blind themselves and knew not the Spirituality of Doctrine or Worship Mat. 23. 26. 25. They were loose Expositors of the Law of God and extended it not to those Internals and necessary strictness which was the proper sense but made it forbid no more than those notable external evils which themselves and their vulgar followers could spare Mat. 5. 26. And with the forbearance of these outward sins and the performance of their Ceremonies they so contented themselves and quieted their Consciences that they wanted the true and spiritual Righteousness absolutely necessary to Salvation Mat. 5. 20. 27. They were the very leaders of all the malignant party that hated Christ and his Disciples and more zealous against them than the very Heathen Roman Governours who sometime saved the Preachers from the Pharisees rage 28. They were so malignant that they envied the very good works and healing miracles which Christ did and repined and fretted that God should so much honour Christians Joh. 11. 47. 29. They were so malignant that no course of the Servants of God could please them or escape their obloquy But John that lived austerely they reproached as a melancholy Demoniack or a crackt-brain'd man and Christ that used a freer converse they accused as not strict enough for them 30. They were so malignant that they could not endure to have God acknowledged the owner and approver of Christianity but would rather have the people take Christ for a deceiver or his works to be done by the Devil himself than that God should be known to be the author of them as his attestation and seal to the Truth of Christ Mat. 12. 24. 31. Being a Generation that never had done complaining of those that conformed not to their Ceremonies and outside Rites and yet void of true Sanctification Christ pronounced them a Plant that his Father had not planted that were e're long to be extirpated Mat. 15. 13. 12. 2. 12. 2 14. 32. They formally preached much good as sitting in Moses Chair and having a holy Law to speak of but their own lives were covetous proud persecuting and contrary to the Law and to their own Doctrine and yet their very Doctrine had much corruption Mat. 16. 1 6 11. 21. 45. 23. 2. Luk. 16. 14. 33. Yet were these Pharisees of a much sounder judgment than the Atheistical Sadduces and therefore thought highly of themselves and some few among them had a secret favour unto Christ as far as their reputation and the fear of their party would permit Luk. 7. 36. Joh. 3. 1 2. Act. 5. 34. 23. 6 7 8 9. In all this I have but recited the Scripture Characters of the Pharisees not daring to speak a word of the application for I much doubt whether you will not think that I have drawn your picture by the bare recitation of the Text so much did I wonder at one of the last Sermons which I heard in publick but just such as I have oft heard forty-five years ago which was spent in likening the Puritan to the Pharisee how the speaker avoided blushing and remembering what the hearers would think when they should read the History of the Pharisees in the Bible and whether they perceived what injury they did themselves who used to call the people to such observations For my part I would counsel them never to name the Pharisees more left the hearers apply it otherwise than they imagin At least never more to go about to make men think that the Puritan who is so contrary to him is like the Pharisee for men never speed worse than by such monstrous undertakings But yet it may be some of them believe themselves For he that will needs make his own Creed may make his own Faith but if they make as large Creeds for others and call them to subscribe them and to swear to them when they cannot make them a Faith proportionable they will but multiply Nonconformists And so much to your angry censure which leaveth us room for no more argumentative a defence 11 Obj. If you do scruple Conformity why do you gather private meetings and separate from the Church and hold your meetings at the time of our publick VVorship and encourage the people in their Separations For whatever you say of your self you cannot but know that it is so in London and in many other places Ans. 1. I told you not my own practise alone but many others and when I have told you our Principles you will the better know how to judg of our different practises The Nonconformists hold 1. That we are members of the Catholick Church in order of nature before we are of any particular Church For Baptism as such doth enter us into the former And that no man must ever separate from this Church upon any pretence whatsoever 2. That our Communion with this Catholick Church is our concord in the performance of that Baptismal Covenant which uniteth us 3. That our conjunction with this or that particular Church is a matter left to humane prudence and to be changed according to the interest of our own souls and the publick good and that God bindeth me not to one Church more than to another by any Law except that general Law which directeth us what choice to make of matters undetermined 4. That the Magistrate is the Governour of these Churches as to their external ordering which supposeth the Pastors to be Governours governed by him as Schoolmasters Philosophers Pilots Architects c. and that the Pastors are essential to the Church in a Political sense as we now take it as a Schoolmaster is to a School but so is not the Magistrate 5. That the ordinary instituted way of the Pastors call to a particular Church is by the Direction of the Ordaining Pastors and by the Election or Consent of the Congregation And that as the Churches had true Pastors without and against the Magistrates consent so may it have still seeing then and now the Magistrate had Power of Governing Churches already made by