Service of your Hypothesis and on the Judgment and Practice of the Faithful in the purest Ages alias the most Popish Ages so that you presume your Inference is clear That all those who have separated without just Cause from the outward Communion of that Church with which they ought or with which you will say they ought to hold Communion and so persisting in that Separation tho' otherwise never so Orthodox or Holy have hereby so cut themselves off from the Body of the Vniversal Church that they can do nothing that can qualify themselves or others for Communion with it So that by this your Rule of Catholick Vnity in outward Communion all those Persons and Churches that herein agree not with you are not of the Body nor united to the Head and then must necessarily be in a state of Damnation Woe be then to all those poor Churches that are to your Constitution and way of Government and Worship Strangers But by the way give us leave to ask you How it comes to pass that Baptism and Ordination received in the Church of Rome are accounted valid in your Church of England and yet Ordination in any Protestant Church that 's not of your Constitution accounted Null Or for what politick Reason is their Baptism allowed and their Ordination only Condemn'd Is it because the Church of Rome never separated from you nor you from it as all the other Protestant Churches have done Who must therefore be all abandon'd by you as Harlots that deserve to be ston'd while Rome is own'd for your Sister or your Mother and of the same Catholick Body with you Either own the Relation or renounce the Title of Protestant Will you say that these Churches were never in Communion with you and therefore did not go out from you Suppose this were true of the main Body of them that they were never in particular outward Communion with the Church of England tho' before the Reformation they were in the same Church with you and many of those and of their Children who were once actually in particular Communion with you went out from you on the same Account as we do yet supposing it otherwise How little will this help Them more than Vs as to the Oneness of the outward Communion of the universal Church in the Sense that you take it and urge it on Vs And now that we are upon Enquiries with you Pray be not offended if we ask you once more What think you of our first Protestant Reformers Before they actually separated from the Church of Rome were they not Members of that Church and in outward Communion with it If not how could they be said to separate from it But if they were let us ask you again was that Church of which they were then Members a true Church of Christ or not If not then that Church and all the Members of it was not united to the Head and consequently was no Church nor by your Rule of Catholick Vnity could do any thing to qualify themselves or others for Communion with any part of the Catholick Church and from whom then did your Church of England or any of the Reformed derive their Succession and Authority from the Apostles But if it was a true Church how could they according to your Notion of Catholick Vnity separate from it without involving themselves in the guilt of Schism with which you now charge us May we not hence conclude that to separate from a true Church of Christ that retains the Essentials of a Church is not always Schismatical nor a Solution of Catholick Vnity Will you tell us that these had a Warrant by a Call from Heaven to justify their Separation Rev. 18.4 2 Cor. 6.17 But on what Reason was this Call grounded Come out of her my People that ye be not Partakers of her Sins And doth not the same Call reach Vs as far as the Reason is the same Tho' the Sins of the Church of Rome were greater than those of the present Church of England yet what is Sin is Sin still and will by your own Concessions so far justify our Separation and on no other Account do we desire or pretend to justify it The Separatists condemn'd in Scripture and with whom you would sort Vs and so represent us to the World were Men of very ill Character as to their Morals Persons given up to Sensuality walking after their own ungodly Lusts tho' veild under a Form of Religion yet by their corrupt Lives they were visibly to be discern'd Now let the impartial part of the World judge whether this be so much our Character as the Character of those by whom we are thus Censur'd That the Fathers and Bishops of the first Ages were very jealous of the Union of their Churches and an intire Obedience to their Ecclesiastical Rulers very Passionately and sometimes Hyperbolically declaiming against Separation or setting up Pastors without the Approbation of their own Bishops is not to be denyed and for which they had some prudential Reasons The Christian Church was then in its Infancy and therefore requir'd a stricter Hand of Government over it for the preservation of its Unity in Communion the Faithful were not so well settl'd and experienced in their Way their Dangers were many ways extraordinary not only from the Heathen Persecutors but from the Jewish Bigots which were in so many Places dispers'd among them and had so troublesome and ensnaring an Influence on the young Gentile Converts Besides the many false