shall spend the day as the Lords-day or have any publick communion with the Church And they are apter to be sensible of this calamity themselves than the Objectors are 6. And I must add also that as London is the most populous place so it hath the greatest number of true Separatists and Sectaries and the sounder part are not responsible for their actions 12 Obj. But with what conscience do you come into Cities Corporations or within five miles of them or of your former Preachingplaces Doth God bid you preach just here And how do your scruples engage you thus to break the Laws Ans. Even with such a Conscience as we Preach in England when the Scripture nameth not England to us Did not the ancient Christians also disobey a lawful power when they setled their Churches in Cities even when they were forbidden both City and Country and if Christ say VVhen they persecute you in one city fly to another and you bid us fly from all and fly to none Hath not a Nonconformists Conscience something of the command of Christ to countenance his practice But our true Reasons are the same as are forementioned for our Preaching If necessity be upon us to Preach because of the peoples necessity to hear then where their necessity is greatest there our obligation is greatest But in populous Cities and Towns when the ablest conformable Minister is insufficient for a quarter of the Parish the peoples necessities are greatest Ergo If it be lawful for us to desert and betray to Satan the souls of all the Cities and Corporations in England and within five miles of them and of all the places where we have Preached why will it not be lawful to do so by the rest VVhere the carcass is the eagles will be gathered together and where the work and Vineyard is the labourer must be And all good men love the publick good and therefore will chuse those places for their labour caeteris paribus which the publick good doth most depend on Especially if the people of their ancient charge live there and they think that their relation to them is not dissolved And I must profess that few of the passages of this generation do more astonish me with dread and wonder than to think that City-Pastors who have so vast a charge and so much more need of help than the Country yea men of reputed learning sobriety and piety should ever be desirous to take this burden wholly on themselves and should be the forwardest to drive away assistants yea and make it a sin to preach to those souls that they know they cannot preach to themselves Yea that the same men that one year have much ado to satisfie their own consciences to conform and think they speed well if with Conformity they can but keep up some reputation of honesty yet the next year make so great a progress as to question his honesty that will not sacrilegiously renounce his Ministry and are the forwardest to put down all Preaching save their own Do the Pastors themselves no better know the Parish bounds and the peoples wants or the worth of souls What then can we expect from others Obj. But it is not your help but your hindering us that we are against Do you help us by drawing the people from us to your selves Ans. I cannot tell whether we help you or not till I know what is your help If your work be not to get followers and applause but to bring men to Christian knowledg faith love obedience and patience then all the Ministers that I plead for are you helpers those that are not silence them and spare not But if your work be to preach up your selves and your successes be reckoned by your applause I cannot tell whether we help you or not For though we seek to increase your reputation with the people yet it is not as you are self-seekers but as in charity we hope you preach more for Christ and mens Salvation than for your selves 13 Obj. But what you before denied of the Magistrate you cannot deny of the Church The Church calleth you and giveth you your power Therefore it may take it from you And so Mr. Rathband confesseth and the old Nonconformists practised Ans. 1. The Church is an ambiguous word If you mean the Bishops all those whom you call to be re-ordained deny that ever the Bishops gave them their power 2. And it was One Bishop who ordained each of the rest or two at most who are both dead and cannot take away what they gave 3. I have answered this before and more largely in my Dispute of Ordination Men give us not our Power at all as from themselves but as Servants of Christ invest them solemnly to whom he giveth it And a servant cannot dispossess him whom by his Masters Orders he hath invested 4. You give us our Baptism and Matrimony as truly as our Ministry And yet you cannot take them from us 5. But indeed if the Church that is the People refuse us we cannot teach and edifie them against their wills 6. And if one Bishop silence us he doth it but as exercising Government in his Diocess and it followeth not that we are silenced in all others 7. And they that dissent from our Diocesan frame of Prelacy do not much reverence their Governing Spiritual Power And if the Kings prohibition bind them not against their Conscience of Gods obligations to be silent much less will yours 8. No Bishops have silenced us by Spiritual Government that we know of but only as Barons by the Secular Laws to which they gave their Votes which yet all did not How then are we obliged by their Power of the Keys to be silent For my part I have one or two of their Licenses never re-called or nulled 9. If a Bishop should silence him under pretence of Government and Order whom God obligeth to preach as much as I have before proved that we are obliged it were ipso facto null as to our Consciences as being against the Laws of God 10. He that is silenced in every Bishops Diocess is not yet thereby degraded but is still a Minister to the world at least for their conversion For those without the Infidels and Heathens are of no Bishops Diocess And it 's a question whether those among us that openly renounce the Prelacy and declare themselves to be none of their Church are yet indeed members of their Church whether they will or not We believe not that a Law of the Land doth make any man a Church-member without his own consent If you think otherwise why distinguish you the Sons of the Church from others If all the people of London be not the Sons or members of your Church the rest are not under your Pastoral Spiritual Government And as for your Secular Power enough is said of that before And I think no man will say that the extent of your Diocess to many hundred Parishes is a
say that they are certain of their own Salvation I know that many excellent Protestants have made it the sense of that article of the Creed I believe that my own sins are pardoned and say that this Proposition My sins are pardoned is de fide Divina And yet I know that in propriety and strictness of speech which should be used in Controversies it is not true I know that many of the School-mens assertions are commonly rejected as erroneous because they are not commonly understood I know that Luther maketh the Doctrine of Justification to be Articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae and yet I know that Ludovicus le Blank of Sedan in his Theses hath greatly narrowed the difference and understands it much better than Luther seemeth to have done Which I may say also of Bucer Conradus Bergius In Praxi Cathol Ludov. Crocius and many other such Conciliators And that Luther on the Galatians is so acceptable to the Antinomians that I conceive divers passages in it have need of as candid an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Doctrine of Scotus and many Papists on that point I am my self a Christian and that is my Religion and I own the name Protestant for no greater reason than because it is the Protestant Religion to be meer Christians and to protest against the Roman Superadditions and depravations of it And so to be a Protestant and to be a meer Christian adhering to Scripture sufficiency as the test and terms of Union and Communion are all one Yea if any one doubted of the Canonicalness of the Canticles Esther or some one or few Books and acknowledg the main body of the Scriptures and the ancient articles of faith I would not cast such a one from my Communion And these terms or none I have foretold it you oft must heal the Church if ever it be healed And till the Papists will see the equity of these terms it is our great advantage that the certain truth of all our Religion is so fully acknowledged But 2. as long as we let others alone with their additions why may they not live in peace with us and let us alone without them All men are united in the Essentials of Humanity though they are not all of one complection stature or degree of strength And if any be so peevish that he will associate with none that are not of his own complection the separation is the effect of his folly which may possibly be cured and till it be cured both the fault and the suffering is his own If a Law were made that none shall live in the Kings Dominions but men of a Sanguine complection and of a strait and comely person and of such a proportion of tallness and of strength and of flaxen hair this Law would necessitate a separation and diminution of the Kings subjects from generation to generation But if the Law be that all English men that will live after the rules of Reason Honesty and Society shall have the priviledges of subjects if an hundred thousand had got a conceit that they may not lawfully be of the same Kingdom with any but men of their own complection and stature as aforesaid this is a cureable folly and the Law-makers may say we have done our parts for universal society and it is not we that make it impossible or hinder it and men in time may come to reason We refuse not them but they refuse us If you make things necessary and of common agreement to be your terms of Union Greeks Abassines Armenians Romans may take their own way and every one without injury enjoy his own be it wisdom or folly upon these terms But if you unite upon any other terms you make Laws for schism even for the exclusion of all that are not of your mind For Hales his Doctrine is true in the judgment of all men save the guilty that the Imposer of unnecessary doubtful things is the Schismatick or cause of all the schism So that there is no true union to be expected with Rome or any others but on the terms of primitive simplicity or which all true Christians are agreed in And they are no good terms which induce the authors through the force of interest to say that none in the world are good Christians that are not of their cut and strain and wear not their livery and lace not their coats in the Imposers mode 4 And as long as we take nothing from the men of various modes and fashions by unity in the Essentials of Humanity and Christianity to imagine that it is the way to union to force all Dissenters to their modes is but to renounce union and to gratifie a distant party so far as to make them laugh at us as fools and hope ere long to get us at their mercy and thereby to lose disoblige and destroy those that are nearer to us and would indeed be our friends and strength and to become enemies to our own families rather than to displease the people of France by not wearing their fashions 5. And if you had attained a seeming union with the Papists you are not sure it will hold seven year For their Religion still thriveth and thereby changeth and is yet far short of its maturity in all likelihood For General Councils make their Religion and who knoweth how many General Councils of forty Bishops perhaps like that at Trent for a great part of the time there may yet be and what alterations of Religion they may make And are you sure you can go along with them in all as far as they will go If you must break at last unite not on such mutable terms at first But there 's no talking to men whose interest and passion and partiality is the maker of their Religion It is not my purpose to speak any of this either to one of Grotius's mind if Saraviad and the Book called Grotius Papirans be credible or if he be that man that wrote the Discussio Apolog. Rivet who would have us unite upon the acceptance of all the Councils even that of Trent nor to such as come as near them as Mr. Thorndike nor any of that degree of affinity For I suppose they are already gone out of the hearing of such a voice as mine Yet still remember that I am not setting a Law no not Christs Law to your selves for the rule of your own opinions or practices If you will please the Papists by coming yet nearer them even nearer than the learned Forbes Bishop of Edenburgh did if you will have more of their Doctrine Discipline and Worship take it if it will do you any good But why must all others needs be of your judgment or those be of your way that are not of your judgment And why cannot you unite with the Papists if you will without destroying the Protestants or renouncing them Unite in things necessary and hold and use the rest as matters of liberty and it will
AN APOLOGY FOR THE Nonconformists Ministry CONTAINING I. The REASONS of their PREACHING II. An Answer to the Accusations urged as Reasons for the Silencing of about 2000 by Bishop Morley Bishop Gunings Chaplain Dr. Saywell Mr. Durel the nameless Ecclesiastical Politician and Debate-maker the Counterminer H. Fowlis Dr. Good and many others III. Reasons proving it the duty and interest of the Bishops and Conformists to endeavour earnestly their Restoration With a POSTSCRIPT upon Oral Debates with Mr. H. Dodwell against his Reasons for their Silence And a Scheme of INTERESTS Written in 1668 and 1669 for the most of it and now Published as an Addition to the Defence against Dr. Stillingfleet and as an Account to the Silencers of the Reasons of our Practice By RICHARD BAXTER 2 Tim. 4. 1 2. I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom Preach the Word Be instant in season out of season reprove rebuke exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine London Printed for T. Parkhurst and D. Newman at the Bible and three Crowns in Cheapside and at the Kings Arms in the Poultry 1681. To the Right Reverend Dr. Compton Lord Bishop of London Dr. Barlow Lord Bishop of Lincoln Dr. Crofts Lord Bishop of Hereford Dr. Rainbow Lord Bishop of Carlisle Dr. Thomas Lord Bishop of St. Davids Dr. Lloyd Lord Bishop of Peterborough and as many more as are of their Moderation and love of our Common Peace and Concord Right Reverend Fathers and Honourable Lords YOU are not the men that resisted and frustrated our earnest endeavours and hopes of Concord at his Majesties return 1660 and 1661 nor made the Act of Uniformity or the rest by which we suffer nor have you been the makers of any Engines to wrack and tear in pieces the Church and Kingdom at such a time when they groan'd and beg'd and hoped for healing I therefore direct this Apology to you and all others of your moderation in some hope though evil men and deceivers grow worse and worse You are reputed among us Nonconformists not only true to the Protestant Cause but lovers of good men and no lovers of cruel silencings violence or blood Though I know but few of you I have reason to believe this fame and some of you have publickly declared your moderation to the world If then the ancient Christians might present their Apologies in hope to Heathen Emperors may I not do so much more to Christian Bishops to moderate Bishops and lovers of peace If yow are wiser and better than we you are as much more merciful and peaceable than we and as much more against all hindering the Gospel and weakening or dividing the Churches of Christ by unjust silencing restraining or persecuting any faithful Ministers or Christians and you are more sensible than we with what deep sense men will shortly hear In as much as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren you did it to me You have then more of the wisdom from above which is first pure then peaceable gentle c. Jam. 3. 17. and you have a deeper Impress of that holy LOVE by which all Christs disciples must be known Interest is supposed to Rule the World And the grand design of Satan is to set up some fleshly sinful interest in Rulers and Teachers and People which is contrary to the Laws and interest of Christ and then he hath made a Virtual War Carnal Interest will not yield and Christ will not yield nor change his Laws Carnal interest will expound them for it self and so secretly and powerfully byas the judgment that even Learned men when they warp and err shall not perceive it but verily think that it 's all for God We are commonly supposed to be against your interest and that this will make us continue unreconciled to the gratifying of them that have no low game to play by the contrived means of our divisions If your chosen Interest be the furthering of holiness and everlasting happiness by sound and serious preaching of Christs Gospel worshipping God that is a Spirit in spirit and truth and yet with all reverent decency and order and living according to the Laws of our Universal Head in soberness righteousness godliness and in love and peace with one another God forbid that we should be against your interest And this is your interest indeed He that is most for it we account the best and wisest man And if your Dignity Wealth and Honour be your Interest subordinate to the greater as it is highest in the ungodly I beseech you think not we are more even against that than we are indeed I had rather be ruled than rule but God must be first obeyed God knows I envy not your dignity or wealth I have proved in the end of this book that our Restoration is greatly for your interest and that none have done more against you than those of your own tribe that have had the greatest hand in our silencing and suffering Give me but a sober understanding man to deal with and I undertake to shew him that by a meer Reforming of the Parish-Churches so far as your selves confess to be desirable and just with such a limited Toleration of peaceable sound Christians as Christian Reason must acknowledge necessary We may be brought yet to an happy Concord and a better Reformation than England yet ever saw without doing the least wrong or hurt to the Diocesans It is usually said that England had more respect to the principles of Augustine in Doctrine and of Melancthon and Bucer in the points of Reformation than of Calvin Luther or any other And as to Cranmer Ridley Cox and the other Reforming Bishops I verily believe it I know no Divines whose judgment I more consent to than Bucers and Melancthons O that all our Clergy would read and weigh what Bucer saith copiously and vehemently for Parish-Discipline and pure Communion de Regno Dei de Animarum Cura in censura Liturg. specially de Confirmatione and what he saith of Pastoral Government Ordination and Order and of imposing such Ceremonies as ours It was written in England and for England And that they would read what Melancthon saith in his Epistles of the Pestilent design of the Papists that would lay the validity of our Ministry and Sacraments on an uninterrupted succession of Canonical Episcopal Ordination that they may make the judgment of their Councils more effectual than of Christ and his Spirit in the Scriptures and what he saith against these cheats And verily we have little worldly interest to draw us to be enemies to yours And I still profess that in all my experience those called Nonconformists did heartily love honour praise and hear a Bishop or Conformist that preached and lived seriously spiritually and in Christian Love such as through Gods mercy we have had many yea if he preached and lived better than Nonconformists they
