religiously plead for a Liberty seditiously and factiously to broach to others any new opinions he pleaseth Nor may any part of men though never so godly carry on any design though it may be better than what at present may be by any violent irregular and disorderly ways For every Christian duty hath its Bounds beyond which it is not true and virtuous Liberty but inordinateness and excess Some mens pedantick incivilities to the Consciences of others may be instructive to us as to convince the necessity of setting out true bounds of Liberty which should not be granted on other terms then as far as it conduceth to Gods honour and the Peoples good For if publick power should suffer arrogant ignorance excess of passion perversness of will to come to its full rudeness and extent tumultuary numbers and brutish Power will soon make good private presumptions and cover over the most impotent Lusts passions and ambitions of men with the pleas and outcryes of Christian Liberty For that is no other freedome then that as water enjoys when it overbears and overflows her Banks and Bounds and such as the envious and malitious Devils affects and are most impatient not to enjoy nor may they be touched or curbed by any authority in Church or State be their extravagancies never so blasphemous but presently they make great clamours of persecution as if all were persecutors who helped to bind a Mad-man or put a roaring drunkard into the Cage The vitious are not to be counted into the sort of meer Dissenters Socinians who are enemies to the Blessed Trinity Atheists who hold Principles destructive to Christianity and those Parties whose Religion forbids subjection and carries an opposition to civil Government and Commands by Fire and Sword to erect their new Spiritual Kingdom And those who hold forth notions and conceptions reforming or wholly changing the state of Religion and Government and in order to that shake even the frame of Civil things to which they think themselves no longer bound in subjection then they want a party strong enough for opposition nor will they easily be perswaded that it is the sin of Rebellion carries the face of reformation easily dispensing with obedience to men where they pretend amendment before God putting on Sheeps Cloathing to no other purpose but the renting of Christs seemless Coat Sow to themselves leaves of frivolous pretences dispute Preach Plead Clamour about moderation and Liberty when all the immoderation is in themselves contend to have priviledges prerogatives freedome regulated so and so yet would they examine themselves nothing needs more regulation then their own judgments opinions and humours There be others of hotter tempers more Cholerick Constitutions and feaverish complexions have such ferocious Spirits like pampered Horses whom no ground will hold dayly neighing after novelties who love to be moving in the troubled waters of secular affairs who seem most impatient of any order or publick rule in which they have not some stroak or influence ready to undo whatever is done without them their Brest is full of turbulent and seditious Spirits as the Cave of Aeolus of Winds Forgetting what Spirit becomes followers of the Gospel whose heads are prone to move their hearts with Specious novelties quick excitations and zealous resolutions which soon after like salt-streams descend and fall upon their Lungs provoking them violently to the spreading their opinions to others till they see the Children of their brains prove meer abortions To the misguided activity of such even Ministers the Commonalty may owe much of its troubles These only and the like most truly forfeit their Christian private Liberty to the publick discretion and power who will not or cannot use it but to the publick detriment Beware then of Compliances with and indulgence to all sorts Sects and Schisms pleaded for as if it were a part of Christs Legacy and Peoples Liberty to be tolerated in any Actions or Opinions never so pernicious Saint Paul beseecheth the Romans to mark those that Cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine received Rom. 4. 6 17. As an absolute unity in judgment is not to be attained in this Life so an universal or absolute Liberty is not to be permitted or indulged in things injurious to God Toleration of all things is a destructive principle to State and Church a Cloak to Licentiousness ushereth in Atheism and Libertinism Transports Men oft-times to such excesses beyond those bounds of duty which as Subjects we ought to observe Hath many Latitudes evasions and distinctions to unravel the Cords of any Oaths and untwist the Bonds of any Covenant or Protestations Those who are most pregnant and impatient of holding in their Opinions on the pretence of Truth do but proudly esteem their own understandings pretious to vend some raw and indigested notions The Devil usually pretends Truth to Cover his Lyes Clamour must not prevail but reason Is it to follow the direction of Christ to Preach on the House-top If there were a Nero or Dioclesian at the Helm who should threaten to mingle our Blood with our Sacrifices if you had your Antelencana and should flock into Caves of the Earth to worship Christ your zeal would be more tolerable True Christian toleration extends not to matters of an extern nature wherefore Magistrates may use a Coercive hinderance from publick Meetings without impeaching it When Subjects have expressed a due Regulation in it then is a King in Capacity to shew a God-like benignity and Power in granting the things they ask as conducing to God's honour and the Peoples Good nor is it rational to be granted on other terms For Religion cannot be defended by transgression of God's Commands which are the rule of it The true Liberty of conscience of any man consists in a Constant tendency or intention to the Supream end and those holy regulations which God hath prescribed as it stands in referrence to God its Creator and its Neighbour Wherein a Christian is free to declare and utter them to know consider meditate of and believe whatever Truth God hath revealed When he is free to declare and utter them in such a holy way which Charity Sobriety Modesty Order and Gravity allow or conferring so with others as may have some savour of Reason and Religion in an humble and holy desire to learn or teach in a regular not in a rude insolent and imperious way A wise humble Christian is never far from his refuge and when pursued and urged beyond what he thinks agreeablt to good Conscience he is not to seek for or take Foxes shifts subtil windings or sinful coverts Is more willing to hear then earnest to object and labours to acquiesce in others satisfaction as well as his own becomes all things to all men in regard of things Civil and extern CAP. V. Whether the Romanists have not a just and equal title to Toleration SUch is the multiplying of that breath giving Life which God hath cast upon slime
Judicature in abetting any contrivance or disturbance to common peace or civility Proceeding on the premises the title of the first Chapter will be CAP. I. Persecution on the score of Religion is utterly Condemned and unlawful IMposition Violence and Persecution for matters meerly relating to Conscience directly invades the divine prerogative for God alone is Lord over the Conscience it is his just Claim and priviledg for as Solomon saith no man hath power over Conscience Luther Eccles in the Book of Civil Magistrates saith the Law of them extends no farther then Body and Goods for over Conscience God alone ruleth in the same Book in the building of the Temple saith he there was no sound of Iron heard to signifie that Christ will have in his Church a free and willing people not compelled by human Laws and Statutes God hath exempted the soul out of your Commission c. The Cause and reason why Judicatures of men are appointed and set up are that Magistrates should be Ministers of protection and praise to them that do good and of terror and revenge of those that do Evil in matters to outward practise but to exceed these limits imposing nice and doubtful oaths not having the Conditions required in Scriptures on the Consciences of men and other pressure and penalties concerning their souls only of which Christ alone Challengeth the propriety is neither lawful nor warrantable it is Gods prerogative to punish for Conscience who hath only propriety in the Soul unto whom all must give account in spiritual things For Religion is a virtue hath God for its immediate object when according to all Divines it is not within the vierge of humane Cognizance because the Soul is not liable to our tribunal Keckerman a learned Writer saith that the Bond between the Magistrate and Subject is essentially Civil The saying of King Stephen the wise King of Poland is Observable that he was King of men not of Consciences Commander of Bodies not of Souls The practise of persecution meerly for conscience hath been disavowed and condemned by divine authority and holy writ by the Primitive Fathers by many of the most famous Princes in the world by our own principles and concessions by the wisest greatest and Best States in ancient and modern times as the Jews Romans Egyptians Germany Holland nay the Turks and Persians Polish and Bohemian Kings Marcus Aurelius a Pagan permitted tolleration to Christians Antâ—niâ—â— Pius Emperor so called for his great piety whose Empire God blessed with greater peace and felicity then any Pagan Empeperor had before or after him for the favour he shewed to Christians in taking of the many and Cruel persecutions suffered under his Predecessors Forbad no man should be accused for their Religion affirmed that the great Earthquakes and other Calamities wherewith the Empire was afflicted proceeded of the justice of God for the injuries done to the Christians as it is manifested by a Copy of the edict related by Eutrop. l. 10. Gratian Jovianus Caesar Emperors permitted various Religions the old Romans offered the Jews Liberty on condition they would be faithful Theodosius and Gratian most Christian Emperors were contented to tollerate the Arrians At Hierusalem in Christ time were two Sects living sociable the Pharisees and Sadduces in Germany these hundred years Papists and Lutherans live together in France Calvenists are permitted How oft the French King gave Edicts of pacification is set down in Laval l. 3. Solomon permitted the Hittites Hivites Perizites and Jebuzites to live quietly under his Reign as Grotius observeth on the 1 of Kings 19. 20. The Novatians saith Baxter were tollerated and loved by the sober Catholick Emperors because they had tollerable principles when many others were otherwise dealt withal and S. Martin and Sulpitius Severus refused to be of their Councel for inciting the Emperor to the way of blood corporal violence The Turk permitteth Christians Persians and Aethiopians in his Dominions Venetians suffereth Jews amongst them as the King of Spain did the Moors till necessity forced him to expel them by the Inquisition It s a false proposition proceeding from Gall and Spleen only to breed an exulceration in the hearts of the people that Catholicks Protestants c. may not be tollerated in a well governed wealth the wiser sort will not endure so gross a paradox dayly proved false before their eyes It was a notable observation of a wise Father that those that perswaded pressure of Conscience were commonly therein interressed themselves for their own end And most that now plead against tolleration would plead as much for it if they were once under the hatches and their Religion discountenanced By Power and we that once thought the imposition of a directory unreasonable a restraint from our way of worship Vnchristian do not the same reasons remain in vindication of indulgence to others if you will have liberty to maintain your own opinions why should not reason tell you others will exspect the like for themselves Protestants Calvinist Presbiterians c. living in popish Countries will plead for tolleration Our first reformers were great Champions for liberty of Conscience as Wicliffe in his remonstration to the Parliament the Albigensis to Lewis the eleventh and twelfth of France Calvin to Francis the First Luther to the several Dyets under Frederick and Charls the Fifth our ancient Protestant Divines Musculus Osiander Sâ—ermius The Protestants in Swetia desired tolleration as Chytraeus sheweth in his Chronicle 1595. and Belloy in Apol. saith that Melanchton consented Erasmus laboured to prove the necessity of it While Popery was prevalent in England the Pope being then reputed Vicar of Christ in spiritual things yet notwithstanding so much liberty was given that no man suffered death for opposing his dictates in Religion and then in the 2. of Henry the fourth a Statute being made against the Lollards the Commons petitioned the King it might be repealed and by complaint of the Commons it was then in part repealed in Stat. Hen. 8. A wise Emperor told Henry the third King of France there was no greater sin then to force mens consciences for such as think to Command them supposing to win heaven do often loose what they possess on earth King James in his speech to the Parliment saith that it is a sure Rule in Divinity that God never planted the Church by violence or Bloodshed Much less saith the wise Sir Francis Bacon ought the Sword to be put in the peoples hands to persecute nourish sedition authorize conspiracies c. for that is but to dash the first table against the second and to Consider men as Christians as we forget they are men The wise Romans in Case of Religion were very tender and Cautious for when Cato was Consul and it seemed necessary to the Senate to suppress with violence the disordered Ceremonies of the Bacchinals brought in by a strange Priest into the City he withstood that sentence alleging there was nothing
hath caused the slaughter of 200000 in Germany hath caused at least occasioned most of the wars devastations and bloodshed the great alterations tumults troubles in most places of Christiandom our late Bishop of Exeter saith impositions on mens Consciences and Judgments in matters of Religion to tye them by penal and coercive Statutes which like Persian sheep carry tails of incurious mulcts after them that are heavier then their bodies To come with swords to put Religion into our heads with main force is like the watering of Plants with salt streams or the lighting of a Candle with gun-powder Never was Christian Religion planted or propagated by wars by the civil and martial Sword for God is not pleased with hypocrital and unwilling worshippers forced thereto by outward violence nor are Christian Societies bettered by such force but oft-times the contrary Too much severity maketh men desperate sheweth a will to oppress the offendor rather then cure the offence and nothing sheweth more evidently that authority inclineth to tyranny then the multitude of Promoters continual informations and the name of treason made as a Livery to put upon all offences Unchristian persecution like a violent Chrysis more frequently taketh away the Patient then Contributes to his recovery nourisheth a wrathful devouring spirit one against another makes us transgressors of that Royal law which forbids us to do that one to another we would not have them do to us were we in their condition and by this rule whosoever is not against the cruelty of persecution hath nothing to say against justice of his being a slave for what measure he would mete unto others he deserves himself If to hate our brother is murder as he is man 1 John 3. 16. sure not only to hate but even for Religion sake to kill our brother a Christian and to be destroyers of Christians are rather deicides then homicides and if nothing can have more of Christian then Charity nothing can have more of Antichristian then such uncharitableness which many nourishing for zeal mistake a Cockatrice for a Dove and fiery Serpent for a Phenix Outward violence in Cause of Religion is also condemned by holy Write and dâ—vine authority Christ commanded both the tares and the wheat should remaine togâ—ther in the world Mat. 13. 30. he repâ—oved his Disciples who would have had fiâ—e come down from heaven ro destroy the Sâ—maritans that would not entertain him in these word you know what spirit you are of the son of man came not to destroy Luke 9. 