pride covetousness and other discontented lusts and partly by Jesuitick arts and Papall policies whose joynt aims are at this day to extirpate the whole race root and branch of the Reformed Catholick Christian Church and Ministry in England They conspire nothing more than that they may serve both the Bishops and Presbyters of England as Elias and Jehu did Baals Priests for this is the sense some men have of us and this is the sentence they have passed and seek to execute upon us as upon so many Cretians not Christians as if we were onely liars evil beasts and slow-bellies either imperious masters or unprofitable servants to the Church that so these new Masters may on all sides freely enjoy those superstitious and fanatick liberties which they have designed for their divided parties who despaired to prevail in England untill they had brought the English Clergie to undergo all manner of indignities and injuries CHAP. XII ALl which Tragedies that the people of England might behold and bear with the greater patience and stupidity they must by popular orators be perswaded 1. That all Bishops or presidentiall Fathers and Over-seers among the Clergie such as the Apostles and their immediate Successors first were are Antichristian truly so are Fathers in families Magistrates in cities and Chieftains in armies 2. That the ordaining of Presbyters by Bishops is meerly Popish so is the celebrating of Baptisme or the Lords Supper or the Lords day 3. That Christs Ministry appropriated to one order of men is a monopoly or a taking too much upon mens selves when others of the congregation may be as holy and able so is all order office and authority civil and military a meer monopoly when others may be as able and wise as the best Magistrates and Commanders 4. That all humane Learning is not onely superfluous but pernicious in the Ministers of the Gospel so is all skill industry and ability in all other workmen 5. That Ministers maintenance by Tithes Glebe-lands and other oblations is Jewish so is all justice and gratitude in paying labourers their wages 6. That the distinction of Clergie and Laity is arrogant and supercilious so are the titles of Master and Scholar Teacher and Disciple Priest and People Minister and ministred 7. That it was proud and insolent for any Clergie-men to be invested with honour to be stiled and respected as Lords Truly if it be no dishonour to any temporall Lord to become a Minister or Christs glorious Gospel nor doth he thereby lose his civil Lordship and dignity no more is it misbecoming learned grave and venerable Ministers of the Gospel the chief Fathers and governours of the Church to be adorned with honours and to enjoy as the favours of Christian Princes and States both the Titles and Revenues of their temporall Baronies and Lordships which they might for ought I could ever see as well deserve and use as any other Lords who had their Lordships by birth by purchase or by favour nor did Honour less become Ecclesiastick Rulers than it doth those military Commanders who I see can endure themselves to be called treated as Lords I confess under favour I do not understand how Church-government should be less capable of degrees and distinction in Governours than those which are civil or military since order and subordination must be in them all nor do I more understand how such chief Governours of the Church-militant as Bishops were and ought to be might not as well both merit and manage such honours and estates as any men who by far less abilities or pains do get to be Major-generals or Colonels and chief Commanders in an Army over poor Souldiers Sure the saving of souls is every way as hard and honourable a work as the killing of mens bodies which is the worst of a souldiers work or as the saving of mens temporall lives and estates which is the best of that employment nor is it less of true valour vigilance and resolution in learned and good Scholars to fight with and overcome the ignorance errours and barbarity of mankind than it is fortitude in good souldiers to suppress the rapines and injustice of mens extravagant actions But these and such like are the envious cobwebs the thin and ridiculous sophistries formerly used by some men of evil eyes and worse hearts out of principles full of ignorance or envy or covetousness or licentiousness or Atheism whereby to perswade silly people to follow these novell easie and more thrifty methods of saving souls which some swelling Libertines propound who have the confidence earnestly to invite this noble Nation to commit the whole managery of Christian Religion and of their souls eternall salvation to such new cheap and bold undertakers who adventure to minister in Christs name without any such character commission or conscience of divine authority which as Irenaeus and all the Ancients tell us were ever in a solemn visible and orderly manner derived by the hands of Bishops to the Presbyters or lawful Ministers of the Church as from Christ and the Apostles in an undoubted and uninterrupted succession of which Tertullian gives so excellent an account in his Book of prescription against Hereticks Their ostentations of naturall liberty of civil indulgence of rationall abilities of speciall