loved and honoured him more though with some weak partial persons it was otherwise If then we have any Interest opposite to yours it is not Riches it is not Power we wisht no more than to be Pastors to the Volunteers of a Parish-Church And what more do the Independents wish than that persons have the same liberty to chuse to whom the Pastoral care of their Souls shall be entrusted as they have to chuse Physicians or Schoolmasters and Tutors for their Children and Wives or Servants Husbands or Masters in the family living under Laws of sobriety and peace And if you think that our cross interest is the praise of a few that follow us in a reproached suffering state you think we have a very low mind and game Why then do we so much desire to be out of this state and to take up with reformed Parish-interest And why doth not a far stronger worldly interest more prevail with us But such accusations are answered in this book As for that party of men among us Archbishops Bishops and Doctors that have made it their office and interest to set up as for Christ 1. A Catholick Church formed by a vicarious Universal Government viz. A General Council or a feigned Universal Colledge of Bishops 2. And the Patriarchal power which was in the Roman Empire 3. And the Pope as the President or Principium unitatis Catholicae 4. And the same Pope as our Western-Patriarch and the six or eight first General Councels as the Laws or Rule of Government and so would bring us under a foreign Jurisdiction and turn the orders of a Catholiok Empire into those of the Catholick Church through the World 6. And that pretend that the Papists Churches have an uninterrupted valid succession and therefore are true Churches and that the Protestant Churches that have no uninterrupted Canonical Episcopal succession are no true Churches nor have valid Sacraments or any ordinary title to salvation I say as for this party of men whose Writings and Names I need not tell you of we profess that we have no hope that ever they will be reconciled to us because it will not stand with their desired reconciliation described by themselves with a more powerful and numerous party which they prefer before us And though as much as in us lyeth we must live peaceably with all men we can never receive their unpeaceable principles and terms And it much more alienateth us against the Church of Rome to find that the nearer any are to them the more they are for uncharitableness and cruelty and trust not to the Church-Keys but to the Sword as if blood banishment or destroying conscionable Christians that are not of their minds were the strength of their Religion and Church and still cry Strike home and execute the Laws Abate nothing Tolerate none of them Let them make their task and have no straw Away with them as pestilent fellows and movers of seditions just contrary to the Christian Nature and Interest and Law And if he that dwells in Love dwells in God and God in him who dwells in them that dwell in wrath and imitate Cain and bear thorns and thistles and devour the flocks which they should gather and feed and shew that they love their brethren by destroying them Right Reverend Fathers and Lords we have far better thoughts and hopes of you and though I have beg'd in vain these Twenty years for Peace and Concord of others of your Order I address my self to you beseeching you patiently to read this Apology and pardon the earnestness of it for it is for a weighty cause It was most written 1668 or 1669 before most of you were Bishops Dr. Stillingfleet hath newly told us that If we will but allow that by virtue of the Rule Phil. 3. Men are bound to do all things lawful for preserving the peace of the Church we have no further difference about this matter pag. 176. We have still allowed it we have solemnly protested it Were it lawful to us to conform and cease our Ministry which we were vowed to we would do it I beg of you as on my knees for your own sakes for Englands for the Churches for Christs that you will agree with us on these terms I ask nothing of you for my self I need nothing that you can give me My time of service is near an end But England will be England and Souls and the Churches peace will be precious and the Cause will be the same when all the present Nonconformists are dead And Bishops must dye as well as we Our Lord delayeth not his coming to encourage any to smite their fellow-servants If it be not a Lawful thing for the peace of the Church to forbear the dividing Impositions and Prosecutions I need not name them then let us all suffer still But if it be do not only privately wish but zealously as Lovers of the Church endeavour and that with speed and all your might for Peace to abate what may lawfully be abated It is not in our power to procure Union For sin and self-condemning will not do it How much is in yours the Lord cause you to know and practice I rest Your Servant R. B. AN APOLOGY FOR THE SILENCED MINISTERS Especially for their not ceasing to Preach Christs Gospel Being the Third Part of their Plea for Peace Humbly directed to those of the Lord Bishops and to the rest of the Conformable Clergy of their mind who have procured our Silence and Sufferings or the continuance thereof Most Reverend and Right Reverend Lords and Fathers and Reverend Brethren HAVING once tryed in vain though by the favour of His Majesties Gracious Encouragement and Commission what speaking might do and since that tryed as much in vain what silence in this kind will do I have resolved once more before the expiring of my gasping hopes to resist despair and to try whether so many years experience hath opened your ears and hearts to the Reasons and humble Requests of those who not so much for their Sufferings as for the Souls of men do daily eat the bread of sorrow At least before I resign this Skeleton to the dust to leave one more testimony of my zeal for Unity and Peace and make one more attempt for the Gospel and the Church of Christ that I may not appear before my Judg in the guilt of negligence cowardize or unprofitableness Not to be your Accuser nor a Justifier of any of the weaknesses or miscarriages of the present Nonconformists nor yet of those of former times but humbly to re-mind you of the things that concern the interest of Christ the people and your selves When it pleased the most Gracious Soveraign of the World to restore his Majesty by the concurrence of the desires of his Subjects and the wonderful dissolution of that Army and Government which resisted his returns as we knew that our divisions had been our sin and ruine and our enemies strength and that
our Concord now would be our duty and our hope and our enemies terrour so we thought that the season had happily favoured our just desires We had all one undoubted Soveraign to unite in We had all seen and felt the folly and calamity of Dissentions We had found that principles and practises of jealousie violence and division had let out our blood and made havock of our wealth and separated us from our King and one another and brought us all into confusions We had newly found that our sudden unanimity and concord had restored the King and those that suffered for and with him We knew that almost all the people of the Land were so weary of contention and its effects that they were melted into an aptness for the mould of unity and never were more inclined to Concord even upon any tolerable terms We knew also that we had a King who was newly restored by the very first recovery of his peoples unity and who was even then famous for a loving and a gracious nature enclined to moderation quietness and peace And we had newly seen the many published Declarations of the Nobility and Gentry of the Land who had suffered most in His Majesties cause protesting against all future animosities and revenge The attempts which we made for the Churches healing upon these encouragements did quickly meet with gracious acceptance and yet greater encouragement from the King And we had no reason to think that among all the rest the Clergy should be averse to such a work or yet should spoil it at such a season for want of skill because we had on both sides been deep in those experiences that should instruct us and many not the least and last either in the former sin or present interest and our calling and understanding in such things were supposed such as should make us Leaders to all the people in any just attempts for Concord When we had humbly craved of his Majesty that such persons of both sides as he should appoint might bring in Proposals containing such Approaches and Abatements and Accommodations as each part could yield unto without sin against God and against their consciences and his Majesty had more than granted our requests even expressing his Gracious resolution to draw you on to such Concessions we did accordingly give notice to the London-Ministers that our Concord might be the more extensive to meet at Sion-Colledge and give in their sense of the necessary means to so good an end Bishop Reynolds and Bishop Worth and some others that Conform concurred with us in our Proposals We never spake a word against a Liturgy nor set-forms of Prayer nor against the festival Commemorations of the Saints nor many other things which many had formerly excepted against but only desired some emendations of the Liturgy and that some other forms of Prayer might be added to the several offices with a Liberty of using this or that And for the Government of the Church which was accounted the matter of greatest difference we never made one offer for Presbytery That is the Government of the Church by Classes and Presbyteries constituted of Lay and Clergy-Elders nor did we ever speak a word for Lay-Elders Not that we presumed to Censure those Churches that used them but as many or most of our selves were never for them so we knew that no forms in which the Churches were known so much to differ could be the proper terms of Concord We never made any Proposals against Episcopacy no not against the Lordships of the Bishops nor against the greatness of their Revenues nor their places in Parliament nor made we any offer of any other way of Discipline but the frame which by Archbishop Usher had been presented to the late King called The Reduction of Episcopacy c. In which he thought that he had hit upon the ancient Primitive Government by Bishops with their Clergy-Presbyters as their Colledge Not that we approved all the forementioned things which we passed by but that we knew we must yield for the Churches peace as far as we could do without committing sin our selves When we presented to His Majesty these our Proposals and Requests and expected to meet with the like Concessions and Approaches of our Brethren not yet made Bishops we met with his Majesties Gracious acceptance but our expectations failed of all the rest having never received any such thing from that day unto this But we shortly after received a sharp Answer to our Proposals to which when a Reply was drawn up we purposely cast it by lest turning the work of Pacification into a dispute should frustrate it by exasperating altercations But when we that should have been the forwardest to Peace could do no more to an Agreement among our selves his Majesty was pleased to do more and published his Gracious Declaration concerning Ecclesiastical Affairs In which though he granted us not Archbishop Ushers Model of Episcopacy nor all that we desired yet granted he so much as made us thankfully rejoyce in hope to have seen the Churches unity and peace Because we thought the terms were such as to which we could without any guilt of sin or check of conscience have laid out our selves in perswading all our Brethren to conform And accordingly the London-Ministers did presently draw a Thanksgiving to his Majesty yea the Commons House of Parliament themselves did thank him There was nothing now remaining for the confirmation of our hopes but the intended Alterations of the Liturgy and the Confirmation of his Majesties Gracious Concessions When we had a Commission from his Majesty to attempt the first we hoped to do it by mutual compliances in gentle and amicable Conference But it was resolved to us that we being the Plaintiffs must bring in a draught of all the Alterations of the Liturgy which we desired and also of those Additional forms which we had proposed as an expedient for Concord Upon this some of our Brethren would have insisted on a refusal believing that it would but spin out time and end in nothing which would attain that Concord which was our end But others perswading them rather to do as was imposed on us than to go no further because at the worst our case would in writing be less lyable to mis-reports than if we had only spoken for our selves perhaps under checks in temptations and restraints For we had heard many wish that the Conference at Hampton-Court in King James his time had been by writing Hereupon we ventured on the imposed task We brought in writing some exceptions against some passages in the Liturgy To this we afterward received an Answer To which we offered to you a Reply and with it the Additions to the Liturgy which we desired And foreseeing the danger of the confusions and sins which since have followed our Divisions we did so far supererogate as to present to you a long and earnest Petition for Unity and Peace And we agreed with you as
