purposely sent from Rome and the greatest sticklers against our Ministers Tithes and Calling must presently depart and none of them return into the Kingdom as many have lately done or else be executed for Traytors But why so what is their crime work imployment here and by what marks or fruits shall we know discover both them and their confederates Let the words of the Statute compared with all our late troubles changes resolve the ignorant and incredulous that there are many such amongst us and of Iohn Cannes fraternity Whereas divers persons called or professed JESUITES these Canne wittingly conceals though the first in the Bead-roll and therfore is a Felon by the law Seminary Priests and other Priests which have been and from time to time are made in parts beyond the Sea by or according to the Order and Rites of the Church of ROME and when Canne can prove that all or any of our Ministers were thus made as he hath confidently averred in print to those he calls the Higher Powers and Supream Authority of the Nation Let them be hanged for Traitors and Antichristian Ministers in good earnest else let him be hanged in their stead for this his impudent slander of them all as well Independents as Presbyterians Have of late years come and been sent into this Realm of England and were any of our Ministers such and not rather Canne himself coming hither from Amsterdam for the purposes following and other the Queens Dominions OF PURPOSE AS IT HATH APPEARED as well by some of their own examinations now out of date as by divers other Manifest means and proofs more visible of late years than ever not only to withdraw her Highness subjects from their due obedience to her Majesty but also to stir up and move Sedition Râ—bellion and open Hostility within the same her Highness Realms and Dominions to the great endangering of the safety of her most Royal Person and to the utter ruine desolation and overthrow of the whole Realm now effected as a Realm if the same be not the sooner and now pray God it be not over-late by some good means foreseen and prevented For reformation whereof be it ordained c. That All Priests and Jesuits Canne cannot spy such good friends within the Act but deletes them out of it Seminary Priests and other Priests whatsoever made and ordained out of the Realm of England c. shall depart the Realm under the penalties therein mentioned Had Canne pressed this Statute to those he dedicates his Pamphlet for the speedy execution of it against those many Jesuits and Seminary Priests now in England for their traiterous Practices and Designes therein mentioned of late and now driven on and almost compleated by them it had been a commendable zeal but not to write one word or syllable against these Romish Vermine Arch-Engineers and Janizaries of the Romish See now swarming among us to ruine our Protestant Kings Kingdoms Parliaments Laws Liberties Church Ministers Ministry Religion and foreign Protestant Kingdoms States Churches now engaged by them in bloody Warres both by Land and Sea and to omit the very name of the Jesuits the first Popish Agents mentioned and chiefly intended in this Act and presse it only against our Ministers Calling Ministry Tithes Maintenance of purpose to ruine them and theirs and by consequence our Church and Religion the Designe and scope of his whole Pamphlet is such a malicious unchristian Antichristian Practice as proclaimes him to all the world either a new converted Jesuit or Romish Factor under the Garb of an old Anabaptist or an over-grown cankered Anabaptist void of Piety Honesty inspired by the very Father of Lyes For not one of our English Ministers I know or hear of except two or three Jesuits and Popish Priests crept into livings in Staffordshire and elsewhere very lately I know not by whose favour or negligence was ever ordained by any such Jurisdiction or authority as is here mentioned which all our Ministers and their Ordainers too whether Prelates or Presbyters particularly and publickly abjured both at the time of their respective Ordinations and admissions to their Benefices and likewise when they took any Degree of learning in our Vniversities by the two known famous Oathes of Supremacy and Allegiance purposly made and ratified by sundry zealous Protestant Parliaments against the usurped Papal Jurisdiction and authority of the See of Rome and the Popes Jesuits Papists practices to blow up destroy our Protestant Kings Parliaments Laws Liberties Religion and subvert our Kingly Government whole State and Commonwealth and for the better discovering of them yet lately suspended abrogated as dangerous unlawful Oathes by some of Cannes good friends who would be reputed Zealots against the Popes Iurisdiction and his Creatures too Now how those Ministers of our Church who thus abjure the Iurisdiction of Rome at the time of their very Ordination and their Ordainers too before them and since have done the like in their Solemn League and Covenant can without the highest slander be said to derive their Ministry from it and that by Canne and his Iesuitical Anabaptistical Fraternity who never took one of these Oathes or the Covenant and revile repeal them as unlawful out of love to the Popes Jurisdiction Jesuits Priests their Jesuitical Treasonable Conspiracies Treasons Practices or for want of zeal against them Let the world and this slanderers own Conscience if he have any left now determine Besides who knows not but this Ignoramus that the Rites and Ceremonies of Ordination in the Church of Rome recorded at large in Ceremoniale Pontificiale Pontificum Romanorum and the ends of Ordination likewise viz. to say Masse create their Creator offer up Christ in Sacrifice at the altar to his Father Invocate Saints adore Images yield Canonical obedience to the Pope and his Supremacy c. are far different from the form and ends of our Ministers Ordination in the Church of England prescribed by the Parl. of 5. 6. Ed. 6. c. 1. ratified by the Statutes of 1 Eliz. c. 1 2. 5 Eliz. c. 1. 8 Eliz. c. 1. and 39 Eliz. c. 8. made only by Protestant Parliaments which as they particularly condemn renounce the Popes Power and Jurisdiction so they declare and resolve our Ministers Ordination to be lawfull and them in very deed to be Ministers and rightly made ordained and consecrated according to Gods word without any derivative power or Ordination from the Church of Rome Therefore for this New old pander for the Whore of Rome to averre they receive their Ministry and ordination thence is a Notorious Ly. Yea but saith he Francis Mason of Consecration and Mr. Yates in his Modell of Divinity prove and confesse That the Ministry of the Church of England established by the Law of the Land is derived from the Pope and Rome True but in what sense onely by way of Succession as his own Ministry and Faith if he hath any were derived from John of Leyden
DECIMAS Primigenia adulta tua DEO DATO O that all those Militarie victorious Commanders who boast of like victories as he obtained would imitate him in these his Vertues Bounty Liberalitie both to our Universities Scholars Ministers and promulging Edicts for the due payment of their detained Tithes and Dues and then they should be Chronicled for SAINTS INDEED as well as the forenamed Kings of which there was not one in three in former Ages as Sir Henry Spelman observes WHO DID NOT ADORN AUGMENT ENRICH THE CHURCH IN SOME THINGS even during their very wars instead of making a mere prey and spoyl of her as some late SAINTS have done to maintain the warres and enrich themselves In which Sacrilegious Rapines if any shall persevere to the utter ruine of the remaining Glebes Tithes Maintenance of all our Ministers and Churches too the prime Honour of our Nation ECCLESIA Faemina Lana as some have designed and would engage them to do to render our Religion Nation and those who shall give their Votes thereto for ever execrable Let them take heed that instead of inducing the Ministers and godly people really fearing God throughout our three Nations to forget Monarchy and be in love with their New Military Government they do not necessitate them and most others too thereby by comparing their Irreligious Church-Robberies and Sacrilegious Rapines against the very Laws even of War and Conquest it self in an Enemies Country and detestable to very Heathens as Grotius proves at large to love and honour Kings and Monarchs more than ever as the only Nursing-Fathers to Gods Ministers Church People under the Gospel and to esteem others not comming in by the Door into the Sheep-fold but climbing up by Storm some other way to be but Theeves and Robbers who come not but to Steal Kill and to Destroy whatever the Bounty Piety and Munificence of these and other our Kings have built and setled on the Clergy for Gods Honour and maintenance of his worship and thereby engage them so to act speak and peremptorily resolve as all the Israelites and Godly Levites Priests People twice did in a like case 2 Chron. 11.13 14 15 16 17. 1 Sam. 8.3 5 19 20. If any here object these Kings and Queens were more Popish Superstitious than really Religious Admit they were in some things as too much doting upon Monkery not Monarchy or worldly wealth or Power which some condemn in others when most guilty of and applauding it in themselves yet their very Bounty and profuse munificent Building Monasteries and Nunneries whereof King Edgar alone built no less than 47. endowed them with large Revenues and intended to make them up 50. had he lived besides what they bestowed in building adorning endowing maintaining all Cathedral and Parish Churches and Chapels for the support and honour of their superstitious Religion should eternally shame all those pretended Saints who will be at no cost at all to maintain and propagate what they now call the True Religion and the faithfull Ministers of the Gospel but instead thereof will by mere Force and Rapine against all Rules of Law Justice Piety Equity and war it self plunder if they can the remaining Materials and Fabricks of our Churches which those Kings or their Successors and other antient Benefactors built for Gods Honour and the small surviving Lands Rectories Glebes Tithes Pensions Dues which our Ministers yet enjoy by their sole Bounty Piety Gift Laws without any real charge injurie oppression or obligation to any Mortals now surviving them But to take off the stain of Popery wholly from our Kings which was no disparagement to their commendable Charity and Bounty Consider in the sixth place that God hath honoured us with the first Christian King in the Universe Henry the 8 th who durst not only question but by Publick Laws and Statutes abolish and renounce the Popish usurped Antichristian Power and with it all Popish Shavelings Abbots Priors Monks Nunnes and many Popish Doctrines Ceremonies and restored the People to the use of the Holy Scriptures in their own Native Language Whose example encouraged other Kings Princes Churches to do the like Who though he seised upon Abby Lands as given to mere Superstitious Persons Orders Vses repugnant to Gods word and the Popes mere Creatures and Supporters yet he continued the Lands Glebes Tithes and Maintenance of the Bishops and other Ministers and augmented it and our Vniversities Revenues also out of the Abbies Spoyles which yet could not exempt him from the publick censure of some Protestants for selling or rteaining most of their Lands and Impropriations for his own use which say they he should have rather converted to other lawfull sacred uses according to the will of the first Donors And Mr. Purchas writes That the Monks unrighteous coveting and the Popes appropriating of the Tithes of some Thousands of our best Benefices unto Abbies and Monasteries and robbing the Ministers of them to whom only they were given by God himself and the first Donors for their Maintenance to the great prejudice both of the Ministers and People was one principal cause that by a Divine Judgement and Providence beyond all mens expectation the Pope and they were both suppressed together on a suddain even by him who not long before had justified his usurped Supremacy against Luther and for which he had received this ominous Title from the Pope DEFENDER OF THE FAITH God grant our New Defenders of the Faith do not as ill requite those Persons Powers who first commissioned them with their Arms to defend our Faith Church Religion against Iesuites Papists and their Confederates in the Field as King Henry did the Pope after this new Motto 7ly That our God blessed honoured us with the first incomparable Protestant King in the world no Papist but a REAL SAINT beyond any of his years in this or former Ageâ— even young KING EDWARD THE SIXT the first King I read of who by publick Laws and Statutes suppressed banished all Popish Pictures Ceremonies Superstitious Monuments Practices Abuses throughout his Dominions and established the true worship Service Sacraments Ministers and Ministry and Gospel of Christ throughout his Dominions for which all Ages shall call him blessed no waies embesselling or diminishing the Churches Glebes Tithes or Revenues and enacting a New excellent Law for Tithes recovery when detained But God taking him suddenly from hence to a better Kingdom and his Successor Queen Mary defacing deforming his blessed Reformation and restoring both the Pope and Popery again almost to its former height except in point of Monkery which the defacing of the Monasteries prevented 8ly God then blessed our Church and Kingdom with an unparallel'd Protestant Princesse Queen Elizabeth a Nursing Mother to the Church who demolished the whole Body of Popery with the Popes revived usurpations again by publick Acts established the reformed Religion again in greater beauty and purity than at first banishing
in his new Voice from the ALEHOUSE RATHER than the TEMPLE which certainly is as Jewish and Antichristian as he would have Tithes to be with sundry late Petitions Proceedings proclaim to all the World and strip them naked of all other coercive maintenance for the future to starve them and their families bodies and the peoples souls that so a new generation of ambulatory Fryers Mendicants and Itinerary Predicants fixed to no certain Parish or Parishes selected out of those swarms of Jesuits Seminary Priests and Popish Fryers now in England under the disguises of Anabaptists Gifted Brethren Dippers Seekers Quakers New-lights Mechanicks of all Trades Gentlemen Troopers and Souldiers too Ignatius Loyola their Father and founder of their Order being a SOULDIER by his profession as diverse of his Disciples are now amongst us as many wise men believe and some on their own knowledge averre may succeed them in their Ministry to subvert our Church Religion and reduce us back to Rome The Pope now living within these few years affirmed to some English Gentlemen of quality in Rome who out of curiosity only went to see him being Protestants that he hoped before he died though he were aged to see England perfectly reduced to her former obedience to the See of Rome having sent many Jesuits Priests Fryers from all parts into England and particularly into THE ARMY as Ramsy the late detected Jesuit at New-Castle under the vizor of a converted Anabaptized Jew confessed in his printed Examination there lately taken and sent up with him to Whitehall Against whom John Canne might have done well to have pressed those to whom he dedicated his Voice from the Temple to execute the Statute of 27 Eliz. c. 2. particularly made against them as most dangerous insufferable Traytors purposely sent over TO WORKE THE RUINE DESOLATION and DESTRUCTION OF THE WHOLE REALM as well as of our Church and Religion as that Statute resolves and not to have most ignorantly and maliciously wrested it contrary both to the very letter and intention against our godly Protestant Ministers only their greatest opposites eye-sores to strip them of their Benefices Livelihood and lives together the whole scope of his Lamentable Voice without so much as uttering one word against these wilde boars and beasts of Rome with whom he and his Companions the Anabaptists are apparent Confederates both in their principles and practices against our Ministers Maintenance Tithes Callings Laws and setled Government to their eternal Infamy The sad consideration whereof hath engaged me though no Impropriator whose cause I plead not nor other Tithe-receiver but a consciencious Tithe-payer as my Ancestors were before me without any retaining fee or other Solicitation to appear publickly in the defence of this common cause of God and all his faithfull Ministers Tithes and antient setled Maintenance being through his mercy and their Prayers enlarged from my long close remote Imprisonments as I did occasionally in private whiles a close Prisoner in Pendennis Castle in Cornwall in December and January last against some Officers and Souldiers there who publickly subscribed in the Castle by sound of Drum three several mornings and promoted in the Country a Petition for abolishing all Tithes though our Ministers own by all Divine and Humane Lawes Rights which neither our Souldiers nor any mortals now living gave to them nor have any pretence of Law Power or Authority from God or our Nation to take from them and all other compulsory Maintenance in lieu of them for Ministers sent to them and to other Garisons as they then informed me by the General Councell of Officers of the Army from St. James both for their own subscriptions though few or none of them or other subscribers of such Petitions Tithe-payers and such hands of Countrymen as they could procure Upon which occasion I had some brief discourses with some of them concerning the lawfulness and antiquity of Tithes First paid by Souldiers out of the very spoyls of Battel taken in the very first War we read of to the very first Priest of God we find recorded in the Scripture and therefore admired that our Army-Officers Souldiers in this age should so far degenerate as to be the very ring-leaders and chief oppugners of them drawing up some brief Notes of this subject out of Scripture to help passe the time in defence of Tithes relating more particularly to Souldiers to silence satisfie reclaim them from this Sacrilegious design which having since enlarged with Arguments and Answers to their chief Objections drawn from their own Military professions for the better satisfaction conviction of all Sword men and others I hope neither Officers nor Souldiers nor any others truly fearing God if they consider Levit. 19.17 Mat. 18.15 16 17. Prov. 19.25 10.17 12.1 13.18 15.10 31 32. 17.10 25.12 Psal 141.5 1 Sam. 25.32 33. 1 Tim. 5.20 Luke 3.14 will or can be justly offended with me no more for writing truth than speaking it to their faces as I did upon all occasions whiles among them not to defame but to inform and reform them for their own and the publick good in what I conceive not warrantable by but repugnant to Gods word and their duties as Souldiers as Christians and to those known fundamental Laws Liberties of the Nation they were purposely raised commissioned waged engaged by Protestations Covenants and their own voluntary printed Declarations inviolably to protect but not subvert and that they will not repute it a capital crime in me not to prove a flatterer dissembler or not to act or write wittingly against my Science and Conscience when our Ministers Maintenance Calling Religion Gods glory Laws Liberties all we have or hope for are in danger of such a sad sodain destructive Convulsion concussion if not Subversion as I long since by Authority of Parliament discovered in Romes Master-piece and since that in My Speech in Parliament and Memento well worth perusal now when so many known Jesuits under a new Provincial which Hugh Peters himself reported as I have been credibly informed are now even in London it self acting as busily and sitting there in Council as duely as when the reclaimed Author of that discovery purposely sent from Rome for the purposes therein discovered was resident amongst them O that these professed Enemies of our Church Religion Nation and those Janizaries of Rome may not sow their Tares of error and seeds of ruine and desolation amongst us whiles almost our whole Nation for ought I can discern if not those who call themselves Watch-men are in a dead sleep or Lethargy and heaving at our most faithfull Ministers Maintenance and Callings too in stead of enquiring after discovering these Arch-traytots and executing the good Laws against and administring those necessary Oaths of Supremacy Allegiance and Abjuration unto them to prevent those treasonable practices destructive designes miseries and that ruine to our Protestant Religion Kings Government Governors Laws Parliaments Church and Common-wealth which the
all Jesuites and Seminary Priests as Traytors restored the exiled Ministers of the Gospel suffering for Religion rewarding them with the richest Bishopricks and Church-Preferments and planting a faithfull painfull preaching Ministry by degrees in most dark corners of her Dominions endowed them with a setled competent maintenance which our subsequent Protestant Kings continued to them and their Successors without diminution All which considered we of this Isle may with much thankfulnesse to God and honour to our Princes without flattery averr before all the world That the forecited Prophecies of Kings being Nursing-Fathers and Queens Nursing-Mothers to the Church and specially Kings and Queens of this Isle have been more really accomplished in the Kings and Queens of this our Island than in the Kings and Queens of any other Isle Kingdom or Nation whatsoever throughout the world and God grant that those who shall succeed them in any other New-modelled-form of Government may not prove such Step-Fathers and Step-Mothers to our Churches and Ministers as to demolish the one and strip the other quite naked of all that former Livelihood and remaining small Revenues which they yet enjoy by our Princes Grants Gifts Charters Laws and Favours only and thereby give all Godly Ministers and people too in our Nation just cause to cry out with wringed hands weeping eyes and bleeding hearts in the Prophets words Hosea 10.3 4. For now they shall say We have no King because we feared not the Lord What then should a King do to us or amongst us They have spoken words Swearing falsely in making a Covenant Thus Iudgement springeth up as Hemlock one of the deadliest Poysons to destroy men in the fields Or else to speak in Solomons language to the same effect Prov. 28.2 For the transgression of a Land many are the Princes thereof as our Land had never so many Transgressions and Princes too as now But by a Man of Vnderstanding and Knowledge and where is such a one to be found to stand up in a Gap the state thereof shall be prolonged Now the Lord raise up such a Man or Men lest God say to our Nation and all Grandees in Power as he did once to the prophane wicked Prince of Israel whose day was come Ezech. 21.25 26 27. Remove the Diadem and take off the Crown this shall not be the same Exalt him that is Low and abase him that is High I will overturn overturn overturn Church State Laws and it shall be no more untill he come whose Right it is and I will give it him To prevent these treble fatal over-turnings with the wiping and turning of our Jerusalem UPSIDE DOWN like a Dish a certain Fore-runner of a Churches Nations ruine 2 Kings 21.13 Psal 146.9 I shall now in the last place present the whole Nation with a brief Catalogue of those manifold Laws Statutes which our Kings have successively made in their Great Councils and Parliaments almost from the very first establishment of Religion in our Island for the due payment of Ministers Tithes by coercive Means Forfeitures Penalties in case of willfull detaining or neglect in paying all or any part of them at the times appointed which those who please may peruse in Chronicon Johannis Brompton Mr. Lambards Archaion Sir Henry Spelmans Councils Mr. Fox his Acts and Monuments John Bridges his Defence of the Government of the Church of England Book 16. p. 1350. Our Statutes at large and Mr. Rastals Abridgement of Statutes Title Tithes which Laws being well known to most learned men are therefore needlesse fully to transcribe The first of them is the forecited Law Decree of the Council of Calcuth under King Oswald and Offa An. 787. of famous King Alfred Anno 887. of King Alfred and Gutburn the Dane cap. 9. De Decimis Deo Debitis about the year 890. of King Edward the elder and Guthurn Anno 905. or 906. as some Cap. 6. in some c. 9. DE DECIMIS ET CENSU ECCLESIAE RETENTIS of King Aethelstan made in the famous Council of Gratelean An. 928. cap. 1. DE DECIMIS REDDENDIS tam ex Animalibus quam de fructibus terrae which this King himself duly paid and then enjoyned all his great Officers and People duly to render of King Edmond An. 944. c. 2. concluding Qui non solverit ANATHEMA ESTO Of famous King Edgar Anno 967. c. 3. DE DECIMIS Canon 54. of the Kings and Presbyters of Northumberland made a little after that time Lex 51. of King Aethelred An. 1012. c. 1 4. of King Knute the Dane An. 1032. c. 8. but 15. in some Copies De Decimis reddendis c. 11 17. and a Statute law against obstinate Detainers of Tithes there stiled JURA ET DEBITIONES DIVINAE of King Edward the Confessor about the year 1060 confirmed verbatim by William the Conquerour in the fourth year of his Reign c. 8 9. forecited To which may be added the Great Charters of King Henry the first and King John recorded in Matthew Paris ratified by King Henry the 3d. in his Magna Charta c. 11. made in the 9th year of his Reign confirmed by above 37 Acts of Parliament since in many successive Parliaments That the Church of England shall be free now in greater Bondage than ever and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable never so much violated diminished as now notwithstanding all Laws Covenants Declarations Protestations lately and all antient Solemn Curses and Excommunications annually made against the Infringers thereof 13 E. 1. 17 E. 3. 14. 2 H. 4. c. 4. Enacting the Cistertian Monks to pay Tithes to Ministers and Evangelists notwithstanding any Buls of Exemption from the Pope which the King and Parliament declared to be void and that the Promovers or Executors of any such Buls shall be attainted in a Praemunire It appears by the Parliament Roll of 2 H. 4. nu 40. This Act was made upon the Petition of all the Commons which because not extant in print pertinent to the present business of Tithes and unknown to most I shall here transcribe at large May it please our most gracious Lord the King to consider That whereas time out of wind the Religious men of the Order of the Cistercians of your Realm of England have paid all manner of Tithes of their lands tenements possessions let to farm or manured and occupied by other persons besides themselves and of manner of things tithable being and growing upon the same lands tenements and possessions in the same manner as your other Lieges of the said Realm Yet so it is that of late the said Religious have purchased a Bull from our Holy Father the Pope by the which our said Holy Father hath granted to the said Religious That they shall pay no Tithes of their Lands Tenements Possessions Woods Cattel or any thing whatsoever although they are or shall be leased or farmed notwithstanding any Title of Prescription or Right acquired or
to Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God the things that are Gods a clear Gospel-Text for the payment of Tithes which are Gods own Tribute and Portion Levit. 27.30 32. Mal. 3.8 9. and Rom. 13.7 Render therefore to all their Dues Tribute to whom Tribute is due Custom to whom Custom c. against both which they directly Petition as the premises demonstrate This calumny and wresting of Scripture being removed I shall thus make good the first Branch of the Proposition I have already manifested by undeniable Antiquities Laws Records That Tithes were freely given to and setled on our Church and Ministers by our pious Kings Munificence Charters Laws with the general applause and consent of all the Nobility and People upon the very first setlement of Religion in this Island many hundred years before we read of any publick Taxes for Defence of the Realm or maintenance of the Warres by Land or Sea the first whereof was Dane-gelt first imposed by common consent of the Lords in Parliament An. 983. or before the antientest yet continued Custome on Wool Woolfels and Skins exported first granted by Parliament in 3 E. 1. Anno Dom. 1276. at least 500. years after the first extant grant Law and setlement of Tithes in perpetuity as a Divine Duty Rent and Service for the necessary maintenance of Gods Ministers and publick Worship This most antient annual Rent Charge or Tribute unto God hath inviolably continued in all publick Changes and Revolutions of Church and State Britons Saxons Danes Normans English Papists Protestants Conquerors Invadors Right Heirs and Lawfull Purchasers Intruders Disseisers Lessees of all sorts whether Publick Persons or Private maintaining confirming rendring their Tithes successively as a Divine and Sacred Quit-Rent due to God wherewith they came charged into the world till they departed out of it laying down this for a Principle of Divinity Law Equity That God alone hath given to every Man the Lands and all he holds and possesseth whereby he gains his food and living and therefore out of the Land and Trade whereby every one gets necessary supply for his body he ought to contribute a Tenth and Tribute towards the Service of God and Salvation of his Soul much better than his Body as Augustine in his 229. Sermon Tom. 10. and the Antient Saxon Canons of an uncertain time and Author resolve There was no Purchaser Heir Inheritor Farmer Tenant or Lessee of Lands in our whole Nation that paid Tithes out of it since Tithes first setled in this Kingdome but he inherited purchased took and held his Lands charged with Tithes Whence our Law-books resolve That no Lay-man can by the very Common Law of England allege any Custome or Prescription for not paying Tithes but only a Modus Decimandi in recompence of his Tithes which he may in some cases plead because grounded on some antient Contract and a valuable consideration in Lieu of Tithes Moreover as all Men took their Purchases Farmes Leases or Inheritances by Descent thus charged so this charge was universally known to all Purchasers Lesees and the full annual value of the Predial Tithes they pay out of their Lands or Leases abated them in their Purchases Rents Fines by the Venders and Lessers of purpose to defray the publick necessary annual Charge which if the Lands had been Tithe-Free had been proportionably raised to the common value of the Tithes in the Purchase-Moneys Fines or Rents and will be so by every Seller of Lands and Land-lord when ever Tithes be suppressed This being a clear undeniable Truth which every rational man must subscribe to it is certain no person this day living complaining or not complaining against Tithes can in Verity Equity Justice Reason repute or call them either an unjust or oppressing Yoak Bond Burden as many Ignoramusses do without sense or reason nor any burden or charge at all to him since he had or rather hath the full annual value of them allowed him in his Purchase Fine or Rent by him that sold or leased his Lands unto him And although it be true that in such Tithes as the Earth doth not naturally produce without labour as it doth Grasse Wood Fruits viz. Corn Hops Saffron Woad and the like the Minister enjoyes the Tenth of the Husbandmans increase seed labour and costs in tillage and improvement the great Objection against Tithes as an Heavy Burthen and Oppression yet all this pretended great cost and charge except only in Cases of Improvements was altogether or for the most part allowed and defalked in the Purchase Rent or Fine which if Tithe-free would have been and when made Tithe-free will be raised to the full value of the Tithes even one years purchase more in ten sales and 28. Rent more in every pound each year upon Leaser as all understanding men knowing what belongs to Purchases Sales of Lands or Leases must acknowledge And that Farmer Purchaser or Improver of Lands who deems not his faithfull Ministers Prayers Preaching Pains and Gods blessing on his Seed Crop Estate Soul Family promised and entayled to the true payment of Tithes and are only procured by his Ministers prayers without which his seed crop and all his estate would be blasted with a Curse amount not to a tenth part of what he now enjoys by Gods promise and blessing by paying Tithes and his Ministers prayers deserves not the name of a rational man much lesse of a Christian and can expect nothing but Gods curse upon all he sowes plants enjoyes instead of a blessed Crop or Harvest All which considered I appeal to any Christian or rational mans Conscience whether Tithes be any such heavy oppressing intollerable discouraging Yoak Bondage Burden Oppression as some now declaim them which Gods chiefest Saints before the Law voluntarily rendred without murmuring and chearfully vowed paid unto God without a Law and his antient people rendred without murmuring though double to our Tithes now by an express Law during all the Levitical Priesthood and all our own Ancestors as well Protestants as Papists have for so many hundred of years chearfully rendred without dispute and all now living came charged with into the world and were thus allowed the value of them in their Purchases Fines and Leases And whether all Tithe payers have not far more cause to Petition against all Old and New Rent-Services Rent Charges Annuities Quit-Rents Statutes Debts wherewith they were charged by their Ancestors Grants or Contracts and of all the antient Customs for Merchandize for defence of the Seas or Realm as intollerable oppressing Burdens Yoaks Grievances as the Levellers and Anabaptists in some late printed papers stile all Customs Tonnage Poundage Impositions whatsoever as well as Tithes our Excises or monthly Taxes of new illegal formation as well as Imposition than thus to murmur complain Petition against their predial Tithes our Ministers chiefest Livelihood except in Cities which have no Tillage Woods or Meadows And so much brieflly for
the Souldiers possessing them should be all restored and so they were accordingly and those Harpyes robbed of their Sacrilegious prey Let the late Purchasers of such Tithes and Lands remember it and think of a possible if not probable Act of Resumption in case they make no voluntary restitution 4ly Let them consider the large Revenues the Popish Clergy at this day enjoy in France amounting to above 12. Millions of Annual Rents at a moderate value besides mony and oblations as Bodine Thuanus Hist l. 28. Ioannes de Laety Descriptio Galliae c. 17 18. record To which I might adde the extraordinary great Revenues of the Popish Clergy in Spain recorded by Lucius Marineus Siculus Ioannes de Laet in his Hispaniae Descriptis cap. 20. Jo. Boterus in his Hist Universalis and of the Popish Clergy in the Kingdom of Naples in Italy registred by Thomas Segethus De Principibus Italiae p. 121. Which they still enjoy notwithstanding their manifold Wars without sale or Diminution for their Soldiers pay And will it not be an intollerable Impiety Sacrilege dishonor for Protestant Souldiers and our new Republick not to allow our Ministers so much as their inconsiderable remaining Rectories Glebes Tithes to support our Religion and instruct and save the Peoples Souls 5ly The reason rendred by Martel and others That the Officers and Souldiers deserve the Lands and Tithes of the Church and Ministers because they fight for the defence of the Church is very strange and just the self-seeking Plea and Practice of sundry of our Officers and Souldiers at this day scarce to be parallel'd in any Age 1. They were raised for the Defence and Preservation of the late Kings Person Posterity and just Rights of his Crown Ergo in discharge of this Trust they have most justly sentenced beheaded the King outed dis-inherited his Posterity and seized upon all the Crown-Lands and Revenues in his three Kingdoms for their own use pay support reward and inheritance 2ly They were raised and fought for the preservatirn and defence of the Kingdom Parliament and Members Privileges and Laws and Liberties of England Therefore they have justly by armed violence invaded subverted them all disposed of all the Common wealth and Revenue of the Nation to themselves and their Instruments to support themselves and their usurped Arbitrary Power and Government over us and may null and pull down not only our Old but their own New-created Parliaments and State-Councils as they stile them and change both Government Governors at their pleasure 3ly They fought for the particular Defence Peace Safety of every mans Person and Estate in our three Kingdoms Therefore they may seize upon and dispose of all their Persons Lands Estates at their pleasures and impose what Taxes Excises Imposts they list and exercise a legislative absolute Arbitrary and Tyrannical Power over them without a lawfull Parliament to eat them quite out of all Lastly They fought for our Church Ministers Religion Ergo they may subvert them all and seise upon all Church-Lands Revenues Rectories Glebes Tithes yea Churches and Church-yards too for to reward support and pay the Army and possess themselves of what ever our Ancestors setled on the Church and Ministers to instruct and save the Peoples Souls as a just Salary for killing their Christian Brethrens Bodies and destroying the peoples Souls and Bodies too Certainly the worst Enemies they fought against would not could not have done worse than this nor yet so bad This certainly is a Devastation Destruction not a Defence or Preservation of what they were raysed and payed to protect an Invasion and Depredation not a Patronage and Protection a Remedy more destructive than the worst Disease War Enemy who could but have stript us of no more had they conquered us than these our new armed Defenders of the Faith Church King Parliament Laws and Liberties have done or intend to do as many fear It was John Baptists Evangelical Precept to all Souldiers whatsoever Do violence to none in Person Lands or Estate much lesse to Ministers privileged by the Law of War from Violence and to be content with their Wages without seising sequestring invading the Lands Estates Glebes Tithes Persons of Ministers King and Members or any others they fought for who never raised nor waged Souldiers to deprive them of their Patrimonies Estates Callings Rights Laws Liberties Privileges of Parliament Government Governours but only to secure them in the full possession of them all This new Martial law and practice then is both irrational and unevangelical fitter for professed Theeves Turks and Pyrates than Christian Souldiers and far different from the foresaid Christian Souldiers practice in former Ages who as they would by no means be engaged by their Pagan Emperors or Generals commands to fight against any of their Christian Brethren choosing rather to obey God their Supream Emperour than Men So the famous Thebean Legion of Christian Souldiers and their Officers under Julian the Apostate when he commanded them to bring forth their Arms against the Christians returned him this most Heroick Answer worthy to be written in Golden Letters briefly fully and elegantly expressing the Duty of every true Christian Souldier in all Ages and Cases Offerimus nostras in quemlibet hostem manus quas sanguine innocentium cruentare nefas ducimus Dexterae ipsae pugnare adversus Impios Inimicos sciunt laniare pios et Cives nesciunt Meminerimus nos and O that our Army-Officers and Souldiers would remember it likewise Pro Civibus potius quam adversus Cives arma sumpsisse Pugnabimus semper pro Iustitia pro pietate pro innocentium salute not for Kings Bishops Deans Chapters Ministers Lands Revenues Tithes Estates the things now fought for Haec fuerunt hactenus pretia periculorum Pugnavimus pro fide quam quo pacto conservemus tibi Imperatori Si hanc Deo nostro non exhibemus O that this Resolution were now engraven in every Army-Officers and Souldiers heart our Ministers then needed not to fear the losse of their Tithes Rectories Churches nor our Universities Colleges Corporations or any other the disinheris on of their Lands Laws Liberties Powers by Military Rapines violences and usurpations 6ly The Exemptions of the Hospitalers and Templers Lands from paying of Tithes was a meer Papal Innovation and Devise which Canne who pleads so much against Tithes upon this mistake that they are Popish and all his Confederates should be ashamed to own and imitate The Israelites Gods own people during their possession of Canaan had many forein and Civil wars in most of their Judges Kings and High Priests successive Reigns and Roman Governours over them yet we never read that any of their Generals Officers or Souldiers fighting for their Churches Priests and Religions Defence against forein or Domestique idolatrous Enemies pretended the least Exemption of their Lands or Estates from paying all their antient forementioned accustomed Tithes to the Levites Priests and Poor
and Parsonages thus well Gospelly served yea not served at all but the Church Doors quite shut up after the New Gospel of England So he This doubtless will be the general sad condition of all England as it is now in most part of Wales if Tithes and Rectories be quite voted down abolished or disposed to the Souldiers or brought into a common Treasury which will hardly leave Ministers the Tenth of their Tithes as our late Sequestrators left not the Tenth nor fifth part clear gains and value of all Sequestrations generally throughout England to the State as I found by examination of their Accompts upon Oath which is now so violently prosecuted endeavoured by many And then we shall have a glorious blessed Reformation indeed according to the Popes and Jesuites hearts desires who like ravening Wolves will make a prey of all Flocks in the defect and absence of able Pastors through want of Maintenance and poverty as they have done in many places throughout the Realm seduced by them to Jesuitism Anabaptism Atheism through defect of able Ministers and ejection of former Incumbent Pastors under pretext of Scandal Insufficiency or Malignity by Arbitrary or Anabaptistical Committees Sequestrators Prosecutors without any legal Tryal by their Peers or any care at all to place better abler or any Minister at all in divers Parishes in their places Whereupon these active Jesuites with other Romish Emissacries under the Disguises of Anabaptists Seekers Dippers inspired Brethren Quakers Ranters Souldiers New Illuminates of extraordinary Endowments and Itinerary Predicants who pretend to preach the Gospel freely have seduced thousands divided the people into sundry Sects and almost ruined our Church and Religion in a short space which they will soon accomplish to their hearts content can they now but vote down Tithes Glebes and set up New Committees in all places of their own and the Anabaptistical party concurring in Design and most principles with the Jesuites as Watson in his Quodlibets and others prove at large to eject our remaining Ministers at their pleasure under pretext they are Antichristian Scandalous and no Ministers of Jesus Christ as John Canne and others have already prejudgeâ— them that they and their Agents may step into their places and at last when all their Designs against our State Church Governm are produced to maturity re-assume their Tithes Rectories with our Bishops Deans Chapters and Abby Lands too into their actual possession according to the Jesuite Parsons and his Companions long prosecuted project at large related by William Watson the Priest in his Quodlibets p. 93 94 98 288 â—89 332 333. with other plots lately prosecuted ad unguem to subvert our Religion Laws Government Monarchy and enslave us to the Iesuits Popes Spaniards Tyranny and Vassalage in conclusion first laid by Parsons and other pragmatical Jesuites then seconded by Thomas Campanella in his Treatise De Monarchia Hispanica c. 25.27 and elsewhere prosecuted of late years by the Jesuites and Spanish Agents on the one hand and Cardinal Richilieu and his Instruments on the other hand who at his death in the begining of our late Warrs which he was very instrumental to rayse recommended the prosecution of them to the French King and his Successor Cardinal Mazarin as A Noble Italian Count Conte Galliazzo Gualdo Priorato in his Historia part 3. printed at Venice in 4to Anno 1648. dedicated by him to the King of Poland and written in Italian p. 175 176 records in these words worthy all English Statesmens special notice where Writing of the affairs of the year 1642. and the death of Cardinal Richelieu in particular he records That amongst other things he caused some Papers to be delivered before his death to the King of France full of Policies and Maximes of State directing him how to carry on his Business with all Forein States His advice in relation to England was this Che Sopra c. That above all other things the King of France should endeavour to keep the Government of Great Britain divided by upholding the weakest party that the other might not make it self too powerfull Reducing the Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland to be divided by one of these two means or both either by nominating new Kings or by reducting them to a Common-wealth Yet with this Caution that when they are reduced to a Common-wealth So to order it that it may not be intirely one but divided For Republiques ever enemies to Potent Neighbours and Iealous of their Liberties ought to be Suspected by the State of France How punctually this advice hath been pursued by the French as well as Parsons and Campanellaes Plots of like nature by the Spaniards those who please to peruse the Lord George Digbies Cabinet Letters printed in the Collection of all the Publique Orders Ordinances and Declarations of Parliament in folio by the Commons Order 1646. p. 849 858 862 863 866 867. and my Speech in Parliament p. 118. 106 to 114. may read at leisure and every mans observing experience can sufficiently attest The Lord now at last give us hearts to be deeply sensible of it and grace zeal courage to make timely use of it for the Preservation of our Kingdoms Nations Churches Ministers Religion from impendent ruine Having given the world this brief Accompt of the principal Promoters Prosecutors of the present Grand Plot against our Ministers their Tithes and Rectories I cannot upon serious consideration of it but foresee and divine that if all or any of these Projectors through Gods heavy Judgment on us for our sins and detestable violations of all Oaths Vows Covenants Trusts Protestations Promises Declarations Divine and Human Laws should by power fraud policy or armed force so far prevail with our present Legifers or Swaying Grandees as totally to take away and abolish the Rectories Tithes and present setled Maintenance of our Ministry for the Souldiers pay or other ends or else secretly to bring them all into a Common Treasury and reduce all our Ministers to set arbitrary Stipends out of them to dispossess them of the future actual possession of them and make them wholy dependent on the arbitrary discretions of new intruding Land-Lords into their Churches Patrimonies Freeholds from whom they never received them at first as it would inevitably produce a world of mischiefs and Inconveniences both to all Patrons and Parishioners throughout the Nation without the least Ease or Benefit to the People so it would certainly either totally ruine our Ministers making them all poor Fryers Mendicants neglecting their Callings Studies to get their living by begging from door to door and as Peter Martyr observes to be ventris potius quam Ecclesiae Ministros ostiatim validè Mendicare non Mendicantes sed Manducantes appellari and thereby subvert our Church and Religion with them in very few years space open such a wide door for the Pope and whole body of Popery to flow in upon us again with an impetuous irresistable Deluge
that they most affect yea farr lesse troublesom to more convenient for our Ministers Persons families and necessary Cattel than bare stipends which must enforce them to run to Markets to buy all their Corn and other provisions both for their Houshold Horses Cattel at the dearest rates So if this Maintenance by Tithes be once abolished either before any other competent Maintenance setled in its steed lesse grievous and inconvenient than Tithes which all wise men in the world will never be able to invent much lesse to establish as things now are setled or Ministers left wholy to an arbitrary unconstrained Benevolence without any limited Proportion or means to recover it if detained as some now petition This expected proposed unconstrained Maintenance would in verity and reality signify just Nothing and be no Maintenance at all in the Petitioners own sence and intention as appears by John Cannes forecited passages and the very words of their Petitions since they refuse to pay them their very Tithes yet due by Law and never freely contributed one penny to them for their Ministry which they revile disclaim as Antichristian Wherefore if any New-fangled Politicians resolve to settle such a new Maintenance only insteed of the old for the peoples pretended Ease let them first establish settle an arbitrary Excise Custome uncoercive voluntary Impost and monthly Contribution as this on the people for Maintenance of the Army and Navy not so simply necessary as the Ministry for our real welfare without any compulsory means to recover it if not freely rendred till the next harvest come and see what a competent Maintenance that will be for the Souldiers and Seamen and provide that all Tenants for the year ensuing shall render only what Rents they please to the State their Landlords Lessees who shall have no power to distrain sue or enter upon any of them in case they deny to pay their Rents and trie what a certain Annual Revenue this whimsy will produce to the States and Land-Lords purses Or else give over this Jesuitical Anabaptistical devised new Maintenance for our Ministers as a Stratagem only to starve their bodies and their Peoples souls without any more Debates concerning Tithes to gratify such malicious Projectors and offend all Godly people through the Nation who deem this old way of Maintenance of Gods own Prescription farr better lesse inconvenient in all respects than this arbitrary or any other new-fangled way of these or other mens invention 5ly That although God by his divine Providence is able to support the faithfull Ministers of the Gospel though totally stripped naked of all their Glebes Tithes antient Maintenance through the unrighteousnesse or malice of ungodly men as he did the Apostles and his Ministers in all ages in times of Persecution yet let all such who have or shall have a hand in such a Sacrilegious design consider 1. That they shall be as bitter Enemies to and Persecutors of the Ministers of Christ amongst us in and by this very Project as Julian the Apostate Christian was to Gods faithfull Ministers in the primitive Times when he took away their Preferments Glebes and Church Revenues as the High Commissioners and Prelates were of late to all those godly Puritan Ministers whom they deprived of their Benefices for Non-conformity to their Ceremonies and no real Crime deserving such an inhuman Censure depriving them of their Livelyhoods 2ly That they shall hereby draw a great Scandal upon our very Religion it self Church Nation render them odious Sacrilegious to all foreign Churches Nations gratify rejoyce the hearts of the Pope Jesuites Papists and other professed Enemies of our Religion accomplish their Designs against our Church and Ministers exceedingly sad the hearts and grieve the righteous souls of all Gods faithfull Saints amongst us of all Protestant Churches in Foreign parts and draw this just Censure on themselves 2 Pet. 2.14 15. An heart they have exercised with covetous practices cursed Children which have forsaken the right way and are gon astray following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor who loved the wages of unrighteousnesse These are wells without water Clouds carried with a Tempest to whom is reserved the mist of darknesse for ever 3ly That although God should miraculously preserve a faithfull able Ministry and his true Religion still amongst us through the bounty and charity of other well affected Christians yet they have done their uttermost endeavours to destroy them and the peoples souls with them both for the present and succeeding ages 4ly That this unrighteous violent act will in all probability bring in a world of Confusion Atheism Schisms Heresies Divisions Contentions Blasphemies disorders amongst us in all places a famine of the sincere preaching of Gods word a neglect and contempt of Learning and Piety a dilapidation Spoliation of all or most Parish Churches Chapels a confusion of the bounds of all Parishes and Parochial Congregations and bring all those Calamities on our Nation as it did upon the Israelites when Jeroboam thrust out the Priests and Levites from their Glebes Suburbs Ministry thus registred 2 Chron. 15.3 5 6. Now for a long season Israel was without the true God and without a teaching Priest and without Law as some would have us now And in those days mark the consequence there was no peace to him that went out nor to him that came in but great veration upon all the Inhabitants of the Country And Nation was destroyed of Nation and Citie of Citie for God did vex them withall Adversity In which condition they continued till King Asa and the people renued repaired the decayed Altar House and worship of the Lord Gathered all the people to Jerusalem to worship God and enter into a Solemn Covenant and Oath to serve the Lord God of their Fathers with all their hearts and with all their soul And that whosoever would not seek the Lord God of Israel should be put to death whether small or great man or woman Offred Sacrifices to the Lord of the Spoyl they had taken from the Enemy 700. Oxen and 7000. Shéep and brought into the house of God the things that his Father had dedicated and himself had dedicated Silver and Gold and Vessels formerly taken thence and then there was no more war in divers years v. 8. to the end of the Chapter And probably our Wars Taxes Vexations will never end till we give over our late irreligious Sacrilegious Rapines Church Robberies and do the like as this pious King and his people here did 5ly That this discouraging robbing abusing despising mocking misusing of Gods Messengers Prophets sent amongst us and of all his and their words against our wicked Atheistical Sacrilegious Rapines is the High way to provoke the wrath of God to rise against us till there be no remedy yea to bring in a powerfull Foreign Nation upon us to pillage waste destroy enslave our whole Nation extirpate us out of the Land of our Nativity and
