best appearing Grounds of Dissent and Separation and that I might so do I thought it best first to set aside those persons that have none 5. Obedience hath done you no hurt in your Plot of Separation though a little more Obedience in you or them that have on this score separated would have done the Church of England much good They that are drawn and held to you by this Argument are Children and Servants who certainly are the most defensible of all the Families that belong to these Tribes considering they do in some sense assert hereby what their Parents and Masters do deny to the King and the Church viz. Obedience There are many considerations of great efficacie to binde these persons to the very Sentiments as well as Commandments of their domestic Superiours 'T is sufficient if there were only in the case a quiet life Trade and Portion to be forfeited by their reluctancie and this there is too often to say nothing of those fearful curses some are afraid to incur being pronounced on them by their dying friends on condition of returning to the obedience to the English Antichristian and Idolatrous Church I think the Servants are under the hardest terms who for the most part have had other kind of Education and come to their Masters with Catechisms Principles and Practises according to the Church of England and therefore must unlearn somethings and disuse more in the practice of their Religion before they can comply with yours You know a little skill in Case-Divinity will help these young people to some ease and the very Doctrine you often needlesly press of an indispensable and prime subjection to God will do them real good and you know the subjection we owe to the Church and the King for Gods-sake supercedes the obedience we owe to Parents and Masters if they once draw up to a competition And ' truly 't is pity but these should be relieved not only in respect of the Church and the good of their Souls but also of their bodies especially when they are galli'd often a whole day to hunger to strange Prayers and strange Propositions whereof many of your underling Conventicles are very full and is not unknown to your Chief Rabbies and Masters Let me then dismiss these as not bringing much credit to any Society and least of all to yours whose pretended formality and essence is to outgo others in purity of heart and life The ground of your Dissent is next to be lookt into which after the most diligent search that I could make seems finally resolved into this Principle viz. That nothing may be lawfully done or used in the Church of Christ without Command or Example for it in Scripture For I suppose your chief dislike of our Church is because in its usages there are somethings inscriptural and so I may boldly say will be while the world stands But this is such a Principle that if you resolve to stand by it and are content to abide by the just Consequences of the same it will as well serve you against any Church as ours not only that of Rome but Geneva not only against the late magnified Platform of Scotland but New England also But to be short either you approve of this Principle or you do not if you do why do you not observe it and govern your selves within your selves by it If you do not why would you obtrude it on the Church of England and desert her too for want of an impossible Conformity to it For examine the next most Evangelical Assembling and tell me whether there be not some Circumstances in the time place gesture manner of Preaching and Praying for which the best Textuary of you all can bring forth no plain positive and particular Commands and Examples from the Holy Scripture And these Circumstances of yours ye are over-rul'd in and suffer your selves to be obedient to on a Vassalage to some private man and it may be he no great Apostle yet continuing to blame those that in as innocent and much more decent Ceremonies and Circumstances are observant of Authority and were derived from those men that were not ashamed to live nor afraid to die for the Gospel Moreover this being the great Postulatum of the Science of Non-conformity and Novel Puritanism may I be so bold as to ask you whence you had it Not from the Scriptures I am sure neither in word nor sense not from Examples of Jewish or Christian Church in the Scripture registred for they both used Ceremonies and Circumstances in Worship again took them up and laid them down without the interposition of a particular Divine Command and yet are guiltless All that I can find of Scriptures that you are wont to alledge for this Opinion are some conceptions of your own on those Texts that mention God's Holiness and Jealousie That thou shalt not add nor diminish c. which have been an hundred times answered to you and had you been ingenuous the Answers had long before removed the dotage You will not say sure that this is a Principle enforced on you by Spiritual Wisdom and prudential debates in the understanding of every man that is possessed with a due fear of God for this were to make your selves the only true Christians or to be found if you venture to talk of prudence in the same Oven wherein you seek to finde or to put your Adversaries But the Church of England must be cautious in contending against this Principle for scarce any of her Members do but they are readily accused for disparaging