and seditious Teachers which the Devil had Sown as his Tares almost every where among them the Orthodox Presbyters too few and generally too weak to deal with so many so potent and so subtil Enemies or to be entrusted with the Conduct of the Church without the Counsel and Direction of its prime Guides and Governours Besides the Honour and Satisfaction of Sovereign Rule and Dictatorship is what was ever very pleasing to Nature So that all these things consider'd we have no reason to wonder at the Heat of their Spirits in this Case And indeed the Church had then very great Reason to bless God for this their Zeal and most religiously to observe them in it especially while they had no cause to dissent or divide themselves on the account of any Heresies they Taught them or any disputable unscriptural Impositions that were required as the Conditions of their Communion with them There were no such Things exacted of Them as have been of Vs and our Teachers which made their Obedience easy and indisputable And you may observe that the great Reason of their Care to preserve the Unity of the Churches outward Communion was not to uphold a few unnecessary Ceremonies but to preserve the Purity of its spiritual Worship and Doctrin which was infinitely more valuable and consequential a circumstantial variety of the external Forms of Church-Administrations would have done the Church no more harm than the variety which we see in every Species
of the Creation doth do them as long as that wherein the vital Substance of Religion consists is preserv'd You having prov'd that a causeless Separation from the Church is highly Schismatical wherein we do not oppose you in the Theorie but in the Application of your Doctrin in which you all along beg the Question you tell us That for Separatists to set up opposite Churches and Officers is a degree of Sin much worse than Separation it self And we will say as you do when once you have prov'd the Separation to be Causeless But till then we hope your Christian Charity will allow us to provide for our own Souls that we may not be as Sheep without a Shepherd when we are either unjustly cast out by you or most justly separated from you And if you will not allow us this we will bless God and thank our more merciful Governours that do allow us without your Leave so to do Lastly You proceed to a yet higher Degree of Schism viz. When they that are engag'd in it constitute Officers without Authority or take to themselves Pastors that have no lawful Mission or real Ordination This is another of your orthodox Hypotheses which it is a thousand Pities that it should be dishonour'd by a Miss-application Sir We are as little for Uncommissionated Preachers and Self-intruders into the ministerial Office as You. Tho' bare Mission without Ministerial Qualification make but an Idol-Shepherd and wherein the Church of England is more deeply concern'd than perhaps you are willing to own yet Qualification without a rightly deriv'd Comission makes but a Thief or a Robber So that herein You and We agree in Thesi But when on this Head you apply to Us and to our Ministers that tragical Story of Korah and his Complices we cannot take it so kindly of you tho' you are not the first Man that in great Wrath hath thrown this heavy Stone at our Heads however we have not been hitherto hurt by it The History of the Case we need not repeat the Principles by which they were acted notwithstanding their popular Pretensions were Seditious and sacrilegiously Rebellious and the Judgment of God on them and their Followers as Just as it was Dreadful But before your Charity had apply'd this dismal Story and Guilt to Us and to our Teachers you ought to have drawn a true Parallel of the Case and have pro'd that our Ministers have no more Call nor Right to the Gospel-Ministry than Korah and his Company had to the Priesthood and that God hath set as strict Bounds about your English Episcopacy as it is now Established exclusively of all others as he then had done about Moses and the Aaronical Priesthood And till this be done there is no Man of sober Thought but must suspend his Judgment on us Out of this Preamble you lead us to your third Section where you tell us You are now come to our Case for indeed we think you have hitherto been far enough from it here then we hope for a fair Trial may we but be determin'd by what is written in that Book out of which both You and We must shortly be judged And in Order to our Conviction you are pleas'd to mind us how nearly it concerns us to enquire I. Whether we have not contracted the guilt of Schism in our Separation from the Church of England II. Whether we have not increased this Guilt by setting up opposite Churches and Officers or joyning with them III. Whether our Pastors have any just Title to the Ministry Sir Had we not to the best of our Power and Skill with the greatest Diligence and Sincerity enquir'd into all these Things long before this Day we had acted very precipitantly and dangerously but yet such an Admonition as this however design'd shall never be out of Season with us But seeing you offer your Interrogatories not in the form of an Enquiry but of an Indictment we are ready to answer to each Article in our