Hiera dakrya, Ecclesiae anglicanae suspiria, The tears, sighs, complaints, and prayers of the Church of England setting forth her former constitution, compared with her present condition : also the visible causes and probable cures of her distempers : in IV books / by John Gauden ...

BOOK II. SEARCHING THE CAUSES AND OCCASIONS OF THE Church of England's decayes. (Book 2)

CHAP. I.

BUt it is now time (most honoured and worthy Countrey-men) after so large and just, so sore and true a complaint in behalf of the Church of England and the Reformed Religion, (heretofore wisely established & unanimously professed in this Nation) to look after the rise and originall, the Causes and Occasions of our Decayes and Distem∣pers, of our Maladies and Miseries, which by way of prevention or negation I have (in the former Book) demonstrated to be no way imputable to the former frame, state or constitution of the Church of England; but they must receive their source from some other fountain. The search and discovery of which is necessary, in order to a serious cure:* 1.1 for rash and conjecturall applications to sick patients are prone (as learned Physitians observe) to commute their maladies, or to run them out of one disease into another, but not to cure any; turning Dropsies into Jaundise, and Feavers into Consumptions. The greatest commendation of Physitians (next their skill to discerne) is, to use such freedome in their discoveries, and such fidelity in their applyings, as may least flatter or conceal the disease.

In this disquisition or inquiry after the Causes and Occasions of our Ecclesiastick distempers, I will not by an unwelcome scrutiny, or un∣charitable curiosity, search into those more secret springs and hidden impulsives,* 1.2 which proceed (as our Blessed Saviour tells us) out of mens hearts, into their lives and actions; such as are wrathfull revenges, unchristian envies, sacrilegious covetings, impotent ambitions, hypocriti∣call

policies,* 1.3 censorious vanities, pragmatick impatiencies, an itch after novelties; mens over-valuing of themselves, and undervaluing of others; a secret delight in mean and vulgar spirits, to see their betters levelled, exauctorated, impoverished, abased, contemned; a ge∣neral want of wisdome, meekness, humility and charity; a plebeian petulancy and wanton satiety (even as to holy things) arising from peace, plenty, and constancy of enjoying them.

* 1.4These spiritual wickednesses, which are usually predominant in the high places of mens souls,* 1.5 being (Arcana Diaboli, the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 & stratage∣mata Satanae) the secret engines, depths and stratagems used by the Devil, to undermine the hearts of Christians, to loosen the founda∣tions of Churches, and to overthrow the best setled Religion; being least visible and discoverable, for they are commonly covered, as mines, with the smooth surfaces and turfs of zeale, sanctity, reforma∣tion, scrupulosity, conscience, &c. these I must leave to that great day,* 1.6 which will try mens works and hearts too, when men shall be approved and rewarded, not according to their Pharisaick boastings, popular complyings, and specious pretensions, but according to their righteous actions and honest intentions.

Onely this I may without presumption or uncharitableness judge, as to the distempers of our times, and the ruinous state of the Church of England; that many men, who have been very busie in new brew∣ing and embroyling all things of Religion, would never have so bestir∣red themselves to divide, dissipate and destroy the peace and polity of this Church, if they had not been formerly offended and exaspe∣rated, either by want of their desired preferment, which S. Austin ob∣serves of Aerius,* 1.7 the great and onely stickler of old against Bishops, or by some Animadversion, which they called persecution; although it were no more than an exacting of legal conformity, and either sworn or promised subjection, as to Canonicall obedience. Many men would have been quiet, if they had not hoped to gain by rifling their Mother, and robbing their Fathers. Some at the first motions might (perhaps) have good meanings and desires, as Eve had to grow wi∣ser; but they were soon corrupted by eating the forbidden fruit, by the unlawfulness of those means, and extravagancy of those me∣thods they used to accomplish them. But God and mens own consci∣ences will in due time judge between these men and the Church of England, whether they did either intend or act wisely or worthily, justly or charitably, gratefully or ingenuously. This I am sure if they have the comfort of sincerity, as to their intent, they have the hor∣rour of unsuccessfulness to humble them, as to the sad events which have followed preposterous piety.

CHAP. II.

THe chiefest apparent cause,* 1.8 and most pregnant out∣ward occasion of our Ecclesiastick mischiefs and miseries (as I humbly conceive) ariseth from that inordinate liberty and immodest freedome, which of later years, all sorts of people have challenged to themselves in matters of Religion, presuming on such a Toleration and Indulgence, as incourageth them to chuse and adhere to what doctrine, opinion, party, perswa∣sion, fancy or faction they list, under the name of their Religion, their Church fellowship and communion: nor are people to be blan∣ked or scared from any thing which they list to call their Religion, unless it have upon it the mark of Popery, Prelacy, or Blasphemy; of which terrible names, I think, the common people are very incompe∣tent judges, nor do they well know what is meant by them, as the onely forbidden fruit: every party in England being prone to charge each other with something which they call Blasphemy, and to suspect mutually either the affecting of Prelacy, or the inclining to Popery, in wayes that seem arrogant and imperious in themselves, also inso∣lent and injurious to others; each aspiring so to set up their particu∣lar way, as to give law to others, not onely proposing, but prescri∣bing such Doctrine, Discipline, Worship, Government and Ministry as they list to set up, according to what they gather or guess out of Scripture, whereof every private man, and woman too, as S. Jerom tells of the Luciferian hereticks, flatter themselves, that they are meet and competent judges, since they find themselves no way di∣rected by any Catholick interpretation, nor limited and circumscri∣bed by any joynt wisdome and publick profession of this Church and Nation; which heretofore was established and set forth in such a publick confession of their faith, such Articles and Canons, rules and boundaries of Religion, as served for the orderly and unanimous car∣rying on and preserving Christian Doctrine, Discipline, Worship, Mi∣nistry, or Government.

This wide doore once opened, and still kept open by the crowding and impetuosity of a people so full of fancy and fury, spirit and animo∣sity, so wilfull and surly, as the English generally are; besides that they are naturally lovers, and extremely fond, as children, of new fashions, as in all things, so in Religion it self; it is not (I say) ima∣ginable (as at the pulling up of a great sluce, or opening of a flood∣gate) what (vortices & voragines opinionum) floods and torrents of opinions, what precipitant rushings and impetuous whirlings, both in mind and manners, have every where carried a heady and head∣strong people quite headlong in Religion: not onely to veniall no∣velties, softer whimsies and lesser extravagances in Religion, which are very uncomely, though not very pernicious; but also to rank

blasphemies, to gross immoralities, to rude licentiousnesse, to insolent scandals, to endless janglings, to proud usurpations, to an utter irreli∣gion, to a totall distracting, confounding and subverting of the Church of Engl. All this, under the notion of enjoying whatever liberty they list to take to themselves, under the name and colour of Religion: which anciently imported an holy Obligation of Christians to God, and to each other, carried on by a Catholick confession, an unani∣mous profession, an uniform tradition, an holy ordination and order∣ly subjection; but now, they say, it is to be learned and reformed, not by the old wayes of pious education, and Ecclesiastick instructi∣on, not from the Bishops or Ministers of this or any nationall Church; but either by the new wayes of every private spirit's interpreting of Scriptures, or by those new lights of some speciall inspirations, which, they say, are daily held forth by themselves and others of their severall factions, or according to the various policies of Lay-men, and those pragmatick sanctions which serve the preva∣lent interests of parties.

This, this is the project, so cried up by some men, for propagating the Gospel, and advancing the Kingdome of Jesus Christ, so rare, so new, so untried, so unheard-of in any Christian Church, ancient or later, that it is no wonder, if neither the Church of England, nor its learned Clergy, nor its dutifull children, can either approve, admire, or fol∣low such dubious and dangerous methods, or labyrinths rather of Religion, any more than they can canonize for Saints those vagrants and fanaticks of old, who were justly stigmatized for damnable here∣ticks, or desperate schismaticks, for their deserting that Catholick faith, tradition, order and communion of the Churches of Christ, which were clearly expressed in their Creeds and Canons, founded upon Scripture, and conform to Apostolick example.

The Gnosticks, Cerinthians, Valentinians, Carpocratians, Circumcel∣lians, Montanists, Manichees, Novatians, Donatists, Arians, and o∣thers, were esteemed by the Primitive Churches as Foxes and Wolves, creatures of a wild and ferine nature, impatient of the kindest restraints, not induring to be kept in any folds, or bounds of Christs flock, which ever had an holy, authentick and authoritative succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters, as its Pastors and Tea∣chers; also it had its safe and known limits for Religion, in faith and manners, Doctrine and Discipline, for order and government, both in lesser Congregations and larger Combinations. The true Christian liberty anciently enjoyed by Primitive Christians and Churches, was fullest of verity, charity, unity, modesty, humility, sanctity, sobriety, harmonious subordination, and holy subjection, ac∣cording to the stations in which God had placed every part or mem∣ber in those bodies; they were the farthest that could be from Schism, Separation, mutiny, novelty, ambition, rebellion, while every one kept the true temper, order and decorum of a Chri∣stian.

Certainly, if either particular Congregations, or private Christi∣ans

liberty had consisted in being exposed or betrayed, as Sheep without their Shepherds, to all manner of extravagancies incident to vulgar petulancy and humane infirmity; those Primitive Churches and an∣cient Fathers, those godly Bishops and blessed Martyrs, those pious Emperours and Christian Princes of old, might have spared a great deal of care, cost, pains and time, which were spent in their severall Councils and Synods, Parlaments, Diets and Conventions; whose design was not to make new, but to renew those Scripture-Canons and Apostolicall constitutions, which were necessary to preserve the faith once delivered to the Saints, and to assert,* 1.9 not onely the com∣mon salvation, but also that Catholick succession, communion and order of Churches transmitted from the Apostles: in which endea∣vour the piety and wisdome, the care and charity of ancient Councils, expressed in their many Canons made for the keeping of the unity of the Spirits truth in the bond of peace among Christians, were so far (in my judgement) from being meer heaps of hay, straw and stubble, bu∣rying and over-laying the foundations of Christian soundnesse and simplicity (which seems to be the late censure of one, whom I am as sorry to see in a posture of difference from the Church of England, as any person of these times, because I esteem his learning and abilities above most that have appeared adversaries to, or dissenters from Her) that I rather judge with Mr. Calvin (a person far more learned, ju∣dicious and impartiall in this case)▪

They were, for the most part,* 1.10 very sober, wise and suitable superstructures, little deviating from, & no way demolishing any of those grand foundations of Faith, Ho∣liness, or Charity, which were laid by Christ and his blessed Apostles, which ever continued the same, and were so owned by their pious successors, however they used that liberty and authority in lesser mat∣ters, which was given them by the Scriptures, and derived to them by their Apostlick mission or succession, for the prudent accommo∣dating of such things as concerned the outward polity, uniformity, order and peace of the Church, or for those decent celebrations and solemnities of Religio••, which were most agreeable to the severall geniu'ses, and civil rites of people, and the mutable temper of times; all which who so neglects to consider, will never rightly judge of the severall counsels, customes and constitutions of either ancient or later Churches.

The best of whose piety and prudence the Reformed Church of England chose to follow, as exactly as it could, first in Her decer∣ning, declaring, determining, translating and communicating to her children those Canonicall Books of holy Scripture; also in the owning, professing, and propounding to them those Anci∣ent, Catholick and received Creeds, which are as the summaries and boundaries of Christian Faith, containing those articles which are necessary to be believed by all: after this it used those discreet li∣mits and rules which it thought fittest to keep the visible profession of Christian Religion in due order and decency, according as occasi∣on required, and the state of this particular Church would bear.

Nor was the Church of England in any of these things ever blamed or blamable, by any well-reformed Church; nor by any men that impartially professed Christianity: among whom I cannot reckon either the politick Papist, or the peevish Separatist; much lesse those later rude rabbles of libertines and fanaticks, who abhor all things in any Church or way of Religion, which they suspect to be contrary to their loose principles, and these must be conform to their several se∣cular ends and interests; which truly in England are now neither small, nor poor, nor modest, but grand, high, and aspiring, extreme∣ly inconsistent with those publick principles and ends of good order, polity, peace and unity, which formerly were established and main∣tained in the Church of England, as they ought to be in all well-orde∣red Churches: whose work and design was, not loosely to tolerate different publick professions of Religion in the same nation or com∣munity, according as every man lists; but seriously and impartially to constitute and authorize some one way, grounded upon Gods Word, and guided by the best examples, as the publick standard of Religion, for Doctrine, Duties, Worship, Devotion, Discipline.

Which methods of Piety and Charity were ever highly commen∣ded, and cheerfully followed by the wisest and best Christian Magi∣strates in all ages; and possibly they had been ere this recovered and renewed here in England, if the beast of the people, getting the bridle of liberty between its teeth, had not so far run away with some riders, who had too much pampered it, that it is no easie mat∣ter (not to be done by sudden checks, or short turnes) to reduce that heady and head-strong animal to the right postures of religious managing: besides, that wise men are taught by experience, that nothing so soon tames the madnesse of people, as their own fiercenesse and extravagancy;* 1.11 which at length, as S. Cyprian observes, tires them, by taking away their breath, and vainly exhausting their fe∣rocient spirits. Time and patience oft facilitate those cures in Church and State, which violent and unseasonable applications would but more enflame and exasperate. I do not ••oubt but the greatest patrons for the peoples liberty in matters of Religion, will in time (if they do not already) see how great a charity it is to put mercifull re∣straints of religious order and government upon them, which are no lesse necessary than those sharper curbs and yokes of civil coercions. No wise States-man will think it fit, in honesty or safety, to permit common people to do whatever seems good in their own eyes, as if there were no King or supreme Magistrate in Israel: nor can any good Christian think it fit,* 1.12 that in Religion every man should be left to profess and patronize what he listeth, as if there were no Christ, as King, and chief Bishop of our souls, or as if he had not left us clear and setled foundations for faith; also evident principles, besides patterns of Christian prudence, and Church-polity, for order and office, disci∣pline and duty, direction and correction, subordination and union. What these measures and proportions have been, both as to the judgement and practise of the universall Church, from the very Apo∣stolicall

times, and their Primitive successors, till this last century, is so plain, both in Scripture and other Ecclesiastick records, that I wonder how men of any learning can be so ignorant, or men of any honesty can be so partiall, as by their doubting and disputing, to divide the minds of Christian people, and by rude innovations to raise so unhappy factions, as have at this day overspread this Church and Nation like a leprosie, which is a foul disease, though it may seem white as snow, blanched over with the shews of liberty, but be∣traying men to the basest servitude of their own lusts, and other mens corruptions as well as errours.

CHAP. III.

I Know and allow that just plea,* 1.13 which is made by lear∣ned and godly men, for Christians mutuall bearing with, and forbearing one another, in cases of private and mo∣dest differings, either in opinions or practises: yea, as S. Ambrose, S. Austin, S. Jerome, and others observe, there is a great latitude of Charity to be exercised among particular Churches, in their different methods, and outward forms of holy ministrations, according as their severall polities are locally distin∣guished by Cities, Countreys, or Nations. I willingly yield to all men, much more to all Christians, that liberty naturall, civil and re∣ligious, which may consist with Scripture-precept and right reason, with grounds of morality and society; which is as much as I desire to use or enjoy my self, in point of private opinion, or publick profes∣sion.

I have other where observed out of Tertullian, that Religion is not to be forced, but perswaded. I admire the Princely and Christian temper of Constantine the Great,* 1.14 who professed he would not have men cudgelled, but convinced to be Christians; that Religion was a matter of choice, not of constraint; that no tyranny, no rape, no force is more detestable, than that which is committed upon mens consciences, when once they come to be masters of so much reason, as to chuse for themselves, and to hold forth those principles upon which they state their Religion. This indeed was the sense of that great and good Emperour: But then withall, he professed not to meddle, by any Imperatorian or Senatorian power, with matters of Religion, either to alter and innovate, or to dispute and decide them, but left them to the piety and prudence of those holy and famous Bishops, which were chief Pastors of the Church; whose unanimous doctrine and uniform practise had carried on Christian Religion a∣midst all persecutions with so great splendour, uniformity, authority and majesty, that few Christians were so impudent as to doubt, much

less contradict, and openly dissent from their religious harmony, publick order and profession, which was grounded on Scripture-pre∣cepts, and guided by Apostolicall patterns.

Yet amidst those primitive exactnesses, to preserve the publick peace and unity of Churches, nothing was more nourished and pra∣ctised, than that meeknesse of wisdome, which every where sought to instruct men, not to destroy them for their private differences in Re∣ligion, when they were accompanied with humility, modesty and charity, not carried on with insolence and injury, to immorality and publick perturbation; in all which men shew malice and pride, mix∣ed with, and sowring their opinions, which easily and insensibly carry mens hearts from dissentings to emulations, from emulations to an∣ger,* 1.15 from anger to enmity, from enmity to despiciency, from de∣spising to damning one another. Private perswasions, like sticks, when they come to vehement rubbings or agitations, conceive heat, and kindle to passionate flames; whereas in a calm and Christian tem∣per, who so differs from me, is in charity to be interpreted, as desi∣rous either to learn of me, or to instruct me better: and therefore such an one deserves to be treated,* 1.16 not as an enemy, but as a brother; not tetrically, morosely, injuriously, but candidly, charitably, chri∣stianly.

Yet because experience teacheth us, that the ignorance, infirmity and incapacity of most people is such, that they cannot easily find out of themselves the Truths of God, which are the grounds of true Religion; yea, some are so lazy and indifferent, as to neglect all means which might help them; yea, and many are either so peevish or proud, as they are impatient not to be singular, or not to lead Disciples after them in Religion (the highest ambition being that of Hereticks,* 1.17 which seeks to domineere over mens souls and consciences:) for these and other weighty reasons, both in civil and religious re∣gards, Christian Religion ought not in any Christian Church-polity or Nation to be left so loose and dissolute, as to have no hedge or wall to the vineyard, no limits or restraints set to the petulancy of those, who under the name of liberty, study to be malicious, licentious, ab∣horring any thing solid, strict, or setled in Religion, either as to themselves or others; counting all those as enemies to their factious designs and interests, who enjoyn them to live in any godly order. Hence these Oecumenicall censors and universall criticks as boldly and easily reproch, revile, contemn, injure as they please, all those Christians and Churches too, who humbly conform to that profes∣sion of Religion, though never so Christian and Reformed, which is once established in any Nation or Church, by publick consent and sanction, upon the most mature deliberation and impartiall advise, in order to Gods glory, and the common good of that society.

If these dissolute fancies of Christian liberty should be followed or indulged to people by such Magistrates and Ministers as own that Religion, certainly no society of men would be more unsociable, more sordid, more shamefull, or more miserable. Common people

will be starved or poysoned, if they be left to feed themselves; they will be as so many ragged regiments, if they be left, as the Isra∣elites, to pick up Religion, like straw, where they can find it.

Therefore all piety, policy and charity commands, that in every Nation professing the faith of Jesus Christ as the only true Religion, there should be, as there was in Engl. some such wise and grand esta∣blishment, as should be the publick measure or standard of Religion, both as to Doctrine, Worship & Government.

This in all uprightness ought to be set before people: not onely propounded and commen∣ded to them, but so far commanded and enjoyned by authority, as none should neglect it, or vary from it without giving account; much less should any man publickly scorn and contemn it, or the Ministers and dispensers of it, by writing, speech, or action, to the scandall of the whole Church and Nation, yea to the scandall of the very name of Jesus Christ and his holy Institution, which ought to be (as Ter∣tullian rarely expresseth it) received with godly fear and reverence,* 1.18 entertained with solicitous diligence, maintained with honourable mu∣nificence, contained within the bounds of charitable union and humble subjection; such as no way permits any private fancy, upon any pre∣tensions whatsoever, rudely and publickly to oppose or despise it.

But, because it is possible that some truths of Religion may be unseen, and so omitted by the most publick diligence; and some may afterward be discovered by private industry and devotion, which ought not to be prejudged, smothered or concealed, if they have the character of Gods will revealed in his written Word, whose true meaning is the fixed measure and unalterable rule of all true Religi∣on: to prevent the suppressing or detaining of any Truth, which may be really offered to any Church or Christians, beyond what is publickly owned and established; also to avoyd the petulant and insolent obtruding whatever novelty any mans fancy listeth to set up upon his own private account, variating frō, or contrary to the publick establishment; nothing were more necessary and happy, than to have in every Nationall Church (which hath agreed with one heart, one mind, one spirit, and one mouth to serve the Lord Jesus) accor∣ding to the pattern of primitive piety and wisdome, persons of emi∣nent learning, piety, prudence and integrity, publickly chosen and appointed to be the constant Conservators of Religion; whose office it should be, to try and examine all new opinions publickly propoun∣ded: no man should print or preach any thing different from the publick standard and establishment of Religion, untill he had first humbly propounded to that venerable council in writing his opinion, together with his reasons, why he adds to, or differs from the pub∣lick profession.

If these grand Conservators of Religion, who ought to be the choisest persons in the Church and Nation, both for ability, gravity and ho∣nesty, do (at their solemn and set meetings once or twice every year) allow the propounders reasons and opinions, he may then publicate his judgement by preaching, disputing, writing or printing:

But if they do not, he shall then keep his opinion to himself, in the bounds of private conference onely, for his better satisfaction; but in no way publicate it, to the scandall or perturbation of what is set∣led in Religion. Here every man may enjoy his ingenuous liberty, as to private dissenting, without any blame or penalty, which he shall incurre and undergo, in case he do so broach any thing without leave, as a rude Innovator and proud disturber.

Private and modest dissentings among Christians safely may, and charitably ought to be born with all Christian meeknesse and wis∣dome: but certainly it would be the very pest and gangrene of all true Religion, also the moth and canker of all civil as well as Eccle∣siastick peace, to tolerate every mans ignorance, rudeness and prag∣maticalness, to innovate and act what they please in Religion. Though Christians may be otherwaies sound and hearty, yet they may have an itch of novelty, popularity, vain-glory. It would make mad work in Religion, if every man, under the notion of Christian liberty, should be permitted not onely to scratch himself as he listeth, but to infect others by every pestilent contagion, yea to make what riotous havock he pleaseth of the publick peace and order.

It were a miserable childishnesse in any nation professing Christi∣anity,* 1.19 to be ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of saving and necessary truths; to be still tossed to and fro with winds of doctrine, and never cast anchor upon sure and safe grounds; which are easily found, if men aimed at piety as well as policy, and regarded Christs interest or his Churches, more than their own private and secular advanta∣ges: which was once happily done, by Gods blessing, in the Church of England, to so great an exactness and completeness of Religion, that nothing for necessity, decency, or majesty, was to be added or desired by sober Christians; nor could much be added for conveni∣ency.

When Religion is thus setled by publick counsel, consent and sanction, it ought in all reason and conscience to be preserved in wayes of honour, peace and safety, more carefully than those banks are, which, by keeping out the seas inundations, preserve our pa∣stures and cattel from drowning: else every Polity and Nation pre∣tending to be Christian, proclaim to all the world, that they think Religion to be no better than matters of Scepticall dispute, and vari∣able opinion, having nothing in it clear or certain, as to any divine truth, or infallible Revelation. Of which, since their ignorance and weakness, or passion and partiality (to which every private man is subject) makes them less capable either to search or judge, to dis∣pute or determine; the wisdome of God hath alwayes either esta∣blished, or exemplarily directed his Church to use and enjoy some such constant Conservators of Religion, besides the occasionall Reformers and restorers of it; which were of old the Prophets ex∣traordinarily sent, besides those that were ordinarily brought up in the schooles of the Prophets, which were the nurseries of those lear∣ned and wise men, who made up the Sanhedrim or grand Council a∣mong

the Jews, consisting of seventy men, who were for piety, parts and place, chief Fathers, Doctors and Rabbies in the Church of the Jews, and the great Conservators of their Law and Reli∣gion.

Answerably we read in the Primitive Churches and times, this care and power was by the wisdome of Christ fixed, and by all good Christians owned, in the Apostles and Elders; to whom,* 1.20 in case of any dispute or difference in Religion, address was made, not onely to hear their counsel and judgement, but to submit to their decisions and decrees; which bound every man to preach no other doctrine, different from, much less contrary to, what that venerable consistory both taught and summarily delivered to the Churches of Christ,* 1.21 viz. wholsome formes, and short summaries of sound doctrine, as well as in their more diffused writings,* 1.22 occasionally sent to particular Chur∣ches, and divinely delivered to the use, care and custody of the Ca∣tholick Church.

Agreeable to these holy precedents, every Christian Church in after-ages had (within their several distributions, or dioceses, di∣stinguished by their Cities or Provinces) their Synods or Ecclesiasti∣call Councils, for all those emergencies or concernments of Religion which arose within their limits and combinations: proportionably they had more extensive Conventions and generall Councils in cases of grand concernment, for the comprimising of all differences in Religion, and conservation of the Churches both purity and peace. These methods of prudent piety and pious prudence, as they were of divine Institution, so they ought to be perpetuall in the Church of Christ, as being the onely means left for the conservation and refor∣mation of Religion.

'Tis true, in the dimness of after-ages, when the decay of Primi∣tive zeal, love, sanctity and sincerity, had too much prevailed over these Western Churches, the Bishops of Rome, taking the advantage of the higher ground, whereon the fame of that City was raised, not onely for being the Metropolis of the Roman Empire, but for being a prime Church of Apostolicall plantation, and high renown for the Faith and martyrly constancy of its first Bishops; these,* 1.23 with no great difficulty, as with great art and policy, contrary to the judgement and practise of Antiquity for the first 600. years, sought to fix the Standard of Religion in the Popes chair, and to make his breast the great Conservator of Religion: certainly a very easie, compendious, and happy way to keep up the peace and honour of Christian Reli∣gion and Churches, if the Bishop of Rome could, in the noon-day-light of these, times either convince the world of his speciall gift of Infal∣libility, or make good his claim of being sole and supreme Judge of all controversies in Religion, above any other Pastors and Bishops, yea and above a generall Council.

This late prodigious pillar, or huge Colosse of the Popes infallible, sole and supreme power, hath, as of old, so of late years, not onely been much weakned by many Churches, Greek and Latine, dissen∣ting,

but by some it hath been quite overthrown, demolished and bro∣ken in pieces, as an arrogant abuse and intolerable tyranny, contrary to all rules of Scripture and reason, never challenged by the first fa∣mous and holy Bishops of that Church, nor owned in after-ages (when Popes began to usurp upon other Bishops and Churches) by the most learned and godly men of those times.

This justice being done to the honour and liberty of the Churches of Christ, and their respective Bishops or Pastors, against the Papall obtrusion of his sole judicature: yet no Reformed Church, of any re∣pute, hath been so transported by just indignation against the Papall usurpations, as to expose themselves and their Religion to the various breach and giddy brains of the vulgar; but every one hath both con∣fined and setled their profession by some publick profession, as the standard of Religion; also they have some such Conservators of Reli∣gion, either ordinary or extraordinary, as do take care that the esta∣blished Religion suffer no injury or detriment.

This authority or power seems now much wanting in England, though it be very necessary, in my judgement, which should so pre∣serve the publick stability of true Religion, as not to invade any good mans private liberty, which ought not to be too severely curbed; yet not so indulged, as to injure the common welfare, contrary to all rules of reason, justice and charity.

These Conservators of Religion should not exact of private Christi∣ans any explicite conformity or subscription, under penalty of any mulct or prison, much less with the terrour of fire and faggot, which was the zealotry of Papal tyranny: onely they should take care that people be duly taught that Religion which is setled; that none be a publick Preacher, that is a declared dissenter or opposer of it; that no man do broach any novelty without their approbation; that no man do petulantly blaspheme, oppose, scorn or perturb that con∣stitution of Religion which is publickly setled, as supposed to be the best; that no man abuse the name of Christian liberty to the publick injury.

All sober and wise Christians do see and feel, by late sad experi∣ence, that liberty, in the vulgar sense and notion, is but a golden Calf, which licentious minds set up to themselves under that specious name; as the Israelites did their abominable Idoll, under the popular title and acclamation of These are thy Gods,* 1.24 O Israel.

* 1.25If common people be indulged in what freedome they will chal∣lenge to themselves, wise men will soon find, that their Christian liberty is no better than an Image of jealousie, a Teraphim, a Tamuz, or Adonis, offensive to the God of reason, order, law and govern∣ment; destructive to humane society; dishonourable to the name of Christ, and that holy profession which was so renowned of old, as Christian, that is, the most regular, meek, harmlesse, strict, peaceable and charitable Religion in the world: whose divided and deformed aspect, even now in England, if (as Clem. Alex. observes in his time) a prudent Heathen, or morall Turk, or sober Jew, or grave Philosopher,

should behold, as to the effect of some mens principles and practises, who glory much in their Christian liberty, would they not con∣clude, that Christ their Master was the Author, and Christion profes∣sion the favourer of all manner of Licentiousnesse?

Which is not more a dehonestation of the Doctrine, Spirit, Disciples and Mysterie of Christ Jesus, than an infinite damp and hindrance to the propagation and spreading of the Gospel in the world: yea, it is the high-way, through the justice of God upon the wanton wicked∣ness and hypocriticall profaneness of such Christians, utterly to extir∣pate the power, peace, comfort, yea and profession of Christian Re∣ligion. The Mahometan power and poyson had never spread so over those famous Asian, African, and Eastern Churches, if Heretical and Schismatical liberty had not first battered the strength, and corrupted the health of Christianity. Hence those inundations of barbarity, those incursions of forraign enemies, following those intestine wars and confusions, by which the wise and just God hath in all ages pu∣nished the folly and presumption of petulant and licentious Christians, who first dare to think, then to speak, at last to act, what they fancy and affect, instead of what God commands, and the Catholick Church hath observed in all ages. These popular provocations of God, which are full of impudent impiety, commonly are revenged by dreadfull and durable judgements, long and lasting miseries. For the pertinacious mischiefs of Heresie and Schisme once prevailing upon any Church & Nation, are, like frenzy or madness, rarely cured, with∣out loss of much blood; besides the iron goads and sharp harrows of mutuall depredations and oppressions, which are used between parties and factions, once in religious respects engaged against each other. 'Tis not expectable that Christians thus tearing and mas∣sacring each other, should recover their wits, till sharp and succes∣sive afflictions have shewed them how unholy and unthankful they are, without naturall and spirituall affections, who dare at once despise their Fathers, reproch their Mother, and devour their Brethren; who being baptized, instructed, communicated and converted (as they pretend) to the same Lord Jesus Christ, and to his holy profession, by the Ministry of such a Church as England was (so Christian, so Reformed) yet by a voluntary separation and desperate defection (as (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) self-condemned) dare to execute such bold and rash censures of excommunication, both upon themselves and others,* 1.26 as a sober Christian should greatly tremble to undergo, if the sacred au∣thority of such a Church, by its Bishops, Ministers, and other Mem∣bers, should joyntly pass such a censure upon them, as their own pride, passion, superstition, and licentious humours daily dare to do. May they not justly fear, lest God should satisfie them with their own delusions, and ratifie that judgement which they have un∣charitably chosen, of being ever separated from his Church, and from himself? might not God justly despise and reject them, who have despised and rejected such means, such Ministers, such Ministra∣tions, as some have done, and still do, in the Church of England?* 1.27 If the

dust of his Ministers feet will rise up in judgement against ingrateful refu∣sers;* 1.28 how much sorer punishment may they expect, who are the inso∣lent abusers of such messengers of peace, and cruell vastators of such a Church as England was, before it felt the sad effects of this Chri∣stian liberty, which common people are prone not more to magnifie, than to mistake and misuse?

CHAP. IV.

* 1.29WHo doubts, but if the plebs or populacy, in any Na∣tion or Church, be left to themselves, to cut out Religion & Liberty into what thongs they list, they will soon be not only unshod, ungirt & unblest, but so quite naked and unclothed, as to any Christian grace or vertue, gravity or decency, truth or san∣ctity, that their shame and nakedness will soon ap∣pear in all manner of fedity, deformity, errour and ignorance, inso∣lence and confusion? They have little studied the vulgar genius, who do not find by all reading and experience, that the common temper of people is rude and perverse, light and licentious, petulant and inso∣lent,* 1.30 as S. Bernard well expresseth it.

They are not convincible with reason, because incapable; they despise good examples, be∣cause they love not to imitate them; they are too proud and pee∣vish to be sweetly won and perswaded to goodness; they are mad and impatient to be curbed.

Yea, they are undone, and perish eter∣nally, if they be betrayed to themselves; if God and good men be not better to them than they deserve, desire, or design for them∣selves, either in things civil or sacred; if there be not, by just and honest policies, such holy restraints and wholsome severities put upon them,* 1.31 as are not their chains, but their girdles; not their bannacles, but their bridles. Alas, what wise Magistrate or Minister is there, who doth not find by daily experience, that if you will but save peo∣ples purses, they are not very solicitous how to save their souls? most of them think Taxes and Tithes farre greater burthens, than all their sins and trespasses; not much valuing their sanctification or salva∣tion, so as they enjoy that rustick, thrifty and unmannerly liberty, which they naturally affect, against their teachers and betters. What immense summes of money have of late years been spent upon mili∣tary and secular accounts? If the hundredth part had been desired of them, in order to have procured a competent maintenance for an able Preacher in every parish (without which there is little hope ever to enjoy competent Ministers) O what an out-cry would have been made? what an oppression would it have seemed to the common people, beyond ship-money, yea, beyond the bricks and bondage of Egypt, as if their very life-blood and the marrow of their bones had been taken from them? so much doth the beast and naturall man over-weigh the Christian, in the most of men and women.

The freest, easiest, and cheapest Religion is thought the best among them: what is most grateful, is most godly: then they fancy themselves most happy, when least obliged to be holy; and then most zealously religious, when they may be most securely licentious. The more factious and pragmatick spirits among them do think that all Polity and Religion, things civil and sacred, must needs be shipwreckt and utterly miscarry, unless they have an oar in the boat,* 1.32 unless they put their hand to the helm of all government. It doth not suffice their busie heads and hands to trimme the sailes, as common Mari∣ners, when commanded, but they must be at the steerage; not consi∣dering what balast of judgement, what anchor of constancy, what compass of sound knowledge, both divine and humane, is necessary for those who undertake to be Pilots and guides of States and Chur∣ches.

The rude plebs, like mutinous mariners, are prone so to affect liberty, as to endanger their own and other mens safety: they are like Porpuices, pleased with storms, especially of their own raising: they joy in the tossings of Religion, and hope for a prey by the wrecks both of well-built Churches and well-setled States: they fancy it a precious liberty to swim in a wide sea, though they be drow∣ned at last, or swallowed up by sharks: they triumph to see other poor souls dancing upon the waves of the dead sea, to be overwhel∣med with ignorance, idleness, Atheism, profaneness, perdition; which is the usual, and almost unavoidable, fate of those giddy-headed, & mad∣brain'd people, who being happily embarqued, and orderly guided in any well-setled Church, do either put their ablest Pilots under hat∣ches, or cast them over-boord; which hath been of late years the re∣ligious ambition of many thousands, in order (forsooth) to recover and enjoy their imaginary Christian liberties, which soon make com∣mon people the sad objects of wise mens grief and pity, rather than of their joy or envy. For, like wandring sheep, they naturally affect an erroneous and dangerous freedome from their shepherds and their folds, that they may be free for foxes, wolves and doggs: yea, some of them, by a strange metamorphosis, that they may seem Christs sheep, turn wolves, seizing upon and destroying their own shepherds: which the true flock of Christ never did, either in the most persecuted, or the most peacefull times of the Church; but were ever subject, with all humility and charity, to those godly Bishops and Presbyters,* 1.33 which were by Apostolicall succession and Divine authority over them in the Lord; whom they were so far from stripping, robbing, or devouring, that both Christian Princes and faithfull people endowed them with most gratefull and munificent expressions of their loves and esteem, even in primitive and necessitous times, as a due and de∣served honour to men of learning, piety and gravity, who watched over their souls, being both wel enabled, and duly ordained to be their rulers and guides to heaven.

But now, who sees not by the sad experience of the Church of En∣gland, how the plebs or common people, yea all persons of plebeian

spirits, of base and narrow minds, (who are the greatest sticklers for those enormous and pernicious liberties) who sees not how much they would be pleased to set up Jeroboams calves,* 1.34 if they may have liberty to chuse the meanest of the people to be their Priests, or some scabbed and stragling sheep to be their shepherds;* 1.35 if they may make some of their mechanick comrades to be their Pastors and Ministers,* 1.36 examined and ordained by their silly selves? O how willing are they (poor wret∣ches) in their thirst for novelty,* 1.37 liberty and variety, as Theophylact ob∣serves, to suffer any pitifull piece of prating impudence, who walketh in the spirit of falshood, to impose upon them so far as to be their Preacher and Prophet, if he will but prophecy to them of liberty and soveraignty, of sacred and civil Independency, * 1.38 of corn, wine, and strong drink, of good bargains and purchases to be gained out of the ruines of the Church, and the spoils of Church-men?

O how little regret would it be to such sacrilegious Libertines, to have no Christian Sabbath, or Lords dayes, as well as no Holy-dayes, or solemn memorials of Evangelical mercies? How contented would they be with no preaching, no praying, no Sermons, no Sacraments, no Scrip∣tures, no Presbyters, (as well as no Bishops,) with no Ministers or holy Ministrations, with no Church, no Saviour, no God, further than they list to fancy thē in the freedom of some sudden flashes and extemporary heats? There are that would still be as glad to see the poor remainder of Church-lands and Revenues, all Tithes and Glebes, quite alienated and confiscated, as those men were, who got good estates by the former ruines of Monasteries, or the later spoylings of Bishops and Cathe∣drals: nothing is sacred, nothing sacrilegious to the all-craving, & all-devouring maw of vulgar covetousness and licentiousness. O how glorious a liberty would it be in some mens eyes, to pay no Tithes to any Minister! much more precious liberty would it be to pur∣chase them, and by good penniworths to patch up their private for∣tunes.

Nothing (in very deed) is less valuable to the shameless, sordid, and dissolute spirits of some people, than their souls eternall state, or the service of their God and Saviour; whom not seeing, they are not very solicitous to seek or to serve, further than may consist with their profit, ease and liberty. They rather chuse to go blindfold, wandring and dancing to hell, in the licentious frolicks of their fanci∣full Religions, than to live under those holy orders and wholsome re∣straints, which in all Ages preserved the unity and honour of true Christian Religion, both by sober Discipline and sound Doctrine.

In the later of these the Clergy of England most eminently aboun∣ded; and in the former of them they were not so much negligent (which some complaine) as too much checkt and curbed: few men being so good Christians, as to be patient of that severe Disci∣pline which was used in the Primitive Churches; which if any Bishop or Minister should have revived, how would the rabble of Libertines

cry out, Depart from us, we will none of your wayes,* 1.39 neither Di∣scipline nor Doctrine, neither your Ministrations nor Ministry,* 1.40 nei∣ther Bishops nor Presbyters; let us break these Priestly bonds in sunder, and cast these Christian cords from us: our liberty is, to lead our tame teachers by their noses, to pull our asinine Preachers by their luculent ears, to rule our precarious Rulers: if they pretend to have or use any Ecclesiasticall authority, so as to cross our liberties, to curb our consciences, or to bridle our extravagancies; we look upon them as men come to torment us before our time,* 1.41 who seek to lead us away captive, to deprive us of our dear God Mammon, (as Micah cried out after the Danites) or of our great Goddess Liberty,* 1.42 according to the jealousie which Demetrius and the Ephesine rabble had for their Diana, against the Apostles. This is the Idea of that petulant, profane and fanatick liberty, which vulgar people most fancy and affect; for the enjoying of which, they have made so many horrid clamours, and ventured upon so many dangerous confusions, both to their own and other mens souls, in matter of Religion.

CHAP. V.

I Shall not need by particular instances further to demonstrate to You (my honoured Countrey-men) what your own observation daily proclaims,* 1.43 namely, the strange pranks, cabrioles, or freaks, which the vulgar wantonnesse hath plaid of late years, under the colour and confidence of liberty in Religion (provided they profess no other Popery or Prelacy than what is in their own ambitious hearts & insolent man∣ners.) Nor is this petulancy onely exercised in the smaller circum∣stances, or disputable matters of Religion, but even in the very main foundations; such as have been established of old in all the generati∣ons and successions of the Churches of Christ, both as to good do∣ctrine and orderly conversation.