54. the servant of God must not strive but be gentle to all men 2 Rom. 2. 24. as God hath called every one so let him walk 1 Cor. 7. 17. they who now are tares may become wheat who are blind may see some there be that come not till the eleventh hour Mat. 20. 6. let your moderation be known unto all men Phil. 4. 5. who art thou that judgest anothers servant c. Rom. 4. now I shall beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ 2 Corin. 10. Wo unto them that make a man an offender for a word or lay a snare for him Esay The Fathers of the primitive times pleaded against all force in Religion The Christian Church saith Saint Hillary against Auxentius doth not persecute but is persecuted No man is forced against his will by the Christians saith Lactantius S. Hierom in paenit cap. 4. saith that heresie must be cut off by the Sword of the Spirit And Tertullian saith seeing he that wants faith and devotion is unserviceable to God for God being not contentious would not be worshipped by the unwilling The Arrians were the first introducers of persecution Let all the Canons of the Church be examined and searched if one be found that justifies the shedding of blood meerly on the score of Religion S. Augustine complaineth how the Donatists filled with blood and desolation all Africa persecuting the Orthodox under Julian the Apostate Docendo magis quam jubendo monendo quam minando veritatem agnoscant Aug. Epist 63. Fides siquidem suadenda est non imperanda ait S. Bernard The Churches of the East grievously complained of the Arrians persecution Athan. Epist ad Solicar speaketh much of their inhumane cruelty Nil tam voluntarium quam Religio cogi non potestdiversa sunt carnifex charitas non potest veritas cum vi aut justitia cum credulitate conjungi in primitiva Ecclesia saith learned Becanus haeretici non puniebantur morte corporali alius est spiritus legalis saith he qui consistebat in severitate alius est spiritus Evangelicus qui consistit in mansuetudine hunc debetis imitari Et Apost ad Titum 3. haereticum hominem devita post unam secundam correptionem Sciens quia subversus est ubi notantur dixit devita non occide Esay 11. 9. non occiderit in universo monte sancto meo id est in Ecclesia ubi Propheta praedixit doctrinam Evangelii propogandam in Ecclesia sine sanguine caede See Becanus Dominicus a Soto in his 4. Sent. dist 5. saith every man hath a natural right to instruct others in things that are good but cannot compell Strifes about Religion saith Grotius are pernicious and destructive where provision is not made for dissenters Persecution overturns the practice of Religion from Abel to Moses and the Prophets even to the meek example of Jesus Christ The Apostles and their Successors for 300 years confirmed their Religion with their own blood and not with the blood of their opposers External force in matter of Faith and Worship is repugnant to the nature of Christian Religion which is meekness To the practice which is suffering To the promotion of it go teach all Nations Christian Religion intreats all compels none Force never yet made a good Christian or a good Subject It subverts all Religion because men believe not because it is true or false but because they are Commanded for to do their interest and security oblige them rather to obey then dispute It is very unreasonable to force men to declare or swear where their judgments are not fully satisfied to require Faith where they cannot choose but doubt to punish them for disobedience if they go not against their consciences and to be punished hereafter if they do For an erroneous Conscience bindeth a man to follow it according to the learned of all Religions Persecution destroyeth the noble principle of reason for no man can believe before he understands and no man can understand before he is taught for Faith in all acts of Religion is necessary Now to believe we must first will to will we must judge to judge any thing we must understand which cannot be forced How can the leprous disease of the mind be cured with corporal catoplasts or mens judgments be convinced of the truth by tormenting their Bodies the inflictions then of external punishments for meer mental errors not wilful is
Treasure so noble of birth so fortunate in Wars zealous in Religion who builded so many Hospitals founded so many Monasteries enacted such wholsome Laws and Statutes got so many Victories in Fâ—ance c. even to Palestine it Self all professed Roman Catholicks Secundo It deserves one observation that when Christianity became the ruling Religion of the World under the great Constantine and Emperours his immediate Successors the very Heathens themselves were exempt from all manner of severity upon the score of their Religion Because they were in possession of it by discent from Father to Son and not by usurpation or intrusion And we have the like president in our own Country For when King Ethelbert had embraced the Christian Faith by the preaching of Saint Austin he would not force his own Subjects though Pagans to receive it Bedâ— l. 1. c. 260. For this reason it was that the great Apostles treated the Synagogue whose Religion at that time was vacuated and consequently void of Truth with so much respect and condescendency and that afterwards the most primitive Fathers used so often this expression that the Synagogue ought to be buried with honour Whence one of our Protestant Divines saith even by the Law of Seniority Catholicks might exspect some favour For what priviledges or immunities have we but the old Church gave us whence had we our Bible Creed Honors Donations commendable Ceremonies charitable Foundations had not they preserved them faithfully we never had found them The first possession of a man is a good title by the Law of Nature until an elder or the Law of Reason which with mankind is to have pre-eminence dispossesses it The Roman Church had a possession unquestionable for above a thousand years and the Pope enjoyed jurisdiction a longer time than any succession of Princes can pretend to and submitted to by all our Ancestors In Catholick Religion they stand as defenders others as invaders they as possessors others as disseisors they seek to keep what de jure they had Calvin and others what they had not There is a vast difference in these two Cases to oppose by force the introducement of innovations and to attempt by force the extinguishment of an ancient Religion of which the People are universally in a quiet and immemorial possession The one drives others out of possession the other maintains himself the one invades his neighbours rights the other defends his own Apostacy and innovation with some colour of right have been oft in several ages persecuted by rigour of Laws even by Protestants and the reason is because innovation in Religion most commonly breeds disturbance in the Common-wealth Natural reason teaches that no particular man is to be condemned much less deprived of what he stands possessed till his cause be judiciously heard and sentenced Nor ought any man to be Judg in his own Cause But penal Laws and Oaths made in contempt and derogation of that Religion which through all Christendom abounds with learning civility and loyalty whose Doctrin amongst the primitive greatest and most learned societies hath been and is avouched in most Nations and Kingdoms allowed and more freely exercised and permitted established by the Laws in which our Predecessors were born and continued wherein all our Progenitors all the Peers Ecclesiast Nobles and Princes of our Realm in precedent ages thought themselves happy and honourable If they had imagined that in future times their Posterity would revile that Religion with Epithets unbeseeming humane much less Christian Ears what an opinion would they have preconceived of us It was said by King James one of the most learned Princes not in private but in open Parliament represented I acknowlege the Roman Church to be our Mother Church although defiled with infirmities and corruptions Is it not then a kind of Spiritual Parracide in the Daughter not only to revile the Mother or which is worse scratch her by the Face call her Whore Superstitious Idolatrous c. on whose Knees you have been dandled nourished by her Breasts and carried in her Womb Hear O you Heavens and give ear O earth I have nourished and brought up Children and they have rebelled against me Isa 1. 2. Let it be allowed some corruptions be of our aged Mother this should be no warrant for cruelty but rather a motive of compassion especially considering that by confession of all her adversaries those pretended failings are of no modern date but such as they are now such likewise they were when first Christianity was received by English-men under King Ethelbert The Church of England who Glory in their succession of Bishops and in this is singular from other Reformers acknowledge they immediately derive their true and lawful Ordination and mission and from whom their first Mininistry viz. Cranmer Baker c. were Consecrated and consequently that the Roman Church conveyed divine right and authority from Christ to them the very essence and being of Religion Which Church notwithstanding they call Antichristian Idolatrous c. abusing tender Consciences sâ—â—press that which themselves confess to be divine Truth condemn as Trayâ—â—rs and persecute to death with pâ—â—munire loss of fortunes c. those from whom such Apostolical Graces and Functions proceed and were continued and preserved If our succession from the Roman be the glory of the English Church it s our scorn and ignominy to persecute and revile them Tertio Penal Laws and Statutes against the Catholick Religion destroyes the ground and foundation of Justice and the form Judicature Because the Witness can have no evidence for their Testimony the Judges not any for their sentence and the Legislator as little for the Law Primo There must be evidence of lawful Witnesses In matters of Faith we go by hearing Rom. 10. The best evidence then of any Religion is the testimony of our deceased Predecessors and Ancestry whose Faith and Doctrine is fresh in the memories and testimonies of the Christian posterity of the present Church For besides the Authority of the present Church we can have no greater evidence in foro externo for the Law of God and Religion then the testimony of precedent ages confirmed with supernatural Signs v. g. the fourteenth Age delivered to the fifteenth the Roman Faith which now they profess assuring them that it was the true sense and Letter of Scripture which they had learned from the thirteenth age and so forward to the Apostles No reformers can produce one lawful Witness against Catholick Religion and their sense of Scripture yet the Greatest Crimes require at least one lawful Witness For what evidence had the first Reformers to oppose the testimony of all former Ages confirmed with so many miracles and to make Statutes against the known practiced Religion at least for nine hundred years Antiquity affords them none because though in diverse Ages some odd men did testifie sometimes an errour they were in those very times contradicted by the Church and declared impostors and innovators In this
Parliament and chief Secretary printed at that time and neither could any noted or known Catholick by any device be drawn into this matter Those that were up in tumult with Catesby were by our Prot. Hist Howes never full fourscore and those made up with servants horse-boys and houshouldattendance as Saunders and Speed confirm For if Priests and Recusants so many thousands then in England would have entertained it no man can be so malitious and simple to think that there would not have been a greater assembly to take such an action in hand and the Council could not have been so ill-sighted but that they would have found some other culpable as some by all imaginable craft and industry endeavoured and desired But to confirm their innocency King James in his own Declaration saith that the generality of Catholicks did abhor such a detestable Conspiracy no less than himself And he was so kind to Catholicks the last half of his Reign of which Wilson complains in several places Wils K. of 193. which was impossible he should have been so favourable had he not been convinced they never had had any design of destroying him or his Secondly the King in his second Proclamation 1605. and in his third Proclamation 1605. when they were all discovered in which Proclamation we plainly see the King and Council knew the Complices and partakers of that villanie yet never taxed any Priest or Papist therewith Thirdly the King in publick Parliament did free Catholiks as much as Protestants when he plainly saith as truth is if it had taken effect Protestants and Papists should have all gone away and perished together The King in his second Proclamation against the Conspiracy calleth the Confederates Men of lewd life insolent dispositions and of desperate estates And to demonstrate from the publick Act their innocency as well Protestants he declares by Proclamation Proclamatione die 7. Novemb. 1605. We are by good experience so well perswaded of the loyalty of diverse Subjects of the Romish Religion that they do as much abhor this detestable conspiracy as our self and will be ready to do their best endeavours though with expence of their blood to suppress all attempters against our safety and the quiet of our State and discover whomsoever they shall suspect to be rebellious This by good experience he pronounceth Priests and Catholicks notwithstanding were upon this pretence persecuted though besides all these reasons aforesaid by publick consent both of their Clergy and Layety Catholicks presented and offered to maintain their cause and innocency in many humble Petitions whereof two were printed to the King The first begins To the most excellent and mighty Prince our gracious and dread Soveraign James King of England c. justifying of Catholicks and the Truth of their Religion against their Adversaries Most Gracious Soveraign THe late intended Conspiracy against the Life of your Royal Majesty the Life Vnion Rule and Direction to these united Kingdoms was so heinous an impiety that nothing which is holy can make it legitimate no pretence of Religion can be alleadged to excuse it God in heaven condemns it men on earth detest it innocents bewail it and your dutiful Subjects Catholicks Priests and others which have endured most for their Profession hold it in greatest detestation and horror c. Yet this is the miserable distressed state of many thousands of your most loyal and loving Subjects dread Leige for their faithful duty to God and Religion taught in this Kingdom and embraced by all your Progenitours and our Ancestors so many hundred years that every adversary may preach and print against us and make their challenge as though either for ignorance we could not or for distrust of our cause we were not willing to make them answer or come to trial when quite contrary we have often earnestly and by all means we could desired to have it granted c. And at this time when your chief Protestant Clergy Bishops and others is assembled we most humbly entreat this so reasonable a placet that although they will not as we fear ever consent to an indifferent choice opposition and defence in questions yet at least to avoid the wonder of the world they will be content we may have publick audience of those Articles Opinions ond Practises for which we are so much condemned and persecuted If we shall not be able to defend or prove any position generally maintained in our Doctrine to be conformable to those rules in Divinity which your Majesty and the Protestant Laws of England we can offer no more have confirmed for holy Canonical Scripture the first four General Councils the days of Constantine and the primitive Church let the penalties be imposed and executed against us c. in fine Your Royal person and that honourable Consistory now assembled are holden in your Doctrine to be Supream Sentencers even in Spiritual businesses in this Kingdome we therefore hope you will not in a Court from whence no appeal is allowed and in matters of such consequence proceed to Judgment or determine of execution before the arraigned is summoned to answer hath received or refused trial is or can be proved guilty c. Deny not that to us your true and obedient Subjects in a Religion so ancient which your colleagued Princes the King of Spain and Archduke do offer to thee so many years disobedient Netherlands upon their temporal submittance in so late an embraced doctrine That which the Arrian Emperors of the East permitted to the Catholick Bishops Priests Churches toleration What the Barbarian Vandals often offered and sometimes truly perforformed in Africk what the Turkish Emperour in Greece and Protestant Princes in Germany and other places conformable to the example of Protestant Rulers not unanswerable to your own Princely piety pity and promise no disgust to any equally minded Protestant or Puritan at home a Jubilee to us distressed a warrant of security to your Majesty in all opinions from all terrors and dangers from which of what kind soever we most humbly beseech the infinite mercy of almighty God to preserve your Highness and send you your children and Posterity all happiness and felicity both in Heaven and Earth Amen Another Petition to the King and Parliament from the Cath. in Eng. allowed by the Priests was presented by Sir Franc. Hastins and Sir Richard Knightly which urged likewise for a Disputation Another to the same tenure was then with the same assent subscribed with three and twenty hands of the greatest Catholick Gentry of England and presented to the chief Secretary of State potent in those times in Court and Council and as Recusants feared not equally affected towards them though never so innocent And the same Recusants were more than jealous that this practice of Conspiracy was no great secret to that Secretary long before divers of them that were actors in it by him named Catholicks were acquainted with it an invention to entrap those he did not