the fulness of Scripture for speaking un-Protestantlike of the perfection of that Sacred Volume and lastly that Christ as Moses was not faithful in his house Which Accusations were they true would signifie but they are not true inasmuch as the Members of the Church of England have always willingly asserted and learnedly justified the perfection of Holy Scriptures as having in them a sufficient and full Revelation of supernatural Truths and the Substantials of God's Worship and the advancing moral and civil Duties to a more sublime and spiritual height by directing them to a more noble end and exacting performance of them in a holy manner Bishop Sanderson Pref. to 20 Serm. But then 't is added by that renowned Bishop that this the Protestants do assert without any purpose thereby to exclude belief of what is otherwise reasonable or the practise of what is prudential Idem ibid But the truth is that Bishop might say what he pleased my meaning is that his Exercitations on the Cause of the Church of England as it stands in Controversie with you are above your refuting Else though Mr. Hookes's be a longsome Book why are not the Right Reverend Sanderson's few Sermons and two Prefaces taken into consideration For doth he not enervate your Principle and establish our Ceremonies with that freeness as if he craved favour from no man's Reason or Learning Therefore let it be thought no
A LETTER OF RELIGION TO THE PROTEST ANT-DISSENTERS FROM The Church of England of what denomination soever in the County of Kent wherein is reported the Ground of their Dissent their Worship way of Instruction and behaviour towards Laws and Government To which is added A perswasive to Conformity at least an acquiescence in the Religion established By a Curate of the same County LONDON Printed by F. Leach for Chr. Wilkinson over against St. Dunstans Church in Fleetstreet 1675. A LETTER c. IF I thought it would any thing contribute to the success of this Paper to set down particular Motives by which I became perswaded to write to you I would not have forgone the pains though it had cost me a long and distinct Paragraph I hope it may be enough to say that I am one of the meanest Clergy-men in the Church of England in whom there should be always a Conscience of its condition and a zeal to do any office that is but probable for its peace and establishment and moreover that I think there is something in the present guise of Affairs that may call you at this time to heed any man or any thing that means no worse than to awaken you after many to another consideration I have assigned my Paper to you of Kent because dwelling in the same County I have been more capable to observe you in such particulars as are here considered and not knowing but the dissenters of other Connties may not be such as you in all the Articles and practises of your dissent from the Church of England I therefore shall leave them to others who have greater abilities and better opportunities to deal with them And though in London for an hundred good Reasons the Heads of all dissenters may be presum'd to reside for that is the Mount from whence a long time you have had your various Patterns yet considering my own insufficiencie to manage any matter and withal that there are many in the same City of strength and warmth enough to take knowledge of and reprove too any thing contrary or prejudicial to the estabilihed Religion in their ablest Adversaries I betake my self to the weaker Country and leave them to convince and perswade at least to mind those Head-men of the City in what Opinions and Practises they will continue to live The beginning of my attempt on you shall be thus fair as first to lay together those grounds of dissent which either in Print or Discourse I have found owned by such among you who think they can give Reasons for their dissent Yet before I do this it is perhaps but very needful to interpose thus much and to tell you especially those among you who boast of number that there are many practical Dissenters from us and appear mostly at your Assemblies who cannot be suspected to have any grounds and indeed have none or no other but what are so apparently weak that themselves are ashamed to confess them notwithstanding they are wholly managed by them and when they are contested with are forc'd to say them in another dress or nothing For there are many conducted to your Societies and fill your Meeting-houses on no better score than Curiosity Discontent Designe Dependance and Obedience In which enumeration because there is one good word or two which you are wont to take presently for good Arguments give me leave to call them over again and annex unto them a small Paraphrase 1. Curiosity I know not whether old descriptions of Virtues or Vices will serve those of the present Age for 't is conceited our Virtues are greater but known I am sure that our Vices are not less and even in this particular of Curiosity which School-Divinity hath reckoned for a Vice for though more knowledge be the pretence yet the appetite may be inordinate perverse and vitious even after knowledge And such surely is That which shall engage men to leave their immediate places and duties to pursue an idle inspection and acquaintance with the Practises and Opinions of others and for love of this satisfaction only