pruning fencing and preserving this goodly Tree in its several Branches which have spread forth to several parts of the world but were never quite parted or separated from either Christ or one another but grounded in Christ they have alwayes grown up in him to such an holy Harmony without any Schismatical slipping breaking off or moral dividing from one another every small twigg every bigger branch every mainer arme of it either for private Christians or publick Congregations or Episcopal Combinations still holding that mutual Communion which became them both to Christ and his Church in general also to each other in particular according to the several Places Duties Stations and Proportions wherein the God of Order and Peace had set them under the Authority Power and Episcopacy of his Son Jesus Christ as Lord of all the King Priest and Prophet the chief Bishop and great Shepherd the principal Teacher Pastor and Ruler of his Church From our Lord Jesus Christ whose love to Mankind intended to enlarge the branches of his Church beyond the Jews even to all Nations under Heaven this small and tender Plant was afterward as a fruitful Vine and flourishing Tree carefully husbanded and orderly extended by such workmen as the Lord was pleased to chuse and appoint for this holy care and culture whom he endued with the spirit of power both for Authority when he solemnly breathed on them and for Ability when he powerfully sent the Spirit upon them enabling them not onely with such ordinary gifts as were necessary for all true Ministers and such ordinary authority as was fit to governe the Churches they gathered but also with such extraordinary and miraculous endowments as were meet for the Apostles to carry on the first plantations of the Gospel to all the world without any Interpreter beyond all contradiction the doctrine they taught of Jesus Christ being confirmed to be the Will and Wisdome of God by the concurrence of his Omnipotency in infallible signes and wonders By these twelve Apostles when their number was completed and the Apostasie of Judas made up by the choise of Matthias to succeed and supply his Episcopal charge and Office for the teaching and ruling of the Church to whom as a supernumerary help and great additional St. Paul was afterward joyned by these I say as by so many chief Pastors or Oecumenical Bishops who had the general care and joynt oversight or Episcopacy of the Catholick Church both Jews and Gentiles was this Tree mightily advanced in a few years both in bigness and bredth in strength and extention so that the Gospel according to Christs command was preached more or less to every Nation under Heaven and as the beams of the Sun are seen so the Evangelical sound of the Apostles was heard in all Lands so loud and audibly that every Nation might have applied themselves to listen and seek after the Lord and have heard and found him in the voice of his glorious Gospel if they would have followed that news which they heard of according to the curiosity after novelties which is in the nature of man The news of which so good and so great was every where reported to be as foretold by so many Prophets long before so attested and confirmed by so many Eye witnesses who not onely spake to every Nation in their several tongues but also wrought great miracles in every place where they came according to those several lots or portions which they had taken by the Lords appointment or by mutual consent as their particular Bishopricks or Dioceses for the more orderly carrying on of the work some staying at Jerusalem as St. James the Elder and the other James surnamed the Just where they were slain others dispersed themselves as St. Peter who went to Antioch Alexandria and Rome there planting eminent Churches appointing Bishops over them as Euodius at Antioch Mark at Alexandria Clemens and Linus at Rome one for the Circumcision the other for the Uncircumcision which Churches ever after even before the Nicene Council had the eminence of Patriarchal seats as afterward Jerusalem and Constantinople had The Histories of the Church either Sacred or Ecclesiastical are not punctual or exact in setting forth the several Countries to which the Apostles divided themselves or where they most resided and at last ended their days nor is it material it being sufficiently clear that as they did not at first so confine themselves to one place or Country as to exclude any other Apostles from coming thither so they went some one or more of them to all chief parts to Syria Arabia Persia India Ethiopia Armenia Scythia Asia the Less and Greater all Greece Illyricum Italy Spain France Germany Cyprus Britanny Africa and all the rest of the grand parts of the then-known World Continents and Islands where at last they either fixed in their old age as St. John did at Ephesus or were martyred leaving besides the Monuments of their preaching and miracles their Apostolical Seats supplied by an orderly Subordination and authoritative Succession of such Bishops and Presbyters Pastors and Teachers able and faithful men as they had Commission to ordain and did authorize for their successors in that holy Ministry spirit and power of Christ which was to continue to the end of the World for the further planting propagating and preserving the Church of Christ by such Doctrine Government and Discipline as they for the main rules and ends clearly by word and practise delivered to them which was then as their Faith Baptism and Hope but one among all Churches in the all world single Christians private Families of them small Congregations little Villages greater Cities ample Territories large Provinces great and small Churches as to their several distributions for conveniency of actual converse and communicating in holy Mysteries had still but one and the same Polity Order Discipline Ministry Government and Communion no Variety no Difformity no Deformity in Doctrine or Discipline among any Orthodox Christians but every one observed that Place Office Duty and Proportion wherein God by the Apostles and their successors had set him or them in relation to the whole Church as well as to that particular part or Congregation of it to which he was more locally and personally joyned yet mentally spiritually charitably cordially and consentiently he still adhered to the Catholick Conformity and Unity according to that holy Polity and Oeconomy which the Spirit of Christ in the Apostles first and for ever established so far as the nature of times and Gods providence would permit that as there was but one God and one Lord Jesus Christ so there might be but one Church one chast Virgin as the Spouse of Christ in all places For these holy Husbandmen and chief Labourers in Christs Vineyard the twelve or thirteen Apostles did not think it sufficient to teach to catechize to convert to baptize to confirm to communicate to admonish
sound saving and practicall Understanding Whence then the present lapses depressions diminutions and feared desolations are come upon and befaln this Church of England which threaten you O worthy Gentlemen and your posterity no lesse than they afflict the despised divided and dejected Clergy is a disquisition most worthy of your serious inquiry that discerning the causes which cannot be good with the consequences which must needs be bad you may endeavour with all Christian prudence and good conscience to advance those counsels and remedies which become wise men good Christians and true-hearted English which Christian counsels and pious endeavours in order to the setling of Religion in this Nation his Highnesse professed in his Speech at the dissolving of the last Parlamentary convention to have expected from them Nothing becomes any men or Nation worse than to own no setled Religion as the publick rule measure and standard of peoples piety except onely this which is one of the basest pieces of policy that ever came out of the Devils skull to professe Religion yea the Christian and Reformed with such a loosenesse and latitude as may expose it with its prime Teachers and Professors to vulgar indifferencies and insolencies yea to be profaned blasphemed baffled beggered scorned contemned according to the dictates lusts disorders and levities of popular humours and the vilest of men The first is the temper of sots and beasts who own no God the second of Machiavillians and Hypocrites who fear no God It was a good rule of the Roman policy and Heathenish piety Either pretend not to the Gods or treat them as becometh Gods CHAP. VIII THe outside or visible effects of the Church of Englands troubles and distempers are as manifest as Miriams Uzziahs and Gehazies leprosies on their fore-heads both in respect of secular contestations and Ecclesiasticall contradictions in both which this Church and Nation have been at once so involved that our miseries are not onely the more complicated cumulated and encreased but they are the lesse curable because less compliable with any impartiall way of publique Christian counsels mens hearts being so many wayes extremely divided and differently biassed not onely upon civil but even Religious differences in which the meanest and shortest-spirited men do ever affect to appeare most cruelly zealous and most uncharitably pertinacious The Rivalry and competition for Soveraign power between Princes or Peers which in former ages for many years and in various vicissitudes of civil wars afflicted this English nation were yet so far tolerable as men still preserved the unity of their perswasions and affections touching Religion amidst those deadly feuds and different adherencies in respect of civil affairs with which they were distracted which politick contests were capable of an end either by the extinction of one party or the uniting of both as it came to passe in seventh's dayes who laid the foundation for uniting the Families of York and Lancaster also the Kingdomes of England and Scotland But alas our late distractions like fire from Hell have seized not onely our Barns and Stables our Dwellings and Mansions but our Temples and Churches our Hearts and Souls Religion The Christian Religion the Reformed Religion this staffe of nationall beauty and sociall bands is broken in sunder Religion both as Christian and Reformed this is torn and mangled this is deformed and unchristened Religion whose obligations are most strict and sacred whose breaches are most wide and incurable this is wounded this is ulcerated this is gangren'd Religion whose balsam is most soveraign to close and reconcile a sinner with an offended God which professeth to worship God and Man united in one blessed Redeemer and Mediator Jesus Christ this is faln out with it self and wofully divided Religion whose aim is to unite first God and man in one band of eternal love next all Christian professors in charitable compliance one with another as members of the same body and belonging to one head this this is the poniard this the sword this the spear by which we are in England armed and animated one against another Not onely our heads in policies and our hands in power but our hearts in piety are divided Most men in England fancy they cannot be truly godly or justly hope to be saved unlesse they damn and destroy each other not onely upon civil but religious accounts The silver cord of religious love is ravelled and broken the golden girdle and perfect rule of Evangelicall charity is not onely much worn and warped but quite pulled and snapp'd in sunderâ— we war and fight kill and slay we bite and devour we persecute and oppresse each other not onely upon humane secular and momentary but upon divine spiritual and eternall pretensions So that to find out either our distempers or our cures in England we must search deeper than the skin and superficies of things the poyson is profoundly imbibed the malignity deeply diffused rising in its source from and reaching in its effects to the very hearts of men the venome and spite is hidden in the most retired cels and inaccessible recesses of mens souls the malice and mischief are fled for their refuge or asylum to Gods Sanctuary to the very spirits and consciences of Christians which should be the receptacles of most sacred influences the very Holy of Holyes the Heaven of Heavens in the reasonable soul in which the Oracles of God the special presence and manifestations of his Spirit are most lively to be heard seen felt and enjoyed These are either grosly darkened and defiled or garnished with false lights or swept with the Devils brooâ— lies wrapped up in hypocrisie and strong delusions guilded over with godly pretensions Here I find the greatest enemies and destroyers of the Church of England are very far from confessing or repenting of any folly pride levity ignorance lukewarmnesse lazinesse deadnesse hypocrisie malice presumption rebellion covetousnesse ambition sacriledge profanenesse coldnesse Atheism Apostasie uncharitablenesse disorderly walking disobedience or unthankfulnesse to God or man all which possibly may be in their own hearts and hands and so must needs have as great an ingrediency in our publick calamities as any mens sins in the nation They rather imploy all their wits and skill their artifices and oratory to anatomize the Church of England to dissect every part of its constitution to observe not onely the practick pulse and outward breathings of its Ministers and Professors but the very inward fibres and temper of its heart as to all its holy mysteries religious ministrations and ecclesiastick constitutions Upon the pretended inspection of which as the vitals noble parts of Religion they daily proclaim to the credulous vulgar other amazed spectators as the astonished Augurs Soothsayers were wont of old that in these they discern all the portentous omens of our afflictions all the prodigious causes and effects of our publick troubles and miseries in these they
who are all consenting to the Law and concerned that justice be duely executed on some evil Members for the good of the whole So that the several degrees and subordinations in the ancient Church of Christ even long before the first Nicene Council as there is expressed among Churchmen and Bishops against which some have made so loud and ridiculous clamors were chiefly for this end as Mr. Calvin and others have as ingenuously as truely observed that the holy correspondency of all Christians and all Churches in one Faith and Truth in one Spirit and Power might not onely be most evident to the world but most aptly carried on and preserved against all Factions Variations and Divisions that they might by these means be known to be of one heart and mind in the Lord that they might all speak the same things and walk in the same steps that what one condemned all might in the same spirit condemn what one forgave all might forgive that none might upon any private passions either excommunicate others by injurious abscission or themselves by voluntary separation or make new confederacies and associations with those who are either deserters of the Catholick Communion or justly excommunicated from it which distempers of Ignorance and Impatience and Imprudence among Christians have brought as we see this great power of the Keyes and this exercise of Christian Discipline so far into contempt that no man almost regards it from any hand every one daring to make what retortions they please and to excommunicate any one or more yea and whole Churches that do excommunicate them for any the most notorious errors and insolencies Thus as the Popes of Rome heretofore so the people now in many places challenge to themselves this power against their Neighbours and Brethren yea against their Preachers and Bishops against the Fathers that begat them and the Mother Church which did bear them So that I confesse there is not so much cause of terror as of pitty in most Excommunications as they are now managed by private and unauthoritative spirits O what sorrow what shame is it to see so Sacred so Solemn so Divine so Dreadfull an Institution vilified and nullified which was designed for the health and welfare of the Church of Christ by just and necessary severiâ—ies when it was as it ought to be soberly applyed by wise holy and impartiall Governours of the Church in the name of Christ in the Catholick Spirit or consent of all Orthodox Bishops Presbyters and people which was able to shake Heaven and Hel to open and shut the Everlasting doores of Salvation or Damnation according as the penitency or impenitency of offenders did appeare To see this flaming sword which was put by Christ into the Cherubims hand those that were the Angels of his Church to keep the way of the tree of life to see this made the scare-crow and scorne of vile men the sport of petulant and peevish Spirits who neither fear to inflict Excommunication upon whom they list as much as lies in their impotent malice nor yet to suffer it from the most Just Impartiall and Authoritative hands in the world from whom being once proudly separated they fancy they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the reach and danger of this just terror and the others true Authority as lawfull Bishops or Governours of the Church whose heavy sentence if I should incurre so far that any one true Bishop with his Clergy should passe it against me upon just grounds of my scandalous and obstinate sinning against God and his Church according to the ancient rightfull and lawfull way of such proceedings in the Name and Spirit of Jesus Christ to which all true Christians in this Church and in all the world do submit and assent I confess I should much more fear living and dying to lye under such a censure and sentence than to be condemned in my Estate Liberty or Life by any Court of humane Justice which reacheth not to the Souls eternal estate as Excommunication rightly managed doth it being a most undoubted Oracle of our Lord Jesus Christ that whose sins the Apostles and their lawful successors as Rulers of the Church do bind on Earth they are bound in Heaven Who their lawful and authoritative successors have been are and ought to be in all Ages and places of the Church is evident to all that have any fear of God or reverence of his Catholick Churches Testimony This is certain as Excommunication carries with it the joynt spirit and suffrage of the whole Church and every true Member of it either explicitly or implicitly so the regular and authoritative managing of it was ever from the respective Bishops Authority and Order as chief Pastors in every Church to whose fatherly care and Inspection with the counsel of their Presbyters the Flock of Christ is committed especially as to the discreet use of such Discipline as highly concerns the salvation or damnation the hopes or despair the binding or loosing the abscission or restauration of any part which ought not to be judged determined and executed by every private spirit of Minister or people but by such venerable Bishops and their Presbyters as have the authentick transmission of the Apostles ordinary governing power delivered to them as from Christ being in this like the Judges in commission for Life and Death though the Sentence be the Laws and the power the chief Magistrates and the transaction or publication in the Face of the County to which all the Bench of Justices the Jury and other honest Men do tacitly give their votes and assent yet is the Cognizance and Examination of the merits of the Cause and the judicial solemn Declaration of the Sentence committed specially to the Judge both in respect of his learned Abilities and known Integrity also for the Honor and Order which are necessary to be observed in proceedings of so great concernment to Mankind as are matters of Life and Death Such is the power such ought to be the procedure of all due Excommunication such they were in the purest and primitive times when all Christians all Congregations all Presbyters all Bishops all particular Churches were so united that as many Spokes make but one Wheel and many Stones one Building and many Members one Body so these made but one Church in the same Faith the same Baptism the same Ministry the same Spirit the same Order the same Power the same Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ From which Blessed Harmony and Spirituall Communion if any Christian or any particular Congregation or any part of the Church as those of the Donatistick party and the Novatians in Africa with others either proudly passionately and peevishly did separate themselves or were deservedly separated by the just censure of any part of the true Church and thenceforth falling to mangling of all by mutuall Excommunications so as to fly in the faces of their lawfull Bishops and Pastors or else turne their backs on them
