of our Lord and of me his prisoner but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel Ver. 11 12 13. Whereunto I am appointed a Preacher and an Apostle and a Teacher of the Gentiles for the which cause I also suffer these things Nevertheless I am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed c. Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me c. That good thing which was committed to thee keep c. How keep not secretly only as a Christian but openly as a Preacher though thou suffer for it as I do So must Titus Chap. 2. 15. These things speak and exhort and rebuke with all authority And such another charge have the Elders or Bishops from the Apostle Peter 1 Pet. 5. 1 2 3. Qu. But is this also the case of those that succeeded them Ans. Yes they ordained others into the same office under the same Law of constancy and fidelity 2 Tim. 2. 2. The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also Though still the Rulers were against it And 2 Tim. 2. 24 25. The servant of the Lord must be apt to teach And what an example of Preaching publickly and from house to house night and day doth Paul give to all the Ephesian Elders Act. 20. even when Rulers were against it And again I say the practise and martyrdom of many and the writings of others do assure us that this was the judgment of Clemens Romanus Ignatius Polycarp Cyprian Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus Origen and generally of all the ancient Church who were called as we are by men and yet Preached to the death against the will of the Magistrate And as Paul himself desireth prayers for him that utterance may be given him that he might open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the Gospel for which he was an Ambassador in bonds that therein he might speak boldly as he ought to speak Eph. 6. 19 20. So he oft commendeth his fellow-labourers that accordingly served with him in the Gospel though they were no Apostles Phil. 2. 22. 4. 3. Rom. 16 c. And as he spake not as a man-pleaser 1 Thes. 2. 4. Gal. 1. 7 8. and as Christ would have his word preacht as on the house top Mat. 10. 7 8. so this is done as a duty of fidelity in Ministers as such and therefore Christ adjoineth with this charge such words as these that shew the Rulers Prohibition Vers. 16 17 c. 28. Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves but beware of men for they will deliver you up to the Councils and they will scourge you in their Synagogues and ye shall be brought before Governours and Kings for my sake for a testimony against them and the Gentiles c. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name sake c. But when they persecute you in this city flee ye into another The disciple is not above his master c. Fear them not therefore c. Fear them not which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him c. These are the next words to the command VVhat I tell you in darkness that speak ye in the light and what ye hear in the ear that preach ye on the house-top Luk. 9. 62. No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God Both Christians as such and Ministers as such must absolutely give up themselves to Christ and not look back for fear of man whatever it cost them to proceed 3. Mat. 9. 38. Luk. 10. 2. Christ commandeth Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers into his harvest viz. because the harvest is great and the labourers few And this is every Christians daily prayer when we say Thy Kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven If it be our duty daily to pray God to proportion the number of Labourers to the greatness and necessity of the work and that his Kingdom and the obedience of his will may be by his appointed means promoted on earth then it is our duty to do as we pray and not play the hypocrites with God as St. James his reproved hypocrites did as to the relieving of the poor that said Go and be clothed and warmed but gave them neither clothes nor food For a called Minister to pray Lord send out more Preachers and such as will promote thy Kingdom and perswade the world to do thy will while he forbeareth to Preach himself because that man forbiddeth him unwarrantably this is as very a mocking of God as it would be by the rich and covetous to pray Lord send some to relieve the poor when he giveth them nothing of his abundance 4. The Reasons of all these Commands for constant Preaching are moral and perpetual for the work of the Ministry is to open mens eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they may receive remission of sins and inheritance among the sanctified c. Act. 26. 17 18. But this work for these ends belongs to us to this day and therefore these Reasons intimate that the like constancy is our duty as was theirs But before I proceed to our further Reasons it will here be expected that I say somewhat more to the grand Objection viz. These that you talk of were Infidel or Heathen Rulers and will you compare our with them Or doth it follow that Christian Rulers may not silence Ministers because they might not Answ. 1. No far be it from me to compare our Governours with such We thankfully acknowledg it to be the Glory of England that it hath a King and Magistracy that owneth Christianity yea more that when the whole world hath but three Protestant Kings that I know of we have not only one of the three but the chiefest who keepeth Religion in greater purity than the rest But that which I have all this while been proving is but this That where and when the Gospel is necessary to be preached true Ministers of Christ may not lawfully forbear because the Rulers do forbid them though they be not Apostles but called by the way of man 2. A Christian Magistrate doth no more Ordain and Degrade than other Rulers but he is the Governour of the Ministers to keep them from neglecting or abusing their Callings and he may drive those out of his Dominions that will not otherwise be kept from subverting faith or godliness or that are proved truly to do more hurt than good in the Land And therefore if the King restrain or banish those that are truly the plagues and destroyers of the Land or of Religion or Loyalty he shall never be blamed for it by us Or if
