cannot be the Ordinance of God for the working of grace that is performed without any manner of Commission or Authority For the necessity of keeping that good order which God hath commanded in his Church requires that no man should attempt any thing of that important nature and high concernment upon his own head or by a power derived no higher than from himself Whosoever shall take upon him to preach God's word in order to the Conversion or saving of souls must be able to give a good answer to that question which the chief Priest and Elders of the People put to our Saviour Christ when he was teaching in the Temple By what Authority doest thou these things and who gave thee this Authority He that cannot make a sufficient and satisfactory reply to it and yet shall adventure upon the work may justly be accounted rash indiscreet and more hasty than needeth or than wisedom requireth But such is the Ministry in question undertaken without any Authority or Commission For all the Authority and Commission that a Minister hath in a constituted setled Church he receives in his ordination Before that he had no Authority or Warrant at all to preach the word or to perform any ministerial Act. Now all the Authority that a Minister of the Church of England hath delivered to him in his ordination is expressed in these words Take thou Authority to preach the word and to administer the Holy Sacraments in the Congregation where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereunto In which words it is plain that the exercise of his Ministry is restrained to lawfull appointment as to the place where it shall be exercised What that lawfull appointment is I need not trouble my self or the reader here to look into seeing the Ministry in question hath not the least colour of it or pretence to it for it is supposed to be in a place where there is another lawfully appointed to perform the same In the Council of Chalcedon where there were 630 Fathers met about the year of our Lord 451 It was thus decreed Neminem absolute ordinari jubemus Presbyterum aut Diaconum nec quemlibet in Ecclesiasticâ ordinatione constitutum Eos autem qui absolute ordinantur decrevit sancta synodus vacuam habere manûs impositionem That none should be ordained absolutely whether Presbyter or Deacon or any in Ecclesiastical orders and whosoever should be absolutely ordained the Holy Synod decreed his ordination void And the 33th Canon of the Church of England â—aith That it hath been long since provided by many Decrees of ancient Fathers that none should be admitted either Deacon or Priest who had not first some certain place where he might use his function For though in ordination the person ordained is made a Minister of the Catholick Church and being ordained to a function he may by the appointment of those that have Authority in the Church or with leave of the Pastour of the Congregation preach any where And although as Mr. Baines observes It is good for a Minister to be like a young Woman so full breasted that she can both feed her own Child and lend a draught upon intreaty to her Neighbours Yet he is not a Catholick Minister of the Church as the Apostles and Evangelists were whose office being extraordinary is long since ceased in the Church and therefore ought not to take upon himself to preach any where Neither yet did the Apostles themselves doe so as hath been proved though their Commission was without Limit as to place But kept within their Line measured forth by God to them It was never God's intention that the two Tribes of Levi and Gad should be confounded one with another nor is it any way agreeable with Scripture rules and order that a Minister should be a wandring star but fixed regularly in some Orb of the Church as a Pastour of some Flock or Congregation of his People Seeing therefore none is lawfully appointed to perform the ministerial function or any part of it in such a place as is in question but the Minister of that Congregation acts of the Ministry done by any other Person that shall intrude himself among them without and against his consent contrary to lawfull appointment and all good constitution that concern admission of Ministers to pastoral charges are done without any Authority Commission or effect and consequently cannot be God's Ordinance who doth not use to send any to preach in order to the working of grace in means hearts without any Power or Authority yea against both ARGUMENT VIII THAT cannot be the ordinance of God as instrumental to the work of grace that instead of building up People in Faith and Holiness demolisheth Christian Duty and in the natural tendency of it produceth sinfull and pernicious effects 'T is true these may accidentally follow through the Corruption of man's nature and Satan's suggestions upon the most right and purest dispensation of God's word and ordinances St. Peter speaks of some that stumble at the word And St. Paul saith to some we are the savour of death unto death as to other some the savour of life unto life The word preach'd like the water of jealousie when it is received into an honest and good heart it doeth it good and makes it fruitfull but when into a corrupt it doeth hurt and causeth it to rot Yet the most proper intent and genuine fruit and effect of it is to doe good to inlighten convince