shall address themselves to every Meeting-house and place of Conventicle intending to make no more gain thereby either to themselves or others than to be able to become pleasant and talkative about divers manners matters and Persons over their Meat Wine and Coffee of this sort there are not a few among you and of whom you are not all ignorant for it needs no proof they are not careful to conceal themselves nor apprehensive of any injury done to them when they are censured as curious Not that I think you have all the curious ones among you or that this sort of Curiosity is all that is to be found among the Professors of Religion for indeed there is more as is evident by such Questions as are very familiar with us which though Fashion and Custome do now save from being condemn'd commonly yet nothing but Curiosity is in their birth and original For not to go further who can give any better account of this or the like Quest How doth Mr. A. B. preach or was it a good Sermon Supposing there was nothing preached but the common and invariable truths of the Gospel as is for the most part supposed by such Inquirers for the Questions and the designe of them that so ask rarely refer to truth or falshood which are Questions only material in instructing men to Salvation and therefore these Questions are made to know with what voice face gesture or perhaps method 't is preach'd which are all idle Curiosities in so weighty an affair as the Doctrine of Eternal Life But to say truth You above all others do invite the Curious and do not often suffer them to lose their labour in such a miserable quest For you are not contented with the general and plain Doctrines of Christianity either in preaching or hearing but betake your selves to odd and uncouth Subjects which do not concern the Substance of a Christian's faith or life but are devised and framed to the Hypothesis of your peculiar Saintship And when a Text containing wholesom and necessary Doctrine falls into your hand it is so shattered into niceties or smothered by your Phrases that though the Curious be gratified the plain man is little edified The Curious come not to you for truth or pertinacie but for that whatever it be they think they have not yet had any where else and as long as so much of your study is laid out to provide for them as you have been often told they will be your Customers And as a man presented with a fresh Nosegay at first will handle it gently and often scent it though he is sure 't will quickly grow flat and wither so do the Curious with your Phrases till their very thinking on them makes them sink in their esteem and so would desert you as well as them but that their Experiences make them hope you will next time provide them more
How many soever they be you procure to your selves by this trifling and how bad soever they are in themselves yet they are not so distress'd as to want a piece of Scripture to help them when by discourse they are reduced to that modesty as to be asham'd of a naked and profane Curiosity for then as you have taught them their Curiosity is Scriptural and holy and the Text is 1 Thes 5. 21. Prove all things c. As if a man was thereby obliged to peep into every corner and forsaking his own station to hunt after new matters to try his skill about and not to stay till they are offered to him as matters concerning and weighty for every matter offered to us is not worth searching into and by those too that we have some reason to think are affected with care and Conscience for the good of our Souls 2. Discontent is another thing that hath added to the number of Dissenters which I might call without taking extraordinary licence to my self spite and peevishness For some in whose thoughts it never entred to alter their Principles or so much as to question the usages of the Church of England have yet made too open shew of deserting the Church by a bold frequenting your Meetings when the only reason of so doing was some occasional heat they have lately had with their lawful Ministers For if a Minister either prest by a Conscience of his duty or by the necessity of his condition do venture to take a measuring-cast of the Tythes due to him from his Neighbours Farm and would thereby adjust some mistakes and ill customs to do himself justice if there be no Arts left for the Owner to continue the fraud he shall be sure to find this woful revenge ready for him viz. That his angry Neighbour will hear him no more And to carry on this hasty and unwarrantable resolution he for a while perhaps keeps at home afterwards hovers about some neighbour Parishes and at last settles upon a Conventicle where whatever his Motives were for so doing he is sure to be welcome And if you had leisure or did dare to ask such a one his reasons of departure from us and joyning with you which were but fair in such a change you would find the account very shameful For it is not his love and liking of you but his despite and revenge to his Minister and he commends your Exercises on no other reason but to disgrace his Sermons I know some of you have ways not only to salve the man's Conscience but even to sanctifie the very occasion of leaving us but the great Topick from whence your Methods are derived is Interest not Integrity 3. Designe hath helpt you much in this matter There being some who