true saving Faith is a knowing Faith it is the evidence of things not â—een it sees him that is invisible as before is shewed But my Lord if the maine grounds be folded up in the unrevealed counsell of God I wonder by what revelation you come to know his secret That God in Christ hath resolved to bring Mankind to their last happinesse by Faith and not by Knowledge surely God hath no where in Scripture revealed any such resolution of his And if it be not written Timeas 〈◊〉 illâ—d as Tertullian forementioned said to Hermogenes the Heretick Feare that Woe to them that shall adde to the Booke of Scripture But if you had leasure to Read the Scripture it reveales unto us plainly what God in this businesse hath resolved to do and how he will bring Mankind to his last happinesse and that is by a seeing not a blind Faith by a Faith explicit and cleare not implicit and folded up by light and not by darknesse This is Gods way that he hath chalked out unto us in the Scripture as before is fully proved of Faith and therfore we are sure that God in Christ in his eternall councell resolved to bring us this way to heaven and no other way And this way is Christ and Christ is light and in this way we must walke as children of the light and not as children of darknesse And every true beleever as he becomes a new man so of a blind man he becomes a seeing man For this cause Christ came the true light that he might lighten every man that comes to him For this cause was Paul sent to preach to the Gentiles To open their eyes and to turne them from darknesse to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive forgivenesse of sinnes and inheritance among them which are sanctified by Faith that is in me saith Christ so that every true Christian in his conversion of blind becomes seeing of darknesse becomes light in the Lord of Satans boâ—dmâ—n Gods serâ—ant and by this way onely through Faith in Christ they receive forgivenesse of sinnes here with sanctification and hereafter the eternall inheritance But as for you my Lord as you have found out another way namely a blind way not by the way of knowledge by which yet you pretend to your last happines so be assured of this that the place you are going unto is just like the way that leads unto it blind and darke yea utter darknesse where the Pit is into which both the blind leader and the blind led shall fall And for your further conviction or else confusion and confutation of your folly and information of your blind Disciples and confirmation of the truth to all the children of truth note what Christ himselfe saith expresly point blanke against you You say God in Christ resolved to bring Mankind to their last happinesse by Faith and not by Knowledge But Christ saith This is the will of him that sent me this God hath resolved on that every one
whatsoever faith is requisite and necessary to salvation as the beliefe of Scripture to be the word of God as is shewed before And this saving faith is the faith of all them that are heires of salvation to wit of all Gods Elect and all the Saints But it seems with Father Bellarmine you have an Implicit faith for your ignorants and an Explicit for you that are great Clerks or the letter of the Creed for those and the sense for these But I handled this also before Onely you propound a Paradox which is no worke for your pen wherein you are the wiser not to take upon you to read or expound such riddles had you been so wise as not to have propounded â— And yet it is the worke of every good Minister of Chrâ—â—t to teach the people what to beleeve and to exhort them to grow in Grace and knowledge and Faith and so declare unto them the whole Counâ—el of God and to keep nothing backe and to build men up in knowledge more and more unto perfection As the Preacher saith Because the Preacher was wise he still taught the people knowledge yea he gave good heed and sought out and set in Order many Proverbs The Preacher sought to find out acceptable words and that which was written was upright even words of truth The words of the wise are aâ— Goads and Nayles fastened by the Masters of Assemblies which are given from one shepheard But this is not a patterne for you to follow neither by your tongue nor pen. You have other imployment for them But though we cannot set a bound to faith in respect of perfection of degrees yet we ought to teach the people all the parts of saving faith and knowledge striving unto perfection And besides it is the duty of every good Minister of Christ to limit and set bounds to all the negatives of faith in discovering all manner of sins and errours which are all contrary and enemies to faith and salvation For which end they must open all the ten Commandements as Christ did Mat. 5. and all other points of saving Doctrine in the Scriptures Now though you have not the skill or will to set bounds how farre men shall beleeve yet you want no will nor power to inhibit and restraine Preachers shewing them how little a way they must goe in teaching the people and so consequently how little a way the people must goe in beleeving and saving knowledge as in restraining and forbidding to preach the Doctrines of Grace as before forbidding Lectures and especially all Sermonâ— on the Lords day afternoon forbidding long Preaching at any time forbidding expounding of the Catethisme as