be an error; so will your Rabbies have to be: who, deeming themselves less in employment than in merit, do heartily rail against that which they heartily desire, the Rochet! This, you say, is not of Divine,' therefore it must be of diabolical 'institution:' can you give a reason of this consequence?.. You are so naked in your outward worship-as the wrestlers of old-it is impossible to lay hold upon you... I must therefore go about to prove the government of Bishops to be of 'Divine institution' or nothing. And here I will take the surest way, that is, to show the Divine institution of Episcopacy from Christ himself; not from the precept and practices of the Apostles, else you would slip out of my fingers, and tell me, 'That, if not by the blessed Apostles themselves,' as one of yours said, 'yet in their time, this mystery of iniquity of antichristianism did begin to work.' My assertion is, therefore,.. that the apostolical office itself, in its proper and reciprocal acts, was nothing else but the Episcopal,-I see you startle, and change your complexion, as it is now-a-days exercised in the Church of England! Whether the ordination of that function was John xxi. 15, or xx. 22; or as others, more probable, by these words, 'As my Father sent me, so send 1 you ;' in the same place, and at the same time, were 'Bishops' ordained: these are the Apostles' successors in asse et ex solido, in all things that ever was assentative to their office... Nothing [is] essential to that office in constituendo, but the acts of ordination and jurisdiction; these, the apostles, as apostles, once had; and these, by the same right of institution transmitted, by the succession of many ages, to the present Bishops! I see you angry at this stant lumina flamma... You see now I have not troubled your conscience with Timothy and Titus,-and these shall be still bishops to me, while you prove the circular and monthly changes, I have derived the original of Episcopacy from the apostles' office, not their authority... Thus have I flourished with you: it were a shame to bestow a blow in earnest upon such a poor smatterer as yourself. I have ever thought it the best refutation of you and of your cause, to lay your foolish impertinences open to the eye of the world; then I am assured only those who love to have their brains suspected would give you the least approbation. You find in the administration of the Episcopal office the perfect image of the Papal Beast, from horn to hoof!' but stay and take it home to yourselves, who are the only beasts I know amongst men... You are pleased to call the ministers a dumb' priesthood, 'a mockery:' what disgrace is this to the Church, to these that have baptism from her, or do expect salvation in her? You have, indeed, named them Bald-pates," with those ungracious children; but take your seat for it, in the first psalm, and there stay for your punishment... I think it strange that you, who deny all outward calling, except that from the People, should think the Curates' none of the ministers of Christ,' in that they derive their ministry from the Antichristian Hierarchy:' if no Orders be necessary, sure a mistake of Orders cannot be much prejudicial! Hence, let the world judge, how both these malicious factions spend their fury upon the Church of England. The Papists object, that she hath forfeited her ordination; you, that she hath none. But the Papists, they tell us, we are no church because we want a priesthood; you, because we have one. They will hear of none but a monarchical subjection; you do establish a democracy in the church, or an anarchy rather. They complain of perjury, because we refuse to maintain their Orders, as if who, amongst them, had sworn canonical obedience to a heretical bishop, were obliged to be a heretic:-you, of the want of purity, because we do not renounce all continuation and Orders of the Church. In spight of you both, she shall still maintain a visible succession in the ministry, from the very apostles' times. May not the Church of Rome, though in her old age more faulty, give baptism; and may not this warrant the derivation of our Orders from her first and better times? But I crave you mercy, Sir; this argument doth not concern you, who, not after the Church of Rome only, but also in the Church of England, do re-baptize... To maintain that every bishop is de jure divino.. is not only to deny all dependence from Rome, but to give her her death's wound, by lopping off the prerogative whereby she subsists; for by virtue of this, appellations come to her, dispensations from her, exemptions of universities and religious houses-the main pillars-which, if the Bishops of Europe, by maintaining their