is transacted here on Earth between man and man the Inside is performed in Heaven through Faith between the Soul and God The height and stature of a Right Christian reaches from Earth to Heaven pedibus terram terit caput inter nubila condit The Originall Model and Truth of all his actions is order'd and contriv'd in his upper-man in his Sanctum Sanctorum where there is access to none but God and his conscience Christ and his heart his outward Actions in his lower man or outward court of the body are but Copies and Proclamations of those Rules from above and are all executed by and towards deputies our hands being the Proxies of our Souls and our Neighbours and Superiours the Proxies of Christ And should a lust or Idoll or Self-interest or Carnall fear steal in or usurp like Lucifer or Antichrist the Throne of Christ in the upper man the Soul the Inferiour faculties below will serve and worship this Impostor or Usurper with the same Allegiance the same fear and trembling as Christ himself which is an abominable Idolatry and confusion and a vile and treasonable Prophanation and subversion of Christs Honour and Soveraignty in us together with that of our own Liberty and felicity Therefore the heart is to be always watch'd and guarded against invasions Prov. 4.24 and kept free and entire for Christ and whatsoever we do we are to do it for no other end or respect and for no mans sake but Christ which is the benefit and Interest of the superiour and Inferiour too The Master or Superiour is happy in the fidelity and Religion of his Servant who is now as diligent in his work behind the back as before the face directing his service not to man who cannot always see him but to Christ from his heart present at all times and places to him in his heart and faith And the servant is much more happy not only in his Immense and Infinite reward for his labour above what his Earthly Lord or Master could ever reach to give but in the glorious liberty and dignity of his condition being not so much Servant as brother to his own Lord and Master in Christ whose Servants both are alike and the chief Rulers of the Earth and the Angels of Heaven count it their chief honour and glory so to be The text as we all men consists of two parts Body and Soul The Body in those words whatsoever ye do ye that is ye Servants which takes in all ranks and orders and degrees of men all from the Plow to the Throne being but Servants Servants either of man or God or both and the word whatsoever comprehends all the duties and Actions of them all The Soul or the heart of my text in the other words do it from the heart as unto the Lord and not unto men where there are two parts of this the heart the right ventricle and the left the right or positive part in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to the Lord and the left or Negative part in the other and not unto men 1. In the right part the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or quatenus ipsum as Logicians say between the Lord and the heart whatsoever is done or not done from the heart is done or not done to the Lord in effect and whatsoever is or is not done for the Lord is or is not done from the heart because of the concatâ—nation or eternall correlation between these two for ever Inseparable Liege and Subject God and the Soul for though a sincere Heathen and a carnall Christian seem both miserably out the one for want of God the other for want of the â—earâ— in worship yet in neither where one is present iâ— the other correlative really ever wanting and Socrates and Cicero who serv'd false Gods actually did design the true God in their hearts and will rise up in judgement against such nominall Christians oâ— Catholicks who actually worship Christ but design another end in their hearts their Backs or Bellies or secular conveniences by him and whatsoever is the aim of our heart is our God And this chief end and treasure at the bottom of the heart and intention which as our Saviour notes Math. 6.21 goes ever with the heart is that which as the Soul of the action gives life and formality to it and denomination to the worshipper either of a true worshipper or true Christian where the chief end at bottom is the true God or Christ or of an Idolator or Atheist where the chief end in the heart is the world or self which God well knows and every mans conscience can best tell him which it is 2. The negative part not unto men yea to men as secondary Masters by the order of Christ the chief to Masters according to the flesh v. 22. but not from fleshly motives or worldly respect or fear that were contrary to the nature of the Soul and the faith of Christians for the Soul knows none to be loved or feared but God alone or in reference to him and faith sets us above the world and consequently above all wordly fears or ends in our actings if our actings be Christian and our Christianity be true To dwell on the first part or body of the text and to enumerate all the fair limbs and lineaments of duty belonging to all sorts of men in their severall ranks and orders were in effect to sum up to you the whole duty of man which yet without the second part or the heart in my text would prove but a meer Anatomy or Skeleton the shell without the kernell the body without the soul And though the outside of our duties be nothing if compar'd to the inside or heart therereof and the latter is to be chiefly done yet the former is not to be left undone for how can that be done from the heart which is not done at all or well done before God which is ill done before men before whom we are bound to glorifie God as well as within our hearts I shall therefore fall to the heart and life of my text after warning and detection given of a great and dangerous errour among Christians which lies in the extreme where faults use to lie Not theirs do I mean with whom their body and its wellfare are all in all with them and their immortall Souls but as ciphers out of sight out of mind which is a very Catholick Irreligion not to be refuted here because such cannot pretend to be Christians because they are no men and no men because they deny their Souls falling short of nobler Infidels and Heathens in Wit and Spirit and Religion and hearding themselves unworthily with the beasts that perish having no signs of manliness left but the false magnanimity of wounding and damning there no Souls and vilifying the Lord Christ his Scriptures and Ministers and that before any open renunciation of their Christianity
which is against the Law of Nations in the treachery and of common sense and reason in the contradiction But the errour in extream that I would warn you of hath the face of sincerity and Christian honour and perfection maintaining the soul to be all in all and the body or outside of our duties to be nothing and not worth the ordering or regarding who therefore seldom or never open their hands in charity to their brethren in distress but think it enough to pity and relieve them in their hearts that think good works needless least they justle out Faith which is the heart of all Religion that think decent ceremonies and habits in Gods service lawfully ordain'd and answering but to the body to be slighted as Inconsistent with the worship of God in Spirit and Truth which answers to the Soul and that there are to be no Masters or Superiours according to the flesh whatsoever St. Paul saith here to the contrary v. 22. but all to be thou'd with Hat on as equalls because the Soul hath but one Superiour to it that is God The root of such mens mistake lies in this that they conceive Subordinates to be contrary and comparatives wholly to destroy the positive that heart and hand cannot go together that the body and the soul and God and man and Heaven and Earth be inconsistent because the one doth so far excell and out-go the other Two errors there are Antient and modern contrary to one another yet twins of the same womb that have much annoyed and moth-eaten the beauty and glory of the Christian Church in its severall ages all along and brought needless straits and troubles upon many a well-meaning Christian 1. That of Monkery 2. that other of Nonconformity the root and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of both being in the one a Melancholly in the other a willfull Imagination of Inconsistency where there is none for the soul may be saved without going a begging and God may be worshipped as well as Idolatry incurr'd by the reverence of the knee For though this present World compared to that to come be nothing with the Monk as the knee compar'd to the heart is nothing with the Non-conformist wherein both be very right and Orthodox yet considered apart and by themselves out of such comparison they recover again their positive necessary and convenient beinâ— and their use and goodness with their being by consequence As the Earth is nothing in respect of Heaven and England therefore so small a part of the Earth is less than nothing in all reason However by it self positively considered it is a large Territory of many dayes Journey consisting of several Counties and famous Towns and Cities affording large materials for Laws and Government and Order But if Monk and Seperatist be compar'd as to the consequence of their principles or the sincerity of their Discipline the one is found to wrong himself only the other publick peace and order The one to despise the World which agrees with a Christian the other to despise Government which too much agrees with Antichrist Jud. 8. 2 Thess 2.4 withall it 's far easier to flesh and bloud to abstain from bowing or kneeling or capping than to wear Sack-cloath or to live on Bread and Water all ones life It s easier I say and less subject to taking cold to change you into thou than to walk bare-foot all the year therefore the Monk stands further off from the Hypocrite than the Quaker though from the unwise both much at equal distance To place all Religion and Service of God in opere operato or the work outwardly done though without the heart or understanding is Idle and Popish To place none in the outward Reverence of the body before Angels and men is Rude and Fanatical and Scandalous To perform all the parts of our outward duties with care and Reverence but to judge them as nothing and as meer formality compared to the truth and sincerity of our hearts to Christ this is Orthodox and Regular Religion and well pleasing in the sight of God and Reason For great is the natural greater or more sensible is the moral difference between our Bodies and Souls The Body like matter in Plato is a vast spungy dull Earthly lump and substance without any life or spirit But the Soul is a contract and strong and indivisible divine and lively essence and spirit being that in the Body what God is in the World tota in toto Giving life and motion and vigour to all its parts minimum maximi mâ—jus maximo minimi a Mole-hill of Gold is worth a Mountain of Oare But the moral difference between them currant in Conversation and the esteem and value of God and man seems much greater Five words of real English truth from the heart are better received with all men than ten thousand Complements and Grimaâ—ces Though a vast Estate be greatly valued in the World for the port and respect that attends it yet health and life have far the pre-eminence when ever they stand in Competition Yet the one and the other both Estate and life set against the Soul become so little worth that they both must expose themselves at its beck into Martyrdom and Sequestration and the Canons mouth to defend and make good but any one Article of Faith any one Principle of Honour and Loyalty in the heart And your Hectors bid higher who by their Hair-brain Duells and sickly Luxuries and hazardous and ignominious Lusts do loudly maintain that an erroneous thought or fancy of the Soul is of more value and price than health and life and all the World What then must be the worth and value of thoughts sober and wise and true What of the Soul it self the Matrix and mother of them all Therefore God who understands the nature of the Soul takes it for no service at all but rather a contempt which is offered to him by the lip without the heart Mat. 15.8 Ones whole life spent in his service without the heart is not one hour or minute spent therein If I speak with the Tongue of men and Angels and have not Charity that is do it not for the Glory of God and the Edification of men from my heart I am but as sounding-brass and a tinckling-cymbal If I bestow all I have to the poor and give my body to be burnt and have not Charity that is do it for a vain Glory or for some other respect than from my heart to God it profiteth me nothing 1 Cor. 13.1 2 3. But this second and principal part of my Text touching the Heart and Soul of our Actions may for distincter method be further explained and illustrated two ways By shewing 1. The Quomodo 2. The Quare The Quomodo how we are to Act is expressed in those words 1. From the heart 2. To the Lord. 3. Not to men 2. The Quare why we are so to Act is insinuated in those two words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
or quicken either or like Pipes in an Organ Dead and Dumb as of themselves yet sounding out aloud the high praises of their God in his Church when they are filled with his Breath and Holy word and spirit However when these inward conceptions of mens spirits bud and break out in Births James 1.15 and land in another World in the Territories of Earthly Soveraigns who like God are both Omniscient and Omnipotent in their own Dominions and precincts Here the case is far otherwise Here Earthly Magistrates have their free Liberty and Authority to arrest and take as in the out-side and purliews of the soul whether they be Christian or Heathen as well the one as the other in their several capacities and Characters Heathen Kings being Gods Deacons Rom 13.4 or his Ministers in the State to preserve the peace of God and man by frowning upon all vice and sin and wicked lewdness Act. 18.14 which is spiritual Idolatry and War against God in the heart provoking his vengaence and judgement against a land and to Protect and praise them in every good work and vertue which is the amicable and loyall deportment and worship of righteous souls towards God whereby he is won to be favourable in his blessings and protections not only to them and their seed but to the whole land though less deserving for their sakes Gen. 18.32 And Christian Kings being the Fathers and Bishops of the Church and Christs undoubted Viccars on Earth in all the outward affairs of that Holy Polity to preserve its beauty and order and the holiness of its Communion against blemishes and scandals according to the Rules of Christ Christian Kings I say cannot be denyed to be the Fathers of the Church according to Gods own mind in Esa 49.23 Prophecies like to Faith being the evidence of things not seen given their right stiles and Titles to persons and degrees as yet not in being as if they were And as they are Fathers so they are Bishops and Overseers of Christs Flock the Church in things without as other Holy Bishops are in things within as it was declar'd by our Constantine the first Christian Emperour in the first and great general of Counsel of Nice of 318. Primitive and the best tried Bishops the Church ever had Nemine contradicente not one dissenting or disliking the expression either then or since but our Romish Popes of late after the Church began to slumber and degenerate And Viccars on Earth they all are severally in their own Kingdoms by the Popes own confession for so Eleutherius early declares in his Epistle to our Lucius the first Christian King in the world about the year 170. if it were the Act of Eleutherius or about the year 110. if the Act of Evaristus according to a. Usher de Britan. Eccles Primordiis p. 34. Ninius or sooner according to b. Usher de Britan. Eccles Primordiis p. 34. Paulus Jovius which though it be not Authentick in all its parts and purposes yet because some of our Kings might send to some of the Popes of Rome then Famous in the world for their uprightness to be Brotherly advised about some points of their Government unless our difference from them about Easter as well as the East might interrupt such correspondence or Communion and the Epistle passes for true and Authentick amongst many of our Romanists therefore the Testimony and citation in it touching Kings being Gods Vicars in their Territories is firm however and binding against them to the full And St. Paul doth no less in the Principles he layes down in my Text by which every master is Christs Vicar to his own Servant and by consequent proportion every King is Christs Vicar to his own Subjects for the Apostle would have tied obedience upon Subjects toward Christians Kings if they had been in his time in being in the same from and tenour as upon Christian Servants here towards their Christian Masters as is observed by a right learned Person towards whom they are to do all from the heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as unto Christ himself this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as implies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so as the master is is over the Servant in his Civil capacity his Civil Lord and Master so is he over him in his Christian capacity a Christian Servant as Christ is over Christians and Subjects Masters and Kings by consequence being Christs Image or similiude or Lievtenants or Viccars as the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies The same Apostle exhorting every soul to be subject to the higher Powers Rom. 13.1 amongst whom are comprehended Ecclesiastical persons as well as lay saith St. Chrysostom If those Powers become Christian as they are now with us they become the Vicars of Christ by consequence to all their Christian Subjects of the Clergy as well as Laity and were his Holiness a liege Subject of this Kingdom our King would be inevitably Christs Vicar on Earth unto him as he is undoubtedly to all English or Brittish Roman Catholicks who yet suffer themselves to be seduced by him who is no Viccar of Christ to them as such to withdraw their Christian obedience from him who truly is and Unchristianly and disloyally to disown his Supremacy over them who is as truly Christs Vicar over them in this world as he is their Christian King or they his Christian Subject Which is also agreeable to right reason as well as Scripture for there is a great difference between the Inside and the Outside of any Church or particular Christian which are in two several Kingdoms under two distinct Governments the one Heavenly and Eternal as is the soul the other Earthly or Temporal as is the body of which two they are severally made For such actions of the Soul as are concrete to the body and of use and moment in this present world only and not contrariant to Divine Institution and are circumstantiated with time and place whereby they become visible facts preceptible by mens senses and open to the view and cognizance of humane Authority though they be concerning matters Christian or deportments and behaviours and wears to be used within the Church and in time of service the same are not properly Spiritual as they are vulgarly call'd especially with them at Rome whose whole Religion is about the outside or Heavenly or Eternal and Invisible and belonging to Salvation which is equivalent but they carry a Temporal or Secular or Carnal nature in them and belong therefore to Temporal Jurisdiction to each Crown they are under and by no pretence to Rome but where Rome hath a temporal Authority to order them in her own Subjects but with us they belong to our Brittish Thrones and Tribunals and to Ecclesiastical Courts where they concern Christian and Temporal where they concern Civil Society and to the Kings Subjects as witnesses and Juries upon the place and not to any Forraign Chair or Rota or Pack of strangers to make