convert and save means souls But the Ministry in question doth directly produce sinfull and pernicious effects and such as a tender heart may tremble to think on I would not have the reader expect that I should here make a particular enumeration of every one of those sinfull fruits and effects that are produced by the Ministry of intruders and upholders of Conventicles for that is a thing no more possible for me to doe than it is for any man particularly to reckon up every one of the many thousands of absurdities that will unavoidably follow in dispute upon one that is granted or yielded to I will content my self therefore and let the reader doe the like with the mention of so many of them onely as I here use arguments against the practice which is the proper cause of them and thousands more First it tends to the breaking of that bond of near relation that is and ought to be betwixt a Pastour and his flock Though it be a truth well known to but a few in this age and little considered by any yet it is nevertheless certain and undoubted that there is a very intimate relation betwixt a lawfull Pastour and his People The Scripture seems to assert a kind of Matrimonial union betwixt them A Minister is after a sort married to that Congregation over whom he is lawfully set and they to him Our legal incumbency on a Church is our Marriage to that Church Hence is that phrase
Superstition and Idolatry avert them from our Church and make them sit down in the scorners chair Doth not this say in effect that all those good laws formerly made against Papists and all penalties and mulcts by virtue thereof inflicted were most unjust in punishing them for refusing to join with us in that form of worship which we our selves cannot approve of We may say with the Athenians Auximus Philippum nos ipsi Athenienses We have strengthned the hands of our Enemies against us by our own divisions and contentions It is an odious quality and that which obscures the lustre of all the commendable vertues which Franzius notes of the Cranes that oftentimes they are so vehemently enraged one with an other and maintain such a combate among themselves that they neither observe nor fear the coming of the Fowler Yea that they rather desire his approach and to be taken by him than to be reconciled to their mates with whom they are faln out It is a thing much to be feared that these men will never be at quiet and peace in the Church untill they make that true of themselves which I have read objected to the aforesaid people of Athens by way of reproach that they would never vouchsafe to treat or hear of peace but in mourning gowns namely after the loss of their friends and fortunes in the wars He hath no mind that considers not this nor heart that condoles it not Put the case that though the Liturgy of our Church was composed with so much piety and prudence yet there might remain any thing capable of amendment as a freckle in a fair Face what if it be not in all things suitable with every man's judgment or fancy as there is nothing in the world the Directory it self not excepted so well done that doth not displease some the best cook'd dishes please not every Palate yet as St. Augustine of old answered the Donatists Si peccavit Caecilianus non ideo haereditatem suam perdidit Christus Shall God therefore loose his publick worship and service shall it be trampled upon slighted and prophanely neglected because we differ about black and white as Bishop Ridley told Bishop Hooper in a Letter to him And though in these latter days preaching hath gotten ground of the Prayers of the Church in the opinion of some whom we shall see present now and then at the former but seldom or never at the latter yet withouâ— any detraction to that excellent ordinance of God be it spoken this most despised part of God's worship must needs be granted to have the preheminence of the other especially in these days wherein the Church is so maturely composed and throughly setled in the faith and the Book of the holy Scriptures so complete and common amongst us in our own Language by him that considers 1. First that it is the most proper and immediate worship of God and preaching but mediate as it is the means which God hath ordained to teach men how to pray and to fit them for that duty For how can they call upon him in whom they have not believed And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher 2. Secondly it is a duty simply and entirely moral good in respect of its own nature and quality before any external constitution passed upon it and may be resolved into one of the dictates and principles of the Law of Nature imprinted universally in the hearts of all men at the creation For before the Law of the ten Commandments men began to call on the name of the Lord as being taught by the light of Nature that in God we all live move and have our being and that he is the Father of lights from whom cometh down every good and perfect gift But preaching and hearing are acknowledged by all to be instituted worship and moral onely by an external imposition and mandate of the Supreme Lawgiver 3. Thirdly it is a duty of longer duration than preaching the one being onely for this life the other for the life to come also the one proper and peculiar to men as members of the Church militant the other