office to be de jure divino, would challenge, as a usurpation, her borrowed feathers might, perhaps, return home to the first owners... You mention Dr. Hall and his learned pieces: out upon thee for a fool and a babbler! The works of that reverend, painful, and judicious Bishop, shall be entertained by posterity, with approbation and thankfulness, when the better times shall hiss thee and thy associates out of the Church. The quintessence of you all, do come short to the meanest crotchet of his learning, judgment, integrity, and eloquence; nor shall these your calumnies be aught else to him but stigmata Laudis!' cicatrices, to testify his conscience and resolution who had the courage to set his face against you, the Amalekites, when others turned the back. For Pocklington, his very citation refutes you: you say he fails in that he cannot prove Rome's succession from Peter;' and yet you have said his assertion is, that he proved St. Gregory's succession from Peter.' But I forgive you; you knew not before, now you read it, that Gregory was Bishop of Rome!.. You are assured that the [Hierarchical] Government is 'protested against:' if such a worm as myself might presume to speak of that Honourable Judicatory and the 'Protestation' made by it, I might, upon better grounds, argue that you and your sectaries are within the reach of the same. My instance shall be in one point-when I might, in a hundred,-that of Magistracy: your doctrine concerning it, is point-blank against the doctrine of the Church of England!.. "Hitherto I might have taken you up, by some pains; but now, you pass all understanding. Fall you once upon the business of Reformation, you rave perfectly; like these lunatics who will, perhaps, speak sense, [but] do they encounter with the purpose that first chafed them out of their wits, then straight they run out. Sir, by laughing at you, you have spared me the cost of physic for expelling melancholy. Your first assertion is that it will be impossible to constitute' a National Church 'agreeable, in all points,' to the 'visible Congregation of Christ!' Here you no less cross the Consistories than the Bishops, and therefore it shall be convenient to leave you to their refutation. .. "It is your brag, that there are many thousand saints, whose hearts are perfect before God.' That is pleasing to you. And shall these 'empty pitchers ;'' these factious lights; these trumpets of discontent, multiplied to make a noise, affright the kingdom? I dare say, that if from your party you deduct madmen and fools --and none of these, are men envied-with such as love, for their own ends, to fish in your muddy waters, scarce a number, yea, scarce a unity, shall remain. Though you cry The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon,' as a friend of yours did, in another kingdom, the Church and State of England will ever have prudence to detect your stratagems, and courage to ward your blows... Now you speak plain language in persuading a separation:.. it is a strange speech, 'be ye separate! You therefore will begin ab ovo, and call together the 'holy' ones: but, how shall these be discerned? only by the infallibility, and presumed omniscience, of your spirit, that of error,' not that of truth!' You only know these 'few names; and here, you tell us that 'scarce' a number shall be found to make up these 'holy' [parish] meetings... Pray you, spare us the pains of separation; separate yourselves for some new colony in Virginia, and trouble not your pates about impossibilities. Would to God, you would leave us or your madness you, and then both of us should be at rest! Now, let the whole world judge, if you be a fit man to usher in a Reformation; and thus boldly to thrust your impious sense upon the Protestation'-made by the Most Honourable Parliament,-whose head is fraught with such whimsies, and who can hear of nothing but the gathering of a new Church in this kingdom! And if we all had made a total 'apostacy' from the Faith, we should descry you blasphemously, 'as the apostles did when they came to plant churches in a country where the Gospel had not been formerly preached' not your ears, but your neck is in danger for this ti "But what answer you to the question, If they have not 'received baptism ?' or, 'Are they not Christians?' Here something sticks in your throat. You answer negatively, by an equipollent metaphor, that the lame and blind are not to be offered up in a sacrifice to the Lord.' Do you thus tempt the patience of the Thus might a son write in conjunction with his father: see Milton's Works. Still Burton's position is not shaken; since neither Gregory nor any subsequent Bishop of Rome can be proved truly to have