many of your Prelates doe and the like Thus you can finely set men bounds how little thy shall beleeve or know of God to their salvation That 's a worke if not for your pen or hand yet for your head and not unlikely of your hand and pen too L. p. 327. The Romanists dare not beleeve but as the Roman Church beleeves And the Roman Church at this day doth not beleeve the Scripture and the Creeds in the sense in the which the ancient Primitive Church received them P Dare they not How then say you there is possibility of salvation in the Roman Church for any when it condemneth and accurseth saving faith and justification thereby with other saving truths For if the Papists dare not beleeve but as their Church beleeves then they are bound to good behaviour they dare not beleeve to their salvation And if they dare not beleeve to their salvation then they cannot be saved And if they cannot be saved what possibility of salvation for them living and dying in that faith And here Why do you noâ— say in the sense of the Scriptures themselves and not of the Primitive Church But you doe not like the Scripture sense except the Church interpret it You allow not Scriptures to speake for or testifie for themselves You are the same man still And as we sayd before you doe wisely in that to stoppe the mouth of Scripture as Ahab did Michaiahs for it never speaks good of you but evil alwayes L. p. 232. I will acknowledge every fundamentall point of faith as proveable out of the Canon as we account it as if the Apochryphall were added unto it P. As if Apocryphalls were any divine proofe at all of the fundamentall points of faith in Scripture or ought any way in that respect to be so much as named with the Scripture Apocryphalls saith Ierome may be read for instruction of manners but not for confirmation of faith as before L. p. 336. I have lived and shall God-willing dye in that faith of Christ as it was professed in the ancient Primitive Church and as it is professed in the present Church of England P. As you handle the matter ther 's a vast difference between the faith of Christ professed in the ancient Primitive Church and that which is now professed in the present Church of England For the Ancient Primitive Church taken properly and strictly as somtime in your Booke as before you put it was that wherein the Apostles lived Now will ye be tryed by the Ancient Primitive Church of the Apostles held and professed What say you my Lord for your faith in this case Will you put your faith and Religion to the tryall of the most intire and upright Jâ—ry the Twelve Apostles Certainly if you decline this tryall 't is a shrewd suspicion that the faith of yours wherein you are so resolute to live and dye is not right Therfore for shame of the world you must at least professe or pretend that you wil be tryed by the the Faith and Religion which the Apostles and the true Church of God in their time as being the most Pure Prime Ancient Primitive Church held and professed First then That Primitive Church neither held nor professed nor practised any Hierarchicall government of Prelates or Bishops but have câ—ndemned it in their writings the Scriptures of the New Testament And yet I are say you resolve to live and dye Primate of Canterbury and Metropolitan of all England Secondly The Apostles and the ancient Primitive Church in their Age and time had no Altars but onely the Lord Iesus Christ Heb. 13.10 as it is formerly proved but you and your Church of England both set up and worship Altars and â—each the people both by your Books and practise to do so too and force Ministers to erect Altars or force them out of their Churches And this Faith and Religion also I dare say you resolve to live and dye in Thirdly The Apostles and the anciciâ—nt Primitiâ—e Church in their time celebrated and sanctified every Lords day in holy duties onely and in preaching as well in the afternoon as in the fâ—â—enoon never forbidding but still exhorting to preach in season and out of season giving no liberty to vaine and profane sports and Pastimes either upon
the malignity and iniquity of the Times shall lay upon me which I am most willing to undergoe for his sake who suffered death that we might live And never had I more imployment to exercise me in any age Mother Iustice what sayst thou Iustice. Deare Mother I hold it both just and necessary that the Reply be published both for the beating down of the insolencie of the Relator and the raysing up of the drooping spirits of Gods people and the setling them in the Truth As for presenting it to the King though I be not against it yet for my part I have engaged my selfe in an Appeale to the High and Rightâ—ous Iudge of all the world for Iustice in this Cause where I shall be sure to have it So as I resolve not to descend to any inferiour Court and there too where the like Cause inferiour to none for pure innocencie and that also upon Appeale so foulely miscarried So as I am altogether taken up in waiting for an Answer from my Righteous Iudge wherein I shall desire my Sister Patience to lend me so much of her vertue as may preserve my Attendance from fainting Mother Mercy what sayst thou Mercy Deare Mother I am ingaged with my Sister Iustice in the same Petition to the throne of Iustice and Mercy that the Righteous Iudge will for his mercy sake to his people give