have such desires and Projects in their Heads distinct enough from Religion which can never be accomplished but by your Success and Prosperity You well remember I suppose when his Majesty was restor'd to the Throne of his Ancestors there were many with him returned to their own Estates that had long been under the hands and embezelments of men that knew how to make a good Market of an unnatural War These men enjoy'd what they had thus basely gotten long enough to make them in love with what they possessed and such love they have thereto still that they will not be out of the Designe for another embrace For there are many pleasant Meadows large Woods and goodly Houses which yet hang in their eyes though they do not stick in their fingers but these can never be compassed again by them without making a new Bead-roll of Delinquents repairing to Haberdashers-Hall and extirpating Episcopacie that is by bringing all things again into War and confusion Or if it be done peaceably yet cannot be done without laying Bishops aside and distributing their Lands Now how can any labouring with this designe of a re-investiture to such Lands more properly bestow himself and his ways than in a diligent attendence on your Conventicles wherein Bishops have been so often declar'd your utter Enemies and the rooting them out both your aims and prayers There is little in such Designers Consciences to byass them more to you than to Rome but dreading that Church is not their friend in this particular they continue with others but on worse Principles to cry out against her It may perhaps be Objected that all of you are not for Alienation of Church-Land but some are against it and are ready as some of your Brethren at first did to declare against it If this be true of which there is some suspicion you may please to make it known at your next meeting which will be well for us but I doubt not for your selves 4. Dependance hath given you some advantage which because it is various I will only instance in such common connexions as are every where observable to have a power to increase the bodies of any sort of men that shall think fit to separate themselves for a distinct Society The Dependances which I mean are those which have a strong relation to food and raiment such as the Shop-keeper hath on the good Customer and the Tenant on the hopeful Landlord which though they are not intrinsecally evil nor the arts of obliging one and the other to be condemned as universally dishonest yet if on such considerations men shall sort themselves to a Sect and distinguish out to themselves a meet Religion or Religious party they are wicked and unreasonable Neither will it help you to say that there are the same presumptions of such among us and though it were true as in this 't is probable what you say For whatever mens secret motives are in abiding with the Church of England they are besides under a known Law for obedience and conformity to it by which all men under the same Government are equally obliged the Seller as well as the Buyer the Tenant as well as the Landlord which is a motive more extrinsecally honest than the other can pretend unto But to see men take a fair place in your meetings not to see and hear best but to be seen and noted best to remove from thence timely to the door and there to abide the train of the Company in their departure and all this time to distribute glances smiles and cringes according to the hopefulness of the person going out and lastly to acknowledge to their private Friends that their Trades and livelihoods engage them so to do whatever profit it brings to them can be no great comfort to you unless you are wonderfully pleased with gang and multitude I will acknowledge that 't is not to be believed that you can easily discriminate those from others or if you could that you would exclude them but yet I know this to be a truth and is to be told only those of you who glory in your number and sincerity My intent is to speak to such that understand and own the
unreasonable request of mine to you who are engaged in this County to the way of dissention from us if I desire you to peruse that Author and to proceed moderately if you can in your Inconformity till you or yours have answered him Neither can I think the denying of this your Principle will argue an Opinion in those that oppose it that Christ was less faithful than Moses For if he hath made known unto us all things that he hath heard of his Father John 15. 15. as to that Errand about which his Father sent him as Moses did in respect of the promulgation of the Laws he received from God for the Instruction and Government of the Israelites and yet left some circumstances unmentionned he is not unfaithful nor his dispensation uncomplete nor fail'd any more than St. Paul to declare the whole Counsel of God though he hath said nothing of the Antipodes Motion of the Earth or World in the Moon no nor so much of God's Decrees as some others have and continue to do What Ceremonies and Circumstances are recorded in the New Testament as the issues of the Will of the Great Captain of our Salvation to be constantly and universally practised in his Church let him be anathematized that renounceth to them either in Opinion or Practice and let the Church of England stand charged of partiallity and falsehood