shall spend the day as the Lords-day or have any publick communion with the Church And they are apter to be sensible of this calamity themselves than the Objectors are 6. And I must add also that as London is the most populous place so it hath the greatest number of true Separatists and Sectaries and the sounder part are not responsible for their actions 12 Obj. But with what conscience do you come into Cities Corporations or within five miles of them or of your former Preachingplaces Doth God bid you preach just here And how do your scruples engage you thus to break the Laws Ans. Even with such a Conscience as we Preach in England when the Scripture nameth not England to us Did not the ancient Christians also disobey a lawful power when they setled their Churches in Cities even when they were forbidden both City and Country and if Christ say VVhen they persecute you in one city fly to another and you bid us fly from all and fly to none Hath not a Nonconformists Conscience something of the command of Christ to countenance his practice But our true Reasons are the same as are forementioned for our Preaching If necessity be upon us to Preach because of the peoples necessity to hear then where their necessity is greatest there our obligation is greatest But in populous Cities and Towns when the ablest conformable Minister is insufficient for a quarter of the Parish the peoples necessities are greatest Ergo If it be lawful for us to desert and betray to Satan the souls of all the Cities and Corporations in England and within five miles of them and of all the places where we have Preached why will it not be lawful to do so by the rest VVhere the carcass is the eagles will be gathered together and where the work and Vineyard is the labourer must be And all good men love the publick good and therefore will chuse those places for their labour caeteris paribus which the publick good doth most depend on Especially if the people of their ancient charge live there and they think that their relation to them is not dissolved And I must profess that few of the passages of this generation do more astonish me with dread and wonder than to think that City-Pastors who have so vast a charge and so much more need of help than the Country yea men of reputed learning sobriety and piety should ever be desirous to take this burden wholly on themselves and should be the forwardest to drive away assistants yea and make it a sin to preach to those souls that they know they cannot preach to themselves Yea that the same men that one year have much ado to satisfie their own consciences to conform and think they speed well if with Conformity they can but keep up some reputation of honesty yet the next year make so great a progress as to question his honesty that will not sacrilegiously renounce his Ministry and are the forwardest to put down all Preaching save their own Do the Pastors themselves no better know the Parish bounds and the peoples wants or the worth of souls What then can we expect from others Obj. But it is not your help but your hindering us that we are against Do you help us by drawing the people from us to your selves Ans. I cannot tell whether we help you or not till I know what is your help If your work be not to get followers and applause but to bring men to Christian knowledg faith love obedience and patience then all the Ministers that I plead for are you helpers those that are not silence them and spare not But if your work be to preach up your selves and your successes be reckoned by your applause I cannot tell whether we help you or not For though we seek to increase your reputation with the people yet it is not as you are self-seekers but as in charity we hope you preach more for Christ and mens Salvation than for your selves 13 Obj. But what you before denied of the Magistrate you cannot deny of the Church The Church calleth you and giveth you your power Therefore it may take it from you And so Mr. Rathband confesseth and the old Nonconformists practised Ans. 1. The Church is an ambiguous word If you mean the Bishops all those whom you call to be re-ordained deny that ever the Bishops gave them their power 2. And it was One Bishop who ordained each of the rest or two at most who are both dead and cannot take away what they gave 3. I have answered this before and more largely in my Dispute of Ordination Men give us not our Power at all as from themselves but as Servants of Christ invest them solemnly to whom he giveth it And a servant cannot dispossess him whom by his Masters Orders he hath invested 4. You give us our Baptism and Matrimony as truly as our Ministry And yet you cannot take them from us 5. But indeed if the Church that is the People refuse us we cannot teach and edifie them against their wills 6. And if one Bishop silence us he doth it but as exercising Government in his Diocess and it followeth not that we are silenced in all others 