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of himself, and you, and us: "I confess, that, while I was Minister in your Church of England, I stood in an antichristian estate; yet doubt I not, but even then, being of the elect of God, I was partaker, through faith, of the mercy of God in Christ to salvation: but, as for you," M. Jacob and his fellow-Christians, "while you thus remain, you cannot, in that estate, approve yourselves to have the promise of salvation." Behold here, the Church of England gave you but an antichristian estate: if God give secret mercy, what is that to her?

Sep.-"The superabundant grace of God, covering and passing by the manifold enormities in that Church, wherewith these good things are inseparably commingled, and wherein we also through ignorance and infirmity were enwrapped."

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GOD's superabundant grace doth neither abate ought of her antichristianism, nor move you to follow him in covering and passing by the manifold enormities in our Church, wherewith those good things are inseparably commingled. Your own mouth shall condemn you. Doth God pass over our enormities, and do you stick, yea separate? Doth his grace cover them, and do you display them? Have you learned to be more just than your Maker? Or, if you be not above his justice, why are you against his mercy God hath not disclaimed us, by your own confession: you have prevented him. If princes' leisures may not be stayed, in reforming; yet, shall not God's, in rejecting? Your ignorance enwrapped you in our errors: his Infinite Wisdom sees them, and yet his Infinite Mercy forbears them. So might you, at once, have seen, disliked, stayed. If you did not herein go contrary to the courses of our common God, how happy should both sides have been! yea, how should there be no sides! how should we be more inseparably commingled, than our good and evil!

Sep.-"But what then? should we still have continued in sin, that grace might have abounded? If God have caused a further truth, like a light in a dark place, to shine in our hearts, should we still have mingled that light with darkness, contrary to the Lord's own practice; Gen. i. 4. and express precept; 2 Cor. vi. 14?”

BUT should you have continued still in sin, that grace might have abounded? God forbid! You might have continued here without sin, save your own; and then grace would no less have abounded to you, than now your sin abounds in not continuing. What need you to surfeit of another man's trencher? Others' sins need no more to infect you, than your graces can sanctify them.

As for your further light, suspect it not of God: suspect it to be mere darkness: and, If the light in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! What! so true and glorious a light of God, and never seen till now! No Worlds, Times, Churches, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Fathers, Doctors, Christians, ever saw

this truth look forth, besides you, until you! External light was God's first creature; Gen. i. 2, 3 and shall this spiritual light, whereby all Churches should be discerned, come thus late? Mistrust, therefore, your eyes, and your light; and fear Isaiah's woe *, and the Jews' miserable disappointment: We wait for light; but lo, it is darkness: for brightness; but we walk in obscurity; Isaiah lix. 9.

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SECT. 16.

The Motherhood of the Church of England, how far it obligeth us. Sep." But the Church of England, say you, is our Mother; and so ought not to be avoided: but, say I, we must not so cleave to Holy Mother Church, as we neglect our Heavenly Father, and his commandments; which we know in that estate we could not but transgress, and that heinously, and against our consciences; not only in the want of many Christian Ordinances, to which we are most straitly bound, both by God's Word and our own necessities:"

THE Church of England is your Mother †, to her small comfort: she hath borne you, and repented. Alas, you have given her cause to pour out Job's curses upon your birth-day, by your not only forsaking but cursing her.

Stand not upon her faults, which you shall never prove capital. Note only, the best parent might have brought forth a rebellious son to be stoned; Deut. xxi. 18-21. What then? Do we prefer duty to piety, and so plead for our Holy Mother Church, that we neglect our Heavenly Father; yea, offend him? See what you say it must needs be a Holy Mother, that cannot be pleased without the displeasure of God! A good wife, that opposes such a Husband! A good son, that upbraids thus unjustly! Therefore is she a Church, your Mother, Holy, because she bred you to God, cleaves to him, obeys his commandments, and commands them. And, so far is she from this desperate contradiction, that she voweth not to hold you for her son, unless you honour God as a Father.