A GOSPEL PLEA Interwoven with a RATIONAL and LEGAL FOR THE LAWFULNESS CONTINUANCE Of the Antient Setled MAINTENANCE and TENTHS Of the Ministers of the Gospel IN TWO PARTS PROVING That there is a Just Competent Comfortable Maintenance due to all Lawfull painfull Preachers Ministers of the Gospel by Divine Right Institution express Texts Precepts of the Gospel That Glebes Tithes are such a Maintenance due to Ministers by Divine Right Law Gospel That if substracted or detained they may lawfully be inforced by Coercive Laws and Penalties That Tithes are no real Burden nor grievance to the people The abolishing them no ease or benefit to Farmers Husbandmen or poor people but a Prejudice and Loss That the present opposition against Tithes proceeds not from any real grounds of Conscience but base Covetousnesse Carnal policy hatred to and a Jesuitical Anabaptistical design to subvert ruine our Ministers Church Religion With a Satisfactory Answer to all Cavils and Material Objections to the contrary By WILLIAM PRYNNE of Swainswick Esquire a Bencher of Lincolns Inne Mal. 3.8 9. Will a man rob God Yet ye have robbed me But ye say Wherein have we robbed thee In Tithes and Offerings Ye are cursed with a curse for ye have robbed me even this whole Nation Mat. 22.21 Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God the things that are his AUG serm 219. Si tu illam Decimam non dederis dabis impio Militi quod non vis dare Deo Sacerdoti Hoc tollit Fiscus quod non accepit Christus London Printed by T. Childe and L. Parry for Edward Thomas and are to be sold at the Adam and Eve in Little Britain 1660. To my most High Mighty Great Dreadfull Omnipotent Omnipresent Omniscient Righteous True Faithfull All-gracious All-sufficient Everliving Everlasting Immutable Covenant-keeping LORD GOD the God of my Life Health Strength Mercy Preservation Consolation Supportation Salvation Deliverance Praise O God THE SAVIOUR of Israel of England too antiently stiled Regnum Dei Gods Kingdom Thou art God alone and there is none else Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee In thee alone I live move and have my being Thou art the strength of my heart and my portion for ever My whole Spirit Soul Body Parts Endowments Natural Spiritual are only of thee through thee O sanctifie them wholly for and only to thee to whom alone I desire intirely and eternally to devote them as due to none but thee and that by right of Creation Redemption Resignation Preservation and that extraordinary Tribute of gratitude I stand most deeply engaged to render to thy most gracious Majesty for those many and manifold WONDERS of Preservation Supportation Concomitation Protection Consolation Absolution Vindication and Restauration thou hast of thy free Grace most miraculously extended to me the mâ—anest and unworthyest of all thy servants in under from all my former and late injurious illegal Sufferings Oppressions Imprisonments inhumane close Restraints Exiles in TEN SEVERAL PRISONS CASTLES some of them at remotest distance from all Acquaintance Kindred Friends and thy publick Ordinances under some Rude Barbarous armed Gardians and Men of blood of purpose to destroy me where thou wast present with me as with Daniel in the Lyons den Paul in the Lyons mouth the three Children in the midst of the fiery Furnace Jonah in the Whales belly to secure comfort and supply me for about ELEVEN YEARS SPACE through the malice and cruelty of mercilesse men Yet blessed be thy holy name for no other cause or crime thy poor servants conscience is guilty of his last close Imprisonments in three several Castles being without the least Examination Hearing Accusation Charge of any particular offence against him or yet declared to him but only for his sincere cordial desire to discharge his bounden duty to glorifie thee in his generation by apposing the dangerous wrath-provoking Errors and corruptions of the age in which he liveth by contending earnestly for the faith which was once delivered unto the Saints according to thy Commands and for the setled fundamental Laws Liberties Rights Government of his distracted Native Countrie against all secret Underminers open Oppugners or Subverters of them to the uttermost of his Ability By a consciencious inviolable observation of all those solemn sacred Oaths Protestations Covenants and Obligations prescribed by those lawfull higher Powers thou commandedst him to submit to under pain of DAMNATION wherewith he hath frequently bound his soul not so much to men as to thee who art a most Faithfull Promise-Oath-Covenant-keeping God especially of those Oathes and Covenants wherewith thou vouchsafest to oblige thy self even to meer dust and ashes both IMMUTABLE and INVIOLABLE never violating nor repenting of them in the least degree and obliging men both by thine own example and Precepts to do the like in all their publick or private Oathes Vowes Covenants to thee or men under pain of temporal wrath here and eternal exclusion from thy holy Hill And for not daring to confederate or comply against his Oathes Covenants manifold publick Engagements Conscience Judgement and thy sacred Inhibitions WITH THOSE WHO ARE GIVEN TO CHANGE many of whose Calamities and Ruines are sodainly risen and fallen upon them by thy Divine justice even from those they least suspected and most relyed on for Protection for the manifold changes they presumed to make against their Oaths Vows Trusts Protestations Covenants and unrighteous oppressing of their dearest Christian Friends Brethren and thy suffering Servant among others Now all Glory Honour Power Salvation and Praise be for ever rendred by me and all thy glorious Saints and Angles in heaven and earth because true and righteous are thy Judgements and because the deliverance of me thy oppressed Servant without any wound to his Conscience dishonour to thy name or scandal to thy People is exceeding Gracious and Glorious Now know I again and again that the Lord loveth his anointed that he hath heard him and others praying for him from his holy Heaven WITH THE SAVING STRENGTH OF HIS RIGHT HAND Some of his self-exalting Oppressors trusted in Chariots and some in Horses but he remembred the Lord his God they are brought down and fallen but he is risen and stands upright Who therefore ever will rejoyce greatly in THY SALVATION and in the Name of his God will set up his Banners For thou hast broken the gates of Brasse and cut the bars of Iron in sunder Thou hast sent thy holy Angel and knocked off the Chains from my long-fettered hands and made the long-barred Iron Castle Gates wherein I was close shut up to open of their own accord without any enforced long-expected Petition from me Thou hast rescued me from more then 4. Quaternions of Souldiers who most strictly garded me day and night as they did thy imprisoned Apostle Peter and more narrowly than any formerly under the Prelates greatest Tyranny and delivered him
out of the hand of Herod and from all the expectation of the People of the Jews the Jesuits and Popish Priests who marched freely abroad not only preaching but printing and dispersing no lesse then 19. grosse Popish Books in defence of their Religion and condemning ours for Heresie whiles I their chief oppugner was shut up so close in three remote Castles that I could neither write against nor discover their Plots to undermine our Church State Religion nor yet send Letters to my Imprisoners to demand my liberty unless I would first give Copies of them to my Gardians and then trust them to send them when and by whom they pleased nor have admission to thy publick Ordinances for above two years space In thankfull Commemoration of which my late and great deliverance from this Aegyptian Bondage I do here presume in all humility to prostrate at thy feet and Dedâ—cate to thee the Great GAOLE-DELIVERING PRISONER-LOOSING GOD who saiest to the Prisoners GOE FORTH and to them that are in darknesse SHEVV YOUR SELVES this mean and unworthy Gospel Plea for the lawfulnesse and continuance of the Antient setled Maintenance and Tithes of thy Ministers of the Gospel reserved to and by thy self AS THY DEVOTED PORTION DEBT DUE whereof many now by FRAUD and VIOLENCE endeavour Sacrilegiously TO ROB BOTH THEE and THEM as the first fruits of my enlargement a Second EBENEZER Hitherto hath the Lord HELPED ME and a lasting Monument to Posterity of my gratitude and thankfulness to thee my God for my late restitution to so much Liberty and Freedom as to be able thus once more publickly to plead thine own and thy Ministers cause against Jesuits Anabaptists Quakers and all other open Oppugners Subverters of our Church State and secret Underminers of the true Preachers and Preaching of the Gospel who now like Gebal Ammon Amalek Edom Ismael Moab the Hagarens Philistines Inhabitants of Tyre and armed Assur of old have consulted together with one consent and are confederate against thee and have said Come and let us cut them off from being a Nation that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance Beseeching thy Majesty most graciously to accept it most powerfully to protect and so effectually to blesse prosper it and thy servant against all these combined Confederates that they may be no way able to resist thy Truth Wisdom Spirit appearing pleading in it by it but either like convicted Seducers or Seduced persons fall down flat on their faces before it worship thee and report that God is in it and in thy servant of a truth Or in case of wilfull malicious obstinacy against thee and thy faithfull Ministers Houses of publick worship Truth and Gospel Do unto them as unto the Midianites as to Sisera and to Jabin at the brook of Kison which perished at Endor and became as dung for the earth Make their Nobles like Oreb and Zeeb yea make all their Princes as Zebah and as Salmunna who said as these do now LET US TAKE TO OUR SELVES THE HOUSES OF GOD IN POSSESSION O my God make them as a wheel as the stubble before the wind As the fire burneth the wood and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire so persecute them with thy tempest and make them afraid of thy storm fill their faces with shame that they may seek thy name O Lord let them be confounded and troubled for ever yea let them be put to shame and perish That men these men may know that thou whose name alone is JEHOVAH art the most high over all the earth So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever we will shew forth thy Praise to all generations And thy servant Davids resolution Whiles I live will I praise the Lord I will sing praises unto my God WHILE I HAVE ANY BEING shall through thy Grace be both the Resolution and Practice of Swainswick 1 Sep. 1653. Thy unworthy unprofitable Redeemed Preserved and frequently enlarged Servant and Vassal William Prynne To the unprejudiced Christian Reader KInd Reader the 80. Psal in my weak judgement is both a lively Character of the deplorable condition of Gods Church of late years and likewise a most excellent Morning and Evening Prayer for it in publick or private The Psalmist thus complains That God by the OPPRESSING SWORD of combined enemies as Psa 83. imports had broken down his Churches hedges so that all they that passed by the way did pluck her the Boar out of the forrest did waste it and the wild beasts OF THE FIELD devour it The antient hedges of the Church here planted and spread in our Nation to wit Gods divine protection and Law the Patronage Rights Franchises Privileges Immunities granted confirmed to our Churches by the manifold great Charters Lawes Statutes of such bountifull devout Kings and Queens as God himself predicted should be NURSING FATHERS and NURSING MOTHERS UNTO HIS CHURCH under the Gospel and bring their Glory and Honour to it and Kings of Iles amongst others having been of late years very much broken down and almost levelled to the dust by arbitrarie Committees Sequestrations and the oppressing all-devouring Sword of War which God hath kept so long unsheathed without returning into the Scabberd these many years for the just punishment of our manifold sins and enormities all they that go by the way or in by-wayes taking advantage thereof have so plucked and the wilde-boares out of the wood and wilde-men and wilde-beasts of the field have so wasted devoured the best and richest part of our Churches Patrimony originally designed by the Parliament by a special Bill tendered to the late King at Oxford April 1643. when Arch-bishops Bishops Deans and Chapters were first voted down and extirpated as none of our Heavenly fathers plants or planting for the encrease of the Crown-Revenues to ease the people in their future Taxes and the Augmentation of our Ministers Maintenance and incompetent livings that there is little or none of it now remaining undevoured by them for either of these two publick ends And many new highway men wilde-boares and Beasts as well as old encouraged by former rich Church-plunders in stead of imitating faithfull Abraham whose heirs and children they professe themselves who gave THE TENTH OF ALL HIS SPOYLS OF WARRE to Melchisedec Priest of the most high God a type of our Saviour Christ if not Christ himself as some probably assert they most eagerly and violently attempt to spoyl plunder all the Evangelical Priests and Ministers of God throughout the Nation at one blow without any lawfull Tryal by their Peers due processe of Law or Legal conviction of any Capital crimes which cannot forfeit their Churches inheritance which is not so vested in them as either to forfeit or alien by the Law of God or the Realm of all their inconsiderable remaining Tithes Glebes and setled antient Maintenance and of their very Ministry too as JEWISH and ANTICHRISTIAN as John Canne the old Anabaptist
wise vigilant Protestant Parliaments of 13 Eliz. c. 1. 23 Eliz. c. 1. 27 Eliz. c. 2. 35 Eliz. c. 2. 1 Jac. c. 4. 3 Jac. 1 2 4 5. 7 Jac. c. 6. with some hundreds of printed Declarations Ordinances Remonstrances of the Lords and Commons the last Parliament and the good new Laws Oaths they provided against those Romish Vipers quite buried in Oblivion have published to allarm all drowsie stupid careless people all lovers of God their Religion or Country against them even at this very season when they and their confederates are wittingly or ignorantly over-turning over-turning over-turning whatever is not yet totally subverted among us and carrying on these their designs to their full accomplishment If these my impotent undertakings with a sincere affection only to Gods glory the real weal safety preservation of our Religion Ministry Laws Native Country and all Protestant Churches now indangered by their mutual discords wars and Jesuitical Emissaries to soment their intestine differences may so far open the eyes of all Degrees in our Nation really fearing God as to know in this their day the things which belong unto their peace and settlement and move them efectually to pursue them before they be hid from their eyes I have all the reward I do expect and shall blesse God for the good successe If any shall be offended with me or it and requite me only with envy hatred persecution new Oppressions Bonds close Imprisonments for well-doing and endeavouring any more publick good for our tottering Church Religion Country I shall commit my cause to God which judgeth righteously who hath so often brought forth my righteousness as the Light and my judgement as the Noon day to the shame and confusion of my causelesse enemies and shall carry this comfortable cordial within my brest to any Prison Pillory Gibbet Grave that the malice or power of poor vapouring Mortals who know not how soon their violent dealing may come down upon their own pates as well as on my other potent adversaries shall be able to hurry me to and ascend triumphantly with it even to heaven it self that I have discharged that duty which God Conscience Providence the publick danger of our Ministry Religion Nation and my sacred Oaths Protestation Covenant have engaged me unto And if I perish for it I perish and in perishing shall by Gods assistance depart with this Swan like Saint-like Song of that eminent Prisoner of Jesus Christ who was in Prisons more frequent in Perils Afflictions Persecutions often as I have been for the faithfull discharging of my duty I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousnesse which God the righteous judge shall give me at that day and not to me only but to all them also which suffer for his truth and love his appearing which is the unshaken constant faith hope expectation of thine our Churches Religions Ministers Countries unmercenary faithfull Friend and Servant Swainswick 2 Sep. 1653. William Prynne A GOSPEL PLEA FOR THE Lawfullness and Continuance of the Antient setled Maintenance and Tithes of the Ministers of the GOSPEL THE antient necessary competent maintenance of our Ministers of the Gospel setled on them by the Pietie Bountie of our religious Christian Kings and Ancestors almost from the very first preaching and embracing of the Gospel in this Iland constantly enjoyed ever since without any publick opposition being in these times of a long-expected glorious reformation and real propagation of the Gospel more audaciously oppugned more impiously decried declaimed petitioned publickly against and more sacrilegiously invaded detained substracted than in the very worst profanest of former ages and that not only by professed enemies of the Ministers and Ministery of the Gospel but by such who pretend themselves their friends and the most precious Saints who not yet satisfied with the late spoils sales of all our Archbishops Bishops Cathedrals Deanes Chapters Lands and Revenues the fattest morsels of the English Clergie tending rather to support their Lordly Power Pride Pomp Luxurie than their true Gospel Ministry ingrossed into Sword-mens and Lay-mens hands doe now industriously yea violently endeavour speedily to deprive all our painfull godly preaching Ministers of all their remaining inconsiderable scarce competent Maintenance by Tithes Glebes Oblations and other duties formerly setled on them by long prescription by sundry successive Laws Canons and Acts of Parliaments as well as late Ordinances with sufficient warrant even from Gods Word Gospel and to leave them no other subsistence encouragement reward for all their labours in Gods harvest but the meer arbitrarie uncoercive Benevolence of the people who being generally profane covetous vicious Sectarian if not open enemies to all godly Ministers will not voluntarily contribute one farthing towards them desiring rather their room ruine than their companie or subsistence and what they shall otherwise earn by their own labour industrie in some other callings It is high time for all sincere Patrons Friends of the Ministers and Ministry of the Gospel now dangerously assaulted publickly to appear in their behalf and openly to vindicate secure as well the Divine as Civil right of their yet remaining ancient necessarie established maintenance against the clamorous cavils petitions and false absurd Allegations of Sacrilegious Covetous Impious Violent Vnreasonable Brutish men to convince them of their errour and impietie herein or else to shame silence them for the future and preserve our present Ministers Ministry and by consequence our very Religion it self now more endangered than in any age since its first establishment from impendent ruine For which end having not long since had some private discourses with Souldiers concerning the lawfullness of our Ministers Tithes and setled maintenance during my late strict causeless restraints under their armed Guards and perusing some short Prison notes notions upon that occasion of that subject lying by me I thought fit to enlarge and reduce them to these ensuing Propositions wherein the whole controversie now publickly agitated touching our Ministers Tithes and Livelihood is comprised to make them publick for the common good and satisfaction of those who shall peruse them especially Sword-men whom I finde most violent against Tithes and Ministers forced maintenance trusting more as I apprehend to the length of their swords than strength of their Arguments against them which how weak they are let all rational perusers hereof resolve The Propositions I shall here through Gods assistance make good from the very Law Word and Gospel of God with all possible brevitie I trust beyond all contradiction are these 1. That there is a just competent and comfortable Maintenance due to all lawfull painfull Preachers and Ministers of the Gospell from the people even by Divine right institution and express Texts Precepts of the Gospel 2. That the maintenance of the Ministers of the Gospell and of Places Houses for Gods publick worship by Tithes Glebes Oblations