exterior order rather than of making or unmaking Churches And therefore that a Pastor may still be a true Pastor when he is prohibited to Preach 6. That the Magistrate hath the power of things circa sacra that is of Temples Tythes maintenance c. so that he divest not the Pastor of his intrinsick power proper to his office as to chuse his subject method words c. And therefore that no Minister may seize upon the said Temples Tythes c. against the Magistrates will 7. That ubi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia as Cyprian faith where the true Pastor is there is the Church because the Pastor is an Essential and the Governing part And as this was true in Cyprian's time so it is now 8. That if Usurping Pastors though by the Magistrates consent do take possession of the Temples and publick maintenance and Legal Right as well as possession this is not enough to make those men
it was my judgment that it was not my duty without a special call to perswade any man to Nonconformity when it was but in the issue to perswade him to be silenced and to deprive the Church of his publick labours Therefore did I never to my remembrance endeavour to make any one man a Nonconformist that did not come or send to me for resolution in the case And some such also I put off as far as conscionably I could Though I may never perswade a man to that which I judg to be sin yet I am not always bound to disswade him from it If I saw a man about to tell a lye or take a false oath to save the life of the King from an enemy or traytor I do not think that it is my duty to hinder him Affirmatives bind not ad semper I thank God not that so many laudable Ministers conform but that they preach the Gospel and keep up so much of the interest of the Church and Religion in the Land I have met with some women and hot-brain'd lads of another mind that said Let them put upon us the veriest ignorant sots and drunkards we shall be the more easily justified for not going to their Churches But I ever reproved this as the language of the Serpent who insinuating into the injudicious would increase the sin and misery of the world For my own part I heard all Ministers where I lived who were but tollerable in the Sacred Office I came to the beginning of the Churches Prayers when I could and staid to the end I took not my self for a constrained unwilling hearer of them but the more any external imperfection made my devotion difficult the more I thought it my duty to labour to stir up my affections lest I should as the hypocrite draw near to God with my lips without my heart I remember what was said of Old Mr. Fenne the famous Coventry Nonconformist that he would say Amen loudly to every one of the Common-Prayers except that for the Bishops by which he thought he sufficiently expressed his dissent I know how unable the old Separatists were to answer the many Arguments of the famous Arthur Hildersham John Paget William Bradshaw Brightman John Ball and other old Nonconformists for the lawfulness of Communicating with our Parish-Churches in the Sacraments and the Liturgy I was exceedingly moved against Separation truly so called by considering 1. How contrary it is to the principle of Christian love 2. And how directly and certainly pernicious to the interest and cause of Christ and of his Church and of the souls of men and how powerful a means it is to kill that little love that is left in the world 3. And how plainly it proceedeth from the same spirit that persecution doth For though their expressions be various their minds and principles are much the same which is to vilifie our Brethren and represent them as odious and intollerable and overlook that of Christ which is amiable in them In which when they have agreed as Children of the same Father they differ in their way of serving him One saith He is such and such therefore away with him silence him imprison him banish him The other saith He is such and such a one therefore away with him have no communion with him He that eateth not Rom. 14. will say Away with him because he eateth And he that eateth will say Away with him because he eateth not Both agree in murdering love and accounting their brother unlovely and intollerable 4. And I was greatly moved in thinking of the state of most of the Churches in the world if I travelled in Abassia Armenia Russia or among the Greek Churches I durst not deny to hold communion with them When I go to God in prayer I dare not go in a separate capacity but as a member of the Universal Church nor would I part with my share in the Common-prayers of all the Churches for all the world but am joined with them in spirit while I am corporally absent owning all their holy prayers though none of their faults or failings in them having many in all my own prayers to God which I must be further from justifying than other mens And having perused all the foreign and ancient Liturgies extant in the Bibliotheva Patrum I doubt not but our own is incomparably better than any that is there But I will not conceal it from you that I am not such a Separatist neither as to communicate with Parish-Churches only If only the Law have turned any Pastors out of the Parishes and the people and they still hold their relation and communion not to say now whether they do well or ill I will no more separate from them than from you I communicate with you in Liturgy and Sacrament but neither as with a Sect or Faction nor as the whole Church but only as a part of the Church Universal and so are they I will hear you and I will hear them when I have a just occasion I will communicate with you and I will communicate with them as I perceive a call If each side run away from the other I will run from neither though I will sin with neither and must go from them that