It is a wilful slander, that you could not but heinously transgress under her. I dare take it upon my soul, that all your transgression, which you should necessarily have incurred by her obedience, is nothing so heinous, as your uncharitableness in your censures and disobedience.

Conscience is a common plea, even to those you hate we enquire not how strong it is, but how well informed: not whether it suggest this, but whereupon. To go against the conscience is sin; to follow a mis--informed conscience is sin also: if you do not the

* Isa. v. 20. Woe to them, that put darkness for light.

+ Mater Ecclesia, mater est etiam matris nostræ. Aug. Epist. 38.

first, we know you are faulty in the second. He, that is greater than the conscience, will not take this for an excuse.

But, wherein should have been this transgression; so unavoidable, heinous, against conscience? First, in the want of many Ordinances, to which we are most strictly bound, both by God's Word, and our own necessities:

SECT. 17.

The want of pretended Ordinances of God, whether sinful to us; and whether they are to be set up without Princes.

CAN you think this hangs well together? You should here want many of God's Ordinances: Why should you want them? because you are not suffered to enjoy them. Who hinders it? superior

powers.

Did ever man wilfully and heinously offend, for wanting of that, which he could not have? What hath conscience to do with that, which is out of our power? Is necessity with you become a sin, and that heinous? David is driven to lurk in the wilderness, and forced to want the use of many Divine Ordinances: it was his sorrow, not his transgression: he complains of this, but doth he accuse himself of sin? Not to desire them, had been sin; no sin, to be debarred them. Well might this be Saul's sin; but not his. Have you not sins enough of your own, that you must needs borrow of others?

But I see your ground. You are bound to have these Ordinances; and therefore without princes, yea against them: so it is your transgression, to want them in spite of magistrates.

Gaudentius, the Donatist, taught † you this of old: and this is one of the Hebrew Songs, which M. Barrow sings to us in Babylon, That we care not to make Christ attend upon princes, and to be subject to their laws and government: and his predecessor, the root of your sect, tells us §,"In this sense, the Kingdom of Heaven must suffer violence, and that it comes not with observation: that men may say, 'Lo the Parliament,' or 'Lo the Bishop's decrees:" and, in the same Treatise; "The Lord's Kingdom must wait on your policy, forsooth; and his Church must be framed to your Civil State, &c." Just as that Donatist of old, in Augustin || : Quid vobis &c? "What have you to do with worldly emperors?" and, as that other, in Optatus ¶ Quid imperatori cum Ecclesiá?

* ένας σωμ. λώβη μιαίνει &c. άλλα ψυχῆς μολυσμος. Nemo per exteriorem violentiam corrumpitur, si interior innocentia custodiatur. cap. 11. q. 3. Custodi .

+ Ad docendum populum Israeliticum, Omnipotens Deus Prophetis præconium dedit; non regibus imperavit. Aug. 1. ii. contra Gau. c. 11.

Barr. Causes of Separat. Def. p. 6.

Brown, Reformation without Tarrying.
Aug. contra Petilian. lib. ii.

¶Optatus Milevit. lib. xxx.

"What hath the emperor to do with the Church?" Yea, your Martyr fears not to teach us*, that God's servants, being as yet private men, may and must together build his Church, though all the princes of the world should prohibit the same, upon pain of

death.

Belike then, you should sin heinously, if you should not be rebels. The question is not, whether we should ask leave of Princes to be Christians; but whether, of Christian Princes we should ask leave to establish circumstances of Government.

God must be served, though we suffer: our blood is well bestowed upon our Maker; but in patience, not in violence.

Private profession is one thing: public reformation and injunction is another. Every man must do that, in the main: none, may do this; but they, of whom God says, I have said, Ye are Gods.

And, of them, there is difference betwixt Christian and Heathen Princes; if, at least, all princes were not to you Heathen if these should have been altogether stayed for, religion had come late: if the other should not be stayed for, religion would soon be overlaid with confusion. Lastly, the body of religion is one thing; the skirts of outward government, another. That may not depend on men to be embraced; or, with loyalty, prosecuted: these, upon ́those general rules of Christ, both may, and do, and must. If you cut off but one lap of these, with David, (1 Sam. xxiv. 6.) you shall be touched. To deny this power to God's deputies on earth, what is it, but Ye take too much upon you, Moses and Aaron: all the congregation is holy wherefore lift ye yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? Num. xvi. 3.