yea by spoils won in battel by Generals Collonels Captains Souldiers is not only lawfull expedient but the most fiting rational convenient Maintenance of all others warranted by direct Presidents Precepts both before under the Law and likewise by the Gospel which doth no wayes abolish condemn but approve confirm this way of Maintenance 3. That if Tithes and other Maintenance formerly setled on our Ministers be either wilfully with-held or substracted from them by the people in part or in whole the Civil Magistrates may yea ought by coercive Laws and Penalties to enforce the payment of them in due form and time both by the Law of God and Rules of Justice without any injurie or oppression to the detainers 4. That our Ministers Tithes are really no burthen grievance oppression to the people but a charge debt dutie as well as their Landlords Rents or Merchants poundage That the abolishing of them will be no real ease gain advantage to Farmers Lâ—ssees and the poorer sort of people as is falsely pretended but only to rich Land-lords and landed men and a loss detriment to all others 5. That the present Opposition and endevoured Abolition of Tithes and all other coercive Maintenance for Ministers proceeds not from any real grounds of Pietie Conscience or any consideble real inconveniences mischiefs arising from them but meerly from base covetous carnal hearts want of Christian love charitie to and professed enmitie hatred against the Ministers of the Gospel yea from a Jesuitical Papistical Anabaptistical design to subvert ruine our Ministers Church Religion the probable if not necessary consequence of this infernal Project if it should take effect which would prove the eternal shame infamie ruine of our Nation not its glory and benefit CHAP. I. THe first of these Propositions being the foundation and corner-stone whereon all the rest depend and into which it hath a prevailing influence I shall be more copious in its Probation and in the Refutation of the Objections which are or may be raised against it That there is a just competent and comfortable Maintenance due to all lawfull painfull Preachers and Ministers of the Gospel from the people even by Divine right institution and express Texts Precepts of the Gospel is as clear as the noonday Sun by these irrefragable Gospel Testimonies I. By Matth. 10.5 6 9 10 11. where when our Lord and Saviour Christ himself first sent forth authorized commanded his 12. Apostles to preach the Gospel he gave them these instructions among other Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses nor scrip nor bread adds Mark 6.8 for your journey neither two coats nor shooes nor yet staves adding this as the reason thereof For the Labourer is worthy of his meat or his Reward Hire Wages Maintenance as the Greek word will bear and other following Scriptures render it II. By Luke 10.1 6 10. recording that when our Saviour Christ not long after his former Commission to the 12. Apostles sent forth the 70. Disciples by two and two to preach in every City and place whither himself would come he gave them almost the self-same instructions Carry neither purse nor scrip nor shoes and into whatsoever house ye enter first say Peace be to this house c. And in the same house remain eating and drinking such things as they give subjoyning this reason for it For the Labourer is worthy of his Hire Go not from house to house as Beggars use to doe for alms And into what City you enter and hey receive you eat such things as are set before you c. III. By John 6.35 36 37 38. where our Lord Jesus Christ soon after the former Commissions used these words to his Disciples Behold I say unto you Lift up your eyes and look on the fields for they are white already to harvest And He that reapeth receiveth Wages and gathereth fruit unto eternal life c. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour c. Which may be aptly paralleld with and interpreted by Matth. 9.37 38. Then said he our Saviour unto his Disciples The harvest truly is plenteous but the Laborers are few pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth Laborers into his harvest Which when he did he agreed with them all for a certain stipend by the day and when the evening was come he said unto his Steward Call the Laborers and give them their hire beginning from the last unto the first Mat. 20.1 to 15. as is there parabolically expressed From which Texts words of our Lord and Saviour Christ himself it is most apparent 1. That the Apostles Preachers Ministers of the Gospel are and ought to be diligent painfull Labourers in Christs spiritual harvest not idle loiterers 2. That they were not obliged but expresly prohibited to provide gold silver brass scrips shoes clothes bread meat drink lodging and other necessaries at their own free cost when they were commissioned and sent forth to preach the Gospel as some now would enforce them to for this very reason That being Labourers in the Lords own harvest for the eternall salvation of mens soules they were worthy to receive them as hire or wages from those to whom they preached 3. That our Saviour Christ himself at the very original institution and first mission of his 12. Apostles and after of his 70 Disciples to preach the Gospel thrice one after another expresl y resolves in positive terms That they are worthy of their meat hire wages for their Labour in the Gospel and so by consequence all other lawfull Labouring Ministers who diligently preach the Gospel are worthie of the like at this day and neither of them obliged to preach the Gospell freely without any recompence wages reward as some Seducers now pretend 4. That meat drink clothes lodging and a competent maintenance are as truely justly due to the true Labouring Ministers of the Gospell from the people and that of pure common natural yea Gospell right justice not as meer arbitrary Charity or Benevolence but as merited HIRE WAGES as much as well as deserved hire wages are due to any other hired servant or labourer whatsoever by common justice and the law of God Gen. 29. 15. Exod. 2.9 Levit. 19.13 Deut. 24.14 15. Mat. 20.1 to 16. Joh. 4.36 Or as well as pay wages are justly due to the best deserving Officers soldiers Luke 3.14 Ezek. 28.18 19. and that by Christs own trebled resolution recorded by the Evangelists for their greater evidence and conviction who emphatically by way of reason applies these words only to his Apostles and Ministers For the Labourer is worthy of his meat hire wages they being the most divine excellent usefull necessary Labourers of all others and that in matters of highest concernment in relation both to God and Men Therefore of all other labourers they are most worthy of a honorable comfortable certain hire salary reward for their support and encouragement 5. Hence
beneficial to others than that of Souldiers and Commanders for they are the very Embassadors of God himself and Jesus Christ the King and Lord of glory the King of Kings and Lord of Lords the Prince of the Kings of the earth and only Potentate to whom all other Powers and knees must bow beseeching men in Christs stead to be reconciled to God 2 Cor. 5 20. The Ministers servants messengers of Jesus Christ workers together with him Stewards of the mysteries of God and the glory of Christ 1 Cor 4.1 2. 2 Cor 6.1 8.23 2 Tim 2.24 imployed to preach to sinfull men the unsearchable riches of Christ to turn them from darkness unto light and from the power of Satan unto God Eph 3.8 Acts 26.18 to rescue their souls from the slavery and power of sin Satan hell death everlasting damnation and make them the sons of God heirs and coheirs with Christ of everlasting glory and felicity in Gods heavenly Kingdom through the power of Gods Grace and Spirit working in with by and through their Ministry on their hearts Now the calling of a Souldier though it be honourable and in some cases lawfull and necessary if rightly managed yet it is for the most part sinfull hurtfull pernicious dangerous unbeseeming the Gospel in respect of the cause managing abuses thereof it being accompanied with murther violence rapine treachery perjury sacrilege cruelty inhumanity profaneness blasphemy contempt of God of all sacred civil Laws and Ordinances ambition treason and the worst of sins tending usually like an overflowing Deluge to the subversion desolation ruine of whole Families Cities Countries Kingdoms Churches yea Mankinde it self Religion Lawes Liberties Properties turning whole famous Cities into ashes and Kingdoms into Golgothaes Acheldamaes fields of bloud and dead mens sculs yea very wildernesses as the Scripture Histories and experience manifest Hence God styles great Warriers and Armies The rod of his anger the Battel-Axe with which he breaketh in pieces the Nations destroyeth Kingdoms and treadeth them down like the mire in the streets and then at last destroyes them in his wrath when they have executed his judgements for their rapines violence and bloudy cruelty Isa 10.5 c. Jer. 50.1 to 48. c. 51.20 c. They being really carried on from one war to another out of vainglory ambition covetousness a mad humour of false greatness nullus supra caeteros eminendi modus in sua fata pariter ac publica to their own and the publick ruine yet still under a pretext of publick good and safety as Seneca excellently writes in his 94 Epistle a piece worth the reading of Alexander the great Caesar Pompey Marius qui cum omnia concuterent concutiebantur cum multis fuerunt Authores mali pestiferam illam vim qua plerosque nocuerunt ipsi quoque sentiunt Indeed the Profession of a Souldier even in the best of men and warres is so full of danger pollution that it leaves some scarrs of sin and tincture of pollution on them however they demean themselves Whence we read that though David were a man after Gods own heart and fought the battels of the Lord against his professed enemies by his special command with constant success yet God would by no means permit him to build an house and Temple to him for this very reason Because he had been a man of Warr and made great Battels and shed much Blood upon the Earth in his sight And the 12000. Israelites who by Gods special command went up to war against the Midianites and slew them returning with victory and great spoils without the loss of one man though treble their number when as they came back from the war were all of them whosoever had killed any person or touched any slain enjoyned by God and Moses to remain without the Camp seven dayes and to purifie themselves on the third and seventh day as unclean and polluted persons Numb 31.1 17 19 20. and all the Officers and Captains of hundreds and thousands in the host brought an oblation what every man had gotten of Jewels of Gold Chaines Bracelets Rings Ear-rings and Tablets to make an Oblation for their souls before the Lord v. 48 49 50. Such a stain and guilt was there adhering to their War-like calling in this best of Warrs against Gods professed idolatrous enemies And may not all Officers Souldiers whatsoever then justly fear finde a deeper guilt of sin and stain of blood than was in David or those Officers and Souldiers adhering to their persons profession in our unnatural uncivil Wars even with and against their very Christian nearest dearest Kings Brethren Friends Kindred Neighbours of the self-same reformed Protestant Religion and thereupon make the like or a far richer oblation than they did out of their spoils and gains by Warr as an attonement for their Souls in stead of provoking God and encreasing their guilt by seeking to spoil his faithfull Ministers of their long enjoyed maintenance In all these 6. particulars wherein the calling of Ministers excells in merit that of common Souldiers Captains and Officers of War both in respect of time studie costs labour diligence parts danger honour excellencie use profit and necessitie to which I might add that the Ministers frequent tears prayers in times of War and Judgements are far more prevalent beneficial victorious than the Souldiers Arms besides their constant use and benefit in daies of peace when Souldiers are needless useless I referr it to the unprejudiced judgements consciences of all rational Christian men and Souldiers themselves whether our faithfull preaching Ministers be not worthie of as large as liberal as constant setled honourable coercive a maintenance from the people as any Souldiers Officers Captains Collonels Majors or Major Generals whatsoever if not a better larger salarie and reward than they enjoy for the premised reasons when as yet some ordinarie Soldiers Troopers receive as much or more pay by the year as many of our godly Ministers and every Ancient Serjeant Lieutenant as much as the most and best beneficed Ministers and most Captains Collonels Majors five or six times more than our ablest best deserving Ministers and some general Army-Officers have received gained more monie lands wealth in few moneths or years space at least than hundreds of our most meritorious Ministers put together can gain in all their lives by their Ministry How then can they tax them as covetous oppressive yea as caterpillars of the people by their Tithes and Duties for receiving only 30 40 50 80 100 200 or 300 l. a year and very few of them more or so much from the people by an antient right paid once a year when as they receive ten times more from the impoverished people and at least the tenth part or more of all our poor Ministers livings by monthly enforced contributions and yet will neither give them the Tenthes of their pay and spoyles of Warr as Abraham and others did Gen 14.10
That he was worthy for whom he should do this And why so For he loveth our Nation and hath built us a Synagogue Whereupon Jesus went with them and healed his servant marvelling at the Centurions words and turning about and saying unto the people that followed him I have not found so great Faith no not in Israel This great Centurion and Commander was no Jew but a Gentile one who but newly heard of Christs name and same yet he had so much Piety and Bounty as out of his very Spoyls and Gains of Warre for we read of no other Lands or Gains he had to build a Synagogue for Gods worship which the Elders of the Jews and Christ too approved as a worthy act and a sufficient inducement for our Saviour to go with him and cure his servant O that all our Centurions who have Souldiers under them and exceed or equal him in command would imitate and equal this Gospel Centurion in his pious munificence in building in stead of contriving how to deface Temples Churches Synagogues to abolish Tithes ingrosse Church Lands and Livings into their own hands then should they receive as large Encomiums of the reality and transcendency of their Faith Piety Charity from men as he did from our Saviour and the Elders of the Jews for building this new Synagogue I shall only adde for our Souldiers Officers better Information that from this example of Abraham approved in the new Testament both Divines Councils Canonists and Casuists have unanimously resolved That Souldiers ought to pay personal Tithes to Ministers out of their very Militia pay and spoyls of Warr. This was St. Augustines Doctrine DE MILITIA de negotio de artificio redde Decimas recited practised and long prescribed here in England in the excerptions of Egbert Archbishop of Yorke about the year of our Lord 750. repeated confirmed by Gratian in his Decrees Causa 16. qu. 1. f. 381 382 By all the Canonists Glossers on his Text by Angelus de Clavasio in his Summa Angelica Tit. Decima by Hostiensis Summa Rosella and other Summists Casuists in their Titles of Tithes and ratifyed by the Synod of Lingon An. 1404. apud Bochellum Decret Ecclesiae Gallicanae lib. 6. Tit. 8. c. 31. p. 967. This many excellent Christian Commanders Officers Souldiers have in several ages performed as Histories record I shall for brevity instance but in one domestick example and that a memorable one King William the first whom we usually style the Conqueror though he never claimed the Crown by Conquest but only by the last Will Testament and Donation of King Edward the Confessor in his life-time with the assent of his Nobles who was educated with preserved by him during his exile and seclusion from the Crown by the Danish usurpers and as COUSIN and HEIR to Edward the Confessor as he stiled himself in the very Title of his Laws He having vanquished and slain the perjured Vsurper Harold who set the Crown upon his own head and made himself King without any Title or due Election against his solemn Oath to Duke William made to him in Normandy which he pretended to be forced in thankfulnesse to God for this his victory whereby he gained possession of the Crown out of the Spoyls and Gains of his Warr erected a Magnificent Church and Abbey to the glory of God and St. Martin which he called de Bello or Battel Abbey in that very place where Harold was slain and this battel fought which likewise he endowed with large possessions Tithes and most ample Privileges by his Charter and therein offered up to God HIS SWORD and the royal robe which he ware the day of his Coronation there reserved as a Monument as well of his Piety as Victory After which this pretended Conqueror in the fourth year of his reign by the Counsel of his Barons through all the Counties of England caused 12. men of the most Noble wise and skilfullest in the Law to be summoned out of every shire that he might learn their Laws and Customs from them and gave them this Oath That proceeding in a right path without declining to the right hand or the left to the best of their power they should make known to him the Customs and Sanctions of their Lawes pretermitting nothing adding nothing and altering nothing in them by prevarication which they accordingly performing and King William intending to alter the Law only in one particular according to the Lawes of Norway from whence he and his Normans descended all the Barons and Grand English Enquest who presented him their Laws on Oath being much grieved at it unanimously besought him that he would permit them to enjoy their proper Laws and antient Customs under which their Fathers lived and themselves had been born and educated because they deemed it very hard for them to receive unknown Lawes and to judge of those things they knew not importunately beseeching him for the soul of K. Edward WHO HAD GRANTED TO HIM THE CROWN and KINGDOM AFTER HIS DEATH and whose Lawes they were that hee would not compell them to persevere under the Lawes of any Foreiners but their own Country Laws alone Wherefore the King taking advice consented to the request of his Barons confirming all their Lawes and Customs in Parliament without any alteration or diminution as they presented them Whereof this is the very first Law concerning the preservation of the Churches rights and Scholars from rapine Every Clergy-man and likewise all Scholars and all their Goods and Possessions wheresoever they are shall enjoy the Peace of God and of holy Church free from all forfeiture and seisure and if any shall lay hands on that which Mother Church shall require LET HIM RESTORE THAT WHICH HEE SHALL TAKE AWAY and likewise one hundred shillings in the name of a forfeiture if it be from an Abbey or Church of Religion and twenty shillings if it be from a Mother Parish Church and ten shillings if it be from a Chapel After which follow 6. other Lawes concerning the Churches peace and privileges and then these two Laws concerning TITHES Of the TITHES of the Church Of all Corn the tenth Sheaf is given to God and therefore to be paid If any shall have a herd of Mares let him pay the tenth colt he who shall have only one or two let him pay a penny for every colt Likewise he who shall have many Kine let him pay the tenth calf he who shall have but one or two let him pay a penny for every calf and he who shall make cheese let him give the tenth to God and if he shall make none the milk every tenth day Likewise the tenth Lamb the tenth Fleece the tenth Butter the tenth Pig Of BEES and all lesser TITHES In like manner also of Bees the tenth of the profit and also of Wood of Meadows Waters and Mills and Ponds and Fishings and Copses and Orchards and Gardens and Negotiations wherein Souldiery
or Feasts to God at all as the Jews by the Levitical law were bound to doe If so then farewell all Lords-dayes Fasts Feasts publike Assemblies for Gods worship all Ministers Churches and God himself together with them as well as Tithes let Gain Money be the only Deities henceforth adored among us as the Motto stamped upon our new State-coyn God with us and most mens practices sadly proclaim to Gods dishonour and Religions intolerable defamation These Answers I presume will for ever satisfie or silence these Objectors with John Canne their new Champion who may now discern their grosse mistake and learn this for a general certain truth That whatever is not in its own nature and Original meerly Jewish and ceremonial but hath a kind of natural justice equity conveniency morality or necessity in it and had a divine original institution before the ceremonial Law given or the Levitical Priesthood instituted That thing though afterwards given limited prescribed to the Levitical Priests or Israelites by a general or special Levitical Law abrogated by Christ doth neither cease its being nor become unlawfull in its primitive or proper use unto Christian Ministers or Believers under the Gospel by the abolishing of the Levitical Law and Priesthood but may and must necessarily be continued practised perpetuated among them without the least sin scandal or Judaism according to its own primitive institution or natural necessary divine moral or civil use else Bread meat drink wives clothes religious Sabbaths Fasts Feasts Edifices and Assemblies for Gods publick worship Houses for Hospitality Charity to Ministers to poor distressed Saints People yea reading prayer preaching of the word of God Magistracy and Government it self should be utterly unlawfull unto Christian Ministers and People as well as Tithes because given prescribed to be used by the Levitical Priests and Jews by the Levitical Law Therefore seeing meat drink food raiment Lands Houses and a competent proportion of all worldly necessaries are as simply needfull for the preservation subsistence of the Ministers of the Gospel and their Families now under the Gospel as for the Priests Levites before and under the Law or all other sorts of men in the world who cannot live without them And seeing Tithes Lands Houses both before and under the Law were originally given to and setled by God and Men upon Priests and Levites first and Ministers since not as meer Types Shadows Ceremonies but as a just fitting convenient recompence of their Labour necessary maintenance Livelihood habitation residence for them and their Families to provide them meat drink Books clothes and other necessaries to live by Why our Ministers under the Gospel should not still enjoy them in this kind and Nature without the least shadow of Judaism as well as Melchisedec before the Law or the Jewish Priests and Levites under it or their Predecessors before them even from the first settlement of the Gospel amongst us or as well as any other Men or the Objectors do enjoy their Lands Goods Houses and the other nine parts of their Tithes encrease for their Livelihood and subsistence as well as the Jews without any sin or Judaism transcends my capacity to apprehend and the ability of all armed or unarmed Enemies of Tithes or Glebes to demonstrate from Scripture Law Reason or the objected abused Text over-long insisted on to clear it from all ignorant or wilfull wrestings And so much for the payment of Tithes by Abraham and vowing them by Jacob before the Law to justifie the lawfulnesse and continuance of them under the Gospel against all cavilling Exceptions Secondly I shall make good the Proposition from the Maintenance of the Priests and Levites by Glebes Tithes and Oblations under the Law urged as the strongest if not only Reason against them and thus form my Argument That which God himself who is infinitely and only wife just holy did by his special Laws Edicts institute prescribe as the most expedient equal fit just rational convenient maintenance of all other for his own Priests and Levites to receive and take from his own People when once setled in the promised Land for the execution of their function must questionlesse be not only a lawfull but the most expedient equal fit just rational convenient maintenance of all other for his Ministers of the Gospel to receive and take from all believing Christians in any setled Christian Kingdome State Church under the Gospel especially if he hath neither positively prohibited this kind and way of maintenance nor specially prescribed any other way or kind of setled maintenance for them in and by the Gospel But God himself who is infinitely and only wise just holy did by his special Laws Edicts institute prescribe Houses Lands Glebes Tâ—thes and Oblations as the most expedient equal fitting just rational convenient maintenance of all other for his own Priests and Levites to receive and take from his own people when once setled in the promised Land for the execution of their Functions and hath neither positively prohibited this kind or way of maintenance nor specially prescribed any other way or kind of setled maintenance for them in and by the Gospel Ergo It must questionlesse be not only a lawfull but the most expedient equal fit just rational convenient maintenance of all other for his Ministers of the Gospel from all believing Christians in any setled Kingdome State Church under the Gospel The Major I suppose no rational Christian can or will deny except he thinks himself as King Alphonso the proud Atheistical self-conceited Astronomer did more wise just holy than God himself and abler to carve out a more expedient equal just fitting rational convenient maintenance for Gods Priests Levites Ministers than God himself hath done and dare bid defiance to this Gospel precept Eph. 5.1 Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children The Minor I shall thus confirm in order 1. That God did by special Laws Edicts institute and prescribe Cities Suburbs Lands Houses Glebes for the Priests and Levites habitation and the better maintenance of them and their Cattel and that in a liberal proportion is apparent by Num. 35. from v. 1 to 12. where we find recorded That the Lord spake unto Moses in the plain of Moab by Jordan near Jericho saying command the Children of Israel that they give unto the Levites of the Inheritances of their possession Cities to Dwell in and ye shall give also unto the Levites Suburbs for their Cities round about them And the Cities they shall have to Dwell in and the suburbs of them shall be for their Cattel and for their Goods and for all their Beasts And the suburbs of the Cities which ye shall give unto the Levites shall reach from the wall of the City and outward a thousand Cubits round about And ye shall measure from without the City on the East side two thousand Cubits and on the South side two thousand Cubits and on the West side two thousand Cubits