her chief and Soveraign end being chang'd her work of reason and Religion and Allegiance is changed by consequence and the Communion between the heart and Christ in Heaven turn'd out of doors and giving place to another between the soul and its new Soveraign the Pope It is still as busie and zealous as before but in a more confin'd sublunary sphere far out of Gods presence in the Pristrinum of this present World as a broken Shoomaker sets up for a Cobler or a fallen Angel to be a Devil And perhaps the necessary errours of the Roman Church can never be more clearly detected and satisfactorily solv'd than by this Hypothesis and fiction new for its name but old and too Common for its nature and practice of a Roman-Catholick Apshychite or Catholick Christians without souls for great must the Spiritual and Internal deadness be and as great and busie the external formality and heartless ceremonies of a Religion so condition'd Our Learned Divines who by invincible Arguments convince them of Idolatries in their Invocations and worship of the Hoast and of Images do but fall upon the branches which necessarily spring and grow from the evil root untouch'd for such must be the Fruit as is the Tree Math. 7 18. St. Paul and Christ and God himself the best Judges of Religion place it all in the heart and it's purity as doth our Brittish Proverb ffydh pawb yn ei galon as did all sober Heathens The end of the Commandment is charity out of a Pure heart 1 Tim. 1.5 Blessed are the Pure in heart for they shall see God Math. 8.8 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind which is the first and great Commandment And the Heathen from Deus est animus could infer pur â mente colendus even as Christ himself doth God is a Spirit and they that Worship him must Worship him in Spirit and in Truth that is with the heart without which all Worship is a lie Gratior diis existimatur qui delubris eorum a Plin. Panegyr puram castamque mentem quam qui meditatum carmen intulerit A mind holy and pure is the best Anthem with God If the truth and life of all Religion by the consent and suffrage of God and men consist thus in a Pure heart what Religion can they have whose Principles exclude and annihilate the heart and the Purity thereof by consequence for where the substantive is barr'd out the Adjective must stand out for company Therefore not this or that part or tenet or Article but the whole Religion of such a Church is Idolatrous or the worshiping of God with the body only without the soul whereby men necessarily frame Corporeal Anthropomorphitical sentiments to themselves of God and of all parts of his Worship for as without the Spiritual mind and soul there could be no conception of God who is a Spirit no more than of light without eyes so a Corporeal Religion requires a Corporeal Deity to answer it and a Carnal service to answer him for all worship true or false consists in likeness and conformity in the true men become pure and holy as God is in the false God and Religion are made Gross and Carnal as the men are which is an highly Idolatrous mistake of the true God against the first and second Commandment And Spiritual Rational Religion shall be traduc'd and slighted by such men for its contrariety and dislikeness to their tempers as the Moors hate heretical white Rivers cannot ascend higher than their springs nor an Absychitical Religion higher than the body and Carnal apprehension and outward frame and appearance or a form of godliness without its power and truth which is not therefore Religion but somthing outwardly like it no more than is a dead picture a true man though like in shape unto him Heaven and Hell to a Beast can never signifie more than the pain and pleasure of the body nor human words with Parrots than the outward syllables and sound nor Religion to Carnal minds but their Carnal Interests and conceptions This supposition shews the errours of Rome to be necessary consequences to the exclusion of the heart in the first place and Christ in the second throughout their Doctrines and Practices congruous to this Propheticall Character and that in such a condition and temper they can do no less than place their chiefest worship and Devotion in the outward parts and surface of Religion that hold the nearest resemblance to it in their Carnal conceipts This makes prayers in an unknown tongue without the heart and understanding a reasonable worship with them This makes transubstantiation both natural and necessary for Christians so described cannot conceive any otherwise than Corporeally and Grossly that Christ is in the Sacrament and to be worshipped there by consequence for Sursum corda to lift up the heart where there is no heart is but a lesson to the deaf but Metaphysicks to Moles This makes them so easily leave the invisible General so unlike their new beings to invocate an host of frail Creatures more like themselves and to find great resemblances to the deity in Images made by hands and much Grace and Spiritual refreshment and Protection in holy Water and great Salvation in a material Cross to which they 'l apply that of the Apostle God forbid that I should glory saving in the Cross of our Lord Jesus as much as to him that suffered on it as Pope Adrian to the Empress Jrene finds grounds for Image-worship in those passages in the Psalms Seek ye my face thy face O Lord will I seek and signatum est super nos lumen vultus tui Ps 26.4 This hath given that Christian virtue and reputation to Beads Crucifixes's Agnus Dei Christ-Mass-Babes new born Good-Friday-loggs interr'd Palls Saints Couls c. and the rest of their sacred shows not short of Bartholomew Fair in their number and congruity to weak and carnal fancies A most lamentable Profanation of our Spiritual and Heavenly worship to be bewail'd by all sincere and tender Christians with grief and tears and confuted by the Learned and suppressed by the Magistrate and prayed against by all A mock Religion carried on by great and strong numbers and Councils with a high face of Authority and Catholick truth on its side and more considerable for duration and combination than all other Heresies whatsoever both Ancient and Modern put together which bespeak it to be some thing more being the Blasphemy of them which they say are Jews that is Christians and Catholicks or new Israelites and are not but are the Synagogue of Satan carrying on his Kingdom with the same dark Arts and Eternal perdition to themselves and others as he himself doth Rev. 2.8 With whom Christianity consists not in a meet Marriage between the heart and Christ to bring forth Heavenly off-springs to God Rom. 7.3 even the divine and lovely fruits
s insensibly received and admitted into its rest at last and then and there lost forever and found forever in the Bosom of the Immense Ocean so is it most an end with every Christian soul at the beginning and progress and end of his Christian Race who is as sure to reach to his rest and glory in the bosom of God forever as Rivers to reach the Sea which they are reaching every day nearer and nearer as they move towards it in the channel that leads unto it and is the very same Element with it To conclude if all could be perswaded and won to walk up to this short and Catholick Rule which reaches all Nations and Churches and Conditions and Vocations and degrees to discharge all their duties to one another from the heart as unto Christ there would be more truth and veracity in the World not only towards Brethren but towards enemies and strangers who have Christ in mens hearts to hold in their behalf any promise pawn'd and made unto them the violation whereof carries as much of Atheism and contempt of Christ within the heart as dishonesty without towards him it wrongs There would be more meekness and patience towards enemies and persecutors if not for their sakes yet for Christs who commands forgiveness and love to enemies More obedience or submission to all Governours to the best for Christ's sake and their own to the worst for Christ sake however being our necessary duty and their due Almes There would be more love and readiness to help one another by Counsel or Purse or Prayer instead of eating and devouring one another by Craft and Power when it shall be consider'd that every benefit or wrong we do to our Neighbour without we do both in a higher degree and greater edge to Christ himself within our hearts to our Eternal reward or reckoning This would make men true Christians and Loyal Subjects and tender Fathers and Governours and just Masters and right members in their respective Communities and Societies and trusts and Genuine Sons of the Church not only of England our Mother on Earth but of Jerusalem above the Mother of us all in Heaven to the saving of our Souls Infallibly when the whole stock of Mountebank Indulgencies shall faile to effect the Cure This little Commandment well observ'd would be the Harmony of the World set Heaven and Earth in Tune again and God at peace with his Creatures and plant joy and concord and the peace of God which passeth all understanding in every Kingdom in every City in every Family in every Breast And that Angelical Prophetical Anthem at our Saviours Birth would recover its Truth and Power in the World And Glory should be to God on high and on Earth peace and good will towards men FINIS A Particular Table of the Contents PART I. MOral experiments proving the Body to be as nothing in comparison of the Soul pag. 1 2 11. Masters and Princes Symbols of Christ how 4. How the Stature of a Christian reaches from Earth to Heaven p. 5. The Heart is never without its God p. 7. 20. Sincere Heathens and Carnal Christians compar'd and which preferr'd 7. Outside Duties in Religion necessary though nothing when compar'd to the Inside p. 8. None ought to vilifie their own Faith before a fair and open Renuntiation ibid. Sincere and dangerous mistakes arising from the comparative excellency of the Soul above the Body p. 9 Monkery and Non-conformity compar'd p. 9 10. How a thought of the Soul true or false is preferr'd before Estate Health and Life p. 11. Three properties requir'd to Act from the heart p. 12. Of force about Religion p. 13 14. Both good and bad men are for pleasure and the difference and the necessity of Divine Grace to set the will free p. 14 15. The Heart is for God and Christ and none beside why How p. 16. seqq Two reasons why the heart is so and how the Soul is Correlate to God p. 19. seqq An Irrefragable proof of the Deity from wicked mens experience and why it operates not upon some p 20 21. The Scheme and Hypothesis of the Christian Faith out of St. Paul and Creed and Fathers and Baptismal Vow p. 21 22. The right rule to chuse or avoid Communion with Churches p. 23. The Christian Hypothesis the best foundation and support of Societies p 23 24. A description of a true and right member of a Society p. 25. seq Honour is more than Life Conscience more than Honour what more than Conscience p. 27. Of a false member and of self-love how sordid and destructive of it self p. 28. seqq What makes good Men good Subjects good Rulers p. 31. seqq The great Rule of doing as we would be done by fenc'd and exalted by the Text p. 32. seq Blind obedience and implicit Faith in the Church of Rome to Superiours fairly examin'd and found unsound and unworthy p. 32. 33. seq What is Truth p. 37. Which the greater sin Tyranny or Rebellion p. 38 39. Plenitude of Soveraignty and Liberty consistent p. 40. Christs Divinity prov'd against Socinians p. 41 42. SECT I. An Exhortation to adhere to the Church of England against Rome p. 43. seqq The way to be Infallible p. 44. Worship in an unknown Tongue excludes the heart p. 44. seq Men are to be Infallible for themselves first for their Brethren next p. 47. The Controversy consists in the Election of a right or wrong Infallible guide p. 47. This Question stated in the sense of both parties p. 48 49 51. All other Controversies would end if this were decided p. 51. Obedience to the wrong is disobedience to the Right Soveraign ibid. Three Questions propos'd to find out the true p. 52. The heart cannot be without a guide Christ or sin or man of sin p. 53. The Principles of Government with the last p. 54 55 No Law of Christ or Conscience or Countrey must be heeded against his Authority and Interest p. 56 57 The Soul is Gods Temple and the Pope instead of Christ affects to be Soveraigâ— there p. 61 62. Great folly and danger to hearken to a Perkin Warheck p. 63 64. The Principles of Protestants how they prove the uniform Loyalty of the heart to Christ as the right Soveraign p. 63 64. How the Brittish Church knowes the Scriptures to be Gods word p. 64. How our Controversies about things indifferent are decidable by these Principles p 65 66. Christ is the Judge of quick and dead and who are his Depuâ—â—â—â—on Earth 47 67. And nothing to be acted against him by â—â—â—s Authority p. 67. Such as be Hereticks with the Pope but Catholicks with God are in no danger p. 67. SECT II. Rome no Mother Churâ—h to us not Loyal to Christ her Soveraign p. 68 69. Every Church may be consider'd three wayes 1. According to its Inside 2. Outside 3. Or extraction p. 69. Jerusalem above not Rome is the Mother Church to all Christians in respect of their inside
l. 28. d of p. 599. l. 35. r. may Col. 3.23 Whatsoever you do do it from the Heart as unto the Lord and not unto men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the Soul THe difference between the Soul and the Body which is the foundation of all Religion and Honesty and Honour is not so plainly demonstrable from Natural marks and arguments wherein the resemblance of Organs and Animal operations in man and beast puts a meer Naturalist often to a stand as from Moral effects and experiments and signatures undenyable For men's Actions good and bad like the Men themselves consist of two Essential parts Body and Soul or the outside of the Action which men regard answering to the Body or Carcass and the inside or the intent and manner which God respects answering to the Heart and Soul which is all in all to assigne a few instances received throughout mankind without controll It is the mind and kindness of the giver which is as the Soul of the guift and not the bulk and quantity which is but as the Body that gives price and valuation to presents with God and God-like men And a Dinner of Herbs or Bread and Water where there is love and a cheerful countenance as a signe of hearty welcom which is the life and Soul of entertainment digests better than the most Sumptuous Magnificent Feast that is where these are wanting If a life be destroyed yet if the will and intention that is the heart appear to have no manner of hand at all therein there is a non est factum in the Case it 's neither Murder nor Slaughter but Chance Lucretia though Villanously Ravished in her Body stands Chast and undefiled in Story because she fully proved after her Roman way her mind to have been pure and unconsenting It was done against my will is a plea of Natural Logick in tender Age and Riper for their indemnity in any fault committed unawares â—â—ir promises and Professions that proceed not from the heart none value but as wind or as God doth the worship or repentance of a Hypocrite that hath a relapse and falsehood in his heart The Roman General knew not how to be angry with the transported Greeks that went nigh to press him to death with their excessive joy and thankfulness at his unexpected Publication of their liberty at the Olympick Games the verity of their heartiness drown'd the danger of their outward rudeness Whereby as by a tast it is apparent that the want and absence of the Soul or heart render all our actions not only pale and ghastly and ill favour'd but also null and void and dead and that the least touch and tincture communicated from the Soul unto them gives them a new and admirable life and beauty How great then must the loveliness and beauty of the Soul itself be if the image of the Sun shines so bright in a Pail of water How glorious is the Sun it self in full body in his own orb and firmament Upon this account so great a stress is laid upon the heart in all mens Actions by all wise and holy men by Solomon My Son give me thy heart Prov. 23.26 By our Blessed Saviour from the heart proceed all evil thoughts and works and all good by the contrary Mat. 15.19 By St. Paul in my Text Whatsoever you do do it from the Heart c. without which all Religious worship would be Insignificant and Cadaverous and dead as without brotherly love from the heart amonâ—â—t brethren your solemn Festivals would be but jejune Pageantry but a Feast of Artificial Napkins or painted Pastboard or that wooden treat of the Poet Et tot á sonat ulmea Caena saburrâ 2. The Text is a rule and lesson given to Servants But doth God take care of Servants only Doth it not as well belong to Masters also yea it doth as much belong to Masters Col. 4.1 For if the Servant is bound to eye the Authority and fear of Christ in his Master is not the Master bound by Counter-part in Equity to appear in the mercy and tenderness of Christ towards such an awful and conscientious Servant Or is there or can there be any better regulation of Master and Servant than when Christ is made a Rule for both And wherein lies the main-stay and support of all the Societies and Communities of the World more than in the right Regulation of Master and Servant Superiour and Inferiour For Communities ever stand or fall decay or flourish as Servants and Subjects Masters and Governours neglect or discharge each their several parts and duties For in all our service and subjection we have two Lords and Masters before us our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 v. 22. those our visible Lords and Masters whom we outwardly and subordinatly serve in our Mortal bodies with a condition and reservation ever that they interfere not in their Commands with God Acts 4.19 And our Invisible and supreme Lord and Master whom we absolutely and unconditionally serve and obey with our immortall Souls and Spirits which know no Superiour but God alone or Christ the Lord in my text who because he hath right to the entire service of the heart and soul according to our Apostle in this text is therefore truly God And seeing we are to do all from the heart and soul or else nothing in reason is by us ever done And the heart or the soul knows none over it but only God the Apostle therefore takes Christians off from serving Earthly and perishing Lords Masters to serve our only ever-living Master in Heaven from the heart of whom Masters on Earth to Christians are as Signs and Symbols changing eye-service for fear into heart-service for Conscience v. 22. Our Earthly drudgery to men into Heavenly worship towards God fear of blows into fear of Hell temporal liberty and salary into everlasting bliss and Glory knowing saith he v. 24. That of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the Inheritance for ye serve the Lord Christ Ye serve the Lord Christ and you are to serve your Masters and Governours over you in the flesh nevertheless yea the more because they are now to you vested with Christ By the Christian Hypothesis Earthly Masters and Governours are as I may say Sacramentally chang'd and consecrated into Christ yet continue the same Masters and Governours nevertheless un-transubstantiated un-removed from their beings and stations to make room for Christ So that a Quaker may with a safe conscience yeâ— ought in conscience to express Reverence from his heart as to Christ in the first place so to his Superiour in the next yea to Christ himself in the persons of his Superiours at once And as the Blessed Sacrament is Holy Bread to our sense while yet Christ himself to our Faith so the Christian Servant or Subject serves an Earthly Prince or Master in the flesh but serves the Lord Christ himself in his heart and Faith the outside of the service
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Heart and the Lord and of these in Order 1. For the Quomodo in the first place Whatsoever we do we must do it from the Heart which requires these three properties at least 1. That we do it with Knowledge 2. With Freedom 3. With Conscience to God and no other The Will and Vnderstanding being the two parts of the Soul require the two first and the natural bent and verticity of the Soul after God its only center and rest requires the last For nothing is or can be said to be done from the heart which is not done for God and before him An honest hearty man doth all that he doth as it were upon his oath because he doth every thing from his heart and Conscience in the presence of God 1. In the first place what is done from the heart must be done with knowledge and attention which is the wakefulness of knowledge For where there is no understanding there can be no will or rational consent as in Beasts Idiots Lunatiques Minors and persons cheated surpriz'd miss-led and where no will then no heart heart will Soul and understanding being all the same Therefore St. Paul decides it to be Idolatry to worship even the true God ignorantly as in the Case of the Athenians Act. 17.23 And our Saviour Christ gives a reason for it Joh. 4.22 in the Case of the Samaritans Ye worship saith he you know not what In our Saviours account God is not reckoned to be worshipped by those that worship him ignorantly or blindly hit or miss whether him or an Idol or Usurper in his stead 2. With freedom which implies two things 1. The exclusion of force and fear 2. Necessity of Grace and Gods assistance For force and fear destroy the will and all hearty consent and delight as much as ignorance and errour did for what we do by force and fear we do it from a principle without to save our skins but what we do from the Heart we do it from a principle within in complyance with truth and justice or Gods mind wherewith the heart complies of its own accord These being so diametrically contrary to one another therefore freedom and force can never stand well together If Religion is to spring from the heart as saith my Text its absurdity and contradiction to propagate it by force Governours may and perhaps ought to use the discipline of the Rod and power paternally towards obstinate and froward Subjects to create Attention and respect in them towards the truth but to use Axe or Fagâ—ot to burn and destroy the Lives of all Dissenters is far from the spirit of Christ Luk. 9.55 Which method began to be in practice when Religion without a Heart and consequently without God began to be in fashion in the World and Corpus Christi worshipped and reverenc'd above Christ himself and the Wood of the Cross above the Mystery of the Cross and a frail Father on Earth above our Father in Heaven And as the growth and prevalence of the true Church over Idolatry and Heresie was by truth and meekness and benificence which tended to win the heart like the Suns victory over darkness which it early dispells with its light and rayes without noise or bloud-shed yet with a sufficient Glorious alteration in the World So the growth of the false hath mostly ever been by ignorance and Fire and Gun-powder which quench and alienate mens hearts and spirits or like the March of the Grand Seigniour which burns and destroys all that stands in its way 2. The necessity of the Assistance of Gods spirit obtainable by servent Prayer to renew and make us truly free and right without whose Illumination and renewing of our minds and hearts we can neither know nor love what is truly good nor in our hearts be affected towards it The carnall man who is blinded with lusts and suffers his affections which are the wings of the Soul to be intangled and fettered with the bird-limâ— of sensual pleasures and wordly delights and your glory hath neither heart nor power lâ—â—t him â—o 〈◊〉 up towards Heaven oâ— to quiâ— his sâ—eming g◠〈…〉 in hanâ— to purifie the savour of an◠〈…〉 â—hom he knows in his conscience to 〈…〉 to his present ways and practices 〈◊〉 wâ—en through the Cross and death of Christ and the mortification of his flesh by Fasting and Prayer the Soul dies to this present world and the lusts thereof and by that death of Faith is set at liberty and detach'd as men say from such snares and fetters then it can soar as an Eagle and ascend in its affections in the power of Christs ascention towards Heaven its true rest and center with delight and ease All are for ease and rest both godly and ungodly the rest and pleasure of the just and unjust differ from one another but by truth and appearance both pursue their vices and virtues from the heart the one with a false the other with true delight and satisfaction Wine and Women and the like which take away the heart Hos 14. are pursued from the heart by their several followers but with a void and dead consent because of the deceit and disappointment they meet in them thus all sinners tire themselves forever in a maze of contradictory and absurd elections and short-liv'd joyes soon repenting and hating that bliss they eagerly chuse and pursue because they put up false Coyn for true through want of skill and care and take their counsels and measures from sense and the flesh and not from the Soul or renewed mind to chuse objects for their hearts to rest on as shall never deceive or disappoint their expectation none being such but God or Christ alone Which is the third property requir'd in our doing whatsoever we do from the heart and contains the remaining parts of the Quomodo To the Lord and not to men which may be spoken to together The heart of man is not for two contraries at once God and Mammon Christ and a lust together the Soul abhors all such Polygamy it is either wholly and undividedly for God and all else for his sake or wholly for its prime lust and Idol which thereupon becomes as a God unto it For out of a God in generall true or false the Soul can neither Act nor move nor stir therefore the verse before the text requires Christ to be served and obey'd with singleness of heart which if it be done for any wordly end or design as the chief motive of the heart the heart is divided or doubled between them and a double heart is no heart the division of the heart and will destroys it and Christ is not serv'd or obey'd at all but rather Irritated and provok'd to enmity against us by our making other ends partners in our hearts of that glory and worship which is due to him alone whereby you may perceive the world is to withdraw and depart out of