so apt to deceive men as Religion which always presents a shew of Divinity and for that Cause it behooved to be very wary in Chastising the professors thereof least any indignation should enter into the peoples minds that somewhat was derogated from the Majesty of God Others More freely have not spared to place Religion I mean that which is ignorantly Zealous amongst the kind of frenzies which cannot be cured otherwise then by time given to divert and qualify the humour of the conceit Whence Levia said to Augustus Visne Muliebre Concilium Let severity sleep a while and try what what alteration the pardonning of Cinna may procure The Emperor hearkned to her Counsel and thereby found his enemies mouths stopped and their Malice abated A soft gale of wind oft allaies a great storm the warm Sun will prevail more with the traveller then cold and boisterous winds The Goats blood will break the Adamant which the hardest hammers cannot do Chronical diseases are not cured by physick and motion but by time and rest It fals out many times that the remedy is worse then the disease and while we go about to cure the State we kill it and instead of purging out the peccant humour of the body politick we cast it into a Calenture or burning feaver This was not unknown to that wise and good Emperor Theodosius who could not be perswaded to extirpate or use violent courses against the Arrians knowing how dangerous it would prove to the state if the quietness thereof should be disturbed Lucretius the Poet when he beheld the act of Agamemnon that could endure the sacrificing of his own daughter exclaimed tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum what would he have said if he had known and seen the Christian Bloodshed and Violence in Religion in these times he would have been ten times more Epicure then he was We read of Sabbacus a Heathen King of Aethiopia who being by dreams admonished that he could not possess himself of the Kingdom but by the slaying of the Priests he chose rather to lay aside the Claim and to refer the government to twelve wise men How much more will it become Christians not to lay the foundation of Religion upon the Carkasses spoils and ruins of their distressed neighbors relations and fellow Subjects It hath been an ancient aphorism of State and Wisdome of the greatest Princes punire raro it was ascribed to Augustus Caesar as a title of honour nunquam Civilem sanguinem fudisse and Seneca who lived under a Tyrant saith frequens vindicta paucorum odium reprimit omnium irritat Aristotle saith those are ever held to be most godly Laws that are least Sanguinary and yet maintain Order The Kingdome of Christ is not carried on after the fashion of this World with arms and engines of War to be erected on the bones and Sepulchres of our Brethren and Fathers The Throne of Christ is not supported as Solomons on both sides with Lyons and Tygres Bears and Wolves instead of Lambs and Doves as if we should change our meek patient crucified Messias and had got some Muzzian a Mahometan God of Forces who is to be served in Buff Coats and Armour It was a great blasqhemy when the Devil said I will ascend and be like to the highest but it is a greater blasphemy to personate God to bring him saying I will descend to be like the Prince of Darkness with furies and persecutions nay what is worse to make the Cause of Religion as is proved by experience this last Century descend to the Cruel and inhumane murthering of Princes butchering of the People racking of Consciences by Oaths and Sequestrations surely this is to bring down the Holy Ghost instead of likeness of a Dove into the shape of a Vulture or Raven and to set out for the Barque of a Christian Church a Flag of a Barque of Pirats and Assasinates or to bring in an armatum Evangelium Christian Religion in Compleat Armour and Christ marching like Alexander Hannibal or Caesar it is hard to pick out Letters of Mart from the Gospel or to have any Commission to kill or slay Jesus Christ in order to reform Whence a learned divine of our English Church saith it is a squalid reformation that is besmeared with the blood of Christians it is against the honour order unity and majesty of a reformed Church to persecute and to be like those canes sepulchrales violating the bones and ashes of the dead Persecution setteth a man as far from a true Christian temper as burning Feavers do from natural heat and health when once a male contented member is grieved then the rest of the body is sensible and secretly arm for opposition all cry pity any should suffer for their conscience and silently say among themselves sors hodierna mihi Cras erit illa tibi there being necessary connexion between Civil Liberty and that which is Spiritual and who would divest any of their spiritual do alarm them with just Causes of loosing their Civil The nature of man however in hot blood it be thirsty of revenge yet in a cooler temper it hath a kind of nausea or distaste of taking the lives even of the most Nocent insomuch that in Assizes or Sessions an Offender can hardly be condemned whom the pity of many will not after a sort excuse with laying of impositions on the Judge part on the Jury and much on the accusers Hence the name of a Serjeant or Pursuivant is odious and the Executioner esteemed no better then an enemy of mankind and if such as are tender of their reputations be very scrupulous personally to arrest men for civil actions of debt they will be more unwilling instruments of drawing their Bodies to the Rack and Gallows especially when any colour of Religion is pretended in defence In Counsels concerning Religion that advise of the Apostle should be prefixed ira hominis non implet justitiam we are to consider we deal with men and not with beasts man is to be treated humanly and a Christian christianly with all reason and charity and of tender Consciences ought to be had a tender respect man is sensible of gentleness may be obliged to quietness by humanity Whereas if you take violent courses and fight against the errors of the times with prisons dungeons fetters oaths c. they will make men the greater hypocrites and be occasion of intestine division and bloodshed experience can speak somewhat in this behalf which hath evidently desâ—ryed within the current of few years that severity in Religion hath years caused the long known and manifest miseries of this Nation Hence one of our late Divines saith it is sufficiently known what the immoderation of a preposterous zeal male contentedness ambition and force hath both machinated and perpetrated to the destraction well nigh destruction of Church and State The impudence and imprudence of inconsiderable rash spirits in their actions passions and pretences for the Gospel
unreasonable and inadaequate for as corporal penalties cannot convince the understanding so neither can they be proportionable mulct for faults purely intellectual Before we can with justice inflict penalties upon any different profession we ought to use all means possible to recover them to truth Arguments to rational creatures as Christians are to instruct admonish warn and finally to reject to come to them full of compassion of their misery full of affection of their Salvation by reasonable and persuasive motives suitable to their own nature by somethng can resolve its doubts answer its objections tenets and Propositions Whence our first work should be to collect a Body of positive articles evidently contained in Scripture and absolutely necessary to salvation for its improper to pen the form of Faith in the negative because my believing Christian truths makes me a Christian and not my disbelieving the errors that oppose it else he that believes nothing at all would be the best Christian We must fight against Antichrist by lawful ways prescribed by the Word of God by the spirit of his mouth in preaching instructing in Charity Patience humility according to the example of Christ and his Apostles The weapons of Christian warfare are not Carnal but Spiritual 2 Cor. 10. For as they were not the warlike engines of Joshua but the trumpets of the Sanctuary that made the walls of Jericho to fall down So it is not the Canon but the trumpet of the Gospel which is required to pull down the walls of Babylon True Religion was never advanced by these ways but propagated by patient sufferings the Example of Jesus Christ is so far from persecuting that he would not revile his persecutors prayed for them saith go teach all nations c. The Text directs Christs procedure in teaching not in devouring Wherefore all wise humble and charitable Christians should so Order their judgments and Censures if at any time they are forced to declare them they must above all things take heed they nourish not nor discover any uncharitable fewds antipathies distances against others after the rule of those passions which were the common source of Schism and Heresies The free meek and solid piety feeds it self on the substance of Religion without picking quarrels at the shell free from the superstition and hypochondriacal Zeal of some who pretend to advance the Kingdom of Christ by cutting the throats of his Disciples and cementing his temples with blood instead of the Cement of charity CAP. II. Persecution is against Policy and Piety THe grand fomenters of persecution can be no friends to the English State for what but imposition immoderation and restraint in the cause of Religion as a learned divine Noteth hath turned Episcopacy into Presbytery Presbytery into Independancy Independancy into Quakerism Religion into Policy Reformation into Innovation Profession into Pretence Ministery into Souldiers Souldiers into Preachers Churches into Stables Pulpits into Tubs Degrees into Parity Pastors into Hirelings Apostolical Hierarchy into Anarchy with abusive fumes and flames to build Babels of their own I am not able to express saith another great Doctor of our English Church how high an impiety it is that at this time when Gods hand is out against us justly for our sins to be disposed and fixed upon a resolution that to redeem external peace we will persecute c. I admire to see too too many in Parliament here amongst us where is great plenty of able Gentlemen of excellent learning worth wit and other perfections and endowments as any nation besides to be inclinable if not actually resolved in all meetings to feud about the Rom. Religion especially now after this tryal of their honesty more is to be admired the preposterous machinations and motions even of Churchmen who by the Canons are forbid to have any hand in blood when they forsake the ancient refuges of Christians which were preaching and tears and betake themselves to swords and helmets plots conspiracies and pursuivants Wisemen have seen those obscurities and disgraces which as black shadows have attended even Churchmen Persecution is fitter for the hands of Cyclops who forged Jupiters Thunderbolts then the Priests of the Gods Bishops should always be tender of good consciences and of the honour of Christian Religion which was not wont to see Ministers rough and targetted as the Rhinoceroes bâ—â— soft and gentle cloathed as the Sheep and Sheepheards of Christ There is not a more portentous sight then to see galeatos Clericos Christ long ago in the person of Saint Peter commanded them to put up their Swords nor was he ever heard to repeal that word or Bid them draw their Swords no not in Christs Cause that is meerly for Religion who hath legions of Angels armies of Truth gifts of Graces of the Spirit to defend himself and his true interest in Religion withal and a little after Indeed our Ecclesiastical Rulers have reason to steer us cautiously since they sit at the Helm in such a Ship as hath thrown very many Pilots over board it becomes those Bishops now got up newly to be most calm quiet and sedate Spirits The great alteration of the Body of the People since these last twenty years require that our old ends of promoting the welfare of the Church of England should be attained by the conduct of new means Bishops should compose the affections of the People by Liberty of Conscience and not Acts of Vniformity for the greatest assertors of Episcopacy and Ceremonies of the Church are lodged in their Graves and the present major part of this Land consists in those to whom the introducing of the old Church Prelatical Government will seem an Innovation It s the interest of the Clergy here to temper the Government of the Church for its irrational to think that any Church Government in a Protestant Country of Sectaries can be accommodated to the content and satisfaction of all which restraineth a large and almost absolute power to the heads of a few Protestant Bishops It s the concern of none but Souldiers of Fortune to oppose due Liberty of Conscience Whence the wise King James had wholly repealed the penal Statutes engaged so to do and Papistry then was declared tolerable had he not been diverted from it by Cecil and other Upstarts and Politicians whose interest was begun and grounded upon Heresie and destruction of the ancient Nobility and Gentry of the Kingdome For in his Speech Sess 1. Printed 161â— My mind saith he was ever free from persecuting and thralling my Subjects in matters of Conscience and in his next words I was so far from increasing their burdens with Roboam as I have so much as either time occasion or law would permit me to have lightened them And in his Censure against Conradus Vorstius the Dutch Heretick recounting the difference between Protestants and Catholicks he findeth not any for which Papists may be persecuted but rather the contrary You may object persecution is necessary in Policy of