7. And they that dissent from our Diocesan frame of Prelacy do not much reverence their Governing Spiritual Power And if the Kings prohibition bind them not against their Conscience of Gods obligations to be silent much less will yours 8. No Bishops have silenced us by Spiritual Government that we know of but only as Barons by the Secular Laws to which they gave their Votes which yet all did not How then are we obliged by their Power of the Keys to be silent For my part I have one or two of their Licenses never re-called or nulled 9. If a Bishop should silence him under pretence of Government and Order whom God obligeth to preach as much as I have before proved that we are obliged it were ipso facto null as to our Consciences as being against the Laws of God 10. He that is silenced in every Bishops Diocess is not yet thereby degraded but is still a Minister to the world at least for their conversion For those without the Infidels and Heathens are of no Bishops Diocess And it 's a question whether those among us that openly renounce the Prelacy and declare themselves to be none of their Church are yet indeed members of their Church whether they will or not We believe not that a Law of the Land doth make any man a Church-member without his own consent If you think otherwise why distinguish you the Sons of the Church from others If all the people of London be not the Sons or members of your Church the rest are not under your Pastoral Spiritual Government And as for your Secular Power enough is said of that before And I think no man will say that the extent of your Diocess to many hundred Parishes is a
Those of their own Religion not charged with one doctrinal difference if they obey not their Wills in every Ceremony are the worst of all mankind Reader is this the Religion taught by St. Paul Rom. 14. 15. and Phil. 3. where mutual forbearances and Receiving dissenters is commanded against both Censurers and Despisers Will ever Church on Earth have Concord on these terms Are such mouths fit to call others Fire-brands Is not this a disgrace to the Christian Protestant Religion that all its fundamentals will not keep a man that differeth but in a Ceremony from being the worst of mankind 3. Look back but on the Instances of our Nonconformity before laid down and then tell thy self what to judge of such men and such pens as proclaim to the world that it is but an innocent Ceremony that we submit not to See the Nonconformists Plea for Peace 4. Bethink you what our Nonsubmission or Nonconformity doth to ruine Kingdoms in comparison of the course of such accusers If poor men desire to serve Christ though in poverty with diligence and peace and Lordbishops shall say Either subscribe say and swear all this or be silenced and cast out of all your Ministry and Maintenance Doth he now that patiently beareth all their penalties loseth all and goeth quietly to the Common Jayl among Rogues for Preaching Christs Gospel to more than four without Swearing and Conforming become hereby a Ruiner of Kingdoms while they are innocent that do all this against them Do they not toto nudato pectore taelum recipire tantum non with great Cameron unbutton them and cry Feri miser Is there any one word of Rebellious Doctrine proved by this man when he hath done his worst out of any one Church-Confession of those whom he revileth And if he can find any thing which is not found in the books of any particular men in the late Wars is that their fault that never owned it and were then scarce born Doth he or any of all the malicious tribe charge those whom they reproach with drunkenness gluttony luxury fornication ambition fraud lying or any such immorality 5. Are those that suffer and do so much for that which they think to be the truth of Christ well charged with hating Christ and is not the exception a prophane scorn of Christ but that he said he came not to bring peace It is easie to say with Tertullus of Paul that he is a Ring-leader of a Sect and a pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among the people but where 's the proof 6. And mark why he professeth himself kinder to the Papists 1. Because they are more Learned Civil and Gentile 2. Because they differ in supposed fundamentals But 1. did he not know our advantage in Learning then was a great cause of the success of the Reformation in Luthers days And who that knoweth the pitiful Priests in France Spain and Italy and what a generation Erasmus Stephanus Vives Hutten and others describe and what men the Reformation found in the Priesthood in England and all other Countries will believe this man that the Papists are more learned And though we truly honour the later Leared men that have been bred among them their Suarez their Petavius and many more yet he might know that our John Reignolds our Chamier Sadcel Bochart Capellus Rivet with multitudes of their like were learned men as well as they and so were Rob. Parker Amesius Bradshaw Paget and many other Nonconformists here and Twisse Gataker and many more of the Westminster-Assembly And all the Learning of the Papists in the world is not enough to make them know Bread and Wine when they see and touch and taste it which without Learning may be easily known 2. But that differing in supposed fundamentals should prove the Papists so much better than us doth tell us with what sort of men we have to do By that rule the Mahometans are much better than the Papists and the Heathens yet better than the Mahometans for they differ from us and them in greater things I perceive why the Jews were crueller than