the holy Scriptures and that it had been a great part of the work of that Generation to pervert and abuse them And withall you see what is become of their high Confidence that they should not miscarry in their Designs upon us whom they baptized with the name of the Complices of the Apocalyptick Beast Their hopes are prov'd abortive and now they are travailing with a new Wind and are in pain till they bring forth a Lye They that were triumphant a little while ago have taken in their Flag and chang'd the Motto Now the word is Ichabod Where is the Glory They have altered the Phrases very much and speak in a complaining tone After so glorious a progress in the Work of pulling down Babylon and such Assurance they should have the Beast under their feet they are cast back again and are but at their Witnessing-work and Prophesying its Destruction Now Mr. Bridge tells us * Seasonable Truths in Evil-times p. 100. this is the work of our Generation Witness-bearing to the truth of Christ in opposition to the wayes of Antichrist in Antichristian times This is the work of our Generation Good lack That the World should be thus turn'd upside down That their hands should be lately at the work that the Carpenters * Mr. Bridge sermon before the Parl. Nov. 29. 1643. 17. should be at work in every part of the Kingdom to cut off the borns and now they should have no work but for their Mouths Witness-bearing-Work is all the business strange The work of the time said Mr. Bridge above 20 years ago is to measure the Temple Nay we are upon the work of Reformation building the Temple * Ib. p. 24. He saw the measuring line in the Parliaments hand yea the Stones were going to be laid and all the fear was they should not lie even But now all is vanished a new Vision appears the Church is hidden the Inner-Court is not to be seen and the Holy-city is still trod under foot and they are got no further than Witnessing-work Then the work was to cast out the Gentiles * Ib. p. 17. and now the Gentiles remain within and the work is only to witness against them * Seas Truths p. 112. This is the work to which a thousand years of Glory and Comfort is promised This is the work witness bearing to the Truths of Christ in opposition to the ways of Antichrist as he tells over and over in his late Sermons * P. 101. Seas Truths printed 1668 Sermon before the Parl. p. 17. Do you not wonder at this that the work was so long ago to cast out the Gentiles and the word was given forth * Vp and be doing and do it fully Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord negligently and with-holdeth his hand from shedding of Blood But now they are only Witnessing waiting for the Power to turn the Nations into was blood N. C They are grown very humble C. No. This is but a new proof of their insufferable Pride They will not ingenuously acknowledg their Errors They are still as bold confident in prophecying from the Revelation as if they had never been mistaken And you feed and incourage their Presumption while you admire these Dreamers and suffer them to lead you quietly by the Nose backward and forward just as they please The Cause of which I doubt is your Pride too who are resolved not to be ashamed of your vain hopes nor abate your confidences but surrounding your selves with Prophesies and Promises to harden your faces and look as boldly upon us as ever The world must not think you have missed the Mark but only suppose you have received a farther light and that the mind of God is more fully revealed and that now you have found certainly in the Revelation whereabouts we are Or rather many of this sort make no reflection upon what is past A new Phrase is able at any time to blot out all remembrance of former things Let them but get this by the end and there is no other talk no other thoughts Away go all Objections and Difficulties all doubts scruples and fears All sad thoughts if they have any vanish as soon as they hear this and you may quiet them with it when you will as you do a Child with a Rattle when it cryes Lord say they it is Witnessing-time How shall thy poor Creature go through this Witnessing-work Alas Christians sayes another when he meets his Friends we are faln into the Witnessing-days Bear your Testimony Fear not their faces only let your Testimony agree If you would bear Witness unite your Testimony O it is a sackcloth-condition Seasonable Truths p. 124.125 replies a Third Let us mind the duty of a sackcloth-condition let us wear our sackcloth handsomly I and then saith a Fourth Christ will pay all the charge that you are at in Witness-bearing If a man have a suit at Law and have 5 or 6. Witnesses and carry them an hundred mile he bears all the charge of their Witness-bearing Saith Christ I will give power to MY Witnesses they are MY Witnesses Ye are Christs Witnesses and look whatsoever charge you are at he will bear the charge he will bear all the charge of your Witness-bearing And therefore be faithful in your Witness-bearing In this manner they are lull'd asleep and tickled out of the remembrance of all things past Nothing else comes into their Minds nothing into their Mouths as long as the strength of these New Phrases last And their Ministers having found the admirable power of them and how they stick in their Fancies and work there and wholly possess them they will not fail to furnish them with good store of them when there is occasion And should they but change a certain Word now in use into one of these Phrases I believe it would help to do their business very effectually N. C. You will not teach them sure in this Art What do you mean C. Preaching you know hath been a Word long in use among us and no body needs be told what we mean by it But this being an old Phrase there were some that grew weary of it and changed it into Teaching And for some time who taught to day was the Phrase But this growing common fell into dislike too and so they called it Exercising And when this became stale also and pleased them no longer then I remember some called it Lecturing But this would not take and so Speaking became in a manner the only Word And among the most pure the question still was who Speaks here this Morning But afterward this was held forth by him to day A great many more such Alterations it 's like you can remember who are better acquainted with these matters than I. But I was going to tell you that if any man should have the conceit to call it Witnessing or Prophesying and this Phrase should get among them
This without doubt hath wosully insuared your peoples Consciences and is one great reason they are so full of fears and scruples They have been taught not to rely upon impartial Reason but to seek still for a place of holy Scripture to be their guide and warrant So Mr. W. Bradshaw a famous Divine Defence of his Book of Lots against Mr. Balmford whose name I know you reverence confessed to Mr. Gataker that he was often troubled to satisfy some in their Cases propounded to him though he gave them never so good reason for his Resolutions because they would not therewith be satisfied unless he could produce some place in Scripture for every particular Thus infinite perplexities doubts and scrupulosities must needs arise in mens minds as Mr. R. Hooker well expresses it and stops and rubs without any end be cast into the course of mens lives concerning their ordinary and civil affairs if the light of Reason shall be suppressed and men shall be constrain'd burn it never so clearly not to proceed by it in ought they are to do till they have had solemn access first to the written Word and fetch'd light from some particular sentence in it for the farther confirmation of them therein And thus I may add the Scripture came to be basely wrested and bended from its proper sense and meaning to serve their particular occasions And in their great Ignorance they went away better satisfied with a fanciful and impertinent application of it to their present business than if the soundest Reason in the world had been offered to them Only this in time was the mischief of it that by this means they found a Way to justify unlawful Actions and supported their Confidence in those wayes against the most evident Reason But it 's possible you will not regard what I say nor Mr. R. Hooker neither being one of those you call blind and superstitious writers Let me send you therefore to Mr. Calvin who tells you that if you understand not your Liberty about things in themselves indifferent there will be no quiet in your Consciences no end of Superstitions Many indeed think saith he that we are fond to move disputation about the free eating of flesh about the free use of dayes and garments and such other small trifles as they think them But there is more weight in them than is commonly thought For when Consciences have once cast themselves into the snare they enter into a long and cumbersome way from whence they can afterward find no easie way to get out If a