without reference to the Lord Mayor or Aldermen or Common-counsell to determine of all things among their severall Companies and from the which there is no appeale for reliefe though one be never so much injured and damnified by any unjust act and whether these severall Companies and severall Assemblies be each of them a severall Corporation or Magistracy or all of them put together make but one Corporation under one civill Presbytery consisting of the Lord Mayor Aldermen and Common-counsell This I thought fit to propound that every one may the better understand the question Now as this kingdome of England hath its severall Corporations through all Counties and the which Corporations although they have their severall Companies in them yet are all dependent upon a civill Presbytery and Common-counsell and every Company in them makes not a severall Corporation or Magistracy or a severall City but are all dependent upon the Common-counsell or Presbytery for the better ordering and governing of them in all their common affaires and for the redressing of abuses and taking away and removing of common grievances and have their severall appeals to the Common-counsell the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and if they finde no justice there nor satisfaction have their redresse and appeal to some generall Court or some supreame judicature as to the Parliament of the Kingdome who redresse and determine all things according to the lawes and constitutions of the whole Kingdome So in the Kingdome of the Lord Jesus Christ which is his Church all these severall Churches which we reade of in the holy Scripture of the New Testament are so many severall Corporations and Associations all the severall congregations and affemblies as so many severall Companies in them depending upon a Presbyterie or Common-counsell and Colledge of Pastors and Rulers all making up but one Church in every one of their jurisdictions and severall Precincts though they be consistent of never so many severall Assemblies according to the greatnesse of the Cities or Townes wherein they are or according to the severall Hundreds or Divisions assigned to each Presbytery and all these and severall associations to be governed by their severall Presbyteries for the better ordering and preserving of the same to the which every particular man as well as any Assembly or Congregation may have their appeal for the redresse of any abuses or enormities and if they finde themselves wronged there then they have appeals to some other higher Presbytrie or Counsell of Divines for relief and justice and both they and all other of the severall Corporations to be governed and regulated by the lawes and statutes given by Christ himselfe the only Head and King of his Church according only to whose lawes they are to be governed and ruled for the common good and preservation of the whole Church divided into those severall Jurisdictions Corporations or Precincts in imitation as neer now as may be of the Churches of Ierusalem Ephesus Corinth and Galatia c. and whose lawes alone must be the rule for the ordering of all their governement doctrine and manners I have premised this I have now said that all men may the better understand the state of the question and controversie in hand Now then if it shall be made appeare out of the holy Scripture that all the severall Churches we have mention of in the New Testament were all particular corporations or associations and governed by a common-counsell of Presbyters or by a Presbyteriall government in each of them and that there were many assemblies and congregations in those severall Churches and all of them had their distinct Officers amongst themselves in the which likewise they had all the acts of worship amongst themselves and did partake in al ordinances of Church-fellowship especially in the preaching of the Word Prayer in the Sacraments of Baptisme and the Lords Supper and yet made but one Church and were all governed by a common-counsell of Presbyters or by a common Presbyterie within their Precincts then it must of necessity follow that as the Mother-churches were first govern'd all the Daughter-churches to the end of the world must be so govern'd and according to that rule that is set down in the Word of God So then the question in hand between us and our Brethren is Whether there were many Congregations and Assemblies in any of those primitive Churches as in that of Ierusalem the Mother Church and many Elders or Presbyters in that Church and all other Officers and whether all those Congregations and Assemblies were one Church and those Presbyters and Officers all of them Elders and Officers of that one Church and whether all those Congregations and Assemblies were under one Presbytery This I say is the question between us and our Brethren Now then if it can be proved that there were more Beleevers in the Church of Jerusalem then could all meet in one place or in one congregation for all acts of worship and if it can be evidently elucidated that there were severall assemblies and congregations in the Church of Jerusalem and yet so as they made but one church for government then our Brethren must of necessity acknowledge that the church of Jerusalem was govern'd by a common-councell of Presbyters or was presbyterially governed Neither did our Brethren ever yet undertake to prove that in case there were many Assemblies in Jerusalem they had severall and independent presbyteries neither if they should go about to prove could they do it And therefore we may conclude and that with very good reason and warrantable authority that as the Mother-church the Church of Jerusalem in her greatest glory was govern'd so all other Churches must likewise be regulated to the end of the world For out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the Word of the Lord from Ierusalem Isay 2. v. 3. We must have both our Law from thence and our paterne of government And our Brethren doe make the Church of Jerusalem the patern of their proceedings Now that all things may be handled in good order and in a methodicall way I will reduce the whole Disputation concerning the first Question into these four Propositions and prove them in order The first That there were many Congregations and severall Assemâ—â—â—â—â— of Beleevers in the Church of Ierusalem in the which they enjoyed all acts of worship and all the Ordinances amongst themselves and did partake of all acts of Church-followship especially of preaching and in the administration of the Satraments and Prayer and that before the Persecution we reade of Acts 8. v. â— The second That all these Congregations and severall Assemblies made but one Church The third That the Apostles and Elders governed ordered and ruled this Church joyntly and by a Common-counsell and Presbytery The fourth That this Church of Ierusalem and the government of the same is to be a pattern for all severall congregations and assemblies in any City or vicinity to unite into one Church and for the Officers
evidences of the truth of their conversion before the congregation and enter into a private and solemne covenant and be admitted by the consent and approbation of the Church or otherwise if they will not submit themselves to this law and come into the Church upon these conditions receive them not into your assemblies nor admit of them for members Here is nothing of all this in Christs commission nor in his holy Word nor any president of the same in all sacred Authority and therefore John the Baptist and the holy Apostles and primitive Ministers admitted all that came unto them and such as but demanded of them what they should doe to be saved and baptized them and received them into the Church-without any gainsaying or question as we may see in the third of Lake and in the seventh chapter of the same book and in the second of the Acts and no sooner did the Eunuch desire baptisme but Philip granted it the Goaler did but ask Paul and Silas What they should doe to be saved and they said Beleeve on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house and it is related that the Goaler and all his were streightway baptized Acts 16. ver 31 32 33. that is they were forthwith admitted into the Church without either walking any time with the Church for their approbation or without either making a publike confession of their faith before the Church or giving in evidences of the truth of their conversion to the congregation or entring into a private covenant and without the consent and allowance of the Church And Christ notwithstanding was imbraced by them as their Lord and King and was preached by Paul and Silas as the Lord and King of his Church and was set up upon his Throne as King by them as well as he is in any independent Churches and yet they had none of all their new borne truths and they could then see how to set up Christ upon his Throne without their new lights and as Christ was then by Paul and Silas and the other Apostles set upon his Throne as King in all those primitive Churches so he is at this day in all the true Protestant Churches through the world as well as in any of the Independent Assemblies and yet they were and are all ignorant of their new way so that any understanding christian may gather that all their new borne truths are no way requisite for the setting up of Christ as King in his Church nor for the advancement of Christs Kingly government for if they had Christ would have put them into the Apostles commission and the Apostles who were led into all truth by the holy Thost who brought whatsoever Christ had taught them concerning the Kingdome of God Acts 1. into their memories would have suggested all these things The new way the new borne truth the new lights to them that they might have been recorded if they had been necessary for the setting up of Christ upon his Throne but when neither Christ nor the holy Ghost nor the blessed Apostles have prescribed any of all these to the church nor called for them nor required them of any that desire to be saved or made members of the church whether this be not a great temerity in any men to preach all these things as the lawes of Christ I leave it to the judgement of any ingenuous minded christian and whether this be not to preferre their owne inventions and traditions before the commandements of God and the lawes of Christ the King of his church and whether this be not rather to set up themselves than Christ I referre it also to any judicious and impartiall christian to weigh and consider I shall now demand of any moderate christian therefore and let him answer me candidly whether of those Ministers and people most advance the Kingdome of Christ and acknowledge him to be their onely Lord and Law-giver that both in their teaching and beleeving follow his commission and Word and teach nothing nor beleeve nothing as they are injoyned but what Christ their King commands them or those that to the commission and commands of Christ adde their owne inventions and traditions and preferre them before the lawes of Christ the King and Law-giver of his church I am confident if he will deale impartially he will answer me that those Ministers and that people most advance Christ for their King and most set him upon his Throne that owne his law and that onely for the rule of their faith and obedience for Christ himselfe hath said it John 10. My Sheep heare my voyce they will not listen unto the voyce of a stranger Christs voyce onely the King of his church is to be heard and they onely that obey it advance him for their King and set him up on his Throne which when the Ministers and beleevers in the church of England doe and the Independents doe not they more advance Christ for their King than they for the Independents to Christs law and commission adde their owne traditions and inventions and enjoyne all that will be admitted as members into their congregations besides their beleeving being baptized to walk with them some time for approbation and to make a publike confession of their faith before the church and to bring in the evidences of the truth of their conversion and enter into a private and solemne covenant and not to be admitted as members without the consent of the Church all which Christ the King of his church never commanded and those that will not submit themselves to these their traditions they will not permit or suffer to enter into their church as joyned members which they call the onely true churches of Christ and count of all others that differ from them as enemies of Christ and his Kingdome and as men without the covenant and if this be to set up Christ upon his Throne then the Pharisees set up Christ upon his Throne who preferred their own traditions before the commandments of God yea the pope himself the Prelats set up Christ upon his Throne who preferred their own traditions and idolatries before the lawes of Christ Now if all the traditions of the Papists were justly abhorred and cast out of the church as things derogatory to the Kingly and Propheticall dignity of Jesus Christ and as things repugnant to his royalty I see no reason but all other popery under whatsoever name or title it be intruded upon the people should be eliminated and cast out of the church and whether this be not a new kind of popery to bring in new wayes and new borne truths and new lights and impose them upon the people as the commands of God and to excommunicate and unchurch all churches in the world but their owne assemblies I referre my selfe to the judgement of any intelligible christian Saint Paul writing to the Galatians blames those false teachers amongst them that would have joyned but the
Gods Clergies I know not what it is to admit of none though beleevers and already baptized but such as will come in upon their owne tearmes and keep out the poore either altogether or as long as pleaseth them without any other reason but because they are poore and cast them out againe upon every slender occasion I say if all this be not a most diabolicall tyranny lording it over Gods Clergies I referre it to any moderate man to judge of and if to unchurch all churches but their owne and at one blast to proclaime them all enemies of Christ and his Kingdome and to deny all church-fellowship with them be not more than a Diotrephian prelaticall and papall authority there was never any in the world and if this be not to lord it over Gods Clergies there was never any knowne Now I say if the Independent Presbiters doe so timely begin their absolute lording of it what would they doe if their government were established by authority Their ministry and government is farre different from that of Christ and his holy Prophets and Apostles for they invited all the poore to come in and to buy milk yea to come in and buy milk without mony Isa 55.1 and Saint Paul for the encouraging the poore to come in saith not many mighty not many noble but the meane and contemptible things hath the Lord made choyce of intimating unto the poore that they have as good right to Heaven as the greatest and chiefest and our Saviour Christ saith come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and ye shall find rest unto your soules Our Saviour has no respect of persons but the poore are with him as acceptable as the rich if they be weary and heavy laden with their sinnes for that is all the condition that Christ requires in all that desire to be admitted members of his Church Now when these Presbiters already make so great difference between the poore and the rich and between beleevers and beleevers as they will admit none but at their owne times and upon their own conditions I do conceive that this is a most tyrannically lording it over Gods Clergies and inheritance which when they daily doe it and the Presbiters of the Church of England doe it not it is most apparent that their rule and domination is more prelaticall and more to be feared than that of the Presbiters of the Church of England for from the independent Presbiters they can never expect any appeale for reliefe and redresse whatsoever wrong or injury they have sustained by them and therefore there is no just cause why any should so traduce the Presbitry of the Church of England as to think they will lord it over the people from whom they may ever expect farre better measure than ever they can from the independent Presbitry which if it should once be established would tend to nothing else but to enslave the whole Kingdome and to bring in a confusion upon both Church and State But now it will not be amisse before the conclusion as we have compared the Presbiters of the Church of England with the Presbiters independent both in regard of their doctrine and discipline so now likewise here to paragonate them together in their proceedings for the advancement of Christs Kingdome that all men may see in that regard also which of their endeavours tend most to the advancement of the Kingdome of Jesus Christ and which of them ought to be preferred before other and which of them doth more really and truly tend not onely to Gods glory but to the peace also of the Church and State For the Presbiters of the Church of England they labour and endeavour as there is but one body one spirit one hope one Lord one faith one baptisme one God and Father over all who is above all and through all and one true christian Religion Eph. 4. so that this only may be established through the three Kingdomes and that all erronious wayes of worshipping and serving God and that tends to lead men to perdition and make disturbance in Church and State may not publikely be tolerated The Independents on the contary both publikely and privately and in all their bitter railing and intolerable pamphlets as that of the compassionate Samaritan the storming of Antichrist and that of the arraignment of persecution and in many more of their scurrilous writings plead for a toleration of all Religions under pretence of liberty of conscience whatsoever they be as Judiansme Turcisme Popery Paganisme and all manner of sects and for the confirming of this their diabolicall tenent they bring in the example of the heathen Nations who suffered all Religions amongst them and the example of Poland Transsilvania and Holland those pantheons of all Religions and tell us of the Parable where Christ commanded that the Tares and the Wheat should be suffered to grow together till the harvest the day of judgement And use or abuse rather some other places of Scripture which as they conceive make all for a toleration of all Religions To all which their pretences I shall at this time briefly answer after I have set downe some grounds out of holy Scripture and produced some examples of Gods deare children friends and servants out of the same which must be the warrant of all christians to follow to the end of the world for whatsoever was written before was written for our learning 1 Cor. 10. Rom. 15. and by the Word of God and from the example of Gods serants we are ever taught that diversity of Religions amongst Christians ought not to be tolerated And first to begin with Abraham the Father of the faithfull and his seed whose examples all that are his and their children oughtto set before their eyes for imitation The Lord called Abraham as it is in Joshua 24. out of his Father Terah's house and from his kindred when they served other Gods made a covenant with him as it is at large set downe in the 12. of Genesis and in divers other places of the same book and in speciall in the 17. of Genesis verse 1 2 3 c. where the Lord reneweth his covenant with him and his seed and sets downe the conditions of his covenant with Abraham which was that Abraham should walk before him and be perfect and that then he would be his God al sufficient to provide for him and protect him wheresoever he came which covenant the Lord ever kept with Abraham and his seed delivering them out of the hands of all their enemies when they served him according to the conditions of the covenant walking uprightly before him as he will doe to all his children to the end of the world walking in father Abraham's steps and of Abraham the Lord sayes this in the 18. of Genesis ver 17 18 19. Shall I hide from Abraham that which I doe seeing that Abraham shall become a great and a mighty Nation and all the Nations of