If any children of her Family will not say Amen But if many Acts of Religion and Piety are commanded in their Substance only in Scripture and men cannot perform them without circumstance what should be the Reason not the pretence why lawful Authority which is judge of decencie and always aims at a blessed Uniformity and in pursuance thereof injoyns nothing contrary to the least Iota of the will of our Saviour should not determine them when de facto some circumstances will though variously be used and determined by every private person But should this very obnoxious Principle be allowed you yet I make a Question whether you have not exceeded in your modern cavil the fairest extension of it For under pretence of precisely standing to Scripture and therein often to words sounds and syllables you have rejected somethings that are Scriptural in sense and signification at least in the judgment of those that are as pious and learned as your selves and infinitely beyond you in number and Antiquity yet still within the acknowledged Church of Christ For what a daring rudeness was it in you to damn Episcopacie supposing such as obtains in England as Unscriptural if the Jus Divinum thereof which is equivalent to the obligation of Scripture be so fairly pleadable by men that are ever ready to go down with you into the Sand to defend it at any Weapon in the Spiritual Armory and are no near at a loss or short of you in Piety than Learning For not to remember your former rage against this Government on the account of the former Principle or none I ask whether ever any Society of men were unchurcht for being govern'd by Bishops but by you For to reckon our Episcopacie Antichristian is as much as to unchurch us And though the Long-Parliament-Sermons call'd it Prelacie yet thereby they meant nothing else but our Episcopacie both in sense and execution But the people must have the new word Prelacie as then used by you having something yet left in them of the antient reverence to Episcopacie But if the Divine right of Episcopacie be not demonstrable as I believe it is yet hath it not as fair pretence thereto as any of those Hebrew or Scotch Roots from whence your different Associations are derived For let it be shewn wherein it comes behind in evidence to your forming and predominant Theses viz. The Doctrine of Lay-Elders and purity of Ministers The Doctrine of the Church-Covenant and Independent-Pastors Or again That the Gospel hath so restrained the Subject of Baptism as to exclude Infants And that men may now expect the same degree of conduct and assistance from the Holy Ghost to guide them into all truth and even to prevent study and meditation as the Apostles had c. And as it is in Government so I go on to demand of you in the point of worship Who ever besides your selves ran away from an explicite Communion with a Church for having a form of Prayer for kneeling at the Lords-Supper for the use of the Cross after Baptism and for the Surplise when they were declared not essential to Religion nor substantial in Worship but recommended and enjoyned out of Reverence to Antiquity and zeal for Uniformity by those who had Authority over us yet never asserted any other Authority in such matters but for edification Concerning which Ceremonies there is no man among you who seems to have retained discretion or a faculty of judging but only hovers and makes slight reflections but never prove them to be directly sinful unless by the former weak and every where even among your selves contradicted Principle The Doctrines of the Church of England contained in the 39 Articles have of late obtained to some better respect among you and on a sudden grow into favour with many Dissenters which one would think were a good pledge of their farther conformity there being nothing as I know in our Government and Worship that is contradictory or abhorrent from those Articles But what the reason should be of your approbation or whether you be not real in it I know not but if you are then proceed to examine other matters and your selves by them I doubt if you were urged to subscribe to them you would again as heretofore have your exceptions and only acknowledge for truth in them those which be the great Commandments However it were but fair if you do own our Articles to let the rest of your Societies know from your own mouths that there are some good things among us that they may become more modest in their revilings who seldome rate us below the Idolatrous the Superstitious and Antichristian not only in one but in all matters that pertain to us as a Church Perhaps you lay hold on our Articles now as an Argument ad hominem and to beat us as you think with our own Weapon for there are great cries among you as if many that live in conformity to the Church of England are departed in their Opinion from the Catholick soundness of the 30 Articles by espousing Socinianism of which there is much suspition and dread express'd in some late Writers but then they charge such persons therewith that are so clearly not guilty of it as that they approve and use that Lyturgy wherein there is a particular Creed against the farce of Socinianism and are willing for ought I hear to give other assurance of their detestation of it notwithstanding those passages in some late Papers that they have with great confidence accused and condemned But if the Doctrine of Socinus and his followers hath gotten any credit
