Legall power more then sufficient to prevent and restrain Tyranny Finally the Parliament hath power to defend that Civill right which we have to exercise the true Protestant Religion this last point is sure of highest consequence because it concernes Gods immediate honour and the Peoples temporall and eternall good Pray Sir shew me if you can why he who saith the Protestants in Ireland may defend their Civill right for the free exercise of their Religion against the furious assaults of the bloudie Rebells doth by that assertion proclaime himself a Turke and Denison the Alchoran you talke of the Papists Religion Sir their faith is faction their Religion is Rebellion they think they are obliged in conscience to put Heretiques to the sword this Religion is destructive to every Civill State into which true Protestants are incorporated therefore I cannot but wonder at your extravagancy in this point Sir Who was it that would have imposed a Popish Service Book upon Scotland by force of Armes You presume that I conceive the King had an intent to extirpate the Protestant Religion Sir I am sure that they who did seduce or over-awe the King had such a designe I doe not beleeve that the Queene and her Agents the Papists in England who were certainly confederate with the Irish Rebells had any intent to settle the true Protestant Religion you cannot but beleeve that their intent was to extirpate the Protestant Religion by the sword and to plant Popery inits stead I know Christ doth make proseâ—ites and breake the spirituall power of Antichrist by his word and spirit for Antichrist is cast out of the hearts and consciences of men by the spirit of the Lord Jesus but Christ is King of Nations as well as King of Saints and will breake the temporall power of Antichrist by Civill and naturall meanes If Papists and Delinquents are in readiness to resist or assault the Parliament by Armes how can the Parliament be defended or Delinquents punished but by force of Armes I know men must be converted by a spirituall perswasion but they may be terrified by force of Armes from persecution All that I say is the Parliament may repell force with force and if men were afraid to profess the truth because of the Queenes Army and are now as fearfull to maintaine errours for feare of the Parliament the scales are even and we may by study conference disputation and prayer for a blessing upon all be convinced and converted by the undenyable demonstrations of the Spirit Sir this is my perswasion and therefore I am sure far from that Mahumetan perswasion of which I am unjustly accused 11. I am glad that you speake out and give light to your darke roome I did not accuse you of Convenicles I beleeve you hate those Christian meetings which Tertullian Minutius Pliny and others speake of we had lights and witnesses good store at our meetings And as for your conceit that I deserve to be in Bedlam because of the predominancy of my pride and passion and the irregularity of my will Sir I confess that I deserve to be in Hell a worse place then Bedlam and if you scoffe at me for this acknowledgement I shall say as Augustine did Irrideant me arrogantes nondum salubritèr prostrati elisi à te Deus meus ega tamen confiteor dedecora mea in laude tua Sir be not too confident of the strength of your wit make a good use of it or else you may quickly come to have as litle wit as you conceive God hath bestowed on me 1. Doe you beleeve that your nature is corrupt 2. And doth not a wanton wit make the heart effeminate 3. Did you never converse with any woman of light behaviour rub up your memory 4. Superstitious persons are usually lascivious I could tell you more but I spare you 5. Are you more temperate then the Disciples to whom Christ gave that caveat Luk. 21.34 you may then apply your selfe to Prayer and Fasting doe not say that this is a filthy Caveat but beware of that filthy sinne and acknowledge that the Caveat is given you upon sad considerations 12. You tell me that God is not so fatally tyed to the Spindle of an absolute Reprobation but that upon your Repentance he will seale your Pardon Sir Reprobatio est tremendum Mysterium how dare you jest upon such a Subject at the thought of which each Christian trembles Can any man repent that is given up to a reprobate mind and an impenitent heart And is not every man finally impenitent save those few to whom God gives repentance freely powerfully effectually See what it is for a man to come from Ben. Johnson or Lucian to treat immediately of the â—igh and stupendidious mysteries of Religion the Lord God pardon this wicked thought of your heart that you may not perish in the bond of iniquity and gall of bitterness be pleased to study the 9. Chapter to the Romanes You say if we agree upon the true state of the Questions before hand nothing will be left us to dispute Sir it is 1. one thing to state a question for debate so that you may undertake the affirmative I the Negative or è contrat 2. another thing to state a question in a supposition as the Respondent usually doth and a third business to state a question after the debate in a prudent and convincing determination as the Moderatour should doe I speake of agreeing upon the state of the question in the first sense that the Question may be propounded in such