so that here we have one president that the whole Lords day was spent by all those Christians in the works of piety and charity Againe in the first of the Revelations Saint John saith that he was in the Spirit on the Lord's day that is the first day of the week called by Saint John the Lord's day and there the Angel preached unto him that day and commanded Saint John to take so much of his Sermon by writing as God in his wisdome thought fit to reveale unto his Church and he that shall diligently read what is there written will gather that the whole day was taken up by Saint John and spent in hearing and writing and meditating of what he had heard for without doubt Saint John made it his whole dayes work to be spiritually imployed and as the holy Communion is called the Lord's Supper and all the time of that action is holily to be imployed as being ordained by Christ himselfe to that end even so the Lords day being a day dedicated unto Christ and ordained by him for holy duties and for the hearing of the Word and for the administration of the Sacraments and prayer the whole day ought both privately and publikely to be taken up in the imployments and works of piety and charity as hearing reading meditating prayer repetition of Sermons in their Families catechizing and instructing their children and servants singing of Psalmes in visiting the sick and them that are in prison relieving the poore and necessitated c. These examples of the primitive Christians are for our imitation for so Saint Paul in the third of the Phillippians in the 17. verse saith Brethren be followers together of me and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example for our conversation is in Heaven And in the 4. chap. ver 8. he saith Finally brethren whatsoever things are true what soever things are honest whatsoever things are just whatsoever things are pure whatsoever things are lovely whatsoever things are of good report if there be any vertue if there be any praise think on these things Those things which ye have both learned and received and heard and seen in me doe and the God of peace shall be with you By the which testimonies to omit many more we are tyed to follow the examples of the Apostles and to imitate them in all that is holy and good and of good report now it is praise worthy and of good report to spend the whole Lords day in holy imployments and we have the Apostles examples and the primitive Christians for so doing and therefore we ought to spend the whole Lords day in the works of piety and charity and by this the sanctifying of the Christian Sabbath which is every seventh day is ratified the prophanation of the which in the reformed Churches and in many places through these three Kingdomes has been one of the causes of all those heavy judgements the whole christian world now groanes under and so much more would the Lord be provoked by the toleration of all Religions amongst us which would give just occasion of violating of all the Commandements of God and of disobedience both to God and man for it is most sure that the morall law is not altered in any thing for substance and that God that by it injoyned but one Religion to the Israelites and commanded them to keep that pure and undefiled and to punish all idolaters blasphemers and seducers hath injoyned the same to all Christians and hath not suffered or permitted them to tolerate all Religions or any sects or heresies which by the Apostle in the fifth of the Galatians are called the works of the devill and that they that doe them shall not enter into the Kingdome of God So that those that would bring in a toleration of all Religions have a desire to send men to the devill For the examples of Poland Transsilvania and Holland they are no presidents to other Nations their politick proceedings are no examples for other christian Countries and Nations to follow for christians are to live by the rule of God's Word and Christ's their Kings lawes and to follow the examples of his own people only in their wel-doing and not in their failings and therfore we are to follow the example of Abraham Joshua Elias the other Patriarchs Prophets and holy Apostles who never tolerated all Religions Yea we are commanded in Romans the 12. not to conforme our selves to this world but that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds that we may prove what is the good and the acceptable and perfect will of God Now when by the Word of God that acceptable and perfect will of his we are taught that he was displeased with his people the Jewes for tolerating of all Religions amongst them and that he was highly offended with those christian Churches in Asia for tolerating the doctrines of Balaan and Jezabel we are sufficiently taught and instructed that Christians ought not to tolerate any other Religion but that which Christ the onely King and Law-giver of his Church hath taught us and that whosoever should take that authority upon them to tolerate all Religions would be found fighters against God and such as deservedly would bring downe his judgements upon the Land by it for if but conniving at evill and consenting to it be a thing displeasing unto God how would the tolerating of it by a law be abominable unto his sacred and divine Majesty for this were to establish iniquity by a law We are taught in the holy Scriptures that the consenting with a theefe makes a man as guilty before God as the acting of theevery and that they that assented unto Jezabel in killing the Prophets made themselves all as guilty as Jezabel her selfe and that the Heathen Romans Rom. 1. ver 32. who knowing the judgement of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death not onely doe the same but consent with them that doe them made themselves as equally guilty as the actors of them as Paul in his bill and information put up in the Court of Heaven against them sufficiently declareth the same did Elias in his bill of information against the people in his time accusing them all as equally guilty of the blood of the Prophets and destroying Religion as Jezabel and onely because they consented unto it They saith Elias have killed thy Prophets and have broken down thy Altars Which they all the people that assented unto her as well as the Officers and Executioners And so our Saviour in his time accuseth the people as well as Herod for slaying of Iohn the Baptist saying They have done to him what soever they pleased They which they all the Nobles that sate at table with Herod that did not disswade Herod from that bloody and tyrannicall act and all the people that liked well of it the sinne of this Nation who assented unto the bloody decrees and censures
so to believe as having received authority because the Aopstles in holy Scripture are called Presbyters that was the ordinary Governours and Magistrates of the Church though the more principall and primary ones and therefore did act as Presbyters in ordinary acts of Church government and for a pattern to all Churches in like administration Neither may any suppose for all this that the Apostles did fall lower in their power in that they acted as Presbyters for our Brethren do acknowledge that at Ierusalem the Apostles acted as Presbyters of a particular Congregation Now then if they did not fall lower in their power by acting as Presbyters in a particular congregation what reason will dictate to any man that they should fall lower in their power by acting as Presbyters in a joint Presbytery The truth is to govern and to rule the Church was the ordinary imployment of the Apostles and therefore they are stiled Presbyters which is to say the Rulers Councellors Magistrates and Governours of the Church neither for all this did their Presbyterships exclude their Apostleships nor did their acting as Presbyters deprive them of their Apostolique power nor of that apostolique spirit which guided them even in these things wherein they acted as Presbyters for although under one notion we looke upon the Apostles as extraordinary men yet under another as in all those affaires of publique concernment and in matter of government and for that end the assembling of themselves together we do not consider them as Apostles for therein they did not act as Apostles with a transcendent and infallible authority and in an extraordinary way but as Presbyters and ordinary Governours and Counsellors and in such a way as makes their meetings and actions a patterne and president to succeding ages and of the Prerbyters congregating of themselves together for common acts of Government whether in a Presbyterian or Synodicall way And as it is in civill affaires and in the government of Kingdomes and States so it was then in the Church of God in a Kingdome some of the Counsellors are of the more secret admission and are generally called Cabbinet Counsellors and are accounted of as extraordinary men and others of the generall Councell yet when all these sit in a common councell together to consult about matters of State and publique concernment they sit then together as ordinary Counsellors and every one of them has as much authority and liberty to debate things by reason and dispute in way of consultation and to give his vote about any thing as well as any of the most extraordinary Counsellors and this hath been the practise of all ages We read that Hushy when he was by Absalon called into councell had his voice and gave his vote as well as Achitophel the Oracle of that time and as in the Common-Councels and Parliaments of Kingdomes whatsoever honour dignity or extraordinary imployments any of them were taken up in before their session and meeting or whatsoever dignity or titles of honour they have extraordinarily above others and take their places accordingly before they come together into the Parliament yet they all sitting there as Judges and Peeres in the Kingdome the meanest Lord in the Kingdome hath as much authourity there as the greatest and so in the House of Commons as they are Judges and chosen by the people for that purpose have all of them even the meanest as much voice and authority in way of consultation as the greatest And so likewise in the Synod or Assembly now of Divines the meanest Presbyter hath as much voice and liberty in way of debate and voting as the greatest Bishop there And even so it was in the Church of Jerusalem when the Apostles those extraordinary gifted men and presbyters met together in counsell they all acted there as counsellors and ordinary presbyters and therefore in all those particular actions of the Apostles we have mention of in their severall meetings whether we consider them by themselves alone and not joyned with the presbyters or in common councell with them those actions I say were done and acted by men which were Apostles but not as they were Apostles exclusively so as they might not act them under another notion neither will our Brethren affirme it for if the Apostles did preach take the trust of the goods of the Church ordaine Officers as Apostles exclusively and in an extraordinary way and as by a priviledge peculiar to themselves it would follow from thence that none may doe any of those things but Apostles which the Brethren will not assent unto as for some instances In that ordination of Deacons in the sixth of the Acts the Apostles there acted partly as Apostles and partly as presbyters for in constituting an office in the Church which was not before they acted their apostolicall authority but in ordaining men to that office which the Church had chosen they did act as presbyters and there is no doubt but the Brethren will yeeld to this for if they will not grant that the Apostles did herein act partly as Apostles and partly as presbyters they must then accord that they acted either onely as presbyters or onely as Apostles If onely as presbyters thence it will follow that all presbyters have power not onely to ordaine men but to erect a new office in the Church If onely as Apostles then hence is no warrant for presbyters so much as to ordaine men into any office nor for so much as to meet together to consult about acts of government either in a presbyterian or in a Synodicall way and by this meanes all Church-government would speedily be overthrowne Neither is it a difficult thing in our Brethren or any other man to distinguish between these two for looke by what infallible rule they make some thing in the practise of the Apostles to be not onely a patterne and president for imitation but even a proofe of institution yet decline other things practised by the same Apostles as things not only by institution not commanded to us but not permitted to be imitated by us By the same rule they may infallibly distinguish between what they acted as Apostles and what they acted as Presbyters and as ordinary Counsellors Judges and Governours and withall they may infer and conclude that what they acted as Presbyters and by joint and common consent it was to give a patterne and president to all Presbyters and Synods in all succeeding ages and as the taking in of the consent of the Church in the choice of Deacons Act. 6. was to give a patterne for the sufferage and voice of the people in all Churches to the end of the world in chosing of their Deacons so for another instance as there were many congregations in the Church of Jerusalem and divers assemblies and all these congregations made but one Church and the Apostles and Presbyters who were officers governed that jointly and by a common councell as our Brethren acknowledge Here likewise
they left a patterne and president to all ages for severall congregations and assemblies in a City or vicinity to unite into one Church and for the Officers and Presbyters of these congregations to governe that Church jointly in a Colledge and Presbytery And for a third instance as the Apostles and Presbyters met together in a Synodicall way and the Apostles in that assembly acted not by an apostollicall and infallible spirit no more then the Presbyters did as when they were writing of Scripture but stating the question and debating it from Scripture in an ordinary way as it is at large discussed in Act. 15. which we never reade they did when they writ the Scripture and having by disputing arguing and searching the Scripture found what was the good and acceptable will of God thereupon they determined the question saying it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and us as the assembly now of Divines or any other for ought I know upon like assurance of Scripture warrant may doe In this action also and their so doing the apostles and Presbyters left an example and president to all the Presbyters of all succeeding ages what they should doe upon the like occasions for the deciding of controversies and differences of opinions in Religion viz. To congregate and meet together in some one place to state the questions and to debate them from Scripture and to follow the written Word as their rule in all things and whatsoever they doe to do it by joint consent and the common councell of them all or by the most voices but in all this their proceedings they must ever cleave to the rule of the Word of God or warrantable authority and evidence of reason deduced from thence as then the apostles and presbyters did yea the very name of the Presbyters in Jerusalem signifieth the Judges Counsellors Magistrates and Rulers of that Church who had the keyes committed unto them as well as the apostles and by their place were more peculiarly overseers of that Church as they were tyed unto it then the apostles as the Presbyters of Ephesus were in that Church and were assigned in their severall places to execute their office and to looke to their particular charges in the government so that whether the apostles were present or absent the presbyters had the government laid upon their shoulders and if the apostles themselves had taught contrary to this constitution or an angell from Heaven Gal. 1. I am confident the Presbyters would not have obeyed them nor have relinquished their authority neither ought they but would still have kept that rule power and authority which God had put in their hands so that for my owne particular I looke upon the apostles in all these severall actions and in all those acts of government joyned and met together with the Presbyters as I looke upon Counsellors and Judges in the great councels of Kingdoms where all the judges have equall power authority in decisive voting and I do verily believe that the Presbyters siting at any time in councell with any one or more of the apostles did act as authoritatively as the apostles themselves I am ever able to prove it and make it good against any man that the Presbyters might as wel conclude It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us as well as the apostles and may say we have written and concluded as well as the apostles as any two or three of the Parliament whether of the Lords or Commons may as well say we have made such an Ordinance as any twenty of them or the whole councell and that without disparagement or impeaching the dignity of any when they joyned with them in that worke and assented to it and in this very notion I looke upon the presbyters in Jerusalem joyned with the apostles and consider them as in my contemplations I looke upon the Lords and Commons now sitting in the great Councell as the grand civill presbytry of the Kingdome where all binding Ordinances are to be passed by the joynt consent and Common-counsel of them all and whose place and office it is to command and rule and the peoples office and place to obey and yeeld subjection to whatsoever they command and injoyne according to the will of God and for the common good and preservation of themselves and the whole Kingdome and that whosoever should resist this their just authority are guilty of contumacy and are high offendors and delinquents for God hath layed the government upon them and left the duty of obedience to the subjects who may not without a publicke cale intermeddle with matters of government And so in the matters of Church government I looke upon Presbyters as Gods peculiar servants and as upon the Stewards Councellours and Magistrates and Judges in the Church as men set apart by God himselfe for this purpose to be the teachers and rulers of their flocks committed unto them in the Lord to whom in the matters of their soules all people under their severall Presbyters so farre as they command in the Lord and according to the written word are to yeeld obedience and much to reverence and honour them and this according to Gods command for it is his ordinance And they are not to be looked on and slited as the fagge ends of the Cleargy as many black mouthes and prophane lips speake of them for the Presbyters they have their authority as well grounded in the word of God as Kings and States have theirs and therefore as they are imployed in a more supreame orbe and in matters of eternall concernment so they should be venerated as men watching over our soules and all contumelious speeches against them deserve severe punishment and ought not to be tolerated and so much the more the Presbyters of this Kingdome in these our dayes have deserved better from the Church the Parliament and the whole Kingdome then any of their predecessors not onely in desiring a perfect and through Reformation in both Doctrine and Discipline but in that they have stood now so cordially to the comon cause and more for the liberty of the Subject then any before them and have cleaved most faithfully to the Parliament have bin also a most singular means of keeping the people whersoever they were suffered to Preach in obedience In all these respects I say they deserve well yea better not onely from the Church but from all the Kingdome for the present than any of their predecessours and their memories ought to be famous to all posterity for this their good service And that government that God has given unto the Presbyters if the Lords and Commons shall now labour to establish it in the Kingdome and to settle it on them they may not onely promise unto themselves a blessing from heaven and peace unto the Church and State but also immortall praise from all succeeding ages Having taken leave to make this digression I will now to my businesse and prove that