common to men and Angels in the Church triumphant The knowledge is small which we have on Earth concerning things done in Heaven notwithstandings thus much we know even of Saints in Heaven that they pray 4. Fourthly it is a duty of larger extent and benefit than Preaching is this onely profiteth those that be present that do hear it and attend upon it but Prayer is available even for those that are far distant yea though they be in the remotest parts of the world When Lot's preaching did no good at all to his hearers yet Abraham's prayers might have been so effectual as to have saved five wicked Cities if there had been but ten righteous persons in them What our Blessed Saviour's judgment was in this case we may easily gather by that place in the Gospel where he calls the Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an house of Prayer not of Preaching Whence in the Primitive times all the Christian Temples were called and known by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oratories And publick Prayers of the Church have as much the preheminence of private as the duty it self hath of preaching in â—egard there is more force in these Prayers wherein the whole Church joyn together as one man than there can be in those that others though never so many make apart any where else I say unto you saith our Saviour that if two of you shall agree on Earth touching any thing that they shall ask it shall be done for them of my Father which is in Heaven Much more then if a Thousand and more if the whole Church They are two excellent and remarkable sayings of St. Chrysostome to this purpose which are quoted by Bishop Iewel in his reply to Harding's answer Non aeque exoras cum solus dominum obsecras atqâ—e cum fratribus tuis Est enim in hoc plus aliquid videlicet concordia conspiratio copula amoris charitatis sacerdotum clamores Praesunt enim ob eam rem sacerdotes ut populi orationes quae infirmiores per se sunt validiores eas complexae simul in câ—elum evehantur Thou dost not so soon obtain thy desire when thou prayest alone unto the Lord as when thou prayest with thy Brethren for herein is somewhat more the concord the consent the joyning of love and charity and the cry of the Priest For to that end the Priests are made overseers that they being the stronger sort may take with them the weaker Prayers of the People and carry them up into Heaven Again he saith Quod quis apud seipsum precatus accipere non poterit hoc cum multitudine precatus accipiet Quare Quia etiamsi non propria virtus tamen concordia multum
God offendeth against the Common order of the Church hurteth the Authority of the Magistrate and woundeth the Conscience of the weak Brethren Where by traditions I suppose is meant the Laws and Canons of the Church as the words following do intimate which speak of the Common order of the Church and Authority of the Magistrate Thus much of the Laws of the Church Neither are such meetings onely against the Laws of the Church but against sundry statute Laws of the Kingdom also in that behalf made and provided In the Statute of 35 Eliz. 1. It is provided that if any person or persons above 16 years old shall refuse to repair to some Church Chapel or usual place of Common-prayer to hear divine Service and receive the Communion or come to and be present at any Assemblies Conventicles or Meetings under Colour or pretence of any Exercise of Religion contrary to the Laws and Statutes And if any person shall obstinately refuse to repair to some Church Chapel or usual place of Common-prayer or by any motion persuasion inticement or allurement of any other willingly joyn in or be present at any such Assemblies Conventicles or Meetings under Colour or pretence of any such Exercise of Religion contrary to the Laws and Statutes of this Realm as is aforesaid which refers to other Statutes formerly made and yet of force against Conventicles as well as this one shall be committed to prison and there remain without bail untill be conform and untill he make an open Submission in the words set down in the Statute viz. I. A. B. do humbly acknowledge and confess that I have grievously offended God in contemning her Majesties Godly and lawfull Government and Authority by absenting my self from Church and from hearing divine Service contrary to the godly Laws and Statutes of this Realm and in using and frequenting unlawfull and disorderly Conventicles and Assemblies under Colour and pretence of Exercise of Religion And I am heartily sorry for the same c. And I do promise and protest without any dissimulation that from henceforth I will from time to time obey and perform her Majesties Laws and Statutes in repairing to Church and hearing divine Service and doe my utmost endeavour to maintain and defend the same Neither can it be pretended as it is by some that this Statute was made or stands in force against any other sort of People than those in question viz. against Popish recusants onely and not against Protestant dissenters as they call themselves The answer is easie out of the words of the said Statute For in the beginning of the Statute the Persons that are concerned in obedience to it are expressed in these general and large words Any person or persons whatsoever above the Age of 16 which shall refuse to repair to Church and willingly