First, if you consider the (Magna Charta) grand charter of your souls, the holy Scriptures. Those lively oracles,* 1.44 which were given by inspiration and direction of Gods Spirit, which beyond all books in the world have been most desperately persecuted, and most divinely preserved, having in them the clearest characters of divine Truth, love, mercy, wisdome, power, majesty and glory, the impressions and manifestations of greatest goodness, grace, both in morals & my∣steries, in the prophecies and their accomplishment, in the admirable harmony of prescience & performance, of Prophets & Apostles, setting forth the blessed Messias, as the prefigured Sacrifice, the promised Saviour, the desire of the world; those Books which have been de∣livered

to us by the most credible testimony in the world, the uniform consent of the pillar and ground of Truth,* 1.45 the Catholick Church of God,* 1.46 which the Apostle S. Paul prefers before that of an Angel from Heaven; that divine Record, which hath been confirmed to us by so many miracles, sealed by the faith and confession, the repen∣tance and conversion, the doctrine and example, the gracious lives and glorious deaths of so many holy Confessors and Martyrs in all ages, besides an innumerable company of other humble professors, who have been perfected, sanctified and saved by that word of life, dwel∣ling richly in them in all wisdome.* 1.47

Yet, even in this grand concernment of Religion, the holy Scriptures, (whose two Testaments are as the two poles on which all morality and Christianity turn, the two hinges on which all our piety and felicity depend) much negligence, indifferency and coldness, is of late used by many,* 1.48 not onely people, but their heaps of Preachers, under the notion and imagination of their Christian liberty, that is, seldome or never seriously to read, either privately or publickly, any part of the holy Scripture, unless it be a short Text or Theame, for fashion sake, which (like a broken morsell) they list to chew a while in their mouths:* 1.49 but the solemn, attentive, grave, devout, and distinct reading of Psalms or Chapters, or any other set portion of the holy Scriptures, old or new (to which S. Chrysostome, S. Jerome, S. Austin, and the other ancient Fathers, both Greek and Latin, so oft and so earnestly exhorted all Christians) this they esteem as a poor and puerile business, onely fit for children at school, not for Chri∣stians at Church; unless it be attended with some exposition or gloss upon it, though never so superficiall, simple and extempora∣ry; which is like painting over well-polished marble; being more prone to wrest, darken and pervert, than rightly to explain, clear or interpret the Scriptures, which of themselves are in most places easie to be understood: obscure places are rather more perplexed than expounded, when they are undertaken by per∣sons not very learned,* 1.50 or not well prepared for that work; which was the employment anciently (as Justin Martyr tells us) chiefly of the (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) the Bishop or President then present, whose of∣fice was far above the (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or) Readers, who having done his duty, the other, as Pastor of the flock, either opened or ap∣plyed such parts of the Scripture as he thought best to insist upon.

Yet there are (now) many such supercilious and nauseous Christians, who utterly despise the bare reading or reciting of the Word of God to the Congregation, as if no beauty were on it, no life or power in it, no good or vertue to be gotten by it, unlesse the breath of a poore man further inspire it, unlesse a poore worm, like a snaile, flightly passing over it, set a slimy varnish upon it: as if the saving truth, and self-shining light of Gods Word, in the precepts, examples, promises, prophecies and histories, were not most cleare and easie of it self, as to all things neces∣sary

to be believed, obeyed, or hoped;* 1.51 as if honest and pure-hearted Christians could not easily perceive the mind of God in the Scriptures, unlesse they used alwayes such extemporary spectacles, as some men glory to put upon their own or their auditors noses.

Certainly such new masters in our Israel forget how much they symbolize with the Papists in this fancy, while denying or disdaining all reading of Scriptures in publick, unless some expound them, though never so sorrily, slovenly and suddenly, they must by conse∣quence highly discourage, yea, and utterly forbid common people the reading of any portion of them privately in their closets or fa∣milies, where they can have no other expositors but themselves, and it may be are not themselves so confident, as to undertake the work of expounding the hard and obscurer places; as for other places which are more necessary and easie, sure they explain themselves sufficiently to every humble, diligent, and attentive reader or hea∣rer: the blessed use and effects of which if these supercilious Rab∣bies had found in themselves, while the Word of God is publickly, distinctly and solemnly read in the Church to them, doubtlesly they would not have so much disused, despised and decried this godly cu∣stome in the Church of England, of emphatick reading the Word of God in the audience of Christian Congregations.

O rare and unheard of Christian Liberty, which dares to cast so great a slighting and despiciency upon the publick reading of the Scriptures, which are the Churches chiefest Jewel, so esteemed and used by Jewes and Gentiles, full of its own sacred, innate and di∣vine lustre; then indeed most spendid and illustrious, when hand∣somely set, that is,* 1.52 when the Priests lips preserve the knowledge of them, and duly impart them to Christian people, both by discreet rea∣ding and preaching, that is, explaining and applying them!

CHAP. VI.

* 1.53AFter these vulgar slightings and depreciatings, cast upon the publick reading of the Word of God by some no∣vellers, I shall in vain set forth to You what is less strange (yet very strange and new in the Church of Christ) that is, the supercilious contempt and total re∣jection of all those ancient venerable forms of sound words and wholsome doctrine, either literally contained and expresly commanded in the Scripture, such as are the Ten Commandements and Lords Prayer; or evidently grounded, and anciently deduced out of the Scriptures, such as are the Apostles Creed, with other ancient Symbols and Doxologies, which were bounds and marks of all Chri∣stians unity and soundness in the faith, generally used by all pristine and modern Churches of any renown, who mixed with their publick Services of God these great pillars and chief foundations of piety, these constant rules, standards and measures of Religion, by which they took the scantlings or proportions of all their duties and devo∣tions, of their sins and repentance, of their faith and hope: hence the humble confession of their sins, the sincere agnition of their duties, the earnest deprecations of divine vengeance, the fervent supplications for mercy and pardon, the hearty invocations for grace, the solemn consecration of the sacramentall elements, the due cele∣bration of holy mysteries, the high Doxologies or exaltations of the glorious Trinity, the joynt testifications of Christians mutuall charity, harmony and communion: All these (I say) were carried on and consummated in the Churches publick worship, which was excellently improved, heightened and adorned, by the use and reci∣tation of those Summaries of Religion amidst the congregations of Christians, to which they assented with a loud and cheerfull Amen.

Yet, which of them is there (now) that is not openly, not onely dis∣used, but disdained, disgraced and disparaged by some men, as nause∣ous crambe, which their souls abhor? so far as they from reverent atten∣ding, or hearing, when any Minister reciteth them, that they scarce have any patience, or can keep within those looks and postures of civility which become them: yea, they endure not to have their children taught them, as the first rudiments of Religion, the semi∣naries of faith, and nurseries of devotion; which being rightly plan∣ted, and duly watered by catechising, may in time (by Gods bles∣sing) bring forth the ripe fruits of wisdome and holiness, of faith and obedience, both to power and order, to an uniformity and constancy of Godliness.

* 1.54The ancient Christian writers, as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ruf∣finus, Jerome, Austin, and others, sufficiently tell us, That these compendious forms of duty, faith and devotion, the Decalogue, Creed,

Lords Prayer and Doxologies, were highly valued, and solemnly used in Christian Conventions, as the gracious condescendings of our God, and Saviour, to the weakest memories and meanest capacities: some of them being of their express and immediate dictating: accor∣ding to which pattern, the blessed Apostles, and the Churches of Christ after them, took care that both those, and other forms like to them, should be used among Christians; that so by frequent re∣peating and inculcating those excellent summaries of Faith and Ca∣tholick principles of Religion, all sorts of Christian people,* 1.55 young and old, learned and ideots, might be either catechised or confirmed in the very same things, to be believed, prayed for, and practised, in order to their own and others salvation. Which great work can never be safely built upon Seraphick sublimities and Scholastick sub∣tilties; much less upon imaginary raptures, childish novelties, idle dreams, and futile whimseys, which of late do seek (very impious∣ly) to justle out of all Churches use, and out of all Christians me∣mories, those wholsome solidities, and holy summaries, which have in them both the warmth of Christian love, and the light of Divine truth; in comparison of which, all novel affectations are dark and cold, dull and confused, silly and insipid.

Yet what sober Christian doth not see, that of late years this popular liberty in England is risen to such a nauseating, niceness and curiosity of Religion, as hath not onely infected the simpler sort of common people with an abhorrence of all those usefull and venerable forms, which the prudence & piety of this or any Church commended to them in their publick celebrations; but (to the great incourage∣ment and advance of ignorance, Atheism and profaneness, unchari∣tableness and insolence among the vulgar) many persons of very considerable parts and good quality, are shrewdly leavened with these Novellismes and Libertinismes? Yea (which is worst of all) ma∣ny Ministers, especially of the Presbyterian and Independent parties, yea and some of the ancient order and Catholick conformity of the Church of England, even these (as S.* 1.56 Peter was over-awed to a dissimulation, misbecoming the freedome and dignity of so great an Apostle, by too great fears, and compliances with the circumcised Jews) have been so carried down this stream of plebeian prejudice, and popular indifferency, more than liberty, to say or silence, to do or omit what they list, that they have not onely much neglected all the devotionall set forms of this Churches prescription (which, in my judgement, merited a far better fate and handsomer dismission, than they found from many mens hands) but some have wilfully disu∣sed, and so discountenanced, even all those sacred formes which have either Divine, or Apostolick, or Catholick characters of honour, an∣tiquity and Religion upon them.

How miserably are many publick Preachers either afraid or a∣shamed, solemnly to recite so much as once every Lords day the ten Commandements, or the Apostles Creed, or any other of those ancient Symbols? yea, when is it, that some Ministers dare use either so

much courage or conscience, as to use the Lords Prayer, either by it self, or in the conclusion of their own voluminous supplications be∣fore or after their Sermons? in which neither much regard is had to the method, nor the matter of the Lords Prayer, which they pretend is the use of it; but it is made to stand, like a meer cypher, silent and insignificant, while men love to multiply the innumerable Loga∣rithmes of their own crude inventions and incomposed devotions: when as that Prayer which the wisdome of our Lord Jesus twice taught his Disciples upon severall occasions,* 1.57 and in them all his Church, both in a doctrinall and devotionall way, as a method, matter and form of Prayer, is in it self, and ever was so esteemed and used by all good Christians, not onely as the foundation, measure and proportion, but also as the confirmation, completion, crown and consummation of all our prayers and praises to God.

Instead of which, and wholy exclusive of it, how many poor-spiri∣ted Preachers, of late, more to gratifie and humour some silly and self-will'd people, than to satisfie their own consciences, yea, highly to the scandall of many worthy Christians, and the dishonour of the Reformed profession, are become not onely strangers, but al∣most enemies to that, and all other holy forms of Religion, contenting themselves with their own private composures, or their more sud∣den conceptions, in all publick celebrations and solemn worship; not having so much modesty and humility, as to consider, what is most evident to wise men, that no private mans sufficiencies in point of publick prayer and celebrious duties can be such, for method, com∣prehensiveness, clearness, weight, solidity, sanctity and majesty, as may compare, much less dispense with, and neglect, yea utterly re∣ject, those sacred summaries and solemn formes, which have been di∣vinely instituted: whose foolishnesse is wiser then the wisdome of men, and whose shortness is beyond the amplest prolixity and largest spin∣nings of humane lungs and invention;* 1.58 there being more spirit in one drop of Christs Prayer (as in cordiall and hot waters) than in whole seas of vulgar effusions; which, at best, having much in them very flashy, insipid and confused, had need to have, at last, the sacred infusion of Christs prayer added to them, to give them and us that sanctity, spirit, life, completeness, comfort, and fiduciary assurance of acceptance, which all good men desire in their service of God. Certainly they seem much to overvalue their own prayers, who wholy disuse or despise the Lords: nor do I see how a Minister of Christ can comfortably discharge his duty to the flock of Christ, if while he professeth to preach that Gospel which Christ hath taught, he industriously omits the use of that prayer which Christ hath not onely commended, but enjoyned and commanded, as an Evangelicall institution. Which shamefull compliance of many Mi∣nisters with vulgar levity and licentiousnesse, seems to me so far from really advancing their own honour, or the true interests of the Christian and Reformed Religion, that (in earnest) they have by these and the like mean desertings of their own judgements & duties, very much exposed

themselves, and the Reformed Christian Religion, to the insolencies and contempts of the meanest people, which as easily crowd and pre∣vail upon them, as waters do against crazy and yielding banks, when once they see Ministers so stoop and debase themselves to the di∣ctates and censures, the fears and frowns, the fancies and humours of giddy and inconstant people, who naturally affect such liberty or loose∣ness in Religion, as may have least shew of divine Ligation and Au∣thority; but onely such, as being of mens own choice and inventi∣on, they may as easily reject, as others obtrude. The very Directory and its ordinances, which gave the supersedeas or quietus est to the Liturgie of the Church of England, doth not yet seem to intend any such severity, as wholy to silence, sequester & eject the Lords Prayer, ten Commandements, or the Apostles Creed, out of childrens Catechisms, Ministers mouths, or Christians publick profession and devotion; in which they seem to me to appear a rich and invaluable Jewels, giving the greatest lustre, price and honour to their religious So∣lemnities.

CHAP. VII.

I Have already shewed you (O worthy Gentlemen) one great and evil instance of that inordinate li∣berty,* 1.59 which some people have challenged of late to themselves in England, to the great dishonour and detriment of the Christian Reformed Reli∣gion; besides the disgrace and indignity cast up∣on this sometime famous and flourishing Church, while they have endevoured to abolish all those holy Summaries and wholsome Forms, which are the best and meetest preservers of true Faith, holy Obedience, and mutual Charity among the community of Christian people.

Nor are these the onely extravagancies of vulgar licentiousnesse, (whose inordinate and squalid torrent, like an inundation of wa∣ters, knows not how to set any bounds of modesty, reason, or con∣science to it self;) but they have farther adventured, as a rare fro∣lick of popular freedome, to invade and usurp upon, to confound and contemn, to divide and destroy the office, honour, authority, the suc∣cession and derivation, yea, the source and original of that sacred Priest∣hood, or Evangelical Ministry and mission, which was ever so highly esteemed, reverenced and maintained among all true Christians; as well knowing that Its rise and institution was divine, from our Lord Jesus Christ, as sent of God his Father, who alone had autho∣rity to give the Word and Spirit, the Mission and Commission,* 1.60 the Gifts and Powers that are properly ministeriall.

Which, as the blessed Apostles first received immediately from Christ, so they duly and carefully derived them to their Successours, after such a method and manner as the Primitive and Catholick Churches, in all places and ages, both perfectly knew, and (without question) exactly followed, in their consecrating of Bishops and or∣daining of Presbyters, with Deacons, as the onely ordinary Ministers of Christs Church; whose ministeriall authority never was any way derived from, depending upon, or obnoxious to the humour, fancy, insolency, and licentiousness of the common people. To which mise∣rable captivity and debasement, as the Aaronicall or Levitical Priest∣hood was no way subjected, so much less ought the Melchisedekian, Christian, and Evangelicall Priesthood, which is no less soveraign and sacred, nor less necessary and honourable in the Church of God. So that those licentious intrusions, which some people now affect in this point of the Ministry, cannot be less offensive to Gods Spirit, than they are directly contrary to those holy rules of power and order prescribed in the New Testament; which both the Apostles and their successors, both Bishops and Presbyters, together with all faithfull people, precisely observed in all those grand Combinations and Ec∣clesiasticall Communions, whereto the Church of Christ was distribu∣ted in all nations: where, if sometime the peoples choice and suf∣frage were tolerable, as to the person whom they desired and nomi∣nated for their Bishop or Presbyter; yet it was never imaginable, that either Bishop or Presbyter was sufficiently consecrated and or∣dained, that is, invested with the power, office and authority mi∣nisteriall, meerly by this nomination and election of the people; which indulgence, in time, grew to such disorder, as was intolerable in the Church: much less was any esteemed a Minister of Christ onely because he obtruded himself upon that service.

The late licentious variations, innovations, invasions, corruptions and interruptions, even in this grand point of the Evangelicall office and Ministry in England, have, partly by the common peoples arro∣gancy, giddiness, madness and ingratitude, and not a little by some Preachers own levity, fondness, flattery and meanness of spirit, not onely much abated, and abased to a very low ebbe, that double honour which is due;* 1.61 but they have poured forth deluges of scorn, con∣tempt, division, confusion, poverty, and almost nullity▪ not onely upon the persons of many worthy Ministers, but upon the very or∣der and office, the function and profession; whose sacred power and authority, the pride, petulancy, envy, revenge, cruelty and cove∣tousness of some people, have sought, not onely to arrogate and usurp as they list, but totally to innovate, enervate, and at last extir∣pate. For nothing new in this point can be true, nothing variable can be venerable: that onely being authentick, which is ancient and uni∣form; that onely authoritative, which is Primitive, Catholick and A∣postolick, both in the copy and originall, in the first commission and the exemplification.

I confess I formerly have been, and still am, infinitely grieved to

hear, and ashamed to report what enormous liberties many men have of late years taken to themselves in this point of being Ministers of the Gospel; what contradictions of sinners, what cruell mockings, & saw∣ings asunder; what buffetings, strippings, crucifyings, and killings all the day long, the Ancient and Catholick Ministry of this & all Churches hath lately endured in England, since the wicked wantonness of some men hath taken pleasure to be as thorns in the eyes, & goads in the sides of the Ch. of England, and Its Ministers, be they never so able, success∣full and deserving: whom to calumniate; contemn, impoverish and destroy in their persons, credits, estates, liberties, yea, and lives, hath seemed (like Mordecai to Hamans malice and wrath) so small a sacrifice to the fierceness and indignation of some men, that they have aim∣ed at the utter extirpation of the Nation, the nullifying, cashiering and exautorating of their whole office and function; either owning no Ministers in any divine office, place and power, or obtruding such strange moulds and models of their own invention, as are not more novell and unwonted, than ridiculous and preposterous; like Mon∣sters, having neither matter nor form proportionate to Mini∣sters.

Against whose petulant and too prevalent poyson, I have formerly sought to apply some Antidote; not more smart and severe, than cha∣ritable and conscientious: aiming (as now I do) neither to flatter nor exasperate any; but in all Christian integrity and sincerity, to discharge my duty to God and my neighbour, to this Church and to my Countrey.

Nor was it indeed then, or is it now other than high time to an∣swer that folly, to repell and obstruct (if possible) that Epidemick mischief, which (on this side) greatly threatens both Church & State, Faith and good manners, all things civil as well as sacred. What wise and honest-hearted Christian (that hath any care of posterity, or prospect for the future) doth not daily find as an holy impatience, so an infinite despondency rising in his soul, while he sees so many weak shoulders, such unwashen hands, such unprepared feet, such rash heads, and such divided hearts, not onely disown, cast off, contemn and abhor all Ministry and Ministers in the Church of England; but they are publickly intruding themselves upon all holy duties, all sa∣cred Offices, all solemn Mysteries, all divine Ministrations, after what fashion they list, both in their admission and execution? In many places, either pittifull silly wretches, or more subtill and crafty fellows, have become the mighty Rivals, the supercilious Censors, yea, the open menacers & opposers, no less than secret underminers, of the most learned and renowned, the most reverend, able and faithful, both Bishops and Presbyters, in England. All that ever these Worthies have done in former ages, or still do never so commendably in their religious services of God and this Church, is superciliously and scur∣rilously cried down by some men (under the presumption and prote∣ction of their ignorant and impudent Liberties) as no better than formall and superficiall, carnall and unspirituall, as unchristian, yea, Antichristian.

All their and our catechisings, preachings, prayings, baptisings, consecratings; their instructing of babes, their confirming of the weak, their resolvings of the dubious, their terrifying and binding over to judgement unbelieving and impenitent sinners, their censu∣ring and admonishing of the scandalous, their excommunicating the contumacious, their loosing the penitent, their comforting the affli∣cted, their binding up the broken-hearted; all the exercise and ope∣rations of their spirituall power, yea, their very ordination and holy or∣ders, their gifts and graces, their abilities and authority, either from God or this Church; all these are either baffled and disparaged, or invaded, usurped by some rude Novellers, with equall insolency and insufficiency, being for the most part by so much the more impu∣dent, by how much they are grosly ignorant.

Yea, some of them, the better to colour over their lazy and illi∣terate licentiousnesse (to which they are now degenerated) have such audacious brows, and seared consciences, as after they have pretended to have tasted how gracious the Lord was,* 1.62 in the orderly and holy dis∣pensations of heavenly gifts by the Ministry of the Church of Engl. yet they now glory to cast off all her ministrations, to separate from her communion, and all due subjection to any of her Ministers, vapouring much of their own and other mens gifts, of extraordinary callings, of odde ravings and rantings, of new seekings and quakings, of rare dip∣pings and dreamings, of their extemporary prophecyings, and inspired (yet confused) prayings, of extraordinary unctions and inward illu∣minations; the grounds and fruits of which strange pretensions I have been a long time diligently curious to observe in the speech, writings and actions of these pretenders. And I must profess, that either I am wholly a stranger to right reason as well as true Religion, to the Word and Spirit of God, principles and practises of all godly men and women in former ages; or I am utterly uncapable to discern any of these, either rationall or religious, orderly or honest expres∣sions in any instances or degrees proportionable, or indeed compa∣rable to (much less beyond) what was most clearly observable (as the Suns light at noon-day) in the Sermons, Prayers, Writings, Lives and Actions of those Ministers, and other excellent Christians, who heretofore held, and still do, an holy communion with the Clergie and Church of England.

Beyond whose sober light and solid discoveries of true Religion, these new Masters (who will needs be Ministers) have yet offered to me no other but such strange stuffe, such rambling rhapsodies, such crude incoherences, such chymicall chimaeras, such Chaos-like confu∣sions, such Seraphick whimsies, such Socinian subtilties, such Behme∣mick bumbast, such profound non-sense, such blasphemous raptures, big as Behemoth,* 1.63 and disdainfull as Leviathan, proud swelling words of vanity, as no sober Christian hath leisure to intend, or need to understand, if he had capacity; which he is not likely to have, since I am confident they pass their authors own understanding: not that there is any thing in them that flows from the higher springs of

grace, or the profounder depths of divine mysteries;* 1.64 but they are meer puffings up of proud and fleshly minds, intruding themselves into things they have not seen, who delight in this froth of idleness, these lyings and vapourings of hypocrisie,* 1.65 which never did of old (in the Gnosticks, Montanists, Manichees, or others of the like bran with these men) in the least degree advance the majesty or authority of Christian Religion, or the credit and comfort of Christian Preachers or Professors; however they served for a time the bellies and inte∣rests of such popular Parasites, more than Preachers of the Gospel, or Ministers of Jesus Christ.

Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father was of old,* 1.66 still is, and ever will be in the minds and mouthes of true Mini∣sters (when these Hucksters and Mountebanks, these deceitfull workers are buried in infamy and obscurity with those their rotten prede∣cessors) a rich magazine of heavenly wisdome, a Treasury of sound knowledge, a store-house of pregnant and ponderous Truths, bring∣ing men to a good understanding of God, themselves, and their neighbours, free from the rust and scurf of childish easiness and po∣pular petulancy, planted by holy and humble industry, watered by prayers and patience, beautified with all manner of usefull vertues and moralities, dispensed to others with authority, industry and per∣spicuity, entertained in mens own hearts with honesty and charity; not studying to be admired of men, but approved of God; not affe∣cting to stupifie auditors with strange difficulties and curiosities, but to edifie them with saving Truths, and sound Doctrine, in words ea∣sie to be understood; five of which S.* 1.67 Paul preferred before ten thou∣sand in an unknown tongue, or unintelligible gibberish, so much affe∣cted by these new-minted Ministers.

That primitive, plain, and profitable way of preaching, praying and writing, was the commendable method of those excellent, or∣dained, and orderly Ministers of the Church of England, who were furnished both with ability and authority for so great and sacred a work, whose notions were more in the fruitfull valleys of practicall piety, than in the barren heights of uselesse sublimities. Then was it that the sweet and fruitfull dews of heaven crowned those true Mini∣sters labours with all spiritual proficiencies and heavenly blessings: then was the Church of England, and thousands of pious souls in it, like Gideons fleece, full of holy distillations, or like the garden of E∣den, liberally watered with the rivers of God; I mean the faithful endeavours of able, honest, and Orthodox Ministers, both Bishops and Presbyters, duly ordained and divinely authorized for that ser∣vice: then was the time common people had less of curiosity and li∣berty, but more of piety and charity; they were more kept to their bounds and inclosures, but enjoyed far better pastures than they now find in the ramblings and extravagances of those commons, where they have chosen to enjoy their Pastors and Preachers after their own heart.

Nor is this insolency of people any wonder (though it be a great

grief) to sober Christians, when they consider how far this gangrene of abused liberty hath spread among men and women too: the meanest and most mechanick He or She (as Tertullian observes of some bolder Hereticks and Schismaticks in his dayes) dare,* 1.68 contrary to all Primi∣tive pattern, and Scriptural precept, to preach, to baptize, to consecrate, to censure, to excommunicate; scorning and opposing all things that are not branded with their schismaticall marks, their novell badges, and factious discriminations.

Wherewith so soon as any silly men or women come once to be dubbed and signalized, their first vow and adventure is against the whole frame and constitution of the Church of England, but specially against the orderly, ancient, and Catholick Ministry of it; which is the rind or bark of Religion, by which the sap, life, and nourish∣ment of it is preserved and conveyed from the root Christ Jesus, to the severall branches of his Church in every place. This, this must by all means be peeled round, stripped off, and cast away, under pre∣tence of Christian liberty; and a better, because freer, course of deri∣ving Chirstian Religion to peoples eares and hearts, by another Mi∣nistry than that Ancient, Apostolick, Catholick and Primitive way of an orderly ordained Ministry, which consisted of Bishops, Presbyters & Deacons, be brought in. Against the constitution & succession of all these, as corrupt, adulterous, Popish, Babylonish, spurious and superstitious, in England, whole troops of plebeian spirits have been, and still are, engaged, whose fierce onsets and encounters were at first begun, and are still carried on with as great resolution and errour, as his that as∣saulted a Windmill instead of a Giant.

The great alarm given by their chief leaders, is, First, to rail bit∣terly against the whole Clergie, and all sacred orders used in the Church of England: thence they proceed to wipe off their Baptisme, as vain and invalid; to vomit up their Lords Supper, as nauseous and super∣stitious; to read their Creeds backward, to an unbelief of all things have been preached: next, they cancell the Decalogue, as a Judaick phylactery, a legall prescription: lastly, they learn to account and call the Lords Prayer a kind of spell and conjuration, being perfect ene∣mies to any thing that looks like a Liturgy, or set form of prayer and devotion. After this, with stiff necks and haughty looks, they scornful∣ly defie all ancient ordination, all Catholick succession, all Apostolick commission derived to any Bishops and Presbyters, as Ministers of Christ, altering and annulling, as much as in them lies, all the order, descent and power of the Evangelicall Ministry, both in this and all other Christian Churches since the Apostles dayes; the right of re∣sumption and redemption of which they challenge to themselves, according as their severall fancies list to make themselves or others Ministers, or to have none at all; which is the highest pitch of their Christian liberty, counting all Ministers to be but their curbs and manacles.

Having thus commenced Masters of mis-rule, their next work is to tu••n the garden of God, any setled Church, as this of Engl. was, into rui∣nous

heaps, or a very dunghil; to expel the Priests of the Lord out of his Temple; to make Churches of Stables, and Stables of Churches; to bring in the lips of bleating calves there, where the calves of learned, devout, and eloquent lips were wont to be offered. It is not liberty enough for them to separate from the Church of England, and apostatize from those Ministers that baptized them, unless they utterly destroy them both; setting up instead of one National and renowned, one uniform and flourishing Church, in which were truth and order, unity and beauty, strength and safety, all Christian gifts and graces, every good word and work to admiration, innumerable little swarms in severall Conventicles, with Ministers strangely multiform, mutable and mis-shapen: in which novell confederacies, both Preachers and people rather catch and hang together by chance, like burres, in confused knots, than grow like Olive-branches, or the kernels of Pomgranates, with order and comeliness, from the same root Christ Jesus, after the methods of those ancient Churches, which were the prime and exemplary branches whereto after-successions should conform themselves.

As these factious people are, so must their new Priests and Mini∣sters be. Grave and godly Bishops, with their learned Presbyters, must be set aside, as broken vessels, that they may set up, by popular and plebeian suffrages, some miserable mechanicks, some antick engines, some pittifull praters and parasites of the vulgar, who have had no higher breeding or degree in Church or State, than that of poore tradesmen, (for the better bred and more ingenuous sort of men ab∣hor such impudence and usurpation:) their shop hath been their school, their hammers, or shuttles, or needles have been their books. At last, coachmen, footmen, ostlers and grooms despair not to become Preachers, by a rare and sudden metamorphosis, coming from the office of rubbing horses heeles, to take care of mens souls, as some Farriers in time turn Physicians. It matters not how sordid, how silly, how slovenly, how mercenary, how illiterate they are, provided they have cunning enough to pretend a call, impudence enough to display their ignorance, and hypocrisie enough, by much talk of Gods grace in them, to supply the reall wants of all competent ability, as well as authority, to be Ministers of the Go∣spel.

Yet these, these (O my noble Countrey-men) are in many places rude intruders, insolent usurpers, doughty undertakers, to dis∣charge the duty of Evangelicall Ministers: in any one of these you must seek, and may find, as they pretend, a Bishop, a Presbyter, and a Deacon; all Evangelicall power, Ecclesiasticall offices, and Mini∣steriall authority: these are the new-invented Machines or En∣gines (which the Church of England, and all others, since the Apostles times, were not so happy as to know or use) which must set up the decayed Kingdome of Jesus Christ: these must propagate the glo∣rious Gospel; these must exalt Christ crucified; these must conse∣crate for you holy Elements; these must administer to you the bles∣sed

Sacraments; these must exercise all Church-power and Divine au∣thority over your consciences: whereas for my part I do not think that the best of these new Masters and Ministers can have from their own fancies or peoples forwardness so much authority (because they have none, either from God, or the Church of Christ, or the laws of this Land) as would make them petty Constables or Bom-baylies, a Lay-el∣der or an Apparitor.

This I am sure, that in the purest and a 1.69 primitive times, as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, S. Cyprian, and others assure us, the holy mysteries of Christian Religion, the power of the Keyes, the sacrating of Sacraments, the pastorall ruling and preaching, as of office, duty and necessity, to any part of Christs flock, was esteemed the peculiar and proper work of Bishops and Presbyters in their order and degree, as the true and onely Pastors and Teachers that succeeded the twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples in their ordinary Ministry; nor were men branded for other (how able soever) than insolent and execrable usurpers, who did adventure to officiate unordained, that is, not duly authorised as Ministers. Such intruders b 1.70 Tertullian notes both some men and women to have been in his time, who were leavened with Schisme and Heresie: so c 1.71 Epiphanius and S. Austin tell us of the Quintilliani, Pepuziani, and Colliridiani, who were con∣founders of the Ministeriall order.

* 1.72Sozomen, Socrates, Nicephorus, and other Church-historians sharp∣ly censure one Ischyras, or Ischyrion, who unordained pretended to be a Presbyter, and so to officiate; calling him a detestable person, and worthy of more than one death: whom Athanasius finding about to consecrate (or rather desecrate) the Eucharist, he in an holy and heroick zeal,* 1.73 as Christ in the Temple, brake the Communion Cup, overthrew the Table, and repressed his insolent impiety, counting him as ano∣ther Judas Iscariot, a traitor to Christ and the Church.

Yet in the place of the Ministers of the Church of England, I be∣seech you how few Athanasiusses, how many Ischyrasses may you now see, challenging to themselves the care of mens souls, as Ministers of Christ, undertaking the managerie of mens eternall interests, con∣fident to interpret Scriptures, to resolve doubts, to decide contro∣versies, to satisfie mens consciences, to keep up the truth, power and majesty of Christian Religion, by new, undue, and exotick wayes, a∣gainst the torrent and impetuous force of ignorance, Atheism, pro∣faneness, errour, malice and madness of men and Devils?

For all which grand designs of Gods glory and the Churches good, those men are as fit agitators as Phaeton was to drive Phoebus his Chariot; and truly with like success they will do it: for instead of en∣lightening the world, these Incendiaries will set all on fire, as far as they meet with any combustible matter: in which sad conflagrations be∣gun and blown up by them in this Church of England, some of them

are so vain as to glory, calling them the spirituall day of judgement, an invisible doomesday, a coming of Christ in the spirit of burning and re∣fining, to purge his Church. For this purpose they say the Sun must be turned into darknesse, and the Moon into blood; government of Church and State must be subverted: nor do they (according to their seve∣rall fancies and interests) fail to presage and expect a glorious Resur∣rection to their parties, which they hope shall reign with Christ, if not a thousand years, yet as long as they can prevail, so as to get power, and preserve those liberties they have ravished to themselves.

CHAP. VIII.

NOr are these novell undertakers ever more ridicu∣lous,* 1.74 than when they sow pillowes under their own rustick arms and others elbows, excusing, yea abetting their illiterate rudeness, and idiotick con∣fidence, with the primitive plainness and simpli∣city of the Apostles, when Christ first chose them, who were Fishermen, Tent-makers, or the like.

Which is truly, but very impertinently alledged, as any parallel case with these impotent and pragmatick intruders; unless they could manifest to the world (which they never yet did, nor ever will) such miraculous endowments, such power and anointing from above, as came upon the Apostles, which in one moment was able to furnish them with more sufficiency and authority, than all study and industry can ever do any of us; which are the now ordinary means appointed and blessed by God, succeeding in the place of miraculous gifts, where Churches are once fully planted, and Christianity setled. To all which the constant testimony of an uninterrupted Ministery and holy succession of ordained Bishops and Presbyters, from the very Apostles, as they from Christ, is a more pregnant witnesse and convi∣ction, than any new miracles could be, much more than any such pit∣tifull accounts can be, as these wonders of ignorance and arrogancy can give to the world, of any extraordinary matters they say or do, either as Ministers or Christians. The best of some of whose lives would deform (I fear) the golden legend, which seems to be written by a man of a brazen forehead, a leaden wit, and an iron heart.

We (the despised Clergie of England) do profess to use, and pray God to bless our long preparative studies, meditations, writings, readings; also our immediate care & concomitant labours in this kind, habitually to fit us for that dreadfull work, and for every actuall dis∣charge of it. We find these methods practised by the most famous lights of the Church, recommended by S. Paul to Timothy,* 1.75 though a person in some things extraordinarily gifted, that he should attend di∣diligently

to those exercises, that his profiting might appear. We do not now expect fire from heaven with Elias, to come down upon our sa∣crifices; but we are glad to take the ordinary coals of Gods altar, which may, by his Word and Spirit going along with our pains and prayers, both enlighten our minds and kindle our hearts, so as to make us burning and shining lights in Gods house, which is his Church.

Truly those proud and poor wretches, who know no coals, but those of their own chimney-corners, may possibly have a few embers on their hearths, or in their potsheards; they may, like dark lanthorns, have a bit of a farthing-candle in them, that shines with a little dim and dubious light on one side onely; as in the smatterings of some plain primer-knowledge, which they have gathered either by superfi∣ciall reading the Scriptures, or by hearing some Sermons heretofore from the able Ministers of England, or by gleaning a little out of the plainest of their writings: but 'tis most apparent, that on three sides of them, (that is, for Grammaticall skill, historicall know∣ledge, and polemicall learning) they are so horridly black and dark, that they seem fitter implements to bring in such ignorance, irreve∣rence, Atheism, superstition and confusion, as shall quite put out the Christian and Reformed Religion in this nation, (reducing all to pristine darkness, deformity and barbarity) than probable ever to be either propagators, purgators, or preservers of it; which had long ago been over-run with the rank weeds of Idolatry, Heresie, Schism and Apostasie in all the world, if God had not in the place of primitive miracles supplied the Church with such Ministers, both Bishops and Presbyters, whose admirable learning, undaunted cou∣rage, indisputable authority, uniform order, and constant succession, was beyond any miracle; which did at once both wonderfully attest and mightily preserve the sanctity, mystery and majesty of Christian Religion, from the subtilty of persecutors, the sophistry of Philoso∣phers, the contumacy of Schismaticks, and contumelies of Here∣ticks; being too hard (by Gods assistance) for the malice of men, and the wiles of Satan.

All which are then (under severall new notions and disguises) pro∣bable to prevaile over this or any Christian Church, when such liberty shall be used by vulgar spirits and inordinate minds, as shall not onely diminish and abate,* 1.76 but quite in time destroy and vacate the divine reverence and inviolable sanctity of religious mysteries and holy ministrations; which will inevitably follow, where the Catho∣lick order and divine authority of Ministers derived through all ages, is not onely questioned and disputed, but denied, despised, variated, prostituted, usurped, by whosoever list to make himself a Minister in any new way; which cannot be true if new, nor authentick if it be exo∣tick, unwonted in the Church of Christ, either broken off, or diffe∣rent from that primitive commission and constant exemplification, or Catholick succession, which was owned and observed in Bishops and Presbyters throughout all the Christian world.

For my part, I abhor all intrusion and obtrusion of dangerous Novel∣ties,

both from Papists and Separatists, either in Doctrine, Disci∣pline, or Government of the Church: and those I account dange∣rous, yea detestable Novelties, which not upon any plea of ignorance or necessity, but meerly out of wantonness and wilfulness, seek to al∣ter the sacred streams and currents of Ecclesiasticall power, authority and order, from those fountains where Christ first broached it, and those conduits by which the Apostles derived it; which unquestiona∣bly was by Bishops and Presbyters.

I know, that the sacred office and Angelick function of the Evan∣gelicall Ministry, as it is from my Lord Jesus Christ, and is in his name and stead; so it ought to be managed, reverenced, esteemed,* 1.77 transmitted, and undertaken among all true Christians,* 1.78 as a visible supply of Christs absence in body; as an authoritative embassie or de∣legation from Him; as a sacred dispensation of that Ministry to his Church, by chosen and duly ordained men; setting forth his Hi∣story, his Precepts, Promises, Sacraments, and other holy Instituti∣ons, together with the Ministrations and Gifts of his holy Spirit, by which he promised to his Apostles,* 1.79 to be with them to the end of the world, in that holy work wherein he employed them and their lawfull successors,* 1.80 to be his witnesses among all nations whither he should send them.

So that every true Minister (as with the ancients Mr.* 1.81 Calvin ob∣serves) in his proper place and order (as Bishop or Presbyter) is first a Prophet, to teach and instruct in the truths of God, that part of Christs Church over which he is constituted: next, he is as a Ruler,* 1.82 Shepherd, and Governour over them in the Lord,* 1.83 to feed and guide them in that holy order and discipline, which becomes the lesser and the greater, the single and sociall parts of Christs flock, according as they are under their several care and inspection: lastly, every true Mi∣nister is in his proper station to perform in Christs stead those offices of his Evangelicall Priesthood, which he hath assigned to be dispensed for his Churches good; as the solemn consecration and celebration of that Eucharisticall memoriall of the great oblation of Christ to his Father upon the Cross, for the redemption of the world, by which all mankind is put into a conditionall capacity of salvation, and upon their true faith and repentance, Christs body and blood, with all his me∣ritorious benefits, are evidently set forth, signally confirmed, and per∣sonally exhibited, in that great Sacrament and most venerable myste∣ry, to every worthy Receiver. He is further to offer up upon the altar of Christs merits the spiritual sacrifices of the Church, in prayers,* 1.84 praises, thanksgivings, alms and charities. Besides this, there is in the true Pastor or Minister of the Church of Christ, according to their proportion and degree, their line and measure (as Bishops and Presbyters) a power of mission and propagation,* 1.85 in order to maintain that holy succession of an Evangelicall Priesthood which Christ Jesus hath appointed; and which the Apostles, with their successors, the Bishops and Pastors of the Church, in all the world, have to this day continued, without any interruption, or any variation, as

to the maine, of the power and practise of Ordination.