of God he was both ordained and put in office without the approbation and consent of the people who knew nothing of the businesse but onely stood amazed and said Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem and came hither for that intent that he might bring them bound unto the high Priest The Ministers in those dayes when they were all taught of God they onely admitted members by their owne authority into the Church without the approbation of the people but in these our dayes wherein people have gotten itching eares and teachers after their owne humours such as S. Paul speaks of in his Epistles to Timothy they teach a new doctrine and bring forth new borne lights to the darkning of truth it selfe and to the bringing in of confusion on all things See what Saint James saith in his 5. chapt to all Churches and Christians in the world It any man sick saith he let him send for the Presbiters of the Churches and let them pray over him c. and the prayer of faith shall save the sicke and the Lord shall raise him up and if he have committed sins they shal be forgiven him The Apostle James here sends all Christians to the Presbiters of every Church who had the power of the Keys delegated unto them for spirituall comfort and whose office onely it was to pronounce pardon and remission of sinnes unto the sick upon their true repentance if they had offended and sinned against God in the time of their health and so scandalized the Gospell and the Church and it was the Presbiters place and office to admit them againe into the fellowship and communion of the Saints upon their cordiall and unfained repentance and that without asking the Church any leave for as the Presbiters onely had the power of casting out offenders out of the Church so they onely had the authority of receiving them in againe upon their repentance and not the Church so if we look into all those Epistles that were written unto the seven Churches of Asia in the 2. and 3. of the Revelations we shall find them all directed to the Angels of the seven Churches which is as much as to say to the presidents of every severall Presbitry established and constituted in every one of those Churches which is a sufficient argument to me to prove a Counsell or Colledge of godly Ministers in every one of those Cities according to that of Paul to Titus chap. 1. ver 5. for this cause left I thee in Creet that thou shouldest ordaine Presbiters in every City not one but many And in the 14. of the Acts ver 23. And when they had ordained them presbiters in every Church c. many Presbiters a Colledge of them was appointed to every Church and so in the 20. of the Acts there were many Presbiters who had the charge and government of that Church committed unto them in common ver 28. there was a Colledge of them constituted in that church and therefore for order sake which the light of nature teacheth they must have a President who by the way of excellency and to distinguish him from the other is called an Angel as the inscription of the Epistle Rev. 11.1 declares saying Unto the Angel of the church of Ephesus As in our dialect when we speak of the great counsell of the Kingdome or of the reverend assembly of Divines if there be occasion of distinguishing the Presidents of those councels from the other Judges in those assemblies we say Master Speaker in the House of Lords or Commons or of the President of the Ministers we say Master Prolocutor and if any have occasion to write to either houses or to the Assembly they direct their letters to the Speakers or to the Prolocutor who communicates them to each Assemblies as being the Presidents of each Society and yet none of all these Presidents by that their place of honour and eminency have any more power or authority then the rest but onely in the casting voyce when the parties upon any occasion are for number equall and for appointing of the times and places of meeting and for the methodicall and orderly carriage of the businesses yea it is ever observed wheresoever there is a President there is a colledge or councell or a court nature dictates this and the custome of all nations proves it and withall by the same light of reason that counsell or colledge to whom God himselfe writes and directs his letters for redressing of abuses has the power in their hands for the rectifying of things amisse that it peculiarly belongeth unto them as to the Magistrates invested with authority to order things according to direction and to punish and cast out offenders and that by their owne power without the consent and approbation of the people as it is now in the great Counsell and Parliament of the Kingdome who make not the people acquainted with what they have to doe but so farre as it pleaseth themselves and not out of any duty and so it was in the government of Gods Church by the first constitution every Church consisting of many congregations were governed by a colledge of Presbiters as that of Jerusalem and this of Ephesus and the other six Churches in all the which the Presbiters by their sole authority governed them according to Gods Word without taking the people in to counsell with them who were no where joyned in commission with them and therefore it is most apparent by those examples I have now produced and many more that might be added and from the commission that Christ gave to the Apostles and in them to all Ministers that the people had not their voyces either for the admitting of any to be members in any church or in the easting out of any for their delinquency much lesse have they authority to require a publike confession of their faith to be made unto the congregation or to exact of them to bring in the evidences of their true conversion or to require that they should walk with them some time before admission or to enter into a solemne private covenant before they be admitted as members for we have no president for any of these things in Gods Word much lesse any command only in Acts the sixt there is mention made that the Apostles for the freeing of themselves from all unnecessary incombrances and that they might the better attend upon their ministry and preaching gave the people liberty to make choice of their owne Deacons but still keeping the power of ordaining them in their owne hand which alwayes was arbitrary in them whether they would exercise it or no neither would the Apostles have ordained them unlesse those that were to be ordained had been man so qualified as they had appointed for otherwise it lay in their choyce whether they would ordain them or no. But that ever the congregation or people had the power of admitting of members or
against the expresse command of God who is the God of order and injoynes the contrary yea it is not onely against the law of God but against the very law of nature and the practice of all Nations for never was it yet heard of in any well governed city or common wealth or Kingdome that women that were subjects had their voyces in choosing officers or Burgesses or making of freemen or disfranchising of them or were permitted so much as to sit in counsell with them much lesse to rule and give lawes to others out of their owne houses And therefore as it is a thing odious to God and man and that which is a shame to that sex it ought to be cast out of all wel-governed Churches and States and as the women ought to know their places so ought all men that are under obedience to learne their duty and not to take upon them that which God never gave unto them as to have their voyce either in making of members in Churches or casting of them out or of ordaining of officers or of imposing lawes upon others either of making publike confessions before the Congregations or of producing evidences of their conversion or that they should walk with them some time that they might behold their conversation or of imposing a covenant upon any that shall be admitted for all rule and government in the Church is put into the hands of the Presbiters and does not belong unto the people or multitude neither may the Presbiters usurpe authority but they also must exercise it onely according to the commission given unto them by Christ they may not transgresse it or goe beyond it in the least thing and therefore when many of the brethren call for a publike confession of mens faith to be made in their new Congregation and the evidences of their conversion to be produced and impose a covenant upon them before they admit them to be members of their Church as if they had lived before in infidelity Who notwithstanding were knowne to be holy and godly Christians and as true beleevers as any that now live in the world and think them onely Christians and beleevers that doe as they would have them and count of others that will not conforme themselves to their customes and novelties but as the off-scowring and refuse and no Christians I say it is an intolerable usurpation and a thing that was yet never before practised in the world in any Church either Jewish or Christian till these dayes and therefore they goe beyond their commission in so doing for God in his commssion to his Apostles and all Ministers bids them admit of all that come in and beleeve and are baptized he quencheth not the smoaking flax nor breaketh the bruised reed now then when they know thousands in this Kingdome that doe beleeve and are men of unblamable lives and such as would lay downe their lives for the faith once delivered unto the Saints and are baptized what have they to doe to lord it over them and to hinder them from communicating in the Ordinances and to be admitted into Church-fellowship with them or to debarre them from the communion of the Saints Me thinks the vision to Saint Peter in the tenth of the Acts should teach such men their duty When God said unto Peter rise kill and eat Peter said not so Lord for I have never eaten any thing that is common and uncleane and the voyce said what God hath cleansed call not thou common And this saith the Scripture was done thrice that by the mouth of two or three Witnesses this truth might be confirmed to Peter and all other Ministers not to call those people common prophane and uncleane and to count them but rubbish whom God hath graced with the gifts of his holy Spirit and hath sanctified and such as beleeve in Jesus Christ and are baptized as well as themselves and such as stood to the truth when they durst not shew their faces but ran from the Cause and deserted it or at least temporized and such as if the like occasions were offered would manifest unto the world by Gods assistance that their lives and all they have should not be deere unto them for the testimony of Jesus and yet such as these must be debarred from the communion in their assemblies unlesse they will conforme to their new-borne traditions for these are no traditions of the Elders but of the younger and if Christ in his time sharply reproved those that brake the Commandements of God through the traditions of men and deeply reproved the Ministers in those dayes for teaching the people to preferre the traditions of the Elders before the commandements of God and for teaching them the feare of God after the precepts of men What shall we think those Ministers will have to answer at the dreadfull day of judgement when they set up their traditions in the Church of God and preferre them before the Commandements of God and what can any man think of the condition of that people that account of such novelties as the Oracles of God and violate the law of Love and make rents and scismes in the seamelesse garment of the Church through these traditions Surely whatsoever they may promise to themselves their condition is very dangerous for our Saviour saith Woe be to those by whom offences come Matthew 18. and whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that beleeve in me it were better for him that a milstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea And whether this be not to transgresse the Commandements of God through their traditions and to offend those little ones that beleeve in Christ when they will not receive such into the communion and fellowship of the Church as beleeve and are baptized but count them as aliens and strangers yea infidels and rubbish I referre my selfe to any that is but of ordinary understanding For Gods command unto all Ministers was that they should admit all such into the Church as beleeved and were baptized upon their desiring it without any confession either private or publike or entring into any covenant Now this command of God they transgresse by their traditions and keepe out many thousands of beleevers through the Kingdome as unholy and as having no right to the Ordinances because forsooth they will not obey their new-born lawes and traditions for where did ever God command that no beleevers should be admitted into the Church except they made a publike confession of their faith and walked some time in fellowship amongst them and then give in the evidences of their conversion and entred into a private covenant and gave the Church satisfaction Or where was it ever practised by any of the primitive Christians either by those that were converted by Peters Sermon and the other Apostless or by Paul's preaching was Lidia when God opened her heart to beleeve Pauls preaching admitted into the Church upon
given in the High-commission-Courts and in the Star-Chamber and in all other unjust Courts the people that assented unto all their cruell censures against Gods people and liked well of it are as equally guilty who would ordinarily say that had they been Judges they would have done the like and that they were men worthy of death which made them I say as equally guilty as their wicked Judges and Executioners as we may see also in those that assented unto the High-Priests and to the Scribes and Pharisees in putting to death the Lord of life they made themselves all guilty of his blood and by that meanes brought the curse of God upon them and their children by it to this day as well as the High-Priests themselves a fearfull sinne though the world take no notice of it and which all these Kingdomes have yet to repent of Saint Paul also makes himselfe as guilty of Stephen's blood as they that stoned him saying When the holy Martyr Stephen was stoned I stood by and assented unto it and held the garments of those that stoned him By which he acknowledgeth himselfe equally guilty and so all those that assented to all the cruelty done to the people of God in these Kingdomes and were approvers of their tyranny are as guilty as the actors of it for consenting unto any treason or conspiracy or with any malefactors and all their complices both by the law of God nature and nations makes them all guilty before God and men and as liable to justice and punishment as those that acted in those malefices and therefore those that but assent unto a toleration of all Religions a sinne so highly displeasing unto God are as guilty as the actors of it and if but consenting make them guilty how guilty are they then that use arguments to bring in a toleration of all Religions and abuse the Scriptures to this end and plead for it and would have it established by a law surely they are offenders against divine Majesty in an elevated nature and have a great deal to answer for it before God especially when they doe it in a most scurrilous and railing manner by which they manifest to all the world that they are more verst and better acquainted with the doctrine of Billingsgate than with the language of Canaan But this may seeme a wonderfull thing to all judicious men that that people which within these six yeers were afraid of a Surplice of the crosse in Baptisme and of any popish ceremony or of any of their vain traditions and wil-worship which was their honour then should now plead for the toleration of the body and soule of popery and for all other both jewish and heathenish Religions and all manner of sects so destructive to that Religion which the King of Saints and King of Kings and the onely King of his Church the Lord Jesus Christ himselfe hath taught us and to the peace and quietnesse of the Land this I say must needs seem a monstrous thing to any moderate minded Christian Nay how unreasonably doe these men deale with their brethren they plead for a toleration of all Religions here in England and yet in New England banish men into Islands from amongst them for dissenting from them in their new modell of Church government and for but dissenting from them in their opinions about Religion and here amongst us what impious and railing books doe they make against the Ministers for endeavouring to establish that Religion and that church-government that God himselfe in his holy Word hath set down and what opprobrious names doe they give the faithful and painfull Preachers and Pastors of the Church of England calling them Baals Priests the profest enemies of Jesus Christ his Kingdome the limms of Antichrist false Prophets the brood of Babylon terming some particular men of them Rabshekes others Bands others Black mouthes legall preachers and stiling all of them the cursed enemies of Jesus Christ and think of them as men not worthy to live and in expresse words professe it and yet these men plead for a toleration of all Religions when both by their words and deeds they manifest if it were in their power the first work they would do should be to root us all out of the Kingdome so that all men may see they say one thing and meane another that they would tolerate all Religions but onely that which is the true Religion so by that meanes have no Religion at all but one of their own making which by their new lights they have of late found out which they call the straight way to Heaven and the onely way of setting up Christ upon his Throne which is nothing else to say the truth but to disthrone him and set up themselves and their new modell for who doth not see how already they lord it over all good christians not admitting them to the Sacraments but upon their owne termes nor suffering their children to be baptized amongst them nor so much as suffering any they call Presbiterians to preach in their new congregated Assemblies if this be to give a toleration of any Religion but their owne let all the world judge but I say and will ever by Gods assistance be able to make it good in that they plead for a toleration of all Religions they are as guilty of hainous and soule sinnes being complices as well as they that are actors Now then when the Presbiters of the Church of England seek and endeavour in all their proceedings to establish that Religion which Christ the King of his Church hath taught them and his blessed Apostles and labour to set up that government that was ordained in all Churches to be perpetuated to the end of the world in their so doing they imitate all the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles and in that they doe more advance Christ's Kingdome than the Independents who under pretence of liberty of conscience would bring in a toleration of all Religions and confusion upon us all Surely if ever any Ministers deserved well from the people the Ministers of England now doe who by all their endeavours shew that they seek to bring them to the knowledge of God and of his Sonne Jesus Christ and to the knowledge of themselves which is life eternall For what could men doe more than that which they have done who have petitioned the house of Lords and Commons now sitting in the great Counsell of the Kingdome that they might be armed with authority from them in their severall charges to have the examination of such as shall be admitted to the Sacraments that they may be rightly informed in the knowledge of those holy Mysteries and that none that are either ignorant or scandalous in their lives may be suffered to communicate at the Lord's Table by which their endeavour they shew the christian care they have of their eternall welfare for which the people are ever bound unto them and by the which also they take away all scandall occasion of offence to others which formerly pretended that the cause of their separating from our Congregations and Assemblies was in regard they could not communicate with dogs and swine and with the tagragge and bobtaile of all the Malignants for in such termes they usually expresse themselves Now when the occasion of this scandall and offence is taken away by the care of the Ministers and all superstition and popish ceremonies and all will-worship is also rooted out and when the Gospell is truly and faithfully by them preached both in season and out of season and the Name of God truly invocated and the Sacraments duly and rightly administred what just cause have the Independents now either of separation or of traducing either Ministers or people of being enemies of Christ and his Kingdome when by all their endeavours they onely seek the advancement of him and his Kingdome amongst them I have so good an opinion of all moderate minded christians that when they shall seriously weigh and consider what I have here writ and truly and faithfully set downe that those of them that have formerly been alienated from them will again being now undeceived returne every one of them to their owne Pastors by whose ministries they have been converted and that all other understanding men will not onely have more charitable thoughts both of the Ministers and beleevers of the Church of England but wil likewise look more narrowly into and examine more diligently all those new wayes and by finding them out to be indeed but new will seek for the old way and walk in it which shall ever be his prayer that wisheth that all men may be saved and come to the knowledge of the Truth The POSTSCRIPL Discovering the uncharitable dealing of the Independents towards their christian brethren with the juglings of many of their Pastors and Ministers to the misleading of the poore people to the detriment of their owne soules and the hurt both of Church and Sate with the danger of all novelties in Religion is to come forth a fortnight hence in the which it will be proved that it is the duty of all christian Magistrates Parents Masters of Families and all such as truly feare God to yeeld their helping hand for the suppressing of heresies and all novelties in Religion if they really desire the glory of God the salvation of their brethren and the peace of Church and Kingdom in the which also there is satisfactory answer given to the principall cavils of him that writ that railing Pamphlet stiled The falshood of Master William Prynne's triumphing in the Antiquity of Popish Princes and Parliaments FINIS