gifts and undiscernable graces or which is most incredible of extraordinary calls from God All or any of these if they were really true yet will not be allowed as a justifiable ground for any mans usurpation or intrusion into any office military or civil without a visible commission derived from the supreme power in both much less are they sufficient pleas for any man to officiate in the Ministry Ecclesiasticall whose Supreme Authority is confessedly in Christ and the derivation or deduction of it in all ages is so visible constant and uniform that no man honestly learned can be ignorant where it resided or how it was derived Certainly it never was dispensed by the hands or power of Emperours Kings Protectors Princes or any civil Magistrates whose duty I conceive if they will act as Christians is not to alter or innovate this sacred authority and method used by Christ the Apostles and the Catholick Church but to preserve it as sacred and inviolable much less was it left to the spontaneous confidence the passionate suffrages and confused petulancies of common people who are the great and infallible prostrators of all Religion vertue honour order peace civility and humanity if left to themselves but it was divinely setled by Christ in the Apostles and by the Apostles in their successors the ordained Bishops and Presbyters of the Catholick Church in its severall branches and combinations who ever have been and ought to be under Christ the great Conservators the onely complete and regular Distributers of this holy ministeriall power as they have been to this day in this and all other orderly Churches of Christ without any controversie or contradiction without dispute or doubt
little proportion of plain easie and well-known truth which neither needs nor desires such Gnostick disguises such vapourings and vampings of uncouth language such muddy rather than mysterious clouds of words which rather signifie a crackt brain a fanatick spirit or an affected hypocrite who either knows not or cares not what they say or do than any such blessed broachings of rarities as they set forth their pageantries of new-drest Divinity to be with the emphasis of Gospel-truths precious sparks spirituall manifestations rare discoveries unheard of emanations the Saints anointing the uncarnating of a Christian the pryings of Gods children into their fathers glory their rising and reigning with Christ their deification with God With these and such like either torments of opinions or terriculaments of expressions do these new sort of Preachers seek not to edifie in the most holy faith but to scare and terrifie their silly sectators out of their sober senses and mother-wits by which God knows they are onely capable as babes of milk things and words easie to be understood but not of such hard and strong meat as these men proffer them which are indeed stones rather than bread and many times serpents more than fishes dry and bare bones or rotten and noysome carrion rather than savoury and wholsom nourishments of sound and Christian Doctrine But if any of these rare Master-cooks of Christianity whose art is to new dress and disguise old Divinity when they have first learned themselves then taught others to despise those plain and practick methods of Faith and Repentance of Piety and Charity which were wont to be commended to good Christians by the learned orderly and excellent Ministers of the Church of England if these mysterious Mountebanks do by chance hit upon some new notions and odde expressions either by reading some of the Speculatists of the Roman party as Harpius Nubergensis Thomas de Kempis Martin d' Espilla Teresa or the like if they can spell out Theologia Germanica or conne by heart the religious Rhodomontado's of H. N. if they can as Heraclitus his ass feed upon the tall thistles of Jacob Behmen Vanhelmont or some such piece of Familistick nonsense and Seraphick curiosity if they have naturally a chimerick fancy a stroke of Evans or Gostelowes crowing brains if in many odde ravings they perchance light upon something that seems truish and newish gay and glistering in Religion beyond what was heretofore known by themselves or usuall to the common people because neglected and despised by grave and sober Ministers Yet still all this their glory and invention amounts commonly to no more than the Devils setting Christ on the pinacle of the Temple not to exalt him but to tempt him the end and aim is that from the precipice of pride and presumption he may cast them down and destroy them After much bigness they bring forth perhaps some Scholastick subtilty some Sceptick nicety or Seraphick sublimity which onely serves to puff up but not at all to feed either themselves or their windy Disciples much after the rate that Origen did when he decayed or doted when from a learned Catechist at Alexandria from a grave and admired interpreter of Scripture he turned Chymist in Divinity Allegorist in Religion for leaving the fruitfull valleys and plain paths of necessary Christian verities he fancied nothing but high-flying curiosities and far-fetch'd fancies of which as Tertullian speaks good Christians have no need and so no desire since the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ is sufficiently and plainly revealed to them in the Scripture although even Tertullian himself as a man of an enormous wit and transcendent fancy too big for it self was hardly able afterward to keep within those sober bounds which sometime he prescribed to others after the good rule of S. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be soberly wise or wise with sobriety but He even He turned Enthusiast and driven by envy disdaine and anger beyond the bounds of Reason and Religion he forsook the Catholick Communion of the Church not in Doctrine so much as Discipline to comply with some fanaticks who fitted his sharp and melancholy humour which was prone to severities of conversation and extasies of speculation Not onely great wits as Origen and Tertullian so Nestorius and Apollinaris c. but lesser ones as Montanus and Manes and Arius whom Saint Jerome calls Daemonium meridianum are many times prone to adventure on the brinks of hell their itch and petulancy are not satisfied till their bold fancies and heterodox opinions have an haut-goust of blasphemy till they so far advance upon the suburbs of errour heresie and damnable Doctrine that they can hardly be fetched off by any salvoes of cunning sophistries with pretended inspirations or nice and subtil distinctions which are like high-tasted sawces made with garlick or onions purposely applied to tainted meats to make their putidness less perceptible or more passable with grosser palates As dead carcases so are the corrupt minds and doctrines of men the more putid by how much the more swell'd in the pomp of words Take their raptures rarities and novelties of our new Masters at their best they have ever much more in the shew than substance of Religion like Herons and Estriches they are more in the wing and feather than in the body and substance they are such precious discoveries as are justly nauseous to a gracious spirit and of which a good Christian may safely be ignorant If any simple souls do perchance light on any of their jingling notions and be taken with their new-sounding Divinity like the noyse of tinkling Cymbals or bag-pipes or Jews-trumps compared to that grave Church-musick which was made of the ancient harmony of Catholick Doctrine yet I see no cause for either the authors or followers of those novell niceties to be puffed up swelled so excessively in themselves nor yet to despise as they do all those grave Divines and godly Christians whose rack is not so high but their manger may be as full who can be content with manna though they have no quailes wherewith to gratifie their wanton appetites Truly I could never yet esteem these vapouring Seraphicks these new Gnosticks to be other than a kind of Gipsy-Christians or a race of Circulators Tumblers and Juglers in the Church who have more of little apish tricks and feats than of solid ability industry or honesty they impose upon the vulgar by a kind of legerdemain by a juggling and canting way in Religion much shifting up and down much capering and vaulting they use but they advance not at all in any vertue grace or knowledge They are a sort of funambulones dancers upon the ropes in Religion whose affected height and daring curiosity in their notions and motions doth not countervail the danger of their audacity or the impertinency of their activity nor have they any cause to despise those who walk more lowlily and soberly on
peevish and jealous against those that have more if we have much we easily grow proud high-conceited dictatorian Some of us are very rusticall morose and refractory others of us very imperious supercilious and magisteriall few of us of so wise calme and safe tempers as to be left to our selves in things of publick Office and Order lest we grow heady and extravagant Nor are we of so humble and meek Spirits as to be willingly led by others If left free we grow insolent popular and factious if under any Government or restraint we grow touchy refractory and petulant not easily kept within our own or others bounds untill by pregnant reason and prevalent power meeting together in wise and resolute magistrates we are at once convinced and commanded perswaded and over-awed to keep those honest bounds of order and subjection which do not onely best become us but ought to be least arbitrary because most necessary both for our own and the publick good most of us will be good subjects even to Church-Government as well as State when we see we must be so and few of us will be either quiet or content when we find that we may be what we or the vulgar will by loose Tolerations and indiscreet indulgences which betray Ministers no lesse than other men to many dangerous extravagancies To cure therefore the distempers of Religion and to restore some Health Beauty Order and Unity to this sick deformed disordered and divided Church of England the first applications as I humbly conceive must by wisdome and power be made to those that professe to be Ministers of the Gospel who must have as broken or started and dislocated bones whose flesh and muscles are highly swoln and enflamed not onely wholesome diet and Physick given them but such splinters and ligatures as may be at once gentle yet strong not bound