join in and be present at any Conventicle or Meeting c. Which words comprehend and take in Persons of all Religions Sects and Persuasions whatsoever And whereas the penalty of the Statute to all that shall refuse Obedience and Conformity to it is abjuration of the Realm or to be proceeded against as Felons There is a Proviso toward the End of the Statute that sixeth the penalty altogether upon Protestant recusants and not on Popish In these words Provided that no Popish recusant or feme Covert shall be compelled or bound to abjure by virtue of this Act. And lest the Popish recusants should be the onely Persons therein meant or intended the Conventiclers of our Age make themselves more perfect Recusants than that Statute supposeth For whereas that makes absence from the Prayers of the Church for one Month together a Crime sufficient to render them obnoxious to the penalties of that Act these men for the most part withdraw themselves for many Years together and for ought I see if they are let alone resolve so to doe all the days of their lives In Anno 22. Caroli 2di Regis there was a Statute made to prevent and suppress seditious Conventicles as the Title of that Statute truly calls them wherein Every Person of the Age of 16 years and upward that shall be present at any Assembly Conventicle or Meeting under Colour or pretence of any Exercise of Religion in other manner that according to the Liturgy and Practice of the Church of England in any place within the Kingdom of England Dominion of Wales and Town of Berwick upon Tweed at which Conventicle or meeting there shall be 5 persons or more assembled together is made liable to suffer the penalties of 5 s for his first fault and for his second 10 s and so onward the Preacher to suffer the penalty of 20 ll And the owner of the house or ground that shall wittingly and willingly suffer such Conventicle Meeting or unlawfull Assembly to be held to suffer the penalty of 20 ll In the late Act for Uniformity all Non-conformist Ministers and disabled and prohibited from preaching any Sermon or Lecture indefinitely either publick or private And for as much as the King's Majesty by the Law of God and the Land of right is and ought to be master of all the assemblings together of any of his Subjects therefore what Meetings soever are not allowed and authorized by the Laws of the Realm are adjudged by the Learned in the Laws to fall within the compass of those Statutes that forbid and punish Riots and unlawfull Assemblies and are or may justly be presumed to be in terrorem populi and in the Event it is to be feared will prove to be contrary to the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King And by the Law all the King's Liege-people are commanded to assist in the suppressing of them upon pain of imprisonment and to make fine and ransome to the King Notwithstanding all which good Laws this practice hath continued in the Church these several years and still doth notwithstanding His Majesties reinforcement of their execution by his late Proclamation in open defiance and contempt of all Authority as if the Laws of the Church and Realm were but fulmen inane a shadow of a Cloud that vanisheth as soon as it is made and as if obedience to Magistracy were no part of Christian duty Concerning these Laws of the Realm to silence clamour I will touch lightly at five things I. That the King being next under God within his Dominions supreme in the Church on Earth hath Power and Authority over the Persons of Ministers as well as of any other his Subjects He being Custos utriusque tabulae having both tables committed to him as well the first that concerns our religious duties to God as the other that concerns our civil duties to men may and ought to make such laws as conduce as well to the peace and order in the Church as as godliness and honesty Pertinet hoc ad reges seculi Christianos ut temporibus suis pacatam velint matrem suam Ecclesiam unde
to the Penalty of the Law is not that sufficient to discharge the Conscience from the guilt of disobedience Casuists that are of that Judgment say it holds true onely in those Laws whereof there are but very few in the World that are purely penal And the Laws which we now speak of are not such for these are partly Moral binding to doe or to leave undone some moral Act and partly Penal in case of Omission of what the Laws command or Commission of what the Laws forbid then to undergoe the Punishment the Laws inflict Now in these mixt Laws suffering the Penalty doth not discharge the Conscience from the guilt of sin For it is a rule of sure truth which Casuists give in such cases Omnis praeceptio obligat ad culpam Every just Command of those who have lawfull Authority to command leaves a guilt of sin upon those mens Consciences who do not obey The reason is because where a Law made by lawfull Authority requires active obedience and imposeth a Penalty in case of disobedience the Conscience of the subject stands bound primarily and intentionally to the performance of the duty therein enjoined As for the Penalty threatned that is a secondary and accidental thing to the Law added to keep up the reputation and esteem thereof in the minds of those who are concerned in it and to affright them from the neglect and disobedience of it So that though the