the Heathens and the Papal than the Pagan Rome against the Ministers of Christ because they differed not from them in so many and weighty points Note Reader that this mans book of 20s Price is written to prove that Treason Rebellion and King-killing is the very Religion and the ancient and later practice of the Papists Their Councils are cited for it and their chiefest and most learned Writers cited as maintaining the excommunicating and deposing Kings to be in the power of the Pope and that in so great a number in their own words the very Pages accurately and fully cited that after a multitude that have written on that subject he hath quite over-done them all and brought whole loads of Testimonies to prove it to be the common doctrine of the Roman Church so that no man that ever wrote hath in this done so much to render them unreconcilably odious to all Kings and Magistrates as this man hath done and he hath given them the deepest wound in point of Policy and History that was ever given them with as bitter and odious terms of aggravation And yet we that agree with him in all fundamentals and refuse as he dreameth but a Ceremony are worse far worse than they Had he only done by us as he did by them recited the words of our Synoâ—s and Professors we would contentedly have left all to judge of our Confessions and of each particular Author as they deserve and those that are proved culpable to bear the blame But his sentence and inferences only tell us how desirable the coming of Christ is to his Servants and how earnestly we should pray to the Judg of the World to come and to come quickly Reasons why the Conformable Clergy should be desirous of their Brethrens Ministerial liberty that cannot Conform as is now required 1. YOU ought to be better acquainted with the Common state of peoples Souls and the great necessity of Teaching in the Land than Parliaments or Magistrates can be expected to be who converse not with the people about their everlasting hopes as your calling bndeth you to do And you are obliged also to a double zeal for the Kingdom of Christ and mens Salvation As you still profess a zeal for the Church when Revenues Power or Ceremonies are the things in question And men that have acquaintance with the Common state of Souls cannot chuse but know how insufficient they are of themselves without help for so great a work among such multitudes and what need most Parishes have of more than one much more of one If the Shepherds themselves should either be so ignorant as to think that their ignorant Parishes need no more help than one man is able to afford to many thousands or hundreds of Souls and that the labours of others may be spared because that which they do themselves is enough or
to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sins alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost Acts 4. 2 c. 3. Experience assureth us that from the beginning of the Church to this present day Christ never gave too many able faithful Ministers to his Church Supernumeraries of such were never its disease nor the amputation of them its cure There is still need of the Lords-prayer Thy Kingdom come And Pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers c. That man is but a Christian or a Pastor in jest and Image and not in earnest and reality who thinketh that the Pastors now allowed are so sufficient for the great employment of the Ministry that more are but supernumerary and the rest may be spared without any detriment to the souls of men Even in the Apostles age of Miraculous gifts Dr. Hammond thinketh the Pastors were so scarce that every Episcopal Church had no more than one Bishop with some Deacons without ever a Subject-Presbyter And that there was de facto none of the Order of subject-Presbyters in Scripture-times And so think all the Presbyterians too And it is a notorious truth that afterwards the Presbyters were so low in abilities that publick preaching in the Church was mostly used by the Bishops only And many Countries have lost the Gospel for want of Preachers And wherever ignorance and prophaneness have broken in upon the Church as the Greeks Abassines Armenians Moscovites Papists and too many Protestant Churches it hath commonly been by the decay of able godly faithful Pastors And if one City or Parish of ten thousand have had too many their near neighbours have so much wanted them that they could not be esteemed supernumerary And in England there are few Parishes which need not helps even where the ablest men are placed much more where Is it seasonable then or doth it answer the Will or Providence of to call in so many when the Church hath always had too few 4. The punishment which you inflict upon the Ministers doth fall a thousand times more heavily on the souls of the innocent people who without being accused or speaking for themselves in a Legal trial have so great a penalty inflicted on them as none but a believer that judgeth of things in reference to Eternity is able to estimate a right Alas to the Preacher the suffering is small in comparison of the peoples What if they live poorly what if they want house or clothes or bread How small a matter is that in comparison of the want of knowledg and faith of grace and salvation I confess their sufferings will cost them dear that are the true cause when Christ condemns those that do not relieve them But to themselves it is no such dreadful business Nay if they were but discharged in conscience from the Ministerial Office most of them might live in much more peace and plenty in the world There