State I answer who is swayed by this motive runs but the indirect way of State-Policy and makes use of a title of that name only to support what his ambition malice or interest inforces him too and is guilty not only of his own Evils but whatever others are thereby occasioned in oppression of others These mysteries of Machiavel have been to far discovered to be of no use in this Nation for the future This Cloak of formal Godliness is now worn thredbare and almost all men sees it to be but a Cloak Such specious devises appear now to be but like Flock-work upon Canvas scattered over with glittering Copper or Tinsel Experience hath made almost every Body able to look not only on the Colours and Pretext but the depth and motive of every such design The infinite eye and wisdome of God doth pierce through all our pretences and his justice doth require no other accuser then our own consciences which neither the false beauty of our actions nor all the formality which to pacifie the opinions of men we put on can in the least kind cover from his knowledge We know that a good pretence cannot justifie a bad action and therefore we ought to be as sollitous about the lawfulness of the means as about the goodness of the end it is a maxime in morality that bonum oritur ex integris and in Christianity that we must not do evil that good may come of it There is nothing that God's pure and undeluded eye looks on with more abhorrence then Pseudopolicy we may deceive men but it s in vain to put Ironies upon God A Counterfeit Religion shall find a real hell And who have conspired with the wrath of God in the stupefaction of their consciences though they may for a time struggle with those inward checks yet there will be a day if not in this life when that Witness that Judge that Jury will not be bribed Let it be part of our dayly orisons that God would banish this cursed Policy out of Europe and the whole World and damn it down to Hell from whence it originally came and such as delight to abuse others think of that self-cousenage with which in the interim they abuse themselves God permitting the Devil to wrong the Impostor Admit that for some worldly respect Laws were necessary in State-Policy for the time wherein they were enacted yet the time changing and those causes entirely ceasing which made them seem necessary now it will not only be safe but necessary to repeal them when after such triaâ—s there is no cause of suspition remaining nâ—r â—olour of jealousie at least none but what may easily be removed by the wisdom of the State and plenary satisfaction in behalf to themselves Wary superpoliticks are over curious Spirits plead policy against Piety and prefer outward safety before inward peace subject Faith and Truth to Policy our private and civil good to interest Religion is suited to Government and Conscience to connivency What is Policy against Religion If it be iniquity injustice and oppression to treat men so without cause or demerit it is not any feigned imaginary reason of State will excuse those who act and give counsel to such unchristian acts lest the Blood of Souls lie upon their account another day More Families have been ruined more persons imprisoned more moneys spent by the cruelty of persecution than by all Law-Suits in the Courts of Judicature or payments and ordinary Taxes Our Church-wardens are perjured that swear to present them to every Sessions though imposing of such an Oath is breach of the Fundamental Laws of the Land and those Church-wardens that are not perjured but pursue the Oath in persecuting their neighbors are plunged with a horrid guilt of Conscience Now there are above 9285 parishes in England and seventy four thousand Church-wardens and Sides-men in England every year and what a dreadful thing is it to have all these yearly either perjured persecuted or Persecutors I am by many reasons induced to conclude that this severe ungospellary way of proceeding hath been the cause of ruin of Trade impoverishing and many afflictions of this Nation It hath made us an Obloquy to all our Neighbors hinders Traffique becomes a prejudice to the Reformed beyond Seas a discontenting our Friends at Home a Scandal to all the World a disheartning of a great many good Subjects Persecution stops all our Friends mouths weakens their hands and droops their hearts on this account many families have left the Land to remove into some country where they may have liberty by this means the trading stock of the Nation is conveyed away To use external force in matters purely of Faith and Religion you must side with and support all corrupt interest tire and weary out your selves with never-failing troubles and anxious difficulties attended with a hundred fears and in conclusion if you prosper in such practices you would but leave Posterity partakers of the Bondage you entail upon the People What benefit or credit was ever got by persecution these eighty years have not many noble persons on that account left the Land many Religious men and women cloistered to retire to spend their means and lives in other Countreys have not Princes and States of that Religion expressed much disatisfaction to see them unmercifully used hath not a general consumption of comfort unity affection settlement and content and many sad mischiefs befallen us the last Century on this only score hath not God shewed his just chastisements judgments upon the chief actors complices contrivers and abetters of such inhumane proceedings as in Cromwel Cecil Dudley Leicester Somerset Walsingham Bacon c. We deceive our selves to promise or exspect to King or Kingdome Prince or Subject Peace or Safety or Deliverance from our Troubles if we subordinate Fundamentals in Religion and necessary Truths of Faith to our private or civil Interest If he be an unwise man who provides means where he designs no end persecutors will never be able to accomplish their end For experience tells us that punishments and persecutions never lessens the resolution of Christians but alwaies heightens Zeal and sometimes draws men into leagued Factions which indulgence and favour would prevent It is observed by all lookers into Antiquity that Christian Religion still got ground in the world not by persecuting but by being persecuted And our penal Laws rather increased then hindred the growth of Popery Whence King James observed that Sanguis Martyrum est semen Ecclesiae the spilling of Christian Blood is but the watering of Christ's Vineyard This Pine-Tree the more it is pressed the higher it groweth This Camomile the more it is troden the thicker it cometh up This Walnut-Tree the more it is beaten the more fruitful it waxeth Yea even the Non-Conformists are likely still to increase as from Edward the sixts time to this they have gradually done notwithstanding the rigour of Ecclesiasticks agaâ—nst them and that which we cannot
in a fair and equal retribution Whence a late Presb. Divine confesseth none ever saw any argument yet could clearly evince why any sort of men who would profess a peaceable subjection unto the Civil Government might not in all their Civil Rights be protected by it I conceive it therefore most clear both in right reason and true Religion that Governours ought to move in that middle way between tolerating all differences and none at all in matters of Religion wherein men are variously to be considered according to the profession they own and make of Religion as none are to be tolerated in Blasphemy or any that have cast off all sense of justice order shame and humanity seeing the nature of man is more prone to imbibe noxious things then to eject them so true virtuous liberty is not to be infringed nor any who can give a sober Christian and rational account for their principles and profession to Church and State For the Power among Chrstians should not be a hard and sharp rock dashing presently all in pieces that touch and strike at it in the least kind though never so modestly Christian Religion saith a learned Divine hath moderated the extremity of Servitude as to Civil things in all places where it was received when certainly it is much more consonant to that Religion and especially that form of Religion which hath asserted its Spiritual Liberty from the impositions of others to allow a Spiritual Freedom to others Another of our Divines saith Christian Religion ought not to be made a snare harrow a rack or heavy yoak or an Egyptian bondage to mens minds and consciences this were to turn the sweetest vine into a sharp bramble and fig-tree into a thorn nor is there any thing Christians should be more tender of as the Ephesine Fathers admonish than their own and others true liberty Christ hath purchased with his pretious Blood of which Christian Magistrates should be exact keepers and conscientious defenders lest piety prove an oppression and the bracelets and ornaments of Religion become the chains of hypocrisie and manacles of superstition binding such heavy burdens on mens Consciences which God hath not imposed but exempted from their Commission The best way to convince opposers is by instructing them in meekness in the Spirit of Love by suitable acts of indulgency for our dear Lord that bought us will take nothing more kindly at this time from us saith an ingenious Author as to be pitiful to his Servants who are distressed about your acts in point of Conscience who the more distressed they are and like to our Lord the fitter subjects they are for your Compassion If you had no need of mercy from God it were tolerable then for you to be extream towards others In point of Christianity we should be merciful unto them as our heavenly Father is merciful Luke 6. 36. Mercy is to be preferred before Sacrifice No torture no rack or tyranny so great as when exercised on the conscience forcing to declare or swear where their judgments are not fully satisfied Force may make an hypocrite it is Faith grounded on knowledge and consent that makes a Christian no war so passionate as the war of Conscience in Factions Conventicles Associations and Sects such practises become not the Gospel nor are suitable to Christ's meek Precepts Sufferings and Doctrine True Christian Concord is the consequence only of a favourable benignity or toleration as before circumstantiated For a true Christian following the rules precepts and examples of our Saviour Jesus Christ loveth God above all things and his Neighbour as himself doth injury to no man pardoneth all injuries done to him esteemeth and honoureth every one according to his degree and merit represseth all concupisence unlawful desires obeyeth Magistrates Superiours and laws as the ordinance of God Non propter â—iram Sed propter justitiam Rom. 13. Not for fear but conscience Yeildeth to every one his due to Caesar that which is due to Caesar c. And finally preferreth in all things the publick wealth before his private Commodity hence it followeth that in whatsoever state he liveth he is humble meek peaceable obedient temperate just religious and consequently a good and excellent member of his Common-wealth insomuch that if the precepts of Christian Religion were followed there should need no Political Law which as the Apostle saith posita est injustis non subditis ordained for the disobedient and unjust Christian Religion in respect of the means it giveth for attaining of true perfection and virtue and for the purity and excellency of the doctrine and of rites and ceremonies is truly Political and most necessary for Government of state whence whosoever is a true and perfect Christian is and must needs be Bonus Civis a good Citizen as Aristotle termeth a good member of the Common-Wealth This was evident to the Paynims when they considered Christian Doctrine without Passion and partiality that Pliny the Second being proconsul of Asia under Trajan Emperour acknowledged the same in an Epistle to Trajan written in favour of persecuted Christians in his Jurisdiction testifying of them they were an innocent and harmless people whose custom and exercise was to assemble themselves in the night to sing Hymns and Praises to Jesus Christ and that they promised and vowed to Commit no offence or do any hurt to other men not to steal rob perjury break promise c. upon which testimony Trajan ordained no Christian should be further punished or inquired of for their Religion Euseb l. 3. Ecclesiast c. 27. and his Successor Adrian upon Like suggestion and information given by a noble man Called Serennio Gramiano gave order to Minutius Fundanus his proconsul that Christians should not be punished Euseb l. 4. c. 8. Hist Eccles Thus ordaiâ—ed they knowing only some points of Christian Religion if they had understood how it reforms mens manners how the Canons Codes institutes digests out of the Corpus Civile are congruous consonant with the good of Civil society they would not have held it only tolerable but even necessary for establishment and conservation of Goverment As nothing is more plain and sure then that the tolerating of all Sects errors and faults which conscience may pretend for or of none at all are utterly destructive of Christian and human peace society and safety nor is he well in his wits that holdeth either part universally or unlimitted who thinketh all or none to be tolerated for by the one we should have no government and by the other in time by death banishments persecutions c. we should have no Subjects to be governed nor have any Servant so no Master no Wife so no Husband So seeing an universal unity among Christians is not to be attained a toleration of things tolerable is not only lawful but necessary a Latitude of Liberty is left in such things as are not clearly and positively laid down in Scripture Or in things of private practice
Rom. 14. 22. hast thou faith have it to thy Self But then it may be objected seeing toleration must have its bounds and limits and those are almost indiscoverable viz. what points are necessary and what not what Sects and Opinions tolerable and what not and who must be the Judge or else we must deal partially and unjustly condemn one Sect and tolerate others I answer we must not cast away reason because there is a difficulty in using it aright What if be a hard thing to enumerate how many bits a man may eat and not be a glutton or how much drink and not a drunkard or what meats or drinks must be used to avoid excess in quality or what cloth silks fashion may be used without excess in apparel will you thence infer that men may eat and drink any think in quantity or quality or else nothing or wear any thing or else go naked as long as it is certain such a difference there is that some opinons are tolerable and some not you must distinguish and then you will find a necessity of discerning as you can according to right reason and grounds of Christianity the Tolerable from the intolerable The profession of the Creed and those who give some solid succinct and apodictical account directly grounded on Scripture rightly understood or in right regulated reason which is able to bear a superstructure of Christian Doctrin and practice as enumerated afore agreeing upon the summary of Belief in positive evident and fundamental points suitable to the Apostolical Symbol are conditions which require necessarily indulgency and toleration In these regards then there can be no prevalent objections urged why a wise State may not tolerate at least in private different Religions when otherwise the publick may be intangled or endangered or rather because the conscience cannot be compelled or Faith forced And more especially if they be such Religions as do not overthrow the fundamentals of Truth Nor such as disturbe or impugn the Government established Or if the professors thereof be such as are not factious or pertinacious but honest simple tractable obedient to Superiours having no other end in holding their Opinions in Religion than Gods glory or satisfaction of their own consciences and withall are willing to submit to better judgments when they are convinced to be Erroneous In this respect the late gratious Declaration for Liberty doth sufficiently appear to all impartial men to be prudent pious and politick For this purpose the Turks and Muscovites inhibited all disputations in matter of Religion upon pain of Death the like inhibition was made by the Emperour and Princes in Germany after their Civil Wars that there should be no Contention between Catholicks and Protestants to this end that there may be no breach of Peace and disturbance in the Government of the State Hence Leo Emperour made an Edict of union Called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that all the different Religions within his Dominions might live quietly and friendly together For the same Cause Anastasius made a Law of Amnesty and accounted those the best Preachers that were moderate Since there must be Heresies and our judgments are as different as our Faces since breeding and education doth so much sway and hath so great influence on many Religions and that Sectaries are grown numerous we ought to have a Latitude of Charity for those that dissent if they be not Impostors or turbulent Incendiaries Dissenters in Controversies are obliged to a mutual toleration