and mine in all our distresses many curtesies when we found little favour from our own brethren which their humanity I must never forget but with all due thankfulnesse for ever acknowledge I say if then this my opinion was thought Orthodox and worthy of their applause I see no good reason why a truth then should not be counted a truth now for the Word of God out of which I had it is the same and if it were good then it is good now for the change of mens minds cannot change the truth but it must be ever truth but this my opinion I learned out of Gods Word then which shall be for ever by his gracious assistance the warrant of my beliefe and practice This Word therefore I desire all my Christian Brethren in the deciding of this question now agitated amongst Gods people and his faithfull servants concerning Church-government to take into their hands and with those noble Bereans to sit down and examine whatsoever shall be said on either side according to the holy Scriptures and I intreat them also to lay aside all passion which Religion has no need of and all vain-glory and bitternesse which is a dishonour to our holy calling and in the spirit of meeknesse and with a Virgine judgement not ravisht with any previous or anticipated opinion to come and approach to the Altar of truth and so consider and examine which of those two opinions the Brethren on both sides now sacrifice themselves unto be the offering that will best endure the firy-tryall 1 Cor. 3.13 14 15. viz. Whether the Presbyterian government Dependent or a Presbyterian government Independent both now laid upon the Altar be the acceptablest service and best pleasing sacrifice This is granted on all sides and of necessity it must be yeilded unto that that Oblation is the best and most acceptable that is offered up by faith without which it is impossible to please God and that sacrifice only is offered up by faith which is according to his Word and has its warrant from his revealed will which is the rule both for worship and the government of his Church we are to be guided by The Brethren on both sides agree about the rule in deciding of this Controversie and make the written word the rule They agree also about the materials both acknowledgeing a Presbytery the difference between them is only about the mould and manner of the offering I will therefore state the questions between us and shew wherein we differ and then set down my own opinion with my reasons and after endeavour to be a Moderator for the determining of this unhappy difference which hath been an occasion of so much rejoycing to the common Enemy There is a twofold question between us they call the Presbyterians and our Brethren they tearme Independents The first is concerning the government of the Church viz. whether it be Presbyterian Dependent or Presbyterian Independent The second question is concerning the gathering of Churches but of that in its due place The first question is whether many Congregations or Christian Assemblies commonly called Churches in our dialect in the which there are all the acts of worship or all Ordinances as the pure preaching of the Gospell the due and right administration of the Sacraments the true invocation of God Discipline rightly executed and all other performances which make for the essence and form of a true Church and in the which assemblies likewise they have all such offices and helps of Government as in their severall places being rightly imployed may serve for the edification of the same and mutuall comfort and benefit of each other and the preservation of all as Presbytors Elders Deacons and all other Officers I say the question between us and the brethren is Whether all these severall Congregations and Assemblies may be accounted but one Church or make but one Church within their Precincts and be to be under the government and rule of one Presbytery or a Councell or Colledge of many Presbyters together upon which all the Congregations and severall Assemblies under it are to depend and to which in all weighty businesses they are to appeal for any injury or conceived wrong or scandall or for redresse of any abuses in Doctrine or manners and for the exercising of Church-Discipline upon incorrigable and scandalous offenders as admonition for giving offence suspension from the Ordinances till amendment and reformornation or if obstinate Excommunion Or whether every one of those particular Congregations or Assemblies be they never so small severally or considered a part and by themselves be Independent that is to say have full and plenary authority within themselves without reference to this or any other great Councell or Presbytery for transacting or determining all differences about faith or manners amongst themselves or for the redressing of any grievances or abuses or the exercising of the power of Discipline or jurisdiction and from the which there is no appeal for relief though the parties offended conceive they have never so much injury or wrong done them In a word whether two Presbyters with a slender Congregation have an absolute kinde of Spirituall Soveraignty among themselves in their own Congregation and as ample authority as was given to the whole Colledge of the Apostles Mat. 17. and to the whole Presbytery in the Church of Jerusalem And this is the first Question Which that it may the better be understood I will propound it in a simile and that in a matter well known unto all men The government of this famous City of London and of many other great Cities through the Kingdome are called Corporations that is to say majestracies and have in them a Secular or Civill Signory or Presbytry who are invested with Authority to exercise all acts of Government amongst themselves as if they were an absolute Principality and this Government by which all Citizens and inhabitants within their Precincts and liberties are to be ruled and ordered as occasion and necessity shall require is committed to the Lord Mayors Aldermen and Common-Councell who onely by such other Officers as they shall allegate are to manage and exercise this government so that all particular Citizens and all the Companies of severall Tradesmen are in their particular Wards Precincts and Fellowships by their constitutions and Charter to depend upon the determination of that Counsell and are to make their addresses unto them upon any urgent occasion or conceived wrong or when it concernes the common good and for the time to stand unto their arbitrement Now then the question between us and our Brethren is as if there should arise a controversie in these severall Corporations Whether the Companies in each City where they all have their severall Halls and their severall assemblies and meetings upon all occasions and have all their Officers and exercise also a power of ruling and jurisdiction among themselves be independent that is to say have plenary authority within themselves
of those congregations to governe that Church joyntly in a Colledge or Presbyterie But before I come to the proof of these particulars it will not be amisse in generall to take notice that all the Churches we read of in the New Testament were Aristocratically and Presbyterially governed and were all dependent upon their severall Presbyteries and that the ordering and managing of that government lay only upon the Presbyterie and was their peculiar who had the power of the Keyes Now Christ gave the Keyes to the Apostles and Presbyters only and whatsoever the Apostles did in ordering and setling the government of the Church they did by Christs command and that order and constitution they set down in the Church was to be perpetuated and continued to the end of the world And the violating of this order and divine constitution was the occasion of the rise and growth of Antichrist and the very cause of all those confusions that the Christian world hath for these many generations been wearied and annoyed with and the occasion of all those Schismes Sects and Heresies the world hath ever swarmed with and the re-establishing and reducing of it to its pristine constitution will be a means not only of removing all scandall and taking away of all division amongst Brethren and be a singular means also of establishing a flourishing governments in Church and State and for the procuring of the blessings of God upon the three Kingdomes but a way also of ruining that Man of Sinne and of making an absolute Reformation through the whole world Let us therefore first take notice what government was established by God in all the Primitive Churches Acts 1 â—â— And when they had ordained them Presbyters for so it is i◠〈◊〉 originall in every Church and had prayed with fasting they commended them to the Lord on whom they beleeved Here are two things observable The first that the government of the Church was committed to the Presbyters The second that the Presbyteriall government was that government that was established in every Church for so saith the Holy Ghost when they had ordained them Presbyters in every Church This was Gods ordinance Acts 20.17 And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the Presbyters of the Church Here we see there were many Presbyters in one Church And Vers 28. Take heed therefore unto your selves saith the Apostle and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Bishops to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood Here as we may observe that in Gods Dialect Presbyters and Bishops were all one so likewise is evident that the Church was committed to their government this Church therefore of Ephesus was under a Presbytery and was to be regulated joyntly by them by a common-counsell of Presbyters And Paul to Titus chap. 1. vers 5. For this cause saith he left I thee in Creet that thou shouldest put in order the things that are wanting and ordaine Presbyters in every City as I appointed thee If any man be blamelesse c. for a Bishop must be blamelesse as the Steward of God c. From this place likewise we may take notice of the parity between Presbyter and Bishop and that the Presbyterian government was that way of ruling that God appointed not in one City only but in every City and that these Presbyters were the Stewards in Gods house which is his Church 1 Tim. 3. and had the government of those Churches in every City laid upon them which they were joyntly to governe and order by the common-counsell of Presbyters And Paul in his first Epistle to Timothy ch 5. v. 17. Let the Presbyters saith he that rule well be counted worthy of double honour especially they who labour in word and doctrine Still we ever observe that the rule and government of the Church was in the Presbyters hands And the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews ch 13.7 Remember saith he them that have the rule over you who have spake unto you the Word of God whose faith follow considering the end of their conversation And vers 17. Obey saith he them that have the rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your soules as they that must give an account c. And in vers 24. Salute all them saith he that have the rule over you and all the Saints Here againe he injoynes all the Churches to yeild obedience and to submit themselves unto the government of the Presbyterie shewing them that it is their place to obey and for their Ministers to rule and that so long as they command in the Lord they out of conscience ought to obey them and that for a double reason For they watch saith he for your souls and they must also give an account of their stewardship And in 1 Peter 5 1 2 3. The Presbyters that are among you saith Saint Peter I exhort who am also a Presbyter and a witnesse of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed feed the flock of God which is among you taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly c. neither as being Lords over Gods heritage but being examples to the flock And Saint James chap. 5. ver 14. Is any among you sick saith he let him call for the Presbyters of the Church He doth not say of the Churches but of the Church So that the Presbyterian government was in every Church and every Church was to submit it self unto the Presbytery And in Acts 15. it is said that Paul and Barnabas went up to the Apostles and Presbyters c. And when they came to Jerusalem they were received of the Church it is not said of the Churches but of the Church and of the Apostles and Presbyters c. and Vers 6. And the Apostles and Presbyters came together to consider of the matter c. and Vers 22. Then pleased it the Apostles and Presbyters with the whole Church c. and wrote Letters by them after this manner The Apostles and Presbyters and Brethren And Acts 21.17 And when we were come to Jerusalem saith Saint Luke the Brethren received us gladly And the day following Paul went in with us in to James and all the Presbyters were present From all which places and many more which might be produced it is most clear and evident that in all Cities there was a Presbytery and that the Presbyters had the power of order namely of preaching and the power of jurisdiction that is of ruling which was ever to be exercised with others and not alone and that consisted in admitting of members and in conventing men before them upon occasion in admonishing if any offended in suspending from the holy Communion till reformation or amendment and if they continued obstinate and incorrigible in excommunicating and casting of them out of the Church and upon repentance in receiving of them in againe and in ordaining of
Officers and in appointing the times of meeting and the places where And within these limits as I conceive is all the power given to the Presbyters terminated and this they are by Gods ordinance joyntly and by the common-counsell of Presbyters to exercise and therefore the Presbyterian government was the order of ruling and governing all Churches that God himself established and is to be continued to the end of the world neither do I ever reade that the people or the congregations were joyned with them in their commission or had any power given them of ruling For Saint Paul professeth of himself in 1 Cor. 14.37 that whatsoever he writ in his Epistles were the commands of the Lord. And the same may be said of all the other Apostles Now Paul writ to Titus that the Churches in all Cities should be governed by a Presbytery And in his first Epistle to Timothy he commands Timothy againe and againe in chap. 5. vers 21. and in chap. 6. v. 12 13. I give thee charge in the sight of God c. That thou keep this command without spot unblameable till the appearing of our Lord Iesus Christ Here Timothy and all Ministers in him are to the end of the world bound to maintaine that government unblameable that was appointed by the Apostles and that was the Presbyterian government and the ruling of all Churches by joynt consent and a common-counsell or Colledge of Presbyters so that nothing ought to be done or transacted of publick concernment without their joynt and mutuall accord or agreement and common consent of the Presbytery And therfore when Diotrephes assumed unto himself and his particular congregation a power and authority to rule according to his will pleasure without the consent of the Presbytery opposed John the Presbyter he sharply reproves his proceedings signifies to the Church Epist 3. That when he came he would remember his words and teach him how to prate against the Presbytery with malicious words For he saith S. John contenteth not himself onely to prate maliciously against us but he will not receive the brethren nor suffer others but casteth them out of the Church which is an evill thing in him saith Saint John But for you saith he speaking to the Church follow not that which is evill but that which is good It was evill in him to assume unto himselfe alone and his particular Congregation that power that belonged unto the colledge or councell of Presbyters and was to be moderated and exercised onely by the conjoynt and common consent of the Presbytery For God had appointed that his Church should be governed by a Presbytery and Diotrephes would have his Congregation Independent and have an absolute jurisdiction within it self Which saith Saint John is an evill thing So that I cannot but wonder that our brethren the Independents should call Diotrephes the Patriarch of the Presbyterians as one of them did to me not long since whereas if the place be duely weighed and considered it will appear that he was the first that opposed the Presbyterian Government and for the which he was by Saint John sharply reproved and in him all that follow his steps and will not submit themselves to the Presbytry which is Gods Ordinance and that will not receive the brethren into the Churches but upon their own termes and conditions But of this businesse when I come to the second Question In the mean time it is by the Word of God sufficiently confirmed that all the Churches we read of in the New Testament were so many corporations in Christs Kingdome which were to be governed by a common councell of Presbyters And so for many years after the Apostles it was governed Communi consilio Presbytererum as our brethren the Independents do confesse and proove by antiquity and humane authority which weapon I do wonder they will contend with in deciding of Gods matters which are onely out of his holy Word to be proved which is to be the rule of our faith But it seems Saint Ambrose his Authority pleaseth them well though if we looke into it it makes much against them He lived as the Author that cites him saith within the fourth Centory his words are these upon the first of Timothy Synagoga postea Ecclesia seniores habuit quorum sine consilio nihil agebatur in Ecclesia Quod quâ negligentia obsoleverit nescio nisi doctorum desidia aut magis superbia dum soli volunt aliquid videri Take with it his own interpretation The Iewes Synagogue saith he and afterwards the Christian Church had Elders without whose counsell nothing was done in the Church which by what neglect it grew out of use I know not unlesse it were perhaps the sloath or rather pride of the Teachers whilest alone they would seem to be some body Here it is acknowledged by their own testimony that in the Apostles time and many years after the Apostles nothing was done in the Church without the counsell of the Presbyters so that it is evident the Primitive Churches were governed by the joynt and common councell of the Presbytery and the people had nothing to do with it We may adde here unto Saint Ambrose Saint Jeromes testimony who in his Commentaries upon the first chapter of the Epistle of Paul to Titus largely declaring himself as in many other places concerning the occasion of the change of that government established by the Apostles saith Idem est ergo Presbyter qui Episcopus antequà m diaboli instinctu studia in religione fierent diceretur in populis ego sum Pauli ego Apollo ego autem Cephae communi Presbyterorum consilio Ecclesiae gubernabantur c. In the which words he acknowledgeth by the first institution all Churches were governed by the common councell of the Presbyters and not by the advice of the people Yea the very Canons of the Pope in the first part and the 95. distinction giving the reason why the Presbyterian Government came to be changed and the Hierarchiall was put in the place affirmeth that it was through faction and for the avoyding of further Schismes and rents in the Church and cities the very words before coted out of Saint Jerome and confesse that before that time the Churches were governed Communi consilio Presbyterorum not by the people or any one Prelate but by the Presbytery and their councell And if humane authority were needfull in this businesse I might make a volume with their very expressions to prove the novelty of the Hirarchicall government and that of the peoples jurisdiction assuming the Authority of governing into their hands and the Antiquity of the Presbytery and that by the enemies own consession But I am resolved to cleave onely unto the Word and sound reason deduced from thence for the deciding of this controversie being sorry that there was so much as occasion of naming humane authority in a point of Divinity As for the Presbyterian government in