termes as doe so farre state the point in Controversie that you and I may know which port to take the Affirmative or Negative The questions as I conceive are these that follow 1. Whether all that our Prelates have borrowed of the Church of Rome and imposed upon the people ought to be still retained in the Church of England 2. Whether the Images of our Mediatour and the Saints are usefull Ornaments in Protestant Churches 3. Whether any Prelate be endued with the power of sole Ordination and Jurisdiction Jure divine 4. Whether they who defend the Protestants of Ireland against the Rebells by force of Armes are therefore to be esteemed Mahumetans 5. Whether that faith which is grounded only upon Tradition ought to be esteemed a Divine faith 6. Whether the spirit speaking in the word to the conscience of private men ought to be esteemed a private Spirit 7. Whether any Reprobate can ever be converted or saved 8. Whether the Papists of England Rebells of Ireland with their Confederates did endeavour to extirpate the Protestant Religion and plant Popery in its stead 9. Whether they who endeavoured to impose a Popish Service-Booke upon Scotland by force of Armes were of the Mahumetan perswasion 10. Whether the School-men are Competent judges in any point which concernes the Mysterie of Faith or Power of Godliness 11. Whether the Nationall Covenant contradict it selfe Sir if you
also unlawfull because Papists shift and so conclude Cleanliness to be as superstitious as Surplices or Copes Sir you may call this Poetry but there is a Logick in it which I hope doth not cease to be Logick which you cannot resist because 't is not watrishly or flegmatickly exprest As for those parts of the Common-Prayer-booke which I doe not say were borrowed from Rome as you impose upon me but are to be found in the Rubrick of the Church if I had said they had been borrowed from that Church yet you have said nothing to prove that upon this supposition 't is Popery to use those Prayers in Ours Foreseeing I beleeve that if you had offered to maintaine that what ever is in the Popish Lyturgie is Popery that is superstitious and fit to be proscribed out of the Church you would meeting with a good Disputant and one not addicted to Poetry have been compelled to confess that the Lords Prayer and Davids Psalmes are Popery too though the one were delivered by Christ the other by one who lived long before Antichrist because they are bound up in the same volumne with the Masse Sir if this be your Logick 't is Socrate ambulante coruscavit and will be a false fire to lead you for ever out of the way But here Sir though I need not take the paines to confute the Nothings you have said against me in this particular yet whenever you shal call upon me to make good my undertaking I doe promise to make it evident to you that all the ancient parts of the Common-Prayer-booke which I plead for I doe not plead for because they are used by the Church of Rome but because they were part of the Lyturgie of those Churches which were thought primitively pure and not superstitious and were in the world long before Popery or Antichrist was borne I must therefore for ought you have yet said to alter my opinion still stand to my former conclusion which is that by the same reason that either the whole or any part of our Cōmon-Prayer-Book is to be turned out of the Church because in some things it agrees with the Lyturgie of the Church of Rome Italy and Rome it self is to be turned out of the world so a new Map to be made of it where these places are not because they are the Popes Territories and lye under his Jurisdiction Lastly Sir as for the Visitors you threaten both me and Christ-Church withall of whom some report that you are one when you come to execute your Commission so you will not urge it as a Topicke to convince my understanding but as a Delegacy of power to examine my studies life and manners I shall bring all the submission with me which can be expected from one subject to the tryal and examination of such a power Being withall very confident that when that time comes however you may perhaps finde an old Cope or two in our Colledge yet you will never bring Logick enough with you to prove that they are either Idolatrous or have been put to a superstitious use And therefore Sir in this particular you have lost your friendly counsell there being no need at all that we should against that time study for an Answer In your next Fascicle you say that I maintaine that some things in the Excellency and Height of the Doctrines of Christian Religion depend for their credit and the Evidence of their Truth upon the Authority of Christs Miracles convey'd along in Tradition and Story And therefore conclude that my Religion leanes too hard and too heavy upon Tradition Sir though I have alwayes lookt upon the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the New as two glorious lampes which to all eyes that have not lost the use of seeing by being kept sequestred from the sunne too long in the darke mutually give light to one another so that a vigilant Reader by comparing Prophecies with their Accomplishments will have very great reason to beleeve that both are true yet because this amounts but to the discourses and perswasions of a single mans reason if I prefer