violence wrested the staffe out of its hands Presbytery seeming like the plant called Touch me not which flies in the face and breaks in the fingers of those that presse it but Independency as the sensible plant rather yielding to then resisting any hand that is applyed to it This later and softer plant no sooner almost began to be set on foot in England about the year 1650. but it soon gained much ground of Presbytery which had been an old bitten shrub ill rooted and never very florishing or fruitfull and lesse apt to be now at last transplanted But Independency as a new slip or full-shoot springs up apace spreads its roots and branches without any noise erects its Churches as fast as Presbytery could its Consistories out of the ruines of Presbyterians Parishes as well as of Bishops Dioceses Independency hath no great line or out-work to maintain and so can do it with fewer numbers and lesse noise it desired onely in Peace to enjoy it self affecting no forced ambition or unvoluntary Rule over others as did Presbytery it professeth to aime at nothing but a nearer and greater strictnesse of Sanctity Unity and Charity among Christians in their Church-way than it thought could well be had among the larger combinations of Presbyterian or Episcopall Churches which they think are not easily managed without much labour and toile besides offence and complaint because they urge many things as of duty and by constraint when this is onely by every ones free will and consent Nothing is more soft and supple than Independency in its first render branches and blossomes nor is it other than a little Embryo of Episcopacy in a little Parish or Diocese For Bishops Presbyters and People did of old and at first so neerly correspond as Fathers Brethren and Sons of a Family when they were but few and scarce made up one great Congregation in a City where one Minister at first was both Pastor and Teacher Bishop and Presbyter who as Christians increased ordained them Presbyters to carry on the work and yet to keep a filial Correspondency with him and respect to him as became them The pomp and solemnity of Independent Episcopacy is lesse but the Power and Authority Ecclesiasticall is though broken and abrupt yet full as great and absolute as to all Church-uses and intents as ever Bishops challenged How far this willow will grow an oake more rough and robust as it growes Elder Bigger Higher and Stronger no man knowes I presume it cannot have better beginnings of Order Unity Purity Piety Charity Meekness and Wisdom than Episcopacy had in its first Institution which is owned by all learned men to be at least Apostolicall both as to the enlarged Churches made up of many Congregations and the enlarged Authority of one Bishop placed by the Apostles over many Presbyters and Congregations so gathered by them into one Ecclesiastick Society or Combination as those Primitive Churches were in the Scripture Nor can it have more specious and modest beginnings for Purity and Sanctity than some former sects have professed such as were the Novatians and Donatists of which St. Cyprian and Optatus with St. Austin and others give us liberall accounts whose procedings did not answer their beginnings either in Modesty Charity or Equity but from rending from they fell to reviling and ruining all Churches but their own From the rise and advantages which these two new and now almost parallel plants in England Presbytery and Independency neither of which are yet any way grown up comparable to the Procerity Height and Goodliness which Episcopacy had and yet hath as in many Churches of Christ so in many English mens minds notwithstanding that both of them as notable suckers strive all they can to draw away all sap and succour from the old root of Episcopacy that it may quite wither and be extirpated every where as it hath been lately with Swords and Pickaxes terribly lopped and almost quite stubbed up in England From these two I say which have so much pleased either some Ministers or People with shewes of Novelty Liberty and share of Authority other Parties Sects and Factions have began to set up their scaling ladders and for a time staying one of their feet either on the standards of Presbytery or Independency they fall amaine with their hatchets to hack and hew down the remaines of all Episcopal order and Communion in Churches to cut off the battered stript and bare branches of that Ancient and goodly Tree which contained once the Catholick Church under its boughs and shade Thus these petty planters begin their new plantations that every one set up new Churches and Pastors after their own Hearts Opinions and Fancies making use of what seare barren and Schismatick slips or abscissions they are able to break or cut off aiming still to plant as they say further off from the root and bulk of Episcopacy as a notable character of more perfect Reformation than either Presbytery or Independency seem to have done who sometime professe they can comply with something in Episcopacy Hence first Erastians or Polititians begin to resolve all Churches into States all Ministry into Magistracy making no other origine of Church-power than that of the Common-wealth nor of any Ministers Bishops or Presbyters Authority than of a Justice or a Captaine or a Constable After this Anabaptists Quakers Enthusiasts Seekers Ranters all sorts of Fanatick Errors and lazy Libertines pursue their severall designes and interests under the notions of some new-found Church Sprigs and better plantations filling all places in England like a wood or thicket with Bushes and Briers and Thornes of Separations Abscissions Raptures Ruptures Novelties Varieties Contentions Contradictions Inordinations Reordinations Deordinations and Inordinations no Ordinations scarce owning any Church or Christians which are not just of their way and form as Optatus tells us the Donatist Bishop Parmenian and his party did All of them agreeing with Presbytery and Independency in this one thing however differing in others as in the matter of Tithes which these are reconciled to that they are enemies against all Diocesan Ruling Episcopacy quarrelling even the Honesty and Credit of Primitive Churches on that account despising all the Fathers and all the Councils and Canons of all Churches as levened with Episcopacy The reason in all of them is one and the same because true Episcopacy was a notable curb and restraint and remedy equally against all Schisms and Innovations in the Church of Christ as St. Hierom tells us And further by its venerable Authority so Famous so Ancient so Universal so Primitive so truely Apostolick it infinitely and intolerably upbraids all their Novelties and Extravagancies besides they are conscious that they shall hardly ever one for a hundred either equallize or exceed in many Ages the useful and excellent Abilities Gifts Graces and Miracles or the Benefits and Blessings which by and under regular and holy Episcopacy the Lord was pleased to bestow if ever any were
bestowed on his Church in all the world who never till of later yeares knew any thing of other Church-governments besides that of Episcopacy any more than they saw new Suns or new Moons in the Heavens It may be these Parelii or Paraselenes these Meteors Comets and blazing Stars that now appear in despite of primitive Episcopacy will not be so long lasting nor so benign to this or any Church as that was though they seem to emulate yea and strive to eclipse nay quite to extinguish the shining of those ancient lights to which they owe their best light of sound Knowledge and Religion Episcopacy joyned with an orderly Presbytery Mean time what Inconveniencies yea Mischiefs and Miseries have or may attend these Fractions Diversities Divisions and Confusions upon the account of religious forms and Church-ambitions in this and other Churches between both Ministers and other sorts of Christians what spoyle and havock they may be tempted in time to make upon one another while they seek either to overdrop or to destroy each other as they have done beyond all moderation and mercy upon Episcopacy how little hopes there is that any or many or all of them can ever thrive and ascend to any height not of secular glory but of Christian proficiency in Truth and Love comparable to the pristine or modern Beauty Fruitfulnesse Usefulnesse and Goodlinesse of a right Episcopacy in England or any other Church is left to the sober judgement and prudent presages of all wise and worthy Christians that list to be spectators and Readers before whose eyes this Scheme is with Truth and Love plainly and impartially set forth as to the historick and politick Description of these several and unproportionable Figures which are lively Emblemes of the Catholick and ancient Unity and Uniformity under Episcopacy compared to moderne Diminutions Divisions and Deformities as to Ecclesiastical Polity Order and Government since Presbytery was planted in blood and Independency self-sown of late years in England whose Honor as a Church Christian and Reformed will then be most advanced together with its civil Peace when both Presbytery and Independency as to the just Interests of godly Ministers and people are re-ingrafted or re-incorporated with those of primitive Episcopacy which is beyond all dispute and ever was in the best and worst times the best Conservator as of Bishops Apostolick Authority and Succession so of Presbyters worthy priviledges and of all faithful peoples comely advantages so far as they are joyntly concerned in Ordination or Approbation of Ministers in Consecration and Communication in holy Mysteries in mutual Counsels Supports and Assistances both private and publick The just ballancing or even twisting of which three together makes Christian Churches and States at once ample honourable and happy both in Order and Unity in Strength and Beauty in Unanimity and Uniformity which are the best constitution and complexion of any Church that desires to thrive in Piety and Charity in Truth and Love which the wise and blessed God in mercy restore to us BOOK I. SETTING FORTH THE Present DISTRESSES OF THE CHURCH of ENGLAND CHAP. I. LEst any one should stumble at the very threshold of my Discourse and by their too much prejudice coynesse and easiness to take offence from Names should frustrate my whole design of doing them good by forbearing to read what I write upon such a subject I am at first as briefly and plainly as I can to assert the Name of the Church of Engl. Which Title is certainly the crown of our Country the honour of our Nation the highest holiest and happiest band of our society the surest foundation of our peace with God and men which under this name and in this relation becomes sacred as well as civil religious as wel as rational It was a very sad and bad exchange if this Nation then began to be no Ch. of Christ when it began to be a Common-wealth if it ceased at once to be an earthly heavenly kingdome which last as the Emperour Theodosius said was the greater honour of the two We eate and drink and sleep we beget our like we die or kill and devour one another as beasts we build and plant we buy and sell we rule and obey as meer men But we believe and worship the true God we professe the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ we are partakers of the gifts and graces of the blessed spirit we have an holy communion with that adorable Trinity and with one another in love and charity as Christians that is visible members of Christ our Head and of his Church which is his mysticall body our noblest life sweetest society and divinest fraternity is as we are Christians that is Emulators of the holy Angels Imitators of God children and servants in the family of Christ candidates of heaven expectants of happinesse partakers of grace and daily preparing for eternall glory All which are the dispensations capacities and priviledges of that nation and people onely which are and own themselves the Church of Christ A title of so much honour and reall advantages that in earnest no Nation or people once called and converted to be Christians and by publick vote or profession owning themselves to be such should ever be patient to be robbed or under any specious pretences and novel fallacies deprived of it since the Empire of the whole world and the riches of both Indies are not equivalent to this honour for a people to be called Gods people which were not his and for a Nation which sate in darknesse and in the shadow of death to be professedly and really the houshold of faith the Church of Christ as this of Engl. was heretofore owned to be by the solemn and publick profession of its Kings and Princes its Nobles and Peers its Parlaments and Synods its Magistrates and Ministers by the consent suffrages and submissions of all estates and degrees of people ever since its first conversion who never thought it any impropriety or barbarity of speech much lesse any disgrace to call themselves according to their joynt and declared profession of the name and faith of Christ The church of England Which Title I use according to the good old style and generall phrase of all learned godly and wise men both at home and abroad Ancient and Modern With which Inscription that excellent Bishop Jewell set forth his just and accurate Apologie ful of honest learning potent reasonings and unfeigned Antiquity besides Scripture-demonstrations which got It and this Church so great an applause both at home and abroad that all Reformed Churches and Divines admired it both this Church and that Book The more learned and modest Romanists either found they had not abilities to confute it or not confidence enough to despise it nor did any Non-conformists then boggle at this Title of The Church of England when they found it convenient to enjoy the benefit of Her shadow and protection however in some things they
then quarrelled at Her garb and fashion If any of these be now grown so wilfully ignorant that they need to be informed in this point they may please to know That the Name of the Church of Engl. is more ancient more honourable and every way as proper as the new style and title of the Common-wealth of England Which denomination imports not the agreement of all private mens aims desires and interests in all civil things any more than the other doth all mens agreement in every opinion and point of Religion But it denotes the declared profession of far the major part which is esteemed as the whole whose consent is declared in the Laws and publick constitutions So by the name of the Church of Engl. it is not imported or implyed that we judge every particular person in this Nation to be inwardly a good Christian or a true Israelite that is really sanctified or spiritually a member of Christ and his mysticall body the Church Catholick invisible No we are not so rude understanders or uncriticall speakers But we plainly and charitably mean that part of mankind in this Polity or Nation which having been called baptized and instructed by lawfull Ministers in the mysteries and duties of the Gospel maketh a joynt and publick profession of the Christian faith and reformed Religion in the name and as the sense of the whole Nation as it is grounded upon the holy Scriptures guided also and administred by that uniform order due authority and holy Ministry for worship and government which according to the mind of Christ the pattern of the Apostles and the practise of all Primitive Churches hath been lawfully established by the wisdom and consent of all estates in this Nation in order to Gods glory the publick peace and the common good of mens souls I know there are some supercilious censors and supercriticall criticks who cavill at disown disgrace and deny this glorious Name of the Church of England allowing God no Title to any such Nationall Church nor any Nation such a relation to God since that of the Jews was dissolved nor doe they much approve the Name or believe the Article of the Catholique Church The truth and property of both which titles and expressions I know there is no need for me largely to vindicate among judicious sober and well catechized Christians who doe not drive on any design by the fractions parcellings and confusions of Nationall Churches as those seem to doe who are still affectedly ignorant for this subject hath been fully handled and cleared by many late excellent pens in England besides the ancient and forrein writers that the name of Church of Christ next to the highest sense which denotes all that holy and successionall society in heaven and earth who are or shall be gathered into one as the mysticall invisible body of Christ that is purchased sanctified and saved by him which is never at one intuition visible in this world this is also in a lower sense not more usually than aptly applyed to expresse that whole visible company of Christian Professors upon earth whose historicall faith declared profession and avowed obedience to the Gospel of Christ like a great body or goodly tree in its severall extensive parts and branches stretcheth forth it self throughout the whole world This collectively taken as derived from one root or bulk is called the visible Catholick militant Church of Christ being to particular Churches not as a genus to the species but as an integrall or whole to the parts of it Besides these the name of the Church of Christ serves to expresse any one of those more noble parts or eminent branches belonging to that Catholick visible Church which being similary or partaking of the same nature by the common faith have yet their convenient limits distinctions and confinements as to neerer society and locall communion for their better order unity peace and safety either in particular Cities or Countries Provinces or Nations each of which holding communion of faith and charity with the Catholick Church were in that respect anciently called Catholick Churches so were their Synods and Bishops called Catholick long before the Bishop or Church of Rome monopolized that name as that of Smyrna is styled in its commendatory Letter touching their holy Bishop and Martyr Polycarpus I deny not but the name of the Church of Christ is in Scripture and in common use may be applied in the lowest and least proper or complete sense to particular congregations and small families especially where others met to serve the Lord which may in some sense as Noahs family in the Ark be called Cities Common-wealths Kingdomes Nations as well as Churches being the Substrata Seminaries and Nurseries of both yet this in a defective improper and diminutive sense onely as apart from or compared to those larger combinations and ampler Communions which all reason besides the expresse wisdome of Christs Spirit and the practise of the blessed Apostles followed by all the Primitive Churches invites all Christians in any nation or polity unto for mutual peace good order safety and edification both as to Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government far beyond what can be enjoyed or expected in smaller parcels or separated societies whose meer locall advantages by neighbourhood or neerness of dwelling and actual meeting together in one place make them not any whit more a Church of Christ or in and of a Church than it makes them men or citizens but only gives them some conveniences for the exercise of some of those duties and priviledges which they enjoy not as Members of that single Congregation but as Branches of the Catholick Church of Christ to which Mystical Body they were admitted when they were baptized and to whose head Jesus Christ they are related and united so far as they are believers either in profession or in power Being further capable to enjoy all those benefits and advantages necessary for the publick Peace Order Government and well-being of a Church All which Christ intended it and which are not to be had in the small parcels of Christians but in the joynt authority of larger combinations Such sober Christians as live above capricious niceties captious sophistries and popular affectation of novel formes and termes do well understand That as little slips grow great trees and small families multiply to populous Cities and Nations whose strength honour safety and happinesse consists not in their living apart reserved and severed from one another in their private houses or parishes and Townships but in their joynt counsels large Fraternities and solemn Combinations under the same publick Lawes and Governours without which they cannot attaine or enjoy Peace and Safety the noblest fruits and highest ends of humane Societies and civil Polities whose Dangers Mischiefs and Miseries are such as cannot be avoyded or resisted save onely by united Counsels and Assistances to which just appeals and addresses may be made for redress of such
