The cry of a stone, or, a treatise; shewing what is the right matter, forme, and government of the visible church of Christ. How, and wherein the present Church of England is wanting and defective, both in the body of the land, and in the parochiall branches thereof, with divers reasons and grounds taken from the Scriptures, to perswade all that feare God, rather to suffer any afflictions at the hands of men, than to submit to mans carnall policy and humane devices in the worship of God, or be deprived of the sweet fellowship of the saints in the right order of the Gospel. Together with a just reproofe of the over-strained and excessive separation, contentions and divisions of such as commonly are called Brownists. By Robert Coachman.

The generall Objection against hearing in the Parish as∣semblies answered.

THe generall objection is, that all Gods Ordinances are given * 1.1 to his Church, and so if their Church state be not good, what have they to doe with any of Gods Ordinances, it is out of [Object. 11] Sion, that the Law must goe, and such as are of the world have no∣thing * 1.2 to doe to meddle with it.

I answer, first, Preaching is not an action that is proper to a vi∣sible [Answer 1] Church, neither are all Gods Ordinances so given to the Church, as that many of them may not elsewhere be used. The * 1.3 Church must be no ingrosser, nor the world no obtruder; a cove∣tous impious wife is more hatefull then a free hearted servant.

And though the Law went first out of Sion; a proper place, yet now mount Sion is every where, and every Christian is both the Temple of the Lord in a sense, as also a little mountaine of holinesse, from * 1.4 whom the Law of God and his Will must flow out upon all just occasions, to neighbours, brethren, countrey-men, strangers, &c. yea, to any, good or bad, that will give attention, and so farre are godly Preachers in England from blame, because they preach, as that I rather blame them that give over, and desire from my heart, that where * 1.5 there is one of these plaine and powerfull Preachers, that there were a hundred, and that not onely their Temples, but even their houses, and all places where people might heare, were filled with the voyce and Word of God, and though this might suffice, being rightly consi∣dered, to answer this objection, and to shew that preaching may not be ingrossed by the Church, much lesse by the officers of the Church, yet because a word is not sufficient to those that make these objections, I willa little more distinctly open and prosecute the difference.

Notes

• * 1.1

  SECT. 22.
• * 1.2

  Mich. 4. 2.
• * 1.3

  All Gods Or∣dinances are not peculiar to the visible Church.
• * 1.4

  Ioh. 4. 21, 23. 1 Cor. 6. ••9.
• * 1.5

  The increase of godly Preachers in England is a thing much to be desired.