Sober and useful reflections upon a treatise of Mr. Richard Baxter's stiled, (Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministry rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the Gospel vindicated) with a most serious preface to the same, out of the said Mr. Baxter. ...

Reader, I have been at the pains to transcribe all this from the End of a Tedi∣ous

Volumn of pro and con Disputations, where it was like to be read but of very few, as matter of General Instruction, fit to be Communicated to the whole World. And it would go a great way certainly to end our Controversies and Divisions, if People were but once resolved, who are their Governours both Civil and Ecclesiastical, to whom all this Obedience is, upon so many weighty grounds both of Scripture and Reason, due? The Question is not we see of the necessity of Government on the one hand, and Obedience on the other (and the people do but deceive themselves to expect an Ease by any Turn or Change as to their duty) but, who should Govern? or, whom we are to own for our Masters and Teachers? — Apply but all this Discourse to the King as Supreme, and our lawful Gover∣nours under him both in Church and State, and the Product of it will be Blessed Conformity to their oderly Appointments about the Circumstantials of Religion, for the well securing the substance of both, to us, and our posterity. — And whatever opinion be now suggested by any against the Bishops of our Church, as Ʋsurpers, Mr. Baxters words, in one of these Disputations, are these—

[We have had, and have Men of that judgment, that have been excellent instruments of the Churches good, and so eminent for God's Graces and gifts, that their Names will be precious, whilst Christ hath in England a Reformed Church.—Moreover, who knoweth not, that Most of the Godly able Ministers of England, since the Reformation did judge Episcopacy, some of them, lawful, and some of them, most Fit? (For the Nonconformists were but few) And that even before this late Trouble and War, the most, even almost all of those that were of the late Assembly at Westminster, and most through the Land, did subscribe and conform to Episcopal Government [even the English Prelacie] as a thing not contrary to the Word of God. So that it is evident, That it is very Consistent with a Godly Life to judge Episcopacie [even, that of the Church of England] lawful and fit, or else we should not have had so many Hundred Learned and Godly Men of that mind]

—I will not comment any farther upon the particulars; but add this only for a close, that it may be worth the while, for Every one to lay his hand upon his Heart, and impartially examine, who they were that first brake these useful Rules, and set that perverse Copy of Disobedience to Rulers and Teachers, which hath now so strangely over-run and poisoned the whole Nation? And then to move the Question, Why for the time to come, this should not be as Good and wholesome Doctrine under King Charles the Second, as it was reputed under R. the Protector?

Notes

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• Disput. 1. Pag. 5.
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