We cannot be ignorant of other States and Kingdomes and now very lately in the Empire and Denmark those that Dissent from the Religion publikely authorized are permitted and secured so long as they do not affront Civil or Ecclesiastick Laws For true Christianity addeth such force and vigour to Civil Power by planting in Mens hearts the awe of Religion which is the main pillar of obedience by weeding out such Errors as humane authority would have much adoe to pluck up CAP. IV. Toleration or Liberty improperly taken and unlimited is neither reasonable nor justifiable I Dare not positively affirm that the Civil Magistrate is not to intermeddle at all in matters of Religion but how far he is to proceed and not exceed his Commission is disputable seeing learned Divines generally hold that the bond between the Magistrate and the Subject is essentially Civil Querulous persons have shown a Childishness in their complaints without telling what the very thing is that troubles them and how far they would have it removed and so complain for want of Liberty because they have not their Wills cry out before they know their own minds fully or take care the Magistrate shall know them otherwise then by inspiration It s the opinion of injudicious furious Spirits that no truth is to be silenced for Peace or forborn for spiritual advantage or true necessity For every one to hold what he pleaseth and publish and Preach what he holds confined to no rule of Order but contemning law will rule as Transcendents For as Plato saith it s a temerarious Liberty to pronounce of what is known and unknown with like confidence Tell us of obeying the Laws of God as long as you please I dare not believe you as long as you break the Laws of those appointed to rule over you it is a distinction without difference to separate and divide the Laws of Men from the Laws of God for unless we observe both we obey neither saith Hooker l. 3. c. 107. Here I confess Christian Governours are not to regard such pleas for private Liberty as overthrow the Publick Order and Peace nor to regard those Clamours against them and the Laws as persecuting when they do but oppose and restrain such perillous exorbitancies as have no savour of reason or Religion which strikes at the foundation of Christianity and openeth a gap to Atheism Profaneness and Blasphemy Here the Magistrate must interpose his Coâ—rcive Power for remedy Nor are they in this infringers of the Peoples Liberty but preservers of Freedome not oppressors of others Consciences but dischargers of their own It s a false Liberty to imagine our Liberty consists in speaking or doing what we List without regard to God or man It s no freedom for a man to think what he lists in vain erroneous Blasphemous thoughts or to bolt out and vent his raw indigested and rotten fancies or irreligious opinions to others its far from Christian Liberty for any Christian to start up loose Principles destructive to Government subverting Order violating Laws breaking Oaths and Covenants contemning Authority for every one to hold what he pleaseth and publish and Preach what he holds upon light popular and untried grounds and publickly to act according to his private perswasions passions lusts or interests wherein neither right reason nor common Order nor publick peace nor Conscience of Duty nor fear of God have any such serious tyes upon men as necessary to the common good No Christian I say can
present Age no Sectaries can be lawful Witnesses for their own lately modelled Religion or against the ancient Catholick because their testimonies cannot be valid against so constant an universal Tradition and practice Secundo It s ridiculous and unjust in a Judge to pronounce sentence against Roman Catholick upon the evidence and testimony of Calvin Luther c. as in open Court to condemn men to forfeit their Estates and ancient inheritances upon the word of a mad fellow that produceth no other evidence to confirm his claim but interior motions of the Spirit or some obscure Text of Law appliable to all Cases and Subjects for all the Protestant evidence is reduced to the private Spirit and the pretended clearness of Scripture Tertio The Legislative power ought to be subordinate to Christian Religion but Statutes against Catholicks are evidently against the Law of God and Christian Religion if we may credit Antiquity and stick to the Faith and practice of the Church and Princes that went before us not only in England but all other Christian Kingdomes This way therefore of proceeding is different from all other Nations and altereth the Stile of natural reason humane nature and the practice of all Antiquity and consequently destroyes the foundation of justice and form of Judicature Quarto The common temporal Municipal Laws which Science above all others next to Divinity doth confirm and evince unto the understanding of an Englishman the Truth of Catholick Religion Forasmuch as from our first Christian Kings and Queens which must needs be the origin and beginning of all Christian Common Laws in England unto the reign of Henry the eight all our Princes and People being of one and the same Catholick Religion their Laws must needs be presumed to have been conformed to their sense and judgment in that behalf and our Lawyers to our Laws So as now to see an English temporal Lawyer to impugn the said Catholick Religion by the antiquity of the common Laws throughout the times and reigns of the said Kings and Queens to favour and countenance Luther Calvin c. or any new Opinions not known before is as great an absurdity novelty and wonder as to see a Philosopher brought up in Aristotles School to impugn Aristotle by Aristotles learning in favour of Petrus Ramus Descartes or some other new Adversary Catholick Religion never prejudiced any Nation or State where it had free passage in the least degree but hath ever been their safety happiness and honour No People or Church in the World so great a friend to loyalty and obedience they have the repute of honest men patient and charitable carry themselves civilly and religiously nothing is heard from their mouths of Blasphemy or Atheism or that may have ground of not believing or adoring God alone or of not hoping to be saved by the merits of Jesus Christ They have lived without just complaint sociable and amicable If they meet you not at Church they meet you at Market Do they not buy and sell with you Are ready to perform all Offices of good neighbourhood and civility Do they refuse any kind of temporal duties or payments Do ye not find them at home and abroad as strict to their promises as any others you converse withall They cannot be persecuted by any Government that understands its own interest unless first abused by false Teachers nor can we deny them what ancient and good Laws have ever allowed theâ— being no innovators but Professors of the same Religion which made this Nation Christian If there were no other Apology for peaceable men but only those Pleas of Conscience tendered to publick view those ought not to be unconsidered by such as profess Christianity Never any Acts of Vniformity could expel Papists out of heretical Countries Do ye know what you ask when you are still urging the execution of pressures against Catholicks even their blood life and fortunes can any Christian zeal be so irregular Can this come from the Spirit of the Gospel Is this wisdome from above Whence comes all this anger What evil have they done What maximes have they so rough and unreasonable that they must be taken away by the Sword Why should we be so bloody in our Tenets How can our passions be so intemperate Our mercies so cruel To them whose Faith was established by our Fundamental Laws and maintenance of it sworn to at least by twenty of our Monarchs even by Queen Elizabeth her self Why must the Papists be thus singled out from all the rest and forced to forfeit all advantages or forsake his Conscience They only exposed to publick hatred and rigour though they only least deserve it Shall we extinguish all considerations of equity and charity towards them of whose honesty we are assured by their Long and Patient Sufferings rather than they would renounce their Conscience towards God who are ready to abjure what is or may be objected as only dangerous in their Religion who have given evidences already they will perform those Oaths and that they cannot be absolved from them If we apprehend their principles and doctrines are inconsistent with the Gospel or Civil Government grant them a free Conference about the points in question which are those Tenets carry an opposition to either and if upon impartial enquiry they are found so Heterodox as represented then inflict penalties If their Ecclesiasticks are not able to justisie both their Religion and Principles let them renounce all mercy This offer is very fair and equal a Vindication of Justice and a legal proceeding against the Criminal And the contrary how plausible soever represented pretending thereby to do God good service is most injurious to the Peace Christian meekness Reason Religion or Charity and destructive to that prudential Ballance the wisest and best States have ever carefully observ'd Who always after questions of Religion freely discussed relieved the distresses of tender and innocent Consciences We must not judge of them or any other by the private and perhaps misinterpretable assertions of some particular Doctors but by the avowed principles of their belief This is the basis on which they build the rule by which they walk in point of obedience to God and man or if you would judg of them by their proceedings and addresses their frequent petitions professions protestations of all just obedience will sufficiently clear them If by their practice and manner of lives their quiet deportment and manner of living and conversing with all men yea even their prayers and wishes which they dayly make unto Almighty God in behalf of their Prince and Country do shew how innocent they are and how little they deserve those black aspersions and calumnies some rash Satyrists are so diligent to cast upon them In charity we are bound to believe the best of others and also to think they speak true when we cannot prove the contrary Some destine them to destruction and extirpation as Agapete did the Jews Are so eager declaimers
Soveraign in Allegiance Though not secured in those that pretend Gods Spirit Besides Recusants being for the most part of the good Families of the Nation will take it for a part of their Nobility freely to profess themselves in Religion whereas the Sectaries are People of mean quality cannot be presumed to stand so much on their reputation And in another place he saith to proceed to divide the Church more and more with Persecutions is more destructive to the substance of Christianity than all that corruption Reformation pretendeth to cure Osborne a Protestant Hist mem Q. E. p. 17. 〈◊〉 that against the poor Catholicks nothing in relation to the generality remaineth upon due proof sufficient to justifie the severity of Laws dayly enacted and put in execution against them All other Sects saith he oppose the Roman with more spleen and animosity then ordinary yet they defend themselves and prevail against all still continue and have been the most grand and principal Body of all Christian Societies and the greatest force and Forâ—ress of Christianity against Turks and Heathenish impieties and chiefest Propagators of the Gospel in all Nations c. I see no reason saith another Doctor of our English Church why Papists in England should not as well deserve hope and enjoy as any other order or rank of men freedome to their Consciences Nor can I think but those men who are so hardned in their Malice and persecution against them do often hear a voice secretly call within them O ye Souls why do ye persecute me in my Servants It s a kind of injustice and an uncharitable course as I conceive saith he when we spare them that have no Religion at all and censure those that can give an account of somewhat tending to that purpose Shall Atheists and Socinians Enemies of the blessed Trinity be not looked after And shall others following the Heresie of Aerius directly opposing the order of Bishops and their Jurisdiction that is the whole frame of the Church of God assembled in the first four general Councils asserted and affirmed to be of divine right by Scripture and the Church of England be winked at And must we only incite our Governours against Papists Force them upon Banishments Prisons Persecutions Pressures and Calamities and use such severity against that Religion we our selves hold Salvation to be acquired in who hold all the positive Articles with us I may loudly proclaim saith Bishop Gauden with Samuel 12. 3. this Protestation in their behalf Behold the Servants of the Lord and his Church O Christians causless Enemies witness against them and before the Lord and before the People Whose Oxe or Ass have they taken Whom have they defrauded or oppressed Whose hurt or damage have they procured Whose evil of sin or misery have they not pitied What is the injury for which so desolating a vengeance must pass upon them and their whole Profession What is the Blasphemy against God or man for which these Naboths must loose their lives liberties and liveâ—â—hoods Wherein have they deserved so ill of former and later Ages that they should be so used as Ahab commanded of Miâ—heas and the Jews did to Hieremias to be cast into Prisons to â—ordid and â—bsâ—ure restraints or to be exposed to Mendicant liberty to be fed only with Bread and water of Affliction What necessary Truths of God or righteousness have they detained What error have they broached revived or maintained What true Christian liberty have they impeached A little after They have not light conjectures not partial Customes not bare Profession not uncertain Tradition not blind Antiquity but evident grounds Scripture Succession Conversion of Nations planting of Churches all over the known World crowning their Doctrine with Martyrdome Authors of best credit undeniable famous in Church through all the first Ages shewing us Catholick Religion And uncontradicted consent constant and uninterrupted Succession their great abilities Add those Credential letters the testimonies and seals which God hath given of his holy Spirit Lastly the Civil rights and priviledges the piety of the Nation and the Laws of this Land have always given to them by the fullest and freest consent of all Estates in Parliament these ought to be regarded much of men of Justice honour and conscience as not to break all these Sanctions and Laws asunder by which their forefathers have bound to God c. Whence Doctor Taylor in his Book concerning the unreasonableness of prescribing to other mens Faith in liberty of prophecying § 2. 249. that Considerations to a charitable Toleration concerning the Roman Church which saith he may easily perswade persons of much reason and more piety to retain that which they know to have been the Religion of their forefathers which had actual possession and seizure of men's understanding before the opposite Profession had a name Another learned Protestant Doctor saith the humble peaceable and discreet carriage of them may justly plead for favour and protection against this calumny of proneness to Sedition Faction or illegal disturbance in civil affairs Even in all the unhappy troubles of the late years have generally behaved themselves and shewed they had no other design than to live a quiet life in all godliness and honesty If they could not help in fair ways to steer the Ship as they desired they did not seem to set it on fire and overwhelm it If at any time relating to publick variations and tossings they could not act with satisfied and good Consciences they humbly bear with silence and suffer with patience Intentive chiefly and fearful to offend God tender of Conscience and their own Religion Whence The late Bishop of Exeter saith in these christian bounds of peaceable subjection humility and holiness if the Papists in England may but obtain so much declared favour and publick countenance which all other fraternities and Professions have as to be sure to enjoy their callings liberties and properties which seem to be so many times in great uncertainties under the protection and obedience of the Laws it would encourage them and redeem them from those menaces insolencies and oppressions of unreasonable men who look upon them like publick Enemies and perdue because they have little of publick favour and encouragement Christian usage will no doubt win more upon them than those rough storms and winds wherewith they are dayly threatened and are still distressed Which makes them wrap themselves up as Elias in his hairy Mantle when they think their lives liberties and livelyhoods are sought after and no such protection like to continue over them they thought in a Christian State and Church they might have obtained and deserved through their quiet conversation As a just protection infers our due subjection so no men pay more willingly then they who besides the Iron-rod of fear have softer cords of love and favour upon them How can we with justice honour or humanity inflict severe penalties upon Papists as refusing to conform to our Church