are Gods and wilt thou not render to the Creator of all things that which is his own The Lord God doth not want he requires not a reward but honour he exacts not any thing of thine which thou shouldest reserve fund He vouchsafes to demand only the First-fruits and Tithe of things which are his and doest thou O covetous wretch deny him What wouldest thou doe if reserving the Nine parts to himself he had left only the Tenth to thee This he hath already done when as thy harvest for want of rain mildew and thy vintage through hayl or frost is diminished into a Ninth part O covetous Varlet how dost thou reckon The Nine parts are withdrawn from thee because thou wouldest not give the Tenth It is most apparent that thou hast not given them but yet God hath exacted them For this is the most just custom of the Lord that if thou wilt not give the Tenth to him he will recall the Nine and leave only a Tenth part to thee What if God should say unto thee Man is mine whom I have made the earth is mine which thou tillest the seeds are mine which thou sowest the cattel are mine which thou weariest the showrs and the rain and the gales of wind are mine the heat of the Sun is also mine And seeing all the Elements by which the seed fruits do live and grow are mine and thou only lendest thy hand thou deservest only a Tenth But because Almighty God feeds deals most liberally with us he hath given a most ample gift and reward to him that laboureth challenging the Tenth only to himself and pardoning all the rest to us And wilt thou then ungratefully and perfideously deprive him of it when the year is ended and the crop reaped If any shall presume to doe so let them read what followes in that Sermon and then sleep quietly if they can 9. That all Christians under the Gospel are bound in Justice Equity Conâ—cience to give their hired Servants and Labourers their due and deserved Wages and not to detain it from them even under the Gospel and that by vertue of Gods command recorded in the Levitical and Judicial Law Levit 19.13 Deut. 14.14 15. approved in the Gospel Col. 4.1 and to allow their Beasts Oxen that plow and tread out their Corn Straw and Provender without muzling up their mouthes by vertue of a like precept recorded Deut 25.4 twice repeated and urged by the Apostle in the New Testament to prove the lawfullnesse of Ministers maintenance under the Gospel 1 Cor 9.8 9 10. 1 Tim 5.18 and that without the least suspition of Judaism or Antichristianism Therefore they may and are also bound in Justice Equity Conscience not only to settle Glebes upon but likewise to pay Tithes to the Ministers of the Gospel as a due Wages Hire Reward for their Labour in the Ministry as well as the Jews did to their Priests and Leviteâ— without the least tincture of Judaism or Antichristianism since Christ himself in the Gospel expresly resolvs Mat. 10.10 Luke 10.7 and 1 Tim. 5.18 That Ministers being Labourers are worthy of their Mâ—at Hire and a competent Maintenance suitable to their pains and function as well as any other hired Servants or Labourers in the fields or as our labouring Oxen or Horses are of Straw and Provender 10. We read it recorded 1 Sam. 8.11 15 17. That this would be the manner of the King that should reign over the Jâ—ws that amongst other things He will take the Tenth of your Seed and of your Vineyards and the Tenth of your Sheep and give them to his Officers and Servants In imitation whereof the Kings of England in antient Parliaments and of late times have usually demanded and received by Grant in Parliament a Dâ—cime or Tenth of the Goods and Estates of their Subjects for their Supplies and likewise a Tenth of their Merchandise exported and imported for Tonnage and Poundage as our Parliament Records Histories and Rastal in his Abridgement of Statutes Tithes Taxes and Tenths attest If then our lawfull Kings Princes and Governours under the Gospel may justly demand and receive by Grant in Parliament the Tenth of all our Goods Corn Wooll Sheep Estates Merchandise for their necessary supplies and the defence of the Kingdom and some who are no Kings and have engaged against Kingship as Tyrannical do the like without a Parliament taking beyond the presidents of the worst of all our Kings not only a Tenth of all our Estates but a double or treble Tenth of all mens yearly Revenues Estates of Ministers Tithes besides for the Maintenance of themselves and the Army without the guilt of Iudaism Antichristian Tyranny Oppression or Superstition Why our faithfull Ministers may not likewise demand receive enjoy their Glebes and Tithes not only granted but confirmed to them by our Ancestors in successive Parliaments from the first planting of the Gospel in this Nation till the Reformation by all our Protestant Parliaments since the Reformation and by sundry Ordinances in the very last Parliament to which some now in highest Power gave their cordial Votes for the Preaching propagating of the Gospel and saving of mens Souls without the like Brand of Judaism and Anti-christianism let John Canne resolve me when he can who most falsly scandalously unchristianly brands both the last and all Protestant Parliaments confirming Tithes for Popish Idolatrous Parliaments acting against the Lord Jesus and our Ministry for an Antichristian Ministry Who certainly was in his Cannes or Cups when he writ and published such palpable scandalous untruths to the dishonour of our Church Parliaments Nation Religion But such Cretians are alwayes Lyars Evil Beasts Slow Bellies wherefore they need a sharp rebuke that they may be sound in the saith Tit 1.12 13. He might have done better to excite those to whom he dedicates his Pamphlet against those Popish Priest Monks Friars Jesuits sent from the Pope and Rome into England of late to root out our Ministry and their Maintenance as most opposite to Antichristianism his Papal Soveraignty and Errors under the Notion of Anabaptists dipped Jews Gifted Brethren New Lights Seekers But against these he hath not one word and why so Because the Dominican and Franciscan Freers as Mr. Selden relates in his History of Tithes were the first who made it a gainfull doctrine to teach Laymen that they were not bound to pay their Tithes to their Ministers as to whom by any Law of God that portion belonged teaching them to be due only as Alms or as what ex debito charitatis not ex debito justitiae was to be dispensed By this doctrine The Mendicams especially often got them to themselves like the old Eustathians as Alms to be arbitrarily disposed of to such as took any spiritual Labour as also made their own detaining of them in lands out of which they were parochially due to séem lesse wrongfull They possessing the people with an opinion to gain them
or just as our Bibles Religion Baptism Churches were derived thence and all now living with Canne himself derived from Popish Ancestors many even from Popes Popish Priests Prelates Friars by natural generation as their surnames discover God used the Popes of Rome and their Instruments to convert the Britains and Saxons from their Paganism to the Christian not Papal or Roman Faith which through Gods mercy hath continued amongst us ever since yet mixed of later times with manifold Popish Errors and Superstitions These Errors Superstitions our godly Martyrs and by them our Kings and Parliaments discovering did thereupon by special Acts of Parliament abolish as derived from the Church of Rome together with the Popes usurped power and Gain which they served only to support retaining only the Scriptures Sacraments Soul-saving Doctrines thence derived by succession onely but authoritatively originally from God and Christ himself with such Godly Orthodox Bishops and Ministers who though first ordained in the Church of England when Popish did yet renounce all her Popish Errors Corruptions with the Popes Supremacy and all Popish additional Rites to the form of their Ordination and Baptism which made neither of them void in Substance no more than their annexing of the Apocrypha to the Canonical Scriptures made them uncanonical These afterwards ordained other Bishops Ministers without any Popish Rites in such manner as the Gospel prescribes which Mr. Mason Mr. Yates and others prove against the Papists to be a lawful Ordination though not made by the Popes Authority nor according to former Popish Ceremonies In this Sense onely they write the bare Succession not the Office and Calling of our Ministers as this woodden Canne mistakes was derived from the Church of Rome but their Ministry it self from Christs own Institution And if this makes them Popish and Antichristian then all our Protestant Kings Parliaments Magistrates Judges Officers of all sorts must be Popish too if not Paganish because their Predecessors were such and all Officers Souldiers of the Army and Anabaptistical Saints too who have purchased any Lands Rents Revenues of Abbies Priories Archbishops Bishops Deans Chapters Archdeacons must likewise be both Antichristian and Popish because their Predecessors who first enjoyed and from whom they do derive them were such at least in their and Cannes repute I hope therefore they will all now renounce these their Purchases to avoid the Guilt and high scandal of Popery and Antichristianism or disclaim this Second Loud-lying Voice against our Ministers and their Ministry as a Voice only from a prophane empty Canne not from a Sacred Temple or Gods holy Spirit But to return from this necessary digression touching the Lawfulness of our Ministers Calling unto their Tithes We have secondly in this Text 1 Cor. 9.13 14. a Gospel Ordinance for their very Tithes confirmed by the old Levitical Law and grounded on its Equity But how doth this appear By these emphatical words Even so hath the Lord Ordained in the Preterperfect Tense That they which preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel But where hath the Lord ordained this The Apostle thrice resolves expresly that he hath done it in the Levitical Law v. 9. For it is written in the Laws of Moses Deut. 25.4 Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the Ox that treadeth out the Corn doth God take care for Oxen Or saith he it altogether for our sakes For our sakes no doubt this is written that he that ploweth should plow in hope and he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope Which he again recites 1 Tim. 5.18 If this Precept concerning the meat and maintenance of Oxen only in the Letter though part of the Levitical Law was doubtless written for and really intended of the Ministers of the Gospels food and maintenance and in full force under the Gospel as the Apostle clearly resolves then a fortiori the Precepts of the Law concerning the food and livelihood of Gods Priests and Levites under the Law by Glebes and Tithes not purely Ceremonial as I have already proved must doubtlesse be intended of them and be in full force likewise in their natural equitable Sence and Proportion in relation to their Livelihood for preaching of the Gospel there being a greater Analogy Proportion between them and Preachers of the Gospel than betwixt them and Oxen. To put it out of doubt he subjoyns Do not ye know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the Temple and they which wait at the Altar are partakers with the Altar To wit by Gods expresse Ordinance in the Levitical Law which ye know and therefore I need not particularly cite the words as I did the other of not muzzling the Ox c. which were more obscure and needed my former Paraphrase on them but thus mind you of them in the general And then he inferrs and subjoyns Even so hath the Lord ordained to wit by the very natural moral Equity of the Lawes Ordinances he made for the Priests and Levites Maintenance by Tithes Glebes and Free-will-offerings for officiating in the Temple and at the Altar under the Law that the Preachers of the Gospel who now succeed and supply their places though in different services in the Churches of Christ under the Gospel should live of the Gospel even so fully comfortably and in such sort as they did under the Law Or at least by this Gospel text superadded to them by Gods Spirit To make this out more fully and clear it from the censure of Judaism take notice of these four particulars 1. That in the Holy Ghosts Gospel phrase and language there is a Temple among and for Christians under the Gospel as well as among and for the Jews under the Law else Cannes Voice from the Temple if there be no such place must be thus amended in his next Edition A Voice from the Canne or Alehouse and that this Temple is nothing else but the Church and Saints of Christ 2 Cor. 6.16 1 Cor. 3.16 17. chap. 6.19 Ephes 2.21 2 Thess 2.4 Rev. 3 12. chap. 7.15 chap. 11.1 2 19. chap. 14 15. chap. 15.5 6 8. chap. 16.1 17. compared together 2. That Christians under the Gospel have likewise an Altar as well as the Jews though different from theirs Heb. 13.14 We have an Altar whereof they have no right to eat which serve the Tabernacle oft mentioned Rev. 6.9 chap. 8.3 5. chap. 9.13 ch 14.18 yea coupled with the Temple Rev. 11.1 Rise measure the Temple of God and the Altar 3. We have Sacrifices to be offered in this Temple on the Altar as well as the Jews in theirs 1. The Sacrifice of Prayer Rev. 8.3 4 5. 2. The Sacrifice of Praise Heb. 13.15 3. The Sacrifice of Charity alms and good works Heb. 13.16 4. Our own bodies which we must present as a living Sacrifice holy acceptable unto God by serving him according to his word as rational men not beasts that were both slain and sacrificed
we are despised even to this present hour we are hungry and thirst and are naked and are buffeted and have no certain dwelling place we are reviled persecuted defamed we are as the filth of the world and the off-scouring of all things unto this day If all Ministers in times of peace and settlement must be like the Apostles in not receiving Tithes then they must be like them too even in setled Christian Kingdoms States Churches in all these their particular sufferings and have no certain dwelling place c. And if so Let Canne and his new Ministers of the Gospel as they stile themselves begin the president of whom our Ministers may now say as Paul did of the Corinthians in the precedent verse of this chapter v. 8. Now ye are full now ye are rich ye have reigned as Kings without us when as most of them were very poor and far enough from reigning as Kings or so much as Petty Constables before these unhappy Wars and in dayes of former persecution when Canne himself durst not shew his face in England for fear of a Bishops power or High commission Pursuivant nor durst reproach our Orthodox protestant pious Ministers and Parliaments as Antichristian Popish and compare their Laws for Ministers Tithes with the very Idolatrous Statutes of Omri and Ahab as he doth now p. 3. for which he might have taken a turn at Tyburn in steed of walking freely in Westminster Hall without being questioned for this his impudent high Slanders both of our Laws and Parliaments as well as Ministry 6. If the Ministers of the Gospel be bound to imitate the Apostles in all things then they must not have Gold nor Silver nor Brasse in their purses neither Scrip nor two Coats nor yet Shoes nor so much as two Staves but Sandals only on their feet Mat. 10.9 10. Mark 6.8 9. as the Capuchin-Fryars Mendicants hence conclude this being a positive Precept the objected examples of the Apostles c. only a President And if so not only all our Ministers but Canne and all his Administrators must turn Fryars Mendicants too in good earnest who ground their Vow of Voluntary poverty on this Text and the objected Presidents of Christ and his Apostles and so become no Ministers of Christ but Antichrist and as truly Antichristian as these Fryars are the Heads Ringleaders of our last sect of Quakers 7. If our Ministers must all now be like those of the Primitive times whiles under persecuting Heathen Emperours Kings Magistrates then all Saints and Christians too in our daies times must imitate and be like the Saints Christians in those dayes They must sell all their old and new purchased Lands Houses Lordships Palaces lay all the mony down at the Ministers feet and have all things in common like the real Saints and Christians in the Apostles times Acts 4.34 to the end and instead of Lording feasting it in their new acquired Royal Episcopal Palaces and Mannor Houses they must wander about in Sheep-skins and Goat-skins in Dâ—sarts Mountains Dens and Caves of the earth being dâ—stitute and afflicted like the Saints of old yea and like them they must be tortured tormented not accepting deliverance have trials of cruel mockings scourgings bonds and imprisonments be stoned sawn asunder slain with the Sword instead of slaying plundering imprisoning and sawing others asunder with the Sword Heb. 11.35 to 39. And when our Army-Saints Officers Souldiers Anabaptists Quakers with other Tithe-Oppugners who presse this Objection against Ministers Tithes shall lay down all their Arms Commands Power Lands and sell all they have to become like to all these Primitive Saints and Martyrs of Christ in their sufferings in times of Persecution I doubt not but our Ministers will joyfully part both with their Glebes Rectories Tithes and setled Maintenance to sympathize with them in their Persecutions Sufferings But till such hard times of Persecutions come and they begin to follow this President of the self-denying Primitive Saints I hope they will not make all our Ministers present Martyrs in their Tithes and setled Maintenance nor enjoyn them alone but not themselves to follow the Primitive Ministers of the Gospel in those times of persecution and prove greater persecutors to them in these pretended times of Christian Liberty Law Justice than the late Oppressing Prelates and High Commissioners who suffered many of them though Non-Conformists to enjoy their Tithes Glebes Offrings and not eject disinherit them and their Successors for ever of their antient Glebes Tithes and other setled Maintenance without any Legal Trial by their Peers or Conviction of any Treasonable crimes against our known Laws for which they deserve to forfeit them and all under the false petence that Tithes are Jewish and Antichristian under the Gospel Which I hope I have sufficiently refuted being established on them by Christian Kings States Parliaments immediately after the Primitive persecutions generally throughout Christendome as the fittest Maintenance of all other and particularly in our Realm when as the abolishing of them will be really such in the Judgement of all Godly Protestants Patrons of Religion both at home and throughout the World FINIS ERRATA PAge 68. l. 11. r. luent p. 141. l. 31. Solemanum r. Salmurum Rothingue r. Rothomag p. 142. l. 20. Trovomala The REMAINDER or SECOND PART of A GOSPEL PLEA Interwoven with a RATIONAL and LEGAL FOR THE LAWFULNESS CONTINUANCE Of the Antient Setled MAINTENANCE and TITHES Of the Ministers of the Gospel WHEREIN The DIVINE RIGHT OF OUR MINISTERS TITHES is further asserted The Magistrates Inforcement of the DUE PAYMENT OF THEM BY COERCIVE PENAL LAWS when substracted or detained vindicated That they are no REAL BURDEN or GRIEVANCE to the People the abolishing them no Ease Benefit to Farmers Tenants or Poor-People but a Prejudice rather and a gain to None but Rich Land-Lords cleared That the present Opposition against them proceeds not from any true Grounds of Conscience or Real Inconveniences in Tithes themselves but only from base Covetousness carnal Policy want of Christian Love Charity to and professed Enmity against the Ministers of the Gospel Yea from a JESUITICAL and ANABAPTISTICAL DESIGN to subvert ruine our Church Ministry Religion and bring a Perpetual Infamie on our Nation and the Reformed Religion here professed By William Prynne of Swainswick Esq a Bencher of Lincolns Inne 1 Cor. 9 14. Even so hath THE LORD ORDAINED that those who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel Cyprian de unitate Ecclesiae Domos tunc Fundos venundabant thesauros sibi in Coelo reponentes at nunc de Patrimonio nec Decimas damus cum Vendere jubeat Dominus Emimus pötius augemus Petrus Blesensis Epist 82. Per Prophetam praecepit Dominus Decimas inferri in horreum suum vos ab ejus horreo jubetis auferri c. Quid interest Equos rapiatis an Decimas Nisi quia Decima res spiritualis est ideo enormius SACRILEGIVM in Decimis
of Christ as Eusebius in the life of Constantine Ambrose Oratio in Obitum Theodosii Baronius in his Annals and Speed in his History of Great Britain p. 156. record Whence she was stiled in antient Inscriptions Venerabilis ET PIISSIMA AUGUSTA both for her extraordinary Piety and her converting of Constantius her Husband to the love and protection of the Christian Religion and the Professors of it who by her means creeping out of the Dens and Caves wherein they were hid began to exercise their Devotions publickly and TO RE-EDIFIE THE OLD RUINATE CHURCHES which Dioclesian the persecuting Emperour had levelled to the very ground in all places and TO ERECT NEW She herself at her own cost erecting a Stately Church over our Saviours Sepulchre at Jerusalem famous till this very day 4ly With the first Christian Emperor in the world even that famous Constantine the Great born and elected Emperour in this Island educated in the Christian Faith by his pious Mother the best the Greatest Nursing Father the Church of God ever yet enjoyed in the world For first He destroyed the two Grand Persecutors of the Christian Religion Maxentius and Licinius with their Adherents and demolished all the Idol-Gods and Monuments of Idolatry throughout his Dominions 2ly He reduced all the exiled Christians driven out of their Countries into desolate Islands Caves Dens Desarts restored them their lost Possessions established Christian Magistrates throughout his Empire encouraged protected the Christians in all places in the publick Profession of their Religion and suppressed the Heresies and Schismes that sprung up amongst them by Councils and publick Edicts 3ly He caused all the Churches in this Isle and elsewhere which by the Decrees of Dioclesian were levelled in all places to the very ground which some Atheistial Anabaptists and Jesuitical Incendiaries even in these pretended glorious times of Piety and Reformation endeavour to do again to be re-edified and new ones to be founded throughout his Dominions himself erecting most Magnificent Temples to Gods honour as King David did out of holy zeal and love to God not Popish superstition as some now censure it 2 Chron. 22 5. c. 29.1 2 3. both in Rome it self Ierusalem Hostia Neapolis Hirapolis Constantinople and other Cities endowing them with ample possessions and all other Churches with convenient Glebes Mansions and Revenues 4ly He encouraged protected advanced Godly Ministers Learning and Religion by setling a competent maintenance on them both for their livelihood and encouragement most preferring esteeming rewarding the best deserving of them And by this means so laid the foundation of the Christians security and the Churches maintenance that the same hath stood under the Protection of Christian Kings and Princes ever since And albeit many Caesars his Successors have often attempted to shake it by their Authorities and the sharp Instruments of Heretiques have dangerously undermined it yet hath it born out the storms of all their boisterous assayes and stood in the strength that this Emperor first laid it as Speed and others observe And for these blessed fruits of this prime Nursing Father of Gods Church he had then and ever after these most Glorious Titles conferred on him by the Christians and Ecclesiastical Writers Most Blessed Emperour most Pious Sacred Divine Most happy Redeemer and Restorer of Romes City and the whole World from Paganism Tyranny Persecution and founder of the Churches Peace Which those shall never enjoy who labour to demolish and extirpate what he thus founded and established 5ly God hath blessed our Church and Isle as Io. Capgrave in his Prologue Sir Hen. Spelman in his Epist Dedicatory to his Councils and the Author of Fasciculus Temporum record with more Kings Queens who for their extraordinary Piety incredible Zeal liberal Alms manifold works of Mercy incomparable Humility and contempt of the World their munificent magnificent and admirable Bounty to the Ministers and Saints of God and in building adorning endowing Churches with Tithes and Glebes and some of them for suffering Martyrdome for defence of Religion by Pagan Invaders were justly Reputed and Kalendred in the Church of God for Saints though infected with some superstititions of those blinder times which the age wherein they lived may excuse and their other vertues over-ballance and delete than any other Isle Region or Kingdom throughout the world how Great or Populous soeber There being no less than Twelve of our antient Saxon Kings Crowned with Martyrdom by Infidels and Ten of them Canonized for Saints for their transcendent Holiness and no less than thirty Kings and Queens within 200 years space who laying down the Height of their worldly Power Crowns and Glory that they might gain heaven by force betook themselves to a devout retired religious Life according to the devotion of those times in some private Monasteries for the most part builded and endowed by themselves or else went as Pilgrims to Rome then reputed famous for Her Piety Besides multitudes of the Royal Progeny who followed their examples both in their Piety Charity and Bounty to the Church And amongst others of our antient Kings King Ethelwolfe gave not only the Tenth out of all his goods and Chattels but likewise of all the Lands and Houses of his whole Realm to the Church His Sonne incomparable King Alfred founder or at least Restorer and Enlarger of our famous Vniversity of Oxford though he was for the most part taken up with Warres and Military affairs by reason of the Danes invasions fighting no lesse than 52. set battels with them for the most part with glorious success yet out of an Ardent zeal to God in emulation of Zacheus he gave no lesse than half of his annual Rents and spoils of war besides in pious uses to wit for relieving the poor both at home and abroad for maintaining rewarding Scholars Ministers building schools of Learning maintaining professors of divers Arts and Sciences in them especially in Oxford and devoted no lesse than the third part of his time to wit eight hours every natural day to his sacred studies and devotions Besides the time he spent in his Military imployments Civil Government and enacting Laws of most excellent use by advise of the wisest men which have continued ever since So as Asser Menevensis in Egercituesse in his life Spelman and others give this Brief Character and Encomium of his Excellencies O Stuporem omnium aetatum Aluredum cujus dum Religionem intuemur nunquam exiisse videatur Monasterio Dum Bella Militiam nullibi versatus fuisse unquam nisi in Castris dum Scripta ejus Lucubrationes vitam transiisse in Academia dum Regni Populique sui administrationem nihilo unquam studuisse nisi in Foro Senatu Justitiae promovendae Legibusque bonis Sanciendis Of which good Laws of his extracted out of the Old and New Testament for most part this for the due payment of Tithes and Oblations to Ministers was one cap. 38.