negligent Therefore the inspired King recommends it as their wisdom to all Earthly Kings To kissâ— the Son lest he be Angry and so they persh from the right way Psal 2.10 12. This Son is the Messia the Lord Christ in my Text whom to kiss is to submit to his Laws to love his nature and to imitate his way and example to win the hearts of the World And to chuse rather to die as he did for the liberties of their people than devour their Birth-rights or Sacrifice their Lives in whole â—hecatombs and Myriads to their pleasure and ambition Full Dominion and full Liberty which both covet Governours and Governed are both obtain'd when both observe this Rule in my Text Governed obey from their hearts as unto Christ and Governours rule from their hearts according to Christs mind and will for the same Gospel which binds the one to submit binds the other to protect and to be compassionate tender Fathers as well as the other dutiful and mild Children That the Prerogative of the Prince should be preserv'd by the people as their own Interest and Glory and the liberty of the people preserved by the Prince as his chief trust and honour Even as the Church loves Christ above its own life and Christ his Church in like manner and that they preserve not each themselves apart which would tend to coldness and alienation and trespass and removal of bounds in the party unreasonable but that they mutually transplant and place their own preservation and Interest in the maintenance of each others right as it were forgetting their own and this begets endearment and firm trust and union and peace between both parts and the contrary tends to separation and to divide the Nation and Kingdom against it self especially when the one or the other part shall plead themselves free from their duty jure divino and the other bound which suggestion cannot be from the God of peace and order but from Satan and Antichrist the contrivers of Confusion But when both are as they should be that is both discharge their duty from the heart as unto Christ which is all that the Church meddles to direct in state matters then both should have their wills and great peace and blessing from God besides the soul best directs the body and the body best obeys the soul when both are as they should be and enjoy their several healths natural and moral being free from all Disease and Vice but let the one be Sottish or the other Hydropical and be enclined to neglect or over-reach the one the other they shall observe no bounds but covet on Insatiably against one another to the burden and ruine at last of both The happiness and bliss of a Nation consists in this when the Prince who is the soul and the people who are as the body enjoy both their several healths Mens sana in corpore sano which all good Subjects ought and will ever pray and wish for and is only attainable when both observe and follow the directions and Prescriptions of this Text. Thirdly this Text is of use to discover and confute false Doctrines that creep in among us some more covertly others more openly and with a high hand threatning the utter Subversion of the Church It serves first to convince Socinians or Modern Arrians and Anabaptists who labour to suppress and overthrow and deny the Divinity of our Saviour God blessed for ever For if the Lord in my Text who is in the following verse expressly affirm'd to be the Lord Christ be not the High and true God then to do all from the heart as unto him were flat Idolatry in us Christians which yet our Inspired Apostle prescribes and binds upon us all as our indispensiable duty and that in contradistinction to men do it saith he to the Lord and not to men manifestly owning thereby his God-head besides there are two Attributes implied in this and another parallel Paragraph Eph. 6 5.-8 belonging to this Lord. 1. First that he is the searcher of the heart 2. That he is the Judge of of the world according to the secrets of the heart which are not communicable either of them to any Creature in Heaven or Earth neither to Angels nor Archangels but to him alone who is the true God Christs Divinity which these dangerous Hereticks would overthrow is the main Pillar and Foundation of all our Christian comfort For because he was truly God that was it gave price and Infinite value to his death for our Redemption whereby he became 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Soveraign Lord of Christians as our Creeds acknowledge And because he was the eternal Son of God that also was it that gave beauty and exstasie to his unparallel'd astonishing humility and love in condescending to take our nature upon him to die in it for us when we were his enemies whereby he became Lord of Hearts and all knees in Heaven and Earth and under the Earth bound to bow unto him and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father Phil. 2 6-11 Rom. 5.10 This merit and humility of his death is that which is recommended in Sacraments to our remembrance and in Brotherly Charity towards one another to the Worlds end And the impudent imitation of Antichrist is not the least proof amongst many of Christs Divinity as St. Chrysostom well observes who would not have acted his part so forgetfully as falsely to assume to be God 2 Thes 2.4 if Christ had not been truly so SECTION I. The Controversie reduced to one single point in General of Obedience to the Right Soveraign of the heart and Protestancy found Loyal and Popery the contrary in its principles and Practice BUt in the Second place I shall chuse to enlarge and insist upon a more necessary Exhortation because the danger of seduction grows daily greater that you and all other Christians here in Britain would be carefull to preserve your selves true and stedfast members in the day of tryal of an higher Society into which you were early enrolled for more Holy and Eternal purposes and to be obedient to your own good Laws and the Governours that are over you by Providence and by consequence to God himself in them and not to fall off as many false hearts are like to do like leaves in Autumn upon a cold nip or trial into forraign Dirt and Captivity and imposture from which the Wisdom and zeal of your Progenitors have set you free for Originally as the learned on both sides know our Brittish Church never was a Daughter of Rome nor Subject to its See being Ancienter in Christ and Seniour to the Church and Chair of Rome it self or the first arrival of St. Peter there were the Tradition or Legend true But what availeth it to have been unless we still be a true Church agreeing with the mind of Christ which some will by no means allow Take therefore for some instance the
Apostolical Rule in my Text in your own hands to measure and Judge as Solomon once did between two Mothers the true and the pretended For a Private Person with God to guide him may judge Infallibly which Church most agrees with God for a wavering eye and a trembling hand having a streight and a stable rule and line to guide it partakes of the stability and streightness that directs it the guide and guided being one and the same person by fiction and agreement And the Roman Catholick themselves as they love to be called cannot be denied to be every Mothers Son as Infallible as the Judge himself or their Church is to whom they give themselves entirely over to be guided by them take therefore in Gods name Gods clear mind and measure and judge impartially with the heart and soul and in the strength of him that guides you Your Holy Mother the Church of England hath nourished you up in a Sound and Orthodox Religion and Worship which you and your Prosterity can understand and therefore say Amen to it from your hearts because you understand it The great pretender of Rome starves her Children at Nurse and all their life time in their own Territories by Politick Ignorance and binds and enslaves their stoutest Champions in chains of darkness and of implicit faith and blind obedience the better to keep them under in Captivity and slavery to serve her unworthy and unnatural designs and to fight against the Truth as the Turk breeds up deluded Janizaries to War and subdue their own Fathers and Mothers and people which absolute and blind subjection of the heart to any man on Earth is Idolatry in the giver and the taker Is it not lamentable to consider how prophane and perfidious the guides of the Church of Rome are towards God and their people committed to their charge and in deceiving the one and mocking the other with a worship in an unknown tongue without the heart and understanding which is therefore a meer nullity by the Divine Doctrine of my Text and by common sense and therefore no worship at all but Idleness and â—â—â—â—ccation approaching to Idolatry Religion without the mind is not Religion or Worship but a shew or Stage-Play or a Counterfeit of Religion as the Scene is of Truth and History where an Actor or a Mimick stands for a Prince as here the shadow for the substance or crossing of the body for the contrition of the soul and all are able to know and understand very well the whole management in both to be a meer divertisement of the fancy only more sufferable on the Stage than in the Church in Gods presence where more sobriety and seriousness of mind is required and nothing else in point of Truth and reality because the Original Persons and parties are absent and wanting there the true Hero and here the Truth of the heart A sincere Protestant is grieved and troubled at every straggling thought and the least deviation of his heart at Prayer in Gods presence as a great and griveous affront and contempt of the Divine Majesty like turning our backs to a Prince while we are speaking to him But our confident Bigots of Rome by their Publick and common pactice maintain and defend that God is best worshipped when he is so affronted and despised and that the total absence of the heart and understanding so there be an outward Opus operatum with lip and breath is no sin at all but right Catholick Devotion most agreeing with the Deity If mumbling Pater Nosters and Ave Maries whether at Church or Closet or at Cards or Plays as Witches do Charms without knowledge or Attention or meaning make good and current Roman-Catholick Devotion then Parrots and Magpyes and Apes may commence Catholick Disciples of the Roman-Catholick Salvation And upon this score perhaps it was that one of the great and Sainted Patriarchs of an order amongst them began to bestow his pains and zeal in Preaching to Birds When men in contrariety to the Apostle in my Text judge it fanatical Innovation to Worship God as Protestants do with the heart and understanding They that so exclude the heart in the first place as needless will they not exclude the Lord likewise in the second place for these two are Correlates take away the one and take away the other also where the heart and the Lord are shut out in the first and second place will not the fear of the Lord be excluded likewise though the beginning of wisdom in the third place And where the fear of the Lord is once banisht from Religion is there any sin or Villany in Soul or Body that such Religious Atheists will boggle at to act and prepetrate at opportunity or temptation when it may with safety be committed and with impunity from the Laws of man It s well that Church exceeds all others in Pardons and Absolutions if such seives hold water for their Principles cut out work enough for Pardons and if their own allowed and best Historians are to be believed the practices of their chiefest Popes come not short of their Principles How deplorable and sad is the condition of such a Church to which no further degree of disorder and misery can be added or imagin'd Nor the Devil drive this nail further to the head than that they should strongly believe themselves to be the sole and only Catholicks salvable and infallible in such gross and damnable Errours And yet upon such holy guides such infallible Rocks the Roman-Catholick Church is built For all with them are bound to believe as the Church that is the Pope believes whom they believe to be infallible For though their lives are often frail and vicious yet their Doctrines or Testimonies for God say they are ever firm and true As if a Vicious life were not an effectual quenching and renouncing of the whole Faith of such a person during such impenitence or as if a Debauch'd person or Atheist were a fit witness for the Christian Faith much less the Judge thereof He that will be Infallible for another ought first to be Infallible for himself and his own Salvation And every man is bound upon his everlasting Peril to be as Infallible as he can for himself and his Brethren But as a Creature no man is or can be Infallible nec vox hominem Sonat but more or less he may be Infallible by help from without according as he is guided wholly or in part by God who is alone Infallible And the issue and whole state of the cause and difference between Protestants and Papists lyes in the right choice and election of their Infallible guide and judge Who this is being the great Question There is no judge under God and Christ the sole judge of quick and dead but the invict Supream Powers himself hath appointed in all Kingdoms and Churches and private breasts Invict Conscience in every private man in all Private and all Eternal concerns Invict
Soveraigns have reduced the one the other and be first at peace till either the Pope conform to the will of Christ which we expect which would beget an unity of Spirit and Truth between us in the bond of peace or Christ to the mind and will of the Pope and have no Scriptures that shall signifie any thing contrary to his sense but that the Popes will shall be taken to be Christs Will where they interfere which is their aim in their engrossing the right of interpreting the Scriptures to their Church alone that is their Pope which would produce peace and union its true but such a carnall peace and slavish union as were worse than any War or Captivity or desolation whatsoever Purgatory indulgencies image worship Transubstantiation blind obedience Universal Monarchy over the whole Church c. let them be never so false or unreasonable or scandalous or absurd not only with all learned and sober men but with many of themselves in their secret thoughts and retirements yet because they support the Kitchin and adorn the Hall and carnal state and esteem of their Apostolick see they shall and must be owned and defended forever as Infallible Doctrines De fide more unalterable than the Laws of Medes and Persians by all her Catholick Sons as they tender their continuance within her Pale out of which with them there can be no Salvation and our worship and Liturgie shall be condemned as Impious and prophane till upon obedience and Submission to their Chair as was offered in Queen Elizabeths days they shall permit it to be Orthodox and Holy and to be used in our Churches without any alteration or further trouble and all our Protestant Doctrines which are the same in effect with Gods Holy Scriptures out of which they are drawn and built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief Corner stone yet because they comport not with their carnal designs and greatness shall be condemned to be abjur'd as false and Heretical though the Authors of them Christ and his Apostles and his purest Church be involved with us in the same sentence and themselves in Gods wo and curse in the Prophet upon those that call good evil evil good light darkness and darkness light Esa 15.20 What Law of Nature or Nations or Conscience or Honour or Humanity or Civility or Faith or Plain-dealing which are indelible imbred instincts in Vulgar and Heathen Breasts much more in Christian and Generous will not the guides of that Church direct their charge to break and violate with assured hopes of Salvation and Immortal Glory for the feat so it tend to promote and advance their Holy Catholick cause which is with them as it were Gods last will and Testament which Abrogates and annuls all precedent wills the Eternal Laws of God and conscience being but obsolete or Corporation orders when they clash against the Infallible Bulls and paramount Oracles of his Holiness yea the contradiction shall be salved and heal'd and Christ by Interpretation which belongs to them is brought to say and sign their draught to be his own Will and meaning and their Atheime shall be fac'd with his Authority as Hypocrites do their Villanies with the cover of Religion as King Philip of Macedon is said to have made the Oracles to Phillipize and Prophesie for him What Civil War and combustion must this make in English and honest hearts who though they have a respect for Rome think fit nevertheless to reserve due Loyalty towards God and their Redeemer and their Country to be thus necessitated to offend against God and man to save their souls who in compliance with that Church and obedience to its commands and dictates upon perill of damnation must shocke the wise and settled Laws of their Nation and disturb publick peace and Union and bring fear and consternation upon their fellow Subjects that desire to live in quietness and slight and disparage the learned and Religious Clergy of this land and our unparallel'd Vniversities and disobey glorious and Paternal Counsels seal'd in bloud for Gracious Kings are Fathers to all their Subjects next to their own begotten and shame the cause of friends and fellow-sufferers loyally and sincerely defended to the last gasp in bloud and ruine and to give just cause of boast and triumph to others for early and wise fears and jealousies and fore-sight and at last reconcile the Nation by a secret judgment against themselves and profess the true Religion before men believed in the heart to be false by humane Patent and dispensation against Conscience And conceal a false Religion believed in the heart to be true And act to the prejudice of the professed before declaring for the intended like giving Hostile broadsides without an Hostile Flag against the Law of Nations and continue or forbear vitious living according to humane Indulgence and tedder above the fear of God Such twisted Arts and servile postures of the Soul set by God above humane reach and power such chymical sublimated hypocrisie and doubling to which all the Swords and Artillery of the World pointed and planted against a single breast ought not to be able to force a Coward to all Politicians and Head-pieces and Whisperers to gull and seduce a fool to though they may go down with more ease with French and Italian tempers innur'd by ill fate to absolute governments and cringes and Slavery how loathsome and repugnant and against the grain must they prove to any honest and generous and freeborne English spirit And whence can this Civil War and distraction arise but from some failer and breach and division of the allegiance of the heart in admitting some up-start usurper or Impostor to be co-ordinate and equal if not Superiour to Christ its natural Liege Lord and Soveraign which the Loyal part of the Soul will never be flattered or frighted to agree or yield to Thus the heart through its own folly suffers it self to be ever disturbed and racked between two contrary Potentates within its bowells God and Old Conscience command and approve of natural affection and truth and peace and love to Countrey and obedience to Parents and Kings and Mercy and Civility to all in Misery and Anxiety The Anti-god or New Conscience commands the contrary as a piece of Catholick zeal and Glorious hazard and self-denyal under pain of displeasure of the Holy See and St. Peter and St. Paul and exclusion out of the Pale of the Church and the like usual forms Plain therefore and evident it is that the whole Controversy between us and Papists is reduceable to one point touching the Right and Soveraignty of the heart and Conscience whose it is and ought to be whether the Lord Christ in my Text as we hold with St. Paul or the Pope and Successor to St. Peter as they maintain at Random If the Pope be God and Lord of the Soul and not Christ then we Protestants are much to blame in