among us which God forbid who may we blame for it but your selves and your Fore-runners who could never endure that body of Canons wherein was one in Title and Doctrine against Socinianism It is the fourth Canon agreed on by the several Synods of London and York 1640. wherein Socinianism is called a damnable and cursed Heresie a complication of many antient Heresies condemn'd by the four first General Councils and lastly contrariant to the Articles of Religion now established in the Church of England I know on what Canon or Canons the burden of your clamour was laid and that the Lawyers helpt you to find out an irregularity in their making though the Composers had the King's Commission to impower them and the Canons the King's Declaration before them yet this Canon underwent the same fate as others though not so audibly complain'd against which I cannot think for all that but was as well as the rest secretly design'd against by the first Authors of our confusions in Religion For soon after the Ministers that exercised before the Lords and Commons at their Monthly Fasts complain'd against infinite Errors and Heresies and this by name of Socinianism and that the persons who were guilty of it were not the adherents to Episcopacie but such as were hearded among the Dissenters and joyn'd for a pretended Reformation The matter therefore well considered though you dislike Socinianism as well you may yet you may see whether directly or by accident I enquire not who unhappily ministred to its growth if not to its first Introduction Concerning the Discipline of the Church of England I have found nothing so boldly talkt against as the particular of Excommunications as if they were irregularly decreed and on light and unmeet occasions But these exceptions are so idle and vain that they argue either ignorance or unrighteousness in those who first made them For had they observ'd how and by whom men are Ecclesiastically censured they would not think the Keys usurp'd by Lay-men 'T is no news to hear Courts and their proceedings first misunderstood and then misrepresented by those who are obnoxious or have an itch to rule and are impatient of Government Now Government it self being sacred and necessary they that quarrel at it must begin with the suspected corruptions of it of which they are neither capable to judge or amend and so proceed to confusion but still keeping up to a noise of corruption till themselves are possess'd of it and then become abominable And as for the causes and occasions of Excommunications that are insisted on by you to be light and trivial it is manifest that those who so accuse are very heedless or very illiterate For let them but read the ordinary form of that Instrument and they will find the cause is renouncing to Government and contempt of the Court that is when men do not acknowledge the Jurisdiction or will not submit and acquiesce in its determinations and censures Having thus mentioned your Principle of Dissent and some Applications that you make thereof for your own pitiful defence against the Church of England let me further add something of the ways and manners you observe or at least are in use among your selves I have sometime considered your Worshipping of God and finde that though you have long handled that Text That God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth to serve you against those you oppose yet there is little assurance that there is more spirit or truth in your worship than in your slighted Neighbour's For if to worship God in spirit be to joyn the Soul with external performances in God's Worship what can you say for your selves more than those from whom you separate who acknowledg the Doctrine and profess the practise of the same beyond your disproof knowing herein they are to be tried by God and not you who searcheth the heart and trieth the reins But yet have not the Sons of the Church of England greater appearances that their Souls are joyn'd to the material parts of Gods worship than you when they readily use such Acts and Indications of reverence as you make Conscience to deny and a piece of Religion to contemn nay sometime become distinctly character'd from us by an obstinate and insolent refusal to use them The Congregations that worship God according to the Canons and Rubricks yf the Church of England do in Prayer and Communions kneel in hearing they are uncovered and in any other constant or contingent Office are decent orderly of which they are so far observant that to prevent any opportunity for confusion it is their Principle to submit and conform to a stated rule given them by their Superiours which is the only guard against indecencie and distraction But your Assemblies those of our County are otherwise managed Many profess to come with no other designe than to hear only and think themselves discharg'd to God and their own wish if they come time enough to hear a mystical Text pronounc'd as the warning to a Sermon This they believe to be the worship of God or else have knowledge of none And when they come there is no difference between them in the Market and in the Meeting-house and to say truth there needs none that their carriage may bear proportion to the