So then, as these three offices are eminently in Christ, as the great Prophet, Prince and Priest of his Church; to all which he was conse∣crated by the mission of his Father, by his own Blood-shed and Pas∣sion, also by the anointing of his eternall Spirit, which filled him with all divine Graces, ministeriall Gifts, and miraculous Power, ne∣cessary for so great a work: so the Lord Christ being absent in bo∣dy, but present in his power and Spirit, had derived and committed the outward ministeriall execution of these his offices, to chosen and ordained men,* 1.86 as over-seers and workers together with Christ, of them∣selves but earthen vessels, yet the fittest instruments for the present dispensations of his Gospel and grace, which yet are to be carried on, according to the first appearance of Christ in the flesh, in such darkness, weaknesse,* 1.87 and meannesse, as may most set forth the present excellency of Gods gracious power, and set off the future manifestations of his glory to his Church; which even in this inferiority and obscurity of the Gospel, hath yet, as three that bear witnesse to its truth in hea∣ven, the wisdome of the Father contriving, the love of the Son effecting, and the power of the holy Ghost applying Evangelical mercies to poor sin∣ners;* 1.88 so it hath three that bear witnesse on earth to that glorious truth and mystery of the Gospel, the water of Baptism, which sprinkles to Regeneration, the blood of the Lords Supper, which feeds and re∣freshes believers, also the Spirit of ministeriall Power and Authori∣ty, which hath been, and still is, from Christ continued in all true Christian Churches. As the first three are one in an essentiall unity of divine nature, so these later three (as S. John tells us) agree in one, that is, in one Soveraign author Jesus Christ, and in one sacred order and office of Church-Ministry, or Evangelical dispensations, succes∣sively derived from the Apostles, Elders and Deacons, by a power and commission peculiar to those who are duly ordained to be Christs Deputies, Lieutenants, and Vicegerents in his Church, for those holy offices and divine ministrations; whereto they are severally ap∣pointed in an higher or lower degree, as Apostles or Elders, as Bishops or Presbyters,* 1.89 as Pastors or Teachers; either over-seeing, as Ru∣lers and Guides, or attending, as Deacons and Servitors.

CHAP. IX.

IN reference to which sacred & grand employments, St.* 1.90 Paul's modesty and humility asked with trembling that unanswerable question, Who is sufficient for these things? Whereas now in Engl. there are such insolent intruders, who act as asking quite contrary, Who is not sufficient for these things? as if forwardness, boldness and confidence were all the sufficiency required in a Minister of the Gospel: in which ple∣beian and pretended sufficiencies as these novell intruders do most a∣bound; so I am sure there were really never more blunt and leaden tooles in any age applyed to Church-work, than many, if not most of them, are: they come indeed with their beetles and wedges, their swords and staves, their axes and hammers,* 1.91 to beat down all the car∣ved work of Gods house, rather than to prepare or polish the least stone or corner of that sacred building.

Who being not a little conscious to themselves, that they are grosly defective in all those reall abilities of good learning, sound knowledge, sober judgement, orderly method, grave utterance, and weighty eloquence, which all wise and sober Christians expect should appear in every true Minister of the Church of Christ, in such a competent measure & evident manner, as they may be able comfor∣tably to discern them, and usefully to enjoy them; these crafty In∣truders do first cry down all those reall and visible abilities, as meer∣ly naturall, humane, carnall, as enemies to the Cross, Grace, and Spirit of Christ: for (as the apes in the fable) these deceitfull wor∣kers having no tails themselves, they would fain perswade all other creatures which have that ornament, to cut them off, as burdens and superfluous. After this rude essay of craft and malice in vain attem∣pted against the fruits of learned industry, wherein the Ministers of the Church of England have, and still do, so vastly exceed these Mushrome Ministers of the last and worst editions, they cunningly flie to the pretentions of speciall callings, extraordinary inspirations, illu∣minations, and graces ministeriall; which (they well know) are not easily to be discerned by any other but a mans self, even there where they may possibly be real. Who knows not that as to the point of inward Graces, they are far more easily pretended and voiced, than discerned and enjoyed in ones self? much less can they be so proved and manifested to others, as to satisfie their conscience in the points of anothers power and their own duty. I am sure, neither gifts nor graces ministeriall are by wise and sober Christians to be much supposed or expected there, where men evidently silly and weak, mean and vain, ignorant and arrogant, dare yet to disdain all that ancient order and uniform succession of the Evangelicall Mini∣stry, which hath been visible in all Churches (as in this of England) for 1500. years: and to salve their credit, or gain reputation as Tea∣chers,

they bring for the satisfaction of their own and other mens conscience, in point of that office, duty, and power ministeriall, which they challenge and undertake, no other signature and character of their commission and investiture into that office, save onely what themselves pretend to be within them, of secret impulses, which be∣ing to mans judgement undiscernable, are utterly insignificant; nor ought they to bear any sway in the Church of Christ, where the power ministeriall was first declared by miraculous gifts and endow∣ments, also by evident signs & wonders, sufficient to confirm its first commission, and to authorize its after-succession, from those onely with whom it was deposited, to be transmitted by them and their successors to the Churches of Christ in all ages, by such gifts and or∣dinary endowments as might be first duly tried and approved in men, before they were ordained to be Ministers in the Church of Christ.

But these Heteroclite Teachers, for the further corroboration of their dubious title and claim to the office of the Ministry, are content to accept of some appointment from that power which is meerly mi∣litary, or civil and magistratick: which powers in Primitive Churches for 300. years were so far from making any Minister either Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon in the Church of Christ, that they sought by all means to persecute and destroy the whole profession of Chri∣stianity:* 1.92 yea, when the Empire became Christian, as in Constantine the Great's time, neither He, nor any Christian Emperour, Prince or Magistrate after him, was ever so impertinent as to imagine, that because they could derive civil and military power to others, they had also power to make Christian Ministers, or to invest them with the Ecclesiasticall power of holy orders; nor did they think they had any thing more to do with the Clergie by way of authori∣ty, save onely to take care for their due and comfortable discharge of that Ministery, to which they were by another principle and power ordained, according as the peace, honour and order of the Church required, which so conformed to the State and Common∣weal, that all Ministers were humbly subject to the Scepters of Princes, in the severall places and stations Ecclesiasticall to which they were applied. The Clergie owe to Princes the civil en∣dowments of honour and revenue, given to them as the temporall re∣ward of their spirituall work: but they are not the sources of their orders, nor can their broad seal confer that power of the holy Spi∣rit, which onely makes a Minister of Jesus Christ; not by way of gra∣ces or gifts, so much as by way of mission and authority, flowing onely from the Spirit of Christ, as the chief Pastor, Bishop and Mi∣nister of his Church.

Others of these new-modell'd Ministers, in a way not more preposte∣rous than ridiculous, seek to deduce their ministerial power from meer plebeian suffrages, from vulgar examinations, approbations and ele∣ctions; which commonly are factiously begun, foolishly carried on, and schismatically concluded; having not less weakness, but less madness,

or possibly a little more seeming order, civility, or tameness, than those whose who pretend no other warrant or authority for their be∣ing Ministers, but what is to be had from their own blindness and boldness, their proud conceit and flattering confidence of them∣selves, which emboldens them by a self-ordination, to take this holy power to themselves, beyond what Aaron, or the true Prophets,* 1.93 or the Apostles, or Christ himself (as man) did, who were not self-sent or ordained, but chosen and appointed, solemnly consecrated and inau∣gurated to their office and Ministry, either by clear prophecies ac∣complished, or visible miracles wrought in the sight of the people, or by some such other signall token, ordinary or extraordinary, by word or work, as God was pleased to use for the manifestation of his will, and for the satisfaction of his Church, as to those persons which were to minister to the Lord, and to whom his Church was conscientiously to submit as to the Lord. Agreeably to which holy pattern, and as a full answer to all those clamours, envies and de∣spites, which the enemies, rivals and extirpaters of the ancient Clergie and Ecclesiastick order in England can pretend, the true Ministers (Bishops and Presbyters) of this Christian and Reformed Church doe challenge, use and maintaine no other power, privi∣ledge, or authority Ecclesiasticall, than what they have duly and constantly received in the way of holy orders from their pre∣decessors hands, who have descended from the very Apostles dayes.

Nor are they such Monopolizers, or appropriators of this power and office ministeriall to their own persons, or to such onely as are formall Academicks, professed Scholars, and University Graduates, as not willingly to admit into that holy Order and Fraternity, by the right and Catholick way of due ordination, not onely any worthy Gentlemen, of competent parts, pious affections, and orderly lives, whose hearts God shall move to so holy an ambition, to desire so good a work; but even those that are of plebeian proportions,* 1.94 of meaner parts, and less improved erudition, provided they be found, upon due trial, to have acquired such competent abilities, by Gods blessing upon their private industry and studious piety, as may render them meet for any place or work in Christs husbandry,* 1.95 where one may sow, another may water, a third may weed, a fourth may fense the Church and Vineyard,* 1.96 according to the severall gifts and dispensations ministred by the same Spirit and power of Christ, which ought to be dispensed and carried on, not in an arbitrary, rude and precarious usurpation and intrusion, but in an authoritative, orderly, and decent derivation & succession, for the honor, profit & peace of the Church of Christ. Certainly no worthy Minister or sober Christian can so undervalue and debase those Evangelicall offices of Christ, which are exercised by his ordained Ministers, as to think that every self-flatte∣rer and obtruder is presently to officiate, without any due examina∣tion, approbation and ordination from those with whom that com∣mission and power hath been ever deposited in a regular and visible

succession from Christ the great exemplar or Original;* 1.97 which visible order, mission and delegation is as necessary for the outward unity, authority, solemnity and majesty of Christs militant Church and Ministry upon earth, as the workings of his blessed Spirit are for the inward operation and efficacie of true grace in mens hearts.

So that as no private and good Christian hath any cause to com∣plain in this part of the Bishops and Ministers of the Church of En∣gland, who in dispensing of holy orders, or ministeriall power, acted after the Catholick pattern of Primitive Churches, no less than the particular constitutions of this Church, allowed by all estates and de∣grees of men; no more have any secular Powers, or civil Magisrates, who are or shall be professors of true Christian Religion, any cause to be jealous of the ancient Bishops and Ministers of the Church; nor shall they need either out of conscience, or reasons of state, to pervert and innovate that pristine course and regular succession of ministeriall authority: yea, as worthy Christians and wise Gover∣nours, they ought, both in piety and policy, in honour and consci∣ence, to be no less exact in preserving this sacred order and divine authority from alteration, invasion and usurpation, than they are for their own civil power, and secular jurisdiction; which the re∣nowned patterns of Christian Potentates, Constantine, Theodosius, and other great and godly Princes, were so far from arrogating to their imperiall power, that they humbly submitted themselves to the order and power Ecclesiasticall in the things of Christ, highly estee∣ming and venerating that Apostolick race of Bishops and Presbyters in the Church, as the great Luminaries of the world, the constant witnesses of Christs life and death, the celebraters of his mysterious sufferings, grace and glory, the ministerial Fathers and confirmers of Christians faith, as terrestiall Angels, as Gods gracious Ambassadors for pardon and peace, as Christs speciall commissioners appointed for to carry on the great work of saving mens souls.

Just and generous Princes, if they be truly Christian, cannot be so partial, as to forbid any man, under the high••st pain and penalty of high treason and death it self, to challenge to himself any part of their civil or military power, without a due commission derived ei∣ther from themselves immediately, or from those to whom they have deputed power for such ends and purposes; which order they permit no man to violate or usurp, however conceitedly or re∣ally able he may seem to be to himself or others for the managing of such power; and yet permit such persons as are for the most part heady and high-minded, insolent and disorderly, to intrude themselves, by a meer usurpation, upon that sacred office, authority and Mini∣stry, which is Christs, without any due and solemn derivation of this power, in such a way as hath ever been Apostolick, Primitive, Ca∣tholick, and onely authentick in the Churches of Christ. Certainly, the rude innovation and usurpation upon this office and honour me∣rits above any boldness (as Nilus in Balsamon expresseth it) that black brand of the last and perillous times,* 1.98 when men shall be empha∣tically

Traytors, not onely to men, but to Christ;* 1.99 not onely to Common-weals, but to Churches; disobedient to parents, not onely naturall and politick, but also spirituall and ecclesiastick; violating and betraying, not onely the visible peace, order, uniformity, and successive authority of the Church, but the invisible comforts, quiet and grace of poor peoples souls: who must needs be at a great loss, in a very sad and shamefull case, as to their Religion, where their spirituall leaders and shepherds are usurpers, intruders, clamberers, not coming into the sheep-fold by the door of right ordination,* 1.100 but climbing some other way, as thieves and robbers; when their titular and intruding Pastors prove either grievous wolves, or miserable asses,* 1.101 as they commonly are found to be, who are not admitted by due or∣dination, but crowd into the Ministry by rude and novell obtrusi∣ons; so domineering over the flock of Christ, over whom not the holy Ghost, by an ordinary derived power and authority,* 1.102 but their own unruly spirits have made them, not so much over-seers of others, as either stark blind, or grosly over-seen in themselves.

CHAP. X.

THe sense of this High Treason against Christ,* 1.103 and of those sinfull disorders which men bring on them∣selves & the Church of Christ, by their intrusion, usurpation upon this ministeriall power and office, makes me here seriously suggest to You (my honou∣red and beloved Country-men) this religious caution, That it very much concerns you, for your own and your posterities souls good, to be very wary not to be imposed upon, and abused by vulgar pretensions of zeal and Christian liberty in this point of the Ministry; but to be vigilant with whom you intrust, as Ministers, your own, your childrens, or any other peoples souls, where you are Patrons of Livings. And since your own prudent abilities for learning, piety and experience, are so modest, as not rashly to ad∣venture upon this sacred office, charge and ministration; how in∣finitely ought you to be ashamed and regretted, to see them usurped many times by the dogs of your flocks, by your hinds and foot-men, your grooms and serving-men, by threshers, weavers and coblers, by taylors, tinkers and tapsters, any mean and mechanick people, whose parts and spirits are onely fit for those trades to which their breeding and necessities have confined them? Not that I despise or reproch these honest, though mean, employments; but I highly blame their insolence, and other mens patience, to see these usurp upon the dignity of the Ministry. Certainly such proud & poor wretches may to some men possibly seem fittest Ministers in a disordered State, and

decaying Church, as factors for Satan and Antichrist, setters for Ignorance and Superstition, turning Faith into Faction: but they will never prove (after that fashion of preparing and admitting) ei∣ther able, or faithfull, or fruitfull Ministers of Christ or his Church; seeming themselves, and making others despisers of Christ, with the blasphemous Jews, while they so look upon him and treat him, as under the notion of the Carpenters son,* 1.104 as their equall or inferiour in some handicraft, forgetting his divine glory and majesty, as the onely-begotten son of God,* 1.105 to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; who hath executed this power most visibly in sending forth his Mi∣nisters to teach and baptize all nations, out of which to gather, and govern his Church in his name. They rudely slight Christs ministerial authority, in such as are truly excellent and duly ordained Ministers, that they may proudly challenge it to themselves, without any rea∣son or Scripture, law or order, command or example, either from Christ or his Church.* 1.106 These men, who say they are Apostles, Pro∣phets and Preachers, and are not, will be in the end (and already are) found liars against God and their own souls, deceitfull workers, false Apo∣stles,* 1.107 Mock-ministers, Pseudo-pastors, disorderly walkers, authors of in∣finite scandall and confusion, of scorn and contempt to Christian and Reformed Religion, both here and elsewhere: many of them ser∣ving their bellies, and gratifying their carnall lusts and momentary wants,* 1.108 much more than designing to advance the glory of God, the Kingdome of Christ, or the eternall good of mens souls; which are not to be carried on, save in Gods way, that is, by fit abilities, and with due authority: both are required as necessary for a true Mini∣ster; the first (though reall) is not sufficient without the second. For as the meer outward materiall action cannot be a divine, sacra∣mentall, or ministerial transaction, more than every killing of an Ox was a sacrificing; so nor are meer naturall or personall abilities suffi∣cient to acquire any office or authority, much less this of the Ministry (which is divine, or none) any more than every able Butcher was pre∣sently enabled to be a Priest. Any mans ability fully to understand, or handsomely to relate the mind of his Prince, makes him not presently an Embassador or Minister of State, unless there be a commission, or let∣ters of credence to authorize the person. The blessed Apostle S. Paul, who was extraordinarily converted, called, and sent of God, as a Chri∣stian, & a Minister or Apostle, yet we see did not take upon him the exercise or office, till first Ananias had by Gods speciall command laid his hands on him,* 1.109 and he became endowed with the ministerial gift or power of the holy Ghost: which were afterward (in like sort) solemnly confirmed and increased by the express command of God, when Paul and Barnabas were separated, and sent upon special service, with fa∣sting, prayer, and laying on of the hands of some Prophets and Tea∣chers in Antioch,* 1.110 where the Apostle had formerly preached in the Church a whole year among much people. This same Apostle oft blames (and bids Christians beware of) false Apostles, not onely false in their doctrine,* 1.111 but in their ordination and mission; as the Pro∣phets

of the Lord did of old the false Prophets,* 1.112 whom God had not sent, yet they ran.

The Spirit of Christ commends the Angel of the Church of Ephe∣sus (where,* 1.113 as Irenaeus and others tell us, S. John lived long, and left the most pregnant examples of Ecclesiasticall order, Episcopall power, and Ministeriall succession) for trying those that said they were Apostles and were not; for finding, esteeming, and declaring them as liars, no way listning and adhering to, or communicating with them, as being Falsaries and Impostors, enemies at once to the truth, or∣der and peace of Christs Church. For 'tis seldome that a bastardly generation of Preachers doth not bring forth some false and base doctrines: for it is observable in this, as in civil Histories, that Ba∣stards in nature, and so in office, are commonly most daring and ad∣venturous spirits. Certainly the late illegitimate Ministers, or spu∣rious Preachers of new and strange originals in England, have in less than fifteen years brought more monsters of opinions and factions in Religion, than have arose in so many hundred years before in any one Church.

I know some Christians are prone to gratifie their curiosity (as those do who sometime go to see monsters) in making some triall and essay of these pretended Preachers, that once knowing their ig∣norance and insolence, they may upon juster grounds ever after ab∣hor them.

If this be tolerable for some persons of able and sober judge∣ments, yet it is no better than a snare and dangerous temptation for others that are weak and unstable: nor may the venture be oft made by the more steddy Christians, lest they seem thereby to countenance and encourage so great a confusion, innovation, usurpa∣tion and scandal in the Church of Christ; besides the abetting of that high profanation of holy duties and mysteries, which ought not to be transacted, but in the name, power and authority of our God and Saviour. Certainly good Christians ought not at any hand to com∣municate with such usurping intruders in any sacramentall action; nor ought they to own any thing more of a Minister of Jesus Christ in them, than they would of a King or Magistrate in a Stage-player.

Doubtless, as no good Christian, so least of all those that profess to be Ministers of Christ, ought to live as sons of Belial, disorderly, re∣fractory, unruly, after the arbitrary, rude and presumptuous dictates of their own wills. The spirit of true Ministers and Prophets will be subject, as it ought, to that rule, order and custome,* 1.114 which in all ages hath been the canon, measure and commission of all Evangelical Ministers and Pastors of Christs Church. As naturall and morall en∣dowments are no plea to invest any man into any office, military or ci∣vil; much less into any power and authority Ecclesiastical. The pre∣tenses of new and extraordinary calls, of missions immediate from God, are not in any reason expectable, nor in Christian Religion credible, where the ordinary power and commission was continued,

and might duly be had, as it was, and yet is in the Church of England: Ravens must not be hoped for to feed us, where Providence gives us opportunity to get our bread by honest industry.

Where then there are so many intruders and deceivers gone out, as Ministers of the Gospel, it is a matter of conscience as well as ne∣cessary prudence in all good Christians, to be cautious and inquisi∣tive, whom they allow and follow as Ministers; to be first satisfied in that question which the Jews rationally asked of Christ, By what power or authority dost thou these things?* 1.115

No discreet person in civil affairs will obey any warrant or order, which hath no other authority than a private and pragmatick activi∣ty: and can it be piety or prudence in Christians, to be deluded by any pretenders in the great concernments of their souls; to have no more of Sacraments, or any other holy duties, than the meer sensible shell and husk of them? for the spiritual life and power of them is no where to be had but from such dispensers of them, as have the autho∣rity and power,* 1.116 the mission and commission of Christ rightly deri∣ved to them: which was evident first in Christ, after in his holy A∣postles and their lawfull successors.

Certainly the cheat and falsity of such mock-Ministers and Pseudo-pastors, is of far greater danger and detriment than those of spurious and supposititious children, or of embased coin, and counterfeit money. Some people have been so wicked, as to change their own children, & steal others from their parents; but it was never heard that children of any discretion were so foolish and unnaturall, as to abdicate their true Fathers and genuine mothers, that they might adopt false parents, and superinduce upon themselves the Empire of bastardly progeni∣tors. The mischief & abuse is not less in Churches than in Common-weales, in Christian Congregations than in families. Due respect of paternall care and filiall love, such as ought to be between Pastor and People, can never be mutually expected, where the relation is ei∣ther supposititious, or presumptuous, or meerly imaginary, or at best but arbitrary, which is inconsistent with humane, much more with divine Authority; the measure of which is not the plea∣sure of man, but the will of God, whose will is asserted by his power.

For my part, I firmly conclude, that as no true Christians may admit of any Gospel, or Sacraments, or holy Institutions, other than such as have been already once delivered to the Catholick Church,* 1.117 and preserved by her fidelity, against which the preaching of an * 1.118 Angel from heaven is not to be received or believed, but ac∣cursed; so nor may any Church or good Christians either broach, invent, or admit any new ministeriall power, order, mission, or au∣thority, beside or beyond that which the Church of England and the Catholick Church of Christ hath received, and transmitted in a con∣stant succession. That sacred ordination which began in Christ, and flowed from him as the effect of his Melchisedechian, Evangelicall and eternall Priesthood, must never be interrupted, innovated, or es∣sentially

altered, no not under any pretense or removing or reform∣ing what corrupions may (possibly) be contracted by time and hu∣mane infirmities, which are but accidentall (as diseases to the body) to Catholick prescriptions founded upon divine institutions. Fields once sown with good corn must not be rooted up or fired,* 1.119 because tares may be sown by the enemy while men slept; Trees that are full of moss & missletow through age, yet bearing good fruit, ought not to be cut down, but pruned and cleared. The decayes or dilapidations of the Temple before Hezekiah and Josiah repaired it, were no ex∣cuse for peoples neglect to frequent it, (much less were they justifi∣ed) and to sacrifice other where than there onely, as the place which the Lord had chosen to put his name there;* 1.120 nor did those pious Princes set that house of God on fire, because it was decayed, but duly repaired it with great cost and care.

And such indeed was the excellent piety and prudence of the Church of England, such wisdome and moderation it observed, as in all other things, so in this of the ministeriall order and office: What injuries it (as other holy things) had suffered in the darkness of times, by the dulness of Presbyters, the negligence of Bishops, or insolence of Popes, it wisely reformed; not abrogating the authori∣ty, or breaking the Catholick succession of Bishops and Presbyters in this, as in all Churches; not broaching a new fountain; not ob∣structing (as Philistins) the wells their fathers had digged; not di∣verting the ancient course and conduits of the waters of life: but cleansing the fountains, and continuing the streams of primitive ho∣ly orders, in the constant descents, degrees and offices of Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons. They did not raise up new Ministers, like Mushromes, out of every mole-hill, no•• force them (like Musk-melons) out of the hot beds of popular zeal and novellizing faction, without any regard to the ancient stock and root of Ecclesiasticall power and Ministeriall authority; from which (as Irenaeus, Tertulli∣an, S. Cyprian, and all the ancients clearly tell us) Bishops and Pres∣byters were ever derived,* 1.121 as slips and off-sets of the twelve Apostles and seventy Disciples. No time ever did, or ever shall render that Primitive plant and root of Evangelicall Ministry so dry, dead and barren, that they may or ought to be quite stubbed up, or new ones set in their room. No, they are only to be pruned and trimmed, that so they may be worthy of that honor which indeed they have, to be by an uninterrupted succession derived and descended from the blessed Apostles, whom Christ first planted by his own hands; nor may any mans presumption undertake to pul up that holy plantation, as those design to do, who endeavour to destroy the derivation and succession of the power Ministeriall.

The truth, sanctity and validity of which, as to the Ministry of the Church of England (by its Bishops and Presbyters) hath been fully and clearly asserted by able pens, against both Papists on the one side, and Novellists on the other. The one confining all Episcopal and Mi∣nisteriall power to one head and origin, the Bishop of Rome, as if

there had not been twelve fountains and foundations of prime Apo∣stles, but onely one, S. Peter, appointed by our Lord Jesus Christ; the other lewdly scattering that sacred office and divine authority, even among vulgar and plebeian hands, that every man may scram∣ble for it as he list, according as he fancies that his abilities and liber∣ty in these times may extend.

The putid and pernicious effects of which, in their present usurpati∣ons, divisions, confusions, debasements, & discouragements upon the Clergie and Church of England, as I shall afterward in the third Book more fully set them forth; so I cannot here but justly condemn those partiall, unreasonable and irreligious principles, from whence so pragmatick an itch, or thirst of novelty, in so grand a concernment of Religion, must needs arise; that fond men should be so eager to stop up the ancient fountains of living waters, which they digged not,* 1.122 that they might dig to themselves broken Cisterns, which can hold little or no water. And this they delight to do, not onely a∣gainst those daily instances, which miserable and manifest experience gives them of the sad and decayed condition of the Christian and Reformed Religion in this Ch. of Engl. since these new Ministers have intruded and divided; but contrary also to all those pregnant testimo∣nies & undeniable demonstrations, which both our pious fore-fathers in Engl. and all other Christian Churches in all ages have afforded us in the practises and writings of the Fathers, & testimonies of all Church-historians, who with one mouth every where unanimously tell us, what was the Apostolick, ancient, true, and onely beginning of the Mi∣nisteriall order, what the holy and happy way of its descent, deri∣vation and succession, by duly consecrated Bishops and ordained Presbyters. Contrary to all which plain and perpetual remonstrances (for nothing is in them dubious or dark) I am amazed (I confess) to see, not the giddy and heady vulgar ungratefully engaged, who are alwaies like tinder, ready to take fire at any sparks of innovations, diminutions, and extirpations especially of their laws and gover∣nours; but I find some men of worth, yea and Ministers of good learning, and seeming ingenuity, either so over-awed by the vulgar, or over-biassed by their own private interests, inclinations and pas∣sions, that after so much light of Scripture and antiquity, shining both in the divine Originals, and the Ecclesiastick copies of Ministeri∣all order and succession, after their own former solemn approbations and subscriptions, after their late experience of the sad consequences already too much felt in this Church, as fruits of those innovations and usurpations made upon that unity, power and authority of the Evangelicall Ministry: yet I grieve, and am ashamed to see that such men should still pitifully comply with, consent to, yea and promote those dangerous alterations, and desperate extirpations which are designed by the enemies of this Church; whose aim is to baffle and deprive this Reformed Church in so main a point and hinge of Religion, as the ancient sacred orders, the constant Eccle∣siasticall methods of the Evangelicall Ministry must needs be

which, what they ever have been in this and all Catholick Churches, no man of moderate learning, humble piety, and honest principles, can be ignorant of.

CHAP. XI.

THose new, unwonted, and exotick fashions,* 1.123 which some men have studied of late to introduce or incourage in England, as to this point of Ministe∣riall office and power, besides that they are all of them new, some of them monstrous to this and all ancient Churches, they plainly savour more of humane faction than of Christian faith; else they would not, they could not in any conscience or charity be so mischievously bent, and malapertly spitefull against those wor∣thy Bishops, and other excellent Ministers, who still adhere to the Ancient and Catholick order of the Church of England; nor yet could they be so mis-shapen, multiform, and many-headed in them∣selves, changing every day almost (as Proteus) by an innate principle of mutability, which follows the fancies and interests of new and present projectors, but not the judgement and grave example of our ancient and impartial predecessors.

And however some of these new ways, not of successive procreating, but new creating Ministers, may seem first brewed by domestick dis∣contents, next broached by a forreign sword, at length fostered by a partiall and over-awed Assembly, at last fomented for a season by scattered and divided houses, Parlaments, in very broken, touchy and bloody times, (when every new thing was made triall of, which might (as toyes and bables) best please the peevish and petulant parties of people in England;) however others have further chal∣lenged to themselves a particular liberty and arbitrary authority, such as best likes them, in this point of the Ministry (which no man of any wisdome, piety, or gravity can allow, under any pretensions of gifts or graces ministeriall in any man:) Yet all these novell in∣ventions, whatever title they pretend from God or man, from policy or necessity, may not in any reason or Religion, in any honour or con∣science, in any piety or prudence, be put into the balance with (much less be thought fit to out-vie) that clear primitive pattern, that Ca∣tholick constant succession, that Apostolick and divine prescription; which do (all) preponderate for the Ministry of the Church of En∣gland, in the true scale of regular and authentick ordination of Mi∣nisters, who are never so completely and indisputably invested with that power, as when by the imposition of hands solemnly done by Episcopall Presidents, and Presbyterian Assistants; who after due

examination, and serious monition, and fervent supplication, do in prescript words commit that ministeriall power, spirit, and authority of Christ, which ought to be rightly imparted to those that under∣take Evangelical ministrations in Christs name, to any part of his Church, if they desire to avoid the sin and scandall of being intru∣ders, traitours, usurpers, and counterfeiters of Christs ministeriall dignity and authority.

Secular or civil powers, which are but the products of the sword, and managed chiefly by the policy and arm of flesh, may (indeed) confer what honour, office and authority they please on any man in civil things; yea they may and ought in conscience to take care of, and regulate the exercise of Ecclesiastical power in reference to Gods glo∣ry, and the publick good both of Church and State: but they cannot (as from themselves) by any naturall, morall, or civil capacity, con∣fer holy orders, or bestow Ministerial authority on any man; much less may they (or as Christian Magistrates will they) make a new broad Seal of Christianity, or commence any new way of ministe∣riall authority; nor may they in conscience cancel or abrogate the good old way, no nor yet alter in any materiall part the Catholick way of its right derivation and succession, which was by the hands of those who had first received that holy deposition; which certainly is of as much higher nature, orb and sphere, beyond any naturall, moral, or secular power, as the celestial light of sun and stars is above that which is from candles, or that holy fire on Gods altar was above that which is but culinary.

All good Christians agree, that its originall is in Christ, its com∣mission from Christ, its first delegation to the twelve Apostles and the seventy Disciples: from the Apostles we read its transmissi∣on to others in the Apostolicall Acts and Epistles. How it was after∣ward continued, and by what means derived to an uninterrupted Ca∣tholick succession in all Churches for 1500 years, is not indeed to be learned, & so not decided by Scripture; whose records (except the Apocalyps) extend not above 28 or 30 years after Christs ascension: but being a thing now of late so hotly disputed in this and some o∣ther Churches, there is no rationall satisfaction to be had (as to mat∣ter of fact) but by the after-histories of the Church; which I am sure give all the seeing world in this point so clear, so perfect, so full a light, and so uniform a testimony, that no learned, impartiall, and conscientious Christian can desire more; nor can they but acquiesce in these, unless they dare to doubt and deny the veracity and fidelity of all authors that have given us account of any Ecclesiasticall Ca∣tholick affairs and customes since the Apostles times: in all which no one point or practise hath less doubt or dispute, less variation or diversity, than this of Ecclesiasticall order,, both as to the Ministry and government of the Church.

What the ignorant vulgar (who are the bran and courser sort of people) may endlesly fancy and affect, or what others of better parts, but as base passions, may cunningly pretend, I know not; the better

to bring in their new modelings of Ministers and Churches: but I am sure it will very ill become you (O noble Gentlemen) who are the best and finest flower, the beauty and honour, the strength and stability of this English Nation, who are the choice and chiefest sons of the Church of England, it ill becomes you to suspect all those burning and shining lights, both Bishops and Presbyters,* 1.124 Fathers and Historians, single and sociall, in their Closets and in their Councils, even in the first innocent ages, when the Church was most pure and persecuted; as if they had all been either grosly ignorant of, or supine∣ly negligent in following the mind of Christ, and methods of the bles∣sed Apostles, as to these great affairs of the Church; which were openly, uniformly & universally both preached and practised by the Apostles, also delivered to and received by their successors, as in other things, so most indisputably in this which so much concerned not onely the right ordering and well-being and polity of the estate of the Church militant, but its very being and Essence, in Doctrine, Ministry, Duties, Discipline and Government. Can it (I beseech you) without great uncharitableness and pervicacy (unworthy of any ingenuous soul) be imagined, that from the beginning, during the life of some Apostles and their scholars, the whole Church, and the most eminent persons in it, Ministers, Martyrs and Confessors, did all conspire to delude themselves, and to deceive all posterity, in so clear, great, and sacred concernments, as those of the Churches Mi∣nistry and Polity were ever esteemed?

The incomparable and unanswerable Mr. Rich: Hooker (who is not to be read without admiration, nor named without veneration) long ago urged this Absurdity against the then more modest Stick∣lers for their Disciplinarian Innovations in the Ministry and Polity of the Church of England.* 1.125

Sure (saith he) it were a very strange thing, that such a Discipline (meaning the Presbyterian) as ye speak of, should be taught by Christ and his Apostles in the Word of God, and no Church hath ever found it out, nor received it till this present time: or contrariwise, that the Government (of the Church) against which you bend your selves, should be observed every where through all generations and ages of the Christian world, and no Church ever perceive it to be against the word of God. We require you to find out but one Church upon the face of the earth, that hath been ordered by your Discipline, or that hath not been ordered by ours, that is, Episcopall government (for ordi∣nation and jurisdiction) since the times that the blessed Apostles were conversant upon earth.

This unanswered challenge did that excellent person heretofore make, in order to prevent (if possible) these innovations and mischiefs which are now grassant in England, to the hazard of quite overthrowing all that ancient Order, Mini∣stry, succession and Government, which had been conserved in this Church, conform to all parts of the Catholick Church.

If your other employments and studies have hindred you from being so well acquainted with the authentick works, and authorita∣tive

testimonies of the ancientest writers of Church-affairs, as those grand Authors deserve, and your ingenuity cannot but desire; yet far be it from your prudence, piety and charity, to derogate from the honour and credit of your own Countrey-men, who have in the Histories of England (both Civil and Ecclesiasticall,* 1.126 to which you cannot well be strangers) sufficiently shewed from the originall of these British Churches, what Ministry and Orders they had.

If you are yet strangers to those eldest ages, times and authors of your own, and so cannot maturely ground your judgements upon their testimony; yet what think you of the learning, piety, honesty and courage of those later, and reall, and renowned Reformers of this Church, whether Clergie or Lay-men, who lived in your fathers me∣mories, whose blood and ashes, as Martyrs and Confessors, against Papall innovations and corruptions, is still warm and precious? These did not lay new foundations of a Christian Church, a true Re∣ligion, or an authentick Ministry here in England; but they onely repaired the decayes of the old, and lightned them of those either erroneous or dangerous superstructures, with which long ignorance and superstition had over-laded them, and not so much built upon them, as almost quite buried them. These Heroes, these worthy men (I say) who were worthy of the name of Christians, English-men and Reformers, did not ever design, or go about to broach new foun∣tains, nor to cut new channels, nor to lay new pipes, by which to con∣vey the Ecclesiasticall order and Ministeriall authority here in En∣gland; but they cleansed the foulness, they removed the obstructi∣ons, they sodered the ruptures of the former Catholick way, which was very good, as well as very old: yet not the antiquity, but the ve∣racity and divinity of it, attested both by Scriptures and by the Ca∣tholick usage of all Churches, made those blessed Reformers (now an hundred years ago) cheerfully subscribe to that polity, Ministry, and authority Ecclesiasticall, which they mended, but changed not: these they recommended to all estates in this nation; by whose Parlamentary votes and sanction they were established, as the best means to preserve this Church both Christian and Refor∣med.

After these famous Fathers of England's happy Reformation, whose judgement is manifest in the point of ministeriall power and holy or∣der, to be carried on by Bishops and Presbyters, can you suspect that their later successors, in office and judgement, I mean all those learned, grave and godly Ministers of England, whom your eyes have seen, and your ears have heard heretofore with great respect, love and ad∣miration, dispensing the word of God and holy mysteries to you; who till the divisions and deformities of these last and worst dayes, have baptized, instructed and guided, both you and your hopefull posterity in the way to heaven and happiness, in truth and peace, in faith and repentance, in humility and holiness, in all graces, vertues and good works, powerfully set forth to you by their excellent Ser∣mons and fervent Prayers, by the blessed Sacraments and worthy

Examples they have communicated to you; can you (I say) suspect that all these, together with the Bishops and Presbyters of the Ca∣tholick Church, the East and West, the old and new, the Greeks and Latines, the Roman and Reformed, that all these have conspi∣red to erre so great, so universall, so constant an errour themselves, and to mis-guide you, me, and all the Christian world, in such wayes of receiving and conferring Ecclesiastick order, Evangelicall Ministry, & Church-government, as were unchristian, yea Antichristian, diverse from Christs mind, yea contrary to it, offensive to the godly, & odious to God himself, as some men have lewdly declamed? whose tongues I judge to be no slander, since they appear persons of so little consci∣ence, and less forehead; either grosly ignorant of the practise and plat∣form of Antiquity, or most uncharitably impudent, in branding so ma∣ny thousands of godly Bishops and other gracious Ministers, both in England and all other places (who were justly famous in their ge∣nerations for their learning and piety) as if they were either so many blind guides, or so many bold intruders, meer usurpers, juglers, impo∣stors & hypocrites; as if, to gratifie their own private ambitions, they had from the very beginning, in the sight and in despite of S. John and other Apostolick Pastors, perverted the way of Christ, as to that Ministeriall power & Church-order which he had appointed, setting up of their own heads a paternall presidency or Episcopall eminen∣cy, instead of these newly discovered wayes of either a Presbyterian parity, or a popular Independency, by which Presbyters and people in common challenge to themselves the sole possession, dispensation and managery of all Ecclesiasticall office, power and authority: in∣ventions so pragmatick, so turbulent, so contrariant to one another, as well as to the ancient orders of the Church, that we in England were happily unacquainted with them till of late years, as were all other Churches in the world, till this last century; who cannot be thought in all former ages to have wanted such Pastors and Tea∣chers, such Rulers and Governours as were after Gods own heart, to carry on his great work of saving souls, in the preserving and propa∣gating of his Church by the Ministers of it.

If the great cloud of ancient and Catholick witnesses, who ever own∣ed all Ecclesiastick power to be magisterially (indeed) and prima∣rily in Christ, but ministerially and secondarily in the Apostles and their successors, as to all Church-ministration, ordination and juris∣diction; which power resided chiefly in Bishops, and from them was regularly derived to Presbyters: if these (I say) can fall un∣der your hard censure, as either deceived, or deceivers, yet truly their errour in this point may be the more veniall, because the case was not so much as once doubted or disputed for three hundred years, in those best and first ages of the Church. It will be more charity in their censurers, to suspect they wanted ability to see the light of Christs mind and the Apostles examples, than honesty to follow them.

But for my self, and other Ministers, my Fathers and Brethren of

the Church of England, who after so high contests about the Mini∣stry of the Church, both as to ordination and jurisdiction (in which we have examined all Scriptures, and rifled all Antiquity) if we do still (bona fide) humbly, honestly and conscientiously chuse to follow what seems to us Christian, Catholick and uniform antiquity, ra∣ther than any partiall and divided wayes of novelty; I hope we are excusable to you, if not commendable; how ignorant or obstinate soever we seem to others, who think we ought to be confounded, if we will not be converted (or rather perverted) by them. But if you do indeed judge, that after so clear demonstrations and potent convictions from Scripture and Antiquity, which either Geneva, or Edenburgh, or Amsterdam, or New-England have alledged, we do still persist in our Primitive opinions and Catholick Errours, tou∣ching the office, power and derivation of the Evangelicall Mini∣stry and Authority, such as was established in this Church of England, meerly out of either passion, pertinacy and obstinacy, or for private interests, sinister ends, and secular policies; if you can think us so base and false, such sots and beasts, so unworthy of the names of Ministers, Christians, Englishmen, or men; if this be your sense of us, truly you and the whole State shall do but an act of high Justice, speedily to cast us all out, as well Presbyters as Bishops, for unsavoury salt; to expose us yet more upon the dunghill of vulgar contempt and worldly poverty, which some Satyrick tongues and pens have earnestly importuned, and petulantly endeavoured, against all the ancient Ministers and orderly Clergie of England, un∣der the name of Prelaticks and Episcopall.