or transgressors of that Law and Law-giver there is but one who can save and destroy James 4.12 The blessed Lord Jesus Judge of quick and dead at the last day whose deputies on Earth in the Interim are consciences in Private souls and Magistrates and Governours in publick bodies who are as the souls of such bodies whether Temporall in Externall or Ecclesiastical in more Internall matters and concerns who are all both Private and publick conscience Subject and accountable unto him who alone is Judge and Soveraign And therefore we can do nothing against Christ upon any mans Authority whatsoever and being found faithful to him the sole and Supreme Judge and Soveraign of our souls we trust to be found Gods Catholicks though we are but Hereticks to the Pope who is not our Judge rejoycing in mans aspersion while we have Gods Absolution to wipe it off for not he who commendeth himself is approved but whom the Lord commendeth 2 Cor. 10.8 SECTION II. Of the true Mother Church in particular to all Christians in respest of their In-side and RomesVsurpation HAving shewed that no Christian Churches or persons are subject to the Pope while himself is not subject to Christ the right Superiour and Soveraign over all nor bound to offend against Christ to please his pretended Vicar all being bound to withdraw their Communion from him who shakes off the undoubted Soveraign over all I will further shew that though the Church of Rome were sound and un-corrupt in its Doctrines and Loyalty which it is very far from yet it neither is nor was ever any mother Church to our British Church nor can have any right or title to its subjection or obedience It never had any Original motherhood or superiority over us of right nor in fact at any time but by the Concession of our Princes imposed upon by its arts which they may justly recal and take away at their pleasure as hath been done So it appears it's themselves that necessitate us to desert their Communion out of Christian Loyalty to our Saviour by them first deserted and deposed in a treasonable manner and his glorious Majesty chang'd into the similitude of a Calf or a Mortal Creature that perisheth which is the first spring and root of the rest of their desperate and monstrous Errours which bear the manifest spots and tokens of Antichristianism in the strength and infallibility of their Delusions Though we can and ought to bewail and compassionate their condition and slavery yet to return to their bosome as to a Mother Church we understand not how it is our duty or sober obedience were it sound or healthy yet we doubt not but she hath angl'd several sincere and ignorant and unwary Sons of this Church with that bait We confess we have been pin'd and stary'd under her for hundreds of years as under a hard and cruel Stepmother while harbour'd by the Fathers of our Countrey imposed upon by her inchantments whose issue by her as by a second venter upon her divorce became appurtenant to the Father and are incorporated with the first stock and Family but sure we are she never teemed of our Brittish Churches who never were the Daughters of her womb nor sucked our first milk from her breasts For whether their inside or their outside or extraction be consider'd they appear to have no descent from Rome Neither can they instance or insist upon any other point or manner of Pedegree and derivation of one Church from another For as it is with every private man if his inside and Soul and Spirit be examined whence it came it came from above from the Father of our Spirits Heb. 12.9 and to return in peace to him that gave it is its utmost aim and bliss Eccles 12.7 If the outside or his body it came from the Earth whence it was first taken and whither it must return If his intermediate descent he springs and proceeds from Fathers and progenitors of the Flesh and owns their superiority and Discipline and honours their names and memories So it is with all Churches and Christian Societies By our inside we are not from below or from beyond the Sea but from Heaven Jerusalem above being our mother and Jesus our King the King and Lord of Souls By our outside we are under our own Kings and Governours on Earth as our Nursing Fathers and Mothers according to the Holy Prophecy As to our descent Old Christian Britannia is our Mother to whom the Antient Church of Rome is Junior in the Faith and much more any of her Perking Daughters or Clergy which shall be further proved in every particular And first as to the inside of all Christian Churches and of the Church of Rome it self if she will be a Church of Christ and of thousands in her that have not bowed the heart to any but to Christ known to God There is no Mother-Church to be accounted of but one only the Spouse of Christ expressed by name in Scripture Heb. 12.22 Not the City of Rome who rather is under ill report in them but the City of the living God The Heavenly Jerusalem which Gal. 3.26 is by the Apostle Stil'd the Mother of us all and which is free and answering unto Sarah whereas Jerusalem on Earth answers Hagar in her servitude and yet Jerusalem below is more a Mother of all Christian Churches than Rome it self or any other here below for Rome her self had her extraction thence her St. Peter and his Chair and the Gospel and Christ himself she and all must derive originally from Sion And if the Mother be not free much less her Daughters for no Soul or Church can be said to be free in her exile and servitude whiles she serves any other but her own natural Prince who is Christ alone the High Priest and Bishop of our Souls who is at the right hand of God in that Heavenly City and Assembly of the Faithful For Christ is the sole Monarch and Legislator in this Spiritual Kingdom and none are free Subjects here but those who obey him alone and no other Controller His will alone is the Law and measure of good and evil and duty and transgression He enacts and repeals and dispenses and absolves he alone can search and reward and punish Souls The everlasting concerns of Eternity and the secrets of mens hearts transcend all humane authority and cognizance and reach No secular Powers are to tread within this Temple but are to stand without in the Court though Christians and in the further Court of the Gentiles if Heathen or Antichristian Christs Deputies and delegates in this Heavenly work and Province are all Bishops and Curates who by their life and Doctrine set forth his true and lively word and rightly and duely Administer his Holy Sacraments who yet have no power or property or Authority but from him Neither is the word they preach 2 Thes 2.13 nor the Sacraments they administer 1 Cor. 4.1 nor the Absolution they
the Brittish is the most faithful and motherly in the education of her Children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord 1 Pet. 5.1 3 4. The Elders which are among you I exhort who am also an Elder or Fellow-Presbyter and witness of the sufferings of Christ Feed the flock of God which is among you taking the over-sight thereof not by constraint but willingly not for filthy Lucre but of a ready mind Neither as being Lords over Gods heritage but being examples to the flock and when the chief Shepherd shall appear ye shall receive a Crown of Glory Now the Popes are so far from feeding Christs flock by their Doctrine or example that no Pope was ever seen in a Pulpit these many hundred years and sometimes are no Divines but Canonists most an end or States-men or Nuncio's better vers'd in the Mysteries of the World than of the Soul And as to the other part of being Holy examples to Christs flock which is as necessary to edifying as preaching they do not so much as pretend to it but instead of morall attraction by the Heavenliness of their doctrines or lives wherewith souls can alone be won which close with nothing but God or what most resembles him in light and holiness they use ignorance and blind obedience and force and Fagot and Inquisition which are secular and temporal weapons and methods to work upon Beasts and Malefactors and the body only and not Spiritual or Ecclesiastical or Heavenly and proportionable to mens souls which are Inhabitants of Heaven But if the guides of their Church have neither the Truth nor pretence and colour of Holiness the whole mystery of iniquity would go to wrack therefore Holiness shall be arrogated as peculiar to them not in respect of heart and life before God and men which would prove a hard lesson and an unstable title but in the Right and Prerogative of the Apostolick chair what ever be their lives or examples vertuous or vitious exemplary or scandalous and Atheistical which is but a wooden title and would be as unstable as the former without the strong supports and butresses of blind Faith and the slavish and bestiall ignorance of their Disciples to acknowledge and bear it up But though our Popes do fully quitt and resign their Ministerial Superiority over the Inside of Churches which was all that could in this respect belong unto them were they extraordinary and inspir'd Apostles from this or their own Inferiour Churches Subject to them and therefore we need not be troubled in conscience for detaining this Right and priviledge from them which they never lawfully had here or if they had they do and have for many ages voluntarily and heartily and in the face of the world quitted and relinquished it for ages immemorial both at home and a broad Yet as to the rights and Prerogatives of the Soveraign or chief Shepheard of this Heavenly Jerusalem as St. Peter calls him which never belong'd to them nor to St. Peter himself their pretended founder none are more for them than they be nor more daring and greedily encroaching and usurping daily upon them a Symptome of the old Disease we are like to meet in every one of their practices and opinions What Christ enacts to be sins of everlasting stain and pravity to depose lawful Kings to Massacre and murder Nations shall be no sins in Roman Catholicks when their Soveraign the Pope shall insinuate to the contrary Orthodox Christians in Christs esteem keeping to his word and will shall be but Hereticks and Dogs with the Pope for the same reason Christ ordained Bread and Wine for the Sacraments the Pope is for Wine only to the people He 'l forbid like Murder or Treason Communion with Protestants whose Sacraments are much purer than his own and dispense and connive at stews which Christ abhors Allegiance to Kings and Faith and Civility to men are duties with Christ but sins with the Pope at his pleasure The Orthodox and penitent whom Christ absolves the Pope will bind he 'l dispense with Hypocrisie and License incest and absolve Impenitence and imploy debauchery and vice in men and women to promote the Interest of Holy Church though means and ends are Homogeneous in their natures and as it were of a piece And men shall be flatter'd in sin for gain and cozen'd into damnation for filthy Lucre which God and Angels and all good men abhor and Scripture detests and no honest or wise man would be seen in none but a Cain or Satan or a Pimp or a Pope And thousands more of the like Abominations and controlling of Christs will and Law too much in request and daily practice enough without repentance to invite and hasten a Turkish Rod upon them and to make the Earth weary in bearing and Heaven in forbearing such scandalous impieties under the name of Christ and mask of Religion SECTION III. Of the true Mother Church to every Christian in respect of the out-side and RomesVsurpations ANd as Churches by their In-side are under the King of Heaven alone so by their out-sides they are under their respective Earthly Kings and not the Pope in either what ever his incroachments are or have been against the one or the other Soveraign against either of whose Authorities and Prerogatives a strong man cannot a good man that bears any Character of Christ as Popes pretend highly to do will not offer to plead prescription Though no Secular power have eyes sharp enough to search or discern the secret Communion of mens hearts and spirits either rightly with God that made them or vilely with an Idol which they have made unto themselves nor hands rich and Liberal to out-bid the deceitful promises of the flesh or buy them out from a fancy or zeal that 's false nor arm or strength or sufficient terrour to wrench them from a Martyriall truth and therefore are insignificant in all their inquests or attempts upon mens thoughts which are as it were in another world far out of their reach and view and subject to no King but Christ who by beatificial Visions and Eternal torments and which is more forceing the immense Humility and kindness of his death and power of his Resurrection checks and reduces all the Idols of mens hearts with all their train and deceits and contumacy and keeps his Assises in every corner of those Intellectual Regions through the Ministry of his Holy word which Heb. 4.12 Is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword pierceing even to the dividing asunder of Soul and Spirit and of the joynts and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart Neither is there any Creature that is not manifest in his sight but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do His Ministers like men in Virginals raising an Heavenly Harmony upon the dead strings of mens hearrs when the finger of the living God is pleased to touch
Zebadia the Ruler of the house of Juda for all the Kings matters v. 11. To assemble Synods and Councells about Sacred Affairs for settling the Ark as did David 1 Chron 13.2 For dedicating the Temple as did Solomon 1 Reg. 8. and reforming the Nation and bringing them back unto the Lord God of their Fathers as did Jehoshaphat 2 Chron. 19.4 To maintain their Command and Soveraignity in such matters not only over all the people in general 1 King 23.21 but over the High Priests themselves in particular by assigning their work and duty 2 King 22.8 12. Where Jehoshaphat layes command upon Hilkiah the High-Priest thrusting them out of their High-Priesthood for their Disloyalty as Solomon did Abiathar 1 King 2.27 And sparing them their Lives in courtesie to their Coat v. 26. And this their pious care and zeal for God and Religion which in the Popes account were little less than intermeddling in other mens rights is recorded in Gods account as their Eternal praise and honour and good service to their Countrey And like Josiah was there no King before him that turn'd to the Lord with all his heart and with all his Soul and with all his might Neither arose there any like him 2 King 23.25 And Jehoshaphat sought to the Lord God of his Father and walked in his Commandments and not after the doings of Israel Therefore the Lord established the Kingdom in his hands and all Juda brought to Jehoshaphat Presents and he had Riches and honour in abundance 2 Chron. 17.5 And the contrary neglect about the Worship of God in their wicked Kings and making their people to sin by their defection or ill example was the ruine of their Land 2 Chron. 36.17 And a Brand of Infamy upon their names in particular forever as the followers of Jereboam the Son of Nebat which made Israel to sin and therefore liker to Satan therein than to Gracious Kings and Fathers And what was thus their bounden duty and honour in the Kings of Israel to imploy their Authority and Government for God and his Church upon the like ground and proportion is the duty and interest of all Christian Kings for a Kingdom that becomes Christian becomes a Church thereby or the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Pet. 3.5 the Heritage and Clergie of God a Christian Kingdom is a new Israel of God Gal. 6.16 and Christian Kings by consequence are heyres of the same Prerogative and Supremacy that did belong in Israel to the Kings of Israel where the High-Priests were subordinate in externals to the Kings and not the Kings to the Priests It is a contradiction to be a King and to be Subject wherein Popes are made Supreme Kings are made Subjects there cannot be two Supremes in the same Church or Kingdom and it were a great snare and Spiritual misery to be subjects under two contrary Soveraigns and to be bound in conscience to obey contrary injunctions and commands whereby inevitably their obedience to the one becomes their sin and transgression against the other Soveraign which is the condition of Roman Catholicks who own the Pope for supreme to the wrong of those Christians Soveraigns over them whose right it is whereby their conscientious Catholick obedience becomes unconscionable disobedience to their right Superiour It concerns and behoves them therefore and every other Christian subject in whom the word of Christ ought to dwell richly in all wisdom Col. 3.16 to be fully satisfied who is to rule them He that mistakes his Soveraign will mistake his Loyalty The Old and New Testament knows but two Soveraigns God or the King Christ or Caesar 2. Chron. 19.11 Math. 22.21 so the Jewish so the Ancient Christian Church so the Church of England held upon the Reformation when the whole Nation both Parliament and Convocation unanimously agreed that the Pope had no more to do in England than any other Bishop The Soveraignty of the Lord the Pope starting up when the Church began to degenerate strongly savours of a fifth Monarchy or an Antichristian erection Christ only is the Immediate Soveraign of the Inside of men in his Church Kings the Immediate Soveraigns of the outside in their Dominions the Pope or Prelate is Soveraign in neither Pet. 5.3 Rom. 13.1 therefore there is no obedience due from the heart and conscience to spirituall Governours but wherein they agree in their Doctrines with Christs mind and clash not in their outward order and Discipline with the rights of Christian Kings for delegates are to be obeyed in and for and not against their Principals and the soul is subject to none but to a supreme either the Lord Christ who is absolutely such or our Lord the King who is such in externals by Christs concession Prov. 8.15 subject also it is to Governours but for his sake and by his command that is to say it 's subject not to them but to him But it will be still objected what have Kings to do with Religion that wholly belongs to Spiritual persons and the Clergy and to the Pope the Patriarch in such matters and by consequence Supreme and it must still be answered and acknowledged That the substantial part of Christian Religion lyes out of the Horizon and Territory of Kings in another world as it were where yet none is Soveraign but Christ alone Popes and Bishops and Inferiour Priests being all officers and Ministers under him in this Kingdom all of equal degree and power without difference in their Authorities or Keys saving that in equity and merit they are foremost and chiefest who are most painful and faithful in this trust Kings well observe their bounds therein they do not as they ought not intermeddle in such matters between the soul and God as are of divine Institution or immortal importance they meddle not with the Priestly office and great would be the peace of Churches and of the world if the Pope did as little meddle with the Kingly they take not upon them to preach and publish the Laws and mind of Christ in his name and Authority nor to denounce wrath and War against offenders high or low nor of themselves to Excommunicate the unworthy from the Holy Society of Christs Church and all hopes of mercy till they repent and change nor to arbitrate as for Christ who are fit and worthy of Grace or pardon neither do they travel between Heaven and Earth upon messages between Christ and souls as the Angels upon the ladder being now Gods mouth to the people in wholsom Counsels and Instructions anon the peoples mouths to God in humble confessions or thanskgivings as neither did the Kings of Israel ever offer to enter the holy place or order the Shew Bread or Sacrifice or incense which might have been done with the same skill though not with the same Authority by Common persons as by Priests and hath been attempted by one or two but to their wo No under both Law and Gospel these offices did solely belong to
