complaining roundly Two Thousand This I must conclude to be done knowingly for somtimes he only mentions One Thousand Eight Hundred p. 151 c. Ans I am persuaded that it is not knowingly that you speak so much besides the truth but for want of knowing what and whom you talk of I never medled with gathering the number Mr. Calamy did and shewed us a List of 1800 upon which I long mentioned no more and seldom saw him afterward But Mr. Ennis who was more with him assuring me that they had after an account of at least 200 more who were omitted I sometime to speak the least mention the 1800 and sometime say about 2000 and by his last account that was the least Yet with a Lord Bishop that knoweth nothing of all this I knowingly over reckon But if God be pleased with their silencing why do you take this ill § 20. The next and great Accusation is my extenuating the Bishops Clemency and aggravating our Sufferings and that against my Conscience I impute to the Bishops that bloodiness which they never intended but abhor And he will not believe what I say of the death of any by Imprisonment or want Ans The good Lady that pittied the Beggars when she came in out of the Frost and Snow when she had warmed her self chid them away and said it was warm enough I could name you those in London that travelled out of the North in great want and took up with such cold Lodgings here in great want of all things that they were past cure before their misery was known How many poor Quakers have dyed in Prison many know It 's like you never heard of the death of Mr. Field a worthy Minister in the Gate-house nor of Mr. Thompson in the noisome Prison at Bristol nor of Reverend Mr. Hughes of Plimouth's Death caused by his Prison sickness perhaps you never read the Life Sufferings and Death of excellent Joseph Allen of Taunton I will not be the gatherer of a larger Catalogue But I believe some others will But these you know not of § 21. The words in my Book which I speak argumentatively shewing clearly whither their cause will lead them if they trust to bring us to Unity by force you unworthily feign that I speak as accusing the Bishops Inclinations My Argument was If you think by violence to effect your ends it must be either by changing mens judgments or by forcing them as Hypocrites to go against their judgments or else by utter destroying them till there are no Dissenters But none of these three ways will do it Ergo Violence will not do it 1. I prove that force will not change their Judgments 2. I prove they are such men as will rather suffer death than sin against their Consciences and so less Sufferings which cure not do but exasperate the Disease 3. I prove that if when less doth no good you would destroy them that would not do your work but cross it And doth this signifie that I charge the Bishops with bloody purposes They openly tell us that it 's punishing us that must bring us to Concord I tell them Lesser will not do it and greater will but hurt themselves A man would think that I hereby rather infer that Bishops will not be bloody than that they will when I argue ab incommodo Truly Sir I see nothing in your Book which tempted me to lament that I mist the happiness of your Academical Education or Disputes Nor do I envy those that now enjoy it God save his Church from the worser part of them § 21. You say P. 79. You must needs look on my aggravating my own and the Dissenters Sufferings beyond Truth you are sure beyond Probability to have proceeded from want of temper As for saying that some have lived on brown Bread and Water Ans I find still that our difference lieth in matter of Fact done in the open sight of the World And if it were whether we are English-men I have no hope of ending it O what is History My own Sufferings by them are very small save the hindering of my Labour Leave to work is all the Preferment that ever I desired of them What I have had hath been against their Wills who have called out for my greater restraint God hath enabled me by the Charity of others to send some small relief to a few of those whose Case he will not believe Some of them have Seven or Eight Children and nothing at all of their own to maintain them and live in Countries where scarce two Gentlemen of Estates within their reach do befriend them and the People are generally poor and many of these have none to preach to being not permitted And when they attempted to meet with some few secretly to fast and pray in some case of need have had their few Goods carryed away by Distress Good Alderman Ashhurst now with Christ took care of many and hath shewed me Letters and Certificates of undoubted credit in the very words which I named One is now near us that was put to get his Living by Spinning Mr. Chadwick was the last of whom I read those words in a just certificate that he and his Children had long lived on meer brown Rye Bread and Water It is now above a dozen Years since Dr. Vermuxden told me that Mr. Matthew Hill was his Patient with Hydropical swell'd Legs with drinking Water and using answerable Food through meer Poverty But God turned it to good for necessity drove him when a little strengthened to Mary-Land where he hath been almost the only able Minister they have We that know them our selves and beg Money to relieve them are supposed to be Lyars for telling that which all their Neighbours know Through Gods Mercy few in London suffer so much though divers are in great streights But great numbers in the Countrys who live among the poor had not some of them now and then a little Relief from London were like to beg for Bread or fall into mortal Diseases by Food unfit for Nature Even in London they that knew Mr. Farnworth Mr. Spinage and some others and how they lived and dyed understand me I 'le name Mr. Martin formerly of Weedon very poor in London to tell you of your impartiality though he lost one Arm in the Kings Army he had not a day abated him in Warwick Gaol for preaching § 22. As to his repeating all my mention of their dealings and my blaming the Bishops at the Savoy for our present divisions and my aggravating the evils which Violence will produce if they trust to that way I judge it all necessary to be spoken Unknown sin will not be repented of nor forborn nor unknown danger prevented nor the unknown needs of the Peoples Souls relieved He asketh Is this the way to be at Peace with us I answer There is no other way What Peace can we have with them that think they are bound to silence
for Knowledge and Life can they bear with in their Communion who cannot bear with such as they silence and ruine in this Land And the Papists can receive even those that know not Christ if they do but profess obedience to the Clergy-Church Luthers words are harsh but I will recite them de Concilâ—â—s Pâ—â—t 3. Pag 291. Si monstravâ—rint mihi unum aliquem ex tota illa multitudine qui possit aequare unum alphabetarium in aliqua erudita Schola aut in summa doctrinae Christianae vel in Scriptura Sacra tantum profecerint quantum uâ—a aliqua puella septem aâ—norum tunc illis concedam palam nisi quod plus callent traditionum humanarum Sycophantiarum Quod valde credo firmius quam in Deum credâ— cum me convincâ—nt facto ipso ut credam To this pass did the Clergies aspiring then bring the Church when worthy men were silenced and persecuted And we are unwilling of any thing that looketh towards a differencing men so contrary to that which Christ will make at last CHAP. II. Whether we have any reason to report the Faults of some Bishops and Councils from the beginning of their Depravation till the last § 1. THat I had great reason for it I think what is before said will evince when we see men destroying Christian Love themselves and us and the Land could they prevail by their erroneous endeavour to grant no Concord Communion nor Peace to no Christians how conscionable otherwise soever who cannot unite in a species of Prelacy which they believe by such evidence as I have given to be contrary to the Law of Christ To the saving men from Heresie and Schism now our opposers and we do judge it useful to know how Hereticks and Dividers miscarried heretofore that others may beware And is it not as true if Bishops be the Dividers And also when the Clergies Ambition and Usurpation have brought that upon the Christian World which it languisheth and groaneth under in East and West is it not needful to open the beginning and progress of the disease by such as had rather it were cured than the Church destroyed by it § 2. Among the multitude of Protestant Church Historians and Chronologers how few are there that do not do the same though in various degrees He that will read the Magdeburgenseâ— or Lucas Osiander Illyrici Test Verit. Melancthon himself and Carion Funcâ—ius yea peaceable holy Bucholtzer Micrelius Meander Phil. Pareus Hen. Gutâ—erleth c. yea or Julius or Jos Scaliger Salmasius Hâ—ttoman Hottinger Morney shall see the faults of Bishops opened before this day § 3. The pious and moderate Papists themselves report and lament them Such as Clemangis Pelagius Alvarus Mirandula Ferâ—â— Jos Acosta Lud. Vives Gerson Erasmus and many other such § 4. The antient Godly Bishops are they who for the most part have been freest in reprehending the vices of the rest especially Greg. Nazianzen and Chrysostom and many antient godly Presbyters have been as free as Gildas Isidore Pelusiota Salvian Sulp. Severus Bernard § 5. And if I have wronged the Bishops or Popes in this Abridgment their own Historians yea their chief flatterers have wronged them One Pope angered Platina by imprisoning him Yet if he be partial it is for the Clergy and not against them But who will believe that Binnius Baronius Crab Genebrard Bellarmine Petavius and such others have spoken too hardly of them There is no one man that I took so much from as Binnius And what should move him to name so many of the miscarriages of the Councils but the necessity of reciting the Acts of the Councils historically as he found them § 6. The Sacred Scriptures record the Crimes of the best men in all the Ages of which they write even Adams Noes Lots Aarons Davids Solomons Hezekiahs Josiahs Peters all the Apostles c. And it was not done out of spite or malice but as a necessary warning to us all § 7. The falshood of History is an intollerable abuse of mankind To know nothing done before our times is to shut up mankind in a dungeon and false History is worse than none And it may be false and deceitful in defect as well as excess He that should record all that was good in the Popes and omit all the rest would be a dangerous deceiver of the world and do more than hath been done to make all Christians Papists You tell us your selves that he that should write the History of Cromwell c. g. or of any Sect that you are against and should leave out all their faults would be taken for a false Historian § 8. They that write the History of mens Lives do use to record their Parentage Birth and Education And so must he that will truly write the History of Church-Tyranny Persecution and Schism The end is not well understood without the beginning Who is it that heareth how many Ages the Christian world hath been divided into Papists Greeks Jacobites Nestorians Melchites c. and that seeth what work the Papacy hath made but will ask how all this came to pass Did the man that died of Gluttony swallow all at one morsel or rather one bit after another And when the Clergy have ventured on one merry Cup or one pleasant morsel in excesa it 's easie to make them believe that one and one and one Cup more one and one and one bit more is no more unlawful than the first Principâ—is obsta is the Rule of Safety If Papists intending the recovery of England to the Pope should say Let us but first get them under the Oaths Covenants and Practices which we will call Conformity and so cast out most that dare not sin and by this engage them as two Armies in contrary Interest to fight against each other and it will be an easie matter to bring the swallowing Party to go further by degrees and to believe that as a Parish Church must not be independent as to the Diocesan nor the Diocesan to the Metropolitical or National so neither must a National be independent as to the Universal And that the Universal therefore must have it s known stated Government as well as the National Were it not necessary here for him that would save the Land from Popery to shâ—w the danger of the first degrees The usual Method is not to use Boccalines Roman Engine which will help a man to swallow a Pompion that he may get down a Pill but to swallow a lesser Pill first and a bigger next till the Pompion will go down Infancy is before manhood § 9. But the great necessity was as aforesaid from the revived or rather Continued attempts of imitating the fatal ambitious and Contentious malady If Priscillians or Gnosticks should rise now among us were it not our duty to set before them the history of the miscarriage of their predecessours And when men are so much set on restoring an Universal Supremacy is it not meet to shew