Tradition which is the constant universall consent of all Ages as a fuller medium to prove doctrines by which are hardly otherwise demonstrable doe I any more I pray then prefer the universall Testimony and Report of the Church of all Times before the more fallible suggestions of a private spirit Your next Paragraph is perfectly the Hydra with repullulating Heads which I warned you of in my first Letter And multiplies so many causeless questions as make it nothing but a heape partly of such doubts partly of untruths as would make it one of Hercules labours to examine them First you bid me prove that Christ hath put the sole power of Ordination in the hand of a Prelate Sir if the practice of the Apostles in the Scripture in this point were not cleare yet the practice and opinion of the Church for 1500 yeeres ought to be of too great Authority with you to make this a scruple Knowing that no Church in the world thought otherwise till the Presbyterian Modell crept forth of Calvins fancie nor any good Protestant in the Church of England till such as you recalled Aërius from his grave and Dust to oppose Bishops Next you bid me justifie that no Church that ever the sunne lookt upon hath beene more blest with purity of Religion for the Doctrines of it or better establisht for the Government and Discipline of it then the Church of England hath Sir you repeat not the words of my Sermon so faithfully as you should I am not so extravagant as to say that no Church that ever the Sunne lookt upon but that the Sun in all his heavenly course for so many many yeeres that is in my sense for many Ages saw not a purer Church then ours was both for the Doctrines and Discipline of it Against this you wildly object I know not what Doctrines publiquely countenanced but tell me not what these Doctrines were speake of certaine superstitious practices and Prelaticall usurpations but doe not prove them to be either superstitious or usurpt quarrell with the Delegation of Bishops power to Chancellors then proceed to the tyrannie of the High-Commission-Court and at last conclude with I know not what Imaginary corruptions and Innovations introduced into the State Church and Vniversity Sir if I should grant this long-winded Charge of yours to be true as truly I think it is onely a seeing of vanity yet my confident Assertion is not hereby enfeebled I hope when I spoke of the purity of our Church you did not think I freed it from all blemishes or spots The Primitive Church it selfe had some in it who broacht strange doctrines Saint John had not else written his Gospell against the Gnosticks nor Saint Paul his Epistle to the Galatians against those that held the necessity of Circumcision The next Ages of the Church have not been more distinguisht by their
Martyrs then Heretiques yet the Primitive Church ceased not to be Apostolically pure because it had a Cerinthus or Nicolaitans in it nor the succeeding Churches to be the Spouse of Christ because one brought forth an Apelles another a Marcion a third a Nestorius a fourth an Eutiches a fift an Arius Sir as long as the best Church in the world consists of men not infallible there will be errors But then you must not charge the Heterodox opinions or Doctrines of particular men though perhaps countenanced by some in publique authority upon the Church Besides Sir every Innovation is not necessarily a Corruption unless it displace or lay an Ostracisme upon some other thing more worthy and better then it selfe You your selfe say that the corruptions introduced were brought in by a prevailing faction who were not the Church If they were not my Assertion holds good that notwithstanding such corruptions yet our Church in its time was the purest Church in the world This then being so me thinks Sir you in your pursuit of Reformation by making Root Branch your Rule of proceeding have beene more severe then the lawes of right Reason will allow you If there were such a tyrannie as you speake of streaming it selfe from the High Commission Court why could not the tyrannie be supprest without the abolishment of the Court Or if there were such a thing as Prelaticall usurpation why could not the usurpations be taken away and Episcopacie left to stand Sir if you be Logician enough to be able to distinguish betweene the faults of persons and the sacredness of functions you cannot but pronounce with me that to extirpate an order of the Church ancient as the Christian Church it selfe and made venerable by the never-interrupted Reception of it in all the Ages of the Church but ours for the irregular carriage of a Prelate or two if any such have beene among us is a course like theirs who thought there was no way left to reforme drunkenness in their State but utterly to root up and extirpate and banish Vines The remainder of your Paragraph is very politically orderd which is that because you finde it hard for you to confute my Sermon by your Arguments you will endeavour to make the Parliament my Adversary who you thinke are able to confute it by their power And bid me prove that the proceedings of the Parliament are Turkish Here Sir methinks being a Poet I see a piece of Ben Johnson's best Comedy the Fox presented to me that is you a Politique Would-be the second sheltring your self under a capacious Tortoise-shell