drive me away But I tell all that ask my mind that I am not so indifferent as to the Ministers whom I must join with as I am to the forms and modes of Worship Not that I call their actions Nullities or say that the Sacraments are invalid which they administer For their usurpation cannot rob the innocent of their right But yet I will not be guilty of countenancing and encouraging any soul-murderer in so great a sin Three sorts of Teachers I renounce Communion with as Ministers 1. Those that through intollerable ignorance and insufficiency do want those abilities which are necessary to the essence of the Ministry 2. Those Hereticks who preach against any essential article of Religion 3. Those wicked ones who openly bend their application not against different Sects and adversaries for that is common to all the factious and peevish but against the serious practise of Godliness Temperance Love or Justice and that labour to make these odious to their hearers though their Doctrine be sound from which they raise these malignant applications These are the men that I will not communicate with I confess when I read in Sulpitius Severus the History of St. Martins resolved Separation from Ithacius Idacius and the Synods of Bishops of those times and the confirmation of him by Visions and the antiquity and credibility of that History if of almost any ancient Church History in the main and the stupendious miracles which he is said to work it a little stagger'd me till I considered 1. That Scripture only is our rule And 2. That it was not from the Episcopal Order that he separated for he was one himself nor from any particular Bishops that were innocent nor yet from the
ever it be the question only VVhether this man or that man be fittest to have his countenance and maintenance and to be by him allowed to preach when only one of the two is needful we shall never speak against him for chusing according to his judgment as long as meer hereticks impious or intollerably unable ones are not chosen But if many hundred worthy Ministers shall be forbidden to Preach at a time and in a Land where many hundred thousand souls do wofully cry out for help as lying in damnable ignorance and sensuality and ungodliness in this case we say that no Rulers may forbid such Preaching 3. The Objectors seem to intimate dangerous Doctrine that if a King should not be a Christian or of the right Religion he lost his power over the Church which is false however maintained by the Papists The Heathen and Infidel Rulers had the Government of all their Subjects Christians and Apostles as well as others They wanted aptitude to do it well and therefore some of them persecuted But they wanted not Authority a King loseth not his Authority when ever he loseth his aptitude to use it rightly Christian Kings only can rule the Church well but others also are its authorized Rulers and there is no external coactive power at all but in the Kings or Magistrates be they Christian or Infidel 4. Christ himself did not set up a Kingdom of this world or worldly nor exempt himself from the Government of the Rulers Nor did his Apostles exempt themselves or the Church Paul Rom. 13 c. and Peter call on all Christians to honour the King and to be subject to the higher powers for conscience sake Mark then in this how little our case doth differ from the Apostles when they were forbidden to preach not by Usurpers only but by lawful Rulers to whom they professed conscientious subjection and yet must obey God rather than those very Rulers 5. Christian Rulers are the Churches nursing Fathers and have more obligation than others to build it up but no more power to pull it down They have all their power as Paul had his For edification and not for destruction It was never referred to them to judg as I have before said whether there shall be a Church or a Christ or a Ministry or whether souls shall be saved or damned or the Gospel Preached where it is necessary to Salvation or not But only by whom and in what order which best furthereth mens Salvation it shall be Preached If a Magistrate as a Magistrate may not forbid necessary Preaching much less may a Christian Magistrate as Christian who is more obliged to promote it This therefore altereth not the case 6. The Sanhedrin and Herod and other Jewish Rulers had such real Authority as Christ did not disown of the same nature with Jehoshaphats and Hezekiahs If therefore these were not to be obeyed when they forbad necessary Preaching then lawful Rulers in that case are not to be obeyed 7. The Arrian Emperours had lawful Power of coactive Government over the Church and yet the Orthodox Bishops never thought it their duty to cease Preaching in Conscience of obeying their commands Though they were forced oft to quit their present Stations Let not any Cainite here say that I compare our Rulers to Arrians For I only argue that if an Arrian Emperour had true Authority and yet when he thus abused it was not to be obeyed by forbearing to Preach the same must be said of others that have authority in case of the like Prohibitions 8. Christ setled Pastors over his Churches 300 years before there were any Christian Princes or States By which he shewed that though Princes are the true Rulers of Pastors yet Pastors are more necessary to the Being of the Church and to Salvation of the people than Princes are and that Pastors hold not their office from Princes nor at their will unless you think they had no true power till Constantines reign 9. Magistrates may not hinder a sufficient number from entering into the Ministry else the meaning of Christ must be Pray the Lord of the harvest to perswade Kings and Rulers to give leave to men to become labourers Therefore they may not hinder a sufficient number from