fact yea the most publick of the persons place and time which our senses have given us notice of that we must believe them with as great difficulty as we must believe Transubstantiation even in opposition to all our senses and experience And whether those men be fit Vindicaters of the Bishops and Councils above a Thousand years ago which are blamed by the Historians of their own Age and by their own Confessions and by their most servent Defenders who notoriously misreport the persons and actions of their own Place and Age I think it is not hard to judge I will instance in Twenty particulars of publick notice for those against particular persons even my self are not to be numbred I. It is now commonly taken for true that the present Nonconformists who gave in their Desires for Concord 1660. are of the same Judgment as those called Nonconformists heretofore and whatever can be raked up out of Christ Goodman Knox Kilby or is reported by Bancroft is partly chargeable on them when as their proposed Desires yet shew the world that they never made any motion against many things by those aforesaid scrupled in Doctrine Worship and Ceremony And it is commonly supposed by them that the present Conformity is but the same as the Old and the Case no harder to us And this notwithstanding all the still visible Acts and Alterations and Additions which attest the contrary to all the world II. In most of their Invectives the present Nonconformists are argued against as if they had been in the Civil War against the King or had been guilty of it more than the Conformists And that War is made a Reason of their Silencing whereas so few of them had any hand in it that I have many times told them that if they will Silence none but those that they can prove guilty of any War or Rebellion or Sedition the rest of us will give them a thousand Thanks though we suffer our selves Few of the present Nonconformists were then in the Ministry and of those few that were few now living meddled with War III. They are so confident that the Parliament and Army that began the War in England were Nonconformists yea Presbyterians and not of the Church of England that Mr. Hinkley here Mr. Morrice make a renouncing of their Senses or Understandings necessary to the believing of it And yet they might as well tell us that they were all Turks or Papists Are not a Parliament and an Army things publick enough to be known in the same Age When we name to them the Chief Lords and Commons and Chief Commanders yet and lately living who are known still to live in their own Communion and when we challenge them to name Three Presbyterians that were then in the House of Lords or the House of Commons or many that were at first Commanders in the Army and we name them the Men that then Commanded who were commonly known to be Conformists of the Church of England And if they will not believe their present practice and profession they may yet go to them and be satisfied from their own mouths what were their former Principles I have told them of a most credible Member of that Parliament yet living who hath ost profest to me that he knew but one Presbyterian in the House of Commons when the war began and I have named that one man to them to try if they can name another I expect not that they should believe me or such other concerning those whom we knew But they may believe the men themselves yet living their most familiar Friends Yea the Records of many foregoing Parliaments with Laua's Life written by Dr. Heylin fully sheweth them that the difference arose 1. About the fear of Popery and Arminianism as they thought tending towards it 2. About Property Loan-mony Knight-mony and after Ship-mony c. 3. About Imprisonment of members and other Gentlemen And these were still the quarrel But saith Mr. M. How then shall we believe our senses Ans See Reader whether his most confident Errours about past things be any wonder He is not so sure of what he saith of the old Prelates or the Nestorians Eutychians c. as he is that he must believe his Senses And his very senses tell him that a Parliament even Lords Commons and an Army many of whom are yet living were of another opinion in Religion than ever they were then acquainted with and which was known to very few in England till afterward And this contrary to their Profession and practice and the senses of their acquaintance Lords are Persons of so publick notice that they may easily yet be informed of the living and the dead In the Army the Chief Commanders were the E. of Essex the E. of Bedford yet living Sir John Merrick the E. of Peterborough Dolbiere the E. of Stamford the Lord Hastings E. of Huntington the Lord Rochford E. of Dover the Lord Fielding E. of Denbigh the Lord Mandevile E. of Manchester the Lord Roberts now Earl of Radnor and President of his Majesties Council the Lord St. Johns killed at Keimâ—n Fight Only the Lord Say and Lord Brook were known Independents and whether the Lord Wharton yet living was then for Bishops or against them I know not but all the rest were of the Church of England And so were the other Collonels Sir Henry Cholmley the late Lord Hollis Col. Will. Bampfield Col. Tho. Grantham Col. Tho. Ballard C. Sir William Fair fax Col. Charles Essex Col. Lord Willoughby of Parham Col. Sir Will. Waller Col. Edwin Sandys Cap. Lord Grey of Grooby and I think then Sir Will. Constable and Col. Hampden What mind Sir Will. Balfoore was of I know not But I know his Country man Col. Brown was too far from a Puritane But saith Mr. M. 1. It 's well the Bishops had no share in it Ans Let Heylin tell you what hand the difference between A. Bishop Abbats Church of England and Laud's then little Party had in the preparations 2. And was the A. Bishop of York no Bishop who afterward was a Commander for the Parliament But saith he I pray where were the Presbyterians when the Parliament took up Arms Were they not then in being Ans An excellent Historian that maintaineth Parliament and Army were such as he knows not whether they were then in being Yes Sir they were in Holland and France and Geneva and Scotland and in England there was one John Ball and one Mr. Langley and a few more such old Nonconformists that never were in Arms and old John Dod and one Mr. Geree that was against the war and dyed for grief of the Kings death But among those called Puritans few knew what Presbytery was till the Scots afterward brought it in Much less did Lords Commons and Army know it In your sense Sir they were not then in being and therefore could not fight It appears by Bancroft and others that there had been once
own Hand Mr. P. provoked him by a Wager to make it good He refusing the Wager was told He should hear of it publickly unless he would ask me Forgiveness After some time the Gentleman came to me with Mr. Tasborough since imprisoned as is known and with great Civility ask't me Forgiveness He was the Son of a Knight and Judge of my Acquaintance and had an Aunt that had been my very dear Friend I told him That Slandering is so common and asking Forgiveness so rare that I took it for a note of great Ingenuity in him and as I must forgive all Men as a Christian so I could easily forgive any wrong to one related to such a Friend of mine He told me He was resolved openly to confess his Fault and to vindicate me on all Occasions Accordingly at the same Coffee House he openly declared his Repentance Upon which Mr. P. tells me That Mr. G. an Aged Lawyer Brother to the Lady Ab. was displeased and said He would prove the thing true by many Witnesses And saith Mr. P. the Story among some of them was That a Tinker did beat his Kettle at my Door and being disturbed by him I pistoll'd him and was tryed for my Life at Worcester Mr. P. said He provoked Mr. G. to lay a Wager on it And he refusing was told Then he should hear of it in Westminster-Hall Upon this saith Mr. P. his Fellow Catholicks ingenuously resolved to disown him unless he would ask Forgiveness which he being unwilling to come to me to do Mr. P. saith He at last performed before Him and Capt. Edmund Hampden All this being done without my Knowledge till after I was relating it to Mr. John Humfrey Why saith he I did twelve Years ago hear Dr. Allestry now Regius-Professor in Oxford say the like That he could not think well of that Man that had kill'd a Man in cold Blood with his own Hand I little regarded all the rest But Dr. Allestry had many Years been my old School-Fellow many a time I had taught â—â—im and he was the best at Learning and of the honestest Disposition of any Boy that ever I knew and I thought if Parties could draw such as he into such Guilt there was little Account to be made of the Reports or History of Men if once they fell into different Factions Wherefore I wrote to him what Mr. Humfrey told me and received from him this honest ingenuous Letter which I here annex And as to all this Story I do here solemnly profess That I never killed wounded or hurt any Man in my Life save one Man whose Leg I hurt with playful Wrestling when I was a Boy and once or twice boxing with School-Boys and correcting â—ads when I was one Year a School-Master Nor in all the Wars or in my life did I ever see any other kill any Man save one and that was at the same Bickering about Forty of a Side when Jennings was wounded While they were Fighting with him in one great Field I being in another near the House saw the Souldiers offering Quarter to a Foot-Souldier and promising him Safety if he would lay down his Musket which he did not but struck at them and Captain Holdich shot him dead And it proved after to be a Wolsh man that understood not English which grieved them when they knew it I have gone the next day where Fights have been and seen many dead when I had nothing to do with the Armies of either Part. But I never saw any to my Knowledge kill or hurt any Man but this one Dr. Allestry's Letter Which I should not Publish but that even in Oxford and elsewhere among the Clergy the Report yet goeth on SIR I Must profess sincerely That I cannot recollect I ever said such Words of you to Mr. Humfrey as it seems he does affirm I did But yet I cannot but acknowledge it is very possible that I related and may be to Him That I had heard you killâ—d a Man in cold Blood Since I very well remember that above Thirty Years since at the End of the War I heard that publickly spoken before Company and with this farther Circumstance that it was a Souldier who had been a Prisoner some Hours Now this Report relating to the Wars in which I fear such Things were no great Rarities and from my very tender Youth I having not had the least Converse with you nor likely-of any for the future did not therefore apprehend at present any Concern or Occasion of inquiring whether it were true of which upon that confident Asseveration I did make no doubt And I took so little thought of laying up the Relation that I protest to you as in the Presence of Almighty God it is impossible for me to recover who made up that Company in which I heard it or from whom I heard it And I wonder how it came into my Mind to say that I had heard it so long after But however though it be some Ease to me to believe the late Discourses of it do not come from my relating so long since that I heard it neither are likely to receive any Confirmation from it unless it be made more Publick than I have made it yet I do profess it is a great Affliction to me to have spoken that though but as a Report which it seems was a Slander for so I believe it upon your Asseveration and not having endeavoured to know whether it were true And as I have beg'd God's Forgiveness of it so I heartily desire You will forgive me And if I could direct my self to any other way of Satisfaction I would give it This is the whole Account I can give of this Matter to which I shall only add That I am Eaton-Coll Dec. 13. 1679. SIR Your very Affectionate Servant Richard Allestry II. In the Preface to the Life of Dr. Heylin are these Words Mr. Barter may be pleased to call to mind what was done to one Major â—ennings the last War in that Fight that was between Lyndsel and Longford in the County of Salop where the Kings Party having unfortunately the worst of the Day the poor Man was stript almost naked and left for dead in the Field But Mr. Baxter and ouâ— Lieutenant Hurdinat taking their Walk among the wounded and dead Bodies perceived some Lifâ— left in the Major and Hurdman run him through the Body in cold Blood Mr. Baxter all the while looking on and taking off with his own Hand the Kings Picture from about his Neck telling him as he was swiming in his Godr That he was a Popish Rogue and that was his Crucifix Which Picture was kept by Mr. Baxter for many Years till it was got from him but not without much difficulty by one Mr. Somerfield who then lived with Sir Thomas Rous and generously restored it to the poor man now alive at Wick near Pershore in Worcestershire although at the Fight supposed to be dead being after the Wounds