are many other Callings to betake themselves to in which they might live quietly and not be as the Hare before the Hunters pursued from place to place with cryes as if they that will imitate Paul in labours must bear also his reproach as pestilent fellows and movers of sedition among the people that do contrary to the decrees of Cesar and turn the world upside down Yea many are already turned Physicians and they have better words and kinder usage But every man that hath the eyes of a Christian in his head and seeth what the people of England VVales and Ireland are for members and for quality and seeth and heareth also what Ministers for number and quality do instruct them doth know as certainly that many hundred thousand souls do wofully need more Ministerial helps as he knoweth that five hundred Scholars do need more than one School-master or five hundred sick men need more than one Physician But O what a plague is it to the Church and World to have Ministers who when they read of the necessity of knowledg holiness and salvation do neither believe Christ nor themselves Argue not the people into such hard thoughts of you as if this were your case by perswading them that it is no matter whether their souls have any more Ministerial helps than now is given them Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid it is hid to them that are lost and that the cure of gross ignorance hard-heartedness unbelief and sensuality are of necessity to salvation or not If not deal openly and silence both your selves and us If yea then either you know how these maladies abound in the people and how much labour the cure doth usually cost or not If not then take not on you to be Pastors or English men or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to But if you do know this then I need to say no more to you but to desire you to fuppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors The worldling drunkard and fornicator is most miserable that would have no reproof or help Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cryes and that you hear them calling to you for help O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance unbelief insensibility worldliness and sensuality that are utter strangers to that life of faith and love and holiness without which none can please or see God and must quickly be converted and made new creatures or they are lost for ever Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints you heard them expostulating with you for their souls O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation Alas our ignorance and deadness and worldly-mindedness and fleshly affections are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used what shall we do then if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed Alas say not that the reading of the Scriptures and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn We confess that it should do so if our disease were so light as to need no more the thing it self is good and every word of God is precious but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep and hardned in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone It is the skilful choice of pertinent Truths convincingly and clearly uttered and closely applied with life and seriousness that our case requireth We confess that if a School-boy or a raw ignorant youth from the University did but read a chapter or say over a less pertinent cento of good words we should be moved
and converted by it But our disease is deadness darkness and disaffection to holiness to God and Heaven and liveliness deceit and love to the world and fleshly things and without a miracle these will not be cured nor our souls be saved without lively clear and affectionate preaching agreeable to the sacred Truth delivered nor without the help of prudent conduct and the constant watchfulness of tender love and the example of a holy heavenly life O therefore pity our miserable souls that must be saved now by the Gospel of salvation or be damned to everlasting fire You tell us so your selves and if you would have us believe you shew us that you believe your selves You speak for good works and what better works than the saving of mens souls And how shall we hear without a Preacher O give us such for number and quality as will imitate Paul Act. 20. that covet no mans silver and gold but will teach us publickly and from house to house day and night with tears that will be instant in season and out of season reprove rebuke and exhort with all long suffering and doctrine in meekness instructing even opposers of the faith much more the tender children of him who is the father of mercies Alas we have enemies enow the Devil and the World and the Flesh are enemies of our faith and holiness and salvation and we are the greatest enemies to our selves be not you also our enemies and destroyers who call your selves our Pastors and our Fathers Think what it is for such a multitude of souls to be shut out of heaven for ignorance unbelief impenitency and ungodliness and to lye in hell for ever and how little comfort it will be to us in our torments to be told that the Order and Decency of Church-affairs did require it or that it was necessary to preserve the interest of the Diocesans O make not such merchandize of our souls Christ purchased them with his blood Do not you sell them for thirty pieces of silver He scourged the buyers and sellers out of his Temple do not you drive out the faithful Preachers He overthrew the tables of the money-changers do not you overthrow