man begin to doubt for instance whether he may use linnen Sheets Instit L. 3. cap. 16. Sect. 7. Shirts Handkerchiefs and Napkins neither will he be out of doubt whether he may use those of Hemp and after that of coarser stuff Nay he will begin to weigh with himself whether he cannot sup without Napkins and be without Handkerchiefs If he think dainty meat to be unlawful at length he shall not with quietness before the Lord eat either Brown-bread or Common meats when he remembers that he may yet sustain his body with baser food If he doubt of pleasant Wine afterward he will not drink even that which is dead with peace of Conscience last of all he will not be so bold to touch sweeter and cleaner water than other Finally at the length he will come to this point to think it unlawful as the common saying is to tread upon a straw lying a cross For the Question is not light and small being no less than this whether God will have us do this or that whose Will ought to guide all our Counsels and Actions N. C. I know none that are troubled with such idle scruples as these C. That may proceed from the dulness and shortness of their thoughts which never let them see into what endless Labyrinths their principles will lead them I am sure such rules as these have been so improv'd by your Ministers that in an ignorant zeal they deny you your lawful Liberties and lay upon you unnecessary Restramts And on the other side intice you to hear controversies and all manner of Doctrines saying that no part of the Counsel of God must be suppressed and conceiving the People would be defrauded if they were not admitted to these disputations They make no difference as my Lord Bacon * Wise and moderate Discourse of Church affairs printed 1641. since published in his Resuscitatio 1657. observed long ago between Milk and Strong-meat and to speak again in his words which now come to my mind what I said before in my own they seek to prove every thing by express Scripture or else imagine it is not to be allow'd and then that constrains them to wrest it and make conceited inferences and forced allusions And as for preaching it hath been in a manner made necessary to sanctifie every Ordinance which is another very ignorant Conceit There are many have thought saith he that it is almost of the Essence of the Sacrament of the Lords Supper to have a Sermon before it This hath brought Liturgies and firms of Divine Service into contempt and made those to be despised who had not the faculty of constant preaching As for those that could not preach at all they have been alwayes reproached by you in so strange a manner that it hath been another occasion of corrupting our Religion and bringing the holy Ordinance of God into contempt N. C. It 's impossible you should rather say the quite contrary C. Hear me a little and then judg These poor men were in a manner constrain'd by your rude clamours to take upon them to expound the word of God though very unable for it and thereby exposed too early even Preaching it self to the laughter and scorn of those that had some Wit to discern but no goodness to pitty their Weakness They were loth to hear themselves called Idol-Shepherds that had Mouths but could not speak a word from God and so rather than endure this reproach they entertain'd the people with their Glosses Paraphrases and Discourses upon the holy Scripture and called all the Word of the Lord though never so absurd and sensless Silence I confess had better becom'd them than straining themselves to speak what they did not understand but yet consider how hard it was to resist the temptation to open their Mouths as oft as they could whereby at once they might both avoid the contempt and odious brand of a dumb dog and also get a great reputation with the Ignorant multitude of an able painful Minister of God's Word And as for those who had some abilities to expound the Scriptures and exhort the People they were called upon with so much earnestness to preach the Word in season and out of season that they knew not at last what to preach They were forced to step up into the Pulpit and make a noise when they had little or Nothing to say By which means the Holy
the Common-Prayer is guilty of where the Minister makes the Gentleman presently confess it to be full of Popish Errors and to appoint horrible Blasphemies and lying Fables to be read to the People Nay makes him cry out almost almost as soon as they had begun their Discourse O horrible How have the Bishops deluded King Edward the Sixth Queen Elizabeth King James and our gracious King Charles and the whole State and made them believe there was nothing in the Service-Book that is amiss or any way contrary to the Word God Almighty deliver us from them I should blush to the end of my life if after our whole debate I had concluded as this man begun But this is the way of those Sots that talk as if they were infallible and would bear all before them by their bare word nay take it very ill if you be not converted as soon as they open their mouth Pythagoras is reviv'd in some of you and Mr. such a one said it is of as good Authority as the best proof in the world N. C. This was some ignorant Zealot I believe C. So one would think and yet he had so good an opinion of himself that he thought such Works as these fit for the eyes of the High Court of Parliament To whom I find he presented Certain Grievances an 1640. of the very same import with this goodly Dialogue but so absurdly slanderous that you cannot but be astonish't at his brutish stupidity For there he tells them as he doth the Gentleman at the conclusion of their Conference that the Bishops have appointed some portions of Scripture to be read on certain dayes and omitted others on purpose to pervert the meaning of Christ and to keep weak Christians in blindness The whole Book of Canticles for instance is never appointed to be read that the People as he will have it may not be able to see the ardent Love and affection of Christ toward his Spouse the Elect and they thereby be stirred up to love Christ and be truly zealous for his Glory Nay if you believe him the Books of the Kings all save the 8 first chapters and the Chronicles were forbid because they shew that Godly Kings did ever love Gods true Prophets and did hearken to them and were zealous of maintaining true Religion and suppressing Idolatry In which words he discovered the very grounds of their quarrel with the King viz. that he did not take such great Seers as himself into his bosom and suffer them to guide his Conscience as if they were of the Privy-Council of Heaven But he discovered withal how little esteem he for his part merited Or rather how well he deserved to be stigmatiz'd and branded in the forehead as one to speak in his own language that was a false-Prophet Prophesying lyes For was there ever any man before this so impudent as to put a Libel of this Nature against his spiritual Fathers and Governors into the hands of the Highest Court of the Kingdom Did any of the Priests or Prophets of Baal think you ever help themselves and their cause by such invectives against the Prophets of the Lord For my part I am of the mind that the Devil himself would be hard put to 't to invent more bold and malicious Slanders than these of this mans forging who wanted nothing but wit to make him like that Father of Lyes And yet I suppose he passed for a Godly man a precious Servant of Jesus Christ a Faithful Minister of the Lord Nay was cherished and incouraged as one of Gods Prophets who had told them things that could be known no wayes but by a Revelation His Book also no doubt found wonderful acceptance though it was stuft with so much Ignorance and railing The people read it with a blind Devotion just as he was transported with so blind a Passion as to accuse our Church of that which all that had eyes must needs acquit it of For both the Books of the Kings were Appointed to be read intirely in the later end of April and in May. As for the Chronicles they being little more than a Repetition of what was writ before might well be left to our private Reading together with some other Books not easy to be understood without great Labour and long Meditation N. C. I wish you would dismiss this man for he hath given us both too much trouble C. Your people would not when time was so easily lay his Book out of their hands as I am able to prove But let him go together with all the Crew of Revilers that were before him For you must know there were Dialogue-writers of the same Stamp in the dayes of your Fore-fathers In one of which Books called the Dialogue of White Devils the Author expresly tells us that if Princes hinder the bringing in of their Disciples they are Tyrants and may be deposed by their Subjects A Doctrine which with all your reading in the Books of the Kings and the Chronicles you will no where find justified For the people were better taught than to go about to depose those that did not