great bond of Christian communion and subordination into which by the wisdome of the Apostles the providence of God did at first and ever after cast his Church in its severall parts throughout all the world for their greater safety strength comfort counsell honour peace and stability which are then most like to be enjoyed when Religious power and the Churches authority run not in small and shallow rivulets which are contemptible and soon exhausted but in great rivers with faire and goodly streams in the united counsels and combined strength of many learned wise grave and godly men Nor may it be thought in any probability of reason that when the Spirit of Christ wrote by Saint John to the seven Churches in the lesser Asia which was about ninety years after the birth of Christ and above fifty after his Ascension or when the Apostle Saint Paul wrote to the Churches eminent in other great Cities that there were then no Christians or no congregations and assemblies of them in the other cities towns or villages of those large countries and spacious territories or that those Christians were not at all considered by the Spirit of Christ or the Apostle as to their further confirmation instruction regulation order and government No but all those Christians and congregations in those respective limits territories or towns belonging to such a principall city or renowned Metropolis were comprehended and included in the dedication or direction given to the Angel or Bishop and chief overseer under or after the Apostle of that whole Church which was contained in that Precinct or Province Which method and form of uniting constituting and governing such ampliated and completed Churches was Primitive and Apostolical whence it also grew Catholick in all Nations and Churches without exception no Christians or Congregations till these last and worst times ever seeing any cause to think themselves wiser than the Apostles or the Spirit of Christ nor ever either finding or feigning or forcing any necessity to alter that constitution order and subordination by any unwarrantable breakings Schismes Separations which are the ready way to weaken and waste the Churches of Christ in their order safety and majesty by unbinding and dissolving what was once and ever well combined breaking the staff of Beauty and Bands of Unity Defence and Stability Certainly as no Reason so much less Religion doth perswade any men to shrink themselves from their manly stature and full growth to become dwarfs and children again who but children mad-men or fools would rend a goodly and fair garment into many beggarly shreds and tatters which are good for nothing but to trim up Babies How savage a cruelty is it in any as Medea did her children to cut a fair strong and well-compacted body into severall limbs bits and mammocks which thus divided are both deformed and dead It argues no lesse a fierce and ferine nature in any men to ravell and scatter themselves from all civil fraternities and sociall combinations which strongly twist the joynt interest of mankind together meerly out of a lust to return to their dens and acorns or out of a fancy to enjoy such liberty as exposeth men by their own infirmities and others malice both to necessities wants and injuries Who but mutinous and mischievous mariners will cast their wise Pilots and skilfull Masters over-boord or shipwreck and cut in pieces a fair and goodly Ship in which many men being sociably strongly embarqued they were able to encounter with and overcome the roughest seas and storms meerly out of a cruell wantonnesse and dangerous singularity which covets to have each man a rafter or plank by themselves or out of a vain hope to make many little skiffs and cock-boats in which to expose themselves first to be ludibrium ventorum the scorn of every blast tossed to and fro with every wind next after a little dalliance with death and dancing over the mouth of destruction to be overwhelmed and quite sunk by such decumane billowes as those small vessels have no proportion to resist Alike madnesse and folly would it be in the Souldiers of an Army to scatter themselves into severall troops and companies of fifties and hundreds that should be absolute of themselves under no Generall or Commander in chief as to joynt discipline united they may be strong and invincible divided they will be weak and despicable The Polity Wisdome Stability Authority and Majesty of those ancient ample and Apostolick Churches was such of old that all good Christians had infinite comfort relief safety and support in their communion with them if any injury were done by any private Minister or particular Bishop to one or many Christians remedy was to be had by appeale to such whose judgement was most impartiall and whose authority as well as wisdome was least to be doubted or disputed by any sober Christian Such as were imprudently erroneous or impudently turbulent Innovators of true doctrine forsakers of Christian Communion disturbers of Peace or despisers of Discipline either they were soon cured and recovered by wholsome applications from the authoritative hands and charitable hearts of many not onely Christians but Congregations and their united Presbyters with the joynt consent of their respective Bishops so far as the evil and contagion had spread in particular persons Congregations or Churches or in case of obstinacy they were not onely silenced and infinitely discountenanced by the notable censures and just reproches of many but they were at last as it it were with the thunderbolts of heaven so smitten bruised astonished and disanimated by the dreadfull Anathema's which from the concurrent spirit of those great Churches and Synods were solemnly denounced in the name of Christ by the chief Pastors or Bishops succeeding in the authority and place of the Apostles that every good Christian feared and trembled they wept and prayed for such sinners repentance and in case of desperate contumacy or incorrigiblenesse they gave them over to the Devil as certainly as if the sentence of Gods eternall doom had passed upon them This this was the pristine polity unity beauty majesty and terrour of the Churches of Christ in their ample and Apostolical combinations when each of those Churches were as sometimes in England faire as the Moon bright as the Sun beautifull as the tower of Tirzah comely as Jerusalem a city of God at unity in it self also terrible as an army with Banners for so they are prophecied of and described under the name of the Spouse of Christ Can any Christian that is not utterly fanatick and wild with his Enthusiastick fancies ever expect such harmony weight lustre authority and efficacy from any of those petty Conventicles and pigmy Churches into which some men seek first by Independent principles and practises to mince all Episcopall and National Churches next by Presbyterian policies to mould and soulder them up again as Medea did Jasons-limbs either to partiall Associations or to parochial Consistories or little
home and to all the Christian world abroad as a Church in folio as a fair Book of royall paper written with the finger of God and Apostolick characters well bound up and nobly adorned as an holy Nation a royal Priesthood publickly owning it self to be Gods people taught by the Word of God sprinkled with the blood of the Son of God that immaculate Lamb slain for us and partaker of that holy Passeover which gives us of Christs flesh to eat his blood to drink All which Christian profession priviledges practise of this Nation are I conceive sufficient without vanity or falsity to denominate and distinguish it with the glorious Title of the Church of England which was the thing I had to prove against the peevish Schismaticks envious Scepticks and rude Separatists of these times CHAP. III. NOr may the Church of Englands present afflictions eclipse or diminish its true glory in this point any more than Jobs misery did lessen his innocency nor may they abate your value love and honour to Her who are her loyal children because she needs your pity 'T is true it hath sadly suffered the late dreadful tempest which came from the North which hath ever been as the magazine of men so the fatall scourge of the Southern parts of the world hoping to mend their condition by changing their climate they never wanted occasions to quarrel and invade Thence the Assyrians invaded Syria Palestina and Egypt the Goths and Vandals swarmed into Italy and Africk the Gaules into Greece the Normans into France the Picts Saxons and Danes into England the barbarous Scythians and Tartars into Asia This Hyperborean impression hath indeed beyond any Civil War that ever was in this nation grievously peeled barked shattered and defaced the Church of England as to its pristine strength peace unity order beauty riches sanctity and glory when Kings were its nursing Fathers and Queens its nursing Mothers yet is its condition such as makes it not so much the object of your despiciency or despair as of your all good mens compassion prayers and real endeavours for Her relief Her calamitous state is not like that of the object of Davids pity the sick servant of the Amalekite from innate distempers but as his whom the good Samaritan found stripped wounded and half dead an object capable to stir up the bowels of any good Christian while her enemies who have sought to cast her down to the ground who sometime roar in her Sanctuaries and hope to set up their banners for ensigns of an absolute victory do contemn her as a dead carkasse and have long ago cast her off as an unclean thing fit to be abhorred of God and man Yet this is the Church most worthy Gentlemen which hath been and is the mother of us all To this you and your forefathers for many ages have owed under God your Baptisme your Christian institution your holy communion with Christ and his Catholick Church to this you owe your vertues your graces your faith your charity your hopes your evidences and preparations for Heaven your Christian priviledges characters and seals by which you are distinguished from Heathens and Aliens as much as their naturall reason morality and humanity distinguisheth them from Beasts This is the Church this the Mother which some children of Belial would teach you by most preposterous wayes of piety and rude reformation to divide to debase to despise to destroy this now craves your compassion Nor do I doubt but you are infinitely sensible how much it hath deserved as it extremely wants your filial gratitude relief comfort and countenance as testimonies of your love and duty better becoming you than anything you can do under heaven most worthy of your most generous piety Nor may your Christian charity holy courage and ingenuity be discouraged because you every where find so many of your and mine unhappy countrey-men rejoycing to see the Church of England brought to so broken and infirm so poor and despicable so mean and miserable a condition as she now appears and deplores her self in I know there are on every side of her busie mockers who gnash upon her with their teeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 evil-speakers false accusers bold calumniators delighters in her destruction These have helped forward her affliction when the hand of God was against her as Edom did against Judah in the day of Sions calamity these cry down with her down with her even to the ground now she is faln let her rise up no more raze the very foundations of her let not one stone be left upon another no Bishops no Presbyters no Catholick Succession no right Ordination no true Ministers no Baptisme no Confirmation no Consecration no Liturgie no Polity no Church let her destruction be like that of Sodom and her desolation like that of Gomorrah that there may be room enough for Ijim and Ohjim for Owles and Dragons for rough and deformed Satyrs to dwell in the ruines of her palaces and Sanctuaries her Pulpits and Temples There are I know too many such proud scorners who laugh and triumph at what your and all sober minds deplore both at home and abroad with infinite grief and astonishment through whose pious hearts a very sword daily pierceth when they behold how the Church of England is faln from being the beauty of the Western world and chief among all both Christian and Reformed Churches to be like Babylon full of licentiousnesse divisions confusions and many abominations both as to mens practises and opinions some of which are so petulant so fanatick so putid so impudent so blasphemous so inordinate so unbeseeming the gravity of men or sanctity of Christians that the ancient Hereticks and Schismaticks of all ages sorts and sizes would be ashamed if they could revive to see themselves so outvyed in ignorance despight malice monstrosity impiety impudence The Gnosticks Valentinians Cataphrygians Marcionites Montanists Manichees Novatians Arians Aerians Circumcelians were tender-foreheaded and simple-spirited people compared to those high-crested and Scraphick Sophisters who study to shake and subvert to defile and destroy all that was sacred or setled in the Church of England At whose sad aspect proud and mercilesse men who as one said sharply of them have guts but no bowels mingle their scornfull smiles with your mine and other mens unfeigned tears they triumph in her rubbish and dance in her dust they count her ashes their beauty her waters of Meribah and Marah strife and bitternesse to be their wine and refreshing they cry up their rendings of her to be rare Reformations their rags and patches to be new Robes for Christs Spouse which they pretend to have been dead and stark naked till the rough touches of some later Prophets happily revived her and till their cruel charities revested her they call the dissolutions of all Ecclesiastick orders of Primitive Government of
or might have been well acquainted they might even in these so much nauseated and despised means sufficient I fear to damn those who despised Salvation by them have found as plain and easie as sure and compendious a way to heaven through Faith Repentance Humility Charity holy Obedience to God and Man as they are likely now to do after they have stirred up so great a dust and smoke as hath put out poore peoples eyes leading them into endlesse mazes and confusions under the name and noise of a better Reformation and safer Religions In this posture of peace and plenty of piety and prosperity as to Christian and Reformed Religion had the God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ the Founder of his Church once setled me out of his abundant mercy to the people of England by the patience and prayers by the preaching and writing of godly Bishops and other Ministers who were not onely Gods painfull Labourers but his faithfull Martyrs and Confessors some of them whose great worth drew the favour of pious Princes to me who were my nursing fathers and the love of peaceable Parliaments who were my faithfull friends insomuch that for one hundred years next preceding my miseries I had no cause to envy any Christian or Reformed Church that ever was or is in all the world nor had any sober Christian just cause to complain of me much lesse thus to murmur mutiny and fight against me for no other cause but this That I would not suffer them rudely to bite off those full and fair breasts which they had so long sucked ingratefully deforming those conduits of plenty order and peace which they had so long enjoyed both in Word and Sacraments in Ministrations and Ministers Yet behold how I am faln suddenly shamefully ingratefully indignly and almost desperately my doctrine not duly examined but rashly condemned my Tenets not confuted but blasphemed by my various adversaries my publick service and solemn worship of God sharply indeed corrected even to blood but no whit improved or amended yea infinitely impaired and neglected my holy Sacraments those two great Seals of a Christians Charter and Gods Covenant those fair marks and badges of Christian profession the two poles and pillars on which all mysterious and spirituall comforts temporall and eternall joyes do constantly turn these are most what rarely used in many places either totally disused or grosly abused by the execrable consecrations of unwashed unholy unordained hands Many of my Oratories Temples and Churches Houses so called because dedicated to the service of the Lord and his Church are by some men first profaned with all the sordidnesse of men and beasts next they are suffered to ruine of themselves while they are robbed of what should repaire them and at last that Sacriledge may be the better husband they are threatned to be sold and utterly demolished The Sanctity of Christian marriages which were wont to be solemnized by prayers instructions benedictions by mutuall solemn and sacred stipulations according to the Word of God and Ecclesiastick practise is sought to be reduced by some to new wayes either very brutall and meerly naturall or at best but civil and politick The infants of Christians who were ever esteemed as the lambs of Christs flock are partially carelesly disorderly many of them dubiously yea not at all baptized neither sprinkled nor washed nor marked with any note of Christs blood to distinguish them from the herd of Heathens the brats of Aliens Jews Pagans Mahometans The sacred dreadfull and venerable Symbols of the Lords Supper which I had happily purged from all rust and rubbish of Superstition in many places have been supinely neglected for many years in others strangely consecrated irreverently celebrated partially distributed denied to many worthy and desirous Christians as if those were not Catholick signes and seals of the truth of the Gospel the Covenant of Grace those common rights or priviledges which belong to every one that professeth to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and keeps communion with his Church but onely marks to discriminate sides and parties in Religion to divide Christians into uncharitable factions As for my Dead for they are still mine as they sleep in Jesus and are Gods deposita these are in many places put into their grave with no other solemnity than a silent procession and a demure perambulation as if all that attended were as dumb as the corps and the dead buried the dead without any difference expressed between those bodies that are charitably presumed to have been Temples of the holy Ghost that are candidates of Heaven and expectants of a blessed Resurrection and the bodies of meer infidells or miscreants being now treated in many places like the carkases of beasts or the burial of an Asse for whom men do usually as much as this comes to namely the covering their corps with earth to avoid the noysomness and offence of them without any further hopes of them And all this late supercilious novelty and neglect of dead Christians is grounded upon a strange scrupulosity of some either silly or superstitious men who pretend to boggle at my office which was more for the living than the dead not meerly humane and naturall but Christian and spirituall which they count as a kind of Necromancy or strange superstition to the dead while I onely made the dead an occasion of godly instruction and Christian hope of comfort warning and lawfull devotion to the living which how they should offend any sober Christian I could never yet be convinced and I am sure came farre short of those commemorations yea comprecations for the dead which were anciently used without offence in the Primitive Churches All other offices of piety and charity for the sick and well the young and old the penitent or impenitent prescribed by me are now either wholly laid aside or performed in so various and exotick forms as common people cannot easily understand them their very novelty obscurity and affected variety makes some Ministers prayers a kind of Latin Service to the simple common people Lastly my whole frame and polity Ecclesiastical all my ancient constitution order and communion as a Nationall Church of Christ in which brethren did happily dwell together in unity all is by some men not onely quite forsaken and abandoned on their parts but they seek utterly to rout and destroy me by defaming and discouraging those that most love approve and obey me as if there had nothing been setled in me with any piety or prudence reason or discretion by the wisdome of their fore-fathers who were sometimes esteemed blest Reformers by most of these modern Renegers Separates and Apostates How justly they have done me this despite I appeal to the just and impartiall Judge before whom I can thus far with truth and comfort assert my innocency that as to the foundations of Faith and rule of Holinesse I have onely adhered to his blessed Word as
liberty as to endanger their own and other mens safety they are like Porpuices pleased with storms especially of their own raising they joy in the tossings of Religion and hope for a prey by the wrecks both of well-built Churches and well-setled States they fancy it a precious liberty to swim in a wide sea though they be drowned at last or swallowed up by sharks they triumph to see other poor souls dancing upon the waves of the dead sea to be overwhelmed with ignorance idleness Atheism profaneness perdition which is the usual and almost unavoidable fate of those giddy-headed mad-brain'd people who being happily embarqued and orderly guided in any well-setled Church do either put their ablest Pilots under hatches or cast them over-boord which hath been of late years the religious ambition of many thousands in order forsooth to recover and enjoy their imaginary Christian liberties which soon make common people the sad objects of wise mens grief and pity rather than of their joy or envy For like wandring sheep they naturally affect an erroneous and dangerous freedome from their shepherds and their folds that they may be free for foxes wolves and doggs yea some of them by a strange metamorphosis that they may seem Christs sheep turn wolves seizing upon and destroying their own shepherds which the true flock of Christ never did either in the most persecuted or the most peacefull times of the Church but were ever subject with all humility and charity to those godly Bishops and Presbyters which were by Apostolicall succession and Divine authority over them in the Lord whom they were so far from stripping robbing or devouring that both Christian Princes and faithfull people endowed them with most gratefull and munificent expressions of their loves and esteem even in primitive and necessitous times as a due and deserved honour to men of learning piety and gravity who watched over their souls being both wel enabled and duly ordained to be their rulers and guides to heaven But now who sees not by the sad experience of the Church of England how the plebs or common people yea all persons of plebeian spirits of base and narrow minds who are the greatest sticklers for those enormous and pernicious liberties who sees not how much they would be pleased to set up Jeroboams calves if they may have liberty to chuse the meanest of the people to be their Priests or some scabbed and stragling sheep to be their shepherds if they may make some of their mechanick comrades to be their Pastors and Ministers examined and ordained by their silly selves O how willing are they poor wretches in their thirst for novelty liberty and variety as Theophylact observes to suffer any pitifull piece of prating impudence who walketh in the spirit of falshood to impose upon them so far as to be their Preacher and Prophet if he will but prophecy to them of liberty and soveraignty of sacred and civil Independency of corn wine and strong drink of good bargains and purchases to be gained out of the ruines of the Church and the spoils of Church-men O how little regret would it be to such sacrilegious Libertines to have no Christian Sabbath or Lords dayes as well as no Holy-dayes or solemn memorials of Evangelical mercies How contented would they be with no preaching no praying no Sermons no Sacraments no Scriptures no Presbyters as well as no Bishops with no Ministers or holy Ministrations with no Church no Saviour no God further than they list to fancy thē in the freedom of some sudden flashes and extemporary heats There are that would still be as glad to see the poor remainder of Church-lands and Revenues all Tithes and Glebes quite alienated and confiscated as those men were who got good estates by the former ruines of Monasteries or the later spoylings of Bishops and Cathedrals nothing is sacred nothing sacrilegious to the all-craving all-devouring maw of vulgar covetousness and licentiousness O how glorious a liberty would it be in some mens eyes to pay no Tithes to any Minister much more precious liberty would it be to purchase them and by good penniworths to patch up their private fortunes Nothing in very deed is less valuable to the shameless sordid and dissolute spirits of some people than their souls eternall state or the service of their God and Saviour whom not seeing they are not very solicitous to seek or to serve further than may consist with their profit ease and liberty They rather chuse to go blindfold wandring and dancing to hell in the licentious frolicks of their fancifull Religions than to live under those holy orders and wholsome restraints which in all Ages preserved the unity and honour of true Christian Religion both by sober Discipline and sound Doctrine In the later of these the Clergy of England most eminently abounded and in the former of them they were not so much negligent which some complaine as too much checkt and curbed few men being so good Christians as to be patient of that severe Discipline which was used in the Primitive Churches which if any Bishop or Minister should have revived how would the rabble of Libertines cry out Depart from us we will none of your wayes neither Discipline nor Doctrine neither your Ministrations nor Ministry neither Bishops nor Presbyters let us break these Priestly bonds in sunder and cast these Christian cords from us our liberty is to lead our tame teachers by their noses to pull our asinine Preachers by their luculent ears to rule our precarious Rulers if they pretend to have or use any Ecclesiasticall authority so as to cross our liberties to curb our consciences or to bridle our extravagancies we look upon them as men come to torment us before our time who seek to lead us away captive to deprive us of our dear God Mammon as Micah cried out after the Danites or of our great Goddess Liberty according to the jealousie which Demetrius and the Ephesine rabble had for their Diana against the Apostles This is the Idea of that petulant profane and fanatick liberty which vulgar people most fancy and affect for the enjoying of which they have made so many horrid clamours and ventured upon so many dangerous confusions both to their own and other mens souls in matter of Religion CHAP. V. I Shall not need by particular instances further to demonstrate to You my honoured Countrey-men what your own observation daily proclaims namely the strange pranks cabrioles or freaks which the vulgar wantonnesse hath plaid of late years under the colour and confidence of liberty in Religion provided they profess no other Popery or Prelacy than what is in their own ambitious hearts insolent manners Nor is this petulancy onely exercised in the smaller circumstances or disputable matters of Religion but even in the very main foundations such as have been established of old in all the generations and successions of