Presbytery in that sense I take it I am so well assured that it is Gods Ordinance as I am of any point of Religion But as I said before if men may argue afthis way The Presbyters in the Apostles times did miracles and spake with strange tongues and their Scholers and Disciples did the same do you likewise and then we will acknowledge you to be true Presbytters otherwise we will not Thus the Jewes might have argued against all their Prophets as against Isaiah Ieremy Ezekiel c. Moses and Elias fasted forty dayes and forty nights and did many miracles do you so and then we will believe you are true Prophets and sent to us of God otherwise we will not believe you to be true Prophets Yea all the wicked and ungodly men of these times may argue thus also God gave unto his Church Apostles Evangelists Prophets c. and they spake all strange tongues and divers languages and did many miracles but you and your Congregations have neither Apostles Prophets nor Evangelists nor ye have not the gifts of Tongues nor ye can do no Miracle Ergò you are not the true Church The Primitive Christians and the servants of God in those times had the gifts of Tongues and Prophesie and the Holy Ghost came down upon them and they spake by direction from God his infallible truth and Gospell whose speeches were not tied to time and to one speaker but many spake one after another by interpreters as it is at large set down in the 1. of the Corinthians chap. 14. vers 27 28 29 30. c. So that they spake infallible truth by direction from God but you have none in your congregations so miraculously inspired with sundry languages and divers tongues nor ye do not speak infallible truths by direction from God nor you cannot cure diseases nor do miracles Ergò your religion is not the same Religion nor your congregations the true Church shew us these miracles and then we will beleeve you to be the true Church otherwise we may not we dare not acknowledge you to be the true Church Again they may argue thus The Apostles and Primitive Pastors and Teachers preached freely and laboured with their own hands and were helpfull to the necessities of others and were not burthensome and exacting from others and spake ex tempore by direction from God but your Ministers in your Congregations do not preach freely nor labour not with their own hands nor are not helpfull to others necessities but are rather burdensome and exacting from others nor they do no miracles nor speak not immediately by inspiration and ex tempore but by Study and out of their Books and are confined to time and speak not in strange tongues and languages one after another by Interpreters Ergò your ministers are not Gods Ministers nor your Congregations the true Church nor your people true Christians for you want all those things that the Primitive Christians and the Primitive Churches had There is a Pamphlet lately come out and highly esteemed and prised amongst many full of such consequences as these which if they hold good against the Presbyters they may also for ought I know be of equall validity to overthrow not onely all Christian Congregations but indeed all Christian Religion But briefly to answer We look upon the Apostles and Primitive Presbyters as men miraculously and extraordinarily gifted and as wonder-working men for the confirmation of the truth of the Gospell to all succeeding ages and we consider in them and in the Christians of those times something extraordinary and temporary as their working of miracles and speaking of strange tongues and gifts of healing c. And those we conceive were to continue no longer in the Church then for the confirmation of the truth of the Gospel Christ himself proclaiming those blessed that believe without seeing of miracles speaking unto Thomas Iohn 20.29 Because thou hast seen me saith he thou believest blessed are they that have not seen and have believed So that miracles now are not ordinary and we are tied to the written Word But we consider likewise in the Apostles and Primitive Presbyters that that was permanent and to continue in all Ministers and Presbyters in all succeeding ages to the end of the world and that was the power of order and preaching and the power of jurisdiction that is of ruling which is not denied by the most learned of the Independents themselves and this I have proved by the Word of God to be transacted over to all Christian Churches whose Presbyters have that power given unto them neither will the Learned Brethren deny it what so ever the ignorant may do Yea the very name of a Presbytery as I said before if we look through the whole Scripture signifieth a Magistracy or Signiory or Corporation invested with authority of governing and ruling and such a counsell and company of men as upon whom the government under Christ is laid and to be extended so far as their jurisdiction extendeth and as far as by common consent it may make for the good and edification of the Church and for the safety of the same And such was the government of all those Churches of the New Testament which were as so many Committees their limits and bounds prefixed them as at this day all Committees through the Kingdome have in their severall Hundreds Wapentakes and Cities to whom the ordering and government of those places that are under them are committed so that all that is done or transacted must be done by the joynt consent and counsell of the whole Committee not any particular man or any two of them severally considered by themselvs can make an order but that order only is binding which is made by the joynt consent and common agreement of them all or the greatest part of them assembled together Even so all those particular Congregations that are within the compasse and jurisdiction of the severall Presbyteries are to be ordered and governed by the common and joynt counsell of the severall Presbyters or the greater part of them For this was the order the Apostles established appointing in every City a Presbyterie and when they had so ordered the Churches they set them all to their severall imployments the Presbyters to command and all the people and particular assemblies and congregations under them to obey neither is it ever found in the holy Scriptures that the people were joyned with the Presbyters in their commission So that they that oppose this government resist Gods Ordinance And if we looke into all the Epistles writ by the Apostles to the severall Churches we shall finde in them that they enjoyne all the severall congregations to yeild obedience to their Pastors and Rulers over them and signifie unto them that they owe unto them double honour especially such as labour in Word and Doctrine that is they must yeild unto them not only due reverence and subjection and obedience to their counsell and just
of all the Courtiers and Officers under Herod therefore it is said that Herod and all Ierusalem with him was troubled So that Tyrants and their complyces never have any reall peace But in this sense also it cannot be understood that Ierusalem went out to Iohn and was baptized it must therefore by a Synecdoche be taken for all the common people promiscuously or for a mighty multitude of all sorts and of all ranks of people and of all professions as Publicans Souldiers and the ordinary Inhabitants and in this sense the word Jerusalem must be taken for a mighty multitude of men in Jerusalem that were made Christians for otherwise the Evangelist would have said many went out of Jerusalem also as well as out of other places but in saying that all Judea and all the Regions round about and Jerusalem went out this metaphoricall expression doth signifie That an infinite number of people in Jerusalem it self were made Christians and members of the Church and that it is so to be understood the places following will evidently evince it for in Matth. 11.12 our Saviour saith That from the dayes of Iohn the Baptist untill now the Kingdome of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force then the which there could nothing be spoke more emphatically to set forth the growth and increase of Believers and the multitude of Christians as Luke also in ch 16. v. 16. expresseth saying That the Law and the Prophets were untill Iohn since that time the kingdome of God is preached and every man presseth in to it that is the generality of the people became believers and were baptized as it is yet more evident from Luke 7.29 30. by the very testimony of our Saviour who saith That all the people that heard him and the Publicans justified God being baptized with the baptisme of Iohn but the Pharisees and Lawyers rejected the counsell of God against themselves being not baptized of him So that by the witnesse of our Saviour Christ except the Pharisees and the Priests all the people or the generality of the people in Jerusalem were baptized and became Christians and imbraced the Gospell and this was accounted among the miracles that was wrought in those dayes and as a thing of speciall observation and as a matter of wonder as we may see in the message our Saviour Christ sent unto Iohn the Baptist by his Disciples when he bad them relate unto their Master what they had seen and heard in the 22 Verse tell him saith he That the blinde see the lame walke the Lepers are cleansed the deafe heare and the dead are raised and the poore receive the Gospel this I say was among the miracles that the generality of the poor imbraced the Gospel and were baptized and made Believers which must needs import a mighty multitude and a great increase or else it would not have been a thing of such wonder and have been sent unto Saint Iohn as a miraculous thing and a thing worthy to prove Christ himself to be the Messiah looked for for no meer man could have wrought such a work as to draw the hearts of the people to imbrace the Gospel but the Messiah himself For Paul may plant and Apollo may water 1 Cor. 3. but God only the Messiah must give the increase he must move the heart to imbrace the Gospel and to believe for faith is the gift of God Ephes 2. and therefore this was the wonder that the generality of the people did believe and were baptized and this was the sole work and operation of Christ and therefore proved him to be the Prophet they looked for And it stands with all reason that there were infinites of people in Jerusalem that believed and that Iohn was greatly magnified of the people and publickly followed because for a time Herod himselfe countenanced Iohn Mark 6.20 and feared him knowing that he was a just man and an holy and observed him and when he heard him he did many things and heard him gladly And although we read not that he was baptized by Iohn yet he highly honoured him till Iohn reproved him and told him it was not lawfull for him to have his Brothers Wife And in this interim of his seeming favour we may conceive that the Courtiers also and the great men would do as their Master did for if we observe the manner of all Courts to this day what the King does the Courtiers also do if the King laugh though there be perhaps a cause of mourning they will all laugh and if he frownes though there be a cause of cheerfulnesse and smiling they will all frown and if the King commends any man they will all admire him and if he hears any Minister gladly they will all hear him willingly and if he when he is reproved be angry and displeased and will cut off his head whom he had so honoured but the day before then all the Courtiers they will help him and further the work as we may see not only in the example of Iohn Baptist but in Haman as soon as the King fround upon him the Courtiers they covered his face and up they trussed him be it right or wrong it is all one to Courtiers But in that interim I say that Iohn Baptist was in favour with the King without doubt it annimated the people greatly to follow him and by hearing him many thousand Saints were converted and the multitudes of them were numerous as is manifest from Matth. 14.5 for it is said That when he would have put him to death he feared the multitude because they counted him as a Prophet Here are two observables the one That he that feared not God was afraid of his servants The second that it was a mighty multitude of Believers that were in Jerusalem for a few could not have awed the King and kept him in fear and therefore he was forced to defer the cutting off of his head till he had got to him all the strength of Galilee all his Lords and high Captains and his chief Estates and Commanders Mark 6.21 And when he thought himselfe strong enough then he exercised his tyranny Yee when Iohn was taken away yet the multitudes of the people continued stedfast in the faith as we may see in Luke 20. by the confession of the very enemies for when our Saviour asked them concerning the baptisme of John whether it was from Heaven or of Men And they reasoned among themselves saying if we shall say from Heaven he will say why then believed ye him not and if we say of Men all the people will stone us for they be perswaded that Iohn was a Prophet Here by the confession of the very enemies all the people or the generality of them were Believers and it must of necessity be a mighty multitude that kept all the Priests and all the Elders that had all the power in their hands in awe that they durst not so much as open their
not have contained them all And which is yet more to be observed that whereas the Pharisees said none but the cursed people believed in him and none of the Rulers in this very Chapter we finde one Ruler one Nicodemus Vers 50. none of the least of the Rulers And in Iohn 12.42 it is affirmed That among the chief Rulers many believed on him but because of the Pharisees they did not confesse him lest they should be put out of the Synagogue And in Verse 11. of the same Chapter it is asserted That many of the Iewes went away and believed on Iesus here was multiplication upon multiplication of Believers And in Vers 19. The Pharisees therefore said among themselves perceive ye how ye prevaile nothing behold the world is gone after him These words the Pharisees spake in private among themselves deliberately and confest that the world of men were turned Christians all Jerusalem swarmed with Believers without doubt all these could not meet in one place And indeed through all the Evangelists we shall reade of infinite multitudes that believed in him and the reason is given Matth. 7.29 Because he taught them as one having authority and not as the Scribes and did such works of wonder and wrought such miracles as in Iohn 7.31 they confest none could do but Christ and in Chap. 12. Vers 11. it is related that the raising up Lazarus from the dead made many believe on him and was the cause that such multitudes of people followed him and did so highly honour him and magnifie him and did receive him comming into Jerusalem with such an acclamation crying Hosanna as in this 12 Chapter is specified and is more largely set downe in Matth. 21.8 where it is related That a great multitude spread their garments in the way and others cut down branches and the people that went before they that came after cryed Hosanna said this is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth they all believed in him and confessed him before the world Now our Saviour saith He that shall confesse me and own me before men I will confesse and own him before my Father in Heaven Here is a whole City of Believers and Confessors Yea the very children believed in him and openly and in the Temple cried Hosanna And Christ himself allowed of their testimony and avouched they did well and accordingly as was written And in Luke 19.47 48. it is said That he taught dayly in the Temple but the chief Priests and Scribes and the Elders of the people sought to destroy him and could not finde what they might do for all the people were very attentive to hear him The universality therefore of the people by all these places were believers and such as followed Christ So that a man may wonder how that Jerusalem it self though it were a mighty City could containe such multitudes of people as believed in Christ so far improbable it is that any one place or congregation could containe the hundreth part of them And we may also gather that the great miracles at his Suffering and at his Resurrection and the apparition of so many that rose from their graves and went into the holy City made a great increase and addition of Disciples and new Believers so that the number was daily augmented we finde no diminution but if some that followed Christ for bread that were but Hypocrites left following him yet in those places we read again and again of numberlesse companies that daily came in and believed in him And to all this we may adde that Iohn the Baptist and his Disciples a little before his death and Christ and his Disciples by reason of the increase of the multitudes of Believers were forced to baptize in severall places For so it is in Iohn 3.23 After these dayes came Iesus and his Disciples into the land of Iudea and there he tarried with them and baptized and Iohn also was baptizing in Enon neer Salim because there was much water there they came and were baptized And very reason will tell all men that of necessity there must be an innumerable multitude of beleevers for none were Baptized but beleevers that must take up an hundred preachers or thereabouts for our Saviour had twelve Apostles and 70. Disciples as we may see in the 9. of Luke and in the 10. chapter of the same book and Iohn had also many Disciples though not so many as Christ and all these were imployed in preaching the Gospell and many of them in working miracles and wonders so that the very Devills were subject unto them as they rejoycingly confest to Christ when they returned to give him an account of their Ministery And without doubt if these miracles wrought so with the very Disciples they prevailed much more generally with the people to make them beleeve so that infinite multitudes of people came in and were Baptized as the Scripture it selfe informeth us And of necessity so many Ministers must have severall places to Preach in and severall congregations and Assemblies to Preach to and severall places to Baptize in for otherwise there would have been great confusion for but one of them could speak at once and all these Disciples were taken up in their severall Ministeries and had their hands full as the Scripture it self sufficiently declareth in expresse words for it is said That Christs Disciples Baptized in Iudaea and Iohn in Enon neer Salim because there was much water there It seems there was too little water to Baptize them in in other places which expression is worthy to be taken notice of And amongst those that came to be Baptized multitudes of them came from Ierusalem And if we compare times with times which will make much for the evidencing of the truth and consider the divers passages in the holy Scriptures we shall finde the like division of the people in those dayes some standing for Christ and Iohn Baptist and speaking in the justification of them and their Ministery and others that were of the Pharisaicall faction and of the high priests company as is even in these our dayes between them they call Caviliers and those they call Parliamentiers Now what twenty or thirty places in the City of London can contain all the Parliamentiers to partake in all acts of Worship Or what ten places can hold all those of the Prelaticall faction that contend for their Bishops and Service and all their other trumpery and accoutrements And yet although they be in divers and sundry Assemblies they are still the Prelaticall party and all of them of the Malignant Church and as the diversity of the places changeth not their complexions so it altereth not their faith nor manners but they continue still Malignants and remain all members of the Malignant Church And as in these dayes all that wish well unto the true Religion through both city and kingdome and love their Country stand for the Parliament so in those dayes those that loved Zion and