example before men belongs to Christian Kings to regulate by discretion with the advice of their Clergy Numb 27.21 Mal. 2.7 for their Transitory Nature makes them more allyed to this present world where Kings are Soveraigns than their bare Connexion to Holy duties doth make them appurtenances to the other immortal world where Christ only Raigns and Rules For Instance whether it be more decent to perform Divine service in a Gown or Surplice or in a Cloak or Querpo whether with the people having all their Hats on as do the Jewes or the Minister as the French or all bare both Minister and People as usually amongst us whether kneeling or sitting be the best and seemliest postures at several Offices before men for it is clear before God that the heart is all in all whether a Bason at the Ministers Elbow be more comly than a Font or whether the Font stand best in the Chancel with the other Table for the other Sacrament or at the Church door in token of our entrance by it Whether the Cross may be used in Baptism or the Ring in Marriage Whether the King have not power to found and endow Churches and to alter Sees and to translate the Metropolitan from one place to another as he thinks fit for any new convenience or redress These things are nominally spiritual but really secular and belong to Christian Temporal Jurisdiction which no way intrenches herein upon Divine Institution or Soveraignity which hath left out such matters and causes free for Christian Kings to regulate even in the Church and Temple as did the Kings of Israel The Church being part of their state and Province where Kings and Subjects are Christian and the one to order every thing to the Lord Christ whose Deputies and Vicars now they are and the other to obey them in all such their Orders from the heart as to the Lord Neither is there any peril of Soul or Salvation by such transitory matters as wears and postures of the Body where they are not ordained for to honour or acknowledge Idols and false Gods there may be great danger in contention 1 Cor. 11.16 and disobedience to those Divine and Eternal Laws which command obedience and Conformity to humane Neither are the Circumstances of Religion made equal hereby to the substantial parts thereof being observed to such several Ends and intents sufficiently distinct and different as are the Authorities that appoint both the one and the other God himself in those and Kings as his Deputies and delegates in these though many mens too much placing their Heaven and zeal and humour and scruples upon Ceremonies and shadows make them substances as to themselves For the difference between Time and Eternity or the Body and the Soul or sense and faith or word and sword or Heaven and Earth or peace of Conscience and the peace of the Kingdom is not more fixt and manifest and unconfounded than is that between the inside and outside of the Church the one lying within the Perambulation and Jurisdiction of Divine Soveraignty the other of humane neither of the Popes over us in England nor the latter but only there where he is a Temporal nor the former even at Rome it self where so he is And O! the Unchristian Arts and Methods that have been us'd by Popery all along both above and under-board according as it was high or low to wrest this Ecclesiastical Supremacy and Prerogative from Christian Kings which is their manifest and undoubted right and chiefest Glory in their Temporal Crowns and a peculiar Talent for their management in order to an Eternal Sometimes openly and above-board by an impudent pretence of Plenitude of Power when they had none at all they have eagerly endeavoured to hook unto themselves our Kings Royal Priviledges about Investures and nomination of Bishops and the Crowns off from their heads which is too well known For any ones Temporal right that had any reference or Relation towards the Church was straightway the undoubted Appurtenance of St. Peters Chair under that pretence they caus'd King Henry the Second in the Controversie about the exemption of the Clergy which was an absolute invasion of his Royal Government and Authority to be whipt and stript by his Subjects like a Malefactor in Bridewell for the good of his Soul and in breach of his Royal Trust and Dignity to allow Appeals to Rome to heal his wounded Conscience Their poisoning Attempts and Invasions and Powder-plots against Queen Elizabeth and King James are fresh in Memory When open Arts can do no good they 'l work their Ends in Masquerade and smaller undertakings Here possessing Quakers and raising Sects to resist and Blaspheme our Religion and Government There endeavouring to get more considerable Instruments into power to promote their Romish Interest in Protestant Shapes with greater succcess and lesser noise because less discern'd to corrupt our hopeful Clergy and destroy honest men under-hand and imbroile the Nation by widening the differences between Protestants which were ready to close and multiplying Non-conformists whether they would or not For it is obvious and easie to observe that all or most of our Presbyterian Dissenters of the younger sort throughout the Nation did see their Errour and desert their Party upon the Restauration of our Church And that the Elder sort were no less convinc'd from the experience of late confusions but that it was harder for the one than for the other in point of Reputation to change and walk contrary on a suddain to their former Actings And the secret enemies of our Protestant peace and union laid hold of this advantage as Non-conformists alledge and cast in politick Provisoes and obstructions to make their Repentance harder still if not impossible to the trouble of our Government and the joy of Rome Some ambodextrous Pens like Mountebanks upon a Stage shall publickly wound and confute and presently heal and defend the Church of Rome as faithfully as any of her own Inquisitors and as safely as any of our own Authors by this double stile falling fiercely upon their first Deserters and such as begin to espy and loath any of its grosser Errours enough in time if not so carefully prevented and discourag'd to cause a general defection throughout the host because they are not perfect Protestants in a moment able to see and relinquish all her Corruptions at first waking And therefore the sincere Irish Clergy shall be rigorously chid for beginning an Orthodox Allegiance in disobedience to their Church and violation of their Oaths And the Jansenists for defending Catholick Doctrines with the like sincerity to Christ and dis-rellish to the Pope And the Distinguishers of the Church of Rome from its more corrupt Court as Pestiferous and rash beginners or some Ho-body Hoyes and no right Sons of the one Church or of the other against all Principles of Christian Charity which forbids to quench the smoaking Flax or break the bruised Reed as also against common humanity and
natural Allegiance of his consciâ—nce towards Christ and the Truth and his outward duty to his Governours and Fathers at home violating the fift commandment with a Pharisaical corban saying to their peculiar Fathers it 's given to Rome whatsoever you might be profited by us following uncertain traditions before Gods express Law and teaching for Doctrines the commandments of men as our Saviour himself hath timely detected and forwarn'd against this Holy fraud Math. 15.5 for by the same reason that every good wife is to know her own Husband from another and every good Subject his own King from a Forreigner or Usurper and every Souldier his own Commander and Colours by the same duty and conscience every English Christian is to follow his own Church in Christ before another for obedience misplac'd is but Godly transgression or Traiterous Loyalty to the disturbance of the publick besides its own shame and prejudice And by submission to Governours and Synods they were heal'd of the Pelagian Heresie which most annoyed this Church next to Romish Inroades that trode down the whole field and sowed their tares and superstitions from year to year among our best corn this made also our Church to under go several variations about the observation of Easter as times required As for the Arian Heresie and venome which began to Breath a little in these parts upon h Usher p 197. Gratians toleration of divers opinions in Religion it found not the air to agree with it neither did Pelagius or Morgan though born in Brittain and as it is said i idem p. 207. the same day St. Augustine was born in Africk suck k idem p. 215. 224. Pelagii Epist ad Demetr or Propagate his Heresie here but fell into it at Rome by finding Christians to come short of Heathens and abusing Grace to Libertinisme and Wantonness for otherwise he was in great esteem and veneration for his learning and Sanctity with the chief l Usher 221.214 Fathers of the East and West St. Augustine and St. Chrysostom and in the East m Usher p. 215. ended his days having never return'd to his own Country but his Heresie came to be spread here nevertheless in those parts especially that were reduc'd by the Saxon Conquerour by the means of n Bed lib 1. c 17. Agricola a French man the Son of Severianus a Pelagian Bishop and in the rooting of it out amongst the Brittains left behind in Lhoegr Germanus and Lupus French-men likewise did good service as by Neutrality they were better fitted as for instance their first and main success in disputation was about o M. Westm p. 446. St. Albans where Gildas and such as he durst not approach for the Enemy as his complaint is taken notice of by p Camden in St. Albans Camden there being their chiefest Champions sent hither from the Gallican at the request of the Brittish Church signifying her distemper and troubles quaâ—primum fidei Catholicae debere succurri that the Catholick Faith should be assisted as soon as might be such was the loving Communion then between this and that Church and still might be especially with the soundest and learned'st part thereof under frown for Orthodoxy if he who now letteth were once taken fully out of the way 2 Thess 2. But it recover'd it self again after Germanus his time till St. David newly ordained Bishop by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in a publick Synod whereto he was invited held in Wales against it gave it q Usher p. 474. its final overthrow and was made Arch-Bishop of St. David in the same Synod thereupon For the Easter Controversie which was the only materiall point Augustine had to object for the other about Baptism was meer Ceremony and since lost in oblivion it consisted of two parts Doctrinal and Astronomical Doctrinal as in the early Controversie between the Churches of East and West wherein it is most probable the Brittains followed the East before the Synod of q Concil Arelat Can. 1. Arles and Nice determined otherwise and Astronomical between Augustine and the Brittains at this time being much the same difference between stylo veteri stylo novo in our days which the Ignorance of Augustine made to be a Catholick tradition derived from St. Peter and the chief ground and pretence of quarrel to disturb our Churches St. Paul dehorts Christians from observing dayes and Months and times and years Gal. 4 10 very agreeably to the Christian Hypothesis whereby this present world or the old Creation hath its end and period in the death of Christ Sacramentally to our Faith and r 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrys T. 5. Edit Savil. Hom. 53. p. 357. time its Concomitant twinne hath the like end and period with it by consequence Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world why as though living in the world are ye Subject to Ordinances for properly a Christian as a Christian lives not in this world but in Eternity or to use the Apostles expression his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his Conversation and Scene of living is not on Earth but in Heaven with Christ at the right hand of God Phil. 3 20. Col. 3.1 Which Doctrine highly Suits with the nature and genius of the immortal Soul all whose Acts of vice or virtue though as born in the body within the virge of time and place they are Temporal and transitory yet as they are the free-born off-springs of the Soul they carry the features and signatures of Eternity upon them being Eternal as their Parent in the memory of their guilt or merit Not as if the old Creation wherein we still live in the flesh 2 Cor. 10.3 were wholly consumed and transubstantiated in the sight of our rational faculties which a moral Philosopher would justly deride as madness in those that should maintain it but that the whole sublunary and moral nature of all its parts is to be elevated and consecrated to Heavenly uses in this state of Grace and nearer access to God wherein the Church as a new Creature by faith now stands Rom. 5.21 2 Cor. 5.17 Therefore old things are passed away behold all things are become new We Christians eate and drink and obey and rule and mourn and rejoyce and observe dayes and times and feasts as well as the Jews or Heathens did but in another World by faith between the heart and the Lord in whom times persons and degrees and differences of persons meet in one as the whole Hemisphere in the candle of the eye or Diameters in their Center In the World men are Greeks or Barbarians bond or free Male or Female but in the Church Christ is all and in all For as in a degenerate Church or false Christian the present World or his Interest and profit is all in all and Holy Church and Religion and God and Christ and Faith and Sacraments are all Hypocritically and profanely named and used in
are more intent for peferments in the Church than for the Kingdom of Heaven or adorning such dignities with life and Doctrine who can hold their peace at the abominable sins of men whereby God is offended and roare to purpose at the least injury done to themselves as if done to Christ such are Gods Enemies and not his Priests the Ringleaders of the wicked and not Popes of the Church traitors not succcessors of the Apostles Rebels not Ministers of Christ And for our Brittish Customs they were and are Primitive and Catholick and Oriental and not Roman We observe with solemn fast the holy week in Lent called Grawys from n Leges Howeli Dha apud Spelman quasi garw-wysg different and rough attire as is conceived then us'd especially therein Dydh Mercher y Brà d and Dydh Gwener y Croglith that is as we term those two days Wednesday wherein he was betrayed and Friday with the lessen of the Cross and from thence all the n Usher 882. Baronius An. 34. n. 47. Wednesdays and Fridays of the year saving Pentecost as Bede confesses of us and the strict practice rhereof with the devouter sort is fresh in memory this and other Brittish Customs having escaped better under Popery than under the pretended Reformation of the late War whereas its well known the Church of Rome stands condemn'd and censur'd in her Clergy and laity the one to be depriv'd the other to be excommunicate by the 6th o Conc. in Trull c. 55. c. Plin. lib. 10. Epist 97. Generall Council for fasting upon the Saturdays 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contrary to the Ancient tradition of the Church and the Apostolical Canon of like severity It 's no wonder therefore if the Church of Rome denies the Authority of this Council 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p Scholiast in loc For it went like a Sword through their heart to find themselves charg'd and impeached of going contrary to the Apostolical Canon And though the Church of Brittain in the West and of Africa in the South and of Millain at her doors agreed with the Eastern and Apostolick followed by this Council yet this Universal consent must not prevail the single Church of Rome Schismatically dissenting from the whole Church in her traditions must be Catholick nevertheless and her Customs to be observed equally with the Scriptures The Asiatic custome of singing a Carol to Christ about Cock-crowing mention'd in Plinie p L. 10. Ep. 97. in his Epistle to Trajan the Emperour in the first Age of the Church is retain'd amonst us to this day in our Plygains or Pulgains as we term them Though we look upon the material Cross as a great rarity which at Rome they Idolize and are beholding to our St. Helena for any naile or part thereof they have to shew and honour that bearing as the Church's Coat of Arms yet our true sense and Religious use thereof appears in our Remembrances and obligations by it to brotherly love and charity having no other word to express welcome which ought to be from the heart but Croeso which is deriv'd from the Cross mae chwi groeso you are welcome in the Cross Though they believe no Purgatory yet at the death of their Friends it is usual with them to wish the party Deceas'd a good Resurrection Duw a Ro iddo Ailgyfodiad da God grant him a good Resurrection an Ancient q Epiphanius in Aerio practice in the Eastern Church much abus'd by them at Rome to their secular profit as usual None have firmer beliefs of the Immortality of the Soul and of the other World than the Ancient Brittains nor greater detestation and Dicipline against lying even in Children which the Roman Church indulges in her Records and Liturgies and chiefest Saints r Cyn gywired a'r Ancor Brittish Proverb as honest and true as an Anchorite Eremitas Anachoretas abstinentioe majoris magisqve spirituales alibi non videas Grald Cambr. Descript Cambr. c. 18. They had likewise besides Eremites and Anchorites of the stictest sort their Nuneries for Christ's Virgins and Abbeyes for Monkes not such as our Western Modern Orders of St. Benedict St. Francis or St. Domnick but far Ancienter and after the Rule in the East and Å¿ Usher p 110. Aegypt so much extoll'd in in the Ancient Fathers and especially in St. Chrysostom's Homilies all along not begging their Bread or being a burden to others but earning their Livelihood with the work of their hands and spending the rest of their time in Study and mutual Edification renowned in History for their great Sanctity and Learning yet it was not counted unlawful for any of their Clergy to Marry for St. Patrick was the Son of †Idem p. 818. Calphurnius a Deacon who was the Son of †Idem p. 818. Potitus a Presbyter And u Spelm. Concil Arelat Restitutus the Brittish Archbishop at the Council of Arles was a Married man and so was St. Hilarie his friend as well as St. Philip and St. Peter In their Tonsures which is also an x Bed l. 3. c. 25 exception by Augustin's party against them if they had any they followed the manner of the East which shaved the forehead not the Crown as did our Romanists who were as much dissatisfied with Theodorus of Tarsus St. Paul's City who being design'd Archbishop of Canterbury to revive and promote the Roman Interest in Brittain quite lost well nigh was y Bed lib. 4. c. 1. fain to stay four Months at Rome before his setting out into his dignity that his Haire might grow fit to be shaved after the Roman mode being well contented to part with an old lock for a new Throne which proves the Greeks to be as far different from the Romans as our Brittains in this Rite Episcopalem vero Confirmationem prae alia gente â—otus populus magnopere petit x Cambrens Descriptio Cambr. c. 18. no Nation had Episcopal Confirmation more in esteem and so desired by all as the Brittains saith Cambrensis whose Archbishops did Consecrate their Suffragans and were Consecrated by them in their own Province And never sought to Rome for their Pall as did several other Nations as Pope Gregory did a Cambrens Itmerar Cambr. lib 2. c. 1. acquaint his Augustine in answer to his 7â— Question directing to take no Superiority over Arles because ab Antiquis praedecessorum meorum temporibus pallium accepit that Archbishop did use to receive his Pall from Rome and therefore was not to be depriv'd of the Authority which once he had obtained a Cambrens Itmerar Cambr. lib 2. c. 1. Britanmarum vero Omnes Episcopes tuae fraternitate committimus But he 'le give leave to his Augustine to bring all the Bishops of Brittain under him who by consequence and in the Popes opinion and diligent search never had any Pall from Rome which by the Principles of the b Bed l. 2. c. 28. 7 â—
