easily have chose a Subject that would have run more smoothly as to some mens apprehensions and affections and given it may be less displeasure But jacta est alea here I stand and considering the Circumstances in which you Noble and Worthy Persons are the Trust committed to you and the Oaths that are upon you to discharge that Trust I will be plain and if I must be censur'd for it I will bear it patiently because 't is for my love to the best constituted Government in the World Therefore 1. I will prove that we have all necessary Advantages in this Church of which we are Members for eternal Life and therefore need not go away from it which will best appear if we consider what is absolutely necessary to the gaining of this eternal Life And upon enquiry we find but two things in neither of which I am sure the Church of England is wanting or deficient 1. A sound Belief of all necessary Articles and Propositions of Faith 2. An holy Practice of all Duties that are enjoyned us 1. For a sound belief of all things necessary in order to eternal Life we stand upon as good ground as any sort of men in the Christian World For our Belief is of nothing but what is plainly laid down or easily deduced out of Holy Scripture and there is not an Article which we can say was framed by a Pack of Men met together barely to advance an Interest or serve a Passion We hear nothing in all the Thirty Nine of the necessary belief of a fictitious Purgatory or a Sense-contradicting Transubstantiation We are not commanded under the pain of Hell and Ruine to believe the Infallibility of an usurping Pope or the Meritoriousness of good Works We meet with none of those Trent-doctrines that were framed by faction and voted to no other purpose than to keep up the present Pomp and Grandeur of the Court of Rome which were at first started by interest and have ever since to the violation of the Peace of Europe been kept on foot by Pride Nor is the Lawfulness of taking up Arms against our Soveraign when he as we fancie will not promote Religion and advance Gods Glory and secure the Interest of his elect and darling People in their Civil and Religious Priviledges one of the Articles of our Faith No no our Belief is of such things as are in Scripture and were entertained as Doctrines and determined so in subordination to the Authority of Scriptures by the four first General Councils And indeed our Church would have been very much to blame if under a pretence of rooting out unnecessary and ungrounded Articles of Faith she had invented others as useless and as dangerous having neither face nor footing in the Holy Scriptures This would have been to have propagated Division so long as the world had stood and given others too great an occasion to believe that it was not Conscience but some other Principles of another Dye that put them upon a Separation from the Church of Rome And therefore she took care that the Terms of her Communion in point of Doctrine should be few and obvious such as no man that is not obstinate and resolved should deny a ready complyance with and if any man can rise up and prove that there is one Doctrine that hath any malign or poysonous influence either upon mens Understandings or else upon their Manners I will stand obliged to quit the power I have of mine own disposal and surrender my self his Bonds-man Nay so little liable are our declared Doctrines to any Imputation so unquestionably agreeable to Holy writ the Protestant Standard of all Doctrines that our very Adversaries themselves cannot in all their Declamations against our Church forbear extolling the exact Care and Wisdom of our first Reformers in this particular and most of them testifie their readiness to subscribe to the Truth thereof as I could prove from their declared Opinions in several of their printed Treatises Yea if need be I could make good this following Story which I think is no small Vindication of our Churches Doctrines That one of them who is now the Oracle of their Party to whom upon all occasions they apply themselves and in whose Judgment they repose no little confidence though I shall not name him because he hath been brought so much upon the Stage already I say I could make good that this very Person when being intrusted and invited to assist in drawing up something which might be a band of Union and enlarge the Pale of this present Church did propose that our Articles might be reduced to Thirty Six though but for his affected singularity he might as well have said Thirty and nine and those made the Conditions of our Communion And according to the wonted Clemency of most of those who call for Toleration when they cannot rule and govern pressed that whoever refused Subscription to them should undergo the penalty of being banished his Native Kingdom an Expression that begot in the breast of a late Reverend Prelate that sate by a resentment agreeable to his known Candour and Moderation and extorted from him a smart reproof of the haughty Separatist for his apparent Cruelty and All this I think makes good that 't is not our Doctrine from which these men can fetch the Grounds and Reasons of their going from us 2. Let us therefore descend to the other thing requisite to Eternal Life which is an holy and upright Practice and well-composed Life and a regular Conversation which are the chiefest things in which Holiness does consist and he who esteems himself so upon any other score he labours under a very foul mistake For intance He that Saints himself upon the account of some sudden and vehement slashes of indiscreet and sulphureous Zeal