righteous judgement between them and the Relator for else they and the Cause must fall to ground And this course I stick unto not that I dissent from my other Sisters but what your selfe and they shall resolve on in this case my Petition with my Sister Iustice may stand in no small stead when GOD shall be pleased to move the Kings heart to vindicate the Cause of Christ and of his innocent people from the unjust and unmercifull dealing of the Relator against whom I stand a dayly Petitioner with my Sister Iustice not departing from the Court-gate of heaven till we have a full Answer Mother Verity what sayst thou Verity Deare Mother I would willingly accompany my other Sisters to the Court in presenting the Reply to the King but that there I am better known then trusted So as I could never yet have any good successe there Insomuch as I have made my selfe as they have made me altogether a stranger at Court because my naked simplicity can no way suit with the garbe of the Court-fashion which can turn themselvs into all formes but mine which is unchangeable Yet if my Sister Hope could lend me her habit I durst adventure with my Sisters once more within the Court-gates in hope the Courtiers would not reject me as not knowing me to be Verity And should they by my language descry me yet seeing me in Hopes habit they might perhaps turn Truths Disciples in hope of some gaine or preferment so much affiance they have in hopes But alas their hope is nothing a Kin to my Sister Hope for her object are things spirituall and eternall but theirs onely temporall And besides the Relator hath forced his Pack with such a deale of trumpery and painted stuffe gilded over with the glittering Titles of Truth and Peace and Piety and Devotion and the Church and the like that these his faire polished Bristow-stones are preferred by his Court-Disciples before the true and precious Diamonds because presented in their ragged or russet Coat so as these prove not merchantable there where otherwise even Truth it selfe is bought and sold. And therefore it shal be sufficient that my Sisters so many as goe weare me as alwayes as a Jewell in their bosomes so I shall not be taken notice of and the fewer they appeare the better least the Prelate conjure them down for a sort of Factious Spirits as he did those THREE of late in the Starre-Chamber I have said Mother Prayer what sayst thou Prayer Deare Mother and all my deare Sisters here present come I pray you and kneele down here and assist me by joyning in earnest supplication to our GOD that he would direct and lead us in that way which in this businesse may most conduce to the advancement of the Cause of Christ and the honour of the King Prayer O Lord God Almighty Who shall not feare thee thou King of Saints Great and marvelous are thy works just and true are thy wayes Thou art the great King over all the Earth the righteous Iudge of all the world the GOD that hearest Prayer and helpest thy People when they cry unto thee and judgest their cause when thou seest their strength is gone But how long LORD Holy and True when wilt thou arise and have mercy upon Sion Is not now the time the set time come Is it not now a day of rebuke and blasphemy Are not the children brought to the birth and there is none to deliver How long shall thy people cry and thou answerest not How long shall the enemy roare and thou regardest not How long shall he blaspheme thy Name For ever Why pluckest thou not thy right hand out of thy bosome Art not thou our King of old working Salvation in the midst of the Earth Didst not thou divide the Sea for thy People to passe through And art not thou the same GOD of Israel still Or is thine arme shortened that it cannot save And dost thou not remember this how the enemy hath reproached O LORD and blasphemed thy Name And wilt thou deliver the soule of thy Turtle Dove unto the Beast Wilt thou forget the Congregation of thy poore for ever Remember thy Covenant O Lord for we are thy People and thou art our GOD. Other Lords besides thee have had dominion over us but by thee onely will we make mention of thy Name And yet dost thou not see the darke places of the Earth full of the habitations of Cruelty O let not the oppressed returne ashamed The poore and needy cry unto thee they trust in thee they waight for thee that they may praise thy Name Arise therfore O GOD plead thine own Cause remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee daily Forget not the voyce of thine enemies the tumult of those that rise up against thee increaseth continually And now behold here spread before thee a Book of Reproaches and Blaspemies against thy Majesty and against thy Sonne Iesus Christ and against thy Holy Spirit and against thy Holy Word and against thy Holy Ministers and against thy Holy People and against thy Holy and Pure Worship yea and against the Kings Sacred Majesty whom thou hast set over thy People to governe them according to Truth and Equity under whose Patronage and Authority notwithstanding the Relator is bold to shrowd this his Book with all the Blasphemies and Falsities therein contained So as hereby not onely the exterpation of all true Faith and Religion in the Land is threatned but consequently the utter ruine and extermination of the Nation it selfe hastened already fitted as dry fewell for thy wrath by this