Interrog New Roman Church is Essentially requisite to constitute an Archbishop because it brings a round sum of Money to their Coffers and dependance and Canonical obedience to their See and the disowning the Supremacy of Temporal Soveraigns by Consequence But whether the Archbishops of Brittain so esteem'd for several Primitive Ages by Emperours and the great Councils of the Ancient Church who summon'd and own'd them under that dignity and Charter must lose their Ancient right and priviledge at the pleasure of a younger Church because it never complyed with its new and sordid devices b Innocentius 3 tius de Officio Misse c. 51. for gain and Lucre is justly a question of which more hereafter but their diminution in fact upon the reason that is implyed to occasion it sets it out of question that by the confession of the Popes themselves Brittain never own'd or acknowledged any Superiority that Rome pretended over it But though our Bishops never went to Rome for their Pall or Consecration yet they us'd not to stand upon such terms of distance from the Asiatic Churches nor the Church of Jerusalem though for some Ages by reason of the destruction of that City truckling under Daughter Cities that were of greater note and fame but really and originally the Mother of all Churches and particularly respected by the Church of Brittain upon that score For thither they us'd from hence to flock and resort as is observed by St. Hierome c Tom. 1 Epl. 17. Usher p. 202. thither d Idem â— 177. St. Helena repaired with her Retinue building and enriching Churches Thither Pelagius went and was cleared in their Councils explaining his own sense in e Idem 248. Greek before them against his Errours Whether it was his care and Interest to speak more warily or whether as one defends Calvin against a Jesuite charging him with Atheism that he read Calvin in Bellarmines Works and not in his own but it is rather to be supected that Pelagius was more truly guilty of his dangerous Heresie than that the Synods of his own Countrey should so explode him without cause or St. Augustine his honourer write so well in vain against him But not to digress but to speak more directly for Pelagius had he been Orthodox was but a f Idem p. 210. Layman thither our chiefest Brittish Doctors are recorded to repair St. David Paternus Elius or Teilaw and to be Consecrated Bishops by that Patriarch in order to to their return which the Brittish Church was so far from dis-rellishing that the first of them in full Synod was translated to be Archbishop of Menevia called afterwards by his Name upon the score of that Consecration together with his parts as before was mentioned out of e Usher p. 210. Idem p. 474. Girald vita S. David Giraldus Cambrensis whose aime was as himself declares to be another Gildas in delivering nothing but the Truth f Idem Preâ—at Cambriae Descript Many other Rites and Customes there were in use among the Brittains as Bede observes that were contrary to the unity of His Catholick Church g Bed lib. 2. c. 2. plurima alia faciebant unitati Ecclesiasticae contraria which took up a long dispute at the Synod of Streanshall from which the Brittains would by no means recede but preferr'd their own Traditions as well as they might before all that were followed by the Roman Church at that time which Bede calls the whole World whereby it appears that though our Brittish Antiquities are many of them lost and perished through Wars and desolations and the special malignity of the Church of Rome to suppress the memory and honour of so emulous a Church as this of Brittain was in its eyes and Abbot Dunawd's Books of the priviledges of the See of St. David and of the Ancient Rites and Customes of the Brittish Church mentioned in Pitseus were destroyed with many other at Bangor with its Monks and Monastery and h H. Lluid Fragm p. 58. Library and I pray God to preserve our English Libraries from the like rude zeal yet the account of its Customes and Antiquities is sufficiently preserved and contain'd in the first best Councils oâ— the Primitive Church and the Learned Orthodox Fathers of the East with whom it so entirely and exactly agreed and concurr'd in all sound Traditions as appears by the tast and instances I have already given from which Rome very much departed and stands notoriously censur'd by the Catholick Church as Schismatical for the same which abundantly proves the Brittish Church never was any Daughter of Rome nor could be not only because of Ancienter years and standing than her supposed Mother but because as wholly dislike to her in every line and feature and humour and Ceremony as are the Spaniards to the French though both Christians in their kind I shall add but two or three of their Homilitical Customes and Principles and pass on to the Characters of their Antagonists from Rome such I mean as had more influence upon their Converse with one another whether the respect of the Church to the Prince or the Prince and people to the Church or the people to one another As to their respect and Loyalty to their Prince There are no footsteps in the Primitive Church nor the Ancient Brittish for deposing Kings for Heresies or Scandal Spiritual Dicipline is not to alter or unsetle Civil rights It 's an Antichristian fift Monarchy Principle that offers at it If Rome be a Mother Church in any thing it is in this Whoever us'd it here had it from her forge Mens several rights as they are men and as they are Christians are as different as peace of Conscience and the peace of the Kingdom as the law of the land and the law of God as the Body and the Soul as Outlary and Excommunicatâ—on which the Church of Rome confounds together But the Brittish Clergy knew how to pay their several rights to God and Caesar to be faithful Servants to Christ and Loyal Subjects to their King they boldly reproved and censur'd the enormous vices of their Princes out of love to God and them and Countrie as appears by a Godwin Catalog Hector Boethius Hist lib. 8. Voadin Archbishop of London reproving King Vortigern for marrying Hengist's Daughter a Pagan when he had a lawfull Queen slain for it by the procurement of her Father not by Vortigern though a very ill man and more happy in such a Martyrdom than in a perfidious connivance in a whole skin and a ragged Conscience and also by Gildas his sharp reproofs remaining to this day against several of their chifest Princes for which not an hair of his head was touch'd by any of them as can be heard or read as likewise by b Bed lib. 3. c. 5. Aidanus his special severity against great offenders They severally reprov'd but never rebell'd against their Princes nor encourag'd any to it and they
force And as Satanical injections refus'd are the Devils guilt but the Christians merit who was buffeted with them to his grief when he could not help Of the like nature especially as to the violence were their Roman missions and Consecrations in this Land wherewith our Brittish Church was needlessly troubled and molested at the entrance of Theodore and his Canterbury Successors for it may well be said that our Brittish Clergy had alwayes thâ—ir own Sees and Prelates in reason and right although actually and forcibly Invaded and possess'd for a time against Law and Canons by Romish Tyrants who when they ordained here ordain'd not in their own but in the right of the true Owners and rightful Governours as their Deputies by fiction because of Gods permission Prov. 8.15 Rom. 13.1 Which right was conveighed down to the Ordained while the guilt and Irregularity of the Action stuck solely to the Conscience of the usurping Ordainer and to no other that was worthy to be ordain'd for which the one must account one day to their sorrow while the others temporary embasement and seeming bastardy Ecclesiastical which they could not help shall be repair'd to their relief and joy And yet in this life a Church restor'd hath the Rights and Priviledges of a Kingdom restor'd which hath and takes the power and liberty to allow or disallow reject or Legitimate enact or abrogate whatever Proceedings have pass'd in publick in the time of Vsurpation And such legitimation and allowance is founded upon the Authority of the rightful Governour coming in and not on any merit of the unrighteous Usurper turning out which makes patience commendable under any slavery or oppression though it continue 7 20 100 500 or 1000 years rather than to extricate it self by any indirect or ungodly means which in Rome is little scrupled at for God is not to be offended nor Faith and Conscience violated to save life or liberty which is more than life or Ecclesiastical liberty which is the greatest of liberties For no evil is to be done by a Christian that good may come thereof Rom. 3.8 For the Innocence of his Soul is a more substantial eternal prosperity than any Outside deliverance whatsoever The body being but a shadow to the Soul and this life but a minute to that come 2 Cor. 4 ult But to return of our own accord to that Spiritual Captivity from whence we were so happily delivered in Gods time and Counsel and by lawful means were to justifie and approve the wrongful slavery of our Ancestors and Posterity together with our own against the Spirit and honour and trust and the common sense and understanding of men and Christians and English Brittains to sell our selves for naught and spit back Gods merciful deliverances into his face SECTION XI Of the Indirect Methods of Rome in Subjugating this and other Churches under it ANd the unworthy methods of their Intrusion and prevalence over our Brittish Church which all that profess Christianity but Roman-Catholicks would abhore and be asham'd of are as manifest as the usurpation it self over us and others 1. By giving away Kingdoms from the right owners to those that had Swords in their hands to force and win them upon the termes and condition the Pope might be considered for polluting the name of Christ and Religion to countenance such injustice So the Pope and Monk Augustine got their first footing in Canterbury by the help of the prevailing Saxons Augustinus quod Dinothus persensit praetextu fidei gentem advenam alieno confirmavit imperio ut suam jurisdictionem Romanam dilataret saith one a Antiq. Eccles p. 9. Augustine the Monk as Abbot Dunawd well perceived made use of Religion to Invest and settle a Foreign Nation in a Territory that was not their own to promote and enlarge the better their own Ecclesiastical b Wheeloc note in Bede c. 2. l. 2. Supremacy by that means So have they ruin'd the Eastern Churches and expos'd them to the Turk about 140. years after by giving Charlemagne the Western Empire from its Constantinopolitan Proprietors to be their Patron and deliverer from Lombards and Exarchs so have they befool'd the Spanish Ambition all along setting him on the like designes with 88. Till their Monarchy is quite tyr'd and Jaded and endanger'd to be master'd by their less Catholick Neighbours and more Christian 2. By Politick Matches and unequal yokes and Apostates rais'd within our own Bowels by the operation of preferments and honours upon men of pride and parts as Balak converted the Prophet Balaam and by slighting and traducing the least mote in other Churches as Damnable Haeresie and maintaining their own grossest errours for Apostolical Infallibities And hard it is to define the time when this method hath been out of use and fashon in that Church these thousand years And by this stratagem they re-invaded the English-Brittish Church after its breaches were repair'd by Oswald For a match being contriv'd between his c Monastic Angl. part 1. p. 333. Bastard Brother and Successor or rather Usurper King Oswi who was not so sound a Christian at the heart as appears by his putting his d Bed l. 3. c. 14. 24. Kinsman and Neighbour King Oswin to death amidst submission and holding the Kingdom from his lawful Nephew and e Idem c. 15. Eanfled Sister of King Edwin Baptiz'd by Paulinus the new Romish Archbishop of York as his first fruits in the North She by her share in Oswi's Bed and Throne became useful and instrumental to preserve and keep alive some Relliques of her Romish Faith expiring in those parts in Cadwalhan's dayes countenancing under hand f Ibid. Romanus and Johannes Diaconus as her Chaplains and sending g Idem l. 5. c. 20. Wilfrid observing his ambitious parts from the Brittish Lindisfarn Monastery where he imbib'd his first principles to Canterbury and Rome to study the point of Easter and to be young Alchfrids Tutor Oswi's Son and to be able to perplex the Brittish Doctors at the point as it afterwards fell out at the Synod and debate at Streanshall or Whitby wherein King h Oswi ita conclusit quia hic Ostiarius est cui ego contradicere nolo ne forte me adveniente ad sores Regni Caelorum non sit qui reserat c. Bede lib. 3. c. 25. Oswi being afore tun'd into a superstitious veneration of St. Peters Keyes which are said to be kept at Rome openly declared in the close of the disputation that he counted it his best wisdom and security to side with St. Peter whom Wilfrid confidently made to be the Author of his new-stile or Golden Number for which he strove than with St. John from whom the Brittains deriv'd their old least St. Peter should turn the h Oswi ita conclusit quia hic Ostiarius est cui ego contradicere nolo ne forte me adveniente ad sores Regni Caelorum non sit qui reserat c.
him in the following year 634. Calwalhan is kill'd by d Idem l. 3. c. 1. Oswald or though he lived many years after according to Geoffrey and M. Westminster as before yet according to them also his Son Cadwaladr lived not beyond the year 688. whereof the last eight are supposed to be spent in Rome out of his great devotion to that place and Church and whence his bones were to be brought back when the Brittains were to recover their Ancient Rule over this whole Isle But others will have him to go to Rome sooner in the time of the great Plague whâ—ch fell out in the year 664. saith Bede and if he lived 8 years longer to die in 672. But had he lived to an 100 years of Age or more if possible to the year 731. being the year Bede e Idem l. 5. c. 24. pen'd his History yet it is not to be believed that Cadwaladr went to Rome in all that time or that he or his Countrey-men had any more respect then for the Religion of Rome than for Heathenism For Bede expresly affirms the Brittains to have continued their enmity to Rome to the time he was f Ibid. writing his History and as appears elsewhere much longer For whereas the Irish and the Picts and Monastery of Hy it self were reduced sooner Anno 716. g Usher 702. by Egbert to conform to Rome in the Controversy about Easter and other Rites by Consequence yet the Brittains saith Bede never would yield nor did in all his time who long surviv'd Cadwaladr whom for their obstinacy in refusing the Roman Tonsure and the other Rites of Rome he stiles h Bede l. 5.23 Capita sine Coronâ heads without Crownes a signe they were not Block-heads without Brains to be so imposed upon by Rome as he and others were Now to reconcile this pilgrimage of honour and devotion with that contempt and enmity that was in all our Brittains towards them of Rome who were but as Church Robbers and Murderers and Schismaticks i Idem l 2. c. 20. Conc. Sardyc can 1. 2. and Pagans in their sight the same time passes any ordinary skill without the help of a strong implicit Faith that can swallow and believe Contradictions The Brittains and all sound Christians measur'd Religion not by the Sanctity of places but the purity of the heart and mind And good lives and examples wheresoever they were met Caelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt change of Air doth not change the mind St. Paul best tells what will change the mind if it be set on things above and not on things below Col. 3.2 on God and not on the World which is done by Heavenliness of mind and constant hearty Prayer and sincerity to God in all our Actions This was Davids Art to lift his Soul to Heaven Psal 25.1 That was by the means of Prayer saith the Chaldee Paraphrast upon the place And Prayer without the heart is no Prayer but as a body without the Soul which is their prime devotion at Rome whereby distance from Cod is professed as it were on purpose for by the exclusion of the heart and understanding they come not near him when they pray and if they are far from God in that means which sets other men nearest how far must they be from Heaven at Rome in the rest of their Actions that are not so Divine The next Imposture on men and Churches and Princes by the help of Ignorance is not unlike the former whereby the man arrogantly passes for his Master the pretended Vicar of Christ for Christ himself or more the lusts of the Pope for the Laws of God and Material Churches and their Rights and Revenues are the same with the Spiritual Church and Temple where none are to be concern'd but the Priesthood and none are Priests but the Pope alone or those that have their Mission from him And therefore when our Princes insisted upon any Ecclesiastical Right or Investiture of Bishopricks they were scar'd with his Holiness Letters k Eadmer Hist Nov. l. 3. p. 50. minding them to know the right difference between a Pallace and a Church And no wonder their Impostures and encroachments prevail'd so much being carried on jure divino and people kept in Ignorance and not suffered to espy any difference between the will and displeasure of the Pope and the will and displeasure of God Almighty And who could withstand him that had the Authority and power of God and Christ for all he did Though he had not them in truth yet having them in the opinion or the belief and fear of the parties deceived it was equivalent And so they rob'd our English Kings of their Prerogatives and well nigh of their Crownes and made them their Instruments to wrest their Sees and Churches from the Brittains It sometimes falling out between these great Combatants the Pope and the Prince as between two Cockes in fight whereof the one having blinded the other never ceases pecking at his Crown and brains till he receive from him an unexpected fatal blow raising himself up thereto by the hold and wrong of his Adversary such were our Statutes of Premunire Mortmain and Provisors wherewith Rome had been long before stagger'd before Henry the Eight appearâ—d to clear the pit This counterfeiting and changing of Heaven and Earth and Christ and man and Scripture and Craft to compass wordly ends and designs much resembles their evil Art who counterfeit the coyns and great Seals of Princes for the like ill purposes if high Treason against man with high Treason against God might so much as be compared And so I pass to the fift general head and supposition delaying the proofs of the nullities of the Church of Rome in her orders and Communion for her Intrusion here to its proper place SECTION XII The change in Henry the Eight rather a Restoration than Reformation and how commencing in Henry the Seventh and of the Inauspiciousness of Popery to the Brittish Crown and the success and blessing of Protestant Counsels to this Nation THat King Henry the eighth his relief and redress both of Crown and Church from Popish Usurpation and Enchroachment was just and providential and likewise Brittish and that the Prosperity and glory of this Nation is remarkably pointed out by the finger of God to any that will attend to ly and consist in the pursuite of the like defence and vindication of our Brittish Church from the attempts of Rome wherein I intend not to be so large as upon the former heads or to take upon me the defence of the Ecclesiastical rights of our Crown which is fully done by abler Pens And indeed our Kings themselves are best able to defend themselves as well as others in their Rights with that Sword which was not given them to bear in vain which they can draw out with a far safer conscience against the Invaders of their Prerogatives and power
Church and their own rules and principles first it is several wayes against the Canons in respect of their Invasions of the rights of other Metropolitans which was adjudg'd a Photii Nomoc. Tit. 1. p. 20. infamous and mulctable before that in the Council of Chalcedon and in Trullo power was yielded to the Emperours to erect or to translate Metropolitical Chaires and also against the Canons in respect of many Illegal Ordinations which made the Romish Church null in Law in England several wayes besides those nullities in fact and event we have before instanc'd Many are the Canons of the best and Ancientest Councils and the most general and Oecumenical that the Church of Christ ever had which condemn the first Entrance of Augustine and his Pope Gregory and the Re-entrance of Archbishop Theodore and his Successors upon our Brittish Church and Provinces under no less penalties than deposition or degradation of their Clergy from their several States and Dignities and Excommunication of their Laity from Christian Fellowship besides the making all their Ecclesiastical Acts and Ordinations to be utterly void and null to all intents If this were of any value or moment with them of the Church of Rome who boast and crack of a great respect they have above others for Fathers and Councils and Ancient Traditions but experience too much discovers it is all with Reservations and Provisoes that they offer not to touch or reflect upon their Church in any of its grossest errours or most enormous misdemeanours for if they do it in the lest the Canons of the Universal Church shall have no more respect at their hands than the Canonical Scriptures which are not allowed to have any sound or sense where they cross and disagree from the private interpretation of their Church I say private and suspicious because notoriously savouring of private ends and carnal designes and Worldly ambition and self-love above any Church or Haeresie whatsoever in all their Commentaries and Expositions and every point and Article of their Faith and Government wherein they differ from us Or they shall be openly disown'd and rejected for no lawful Councils either in whole or in part according to their liking or disliking of particulars who yet call for implicit obedience to their own petty Authorities and decrees how contrary soever to Common sense or reason while themselves dispute and contradict the power and jurisdiction of far greater Superiours acting and decreeing with the special assistance of the Spirit of God So that as to such Roman-Catholicks who are wedded and guided by their wills and Idols more than Truth or Conscience the Testimonies and Canons I shall produce will prove but Pearls ill cast yet with this advantage and satisfaction that they shall drive and force them either to submission or to rebellion either to confess and acknowledge themselves to be convict Schismaticks and Sacrilegious Robbers and Oppressors and their Popes and Missionaries depos'd and condemn'd in all their Titles Holy Orders and pretences by the Holy solemn Laws and Canons of the Universal and undoubtedly Catholick Church of Christ or manifestly detect themselves to be Antichrist in this as in their other practices and the Invaders of Gods Regiment and power in all its formes and varieties of of appearance as of God the Creator in disposing the Kingdoms of the World of God Redeemer in Lording over Souls and Consciences so of God the Holy Spirit and Sanctifier in slighting Scriptures and General Councils Which last part it is