nature of such unlawful Assemblies They have been taught that Preaching and Hearing are the principal Duties of Minister and People and for the one to preach plain Doctrine and the other to be uncovered are both superstitious and moreover that Superstition is so dangerous that rudeness is much safer with such-like whimsies that whenever they are reproved for it in our Assemblies especially in this point of the Hat they think they are abridged of their Christian Priviledges Neither is your Worship better for truth than spirit if to worship God in truth be to worship him after the manner that Christ hath revealed him who is the true God For concerning God nothing is more Emphatical in the Revelation of him by Christ than then that he spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all Rom. 8. 32. which Doctrine that it might be preserved fresh in the memories of Christians then was an holy Rite instituted by our Saviour that carried with it the most easie and familiar signification of the same viz. the Sacrament of the Lords-Supper which is to be celebrated with such words that do import the very Doctrine whereby is shewn not only our Saviour's care and faithfulness to continue an assertion of the Point but over and above that this is the most properly differing Character of the Christian Society But alas Of what little use is this among you your former setting up spiritual Rails by strange and unchristian Niceties hath made a desolation of this Table not yet to be repaired by the soundest Doctrines and vehementest exhortations to those that otherwise are governable people And as for your
own Societies I speak of Kent there is a very little obedience to it or such obedience as little comports with the merit of the Doctrine it relates to or the solemnity wherewith it was instituted And to my experience there are some who frequent your Assemblies with good affection having yet a veneration of that Sacrament do constantly communicate with us not our of compulsion or more than ordinary perswasion but because not in practice in such Meetings of yours to which they usually betake themselves I pray then consider how intire integral your Worship is especialiy where there is nothing but an extemporary prayer and attempts on a Theological Discourse If in any place the Holy Scriptures are read I do not hear of any great care or order had for reading the same in the most material parts thereof but in many places there is no more use of them than in such Quotatations that are brought in to attend the Sermon and in the rest the Method or Confusion of reading is left to the discretion of the gifted Brother Pastor or Minister be he young or old Stranger or home-born And therefore it is that the skill your Auditors have in the Scriptures is very narrow referring only to those Texts which are most in fashion for your Sermons They observe little connexion or discrimination between Old and N. Testament nor particularly understand those Scriptures that essentially concern Christianity but are under Rote and Government of such glosses as you have fixt on those places that appear fairest at least in sound for dissent and difference from the Church of England This consideration makes me reflect on your way of instruction supposing instruction of men not worship of God to be the chief end of your assembling For if it were not you could not reasonably lay such stress on Sermons as you do and you cannot deny but God may be publikely worshipped without them and that acceptably too especially in those places where the Gospel hath been long received and in such a Church where there are ways of another name constantly used to instruct the Members thereof But if you should assemble without Sermons for worship what will become of you For you have so long preach'd a woe upon the neglect and very omission of Preaching that the people you know will curse you if you should but attempt to call them together in any publike Meeting without it But yet to let this pass when you are conven'd your way of instructing one would think might be better advised I meddle not now with the unaptness of your Subjects to beget Principles of Christianity in your Hearers and if they were Principles which you teach how unduly they are proportion'd to their capacities being inveloped with such Phrases that it were hard for the very Apostles to know their own Doctrines again or the Primitive Christians to resume their faith and practice of them if they were to judge and live by your Discourses But say your way of Preaching is mended for indeed the Writings of Dissenters in other Cities and Countries are being more congruous to sense and beginning to be more Orthodox as to Doctrine what reasons can there be in order to better edification as you pretend to neglect the use of the Ten Commandments publike Catechisms the Antient Creeds and the Lords Prayer which deliver the Elements of Religion in such plain words and tractable Periods as the meanest judgment and memory may receive and manage them And if the memory only be first obliged in those wise and blessed accomodations of Divine Truths they are the nearer to the understanding and may at last rule in the affections and conversation Yet with these you instruct not but make them all subside to your own private senses and illustrations