it was my judgment that it was not my duty without a special call to perswade any man to Nonconformity when it was but in the issue to perswade him to be silenced and to deprive the Church of his publick labours Therefore did I never to my remembrance endeavour to make any one man a Nonconformist that did not come or send to me for resolution in the case And some such also I put off as far as conscionably I could Though I may never perswade a man to that which I judg to be sin yet I am not always bound to disswade him from it If I saw a man about to tell a lye or take a false oath to save the life of the King from an enemy or traytor I do not think that it is my duty to hinder him Affirmatives bind not ad semper I thank God not that so many laudable Ministers conform but that they preach the Gospel and keep up so much of the interest of the Church and Religion in the Land I have met with some women and hot-brain'd lads of another mind that said Let them put upon us the veriest ignorant sots and drunkards we shall be the more easily justified for not going to their Churches But I ever reproved this as the language of the Serpent who insinuating into the injudicious would increase the sin and misery of the world For my own part I heard all Ministers where I lived who were but tollerable in the Sacred Office I came to the beginning of the Churches Prayers when I could and staid to the end I took not my self for a constrained unwilling hearer of them but the more any external imperfection made my devotion difficult the more I thought it my duty to labour to stir up my affections lest I should as the hypocrite draw near to God with my lips without my heart I remember what was said of Old Mr. Fenne the famous Coventry Nonconformist that he would say Amen loudly to every one of the Common-Prayers except that for the Bishops by which he thought he sufficiently expressed his dissent I know how unable the old Separatists were to answer the many Arguments of the famous Arthur Hildersham John Paget William Bradshaw Brightman John Ball and other old Nonconformists for the lawfulness of Communicating with our Parish-Churches in the Sacraments and the Liturgy I was exceedingly moved against Separation truly so called by considering 1. How contrary it is to the principle of Christian love 2. And how directly and certainly pernicious to the interest and cause of Christ and of his Church and of the souls of men and how powerful a means it is to kill that little love that is left in the world 3. And how plainly it proceedeth from the same spirit that persecution doth For though their expressions be various their minds and principles are much the same which is to vilifie our Brethren and represent them as odious and intollerable and overlook that of Christ which is amiable in them In which when they have agreed as Children of the same Father they differ in their way of serving him One saith He is such and such therefore away with him silence him imprison him banish him The other saith He is such and such a one therefore away with him have no communion with him He that eateth not Rom. 14. will say Away with him because he eateth And he that eateth will say Away with him because he eateth not Both agree in murdering love and accounting their brother unlovely and intollerable 4. And I was greatly moved in thinking of the state of most of the Churches in the world if I travelled in Abassia Armenia Russia or among the Greek Churches I durst not deny to hold communion with them When I go to God in prayer I dare not go in a separate capacity but as a member of the Universal Church nor would I part with my share in the Common-prayers of all the Churches for all the world but am joined with them in spirit while I am corporally absent owning all their holy prayers though none of their faults or failings in them having many in all my own prayers to God which I must be further from justifying than other mens And having perused all the foreign and ancient Liturgies extant in the Bibliotheva Patrum I doubt not but our own is incomparably better than any that is there But I will not conceal it from you that I am not such a Separatist neither as to communicate with parish-Parish-Churches only If only the Law have turned any Pastors out of the Parishes and the people and they still hold their relation and communion not to say now whether they do well or ill I will no more separate from them than from you I communicate with you in Liturgy and Sacrament but neither as with a Sect or Faction nor as the whole Church but only as a part of the Church Universal and so are they I will hear you and I will hear them when I have a just occasion I will communicate with you and I will communicate with them as I perceive a call If each side run away from the other I will run from neither though I will sin with neither and must go from them that drive me away But I tell all that ask my mind that I am not so indifferent as to the Ministers whom I must join with as I am to the forms and modes of Worship Not that I call their actions Nullities or say that the Sacraments are invalid which they administer For their usurpation cannot rob the innocent of their right But yet I will not be guilty of countenancing and encouraging any soul-murderer in so great a sin Three sorts of Teachers I renounce Communion with as Ministers 1. Those that through intollerable ignorance and insufficiency do want those abilities which are necessary to the essence of the Ministry 2. Those Hereticks who preach against any essential article of Religion 3. Those wicked ones who openly bend their application not against different Sects and adversaries for that is common to all the factious and peevish but against the serious practise of Godliness Temperance Love or Justice and that labour to make these odious to their hearers though their Doctrine be sound from which they raise these malignant applications These are the men that I will not communicate with I confess when I read in Sulpitius Severus the History of St. Martins resolved Separation from Ithacius Idacius and the Synods of Bishops of those times and the confirmation of him by Visions and the antiquity and credibility of that History if of almost any ancient Church History in the main and the stupendious miracles which he is said to work it a little stagger'd me till I considered 1. That Scripture only is our rule And 2. That it was not from the Episcopal Order that he separated for he was one himself nor from any particular Bishops that were innocent nor yet from the
of our Lord and of me his prisoner but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel Ver. 11 12 13. Whereunto I am appointed a Preacher and an Apostle and a Teacher of the Gentiles for the which cause I also suffer these things Nevertheless I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed c. Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me c. That good thing which was committed to thee keep c. How keep not secretly only as a Christian but openly as a Preacher though thou suffer for it as I do So must Titus Chap. 2. 15. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority And such another charge have the Elders or Bishops from the Apostle Peter 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3. Qu. But is this also the case of those that succeeded them Ans. Yes they ordained others into the same office under the same Law of constancy and fidelity 2 Tim. 2. 2. The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also Though still the Rulers were against it And 2 Tim. 2. 24 25. The servant of the Lord must be apt to teach And what an example of Preaching publickly and from house to house night and day doth Paul give to all the Ephesian Elders Act. 20. even when Rulers were against it And again I say the practise and martyrdom of many and the writings of others do assure us that this was the judgment of Clemens Romanus Ignatius Polycarp Cyprian Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Origen and generally of all the ancient Church who were called as we are by men and yet Preached to the death against the will of the Magistrate And as Paul himself desireth prayers for him that utterance may be given him that he might open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel for which he was an Ambassador in bonds that therein he might speak boldly as he ought to speak Eph. 6. 19 20. So he oft commendeth his fellow-labourers that accordingly served with him in the Gospel though they were no Apostles Phil. 2. 22. 4. 3. Rom. 16 c. And as he spake not as a man-pleaser 1 Thes. 2. 4. Gal. 1. 7 8. and as Christ would have his word preacht as on the house top Mat. 10. 7 8. so this is done as a duty of fidelity in Ministers as such and therefore Christ adjoineth with this charge such words as these that shew the Rulers Prohibition Vers. 16 17 c. 28. Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves but beware of men for they will deliver you up to the Councils and they will scourge you in their Synagogues and ye shall be brought before Governours and Kings for my sake for a testimony against them and the Gentiles c. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name sake c. But when they persecute you in this city flee ye into another The disciple is not above his master c. Fear them not therefore c. Fear them not which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him c. These are the next words to the command VVhat I tell you in darkness that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the ear that preach ye on the house-top Luk. 9. 62. No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God Both Christians as such and Ministers as such must absolutely give up themselves to Christ and not look back for fear of man whatever it cost them to proceed 3. Mat. 9. 38. Luk. 10. 2. Christ commandeth Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers into his harvest viz. because the harvest is great and the labourers few And this is every Christians daily prayer when we say Thy Kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven If it be our duty daily to pray God to proportion the number of Labourers to the greatness and necessity of the work and that his Kingdom and the obedience of his will may be by his appointed means promoted on earth then it is our duty to do as we pray and not play the hypocrites with God as St. James his reproved hypocrites did as to the relieving of the poor that said Go and be clothed and warmed but gave them neither clothes nor food For a called Minister to pray Lord send out more Preachers and such as will promote thy Kingdom and perswade the world to do thy will while he forbeareth to Preach himself because that man forbiddeth him unwarrantably this is as very a mocking of God as it would be by the rich and covetous to pray Lord send some to relieve the poor when he giveth them nothing of his abundance 4. The Reasons of all these Commands for constant Preaching are moral and perpetual for the work of the Ministry is to open mens eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive remission of sins and inheritance among the sanctified c. Act. 26. 17 18. But this work for these ends belongs to us to this day and therefore these Reasons intimate that the like constancy is our duty as was theirs But before I proceed to our further Reasons it will here be expected that I say somewhat more to the grand Objection viz. These that you talk of were Infidel or Heathen Rulers and will you compare our with them Or doth it follow that Christian Rulers may not silence Ministers because they might not Answ. 1. No far be it from me to compare our Governours with such We thankfully acknowledg it to be the Glory of England that it hath a King and Magistracy that owneth Christianity yea more that when the whole world hath but three Protestant Kings that I know of we have not only one of the three but the chiefest who keepeth Religion in greater purity than the rest But that which I have all this while been proving is but this That where and when the Gospel is necessary to be preached true Ministers of Christ may not lawfully forbear because the Rulers do forbid them though they be not Apostles but called by the way of man 2. A Christian Magistrate doth no more Ordain and Degrade than other Rulers but he is the Governour of the Ministers to keep them from neglecting or abusing their Callings and he may drive those out of his Dominions that will not otherwise be kept from subverting faith or godliness or that are proved truly to do more hurt than good in the Land And therefore if the King restrain or banish those that are truly the plagues and destroyers of the Land or of Religion or Loyalty he shall never be blamed for it by us Or if
ever it be the question only VVhether this man or that man be fittest to have his countenance and maintenance and to be by him allowed to preach when only one of the two is needful we shall never speak against him for chusing according to his judgment as long as meer hereticks impious or intollerably unable ones are not chosen But if many hundred worthy Ministers shall be forbidden to Preach at a time and in a Land where many hundred thousand souls do wofully cry out for help as lying in damnable ignorance and sensuality and ungodliness in this case we say that no Rulers may forbid such Preaching 3. The Objectors seem to intimate dangerous Doctrine that if a King should not be a Christian or of the right Religion he lost his power over the Church which is false however maintained by the Papists The Heathen and Infidel Rulers had the Government of all their Subjects Christians and Apostles as well as others They wanted aptitude to do it well and therefore some of them persecuted But they wanted not Authority a King loseth not his Authority when ever he loseth his aptitude to use it rightly Christian Kings only can rule the Church well but others also are its authorized Rulers and there is no external coactive power at all but in the Kings or Magistrates be they Christian or Infidel 4. Christ himself did not set up a Kingdom of this world or worldly nor exempt himself from the Government of the Rulers Nor did his Apostles exempt themselves or the Church Paul Rom. 13 c. and Peter call on all Christians to honour the King and to be subject to the higher powers for conscience sake Mark then in this how little our case doth differ from the Apostles when they were forbidden to preach not by Usurpers only but by lawful Rulers to whom they professed conscientious subjection and yet must obey God rather than those very Rulers 5. Christian Rulers are the Churches nursing Fathers and have more obligation than others to build it up but no more power to pull it down They have all their power as Paul had his For edification and not for destruction It was never referred to them to judg as I have before said whether there shall be a Church or a Christ or a Ministry or whether souls shall be saved or damned or the Gospel Preached where it is necessary to Salvation or not But only by whom and in what order which best furthereth mens Salvation it shall be Preached If a Magistrate as a Magistrate may not forbid necessary Preaching much less may a Christian Magistrate as Christian who is more obliged to promote it This therefore altereth not the case 6. The Sanhedrin and Herod and other Jewish Rulers had such real Authority as Christ did not disown of the same nature with Jehoshaphats and Hezekiahs If therefore these were not to be obeyed when they forbad necessary Preaching then lawful Rulers in that case are not to be obeyed 7. The Arrian Emperours had lawful Power of coactive Government over the Church and yet the Orthodox Bishops never thought it their duty to cease Preaching in Conscience of obeying their commands Though they were forced oft to quit their present Stations Let not any Cainite here say that I compare our Rulers to Arrians For I only argue that if an Arrian Emperour had true Authority and yet when he thus abused it was not to be obeyed by forbearing to Preach the same must be said of others that have authority in case of the like Prohibitions 8. Christ setled Pastors over his Churches 300 years before there were any Christian Princes or States By which he shewed that though Princes are the true Rulers of Pastors yet Pastors are more necessary to the Being of the Church and to Salvation of the people than Princes are and that Pastors hold not their office from Princes nor at their will unless you think they had no true power till Constantines reign 9. Magistrates may not hinder a sufficient number from entering into the Ministry else the meaning of Christ must be Pray the Lord of the harvest to perswade Kings and Rulers to give leave to men to become labourers Therefore they may not hinder a sufficient number from labouring when they are entered 10. Magistrates cannot dispense with absolute lawful Vows to God at least about necessary duty This all Protestant Divines maintain in their Writings against the Papists who plead for the Popes power to dispense with Vows But our enterance into the Ministry had the nature of an absolute lawful Vow and was done by the Magistrates encouragement For in it we did solemnly devote our selves to the Sacred office and work 11. Magistrates are Christs Officers and Servants and have no power but from him and for him as the Justice and Constable are under the King Therefore they have no power against him Therefore they have no power to forbid the necessary Preaching of the Gospel and where it is not necessary we confess their power 12. If the Magistrate might degrade Ministers or absolutely forbid their work then it would follow that one Prince hath the Government of all other Princes Dominions or else that all Princes on earth must agree to the degrading of a Minister For it is fully proved by Divines of all parties except some of the Independents that Ministers at their Ordination are as Christians at their Baptism entered into a Relation to the Universal Church and not only to one particular Church And therefore he that is removed from one Church or Kingdom is not removed from the Ministerial office which continueth as towards an indefinite object Yea we are first in order of nature related to the unconverted world as we have capacity Go teach all Nations baptizing them will be Christs Law to the end of the world And if they cannot degrade they cannot take away the power of exercising the office statedly but only suspend it for a time or limit the exercise or regulate it by their governing power on just occasions and governing an office is not nullifying or destroying it Obj But if the Magistrate may suspend them and deny them liberty in his dominions then it is he and not every Minister that is to judg who deserveth such restraint 1. If you speak of publick judgment which is the publick decision of a controverted cause no doubt it is only the Magistrate that is Judg in foro civili No Pastor may enter into the Judgment seat and judg his own cause But if you speak of a private judgment of discerning every mans reason is the discerner of his own duty for he cannot do it without discerning it 2. The Magistrate is to judg publickly but not as he list as left to his own will but as an officer of Christ under the regulation of his Laws as our Judges are regulated by the Kings Laws The King may judg between an Infidel and a Christian whether Christ be the
