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 ...

CHAP. III.

* 1.1BUt the mischiefs of unsetled Religion and Irreligion, like a Gangrene, is further spread to the more noble parts of this body politick, to persons of generous qua∣lity, of hopefull ingenuity, both by extraction and education, who have fair fortunes, like fuel, to main∣tain the flames of their factions; and good abilities, like oyl, to nourish the wild-fires of their fancies, which way soever they affect to rove. This sort of young gallants, who are grown up amidst our late civil broils and religious distractions, as handsome young trees oft do among brambles and bushes; these (I say) who might be the strong supports and goodly shelters of Religion in after-ages; these are miserably shaken, depraved, distorted: not so much by the impetuousness of their own juvenile fervours and passions (which,* 1.2 if inordinate, will, as S. Austin observes, be their own sting, reproch and punishment) as by those various circulations and contrariant traversings of Religion, which have tossed their minds to and fro, to a kind of delirium or vertigo, a meer whimsicall uncertainty, as to Religion.

Which distemper and giddiness in their heads and hearts they have contracted, chiefly, by beholding that unsettledness, looseness, giddiness, variety, irreverence, contempt and confusion, which hath been cast upon the face of the Reformed Religion and this Church of England: for since they came to any years of discretion, and a capa∣city, as men, to judge of humane affairs, they have seen nothing ma∣naged with less discretion, gravity and judiciousness, than the publick interests of the Reformed Religion and this Church. Many of them have been taught by words, and more by examples (full of all petu∣lant rallieries against our Church and Religion, as formerly establi∣shed) to despise and abhor all that their fore-fathers reformed, or set∣led, or professed and delivered as their Religion. How do some suck from their very milk and nurses all manner of bitter scorns and re∣proches against the Church of England, its Baptism, divine Ministra∣tions and Ministry? Some that are now grown up men and women, yet are still in the very infancy and cradle of Religion, either sleeping securely in sensual impenitency, or delighting to be variously rocked from one side to another, with a lullaby of novelty, which will bring them to a drowsie indifferency by a religious inconstancy.

Thus the very salt of true Religion, as to its smartness and savour, its piercing and preserving vertue (which only is able to keep persons of pregnant parts and opulent estates from vicious putrefactions) this is presented to them as useless, unsavoury, infatuate, while they have from their youth upward seen it, especially in its chiefest dispensers & most constant professors (according to the establishment of the Church

of England, daily cast out upon the very dunghill of plebeian petulan∣cy and contempt, exposed to poverty, yea beggery in many places, yea and profanely trampled under foot by the very beasts of the peo∣ple. Hence it is that the Christian and Reformed Religion appears to many great spirits and young Gentlemen, not as a matter of eter∣nal truth, of infinite weight, and highest concernment to them; not as having the Catholick testimony of the wisest and best of man∣kind in all ages, the expectation of the Patriarchs, the prediction of the Prophets, the preaching of the Apostles, the signatures of Mar∣tyrs and characters of Confessors, by their bloodshed and sufferings, which they chose rather to endure, than the least abnegation, Aposta∣sie or swerving from so great, so holy, so constant, so necessary, so di∣vine principles, as the Christian Religion is grounded upon. Many good wits of later years in England look upon Religion with a su∣percilious eye, with a squeamish coynesse, with a nauseating and huffing aspect: so far are they from fear and trembling, as if they did God a good turne to own him in any fashion, or Religion were beholden to them, if they were but civil to it; not considering the majesty of Miracles, the admiration of Angels, the accomplishments of Prophe∣cies, the manifestation of the Messias, the expresse image of Gods grace and glory, mercy and truth upon it, in the holiness of the precepts, in the honour of the examples, in the preciousness of the promises, in the astonishing love, compassion, wisdome and goodness of God con∣tained in it, laying out gracious and glorious methods of reconciling and saving sinfull mankind, by such a way of propitiation, satisfacti∣on and merit, as no whit blemisheth or diminisheth his justice, but every way advanceth and magnifieth his mercy.