of Scripture If this be told abroad to those who are of the Reformed Churches it will become to their Judgment equally wicked and incredible That men should pretend to instruction and the best way too without a Catechism or the use of it without the Decalogue Creeds or Lords Prayer For to say you touch on all these in your Pulpit-declamations is but to tell us of a Wild-goose-chase wherein the Learner though he may come to hear some good shall never have a form of sound words This is the stranger for that these things are omitted not only on choice but in opposition to Laws that enjoyn them but what speak I of Laws when as there is no Church or Kingdom on the face of the whole earth that hath better and more wholesome Laws than ours and yet none so slighted and baffled not by the Banditi or men that live without any conduct of Law and Conscience but by those that pretend to have the greatest apprehension of Religion and liveliest sense of the fear of God For what Authority hath consulted with greater wisdom and compassion towards those it governs hath waited with more patience and desire of Conformity and Obedience or inflicted more gently and tenderly on transgressours than ours yet what Government hath been more complain'd and libell'd against That stand reproach'd and foil'd in its wisest Decrees and most Christian Sanctions to the wonder and astonishment as well as to the evil Example of all the Nations round about us Should other men take your licence to except against Laws that they do not like and abate openly in their Obedience to them as you do no Law would be regarded but the constitution of the Kingdom must dissolve Yet for this you have taught them Principles and given them Patterns which they may know how to use in matters of body and estate as you in your pretended concerns of Soul and Religion For if you may deny Conformity to Law on the account of Conscience towards God in a matter that is not intrinsecally evil or by any word of God absolutely sinful as you cannot prove any thing in our usages is then may others also be set onto violate other Laws which they judge inexpedient or otherwise for I know not what reason do not please them I believe many of you intend no such evil to your Nation and Country but then why will you hold and love that Principle that may be so naturally improv'd to infinite mischiefs The time past surely may suffice you to have wrought your own will the Consequences whereof cannot without horrour be contemplated by any that have affection to the Church or Commonwealth Remember I pray your endeavours and oppositions were and are against such a Church that you cannot accuse of any defect in necessaries to Salvation or hath any thing in use or injunction that may otherwise hazard any mans happiness but set it forforward that shall unite unto it And yet your opposition to it visibly contradicts such a Doctrine for ought yet hath been proved whose infringement brings damnation viz. obedience to Authority Nor are your followers any way better prepared to discharge themselves of being involved in this guilt but by the precarious Argument of an implicite Belief that your Leaders are good men and will not go against the Scriptures which Scriptures if you would be intreated to look into without Party or Passion and so far yield to as you are convinc'd you would quickly both Leader and Follower leave your Tents and Camps and find more comfort though perhaps not success in obedience than obstinacie Here is nothing I believe in this Paper but some of you may have heard but I doubt few of you consider'd and therefore my design hereby is only to give in familiarly another Memorial and to renew the instance for peace and conformity which I do offer to you from the bottom of my heart without sense of any particular wrong or provocation from you save what is to every Member of the Church of England by your recessions from it or batteries against it I need not tell you that you with us are of one common Nature and Country but Religion too for you are wont to defend your selves in all aggresses upon you by the name and pretence to the cause of English Protestants but sure you were never acknowledged abroad as you stand in your disagreements from the Church of England to be in respect of Forein Churches either Mother Sister or Daughter yet will you not cease to multiply distinctions from us and enmities against us Consider how much the right spirit of Christianity is seen in meekness and peaceableness which if they are to be exercised towards all then doubtless not to be denied to a righteous and innocent Authority We ask you not to part with any Christian Vertue or Doctrine as necessary to a compliance with us but rather to become more practical in the most eminent points thereof and that you would leave off to mingle and prefer your own things before the things of Jesus Christ his Gospel and his Church There was a time when the Ordinances of a small piece of a Parliament were cried up for Laws by you and not only Obedience press'd to them on pain of Delinquencie and Damnation but Neutrality cursed though the very matter of those Laws was either to begin or justifie Rebellion or Schisme And shall an integral and full Authority betrampled under your feet in Laws that are for right Religion peace and Unity FINIS