suffering the Penalty of the Law in case of the transgression of it be as much as can be required of the Law-giver yet God by whom Kings reign and who requires subjection to Authority and that for Conscience sake will not hold such persons guiltless that doe not the things commanded in the Law The malefactour satisfies the Law at the time of his execution but who will say that without repentance of his fact the guilt of sin remains not still upon his Conscience or that he shall be acquitted at God's tribunal 5. Neither are they the Laws of the Church and Kingdom of England onely that are against such Meetings and Ministry as are in question But the godly Kings and Princes of the primitive Christian-Church have ever made the like Eusebius tells us that Constantine the Great made a Law that no Separatists or Schismaticks should meet in Conventicles and commanded that all such places where they were wont to keep their Meetings should be demolished and that they should not keep their factious Meetings either in publick places or private houses or remote places but that they should repair to their parochial Churches And in the next Chapter he saith that by that Law the memory of most of those Sectaries was forgotten and extinguished Sozomen reports that Theodosius the great decreed that the Sectaries whose petition for liberty he had first torn in pieces should not assemble together but all of them repair to their own publick Congregations otherwise to be banished their Country to be branded with some infamy and not to be partakers of Common privileges and favours with others And our neighbours and brethren of Scotland of the Presbyterian judgment did in one of their late general Assemblies since the enacting of their solemn League and Covenant make a special Canon against all private Meetings the direct tendency there of being to the overthrow of that Uniformity by them covenanted to be endeavoured in all the Churches of the three Kingdoms The very Heathens themselves by their Laws have made all such Assemblies illegitimate which the highest Authority did not cause to meet though they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to doe solemn Sacrifice to their Gods as may appear by Solon's Laws and in their practice they have shewed themselves ready to yeild obedience to their Governours in desisting from such irregular Conventions when they have been required Though Demetrius his Assembly came together disorderly and of their own heads rushed into the Theatre and there kept a shouting and Crying two hours together some one thing some another not knowing most of them wherefore they came together Yet when the Town-clark who had Authority did dismiss them they added not one fault to another but broke off their disorderly Meeting presently And they shew themselves more refractary than Demetrius himself who doe otherwise And if it be well considered the practice in question will be found to interfere with it self and to carry in the very face of it a convincing Testimony of its evil and unwarrantableness For if it be lawfull for these men to preach in private Meetings as they do and have a long time done why do they not take upon them to adventure to preach in the publick and Church-assemblies also What is it that makes them abstain from the latter and yet take liberty in the former Is it in obedience to the Law of the Land which forbids them to preach in publick The same Law forbids them to preach in private also It cannot be denied but that one is forbidden as well as the other Then this must needs be turned upon them why do they not obey in the one as well as in the other since they cannot but acknowledge that both are forbidden in the same Law surely if it were the Care and Conscience and desire to obey lawfull Authority according as Christian duty binds them that makes them silent in publick the same Conscience the same care and desire would make them sit down in silence in private also If it be said that they therefore abstain from publick preaching because it more exposeth them to the danger and penalty of the Law than private doth Then this must be retorted upon them also that their obedience is not such as God requireth for Conscience but for wrath Good men obey for Conscience but those that obey for wrath have not the fear of God before their Eyes For none contemns the power of man unless he hath first despised the Power of God And shall that be accounted by any sober Christian to be the ordinance of God or means of his appointment to beget grace in mens souls that is so repugnant to good Laws both of Church and State which we all stand bound in Conscience to observe and obey is contradictory to it self and hath in it that which proclaims to all that will open their Eyes to look into it its unlawfulness and sin God forbid ARGUMENT II. THAT cannot be the ordinance of God or means of grace that is contrary to that order which God himself by his word hath established in his Church For God is not the Authour of disorder and confusion But the Devil In the Church God's Command is for order in all things Let all things be done decently and in order And St. Paul did as well rejoice to see the order as the faith of the Church of Coloss. Onely Death and Hell have no order And it is a kind of death to a godly Christian to see