If the bitter and bold invectives of spitefull Papists and fierce Se∣paratists, of rash Presbyterians and rude Independents, of Erastians and Anabaptists, if these have been or can be made good to you against the Ministry and ordination of the Church of England, a∣gainst all its Bishops and Presbyters, both in office and exercise; as if we had not, either before or since the Reformation, any due mini∣steriall office or authority, no true ordination or succession, little of ministeriall gifts, and less of graces, no sound doctrine faithfully preached, no Sacraments rightly consecrated, no holy mysteries lawfully celebrated, no Church-discipline dispensed, no right go∣vernment constituted, no true Ministry, or authoritative Ministers any way deserving either love or honour from you and your poste∣rity:

If all your and our faith, repentance, charity, and other graces, be in vain; if your Christian peace and hopes be all but imaginary; if neither we are made true Ministers of Christ, nor you true Members or Disciples of Christ; if all your and your fore-fathers piety, de∣votion, charity, Christianity, hath been onely a fantastick pageantry, a mummery and mockery of Religion, Christianity and Reformation; if hitherto you have onely been deluded and abused in so high con∣cernments of your consciences and souls to eternity: truly 'tis but high time for you and your new Common-weale, to offer up the

wretched remnant of those Bishops and Presbyters (who have yet sur∣vived the calamities and contempts of these times, and who yet re∣tain their former judgement, ministeriall office, and holy orders, conformably to the Church of England) to be an acceptable Sacri∣fice, a welcome Holocaust, or much longed-for Burnt-offering, to the malice of their adversaries and persecutors, both Gog and Magog: first to the more secret, but implacable despite of Papists, who have infinitely longed, and no less rejoyce to see poverty, obscurity, si∣lence, scorn, division, confusion, extirpation, to be the portion of the English Clergie, whom they heretofore either envied or dreaded, be∣yond the Ministry of any Christian or Reformed Church in all the world: next, you shall in so doing highly gratifie the bitter and bol∣der enmity, the fouler-mouth'd fury of all other sharp-tongu'd, bra∣zen-fac'd and heavy-handed Schismaticks, who have a long time grudged at the Clergie of England, envying both Bishops and Presby∣ters their honours, liberties, livelihoods and lives, prompted hereto partly by their own pride, covetousness, and other discontented lusts, and partly by Jesuitick arts and Papall policies, whose joynt aims are (at this day) to extirpate the whole race (root and branch) of the Reformed, Catholick, Christian Church and Ministry in England. They conspire nothing more, than that they may serve both the Bishops and Presbyters of England, as Elias and Jehu did Baals Priests:* 1.127 for this is the sense some men have of us; and this is the sentence they have passed, and seek to execute upon us, as upon so many Cretians, not Christians, as if we were onely liars, evil beasts, and slow-bellies, either imperious masters or unprofitable servants to the Church; that so these new Masters may on all sides freely enjoy those super∣stitious and fanatick liberties, which they have designed for their di∣vided parties, who despaired to prevail in England, untill they had brought the English Clergie to undergo all manner of indignities and injuries.

CHAP. XII.

* 1.128ALl which Tragedies that the people of England might behold and bear with the greater patience and stu∣pidity, they must by popular orators be perswaded, 1. That all Bishops, or presidentiall Fathers and Over-seers among the Clergie, such as the Apo∣stles and their immediate Successors first were, are Antichristian; truly so are Fathers in families, Magistrates in ci∣ties, and Chieftains in armies. 2. That the ordaining of Presbyters by Bishops is meerly Popish; so is the celebrating of Baptisme, or the Lords Supper, or the Lords day. 3. That Christs Ministry ap∣propriated to one order of men, is a monopoly, or a taking too much upon mens selves, when others of the congregation may be as holy and able; so is all order, office and authority, civil and military, a meer monopoly, when others may be as able and wise as the best Magistrates and Commanders. 4. That all humane Learning is not onely superfluous, but pernicious in the Ministers of the Gospel; so is all skill, industry and ability in all other workmen. 5. That Ministers maintenance by Tithes, Glebe-lands, and other oblations, is Jewish; so is all justice and gratitude in paying labourers their wages. 6. That the distinction of Clergie and Laity is arrogant and superci∣lious; so are the titles of Master and Scholar, Teacher and Disciple, Priest and People, Minister and ministred. 7. That it was proud and insolent for any Clergie-men to be invested with honour, to be sti∣led and respected as Lords. Truly, if it be no dishonour to any tem∣porall Lord to become a Minister or Christs glorious Gospel, nor doth he thereby lose his civil Lordship and dignity; no more is it mis∣becoming learned, grave and venerable Ministers of the Gospel, the chief Fathers and governours of the Church, to be adorned with ho∣nours, and to enjoy, as the favours of Christian Princes and States, both the Titles and Revenues of their temporall Baronies and Lord∣ships, which they might (for ought I could ever see) as well deserve and use as any other Lords, who had their Lordships by birth, by purchase, or by favour: nor did Honour less become Ecclesiastick Rulers, than it doth those military Commanders, who, I see, can endure themselves to be called & treated as Lords. I confess (under favour) I do not understand how Church-government should be less capable of degrees and distinction in Governours, than those which are civil or military, since order and subordination must be in them all: nor do I more understand how such chief Governours of the Church-mili∣tant, as Bishops were, and ought to be, might not as well both merit and manage such honours and estates, as any men, who by far less abilities or pains do get to be Major-generals, or Colonels and chief Commanders in an Army over poor Souldiers. Sure the sa∣ving of souls is every way as hard and honourable a work, as the kil∣ling

of mens bodies, which is the worst of a souldiers work; or as the saving of mens temporall lives and estates, which is the best of that employment: nor is it less of true valour, vigilance and reso∣lution in learned and good Scholars, to fight with, and overcome the ignorance, errours and barbarity of mankind, than it is fortitude in good souldiers to suppress the rapines and injustice of mens extra∣vagant actions.

But these, and such like, are the envious cobwebs, the thin and ri∣diculous sophistries formerly used by some men of evil eyes and worse hearts, out of principles full of ignorance, or envy, or cove∣tousness, or licentiousness, or Atheism, whereby to perswade silly people to follow these novell, easie, and more thrifty methods of sa∣ving souls, which some swelling Libertines propound, who have the confidence earnestly to invite this noble Nation to commit the whole managery of Christian Religion, and of their souls eternall salvation, to such new, cheap, and bold undertakers, who adventure to minister in Christs name, without any such character, commission or conscience of divine authority,* 1.129 which (as Irenaeus and all the Ancients tell us) were ever in a solemn, visible and orderly manner derived by the hands of Bishops to the Presbyters, or lawful Ministers of the Church, as from Christ and the Apostles, in an undoubted and unin∣terrupted succession; of which Tertullian gives so excellent an ac∣count in his Book of prescription against Hereticks.

Their ostentations of naturall liberty, of civil indulgence, of ratio∣nall abilities, of speciall gifts and undiscernable graces, or (which is most incredible) of extraordinary calls from God; All, or any of these (if they were really true) yet will not be allowed as a justifi∣able ground for any mans usurpation or intrusion into any office mili∣tary or civil, without a visible commission derived from the supreme power in both: much less are they sufficient pleas for any man to of∣ficiate in the Ministry Ecclesiasticall,* 1.130 whose Supreme Authority is con∣fessedly in Christ; and the derivation or deduction of it in all ages is so visible, constant and uniform, that no man honestly learned can be ignorant where it resided, or how it was derived. Certainly it ne∣ver was dispensed by the hands or power of Emperours, Kings, Pro∣tectors, Princes, or any civil Magistrates; whose duty (I conceive) if they will act as Christians, is not to alter or innovate this sacred au∣thority and method used by Christ, the Apostles and the Catholick Church, but to preserve it as sacred and inviolable: much less was it left to the spontaneous confidence, the passionate suffrages, and confused petulancies of common people, who are the great and infallible prostrators of all Religion, vertue, honour, order, peace, civility and hu∣manity, if left to themselves; but it was divinely setled by Christ in the Apostles, and by the Apostles in their successors, the ordain∣ed Bishops and Presbyters of the Catholick Church, in its severall branches and combinations; who ever have been, and ought to be (under Christ) the great Conservators, the onely complete and regular Distributers of this holy ministeriall power, as they have

been to this day, in this and all other orderly Churches of Christ, without any controversie or contradiction, without dispute or doubt, till of later years.

CHAP. XIII.

* 1.131THe late licentious Invasions made upon this Church of England, the Reformed Religion, the Ministerial Or∣der, Office, and Succession established in it, through all ages since the Nation was Christian, were yet some∣thing tolerable & justifiable, if those Ministers who pro∣fess to be of the ordination and communion of the Ch. of Engl. either wanted ability or industry, skill or will to serve God, and to deserve well of you (O worthy Gentlemen) and all their Countrey-men: or if you and the rest of the nation were already better provided, in order to your souls good, by any new generation of Preachers, better learned, more rarely gifted, more spiritually extracted, or more re∣gularly consecrated and duly ordained; if these new-minted Mini∣sters, these self-intruding Teachers, did afford you weightier Sermons, warmer Prayers, more solemn Sacraments, more sacred Examples, more usefull writings; if they brought you (with all this bustling and parado) a better God,* 1.132 a better Saviour, a better Gospel, bet∣ter Scriptures, or a better Spirit than those were, which the ex∣cellent Bishops, and other Ministers of the Church of England, set be∣fore you and this nation, many wayes, for many years, with mighty successes (while they were countenanced, encouraged, and ingenu∣ously treated;) if the advantages of Religion, as Christian and Re∣formed, or of your and your posterities souls, were either reall or probable, by these new intruders, we might well bear with your and the common peoples pious inconstancy, when it should tend to the improvement and happinesse of your souls.

But these great and good interests of your souls, for my part, as I have not yet found any where in any new wayes, so I do not think that any wise and honest-hearted Christian can by any one instance prove, that those Libertines (who are Levellers of the Ministeriall duty and dignity) either have been hitherto able, or will ever be probable to advance them in the least kind or degree, beyond, or equall, or any way comparable to what the former Clergy of England have done, and are still both able and willing to do.

As for these new Rabbies, you shall have commonly their best at first:* 1.133 by soft, and (as they think) saintly insinuations, they first creep into houses, next into bosoms, at last into pulpits. The small and light bundle of the gifts they have picked up, are soon set on fire by the least sparks of popular desire and applause; then (as squibs

or granadoes) they flie off amain, with more extravagant motion, panick terrour, thick smoke, foul stench and vapour, than with any great or good execution done against Sin, or Satan, or the World. Af∣ter a few godly prefacings about the Spirit, Grace, Christ and the new Covenant, together with some gallantries, or light skirmishings with some starveling errors and useless sins, you shall know the utmost of their sufficiencies; which is, with egregious impudence, to scorn what they cannot attain, that is, all good learning, and the manners of their betters. When they have loudly ratled at, more than confuted, any thing which they list to call an Error, when they have huddled toge∣ther, wrested & distorted a great many places of Scripture,* 1.134 without any regard to the Grammaticall and genuine sense of the words, or to the propriety of phrases, or to the main scope of the place, or to the clear Analogie of faith; after all these flourishings, you shall see the bottom and dregs of their hearts poured forth in vile and un∣comely railings, scurrilous and odious rantings against all Bishops and Ministers, against the whole Hierarchie, Ministry and Church of England. At last, with equall vociferation and emptinesse, with∣out any principles of reason, or grounds of Religion, without proof or plausibility, with more lungs than brains, they cry up their own new lights, their rare discoveries, their excellent Reformations, and pure Ordinances of Jesus Christ: all which are as much be∣yond all former dispensations and ministrations in this or any Church, as the deceits of Mountebanks excell all that Fernelius, Galen, or Hippocrates, could ever use or invent; especially when these are (in a new Paracelsian way) applied and dispensed, not by the old Empiricks, the Papall and Episcopall Clergy, but by new-called and ordained Preachers, by specially-inspired Pro∣phets, by precious men, extraordinarily qualified, and sent, ei∣ther by the inward and unknown impulses of Gods Spirit, or by the call and election of some godly select people; who casting off all ancient Christian Communion with this Nationall or the Catholick Church, do first body themselves to a new way of Church-fellowship, then they assume to themselves some Brother and Member (as they can agree) to be their spirituall Pastor, him they invest by their bare suffrages with all ministerial power and authority, as from Jesus Christ himself.

Such a kind of confused noise doe these land-floods, these po∣pular torrents, these turbulent Teachers make, where once they have found a vent and course for their liberty, to break through all bounds of law and order, being indeed very muddy, shallow, fatuous and feeble in all things, divine and humane, for the most part; onely they have a strong high conceit of themselves, and a perfect Antipathy against those Ministers in the Church of En∣gland, to whom they owe all they have of Knowledge and Re∣ligion which is worth owning. Do but look near to their new doctrines and opinions, and you will easily see how loose, how false, how futile, how fanatick they are: look to their speech and writing,

how rude, how improper, how incoherent, how insignificant, how full of barbarismes, soloecismes and absurdities: mark their whole form of preaching, how raw, how rambling, how immetho∣dicall, how incongruous, how obscure, impertinent: consider their Prayers, how are they farced with odde expressions, with forced, affected, confused, dull, dead and insipid repetitions: weigh their lives and actions; how pragmatick, licentious, injuri∣ous, sacrilegious, spitefull, uncharitable, pernicious, scandalous are they to many sober and quiet men, and specially to such as they have most cause to suspect to be much their betters, and their most accurate censurers. Last of all, look to all their no∣vell principles, and you shall see how various, versatile, ambigu∣ous, temporizing and dangerous they are; while much of their Divinity depends upon Diurnalls; their Religion is most-what calculated by the Almanack or Ephemeris of their hopes and feares, their interests and lusts, their prevalences and advantages, measured not by Scriptures, but by Providences.

These distempers evidently appearing (as they daily do in your new Teachers) must not you and all sober Christians confess, that these Comets,* 1.135 these blazing and wandring stars, mostly made up of gross, vulgar and earthy exhalations, full of portentous malignity to this Reformed Church, are infinitely short of that benign light, and that divine, sweet and heavenly influence, which heretofore shined from the fixed starrs of this Church, which were in the right hand of Christ,* 1.136 the godly Bishops and other Ministers, to the great honour and unspeakable happiness of this Nation, to the flourishing of the Christian and Reformed Religion; when men knew what it was to have and to honour Gods Ministers, and to be good Christians, that is, judicious, humble, honest, charitable, orderly and constant in the true Religion?

CHAP. XIV.

BUt suppose (in very deed) it were true, that you,* 1.137 the Nobility, Gentry, and Commons of England, did find an irreparable decay and dotage now grown upon the ancient Clergie; and that you might now be cheap∣er and better served by these new-sprung Gourds which are but of yesterday, like Mushromes, the sons of a night: yet since the ancient race and stock of Apostolick Bishops and Presbyters, is not onely of so venerable an age as 1600 years in the Catholick and this Church of Christ (which is a great plea of priority, honour and prepossession, against any novell intruders and pretenders;) since they and their predecessors, both before and since the Reformation, even from the first plantation of Christianity in this Island, have done their best to deserve well of you and your fore-fathers, who, this last century especially, in your own memory, greatly rejoyced in the lustre of these * 1.138 burning and shining lights, justly and gratefully esteeming the learned ability, industry and pie∣ty of the English Clergie, a great crown, honour and rejoycing to this Nation; since they have thus far premerited of you in their former age, strength and vigour; truly it must needs be, not more their grief and misery, than your shame and eternall dishonour, if you should use your ancient Clergie and Ministers, as you would your old dogs and harrased horses, casting them off to seek new masters, or turning them into the high wayes, to graze upon what alms they can pick up among their timorous and ungratefull friends, or their super∣cilious and disdainfull enemies.

Surely it were but charity and humanity in you, to provide rather some Almes-houses and Hospitalls for your cast and decayed Mini∣sters, as well as you do for your veterane and unserviceable Souldiers, who have in their time and station been valiant, faithfull and order∣ly; that at least the prouder Jesuits, and the less charitable Papists (besides other pestilent enemies of the peace and piety of England) may not too much triumph, to see so many, so venerable Bishops, and other worthy Ministers of this Reformed and sometimes flourishing Church of England, either begging or starving: which if it be not (as I fear it is) I am sure it would be the sad fate of many of them, if God did not stir up some mercifull Obadiahs to relieve them; not that they want ability or industry, but either such liberty, or such opportunity as their adversaries presume to enjoy.

But against all this that I plead of Justice and Mercy for the English Clergie,* 1.139 some mealy-mouth'd and hen-hearted men are prone secretly to object; Alas! there is now no hope to recover the pri∣stine honour (either as to reputation, reverence, or revenue) of the Ministry of England, neither to Bishops nor Presbyters. Alas! they have been, and still are, so vulgarly slighted and abased. We see

these new Teachers have most-what got the upper hand; they are brisk and bold young men, who have disgraced, displaced, and baf∣fled many of the old stock; they have decried, affronted and over-awed in a manner all of them: the new-fashioned Ministers ride on the fore-horse, and are fancied by many wary and wise men to be most useful, advantageous and conform to the present state of civil interests and affairs; so that men are prone to think they had better rest satisfied with these new Preachers upon any account, if they be but tolerable speakers and livers, rather than go about to restore, much less to prefer the former Ministers and Ministry, which grow daily more antiquated and exautorated, both as to their persons and pretensions, among the common sort of people: besides many others, who are their friends, yet look upon the very names of Bishop and Presbyter, of ordination and succession, as terms extremely unpopular, unpleasing, and growing out of fashion in England.

* 1.140Well, much good may these new Ministers do to these new-fashio∣ned Christians, these wary men and their posterity. 'Tis well howe∣ver,* 1.141 if Christ be preached; whether of envy or good will, whether in truth or in pretence onely.

Yet I cannot forbear (in an honest and Christian freedome) to of∣fer this to the judgement of you and other Gentlemen, who are of more noble minds, and more prudent spirits: Do but foresee and consider, I beseech you, what pitifull Ministellos, what pigmy Presby∣ters, what plebeian Preachers this Nation in after-ages is like to have, if the Ministers of the glorious Gospel of J.* 1.142 Christ your Saviour must ever grow up, & live under such vulgar scamblings, contempts, insolencies, obloquies, molestations, intrusions, confusions, which are, and ever will be as so many nipping frosts and horrid discouragements, to all able, ingenious, grave and godly men; when they shall see, under the pre∣tence of Novelty and Christian liberty, not only themselves very much impoverished, curbed, despised, and depressed, as to that order, dig∣nity, office and authority which they claim and exercise upon grounds Divine, Catholick and Ecclesiasticall; but they shall further behold all sacred, solemn and venerable mysteries, as well as offices of the E∣vangelicall Ministry and Christian Religion, exposed to such plebeian insolencies, such petulant extravagancies, such fanatick fancies, such fulsome affectations, such empty pretensions, such uncharitable janglings, such miserable manglings, and such proud usurpations, under any notions and pretensions which common people please to call their Christian Liberties.

CHAP. XV.

WHich are indeed little else than novell vanities,* 1.143 oppo∣sing pious Antiquity; weaknesse vaunting it self against strength; ignorance, darkness and confusion boasting against sound knowledge; true light, and holy order; folly crying it self up for wisdome; the rapes and stu∣prations of Religion styling themselves rare Reformations: melan∣choly ravings are cried up for divine Revelations; schismatick conven∣ticles voted for the onely pure and organized Churches of Christ; being bodies (as Tertullian accurately observes) so homogeneous,* 1.144 similary and inorganick, that it is hard to discern which is the head or tail, hand or foot, Pastor or people: like earth-worms they crawl with either end forward; all are Prophets & inspired, all grow Seers, Teachers, Elders and Rulers of the Church. If they can but light on some new notions, some strange fancies, some odde and unwonted expressions, they are presently set forth for rare and spiritfull dis∣coveries; when (indeed) they are but old and rotten errours, pro∣trite and putid opinions of the ancient Gnosticks, or Valentinians, or Manichees, or Montanists, or Circumcellians, or Donatists, who affected either to invent poetick fancies,* 1.145 or to darken and bury plain and wholsome Truths, by words without understanding.

And such are, for ought that ever I could discern, those Seraphick, Anabaptistick, & Familistick Hyperboles,* 1.146 those proud swelling words of vanity and novelty, with which those men use to deceive the simple and credulous sort of people, who are set up by them as the great ri∣vals and Antagonists of the Ancient, Catholick and Apostolick Mini∣sters of Christ, and Vastators of the whole frame of the Church of England.

Can you (O worthy Gentlemen) or any sober Christians, who are not strangers to the prayings, preachings and writings hereto∣fore brought forth by the worthy Ministers, Bishops and Presbyters of the Church of England; can you think, that either the godly Mi∣nisters, or the Christian people in England were ignorant of, or strangers to those spirituall influences, those inward powers and secret experiences of Religion, till these new Pedlers of piety began to open their packs, or till these rare Rabbies turned their shops into Syna∣gogues, and their Conventicles into the onely true spiritualized Churches of Christ? Did we never know before these new Illumi∣nates and Spiritaties rose up, what belonged to the humble seeking, the happy finding, and holy acquaintance with God, by the union and communion of Gods Spirit, working and witnessing with ours?* 1.147 Had we neither the root nor the fruit of true Religion till these new planters sprung up? Were we utterly strangers to Faith, Re∣pentance, Charity and good works, or to that joy, love, peace, bles∣sed

hopes, sweet satisfactions, evident sealings, sincere sanctifyings, and undoubted assurings of the holy Ghost, which are wrought by, and conform to the Word of God; first casting the Christian into that holy mould, and then filling him with such comforts as are unspeak∣able and glorious;* 1.148 whose nature is rather to be humbly enjoyed, modestly owned, and tenderly treated in a gracious soul, than vul∣garly discovered, and vapouringly ostentated in a rude and vain-glo∣rious fashion? The brightest lustre of Gods Jewels is rarely shewn, and hardly seen, being most glorious within: the richest wares are least set upon the stalls or shop-boords.

* 1.149These (Arcana, magnalia, sublimia Dei) secrets of the Lord, these whisperings of the blessed Spirit, these (oscula Christi) kisses of Christ as S. Bernard calls them, these (aromata gratiae) perfumes of his soft breath, these glowings of grace in the heart, these holy fer∣vours and heavenly raptures, of humble, devout, meditative, fervent souls, who the more they believe, the more they love, and the more they love, the better they live, more humanely and more divinely, more justly, more charitably and more orderly; these real pregustations of glory, and anticipations of heaven, blessed be God, were long ago known, and experimentally set forth in the Prayers, Sermons, writings and actions of thousands of good Christians, both Ministers and others, long before these novell and exotick masters began to lisp out the Soboloths of fine phrases; before they dared to assault, and not onely cry, but beat down this and all National Chur∣ches, all Clergie of the ancient and right order, all Universities and Nurseries of good learning together, all Tithes, all Liturgies, all studied Sermons and premeditated prayers, all wholsome forms and sober compendiums of religious duties and devotion; as if all these were meerly carnall, literall, formall and superficiall, naturall and papall, meer husks and shells, the rind and out-side of Religion. Yea, we had the comfort, and God the glory of his grace in the Ch. of Eng. long before either Anabaptists, or Familists, or Seekers, or Quakers, or Ranters, or any other spawn of Libertinism and Inde∣pendency, of Schism and Separation, had amused the silly vulgar (as * 1.150 S. Austin tells us, by his own experience, the subtill, but sordid, Manichees were wont to do) with their new motions and strange expres∣sions of being Godded with God, Christed with Christ, Spirited with the Spirit, and the like affectations; which are either barbarities and sim∣plicities, or blasphemies, insolencies and impossibilities of speaking: for no sober Christian ever did or in Religion ought, or in true reasoning can understand, that by a believers being a 1.151 partaker of a diviner na∣ture through Christ, he is presently Deified, that is, personally invest∣ed, and plenarily possessed with all the infinite Attributes, essence and glory of God, which are incomprehensible by any finite understan∣ding, and personally incommunicable to any creature, excepting Christ Jesus, the (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 or Immanuel) God Incarnate, who onely may without b 1.152 robbery be equall with God, esteemed, called, and ado∣red as God.

So that they can religiously mean no more by all this pomp of their words, than what was long ago far better understood, and ex∣pressed in more humble, wholsom and intelligible words; also better enjoyed by sober, meek, just and quiet-spirited Christians, who well knew the glorious priviledges of every gracious and sincere Christian, which is to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ;* 1.153 to whom being related by faith, they are in some sense united to God. As the eye that sees the suns light and glory by its beams, is in some sense truly enlightened by it, united to it, & partaker of it; not as to the vast∣nesse of its Globe, essentiall glory, which is far too big and too bright for the eyes small capacity, but as to its pleasing influences: in like manner, the Christian that is illuminate and regenerate by Baptism, instructed by the Word of God, and sanctified by the Spirit of God, is so drawn to Christ, by the sweet attractions of the cords of his love, and engraffed in him, that he is not now his own, but Christs;* 1.154 not enslaved to his own sinfull and depraved nature, but endued with the new powers and principles of an holy and heavenly nature, which is truly and soberly that divine nature of which S. Peter speaks; which while we behold by true faith and obedience,* 1.155 we are changed into the same image from Glory to Glory.

CHAP. XVI.

IF then a wise and serious Christian,* 1.156 who is not so idle or impudent as to play with Religion, to trifle in holy things, or to mock with God; if such an one will lose so much time as to sift all that these new masters vent, that these vapouring Prophets say or write, as rare and precious, spirituall and heavenly, beyond all the fleshly forms, lear∣ned ignorance, and litterall darknesse, under which, they say, we o∣ther Christians and Ministers in England have lain long, and laboured all night in vain; if he will do himself and them so much right, as to winnow away the chaff of their affected language, their bumbast tearms, their insolent expressions; drive them from the refuge and confidence they have in the sillinesse of their Auditors, the easinesse of their Disciples, and the sequaciousnesse of their followers (who most admire, when they least understand:) this done, he shall find, that either nothing remains that is wholsome and good in their swoln heaps of new notions and expressions (which are many times the gil∣dings of some of their pills, the palliations of their poysonous opini∣ons, the daring-glasses or decoyes to bring men into the snares of their dangerous or damnable doctrines;) or (at best) all this froth and swel∣ling, this noise and ratling of their Novellizings, is reducible into a few drops, a little proportion of plain, easie and well-known truth;

which neither needs nor desires such Gnostick disguises, such vapou∣rings and vampings of uncouth language, such muddy, rather than mysterious, clouds of words; which rather signifie a crackt brain, a fanatick spirit, or an affected hypocrite (who either knows not, or cares not what they say or do) than any such blessed broachings of rarities, as they set forth their pageantries of new-drest Divinity to be, with the emphasis of Gospel-truths, precious sparks, spirituall manifesta∣tions, rare discoveries, unheard of emanations, the Saints anointing, the uncarnating of a Christian, the pryings of Gods children into their fa∣thers glory, their rising and reigning with Christ, their deification with God.* 1.157 With these and such like, either torments of opinions, or terriculaments of expressions, do these new sort of Preachers seek, not to edifie in the most holy faith, but to scare and terrifie their silly sectators out of their sober senses and mother-wits; by which (God knows) they are onely capable, as babes, of milk (things and words easie to be understood) but not of such hard and strong meat as these men proffer them, which are indeed stones rather than bread, and many times serpents more than fishes; dry and bare bones, or rotten and noy∣some carrion, rather than savoury and wholsom nourishments of sound and Christian Doctrine.

But if any of these rare Master-cooks of Christianity, whose art is to new dress and disguise old Divinity, when they have first learned themselves, then taught others to despise those plain and practick methods of Faith and Repentance, of Piety and Charity, which were wont to be commended to good Christians, by the learned, order∣ly and excellent Ministers of the Church of England; if these myste∣rious Mountebanks do by chance hit upon some new notions and odde expressions, either by reading some of the Speculatists of the Roman party, as Harpius, Nubergensis, Thomas de Kempis, Martin d' Espilla, Teresa, or the like; if they can spell out Theologia Germanica, or conne by heart the religious Rhodomontado's of H. N. if they can (as Heraclitus his ass) feed upon the tall thistles of Jacob Behmen, Van∣helmont, or some such piece of Familistick nonsense, and Seraphick curiosity; if they have naturally a chimerick fancy, a stroke of Evans or Gostelowes crowing brains; if in many odde ravings they per∣chance light upon something that seems truish and newish, gay and glistering in Religion, beyond what was heretofore known by them∣selves, or usuall to the common people, because neglected and despi∣sed by grave and sober Ministers:

Yet (still) all this their glory and invention amounts commonly to no more than the Devils setting Christ on the pinacle of the Temple,* 1.158 not to exalt him, but to tempt him: the end and aim is, that from the precipice of pride and presumption he may cast them down and destroy them. After much bigness, they bring forth (perhaps) some Scholastick subtilty, some Sceptick nicety, or Seraphick sublimity, which onely serves to puff up, but not at all to feed either themselves or their windy Disciples: much after the rate that Origen did, when he decayed or doted, when from a learned Catechist at Alexandria,

from a grave and admired interpreter of Scripture, he turned Chymist in Divinity, & Allegorist in Religion; for leaving the fruitfull valleys and plain paths of necessary Christian verities, he fancied nothing but high-flying curiosities, and far-fetch'd fancies:* 1.159 of which (as Tertullian speaks) good Christians have no need, and so no desire, since the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ is sufficiently and plainly revealed to them in the Scripture: although even Ter∣tullian himself (as a man of an enormous wit and transcendent fancy,* 1.160 too big for it self) was hardly able afterward to keep within those sober bounds which sometime he prescribed to others, after the good rule of S. Paul (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) to be soberly wise, or wise with sobriety; but He, even He turned Enthusiast, and driven by envy, disdaine and anger, be∣yond the bounds of Reason and Religion, he forsook the Ca∣tholick Communion of the Church (not in Doctrine so much as Discipline) to comply with some fanaticks, who fitted his sharp and melancholy humour, which was prone to severities of conver∣sation and extasies of speculation. Not onely great wits, as Origen and Tertullian, so Nestorius and Apollinaris, &c. but lesser ones, as Montanus, and Manes, and Arius, whom Saint Jerome calls Daemo∣nium meridianum, are many times prone to adventure on the brinks of hell; their itch and petulancy are not satisfied,* 1.161 till their bold fancies and heterodox opinions have an haut-goust of blasphemy; till they so far advance upon the suburbs of errour, heresie, and dam∣nable Doctrine, that they can hardly be fetched off by any salvoes of cunning sophistries, with pretended inspirations, or nice and subtil di∣stinctions, which are like high-tasted sawces made with garlick or oni∣ons, purposely applied to tainted meats,* 1.162 to make their putidness less perceptible, or more passable with grosser palates. As dead carcases, so are the corrupt minds and doctrines of men, the more putid, by how much the more swell'd in the pomp of words.

Take their raptures, rarities and novelties of our new Masters at their best, they have ever much more in the shew than substance of Religion; like Herons and Estriches, they are more in the wing and feather than in the body and substance: they are such precious dis∣coveries as are justly nauseous to a gracious spirit, and of which a good Christian may safely be ignorant. If any simple souls do per∣chance light on any of their jingling notions, and be taken with their new-sounding Divinity, like the noyse of tinkling Cymbals, or bag-pipes, or Jews-trumps, compared to that grave Church-mu∣sick which was made of the ancient harmony of Catholick Doctrine; yet I see no cause for either the authors or followers of those no∣vell niceties, to be puffed up, & swelled so excessively in themselves,* 1.163 nor yet to despise (as they do) all those grave Divines and godly Christians, whose rack is not so high, but their manger may be as full; who can be content with manna, though they have no quailes wherewith to gratifie their wanton appetites. Truly I could never yet esteem these vapouring Seraphicks, these new Gnosticks, to be

other than a kind of Gipsy-Christians, or a race of Circulators, Tum∣blers and Juglers in the Church, who have more of little apish tricks and feats, than of solid ability, industry, or honesty: they im∣pose upon the vulgar by a kind of legerdemain, by a juggling and canting way in Religion: much shifting up and down, much capering and vaulting they use, but they advance not at all in any vertue, grace, or knowledge. They are a sort of (funambulones) dancers upon the ropes in Religion, whose affected height and daring curiosity in their notions and motions, doth not countervail the danger of their audacity, or the impertinency of their activity; nor have they any cause to despise those who walk more lowlily and so∣berly on the firm ground, less indeed to vulgar admiration, but more to their own safety and others benefit. S. Paul seriously represseth the vanity of knowledge falsly so called,* 1.164 when men intrude themselves into things they understand not,* 1.165 being puffed up (as those primitive Gno∣sticks) in their fleshly minds,* 1.166 not holding the Truths as they are in Jesus, nor content with the simplicity of the Gospel,* 1.167 as it hath been delivered, received, understood, believed and practised by the Catholick Church of Christ: this check the Apostle gave to humane curiosities and Sata∣nick subtilties, even then, when speciall gifts and revelations were at the highest tide.

CHAP. XVII.

* 1.168THe better learned and more humble Ministers of the Church of England, (both Bishops and Pres∣byters) ever professed, with S. Austin and the re∣nowned Ancients, an holy nescience, or modest ig∣norance in many things; no less becoming the best Christians, the acutest Scholars, and pro∣foundest Divines, than their (otherwayes) vast knowledge and accurate diligence to search the Scriptures, and find out things * 1.169 revealed by God which belong to the Church. The mode∣sty and gravity of their learning commends the vastness and varie∣ty of it; as dark shadowes and deep grounds set off the lustre of fair pictures to the greater height. They were not ashamed to sub∣scribe to Saint * 1.170 Paul's (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) unfathomable depth, the divine Abyss of unsearchable wisdome and knowledge: they were not cu∣rious to pry into things above them, or to stretch their wits and fan∣cies beyond that line and measure of truth, which God had set forth to his Church in his written Word, and in those Catho∣lick summaries thence extracted, as the rule of Christian Faith, Man∣ners and Devotion, whereto the spirits of all good Christians, great and small, learned and idiots, were willingly confined of

old (as Irenaeus tells us:) they never boasted of raptures, revelations, new lights, visions, inspirations, special missions and secret impulses from Gods Spirit, beyond or contrary to Gods Word, and the good or∣der of his Church, thereby to exercise their supposed liberties and presumptuous abilities; that is, indeed, to satisfie their lusts, disor∣ders and extravagances in things civil and sacred, to discover their immodesties and impudicities, like the Cainites, Ophites, Judaites and Adamites, to gratifie their luxuries and injuries, their sacriled∣ges and oppressions, their cruelties against man, and blasphemies against God, their separations, divisions and desolations intended a∣gainst this Church.

The godly Pastors and people of Christs flock never professed any such impudent piety, or pious impudence, because they were evi∣dently contrary to sound Doctrine and holy Discipline, beyond and against the sacred precepts and excellent patterns of true Ministers, sincere Saints, and upright Christians, whose everlasting limits are the holy Scriptures, sufficient to make the man of God and Minister of Christ perfect to salvation. They were not (like children) taken with any of these odde maskings and mummeries of the Devil, who is an old master of these arts, in false Prophets and false Apostles, with their followers; whose craft ever sought to advance their credits against the Orthodox Bishops, Presbyters, and professors of true Religion, by such ostentations of novelties and unheard of curiosities in Religion, which never, of old or late, made any man more honest, holy, humble, or heavenly: they never advanced Christians comforts, solitary or sociall, living or dying; but kept both their Masters and Disciples in perpetual inquietudes, perplexities and presumptions, which usually ended in villanies, outrages and despairs. Nor will these new Masters late discoveries prove much better (whereof they boast with so insolent and loud an 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) for all their rarities are but dead carkases, which are become mummy by being long dried in the sands, or wrapped up in searcloths; they are not less dead, though they seem less putrified, to those whose simplicity or curiosity tempts them thus to rake into the skulls and sepulchres of old Here∣ticks & idle Ecstaticks, such as the very primitive times were infinite∣ly pestred withal: but, blessed be God, they were all long ago either extinct of themselves, and gone down to the pit, or crucified, dead, buried, and descended into hell, by the just censures, Anathemaes and condemnations passed against them by the godly Bishops and Mini∣sters of the Church in those ages. Nor have these Spectres ever much appeared in this Church of England till these later years, in which, by the ruines and rendings of this Church, they have gained a rotten kind of resurrection; not to their glory, but to their renewed shame and eternall infamy, I trust, in Gods due time, when once the honour of the true Christian and Reformed Religion (once hap∣pily setled and professed in the Church of England) shall be again worthily asserted and re-established by your piety and prudence (my noble and religious Countrey-men) who have been, and I hope ever

will be, the chief professors and constant Patrons of it, under your God and your pious Governours.

Your prudence and piety, your justice and generosity is best able to see through all those transports, which are so transparent, those specious pretences, those artificiall mists and vapours, which are used by some novel Teachers to abuse the common people; that engaging them into eternall parties, animosities and factions, they may more easily, by many mouths and hands, not onely cry, but utterly pull down this Reformed Church of England, in its sound Doctrine, wholsome Discipline, Catholick Ministry, sacred Order, solemn Worship, and Apostolick Government. All which must now be represented to the world by these new Remonstrants, as poor and pittifull, carnall and common, meer empty forms and beggarly ele∣ments, fit to be cast out with scorn, as reaching no further than Christ in the letter, Jesus in the flesh, Truth in the outward court, Religion in the story or legend: but (they say) the Ministers and other Christians of Old England are not come within the vaile, to the Spirit and My∣stery; they have not that light within, which far out-shines the paper-lanthern of Gods word without them.

CHAP. XVIII.

* 1.171THese, and such like, are the uncouth expressions used to usher in, under the names of liberty, curio∣sity, sublimity, nothing but ignorance, idlenesse, A∣theisme, barbarity, irreligion, and utter confusion in this Church: or, at best, (as I shall afterward more fully demonstrate) they are but van∣courriers or agitators for Romish superstitions and Papall usurpations; the end of all this gibberish is, Venient Ro∣mani.

Put all these fine fancies and affected phrases together, with all those strange phantasms in Religion, which of late have haunted this Church, like so many unquiet vermin, or unclean spirits; truly they spell nothing but, first, popular extravagances, which are the em∣basings and embroylings of all true and Reformed Religion; next, they portend Popish interests and policies prevailing against this Church and State, whose future advantages are cunningly, but no∣tably, wrapt up in these plebeian furies and fondnesses, as grocery wares are in brown paper. Be confident, the spirit of Rome (which is very vigilant and active) doth then move most potently upon the face of our English waters, when there is to be seen nothing but a sea of con∣fusion, a meer Chaos of the Christian and Reformed Religion.

Which feared deluge, and (by wise men foreseen) devastation of

the Reformed Religion (once wisely established, honourably maintain∣ed, and mightily prospered in the Church of England) is already much spread and prevalent among many people, under the plea and colour of I know not what liberty, to own any or no Minister, any or no Re∣ligion, any, none, or many Churches in England. The visible decayes and debasings of the true and Reformed Religion in England, as to piety, equity, unity and charity, as to the authority of its Ministry and solemnity of its Ministrations, are so palpable, both in the out∣ward peace and profession, also in the inward warmth and perswasion, that it is high time for all sober and wise men, that love God, Reli∣gion and their Countrey, mightily to importune the mercies of God, that breathing upon us with a spirit of meeknesse and wisdome, truth and love, humility and honesty, he would (at length) asswage that deluge of contempt and confusion, the troubled and bitter waters of wrath and contention, which have over-whelmed the highest mountains of this Church; over-topping by their salt waves and aspersions, the gravest, wisest, most learned and religious, both Preachers and pro∣fessors, of the Reformed Religion in this Church and Nation.

Which licentious insolencies have made all sober Christians so sick, weary and ashamed of them, that they cannot but be infinitely grieved to see and foresee the low ebbe, to which the Reformed Re∣ligion, in its purity and power, must in time fall in England, while the pristine dignity and authority of the Evangelicall Ministry is so invaded, baffled and despised; while the authentick derivation, and Catholick succession of that holy power, is so interrupted, inno∣vated, divided, destroyed; while the reverence of primitive cu∣stomes and examples is so slighted, abated, by fanatick innovators; while the cords of Christian harmony and Church-polity are so loosened and ravelled on every side; while the just honour and en∣couragements of learning and learned men are so much damped and exhausted; while the Ecclesiastick Glory of this Nation, which was its chiefest (in being and owning it self as a true and Reformed Church of Christ) is so much eclipsed, to the great reproch of this present age, and the infinite hazard of posterity; which will hardly ever re∣cover the honour, order, beauty and unity of Christian and Reform∣ed Religion formerly enjoyed in this Church and Nation, when once the Jewels of it, the learned, ordained, orderly and authorita∣tive Ministers of the Gospel, with all their Ministry and Ministrati∣ons, come to be either trampled under feet by Schismaticall fury, or invaded and usurped by vulgar insolency; which in time will rake them all up, and bury them in the dunghill of Romish superstitions and Papal usurpations.