were to submit themselves And therefore this their Argument maketh much against them and greatly for us And this shall suffice to have answered to this their first Objection which to speak the truth is that that carrieth the most appearance of any Argument they produce to prove their Assertion and tenent for all their other Objections raised from the severall meetings of the Apostles and people and from the multitude comming to them about the ordaining of Deacons by which they would perswade the world that the company of Believers in the Church of Jerusalem was not so numerous at any time but that they might all meet in one congregation or in one place to partake of in acts of worship they consist most of them in Homonymies and meer Paralogismes which indeed beseem not the gravity of reverend men and in the weighty matters of Divinity would be undecent in a sucking Sophister and therefore are much more blameworthy in them who by such fallacies labour to amuse the people to the disturbance of the whole Church and Kingdome and alienating the affections of Brethren one from another I shall briefly run over them Acts 2.46 where it is related that the Believers and new Converts continued daily with one accord in the Temple and breaking bread from house to house From these words the Brethren conclude that the multitude of Believers was not so great but that they might all meet in one congregation and in one place to partake in all acts of worship for here in expresse words the place where they met is specified and it is said to be the Temple I appeale to the wisdome of any learned man or but of a rationall Christian whether this be a candid or ingenuous way of arguing That because three thousand Christians might meet together in the Temple of Jerusalem Ergò all that believed in Jerusalem that were converted by Iohn the Baptist and all that believed by Christs ministery and miracles and all that were converted by the Apostles and the seventy Disciples before Christs sufferings and all that were after his Resurrection converted for twenty years together by the Ministry of all the Apostles and all the other Ministers of the Gospell they might yet all meet in any one place or Congregation to partake in all acts of worship and to edification I refer this I say to the consideration of any Learned man or any intelligible Christian whether this be an ingenuous way of arguing I believe if one should argue against them after the same manner they would laugh at him If one should thus dispute within these seven years all the Independents continued daily with one accord in such a place and they all met together in one congregation Ergò there is but one congregation and but one Church still of Independents in London and they all meet together in one congregation Would not the Brethren make themselves as merry with such a way of disputing as they have made others sad with their way of arguing yes doubtlesse The truth is their way of arguing is not to their own honour to speak but favourably of it as will appear For should I grant unto them that at that time this place of Scripture speaks of there had been no more Believers in Jerusalem but those hundred and twenty names specified in the first Chapter of the Acts and these three thousand new Coaverts and accord also unto them that all these did meet together in one place and in one congregation and did partake in all the Ordinances which notwithstanding I cannot grant them for divers reasons for in the same place it is said that although they continued daily in the Temple yet they brake bread from house to house that is to say some of them did daily meet to hear the Word in the Temple and then followed their severall imployments and others in private and they had the holy Communion or Sacrament in severall houses from which it is manifeltly evident that then when there were newly added to the Church but three thousand Believers they had many and severall congregations and assemblies and without all doubt as the multitudes of Believers increased they were still distributed into more congregations for it is said They brake bread from house to house that is they had their assemblies and meetings in severall houses and places besides the Temple and in those severall houses they had not only the preaching of the Word and Prayer but the administration of the Sacraments and communicated in all the Ordinances which they could not do in the Temple as afterward will appear and all that I now say is evident from the 41 Verse of the same Chapter to the 47. But I say should I silence my own reason and suffer it to speak nothing and should I grant to our Brethren that there were but three thousand and that these three thousand Believers might all meet in one congregation and partake in all the ordinances to edification would it follow that when ten thousand were added unto them and twenty thousand more to them and thirty thousand more to all these and it may be in a short time many hundred thousands more would any man think or believe that ten thousand men can meet in one congregation to edifie and to partake in all the Ordinances much lesse when there is so many thousands more added to them that they could still meet in any one place or congregation I think no man that hath not abdicated his understanding will so conclude So that all men may see not only the weaknesse of this argumentation but the strength of truth For this very weapon with which they had thought to have defended themselves and wounded the Truth they wound themselves and overthrow their own tenent as God willing I shall more fully by and by make appear But out of Chap. 5. our Brethren conceive they have a very strong invincible Argument where it is related that after Ananias and Saphira were miraculously taken away for lying unto the Spirit of God It is said That great fear came upon all the Church and upon as many as heard these things And by the hands of the Apostles were many signes and wonders wrought among the people and they were all with one accord in Solomons Porch Ergò say they the number of Believers in Jerusalem was not so great but that they might all meet together in one congregation for the place where they did meet is set down viz. in Solomons Porch and it is further specified That they were all with one accord in that place This is their Argument faithfully and truly set down and with the best advantage for their cause But to speak the truth this kinde of arguing hath no force in it neither doth it beseem grave men to trifle thus in the matters of God and Religion For should I grant unto them that all the Believers that then were in Jerusalem and had been converted by John
remissions of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost c. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized and the same day were added unto them about three thousand souls And they continued stedfast in the Apostles Doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and prayer And feare came upon every soule and many signes and wonders were done by the Apostles and all that believed were together and had all things common and they continuing daily with one accord in the Temple and breaking bread from house to house did eat their meat with gladnesse and singlenesse of heart praysing God and having favour with all the people And the Lord added to the Church daily such as should he saved Here we see that by vertue of one Miracle and Sermon God working with them were added to the Believers that Saint Iohn the Baptist and Christ and his Disciples had converted and such as were formerly baptized three thousand more a great Miracle all which with the many other that were converted afterward are called but one Church For it is expresly said that the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved We heard of the great multitudes and of a world of such as believed in Christ before this Miracle and Sermon And can any man in reason conceive that all these could meet in any one place or congregation to partake in all acts of worship But let us go on In the 3 and 4 Chapter by means of that Miracle that was wrought upon the Impotent Man who was known to all the people to have bin a Cripple from his Mothers wombe and through the powerfull preaching of Peter who exhorted them to repent and to be converted that their sinnes might be blotted out when the time of refreshing should come from the presence of the Lord c. It is said that many which heard the Word believed and the number of those new Believers is there specified to be about five thousand men which were also added unto the Church and joyned to all the former Believers so that we have here eight thousand new Members added unto the Church in a very little time and this was a greater Miracle then the former So that the Prophesie in the 110 Psalme vers 3. was not fulfilled That in the day of Christs power his willing people from the wombe of the morning should be multiplyed as the Dew upon the Earth And which is not to be passed by without due notice It is supposed by the best Interpreters and the most orthodox Writers and there is good reason for it that these new Converts were Men not Women and Children And without doubt these new Believers endeavoured to convert their Wives Children Servants and Neighbours and there is good reason also why we should be induced to believe that Truth with such wonders and miracles annexed to it should be as prevalent to convert Women Children Servants and Neighbours and whole Families as errors and novelties in these our dayes are able to mis-leade those poore creatures that are ever learning and never come to knowledge and the which are carried about with every winde of doctrine and believe every new-born truth as they tearm it and follow every New Light and every new-found way though it tend to the confusion of the Church and Kingdome It is said of that man of Sinne that Sonne of Perdition that he shall come after the working of Satan with all power and signes and lying wonders and with all deceiveablenesse and unrighteousnesse in them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved 2 Thess 2. But to see people so deluded without Miracles is a Miracle So that those poor Women that are carried about with every winde of doctrine from that truth that was taught by Christ and his Apostles and confirmed by so many Miracles and those that do and have mis-led them have all of them a great deal to answer for But this I speak by the way conceiving that all those new Converts would endeavour as the good Samaritan Woman did after conversion not only to bring their Wives Children and Families but their Neighbours also and whole Cities to the same faith And I have that opinion also of all the Women and people of that Age that they were as ready to imbrace the truth as the Women and people of this Age and in these our times are to follow errors But let us now see what effects the other Miracles wrought upon the people that are related in the fifth Chapter as of Ananias and Saphira his wife who for tempting the Spirit of God were both stricken down dead and gave up the ghost and the other Miracles wrought by the Apostles It is said in Vers 11. That fear came upon all the Church and to as many that heard these things and that to the rest viz. the Scribes and Pharisees the Malignant party durst no man joyne himselfe And Believers were added unto the Lord multitudes both men and women Here come in the good Women now And in Vers 26. it it is said that the Captaine with the Officers brought the Apostles without violence for they feared the people least they should have stoned them It will not be amisse briefly to take notice of the severall effects these Miracles wrought The first is that great fear of offending God came on all the Church Gods own people which notwithstanding of the many additions of Believers is called still but one Church The second that none durst joyne themselves to the contrary party the Pharisaicall malignant crew The third that Believers were added to the Church and that multitudes no small companies both of Men and Women Here is a new increase and that a great one The fourth is that the very Captain and Officers were awed and kept in fear by reason of the multitude of Believers so that those that feared not God were afraid of his servants By which it may be gathered that the party of Believers did ballance the number of the incredulous and Pharisaicall party if not by far exceed them And therefore by all probability must needs be an innumerable company and a mighty multitude and such a number as could not all meet in any one place or congregation to partake in all the Ordinances And to say nothing of the diversity of Tongues and Languages which were not given to the Apostles to be uselesse and of no profit nor to speak any thing of the divers Jewes that were then dwelling at Jerusalem devout Men and Women out of every Nation under Heaven which notwithstanding may be a sufficient argument to prove that they all had their severall meeting places and their severall Ministers to preach unto them in their severall Languages that they might be edified I say for the present to wave all this let us take notice what is positively set down in the last Verse of the fifth Chapter
of ordaining of Officers it is no where extant in Gods Word But that the women should have a voyce in the Church either for receiving in or casting out of members or officers or should have any thing to doe with Peters Keys it is against the law of God and nature For Paul in the first Epistle to the Corinths 14. makes it one of the marks of confusion in any Church where women have their voyces saying God is not the Author of confusion but of peace as in all the churches of the Saints and in the next verse following in expresse words saith Let your women keep silence in churches for it is not permitted unto them to speak but they are comanded to be under obedience as also saith the law and if they wil learn any thing let them ask their husbands at home for it is a shame for women to speake in the church And what S. Paul writ to this Church of Corinth he writ to all Churches and proclaims that what he writ to them were the commandements of the Lord ver 37. so that God had commanded that the women should not speak in the Church and sayth that it is a shame they should and yet in these our dayes and in many of the new congregations they have their voyces in choosing of officers and admitting of members and have all of them Peters Keys as their Girdle and make learned parts of speech in the congregation and dispute questions and debate of matters and give their reasons con pro as it is credibly reported and others of them set forth and print learned Treatises in polemicall divinity with great applause and admiration of the Independent Ministers who cite their authority and quote them in their writings as classicall authors to the shame of the Nation and ludibry of Religion and howsoever there is not any that shall more honour the truly vertuous and pious of that sex than my selfe yet I must confesse when I see how farre they become transgressors of the law of God do those things that the holy Apostle hath not onely forbidden but proclaimed a shame I cannot but exceedingly blame them those Ministers that allow of and approve of such rebellion against God and nature And as if it had been the special care in the Apostle to prevent this evill of womens intermedling in matters of the Church he foreseeing the confusion that would be brought in upon it In his first Epistle to Timothy and in him to all Ministers to whom the government of the Church was committed he gives him direction how to behave himselfe in the house of God which is the church of the living God in cap. 2. ver 11.12 he saith Let the women learne in silence with all subjection for I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurpe authority over the man but to be in silence for Adam was first made then Eve and Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression c. Here the Apostle again and agun twice in these few words enjoyns them silence in the church and imposes upon them subjection and obedience I suffer not saith he a woman to teach or to usurpe authority over the man but to be in silence and he giveth his reasons of this his command because saith he Adam was first made not by the woman nor of the woman but the contrary and therfore she may usurpe no authority over the masculine sex especially in Gods matters and shee is to be the disciple if the man and not the man her schollar and therefore that superiority that the God of order had established upon the man in the first creation he doth now re-establish upon him againe in his holy Word after all things through sinne had been disordered and confused and commands the woman to be both subject and silent especially in the Church Another reason of this his command is because the woman was first in the transgression and was the cause of Adams fall as he accuses her and her disputing and voycing of it then brought confusion upon all mankind and for this her so doing S. Paul concludes for ever hereafter that she ought to hold her peace be in subjection to her husband and ought to learne in silence at home but more especially in the Church for if they come to voyce it once again in the Church as Eve brought confusion upon mankind by her disputation and reasons so these with their loquacity and babble and confusion of voyces will bring in a new Babel into the Church and State as they have prettily well already begun to doe Saint Paul saith I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurpe authority over the man but to be in silence Here the Apostle as in the place above cited out of the Cor. chap. 14. commands them silence and permits them not to speak and expresly forbids them to usurpe authority over the man that is the virill sex Now I appeale unto any understanding creature whether or no to make large parts of speech in the Church as many of them upon occasions doe and dispute and give their reasons con pro be not to speak in the Church and whether to have their voyces in either admitting of members or officers or in the casting of them out be not to usurpe authority over the man for all the world knowes that they that have the power in their hands of either admitting of any into the fellowship or communion of the Church or of hindring their comming in or have their voyces for the casting of them out when they are received exercise and usurpe authority over those they so deale with and therefore they doe against the expresse prohibition of the Apostles and all those women that have usurped this authority and all those Ministers that have permitted them so to doe or tanght this doctrine unto them are all guilty of great contumacy against God and ought seriously to repent for this their temerity and rebellion and it will be the immortall honour of those women that have not intermedled if there be not some speedy course taken by authority to forbid such disorder we may promise nothing to the Church and whole Kingdome but confusion It has ever been observed that Hermaphrodite counsels in any Kingdome or country when women that are subjects intermeddle in government and matters of state that that Kingdome and country is very crased and not far from ruine and destruction and we need not look into many ages or countries for presidents of this kind if hermaphrodite counsels in Kingdoms has ever been so fatall unto them what may any man think in time will become of this Church and Kingdome when the women have gotten Peters Keys at their girdle and have their voyces in many congregations and a power of ordering and disposing of things in Church affaires certainly nothing but confusion can be expected for this their doing is