of some imagined Raptures and supposed intimacy and correspondence with all the three Persons in the Trinity he that strokes his Breast as the only acquaintance with God and Christ purely for his listing himself into such a Party and entertaining such Opinions as the good Apostles and Primitive Christians never had any knowledge or conviction of further he that hath no other Plea for his excelling Goodness than his observing uncommanded Fasts and slighting Days appointed by Authority for solemn Commemoration of past Blessings and hearty petitions for Mercies wanted he that hath no other way to make out his internal Graces than by a solemn Winke and a meager Face than by a scornful pity of the ignorance of his Betters and bewailing with a doleful sigh the carnal state of his Neighbours though indeed they understand Religion in its Design and end every way better than himself than by declining these publick Places of Worship and running into the Camps of separation I say he is false in the Measures he takes of himself and does not weigh himself in a proper and allowed Ballance For these things we find may be done by men of the most debauched
in such numbers from our Churches nor be so easily beguiled into a belief of things so every ways wanting a Foundation in Holy Writ nor would they make such vile and unworthy reflections upon a Church whose Foundation is laid and superstructure built by the Laws of Reason and rightly understood Religion in a word which imposes nothing upon our practice that is forbidden in Holy Scripture And I hope there is so much weight in this one Reason I have given for my zeal against the present Separation as may apologize for me and satisfy any modest man that it is not from any Principle of despight to God his Religion or his people that I have ventured upon such a work as this But I have yet more to say Further then I took notice that Non-conformity had a very evil aspect upon Governours and Government I found no men so ready to embrace any stories whereby their superiours were scornfully reflected upon or vilely represented as these man were nor any men more hasty in spreading these tales further abroad and wondring with my self that men pretending to so extreme a strictness and pleading that strictness as a sign of their being the best of Saints should fail in so known and obvious a duty as obedience to Authority is I looked back into Ages past and God knows found the same temper and spirit among those who were the authors and beginners of this desolating Separation I found one Goodman an Exile in Queen Maryes days and one of the Antesignani of the Nonconformists vindicating Wyat's rebellion asserting in Print that his cause was God's and that none but Traytors could accuse him of Treason and after this I find Queen Elizabeth maligned by White Rowland and Hawkins three of the Brotherhood and by no means must she be thought any other ways than an evil Princess spoiling God's people and extolling vanity and this averred before Grindall then Bishop of London And if I should quote what hath dropt from these mens pens since to the slandering of God's Anointed this Preface would swell into too great a bulk Now I must confess this thing very much troubled me and stirred my passions to see that in which our happiness is so apparently wrapt up and by vertue of which we safely possess the fruits of our own labours made the scorn of boys and raw servants and the wise and prudently enacted Laws brought to the Barr many times by a company of silly women who are led captive and laden with many lusts and according to their deep and profound judgment voted obligatory or else nulled and voided And in good earnest this appears to me the ready way to the Nations ruine as it naturally prepares men to serve their turn upon the established Government when ever opportunity is put into their hands And no man need blush in asserting this when he considers who they were that in the beginning of the late unnatural War readily took the Alarm and clothed themselves with courage and armour too in order to sight the Lord's battel against the Mighty but such persons as had been brought up under and disciplin'd by such Teachers as were known notoriously inclinable to the Principles of Separation And he that considens with what pleasure some men do reflect upon the Priviledges and enjoyments the late War gave them before his Majesties return and how ready they are to suggest to young and unimpressed minds that those were days wherein men might be as good as they would and wherein scandalous Ministers were turned out with many other things of the like nature he must needs infer from thence that many of these people are so far from repenting of what was then done that they could willingly wade through the same paths of bloud to be reinstated in their former priviledges again Now truly I must needs say that I cannot think the Kingdom safe so long as such things are propagated and propagated they will be so long as men believe their Prince an enemy to the pure Doctrines and Ordinances of Jesus Christ and themselves persecuted for complyance with Christ's Laws in opposition to the superstitious Impositions of their Governours For considering the weakness of men and the slender improvement the education of most give them how can we imagine Magistrates should have their due honour and esteem from such persons who are made to believe that they symbolize with Antichrist and are Friends to the cause and Interest of the Beast No alack such crafty insinuations as these waste all the Principles of Loyalty