See, if herein you come not too near the walls of that Rome, which ye so abhor and accurse, in ascribing such power to the Church, none to Princes.

Let your Doctor tell you †, whether the best Israelites, in the times of Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, took upon them to reform without, or before, or against their princes; 2 Chr. xiii. xiv. xv. xxix. xxx. xxxiv. Yea, did Nehemiah himself without Artahshaht, though a Heathen King, set upon the walls of God's city? Or what did Zerubbabel and Jeshua, without Cyrus? Ezra ii. and iii. 2. In whose time Haggai and Zechariah prophesied indeed, but built not. And, when contrary Letters came from above, they laid by both trowels and swords; Ezra iv. 23, 24. They would be Jews still: they would not be rebels for God. Had those letters enjoined swines' flesh or idolatry, or forbidden the use of the Law, those, which now yielded, had suffered; and, at once, testified their obedience to authority, and piety to him that sits in the assembly of these earthen gods.

I urge no more. Perhaps you are more wise, or less mutinous : you might easily therefore purge your conscience from this sin, of wanting what you might not perforce enjoy..

* Barr. Second Examination before the Lord Archbishop and Lord Chief-Justice, compar. with his Reply to M. Gyff. Art. 5.

↑ Counterpois. p. 230.

Say, that your Church should employ you back to this our Babylon, for the calling out of more proselytes: you are intercepted, imprisoned: shall it be sin in you not to hear the prophecies at Amsterdam? The Clink is a lawful excuse. If your feet be bound, your conscience is not bound. In these negatives, outward force takes away both sin and blame, and alters them from the patient to the actor: so that now you see your strait bonds, if they were such, loosed by obedience, and overruling power.

SECT. 18.

The Bonds of God's Word unjustly pleaded by the Separatists. BUT what bonds were these strait ones? God's Word, and your own necessity-both strong and indissoluble.

Where God hath bidden, God forbid that we should care for the forbiddance of men! I reverence, from my soul (so doth our Church, their dear sister) those worthy foreign Churches, which have chosen and followed those forms of outward government, that are every way fittest for their own condition. It is enough for your sect to censure them. I touch nothing common to them with you.

While the world standeth, where will it ever be shewed out of the Sacred Book of God, that he hath charged, "Let there be perpetual Lay-Elders in every Congregation:" "Let every Assembly have a Pastor and Doctor, distinct in their charge and offices:" "Let all Decisions, Excommunications, Ordinations, be performed by the whole multitude:" "Let private Christians, above the first turn, in extremity, agree to set over themselves a Pastor, chosen from amongst them, and receive him with prayer; and," unless that ceremony be turned to pomp and superstition, "by imposition of hands +:""Let there be widdowers," which you call Relievers ‡, "appointed, every where, to the ChurchService:""Let certain discreet and able men, which are not Ministers, be appointed to preach the Gospel, and whole truth of God to the people?"

All the learned Divines of other Churches are, in these, left, yea, in the most of them, censured by you. Hath God spoken these things to you, alone? Plead not revelations; and we fear you not.

Aug. Epist. 58. Pastores autem et Doctores quos maximè ut discernerem voluisti, eosdem puto esse sicut et tibi visum est; ut non alios Pastores, alios Doctores intelligeremus; sed ideo cùm prædixisset Pastores subjunxisse Doctores, ut intelligerent Pastores ad officium suum pertinere doctrinam. Barr. against Gyff. inveighs, for this cause, against the Consistory of Geneva.-Fr. Johns. Complaints of the Dutch and Fr. Churches. Description of a Visible Church, cannot make a Distinct. in the Definition of their Offices.

+ State of Christians. 119.

Description of Visible Church. H. Clap. Epist. before his Treatise of Sin against the Holy Ghost. Brownists' Fourth Position.

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