favour the Lords Prophets I know you all disclaim this principle and I verily believe many of you abhor it but I mention it to let you see what the Maximes of some of your Predecessors imboldned some of their Posterity to do For this purpose I could relate strange passages out of some Books esteemed by your Party which would verify the censure of the Bishop of Down and Conner * In his Visitation speed at Lisnegarvy 1638. publish'd by Authority upon the Title of the Dialogue now named Which he saith was very fit for such mens Books for if ever there were White Devils or Devils transformed into Angels of Light it is in their persons who under the pretence of Sanctity labour to bring in all manner of Disorder into the Church and confusion into the Common wealth But you have no mind we should remember any thing that is past that so you may the more confidently fill the world with loud clamors as if there never were such doings as now Else you might know there was another Dialogue in Queen Elizabeths dayes between Diotrephes and S. Paul in which the Discipline and its Favourers are magnified as Apostolical but the Bishops of the Church of England made no better than so many proud Diotrephes's nay so many Devils and he of Canterbury so they speak is Beelzebub even the Prince of the Devils N. C. Still you will have all the talk to your self and I must hold my tongue Pray give me leave to inlarge my self a while for I am blam'd I assure you very much for saying so little in our last Conference C. Speak your mind N. C. I must ingeniously confess that we cannot accuse you of such speeches as these but yet you shew your great malignity to us otherwayes In particular it is very ill taken that you make our Ministers guilty of
on all the Subjects under the Pain of being incapable of any Office if they refused it But now you will be free from all imposition of this Nature And an Oath enjoyn'd by the King and both the Houses under no severer penalty than a small Restraint is look't upon as a grievous Oppression There are those likewise that can remember when the Commons alone put out another Order about some of the affairs of Religion But now a Law enacted by the Kings Authority is thought an high invasion of Christs Prerogative and he must not meddle in matters of his Worship The reason is any thing may be done by any Body to advance your fancies but nothing against them by no creature in the World Nay we have not forgotten the time when Mr. Case used this Argument among others to perswade the People to take the Covenant * Sermons about the Covenant p. 64. because Antichrist and his faction had prosper'd so much by entring into Covenants therefore the People of God should try what this way will do which hath been so advantageous to the enemy For God said he may make use of that Stratagem to ruin their Kingdom which they used to build it But now if any of us say that the same Persons have maintain'd a great reverence in the people to their Religion by many Stately Ceremonies splendid Vestures and Pompous Rites and therefore we may hope to keep the Ordinances of God from contempt by a few solemn and grave Ceremonies by decent habits and such rites and gestures as may beseem the dignity of our Religion presently you raise an out-cry against us and the People are told that we are Popishly affected of an Antichristian spirit and imitate Idolaters For which I can assign no cause but this that then the Argument was for you and now it makes for us And you are resolved to serve your selves by all means though it be by approving and anon rejecting the very same things If a thing like you well it shall go very hard but you will find some Scripture for it And if none speak plainly you will torture and draw some or other to be on your side and labour to prove that they signifie according to your meaning But if a thing dislike you then you ask for plain Scritprue Nothing will satisfie unless we shew it you in express terms It is Superstition Will worship any thing but good unless we produce a text in so many words to confirm it Of the same shifting humour was the late Army as appears by their unparalel'd Story which in brief is this On the 20. of April 1653. they turn'd their Masters whom they had long served out of doors as a company of Self-Seekers who minded their own private more than the publick Good About six years after finding the good Spirit declining which formerly appeared among them in carrying on the great work those are their Canting expressions and the good old Cause it self become a reproach they were led to look back and examine the cause of the Lords withdrawing his wonted presence from them And among other things they remembred what Injuries they had done to the remnant of the long Parliament and that they were eminent asserters of that Cause and had a special presence of God with them and were signally blessed in that Work And therefore invited them by their Declaration of May 6. 1659. in which you may find these things to come and sit again promising to yield their uttermost Assistance for their sitting in safety Would you not imagine now that they would for ever reverence these Eminent these Blessed men and that to oppose them in their great work would be in their opinion to fight against God to drive away the good Spirit and to endeavour to destroy the Cause of God And yet it was not long before they were of another mind They held themselves for all this to be the greater Saints the Army of the living God and so immutably setled in his favour that they should not lose it do they what they would And therefore as soon as ever the Parliament refused to act according to their mind they refused to yield their obedience When they voted some of their Commissions void and resolved to govern the Army by Commissioners in stead of a Lieutenant General these late penitents could see nothing of God any longer among them The special Presence of God vanished and in a moment disappeared So that on the 13th of the next October they lockt up the doors of the House set themselves once more above their Masters and in an insolent manner declared * Declara agreed at Wallingford House Octob. 27. all their Orders Acts pretended Acts or Declarations and all proceedings thereupon had or done on Munday the 10. of that Month and on Tuesday and Wednesday following null and void to all intents and purposes in as full and ample a manner as if they had been never done And immediately after they pact the Men away after these Acts and Orders Nay this they did notwithstanding that they had stiled themselves several times but five dayes before this 10. of October Your faithful Servants the Army and professed that having diligently inquired into their hearts and wayes Humble Represent and Petit. Octob. 5. they found nothing among them but faithfulness and integrity to the Parliament concluding their address in this manner that notwithstanding all endeavours to the contrary they would by the help of God be found faithful to them Were not these gallant fellows Wonderful constant to their Principles and Professions Mightily overawed by the presence of God Single-hearted and faithful to their word Yes by all means you must needs say for of such as these a great part of the Churches of the Saints is now composed And faithful they were to themselves and that was enough Constant to this principle that they were alway in the right and what would you have more They could Cant still in Scripture language and therefore God was not withdrawn from them They could fast and pray still and had a power to turn even the Lords-day into a day of Humiliation and therefore the Good Spirit had not forsaken them They hated Antichrist that is us and were resolved to burn the flesh of the Whore with fire so still remained the Army of the Lord of Hosts For as if they had some such work in hand as the Apostles had they call upon all the Godly in the nation to say on their behalf who are sufficient for these things and to cry aloud for them before the Throne of Grace that the Lord himself would appear and carry on his work in their hand And great reason there was to expect it since they had once more injur'd those who asserted his cause and done that very thing for which as they said he had before withdrawn his wonted presence from them O the Impudent foreheads of these Men O the