labouring when they are entered 10. Magistrates cannot dispense with absolute lawful Vows to God at least about necessary duty This all Protestant Divines maintain in their Writings against the Papists who plead for the Popes power to dispense with Vows But our enterance into the Ministry had the nature of an absolute lawful Vow and was done by the Magistrates encouragement For in it we did solemnly devote our selves to the Sacred office and work 11. Magistrates are Christs Officers and Servants and have no power but from him and for him as the Justice and Constable are under the King Therefore they have no power against him Therefore they have no power to forbid the necessary Preaching of the Gospel and where it is not necessary we confess their power 12. If the Magistrate might degrade Ministers or absolutely forbid their work then it would follow that one Prince hath the Government of all other Princes Dominions or else that all Princes on earth must agree to the degrading of a Minister For it is fully proved by Divines of all parties except some of the Independents that Ministers at their Ordination are as Christians at their Baptism entered into a Relation to the Universal Church and not only to one particular Church And therefore he that is removed from one Church or Kingdom is not removed from the Ministerial office which continueth as towards an indefinite object Yea we are first in order of nature related to the unconverted world as we have capacity Go teach all Nations baptizing them will be Christs Law to the end of the world And if they cannot degrade they cannot take away the power of exercising the office statedly but only suspend it for a time or limit the exercise or regulate it by their governing power on just occasions and governing an office is not nullifying or destroying it Obj But if the Magistrate may suspend them and deny them liberty in his dominions then it is he and not every Minister that is to judg who deserveth such restraint 1. If you speak of publick judgment which is the publick decision of a controverted cause no doubt it is only the Magistrate that is Judg in foro civili No Pastor may enter into the Judgment seat and judg his own cause But if you speak of a private judgment of discerning every mans reason is the discerner of his own duty for he cannot do it without discerning it 2. The Magistrate is to judg publickly but not as he list as left to his own will but as an officer of Christ under the regulation of his Laws as our Judges are regulated by the Kings Laws The King may judg between an Infidel and a Christian whether Christ be the
the necessity and that God and nature had given no power to themselves to know what is necessary good and helpful or unnecessary bad or hurtful to themselves Obj. The sheep chuse not their own shepherds nor children their own School-masters Ans. 1. This is as some call it Phrase-divinity Similitudes prove nothing beyond the point of likeness Sheep have not reason and children have it not in maturity and full use 2. Are we grown better and wiser now than the Churches all were for 600 years or for the first 300 either Why do men pretend so much to antiquity and cry out against novelty who when interest bids them do more than others despise the judgment and example of the Primitive ancient Church as a ragged fordid infant-thing 3. Mans nature hath laid the foundation of this order It is not possible for the people to be edified by Ministers or worship God in their communion acceptably against their own wills And therefore as their consent is of absolute necessity to their benefit and salvation so it is the more necessary to the just calling of him that must profit them For they are the likelier to consent to his Doctrine and rule when they have first consented to his relation and so e contra they are the likelier to reject the guidance of him that was forced on them against their wills Obj. But what divisions and heresies shall we have if all the people shall chuse their Pastors and then they may bring in Hereticks whether the Magistrates will or not Ans. 1. Their choice is a matter of mutable convenience but their consent is a matter of necessity 2. I say not that they alone must chuse them or consent Two or three Negative wills sine quibus non in a case of great concernment is safer than one alone Writings or treasures belonging to three parties kept in a chest of which every party hath a lock and key are safer than under a single lock The Ordainers have a negative voice and so have the people as to the relation of the Pastors to themselves And so hath the Magistrate under Gods Laws whether that man shall live or preach in his dominions 3. And God in wisdom is pleased to lay all mens salvation or damnation more upon themselves and their own choice than on the Kings because it is themselves that must have the everlasting joy or sorrow And therefore so he hath done by all the actions and means that stand nearest to their own Salvation 4. And when we say the Ordainers and people conjunctly should chuse their Pastors we still say that when they are chosen they are under the Government of the King 5. Apply all your Objections to the case of a Physician to his Patients it is meet that all Physicians be under the Government of the King and that he by Laws restrain them from the abuse of their callings And it is meet that the Colledg that can best judg be the discerners who shall be a Licensed Physician But when all 's done it is not meet that any one be forced on the sick without their own consent And why 1. Because their consent is necessary to the use of the remedies 2. Because it is themselves that are most concerned in the event 3. Because every man knoweth much of his own condition which the King doth not