so hard as may occasion paine or mortifying nor yet so loose as may suffer any constant dislocation or new flying out To such ruptures and inordinacies the many notions and raptures that Scholars and Preachers get by reading and conversing besides the pregnancy of their wits and ambition of their own Spirits are prone to tempt them no preacher is so meane but he would faine appeare some body if he despaire of his own merits as to publick notice and preferment then he applies to popular arts and lesser engines Discontent and ambition are observed both in old times and of later to have been the great perturbers of the Churches peace which some have written even of Mr. Cartwright himself a man of excellent Learning yet unsatisfied when he had not the good fortune to be so much favoured and preferred by Queen Elizabeth as others were who bare a part with him in publick Acts at Cambridge before that popular yet politick Princesse Who had no greater art in her Government than this to give not onely shrewd guesses at mens tempers and geniusses but exactly to calculate the proportions of their spirits and parts and accordingly either to refuse them or imploy them in Church or State Nor could she easily have kept this Church of England from flying in pieces in her dayes when many notable Ministers wits did work like new beere or bottled Ale to blow up the Government of the Church unlesse she had besides the Canons agreed in Synods and the good Lawes passed in Parliament applyed such wise able and resolute Governours to the Helme of the Church as were Parker Grindall Whitgift Sands Matthewes and others whom the stormes yet safety of the Church in those times shewed to be excellent Pilots and excellent Prelates no lesse than excellent Preachers Whose names and autority had then been made as odious and unpopular as now all Bishops and Episcopall Clergy have been if under God the resolute power and ponderous authority of the Princesse had not preserved them besides the Gravity Piety and prudence of their own carriage which abundantly stopped the mouthes of their clamorous enemies then and further justified them to all posterity to have been as the true Sons of wisdome so deservedly the venerable Bishops and Fathers of this then famous and flourishing Church I well know that Ministers in England above all sorts of men do stand bound in conscience and prudence to use all faire meanes for the speedy setling and happy restitution of the State of Religion in this Church because however many of them professe to be great patrons of piety and sticklers for Reformations either old or new yet most if not all our Church-deformities and miseries have been and still are imputed chiefly to their immoderations passions or indiscretions when too much left to themselves Some driving so furiously to conformity that they went beyond it not onely over-shooting themselves but the good Lawes Canons and Customes of this Church hereby putting the common people into high jealousies of superstition by their too great heats and surfeits of ceremonious innovations and affected formalities Other Ministers were so jealous and impatient of what they fancied rather than felt to be burthens in Religion that they not onely cast off some superfluous loades of new ceremonies but the very comely Garment Girdle and Government of this Church yea some of them at last flung off all their clothes and tare off as Hercules in his fiery shirt much of their own skins by a frantick kind of excesse severely revenging even other mens reall or imputed faults upon themselves and upon the whole Church committing greater injuries than ever they did or indeed could suffer while they possessed their soules in patience and peace whereas now they have left themselves and this whole Church as the Tortoise did that was weary of its shell and put it off almost nothing for safety comelinesse or honour but are nakedly exposed to all those dangers and deformities which attend any Church Religion and Ministry which being once ungirt as to order unity and Government will soon be unblest as to all holy improvements either in Piety Verity or Charity Hence hence it is that such a crowd of importune and insolent mischiefes have as the Sodomites upon the Angels and Lot at his doore not onely rudely pressed but notoriously prevailed too farre upon all Ministers and the State of the Reformed Religion chiefly the jealousies feuds factions animosities immoderations indiscretions divisions and dissociations among Ministers who can never expect to see common people return from their madnesse and giddinesse to sober senses untill they see their Preachers to recover their wits and their pastors to become patternes as of piety and zeal so of humility and order of charity and unity of gravity and constancy of meeknesse and wisdome and not to be like mad dogs so daily snarling and snapping at one another so biting and infecting their own and others flocks with their poysonous foam and teeth that at last they disorder the whole frame of the Church and endanger the civil peace of the Nation whence some