the necessity and that God and nature had given no power to themselves to know what is necessary good and helpful or unnecessary bad or hurtful to themselves Obj. The sheep chuse not their own shepherds nor children their own School-masters Ans. 1. This is as some call it Phrase-divinity Similitudes prove nothing beyond the point of likeness Sheep have not reason and children have it not in maturity and full use 2. Are we grown better and wiser now than the Churches all were for 600 years or for the first 300 either Why do men pretend so much to antiquity and cry out against novelty who when interest bids them do more than others despise the judgment and example of the Primitive ancient Church as a ragged fordid infant-thing 3. Mans nature hath laid the foundation of this order It is not possible for the people to be edified by Ministers or worship God in their communion acceptably against their own wills And therefore as their consent is of absolute necessity to their benefit and salvation so it is the more necessary to the just calling of him that must profit them For they are the likelier to consent to his Doctrine and rule when they have first consented to his relation and so e contra they are the likelier to reject the guidance of him that was forced on them against their wills Obj. But what divisions and heresies shall we have if all the people shall chuse their Pastors and then they may bring in Hereticks whether the Magistrates will or not Ans. 1. Their choice is a matter of mutable convenience but their consent is a matter of necessity 2. I say not that they alone must chuse them or consent Two or three Negative wills sine quibus non in a case of great concernment is safer than one alone Writings or treasures belonging to three parties kept in a chest of which every party hath a lock and key are safer than under a single lock The Ordainers have a negative voice and so have the people as to the relation of the Pastors to themselves And so hath the Magistrate under Gods Laws whether that man shall live or preach in his dominions 3. And God in wisdom is pleased to lay all mens salvation or damnation more upon themselves and their own choice than on the Kings because it is themselves that must have the everlasting joy or sorrow And therefore so he hath done by all the actions and means that stand nearest to their own Salvation 4. And when we say the Ordainers and people conjunctly should chuse their Pastors we still say that when they are chosen they are under the Government of the King 5. Apply all your Objections to the case of a Physician to his Patients it is meet that all Physicians be under the Government of the King and that he by Laws restrain them from the abuse of their callings And it is meet that the Colledg that can best judg be the discerners who shall be a Licensed Physician But when all 's done it is not meet that any one be forced on the sick without their own consent And why 1. Because their consent is necessary to the use of the remedies 2. Because it is themselves that are most concerned in the event 3. Because every man knoweth much of his own condition which the King doth not know Yet here you may as handsomely exclaim What shall every woman every boy every sottish rustick and tradesman have liberty to put his life into the hands of women or foolish Empericks what murdering of men by medicine shall we then have and what diminution of the Kings subjects Ans. But 1. this is your error which confoundeth all that you think the matters of imperfect man in an imperfect world can be done without any imperfection or inconvenience and then that you look only with one eye on your own side and cannot or will not see the far greater inconveniencies on the other side but will cure an inconvenience with a mischief and subvert the end and substance to preserve your particular way of Order What would follow on the other side if all men must have Physicians forced on them Those empty fellows that could make most friends should be the seekers and finders of the place especially if Physicians were made Lords and had the honour and maintenance that Bishops have And next the people must be taught by these formalists that it is not for them to judg themselves what is good or bad for them nor when to take Physick nor how much And next they must be told that it being an office of Government as well as of skill they must put their lives into his hand who ever he be that is the Physician of the place and not go to others as abler men O what work would these Orderers make If you here except against the aptness of the similitude I will only ask you now 1. Whether the King is not as truly the Governour of his subjects as to their lives as he is as to their Salvation Do not his subjects bodies and lives belong to his care 2. Is not every man as much concerned for his own soul more than the King is or any other as he is for his health or life Will not the Salvation or damnation be his own 3. Is not every mans free will as much and more to be exercised for his salvation as for his health You may drench him by force as a horse for his health and therefore there is more pretence for cogent Laws But so you cannot for his soul. These things are plain to them that are willing to see but not to them whose interest will not give them leave but like the Ephesian Craftsmen must cry up Diana and cry down Paul to save their Trades And yet I still maintain that the King is to afford his Subjects all help in his power for their souls as well as for their bodies IV. OUR Fourth main Reason why we dare not cease our Ministry is Because we shall sin against Nature it self even the great and radical Law of Love and shall be guilty of murdering mens souls And because Magistrates cannot dispense with the great and necessary Laws of Nature we put them all into one for brevity 1. If we were Lay men yet charity would naturally oblige us to do our best to save mens souls in a way that doth not greater hurt Deny this and you deny the master-points of natural obligation and are unfit to dispute about things indifferent And the judgment of the ancient Church as the case of Origen and other Teachers and Catechists at Alexandria as well as that of Frumentius and Edesius do witness is flat against you and so is the common judgment of Divines both Protestants and Papists who use to cite these instances to prove that in some case Lay-men may be publick Teachers But if they might not in Churches lest they seem usurpers yet in other
s no wonder if one sin be a temptation to another or by actions sinful only in this And that scandal is 1. When the action otherwise lawful is purposely intended as a snare or temptation 2. When it is not so intended but hath a strong natural tendency in it self to tempt and being unnecessary is the effect of great inadvertency carelesness rashness and want of love to others souls But scandal taken and not given that is not culpably given is when it is either from a necessary duty of ours or from a thing so harmless as that there is no probability that it should be a temptation to any but those that go out of their way to seek for matter of temptation to themselves by an extraordinary perverseness We think it no false distinguishing to say that it is one thing to lay a trap or dig a pit purposely for men to fall in and another thing rashly and carelesly to dig a pit and cover it to catch wild beasts in in the common high-way or very near it and another thing to dig a pit quite out of all ordinary passage of men where yet a drunkard or one that will seek a pit to leap into may possibly find it Scandalum datum is that which charity and prudence bind men carefully to prevent and Scandalum acceptum is that which ariseth not from any omission of the duty of him from whom it is taken But more of this anon We have told you our Religion but we are not now disputing against yours If the naming of such opinions be confutation enough the owners have confuted them themselves If it be not let them pass Our work at present is only Apology though we are tainted too with the disputing disease And so much for our Reasons for Preaching Christs Gospel against mens will The sum of all is this It is an indispensible duty lying on us as men and Ministers by the obligation of Gods Law of Charity and as Ministers also by the obligation of our own Vows or self-dedication at our Ordination to do our best in the exercise of all our talents Humane Christian and Ministerial to seek to save the peoples souls and so to preach or teach and exhort them in the manner which most conduceth thereto when and where our teaching is truly and evidently necessary But now in the Kings Dominions our teaching is to these ends truly and evidently necessary therefore it is our duty so to teach III. BEcause many of your contrary Reasonings are already answered before I will here annex the rest that they may not have the disadvantage of too great a distance 1. Obj. Your own preciseness and censoriousness maketh the common people seem mostly ignorant and prophane to you and then you pretend a necessity of your Preaching when you do but feign it by setting your selves more above your neighbours than there is cause Ans. 1. I confess that many of the Separatists are truly guilty of what you here object For when they have Unchurched whole Parishes of men whom they know not nor ever heard speak for themselves we that have come after them have found abundance of the people much better than they imagined But one error or extream will not justifie another Remember that we are not now talking of mens qualifications for visible Communion in the Church but of their necessity of being taught And we censure none beyond such cogent evidence as is not in our power now to be ignorant of I beseech you deal openly with us and answer us these few Questions and all the matter will be ended 1. If men do not know who Christ is or what he came into the world for nor what he hath done for us nor what the Holy Ghost is nor what he is to do for us nor what a Saviour or a Sanctifier is nor what is the plain sense of most Articles of the Creed or Petitions in the Lords-prayer have such men need of Teaching to save their souls or not 2. If men follow the world eagerly all the week and talk of it on the Lords day and love not to hear any talk of another world or how they must be pardoned and saved but swear and curse and rail and many of them are drunkards gluttons or fornicators and if they never teach their children or families or pray with them any more than Infidels and shew no Religion but going to Church or perhaps sometimes say the Lords-prayer and the Creed without understanding and if we advise them to prepare for death and the life to come and tell them the need of a Saviour a Sanctifier and of faith repentance and a holy life they tell us that they will trust God with their souls and not trouble their heads with things so high they shall speed as well as their neighbours Have these mens souls any need of teaching 3. If any of the people so much love their drunkenness and fornication and other gross sins that they hate the Minister that seriously though gently reproveth them and like Cain would see their brothers blood if he offer God a more acceptable sacrifice than themselves or slander and hate the most conformable Minister that is but strict and seriously Religious and is talking against them on all occasins have these mens souls any need of exhortation or not 4. If many of the people be weak in judgment that mean well and have only a glimmering confused knowledge of most of the greatest matters of Religion and though we hope well of their sincerity they have abundance of mistakes and sad miscarriages in their lives and are inclined to most of the real errors which the Debate maker reciteth and in danger of being carried into any opinions which are offered by men who by nearness or plausibility of perswasion come to them with any great advantage yea and are like to be troublers of the Church have these men need to be taught or not Let us but be once agreed that the true belief consent and performance of our Baptismal Covenant is necessary ordinarily to mens salvation and that without faith it is impossible to please God and that except a man be regenerate of the Spirit as well as of water and except he be converted and become as a little child he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and that he that hath not the Spirit of Christ is none of his and that they that are in the flesh cannot please God because the carnal mind is enmity against him and that without holiness none shall see the Lord and that if the Gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost and how can they hear without a Preacher c. Agree but to this or any of this and sure our case is fair for a good issue Mark 16. 16. Heb. 11. 6. Joh. 3. 3 5 6. Mat. 18. 3. Rom. 8. 6 7 8 9 13. Heb. 12. 14. 1 Cor. 4. 3. Rom. 10 c. 5. And for the matter
silencing to lose our friends to gratifie them that thus abuse us and to take pains to exchange kindness for cruelty and to strive hard to leap out of the ashes into the fire But I will tell the truth to the world and you we do what you desire of us or reasonably can desire I constantly Preached till the Goal restrained me against Separation and much more against sedition and rebellion We do it openly and plainly I am the man that am reproached in Print for want of this And the same hand so far justified me as before the Kings Majesty and Lords and before the Right Reverend Bishops to say of me and my Disputes of Church-Government about the Ceremonies c. No man hath written better of these things And can we speak louder than by the Press Or can they prove that we preach not as we write O wonderful that ever the world can degenerate to so much unrighteousness as to condemn men upon such defamations as these Besides that Book many a year before and since I have still written to the same purpose I have Preached to the same purpose But thinking it more seasonable in private Conference I have an hundred and an hundred times more pleaded for the like in private And my Disputes before mentioned are accused by many offended persons as having made a hundred Ministers at least conformable And had they not been written in the very height of Usurpation before the Kings return I should have been taken for the vilest temporizer This is our course and yet if wrath and partiality and ill will do but dream that we do infect the people and cherish them in Separation and do not contradict but flatter them in their extreams against our own judgments the world must ring of all these dreams and they think it fit that we be used as if all were certain truth We have need to bless our selves against dreaming neighbours if we must be estimated and used and described to the world according to their dreams Nay I will tell the world here the certain truth of our success and usage I preach I write and I frequently and openly talk against Separation and for the lawfulness of joining with the Church in the use of the Liturgy and to rebuke mens extreams and censures of the Episcopal Clergy and for an impartial love of all true Christians I sharply reprove the weak reasonings of those that are otherwise minded and by this I occasion the true Sectarians every where to speak against me and yet even these Sectaries wish me well and would do me no harm and the generality of my hearers bear all this well and seem to be of the same mind And yet when I am loved by those that I plead against I am reviled and abused by those that I plead for Yea more I must profess it before the world that I plead your cause as far as conscionably I can and its you that hinder me and none like you You would have us do your work with the people and you would not let us do it You use us as I saw a man lately do by a Colt who tyed him fast to a great tree and lashed him most cruelly to make him draw You make our work difficult if not impossible and then think us worthy of your smarting wrath for not performing it Were it not for two things we could do much to reconcile the people to you 1. If you would not impose those Oaths Subscriptions and such like burdens which we are our selves unable without fraud and falshood to defend 2. If you would not silence their faithful Teachers but would encourage Godliness and good men impartially and would exercise LOVE as openly and largely as you exercise WRATH But we must tell the world and you that we are unable utterly unable to justifie the Corporation-Oath and Declaration and to bring the people to like those Bishops whom they think are the chief cause of depriving of them of their long tried painful faithful Pastors and setting over them such as in too many places are set When our people are in Goals for meeting as they have done these twenty yea thirty or forty years only to repeat their Teachers Sermon and pray and sing a Psalm together between the publick Exercises on the Lords-day where they have reverently attended It is a hard task that you put on them to like you but a harder that you put on us that we must Preach them to it even when we must not Preach at all That we must go to the Gaols to them or after they come out to their houses to teach them to like the Bishops and their Impositions They will tell us VVe love them with a love of Benevolence as we must our enemies we wish them no harm but the greatest good but we cannot love them as such complacentially nor think approvingly of their ways Whether you do well or ill in promoting their sufferings I am not now judging I only tell you that it is the greatest hinderance to our reconciling them to you and your ways that you could easily have devised I never saw that wooing speed well that said Love me or I will send thee to Gaol When I was a child I never thought any correction more unreasonable than whipping children to make them give over crying when whipping was an unresistible means to make them cry if they had not cried before While I am Voluminously reproached for not reproving the spirit of Separation or Nonconformty as afore limited when I did it last I was sent to Prison and when I would do it by Preaching I have not leave And if your meaning be Speak when we have shut thy mouth and teach men to like us when they suffer our wrath you increase our task when you have taken away our straw I conclude therefore with repeating it you will not suffer us to serve you as we can but are our greatest hinderers while you blame us And lastly as to their scrupling the Corporation Declaration and Oath I can speak best for my self The Bayliff Justice and all the twelve Capital Burgesses besides inferior Burgesses did refuse it and were every one displaced save one now dead that had been a Soldier in the Kings Army what men were put in their stead I am not now to tell you And they were so far from being perswaded to this by me at almost an hundred miles distance that I never once spake to them nor wrote to them one Letter or word about it And it being no part of the old Conformity how could this be put into their heads by me especially when they know that I had kept the Covenant from ever being put upon that Town and Country 4 Obj But the issue sheweth how little good your Teaching doth where are any more against Bishops and Conformity than your hearers You make men hypocrites and teach them to prate phrases and cut faces and rail at carnal