these must exercise all Church-power and Divine authority over your consciences whereas for my part I do not think that the best of these new Masters and Ministers can have from their own fancies or peoples forwardness so much authority because they have none either from God or the Church of Christ or the laws of this Land as would make them petty Constables or Bom-baylies a Lay-elder or an Apparitor This I am sure that in the purest and primitive times as Justin Martyr Irenaeus Tertullian S. Cyprian and others assure us the holy mysteries of Christian Religion the power of the Keyes the sacrating of Sacraments the pastorall ruling and preaching as of office duty and necessity to any part of Christs flock was esteemed the peculiar and proper work of Bishops and Presbyters in their order and degree as the true and onely Pastors and Teachers that succeeded the twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples in their ordinary Ministry nor were men branded for other how able soever than insolent and execrable usurpers who did adventure to officiate unordained that is not duly authorised as Ministers Such intruders Tertullian notes both some men and women to have been in his time who were leavened with Schisme and Heresie so Epiphanius and S. Austin tell us of the Quintilliani Pepuziani and Colliridiani who were confounders of the Ministeriall order Sozomen Socrates Nicephorus and other Church-historians sharply censure one Ischyras or Ischyrion who unordained pretended to be a Presbyter and so to officiate calling him a detestable person and worthy of more than one death whom Athanasius finding about to consecrate or rather desecrate the Eucharist he in an holy and heroick zeal as Christ in the Temple brake the Communion Cup overthrew the Table and repressed his insolent impiety counting him as another Judas Iscariot a traitor to Christ and the Church Yet in the place of the Ministers of the Church of England I beseech you how few Athanasiusses how many Ischyrasses may you now see challenging to themselves the care of mens souls as Ministers of Christ undertaking the managerie of mens eternall interests confident to interpret Scriptures to resolve doubts to decide controversies to satisfie mens consciences to keep up the truth power and majesty of Christian Religion by new undue and exotick wayes against the torrent and impetuous force of ignorance Atheism profaneness errour malice and madness of men and Devils For all which grand designs of Gods glory and the Churches good those men are as fit agitators as Phaeton was to drive Phoebus his Chariot and truly with like success they will do it for instead of enlightening the world these Incendiaries will set all on fire as far as they meet with any combustible matter in which sad conflagrations begun and blown up by them in this Church of England some of them are so vain as to glory calling them the spirituall day of judgement an invisible doomesday a coming of Christ in the spirit of burning and refining to purge his Church For this purpose they say the Sun must be turned into darknesse and the Moon into blood government of Church and State must be subverted nor do they according to their severall fancies and interests fail to presage and expect a glorious Resurrection to their parties which they hope shall reign with Christ if not a thousand years yet as long as they can prevail so as to get power and preserve those liberties they have ravished to themselves CHAP. VIII NOr are these novell undertakers ever more ridiculous than when they sow pillowes under their own rustick arms and others elbows excusing yea abetting their illiterate rudeness and idiotick confidence with the primitive plainness and simplicity of the Apostles when Christ first chose them who were Fishermen Tent-makers or the like Which is truly but very impertinently alledged as any parallel case with these impotent and pragmatick intruders unless they could manifest to the world which they never yet did nor ever will such miraculous endowments such power and anointing from above as came upon the Apostles which in one moment was able to furnish them with more sufficiency and authority than all study and industry can ever do any of us which are the now ordinary means appointed and blessed by God succeeding in the place of miraculous gifts where Churches are once fully planted and Christianity setled To all which the constant testimony of an uninterrupted Ministery and holy succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters from the very Apostles as they from Christ is a more pregnant witnesse and conviction than any new miracles could be much more than any such pittifull accounts can be as these wonders of ignorance and arrogancy can give to the world of any extraordinary matters they say or do either as Ministers or Christians The best of some of whose lives would deform I fear the golden legend which seems to be written by a man of a brazen forehead a leaden wit and an iron heart We the despised Clergie of England do profess to use and pray God to bless our long preparative studies meditations writings readings also our immediate care concomitant labours in this kind habitually to fit us for that dreadfull work and for every actuall discharge of it We find these methods practised by the most famous lights of the Church recommended by S. Paul to Timothy though a person in some things extraordinarily gifted that he should attend didiligently to those exercises that his profiting might appear We do not now expect fire from heaven with Elias to come down upon our sacrifices but we are glad to take the ordinary coals of Gods altar which may by his Word and Spirit going along with our pains and prayers both enlighten our minds and kindle our hearts so as to make us burning and shining lights in Gods house which is his Church Truly those proud and poor wretches who know no coals but those of their own chimney-corners may possibly have a few embers on their hearths or in their potsheards they may like dark lanthorns have a bit of a farthing-candle in them that shines with a little dim and dubious light on one side onely as in the smatterings of some plain primer-knowledge which they have gathered either by superficiall reading the Scriptures or by hearing some Sermons heretofore from the able Ministers of England or by gleaning a little out of the plainest of their writings but 't is most apparent that on three sides of them that is for Grammaticall skill historicall knowledge and polemicall learning they are so horridly black and dark that they seem fitter implements to bring in such ignorance irreverence Atheism superstition and confusion as shall quite put out the Christian and Reformed Religion in this nation reducing all to pristine darkness deformity and barbarity than probable ever to be either propagators purgators or preservers of it which had long ago been over-run with the rank weeds of
Ravens must not be hoped for to feed us where Providence gives us opportunity to get our bread by honest industry Where then there are so many intruders and deceivers gone out as Ministers of the Gospel it is a matter of conscience as well as necessary prudence in all good Christians to be cautious and inquisitive whom they allow and follow as Ministers to be first satisfied in that question which the Jews rationally asked of Christ By what power or authority dost thou these things No discreet person in civil affairs will obey any warrant or order which hath no other authority than a private and pragmatick activity and can it be piety or prudence in Christians to be deluded by any pretenders in the great concernments of their souls to have no more of Sacraments or any other holy duties than the meer sensible shell and husk of them for the spiritual life and power of them is no where to be had but from such dispensers of them as have the authority and power the mission and commission of Christ rightly derived to them which was evident first in Christ after in his holy Apostles and their lawfull successors Certainly the cheat and falsity of such mock-Ministers and Pseudo-pastors is of far greater danger and detriment than those of spurious and supposititious children or of embased coin and counterfeit money Some people have been so wicked as to change their own children steal others from their parents but it was never heard that children of any discretion were so foolish and unnaturall as to abdicate their true Fathers and genuine mothers that they might adopt false parents and superinduce upon themselves the Empire of bastardly progenitors The mischief abuse is not less in Churches than in Common-weales in Christian Congregations than in families Due respect of paternall care and filiall love such as ought to be between Pastor and People can never be mutually expected where the relation is either supposititious or presumptuous or meerly imaginary or at best but arbitrary which is inconsistent with humane much more with divine Authority the measure of which is not the pleasure of man but the will of God whose will is asserted by his power For my part I firmly conclude that as no true Christians may admit of any Gospel or Sacraments or holy Institutions other than such as have been already once delivered to the Catholick Church and preserved by her fidelity against which the preaching of an Angel from heaven is not to be received or believed but accursed so nor may any Church or good Christians either broach invent or admit any new ministeriall power order mission or authority beside or beyond that which the Church of England and the Catholick Church of Christ hath received and transmitted in a constant succession That sacred ordination which began in Christ and flowed from him as the effect of his Melchisedechian Evangelicall and eternall Priesthood must never be interrupted innovated or essentially altered no not under any pretense or removing or reforming what corrupions may possibly be contracted by time and humane infirmities which are but accidentall as diseases to the body to Catholick prescriptions founded upon divine institutions Fields once sown with good corn must not be rooted up or fired because tares may be sown by the enemy while men slept Trees that are full of moss missletow through age yet bearing good fruit ought not to be cut down but pruned and cleared The decayes or dilapidations of the Temple before Hezekiah and Josiah repaired it were no excuse for peoples neglect to frequent it much less were they justified and to sacrifice other where than there onely as the place which the Lord had chosen to put his name there nor did those pious Princes set that house of God on fire because it was decayed but duly repaired it with great cost and care And such indeed was the excellent piety and prudence of the Church of England such wisdome and moderation it observed as in all other things so in this of the ministeriall order and office What injuries it as other holy things had suffered in the darkness of times by the dulness of Presbyters the negligence of Bishops or insolence of Popes it wisely reformed not abrogating the authority or breaking the Catholick succession of Bishops and Presbyters in this as in all Churches not broaching a new fountain not obstructing as Philistins the wells their fathers had digged not diverting the ancient course and conduits of the waters of life but cleansing the fountains and continuing the streams of primitive holy orders in the constant descents degrees and offices of Bishops Presbyters and Deacons They did not raise up new Ministers like Mushromes out of every mole-hill noâ— force them like Musk-melons out of the hot beds of popular zeal and novellizing faction without any regard to the ancient stock and root of Ecclesiasticall power and Ministeriall authority from which as Irenaeus Tertullian S. Cyprian and all the ancients clearly tell us Bishops and Presbyters were ever derived as slips and off-sets of the twelve Apostles and seventy Disciples No time ever did or ever shall render that Primitive plant and root of Evangelicall Ministry so dry dead and barren that they may or ought to be quite stubbed up or new ones set in their room No they are only to be pruned and trimmed that so they may be worthy of that honor which indeed they have to be by an uninterrupted succession derived and descended from the blessed Apostles whom Christ first planted by his own hands nor may any mans presumption undertake to pul up that holy plantation as those design to do who endeavour to destroy the derivation and succession of the power Ministeriall The truth sanctity and validity of which as to the Ministry of the Church of England by its Bishops and Presbyters hath been fully and clearly asserted by able pens against both Papists on the one side and Novellists on the other The one confining all Episcopal and Ministeriall power to one head and origin the Bishop of Rome as if there had not been twelve fountains and foundations of prime Apostles but onely one S. Peter appointed by our Lord Jesus Christ the other lewdly scattering that sacred office and divine authority even among vulgar and plebeian hands that every man may scramble for it as he list according as he fancies that his abilities and liberty in these times may extend The putid and pernicious effects of which in their present usurpations divisions confusions debasements discouragements upon the Clergie and Church of England as I shall afterward in the third Book more fully set them forth so I cannot here but justly condemn those partiall unreasonable and irreligious principles from whence so pragmatick an itch or thirst of novelty in so grand a concernment of Religion must needs arise that fond men should be so eager to stop up the ancient fountains
which I am sure give all the seeing world in this point so clear so perfect so full a light and so uniform a testimony that no learned impartiall and conscientious Christian can desire more nor can they but acquiesce in these unless they dare to doubt and deny the veracity and fidelity of all authors that have given us account of any Ecclesiasticall Catholick affairs and customes since the Apostles times in all which no one point or practise hath less doubt or dispute less variation or diversity than this of Ecclesiasticall order both as to the Ministry and government of the Church What the ignorant vulgar who are the bran and courser sort of people may endlesly fancy and affect or what others of better parts but as base passions may cunningly pretend I know not the better to bring in their new modelings of Ministers and Churches but I am sure it will very ill become you O noble Gentlemen who are the best and finest flower the beauty and honour the strength and stability of this English Nation who are the choice and chiefest sons of the Church of England it ill becomes you to suspect all those burning and shining lights both Bishops and Presbyters Fathers and Historians single and sociall in their Closets and in their Councils even in the first innocent ages when the Church was most pure and persecuted as if they had all been either grosly ignorant of or supinely negligent in following the mind of Christ and methods of the blessed Apostles as to these great affairs of the Church which were openly uniformly universally both preached and practised by the Apostles also delivered to and received by their successors as in other things so most indisputably in this which so much concerned not onely the right ordering and well-being and polity of the estate of the Church militant but it s very being and Essence in Doctrine Ministry Duties Discipline and Government Can it I beseech you without great uncharitableness and pervicacy unworthy of any ingenuous soul be imagined that from the beginning during the life of some Apostles and their scholars the whole Church and the most eminent persons in it Ministers Martyrs and Confessors did all conspire to delude themselves and to deceive all posterity in so clear great and sacred concernments as those of the Churches Ministry and Polity were ever esteemed The incomparable and unanswerable Mr. Rich Hooker who is not to be read without admiration nor named without veneration long ago urged this Absurdity against the then more modest Sticklers for their Disciplinarian Innovations in the Ministry and Polity of the Church of England Sure saith he it were a very strange thing that such a Discipline meaning the Presbyterian as ye speak of should be taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God and no Church hath ever found it out nor received it till this present time or contrariwise that the Government of the Church against which you bend your selves should be observed every where through all generations and ages of the Christian world and no Church ever perceive it to be against the word of God We require you to find out but one Church upon the face of the earth that hath been ordered by your Discipline or that hath not been ordered by ours that is Episcopall government for ordination and jurisdiction since the times that the blessed Apostles were conversant upon earth This unanswered challenge did that excellent person heretofore make in order to prevent if possible these innovations and mischiefs which are now grassant in England to the hazard of quite overthrowing all that ancient Order Ministry succession and Government which had been conserved in this Church conform to all parts of the Catholick Church If your other employments and studies have hindred you from being so well acquainted with the authentick works and authoritative testimonies of the ancientest writers of Church-affairs as those grand Authors deserve and your ingenuity cannot but desire yet far be it from your prudence piety and charity to derogate from the honour and credit of your own Countrey-men who have in the Histories of England both Civil and Ecclesiasticall to which you cannot well be strangers sufficiently shewed from the originall of these British Churches what Ministry and Orders they had If you are yet strangers to those eldest ages times and authors of your own and so cannot maturely ground your judgements upon their testimony yet what think you of the learning piety honesty and courage of those later and reall and renowned Reformers of this Church whether Clergie or Lay-men who lived in your fathers memories whose blood and ashes as Martyrs and Confessors against Papall innovations and corruptions is still warm and precious These did not lay new foundations of a Christian Church a true Religion or an authentick Ministry here in England but they onely repaired the decayes of the old and lightned them of those either erroneous or dangerous superstructures with which long ignorance and superstition had over-laded them and not so much built upon them as almost quite buried them These Heroes these worthy men I say who were worthy of the name of Christians English-men and Reformers did not ever design or go about to broach new fountains nor to cut new channels nor to lay new pipes by which to convey the Ecclesiasticall order and Ministeriall authority here in England but they cleansed the foulness they removed the obstructions they sodered the ruptures of the former Catholick way which was very good as well as very old yet not the antiquity but the veracity and divinity of it attested both by Scriptures and by the Catholick usage of all Churches made those blessed Reformers now an hundred years ago cheerfully subscribe to that polity Ministry and authority Ecclesiasticall which they mended but changed not these they recommended to all estates in this nation by whose Parlamentary votes and sanction they were established as the best means to preserve this Church both Christian and Reformed After these famous Fathers of England's happy Reformation whose judgement is manifest in the point of ministeriall power and holy order to be carried on by Bishops and Presbyters can you suspect that their later successors in office and judgement I mean all those learned grave and godly Ministers of England whom your eyes have seen and your ears have heard heretofore with great respect love and admiration dispensing the word of God and holy mysteries to you who till the divisions and deformities of these last and worst dayes have baptized instructed and guided both you and your hopefull posterity in the way to heaven and happiness in truth and peace in faith and repentance in humility and holiness in all graces vertues and good works powerfully set forth to you by their excellent Sermons and fervent Prayers by the blessed Sacraments and worthy Examples they have communicated to you can you I say suspect that all these together with the