think it was Generation-work to pull down Monarchy to bind Kings in chains nay Protectors in fetters of Iron And when they were not able to do the last though they had effected the other then they fell to witnessing-work and prophesying against it For that was the Common-wealths mens phrase when they spoke of O. CR. himself * True Catalogue p. 12. The Lords faithful people the foolish contemptible nothings irreconcileable enemies to the Government of a single person were putting up their prayers and appeals to the Lord witnessing and prophecying against him and the Beast-like foundation on which he stood c. For the setting up of him you must know was in their opinion the healing the deadly wound of the Beast * Ib. p. 9. Though by others who were for Generation-work too and thought themselvs as great promoters of it as they He and his son were called Moses and Joshua or David and Solomon as you may see in several Addresses made to them But above all commend me to the good people of Chard in Somersetshire The address from those at Leicester was much to the same purpose who bless that Providence who had given them such a Joshua to conduct them to the land of promise Another phrase as hard to explain as the former But as greedily swallow'd and made use of by your wretched Phrase-mongers to abuse themselves and the Nation In short All the whole gang thought God was fulfilling prophecies and making good the Revelation and they must help and be instrumental to him in this Generation-work Else they might be shut out of the land of promise and not enter into the New Jerusalem There was no man of this sort who had never so little power were he but a petty Constable or the like Officer but he imagin'd he heard God saying to him as Mordecai to Esther Who knows but thou art raised up for such a time as this Nay those whom you count the soberest persons were so drunk with this conceit that they fancied themselvs or their Friends to be Angels powring out Vials or some such thing Mr. Edwards I remember who with so much zeal and courage incountred all the Sectaries and gave a particular reproof to one Durance who prayed that the King might be brought to the Parliament in chains Fell into this dotage himself peremptorily to affirm that God would honour their Brethren of Scotland to be instruments of pulling down the Sectaries They shall all fall before the Scots saith he whom they have so vilified and unworthily dealt with as the Prelatical and Popish party did Which he proves from Revel 3.8 9 10. All those promises to Philadelphia he assures you do in a special manner belong to our Brethren of Scotland as First that God will make them come i. e. those who are the Antitype to those Jews Gangraemi second part p. 193. 194. the Sectaries Anabaptists Independents that whole faction and worship before their feet and to know that God hath loved them that is they shall overcome and triumph over those Sectaries c. O Church of Scotland and all ye that are for Reformation Presbyterial against the Sectaries nourish your Hopes by these things neither let your hearts be troubled whatsoever the world speaks against you And so he interprets a story of a Drum beating in an Independent Congregation as a signification that the War which the Independents thirsted for with the Scots as much as ever an unhappy Boy did to be at fisty-cuffs with one of his fellows would prove their ruin and be a means to overthrow all their Conventicles * Gangraena 3. part pag. 165. Though alas Quite contrary to his expectation the Sectarian Army beat the Scots to dirt subdued the whole Nation brought Philadelphia into bondage and made her worship at their feet And yet Mr. Burroughs I observe one of those Independents Mr. Edw. writes against seemed when time was to have the same opinion of the Scottish Brethren and to foresee glorious things that they would do For he tells the Citizens Certainly that Nation is a Nation that God doth love a Nation that God doth honour and by whose many expressions of his love sheweth that he doth intend to make them SPECIAL INSTRVMENTS of the GREAT THINGS he hath to do in this latter age of the World Speech at Guild-Hall upon the occasion of the coming in of the Scots And it should seem he read this in the Revelation too for he adds We may truly call it Philadelphia And Mr. Brightman that famous light it former time 30. or 40. years since did Parallel the Church of Philadelphia with the Church of Scotland Philadelphia signifies Brotherly-love When was there ever a Nation such a Church that joyned together in such firm Covenant as they have done Hid we the like Vnion among us O how great things had we done before this time And then he tells them that it is a Nation ingag'd to God in a higher more extraordinary way than any Nation upon the face of the Earth a Reformed Nation A people that have risen up against Antichrist more than ever any people have done and that is the great work of God in these times And therefore certainly God hath a love to them because they break the Ice and begin the work and arise in such a way as they do for the pulling down of the man of sin I suppose he means they arose in the way of Arms and resolved not to lay them down till they had finished the work of the times What that was Mr. Burroughs tells you though the word Antichrist now signifies nothing certainly but what every one pleases And Mr. H. Wilkinson tells the Parliament of England what it is in the same terms Your business saith he lyes professedly against the Apocalyptical beast and all his Compliees Epistle before his Sermon preached 25. Octo. 1643. The birth with which you travel as it was the expectation of Antiquity and Ages past so it will be the happiness of posterity and Ages future Think not that it is in the power or compass of Devils or men to make that birth prove abortive which himself hath undertaken to bring forth and to baptize with the name of Israel it being a child of promise Isa 66.9 Shall I bring to the birth and not cause to bring forth saith the Lord shall I cause to bring forth and shut the womb saith thy God No saith he a little after God hath spoken the word for the restauration of Sion and building up the walls of Jerusalem and therefore let your Faith hang out its conquering and triumphing Flag and let Emanuel be the Moto Thus you see what both the great Parties thought was the work of Generation and what fine work they have made of it there being a greater growth of Antichristianism of all sorts since that time than ever we knew before You see likewise what work they make with
freed from her forgeries So wholesome sometime is a little severity And so much is the force of Civil Authority with these people above the sharpest Arguments of Divines For they opposed the Spirit and their manifestations and illuminations to all their Minister's Reasons which would do no service at the bar of the Court of Justice where they understood none of this language And now I speak of the Manifestations of the Spirit it is very strange to me that you should generally expect the Holy Ghost should do for you what Christ promised at his parting to the Twelve Apostles teach you all things and guide you into all truth It is another sign of great Ignorance in you and of insincerity I doubt in many of your Ministers who are afraid to dispossess you of this conceit and to instruct you in the plain difference between these times and those but suffer if not teach you to apply to your selves whatsoever our Saviour spoke to the Apostles alone A thing which is so palpable that I cannot but wonder men should so pervert the Scripture especially when they see there is no such thing but that those whom they account the people of God are of several nay contrary minds And that all cannot be in the right and yet none they think devoid of the Spirit to teach them all things and lead them into all truth This sure makes so many think every strong and unusual motion they find within them is the work and operation of the Spirit of God And that every place of Scripture that comes on a sudden into their mind is darted from Heaven and the immediate dictate of the Holy Ghost Though never so impertinently applied to their present occasions And that all the ardent affections and transports and raptures they have in prayer or at other seasons are likewise Inspirations from above and that now they are filled with the Holy Ghost Which is a gross and ignorant Conclusion in my opinion for want of such obvious considerations as these that such heats and flights are common to them with the Heathen Poets and excellent Orators and that bad men have had them as well as the best As I am able to shew you if you please N. C. Some other time if you will for we have spent now a great deal in this kind of discourse C. Let me tell you notwithstanding that this I believe is one reason that your people are filled with so many doubts jealousies and fears of being deserted When they have not these heats then they think the Spirit is gone and how to comfort them it 's hard to tell till they return again And now I mention this give me leave to tell you it is another evidence of great Ignorance That the minds of well meaning and honest-hearted people among you are full of so many scruples and so uncertain what to resolve on all occasions You may say perhaps it is because their consciences are tender and very careful and wary what they do And so you may say when you see a Blind man tremble and walk softly and feel his way at every step with his staff that he is a very