succeeded "Peter." e "There are a few, yea, I trust many, &c." h 1 John iv, 6. i P. 33, St. P. 24-31. f Jud. vii. 16. d P. 32. Prince and people? Is it nothing for you to object Paganism to them at every word? to call them profane, ignorant, unbaptized, unchristian persons? This were intolerable to any free soul; and must induce all those who have the smallest affection to generosity and religion, to provide a way how such monsters as yourself may be supprest. You go on, and tell us the 'godly may not communicate with the profane.' Quo Donate ruis? are not all 'profane' to you, that are good churchmen and obedient subjects?.. I see there is a necessity laid upon us, to search the hearts of men; to have their breasts made of crystal; to find out their very thoughts; else no fellowship, no communion! But if every known sin be every man's, where is Christ's burden? What difference put you betwixt the Head and the branch? Others' uncleanness can no more defile you than your holiness excuse them: if you be for this 'separation' you must either fly out of the world, or your flight is in vain. The best metal here hath its dross; the best grain its offal; there is need indeed of a fan, and a furnace, but not that of yours-destructive; not purging. Nor stay you here: all are 'dogs' and 'swine' to you, that will not be of your kennel nor wallow in your puddle...a "The Reformation you aim at is straiter laced than either Consistories or Parishes there is a 'necessity' of 'setting up' other 'Congregations,' besides these! Here your intent is to have all reduced to families. Old Nab must be your doctor and pastor: his wife, Tib, your deaconess; his son, Dick, your ruling-elder; and the serving-man, Will, your deacon: a pretty church indeed! and 'where none are to be admitted, but such as are approved by the whole assembly.' He and his household; the supreme and only Congregation upon earth not any beyond it in purity, above it in jurisdiction. No more contests now, for Consis tories, or Parochial Churches! you, for the avoiding of profaneness,' have assigned us a lesser circle; ipse ratem conto subigit; all will be well, and you be at the stern! Is this your model, your pattern of Reformation? It is so ridiculous, children will point at you and it, in the streets. If not for Christianity, yet for shame' sake abstain from such motions, for the which the enemies dreaming you and the Church of England to be concentric, name us no more 'heretics,' but madmen. Nor are you less dangerous than they. The innocent sheep are no less terrified by the barking of the dogs within, than by the howling of the wolves without. My very soul bleedeth, to think what discouragements you give us at home; what ignominy, and scandal, and disgrace, you are to us abroad. But you proceed, and tell us, 'If there must be 'a National Church, let not this exclude and bar out the free use of Congregations.' Here you play the Libertine: give you freedom, and you care not what religion is at the next doors... This is indeed the confusion your parity aims at, that every man may do what seemeth him good in his own eyes... You are willing to be daily spectators of the Antichristianism, and their patron-such is all to you, besides your sanctified Conventicle―of a National Church. Order; as they call it and how do you? you have no use, no name for 'order' at all: all besides your humour, though 'prescribed' by the State, must be 'order, as they call it!' this is your respect to Parliaments! You are the only mouths, I know, of all power and jurisdiction...b "You will have us to believe that though you are in, yet you are not of the world. You, good man! are 'separated from the world in the corruptions thereof:' whether is this, that you cannot sin, or that you do not sin? whether boast you here, of your opinion, or your practice? If the first, take it with you; and that of the apostle, when you say you have not sin, you are liars and the truth is not in you: but if the last, I will tell you, you are now too gross not to be discerned: all your fig-leaves of Purity and Reformation will not cover your nakedness, violence, rebellion, deceit, cruelty, dissimulation, wrath, incharity; in a word, all the titles that attend you in the first [or title] page are your individual lackies, and, do your best, will acknowledge no other master. I have known men of honest, civil, dispositions, ere they joined to your Sect; but then, as if Satan had entered with the sop, immediately became proud, testy, hollow-hearted, and whose charity dared not so much as extend itself to the respects of nature or acquaintance: these, in the children of disobedience, might be accounted sins; what they are in you, I