who are set up by them as the great rivals and Antagonists of the Ancient Catholick and Apostolick Ministers of Christ and Vastators of the whole frame of the Church of England Can you O worthy Gentlemen or any sober Christians who are not strangers to the prayings preachings and writings heretofore brought forth by the worthy Ministers Bishops and Presbyters of the Church of England can you think that either the godly Ministers or the Christian people in England were ignorant of or strangers to those spirituall influences those inward powers and secret experiences of Religion till these new Pedlers of piety began to open their packs or till these rare Rabbies turned their shops into Synagogues and their Conventicles into the onely true spiritualized Churches of Christ Did we never know before these new Illuminates and Spiritaties rose up what belonged to the humble seeking the happy finding and holy acquaintance with God by the union and communion of Gods Spirit working and witnessing with ours Had we neither the root nor the fruit of true Religion till these new planters sprung up Were we utterly strangers to Faith Repentance Charity and good works or to that joy love peace blessed hopes sweet satisfactions evident sealings sincere sanctifyings and undoubted assurings of the holy Ghost which are wrought by and conform to the Word of God first casting the Christian into that holy mould and then filling him with such comforts as are unspeakable and glorious whose nature is rather to be humbly enjoyed modestly owned and tenderly treated in a gracious soul than vulgarly discovered and vapouringly ostentated in a rude and vain-glorious fashion The brightest lustre of Gods Jewels is rarely shewn and hardly seen being most glorious within the richest wares are least set upon the stalls or shop-boords These Arcana magnalia sublimia Dei secrets of the Lord these whisperings of the blessed Spirit these oscula Christi kisses of Christ as S. Bernard calls them these aromata gratiae perfumes of his soft breath these glowings of grace in the heart these holy fervours and heavenly raptures of humble devout meditative fervent souls who the more they believe the more they love and the more they love the better they live more humanely and more divinely more justly more charitably and more orderly these real pregustations of glory and anticipations of heaven blessed be God were long ago known and experimentally set forth in the Prayers Sermons writings and actions of thousands of good Christians both Ministers and others long before these novell and exotick masters began to lisp out the Soboloths of fine phrases before they dared to assault and not onely cry but beat down this and all National Churches all Clergie of the ancient and right order all Universities and Nurseries of good learning together all Tithes all Liturgies all studied Sermons and premeditated prayers all wholsome forms and sober compendiums of religious duties and devotion as if all these were meerly carnall literall formall and superficiall naturall and papall meer husks and shells the rind and out-side of Religion Yea we had the comfort and God the glory of his grace in the Ch. of Eng. long before either Anabaptists or Familists or Seekers or Quakers or Ranters or any other spawn of Libertinism and Independency of Schism and Separation had amused the silly vulgar as S. Austin tells us by his own experience the subtill but sordid Manichees were wont to do with their new motions and strange expressions of being Godded with God Christed with Christ Spirited with the Spirit and the like affectations which are either barbarities and simplicities or blasphemies insolencies and impossibilities of speaking for no sober Christian ever did or in Religion ought or in true reasoning can understand that by a believers being partaker of a diviner nature through Christ he is presently Deified that is personally invested and plenarily possessed with all the infinite Attributes essence and glory of God which are incomprehensible by any finite understanding and personally incommunicable to any creature excepting Christ Jesus the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Immanuel God Incarnate who onely may without robbery be equall with God esteemed called and adored as God So that they can religiously mean no more by all this pomp of their words than what was long ago far better understood and expressed in more humble wholsom and intelligible words also better enjoyed by sober meek just and quiet-spirited Christians who well knew the glorious priviledges of every gracious and sincere Christian which is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to whom being related by faith they are in some sense united to God As the eye that sees the suns light and glory by its beams is in some sense truly enlightened by it united to it partaker of it not as to the vastnesse of its Globe essentiall glory which is far too big and too bright for the eyes small capacity but as to its pleasing influences in like manner the Christian that is illuminate and regenerate by Baptism instructed by the Word of God and sanctified by the Spirit of God is so drawn to Christ by the sweet attractions of the cords of his love and engraffed in him that he is not now his own but Christs not enslaved to his own sinfull and depraved nature but endued with the new powers and principles of an holy and heavenly nature which is truly and soberly that divine nature of which S. Peter speaks which while we behold by true faith and obedience we are changed into the same image from Glory to Glory CHAP. XVI IF then a wise and serious Christian who is not so idle or impudent as to play with Religion to trifle in holy things or to mock with God if such an one will lose so much time as to sift all that these new masters vent that these vapouring Prophets say or write as rare and precious spirituall and heavenly beyond all the fleshly forms learned ignorance and litterall darknesse under which they say we other Christians and Ministers in England have lain long and laboured all night in vain if he will do himself and them so much right as to winnow away the chaff of their affected language their bumbast tearms their insolent expressions drive them from the refuge and confidence they have in the sillinesse of their Auditors the easinesse of their Disciples and the sequaciousnesse of their followers who most admire when they least understand this done he shall find that either nothing remains that is wholsome and good in their swoln heaps of new notions and expressions which are many times the gildings of some of their pills the palliations of their poysonous opinions the daring-glasses or decoyes to bring men into the snares of their dangerous or damnable doctrines or at best all this froth and swelling this noise and ratling of their Novellizings is reducible into a few drops a
fanatick triflers troublers of Religion which no sober Christian can tolerate in their publick and religious meetings they presently meditate the most desperate separations they instantly fall to set up new Churches and Pastors after their own heart their full revenge must be had not onely by dividing themselves but by seducing and poysoning other silly people as much as may be withdrawing them from that good esteem they had and respect they formerly bare to the Church of England and their lawfull Ministers Then the followers of these pragmatick Preachers are taught to bear with patience as horses are the noise of drummes and trumpets all manner of scurrilous railings against the Church and Clergie of England At last they are by troops brought up in front to charge them with such insolency of speech and behaviour of writing and acting as sufficiently discovers their evil hearts to be like mines or Petars full fraught and charged with all kinds of bitterness contempt and animosity against them in order to destroy them utterly as soon as they have power and opportunity to do it In the room of whose orderly beauty learned gravity sober sanctity and exemplary piety so famous conspicuous and prosperous heretofore these bold extirpators and bitter Antagonists have hitherto produced as the eructations of Aetna and earth-quakes are wont with much swelling noise and terrour nothing but darkness smoke and thick vapours full of sulphureous obfuscations Sure their executions and conclusions must be full of mischiefs subversions confusions desolations to the Reformed Religion because there is not one dramme or iota that ever I could observe of sound knowledge of usefull piety of gracious effects of holy patterns of Christian principles to be found in them any way comparable to those proportions of wisdome and good understanding of justice and charity of meekness and moderation with all which the English world was heretofore well acquainted by the learned industry and exemplary piety of its reverend Bishops and other godly Ministers who were ever highly honoured passionately loved and worthily treated by pious Princes peacefull Parliaments and unpassionate people long before either tumultuary rabbles or schismatick agitators or the Scotch sword or the Smectymnuan juncto or a sifted sequacious Assemblie or covenanting Houses or Committee-Consistories or Military Superintendents undertook by an unwonted authority and severity not onely to catechise but to chastise the Church and Clergie of England even all the Bishops and most of the Presbyters among whom many one person might be found whose learning and worth every way might modestly be put into the balance against all that any or all those parties can pretend to or ever yet discovered to the wiser and better world who have been and are the most rigid exactors severest censurers and sorest enemies to the Reformed Clergie and Church of England Whos 's more crafty rivalls and cruellest persecutors finding themselves as heretofore so still vastly exceeded and infinitely out-done as to all reall endowments commendable practises and visible sufficiencies for learning knowledge utterance prudence for praying preaching writing and living they are now of late after the way of those old fanaticks who called themselves the pure elect inspired and spirituall ones flown to the retreats and refuges of their inward graces to more secret and spiritual perceptions to hidden and unseen acquaintances with God Which are as I formerly touched the old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of elect Manichees and paraclete Montanists meer shifts and sleights blinds and evasions where the light of mens works and gifts shines not to the glory of God as our Saviour speaks for these are a nemo scit as easily denied as they are rashly affirmed being indiscoverable and incommunicable to any but Gods and a mans own spirit The hidden manna the white stone the new name which none can read but he that hath it these if meant of Graces are best asserted or most confuted by mens works No man is of God who doth not the will and works of God as they are revealed in his Word in all righteousness and holiness with meekness and humility with sobriety and good order in all which if any the best of these Novellers do at any time come neer to the parts graces and merits of those that were and are dutifull sons and servants to the Church of England yet I am sure they cannot without intolerable impudence pretend to exceed them so far that no fair quarter may be allowed to the former Preachers and Professors in this Church that no place or naile should be left them in Gods sanctuary here in England CHAP. XXII INto which as I have by many instances evinced some mens folly or fury hath of later years sought to bring so much filth and confusion that they have almost made this Church an Augean stable so that it is an Herculean work to cleanse it of all those debordments and debasements faln upon Christian Religion of those fedities and deformities brought upon its reformed profession of those disorders and undecencies which have invaded Ecclesiastick duties and mysteries all which necessarily follow the invasions and usurpations of popular libertie in Religion which though already full of squallor and sordidness yet are still eagerly challenged loudly clamoured and fiercely asserted by the common people and their parasites the most plebeian spirits Who not capable to comprehend or not willing to understand the gracious beauty the holy modesty and divine majesty of true Christian liberty which most excludes all base licenciousnesse as the brightest light doth all darkness and the perfectest health all sickness have excessively doted in later years upon this Image of imaginary liberty as if it had newly come down from heaven in a whirlwind of Civil war and Schisme whereas in good earnest the most vociferant vulgar who most cry up this their Diana like the riotous rabble at Ephesus do least know what the matter is nor what true Christian liberty means which undoubtedly puts the severest restraints that may be upon it self as to doing any thing offensive to God or injurious to its neighbour in private and single much more in publick and sociall respects in civil much more in religious relations which as men and Christians we bear to one another True Christian liberty is as far as heaven from hell from any thing that looks like incivility rudeness barbarity inhumanity frenzy fedity disorder deformity Rationall and religious liberty is not the freedome of an untamed heifer of an unbridled horse of a mad dog or an unyoked hog which will ramble and wallow and bite and root up where they list which seeks to subvert not whole houses onely but famous Churches to infect as many as they can with the plague and contagion of mens own evil hearts It is not Christian liberty but an earthly sensuall and devillish lazinesse or licentiousness for men and women that have been baptised in the name of Christ and so
eggs the best of which are of no great worth and most of them are quite addle or rotten CHAP. XXIII ALthough I have thus far and thus long insisted most honoured and beloved Countrey-men upon the mischiefs of abused Liberty as the first and chief cause I conceive of the greatly lapsed and decaying estate of the Church of England and the Reformed Religion which was heretofore so setled so sound so prospered so approved by God and good men yet I cannot forbear a further search into this Ulcer or Fistula for indeed her hurt is not now a green wound lately made either by the malice of open enemies or by the wantonness of those friends who love to be alwayes pickeering and skirmishing in Religion but it is now by a long confluence of ill humours in people grown a venomous and inveterate sore contumacious to any ordinary Medicines opprobrious to the best Physitians contagious to the remaining parts of this Civil and Ecclesiastical body which have any thing in them sound and sincere many of which especially among the common people being weak are less able to resist that petulant poyson and spreading itch of liberty which is so bewitching a name to the populacy a temptation and infection which few vulgar spirits are able to resist or willing to remedy And indeed the mischief seising like Mercury or Quicksilver upon the spirits and brains of men that are rash easie heady it makes them presently suspect and shortly to hate all those as their enemies who go about to curb or cure so welcome and flattering a disease which is not less dangerous because delightfull for commonly all those things that are most agreeable to naturall men and carnall minds who love to be licentious prove grievous to Gods Spirit scandalous to the name of Christ and pernicious to his Churches purity or peace Liberty if it be in ill keeping soon putrifies to licentiousness as the manna did which turned to wormes Not that I am any way against that rationall ingenuous modest inoffensive charitable and conscientious liberty which is the onely true Christian liberty to be desired and enjoyed either in private or in publick such I mean as is neither touchy nor turbulent but carries an equall tendernesse to other mens honest and harmless freedome as to its own seeking onely by lawfull means either to remove those impediments of its well-being and doing that are really rubs or remiras in its way to heaven or else to obtain those holy allowed advantages which may most promote its communion with God with Christ and his blessed Spirit which holy freedomes and happy advantages are surest to be met withall as I conceive in those high wayes and plain paths which Christs Catholick Church in its nobler parts and ampler combinations hath constantly kept after the primitive proportions Apostolicall distributions of Churches wherein the majesty of Christ the harmony of Christians which is the honour of Christian Religion are infinitely more to be seen and safely preserved than in any of those by-wayes or diverticles which Schismatick liberty affects to chuse and follow which will at length make any Nationall Christian and Reformed Church that was heretofore grounded in truth guided with order united in love conspicuous with beauty fortified with its joynt power uniform in its solemn ministrations and orderly in all its holy motions like an army well ordered disciplin'd and bravely marshall'd to be like the routed parties and ragged regiments of a scattered and divided army It is an observation never failing That the sanctity of Christian Martyrs the honour and prevalency of that Religion which recommends the crucified Lord Jesus as a Saviour and preserver not a destroyer of mankind these are best preserved in any nation or society of men there where least liberty or license is permitted to private spirits publickly to innovate or alter dispute or deny contemn or subvert those Catholick Truths and Doctrines or those comely constitutions and customes which are once well wisely setled by publick counsel and authority which carried due regard to the glory of God to the rule of his Word to the Catholick precedents and to the common good of that particular Nation or polity All experience and our own as bad as any teacheth us that liberty in the vulgar sense and use is like a sweet and rank kind of Clover-grass with which the beast of the people will soon surfeit even till they burst themselves if they be not moderated and restrained from over-feeding by their wise Governours in Church and State The Histories of Sleidanus and others sufficiently shew you in the last Century how wild the Boores of Germany grew even to a kind of a Lycanthropy by such liberties as their teachers first indulged and themselves afterward usurped how quickly this charm like Circe's turns men and women into dogs and wolves how abused liberty having once seized upon the thatch and straw the petulancy and insolency of common people as most combustible matter like a masterless and unbridled fire it will devour more in a few dayes by the pragmatick folly of some extravagant heads and hands than the wisdome piety and gravity of your forefathers could erect or your posterity will be able to repair in many years or ages for no fires burn with more fury pertinacy than those which maintain their unquenchable flames by the oyl of Religion and Liberty with which they are least to be trusted who most love to play with it as children do with fire and gun-powder Common people like young heirs who have more wealth than wit are of so profuse an humour and so lavish of their liberty both civil and religious when once they think themselves masters of it that they will presently be undone if they have not some wiser men to be their Guardians who will be better husbands for them than they would be for themselves nor are they ever more desperately prodigall or more certainly miserable than when like mad-men they have by insolency or importunity extorted from their Governours and the Laws such a portion of liberty either civil or religious as they least know how to use and will be sure to abuse Let those men that are the greatest Tribunes of the people the seeming Patrons of their liberties but reall parasites of their licentious humours in Religion let them I say make but one years triall with how much good nature reason justice and modesty these people will use their civil and naturall liberty in which being absolved from all restraint of laws and fears of power and of punishment they shall have leave with the bridle on their necks to covet challenge contend invade usurp and take every man to himself such women such houses such goods such lands such offices such power and such honours as each of them most fancies himself capable to deserve or enjoy in a few dayes they will soon see how severe a revenge such folly will take of