CHAP. XIX.

* 1.172HOw far in humane policy or reason of State this popu∣lar liberty (or rather insolency, usurpation, and anar∣chy in Religion) is to be indulged, I know not, as not pretending to any of those depths of secular wis∣dome, which will be found shallow at last, if Gods glory and the good of mens souls be not in the bottom of them.

But thus far I conceive I may (after so many years sad experience, which all sober Christians have had of the retrogradations of the Re∣formed Religion in England) appeal, as to you, who are the most ge∣nerous and judicious persons in this Nation, so to all prudent and well-advised persons, of all sizes and conditions, who are capa∣ble to weigh the true interests and future concernments of their Countrey and Posterity, both as to Piety and Peace, Honour and Happiness, by way of an humble and earnest expostulation.

Hath not (I beseech you) this English world, Prince and pea∣sant, Pastors and people, great and small, had enough, both in cities and in villages, of these late Hashshes, Olives, and Queckshoes of Reli∣gion; in the mixture and dressing of which every foul hand must have a finger? Do you not perceive a different face of Christian and Reformed Religion, from what was heretofore in England, when it had less experience of vulgar licentiousness, but more true Christian liberty; when, in my memory & most of yours, Engl. was so full and flourishing, with excellent Christians of all sorts, young and old, plain and polite, learned and illiterate, noble and ignoble, in the Nobility, Gentry, Yeomanry and Peasantry, whose setled & judi∣cious piety was the fruit of the labours, cares, counsels and inspe∣ction of those learned, grave and godly Ministers, both Bishops and Presbyters, with whom you were blessed? Have not all of you had enough, and too much of these new flashes, these flutter∣ing squibs, these erratick Planets, these wandering Stars, these pre∣tenders to rarities, novelties, superfluities, super-reformings, raptures, revelations, and Enthusiasmes in Religion? To all which you may easily see, that a fancifull invention, a melancholy pride, a popular itching, a profane spirit, a loose temper, and a glib tongue, are very prone to betray men (being as sufficient to furnish them in those trades, as a little stock will go far to make up a pedlars pack:) yet have they so great confidence of themselves, as if they exceeded not onely all former Christians, all Ministers, all Councils, all Churches, but even all holy Scriptures themselves, whose darkness or incom∣pleteness must (as some men say) be cleared and supplied by their speciall illuminations: an old artifice of the Devil, most used by those men, and in those times, which being most destitute of true

reason, good learning and Religion, did most vapour of their visi∣ons and revelations, their traditions and superstitions: witness those Cimmerian Centuries, or blinder ages of these Western Churches, in which there were as many visions, revelations and miracles daily obtruded on the credulous vulgar, as there were Monasteries and Nunneries, which in stead of Seminaries and Nurseries became dark dungeons, wherein Christian Religion and Devotion were for ma∣ny ages sadly confined, and almost smothered with superstition, idleness and luxury.

Have we not had enough & too much of vulgar playings with piety, of triflings with Christian and Reformed Religion, of baffling, abusing and abasing the Christian Ministry, of buffetings of Christ, of mockings of God, by impudent pratings and insolent intrudings, by confused rhapsodies and shuffling sanctities, by endless janglings and refined blasphemies, vented in some mens writings, preachings, prayings, & practisings; so far from the light, weight and height, the sobriety, sanctity and majesty of true Religion, that they are (most-what) void of ordinary reason and common sense, of equity and modesty, of humanity and civility; being little else but the froth of futile and fanatick spirits, who blind poor people to enlighten them, cap∣tivate them to make them free, and ruine them, under pretense of building them after new wayes and models of Religion, sanctity, salvation?

Have we not had enough of passionate transports, popular zelo∣tries, Anarchicall furies, deformed reformings, and desperate hy∣pocrisies; by which some men have, like very foul chimneys, not onely taken fire themselves, according as their own lusts kindled them, but they have sought to set this whole house of God, the Re∣formed Church of England, on fire, under pretence (forsooth) of cleansing the soile and soot of it; which appear now to have been more in their own hearts, than any where else?

Have we not had enough of insolent railings, bitter calumnies, odious indignities, and endless divisions, brought upon this Refor∣med Church of England, upon its Apostolick Ministry, and all its E∣vangelical Ministrations, as invalid, superstitious, Popish, Antichri∣stian, abominable? Besides the tragick depressions and undoings of many sober Ministers, in their persons, credits and estates, who were justly esteemed by good Christians for very pious, painfull and peaceable men; yet have the storms of times not onely faln hea∣vily upon them, during the paroxysme of our civil wars, but even since that tempest hath been allayed, many poor Ministers (beyond all other men) have been afflicted with the strifes of tongues, with schismatical despites, with opinionative and disputative (besides operative) persecutions, so far, that many a grave and godly Mini∣ster hath not known whither to flie, not so much for employ∣ment, as for his safety, or quiet; that he might in any corner or cottage of the land be free from the molestations of those impor∣tune wasps, those ill-natur'd Factionists, who are his eternall An∣tagonists;

who first separating from him, at length they preach (or prate) against him,* 1.173 against his office, orders and function, counting themselves as a new swarm of Teachers sent of God, to be to the former stock of Preachers like the hornets sent against the Canaa∣nites,* 1.174 that driving all the ancient, orthodox, duly ordained, and well-learned Ministers out of the employment and communion of the Church, this Canaan of England, this good land, this famous Church, may wholly be in their possession.

Have we not had enough and too much of petulant practises, scurrilous expressions, and blasphemous insolencies, cast even upon that God, that Saviour, that holy Spirit, that blessed Trinity, whom we adore and admire; besides the neglects, contempts and profa∣nations cast upon our Sacraments, our Sermons, our Prayers? I need not to adde and repeat the diminutions and indignities under which many worthy Ministers, both Bishops and Presbyters, do lie, together with that whole Evangelical order and office, which planted, preserved and reformed this Church of England. How many have questioned, others derided, a third sort divided from, and not a few have utterly denied, and (as much as in them lies) destroyed them all? Hence many are grown to esteem all our Religion, all our Reformation, all Christian duties, all Wor∣ship and Devotion, no better than meer politick frauds, specious fa∣bles, popular fallacies, cunning captivities, witty mockeries and delusions of the people.

Yea, that nothing might be wanting which malice can invent or act, there are some so fierce and cunning enemies of the Church of England, that (to bring our Reformation into further defiance and disgrace among Papists, Atheists and profane livers) they dare to impute even their most putid errours, their most extravagant fancies, their most factious and flagitious practises, either to refor∣ming principles, or to Gods Spirit and divine impulses. O what asto∣nishment, what stupor, what a lethargie, what a dumbnesse, what sea∣rednesse, what deadnesse must needs possess the spirit of any Nation (so Christian, so Reformed, so knowing and enlightened as the people of England sometime was) to hear with patience, yea with silence, yea with connivence, yea with smiles and seeming appro∣bation, such insolencies, such extravagancies imputed to their Re∣ligion, yea to their Reformation, nay to the Spirit of their God and Saviour, horrid and black enormities, which deserve to be expia∣ted with teares of blood, as Gregory Nazianzen speaks of some abuses of Religion in his times. O blessed God, stir up such a pious shame, sorrow and abhorrence in the generality of the people, that these fedities may not become the sins of the nation.

Have we not had enough and too much of scepticall disputes and unedifying contests, of unhealing questions and uncharitable quar∣rellings, of bitter strifes and bloody contradictions, of evil eyes and envious emulations, prevailing like gangrenes or cance∣rous distempers, even among those that profess to be godly, and

contend for the superiority of Sanctity? By all which (as S.* 1.175 Hilary passionately complains, after the Arian fury had poysoned the Church in his times) not onely unkind distances, but mutuall de∣fyances and damnings, the Christian Reformed Religion, some∣time setled, uniform, and flourishing with verity, charity, decency, divine authority and publick majesty in the Church of England, is now made * 1.176 an annual, menstruall and diurnall Faith or Religion, as S. Hilary aptly deplores. All things are either so snarled and in∣tangled by infinite doubts and scruples, or so wire-drawn by popu∣lar and petty disputes, or so broken in sunder by factious divisions, or so horrid, by reciprocall Anathemaes, like thunder-bolts, cast on all sides in each others faces, that the common sort of people know not what to make of Christian or Reformed Religion, nor to what Ministers or Ministry to apply themselves with comfort and consci∣ence. The solid masse of pure gold, which was the highest riches and honour of this nation, the true and invaluable treasure of your souls (while Religion, as Christian and Reformed, was carefully preserved as a precious and holy depositum;) this well-refined gold is now so dim and embased with dross, or so malleated and beaten thin by perverse disputations, that most men use Religion onely as leaf-gold, to tip their tongues, or gild over the superficies of their conversation withall, or to set off (as S. Austin observed of old in the crafty Manichees and others, both Hereticks and Schismaticks,* 1.177 of his time) with the shew and lustre of Christian Religion, all the new fancies, projects, policies and opinions of severall parties, which are presently by their authors and abettors cryed up as the pure Ordinances of Jesus Christ, the perfect mind of the Spirit, the true meaning of the Scripture, Gospel-truths, hidden treasures, Evan∣gelick rarities: yea, that nothing might be thought to have been Christian, Catholick, clear and constant, setled and indisputable, as to Religion, in this or any other Church of any other frame and fashion; some men have sought, not onely to shake and batter, but to de∣molish and utterly overthrow, the whole house of wisdome, beating down all the grand and goodly pillars, on the one side, of faith, repen∣tance, charity, good works; on the other side, of Scriptures, Ministry, Worship, and Sacramentall Mysteries, as to the validity, authori∣ty, majesty, sanctity, solemnity, and saving efficacy of them all:

Upon which the Catholick Church was every where anciently built, even then, when it was by the hands of the Apostles & their successors (the Primitive Bishops & Presbyters, Martyrs & Confessors) hewn out of the rock of heathenish barbarity & idolatry, polished by heavy & sharp persecutions, fixed by the solidity and patience, honoured by the charity and constancy of Christian people: even all these solid sup∣ports of Religion are sought by some men to be either sawn in sunder, or to be cut into chips and shavings, by their infinite scrupu∣losities, by their importune longing after novelties, by their affe∣ctations of Schisms, and separations, and usurpations.

Alas! how many poor souls, rather weak than wicked, of easie

heads, yet honest hearts, have (in these later years, since the vertigo of Religion befell this Nation) ravelled out their time and ended their dayes in Obs and Sols, in cavilling and contending, in shifting their sides and parties, in seeking and shaking, in ranting and raving, in quarrelling and jangling about their Religion? What new mo∣dels of Churches, what new methods of worshipping God, what new forms for Ministry and Ministers have distracted and distorted them, while they have been picking and chusing what way they could best fancy, and with most advantages follow? Thus poor mor∣talls (who have infinite sins to be pardoned, and infinite wants to be supplied, who have precious and immortal souls to be saved, by the happy improvement of their short uncertain moment) are by a pragmatick vanity, continually itching and scratching, while they should be cleansing and healing; sceptically and mise∣rably disputing and doubting, while they are decaying and dying, while they should, in all piety and prudence, by sound faith and seri∣ous repentance, be doing that great work which is evidently set forth in the Word of God, and faithfully delivered unto them by the Ministers of his Church. Behold the terrours of death prevent them; Eternity presseth upon them, before they are resolved what side to take, when to begin, where to fix, what to hold fast: the flower of age passeth, gray hairs are here and there, giddiness in their heads, stupor in their minds, hardness in their hearts, searedness in their conscience, a Manichean dotage and delirancy seiseth upon them, before ever they are resolved whether the Scriptures be the true, onely and sufficient revelation of the Word and will of God; whether it be their duty to live righteously, soberly and holily in this present world toward all men; whether this Church of England, and all the Churches of Christ in all ages, have not till now chea∣ted them and all the world; whether there be any Ministers in the Church of England that are duly set over Christian people in the Lord, to whom they owe double honour; whether they may not in some cases follow their own fallacious fancies, and other mens flattering suggestions, rather than the Scriptures plain and pregnant precepts, in order to carry on the covetous, ambitious, factious, fanatick and novell designs of such as call themselves godly; whether they may not in some junctures of times and things (when opportunity suits with their lusts and worldly interests) dispense with Gods revealed will in his word, that they may fulfill his secret will, hinted, as they suppose, by his providences; whether in order to advance the glo∣ry of God, men may not sometimes break his express commands, presuming that then they please God best, when they most please or profit themselves, as the onely people of God. These strange scrupulosities, or extravagancies (rather) in Religion, do ordinarily not onely intangle, but debauch the minds of common people, when once they please themselves with inordinate liberties and ram∣blings in Religion, which fill their heads and hearts with such snar∣lings and intrigues, as resemble those deformed knots of burres

which colts get upon their manes and tails, when they run loose upon heaths or commons; they are easily got on, but very hardly shaken off, or cleared: mens interests, lusts and passions, once lea∣vening their Religion, and blinding no less than biassing their judg∣ments, it is not imaginable what sport the Devil makes with them, and with what compasses and fetches of godliness he plays his game by them.

Have we not enough and too much hitherto in England, of ver∣ball sanctity and titular Saints; not after the Catholick Christian account, which was Scripturall and orderly, unblamable and chari∣table, most imitable and honourable in an uniform and constant holiness, full of equity and charity, purity and sincerity; but upon new notions, names and factions? We have sects of self-canonizing Saints, as well as self-ordaining Ministers: every petty Schisma∣tick, every solitary Seeker, every extatick Quaker, every Indepen∣dent Noveller, every Presbyterian temporiser, each of these have learned of late to tip their tongues, & crown the heads of their par∣ties with these precious names; (which are the ambition of Angels, the beauties of heaven, and glory of God himself.) And this they do not in a way of charitable communion and Christian emulation, as allowing others with them an interest in that honour, which I have the charity to believe some of the soberest in most of those sects may deserve; but peculiarly and exclusively, as if none that had, or still have communion with the Church of Engl. either as Bishops, or Presbyters, or people, ever had, or have any right or claim to be cal∣led or esteemed Saints: yea, some of the most noysome weeds of late grown up in the garden of this Church, the most vile, pollu∣ted and profane wretches, affect to style themselves the onely herbs of grace; hereby causing the silly people to mistake hemlock for par∣sley, and to gather hen-bane for hearts-ease.

Thus while either with great superstition many men scruple, or with great pride they disdain to give the name & honor of Saints, to those holy men and women, whom the judgement of the Catholick Church, or the Scripture-Records, have ever counted and called Saints; yet they very superciliously and Pharisaically arrogate, nay some monopolize these Titles to themselves and their com∣rades, as absolutely and magisterially, as Popes have done that of His Holinesse, though they be never so black and abominable, as some Popes, even by Roman writers, are reported to have been, in the darkness and degeneracy of times, very monsters of men, and pro∣digies of all impiety; such as Guicciardine * 1.178 describes Pope Alexan. the sixth, a Father worthier of such a Son, as Caesar Borgia, or the Duke of Valentinois was, than to enjoy so high a place of paternal presiden∣cy in the Church of Christ.

For what (I pray) can be more unsaintly, than to desire, yea, de∣light and glory, as some in England now do, in most unjust and un∣charitable actions, in immoderate revenges, in the poverties, dis∣graces

and dejections of their lawfull Pastors, in the divisions, di∣stractions and destructions of that nobly Christian and Reformed Church, in whose bosome they were duly baptized and instructed, legitimately begotten, wholsomely nourished, and carefully educa∣ted, as Christians, and as Reformed, to all excellent proportions of piety?* 1.179 What is less Saintly than for Christians to mutiny, nay re∣bell (as S. Cyprian calls it) against those reverend Fathers, ortho∣dox and godly Bishops, and other worthy, yea excellent Ministers, to whom they and their fore-fathers do really owe themselves, as S. Paul tells Philemon, as to whatever they can rightly pretend of the true honour, priviledge and power of Christiany?

What is less Saintly than to cry up novell, partiall and factious Reformations, to magnifie uncouth and exotick wayes of Ministry and Christianity, Church-fellowship and Communion; while in the mean time they ungratefully despise and cruelly crucifie their proper Mother, the Church of England, together with those whom they sometime justly esteemed as their Fathers in God, and bre∣thren in Christ?* 1.180 What is less Saintly than to endeavour to rob God in a land of peace and plenty, to expose his servants and service (after the order of Christs Evangelicall Priesthood) to as great con∣tempts, deformities and diminutions in all points, both for order and authority, learning and maintenance, as ever Julian the Apo∣state did design? with great impudence crying down the rare and (indeed) incomparable Ministers of the Church of England, who had been liberally treated and honourably maintained, that they may, with vulgar easiness and credulity, by a penurious, covetous and sacrilegious sophistry, cry up some cheap new-fashioned Teachers, as rare Angels, that had no stomachs, and would preach gratis; who, I believe, are found in many places, as greedy and vora∣cious as Bell and the Dragon in the Apocrypha? Nor can I think them other than Apocryphall Preachers, so far from Angels of light sent from God to comfort the Reformed Religion in its bloody sweat and agonies,* 1.181 that they seem rather as Messengers of Satan sent to buffet this Reformed Church and the renowned Clergie of England; whose fame and flourishing, whose piety and prosperity, whose honour and unity, whose Catholick order and authority, heretofore was so conspicuous, by the rare indulgence of Gods pro∣vidence, by the generous munificence of pious Princes, and by the moderation of wise and worthy Parliaments, that God (it seems) saw it in danger (as S. Paul) to be exalted above measure, by reason of those excellent endowments and enjoyments, both spirituall and temporall, which were bestowed upon it. All which are prone to threaten themselves by their excess; the usuall temper of hu∣mane frailty being such, that it is never so fixed, sweetened and seasoned by any temporall blessings in the best of men, but it is subject to warp, to sowre, or to putrifie, if it stand too long in the warm sun of prosperity.

However it becomes all holy and humble Ministers to bless God,

with holy Job, though he take what he once gave: it is his mer∣cy that he chuseth rather by impoverishing of us to correct us, than to leave us wholly to that crookedness and putrefaction, which we were ready of our selves in peace and plenty to contract: it is better for any Church, any Clergie, any Christians, to be healed by the sharpness of Gods corrosives and vinegar, than too much softned by the suppleness of his oyles and lenitives. I hope the health and soundness of the Church and Clergie of England are Gods last de∣signs; that his blessings to both shall in due time be restored and enjoyed again, when being better prepared to use and value them, we shall be less subject to abuse and loose them.

CHAP. XX.

MEan time,* 1.182 while many grave and excellent Ministers are faine patiently to hang their harps upon the willowes, while they and other sober Christians daily weep o∣ver the waters of Babylon (our sad confusions;) a ge∣nerall astonishment hath seised upon all sober and se∣rious, wise and worthy men, true lovers of this Church and Nation, who, with sad hearts and moistened eyes, do hear and see the more then childish petulancies, the rude insolencies, the impu∣dent familiarities, the irreverent behaviours, which in many places the common sort of people are grown to affect, and presume to use, even in our religious duties and sacred assemblies; expressing less outward respect or reverence in the presence of God, when his Mini∣sters and his people assemble to worship him, than they are wont to use, either for fear, or civility, or shame, before the Steward and Ju∣ry of a Court Leet, or the meanest Justice of Peace and his Clark in the countrey.

From the rude examples and daring indulgences of some men, whose years and education might have taught them better man∣ners) there daily growes up a numerous generation, a rustick, hea∣dy and impudent fry of younger people, who carry no more regard to any duties of Religion, or respect to the Ministers of them, than the fourty children did to the Prophet Elisha, when they mocked him, and were for their ill breeding and irreligious rudeness * 1.183 torn in pie∣ces by the she-Bears; to teach both parents and children better manners towards Gods Prophets, as was of old observed. Yea there are some grown so clownish and Cyclopick Christians, that their very Religion consists (not a little) in their morose, undecent, unci∣vil, untractable spirits and demeanour: if others have their heads reverently uncovered in the presence and service of God, these must have their hats on; not to relieve the tenderness and

infirmity of their heads, but to shew the liberty and surliness of their wills and spirits.

If others testifie their inward veneration of the divine Majesty by their outward comely gestures, as either standing or kneeling, accor∣ding to the variety of duties; these by all means affect to fit or loll, after such a lazy and neglective fashion, that easily discovers and openly proclaims, neither much fear of God, nor reverence of man: yea, some people are not satisfied thus to express their sullen tem∣pers by their churlish and unconformable gestures, as to our religious duties and decencies (in case they vouchsafe to be present;) but they must be railing and reviling, prating and opposing, cavilling and disputing in publick.

What eare, not wholly uncircumcised, can bear the vain bablings, the unprofitable, unpleasing and profane janglings of such sophi∣sters, the unharmonious noise of such Low-bels, whose sound is nei∣ther with verity, certainty, harmony, nor gravity? yet do they, eve∣ry where, seek to drown or confound the sacred concent of Aarons bells, and that sweet musick which was wont to be in Gods sanctuary, in our Churches here in England, when good Christians did order∣ly and reverently meet together with their lawfull Ministers in one place, with one accord, with one heart, one mind, one mouth, to serve the Lord, and to edifie one another in truth and love, with all modesty, humility, decency and solemnity.

CHAP. XXI.

* 1.184WHich comfort & honour, solemnity and blessing of Re∣ligion, formerly enjoyed in most Congregations of the Church of England, how many of later yeares have dared, not more with rudeness than profaneness, to exchange for a kind of Sibylline ravings, Bacchinal rap∣tures? They obtrude upon poor people sudden correptions, licentious rantings, ridiculous quakings, fanatick ravings, senselesse vapourings, and such like rallieries or gallantries in Religion, which seek to turn Christi∣anity to a kind of buffoonery. If these corrept & corrupt extasies, or ex∣travagancies, be not permitted to such fanatick triflers, troublers of travagancies, be not permitted to such fanatick triflers, troublers of Religion (which no sober Christian can tolerate in their publick and religious meetings) they presently meditate the most desperate se∣parations; they instantly fall to set up new Churches and Pastors after their own heart; their full revenge must be had, not onely by dividing themselves, but by seducing and poysoning other silly peo∣ple, as much as may be, withdrawing them from that good esteem they had, and respect they formerly bare to the Church of England and their lawfull Ministers. Then the followers of these pragmatick

Preachers are taught to bear with patience (as horses are the noise of drummes and trumpets) all manner of scurrilous railings against the Church and Clergie of England. At last they are by troops brought up in front, to charge them with such insolency of speech and behaviour, of writing and acting, as sufficiently discovers their evil hearts to be like mines or Petars, full fraught and charged with all kinds of bitterness, contempt and animosity against them, in order to destroy them utterly, as soon as they have power and opportunity to do it.

In the room of whose orderly beauty, learned gravity, sober san∣ctity, and exemplary piety, so famous, conspicuous and prosperous heretofore, these bold extirpators and bitter Antagonists have hither∣to produced (as the eructations of Aetna, and earth-quakes are wont, with much swelling, noise and terrour) nothing but darkness, smoke and thick vapours, full of sulphureous obfuscations. Sure their exe∣cutions and conclusions must be full of mischiefs, subversions, con∣fusions, desolations, to the Reformed Religion; because there is not one dramme or iota (that ever I could observe) of sound knowledge, of usefull piety, of gracious effects, of holy patterns, of Christian principles, to be found in them, any way comparable to those pro∣portions of wisdome and good understanding, of justice and charity, of meekness and moderation, with all which the English world was heretofore well acquainted, by the learned industry and exem∣plary piety of its reverend Bishops, and other godly Ministers; who were ever highly honoured, passionately loved, and worthily trea∣ted by pious Princes, peacefull Parliaments, and unpassionate people, long before either tumultuary rabbles, or schismatick agitators, or the Scotch sword, or the Smectymnuan juncto, or a sifted sequacious Assem∣blie, or covenanting Houses, or Committee-Consistories, or Military Superintendents, undertook (by an unwonted authority and severi∣ty) not onely to catechise, but to chastise the Church and Clergie of England, even all the Bishops, and most of the Presbyters; among whom many one person might be found, whose learning and worth (every way) might modestly be put into the balance against all that any or all those parties can pretend to, or ever yet discovered to the wiser and better world, who have been, and are, the most rigid exa∣ctors, severest censurers, and sorest enemies to the Reformed Clergie and Church of England.

Whose more crafty rivalls and cruellest persecutors, finding themselves (as heretofore, so still) vastly exceeded, and infinitely out-done, as to all reall endowments, commendable practises, and visi∣ble sufficiencies, for learning, knowledge, utterance, prudence, for praying, preaching, writing and living, they are (now of late, after the way of those old fanaticks, who called themselves the pure, elect, inspired and spirituall ones) flown to the retreats and refuges of their inward graces, to more secret and spiritual perceptions, to hidden and unseen acquaintances with God. Which are (as I for∣merly touched) the old 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 of elect Manichees,* 1.185 and paraclete

Montanists, meer shifts and sleights, blinds and evasions, where the light of mens works and gifts shines not to the glory of God,* 1.186 as our Saviour speaks: for these are (a nemo scit) as easily denied as they are rashly affirmed,* 1.187 being indiscoverable and incommunicable to any but Gods and a mans own spirit. The hidden manna, the white stone, the new name, which none can read but he that hath it, these (if meant of Graces) are best asserted, or most confuted, by mens works. No man is of God,* 1.188 who doth not the will and works of God, as they are revealed in his Word, in all righteousness and holiness, with meekness and humility, with sobriety and good order: in all which, if any (the best) of these Novellers do at any time come neer to the parts, graces and merits of those that were, and are, dutifull sons and servants to the Church of England; yet I am sure they cannot, without intolerable impudence, pretend to exceed them so far, that no fair quarter may be allowed to the former Preachers and Professors in this Church; that no place or naile should be left them in Gods sanctuary here in England.

CHAP. XXII.

* 1.189INto which (as I have by many instances evinced) some mens folly or fury hath (of later years) sought to bring so much filth and confusion, that they have almost made this Church an Augean stable; so that it is an Herculean work to cleanse it of all those debordments and debase∣ments faln upon Christian Religion, of those fedities and deformities brought upon its reformed profession, of those disorders and unde∣cencies which have invaded Ecclesiastick duties and mysteries: all which necessarily follow the invasions and usurpations of popular libertie in Religion; which (though already full of squallor and sor∣didness, yet) are still eagerly challenged, loudly clamoured, and fierce∣ly asserted by the common people and their parasites, the most ple∣beian spirits.

Who not capable to comprehend, or not willing to understand the gracious beauty, the holy modesty, and divine majesty of true Chri∣stian liberty (which most excludes all base licenciousnesse, as the bright∣est light doth all darkness, and the perfectest health all sickness) have excessively doted in later years upon this Image of imaginary liberty, as if it had newly come down from heaven in a whirlwind of Civil war and Schisme; whereas (in good earnest) the most vocife∣rant vulgar,* 1.190 who most cry up this their Diana, like the riotous rabble at Ephesus, do least know what the matter is, nor what true Christian liberty means: which undoubtedly puts the severest restraints that may be upon it self, as to doing any thing offensive to God, or injuri∣ous

to its neighbour, in private and single, much more in publick and sociall respects; in civil, much more in religious relations, which as men and Christians we bear to one another.

True Christian liberty is as far as heaven from hell, from any thing that looks like incivility, rudeness, barbarity, inhumanity, frenzy, fedity, disorder, deformity. Rationall and religious liberty is not the freedome of an untamed heifer, of an unbridled horse, of a mad dog, or an unyoked hog, which will ramble and wallow, and bite and root up where they list; which seeks to subvert, not whole houses onely,* 1.191 but famous Churches, to infect as many as they can, with the plague and contagion of mens own evil hearts.

It is not Christian liberty, but an earthly, sensuall and devillish lazi∣nesse, or licentiousness, for men and women that have been baptised in the name of Christ, and so dedicated to his worship and service (as well publick and social, as private and solitary) to sleep and laze in their chimney corners on the Lords day, rather than go to Church, as many hundreds do. It is no part of Christian liberty, to come sel∣dome or never to the Lords Supper, to despise Baptisme, to forsake those publick assemblies where the true God is truly and sincerely worshipped, according to his Word, with soundness, holiness, order, decency and sincerity; to rail at, and separate from all those Bishops and Ministers of so well a reformed and wisely setled Nationall Church, who are evidently furnished with good ability, and invested with most undeniable & due authority, to dispense sacred mysteries. It is no part of Christian liberty, for men to speak, and act, and behave themselves in Religion, as seems good in their own eyes; which are easi∣ly blinded with passion, pride, prejudice, covetousness, ambition, re∣venge. It is no part of Christian liberty, for men to have no regard to that order, peace, charity, duty and subordination which God requires, and which every Christian owes, as to the civil, so to that Ecclesia∣stick polity and Society in which God hath placed him, as by his birth and habitation, so by his baptisme and profession; which are the holy ties of Religion, by which, as members of Christs body in the judgement of charity (his visible Church) we are bound to him as the head, and to each other as members, in the severall places and proportions where God hath set us, either in a coordination and community, as to brethren, or in subordination and superiority, as to Fathers, guides, Pastors, Governours, Teachers; to whom, as sons,* 1.192 or scholars, we owe the duties of love, gratitude, reverence, submission and obedience for the Lords sake, and for their work sake.* 1.193 If it be a great sin, and deserving the ponderous milstone of Gods heavy judge∣ment (as our Saviour tells us) to offend causelesly,* 1.194 uncharitably and maliciously, one of Christs little ones; how much greater and more intolerable must the condemnation of those be, who wantonly and presumptuously offend, yea, seek to wound and destroy, those that are duly and deservedly the Bishops and Presbyters, the chief heads and Fathers, Officers and Stewards, Guides and Governours, even in Christs stead, and by his authority, over his house and family, his

Temple and Body, which is his Church, in the several parts and proportions of it, according to the Catholick order and custome used in his Church?

Of which riotously to make havock, to rend, to strip, and waste all things of good order, Catholick custome, comely honour, au∣thority, decency and solemnity, to the overthrowing of Christian unity and charity, to the dissolving, deforming and discountenan∣cing even of that truth, those gifts and graces, which were in such a Church as this of England was, must without all peradventure be no less sin and crime,* 1.195 than it is a sacriledge and scandall (in S. Au∣stins judgement;) agreeable to the sense of Dionysius Bishop of A∣lexandria, who in his Epistle, so famed, tels Novatus as much, who was a primitive Schismatick, or a Saintly Separatist, from the Catholick custome, judgement and communion of Christs Church. For which practice in any case, a man must have very great and pregnant grounds (as S.* 1.196 Cyprian & S. Austin oft observe) either in point of gross errors, or immoralities, obtruded upon a believer (in case he will keep com∣munion) whereby to justifie his desertion, division, or separation, which upon small and trifling accounts, or upon spiteful and malicious prin∣ciples, or for covetous and vain-glorious interests, or upon meer jealousies and surmises to violate,* 1.197 was ever esteemed, by the soun∣dest and soberest Christians in all ages, a sin much of the nature and size of Korah's, Dathan's and Abiram's transgression or rebellion, as S. Cyprian observes, applying that History to some such mutinous dis∣tempers and unquiet spirits, as haunted the Church in his dayes and Diocese; That their popular and parasitick crying up of a 1.198 all the Lords people to be holy, their rude reproching of Moses and Aaron, as taking too much upon them, these specious pleas did not serve their turn, when Gods searching severity, and not vulgar levity, credulity or in∣gratitude, was their judge: all their plausible pretensions of sanctity and liberty before the people, were not able to defend them from those horrid chasms, and unheard-of gapings of the earth, which by a new way of death,* 1.199 swallowed up (even quick, and yet alive) these mutinous novellers and levelling rebels into the black and dreadfull Abyssus of eternall death and darkness; whose names and memory (yet) the Cainites did venerate, as the commendable asserters of popular liberty,* 1.200 and the Princes or Protoplasts of Schisme, as S. Austin ob∣serves.

Nor is the usuall fate of such like insolent and popular pertur∣bers of Christs Church much different or disproportionate at last: for either they fall (when their pride and folly is manifest) into the pit of vulgar hatred,* 1.201 contempt and abhorrence; or they are swallowed up with carnall lusts, with earthly, sensuall and devilish passions, affections and actions; or being at last justly abandoned and abhorred of all so∣ber and good Christians, they are (by Gods utter forsaking of them) plunged into the gulf of their own polluted, seared and despairing consciences.

If those were in the primitive times esteemed as given over to the

will and power of Satan,* 1.202 who were justly excommunicated from the communion of the true Church of Christ; which sentence (as Ter∣tullian tells us) every good Christian did dread, next to that doom of (Ite maledicti) Goe ye cursed,* 1.203 as a dreadful pre-judging be∣fore the last and fatal judgement; how must they needs lie down in darkness and sorrow, who upon no just cause, do not onely excom∣municate themselves from any one Churches communion (in which they were) out of a fancy of I know not what liberty, but (out of an excessive pride, arrogancy and boldness of spirit) they dare ex∣communicate even whole National Churches, yea, such a famous Reformed Church as England; nay they exclude the very Catho∣lick Church of Christ in all ages and places, from any communion with themselves (which certainly is no small height of uncharitable∣ness) yea, and from all communion with Christ himself, which is a strange pitch of Luciferian pride.

It is no news for the patient, but just and righteous God, to keep those men and women at a great distance, even from himself, and from the sweet communion of his holy Spirit, who proudly or peevishly de∣spise the communion of any part of his Church, in the holy ministra∣tions of the Word, Prayer and Sacraments. They that hope to kindle to themselves strange fires, and light new sparks by their violent strikings and novell agitations in any sound and well-ordered Church, God (commonly) beats the smoky brands ends about their own heads, and kindles a fire of displeasure in their own breasts, because they ca∣red not to set whole-Churches on fire, in order to rost their new-laid eggs; the best of which are of no great worth, and most of them are quite addle or rotten.

CHAP. XXIII.

ALthough I have thus far and thus long insisted (most honoured and beloved Countrey-men) upon the mischiefs of abused Liberty,* 1.204 as the first and chief cause (I conceive) of the greatly lapsed and decaying estate of the Church of England and the Reformed Religion (which was heretofore so setled, so sound, so prospered, so approved by God and good men;) yet I cannot for∣bear a further search into this Ulcer or Fistula: for indeed her hurt is not now a green wound lately made, either by the malice of open ene∣mies, or by the wantonness of those friends, who love to be alwayes pickeering and skirmishing in Religion; but it is now by a long con∣fluence of ill humours in people, grown a venomous and inveterate sore, contumacious to any ordinary Medicines, opprobrious to the best Physitians, contagious to the remaining parts of this Civil and Ecclesiastical body, which have any thing in them sound and sincere;

many of which, especially among the common people, being weak, are less able to resist that petulant poyson, and spreading itch of li∣berty, which is so bewitching a name to the populacy; a temptation and infection which few vulgar spirits are able to resist, or willing to remedy. And indeed the mischief seising (like Mercury or Quick∣silver) upon the spirits and brains of men that are rash, easie, & heady, it makes them presently suspect, and shortly to hate all those, as their enemies, who go about to curb or cure so welcome and flattering a di∣sease: which is not less dangerous, because delightfull; for commonly all those things that are most agreeable to naturall men and carnall minds (who love to be licentious) prove grievous to Gods Spirit, scandalous to the name of Christ, and pernicious to his Churches purity or peace. Liberty, if it be in ill keeping, soon putrifies to li∣centiousness,* 1.205 as the manna did, which turned to wormes.

Not that I am any way against that rationall, ingenuous, modest, inoffensive, charitable and conscientious liberty, which is the onely true Christian liberty to be desired and enjoyed, either in private or in publick; such I mean as is neither touchy nor turbulent, but carries an equall tendernesse to other mens honest and harmless freedome, as to its own, seeking onely by lawfull means, either to remove those impediments of its well-being and doing, that are really rubs or remi∣ras in its way to heaven, or else to obtain those holy allowed advan∣tages which may most promote its communion with God; with Christ, and his blessed Spirit: which holy freedomes and happy advantages are surest to be met withall (as I conceive) in those high wayes and plain paths, which Christs Catholick Church in its nobler parts and ampler combinations hath constantly kept, after the pri∣mitive proportions, & Apostolicall distributions of Churches, wherein the majesty of Christ, & the harmony of Christians, which is the ho∣nour of Christian Religion, are infinitely more to be seen, and safely preserved, than in any of those by-wayes or diverticles, which Schismatick liberty affects to chuse and follow; which will at length make any Nationall, Christian and Reformed Church, that was heretofore grounded in truth, guided with order, united in love, conspicuous with beauty, fortified with its joynt power, uniform in its solemn ministrations, and orderly in all its holy motions (like an army well ordered disciplin'd, and bravely marshall'd) to be like the routed parties and ragged regiments of a scattered and divided army.

It is an observation never failing, That the sanctity of Christi∣an Martyrs, the honour and prevalency of that Religion which recommends the crucified Lord Jesus, as a Saviour and preserver, not a destroyer of mankind, these are best preserved in any na∣tion or society of men, there, where least liberty or license is per∣mitted to private spirits publickly to innovate or alter, dispute or deny, contemn or subvert, those Catholick Truths and Doctrines, or those comely constitutions and customes, which are once well & wisely setled by publick counsel and authority, which carried due re∣gard

to the glory of God, to the rule of his Word, to the Catho∣lick precedents, and to the common good of that particular Na∣tion or polity. All experience, and our own as bad as any, teacheth us, that liberty, in the vulgar sense and use, is like a sweet and rank kind of Clover-grass, with which the beast of the people will soon surfeit, even till they burst themselves, if they be not mode∣rated, and restrained from over-feeding by their wise Governours in Church and State.

The Histories of Sleidanus and others sufficiently shew you, in the last Century, how wild the Boores of Germany grew, even to a kind of a Lycanthropy, by such liberties as their teachers first indul∣ged, and themselves afterward usurped; how quickly this charm (like Circe's) turns men and women into dogs and wolves; how abused liberty having once seized upon the thatch and straw, the pe∣tulancy and insolency of common people, as most combustible matter, like a masterless and unbridled fire, it will devour more in a few dayes, by the pragmatick folly of some extravagant heads and hands, than the wisdome, piety and gravity of your forefathers could erect, or your posterity will be able to repair, in many years or ages: for no fires burn with more fury & pertinacy, than those which maintain their unquenchable flames by the oyl of Religion and Liber∣ty, with which they are least to be trusted, who most love to play with it, as children do with fire and gun-powder. Common people, like young heirs, who have more wealth than wit, are of so profuse an humour, and so lavish of their liberty, both civil and religious, when once they think themselves masters of it, that they will pre∣sently be undone, if they have not some wiser men to be their Guardians, who will be better husbands for them than they would be for themselves; nor are they ever more desperately prodigall, or more certainly miserable, than when (like mad-men) they have by insolency or importunity extorted from their Governours and the Laws, such a portion of liberty, either civil or religious, as they least know how to use, and will be sure to abuse.

Let those men that are the greatest Tribunes of the people, the seeming Patrons of their liberties (but reall parasites of their licen∣tious humours) in Religion, let them, I say, make but one years triall, with how much good nature, reason, justice and modesty, these people will use their civil and naturall liberty; in which, be∣ing absolved from all restraint of laws and fears, of power and of punishment, they shall have leave, with the bridle on their necks, to covet, challenge, contend, invade, usurp, and take every man to himself such women, such houses, such goods, such lands, such of∣fices, such power and such honours, as each of them most fancies himself capable to deserve or enjoy: in a few dayes they will soon see how severe a revenge such folly will take of it self, both as to the actors and permitters.