all humane Laws and Penalties so long as they wear their swords by their sides for defrauding our Ministers of their lawfull Tithes and Dues let them then chew the cudd upon this Evangelical Precept backed with the strongest coercive power both in Heaven and Earth 1 Thes 4.6 Let no man go beyond or defraud his brother much less then his Minister in any thing therefore not in Tithes due by Divine and humane Right mark the reason Because that the Lord is the avenger of all such things as we have forewarned and testified And what vengeance God will take of such who defraud their Brethen and Ministers of their debts and necessitate them to sue them at the Law to recover their Rights he resolves in the 1 Cor. 6 7 to 11. Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you because you go to Law to wit before Heathen Judges or without just cause one with another the greatest if not only fault being in the Defrauder and Detainer why do ye not rather take wrong why do ye not rather suffer your selves to be defrauded Nay why do you wrong and defraud and that your Brethren and which is more rob your Ministers yea but what harm or punishment will follow on it Mark it O all ye Saint-seeming Hypocrites who are guilty of it Know ye not That the unrighteous who thus wrong and defraud their Brethren and Ministers which is worse shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Be not deceived neither Theeves nor covetous and such are all those who rob and defraud their Ministers of their Tithes and Duties shall not inherit the Kingdom of God no more than Fornicators Idolaters c. with whom they are here coupled Let all those then who are guilty of this damning sin which disinherits them of Gods Kingdom now seriously repent and reform it with all such who have abetted or confederated with them herein that so I may adde with the Apostle in the next words And such were some nay all of you but ye are washed but ye are sanctified but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God And now to cloze up this Chapter I shall desire all Anti-Tithers who have already in their heady Resolutions resolved to abolish not only all our Ministers Tithes and antient Dues established by the Lord himself in the Old and New Testament with all the forecited Laws Statutes Ordinances for the true and due payment of them but all other coercive maintenance for their future subsistence if not their very Rectories Glebes and Fabricks of our Churches devoted for a prey by divers sadly and seriously to consider these ensuing particulars 1. That herein they shall shew themselves not only worse by thousands of Degrees than our forementioned Kings and Queens who built and endowed our Churches with Glebes Tithes and a liberal Maintenance and worse than the most of all their Ancestors Protestants or Papists who have hitherto continued confirmed established them by successive Laws but even worse than the worst of Turks and Infidels who alwaies heretofore and at this very day have and do allow their Mahometan and Pagan Idolatrous Priests in all places a liberal competent setled Salarie and erect magnificent Temples to Mahomet and their Idols exceeding most of our fairest Christian Churches both for beauty and number as you may read at large in Pulchas Pilgrimage Alexander ab Alexandro Hospinian De Origine Templorum and others And to give you one instance for all There are no lesse than 700 Moschees or Saracinical Temples in Fesse a Mahometan City in Barbary the chief whereof is Carven being a full mile and an half in compasse It hath 31 Gates great and high the Roof is 150 yards long and 80 broad the Steeple very high the Ornaments rich and stately Round about it are divers Porches containing 40 yards in length and 30. in breadth About the Walls are Pulpits of divers sorts wherein the Masters and Priests of their Law read to the People such things as they think pertain to their Salvation The Revenue of this Temple alone Anno 1526. was no lesse than 200. Duckets a day of old rents The chief Church in Morocco is bigger though not altogether so fair as that of Fesse and hath a Tower so high that the Hills of Azâ—fi being 120. miles distance may be seen from thence as Leo Purchas and Heylin write These Temples and others are adorned with marble Pillars and curious Mosaicks carved works of all sorts Their Priests and Readers of the Law have a liberal Stipend with Books and lands likewise allowed them and are had in very high estimation and Reverence both with their Kings Magistrates People the Califfs there receiving likewise the tenth Measure of Corn yearly from the People Besides which Tenths they have many Colleges and Schools of Learning very Majestically built and richly endowed Those therefore who pretend themselves Saints of the highest New-form and yet would deface the beautifull Churches our pious Ancestors erected for Gods worship strip our Ministers naked of all Glebes Tithes setled Maintenance so as they shall not be able to live comfortably and provide for their Families have in truth denyed the Faith and are worse than these Turks and Infidels 1 Tim. 5.8 2ly That hereby they shall make both our Religion and Nation to stink in the Nostrils of all forein Protestant Churches Papists Turks Infidels who by the very light of Nature have condemned Sacrilege and Church Robbers Acts 19.37 Give extraordinary advantage to Jesuites Papists and other Atheistical Seducers to reduce the People either to Popery or mere Atheism Give all the Enemies of God and our Religion occasion both to rejoyce and blaspheme and extraordinarily scandalize and grieve the hearts of all true Godly Ministers and Protestants really affected to our Religion throughout our three Nations 3ly That they will herein exceed all our late suppressed Prelates and their High Commission Courts in Tyranny Cruelty Injustice by undoing all or most of our Godly Ministers and their Families at one fatal blow instead of relieving them in their present Necessities under which many of them sadly groan by depriving them of their Livelihood without any legal Conviction of the least crime but only that they are Ministers of the Gospel and receive Tithes and thereby draw upon their Heads not only the cryes and clamours of these oppressed ones here with all the formentioned Curses and judgements denounced against Tith-Detainers but also that sad irrevocable sentence of Condemnation before Christs Tribunal at the last day Matth. 25.41 Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels for I was hungry and ye gave me no Meat I was thirsty and ye gave me no Drink I was not a Stranger but your Minister and ye took me not in but cast me and mine out of those Rectories and Benefices your Ancestors gave and setled on me
peradventure they held the payment of Tithes to Ministers in kind a Divine Moral Duty and in some places and at some times when and where they could did voluntarily pay Tithes as a Duty for their Maintenance without any coercive Laws or Canons upon the bare demand or exhortation of their Ministers by vertue of Gods own Divine Laws as is undeniable by Irenaeus l. 4. c. 34. who records That the Christians in his time being but 180. years after Christ did not give lesse to their Ministers than the Jews did to their Priests by the Law of Moses who received the consecrated TITHES of their people but more Designing omnia quae sunt ipsorum all they had to the Lords use Hilariter ac liberaliter ea quae non sunt minera Giving chearfully and freely those things which were not lesse than Tithes as having greater hope than they And further confirmed by Origen Homil. 11 in Numeros Saint Cyprian lib. 1. Epist 9. De unitate Ecclesiae the words of Saint Augustine Hom. 48. Majores nostri ideo copiis abundabant quia Deo Decimas dabant And the second Council of Mascin An. 586. Can. 5. Leges Divinae Consulentes Sacerdotibus ac Ministris Ecclesiarum pro Haereditaria portione omni populo praeceperunt Decimas fructuum suorum locis sacris praestare ut nullo labore impediti per res illegitimas possint vacare Ministeriis Quas leges Christianorum Congeries legis temporibus custodivit iutemerata Which prove a long continued Custom and Practice of paying Tithes to Ministers as a Divine Right and Duty used amongst Christians long before St. Augustins dayes and this antient Councel And no sooner were the times of Persecution past but the Divine Right of Tithes was asserted pressed and the due payment of them inculcated by St. Hilary Nazianzen Ambrose Hierom Chrysostom Augustine Eusebius Cassian Cyril of Jerusalem Isiodore Pelusiota and Caesarius Arelatensis all flourishing within 500. years after Christ as Dr. Tillesly proves at large And the people during that space paying their Tithes freely without any compulsion in all places there needed neither Laws nor Canons to enforce their payment whence Agobardus writes thus about the year of our Lord 820. when Laws and Canons began to be made for their payment of the precedent times Nulla compulit necessitas fervente ubique religiosa devotione amore illustrandi Ecclesiae ultro aestuante That there was no need of Canons or Laws to compel the payment of Tithes whiles fervent religious Devotion and love of illustrating Churches every where abounded But in succeeding degenerating times when according to Christs prediction the love and zeal of many Christians to God Religion and Ministers began to grow lukewarm and colder than before so as they began to detain their Tithes and Ministers dues then presently Christian Kings and Bishops in Ecclesiastical and Temporal Synods and Councils began generally in all places to make Laws and Canons for the due payment of them declaring in them only the Divine Right Laws and Precepts of God to the People both in the Old and New Testament as a sufficient obligation seconded by their bare Canons and Edicts without any coercion or penalty to oblige them to their due payment The first unquestionable Canon for the payment of Tithes I find extant is that of the second Council of Mascin forecited An. 586. cap. 5. The first Law extant made by any General Council or Parliament for the payment of Tithes is that of the Council of Calcuth in England under Offa and Alfred An. 786 declaring their Divine Right and enjoyning their payment without any Penalty After which Charles the Emperour about the year of our Lord 813. by Canons made in sundry Councils and in his Capitulars or Laws enjoyned the payment of Tithes under pain of being enforced to render them by distresse upon complaint and some small penalties Since which time many Laws and Canons were made in our own and forein Realms till our present times for the due payment of Tithes under sundry penalties which because collected by Sir Henry Spelman in his Councils Mr. Selden in his History of Tithes Bochellus Decret Eccles Gal. l. 6. Tit. 8. De Decimis Fridericus Lindebrogus Codex Legum Antiquarum Surius Binius Crab Lindwood in their Collections of Councils and sundry others I have therefore only given the Reader a brief Catalogue of the principal Civil laws both at home and abroad for the due payment of them reciting more at large but what others for the most part have omitted and are not vulgarly known giving only brief hints upon some of the rest in my third Chapter Whither I refer the Reader for further satisfaction in this Objection and shall conclude of penal Laws as Seneca doth of Fates Fata volentes ducunt Nolentes trahunt those who will not willingly pay their Tiths must and ought to be compelled thereunto by penal Statutes The second Objection is That the payment of Tithes is against many mens Judgements and Consciences Therefore it is both Vnchristian Tyrannical and Vnjust to enforce them thereunto I answer 1. That the payment of Tithes being not only warranted but commanded in and by the Old and New Testament and the constant practice of Christians in all Ages Churches there neither is nor can be the least pretence of Conscience for the non-payment of them Therefore this pretext of Conscience is in truth nought else but most desperate Vnconscionableness Malice Obstinacy Peevishness Covetousness Impiety or secret Atheism worthy to be reformed by the severest Laws and penalties 2ly All that Conscience can pretend against their payment as Tithes is only this Anabaptistical Devise and loud Lye of Canne and others That the payment of a precise Tenth part of mens increase to their Ministers is Jewish or Antichristian and so unlawfull both which I have unanswerably refelled Therefore this can be no ground or Conscience for any to detain them But if any scrupulous Consciences be not satisfied in this point let them either pay their Ministers the Moitie or 9. parts or the 5 6 7 8 or 9. part of their annual encrease neither of which is Jewish or Antichristian or else let them sell all their old or new purchased Lands Houses Possessions Goods they have and bestow them on the Ministers and Poor as the forecited Primitive Christians did whom they pretend to imitate and then they may satisfie both their Consciences and Ministers too without the least difference coercion sute or penalty of our Laws 3ly Many of these very Objectors pretending Conscience as Souldiers or Sequestrators have made no Conscience to enforce thousands of Parishioners of late years throughout the Nation to pay their Ministers Tithes to themselves for pretended Arrears or sequestred Goods and exacted Monthly contributions out of Ministers Tithes to pay the Army without any scruple of Conscience levying them by distress and armed violence when detained If then they can enforce others thus
to pay Tithes to themselves and those to whom they were never due by any known Law of God or Man With what Conscience can they detain them from our Ministers to whom they are due by all divine and human laws or condemn the enforced payment of them from themselves who have so violently extorted them from others 4ly If any Ministers or others plead the payment of our late heavy monthly Taxes Excises Impositions Ship-mony far exceeding the old to be against their Conscience as being imposed by no lawfull Parliamental Authority repugnant to all our Laws Statutes Liberties Privileges Protestations Covenants Records Votes of Parliament imployed to shed Seas of innocent precious Christian blood to maintain unchristian bloody wars against our late Protestant Brethren in Covenant and Amity they know not upon what lawfull Quarrel to support an arbitrary Army Government Power to domineer over them to subvert our old Fundamental laws Parliaments Governours Liberties Peace Elections Trials the Great Charters of England foment Heresies Sects Schisms and carry on the Plots of the Pope Jesuites Spaniard French to ruine our Realms Church Religion and pay many disguised Jesuites and Popish Priests secretly lurking in all places under the Mask of listed Souldiers as most wise men conceive to perpetuate our warrs destroy our Ministers and Nation by endless wars and Taxes All these with other such weighty grounds of Conscience Law Prudence which some have insisted on and pleaded can no waies exempt them from violent Distresses Quarterings Penalties Forfeitures Levies by armed Souldiers who regard these Pleas of Conscience no more than Common High-way-men who take mens Purses by force and deem all publick Enemies who dare plead Law or Conscience in this case though the Plea be true and undeniable even in their own Judgements and Consciences as some of them will acknowledge to those they thus oppress Why then should they or any others esteem this mere pretence of Conscience only against Penal Laws for Tithes enforced in a lesse rigorous manner which they may with as much reason and Justice allege against the payment of their just Debts Land Lords Rents and all other dues from them to God or Men The 3d. Objection is That Tithes are pure Alms Therefore not to be enforced by any Law For which the Opinions of John Wickliff Husse Thorp are produced by the Anabaptists and Erasmus urged by some but without sufficient ground I have answered this Objection elsewhere and shall here only declare whence I conceive this Error that Tithes are mere Alms originally proceeded to rectifie mistakes of the meaning of some antient Authors and clear two Texts of Scripture which some Scholars and ignorant People misapprehend First I conceive this Error sprang originally from the misunderstanding of that Text of Deutr. 14.28 29. At the end of three years thou shalt bring forth all the Tith of thine encrease THE SAME YEAR and shalt lay it up within thy Gates And the Levite because he hath no place no Inheritance with thee and the Stranger and the Fatherlesse and the Widow which are within thy Gates shall come and shall eat thereof and be satisfied That the Lord may bless thee in all the work of thine hands which thou doest compared with Deutr. 26.12 13 14. When thou hast made an end of tithing all the Tithes of thine Encrease the third year which is the year of Tithing and hast given unto the Levite the Stranger the Fatherless and Widow that they may eat within thy Gates and be filled Then thou shalt say before the Lord thy God I have brought away the hallowed Thing out of mine House and also have given them unto the Levite and unto the Stranger to the Fatherless and to the Widow according to all thy Commandements which thou hast commanded me I have not transgressed thy Commandements neither have I forgotten them I have not eaten thereof in my mourning neither have I taken away ought thereof for any uncleaness nor given ought thereof for the Dead but have hearkned unto the voyce of the Lord my God and done according all thou hast commanded me To which that of Amos may be referred From which Texts some have conceived That the Israelites paid Tithes only every third year 2ly That they paid them then not to the Levites only but to the Stranger Fatherless Widows and Poor amongst them who had a right and share in them as well as the Levites 3ly That these Texts use the phrase not of paying Tithes as a Debt or Duty but of GIVING them as an Alms and seeing they are given thus to the Stranger Fatherless Widow as Alms therefore to the Levites likewise here coupled with them This doubtless was the true ground that Tithes were reputed mere Alms by some and not a Divine Right peculiar to Ministers To disperse these Mists of Error First take notice That neither these nor any other Texts in Scripture stile Tithes Almes much lesse pure Almes which men may give or retain at their pleasures 2ly That they expressely resolve the contrarie that they are no Alms at all in the objected sense but a most certain positive commanded Debt and Dutie no waies arbitrarie in the least degree For 1. By express positive Laws and Commandments of God oft repeated all the particulars of this Dutie are defined 1. The Quota pars or quantitie All the Tithe of thine Encrease the same year 2ly The time of it every third year which is the year of Tithing at the end of three years 3ly The place of Stowage Thou shalt lay it up within thy gates 4ly The persons who must receive it The Levite Stranger Fatherless Widow 5ly The place of their receiving it Within thy gates 6ly The manner of receiing it They shall come and eat thereof and be filled Secondly which is most considerable the Owners and Tithe-payers had no disposing power over it for their own uses upon any occasion or necessitie For 1. They must bring all of it out of their Houses as an hallowed thing 2ly They must make a solemn Protestation before the Lord that they had given it all to the Levite Stranger Fatherless Widow and that not of their own free voluntarie bountie but as a bounden debt and dutie according to all Gods Commandments which he had commanded them 2ly That they had neither wilfully transgressed nor negligentlie forgotten his Commandments herein 3. That they had neither eaten thereof in their mourning in times of want and distress neither had they taken away ought thereof for any unclean use c. but have hearkened to the voice of the Lord their God and done according to all that he commanded them The reason of which Protestation was because God committed the custodie and dispencing of these three years Tithes to the Owners themselves who might be apt to purloin and pervert part of them to their own private uses I appeal now to all mens consciences whether these very Texts do not unanswerably prove
to secure the Country either from an invading or pillaging Enemy by Sea or Land as I have made many Garrison-Souldiers acknowledge by unanswerable Demonstrations disband their long-continued Army and Forces kept up on the people 's drained Purses to their undoing for what ends the very blindest men now see put the peoples necessary defence when there is occasion into their own hands and elected Militia and abolish all these heavy incessant Monthly Contributions Taxes Excises so long continued on them to maintain the Army and inrich the Officers being the Peoples sorest Grievance not Ministers Tithes which few count a Burden and then upon mere Mistakes which late created Monsters unknown to our Fore-Fathers who knew none but Tenths Fifteenths and Subsidies duly granted one or two in several years will in short time eat out not only our Ministers and Peoples Tithes but the remaining Nine parts too and leave them most miserable Beggers in conclusion without any Food or Provision for their Souls or Bodies and no other Magistracy Ministry Government Laws Liberties Privileges but what the Army-Officers and Souldiers their late pretended humble Servants but now their Supream Lords and Masters shall out of their mere Grace and Favour allow them as their conquered Vassals as many of them are not ashamed even publickly in my hearing as well as others for to stile our own enslaved Nation as well as Scots and Irish And then they shall all lament their folly when too late in concurring with these Swordmen to abolish their Ministers Tithes in the old Poets Elegie in a like ease as ours Impius haec tam culta novalia Miles habebit Barbarus has Segetes En quò discordia Cives Perdurit miseros En queis consevimus Agros Suidas records of Leo the Emperour that when on a time he commanded Eulogius a learned Philosopher should have a Liberal Princely Reward bestowed on him A great Officer and Courtier standing by said That mony would be better bestowed for the maintenance of Souldiers To which the Emperor replyed Nay I would rather it might be brought to pass in my time That the Riches now bestowed upon Souldiers might be given to maintain Philosophers And I suppose all rational wise men now will be of the same mind concerning Ministers and rather they should enjoy their Tithes and Glebes than Souldiers and Buff-Preachers All which out of true Affection to our Ministry and my Native Country without any private design to scandalize the Souldiers I submit to all prudent mens consideration who by this will be able to judge of the truth of this Proposition without further proof In the Officers printed Proposals August 13. 1652. to those they then stiled the Supream Power of the Nation I found the first of all to be The abolishing of all Tithes as an unequal troublesom and contentious way of Maintenance respect being had therein to others Rights but not to the Ministers who have the only true proper legal Right unto them and this to propagate the preaching of the Gospel I profess when I read it in the Diurnal I told some Souldiers who brought it me to read in Pendennys 1. I could not possibly conceive that the putting down of Ministers Tithes should be a means to propagate the preaching of the Gospel but rather to suppress it the very Scripture resolving the contrary Neh. 13.10 11 12. and 2 Chron. 31.3 c. and the Heathen Poet concluding Quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam Praemia si tollas 2ly That I wondred men professing Conscience Justice and Religion should have more regard to Impropriators and others Rights to Tithes who had no original right at all unto them but only by Popes Bulls and Dispensations and did no service for them without any special regard to Ministers Rights who had only a due and true Divine and human Right to them and received them as due wages for their Ministry I doubted the only cause was because they or some of their Friends were owners of Lessees of some Impropriations which they were loath to part with for the Peoples ease or give in to the Church without a considerable Recompence 3ly That the suggestion of the unequal troublesom and contentious way of Tithes was a very strange and daring Objection against the very wisedom and Justice of God who instituted and prescribed them to his own chosen people against the wisdom justice prudence of our own and all other Christian Kings States Parliaments Churches that have at first pitched upon and so long continued established by successive Laws and Edicts this way of Maintenance as most equal rich and poor paying a Tenth alike according to the greatness or smallness of their Estates and the poor Farmer and Tenant paying them out of his Landlords Estate as allowed in his Rent or Fine not out of his own private purse alone being more equal than any Taxes or Excises for the Armies pay As least troublesom to the Ministers at least who were only at the cost and trouble to carry in their Tithes at Harvest when cut and severed from the Crop to their hands to prevent the trouble of plowing sowing weeding mowing reaping gathering which might divert them from their Studies and Ministry And as little troublesom or not over-troublesom at least it is to the Husbandman who sows cuts and makes it up together with his own and then only severs it out and is not now bound to carry it into his Ministers Barn much less to thresh cleanse and sever his Corn Wine or Oyl and other Tithes and carry it to Hierusalem◠and the Treasuries of the Priests and Levites at his own cost as the Israelites were obliged by God to do which these Officers had they lived amongst them and payed a second Tenth as well as a first and first-fruits besides would have petitioned God himself to abolish as a troublesome way of Maintenance which they could not brook though the godly Israelites and Jews repined not against it but chearfully brought up their Tithes to the Priests Treasuries as they were enjoyned And as no waies contentious or litigious in it self were people as just and conscionable to pay their Tithes there being many Parishes in England and that wherein I live one wherein I never heard of any sute or quarrel betwixt the Ministers and Parishioners for Tithes there being farre more sutes and contentions for just Rents Annuities and Debts throughout the Nation than for Tithes at least ten for one in proportion before these late contentious Lawless times when many unconscionable unrighteous Wretches pretending Religion to cover their fraud covetousness and oppression will pretend Conscience for not paying their very Rents and Debts as well as Tithes And such who have so little grace or fear of God as to contend with their Ministers for their just Tithes will be altogether Litigious towards them for any other Annuity or setled way of Maintenance that can be devised in lieu of Tithes seeing nothing