which can by no persons of any right understanding be thought to be the temper of any thing that is worthy to bear the name inscription of the true God or the Christian and Reformed Religion This is not the pulse of piety nor can be the influence of Gods holy wise and peaceable spirit No Christian can be so uncatechised as not to know that these wounds and scarres which are upon the face of Religion and made by Christians of the same countrey and communion are not the marks of Christs sheep nor the characters of his Disciples who have been in all ages most eminent for all graces and vertues for all things true comely orderly just generous benigne charitable none exceeded or equalled them for mutuall love while they were neer or far off insomuch that primitive Assemblies of Bishops Presbyters and people were most lively resemblances of that Angelick Order Quire and Harmony which is in Heaven before the Throne of God and of the Lamb. This union and subordination kept up the reverence of Religion and the dignity of the Evangelicall Ministry among Christians even then when persecution most raged against them when the persons of holy Bishops and Presbyters were imprisoned banished mangled and massacred by Heathenish and Jewish persecutors yet then was the authority of Ministers looked upon as sacred and divine not from the earth but heaven not from Kings and Princes not from Parlaments and civil Senates not from Protectors and Major-Generals or new Triers much lesse from any principle or power which is now challenged by popular arrogancy and vulgar usurpation but from Christ Jesus and so from the blessed God who sent his Son and He his Apostles and other Ministers as his Father sent him for the same end and work in those measures and proportions of his Spirit which were necessary for the calling converting continuing and perfecting the Church as the Body of Christ While these continued in an holy and uninterrupted succession of undoubted Authority as Apostles Bishops Pastors and Teachers of one mind and mission of one ordination and succession they easily preserved the doctrine of Christian Religion uncorrupted the Mysteries unprophaned the Ministry unviolated the reverence of Religion unabased but these once divided against each other in opinions and factions their ranks and order broken their succession interrupted their commission counterfeited or varied their office invaded their authority doubted denied and destroyed who knowes not what spring-tides what whole seas of faction and fury of negligence and irreverence of Atheisme and irreligion must necessarily flow in upon the face of any Church when the truest and compleatest Ministers shall be questioned or scorned the dubious defective or false ones magnified by secular policy or popular levity when Lay-men shall either think there are no Ministers invested with any due authority or themselves as good as the best set up after some novell and arbitrary modes of their own invention which must not onely vye with the true ancient and Catholick ordination of 1500 years standing but justle it quite out of the Church like the bastard Abimelech who slew all the legitimate issue of Gideon his Father Who can heare with trembling or pray with devotion or receive with reverence or be reproved with patience or be comforted with peace or be terrified with judgement or mortified to any lust or moderated to any passion or confined to new obedience or won to true repentance or moved in conscience or raised in hope when he applies to any or all these duties out of faction novelty curiosity levity custome affectation or hypocrisie when he thinks the Minister that officiates hath no more power than himself or his groom and footman when he looks upon his Minister as a poor man confined to his teddar staked to his petty living dependant upon mens charity exposed to plebeian contempt at best but an almesman of the State a publick pensioner or an Evangelicall Trooper whose commission is ad placitum hominum after the will of man having no divine power or authority to his office and work no legall right or title as to certainty or perpetuity in any thing he enjoyes as his wages further than the arbitrary favours or frowns of men are dispensed to him a very trembling and precarious orator whose pulpit is like the Ara Lugdunensis soon made his scene his coffin and his sepulchre especially if either fervently praying or faithfully preaching or justly yet wisely reproving he displease any captious and peevish Auditor who hath confidence enough to make him an offender for a word and influence enough to sequester to silence yea to starve him and his family if he use an honest and innocent parrhesy or freedome of speaking such as becomes the Messenger of heaven the Minister of Christ and the Ambassadour of God When the mouths of Gods oxen are thus easily muzled when his Prophets are so cheaply despised when his neerest servants are thus despitefully used no wonder if irreverence Atheisme and profanenesse in all sorts of people attend all religious exercises as necessarily as shadows doe those grosse bodies which intervene between the sight and light which is the first sad and bad consequence following and flowing from the inconstancie and unsetlednesse of Religion CHAP. V. BEsides the decayes of Piety and Charity in mens hearts both as to the principles power and practice becoming Christians which like a Lethargick numbnesse and stupor is come upon the old stock of Christians in England together with that unsetlednesse irreverence contempt Atheisme and profanenesse which grows upon the younger sort of people who have been bred amidst these our divisions distractions and extravagancies of Religion to very much of irreligion the lusts and vanities of their minds being not any way so curbed and repressed by the incumbent majesty and authority of any such setled and uniform Religion as is necessary either to perswade men to be good or to over-awe and restrain them from being so bad as they would be Besides these mischiefes which I have already set forth to you my Honoured Countrymen there is a second sad and bad consequence which like a Gangrene or spreading Canker daily frets the spirits and as it were eats up the very substance and vitals of Religion in this Nation by reason of those endlesse and vexatious disputes which agitate the spirits and exasperate the minds of all sorts of Christians and of none so much as Ministers who are looked upon as those that expose and offer themselves to be the chief heads or Champions of Religion in their severall parties who are to undertake the combates and challenges of all opposers which truly were no very hard province if either Ministers were unanimous and mutually assisted by concurrent judgement among themselves or if they were protected by the shield of this Churches declared Doctrine and uniform profession of Religion Which heretofore was justly esteemed as sacred inviolable and invulnerable having
which was by that sea represented 5. Nor is it inconsiderable in this point the custome of washing or baptizing among the Jews as a religious ceremony used in admitting proselytes of the Gate which were not circumcised these were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 baptized with their whole houshold servants and children as the Talmudists report This usuall ceremony and custome of Baptisme chosen by Christ for an Evangelical Sacrament or sign of admittance to his Church may justly be thought in Christs use and intention to extend to the like latitude in its use or applying to Infants among Christians as it did among the Jewes especially where neither Christ nor the Apostles make any restraint or exception in the case of Infants 6. Who under the Gospel as S. Austin proves against the Pelagians are in as much want by nature of Evangelical mercy as they were under the Law and Jewish polity Nor is it to be imagined without great absurdity that Christ lessened Gods mercy or favour to them under the Gospel short of what was under the Law seeing they are every way as capable of this new Sign and Seal as they were of the former and want this as much which Origen urgeth as the ground of Infant-baptisme 7. Neither the Analogie of the Scripture nor the proportion of Gods dispensations of grace to his Church-Christian will allow us to think that God under the Gospel denies to believing parents or their children such latitudes of mercy and holy priviledges in the visible means of grace and salvation which were in another form afforded to the Jews that God hath no regard or makes no claim to children as his or any parts of his Church till they come to years of discretion that he would have the children of Christians while Infants now in no better state and capacity of his mercy by Christ than the children of meer Heathens and Infidels that either no Infants are now to be saved or not by the Blood of Christ or by no visible sign and means or by the Spirit alone without Water which Christ joyns together affirming that none can enter into the Kingdome of Heaven either the Kingdome of Grace or Glory the visible or invisible Church in the ordinary methods of Gods dispensation of grace now under the Gospel unlesse they be born again of Water and the Spirit 8. If children are capable to be sanctified by the Spirit they are no lesse capable to be washed by baptismall water which is consecrated by the Word and Spirit or power of Christ in his Church to so holy an use and spirituall washing away of sin as is attained by his blood represented by baptismall water for the sign is of less value than the thing signified as the wax and parchment are far less than the land or estate consigned and conveyed by them Since then Christ hath joyned these together in so full express and large a manner extending to all it must needs appear not onely a petulancy but arrogancy in any Christians to separate them and in order to gratifie a novell fancy or exotick opinion to run counter to all these proportions of Evangelicall Truth and Mercy which evidently crosse all those mentioned absurdities as inconsistent with Evangelicall promises favours and dispensations of grace which are much ampliated and enlarged but no way straitned or abated 9. This general tenour and scope of the Scriptures so highly favouring Christian Infants as a great part of those many nations and families which are prophecied and promised shall come in to Christ is in my judgement sufficient to satisfie all those that list not to be contentious especially where the words and actions of Christ do further expresly intimate yea largely declare his speciall favour indulgence toward 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 little Infants in his Church as Irenaeus justly urgeth in favour of them who lived anno 150. Christ having himself been an Infant and received then the seal of Circumcision as an Infant to denote his grace for them and favour to them suffering and shedding his blood in infancy for infants he afterward as three Evangelists tell us invited infants to come or be brought to him testified a favour for them blessed them and declares them capable of the Kingdome of Heaven as members of the Church both in grace and glory For as Infants have the spirit and principles of reason even then when they cannot exercise or exert them so may they have as Tertullian observes the spirit and principles of grace and glory of sanctification and salvation even then when they are as under Circumcision onely passive receivers not active employers of the grace of God given them by Christs merits The magnetick vertue may be communicated to a needle although it be not presently put into such an even posture or aequilibrium as will actually shew it so is the grace of God in Infants Which mercy and indulgence of God to the Infants of his Church is a gracious counterpoizing of that native misery and pravity which as Origen and Austin observe they derive from the old Adam to which they are not actively contributive but passively receptive In like manner by the second Adam Christ Jesus the Antidote or remedy is early and so preventive of their agency that as S. Cyprian urgeth the means of life and salvation is dispensed to them also in Baptisme before they can know their calamity CHAP. X. 10. ALl which weight and strength of reasoning drawn from Scripture in many instances and most conform to the love grace philanthropy mercy and benignity of God through Christ to his Church under the Gospel are sufficient to out-weigh those two small and weak cavils urged by the Anabaptists either from the Scriptures silence not naming Infants in the precept or history of Baptisme or limiting as they fancy for ever which was but in the first planting of Churches Baptism only to such as are taught and actually believe which is true as in Abrahams case and such as were men grown in his house he and they were first taught of God the meaning of that Evangelicall mystery but the Infants who in the second place received it could not be instructed and yet were circumcised that is owned for Gods dedicated to him distinguished by this visible sign from the children of Aliens and by this means of grace brought no doubt to glory so is it in Baptisme where the root of parents believing is once holy by baptismall relation and dedication to God keeping communion with Christ and his Church there the branches or children are also holy and belong to the Lord. 11. Nor is this reasoning from Scripture as to the harmony and concurrent sense of it either scepticall or curious or infirm but farre more pregnant and potent in Religion both as to faith and manners than any urging of one or two particular places contrary to this tenour and Analogie of faith or those proportions
rejoyce in that vengeance which they conclude God hath made upon our Schismes Errours Obstinacies and Persecutions against them by our mutuall confusions Hence must daily and necessarily follow secret inclinations and accessions to the Roman party by all those who are not well grounded in the Reformed Religion or not much prejudiced against the Popish Errours or are indifferent for any Religion which is most easie or pleasing These at length will warp to the Roman party as the most specious of any so that unlesse there be a speedy restauration of the honour of the Church of England I see not how it is possible to prevent that fatall relapse either to Romish superstition and slavery or else to a dreadfull persecution which will in time necessarily follow those dissipations and destructions of this Reformed Church its Ministry Government and Religion which some men have already too much still do beyond measure so industriously promote to the excessive joy and gratifying of the Popish party and designes which are not onely invasive upon the honour and freedome of this Nation but highly scandalous to our Reformed Profession and dangerous to our consciences especially as we yet stand convinced of the Errours Superstitions and Sacriledges of the Romish Religion since it lapsed from the Primitive Institutions of Christ the patterns of the Apostles the ancient Communion of Christian Churches and the fraternall Coordination of Bishops who were alwayes united in orderly happy and harmonious Aristocracies rather than subordinate to any one Monarchicall Supremacy as to Ecclesiasticall Power and Jurisdiction however they had such regulation and primacy of order by Patriarchs and Metropolitans among Bishops and the representers of severall Churches as became wise men that were numerous when they met in great Councils or Church-Assemblies CHAP. XV. I Cannot but here recommend it to the most serious consideration of all wise and worthy Christians who make conscience and not policy of Religion as Christian and Reformed That however the soberest sort of Christians in Engl. do in many and possibly in most things necessary to salvation which are not very numerous agree both charitably and cheerfully with those of the Roman Church as to our common Faith in Jesus Christ and hope of Salvation by his merits in the way of an holy life and good works yet as it will never be hoped that the Papists shall return to a communion with us while we are so divided among our selves and daily excommunicating each other from Church and Christ and Heaven so it will be very difficult and dangerous both in point of conscience and prudence of sin and safety for you or your posterity to return to a plenary and visible Communion with the Papal profession or Roman Conventions considering how we now stand convinced in our judgements and so will many of your posterity ever be untill all Books of controversie which no purgatory Index can correct are burnt or buried by which you and they must needs be so well informed as to be justly opposite and uncompliant to those Errours Superstitions and Sacriledges which the Roman party seeks to impose upon all those that will have visible communion with them which no consciencious Christian can swallow down when they appear to him not onely different from but contradictive in plain termes to that Word of God which themselves with us do own to be the rule of faith and manners the measure of all true Religion contrary to which some of their Tenets Injunctions and Practises seem to us either to rob God of his peculiar honour and omniscience which is to search hearts to heare and answer the prayers of our souls as well as our lips or to rob Christ of the glory of his onely Merit Mediation Satisfaction and Intercession for us or lastly to rob the Church of Christ of that pure and plenary perception of Christs holy Institutions and blessed Sacraments to which they adde and detract as they please performing religious offices most-what in such a language as most people cannot understand and so not be edified either in their judgements or affections which ought in all reason by holy duties to be either more enlightened or judiciously warmed and devoutly excited to the knowledge of God to the love of Christ to an holy Life and mutuall Charity To remove all which Deformities Disorders and Indignities put upon religious Mysteries by the Church of Rome the Church of England with great Prudence Piety and Charity did assert and restore to a Scripturall rectitude primitive simplicity and sober decency the state of this Church and Nation by a just necessary and prudent Reformation of those Romish Errours Superfluities and Corruptions which had with great fraud and fallacy prevailed upon this as other parts of Christendome here in the Western world Which great and happy work of due Reformation was begun carried on and compleated not by any forraign or intestine Swords not by popular and tumultuary rudenesse as in many places which are the odious methods of the Devil to blast over-drive and pervert due and true Reformation in Churches or States but in Gods peaceable just and holy way by such publick lawful and complete Authority both Ecclesiasticall and Civil as this Church and Nation had originally in it self without any authoritative or subordinate dependance upon any forraign State or Church Prince or Prelate however it did in Charity so comply for many years and correspond with the pristine renown and eminency of the Roman Church as might most preserve Order and unity in the Christian world till it felt as well as saw the Roman Yoke to be intolerable in honour and conscience Which Independent and absolute state of this Church and Monarchy as to the originall right and power of it in it self hath been unanswerably asserted as by others so of late by those very reverend learned and judicious persons who have made it their businesse in particular Tracts to defend this Church and Christian State from the just charge of any unjust Schisme in respect of the Roman Communion and Jurisdiction or usurpation rather resuming upon good grounds both as to Divine and Humane Lawes that supreme power which is inherent and unalienable in this Nation both in Prince Nobility Prelates and People for the preserving of true Religion and reforming it as need shall require in order to the Honour Peace and Happinesse both of Prince and People Church and State who never did nor indeed ever could alienate or give away from themselves and their posterity those primitive ancient Rights or Immunities of the Nation which if any had in the darkness drowziness of times by great artifices and pretensions encroached upon all Reason and Justice required that when Prince and People awaked out of their dreams and superstitious slumbers they should reassume those honorary powers and hereditary priviledges of Church and State which were cunningly lurched or filched from them while they were dozed or asleep
an envious Eye and a sacrilegious Spirit did not find vehement Regrets honest Pity and sharp Remorses in his heart when he saw that goodly Temple of God turned to a stable by a military either necessity or liberty when passing by he discerned all the scaffolds which supported those ponderous arches till the sides of the Building were confirmed pulled down not without the danger and dread of those which removed them to burn or sell them when after this he beheld the lead which covered it flayed off by piece-meal and turned to private advantages when last of all he was afraid to passe through the Isles or come near the Arches of that great structure for fear it should fall upon him and oppresse him with those horrid heaps which every moment threatned to fall their cement being dissolved by rain and weather To this Tragick posture is that stately structure reduced which was the noblest ornament of that great and renowned City as it were the centre of its stability magnificence and honour yea it was justly reckoned among the chiefest visible instances of the Christian glory and renown of this Nation while both Natives and Strangers beheld it not without a sacred horrour and unwonted admiration I pray God the Ruine of that Church be not a presage of other Ruines which will be more unwelcome to many of that City when their seiled Houses shall become ruinous heaps I know there are of later years so many pedlars and enterlopers in Religion that they are in danger to spoile the grand trade of true Reformation which ought to be carried on by a publick joynt stock of Christian Counsel and Charity for their gainfull godlinesse aims not onely to make all Ministers of the Church so mean and miserable that they shall have just cause to envy the poorest pesants and the meanest mechanicks but they further design to reduce all our material Churches or Houses of God in the Land to such sordid deformities that these shall have cause to envy not onely the spruce and costly Houses of these thrifty Reformers but their very Barns and Stables which they will have more substantiall and in better repair yea more decent and cleanly than our Churches into which Christians as Gods Harvest are frequently gathered together to serve and worship their Saviour to praise adore and admire the God of Heaven While there is no end of the Cost and Curiosity the Beauty and Richness of their private Dwellings yet are these Church-worms these moths of Reformation ever murmurnig repining at what charge is bestowed even by other men either long since or late upō our Churches and with a most supercilious demurenesse and affected zelotry the better to colour over or conceal their sacrilegious spirits they are heard very oft to cry out To what purpose is this wast this excessive yea superstitious cost What need is there of such goodly stones such stately pillars such massive timber such costly coverings with lead when we may serve God at a cheaper rate full as well nay farre better in a Barn or Stable in a common Hall or Parlour Alas God dwels not in Temples made with hands nor is he pleased with such prodigall expences in order to his worship how much more acceptable were it to him if this money were bestowed on the Poor those living Temples of Gods Spirit These are the penurious Principles which some whining Reformers use to save their purses yea and to fill them as occasion serves with the spoiles both of Churches and Church-men too which some men I believe have already done without giving that ever I heard any portion as Almes to the Poore and for hire some poor labouring men have been so conscientious Christians that they would not be employed or hired by them on any terms to pull down Churches lest they should do the work and receive the wages of iniquity I cannot but answer these men according to their folly and presumption the rather because they pretend Religion and Reformation of all things to a spirituall way of worshipping and serving God which they understand may reach their Hands Eyes Tongues Heads and Hearts but not their Purses That is their Noli me tangere the peculiar and reserve exempted from Gods claim and title not contained in any Commission of Religion yea precisely excluded out of the new Copies and Schemes of Reformation drawn different from all ancient Originalls of Judaick or Christian Devotion by men that are very wise in their owne eyes and very wary to save their purses I pray God they be as carefull to save their souls That these new Masters may not too much triumph in their own fancies they may please to understand that we other Christians who love to serve God in the beauty of holinesse and handsomnesse who are ambitious to honour God and his worship with our substance we are not so uncatechised as not to know almost as well as these supercilious and parsimonious censors that the Divine Immensity is so farre from dwelling in a comprehensive or inclosed manner in Houses made with hands that the Heaven of Heavens cannot containe him he onely is his own Heaven a Center and Circumference fixed in and full of himself alone comprehensive of his own incomprehensible excellencies yet under favour of these Seraphick Teachers the high and holy one that inhabits eternity delights to dwell among the Sons of men not onely in humble Spirits contrite Hearts and believing Souls by the speciall and invisible residence of his Grace and Spirit but also in such visible manifestations as are specially circumscribed by times and places where it may not unproperly be said the Lords name is placed while there it is solemnly called upon blessed and praised by the Congregation of the Lords people who meet together to worship the Lord in such places as not onely fit their own conveniencies best but carry some proportion to their affections Honour Reverence Devotion and Relation toward their great God and glorified Saviour even before the sons of men who by the light of Nature require and expect that the Divine Majesty should be worshipped not in places of profane and common use but such as are specially separated from them and dedicated or consecrated to holy Services agreeable to that relation they bear to the most holy God as houses of Prayer and so houses of God such as the blessed Apostles and the Lord Jesus himself disdained not to frequent among the Jews as the place of publick worship consecrated to God 'T is true our God needs not such Houses as to his Omnipresence but he requires them so far as they are evidences of our respects to him Nor are Churches onely intended for the conveniences of Christians to meet together that they may sit warm and dry but they serve further to expresse when God gives us Peace and Plenty that high esteem and honour we bear to our God also the love we