Why Sir can you perswade your selfe that the great Councell of the Kingdome by whom you are imployed if they will vouchsafe to reade my Sermon will not presently discerne your Art And withall perceive that though the Text upon which I out of the Integrity of my soule preacht that Sermon stick as close to False Prophets as the Centaures shirt did to Hercules and set them a raging yet that they having never Parliamentarily profest to propagate Religion by their speare can no way be concerned when I say that such a perswasion in us Christians would be Mahumetan and we thereby should translate a piece of the Alchoran into a piece of the Gospel Sir I am so confident of the wisdome of that Honourable Assembly of my owne innocent meaning and of your guilt who have beene one of those Turkish Prophets and in your Letter to me still are who have preacht that piece of the Alchoran for good doctrine that for answer to all your slye impotently-malicious mis-applications and shiftings off that which I have said onely of such as your selfe to the Parliament I shall onely appeale to my Sermon And by that if you please to undertake the Devils part and be my Accuser shall be content to stand or fall In the meane time Sir I must repeat what I said before that if it be read or lookt on through those refractions with which you have mis-shap'd and crookt it I shall consent to what you say in the end of your filthy Paragraph That 't was once a Sermon but you almost à Carceribus usque ad metam have made it a Libell In your next what shall I call it you are very Critically pleasant And because I talke of a Religion wherein I was borne aske me whether I were borne in a Surplice or Cope and then very distinguishingly proceed and say Christiani non nascuntur sed fiunt To the first I reply that it had been as unnaturall for me to be borne in a Surplice or Cope as for you to come into the world with a little Geneva set-ruffe about your neck Next Sir for your sharpe distinction I hope though the Muses be your Step-dames yet you thinke not the figures of Rhetorick to be so superstitious that it shall be Popery in me to make use of a Metonymy and to express my selfe by the Adjunct when I mean the place and Country I grant Sir that men are not borne but re-born Christians yet 't will be no great Errour in speech for a man to say he is born in Christianity if he be a Christian and were born in the place where Christianity is establish'd Sir I doubt you begin to think secular learning to be a profane thing And that you are bound to persecute Tropes out of Expression as you have Liturgy out of the Church If you do Sir we shall in time if we proceed in this conflict fulfill a peece of one of Saint Paul's Epistles between us I become a Barbarian to you and you to me I am glad to hear you say That the Parliament will not suppress the true Protestant Religion Sir I never thought they would But then 't will be no harm to you if I pray That whilst you pursue such a through Reformation of it as of late years hath left it doubtfull in the minds of the people what the true Protestant Religion is you let not in Popery at that Gate by which they strive to shut it out If Queen Maries dayes do once more break in upon us through the sluce which we open to them by our unsetledness and Distractions and if I then fall a sacrifice in defence of the same Religion for which I now contend I hope you then will think your self confuted And no longer beleeve that I am such an ill Judge of Religions or so profusely prodigall of my life that I would make it a Holocaust or Oblation either to Tyranny or Popery In short Sir let the King and Parliament agree to burn Copes and Surplices to throw away the Common-Prayer-Book or to break our Windows I shall not place so much Religion in them as not to think them alterable and this done by Right Authority But as for the Covenant 't is a pill Sir which no secular interest can so sweeten to me that I should think my self obliged to be so far of any mans Religion as to swallow
and undivided as Christs coat But since the Soldiers did cast lots upon it so much heresie as well as schisme hath torne it asunder that 't is now become like Josephs coat imbrued in bloud where no one piece carryes colour or resemblance to another As for the Discipl ne and Government of our Church if you would speak your conscience and not your gall you would confess that the frame and structure of it was raised from the most Primitive Modell that any Moderne Church under the Sunne was governed by A Government so well sized and fitted to the Civill Government of the Kingdome that till the insurrection of some false Prophets who presumed to offer strange fire before the Lord and reduced a Land which flowed with milk and honey into a wildernesse they agreed together like the two Scripture-brothers Moses and Aaron and were the two banks which shut up schisme within its channell and suffered not heresie or sedition to overflow their bounds In short Sir I know not into what new forme this Kingdome may be moulded or what new creation may creep forth from the strife-full heap of things into which as into a second Chaos we are fallen But if the Civill State doe ever returne to its former selfe againe your Presbyterian Government which was brought forth