Wary man when it is not Caution but his want of sight that makes him so diffident And indeed how is it possible they should have any true assurance in any case when it is to hard if not impossible to be resolved in the great question of all What a man must do to be saved and attain the satisfaction of knowing that be hath an interest in Christ To this the most admired Divines reply that a man can have no comfort but only by going to the promise O but saith the poor Soul according as it is taught I dare not so much as look to the promise Mr. Th. Hooker's Poor Doubting Christian drawn to Christ p. 30. I cannot believe it To this the Answer is p. 115. That a man shall never believe on these terms if he look to have faith besore he go to the promise For thou must not have faith and then go to the promise but must first go to the Promise for the power of that faith from it thou must receive power to believe But then how shall the Soul go without Faith Will a Promise do him any good unless he believe it to be the very Word of God on which he should trust This is an unanswerable difficulty as far as I can find These Divines cannot tell him how he should go to the promise since it is confess'd he must go by Faith and if be look to have faith before be go to the promise he will never have it They only tell him over again p. 117. and if it will do well and good That we must not bring faith to the Promise but receive faith from it to believe Thus the poor Soul is sent to the promise for Faith and back again to saith to lay hold on the Promise but how to do that who can tell It must first go to the promise to fetch faith and yet how should it go if it have no faith In this case how should a man chuse but be full of scruples and like one that is bewildred and lost not knowing what will become of him N. C. I have read the Book for it uses to be one of the first that is recommended to us and as I remember he tells you a little after How a Soul should get to the promise C. I thank you for remembring me of it He moves indeed that question p. 144. But me-thinks he only leads a man into a worse Labyrinth For these are the Rules to be observed how the Soul may get to the Promise First Throw off all power and ability in thy self Let the bea rt lie still till the wind and tide and promise come and that will carry thee And yet the Second Rule which immediately follows is this which contradicts the former Bring the promise home to thy heart that the promise may bring thy heart to it How is this possible I would know how to get to the promise I am told I must lie still that the promise may come to me And yet at the next breath I am sent to bring the promise home to my heart which supposes I must go to fetch it What a case am I in now What Direction can he give me to bring me out of these Bryers Why To answer this doubt the only way is to unsay this in the third Rule which supposes the Promise will come of it self and that I need not bring it home For it runs in these words When the promise is thus come home to thee and thou seest the sufficiency and the Authority of it then all thou hast to do is this In the stream of that promise be carried home to the promise p. 149. N. C. I can make no sense of it C. Nor I neither But the thing he seems to aims is this that a man must
things more particularly to see the Scripture so wretchedly abused wrested even in this very case to justify their Separation and with-drawing from us N. C. You mean I believe that to the Corinthians cited by Mr. Bridge Come out from among them and be ye separate 2 Pag. 166. touch no unclean thing 2 Cor. 6.17 C. Yes N. C. And doth it not require us to have no Communion with the wicked of which your Congregations we think are full C. But do you think then we are all Pagans and Infidels i. e. such people as do not so much as acknowledg Jesus Christ to be the Lord N. C. God forbid C. Then you apply those words impertinently to us as you do the rest of the Scriptures who are nothing like those from whom the Apostle would have the Corinthians withdraw It is an exceeding great shame that you have been so long turning over the Bible and talking of the word of God and yet not understand so plain a thing as this You seem to me to be like those the Apostle speaks of in another Epistle who are ever learning but never come to the knowledg of the Truth Nay you are like little children that tear and rend their Book into little scraps or like those imperfect creatures I spoke of before you nibble at a bit of the Scripture and instantly start away and leave all the rest Could you not have cast your eye back but to the 14. verse There you might have seen who they are the Apostle speaks of Be ye not unequally yoked together with Infidels saith he i. e. Either do not marry an infidel or do not joyn with them in any of their rites belonging to their Idolatrous service Be not at their Idol feasts the thing he admonisht them of in the former Epistle and touches upon here again as some think lest they should not be cautious enough in this particular For the Apostle having told them an Idol was nothing they might hold these festival entertainments to be indifferent things and so when their kinsfolk or friends invited them not deny that Civility to accompany them to their Temples Stay says the Apostle consider what you do What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness c. these things are as contrary as Light and Darkness you cannot partake of the Table of the Lord and the Table of Devils too as he told them in his first letter And then he renews his Exhortation Come out from among them and be ye separate from those Idolatrous Infidels touch no unclean thing meddle not with their Idolatrous services nor any of their wicked ways You would be more assured that this is the sense if you would but turn to the place from whence these words are cited as the Margin directs you Isa 52.11 where the Prophet bids not the more holy sort of Jews to separate from their prophane Brethren but the whole Body of the Jews to flye out of Babylon as any body may see that reads the place And therefore they cannot be urged without a notorious force to prove such a separation as you are in of one part of a society professing belief in Christ and baptized into his name and renouncing all Idols whatsoever from the other And so Mr. Geree I remember a discreet Presbyterian confessed and explained the words to the same purpose that I do And so did a noted person long before him * Arin 1610. Mr. Rich. Bernard plain evidence p. 140 141 c. and far more largely in his dispute against the Brownists For I must tell you those old Separatists condemned by all honest Nonconformists in former times sought to justifie their Schism from the Church of Christ from this very place and the very truth is so did the Ancient Donatists Who to make a fair shew for their fearful Schism cryed out just as you do now Come out from among them touch no unclean thing Depart depart Separate your selves Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness Be not partakers of other mens sins What hath the Chaff to do with the Wheat which are the very words now Ignorantly imployed by your Party against us with as little knowledg of their sense and meaning as of their being the rotten Tools wherewith those Schismaticks sought to overthrow the whole Church N.C. How come you by more knowledg than other folk in this matter Can you tell what the Donatists said C. Yes without reading St. Austin For I can believe an old English Divine who lived above half an Age since that acquainted me with this and shewed withall that those proud people had the same answer to this place from that Father Mr. G. Gyffard plain Declaration that our Brownists are full Donatists p. 19. An. 1590. which I have now given you These words saith he They understanding carnally have cut themselves into so many divisions into little bits in this Africa alone For they do not understand that no man is joyned with Infidels but he that commits the sins of Pagans or else doth favour those that do such things c. And who hath fellowship with darkness but he that by the darkness of his consent forsaking Christ doth follow Belial Who puts his part with Insidels but he which is partaker of that Infidelity For that way he ceaseth to be the Temple of God neither otherways doth he joyn himself to Idols N. C. I am convinced of this But may we not gather by proportion that we ought to separate from the wicked sort of Christians though it be not here intended C. Hear what Mr. John Geree answers to this No. Resolution of 10 Cases 1644. All that can be inferred is that we should avoid needless familiarity with the wicked and all s ciety in sin To keep them from the Sacrament if we can But if it be not in our Power not to omit the Sacrament because they partake of it In which he followed the resolution of St. Austin who immediately after the words before mentioned adds these as my Author tells me B. 2. against Parmen cap. 18. And they which are the Temples of the living God and in the midst of a crooked and perverse Generation appear as lights in the world having the word of life nothing doth infect them which they tolerate for Vnities sake nor are they pent up in any straight because God doth dwell in them and walk in them And they depart in the mean time out of the evil and are separate at least in heart lest haply while they would separate by the sedition of Schism they should rather be spiritually separated from the good than carporally from the bad This old Divine also admonishes us very well out of the same Father that when the multitude of the Assemblies of the Church are free from that crime to which Excommunication is denounced it is very healthful and because so many avoid him he will be stricken with fear and healed through