carried on by Jesuitick Policies Principles and Practises against all rules of Morality and Piety Honor and Humanity when these and some of the like rank leaven are recanted and removed from the Roman party On the other side when the Protestants and all that pretend to any name of Reformation shall be ashamed under any cloak of Piety or Christian Liberty either to rob from God and his Church from his service and speciall servants the Ministers of the Gospell or not to restore to them what is theirs by all Lawes Divine and Humane by right of Testamentary Donation by religious consecration by civill sanction and confirmation by long use and peaceable fruition no way forfeitable by Man or alienable from God whose the fee right and property is as a gratitude and homage payed to the Honour Worship and service of his great Name When Papists forbear their Superstitious Sacriledge and Protestants their Covetous Sacriledge when the first restore the Truth Purity and Integrity of Christian Religion which they have long detained in unrighteousnesse when the other restores that Order Honour and Estate which belongs to the support and government the decency and Majesty of Christ his Church and true Religion Then and not before may we expect some happy close among these so divided Western Churches whom first Papall policy and pride now Plebian loosenesse and insolency on all sides factious and schismaticall covetous and cruell practises have now no lesse divided than former different Doctrines opinions and ceremonies did the reconciliation of which many learned and peaceable men have seriously studied soberly proposed and charitably endeavoured The want almost despaire now without multiplied Miracles of which most desirable atonement the sad consequences which must needs attend the continuance and increase of desperate defiances implacable violences and cruell immoderations on all sides these these I say are calamities more deplorable than any that a Christians eyes can behold in all the world since they are at once the sin shame and misery of Christendom besides the scandall and scorn of all the world It being a farre sadder sight to see Christians thus rob and spoile thus worry and wound one another than to see them persecuted by Heathens and Infidels Jewes and Mahometans as it is farre more horrid to see men fighting with one another than beasts or brethren than strangers Without any doubt the mutuall animosities and barbarities exercised by Christians on all sides as they will in time open a doore for Turkish power to prevaile against them so meane while it makes Christians turn Turkes one against another Besides that these unchristian Practises on all sides do leave not onely the looser sort of men and women to an Atheisticall indifferency as to any Religion but the more sober and just Christians on every side Protestants and Papists are so scandalized and perplexed that they do not wel know what course of Religion to hold nor how to steere between the grosse errors on the one side and the base rapines on the other It being an hard choice for a serious and honest Christian whether he should keep Communion with superstitious and Idolatrous Papists or with schismaticall and sacrilegious Protestants the one refusing to be justly reformed the other deforming even Reformation it self Amidst which miserable distances and disadvantages of Christian Religion this sad event and burden of the Lord may be too easily foretold by one of the smallest Prophets That as Atheisme Profanenesse and Irreligion is like to get ground on all sides through the deformities immoderations varieties inconsistencies of Religion so to be sure the Papall party repute interest will daily prevaile every where as of later yeares it hath against those of the Protestant and Reformed profession since they see even the most famous setled and flourishing Church of England which was the Mirror of Reformation the noblest standard of Religion the ablest Antagonist against Romish pride and superstition in all the world this even this sought now to be so reduced so battered and divided so peeled and spoiled distressed deformed dissipated and despised and this even by those that pretend high to Reformation which must they say be attained and perfected by utter devesting even this so famous a Church and its deserving Clergy of their former Honour and Estate Order and Government Authority and Dignity Revenues and Reputation Uniformity and Unity all which heretofore they enjoyed by the mercy of God and good will of such Princes and Peers Parlaments and People as were the best Christians and best reformed who justly abhorred those sacrilegious and sharking arts which make either Religion or Reformation Preachers or true Professors either avaritious or beggerly and necessitous which their Wisdome and Piety knew would be the way to undermine and obstruct all true Religion and progresse of Reformation all experience teaching us that mankind is naturally prone rather to follow liberall Errours than niggardly Truths few men will adhere to hungry Holinesse and famishing Reformations such as some men have designed and vehemently agitated of late years in England little God knows to the credit or advance of any true Reformation It cannot then but be most evident to you O my noble Countreymen and to all wise men that as the sad