themselves to no parties sidings or factions in Religion They that you call Puritans and our followers were neither Episcopal Presbyterians or Independents but for plain Christianity and Godliness as such and for the unity of all sober Christians and to do their own duty in that especially which all these parties did consent in When I was removed from them and they heard a stranger in the Pulpit crying out against them as Presbyterians and a generation of vipers c. I hear they looked somewhat strangely at such strange kind of Preaching what the man meant to pretend to know their judgments better than they knew their own When I never knew two whose judgments were for the Presbyterian Government in all the Town and Parish They were in all this so unanimous and concordant that when division shattered some other Parishes there was not that I heard of one Anabaptist one Quaker nor of any different party at all among them save that two ot three in the War fell off from Christianity and all Religion and became as a pillar of Salt unto all the rest When I called them to my house to be Catechised and instructed there were very few families refused And there were not that I could hear of in the heart of the Town above one or two families in a street side that did not call on God and daily worship him The Lords-day they spent in publick Worship and in repeating for memory what they heard and in Praying and singing Psalms of praise They lived in quietness and had no Law-suits nor known contentions None of them lived in wealth or worldly honours none in idleness few or none in begging but in daily painful labour in their Callings by which they lived from hand to mouth Those few that were common drunkards in the Town three or four that custom had made as beasts were yet convinced that their neighbours were better and happier than they As to their cutting faces I can say nothing to you but that their tone was as decent as most Preachers I now hear and their countenance as sober and well composed But God most regardeth the composure of the heart But all that seemeth serious is to some men matter of scorn and one lately telleth you That if you stop the Nonconformists mouths no wonder if they speak through the nose And men will have more care to wash their faces and compose their countenances in publick than if you drive them into corners And for their prating-phrases they are ambitious but of two excellencies of speech the one is to speak their minds in that matter which may have the fullest signification both of the matter spoken and of the speakers affections about the matter for the use of speech is to express them both the other is for ornament and that is to speak in Scripture-phrase not abused any further than weakness causeth all the weak to do even publick Preachers as well as others but as well understood as they are able And they that scorn at Scripture-phrase should not conform to the Book of Ordination or Articles where the Scripture sufficiency and perfection is confest If the phrase of the Scripture it self is not odious neither is the sober use of it where it is not perverted But to such general charges we can give no answer but nexa caput sequitur name the particular persons and words and prove your accusation and caluminate not the rest against whom no such proof is brought 5 Obj. But what excellent Preaching or Labours have you to boast of more than others that your Preaching must be thought so necessary What did you when you did preach but cast out Catechising the Lords-prayer the Creed and the Communion in the Sacrament out of the Church and bring the people to be almost Heathens and cast out all true Discipline and Government and substituted Presbyterian Examinations before the Sacrament and rigor and tyranny which the people would not endure and is this so necessary a thing Ans. These things indeed we read and hear from you very often but another Judg must pass the final sentence You make us pity the poor world in regard of the uncertainty of History You put us upon the recital of our practice which will sound like the boasting of a fool But if blessed Paul was put upon that which he calleth Speaking like a fool though they were not the words of folly we must not murmur if we have the like inconvenience put upon us 1. If the successes before described be nothing worth in your esteem yet labour must be continued still and we must in meekness instruct those that oppose if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth 2 Tim. 2. 25 26. And I suppose few Parish-Priests of my acquaintance will either judg themselves and their labours useless or give them over if the maintenance fail not of success else how many empty Temples should we have But you shall not so easily tempt us into utter unthankfulness for so great a mercy as our success beyond our expectation was I remember Dr. Ames telleth his Father in Law Dr. Burgess in his Fresh Suit that Bishop Morton himself did silence old Mr. Midsley of Rutsdale in Lancashire after God had blessed his Ministry with the Conversion of many thousand souls and his Son after him he silenced also Whether you will think that this which he calleth conversion being but from Popery ignorance sensuality and prophaneness be to be valued or whether you will deny the publick matter of fact I know not but for my part I was glad to hear that he was not silenced till many thousands had been converted by him And O what abundance of success this way had the Ministry of Mr. Hildersham Mr. Nichols Mr. Dod Mr. Thomas Hooker Mr. John Rogers of Dedham Mr. Herring Mr. Barlow and abundance more of the old Nonconformists And what understanding excellent persons were Dr. Ames Mr. Bradshaw Mr. John Ball Mr. John Paget old John Fox Mr. Paul Bain Mr. Parker c. To say nothing of Mr. Perkins Dr. Humphrey Dr. John Reynolds c. who were more Nonconformists than I and those of my judgment are Doubtless they were as like to know how to Preach without either prating phrases or ignorant unlearned dry unedifying Sermons tending to bring Christianity into contempt as most at least of the Parish-Priests that I use to hear in any place where ever I come 2. And as to our own Preaching I confess we have little cause to boast of it For my own part God knoweth I have seldom come out of the Pulpit without some grief and self-accusation that I should stand there to speak as a Minister of Christ about so great a matter as the everlasting Salvation of the peoples souls and that to men that are almost dying and must shortly be all in an unchangeable state where there is no more time of preparation for their final doom
blind themselves and knew not the Spirituality of Doctrine or Worship Mat. 23. 26. 25. They were loose Expositors of the Law of God and extended it not to those Internals and necessary strictness which was the proper sense but made it forbid no more than those notable external evils which themselves and their vulgar followers could spare Mat. 5. 26. And with the forbearance of these outward sins and the performance of their Ceremonies they so contented themselves and quieted their Consciences that they wanted the true and spiritual Righteousness absolutely necessary to Salvation Mat. 5. 20. 27. They were the very leaders of all the malignant party that hated Christ and his Disciples and more zealous against them than the very Heathen Roman Governours who sometime saved the Preachers from the Pharisees rage 28. They were so malignant that they envied the very good works and healing miracles which Christ did and repined and fretted that God should so much honour Christians Joh. 11. 47. 29. They were so malignant that no course of the Servants of God could please them or escape their obloquy But John that lived austerely they reproached as a melancholy Demoniack or a crackt-brain'd man and Christ that used a freer converse they accused as not strict enough for them 30. They were so malignant that they could not endure to have God acknowledged the owner and approver of Christianity but would rather have the people take Christ for a deceiver or his works to be done by the Devil himself than that God should be known to be the author of them as his attestation and seal to the Truth of Christ Mat. 12. 24. 31. Being a Generation that never had done complaining of those that conformed not to their Ceremonies and outside Rites and yet void of true Sanctification Christ pronounced them a Plant that his Father had not planted that were e're long to be extirpated Mat. 15. 13. 12. 2. 12. 2 14. 32. They formally preached much good as sitting in Moses Chair and having a holy Law to speak of but their own lives were covetous proud persecuting and contrary to the Law and to their own Doctrine and yet their very Doctrine had much corruption Mat. 16. 1 6 11. 21. 45. 23. 2. Luk. 16. 14. 33. Yet were these Pharisees of a much sounder judgment than the Atheistical Sadduces and therefore thought highly of themselves and some few among them had a secret favour unto Christ as far as their reputation and the fear of their party would permit Luk. 7. 36. Joh. 3. 1 2. Act. 5. 34. 23. 6 7 8 9. In all this I have but recited the Scripture Characters of the Pharisees not daring to speak a word of the application for I much doubt whether you will not think that I have drawn your picture by the bare recitation of the Text so much did I wonder at one of the last Sermons which I heard in publick but just such as I have oft heard forty-five years ago which was spent in likening the Puritan to the Pharisee how the speaker avoided blushing and remembering what the hearers would think when they should read the History of the Pharisees in the Bible and whether they perceived what injury they did themselves who used to call the people to such observations For my part I would counsel them never to name the Pharisees more left the hearers apply it otherwise than they imagin At least never more to go about to make men think that the Puritan who is so contrary to him is like the Pharisee for men never speed worse than by such monstrous undertakings But yet it may be some of them believe themselves For he that will needs make his own Creed may make his own Faith but if they make as large Creeds for others and call them to subscribe them and to swear to them when they cannot make them a Faith proportionable they will but multiply Nonconformists And so much to your angry censure which leaveth us room for no more argumentative a defence 11 Obj. If you do scruple Conformity why do you gather private meetings and separate from the Church and hold your meetings at the time of our publick VVorship and encourage the people in their Separations For whatever you say of your self you cannot but know that it is so in London and in many other places Ans. 1. I told you not my own practise alone but many others and when I have told you our Principles you will the better know how to judg of our different practises The Nonconformists hold 1. That we are members of the Catholick Church in order of nature before we are of any particular Church For Baptism as such doth enter us into the former And that no man must ever separate from this Church upon any pretence whatsoever 2. That our Communion with this Catholick Church is our concord in the performance of that Baptismal Covenant which uniteth us 3. That our conjunction with this or that particular Church is a matter left to humane prudence and to be changed according to the interest of our own souls and the publick good and that God bindeth me not to one Church more than to another by any Law except that general Law which directeth us what choice to make of matters undetermined 4. That the Magistrate is the Governour of these Churches as to their external ordering which supposeth the Pastors to be Governours governed by him as Schoolmasters Philosophers Pilots Architects c. and that the Pastors are essential to the Church in a Political sense as we now take it as a Schoolmaster is to a School but so is not the Magistrate 5. That the ordinary instituted way of the Pastors call to a particular Church is by the Direction of the Ordaining Pastors and by the Election or Consent of the Congregation And that as the Churches had true Pastors without and against the Magistrates consent so may it have still seeing then and now the Magistrate had Power of Governing Churches already made by exterior order rather than of making or unmaking Churches And therefore that a Pastor may still be a true Pastor when he is prohibited to Preach 6. That the Magistrate hath the power of things circa sacra that is of Temples Tythes maintenance c. so that he divest not the Pastor of his intrinsick power proper to his office as to chuse his subject method words c. And therefore that no Minister may seize upon the said Temples Tythes c. against the Magistrates will 7. That ubi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia as Cyprian faith where the true Pastor is there is the Church because the Pastor is an Essential and the Governing part And as this was true in Cyprian's time so it is now 8. That if Usurping Pastors though by the Magistrates consent do take possession of the Temples and publick maintenance and Legal Right as well as possession this is not enough to make those men
true Pastors over that people without their consent and to nullifie the relation of their former-lawful Pastors 9. That it is not impossible or rare for the Usurper to have the foresaid advantages and the true Pastors to be put to meet in privater places and so thought Dr. VVild Dr. Guning Dr. Hide c. in the time of our Civil Usurpations And even under lawful Governours it was so judged by the Churches in the case of Athanasius Basil and multitudes of Bishops then cast out 10. That abundance of the Ministers now cast out were once the lawful Pastors of the flocks 11. That when the true Pastor is thrust out of the Temples and Usurpers have that place he is rather the Separatist that followeth the Usurper in that more publick place than he that adhereth in private to the lawful Pastor as Dr. VVild and the rest aforementioned then thought 12. That therefore in those places where the Relation of prohibited Ministers to the people is truly dissolved they are the faulty dividers that adhere to them But where it is not dissolved but the publick Teachers were never their true Pastors there those may be the Schismaticks that forsake their lawful Pastors though under that restraint 13. That where the Pastors that have the Temples and those that are shut out are both true Pastors caeteris paribus it is as good a proof that they are Separatists and Schismaticks who join not with them in other places as that they are so for not coming to the Temples that is neither of the inferences is good 14. Every man is not a Separatist that is not present with others in publick worship I separate not from all foreign Churches nor from all the Parish Churches in London save one though I be present but with one But he that censureth a true Church to be no Church and so separateth from it as none and he that accounteth any Church injuriously to be so corrupted as that it is unlawful to hold communion with it both these are guilty of culpable Schismatical separation but in very different degrees 15. A mans absence from you will not alone prove him a Separatist unless he be absent upon separating Principles 16. He that keepeth not local communion with a particular Church and yet honoureth them as a Church that may be communicated with and holdeth communion of Faith and Love and Obedience with them cannot be a Separatist from them simply but only extrinsically secundum quid and that is to be tried and judged of as aforesaid 17. If therefore they will admit you to communicate with them in their way and will not communicate with you in your way it sheweth that it is something in your way and not directly in your selves from which they separate 18. And