know Yet here you may as handsomely exclaim What shall every woman every boy every sottish rustick and tradesman have liberty to put his life into the hands of women or foolish Empericks what murdering of men by medicine shall we then have and what diminution of the Kings subjects Ans. But 1. this is your error which confoundeth all that you think the matters of imperfect man in an imperfect world can be done without any imperfection or inconvenience and then that you look only with one eye on your own side and cannot or will not see the far greater inconveniencies on the other side but will cure an inconvenience with a mischief and subvert the end and substance to preserve your particular way of Order What would follow on the other side if all men must have Physicians forced on them Those empty fellows that could make most friends should be the seekers and finders of the place especially if Physicians were made Lords and had the honour and maintenance that Bishops have And next the people must be taught by these formalists that it is not for them to judg themselves what is good or bad for them nor when to take Physick nor how much And next they must be told that it being an office of Government as well as of skill they must put their lives into his hand who ever he be that is the Physician of the place and not go to others as abler men O what work would these Orderers make If you here except against the aptness of the similitude I will only ask you now 1. Whether the King is not as truly the Governour of his subjects as to their lives as he is as to their Salvation Do not his subjects bodies and lives belong to his care 2. Is not every man as much concerned for his own soul more than the King is or any other as he is for his health or life Will not the Salvation or damnation be his own 3. Is not every mans free will as much and more to be exercised for his salvation as for his health You may drench him by force as a horse for his health and therefore there is more pretence for cogent Laws But so you cannot for his soul. These things are plain to them that are willing to see but not to them whose interest will not give them leave but like the Ephesian Craftsmen must cry up Diana and cry down Paul to save their Trades And yet I still maintain that the King is to afford his Subjects all help in his power for their souls as well as for their bodies IV. OUR Fourth main Reason why we dare not cease our Ministry is Because we shall sin against Nature it self even the great and radical Law of Love and shall be guilty of murdering mens souls And because Magistrates cannot dispense with the great and necessary Laws of Nature we put them all into one for brevity 1. If we were Lay men yet charity would naturally oblige us to do our best to save mens souls in a way that doth not greater hurt Deny this and you deny the master-points of natural obligation and are unfit to dispute about things indifferent And the judgment of the ancient Church as the case of Origen and other Teachers and Catechists at Alexandria as well as that of Frumentius and Edesius do witness is flat against you and so is the common judgment of Divines both Protestants and Papists who use to cite these instances to prove that in some case Lay-men may be publick Teachers But if they might not in Churches lest they seem usurpers yet in other
Catalogue of Questions for our Disputations at those Meetings and never then talkt to us of what he here writeth in a Book called Dubitantius Firmianus 2. Mr. Thomas Foley a Nonconformist Gentleman eminent for Charity having built near Stourbridge a Hospital and endowed it with about 500 l. per annum being my friend Dr. Good wrote to me to move him to give maintenance for two Scholarships in Baliol-Colledge and I wrote this Letter in answer to that but the sending was delayed till he was dead Accus 29. Another to save the Nation from the labours of a Concordant Ministry and from the blessings of Unity Peace and Innocence hath written a book lately called The Modern Pleas for Comprehension Toleration c. considered who at his enterance saith I would fain have any of our dissenting brethren to answer directly Whether there be any one thing sinful in her Communion the Churches as by Law established or only some things as they conceive inexpedient And p. 11. he saith Suppose that the terms of the Communion of the Church are not only inexpedient but really sinful if so then I shall readily grant that the Church ought not to be communicated with while the terms of her Communion are such But I shall presume to say with some confidence that it is not easie to find a considerable man among them who will not be ashamed to own it publickly or who doth himself really believe it And p. 12. I have been credibly informed not to say that I am able to make it good that Mr. Calamy did before his Majesty and divers Lords of the Council profess that there was not any thing in the constitution of the Church to which he could not conform were it not for the scandalizing of others so that in his esteem the Constitutions of the Church were in themselves innocent and the whole objection against them lay in the mistakes of other men Yet saith he p. 11. That the separation from the Church is so avowed and pressed upon the people as if that it were highly necessary and that communion with the Church was highly criminal at least in the opinion of the teachers Ans. And now Reader what a shake doth this instance give to the credit of History at least such as is written by interessed factious men yea what a reproach to humane nature For what untruth can be imagined so gross and what thing so nakedly evil as may not be expected to be found in Man yea in professed Christians yea in Divines of such a character