to be fear'd they 'l chuse to take as being thereto too much inclin'd by their Principles being one main cause if not perrhaps the principal that the spirit of truth and concord hath withdrawn it self in lamentable manner from Christian Churches and Councils these several last hundreds of years in whose Assemblies it cannot well appear with liberty and without diminution of its Divine Honour and Glory when its promis'd assistance to Gods Church gathered together in his name must be eftsoons check'd and controll'd by the Negative will and lust of one man that sets up himself above Both and the Interest of Rome made the mark to steer by instead of Truth and Holiness and Gods holy spirit thereby necessitated either to countenance Errour and Tyranny by its presence or to stand out whereby is left but a Carcass of a Church and not a Church for a Church without Gods spirit is but as the body without the Soul the one as ready moulders into errour and corruption as the other into stench and rottenness as is the condition of the Modern Roman Church too visibly The first Canon I shall instance in shall be the third General Council held at Ephesus than which hardly any president can be more apposite to the Case of Rome and Brittain and that Councill's determination upon the complaint of Cyprus against Antioch where three points may be observ'd 1. The state of their case and grievance 2. The sense and resentment of the Council 3. The decree and redress 1. Their complaint to the Council by Declaration and the Affirmation of their Bishops then and there present was that the Bishop or Patriarch of Antioch did send and Consecrate Bishops for the Isle of Cyprus in violation of their Ancient Rights and Customes The occasion of this encroachment was as is noted by Balsamon and Zonaras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Upon a pretence and imitation of the Duke of Antioch under the Romans sending thence a Deputy Governour for this Isle The plea of the Cypriots was as is imply'd in the Canon an Ancient immemorial right of chusing and consecrating their own Bishops among themselves On the other hand the Bishop of Antioch had his Patriarchal dignity and the Supremacy of St. Peters Chair to insist on from whom he deriv'd by undoubted Lineal Succession Now if this Controversy had come before the Pope of Rome and his Conclave or Lateran or Tridentine Council it is easie to coniecture who had gone by the worst but not so easie to know whom the prey should have been adjudg'd to whether to Antioch or rather to Rome her self although the other were the acknowledg'd Chaire of St. Peter establish'd for 7 years at Antioch at the lest before ever he arriv'd at Rome 2. But the sense and resentment of their wrong by this great Council is very remarkable who took this matter into their cognizance and Judicature though no lesâ— than the Patriarch of the East and as great as the Pope takes himself to be was one of the parties to aâ—ide their censure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And thus they represent the mischief and consequence of this encroachment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A new kind of Schismatical attempt in defiance of the Apostolical Laws of the Church and Canons of the Holy Fathers and striking at the common Liberty of Christendom yea the Spiritual Spiritual Liberty of men Souls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Christ himself by his bloud hath purchas'd for us
Preach Gods word without a License sued out from their See Nor the Scriptures themselves to be Gods word without their stamp or Allowance nor any hope of Salvation to any Soul out of the Pale of their Church The Corinthians Ephesians Thessalonians Phillipians Galatians had their Gospel not from St. Peter but from St. Paul for he had it not of man nor by men Gal. 1.1 And therefore not from St. Peter if St. Peter were a man but from Jesus Christ who is therefore God as likewise the Brittains had theirs from Christs Apostles and Companions before St. Peter ever had a Chair at Rome yet all these must be no Churches with the Church of Rome which is an absolute Haeretical affront to the Article in the Creed touching the Church which they deny to be Catholick and universal by limiting it to their Roman Communion Did the Haeresie of the Donatists heretofore speak higher or plainer Or of a Epiphanius in Simonianis the Pepusians who affirmed their own City Pepusa to be Jerusalem above if the Church of Rome in St. Augustine's dayes had been so Heretical as our Modern had it escap'd the impartial zeal and censure of that Learned Father and wherein was Basilides the Ancient Gnostick worse than these Modern Who maintain'd that God reveal'd his Truth to His party only a Epiphanius in Simonianis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they alone were men all others as Swine and Dogs as Protestants are esteem'd in the Romish Territories Or wherein exceeded by Simon Magus the Father of the Gnosticks who b Idem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said he was Christ as the Pope doth in effect who a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 first Worshipped Images who made all Religion and the Cross of Christ subservient to their fleshly ends and pretended themselves to have Ecclesiastical Authority above any else or St. Paul himself though they were the enemies of Christ because the enemies of his Cross and Gospel and to be shunn'd therefore by all true Christians Phil. 3.18 as the Apostle there declares Whom no Oaths also can bind no more than they could the old Heretick c Epiphanus lib. 1. p. 24. Helxas in the Jewish Church who taught it was no sin to worship Idols in time of Persecution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and although he made profession with his mouth but denyed the same with mental reservation in his heart which is a Doctrine too well known at Rome he was not guilty of any offence at all Who lastly in a word not to enumerate any more particular Heresies whom they revive are our Apsychites as before who by their Principles and pactices deny the heart and its necessary use in Religious worship and by consequence deny Christ and God and all for without the heart or soul as a body is a dead body so a Church is a dead Church in reason and but the Carcass of a Church and as the death of the body contains most of the diseases that can be nam'd Deafness Blindness Apoplexy c. so deadness in a Church through the want and absence of the heart and soul pregnantly comprizes all sorts of errours and Heresies as Arrianism Nestorianism Pelagianism Manicheism Libertinism Antichristanism Atheism c. for take away the heart and take away God and take away God you take away all Religion whatsoever as take away smelling you take away odours or take away eyes and you take away light these being correlates to one another as was shewed before For the heart being intirely for Christ as its end and correlate as was shewed at the beginning when it loses its true end it ceases to be a heart the end in such things as are ordain'd for an end being as their life and soul and being whereof when depriv'd or frustrated in fiction of reason they cease to be as an eye that cannot see or an ear that cannot hear or a foot that cannot move is in reason no eye or ear or foot though the Ball or Organ or Limb remain in visible existence to the sense In like manner where the heart is seis'd or diverted by any Idol or vanity from Christ its end and life it ceases to be a heart To honour men for Christ's sake for any likeness to him bâ— Grace or Place or Quality may be done with the heart for it is not man so much as Christ himself is so honour'd by the heart which thereby attains its end and life by conjunction with him But to honour Christ upon the score of the Pope as is the way and Principle of Romanists with whom the Pope gives Authority to Scripture and Religion and to Christ himself by consequence It is not to honour or serve Christ so much as the Pope to whom the heart is thereby Principally directed and not to Christ but rather divided from him by the interposition and presence of another And whatever it be in like manner that severs and engrosses the heart from Christ its life and proper Element whether it be lust or Interest or wordly end or any sin or man of sin destroys and choaks it It is the extinction of reason to be besides it self the extinction of the heart to be besides its Christ The corps of a Religious Action remains in all Acts of Hypocrisie and Superstition and Idolatry but the heart and soul is lost and gone And generally the form of godliness no where more abounds than where the life and Power is wanting who more for outward zeal and show of Religion than the Hypocrite who hath none who more nice and exact in all minical Ceremonies than the Superstitious who wants the substance who more complemental than the hollow-hearted Forma viros neglecta decet men of great hearts and reality are more for deeds than words Now some superficial understandings that judge all by sense and outward appearance though but skin-deep are apt to mistake busie and zealous superstition and bigottry to be sincere and sober Religion whereas these differ in specie and are no more the same than a dying man sâ—picking bed câ—oaths is Family care or hollow Complement of the lip true friendship of the heart or an fâ—bullition of worms in a putrified Corps the Restoration of its former life unto it for in like manner as the cessation of natural life brings forth an unnatural bâ—ood of maggots in dead bodies so the departure of the heart and life from any Church ends in innumerable freaks of Religious whimsies and crossings and cringings without end There are several other Characteristical marks and effects of the want and absence of the heart and conscience in the Romish Religion wherein it goes beyond common Heresies and bids fair for Antichrist And waving the Principal or Lucifer-like Pride the womb of Antichrist and Universal Supremacy according to our Pope Gregory which hath been our game and Subject all along I shall instance but in three or four genuine properties very particular to that
Church above any other 1. It s Addiction and delight in fictions and pious frauds and officious lies and equivocations and mental Reservations and Stolid Insipid Legends and Infamous unconscionable forgeries and falfifying of the Living and the dead both persons and Records and Histories Fathers Councils Saints Apostles Angels Virgin Mary and Christ himself as well when there is no need of such Arts as when there is out of meer delight in this ugly sin as it were to keep their hands in whereby few Ecclesiastical Authors saving the Bibles have escaped their forgeries and their Histories where they are worth the reading are scarce to be believed but where they speak against them and their Interest now a lye is a slight or repugnancy to the heart and to God present in it or to Ciceroe's Divine mind and by consequence never without a kind of perjury in its train But when the heart is with Christ Christ is with that heart by consequence and he that speaks with and from his heart never lies for Christ speaks through him by fiction and he in whom Christ speaks cannot lye for Christ is Truth and Truth is only that which God saith or approves And God can neither lie himself nor approve it in any others where lyes are in common request and vogue it 's a sign God and the heart are departed and the Dialect of Satan who is a lyar becomes the Language of that Country The Innundation of Legends and Fables that over-spreads the service and Religion and Profession of that Church manifestly proves that its banks are broken that there is little or nothing of the heart or Christ or Conscience left amongst them as the sole and proper walls and fences against all untruth and falshood for regard to the heart alone will keep out lyes as in Generous Heathens and all persons of true honour and honesty much more to the heart and Christ as with all true Christians there is an Antipathy and inconsistency between every Ly and Christ and the heart and Conscience and Honour Where lying and Legending and dissimulation before God and man are easily dispensed with as no where more than at Rome there Christ and the heart are but cashier'd Soveraigns and stand for Ciphers And in what Church or Profession soever Christ goes off the stage Antichrist soon comes on the Father and Patron of Lyes who primarily and originally sure is Satan Revel 2.9 c. 13.4 or the great Dragon and old Serpent in Paradice the first Anti-god that destroyed mankind with a Lie seducing them from their Allegiance to God and substituting his own will to be observ'd instead by interpretation from Gods Authority against his mind Whereof the Science and Mystery is retain'd and profess'd in the Academy of Rome but the common practice and lying Dialect of his Kingdom is to be met in other Apostatical places and Ages co-dispers'd with the Church like Tares among Wheat to destroy and choak it And though the Jewish Turkish and Popish Apostacy use different Dialects the Hebrew the Arabick and the Latine yet they understand one another and exactly agree in their common Mother Tongue of vain lying For our Popish Legends and Alcharon Dreams and Talmudical Dotages wherein differ they but in the Garb and Masquerade of different Languages being all three a breed of the same womb and the Genuine off-spring of the Father of Lyes strongly retaining as bred in the bone the humour and special faculty of vending their own Errours for Gods Truths whose Interpreters they pretend each to be but the Pope and Mahomet more especially 2ly The Unchristian Cruelties of that Church proves it to be an unconscionable Church without a heart and nearly Allyed to Antichrist For by the Heart and Conscience we carry all other men about us in our breasts and our Souls are the Armory and Magazines of Modells and Suppositions by which ouâ— Inward Actions are first form'd and conceived whereof our Outward are but Copies and Counterparts And no man can wrong another outwardly without wronging him in himself to the wounding of his own Conscience in the first place The hurt in both is to himself in the one to the life and quick in the inward guilt in the other in the outward effigie to his own flesh By our unconfin'd Souls whereby one man is all mankind by fiction we are naturally fram'd and dispos'd to compassion and justice and doing as we would be done by As by our confin'd bodies on the other hand or the existence of no more but our bodily life and concerns in the conceptions of the Soul which is our narrowest being and measure of self-preservation we become mean and solitary Individuals and prompted thereby to the sole care and defence of our skin and property and often betrayed to insatiable deceitful appetites after Luxury which more tire and disappoint than satisfie the immense desires of the Soul aiming at the beatifical enjoyment of its God in every lust and pleasure it blindly stumbles upon The whole Creation being not a sufficient meal and the narrow brittle Vessel of the body not large and tight enough to contain and digest its vast draughts and ingestions but in a bounded love or Mortification rather of its Carnal self and unbounded Charity and preference of God and Countrey and mankind iâ— finds a Divine and honourable repast to its full â—atietie and true content yea our Souls were made to be not only receptacles and Synods of mankind but the Temples of God and Christ and all Christians And where the Heart is given Christ Christ a Eph. 3.17 1 Cor. 6.20 in MS. Alexandr in his Law and Nature resides and acts in that heart As such a heart also by its inspir'd Commands and dispositions rules its own body and members whereby every Christian carrying Christ about him by his Faith or Christian supposition is partaker of his Divine Nature and become an inspir'd Actor of his Saviours Vertues meek and merciful to enemies as Christ himself was and kind and tender hearted b Jac. 3. â—7 and peaceable and gentle and easie to be entreated as he hopes to find Christ to himself from an assurance from and in himself of his Infinite and unbounded goodness A right Catholick Christian is angry aâ— Hereticks and transgressors with the same zeal and dislike as Christ is who delights not in their death and ruine but their repentance and return yea he had rather dye for them than be the death of any of them though his enemies Mercy therefore and mildness and compassion from the heart to erroneous fellow-Christians is a great demonstration of true Catholick Christianity where ever it occurres or shines as merciless hostilities and zealous killing and burning all Dissenters of the contrary and of the Eclipse of the heart and Conscience and Christ by consequence in such a Church or Christian Whereby the Protestant Spirit is justified to the World to be right Christian and that in
different Liquor unto others in Synods and Conventicles to make them turbulent and frantick and to worry their Rulers and destroy their Kings several have been so weary and tyred what with the noyse and scandal on the one hand what with the Narcotick steam and Operation on the other that they are ready to slumber and sleep at Noon-day and like sick men can find no rest but by changing their Religion as they do their Beds a deadly Symptom in both and to Rome they will go where they may sleep to purpose while their eyes are resign'd to their guides and their trust to man instead of God and never waken till the Trumpet and last Judgement to their Eternal wo. If it were to return to Rome Heathen in its glory and to change their Bibles for Tully or Seneca rather than for Lyes and Legends men might have some excuse for their intoxicated love of slavery which all free Spirits abhor and especially Spiritual slavery which is so contrary to the soul the freest of beings For there we should meet with Caesar and Cicero and Virgil and many other Heroes of several endowments we should light if not upon Christ yet upon the other part of my Text the Heart and Soul in that perfection and improvement by knowledge and virtue and valour as fully answer'd the Poets Character which compriz'd the utmost that men could do or Pen describe Imperium terris animos aequavit Olimpo they match'd the Gods with their parts and over-match'd the World with their Prowess And where the heart is well preserv'd and enlightened Christ is never far off even as Antichrist is never nigh but where the heart is first darkned and resign'd For the Sun of Righteousness was rising to the World about this time that Rome was so clear'd and enobl'd in heart and Spirit and mens souls were so awakned and sitted with Liberty and honour to receive his Truths The Roman Empire being raised and imployed in St. John Baptist's work as it were to prepare the way of the Lord and to train mens souls to value truth in the General above sordid self-love and to clense the eye in part to behold its lustre For as the Sun were of little use to people that had no eyes or were blinded with cataracts and scales so also is the Sun of righteousness to blind and servile and seal'd understandings and Christ to any heart that is muffled with Idols or enslaved to another Supremacy But in Popery neither Christ nor the Heart can well be met with both are so engrossed and devourâ—d by his Vicaâ— it is highest Honour there not to be true to Honour or Conscience which passes for a dangerous private Spirit against their Church and to quit on 's self of his soul and Heart and Judgement is the method to be a right Roman Catholick and Christ and the soul like correlates ever stand and fall together where the one departs the other seldom stays behind Which is the reason that Popish Rome in its highest manhood and perfection had little to shew of either for when it arrived to its highest pitch and all Crowns were Subject to its Mitre all Laws to its Canons where was its glory compar'd to the other Rome but in a Herd of Monkish-Blockheads to be set against the others Divine Classick Authors Bede Geoffrey Comestor or the Golden Legend against Livy and Tacitus and Plutarch c. Epistolae obscurorum virorum against those of Cicero or Seneca And who against Virgil and Juvenal and Horace Poetry was so Ingenious and true to human nature in whose exaltation it ever chirps as down in the mouth in its fall also that where the Heart was excluded it turn'd Protestant and never shewed more its head What they had left to boast of were men without souls Arguments without sence Sermons without Scriptures or Fathers Authors without the stile and dialect of men cloysterd Epicures fat and trading Monks Cardinals without Christian Lives and Popes without Faith or Religion In a word Christianity without a soul or Saviour the Image of Religion to mans eye without the life and truth thereof to God's The Pope and the Virgin Mary instead of Christ and blind Obedience instead of the heart that no time or Age since the Floud or Fall can be parallel'd to that of Popery in its full reign and adâ—ption for a total degeneracy of human and Christian nature in point of Morality and Grace and Learning and Knowledge and Pen. It were better to have our sight and Judgement and but Stars to guide us than to have a blind heart with such a Sun and Gospel It were more eligible to be Cicero â—s Servitour than a King of such Christian Cattel And this was the state of Popery in his highest culmination and plenitude of growth and Lustre And which it is still at to recover for Popery is not to be heeded by its present pretences but its known ends and humour when it hath attain'd its ends which of all things hates nothing more than eyes and private Judgement and light which Inseparablâ— accompany the heart for thieves are best at thâ—iâ— work in the dead of night and Kings are best gullâ—d of their Soveraignties and Subjects of their Câ—yn and Liberty by Ignorance and a scale or Ointment to blind their eyes and all are better cramped and confessed when they are asleep For to appeal to any mans sence or Conscience or observation is there any thing more experimentally manifest to the World in every Age than that the chief design of Popery as to its Leaders is to promote and compass secular ends and Grandeur and Wordly power upon what hazard soever to souls or disgrace to Christ and his Religion and that Mammon is as Catholickly servâ—d at Rome as God and that its main design is to have the Crowns of Kings and Purses of Subjects in its power and the Consciences of both in order thereunto Quae regio in terris c. What Territory or Kingdom can be nam'd in Europe whose Scepter it hath not made Feudatary and Tributary to St. Peters Chair by its Faith-craft as the Ancient Romans did more nobly and Lyon-like by their Arms and Manhood what hide of good land without the fence of mortmain had escap'd the Plow of mortified Monks what Chimney was in all the Kingdom without a Peter-pence what is more confessed and gloried in by our Modern Popes in their stamps and meddals wherein St. Peter is represented lifting up an old Woman from the ground with this motto Roma resurgens a fair and lucky Comment under their own Hand and Seal upon Rev. 13.12 And he exerciseth all the Power of the Beast before him and causeth the Earth and them that dwel therein to worship the first Beast whose deadly wounds was heal'd whereby is prov'd as by their own confession the Succession of Rome-Papal to Rome-Imperial it being the sence of the Ancient Fathers as before that the Empire which