at Geneva and was since nursed up in Scotland mingled with it if I be not deceived in the principles of that Government will be but a wild Vine ingrafted into a true Vpon which unequall disproportioned Incorporation we may as well expect to gather Figs of Thistles or grapes of thornes as that the one should grow so Southerne the other so Northerne that one harmonious musicall Body should arise from them thus joyned What Errors in Government or Discipline were committed by the Prelates I know not neither have you proved them hitherto chargeable with any unless this were an error that they laid an Ostracisme as you say upon those that opposed your Government I beleeve Sir when Presbytery is set up and you placed in your Consistory with your Spirituall and Lay-Brethren you will not be so negligent or so much asleep in your place as not to find an Ostracisme for those who shall oppose you in your office In the meane time Sir to call them or those who submitted to their Government A Prelaticall faction because the then wheels of their Government moved with an unanimous undisturbance is I beleeve a calumny which you would faine fasten upon them provoked I suppose by the description which I have made of the conspiracy of the False Prophets of Jerusalem in my Sermon I must deal freely with you Sir do but probably make it appear to me that this Faction in your letter was like the Conspiracy in my Sermon Do but prove to me that the Prelates devoured soules That they took to themselves the Treasure and precious things of the Land That to effect this they kindled the first spark towards a Civil War then blew it into such a flame as could not be quencht but with the bloud of Husbands ravisht from their Wives and the slaughter of parents prest and ravisht from their children Doe but prove to me that they made one widdow or built their Honours upon the ruine or calamity of one Orphane Lastly do but prove to me that the Priests whom you make to be the lower orbe of their Faction did so mingle and confound the services of the Church as to put no difference between the holy and profane or that in complyance with them they saw vanity and divined lyes to the people and I shall think them capable of all the hard language which you or others have for some yeares heapt upon them Till then Sir pray mistake not Concrets for their Abstracts nor charge the faults of persons upon the innocency of their functions Prelacy is an Order so well rooted in the Scripture though now deprived of all its Branches in this Kingdome that I verily perswade my selfe that as Caiaphas in the Gospell when he spoke Prophecy perceived not himself at that time to be a Prophet so you over-rul'd by the guidance of a higher power have in this Paragraph exceedingly praised Prelacy whilst you laboured to revile it For either it must be Non-sense or a very great Encomium of it when you say that as long as it enjoyed a root here in this Kingdome it had not onely a destructive influence into the evils of the Church but of the Civill State too If the Influence of it were so destructive of evils as indeed it was pray with what Logick can you say that Salus populi quae suprema lex est did compell the Parliament to extirpate a thing so preservative and full of Antidote both to Church and State Sir if mens styles denominations be to be given to them by the place clymate where they are borne bred I shall grant you are an English nay an Oxford Christian But if you preach maintain that Religion as to be propagated by the Sword I must tell you that an English Presbyter may in this case be a Turkish Prophet and that though his Text be chosen from the Gospel yet the Doctrine raised from it may be a piece of the Alchoran I shall allow you to say that the Protestants in Ireland had a Right to the defence of the free exercise of their Religion against the furious assaults of the bloody Rebels But when you tell me that Christ is King of Nations as well as King of Saints which I shall grant you and say that as one of his wayes to make Proselytes is by the perswasion of his Word and Spirit so if that will not do his other way to break the power of Antichrist that is as I conceive you mean to convert men from Popery is by civill and naturall meanes that is if you meane any thing to compell them to be Protestants by the Sword Me-thinks I am at Mecha and heare a piece of Turcisme preacht to me by one of Mahomets Priests In short Sir whether the Papists in England were confederate with the Irish Rebels I know not But doe you prove demonstratively not jealously to me that the Queene and her Agents had an intent to extirpate the Protestant Religion and to plant Popery by the Sword and the Army that should bring that designe to pass shall in my opinion be styled an Army not of Papists but of baptized Janizaries As for your bidding me dispute the right of taking up Armes in such a case with the Parliament First I must desire you to accept the Answer which Favroinus the Philosopher gave to a friend of his who askt him why he would let Adrian the Emperour have the better of him in a Dispute I am loth to enter into an Argumentation with those who command Thirty Legions Next Sir if I were of consideration enough to be heard to speak publickly to that Great Assembly having first kist my