in easy and credulous mens breasts they imbitter and poyson their Spirits so that they spit nothing but fire in the face of all well regulated Constitutions and there is nothing but the fear of imprisonment or confiscation of Goods or the loss of life that keeps these men thus set on fire from offering violence to the Thrones of Princes It was this that made Henry the Third and the Fourth of France fall under the bloudy hands of two Assassinates and though our modern Enthusiasts and the Papists widely differ in many things yet in a mistaken furious zeal and resolute enterprizes for the mistaken cause of God and his Church they have been both very much to blame and incurred such a censure as thanks be to God the regular Sons of the Church of England can wash their hands from Now this being very plain and notorious I thought I could not do a better work one whereby I might better serve my Prince and Countrey than by endeavouring to reconcile men to a Church wherein they learn the duties of humility and meekness of modesty and candour of spirit of submission and obedience of jealousie and suspicion of their own private opinions when they stand in competition with the publick Judgment and Wisdom of the Nation For these are vertues hugely serviceable to the interest of Government and preserve such a peace amongst men as gives great encouragement to industry and labour These are Vertues that render Religion amiable and lovely and no doubt the more Professors are possessed of them the more do they engage standers by not only to an admiration of but an hearty complyance with that Religion that cancels no worthy Law that is made in pursuit of the ends of Government but on the other side lays obligations upon every man to keep his place denouncing severely against those who either curse their Princes in their hearts or speak evil of Dignities with their tongues And let me speak freely That I am very much mistaken if a return to so good a spirit as this is going to Egypt again is siding with the Beast against God and his Christ is renouncing the Kingship of Christ which words by whom made use of and to what purposes we can easily tell If this be a forsaking of Christ and giving up his cause and going into Babylon I pray God I may continue in this Babylon all the days of my life and then
Minds by men every way wicked in their Principles Nay these things have been done and taken up on purpose to carry on the most villainous Designs that History can Parallel And now in this Notion of Holiness we will give other Churches leave to go before our own But if we take Holiness in a Gospel sence in a Conversation suitable to those several Circumstances in which we are those several Relations in which we stand those several Dependencies that we have Then I will say why does any man go from this Church of ours For here he hath all Advantages for Eternal Life Take Man as he is Gods Creature the Workmanship of his hands and therefore bound to pay Homage and Fealty to him which you know is most naturally done upon our knees by solemn Prayer Why let me seriously beg of any wise man to inform me what we want to this end by way of help and aid in our so much despised Church We are permitted nay commanded to pray to God in a Tongue that is known we pray by words apt and significative of the sence they bear and with Prayers abounding with that sence which no man that is unprejudiced and wise can except against We pray to God through Jesus Christ presuming neither upon our own worth and merit nor yet upon the Intercession of any Saint or Angel and whether this be not as good a way to express all our thoughts and affections as by any uncertain extemporary effusion where we are not certain of avoiding rude and saucy periods and of hearing things sometimes bordering upon Blasphemy and oftner upon nonsence I leave you all who can make just reflections upon things to judge In a word In our Prayers we have as great advantages to pray by the Spirit it being taken in its proper sence nay greater than others who pretend so highly to it have And the reason is because we engage this Spirit to come in to our help and aid by our orderly compliance with those Duties of Submission and Obedience to Authority which this Spirit it self hath so strictly enjoyned in Holy Scripture And you know our Saviour tells us Luke 8.18 To him that hath shall be given that is the more Graces and Vertues our Souls are adorned withall the more still will God bless us in the improvement of them 2. If we take a view of those Advantages we have for Eternal Life by Preaching by wholesome Documents and Instructions why I am not afraid to say that we have no Reason to throw our selves out of our Mothers Arms upon this account or to forsake her for the dryness of her Breasts for so long as we are told all things necessary to Salvation and those several pressing Reasons why we ought to practise them and indeed he must be a very ordinary man who is clothed with sacred Orders and cannot teach us this Why though it be our allotment to be under the guidance of a Minister who cannot deliver himself with that affection whose Temper of Body will not allow him such degrees of becoming Zeal why we must make up that want in him by raising our own Affections in our retirements before we attend the Publick to an higher pitch and better strain and then I am sure every thing that is Divine and tends to Holiness though not pronounced with that advantage others do yet will be welcome and delightsome to us For it is not commonly so much the Dulness of the Man we hear as the