no man ought to commit one sin for the communion of any Church 19. I may have more mental communion with a Church which I dare not outwardly join with because they impose some one unlawful word or action than with a more corrupted Church with which I hold more external communion because they put me not to approve their errors 20. When there are several Churches near caeteris paribus a free man should join himself with the Purest and to the most edifying Ministry ordinarily 21. Yet in times of suspicion and division it is fit to shew our judgment by our practise and to join sometimes with some less pure Churches that put no sin upon us to shew that we withdraw not from them on separating principles 22. When a Minister is not lawfully separated from his flock but another is obtruded without a just call upon his people yet if he see that the voluntary relinquishing of his relation is most for the peoples good that they may accept another that hath more secular advantages to profit them and guide them in peace he is finis gratiâ in prudence bound to do it 23. All people in England therefore are not in the same condition but to some it may be a fault which to others is a duty Were I in a place where the Minister is faithful and worthy to be owned I would draw all the people to attend his Ministry and would help him at other seasons as I were able in unity and love But if I lived where the publick Minister were intollerable I would do otherwise 24. The case of London much differeth from most other places in the Land as very many of them think that their relation to their ancient flocks is not yet dissolved so necessity putteth them out of the track of formal Parish-order 1. In the great Plague almost all the Parish-ministers deserted them and those that then stuck to the people found such success by the help of that awakening judgment that they durst not since forsake them nor will easily be forsaken by them 2. There being so many score Churches burnt down and the Inhabitants not gone and the conformable Ministers not officiating but in the standing Temples there is no reason that the people should therefore turn Atheists and give over worshipping God 3. Many Parishes being so great that the twentieth person cannot come to the Temples and many of the Preachers voices so low that half cannot hear them who might get in there is no reason that all the rest must therefore be cast off and left as the Indians without the means that God hath appointed for mens Salvation 4. And why then should not their Assemblies take the fittest time of the day as well as yours All men know that especially in the short Winter-days there is little convenient time left for the work of a Lords-day besides the time of your morning and evenings Liturgy and other Offices 5. And when you have as many as can hear you O why should you be angry that the rest or rather some few of them are hearing others that Preach as profitably as you Nay I beseech you before God judg try and judg what is the cause that when many parts perhaps of your absent Parishioners are at no Church but some in Ale houses Taverns or Gaming-houses and some idle at home that yet the few that are worshipping God with an able faithful Minister are more exclaimed on and written against and angerly accused than all the rest Obj. But many of the Parish-churches are half empty Ans. 1. It is not so with the rest and therefore you may see that the difference between your own Preachers is the cause Unedifying Teachers will not have so many voluntary intelligent hearers as others 2. As I said half the Church-full cannot hear many of your Preachers 3. When the Parishioners know beforehand that the Temple will not hold a quarter of the people they are never certain of room as not knowing when others will exclude them and therefore they seek another place where they may be certain For he that brings his family to Church every day upon such uncertainty is every day uncertain whether he
Divine Institution obliging all mens consciences to obey you that shall come within that circuit of ground you will ascribe this extent of your power to the King and Laws of which more in due place And as to the old Nonconformists they forbore the Temples and publick maintenance and so do we And I am sure they used to preach in private as well as we yea and in the Churches when they thought it brought no great inconvenience by offence Mr. Hildersham Mr. Nichols and abundance more did preach in publick after they were forbidden and silenced till execution hindered them as well as Law And Mr. Nichols Mr. Langley Mr. Bromskill and many more when they were driven from one place would preach where they found opportunity in another And Mr. Herring was wont privately to preach in Shrewsbury as his most credible friends and hearers told me And indeed the far greatest part of the Nonconformists that ever I knew had publick liberty in some small peculiar for most of their time if not by connivence in greater places So had Mr. Knewstubs Ash Slater Root Ball Barnet Gilpin and many more And yet we as well as Mr. Rathband will submit to a suspension or prohibition of authority when it is but an act of Order and Government of just authority and not a notorious subversion of the thing Ordered or the End and Gods Laws and mens necessities oblige us not to the contrary The Papists hold that a Father may not keep his Son from taking Orders If the Bishops were our Fathers then they could not hinder us from the faithful exercise of what we have undertaken 14 Obj. The Reason why you are against Bishops is because you cannot be Bishops your selves And why was it that you so long demurred on the matter before you refused them when some had such offers Did it not shew that you had a mind of them Ans. The first half of this charge was given in the Pulpit to my face when no Minister or Nonconformist else was present The other is the Debate-makers in sense And seeing I am personally concerned in the matter my answer must be historical accordingly Will not all sober by-standers think that we have very hard measure and have to do with a strange generation When they shall know that Bishopricks were offered us without seeking directly or indirectly and refused with as much modesty as we could use and after all are denied not only the place of the poorest Curates but even all liberty to Preach for nothing to the rudest poorest Inhabitants of the Land and yet after all this to be told that we are against Bishops because we could not be Bishops our selves O happy Christians that must be finally judged by a more righteous Judg If you say that you mean it of those that never had such offers why should you not rather judg of them by us that were tryed than boldly judg that of them which they were never tryed in and of which it is impossible for you to have knowledge But the later objector telleth us whom he speaketh of To whom I must say There were but five or six Nonconformists of all England that ever I heard of that had any Church-Dignities offered them since his Majesties Restoration And of these but three that had Bishopricks offered them which were Dr. Edward Reignolds Mr. Calamy and my self And of these three I refused it the next day or next save one after the first offer of it by the Lord Chancellor for private overtures by inferiors before I answered with as much refusal as was fit to such uncertain offerers Dr. Reignolds in a very short time accepted Only Mr. Calamy delayed And if Dr. Bates and Dr. Manton who were offered Deanries as they said for I am certain of no offer but my own did delay their refusal it was on the same account And the true Reason of Mr. Calamies delay which few men knew better than my self was because perhaps he would have accepted a Bishoprick as altered by the Kings Declaration about Ecclesiastical affairs and to be used according to that Declaration but not according to the ancient Laws and Customs of the Land and Church though of this much he was unresolved Therefore he being uncertain whether the Kings Declaration would stand or pass into a Law he delayed to see the certainty And when he saw that the Declaration was dead and Prelacy was what it was before he refused it And Dr. Reignolds professed to me to accept it but on the terms of that Declaration Now I would put two questions to the Justice of the Debater 1. Whether he do well to mention our refusing of Bishopricks at all which we our selves so studiously silence There is now no Refuser living but my self And I must profess that to this day I have been so careful to silence it that I do not believe there are many men if any alive that ever heard me mention it unless in answer to some one that askt me about it or in confutation of some such aspersions as these And my reason was because I apprehend it to favour of Ingratitude and disingenous carriage to my Rulers If they shall offer me preferment and I should boast how I refused it it would seem a casting it in their faces with unthankfulness and contempt And no man can say that ever I was so unworthy and few have ever heard me mention it And yet we cannot be quiet for accusers but if we say nothing such men will Q. 2. Whether candor or justice would without any distinction perswade the world that we had a mind of preferments and therefore so long delayed whereof only three men that had the offer of Bishops one refused in a day or two and the other presently accepted And the one that delayed with the two about Deaneries were known to do it that they might know first whether the Kings Declaration would pass into a Law or be cast by And if you proceed to intimate that we refused but for fear of losing our party I know no mans heart but my own and I will help you by some evidence to know it in this matter 1. Upon the offers by inferior agents that first were made to me my neighbour Ministers in Worcestershire having some knowledge of it concurred in a Letter to me neither perswading nor disswading me but thinking me the fittest judg assured me that if I accepted it they should be so far from censuring me for it as rather to believe that it would be for good c. 2. When I refused it being wary what men might after say I did it in writing in a Letter to the Lord Chanceller giving him those Reasons that did content him viz. If the Kings Declaration were established though I wisht a perfecter frame of Discipline than it reciteth yet I was so glad of that much that I took it to be my duty to promote our Concord with all my power upon that foundation
tell you of Abbot and Laud c. and when yet the Conformists preach against one another about it yet did we never speak a word to the King or them of any such matter Because if all men will subscribe the same wholsome Doctrine of the Articles we cannot hinder any from dissembling and destroying what they do subscribe Obj. 24. Agreement with the Church of Rome is more desirable on the terms described by Dr. Heylin in A. B. Lauds life and you would make it impossible Ans. We are for a just concord with all Christians but true Popery we cannot agree with and as to Papists they are but a part a third or fourth part saith your Primate Bishop Bramhall of the Catholick Church We must unite with the whole Church or else we are Schismaticks To embody in the faction of the Papists is as Schismatical as to do it with a smaller faction And if you will unite with all Christians I still say you must unite on Vinc. Lirinensis terms on that which all Christians are agreed in that indeed deserve the name of Christians Now if you establish your concord on the Scripture and on universal terms all Christians in the world will confess that your Religion yea all your Religion is certain truth and that it hath also all things universally necessary to Salvation and this is a fair degree of unity though they say that yet you want their Traditions And then you can tell a Papist quickly where your Religion was before Luther Even where ever the Scripture was received And you do not wilfully and resolvedly cut off your selves from Communion with all the Protestant Churches who do not hold the Traditions and Decrees of Rome But you are united with all the Christians in the world in Christianity and so far as they have any union among themselves And then all those that will needs go further do run the hazard of their own additions We will live in peace with them if they will live in peace with us But if the Papists be such men that they will hold no communion with any that hold not all their Religion that is all the Decrees of their Councils than neither Abassines Armenians Greeks nor Protestants can be received into their Communion And do you think it desirable to comply and embody with them in such a schism and factious combination against all the rest of the Churches of God If you will deal like Christians Catholicks and wise men let us first be as moderate as may be in our Doctrinals and not pretend that we are further disagreed with Papists or any other Christians than indeed we are I am one of those who believe that in many Doctrines quarrelsome ignorant men have made differences where there are none and have made those that be seem wider than they are cut off these superfluities and spare not and then reduce your terms of Union and Communion to the Primitive simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Discipline and if any will have more let it be a matter of liberty and not of necessity or if they will not be limited as we are let them take their scope Or if you your selves will needs have more yet hold it with liberty as matter of conveniency and not of necessity to the union or communion of the Church If you will take this course we shall deny Papists no love no peace no communion with us on our terms which they justifie for the truth of them in our Churches And if they will fly from us and refuse our Communion or will put unlawful terms on us and drive us from them we shall have no accusation for this by our consciences or any wise man He is the Schismatick that maketh communion impossible by his Additions or Impositions or runs away from those that will not receive all his Supernumeraries Usurpation is the peace breaker in the Church of God Christs sheep know his voice and follow him but they will not be so obedient to an unknown voice Why cannot a man be content to be a Lord Bishop and to have many hundred or thousand pound a year for promoting the preaching and practice of Christianity and for punishing Hereticks rebels drunkards sensualists c. and serve God himself with what garb or forms or ceremonies he please as well as to have the same wealth and honour to prosecute much wiser and better men than himself with a burning zeal for not swearing obedience to him or for not subscribing that his Books are faultless or for not wearing a Surplice or signing Children with the transient Image of the Cross. But we must suppose that we cannot make Papists to be Protestants If they will not turn Protestants and we will not turn Papists the contrivance or supposition of a turn or half-turn is but a vain imagination not the way to unity and peace We must take them as they are and they must take us as we are and we must take all the Christian Churches as they are in our design for concord if we will do any good in it The question is not how or how far we shall change one anothers minds or be changed but how we shall maintain so much love and peace as is due to one another in the capacity that we are in and how far we shall endure the different opinions and practices of another to such an end And such a Conciliator with Rome I would be my self and magnifie the design as much as Heylin doth and be as zealous in it as Grotius Laud or Forbes were in theirs For it is but the service of Love and Peace and that is certainly the service of God I would treat with any Papists on such a design If peevish or suspious Protestants should try out on me and defame me for such a design as some have done I would no more regard it than the crying of a child If Christian Princes would make such a Treaty their business by their Embassadors that Love and Liberty might be regulated by the just rules of Equality and not be pretended only by a faction for their own ends even by them that will seek Liberty but will not give it I would bless God for such Princes and for so good a work And I would be and am ready to manifest to all wise impartial men whose Religion is Love and not Malice under the name of Zeal that in many Doctrines that we are by some supposed to differ in Fundamentals ignorance hath feigned the difference to be doubly greater than it is And I think many of Forbes and Spalato's Arguments in his very Learned Books de Republ. Eccles. to be worthy the serious study of every Learned man I know Luther took the Doctrine of uncertainty of Salvation alone to be cause enough of our unreconcileableness with Rome and yet I know as well that it is not one godly person of many yea very many of them that are farthest from the Papists who do