for their Worshippers should boast of their Temples to the upbraiding of Christians or that the Jewes and Mahometans should have cause to suspect us of a disesteem and slight of our God and Saviour who lived among us and died for us by our neglect of the places where we Christians meet to serve our God and Saviour While we ambitiously dwell in sciled houses Gods houses lie wast poor mortall worms affect Palaces for themselves and crowd their God the King immortall into a Cottage The pouring of that costly oyntment on our Saviours head was not that which he either absolutely needed or required but he deserved it and all that could be rendred to him as tokens of Love Honour and Gratitude and we see he was so far from finding fault with it or complying with the thrifty and thievish basenesse of Judas that he accepted it kindly he justified it publickly and commended it highly as worthy to be recorded whereever the Gospel is preached that it might be an everlasting example of generous Grace and liberall Love capable to give check in all Ages to such dangerous Christians and penurious spirits as are prone under pretences of Piety or Charity or any reforming Frugalities to quarrel at or condemn parallel expressions of munificent Honour and heroick Gratitude to Jesus Christ for the honour of whose name I thought it my duty thus farre to vindicate against sacrilegious Vastators the sanctity and sumptuousnesse of those places where the honour of our God and Saviour eminently dwels in the solemn and publick celebration of his Name Praise Merit and Divine Majesty who abasing himself to the shame of the Crosse and now ascended above every created name of Power and Honour in Heaven and Earth ought not to be in any respect treated in such a vile fashion as if we thought meanly of him or with the Samosatenians and Arians esteemed him no other than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a meer Man to be served in as mean or meaner way than we serve our selves which seems the sense of some wretches who are glad to see Churches lie like Hog-sties full of filth and confusion and to be made even as Jakes and Dunghils which fate Nebuchadnezzar threatned to those that spake any thing amisse against the true God A sight and example which I confesse I take to be as little to the credit or encouragement of any reformation of Religion as it is no advantage to a beautifull face which possibly is a little foul and besmeared to scratch and tear its skin till the blood come in stead of washing it clean I could not forbear to insist on this subject in which if I offend some penurious and sacrilegious spirits of the present Age I hope I shall please and promote the desires and designs of more generous posterity in whose dayes it may be God will restore the captivity repair the ruines wipe away the reproches unjustly by Papists others cast upon this Church and the true Reformation which indeed never owned any such Principles or Practises as savoured of Sacriledge which is a taking away from our God and the Lord Jesus Christ from his Church his Ministers such things as are dedicated to his Worship and Service to the Churches Benefit and his Ministers Maintenance Order and Honour without which Religion cannot flourish nor indeed well subsist especially among such Christians as under pretense of love and zeal for Reformation as friends daily pillage and spoil Religion as its cruellest enemies CHAP. XXVII IT was a speech in old times of better significancy than sound Luxus Clericorum Laus est Laicorum The Splendour or Pomp of the Clergy was the Praise and Honour of the Laity not that Church-men should at any time be riotous and luxurious in their greatest abundance but it is the commendation of Christian people as indeed of all men so to entertain the Ministers of their God and Dispensers of their Religion specially in times of peace and a Land of plenty as may set them and their Profession furthest off from Poverty and its inseparable companion vulgar contempt that Church-men might have not onely wherewith to keep up the outward Decency Majesty of Religion but to maintain themselves and their families at such a proportion as may extend to charity liberality and hospitality The habits and exercises of which vertues become no mens Hearts Hands and Houses better than Christian Ministers and Rulers of the Church nothing more confirming the Doctrine they teach of Gods munificence to mankind than their living so as to be ever giving Religion is never so acceptable to common people as when they not onely hear the Word and see the Ceremony but taste the sweetnesse and substance of it in the reall fruits of its bounty Which pious Policy and charitable Craft in former dayes kept up the credit of Religion both while it was Roman and when it was Reformed to as high a pitch in England as in any Nation under Heaven while the Clergy enjoyed those blessings of Gods and mans Donation which enabled many an one of them to build and endow many such noble foundations of Churches Colledges Hospitals and Almes-houses that any one of them now goes beyond all that ever sacrilegious spirits did or designed either for Gods honour or mans benefit if all their good works and thoughts were summed up and put together though indeed those men are uncapable of doing any good work as to Charity who are guilty of sacred Robbery stoln Sacrifices were not to be consecrated to God no more than dead carkases Every History of England shews at large what good and great works Bishops and other Church-men in England did not onely in their Papal Celebacy but in their Primitive and later Conjugacy fruits indeed of pious and Princely Magnificence such as now neither the joint abilities of the indigent and peeled Clergy nor the gripple charity of whole Counties can or will so much as keep up or repair no not so much as to the very fabrick of those fair Churches which were the honour of Cities Counties and the whole Nation Whose vast Revenues being taken away both from Churches and Church-men no wonder if the sordid vastations of them and their deplorable decayes as that of S. Pauls in London and of Ely-Minster in that Isle every where appear as shamefull scandalous and prodigious Spectacles to all ingenuous persons to Papists both at home and abroad also to all Forraigners Christian Mahometan or Heathen who come into this Island who may easily see such sights as rather proclaim Saracenism Barbarism and Atheisme than such a sense of Christianisme as possessed our noble Progenitors who were ashamed to seem base and niggardly toward a bountifull God and Saviour Every City in England besides other Towns had such stately and durable monuments of pristine Piety and Charity in them as were hardly to be destroyed by the malice of Time in many Centuries if the
rob God and the Church their Mother Fathers and Brethren of that double Honour Maintenance and Reverence Authority and competency which is due to them and was setled upon them snatching away the childrens bread that they may give it to dogs to greedy and grinning men authors and fautors of all our rents and confusions who as the Psalmist expresseth it run up and down through every County City Street and Village grudging if they be not satisfied with the Priests portion Thus while the Papists too much pamper overcharge Religion with Pomp and Luxury with superfluous Ceremonies and Superstitions while the Fanaticks strive to underfeed and starve it to a despicable feeblenesse and deformity both of them are become dangerous enemies to the true reformed state of Religion in this or any Church and Nation whose best temper and healthfullest constitution is made up of sincere Truth unfeigned Charity liberall Piety unaffected Decency a duly ordained Ministry with just Authority and uninterrupted Succession entertained with holy moderation and humble prosperity All which were heretofore as remarkably to be seen in the Church of England as in any Nation under Heaven which now is in danger to be put upon great streights to run between two Seas and Rocks like the Ship which carried S. Paul uncertain whether it must be destroyed by Papall or popular insolencies whether it shall at once be driven and split upon the high rocks of Popery or tossed with the Herricano's of vulgar tempests and variety till it run upon the flats and shallows of Sacriledge and be swallowed up by fanatick Quick-sands 'T is true these insectiles the later and lesser fry of novell Sects and various factions in England dayly multiplying and dividing in their Opinions Religions and Reformations may possibly seem to some men like small Pilchards or Shotten Herrings compared to the great Whales and mighty Leviathans of Rome neither so dreadfull nor so dangerous to the Reformed Religion But wise men may consider that what seems wanting in their Masse and Bulk severally looked on is made up in their number and activity not onely Sea Monsters may sink a ship but small wormes which grow to its sides and keel will eat it through and destroy it It is a great deal of mischief that Mice and Rats Ants and Mites will do in a little time to great bodies if they be let alone This I am sure some of these petty spirited but very spitefull animals which some men so much despise have of late yeares so excessively spawned and swarmed by a licentious superfetation of Religions and Reformations here in England that they are become like the numerous Locusts Flies and Caterpillars of Egypt not onely very busie and importune but biting and devouring what ever they can light upon yea many of them like Wasps and Hornets are most exasperated against those sober Christians and Ministers who are less patient to have their Estates Liberties Consciences and Religion at once destroyed by their gnawing or corroding Reformations The fruits and effects of which African mixtures and confusions every wise man may easily foretell being utterly inconsistent with not onely the Sanctity Charity Unity Tranquillity and Majesty of Religion becoming this Reformed Church and Christian State but with the very civill Peace freedom and secular Honour of this Nation Nor can any sober person tell what any one or all of them in their fractions and factions would be at either in respect of the flourishing of Religion or felicity of the civil state beyond or any way comparable to what was formerly professed practised and enjoyed in this Church and Nation long before Satan had leave thus to winnow the Church with Saint Peter or to smite the State as he did Job with these civill boyles and botches I know there are some grave and godly men who are well-affected to the Church of England and zealous for true Reformation in a settled and happy way who do not account these Moderne and Minute Sects these broken and divided factions to be any way very dangerous and so not considerable to the publick welfare of this Nation either in Religious or civill respects because they think none of them to be of a firme and durable constitution but rather as Vermine bred of putid water in warme unholesome and to them most indulgent seasons between Pride and Peevishnesse Ignorance and Licentiousnesse Envy and Covetousness they cannot either continue long or propagate any lasting succession but as animalls of a crude imperfect and equivocall generation having spent that corrupt matter out of which they have both their production and nutrition they will like Magots dye of themselves as did the Gnosticks Montanists Manichees Novatians or Catharists the Aerians Euchites Circumcellions Donatists and others in ancient times whose folly being made manifest to all sober Christians it prevailed no further Such creatures in time like Snailes wasting their slimy and indigested substance by their own motions The rage of Hereticks and Schismaticks being like that of mad Doggs which after they have a while fomed and snapped here and there run themselves to death and are tired by their own cruell agitations Nor will they find many to succeed them especially when once the wisdome and piety of a Christian Nation so far recovers as to cut off and curb that popular licentious and lazy humour or to obstruct those hopes of profit pleasure and preferment which are the Favonii the warme winds that impregnate these creatures How few would have deserted and so defied the Church of England as they have done if they had not had other temptations than those of conscience or religious perswasions 'T is true I do not look upon these many-headed and mis-shapen factions which are so highly animated against the Church of England being most-what like Monsters either excessive in their Seraphick Whimsies everlasting Novelties and affected fancies or defective in that sound knowledge that humble orderly and peaceable charity which becomes true Christians I do not look upon them as any way apt or able of themselves to build an orderly and durable structure no more than the Brick-layers of Babel when their Tongues were divided for I find they are commonly like Rookes which strive to make their own nests by rifling their Neighbours Little solid or setled in Reason or Religion in Church or State is expectable from tempers and activities which are like that of Pioneers and Plunderers chiefly for undermining and ruining prostrating and levelling both Churches and States all Magistrates and Ministers that are either within their reach and stroke or without their mark and cognizance upon their fore-heads Yet give me leave to suggest yea and to urge upon your most serious considerations O my Honoured and beloved Country-men than the consequents necessarily attending the divided opinions and destructive agitations of those that may seem the most petty parties and inconsiderable Sects now in England must needs be very dangerous and may in
rewards of Valour Learning Industry Parts and as they think of Piety it self onely or chiefly bestowed on those that adhere to and symbolize with the prevailing party which is the onely rising side all others despairing to rise till the great Resurrection unlesse by power or policy they can undermine or overthrow the predominant faction In these nests of Religious differences and zealous emulations are the eggs of all civill discontents popular seditions and pernicious rebellions commonly layed and hatched to the infinite hazard and many times utter ruine of civill States which are never so safe as when all parts of them like the parts of a globe or sphere fairly correspond with each other by the unity and intirenesse of the same Religion whose content or orbe is the holy Scripture whose centre is Gods glory and whose circumference is Christian love unanimity or Charity without any of which Religion is but a Rhapsody of mens opinions passions and ambition From these holy confinements when once Christians come to divide as to their Religion they soon fall to defie to destroy yea to damne one another Every party hath such high paroxysmes of zealous hopes and presumptions for their way that they presently ascend Gods Throne and Christs Tribunall severely judging all men but themselves which judiciall and uncharitable arrogancies have as we see at this day not onely in England but in all the Christian world so filled and inflamed mens minds with cruell counter-curses and angry Anathema's against each other that if Gods last doome should echo after the clamours and censures of Christians passions we must all be damned every mothers child of us notwithstanding that we all professe to believe and serve the same God and Saviour If not every particular person of each party who may have more moderation and charity yet to be sure the froth and scumme the populacy and vulgarity of them which are alwaies boyled highest these mutually condemne each other not to a Purgatory or a Limbo onely but to a very Hell of infernall and eternall torments Thus many Protestants utterly damne all Papists as if God had no people in that Babylon of Popery the Honesty Humility and Simplicity of whose Faith Works and Hearts may bring them out of the contagion of Romes Plagues Policies and Superstitions Papists on the other side universally damne all Protestants though they hold all the ancient Creeds and Articles of Faith though they practise all Christian necessary duties and keep to the Primitive Order of the Catholick Church onely because they will not tye the keyes of Faith Conscience Scripture Religion and Church-Government to the Popes girdle or absolutely submit to him in a blind obedience against Reason Scripture and History as to the surly Jaylour rather than the safe keeper of Christian and true Religon In like manner the violent Lutherans call the Calvinists Devils and the passionate Calvinists defie the Lutherans as luke-warme Protestants and smelling too rank of Rome Look to the eager and acute Arminians the Socinians the moderne Pelagians the Anabaptists Catabaptists Familists the Seekers Ranters and Quakers As the Independent Presbyterian and Episcopall hands so these are generally full either of firebrands from hell or thunderbolts from heaven which are eagerly cast by the more violent Spirits in each others faces as Hereticks or Schismaticks as Antichrists and Hypocrites as deceived and deceiving Nor will the Zealots and bigots on any side make any great scruple if they have power to destroy those whom they account no better than desperate and damnable even in their Religion Amidst and against all which factious discriminations of Religion every Nation and Polity which either is or would seem to be wise must seek to preserve its safety by establishing some Uniformity and Unity in its publick profession For no nation is farre from misery that is pestred with variety of Religions and is fixed at no certainty The sad example of this Church and State of England besides our neighbours is an instance as unanswerable as palpable for the Church of England stood Neuter as to all the sides and factions of Christendom yet held so far Communion with Greek and Latine Reformed and Romane Lutheran and Calvinian Churches as it saw they held communion with the Scriptures and with the ancient Catholick Symbols or Councils which were the best boundaries of Christian Religion It had if not more yet as much Solidity and Sincerity Piety and Proficiency Gifts and Graces Charity and Moderation Order and Good polity as any yea all of them farre lesse of Partiality Popularity Novelty Oppression Superstition and Confusion than almost any one of them while the favour of God and man shined upon her strangely blest with Peace Plenty Honor and Prosperity while it kept its Ecclesiastick Order and Uniformity in Religion which was the chief soder or cement of civill Tranquillity This Palladium once stolne away by the Jesuitick subtilties and other factious policies how have the Temples and Towers of our Troy the Churches and Palaces of our Jerusalem the Oratories and Houses both of God and man falne to the ground not with their own age infirmity or weight but battered and subverted chiefly by those Engines which factious fury and devout ambition puts into all mens hands upon the score of their Religion a fate which still threatens all the remaines of Religion and Peace that have yet escaped if God be not so mercifull to this Land as to shew us some Balsam that may heale the Divisions and Wounds of our Church and Religion which will easily fester and inflame the body politick of any Nation for civil Peace cannot be firm where publick Piety is not sound and setled nor can any Kingdom or Common-weale be established in which true Religion is either baffled or abased by being divided and distracted But suppose that you O my Noble Countrymen and your posterity should enjoy a moments miserable prosperity and a pitifull kind of peace meerly upon the account of a meer Mahometan power and Gladiatorian Prevalency of one side possibly over-awing all other parties and pretensions of Religion or so counterpoising them by secular policies to some consistency as doth rather distort and depresse than advance or encourage the progresse of that true Piety and Christian Charity which are the surest marks of Christianity and of Gods favour to any people yet I presume you are so piously prudent as to consider First that such worldly tranquillity and prosperity are scarce worth owning or enjoying apart from that sweet harmony and fruition which goes with true Religion and flowes from it when it keeps the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace when its sacred oyntment is diffused from the head Christ Jesus not onely to the chief members of his body but even to the skirts of his clothing the use and capacity of the meanest believer in an holy Unity and happy Uniformity not onely of true Doctrine but of comely Order and charitable