Deadness of our Affections to him that makes us complain of the unprofitableness of his Ministery And I have known several who so long as Interest or Acquaintance or any thing else of equal influence hath kept up their kindness or affection to any publick Preacher they have followed him with greediness heard him with attention and praised him to excess and their Minds never received greater advantage nor their Affections a more vigorous warmth than under such a Person 's Ministery And yet all of a sudden let but an unseasonable quarrel arise and their former correspondence be abated and a grudge or two spring up either upon a little or no Reason in their minds and presently the same man becomes a flat and heavy Preacher and they sit very uneasily under him or else joyn themselves to some other who by chance hit their Fancy and Humour when they were upon their ramble in order to find out one to profit by But because this is a mighty Pretence made by the present Separatists at this day and a warrant as they think for their Disobedience to the present Laws I will make a few reflections upon it And here 1. I will state the Notion of profiting and then consider whether we may not sufficiently profit according to that Notion under our establish'd Pastors and Teachers without gadding after other men Now profiting can but possibly relate to these things either to the Information of our Judgments as to all things necessary to be believed and known or else to the raising of our Affections in a just proportion to the Nature and Excellency of those things so believed and known or to a more even and resolute Practice of them First then as to the Information of our Judgments as to things necessary we may certainly meet with it amongst the allowed Teachers especially considering how few they are and how they have been drawn up into a sum by the Ancient Church I confess my circumstances call upon me to be oftner preaching than hearing but yet this I must needs say and I fear not a blush in saying of it That as often as I can get opportunity to enjoy other mens Labours I usually meet with such Discourses as may vie with those mens whatever they would perswade the easie world to the contrary especially which I have no reason to doubt if their Popular Sermons be fraught with no more coherent Sence and Reason than their printed Discourses are I do not love to make Reflexions upon any mans Labours who designs a good to the World and whatsoever Books published by these men have done any service to the Minds of men I heartily bless God for But yet this I must needs say That we may meet with Sermons from Persons under the Countenance and Encouragement of our Church that may equal any nay if I had said for strength of Reason for weightiness of Argument for fit and apposite quotations of Texts of Scripture for apt and proper Terms and Expressions may be judged to excell any or most that the Brethren of the Separation have set forth I think I had not transgressed the Lines of Truth But my Design being to convince mens Judgments and not to heat their Passions I will forbear such Comparisons However this I am sure which serves my present undertaking that we may from the authorized Ministery come to the knowledge of all Doctrines that are necessary and he that does not preach them and give such Reasons for
them to consider that when they come to take a view of what they have done they will find the money they received is the price of bloud and that they sell those for whom Christ died and must be accountable at the Last day not only for their own Sin but for that very Sin of Perjury the vicious Priest is guilty of for he that invites a man to a sin is reckoned as if he had committed the sin himself And further I offer to these mens considerations that unspeakable discouragement which by so doing they give to learning and those worthy improvements which render men really and indeed useful to the Church and the Interest of immortal Souls when Dunces who have more Money than Honesty or Learning shall climb into the best Preferments and men of Parts and Principles who by pains and study have run through and well digested all necessary Arts and Sciences must be forced to sit down contented with allowances every way disproportioned to and below their manifest deserts and worth And if there be not some further remedy found out against this distemper we may well expect in a short time to see the Church in a more forlorn and despicable condition than now it is which God of his goodness prevent For I cannot forbear reasserting this that the Church and State are so necessarily helpful to one another that they will live and die together 6. This Church receives no small injury from the careless and remiss attendance of many of her professed admirers upon her publick Devotions and Instructions And though I do not think that Religion lays any obligation upon her Children to hear a Sermon every day of the week nor to esteem that time lost and vainly spent in which we are not upon our knees in prayer yet this I am sure of that we are obliged to attend if not reasonably prevented upon all those Ordinances which the Church hath enjoyned us and to omit them is to violate our obligations to that Authority to which we have vowed and professed subjection And if we consider well we shall find that not only the necessity of our Souls which by often and dutiful approaches to God in publick prayer are preserved in a warm and vigorous sense of God and so consequently made more fearful of running into any course whereby he is offended requires