Either this man and such others believe what they say themselves or not If not what Preachers what Christians what Men are these If they do what matter of fact can ever be so notorious as that we can hope that such men can know it What History of such Writers can deserve any credit What regard can the people be encouraged to give to the Words and Writings of such Doctors that no better know such publick notorious matters of fact and so confidently and boldly deceive the world in cases where so many thousands yea the Churches Peace and Concord is so much concerned Reader judge by these notorious evidences of fact of these mens credibility and usage 1. The judgment of the ancient Nonconformists is declared to the world by abundance of Writings in which they thought that they proved much in the English Constitutions to be sinful and such as men must suffer deprivation and death rather than consent to And are all these Writings no evidence of their judgments nor their sufferings neither 2. Since his Majesties Restoration the present Nonconformists still distinguished 1. Between Diocesan or National Churches and Parish-Churches 2. Between the Communion and Conformity of private men and of Ministers And 3. Between Approbation of the Church-Constitutions Practising all imposed and peaceable behaviour and submission And though some exasperated persons have by the late sufferings of conscionable men been tempted to separate from the Prelates and their party as far as St. Martin did from the Bishops about him and their Synods yet the main body of the Nonconforming Ministers as far as ever we could learn did judge as followeth 1. That those Parish-Churches which had true Ministers not utterly uncapable persons were true Churches of Christ. 2 That the ordinary Liturgy appointed for the publick worship was such as a good Christian may lawfully joyn in not speaking of Baptizings Burials c. in which some things they thought more dubious 3. That though combined Churches whether you call them Diocesan or National are not any otherwise a Divine Institution than as Concord is commanded us in general and may not be set up to the detriment of the particular Churches which are of Divine Institution yet a good Christian may and must live peaceably and submissively where some such combined Churches are guilty of Usurpation and sinful abuse 4. That Conformity to all the Subscriptions Declarations Oaths Covenants and Practices now imposed on Ministers would be to us a very great and heinous sin modesty forbidding us to meddle uncalled with the Consciences of the Conformists 3. Their judgment of the sinfulness of Ministerial Conformity they declared to his Majesty and the Bishops in many Writings when they had encouragement to attempt once the healing of the divisions And when because they agreed to leave out all harsh provoking words in their accusations of the church-Church-Orders and Ceremonies the Lord Chancellor had put into the first draught of a Declaration That we do not in our judgments believe the practice of those particular Ceremonies which we except against to be in it self unlawful In our next Address we desired that those words might be expunged and so they were Yet this extended not to Subscriptions Oaths c. And afterward many particulars were mentioned which we thought sinful and the supposition vindicated in a Reply to which the Bishops never answered And in a long Petition for Peace p. 6. we make this Protestation following Who can pretend to be better acquainted with their hearts than they are themselves For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of a man which is in him And they are ready to appeal to the dreadful God the searcher of hearts and the hater of hypocrisie that if it were not for fear of sinning against him and wounding their consciences and hazarding and hindering their salvations they would readily obey you in all these things That it is their fear of sin and damnation that is their impediment they are ready to give you all the assurance that man can give by the solemnest professions or by Oath if justly called to it And one would think that a little charity might suffice to enable you to believe them when their non-compliance brings them under suffering and their compliance is the visible way to favour safety and prosperity in the world And if men that thus appeal to God concerning the intention of
to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost Acts 4. 2 c. 3. Experience assureth us that from the beginning of the Church to this present day Christ never gave too many able faithful Ministers to his Church Supernumeraries of such were never its disease nor the amputation of them its cure There is still need of the Lords-prayer Thy Kingdom come And Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers c. That man is but a Christian or a Pastor in jest and Image and not in earnest and reality who thinketh that the Pastors now allowed are so sufficient for the great employment of the Ministry that more are but supernumerary and the rest may be spared without any detriment to the souls of men Even in the Apostles age of Miraculous gifts Dr. Hammond thinketh the Pastors were so scarce that every Episcopal Church had no more than one Bishop with some Deacons without ever a Subject-Presbyter And that there was de facto none of the Order of subject-Presbyters in Scripture-times And so think all the Presbyterians too And it is a notorious truth that afterwards the Presbyters were so low in abilities that publick preaching in the Church was mostly used by the Bishops only And many Countries have lost the Gospel for want of Preachers And wherever ignorance and prophaneness have broken in upon the Church as the Greeks Abassines Armenians