discern and value that Knowledge in another which he is a stranger to himself Experience tells us that young unexperienced men do commonly receive that man's Opinions 1. Who hath by nearness or some accident the greatest advantage in their esteem and love 2. Or his that speaks most for their fleshly Interest and for that which they would have to be true 3. Or his that hath the last word It cannot be expected that they judge of any thing beyond the advantage of their senses and the Notitiae communes according to Evidence of Truth which must be received by long and serious study and by willing honest minds and by the help of antecedent Verities § 5. In this therefore Divine free Election is very manifest As in giving the Gospel to some Nations in the World when most others never have it so in giving some young persons the blessing of good Education and Teachers and chusing for them that were unable to chuse well for themselves as also in blessing the same helps to one which are despised by another And verily when I have been long stalled with the difficulties about Election and Differencing Grace undeniable Experience hath been my chief Conviction If the Gospel be true the common worldly fleshly sort that are for Christ but by Tradition Law and Custom and are religious for worldly ends and no farther than the Interest of the Flesh and World will give them leave have no true Saving Grace at all And the rest that seriously believe and seek a better Life and live above fleshly worldly Interests are in most places few and made the scorn and hatred of the rest And if de facto God do sanctifie only a peculiar People who can deny his differencing Will and Grace § 6. I was my self in my Childhood ignorant what Teachers among such diversity I should prefer And first God had such a witness in my Conscience that Virtue and Holiness were better than Vice and Sin that it made me think that the sort of Teachers who Traded meerly for the World and never spake a serious word of Heaven nor differed from sober Heathens but in Opinion yea that endeavoured to make serious Godliness to seem but Hypocrisie were not like to be the wisest and most trusty men And yet how to judge among the serious which were right was long too hard for me § 7. When I came to consider of the Divisions of the Christian World and â—eard the Papists pretend to Catholicism and call all others Schismaricks or Hereticks it sometime seemed a plausible Opinion that the greatest Power and Dignity of the Clergy was the Interest of Christianity By Riches Honour and Power they may protect the Godly and keep Religion from Contempt among the worldly sort of men or from oppression at the least 2. And I saw that in all Ages and Countries of the World Historians tell us how rare a thing a wise and holy Prince hath been and how commonly by Wealth and Greatness they have been bred up in that Sensuality and Pride which hath made them the Capital Enemies to serious Piety if not the Persecutors of it 3. I thought with myself if such godly Christians as much value the Interest of Religion had lived in such times and places where Rulers were Persecutors of the Truth how glad would they have been to have had the Power of Church-matters put into the hands of their Chosen Pastors what would they have desired more 4. And I read that till Riches and honours were annexed to the Office the People had still the Choice of their own Pastors and therefore could not chuse but wish their Estates and Lives and all as well as their Religion to be as much as might be in their hands And so no doubt when the Bishops were advanced to great Diocesses and Power it was by the desire of the most Religious Christians who valued most the Interest of the Church 5. And I could not but observe that though Christ gave his Apostles no Power of the Sword he set them above other Ministers not only in Miraculous Gifts and Infallible testifying and recording his Commands and works but in some sort of oversight which seemeth a thing appointed for Continuance as well as preaching 6. And I thought that if Church-Grandure were the Interest of Religion and Unity the strength of the Church it lookt very plausibly to reason that as Bishops were over Presbyters so there should be some over Bishops and that National Churches should by such Government be hindered from Schism and Heresie as well as Parochial And that Diocesans and Metropolitans Power should be derived from a Superiour as well as Presbyters And that when poor Subjects dare not reprove a Prince some that are above fearing his Power may 7. And when I read the Popes Claim I thought it seemed not improbable that Petrus primus and pasce oves meas and super hanc Petram were not spoken in vain And these thoughts pleaded thus for Church-Grandeur in Prelates and Popes § 8. On the other side I saw 1. That Christ said His Kingdom was not of this world and comes not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with observable Pomp. And that when they strove who should be greatest he reproved them and Concluded with you it shall not be so and that the most serviceable is to be accounted the greatest that Peter himself accordingly describeth their office 1 Pet. 5. 2. I find that Christ appointed them another sort of work to do even to Preach the Gospel to all Nations through all streights difficulties and sufferings and to baptize and teach Christians to observe the Laws of Christ And that as he never put the Sword into their hand so an official declaring and applying his Word to voluntary Disciples was all their Office as ordinary Pastors to be continued 3. I find that Christ sent them out by two and two as if it had been done on foresight that men would erect a Church-Monarchy And that no Scripture tells us of any division of the Church into Diocesses where ore Apostle was a Monarch or had Power above the rest or was his Peculiar Province Nor that the twelve settled twelve such or any as the seats of their Successors 4. I find not that ever any one Apostle exercised Government over the rest Nor that ever Christ gave the rest any Command or Direction to obey any one Nor that ever the Contending or Schismatical sort of Christians were directed to end their strise by taking any one for the Head who must determine all their Controversies And that they that said I am of Cephas are reproved with the rest And that all are called Members of the Body and only Christ the Head And if it had been his will that One Universal Head or Power should have been set up as the Principium or Center of Unity it is a matter of so great consequence that it is not to be believed that Christ would not have plainly
verbo discedimus omnia limatius subtilius scrutamur quam ipse vult nos scrutari Whether you reverence Luther any more than Calvin I know not 11. To conclude this matter two things I desire you or at least the Reader to consider 1. Whether it be not a dreadful thing for a man to make the Church corrupting dividing and confounding sin◠to be all his own by defending or excusing them on a false pretence of Vindicating the Primitive Church Government which was contrary to them 2. Whether you trust to Truth and Evidence or to Interest and depraved Judgments if you think men shall believe that you have confuted all this undoubted History and the present experience of all the woful Christian World by a general Cry that I write falsly and maliciously or by saying that I am unlearned or that I trusted to a Translation or Binnius or that Binnius mistook the year things that I will not turn over my Books to try or that I misplaced or misunderstood a word of Theodorite or mistranslated Calami or such like Such Believers of you are guilty of their own deceit § 22. There is lately published by a nameless Prelatist to shew the World what Spirit he is of a Book pretending by the description of my Life from 1640. till 1681. to prove me one of the worst men alive To that I will now say but these few words 1. That let them take me to be as bad as they will so they would have some mercy on their own and others Souls and the Church of God 2. That it 's no wonder that we differ about Antient Times and History and present Impositions when the main difference in our Times is who are godly yea tolerable Christians and who are intollerable Rogues and those that as before God by long and intimate acquaintance I judge to be the most serious conscionable humble holy Ministers and People that were ever known to me are the Persons that the Prelatists prosecute silence and cry out against as the most intollerable wicked Enemies of Piety Truth and Peace What is it that is the root of this 3. That this foresaid Book is one continued Calumny unworthy of an Answer partly making my duty my sin as that I disliked the many drunken Readers that were the Teachers of my Youth c. and partly perverting scraps of sentences and partly reciting one revoked Book and a few retracted sentences of another when Augustin is commended for retracting far more and filling it with a multitude of most gross untruths of his own fiction 4. That as to his and Mr. Morrice and others talk of the Wars I say 1. That I never thought the Parliament blameles◠2. That yet on Bilson's grounds I was in my Judgment and Speech and Action comparatively for them while they made their Commissions to Essex for King and Parliament 3. That from Naseby Fight I wholly laboured to have drawn off their Souldiers from Errour and Rebellion and Usurpation in which I did and suffered more than multitudes of my Accusers 4. That I never went so far against the Power of the King as R. Hooker whom I have long ago confuted 5. That I never struck or hurt man in the wars 6. That I will consent to be silenced and imprisoned if they will but give those Ministers leave to preach Christs Gospel that never had to do with wars unless for the King 7. That when our beginning Concord had restored the King the Scots though unsuccessfully fought for him Monk his Army that had bloodily at Dundee c. fought against him had with the Concurrence of Sir Tho. Allen the Londoners and Presbyterians restored him when the King by them came in Triumph Honoured Monk and others of them confest them the Cause of his Restoration past an Act of Oblivion that we might all live in future Peace I say If after all this it be Prelacy and Clergy Interest and Spirit that will rub over all the healed wounds and strive again what ever it cost us to ulcerate the peoples minds and resolve that the Land and Church shall have no Peace but by the destruction of such as restored the King I shall think never the better of Prelacy for this But ask them why did you not Speak it out in 1660 to Monk and his Army