condition of the Church of England at once pleaseth and hardneth the Romanists who are glad to see her thus wasted though they abhor the means and methods of her misery so the reall interest of the true Reformed Religion in England seems now much weaker than ever it was much more exposed to the objections and obloquies the Policies and Practices of pragmatick Jesuits and other spitefull Papists who with infinite Industry with all Arts and Alacrity daily undermine all the remaining parts yea and the very foundation as well as the reputation of all reformed Religion in the hearts of the people of England Doubtlesse if Popish Priests which are men of learning and sober lives had liberty in publick to promote their party they would draw most men and women after them in the Novelties Distractions Confusions and Deformities of Religions yea and of Reformations here in England in despite of all the orderly and Orthodox Clergy yet left in England so little would they consider any stop or impediment that either Presbytery or Independency Scotl. or New-Engl can give them who have all been made active and contributive to their own shame and to the generall ruine of this Church and consequently to the reall advantages of Popery which professeth great uniformity and constancy in their Religion Nor can the subtil factors for the Papacy but expect and hope by degrees in a few years to bring in again into England the justly feared and abhorred Inundations of the Sea of Rome in its superstitions and usurpations against both which our wise and pious progenitors both since and before the Reformation did in many Parlaments make severall cautions provisions Premunire's and sanctions to preserve
for which no Apology but made and affected necessity is alledged which none but God Almighty can convince confute and revenge hence those convulsions faintings swoonings and dyings which are befaln the Church of England and its holy profession the Reformed Religion which heretofore was a pure and unspotted Virgin free from the great offence constant to her principles and duties both to God and man alwayes victorious by her patience This seems now besmeared all over with blood this is sick deformed and ashamed of her self so many sanguinary and sacrilegious spirits pretend to court and engross her such foul spots are found upon Her which are not the spots of Gods children which no nitre no sope no fullers earth no palliations or pretensions of humane wit policy or necessity can wash away or make clean til He plead Her cause take away Her reproch whose love induced him to shed his own precious blood for his Church a noble eminent uniform and beautifull part of which I must ever own the Church of England to have been Of whose former holy and healthfull constitution I am daily the more assured by those modern eruptions and corruptions defections and infections errours and extravagancies blasphemies and impudicities which have so fiercely assaulted and grievously wasted the Truths the Morals the Sanctities the Solemnities the Mysteries and Ministrations the Government and Authority the whole Order and Constitution of the Church of England clearly evincing to me that this Church was heretofore not onely tolerably but most commendably reformed and happily established upon the pillars of piety and prudence verity and unity purity and charity Nor do I doubt but the blessed Apostle S. Paul with all those Primitive planters and Reformers of Churches would have given the right hand of fellowship to the Christian Bishops Presbyters and people of this Church of England cheerfully communicating with us in all holy things blessing God and greatly rejoycing to have beheld that power and peace that stedfastness and proficiency that beauty order and unity which was so admirably setled and happily preserved many years in this Church by the joynt consent and suffrage of the Nation Princes Parlaments and People cheerfully giving up their names to Christ and willingly yielding themselves to the Lord and to his Ministers Nor do I believe those Primitive and large-hearted Christians who brought the price of their estates and laid it down at the Apostles feet testifying their esteem of all things but as loss and dung in comparison of the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ that these would have ever repined or envied at the riches plenty civil honours peace and prosperity wherewith the Governours and Ministers of Christs Church were here endowed No those first-fruits of the Gospel had too good hearts to have evil eyes because the eyes of Princes Peers and people had been good to the Clergie investing them with that double honour which the Spirit of God thinks them worthy of while they rule well and labour in the Word and Doctrine so as the godly Bishops and Presbyters of the Church of England did abundantly since the Reformation nor was their labour of love in vain in the Lord. What was really amisse or remisse in any Ministers as to their minds or manners as some Errata's we find even in those Pastors and Churches which were of the Apostolicall print the very first best Edition certainly there wanted not sufficient authority and wisdom skill or will in the Governours of Church