If such inordinate liberty (which naturally men affect, and which imposeth on mankind the necessity of having publick laws and ma∣gistratick

powers above all private mens fancies) if it be so pesti∣lent in civil and secular regards, that the indulgence of it is no more to be permitted by wise and good men, for one moneth, or one day, than a fire may be left to its freedome for one hour in any private cab∣bin or chamber, to the endangering of the whole ship and house; how (I beseech you) can it be convenient or profitable to the common in∣terests of Religion, or the honour of any Nation that desires to be cal∣led Christian, to let every man pick and chuse their severall do∣ctrines, opinions, forms and fashions of Religion, as they best fancy; or to suffer them to set up to themselves what Prophets, Pastors, or Preachers, what Churches, Congregations & Conventicles they most affect;* 1.206 one being of Paul, another of Apollos, a third of Cephas; one Episcopall, another Presbyterian, a third Independent, a fourth own∣ing no Ministers, no Religion at all? Specious names and godly pre∣tensions may be very pernicious to the peace of the Church, the ho∣nour of Christ, and the good of mens souls, as the blessed Apostle there observes, through the folly and factiousness of people. Better the most deserving names, how much more the most flattering No∣vellers in the world, should be buried in eternal oblivion, than they should be set up in the Church of Christ, as so many apples of conten∣tion, so many wedges of division, so many rivals to the glory of Christ, so many moths to religious unity and the Churches beauty, so many Molechs or Idols, through whose fires your posterity, as Chri∣stians (that are not yours onely,* 1.207 but Gods children, and, as it were, Christs seed and off-spring) should be forced to pass with popular noy∣ses and incondite acclamations of liberty, onely to drown the sad cries of those poor souls who are to be tormented in those flames, those Tophets of uncharitable novelties and factious liberties.

Christian liberty, as vulgar spirits commonly use it, is but a corro∣ding salve spread on a silk plaister; it is a confection of carnal projects, wrought up with spirituall mixtures; it is poyson presented in a gilt cup, the Devils rats-bane mingled with sugar. The sad effects al∣ready upon us in England, and further threatning us, do promise no∣thing upon this account,* 1.208 but envies, wraths, strifes, jealousies, animo∣sities, whisperings, swellings, tumults, seditions, oppressions, and mutual persecutions,* 1.209 with every evil work among us, as men and Christians.

CHAP. XXVI.

NOr are these mischiefs only rife among Lay-men,* 1.210 or or∣dinary people (whose ignorance, meanness and dis∣content, are prone to tempt them to any thing) but e∣ven among those who desire to be called the Ministers, Teachers, Pastors & leaders of the people; for even these, in many places, either mis-led by the people, or sad∣ly misleading them, are very much bitten and infected with this epidemicall disease, of mistaken, corrupted and abused liberties in matters of Religion, both as to Doctrine and Worship, as to Eccle∣siasticall order and Ministeriall authority: many of these (other∣wise men of worth, for soundness and integrity, no way unfit for the work, or unworthy to have the honour of being Ministers of the Go∣spel) yet are miserably tainted with these divisions, distractions and deformities, even among themselves.

Which contagion (among the Pastors as well as the Flocks) as a farther sad and evident instance of the grand causes or occasions of this Churches present miseries, and of the great decayes of the Re∣formed Religion, I crave leave, without offence to any of my wor∣thy and deserving Brethren in the Ministry (of what name or title, of what stamp or metall soever they are) a little to insist upon; that I may, by further discovering the rise and progress of our mis∣chiefs, the better make way for such remedies as your wisdome (O my noble Countrey-men) shall see fittest for the recovery of health, strength and beauty, to this deformed Church, and the rem∣nants of Reformed Religion in it.

As all experience tells us poor mortalls, that our greatest enemies are many times nearest to us, and oft lie in our own bosoms; so the greatest mischiefs that have, or can befall the Christian Reformed Re∣ligion in England, do chiefly arise from some Preachers, or such as would be accounted the Ministers of Christs Church, under severall notions and formations. Vulgar reproches, plebeian contempts, the in∣juries of Lay-men, yea the persecutions of great and mighty men, the Clergie, or true Ministers of Christs Church in England, might possibly have born with patience, constancy, comfort and honour, (though much to their outward diminution) if they had had the grace, wisdome and understanding, to have kept among themselves that har∣mony, constancy and integrity, in judgements, practise and affections, which became men that should be both wise and warm, prudent as serpents, and innocent as doves; if they had (as Christs Disciples) lo∣ved one another, though the world hated them:* 1.211 if they had (as one man) held together, like a well-turn'd Arch, surely they might at once have upheld themselves, and easily sustained any pressures laid upon them by the levity, violence and ingratitude of other men: the

Clergie being as the cable and anchor of Religion, which firmly twisted together, and fraternally combined in truth and love, will in time bring the people to quiet and calmnesse in Religion; however they may have their storms and tossings sometime, partly by innate fluctuancy, as the rollings and tidings of the sea, and partly by out∣ward winds and tempests.

What Nation hath there been so barbarous, what heathens so truculent, what persecutors so inhumane, whom godly Bishops and other Ministers have not by their exemplary faith, patience, unity and charity, with Gods blessing, in time softened and sweetened, convinced and converted to be Christians; while they all spake the same things, & carried on the same interests of Christ, as it were with one shoulder? These once broken in their orderly and uniform me∣thods, varied in their Catholick succession and authority, divided in their fraternall concord and harmony, the peoples minds soon grow distracted, and are violently driven, as ships from their anchors and cables, upon a thousand dangers. When primitive Pastors and people were most cordially united, though they were most cruelly persecuted, yet Christianity spread and prospered; what the fury of men pull'd down, that the care and charity of their Ministers built up, twisting what others ravelled, either as Idolaters, Hereticks or Schismaticks: which reparations of Religion were easily effected, while the sheep knew their true shepherds, following them, or flying to them in case of any danger; when the people knew their proper Presbyters, and orderly Presbyters owned those Bishops to whom they were duly subordinate, when all ranks and orders in the Church of Christ, as parts in the body, kept their stations and ranks, their orders and correspondencies, their proportions and duties, either in filiall sub∣jection or fatherly inspection; when no good Christian was to seek what Pastors, what Preachers he should apply to, nor any Deacon or Presbyter did doubt to what Bishop he owed a respect, as to his Superi∣our, in Ecclesiastick eminency, order and authority.

This, this blessed harmony, this Catholick (and in primitive times undoubted, as well as uniform and constant) order, did then keep up, or recover, by Gods blessing, the majesty of Christian Reli∣gion, the love, together with the honour and authority, of the Evan∣gelical ministry, amidst the heaviest distractions and persecutions; and so, no doubt, it would have done in England, amidst all plebeian in∣solencies and popular prostitutions.

But (alas!) though all this evil be come upon us Ministers of all sorts and sizes, from without, from civil warres, and unhappy publick differences in secular interests (which spare no men) as also from the private covetousness, inconstancy, malice, revenge, impatience, am∣bition and ingratitude of some vulgar people (not onely to the great injuring of many Ministers persons, credit and estates, but to the me∣nacing of an utter subversion, even to the whole tribe, office and fun∣ction, as it was founded on Divine Institution, built up by Apostoli∣call Tradition, and preserved by Catholick Succession:) yet in our

distresses and afflictions many Ministers (as Ahaz) have sinned more and more:* 1.212 and as if it were a small matter that plebeian spite and petulancy could ambitiously inflict upon Ministers, themselves have added much fewel to their fires, encouraging their malice by wret∣ched complyings with them, & flattering of them, in the very abuses of their liberties, in their rude arrogatings, and usurpations upon the Ministry, infinitely to the disgrace of their holy calling, to the disparagement of their own judgements, and to the prostrating of their due authority, which is (as I have proved) divine, or none at all: that I mention not Ministers betraying of their own honest in∣terests and enjoyments as to this world, in point of profit, honour and reputation. All which the gulf of secular avarice, and the Abyss of Lay-mens sacriledge, daily gapes to devour, after the pattern which some Achans and Ananiasses of the Clergie have set them: the poor remainders of which, as they are already forfeited, by the sordid and shamefull debasing of themselves, to the humouring of people in their lusts and licentiousness; so they will in a few years be utterly lost and confiscated, by the advantages which will be given to peoples covetous cruelty, through those mutuall animo∣sities, jealousies, distances and varieties, which are now maintain∣ed by the severall sides and sorts of Ministers in England, all preten∣ding to be Preachers of the Gospel, under reformed and super-reform∣ing names.

What infinite swellings, disdains, envies and pertinacies,* 1.213 are open to all mens observations, even among those men who would be thought grave, wise, learned, holy, and every way able to teach and rule the vulgar? How have their innovations, mutations, levities and divisions, so clearly manifested their weaknesse, folly and factious∣nesse, that as it cannot be hid from vulgar eyes and censures, so it is al∣ready many wayes confuted and sorely punished, not onely by the palpable frustratings of some of their novell designs, but by their being generally debased far below their former station, and ex∣tremely worsted in all points, as to that handsome, if not honourable condition, which they might in unity and order (as heretofore) have enjoyed in England? If once the Ministers of any Church (who are as the walls and sea-banks) do make cracks and breaches upon them∣selves, or suffer the moles and water-rats of the people so to do; no wonder if the high tides of vulgar insolency and rapine soon break in upon them, & make their ruines not more deplorable than irreparable.

CHAP. XXV.

* 1.214YEt after all this sharp and sad experience, which hath rendred the profession of Ministers on all hands con∣temptible, their ordination disputable, their enjoy∣ments miserable, their necessities irreparable, their dependences poor, plebeian, & almost sordid, by their mutuall and unhappy divisions; yet still many, who glory to be cal∣led Ministers, (of whatever odde ordination or new edition they are) do fancy it a great part of their piety, to be pertinacious in those new opinions, wayes and factions, which they have adopted; yea much of their sanctity is made to consist in their scorning all antiquity, and of all Reformation heretofore in the Church of England. If they can find nothing else to quarrel at in the old Clergie of England (whose doctrine was found, whose ordination most Catholick, valid and un∣questionable by Bishops, whose learning and lives were most com∣mendable) yet they must find fault with their very clothes; and ra∣ther than not differ, they must disguise themselves from the gravity of Gowns and Cassocks, of black caps and black clothes, to military clokes, to Scotch jumps, to white caps, and all mechanick colours: in which posture being as Preachers once got into a Pulpit, then both they and the silly people fancy they see great Reformations of Reli∣gion, more looking at the gay and strange colours of a foolish bird, than minding how it speaks: especially if these new Ministers do gratifie the plebs of the Laity and the plebs of the Clergie with any influence or stroke in their ordination, and consecration to the office of the Ministry; if they have highly cried up popular rights and li∣berties in making and marring, in electing and rejecting, in ordaining and deposing their Pastors; if they have gently condescended to such popular transports and real novellizings in England, as are contrary to all practises of ancient and best Churches; O what an high moun∣tain do these new Masters and their new Disciples fancy they are ascended! to what a glorious transfiguration do they imagine them∣selves to be changed! what a new heaven and new earth do some of them, either more silly, or more subtill than others, glory they have created, in their godly corporations, their rare associations, and blest ordinations! how strange, novell and disorderly soever they are, as to all ancient customes of this and all Churches.

Nor do they think it worth considering, how much they deviate from all Antiquity; how much they desert, yea & reproch the wisdom of this Church and all estates in this Nation, ever since it was either Christian or Reformed; how much they go beyond the duty they owed to the civil peace of this Nation, as also that modesty, humi∣lity, ingenuity, reverence and subjection, which by the lawes of God and man, by all sanctions, civil and Ecclesiasticall, they owed to the

Governours and guides, Pastors and Preachers, the peace and well∣fare of this Church of England; besides that prudence and policy which they ought to maintain, in order to the honour and respect, which is indeed due to their calling and authority, when it is truly ministeriall and authentick.

What sober and impartial man doth not see, how the despites, arro∣gancies and insolencies, first expressed in tumultuary heats and furies, against all Bishops whatsoever (though never so learned, grave, god∣ly and industrious men, fit to govern, and apt to teach the Church of Christ,) are still maintained and repeated daily; yea raked up and increased by the popular oratory of some novel Ministers, so far as to raise eternall prejudices and antipathies, even against all those Presbyters which were, or are, of Episcopall ordination? And the better to justifie these Novelties and Schisms in the Church of England, (which some were so eager and easie to begin, so loth and unwilling to retract) they still entertain their nauseous, credulous and itching Disciples, with all those odious, stale and envious Crambes, which are most welcome to vulgar ears and sacrilegious aims: as how unfit it was for the Ministers of Jesus Christ, who was the great pattern of piety and poverty, to have great revenues, state∣ly Palaces, and noble Lordships, which more godly men do want; for Preachers to have any titles of honour and respect, as Lords, to have any part of civil power, or indeed of Ecclesiasticall jurisdiction.

All which honest employments and enjoyments, I conceive, (un∣der favour) the excellent Bishops, and other deserving Clergie-men in England, were as worthy to enjoy, and as able to use, with ho∣nour, conscience and charity, as any of those men, either military or civil, who were most zealous to deprive, to debase, and to destroy the Hierarchy, or just honour of the Ecclesiastick state in England. Nor do I think it was any way displeasing to God, or in the least kind unbecoming the name of Christ, for Bishops and other Ministers of his Church to have such ample estates and honourable preferments for their double honour, in so plentifull a land as England was: this I am sure, it was far less beseeming any good Christian to repine at them, and unjustly to deprive them of them.

If this envious vein of popular oratory grow at length fulsome, vile and ridiculous (as it is now to all sober and judicious auditors;) then the Anti-episcopall parties of Ministers devoutly rip up, and sadly repeat whatever they have heard, or others invented, of any Bishops faults, or the Episcopall Clergies past infirmities: whate∣ver they can they rake up, though long ago buried as it ought to be, in the charitable forgetfulness of all good men, who either consider their own frailties, or remember how many holy Bishops were Mar∣tyrs and Confessors in all ages of persecution; how learned, how diligent, how commendable, how admirable, how useful they were to this Church, for their preaching, writing and living, in times of persecution as well as peace, even here in England. All good Bi∣shops and other Clergie (as I have formerly expressed) confess

themselves, as men, to be subject to infirmities and temptations; the best Bishops and Ministers least deny this truth, being every day most vigilant to resist the one, and amend the other. These allega∣tions then (like the Devils quoting of Scripture) though they may have some squint-ey'd truth in them, yet they are spitefully, parti∣ally, and most impertinently alledged against all Bishops, especially by those fierce Presbyterians, or other implacable Preachers, who have now liberally taught the English world, that however the ri∣ches, pomp and honours of Presbyterian or Independent, or other Preachers, are (much against their wills) far less than those which God and man, reason and Religion, order and polity, devotion and gratitude, Law and Gospel, allowed to Bishops and Presbyters heretofore (that the eminency of their office and place in the Church might have something of honourable splendour and hospi∣table magnificence, proportionable to its venerable authority and great antiquity;) yet men are not so blinded by that popular dust, stirred up against the faults and names of Bishops, as not to see that the pride, covetousness and imperiousness of the most furious and factious Anti-episcopall Ministers, come not one jot behind any of those Bishops, whom they look upon and represent with the most malignant aspect. O how magisteriall are many new masters in their opinions! how authoritative in their decisions! how supercilious in their conversations! how severe in their censures! how inexo∣rable in their passions! how implacable in their wrath! how infle∣xible in their factions! how irrevocable in their transports, though never so rash, heady, plebeian and unsuccessfull! by which they (at once) forsook their duties to others, and their own mercies. And this many of them did to please others or themselves, contrary to their former judgements, their sworn and avowed subjection to Bishops for many years, when they paid that respect to those Fathers and Gover∣nours of this Church, which the laws of God and man required, long before either Presbytery was hatched, or Independency gendered in England.

The sharp severities and early rigours of both which parties and their Consectaries, grew quickly both remarkable and intolerable to sober Christians: for as they were bred and born (like Pallas) arm∣ed, full of anger, revenge and ambitious fierceness; so they have acted, even in their infancy and minority, far beyond what regular, sober, and true Episcopacy ever did in its greatest age and procerity here in England; yea its greatest passion and transports did not ex∣ceed the aims of these new masters, both Ecclesiastical & civil, which was either to rule all, or to ruine all. Bishops commonly justified their reall or seeming severities by those lawes, either civil or Ec∣clesiasticall, which were in force against all such as did not conform to them. Hence were occasioned (much, I am confident, to the grief, and against the desire of the most grave and godly Bishops) sometimes those so oft declaimed against, and aggravated persecuti∣ons of some unconformable, yet otherwayes godly Ministers, by si∣lencings,

suspensions, deprivations, &c. which sometimes were but just and necessary exercises of Discipline (as I conceive) if men will maintain any order and government in any Church or State; some∣times, it may be, some Bishops pressed too much upon the strictness and rigour of law, aggravated by their private passions, beyond what might with charity and moderation safely have been indulged to some able and peaceable Ministers, though in some things dissenters, yet, as to the main, good and usefull to the Church.

Yet all these old Almanacks, these stale and posthumous calcula∣tions of Episcopall severities, did not upon true account, no not in one hundred years, equal the number and measure of those pressures and miseries, which have been acted or designed in one fifteen years, by such as now profess Presbyterian and Independent principles, against all Bishops, and all those Ministers which are of the Episcopal per∣swasion. I think it may, without any stroke of Rhetorick or Hyper∣bole, be said with sober truth, that the little finger of Presbytery and Independency, with the warts and wens of other factions growing up∣on them, hath been heavier upon the Episcopal, which was the one∣ly legal Clergie of England of late years, than the loins of any sober and godly Bishops ever were for any one century, yea, and equal to the burdens of the most passionate and immoderate Bishops whatso∣ever in any age, who commonly were most imperious when the Church had most peace and civil prosperity; but the Presbyterian thunder and Independent lightning, urged most upon all Bishops, and all Episcopall Ministers, then when they were most scared, pillaged and harrased by a civil war, when most tossed by those sad storms, and almost overwhelmed by the impressions of those sad dissentions. Then, then was it that Bishops and other Episcopall Ministers, (whose consciences were guided in their judgements by the wisdome of this Church and Nation, together with all other Christian Churches in all ages) having lost their clokes in the wars, must be deprived of their coats also; chiefly for their innocent opinion, and honest adherency to Catholick Episcopacy: then was it, that where Episcopacy had at any time, and that by special command from their Governours, si∣lenced or sequestred refractory or turbulent Ministers, by tens or hundreds, possibly Presbytery and Independency inflicted either those mulcts, or terrours at least, upon thousands of Ministers dissenting from them, not as to the Religion established, or Laws in force in England, but meerly as to their private opinions and principles about Church-government. Hence so many learned, pious and pain∣ful Preachers, since the civil digladiations ceased, had been condem∣ned to chains of everlasting darkness, to remediless distresses, both they and their families, if there had not been some more generous mercy and connivence shewed, than those mens spirits intended, or can well bear. Through which miseries and terrours, many Mini∣sters gray hairs have been brought down with sorrow to their graves.

After all which dreadful severities, either intended or executed,

against the Episcopall Clergie, yet, as far as I can see, the conditi∣on of any sort of Ministers now in England is not any whit better, as to the generality, nor comparable to what the Clergie enjoyed in former times, who in my judgement might well have born the yoke of Episcopacy, with as little disparagement, and with as much ease and honour, every way, as they have for some years done the examination and inspection, the rebukes and frowns, the terrours and jurisdictions of Major Generals, or Countrey Committees, not onely in secular and military, but even in religious respects: among which few, I believe, were to be found equal, or exceeding such Bishops and other grave Divines as England afforded, both able Preachers and excellent Governours; much more fitted in all respects (except their swords) to be the superintendents of Ministers, being of the same education, office and calling, than most of those men can be, who are (generally) so much (Heteroclites) different from learned men, both in their breeding, learning, studies and course of living, that even from hence they have sometimes secret Antipathies even against all Ministers or Clergy-men, as persons of another geni∣us, of more refined minds, and, if men were impartially weighed, of greater worth and merits.

As then I cannot find that Ministers of any new name, form, title and extractions whatsoever, have much mended their condi∣tion, by that great alteration they have made or sought in this Church and State; so, I am sure, their mutual enmities and divisions do very much heighten their common afflictions, and add exceeding∣ly to that general darkness and diminution, in all respects, civil and sacred, which is come or coming upon them, as upon wicked men, in the strict account of Gods justice; or as weak men, in the vulgar process of mans severity.

Indeed the worst of Ministers miseries they generally owe to themselves, who in piety and prudence, above all men, should by uni∣ted counsels and cares avoid them; because it is sport to the most and worst of men, to see those men together by the ears, hating, de∣spising, biting and devouring one another, who are esteemed the severe censurers of other mens sins and follies, sharp curbs to the chil∣dish, petulant and licentious humours of people. Ministers scufflings and contests with one another, is beyond any Cock-fighting or Bear-baiting to the vulgar envy, malice, profanenesse and petu∣lancy.

* 1.215In the midst of all which sufferings, first from Divine Justice, (which calls upon every one to examine the plague of his own heart,) next from humane ingratitude and insolency, though every sober and prudent Minister cannot but see that precipice and gulph of irreligion, irreverence and contempt, to which the Reformed Religion and the whole office of the Ministry is now falling in England, through the endless capricios and extravagances chiefly of some Ministers; though most Ministers on all sides, that have any learning, worth or abilities for that office, do generally agree in the same Scriptures and

Sacraments, in the same Faith and Salvation, in the same God and Sa∣viour, in the same Graces and Vertues, in the same Doctrine for morals and Mysteries, in the same Precepts and Promises, in the same holy duties and blessed hopes; yet even these Ministers (which is a thou∣sand pities) are sharply, and for ought I can see (unless God work miracles upon some of their spirits and tempers) resolutely and eter∣nally divided by those wedges of differences, touching external Church-order and Discipline, the manner of worship, and power of managing of Church-government: so that the way of peace few have known; nor are they patient to learn, contrary to their pre∣sumptions. To recant their errours they are ashamed; remit their rigour they must not, lest they abate their parties and followers; exchange their animosities as men, for moderations becoming bre∣thren and Christians, they will not, lest their credit decay, and their factions abate, lest those shews and shadows of popular empire va∣nish, which they have seemed or fancied themselves to enjoy, upon these accounts of rare inventions, and new models of Refor∣mation, Ministry, &c. All which must by some men be kept up, though all things else do fall to the ground: though the Church of En∣gland lies languishing and sighing, weeping and bleeding; though the Reformed Religion is deformed, decaying, dying; though both piety and sincerity be much dispirited; though they cannot but see Ichabod wrote upon all their foreheads; though all Ministerial or∣der, office, employment and authority, as to mens inward respect and consciences, no less than in their outward reverence and obedi∣ence, is infinitely slackned, and in many places (as well as in many hearts) quite dissolved; though the Catholick Character, or Christs cognizance of Christians, which is sincere charity, be much defaced, & the Devils badges of factious confederacies be much worn; though the purity and simplicity, the warmth and worth, the words and works of true Religion be much out of fashion, giving way to fana∣tick follies and impudent vanities, daily vented in every place; though the beauty & serenity of the true Christian Religion, as of old, and of the well-reformed Religion, as it was of later years well esta∣blished in Engl. be much hidden, defaced, disguised by many hypocri∣tical masks & new dresses; though the palpable cunning of some men hath taught them to abuse this credulous age, by shaving off the hair & primitive ornament of this Church, which was very good & grace∣ful (having the honour of ancient, venerable and gray-headed Episco∣pacy upon it) that they might the better induce Christianity, which is now above 1500 years old, to put on and wear (a la mode) the new peruques either of young Presbytery, or younger Independency (ra∣ther than Religion should go quite bald, and be ridiculous by its de∣formity and confusion;) though the pristine polity, peace, purity, ma∣jesty, severity, sanctity and solemnity of Religion, as Christian and Reformed in England, be infinitely baffled and abased by the petu∣lancy of those that affect licentious liberties and unsaintly extrava∣gances; though all these evils (as Daemones meridiani) are pregnant,

and every day proclaimed by the loud Herauld of Experience, which themselves declaime against and deplore, as well as other men: Yet many Ministers (in other respects not to be despised, or much blamed) do still, as to the point of Church-order, discipline, govern∣ment and polity, (which is the outward centre of unity, and visible band of peace) passionately desire and solicitously endeavour, that those wild oats and tares, which some men have of late years sown, watered and cherished (while the Nation and Church were not aware, as being engaged in war and blood, during whose heats great wounds of Religion are little felt) might for ever grow up, spread and shed abroad (like thistle-down) yea and succeed to after-generations in this nation; that so England might be more famous for variety of parties and opinions in Religion, than either Poland is or Amsterdam.

How few nominal or real Ministers, that have been either Authors, or great sticklers and abettors, not of any modest, just and sober Reformations, but of needless, endless innovations, schisms, de∣formities and defections in the Church of England, can yet find in their hearts meekly to retreat by any humble, ingenuous and hap∣py wayes of Christian meekness and wisdom, to a sweet accord, from their first heady extravagances and unhappy transports? in which the heat and passion of mens spirits (as is usual in all quarrels) made, even at first, the differences, jealousies and offences far greater than the real injury or inconvenience indeed was: which is most clearly evident now, not onely by our comparing the former happy estate of this Church, and of the Reformed Religion here, besides those com∣forts which the generality of all good Ministers and sober Christians in former times enjoyed in England under Episcopacy; but fur∣ther, by our serious considering those fair offers, those great mode∣rations, those self-denials and Christian condescentions, with which all worthy and wise Bishops, with all Episcopal Ministers, were, and are, ready to gratifie the peace of this Church, and the desires of all good Christians, even of those who have been most their enemies and destroyers; whom they forgive the more readily, because they believe most of them, as the crucifiers of Christ, did it ignorantly; ignorant of the laws of this Nation, and of the good constitutions of this Church, ignorant of the customes, practise and judgement of all ancient Catholick Churches, ignorant of that equity and chari∣ty which they owed to others, ignorant of that honest policy and discretion which they owed to themselves and their order, lastly, ignorant of that pious, grateful and prudent regard they should have had of the honour, peace and prosperity of this Church, both at present and in after-ages.

But however the exorbitancies of some ignorant men at first might be so far venial, as they were led on by the pious and speci∣ous pretences of others, rather than their own principles; yet they are less excusable (now) since the sad events have so fully confuted all those prejudices and pretensions; since popular looseness, avarice

and madness, hath, as a rude broom, swept away all the fine-spun and speciously spread cobwebs of Reformation, either as to the state of this Church, or the Reformed Religion professed here in England, or as to the promised amendment of the Ministerial order and of∣fice, either for ability, duty, authority, or maintenance. Ministers first tearings and rendings of themselves asunder are not yet sewed together; yea Religion it self is faln to rags, and preachers are be∣come as so many pie-bald patches, of several colours and antick fi∣gures: which wretched division and fundamental deformity in Re∣ligion cannot but daily grow, as a Gangrene, to greater maladies, mischiefs and miseries, which will be bitterness in the later end.

For as no City, so no Church can prosper,* 1.216 that is divided against it self: neither grace nor peace can advance, where Preachers of Re∣ligion are mutual persecutors; where, while Ministers teach people to believe, to love and to live Christ crucified, they are daily cruci∣fying one another. It is a deplorable and desperate state of any Church, where (as in Babels building) the builders tongues, heads, hands and hearts are divided, yea the very builders are self-destroy∣ers, mutually ruining themselves under pretence of zeal to build, or repaire the Church of Christ: what one rears with the right hand, another pulls down with the left; when they frequently leave their trowels, and fall to their pick-axes and ponyards; when they fling lime and sand in one anothers eyes; when they build, or dawb rather, with untempered mortar; when every one is ambitious to be a Master-builder, a new modeller of Religion, of Churches, of Ministers and of Ministry, contrary to the wisdome and piety of such a Church and Nation as England was.

Leaving poor people (mean while) infinitely amazed, jealous, unsatisfied, perplexed, as to Religion. Some are sadly grieved, others are quite confounded: many are zealous for the newest fashi∣on, others are for the good old way, a third sort is glad of the oc∣casion to cast off all Religion, while they see those Ministers cut the Catholick cords of charity and unity in sunder, in order to bind Christians up to new parties and factions, or to private interests and opinions, which, like Sampsons withs, will not serve to bind the lusts or consciences of men to their good behaviour.

These, these are the sad effects which follow those deformities of Preachers turning Pioneers, of Ministers being underminers and demolishers of one another, and their Mother-Church; when those that should be Gods Ambassadours (forgetting the majesty of their mission, and sanctity of their errand) fall to railing and reproching, calumniating and declaiming against one another (like so many eager Baristers and mercenary Lawyers, who are resolved (being once fee'd) to defend their cause and their client, whatever the merits of them be, because they have once undertaken them) without any regard to that justice, honour, wisdome, gravity, charity, meekness, harmony, joynt counsel and ingenuous correspondency, which ought to be pre∣served in all fraternities and honest callings or mysteries: but chief∣ly

among the Ministers of Christs glorious Gospel; Preachers should be of the highest form of Christs Disciples, the most exem∣plary in all piety, meekness and prudence, in all gravity, equity and charity; for want of which, even as to matters of outward polity, order, civility and ministration, they are (and ever will be) the more blamable before God and man, by how much nearer they profess to come to one another in the harmonies of faith, and confessions of the same reformed and true doctrine, which would soon unite their hearts and studies, if they had (on all sides) less of easiness, creduli∣ty, popularity, peevishness, obstinacy, small ambitions and juveni∣lities. The removing of which distempers from all Ministers, new and old, and from my self as well as any other, is one of my chief de∣signs and endeavours to be carried on in the fourth and last Book of this discourse.

At present it sufficeth to have shewed (as an evil branch of abused Liberty in Religion) this to be none of the least causes or occasions of the Church of Englands distempers, decayes and miseries, that Mini∣sters are (after Mundane and machiavellian methods) so sharply di∣vided from, and eagerly opposite against one another; so hardly perswaded by any retreats and principles of piety, charity, pru∣dence, which honest policy, publick necessity, self-preservation, or care of future succession invite them to; which may make for an happy close and Christian accommodation.

Upon some Ministers pride and peevishness, not any one, nay not all these considerations together, can so far prevail (I fear) as to induce them to any terms or treaty of equable accord; but they still carry themselves as young men, high in their own conceits, coy and elate in their parties, opinions, presumptions, prejudices, ani∣mosities and disdains, especially against the former Ministry of En∣gland, which was not more Episcopal than Catholick, Primitive, Apo∣stolicall and truly Christian. Few novell Ministers ever lay their hand on their heart, and ask, what evil have I acted, occasioned, or not hindred to this Church of England?

CHAP. XXVI.

THat I may a little further open the eyes of all my Brethren, such as either are, or deserve,* 1.217 or desire to be Ministers of the Gospel, and of all other my Countrey-men, both as to their own private inte∣rests as Ministers, and as to the publick concern∣ments of the Christian Reformed Religion in this Nation, I shall yet more particularly, and as pa∣thetically as I can, endeavour to shew them the true state and po∣sture in which their persons, their livelihoods, their credits, their worldly comforts, their calling at present, and their succession for the future (now) seem to stand in England: what scratch'd faces, what deformed aspects, how deplorable conditions all of them either feel, or may justly fear and expect, by reason of that inordinate liberty which people in England have lately carried on to such intolerable petulancies, insolencies and licentiousnesse against Ministers; whereto they have been highly animated and encouraged, not more by their own lusts and malapertnesse, than by those unkind, indiscreet and un∣christian dissentions, which have broke out among Ministers them∣selves against one another, while forgetting that gravity, constancy, modesty and equanimity, which they owed to themselves and to each other, they either rowed down, or suffered themselves to be carried down this foul stream and torrent of vulgar liberty, out of principles of facility or faction, popularity or pride, covetousness or cowardise, ignorance or sequaciousness; which have so blinded some Ministers, otherwise of very good abilities, that (like men drenched over head and ears in water) they cannot suddenly or easi∣ly see what deformities are upon them, what dangers threaten them, both as men, and as Ministers. Whatever title, order, original, badge, or discriminating character of their Ministry they bear and wear in the world, whatever principles they profess, whatever party they patronize, adhere to, or adopt, new or old; this I am sure, if they be not purely plebeian praters, of the very scumme, lees and dregs of people (which have no sense of sin, shame, or honour) if they are per∣sons of any learned latitude, of any ingenious capacities and abilities, of any tenderness in honour or conscience, if they be painful, pious or prudent men in any degree, they cannot but see, that no mens condition in England, or almost under heaven, of whatever calling and quality they are, is more mean and miserable, more tattered and scambling, less honourable, or less comfortable; no profession, or∣der, or fraternity of men, is more divided, dubious, distressed, for∣lorn, despicable, as to all civil and secular interests, for profit, peace, respect and reputation, both for the encouragement of their present ministration, and for the hopes of an able future succession: none of

which things wise and worthy Ministers ought supinely, sordidly, sluggishly, or simply to neglect.

Their own and all mens eyes that are open and clear, may easily see the sad prospects of Ministers dejections, diminutions, debase∣ments, distresses in all those points: all of them are under the scorn of some opposite party or other; most of them live in a low and mean estate; many of them (to my knowledge) contend with extreme difficulties, and all manner of necessities; not a few of them, which I have been oft an eye-witness of, have been, and are reduced to a morsel of bread, and are driven even to beg alms for the support of themselves and their distressed families. How many of their cryes have I heard? how many of their tears have I seen? with what pal∣lor and dejection, with what squallor and horrour, with what asto∣nishment and despair, do many of them wander from one village, city, and countrey to another for relief, untill being weary and wa∣sted, sunk and oppressed by their daily distresses and remedilesse tra∣gedies, they go to their graves with sorrow, to the shame and sin (I be∣lieve) of the Age in which they have thus lived and died Ministers of the Gospel, and very worthy ones too, if it be any merit to have con∣stantly deserved well of the Church of England, by their godly prea∣ching and living: over whose sad ruines I know the enemies of this Church and the Reformed Religion, both at home and abroad, do in∣finitely triumph and seriously rejoyce.

Nor is this hard fate befaln those Ministers onely, who were, and are of the Episcopal persuasion, and most constant to the love and duty they owe to the Church of England; but even those Ministers have been shrewdly singed, who most eagerly sought to heat the fie∣ry furnace of popular wrath and revenge against all Bishops, and the Episcopall Clergie: the thumbs and toes of many of those great Ado∣nibezeks have been cropt off, who most joyed in the like executions done by popular revenge and vulgar fiercenesse against all of the Epis∣copall order and ordination; even those Preachers who filled their sails most with the peoples breath, are now either becalmed, or come aground, or very leaky, or quite dashed in pieces, as to their former great influence and reputation among the people: nor have they made either such a fair port, or such a prosperous voyage, as might any way answer their former presumptions, their high ostentations, and their flattering expectations. This I am sure, that the ambitious wantonnesse of many Ministers lusting to tast of the forbidden fruit of government, beyond their share, proportion and capacity, hath now (if not altogether) almost quite driven themselves, and all others of that calling, name and profession, out of that paradise of peace, plenty and respect, which they did heretofore, as Ministers, en∣joy in England, and still might have done, if they had used such mo∣desty, prudence and piety, as best became wise and worthy men, who had been masters of any prudence and providence.

But now (alas) who ever professeth to be a Minister of the Gospel in England (not as an interloper or mungrel, who ekes out his other

mechanick trade, by putting the new patch of a plebeian Preacher to that old garment (for these wretches are deservedly despicable to all consciencious, sober and ingenuous men) but even those who have destinated and confined themselves wholly to the Ministeriall work and function, whatever account they go upon for the deriva∣tion of their mission, ordination and authority, whether Episcopall, Presbyterian, Independent, or Plebeian) yet if they make their Mi∣nistry their work and businesse, and not their wantonness and sport; if they give themselves to that painful plough and sacred husbandry which tills rocky hearts, and sowes in hopes of an eternall harvest; they shall be sure to find work enough both to do and to suffer; ene∣mies enough to encounter with, indignities more than enough to di∣gest, necessities enough to contend withall: at their very best estate they are altogether vanity, accounted as the scorn and out-casts of the people, the filth and off-scouring of all things, by some party or other. Even those Ministers that fancy themselves most favoured by the potent or impotent, by Prince or people, yet still they are attended with many evil eyes, bitter speeches, contemptuous reproches,* 1.218 spitefull affronts, from some side or other. This, this is the portion of Ministers of all sorts to drink; this is the cup which vulgar liberty and their own dissentions have mingled for them, as to all civil respects and worldly enjoyments.

CHAP. XXVII.

TRuly they had need make much of good consciences,* 1.219 for little comfort else is left to most of them, as to any ci∣vil splendour, competency, or certainty in this world. Look but to the point of estate, and that moderate sub∣sistence which all ingenuous & industrious men may just∣ly expect and aim at for themselves and their relations, in the way of honest labour; no mens salary, subsistence, or maintenance is generally so dubious and uncertain, so arbitrary and hazardous, so bur∣dened and exhausted, so thin driven, and, as it were, wire-drawn, both by their own necessities and other mens injurious sharkings: insomuch that many Ministers very well-deserving, are reduced not onely to tenuities, but to difficulties, necessities, extremities; they are forced to live by faith: and some of them have (as I have heard) even died with famine; others had so perished, if charity had not in∣terposed, wanting those necessary supports which their aged and lan∣guishing condition did require. The truth is, not one of ten (I might say of an hundred) of any sort of common people make it a matter of conscience to pay them their dues, if they can hold their livings; few do pay them without delayings, defalkings and defraudings: many

people make it a great point of conscience, to pay them nothing, ei∣ther by the Laws of Justice or Gratitude. Ministers must in most places onely learn how to want;* 1.220 for in few they shall ever learn how to abound. Many of them have been a long time quite turned out of Gods Husbandry, from their Livings and Labours: many, such as have leave to labour, have (most-what) their labour for their paines; forced to study how to live, when they should live to study: such as should dispense the bread of eternall life, and consecrate the Sacra∣mentall bread, which is the Communion of Christs blessed Body to his Body the Church, these are solicitous for that perishing bread, which is the staffe of this momentary life. Many Angels of Christs Church, and Stewards of his houshold, are exposed, many wayes, and many times, to sordid necessities, and scurrilous indignities. The chief Pastors and ablest Shepherds are very much levelled to the mea∣nest of the flock, while yet the weakest and most scabbed sheep affect to be shepherds: the very abjects of the people, every where, dare, if they list, contemne their Ministers to their faces; they make no scruple, yea they take pleasure to be petulant, peevish, refractory, and insolent, even in publique. The ayme of many is, to have such Prea∣chers, as shall be, not Fathers, Rulers, and Heads in the Church, but either as sequacious and flexible tayles, following the frowns and flatteries of the people, on whose good will they must depend, if they will eate; or as firebrands of unquenchable factions, engaging the populacy to infinite parties and sects, under the notion of new Mi∣nisters and new Religion.

* 1.221These, these are the treatments, these the methods used by some, to bury not the dead carkases of Ministers in the graves of common people, (which fact is branded in King Jehoiakim, as a token of great irreligion to God, and irreverence to the Prophet Uriah;) but they seek to cast them yet alive into a most plebeian state, the graves of ignominie, poverty, contempt, and shame: yea many hope at length to make the Reformed Clergie or Ministery of England, as odious as those Heathen Priests became,* 1.222 when (as the Church-Historians tell us) their Temples were rifled▪ when their despicable Deities, their defor∣med Idols and worm-eaten gods were discovered. Nor is this deplo∣rable estate befaln those incruders onely, who from the basest of the people have of late consecrated themselves to serve those calves that list to set them up,* 1.223 or follow them; but many great Prophets, like Je∣remy,* 1.224 stick to this day in the mire and dirt of those dungeons into which they are cast:* 1.225 others are become miserable, as Eli's posteri∣ty, crouching for a morsell of bread, even to their enemies, I mean those factious and sacrilegious spirits, who would be glad to see the most learned Ministers in England advanced to no higher preferment than Musculus was in Germany,* 1.226 who though an excellent Preacher and Writer, yet was forced for his livelyhood sometime to help a Wea∣ver at his Loome, otherwhile to work as a Scavenger in purging the Towne-ditch.

N••r is this a Parable of Misery, or an artificiall and Theatrick Tra∣gedie

made by me: No; I solemnly protest to you (my honoured Countrymen) the World affords not greater, more numerous, or more calamitous objects of Christian pity and humane charity, than are many Ministers at present in England, if you consider their calling, their abilities, their education, and their sad condition. Many of them are already implunged into the horrible pit of darknesse; others are upon the very brink and precipice of extreme poverty, meannesse and contempt, through the trialls or displeasures of God, executed by the restlesse malice and immoderate revenge of some men, against this Church, its Ministry, and the Reformed Religion; whose spite and passion have much over-born (of late years, as by a new, unwonted and ponderous bias) the ancient noble genius and ge∣nerous piety of this Nation; which was by no people under Heaven heretofore exceeded in its honourable munificence, yea magnificence, toward their God and Saviour, toward learned and religious men, especially those who had the honour to be their Teachers, Governours and Guides to heaven. No men had more priviledges and immunities; no men had more tranquillity and leisure to be good; none had more means and encouragements to be good, and to doe good, to live ho∣lily, hospitably, honourably; no men had abilities, opportunities, and hearts to doe more works of piety and charity both to rich and poor, great and small, both transient and permanent, occasionall and mo∣numentall, than the Clergie of England: Witnesse the severall goodly Foundations, and liberall Endowments, which the Ecclesia∣sticks of England have either themselves erected, or perswaded o∣thers to Found and Endow, to Gods glory, to the good of Man∣kind, and the honour of the Nation.