or till now § 23. And whereas that Advocate described Job 8. and you are still deceiving the ignorant by facing men down with Confidence that I lie in saying that Two Episcopal Parties began the War in England and the Papists and Presbyterians came in but as Auxiliaries I again say 1. Allow me but reasonable leave and I will prove it to the shame of you if you deny it 2. At present I will but recite one clause in Whitlocks Memorials pag. 45. even after they thought themselves under a necessity to please the Scots as far as they could Anno 1640. The Commons had debate about a new Form of Ecclesiastical Government and July 17. agreed That every Shire shall be a several Diocess a Presbytery of Twelve Divines in each Shire and a President as a Bishop over them and he with the assistance of some of the Presbytery to ordain suspend deprive degrade and excommunicate To have a Diocesan Synod once a year and every third year a National Synod and they to make Canons but none to be binding till confirmed by Parliament The Primate of Armagh offered an expedient for conjunction in point of Discipline that Episcopal and Presbyterian Government might not be at a far distance but reducing Episcopacy to the Form of Synodical Government in the Primitive Church Were not these men Episcopal It 's much like Mr. Thorndike's own motions saving his Opinion for Forein Jurisdiction § 24. As to your first and last Chapters and about the Antient Extent of Churches while my Treatise of Episcopacy which fully confuteth you is unanswered if I repeat it again it will not be read by weary men And another hath answered those parts of your Book which is ready for the Press I after tell you where Chrysostom even in his time numbers the Christians in that great Imperial City to be an hundred thousand that is as many as in Martins and Stepney Parishes and perhaps in Giles Cripplegate too § 25. To conclude whereas Mr. M. in general chargeth me as falsifying History I still call my self a HATER of FALSE HISTORY and loath Mr. Morrice's History because it is false But if he will instead of falsifying and trifling shew me any false History that I have owned I will thank him unfeignedly and retract it But factious reproaching of good men and painting the deformed face of Vice go not with me for convincing proof If I am not near of kin to Erasmus I am a stranger to my self even as Merula and M. Adamus describe him Ingenio erat simplex adeo abhorrens a mendacio ut puellus etiam odisset pueros mentientes
Printers have passed the foresaid censure of me But doth not this Learned Historian know how ordinarily the greatest of them do charge one another with manifold Errours and of far greater moment than these forementioned How few Historians do not this Yea what bitter censures doth he pass himself on no lower Historians than Socrates and Sozomen It would be tedious to give you the Instances that every such Book affordeth I see he valueth Labbe the Jesuite How oft doth he accuse Historians of Errour Ignorance Malice c. e. g. de Anastasio Biblioth so eminent a Writer of the Popes Lives yet Errat Vossius siqui alii cum Anastasio Presbytero c. And even of that famous History of the Popes Onuphriaâ— Panuinius Gerb. Vossius plerique alii 〈◊〉 consent esse ab Anastasio scriptam Nicolai 1. Papae Vitam a Gulielmâ— S. R. E. Bibliothecario additas fuisse Haâ—r 2. Steph. 6. P. Vitas Verum Cardinalis Baronius iis refragatur eidemque auctori omnes illas ascribit sunt quoque qui a Damaso Papa c. Here the greatest Historians differ about one of the most noted Histories Of Augustin's Works To. 1. p. 129. he tells you that Bellarmine tells us not what Edition he used But it 's certain he used not the Antwerp or Plantinian Edition which was the best and the Original of all the rest P. 132. Rivet and Perkins are derided for disowning some Epistles P. 135. Erasmi Riveti similiumque ridetur a doctis censura viz. de lib. Continent And I profess my self less skilful in such matters than Erasmus Et ibid. Erasmus Hâ—sius Juliano opus illud tribuere videntur Pamelius tanquam incerti Authoris allegat Nos cum Lovaniensibus Bellarmino aliisque Catholicis Augustini esse censemus nec tricae Riveti deterrent P. 136. Quaest. Vet. Novi Test non sunt Augustini ut facile omnes consentiunt Quamvis sub ejus nomine citatae reperiantur ab Episcopis Lutetiae Paris An. 824. Congregatis quibusdam aliis Of Ausonius the Poet p. 171. he saith Quam falsa sint quae de eo scripsit Jo. Trithemius quivis vel ex ipsa lectione intelliget Of Mantuan p. 173. Ex Trithemii encomio haec dubio proâ—ul omni obliteranda Qâ— metro Virgilium Ciceronem prosa aequat ne dicam superat Sunt enim falsissima iis qui gustum aliquem latinitatis habent Of Beda p. 184. See what he saith of Will. Malmsbury Mat. Westminst Vessius and Baronius Of Bâ—ethius p. 204. Henorius Augustod ubi falso narrat Mediolani interfectum fuisse P. 217. Plura adversus Leunclavium primum eorum editorem declamavit Jac. Billius de Caesario De Claudio Scoto p. 228. Tho. Dempsterus multa pro more suo indigesta effudit De Gersone p. 565. Errat post Possevinum Maraccius qui Joan. hunc Monachum ordinis coelesti asserit Idem quoque ex Patrologo eradendum See what he saith de Julio Asricano that the Annotationes eruditiss in Euseb Eccles Hist Opinioni nostrae in plerisque adversantur I suppose he means that Valesius which I wanted And de Justino Mart. Scaligerum errasse c. Et p. 833. insigne mendum ex Trithemio Gesnero Simlero Sexto Possevino Bellarmino Miraeo aliisque propagatum To. 2. p. 361. Smaragdos duos in unum confuderunt Trithemius Sixtus Senensis Possevinus Bellarminus Miraeus aliique passim Abundance such charges tell us how much greater Errours are charged on the greatest Historians than Mr. Morrice chargeth on me with the least shew of probability How many score of Historians doth Blondell cite who he thinks have falsly told us of a Pope Joan What abundance of faults would Causabon have found in Baronius if he had lived to go through him as he began And I profess my self much more ignorant in History than Baronius It would be tedious to number all the gross Errours that Vossius citeth de scriptor Graecis Latinis e. g. in the Later p. 230. Hos duos confudit Trithemius vid. quae habet de Flaâ— Alcuino p. 290 291 292. De Usuardo p. 295. cont Gualterium Baronium Wicelium p. 296. cap. 32. de Turpino contra Trithemium alios Et cap. 33. de Walafr Strab. Tritthenius vehementer errat Et Laur. Surium Bellarmin in Catal. alios nonnullos in errorem induxit Vid. quae de Aimoino p. 308 309. habet contra Possevinum p. 310. contra alios 311. Et contra Baronium Breulium c. 312. Et de Haimone cap. 35. contra Tritthenium de Rabano Mauro p. 315. Et de Landulph Sagace contra Caes Orlandium De Anastas c. 35. p. 319. De Hinâ—maro contra Tritthenium c. 36. p. 320. But I must not tire the Reader Multitudes of such Instances this one Author gives us And how few Historians charge not others with Errours so much greater and more than Mr. M. with any Truth accuseth me of § 3. As to his notes on my Titles of some Councils it 's past my memory whether it was my carelesness or as I think the Printer's Errour to put a Council at Aransican Toletan Regiense for Concilium Aransicanum Toletanum Rhegiense If it was my act I forgot that I had first put the Substantive in English But he may oft find the same names used to his mind And sure it is no falsification of the History § 4. But he hath a far greater charge against me that I did not apprehend the mind of the Council at Tours why so The words are Nos vero siquos Lex perimi jubet si cupiunt audire praeconem volumus ut convertantur ad vitam Nam perimendi sunt oris gladio communione privandi si relicta sibi seniorum decreta observare noluerint c. Here he saith the meaning is The Ecclesiastical Laws do punish such with perpetual Excommunications yet this Council thought fit to mitigate it c. The Question is Whether Quos Lex perimi jubet signifie Death or Excommunication I take it to be Death and that the Council saith Though by the Law such are to Die if they will hear the Preacher we will have them converted to Life But so that if they will not be separated the Church Sword of Excommunication shall cut them off instead of Death My Reasons why Lex perimi jubet signifieth Death are from the express foregoing words Quia etiam Lex Romana constituit ut quicunque sacratam Deo Virginem vel Viduam fortasse rapuerit si postea eis de conjunctione convenerit capitis sententia feriantur Item siquis non dicam rapere sed attent are matrimonii conjungendi causa sacram Virginem ausus fuerit capitis sententia feriatur Cum etiam in Chronicis habeatur de Virginibus Gentilium tempore quae se deae Vestae sacraverant postmisso proposito corrupta virginali gratia Legali sententia vivas in terra fuisse desossas If none of this signifie
a man to take that went through an Orchard Vineyard or Corn-field and what the Law of nature is and whether the Kings Army on whose strength the Safety of King Kingdom depends may not violently take food without the owners consent rather than perish will find it harder to justifie the denying Christendom and Communion to godly Persons that scruple our sort of God Fathers Crossing and Kneeling c. than to confute the aforesaid stealing or that which is meerly to save life 6. And as for Lying in cases of necessity No less men of their own party than Grotius de Jure Belli and Bishop Jer. Taylor in Duct Dubit have written for it And though I be against it and many Conformists for it yet I will not deny but if the Life of the King might be saved among Enemies by a Lie or the Life of a Patient by his Physicians deceiving him by a Lie much more may be pretended for it than for all the heinous sin which I fear § 7. And if these words be uncharitable Railing what means have we lest to give them that demand it the Reasons of our Nonconformity What if we had gone further and taken it for a crying Church Crime and called all the Clergy to Repentance If that which we judge sinful be not so let them confute us If it be so and as great as we fear is it not our duty to bewail it and mourn for it Ezek. 9. 4. Zeph. 3. 17 c. And is not mincing and extenuating great sin an implicit hardening men against Repentance Should one Preach against Adultery Fornication Perjury Murder as about a doubtful Controversie or a small thing and say but Good men are on both sides I dare not say it is a sin though I dare not do it my self Or if it be one it is but such as good men are ordinarily guilty of We must not judge one another What were this but worse than Eli to his Sons to cherish Sin and Preach Impenitence and serve Satan against the Evangelical Preaching of Repentance § 8. For my Judgment I profess it to be the duty of me and all men to use no Language of Good mens faults no though they turn Persecutors upon some particular Errour but what is consistent with true Love to the men and to cover their faults that are private and meerly personal as far as lawfully we may but not to make light of publick aggravated Crimes such as those of Hophni and Phinehas nor to shew indifferency towards Buyers and Sellers in the Temple nor to strengthen the Sin which threatneth a Land If I thought that hundreds or thousands of Christ's faithful Ministers in any Country were unjustly hunted and forbidden to Preach the Gospel to a People that truly need it and this to the unavoidable dividing of the People and the plain making way for a Forreign Jurisdiction I should take my self as a guilty hinderer of Repentance and Enemy to the Publick Safety if I should say only This is a doubtful Controversie between Good Wise and Learned men Labbe ends his To. 1. as justifying his bitterest Reproaches with the Authority of Christ Peter Paul John Jude Ignatius And if he had only given great and publick sins the true names necessary to mens knowledge of them for Repentance or Preservation those Texts and many more would have justified him CHAP. XIII Of his Supposition that I speak against all Bishops Councils § 1. THis is not so 1. I write oft for the great usefulness of Councils 2. I justly praise no small number of them especially before the great Rising of the Bishops for the first 300 or 400 years He once acknowledgeth it of the African Councils And he might have seen the like of many Spanish and some French and Germane Councils The English I little medled with 3. The First General Council at Nice I justly honour yea and the Three following and many more than three for the soundness of their Faith and as having many very laudable persons in them though I shew the ill effects of their contention and ambition I have heard some Conformists confess the great Learning and piety of the Westminister Synod in 1642. and of the Synod of Dort where we had Delegates and yet sharplier speak against the Acts of both by far than I have done by any such pious Persons Even they that have honoured Bishop Carlton Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Dr. Ward c. that were there have yet bitterly reproached the Decrees which they subscribed And how many as well as Dr Heylin have written and spoken ill of A. Bishop Usher of A. Bishop Abbot A. Bishop Grindai A. Bishop Parker yea of A. Bishop Whitguif◠for the Lambeth-Articles which I justifie not who yet have a great honour both for Bishops and their Councils § 2. But I confess I am much of Nazianzen's mind and I think I am no more against them in the general than he was And I am against our subjection to the Jurisdiction of Forreign Councils and the use that the Pope and ambitious Clergy have made of them to become Masters of Princes and of the world I am not for Ebbo's French Council which deposed Ludov. Pius nor for making them either the Popes Army or the Army of Patriacks against each other or of such Princes as Constantius Valens Theodosius junior Anastasius Philippicus Justinian Irene c. to fulfill their own mistaken wills how honest soever the men might be Much less am I for such work as the Council at Later an sub Innoc. 