and State to have reformed all things in such a way of Christian moderation as should have gratified no mens envies revenges ambitions covetousness and the like inordinate passions but have kept all within those bounds of piety justice charity and discretion which would have satisfied all wise and honest mens desires and consciences Such an Apostolical spirit and method of Reformation as would have cleared the rust and not consumed the metall sodered up the flaws but not battered down the whole frame of so goodly a Church this spirit might have mended all things really amiss in England at a far easier and cheaper rate than either calling for fire from heaven or calling in the Scots to quench our intestine flames with oyl To purge the English floor from all chaff there was no need to raise up such fierce winds as the Devil did when he overthrew the whole house and oppressed all Jobs children with the rubbish and ruine both of superstructures and foundations No work requires more wary wise and tender hearts and hands too than Church-work or that which men call Reformation of Religion which easily degenerates to high deformities if bunglers that are rash rude deformed and unskilfull undertake it Nothing is more obvious than for Empiricks to bring down high and plethorick constitutions to convulsions and consumptions by too much letting blood and other excessive evacuations those are sad purgations of Churches which with threatning some malignant humours do carry away the very life spirit and soul of Religion the whole order beauty unity and being of a Church especially so large so famous so reformed so flourishing an one as the Ch. of Engl. was which some mens ignorance malice and excess hath a long time aimed at impatient not to forsake yea and quite destroy both It and all its true Ministers to whose learning and labours they owe whatever spiritual gifts Christian graces priviledges or comforts they can with truth pretend to All which I believe they have not much bettered or increased since their rude Separations and violent Apostasies by which they have shewed themselves so excessively and unthankfully exasperated against the Fathers that begat them and the Mother that bare them more like a generation of vipers full of poysonous passions which swell the soul to proud and factious distempers than like truly humble meek and regenerate Christians who cannot be either so unholy or so unthankfull as to requite with shame despite and wounds the womb that bare them and the breasts that gave them suck not feeding them with fabulous Legends superstitious inventions or meer humane Traditions but with the sincere milk of Gods word as it was contained in the holy Scriptures which were the onely constant fountain from whence the Church of England drew and derived both its Doctrinals and its Devotionals its Ministry and Ministrations Of which truth having such a cloud of witnesses so many pregnant and undeniable demonstrations before God and the world before good Angels and Devils before mens own consciences in this Church and before all other reformed Churches round about I suppose these are sufficient Testimonies in the judgement of You O my worthy Countrey-men and of all other sober Christians to vindicate the Church of England that it never deserved either of Princes Parlaments or People so great exhaustings and abasings as some men have sought to inflict upon Her Over which no tongue is
so eloquent no pen so pathetick as to be able sufficiently to express eye no so melting as to weep enough no heart so soft and diffusive of its sorrows as worthily to lament when they consider that wantonness of wickedness that petulant importunity that superfluity of malice that unsatisfied cruelty of some men who have endeavoured to cast whole cart-loads of injust reproches vulgar injuries and shameful indignities upon the whole Church of England seeking to bury with the burial of an Asse either in the dunghill of Papall pride and tyranny or popular contempt and Anarchy all its former renown and glory its very name and being together with the office order authority distinction and succession of its Ancient Apostolick and Evangelical ministery which hath been the savour of life unto life the mighty power of God to the conversion and salvation of many thousand souls in the Church of England Whose sore Calamities and just Complaints having thus far presented to Your consideration and compassion it is now time for me to enquire after the causes and occasions of its troubles miseries confusions and feared vastations in order to find out the best methods and medicines for Her timely cure and happy recovery if God and man have yet any favour or compassion for Her The end of the first Book BOOK II. SEARCHING THE CAUSES AND OCCASIONS OF THE Church of England's decayes CHAP. I. BUt it is now time most honoured and worthy Countrey-men after so large and just so sore and true a complaint in behalf of the Church of England and the Reformed Religion heretofore wisely established unanimously professed in this Nation to look after the rise and originall the Causes and Occasions of our Decayes and Distempers of our Maladies and Miseries which by way of prevention or negation I