But now (alas!) as the Estates of most Ministers are so small, that they hardly reach to their own necessities; so their influence up∣on other mens estates and minds is almost as little. They are despised by many, valued by few, scarce loved by any, and honoured almost by none: they are all reduced to such a timorous, sneaking, servile, arbitrary, dependant, and plebeian proportion. Nothing grand, con∣spicuous, magnificent, honourable or venerable, is upon any of them, especially as to vulgar eyes and censure: who are never too liberall of their courtesie, civility, and respect to Ministers; much lesse when they find them at a low ebbe, as to the esteem of their betters, the rich, the noble, and the mighty. For with common people, Learning, Wisdome, and all intellectuall excellencies, generally signifie little or nothing, if they see nothing of power, authority, plenty, splen∣dour, or eminency in men, by which they either hope to be bene∣fited, or feare to be punished. Certainly that part of the Clergie of England were extreme out, as to all Politicks, who fancied that common people, yea, or the better sort of mankind, were so good-na∣tur'd, as to value them most for Ministers, when they enjoyed least as men. Angelick vertues doe not weigh so much in the worlds ba∣lance, as houses, lands, revenues, preferments, and honours doe. A golden calfe easily tempts people to worship it, while desolate and

wooden vertues are despised: yea they much mistook the interest of Christian and Reformed Religion, as well as of the Ministery in England, who thought it would turne to any account of honour and advancement of Reformation,* 1.227 to serve the Clergie as Hanun did Da∣vids servants, not onely stripping them of their upper garments, and those comely ornaments which became Gods Ambassadours, but cut∣ting off their nether garments and necessary coats, to such a curtail'd proportion, as renders them both ashamed of themselves and ridiculous to others.

The reall impoverishings, sufferings and abasings of many Ministers, have been very great, in all bitter extremities; nor are the fears, ter∣rors or dejections of those, few or small, who have scaped best, who are still permitted, either by their gentler neighbours, or the lesse severe Lay-Bishops of later inspection, to earn their bread with the sweat of their brows. For even of these Ministers, many of them dare scarce demand their wages, when they have dearly deserved it; nor can they tell how with safety and peace to get it, when they have hardly earned it: so terrified and over-awed, so threatned and repro∣ched are they, some by peevish parishioners, others by separating straglers, and a third sort (which is a very Epidemicall mischief) by sharking and shuffling, dilatory and grumbling pay-masters; who think they deal very bountifully with their Ministers, if they pay them at the years end, with some difficulty, and many importunities (which looks very like pure begging) after the rate of two shillings in the pound for their Tythes, when they are bonâ fide worth foure, five, or six shillings. Few, yea very few, as I said, make it any point of Con∣science in Law, Religion, or Gratitude, to doe justice to their Ministers, so as their rights are assigned them by Mans laws. Few scruple to rob, deny, shark, detain, and immodestly to delay the pay∣ment of their dues, even according to their own agreements. If the poore Minister complains, though never so softly and whisperingly, if Necessities so pinch him, that he must either cry aloud, or starve with his wife and children, if he have so much spirit and courage, as he dares roundly to demand, or to urge the Law in his behalf; pre∣sently he is scared with the menaces of some proling Sequestrator, or some surly Aproniere, who being the fag-end or dregs of a Countrey-Committee, and sowred either with Anabaptisticall leven, or other factious principles, thinks he does God good service to threaten, to terrifie, to torment, to rout, to undoe such a quarrelsome Minister, who dares thus far to own himself, his calling, his condition, and his rights by Law; especially if the Minister be known to be of the Epi∣scopall judgment, a lover and honourer of the Church of England, and have a Living worth the losing. O what arts and policy, what wind∣ings and shifts, what complyings and cringings must this poore per∣plexed Minister use, to fence himself against the crafty agitations of his spitefull neighbours, and those pragmatick pieces, who in eve∣ry corner doe hover over the heads of Ministers, as Kites doe over Pigeons! How many times have Ministers been affronted publiquely,

even in their Churches, amidst Divine Offices; and had been much more, even to the outraging of their persons, if either the piety or the policy of those in power had not intervened, and in time repres∣sed this intolerable insolency, which was never heard of, never indul∣ged, never connived at in any Nation under heaven, that owned any publique veneration, service, or Religion to their God? If some stop and restraint had not for shame been given to these profane enormi∣ties, certainly by this time no true or worthy Minister should have opened his mouth in publique, but he should have been smitten on the mouth (as Ananias commanded them to use St.* 1.228 Paul) by some of those rude and facinorous Assassinates, whose design is to silence and extirpate all the Reformed, Orthodox, and orderly Clergie of England; not onely Bishops, as the Apostolick roots, but even all so∣ber Presbyters, as the branches of Ecclesiastick ordination.

For besides the private scorns and contests, no lesse than publique affronts, which Ministers have personally sustained, their enemies have proceeded many times to give even publick alarms to all the tribe & function, by rude Pamphlets, bitter libellings, and insolent Petitions, im∣portuning an utter extirpation of the Calling, Ordination, and Successi∣on,* 1.229 (such as Haman designed against the whole Nation of the Jews) together with a total alienation or confiscation of all the setled main∣tenance of Ministers by Glebes and Tithes. At which morsel some mens mouths have a long time extremely watered; with which pro∣digy of sacriledge they have been big a long time: nor do they yet think they are quite miscarried, or that this godly & gainful project is wholly abortive; although they have not yet been able to get a pub∣lick law or Parlamentary sanction to be their Midwife; nor I hope ever shall be able so far to blind and abuse the whole Nation, no less than abase the Ministry of the Gospel.

But the frequent tamperings and essays which some men still make in these kinds, (for what dare not the meanest wretches meditate and adventure against the best, yea all the sober Ministers of En∣gland?) these (as the clouds did Deucalion after the Flood) do still so terrifie the minds of the better sort of Ministers (till they shall see a clearer rain-bow of assurance appearing in the English firmament, for their favour and security, than yet hath been seen) that they have continual damps on all their spirits, great and daily checks in their studies, industry and ingenuity. Few of them can be so good husbands in these times, as to lay up any thing out of their livings for poste∣rity: nor dare they be so provident, as to lay out any thing upon the glebes or houses of their livings, either for their after-benefit, or present conveniency, because they know not (besides the hazards of mortality) what a day or a night may bring forth; uncertain how soon they may be undermined, and together with their miserable families turned out of that house and home, which heretofore was counted their free-hold by law, till by law they had forfeited them. Many Ministers have been suddenly conformed to our Saviours con∣dition, who had not of his own where to lay his head: which was not

his necessity or impotency, but his gracious choice, by being poor to enrich us; but poor Ministers are not armed (as Christ was) with miracu∣lous supplies when they please, nor may they now expect to be cour∣ted with such devout donaries and charitable oblations, as in primitive times were remarkable for their munificence, amplitude and splen∣dour; of which the Acts of the Apostles, the after-Church-histories, and Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth Century give us accounts. Alas, this age is an iron age; and mens estates are not generally more impaired than their hands are withered, and their hearts petrified: these are hardned in many, the others are exhausted in most. Mens minds are every where indifferent towards their Ministers; in many places they are divided from them, and their spirits exaspe∣rated against them. No wonder then if charity be grown cold, if po∣pular stipends and arbitrary alms (like morning dews) be soon dryed up. The Devil is so crafty, that he knows, if once he can take away that ancient, legal and Evangelical maintenance of Ministers by Tithes, he shall soon by starving take that royal Citadell and Sanctuary of Gods Church, that ancient Fort of Christian Religion, the Ministry it self: which above all things in the world he aims to slight, under∣mine, and utterly demolish; and hopes to do it by the help of such crafty and cruell engineers, who have, as Satans mouls and pioneers, done all they could in these times to undermine and batter down that firm pillar and support of Religion, a legal and certain main∣tenance by Glebes and Tithes, which are yet left to carry on any Church-work and Ministry, with any comfort or cheerfulness.

CHAP. XXVIII.

* 1.230YEt how cruelly do these still stick in some mens teeth and stomachs, onely because they cannot, yet, de∣vour them. I have other-where largely shewed to the publick view, how endlesly and earnestly some covetous and sacrilegious sophisters have disputed, or rather cavilled against Tithes, as paid to the Mi∣nisters of the Gospel, either in a civil or religious right, as given to them, and deserved by them, as Gods proportion and mans assig∣nation. O what swines-flesh, what abominable broth are they still to some mens squeamish stomachs; not as to their receiving them, or to their detaining them, against all Law, Justice and Conscience, but as to their paying of them to those to whom they are many wayes and onely due!

O how Legall, how Judaicall, how Ceremoniall, how Popish, how Antichristian are Tithes in Ministers hands! Let these holy Harpies once get them into their own clutches, either by impropriation, or sequestration, or hard compositions, by fraud, force, or by any way

never so illegall and injurious, O then, how sweet is the sacred sop to them! how quiet is the Cerberus of their tongues and conscien∣ces in the point of Tithes when paid to themselves! These (as all things) are a portion meet for such Saints, if they can but get them by any means; though neither God nor man, Law nor Gospel, Rea∣son nor Religion, give them any true right or title to them.

Nothing is more halting, more partiall, more subtill, more sini∣ster, than covetous hearts and sacrilegious spirits, as is evident in this one instance of Tithes; which hath been long debated to and fro by the perverse disputations of men of corrupt minds, who have been told a thousand times, that the Ministers of the Gospel do not plead any right of Tithes, as the Jewish Priests did, by any Mosaick Law and Jewish Institution; for our service, our sacrifice, our Ministry, are all changed to an higher and more noble Priesthood than that of Aa∣ron or Levi was. We plead that Tithes weve prae-Mosaical, and so may be post-Mosaical, before Moses, and after him in the Church of God;* 1.231 they are due to the Melchisedechian Priesthood of Christ; they were paid to the Type or Shadow, and so much more may be to the An∣titype or Substance: that they are Gods proportion even by a gene∣nerall law of * 1.232 naturall gratitude, besides Gods special choice and assignation: that as they were ever owned and confessed as due to the Divine Majesty by an innate principle or a traditionall dictate of all nations, almost in all ages, confirmed by a parallel law of God among the Jews; so they are no where in the Gospel abrogated or denied, but confirmed as to Evangelical uses and respects, in as much as the Christian hath no less cause to pay such an homage to God and his Ministers now, than the Jew had of old; the Ministry of the Gospel (which a 1.233 is a more excellent Ministry) deserving as much and as well of mankind as that of the Law: besides, in all reason, Gods ancient demand and unrepealed proportion is rather to be chosen than any other, as most pleasing to God, most equall in it self, and every way best, both for Minister and people, more agree∣able to good conscience, and least subject to cavill, grudging or ex∣ception on either side; especially when 'tis most evident, that it is confirmed by Evangelical sanctions and Apostolick orders; even b 1.234 so hath the Lord ordained, that they who preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel, as those that served at the Altar did live of the Altar. If these repiners do not like Gods assignation, and Christs right to Tithes, (which was not Leviticall, for c 1.235 Christ was not of that tribe) which are devolved to his Evangelicall Ministers, as being in Christs stead and office; yet they may very well satisfie their consciences in the paying of them, meerly d 1.236 upon the account of Ministers civil rights, and the publick donation of the nation, which hath by law invested Ministers, yea Christ and his Church, in the right and property of de∣manding, receiving and enjoying Tithes. This in all other cases holds good, even with these godly grudgers, as to Meum and Tuum, the law giving to every man what is his own by any honest acquisi∣tion of industry, purchase, or donation: which last title of gift is as

good, both in law and conscience, as any title in the world; especially where it is done by publick counsel and consent of a Nation, upon valid reasons of gratitude, equity and piety, both to God, to Ministers, to mens own souls, who have the greatest benefit by Tithes, if they have grace to partake of those spirituall good things, which Ministers do (at least ought) conscientiously to dispense to them.

If these devout devourers of things sacred (these Helluones decima∣rum) had as many pregnant Texts of Scripture, as much Analogy of Religion, as strong grounds of reason, as potent pleas of merit, as great evidences of equity, before the law, under the law, and after the law; if old Testament and new Testament were as evident for any thing which they fancy to set up, and are concerned to promote, as all these undeniably are for Tithes to be paid to the Ministers of the Gospel;

O how should all the world ring, and all ears be filled with their noise, cryes and clamors of a Divine Institution, an Ordinance of Jesus Christ, an holy rite, a necessary duty, a Gospel-dispensation, an everlasting Law, an undispensable Institution! O how should all men, all Christians, all Churches be unchurched, unchristened, unsaint∣ed, unheavened, quite excommunicated, and eternally damned, if these men might not have their wills; if all not did not readily submit to so clear a cause, in which Christ Jesus was so much concerned, at least in their opinion and interpretation, especially if it made for their profit!

But in the case of paying their Tithes, being themselves most con∣cerned not to part with them, they are so stupid, so sottish, so wil∣fully blind and impertinently peevish, that seeing by all those lights, yet they will not see what is equall, just and righteous before God and man; the bias of their covetous and base hearts being therefore cross-grain'd to the paying of Tithes to Ministers, because they hope (foolishly) that Tithes will one day lapse to their own private hands, as owners or farmers, and that they shall shark them not onely from Ministers, but from the Exchecquer, and from their severall Land-lords: the one of which will certainly confute the folly of these men, who are never to be reconciled to Tithes, till they can get them, or save them, if by no other wayes, yet by their turning popu∣lar Preachers: in which employment (forsooth) their consciences will serve them now at last to receive those Antichristian Tithes, which they cannot now much deserve, and which they heretofore so eagerly disputed against, and injustly denied, as too much for true and worthy Ministers, beyond, yea, against all modesty, civility, grati∣tude, honesty and equity. By which rude, injurious and vexatious tempers and dealings of such men, swarming in every corner of the land, poor Ministers of late years, in many, yea most parishes, have hardly been able to keep life and soul together: what they get is with difficulty, importunity, grudging, reproches, unkind and un∣comfortable contests, below the spirit of any learned and ingenuous man, especially when he thinks he hath a right both of Law and Go∣spel, of publick gift and personal desert.

CHAP. XXIX.

WHat,* 1.237 I beseech you (O noble Englishmen and generous Christians) can you find in this posture of Ministers condition, that hath the least shadow of double honour? what is there here to be envyed? what not to be pi∣tyed, as to the present? what hopes, what help for the future, if your favour, who are persons of piety, ingenuity, honour, compassion, constancie, faile them? If you also forsake them, they are utterly lost, and, as to this world, of all men most miserable. For as to the vulgarity and generality of people, what is there in the best condition of any true Minister, that carryes any thing with it of spirit and life, of comfort and encouragement, of vigour and improve∣ment to those studies and prayers, those pains and parts, those cha∣rities or hospitalities which doe become a Minister, and which peo∣ple expect from them, though they feed them but with pulse, the bread and water of affliction, and make them (with their families) look like Pharaohs lean kine? what almost is there left for their com∣fort, either as to future provision, or present subsistance? By that time their poore pittances are injuriously compounded, and slowly payd by dribbets and with infinite delayes; by that time taxes, tenths, and town-rates are defalked out of their wages; by that time they have satisfied the poor and rich in every Parish, which alwayes ex∣pect, as a right and due from their Ministers, something of charity and hospitality, be their Livings never so small; by that time the upper and the nether milstones, private necessities and publique exacti∣ons, have ground these poore men; alas, how little will be left for necessity, how nothing for conveniency, how lesse than nothing for posterity? You may despaire of any such superfluity as should serve for any such great, good, and generous designs, as the Clergie in former times did effect, both for piety and publique charity. Their Livings, at best, are but for life; and (now) many times upon a ve∣ry verticall point, an arbitrary and uncertain account: Besides, they are many wayes peeled and exhausted beyond any mens estates, pay∣ing not onely civil Taxes and Subsidies for their Tithes, after the rate of Land of Inheritance, but First-fruits also and Tenths, as a Spiritu∣all Tax and speciall mulct upon them. Truly, for my part, I am so far from seeing any cause for men to envy and grudge at Ministers enjoyments, such as they are for the most part, that I rather wonder at many of their subsistence, considering how ill it becomes their breeding and calling, to debase themselves to any sordid and mecha∣nick wayes of gain.

Especially when I consider a further cumulation incident to Mini∣sters miseries, which is, To be oft molested with pedling, peevish, and unhandsome Suits of Law, to which they are compelled by those

that list to be contentious: Ministers not having to this day any such easie, quiet and compendious way to get their wages when they have done their duties, as is daily used in raising the Souldiers payes, or the Poors collections; but the poor Minister, if he will not be ut∣terly impoverished, must ride and run, solicite and engage in tedious and chargeable attendances upon Justices, Committees, Lawyers, At∣torneys: among whom although Ministers find some very just, inge∣nuous, and generous Gentlemen, lovers of Learning, Religion, E∣quity, Order, and of their Mother the Church of England; yet others of them savour so strong of the apron antipathy, of a rustick, mechanick and illiterate breeding, besides that factious and peevish temper which they have lately added to their other perfections, that (in good ear∣nest) the sober and sound Ministers of the Church of England are as unwelcome to them, as cold water is to their feet in winter, or vi∣negar to their aking teeth, or smoke to their sore eyes, which they have (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) many wayes and oft expressed by their looks, words, gestures, actions; some of them treating aged, grave, godly, venerable, and most deserving Divines, (much their betters (God and man knows) in all true worth) not onely with rudenesse and petulancy, but with such bitternesse, haughtinesse and disdain, as they would not shew to a Foot-man or Lacquey, related to any per∣son whom they either fear, love or esteem. Herod was civill to John Baptist in comparison.* 1.238 These puffe and swell, they bite and threaten, as Ahab did at Eliah or Micaiah: counting these Ministers, though ne∣ver so supple & humble,* 1.239 tame & trembling before their good Worships, as enemies, because they hold to the Catholick truth; and as troublers of their Israel, because they will not be flatterers of their new fancies in Religion; because they persist in a judicious and consciencious owning their Orders and asserting their Ministry, which is their chiefest honour; because they will not yet fall down and worship the imaginations which some men seek to set up in England; because they follow the Primitive order, constancy and verity, not complying with that ig∣norance, levity, vulgarity, Schisme and Apostasie against the Church of England, wherewith some men are so delighted, without any sense of sin or shame, though never so much against that duty, gratitude, love, honour, estimation and communion which they owed to the Church of England, and the worthy Ministers of it.

CHAP. XXX.

THis I write to you (O nobler Christians,* 1.240 and my Honoured Countrymen) as with great certainty, sor∣row and sympathy, in regard of my Brethren the Ministers of this Church; so with the greater free∣dome, because it neither hath been, nor is my par∣ticular case (through Gods mercy) either to be con∣siderably injured, or in any degree over-awed by common people, much lesse by any men in Power, either Military or Civill: Nor have I any cause to complain of the generality of my own people, as to any want of justice, gratitude, or civility expecta∣ble from persons of their size and proportion.

Yet my own experience teacheth me to have the more sensible belief of many other Ministers sad complaints, who having (it may be) lesse advantages above their people, and much depending upon them, are forced in a very low posture to truckle under such factious, imperious, and injurious spirits as they meet withall.

There is, I find, no flock of Pigeons so pure and entire, but there will be some Stares, Jack-dawes and Rooks among them; no people so modest and ingenuous, so respective and submissive to their Mi∣nisters, but there will be some surly and supercilious, petulant and insolent spirits among them. No Minister of any good name and merit is so exalted in the love and respect of his people, but he will have some messenger of Satan to buffet him; some Judas among his Disciples, that will be prone to betray him, to traduce him privately and publiquely, to make him an offender for a word, to suck poyson as Spiders out of the sweetest flowers of his zeal, piety, charity, and oratory; turning honey into gall, and requiting evill for good.

I could give you (if you wanted daily experiences) some neer and notable instances, how respective, how gentle, how good-natur'd, how gratefull, how civill some people are to their Ministers, since they have taken the liberty to be rude, petulant, insolent, unholy, un∣thankfull. I have seen how much they disdain to pay any more civi∣lity or outward respect to their Minister, than they challenge to themselves, or than they give to their meanest comrades, which are of the same bran and barrell with themselves: yea some of them have taken a glory and pleasure to shew incivility, rudenesse, con∣temptuousnesse in words and behaviour as well as looks; more passi∣onate, malapert, and imperious to their Ministers, than they durst be toward a petty Constable, or a Bum-baily: some of them so unthank∣full, that for twice seven years constant pains among them, they ne∣ver returned any acknowledgment: some have not been ashamed to use down-right railing, scorn and ruffling to their faces, others behind their back. Some are so conceited of themselves, that they have

adventured to dictate and prescribe in a way even haughty and me∣nacing, what their Minister should doe and say. There want not some aguish and feaverish Auditors, who heare onely by fits, when they list: others are great criticks and severe censurers, whose wanton curiosity useth Sermons, as Walnuts; they crack them, and peel them, and cast away the greatest part of them with great nicety, eating little, and digesting lesse of sound doctrine. Some have high conceits that they can preach better than my self, I or any Minister. Some have begun a clownish contest with their Minister at the Font, bringing their children to Baptism with such indifferency, as when one was asked by his Minister, if he desired to have his child baptized in the Christian Faith, he answered very surlily, Yes, if you can doe it. Another with great peremptorinesse refused to have his Child baptized, unlesse the Minister would doe it himself, though he pleaded (with truth) his great wearinesse after twice Preaching that day, and desired ano∣ther Minister then assistant and present might doe it, as was usuall: But he, stiffe-girl, and inexorable, went with a short turn out of the Church, carrying his child with him, nor ever after offered it, that I know, to be baptized, although he was intreated with great gen∣tleness and kindness. These are the religious demeanours and deeds of some people that I have known.

Nor am I a stranger to those garlands and flowers of rustick ora∣tory and civil behaviour, wherewith some true plebeians do crown the heads of their Ministers, with as much love and respect as those did, who platted a crown of thorns on Christs head. I have heard and read the language of some of their tongues and pens too, for they dare to scribble as well as babble; nor doth their goose-quill want teeth any more than their lips do the poyson of Asps, sufficient to exercise the best Antidotes of Christian patience and charity, which any true Minister bears about him. I have seen sometime the viru∣lent letters of some of these Scribes and Pharisees, as full of contempt, insolency and menacing, as their little wits and great malice could in∣vent: and this from such as have been sometime personally obli∣ged, and to whom their Minister willingly never gave the least of∣fence. No touch-wood or dry gun-powder sooner kindles to flames of wrath, indignation and disdain, than some ordinary and mean men dare, yea delight, now to do against their Ministers. I have seen both by their pasquils and practises some instances of their ingenu∣ous manners, of their great respects, love and gratitude: all which (in good earnest) I might (I think without any vanity) have chal∣lenged and expected from all men, especially from my own Pari∣shioners and auditors, whom for many years I have endeavoured to entertain with so much industry, civility, candour, charity and hospi∣tality, as is not inferiour to most (if any) Ministers in the countrey; and in some things, as to publick charges and burthens, I believe I have exceeded any man of my estate and calling in England. As for private charities to the poorer and richer, to the well and the sick, for food, physick, clothing, &c. it is fitter others assert me, than I

should vindicate my self against the petulant ingratitudes of some men; among whom one had his tongue so much at liberty, that un∣injured, unprovoked, yea almost unknown to me (yet one of my many hearers) he doubted not openly to joyn me with my man, and put upon us both the title of a couple of proud Jack anapeses, when he was but, after two or three years forbearance, demanded to pay what was due, professing he would not maintain any proud Parson. Such spirits as these I must leave to be punished with their own manners; I must pardon them, as David did Shimei, and pray for them, as Samuel did for the ingrateful Israelites: the rather, because, I thank God, I meet with few of them in a very numerous people, who for the greater and better part of them, do indeed deserve all that care, love, labour, kindness and constancy, which I have shewed to them for 15 years together.

Onely by these experiments, both my self and others may easily conjecture how the pulse of people beats in most, if not all places, toward their Ministers, whatever they be; if they be men of any worth, spirits and parts above them. 'Tis sure enough, that even the best of them in the best places they meet with, are brought to a low ebb, in comparison of what respect they formerly enjoyed in En∣gland.

Indeed some Ministers (perhaps) have some little sleights and po∣pular artifices to win and please the vulgar; whom rather than of∣fend, they will do, or say, or omit, or silence any thing, not grosly a sin and shame; and rather than not please, they will rub ever and anon some salt upon the Bishops, the ancient Clergy, upon the Li∣turgy and the former constitution of the Church of England: for this gall is honey to the palates of some plebeian spirits. And rather than displease some people, there are Ministers that will never use the Creed, Decalogue, or Lords prayer in twice seven years. Nay some people so rule the tender mouths, and ride the galled backs of their Preachers with so sharp a snaffle and hard a saddle, that they are afraid to offend these their great Censors (rather than good Masters and Dames) by putting the title of Saint to any holy Evangelist, or Apostotick writer, no not when they name their Text, or cite any place out of their holy writings; but those holy and reverend men are named with as little respect or honor to their memory and merit in the Church, as if they spake to Matthew, and James, and Peter, and John in their kitchin, as their servants, or fellowes and familiars. Yea so spongily soft, timorous and sequacious some Ministers are, that what they own as their judgement among men of learning, parts and courage, this they smother with great wariness and cowardise among those plainer Hees and Shees, by whom they are over-awed, as it were, by a kind of necessary sportulary dependence.

CHAP. XXXI.

* 1.241WHat the sufferings, dejections, d••basements, indignities are, which many Ministers have, and do endure, no man can imagine, who doth not see and feel the weight of high shoes, or the ponderousness of Weavers beams, when they dare to tread on Ministers toes. If (as I have experimentally instanced) it be thus done to a green tree, to one that hath been not barren or unfruitfull among them, whom God of his mercy and bounty hath planted in an upper ground, and in many degrees of eminency above the vulgar; how (think you) will rustick spirits lift up their flailes and sithes, their hooks and bills, their shuttles and shovels against those of my brethren, whom they look upon as much their underlings and shrubs, by reason of the tenui∣ty of their condition, though they be never so tall Cedars in learning, piety, and all true worth? How do they threaten, and scorn, and molest them, if they do not suffer them to enjoy those shaking and sacrilegious compositions which they will make, or none at all, for their Tithes? else Articles and Committees, sequestrations and suits are loudly threatned: at best, parties, factions, schisms and separati∣ons are presently hatched and nourished against him; if the Minister do not sacrifice with great tameness a great part of his small means, as a peace-offering or atonement to these turbulent spirits, who if they may not be his Masters and Commanders, resolve to be his oppressors and undoers, if they can; however they take the freedome to be his declared deserters and enemies, discouraging and dis∣paraging him what they can, by separating from him, and from the Congregation or Parish, to some private and spitefull Conven∣ticle.

Which reserve of malice never fails to follow there, where any Minister hath the courage and confidence so far to own himself, as not to submit either to the injuries or insolencies of some proud and pragmatick spirits. If the conscience of his own integrity sets him im∣movably as a sluce against the tide of their folly and petulancy, O how excessively will their spleen swell against the good man! Ra∣ther than fail of having some revenge upon him, they will take this most severe revenge against themselves (as malice is oft its own mis∣chief) wholly to deprive themselves of all the benefit to be enjoyed by his learned, judicious and devout Ministry; which they labour to cry down, as that by which they cannot profit; that to refresh their souls, they are forced to seek out some more warm, complying, creeping and inspired Preacher: such an one, though a meer rhapso∣dist and rambler, must presently be cryed up as a rare soul-saving Preacher.

And indeed it may justly be feared, that most Separates of later

years have taken the rise and occasion of their schismes and separa∣tions from their lawfull Ministers, and from the Church of Engl. not so much upon any scruple of conscience, as upon pride, covetous∣ness, ambition, revenge, and other inordinate lusts, with which their Ministers would not comply: from which centre of order, union and consistence in the Church, when countrey people are once removed, no wonder if, like their cart-wheels, they run round in a vertigo of Re∣ligions; & being themselves once bitten with their own rage, they run (like mad dogs) up and down the countrey, seeking whom they may bite and infect with the contagion of their malice, contempt, revenge and abhorrence against their former Minister and all of his form, rai∣sing what mutinies, conspiracies and animosities they can against them, among those rurall neighbours, to whose conversation the most part of Ministers are condemned, and by whose egregious inso∣lence many of late years have been, as with evil spirits, grievously vexed and tormented, being in most places little respected and less beloved; generally but men of small estates, helpless enough, and friendless, full of frequent perplexities, betweene conscience and necessity, between piety and policy; having run through so many Ordeales or fiery trials of State, first a Protestation, then a Covenant, after that a Vow, next an Engagement, and soon after a dis-engagement. One while they are bound to maintain the Reformed Religion, as esta∣blished in the Ch. of Engl. according to their education, judgement, conscience and ordination: if they keep to this station, first Presbytery hath a fling at them, next Independency pincheth them; at last the li∣centious humour of people lets out a whole kennell of Libertines to worry them. Thus have many Ministers lingred out their lives of late years, laden and almost oppressed, worn out and quite tired with the burden of years, cares, labours, fears, anxieties, necessities, rude af∣fronts, and remediless afflictions.

All which calamities have faln so thick upon them in their per∣sons and reputation, in their estates and quiet, in their calling and employment, that none, but very ingenuous minds and compassio∣nate hearts, are apt or able to consider fully those sad talents of lead which lie upon many or most Ministers.

Their private closets are almost daily witnesses to their sighs, tears, prayers, bitter complaints, despondencies, and almost despairs: many of them ready, with Job and Jeremiah, to curse the day of their birth,* 1.242 their education as Scholars, and their ordination as Ministers: many of them, as Eliah, say secretly in their souls, Lord, 'tis enough, take away my life, since I have out-lived the glory of this Church, and the honor of my calling. Many are in such anguish of spirit, that they long for death, as for their rest, and seek for the grave, as for hidden trea∣sure; so sorely doth the heat and burden of the day beat upon them, as upon Jonah, and no gourd to refresh them.

All which griefs and dejections, however they strive, many of them, by a generous magnanimity, to conceal and smother, as much as is possible (knowing how vain a thing it is to complain, where is no

hope but of pity, and scarce that;) yet many of their neighbours, both friends and enemies, are so much curious spectators of their distresses and discouragements, that the one hath the pleasure to pity them, the other to insult over them. Which dismall reflections when the poor Ministers discern in mens looks, words, treatments and comportments toward them, how do they ruminate afresh, and chew over their calamities, when they retire home, and hide their heads in their ruinous and uncertain habitations, which daily, with their masters, fall to dilapidations? Ministers having neither money to lay out, nor hearts, if they had money, to repaire such uncertain, and, it may be, momentary mansions, where every relation they meet renews their regrets and vexations, both as to their private and pub∣lick condition; when they consider how much they and their pro∣fession are faln in England, as to all former civil and secular interests, either honourable, or honest and comely, and forced to stoop to those that make them their foot-stool,* 1.243 commanding them to bow down, that they may go over their backs.

When they hope a little to divert their melancholy thoughts, by going abroad and meeting with other men; with what force and af∣fectation do Ministers contend to put on so much brow and confi∣dence, as may keep them from appearing too sensible of their being every where discountenanced and despised as Ministers? Hence they think themselves safest, when they are most disguised in their clothes, both for colour and fashion, such as may least bewray them and their pitifull profession; being Ministers now rather by force and fatall necessity, than of any good will, choice, or self-comprobation, finding the best of their condition, preferment and expectation amounts not beyond a dispirited, dejected, despised, decayed, pre∣carious, proletary, predicant, not many degrees removed from a mendicant, condition.

Thus while the Souldier looks big, and glories to be seen in his arms, as the ensigns of his well-paid profession; while wary Lawyers keep as grave and wise men to their robes and gowns, as badges of their calling, which is their honour and gain too; while other civil fraternities and companies of trades own their vests and liveries; onely the poor Ministers of England study with great artifice to dis∣guise themselves, as manifestly, and not a little ashamed of their or∣der and function; and this not onely in high-wayes and markets, but even in their very Churches and Pulpits: they had rather appear as Lawyers, Physitians, Troopers, Grasiers, yea, Mechanicks, Apprentices and Serving-men, than in such a colour, garment, garb and fashion, as best becomes (in my judgement) grave Scholars and venerable Preachers: so great is the damp and discountenance they are sensible of, when they come among Lay-men, being alwayes loth, and oft afraid to be taken for Ministers, lest they be openly disgraced, jeered and contemned: this makes many leave off their wearing black, when they have cause enough to be in mourning.

There is yet one relief onely left them, by which a little to buoy

up their sinking spirits; that is, when Ministers meet together, they seem with some shew of wit, or gravity, or learning, or confidence, or sanctity, to hold up each others chins, especially if they be of a party, and get into some associate convention (which is the least of comforts to consorts in calamity;) and even this invention is carried on (as yet) rather furtively and precariously, than with any great solemnity or authority: and here, in the midst of their feigned mirth and seeming serenity, O what a secret guilt, shame and regret, do most of them find in themselves and in one another! O how great a cloke of con∣fusion covers their faces! as those most, who are most modest, inge∣nuous, ancient and innocent, when they see in their own nakedness, how God hath satisfied either the superpolitick or the simple sort of Ministers with their own delusions; what a cloud they have em∣braced instead of Goddesses; with what slighting they are treated & looked upon by all sorts of men; how they have helped, with much zeal and little wisdome, to reduce themselves and their order to this diminutive posture; being so divided & disordered among themselves, that they are easily despised, derided and destroyed by any that dare to attacque them: having now no nationall circumference as Church-men, no Ecclesiastical centre for union or ordination, no shadow or paternall shelter of protection among themselves, to defend them from vulgar heats and plebeian storms; nothing of filiall subordination or fraternal conjuntion, to keep them in any comely posture and regular moti∣on. Look beyond the seas, and they see all orders cast into a strength, stability and honour, by their subordination to their Bishops and Su∣periours, after the ancient and venerable pattern of all Churches: look homeward, and they find all mysteries of civil trades and merchan∣dise kept up by mutuall correspondencies and corporations, for order, counsel and government: onely the Ministeriall Tribe is become a disorderly order of men, like Simeon and Levi,* 1.244 they must be divided in Jacob, and scattered in Israel; which was the left-handed blessing of that holy Patriarch to those fierce and furious brethren, &c. Yea, the Clergie, or Ministry if you will (for some like that new title best, since their condition is much worsted) are become in England like the Jews in all lands; who are dispersed in many countries, but have no where any polity, community, authority, or government.

Adde to this dissipated and distracted state of Ministers, their pri∣vate distresses and poverties, together with the publick neglect and indifferency of people toward them; who can wonder if they look pitifully one on another, which no jocose or juvenile drolings can re∣lieve? how forced are their mutuall salutations, since they affect to call one another brethren, and yet have cast off their Fathers? how feigned are their smiles and embraces, when they see how hard an after-game they have to play for their subsistence, reputation, civill respect and Ecclesiastick union? For splendid estates, or any beam of publick honour and reall authority, further than the Territories of their desk and pulpits reach, they may sadly and justly, many of them, de∣spair of them: though I am of opinion no men can better deserve

them than some Clergy-men did heretofore, and still do; but not those, who by a spiteful and rash prodigality have set their own as wel as other mens corn-fields on fire, by helping to tie foxes tailes with fire-brands. These may be glad if they can preserve the petty Provin∣ces of their Parochial and Independent Episcopacies, which they so infinitely ambitionated, that they indiscreetly ventured to consume the larger harvest of this Church, which was annexed to the honour of Ancient and Catholick Episcopacy; by which means, not onely many Ministers of the Episcopall Ordination and judgement have been shrewdly distressed, but even Presbyterian and Independent Preachers, who flatter themselves as if they were the speciall favo∣rites of the people, even these are fain, in many places, with much ado, to fall to their gleanings, to pick up what small compositions, remnants and scatterings of support and respect, they can here and there get or find, as new and speciall undertakers to preach the Gospel, and give some credit to the lapsed and distressed Ministry of England.

This, this is generally the fate of Ministers; deservedly indeed of some, but most unworthy of many of them, who not without a pati∣ent horrour behold this prospect of calamities befaln them in their decline & age: and all this after great pains in their studies from their youth upward; after infinite prayers and tears, for their own and others souls improvement; after unwearied diligence in their calling; after in∣vincible patience under common peoples incapacities, stupidities, in∣gratitudes, indignities; after many rigours and severities of life, vo∣luntarily, besides necessarily sustained; after a kind of civil mar∣tyrdome endured, like that of Simon Stilites, who loaden with irons, confined himself into a narrow pillar of stone, while most Ministers are all their life-time condemned to the rusticity, barbarity, mo∣roseness and brutishness of the flinty vulgar, being like Orient Jewels set in sockets of copper, or brass, or lead, or iron, or clay. What Minister but finds in these licentious times, the deportment of many common people, as in the city proud and supercilious, so in the countrey harsh as hedge-hogs, and hard as rocks? for so their society oft seems to those men that have once tasted of ingenuous breeding, of softer and civiler conversation; from which to be wholly remo∣ved, and all ones life confined to hob-nails and high shoes, to lo••es and lasts, to tempers utterly clownish, or meerly mechanick, yet ponderous or petulant enough, as now they dare appear, is as if a man should fall from a down bed into a plot of briars and thorns.

Tell me I beseech you (O my brethren and fellow-labourers in the Ministry) who have many years contended with the clod, and toiled in the brick clamp of a countrey living, being as Ministers (now) even faln under plough-shares, and sawes, and harrowes (as Da∣vid once treated the children of Ammon;) tell me (O you my com∣panions in this tribulation) who have any thing in your temper, con∣stitution, or education, that is courteous and civil, polished and ge∣nerous, learned and ingenuous; yea tell me (O ye Noblemen and

Gentlemen of England, who are the chief pillars of cloud and fire, of light and favour, of capacity and affection (under God) to the now depressed Ministers either in their severall solitudes, or amidst those rural societies, which are many times more sad than utter soli∣tudes;) tell me (I beseech you all, who are my betters or brethren) are not those excellent associates, rare refreshments, precious rewards, noble encouragements, which Ministers of worth and parts in most places of England (for in Wales they say few are resident or incum∣bent) do now enjoy, for which they must spend their spirits, wast their lungs, decay their health, exhaust their lives, neglect all other wayes of livelihood, both for themselves and their families? After all which, little shall be left them, if some men may have their wills, but contempt cast upon their persons & calling together, with the le∣gacies of extreme poverty, which after a lingring death they must leave to their desolate wives and fatherlesse children. Good God! what arts did Church-men in former times use, when they did so much out-wit and out-wealth us; when having less charge, less learning, and less work, they had more order and unity, more honour and reve∣nues, even heaped up, pressed down, and running over? whereas (now) the tale of brick is much more, and the supply of straw far less: Livings heretofore worth an 100 l. per annum, are now ebbed and hardly squeezed to 50. or 60. pounds; and this with much whining and grudging, with many evil eyes and evil words on all sides.

Nor are these yet the dregs of that bitter cup, which Ministers above all men are to drink: for after all their former pains faithful∣ly bestowed, after they have been miserably tossed and weather-beaten by the storms of a long and dubious civil war, in the bowels of the Church as well as the State, after they have made shipwreck of almost all but a good conscience (few of them being ever admitted to any composition or resumption, as to their livings, yea many of them denied to make use of any such plank or rafter, which might serve to buoy them up from utter sinking and starving, though it were but teaching school in a belfrey;) yet after all these personall sufferings and extremities, behold they must live to hear and see their very calling and orders, their whole function and fra∣ternity disgraced and disordered, yea (as to some mens desires and endeavours) quite routed and abolished; the primitive pipes and ancient conduits of all Ecclesiastick power quite broken, and new cisterns set up, which hold no water, comparable to that brazen sea of Apostolick Episcopacy and orderly Presbytery, which ever served the Sanctuary of Christs Church, in all ages, places and offices. It might (possibly) break the quiet, the cheerfulness, the estates of many worthy Ministers, to see their persons, preaching, pains, prayers and holy ministrations neglected by many, despised by some, and trampled under foot by not a few; who (after the rate of plebeian spirits) following the revolutions of mens fortunes, think there can be no worth meriting their value and respect, either

civil or religious, but onely under the characters of riches, honour, and power; soon ebbing in their love and esteem of the Clergie, when they see the tide of honour and munificence so turned and abated, even to the lowest water-mark almost, as now it seems in England. But it breaks the very hearts and spirits of worthy Ministers (like old Elies) to hear and see Philistines take by violence the Ark of God,* 1.245 and carry it captive to their Dagons, the Idols that every ones fan∣cy lists to set up in private Conventicles, under the title of Mini∣steriall power and holy ordination: this at present infinitely dejects all sober Christians and true Ministers; this for the future quite sinks them in despair.