3 made no nor that at Florence § 3 And I take it for an Act of great Prudence in this my accuser while he is vindicating Bishops Councils to go no further than the four first General when it is many hundred that I have mentioned And is it not really an intimated accusation of them to vindicate so few of above 400. And those such as for their faith we all own And yet a man would think by the strein of his style and language that it were at least the greater part of Conncils that he were pleading for I say still as Bishop Bilson and other Protestants Well ordered sound Councils we owe great respect and honour to for Counsel strength and Concord but subjection and Obedience saith he We owe Them none save as we are bid be all subject one to another and serve one another in Love § 4. And now I leave any impartial man to judge what answer such a book deserved which goeth upon all these forementioned untrue suppositions CHAP. XIV Some mens Credit about ancient Church History may be conjectured at by their Reports of the History of the time and place that we live in § 1. BY their History of late and present things we may conjecture at the Credit of not Mr. M's but others of the Clergy-accusers and Prosecutors of their Brethren Almost all that I remember that write against me agree in such misreporting matters of
they are so far from professing it that they oft speak of the Novatians in disowning words But they praised them for the good that is in them And would not any impartial Historian do the like Must a man rail at any party or hide their Virtues or else be taken to be one of them I confess that such as Mr. M. do fully acquit themselves from the suspicion of being Presbyterians or Nonconformists But so did not A. Bishop Grindall Bishop Jewel A. Bishop Abbot A. Bishop Usher and many more such Sure Candor and Impartiality is Laudable in Historians And Thuanus is most honoured for that And notwithstanding Mr. M's assertions of the contrary I profess my self a lover honourer of the worth of many of the aspiring Bishops that corrupted the Church and of many Popes and of many that continue Church corruptions in the height even many of the Papists Cardinals Schoolmen and Jesuites Who will not love and praise the excellent Learning of such as Suarez Vasquez Victoria Petavius and abundance such Who will not praise the piety of such as Gerson Borromaeus Sales and many others though we nevertheless disown their Popery For my part I highly value the Cleareness of multitudes of the Schoolmen and that they have not in whole loads of their volumes so much malicious railing as the Jesuits and many of our late Conformists have in a few sheets Doth it follow that I am a Papist because I praise them or that Socrates or Sozomen were Novatians because they speak well of their faith and piety There are abundance of Malignants that acknowledge the Good Lives of those they call Puritanes and if he had not had the late Wars between King and Parliament to fill all Mouths and Books against them the Devil by this time might have been at a loss with what Accusations to reproach them For he was put to use the Voices no names of Roundheads Whigs c. when their Revilers were called Drunkards Swearers Dam-me's c. But they that confess the Good reproach them as Hypocrites that do but counterfeit it Doth this acknowledgment prove them Puritanes I suppose Mr. M. knoweth that no small number of Historians and Fathers confess the strictness of the Novatians Lives and yet were no Novatians And Constantine's words to Acesius imply that he thought him singularly strict And Mr. M. saith Pref. The Novatians saith the Author did not suffer much by this Edict being besriended by the Emperour who had an esteem for their Bishop of C. P. upon the account of his Holiness And may not an Orthodox man confess the Piety of others § 3. But Mr. M. is so Magisterial as to say Pag. 322. The story of Theophilus and the Monks of Nitria no reasonable man can believe as it is related by Socrates and Sozomen without loving a malicious Lie So that Socrates and Sozomen either believed not themselves or else Love◠a malicious Lie And Page 319. he saith The story of Theophilus his charging Isidore with double Letters that whoever was Conquerour he might apply himself to him in his name is of the same piece with the rest of Socrates his story concerning that Bishop and in all probability an invention of one of the Monk◠of Nitria It seems this Historian believeth Old Historians as the matters seem probable or improbable to himself And so we may take him for the Universal Expositor of History It is not the Old Historians that we must believe but his Conjectures And thus he deals with divers others § 4. For my part I profess that before I had any Engagement in these Controversies since I first read them I took Socrates and Sozomen to be two of the most credible Historians that the Church had till their Times and of many an Age after them I said of them as I use to do of Thuanus A man may trace the footsteps of Knowledge and impartial honesty and so of Veracity in their very style And there are few of the judicious Censurers of Historians but do tell us of far more uncertainties in Eusebius and after in Nicephorus and most that followed as far as I am acquainted with such Censurers than in these two And if their History be shaken our loss will not be small And I doubt not but the Anathematizing and Condemning Spirit hath done hurt which hath made Eusebius an undoubted Arian and Theodoret first a Nestorian and after at the fifth General Council condemned some of his Writings and imposed it on the whole Christian World to condemn them though many never heard of them and that made Ruffinus and Chrysostom Originists and Origen a Heretick condemned also by a General Council and Socrates and Sozomen Novatians Epiphanius an ignorant credulous Fabler Sulpitius Severus and Beda two pious credulous Reporters of many feigned Miracles and one a Millenary Nicephorus a Fabler Anastasius Bibl. full of Falshoods Philastrius an ignorant Erroneous Hereticator Cassianus a Semi-Pelagian Cassiodori Chronic. est farrago temulentiae inquit Onuphrius Pan. Pene nunquam cum Eusebio convenit inquit Vossius c. I say Though it be no wrong to the Church to take them for fallible and such as have mistakes which the English Articles say even of General Councils yet it wrongfully shaketh all our belief of Church History to call their Credit in matters of fact into question for their Errours or opinions sake without good Evidence that either they were ignorant mis-informed or wilfully lied But if the Novatians were more strict precise than others it 's rather like that they were more and not less credible than others and made more or not less conscience of a lye Certainly that which the rest named are charged with is somewhat more as to Historical Credit than to be Novatians So that if these men had been Novatians I should yet say by the Complexion of their History that They are two of our most useful and credible Church Historians § 5. But when it serveth his turn he can gather out of Sozomen that even in Constantine's time Constantinople was Altogether a Christian City Because he mentioneth the great Enlargement of it and great encrease of Christianity When as no man that lived could be a sitter judge of the number of Christians in his time than Chrysostom And he that considered that there and every where Constantine left all the Jews and Heathens uncompelled to be Christians yea and used them commonly in places of dignity and Government in City Provinces and Armies and that they continued in such power under many Emperours after him will hardly believe that in Constantine's time C. P. had half or a quarter so many Christians as were in the time of Arcadius and Chrysostom And yet then Chrysostom conjectureth the Christians to be an hundred thousand and all the City poor half as many but the Jews and Heathens not to be numbred See him one Act 4. Hom. 11. When he is making the most of their estate and
praised God 45. The 88 Heresie thought that the Levitical Feasts were litterally to be understood not knowing that it was the 8 Feasts of the Church that were meant 46. The 90 Heresie preferred Aquila's Translation before the Septuagint 47. The 91 preferred a Translation of thirty men before the Septuagint 48. The 92 preferred another Translation of six men before it 49. Another Heresie preferred the Translation of Theodotion and Symmachus before it 50. The 94 Heresie preferred the Scriptures found in a Vessel after the Captivâ—â—y before it 51. The 96th ought that Melchizedeck had no Father or Mother not knowing that it 's spoken of him as learning that which his Father and Mother never taught him 52. The 97 hold that the Prophet Zachariah of Fasts is to be properly understood when as it is but for the four Fasts of the Church viz. for Christmas Easter Epiphany and Pentecost 53. The 98 Hâ—râ—sie holdeth that Solomon ' s great number of Wives and Concubines is literally to be understood whereas it is meant but of diversity of Gifts in the Church 54. The 100 Heresie thought that the Measuring Cord in Zachary was to be understood of measuring Jerusalem literally whereas it meant the choice of Believers 55. The 101 Heresie not understanding the Mystical Sense of the Cherubim and Seraphim in Isaiah are troubled about it and in doubt And here he Mystically tells you the Mystical Sense 56. The last Heresie thought that one of the Cherubims came to Isaiah and with a Coal touched his Lips and that it was an Angel or Animal with Fire whereas it is the Two Testaments and the Fire of God's Grace To these you may add if you please the Heresie of holding Antipodes determined by Pope Zachary by the Mediation of the holy Bishop Boniface I think an English man And of what peril it is for Christians to eat Jayes and Rooks and Badgers and Hares and Wood horses And Lard must not be eaten before it is dryed in the Smoak or boiled on the Fire Or if it be eaten unboiled it must not be till after Easter And there must be three great Lamps set in a secret place of the Church after the similitude of the Tabernacle which must be kept burning and at Baptism others lighted by them Reader remember 1. That Philastrius as well as Epiphanius was a Bishop 2. Yea and a Saint whereas very few Bishops of all the Councils had the honour to be Sainted Therefore if you say that all these were not Anathematized by