just Defence 1. The first Article of our Indictments runs thus That we have contracted the Guilt of Schism by our Separation from the Church of England that is to wave all Disputes about the Ambiguity of the Word what you are pleas'd to call the Church of England Tho' we have varied your Form of Speech we have done you no wrong it being a known Rule in Rhetorick that a Negative Interrogation is but a more vehement Affirmation And to convict us of the Schism you charge us with you plead thus Was your Communion with it lately Lawful and have any new Terms been added to make it cease to be so Or was Conformity then a Duty and is it now become a Sin This you take to be a Dead Blow which must needs convince us and make us cry Guilty or stop our Mouths for ever But be not too Consident before you have heard our Defence 1. By way of Concession you shall have all that you here suppose that you may see we are not froward 1. That we once thought our Communion with your Church of England Lawful we grant for had we not been so perswaded we had been self-condemn'd by our own Practice Yet whatever our private Thoughts were once of it that was not it that could make the thing to be in it self either Lawful or Unlawful our private Judgment being only a Rule to our selves And if we were therein mistaken thro' our Weakness or any Prejudices of our Education we hope you will allow us the Liberty of rectifying our Judgments upon better Information of which if you think us uncapable what do all your Arguings with us signify But 2. We will grant you yet a little more that we are still of the same Opinion that it is Lawful to Communicate with the Church of England i. e. that it is not absolutely and in it self Sinful so to do But then we hope that if your Charity will not your Logick must grant us that what is to be consider'd but as simply Lawful is Matter of Liberty and not of Necessity We say Liberty granted us by the Nature of the Thing without any Relation to what the Government hath pleas'd so much to your regret to grant us But where we are thus at Liberty to Censure us for using it is Inhumanity 3. If this be not yet enough to please you we will grant a little more we once thought the Conformity you contend for i. e. our Lay-Conformity to be our Duty nor have we repented of these our Thoughts to this Day nor acted any thing that is inconsistent with them We hope the Ingenuity of your cultivated Reason will allow at least in Thesi that what is a Duty at one Time and under some Circumstances is not always so at another Time and under other Circumstances This you must grant or you know with what a Crowd of senseless Absurdities you will be pester'd and of which you will not be able to rid your self Now having
Gift of Prayer may upon occasion be of Benefit to others But if it chance to touch your Noli me tangere and seem though but by consequence to reflect on the Honour of your Liturgy and the Forms by which you Pray that 's enough without any other Fault to render them most Dangerous Snares and instead of promoting cannot but hinder their Edification And this indeed is Canonical enough For your part you say you think a well-compos'd Liturgy has much the Advantage of our Way of Praying and is much fitter in Publick Assemblies then we hope you will bear with us in our Private Families where we thank God you cannot yet reach us And for this your Opinion you produce several Reasons which are no new things to us and which have been already Answered by such as on our side have Written on this Subject You say it secures the Honour of Religion in the Solemnities of Worship i. e. from such Expressions in Prayer as agree not with the Genius of your Fancy or the Fineness of your Stile or which on some account or other you might be ready to ridicule or to quarrel at And then it affords the greatest help in the part that you bear in it i. e. It eases you of one and that the more Spiritual half of your Ministerial Work so that you are more beholden to your Prayer Book than to the Spirit of God in that Duty which indeed is great pity but yet ingeniously enough confessed Again by this means You have no occasion to be in Pain or Fear as you think we are about the next words that shall fall from your Minister as you might have Reason enough to be were it not for his Form which he hath before his Eyes or which he hath made as perfect as the Child hath his Lord's Prayer Well may you be in Pain for one that never accustomed his Tongue to Holy Discourse more than what he hath prepared for his Pulpit That never studied his own Heart nor hath been experimentally affected with the Cases of Tender or Wounded Consciences No wonder if such a one be at a loss that is a Stranger to these things And Lastly By the Benefit of your Forms You have no Doubtful Expressions to exercise your Thoughts or disturb your Devotion with as you suppose there are in our Ministers Prayers before you can say Amen And this you take as a great Commodity both to the Minister and to the People for which it ought to be preferred before our way of Praying And why are not the same Arguments as cogent for the use of Homilies That so the whole Work may be cut out for him that Officiates which would be a great