any such termes was the Goaler and his converted family forced to make a publike confession to the Church of their faith to give in the evidences of their conversion and to enter into a private covenant before they could be made members of the Church or was the Churches assent required before they could be admitted and made members of it or were ever any of these things they impose upon Christians now required at beleevers hands before these our times and therefore they are to be abominated as vaine traditions and such as by which they break the lawes of God making devisions in the Church and Kingdome and through all the families and houses of the same so that neither masters of families nor parents have any rule over their wives children or servants their husbands goe out one way the wife another their children to this assembly their servants to that congregation and as it was among the Corinthians which Paul blames in them one said I am of Paul another I am of Apollo the third I am of Coephas and so they flutter about like a company of chickings without either heads or wit and none will be under obedience to either parents or masters notwithstanding God hath commanded children to obey their parents and servants their masters no farther than pleaseth their owne humours and all this they have learned by the traditions of the younger and whether I have wronged the brethren in any thing I have now said I report my selfe to all the distracted families in the Kingdome where they have been preaching and the daily experience of any moderate minded Christian and if ever there was a pantheon of all Religions in the world it is now in England by reason of these new teachers to the great dishonour of God the hinderance of Reformation and the allienating of the affections one from another of those that are joyned together in nighest relations And by all that I have now spoke I hope it doth sufficiently appeare that there is neither precept nor example through all the holy Scripture to warrant the practice of these men in the gathering of their new Churches and if a man will but looke a little more upon the practice of Christs seventy Disciples of all the Apostles in the gathering of Churches they shall not find one footstep through the whole booke of God of the gathering Churches after the manner of their congregating of their assemblies as for Christs Disciples they were all sent to gather in the lost sheep of the house of Israel they went not to gather in converted men from amongst converted men for they were to bring the lost sheep into Christs fold and we are taught there is but one Shepheard and one sheepfold we never read that after they were once folded and brought into the Church that any true Pastors came into the fold and flocks of their fellow-shepheards and picked out all the best and the fattest sheep and the most wholsome and molded them into an independent fould by themselves as seperate and distinct from the others and with the which they would have no fellowship and communion in the Ordinances this was never heard of before these dayes Paul was so farre from getting away of others sheep that he took it for a dishonour to him to build upon anothers foundation Rom. 15. and preached Christ in those places where they had never heard of him before and planted the Church of Corinth himselfe and left Apollo to water it and committed all the flocks that he had gathered as that of Ephesus to the charge and care of faithful Pastors and commands both the flocks and the Pastors and in them all shepheards and folds to keep unity and love one with another Ephes 4. ver 1 2 3 4 c. and forbids them to make seperations and devisions and scismes between flock and flock and this method he used wheresoever he came yea as soon as he was converted and entred upon his ministry as we may see in the first of the Galatians he went into Arrabia and preached there among the poore Infidels he got not other mens sheep from them neither did he ever make any seperation of sheep from sheep yea even in those flocks and Churches as that of Corinth Galatia and Colosse where there were many that walked disorderly and against the rules prescribed and taught false doctrine and heresies and made scismes in the Church and were very scandalous so that if ever there were in any Churches a just cause of making a seperation it was then and yet the Apostles bid not the Christians seperate themselves from the communion and assemblies of the Saints and from the Ordinances for these mens causes but onely that they should look unto themselves and examine their owne consciences that they may not offend and so make themselves unworthy of the holy things and gives them power to cast out the prophane but no way tolerates them to seperate onely he bids them not be familiar with such as walk disorderly that by this meanes they might learne to amend their lives and tels them of what judgements have alwayes happened to such as were wicked and bids them by their example to take heed how they provoke God by the like as it is at large set downe in the tenth chapter and commands them to make no separation but from Idolaters and Infidels and so likewise in his Epistle to the Galatians he sayes for his owne particular he could wish that they that troubled them were cut off yet he biddeth not the Galatians to separate themselves into independent congregations Nothing of all such things were taught before these dayes that true beleevers and the faithfull servants of God should separate from the assemblies of their brethren every way as deerly beloved of God as themselves and such as with the twelve Tribes of Israel serve their God night and day and would suffer any thing for the Gospell and that any Christians I say should make separation from the fellowship of such or that such should be accounted as enemies of Christ it was never heard of before our times by which their so dealing they have made the greatest scisme in the Church that was ever yet made to the scandall of of our holy profession I have been ever taught in Gods holy Word that those faithfull Ministers that preached Jesus Christ and him crucified and opened the eyes of the blind and turned them from darknesse to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they might receive forgivenesse of sinnes and inheritance amongst them that are sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ and taught the people that they should repent and turne to God and doe works meet for repentance and that instructed all men that they being delivered out of the hands of their enemies they should serve God without feare in holinesse and righteousnesse before him all the dayes of their life and teaching them that the grace of
God bringing salvation hath appeared to all men for this very end that they should deny all ungodlinesse and worldly lusts and should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ who gave himselfe for us that he might redeeme us from all iniquitie and purifie unto himselfe a peculiar people zealous of good works I say I have been ever taught by Gods holy Word to beleeve that those Ministers that instruct the people to do al these things and where the people by faith imbrace and receive this doctrine are the true Ministers of Jesus Christ those congregations under them the church of Jesus Christ and of his sheepfold and that Christ in all such congregations is set up as King in his Throne as who rules in the hearts of his people and the which are swayed and guided by the Scepter of his Word and Spirit and deserve none of those contumelious languages the brethren asperse both Ministers and people with Of the ministers they thus speak and print That they deny disclaime and preach against Christs Kingly government over mens consciences and Churches so that such a conversion as is wrought by them comes not home to whole Christ and such with their converters doe deny Christs kingly government or at least and best they are converted but in part and that maine thing is wanting to wit Christs Kingly office and of all the people and Christian beleevers through the Kingdome that are not in their Congregations and new-gathered Assemblies they speak and print thus We say the brethren the independent ministers exhort them to set up Christ King in their hearts We exhort them to become and professe to be those Saints of whom Christ is King for he is King of Saints Rev. 15.3 but they will not beleeve us say they they will not depend upon Christ as the onely law-giver and King over their consciences Now what would you have us to doe in this case say they baptize the infants of such parents as will not in this respect professe nor confesse Christ to be their King Why doe you not know say they that no Infants have any title to baptisme that are not within the covenant visibly and how are they within the covenant visibly but by vertue of their parents faith outwardly professed and what outward profession of faith is there in the parents that refuse Christ for their onely King that are ashamed or afraid to professe to be in covenant with Christ as their King if therefore the parents professe not yea refuse thus to be in visible covenant can the children be said to be in visible covenant so to have a right in baptisme the externall seal of the covenant here is an obex a barre put These are their owne words which I have set downe at large the summe of them briefly is this that all the Ministers of the Church of England that are not of their fraternity doe deny disclaime and preach against Christs Kingly government over mens consciences and churches and that all the people under their Ministery are men unconverted or at least converted but in part wanting the main thing to wit Christs Kingly office men visibly out of the covenant of grace who have not so much as an outward profession of faith who deny Christ to be their King to whose persons and infants the very sacraments and seals of grace with all church communion may and ought to be denied Another of the Independents amongst many of the contumelious and disgracefull speeches he uttereth out aganst the Ministers of the church of England calling them the blackcoats in the Synod who he is afraid will prove more cruell Taskmasters than their Fathers the Bishops who cowardly sit at home and in his apprehension for no other end but to breed faction and devision amongst the wel affected to the Parliament promoting their own interest which saith he is lazinesse pride covetousnesse and domination and amongst many such expressions as these he proclaimes them the sworne enemies of Jesus Christ and desiring that the Parliament may be put in mind of their covenant for he thinks they have sworn to root out popery he tels them they have established Tythes the very root and support of popery which he doth humbly conceive is a contradiction to their covenant and which will be a greater snare than the Common-Prayer to many of the precious consciences of Gods people whose duty it is in his judgement to dye in a prison before they act or stoop unto so dishonourable a thing as this is to their Lord and Master as to maintaine the black-coats with tythes whom they look upon as the professed enemies of their anointed Christ c. These are some of his formall expressions I leave the comment of these severall passages to others neither doe I rehearse innumerable such like sentences as are daily vented to the intolerable disgrace both of all the Ministers of the Church of England of all those beleeving christians that are under their several charges that in every pamphlet in the which they proclaim all the Ministers to be the sworne and professed enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ and such as deny disclaime and preach against Christs kingly government over mens consciences and Churches and for the people and beleevers in England they proclaime them to be men unconverted or at least converted but in part wanting the maine thing Christs Kingly office men visibly out of the covenant of grace who have not so much as an outward profession of the faith who deny Christ to be their King to whose persons and Infants the very Sacraments and seales of grace with all church-communion may and ought to be denied c. By the which words they not onely unchurch all the congregations of England Scotland Ireland but indeed all the reformed churches and unchristian all christians but those that are in their owne independent assemblies and account them as aliens and strangers from the common-wealth of the Saints and make Christ to be no King over them or to have any Kingdome in or amongst them but onely amongst themselves in their new congregations wheras Christ ever had a church or Kingdome upon earth in all ages before they were and hath without all controversie a true Kingdome in many churches in these our dayes where they are not Had I not seen their expressions in print and the book in which they are uttered set forth by authority with approbation I should not have beleeved that they had all of them bin so uncharitable but finding that book not only printed by license but generally applauded by them all and much magnified as the frequent edititions of it doe manifest I gather it is the universall opinion of them all Than the which what could be more uncharitably and unchristianly spoken what comfort can any of the Ministers of the church
of Engand have in the society of these men who whatsoever outward seeming favour they shew to them in their hearts conceive of them as the sworne enemies of Christ and his Kingdome and as men unworthy to live and who count it a dishonorable thing to their Lord Master to maintain those black-coats with tythes whom they look on as the professed enemies of their anointed Christ can I say any Ministers with joy and alacrity converse with these men no surely what reall comfort can any poore christian beleevers through the Kingdome either expect or look for at these mens hands if they were in their power whom they declare and that in print and in their Pulpits to be men unconverted or converted but in part wanting the main thing Christs Kingly office men visibly out of the covenant of grace who have not so much as an outward profession of faith who deny Christ to be their King to whose persons and Infants the very Sacraments and seals of grace with all church-communion may and ought to be denied can any true christians be reall friends to the enemies of Christ He saith Saint Paul 1 cor chap. 16. v. 22 that loveth not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathama Maranatha will any true Christians blesse those that God hath curst David said I hate them that hate thee yea I hate them with a perfect hatred And surely those that are true friends to Christ hate all his enemies now they looke upon our Ministers as the profest enemies of Christ and upon all the people under their ministery as enemies of his Kingdome and as men to whose persons and infants the very Sacraments and seales of grace with all church-communion may and ought to be denied they are their owne words can they therefore expect any reall friendship from them whatsoever outward curtesie they seem to shew them no doubtlesse how can any poore christian have any delight to come amongst these men or so much as to be in their society whom they account of as the enemies of Christ his Kingdom For my owne particular I would not willingly come in any mans company or be familiar with any that I thought a profest enemy of Christ and his Kingdome neither should I ever beleeve I could have any reall esteem from such as think me an enemie of Christ and his Kingdome It was the greatest calamity to the poore sufferers under the Prelats tyranny and to all those distressed christians that were haled into the High-commission court or into the Star-chamber or before the Counsell table for matter of Religion and conscience which was the lot of many thousands through the whole Kingdome that commonly their greatest enemies were those of their owne house their parents their brethren and fisters would be the chiefest calumniators reproachers of them and that in word and deed would most despightfully persecute them denying them the common humanity of hospitality and would not so much as look on them except it were to revile them and insult over them and would ordinarily joyne with their enemies both privately and publikely and desert them in their greatest streights as all of them can generally witnesse which not onely encouraged their enemies against them but added credit to their false accusations and calumnies for they would usually say ye may see what manner of men these are whose nighest friends are not onely ashamed of but thus speake of them which was a greater affliction unto them than all the other miseries and sufferings they underwent for had they been their professed enemies as David said they could easily have endured it and there would lesse credit and regard have been given to their words but they were their parents brethren sisters and familiars and therefore it added more sharply to their affliction So had they been our professed enemies as Papists Socinians Arminians or those of the Prelaticall faction that should have proclaimed us enemies of Christ and his Kingdome and had they denyed unto us and out children the seals of grace with all church communion it would not have troubled us but tu Brute that brethren that fellow-sufferers in affliction that had gone up to the house of God together and had taken sweet counsell together that they should now proclaime us the enemies of Jesus Christ and deny communion with us oh let not this be spoken in Gath and Ashkelon This is that that grieves and fads the hearts of their brethren more then all their former afflictions and gives a great advantage to the common enemy and scandalizes the Gospell and exposes both themselves and us to the scorne of the Malignants who ordinarily jeere and say see those holy Brethren that lost their cares together are now together by the eares and count one of another as a company of Infidels and disclaime all holy communion one with another and will not so much as admit of their children to baptisme or suffer them to receive the Sacraments with them But this is that that makes all men wonder to hear them proclaime all the Ministers of the Church of England to be such as deny disclaime and preach against Christs Kingly government when it is apparently evident both by all their preachings and writings and all their practices that they ever advance Christs Kingly government as really as any of those that oppose them who in preaching up the Kingly office of Christ and setting Christ upon his Throne are inferiour to none of them in this work For we are taught out of Gods Word that those Ministers set up Christ in his Throne that open the eyes of the blind and turne them from darknesse to light and from the power of Satan to God that they might receive forgivenesse of sinnes and an inheritance amongst them that are sanctified by faith in Jesus Christ and that teach men to repent and turne to God and doe works meet for repentance and when the people that heare them give themselves first to the Lord and unto his Ministers by the will of God and after denying all ungodlinesse and worldly lusts live soberly righteously and godly in this present world And this the Word of God teachâ—â— us is to set up Christ upon his Throne and those Ministers that teach all these things set up Christ upon his Throne and those people that embrace this doctrine make Christ their King as we may see 2 Cor. chap. â— ver 5. Tit. 2. ver 12. For Christ sits as King upon his Throne when he is beleeved in to be that horne of salvation that was raised up for us in the house of David that has saved and delivered all that beleeve in him out of the hands of all their enemies both spirituall and bodily that they may serve him without feare and when Christ rules in all their hearts by the Scepter of his Word and Spirit and when they owne him as their onely law-giver and acknowledge him to be the onely King in his