Moscovites Papists and too many Protestant Churches it hath commonly been by the decay of able godly faithful Pastors And if one City or Parish of ten thousand have had too many their near neighbours have so much wanted them that they could not be esteemed supernumerary And in England there are few Parishes which need not helps even where the ablest men are placed much more where Is it seasonable then or doth it answer the Will or Providence of to call in so many when the Church hath always had too few 4. The punishment which you inflict upon the Ministers doth fall a thousand times more heavily on the souls of the innocent people who without being accused or speaking for themselves in a Legal trial have so great a penalty inflicted on them as none but a believer that judgeth of things in reference to Eternity is able to estimate a right Alas to the Preacher the suffering is small in comparison of the peoples What if they live poorly what if they want house or clothes or bread How small a matter is that in comparison of the want of knowledg and faith of grace and salvation I confess their sufferings will cost them dear that are the true cause when Christ condemns those that do not relieve them But to themselves it is no such dreadful business Nay if they were but discharged in conscience from the Ministerial Office most of them might live in much more peace and plenty in the world There are many other Callings to betake themselves to in which they might live quietly and not be as the Hare before the Hunters pursued from place to place with cryes as if they that will imitate Paul in labours must bear also his reproach as pestilent fellows and movers of sedition among the people that do contrary to the decrees of Cesar and turn the world upside down Yea many are already turned Physicians and they have better words and kinder usage But every man that hath the eyes of a Christian in his head and seeth what the people of England VVales and Ireland are for members and for quality and seeth and heareth also what Ministers for number and quality do instruct them doth know as certainly that many hundred thousand souls do wofully need more Ministerial helps as he knoweth that five hundred Scholars do need more than one School-master or five hundred sick men need more than one Physician But O what a plague is it to the Church and World to have Ministers who when they read of the necessity of knowledg holiness and salvation do neither believe Christ nor themselves Argue not the people into such hard thoughts of you as if this were your case by perswading them that it is no matter whether their souls have any more Ministerial helps than now is given them Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost and that the cure of gross ignorance hard-heartedness unbelief and sensuality are of necessity to salvation or not If not deal openly and silence both your selves and us If yea then either you know how these maladies abound in the people and how much labour the cure doth usually cost or not If not then take not on you to be Pastors or English men or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to But if you do know this then I need to say no more to you but to desire you to fuppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors The worldling drunkard and fornicator is most miserable that would have no reproof or help Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cryes and that you hear them calling to you for help O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance unbelief insensibility worldliness and sensuality that are utter strangers to that life of faith and love and holiness without which none can please or see God and must quickly be converted and made new creatures or they are lost for ever Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints you heard them expostulating with you for their souls O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation Alas our ignorance and deadness and worldly-mindedness and fleshly affections are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used what shall we do then if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed Alas say not that the reading of the Scriptures and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn We confess that it should do so if our disease were so light as to need no more the thing it self is good and every word of God is precious but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep and hardned in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone It is the skilful choice of pertinent Truths convincingly and clearly uttered and closely applied with life and seriousness that our case requireth We confess that if a School-boy or a raw ignorant youth from the University did but read a chapter or say over a less pertinent cento of good words we should be moved
furnace devoured the Executioners and so did Daniel's Lyons too God hath ever shewed himself a God of Love and an enemy to the enemies of it Many are the afflictions of the righteous but God hath many ways to deliver them out of all As I said already who would have thought that enow should have escaped Queen Maries Bonefires to have planted a Protestant Church so soon Or so many escaped the French Massacre as so soon to have made that fact repented of and ring to the Odium of the Actors through the world Yea that so many should survive the Two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland as to see so terrible a revenge Yea that the far greater Murders of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses should be followed with a resurrection of the witnesses of the truth with double advantage and leave the everlasting odium of bloody cruelties upon Rome and that the German-sufferings