ease to his Studies some charge sav'd in Books A small Sallary would serve to maintain him as a Curate the more time to spend all the Week in the Satisfying of his Lusts and the Debauching of his Neighbours How happily would this conduce to the comfortable Assurance of your performing an acceptable Service to God and agreeable to his Will when the whole of the Ministerial Work is thus wisely prepared that there can be no Errour in it if the Man can but read English What you quote us out of a Sermon of Dr. Beveridge on 1 Cor. 14.26 in the Praise of your own Liturgy we shall not stay now to make Remarks upon there having been enough already said by others on this Point and of which you cannot be ignorant How your Liturgy was compil'd in that juncture of the Reformation or rather Accommodation the true History of these Times would inform you but that this was that that was Defended or Confirmed by the Martyrdom of many or of any was the Doctor 's great mistake and yours too That it hath been Established by Acts of Parliament and fenc'd with the sharp Thorns of Penal Laws too often Arbitrarily and Despightfully executed we have known to our sorrow but that ever it was yet established by an Act of Scripture we could never yet learn 2. You come next to Animadvert on our Ministers Way of Preaching which you represent as a Sect of Pharisees in which they have no meaning or a bad one and that we think our selves Edified by a Sound of Words when we understand nothing by it Sir this is Written with Scorn enough Then you fall out as well you may with the Antinomians But to set us forth in such Bear-skins as these is but a trick of the old Enmity and Policy But yet if for Argument sake you should suppose that we have better Praying and Preaching yet you say we do not preetend that there is any thing wanting with you that is necessary to Salvation Sir We do not pretend that Salvation is not to be obtained in the Church of England but whether there be any thing wanting with the most of those that are set over our Souls in our Parish Churches which is necessary to our Salvation or no of this we are sure there is something wanting that is necessary to our Edification or if you had rather have it in your own words to our Conversion and Advancing and Perfecting in Knowledge and Piety and Faith and Practice When we hear what for Airiness of the Notions or the Affected Quaintness of the Language we can't understand or for the Obscurity of the Method which seems to be generally affected and is become the Mode amongst your Modern Church-men in opposition to the more Plain and Instructive Method which was once called the Puritannical and now in derision called DRUM Preaching we can't comprehend or for the tumbling celerity of its utterance we can't remember when we must be Entertain'd with such jejune insipid stuff as a School-boy would be ashamed of in his Exercise or have Stones given us instead of Bread and Raileries instead of sound Doctrine or a good Sermon in the Pulpit and a Vicious Life all the Week after we can't think this to be very Edifying or the Way to make any great Advance Heavenward And 't is hard to perswade us thus to neglect our own Souls to keep up the honour of your Ceremonies 'T is true a Publick Good is to be preferr'd to a Private of the same kind We ought to deny our selves and to lay down our Lives for the Brethren but we know not by whose Law besides yours we are required to Damn our own Souls to please or to save others III. Your next Enquiry is Whether it be a good Rule that we may or ought to follow those Teachers whosoever they are by whom we can most be Edified or whose Praying and Preaching we approve as most beneficial to our selves To which as you have here more tuo stated it we Answer much as you would have us to do Sir We have no such Licencious Rule as this to walk by We are for Discipline and Order as much as you But when we are driven out of your Communion by your unconscionable Impositions or have
Wolves instead of Shepherds set over us and enforc'd on us or such as are either unable or unapt to feed our Souls with the Bread of Life we think it our Duty and Bless God that we have now Liberty and Allowance by the Law of Men as well as of God to make the best Provision we can for those poor Souls of ours which must Live or Die to Eternity by the more Charitable assistances of those whom the good Providence of God hath raised up for us and sent to us to this End So that what you alledge out of 1 Cor. 3.3 is not to our Case nor at all to your purpose Yet here again you lift up your cry of Unity and Order That which is against the Unity of the Church is against the Edification of it That is without an entire Conformity and tame Submission to all your Impositions your Church is broken and weakned and convuls'd and undone So that whoever they be that could speak with the Tongues of Angels or whatever their Qualifications and Commissions to Preach the Gospel be if they will not say as you say and do as you do in those things wherein you Dissent from almost all the Reformed Churches in the World we must for the preservation of your Ceremonies fly from them and avoid 'em as most dangerous Fellows And then what is against the