CHAP. XXXII.

* 1.246O How high and holy an ambition, I beseech you (my worthy Countrymen) will it be in after-times, and already is, for any man of parts, of learning, of con∣science, (guided by Scripture, and by all ancient pra∣ctices of the Catholick Church, no lesse than that of this Reformed and famous Church of England) to de∣vote himself to be a Minister of the Gospel, when he shall see no Reverend Bishops, no subordinate Presbyters left to ordain him, few or no people left to entertain him with due respect to his calling; some doubting, others denying, a third sort wholly despising all his Ministeriall power and authority! of which, next to our salvation, Ministers and other Christians should study to be assured that it is valid and divine, upon good and authentick grounds, which may both merit their acknowledgment, and oblige them to submission.

If any man that is fit, and willing to be a Minister in Eng∣land, if, I say, he can dispense with the Novelties, irregularities, and inconformities of his ordination, as to all Antiquity, no less than the orders of the Church of England (which ever was by Bishops, as the Apostolick Conduits, the chief Fathers and proper Conveyors, so confessed by all Reformed Churches;) if he can bear the tedious journeys from the remoter Counties, the long delayes, the unex∣pected scrutinies, and the strange questions he shall meet with, be∣fore he be allowed and admitted to officiate; which are very hard tri∣als to men that are tolerably learned, and not intolerably necessita∣ted for a small living: if these difficulties can be digested, which we see of late have deterred many good scholars and hopefull students from entring upon the Ministry, rather diverting their thoughts to other employments which are more easie, profitable and honourable now in England; yet still, whatever doore he comes in at, he is a great and bold adventurer, daring at once to undertake so tedious

and dreadful an employment, in which he must daily undergo many oppositions, many abuses, many injuries, many indignities incident from one side or other, to any Minister, what stamp soever he bears. He must be fortified with invincible patience, with heroick resolutions, with humble constancy, with Hermeticall content, with Martyrly charity, while he contends with many causeless enemies, with all those difficulties of poverty and contempt, which are very un∣welcome to flesh and blood, though never so spiritualized and refi∣ned: these do and ever will attend him as a Minister, while com∣mon people take so great liberties and confidences to baffle, to dispute, to despise, to disturb, and to undo their Ministers, besides their daring to obtrude themselves into his place and office.

The meanest tradesman or handy-craft mechanick bears the labour of his hands, and that sore travail of his soul, during his mortall pilgrimage, cheerfully and comfortably, while being willing and able to work for his living, he gets his wages without any mans grud∣ging, and enjoyes himself without any envy or obloquy, in ho∣nest wayes of industry, though possibly it reach no further than making of ribbands, or points, or buttons, or babies, for the use of the Common-weal: onely the poor Minister (especially if he dare own the Church of England, or assert his authority from an higher origine, than what is novel, secular and popular) after twice seven years rig∣ging and preparing himself for so rough and hazardous a voyage; af∣ter he hath many nights and dayes, by studying, watching, fasting, praying, weeping, furnished himself as a workman that needeth not to be ashamed before men; after he hath wholly and onely devoted himself to that heavy plough and employment, the care and culture of mens souls (which are naturally hard as fallow grounds, full of weeds and thorns) which work may well take up the whole time, ability and industry of the best of men; after he hath so followed this holy husbandry, as to neglect all other means and opportunities to advance his worldly condition, thinking it would be enough for him to merit well of his Countrey and the publick, and, as a learned, grave and serious Minister, to serve God and mankind, by setting forth and communicating to the world the inestimable ri∣ches and excellencies of his and their Saviour; which service might well deserve as good salaries and encouragements as those enjoy, who have offices in the Customes, Excise, Exchecquers, and treasuries of unrighteous mammon; after he hath thus denied, exhausted and macerated himself, in order to promote the highest interests of God and man, which is the eternall salvation of sinfull souls, and this at no great charge, or expence of mens estates; after his modesty, charity and hospitality hath convinced all men, that he covets them, not theirs, condescending oft below himself, in order to captate the love and civil favour of people, that he might gain more advantages to save their souls:

Yet still this good Ministers condition will of all mens in Engl. be

most miserable: for while he is daily doing his duty, and doing it well, with meekness of wisdome, with good conscience and discretion; yet he shall be sure to contract many enemies without a cause. Many that are meere strangers to him will hate him out of anti-ministeri∣all Antipathies and Epidemick principles; which are so rife and in fashion in England, against any that own themselves as Mini∣sters (ex officio) by duty and office, especially after the order of the Church of England. Upon this very name he shall adopt the cen∣sures and hard speeches, the envy and malice, the janglings and ruffling, the injuries and indignities of many: he must be made a man of strife, whether he will or no; oft destinated to disgrace and ruine, unheard, untried, unseen, unknown. If he own him∣self as a man of any spirit, and a Minister of any authority, then he is censured as proud, a Pope, a Lucifer; if he be soft and supple, then he is counted spongie, poor-spirited, pusillanimous: if by any honest arts and innocent frauds he can preserve his station, his living, his liber∣ty, then he is counted cunning, a meere politico, a time-server, an hypocrite: where he is best known he must look to be least be∣loved by many high Seraphicks and supercilious Separatists; there will be some godly bubbles, swolne with pride and ignorance, that will scorn all his learning, all his abilities, all his devotion, all his duties.

When their mouths are stopped, and their gain-sayings confuted, though not silenced, yet neither his work nor his person will be accepted; nor will some men own their profiting by his Mini∣stry, that they may save their purses, and excuse themselves for not paying him his dues. His wages must be oft changed by pee∣vish Labans, sometimes totally denied by churlish Nabals; and there are who never batten more than when they most cheat their Minister. In fine, he will need Argus his eyes to look about him, for feare lest the whole foundation of his livelihood and sub∣sistence be so undermined, shaken, assaulted and quite overthrown by two or three pragmatick and spitefull neighbours, that he will be in hazard to be quite routed and outed, without reward and work, forced to be either indigent or idle; and this without any ordinary rule or remedy, that I know, as to the Lawes of En∣gland.

A dreadfull prospect, God knowes, of Idleness and Indigence, sufficient to scare a very resolute soul, more than that spectre did Brutus the night before he fought unfortunately in the Philippick fields; discouragements capable to damp any provident mens spirit, from so dangerous, and almost desperate a service as this is, to be a professed and ordained Minister of the Gospel in England. What young men of any parts and hopes, of any pregnancy and in∣genuity, will be so zealously forward, as to prick their fingers by gathering roses and lillies, among such rude thorns, as now either hedge up the way, or encompass the paths of every solid and so∣ber

Minister? It is a fervour not very frequent, nor are they quoti∣dian fits, either in younger or elder men of any worth, to embrace Religion in rags, and vertue when it is vagrant and mendicant, out at heels and elbows: when to be a Minister of Jesus Christ, is to have little for the belly or back, less for books or the brain; nothing to exercise charity of hospitality, less than nothing (as from man) to cherish graces, to increase gifts, to whet industry, to promote piety. What mortal is so brutishly hardy, as having no fleece or wooll on his back, he would chuse, not to dwell, but do penance in so cold, so Scottish a climate, as old England will soon prove to worthy Ministers; when it is become an Iseland, a Freezland, a nova Zembla, nothing but Hyperborean rigour, frozenness, and barrenness in it; no spring, no summer, no harvest expectable, as to any common favour, ingenu∣ous pleasure, honest profit, or moderate honour? which is the temperature that some mens distempers have sought to reduce poor Ministers to, while they endeavour to turn the English Church and Clergy either up-side down, or out of doors.

CHAP. XXXIII.

CAn you (O my worthy and honoured Countrey-men) without an infinite vanity, folly and presumption,* 1.247 (most unworthy of your piety and prudence) ever expect that there should be such burning and shining lights among you, as have been in this Church and Nation; when there shall be little or no oyle to sup∣ply the lamps, or such as shall be rather Whale-oyl and Greenland-stuff, than such sweet and golden oyl,* 1.248 as through the golden pipes flow∣ed from the Olive trees, which were round about the Candlesticks in Zachariah's vision, which was an emblem of Evangelicall diffusi∣ons from Christ to his Ministers, and from these to his Church? Do you think any mens sons of better quality, or others (whose hopes and ambition will carry them above the condition of a Cob∣ler or a Tinker) when they come to yeares of discretion, and have a true prospect of that barren heath, that dry and parched wilder∣nesse, to which the Ministry of England is like to be confined and condemned in the midst of a land of Goshen, which flows with milk and honey to all other wayes of industry; doe you think (I say) that any man, who hath not lost his mother-wits, and those innate principles of self-preservation, will spontaneously rush into so many sharp contentions and temptations, like the horse into the battail, where hunger, and thirst, and cold, and nakednesse, and shame, and sordidnesse of living, shall threaten him as a Minister, like the ragged regiment attending that armed man,* 1.249 whose name is Poverty; besides the black pots, among which these doves must

lie, I mean the foot and skullery of vulgar insolency, plebeian petu∣lancy and fanatick contempt? all which, like the over-hanging brow of a rock or cliffe, threaten to fall upon him and his relations, who seeks for the refuges of his life and pilgrimage, under the shel∣ter of the Ministry: where if any single men (being more (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉,) callous and iron-sided) can bear with, and bustle through their own sufferings and others rude oppositions; yet when they are married, and have relations more tender and dear to them than their owne lives, O how will their bowels be broyled like S. Laurence's, and their hearts turned upon the gridiron, when they are frequently forced to hear, and see, and feel the cryes, the wants, the distresses, the tears, the pallors, the squallors of their wives and children, which pierce and wound the very souls of ingenuous men! O how cruell will that indulgence appear in after-ages, which took away the hea∣vy yoke and severe restraints, beyond what God and Nature, Law or Gospel imposed, as on the other Western Clergie, so here in England, by the policy more than piety of the Popes of Rome (con∣trary to the sense of the Nicene and primitive Fathers) when the fruit of such Clergy-mens marriages shall appear no other than wi∣thered plants, starved in their very originall, and condemned to per∣petuall tenuity, both of parts and employments!

In ancient times, when the state of this Church and its Clergie was more idle and superstitious, but more opulent and honourable, what Gentleman, what Nobleman, what Prince, yea what Soveraign Kings did not ambitionate to plant some of their sons (as Henry the seventh intended his second son, Henry the eighth) into Gods vineyard, for the work, office and honour of a Church-man? Now a Gentle∣man of the first head disdaines it, a Yeoman disputes it. If the Fa∣thers piety can digest to make the meanest of his sons a Minister, the Mothers tenderness dreads it; if the good Mothers zeal de∣votes the poor youth to that perpetuall servitude, yet the Fathers prudence and policy rather chuseth for him a life of more activity, ease, peace, pleasure and honour; if it be but to make him, as the last refuge, a common trouper, or a foot-souldier, who may in time over-awe the best Bishop and Minister in a County, yea a whole Diocese and association of them, if Ministers shrink the next ten years as they have done of late.

Nor may any wise men, that wish well to their Countrey and the Church of England, ever flatter themselves, that one man of a thou∣sand, who hath good abilities of mind, or any competent estate, sufficient to redeem himself from the servilities of poverty and popularity, will ever condemne himself, in a monastick or melan∣choly humour, to be a Minister. The old stocks already are dwarft in great part, or hewn down; and generally they will be but shrubs, on which the Ministry hereafter will be grafted, in a foile and age that growes so barren, stingy, ungenerous, unbenigne to them. Possibly there may be now and then an heroick resolu∣tion in a Gentleman of worth, for family, parts and estate, to

assert the honour of his Saviour, and the declining dignity of his blessed Ministry, by undertaking holy orders: but these are rare birds, and will be Phoenixes in after-ages; not more admirable than commendable indeed, when they come in at the right doore of Catholick ordination and Apostolick succession, which are the visible seales of Divine Authority and Commission, con∣ferred of old, even from the first age, by none (that ever I read) without Episcopall power and precedency, which immediately succeeded the Apostles in that ordinative and gubernative emi∣nency; which, I believe, was to be ordinary and constant in the Churches Oeconomy, both to preserve an orderly polity, and to confer holy orders with due, that is, Divine authority, in an uninter∣rupted succession.

But where a childs portion must be wholly raised by a mans own industry, and Gods blessing upon his employment in the Mini∣stry, O how cruell will those parents seem to their sons at years of discretion, when once they come to tast and drink deep of that cup of gall and vinegar, tenuity and contempt, which some mens charity designes to mix for Ministers! How will such poor and despised Preachers, all their tedious and necessitous lives, condemn, and in the bitterness of their souls sometime be ready to curse (as Job and Jeremiah did the dayes of their birth) that preposte∣rous zeal, and pitiless piety, which bred them up, with no small care, cost and pains, onely to condemn them to the pulpits, as to the gallies of plebeian slavery and necessity; when they shall by wofull experi∣ence find, that all their costly learning and education, their ingeni∣ous parts and excellent abilities, have made them like the sacrifices of old, adorned with ribbands and garlands, that they may with the greater pomp and solemnity be slain by popular insolency; when pa∣rents devoting their hopefull sons to the service of the Church, is to prefer them to labour and sorrow, to pains and poverty, to scorn and shame, to vulgar contempt and contradiction!

Which very unpleasing and horrid apparitions of all manner of discouragements, have of later years so evidently damped and dis∣couraged many worthy men, that not onely very hopefull scholars have diverted their studies to any other design than that of Divi∣nity and the Ministry, but few parents, who can find any other way to dispose of their sons, are so unnaturall, as to expose them to that sad fate, which they see attends every Minister that dares own the right way of acquiring and exercising the sacred authority of that functi∣on. Certainly Origens juvenile impatience not to be a Martyr, was not many degrees above the resolution of those young men who will now adventure to be Ministers in England, upon a good and Ca∣tholick account, which equally abhors plebeian petulancy, popular dependency, and uncatholick novelty.

And to hope that common people will in time grow better-natur'd toward Ministers, by enjoying whatever liberties they list to arrogate or indulge to themselves in Religion, is so high a presumption, as is next

door to despair: unless it can be imagined that mankind (naturally enemies to God and all grace) will of themselves learn to value their souls and their eternall interests, which are so remote from their sen∣ses, as much as they do their bodies and estates; or that they will look upon Divines and Ministers as no less necessary for their good, than Lawyers and Physicians are; whose fees and entertainments tell the world, that men willingly or necessarily bestow many pounds in or∣der to secure their bodily health and wealth, when they miserably and basely grudge at three half-pence spent upon their Ministers and their souls: on which to bring men to set a due value, hath been in all ages the chief end of true Religion, the great work of all the Prophets, Apostles, holy Bishops and godly Ministers; yea the main de∣sign, next the divine glory of God himself, and our blessed Saviour Je∣sus Christ. Men are miserably betrayed to themselves, when they are suffered to live at that liberty or looseness, which will certainly debase, despise and damn their souls. Which sad events being chiefly imputable to common peoples own folly and madness, yet will those men be highly responsible for them, in whose power it was, either to teach them better, or to restrain them from those profligate hu∣mours, by which prodigal and poor wretches are prone to destroy, as well as to despise, both their Ministers and themselves; whom to per∣swade to a true value and reverence of themselves, is an high point of Philanthropy and Theologie, of charity and piety, of humanity and Divinity: which foundation once well laid, would soon recover the decayed and desolating condition of Ministers, who will never be valued, loved, or rewarded proportionably to their worth, labours and dignity, untill men think they have infinite need of them; yea, more need than of the most learned and honest Lawyers, or the most faithfull Physicians, who have so great an influence, yea empire upon mankind, because men sensibly feel and find the want of them, which they do not of their able Ministers; every prating intruder being enough to serve their turn.

But I have done with the causes and occasions, the instances and evidences of the decayes and deformities of Religion in the Church of England; which chiefly rising from the licentiousness of people, and the inordinateness of Ministers, have been the main subject of this second Book.

Notes

• * 1.1

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. Hip. Non sanant, sed mutan•• morbos. Fernel.
• * 1.2

  Mat. 15.19.
• * 1.3

  2 Tim 4.3. 1 Tim. 6.4, 5.
• * 1.4

  Ephes. 6.12.
• * 1.5

  Revel. 2.24.
• * 1.6

  Revel. 2.23.
• * 1.7

  Doluisse fertur A••rius, quod quum ••sset Presbyter, Epis∣copus non potu∣it ordinari. Aug. de Hae. es.
• * 1.8

  Inordinate liberty in reli∣gious affaires the chief cause of m••series in the Church of Engl.
• * 1.9

  Jude 2.
• * 1.10

  Tametsi illo∣rum temporum Episcopi mul∣tos Canones ediderunt, qui∣bus plus viden∣tur exprimere quam sacris li∣teris expressum sit; eâ tamen cautione totam suam oeconomiā composuerunt ad unicam illam verbi divini normam, ut fa∣cile videas ni∣hil ferè habuisse hac in parte à verbo Dei alie∣num. Cal. Inst. l. 4. c. 4. sect. 1.
• * 1.11

  Schismaticos semper inter in∣itia fervere; in∣crementa vero capere non pos∣se, nec augere quod illicite coe∣perint, sed sta∣tim cum prava sua aemulatione deficere. Cypr. ep. 52.
• * 1.12

  Judges 21.25.
• * 1.13

  What Christi∣an liberty is desirable and tolerable a∣mong people.
• * 1.14

  Euseb▪ in vita Const. M.
• * 1.15

  Rom. 14.3.
• * 1.16

  2 Thes. 3.15.
• * 1.17

  Acts 20.30.
• * 1.18

  Ubi metus in Deum, ibi gra∣vitas modesta, & diligentia attonita, & cu∣ra solicita, & adlectio ex∣plorata, & com∣municatio deli∣berata, & pro∣motio emerita, & subjectio re∣ligiosa, & ap∣paritio devota, & processio mo∣desta, & ec∣clesia unita, & Dei omnia. Tert. de praes. c. 43.
• * 1.19

  2 Tim. 3.7. Ephes. 4.14.
• * 1.20

  Acts 15.
• * 1.21

  1 Tim. 1.3.
• * 1.22

  2 Tim. 1.13.
• * 1.23

  Rom. 1.8.
• * 1.24

  Exod. 32 4
• * 1.25

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. Clem. Alex. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. 7.
• * 1.26

  Tit 3.11,
• * 1.27

  Luke 20.16.
• * 1.28

  Mat. 10.14.
• * 1.29

  Of Plebeian rudeness and licentiousness in Religion, if left to them∣selves.
• * 1.30

  Non rationibus convincuntur, quia non intel∣ligunt; nec auto∣ritatibus corri∣guntur, quia non recipiunt; nec flectuntur suasionibus, quia subversi sunt. Bern. in Can. s. 66.
• * 1.31

  Imperiti, ani∣mosi, & propter inopiā consil••i iracu••di. Fer∣mil. ap. Cyp.
• * 1.32

  Nisi quod ipsi faciunt, nihil r••ctum existi∣mant. Aug. ep. ad Janua.
• * 1.33

  Heb. 13.17.
• * 1.34

  2 Chr. 11.15.
• * 1.35

  1 King. 13.33.
• * 1.36

  2 Chron 19 9.
• * 1.37

  Theophylact in 2 Tim. 4.3. Heaping up tea∣chers, &c. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.
• * 1.38

  Mich. 2.11.
• * 1.39

  Job 22.13.
• * 1.40

  Psal. 2.3.
• * 1.41

  Mat. 8.29.
• * 1.42

  Acts 19.28.
• * 1.43

  Instances of abused Liberty in the vulgar neglect of rea∣ding the Scri∣ptures.
• * 1.44

  Acts 7 38. 2 Tim. 3.16.
• * 1.45

  1 Tim. 2.13.
• * 1.46

  Gal. 1.8.
• * 1.47

  Co••. 3.16.
• * 1.48

  2 Tim. 4.3.
• * 1.49

  Nehem. 8.3, 8.
• * 1.50

  Just. M. Apo. 2.
• * 1.51

  Psal. 19.7, 8.
• * 1.52

  Mal. 2.7.
• * 1.53

  Vulgar neg∣lect and scorn of ancient formes of wholesome words, in the Decalogue, Creed, and Lords Prayer. Rom. 6.17. 2 Tim▪ 1.13.
• * 1.54

  Totius Evan∣gelii breviari∣••m. Tert. de Orat. Dom. So Cyp••. Coelestis doctrinae compendium, fidelium harmonia, in toto orbe celebratum Amen. And Ruffin. in Symb. Iren. l. 2. c. 9. l. 3. c. 3. It is called Apostolorum traditio, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Amphiloch. Hieron. ep. 16. Chrys. in Symb.
• * 1.55

  Heb. 6.1.
• * 1.56

  Gal. 2.14.
• * 1.57

  Matth. 6.9. Luke 11.2.
• * 1.58

  Quanto facilius audiamur, dum prece quam fili∣us docuit apud patrem loqui∣mur?

  Quanto of∣ficacius ••m∣petramus quod petimus in Christi nomine, si petamus ipsi∣us oratione? Cyp. de Orat. Dom.

  Quantum sub∣stringitur ver∣bis, tantum dif∣funditur sensi∣bus. Tert. in Orat. Dom.
• * 1.59

  The innovati∣ons, usurpati∣ons and vasta∣tions made by some upon the order, office and authority of the Evan∣gelicall Mini∣stry.
• * 1.60

  Joh. 15.21, 22.
• * 1.61

  1 Tim. 5.17.
• * 1.62

  1 Pet. 2.3. Heb. 6.4, 5.
• * 1.63

  Job 40▪ & 41. 2 Pet. 2.18.
• * 1.64

  Col. 2.18.
• * 1.65

  1 Tim. 4 2.
• * 1.66

  James 1.27.
• * 1.67

  1 Cor. 14.9.
• * 1.68

  De praes. ad Har.
• a 1.69

  Dandi baptis∣mi jus habet summus sacer∣dos qui est E∣piscopus; dehinc Presbyteri & Diaconi. Tert. de bap. c. 17. Tert. exh. ad Cast. c. 7. Differentiam inter ordinem & plebem con∣stituit ecclesiae autoritas & honor per ordi∣nis consessum sanctificatus à Deo, ubi eccle∣siast••ci ordinis est consessus & offert & tinguit sacerdos qui est ibi solus. Eucharistiae Sacramentum non de aliorum manu quam praesidentium sumimus. Tert. coro. mil. c. 3. Cyp. ep. 35. in illa verba, Quemadmodum misit me pater, &c. John 20.21. unde intelligimus, non nisi in eccle∣sia praepositis, ac in Evangelica lege & Dominica ordinatione fundatis, licere baptisare, aut remissionem peccatorum da∣re.
• b 1.70

  Tertul. de praes. ad Haer. cap. 41.
• c 1.71

  Epiphan. Haeres. 89. Aug. de Haer. c. 27.
• * 1.72

  Facinus mul∣tis mortis gene∣ribus multan∣dū Socr. hist. l. 1. c. 20. Niceph. l. 8. c. 49.
• * 1.73

  Athanasius Ischyram vel Ischy••ionem sacris mysticis operantem, fa∣cto flagrante deprehendens, mensam sacram evertit, calicem confregit, im∣piam tem••ra••ii hominis audaci∣am inhibuit. Aetas nostra multos vidit Ischyras, A∣thanasia nul∣lum. Langius in Niceph. locum.
• * 1.74

  The pretensi∣ons of Intru∣ders to excuse their wants. Apostolos in perversum ae∣mulantur. Tert. de praes. l. 30.
• * 1.75

  1 Tim. 4.13, 14, 15, 16.
• * 1.76

  Si constat id verius quod prius, id prius quod & ab ini∣tio, id ab initio quod ab Apo∣stolis; pariter utique constabit id esse ab Apo∣stolis traditum quod apud Ec∣cles••as Aposto∣lorum fuerit sacrosanctum. Tertull. adv. Marci. l. 4. c. 5.
• * 1.77

  2 Cor 5.••0.
• * 1.78

  Tota in Aposto∣los potestas Do∣minici trans∣fertu••. Hilar. in Mat. c. 10.
• * 1.79

  Mat. 28.20.
• * 1.80

  Verse 19.
• * 1.81

  Chrys. in Joh. 20.21.
• * 1.82

  Heb. 13.17.
• * 1.83

  Quia Christus visibili praesen∣tia inter nos non habitat, ho∣minum ministe∣rium adhibe••, quasi vica••iam operam; non ad eos jus suum transferendo, sed ut per manus ipsorū suum ipse opus ••g••t. Cal. Inst. l. 4. c. 3. sect. 1.
• * 1.84

  Rom. 12.1. Heb. 13.10. 1 Pet. 2.5. Heb. 13.15.
• * 1.85

  Acts 14.23. 1 Tim. 3. & 5.22. Ti. 1.5.
• * 1.86

  Act. 20.28. 2 Cor. 6.1. 2 Cor. 4.7.
• * 1.87

  1 Cor. 2 3.
• * 1.88

  1 John 5.7, 8.
• * 1.89

  1 Tim. 3.13. Ephes. 4.11.
• * 1.90

  Of Ministerial sufficiencies, reall or pre∣tended. 2 Cor. 2.16.
• * 1.91

  Psal. 74 6.
• * 1.92

  It was Constan∣tine the Great's saying to the Nicene Bishops, Vos intra eccle∣siam, ego extra ecclesiam à Deo episcopus con∣stitutus sum. Euseb. vit. Const. l. 4. c. 24.
• * 1.93

  Exod. 28.1 Heb. 4.4 5 Mat. 3.14
• * 1.94

  1 Tim. 3.1.
• * 1.95

  1 Cor. 3.6.
• * 1.96

  1 Cor. 12.4, 5.
• * 1.97

  Plane Episcopi non de Dei vo∣luntate fiunt, qui contra dis∣positionem (Do∣mini) & tradi∣tionem (eccle∣siae) fiunt. Cyp. ep. 55.
• * 1.98

  Pag. 1164.
• * 1.99

  2 Tim. 3.4.
• * 1.100

  John. 10.1.
• * 1.101

  Act. 20.29.
• * 1.102

  Acts 20.28.
• * 1.103

  What caution Christians ought to use, as to those Mi∣nisters with whom they in∣trust the care of their souls.
• * 1.104

  Mat. 13.55.
• * 1.105

  John 1.14. Mat. 28.18.
• * 1.106

  Revelat. 2.2.
• * 1.107

  2 Cor. 11.13.
• * 1.108

  Rom. 16.18.
• * 1.109

  Acts. 9.17.
• * 1.110

  Acts 11.26.
• * 1.111

  2 Cor. 11.13.
• * 1.112

  Jer. 23.21.
• * 1.113

  Rev. 2.2.
• * 1.114

  1 Cor. 14 32.
• * 1.115

  Mat. 21.23.
• * 1.116

  Mat. 7.29. He taught them as one having au∣thority. 1 Cor. 4.19. Not the speech, but the power.
• * 1.117

  J••de 3. M••s iste semper in ecclesi•• vi∣gu••••, ut qu•• quisque s•••••••• re∣ligi••si••r, ò prompt••us no∣vellis adinven∣tionibus con∣traire••. Vin. Li••. adv. haer. c. 9.
• * 1.118

  Gal. 1.8.
• * 1.119

  Mat. 13.30.
• * 1.120

  2 Chron 29.5. Sanctifie the house of the Lord, and carry fo••th the filthi∣ness out of the holy place.
• * 1.121

  Surculi & pro∣pagines Aposto∣lorum fidei tra∣duces. Tert. de praes. c. 32.
• * 1.122

  Jer. 2.13.
• * 1.123

  Of late new models for ma∣king Ministers of the Gospel.
• * 1.124

  Christiani vete∣res, & recentes ab Apostolorum & Apostolico∣rum virorum disciplina, ••o∣rum praescripta & intelligebant melius, & p••rfe∣ctius ••molebant. Grot. de jur. bel. & pac. l. 4. c. 4. sect. 5.
• * 1.125

  Mr. R. Hookers p••ef. to his Ec. pol. pag. 16.
• * 1.126

  Venerable Bede, Hist. Eccl. The Primate of Armagh, his De primordi••s eccl. B••tan. Sir. H. Spelman. B. Godwin, & others.
• * 1.127

  2 Kings 10.22.
• * 1.128

  The false and foolish preten∣sions urged a∣gainst the Mi∣nistry of Engl.
• * 1.129

  P••esb••t••••is q••i s••nt in E••cl••sia obau li••e op••••∣t••t, qui successi∣on••m habent ab Apostolis, & cum successio•••• charisma veri∣tatis. Iren. l. 3. c 40. & l. 4. c. 43. Vid. T••rt. de praes. adv. Haer. c. 20. & 32. &c.
• * 1.130

  Vid. Auberti Miraei. Notitiā Episc. & poli∣tiae Ecclesiasticae per omnes Ec∣clesias.
• * 1.131

  An impartial balancing of the old and new Minister.
• * 1.132

  2 Cor. 11.4.
• * 1.133

  2 Tim 3 6.
• * 1.134

  2 Pet 3.16.
• * 1.135

  Jude 13.
• * 1.136

  Rev. 3.1.
• * 1.137

  A charitable plea for the ancient Cler∣gie of the Ch. of England, a∣gainst the in∣gratitude and indifferency of some men. Ordo Episcopo∣rum ita per suc∣cessiones ab ini∣tio decurrens, ut primus in quali∣bet Ecclesia Epi∣scopus aliquem ex Apostolis, aut Apostolocis vi∣••is, habuit auto∣rem & anteces∣sorem. Tert. de praes. adv. Haer. c. 32.
• * 1.138

  Joh. 5.35.
• * 1.139

  Object.
• * 1.140

  Answ.
• * 1.141

  Phil. 1.16, & 18.
• * 1.142

  1 Tim. 1.11.
• * 1.143

  The best of the new Tea∣chers compa∣red with the Ministers of England.
• * 1.144

  Tert. de praes. c. 41. & 42. Quis catechu∣menus, quis fidelis, incertum ••st; pariter audi∣unt, pariter o∣rant, &c.
• * 1.145

  job 38.2.
• * 1.146

  2 Pet. 2.18.
• * 1.147

  Rom. 8.16.
• * 1.148

  Maxima gratia est minime sui ostentatrix. Bern.
• * 1.149

  Psal. 25.14. Prov. 3.32. Cant. 1.2.
• * 1.150

  Incidi in ho∣mines superbe delirantes, car∣nales nimis & sequaces; in quo∣rum ore laquei Diaboli, & vi∣scum confectum commistione syl∣labarum, nomi∣nis tui (i. e. Dei) & Jesu Christi, & paracle••i, Spiritus Sancti: haec enim nomi∣na non recede∣bant de ore eo∣rum; sed sono te∣nus & strepitu linguarum; cae∣cerum cor inane veri. Dicebant veritas veritas mihi; sed nus∣quam erat in iis, qui falsò lo∣quebantur. Aug. conf. l. 3. c. 6. de Manicheis.
• a 1.151

  2 Pet. 1.4.
• b 1.152

  Phil. 2.
• * 1.153

  2 Cor. 4.6.
• * 1.154

  1 Cor. 6.19.
• * 1.155

  2 Cor. 3.18.
• * 1.156

  A farther sift∣ing of these new Teachers.
• * 1.157

  Dogmatum tor∣m••nta, & terri∣culamenta ver∣borum. Hier.
• * 1.158

  Matth. 3.
• * 1.159

  Nobis post Chri∣stum curiositate opus non est, nec revelatione post Evangelium. De praes.
• * 1.160

  Hoc prius cre∣dimus, ultra scripturas n••hil esse quod creda∣mus. Id. Rom. 1••.3.
• * 1.161

  Lascivienti in∣genio nihil peri∣culosius aut bonis moribus aut sanae religi∣oni. Eras.
• * 1.162

  Ut cadavera, sic haereticorum dogmata, quò magis pu••ida, eò magis inflata, sua{que} tabe tu∣m scunt.
• * 1.163

  Tolerabilius est Deo quempiam cum ignorantia in humilitate jacere, quàm cum elatione al∣ta sapere. Greg. Moral.
• * 1.164

  2 Tim. 2.20.
• * 1.165

  Col. 2.18.
• * 1.166

  2 Cor. 11.10.
• * 1.167

  2 Cor. 11.3.
• * 1.168

  The modesty, gravity, sancti∣ty and solidity of true Mini∣sters, &c. Sanctam insci∣entiam & doctā ignorantiam. Praestat per De∣um nescire, quia non revelaverit, quam per homi∣nem scire, quia ipse praesumpse∣rit. Tert. de An. cap. 1.
• * 1.169

  Deut. 29.29. Si propter ••os solos Christus mortuus est qui certa intelligen∣tia possunt ista (sublimia) dis∣cernere, penè frustra in ••ccle∣siae laboramus. Aug. ep. 102.
• * 1.170

  Rom. 11.33. Ne{que} qui valde potens est in di∣cendo ex ecclesi∣ae prae∣ectis alia ab his dicet; ne∣que qui debilis est in dicendo hanc traditionē imminuet. Iren. l. 1. cap. 3. de Symbol.
• * 1.171

  The designs & ends of fana∣tick Libertines fatall to the Reformed Re∣ligion.
• * 1.172

  An humble & earnest expo∣stulation in the behalf of the people and Church of En∣gland.
• * 1.173

  Ep. Joh. 3.10.
• * 1.174

  Exod. 23.28.
• * 1.175

  Post Nicenam Synodum, nihil aliud quàm fi∣dem scribimus, dum in verbis pugna est, dum de novitatibus quaestio est, dum de ambiguis querela est; dum alter alteri A∣nathema esse coe∣p••t, propè jam nemo est Christi. Eò processū est, ut nihil sanctū, nihil inviolabi∣le perseveret; invicem mor∣dentes penè ab∣sumpti sumus. Hilar. vita.
• * 1.176

  Annuas atque menstruas de Deo fides decer∣nimus. Hilar.
• * 1.177

  Insanas & sa∣crilegas fabulas suas Christiani nominis pallio velare conten∣dunt. Aug. cont. Fau. l. 22. c. 15.
• * 1.178

  A Serpent, who with his immoderat am∣bition & poyso∣ned infidelity, together with all the horri∣ble examples of cruelty, lu∣xury and mon∣strous cove∣tousness, had infected the world. Guic∣ciard••n. l. 6. p. 308.
• * 1.179

  Contra hoc con∣cilium nostrum rebellatur, & omnis sacerdo∣talis autoritas factiosis conspi∣rationibus de∣struitur. Cyp. ep. 40. ad pleb.
• * 1.180

  Malac. 3.8.
• * 1.181

  2 Cor. 11.7.
• * 1.182

  The rudeness & irreverence expressed by some in religi∣ous duties, as a part of their Liberty.
• * 1.183

  2 King. ••.24. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. Quaest. & Resp. ad Or∣thod. in ep. Just. Mar. Res. 80.
• * 1.184

  The sad ex∣change people make of their old Religion for new Rap∣tures.
• * 1.185

  Vid. Aug. de Haeres. Manich.
• * 1.186

  Mat 5.16.
• * 1.187

  1 Cor. 2.11. Rev. 2.17.
• * 1.188

  John 5.30.
• * 1.189

  The soul mis∣takes & abuses of Christian liberty in vul∣gar spirits.
• * 1.190

  Acts 19.3••
• * 1.191

  Titus 1.11.
• * 1.192

  Heb. 13.7, 17.
• * 1.193

  1 Thes. 5.13.
• * 1.194

  Mat. 18.6.
• * 1.195

  Sacrilegium schismatis om∣nia scilera su∣pergreditur. l. 1. c. 4. cont. ep. Parmen.
• * 1.196

  Vid. Cyp. lib. ad Novatian. Haeret. & ep. ad Magn. 76.
• * 1.197

  Quis non trepi∣dat, Christi Ec∣clesia derelicta, ratione caeca, a∣pud temerarios illosschi smatum Duces & dissen∣sionis autores converti•• Cyp. ad Nov.
• a 1.198

  Numb. 16.
• * 1.199

  Cypr. ep. ad Ro∣gat l. 3. ep. 9. & ep. ad Felicē ep. 78.
• * 1.200

  Haeres. 18.
• * 1.201

  2 Tim. 3.9.
• * 1.202

  1 Cor. 5 5. 1 Tim. 5.20.
• * 1.203

  Summum futu∣ri judicii prae∣judicium. Tert. Apol. c. 39.
• * 1.204

  A further dis∣covery of mis∣chiefs from a∣bused liberty in Religion.
• * 1.205

  Exod. 16.20.
• * 1.206

  1 Cor. 3.4.
• * 1.207

  Heb. 2.13.
• * 1.208

  2 Cor. 12.20.
• * 1.209

  Jam. 3.16.
• * 1.210

  The contagi∣on of abused or mistaken Liberty spread among Mini∣sters, to the di∣viding, deba∣sing and de∣stroying of them.
• * 1.211

  Mat. 10.16.
• * 1.212

  2 Chro. 28.22.
• * 1.213

  Qui jam alios quieta consilia sequi persua∣debit, quando vos (sacerdotes Dei) tam hostili∣ter arma sumitis & inter vos de∣pugnatis? Niceph. l. 8. c. 16. orat. Const. m. ad Epis.
• * 1.214

  Unavoidable contentions a∣mong Ministers of different or∣dinations.
• * 1.215

  1 Kings 8.38.
• * 1.216

  Mar. 3.24.
• * 1.217

  The folly and factions of Mi∣nisters evident∣ly seen and punished in their common calamities.
• * 1.218

  1 Cor. 13.4.
• * 1.219

  The great di∣minutions of all sorts of Mi∣nisters in Engl. as to all civil respects.
• * 1.220

  Phil. 4 12.
• * 1.221

  Jer. 26.23.
• * 1.222

  Socrat. Hist. Eccl. l. 1. c. 14.
• * 1.223

  1 King. ••3 33.
• * 1.224

  Jer. 38 6.
• * 1.225

  1 Sam. 2.36.
• * 1.226

  Melchior A∣d••m. in vita M••sculi.
• * 1.227

  2 Sam. 10.4.
• * 1.228

  Acts 23▪ 2
• * 1.229

  Esth. 3.
• * 1.230

  The sordid en∣vy and grud∣ging against Ministers Tithes and Glebes.
• * 1.231

  Heb. 7.8.
• * 1.232

  Learned Bo∣chart observes out of Herodo∣tus, Pliny, Stra∣bo and others, that the Sabe∣ans or Arabi∣ans constantly paid the tithe or tenth of all the Frankin∣cense they ga∣thered in Ara∣bia Faelix, to the Priests and Temple of A∣pollo, or Phoe∣bus, which is the Sun, as an acknowledge∣ment, that to his warme beams and in∣fluence they owed those sweet per∣fumes. Vid. Bocharti Geo∣graph. Sacr. in Arab. Fel.
• a 1.233

  Heb. 8.6.
• b 1.234

  1 Cor. 9.13, 14.
• c 1.235

  Heb. 7 14.
• d 1.236

  Heb. 7.5, 6, 8.
• * 1.237

  Ministers con∣dition not to be envied, but pitied.
• * 1.238

  Mark 6.20.
• * 1.239

  1 King. 21.20 Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? 1 King. 22.8. But I hate him.
• * 1.240

  Experimental instances how petulant some people are to their Ministers.
• * 1.241

  The personall sufferings of Ministers, af∣ter all their pains, merits and troubles.
• * 1.242

  Job 3.1. Jer. 20.14.
• * 1.243

  Isa. 51.23.
• * 1.244

  Gen. 49.7.
• * 1.245

  1 Sam. 4.
• * 1.246

  Discourage∣ments to inge∣nuous men to be made Mini∣sters in England in after-times.
• * 1.247

  A worthy Mi∣stry not expe∣ctable, unless there be a worthy usage and entertain∣ment.
• * 1.248

  Zach. 4.12.
• * 1.249

  Prov 6.11. Psal. 68.13.