the doctrine discipline or Table of the Lord. He came from Heaven into flesh to seek and save those that were lost do not you contrive and labour to famish and destroy them He gave them his flesh and blood for food do not you devour their flesh and blood He preached in Ships and Mountains and Wildernesses and Houses to many and to few to rich and poor to ignorant women and the meanest and the worst among the people do not you think then that to read to us those words which we can every day read at home or to make a formal speech to us once a week is enough to cure such souls as ours There is joy among the Angels of God in heaven over one sinner that repenteth O do not you rejoyce to hinder the preaching of Repentance unto thousands Christ set up a Ministry to preach the Gospel to every creature under heaven and to teach them whatever he hath commanded even to the end of the world Do not you contradict him and say Preach not Kick not against the pricks Wo to him that striveth with his Maker Who hath hardened himself against him and hath prospered The saving of Souls is too good a work for any that is good to strive against And Christs Ministers are workers together with him and not against him If you take away from our mouths the bread of life it will be cold comfort and a poor relief to us in our misery in hell to tell us that they were pestilent fellows and ringleaders of a sect that would have saved us that is that they were not conformable to your Subscription Oath and Ceremonies Suppose them to be in the wrong and you in the right Why must our Souls be left to damnation because our Teachers think that a sin which you think you your selves have made a duty Shall not the soul that sinneth dye If they have eaten sowr grapes why must our teeth be set on edge If he be mistaken that thinks that it is aggravated Lying and Perjury which he refuseth which you say is but a thing indifferent yet Christ is not to be blamed for that And why shall the fire of his kindling be quenched his gifts be suspended his Gospel hindered his redeemed one 's forsaken because some of his Ministers were as you thought too fearful of offending him O hear these expostulations of miserable Souls before you are speechless under the Expostulations of the tender Saviour of Souls 5. You have other punishments enough besides forbidding them to preach Christs Gospel whereby to be revenged on Non-conformity Is their fearing an Oath a greater sin than prophane swearing If not let us pay at the same rates for not swearing and for not disobliging all others from a Vow as swearers do by the Law for every Oath And we will not desire you to execute the Laws as seldom on us as they are executed on them which is not I think for one Oath of Twenty thousand Or are we worse than drunkards or fornicators If not punish us no worse than they are punished Are we worse than petty thieves If not let us be put in the stocks and whipt as Paul and Silas were so we may but preach Christs Gospel Or if we are as bad as felons allow us our Clergy and burn us in the hand use us as Prin Bastwick and Burton were used on the Pillory so you will not hinder us from preaching to sinners the word of salvation Or put us in the House of Correction and use us as the Israelites were used in Egypt rather than forbid us to labour to save the peoples Souls Can your profound understandings find no way to punish a man that feareth Lying Perjury and false Worship suppose mistakingly which will consist with such intermission and liberty as is necessary to the doing of our Masters work The servants of the King and Parliament are priviledged from arrests and molestation which would hinder them from their necessary duty We crave no impunity for our sins above the basest subjects in the Land We will be thankful to be under no severer usage than Colliers and Bargemen and Seamen and begging Rogues and Vagabonds have yea constrain us to beg our bread in rags from door to door rather than restrain us from doing the work to which in our Ordination we are devoted and by the belief of a life to come obliged Have all other faults more suitable punishments save only those of the Ministers of Christ You can punish your child without forbidding him to love you or obey you you can punish a School-boy otherwise than by forbidding him to learn and a Master otherwise than by forbidding him to teach and your Servant otherwise than by forbidding him to work and Eighteen hundred scrupulous
furnace devoured the Executioners and so did Daniel's Lyons too God hath ever shewed himself a God of Love and an enemy to the enemies of it Many are the afflictions of the righteous but God hath many ways to deliver them out of all As I said already who would have thought that enow should have escaped Queen Maries Bonefires to have planted a Protestant Church so soon Or so many escaped the French Massacre as so soon to have made that fact repented of and ring to the Odium of the Actors through the world Yea that so many should survive the Two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland as to see so terrible a revenge Yea that the far greater Murders of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses should be followed with a resurrection of the witnesses of the truth with double advantage and leave the everlasting odium of bloody cruelties upon Rome and that the German-sufferings should so soon be revenged by the Swedes Or that the desolations which for the Interim were made among the German Ministers should so soon be repaired Or that the Prelacy which Constantius