ages she hath had some glorious company professing her Religion even in points their adversaries now impugne There makes for them all that may or can be of any Christian man required Literal Text of holy Scripture approved Tradition general Councils ancient Fathers Ecclesiastical Histories Christian Laws Conversion of Nations divine miracles heavenly Visions Vnity Vniversality Antiquity Succession their true Mission Ordination c. all Monuments all Substance all accidents of Christianity No wit of man can find out Arguments more convincing in themselves the truth of Religion than plain Texts and literal Sense of holy Writ the infallible Decrees of Church and general Councils the indubitable Writings and unanimous consent of ancient Fathers the credible Histories of all times and places and often the common light of Nature and Reason it self And ad hominem for prevention of all evasions no victory more certain no objection more unanswerable than the plain confession of their adversaries themselves The Volumes of Fathers and Councils in the eldest and purest times be so clear in themselves for Romish Faith that the primest and most learned Reformists studying the same are enforced through evidence of their words and deeds to acknowledg as Master Bierly in King James's time produceth clear testimonies If that Church erred or changed by little and little or that the true Church was invisible c. they require some humane reason to shew it catigorically In what time in what Articles what Pope changed what tumults rise thereupon what Councils withstood c. which in all innovations they can shew easily a total change and in what particular points as by Arrians Sabellians Donatists Pelagians Protestants c. What places what Countries changed with them what Catholicks set against them what kept the old paths To say the Church was extinct a thousand years or unknown is expresly against the Scripture Christs Promises and Providence and Reason it self If the Church were invisible whether should Gentiles address for their Conversion or the doubtful for resolution or all faithful for their direction was our Saviour who was promised to all Nations brought to that streight that he had not a visible Chappel reserved to him in the whole world Is it not good reason God would preserve his Church which he had planted and watered with his Blood Is it not a denyal of Gods Providence and to say Jesus Christ was unjust or an Impostor to oblige all men to indispensible obedience to her if erroneous or invisible if men were changed into beasts they may be thus perswaded Is not the Church compared to a City to a Light to the Sun c. can the Church which is a Sun be drawn into a chinâ—k or all her Beams into the center of a Burning-glass Can any Proposition be more reasonable than to ask of those who maintain a thing to be in former ages to produce some marks thereof to shew where they had a being or a Company successively holding the same Articles with them The Building is perpetual where God layeth the Foundation The Church is the Pillar of truth 1 Tim. 3. cannot err Irenaeus l. 3. c. 4. Mat. 28. Act. 3. Go teach all Nations and I am with you all days to the consummation John 17. Father keep them in â—hy name whom thou hast given me See his Petition to keep his Church gathered of all Nations and his continual protection I will give you another Comforâ—â—â— â—o aâ—iâ—e with you for ever John 16. When the spirit of truth cometh he shall â—â—ach you all truth This assistaâ—ce promisâ—d was ever in all ages no Heresie or Jew could ever prevail against it The guard and strength of Truth in point also of antiquity is ever such that she resteth still accompanied attended and fortified with surest friends strongest towers and best munition Priority and ancestry is so specially affected by the Wisdom of God and maligned by the enemy of man that in first planting the Church it s said Mat. 4. 13 24 25. 5. Mat. 13 17. Luk. 8. 12. that he first sowed good seed in the field and after the enemie came and oversowed Cockle not obscurely intimating true Faith and Religion that is good seed was first and ancient to Sects and Heresies Even as temporal nobility is most honourable which is derived from the aâ—cientest Blood and in earthly possessions that Title strongest which pleadeth longest prescription or ancientest evidence So it cannot be denied but truth was before falshood substance before shadows the Gospel Faith Religion c. which is first and eldest is only the true Gospel Faith Church and other Congregations afterwards arising or going out from thence are only malignant inventions of the enemy In which respect to find out truth in all occurring difficulties we are specially forewarned to recurre to antiquity to suspect novelty Moses Deut. 32. before his death leaving documents to the Children of Israel saith Remember the old days ask thy Father c. so Bildab Jobs friend 1 Job 8. advised him in greatest extremities ask the old generation and search diligently Solom Eccl. 9. 8. 11 12. let not the â—â—rration of the ancient escape thee c. and Jer. c. 16. stand upon the ways and ask the old paths which is the good way c. on the contrary God reproveth such as walk in a way not trodden and Solomons lesson is Transgress not the ancient bounds which thy Father hath put So Saint Paul to Timothy to keep the Depositum avoiding profane novelties It 's very ordinary with the Fathers to confute Hereticks by their innovation So Tertullian reproveth Novelists of his time saying to them who are you when and from whence came you what do you in my grounds by what right Marcion didst thou cut down my woods by what licence Valentine dost thou overthrow my Fountains c. It is my possession long since I possessed it I possessed it first So Saint Hierom. of the Luciferians Why do you go about after four hundred years to teach that we knew not before until this day the world was Christian without that Doctrine So Athan. confuteth the Arrians Saint Hilarie and Saint Aug. Donatists These reasons may induce us to take new measures of that ancient Church and may easily perswade persons as Doctor Taylor in his Treatise of Liberty of Prophecying of much reason and more piety to retain that which they know to have been the Religion of their forefathers especially when her Soveraign Rights Titles and Prerogatives are admitted and acknowledged by her professed enemies Whence Chillingworth confesseth that Protestants cannot with coherence to their own grounds require of others the belief of any thing besides Scripture and the plain irrefragable and indubitable consequences of it without most high and schismatical presumption Dr. Bramh. Reply p. 264. We do not saith he hold our 39 Articles to be such necessary truths extra quas non est salus without which there is no salvation nor enjoin ecclesiastical
disloyalty from them that have freely taken them and none in Catholicks that have refused For the Oaths by none more readily taken and earnestly imposed on others than by those who began the Wars and promoted the Covenant and on the contrary by none more scrupled and refused than by those who always assisted the King ¶ Thirdly it may be objected as lately by Doctor Denton c. That Papists suffer not for Religion but because they are not obedient to the Laws c. Resp 1. By a Proviso of the Act 25 and 27. of Eliz. if any Priest committed shall submit to the Laws and take the Oaths they shall be freed from the penalty and not adjudged Traytors if they renounce their Religion Resp 2. Suppose that in the Apostles time a Law had been made by any King or Emperour of a contrary Religion to them that if any of the said Apostles or Priests should enter into their Dominions to preach a contrary Doctrine to to the Religion there received and to exercise any of their Apostolical or Priestly Functions it should be treason and under pain of death Would or could the Apostles have obeyed those Laws or did they obey the Governours of the Jews their lawful Superiours when they commanded them to preach no more in the name of Jesus Christ or to disperse Christian Doctrine which they held for Treason or did they fly out of their Dominions lest their sufferings should be imputed to disobedience and not for the name of Christ Is there not another blood to be respected called by the Prophet the blood of the Soul whereof the Pastor shall be guilty if he fly for fear or forsake his flock in time of danger and persecution Have not the English Priests the same Obligation of Conscience to help their Country-men in spiritual necessities as had the Apostles and Apostolick men to strangers for whose help they were content to offer their lives and incur any danger whatsoever ¶ Fourthly It may be demanded why cannot Papists come to our Churches Resp Unity and Vniformity are two things one being internal the other external therefore if they should conform yet they can have no verity faith or truth but as forced by which Religion is never better'd Truth and falshood are like the clay in Nebuchadonosors Image they may cleave but they will never incorporate Christ's Coat had no seam though the Churches vesture was of divers colours whence a learned Father saith in veste varietas sit scissura non sit The true God hath this attribute that he is a jealous God and therefore his worship and religion will endure no mixture or partner ¶ Fifthly To say or object the Popes Supremacy is dangerous This reflects not only upon the honour of Catholicks but the safety of all the Professors of it They acknowledg the Pope as Successor to Saint Peter is head of the Church and hath supream Authority in matters spiritual but how this can be offensive to the Temporalities of Princes is not understood by me nor those great Monarchs that are of his Church and submit to his authority and and yet are zealous and jealous of their own power and temporal Regalities as any Princes can possible be Our graver and more learned Divines distinguish between the inward power of the Keys and the outward jurisdiction by temporal penalties this they assign to the King in all causes and over all persons that they reserve to the Clergy as neither derived from or dependent of the Civil Magistrate And if I rightly understand the Religion of the English Church although they allow the King to be supream Governour of their Church yet they do not confer any Pastoral Office or Jurisdiction upon him and consequently he is one of the Flock and therefore as such he is subject to Pastors Wherefore if this be not looked on by Protestants as derogatory to the Kings authority I hope by the same reason Roman Catholicks will not be found guilty for owning the Popes Supreamacy in matters meerly spiritual There can be no just fear or jealousie that spiritual jurisdiction should supplant secular obedience because the Church-Discipline in it self is so innocent and passive We our selves acknowledg a spiritual authority in the Bishops promise a Canonical obedience to them and not to the King admit Jurisdiction in their spiritual Courts c. nay the Presbyterians in their Consistory and ecclesiastical Courts will allow the King no authority at all more than the meanest Subject and so do other Sects Now if a Subject v. g. the Bishop of Canterbury may be supream in Spirituals without any derogation to the Prince may not the Pope with less danger and inconvenience be truely called as King James did the Patriarch or Superintendent of the West For if that power be purely spiritual being of a different nature as is said before it cannot in the least degree be prejudicial to the Kings civil power but rather oblige those that acknowledg it faithfully to obey the King Therefore it ought to be no obstacle to Toleration otherwise no Christians or Sect whatsoever ought to be tolerated for let them be Presbyterians Independents Anabaptists c. do not they depend upon and own a power distinct from his Majesties Civil Power I mean a Power meerly spiritual or pastoral not subordinate to the King but to which the King himself if he be of your Religion ought to be subject as no Pastor but a Sheep no Teacher but a Hearer no Administer of Sacraments but a Receiver Such a Power all Sects and Religions seem to own no Catholick depends on or can own more The spirituall Primacy of the chief Pastor preserves peace and unity and is a greater defence to them than many Armies in subduing their minds to civil obedience without such a spiritual authority there is no influence on the people all preaching and Laws are but shaking Bulwarks to support Monarchy No Kingdom hath been more happy at home or glorious abroad than when the Pope was their spirituall Father When such a Primacy purely spiritual was acknowledged in England the Church here was never torn in pieces with Schismes nor poisoned with Heresies the honour and safety of our Dominions were far from being prejudiced or invaded It is denied then the owning Supremacy should worse their condition shall notions convince experience when a demonstration it self often gives way to practice Let 's summon the Kings of Europe of Catholick Profession to decide the contrary unanimously and proclaim their people are not rebellious by reason of any ecclesiastical dependance abroad Roman Catholicks did ever renounce any temporal power or jurisdiction belonging to the Pope over any Subject of his Majesties But since there is a Power purely spiritual as is shewed before from which Princes are not exempted Is it not more for their temporal security that the spiritual power should reside in one single person that usually is both learned and discreet and withal is a thousand