have in the former Book demonstrated to be no way imputable to the former frame state or constitution of the Church of England but they must receive their source from some other fountain The search and discovery of which is necessary in order to a serious cure for rash and conjecturall applications to sick patients are prone as learned Physitians observe to commute their maladies or to run them out of one disease into another but not to cure any turning Dropsies into Jaundise and Feavers into Consumptions The greatest commendation of Physitians next their skill to discerne is to use such freedome in their discoveries and such fidelity in their applyings as may least flatter or conceal the disease In this disquisition or inquiry after the Causes and Occasions of our Ecclesiastick distempers I will not by an unwelcome scrutiny or uncharitable curiosity search into those more secret springs and hidden impulsives which proceed as our Blessed Saviour tells us out of mens hearts into their lives and actions such as are wrathfull revenges unchristian envies sacrilegious covetings impotent ambitions hypocriticall policies censorious vanities pragmatick impatiencies an itch after novelties mens over-valuing of themselves and undervaluing of others a secret delight in mean and vulgar spirits to see their betters levelled exauctorated impoverished abased contemned a general want of wisdome meekness humility and charity a plebeian petulancy and wanton satiety even as to holy things arising from peace plenty and constancy of enjoying them These spiritual wickednesses which are usually predominant in the high places of mens souls being Arcana Diaboli the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 stratagemata Satanae the secret engines depths and stratagems used by the Devil to undermine the hearts of Christians to loosen the foundations of Churches and to overthrow the best setled Religion being least visible and discoverable for they are commonly covered as mines with the smooth surfaces and turfs of zeale sanctity reformation scrupulosity conscience c. these I must leave to that great day which will try mens works and hearts too when men shall be approved and rewarded not according to their Pharisaick boastings popular complyings and specious pretensions but according to their righteous actions and honest intentions Onely this I may without presumption or uncharitableness judge as to the distempers of our times and the ruinous state of the Church of England that many men who have been very busie in new brewing and embroyling all things of Religion would never have so bestirred themselves to divide dissipate and destroy the peace and polity of this Church if they had not been formerly offended and exasperated either by want of their desired preferment which S. Austin observes of Aerius the great and onely stickler of old against Bishops or by some Animadversion which they called persecution although it were no more than an exacting of legal conformity and either sworn or promised subjection as to Canonicall obedience Many men would have been quiet if they had not hoped to gain by rifling their Mother and robbing their Fathers Some at the first motions might perhaps have good meanings and desires as Eve had to grow wiser but they were soon corrupted by eating the forbidden fruit by the unlawfulness of those means and extravagancy of those methods they used to accomplish them But God and mens own consciences will in due time judge between these men and the Church of England whether they did either intend or act wisely or worthily justly or charitably gratefully or ingenuously This I am sure if they have the comfort of sincerity as to their intent they have the horrour of unsuccessfulness to humble them as to the sad events which have followed preposterous piety CHAP. II. THe chiefest apparent cause and most pregnant outward occasion of our Ecclesiastick mischiefs and miseries as I humbly conceive ariseth from that inordinate liberty and immodest freedome which of later years all sorts of people have challenged to themselves in matters of Religion presuming on such a Toleration and Indulgence as incourageth them to chuse and adhere to what doctrine opinion party perswasion fancy or faction they list under the name of their Religion their Church fellowship and communion nor are people to be blanked or scared from any thing which they list to call their Religion unless it have upon it the mark of Popery Prelacy or Blasphemy of which terrible names I think the common people are very incompetent judges nor do they well know what is meant by them as the onely forbidden fruit every party in England being prone to charge each other with something which they call Blasphemy and to suspect mutually either the affecting of Prelacy or the inclining to Popery in wayes that seem arrogant and imperious in themselves also insolent and injurious to others each aspiring so to set up their particular way as to give law to others not onely proposing but prescribing such Doctrine Discipline Worship Government and Ministry as they list to set up according to what they gather or guess out of Scripture whereof every private man and woman too as S. Jerom tells of the