them to the use of the Army for the pretended ease of the people in their future taxes I shal for the cloze of this Proposition and prevention of this detestable impious Sacrilegious plot against our Ministers and Religion too propound and answer all such specious Arguments Pretences as may be produced by them to delude the people veil over the execrable Impiety and take off the odium of this prodigious Villany First they may and will suggest that they have some ancient punctual Presidents to warrant countenance justifie this their Project As namely the practical example of Charles Martel King of France who about the year of our Lord 730. as the Marginal Authors report having perpetual wars and seldom or never peace in his Kingdom Ideo res Ecclesiarum suis Militibus in stipendium contulit maxima ex parte did thereupon bestow the Lands Revenues Rents and Tithes too as the Act of Restitution with others prove of Parish-Churches Monasteries Bishops Deans and Chapters upon his Souldiers for their Pay and Arrears for the greatest part And surely upon a very Godly and just reason as John Canne and some Army-Officers will swear thus expressed in his Decree recorded in Goldastus and Mr. Selden ut subveniatur necessitatibus Publicis et Salariis Militum pro Dei Ecclesiae bono statu Reipublicae uniuscujusque propria pace pugnantium That he might relieve the Publick Necessities and pay and reward the Souldiers fighting for the Church of God and the good of the State of the Common-wealth and the proper peace of every one as our Officers and Souldiers now say they do And is it not then most just they should have all the Lands Glebes and Tithes of the Church King Common-wealth and of every particular Person too who have fought all this while for them and their defence To this they may chance to adde the President of the Templers and Hospitalers who being no part of the Clergy but Religious Souldiers imployed only to fight in the defence of the Church were by special Bulls and Grants of several Popes exempted from paying any Tithes at all to any Ministers out of the Lands belonging to their several Orders Because they fought for the Church against her Enemies as Turks Saracens and other Infidels Therefore there is great reason equity all our Officers and Souldiers who have lately fought or are now or hereafter fighting for the Church against her Enemies and Malignants should be totally and finally discharged from paying any Tithes at all out of their Old or New Purchased Lands Leases Cattel Estates Spoyls Pay or other increase Besides most of our Army-Officers and very many of the Souldiers are extraordinarily gifted inspired from Heaven and constant Speakers or Preachers transcending all Black-coated Ministers yea the undoubted new Ministers and Priests of Jesus Christ as many deem them So as they may be truly stiled a chosen Generation a Royâ—â— Priesthood yea Army of Priests being made Kings and Priests by Christ himself to God the Father as John Canne hath published in his Voyce p. 24 27 28 29. Therefore they may not only enter into our Ministers Churches Pulpits and dispossess them of them as he there asserts and presseth them to put in execution but be capable in right equity justice to receive all their Tithes to their own use Nay one step more John Canne in his Voyce p. 27. thus peremptorily concludes I will affirm and abide by it since it hath pleased the Lord to draw out the hearts of some Souldiers and others who were never brought up at Universities to learning publickly to preach which is not above 10 or 12. years the People of this Common-wealth have had more true Light and glorious Discoveries of Christ and his Kingdom than all the Nations Ministers ever before made known to them since first they took their calling from the Sea of Rome till this Day On the contrary the greatest Heresies and Blasphemies which have been in the world have been broached by Ministers and Scholars whereas Lay-men at the same time have been sound in the Faith and zealously earnest against such abominable Doctrines Therefore there is just ground that both our Vniversities and all Colleges for Advancement of Learning should be suppressed as the very poyson bane subversion of Religion Church and Common-wealths as some Souldiers and the Anabaptists generally deem them and their Lands as well as Bishops Deans Chapters and Ministers Glebes and Tithes sold or conferred on the Officers and Souldiers of the Army for their better encouragement reward and supportation to propagate defend Religion and the Common wealth A design now eagerly prosecuted by some To which let them receive this Answer before hand since I intend not any future Treatise of this nature 1. That I never read of any pious Generals Armies Officers or Souldiers in Scripture the rule of Faith and Manners that spoyled the Church or Ministers of their Lands and Tithes to maintain their wars or enrich reward themselves but we find it expresly recorded of Abraham the Father of all the Faithfull that he paid Tithes even of the Spoyls of the first Wars to the first Pâ—â—â—st we find in Scripture unto Christ himself both in the Old and New Testament for other Christian Souldiers imitation The like we read of David and all his Officers Captains of the Army with sundry others fore-cited whose Presidents are more obliging and commendable than Charles Martels 2ly That it was the Custom use and pious practice of many Pagan Warlike Nations as the Romans Graecians Carthaginians Tyrians Saxons to do the like who consecrated the Tenths of all their Spoyls to their Idol-Gods and Priests as we may read at large in Mr. Seldens History of Tithes and Review c. 3. and in Mr. Richard Mountague his Diatribe thereon ch 3. Therefore they are worse than Pagans who neglect not only to pay their Ministers the Tenth of their Spoyls but will even spoyl them of their Glebes and Tithes besides 3ly It is very observable and let our Souldiers and Officers consider it in good earnest That God himself specially consecrated and devoted the future Spoyls a Sacrifice for and to himself and all the Spoyls City of Jericho the very first City taken by the Israelites in the Land of Canaan as a sacred First-fruits and kind of Tenth for the use of his Sanctuary and Priests in these memorable words Josh 6.17 18 19. And the City shall be devoted even it and all that is therein except Rahab and her Family and House Lord Whereupon when the City was taken they burnt it and all that was in it as a Sacrifice to the Lord But the Silver and Gold and the Vessels of Brass and of Iron they put into the Treasury of the House of the Lord v. 24. But Acban a covetous plundring Souldier seeing among the rich Spoyls of the City a goodly Babylonish Garment and two hundred Shekels of
to Peter mentioning again his Prayers and Alms but not his preaching concluding thus Now therefore are we all here present before God TO HEAR not preach all things that are COMMANDED THEE of God Whereas some Centurions Colonels Captains and Souldiers of this Age if Peter himself should come to their Assemblies or Quarters would be readier to teach and preach to him than to hear him and apter to be his Teachers than Auditors as these only were After which Peter preached to him and his company I find another sort of Captains and Souldiers in the New Testament Who went out and apprehended our Saviour Jesus Christ mocked him derided crowned his Head with Thorns stripped him of his Rayment put him on a purple Robe bowed their Knees before him in scorn saying Hayl King of the Iews blind folded and then strook him with their hands and bade him prophecy who smote him guarded him to his Tryal carried and nayled him to his Crosse crucified him between two Theeves pierced his side with a Spear gave him Gall and Vinegar to drink parted his Garments amongst them cast lots upon his Vesture and would have broke his Legs but that he was dead After which they watched and guarded his Sepulchre took large Mony of the Priests to smother the truth of Christs Resurrection by reporting a Lye that his Disciples came and stole him away whiles they were asleep who TOOK the mony and did as they were taught and are branded for ever with this Epiphomena These things therefore the Souldiers did After which some of this rank of Officers and Souldiers by Herods command killed James the Brother of John with the Sword apprehended imprisoned chained and most strictly garded the Apostle Peter in order to put him to death the next day but that the Angel of God miraculously delivered him Others of them apprehended bound and would have scourged Paul garded and carried him from prison to prison and when he was sent Prisoner to Rome when the ship was wracked and their lives saved only for Pauls sake they gave the Centurion counsel to kill Paul and all the other Prisoners lest they should escape from them by that wrack These Souldiers no doubt were truly Antichristian and if the Tree may be judged and known by its Fruits and Souldiers by their Actions and Intentions I doubt there are far more of this later sort than of the first in this Age and if John Cannes Voyce from the Temple be imbraced for Gospel in every point by the whole Army no doubt they will then be all of this later rank not the Ministers and Soldiers of Jesus Christ but of Antichrist alone and the Crucifiers of Christ again in his faithfull Ministers and Members which I desire them all sadly to consider 9ly Admit them to be made Kings and Priests to God the Father by Christ in a spiritual sence as all the Elect Saints of God are will it thereupon follow that they may all lawfully preach in publick administer Sacraments and exercise the proper Function of Priests and Ministers If so then by the self-same reason they may all lawfully exercise the office and power of Kings as well as of Priests as some of them do in the highest degree beyond all Presidents of any our Kings before them and so under pretext of suppressing our Monarchy and one sole King as dangerous and pernicious we shall have now no less than an whole Army of Kings to rule and reign over us and to engross not only all the old Kings Lands and Revenues but the greatest part of the Peoples far surmounting of a Million or two each year in Contributions and Excise to support their new Royal State and Dignity as well as an Army of Priests who have and would swallow up our whole Churches Revenues Glebes Tithes Patrimony and our Ministry too for to support their new Evangelical Priesthood that so they may resemble both Christ and Melchisedec in their Kingly and Priestly Offices united in one Person though not in the Title of their Kingdom as the Apostle interprets it Hebr. 7.2 being by Interpretation KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESSE and after that also King of SALEM which is KING OF PEACE which Souldiers who make a gainfull Trade of War and Rapine delight not in 10ly I do affirm and will abide by it that since the time some disguised Popish Priests Jesuits Sectaries Hereticks Anabaptists and other Seducers rather than the Lord drew out the heart of some Souldiers and other Mechanicks in truth or disguise publickly to preach the People of this Common-wealth have had more abominable false damnable atheistical Antichristian Heresies Errors Blasphemies New Opinions and old exploded Heterodox Heresies and Tenents of all sorts whatsoever against the very Essence Nature Attributes of God himself the three sacred Persons in the Trinity the Old and New Testament Law Gospel all the fundamental Articles of Faith and Salvation the Sacraments Ministers Ordinances of God and practical publick private Duties of Piety and Christianity under the Names and specious Titles of New Lights and glorious Discoveries of Christs Kingdom broached by Souldiers and Lay-Preachers than in all the times since the Gospel was first preached in this Island and more than ever any one Age Church Nation or all our Ministers put together since the Creation till now were guilty of and these publickly averred both in Presse and Pulpit and the Authors of them exempted from any corporal or pecuniary punishments by the Civil Magistrates by the avowed printed Positions and Proposals of the General Council of Army-Officers and Souldiers in sundry Papers For full and infallible proof whereof I shall remit the Reader to Mr. Edwards Gangrenaes the Catalogues of the Heresies Blasphemies Errors collected by the London and Devonshire Ministers the Stationers Beacon fired and New Law p. 78 97. Which stiles Heaven Hell the resurrection of the Flesh a Dream of our Preachers The History of the Scripture an Idol c. And all this by the malice of Satan the underhand practices of Jesuites and our Popish Adversaries to defame ruine our Church Ministers Religion seduce thee to Popery Atheism and reduce us back to the Antichristian Tyranny of the Sea of Rome as I have largely manifested in the fifth Chapter Whereas Canne cannot charge our Parochial Ministers and Presbyterians with any such Blasphemies Heresies Errors as those he pleads for are guilty of in the highest degree nor with those Jesuitical treacherous perfidious sacrilegious unclean beastly ranting unrighteous prophane atheistical Innovations Practices Rapines Usurpations as they have plunged themselves into over head and ears without any Conscience or dread of God or Man 11ly What that more true Light and glorious Discoveries of Christ and his Kingdom made known to the people of this Common-wealth within these 10 or 12. years by the publick preaching of some Souldiers and Laymen exceeding all the Nations Ministers ever made known unto them before are is concealed by
Canne and unknown to me or others unless it be the flat atheistical denyal of God of Christ and all his Offices of the Holy Ghost Scriptures Sacraments all publick Ordinances in the Church of all Kings Princes Parliaments lawfull Magistrates Laws Oaths Vows Covenants Protestations Engagements by many of them in their words writings and most of them in their works with their Jesuitical positions plots practices recited in the fifth Chapter And if these be not true infernal Darknesse and clear inglorious Discoveries of Antichrist and his Kingdom in the highest Degree that ever yet appeared amongst the people of this Common-wealth let the fifth Chapter with the positions and practices themselves compared with the Old and New Testament determine 12ly The decrying of our Vniversities Colleges Schools of human Learning Innes of Court and some mens endeavouring to seise upon their Lands and Revenues for the Armies use is no doubt a Jesuitical Papal plot to extinguish the light of our Knowledge both Divine and humane by puting out the Eyes of our Nation that so Jesuitical Popish darkness might over-spread our Church and State and so the blind leading the blind in both they must fall into the Pit of Destruction in a moment It is storied of Julian that blasphemous Apostate and professed Enemie of Christ and Christian Religion That he suppressed all the Schools of Christians prohibiting by general Laws and Decrees that any should profess practice or study any Arts or Sciences in any Schools that so they might become and remain Ideots without learning and so be insufficient and unable to preach the Christian Faith oppose or refute any Pagan or other Errors Blasphemies against the true God and his worship devising by all means possible whereof this was one of the Principal TO MAKE WAR AGAINST JESUS CHRIST and extirpate Christianity without shedding any Christian blood finding by experience that the Christian Faith and Christians were greatly increased by the torments and blood of the Martyrs So that bloody Apostate from and Persecutor of the Christian Faith Lucius the Emperour as he ruined the Churches Temples he commanded to be built for Christ cast out of his House Service and all Offices and place of Command whatsoever he that was a Christian commanded all those Christians to be slain who would not adore his Idols prohibited all Assemblies of Christians either for worship or consultation so he was such an Enemy to Learning that he named the same as some do now A Poyson and common Pestilence and the Overthrow of Common-wealths and especially the knowledge of the Laws And thought no vice worse became a Prince than Learning because he himself was unlearned and thereupon prohibited Schools and Meetings for Instruction Whereas on the contrary Constantine the Great and all other Godly prudent Christian Emperors Kings and Princes founded Schools of Learning and Universities in all places encouraged and advanced learned men of all Arts and Professions especially Divines Lawyers and Philosophers well knowing that Learning was the principle means to promote Religion and the glory honour wealth and greatness of any Nation more necessary than any Arms or Souldiers and the chief means to preserve them from Idolatry Superstition Confusion ruine We may therfore clearly discern whence the present Outcries against our Vniversities Inns of Court Schools of Learning and all human learning proceed even from desperate Apostates from true Religion and Gods Church and those who would erect a New Babel of Confusion amongst us in Church State and thereby build up the demolished walls of the Romish Jericho within all our Dominions For proof whereof I shall transcribe this notable passage of our famous learned Bishop Jewel in his Sermon on Joshua 6. in his works in Folio p. 167 168. which is very pithy learned and satisfactory omitting all others Now to stay the restoring of Jericho many good waies may be devised The 1. maintenance of Schools and Learning That Learning and Knowledge is able to hinder the Building of Jericho is so plain that it needeth no speech In the time of Moses Law Aaron the great Bishop and High Priest had written in a Tablet before his Breast Doctrin and Truth not only Learning but also Truth whereby was meant that neither ought to be without the other For as Learning is dangerous and hurtfull in some cases without Religion So is Religion unable to defend it self to convince the Gain-sayers without Learning For this cause the Heathen when they erected Temples in honour of their Gods they did also build Libraries that is places to keep Books that by such means their Priests might grow in Knowledge and be better able to perswade others to their Religion Strabo of the Sinprincians that they built a Temple in honour of Homer and joyned thereto a Library Augustus the Emperor built a Temple and also a Library in the honour of Apollo Trajanus in like manner built a Library and called it Vlpia after his own name At Rome in the Capitol where all the Gods had a Solemn place for to be worshipped in there was also placed a Library Athens was a famous Universitie and had many Colleges and Schools of Learning Academia Stoa Lycaeum Canopus Prytanneum Tempe Cynosura in which places were divers Sects of Philosophers Such were in Persia the Wisemen whom they called Magi in Babylon the Chaldees in India Brachmanes in Aethiopia Gymnosophistae in France and England Druides and others in other Countries In all times the Kings and Princes which did set forth Religion were also Builders of Schools and Colleges and Advancers of Learning The people of Israel were never in better state as P. Phagius a learned man noteth out of their Story than when they had in every Town and Village Bathe chenesioth and Bathe medraschoth that is Synogogues wherein they assembled together and places to preach in The same Phagius relateth of Hierusalem that there were in it more than four hundred common Schools and Synagogues wherein the Law of God was taught The Patriarch Jacob was called A Minister of the House of Learning because he applyed himself to the knowledge of the Law of God and to Godliness The Prophets of God had their Schools to breed up under them such as might after their death draw the people from Idolatry and resist the false Prophets They which were so taught by them were called the Sons of the Prophets Samuel taught in such sort at Rama Elias and Elizeus the Prophets taught the Law of God besides Jericho St. John the Evangelist taught at Ephesus and Eusebius reporteth out of Philo that St. Mark had at Alexandria sundry Scholars which gave themselves to reading and reasoning and expounding of the Scriptures Others did the like at Antioch and at other places Out of such Schools it pleased God to take many excellent men and place them in his Church as Origen Tertullian Cyprian Lactantius Arnobius Basilius Nazianzenus Chrysostomus Hieronimus Ambrosius
Augustinus c. who were brought up in all kind of Learning and became shining Stars and brought Lights in the House of God notable Defenders of Religion Over-throwers of Idols and Confounders of Hereticks Christian Princes herein have witnessed their Zeal in setting forth the Glory of God After Charles the Great had made his notable Conquests let our Conquerors remember it he erected five famous Universities one at Paris another at Tolouse another at Papia another at Padua and another at Prague to which our King Alfred founder of out famous Universitie of Oxford with the founders of all the Colleges therein and of the Universities of Cambridge Dublin and those in Scotland to omit those Universities in Germany Spain Portugall Poland Denmarke Sweden Hungary and other Parts of Italy and France mentioned by Heylen and others might be added Suidas reporteth of Leo the Emperour That when Leo on a time commanded Eulogius a Philosopher should have his Princely reward a Noble man of the Court sayd as some do now of our Universities and Colleges Lands and Revenues that that money would be better imployed for the maintenance of Souldiers Nay saith he and so all wise men now I would rather it might be brought to pass in my time that the wages which are now bestowed upon Souldiers might be given to maintain Philosophers Alexander Severus so highly esteemed that notable famous Lawyer Vlpian that when certain of his Soldiers ran feircely upon Vlpian to slay him the Emperor stept forth and set himself between the body of Vlpian and the fury of his Souldiers and covered him with his own Robes that the Souldiers might know how carefull he was for the good estate of Vlpian Let our Souldiers who hate and study to suppress Philosophers Scholars Lawyers consider these two last Stories And also for the contrary such as have practised cruelty upon learned men and have hated knowledge were worthily discommended in the Stories of all ages He instanceth in the wicked Apostates Julian and Licinius forecited examples The like is reported of Caligula Caracalla and Domitianus that either they utterly hated all manner of Learning or had some special malice against the writings of some one notable man and therefore sought to destroy them Such was the policy of Satan so thought he to get the upper hand and to restore again his wicked Jericho And were these the Practices of Heathen Princes only may not we remember the like attempts wrought in our dayes who will call to mind the time that is not far past shall find that this ignorant Iericho had many friends and hath it not now as many and the same who by all means drew men from knowledge they gave Liberty rather to do any thing than to seek understanding and yet suffered rather the use and reading of fabulous and unclean writers than of the Holy Scripture and Books which carried fruitfull instruction Good Letters to increase knowledge are not to be neglected Such as presume of Gods Spirit over-boldly that without endeavour to use the wholsome means which God hath left unto his Church they shall and doe by special inspiration understand his will do tempt God He adds much more In brief learning knowledge in Arts Tongues Histories of all sorts and in the Laws Governments of former ages are so absolutely necessary for the right understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures and good Government of all Common-wealths and Kingdoms that without them there neither will nor can be any true Religion sound Knowledge of God his word or works nor orderly Government Humanity Civility Navigation or Commerce almost in the world and men deprived of it will be little different from Beasts as appears by the brutish Sottishnesse Barbarousnesse Savagenesse ignorance of the illiterate Indians in America and of some other African and Northern Nations voyd both of Religion Government and Humanity it self because destitute of Learning as Purchas his Pilgrimage Mr. Hackluits voyages Peter Martyrs Indian History Mercator and others record Hereupon our antient Ancestors were so carefull of Learning Religion Ministers Scholars Lands Estates Tithes that they placed them in the very front of all those antient Laws Liberties Customs which they claimed enjoyed and presented to William the pretended Conqueror upon Oath in the 4 th Year of his Reign who ratified them in Parliament without the least Alteration or Diminution to his eternal Honour and the great contentment of the whole Nation whose affections else he would have lost to the endangering of his new acquired Royalty as I have proved in the 2 d. Chapter Which our New pretended Conquerors may do well to consider And so I proceed to my concluding Assertion CHAP. V. I Am now arived at the fifth and last Proposition That the present opposition and endeavoured abolition of Tithes and all other coercive maintenance for Ministers proceed not from any real grounds of Piety or Conscience or any considerable real Inconveniences or Mischiefs arising from them but merely from base covetous carnal Hearts want of Christian Love and Charity to and professed enmity and hatred against the Ministers and Ministry of the Gospel and from a Jesuitical and Anabaptistical design to subvert and ruine our Ministers Church and Religion the probable if not necessary consequence of this infernal Project if it should take effect Which would prove the eternal Shame Infamy and Ruine of our Nation not its Glory and Benefit The first part of the Proposition is sufficiently manifested by the premises wherein I have answered all Objections from pretended Grounds of Piety Conscience and surmised Inconveniences or Mischiefs made against Tithes discovering them to be mere Impostures and false Surmises and the principal Objections against them are that they are Jewish Popish And Iohn Canne in his Second Voyce from the Alehouse for surely it came from thence not from the Temple to shew his skill in Divinity most impudently asserts That payment of Tithes is a Sin two waies against the second Commandement 1. In it self as being Iewish and Superstitious giving honour to the wayes and devises of Antichrist This way of Maintenance by Tithes being a Popish Custom imposed by the Popes Authority c. 2ly As paid to an unlawfull and Antichristian Ministry c. Surely a Lyer ought to have a good Memory He confesseth p. 15. That Tithes were paid by Abraham vowed by Iacob and prescribed by God himself in the Ceremonial law Therefore neither Jewish nor Popish nor Superstitions nor a Sin against the 2d Commandement else Abraham in paying Iacob in vowing God in prescribing the Israelites in paying them should transgresse this Commandement and commit a Sin against it I would demand of this Canne how he can reconcile these his palpable Lyes and Contradictions unbecomming him who professeth himself a true Minister of the Gospel 1. How Tithes can be merely Jewish since paid by Gods direction and approbation by Abraham the Father of the Faithfull and that
grounds policies hypocritically gilded over with the paint of Conscience Reformation Religion Propagation of the Gospel c. which makes the Design more detestable both to God and all good men The second sort of Tithe-Oppugners are professed Anabaptists Dippers Seekers Quakers and other blasphemous Sectaries and Heretiques lately sprung up amongst us many of which have crept into the Army for their greater security and the better accomplishment of their dangerous destructive Designs against our established Government Magistrates Laws but especially against our Religion Church Ministers Ministry their Tithes and Glebes Scarce one of a thousand of these poor Sneaks were of ability to pay any Tithes of late and those of this prevailing Faction who have crept into Sequestrations Offices Imployments of late and thereby gained any Estates for the most part have enriched themselves by sequestred Tithes Glebes Bishops Deans Chapters Lands and Revenues which these hungry Harpyes have most greedily preyed upon not out of any real grounds of Piety or Conscience as they pretend which I could yet seldom or never find in any of them but out of an unsatiable greedy HOLY HUNGER OR THIRST in the Poets sence after Gold Gain Spoyl the Revenues of our Church and an implacable bitter Enmity against our Ministers Persons Callings whether Presbyterians the chief Butt against whom their Malice is bent or Independents of a more moderate strain whose Ministry is the main Fort they level all their present power against to raze it even to the very Foundation now prosecuting the total abolition not only of their present Tithes Glebes but of all other future coercive maintenance in lieu of them only to subvert their Ministry and quite starve if they cannot violently storm them out of it This is most perspicuous not only by their manifold former libellous Pamphlets against our Ministers Calling and the late Ordinances for Tithes which I have elsewhere collected refuted but by their fresh Petitions both against their Tithes and Ministry too as Antichristian Jewish Popish c. especially by John Canne the old Amsterdam Anabaptists Second Voyce from the Temple or Synagogue of Satan rather newly dedicated to those he stiles The Supream Authority of the Nation wherein he exhorts and stimulates them by all the Art Rhetorick Motives false Arguments he can muster up to do execution and take vengeance upon Babylon to wit the National Ministry Church-worship Government of England as he explains it p. 2. till it be wholy desolate not a Stone left upon a Stone till it be thrown down To take a most effectual and certain course to starve and famish these Antichristian Idols by taking away the Food and Maintenance whereby hitherto as at this present they are nourished fed and left alive and more particularly their Tithes To repeal all Laws and Statutes formerly made whereby the Whore hath lived deliciously and proudly and keeps on to this Day her Whorish attire To make the Whore desolate and naked by making no Act or Law to stand in force which doth yield any relief to her To set themselves in array against her by the Armies power no doubt which he alludes to bend their Bow fan and empty her To set upon this work speedily in good earnest as it seems they do whiles it is to day And why so Because the Lord himself hath by a Call more than ordinarie called them to this more than ordinary Imployment if he could have proved it by Scripture or Law it had been more worth than all his Pamphlet put this fair or rather foul opportunity into their hands hath commanded his sanctified ones and called his Mighty ones the Army-Officers to fulfill his pleasure upon this great Whore the Church and Ministry of England and SION is in travel and ready to bring forth this Monster of Desolation and Confusion which if they neglect or delay then mark how he briefly menaces them with the Fates of their late Predecessors I would think you should never be sitting in that House but be thinking still on those who sate there before you and why not as well on Faux and the Gunpowder Traytoâ—s as those since there seems another Powder-plot in the Vault to blow them up intended by Canne and his Confederates if they fail in accomplishing this their desired work whom the Lord hath lade aside as despised broken Idols and Vessels wherein his Soul had no pleasure And why As they knew not their Generation-work which he excites them to neither were faithfull to the interest of Jesus Christ God is no respecter of Persons as men sow so they shall reap Ex ungue Leonem ex cauda Draconem You may see by these passages and his whole Pamphlet pursuing them what these malicious inhuman barbarous irreligious hypocritical Anabaptists aym at in their present violent prosecutions against Tithes even utterly to starve famish subvert extirpate our Ministers Ministry Church Worship Government and make our Land a mere Spoyl Desolation as their Predecessors did Munster and some parts of Germany whiles in their power But let Canne and his Anabaptistical Confederates remember what tragical ends their New King John with all his Princes Grandees Officers Prophets Followers came to in conclusion in Germany And what fatal ruine befell Jack Cade Iack Straw Wat Tyler Sharp and other levelling Companions who had the self-same Designs against our English Laws Lawyers Clergy Tithes Glebes as He and they have now animated thereto by the new-dipped Iesuites and other Romish Emissaries lately crept into their Anabaptistcal Fraternity to further this their Infernal Gunpowder-plot against our Church Religion Ministers Magistrates Government Laws and let them thereupon repent of desist from abominate this their Diabolical wicked Design lest they incur the self same punishments in conclusion by stirring up God and all the whole Nation against them as most accursed Rebels Traytors Instruments of Satan yea that very Antichrist and Whore of Rome they pretend they are blindly acting against whose designs in truth they are but accomplishing in the highest degree I must here observe and desire all others to take notice of three things First that in Cannes Voyce and in all other late Pamphlets Petitions of the Anabaptists wherein they seem to vent their most passionate zeal against Antichrist Babylon the Whore of Babylon their chief Instruments and Supporters I cannot find so much as one Clause or Syllable against Iesuites Popish Priests Papists Romish Emissaries or exciting the execution of any Laws or Statutes formerly made against them but the whole stream bent of them all is only against the Godly Ministers Ministry worship of the Church of England the Presbyterian Government and our present Church-worship the only Babylon Whore Antichrist they intend and fight against not the Pope and Church of Rome 2ly That they are so far from pleading against the Pope Popish Priests Iesuites and urging the execution of the good Oaths Laws made by late and former