miles removed than in many thousand within his own Kingdom not all of them Angels The King of France esteems it a priviledg granted him in a Concordate by the Pope that no particular Bishop should have power in any case to excommunicate him Never was there greater supporters to the Crown than English Catholicks have been ever against the least encroachment offered by the Bishop of Rome himself as it is to be seen in the Statâ—t Laws of King Richard the Second wherein you find in many businesses the Pope was interessed the Roman Catholicks flatly denying the Crown of England to be subject to any immediately but to God yet acknowledged in the very same Parliament the Bishop of Rome's spiritual Jurisdiction And Bishop Bilson in his Defence between Christ and Antichrist brings in the Parliament consisting then altogether of Roman Catholicks expressing their loyalty to their Soveraign Prince in these words we will with our said Soveraign the King and his said Crown and Regality in cases aforesaid and in all other cases attempted against Him his Crown or Dignity in all points live and dye p. 3. p. 243. And in Holinshed 2. Volume of the last Edition p. 309. we find in the Reign of King Edward the First all the Catholick Lords assembled in Lincolne in Parliament in the name of all estates did answer the Popes right to judg c. that they would not consent their King should do any thing tending to the disinheriting of the Crown or right of England And that it was never known and consequently never practised that the King of this Land had answered or ought to answer for their rights in the said Realm before any Judg ecclesiastical or secular Yet at the same time they stiled Pope Boniface the high Bishop of the Roman universal Church and themselves his devout sons c. Therefore Catholick Religion hath no headship prejudicial to temporal Supremacy If this were a Check to the Glory of Kings why do the Kings of France Spain Poland Portugal the Emperour and other great Princes in Germany uphold it and glory in it the Duke of Savoy with the Florentine and the rest of Italian Princes living under the Popes Nose absolute and arbitrary in their Dominions dispute with Sword in their hand for their Temporalities And for the Catholick Church in England in Catholick times Stat. 25. Edward 3. Statut. 16. Richard did not admit the Pope's deposing power in temporals made it a preeminence to appeal to Rome or to submit to a Legates jurisdiction without the Kings License or on the Popes summons to go out of the Kingdom or receive any mandates or brief from Rome or purchase Bulls for Preserments to Churches c. and the reason was given because the Crown of England is free from earthly subjection and immediately subject to God Our Catholick Lords of England have in the name of the whole Body made oft protestations of eternal fidelity to the King and renouncing all dependance of any forreign power that can any way be prejudicial to him Many Protestations Professions Declarations have been printed by several Catholicks that no authority on earth can absolve them from their necessary and natural Allegiance and that his fidelity was a duty of their Religion have made and will be ready to give all security of peaceable obedience and sincere integrity that any words or actions can confirm But you will object and say they allow a power in the Pope to excommunicate Princes and thence follows a train of pernicious consequences of deposing raising his Subjects against him c. Resp That the power of Excommunication is indeed necessarily annexed to the pastoral Function and therefore to be allowed in the cheife Bishop over his Flock But they deny and renounce any further extent of that power unto those things which appertain to Caesar 5 and therefore they declare as firmly that notwithstanding any such excommunication they will bear true faith to our Prince and him maintain and defend against all opposers whatsoever You may again object the Council of Lateran decreed Princes that savoured Hereticks after admonition given the Pope might discharge the Subjects from allegiance and give away the Kingdom to some Catholick to root out Heresie Resp 1. Councils are not infallible in every point even in matter of fact and other Constitutions not concerning faith or doctrine being but human Laws are changeable and oft admit exceptions 2. Council's Ordinations are to be taken according to the prudent meaning of the Legislators which bear another sense than the words taken lye In this case suppose the Emperours of the East and West Kings of England France Hungary Hierusalem Cyprus Arragon c. agree together to purge their Kingdoms of Heresies and upon forfeiture the Church should give their Dominions to another that will perform their Compact these Princes being present by their Embassadors at the Councils and what was there done was done by their consent The Albigensian Heresie beginning to be so numerous and even dangerous those Monarches thought themselves in no worse a condition for that decree nor did any Catholick King since complain or protest against this Council for it 3. Note the Decrees of some Councils not received or acknowledged universally by the Catholick Church are not obligatory but that which is principally to be considered is that in the Decree of this Lateran under Innocent the Third it is ordained not Supream Princes but temporales potestates dominos which bear Offices in States and Kingdoms to take Oaths to root out all Hereticks under the penalty of being denounced to be deprived of their Estates c. yet reserving the right of the supream Lord. 4. This pretended Article of Faith hath been disclaimed by a world of unquestionable Catholicks and all allegations confuted by learned Authors of our Nation Doctor Bistop writ a Book purposely against it 5. No proof can be given that it was ever received or executed by any Catholick Kingdom out of Italy The reason is because those decrees were never published by Pope Innocent nor a Copy of them extant either in the body of the Councils or Vatican Library or elsewhere till a certain German three hundred years after said he found them in a Manuscript compiled he knows not by whom 6. By testimony of all Historians at that time Pope Innocent suffered in Reputation having convoked so many Prelates to no purpose 60 Capitula were recited in the Assembly and many penned in a stile as if they had been concluded but nothing at all could plainly be decreed no Conciliary determinations made but one or two viz. about the recovery of the holy Land and subjection of the Greek Church to the Roman for a War began then between them of Pisa and Genua which called the Pope from the Council 7. Be it granted a conciliary decree it is so far from looking like an Article of Faith which saith Bellarmine and Canus may easily be discovered by
were Sturton and Mordent two Catholick Lords were fined because they were absent from Parliament that day their circumspection was so great that the Lord of Northumberland a Protestant was imprisoned for many years because being Captain he admitted Piercy into the Bond of Pensioners Thus any indifferent Reader may see how improbable or rather impossible it was the Catholick party to be involved therein Concerning Plots we know it was counted a piece of wit in Queen Elizabeths time to draw men into such devices and none more excellent than Burleigh and Walsingham the first of which Cecil was son to and successor to the others secretariship and fomenting of plots then in fashion Who hath forgot the plots of Cromwel framed in his Closet not only to destroy many faithful Cavaliers but also to put a lustre upon his intelligence This Gun-powder Treason was a meer device though acted by the hand of some desperate persons as King James saith in his second Proclamation whereas Thomas Piercy some other confederates being of lâ—wd life insolent dispositions and for the most part of desperate Estates c. Yet contrived invented by a crafty States-man who every one knew hated their profession to make them odious suspected in that Nation and to disoblige his Majesty of his promises in favour of them and this his jealousie increased seeing the King received in his Council Henry Earl Wil. Hist in King James p. 3. p. 190. of Northampton an eminent Papist and no friend to the Statesmen And his Majesties speech then to the two Houses against persecution of Catholicks as Wilson noteth as it may be justly thought considering what Polititian sate at the helm then Nor was it hard for a Secretary to know turbulent and malitious Spirits as Stow calleth Catesby a malecontent in Queen Elizabeth's days and when King James came to the Crown no favourable Article concerning Indulgency to English Catholicks And that the King of Spain and Archduke minded only their own interest c. Vide Stow 880. 'T is argument enough to assert this that if a Statesman professed in tricks hating and envying Roman Catholicks contrived the material part contrived also the rest and certainly the miraculous letter which discovered the Gun-powder Treason will discover our Statesmen to be the author of it The Letter is this to the Lord Mounteagle a Roman Catholick MY LORD OVt of the Love I bear some of your Friends I have care of your preservation therefore I would wish you as you tender your life to forbear the attendance at this Parliament for God and man have concurred to punish the wickedness of the time Think not sleightly of the advertisement for though there be no appearance of any stir yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow this Parliament and yet they shall not see who hurt them This Counsel is not to be contemned because it may do you good and can do you no harm for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the Letter and I hope you will make good use of it Now this Letter could not be written by Piercy as reputed because first there was little intimacy between the Lord Mounteagle and Piercy as Wilson saith Secondly the Earl of Northumberland Percy 's Patron and only support he was to be sacrificed and all Catholick Lords of his Religion therefore no Plotter writ this for here a hundred suspicious things in the opinion of any fool would endanger the discovery Thirdly Notice also given so long before the execution for the Letter was sent to Mounteagle ten days before the 5. of November as Saunderson p. 383. Hist saith the long warning being opposite to the designe of a Conspirator Fourthly in their examinations they never confessed it as they did things of higher secrecy Now the interval was beneficial to a Machivilian it would be more grateful to the Council to have time to consider the difficulties to ruine his enemies and make his vigilance appear And Cecil did not miss of his aim for as Saunderson says he was made Earl for his Service For the Letter came by his contrivance being as Osborn Prot. Hist confesseth a neat device of the Treasurers Nor was he ignorant from time to time of their actions Osborne Mem. K. Jam. p. 360. For Tresham and another who were Cecil's instruments had access to him at midnight and last he should discover it he was never brought to a publick trial were sent to the Tower and never seen afterward lest they should tell tales And Piercy and Catesby might have been taken alive but Cecil feared these two would have related the Story less to his advantage Whence they were not made Prisoners though they had no weapons but their Swords Besides many knowing men Strangers abroad have writ And Protestants themselves at home have discovered since this to be a purposed contrivance So Ossate Letters Livr 2. Epist 43. Prins Antip. of Prelat p. 151. His Majesty also well knew some had learned this art in their old Mistress's time Whence he oft said the fifth of November was Cecils holiday as the Lord Cobham and others have protested to have heard from his own mouth Therefore the Roman party had no hand in the Treason being but thirteen Laymen and all those drawn in by their mortal enemy This desperate attempt seemed rather of a private Kindred or Acquaintance than of any Religion Catesby and Tresham were Sisters Children the two Graunts two Brethren and the elder intermarried with Winters Sister Faux and Keys were but Servingmen the two Wrights long time dependers on Catesby and their Sister married to Piercy If any of these were Papists or so died they were not so long before for the true Priests and Catholicks in England knew them not to be such they being never frequenters of Catholick Sacraments and none of them convicted and known recusants before as our Courts witness Papists and Priests know Catholicks by using Sacraments These they renounced by publick Writings and condemned their Enterprise for impious malefactors of this hellish Conspiracy The Lord Mounteagle with his Lady and Children who disclosed it indeed were known Catholicks No Priest or known Catholick after many strict examinations searches and scrutinies was either proved or probably suspected of it but so far freed that the Lords of the Council requested that a Priest should be appointed to perswade and assure Faux an agent in it that he was bound in conscience to utter what he could of that Conspiracy And Master Thomas Wright a learned Priest did hereupon come to the Council and offer his best Service therein and had a Warrant to that purpose subsigned with twelve Privy Counsellors hands but Faux had confessed all they could wish before he could come to him So that no man of Conscience can think but Recusants rather deserved favour for their loyalty Seeing the Arch-Priest condemned it all Catholicks detested and abhorred it as appears by their Petitions to the King
Laws nor made by the principles of Catholick Doctrine The Arrians were the first introducers of persecution they were not I say enacted by Ecclesiasticks but by civil Governours only We know that by the Canons of the Church ever in force their Clergy under the penalty of irregularity are forbidden to have any hand in blood And whatsoever civil Laws have been made by Catholick civil Governours were but as prudent means to prevent Sedition or Rebellions justly apprehended And though for some later ages civil Magistrates in some Countries exercise greater severities than anciently were used must England imitate the rigidest of other Countries Neither can our hatred or persecution against Catholicks be any more excused by the proceedings of the Spanish or Italian Inquisitions than our penal Statutes have been by the Laws of ancient Kings and Emperours against Hereticks First Because the Inquisition proceeds according to the rules and forms of justice none is declared an Heretick or guilty by any new Law or Oath made only to the end that by them men may be entrapped both in Soul in Body and Estate It was no crime in England to be a Roman Catholick before the penal Laws were enacted but it was a crime to be an Heretick or an Apostate or broacher of new Doctrines before the ancient Emperors and Kings made penal Laws against Heresie The Law supposed and did not make the crime As penal Statutes do in England making a crime of Christian Religion Secondly Hereticks are never condemned by the Inquisition without the testimony of many lawful witnesses both living and dead All the ancient Fathers Councils and the Christian Church of former ages testifie their errors are new and contrary to the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles No Rebel was ever more evidently convicted of Rebellion against his Prince then Hereticks are by the Inquisition of Heresie against God and the old Apostolical Church Catholicks cannot obtain so fair a Plea they are condemned by a new Law because they are not Hereticks and separate from the ancient Faith Thirdly The Inquisition practiceth all imaginary means towards the accused to reduce his judgment Fourthly The Inquisition it self is permitted in no Kingdome where Heresie is numerous nor can it be in justice they strive to keep out Sects and new Opinions in Countries totally of one Belief We do not morally blame the very Moors in Africa being of one profession for keeping out the Gospel it self In England where all fell not from the Papacy there is not the same just motive for severity as if it brought an upstart Religion never heard of or spread over the Nation Fifthly The Inquisition medleth not with those who never were Catholicks but the penal Statutes comprehend them who never were of their Church or Communion Sixthly The Inquisition condemns no Hereticks to death but only declares their heresie to the end the faithful may avoid their conversation its true the Secular power executes the sentence of death against them notwithstanding the Inquisition doth protest against the rigour and desireth that Hereticks may not be punished with death Seventhly Though the Inquisition were rigorous and unjust as adversaries pretend it is not a blemish to Catholick Religion because it is not an universal practice but limited to Spain and Italy at the instance of secular Princes looked upon as a necessary means to keep their Subjects in awe of their 〈◊〉 Eighthly The Inquisition â—oth seriously wish and endeavour the conâ—ersion and amendment of Hereticks imploâ—ing learned Divines to convince them and by fair ways and reason to win them Neither can the Muthers or Massacres in Ireland so much and so often exaggerated in Protestant Pamphlets and Pulpits be any pretext of rigour or austerity to English Catholicks What hath an English Catholick to do with an Irish Massacre Can we our selves excuse all the extravagancies by some of our natives and party Doth Catholick Religion either incline him to or teach murther or rebellion Have they not a setled sense of Scripture for loyalty and obedience Which none can alter without breach of his Catholick Faith And they are not their own interpreters and and judges in points controverted that 's the priviledge of others I only say and wish from my soul that some indiscreet Zealots had not a greater hand in them than Catholick Religion whose tenets are contrary to cruelty and murther on any pretence whatsoever Is it not notorious that the Reformed Zealots in Ireland signed a bloody Petition offered to the Parliament in England that all Irish that would not go to Church might be extirpated or banished This was done before the Irish Catholicks did stir Suppose that in Vlster some of the rascality or Kerns being exasperated by so many and continual injuries had murthered some persons must that reflect upon the English Catholicks and all the Irish Nation or what is the Irish Râ—â—ellion to English Catholicks who detest it more than the Amboyna to Reformists it is too much ascertained that the Murthers and Massacres done in Ireland by Reformists furious zeal against Catholicks exceeded those committed by Catholicks witness their murthers about Dublin the County of Wicko and Fingcole by the transplantation of them into Canaught and by the transporting them into the Plantations of America forcing them to the Oath of Abjuration and almost starving them in those places contrary to the Publick Faith given them by printed Declarations in the Name of the English Parliament to Irish Catholicks Anno 1649. 