many years set at naught the Power of the Roman Empire which induc'd Josephus c Apud Camden Ibid. being further off to be believe that Brittain could not be much less in bigness and number of men than the other World beside Vocatus ut ad insigne spectaculum populus The Citizens were invited and call'd together as to no ordinary sight and the Pretorian Cohorts made a Guard And the Empress her self which before was never known Novum sanè moribus veterum insolitum could not forbear to be absent And the Senate afterwards met Et multa magnifica super Captivitate Caractaci disseruére and had many discourses and high resentments of the reducing of P. Cradoc Judging it no less a Victory than Scipio's over Syphax or Paulus over Perses or over any other Kings that ever were led in Triumph by the Romans And when he was to speak before them in this condition nec c Tacit. Ann. lib. 12. vulta demisso nec verbis misericordiam requirentibus Neither with dejected looks nor precarious style he boldly deliver'd his mind to this effect Sâ—â—ing it was in fate that the Romans were to be 〈…〉 in necessity that others must be un … 〈…〉 … ey had an opportunity now to shew their 〈◊〉 and being observ'd to be near of Kin in spirit he was presently received into singular favour and honouâ— which might well conduce to the promotion of Christianity there by his Visitants from Britâ—aiâ— Not 〈◊〉 was the deportment of another Aged Gentleman d Dr. Davis Praefat. Gram. Cambr. ex Camden 〈◊〉 â—â—e same Countrey and in the like condition about 1100 years after before K. Henry the second who being ask'd whether he conceived his handful of Brittains were able to withstand or hold out against his Royal preparations now against them made answer with equal unconcernedness and Faith superlative This Nation O King may now as heretofore and often be overpowr'd and in great part ruin'd by your Armes and others but totally destroyed root and branch which was the design of this powerful and bloudy expedition and Allyance unless the wrath of God concurre with man they will never be And I trust for this Corner of the Earth however it may happen with the rest of the World that before the Supream Judge at the last day no Nation will be found to survive here to answer for themselves but Brittains and in no other Language but their own But to pursue the Comparison of Brittish and Roman Valour after our Reduction there appears a manifest difference in their own sense and styles of their Armies and Legions after they were animated with Brittish Levies from what they were before For before they were distinguish'd with numerical names only of first second third ninth tenth fourteenth Legion c. But their Cohorts and Legions rais'd out of Brittain ever bore the Plume and additional style of Victorious a Cambden p. 571. 458. Pancirol c. 35. p. 236. in â—â—e their Fields and Musters so the sixt Legion that lay at York a Cambden p. 571. 458. Pancirol c. 35. p. 236. was called Sexta Brittannica Victrix or Victorious the 20th at a Cambden p. 571. 458. Pancirol c. 35. p. 236. Chester was vicesma Brittannica Victrix or Victorious also the third at Caerleon-ar-Wysc higher yet being styl'd Augusta or the Imperial Legion And accordingly the Emperours themselves finding their greatest safety to be near them removed their Imperial Seat to this Island Which at first sight might not seem the best way to keep the rest of the World under them in peace to translate their habitation so far into a Transmarine excentric Corner Great Kingdoms like the dryed Oxe-hide being best kept even from Risings and Insurrections of every side by Treading in the middle But they looked upon their abode to be in the heart and Centre of the Empire when they had their Brittish Legions about them for their Life-guard judging their Brittish Forces to be the most Fighting and Faithful of any other besides And this difference between their several Legions in point of Valour came to be more distinctly perceived upon tryal and experience upon one another in their Civil Wars The Illyrick Legions in the Wars of Severus for b 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Herodian lib. 2. in Juliano 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem in Severo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid The Brittains for valour and warlike rage are no way short of the Illyrians strength of Body and Military Skill and Courage carried the Fame above any other Nation of the East or West beside not only the Roman which was now much degenerated but the German likewise which was in its prime yet these Hand to Fist were worsted by the Brittannic and the Emperour who trusted in them put to his disguise and shift Till they also were forc'd to give way when assaulted with fresh Legions By them Constantine the Great their flesh and bloud overthrew the Western and Eastern Forces of Maximus and Licinius setling himself and Christian Religion in the event in the Throne over Tyrants and Heathens by mighty Battles was it for this service that Brittain was made subject forever to the Roman Church and to forfeit all the liberty and honour they had either by their own Seniority or His Nativity and Christianity from among them And when their half Countrey-man Maximus drain'd and expos'd our Land to ruine with his numerous Levies how soon did he over-run and subdue all France Germany Spain Africa Italy and Rome it self with two of its Emperous instar fulguris like lightning saith one and was foil'd at last his cause being also not good by a third Emperour Theodosius not so much by Armes as the Prayers of all the Churches and Monasteries of the East and c Spondan Ann. 3888. n. 5. Aegypt and the victory ascrib'd to God alone at Rome by d Spond Ann. 388. n. 7. an Anniversary thanskgiving for their great deliverance whereby may be gather'd how considerable Great Brittain still is consisting of the same people and Courage when well united in perswasions as it is in its Monarchy and upon a good cause Is it fit then this Ancient Apostolick free-born Church Subject never to any Senior to all the Churches of Europe and dignified by Providence with several Preheminences of the first Christian King Emperour Reformer and the honour of first conveying and reconveying Arts and Religion and light to most Nations of this part of the World that now at last it must not only become a Pupil to its Junior but all its Sons become Slaves and Tributaries forever in their Bodies and Souls and Understandings and Purses and Posterity to a Novel Pseudo-Catholick Church no more to be compar'd to the old Roman Heathens than Foxes to Lyons nor to the Old Roman Christians than Apes to Mankind to neither whereof Brittain in her Sons was in any Age ever
within the Pale of the Church of Rome or to be subject to the Pope and to believe as the Church believes will do it and nothing else without it For let a man be never so vitious and Ungodly if he stick close to their Church which is allowed to be consistent provided he have the Absolution of a Priest at the last gasp upon his sorrow and condition or if this be wanting upon his attrition or fear of Hell he shall not miss Eternal Salvation nor ever attain the same if he be a Protestant though never so holy or charitable or Penitent and believing so are such Casuists for their want of love to the truth delivered over to deceive both themselves and others But to wave all parties and to give a plain and clear answer according to the truth or the mind of God in his word which is the same which the soul and Conscience loves to believe and build upon before any human Authority whatsoever This question may be divided into two points or Issues Stricti juris largi 1. What that is that makes one a Member of that Heavenly Church which if he wants he is none 2. What makes him more assuredly of it than many others that yet be in it The first question is best answer'd in St. Paul's Phrase in one word in the sence of that Phrase in three By the first he is of this Salvifical Church who is in Christ he is not of it who is out of Christ Rom. 8 1. Here the issue is short and clear with St. Paul Not to be In or out of the Church of Rome this he never saith but in or out of Christ which he affirms throughout Neither Jew nor Gentile nor Greek nor Barbarian nor Brittain nor Roman nor English or Scot or Irish are nearer or further from Salvation by their Countrey but their conditions Not by their first birth which is Temporal but their second which is Celestial and Catholick and one and the same to all true Christians stilâ—d for this Originally the Brethren Neither Circumcision nor uncircumcision nor the skin Black or White nor a Pall from the body of St. Peter nor the Vest of St. Francis to be buried in nor dispensations Seal'd in Lead more lasting than Wax nor sprinkling nor bathing in Holy Water can avail any thing to save the soul or to purifie the heart but only faith which worketh by love Act. 15.9 Gal. 5.6 Nor the sign of the Cross alone nor the very nails and wood of the Cross it self were they to be seen and touch'd nor any other contact or show or specious title nor the entring in at Porta Caeli at a Jubile nor the Popes Canonization nor the name and title of Roman-Catholick nor the Holy Roman Church like the Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord with them in the old Testament Jer. 7.4 or saying Lord Lord with them in the New Math. 7.21 can give entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven but the doing the will of our Father which is in Heaven And did not this old anile faith of Modern Rome which serves to make so many Catholick Sons of their Church serve as much to make them children Universally in understanding also which the Apostle dislikes 1 Cor. 14 20. their practices would have more of their own suspition and less of their Neighbour's Censures What can any mortal excellency that hath visibility and hic nunc or perishing Temporality stamp'd upon it signifie to Christians who are not of this World as Christians but of the World to come by faith And look not at the things which are seen but at the the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are Temporal but the things which are not seen are Eternal It 's true as men we are to prefer and provide for the nearest in flesh unto us before others or else we are worse than Infidels and prefer our Country and our Prince before our own flesh and life or else we fall short of Noble Heathens but as Christians who is to be nearest to us but he that is holiest and likest to God and Christ How unlike Christians therefore are they in their estimates and measures who think any man is a better or worse Christian or more capable or incapable of Salvation for being of this or that place or City or Nation on Earth rather than for having his affection with Christ in Heaven at Gods right hand Col. 1.3 In whom is neither Greek nor Jew Circumcision nor Vncircumcision Barbarian Scythian Bond nor Free but Christ is all and in all Col. 3.11 2 Cor 5.16 Math. 12.50 Act. 10.34 35. But how Antichristian is it to make a contrary measure of Salvation to curse them as Hereticks though they be in Christ that be not of their way and Communion and bless them as Catholicks though out of Christ if they be According to the sence of that Phrase it may be further answer'd in three words 1. To be Christ's and not his own 2. to dye in his death to Earth 3. to live in his life to Heaven 1. To be Christ's and not his own All are yours and ye are Christ's 1 Cor. 3.22 23. and 2 Cor. 5.15 Christ dyed for all that none should live unto themselves No Christian is to live unto himself but unto Christ He is to eat and drink and converse and rise and lye down and labour and rest and study and serve and obey and command and rule and to bring up or provide for children and relieve the poor and poor friends every thing as to Christ as guided by his Law and accountable to his Judicature For he cannot be said to be a Servant to another that minds his own affairs or pleasure altogether and never his Master's but when himself pleases for a spurt or humour Neither is any selfish person a Servant of Christ nor a true salvable Christian by consequence but is one that sets up for himself And is not under Christ's Law and will but his own Neither shall be under his pay but must must expect his reward and Salvation from himself as he lived wholly to and for himself and his Conscience cannot gain-say this Law for such a one never hath Communion with God as all true Christians have but only with himself like a Rebel Mock-god ordering all things in the World for his own ends as God doth all for his own glory and never durst trust God so far as to go out of himself for his sake In himself shall he therefore ever remain and out of Christ forever because he never had the honesty to give God his glory nor the faith to give his heart that is himself to his Redeemer 2. To dye in Christs death to the Pomp and vanity of the World which according to St. Paul's comment is the mystical Christian meaning and fulfilling of the Ancient Circumcision Col. 2.11 12. Phil. 3.3 Gal. 6.14 16. That as amongst the Jews
who ever was uncircumcised was to be cut off from his people so all among Christians that live to their flesh in luxury and uncleanness in wordly pride and vain-glory and carnal security and give their heart from Christ to his Enemy to sin and Satan and the World contrary to the Christian vow cannot belong to Christ but are spiritually uncircumcised and to be for ever cut off from the hopes and priviledge of a Christian Israelite Some strongly led by their Carnal will which easily believes what it loves think their lusts and their Lord may agree and Salvation and a sinful life stand well together what advantage else hath a Christian by having a Saviour above a Heathen who hath none and is not this an honourable requital then to make Christ who came to destroy the works of the Devil a greater Patron for them than the Devil himself and to fortifie his temptations to sin with Indemnity Such suggestions and delusions are not to be answer'd but abhorr'd Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound God forbid Rom. 6.1 2. or to be seriously warn'd and monish'd with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Have a care be not deceived neither Fornicators nor Idolators nor Adulterers nor Effeminate nor Abusers of themselves with mankind nor Theeves nor Coveteous nor Drunkards nor Revilers nor Extortioners shall inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6 9 3. To live with Christ in Heaven or to have our affection and Conversation in Heaven from whence we look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ Phil. 3.20 Col. 3.2 For his affections cannot chuse but be with Christ if his heart be with him but his heart can never be with him till it be seâ—sible of his grace nor be sensible of his 〈…〉 see its danger and deliverance by him and 〈◊〉 he can never see without hearing Gods word and believing his Gospel Clear therefore it is Conscience it self being judge that where there is no pulse of Heavenly life and concomitancy of the heart after Christ in his Exaltation there is no belief and who hath no belief is no Christian He may pass for a Protestant or Catholick for his profession before men but God and his heart will pronounce him to be an Infidel and out of Christ at the last day and here great is the usefulness and service of a wary Conscience and a faithful Pastor to be its Adjutant and guide The second question is who are in Christ with a stronger title and firmer possession than others of their Brethren Or who they be that be no punies but compleat Graduates and of the highest form and degree in the Church of Heaven All men are ambitious of excelling their Brethren either in Riches or Honour or Precedency or Parts or Learning or Activity or Beauty or in their very Clothes And no where is their more scope or encouragement or praise and honour from God and man and Conscience and less danger of wrong or envy than in the honest ambition of being the greatest man with God in Heaven and surer of being saved than many others to be a Christian not in the Positive degree only but also in the superlative according as the Apostle Beseeches and exhorts all by the Lord Jesus that as they have received how they ought to walk and to please God so they would abound more and more 1 Thess 4.1 And Heroes and Worthyes and men taller than others by the Head belonging to the Heavenly Kingdom may be met and found on Earth amongst all Ages and Conditions and Degrees High and Low Young and Old Rich and Poor For Instance he is Princeps Civitatis a Grandee of this Heavenly City who is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first mark with the Apostle to qualifie a man to be a Bishop 1 Tim. 3.2 there translated blameless but may well signifie one that is unsurprizeable in his Christian principles and profession and watch by any lust or temptation or worldly Allurement alwayes retaining his Baptismal vow and love and Allegiance and fear of God in his remembrance and esteem and that in all times and places and companies by an uniform healthy victorious sobriety and vigilance over his heart and fancy and senses subject to no Convulsion-fits or Spiritual Epilepsies or scandalous fallings But having Heaven ever present in his eye to the life to cure all weariness and fainting and to out-bid all Worldly and Carnal Allurements Keeping himself altogether with God or as near as may be to Him having no end or design ever in his heart that doth not finally reach his Lord no thought therein that his God doth disallow or take unkind no word in his mouth to be publish'd without His License no bargain or sale without his God to approve and supervise it to be just and keeps no Company but with the living Images of his God for every vertue Is inseparable from Church and Sacraments where he is sure to meet with his God by special promise and appointment And either Reads or Prayes without ceasing at all Intervals of business that he and his God may be ever within hearing of one another which is effected with success while God is ever speaking to him or he to his God Which is an infallible method to be ever with God that is to be in the Church of Heaven while he is on Earth by prefruition He is another great Prince or Peer that bears great sway and rule and hath large and fair Possessions and domaines in this Heavenly Territory that bears a Martyrial breast and a fixt Resolution to come off with Faith and a good Conscience in all his Tryals though not with life Being never touch'd or hurt but where his Interest and adherence to Christ where he computes his self and being wholly to be comes to be shaken and assaulted And feels no heat in flames no rubs in Persecution to prove his love and to make good his March and Progress under his Saviour's Flagg but dants all that stand in his way with his immoveable Innocence and Heavenly unconcernedness And makes all Tyrants and Atheists confess they have not strength and power enough to shock his constancy nor the whole World wrongs and vexations enough to overwhelm his patience and forgivenness For the World with all its terrours and preparations is but a dead Host already subdued and crucified to his hand in the Cross of his General through whom he is more than Conquerour and altogether inseparable from him by that love in his heart Which neither Tribulation nor distress nor Persecution nor Famine nor Nakedness nor Peril nor Sword nor Death nor Life nor Angels nor Principalities nor Powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other Creature can divide from God but maintains his ground though but one against the whole World who may perhaps prevail to seperate his Body from his Soul but never his Soul and Heart from Christ nor from his love or Laws