Christ that now are or ever were N. C. Pray do not say so C. They have granted me that for 1400. years there never was any Church with which we might hold Communion if not with ours And I will prove that there hath been none for these 1668. years N. C. You are strangely bold C. No bolder than Mr. Calvin who will give you good satisfaction if you read the Chapter to which I referred you that the Church of the Jewes in our Saviour's time and the Apostolical Churches afterward tolerated greater Vices in manners and fouler Errors in Doctrine than were in any Church from which in his days a separation was made And I will shew you distinctly either now or when you will require it that those Churches planted and watered by the Apostles had those Corruptions in Doctrine Worship Manners Discipline and Government which cannot be pretended to be in ours And yet there was no separation of some Members from the rest Nay the Apostles notwithstanding all these speak very well in general of some They call them all Believers and Saints And none knew then any other Men of the World and Vnbelievers but Pagans such as did not acknowledg Jesus to be the Lord. N. C. I am loth to give you so great a trouble But I pray answer me one Scripture which seems to be against this when it saith The Apostles separated the Disciples Act. 19.9 C. Admirably argued The Apostles separated the Disciples from those that were not Disciples and therefore we may separate Disciples from Disciples N. C. How say you C. The Apostles I say were sent to preach the Gospel and make Disciples to Christ baptizing them into his Name who believed on him Those who would make profession of Christ they gathered into a new Church from among the Jewes and Pagans who disown'd him And accordingly here in this City having won some to believe and made them Christs Disciples they separated them from the rest of the Jewish Synagogue who blasphemed Christ and would acknowledg no other Religion but that of Moses to be a distinct Society by themselves and no longer Members of the unbelieving Synagogue From whence you would inferr that one Christian is to be separated from another Christian and believers gathered from believers if one part appear to us Pious and the other Vicious Which is just as if the Apostles out of those few Disciples separated from the Jews had made another lesser Church separated from the rest of the Disciples N. C. I see my Error plainly And shall remember hereafter if I can not merely to nibble at the Scripture as you called it but take it altogether But Mr. Bridge affrights us horribly with one place which prophesies he sayes of the greatest separation in the latter dayes that ever was It is in the Revelation where the Spirit cryes Come out of her my people that you be not partaker of her sins There shall be the greatest separation and that provokes the Antichristian party as his words are p. 179. of the Book before mention'd C. I remember them very well Rev. 18.4 But do you still take Mr. Bridge for a Prophet Have I not shown you what a rare Seer he is in the Revelation N. C. I have heard others beside him mention this place Mr. Case I remember gave us this reason to hope that God would be gracious to England Englands Incouragement to wait on God p. 69. and that Babylon should shortly fall because he had begun with such a distinct and audible voice from Heaven to call his people out of Babylon saying Come out of her my people c. Rev. 18.4 her Idolatrous bowings cringings Altars Crosses and cursed Ceremonies false Worship false Doctrine C. You need say no more I have it perfectly in mind as well as you And you were wont I know in those days to believe that they knew the designs of Heaven as well as if they had been Counsellors of State in that kingdom And conceived the News they told you of what was coming as sure and certain as if they had layn in the Bosom of St. John as he did in our Saviour's But I hope by this time you are convinced they were only drowsy dreamers that knew nothing of his Mind And see that they are but like a poor Mouse which having but one hole is easily caught Babylon Babylon was all they had to say then and thither they run now These are the Magical sounds whereby they would astonish you The Mystical words whereby they practise all their Sorceries upon you Stop but your ears against these and you are free from their Enchantments for they can never prove that the Church of England is this Babylon from whence his people are call'd or that she hath taken so much as one sip or kiss'd the Cup of her Fornications N. C. I never askt them indeed to prove this C. No You took it very lovingly upon their word And ran after those whom you fancied and were inamoured of with an implicit Faith as if you had tasted too deep of the Cup your selves If you did but hear them say Mystery Mystery the very word you know in the forehead of the whore presently you bowed to them and thought you were under the teachings of an infallible Spirit And you remember I suppose very well that those two and all the rest of the Ministers that were wont to preach before the Parliament and in the greatest Congregations generally chose their texts out of the Old-Testament seldom out of the New unless it were the Revelation N. C. What of that C. By which means they furnished themselves in an abundant measure with such Comparisons as did them admirable service They could easily contrive it so that they might seem such a select number as the Jewes the peculiar people of God and we like the Aegyptians and Babylonians or what other accursed Nation they pleased And so applying all those places which spoke of them to us and our times they excited in you the same hatred against us that was in the Jews against those Nations and made you think it as necessary to separate from us as for the Jews to come out of Babylon Nay by a wonderful Art or prodigious Inchantment rather which argues your great dulness they first raised your fancies put words into your mouths and taught you to expect all that they had a mind should shortly come to pass and then they made the expectation they had wrought in you an argument that it should come to pass Thus I remember one of your Divines incouraged the Parliament to expect the overthrow of Babylon because said he the General talk throughout the Houshold among the Domesticks is Mr. H. Wilkinson Sermon upon Zach. 18.19 pag. 21. that Christ their King is coming to take possession of his Throne This they not only whisper but speak publickly Now you know before Kings go to a place their purpose is first known among
flock committed to their trust From whom notwithstanding the People of Israel were not to withdraw nor to renounce all communion with them and obedience to them But besides this I would have you know that if there be any Ministers among us that are but like Idols and Images of men there are those and thanks be to God good store who hear and see and speak and do the will of God in the places where they are set N. C. I am convinced of all this C. But I pray once more observe whether all such Writers and Preachers as Mr. Bridge and the rest of the separation in which you are ingaged do not take more pains to prove the danger of Idolatry and the hainousness of the sin than to tell you what Idolatry is and to prove that it is Idolatry to joyn with us Their way alwayes was to prove little and to accuse stoutly to declaim loudly and not to reason to terrifie the people by a dreadful sound of words and raise great passions in them not to inform their judgments what they are to do and what to avoid And for that purpose nothing hath ever done them better service than Babylon and Aegypt and the Golden Calves and Idol Ministers Idol Service and such like words of no certain and determinate meaning And to say the truth in this as Mr. Can himself could not but observe a great while ago consists a great difference between Christs institutions and mens inventions Whatsoever God will have us do or not do he layes down the same openly precisely manifestly but when Satan speaks by his