Order of your Church must needs be against Edification as if there were no Order but with you or that yours were to give Laws and Orders to all others For what you seem to speak of the Church in general to carry with it a face of Orthodoxy you design only for your own Church from which you condemn us as Schismaticks for Dissenting and in this Vein hath the Fallacy of your Arguings run throughout your whole Discourse IV. Your last Enquiry is of the same kind and to the same purpose Whether our hopes of being better Edified may justifie our Separation that is say you if you have Stated the matter right which indeed is one of the most necessary Parenthesis in all your Book whether our false Hopes may justifie a Sinful Practice And this will as easily be resolv'd on your side as you can desire or imagine when once you shall have prov'd our Hopes to be False and our Practice Sinful but till then you do but beg the Question And now Sir Sect. ult we are come with you to your Last Section wherein you lament the deplorable consequences of Schism in all which we have reason to think you much more properly concern'd as guilty than our Selves who have been the Causes of all the Separation you complain of and of the ill consequences of it You tell us how it hath hardened the Insidels in their Unbelief and hinder'd their Conversion brought a Reproach on the Reformation of the Church and hindered the Progress of it gives occasion to the spreading of many detestable Errors in matters of Religion and greatly incouraged Immorality All which if you had as much Charity for your selves as you pretend to have for us you would apply as you ought to do to your selves unless you have a mind to be famous among those Edifiers that have more care of other Men's Soul 's than of their own But being sensible how far we have run with you though with as much haste as we could beyond the ordinary Bounds of a Letter we shall have done with your Discourse wherein we have found you better at Declaiming than at Arguing though this we would impute rather to the incapacity of your Subject than to the measure of your Parts or Learning when we shall have shewn a little of the face of your Spirit of Charity as it hath here appeared in your own Glass and now in a truer Light Cast back your Eye now and see with what Industry you have gathered up all that hath come to hand from the Fathers and from any others that hath been written in Aggravation of the Sin of Schism that you might cast it as Stones with all your might at our Heads Have you not represented us here who are both your Christian and your Protestant Brethren as the very worst of Sinners That our Sin in Dissenting from your Ceremonies is worse than Murder or Idolatry and equal to the Crucifying of the Son of God that we have hereby cut our selves off from the Catholick Church and from Christ the Head of it Have made our selves some of the most Execrable and Hopeless Villains on the face of the Earth That our scrupling your Way of Worship is much worse and more dangerous than downright Popery and therefore ought to be more severely dealt with and have no benefit of Protection from the Laws of the Land we Live and were Born in The Papists it seems are no Schismaticks as we are and therefore more tolerable and deserve more favour Have you not set us forth as worse than Thieves or Traitors that ought to be Punished with Death That not to Kneel at the LORD's Supper is a greater Sin than Drunkenness or Whoredom or the foulest Immorality not to wear a Surplice more Vile than Idolatry or Witchcraft to scruple the Cross in Baptism as bad as the Crucifying our Lord himself that our Blood though in Martyrdom will not expiate our Guilt though you should tear us in Pieces or burn us in the Fire and make our Houses Dunghils and rid the Earth of us yet this will not satisfie unless you can Damn our Souls too though all these be not your very Words yet are they not the direct and natural consequents of ' em Besides have you not laid your Protestant Brethren in France and Germany c. who are the Suffering Martyrs and Confessors of the present Age under the same Condemnation with us O Sir will you laugh at their Calamities and justifie the Barbarities of their Enemies and mock at their Tears and Groans and yet call your self Protestant Will you clap your hands at them and say Ah! so would we have it down with 'em down with 'em to the Ground that the Names of Calvin and Geneva may no more be had in remembrance Is this your Spirit of Charity and Meekness you told us of in the front of your Discourse Frouti nulla fides If these be your Tender Mercies what must your Severities be We will now only mind you of what one of your own Doctors once said to a Papist Still Ration Account p. 613. and leave you to make the Application When we consider says he how many among you dispute for the possibility of the Salvation of Heathens and yet deny it to those who own all the Fundamentals of Christianity what can we otherwise Imagine but that it is the Interest of your Church you more aim at than the Salvation of Men's Souls But before we dismiss you we must crave your leave to do our selves more right than you have done us in producing those Six Arguments