Parliamentsâ—gainst â—gainst them and their Treasonable practices that they have frequently written petitioned for their Repeal Abolition as bloody Tyrannical Laws unlawfull Oaths and procured their Repeal or Suspension at least in their favour from some late and present Powers 3ly That when some consciencious pious Stationers late in their Beacons fired discovered to those then in Power The many sorts multitudes of Jesuites Popish Books printed in England within 3. years last past in defence of the Pope and Church of Rome all Popish Doctrines Ceremonies and reviling our Church Religion as Heretical desiring them to take it into their timely considerations to suppress this growing Mischief Design to corrupt the People and reduce them back to Popery ere they were aware Kiffin with other Anabaptists in the Army headed by Colonel Pride taking an Alarum thereat subscribed and printed a Book intituled The Beacons quenched penned they know best by whom not the Subscribers of it not yet inspired with the gift of all the Tongues therein contained pleading for a free Tolleration of such Popish Books printing dispersing amongst us of publick Disputes by those of that Religion traducing accusing the Presbyterians throughout that Pamphlet and those honest zealous Stationers in particular of no lesse than a New Gunpowder-plot Mine Train then ready to be sprung to blow up those Colonel Pride and his Confederates first made and then stiled The Parliament of the Common-wealth of England and the Army too only for discovering thesâ— Popish Books and Trains to blow up our Religion Which Scandal as the Stationers then fully cleared by their satisfactory Reply to that impertinent Pamphlet so the Subscribers of it their Fellow-Souldiers of the Army better versed by far in Mines and Fireworks to blow up Parliaments and nearer related to old Guy Faux a Low-Country Souldier by reason of their Military profession than these Stationers and Presbyterians they thus falsly slandered have since cleared before all the World to be a malicious Calumny of which themselves only are guilty and given just cause of Jealousie Fear to all Presbyterians old Protestants and Pâ—ritans to apprehend that they now really joyn their Forces and Heads together with those thus pleaded for to ruine our Church Religion Ministry under the Notion and Project of suppressing Tithes and of all future compulsory Maintenance for the Ministers of England whom they intend to starve and famish such is their Charity if they can but vote Tithes down before they provide any other Maintenance which Vote once passed the next will be to vote them both out of their Rectories Glebes Churches Ministry too as Cannes Voice and the Kentish Petition against Tithes root and branch sufficiently discover to all who are not wilfully blind enough to make all men now to look about them That the Dominican Franciscan and other Popish Fryers were the first Broachers of this Opinion That Laymen were not bound to pay Tithes to their Ministers by any Divine law or right on purpose to draw the Tithes of Ministers and Curates to themselves and exempt whatever Lands or Things were given to them from payment of Tithes I have elsewhere evidenced out of Mr. Selden and others wheâ—eupon Johannes Sarisburiensis Bishop of Chartres thus censured them Miror ut fidelium pace loquar quodnam sit ut Decimas jura aliena usurpare non erubescunt Inquient sortè Religiosi sumus Planè Decimas solvere Religionis pars est Adding that their Exemptions from payment of Tithes did derogare constitutioni Divinae derogate from Divine institution And Petrus Blesensis Archdeacon of Bath in his 82. Epistle inveighs very much against the privileges of the Cistercian Monks exemption from payment of Tithes as injuriosa immunitas contra Dei justiciam seeing Justiciae Divinae manifestè resistit qui Ministris Ecclesiae nititur jus Decimationis auserre Which these Friers not only persisted in by substracting their own Tithes from the Ministers by colour of these Exemptions but likewise the Tithes of their other Parishioners especially such who contemning and deserting their own Parish Priests and Churches resorted to these Friers Chapels and acknowledged them for their Ghostly Fathers and Confessors This is most evident by the Petition of the Parish Priests and Rectors of London to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the rest of the Bishops in a Synode about the year of our Lord 1240. against the Dominicans and Franciscans who much impaired their profit wherein they complained That their Parishioners who at leastwise on Lords daies and Festivals are bound to frequent their Parish Churches and to receive Sacraments and Sacramentals in the same and devoutly to hear Divine Service as also to offer at Solemn Masses due and accustomed Oblations did repair to the places and Houses of these Friers and scorn and forsake their Parish Churches and so confer the due Rights of the Church wherewith the Churches were antiently endowed upon the Friers Also they who confess themselves to these Friers who before were accustomed annually by the Canon-law to pay Tithes of their Tradings to their Parish Churches from the time since they submitted themselves to the Confessions of these Friers modo debito ac consueto negociationes suas decimare non curant Neglect to pay Tithes of their Tradings after the due and accustomed manner And is not this the very present Grievance Complaint of most London and other Ministers throughout England that since these disguised Romish Friers Jesuits swarming in all places under the Masks and Titles of Anabaptists Quakers and other Sects have in imitation of these their Predecessors in their Writings Preachments and Conventicles declaimed against our Ministers Tithes as not due unto them by any Divine Right to rob our Ministers of and draw the value of them to themselves and since their Parishioners who are bound to resort to their Parish Churches on Lords daies and Feastivals to hear Divine Service Sermons and receive the Sacraments in a devout manner have resorted to the Conventicles and Meetings of these Friers and Jesuites and submitted themselves to these new Ghostly Fathers and Confessors they have quite contemned deserted their own Parish Churches neglected refused to pay any personal or predial Tithes or Oblations to their Ministers after the due and formerly accustomed manner and bestowed the due Rights and ancient endowments of their parish Churches in value or substance at least though not in kind upon these Friers and Romish Locâ—sts whose very Doctrin Practice in this particular of our Ministers Tithes and Oblations and their substraction of them yea in most other Tenents now broached by them for New light are the very same in all particulars which these Friers in former ages both at home and abroad as I have evidenced in my Quakers unmasked my New Discovery of Romish Emissaries and our London Lancashire Newcastle and other Ministers have plentifully demonstrated in sundry publications with Mr. Edwards in his Gangraenaes We may then most clearly
that we should no waies be able to resist their progress till they were re-estated in their former Supremacy and Prevalency amongst us And then rhose very Romish Factors who are now so violent against Tithes and Rectories of purpose to starve our Ministers out of them and their Ministry for the present will not only forthwith resume as they did in Queen Maries daies their pristine abolished Pontifical Power and set up their Ecclesiastical Consistories High Commissions and bloudy Inquisitions amongst us higher than ever they were in former ages to the utter extirpation of our Protestant Ministers and Professors too but likewise presently resume into their hands all those Rectories Tithes and antient Dues whereof they now endeavour to deprive our Ministers with all our late Arch-Bishops Bishops Deans Chapters Cathedrals Lands and Revenues as Sacrilegiously alienated from the Church against the Lawes both of God and Man as well as against their Popish Canons by those who had no right to dispose of them if they proceed to resume all Abby Lands too in Protestant hands at least And then all late or antient Purchasers of such Lands now confederating with them out of Covetousness Ambition Rapine or other respects will repent too late of their inconsiderable unrighteous unchristian complyance with them against our Ministers Glebes and Tithes and have as ill a Bargain in conclusion as divers old Projectors had in the purchase of our Crown Revenues when resumed or setled in the Crown again by many special Acts of Resumption for the publick weal and ease of the people in their Taxes as being the constant standing Revenue of the whole Kingdom to defray its ordinary publick Expences which none can or ought to Alien or purchase from the Republick to enrich themselves by the publick Losse Wherefore I shall now refer it to their saddest thoughts to consider whether it will not be far safer for all such Army-Officers and others who have purchased Church Lands to joyn together with all such zealous Protestants who desire the continuance of our Ministers antient Tithes and Maintenance more aimed at than Impropriators Tithes against these Jesuites and Romish Emissaries now oppugning them and to use their utmost endeavours to detect apprehend prosecute execute all our former good Laws against them to prevent their mischievous present and future Designs against our Ministry Church Religion Nation than ignorantly or wittingly to confederate with and assist them to accomplish their present Sacrilegious Projects to ruine us and themselves with their Posterities in conclusion and thereby incur the self-same Crime Charge of High Treason which themselves and the whole Parliament of England so lately prosecuted against Canterbury in the 7 8 9 11 12 13 14. Articles of his original Charge for which he lost his head on Tower Hill To draw to a cloze of this Proposition I shall desire all truly fearing God throughout the Nation and Army too sadly to consider these particulars 1. That those who are the chiefest Sticklers against Tithes and our Ministers setled coercive Maintenance especially Jesuites and Anabaptists are the greatest professed open Adversaries to our Ministery Church Religion of all others desiring nothing but their utter ruine as their late printed Pamphlets and Petitions manifest Therefore to gratify them in their Designs herein is to ruine all at once for whose defence we have spent so much Christian Bloud Treasure pains of late years against the Common Enemy and Jesuited Popish Party 2. That many of those who in their printed Papers have decryed our Ministers Tithes and coercive Maintenance as inconsistent with the Peoples Liberties and a great Bondage to them have as earnestly declaimed against all Inclosures Coppy hold Tenures Land-Lords old Rents Services antient Customes Imposts which being not so antient nor ratified by so many Statutes Charters Muniments of all sorts as Tithes are will not be able to stand before their Opposition and Arguments against them if our Tithes and Ministers Glebes should once fall before them 3. That if our besotted Nation shall be so stupid as to admit or permit any company of persons whatsoever a sufficient Legal Power or Jurisdiction without any pretended Crime Attainder Legal Conviction or Trial by their Peers at their meer wills and arbitrary discretions to deprive all our godly Ministers throughout the Nation of their Rectories Tithes and antient Dues though ratified by the Law yea Gospel of God himself by an uninterrupted Title Prescription in their Predecessors from the very first planting of the Gospel in our Nation and more hundreds of years than the antientest Families in the Nation have enjoyed their Inheritances by more Charters of our Kings more particular Lawes Statutes of our successive Parliaments in all ages than all the Nobility Gentry Corporations Commons of the Realm are able to produce for the Rights Titles Defence of their particular Lands and Inheritances against the Rapines Intrusions Claims Seisures Confiscations Sales Alienations of any either claiming or usurping such a Power or Jurisdiction by the Sword or otherwise They will thereby both admit them and invest them in as sufficient a Legal Power and Jurisdiction without the least pretended Crime Attainder Legal Conviction or Trial by their Peers at their meer arbitrary wills and Discretions to deprive strip all the Nobility Gentry Corporations Commons of the Realm of all their Mannors Lands Inheritances Estates Chattels Privileges Franchises whatsoever being not so well fenced by the Laws of God and Men against their Rapines and Depredations as Tithes are and those who will make no conscience upon any grounds or pretences to invade the one will make no Scruple to act the other as the Histories of Jack Cade and his Complices Practices Designs at home and the Anabaptists abroad will sufficiently attest Yea it will be but just with God to engage such Arbitrary Powers to act the later to the ruine of them and their families if they shall either assist permit encourage them by their silence or cowardice to perpetrate the other to the disinheriting of the Church the ruine of their faithfull Ministers themselves and that very Religion which they pretend to profess and practice 4. That as Tithes are the fittest Maintenance for Ministers of all others as invented appointed by the very Wisdom of God himself and the best the wisest of his Saints in all ages holding the self-same proportion in relation to the Ministers and Parishioners in times of Plenty and Dearth good years or bad fair harvests or foul rising or the falling of the prices of Corn Lands and other Commodities affecting them both alike with the mercy and bounty of God in times of Plenty and the Judgments of God in times of Scarcity or unseasonable weather more easily parted with by the Country-man in kind by several small parcels as they grow due than in ready money in one or two intire sums which they are most loth to render and part from of any thing as
by diminishing or by rapine are taken from Christ And if it be Robbery to take any thing from a friend it is Sacrilege to take away alienate substract or waste any thing especially from Christ who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords For all Robbers of the Church are most apparently Sacrilegious persons and no Sacrilegious person unlesse by pure approved and publique Repentance and by satisfaction to the Church and by imposition of the Bishops hands and reconciliation according to the Canonical Sanctions shall Inherit the Kingdom of God and shall not only be secluded the Kingdom of God but likewise be shut out of the limits of the Church especially of the Church he hath ruined and shall be excommunicated thence until the foresaid Satisfaction given And the perpetrators of such wickednesses ought to have no Communion at all either with the living or dead till after such Satisfaction given Because who ever violently takes away his Neighbours money commits Iniquity but Sacrilegious persons are not only Théeves but likewise Wolves and Man-slayers and Murderers of the poor and accursed damned persons before God and his Saints And if so as these two pious Emperors by their Lawes with many Protestant Writers as well as Papists resolve and all Sacrilegious Persons taking any Vessel or Vtensil out of a Church though of small value by our own Lawes too as well as theirs be Sacrilegious Persons worthy to suffer pains of death as Felons those who shall openly Sacrilegiously Rob or attempt to Rob and spoyl all the Godly painfull Ministers of our Nation of all their Tithes Rectories Glebes Churches and Church-yards too at once are doubtlesse Sacrilegious Persons in the highest degree deserving to suffer a temporal infamous death and execution better than any High-way Theeves or Robbers at Tiburn or to be eternally banished the Nation excommunicated all Christian Society and had in perpetual execration for this Sacrilegious Rapine both by God himself and all good men unlesse they repent and make full publique Restitution Satisfaction for this their detestable Sacrilege Lastly If any Officers or Souldiers pretend we are now a Conquered Nation that Conquest makes all sacred things prophane and common to the Conquerors and that Churches may be justly spoyled of their Materials Vessels Glebes Tithes in such a case for the pay and benefit of the Conquering Souldiers as some affirm Therefore they may now justly deprive our Ministers of their Tithes Glebes Rectories Churches Church-yards to pay maintain themselves and the Conquering Army yea alter change our Laws at present as they now attempt and divers of them openly professe they intend to doe I Answer 1. That the Lords and Commons the very last Parliament when they first raised the Army in their Petition to the late King sent to his Excellency the Earl of Essex to the Army and by him presented to his Majestie Sept. 24. 1642. or soon after used this expression That the prevailing Popish party with his Majestie who by many wicked Plots and Conspiracies have attempted the Alteration of the true Religion and the antient Government of the Kingdom the introducing of Popish Idolatry and Superstition into the Church and tyranny and confusion into the State and by corrupting his Councels abusing his Power and sudden and untimely dissolving of former Parliaments had often hindered the Reformation and Prevention of those Mischiefs And in prosecution of those wicked Designs had as the most Mischievous and Bloudy Designe of all drawn his Majestie to make War against his Parliament and good Subjects of this Kingdom and to lead in person an Army against them as if he intended by Conquest mark the word to establish an absolute and unlimited power over them And in their Remonstrance Nov. 2. 1642. in Reply to his Majesties Answer to their Remonstrance of May 26. 1642. they charge this as the last Doctrin and Position of the Contrivers of his Majesties Answer That the Representative body of the whole Kingdom is a Faction of Malignant Schismatical and ambitious persons whose designes is and alwaies hath béen to alter the whole frame of Government both of Church and State and to subject both King and People to their own lawlesse arbitrary Power and Government and that they design the ruine of his Majesties Person and of Monarchy it self and consequently that they are Traytors and all the Kingdom with them for their Act is the Act of the whole Kingdom And whether their Punishment and Ruine may not also involve the whole Kingdom in conclusion ☜ and reduce it into the condition of a Conquered Nation mark the words no man can tell but experience sheweth us as now it doth in good earnest more than ever that Successe often carries men not only beyond their Profession but also many times beyond their first Intentions For an Army Officers then professing themselves true born English men eminent Godly Saints preservers of our Nations Liberties against Regal Tyranny and Enchroachments originally raysed Commissioned by both Houses to protect our Lawes Liberties Religion Church Government Parliament Nation from an intended Conquest by the late Kings Army to establish an absolute unlimited power over us and from being reduced into the condition of a Conquered Nation after the total routing of the Kings Army Power now at last to plead to averr we are now a conquered Nation in respect of themselves and thereupon to endeavour to establish an absolute unlimited power over us by altering the whole frame of Government both in Church and State changing the body of our Lawes yea antient constitution of our Parliaments abolishing our very Ministers Rectories Tithes Dues or diverting them to pay maintain themselves yea now to act over the very self-same things which both Houses then charged upon the late beheaded King and his Malignant Popish Councel thereby verifying these his Predictions of their forementioned designs in every Punctilio then utterly disclaimed by both Houses as the Highest Scandal to them and their sincere loyal Intentions and making him a truer Prophet than their new Merlin Lilly will not be only most scandalous dishonourable to them but monstrous treacherous perfidious if insisted on or persisted in both in the Judgement of God Angels Men and their own Consciences too Wherefore I presume on second thoughts they will disclaim this Plea both in words and Actions 2ly They were all raysed waged Commissioned by the late Parliament and well-affected People not to fight against conquer or subdue themselves but to preserve them their Lawes Liberties Privileges Estates our Churches and Religion against the Common Enemies and Invaders of them Therefore they cannot stile themselves Conquerors of thoâ—e Persons things they never fought against but only for unlesse they will now declare their secret intentions were ever crosse and contradictory to their open Commissions Vowes Covenants Protestations Words and printed Declarations to God and those that raised waged them for their safety and defence alone
and Friends for to recover the said Realm which Realm was upon the point to be undone for want of Government and abrogating of the Laws and Customs of the Realm And that it was not his will that any should think that he would by way of Conquest disinherit any one of his Heritage Franchise or other Right which he ought to have nor to out or deprive any man of that he had or should have by the good Laws or Customes of the Realm all which he confirmed by a special Act before 1 H. 4. c. 1. but only those who were against his good purpose and the common profit of the Realm and were guilty of all the evil come upon the Realm and were adjudged guilty thereof in that Parliament as Sir William Le Scroop Sir Henry Green and Sir John Bassy whose Lands only he would have by Conquest as forfeited by their Treasons Whereupon the Commons thanked the King and praysed God that he had sent them such a King and Governour Upon all which Considerations and the Resolution of learned Grotius with others quoted by him That by the very Laws of War even those who are conquered by foreign Enemies ought to enjoy by permission of the Conquerors their own Laws Liberties Magistrates Religion and a share in their Government much more in such a Civil War as ours where the Souldiers Generals can pretend no Conquest over those who raised waged them for their just defence against Conquest and Invasion of their Laws Liberties Government Magistrates Rights Privileges I hope those vaporing Officers Souldiers who have formerly cried up pleaded practised this pretended Title of Conquest amongst us and used many of their former Masters Raisers and the whole Nation more like to conquered enslaved People than their fellow Christian Brethren and Freeborn Englishmen who have paid them so well for all those Services they imployed them in wiâ—l henceforth totally renounce this their false usurped Injurious Plea Title and no more persist under pretext thereof to deprive our Ministers Church Peers Parliaments Nation of their very Native Freedomes Liberties Franchises Rights Laws Government Lands Possessions which they were purposely commissioned waged and by all Sacred all Civil Obligations Trusts Oaths Vowes Protestations perpetually engaged to defend against the least violation or Innovation without their free and full consents in a due and lawfull Parliament freely elected by them not forcibly obtruded on them without their choise or privity Yea I trust they will be so just so righteous towards me so great a Sufferer by under them only for discharging my Conscience and bounden duty towards my God our Church and Native Country of England as no waies to be angry with me or Injurious towards me for this my New Gospel Plea interwoven with a Legal and Rational for the Lawfulness and Continuance of the antient setled Maintenance and Tithes of the Ministers of the Gospel and the good old Fundamental Laws and Liberties of the Nation which their present busie Endeavours to abolish alter subvert beyond yea against their Trusts Commissions Callings have necessitated me now to publish to the world to preserve our Church State Ministry from new Combustions and Impendent ruine but rather found a Retreat from these their Heady Proceedings which I fear the Jesuites with their Confederates the Anabaptists have engaged them so deeply in to work as well their own as the publick speedy ruine both of our Church Religion State Ministry Nation and excite them to use the self-same deportment words to me who have no private design nor interest of my own or other mens in this my voluntary undertaking but only the publique Safety and Weal as enraged David did once to Abigail when she diverted him from his rash bloody resolution to destroy Nabal and his family for a Churlish Answer returned to him for his Kindness 1 Sam. 25.32 33. Now blessed be the Lord God of Israel which sent thee this day to meet me and blessed be thy advice and blessed be thou which hast kept me this day from coming to shed bloud and to avenge my self with my own hand But if they shall by Gods permission cast me again bound hand and foot into another fiery Fornace for this my faithfull Service or not falling down and worshipping that Golden or rather Wooden Image which they have or would now set up I doubt not but that Gracious God who hath so miraculously preserved me in delivered me out of so many fiery Trials and Fornaces heretofore will do the like again hereafter and that in such a visible eminent manner as shall enforce them at last to use those words unto me as Nebuchadnezzar did unto Shadrac Meshac and Abednego after their miraculous preservation in the midst of the fiery Fornace into which the most valiant men of his Army cast them bound by his unrighteous Command to their own immediat destruction by the flame without the least hurt to them Dan. 3.28 Then Nebuchadnezzar spake and said Blessed be the God of Shadrac Meshac and Abednego who hath sent his Angel and delivered his Servants that trusted in him and have changed the Kings word and have yielded their bodies that they might not serve nor worship any God or Idol except their own God This being an undoubted Truth which I have ever hitherto found experimentally true from and in my former causelesse Oppressors whose Erronious Practices vices I have reproved recorded by God himself and the wisest of all Mortals Prov. 28.23 He that rebuketh a man for his faults plainly shall afterwards find more favour than he that flattereth him in them with the Tongue And that saying of the truth it self in such cases of difficulty and concernment to the reprover will ever prove an experimental verity wherewith I shall conclude my Plea which I desire may be deeply engraven in the Hearts Spirits of all timorous base unworthy Christians who dare neither speak nor write their Consciences nor Discharge their Duties in these times of danger and will wrong both their Consciences Country Posterity yea shame their God Nation Religion to save their Estates Lives as they fondly conceit when they will lose all with their souls to boot by their base carnal fears Math. 16. 24 25 26. Luke 17.33 If any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his Crosse and follow me For whosoever will Save or shall seek to Save his life so Luke records it shall Lose it and his Tithes Lands Liberties with it and whosoever will Lose his Life for my sake shall find it For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole World and Lose his own Soul Or what shall a man give in exchange for his Soul I shall cloze up all with this notable Passage of our own learned Writer John Sarisbury against such Religious Hypocritical Cistersian Monks who in his age sought exemption from payment of Tithes and seised upon the Ministers Dues about the year 1170.