Catalogue of Questions for our Disputations at those Meetings and never then talkt to us of what he here writeth in a Book called Dubitantius Firmianus 2. Mr. Thomas Foley a Nonconformist Gentleman eminent for Charity having built near Stourbridge a Hospital and endowed it with about 500 l. per annum being my friend Dr. Good wrote to me to move him to give maintenance for two Scholarships in Baliol-Colledge and I wrote this Letter in answer to that but the sending was delayed till he was dead Accus 29. Another to save the Nation from the labours of a Concordant Ministry and from the blessings of Unity Peace and Innocence hath written a book lately called The Modern Pleas for Comprehension Toleration c. considered who at his enterance saith I would fain have any of our dissenting brethren to answer directly Whether there be any one thing sinful in her Communion the Churches as by Law established or only some things as they conceive inexpedient And p. 11. he saith Suppose that the terms of the Communion of the Church are not only inexpedient but really sinful if so then I shall readily grant that the Church ought not to be communicated with while the terms of her Communion are such But I shall presume to say with some confidence that it is not easie to find a considerable man among them who will not be ashamed to own it publickly or who doth himself really believe it And p. 12. I have been credibly informed not to say that I am able to make it good that Mr. Calamy did before his Majesty and divers Lords of the Council profess that there was not any thing in the constitution of the Church to which he could not conform were it not for the scandalizing of others so that in his esteem the Constitutions of the Church were in themselves innocent and the whole objection against them lay in the mistakes of other men Yet saith he p. 11. That the separation from the Church is so avowed and pressed upon the people as if that it were highly necessary and that communion with the Church was highly criminal at least in the opinion of the teachers Ans. And now Reader what a shake doth this instance give to the credit of History at least such as is written by interessed factious men yea what a reproach to humane nature For what untruth can be imagined so gross and what thing so nakedly evil as may not be expected to be found in Man yea in professed Christians yea in Divines of such a character Either this man and such others believe what they say themselves or not If not what Preachers what Christians what Men are these If they do what matter of fact can ever be so notorious as that we can hope that such men can know it What History of such Writers can deserve any credit What regard can the people be encouraged to give to the Words and Writings of such Doctors that no better know such publick notorious matters of fact and so confidently and boldly deceive the world in cases where so many thousands yea the Churches Peace and Concord is so much concerned Reader judge by these notorious evidences of fact of these mens credibility and usage 1. The judgment of the ancient Nonconformists is declared to the world by abundance of Writings in which they thought that they proved much in the English Constitutions to be sinful and such as men must suffer deprivation and death rather than consent to And are all these Writings no evidence of their judgments nor their sufferings neither 2. Since his Majesties Restoration the present Nonconformists still distinguished 1. Between Diocesan or National Churches and Parish-Churches 2. Between the Communion and Conformity of private men and of Ministers And 3. Between Approbation of the Church-Constitutions Practising all imposed and peaceable behaviour and submission And though some exasperated persons have by the late sufferings of conscionable men been tempted to separate from the Prelates and their party as far as St. Martin did from the Bishops about him and their Synods yet the main body of the Nonconforming Ministers as far as ever we could learn did judge as followeth 1. That those parish-Parish-Churches which had true Ministers not utterly uncapable persons were true Churches of Christ. 2 That the ordinary Liturgy appointed for the publick worship was such as a good Christian may lawfully joyn in not speaking of Baptizings Burials c. in which some things they thought more dubious 3. That though combined Churches whether you call them Diocesan or National are not any otherwise a Divine Institution than as Concord is commanded us in general and may not be set up to the detriment of the particular Churches which are of Divine Institution yet a good Christian may and must live peaceably and submissively where some such combined Churches are guilty of Usurpation and sinful abuse 4. That Conformity to all the Subscriptions Declarations Oaths Covenants and Practices now imposed on Ministers would be to us a very great and heinous sin modesty forbidding us to meddle uncalled with the Consciences of the Conformists 3. Their judgment of the sinfulness of Ministerial Conformity they declared to his Majesty and the Bishops in many Writings when they had encouragement to attempt once the healing of the divisions And when because they agreed to leave out all harsh provoking words in their accusations of the Church-Orders and Ceremonies the Lord Chancellor had put into the first draught of a Declaration That we do not in our judgments believe the practice of those particular Ceremonies which we except against to be in it self unlawful In our next Address we desired that those words might be expunged and so they were Yet this extended not to Subscriptions Oaths c. And afterward many particulars were mentioned which we thought sinful and the supposition vindicated in a Reply to which the Bishops never answered And in a long Petition for Peace p. 6. we make this Protestation following Who can pretend to be better acquainted with their hearts than they are themselves For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him And they are ready to appeal to the dreadful God the searcher of hearts and the hater of hypocrisie that if it were not for fear of sinning against him and wounding their consciences and hazarding and hindering their salvations they would readily obey you in all these things That it is their fear of sin and damnation that is their impediment they are ready to give you all the assurance that man can give by the solemnest professions or by Oath if justly called to it And one would think that a little charity might suffice to enable you to believe them when their non-compliance brings them under suffering and their compliance is the visible way to favour safety and prosperity in the world And if men that thus appeal to God concerning the intention of
terms of the Churches union and communion and we shall not be unthankful to you if you will make that and only that to be so now I do not say that you should make all that necessary which was then used on terms of liberty and indifferency they had then their necessaries for uâ—ion and their unnecessaries which were used at liberty as every Church saw good Impose no more than they imposed no more of Liturgy no more of Ceremony no more Subscriptions Promises or Oaths and it will heal us all Impose Liturgy no further than they then did which at the most was but every Bishop on a particular Church that was united for personal not representative communion and was no bigger than one of our Parishes for number of souls If these terms will not serve you neither you shall not with us have the reputation of the best friends of Antiquity Unity Love or Peace Q. 3. What harm would it do if the Churches were healed by such means as all the most grave experienced Conciliators have pitched upon as the only way at least in all the Protestant Churches We are contented with Lerinensis terms Quâ—d ab omnibus ubique semper receptunest All the famous reconcilers of the last age and this Acontius Melancthon Pelargus Duraeus Calixtus Lud. Crocius Joh. Bergius Conradus Bergius Junius Paraeus Hottonus Amyâ—aldus Usher Morton Hall Davenant Chillingworth Hales Bucer Burroughs Stillingfleet and every man that ever wrote a rational Irenicon conspire in this one necessary means the forbearing all imposition of doubtful unnecessary things as necessary to actual unity and communion and the centering and cementing all on the terms of the few certain greâ—t and necessary things which we are commonly agreed in or as Rupertus Meldenius his oft-cited words are In necessariis unitas in non-necessariis libertas in utrisque charitas Do you think verily that all these were mistaken and that you are wiser than they who have studied the art of peace as much as you have done the arts of victory and getting down those whom you first make and then call your adversaries I know you will still say These are good terms for our union with neighbour churches but not for our church within it self To which I have answered you already and now add 1. Every company of Christians associated for personal communion in Gods publick Worship as distinct from distant communion in Spirit only and from communion by Delegates or Representatives is a true particular church taking Pastors and people to be the parts thus associated Every such Church had a Bishop in Scripture-times as Dr. Hammond in his Annot. will tell you over and over and in Ignatius his time too For he saith That to every Church there was one Altar and one Bishop with his fellow Presbyters and Deacons And this one Altar which shewed only one place of meeting for ordinary publick Communion and one Bishop were the notes of Unity to every one Church as Mr. Mede also fully openeth it And Dr. Hammond will further bear witness what every Bishop with his Church is in 1 Tim. 3. And such all the particular Churches of the whole world considered together under the Supreme Head Christ Jesus dispensing them all by himself and administring them severally not by one Oeconomus but by the several Bishops as inferior Heads of Unity to the several bodies so constituted by the several Apostles in their plantations each of them having an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a several distinct commission from Christ immediately and subordinate to none but the supreme Donor or Plenipotentiary And before so was every such regular Assembly of Christians under a Bishop an Oeconomus set over by Christ the house of God Mark all this then and let your Impositions be measured by this Rule so that either you will have the many Churches in one Kingdom to be united on terms of Regiment or only on terms of Concord On the terms of the extrinsick accidental Regiment we grant that all the Kings Subjects are united and that he hath power circa sacra But so you might have said of all the Roman Empire And so if the Christian part of the World had all one Monarchy your own Concession must be overthrown that neighbour Churches must unite on necessary terms leaving indifferent ones to liberty or else you will see that the case of the Catholick Church under such an Empire would be the same with a National Church under one King And our Churches are as much to be accounted Neighbour-Churches as those in such an Empire would be But if you speak of one Essential Constitutive Ecclesiastical Head and Governour we know none such any more than one Pope Therefore it must be an Union of Concord by which you call many Churches in a Nation one or an extrinsick accidental Union And consequently it is an improper speech because it is not locutio formalis sed accidentalis for the form denominateth We being therefore One Church but Accidentally by one King and by Concord as several agreeing Churches may be called it followeth that we must hold our Concord accordingly with those at home as well as with those abroad upon terms of equal charity and liberty except what the King will take away For as for Councils even General ones much more Provincial it is not Bishop Ushers opinion only but ordinary with Protestants that they are to the particular Bishops not directly Regimental but means of Agreement Mark your Bishop Bilsons words of Christ. Subject pag. 229. To Councils such as the Church of Christ was wont by her Religious Princes to call we owe communion and brotherly concord so long as they make no breach in faith nor in Christian charity Subjection and servitude we owe them none The blessed Angels profess themselves to be fellow-servants of the Saints on earth Rev. 22. What are you then that with your tribunals and jurisdictions would be Lords and Rulers over Christs inheritance 2. The same Reasons which require you to agree only on necessary terms with foreign Churches will oblige you to the like course at home The judgments of Natives are of the same temper and their differences will be as certain and constant and your charity to them should be no less than to strangers Only this we all confess 1. That all the Churches must agree in their subjection to the same King 2. And every particular Church must agree with their particular Pastors in the exercises of Communion 3. And that Concord in one Translation one Meeter and such like is desirable not so much because we are under one King as because we are neighbours and of one language and would be desirable if we were of several Kingdoms in the same propinquity But it is not to be procured at a price which is above its worth 3. When you profess Concord with the foreign Churches upon Catholick terms and deny the same to the Churches that are under one King you
such Wars and wasting Plagues yet nothing moveth you to see so great and grievous sins as the silencing so many hundred Ministers and the starving so many hundred thousand souls that never deserved evil at your hands That the instances of the obduration of Pharoah and the Pharisees with the consequents make you not afraid lest the wrath should come upon you to the uttermost while you please not God and are contrary to all men forbidding Christs labourers to gather in his harvest and to preach to the ignorant and impenitent that they might be saved 1 Thess. 2. 15. That you are no more sensible of the foretold tenor of Christs final doom on them that did not feed cloath and visit the least of his servants but think that you please him by reproaching those whom he calleth his Brethren and think still that you do God service when you do so much against his servants and against the peoples souls Wonderful when Christ had so plainly rebuked his Disciples for striuing who should be the greatest and forbidden them to Lord it over his Heritage and told them the necessity that they become as little children and the servants of all that yet the pomp and vanities of this world and an uncharitable mind can make the very name of Obedience to your selves seem a sufficient pretence for the lamentable dissipations and confusions of the Churches of true believers That ever you can preach for Loving your neighbours as your selves and not feel the convictions and sentence of your Consciences for what you have already done For my own part I have little sense of any of your injuries to my self Nor am I unthankful for that respect of my Governours which would have advanced me to your degree of honour But I must profess if it were the last word that I should speak in the world that I had rather be the basest scavinger yea and suffer many deaths than be found at the Judgment-seat of Christ in the place and under the guilt of those of you who have done what is done against the Gospel and Church of Christ among us in this Land I am not so foolish as not to know that all this talk is grievous to you and not the way to my ease or honour with you nor to procure favour in your eyes But if in such a day and in such a case we should all be silent and none so much as call you to repentance nor plead the Cause of an injured Saviour and deserted souls we should partake of the crimes which we are lamenting and not only Gildas and Salvianus and such like but all the Prophets and Apostles would condemn us And if all that is here said have no other effect than to increase your indignation and our sufferings Judg O posterity Judg all disinteressed impartial men between these Reverend Lords and us whether the Petitions here presented to them be selfish or unreasonable or such as should be rejected at so dear a rate as our lamentable divisions and Church-distractions come to yea Christ whose cause and interest we plead will certainly and shortly judge before whom their worldly grandeur and dignities will be insignificant and wrathful reproaches will not prove the innocent criminal nor justifie them that condemn the just or that will not understand the will and interest of their Lord. Even so Come Lord Jesus Come quickly Amen If you ask why I write all this to you and not to His Majesty and the Parliament I answer It is not them nor any of their Laws or Actions which in all this book I intend to speak against The most pious Princes and Rulers have been most addicted to reverence the Counsels of the Bishops in the matters of Religion All men are supposed to know more than other sorts of men in their own professions Uncontrolled Fame imputeth all our sufferings to your designs and wills And I have reason to remember that when his Majesty did graciously authorize you by his Letters Patents to make such Alterations in the Liturgy as were necessary to the satisfaction of tender Consciences you would make none at all but what is now done which maketh our burden much greater than before And more than once his Majesty by his publick Declarations hath warranted us to be confident that his Desires are and have been for the quiet peace and welfare of his Subjects upon moderate terms And I know not any man alive that doubteth but if you would cordially desire it and endeavour it the King and his Parliament would soon be found the healers of our wounds and the restorers of Unity and Concord by casting out that which hath cast out Love and turned the people as into Guelphes and Gibelines and we might soon see the blessed fruits of Concord Amen A Postscript to the Apologie for our Preaching SInce the writing of what goeth before I have heard so much from the most learned Accusers of their accusations of us as enableth me the better to know what objections to answer And the ablest that I have met with argueth at this rate Mr. H. Dodwell 1. He confesseth that we cannot subscribe declare and swear as is required without stretching the words to an improper sense and such as I think will allow by parity of reason almost any lying equivocation or perjury in the world Some others of them say If Rulers will go about by fraudulent impositions to turn us out of our Ministry we will countermine them and take their words in any tolerable sense to which we can subdue them But we cannot practice that art 2. He confesseth that we ought not to perform active obedience herein against our consciences 3. But he saith it is Schism in us to preach as we do because the passive obedience of silence is our duty His reasons are 1. Because a Presbyters calling is dependent on the bishop and not otherwise to be exercised 2. Because by preaching we become Church Rulers and take the Bishops Office on us as if a man should depose the King and take his place because he governeth not aright as he conceiveth 3. Because without such passive obedience no peace can be kept by any Government 4. Because the Bishops and not we are Judges who should preach or not 5. And Presbyterians are for silencing some 6. And the hurt that followeth our silence must be charged on the Bishops and not on us So that the great crime of the Nonconformists is preaching Christs Gospel when the Bishops forbid them Here he granteth all the following matter of fact and right 1. That the Preachers in question e. g. my self c. are consecrated to God in the Sacred Ministerial Office 2. That it is Sacriledg and soul-murder to alienate our selves 3. That in God's ordinary way men cannot be saved without knowledg faith and obedience 4. Nor be brought to these but by Teaching 5. That few of the Churches that were burnt in London are rebuilt 6. That many Parishes