Church and the Saviour of all those that truly beleeve in him and this is to set up Christ upon his Throne and the brethren themselves accord unto this Now when the Ministers of England teach this doctrine in their preachings and writings how can they be truly said to deny disclaime and preach against Christs Kingly government over mens consciences and Churches and how can that people be said truly to deny Christs Kingly government who doe both beleeve and to the uttermost of their power practice this doctrine and follow onely the guidance of his holy Spirit and Word both for doctrine and government who is King of the Church whether therefore this be not an unjust and unchristian calumny laid both upon the Ministers and people of the church of England I leave it to the consideration of any moderate minded christian doubtles all charitable minded christians if they consider althings aright will not think so dishonourably neither of the Ministers of England nor of the people under their ministry for they deserve not to be accounted the profest enemies of Christ who are freed from that heavy accusation by Christs owne testimony who when it was related unto him by Saint John Mark 9. ver 38. That they had seen one casting out devils in his name which followed them not and that the Disciples had forbad him because hee did not follow them Our Saviour Christ replying forbid him not saith he for whosoever is not against us is on our part Now these Ministers that open the eyes of the blind and turne them from darknesse to light and from the power of Satan to God they cannot be eâ—â—â—emed enemies of Christ and to be against Christ but for him and ought highly to be honoured for their works sake 1 Thes chap. 5. ver 13. and singularly to be beloved and deserve not to be maligned and reproached especially by brethren who owe all their conversions next unto God to their ministry yea both the Pastors and people of all the new congregated Churches are beholding unto them for their conversion for they admit none into their Assemblies but beleevers and they were made beleevers and converted by their ministry and therefore they are friends of Christ and not his enemies and they ought all of them to look upon them as their Fathers and on the Church of England as their Mother and on the beleevers of England as their brethren and ought not thus unchristianly and ungratefully to cast durt in all their faces Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Phillippians chap. 1. has these words Some saith he preach Christ even of envy and strife and some also of good will the one preach Christ of contention and not sincerely thinking to adde affliction to my bonds but the other of love What then notwithstanding every way whether in pretence or in truth Christ be preached I therein doe rejoyce yea and I will rejoyce S. Paul speakes here of such as preach pure doctrine though not with a pure mind and was glad that Christ was preached and counts them not the enemies of Christ as he did the false teachers among the Galatians who joyned the ceremoniall law and their owne inventions with the Gospell and therefore he wisht that they were cut off but in this place he rejoyces that Christ and the Gospell were purely preached though it were of envy Now when the Ministers of the Church of England doe not onely preach the Gospell purely but of sincerity and of love and mingle not their owne traditions and inventions with the Gospell but follow their commission how can any men without intolerable injustice proclaime them the enemies of Jesus Christ and make them odious to the people under the name of Presbiterians whom they perswade all men that they will prove more cruell Taskmasters than the Prelates yea and they have generally possest the people with so prejudicate an opinion of them all as if they would more lord it over them than ever the Bishops did and causelesly have moved the people to hate the name of presbitry And notwithstanding they themselves pretend they contend for the ancient presbitry and by this make themselves Presbiterians as well as the other What justice or equity then is there in their dealing to make their brethren odious to the world for endeavouring to set up a Presbitry after Gods Word when they themselves are Presbiterians and labour to set up a Presbitry of their owne and therefore if the name of Presbiters be odious in the Ministers of the Church of England no reason can gainsay it but that they also should be as odious to the people as their brethren for they also are Presbiterians But that the truth may the better appear whether the Ministers of the Church of England or the Independent Ministers be most guilty of all the accusations laid to their charge it will not be amisse to compare the practice of the Ministers of the Church of England and the proceedings of the Independent Ministers together and that both for their doctrine and discipline and in their severall studies and eudeavours for the advancing of Christs Kingdome and by so doing it will be easie for any to judge which of their governments and which of the Ministers are more intolerable and which of them are most guilty of those foule reproaches the Ministers of the Church of England are aspersed with by their Brethren for he hath a shallow understanding and a very dim sight that cannot discerne whether those that advance Christs their Kings Word and lawes onely and follow his commission and the example of the holy Apostles in their ministries and that of John Baptist and the primitive Preachers or those that set up their owne inventions and preferre them before the lawes of Christ and have neither precept nor president for their doings in all the holy Word of God He I say that cannot judge which of these most advance Christ for their King either those that obey Christs lawes or those that observe their owne neglecting Christs is of a very shallow capacity But now let us compare them together the Ministers of the Church of England preach faith and repentance the Law and the Gospell according to Christs commission given to his Apostles and they receive all into the Church that beleeve and are baptized and such as but desire to be admitted they demanding of them what they should doe to be saved and in their so doing they have both precept and presidents For Christ in his commission unto them has given them auhority so to doe Neither did he ever say unto his Apostles and Ministers admit none into the church although they beleeve and are baptized without they walk with you some dayes weeks moneths or yeeres that you may behold their conversation and manner of life and after you have had some tryall and experience of them see then that they make a publike confession of their faith before the Church and give in the
when they are upon every slight occasion or for any difference in opinion cast out then they congregate a new church by themselves and turne Pastors The which blessed be God in the reformed churches of France and Germany hath not yet been seen since the first reformation for the governing of Churches by the Common-counsell of their Presbiters where they find such brotherly dealing and where they have their appeals upon any conceived wrong or injury and have right and justice done them makes them willingly submit themselves to that manner of government without making rents and scismes And truly if things were but maturely weighed all men would readily perceive that there is no just ground of reproach to be laid upon the Presbiters neither would they see any reason why in way of disdaine the Ministers of the Church of England should be more called Presbiterians than the Independent Ministers for they also are Presbiterians and labour to set up a presbiterian government as well as the other and professe in their writings that they contend for the ancient presbitry so that they also are presbiterians as well as the other and if the one be made hatefull and formidable to the people in the judgement of all solid men the other also may be made as odious and hatefull for if that odium and hatred they bring upon the presbitry be for the onely feare they have conceived the Presbiters will lord it too much over them and that onely I say be the occasion that so terrifies the people from that government let all men here consider and compare each kind of presbitry together both that of the Dependent and that of the Independent for if the Independent Presbiters in the infancy and very first beginning and rise of their government assume unto every severall congregation and presbitry of theirs an absolute kind of soveraignty and jurisdiction from which there is no appeale and if they already take upon them to unchurch all Churches but their owne and proclaime all the Ministers and people but those of their owne congregations profest enemies of Christs Kingdome what would they doe if they were once established by authority in their severall Jurisdictions and Assemblies and if now they will admit of none into their severall Assemblies though never so eminent beleevers but upon their owne conditions and unlesse they will be admitted members upon such tearmes as they propound without either precept or president out of the Word of God for their so doing which is the greatest tyranny of the world how would these men lord it if their government were once established by Parliament It is well knowne and can sufficiently be proved that godly christians and people of approved integrity and of holy conversation against whom they had no exception either for doctrine or manners and who offered themselves to be admitted members upon their owne conditions and yet were not suffered to be joyned members onely because they were poore and this very reason was given unto them for their not admission that they would not have their Church over butdened with poore And others desiring that their Children might be baptized in their Congregations and going to the Ministers of those Assemblies to entreat this favour that their children might be baptized among them For answer it was told them that they could baptize none but such as were infants of their joyned members which is their practice and wished them first to be made joyned members in one of their Churches Whereupon they thought that there was no congregation fitter for them to joyne to than to that Pastors Assembly that had given them this counsell and therefore applyed themselves unto him and desired that they might be admitted joyned members for answer it was replyed that the congregation of which he was Pastor consisted of great personages Knights Ladies and rich Merchants and such people as they being but poore could not walk so suitably with them withall he said he could doe nothing without the consent of the Congregation wherefore he perswaded them to joyne themselves to some other Congregation among poore people where they might better walk and more comfortably in fellowship with them so that the last news I heard of this businesse was that the children were neither baptized nor the poore men admitted to be joynt members of that Congregation What their Ministers have done since I know not but I well perceive it is as great a difficulty for a poore man to get into some of their Congregations as to get into Suttons-Hospitall and that I conceive to be the onely occasion that makes some walk so long in many Congregations before they come to be admitted members for if they be rich they are speedily received nay invited to be members It is too well knowne that many godly and holy people have left their native country and transporttd themselves over into New-England where this government is set up onely that they might enjoy the Ordinances there in their purity they were beleevers before they went and were baptized and such as were knowne before they went thither to be the deare servants of God but when they came there especially if they be poore they make them walk some a yeer some more yea some six or seven before they can be admitted members of their Congregations and they baptize none of those children that are borne there before their parents be joyned members and except they will in all things conforme themselves to their own conditions they shall never be admitted And sometime the man onely is admitted and his wife left out still to walk and sometime the wife is admitted and the man left out still to walk and both these notwithstanding are beleevers and baptized and after with a great deale of difficulty they are admitted to be members a very small offence will be sufficient to cast them out againe if they be poore But for stories of this nature I doe not love to multiply them but I have heard many of this kind from those places and from such as have been in New-England and men both then and now no way evilly affected either to the place or people serving God there But it is too notorious they lord it there over Gods poore Clergies in the superlative degree and every man that has but eyes in his head may see it here in England in their congregations what difference they make between the rich and poore and that they have the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ in respect of persons a sinne in Saint James his time highly blamed in christians James 2. and as in their carriage towards the poore they are very lofty and look for great observance and attendance from them wheresoever they come so likewise a little thing will displease them if they speak a word amisse it is enough to be cast out of the Congregation presidents of this nature might be brought many And if all this be not to lord it over
the earth shall be blessed in him for I know him that he will command his children and houshould after him that they shall keep the way of the Lord to doe Justice and Judgement that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him c. In these words we have Gods testimony of Abraham in the which he gives this witnesse of him that he would command his children and houshold after him that they should keep the way of the Lord to doe justice and judgement Then it is manifest that Abraham tolerated neither in his children nor in his houshold any Religion contrary unto that that God had taught him nor suffered no Idolatry nor sects in his family for this had not been to walk uprightly before God for it had been unjust dealing with God so to have done for Abraham and his seed were to walk perfectly and sincerely before God and therefore he would never tolerate all Religions or the worshipping of a false God or the worship of the true God after a false manner which also is idolatry for this had not been to doe justice and judgement but Abraham set up the true worship of God wheresoever he came as the whole story of his life doth abundantly declare And so did Isaac after him and Jacob after him as in the 33. of Gen. doth appeare where Iacob said unto his houshold and to all that were with him put away the strange gods that are among you and be cleane and change your garments and let us arise and goe up to Bethel and I will make there an Altar unto God who answered me in the day of my distresse and was with me in the way which I went and they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hands and Jacob hid them under the Oake that was at Sechem and the terrour of God was upon the cities which were round about them and they did not pursue after the sonnes of Jacob. In these words we have a president for imitation with the fruit and benefit that doth redound to al those people Nations that set up the true worship of God and root out all idolatry and false worship out of their families countries for Iacob gives no toleration in his house nor amongst his people for all Religions or for any other but that which God himselfe had appointed he sets up the true worship of God and that onely within his Jurisdiction and buries all the Idols of what price and how rich soever they were and he found the comfort and benefit of this his so doing for the Lord for this his faithfull service blessed him and protected him from the fury of all his provoked enemies for the terror of God was upon them all so that they durst not pursue him And if we take notice in our reading of the holy Scriptures we shall find and that through the whole Word of God that the Lord ever followed that people and those Kings and governours and their whole Kingdomes and countries with speciall blessings and singular favours that purged their country from idolatry and all false worships and struck a terror into all their enemies round about them neither did they ever purge their countries from idolatry and root out idolaters but the anger of the Lord was presently appeased by it and it is alwayes recorded to the eternall praise and honour of those Kings Rulers and Judges that were most forward in reformation and that set more throughly upon that good work of reformation and those that did things but to the halves in reformation have not so honourable a testimony in holy Scripture as the other and that God has ever been pleased when idolatry has been rooted out and idolaters put to death there be many presidents of it in the Word of God Amongst others that in the 32. of Exodus how highly was God displeased there with the making of that Calfe and how well was he pleased when execution was done upon the contrivers and authors of that idolatry that place sufficiently declareth yea in the 13. of Deuteronomie the Lord declaring how much he detesteth idolatry all false worship giveth a dispensation to children for disobedience to their parents who by his law they are bound to obey in Gods matters so that if those of their nighest relations should goe about to intice any to idolatry or to the worshipping of false gods or the true God in a false manner or should endeavour but to bring in another Riligion than that the Lord had appointed that then they should bring them forth and have justice done against them so that God abhorreth that any Religion amongst his owne people should be tolerated or set up besides that he himselfe hath commanded and he had forbid in his law that any man should make to themselves any graven Image or set up any way of worshipping him but that which he himselfe had ordained and injoyned and commanded that they that should attempt any such thing should be put to death We see likewise what Joshua did according to the commandement of God who ought to be a patterne to all christians and all christian Magistrates chap. 24. ver 14.15 16. Now therefore saith he fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in truth and put away the gods which your Fathers served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt and serve ye the Lord and if it seem evill unto you to serve the Lord choose you this day whom yee will serve whether the gods which your Fathers served that were on the other side of the flood or the gods of the Amorites in whose land yee dwell but for me and my house we will serve the Lord And the people answered and said God forbid that we should forsake the Lord and serve other gods for the Lord our God is he that brought us up and our Fathers out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage c. Here we may observe first that Joshua injoynes them to serve the Lord in sincerity and in truth and that they might do that to put away all their idols he gives no toleration of all Religions and the like may be said of Joshua Jos 24.15 and that they might with the more alacrity yeeld obedience to God's command he sets his owne example before their eyes with his resolution which was that both he and his houshold would serve the Lord onely and set up his worship and all the people likewise assented to doe the same and gave their reason why they would serve the Lord and tolerate no other Religion because say they the Lord hath brought us up out of the land of Aegypt and out of the house of bondage and made us his peculiar people and therefore they resolved to serve him onely and tolerate no other service amongst them but that which God himselfe had commanded and appointed And this example of Joshua and the people