and other Arrian Emperors set up should so soon be changed and the Arrian cruelties recorded to their perpetual shame And that the Vandals in Africa should but murder Ministers enow to kill themselves with the stroke Or that the true Persecutions of the Heathen Emperors should but increase the Church of Christ and the blood of Martyrs should be its seed Or that fewer Nonconformist Ministers than there be Counties in England in 1640 should multiply into that number as they did within two or three years Or that the Diocesan-Ministers supprest by Cromwell should revive to the strength that they were in within three years after his death Men may contrive but God will dispose Caiphas may think that one should dye for the people rather than all the Nation perish and the fact may prove their speedy and most dreadful ruine 2. And as blood cryeth loud to God for revenge so it usually maketh the actors so odious in the world that men will hardly leave it unrevenged There is no hope that ever you should be able to extirpate both grace and good nature out of the world There will be some sparks of love and humanity in the minds of men when interest quencheth them not when you have done all And these sparks of charity and humanity will make all the actors of cruelty odious and the people will take them for Bears and Wolves Yea if you were able to perswade others by your words and books as you do your selves by your interest and passions that we are as very fools and disobedient to your Lordships as you describe us yet most men and especially English men will pity the suffering side and will think with heart-rising on the men of blood When the Puritans suffered the people pitied them and cryed out against the Prelates When the Diocesan party suffered the people pitied them and cryed out against Cromwel and those that cast them out And now they are turning about again tho' I know there are many more cases do concur 3. And God having resolved that the memory of the just shall be blessed and that the name of the wicked shall â—ot and that the greatest of the ungodly shall not be the Master of Fame nor any more able to leave an odium on the name of the just than to pursue their souls with malice into heaven no nor so much as to preserve their own names from odium any more than to keep their bodies from corruption It hence comes to pass that the very odor and perfume of sufferers names that endure the wrath of man for the sake of God and conscience doth so invite posterity to their mind and way that multitudes quickly rise up in their steads And the loathed names of the persecutors of the godly doth make posterity shun their courses What a stink hath the name of David Seton in Scotland of Bonner of London and Gardiner Bishop of Winchester left behind The like I may say of all such men 4 Moreover the same reasons that prevail with us will prevail with others when we are dead They will be as fearful of lying and perjury and of swearing Allegiance to Church-usurpers as we have been There will still be a people seriously religious that are Christians in good sadness and really believe a life to come There is no hindering it God will have it so and who can gainsay him And these men will be as loth under pretence of order and decency to have Religion dwindle into a lifeless form of words and ceremonies and to take the chaff and straw for the corn as ever we have been before them And the History of our sufferings will but animate them 5. Besides this 1. While you are doing your work you are dying you are alas that 's the cut-throat of your comforts but mortal men your selves Bonner is dead and Gardiner is dead Guise is dead and D' Alva is dead King Edward's Reformation and Q. Maries Persecution were both cut short by the shortness of their lives When you have destroyed ten or twenty or an hundred Ministers and are resolving Thus we will use them all A Fever or an Apoplexy or some other Messenger of an offended God doth stop you in your course and call you to judgment and tell you that when it is too late which you could not hear from such as we Cum tamen a figulis munitam intraverit urbem Sarcophago contentus erit Mors sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum Corpuscula Nature will not suffer you long and Justice oft anticipateth the time of Nature The strange Histories of Gods Judgments are not all fables Nullane perjuri capitis fraudisque nefandae Poena erit Juv. 6. And sometimes God stoppeth a Saul in his way with greater mercy And sometimes crosses make men melancholy and retire from their cruel course Can you think of two such instance as Dioclesian and Charles the fifth without admiration And oft-times an accusing-conscience beginneth such a hell on earth as interrupteth the execution of malicious purposes And sometimes the very odium of the people turneth them off with shame both which the same Poet intimateth Sat. 13. Exemplo quodcunque malo committitur ipsi Displicet auctori Prima est haec ultio quod se Judice nemo nocens absolvitur improbae quamvis Gratia fallacis Praetoris vicerit urnam Quid sentire putas omnes Calvine recenti De scelere fidei violatae crimine And domestical afflictions may cool the fire of vour consuming zeal You must not look to be still imposing crosses and making crosses for your neighbours and feel none your selves It may be your great Patrons may dye or fall or forsake you and then your hearts are broken It may be death may enter into your own families and make you think what blood-thirstiness doth tend to Ut Vigeant sensus animi ducenda tamen