Instruments he speaks so ambiguously and cloakedly that one knows not how to take it nor which way to apply it * So I find his words cited in Mr. J. Balls book against him pag. 88. Which if you will but apply as Mr. Ball told him to your own manner of disputing and alledging testimonies It will discover your-selves to be the deceivers who affect ambiguous and equivocal speeches and seek by mists and foggs of strange and unusual arguments and sentences wrest to a contrary sense to blind the eyes and puzzle the understandings of the simple For you hide your selves under the terms of false Church false ☞ Ministry false Prophets false Worship flying from Idolatry taking heed of Idols c. which you have taken up in a peculiar sense and running along in that strain you pervert the Scriptures wrong Authors confound things to be distinguished dispute sophistically and while you boast of clear proofs divine precepts examples and practises of Forefathers c. you only raise a dust to dazzle the eye For let the matter be lookt into and you have neither divine Precept nor Example of godly Forefathers to justifie your separation What you teach hath been condemned in Schools cryed down in Sermons disallow'd in all the Churches of the Saints from the very beginning to this day N. C. You are heated now to some purpose C. It is better you should blame my zeal than I blame my own chilness and I had rather a great deal be condemned of some violence than of a lazy indifference in these matters For who is there that values his Religion and reverences the Sacred Scriptures that can hear them thus abused and not have his spirit stirred in him N. C. There are those who think they smell something else that stirs the spirits of your Ministers C. What should that be N.C. Envy and Anger that any men should be liked better than themselves It troubles them to see any body leave their Churches and follow our Ministers because they would not be thought less able than they And it 's possible their congregations may be thin when so many have withdrawn themselves from them C. There is an old saying that No man ever sought another in the Oven who had not been there before himself Had not your Preachers been heretofore tickled with the sight of full Congregations and the fancy of having many followers they could never think Multitudes and throng'd Assemblies which many do not want so necessary to the contentment of any man of worth among us And were not you intollerably proud and conceited of your selves this imagination could never have entred into your heads that it dejects our Ministers to want your company What are you that they should tremble to hear you say in a threatning manner We will never hear him more Are you the only men of Wisdom the sole Beauty of Christian Assemblies Is all their labour lost if you be not there to commend it Are the rest of the people no better than the walls and the seats Speak man Is it a great courtesie to a Minister that you will be pleased to hear him Must he think himself beholden to you that you vouchsafe him your presence Nay take it for an honour that you come and help to make a numerous Auditory in which you shine as the precious stones in a Ring O prodigious Vanity I have heard indeed that some of your Ministers made low reverences to you and studied to humour you as if they thought you deserved much of them for honouring their Assemblies but I know none of that mind If you will not come to hear them you may stay away and I wonder who will have the worse of it you or they N. C. If they are not concern'd in this why do they keep such a stir about Separation Cannot they let the people do as they will and say nothing To what purpose is it to make so great a noise about such little things C. How say you little things Hear Mr. J. Ball I beseech you a person whom you reverence I suppose who tells you in another Book of his Trial of the grounds of separation Epistle to the Reader that how small soever the things in themselves may seem to be the evil consequences that follow thereupon be both many and great It is no small matter to bury that under the condemnation of false worship as Mr. Bridge doth which the Lord the Author of all Truth the Determiner of his true pleasing and acceptable worship doth allow in his service It is no small offence to forsake the prayers of the Congregation to depart from the Table of the Lord when he calls to feast with himself and to break off Society and communion with the Church of Christ to fill the hearts of weak Christians with doubts and distractions as not knowing what to do or what way to take to spend time in reasonings and disputings of this kind which might much more profitably be imployed in the practice of Repentance and holy obedience to expose Religion to contempt and the truth of God to reproach among them that delight to speak evil These are sad effects of this Separation which I oppose Which tends not as he speaks in his Answer to Can to the overthrow of Antichrist but to the renting of the Church the disgrace of Religion the
the place of God and you who submitted to their orders Worshipped the creature and said constructively and in effect if he reason right to the Parliament Thou art my God or I acknowledge and own thee for my God N. C. I remember the words pag. 12. C. And what would have become of you if after this dreadful sentence he had not in an extraordinary fit of good nature revoked it and allowed the use of a prescribed form For though he say that conceived prayer for the nature and kind of it is that very worship which God Commands Yet as he doth not prove it so he affirms it not confidently without this restriction at least to those that are or by the use of means may be capable of it p. 30. Very kindly said I perceive this gift then of conceiving prayer is but natural and no divine inspiration and where nature is not ready in its conceptions it may be relieved by the help of Art and some may be uncapable of it whatsoever means they use to acquire this gift And consequently conceived prayer is not the Worship which for the nature and kind of it God commands because he doth not command impossible things but another manner of Worship by a constant form may be used nay imposed too when a Magistrate judges it needful and sees that those who are most zealous for conceived Prayers alone have generally least abilities to conceive aright In short he grants p. 55. that stinted forms of Prayer in themselves unto some men and under some circumstances may be lawful He might as well have said needful for I suppose-he thought them lawful in case men could not conceive prayers themselves as they ought And then why may not the circumstances be such that they may be needful to all at least at sometimes when men of the readiest inventions are indisposed And mark I beseech you how timerously he begins to speak after all his vapouring when he tells us We shall hardly find in the Scripture especially in the New Testament the same Prayer used by the same person the second time It seems we may find it if we will but take the pains But to save us a labour he presently remembers that Christ prayed the same words a second and a third time which he excuses thus by the same words we are to understand the same in sense matter and import but not in sound letters or syllables How he came to know this I cannot tell for my part I believe our Saviour was not concern'd about new words when he had the same thing to say again But the like peremptory conclusion he makes concerning all the exhortations to prayer delivered by Christ or his Apostles which he saith were intended only of that kind of prayer which the Saints were to conceive and indite by the help of the Spirit which they who believed did receive To countenance this he cites a great many Scriptures and tells us that those places at least the most of them cannot be understood of the Miraculous gifts of the Holy Ghost c. which is so notoriously false that I wonder he had the confidence to affirm it The first is Joh. 7.39 the next Act. 5.32 which no man I think before him ever understood otherwise than of the extraordinary gifts bestow'd on the day of Pentecost And of such gifts the Apostle speaks in the Rom. 5.5 2. Cor. 5.5 Gal. 3.2 Ephes 1.13 In short there is but one place of all that he musters up that can with any colour be drawn to serve his purpose viz. Rom. 8.14 15. And yet to me there is no Sense so plain of those words as this that all the gifts of the Holy Ghost being a great Evidence of the truth of Christianity they that lived accordingly might be assured of the love of God and whether they were Jewes or Gentiles might call God Father though they observed not the Law of Moses But I most marvel that he should alledge that place in 1 Joh. 2.27 which the Brownists I remember were wont to cite and with more shew of reason to prove that every Saint had the Holy Spirit to open to them and lead them into every