All this divine beauty, majesty, glory and extasie of true Reli∣gion, so highly valued heretofore in England, by Princes and Peers, by Noblemen and Gentlemen of all degrees, is now looked upon by many as a mimicall play, a popular pageantry; a business so scepticall and litigious, so mutable and various, so childish and impertinent, so trivial and plebeian, that many think it a point of gallantry and great∣nesse of mind, totally to undervalue all Religion, as a meer fabulous flourish, set forth with some pomp and solemnity heretofore, now with specious liberties and indulgences, in order either to amuse and over-awe, or to please and gratifie common people, whose brutall strength and refractory rudeness is found to be such by all wise Go∣vernours in all ages, that nothing can over-awe or bridle the popula∣cy so much, as the opinion of some Religion, derived from a Deity; whose power being represented as omnipotent, can onely give either terrour and check to vulgar presumptions, or fixation to their everla∣sting revolutions. Which volatile temper of common people some cun∣ning men of later years having observed, how in nothing of received Religion they were setled, they have flown anew to the old craft of those heathenish Legislators, to pretend Nymphs and caves, to dreams and visions, to extatick grotts and groves, to converse as Sibyls with Demons or Spirits, and to keep immediate intelligence

with God himself, by special inspirations, beyond any thing of tradi∣tionall Religion, anciently received and constantly delivered by this or any other Church of Christ.

Nor doth this sorry artifice fail to take some simple birds that are more silly and incautious, who hardly ever get out of these snares and lime-twigs of pretended new Religion, till they lose their fea∣thers, much of their time and estates, besides the hazard of their souls and consciences.

But others, of more bold and robust tempers, are from these tem∣ptations and scandals of snarled and entangled, or loose and unsettled, or arbitrary and nulled Religion, betrayed to down-right Atheism; from thence they are carried down the stream of all sensuall debau∣cheries, without any stop or check of conscience, as to God or any Re∣ligion, by which they stand obliged and responsible to a Divine power above them.

All which comes to pass, by reason that they fell into such un∣happy times, as to their Religion, education and imitation, as offe∣red them for many years very little but novelties; and in them no∣thing worthy of the name of true and solid Religion, as to any pub∣lick certainty, harmony, unity, or authority. Nothing must be own∣ed as the uniform piety of this Nation, or the consent of the Church, either as from wise men or good Christians; nothing fixed, as be∣comes the majesty of a glorious God, and a gracious Saviour, an immutable goodness, and unerrable truth, held forth by the most idoneous and credible witnesses in the Catholick Church, through all ages and successions: but, as if all Christians had been either ig∣norant or impostors in this and all Churches, as if no Christian Princes, no Presbyters, no Bishops, had had either wit to discern, or grace to retain true Religion; so have many people on all sides run up and down, to pick and chuse, to begin and invent, to contrive and cut out what they listed to call their Religion: yea, many rigid Re∣formers, and most severe pretenders to Religion (upon new accounts, as schismatizing in, or separating from the Church of England) even these are daily found either split upon the rocks of uncharitablenesse, or beating upon the quick-sands of change and uncertainty; not onely their several factions, but the same persons having as many fa∣ces successively of Religion, as Proteus had shapes. The stakes and cords of that Christian and Reformed Religion, which was fixed in the Church of England, these are pulled up, quite ravelled and broken into pieces by many. Nor are these new modellers such as made modest trials and essayes of truth; but they are generally fixed to their unsettled fancies, constant in their inconstancy, pertinacious in their extravagancies, and hardly ever to be perswaded by any expe∣rience of their own folly, to recant or repent of their apparent and im∣prudent transports; much less to return from their exotick novelties and fanatick inventions they have lately chosen, to that solemn & sa∣cred, uniform and majestick, primitive and Catholick posture of Reli∣gion, in which it was for many years illustrious in the Ch. of Engl. and in all other famous Churches.

Notes

• * 1.1

  The evil conse∣quences infest∣ing Christians of better qua∣lity.
• * 1.2

  Omnis inordi∣natus animus si∣bi poena.