this at our hands but the being useful to others by our good examples especially if we be men of power and authority for Examples with the common people are more prevalent usually than Arguments and Demonstrations And therefore he that either out of a vain notion that one Sermon a day is more than he can practise or from a lazy and slothful temper which too many are guilty of or because it is the best time he can spare from his other business to indulge himself and his Neighbours in excessive and intemperate drinking neglects not only the preaching but the publick prayers of the Church which he is bound to be present at Evening as well as Morning why I must tell him that he is an enemy to that Church of which he is a member and puts an argument into her Adversaries mouth whereby he renders her contemptible And is it not a shame tell me you who are the persons guilty of this crime I am now accusing to see men more zealous in breaking than you are in preserving the reputation of publick Laws and to behold Faction more eagerly supported and upheld than Loyalty and obedience And therefore I do in the name and behalf of the Church your Mother beg and intreat you all to render her and her publick Devotions more venerable in the eyes of the common people by your constant waiting upon all her Offices upon all those publick Ministeries wherein she dispenses wholsome food to all her Children for this will evidence that which many people are unwilling to believe to wit that Essential Righteousness and Goodness are as visible and conspicuous in the Members of our Church as in any other and that if her Counsels be but followed there are none that make nearer approaches to the Zeal and fervour to the Innocence and simplicity of the Primitive Christians than the Sons of the Church of England do 7. This Churches honour and due regard is lessened by a perfunctory and careless consideration of the confusions and disorders that followed her dissolution by the pretended power of a Parliament For he that truly weighs what monstrous Opinions presently brake in upon us such as were destructive of all our Civil as well as Religious Rights and Liberty he that reflects upon the impudence and boldness wherewith every private fancy was vented and spread abroad and how servants became our Masters and the Meanest of the people presumed to handle sacred things further he that considers the bloud was spilt and the treasure was exhausted and all this for a thing they could never agree what it was why certainly he cannot but maintain a value and just esteem for a Church which by her Doctrines and Canons puts every thing into its proper place and settles every person in his own office and prescribes him duties suitable to the sphere in which he moves giving a just power to Magistrates to enact and punishing Subjects for any wilful disobedience to those Laws so enacted enjoyning the Pastor of every flock to teach the people all necessary duties and commanding the people to such a submission to those Instructions as is neither prejudicial to their Judgment of discretion nor yet allows them pragmatically to scorn and censure whatsoever pleases not their own itching ears and over-curious palats And therefore let me here advise all men who are not perniciously resolved to take notice well of this one thing and I am confident it will go very far toward their cure Let them consider the violence after this Church was down offered to mens Estates for their conscientious adherence to their Prince the taking away the Lives of many of the good Subjects of the Kingdome purely for not siding with them against the known Fundamental Laws the divesting of many of the Nobility of their birth-right because they pursued his Interest from whom their Titles of Honour were immediately derived Let them consider further the strange Maxims of Policy by which they acted after the taking down the Churches Fences and every mans doing what was good in his own eyes let them consider the horrid and intolerable abuses put upon the Providence of God and at last the murther of the best of Kings and I will warrant them if they be cool and in their proper senses and not sworn to the Interest of a Faction they will keep alive in their breasts a greater veneration for the Church of England than they had before And though I am sorry we have any occasion to mention these things and rubb up these old sores yet so long as men stand ready with their former principles and
they grow vext and impatient and straightways their thoughts are fixt upon revenge and from a quarrel with those who sit at the Helm they fall out with the Government it self and all their parts are bent upon finding out plausible Arguments and pretences to sink its reputation amongst the people and no stone is left unturned to carry on this wicked purpose and resolution It is an easie matter to make this assertion out from the accounts of every age of Christianity Heresies Schisms seditions and publick disturbances have most of them crept in at this back door and whosoever will give himself the leave to take a just account of the Apostasie of many from our Church some few years after the Reformation and ever since he will not be long before he find this its original and spring which thing though not altogether yet very much had been prevented if all the Spiritual allotments for Ministers had been comfortable and such as would have afforded wise men for I undertake not to be an advocate for Fools and Prodigals a convenient and creditable maintenance AND now having said thus much in the vindication