truth To which if you please you shall hear what the Old Non-conformist replyed N. C. I had rather hear what you can reply to the Scriptures which he brings to prove that therefore God abominates a worship or a form and manner of Worship because he hath not commanded it Though the Worship were in its own nature abominable yet he takes no notice of that but only of its not being commanded which is a sign the provocation lyes there Jer. 7.31 Jer. 19.5 c. pag. 19.20 C. I remember the places very well and remember withal that this is a miserable old argument which hath been answered many a time before he set pen to Paper And it hath been proved with plain Evidence that the meaning of the words which I commanded not is as much as which I forbad as he had expresly their offering their children to Molock of which he speaks in that Jer. 7.31 So when it 's said that they offer'd strange fire which the Lord commanded not Lev. 10.1 all conclude that less is said and more understood viz. that the Lord hath forbidden it Mr. Ainsworth himself cannot deny it who yet makes the same use of this phrase sometimes that this Author doth And indeed a man must flatly contradict all reason that opposes this For when he speaks of those that should worship other Gods Sun and Moon which he had not commanded Deut. 17.3 it is senceless to interpret it otherwise than this which he had forbidden For if this was the reason why a man sinned in worshipping the Moon that he did it without Gods leave or Command it would suppose that God might have commanded them to worship it and serve other Gods which no body imagines All those places therefore which he alledges to prove that Gods not commanding a thing is enough to make it unlawful amount to no more but this that his forbidding a thing makes it unlawful N. C. But we ought to interpret the Scripture according to the very form of the words and so that is unlawful which is not commanded C. Just now you were only for the sense and the matter not the words and syllables But to let that pass I have shown you this is a fashion of Speech in the Old Testament for a thing forbidden And besides the absurdity of your Interpretation is so great that the wiser sort of that party who first used this argument were forced afterward to forsake it as I can clearly demonstrate out of Mr. Cartwright And in deed where hath the Lord commanded a Minister to read a Text and gloss upon it or the Congregation to sing the Psalms of David in Metre Mr. Smith can never be answered by these Disputers who said that the Holy Scriptures were not to be retained as helps
The Saints and people of God Seas Truths Sermon 6. p. 166. saith he they withdraw from the men of the World and do separate from them Now when we withdraw from men and from their worship we condemn their Worship and the men of the world do not love to be condemned To separate from them and from their Worship this they cannot bear The Saints do separate from them and therefore there is such a deal of anger and wrath in their hearts against them C. Alas Good man Doth he think we have such an opinion of him and his Saints as they have of themselves He flatters himself too much It is one thing to imitate the Saints and another thing to counterfeit them He shall never perswade me that quick-silver is better than gold and that turbulent and affrighted Imagination can be a surer guide either in the choice or exercise of our Religion than a calm Reason and a fixed well-resolved Judgment Let him call himself and his party Saints a thousand times or as oft as he breathes it shall never move me at all nor shall I think the worse but the better of my self for being none of them Let him pride himself in new devices of a different worship for the Saints and the rest of the world I am very well contented if they will but withdraw themselves far enough from us and let us be out of the hearing of their Gibberish Let him lead them to the Indies if he please and be separated from us by the wide Ocean it will be a great satisfaction to enjoy our worship quietly * Yet you must not hope for this For they must stay to power forth the Vials which next to the Separating from us is the thing that provokes the Antichristian party For they are to torment the men of the world and make them gnash their teeth and bite their tongues for pain As he tells you afterward pag. 179. to our selves Or rather let him retire into his Closet and think no company in the world pure enough for him but his Books and no Books but his own his preciseness I assure him shall never trouble me at all And I suppose I may pass my word for our whole Church that they will not complain for want of his company nor think it any disgrace to our Worship that such do not like it or perhaps abhor it nor any shame to themselves that they will have no Communion with us There were alwayes people of a morese and sowr humour whom nothing can please no not what they do themselves when once it pleases others too They must be of a contrary Opinion to the whole race of mankind And hate some things only because others love them And therefore if they not only withdraw themselves from us but also slight us and set us at naught the concern is not so great as to require my care Let them call Us the World and if they please the Dogs that are without the Holy City I value it no more than the barkings of an angry Cur Though in his vain conceit of himself and party he imagines we lay their disrespect to us mightily to heart For this you know is another cause which he is pleased to assign why the men of the world are angry with them The Saints and people of God do not regard the men of the World and the men of the World they think so Now for high and lofty men to be slighted and not regarded this makes them angry For which he cites Dan 3. and then repeats it They cannot bear this that they should not be regarded high and great men that they should not be regarded and therefore no wonder there is such a great deal of wrath and anger in their hearts against the people of God But let him repeat it as oft as he will tell him from me that it moves us not at all to want their regard for we do not think our selves honoured by their Esteem and Respect It is rather a reproach than an honour to be commended and praised by such mouths as value a composed countenance and a Sett of phrases more than the most composed and regular life and the best sense in the world Let them slight us therefore so much if they list as not to move their Hat or give us the time of the day or turn their face another way when they chance to meet us it is all one we shall have never the worse opinion of our selves or of our Worship We do not think them so able to judg of true worth or to discern between true and false good and bad as to concern our selves about their Opinion these being almost the same thing now adays and though all undertake to judg yet few know the difference We have something else also to support us than their favourable opinion of us and that is a sincere care with unblassed affections to search after the Will of God and a readiness to receive and do it whensoever we know it Let him bring us Reasons in stead of confident assertions and see if we will not studiously consider them and if they be good yield to them He spoke admirably who said that our Reason ought to yeild obedience to nothing but Reason and that Authority is a yoke which none but God hath a right to impose upon our judgments If God say it that 's reason enough but we shall never be perswaded that they only hear or understand what he sayes Let them talk as if they had not only slept in our Saviour's Bosom as a Gentleman I remember sometime said but even watch't in his heart and soul and as if there were none of his intentions hid from their knowledg They will never gain the greater credit with us unless we see more than words and confidence No though they should not only contemn and scorn us as altogether ignorant in the things of God but pronounce Anathema's and Curses against us as the limbs of the Apocalyptick Beast Heaven we know laughs them to scorn and we shall smile at their ridiculous presumption The Wolves we know will never be reconciled with the Shepherds flock and when we have done all that we can there will be an Envious and Malitious Generation who like the Rats and other imperfect Creatures which it is possible were bred in the Ark it self will still be gnawing the reputation even of the best Church in the World Every thing under Heaven is abused yea and what Heaven it self hath spoken is not safe from Injury and Violence and therefore why should we look to have a general respect or be cast down or angry either at the neglect of these men or if they please their Contempt and Reproach N. C. You say you are not angry but methinks you are in a great heat C. Not at their slighting us I assure you N. C. What then C. I told you that I professed a just indignation at some