which is holy high and honourable in Gods esteem as his Embassage venerable before the good Angels in Heaven and terrible to the very Devils in Hell Let not the preaching of the Word be slighted mocked and laughed at by the unautoritative insolency and unsufficiency of unordained and impudent praters who will never make powerfull Preachers Let not the solemnity of publick prayers and Sacraments be made ridiculous vaine and void by the simplicity and barrennesse the non-sense and flatnesse the slovenly rudenesse and confusion of those undertakers to officiate whom no man in Christs name hath duly authorised or sent according to any Primitive pattern or Catholick custome in this and other Churches When the Authority of Ministers is doubted denyed divided despised on all sides it is impossible there should be any unity or charity among either Ministers themselves or those to whom they thus brokenly Minister holy things nor can there be any reverent and sacred esteem of those things which they so administer with so much variety dubiousness and inconformity Civill respect to Ministers of the Gospel will follow where there is a religious regard to their Ministry as sacred and Divine indeed as Christs for so it is or it is none upon any religious account Therefore I forbear to urge you with any importunities in order to restore the Pristine honors and dignities the many priviledges and great plenty which the Clergy enjoyed in England I know those are unseasonable motions in an iron age amidst so many sacrilegious Spirits as envy even those pittances that yet remaine of oyle in the cruses or meale in the barrels of poor Ministers who are generally in a low depressed squeesed and almost exhausted condition not onely publick exactions but private sharkings of people in many if not most places have reduced heretofore convenient livings to pittifull tenuities Ministers affect indeed to wear longer haire than they were wont but their condition is now so much shorne and shaved since the Scots rasor was first applyed that most of them are very bare and quite bald to the great joy of Papists the viler sort of licentious people who want but one vote more to perfect their desired Reformation That is to take away all tithes and glebes rather giving them to Moloch or Beelzebub than to Christ his Church and his Ministery to whom these are paid by many men so grudgingly sharkingly and superciliously that few Scholars of any generous minds and parts will apply themselves now to be Ministers and many grave men heretofore devoted to that calling are content to be silent rather than to preach to ungratefull and gain-saying people yea some Ministers think it better to starve with honor than to be fed with scorn preferring any calling before that which must first work then beg or contest for its wages But as the poverty and tenuity of Ministers the popular contempt of their persons and calling the neglect and irreverence of holy ministrations the intrusions and usurpations of petulant people upon their function as all these could not have grown upon them had they not been scattered and divided among themselves for by these cracks and leakes those bitter waters have prevailed thus far to sink and depresse them So the reducing of Ministers to some unity in their judgments to uniformity in their Ministrations to an identity or samenesse for their Ministeriall power and ordination also to a decent subordination and government among themselves these methods would be most effectuall beyond any thing I can think of to remedy all those great inconveniences and mischiefes under which they now labour and grone From Ministers mutuall separations affrontings reprochings oppressings and despisings of one another common people have learned the language and carriage of clownery and contempt For how can people see any thing worthy their civill much lesse consciencious respect and love toward any Ministers when they see hear and read how they depreciate and scorn envy and maligne shun and abominate one another on all sides each invalidating or disparaging the others authority to officiate and almost annulling all they do in holy duties as Ministers Be they never so able and fit as to their gifts knowledge utterance holy lives and good report in all things yet still they are thought by some side or other either to enjoy more than they merit or to arrogate more than is their due or wholly to usurp that which is no way their due Certainly it is not a more pious and Christian than heroick and prudent work to reconcile the discrepancies and feuds that are grown among Ministers of severall formes and names as to their ordination or admission to their Ministry And since there are on all sides men of very good abilities commendable lives and usefull parts in this publick service as Ministers of the Church it is infinite pitty that Christians should be by any prejudices deprived of the common benefit to be had by them or by factious and frivolous discriminations if their Ministeriall Authority be frustrated of those many blessings which all good Christians might happily enjoy both publickly and privately by a firm union and uniformity among all true Ministers both in the origination of their power also in the manner of the derivation and dispensation of it Which harmony as without doubt it would highly contribute to the honor of the reformed Religion so it would much obstruct the advantages which Popery gets by the scandall of Ministers discriminations and divisions in this point For what sober-minded man will not rather adhere to what seems uniform though an error than to what seems divided though a truth Men will rather turne Seekers Quakers and Enthusiasts than weary themselves in dancing after every Ministers pipe and the new tunes they set to both their Ministry and holy Ministration For my part I should rather choose to live in a solitude as a private Christian or retire to any corner of the land as a Minister than to correspond with such societies of Preachers as are either evidently Schismaticall in their principles or onely formally and partially Associating in their politick practises which do but declare their spirits to be at as great distance from their duties both to their betters and their equalls as ever they were I prefer a cottage in a smooth and peaceable wildernesse before such palaces as are built among briars and thornes I am sorry and ashamed to see those Ministers who are able and worthy to use the trowell for edification should be so eagerly imployed at the swords for mutuall destruction Since they generally agree to preach and live Christ Crucified since they do for the maine correspond in doctrinalls of faith and morality yea in holy Mysteries and Ministrations what a misery is it they should not all endure the same imposition of hands or the same holy and Catholick ordination yea what pitty is it they should not all dare to say publickly and Ministerially the same Creed
dispensers of it be not wisely united not onely in their doctrine but in the derivation and reception as well as dispensation of that holy Authority by which they officiate for otherwise one Minister is prone to magnifie himself against all others of any other make mold to disparage all that is done by others as sacred to draw disciples from one side to another perswading people according to the feuds which were between the Samaritan Jewes and Priests of that Temple against those of Jerusalem that what is done in holy duties by such as are not of his stamp form is unauthoritative presumptuous invalid meer nullities and profanations of holy mysteries without Spirit Life Power or Efficacy an histrionick pageantry of Preaching Praying Baptising Consecrating Celebrating Censuring Binding Absolving Terrifying Comforting as in the name of Christ when indeed there is either no power or authority but a new one that must needs be a false one either usurped or obtruded or pretended by those that have nothing to shew for their Commission Order and Derivation of such spirituall power either from the Scripture or the constant practise or the Catholick Custome of the Church of Christ Thus everlasting feuds distances and defiances will follow among people and Pastors where an harmony is not in this maine point of ordination or Ministeriall Authority which certainly were no hard matter to effect if Ministers would so far agree by an Episcopall subordination in an uniformity of ordination and all other Ecclesiastical Ministrations as no Ministers or peoples just claime and interest should be either neglected excluded or oppressed 1. First the rights of people should be so far satisfied that no man should be ordained a Minister but in the most publick and solemn convention of the Diocese after publick notice given of his name and demand what any could say against his being ordained in like manner no Minister should be obtruded upon any people by patron or Bishop without hearing what they had to object against him and rationall satisfaction given to them which was required in St. Cyprians time 2. Next the rights of Presbyters should be so far satisfied that none should be ordained a Presbyter untill he had passed the orderly triall as of the Bishop so of any Minister that list to examine his sufficiency or his manners and life after which done Presbyters should not onely be present at the solemnity of preaching and praying but such as could conveniently of the eldest and gravest Ministers might lay their hands with the Bishops or Presidents upon the ordained both in their own and others behalfe as a testimony of a joynt consent on all sides to his ordination 3. Last of all the rights and claime of Episcopacy or Bishops would easily be satisfied and very compliant with the other of Presbyters and people if no ordination might passe without either the presence of the Bishop as President or of such a Presbyter as in the Bishops necessary absence should be his suffragane or Vicegerent nominated by him and allowed by that Presbytery over whom the Bishop presideth This method and moderation would as I humbly conceive both complete and settle in all sober mens judgements the ordination of Ministers and giving satisfaction to all just demands or ingenuous pretensions it would powerfully and happily unite both Bishops Presbyters and people as answering all the claimes and expectations considerable of Episcopall Presbyterian and Independent parties as to the maine point of unanimous and uniform Ministry Among whom a like correspondency would easily if wisely and meekly be carried on in all other Ecclesiasticall affaires of publick concernment for Doctrine Worship Discipline Censures Appeales Admission Abstention Excommunication Absolution Synodal conventions and the like It is not imaginable how great an harmony honor and happiness would hence arise to the infinite content and comfort of all good Christians to the great advantage of the Reformed Religion to the peace of this Church to the happiness of the Nation to the Glory of God and to the unspeakable quiet of many thousands of poor soules who are now agitated with infinite Scruples Feares Anger 's Jealousies and Despites in Religion according as they are ingaged and exasperated in their first entrance or beginnings all these would peaceably and comfortably apply by Gods help and Ministers harmony to the improvement of their soules in faith and repentance in truth and love to lead holy and orderly lives to hear with diligence and reverence to receive with frequency and charity to pray with understanding and fervency to do all things with meekness and wisdome lastly to die with earnest desire and blessed hope of further enjoying that Christian and sweet Communion with God with Christ Jesus and his holy Servants Saints and Angels in an other life of which he hath had so blessed experience and pleasing a fore-taste even in this world where the onely heaven a good Christian can have consists in the happy Communion he hath with God and good Christians without which all society is but solitude or worse an harmony no better than what may be found in hell which is a conspiracy in sin and conjunction in misery This holy Communion is so much the more divine and joyfull even in this world by how much it enlargeth it self to greater numbers and extentions true Christian love being loth to be confined to a narrower compasse than the Christian and Catholick faith is but coveting as light and heate most ample dilatations and Catholick diffusions seeking if possible and as much as in it lies to live peaceably with all men and chearfully with all that are of Christs family or the houshold of faith who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity By these and such like peacefull methods of prudence and love of moderation and mutuall condescension among Ministers without further disputing or urging any of their former principles upon which they seemed to differ much lesse casting any further reproaches upon each other I do not see but by the blessing of God upon them they might all meet in an happy union and accord in Church-Government according to those principles of right Reason and Religion of Piety and Polity of Scripture-Canons and Catholick Customes in which all sober Ministers must necessarily agree as the best rules of Christian prudence the surest methods of holy order and the firmest bonds of Christian Communion To which maine ends as all good Christians should chiefly bend all their Counsels Prayers and endeavours so I do not conceive they are so strictly confined and limited by any precise rules or formes of any externe Polity and Order but they may as occasion requires for the peace of the Church and edification of Christians in love use such a liberty in their mutuall condescendings and compliances as shall no way offend the blessed God of Truth Order and Peace nor violate any of their own consciences while they bear such a tender regard to other mens as they
not many good Bishops then when worse and harder measure befell them and their Order than since England was Christian Indeed many yea most of our Bishops were as Noahs Sems and Japhets yet have all these been drowned in the Presbyterian Deluge Even these made up the so odious so unpopular so decryed Bishops in England The pest and contagion of whose fate as it came first from Scotland where no doubt there were many Bishops of equal vertues though inferiour revenues to the worthy and well-known Dr. Spotswood Archbishop of St. Andrews and Lord Chancellour of Scotland so it reached to Ireland where there wanted not Bishops worthy of the fraternity of Bishop Usher Bishop Bedel and Bishop Bramhal all cruelly persecuted first by Papists and after by Antipapists though persons of the highest form for all excellencies yet must all these be destroyed their whole Order with the destruction of Sodom Although more than ten righteous Bishops I am sure were to be found in each of these British Churches yet all must be routed all rooted up as guilty of the unpardonable sin of Prelacy a new sin and unheard of in the Church of Christ but now to be put into the black Catalogue of scandalous sins when Heresie Schism Sacriledge and Sedition must be left out These these and such like Bishops are the men whose fate I passionately pitty men famous in their generation either for solid Preaching or weighty writing or grave counselling or holy living or prudent governing or charitable giving all of them for some and some of them for all these excellencies These are made the most unsound the most infamous and superfluous parts of this body politick and Ecclesiastick these must be one and all represented to vulgar simplicity and scurrility as the Popes the Antichrists the Bite-sheeps the Oppressors the Tyrants the Greedy and dumb dogs the Cretians the Slow-bellies the Devourers the Destroyers of all godliness and true Religion These foule glosses first made by Martin Mar-prelate of old against Episcopacy and the Bishops of England are now set forth in a new and second edition with larger notes and exquisite Commentaries upon them intimating that these are the men who have by their Learned Grave and Godly Misdemeanours as Bishops forfeited not by any Law but by absolute will and pleasure meerly as Bishops all their Houses and Revenues all their Honors and Preferments yea their good Name and Reputation which by Law and desert they had obtained and enjoyed yea all the Ancient Dignity Apostolick Authority and Constant Succession of their Place and Function in the Church which had not more of eminency than of necessity nor more of necessity than of Primitive and Catholick Antiquity For the reall faults of some and the imaginary of other Bishops whose name was their onely crime must all Ages after them be for ever punished with the want of such Grave Learned Godly and Venerable Bishops as have been destroyed for better cannot be had or desired and posterity must be ever exposed in these British Churches to all those Factions Fedities Divisions Disorders and Confusions which follow the want of due Episcopal order and Government in the Church But Bishops qua tales were enemies to the power of Godlinesse the worst of them and the best of them were men too much devoted to empty formes of Religion they urged Ceremonies so far as to neglect substances straining at gnats and swallowing Camels they justled out preaching by Catechizing and over-layed Ministers private prayers by their long Liturgies they did not kindle but quench damp and resist that spirit of Zeal and Reformation which for many years hath burned in the breasts of many godly Christians by whose flamings and refinings at last all Bishops as drosse with all their ornaments and adherents have been justly consumed I confesse I cannot tell how to answer for all the actions and expressions of every Bishop they were of age and able to have answered for themselves if any of them as offendors of our Lawes had been brought to plead for themselves which not one of them was as to Ecclesiasticall matters that I ever heard of for the weight of the Archbishops charge was chiefly upon civil or secular affaires Who knowes not that Bishops were but men that if left to their private spirits and single Counsels they might as easily over or under-do as their Adversaries have done beyond or short of what becomes wise and good men The greatest blame that I perceive among any of them was that they would injoyne or exact or remit any thing as to publick Order Discipline and Government of the Church without a joynt agreement and uniformity among themselves according to what the Law allowed or commanded This fraternall concurrence and mutuall correspondence had been worthy of Grave Wise and Learned men for all private fancies obtruded by any one or two Bishops in so tender a case as Religion is and upon so touchy a people as the English now are do but breed variety this differences these disputes these dissentions these despites these oppositions these breed confusions All the actions and injunctions all the Articles and disquisitions of Bishops as such should have been as exactly consonant and uniforme as possibly could be But as to the crimination That Bishops like Hernshaws abounded in the wing and feather of Ceremony but had little substance or body as to the power of Godlinesse First Scripture and Christs example teach us that decent and apt Ceremonies publick or private are not in their nature enemies but helps to the power of Godlinesse as putting off all Ornaments eating the bread of Sorrow putting on Sackcloth and Ashes Fasting Weeping Smiting the breast Bowing Kneeling Prostrating to the ground being all night in Solitude and Darkness lying in the Dust c. all these were and are helps to an humble broken contrite penitent and devout temper of Soul Contrary Company Wine and Oyle Singing and Musick Dancing Discourse and Laughter were and are helps to holy joy and thankful jubilations so are lifting up the eyes and hands to Heaven Sighing and Groning to fervency of Prayer and Praises It is but a rude affected and fanatick imagination of clownish Christians that decent Ceremonies of Religion wisely appointed in any Church or fitly applied by any private Christian in his private devotions these cannot stand but the substance and sincerity of Godliness must fall that there can be no forms of Godlinesse but the power of it must vanish or be banished They may as well imagine that they cannot put on their clothes or dresse themselves handsomly but they must presently cease to be wise men or honest men and good women but must turn either spectres or dishonest Do we not find that many such Christians who have of later years cast off all the former decent and wholesome formes of Godliness either by Profaneness or Preciseness or Peevishness or Faction or Atheism or Superstition are most apparently now