should so soon be revenged by the Swedes Or that the desolations which for the Interim were made among the German Ministers should so soon be repaired Or that the Prelacy which Constantius and other Arrian Emperors set up should so soon be changed and the Arrian cruelties recorded to their perpetual shame And that the Vandals in Africa should but murder Ministers enow to kill themselves with the stroke Or that the true Persecutions of the Heathen Emperors should but increase the Church of Christ and the blood of Martyrs should be its seed Or that fewer Nonconformist Ministers than there be Counties in England in 1640 should multiply into that number as they did within two or three years Or that the Diocesan-Ministers supprest by Cromwell should revive to the strength that they were in within three years after his death Men may contrive but God will dispose Caiphas may think that one should dye for the people rather than all the Nation perish and the fact may prove their speedy and most dreadful ruine 2. And as blood cryeth loud to God for revenge so it usually maketh the actors so odious in the world that men will hardly leave it unrevenged There is no hope that ever you should be able to extirpate both grace and good nature out of the world There will be some sparks of love and humanity in the minds of men when interest quencheth them not when you have done all And these sparks of charity and humanity will make all the actors of cruelty odious and the people will take them for Bears and Wolves Yea if you were able to perswade others by your words and books as you do your selves by your interest and passions that we are as very fools and disobedient to your Lordships as you describe us yet most men and especially English men will pity the suffering side and will think with heart-rising on the men of blood When the Puritans suffered the people pitied them and cryed out against the Prelates When the Diocesan party suffered the people pitied them and cryed out against Cromwel and those that cast them out And now they are turning about again tho' I know there are many more cases do concur 3. And God having resolved that the memory of the just shall be blessed and that the name of the wicked shall â—ot and that the greatest of the ungodly shall not be the Master of Fame nor any more able to leave an odium on the name of the just than to pursue their souls with malice into heaven no nor so much as to preserve their own names from odium any more than to keep their bodies from corruption It hence comes to pass that the very odor and perfume of sufferers names that endure the wrath of man for the sake of God and conscience doth so invite posterity to their mind and way that multitudes quickly rise up in their steads And the loathed names of the persecutors of the godly doth make posterity shun their courses What a stink hath the name of David Seton in Scotland of Bonner of London and Gardiner Bishop of Winchester left behind The like I may say of all such men 4 Moreover the same reasons that prevail with us will prevail with others when we are dead They will be as fearful of lying and perjury and of swearing Allegiance to Church-usurpers as we have been There will still be a people seriously religious that are Christians in good sadness and really believe a life to come There is no hindering it God will have it so and who can gainsay him And these men will be as loth under pretence of order and decency to have Religion dwindle into a lifeless form of words and ceremonies and to take the chaff and straw for the corn as ever we have been before them And the History of our sufferings will but animate them 5. Besides this 1. While you are doing your work you are dying you are alas that 's the cut-throat of your comforts but mortal men your selves Bonner is dead and Gardiner is dead Guise is dead and D' Alva is dead King Edward's Reformation and Q. Maries Persecution were both cut short by the shortness of their lives When you have destroyed ten or twenty or an hundred Ministers and are resolving Thus we will use them all A Fever or an Apoplexy or some other Messenger of an offended God doth stop you in your course and call you to judgment and tell you that when it is too late which you could not hear from such as we Cum tamen a figulis munitam intraverit urbem Sarcophago contentus erit Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum Corpuscula Nature will not suffer you long and Justice oft anticipateth the time of Nature The strange Histories of Gods Judgments are not all fables Nullane perjuri capitis fraudisque nefandae Poena erit Juv. 6. And sometimes God stoppeth a Saul in his way with greater mercy And sometimes crosses make men melancholy and retire from their cruel course Can you think of two such instance as Dioclesian and Charles the fifth without admiration And oft-times an accusing-conscience beginneth such a hell on earth as interrupteth the execution of malicious purposes And sometimes the very odium of the people turneth them off with shame both which the same Poet intimateth Sat. 13. Exemplo quodcunque malo committitur ipsi Displicet auctori Prima est haec ultio quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur improbae quamvis Gratia fallacis Praetoris vicerit urnam Quid sentire putas omnes Calvine recenti De scelere fidei violatae crimine And domestical afflictions may cool the fire of vour consuming zeal You must not look to be still imposing crosses and making crosses for your neighbours and feel none your selves It may be your great Patrons may dye or fall or forsake you and then your hearts are broken It may be death may enter into your own families and make you think what blood-thirstiness doth tend to Ut Vigeant sensus animi ducenda tamen