Councils I answer 1. All these are Registred as Hereticks 2. And they held as Mr. Dodwell and his Company here do that he that communicateth with Hereticks is to be judged a Heretick 3. And that Hereticks are no parts of the Church And forget not above all the Henâ—ician Heresie which determineth not only our King but many Papist Princes to be Hereticks for claiming Investâ—tures And now Reader I unâ—eignedly hate uncharitableness and therefore deny no good that was in such Bishops But I must no more be indifferent between Good and Evil than between Heaven and Hell not may I judge Christ a Railer for saying to his prime Apostle Get thee behind me Satan thou art an offence unto me c. If the name of Hereticators that is too rash pronouncing men Hereticks be railing I will give thee no Character censure or name of the aforesaid practice for I can devise no name which may not be called Railing But judge of it and call it what you see cause And again if you say These are not the Decrees of Councils I answer These are but Flea-bitings to the wounds that the Church hath received from Councils by Anathematizing The next Instance of Railing in these words which he half repeateth Either credible Socrates and others were gross Lyars or this Patriarch and St was a dowâ—right Knave Ans He himself is so far from denying this that he makes Socrates and Sozomen not only Lyars but Lovers of a Lie for what they say of St. Theophilus And who is it then that is the Railer Read the Story The next Instance is p. 95. that I call Bishops the Firebrands of the World Ans The words are these I take them to be the Firebrands of the World and unworthy the regard of sober men who pretend to know mens Judgments better than themselves and allow not mens own aâ—liberate professions to be the notice of their Faith If they will say that you are Hereticks in heart though your Tongue and Life prâ—fess sound Doctrine what means hath any man to clear himself against such and keep from their Inquisition Racks or Flames Is this Railing The next Instance is the Word Self-conceited Bishops P. 98. Having mentioned the many Logical Niceties necessary to decide the Question between the Nostorians Eutychians and the Orthodox I said Is it not pâ—ty that such Questions should be raised about the Person of Christ by self conceited Bishops and made necessary to Salvation and the World set on fiâ—e and divided by them Reader remember the Division made by it conâ—inueth to this day to the Separation and Condemnation of a great part of the Christian World And is the name self-conceited in describing the cause of this a railing How much worse râ—â—ers are they that will call a Drunkard a Drunkard or a Forâ—â—cator a Fornicator Read the sadder words of Ludolphus The next railing is merciless furâ—â—us Bishopâ— pag. 196 Ans There is no such word When I find where it is I shall see the occasion of it Italy Piedmont Ireland c. have tried that there have been such The last is pag. 183. The Confounders of Churches Ans I thought I had merited of them by my impartiality and lenity As after I commend the Wisdom peaceableness of Pope Hâ—norius though a General Council even for that made him an Hâ—retick so I here justly commend the Wisdom and Peaceableness of Pope Vigilius who advised the Council to leave dead men to God Theod. Mâ—ps Theodorite and Ibis and not damâ— them when God hath judged them already and yet not to admit any of their wrong opinions I â—â—y Tâ—is was the right way If they had all dealt as visely and Christianlike Councils â—ad not been the Consounders of the Câ—uâ—châ—â— Is this railing At last they forced Pope Vigâ—lius to subscribe to them and it so consounded the Churches that a great part of Italy itself forsook the Church of Rome for it and set up another head against the Pope aâ— 100 Years Was not this confusioâ— And must it not be known Reader as far as I understand them the Paraphrase of these mens words is If we kindle a fire in the Church name it nor much less call any to quench it or else we 'll say it 's you that kindle it say not you are excommunicate or silenced when you are though it be by Thousands else we will prove that you are railerâ— If we lay you in Gaols and
think that so great a Patriarchate Diocess would not find a conscionable Pastor work enough without joyning with it the Magistrates Office 2. Was not the Church greatly changed even so early from what it was a little before in the daies of Martin and Sulpitius when even Ithacius durst not own being so much as a seeker to the Magistrate to draw the Sword against gross Hereticks and the best Bishops denied Communion with them that sought it And now a Bishop himself becomes the striker not of gross Hereticks but such as peaceable Bishops bore with I remember not to have read that Cyril had any Commission for the Sword from the Emperour Others then had not But I deny it not § 6. He saith that elsewhere I say I shall not dishonour such nor disobey them Answ I say and do so If a Bishop will take another Calling from the King's Grant when he hath undertaken already 40 times more work as a Diocesan than he can do I le honour and obey him as a Magistrate But I would be loth to stand before God under the guilt of his undertaking and omissions § 7. As to all the rest of the History about Cyril's Executions and the wounding of Orestes the Governour I leave it between the Credit of Mr. M. and Socrates And he very much suspects the Story of Cyril ' s making a Martyr of him that was executed for it I leave all to the Reader 's Judgment I think I may transcribe Socrates without slandering Cyril Here his spleen rising saith There are men in the world that honour such as Martyrs for murdering a King Answ You may smell what he insinuates I think he will not say that he ever did more against them than those that they call Presbyterians have done We Wrote and Preacht against them when he did not I know not the Presbyterian living to my remembrance that was not against the Murder of the King and Prin. whom the Bishops had cropt and stigmatized for being against them as an Erastian was the hottest in the Parliament for the Execution of the King's Judges But I knew divers Conformists that have written or spoken to justifie or excuse that Fact § 8. As for the Murder of Hypatia I leave him to his scuffle with Socrates and Damascius in which I interess not my self § 9. I thank Pope Innocent Mr. M. durst not deny Cyril's faults in his Enmity to the memory of Chrysostom and yet he calls my reciting the matter of Fact a reproach He is constrained to confess That the Quarrel was it seems hereditary to him so is Original Sin and he did prosecute it beyond all equity or decency against the memory of a dead man This was a fault and and he that is without any or without any particular animosity specially if he be in any eminent place let him â—ast the first stone Answ Thanks to Conscience We feel your Animosities But is not this man a Railing Accuser of Cyril if I am such What saith he less in the main Yea he now renews his Accusation of his Predecessor saying It was hereditary To prosecute malice against the very name of a holy extraordinary Bishop beyond all equity and decency what will Christianity or Humanity call it But Faction saith it was a fault and he that is without any c. Thus talkt Eli to his Sons So one may say To Silence 2000 Ministers or to hate the best men and seek their ruine is a fault a Prelatical peccadillo and so was Bonner's usage of the Martyrs and let him that is without any cast the first stone And St. John saith He that hateth his Brother is a murderer and none such hath Eternal Life abiding in him and that as Cain he is of the Evil One the Devil And I believe him § 10. But he saith I injuriously charge him with calling Alexander a bold faced man when Atticus was the first Author of that word Answ Atticus mentioned Alexander's confident true and necessary Counsel Cyril contradicting it calls the man A man of a confident face or mouth If another Bishop said the first words before him do I wrong him in saying he said the second O tender men His urging the keeping up the names of such as Nectarius and Arsacius and casting out Chrysostomus is so like our Canons about Readers and Nonconformists and our Canoneers descriptions of their Country Parsons and the Puritanes that I wonder not that you defend him § 11. But he saith that It 's a little unchristian to blast his memory with the faults which he corrected in his life-time Answ 1. It 's necessary to tell that truth which blasteth the Reputation of such sin as was growing up towards Papacy Ans 2. Then Christ was unchristian to tell the Jews of their very Fathers murders of the Prophets while they disclaimed it and built their Sepulchres Mat. 23. And then it was unchristian in the Holy Ghost to blast the memory of Adam Noe Lot David Solomon Peter yea or Manasseh with sins repented of 3. History must speak truth about things repented of or else it will but deceive the world 4. The Honour of God and Goodness and Truth must be preferred before our own Honour Repentance if true will most freely confess a mans own sin and most fully shame it § 12. Whether all his far-fetcht Conjectures that Cyril repented be true or no is nothing to me I will hope he did though I never saw it proved The very last Sentence of Death might do it His retortion is I know no man deeper engaged in the Contentions of the Church than I The writing of his Eighty Books being but like so many pitcht Battels he has fought and most commonly in the dark when he was hardly able to discover friend from foe Answ It 's too true that being all written for Peace the Enemies of Peace have fought against them Nimis diu habitavit anima mea inter osores pacis But pro captu Lectoris c. All men take not the words of such as he for Oracles How much I have written and done for Peace let others read and judge I long laboured and begg'd for Peace in vain with such as he defendeth And it 's admirable if this pittiless Enemy of Sects and Errours can be for all the Sects and Errours that I have written against Have I in the dark taken for foes by Errour the Atheists the Infidels the Sadduces the Hobbists the Quakers the Ranters the Papists the Socinians the Libertines called Antinomians the Anabaptists the Separatists and Sects as Sects Be of good comfort all These Prelatists that accuse us for too dark and sharp Writings against you seem to tell you that they will more hate persecuting or distressing you Yes when they agree with themselves His Prayer that I may have a more honorable opinion of Repentance he calls me to speak to in the End § 13. Whether good Isidore Pelusiota were a man very easy to