know not!..d "Meantime you bear us in hand, you are not separate,'—and woe is me, for e 1 John. i. 8. d P. 36, 37. a P. 34. b P. 35, 36. it,-'from the Civil State, but are peaceable members thereof, subject and obedient to all goodly and just laws,' how long they may happen to fit your itching humours! Go beyond this train, the laws will be neither 'good' nor 'just;' you must have the power to interpret them, as you have the 'Protestation,' and thereafter obey not them but your fancy concerning them. Here you bring in your 'fulminatrix legio,' as if all we were Pagans about you. What your prayers' have 'procured' to us, let these last thundering days witness; the almost ruin of a poor Church by your schisms, will testify it to the succeeding ages. The apos tle indeed 'exhorts' us to pray for kings;' your hearers know how you obey this exhortation when, by your prayers, you teach them how to suspect their Princes of lukewarmness and oppression in your wavering petitions to God for their reformation, their amendment. As Joab did to Amasa, you stab their authority;' their reputation, beneath the fifth rib!'.. To your tents, O Israel: What inheritance have we in the son of Jesse ?' validior est oris quam operis vox. Let the condition of the times, your defections, your stirs, speak for me the truth of the matter if the Parliament should give ear to your desires, royalty might seek a patron amongst the Nominalists: you would soon find that burdensome that is not profitable, and at the last, answer the charges of the Crown with a Quorsum proditio hæc! You make too bold with Domitian's example; blessed be God for it, we have none such, no edicts come out for 'persecution:' but it is customary with you, to compare king and people to tyrants and heathen... Kings have no more certainty of your obedience than of your humours; your mutations, at the first change of the weathercock-and you are no less moving,-on information sent you from Amsterdam of a design against the religion, omnia susque deque miscentur, all is turned topsy-turvy...c "Now when you have drained us of all discipline and unity, how proceed you against the fomentation of envy and faction in the State? You give a bill of divorce to all Ecclesiastical, and a seeming power to all Civil laws; these, say you, may take order with' transgressors, but with the proviso of incorrigibility: and can there be any such in your exempted Congregations?' This is either against your doctrine of admission, or perseverance... That 'old stratagem of Satan,' you have executed handsomely this year against the Bishops, and with as great moderation as he whom you name did, 'Nero.' They, poor men, are by you made the gate to disburden the people of their sins... You tell us the Gospel,' that Novum Evangelium of yours, will kindle coals and stir up debate:'.. see how you deal with us here; shall we seem profane to you, you must separate from us; shall you be troublesome and contentious to us, we not from you!.. Only you, whom the Conventicle hath assumed to be of the Faithful, have the liberty of the Gospel!.. "For your next doubt, that your 'perfection' will be envied; it is of your own making. There is none who knows your conversations, can justly charge you with Popery-That you intend for Heaven by good works!.. You call your way of devotion 'Christ's sweetness;' spare, 1 entreat you, such appropriations; your works must not ever pass as the works of God...e "Now fall you down again upon the Parishes, and maintain a necessity to separate your exempted Congregations' from them: no minister, you say, will be 'so unchristian as to envy' ye this! Pereunt civili vulnere fratres: each of you hath his sword in his brother's side. When will you agree among yourselves? It seems you are erecting the Babel you so much talk of, if the confusion of tongues, hearts, and opinions, be suitable to the work. One calls for an elder, another brings a widow: one will have a parish, another a family: one for the Separation, another against it: this man [holds] that the doctor is an office-bearer; this, that he is not: he for a deaconess, he against her: one says the doctors may excommunicate, another contradicts that; he gives the right of prophesying to the inspired lay-elder, he denies it; another denies all church superiority and jurisdiction; he maintains it in a presbytery; this man, in a parish: non si linguæ centum, oraque centum-ferrea vox; and yet all of these,-mirum dictu!leaning to the like immediate, the like infallible, revelation: neither learning, church, nor fathers, must assist to find out the genuine sense of Scripture con a 2 Sam. xx. 10. b1 Kings xii. 16. * P. 33.