are so large and the Churches so small and the Preachers voice so low that one of ten or twenty of the Parishioners cannot hear if they were never so willing 7. That many Ministers are insufficient and the Parson of the Parish where I live hath been suspended ab officio these two or three years or at least hath not officiated 8. That therefore the silence of all the Nonconformists is like to prove the damnation of many thousand souls 9. That if the King only forbid us preaching and not the Bishop we are not bound to such silence as he requireth 10. That our Bishops are not chosen by the Presbyters of the Diocess or the people but by the King whatever formality seem to contradict this 11. That the extent of their Diocesses is not jure divino 12. That none of them is jure divino the Bishop of me or any other such 13. That National Churches are but of humane institution 14. That what man instituteth man may abrogate or undo 15. That if King or Bishop forbid me to relieve the poor in true necessity or to feed any family or teach them I must not obey 16. That the prime part of Religion is in positives and but the second in negatives and therefore sins of omission are the first sins 17. That no sin must be matter of obedience to Bishops or any man 18. That the Apostles had their power to edification and not to destruction 19. That in case of controversies of Faith the Church may not judg in partem utram libet but only for the truth 20. That all Bishops power is limited and not absolute 21. That when they command without power only passive obedience is due 22. That Bishops are not made Judges whether there shall be preaching and worshipping God or not but only to order it aright and judg by whom it shall be done 23. That Bishops cannot dispense with the Law of God nor humane power prevail against Divine 24. That order is for the end and for the thing ordered and not against it 25. That natural morals are to be preferred caeteris paribus before positives much more before humane orders and God will have mercy and not sacrifice 26. That the silencing of the faithful Preachers of the Gospel greatly pleaseth the Devil and that he is so far of the Silencers mind 27. He accuseth not the silenced Ministers with any false doctrine 28. He chargeth them not with Immoralities or a bad life saving his supposed sin of Schism for preaching Christs Gospel when forbidden 29. He confesseth that Paul must preach though forbidden and that he chargeth Timothy before God and Angels to preach in season and out of season 30. He confesseth that the Pastors for 300. years preached when lawful Magistrates were against it and for bad them 31. I acquaint him that I my self have the Bishops ordination the Bishop of the Diocess License not repealed and the Kings License and yet unless I will say that I trust to the Bishops License as that without which all were Schism it is Schism still so that it seemeth to be made necessary not only to have it but to believe in it or trust it On the other side we grant as followeth 1. That we must not over-value our own grace or gifts nor undervalue other men nor pretend that our labours are more necessary than they are 2. We must not disobey our lawful Rulers by omission or commission in any thing which it belongeth to their office or power to command or forbid us 3. That if they command or forbid without power that which belongeth not to their office as that which belongeth to a mans private Trade or self-government or family-government c. if it be not in it self evil we should materially obey them finis gratia to preserve order and reverence to their office and that we embolden not men to disobey in other things though formally that particular injunction be powerless of itself 4. That if they command us that which God forbiddeth or forbid that which God commandeth we must patiently suffer what unjust punishment they inflict on us for not obeying them and not resist them in their executions by force Though we cannot say that this hath no exceptions as if a Bishop would ravish a woman she may resist him to save her chastity yet at least no resistance is lawful which deposeth the Governour or disableth him to govern 5. We think it not lawful to invade or take the publick Temples or Tythes or other maintenance of the publick Ministers against the Kings will or without authority 6. We believe that lawful Rulers have power to forbid such ministers to preach in this or that place or any where in their dominions whose preaching is such as tendeth to do more harm than good 7. Had we any reasonable conviction that our Ministry is unnecessary we would obey our Rulers though they silenced us causlesly and would seek some other place or way of serving God 8. In those times places and circumstances which perswade us that more hurt than good will come by it if we preach we will then and there forbear it though it be not as an act of formal obedience nor a desertion of our Office or of the exercise of it at other times 9. We judg it our duty to further the good success of the Conformable Ministers to the utmost of our power 10. And we take Schism to be a great sin and that which we are bound to do the best we can not only to avoid our selves but to cure or hinder in others But we cannot in our present case give over the preaching of Christs Gospel for the Reasons before given 1. We judg it a violation of the grand Law of Charity to agree with the Bishops that the people shall be damned by thousands and content our selves that not we but they shall answer for it 2. We judge it perfidiousness to violate our Ministerial Covenant with God in which we gave up our selves to his service 3. We judge it also heinous sacriledge it being a holy work to which we are devoted 4. It is an Idolatrous setting up mans will and power above and against Gods 5. It is a preferring of pretended Order before the thing ordered and that which is less than sacrifice even sin before Mercy yea the greatest mercy 6. It is a pleasing of the Devil who is the great enemy of Preaching the Gospel and of sinners repentance and salvation and whose instruments the hinderers of the Gospel are we leave to consideration 7. It is a contradicting of the prayer taught us by Christ Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers For we are sure he hath not sent forth supernumeraries 8. It is a wilful running on Christs damning sentence after his premonition Matth. 25. by omitting greater matters than feeding cloathing visiting c. 9. It will be a burying our talent with the unprofitable servant and denying God
in his glory which is much in the LOVE and Concord of his servants II. The Interest of the Universal Church is the pleasing and glorifying God in its unity and strength in the same Faith Hope Love and Obedience to Christ the sole Universal King III. The Interest of particular Churches is their pleasing and glorifying God by their union with Christ and the Church Universal by Faith Love and Obedience and their holy Union between Pastors and people and of the people among themselves IV. The Interest of the Kingdom is its pleasing and glorifying God and the welfare of the whole by a holy unity with God the Universal King and of the Soveraign and Subjects and of the Subjects among themselves V. The Interest of the King is the pleasing and glorifying God in the foresaid welfare and just government of the Kingdom his own salvation and his Political strength and honour which consisteth much in the most inseparable twist of union and interests with his united subjects VI. The Interest of the Pastors of the Church is the pleasing and glorifying God in the ministerial uniting of souls to God in Christ and among themselves in the same holy Life and Light and Love and their own salvation and consolation herein VII The Interest of each particular Christian is his pleasing and glorifying God in his holy union with Christ and with the Church Universal and subordinately his holy unity and concord with the Ecclesiastical and Civil Society where he liveth VIII The true Interest of an honest Separatist and Papist in England supposing them uncurably such requireth them to live quietly and peaceably in subjection to the King and in love with others in the concordant practice of so much of Religion even the Laws of Nature or common Christianity which we are all agreed in and in such tolerated exercises of their several errors as is consistent with the common welfare and not to exasperate others by reproaches or striving to get into suspected power IX The mistaken Interest of the Pope and Papal Clergy is to have their own wills in ruling all the world and to that end to weaken and disable Kings and States by divisions contentions and diversions and to draw them by deceit to a voluntary subjection as necessary to their salvation and to the concord of their subjects and the Christian world and to silence and disgrace all such as are against them X. The mistaken Interest of English Papists Quakers and all true uncurable Separatists is to encrease and strengthen their several parties and if it may be to get into power and to that end to unite in the bond of a common Toleration and to make the tolerated party as strong as they can and to weaken the united Ministry and Churches and therefore to cry down a Comprehension or Union of the sober Conformists and Nonconformists and to desire that those Impositions which themselves account sinful may be continued that good may come by the evil viz. lest the union of the rest should weaken the tolerated party and render them inconsiderable and to bring the established Ministry and all that are for union with them into contempt by reproaches XI The true Interest of a meer Nonconformist requireth him to commit no known sin on pretence of obedience unity or peace nor forsake his Ministry whatever he suffer for it but to live in loyalty peace and patience and in love and communion with the Parochial Churches and all Christians so far as they are agreed XII The true Interest of a Conformist requireth him to use all lawful means to procure as comprehensive a Union and Concord of all sound and faithful Ministers and Christians as they are capable of and to bear with tolerable differences to live in peace among themselves and by Ministerial skill fidelity diligence and holy living and by condescending humility and love to all men to win Dissenters to edifie and unite the people and so to advance the true honour of the Ministry and to encrease and corroborate the Church Octob. 27. 1675. R. B. FINIS THE CONTENTS A Prefatory History of our Case Page 1 c. Our judgment how far we are bound to Preach p. 14. Our Reasons for Preaching I. We judge it sacriledge to for sake the work to which we were consecrated p. 20. II. We cannot be ignorant of mens obliging necessities p. 22. III. Many express texts of Scripture oblige us p. 32. Many Objections answered to p. 44. Whether Princes may silence us Largely answered Of mans binding Conscience Of the Peoples choice of Pastors IV. By deserting our Ministerial Work we shall sin against the Natural Law of Love and be guilty of soul-murder p. 45. Objections and Accusations answered 1. That our preciseness falsly pretendeth mens necessity p. 52. 2. That we think too highly of our own Preaching as necessary p. 55. 3. That our Preaching doth more harm than good p. 56. 4. That we have made the People disobedient hypocrites c. p. 64. 5. That when we had liberty we cast out Catechising the Creed the Lords-Prayer Decalogue and Church-Government c. p. 69. 6. That we lived in sequestrations on other mens bread Mr. Durel's accusations of my self herein answered p. 77. 7. That we silenced and ejected others when we had power p. 83. 8. The better must suffer with the worse if they will joyn with them p. 85. 9. That our Preaching will increase mens dislike of Government p. 86. 10. That our pretended Piety is Pharisaical hypocrisie pride zealous Villanies The Pharisees described p. 91. 11. Of gathering Assemblies and separating from the Church p. 97. 12. For coming into Cities and Corporations within five Miles p. 102. 13. The Church giveth you power and may take it from you as the old Conformists in Mr. Rathbands book c. confess p. 104. 14. You are against Bishops because you cannot be Bishops Why did you demur so long before you refused Preferments p. 106. 15. Must the Laws be changed as oft as tender heads will scruple p. 108. 16. Obedience beseemeth tender Consciences Disobedience is as the sin of Witchcraft p. 110. 17. The only reason why some forsook the Ministry is that they durst not abjure the Covenant Why do they not do the rest p. 111. 18. Why not all tolerated as well as you and so let in Popery p. 113. 19. Preaching was necessary before the World became Christian c. p. 114. 20. Why do you not go preach among the Indians p. 115. 21. The folly and villany of your Religion is so opened by the Debater and the Ecclesiastical Politician that you should be ashamed to ask leave to preach ibid. 22. You overthrow all Principles of Government p. 120. This is answered since in a full Volume called The 2d Plea for Peace 23. They object our Doctrine as Calvinism and Puritanism c. The intended Scheme of my Reconciling doctrine since published p. 121. 24. You would make our Reconciliation with the Church of Rome impossible which is more desirable than with you p. 128. 25. Abating would countenance your scruples by authority and make you thought to be true Reformers p. 134. 26. It is rebellion that is in your hearts as your not renouncing the Covenant and resistance sheweth The foresaid 2d Plea for Peace fully answereth this accusation p. 137. 27. We remember your practices heretofore c. p. 140. 28. Dr. Goods Charge of the Kings death answered in a Letter to him p. 142. 29. The inhumane Calumnies of a book called The Modern Pleas for Comprehension Toleration c. considered p. 147. 30. The errors and faults of Sectaries imputed to us p. 155. 31. Dr. Ashtons and the Debate-makers Accusation of us of covetousness and pride and delaying to refuse preferment p. 157. 32. The Calumnies of a book called A free and impartial enquiry into the Causes of the very great esteem and honour that the Nonconformists are in c. p. 165. A notable passage of Clemangis and another of Bernard p. 173. The true Case of the Nonconformists sufferings which they are said to under go by Covetousness for gain p. 175. 33. Mr. Hollingworths Story of a Nonconformists cruelty p. 182. 34. Henry Fowlis heaviest accusation examined p. 182. Twenty Reasons why the Bishops and conformable Clergy should desire and endeavour the Nonconformists Ministry Plainly and seriously urged to their consciences p. 186. A Postscript Answering Mr. H. Dodwell's Reasons against our Preaching and publick worship when forbidden by the Bishops What he cannot deny us what we grant him what we cannot grant with the reasons of our dissent p. 237. An Account of the Interests of all the several Parties among us Interest ruleth the World p. 250. Reader I have not time to gather the Errata of the Press All this was written 1669. * 1669. â—y Gods merâ—y since theâ—riting of this have publiâ—hed it called â—atholick Theâ—ogy * The Earl of Orery who was present all the while at both times that ever I spake to Cromwell which was plainly and faithfully to his displeasure †The Lord Chief Justice Hale told me he had Hookers last books before and I now have the last printed long before Bishop Gauden published them ☞ â—his was writâ—â—n when we â—ad the Kings â—icense