1652. that the Oath of Abjuration shall not be administred to any in Ireland Baxter in his Cure of Church-Division confesseth and saith they put the Irish to death that went to defend themselves and stand for the King and Country yet they who seemed so godly themselves Massacred millions of their own Country that were for the Country and King and gave God many humiliation days and thanks for their success killing after so many Scots in cold blood after they were taken at Worcester Fight See Baxter But whosoever desires to be better satisfied in this of Ireland let him read the printed Remonstrance of the Irish Confederate Catholicks delivered by their Commissioners the Lord Vicount Preston and Sir Robert Talbot the seventeenth of March 1642. to his Majesties Commissioners at Trim. There he will see how the Irish desired the murthers on both sides might be punished and how they were forced to take up arms by the wicked practices of Sir William Persons Sir Charls Coot and other fiery Protestants who governed the Kingdom Therefore whatsoever may be said in passion of the Irish war its evident that the Calvinistical Zealot had great influence upon their injurious provocations murthering seven or eight hundred women children Ploughmen and labourers in a day in the Kings Land whensoever the Army went abroad the poor Country-people did betake themselves to the Firrs where the Parliament Officers did besiege them and set the Fâ—rrs on fire and such as escaped that element were
Nations to perswade people from Idolatry to be charged themselves with the same guilt Good Sir you may as truly say they worship an Asses head as the old Heathens accused the primitive Christians a wise man will as soon believe if you should affirm those that approve all things in the Alcaron are Christians or that England reaches as far as Greece This Web which you weave with so much earnestness will only catch dotterils and fools such as have shaked their hands with their reason or else enthralled or captivated it under tyranny and partiality and locked it down to the gallies of their own passions It is not my business to dispute this polemical Article at large which is better done by Doctor T. G. and V. C. I find his whole Book like that paralitick Discourse written rather Rhetorically ad captandum populum to insinuate into vulgar capacities then logically to evince the Hypothesis contended for strip it out of its multifarious fallacies ungrounded surmises and erroneous suppositions and it will not only be a massie body without bones and nerves to support it and join it together but sine succo sanguine a very Skelleton Pardon me good Reader if thou think me oversharp with this man who hath kindled my zeal and whetted my stile against him in that his procedure is unchristian that it tends to destroy all but settle no Religion The greatest heathen could never reproach Christians with more injurious slanders And shall it be lawful for a private person to condemn and deride on false grounds and surmises those duties which the most learned and major part of Christians ever admitted of and shall such a one be entreated to preach and print and others abler and honester forbid the Press and Pulpit are we not then partial to our selves and become judges of evil thoughts James 2. 1 4. When the Doctor proveth that they worship Idols together with God as the Kings of Israel did Or alone without him as the Pagans did or that they adored with Sacrifice the Sun the Moon c. and other inferiour Deities as he calls them we will grant him flat idolatry In the mean while all sober men must think These are devices to seduce the vulgar into strange opinions and unchristian thoughts of others to traduce honest men and their principles let them be fairly heard in a publick conference how far they can justifie themselves from being deservedly suspected of such abominations if our passion will not our charity ought to think better I intended here to have a lash or two at the late uncharitable Pamphlet called A seasonable Discourse but hearing it is already fully examined and corrected by a better Quill I will only give these Animadversions viz. that all or most of his material Arguments are sufficiently answered in this Treatise viz. concerning the Popes Power of Excommunication Deposing Supremâ—â—y the Inquisition Massacres disguised Jesuits opinions of Mariana c. as you may find in the Objections and Answers before as also that faith is not to be kept with Heretiks that dissimulation of Equivocations in Religion is permitted all these are confuted to be most manifest untruths and falshoods he cites also very insincerely many Authors and brings in for his best proofs for witness our enemies or partial Authors not to be credited as Thuanus Platina Myster Jesuiâ— Cornel. Agrippa Sleiden â—llâ—ry de Foulis c. The Pamphlet indeed rather indeed deserves a rebuke for his slanders and therefore the name is wisely concealed than for any man to take the pains to read or answer it It is but a cheating Drollery to delude the people whence he makes merry with the life of Saint Francis as fabulous though written by the hand of Saint Bonaventure a seraphical and holy learned man reputed amongst wiser Protestants he takes pleasure to rail at the Popes to whom all western Churches did ever bear a respect and ought to do as being the chief Patriarch of the West acknowledged by the adversaries themselves All men should speak honourably and reverently of Princes and Bishops the one being Gods Vicegerents in temporals the other in spirituals and Successors to the Apostles Suppose some Popes have behaved themselves too severe or haughty being Princes as well as Bishops it is not so strange all great mean should be Saints But the very name of a Pope is a scare-crow to this man as if he were one of the ignorant Herd credulous to believe any fabulous stories pick'd out of Legends like his own Pamphlet that have neither charity truth or civility Why cannot he if he were just and honest rehearse as well the pious acts and memories of good Popes where there be twenty to one famous in approved Authors and undeniable History but that like some venemous serpent he loves to suck only in poisoned places To speak of our own days as he doth at random without jugment or sincerity what can he say against the lives and the actions of the last three Popes have not they incessantly laboured for the peace and support of all Christian Princes among themselves and against the common enemy and now in particular uniting the Polanders and assisting them with money against the Adversary of Christianity Is it not then a weakness in this man worthy to be derided by all the moderate and wiser sort who would make the world believe Popes are so dangerous to Monarchy What Kings or States complain against them Are his neighbouring Princes jealous or fearful of his power or encroachments and cannot more potent Princes and Commonwealths at a distance better secure themselves by their own power Are not Catholicks in all places obliged to stand to their Soveraign in defence of their Countrey against the Pope as effectually as against any other Have not the English Catholiks long ago in open Parliament declared that the Imperial Crown of England is and hath been at all times free from all sabjection to the Pope and provided a Statute of praemunire against any abuses as they thought might happen Look on the English Catholicks in 88. when the Pope was excited and backed by the power of a great Prince Her Title being disputable and urged by some abuses aud continued severities to excommunication c. Do not our own and forraign Writers notwithstanding testifie the Catholicks stood firmly to their Allegiance and the most learned Priests by an authentick Writing acknowledged the Q. though excommunicated to have still the same authority as her Predecessors and chearfully offered to hazard their lives in defence of her Dignity and Country Suppose eight or ten men talk at random in Schools of the deposing power c. must that be the Doctrine of the Church Did the Church ever approve or teach any such maxims or were they ever tolerated as he most falsely would have it Have not all other numerous learned men contradicted them did not all the Universities of a great Kingdom condemn such opinions and their Books to be
Secondly When it is hardly restrained it sheweth the World and the Flesh are too much it friends Thirdly When it burneth where lust pride and malice burn Fourthly When it carrieth you from those holy rules prescribed and pretendeth to come from a spirit which will not be tried but by Scripture It s a suspicious sign when it is contrary to the judgment experience and zeal of the generality of most well experienced sober godly Christians And so contrary to the ordinary working of Gods Spirit in others who are as good as you for this zeal cometh not from heaven For Gods Spirit is not contrary to it self But the true Catholick genuine Christian zeal appeareth in its own likeness in wisdome love humility meekness and and sobriety Provoketh hearers to love and good works Is not contentious reproachful injurious loveth virtue in a heathen Is kindled by humble meditations of Christs example to study and imitate him and his Saints in forbearance patience forgiving others and doing good Promoting Christian Religion with sincere and plain dealing winning men by Morality justice and charity and offending them by no unnecessary thing by no imputed calumnies sticking closer to justice and peace than to any party Owneth virtue and goodness that is in all parties and opinions Which will be a means to remove the animosities we are so apt to receive against dissenters and lessen our differences and disagreements The true means of gaining souls to God is the Gospellary way of meekness perswasion c. Christ and his Apostles appeared without words of mans wisdome assistance of Kings or Princes without fines imprisonments oaths c. By his admirable mildness he condemned all these politick Religions by using cruelty to support them If it had been otherwise I would have told you John 14 if the way of planting or preserving my faith had been by imposing penalties by cruel Oaths or watering it with the blood of Refusers I would have told you The son of man came not to destroy mens lives but to save them To wind up all in few words of what is said in this Book I desire no prudent man to give any credit further than his experience shall find true after diligent search made as concerns every one before he pass sentence If this be not enough to disabuse your credulity of criminations imputed without proof or probability let all impartial men judge whether you have not shaked hands with all morality For who can pretend any charity that will harbour detected calumnies or who can love truth that will not acknowledge it when represented The reasons above given I doubt not which would serve to clear the Catholicks from such aspersions before any just or reasonable Judg Pagan or Mahometan How much more ought they to serve among Christians who profess not only truth but charity which is the life of Religion and bond of perfection Hence saith the great Siracides blame no man before thou hast enquired the matter understand first and then reform righteously CONCLUSION IN Conclusion now of this Apologetick Discourse it will not be improper once again to mind you of the necessity we have to Christian love Seing the neglect of it and a persecuting hurtful spirit mistaken for zeal hath been and is the issue and consequence of all the immoderation feuds and antipathies we have one against another It is then the duty of every serious Christian to lay aside all vain jealousies idle suspitions rude severities and much more forged calumnies against any perswasion whatsoever The Authors and Meditators of such aspersions though they may pretend much Conscience and Religion can have none For S. James assures us that whosoever would seem religious and tempers not his tongue that mans religion is vain And in Leviticus 19. 15. It s commanded thou shalt not calumniate thy neighbour nor oppress him by violence It s against a divine precept to bear false witness or detect our brother it s against the lustre of Christian Religion it gives scandal abroad to the very Heathens it s against the peace and settlement of the Nation at home which must be conserved by mutual concord and unity of affection No moderate man that hath left any room in his breast for truth or charity in his heart can abet such fierce censorious unchristian tempers which have appeared of late which have made and still keep open our divisions and distances if the same sins are continued without repentance and if after such warning as the whole world ever scarce had the like we remain still self-conceited and arrogantly ignorant How heynous is our crime and how dreadful is the prognostick of our greater ruin and how guilty are those Ministers of the blood of Souls who tell not men of this sin and danger When I consider Christs precept of mutual love and the Apostle abridging it the whole duty of a Christian I cannot sufficiently wonder to see Christians in this present age so furiously to persecute and hate one another only on the account of Religion If we reflect upon the difficulties that encounter us in the way of truth and withall consider the shortness of our sight for here we see but in part and understand but in part There will appear more reason to endeavour the mutual assistâ—nâ—e and support than malitious destruction and ruin of one another To hate and vilifie others for their opinions is repugnant to Scripture which commands us to love our brother and not persecute him To despise our brother for his innocent mistakes or to constrain him to profess more than he is convinced of proceeds from a great tyranny and presumption I searched Evangelical records and there was nothing but mildness and soft doctrine I enquired into the breathings of the Spirit and they were all pacificatory I wondred from what Scripture-encouragement these men deducted their practices At last I was forced to conclude they were only pretended Chaplains to the Prince of peace And those Teachers that should have been saving lights were degenerated into firebrands Different Opinions in Religion might consist well enough with peace and publick safety would men be perswaded to be modest to keep them to themselves and not to fancy their conceits necessary to the rest of mankind to vex their neighbours provoke their rulers dissettle the government and disturb the peace for the propagation of them Unity and affection might be preserved amidst diversity of opinions if we do but consider that errors are infirmities of the understanding and no man is willing to be deceived So are not objects of our hatred but our pity We hate no man for being blind poor lame c. ignorance and infirmity require our compassion and our charity but nothing can justifie our rage and malice If we were infallible and all our opinions were certainties and demonstrations we might then have more pretence for our stifness rigidness and severities But to confess the infirmities of our own faith and understanding and