* c P. 37-39. cerning any of these! The poets tell us that the mistaken history of Babylon was coμaxeiv; this, in a two-fold meaning may be so.. settle the business among yourselves, and say-you, who maintain the discipline and government of the church to be so clearly and particularly set down in God's word,-hitherto shall our proud wits-that cast up dirt and mire continually-come: then it is possible we may join with you, and that safely too; because you are no more yourselves if you once but listen to unity and concord. But this were dangerous; agreement amongst yourselves might, at the last, end in the Monarchical government of the Church of Rome!.. You tell us that your Independent Congregations' will not plead for tithes;' now you take the title of Independence upon you, from Church and State; such is the liberty of your family-meetings. Nor will you meddle with 'tithes; this were-God save us!-to Judaize. It is your custom to ingratiate the people to you by preaching sacrilege, rebellion and usury. King, priest, and people, are too cheap sold for your five-shilling freewill-offering. Nor shall you thus avoid the reward of Balaam; your purchase, it may be is as good as the set rent of others. To live by the chimney-corner, is sometimes as profitable as to live by the altar! Twenty or thirty pounds of collection, is a mean reward for some of your household lectures: even for one exhortation, if some godly families, about midnight, be pleased to join themselves together. That piece of Scripture is practically yours indeed, Godliness, is great gain.' Nor must the good women,-the conceit of whose devotion, is measured by their reward,-want their oblation, though they should borrow it from the pockets of their sleeping husbands, or send their clothes to Long-lane to fetch it! 'Not many wise,' you can tell us; these are likely to detect your knaveries; but as 'rich' as may be; they will drop the more oil for your zeal, and you, out of your Christian pity, will adventure to disburden them of part of their goods, that they may have the more easy passage 'through the needle's eye.' Your small tithes, you gather them ipsa corpora at your chamber conferences and long feasts, which you repay with as long graces, praying to the extent of your belly, where not a morsel may pass your censure if your hand be not in the dish: fastings, unless it be with the Manichæans, upon the Lord's day, fall not out, in your calendar, till the 32nd day of the month! 6 "The Parliament,' you tell us, is 'about a Reformation;' a 'glorious work' indeed; God prosper them, and send it us to the rooting out of you and all who have wrought our unquiet, and troubled the peace of Israel... But what Reformation do you conceive? When shall you make a stand? Must every year produce you a new religion? every month a new faith? Nor shall the Rabbies of the next moon be content with what you do a new inspired-eldership upon a new pretended Revelation will, perhaps, demolish this platform. You have indeed reached home to the first, the Patriarchal; each of them were priests to themselves, so you. Thus it was before the Law, before ceremonies were in custom ! and therefore is the only mean for you, who are without all law, to reclaim the church, your household, from ceremonies. You persuade yourself the Parliament will remove that 'Government' you name 'Hierarchical;' and we hope it will not... Those of that Honourable, that Religious Judicature, are lately taught by your madness, that essentially to change the present state of things, were no less than present death to the State... Then, if that dream, that 'idea' of Plato's were made real, did you imagine these noble and conscientious Pilots of this great Body would resign their present tranquillity for the fancies of your distempered humorists?.. Go, therefore, with this your conceit, to New England; there convert the Americans from Popery!-every thing beside your own opinion is so to you. We hope never to see this confusion of government, this parity of beings, this annihilation of laws and magistracy, you bring along with you, received with any thing but laughter and derision, in this kingdom... It will be possible to tell you what Angeli motores, what great Agents have turned the sphere, and racked their heads, if not their consciences-these, I know they have; I doubt if those,—to advance your ends for their own. I speak no mysteries now; blindness itself hath gotten eyes to see it... Do not you too much rejoice over the-perhaps deserved-afflictions of others: if 'judgment begin at the House of God,' what do you expect? The brim of the cup may purge, may refine them: the dregs, plague and confound 1 Pet. iv. 17. a 1 Tim. vi. 6. b P. 33-35. |