Very good but cried Pretty good Ink Pretty good Ink and no body would buy of him and he lost his Ink. And if you cry up An indifferent Religion whatever you have for numbers you will have for quality but an Indifferent Church save our Rulers XV. But he adds Many of them would preach against it and their Governours too Ans 1. You tempt them towards it If I ask the Butcher Is your Meat sweet and he say it is indifferent I am excusable if I think it stinks 2. They judge by the effects They thought that when an indifferent thing casteth out a necessary thing it becomes naught 3. But yet your Accusation is unfaithful Why did you not say then that it was not for Non-conformity that men were cast out but for preaching against your Religion Who were those Was it proved If so what was that to the rest Do you punish many learned moderate men for the fault of a few others that they were not concerned with You now alledge Mr. Hildersham Ball Bradshaw Baine Knewstubs and abundance such for being against Separation and persuading men to come to the Common Prayer and many of them to kneel at the Sacrament and yet when you plead for their Silencing even other mens words may serve against them XVI To conclude in all he layeth the cause of their silence on themselves for not conforming and yet will not tell us what we should do to help it Would they have us Conform while we judge it as sinful as I have mentioned in my first Plea for Peace No they profess the contrary Would they have us believe all to be lawful We cannot Our Judgments are not at our Command What would they have us do to change Worldly Interest maks us too willing We study as hard as they We earnestly beg Gods Illumination to save us from Er rour We read all that they write to convince us And the more we read study and pray the more heinous the Sin of Conformity seems to some I askt Bp. Morley the same question when he forbad my preaching before the ejecting Act and he bid me read Bilson and Hooker I told him that was not now to do and in both of them I found the Principles which are made the cause of my Silencing my greatest Crimes and in one of them worse He then told me If God would not give me his Grace he could not help it And yet most of these men are against fatal reprobating necessitating Decrees The imposing Papists use men worse Of whom will you pardon a Fable A Bee and a Flie were catcht together in a Spiders Web The Spider when they were tired with striving claimed them both for her Food as a punishment for breaking into and troubling her Web And against the Bee she pleaded that she was a hurtful Militant Animal that had a Sting and against the Flie that she was noisome and good for nothing The Bee answered that her mellifying Nature and work was profitable and Nature had armed her with a Sting to defend it And the Flie said as she did little good so she did little harm and could make her self no better than Nature had made her And as to the Crime alledged against them they both said that the Net was made by a venomous Animal spun out of the Air and the Venom of her own Bowels made for no use but to catch and destroy the Innocent and they came not into it by malice but by ignorance and mistake and that it was more against their Will than against the Spiders for they contrived not to fall into it but she contrived to catch them and that it was not to break the Net that they strove but to save their Lives The Master of the House overheard the Debate but resolved to see how the Spider would judge which was quickly done without more words the took them for Malefactors and killed them both The Master of the House so disliked the Judgment that he ordered that for the time to come 1. The Bees should be safely hived and cherished 2. And the Flies if not very noisome should be tolerated 3. And all Spiders Webs swept down I need to give you no more of the Exposition of it than by the Spider I mean the Papal noxious Canon-makers and that by the Net I mean their unnecessary and ensnaring Laws and Canons which are made to catch and destroy good men and are the way to the Inquisition or Bonner's Coal-house or Smithfield Bonefires But I must desire you not to imagine that I speak against the Laws of the Land § 27. As to the Conclusion of his last Chapter I shall now add no more but this If what I said before and to Mr. Hinkley satisfie him not of what Religion and Party both sides were that began the War and Mr. Rushworths Collections and other Histories of former Parliaments be not herein useful to him let him but secure me from burning my Fingers with Subjects so red hot by mens misinterpreting and impatience and I will God willing give him so full proof that to say nothing of latent Instigators and consequent auxiliaries on either side nor of the King himself whose Religion is beyond dispute the parties else that begun the War in England did differ in Religion but as A. Bps. Laud and Neal and Bromhal and such others and A. Bps. Abbot and Williams and Bp. Bilson on the other side and as Dr. Mainwaring Sibthorp c. on one side and Mr. Ri. Hooker and such on the other side differed And if my proof be confutable I will not hereafter undertake to prove that English is the language of England But my Bargain must be thus limited 1. I will not undertake that from the beginning there was no one Papist on the Kings side or no one Presbyterian on the Parliaments I could never yet learn of more than one in the House of Commons and a very few Independents but I cannot prove that there was no more 2. You must not put me upon searching mens hearts I undertake not to prove what any mans heart in England was but what their Profession was and what Church they joined with in Communion 3. And you must not equivocate in the use of the name Presbyterian or Nonconformist and tell me that you take some A. Bps. and Bps. and such Divines as Ri. Hooker and Bilson and Bp. Downame the Pillars of Episcopacy and Conformity for Presbyterians And if it may be I would beg that of you that you will not take the long Parliament for Presbyterians and Nonconformists who made the Acts of Uniformity the Corporation Act the Militia Act and those against conventicles and for banishment from Corporations c. Notwithstanding their high Votes about the Succession and Jealousies of Popery and that which they said and did hereupon For I confess if it be such Nonconformists or Presbyterians as those that you mean I 'le give you the better And I must
it But we are mistaken No doubt men can write learned Volumes to defend any of these and if one do but say They please not God men may be found that can say I believe in my Conscience that you are mistaken and speak unpeaceably God is pleased with it all Sure the day of Judgment will be much to justifie God himself who is thus slandered as the Friend of every mans Sin What wonder is it if there be numerous Religions in the World when every selfish man maketh a God and a Religion of his own fitted to his Interest and Mind But when all men center onely in one God and bring their Minds to his and not conceitedly his to theirs we may yet be One. And if we could make men know that God is not for them and accepteth not of a Sacrifice of Innocent Blood however men think that they do him good Service yet they would not have this known It 's long since unhumbled Sinners turned Church-Confession into Auricular If Saul do say at last I have sinned he would yet be honoured before the People But the time is near when those that honour God he will honour and those that despise him shall be lightly esteemed Few men living can easier bear with others for different forms and Ceremonies than I but I take not the silencing and ruining of 2000 Ministers for Ceremonies were that the worst of it to be a Ceremony § 6. Pag. 69. You say We are not all of one mind yet A sad word from a Bishop Do you think that any two Men on Earth are of one mind in all things Were those agreed whom Paul persuadeth Rom. 14. to receive each other but not to doubtful Disputations and not to judge or despise each other much less to silence imprison and destroy We are agreed in all that is constitutive of Christianity and agreed that all Christians should love others as themselves and do as they would be done by I confess if you have such eminent Self-denial as to be willing if ever you differ from the publick Impositions about the lawfulness of any one thing to be not only cast out of your Lordship and Bishoprick but to be silenced imprisoned and destroyed I cannot accuse you of Partiality but of Errour I have known too many Conformists who needed no Bishop to silence them they never preached But that will not justifie their desires that others be silenced I have oft enough told you in how many things the Conformists are disagreed I now say the Bishops themselves are not agreed of the very Species of the Church of England To say nothing of their disagreement of the Constitutive national Head or Governour they are not agreed whether it be only a part of an universal humane political Church subject to an universal humane supream Power who hath the right of Legislation and judgment over them or whether it be a compleat national Church of it self a part only of the universal as Headed by Christ but not as by Man or as humane Politie having no foreign Governour Monarchical or Aristocratical Pope or Council Overdoing is illdoing and undoing He that would make such a Law of Concord as that none shall live out of Prison who are not of the same Age Complexion Appetite and Opinion would depose the King by leaving him no Subjects The Inquisition is set up in Love of Unity But we know that we shall differ while we know but in part Only the perfect World hath perfect Concord I greatly rejoice in that Concord which is among all that truly love God They love one another and agree in all that is necessary to Salvation The Church of the Conformists is all agreed for Crossing and the Surplice and for the Imposed Oaths Professions and Covenants Oh that all our Parishioners who plead for the Church were agreed that the Gospel is true and that Christ is not a Deceiver and that Man dyeth not as Dogs but hath a Life of future Retribution § 7. P. 69. Asking Were not almost all the Westminster Assembly Episcopal Conformable men when they came thither He can say No not in their hearts as appeared by their fruits And he cites some words of the sense of the Parliament Jun. 12. 1643. Ans 1. See here a Bishop that knew the hearts of hundreds of men whom he never saw to be contrary to their Profession and constant Practice 2. And he can prove by their reporting the Parliaments words what was these Ministers own Judgment 3. And he can prove by those words in Jun. 1643. what was their Judgment a Year or two before and is sure that the Scots Arguments did not change them 4. And he can prove that those are no Episcopal Conformists who are for the ancient Episcopacy only described by Bishop Usher and take the English frame to be only lawful but not unalterable or best And if really he do take him to be no Episcopal Conformist who is for enduring any way but their own it is he and not I that gave them so bad a Character It is he and not I that intimateth that those moderate Conformists who had rather Church-Government were reformed than such Confusion made by silencing and hunting Christians are at the Heart no Episcopal Conformists Their Hearts I confess much differ from the Silencers and Hunters § 8. He maketh me a false Historian for fixing the War on the Erastian Party in Parliament Ans Did I lay it only on the Erastians Have I not undeniably proved that the War here began between two Episcopal Parties Of which one part were of A. Bp. Abbots Mr. Hookers and the generality of the Bishops and Parliaments mind and the other of Bp. Lauds Sibthorps Maynwarings Heylins A. Bp. Bromhalls c. mind And the first sort some of them thought Episcopacy Jure Divino but the English Frame not unreformable And the other sort thought it was but Jure humano and these were called by some Erastians Let him give me leave to produce my Historical proofs even to single men by name that the English War began between these two Parties and I defie all his false Contradiction Only supposing 1. That I speak not of the King nor of the War in Ireland or Scotland 2. That I grant that the Nonconformists were most for the Parliament and the Papists most against them But when I have said so much to Mr. Hinkley already to prove this did this Lord Bishop think to be believed without confuting it § 9. But it transcendeth all bounds of Historical credibility that he answereth this by saying He and all his Abettors must know the Catalogues of that Parliament and that Assembly are still in our hands the Copies of their Speeches and Journals of their Votes c. Ans They are so to the Shame of such Historians You have many of them in Whitlocks Memorials I knew so great a number my self of the Parliament Assembly and Army as makes me pitty the