of this excellent Church and withal given the Reasons of those many disparagements she hath in these late years met withal I cannot draw off my pen from paper till by it I have made my humble address to the Nobility and Gentry and all others who are concerned by vertue either of their Principles or Estates in the preservation of the Kingdoms peace and Nations welfare and are very unwilling to be sad spectators of those ruines and desolations that not many years ago many of them to their own as well as the Nations sorrow were too sadly acquainted withal till I say I have made my humble address to them and implored them by all that is near and dear to them to use that power God and the King hath entrusted them withal in stifling those Opinions in suppressing those dangerous Principles and Maxims in preventing those practises which have had so bad an influence upon the Body Politick and in using all methods by which they may be kept from the Common People whom we find by sad experience easily leavened and as easily afterwards wrought upon to enter into any Evil action whereby the peace and happiness of the Kingdom may be endangered And though it may be this address may be looked upon as the product of a malicions and revengeful spirit yet God that knows the hearts of men knows it flows from no such bitter Fountain but so far as I am in a capacity to serve any of these persons against whom I now complain in their personal capacity no man can I am sure be more ready and more forward Let them but live agreeable to the Laws under which they live and that but as far as their own avowed Principles will give them leave which I think is a very reasonable request and they shall not want that just esteem from my self and so I am sure from all men of my Principles that they do deserve Which if they will not do but continue resolute in widening our differences making our breaches greater forming men into parties and numbers in opposition to the injunction of all those prudent Laws that are enacted by the great Authority of the Nation and thereby strengthning and encouraging that deplorable Schism that is amongst us why truly I think he wants the Spirit and Courage of a Man who holds his tongue and by his silence gives the least spirit to such undertakings For alas what can we imagine all this will centre and bottom in and who will be the chief gainers by these divisions That certainly is no hard matter to determine And truly in my apprehension 't is very sad that the revenge of our Nonconforming Brethren should be so great against the Church of England that rather than she shall continue in any glory and be vested with any Authority they will use their utmost endeavours to pull her down though it be to the destruction of the Protestant Cause both at home and abroad and to the Introduction of Popery it self A good sign indeed of a Gospel Spirit and of that tenderness of Conscience these men profess upon all occasions when pressed to any necessary complyance with the Laws of the Kingdom And therefore seeing it is so that these men will play any game rather than that in which the safety of the Church as well as State is concerned truly I think all the true Patriots of the Countrey ought to look upon them accordingly and give them such fare as by those Oaths they take when they are admitted to their office they are obliged to And seeing they are resolved we shall fall though they know it must needs be accompanied with so great a ruine to that Cause and Interest which was purchased with the bloud of the Martyrs which hath been a Sanctuary to distressed and banished Foreigners and which indeed as it is here maintained by so many prudent Laws is the only stay and support of all the Protestant Churches abroad seeing I say they are resolved to have their wills of this Church notwithstanding these sad and too much to be feared effects and consequences of it I do declare I think all true hearted Magistrates in whose hands the execution of the Laws does lie ought to let them know that they owe more Regard to the present Government of the Kingdom and that if they will continue fixt in their Resolves to bear down all that stands in their way to the undermining the Churches safety and reputation so on the other hand they the Magistrates are as well resolved to hinder by all legal and worthy means so great and so unseasonable a violence to those Laws wherein mens Estates and Liberties mens Religion and consequently their Souls are so much concerned And I am certain nothing is a greater argument among the present Magistrates either of Cowardize or else of Ignorance and Non-observation than to suffer such assaults upon Government without a suitable resentment of them and to connive at such practises as are apparently tending to shuffle in a Religion once again amongst us by which the Prince loses half his Government and the people all their Reason and Sense together And therefore Worthy Sirs I beg of you to consider what is incumbent upon you at present do not you let Justice sleep while covetousness and ambition while Faction and discontent is devouring and eating up all those sober principles whereby your Estates as well as any thing else is secured to you and your Posterity after you Let not a Church that teaches all her Members to live contentedly in all those subordinations the Providence of God hath placed them and up to all those Duties which belong to those several places I say let not this Church be scorned and trampled under feet by rude and revengeful persons And if you think them people of meek and peaceable