troubled at any one that did turn Quaker or against Infant Baptism than some indifferent Persons are at Multitudes And I was one that disputed most against them and wrote against some distant Antinomians mostly Souldiers But our Disputes satisfied and confirmed all our Neighbours more than Prisons would have done We punished none of them and none of our People there turned to them But I confess we were commonly too little sensible how much hurtful Violence hindereth Concord more than loving forbearance of tolerable differences As too many were how much for Peace they should have abated of the Zeal for their private Opinions which they thought to be better than they were We were much like the days that followed the Apostles which had some troublesome Sectaries but the main Body of Christians did cleave together in Love till success had puft up a rebellious Army to make themselves Rulers to the Confusion of themselves and others § 35. At last mentioning the common Dissentions of the Churches he seems to resolve the Question What then must be done But he puts us off only with the Negative Answer that the Rule i. e. of our Uniformity is not to be altered And why We have no assurance that we shall find any Conformity to it more than we have now Ans I must not call this Answer as it deserveth 1. You were about dealing otherwise with the Papists Dr. Heylin tells us how much they were to have altered for Concord Mr. Thorndike threatens the Land if you alter not the Oath of Supremacy for them The name of the Pope and Anti-Christ hath been expunged for them yet you said not We know not that they will come any nearer us 2. By these measures a Rag or a Ceremony should never be abated for the Peace and Concord of any Church or Kingdom You may still say we are not sure that this will serve them The Pope may say so where he refuseth to abate the shaving of the Priests Beards or the least of his Impositions yea he knows that would not serve They said so to the Bohemians four Demands They concluded so at first against Luther This very Argument hath kept them from all Reformation 3. Can you find nothing in your Impositions that in the nature of the thing is worthy to be altered If not you have more or less Wisdom than Bishop Morton and the rest of the Church Doctors who at Westminster motioned so many Alterations â—â— one should but then move you to correct your known false Rule for finding Easterday or to give Parents leave to be the first Promisers for their own Children and Godfathers but their seconds or not to deny Christendom and Communion for that or a Ceremony No come on it what will nothing must be altered lest men ask more And yet you preach against Clergy Infallibility or subscribe at least 4 But if you are so much against altering why did you alter to our greater suffering and add as much more yea five times more to the former Task and Burden You can no doubt say somewhat for all this 5. And when it is the same things that the old Nonconformists still asked and we since 1660 askt yet less what reason had you to raise that suspicion that we will not be satisfied with what we ask Have we given you any cause If you mean that perhaps there be some still that may be unsatisfied will you deny Peace to so many that beg it of you because others will not accept it on their Terms Or will you never agree with any lest some disagreement should arise hereafter Some Travellers were assaulted by the high way by a Captain of Souldiers who took all their Money Swords and Horses and swore he would kill them if they would not take an Oath to conceal him One took the Oath to save his Life another scrupled it They begg'd his Mercy to restore so much as would bring them home He askt them what would satisfie them One would have his Horse another his Sword another part of his Money He told them You are a Company of Rogues that can neither agree what to ask nor give me assurance if I give you this you will ask no more I compare not the Authority but the Reasons of the Denial § 36. But seeing no abatement of their Canons c. must be granted what is it that must cause our Concord He would not tell you but it 's discernible what 's left It must be no Concord but what Punishment can procure And what punishment Sharper than is yet tried for that hath not done it Such Concord as Tertullian nameth Solitudinem faciunt pacem vocant The Concord in Spain is worse than the Amsterdam toleration Again I remember the great Fish-Pond mentioned by Judge Hale that had multitudes of Fish and frie and at last two small Pikes put in when the Pond was drawn there was never a Fish but the two Tyrants as he calls them grown to a huge bigness The fear least Popery and Prelacy should be the two Pikes tempted men irregularly to covenant against them To have such variety as Roch Dace Pierch Tench Carp made it a Schismatical Pond The two Pikes were against Schism and Toleration and for ending the Division by reducing all to unity of Species § 37. As to his Question of Qu. Elizabeths days the Intimation may seduce the ignorant but none else 1. If he know not that it was the Subscription required in the Canons that nothing in the Books is contrary to the Word of God scrupled which broke the Peace and Concord of England he is unfit by his Ignorance to be an Informer of others I have known many that would have yielded to come into the Conforming Church if that one word had been but forborn For when any practice against their Consciences about baptizing Communion or Burials had faln in their way they would have silently shifted it off or been from home and have ventured to answer it so they could but conscionably have got in But our Canoneers are for all or nothing 2. He is sure no English Clergy-man if he know not how much is laid on us that was not known in the days of Qu. Elizabeth Is it to inform men or deceive them that he makes the difference to be between 36 and 39 Articles and saith nothing of all the new Covenants Declarationâ— Oaths Subscriptions Doctrine and Practises § 38. Many make use of Mr. Edwards Gangrena and the London Ministers Testimony against errours to prove the Heresies and Confusions of the late times No doubt all sin is odious But few men living are more competent Witnesses of those things than I. The Errours that sprung up were much more tenderly resented then than now You now have many called Wits and Persons of Quality who at a Club dispute against the Providence of God the immortality of the Soul and a future Life and there is neither Church-Admonition Excommunication nor any great
matter made of it but they are Members of the Church of England the purest Church in all the World Whereas in those licentious times if one Souldier had spoken such a Word it would have rung out through the Land and perhaps his Tongue would have been bored with an hot Iron It was the errours of the proud rebellious Soldiers that made most of the noise that had no considerable number of Ministers left with them I had a hand in Mr. Edwards Book thus An Assembly of Ministers after Naseby Fight sent me into the Army to try if I could reduce them Dayly disputing with them a few proud selfconceited Fellows vented some gross words At Amersham a few Country Sectaries had set up a Meeting in Dr. Crooks Church to dispute and deceive the People A few of Major Bethel's Troop that afterwards turned Levellers and were ruined joined with them I met them and almost all day disputed against them and shamed them and they met there no more I gathered up all the gross words which they uttered and wrote them in a Letter to Francis Tyton and after I found them cited in Mr. Edwards Gangrena And what 's the absurd Speeches of a few ignorant Souldiers that are dead with them to the Heresies and Schisms that these 1000 or 1200 Years continue in all the Roman Communion and they say in all the rest of the Christian World One cheating Papist as a converted Jew got into an Anabaptists Meeting one Maxwell a Scot and all England rung of it But when Bishops have made and keep France Spain Italy c. in the same Errours Dr. Heylin and Bp. Bromhall and such others took them for such with whom a Coalition on the terms by them described was very desirable CHAP. XXIV His 7th Chapter considered § 1. THE Man had not the courage to defend the surgent Prelacy in its Manhood and Maturity but only in its Infant and Juvenile State nor to defend the many hundred Councils which I mentioned after the Council of Calcedon in which either his Modesty or Cautelousness comes short of his Rd. Fathers who some of them own the six first General Councils and some of them eight and some would unite with the Church of Rome if they will abate but the last 400 Years additions § 2. In his Gleanings in this 7th Chap. he over and over and over persuadeth his Reader that I make or affirm that the Bps. were the cause of all the Heresies in the world and of all the Heresies Schisms and Evils that have afflicted the Church And hath this Historian any proof of this Or is it the melancholy fiction of his Brain Yes this is his proof contrary to my manifold Instances because I say in one age We have a strange thing a Heresie raised by one that was no Bishop which I have answered before To be then strange and never to be at all are not words of the same sense But his Answers throughout do mind me of Seneca's Words that a man that is sore complains or cries Oh when he doth but think you touch him § 3. He thus himself accuseth the Bishops p. 276 There have been wicked men and wicked Bishops in all times And p. 277. That some Bishops have abused their Authority and Office and been the cause of Heresie and Schism cannot be denied But yet He hath shewed sufficiently that most of my particular Accusations are void of all truth and Ingenuity Ans Or else those words are so § 4. He saith All Ecclesiastical Writers agree that Simon Magus was Author of the first Heresie in Christian Religion Ans All confess that Judas was before him And if it be a Heresie to buy the Spirit for Money it is a Heresie to sell Christ for Money But I confess some tell us of his after pranks at Rome and imitating Icarus at Peters Prayers If you would see why Dr. More takes this for a toyish Legend see his Mystery of Iniquity Lib. 2. C. 19. § 6 7. p. 447 448. § 5. P. 286 287. Baronius first and Philastrius after are made guilty of Forgery and disregardable History so that I may well bear some of his Censures § 6. P. 290. To confute me effectually he saith much what the same which is much of the sum of all my Book And yet it 's false and malicious in me and true and charitable in him viz. Praising the first 300 years when the Bishops were such as we offer to submit to he adds The following Ages were not so happy but as Christians generally degenerated so did the Bishops too Ans What! Before the Council of Nice That 's a sad Confession I was ready to say as a Roman Emperour said to a flatterer that still said all that he said Dic aliud aliquid ut duo simus But his next words allay it But yet not so much as our Author would make it appear As the Dominicans and Oratorians must say some falshood of Calvine lest they be thought Calvinists And yet he addeth The beginning of the 4th Century was very unhappy to the Church for Persecution without and Heresie and Schism within Meletius an Egyytian began a Schism forsook the Communion of the Church c. Next the Donatists Arians c. Ans It seems that the Emperours Constantius and Valens were without the Church and yet the Arian Priests and Bishops were within it When he defineth the Church we may understand this But is it not this 4th Century that is made the Churches more flourishing state by others § 7. Even the great Historian of Heresies Epiphanius is said p. 292. to be unaccountably mistaken in several things relating to that History And 293. hath a strange unaccountable mistake in diverse other things relating to that matter If I had at any time erred with such a Bishop and Father I might have been excusable for reciting his History § 8. Pag. 295. He opens the very Heart of his Parties Principles and saith The Church is never distracted more by any thing than Projects of Moderation Ans Experience proveth that you speak your Heart The words are no wilful Lye which agree with a mans Mind be they never so false as disagreeable to the matter No man was more of that Opinion than Hildebrand that would not yield the Emperours the Investiture nor as I before said abate the Prince of Calaris the shaving of his Bishops Beard to save his Kingdom Victor began with that Opinion too soon but his Successors have these Thousand Years been as much for it as you can wish 2. But to whom is it that you intend this Sure not to all Was Bishop Laud of that mind toward the Papists if Dr. Heylin say true Was Grotius of that mind toward them Was Arch-Bishop Bromhall Forbes Beziar Thorndike and many more such of that mind No I 'le excuse you that you meant not them and their Projects of Moderation Nor I believe neither Cassander's Erasmus's Wicelius's Sancta